This is the Start Wars movie you have to see if you’re a believer, and you want to believe. It will tempt you to feel that no matter how low the odds of success against overwhelming force, your cause is just so you must continue.
So let’s look at the left for a moment. We’re a rag-tag battlefleet of … wait, wrong movie.
We’re going where no man has gone before … ah dern it.
In a galaxy far, far away … or indeed on the planet right here. Yes, that’s the one.
When the causes for peace for ethnicity, for socialism, for the earth itself, when all of those appear lost …
… we go to the movies.
This Last Jedi certainly pours on the Christian symbolism of sacrifice, atonement, and redemption like we haven’t seen for a while.The nature of political will and spiritual faith share a common drive within us. It goes straight to the father-heart of the desert religions and of the mother-heart of pained resolve like only psychoanalysis and faith can.
Our causes have not burnt this dim in a century. We’re not winning anything much in this world right now. Or at least, we are not winning anything unless we allow our imaginations to feel like Rey does. If you are older, and you ever get asked the question: “How can the Resistance possibly continue?”, you can answer, hand on hers, “We have everything we need right here.”
Since libertarians can certainly see the political imagination at work in Star Wars, I’m confident you can too.
Hard to be The Resistance when you’re in government. But then, that’s the commonwealth we are seeking to create. There is no doubt that there are very few progressive governments left, there are very few progressive political parties in the entire world right now that are not in decline, and there are very, very few strong states with a huge commitment to redistribution and to eradicating poverty. So little old us in New Zealand ain’t doing too bad.
What better place to re-imagine the Resistance than here?
We may or may not need more dystopian movies to remind us of how much worse things may get. But we certainly need inspirational movies that integrate and celebrate spiritual impulses with political values, inside a spectacle of adventure that will appeal to every generation. Project all the kinds of hope you have onto it, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi will reward you.
May The Force Be With You.
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