The Mushroom Cloud in our Brains

I was born in 1941.  When the A- bombs exploded over Japan, I was 4, and acutely aware of the progress of WW II.  My father and both maternal uncles were in the service, and my mother and grandmother were glued to Drew Pearson every Saturday night with the latest war news.  

My mother, a history teacher, greeted the news of nuclear weapons with a mixture of relief that the war was ending, and horror.  She told me that the world would never be the same again.  I felt it, at age 4.  I felt a dark cloud settling over the planet.  

Knowing that we have the means to commit planetary-wide suicide has changed human consciousness.  We all have the mushroom cloud image buried somewhere deep in our brains.  An ancient Hopi prophecy calls it “the gourd of ashes”, and says after the gourd of ashes is sent to earth, humanity has the choice of two paths, material/outer or spiritual/inner.   The first leads to disaster, the second to peace and prosperity.

With books like The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey and the Left Behind series by LeHaye and Jenkins (all writers close to the Bush White House) , the radical “Christian” right  has co-opted the mushroom cloud.  Bringing it to the forefront of consciousness, they offer believers a way out of nuclear terror.  The rapture cult promises believers that they will go directly to heaven with Jesus, while planet earth is slowly destroyed by the tribulation (overpopulation, ecodisasters, wars- as we are now experiencing), and then finished off with a nuclear holocaust.  There are variations, but this is their basic scenario.  

Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, written by Jerry Falwell in 1983, welcomes a nuclear war: "'Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ' - the one brings thoughts of fear, destruction, and death, while the other brings thoughts of joy, hope, and life. They almost seem inconsistent with one another, yet they are indelibly intertwined." (Introduction)
The rapture cult offers people a way to deal with nuclear terror that is sanctioned by their church, by their politicians, and by popular fiction.  Variously called dispensationalism, dominionism, and prosperity theology, it is a uniquely American point of view.   It promises believers that if they join the cult and support the Bush administration, they can have lots of money, have their sins forgiven, and still go to heaven.  

This “Bible – based”  point of view,-  which is totally contrary to Jesus’ message of love and peace,- has turned the mushroom cloud into an instrument of “psy-ops”- psychological operations- for the Bush regime.   For those in the cult, the fear of being “left behind” keeps them in line. Children are told that if they’re not good, they’ll be “left behind”.  

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Carol S. Wolman, MD is a psychiatrist in Northern California. A lifelong peace activist, she is helping to distribute a Peace Plan for the Holy Land- email her for a copy. As the Green candidate for Congress in California District 1 in '08, she (more...)
 

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