New Hampshire: What We'll Wish After A Nuclear Attack

As all the establishment candidates chant "change," "change," change," actual candidates who have actually advocated actual change are excluded from the debates and mocked in the media.

The people of New Hampshire and lauded by the pundits for their "independence" -- by voting for the the novel choices of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain -- who has called the media his base. It's like a slick salesman congratulating a naive customer on the wisdom of buying from him.

It would all be funny if the stakes were not so enormous.

ABC's Charlie Gibson at the debate on Saturday: "The next president of the United States may have to deal with a nuclear attack on an American city. I've read a lot about this in recent days. The best nuclear experts in the world say there's a 30 percent chance in the next 10 years. Some estimates are higher. Graham Allison, at Harvard, says it's over 50 percent. Senator Sam Nunn, in 2005, who knows a lot about this, posed two questions that stick in my mind. And I want to put them to you here.

"On the day after a nuclear weapon goes off in an American city, what would we wish we had done to prevent it? And what will we actually do on the day after?"

Some of us who are paying attention will have wished Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel were not excluded from that debate so they could outline how we need to change U.S. policy.

In terms of what will happen after a nuclear attack: probably some sort of martial law, possibly against anyone who would say something like the previous sentence.

See Noam Chomsky: We Must Act Now to Prevent Another Hiroshima -- or Worse.

But progressives are constantly told Kucinich, Gravel and Ron Paul are quirky, so don't support them. Be a player, not a citizen. Deal with the political game, don't try to prevent another Hiroshima. But remember to be surprised when we get there.