Capitol Ideas / Inequality Now

...The reason for this is, of course, the strange power (one is inclined to say stranglehold) that the idea of equality has over the minds of liberal intellectuals...

...What animates the film is the conflict of the two industries...

...One got the impression that he was particularly resentful about this because he vaguely perceived the opportunity for an affirmative action program going to waste...

...It may have taken even more self 22 The American Spectator May 1979...

...How is it that equality can even exist as an ideal when, it is true to say, we have had practically no experience of it...

...You see what a vacation from Washington and a look at New York's skyline, however dilapidated, will do for you...

...11...

...In the first place, one should point out that even liberal intellectuals are well aware, when they emerge from their egalitarian daydreams, as they sometimes do, that there is almost no sense in which two people can be said to be "equal...

...We may hope that it will gather sufficient force to produce within its bloodstream the antibodies necessary to destroy the microbe invasion...

...But still, the moral urge toward equality persists...

...and in intelligence (inequalities so marked that it would seem absurd to claim of any two people in the world that they have the same intelligence...

...But in fact such a choice was not merely convenient...

...But somehow it seems that way, perhaps because other personal qualities-for example courage, loyalty, and various moral traits-have declined in relative importance...

...and the analogous sense in which members of the human race are equally loved by God, however different their potential may be...

...And who would have it any other way...

...Wilfred Bramley and Jack Lemmon, as the men in charge of the plant's control room-the hermetically sealed aggregation of mystifying dials and meters where most of the film's action takes place-are drawn from life, too: a company man who has stayed with the industry through its progression from relatively simple electricity to a technology he cannot fathom, and a specialist who is more loyal to nuclear power than to the firm...

...This is both drama of the highest order and a convincing tribute to the journalistic potential of TV...

...I would argue, however, that there is a serious question whether these people deserve to be regarded as anything other than stealthy infiltrators, Satan's new army, comparable to microbes infecting the vital organs of a formerly healthy body...

...I'm not sure there is a simple answer to this...

...Two people may be the same height or the same age, may have the same income, and may drive the same type of car...

...Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas, playing the TV reporter and cameraman who inadvertently discover that something is amiss at the plant, are a parallel professional pair: She, a careerist accustomed to covering dancing telegrams and tigers' birthday parties, doesn't want to make waves at first, while he, with the arrogance that is acquired behind the scenes, comes out fighting...

...One thing that one can say for sure is that if this change does take place-and we are talking about nothing less than the end of the curiously misnamed "Enlightenment"-then egalitarianism, too, will have had its day...

...One of the more striking illustrations of the liberal death wish, I fear...

...If "If the license is delayed, even slightly," one of them says, "our cash flow dries up...

...They, and the "theology of liberation" with...

...Egged on by the reporters, Lemmon takes the structural flaws he's found to the airwaves-after the company has refused to listen-hijacks the plant on camera, and ultimately bites the linoleum...

...Contributing to the film's success as well are some things that it doesn't do...

...The China Syndrome may send as many resumes into the news room as All the President's Men sent into the city room...

...What, if anything, do these people have in common...

...We are all different-unequal-not just in looks (as we all have had occasion to ponder) but in so many other ways: in energy and drive (tremendous inequalities there, for some reason almost never mentioned, although they have incalculably enormous effects...

...It is worth pondering for a few moments...

...Bridges and company seem to realize that such questions are beyond the film's range, and, although expressions like "feedwater leak," "turbine trip," "isolation valve," and "Take it up to 110" are continually bandied about, they are used more for conveying atmosphere than information...

...in physical strength (unimportant, these days...

...This was an especially obnoxious form of "discrimination," Nader felt, because looks are something "we can't do anything about...

...Which reminds mewhat an incredible irony it is that the New York Times, a newspaper with headquarters allegedly in New York, should so strongly and determinedly have supported policies in recent years which have led inexorably to the growth of Washington and the decline of New York...

...The presence, and pressure, of these Marxist microbes within the body of the Church was surely- what Alexander Solzhenitsyn had in mind when he commented at last year's Harvard commencement that the forces of evil had begun their "decisive offensive...

...If that happens, then we may predict with certainty that the philosophy of materialism itself, which has dominated intellectual life in the West for the past 150 years, will also be destroyed...

...But inequality, which is the equivalent of voltage for many (most, I feel sure), evidently inspires in the wretched remainder nothing more elevated than an abiding sense of resentment at the demonstrated "unfairness" of life...

...Yet when presented with the right story, TV can offer a journalistic immediacy unavailable to any other medium...

...How striking that the skyline of New York (the sky is the limit) so perfectly dramatizes the former...

...Initially Douglas is completely mistaken about what the trouble is, and he's much too quick with his charges of cover-up and conspiracy...

...The per Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington columnist and Washington editor of Harper's...

...Inequality Now ceived greater achievements of otherswhether in the realm of art or literature or more mundanely . in the accumulation of possessions-is the force that drives us on to greater personal efforts...

...Thus, one might say that among those The American Spectator May 1979 21 who have been educated into a state of atheism, the religious impulse is still faintly present, faintly perceived, but suppressed, until it eventually breaks out in the wrong place, like a rash, manifesting itself in the worldly creed of material egalitarianism...

...The portrait of the power trade is not even credible, but that of TV news is extraordinarily perceptive...

...The film does go askew, however, in making the company owners unbelievably dastardly...

...In short, it is difficult to discern any sense other than the utterly trivial in which equality between two people can exist...

...Why on earth is this...

...just as New York at least used to be the home of individual achievement...

...Having said that, one is reminded of the Christian understanding of the idea of equality, which Malcolm Muggeridge has written about illuminatingly...

...CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell A visit to New York-and simultaneously an escape from Washington-inevitably conjures up thoughts about individualism and egalitarianism...

...In the final scene of the film, Fonda, after being holed up, and nearly blown up, in the control room with Lemmon, goes on camera, convinces Bramley at least to suggest that the company may have been in the wrong, and tearfully pulls the story together...

...He has described the sense in which the children in a family-however different they may beare all equally loved by their parents...

...It is just that there were so many other personal qualities-including physical strength-that then seemed equally important or more so...

...Perhaps I should go there more often...

...This would explain the crucial point that egalitarianism is an idea that overwhelmingly appeals to those with precisely the modern booklearning (Freudian fakery, Darwinian drivel) needed to persuade us that religion is superstition...

...It is not at all clear, as some believe, that life is now organized in such a way as to give the intelligent an advantage more decisive than has formerly been the case...

...I am not sure it still is-the city is now in such a sad state of dilapidation...

...Why, incidentally, have intelligence differences taken on so much importance in recent years...

...persisting even when their "possession" by it is self-destructive, as in a sense it is for those who would like to see New York survive...

...On the other hand, the English writer Paul Johnson on a recent visit to Washington observed that religion "in some respects appears to be a gathering force" in the world today...

...Ben Yagoda is a free-lance writer living in New York...

...THE TALKIES by Ben Yagoda The China Syndrome and Real Life T e China Syndrome is a bang-up thriller, among other reasons because it has such a good feel for work-both what people do and the way it defines them...

...He loves the, news as much as Lemmon loves nuclear power...

...which they come armed, represent (in my view) the most serious attack on Christianity since its founding...

...In the minds of Bridges and company, it is precisely because it is controlled by evil, profit-minded capitalists that nuclear power is dangerous...

...the skyline of Washington (flat, if you ignore the Washington Monument) so perfectly embodies the latter...

...The PR man for the nuclear plant where all hell breaks loose (James Hampton) is archetypal-smarmy, unintelligent, and effective...

...There are, in fact, a few early warning signals suggesting that this seachange may be at hand...

...It is surely true, then, that the idea of equality has its origins in such religious perceptions as these, and the characteristic feature of those who choose instead to believe merely in a material equality is that they have abandoned or denied or never fully experienced religious faith: They are, in short, materialists...

...It restrains itself, for one, from making a political statement against nuclear power-beyond a general and resounding BE CAREFUL, which the events of late March proved to be entirely justified...

...This theory-that egalitarianism is simply a by-product of atheism-is of course challenged by the existence of any number of contemporary Marxist clerics...

...And, of course, egalitarianism is the one idea that Washington is zealous about...

...One might suppose that the filmmakers were in a bind: Since atomic energy as such couldn't plausibly be the villain, something had to provide the danger-and the logical candidate is capital's greed...

...Probably not, although intelligence was no doubt a tremendous advantage in the battle for survival in the "Dark Ages...

...How are we to account for the astonishing appeal of 'the phantasmagorical idea of equality...

...Meanwhile the circumference of Washington's flatness grows more encompassing every year...

...Director James Bridges and his co-writers, T. S. Cook and Mike Gray, have not only shown us how it works (a territory uniquely suited to films and too often ignored by them), but they have captured the essential quality of video reporting: It is woefully given to oversimplification and distortion...

...Seen this way, inequality is the great energizer of life: just as a current only flows in an electrical circuit when there is a "potential difference" between the two terminals...

...Did King Arthur give Round Table candidates intelligence tests...

...I once heard one of their most conspicuous representatives, Ralph Nader, give an address in the course of which he expressed his frustration that most of the "front offices" on Capitol Hill are staffed by good-looking girls...