[colechristensen]

It was largely our own governments wanting to scare us of nukes so we'd be scared of the Soviets, like in America with the schoolchildren doing duck and cover drills.

Having enemies the population is afraid of is good for politicians and they'll take any enemies they can find, and they'll do so indiscriminately regardless of the real nuance of the issues.

Immigrants, abortion, this religion or that, rock music, jazz music, alcohol, marijuana, global warming, windmills, books... just whatever as hard as they can regardless of if it's reasonable or not.

[TurdF3rguson]

The Soviets were parking nukes in Cuba in striking distance of the White House. If that's not legitimately terrifying to you, I just don't know.

[thombat]

Which directly followed the USA stationing Jupiter missiles in Turkey with the range to strike Moscow. As part of the mutual climb down from the missile crisis the USA removed the Jupiters, as both sides then understood the wisdom of avoiding hot brinkmanship

[GJim]

It's genuinely amazing how few people in the USA appear to be aware of what you have written.

It'd be nice to put jingoism aside for a change.

[satao]

americans are the most brainwashed people on earth when you consider how naïve of their own propaganda they are

[amanaplanacanal]

Which in hindsight seems like just a sideshow, since both sides already had ICBMs in development that can strike from anywhere in the world.

[zorked]

Not anymore than the US being able to strike worldwide to this very moment. They are the only country that has used nuclear bombs against civilians.

The big problem is having one country be able to do it without deterrents and with impunity. MAD is a good thing, if anyone will have those things at all.

[TurdF3rguson]

One of those things is scarier to American school children and their teachers than the other.

[pjc50]

Objectively, nukes have killed 0 American school children and their teachers while legal constitutional American gun owners have killed thousands every year.

The main natural predator of Americans is other Americans.

[soperj]

scariest thing for American School children and their teachers is the way that the second amendment is administered.

[lostlogin]

School children aren’t easily scared by boogie men, but maybe they should be. The Iranian girls found this out.

[Tepix]

Their nukes are still within striking distance.

[01100011]

I think it came from peaceniks and hippies mostly. You're talking about the equivalent of modern anti-vax liberals. Anti-science and given to conspiracies and mysticism.

There was a pretty good reason to be scared of nukes when these folks were children in the 50s. The world was quite a different place back then. The US was lagging behind the Soviets, militarily speaking, and Communism was much more expansionary.

[pjc50]

> There was a pretty good reason to be scared of nukes when these folks were children in the 50s

Yes, but I think if you asked which country was more likely to "push the button" in the 50s-70s it would have been the US, and the extent to which the US continued invasions after the collapse of the USSR kind of vindicates that.

> The US was lagging behind the Soviets, militarily speaking

I don't think this was ever true except in the least useful measure, raw headcount of conscripts.

[happymellon]

> anti-vax liberals

Just a small correction, but the anti-vax arguments are very conservative, not liberal.

[soperj]

hate to tell you this, but there's a whole contingent of "granola moms" who won't vax their children. They're the same people that subscribe to those teething stones that are really only a strangulation risk.

[happymellon]

Yep, and a lot of what they say is deeply conspiratorial conservative rhetoric.

They may be self described liberal, but their actions certainly aren't.

[soperj]

Conspiratorial sure, conservative though not sure how it gets labelled that. It's not a deeply ingrained philosophy of conservatism, and crazy is broad spectrum.

[tekla]

Its so fucking wild to see how fast the winds change. And since its inconveniently politically incorrect, history rewrites or "they were actually the opposite of us and lying"

Anti-Vax people are/were seen the leftist idiots who were anti-capitalist, anti-corpo, anti-the fascist govt, who would rather have died of preventable diseases than perpetuate the medical industry and its capitalist schemes trying to keep us sick to sell drugs and also ban weed.

It's so funny to watch the political sides swap and the doublethink take all of a few days to propogate.

[amanaplanacanal]

When antivax was a lefty thing, it was a tiny percentage. The most wacky on the left always get the most airplay for some reason, making their views seem more mainstream than they really are.

Since antivax is now popular on the right, it has grown into a much larger proportion of the populace. It doesn't help that they now have positions in government.

[01100011]

It's not surprising.

As a kid I was an anarcho-communist punk rocker but I had a friend who was a christian and his parents were scammy, MLM, right-wing conservative types(think Rush Limbaugh but loonier) who distrusted the government and lied on their taxes. It was obvious how the wings of the political spectrum almost touch at times.

Paranoia and distrust of institutions, mystical thinking, adherence to alternative truth structures.. these are apolitical just as mental illness is also apolitical.

[JuniperMesos]

There are both liberal and conservative strains of anti-vaccination sentiment that have been more or less prominent at various times.

[secretsatan]

There is undeniably a middle class anti vax wellness leftist movement whether it was originally conservative or not, unfortunately.

[userbinator]

Appeal to nature is something that definitely cuts across the political spectrum.

[lostlogin]

> Appeal to nature is something that definitely cuts across the political spectrum.

I wish this was true. How many right wing political parties support policies that improve the natural environment? Doing that is the domain of left wing parties, but I’d love to know of any exceptions.

[amanaplanacanal]

Conservation used to be quite popular in conservative circles before it got branded as a lefty position. Once that happened, everyone who thought of themselves as conservative started running away from it.

The US EPA was created by Richard Nixon, for example.

[happymellon]

> wellness leftist movement

Hang on, are we talking about liberal or leftist now?

Because a lot of these hoax "wellness" movements are conservative. Distrusting science and things you don't understand is a conservative mindset.

[TheOtherHobbes]

And trusting science while distrusting technology you do understand is a leftist mindset.

[happymellon]

I've never heard of that as a leftist mindset.

Do you have examples? People like the Luddites weren't distrusting of technology, they were distrusting of the owners using it to depress wages.

[Forgeties79]

> You're talking about the equivalent of modern anti-vax liberals. Anti-science and given to conspiracies and mysticism

In 2026 this is decidedly a more conservative stance. They installed RFK Jr., who in addition to Wakefield, is the antivax guy. MAHA specifically (can’t believe they actually stuck with that acronym) is overwhelmingly Republican dominated/supported.