| AFSC Anti-SDI Handbill | |
| Remember how, in the '80s, President Reagan's astrologist told him to build a veritable space armada? In the grand tradition of bland government gobbledegook, it was christened the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but everyone called it "Star Wars." Now of course no one but Elon Musk goes to space, and he only does it to impress chicks and convince himself he's Tony Stark. But if you made a bazillion dollars off PayPal, wouldn't you do exactly what Elon is doing? Okay, maybe you'd buy a few 12-backs first -- but that's almost as expensive as building a space armada.
A trillion dollars isn't quite a bazillion dollars, but it's still a lot of dough, as this handbill makes clear. The item appears to be an advertisement issued by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to propagandize against SDI. AFSC is still around. The group has its roots in Quaker anti-war sentiment; for its efforts it was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1947. Unsurprisingly, it's been accused by some of being a communist front organization. My guess is that Donald Trump is not among their donors. Whatever the AFSC was or is, this handbill of theirs is a lot of fun. As you can see, it features an image of a Vader-like character on its front. Note that he has the radiation symbol incorporated into his face mask, and his chest plate is a corruption of the American flag. The reverse of the flyer marshalls some fairly sensible-sounding arguments against SDI. One of them is that its cost represents half of the then national deficit of...TWO TRILLION DOLLARS. Today, in order to accumulate half of the national deficit you'd need nine of these trillion-dollar bills. By the way, this is the first time I've come across the expression "the camel's nose under the tent." |
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| Description by: | Ron Salvatore |
| Photo: | Ron Salvatore |
| From the collection of: | Ron Salvatore |
| Country: | United States |
| Film: | A New Hope |
| Licensee: | Unlicensed |
| Year: | 1977 |
| Category: | Catalogs / Flyers |
