Bomb Thoughts
In preparation for Veterans Day, I watched the Netflix movie House of Dynamite. On the one hand, I wish I’d skipped it because it’s about nuclear war, and I grew up on a diet of books and films like that: Hiroshima, On the Beach, Fail Safe, and Dr. Strangelove. I spent my youth scared spitless, even though I never once had to do a duck-and-cover drill. I guess Catholic schools felt that prayer was your best option, because we spent a lot of time being told that death could come knocking at any moment.
On the other hand, I’m glad I watched the movie, because now I know it’s a good movie. And while it scared me once again, I realized that suggesting people watch it might help them, if they do, understand that when a nuclear weapon is coming at you on an ICBM, you don’t have a lot of time to think, in this case, eighteen minutes. So perhaps we should stop pretending that anyone can really win a nuclear war. Because if one comes, the next Veterans Day will seem a quaint remembrance.
And with that, I’m going to spend the day thinking about the sacrifices my mother and father made in service to the country, along with my uncles during World War II, and how my grandfather must have felt leaving the confines of his hometown in Texas to see France in the first great war. Then I’ll offer up a fervent prayer for peace, even though I know the money to be made in war most likely will never let it happen.