We've Never Had a Real-Time Nuclear Demo On Live TV, But It's On The Schedule.

The Sacrifice and the Reckoning: Sleepwalking

We have made a dark bargain with ourselves to let one of our cities die.

First published: October 2004 Read Part II below or at The Sacrifice and the Reckoning: The Event

"We haven't had a real-time nuclear demo since Japan, 1945, and that was with one of the prototypes. We've never had a real-time nuclear demo live on TV, but it is on their schedule. What we can't face is that the next time, many more than 3,000 will die and a lot of the dead will be our children. Just what do you think our mood will be the morning after they slaughter not only thousands of adults at their desks like they did on the 11th, but thousands of our children as well?" -- In conversation, July, 2004

THE RUTHLESS DEDICATION OF OUR ENEMIES TO OUR DESTRUCTION was written across our sky with two pillars of flame and smoke in our largest city. We've seen that dedication continue, punctuated by car bombs, mortars, and random attacks against our soldiers. We've seen it continue in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Spain, Russia, Italy and England.

Our unluckiest citizens have had their heads severed from their bodies as pilot episodes of what promises to be a long running reality television series in which American heads are held up, to our horror and for the delight of those many millions that support those that take the heads. The message beyond this madness is that they would be pleased to extend this television series to 300 million beheadings in which each of us would have his "star" turn. Our enemy has not yet taken a woman or a child for a beheading, but both clearly on their programming schedule.

All these things we know. We know the nature and goals of our enemy well. Our army is at the ready and in the field. And yet we hesitate.

We hesitate because we believe our search for a moderate, modern outcome will somehow determine what actions our ancient enemy will pursue.

We are a foolish people grown fat and fearful during the long peace.

We stay our hand and hobble our warriors and walk on wrapped in our suburban slumber.

The party in power shambles about speaking in color codes and hushed words of warning. It mumbles of "they" and it seeks love from where there is only hate. It is a party of quislings led by a traitor.

We are soothed on the days when our media feeds us only thick streams of pap concerning grisly murders of obscure women by their husbands, the latest fornication festivals of the lightly talented in music and the cinema, and estimates of how long a woman famous for finger-bowls will spend in jail. We are relieved because the media's relentless focus on the tripe and detritus of our culture tells us that the day of the sacrifice is not to be this day.

And so we dream on. We imagine that the cliff is not really directly in our path, believing on some persistent level that merrily, merrily our life is but a dream, rather than a somnambulant march through the gates of history that is all too real and, for as yet unknown thousands of us, all too lethal.

But this world is not a dream and our awakening will be into nightmare.

Continued...