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Mar 03, 2024

A Review Of “Oppenheimer”

I haven’t seen it yet, Athena. I’m not sure I will. I grew up in the 60s when some of these events were still happening. And I was pretty well traumatized by having to watch the actual film of the

I haven’t seen it yet, Athena. I’m not sure I will. I grew up in the 60s when some of these events were still happening. And I was pretty well traumatized by having to watch the actual film of the actual Trinity test, in school. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

All I knew, back then, was that Oppenheimer had been picked as the guy who could deliver a superweapon, not just because of his physics chops but because he had a lot of influence in the scientific community, and was supposed to be a good administrator.

And he delivered, alright. Except that once the superweapon was a concrete object in existence, rather than a hypothesis being pursued in the name of The Science, he had serious second thoughts, exacerbated by the nature of the political and ideological bullshit accumulating at the top. (The importation of actual Nazis into the project after the surrender of Germany didn’t help that any…)

So he tried to make a case for anything but actually using the superweapon on real, unsuspecting civilian human beings in their homes and businesses. He consulted with other scientists of conscience and they made cases for other ways to use The Science, but made no headway against the political and military establishment that wanted a large, spectacular event that would bring the war in the Pacific to a near-instantaneous halt.

Then there was a short lull… some people from the (Manhattan) Project got back to living their lives, Oppenheimer tried but had a hard time moving on to other areas of science. And then came the Soviet atomic test in 1949, and the Rosenbergs’ trial for espionage.

Who benefited from ginning up Americans’ fear of an atomic USSR? Politicians, scientists, industrialists who wanted to reap massive profits from producing bigger and more lethal superweapons, delivery systems, and other military hardware.

Oppenheimer’s was still a potent voice. But the Red scare was heating up, and the McCarthy hearings were scything hundreds of talented, intelligent people out of their professional lives. And he was on the edge, and finally he more or less fell in.

They couldn’t totally repudiate him without the blowback tainting the military and government decision-makers who had originally backed him, so they chose a death of a thousand cuts strategy, revoking clearances, removing him from committees and letterheads, not returning calls. They made sure that educational and scientific institutions knew hiring him would kiss government contracts good-bye.

And he had cancer. His health was failing, slowly and painfully. And all the while he was living with the horror of having made the decisions and overseen the work and promoted the science that made it possible for humanity to destroy itself and the planet’s habitability. It wasn’t just an ego-related existential crisis about his legacy. It wasn’t just his anger at having been put beyond the pale.

Every person, as we get older, at some point starts to think about “What difference will my life have made? What changed here in this world because I lived? Did I do the best I could with what I had? Did I make things better, or worse? Were my decisions all selfish and in-the-moment, or did I take time to think about the larger good and a better future?”

Oppenheimer’s experience of that self-conversation could not have been a happy one, as his body slowly failed from the cancer.

I am not sure I want to watch it, even a Hollywood version of it.