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http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2002/12/05/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis01.txtThe big guy is the answer
By Rich Lewis December 5, 2002
I was driving down the road the other day gloomily mulling the state of our over-weaponized world.
The weirdo North Korean government has nuclear weapons.
Our own president seems disappointed that Saddam Hussein isn't giving him a quick enough excuse to start a war.
Saddam himself is likely sitting on piles of bombs filled with toxic gases and horrible diseases.
Some violent fool has shown all the other violent fools that shoulder-fired missiles could be an economical way to blow up planes full of people.
And on and on and on....
I was getting pretty depressed, convinced that we are doomed to blow ourselves up, and that we are utterly incapable of stopping it from happening.
That's when it hit me — just flashed into my mind, out of the blue.
What we need is... Gort.
That's right, Gort. You remember him. He's the eight-foot-tall, gleaming metal robot from the classic science-fiction movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
In that movie, made in 1951 but still as good as anything coming out of Hollywood today, a spaceman named Klaatu (played by Michael Rennie) comes to say that peace-loving aliens are worried that Earthlings are developing weapons and technology that could threaten the entire galaxy.
His message: "It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet. But if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple. Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration."
Wow. They just don't write dialogue like that any more.
Anyway, Klaatu's bodyguard is Gort, a member of an intergalactic police force of robots. Their job is to melt weapons — and the bad guys who carry them — with a laser beam that shoots from their heads. The image of that creepy light swirling inside Gort's head as he prepares to fire still gives me the chills.
As you recall, Klaatu gets shot and spends time in the hospital.
Later on he gets shot again and just before he dies, tells Patricia Neal she must go to the big robot and utter that immortal line, "Gort, Klaatu barada nickto."
That will cause the robot to fetch Klaatu and bring him back to life so that the spaceman can deliver the "cinder" speech quoted above.
While all this is happening, Gort is running around microwaving into dust anything that even looks at him the wrong way. Rifles. Tanks. Soldiers. Poof, gone.
We Earthlings need that kind of tough love now.
It's obvious that people can't put the world aright — and that we truly are threatening all life on this planet, if not on other planets.
So I say, send in the Gorts.
Ok, it sounds silly at first, but really, is it any dumber than Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" defense shield? Visions of that gazillion-dollar boondoggle are still dancing in the heads of the president and his friends.
If we're going to waste all that money anyhow, Gort is a much better idea to waste it on.
The danger these days isn't from big missiles shooting through space where "Star Wars" can zap them. What we need to fear are those shoulder-fired babies, car bombs, nukes-in-a-suitcase, anthraxes-in-a-bottle, sniper rifles and other earth-bound stuff.
Exactly the kind of stuff that Gort eats for lunch.
And yes, I've seen "The Terminator" and "The Matrix" and so I know how these robots can get uppity and decide to take over the world for themselves.
But that's just a design problem. Build 'em right and they'll run right.
And yes, it is a tad fascistic — you know, a swarm of giant metal cops melting down everything from slingshots to nuclear submarines.
But we could soften that by equipping them with features that would benefit mankind in other ways. They could have vacuum attachments to keep the streets clean.
Or they could dispense freshly brewed coffee or play your favorite CD. Nobody says Gort has to be a uni-functional bore.
So that's my idea for saving the world.
If you've got a better one, by all means share it.
But do it quick. I have a feeling that if you put it off too long, there won't be any world left to save.
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