Eric Sevareid (1912-1992) was a journalist and commentator for CBS news who presented opinions in brilliant essays for 47 years. How can we forget his opinion about the greatest export from these United States, not as cars, other products manufactured by an advanced industrialized nation? “The largest export of the USA is the manufacture and distribution of anxiety!” Anxiety is still our foreign export.
Having grown up during WW II, witnessing three older brothers volunteer for military service, being present when a telegram arrived at our Illinois home from the War Department with the sad news of Capt. Thomas A. Hummert’s death in a B-17 bomber on May 5, 1945. When we were struck by the media “bombardment” of Russia and China with designs for taking over the world, all families in the USA received the internal “export of anxiety” in abundance. Two other brothers Richard and Robert returned to Illinois from WWII spiritually wounded. They spoke little of war experiences abroad.
National anxiety exploded from $1 billion on “defense” in 1945 to $2 billion daily in 2018. The USA is now $20 trillion in debt and digging a deeper hole daily by spreading anxiety globally. Trillions went to fighting wars abroad and such agony continues today in Korea where peace was never declared. I visited the DMZ & 38th parallel in August 1970 to sense war anxiety.
We are all invited to use computerized search engines then pull up “CHOKEHOLD ON RUSSIA AND CHINA” to discover our USA military has in Pentagon terms placed a “noose” around the Korean peninsula, China and Vladivostok, Russia. A US Navy fleet in the Russian Black Sea, brings anxiety.
Father Gerry Hammond, 83 from Philadelphia has lived in Korea since 1960. Of course, he speaks Korean and goes easily with the Bell Foundation to North Korea distributing expensive medications for resisting TB, a serious disease in that nation. After fifty trips to North Korea, Fr. Hammond senses his major obstacle to good will visits there comes from Washington.
“Denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula has begun in North Korea this year when they became the first of nine nuclear nations to physically destroy tunnels in their nuclear testing zone above the 38th parallel. Will the Trump/North Korea session this month reduce anxiety? Will the US close Pantex nuclear weapon facility in Amarillo, Texas? Or any of thirteen other installations?
“Denuclearization” of the entire planet actually occurred legally as 122 countries (out of 195) in the United Nations voted on July 7, 2017 for total abolition of all nuclear weapons. Those countries which reject such a dramatic historical movement are simply “rogue states” for refusal to join the momentum to abolish Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD’s). US Ambassador to the UN Mrs. Nikki Haley was adamantly opposed to denuclearization. Her two children will live in a dangerous world unless WMD’s are abolished.
A wise retired general from Louisiana said the reason for US refusal to abolish nuclear arms is the money involved in a multi trillion dollar operation. Thousands are employed in such deadly work.
Which will be the second nation to abolish a nuclear facility? Our future depends on abolition.
Will we all have the initiative to study a map showing the US Chokehold on Russia, North Korea and China? US presence in over 70 countries with 800 military bases around the world is an example of Sevareid’s “exporting anxiety.” Which nation threatens USA borders with military bases?
Germs of science are so easily spread, so hard to take back.
The meagerness of scientific accomplishments in China would not have been due to any lack of intelligence. Potentially, at least, the Chinese people are highly inventive. I need only quote to you some interesting words from an after-dinner speech delivered in London fifty-two years ago in April by his Imperial Highness Duke Tsai Chi: “It is well known that the mariner’s compass was invented in China, and to mention no greater results from its extended application in your hands, one very happy result at any rate is that we have been safely navigated to your hospitable shores. Gunpowder and guns had also their origin in China. A very harmless beginning, and there it might have stayed; but on the occasion of our recent visit to Woolsih Arsenal we noticed how greatly our germ had developed; and the idea suggested itself whether it had benefited mankind in making the discovery.”6
Wu, John. Chinese Humanism and Christian Spirituality (pp. 151-152). Angelico Press. Kindle Edition.