I finally got around to seeing the Oppenheimer biopic this weekend, fully expecting to be met with debunked talking points about how dropping nuclear bombs on Japanese cities was absolutely necessary. In this regard, I was sadly proven correct, and while I was mildly pleased to see a very slight counterbalance depicting atomic horrors, none of these depictions involved images from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the unfortunate civilians on the ground.
Perhaps worse, the film’s release has seen the emergence of the kind of crowd eager to defend to the death America’s right to nuke cities without remorse, partly justified by an “all is fair in love and war” mentality and partly justified by exhausted arguments that it was the only other option aside from a ground invasion where millions of young men would be sent to die.