your typical leftist sentiment

--------------- CANNES -- Right away, George Lucas was asked about George Bush. What is the political context of the director's Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival Sunday?

Since screenings began last month at Lucas' Skywalker Ranch, people have Wars saga and current political events.

Meeting the press, Lucas said any similarities were purely historical.

"This was written during the Vietnam War and Nixon era, when the issue was how a democracy turns itself over to a dictator -- not how a dictator takes over a democracy," he said.

Sith opens in the USA at midnight Wednesday (***1-2 review, 1D). Critics have applied the politics of the saga to presidential administrations from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush.

Lucas said that a long time ago in a galaxy far away, he had read some history and wondered why, after going to the trouble of killing Caesar, the Roman Senate turned things over to his equally power-hungry nephew, Augustus Caesar? Or that after a revolution, France turned next to Napoleon, a dictator?

That's what fueled the entire Star Wars saga, Lucas said. "It seems to happen the same way every time: There are threats, and a democratic body, the Senate, is not able to function properly."

Pushed further on the current Internet chat about the war in Sith being akin to the current Iraqi war, Lucas said, "When I wrote this, Iraq didn't exist. We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mbutt destruction."

But, he added, "the parallels between Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable."

Lucas said Darth Vader's saga is about how a good man turns himself into a bad one.

"Most of them think they're good people doing what they do for a good reason."

Lucas and his film got a glamorous launch party aboard the Queen Mary 2. Natalie Portman, who plays Senator Padme Amidala in Sith, sported an attention-grabbing new look, hair shorn for a prison episode in her upcoming movie V for Vendetta.

Lucas showed the modesty of a Jedi knight when asked how he felt about stealing the limelight from filmmakers competing at Cannes. "I'm happy I don't have to compete, because I probably wouldn't win. Just being here is an honor." ---------------

I really can't comment fully until I see the movie, but I did read this article and Lucas' comments. I think George Lucas is a good film maker, but you also have to look at the man. He's a Geek Nerd who grew up watching Sci-Fi, and a reading a little bit of history, and then combined them into a brilliant movie. It is hard, when you gain a moderate position of power such as George Lucas, and although you can use smoke and mirrors to change the film world, and make the "make believe" more fantastic than before; it must be disturbing to him, that he cannot will to change the world himself. I love the line in Matrix Reloaded, where the Oracle tells Neo, "What do men with power want? More power!"

The parallels between the Bush administration and Caesar, or Napoleon are quite shallow. First of all, you have to understand the differences in the culture, between now and then. George Lucas is guilty of seeing history through the lenses of his 20th Century Experience, especially the oh, so rose colored 50's. Not everything was "American Graffiti" or "Happy Days" in the 50's. You had the Korean War and you had the Cold War and the very real worry of the Soviet Union possibly using the Nukes they developed against us, which eventually bled over into Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam. Plus the worry over the space race and would the Soviets put Nukes on Satellites and thus the space race.

In Rome's day, 38 was considered old, and 25 was the average life expectancy of a male in the Roman world. 1% of the population at this time is literate, and an even smaller percent is educated on the level of Aristotle. Rome had developed a military system that was handed down and improved upon far before Julius Caesar, going back to Alexander the Great. When Rome ceased to be a Republic, was about the time the Roman's met the Phoenicians. Rome was a very family oriented Republic, but once they met the Phoenician culture which was much more hedonistic, their culture began to change, and the women and wives became less respected, and divorce rose. Before the Romans met the Phoenician culture, Senators would go home to discuss matters of state with their wives, and then come back after considering their wisdom, and make law for Rome. Just before the Republic became an Empire, a Senator from Rome once lamented, "We Romans, who rule the world, are ruled by our women." The downfall of family life, was the decline of the early Roman Republic, and the rise of the Empire. Not just a one instance where Julius fell, and then the Senators gave way to Augustus. So like I said, Lucas is seeing things through Rose Colored Lenses, and he know a little of history, but he is not taking in the whole.

Again, lets look at Napoleon. In the 60's America's only had 25% of their population finishing and graduating high school, compared today with over 75% of students graduating and finishing high school. Two of my Grandparents, only had as far as a 2nd grade education. After that, their parents put them to work, and they never went back to school. In the early 20th century, and before, most young people, because of lower health standards, and fresh beef not being readily available like it is today with freezer technology, did not enter puberty until age 15 or 16. By 17 & 18 they were usually married, and having children shortly thereafter. That is why in Biblical Times, Jews were not allowed to read the "Song of Solomon" until they were 30, and why? Because by the time they were in their 30's their own children were marrying and having children, and they were now Grandparents or soon to be Grandparents. Taking into account, that your literacy rate in Europe is probably still quiet low, the life expectancy is now maybe into the 30's instead of 25 like the Roman Empire, you are still dealing with both of these cultures being heavily influenced by a still Juvenile Illiterate Culture. You begin to look at Barbarian Hordes, Vikings, even Alexander The Great's rape and pillage Armies a little different when you consider the age and lack of state structured education.

Today, we send them off to college or the Army, and the stupid ones waste their time with hazing or pledging some stupid Fraternity and still having hazing, instead of joining a Barbaric Gang and going off to Rape and Pillage the next Village. Plus history shows that up until WW II rests from War were rising exponentially, with hundreds of millions dying in WW II in Europe alone, not counting Asia. Once the United States developed the Atomic plant and dropped it, and the War ended, rests from War around the world fell off to just 1 million every year since on average. There's nothing like being able to Drop Hell Fire from the skies to wake you up, and convince one of the futility of War. Also, neither Rome nor France had very strong Democracies, nor a Super Power such as the United States, with Western Democratic Allies, to help them transition and stay full fledged Democracies.

Also, with Rome you don't even have Christianity until Tiberius Caesar, and so you don't have the influence of a Protestant Christian Society that encourages Reform. Much of France was Catholic at the time, and the Protestant Movement was in its infancy in Europe, and just getting under way in the United States. Much of society's ethics comes from the stories they hand down and teach. The Nazi's read Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil" and came to the conclusion, that might makes right, and those with power make the rules, and if the weak must perish according to Darwinian Evolution, so be it.

Contrast that with the "layman" lead "Sunday School" movement of the late 1800's in America. Where "the greatest is to be the least and servant of all" according to the Gospel. The "Sunday School" movement was at one time separate from the Churches and growing faster than they. Many Libraries in the United States were created by the Sunday School Movement. Many of your "one room schools" were started by the "Sunday School" movement. People learned to read from "the Bible" and "Sunday School" was the first place where not only women could teach men, but also be in roles of leadership. Much of the modern Feminist movement came from the "Sunday School" movement. A historical fact they have long ago chose to forget and not bring up. Our own Government and its consbreastution were a blend of "European Rationalism", "Idealism", and "Judeo-Christian Conceptualism". The founding Fathers would have looked strangely upon the current idea of "Separation of Church and State" because many of the educated ones, such as Jefferson, in the degrees from the Colleges of their time, had not only been required to study and learn Modern Philosophy, but also learn French, Spanish, German, Latin, and also the NT Greek, because they would have been educated in the Bible as well.

Neither France nor Rome would have had the influences America had early on, and by the mid-20th Century, you have a phenomenon not seen before, in that children enter puberty as early as age 12-13, and by 1986, the average age for getting married becomes 27, and so you have a longer adolescence, but you also have an older middle-age clbutt who rules over them and keeps them in check because life expectancy has gone up. You have dating in the 50's, and with the Baby Boom, and the desire of all these young people to have their own lives, much more money than their parents had in the depression, you have an entirely new culture and culture shift, but it is still influenced by the earlier American Culture. Now one can point to other influences that were not so positive about America, such as the Moonshine Business, the early unregulated drug business, the mistakes made with the Native Culture and mistakes made in slavery, but you had an emerging Christian ethic driven by the narrative of the Sunday School Movement of the middle 1800's, and subsequent Holiness movement which multiplied new denominations of protestant Church's, and at one point in the early late 1800's and early 1900's much of Congress was a member of the Sunday School Movement. Reading about concepts such as equality "the greatest must be the least among you and servant of all" and "liberty" or "liberation from bondage" drove the slave's right, and later women's rights, and later minority rights movements.

We inherited a notion from our great "Civil War" that all people should be free, and the greatest form of Government was Democracy, and that drove our agenda in World War II, to create new "Democracies" in Japan and Germany. Our mistake in Vietnam, was once we set up a Democracy there, we didn't stick with it like in Japan and Germany, and the Democratic Congress of the 70's cut funding to the South Vietnamese Democracy, and so much like the later scenes in "Somalia" in the film "Black Hawk Down", the Vietnamese didn't have the equipment nor support they needed and they fell. Also, Vietnam was the 2nd time a Democratic President made the mistake of not letting the military do their job. The first was Harry Truman when he fired Macarthur.

So in conclusion, George Lucas is a great story teller, but he is a poor historian, and an even poorer philosopher. He may well be like his predecessor Homer, but he's no Plato when it comes to History, and he's not Aristotle when it comes to philosophy. Augustus Caesar, Napoleon, and his fictional Anakin Skywalker were all under 30 when they rise to power. George Bush was in his 50's when he became President.