, found in the ultra-secretive creation of the bomb and in the deliberations over using it the origins of the same National Security State that today identifies as a top national priority the persecution of a 29-year-old former intelligence analyst for telling the American people what they have every right to know. “Hiroshima was the mother of all cover-ups,” they wrote, “creating distortions, manipulative procedures and patterns of concealment that have affected all of American life. Secrecy has been linked with national security—and vice versa—ever since.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n\n\tStarting with Hiroshima, officials advised Americans to leave all problems surrounding the bomb to political, scientific and military leaders—the nuclear priesthood. Americans were not supposed to think critically or engage in the debate over the gravest issue of our age. Over time, we became accustomed to bowing out of that discussion, and then of debates involving other major issues. We got used to putting the greatest problems, military and social, completely in the hands of experts and political leaders who claimed to have them under control—only to recognize in painful moments that they didn’t have them in hand at all. Surrendering our right to know more about Hiroshima, and later nuclear policies, contributed to our gradual alienation from the entire political process.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n\n\tThe message of the official Hiroshima narrative was <\/span>control<\/span>: controlling the story of Hiroshima, controlling nuclear weapons, controlling history. But the official narrative also increased ordinary Americans’ sense of being out of control of their own destiny, of being out of control of the forces that determine their future.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n\n\tNo wonder, then, that the American people have come to feel deceived by the bomb and its caretakers. We know that ominous truths have been concealed from us—starting with Hiroshima. One reason we remain confused is that part of each of us psychologically collude<\/span>d <\/span>in the concealment. But our resentment at what has been concealed and falsified does not necessarily limit itself to nuclear matters but can spread, vaguely and bitterly, into just about any aspect of social and national experience.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n\n\tWe have to ask ourselves, then, how much of our mistrust of politicians and public officials, of the media, of our government and just about all who govern us—how much of this angry cynicism so evident in our public life in recent years—is an outcome of the Hiroshima and post-Hiroshima nuclear deceptions and concealments. To what extent do we feel ourselves a people who have been unforgivably deceived in that most fundamental of human areas—having to with how, when and by whose hand, or lethal technology, we are to die?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n\n
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Main Image Credit:<\/b><\/div>\nThe streets were full of bodies after the burning.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Deck: And Allah knows what you conceal and what you reveal. (Holy Qur\u2019an 16:19) – Katrina vanden Heuvel , Nation Teaser: Kirchwey dialogue continued from part 1 … A new conference of the nations must be assembled to set up a World Government, to which every state must surrender an important part of its sovereignty. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2964,"featured_media":4783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14081],"tags":[9781,12064,11520,12295,12355,10098,12480,10812,9500,12774,14051,10951,10302,11050,9552,9700,13285,13286,14038,11318,13618,13775,13935],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.islamicpostonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3660"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.islamicpostonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.islamicpostonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.islamicpostonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2964"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.islamicpostonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.islamicpostonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.islamicpostonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.islamicpostonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.islamicpostonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.islamicpostonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}