Button: Peace [written in English and Japanese]
$2.00
PJ
Since the start of the Nuclear Age on August 6, 1945, we have been kept in continual fear of nuclear attack by our opponents, enemies or an "evil empire" (the rhetoric changed with the political views of the U.S. administration in power). That fear was why we were so easily manipulated throughout the Cold War era. The fact remains: we, the United States are still, after seven decades, the only nation on earth to have ever targeted and dropped nuclear bombs on human beings, in Hiroshima and Nagaski, Japan on the 6th and 9th of August 1945. We did not fully realize what long-lasting devastation we had unleashed with the ongoing radiation-caused cancer caused by ionizing radiation from nuclear bombs. Now we know. The whole world knows. By luck, worldwide public opposition for generations, the 1963 Nuclear Test ban Treaty, the madness of the M.A.D. premise ("Mutual Assured Destruction") and constant vigilence we've managed to prevent the use of nuclear bombs so far.
So this button has the word "peace" in the language of the perpetraitor and of the victim. In times of war these words are not used; we prefer other delusional, polarizing, dehumanizing labels for our enemy, so we don't have to consider them as people much like ourselves. The aftermath of every war requires deep listening to those who took part in war. To heal, requires the war veteran to do deep truth-confronting; and all of us who live through war to engage in an on-going process of patient deep listening, truth-telling and reconciliation, as Vietnamese poet and peacemaker Thich Nhat Hanh continues to advise the world. [see his book "Peace In Every Step" in the Books and Books for Organizing sections of the website.]
