'Tis (Not) Season For Grinchy Humbugs

Several years ago, I decided to no longer own an automobile as it seemed ridiculous to pay for and maintain something only sporadically used. As such, I mainly walk or ride the bus, occasionally renting a vehicle or using a ride-sharing service when necessary. Of course, this assuredly will change and I will rejoin the great American car culture in the near future. Riding the bus, I have observed that typically everyone keeps to themselves and desires to be left alone - a sentiment I fully embrace and understand - with their faces buried either in their phone, tablet or other gadget. To my point - and this equally pertains to social media as well - although we are all connected in our modern lives, are we really communicating with each other? It is not baseless to believe that this undoubtedly is a contributing factor to society's current ills, to say the least.

Oftentimes, my general aversion of people and overall disdain for humanity is misconstrued as an outright, if not perchance irrational, loathing of both. However, it is quite to the contrary - for the most part. This attitude stems mainly from the study of history and the harrowing atrocities of which individuals and groups alike have been capable of throughout it - and that their contemporary equivalents continue to perpetuate, frustrating any potential wasted by such actions. Having landed on the Moon in 1969, there measurably should be a permanent colony on it by now - if not beyond on the outer reaches of our solar system - to further explore the fundamentals of existence. Instead, humanity continues to devise ways to annihilate itself from existence on this singular body we zealously remind ourselves as our only home.

Like countless others of a certain age, I grew up watching Bob Barker and The Price Is Right - especially on those glorious mornings home “sick” from school. During that one hour of the day, you cheer on and root for strangers to win. This is partly the reason I still tune in:  the  hope that it inspires. Hope not only for individual contestants but for humanity as a whole to succeed. Mr. Barker's genial and considerate demeanor exuded a lot of this optimistic sentiment, passionate in his encouragement toward everyone appearing on the game show; Drew Carey, of course, continues the custom in his own animated and kind way. Imagine if that message would extend past that hour, though, and engulf the world, desperately in need of it, beyond a television screen? One can dream, as many have before.

Merry Christmas and, hopefully, a Happy New Year. To, and especially for, all mankind.

©2023 Steve Sagarra

Truth Lost in Divisive Acrimony

“Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

Society has become a discordant cult of petulant grievance mongers. Deviancy is normalized and sanctioned, while normalcy is considered deviant. Lawful citizens are relegated and superseded for illegal immigrants, unrepentant criminal offenders prioritized over helpless victims. Compliance to this status quo is unconditionally mandatory, any dissent perceived as specious heresy by an aggrieved class that perpetuates the endless cycle through lies and manipulation. The situation is maddening to the point of insanity in a progressively self-inflicted, if not deliberate, cultural suicide.

Those in power, even the most benevolently intended, always have ruled by feeding off anxiety and fear - especially those who tout doing so in order to preserve and save a way of life. Whether either from benign or catastrophic forces, circumstances often will present the scenario ripe for exploitation by duplicitous individuals and groups to whom it can, and will, opportunely benefit. All of these efforts supposedly are meant not only to rescue civilization from itself, but most especially from ourselves. This faction are the alarmist mongers, whose main purpose is to incite and exhort the aforementioned grievance mongers and other blocs.

A culpable mainstream media that is not objective in its reporting serves only to exasperate the problem. Self-serving “journalists,” i.e. propaganda mongers, conspicuously regurgitate narratives that supposedly corroborate questionable news stories rather than investigate them to their impartial conclusion. These are the new mythmakers. Ancient civilizations created mythologies to describe and understand the world in which they were born; maybe those myths were true, maybe they were only stories told with no basis. Either way, they created the necessary effect in their own time: power over and control of the masses coerced to believe in them by those who interpreted and relayed their meaning.

One might predict, if not hope, there exists a sensible majority of voters who have grown weary of this frustrating state of affairs. The question being is this in itself simply based on contending grievances, fears or propaganda? Or is it legitimately a disquieting actuality brought about by the combined three? As T.S. Eliot noted, though, “humankind cannot bear very much reality.” While curiosity may well be fatal to inquisitive felines, apathy regarding the grander scheme behind both domestic and world events nevertheless is, and will be, equally destructive. As such, humanity must restore truthfulness in spite of its more acrimonious inclinations.

©2023 Steve Sagarra

Atom, and the Eve of Destruction [A #TBT Post]

Heading to your local theater to watch Christopher Nolan's latest epic movie, Oppenheimer? For your consideration, I present a quick refresher - or perhaps brand new information if you are unfamiliar with the subject - on the basic historical context of the upcoming film. [Note: Originally written by me for a now-defunct startup reference website in 2007, and titled, "Making the Atomic Bomb:  Alamogordo and the Road to Nuclear Armament." All grammatical and typographical errors have been left intact as originally written and formatted.]

    On July 16, 1945, the United States detonated the first atomic bomb near Alamogordo, New Mexico, at the Alamogordo Test Range. In an area of the Jornada del Muerto Valley designated Trinity Site, the successful test was the culmination of years of scientific research.
    Throughout the 1930s, politicians and scientists, spurred by new discoveries in atomic theory, debated the theoretical plausibility of an atomic bomb. By 1939, American and British scientists began investigating the creation of such a weapon, particularly in light of Germany’s alleged ambitions to develop a bomb of their own. That same year, physicists Leo Szilárd and Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging the United States to build the weapon before Germany. Working with several expatriate European scientists, the U.S. government prioritized its development.
    However, efforts did not move forward until 1942, when transferred under the authority of the U.S. Army as the Manhattan Project. The top military leader in charge, General Leslie R. Groves, oversaw all major aspects of the project at the three main facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hanford, Washington, which manufactured the atomic materials, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, which served as the technical laboratory. Groves selected theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer for scientific director of the project, noting his scientific intellect, tactful manner, and previous work on several aspects of the bombs development prior to his appointment.
    Working out of the top-secret Los Alamos, Oppenheimer and his scientific teams focused on the design and material needed to create a nuclear chain reaction. In conjunction with such notables as Szilárd, who formulated the reaction concept in 1933, Enrico Fermi, and Niels Bohr, numerous scientists from around the country dedicated themselves to the project. They explored several concepts, with little practicality in their application. Confident a uranium-based bomb would work, two fission designs were proposed:  one utilizing enriched uranium and the other its newly discovered derivative plutonium.
    For the more complicated plutonium device, physicist Seth Neddermeyer, working off earlier proposals from others, posited the use of an “implosion technique”:  a ball of plutonium at the weapon’s core imploded to a supercritical state by conventional high explosives, setting off the desired chain reaction. Oppenheimer, seeing merit in the idea, shifted focus to its development. By July 1945, a team that included chemist George Kistiakowsky, mathematician John von Neumann, and physicists Robert Christy and Edward Teller, readied a device, nicknamed “the Gadget.”
    Due to uncertainties in its capabilities, Groves and Oppenheimer agreed it necessary to test the Gadgets’ military usability. Under a veil of secrecy and morning thunderstorms, the plutonium-based bomb was detonated at Trinity on July 16 at 5:29 a.m. local time. The result was an explosion equivalent to 19 kilotons of TNT, creating a crater 10 feet deep and over 1,000 feet wide. By all accounts, it illuminated the surrounding landscape brighter than daylight for a few brief seconds. The mushroom cloud caused by the explosion extended nearly eight miles into the sky, while the resulting shockwave traveled as far as 100 miles. Noting the accomplishment, Oppenheimer stated simply, “It worked.” (He would later recall reflecting privately on a passage in the Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita:  “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”)
    President Harry S. Truman quickly authorized the use of the new weapon against Japan, whom the United States had been at war with for the past three and a half years. Truman’s top advisors, fearing major casualties in a proposed invasion of mainland Japan, concluded such action to be the best solution in ending hostilities between the two nations with minimal Allied losses. On August 6, a U.S. Army Air Force B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped the first of two bombs – the uranium-based “Little Boy” – on Hiroshima, Japan. Japan’s refusal to comply with surrender terms resulted in a second – similar in composition as the Trinity test bomb and codenamed “Fat Man” – being dropped on Nagasaki three days later. Due to the devastation caused, Japan formally surrendered to the Allies on August 15, 1945, ending World War II.
    Reactions to the bombings were immediate and mixed. While proponents celebrated the triumphal victory, critics questioned their necessity against an ostensibly defeated enemy. Some regarded them as unmitigated revenge for Pearl Harbor, while others saw them as a propaganda tool against the Russians. Whichever interpretation of the bombings one chooses, the Trinity test prior to them had irrevocably signaled an uncertain new era. Unbeknownst at the time, it became a means for ending one war and a symbol of a yet-undefined one — “the Cold War” — with the Soviet Union.

References:

Frank, David.  Downfall:  The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.  Penguin Publishing, 2001.

Los Alamos National Laboratory History Homepage.  “Project Y.” n.d. <http://www.lanl.gov/history/atomicbomb/index.shtml> (6 June 2007)

McKain, Mark, ed. Making and Using the Atomic Bomb.  San Diego:  Greenhaven Press, 2003.

Rhodes, Richard.  The Making of the Atomic Bomb.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Takaki, Ronald T. Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb.  Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1995.

©2023 Steve Sagarra