Missiles
go unnoticed
On Monday October 14, at about 7 p.m., Californians
noticed a zigzag trail of billowy, nebulous
smoke in the sky, pointing seaward, like
a flaming arrow. The cloud, glowing, illuminated
like a stellar object seen up close, ethereal,
foreign to our eyes.
The
news anchors laughed it off. It was a successful
test of the Minuteman Missile, they said.
Nothing to worry about. And, added Hal Fishman,
it was successfully intercepted by a second
missile on its way to the Marshall Islands.
The
tone of the anchors was genial, laughing,
suggesting that people were silly to worry
about it.
One
local channel had a reporter stopping people
and asking them if they saw it, and what
they “thought it looked like.”
“A
UFO,” said a rock-and-roll boy, predictably.
“It
looked like a jellyfish,” a woman said.
Not
one person was told it was a missile, flying
out of the Midwest. Not one was asked what
he or she thought about the reality of a
missile flying over his or her head and
home.
The
TV news anchors moved on with a laugh, teasing
us for worrying.
“There’s
another light in the sky which is keeping
it illuminated,” one of them added smirking,
“It’s called the moon.”
The
Minuteman Missile, or Boeing Minuteman 3,according
to Strategic-Air-Command.com, “is the most
advanced version of the solid-propellant
series of weapons and offers greater range
than the Minuteman I and II. Its larger
nuclear payload consists of multiple independently
targeted reentry vehicles (MIRV) which,
with such aids as chaff and decoys, increase
its chances of penetrating enemy defenses.
The entire Minuteman force of approximately
1,000 missiles scattered launch sites in
central and northern plains states.”
Its
cost is $1.8 million. Its maximum range
is over 8,000 statute miles and almost 7,000
nautical miles. And it can travel more than
15,000 mph.
A
test of a nuclear warhead flew over our
heads and made a pattern in the sky that
news anchors thought was worth a laugh.
What
are missiles used for; do we imagine that
they bring groceries and social services
to victims of war and poverty suffering
under dictatorships in foreign countries?
The
gentile citizens of Berlin were undeniably
told to “ignore” the civil unrest in the
Jewish quarters in 1942 Germany. The firing
in the streets was “nothing to worry about,
a product of criminal behavior. Everything
is fine, everything was normal.
Farms
neighboring Auschwitz and Dachau, observing
the trainloads of frightened citizens cargoed
in to their deaths, were no doubt told,
“Don’t worry about this, go about your business.”
Even
as they observed the oily, black smoke billowing
from mass graves they were told, “everything
is normal. It’s nothing. Go about your business.
It’s all perfectly normal.”
Pay
attention people, missiles, nuclear missiles
do one thing. They fly out of earth, burn
thousands of miles across the sky in minutes
and shatter villages, half-cities, schools,
hospitals, homes, bones, teeth, children,
mothers, fathers, shrapnel, heat, burn,
roar, death.
Missiles
kill people, tens of thousands of people,
in seconds.
Pay
attention people, and don’t be fooled by
the smokescreen.
Liam
Scheff is an education major at Cal State
Long Beach.
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