I had a fleeting brain fart of a thought earlier, and the more I’ve pondered on it, the more sense it begins to make.
For about a decade now I have become increasingly annoyed with people who mistakenly believe that being left wing simply means being anti-America (or more precisely, anti-Republican), or that being liberal means being anti-global (or more precisely, anti-logo). Proper political discourse does not stem from being simply contrary to bigger entities. But, I realised tonight what’s caused it.
Star Wars.
The fairytale nature of the film’s narrative has left an indelible imprint on the psyche of my generation. A rag-tag collection of rebels band together using a load of recycled junk and overthrow an evil well-oiled, overbearing empire. That this idea was born out of Lucas’ view of the Vietnam war is even more pertinent.
We’ve grown up indoctrinated by two droids to believe that the power in the galaxy must be inherently evil, and that we can get together with some teddy bears in the woods and cause a revolution. Before having a nice picnic.
The plot device of the Force has also dismantled our rationocentric reasoning centres, and made us more susceptible to the idea that we can communicate with the dead.
Some people blame the post-modernists, but I blame Yoda.
