What I like most about fireworks is they're a subversion

What I like most about fireworks is they're a subversion. All those rockets, and gunshots, and bullets, have been transformed into something that (ideally) hurts nobody. Weapons of war intended to kill, and they've been instead bent to the task of pure entertainment and joy. How many times have you fired a mortar without intending harm on someone? That's how often you've set off one of those fireworks that go really high and then kaboom into stars.It's like beating our swords into plowshares. Even our most terrible weapon, the most destructive force ever conceived (aside from Project Sundial), was only used in testing. To take photographs of the titanic explosion and impress our neighbors. Even in the insanity of the nuclear arms race, Tsar Bomba wasn't a weapon. It was the largest firework in history.I won't begrudge the Pacific Islanders from justifiably demanding a lot of reparations for these "tests" that wrecked their homes and the irradiated crap the testers left behind. (Tsar Bomba was set off in Siberia.) They were still somehow, amazingly, not intended to kill.#fireworks #war #ptsd #rant