A Pilgrim’s Digression

As soon as the media types were allowed to view Revenge of the Sith, among the first things the public was told was that the movie was an implicit critique of Bush Administration policy. One article in the Washington Post was titled The Empire Strikes Bush, in which Lucas was quoted as giving some credence to the idea that his film was a critique of the Bush Administration and the Iraq war in particular.

After premiering his film at Cannes, Lucas was quoted as saying,

‘I didn’t think it was going to get quite this close,’ he said of the parallels between the Nixon era and the current Bush presidency, which has been sacrificing freedoms in the interests of national security. ‘It is just one of those re-occurring things. I hope this doesn’t come true in our country. Maybe the film will awaken people to the situation of how dangerous it is.’

Thus “Revenge” certainly has a political moral which Lucas believes is relevant to our society today. I would be interested in knowing if Limbaugh or one of his cohorts in radio has mentioned the links between Bush and “Revenge”; I don’t listen to these programs much anymore. I suspect Limbaugh hasn’t mentioned it much, if at all. I recall back in ‘99, when The Phantom Menace appeared, Limbaugh responded to the first negative reviews by commenting that the film must have a Conservative moral, if the “liberal” media was attacking it, and so he promoted the film on his program, at least until he saw it himself. I don’t think Limbaugh and his buddies have any illusions anymore about which side of the political divide Lucas stands on. What might be more interesting to study is how the politics of the prequels changed from 1999 through 2005, especially since the second and third film of the trilogy appeared after 9/11/01.

There are clearly some seemingly explicit links to the Bush Administration in “Revenge” which ought to be provocative to the Limbaugh-types, though. Anakin’s now-infamous line, “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy,” echoes another infamous line by George Bush. And as the “Post” reports, Obi-Wan’s response—”Only a Sith thinks in absolutes”—will probably find its way onto the bumper of thousands of Volvos and Toyotas by the time 2008 rolls around.

On a more general level, the movie is about how a tyrant manipulates a democracy into militarizing, prompting its citizens to give up essential freedoms. The war against the Seperatists (read “terrorists”) is a deception that allows the tyrant to consolidate his executive power and weaken the Senate, the representative of democracy. That word “executive,” our American word for the President and his office, is even used a couple of times in the film to describe Palpatine and his office.

If one believes in the bad intentions of Bush, then, the parallels are unmistakable. Conservatives will argue that the comparison is unfair. We were attacked on 9/11, etc., etc… However, the Republic was attacked also. It just had no idea that its leader was playing for both sides during the war. No one but the craziest of the crazies would accuse George Bush of playing for both sides, and I think there the parallels between the film and reality end. However, Bush is a cunning manipulator, and I believe without a shadow of a doubt that he has used 9/11 and the resulting war as a method of consolidating his party’s power.

Perhaps the strongest parallel between “Revenge” and our American reality is the fact that the Republic willingly sacrifices its freedom in the name of an ephemeral “security” which does not exist. During Palpatine’s speech declaring the first Galactic Empire, Padm� remarks, “So this is how liberty dies: to thunderous applause.” And Lucas has never written anything more true. It’s a Machiavellian principle that people don’t want freedom so much as security, and Bush, or people close to him, have learned that principle very well. Unfortunately, the security provided is not security from death at the hands of a phantom menace. The government admits constantly that “it’s only a matter of time” before another massive terrorist attack, yet people do not wake up to the fact that our government cannot protect us from fanatics who want to kill us. The security provided is a semblance, and what consistently amazes me is how satisfied people are with that semblance.

I feel sick every time I think about some Republican saying they voted for Bush because he’s a “strong” leader and “you know where he stands.” That’s all appearance, and it means nothing when you get right down to the supposedly inevitable fact of a terrorist driving a truck loaded with explosives into one of our cities.

Yet providing the semblance of security is important for maintaining power. Another interesting parallel between the Republic and our Republic is that when Palpatine assumes power, he does not dissolve the Senate, at least not immediately. People often forget that the Senate survives right up through the beginning of A New Hope. People often think of the Empire as a monolithic entity, and yet close examination reveals that for at least twenty years after the fall of the Republic, the Empire maintained the semblance of democracy as well as the semblance of security. Why?

In his Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli wrote of how a tyrant can grab power from a position of strength. He wrote that among other things, the tyrant “must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones.”

In A New Hope, specifically in the scene in which Tarkin announces the dissolution of the Senate, Commander Tagge says, “That’s impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?” In one way Tagge is right. The end of the Senate and the bureaucracy also symbolically marks the end of the Empire at a time when the Emperor believes he is at the height of his power. As long as “democracy” in a weakened form continues in the Republic, the Empire grows stronger. When the illusion of a living democracy is no longer maintained, the Empire seals its own fate. So we can expect that in our Republic, the corpse of democracy will remain on display, only appearing to live, long after it has died an unceremonious death “to thunderous applause.” Recall that in Rome, the Senate also continued beyond its official expiration date. What I find truly amazing is that after assassinating Caesar in the very halls of the Senate, the Senate then installed his nephew Caesar Augustus as dictator. People choose their own enslavement, more often than not.

In our Republic, war has turned out to be a major catalyst for this enslavement, as in the Republic. On an individual level, war has made it easier for people to accept changes which bring the nation closer to a police state. Patriotism drowns out dissent; soldiering is glorified as the greatest of occupations. On a larger scale, people accept the wholesale elimination of a right to privacy as necessary for “security”; and due process is eliminated for anyone the State deems a “terrorist.” War has increased the power of the Executive branch, while weakening the Legislative. No one thinks it out of the ordinary that the President makes war, assuming unto himself the right explicitly granted only to the Legislative branch in our Constitution. That is a tremendous power, perhaps the one power that is key to unlocking all others.

Machiavelli also wrote that fear is the source of power. An American populace that lives in fear, not necessarily of its own leader, but of everyone else in the world, “the enemy,” is a populace easily manipulated by those who promise security.

Our war on terror is fueled mostly by our own fear, but also a desire for control. We invaded the Middle East because we wanted to control what “those people” think and say about us and what they can do to us. This is considered going to the root of the problem. I read recently in The Liberal New York Times about Administration plans to “Weaponize” space, that is deploy space-based weapons that can strike anywhere on earth in minutes. Control. We think that we can control the perceived “threats” from our enemies. Doing so, we only make more enemies.

Grand Moff Tarkin is proud of his battle station, the Death Star, so proud that he brags to the captive Princess Leia about the power it confers. Leia’s response is instructive: “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”