This is very strange. I wrote about the ethics horror movie “The Box” just this year, yet had no memory of writing the post or seeing the whole movie, despite stating in the post that I had. Then I noticed that the post was dated February 28, the day before I found my wife’s body in our living room. Apparently the shock erased some files.

Moreover, it is creepy that I posted on a movie about a couple that pushes a button on a mysterious box after being told that doing so will kill a stranger but also result in their receiving a million tax-free dollars from an anonymous authority, and shortly thereafter discovered that my own wife had died of unknown causes.

Did somebody push that button?

This toxic line of thought moved me to watch “The Box” again last night. I’m an ethicist, I said that I had seen the whole movie, I am notorious for remembering the movies I have seen in excruciating detail, but boy, the whole last two-thirds of the film seemed completely new to me.

All of my observations in the original post stand. The basic message of the film, that it is never justifiable to use the life of another for great personal gain even if there is no chance that your unethical act will be discovered, is irrefutable. It is irrefutable even with the insistence of some recent visitors here that it is acceptable to suspend ethical standards for the benefit of one’s family.

The woman who is the main advocate of pushing the button does so because her young son faces being tossed out of the private school he thrives in because she and her husband can no longer afford the tuition. Her son’s happiness and future in exchange for the life of a stranger who might be serial killer or a drug pusher? Easy choice, right? What mother wouldn’t make that deal?

[Aside: Wow, is Cameron Diaz a boring actress or what? Has any lousy actress had more opportunities to louse up major films? But I digress...]

What I had completely forgotten about “The Box” was that the challenge is later revealed to be part of an experiment by some extraterrestrials to see if the human race is worth preserving, or if it should be exterminated to protect the galaxy. They were keeping track of the percentage of Earthlings that would press the button, and the results were discouraging.

I found myself thinking about how the kinds of bargains being offered by the candidates in this Presidential campaign resemble the deadly bargain that comes with the box in “The Box.” Apparently a lot of women are willing to put an incompetent puppet President in the Whites House knowing that she will be controlled by an unaccountable and faceless collective that has totalitarian aspirations, knowing the risk to the nation’s security, unity, liberties, and economic future this entails, as long as they are able to kill unwanted children in their wombs. Other citizens will enthusiastically vote for whichever candidate promises the most extravagant cash benefits for themselves or their tribes, even as it advances the United States even further into dangerous debt. But on the bright side, the disaster will occur after the greedy voters have received their promised bounty, and the victims of their bargain will be….strangers.

There’s a lot of button-pushing going on.

The weakness of the film’s plot is that the ultimate trap the nice, greedy couple fall into should be obvious: by pushing the button, they place themselves in the chain of disaster that will be exploited by those who agree to the deal in the future.

And that also is what those whose votes can be bought by promises that benefit their narrow interests are going to do in November.