{"id":27061,"date":"2023-06-23T13:58:02","date_gmt":"2023-06-23T20:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=27061"},"modified":"2023-06-23T14:57:39","modified_gmt":"2023-06-23T21:57:39","slug":"against-the-unthinkable-life-after-daniel-ellsberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/06\/23\/against-the-unthinkable-life-after-daniel-ellsberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Against the Unthinkable: Life After Daniel Ellsberg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Daniel<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Daniel Ellsberg speaks to the press outside a federal courthouse in 1971.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 (Photo by Donal Holway\/The New York Times)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day he saw the world as it is and realized what it must become. He acted on this realization and dedicated his life to humanity. Now so must we.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

RICHARD ESKOW<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jun 22, 2023 Common Dreams<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trappist monk and socially engaged writer Thomas Merton wrote of what he called \u201cthe Unspeakable,\u201d which he described as \u201cthe void that contradicts everything that is spoken before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment they are pronounced and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniel Ellsberg<\/a> stared into that abyss more closely than most human beings, and he spent his life fighting what he saw. And now, with the obituaries published and the testimonials read, it\u2019s up to us to look into the mirrored face of a world most of us would rather not see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a defense analyst, Dan Ellsberg studied annihilation for years. He kept death\u2019s secrets, until he knew it was time to speak. He watched the machinery of Armageddon, then he knew it was time to act. He had found his life\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unthinkable is born from the unspeakable, until in the end it becomes inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unspeakable has a cousin: the unthinkable. Herman Kahn, who was once one of Ellsberg\u2019s war-planning colleagues, called one of his books \u201cThinking About the Unthinkable.\u201d Kahn went on to form the right-wing Hudson Institute, while Ellsberg came to understand what people like Kahn could not: that in thinking the unthinkable, you forget why<\/em> it\u2019s unthinkable. You incinerate the moral universe inside yourself. You tell yourself you don\u2019t want mass death, but you\u2019ve created a mental vortex that swallows everyone who comes too close. It turns generals and politicians and statisticians and weapons designers into technocrats of annihilation. The apocalypse gains mass and momentum until it becomes irreversible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unthinkable is born from the unspeakable, until in the end it becomes inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellsberg, of course, became famous for exposing the lies behind the war in Vietnam. Now, eulogizers are working overtime to drain his life and work of their true meaning. They want to distance him from his moral heirs, just as they\u2019ve tried to do with Martin Luther King, Jr<\/a>. and Malcolm X and so many others. But Ellsberg supported the whistleblowers and journalists who carried on his work, like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, until the very end. If someone condemns Snowden and Assange while praising Ellsberg, they\u2019re speaking for the unspeakable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellsberg understood the machinery of nuclear war, which is why he wrote a book entitled The Doomsday Machine. <\/em>He understood that this mechanism was waiting to be triggered: by an error, or a misunderstanding, or a zealot. He knew the real doomsday machine was made of flesh and blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellsberg faced threats of jail and worse. Those threats might have broken others, but he never wavered. A reporter asked him if he was willing to go to prison for releasing the Pentagon Papers. \u201cWouldn\u2019t you go to prison to stop this war?\u201d he replied<\/a>. It wouldn\u2019t have occurred to him to do otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That aspect of his character reminded me of an exchange I had with Chris Hedges when I was interviewing him about his book, Acts of Rebellion. <\/em>I told Hedges that many revolutionaries and movement leaders seemed to have a quality of serenity, even when facing terror and pain. If you share that sense, I asked, why do you think that is?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause they know,\u201d Hedges replied. \u201cThey\u2019ve decided.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniel Ellsberg knew. He decided. Ellsberg was rightly celebrated for facing death from prostate cancer with equanimity and even joy. But he had been facing death his entire adult life\u2014not just his own, but all of humanity\u2019s. Through close friends, I had the honor of meeting him several times and interviewing him twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were sides of him that weren\u2019t mentioned enough after his death: his enthusiasm, his humor, his interest in others. He carried darknesses, of course. Who wouldn\u2019t, knowing what he knew? But these other qualities made him seem almost boyish. His blue eyes would light up at a suggestion or idea he liked. It gave him the \u201cHey, kids, let\u2019s put on a show right here!\u201d air of an actor in a 1930s movie with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellsberg was rightly celebrated for facing death from prostate cancer with equanimity and even joy. But he had been facing death his entire adult life\u2014not just his own, but all of humanity\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now he\u2019s gone, and here we are. Merton\u2019s void still nullifies official proclamations. Joe Biden has spoken of nuclear disarmament over the years, but he\u2019s staffed his administration with thinkers of the unthinkable. He\u2019s proceeding<\/a> with the deployment of a missile once known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, which Ellsberg campaigned against. (Ellsberg and I discuss it above.) Biden campaigned on reversing Trump\u2019s new nuclear weaponry, but Congress keeps funding it<\/a> and so far he hasn\u2019t pushed back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US military is expected to spend $634 billion<\/a> on nuclear weapons in the next 8-10 years. The White House\u2019s 2022 nuclear strategy document or \u201cNuclear Posture Review\u201d (NPR) struck a more moderate tone than the Trump administration\u2019s but, as the Federation of American Scientists<\/a> observes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlthough Joe Biden during his presidential election campaign spoke strongly in favor of adopting no-first-use and sole-purpose policies (for the use of nuclear weapons), the NPR explicitly rejects both for now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, there\u2019s not much pressure on Biden to keep his nuclear promises. Who\u2019ll push for that now, if not us? As for Trump, here\u2019s Ellsberg\u2019s 2017 take<\/a> on his \u201ccrazy\u201d behavior:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrump has made people more worried, but what is real craziness? Everything we\u2019re doing here is crazy, but it\u2019s a consensual craziness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellsberg considered the escalating American posture against China and Russia \u201cinsane,\u201d he told Democracy Now<\/a>. \u201cIt is as insane as QAnon or as the belief that Trump is currently the president of the United States,\u201d he said, raising the \u201creal possibility of a nuclear war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The playwright Anton Chekov famously said that if you put a gun onstage in the first act you better fire it in the next act or two. The nuclear doomsday machine was introduced in the first act of America\u2019s postwar empire. Now, as we enter its third and perhaps final act, we\u2019re coming closer to firing it: over Ukraine, or Taiwan, or (even likelier) over a misunderstanding or technical failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merton found an escape from the Unspeakable that was consistent with his Catholic vocation. But his description of it applies to secular epiphanies, too. He said it \u201ccan be broken open only by a miracle …\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dan Ellsberg\u2019s miracle was a simple one. One day he saw the world as it is and realized what it must become. Call it grace, if you like. Now, we must learn to see what he saw so that we can act as he acted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additional resources: Ellsberg on <\/em>the risk of nuclear war<\/em><\/a>. I <\/em>interviewed Ellsberg<\/em><\/a> about The Doomsday Machine four years ago. We also talked <\/em>about the ICBM threat<\/em><\/a> last year; there is a print excerpt of that conversation <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RICHARD ESKOW<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard (RJ) Eskow is a freelance writer. Much of his work can be found on eskow.substack.com. His weekly program, The Zero Hour, can be found<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Ellsberg speaks to the press outside a federal courthouse in 1971.  (Photo by Donal Holway\/The New York Times) One day he saw the world as it is and realized what it must become. He acted on this realization and dedicated his life to humanity. Now so must we. RICHARD… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[694],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27061"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27066,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27061\/revisions\/27066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}