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."
There is historical president for that kind of diabolical realpolitik. It's rather like the development of conscription and the concept of total war that has caused such untold horror in the 20th century. Once the French brought it into practice everyone had adopt it or suffer the same fate as Alderaan... I mean Europe.
Star Wars is really about how the Jedi Council (read:United Nations) sat on its hands and refused to do anything to stop the spread of Sithlam until it was too late.
If the Jedi Council had actually raised a peacekeeping force from the start and used it to liberate Tatooine from the violent sand-people, then Anakin's mother would have never been killed.
And if Ani's mother had never been killed, then the seductive teachings of Sithlam would have fallen on deaf ears. But the corruption and appeasement of the Jedi Do-nothings all but insured that Sithlam would spread unchecked.
Indeed. As Sigmund Freud reportedly said, "Sometimes a cigar, is just a cigar."
Arm - Gettysburg.
Leg - Chickamauga.
We should build the Death Star regardless.
Memo to FReepers: Mr Roberts is just an idiot.
While, as a Christian, I disagree with the New Age tenets espoused in the Star Wars movies, they are less offensive- and dangerous to Western civilization and Judeo-Christian morality than is the Marxist and nihilist bent of most mainstream entertainment: music, film, art, etc. Lucas is not influenced by a Christian worldview, as are other popular writers who dealt in mythological themes, such as Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. However, there are significant areas of congruence with traditional morality in the Star Wars films, such as the value of heroism, honor, and self-sacrifice. Christians and other supporters of traditional values should not reject the whole package to the extent that is necessary with most of the nihilistic, amoral cesspool of rock, rap, and hip-hop, or the leftist propaganda movies of Oliver Stone or Michael Moore.
There are no reasonable parallels between Chancellor Palpatine and George W. Bush, unless you want to resort to conspiratorialism and equate the Sith with Skull and Bones. Even Paul Craig Roberts does not go that far. Governments expanding their powers during wartime is almost a universal fact. Using wars as an excuse to expand domestic political power was a shopworn technique even in the days of Julius Caesar. If there is any parallel of Star Wars with actual history, it would be in the conversion of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire and the ruthless and corrupt emperors like Nero and Caligula who occupied the throne.
While there may have been a few throwaway lines of dialogue that were intended as attacks on President Bush, the overall theme of the movie is the conversion of a republic into an empire through corruption and merciless killing of enemies. Fallen heroes like Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, the selfless heroine (Padme Amadala), and the thin line between good (Jedi) and evil (Sith) are universal symbols that derive from Joseph Campbell's works.
The bottom line is that it is entertainment with a New Age spin, and not intended to be a political statement.
"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."
Oh, well! If the Ass-ociated Press says it, then it's true!
F*king idiots!
Unless it's made of gum!
Which if you know your history you know was the result of enfranchisement (i.e. Partisanship) and an increasing slide towards democracy. It's all in Plato people.
News flash: President Bush did not "turn the Muslim world against us"...to say he did is a patently absurd statement! In fact, one of the reasons we went into Afghanistan and Iraq is that some in the Muslim world, with absolutely no help from President Bush, have wanted to kill us and many other "infidels" for a long time, and more recently have done so with some success. Terrorism is global, but you have to start somewhere.
This writer has a screw loose, IMHO...it's disturbing that he sincerely believes his analogy is correct, and worse when he can persuade otherwise normal people to believe it too...what's wrong with these people?! Doesn't anyone know how to "fact check" or think critically and logically any more? Sheesh!
They have people who think Bush put nuclear bombs in the Towers. Some people just have to be written off. They aren't worth saving.
Astonishing. I honestly thought this was a parody. To be charitable I hope that Mr. Roberts reads this five years hence and winces. Painful.
What do you expect from NewsMax, anyway? :)
Work at Wendy's.
Moving the subject from jedi younglings to islamofacist children, you'd actually kill someone's child just because the parents of that child are dead set on killing you?
No. Next question, please.
Freud never met Bill Clinton. I'm not sure whether that is a good thing.
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