or now.  
</p>
<p>
If there hadn't been an even grander illusion evoked by the event that began it all, nothing would have developed as it did.  As columnist James Carroll writes this week <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/10/19/a_politics_of_love?mode=PF">in the Boston Globe</a>:
</p>
<p>
<blockquote>"After decades [following the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] of implicitly waiting for the mushroom cloud to appear over the nation, we saw the clouds of ash