[stareatgoats]

Good thing you added that thing about snark to your previous comment because the irony was not altogether evident.

I totally agree, people should protest. But they don't, exactly because of the age-old paradox mentioned, that you so emphatically deny. You underestimate the societal, psychological mechanisms in place, you underestimate the power of propaganda given to the military, even in democratic countries when "national security" is at stake, you underestimate the belief among large swathes of the population that "we can win this thing" and get rich doing it.

Of course I hope you are right, I'd love to be proven wrong. You are likely young and want to live a long and healthy life. I am old and with one foot in the grave anyway. But I do believe it gives me some clarity of vision, unobscured by wishful thinking.

But again, I hope you are right.

[notthatmccarthy]

I think I am. If you see what's happening in Iran right now, it's clear that people don't always coldly calculate their chances to win and there is a threshold beyond which common decency and ambient morality will boil over to rage that overwhelms the instinct of self-preservation.

In the case of nuclear weapons on the other hand, it is about self-preservation because the blood-thirstiness and the willingness to take risks of the people who control nuclear weapons can doom us all to non-existence. Or, even worse, to a nightmare existence were we are worse than beasts in a world destroyed and incapable of sustaining life.