The Revenge of the Liberals

How Star Wars is being used to bash Bush

By Andrew R Quinio
Posted on 05/19/05

In light of the successes in Iraq, Liberals have exchanged their mantra, “Iraq is another Vietnam,” for, “George Bush is another Darth Vader.” It seems that desperate times have called for desperate measures. After a recent showing of Star Wars Episode III at the Cannes Film Fesitval in France, several audience members drew a connection between the rise of Darth Vader’s evil galactic empire and Bush’s War on Terror. Many have cited a line said by Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader: “If you're not with me, then you're my enemy.” For European Liberals, it is close enough to Bush’s remark, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” to make them run crying to the UN.

I myself found a different connection. There is a parallel between Darth Vader’s crusade to kill all the Jedi and Osama Bin Laden’s crusade to wipe out America. But who am I to make comparisons between Bin Laden and Vader. As my French friends have informed me, George Bush is totally Darth Vader, and that murderous al-Qaeda leader, Osama what’s his name, isn’t even in the running.

Even the mainstream media is jumping on the bandwagon. The Today Show recently aired a segment in which they highlighted the supposed similarities between Vader’s rise to power and Bush’s current leadership in the War on Terror. I am still confident that the mainstream media had no ulterior motive in airing such a segment. As long as they retract their story about troops freezing the Koran in carbonite at Guantanamo, my faith in their unbiased reporting will be upheld. We also wouldn’t want the added hassle of Star Wars geeks starting anti-American riots with their plastic light-sabers.

The new Star Wars movie is providing political fodder for both conservatives and liberals. According to the New York Times, the winners at Moveon.org were planning to loiter major multiplexes and pass out leaflets comparing Republican Sen. Bill Frist to power-hungry Chancellor Palpatine. Meanwhile, a conservative website recently placed George Lucas on the list of anti-American entertainers to boycott.

So is there a political connection to Star Wars? The Force tells me that there isn’t. Believe it or not, Darth Vader is a fictional character from a movie that is not attempting to draw any sort of connection to real life. Star Wars isn’t making a political statement, George Lucas is not anti-American, and the people from Moveon.org are not winners. What is certain is that the liberals are trying hard to turn Star Wars into a political statement, just for the sake of denouncing Dubya.

It is sad to see the scope and substance of political debate in America reduced to pointing out the coincidences from popular Hollywood movies. Nowadays, a secularist cannot publicly criticize a member of the Christian Coalition without retelling scenes from Kingdom of Heaven. Imagine James Carville on Crossfire yelling to Bob Novak, “Bush’s foreign policy is a disaster. Sounds like we are living a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away all over again…” What happened to supporting one’s arguments with facts, figures, or historical references? Instead, the Entertainment section of a newspaper is the only thing a Liberal needs for a debate.

To their credit, the Liberals are helping their cause by simplifying the political debate with comparisons to fictional movie characters. More people would choose to hear about USS Ronald Reagan’s resemblance to the Death Star rather than how the Laffer Curve should guide tax policy. Connecting politics to movies is like getting one’s message out with a bumper sticker, only with cool CGI effects. If the recent Presidential election is any indication of who needs to get their message out the most, the Liberals have no choice but to manipulate the meanings of popular movies for their own political gain. Thus, it is no surprise that they jumped at the opportunity to compare our President to a Darth Vader.

If a connection really must be made, then it isn’t at all offensive to this Republican Star Wars fan that Bush is compared to Darth Vader. After all, Anakin Skywalker is the “chosen one” who eventually kills the evil and tyrannical emperor by tossing him to his death. Anakin rid the galaxy of evil, and George W. Skywalker is doing the same for ours, so the comparison isn’t so bad.

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