Best Person Rural by Noel Perrin

Author:Noel Perrin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher

Nuclear Disobedience

THIS ESSAY IS going to be a little bit embarrassing in its present company, like a Jehovah’s Witness who has strayed into an Episcopal picnic. He will preach. The Episcopalians may like what the fellow says, but he’s too earnest for them: he keeps waving his arms and making the same point over and over, long after the entire audience has grasped it, committed it to memory, and possibly tried repeating it backwards in rhymed couplets. If only he’d sit down and eat a deviled egg, and stop all that shouting, they could get on with the day’s activities.

As it happens, I am an Episcopalian myself, and very fond of picnics. Normally I would sympathize with the other essays and be on their side against this one. Even as it is, I won’t blame them much if they crowd back along the page and glower. But for once I am constrained to play the sweating Witness.

What I have to witness is the familiar fact that the United States possesses weapons which are too powerful for it to control, and which may at any time destroy us and the world, without anyone’s ever quite having meant to. We all know about our danger, and just as soon as our government and the Russian government (and, of course, the Chinese, French, and British governments) reach an agreement to disarm, we will all breathe a huge sigh of relief and maybe give up smoking. So we weren’t to be extinguished after all.

Meanwhile, progress toward such an agreement is imperceptible, and the danger increases. What does any man do to avert it? Well, some write letters to newspapers, and some distribute leaflets. Some go to see their congressman, and urge that the United States should renounce its nuclear bombs now, whether Russia does or not. (The congressman, if he is typical, explains that this would be bad politics.) A few daring ones sail their boats into the test areas or picket missile bases, and they are ignored or quietly put in jail. Most of us wait with a mixture of hope and resignation for our government to do something, and pray that extinction doesn’t come first. And while we wait, we help to increase the danger. As Air Force officers, we fly live bombs over the Arctic, and sometimes over the towns where our children lie sleeping. As physicists we design new and worse weapons. As technicians we build them. As administrators we plan them. As taxpayers we pay for them. And we don’t know what else we can do. For surely if there were anything, our government would tell us, or the people would rise with a thunderous voice and tell the government.

The worst of it is that those of us who write the letters and plead with the congressmen actually have a feeling of virtue. We tell ourselves that we are doing all a single man can do, and if we die in a nuclear blast it won’t be our fault.

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