Chrysler's Nuclear Showroom
Nollson, John
"Chrysler's Nuclear Showroom" will not be greatly lowered by the President's confident (and accurate) predictions that the 1983 budget really will at long last be balanced. But not all deficits are created equal nor are...
...Its own nuclear weapons development program is now cranking full tilt on a crash basis...
...Not that the airport itself needed to be destroyed...
...As one of PATCO's officers pointed out, there is nothing like the sight of a mushroom cloud where LaGuardia airport used to be to persuade pilots that they ought to go land someplace else...
...Strategic theorists at the better universities, for example, look upon the test of wills between the nation's airlines and the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization as a textbook case...
...This incensed the Grosvenor family and all three generations of them decided to put an end to this impudence...
...In fact, the origins of W.H.O.'s deterrent can also be traced back to the 1950s...
...D THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1980 21...
...The Society's ascendency in the Third World, one of the outgrowths of Pax Americana, had to be placed on a more stable long-term footing...
...That they were able to take advantage of their tax-exempt status to acquire them on the cheap has only inspired businesses to follow in their footsteps...
...True, this has been one of the unintended consequences of the investment tax credit scheme...
...Thousands of Americans have flocked to Chrysler showrooms to sign up for a K car.' We still pretend that we are doing this in order to sock OPEC in the gas pump, but it's just the result of unchecked nuclear proliferation and all that goes with it...
...The National Geographic Society doesn't like to make much of the fact that its influence in world politics rests on the bedrock of its secure second-strike force...
...In this way, the World Health Organization acquired control of a global network of nuclear installations...
...The granddaddy of non-governmental nuclear forces, as everyone knows, is the now-aging fleet of B-47 bombers acquired in the mid-1950s by the National Geographic Society...
...It turns out that the average corporation can invest in nuclear forces and, taking advantage of accelerated depreciation schedules, write off most of the cost...
...At first, it was just a matter of promoting the use of radioactive isotopes in basic medical research...
...Then came enormous cobalt devices, ostensibly designed to destroy tumors but, in reality, powerful enough to knock down an airplane if aimed skyward...
...its latest shareholders' report maintains that customers will now be more readily coerced into buying K cars...
...PATCO's highaltitude demonstration blast was all that was necessary...
...So management was not far behind...
...By the time the rest of us were able to figure out what was going on, it was far too late...
...The Tobacco Institute, for example, understands this very well...
...It is necessary only to intone "subscribus Geographicus sum," and one can travel throughout the known world in perfect serenity...
...Today, membership in the National Geographic Society is the equivalent of ancient Roman citizenship...
...But at sea or in the air, it's a different story...
...But everyone knows that it does...
...The entry of nuclear weapons into the private sector will almost certainly have an effect on the behavior of the free market...
...That's why the World Health Organization also made the decision to go nuclear...
...For years, we have been coerced into shelling out billions for preventive health programs and all we've got to show for it is a stepped-up arms race...
...Given this experience, it was similarly inevitable that the nuclear question would invade labor-management relations sooner or later...
...The federal government has warned us of the dangers of smoking cigarettes, but that warning will be as nothing once the tobacco growers' leaf-launched missile is deployed...
...In that the W.H.O...
...Nonprofit organizations have long realized the utility of independent nuclear forces, not under governmental control...
...Airline pilots, having refused to comply with PATCO's demands for periodic slowdowns, had to be brought into line...
...John Nollson CHRYSLER'S NUCLEAR SHOWROOM The American people have been sobered by the announcement that the Chrysler Corporation is now in possession of its own strategic nuclear strike force...
...Certain radical organizations abetted, it is rumored, by Friends of the Earth, became determined to break the Society's stranglehold on the Third World's image...
...Chrysler, for one, makes no bones about it...
...In one such, three of the Society's tripods were destroyed in a lightening raid by a nomad sapper team...
...Then came the need for small amounts of enriched uranium to fuel ever more powerful X-ray machines...
...The returns--in terms of increased sales and heightened corporate prestige--already look impressive...
...The Society's photographic expeditions, sent in search of ever more exotic bare-breasted women, were victimized by sporadic attacks...
...That step alone justifies the outcome of the 1980 election...
...But not all deficits are created equal nor are they all equal in their long-term consequences for the nation...
...In a sense, the development was inevitable, and we should not be surprised to see these weapons of mass destruction migrate into the profit-making sphere...
...A Carter deficit of that magnitude would occur in the context of a weaker defense and a more bloated central government...
...is part of the United Nations, it had to be a bit more circumspect...
...Nuclear weapons are of little use in the customary struggles between workers and capitalists, given the fact that these struggles usually occur at close range...
...The Reagan deficit will result from a badly needed first step toward restored military strength and reduced federal claims on our national wealth...
Vol. 13 • December 1980 • No. 12
