Did Batman Flip-Flop? An Apparent Inconsistency in The Dark Knight

Apparently, Batman’s acrobatic ability is not limited to the physical. He displayed what seemed to be a major philosophical flip flop in the latest movie, The Dark Knight that would make a politician yell “encore!”

The Joker has rigged two commuter ferryboats with explosives. As the two ferryboats leave the docks, the passengers in both soon find detonators. The Joker’s mocking voice comes over each boat’s public address speakers, announcing his terms. He is not after ransom. The detonator found in each boat triggers the explosives in the other ferryboat. They have half an hour to decide whether to live or to die. To live, they would have to trigger the detonator, killing all passengers of the other boat. If both boats are still intact after half an hour, The Joker announces that he has a third detonator that he would use to explode both ferries. He is after chaos and anarchy. The passengers in both ferries naturally go into panic, each clamoring for survival. To add to the moral quandary, one of the two ferryboats is transporting condemned criminals among the passengers. It appears that the Joker will get his wish.

Batman decides to go after the Joker, and he succeeds in doing so using extremely sophisticated technology. Flawlessly, Batman eliminates each hurdle until he is face-to-face with the Joker. The Joker taunts Batman that he cannot save the passengers, that one of the two ferries will soon go up in flames. Batman confidently declares that that will not happen. I expected that Batman had another sophisticated gadget like a frequency jamming device to keep the detonators from working. There was none. As for the Joker’s detonator, Batman succeeds in hand-to-hand combat to disable it.

At the ferries, the passengers get over their panic and decide to vote for or against using their corresponding detonators. They cast their votes calmly as if CSPAN-1 and CSPAN-2 were on each ferryboat (do I detect a symbolism for the Congress?) The passengers vote to not murder the other ferry's passengers, Batman has disarmed the Joker, and the democratic process wins the day. There was no technological gizmo to block the detonators’ signals. In an attempt to promote anti death penalty, the movie ironically has one of the convicts lecture a citizen on the immorality of murder, that they should not even have voted on it.

Why was Batman so confident that the ferries wouldn’t blow up? Was he acting on faith? Did he have great confidence that the passengers on the ferries would do the right thing and not murder others for their own self-preservation? (Too bad he isn’t as articulate as the Joker is about his philosophy – must come from trying to disguise his voice too much.) So, if Batman had so much faith in the people, why couldn’t he trust them to absorb the news that Harvey Dent was guilty of murder? Instead, Batman conspires with Commissioner Gordon to preserve an illusion. He believed that the people would succumb to anarchy without a white knight like Harvey Dent. What a flip flop! What a glaring inconsistency, faith in the people in one scene, liberal elitist in the next!

We need heroes. We need Camelot. We need that "photo-op". Appearance is more important than substance, and finally, convicted criminals are morally superior to innocent citizens - All according to The Dark Knight.

But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

1 Samuel 16:6-8

Eichmann, The Joker, and The Banality of Evil

Adolf Eichmann was a member of the Nazi regime who is considered one of the chief architects and executioner of Hitler’s “final solution” for the “Jewish Problem.” Israeli agents captured Eichmann as he was hiding out in Argentina after the collapse of the Third Reich and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for genocide. At his trial, Eichmann was found to be just a diligent, conscientious bureaucrat faithfully going about his job, but he was found complicit nonetheless in mass murder. Hannah Arendt, a German political philosopher, published in 1963 a book, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.” The phrase, “banality of evil” is used to describe the fact that great atrocities and crimes do not necessarily stem from extraordinarily diabolical minds, but that evil resides in ordinary and commonplace persons and events. It doesn’t mean that evil is boring or trite or hackneyed. “Banality of evil” means that great wickedness can reside in innocuous form.

I first heard of “the banality of evil” from Dr. Ravi Zacharias. If you want to see an illustration of the banality of evil today, go see a movie. My wife and I went to see The Dark Knight last weekend. I found the Joker a fascinating character. When he was a kid, his dad thought he looked too serious so that his dad decided to permanently carve a “smile” into his face using a knife. Thus, the Joker wears a clown make-up to cover his scars. His “smiling” face is a mask for a murderous and vengeful heart. The Joker will not kill Batman because being Batman’s arch enemy is just “too much fun.” Such dialog is quite commonplace in the movies. Commonplace but grotesque witticisms accompany the most heinous of crimes, desensitizing us to the depth of the evil being depicted and may even elicit some admiration for the evildoer.

On Sunday, the weekend we watched The Dark Knight, a gunman walked into a Church service in Knoxville, TN carrying a 12-gauge shotgun in a guitar case. During the childrens' performance, he took out the shotgun and fired into the congregation, killing an elderly man and an elderly woman. According to Foxnews, “Neighbors described the gunman as a friendly man who often worked in his motorcycle outside, and would go on long weekend rides.” The gunman is now in custody for hate crimes. This was no movie. This is the banality of evil.


Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Genesis 6:5

The Dark Knight, A Sacrifice for Law and Order

I followed the Batman comic books when I was a kid and have seen the Batman movies. I am impressed by The Dark Knight, the latest release in the series of Batman movies, as it seems to go beyond the usual cat-and-mouse, catch-me-if-you-can theme of the comic books and the other Batman movies and tackles the theme of personal and mass terrorism and murder that we have seen more and more of in today's news.

Gotham City is enamored with a young, zealous, and aggressive prosecutor, Harvey Dent, who is determined to put an end to organized crime using all available legal resources at his disposal. Meanwhile, Batman contemplates "retirement" as vigilante copycats try to emulate Batman but only succeed in giving Batman a bad name by their bungling idiotic crime fighting exploits. Batman's arch-enemy, "The Joker," appears on the scene, seizes control of the mob and murders the Batman copycats to implement a personal agenda of unprecedented evil in the history of Gotham city.

The Joker is not the power-driven criminal of gangster genre. The Joker is a fanatical ideologue, uninterested in money, whose personal agenda is the seduction of individuals, institutions, and society into evil, anarchy and chaos. He is the serial killer, genocidal maniac, and vengeful terrorist all rolled into one. The movie ascribes to The Joker incredible power and cunning as he effortlessly and flamboyantly executes a series of crises which places Batman, the police, and Gotham's citizens in ethical and moral quandaries that force them to choose between two evils either of which result in death, destruction, mass murder, and escalating anarchy and chaos.

Batman and the authorities try to stay on top of the situation but The Joker always seems to have the edge. Right up to the end Batman plays catch-up. The Joker unfolds one evil scheme after another appearing to succeed in his goal of destroying law and order on a personal and social scale. Batman fails to save his girlfriend Rachel Dawes while the Joker succeeds in seducing Harvey Dent to commit murder. Batman succeeds in tracking down the Joker using technology and a willingness to operate outside privacy laws. The Joker fails in his scheme of mass destruction and anarchy as the people vote on the Joker's terms, extolling the triumph of the democratic process. Batman has the Joker in his grasp but doesn't kill him, but Harvey Dent commits murder and gets himself killed in the process. To preserve Harvey Dent's reputation, Batman convinces Commissioner Gordon to lay Harvey Dent's crimes on Batman to preserve the people's faith in law and order and Batman becomes a hunted man. Harvey Dent is remembered as the white knight crusader for law and order.

Not bad for a comic book character.

Some analysis to follow.

Obama and Marx

When Barak Obama was campaigning in April in San Francisco, he characterized MidWest voters who were suffering the effects of an economic downturn thus:

"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."

This remark by Obama sounds very much like Karl Marx when he said that "religion is the opium of the people." The quote originates from Marx's "Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right"

In whose footsteps is Obama walking?

Who Defines Sin?

It seems that as political correctness strives to elevate its values to
that of moral imperatives, it is defining sin as that which contradicts
its own political priorities. See for, example, the article by Chris
Satullo of the Philadelphia Inquirer on July 1, 2008, "A Not So Glorious
Fourth" where he calls a "national sin" the alleged torture of political
prisoners.

This is what happens when one excludes God from public debate. To fill the vacuum (although it's not really a vacuum) you substitute your own personal politics for God's laws.

However, every one of us to some extent, has this tendency to define what is sinful based on our own personal standards. This is exacerbated by the common but erroneous belief that there are no absolute values, that morality is personal and private. But there are absolutes. As Creator of the universe, God has the right to express His sovereignty and rule over all. He does this through natural laws and through moral laws, written in the consciences of men and women, and also objectively written in His divine revelation in Scriptures.

There is indeed a great reason to pray,

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

A Politically Correct Prophet

In a recent issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer, (July 1, 2008), columnist Chris Satullo wrote an article, "A Not So Glorious Fourth, U.S. Atrocities are Unworthy of our Heritage." In his article, Satullo cites, "Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. CIA secret prisons. 'Rendition' of prisoners to foreign torture chambers." as "sins" not only of the U.S. but of the American people who have tolerated such torture, according to Satullo. Satullo intends to dump guilt on the American people and shame them into grieving, instead of celebrating, Independence Day. "So put out no flags. Sing no patriotic hymns. We deserve no Fourth this year. Let us atone, in quiet and humility," Satullo writes.

Satullo is a self-proclaimed prophet of political correctness. He elevates what is, at best, a controversial political issue into the status of a national sin. What moral superiority does Satullo think political correctness have to try and condemn the nation like a biblical prophet over such a partisan issue as terrorist torture?

I would like to see if Satullo is equally as condemnatory of the killing of the innocent unborn, for example, or the gradual rendering of marriage into a meaningless institution, or the pollution of the culture with pornography in the name of free speech, or the abandonment of the faith of our fathers by censoring God from public discourse, ("Let us spend the day truly studying the example of our Founders," writes Satullo, referring to politics, not faith.)

What a lame and pathetic call Satullo makes! Political Correctness has nothing to offer! Satullo is borrowing from the theism that they are trying to supress in order to buttress the flaccid ideology of liberalism.

Lord, please send us a true prophet like Elijah.

An Easy Way to Check the Stock Market

These days, it is no longer necessary to check the financial media to see how the stock market is doing.  As you drive to work, simply check the price of gas.  If the price of gas has increased, the stock market must have gone down.

In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider--God has made the one as well as the other So that man will not discover anything that will be after him.

Ecclesiastes 7:13-15

Another Word for Double Speak

Politicians are said to “solidify the base” and then “move to the center” in their effort to win the nomination or the elected position. This is accomplished by giving speeches and taking positions near and dear to the “base”, which could be the conservative rightist base or the liberal leftist base. “Moving to the center” involves the candidate taking positions sometimes contrary to the former positions he or she took before when he or she was “solidifying the base”. Such Machiavellian maneuvers are taken as a necessity in today’s political climate. Being a man or woman of principle, constant in his or her views, is just a pretense. Politicians pay lip service to truth and principle, yet are thoroughly pragmatic in their thinking, and political posturing is second nature to them. This is the essence of “political correctness”, taking positions which are perceived to please the most number of people in order to win their votes, regardless of truth or principle. “Solidifying the base” and “moving to the center” are just euphemisims for lying and demagoguery.