Slanted Viewpoint

I’m a die-hard James Bond movie fan. And Goldfinger ranks up there as perhaps my all-time favorites James Bond film.

At least it was until I watched it again recently. I’m now thinking of downgrading it a bit.

Yes, it still has all the iconic scenes that remain so indelibly imprinted in my mind. But watching it again, I was struck by how much of the movie makes absolutely no sense from any logical perspective. And I found it impossible to ignore this, even accepting the idea that the movie is basically an escapist fantasy.

I won’t bore you with a complete list of all the ridiculousness in the movie. Instead, I want to focus on just one sequence; a sequence that so defies logic that I believe it could well be the #1 all-time most logic-defying sequence in movie history. I’m talking about the scene that begins with the assembled hoodlums inside Goldfinger’s Kentucky ranch.

For starters, in the meeting room, Goldfinger unveils an elaborate hidden control panel that he uses to show the assembled group his big plan. However, the show consists only of a simple map and a 3-D mock-up of Fort Knox, also concealed until he presses the buttons to reveal them. Even granting that these items may have had some use beyond displaying them to his criminal associates, it’s hard to imagine why such an expensive and elaborate setup was needed to conceal and reveal these two items. Couldn’t he just keep them in a locked room? Okay, Goldfinger is super-rich and can afford it. But still.

Anyway, we’re just getting warmed up. Next, Goldfinger kills off the entire group by mechanically sealing off the room and spraying nerve gas into it. Are we to believe that he kills people off this way with such frequency that he decided to install a permanent setup just for doing so? Surely, there are many simpler less elaborate ways he could have taken care of this matter. Again, I can pretty much forgive this. James Bond movies, after all, are all about elaborate schemes.

But now, we enter into the realm of the unforgivable. If he always intended to kill everybody (as seemed to be the case), why even bother giving them the dog and pony show about how he was going to raid Fort Knox? Why not just kill them as soon as they were all in the room. Again, I understand that the movie needs to reveal the Fort Knox plot to the audience. But couldn’t the movie makers find a way to do it that doesn’t require that you be halfway in a coma in order for you not to notice how preposterous it all is?

Even if you are willing to suspend disbelief and accept all of the preceding, there remains the coup de grace of the entire sequence:

One of the criminals, appropriately named Solo, decides to opt out of the Fort Knox deal. He wants to take his promised money and leave. Goldfinger agrees and sends him on his way. Given that even he is going to be killed anyway (shot by Oddjob, as we soon find out), why let him leave? Why not just have him die in the room with the rest of the hoodlums? Goldfinger could have easily come up with an excuse to leave the room before letting Solo exit.

Okay, so Goldfinger passed on this opportunity. A lapse in judgement perhaps. But why not then shoot Solo before he ever leaves the property? Ah, that would still be too easy. Instead, Goldfinger puts Solo into a limo, ostensibly with instructions for Oddjob to drive him to the airport. And yes, there’s the payment of a million dollars in gold bullion in the trunk!

Solo never makes it to the airport — to no one’s surprise. Oddjob shoots him in the car along the way. Oddjob then dumps the body in some remote location, drives back to the ranch, and takes the gold out of the trunk, right? In your dreams. Why do anything that makes even the slightest sense when there is a much more complicated and totally idiotic way to accomplish the same goal?

What actually happens is that Oddjob drives to an auto junkyard that has machinery to crush and compress cars into nice compact cubes. And then, after compressing the limo (with the dead Solo still inside, of course), he places the resulting cube on the flatbed of a truck, somehow conveniently waiting for him, which he then drives back to the ranch. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?

If you have not yet turned your brain off by this point, you may be wondering: Why take the compressed car back at all? Ah, you forgot about the gold. The million dollars in gold is still contained within the now heap of metal and human body parts — and needs to be extracted. Holy smokes, why didn’t Oddjob just remove the gold from the car before he compacted it? That would have saved Goldfinger from the ugly extraction task. In fact, it would have eliminated the need to take the compacted car back to the ranch at all. Ah, but then we wouldn’t have been able to have the witticism, spoken by Bond and Goldfinger in different scenes, of Solo’s “pressing engagement.” Oh yes, what does a total absence of any sense matter, when there’s a witty remark at stake?

Okay. I know James Bond movies aren’t meant to be taken seriously. And I will more than willing to accept some lack of logic in the name of fun. You’d be hard pressed to find an action movie that doesn’t have at least a few such minor lapses. But there comes a point when it all gets too much. For me, the Goldfinger movie surpasses that point several times over. I guess I was more forgiving when I watched it when I was younger. But I am not now.

Perhaps I am more harsh now because I see a bigger problem lurking. I believe the success of these early James Bond movies laid the groundwork for most of the hundreds of action movies that followed. The Bond franchise showed movie makers that you don’t need an intelligent script, or even one that makes any sense, for a movie to be successful. Throw in enough fight scenes, chase scenes, special effects, and explosions — and the audience will pay for a ticket and ignore the fact that there is no coherent plot to the movie.

That’s why I am almost always disappointed now in each new action movie that comes out. I hope the day may yet come when, in describing a movie, the words intelligent and action need not be mutually exclusive. I see some glimmer of hope here with movies such as 2005’s Batman Begins. But they are still more the exception than the rule. The vast majority of this summer’s movie blockbusters, sadly, appears to be sticking to the old formula.

It’s a bit sad and more than a bit pathetic to see Republicans so desperate to win elections that they descend to the lowest possible road as quickly as they can.

With a unpopular war costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives, soaring food costs, the sky-rocketing price of oil, mortgage foreclosures at record highs, a looming health care crisis, an impending global-warming disaster, and continuing international problems in the Middle East and Asia, Republicans are cheering that the recent California decision in support of gay marriage is an “early Christmas gift.”

An upstanding Republican candidate (if such a person exists), who was opposed to the ruling, could simply say: “I am against gay marriage and I will work to make it illegal. However, there are many more important and more pressing issues that confront our country today. And these are issues where my views differ from those of my opponent. I intend to focus on these other issues in the campaign ahead.” And mean it.

I’m not holding my breath waiting to hear this. Rather, I expect Republicans, as usual, to milk this hot button issue for all its worth — doing their best to keep the campaign at gutter level. It is a strategy that depends upon appealing to our fears and prejudices, that offers no solutions to the real problems that our country faces, that focuses exclusively on what it takes to win (at almost any cost) rather than what it takes to govern, and that seeks to “swift boat” opponents rather than offer legitimate criticism. Unfortunately, it is a strategy that has worked well in the past.

I can only hope that the tide has finally turned against this sort of campaigning — and that it will fail miserably this time around. There are already signs that this is happening, such as in last week’s Mississippi Congressional election, where a Democrat won in a district that voted strongly Republican last time around. If this trend continues, this fall will see not only the welcome end of the Bush era, but the end of the uber-divisive and deceptive political tactics on which the administration thrived.

The following is a slightly edited copy of feedback I sent to NPR earlier this week. It’s probably a bit more harsh than they deserved. But I felt I needed to do some shaking here.

“I was truly disappointed in your coverage of the Florida evolution bill issue today. Even the title of your piece, ‘Bill in Fla. Lets Schools Teach Evolution Alternatives,’ is a distortion.

The truth is that no bill is needed to allow teaching of alternatives to evolution. Schools are already allowed to teach scientific alternatives to evolution, just as they are allowed to do so for any other theory in science.

What they are not allowed to do is teach religion in the guise of science. That is what this law is really all about. It is the latest attempt by the proponents of creationism to shoehorn the teaching of creationism in science classes. The more neutral sounding language is simply designed to circumvent the latest legal rulings against such teaching. Your report never really makes this clear.

Instead, your report makes the issue sound more like a “he said, she said” debate between Republicans and Democrats, with the Republicans on the side of academic freedom.

To describe this bill as advocating academic freedom, is like describing a bill that weakens anti-pollution regulations as a “Clean Skies Act.” It’s just double-speak. This is an anti-evolution bill, plain and simple.

Similarly, your report mentions the Discovery Institute as a source of support for the Florida legislation, but fails to mention that this same Institute was on the losing side of the Dover, PA trial that strongly ruled against teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom. Indeed, the Discovery Institute spokesman quoted in your report acknowledges that the wording of the Florida legislation was in part based on model language provided by the Institute.

Your report mentions Ben Stein’s new movie (Expelled), but fails to mention that it has received near unanimous condemnation for its promotion of knowingly false and inaccurate information. The New York Times, for example, called it “one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.” There is an entire Web site, Expelled Exposed, that exposes the many falsehoods in this movie.

While citing Ben Stein and his film, and quoting a person from the Discovery Institute, your report offered no statements from scientists or experts of any sort on the other side of this controversy.

In the end, your report comes off as a shameful example of ignoring the facts, and promoting the legitimacy of discredited views, apparently in a sheepish attempt to give yourself an appearance of neutrality.”

I recently browsed through a book titled I Don’t Believe in Atheists. As I have not actually read the book cover-to-cover, I won’t attempt to review it here — or even give my opinion of it.

I will say that one of the general points seemingly made in the book is similar to one I have seen made many times before: Strong advocates of atheism (such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris) are characterized as every bit as much extremists as the religious fundamentalists on the other side of the fence. Indeed, atheism itself winds up being equated to just another “faith” — and therefore no more worthy of support than any other faith.

The argument that atheism itself is just another type of religion has been more than adequately rebutted elsewhere (although, as with creationist arguments, that won’t prevent it from going away). So I won’t bother with answering that here.

However, I do want to address the idea that atheists and fundamentalists represent the two extremes on a spectrum — with the implication that more reasonable minds should prefer to seek some more rational middle ground.

Normally, I am a strong advocate of the “middle ground.” Take almost any controversy — and you will almost certainly find that the most extreme advocates for either side have pushed the argument too far. A middle ground is a more sensible approach and, thankfully, often becomes the dominant view. For example, consider arguments over the concept of instinct. One side may say that there are no such things as instincts, that all behavior is learned. The other side may claim that all behavior ultimately emerges from innate patterns, that learning plays at best a minor role in behavior. The truth, almost assuredly, lies somewhere in between.

Still, there are “either-or” propositions for which there is no middle ground. Either the earth revolves around the sun or the sun revolves around the earth. There is no compromise position here. Either O.J. killed his wife or he didn’t. There is no middle ground on this matter. The only ambiguity comes from the public not knowing with 100% certainty what O.J. actually did, not with any ambiguity in his actions.

And so it is with God. Either God exists or he doesn’t. If God exists, the atheists are wrong. If God does not exist, all the theist religions of the world are wrong. There is no safe middle ground to be found. Trying to find some compromise here is simply a waste of time.

We can perhaps agree that, in the absence of 100% proof in either direction, some degree of tolerance should be maintained for both positions. But that’s about it.

However, understand that much of science is based on evidence for things we cannot see. No one has actually visited a black hole. Almost no one (maybe no one really) has seen an atom. We cannot actually view gravity. Yet most people (at least virtually all rational people) believe that these things exist. We don’t consider such beliefs to be based on faith — but rather the result of the preponderance of scientific evidence. Atheists simply ask that a belief in God be established in the same way. Given that no such preponderance of evidence exists, rejecting the idea of God makes more sense.

Or, to turn it around (and as I have said before in other postings), we don’t assume something is likely to be true simply because we can’t prove with 100% certainty that it’s not true. Otherwise, we would have to say that it is plausible that little green men live on Mars. And so it is with God. The fact that existence of God cannot be disproved with 100% certainty, does not make it likely that God exists.

In the end, atheists wind up discarding a belief in God following the same logic that leads science to discard a belief in men on Mars or support a belief in atomic theory. This is not an “extremist” position and there is no need to seek a middle ground for retreat.

I am so tired of seeing repeated references to how the surge of troops in Iraq has been a success. I expect to hear this from the Bush administration and its supporters. I am surprised, however, by how much this illogical framing has been accepted by the mainstream media.

The problem begins with the definition of success. The Bush White House wants success to be equated to a reduction in violence. Looked at from this narrow perspective, a case could be made for the surge being a success. As far as I can tell, the overall level of violence in Iraq is currently down (although whether or not the surge deserves all the credit for this is less clear).

However, by itself, this reduction means practically nothing in terms of how we should truly measure the success of the surge. If you keep adding more and more U.S. troops to a battle zone, of course you expect to see a reduction in violence eventually. The real surprise would be if we kept increasing our troop level but never saw any effect at all.

A more accurate measure of success would require looking at how far the level of violence has fallen and how sustainable that level is. On these measures, the surge does not appear to be doing well at all.

The level of violence is still nowhere near a peacetime level. And we still have not begun to reduce our troop levels significantly. In fact, I believe levels are still higher than before the surge started. Does this mean that we have to maintain our current troop levels in order to maintain this “success”? If so, it’s is hardly what I would call a success.

A success is when you can send your troops home. A success is when you have an Iraqi government that can take care of its own security. So far, I have seen no sign that this is happening. Even vocal opponents of the war agree that it will likely be years before most of our troops are out of Iraq (it will likely be decades, if ever, before they are entirely out). This is not evidence of a success. Rather, it is evidence of how much we have messed things up.

One more thing: No matter what happens in Iraq from this day forward, it can never erase the failures and lies of the past.

This was a war that was started against a country who had not attacked us and had shown no signs of doing so. It was based largely on a claim that Iraq was in possession of WMD—a claim that turned out to be completely false. The claim that Al-qaeda and Sadam Hussein were working together, another justification for the war, also was completely false. Instead of continuing our focus in Afghanistan, where we were fighting Al-qaeda, we were diverted to a country where Al-qaeda wasn’t—and we our now doing rather poorly in both countries.

We were promised a short war that would largely pay for itself. We instead got a long war—lasting 5 years and counting—that is costing us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.

Iraq-related incidents revolving around Abu Ghahib, Guantanamo, and waterboarding have further sullied our reputation and moral standing in the world community.

Finally, there are all the negative side-stories that have emerged over the years: the Blackhawk scandal, the Valerie Plame outing, the Pat Tillman coverup, the Walter Reed Hospital conditions, the illegal wire-tapping, the elimination of habeas corpus for terrorist suspects, and more.

It is outrageous to think that a slight reduction in violence, possibly linked to our increase in troop levels (levels that show no sign of significantly decreasing), could be used to justify all of these past lies and abuses.

No matter what happens in the future, our decision to invade Iraq will always remain the wrong thing to have done. There is no way that this failure in leadership can ever be considered a success.