The Cold War arms race was largely manufactured from outright lies about Soviet nuclear capabilities. (Nothing new to see - move along please...) The Soviets had bombs, but they didn't have nearly as many bombs as intelligence analysts stated they did. With accurate intelligence the pace of the Cold War would have been much slower and the threat of total nuclear wipe-out much lower.

There's something truly psychotic at the heart of the US establishment. It's not as insane as Stalin and Hitler were, but it seems to suffer from a milder form of the same sociopathy - albeit directed more towards siphoning tax money towards military adventurism than rounding up millions of civilians into camps.