GRGR(8): Nuclear light

[Monte Davis]

Craig Clark:

> The rocket is merely a means towards an end

And what a peculiarly un-final end. GR embodies and foreshadows so many ironies...

At the beginning of WWII in England, there was a fatalistic belief that "the bomber 
will always get through": London hospitals were preparing for casualties far 
greater than the Blitz actually inflicted.

Then, years of costly, ineffective "strategic" bombing by the Allies, building up to 
atrocities like Hamburg and Tokyo. ("But they started it, Dad, at Guernica and 
Rotterdam.")

And then, at the end, the A-bomb, and Allied & Soviet teams hunting for V-2s: the 
combination that in a few years *would* make "strategic" targeting both effective  
and unstoppable. The struggle against those genocidal Nazis and barbarous Japs 
yielded a Kwik, Kleen way to incinerate millions. Only it didn't get used, only 
brandished, because it was a "cold" war. (Say, doesn't that monstrous 
tyrant Stalin look kinda like old Uncle Joe?)

That's why for those of us of a certain age, the ending of GR has a more than 
literary power. Those TV newsreels I mentioned (I think 'The Big Picture' was 
one)... on weekend mornings in Dallas, in the wake of the Korean War, with 6x6s 
rumbling off to Army Reserve maneuvers outside, my brother (b. '45) and me ('49) would 
turn on the tube and within a few minutes go from a follow-the-bouncing-ball 
cartoon singalong, to fireballs in Nevada, to a WWII movie, to a Viking or Redstone 
launch in New Mexico, to fiery young Congressman Zhlubb. And on Monday morning 
at school, we'd practice curling up under our desks.

We knew there was *something* strange, but it wasn't until GR that someone made 
artistic if not historical sense of it.

-Monte <this is only a test>