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."
I think the best reaction to someone trying to make a political point by talking about Star Wars is:
Yeah, and 'member that time, 'member when Yoda lifted the X-wing using the Force? That was AWESOME!
If Bush were a Sith Lord, he'd deal with Paul Craig Roberts by telekinetically choking him...not that there's anything WRONG with that :)
Guys in the Empire do live much nicer. And you get all those guys in white suits to clear the way for you. Empire. Has a nice ring to it.
The congenital lying above and beyond the political norm, would undoubtedly have been diagnosed. (As even his political pals said of Slick: "Did you know he is an unusually good liar? I mean really unusually good.") Freud would likely have come up with some Oedipus complex to explain Bills' other penchants...
*LOL* Bush isn't like any of the Star Wars heroes.
I understood what you initially said, which is why I asked you my question.
My answer to your question is an emphatic 'no'. I would not kill a child that was raised to hate and kill me.
No it's not. It's just a movie.
no! no girlfriend for him... he might reproduce!
for them, all was right. we were heading towards a nice socialist government, then we get this republican in office, and actually, the world got better for them. now they can take all this screaming about loss of rights that we've been talking about for years, and blame it on bush.
:-)
I hadn't yet gotten that far, and the book I am reading didn't go into details about Chickamauga so much and instead concentrated on Lee and in Petersburg...
No... but he IS a bit of a Sitthy..
You know, him, being Vincente Foxes b!tch or main squeeze.. and all..
Mexican insurgents are pouring accross the border..
Many as mules for the Drug Lords.. <<-the Mexican gov't..
i thought the movie was based on reality, wwii germany and hitler, vietnam and their leader.. and now hillary. if you want to see a correlation, look there.
she's a senator
there's a possible interminable war
she's smart, cunning, crafty, and conniving
she'll do anything for absolute power
she was very close to a major leader (bill)
anything i'm missing?
biblically, you are supposed to.
check out Deuteronomy 20: 16-18.
Regards, Ivan
But the folks dressing up as Stormtroopers and Darth Vader are on the Dork Side.
You have touched on a topic many, probably almost all here will not explore.
It needs to be spoken about and brought into the light. I believe the time for recognizable enemies in unifroms are a thing of the not to distant future.
Now more than ever, children are being used a soldiers. Africa is awash with them. And other countries are starting to use child soldiers as well. They are every bit as deadly as their adult counterparts I believe, maybe more dangerous. What American soldier would shoot a child? They would hesitate I believe, which is what the child soldier is relying on. Hesitate till they knew this child soldier was their enemy.
Those who meet such tribal hordes of homicidal kids and knife wielding females quickly lose their reluctance to shoot to kill.
A whole new warfare is emerging I believe. The line between civilian and enemy combatant is bluring.
I frankly believe that the families of known Jihadis should be sought out and dealt with.
I heartedly agree.
This is war to the knife and we should treat our enemies as what they are with no mercy at all.
This PC war we are fighting isn't gonna cut it.
Let me break this down a bit. Suppose a child of 8 or 9 was strapped with a suicide belt. That child is about to walk into the middle of 30 to 40 children playing in a park...would you shoot that child before they made it to the innocent children?
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