At the very beginning of WWII, America's leadership wwas convinced that, morally, only the Norden Precision Bombsight would allow it to win at war with minimum civilian casualties for the other side.
But by 1945, America's leadership had decided that its new chief weapon was to be a weapon of mass terror and mass destruction, The Bomb.
Its only truly unique capability was its ability to burn alive all the residents of a large city at one go.
And with only America possessing it, America could become God's terrifying Avenging Angel over the whole world .
From plan A's Norden precision killing to plan B's Yellowcake mass killing, it is easy to see a steep moral fall in America's moral leadership.
But when we turn from America killing people to America saving people , we see instead an unexpected moral ascent.
The plan A medicine of choice was the man-made patented Sulfa drugs.
They spoke of an era that sought to replace everything Mother Nature made with a Man-made analogue , patented in a monopoly to sell for high cost profit.
It was a time when Man in the biggest, richest, most developed nations actually believed they could go it alone every time and in everything.
Go-it-alone emotional autarky and emotional neutrality and emotional isolationism , never needing help from either Mother Nature or from fellow human beings.
So they stone-heartedly ignored cries for help from smaller weaker nations as the Axis of Evil gobbled them up one by one by one and instead devoted all their efforts to building up their own defences, selfish , self-centred , self absorbed.
But Man failed to improve their artificial Sulfas (past the Fall of 1942) to keep up with the bacteria cleverly evolving to evade its dangers.
And Man failed to synthesize and patent a man-made patentable penicillin , to replace the Sulfas, despite wasting years of war and millions of lives trying.
Instead a very small group of powerless people successfully convinced the American public that Mother Nature-made penicillin could do the job - right now ! - and at low cost.
And that the benefits of this new wartime American Yellow Magic should be flown - posthaste - to all the dying - not just front line Allied troops - to civilians, to the Neutral nations and even to enemy soldiers and civilians.
Those Yellow Magic flights of mercy to dying children, ironically undertaken in the same bombers that were busy burning occupied and enemy children alive, finally ended America's moral and emotional isolationism.
In 1945, Manhattan, ever Janus-faced , presented to a perplexed world two very different moral faces of America - as Manhattan and America still does today : exhibiting both the best and the worst that humanity has to offer.
It was to be Pax Americana , of that there was no doubt : but what sort of Pax : Yellowcake or Yellow Magic ?
No wonder the world still finds the tiny island of Manhattan, home of both Gordon Gekko and Emma Lazarus, so eternally fascinating ...
But by 1945, America's leadership had decided that its new chief weapon was to be a weapon of mass terror and mass destruction, The Bomb.
Its only truly unique capability was its ability to burn alive all the residents of a large city at one go.
And with only America possessing it, America could become God's terrifying Avenging Angel over the whole world .
From plan A's Norden precision killing to plan B's Yellowcake mass killing, it is easy to see a steep moral fall in America's moral leadership.
But when we turn from America killing people to America saving people , we see instead an unexpected moral ascent.
The plan A medicine of choice was the man-made patented Sulfa drugs.
They spoke of an era that sought to replace everything Mother Nature made with a Man-made analogue , patented in a monopoly to sell for high cost profit.
It was a time when Man in the biggest, richest, most developed nations actually believed they could go it alone every time and in everything.
Go-it-alone emotional autarky and emotional neutrality and emotional isolationism , never needing help from either Mother Nature or from fellow human beings.
So they stone-heartedly ignored cries for help from smaller weaker nations as the Axis of Evil gobbled them up one by one by one and instead devoted all their efforts to building up their own defences, selfish , self-centred , self absorbed.
But Man failed to improve their artificial Sulfas (past the Fall of 1942) to keep up with the bacteria cleverly evolving to evade its dangers.
And Man failed to synthesize and patent a man-made patentable penicillin , to replace the Sulfas, despite wasting years of war and millions of lives trying.
Instead a very small group of powerless people successfully convinced the American public that Mother Nature-made penicillin could do the job - right now ! - and at low cost.
And that the benefits of this new wartime American Yellow Magic should be flown - posthaste - to all the dying - not just front line Allied troops - to civilians, to the Neutral nations and even to enemy soldiers and civilians.
Those Yellow Magic flights of mercy to dying children, ironically undertaken in the same bombers that were busy burning occupied and enemy children alive, finally ended America's moral and emotional isolationism.
Gordon Gekko or Emma Lazarus ?
In 1945, Manhattan, ever Janus-faced , presented to a perplexed world two very different moral faces of America - as Manhattan and America still does today : exhibiting both the best and the worst that humanity has to offer.
It was to be Pax Americana , of that there was no doubt : but what sort of Pax : Yellowcake or Yellow Magic ?
No wonder the world still finds the tiny island of Manhattan, home of both Gordon Gekko and Emma Lazarus, so eternally fascinating ...
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