Another Thought On The Bomb

[Gillies, Lindsay]

Susan adds:

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I, for one, am quite ready to admit that I find weapons of mass destruction
sexy.  Power in general is a turn-on.  Also, the slow, complex blooming of
a mushroom cloud is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen
through the filter of a TV screen.  :>  I've heard that those who saw
the fireglow of the atomic bomb have never forgotten it.  Seductiveness
comes not from the final consumation, but from the siren-call and slick
"sexy" presentation.
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My [despairing] reply:
Can it be the _idea_ of these things that you find sexy?  It would be 
interesting to know how many of us are speaking from a point of view 
grounded in actual experience of combat/fireglows etc.  I know, I know---you 
don't have to be French to appreciate Proust---or even female to appreciate 
V. Woolf---but can we really dispense with the actual content of human 
misery these images represent?---long enough for even the briefest of 
aestheticized abstractions?