A Little Reflection on Star Wars History

There's a lot out on the Internet about Star Wars's history, both in real life and in the Legends and canonical universes.  I am not versed deeply in the lore of Star Wars Legends as there is a great deal of it, and I am at best a journeyman in my knowledge of the new canon's history.  But I am a history buff (both for Star Wars and for real life) and an armchair philosophy who uses popular culture as the lens for my personal philosophies.

Maybe you don't know Star Wars very well, maybe you like it but you never took the time to synthesize everything that's been going on in all the movies and television shows and comic books and novels and... *gasping breath* ...whatever else is out there.

[Excited Whistle]

I'd like to reflect on the current state of affairs in Star Wars history, and the interesting direction it's taken since the Legends have been thrown out.  I feel that, since so many people were attached to the Expanded Universe stuff (now called Legends), the current canon is not usually given a fair shake.  My own personal views on Star Wars philosophy will play into my interpretation of what I've read, and that's the touch that I hope will convince you that what I'm writing is worth having read.

So what follows is a -- *ahem* -- brief synopsis of the Star Wars saga so far.

I'm not much more than an interpreter, and not very good at telling stories anyway.

For those who do not know, the Star Wars calendar (as recorded by the New Republic) measures time before and after the Battle of Yavin (ie. the destruction of the first Death Star above the planet Yavin).  So the First Galactic Empire and its New Order was established in 19 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin) and fell in about 7 ABY (After the Battle of Yavin) with the Battle of Jakku.  This is important to know for a clear understanding of the time frames that I'm talking about.

To get a quick backstory on how the Empire came to be, it's important to understand the history of the Clone Wars.  All of this started about 40BBY with a Jedi master named Sifo Dyas.  I won't go into too much detail about Sifo Dyas, but suffice it to say that he predicted the whole Clone War thing coming and so went, in secret, to have an army of clones made for the Grand Republic.  This eventually became the Grand Army of the Republic, and it was all made from the genome of a Mandalorian bounty hunter named Jango Fett.  The dark lord of the Sith, who had been developing his power in hiding, caught wind of Sifo Dyas's behavior, and sent his apprentice to mess around with the clones and set in motion the circuitous plan that would make the Sith Lord the Emperor of the galaxy.

Twenty years later (yes, there's no shit that big a gap between important events here), a nobleman named Count Dooku takes a grip of star systems that were once part of the Grand Republic and secedes, forming the Confederacy of Independent Systems.  It is because of this that the supreme chancellor, Sheev Palpatine, secretly the dark lord of the Sith, is able to receive emergency war powers that let him officially found the Grand Army of the Republic.  The Separatists employ battle droids in armed conflict against a force of primarily Jedi in the First Battle of Geonosis which kicks off the Clone Wars.  Nobody seems phased by the fact that the Grand Army was hot and ready to shoot when Palpatine called for them.

Through twists and turns, Palpatine manipulates both the Separatists and the Grand Army to weaken the infrastructure of the galaxy until he can take a new apprentice: Darth Vader.  Palpatine is convinced that Darth Vader is a prophesied and powerful warrior who will help him reign over the galaxy for all eternity.  In order for that to work, however, Palpatine has to find the secrets to eternal life.  So he begins to look for that.  Meanwhile he sends Vader on a killing spree.  Vader kills all the Jedi on the capital world of Coruscant, including all the Jedi children.  Then Vader is sent to kill the Separatist leadership, and the Clone Wars end very suddenly.  Along with this, Palpatine's earlier interference with the Grand Army allows him to force the Clones to execute all the Jedi out in the field.  The galaxy is told that the Jedi betrayed the Republic.  Palpatine reorganizes the Republic into the First Galactic Empire in 19BBY.  The regions throughout the Core of the galaxy easily accept the peace this brings, because much of the fighting had damaged their worlds tremendously.

That's the nitty-gritty of the Clone Wars, distilled into three paragraphs.  There's a lot more intrigue and development, but this post is already quite long and I'll assume you haven't got all day.  You now know enough to move onto the Galactic Civil War.

To begin the Galactic Civil War era I want to answer a question that I myself have asked, and recently have heard asked, about the Rebellion.  Why did it all take place in the Outer Rim?

The simple answer is that the Core Worlds, the Colonies, and the Mid-Rim were all mostly happy to fall under Imperial rule.  These are worlds primarily inhabited by human beings, and although some key non-human races inhabit the Core Worlds, most of the prominent members of non-human races come from the Outer Rim.

The Outer Rim is also more vast and lawless, so the Empire is stretched thin trying to keep it all under control.  The Hutts gangsters have their kajidics reaching outward from Hutt space to the Western reaches with the help of Jabba the Hutt (through 6ABY).  Although the Hutts officially paid lip service to the Empire, they considered themselves above Imperial law and asserted their own authority wherever they lay their greasy tails.

But the Outer Rim is not as resource-rich as the Core-ward regions.  There are some key strategic planets, and the Empire certainly pinpointed those first, but until the Alliance to Restore the Republic stole the Death Star plans the Empire never considered the Rebels to be a credible threat.  Whatever small victories the Rebels may have had on planets like Lothal and Mygeeto, the Empire responded by doubling down its strength to great effect.  For the most part, if the Empire wanted any one planet in the Outer Rim, they took it.

Tarkin Town, a ghetto on Lothal created by Imperial sanctions against aliens and dissidents.

In response to Rebel activity, Tarkin Town was razed to the ground.

There was the issue of keeping the planets they took, and all of the others, after they had been placed under Imperial Authority.  Rebel cells acted as nuisances, disrupting the efforts of Imperial governors and causing problems for the Imperial foothold in the Outer Rim.  So a project left over from the Clone Wars was brought forward by Director Orson Krennic and the Imperial Governor Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin.  Tarkin pitched the idea to the Emperor, and Director Krennic set off trying to reclaim the one guy in the galaxy who'd figured out how to turn kyber crystals (the focus of a Jedi's lightsaber energy blade) into a source of near-infinite power: Galen Erso.  And Krennic wanted this man to weaponize that power for the Death Star.  Go figure.

During much of this ruthless expansion into the Outer Rim territory, the Emperor continued to be slowed down somewhat by the existence of the Imperial Senate.  A holdover from the Grand Republic, the Senate gave the galaxy some semblance of democracy.  Although the Emperor held supreme military power, much of the actual governing of planets was handled by the Senate until 0BBY.  So the Emperor set about a plan to get rid of the Senate.  Because when people are voting, you'll never get them to agree which planet ought to be blown up.  And the Emperor does like playing with his toys.

When Jynn Erso stole the Death Star plans and delivered them to the Tantive IV, the Rebellion earned the close and continued attentions of Darth Vader.  Though Vader had a hand in dealing with Rebels on Lothal, he was really only interested in hunting down a missing padawan: Caleb Dume (aka Kanan Jarrus).  Until the Death Star plans were stolen, Vader's job wasn't routing out Rebels it was continuing to eliminate the Jedi as an overseer of the Imperial Inquisitorius.  It took an encounter with his old padawan, Ahsoka Tanno, to divert his attention from the Jedi of the Phoenix Squadron Rebel cell.

Vader on Lothal

Vader was a legendary physical manifestation of the Emperor's will, and, eventually like Luke Skywalker, was a bit of a myth among the people of the galaxy fortunate enough not to cross his path.  Few Imperials even dealt with him, and during the early Empire Era Vader operated out of his castle on Mustafar.  Having Vader as a common presence would have disrupted the general belief that the Force was a bunch on nonsense made up by the Jedi to bamboozle the galaxy (an important tenet of Imperial propaganda).

Most importantly, Jyn Erso and the Battle of Scarif legitimized the Alliance to Restore the Republic in the eyes of the Empire.  They weren't just dealing with a few disparate dissidents, they were dealing with an organized and armed militia.  Tarkin took up residence on the Death Star and Vader chased after the Tantive IV to recover the stolen Death Star plans.  Quite honestly, this one task is the most involved Vader ever was in rooting out the Rebellion as a fighting force.  After failing to recover the plans, Vader devoted himself to locating Luke Skywalker, not to destroying the Rebels.  Ostensibly, he was still continuing his mission to eliminate the Jedi.

If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

But as much as the Skywalkers would like to believe it, the galaxy doesn't orbit them and their weird family squabble.  The Empire never planned to have only one Death Star, and began right away on a second one.  In traditional Imperial fashion, they doubled-down on their military, and an interesting thing happened in the Core, Colonies, and Mid-Rim regions: there was a schism of opinion in the Empire.

Two things happened to cause this: the Death Star destroyed Alderaan, and then the Rebels destroyed the Death Star.  Both of these events cost millions of lives.  Possibly collectively billions (the population numbers are always estimated really low in science fiction).  People who cared more about the atrocity that the Empire committed against a Core World began to dissent.  People who cared more about the ferocious terrorist attack on an Imperial military facility strengthened their resolve.  In short, the civil war got worse.  This is hard to see in the Star Wars trilogy, but it has a lot to do with why The Empire Strikes Back is so dark, and why the Rebels lose so much footing in that movie.

The Rebel Alliance is on the run so badly that it cannot gather except in the depths of the Outer Reaches.  Out beyond the Outer Rim, they begin to amass an unprecedented fleet of ships from all over the galaxy.  Everyone was starting to show up to the party, including larger numbers of Imperial defectors.  It was at this time that the Rebels learned from Bothawui of the second Death Star being constructed above the forest moon of Endor (which is technically not a moon, but a dwarf planet).

The Empire felt pretty good about its chances against the Rebels.  Between 1ABY and 6ABY, they had the Rebels on the ropes.  They had no reason to suspect that the enemies they made during those years would contribute to their demise.  Did you ever notice how much larger the Rebellion military seemed to be in Return of the Jedi compared to A New Hope or Empire Strikes Back?  Well, people weren't happy about what the Empire was up to and they showed up with guns to do something about it.  When the second Death Star was destroyed, there was much celebration by rebel sympathizers throughout the galaxy.  But there was also a sudden and horrible retribution from the remaining Imperial powers.

You see, those in power aren't likely to give it up quickly, especially when they got that power by bullying in the first place.  And the Empire was made up of no one if not a multitude of the most clever, brutish, and cold-hearted bullies that ever terrorized the galaxy.  But these bullies were also people, and often people of strong convictions.  The slaughter on worlds like Coruscant following the tear down of Sheev Palpatine's statue was just what you would expect from a military dictatorship struggling to retain its power.

In the first few months following the Battle of Endor, the Empire executed a powerful campaign of misinformation.  The official story was that the Emperor was not at Endor, and that he was alive and well on Coruscant.  You see, Palpatine had plans in place in the event of his death, and his subordinates were able to keep much of Imperial High Command fooled in the time after his destruction.

The Empire was, however, extremely fractured.  Without central guidance from the Emperor, and without a replacement for the missing ruler, Moffs and Admirals took it into their own hands to steer their diaspora forces to victory over the New Republic fleet.

To say the New Republic made short work of the Empire is not entirely accurate.  Imperial forces continued to fight on with as much fervor as ever in the wake of Endor.  It was at about this time that Luke Skywalker split fully from the Rebellion to begin researching the ancient Jedi ways.  He had yet to decide to found his temple, and Leia and Han hadn't yet produced baby Ben yet.  Nevertheless, a cadre of the more capable Imperial commanders regrouped and planned one last ditch effort to try to defeat the New Republic once and for all: the Battle of Jakku.

Exactly one year and a day (I think) after the Battle of Endor, the Battle of Jakku was a huge failure for the waning Empire.  Jakku had been the site of an Imperial listening post during the height of the Empire, and Palpatine had even ordered some top secret research be done there.  According to Palpatine, this planet was going to be a big deal some day in the future.  Who'd have thought?

But the battles aside, the politics of what was going on behind the scenes start to get really interesting at this point.  With the war ending, the Core Worlds are beginning to realize that they are under new leadership.  Being that they supported centralized government, they more or less welcomed the New Republic.  To your average citizen, it wasn't much different in the Core Worlds (except there were lower recruitment quotas for the demilitarizing New Republic military).  Tariffs were lifted and trade lanes opened up.

But in the Core Worlds, something was missing.  Nobody talked about it openly for many years (about 24 years, Bloodline takes place about 6 years before The Force Awakens).  But over two decades, political sentiments in favor of a more fascist, utilitarian government have started to come to the fore.  So the New Republic splits between two diametrically opposed factions: the centrists and the populists.

You can start drawing a lot of parallels here between American political parties and the political parties of the New Republic.  You can even see how whenever there's a political official that someone doesn't like they're compared to Darth Vader.  Well, okay, that's not exactly what happened -- Leia's relationship to Darth Vader was released and the galaxy balked.  But it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that kind of tactic being thrown around a heated senate chamber in the New Republic.

Officially, the Empire had no political parties because they were pretty clearly a fascist organization.  The centrists in Star Wars desire the social benefits of that fascism.  The more naive centrists see the benefits of that organization and believe it can be achieved without the iron fist of men like Darth Vader and Sheev Palpatine.  Most, however, simply miss the Galactic Empire and the fringe benefits they had from being at the top of their societal food chains.

The climate is right for the First Order to return.  The First Order, built from the remnant of Imperial forces that survived the Battle of Jakku, have been hiding out in the Western reaches for three decades.  In the final years before The Force Awakens, they have begun to more radically mobilize because the political atmosphere has begun to support it.  They choose the name First Order because they want to be clear that the Republic is the usurping power in the galaxy, and the Galactic Empire's New Order (founded 19BBY) is the legitimate government, and that it never went away in the first place.

What we don't get to see in The Force Awakens is that the galaxy after the destruction of Hosnian Prime is going to be split like a pane of glass, with a thousand fragments breaking off from several large pieces.  The destruction of the New Republic doesn't just allow the First Order to assert a foothold, it allows Centrist systems to swear fealty to the Supreme Leader of the First Order, Snoke, outright and reestablish the Empire in one fell swoop.

Other members of the New Republic will lose faith in it and split off to be sovereign states of their own.  The First Order doesn't consider this a problem - with the backing of the centrist systems and the might that they have been developing in the Western Reaches the individual stragglers will offer no resistance.

With Rogue One out in theaters and Star Wars: Episode VIII due out next December, trailers will likely be released soon offering glimpses of what is to come and sparking speculation about where the authors of this saga will take us in the future.  You're now caught up with everything that's been going on in Star Wars.

Star Wars and its Prequels

With the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the bridge between the Star Wars prequel movies and the original trilogy is now complete.  In another thirty years, maybe we'll have the movies that bridge the gap between the Star Wars original trilogy and the sequel trilogy.

My personal opinion is that the Prequel movies leave a lot to be desired as movies.  They suffer mostly from the problem that filmmakers got too geeked out on green screens and forgot that the actors they were putting in front of all the beautiful but nonexistent backdrops needed to be able to act against or with other characters.  Even Mark Hamill rehearsed with a Yoda puppet before being filmed with the stiff but charismatic little green fellow that ended up in The Empire Strikes Back.  And then he was still talking to something that was actually there.

This is a real thing, I seent it!

Really I think that's the biggest flaw of the Prequel trilogies.  I think it's very likely that, with more concrete environments, the actors they chose could have delivered much stronger performances and it wouldn't have mattered as much that the story didn't always make sense or that Anakin was a little whinier than we'd like to admit is appropriate for his character.  Because Anakin is supposed to have been like that, for the most part.  The guy who wrote the movies said so.  You can't really argue with that.

I cannot thank Dave Filoni and the team of writers he has worked with over the past decade enough for giving depth to the Star Wars universe through The Clone Wars television show.  Even if you liked them, the Prequel movies kind of hurried the Clone Wars between a couple films and so they ended up being at the end of the second one and sort of in the background of the third film.  But the Prequel films weren't really about the Clone Wars, they were about Anakin's fall from grace and the rise of the Empire.

What The Clone Wars did for the time period was give development to the galaxy and the conflict at large.  I feel that, honestly, the biggest missed opportunity with the series was the chance to really, really flesh out what kind of a person Anakin Skywalker really is.  But anytime the show came close to doing that, they kind of backed off and let other characters (like the amazing Ahsoka Tanno) take the lead.

To their credit, there was some great late-game development of Anakin and Padme's marriage.

But the decision to focus on characters other than Anakin Skywalker was by a wide margin the best thing Clone Wars gave us.  Even (and especially) Obi-Wan Kenobi got more development as a character.  We saw how our favorite wise old man dealt with the issue of love, as well as how he behaved as a member of the Jedi Council.  We also got to see Anakin and Obi-Wan being "good friends."

I will never like the Prequel trilogy movies, in all likelihood, but I do enjoy the era.  That's all thanks to Dave Filoni and his influence on the way the Prequel era was developed outside of the Skywalker saga.  Recently he has turned his attentions to the early Empire era, post-Clone Wars but pre-New Hope.  Which is great, because that all ends with Rogue One.

I am usually not an advocate for novelizations and comics as tie-ins because it ends up being too much to keep track of.  Certainly when I was growing up there was a dearth of really bad Star Wars expanded universe writing that made it to the shelves and took Star Wars in directions I didn't really care anything about.  And there was practically a new novel every month.  Time consuming and expensive, all to track whatever Wedge Antilles and the Skywalker twins were up to this season.

I have found the new novels to be a giant leap away from older Star Wars publishing habits.  It's not all good.  And maybe you don't like to keep track of all the minutiae, but if you do like to read books then certainly anything by James Luceno and Claudia Gray is worth your time.  Not just because they tie in beautifully with everything that you see on in the movies, but also because they fit in flawlessly with what you see in Star Wars Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.

You won't necessarily find any huge revealing truths about any mysteries in the Star Wars galaxy by reading these books, but you certainly will get the emotional impact of the galaxy in ways not delivered since Timothy Zahn first published the Thrawn trilogy back in the early 1990's.  And now that Grand Admiral Thrawn has returned, of course, Zahn has been asked to write a new book for him (aptly named Thrawn, available April 11, 2017 from Del Rey Publishing).

And that's what Star Wars novelizations have become.  They're not continuing the saga, they're fleshing it out.  They don't need to worry about pushing things forward, because there are movies and television shows to do that.  Instead, the authors are able to give lots of real depth to the characters they're writing about.  Lots of it.  Thrawn himself would revel in the sheer volume of knowledge he could glean about all of his most loathed rivals in these books.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story honestly did not play out like any Star Wars movie I had ever seen.  It did, however, play out like a very long and depressing episode of Star Wars Rebels.  In fact, I'd say the amount of defeat that Phoenix Squadron faces in Rebels is entirely too low, but then I suppose it is a kid's show.  Still, the Pyrrhic victory that is Rogue One was literally described as their first victory against the evil galactic Empire.

Just in case you couldn't recall....

It's not like Phoenix Squadron is making any huge gains for the Rebellion.  And they have three canonical years between where Rebels is in its third season and the events of Rogue One.  It is possible that Phoenix Squadron could fall apart and the crew of the Ghost be absorbed into the Rebel Alliance based on Yavin IV.  There's plenty of room and plenty of time to figure that out.  But that's what's great about it.  That's what's great about what's been done with the Prequel trilogy.  And while the movies will always be a little less than perfect, the world they exist in is now deep enough to satisfy any fan willing to watch a little Star Wars television.

My First Protest

It is agreed upon by many people around me that the country we live in is in a poor state of affairs.  This will not be a huge political rant - the people that need to know my feelings on the subject of politics largely already know my feelings on the subject.  As with everything, I try to remain open and critical of the information that comes my way.  That said there are some things that concern me.

This kind of thing - not the cartoon, but the content of it.

I participated in my first protest today.  This was a peaceful protest conducted by my university's Social Justice Committee.  The words "social justice" have taken on a negative connotation in my mind, so much as I love the people on the committee and their undying commitment to the betterment of humankind I still inwardly cringe at the title.  Thanks, Tumblr.

You PC, bro?

It was a peace protest, not just a peaceful protest.  Unlike many protests going on across the United States, our university wasn't demonstrating against president elect Trump.  There were, in fact, Trump supporters present with Trump/Pence signs.  Cool, there's a potential for a dialogue here.

Kind of.  I mean, it was a protest, and people were there to chant slogans and not really engage in discussion.

Going in, there's one thing that I promised myself I would not do: I would not engage in chanting of any kind.  Group voices are powerful, and being present and part of a mob is also powerful.  But Groupthink can be very dangerous, and so I refuse to engage in it when I see it coming - even if the intentions are noble enough.  When spoken to, I will raise my voice in defense of my beliefs.  When no one will speak up, I will raise my voice in defense of my beliefs.  But I will not chant them, and I certainly will not chant them with a group.  (In case you're wondering, I stayed true to my promise).

No good ever comes of this.

I saw a great number of friends at the protest.  Most of them were students, a couple of them were professors.

I should back up.

Back on my birthday, I decided that I would quietly begin my transition from identifying as a male to identifying as a female.  This was late October - I suddenly had more personally riding on the election than previously.  (Not to say that I wouldn't have been frustrated by the result had I not begun to transition, but I certainly wouldn't have had much in the way of irrational fear to buy into as a white male).

I began showing up to school dressed as a woman and wearing a wig (because my hair hasn't grown out to a point where I'm satisfied that it looks feminine enough for my own tastes) and I wear mastectomy prosthesis because I like the way I look with boobs.  I put on makeup before I leave the apartment.  This came as a bit of a shock to many of my school friends, who I had to refrain from directly coming out to for other reasons that are logical to those friends and I but do not otherwise concern anyone else.  My transition has been, in this very short period of time, fairly smooth.

This includes looking fabulous in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel leggings

I go out dressed as a woman for much of my time these days.  I'm pretty comfortable with it.  Today, I protested as a woman.  This was not some holistic experience that made me feel like a goddess.  It was, however, an interesting experience as a trans woman.  This was mostly because of the Trump supporters that were present.  Without them, I rather suspect the whole protest might have felt a little dry and uninteresting.  Just walking and chanting, walking and chanting.

None of the Trump supporters were openly hostile towards me, and if they noticed that I was trans then they didn't give any indication that it mattered to them.  While that's great, I was still uncomfortable around them.  I know a lot of Trump supporters, specifically family members, who don't buy into the whole racism or misogyny bit.  They support much of Trump's economic platforms, or else just despised Hillary.  They're not bad people and I continue to love them even though our opinions on the matter differ.  So why should these student Trump supporters make me uncomfortable?

The first time they made me especially uncomfortable was when the front of the crowd began to chant "Human rights matter," and the Trump supporters (somewhere around the middle where I was) began to chant "USA" over top of the folks in the front.  If it wasn't their intent to usurp the message of "human rights matter" they surely failed.  Sorry, but your patriotism does not outweigh human rights on a global scale.

The actual protest as it left Saint Martin's University

But chanting "USA" just by itself was discomforting, as well.  Later in the protest, the whole crowd chanted it as we walked down Lacey blvd.  While I might have been inclined to chant things like "human rights matter," chanting the initials of my country speaks of mindless nationalism.  While I don't think my country is the worst country in the world by a long shot, I am certainly very critical of it even when things are going my way.

To me, the biggest problem that the United States has is one associated with idolatry.  I am choosing this very Abrahamic word because it suits our largely Abrahamic nation.  We idolize the rich, and we build our society on the myth that it is possible for anyone to get rich.  And Trump, among other things, spews forth the Horatio Alger myth as his own path to success.  While I think a great number of people had a great number of reasons for voting for Trump, I think the reason why Trump is most trusted is because people believe he can be trusted with money.

I'm not going to make the argument that he cannot be trusted with money.  I'm not writing this to attack Trump.  I just want to point out that it doesn't take much digging to find something that's terribly wrong with this country, something that has been consistently demonstrably untrue for two hundred and forty years of American history.  And it is something that has been protested against for almost the entirety of the twentieth century.

This dapper fellow just wants the chance to eat - he isn't concerned with the capital gains tax

I served in the US Army for 8 years.  I am proud of my service, and I believe I have done my civic duty to this country.  I asked not what my country could do for me, and instead asked what I could do for it.  That's what many young men are wont to do in a wartime.

But I am ashamed of what extremists have been doing in the name of patriotism.  Especially this past year.  Especially this last week.  And just like my feelings about the Confederate Flag and the swastika, the chant "USA" has become synonymous with hate speech in my mind.  It doesn't represent proud patriotism, crowned good with brotherhood.  It represents angry, frustrated people trying to yell their way to greatness.  The news media tells us, "we have never been more divided in American history."

Though these gentlemen might disagree

I became curious, as I watched these young students march and chant, how many of them actually participated in the elections?  Before we began, I heard one young fellow admit that he didn't vote.  It wouldn't have mattered much if he had in Washington, which voted Hillary anyway.

But what I find curious are two things: first, if the majority of protesters did vote, which I think it seems safe to assume they did, what does that say for the stereotype of voters in their age ranges?  Most of them seemed to be typical college students, early twenties.  Not your traditional voters.  Second, if they didn't vote, why would they choose to enter the political process now, outside of the bureaucracy that allows the system to change?

I don't have answers to these questions.  I hope someone with more journalistic wherewithal is out there doing the research right now.  I'd be fascinated to interpret the data.

Something else I reflected on while I was walking up the street was how grateful I was to be privileged enough to be part of a protest where I wasn't getting attacked by dogs, or tear gassed, or pepper sprayed, or arrested.  There are still some very big protests in this country - vital ones that aren't related to president elect Trump at all - where that kind of thing is still happening.

Like the Dakota Oil Pipelines

I think, though, those are the most effective kinds of protests.  You don't have to be violent to protest, but I think in order for the protest to work there must be some kind of violence perpetrated.  Someone must become the villain in order for the problem to be recognized.  And the more villainous the villain the more effective the protest.  That's really sad, and honestly I hope I never have to be in a protest where I have to wonder if I'll ever see my children again.

But should it come to it, I know that I will be in that protest.  I will link arms with my brothers and sisters for a united goal should the time come.

I think that's all for my stream of consciousness reflection on the protest I took part in today.

Live long and prosper.

Get Your Ass to Mars!

I must admit I am in no small amount moved by Elon Musk's fervor to reach Mars by 2025.  I am skeptical of its success, but I am also reminded of what Kennedy said in 1962 on a football field in Texas.

We choose to go to the moon.  We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, ONE WE ARE UNWILLING TO POSTPONE, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

 This quote remains relevant in the world today because, even in the face of Kennedy's death, we (as human beings) were able to pull together and send men to the moon within that decade.

The political and scientific significance of the actual moon landing is beyond the scope of this blog

There's no small amount of risk in interplanetary travel.  Some have compared it to the overseas travel of the 15th and 16th centuries, but Elon Musk's plan calls for something a bit more concentrated than that.

However, in that context, I've been thinking about some of the ways that people might find themselves on a rocket ship to Mars.  The very real threat of indentured servitude crops up here, since in founding a colony you're going to have a bunch of people who stand to gain quite a bit of land from completing initial contracts and corporate sponsorship is an easy way to cover costs and allow businesses on Earth to profit from the goings-on on Mars.  There is no doubt in my mind that this latter situation (Earth business profiting from Martian investments) is going to happen.

One must wonder what kind of society will be set up on Mars.  By necessity, I think it would likely be established as an 'international colony,' somewhat akin to the international research stations like those in Antarctica and, of course, the ISS.

Humans coming together for science!

The Martian political landscape is quite likely to be discussed thoroughly before its establishment, as humanity enters an age of neocolonialism.  It's impractical, with a 13-minute communication delay and a 2-year physical transportation gap, to remotely govern a Martian colony.  But I'm sure critics in Europe said the same thing about establishing colonies in the Americas where the delays were months-long for both physical transportation and message sending.

The very real promise with the Martian colony is its potential.  This potential has been argued both for and against, and I've seen compelling arguments both ways.  It could be that the "Martian Million" all perish as they attempt to establish a colony there.  But what a step forward it would otherwise be!

Image courtesy of the Curiosity rover

Another concern on Mars is where humans can ethically settle.  There has been water discovered on Mars - all over the damn place.  And while that's great from the point of view of people who are going to need water to live, it's also really frustrating because it presents the possibility for cross-planetary contamination.  Colonization is the fastest way to contaminate things, and the robots that NASA has been sending to Mars have gone through increasingly stringent processes to reduce the amount of Earth that goes to Mars.

What is there to contaminate?  Possibly nothing, but probably something.  Not necessarily microbial life, but there's a good chance of that being the case.  And if it is, then a pure sample will teach us a great deal about the evolutionary process as it applies to life on a universal scale.

Those clean white suits aren't just for style.

I will, and have, made no secret that I want to live (and likely die) on Mars.  I'd love to be one of the Martian Million.  There's no doubt that I could contribute to the Martian society, particularly in the form of entertainment (which they will need up there!)  I have other facts standing against me, though.  I have had a vasectomy, so I cannot effectively contribute to the gene pool of the Martian colony.  In an austere environment, reproductive efficiency is a must.  Although I'm sure reproduction problems will exist to some extent due to stress and other issues that arise from interplanetary travel that we're as yet unfamiliar, I am wholly unable to contribute.  Another fact against me is my legal obligation to my children, which will I will not be relinquished of in enough time to become one of the Martian Million.

I love my children dearly.  As they grow older, my presence in their life fluctuates.  Sometimes I see them quite a bit and sometimes I never see them at all.  Ideally, we could all go to Mars.  But I couldn't make that choice for them, not when going to Mars is this dangerous.  I would miss my children terribly, but I'd live with my choice to go if I could.  I know I could justify my actions to myself, even if I couldn't justify it to them.  Call me selfish, I don't care.  I've dreamt of being an astronaut since I was a child, and I've never stopped dreaming of it.

In the long run, Musk's Mars Million is not about just colonizing Mars and ultimately terraforming it.  It sounds silly to talk about the long-term goals of this mission, but Musk says it all in his mission statement: he wants to make human beings interplanetary.  This starts with what's in our solar system, but stretching out into vast and unknown stretches of time it covers interstellar exploration as well.

There's a reason why, in Star Trek, Mars was the jumping-off point for Starfleet after Earth Space Dock

A Few Thoughts on the Force

I realize this blog has primarily been about Star Trek, but I have other interests and so should you.  In the wake of writing a paper (rather hastily, I'll admit) for a religious studies class I'd like to explore some thoughts I have on the nature of the Force from Star Wars.

The Force is changing.  Or rather, the canonical definition of it is changing somewhat.

The Ashla, the Bogan, and the Bendu

Some of this change is manifested in the Disney XD television show Star Wars Rebels which just entered its third season this last weekend.  (Rather triumphantly, I might add).

Star Wars Rebels (and Dave Filoni's other project, The Clone Wars) has done wonders for expanding the canonical Star Wars universe in wonderfully cinematic ways.  What I appreciate more about Rebels than Clone Wars are the episodes that delve into what it means to be a Jedi (or to wield the Force in general).  Clone Wars does have a few good episodes on this topic as well, but Clone Wars' aim was less about exploring the nature of the Force and more about demonstrating how far off the path of light the Jedi had tread.

The three-part story about Mortis was nothing short of epic

Rebels examines a struggle that might have been played out in the Star Wars cinematic saga had Obi-Wan Kenobi more time to train Luke.  Granted, Obi-Wan was a full Jedi when he met Luke, but the downfall of Vader always made it seem like training a new Jedi was more difficult than it appeared.  Ezra Bridger encounters many of the trials that we don't get to see Luke (or Anakin, for that matter) go through on his way to becoming a Jedi Knight.  Kanan Jarrus is someone who never achieved Knight status.  Both master and apprentice are learning how to use the Force.  This opens their minds to new interpretations.

Not the last of the old Jedi, but the first of the new...

The Force is strange, and rightfully beyond an exact definition.  The definition that Obi-Wan gives Luke is our most solid explanation of what the living Force is and where it comes from, and Yoda reinforces this view.  But there is a duality in the Force which comes from the distinction between the cosmic Force and the living Force.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

The living Force holds within it a connection to all other life forms in the galaxy.  It is very specifically what Yoda and Obi-Wan train Luke to be aware of.  Because life is now, it is the Force of the moment.

Life creates it, makes it grow.

But there are greater powers at play in Star Wars, and this is where the cosmic Force comes into play.  The cosmic Force covers the great galactic currents of time and possibility.  These events vary from the infinitesimally small to the unfathomably large, from the impossibly fast to the epically slow.  The cosmic Force and the living Force are, without a doubt, intertwined.  But it is the cosmic Force that lets a Jedi peer into possible futures or reveal hidden truths from pasts long gone.

In the time of the Grand Galactic Republic, the Jedi believed they were masters of both the living and the cosmic Force.  Darth Sidious came along and proved that they were not.  The Dark side seems to have a peculiar stranglehold on the cosmic Force, and an uncanny ability to blot out visions of the future that would otherwise be readily available to the Jedi.

Difficult to see, the future is.

It is very possible that the reason why the Dark side is so powerful is that, unlike the Light side, the Dark side draws more from the massive wealth of power stored up in the infinite, uncaring cosmos.  So much power, used so readily and channeled through extreme emotions, is certainly enough to spell out one's destruction at the hands of the Force.

This is not to say that the living Force is not its own dearth of power.  Certainly, the Jedi were no trifling opponents in the days of the Grand Galactic Republic.  But, when properly used by a Light-side Force user, it seems to take longer to call upon.  Don't believe me?  Go back and check out how long it took Yoda to pull that X-Wing out of the swamp, and how much effort he put into it.

Judge me by my size, do you?  Well!  You should not!

I believe this is actually because most of what Yoda is doing here is controlling his emotions.  The temptation of the Dark side is always there, and the more you're trying to do with the Force the more the Dark side is likely to tempt you to just use the easy path to get the job done.  For someone like Yoda who believes that "once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny," there's no such thing as quickly and easily moving things around with the Force.

Vader just snags it because he doesn't care

But this just takes forever to happen

Now, I'm not an expert.  I might be way off base here.  But that seems pretty reasonable to me so I'll go on to explain why I am so convinced.

In Rebels, the Force training Ezra receives is very personal.  This lets us join him on his path to becoming a Jedi.  The episodic nature of the show means that the lessons Ezra learns can become episodic and focused.  Usually, by the end of an episode, Ezra has made some progress in learning the lesson about the Force he was taught at the start of an episode.

Learning as a team!

Bite-sized chunks are great for understanding the nature of the Force.  They even get Yoda to step in and help out with Ezra's training.  No, Ezra and Kanan don't go to Dagobah, they hear Yoda speak to them through the Force.

Now if this seems weird and nonsensical to you in the context of what I explained about the Dark side's connection to the cosmic Force, that's okay.  You're on the right track, except that Yoda isn't using the cosmic Force to watch over and communicate with these aspiring Jedi.  Instead, Yoda is using the living Force.  Why the living Force?  Because he's seeing things as they happen, which is what the living Force is good at.

Yoda is nothing if not a master at using the living Force.  That's part of why he chose exile on Dagobah.  Everything on that swampy planet is alive, and it has its own Dark side cave that he can watch over as well.

This is the reason why Yoda is able to make a claim like, "long have I watched this one," about Luke and then turn around a day later and tell Luke that "difficult to see, the future is; clouded by the Dark side."

In Star Wars, the present and the future are two distinct domains.  Where the past falls into this is unclear just yet.

But, as I said at the start of this blog, the nature of the Force is changing.

There has been an Awakening...

Star Wars The Clone Wars reintroduced the magic of the Night Sisters of Dathomir, whose powers were previously de-canonized following the made-for-TV movie Ewoks: Battle for Endor.  The Night Sisters of the Clone Wars have a wide array of powers some consider to be... unnatural.  Well, the Night Sisters are distinctly Dark side Force users, so this should come as no surprise.

No, I'm not even going to cover this.

Star Wars Rebels took this one step further in their second season with the introduction of a concept called Ashla.  Ashla was first referenced by an elderly female Lasat named Chava, and she used it as a power to guide the crew of the Ghost to the lost world of Lira San.  Ezra remarks that Ashla sounds an awful lot like the Force.

Well, the Force can go by many names.  Why can't it?  If it's such a ubiquitous power in the galaxy, surely cultures everywhere will have different names for it.

The name Ashla comes from the Expanded Universe world of Tython, where it was one of two moons that helped influence the apocalyptic Force storms that wracked the Jedi home planet.  Its other moon?  Bogan.

Bogan is mentioned in passing by a new character in Star Wars Rebels season three.  The character is known as Bendu, but even this seems to be a bit of a misnomer because he identifies the Light side of the Force as Ashla, the Dark side as Bogan, and himself in between: Bendu.

This... is not a thing.  Not yet, anyway.

Now, the choice of word is interesting because the original title for the Jedi was the Jedi Bendu.  The post-Clone Wars Jedi in the movies seem more concerned about balance than they do specifically about light versus dark.  I'll qualify that last statement in a moment.

But what's most interesting about the character Bendu is that he talks about sight.  Now, Kanan has been blinded and must learn to see using the Force (no, he's not a de facto Miraluka).  But Bendu has a very specific way of phrasing the way he perceives the Force.  He is very clear that the different sides of the Force are as irrelevant and natural as night and day.  To see, one must simply be willing to let go and trust the Force.

No! Do.  Or do not.  There is no try.

Why is this a change?  Because the Sith and Jedi have relied on the cosmic and living Force as individual domains to accomplish their goals previously.  According to Bendu, sight has no bearing on light or darkness when one uses the Force.  Potentially, if Yoda could get past his dogma (he can't) he would be able to see the future that the Dark is trying to hide from him.

Now back to my assertion that Yoda and Obi-Wan are more interested in balance than the actual Light-side: the only Force users in the known galaxy during the Rebellion era are Darth Vader, the Emperor, and Luke.  Since Darth Vader and the Emperor were both decidedly evil, Yoda and Obi-Wan are convinced that Luke needs to be twice as good to make up for all the evil.

No pressure, right?  (Yeah, well Luke said fuck that, if I'm good and I can get my dad to be at least half good we'll be set.)

This, to me, really supports the assertion that the cosmic Force is kind of big and powerful and ambivalent to the living Force.  According to Bendu, the Force itself cannot be good or evil, it can only be used for good or evil.  Easy peasy and we didn't need some nonsensical code that looks like it was written by a middle school kid trying to make a cool Star Wars thing canon.  (I'm looking at you, Grey Jedi).

Serenity and peace are the same thing, dumbshits.

This also fits in well with why Rey was suddenly capable of using the Force the way she did.  If she was able to tap into the cosmic Force better than those around her, she'd be particularly potent in her implementation of the Force.  Since her awakening happened through a vision of the past and possibly the future, it is very reasonable that this made her a conduit for the cosmic Force.  Although she might well have used all that power for the Dark side (Snoke sure wants all that power for himself) she chose not to follow that path.

Dis mah mad face

But, like Bendu, Rey maintained a strong link with the cosmic Force.  Truly the first of the New Jedi, Rey brandishes the Force with all the emotion she earned by being tortured then watching Han and Finn get cut down.  And at the end of the day, she still walks the good path.

What Rey teaches us, what the old Jedi fail to teach us, is that emotions aren't bad.  They just need to be understood and directed.