Support the Chancellor

Found here: Feinobi

I can't vouch for anything else because I haven't looked, but this is wicked cool. Never forget, as Star Wars teaches us, that Palpatine got elected to office, and took "legal" steps every single way towards his goal of total power. Same with Hitler! He was duly elected to every post on his path to power, and used "Emergency Powers" towards the end game.

Hint: It's always "Emergency Powers" that does the trick. Thus, never trust anyone asking for that power.

Technological Terror

Don't forget! Disney bought Star Wars, and thus there is soon to be a new movie. And why not? Star Wars is still hugely popular, and any new film guaranteed to print money. But will it be good?

Being a nerd from the Internet, I don't think it will be. That it can be. Because the first 6 movies are really the story of a Sith Lord named Sidious, or you might know him as The Emperor. While the Skywalker family is the focus of the movies, it is the man also known as Palpatine that is the driving force behind all the movies, and everything happens because of him. Like Sauron, who is "The Lord of The Rings", all action in the story of Star Wars is in response to something Palpatine does, or has caused to happen. But now, technically, he's dead, and the new movie cannot (or should not!) feature him.

And thus, the odds of VII being a good Star Wars movie is small, since the main agent of the movies is gone. Bring back Luke, and Leia, and Han, and it doesn't really matter. There's no villain Disney can come up with better than Darth Sidious.

One of the best villains in fiction. Why? Lots of reasons, but not least of which he does many of his evil deeds posing as a respectable Senator,

 and then later Supreme Chancellor.

He's only mentioned in A New Hope. He appears as a hologram, once, in The Empire Strikes Back. He's a key piece of the conclusion in Return of the Jedi. He's the star of the Prequels. Let's take a moment to appreciate this aspect of the Prequels, even if you don't like them overall. Good villains are a treasure of mythology.

Remember! Vader - the Chosen One - is only a lackey to Darth Sidious. So, three cheers for the true Dark Lord of The Sith! Let us lament his fictional passing.

Enjoying the ride

Even if we are all plummeting towards our doom, better to laugh than quake in terror, yeah? Also, bread and circuses, or, updated for modern times, frozen cheesecake and a marathon of Gossip Girls.

Evil

"Dark Helmet: So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb. "


I think a lot about stupid stuff. Like, is the Dark Side stronger than the Light?

Are there such things as "sides"?

No.

However, for human convenience only, it's easier to talk about things like "evil" as if they were objective realities, true "things", rather than as subjective descriptors completely dependent on context.

So, for ease of discussion, assume Evil (capital E) is real, and thus so is Good (Capital G).

Evil has many advantages. For example, there's no shame in evil, nor are there any boundary lines. Evil does as evil wants. Good, on the other hand, by definition! Is denied a whole range of behaviors and modes of thought. Hard to describe someone as "Good", after all, when they murder remorselessly, right?

Put this into current American politics: If I was forced to assign a label, I would call the Republican Party "Evil", and the Democratic Party "Good" (I don't actually believe this -- well, yes, Republicans are evil, but so is, for the most part, the Democratic Party). For my fair Republican friends who might blanch at such labels, maybe this shorthand is useful.

Traditionally, selfishness is considered "Evil", and selflessness is considered "Good". Roughly, the (R) is dedicated to selfishness (lower taxes, lower regulations, better bombs) and the (D) is dedicated to selflessness (progressive taxation, welfare, social security, minimum wage, etc). I know, shorthand and not always accurate, but it will suffice.

This leaves you with the following: There is no slander, no attack, no lie beyond the Republican's reach. Their only calculation would be "does it help the candidate get elected, or get future candidates elected". Democrats, on the other hand, are constrained by morality within certain bounds. Thus, the lack of effective Democratic attack ads. The concept is almost inconceivable.

And where does this leave us? As Mike Barnicle told me last night on the Tee Vee: "Attack ads work". And this seems to be true, and thus we have a Republican domination of America, and thus the world, because people vote against their own interests, and for the interests of the American Plutocracy.

So John McCain is launching one after another after another, and the logical side of me says they are so absurd, so false, they cannot possibly work.

And then I remember we elected Bush in 2004. And then I worry....