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My Experiments with Plainness

August 20, 2002
· Martin Kelley

[See also: Resources on Quak­er Plain­ness]

This was a post I sent to the “Pearl” email list, which con­sists of mem­bers of the 2002 FGC Gath­er­ing work­shop led by Lloyd Lee Wil­son of North Car­oli­na Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive). Eighth Month 20, 2002

 

I thought I’d share some of my jour­ney in plain-ness since Gath­er­ing. There’s two parts to plain dress: sim­plic­i­ty and plain-ness.

The most impor­tant part of the sim­plic­i­ty work has been sim­pli­fy­ing my wardrobe. It’s incred­i­ble how many clothes I have. I sus­pect I have a lot few­er than most Amer­i­cans but there’s still tons, and nev­er enough room in the clos­ets & dressers (I do have small clos­ets but still!). I’d like to get all my clothes into one or two dress­er draw­ers and donate the rest to char­i­ty. Two pairs of pants, a cou­ple of shirts, a few days worth of socks and under­gar­ments. This requires that I wash every­thing fre­quent­ly which means I hand-wash things but that’s okay. The point is to not wor­ry or think about what I’m going to wear every morn­ing. I’ve been to a wed­ding and a funer­al since I start­ed going plain and it was nice not hav­ing to fret about what to wear.

I also appre­ci­ate using less resources up by hav­ing few­er clothes. It’s hard to get away from prod­ucts that don’t have some neg­a­tive side effects (sup­port of oil indus­try, spilling of chem­i­cal wastes into streams, killing of ani­mals for hide, exploita­tion of peo­ple con­struct­ing the clothes at hor­ri­ble wages & con­di­tions). I try my best to bal­ance these con­cerns but the best way is to reduce the use.

These moti­va­tions are simple-ness rather than plain-ness. But I am try­ing to be plain too. For men it’s pret­ty easy. My most com­mon cloth­ing since Gath­er­ing has been black pants, shoes and sus­penders, and the com­bo seems to look pret­ty plain. There’s no his­toric authen­tic­i­ty. The pants are Levi-Dockers which I already own, the shoes non-leather ones from Pay­less, also already owned. The only pur­chase was sus­penders from Sears. I bought black over­alls too. My Dock­ers were vic­tims of a minor bike acci­dent last week (my scraped knee & elbow are heal­ing well, thank you, and my bike is fine) and I’m replac­ing them with thick­er pants that will hold up bet­ter to repeat­ed wash­ing & use. There’s irony in this, cer­tain­ly. If I were being just sim­ple, I’d wear out all the pants I have – despite their col­or – rather than buy new ones. I’d be wear­ing some bright & wacky pants, that’s for sure! But irony is part of any wit­ness, espe­cial­ly in the begin­ning when there’s some lifestyle shift­ing that needs to hap­pen. As a per­son liv­ing in the world I’m bound to have con­tra­dic­tions: they help me to not take myself too seri­ous­ly and I try to accept them with grace and good humor.

But prac­ti­cal­i­ty in dress more impor­tant to me than his­tor­i­cal authen­tic­i­ty. I don’t want to wear a hat since I bike every day and want to keep my head free for the hel­met; it also feels like my doing it would go beyond the line into quaint­ness. The only type of cloth­ing that’s new to my wardrobe is the sus­penders and real­ly they are as prac­ti­cal as a belt, just less com­mon today. A few Civ­il War re-enactment buffs have smil­ing­ly observed that clip-on sus­penders aren’t his­tor­i­cal­ly authen­tic but that’s per­fect­ly okay with me. I also wear col­lars, that’s per­fect­ly okay with me too.

The oth­er thing that I’m clear about is that the com­mand­ment to plain dress is not nec­es­sar­i­ly eter­nal. It is sit­u­a­tion­al, it is part­ly a response to the world and to Quak­er­dom and it does con­scious­ly refer to cer­tain sym­bols. God is what’s eter­nal, and lis­ten­ing to the call of Christ with­in is the real com­mand­ment. If I were in a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty that demand­ed plain dress, I expect I would feel led to break out the tie-die and bleach and manic-panic hair col­or­ing. Dress is an out­ward form and like all out­ward forms and prac­tices, it can eas­i­ly become a false sacra­ment. If we embrace the form but for­get the source (which I sus­pect lots of Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry Friends did), then it’s time to cause a ruckus.

Every so often Friends need to look around and take stock of the state of the Soci­ety. At the turn of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, they did that. There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing anti-plain dress book from that time that argues that it’s a musty old tra­di­tion that should be swept away in light of the social­ist ecu­meni­cal world of the future. I sus­pect I would have had much sym­pa­thy for the posi­tion at the time, espe­cial­ly if I were in a group of Friends who did­n’t have the fire of the Spir­it and wore their old clothes only because their par­ents had and it was expect­ed of Quakers.

Today the sit­u­a­tion is changed. We have many Friends who have blend­ed in so well with mod­ern sub­ur­ban Amer­i­ca that they’re indis­tin­guish­able in spir­it or deed. They don’t want to have com­mit­tee meet­ing on Sat­ur­days or after Meet­ing since that would take up so much time, etc. They’re hap­py being Quak­ers as long as not much is expect­ed and as long as there’s no chal­lenge and no sac­ri­fice required. We also have Friends who think that the peace tes­ti­mo­ny and wit­ness is all there is (con­fus­ing the out­ward form with the source again, in my opin­ion). When a spir­i­tu­al empti­ness sets into a com­mu­ni­ty there are two obvi­ous ways out: 1) bring in the fads of the out­side world (reli­gious revival­ism in the 19 Cen­tu­ry, social­ist ecu­meni­cal­sim in the 20th, Bud­dhism and sweat lodges in the 21st). or 2) re-examine the fire of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions and fig­ure out what babies you threw away with the bath­wa­ter in the last rebel­lion against emp­ty out­ward form.

I think Quak­ers real­ly found some­thing spe­cial 350 years ago, or redis­cov­ered it and that we are con­stant­ly redis­cov­er­ing it. I have felt that power/ I know that there is still one, named Jesus Christ, who can speak to my con­di­tion and that the Spir­it comes to teach the peo­ple direct­ly. I’ll read old jour­nals and put on old clothes to try to under­stand ear­ly Friends’ beliefs. The clothes aren’t impor­tant, I don’t want to give them too much weight. But there is a tra­di­tion of Quak­ers tak­ing on plain dress upon some sort of deep spir­i­tu­al con­vince­ment (it is so much of a cliche of old Quak­er jour­nals that lit­er­ary types clas­si­fy it as part of the essen­tial struc­ture of the jour­nals). I see plain dress as a reminder we give our­selves that we are try­ing to live out­side the world­li­ness of our times and serve the eter­nal. My wit­ness to oth­ers is sim­ply that I think Quak­erism is some­thing to com­mit one­self whol­ly to (yes, I’ll meet on a Sat­ur­day) and that there are some pre­cious gifts in tra­di­tion­al Quak­er faith & prac­tice that could speak to the spir­i­tu­al cri­sis many Friends feel today.

In friend­ship,
Mar­tin Kelley
Atlantic City Area MM, NJ
martink@martinkelley.com

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Must Freedom Be Another Victim?

December 1, 2001
· Martin Kelley

Nation­al crises bring out both the best and worst in peo­ple. On Sep­tem­ber 11th, we saw ordi­nary Amer­i­cans step up to the task at hand to become heroes. The thou­sands of sto­ries of peo­ple help­ing peo­ple were a salve to a wound­ed nation. We have all right­ly been proud of the New York fire-fighters and res­cue work­ers who became heroes when their job need­ed heroes. We will always remem­ber their brav­ery and their sac­ri­fice as a shin­ing moment of human history.
But crises can also bring out the worst in a peo­ple and a nation. Some of the most shame­ful episodes of U.S. his­to­ry have arisen out of the pan­ic of cri­sis, when oppor­tunis­tic lead­ers have indulged fear and para­noia and used it to advance long-stifled agen­das of polit­i­cal con­trol and repression.

Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft are just such oppor­tunis­tic lead­ers. Under the cloak of fear and the blind of ter­ror­ism, they are try­ing to strip away civ­il lib­er­ties in this country.

It is true that we must review our pri­va­cy laws and secu­ri­ty poli­cies fol­low­ing the hor­rors of the air­plane hijack­ings. We must see if some judi­cious re-balancing might cre­ate more secu­ri­ty while keep­ing true to the spir­it and tra­di­tions of Amer­i­can liberty.

But George W. Bush and John Ashcroft are not the men for care­ful, judi­cious review. With every day that goes by, with every press con­fer­ence or speech, it is becom­ing clear­er that they are using the times to grab pow­er. The Attor­ney Gen­er­al in par­tic­u­lar is sul­ly­ing the hero­ism of those who died on Sep­tem­ber 11th try­ing to res­cue their fel­low Amer­i­cans. He is a cow­ard in the unfold­ing nation­al drama.

MASS ARRESTS

Over 1,200 peo­ple have been arrest­ed and detained since Sep­tem­ber 11th. Hun­dreds of them remain in jail. There is no evi­dence that any of them aid­ed the Sep­tem­ber 11th hijack­ers. Only a hand­ful of the detainees are sus­pect­ed of hav­ing any con­nec­tion with any ter­ror­ists. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ashcroft has refused to give basic details about these peo­ple – includ­ing their names!. He has defend­ed the secre­cy by imply­ing that jail­ing such large num­bers of for­eign­ers might maybe have pre­vent­ed oth­er ter­ror plots, though he’s nev­er pro­vid­ed any evi­dence or giv­en us any details.

His is a legal stan­dard based on the fear and para­noia lev­el of he and his Pres­i­dent are feel­ing. But we here in Amer­i­ca do not lock up any­one based on our para­noia. We need evi­dence and the evi­dence of some­one’s skin col­or or nation­al ori­gin is not enough.

The evi­dence of skin col­or and nation­al ori­gin was enough in one oth­er time in Amer­i­can his­to­ry: the shame­ful round­ing up of Japanese-Americans in World War 2. Polit­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties saw the pos­si­bil­i­ties in Amer­i­can’s fear fol­low­ing the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor and we con­struct­ed con­cen­tra­tion camps. Many of those sent there were full Amer­i­can cit­i­zens but they had no choice. There weren’t enough clear-headed, decent Amer­i­cans then to say “enough,” to demand that the U.S. live by it’s birthright man­date to ensure free­dom. The prop­er­ty of Japan­ese Amer­i­cans was also tak­en and giv­en to politically-connected landown­ers who had long cov­et­ed it. It was a dark moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Now, in 2001, we are once again lock­ing up peo­ple based only on the coun­try of their origin.

KANGAROO COURTS

Pres­i­dent Bush has by sleight of hand declared that sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists can be tried by Unit­ed States mil­i­tary tri­bunals. This is an extreme step. We have judi­cial process­es that can try crim­i­nals and the Unit­ed Nations does as well. The only rea­son to use the mil­i­tary tri­bunals is out of fear that oth­er courts might be more fair and more just. They might be more delib­er­ate and take longer to weigh and con­sid­er the evi­dence. They will sure­ly be seen as less cred­i­ble in the eyes of the world, how­ev­er. We will have lost any moral lead­er­ship. But more impor­tant­ly, we will have lost the true mean­ing of Amer­i­can lib­er­ty and justice.

DOMESTIC SPYING

Yes­ter­day, Novem­ber 30th, John Ashcroft announced a fur­ther grab of polit­i­cal pow­er, anoth­er attempt to erode civ­il lib­er­ties. He is con­sid­er­ing allow­ing the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion to begin spy­ing on reli­gious and polit­i­cal groups in the U.S.

The New York Times says: “The pro­pos­al would loosen one of the most fun­da­men­tal restric­tions on the con­duct of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and would be anoth­er step by the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion to mod­i­fy civil-liberties pro­tec­tions as a means of defend­ing the coun­try against terrorists.”

For those of you who don’t know the his­to­ry. These restric­tions against open spy­ing were put into place in the 1970s when the extent and abuse of for­mer spy­ing became known. The F.B.I. had a wide­spread net­work that active­ly tried to sup­press polit­i­cal groups.

Fig­ures such as Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., were not only under con­stant sur­veil­lance by the F.B.I. They were harassed, they were black­mailed. Often incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence would be placed on them and rumors spread to dis­cred­it them in their organization.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment active­ly sup­pressed polit­i­cal dis­sent, free speech, and orga­niz­ing. The reg­u­la­tions Ashcroft wants to over­turn were put into place when the extent of this old spy­ing and dirty-tricks cam­paign­ing was exposed.

Pres­i­dent Bush and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ashcroft are using the fear of ter­ror to return us to an era when domes­tic spy­ing and abro­ga­tion of lib­er­ties was the norm. When fear of for­eign­ers and polit­i­cal dis­sent gave U.S. offi­cials pow­ers far beyond those that democ­ra­cy and secu­ri­ty require.

The words you read right now are a gift from the U.S. found­ing fathers and from gen­er­a­tions of good Amer­i­c­as who have stood up bold­ly to demand con­tin­ued lib­er­ty. Like the fire-fighters of Sep­tem­ber 11th, dis­senters and free speech advo­cates are nor­mal peo­ple who were called by the times to be heroes. Our coun­try and are world needs mores heroes now. Speak out. Demand that our free­dom not be anoth­er vic­tim of Sep­tem­ber 11th. 

Stopping the Next War Now: More Victims Won’t Stop the Terror

October 7, 2001
· Martin Kelley

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Non​vi​o​lence​.org

The Unit­ed States has today begun its war against ter­ror­ism in a very famil­iar way: by use of ter­ror. Igno­rant of thou­sands of years of vio­lence in the Mid­dle East, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush thinks that the hor­ror of Sep­tem­ber 11th can be exor­cised and pre­vent­ed by bombs and mis­siles. Today we can add more names to the long list of vic­tims of the ter­ror­ist air­plane attacks. Because today Afgha­nis have died in terror.

The deaths in New York City, Wash­ing­ton and Penn­syl­va­nia have shocked Amer­i­cans and right­ly so. We are all scared of our sud­den vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. We are all shocked at the lev­el of anger that led nine­teen sui­cide bombers to give up pre­cious life to start such a lit­er­al and sym­bol­ic con­fla­gra­tion. What they did was hor­ri­ble and with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. But that is not to say that they did­n’t have reasons.

The ter­ror­ists com­mit­ted their atroc­i­ties because of a long list of griev­ances. They were shed­ding blood for blood, and we must under­stand that. Because to under­stand that is to under­stand that Pres­i­dent Bush is unleash­ing his own ter­ror cam­paign: that he is shed­ding more blood for more blood.

The Unit­ed States has been spon­sor­ing vio­lence in Afghanistan for over a gen­er­a­tion. Even before the Sovi­et inva­sion of that coun­try, the U.S. was sup­port­ing rad­i­cal Muja­hadeen forces. We thought then that spon­sor­ship of vio­lence would lead to some sort of peace. As we all know now, it did not. We’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with vio­lence in the region for many years. Our for­eign pol­i­cy has been a mish-mash of sup­port­ing one despot­ic regime after anoth­er against a shift­ing array of per­ceived enemies.

The Afghani forces the Unit­ed States now bomb were once our allies, as was Iraq’s Sad­dam Hus­sein. We have rarely if ever act­ed on behalf of lib­er­ty and democ­ra­cy in the region. We have time and again sold out our val­ues and thrown our sup­port behind the most heinous of despots. We have time and again thought that mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism in the region could keep ter­ror­ism and anti-Americanism in check. And each time we’ve only bred a new gen­er­a­tion of rad­i­cals, bent on revenge.

There are those who have angri­ly denounced paci­fists in the weeks since Sep­tem­ber 11th, angri­ly ask­ing how peace can deal with ter­ror­ists. What these crit­ics don’t under­stand is that wars don’t start when the bombs begin to explode. They begin years before, when the seeds of hatred are sewn. The times to stop this new war was ten and twen­ty years ago, when the U.S. broke it’s promis­es for democ­ra­cy, and act­ed in its own self-interest (and often on behalf of the inter­ests of our oil com­pa­nies) to keep the cycles of vio­lence going. The Unit­ed States made choic­es that helped keep the peo­ples of the Mid­dle East enslaved in despo­tism and poverty.

And so we come to 2001. And it’s time to stop a war. But it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly this war that we can stop. It’s the next one. And the ones after that. It’s time to stop com­bat ter­ror­ism with ter­ror. In the last few weeks the Unit­ed States has been mak­ing new alliances with coun­tries whose lead­ers sub­vert democ­ra­cy. We are giv­ing them free rein to con­tin­ue to sub­ject their peo­ple. Every weapon we sell these tyrants only kills and desta­bi­lizes more, just as every bomb we drop on Kab­ul feeds ter­ror more.

And most of all: we are mak­ing new vic­tims. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren are see­ing their par­ents die, are see­ing the rain of bombs fall on their cities from an uncar­ing Amer­i­ca. They cry out to us in the name of peace and democ­ra­cy and hear noth­ing but hatred and blood. And some of them will respond by turn­ing against us in hatred. And will fight us in anger. They will learn our les­son of ter­ror and use it against us. They cycle will repeat. His­to­ry will con­tin­ue to turn, with blood as it’s Mid­dle East­ern lubri­cant. Unless we act. Unless we can stop the next war.

A Terrorist Bombing by Any Other Name

August 20, 1998
· Martin Kelley

What if in the weeks fol­low­ing the bomb­ing of the fed­er­al cour­t­house in Okla­homa City, the FBI had launched dozens of cruise mis­siles at the Michi­gan town where Tim­o­thy McVeigh had built his bomb? What if it had done so even when evi­dence was still mea­ger, when accounts were still con­tra­dic­to­ry? What if it did so with­out look­ing for less dra­mat­ic ways of serv­ing jus­tice? What if the mis­siles just killed and enraged more innocents?

Ear­li­er today the Unit­ed States attacked two nations accused of har­bor­ing the ter­ror­ist team respon­si­ble for the recent bomb­ings in East Africa. Telling the world that “our tar­get was ter­ror,” U.S. naval ships fired seventy-five to one hun­dred cruise mis­siles into a busy urban neigh­bor­hood of the Sudanese cap­i­tal of Khar­toum, a city of 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple, and at a lightly-populated tar­get in Afghanistan.

It is a sol­id prin­ci­ple of both inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy and non­vi­o­lent action that the more peace­ful options are exhaust­ed first. No sig­nif­i­cant diplo­mat­ic efforts have been made with the Tal­iban gov­ern­ment in Afghanistan to extra­dite reput­ed ring­leader Osama bin Laden. No Unit­ed Nations res­o­lu­tions have been passed for inspec­tion of the reput­ed chem­i­cal weapons fac­to­ry in Sudan (local offi­cials say it’s a fac­to­ry for med­ical drugs).

If the chem­i­cal plant had been in a Euro­pean cap­i­tal, it is all but cer­tain that the U.S. would not have fired dozens of cruise mis­siles with scant evi­dence and no pre­lim­i­nary diplo­mat­ic effort. But Khar­toum is the cap­i­tal of a mil­i­tar­i­ly weak African nation. While Clin­ton claims to be sad­dened at all the African lives lost in the bomb­ing at the embassy in Kenya, yet he has lit­tle regard for the lives of Africans in the neigh­bor­ing Sudan.

Jus­tice takes time. It needs the care­ful weigh­ing of evi­dence by neu­tral par­ties. It took over a year for inves­ti­ga­tors to col­lect the evi­dence sur­round­ing the Okla­homa City bomb­ing and for Tim­o­thy McVeigh to be con­vict­ed of the crime. But while jus­tice might take time, pol­i­tics requires imme­di­a­cy, dra­ma. Clin­ton is a politi­cian and he knows that tough mil­i­tary adven­tures against pip-squeak coun­tries is the fastest way to ral­ly bipar­ti­san domes­tic sup­port in times of trou­ble. Con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians have stopped the ever-louder calls for his impeach­ment over the sex and per­jury scan­dal to ral­ly behind him and mut­ter the famil­iar impe­ri­al­is­tic clichés about pol­i­tics stop­ping at the water’s edge. But it is time to stop play­ing pol­i­tics with Third World lives.

“Our tar­get was ter­ror” said Pres­i­dent Clin­ton, but so was his solu­tion. The only way Amer­i­ca knows to respond to two bombs is to set off seventy-five bombs. The only way it know to avenge the death of hun­dreds of inno­cent Africans is by threat­en­ing the lives of hun­dreds of oth­er Africans. Ter­ror­ist bomb­ing by any oth­er deliv­ery method is just as dead­ly and it is just as dis­rup­tive to inter­na­tion­al world order.

As cit­i­zens, Amer­i­cans have grown too com­pla­cent about these mis­sile launch­es against unarmed cities. These attacks have become too famil­iar a part of U.S. pol­i­cy. Too few ques­tions are asked, either imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the bomb­ing or in the years after­ward. Ter­ror­ist mis­siles are not effec­tive means of appre­hend­ing crim­i­nals or serv­ing jus­tice. Ear­ly reports from Afghanistan are that bin Laden is safe and con­tin­u­ing to plan fur­ther attacks against Amer­i­cans. In the last decade, mis­sile attacks have been used against Libya, Lebanon and Iraq but in no case have they dam­aged the ene­my and have in fact only strength­ened the anger and the resolve of their supporters.

As before, the mis­siles were launched by com­put­er from ships hun­dreds of miles away. We nev­er see the smoke and the fire, we nev­er smell the blood, we nev­er see the ter­ror in the eyes of the chil­dren. Chil­dren whose night­mares will now fea­tured scream­ing mis­siles from unseen ter­ror­ists known only as Amer­i­cans. Chil­dren whose dreams will be the taste of revenge.

Osama bin Laden has won. He won by pro­vok­ing the U.S. to shun it’s ideals of democ­ra­cy and jus­tice to wal­low with him in the mud of orga­nized inter­na­tion­al ter­ror. Two hun­dred and fifty mil­lion Amer­i­cans have now joined bin Laden’s cru­sade to avenge ter­ror­ist vio­lence with more ter­rror­ist vio­lence. It is time to stop all ter­ror, it is time to speak out against all violence.

Two More Nuclear Cowboys

June 5, 1998
· Martin Kelley

For the last fifty years, Amer­i­ca has swag­gered around the globe like a par­o­dy of one of it’s Hol­ly­wood West­erns. Like John Wayne car­ry­ing his six-shooter down the Main Street of Dodge City, Amer­i­ca has strut­ted around the world, tak­ing nuclear weapons wher­ev­er it want­ed it’s way, from the Gulf of Tonkin to the Gulf of Pana­ma to the Gulf of Persia.

Well, the oth­er cow­boys in town have got­ten the mes­sage. To be some­one in the nuclear age means you need to car­ry your own six-shooter. In the last few weeks, India and Pak­istan have offi­cial­ly joined the nuclear cow­boys by set­ting off nuclear weapons. Dodge City’s just become a lit­tle tougher.

Inter­na­tion­al out­rage against India and Pak­istan is a lit­tle strange. No one’s real­ly doubt­ed they had nuclear capac­i­ty. Like Israel, it’s long been known they have nuclear weapons. The dif­fer­ence between them and the more estab­lished nuclear pow­ers is sim­ply the log­ic that says it’s okay for some coun­tries to have nuclear weapons but not oth­ers. Like all double-standards, it was just a mat­ter of time till the this one fell to its own hypocrisy.

The debut of two new nuclear cow­boys has brought into sharp relief the real work of our age: full nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment. The real Dodge City, Kansas long ago out­grew it’s gun­slingers. The only John Wayne’s who stomp down its Main Street these days do so for the tourist cam­eras. It’s a qui­et Mid­west­ern town full of shop­ping malls, drug stores, and fast food restau­rants. There’s no need for tough sher­iffs, show­downs, or six-shooters.

The Wild West is long gone, rel­e­gat­ed to the movie screens and cut­sey gift shops. It’s time to close the door on the nuclear age too. Time to pack in the six-shooters and learn to live togeth­er under inter­na­tion­al law. Lets leave nuclear brinks­man­ship to Hol­ly­wood screen­writ­ers and let the real world live in peace.