August Wilson, interviewed by Charlie Rose, asks “Am I an Artist?”   I ask, “Why do I write?”  Do I share the obsessive-compulsive disorder that results in the narcissistic inner drive to self-expression?  Who is my audience?  Do I have purpose?  Whom and of what do I seek to persuade?  I have no talent, only modest craft, I think.  So use it wisely, sparingly; do not abuse the privilege conferred by the new internet mode.

Bemused, bewildered and bowled over by the “shock and awe” of the hubris displayed by our leaders and their cabal in the Iraq war, I stopped “steaming as before” and lay dead in the water until it was possible to recover my voice.  With so much mendacity, arrogance and misuse and abuse of power about which to complain, now where to begin?  Given to impulsive thought and action, I am not a fool.  Not wise, either, but well-intentioned, I want my words to have power, to galvanize, to provoke, to spur on those with the energy, channels and courage to change our course, take the heavy seas off the bow and head for saner, calmer waters.

Samantha Power engages genocide; Franks, the red state/red neck phenomenon in American politics; Elizabeth Warren and Barbara Ehrenreich view with alarm and sadness the relentless drive to consume and the ensuing financial crises of the middle class in America.  The third or fourth “great awakening” once again merges religion and politics and hikes up political correctness to the gagging point.  Judges are now attacked physically as well as metaphorically, and what passes for politics in the U.S. is acted out on the floors of the houses of Congress, displaying all the flaws depicted by the Greek tragedians but without their dramatic power. But these recurring themes will ripple like the tsunami, unseen until some other day when they will come ashore, wreak brief, but tragic havoc, and then recede.

“Loose Nukes,” as the idea is now popularized, I will adopt as my chief concern, because unlike the tsunami, their havocs have a devastation measured in “half-lives,” an ironic double entendre nonpareil. Former Senator Sam Nunn, Warren Buffet, and a friend who worked for the Department of Energy in the G.H.W. Bush regime, along with a host of atomic scientists since the early days of their Bulletin and its famous clock, have howled with the fury of a Greek chorus, but with less effect, that the holocaust of accidental nuclear war grows more likely as the complacency engendered by the imagined end of “cold war” continues to lull us in the face of increased danger from “rogue” states and terrorists.  Buffet, along with many others, points out that the loss of life and material destruction of 9/11 will be diminished beyond perception by the explosion of a 10 kiloton nuclear device in a compact urban setting such as New York or Washington.  Between 11 and 17 Kilotons was the estimated “yield” of the Hiroshima bomb, exploded at about 1500 feet above ground. !40,000 died as a result of the blast and burns.  An equal number died within the next four months from radiation sickness. Countless others have died of radiation induced disease, and genetic defects presumed to have resulted from radiation exposure.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), organized by Nunn, and substantially funded by Buffet, is a leading private agency dedicated to educating the public and influencing policy to step up efforts to account for and control the nuclear material and weapons now possessed by many states and non-states.  It has produced a short film called “Last Best Chance” which is distribute free and should be played in classrooms at all levels everywhere, not to say in homes as well, repetitively, if necessary, which seems obvious.  There are other dramatizations, such as “Dirty War”, a Frontline production, and “The Day After” a 1983 cold war stunner, starring Jason Robards.  For dramatic written descriptions, few can surpass those of “The Third World War” and “Arc Light” both works of fiction by writers knowledgeable about the precise way in which nuclear weapons work their evil.  There are, doubtless, many others, if we need reminding of the effects of even low level nuclear devices, the most profound of which is the psychological state in which “the survivors envy the dead.”

Writing or emailing your Congress people is a start, of course, but what is needed is the use of large scale peaceable assemblies, on the order of, but much larger than, say, the “million man march” of the civil rights era.  What is at stake is the most fundamental civil right – that to life, leaving aside the familiar accoutrements of liberty and pursuit of happiness.  If the energies of those who oppose abortion could be channeled into securing “Loose Nukes” a major step would be underway to protect what they claim is their most precious goal: life at any cost, which may include violent death.