Sir, – We live under an economic system that is pushing us closer and closer to nuclear war. It isn’t about who is US president. Nearly every US president since Truman has considered using nuclear weapons in war – Eisenhower on North Korea, Kennedy on the Soviet Union, Johnson on North Vietnam, and apparently Nixon considered using nuclear weapons on four different occasions.
It isn’t about electing into office the right candidate. The political system isn’t designed to allow rational-thinking people to hold top office as the economic system we live under is irrational, and there are filters in place to guarantee that those at the top of all institutional bodies champion the status quo.
Our economic system may be providing the top 20 per cent of the world’s population with a comfortable lifestyle, and the top 1 per cent with an opulent lifestyle, but this is at the expense of the 80 per cent living on less than $10 dollars per day.
And more significantly, it’s at the expense of our global environment, which is being devastated to the point of collapse.
We need to educate ourselves to the point where we see these problems as being systemic and to organise together to create a better society and a more equitable economic order – maybe one that has never been tried before on a large scale.
How can we accept that our present system is the best possible system when the world has come to the brink of nuclear war so many times in the past and that at present we are close to nuclear war (and consequently nuclear annihilation) due to our confrontation with North Korea?
As always, it is time to discontinue the trivia we fill our lives with, and to become responsible citizens and collectively build a better society – one which is peaceful, fair, inclusive, and progressive. – Yours, etc,
LOUIS SHAWCROSS,
Hillsborough,
Co Down.