Will we ever see a worthwhile film about the fight against Islamic terror? Forget stories about emotionally tortured soldiers who return home to abandon their combat fatigues for civilian armor and take to the streets to protest American war crimes while government agents illegally wiretap these men (and women) of conscience. Films of this nature – pictures that gloss over totalitarianism but reflexively attack any pretense for American military involvement – are a political cliché. But we will never see a film that depicts the complexity of this struggle – opponents may suggest that the contrasts are too stark – because, despite the many nuances a director could provide (including the tenacious way Islamic extremism can overrun a people, alongside the reluctance of Western civilization to acknowledge the gravity of this threat), there is still an obsession with that most absurd of all questions — Why do they hate us?

Think about that question for a moment. The question is itself an insult to every woman forcibly enslaved, beaten, subjugated or mutilated by the tenets of an ideology that commands silence among the very people, in Hollywood and elsewhere, who wouldn’t for a second countenance the same respect for Nazism. Try to imagine an intellectual give-and-take between, say, Leni Riefenstahl and Steven Spielberg, with the former explaining the Final Solution as (her own self-flagellation for her celebration of Adolf Hitler notwithstanding), the result of usurious interest charged by a minority of Jewish bankers. Thus, the mass deportations, summary executions, gassings — the use of industrialized murder can be an academic dispute in which answers may differ, but all are a response to the same question, Why do they hate us? Please.

And yet, we entertain this question when discussing Islamic extremism. We, the American people, are somehow to blame for every grievance the Muslim world has against us; we are the authors of our own destruction, all evidence to the contrary be damned. Even when Islam plagiarizes the tenets of the Third Reich, substituting “Zionist” for “Jew” (and reverting to medieval forms of sadism, in lieu of Josef Mengele’s scalpel), there is silence. Oh yes, there is nuance: criticism of American foreign policy, condemnation of Israeli “war crimes” and all manner of outrage about our effrontery to a religion and culture of such exoticism. Again, please.

Failure to produce a decent film about this dispute is the equivalent of moral amnesia where some Hollywood lackey doesn’t care who wins or loses but whether “they” still hate “us.” No wonder the entertainment industry has high hopes for President Barack Obama, since he has an aversion to the blunt talk that, frankly, can embolden our enemies but also encourage those who need our help: women, minorities, nonbelievers, Jews, Christians — all those who support science, reason, suffrage and individual faith in parts of the world veiled by ignorance and theocracy. To these citizens, President Obama might as well say, “Shut up”; and to these dissidents, Hollywood already says, “Who cares?”

If we can muster the courage to acknowledge this threat, then we might give those who need our assistance real hope. Anything short of that is a cheap campaign slogan.

Know Hope, the propagandists tell us. I’ll know it when I see it on screen first.

A week into Barack Obama’s presidency comparisons abound concerning his personal and political gifts. Is he a rock star, or too cerebral for the sort of crowd-diving, one-with-the-audience intimacy that riles fans to amplified hysteria? Or is he a musician, yes, but more of a cool jazz artist who maintains an appropriate distance from his listeners while at the same providing a (false) sense of comfort for his admirers to absorb? Or is he a messianic figure who elevates our better instincts and unites the races, forever banishing the tragedy of human nature – its affairs with cowardice, its comfort with indifference, its passivity before evil – allowing us to march forward to paradise on earth? Or, finally, is he all of these things, a post-partisan president – a man who refuses to let eloquence devolve into mere rhetoric – and brings so many Clintons and conservatives into his ever expanding arms so we can make the world sing in perfect harmony?

The short answer is: No. Barack Obama is neither a rocker nor a cult leader, though his supporters treat him like the latter while giving him all the adulation (and then some) of the former.

He is, instead, Spock, the famed “Star Trek” character who makes supreme intellect a virtue and emotion both a terrible weakness and vestige of his human lineage - a handicap in the pursuit of reason. How else to explain President Obama’s inaugural address and his belief that “the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself.” This sentiment is the very essence of Spock, the equivalent of a private journal entry read aloud for billions in real time, the resignation of a logician who must abandon the purity of his laboratory to rescue an ungrateful citizenry.

And yet, Spock is not the captain of “Star Trek’s” fabled vessel, the USS Enterprise. Why? Because a Captain, even a melodramatic hero like the kind given voice (and pauses, and . . . pauses) by William Shatner, is emotional — sometimes incredibly so. Spock can assess a situation, tabulate the odds of enemy retreat, surmise an adversary’s weakness and discuss the most suitable terms of surrender, but he permanently remains unable to detect a sense of spirit and soul and righteous anger that makes, say, a Kansan oppose slavery or a Kenyan fight a military coup. For these heroes are erratic and thus the dangerous people Spock must render harmless with his Vulcan nerve pinch. (A few words to all single women: I am not a “Trekkie,” do not live with my mother and have never tried – and will never seek – to build a female companion out of spare parts and old circuit boards.)

Because we are human, a concession President Obama indulges with his megawatt smile, we can experience both extraordinary tragedy and Hope© (The One, All Rights Reserved). The two are impossible without even an ember of anger or from allowing emotion to overcome reason and summon defiance. For there is no transcending human nature – there is no spiritual awakening from the lines of tribe – without first feeling the gamut of human nature. 

We now have Spock in the White House, his oversized captain’s chair within reach of issuing every order except one: presidential anger. Until President Obama discovers his own sincere but controlled fury, he will remain the professor-as-president, a rationalist without an ounce of necessary emotion. To further mix sci-fi metaphors and earn the enmity of millions worldwide, we can’t afford a president who is Spock in a world where Darth Vader lives.

In the case of Carter, the films of the Seventies – and let it be known that I venerate this fabled period, like any good cinephile – are a smorgasbord of dramas about Vietnam and Watergate, with customary attention paid to the machinations of evil corporations (Pakula, Alan; see films of) or faux populists (Altman, Robert; see ”Nashville”). Content with attacking Richard Nixon, or using him as an all purpose villain who might as well have been Lee Harvey Oswald’s accomplice, Jimmy Carter simply . . . fades away, Hollywood’s forgotten man who nonetheless managed to reap a whirlwind of economic ruin and humiliation in the Middle East. But it is Carter’s facade of honesty – “I will never lie to you” – that insulates him from nothing more biting than a few sketch comedy acts on ”Saturday Night Live,” with Dan Aykroyd as the pious Southern governor who kept George Washington’s honesty and traded the cherry tree for a bag of Georgia peanuts.

There is no oblique or transparent critique of Carter’s presidency, for Hollywood accepts this period as (at best) forgetful or (at worst) another dark chapter in the Nixon White House, any successor to the Oval Office having been made seemingly irrelevant by the actions of ”The Man with the Five O’clock Shadow,” a trespasser in the home of Roosevelt and Kennedy.

The memory hole is even worse with Hollywood’s approach to Bill Clinton. The adulation for Clinton takes shape in films (”The American President,” “The Contender”) and TV (”The West Wing”), an alternate universe where the president has all of Clinton’s presumed smarts – and a Nobel Prize, too! -without any of the bimbo eruptions, or mean-spirited conservatives who seek to leave one third (at least) of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished. The Clinton of the movies is more charming and handsome (thank you, Jeff Bridges) than his real-life self, a man beset by hapless foes or outrageous hypocrites. Always eloquent and slow to anger – the cinematic Clinton is justifiably righteous in his indignation – this fictional president never overlooks the plans of jihadists or others who want to harm the United States. Thus makeup artists apply powder to Clinton’s nose, costumers give him better tailored suits and his Southern accent becomes a rich baritone — voila, I present you Ronald Reagan without conviction.

Hollywood now finds itself in love with The One – and that infatuation, which rivals the sort of hysteria that citizens normally display in totalitarian countries, will never dissolve into criticism. Disappointment, perhaps. But that disappointment will be the lament of what-might-have-been, a debate over the promise of the Obama administration’s efforts to return to Eden. Before the Republicans attacked. Before our innocence died. Before we came to our senses.

Villains For Your Consideration

Sadly, Hollywood’s version of an energetic president involves attacking evil corporations or Republicans (the two are often interchangeable), while clamoring for some special bill that – surprise! – the nasty CEOs or “other side” (those pesky conservatives, again) want to derail. For only liberals value human rights and the environment, and only they can unearth freedom by enacting a momentous wave of legislation that summons a paranormal return to all those fabled Washington deals: Square, New and Fair. Which is to say, filmmakers combine arrogance, naivete, paranoia and political groupthink to make the same tired movies about government.

It’s not that Hollywood fails to recognize the dangers of concentrated power. The misdeeds of multinational corporations receive harsh criticism, the actions of abusive law enforcement agencies come under appropriate attack, even individual members of the executive branch are fair game — but these villains are selective enemies because they are the antagonists of a liberal president, not foes of limited government or the sanctity of the Constitution. And Hollywood’s heroic president, when he’s not evading the denizens of Big Tobacco or escaping the clutches of some sadist in the bowels of an undisclosed location, always manages to expose the grand thievery of these right-wing nuts.

Maybe if Hollywood got rid of these stock villains and humanized things – maybe if directors and writers actually portrayed the day-to-day inanities of politics and the petty depravities of a million bureaucrats – we could have a real conversation about the state. Forget the CIA or FBI or the racist Southern sheriff — the next great movie about an assault against freedom should be filmed at the DMV.