In the late 1950s, U.S. Strategic Air Command had a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction. Meaning they had planes regularly circling the earth with thermonuclear bombs. The theory being that if Russia attacked America, we would already be airborne to strike back with our own nukes, thereby destroying both sides. I think there’s a lot of stuff the government knows, that the government is doing that they’re not telling me about … and I’m okay with that.
Harry Truman knew nothing about the bomb, NOTHING until he became president and he was on the Senate Defense Committee. If you can’t trust Harry, how can I possibly be trusted? I think it best to learn top-secret stuff well after the fact. If kept in the loop in real-time, I fear I may not be able to handle the truth. In 1961 the Russians detonated the biggest nuclear bomb in history, 5.8 megatons, 400 times the power of what was dropped on Hiroshima. I’m glad I didn’t know that.
DEFCON1 is the highest level of defense readiness. It means nuclear war is imminent. I consider any personal knowledge of our readiness level as too much information. I’d rather be surprised (I guess we’ll all be surprised at DEFCON1). Of course, the government counts on our blissful ignorance, and I for one have no problem being labeled as such, because I know I can’t be trusted with any information that someone may need to torture out of me.
Bombs seem to be a hot topic for extreme secrecy. Seventy thousand nuclear bombs were made in the U.S. between 1946 and 1990. I can’t decide whether I’m really proud of our national secret-keeping ability, or really sad that super evil mass human destruction is the only subject we can be this tight-lipped about.
Mum was the word at Area 51. The Area 51 site is twice as large as Delaware, making it the largest government-controlled land parcel in the U.S. The atomic bomb was built at a cost of $82 billion and was a so-called “Black Project,” a secret from Congress. One of the test bombs they used in the run-up to the bomb bomb, was called “Mike,” it weighed 65 tons and the force of this thermonuclear trial run in 1952 vaporized the island the test was staged on. Test? What test? Island? What island? Mike? Who’s fuckin’ Mike?
What if the government’s not just keeping things from you, but also watching you? My conscience is clean, but these are professional spies we’re talking about here. They might know stuff about me that I haven’t yet learned. By 1955 the Air Force had the photographic technology to take a picture of President Eisenhower’s golf ball on the green from 55,000 feet. We saw that mulligan, Ike!
Oh well, it might be for the best; after all, how can the government protect you unless it tramples your rights and keeps you under constant surveillance? The rest of the world is spying on us so we’d better spy back. Besides, we all live right on top of each other, so how much privacy does one really have? The fun stuff we do in life is mostly just happening in our minds anyhow. I don’t really do anything of note physically during the course of a day, but the things happening in my mind are crazy and sick and embarrassing, and the government hasn’t shaken me down even once.
There’s so much in life I have no clue about … let’s keep it that way.