As someone who has cultivated an anti-authoritarian reading list since the end of high school (or beginning of college, depending upon your viewpoint), I was eager to read Howard Zinns final contribution to the annals of modern history, The Bomb, published this month by the daring muckrakers and perpetual shit-disturbers at City Lights.
As a student growing up in a wealthy suburb of Chicago, Zinns bestselling history textbook, A Peoples History of the United States, was part of the syllabus for my junior year of high school, thanks to a hippie teacher of mine whom I didnt entirely appreciate at the time (thank you, Ms. Davis!). While many high school students have been fed the standard My Country Tis of Thee from K through 12, at least some of the students at my high school were exposed to the fact that maybe, just maybe, our government wasnt always operating in our best interests, particularly when it came to things like the Vietnam War.
But step back in time to that noble war, WWII, where the greatest generation proved themselves courageous crusaders against fascism. The unquestioned evil of Hitler and the unquestioned good of the Allied Powers are tackled by Zinn, who was himself a bombardier in the U.S. air force, dropping unnecessary napalm upon a seaside resort town in France called Royan. At the time of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Zinn was a young married man, and could only view the headlines with youthful exuberance: the war was going to end, how could that be a bad thing?
As he explores the reality of the situation in his book, Zinn conveys his belief that ultimately, neither atomic bomb was necessary to end WWII, and in fact the seeming purpose of these bombings was to exhibit American ingenuity and technical prowess: we had nuclear bombs, and Russia didnt. Thus the beginnings of the Cold War.
Even more interestingly, Zinn acknowledges his own culpability in the Royan bombings, which were also not strategically necessary, but showed off more American ingenuity and technical prowess with the invention of napalm. He comes to a Hannah Arendt-ish conclusion that evil is committed in the most banal of circumstances, by those who stand idly by and allow atrocities to be committed in their names, rather than by those who take up the task of barbarism like evil supervillains with maniacal laughter at the ready.
We are all culpable. We are all at fault. And we must all overcome our propensity for rage, racism and retaliation. Happily, Zinn points out that:
"Against the claims of a violent 'human nature' there is enormous historical evidence that people, when free of a manufactured nationalist or religious hysteria, are more inclined to be compassionate than cruel."
And yet when it comes to rejecting evil and doing good, Zinn notes that It is the immediate victimsor tomorrowswho have the greatest need, and the fewest wrenches. They must use their bodies (which may explain why rebellion is a rare phenomenon).
I, siding with Zinn, propose that rebellion need not be difficult, nor even time consuming. Sure, we must use our bodies rather than wrenches in the machine, but we are creative, capable souls. All we really need are a few good books to start the journey, the healing, the revolution. Zinn quotes from classics like John Herseys Hiroshima (another book I was charged with reading, thanks to my progressive high school curriculum), as one of the books that began his own moral awakening. Readers of The Bomb might well cite Zinns work as an influential eye-opener, ushering in their own personal eras of peace and prosperity.
Heres hoping.
(Originally published at Buttontapper.com)
As a student growing up in a wealthy suburb of Chicago, Zinns bestselling history textbook, A Peoples History of the United States, was part of the syllabus for my junior year of high school, thanks to a hippie teacher of mine whom I didnt entirely appreciate at the time (thank you, Ms. Davis!). While many high school students have been fed the standard My Country Tis of Thee from K through 12, at least some of the students at my high school were exposed to the fact that maybe, just maybe, our government wasnt always operating in our best interests, particularly when it came to things like the Vietnam War.
But step back in time to that noble war, WWII, where the greatest generation proved themselves courageous crusaders against fascism. The unquestioned evil of Hitler and the unquestioned good of the Allied Powers are tackled by Zinn, who was himself a bombardier in the U.S. air force, dropping unnecessary napalm upon a seaside resort town in France called Royan. At the time of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Zinn was a young married man, and could only view the headlines with youthful exuberance: the war was going to end, how could that be a bad thing?
As he explores the reality of the situation in his book, Zinn conveys his belief that ultimately, neither atomic bomb was necessary to end WWII, and in fact the seeming purpose of these bombings was to exhibit American ingenuity and technical prowess: we had nuclear bombs, and Russia didnt. Thus the beginnings of the Cold War.
Even more interestingly, Zinn acknowledges his own culpability in the Royan bombings, which were also not strategically necessary, but showed off more American ingenuity and technical prowess with the invention of napalm. He comes to a Hannah Arendt-ish conclusion that evil is committed in the most banal of circumstances, by those who stand idly by and allow atrocities to be committed in their names, rather than by those who take up the task of barbarism like evil supervillains with maniacal laughter at the ready.
We are all culpable. We are all at fault. And we must all overcome our propensity for rage, racism and retaliation. Happily, Zinn points out that:
"Against the claims of a violent 'human nature' there is enormous historical evidence that people, when free of a manufactured nationalist or religious hysteria, are more inclined to be compassionate than cruel."
And yet when it comes to rejecting evil and doing good, Zinn notes that It is the immediate victimsor tomorrowswho have the greatest need, and the fewest wrenches. They must use their bodies (which may explain why rebellion is a rare phenomenon).
I, siding with Zinn, propose that rebellion need not be difficult, nor even time consuming. Sure, we must use our bodies rather than wrenches in the machine, but we are creative, capable souls. All we really need are a few good books to start the journey, the healing, the revolution. Zinn quotes from classics like John Herseys Hiroshima (another book I was charged with reading, thanks to my progressive high school curriculum), as one of the books that began his own moral awakening. Readers of The Bomb might well cite Zinns work as an influential eye-opener, ushering in their own personal eras of peace and prosperity.
Heres hoping.
(Originally published at Buttontapper.com)
