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The war of all against all in America
The 1990s began with great promise. I watched the wall across Europe come down and the international coalition to force Iraq out of Kuwait and hoped that we might finally fulfill what Enlightenment thinking had made possible.
I grew up in the latter part of the Cold War. The world on the evening news and Sunday programs was divided into two neat sides, and while Democrats and Republicans would argue with each other about domestic policy, hardly anyone questioned our perceived duty to be the opponent of the communist part of the world.
But as I grew up, I found out that things were not so simple — that is a fundamental part of growing up, after all. I asked my fundamentalist father how a president could lie to Congress and the voters by selling weapons to our enemy, Iran, and by using the money to get involved in drug deals in Central America. His answer was that things are complicated. This was revealing coming from someone who presented absolutist stances on moral questions that involved my own behavior.
Another shocking incident, coming around the same time as I read Isaac Asimov’s Inside the Atom and so was able to comprehend something of the science involved, was the airing of The Day After, a broadcast that I am still surprised that my parents let me watch — I had to promise that I would not make disruptive rocket noises at…
