There is no victory nor venegance in this case. There is only death.
That is precisely the idea, general. That is precisely the idea. The idea that someone might "let go" of a nuclear attack was the single biggest contributer to the likelihood of nuclear war, and the idea that someone one destroy the world to get revenge is almost certainly the single greatest cause of peace between the US and Russia today, and every day since the surrender of German forces. If you are unwilling, even in principle, to mount vengeance upon those who would strike first, then logically a first strike is an easy and powerful tool to achieve any goal. The entirety of deterrence is the theory of this. Would you start a war over the world? Sure, anyone would. How about the destruction of DC? Or New York? Or London? Would the Soviets respond if we nuked Moscow? Sure. How about, Leningrad? Obviously. But harder questions: How about Kaliningrad? Or even non-soviet states, like Warsaw? Or even non-comintern states, like Belgrade? What if only the UK did it, not the US? Or France? The answer is that if you wish to prevent a nuclear strike at all, the
only logical principle is that you must say that even the slightest nuclear provocation will receive a full retaliatory response. As Kennedy said:
It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.
So I'm on my break. Fun times. People poured into the polling place at 6:00 AM and they never really stopped. The line was around two corners last I checked. This is totally more than anything I've dealt with before. Just, breathtaking. I'm glad to be off my feet.
When things work out, as people leave they say to me "Oh, you know this was really good" and "You know, for how many people there are here this is very well-organized". When they don't, "This is terrible, this is the worst I've ever been to, you are all terrible, I'm writing your names down, etc". Most of the time its fine, but then you have those occasional people who are just ANGRY. Someone comes up to me before my break and complains about the NY Supreme Court Ballot. I've fielded a dozen complaints about that so far; the thing is that there is nine candidates for nine positions with the same name, meaning A) There are no actual choices, and B) The description says "Vote for nine of nine", which confuses people (my usual answer to "Should I put X" is "Yes" regardless of X). But this lady doesn't care; she's just mad that there aren't any Republicans. I tell her I don't decide what gets put on the ballot, but she ain't happy to hear it. Just as soon as things go wrong, certain types of people just get MAD, and you have to sit there and like... play dead, iunno. Like you are dealing with an angry dog, and if you look confrontational or scared they'll lash out at you. They are looking the for the
first sign of opposition, and you just gotta not give it to them and help them along as soon as possible. Meanwhile my coordinater is a control freak who'd be up my ass about everything if the place wasn't so busy; but you still gotta watch it. She'll start lecturing about the Scanner "Wait here" sign not being precisely 5 feet away from some other thing.
Also two funny things. First, both Presidential candidates are listed as being from New York, so ha. The second thing, which I'm a little reluctant to say because it divulges info about my location, but I figure "eh, it's not near our house, and it's public info; who cares?": apparently Trump voted at the voting place where my sister worked.
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Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0 (Read 1392243 times)