Posted on 05/25/2005 7:43:18 AM PDT by Revenge of Sith
The current episode of "Star Wars" is dynamite for the duplicitous Bush administration. Palpatine, a Sith Lord masquerading as a galactic Republican, becomes Chancellor of the Galactic Republic through deception. Palpatine uses wars that he instigates to elevate security over the power of the Senate and to become dictator.
In a moment of triumph, Palpatine tells the Senate, "In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society." The senators respond with sustained cheering and applause. Padme says, "So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."
Sith lords use the powers of the dark side of the force. Jedi knights use the power of the good side. The Jedi are selfless and use their incredible powers to protect the Republic. Sith are evil and crave absolute power. Palpatine, who is really Darth Sidious, manipulates the Senate and enlists the Jedi Council's patriotism to "defend" the Republic against a "separatist" army that he secretly directs. The purpose of the orchestrated war is to erode liberty in the name of security. The naive Jedi catch on too late and are decimated. The Republic falls.
Bush's "war against terrorism" is no less orchestrated than Palpatine's war and has led to the same result: a society dominated by security concerns.
The top secret British government memo that was leaked to the London Times proves beyond all doubt that Bush invaded Iraq for none of the changing reasons that he has given a too-trusting public. Bush did not invade Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction or because he wanted to bring democracy to Iraq.
Why did Bush invade Iraq? No one, least of all the Bush administration, has come up with a believable reason. Yet, there is no shortage of patriotic Republicans who sincerely believe that Bush has made America safer by turning the Muslim world against us and stirring up a hornets nest of terrorists united by their hatred of America.
Moreover, like Palpatine's war, Bush's war in Iraq appears to be interminable. U.S. military commanders say the United States will be fighting in Iraq for years to come. Forecasts are that the war will have cost taxpayers $600 billion by 2010.
Meanwhile, Bush, like Palpatine, has brought civil liberties to a crisis. In the United States, civil liberties are everywhere biting the dust. Not content with the Orwellian-named "Patriot Act," the Bush administration is pushing for expanded secret police powers. Even conservative Republican Bob Barr writes in the May 17 Washington Times that provisions of the "Patriot Act" go far beyond fighting terrorism "and undermine our constitutional freedoms and Fourth Amendment rights."
Barr is chairman of a coalition called Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances. In other words, dear readers, the checks and balances are gone. Bush has enabled the police to bypass the courts. Executive power rules, and there are no Jedi knights.
The Sith, however, are everywhere. In our day, the Sith masquerade as neoconservatives. Neocons deal in absolutes. They believe the end justifies the means. As the Jedi master Obi-Wan tells Anakin, who is turning to the dark side and emerging as Darth Vader, "Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes." Anakin to Obi-Wan: "If you're not with me, you're my enemy."
Palpatine is able to manipulate the Galactic Senate with the clever use of words that play upon emotions. People want to feel secure. They want their side to prevail and will do whatever it takes to win, including trading their republic for an empire. Palpatine prevails because people deceive themselves.
Republicans have become adept at self-deception. They will believe any argument that justifies Bush and no news report that casts doubt on Bush's war. The leaked British government memo is dismissed as just more anti-Bush propaganda from the liberal press, like Dan Rather and Newsweek.
Newsweek's retraction of its story that U.S. soldiers flushed a Quran down a toilet proves to Republicans that the only problem is an anti-American liberal media. The fact that Newsweek was absolutely correct in reporting desecration of the Quran by U.S. troops -- and only got wrong the particular way in which the holy book was desecrated -- has been totally ignored by Republicans.
Republicans believe everything Bush says. When he tells them he needs a police state to save them from terrorists, they believe him.
Who will save us from Bush's police state?
Just as Child Protective Services has had to frame innocent parents and child-care providers as child abusers in order to justify its budgets and a massive bureaucracy, the vast Homeland Security apparatus will have to "find" terrorists. Otherwise, there is no point to all the expanded police powers and the huge budget.
Just as the indignities of airport security and its assorted searches fall on loyal American citizens, the police state measures will also fall on loyal American citizens.
With the courts bypassed, a terrorist is whoever the secret police say is a terrorist. The U.S. government is already committing the crime of kidnapping people mistakenly identified as terrorist suspects and flying them to brutal regimes to be tortured.
Police states have an insatiable need for enemies. In Stalin's time, the secret police conducted "street sweeps." People waiting for buses and shopping for food were carted off to prison, where they were tortured until they implicated others. Thus was the Gulag filled with innocents.
"It can't happen here," but the beginnings of it already have. The U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is full of mistaken identities and people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time -- including, according to The Associated Press, a chicken farmer and an invalid. Bush's brand of democracy -- a regime that holds people in prison for three years without charges -- does not have civil liberties at heart.
Republicans are cheering. According to news reports, Congress has passed -- and Bush is about to sign -- a law requiring a national identity card (Real ID) containing invasive digital information about the person.
How long will it be before the card specifies whether the person is a gun owner? If it is dangerous for air travel to permit a passenger to have a toothpick or nail clippers, how can a terrorist-threatened society permit mass gun ownership?
If the constitutional protections of civil liberties can be suspended in order to better fight terrorism, the Second Amendment doesn't have a chance. A government that spies on its citizens will not trust them with guns. When gun control becomes an essential feature of Homeland Security, the National Rifle Association and talk radio conservatives will be as astounded as Bail Organa and Padme when they hear Palpatine declare "an empire ... and a sovereign ruler chosen for life."
Agreed. once again...Long live the Sith.
Without evil, there can't be good, so evil has to be good in some way...
Are you saying the Devil has good qualities?
Is Paul Craig Roberts a Sith Head?
What is a Sith?????
What is a Sith?????
This would explain why Bush used a Force-push to knock Kerry off the stage and into the audience during the 2nd debate.
And when God commands the indiscriminate killing of Arabs you can quote that. But as it stands Deuteronomy does not overturn Matthew 5:38-44?
At least not for a Christian.
(((snicker)))
Out of curiosity, would you in fact support a benevolent dictator if he were a moralist, and a conservatively principled humanitarian, like Bush?
I'm asking this candidly.
Worded that way yes.
I see the UN as the corrupt Jedi. Who always want to seek diplomacy when they should fight.
I see Bush as Sith, ready to take on those who would try and destroy him.
Delusion the theories of this writer. Misreads the movie with great error. Plays too much with Star Wars figures.
I saw the film. No the "Bush is a Sith" is way overblown. As others of said, it is just a movie.
YOU:Worded that way yes.
Yeah well it wasn't worded that way. If you are not willing to answer the question I asked, I'll have to assume your are not really sure. Perhaps the nature of our system of government doesn't truly concern you? We know it really doesn't concern the pseudo-liberals.
Is any comparison to "Star Wars" lame or what?
With all due respect, Jon Alvarez, a freeper himself, has boycotted virtually everything from the movie, music, television, and print industries. And the stunning success of ROTS is about par for the course for Alvy boycotts. The guy is Quixote reincarnated.
Please read a few verses before 16 and notice what is said regarding women, children, cattle, etc.
No. Breaking this down a bit, supposing I had time to act before the child with the bomb had a chance to reach the other children, I would move the 30 or 40 children out of harm's way.
If I had did not have time to act before the child with the bomb made it to the other children, killing the child with the bomb would not diffuse that bomb and all the children would be dead anyway.
Earlier you suggested that if you thought that a child would grow up to do what it was taught to do, reared to do, you would kill that child.
If my enemy's child has done nothing to me, even though I thought that child was capable of harming me, I would not kill that child. The scenario you now suggest is another matter.
I do not mean to split hairs with you. I do understand the horrible scenario you put before me is entirely possible, as are 1,000s of other scenarios (which is why I answered the way I did to this particular scenario). I imagine you can rephrase your scenario in such a way that I had little choice but to kill my enemy's child. I've heard accounts from men that were in combat and faced very similar situations. They did what needed to be done, but they did it with extreme hesitation and only after they were certain such an act was necessary.
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