Spinor Info

Today, December 7, marks the 82nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Discussion of the Pacific War inevitably leads to discussion of the morality and necessity of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I have long argued, and continue to argue, that it was the only acceptable decision for Harry Truman to make back during the fateful summer of 1945. And I just came across an unusual data point that supports my argument: the manufacture of Purple Hearts.

Wikipedia tells us that the Purple Heart is a US military decoration awarded to those wounded or killed while serving. Needless to say, Purple Hearts must have been in high demand during the war years, between 1941-1945. The decorations obviously need to be manufactured, and that means the US government placing an order for them in anticipation of casualties during any conflict.

And it was an order of stunning magnitude that they placed in 1944-1945, anticipating the invasion of Japan: Something like half a million Purple Hearts were stockpiled. As a result of this and other unused stocks, it was not until the year 2000 that the US government ordered a new supply, and the old supply, though running low, remains in existence to this date.

So imagine that you are the newly minted president of the United States, after your former boss, Roosevelt, dies. You are informed that your government just completed an astonishing effort to create an immensely powerful new weapon, and it is ready for deployment. You are facing a ruthless enemy: Let’s not forget that the Empire of Japan was no less genocidal than Hitler’s regime, perhaps in some ways even more so (look up Unit 731 on Wikipedia if you have the stomach for it.) Perhaps they are ready to surrender. Perhaps not. But until they are, they remain the enemy. You don’t have the benefit of hindsight. You know what you know and it’s July 1945.

How could you NOT order tactical deployment of the new weapon? As opposed to keeping it in reserve or worse yet, wasting one for a theatrical “demonstration”? Wouldn’t that be an open betrayal of the American servicemen fighting in the Pacific theater? An almost treasonous act?

Yes, there were dissenting voices. But, lest we forget, the conventional bombing campaigns were just as brutal on the civilian population as the nuclear bombs, perhaps even more so. The firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo serve as splendid examples of just what the Allied powers were able and willing to do to enemy cities and their civilian population. Of course there was dissent. Americans are not without conscience, and senior political and military leaders in 1945 were no exception. But it was not until the 1960s that questioning the morality of the use of these weapons became… fashionable.

Yet here we are, more than 78 years later, and not a single nuclear weapon was used in anger ever since. That’s not an iron clad guarantee of course, but at least a ray of hope. Perhaps Hiroshima and Nagasaki achieved more than help bring an end to the War in the Pacific. Perhaps they also helped shape our public perception of nuclear war as the pinnacle of abhorrence.

In the meantime, though, if anyone wonders about the morality of Truman’s decision, perhaps it’s a good idea to contemplate the half million (give or take) surplus Purple Hearts.

As I watch the lamps of the post-WW2 world order go out, one tiny, flickering light at a time, I am compelled to remember something that happened more than a century ago: When Sir Edward Grey, Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary at the time, remarked that “the lamps are going out all over Europe”.

We are not quite there yet. There is hope that sanity will prevail.

Yet I feel that that hope is fading, that time is running out.

In 1914, the point of no return, the trigger was Germany’s decision to attack neutral Belgium. It compelled Britain to declare war, and ultimately widened that war into the world’s first (or maybe second — I think the Napoleonic wars might qualify as World War 0) global conflict.

What the trigger will be this time, I do not know. I am reacting in part to the announcement that the West warned Hezbollah to stay out of Israel’s conflict with Hamas. But chances are it will be something else.

But it is coming, of that I am near certain, even as I dearly hope that I am dead wrong, that my pessimism is unwarranted, my concerns grossly misplaced.

The world is not heading in the right direction. Not by a long shot. The golden era that began in 1945 and saw an unprecedented number of people around the world find relative peace, prosperity, and security for nearly eight decades, may be coming to an unpleasant end. There is a Hungarian saying (“kutya is jódolgában megy a jégre”) that may have a loose equivalent in English in the form of the proverb, “you never miss the water till the well runs dry”.

Here are a few things that concern me, in no particular order:

• Worsening wars: Russia-Ukraine, the (brand new) Hamas-Israeli war, hotspots elsewhere, China-Taiwan tension
• The shrinking middle class, rising inequality and homelessness
• Erosion of democratic values, faith in democratic/constitutional institutions
• Rise of populism, ideological demagoguery and intolerance, political polarization, even violence
• Rising economic instability, lack of economic and environmental sustainability

There are probably a few more that I have not mentioned, including petty domestic Canadian issues, such as the gloriously incompetent bills C-11/C-18 by which Canada tries to control online media.

Individually, each of these issues would be considered serious, but certainly not insurmountable. When they come all at the same time… The last time the world faced something similar was in the late 1920s, early 1930s. We know how well that turned out. Tens of millions of deaths, the rise of two of the worst totalitarian ideologies in history, a world war and the deployment of two nuclear weapons later…

Those nuclear weapons proved to be genuine peacemakers: Few can argue that they had a major role convincing all participants to play kind of nice, making sure that certain lines in the sand remain firmly uncrossed. But the inhibitions against their use are becoming weaker over time.

Am I being an alarmist? I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure the people who woke up today to the sound of air raid sirens in Israel, or found themselves at the end of the day in Hamas custody as human shield hostages do not think so either.

Earlier today, I was looking at amazing pictures of an abandoned Siberian town, Kadykchan. Built at the cost of the lives of countless gulag prisoners, the town lost its population after the breakup of the USSR, and now serves as little more than a sad reminder of entire chapters of 20th century history. I think one of the images of that town that I saw might serve well as a cautionary tale.

How about coming to our senses before it’s too late, before we turn much of the world into a similar post-apocalyptic wasteland?

PS: My AI friend Claude suggested toning down this post a little, to make it less alarmist. I don’t want to. I am alarmed.

Here is a bit of history of which I was not aware: The window tax.

Back in the 18th, 19th century in many jurisdictions around the world, buildings, especially rental properties, were taxed by the number of windows that they sported.

The advantage of this tax was that it was easy to assess: the assessor just had to walk around the building and count.

The unfortunate reality, namely that the tax most disproportionately affected the poorest of the poor? Well, eventually these taxes were repealed but I wonder how many generations grew up in windowless rooms.

For better or for worse, we are witnessing history in the making in the great United States.

What it will lead to, I don’t know. I am apprehensive.