Song of the Day 11/4: Tom Lehrer, “So Long Mom (A Song for World War III)”

Is it mere coincidence that Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear thriller “House Full of Dynamite” on Netflix came out about the same time Donald Trump proclaimed nuclear testing is back? The movie’s premise, that a single nuclear missile is headed for Chicago and it’s unclear who launched it, requires a suspension of disbelief – it takes place in an alternate universe where the government is run by adults.

In this world, the current occupant of the teardown known as the White House lacks the cool head and restraint of fictional presidents, so Bigelow’s cliffhanger ending wouldn’t work. We all know it would be “bombs away,” so Trump’s sudden nuke-test fixation brings back another fixture of his youth, fear of nuclear holocaust.

This is old stuff to Boomers who lived through the early ’60s, when the specter of global annihilation loomed over a society unconvinced that mutually assured destruction would deter it. Apocalyptic warnings flourished in movies and TV shows. Eventually, people developed enough gallows humor about it that satirist Tom Lehrer penned a patriotic ditty for World War III, and got laughs doing it.