In The Unreported Resistance, Howard Zinn talked about the underground rebellion of the American people on the American government. The argument was mainly based upon nuclear weapons; however, from there it altered to also include a decrease in the United States military budget. Because of the Cold War and the proxy-wars that can along with it, the US had been involved in conflicts all across the globe. On top of that, the US “needed” nuclear weapons to prove their might to the Soviet Union. After the Cold War came to a close, the US continued with the production of nuclear weapons. When the Gulf War came around, the United States increased its military spending once again. I think it is interesting to see why the United States continued with the creation of nuclear weapons even though they already have a stockpile from the Cold War. On top of that, I know there was a suspicion the Sadam Hussein was on the very of creating not only nuclear weapons but chemical weapons as well. What I don’t understand is why did the United States need more weapons if they already had a stockpile. Since the use of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II, nuclear weapons had only been used to taunt and show off that nation’s military might. As we know, history repeats itself so why did the United States actually think they were going to use the weapons again?
On another note, I was surprised to read about this resistance of the American people on the US government because I had just never heard about until reading Zinn. I’m surprised that it was never talked about during history class and that there was overall just no mention of it in general. I was also surprised to see the nationwide demonstrations of adults, religious persons, students, and others. I actually believe that Zinn mentioned probably around twenty separate demonstrations all across the United States. It kind of made me happy seeing the citizens of the United States unite; however, it was in protest of the government and not for another reason. On another topic, something from Zinn that I found to be shocking was that 1% of the United States population owned approximately 33% of the wealth in the nation.
I was surprised and not surprised at the same time that I hadn’t learned about this kind of American resistance. I was surprised because I would have thought somewhere in my years of education it would have been taught to me. I was also not surprised because Zinn has uncovered a lot of things I haven’t learned in general history classes. He has also taught us that Americans try to hide parts of history in order to portray the story they think the rest of Americans want to hear.
Not that I know for sure, but to answer your question about why we “needed” to make more weapons and keep building up our stockpile, I think our government has always had a large military focus whether or not we want to admit it. Therefore, having a large stockpile threatens other countries and shows them that we are the “best” and “most powerful”. While I disagree with this, I just think that idea of our alleged dominance is always in the back of our minds, and thus that is also why our military funding is so large today.
I was also shocked by the public resistance in America during the Cold War. It is shocking to read that people of all different backgrounds and walks of life rallied together in their disapproval. How was this ignored by the president at the time? Why don’t we ever learn about this disapproval nd how it united Americans?