Build a Better Mousetrap?

That is one thing that a mouse would never do, according to Einstein when asked about the atomic bomb: Mankind invented the atomic bomb but no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap.

When the film Oppenheimer was released, I was in Berlin. The movie theatre at 4 p.m. on a weekday was packed. Subtitles translated the story into German. While this is not a movie review, if you haven’t seen the film but plan to, stop reading now. If you have seen the film you may remember the moment when after the testing has been accomplished with all that power released into the world for the first time, the audience knows what those scientists knew: They had invented the ultimate self-destruction of human kind. There was no turning back. But, there was a choice whether to use it on our own kind (and by extension the earth). The movie shows a struggle between those who want to release this innovation for the whole world to see and some who cannot agree. Enter the U.S.Federal Government. Why was this not a surprise? It is not because we know how the story ends, but because we Americans have come to expect our own Government to use force to solve problems around the world, and as is often the case, we are expected to do so by others looking for support. Words, too, can be forceful. Yet, when the solution is to shoot first and ask questions later, this sets up a self fulfilling prophecy. World War II was not the exception. It is the rule by which every conflict and war has been measured since. We have grown used to it. We do not look away. The story repeats daily. Somewhere.

I think the most shocking words spoken in the film are by Oppenheimer himself after the bomb that he masterminded had annihilated 200,000 Japanese people in their own country. He said that he wished he had gotten the bomb finished sooner so it could have been used on the Germans. I held my breath wondering how all the German women and men seated in the theatre with me, an American, must have felt. I cannot imagine.

The idea of building such a murder weapon to use en masse should go against our sensibilities. Are we humans so self destructive that even a lowly mouse would not conceive of such a thing (assuming it could)? There is no logic behind these decisions that can be justified for any reason; while there are any number of excuses to tell ourselves or to be told by those who support such a decision. The inevitable long-term unintended consequences still reverberate whenever threats are heard from the likes of Putin or from the unstable regimes in North Korea and Iran. The threats alone should be deterrents, but one day someone will not see it that way, and Kabloom!

There is nothing hyperbolic in such a thought that could lead us down a dark path of destruction. Civilizations have been wiped out in many places by those in power with power at their fingertips. Whose fingertips should we entrust this power to is the question to ask ourselves? Who do we trust to protect citizens of our country and those others who look to the U.S. for help? We have no room for error in making this all important decision that holds our fate and the fate of the world. It's that serious. One vote is all we get. It counts for everything we hold dear. It counts for the future of the earth.