We’re told President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima will the first by a sitting US president. Hiroshima being where America demonstrated its first atomic bomb. Ranked by scale of civilian casualties, Hiroshima has multiple sister cities who could share the honor of being sites of the greatest single day attrocity beneath US bombers. Travelogue wise, if there isn’t a sign saying “Washington slept here” obvously everywhere has a first for American presidents, so what makes Hiroshima newsworthy? Let’s agree as the objective of Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project, Hiroshima was the most calculated. Nagazaki was the reproductive test serving as reprise for the international stage. Obviously President Obama’s next visit should be to Nagazaki as proof that paying tribute via presidential visitation doesn’t amount to an apology, expression of regret, or even recognition of a lesson learned. The gesture may be a nod to self-reflection but it’s not guilt. What Obama is doing is taking a bow. The imperial pageant of unending curtain calls, for an old show called gunboat diplomacy.
Maybe call him up to come to the Little Bighorn? Technically Americans won the battle, just the US that lost. Just a bit of whimsy.
In the really Zen balance of things, The Bomb being deployed is also a loss for the US. Every time some Imperial Triumph takes place, the backlash gets put into motion Sometimes the pendulum swings slowly. Fast or slow it still swings.
Some of it is growing from the seeds of distrust planted, each lie that is disclosed eats at the Big Lie, the one where “we” are moral and righteous enough to rule the world. Or even the cosmos.
“We” are somehow drafted into the blame for the Empire having the distinction of being the first to have used each class of WMD..
Nuclear, Chemical and Biological. Others have gotten two out of three but starting with Hiroshima America hit the trifecta.
There’s a children’s book I checked out when I was 8 years old and never got it back to the library, called “Black and blue magic”
Other than by now owing a hell of a fine on the transaction, I do recall a line from it
I really don’t know if good can come of it, but I keep hoping. Open enough hearts and eyes and minds, who can tell? Since exactly nothing else has worked we should keep trying,