Dear diary,
Two monarchs meet; they sit down to play a game of chess. Each takes a turn, moves a piece. Then one of these monarchs draws his scimitar and slays the other monarch. Was this a legal move? Did the killer have a right to perform this action?
Today I heard a man at the hardware store say: “This country spends too much money on defense.” He added: “We should cut the defense budget down to almost nothing; all we should keep is our nuclear arsenal.” Since I was in the same aisle as this man (we were both browsing the store’s array of “soft hammers”: those tools which appear to be made of steel but are actually foam – they are often used in slapstick routines), I asked this man why not eliminate even our nukes. And he replied: “The major nations all need to have nuclear weapons, to keep the world safe.”
Then I asked: “Am I wrong to think of nuclear bombs as dangerous?” The man laughed and said: “Of course not; but the world is safer with the big nations being armed in this way, because, when all the major players have the ability to annihilate each other, it means that none of them shall be able to use these weapons without destroying the whole world, which none of them truly wish to do.”
I pretended like this made sense to me, just to get out of the conversation; then I walked away, and browsed the liquid swords.
I don’t believe that the “major players” are averse to destroying the world. I’m not sure why they haven’t done it yet.
If one of the nations that has nukes were to get rid of all its weapons, including the nukes, then what would happen? Would the other nuclear-armed nations act like a guy with a gun and say to the unarmed nation: “Do this and that, or I’ll shoot you”? What would the nuke nations want the non-nuke nation to do, anyway? “Give us all your people; we will force them to be servants of our own populace.” Would we United Statesians all truly be shipped over to Russia and China? Would we truly be forced to wash their dishes, and care for their house-pets, and trim their shrubbery, and iron their trousers, and drive their children to school, and prepare healthy meals for their family picnic, and become big with child by the master’s son, and work the projector on movie nights?
If the entire population of the U.S. is shipped overseas to be servants of foreign nations, just because those nations kept their nukes when we got rid of ours, then who will live in this land that we left behind? Will it just be left unoccupied? Will the ghosts of the previous owners reclaim it? Or will the foreign nations move in and make it their own? Does anyone really want to live in Minnesota? – I would like to try this experiment in nuclear disarmament, just to see how things turn out.
Now imagine a guy who buys more than fifty guns and keeps them all in the trunk of his car. I find this guy to be a suspicious character. Why do you need all those lethal weapons, if you’re not planning on using them?
But people will say: “If you get rid of all the weapons in your trunk, then just one man with a gun will be able to take you prisoner.” So it’s like the nuclear argument all over again. Everyone needs to remain a deadly threat, for the sake of love and happiness. Then, when someone sticks you up in a parking lot, you can say to them: “One moment, please; I just need to unlock the trunk of my car, for I have an impressive display of weaponry that I believe will make you rethink your desperate act.”
So, everyone in the Wild West remains armed to the teeth. Some of the people who are pleased with this scenario, I presume, are the manufacturers of bullets and guns. I guess that’s the best thing to be: an arms dealer. Because everyone’s so scared, and the world is so violent, you’re guaranteed to have continued sales. Plus, nobody ever shoots arms dealers; the people who get shot are always innocent mothers and children, and unarmed peacemakers. So if I were to give a young lad or lass advice about finding a career, I’d say: go into the mass-murder business.
I find it odd that all the citizens of the United States believe in the God of the Hebrew Bible, but they do not use the Law Code that this God authored in that same Holy Scripture. They use the U.S. Law Code instead. Is the U.S. Law Code better than God’s Law Code? Maybe it’s not, but people just keep using it, despite its inferiority, for the same reason that the U.S. keeps using the British imperial system of measurements instead of switching to the divine metric system.
Or maybe the U.S. Code is truly the best; maybe it was also authored by the finger of God and handed down from a mountaintop amid thunder and lightning. I wish there were a way of testing the authenticity of these types of claims. Wouldn’t it be interesting if, for instance, Joseph Smith’s writings all came back from the lab having tested positive for holiness? What would the sects that reject Smith think about that? I suppose they would just question the reliability of the lab or the science behind the testing. So then we would need a system of verification for systems of verification. I’d be willing to create such a thing. But I wouldn’t do it for free.
If any deity from any religion were to show up on Earth and do miracles for us, who wouldn’t believe in him or her? I suppose Christians would say: “But this is probably the Devil trying to trick us.” And if the deity came here dressed as the Church’s Savior, looking exactly like Jesus, with a beard and the correct hairstyle, etc., the same Christians would say: “This is probably the Antichrist sent by the Devil to deceive us. As it is written (2nd Corinthians 11:13-14), ‘For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.’” So is there any deity that the Christians will accept? Even Jesus himself can’t convince them that he’s not the Devil. Yet it does not work the other way; I mean, if the Devil himself shows up, the Christians aren’t going to say: “Here is the True God; he only looks evil because the Devil is trying to beguile us into rejecting our Creator; but once we embrace him, it will be like when the princess kisses the frog that turns into a prince.”
I think, however, that every group other than Christians will accept any deity that makes an appearance. I know that I will. Or even if an alien species shows up, and they seem sort of like humans; maybe they are in some ways better and yet in other ways worse; I will welcome them, as long as they treat us kindly. So it’s in their interest to avoid slaying us; for if they slay us all, then I won’t bow to them.
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