The Road to Galactic Serfdom

This article is conspiratorial, and isn't aiming to be academically rigorous but I found it interesting to read and thought it might be worth sharing: how Star Wars is an allegory for the current politics / foreign policy of the US (although it also applies to the UK, France, NATO etc etc). It isn't meant to be a specifically anti-US polemic . . .
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-15/road-galactic-serfdom-libertarian-lessons-star-wars


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It's not something I agree with, but its always interesting to see what people can come up with :side:

The article does speak lots of truth in it and it's fairly obvious that governments in the past have started wars in order to gain more power. But some will refuse to believe it, because they don't want to believe such people would do such a thing to their own government, when they have done it before and some are doing it right now. It's the old "Create a problem, see how people react then step up with a so called 'solution'". I don't know why people think this idea is implausible when it's been done before numerous times. How many times have we seen dicators wanting safety and security and limiting people's freedoms at the same time? It's been done before.

i enjoyed the article quite a lot

i remember watching america just lose its mind after 9-11

from the first day out "Dubya" ("W") was saying "we dont know who did it" and "they did it because they are evil and they hate our freedom" in essentially the same breath

i mean there was blatant manipulation going on, in the form of fear mongering, (remember the color codes for terror levels?) overt hostility towards anyone who questioned or doubted the war rhetoric, demonization of muslims, and especially the silly idea that we were "liberating" iraq - which was stupid even then: its stupid to think that an invading, occupying force, is a liberating force, period - that is stupid

i mean, if we were in the business of "liberating" people or of protecting people from internal tyranny, the darfur genocide was still going strong at that point, and we were still doing nothing, and that WAS a clear case of "getting involved is the right thing to do" (exactly HOW was debatable, but anyone paying the least bit of attention knew that it was a terrible situation and that those people needed help)

the idea that the iraq invasion could be justified as altruistic endeavor to :save the iraqis" was absurd, especially in light of that darfur/sudan crisis

not to mention that it's also a violation of international law to invade a foreign nation and topple their government, and the fact that america didnt care ("youre either with us or youre against us" - dubya's exact words)

so yeah, i agree with much of what the author says in that article - i was here to see it happen to a lesser extent in my own country

thanks for posting!

also, the reference to pearl harbor being "engineered" led me to this http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=408

"Do Freedom of Information Act Files Prove FDR Had Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor?

Stinnett’s well-documented book makes a convincing case that the highest officials of the government—including the highest official—fooled and deceived millions of Americans about one of the most important days in the history of the country. It now has to be considered one of the most definitive—if not the definitive—book on the subject. Gore Vidal has said, “...Robert Stinnet has come up with most of the smoking guns. Day Of Deceit shows that the famous ‘surprise’ attack was no surprise to our war-minded rulers...” And John Toland, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Pearl Harbor book, Infamy, said, “Step by step, Stinnett goes through the prelude to war, using new documents to reveal the terrible secrets that have never been disclosed to the public. It is disturbing that eleven presidents, including those I admired, kept the truth from the public until Stinnett’s Freedom of Information Act requests finally persuaded the Navy to release the evidence.”

That was very interesting. I'd be lying if I said it didn't make sense to an extent (a rather large one too). Although mostly I enjoyed the discussion of Luke's journey mirroring that of his father's (well...it was written the other way around, but you know what I mean) and the differences in their choices that led to the different end of their paths.

I'm a little surprised that they didn't bring up parallels between the prequels and the Roman Empire, which I always thought was what the prequels were modeled on. That would have shown that there were real life examples of exactly what they were talking about, but that might have taken too long to explain in any sort of detail. A republic in crisis hands over power to a power hungry yet seemingly benign leader who then uses his new power to keep himself there permanently through fear and war.

One should question leaders who use war as a first resort. When war should always be a last resort. Many of them are so eager to fight and go to war. Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction and even if they did, which they didn't, who gives a person the right to invade the nation and take it by force saying you can't have any. Did people support the idea because they were Muslims or Saddam was a bad leader? Well America didn't seem to mind Pakistan or North Korea having nukes but Iraq having some is bad?

It's pretty obvious Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Even Afghanistan didn't have anything to do with it. If 9/11 was done by terrorists, than why punish an entire country? If Ethiopian criminals did what they did did, would it be wise to go to war with Ethiopia? That doesn't make sense. And what's even sadder is the people following orders to commit atrocities in war and they honestly think what they are doing is the right thing and they have no idea they are being manipulated.