As George Lucas said in Time Magazine:

"All democracies turn into dictatorships—but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea ... What kinds of things push people and institutions into this direction?

...That's the issue that I've been exploring: How did the Republic turn into the Empire? That's paralleled with: How did Anakin turn into Darth Vader? How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship? It isn't that the Empire conquered the Republic, it's that the Empire is the Republic."

"Lucas' comments clarify the connection between the Anakin trilogy and the Luke trilogy: that the Empire was created out of the corruption of the Republic, and that somebody had to fight it."

"One day Princess Leia and her friends woke up and said, 'This isn't the Republic anymore, it's the Empire. We are the bad guys. Well, we don't agree with this. This democracy is a sham, it's all wrong.'"

The none-too-subtle staged terrorist attack against Senator Padme Amidala's ship to usher in an era of "security" and ultimately the take-over by the Dark Side did not go unnoticed. I didn't miss the similarities to the problem-reaction-solution system that has been utilized by world leaders as far back as the history books go. The parents who paid $8 admission charge each for their kids to see Episode 2 seemed to have missed the point. But the children got it.

Lucas gets it.

Ask your average American why they think Hitler became supreme commander of Germany. Did he just "pull the wool over their eyes"? Was everybody "brainwashed"? or did his stormtroopers burn the Reichstag building down, blame it on terrorists, and tell the people: "I cannot protect you, unless you give me full control."

Irrational Reactionism: The Last War on Terror

"In the end, the last War on Terrorism didn't go so well for Germany. They not only lost their War on Terrorism, but their regime was ultimately defeated, not by the "terrorists", but by a foreign alliance because of their response to terrorism.

The foreign alliance felt justified in removing a hysterical empire from existence, who apparently could not deal with terrorism in a rational manner. If history is to repeat itself, Russia and China will feel the same moral justification when they attempt to do the same.

The sheeple are simply more happy thinking they have a government that is incompetent than a government that is evil, when in fact they have a government that is so incompetent that it can't recognize its own evils.

The Psychology Behind Mass Subservience to Tyranny

"Everyone likes to say, "Hitler did this," and "Hitler did that." But the truth is Hitler did very little.

He was a world class tyrant, but the evil actually done by the Third Reich, from the death camps to WWII, was all done by German citizens who were afraid to question if what they were told by their government was the truth or not, and who, because they did not want to admit to themselves that they were afraid to question the government, refused to see the truth behind the Reichstag Fire, refused to see the invasion by Poland was a staged fake, and followed Hitler into national disaster."

"America has escaped the clutches of a dictatorship thus far only through the efforts of those citizens who, unlike the Germans of the 1930s, have the moral courage to stand up and point out where the government is lying to the people."

"The reality is that the American people, as individuals, have lost their courage. The government prefers it that way, as a fearful people are easier to rule than a courageous one..."

Perhaps as Goddard said:

"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get."

Sounds about right to me.

Feedback welcome...
- valis