Do We Really Want Peace?

Life as we know it could be wiped out if one or more nuclear powers decide to launch their nuclear weapons. This knowledge should keep us awake nights. It doesn't. Why?

Do We Really Want Peace?

by C. A. Matthews

The anniversaries of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and August 9, 1945) pass by most Westerners’ consciousness without notice. The dates aren’t printed on any calendars I have like “Memorial Day” or “Presidents’ Day” are, labeled in big, bright capital letters. The week the first atom bombs were dropped on civilians is not a bank holiday anywhere as far as I know.

The anniversary is mostly remembered by the children of the survivors and a handful of international peace organizations. The one event that should have motivated humankind to turn around and go in a better direction is the one event we seem to care the least about. We neither care to remember it and learn from it nor honor it and promise ourselves we’ll never do it again.

I have to admit that if GPAX, the Green Party Peace Action Committee, hadn’t presented Never Again! a very informative webinar on August 6, I’d probably would have forgotten about humanity’s fall from innocence, too. Yes, humankind is guilty of the sin of unleashing the power of the atom, the genie that cannot be put back inside the bottle once it has escaped. All life on Earth will never be the same again.

No one born since those early August days in 1945 has ever lived in a world without manmade nuclear radiation effecting them, either directly through an nuclear warhead detonation, or from being shot with depleted uranium coated bullets, or from the fallout leaking from a nuclear power plant that has suffered a “mishap” like Fukushima, or even from a simple rain shower. Manmade radiation has become a permanent part of our ecosystem for the worse, not better.

No one born since then has ever known a world where life as we know it could be wiped out in a matter of minutes if one or more nuclear powers decide to launch their nuclear weapons. This knowledge should keep us awake nights, but the majority of us seem okay living day-to-day in such a terrifying world.

Could it be we really don’t want peace? Could it be that we’d rather live with the threat of imminent Mutually Assured Destruction than to give up our creature comforts and affordable lifestyles in the West? Could it be Americans enjoy the hegemony we’ve gained through the threat of dropping H-bombs on your country if it doesn’t “cooperate” and give us what we want? (This means you, Venezuela and Iran. Hand over your oil or else!)

Or could it be I’m over-exaggerating the threat of our potential demise? Could I be minimizing the numbers of activists who are actively fighting to shut the war machine down? I don’t think so.

At the Green Party National Annual Meeting in Chicago this past month, I attended a workshop called Organizing for Peace. Presenter Haig Hovaness from GPAX described how we need to build “Peace Power” as an effective alternative to “War Power.” He told us how the “War Power Ecosystem” boasts a robust mutual protection network. The mainstream media is on its side. The White House, Congress, and Wall Street are all on its side. NATO and other US allies are on its side. Anyone with tons of money and zero empathy is on its side.

Haig gave the example of how during the Iraq War there were 270,000 protesting it in New York City and over 3 million marching in the streets of Rome. In spite of these large demonstrations, they had zero effect on stopping the war. None whatsoever. Bombs continued to fall on Iraq. The war continued to be funded by the US Congress and approved of by the president without any worry that everyday people would somehow be able to shut the war machine down.

There’s nothing surprising about this situation if you’ve ever heard of the 2014 Princeton Study. Americans without money and status make only an infinitesimal mark on government policy. Rinse and repeat and you’ll still see this same lack of public influence on politicians to halt the current genocide in Palestine. When billionaires/oligarchs want to start a war or continue a genocide to increase their profits, nothing and nobody on Earth can stop them.

“Okay,” I hear some of you say. “Let’s not act defeated before we begin. Let’s vote out the politicians who continue to fund war and genocide in the next election. That’ll solve the War Power problem, right?”

Will it? In the US politicians are easily replaced by like-minded others proudly in the pockets of AIPAC and/or the military-industrial complex lobby. The American public may notice a switch of party labels beside the winners’ names after the upcoming midterm elections, but those who take office will no doubt continue to vote for arming Israel and funding their genocide of the Palestinian people without pause. They’ll continue to permit Trump to bomb Iran and murder civilians while making massive personal profits on oil stock. They’ll even support the Nazis in Ukraine— a country now calling itself the “New Israel”.

I’m not a gambler, but even I’d bet everything I have down to the last cent in my wallet that this will be the case.

War Power sees no difference in the two factions of the American uniparty/duopoly. Both “sides” are useful in their own ways to promote endless warfare. This isn’t unique to the US, either. The end results of just about any Western country’s elections follow the same line: The wars continue, fear and distrust between nations increase, the war profiteers grow ever richer, and the terrible threat of a nuclear war remains because nuclear weapons stockpiles remain.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds before midnight in January, the closest it has ever been to Armageddon. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the US, its NATO allies, and others have accumulated more nuclear warheads than ever before. Humanity is less safe from being annihilated from a nuclear weapon today than we were over sixty years ago during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And we live our daily lives as if there’s nothing to be done about it except ignore it.

I think you can see now why I ask, “Do we really want peace?” Because if we truly wanted it with our whole hearts, wouldn’t we have peace—true freedom from a possible nuclear holocaust—by now?

The current tactics of Americans who say they want peace—protesting, marching, voting for anti-war/pro-Palestine politicians, emailing/calling our representatives and begging them to stop arming Israel, stop bombing Iran—haven’t worked. The genocide in Gaza and the terror in the West Bank hasn’t halted. US bombs are dropped on Iranian infrastructure. We might have scared a few less-than-diehard Zionist supporters with our words and actions, but, on the whole, the Zionists are still getting their way. And nuclear weapons are still being stockpiled.

Former Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein gave us a ray of hope at the workshop in Chicago. She reminded us that public opinion is the hardest thing to move, but it has moved decisively since October 2023. The majority of Americans no longer support the apartheid regime called Israel and instead support the oppressed indigenous people of Palestine. It didn’t happen overnight, and it certainly didn’t happen without a horrible cost of Palestinian lives and suffering, but public opinion has noticeably shifted away from supporting Israel’s genocide of Palestine, invasion of Lebanon, and the US/Israeli bombing of Iran according to all major polling organizations.

Even AIPAC spending $60+ million to win a recent primary in Michigan for a very vocal pro-Israel candidate didn’t work this time around. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of mindless support for these genocidal maniacs? I hope so. If a livestreamed genocide can shift attitudes after decades of hasbara (pro-Zionist propaganda), then perhaps we can shift the public’s nonchalant attitude toward nuclear proliferation as well?

Jill quoted Malcolm X: “We’re not outnumbered—we’re out organized.” This is what peacemakers are up against. Those with power have built-in organizations to suppress dissent giving them the edge, but the peacemakers have the numbers. Considering it’s We the 99% of the world who would suffer the worst from any nuclear conflict, it’s time We the 99% started using our numerical advantage.

Peace Power doesn’t have the money to spread its message widely like the War Power has. War Power has war apologists (the mainstream media) blasting their blatant hatred of the other directive to unsuspecting audiences full time. Peacemakers must build parallel institutions to knock out the warmongers’ propaganda advantage.

Independent journalism podcasts and blogs (such as this one) are making a sizable dent in the public Zeitgeist, pushing the narrative toward peace by speaking out against genocide and endless wars for oil. But can we make recently awakened peace-lovers see how much nuclear warfare also must be halted?

Haig advised in the recent GPAX webinar that we need to organize and unify peace organizations worldwide if we wish to minimize nuclear arsenals, start new treaties, and make significant progress toward the total abolition of all nuclear weapons. But can we get past our mutual distrust and work together effectively? Is it possible to create enough enthusiasm to end humankind’s worst form of warfare when authorities in so many nations promote war and genocide as “necessary evils”?

Once the public has swallowed the lie behind the concepts of “necessary evils” (violence is needed to maintain one’s standard of living, etc.) and “the lesser of two evils” (one candidate is “better” because they smile while approving of funding genocide or war), will the people ever be able to see the truth that, no matter how it’s packaged, evil is still evil? Will voters ever stop playing the dangerous game of “two-party roulette” and vote outside the box for genuine peacemakers?

There are even some in office who promote “limited nuclear war” as winnable. Haven’t they heard of nuclear winter and its dire consequences for life on Earth? The need for independent journalists, educators, and influencers who can refute this brainwashing of the public is needed now more than ever. The falsehoods that any kind of nuclear war is survivable and that evil candidates will readily work for peace must be destroyed before we are.

If we really want peace, we’ll want peace everywhere—in our homes, our institutions, our cities, our countries and regions, across our entire planet. We’ll want a peace which permeates the world and shuts down any evildoer’s impulse to drop H-bombs. We’ll work together to unify our calls for peace and spread the news far and wide. We’ll promote and organize until we have the numbers necessary to physically take out the 1% who threaten our very existence, as words alone won’t do it.

If we truly want peace we’ll work hard for it today—because with nuclear weapons proliferating globally there’s no guarantee there will be a tomorrow.

Conscientious Objectors: Call the G.I. Rights Hotline at 1-877-447-4487 or the Center for Conscience & War at 1-800-379-2679.

Spread knowledge that supports peace—read and share indie journalism links!

HIROSHIMA 81: The Looming Risk of Nuclear Disaster https://consortiumnews.com/2026/08/06/hiroshima-the-looming-risk-of-nuclear-disaster/

An Ordinary Insanity (film) https://www.anordinaryinsanity.com/

‘Scarred Lands, Wounded Lives: The Environmental Impact of War’ (film) https://scarredlandsfilm.com/

Faith Leaders Collectively Raise Alarm as AI and Nuclear Weapons Systems Merge https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/06/faith-leaders-collectively-raise-alarm-as-ai-and-nuclear-weapons-systems-merge/

China Just Saved The World — And No One’s Talking About It https://realleecamp.substack.com/p/how-china-saved-the-world-this-year

$1.6 Trillion In Hidden Debt — The AI Bubble Just Got More Insane! https://realleecamp.substack.com/p/the-ai-bubble-just-got-more-insane

As the Board of Peace Cosplays Diplomacy, Israel Once Again Ramps Up Killing in Gaza https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-board-of-peace-israel-disarmament-escalated-attacks

ALL Mainstream Western Institutions View Palestinian Lives As Worthless https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/all-mainstream-western-institutions

Over 11,000 cancer patients in Gaza face slow death amid Israeli siege and devastation of hospitals https://palestinewillbefree.substack.com/p/over-11000-cancer-patients-gaza-face-death-israeli-siege-devastation-hospitals

Genocide Deniers Call Gaza Starvation a ‘Hoax’ by Citing UNICEF—Which Reported Famine www.commondreams.org/news/unicef-gaza-famine

Israel’s Brutal Retaliation Against Imprisoned Palestinian Doctors Seeking Legal Appeals https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/doctor-hussam-abu-safiya-prison-abuse-medical-gaza

Anti-Zionism is now a protected belief in the UK https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/anti-zionism-is-now-a-protected-belief

Securing Maritime Access for Israel https://genxgirl.substack.com/p/securing-maritime-access-for-israel

Where’s The Water? https://www.thebrockovichreport.com/p/wheres-the-water

How the Epstein Network is Privatizing the Government & Building Out the Surveillance State (w/Whitney Webb) | TCHR https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/how-the-epstein-network-is-privatizing

It’s Not Just Delaney. Immigration Jails Have Had Hundreds of Hunger Strikes. https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/08/its-not-just-delaney-immigration-jails-have-had-hundreds-of-hunger-strikes/

ICE and Data Centers Aren’t New, But Face Growing Pushback as They Intertwine https://truthout.org/articles/ice-and-data-centers-arent-new-but-face-growing-pushback-as-they-intertwine/

Court Makes It Clear That the White House Is Not Donald Trump’s Plaything https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/09/court-makes-it-clear-that-the-white-house-is-not-donald-trumps-plaything/

The Floods of the Future won’t come One at a Time https://www.juancole.com/2026/08/floods-future-wont.html