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020518 16:49 Star Wars

The Good Empire or How idealism took a dark turn

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These two items on the Internet have sparked my uneasiness:

  1. 'The Case for the Empire', by Jonathan V. Last at The Daily Standard.
  2. This spoof by an anonymous Usenet poster, reposted to Slashdot.

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Wait a minute. Only because we've gotten to know evil Darth Vader as tormented Anakin Skywalker, have developed compassion for him and admit that under every cruel person there must have once been an innocent soul, we are now entertaining the thought that the Evil Empire isn't that evil after all?

The Empire doesn't want slaves or destruction or "evil." It wants order. [1]

Let's just remind ourselves that we can still like Anakin/Vader as the tragic character that was corrupted by the evil Siths but eventually redeemed himself. But the Empire is still evil! It is still a dictatorship that oppresses it's subjects and limits their freedoms, all for greed and hunger for power, not for ideology.

But viewed in context, these acts are less brutal than they initially appear. [1]

There is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship. If you won't let the people participate in decisions about their lives then there's is nothing benevolent about your reign.

This article is the typical result of our present brainwashed and paranoid situation. Are we that scared and desperate for a leader who thinks for us and makes it all go away?

Weak-minded and easily manipulated people deeply disappoint me. In fact, that was the one thing I was really shocked about when I saw Attack of the Clones, how quickly the intelligent Jedi let themselves be manipulated into becoming pawns in this scheme. The Dark Side clouds everything. How true. And what a pathetic excuse.

Let's just think about this. We follow the trail of the almost-assassin of our beloved Amidala to this planet where we find this army of clones that has conveniently been built for us, and immediatly deploy it in a war without questioning the whole context of how we got there, let alone the ethical implications. Even with our marvellous Jedi powers evaporating, we shouldn't really need much intelligence to at least wonder.

The excuse for the necessity for a strong hand and for war is that the Republic has become too big and diverse to be governed. So we put our trust into one man, the 'emperor', to bring swift order to the chaos that we are unwilling to tackle differently, because negotiating between different world views and learning to live with more tolerance requires too much individual involvement and effort?

Maybe the reason for our willingness to change our minds about our interpretation of Star Wars is that otherwise we would be deeply embarrassed. The comparisons are well drawn in this text.

The attack on the Death Star came shortly after the Empire's destruction of Alderstaan, a planet whose government was known to harbor terrorists. [2]

If we want to justify our own current actions on this small planet we have no choice but to give the Empire some slack. After all, order is what we are longing for.

The Rebellion is now compared with the 'terrorists' of our real-life situation. How quickly our allegiances can be changed.

Whatever the case, the important thing to recognize is that the Empire is not committing random acts of terror. It is engaged in a fight for the survival of its regime against a violent group of rebels who are committed to its destruction.

Personally I can't wait for the rebellion to rise up again to ensure our return (?) to tolerance, diversity, freedom of opinion and trust.

As we all know from the final Star Wars installment, "Return of the Jedi," the rebellion is eventually successful. The Emperor is assassinated, Darth Vader abdicates his post and dies, the central governing apparatus of the Empire is destroyed in a spectacular space battle, and the rebels rejoice with their small, annoying Ewok friends. But what happens next? [1]
In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. [1]

Maybe that's because they don't believe in government.

The next 3 films now need to be made.

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Update: Aaron McGruder finally went to see it. Here's the May 27 strip and the May 28 strip. [update 031024: sorry, links are now broken]