Recently, the day’s mail brought an invitation from the grandson of Harry S. Truman to contribute financially to the restoration of the Truman presidential museum and library. The letter indicated that I was among a “carefully selected” group of potential donors. Yes, I visited Kansas City once, about 20 years ago, and my name and address are on some list that generates letters from both President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden. I would not, however, under any circumstances send money to honor a man who ordered the destruction of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, even if he, as the letter stated, was perhaps “America’s greatest president.”
It
seems the donor-selection process has its flaws.
Years ago I said in a sermon something to the effect of, “Until we say
NO to nuclear weapons we are as guilty of idolatry as President Reagan and the
other old men running our country who think war and the threat of war provide
national security.” There was an audible
gasp in the congregation, and it being an election year, someone muttered, “I
guess we know who he’s voting for.”
Yeah, and I voted for George McGovern in 1972, as well.
When Reagan, who even admitted there would be no winners in a nuclear
war, pushed for a continuing – and obscenely expensive – buildup of the military
and nuclear arsenal to defend against the then-Soviet Union, I always wondered
what we were defending. Every dollar
that went down the nuclear weapon drain was a dollar that could otherwise have
been spent on addressing the educational needs of our children, or combatting
the AIDS crisis, or creating employment opportunities for the growing ranks of
the unemployed, or looking for solutions to homelessness, or other crises that
affected the lives of countless Americans who were not among the upper crust privileged
tax-break-beneficiaries.
In some ways all that seems as if it occurred long ago. Well, guess what? Here we go again.
There now are plans to update and modernize our nuclear arsenal at a
cost of $1.6 trillion. In the eyes of
those who support this effort, it’s not enough that we already have hundreds,
even thousands of nuclear weapons standing by to destroy the earth and its
inhabitants, especially Russia, which, by the way, has similar arsenals
pointed our way. Most, if not all, of
these weapons surpass the Truman bombs in destructive capability many times
over.
Yes, Biden wants to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal and is extending the
START agreement with Russia, but new weapons are on the horizon. Contracts were signed with only one bidder,
Northrup Grumman, to develop and produce the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent. The GBSD will replace ICBM’s, which sit in
silos on a hair trigger, with new nuclear ballistic submarines and
state-of-the-art bomber aircraft.
Meanwhile, many Americans are evicted from their homes as a result of
the pandemic. Some of them, and many others, are faced with food insecurity, including members
of the U.S. armed forces. Racial and cultural tensions tear apart communities. The right and ability to vote is shrinking for those seen as “less than.” Healthcare remains a very expensive privilege rather than a right. Immigration is a constant political football. Gun violence claims lives
randomly as well as targeted. Billionaires compare the size of their rockets.
