Dear Ted:
Screw the Times, young readers, and everything else for the moment. Let’s start with: The test ban is good. It’s better than no test ban. And yes, it’s imperfect. And no, we won’t be able to know everything everyone does in the world. But knowing a lot of it and being able to nail a government for testing is better than “who cares.” Fact is, we’re moving away from arms control. The real threat comes from Russia, still. They have lots of plutonium and the people there are eating their cats. Someone, somewhere is converting those bombs into ready cash. We need an all-out program to buy this stuff up. Clinton is proposing something like that, but it needs to be the big front-burner story for the world. Or are we counting on nuclear winter to counteract global warming, producing mild temperatures along the Eastern Seaboard?
Also, wouldn’t Jesse Helms and Trent Lott and pals love to see the door open to testing for all kinds of Star Wars shit? Call me a dopey idealist, but I think there are still too many people who go sick, hungry, and uneducated right here to be playing with these toys.
How about the French union leader who is being celebrated by the press there for bombing a McDonald’s? Did somebody say globalization? Did he do it because McDonald’s is such a great repressive corporate octopus or it’s just that they wouldn’t make him a pâté burger?
Yum,
Steve
