Everything old is new again - but not any of the good old things. Just this week our president revived the old racist idea that only white immigrants should be allowed in this country, instead of people from "shitholes" like countries in Africa. Today we were reminded of the bad old days of the Cold War, which the same president is doing his best to revive.
I suppose that everyone has heard about this by now - at 8:00 am Hawaii time today, people in Hawaii were sent the following message:
I suppose that everyone has heard about this by now - at 8:00 am Hawaii time today, people in Hawaii were sent the following message:
BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
It wasn't a drill - it was a mistake, but for over a half an hour people in Hawaii thought that they were about to be hit by a nuclear missile.
Thirty-eight minutes later, an official message was sent cancelling the first.
Before then Rep. Tulsi Gabbard had sent out a message (about twenty minutes after the first emergency message) saying this was a false alarm.
How can this be happening??? I lived through the Cold War. I didn't know about most (or maybe all) of the false alarms that went off from 1956 (when I was born), to the fall of the Soviet Union. I don't even remember the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, although I do remember nuclear war alerts where we had to go sit in the hallway. We had a fallout shelter in the basement of our school. I remember the nuclear tensions of the 1980s, and the unconscious fear I had that the world would blow up. (I didn't even know that I had that constant fear until the fall of the Soviet Union when I felt like I could finally relax).
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