I realize he just couldn't help it, and I couldn't help feeling a flash of fear and hatred, you know? More of a fear, actually - one of the most chilling, breathtaking kind of horror that you immediately get ashamed of and want to push it out by turning it into fury and punching something hard.
Gosh, I was really curious how this post would go across with our Russian readers, because you guys must have a really intense set of associations with Trinity and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the whole four year stretch before First Lightning, yeah? Emily and I are writing about Russia's feelings about all this in the Potsdam post, and she's going to do a solo post right afterwards to get into it even more, but after all, all we can really do is speculate.
In America, you know, we have these very different associations with Trinity, and then the actual bombings which took place a few weeks later. Trinity was ominous as shit, yeah, but it was also a massive technological accomplishment, something we're taught to be rather proud of just on its own merits, and it was, I mean, along with economic considerations (America being sort of the only developed country that wasn't fucking burned down during WW2) what earned America that instant "LOL, SUPERPOWER" label after the war. And you know, being a superpower, that's nice, we're into that. So we feel...I don't want to say "positive" about Trinity, and the Manhattan Project, but...there's a lot of respect for it, you know?
But then, you ask most Americans (any educated Americans, I'd like to think) what they think of the atomic bombings during the war, and there's this tremendous regret, this really intense sense of national responsibility. Not "guilt," that's not it, although certainly among some elements, you'll find very intense feelings of guilt and shame for our use of the atomic bomb...but a far greater awareness and sorrow for what an awful thing the bomb is, and how much suffering it brought into the world, both in Japan, and, you know, kind of everywhere as a result of the Cold War.
Like, these two things are distinct, separate events in the American psyche, you know what I mean? Trinity was an amazing accomplishment that gave the nation unprecedented power, and we have respectful feelings about that. The bombings themselves were...evil, obviously. Like, necessary? The best choice? (Not the right choice--obviously nothing that involves wiping out two cities full of civilians is the 'right choice.' But the best choice available?) Maybe. Who knows? Nobody can ever say, really. But there is a profound understanding of the horror of the atomic bomb in the United States. I don't want to throw around the term 'war crime,' because that has a very specific and highly controversial definition, but there's no question to most Americans that it was a horrible, cruel thing to do, regardless of its efficacy, or how little anyone understood about the long-term consequences of the bomb at the time.
But I suppose there wouldn't be any sense of that distinction in Russia, would there? It would just be, first day of the Atomic Age, oh fuck, come oooon Soviet atomic project. (By the way, does it have a cool name? Like the Manhattan Project? I can't even find a number designation for it or anything, everything I read just calls it the 'Soviet atomic bomb project.' I sometimes wish the Soviet Union had placed more of a priority on giving things cool names. >_> All the number designations are hard to remember. <_< )
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I realize he just couldn't help it, and I couldn't help feeling a flash of fear and hatred, you know? More of a fear, actually - one of the most chilling, breathtaking kind of horror that you immediately get ashamed of and want to push it out by turning it into fury and punching something hard.
Gosh, I was really curious how this post would go across with our Russian readers, because you guys must have a really intense set of associations with Trinity and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the whole four year stretch before First Lightning, yeah? Emily and I are writing about Russia's feelings about all this in the Potsdam post, and she's going to do a solo post right afterwards to get into it even more, but after all, all we can really do is speculate.
In America, you know, we have these very different associations with Trinity, and then the actual bombings which took place a few weeks later. Trinity was ominous as shit, yeah, but it was also a massive technological accomplishment, something we're taught to be rather proud of just on its own merits, and it was, I mean, along with economic considerations (America being sort of the only developed country that wasn't fucking burned down during WW2) what earned America that instant "LOL, SUPERPOWER" label after the war. And you know, being a superpower, that's nice, we're into that. So we feel...I don't want to say "positive" about Trinity, and the Manhattan Project, but...there's a lot of respect for it, you know?
But then, you ask most Americans (any educated Americans, I'd like to think) what they think of the atomic bombings during the war, and there's this tremendous regret, this really intense sense of national responsibility. Not "guilt," that's not it, although certainly among some elements, you'll find very intense feelings of guilt and shame for our use of the atomic bomb...but a far greater awareness and sorrow for what an awful thing the bomb is, and how much suffering it brought into the world, both in Japan, and, you know, kind of everywhere as a result of the Cold War.
Like, these two things are distinct, separate events in the American psyche, you know what I mean? Trinity was an amazing accomplishment that gave the nation unprecedented power, and we have respectful feelings about that. The bombings themselves were...evil, obviously. Like, necessary? The best choice? (Not the right choice--obviously nothing that involves wiping out two cities full of civilians is the 'right choice.' But the best choice available?) Maybe. Who knows? Nobody can ever say, really. But there is a profound understanding of the horror of the atomic bomb in the United States. I don't want to throw around the term 'war crime,' because that has a very specific and highly controversial definition, but there's no question to most Americans that it was a horrible, cruel thing to do, regardless of its efficacy, or how little anyone understood about the long-term consequences of the bomb at the time.
But I suppose there wouldn't be any sense of that distinction in Russia, would there? It would just be, first day of the Atomic Age, oh fuck, come oooon Soviet atomic project. (By the way, does it have a cool name? Like the Manhattan Project? I can't even find a number designation for it or anything, everything I read just calls it the 'Soviet atomic bomb project.' I sometimes wish the Soviet Union had placed more of a priority on giving things cool names. >_> All the number designations are hard to remember. <_< )