Sunday, June 05, 2005

It's A Trap!



From Rodger A. Payne's blog:

Another space program, nicknamed Rods From God, aims to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking at speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour, or 11,500 kilometers an hour, with the force of a small nuclear weapon...No nation will "accept the U.S. developing something they see as the death star," Teresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information, a policy-analysis group in Washington, said at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. "I don't think the United States would find it very comforting if China were to develop a death star, a 24/7 on-orbit weapon that could strike at targets on the ground anywhere in 90 minutes."


It's only natural that this adminstration would want to militarise space, and go about it so dementedly. Or, as Payne says:

After all, as other bloggers have noted, the neoconservative right openly admires Vader's empire. And Bush has selected a General named Lord to oversee a program dubbed Rods from God? Incredible.


I'm in Payne's debt for that Weekly Standard link, which surpasses even the stupidity exhibited in the Episode III reviews by Orson Scott Card, Jim Geraghty, and elementropy reader (sorry, that doesn't get you off the hook) absentee. When jingoism and imperial desires clash with Star Wars fanboyism, plainly Star Wars loses. Which is okay: they'd step over their own mothers to do it, too, so Star Wars loyalty can't be expected to hold much sway over them. Hell, if Jesus came back to act like the anti-imperialist hippie He was, they'd explicitly recast their interpretations of the Bible to favor Satan. Art, mythology, even belief -- it's only there to reinforce their (utterly depraved, concentrated evil) weltanschauung, and when it fails that utility, down the toilet it goes.