The false protection of wishful thinking

Only now, with new eyes that are old, I am able to see more clearly the innocence and beauty of children. I see, too, the awe and wonder of the natural world. I am frozen in my steps by the drama of a flock of robins, circling around a nestling who has slipped out of the nest, encouraging her to fly away before she's spotted by some predator. Experiencing joy from these simple things is an unearned gift of old age. But joy is not happiness. Joy admits suffering and pain, and when I am moved to joyful tears by young children, I see how their very lives are threatened by tomorrow’s headlines, by the dance of death that threatens their future. I was born before the first atomic bombs were tested in the American desert and then used to mass cremate 145,000 Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 78 years ago. I grew up watching H-bomb tests on the morning news show before I walked to school. I participated in the absurd duck-and-cover civil defence preparations, when the only logical response to a nuclear attack should be to walk directly into ground zero. In Ottawa, it is now deeply disheartening to see that Public Safety Canada is at work on a government contingency plan that supposes it will have the time to whisk away to bunkers the Prime Minister's Office, the cabinet, Parliament, and the Supreme Court. The Canadian Press’s Jim Bronskill uncovered the pathetic plan in an ATIP, and the story, which should have lived on to become a full-fledged national debate, quickly disappeared from the headlines. There is really only one thing Canada’s federal government can do in the face of an imminent nuclear weapons threat: use every tool at its disposal to convince our allies and all other countries to cease their programs of nuclear weapons development. Anything less than that risks committing global suicide. This will take political courage, because public opinion is quick to rally around political leaders who wear the mantle of warrior while it condemns true peacemakers. The persuasive and well-financed powers of the military-industrial complex also have a way of pushing public opinion away from any kind of disarmament. Democratically-elected leaders and dictators alike, who expect to stick around, ultimately count on public opinion. Retail politics do not favour peacemaking. But the very existence of this planet does. All of our attempts to mitigate the dangerous effects of climate change, our efforts to combat poverty, disease, and the stain of racism would—in a matter of minutes—be upended by a nuclear exchange. Wishful thinking leads us to believe that these weapons will not be used. But wishful thinking is a shiny object that distracts us from reality. It’s understandable that we don’t want to admit to a crisis that only a massive change in public opinion and the tactics of political leaders can solve. Yet we must disarm and outlaw nuclear weapons. There is a United Nations treaty, signed so far by 92 nations, that proposes to do just that. Canada is not a signatory. Sadly, the western world and especially the United States has decided that NATO—and not the UN—must be the most influential international organization. It will take a great deal of political courage to move away from that warlike stance and self-destructive nationalism. Now, 78 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is the slim possibility that the popularity of the film Oppenheimer may be awakening some small degree of public awareness of what we have set in motion. Weapons of mass destruction that are built and stockpiled will, one day, be launched intentionally because of a crisis, or by human error, or AI accident. Why are we still building a system that will inevitably lead to our destruction? We can study the relatively short history of how we have arrived on this knife’s edge. And be inspired to act. Or we can ignore the prophetic warnings and go about our business. The appearance of Oppenheimer also reminds us that there is another film, produced by Canada’s jewel of documentary filmmaking, the National Film Board, about the nuclear physicist who walked away from the Manhattan Project and devoted his life to the groundbreaking nuclear disarmament movement named after Pugwash, Nova Scotia. The NFB’s free app and site allows us to watch The Strangest Dream and perhaps be inspired by it enough to take an urgent, collective step toward peace. Jim Creskey is the founding editor and the publisher of The Hill Times. news@hilltimes.comThe Hill Times