At that point and maybe accept some questions
and move on from there.
[Tapping his hand impatiently and waiting]
Don't be shy.
Yeah?
[indistinguishable question]
Ah, sure. Sure it does. It's, I mean it would
take us a hundred hours, and I don't know if Rik and I combined
could explain all the phenomena. Certainly, but
it's a new phenomena. It's a new phenomena
that we are the only people for the last 40
years of history who have had to deal with
it. Our children have had to deal with it. Kids have nightmares. There is however a likelihood that
in an hour you could be dead. That's all.
After 40 years or especially since they developed
the most sophisticated weapons and the carrying
systems, all of us share, throughout the entire
world, the understanding that for no particular
reason you could understand, either by accident
or because Ron is in a bad mood tonight or
whatever the hell is going on. The Russians
are doing something…you could be dead. Okay
and obviously that reality is there. It's
here with every single person in this room.
You don't have to talk about it ever. You
don't have to talk to children about it, they
all understand that there are weapons in this
world which can destroy us all. And that of
course happened after the explosion in '45
and has continued going. It's there. Uh, and
I think, how is that related to the 60's.
How is that…I think it's obviously. It's
there, it's present all the time, the understanding
that I think people in the 60's felt and feel
today the insanity of it all. The insanity
of it all, that people have not yet learned
after thousands of years of killing each other,
that that's maybe a stupid thing to do. And
when you watch, again I'm older than you and
I probably know more about most of these things than most of you, and I watched Reagan. I could write you the
script in 5 minutes, it's an old script and
I got it from some old movie that he was probably
in. Same speeches that they've been giving
for about a hundred years. These are the terrible
bad guys, they are, and you list off all of
these things. They're drug dealers, they're
anti-semitic, they're communist, blah blah blah. You
know all those…a whole list of things that
doesn't have much to do with reality. And
we of course are the good guys and they are
the bad guys and we're going to fight for
God and freedom and they're the evil blah
blah blah and they're all the same speeches.
They give the speech, go through the history
books, both countries, both sides gives the
same speech. And, y'know at a certain point
you look back and you say "God, why?" and you sit back,  and I think Vietnam was something like that. People
could not get swept into it. The establishment
was a little bit surprised. The way it had
always been is "Okay Boys and Girls, there's
a war. Let's go! They're the bad guys. You're
supposed to kill them. Come on. They're supposed
to kill you and we're fighting for God and
Country." And everybody's fighting for God
and country, and there's a certain point,
everybody's surprised. People say "Wait a
second, wait a second. How did we get involved
in this? We're not so sure we're on the right
side." And in fact, although many of us get
depressed about what's going on in Nicaragua
today and the absolute lies that are coming
out of the White House, in fact, we have a
right to be very exhilarated, that today despite
years and years and years of lies on the part
of the media and the president. Still, 60-70%
of the American people are not buying it.
Now certainly if you think back to Vietnam
in the beginning when they started this whole
business, there were a handful of people,
they do polls, 90% of the people think the
United States should be in Vietnam and it
took years, okay? And remember no American
kid has come back from Nicaragua yet in a
bodybag, and still 70% of the people are against
the war. And thats' why Reagan is not sending
the American kids there. Paying for the poor
Nicaraguans to kill each other. And that's
pretty impressive. And that I think is a good
thing, so to get back, to answer your questions.
It is there, it has been there since 1945,
and I think yeah. I think that is a fact,
people were looking when they say "Look, this
is what's normal. This is what's good. What
you people have given us is a world in which
people kill each other, we don't accept that
as a normal value. We think that's pretty crazy
and that's pretty stupid." Okay? Everything
you tell us leads to the fact that you tell
us leads to the fact that we're spilling billions
of dollars on weaponry that could kill the
whole world. We're beginning to challenge
some of your assumptions. Don't tell us that
if we go A, B, C and D, this is all right
because you've led us to some pretty stupid
conclusions and we're going to begin to challenge
the whole assumption.
[Silence]
RIK: I have a comment, a question as well.
I think that during one period, early part
of the 60's, there was a real movement that
started around the bomb shelter thing and
the whole civil defense movement. Uh, that was gaining
a little bit of steam. It was gaining a little
bit of steam, and what I think distracted
America and Americans from that quite quickly was the incursion into Vietnam. Does everybody…remember the biggest
