Crises of the Mind

I used to work in aerospace, first at the Firestone Guided Missile Division, where we produced a guided missile sort of right out of WW II.  The Corporal was a direct follow-on to Hitler’s V II rocket that he used to send over the waters into Britain’s back yard during the war.  Ours had a range of about 100 miles, and was essentially a battlefield weapon. It was an odd weapon, since an airplane, almost any WW II fighter-bomber would have caused more enemy destruction at less cost and fuss.

But then in 1957 I switched to Lockheed, the new Missiles and Space Company just beginning to operate in the San Francisco Bay Area, just before that turned into Silicon Valley. Lockheed was designing and producing several creatures. The one on which I worked as an engineer was the Polaris Missile. Now that was a giant step ahead in wartime technology. The Polaris was a formidable Cold War weapon. (It was intended to be launched from a submarine.) Yeah, instead of sitting on the ground somewhere in the US or Europe, this dude was intended to be carried around under water in a nuclear submarine. Now each submarine was large enough to house 16 launch tubes, so 16 Polaris missiles.  And each missile could carry 10 independently targetable nuclear warheads. Now think of that. Each submarine could launch enough weaponry to destroy 160 enemy targets, as in Cities.  How’s that for an advance in Cold War weaponry?

I think as engineers, we kept our minds on the day’s tasks at hand—designing some piece of the monster. We really did not think much about what we were really about—designing a mechanism that could destroy much of the world, if not the entire globe.  I mean, we showed up each day for work at around 8:30, stayed until 5-5:30ish and then went home, or sometimes out for an after work drink at a local pub.  Even there, we didn’t talk much about what we were about. Mainly, we chatted about movies we had seen, what our kids were up to, or maybe where we might go for our vacation.  Well, we also chatted about cars a lot.  As engineers, we all loved cars, especially sports cars, or other unique creatures of the road. Many of my engineer buddies owned exotic cars. One of them drove a 1927 Rolls Royce. Another fellow drove a 1959 Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing.  MGs, TRs, Jags, Alfa Romeos.  Lots of money went into that auto parade.  And so, there was a lot of chattering about cars.  I had a wife and a young child, so, of course, I did not own a sports car. I drove a Borgward Isabella (look it up).

And so we worked and played along through the 1950s into the 1960s.  And then we had an election in 1960, and John F. Kennedy was elected. Such a nice, clear moment in time. A decent, intelligent human being as our president. Wow, what a concept. But throughout this period, tensions arising out of that Cold War with Russia kept increasing. I assume our missile development program might have contributed somewhat to those tensions.  But increase they did.  And then this dude Nikita Khrushchev showed up on the scene in Moscow.  And he wanted to shake things up a bit. So he looked around and then he came across this other dude, named Fidel Castro who had taken over Cuba. Fidel was an ornery dude looking for a way to increase his relative independence of the US. So, Nikita began talking with Fidel, and they arrived at a momentous decision—the Russians would respond to our missilery in Eastern Europe with some missiles in Cuba, and maybe add some Russian aircraft he could use to survey American interests.

So beginneth  the Cuban Missile Crisis. And what was that crisis you might ask? Well, here from Wiki is a little brief on that period.

“The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962 (Spanish: Crisis de Octubre), the Caribbean Crisis (Russian: Карибский кризис, tr. Karibsky krizis, IPA: [kɐˈrʲipskʲɪj ˈkrʲizʲɪs]), or the Missile Scare, was a 1 month, 4 day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union which escalated into an international crisis when American deployments of missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of similar ballistic missiles in Cuba. Despite the short time frame, the Cuban Missile Crisis remains a defining moment in U.S. national security and nuclear war preparation. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war.^[3]

In response to the presence of American Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey, and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev agreed to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles on the island to deter a future invasion. An agreement was reached during a secret meeting between Khrushchev and Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro in July 1962, and construction of a number of missile launch facilities started later that summer.

Meanwhile, the 1962 United States elections were under way, and the White House denied charges for months that it was ignoring dangerous Soviet missiles 90 mi (140 km) from Florida. The missile preparations were confirmed when an Air Force U-2 spy plane produced clear photographic evidence of medium-range R-12 (NATO code name SS-4) and intermediate-range R-14 (NATO code name SS-5) ballistic missile facilities.

When this was reported to President John F. Kennedy, he then convened a meeting of the nine members of the National Security Council and five other key advisers in a group that became known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM). During this meeting, President Kennedy was originally advised to carry out an air strike on Cuban soil in order to compromise Soviet missile supplies, followed by an invasion of the Cuban mainland. After careful consideration, President Kennedy chose a less aggressive course of action to avoid a declaration of war. After consultation with them, Kennedy ordered a naval "quarantine" on October 22 to prevent further missiles from reaching Cuba. By declaring a quarantine rather than a blockade, the United States was able to avoid a further conflict. This quarantine fell short of a traditional blockade and so avoided the implications of a state of war.^[4] The US announced it would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba and demanded that the weapons already in Cuba be dismantled and returned to the Soviet Union.

After several days of tense negotiations, an agreement was reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement to not invade Cuba again. Secretly, the United States agreed that it would dismantle all of the Jupiter MRBMs, which had been deployed in Turkey against the Soviet Union. There has been debate on whether or not Italy was included in the agreement as well. While the Soviets dismantled their missiles, some Soviet bombers remained in Cuba, forcing the Naval quarantine to stay in place until November 20 of that year.^[4]

When all offensive missiles and the Ilyushin Il-28 light bombers had been withdrawn from Cuba, the blockade was formally ended on November 20, 1962. The negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union pointed out the necessity of a quick, clear, and direct communication line between the two Superpowers. As a result, the Moscow–Washington hotline was established. A series of agreements later reduced US–Soviet tensions for several years until both parties eventually resumed expanding their nuclear arsenals.”

And there we sat every day, designing that big missile that might one day destroy all of Russia, while simultaneously listening to daily news reports about the worsening crisis on our southern doorstep. Would they actually launch missiles at us? And, if so, where would those missiles be aimed? Every day, we would gather after work and chat, while we drank martini’s, or gin and tonics, and pondered the possibility that we might not actually make it to the next day.

We actually discussed what we might do. If the missiles began, would we run off to the Pacific coast, or would we head for the hills, to hide out in the mountains, assuming we could actually reach there? Yes, we actually held such discussions, and so the possibility of the end of our lives began entering our consciousness.  See, this was not World War II we were pondering, where all the action took place beyond that great sea. No, this wartime might arrive right on our doorsteps.  And so the tensions began increasing, while our work on a device to destroy the Russian people continued.

This period of crisis lasted for several months and did not end formally until November 1962, when we began to breathe normally again, and we were able to think about such things as sports cars, or families, or vacations.

And then my life regained its normalcy.

Now life in this country and, in fact this world, is rarely without some crisis in the making. Goodness, remember Ronald Reagan, messing around in both Iran and Central America? Oh, he did love to stir that pot. And let us not forget Korea, and then Vietnam, that endless blood sport. But with all those horrific blood sports, the action was elsewhere. It was technically possible to get on with the activities of your daily living, and not focus every hour of every day on those warring events.

And we did enjoy all of our activities of daily living. We got to travel a lot, even living for a few years in India, traveling to Europe, and other exotic locations (does Australia qualify as exotic?).  And then we retired and moved to North Carolina to be close to a daughter and some grandkids.

That retirement phase has been quite wonderful I must confess. We have managed to see much of our family both here and farther away with some frequency, and so retirement has been a wonder.

Then recently, this young lady, one Greta by name, began appearing in our consciousness.  And she began saying things that others had said for several decades, although quite without notice.  I think scientists had been saying since maybe the 1970s that we really needed to begin paying attention to our global climate. That we were really screwing up with our emissions of carbon into our atmosphere and that, eventually we would begin paying a price. That is, our climate would in fact begin to change—heating up our globe and changing our environment in deadly ways. But they always put off the period when the dues had to be paid.

Suddenly, enter 2020. We now had arguably the stupidest human on the planet as our president.  And then, that dreaded little creature known as the COVID entered our world in the Chinese city of Wuhan. And again, we were preoccupied, so for a time we just pointed our fingers at China, until that little COVID creature spread beyond China. And then it really spread, and people all over the globe, including especially here in America, began to sicken and then die. It seemed wherever stupid political leadership was in place, the disease spread more rapidly, and more people died. And America sported arguably the dumbest human we have known, so we did relatively little to prevent the worst effects.

And then, finally, 2021 arrived and we managed to kick out our Neanderthal president (although he continues to deny that fact). But he succeeded in not managing the disease, to the point that hundreds of thousands of people died unnecessarily.

But were we done with catastrophe? Ummm, no, because then our climate suddenly began changing in big ways. California has always had forest fires, but suddenly whole regions of the state were burning away.  The entire Pacific Northwest was turning into a tropical zone. Areas that normally consider 85 or maybe 90 very hot, now suddenly were seeing temperatures creep up into the 120s and above range.  And we suddenly had fires beginning because of lightning (or Jewish Space Lasers, take your pick).  Storms were beyond dangerous.

Ice sheets were collapsing. In one region, an entire town began sinking due to water being sucked out of the substrata, causing the soil structure beneath to collapse.

Climate change had joined forces with COVID to change the conversation.  Was the globe on fire, and would that fiery creature get to you or would COVID end it all for you? Take your pick.

And so that terror-filled mind-set has entered our world.  And still we have people denying the worst effects of the disease or climate change—take your pick. It seems that stupid people everywhere are into denial. Here we have two governors, Florida and Texas who specialize in denial, and their people are dying heavily as a direct result.

Now, unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis, there is no easy answer. We can’t sit down at a table with Mister COVID, or Madame Climate-Change.  No, we only have responses that can play out over the long haul. And the responses must begin with POLITICS, and then they must engage the world of MONEY.  We must stop electing stupid people to govern us.  Texas and Florida are examples, but the world of American politics is rife with idiocy.  How in heavens name did anyone even consider voting for Trump or Green, or Bohbert,  or Cruz, or Rubio, or Mitch,  or, for heaven’s sake now Giuliani?  Really? Rudy gets your vote? Really? And you watch Hannity & Co, and expect to understand anything??

So, we really need a wholesale re-outfitting of our Congress, and our State houses. And we need to begin demanding some honesty and some actual intelligence in our public discourse.  Because, folks,  we are killing ourselves with these folks-yep, it’s exactly like committing suicide.  It’s like being tossed into a cellar filled with sickly degenerates and then deciding that we really are not going to get vaccinated against their disease.

Now, you are entirely correct that all of this is your choice. Yep, you can continue to support the idiots of our world. OR, you can open your eyes and your minds, and begin considering human intelligence as a pathway to a new world.  Yep, there are actually folks out there in America who possess functional brains, and who are willing to at least begin confronting the problem of MONEY as a corrupting influence in the World.

It’s really your choice folks.