Heading Toward The Danger When It Counted In The Red Scare 1950s Night-The Saga Of The Golden Rule

 

Frank Jackman:

Those of us who grew in the blessedly behind us Red Scare Cold War 1950s night and who innocently suffered through the torments of ducking our heads and asses down in some forlorn school basement come air-raid drill time missed a few things. Didn’t get to know much more than if we didn’t duck those heads and asses we were doomed. Like if the “big one,” and everybody from about first grade on knew the big one meant that the Russkies, Uncle Joe and his minions, had set the trail for total destruction had really occurred some candy-ass basement was going to save us. What we didn’t know because nobody gave a rat’s ass to tell us we would have been just as well off staying right at our desks in the classroom because when and if the big one blew around Boston town we were goners anyway.

Well, enough of youthful Cold War horror stories because the really important thing that we did not know, as elementary and junior high school students did not know, was that there were people, brave people anyway you cut it who challenged the conventional wisdom, did not buy into the idea that we all had to suffer the nuclear winter the governmental flaks were warning us about if we didn’t go toe to toe with Uncle Joe and his minions and built more and more thermonuclear bombs. And test then out in what was supposed to be “no man’s land,” out in the deep Pacific. But some brave souls in places like New York and Boston demonstrated against the nuclear madness. And they were brave. But the bravest of them all, the ones we should thank profusely even today, maybe especially today as a new cold war seems to be on the agenda were those serious pacifists who outfitted the Golden Rule and headed toward, not away from, the danger of the nuclear test bomb sites to say, well, to say “stop the madness.” Yeah, stop the madness now. Check out the story of the Golden Rule and its recent restoration to once again go toward not away from the danger.