seeing phasers to stun

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

The Hollow Men, T. S. Eliot (1925)

When I first started school in the nether-regions of the mid 70’s, the older boys used to play "Star Trek” during recess. For some reason the administration had the brilliant oversight of placing preschoolers like myself in regular rotation with kids up to 3rd grade, little fish in a big pond. I’ll save you some of the harrowing stories for now.
I started mid-year and wasn’t quite up to speed with the older boys you see. One fine day I asked dumbly if could I play with them. I remember the leader’s name was Daniel who played Captain Kirk and he nearly wet himself with laughter. No self -respecting third grader would be caught dead running around with a preschooler.
“You need one of these” Daniel said holding up his Starfleet badge, communicator, and his phaser. I was wearing a t-shirt with Kirk and Mr. Spock, surely that was enough to assuage their qualms of being dedicated enough.
“Ooooh, neat-o, can I try it?” I asked awestruck.
“No way runt, get your own”.
“Can I use a pretend phaser?”
“Get real kid”! Daniel said as he walked off laughing to rejoin his waiting friends. I sat there on the curb as the impersonating Captain Kirk went off to do battle with the Klingnons. The real Captain Kirk wouldn’t act like that to a friendly alien life form I thought.

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You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

John Lennon, Imagine (1971)


For this reason I can sympathize with the Iran’s nuclear program. Perhaps the difference is that Iran isn’t a new kid on the block and perhaps deserves a bit more respect than I did, but I know how they must feel standing on the sidelines while other countries call all the shots in their homeland. It must be infuriating to be an age-old society and have these youngish upstarts make all the rules. It’s no fun watching the big boys swagger around menacingly with those weapons in your own back yard.

You got to admit, a nuclear weapon is the ultimate bargaining chip, no two ways about it. It’s instant Sir status without having to go to Buckingham Palace to get knighted. You’ll never have to wait for a table at a chichi restaurant again. The Iranians have arrived at the simple conclusion-if the system doesn’t work then build a different one or work outside of it. Could you really blame them? The world is a fucked up place!

It seems like America, for all it’s so-called good intentions in the world, has done nothing in the Middle East, but to stir up hatred like an overturned hornets nest. Is it any wonder why there seems to be a consolidation of forces and an emerging consensus against American foreign policy in the region? Is it just as easy to assume if one Muslim nation acquires WMD, then it will become readily available to all so-called rouge nations? Is a friend of an enemy also a fiend? Is an enemy of a friend necessarily… ah you see?

So, just what does joining the Nuclear Club entail? Of course it is a mass suicide machine where both sides lose irrevocably. It undermines every principle of war, as if war has any! There is no divvying of land, capture livestock, raping of women, the acquisition resources, no separation of frontline and front door, no consideration for civilians- especially women, children, or the old, or taking of slaves- all is charmingly decimated. How can you pillage the village when there’s nothing left? What a fitting end to the human race, poof! Who’s going to write conqueror tales, when there’ll be nothing left to write on? Ha!

Of course having nuclear weapons mirror the norms of reciprocation that we experience on a daily basis within any intimate relationship. For instance, if you receive a nuclear weapon, it’s kind of like a love letter- you feel almost obligated to send one back. If anything that comes with power, it’s a shared understanding of what good-manners are really all about.
Perhaps Iran tires of sitting at the little kids table, for who wants to be treated as such forever? Isn’t that what we should all have? a place at the table? America is going to have to wake up to a few harsh realities in this dawning age. Once one nuclear weapon is out there, making another and selling them is going to make us all fast friends, like it or not! . .
With trying to be the parent of the world, there always will be that crazy teenager who will want to raid the liquor cabinet and take the car for a spin at 3 in the morning. How to deal with these growing pain problems? How many parents want to keep their babies forever?

It’s not really a question of if, but when the WMDs will be available on a trans-global scale to rich and poor countries alike. Therefore it should behoove us to act a bit more tact in these critical junctures, lest we forget what happened to SS officers at the liberation of certain death camps. For memory is long, especially when it is written in blood. It’s the bad parents who get left in homes and never visited. What happens to abused children when they grow up? Do you think angry children just forgive and forget what their parents did to them?

So how does one solve the problem of world peace? Quite simple actually- in an evolved, ideal world, every country would have a nuclear bomb. Think how foreign policy would change if big countries couldn’t just couldn’t charge into smaller ones willy-nilly with oil thirstiness under the guise of liberation? It would be like giving Rhode Island the same amount of electoral votes as Texas! It would be like opening a ghetto in Beverly Hills!
And if for some unforeseeable reason, hot fighting did break out in some region, well we’d all be the direct beneficiaries. How long does it take for fallout to happen or for a cloud to circum navigate the planet? Hence, the expression “your brother’s keeper” would take on global proportions. We’d all be good girls and boys now, wouldn’t we? No more bullying kids for their lunch money or excluding them from games, simply because they don’t have the right credentials
. I feel this is really at the heart of the U.N.’s argument that we can’t allow WMD to fall into the hands of so-called rouge nations. I’ll bet money, these were the same kids who wouldn’t let you play Star Trek on the playground because you didn’t have a fucking phaser! They'll never tell you they want to play their games at someone else's expense, for if they share the ball, someone actually might get good at it and beat them on our own field.
What is it about power that makes it so hard to share? Is it because we are so sure that the rest of the world is as fucked up as we pretend not to be? that we can’t even imagine what would happen if "they" had an nth of our potential to do good or bad? It’s interesting to note how closely respect and manners are linked.
What’s the ultimate upshot of shared power, be nice to me or we’ll all die? Seems as good an argument as any I’ve heard thus far! It seemed to have worked between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. for the duration of the Cold War, unless of course you want to discount Korea and Vietnam! But they didn’t have nuclear weapons. How would those engagements hapepned if either country had WMDs? Why aren’t we charging into North Korea now do you suppose? Eh? Why aren’t we spreading the doctrine of a free democracy in Pakistan or China? Eh, eh?


Needless to say I was never able to become a true trekkie after that little experience. Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a multi-cultural mission into the outer regions of space for the good of humanity and the universe were apparently lost on the third graders of Lindsy Christian School, La Mirada, CA.
Of course what rendered Star Trek obsolete was one of the most dysfunctional family stories of all time, Star Wars. Wasn’t it Episode V where a bigger, badder father tries to kill his own fledgling son because he won’t be turned to the dark side? Sound familiar anybody?
After seeing Star Wars as a 5 year-old child, there was no looking back. I entered Kindergarten knowing the score. I hung up my communicator and phaser for a light saber and started using the force!