Pajamas Media

46 Comments

Outstanding Afterburner!

Naturally, I couldn’t resist making the following observation:

What I find interesting is that “The Dowd Conundrum” has two actors playing roles: Maurice LaMarche as the voice of Captain Kirk and Derek Ringolg as President Obama.

One of these actors played a megalomaniac who, convinced of his superior intellect, concocted schemes to rule us all, not realizing that the basic flaws in his plans’ premises ensure their utter failure.

The other is well-known as the voice of Brain in Pinky and The Brain.

Brilliantly done, Bill, and full of good points.

That said, I don’t think it has the impact of some of your other written essays like Tribes and Sanctuary. But what do I know? I’m an intellectual.

This was a very good piece – combining humor with pop culture and a very sound philosophical/political rebuttal. Keep it up.

Bell, a second thought: Do you really need a second heading? Of course, what I’d like most are more of your brilliantly argued and moving essays like Victory and Power.

“I’d never really gotten to the bottom of why these smart people are so consistently correct and brilliant in their chosen fields and yet so spectacularly wrong almost all of the time when it comes to politics.”

What happens when their chosen field is politics? Error! Error! Boom!

Obama’s chosen field is community organizing, not politics, however.

[...] Eject Eject Eject » THE DOWD CONUNDRUM [...]

That’s awesome!

Great, fun piece. I don’t usually share my reading material with the family, some of whom think the old man is simply one of those radical, right-wing, 2nd ammendment, personal responsibility wacos, but this one I showed my sweet, far to the right of Attila wife and my 30 year old son for who I still have great hopes.

Also, thank you so much for reassuring us (especially me) of your intent to bring back the essays; I used to link to them almost weekly.

A brilliant and fun piece.

My nit-picky complaint is with your description of the Enterprise bridge as “Multi-cultural.”

The bridge was clearly multi-ethnic, but it was 100% Federation culture.

WOW! You’ve cracked the Dowd Conundrum!

Combining steely, cool logic, deliberation and reason in perfect proportions to raw fed-up-ness, you have realigned Star Trek to its proper perspective.

And discovered the missing link between moron drones and the queen bee who metastasizes the syndrome into a fully fledged inter-galactic pandemic.

Because, as we all now know, men are morons from Mars, and women are… Mo-reens from… the New York Slimes?!

It all so obvious now, so simple!

Well done, Mr. Whittle.

I was a huge fan of the Hornblower sagas during my teenage years, but never made the connection to the Star Trek formula. It is quite clear once it is stated. The qualities of leadership that are important as displayed by Hornblower and Kirk is that the responsible officer seldom has all of the data needed to make a fully informed decision. He/she must be able to fall back on core principles that help to fill in the gaps. This allows them to take action which can be decisive. Spock’s leadership style, and his dependence on logic, led to hesitation since he was aware that he lacked needed data and logic/deliberation were his core principle. Spock was an excellent advisor though because he could describe the current state of affairs and point to the information that was lacking for a full and logical decision.

I don’t know that I buy the Spock is Obama analogy (and you are wise to point out that it is imperfect). As we have seen, Obama is quite capable of taking decisive action. This does not mean that the decisions are bound to have good results. They are premised on faulty understanding of the world and are often prejudiced by a lifetime of association with people that misunderstand (intentionally, I believe) the principles that guided the founding of our great country.

Great work on this – I was pleased to see that you included the screen capture of Pelosilu Productions shot at the end. I laughed so hard when that came up that I almost forgot what a scary visual it was. I am looking forward to the piece on Thomas Sowell. My wife recently heard Dr. Sowell on the radio and said, “do you know who Thomas Sowell is?” Twenty minutes later she was convinced that Thomas Sowell should be POTUS and that I have too much time on my hands.

Best,
T Rich

You do look good in the Big Chair, Bill.

Ad astra indeed.

Bill, sheer genius on the Conundrum.

As for

Unless some liberal pundit steps on another land mine…

You can bet your last dollar that some liberal SOMEwhere is stepping on their crank, much less some land mine. Constantly. The current mess would be very entertaining except for the fact that it’s so destructive to America…

Igor

Wonderful explanation of the Hubris of The Intellectual, Bill.

The self-absorbed Intellectual doesn’t understand that Education in the classroom does not equal that which you get through actual experience. as little as 30 years ago, that fact was practically axiomatic, but today it’s hardly ever brought up by anyone under 50 today. How many of us know people who have tons of book-learning, but are totally hopeless in the actual workplace? Most, I suspect. Yet we have put more and more people into Government office who have no practical experience at anything, and it shows.

Thanks, Bill. Obviously showed a lot of effort, and it was very good.
Might convince me to pay for PJTV when I’m back to work.

Don’t forget one more reason Obama is like Spock:

They both believe “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”

Spock’s body would have perished on the Genesis planet if it were up to him to rescue himself.

Excellent piece!! Loved Star Trek as a kid, but by the time I got around to DS9, and Ugh! Voyager, the leftism just got to be more than I could stomach. And that was well before I took an interest in politics… Hate to tell you, but they took the Enterprise long ago. The most obvious connection I see between Obama and Star Trek, is that he seems to believe that like captain Picard, he can talk his way out of anything. Unlike the captain, however, someone should tell him that in the real world, there are no screenwriters who can contrive a new plot twist to ensure that he wins every time…

Thanks, Bill. Excellent presentation, as usual. I have only one disagreement: I don’t think Obama is really an intellectual. I think he only plays one on TV.

Brilliant!
Nail.
Head.
Nicely done, Sir!

I’m picturing Spock giving the split-finger fastball salute and instead of saying, “Live long and prosper” he says, “Hope and Change.”

Absolute genius and dead-on re the national mythology as represented on the bridge of Enterprise. Only thing missing? All the “security” guys in the red jerseys getting beamed into deep space. “You… mean… I… just… beamed… two men… into deep space?”

Cap’n O’s sure used up a lot of them.

Missile defense was our “Corbomite Maneuver.”

“The Left took Hollywood, music, late night comedy, universities, high schools, the news media and just about every other damn thing away from us… but they are not getting Star Trek, God damn them! I am not surrendering the Enterprise! Not without a fight!”
———

Sadly the Left DID take the Enterprise from us, over 20 years ago. We’ll always have the adventures of Captain Kirk, of course, but all the subsequent series were pure left-wing dogma. The Federation had completelely eradicated capitalism, government was involved in EVERYTHING and religion existed only as a cultural artifact.

At least the original series is coming out on Blu-Ray.

Harry Reid as the M-113 salt sucking creature was pure comedic genius. I’m still cleaning coffee out of my keyboard. Keep up the good work Bill.

“I’d never really gotten to the bottom of why these smart people are so consistently correct and brilliant in their chosen fields and yet so spectacularly wrong almost all of the time when it comes to politics.”

That is the $64,000 question. After being in the defense world for over 20 years, I am now newly exposed to America’s medical professionals. In case you were unaware let me assure you, they are a VERY left wing bunch. Certainly not all doctors and medical researchers are brilliant intellectuals, but for the most part they can definitely be described as intellectuals. In their field (as you point out), I find them to be incredibly informed, extremely logical, and able to defend their ideas very well. Yet in social conversations I consistently hear them spew utter nonsense when it comes to politics. Regardless of the political topic, you’d think you were listening to a high school sophomore. And a dim one at that.

You should hear the grandiose conjecture as they talk about “how much better it is under Obama”, when there is no possible way they could have any real evidence to support this claim. Certainly they are thrilled that Obama has opened the floodgates in funding medical research (quite a nice reward for their loyalty), but when asked “where is this money coming from” or “what happens when the money runs out”, they look at you as if you just said “two plus two equals twenty-two”. In any other situation they would vehemently challenge/question the flagrant unsubstantiated conclusions that they so casually state concerning Obama or any other liberal political agenda. But when it comes to liberal politics, it seems they put their brain on the shelf, stop thinking, and tow the party line without question.

The only answer I have been able to come up with is best described by Yuri Bezmenov in his talks regarding the demoralization of America. If you have not listened to him, I highly recommend it. It is a scary, but convincing explanation of today’s modern liberal.

Anyway, great work on the Dowd Conundrum. Keep up the excellent work.

How was the original series markedly different from any of the successors?

Secular humanism; check (religion didn’t appear positively in the original series either). Multiculturalism; check (forget Uhura or Sulu, any civilization that contains humans and Vulcans most assuredly does not have a unified culture). Pacifist, anti-Cold War, anti-nuclear theme; check (the episode where the Organians stop a Klingon-Federation war even though the Klingons were clearly the aggressors, the episode where a malevolent entity feeds off of Federation and Klingon hate for each other to grow stronger, the episode where Gary Seven goes back in time to stop a nuclear test in the 1960s). Even the “no money in the Federation” principle was introduced in one of the Kirk movies, I think.

Sorry but the left did indeed take the Enterprise, the moment it took flight. Not to knock it, it was a good series of shows, but there was never any doubt about its political orientation. If you want a show on the other side of the spectrum, watch Firefly… it’s the new Star Trek, except it flips Trek’s politics completely on their head (dystopian rather than utopian, libertarian rather than socialist, the central governing “Federation” authority are the bad guys and the good guys are those who resisted unification and just want to be left alone).

I totally disagree with you politically but that was a great piece.

Only your fine writing and showmanship could attempt to impress upon others that we need another cowboy in the Big Chair. We’ve all seen what a Cowboy can do to our country as we look around and pick up the pieces of the bar fight that is now our country.

Anti-intellectualism is always and every where a precursor to fascism and totalitarianism. I’ll take a president who is smarter then me any day over one who thinks with his gut, takes orders from on high and is a Cowboy who’s never ridden a horse.

Puzzled – While the structure of Star Fleet resembled a Socialist system, don’t forget that it was a military-style organization in the original series (albeit a largely unused one, which is why the Enterprise was doing exploration and research anyway). It is a seeming contradiction, but the military does resemble Socialism, because of the way it needs to operate.

Regarding Multiculturalism: The Federation was a coalition, not a unified culture. It wasn’t supposed to be a homogeneous setup – individual planets were mostly autonomous.

As for the episodes mentioned, remember that the Organians FORCED their solution on both parties, the Hate-Eater was an example of “The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend” (you notice that they didn’t stop hating each other, except for that temporary truce), and the Enterprise tried to STOP Gary Seven.

And the “No Money in the Federation” with Kirk was AFTER the franchise was eaten by the Lefties. Back in the original series, they did use money, frequently.

muirgeo, you couldn’t be more wrong. The precursor to fascism and totalitarianism everywhere isn’t a healthy disregard for the intellectuals who consider themselves terribly wise in all aspects of life. No, it’s those same intellectuals deciding that their (self-proclaimed) wisdom should guide and control the populace instead of the individual people’s descisions.

Yes, we’ve all seen what a “cowboy” in charge can do. Keep us from being attacked for 7 years and bring representative government to a country in the heart of the 7th Century ideology that is Islam. As opposed to your (again, self-proclaimed) “smarter-than-you” president who is very quickly destroying our entire economy and who is exhibiting alarming tendencies toward real fascism, not just your desired definition of fascism as “stuff you conservatives do that I don’t like.”

“As opposed to your (again, self-proclaimed) “smarter-than-you” president who is very quickly destroying our entire economy….”

That’s laughable. This economy as been set up for it’s great fall ever since Reagan starting the push of setting up the economy to favor the elite few on top while destroying the middle class. The economy was destroyed well before Obama took the reigns and attempts to lay blame on him after inheriting this disaster are immature at best. And 7 years of protecting us AFTER allowing the most horrific attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor is nothing to be bragging about. Especially when the culprits have never been brought to justice.

Again you misrepresent the facts. You know as well as I do (well, maybe not, from what you say) that Reagan ushered in the longest era of peaceful economic expansion in at least a century. It was Clinton’s great expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act passed by Carter that led the way for the collapse we’ve seen. Bush did make some ineffectual attempts to address the looming problem, only to be swatted down by the Democrat enablers, the very same people who are not screaming that it was his fault for not stopping them.

As for blaming Obama for destroying the economy, I can only think that you know absolutely nothing about economics since you try to deny that his massive, unprecedented expansion of our national debt, far beyond any possibility of repayment, isn’t such destruction. Sorry, but people with even a tiny understanding of how the world works know that.

As to your calumny about Bush “allowing the most horrific attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor,” you expose your self as just another lunatic Bush-hater, willing to invent any slurs you can to attack a good man. I didn’t agree with his policies and actions on numerous occasions, but all in all he was and is a good man.

In conclusion, there are only two ways to read your postings. Either you don’t know what you’re talking about (my guess) and are merely ignorant, or you do know that what you’re saying is filled with the rankest prevarications and are a liar.

Whoops, make that “the very same people who are now screaming.”

Oh. Captain. Whittle.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ve been nursing this kernel of an idea, all alone, and now you’ve shown me I’m not alone. We’ve heard for decades this litany of fans and spokespeople and reviewers and characters in the shows — who explain that in the Star Trek future, humanity has been united. We’ve set aside our petty differences. We’ve gotten over our conflicts and moved out among the stars together as one race. And sometime a few years ago, it hit me: the Enterprise isn’t an amalgam of the US and the USSR, or of all the world’s cultural and political systems blended together. It’s AMERICA. Duh. Geez, it was staring me right in the face all that time that I was gullibly accepting all that “got over our petty differences” business. In Star Trek’s future, the Americans WON! All that tolerance, and respect for achievement, and ignoring of unimportant differences, and striving for improvement: that’s America. We won. WE are the Federation.

I think you really hit upon something when you suggested that none of them, not even Roddenberry, knew exactly what they had made. I have a few quibbles, mostly with how you treat Spock, but they can wait.

Bless your geek self, Sir. And that’s a damn nice shirt.

I’m sorry to disappoint you people, but the original series was just as socialistic and multicultural at least for the time. Roddenberry was the polar opposite of the right wing media mavens you worship here. He did posit a future free of racism and providing for the material needs of all gratis. Please enlighten me to the Kirk series epsiodes where capitalism was celebrated.

I think most can agree that Star Trek was/is a successful franchise in the history tv/motion pictures/entertainment. (How many television series went on to become the space station platform that was reborn and relaunched as a movie with multiple sequels?)

Whittle stresses that the infrastructure of the casting model was responsible for the potential of not only the series, but the idea itself. Kirk the passionate man of action, and we admire spock his logic alright, but lets not forget what a sexy show it was either. I mean, lets take the Free Enterprise to the future if those girls in the uniforms the yeoman wore are in store for us, not to mention the yeoman herself.

Its difficult to articulate why the star trek show is such a favourite of mine, because I love it at its best and worst, its campiness in the last season (for example, if you’ve ever heard James Lileks recount the “Festival” episode as a metaphor for the liberal utopia/dystopia, neo-puritan/bacchanalia, bi-polar, revenge cycle, group think national-socialized-fascism we’ve come to expect from the disloyal (tribal, balkanized) opposition; then you had a good laugh as well).

After a while, I had a good laugh with “the Prime Directive” [of Starfleet Command]. You know, the Prime Directive that states quite clearly and unequivocally that the Enterprise and her crew shall “not interfere” with any of the “strange new worlds, and new civilisations” that the Enterprise “seeked out” and, you know, interfered with, on a weekly basis (to put it using a preposition at the end of the sentence)

“Not interfere with”?! Are you kidding? The Enterprise burned up beaucoup carbon credits, chewing up countless parceks relentlessly “seeking out” and “interfering with” unsuspecting “strange new worlds, and new civilisations” [with or without their own space program] just to “interfere with them”. Big Time. So yes, I agree with the premise that the Bridge [of the Enterprise] was multiethnic, diverse America, but that the Show itself was also a metaphor for American Exceptionalism, and a good one at that.

which reminds me, when my wife and I got married, we were both virgins, so when I got to that ‘remove the garter thing’ part, I knew that I was about “to boldly go where no man had gone before”. [they say that “If you split an infinitive, you can potentially carpet bomb the hole fabric of space/time”, so the physics corollary goes…)_Ah, adventure. where would we be without it? And without the Spirit of the Enterprise (and Horatio Hornblower too)

You know, there’s just not any sexism left in rock ‘n’ roll anymore: but that is the subject for another comment section, on another topic, in another time, in a politically incorrect galaxy far, far away…

The reason there is no money in the future isn’t because they’ve moved past capitalism, it’s because we spent it all today.

ZMDavid – That’s funny stuff right there.

Muirgeo (aka Muirdiot, Muirpid, Muirduck) – your posts on cafehayek.com are regularly beaten to a pulp by the commenters there. It’s not much of a challenge as you fill the role described by JHernan (comment 24) to a T. I don’t know what caliber of a pediatrician you are – possibly good enough to keep your license, but not spectacular. However, your knowledge of economics, politics, foreign relations, and most importantly human behavior is approaching zero. It is people like you, somewhat glib and totally committed to some sociopolitical dogma that lead to change for the worse as you don’t let obvious facts influence your beliefs. You may think you are secular, but you are a committed zealot of the socialist religion.

As for your assertions that Reagan set things in place for the current fall. What is your evidence? I know, he was just an amiable dunce. Also, it was just coincidence that a 25 year period of unprecedented peace time growth matched perfectly with his efforts to rein in inflation, rationalize regulations, and make taxes less onerous. Or, was he an evil genius that masked his plans to destroy America by creating a 25 year economic boom that he knew would eventually lead to overreach, bad government regulations, etc that would lead to calamity. I mean really, as a doctor, you should know to keep your head out of dark orifices as it can affect your vision quite a bit.

Also, how can we know anything about this current president’s intelligence. We are asked to take it for a fact because his supporters tell us he is so friggin’ smart. If so, why did he not write any articles for the Harvard Law Review, why are his college transcripts secreted away from public inspection, and why does he sound like such a dunce when caught in an unscripted moment. His intelligence appears to be of a strictly verbal variety – he can memorize talking points, he may possibly write well (although I am somewhat in agreement with those that believe Bill Ayers ghostwrote his first book), and he certainly can read with the best of them. Ultimately, I haven’t seen any evidence that he can synthesize information and build something new. Maybe that is why all of his ideas are ones that have been previously tried in other countries and other centuries (yes, they did in fact fail).

Say what you will about GWBush, but he faced a completely new challenge and created new responses. They did not always work and things like Guantanamo should make a civilized culture question the costs and benefits of such solutions. However, Bush and his team did keep us safe, their war policies are providing an opportunity for liberty to 50 million people, and who knows maybe Iran will join the democratic movement in the region (I will admit this is more hope than prediction on my part). However, Bush lacked that piece of intelligence that is so valued — overvalued IMO — by our media class. He was not telegenic and a good speaker. More than once I watched him struggle with presenting his plans and needs for such plans to the media and felt like the Sam Kinnison character in the movie, “Back to School,” who screamed, “Say it! SAY IT!” in his history class.

So, Muirgeo — don’t go away mad, but just go away.

As for the commenters here, thanks for answering this dodo bird in your typical polite fashion. He is a troll and doesn’t deserve it.

About the question of why so many people can be brilliant in their own field but wrong when it comes to politics, I have an opinion.

I think there is a natural human tendency to underestimate the difficulty of things until we’ve tried them. How hard can it be to run a business or plan a battle or figure out how mortgage lenders should operate? I can ask that because I’ve never tried any of those. I have taught math and also designed computer software and so I know how hard those are.

I also think that many of the liberal prescriptions for problems are naive, and that is because the formulators of those prescription don’t appreciate the difficulties involved, because they’re not the ones doing it.

This is also why young people are overwhelmingly liberal. They have no experiences and so everything seems easy to them.

Ironically, the more bright and successful one is in one area, the greater the tendency to underestimate the difficulties in other areas. If someone is really smart and knows it, they tend to think that they could easily do other people’s jobs, and easily solve other people’s problems if only they spent just a little time thinking about it.

No offense to anybody here, but you can’t really blame muirgeo or any of those like him. They exist in a different reality, and they believe what their friends and colleagues, their family, CNN, Hollywood, Stand up comedians, late night tv hosts, their school teachers and professors, and most of their government tell them. Who are they going to believe, us or their lying eyes? They never see any reality without a leftist spin. The narrative fed to America by the mainstream media and our mainstream culture is so prevalent, the voices of reason so marginalized that its a wonder of wonders that there are any conservatives left at all.

@38. RP

“They exist in a different reality, and they believe what their friends and colleagues, their family, CNN, Hollywood, Stand up comedians, late night tv hosts, their school teachers and professors, and most of their government tell them. Who are they going to believe, us or their lying eyes?”

Plato’s cave analogy. Until they build enough courage to turn around (and question the source of the shadows), they will never leave the cave. Just my observation.

The Gold Shirt suits you, Bill. Keep on fighting the Good Fight!

As Thomas Jefferson said, “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor; the ploughman will decide it as well, and often better, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.”

Bill Whittle, thank you so much for your dazzling work!!!

I too have been baffled by how liberals can be so consistently wrong on everything.
In order to be that wrong, you would first have to know what the right answer is, right?
But what explains why anyone would then choose to be wrong?

If you are puzzled by this conundrum, then the following leads may be helpful:

Video: “How Modern Liberals Think” by Evan Sayet.

Video: “History of Political Correctness” by the Free Congress Foundation.

[I learned about the above videos from PJM subscribers Proud Conservative and Moogie -- thank you!]

On the brainwashing tactics of the Left, George Lakoff is the guru who taught the mainstream media morons how to distort the value significance of words.
Video: “Idea Framing, Metaphors, and Your Brain – George Lakoff”.

Ayn Rand first analyzed the nature of the modern liberal in the early ’60s, and her work remains the most penetrating and integrated analysis that I know of. Those essays are collected in the book,
“The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution”.

“Lieutenant Whittle: set those fazers on Fun, Mister”.

Oh, I see you already have.

“Captain, our fazers are having no effect!! This Dowd Conundrum babe is one dried up bag of… of… Envy!!

“I’m Captain Kirk!!! I’m Captain Kirk!

“Looks like we’ll have to set those Fazers on…

“Tune in again next week, for Part Two of The Mysterious, Seemingly Unstoppable– (duhduh DUMM!!) DOWD CONUNDRUM

I just watched it AGAIN. This is so much fun!

But where’s the text version? This one is hard to quote from. I hope you’re not giving up plain-old-text writing because of your awesome new video powers. Most of this piece would work just as well to read as to watch, I think.

(”See this room? The bridge of the USS Enterprise? This is America!” Yes!!!)

PS. I finally subscribed.

I’m still waiting for evidence that Obama is a brilliant intellectual.

The Harvard degree doesn’t cut it as:

1) there may be a whiff of affirmative action and possibly quite mediocre marks as the transcripts are locked up in a legal Fort Knox for some inexplicable reason.

2) If people like Gates can make Professor there in a “discipline” that boils down to permanent race mongering and in a chair named after a hate-America-first communist, Harvard has lost its way.

3) Lawrence Summers voted out by Harvard staff for speaking scientific truth about differential gender abilities.

I could go on an on, but it should be pretty clear that a degree from PCU (Political Correctness University) is strongly deflated in value.

There is credible analysis that Obama’s books were ghostwritten.

He is a stumblebum off the teleprompter. His impromptu efforts at wit are completely lame and/or backfire as on the Leno show kibbitzing about the Special Olympics.

As for being more knowledgeable on foreign policy than the average American pharmacist? Bill, you’re too kind. Obama didn’t know Canada, his first whistlestop outside the USA has a Prime Minister instead of President, thought Austrians speak Austrian, didn’t realize that Russia has a veto on the UN Security Council and would not vote to censure itself on Georgia, and didn’t know the POTUS does not bow deeply to a jumped up camel driver King of Arabia. At least he didn’t call himself a jelly doughnut at the Brandenburg Gates photo op.

Then there’s the one little geographical factoid that should have made the Harvard brain unelectable if it had been properly reported. Obama didn’t know how many states there are in the country he now governs, even though he supposedly hails from the 50th and last state to enter the Union. Not many Gr. 5 students who wouldn’t get that right.

Finally, what intelligent man in his 40’s still serves up warmed over marxist claptrap that killed a hundred million in the past century and mired hundreds of millions in poverty as “hope and change”?

So still waiting for actual evidence of intelligence on Planet Obama instead of the media’s merely repeating the word a gazillion times.

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