Fairwell to Rick Santorum

So, Rick Santorum has honorably and face-savingly withdrawn from the Republican primary because his daughter Bella has been ill and needs him. Let us all give our best wishes to Bella. And let us salute Rick as an excellent father.

It seems mean-spirited (and no longer relevant) to raise the question, but really it must be raised. Most people, I trust, would agree that we should be concerned about the health of Presidential candidates. Certainly there are many medical problems that should not be disqualifying and may be treated as purely private matters. But a candidate who has a very serious health problem and is in danger of dying in office or becoming incapacitated should be rejected. (See Paul Tsongas).

So perhaps we should ask the same question about family members. If a presidential candidate has a seriously ill family member who is likely to require a great deal of his (or her) time and attention, is that, after all, grounds for choosing someone else? Family comes first, after all, but for a President it is not so easy. Maybe I'm wrong. After all, Abraham Lincoln's son died while he was in the White House and Lincoln, though devastated, managed to carry on during our greatest national crisis ever.

But perhaps the subject is worth at least thinking about.

Jonathan Haidt: The Basics

And now, on to Jonathan Haidt and especially his views on purity and sanctity. Haidt's thesis is that liberal lack liberal appeal to the working class, even if we believe we represent their economic interest, at least better than the Republicans do. He starts with the obvious point that moral judgments are not altogether rational, that they are mostly made at the gut level with rationalizations made afterward. Anyone who ignores people's basic moral intuitions and tries to make morality purely rational, based solely on whether anyone is hurt, is going to end up offending a lot of people. Instead, he argues that morality is not just about whether anyone is hurt, but about "about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in
a sanctified and noble way." He argues that conservatives and people of the lower class are more willing to accept gut-level moral intuitions, even if they cannot give a rational, harm-based explanation for them. And he warns that liberals come across as snobbish, or at least clueless if they reject people's moral intuitions.

Well, sure, I think it is obvious that moral decisions are made at the gut level. I also agree that the idea that a degree in ethics makes you inherently more moral that a person without such a degree is offensive. And I think that to ignore people's moral intuitions and attempt to make moral decisions on purely "rational" basis can reach monstrous conclusions, like, say, killing a socially useless predatory lender in order to use her money for the greater social good. I am less sure that this is simply a question of conservatives/less educated people make intuitive moral decisions; liberals/more educated people make purely rational ones. This may be generally true, but I think there are also times when different groups simply have different moral intuitions. For instance, the intensity and absolutism of liberal opposition to torture suggests that it is the sort of thing that comes from the gut. And Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night turns on the question of whether a professor should be fired for falsifying an obscure bit of historical research that has no practical impact on anyone. Yes, say the women professors, even if it means he can no longer support his wife and children. His wife, by contrast, sees this as an outrage. How can they deprive them of their livelihood all over some meaningless bit of trivia that never hurt anyone.

But let us accept his generalization. Haidt goes on to argue that two universal moral values refraining from harming others, and some concept of fairness, roughly defined as reciprocity. These are values equally shared by liberals and conservative. But, Haidt argues, a society that relied only on those values would be a remarkably cold and shallow society. (And, although he does not add it, it would be much like an Ayn Randian libertarian society that liberals find so distasteful; one that equates freedom with atomization and regards individuals' obligations to each other as purely negative -- don't commit crimes or breach your contracts). He argues that there are three other important values that liberals don't relate to as well as conservatives -- loyalty to one's in-group, respect for authority, and purity/sanctity, a category that can cover anything from chastity to respect for sacred symbols to disgust at violation of a taboo. He implies, but does not add, another value -- personal autonomy.* This is an immensely important value in American culture, much esteemed by both liberals and conservatives, although conservatives are more likely to see it in economic terms and liberals in social terms. It is not generally much regarded in traditional societies.

He then goes on to discuss ways in which liberals might start adopting these values as their own. He is rather brief on this matter, but it deserves more discussion. I have two points to make here, that I hope to develop in more detail in my next few posts.

One is that I don't think liberals are quite as tone deaf as he thinks. Contrary to what he suggests, most liberals are appalled at the libertarian vision he paints of a society based solely on harm, fairness, and personal autonomy. It is the society of Ayn Rand, or Margaret Thatcher saying, There's no such thing as society. No doubt part of liberal's aversion to such a society is the fear that it would leave the weaker members vulnerable to the stronger. But I think there is more. Liberals, just like conservatives, long for a closer knit society where people care for each other and feel more obligation than just to refrain from harming each other.

Consider, for instance, an easy example Haidt takes. The family dog is hit by a car and killed. The family had no role in killing their dog. They therefore harm no one in eating it. Everyone felt revulsion at the act, but college student were able to overcome their revulsion and accept the act as "rational." You might come up with a utilitarian argument against eating the dog, mostly that it would upset other family members. But what if the whole family agreed? The answer lower-class respondents usually gave was some variant on, "Your dog is family and you just don't eat family."** I am guessing that most liberal and college people, even if they did not come up with this argument on their own, would happily seize on it as expressing exactly what they were trying to say in explaining their disgust. Exploring these other values may help liberals understand more clearly their horror and revulsion at the libertarian society, and see what alternative there are besides government programs.

But my other point is less optimistic. Simply put, there are trade-offs here. Not everyone agrees on what in-group they should be loyal to, what authority deserves respect, or what is sacred. Nor does anyone agree when members of one's in-group or authority figures no longer deserve respect. In a pluralistic society, these can be immense problems. Furthermore, there are trade-offs here. Loyalty to one's in-group may undermine one's ability to be fair to outsiders. Respect for authority may mean turning a blind eye when that authority acts unjustly. One person's sacred symbols may infringe on another's.

Haidt concludes by saying:

The Democrats would lose their souls if they ever abandoned their commitment to social justice, but social justice is about getting fair relationships among the parts of the nation. This often divisive struggle among the parts must be balanced by a clear and oft-repeated commitment to guarding the precious coherence of the whole. America lacks the long history, small size, ethnic homogeneity, and soccer mania that holds many other nations together, so our flag, our founding fathers, our military, and our common language take on a moral importance that many liberals find hard to fathom.

I worry that the proposals he makes, by ignoring those trade offs, my mean sacrificing our soul for political gain. More on that in the next few posts.

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*It is my understanding that he has since updated his moral taxonomy to include this value.
**I suppose this is a matter of in-group loyalty.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

As is so often the case, I’m late to the discussion, but I have been wanting to join some time, the discussion of why liberals lack appeal among the white working class, even though Republicans are, after all, the party of plutocracy. In later posts, I intend to discuss Jonathan Haidt's theory that it is because liberals are tone deaf to many people's important moral concerns about in-group loyalty and cohesion, authority, and purity/sanctity, and why these values, though important to many, can be problematic.

But here I want to stick to a simpler and more obvious explanation, as embodied in Alexandra Pelosi’s interviews with the white working class in Mississippi. The basic answer is that they vote their values, not their pocketbooks. Pelosi depicts this in highly patronizing terms as bizarre, inexplicable behavior by fools and bigots too dumb to recognize their own interests. Well, guess what? Treating people as fools and bigots too dumb to recognize their own interest is a really poor way of getting their votes. Before worrying about how to deal with loyalty, authority and sanctity, let's begin with something more basic -- respect. Or, as one view puts it:

This video is PRECISELY the sort of condescending, self-congratulating, tautological garbage that fuels the stereotype of the mainstream media as a band of snotty elitists who sneer at everything that resides outside the Beltway, NYC, Hollywood or San Francisco.

And another:

As long as this shit is accepted on the left, it should be no wonder that liberals are not welcome in white, rural America. It reeks of privilege, prejudice, and the superiority complex that taints the limousine liberal politics that run the Democratic Party. Until liberals can learn how to talk about the people they supposedly care about without this disgusting air of condescension and smugness, Mississippi, and everywhere like it, will remain a one-party state.

And, I should add, whatever liberals' tone deafness on the issues of loyalty, authority and sanctity, problems with respect are bipartisan. If the issue of respect is a major reason the white working class is heavily Republican, it also goes a long way toward explaining why the Republican Party cannot attract minorities. Republicans regard minorities as voting against their interests when they vote for the party of government dependency – and as voting against their values when they vote for the party of gay marriage and abortion.

So how does a liberal respond to that? Probably with an impatient roll of the eyes and an answer that doesn’t even get to economics. You seriously want to court the Hispanic vote while simultaneously treating illegal immigrants as an all-purpose scapegoat? You think Hispanics are going to vote for the party of Tom Tancredo and Joe Arpaio?!?* Are you nuts? And it does no good for Republicans to say they only oppose illegal immigration, not legal immigration, let alone Hispanics who are citizens. Searches for scapegoats rarely confine themselves to neat boundaries. Consider "self-deportation." Republican leaders are basically acknowledging that the federal government lacks the resources to forcibly deport 12 million people, but they hope to encourage “self-deportation.” What this means, in simple English, is to encourage a campaign of harassment and persecution against illegal immigrants at all levels of society to drive them out. And do you seriously believe that not one Hispanic citizen or legal resident will be at all effected by the harassment and persecution? Um, you obviously don't know much about how harassment ans persecution work. And even if you can assure that everyone scrupulously checks for citizenship or legal residency before harassing or persecuting consider the humiliation that goes with constantly having to prove that you are a citizen or legal resident in order to be spared. Nor is the current uproar over Trayvon Martin going to do anything to win black votes for the Republican Party. If I were to write a memo to the Republican Party about how to woo minorities, I would tell them that before they can even begin working to convince minorities that their interests lie with the Republicans, they will have to convince minorities that Republicans don't despise them.

Well guess what? That cuts both ways. If Democrats want to win the votes of the white working class, a good start would be not to make films like the one Alexandra Pelosi made. She said she had intelligent discussions with the people she filmed. Great, then, why not show those discussions? If you want to attract people’s votes, wouldn’t it make more sense to foster understanding of what they believe and value, rather than to mock? I also recommend refraining from patronizing stereotypes and suggesting that people are too dumb to know their own interests. You will never win people’s votes by telling them they are too dumb to understand their own interests.

And yes, I admit it, I am guilty of this too, sometimes. When Rick Santorum brings working class audiences to their feet denouncing Obamacare, I want to scream, don’t you understand? Obamacare means that you won’t lose your insurance if you lose your job. It means you won’t have to worry about how to keep coverage if a member of your family develops a serious medical problem. It means if you are Joe the Plumber and want to stop working for someone else and go into business for yourself, you don’t have to worry about losing health insurance if you do. Can’t you see those things are in your own interest?** But if we ever want to attract the votes of the white working class, step number one has to be not to do that.

Consider Obama’s famous "bitter clinger" speech. It starts off on an excellent note, the sort of note that might connect to the white working class:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

The obvious follow up, then is to explain how you actually can make a difference. Or, if you don't have anything concrete to offer, you acknowledge that you don't have the answers, but pledge to work with the white working class to find them. Instead, of course, he continued:

So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Instead of explaining why many people are legitimately alienated from the political system because they perceive (correctly) that it does not represent their interests the speech drifts off into patronizing stereotypes, portraying as pathology things that many people regard as signs of virtue. And in the end, no one remembered or cared about excellent start. People only heard the patronizing stereotypes.

But this speech, and its inability to offer anything useful to the white working class, raises another, disturbing point. Do we, in fact, represent the interests of the working class? At the margins, maybe we do. But how much difference can we really make beyond the margins? The good-paying blue collar jobs of yesteryear are gone and no one, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative knows how to bring them back. Make no mistake, if any politician knew how to bring those good-paying blue collar jobs back, it would be too big a political goldmine for anyone of any ideology to pass up. Any politician anywhere on the spectrum who could credibly promise to bring back those good-paying blue collar jobs would win the blue collar vote by a landslide that election. And anyone who succeeded would have the blue collar vote for a generation. In the meantime, no one knows how to bring those jobs back, and no one really represents the interests of the working class. So given the choice between a politician who offers them nothing economically but at least shares their values, and one who offers them nothing economically and looks down on them as bitter clingers, the working class will chose a politician who shares their values.

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*Just for the record, Tancredo and Arpaio are both Italian names, not Spanish. I do sometimes, though, if being mistaken for a Mexican immigrant because of their names has anything to do with both men’s intensity on this issue.
**I want to scream it at Santorum , too, as well as Sarah Palin. Both politicians chose against abortion of a baby with chromosomal abnormalities. Both talk about reverence of life for people like their disabled children and warn that if government controls health insurance, it will regard people like them as burdens to be discarded. Don’t they realize that insurance companies already see their children in those terms? That one of the first provisions of Obamacare to come into effect was to require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions in children? That if and when their children grow up and can no longer be on their parents’ insurance, they will be uninsurable by any profit-seeing insurance company and will have no choice but to rely for insurance on the Evil Government that supposedly wants to kill them? And that a lot of people who have developmentally disabled children do not have all the advantages they do and desperately need help with the medical expenses involved?

Speculation on the Supreme Court and Obamacare

I have not mustered the nerve to listen to any You Tube clips of the arguments before the Supreme Court or read any transcripts of the arguments , so I will just have to go by news reports of what was said about Obamacare. My general impression is that the five conservative justices show all inclination t0 strike down the mandate, that Scalia (and, by implication, Thomas) will almost certainly take a root-and-branch approach to the whole thing, and that the extensions of Medicaid are in grave danger. Indeed, some commentators have suggested that the Supreme Court may even declare Medicaid in its entirety an unconstitutional burden on the states.

So, for starters, I do not believe that the Supreme Court will declare Medicaid unconstitutional. Thomas might, but I am confident that for the others, the political price would be much too high. A number of people have pointed out that, given widespread skepticism about Obamacare, the justices will probably not pay a high political price for striking down the mandate, or even for a root-and-branch approach. Attacking Medicaid would be another thing altogether. Striking down Obamacare means that 30 million people will not get health insurance. Striking down Medicaid will mean that a comparable number of people will lose healthcare. Many of them will be seniors in nursing homes whose assets have been depleted paying for their care. Many others will be children. The sight of seniors being thrown out of nursing homes because of a Supreme Court decision will arouse public outrage. The pressure on states will be immense to do something about the sudden flood of uninsured, many of them children. Even the most hard core Tea Party state government will be thoroughly displeased by the flood. So, no, if the constitutionality of Medicaid were questioned, I have no doubt that the Supreme Court would vote 8-1 (Thomas dissenting) that it was constitutional.

If, on the other hand, the federal government has passed an expansion of Medicaid that states must accept on penalty of losing their entire Medicaid funding, it is entirely possible that the Supreme Court will find that an unconstitutional coercion of the states. Justice Roberts will say, with the utter reasonableness that is his trademark, that of course the federal government may offer states expanded Medicaid coverage. But it may not threaten states with the loss of all Medicaid funding if they refuse. Congress is perfectly free to reenact the expansion, minus the extreme penalty. He will know, of course, that given Republican domination of Congress, such an outcome would be politically impossible. And, incidentally, I do not think such an argument is unreasonable. Telling the states to accept this expansion or lose everything does smack of unreasonable coercion, and requiring less drastic measures would be in line with earlier rulings. It’s just that right now Republicans have made preventing any reduction in the number of uninsured their priority, so this reasonable suggestion will be pointless, and Roberts will know it.

Conventional wisdom has it that the individual mandate is toast. What follows? I think we can rule out the Supreme Court striking down the individual mandate but leaving everything else. Even the Administration has asked them, if the strike down the mandate, also to strike down the parts requiring community rankings and banning insurance from excluding people due to pre-existing conditions. These conditions rise and fall together. To strike down the mandate but leave the community rates and pre-existing condition ban would set off a death spiral. While this would have the gratifying effect of being politically very damaging to Obama, it would also bring pressure on the government to do something, and the last thing any conservative wants is for government to do something. The root and branch approach is possible and (as I understand it) almost certainly what Scalia favors. But I suspect the Supreme Court will ultimately decide against it because it will look a little too much like judicial overreach.

So here is my guess. Roberts, Alito and Kennedy will write a plurality opinion striking down the mandate, community ratings, bans on discriminating against pre-existing conditions, possibly the expansion in Medicaid, and enough to cripple the law. But they will leave enough tatters not to look too much like judicial overreach. Scalia and Thomas will write a concurring opinion declaring the whole thing unconstitutional and calling into question the entire New Deal edifice.* The four liberal justices will stridently dissent, expressing the opinion that the whole thing is constitutional. This is based on the justices’ overall track record. Roberts, Alito and Kennedy tend to write opinions giving conservatives everything they want on the immediate issue, but refraining from broader constitutional rulings. Scalia and Thomas make sweeping constitutional pronouncements. Consider it a game of good cop/bad cop, with Scalia and Thomas being scary enough to make the others seem reasonable.

So what will be the effect? Well, if I am right, some incremental improvements like letting people stay on their parents insurance to age 26 will survive. The exchanges will survive, and people will get a subsidy to buy insurance, but many people will choose not to act and/or be priced out. A few people will get insurance who didn’t have it before, a major expansion in the number of people covered will be averted. (Whew!)

And, no, I do not agree with people who think this will lead Democrats to enact a single payer. Each time Democrats try to achieve universal coverage, Republicans strike it down and make it too toxic to address again for a decade or two. This time, their goal is clearly to make it too toxic to touch again EVER. Why Republicans have made so high a priority of ensuring a large portion of the population remains uninsured is something I do not understand, but it is time to face facts and acknowledge that is their goal.

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*I may be wrong about that. It is quite possible that Scalia will limit himself to calling for a root-and-branch elimination of the health care law, and Thomas will write a second concurrence, calling for the overturn of the entire New Deal.

Conservative Anti-Intellectualism -- Or Not

What do Rick Santorum and the Supreme Court argument over Obamacare have in common?

I will start with Santorum. Conventional wisdom has it that he is the last non-Romney standing purely by process of elimination. Various alternatives to Romney had their days in the sun, were subject to public scrutiny, and then declined as their flaws became apparent. Santorum is simply the last challenger to Romney because no one took him seriously until everyone else had self destructed. There is probably something to that.

But in another way Santorum is different from any other Republican front runner this primary season. He is the only one to give the lie to Paul Krugman when he said that any Republican candidate must be either totally clueless or totally cynical. Rick Santorum is neither cynical nor clueless, just crazy. But despite his craziness, he has a formidable intellect. Which emphasizes an important point, probably the only ray of hope to emerge from this primary. Cluelessness has become a liability among the Republican base.

It was not long ago that the Republican base reveled in its anti-intellectualism. They applauded George Bush when he boasted that he ignored the out-of-touch, liberal elitist experts with their reliance on facts and evidence and instead went with his gut. And even after facts and evidence turned out to be more reliable predictors of what was going on in Iraq than George Bush’s gut, they applauded Sarah Palin, who proudly held up her ignorance as proof of virtue. Sarah Palin might be considered peak cluelessness. But after a while the charm of a candidate whose best qualification for office was that she didn’t know what she was talking about started wearing off. If ignorance was virtue for Palin, it has proved to be a distinct liability for Bachman, Perry and Cain. Instead, Republicans turned to Gingrich, who at least plays the part of an intellectual. And their reasons are revealing. They wanted Gingrich to show Obama up and prove that he was smarter. Is it such a stretch to suggest that Santorum may have a similar appeal?

Much the same tendancy is at work in the intense conservative glee at the drubbing Obama’s Solicitor General got in front of the Supreme Court at the hands of the conservative justices, and the brilliant showing by Paul Clement. And the deepest glee was not just the prospect of destroying Obamacare, root and branch, but of showing those snooty liberals that they aren’t so smart after all.

All of which causes me a strong suspicion about conservative anti-intellectualism. I suspect a lot of it is just sour grapes. Conservatives don't oppose knowledge and expertise at all. What they resent is that the experts keep reaching conclusions they don’t like. Wonks who reach acceptable opinions, and put forth a strong intellectual case for them are a different matter altogether. And what rankles even more than that is liberals’ patronizing sense of intellectual superiority, together with a strong suspicion (probably accurate) that the pose of intellectual superiority covers a sense of moral superiority.

So, once again, I have some suggestions for my fellow liberals (that they will never hear). You can’t do much about the first problem. If the facts suggest that evolution, global warming, tax cuts costing revenue, or whatever are correct, it would ruin our integrity to deny these conclusions just to politically pander. Besides (a) the people we are lying to would undoubtedly recognize the lies and be unimpressed, and (b) ignoring unpleasant facts won’t make them go away. Sooner or later, they have to be dealt with. But if we should not adjust our conclusions to suit conservative sensibilities, can we at least drop the attitude of intellectual superiority? Make no mistake, that attitude is one of Democrats' greatest weaknesses among the white working class.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

A brief personal note: There is no good reason I suddenly stopped posting, except, perhaps, no more Left Behind segments to review. Once you get out of the habit of writing, it can be hard to get back in. So why, with the Supreme Court poised to strike down Obamacare in its entirety, am I writing about a movie that is over 30 years old? No good reason, really, except that (1) maybe it will be easier getting back into the habit writing something light and fun, (2) it is hard to keep posting about current events when they bring nothing but despair and, (3) I have come across a site called SF Debris that specializes in reviews of science fiction in general and Star Trek in particular. The review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture struck a cord with me.

Apparently there are people who prefer STTMP (for short) to Wrath of Khan. They say that STTMP is "cerebral," with Wrath of Khan is a simple black-and-white story of good against evil. Well, the author of these reviews and I agree there -- we vastly prefer Wrath of Khan. David Gerrold has said that every TV series has two great villains to deal with -- time and money. There is never enough of either. In a movie, there is plenty of both. STTMP is the perfect refutation of that theory. Its problem was that Gene Roddenberry finally got unlimited time and money and behaved like a kid in a candy store -- he WAY overindulged and made himself (or us) sick. STTMP isn't a story. It is a special effects extravaganza that lets the light show overwhelm details like plot or characters. It would have been a much better movie if its budget had been massively cut to focus on Rodenberry to focus on actually telling a story.

What would have happened in that case we can only speculate on, but but it might have made a good story. There were some promising elements if they had been fully developed instead of overwhelmed by special effects. The movie begins with a cloud of immense destructive power destroying several Klingon warships and headed for earth. Watching it for the first time, I could already see where this was going. Clearly the cloud was not evil, just misunderstood. That can either work or not work, depending on whether it is well done.

Another promising element was Kirk. He had been promoted to Admiral, and now realized it was a mistake. He was cut out to be a captain, not an admiral, and desperately wanted command of a ship back -- to the point of hastily assuming command of the Enterprise without fulling learning of the changes and upgrades made and making reckless decisions resulting from his lack of knowledge. This seems psychologically very plausible. In fact, it is a lot more plausible than the opposite situation shown in Wrath of Khan, which portrays Kirk as an admiral who is clearly better suited to be a captain, but keeps insisting he is too old to command a star ship. In this, and in nothing else, STTMP is better than Wrath. This in turn is even better developed by introducing Will Decker, who is supposed to command the Enterprise, and who does know about the changes and upgrades made. Kirk elbows him aside and assumes command himself and makes mistakes Decker could easily have avoided. This sets them up for conflict.

Another element that works well is Spock. Spock, in a desperate attempt to free himself of his human half, has been studying the Kolinahr, a Vulcan discipline intended to purge the participant of all emotion. Yet he is unable to succeed, at least in part because he feels the telepathic pull of the mysterious cloud. When he makes telepathic contact with it, he at last experiences what he has sought all this time -- a mind of pure logic, pure knowledge, untouched by any emotion -- and sees how empty it is and understands at last the important things that the truly emotionless are missing.

There were other elements that were not so good. McCoy (at least at the start) was one. First there is some sort of transporter accident. According to the novelized version of the movie, two people being transported were hideously mutilated by the transporter and died. In the movie, this was no more than hinted, at, presumably to save its G rating. This incident serves no apparent role other than to reinforce McCoy's general fear of the transporter and allow him to take the role of comic relief. McCoy can offer a little of that at times, but his character is really best when he is offering insight. He gets better as the movie progresses, especially in pointing out why Kirk is overreaching. But he gets off to a poor start.

Then there is Ilia, the bald-headed alien female who is apparently so hot she has to take an oath of celibacy to serve. She and Decker were apparently an item in the past. She is soon vaporized by the cloud, but a robot of her appears naked in the shower (don't ask). Kirk, concerned for the movie's G rating, gives her a robe, but it is so short that G rating remains in peril with the slightest slip. The robot speaks for the cloud and identified it as V'ger and explains its quest to find "the creator." There is a long distraction as Decker tries to awaken Ilia's personality, which ultimately goes nowhere.

Worse yet, V'ger turns out to be short for Voyager VI, an earth probe that fell through a black hole (this was before worm holes were invented) and came out on the other side of the galaxy and had its programming to find knowledge and take it back home upgraded to -- well, V'ger of the movie. When V'ger needs someone to merge with, Decker, for no apparent reason, desperately wants to be the one, and Ilia joins him. Presumably, he volunteers because it is the only way he can be with Ilia again. More plausibly, his motives are (1) it saves the authors having to figure out how to resolve his conflict with Kirk, and (2) it wouldn't do to kill off a regular, after all.

Then you have to figure out what to do about V'ger. We now know that V'ger is, indeed, not evil, but just misunderstood. But it is also true that anything that powerful is too dangerous to have around. So what are you going to do about it? The makers of the movie cop out by showing such a burst of special effects that they hope you won't notice they fail to address this issue. The general consensus appears to be that V'ger disappears. Um, why? No explanation. It has been suggested that it moves on to a higher plane. Whatever. If that is what happened, we need so.

There is another possible way for the movie to end, one that fits far better with the plot trajectory up until the climactic scene. It is my understanding that at that time Leonard Nimoy was tired of being Spock and wanted out. The story provided the obvious vehicle. The logical outcome would be for Spock, the being seeking to escape emotion into pure logic, to merge with V'ger, the being of pure logic needing to learn the meaning of emotion. Each would supply what the other wanted and was missing. It was this that Spock was drawn to from the start. It would also quite decisively have gotten Spock out of the series for good. It is my understanding this was how the movie was originally planned. Of course, that would still have left the question of what to do about V'ger after the merger. And Kirk and Decker would also somehow have to resolve their differences. With special effects toned down to a mere supporting role, this might have made an excellent movie. Or it might not. It is hard to say. All I can say for certain is that the movie, as it was, fell far short.

So Why Do I Want Gingrich to Drop Out

It's funny, but I really do think Newt Gingrich should drop out of the primary and let Santorum go head to head with Romney.

Really, what business is that of mine? I am not Republican; I am scared to death of what the Republican Party is becoming these days, and I really want to see it self-destruct. So clearly any advice I would have to give cannot possibly be in good faith.

But I still think Gingrich should drop out.

It's a phenomenon I first noticed when John McCain chose Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate. Many times before I had read conservative columnists making recommendations about who a Democratic candidate should pick, and always I doubted their good faith. But here I was, thinking that I understood why McCain would want a woman on the ticket, but their must be Republican women who were better qualified. I even ran down a possible list, thinking about the pros and cons (from McCain's viewpoint) of each. And no, I was not doing this in bad faith (at least not consciously so). You might say I was doing it as an American concerned that we have a potential Vice President who was qualified for the job. But really, I was putting myself in the shoes of a McCain strategist.

And so with Gingrich. As an American, I think a Gingrich presidency would be disasterous, but the Republican establishment shares my fears and will keep that from happening. And what else? I'm not a Republican and I wish nothing but ill on the Republican Party. But I still think that Republican candidates should show some basic party loyalty and not do anything harmful to their party. I certainly have no use for the right wing of the Republican Party. But if Gingrich has his heart set on beating Romney and delivering the nomination to a True Conservative, he should show some loyalty to his faction of the party and quit splitting it.

So what gives? Obviously, I can't read Gingrich's mind, so I don't know. The suggestion most often made is that he is hoping by some miracle to win a brokered convention. That seems most unlikely to me, given that the Republican Establishment is going to have a lot of pull at a brokered convention, and the Republican Establishment hates Newt Gingrich's guts. It would also quite legitimately anger Republican voters to see their choice against Gingrich overlooked. I have trouble believing that even Gingrich could be that delusional and that egocentric. If he is, that alone should disqualify him from ever being President.