While I can agree on one level with your "point of no return," John, I think I can trace it back a little further, to the event that started the ball that Ike warned us about rolling -- the Trinity explosion.
The Manhattan Project was the first real boondoggle of a military-industrial-intelligentsia-driven project. It had all the earmarks of any of the boondoggle pro- jects since -- it cost a fortune, it was secret and hidden from the public, and it wasn't necessary. On the last point, the guvmint learned halfway through the project that the Germans had taken a wrong turn in their research and had given up on trying to create an atomic bomb, but they didn't tell the scientists working on the Manhattan Project. They let them keep working, telling them that the Germans were only months away from "beating them to the bomb." I grew up in the aftermath of the public learning about the atomic bomb and what one did -- the "duck and cover" drills in school, the Civil Defense films on TV showing the effects of the bomb on buildings, the rash of doomsday books and movies like "On The Beach." I often wonder whether the "tipping point" for it all going to hell in a handbasket might have been the man on the street looking at photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and having the same reaction that Robert Oppenheimer did. His reaction to seeing the bomb for the first time was to quote the Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I think that the world, but especially America, had a similar reaction. They saw the films and realized that the world had changed forever. One moment it couldn't all just go away in an instant -- wars, pestilence, disease, natural disasters...those things all take time. An entire nation, or an entire planet, couldn't just disappear in an instant. But now they could. The climate of FEAR in those early years of the arms race was *palpable*, man. People worried about the Ruskies around the water fountains at work and built fallout shelters in their back yards at home. And *because* the FEAR was so palpable and so omnipresent, these fearful people allowed the military-industrial complex to start running things. Because all these weapons made them feel safer, while they were really making life more dangerous. So if I were trying to nail down the "tipping point" at which America shifted from a democracy to a military- industrial oligarchy, I'd say it was long before Ike's speech. Ike was *reacting* to what was essentially a Done Deal in his speech. It started with Trinity. The creation of the bomb created the FEAR. And the FEAR is what created a fertile ground for the military-industrial complex to take advantage of it and take America to the cleaners for half of its GNP for 60 years. Credit where credit is due. Eisenhower really did give the most important speech of the 20th century on his way out of office, but it was the bomb that opened the Pandora's Box that has become our world. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "do.rflex" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > ~The Zapruder Film: > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E66__vymfPA&feature=related > > > IMO the group[s] behind this is/are the same people Eisenhower warned > us about: > > ~Military Industrial Complex > > The estimated costs for the development of major weapons systems for > the US military have doubled since Bush's 9-11 surprise, with a > trillion-dollar price tag for new planes, ships, and missiles that > would have little direct role in the fight against insurgents in > Afghanistan and Iraq. > > The soaring cost estimates have led to concerns that congressional > supporters of multibillion-dollar weapons programs, the Pentagon , and > the defense industry are using 9-11 and Bush's phony "war on > terrorism" to fulfill a wish-list of defense expenditures, needed or not. > > http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/08/19/major_arms_soar_to_twice_pre_911_cost/ > > > ~Dwight Eisenhower's Warning about the Military Industrial Complex > > "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, > whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. We > will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security." > > AND, > > "If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. > They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if > an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human > being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government." > > ~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower 34th President of the United States (1953-1961) >
