During the final half of the 20th century, the U.S. and former Soviet Union were engaged in an ideological struggle commonly known as the Cold War. During this era, fear, paranoia and suspicion often ruled politics, the military and the media in American society. Also during this era, politicians, the military and the media conspired to create a “culture of security” among the American public. The American public’s fear of nuclear annihilation was in part ameliorated by the normalization of war and violence by politicians, the military and the media. Fear of nuclear attack made Americans supportive of policies that vigorously defended the national interest. The Cuban Missile Crisis hit close enough to home that Americans were ready to believe the worst about the Russians, and political, military and media fear-mongering exacerbated those feelings. Such fear and paranoia and the aggression they engender is the subject of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, 1964). In this satirical black comedy, Cold War politics and nuclear annihilation are the subject matter. The film portrays how politicians, military personnel and the media are complicit in whipping up fear and paranoia that ultimately results in bad policies. A low-level military commander inadvertently launches an attack on the Soviet Union, triggering Russia’s Doomsday Machine that will bring total world annihilation. Anatol Lieven discusses how such policies are the result of social institutions reinforcing negative perceptions of an “enemy”, an “other” that acts as scapegoat or villain and thereby helps normalize violence perpetrated against them: “Like any other inherited hatred, blind, dogmatic hostility toward Russia leads to bad policies, bad journalism, and the corruption of honest debate-and there is all too much of this hatred in Western portrayals of and comments on Russia...