James W. Douglass, 1980 & 1985
This is Chapter 5 of Lightning East To West – Jesus, Gandhi, and the Nuclear Age (also included as PDF) paired with the documentary, The Arms Race Within, published in 1980 and 1985 respectively.
As Jim Douglass has observed, Hitler won World War II. This is unspeakably evident in such global manifestations of holocaust machines as Trident submarines. The book’s Preface begins:
When work began on this book ten years ago, I understood its writing as a form of prayer. Jesus and Gandhi discovered a nonviolent process that offers inconceivable possibilities of change in our nuclear age. We need not despair. Hope is grounded in our very being, in a loving, truthful process bound up with it.
Jim and Shelley Douglass
I don’t understand.
What is it you don’t understand?
This submarine which equals 7,296 Hiroshimas. How can anyone understand that?
Begin with a meditation: To understand Trident say the word “Hiroshima.” Reflect on its meaning for one second. Say and understand “Hiroshima” again. And again. And again. 7,296 times. Assuming you’re able to understand Hiroshima in one second, you’ll need more than two hours to understand Trident. That’s one Trident submarine. To understand the destructive power of the whole Trident fleet, it would take you more than 40 hours, devoting one second to each Hiroshima.
Your meditation is impossible. To understand Hiroshima alone would take a lifetime.
You do understand. Hiroshima was the end of our ability to imagine our destructive power, or to measure its consequences. Trident is the end of the world.
How does one live at the end of the world?
By beginning a new one. The power of thousands of Hiroshimas on their way to Trident submarines comes from the grip of an illusion: our own egos and the murderous security they seek. The force of truth and love, lived in their depths, is a force of unity, of life itself. That force is real. We need to join in a community committed to that nonviolent love force which is the power of the powerless. We need to test the truth of love by betting our lives on it in the world. If a community can experiment deeply enough in a nonviolent love force the White Train of Trident will be stopped. Love will stop the train. Love will stop Trident.