The Recent trend of “Zoomer-Anakin” memes has taken Twitter and pop-culture by storm… And despite legacy institutions, left-wing posters, and atleast a few bot-nets trying desperately to make it go away, or to claim that it was some inorganic election maneuver, or to try and do a “No one cares”. I can basically guarantee you that this meme-format and wider cultural shift in the symbolism of this Franchise is here to stay.
The George Lucas Star Wars films are the strongest contender for America’s National Epic
The Greeks have Homer, The Romans Virgil, England the Arthur Stories and Shakespeare, Germany has the Wallenstein Trilogy, Geothe’s Faust, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle, France The Song of Roland…
Even Star Wars’ famous opening exists to frame the story as an ancient epic:
The significance of this is to frame Star Wars, a Scifi… As something of a deep legend, a object of Mythology.
This of course is complete Genius and a complete compromise, since America is partially too young to have a founding epic story, but also lacks an era in which all the intended “Americans” can trace heritage from.
Whilst Virginians could tell a story about George Washington, or Boston WASPs a story about the Puritan founders, or Georgians about the Southern Nobility such as Gone With the Wind… Almost all actual figures in American history and legend distinctively are NOT part of a shared identity.
New Jersey Italians, Wisconsin Germans, New England Wasps, Oregon Norwegians, Brooklyn Jews, Appalachian Scots-Irish, Texan Tejanos…
The various failed attempts to define the boundary of American Identity, or define an era where American identity was set and remained set… Have all failed, and the very identity of “American” might actually die in the next few decades if another Biden-wave of migration.
America? The United States of America?
In truth its a lot like “Canada” in that while most little groups and regions might have well defined identities: Newfies are a real people. the Quebecois are a real people. The Upper Canada Loyalists and Backwoodsmen are real peoples. The Albertans are a real people.
But Canadians? Those aren’t a real people. There isn’t actually something that coherrently unifies all of it.
And America is much the same… Nothing really unites all of it… when you start deconstructing it a 3rd gen Latino who’s parents migrated in the 60s, An African American, a Mayflower American, and some Soviet Defector who landed in California in 1986 really have little that unites them all… Not shared history, not shared culture, nothing…
But this is where Star Wars is both magic and highly manipulative because its a distinctly American epic that frames a hypothetical future as a shared past, which does not exist… But which recycles symbols and ideas from the various histories of the peoples in America (Cowboys, Conflicts with sword wielding Samurai, Sand People raiders hitting the homestead, Bureaucratic parliamentary gridlock, a Separatist Confederacy, a rebellion against an Empire, A forest insurgency resembling Vietnam, Space Fascists that are totally evil and obsessed with super-weapons, a republic trying to resolve its largest war ever by building a super-weapon (Is the death star Germany’s Nuclear Weapons Program? Or America’s?), 50s Diners, neo-futurist luxury chrome vehicles, Junker desert vehicles that were once the chrome vehicles, smugglers along the Mexican Border Outer rim)
Controlling the meaning and interpretation of Star Wars is incredibly politically powerful. Largely because George Lucas ruthlessly hacked America’s (and the world’s) vision of the future and the past with narratives that are unnaturally flattering to the modern “American”’s identity sensibilities.
And if you don’t think so just think how much money was poured into “The Force is Female”, and “The Resistance” cringe propoganda with star wars theming in the 2010s and early 2020s by the overwhelmingly Jewish, Gay, and Feminist activists at Disney…
And if you think that it doesn’t matter… Simply look at how the worst factions of the regime and boomer moral gate-keepers reacted to the Anakin-Memes reframing the Prequels…
So what is the Political significance of the Anakin meme? Why have at this point hundreds of Right Wing youtubers and commentators published long pieces, and on the counter hundreds of left wing commentators published think pieces and concern tweets?
First of all… This shouldn’t need to be said but some Neocons and leftists are desperately trying to claim it…
Zoomer-Anakin had nothing to do with Republicans in the midterm… Indeed most of the Zoomer-Anakin memes frame Boomer Republicans and the institutional party as the enemy, the Zionist-wing and Aging boomer-cons most of all.
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Meanwhile, at the same time left wingers are trying to post their “No one cares”, “It doesn’t matter”, “This is soy”… Their major influencers are also producing hour long videos hand wringing and desperately trying enforce basic media literacy,
Anakin is the bad guy! He’s a SPACE FACIST! or atleast a space imperialist (weirdly Star Wars never unpacks his position on the welfare state or centralized cultural policy).
He’s EVIL.
He Hates Democracy!
He killed those sand people children and the jedi younglings!
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Well yeah.
That’s the point.
Anakin Vs. Liberal Hypocrisy
Whilst in “Getting Sith Pilled on the Boomers” the excellent writer Upper Canadian Cavalier has argued that the killing of the Jedi Younglings in final act of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is a Hollywood cop-out and propaganda atrocity so that George Lucas and the Writers need not engage with the actual merits of Anakin choosing the Elected Chancellor and “Authoritarianism” over the unelected Jedi and “Democracy”…
Cavalier argues that Anakin killing the Jedi Younglings is a throwaway atrocity like the destruction of Alderaan in the first Star Wars, never to be mentioned again, but simply to unambiguously establish the empire as “The Bad Guys”… The same way other lazy writers might have a villain kick a puppy in a throwaway scene never mentioned again.
Now while this is a very VERY good critique of Star Wars 1977 (Episode 4: A New Hope), that Princess Leia after watching her entire family, friends and homeworld killed in the blink of an eye, does not even weep… The very next scene she’s in she is sassing Luke and flirting with him that he’s short for a Stormtrooper.
Alderaan and its destruction are never mentioned again in the original trilogy.
So George Lucas has done cheap atrocity moments like this when his writing was poor… Like in the horribly written original Star Wars film. (easily the laziest writing of the series… See also Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s deaths)
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But I’d argue that’s very far from the case with the prequels and certainly very far from the case with the memes.
The Prequels are Films About Child Soldiers
If there exists one theme in the entire Star Wars prequels that is fully developed, present in all three films, drawn out, fully crafted, and deftly handled it is the theme of Child Soldiers and Children in War.
Indeed this is one of the most expanded upon themes that George found in the original trilogy: Obi-wan and Yoda’s grooming, lies, and intentional manipulation of Luke and Leia in isolation where they can control them… If Luke had known his father was alive, rich, powerful, and Obi-Wan had maimed him and burnt him alive… He would have sought out Vader then Luke and the Lars Family would have benefited from his paternal wealth and protection years before Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were killed. Instead he lost his family, risked his life, and spent years in miserable combat… Over lies Obi-wan first told before he was one year old.
Indeed it is maybe the most genius elements of the entire franchise, that Lucas pulled a bait and switch akin to Evangelion or countless hit Anime Series … Framing the more kid friendly and light hearted initial outing in Phantom Menace elements as fun adventures standard in children fiction… Only to not age-up bell-curve of Characters as the story darkens.
Both Anakin, age 9, and Padme, age 14 (Natalie Portman was 15 when filming started)… are fulfilling ritualized and over-mature roles in their societies within the plot of the Phantom Menace… Padme is thrust into the role of Queen Amidala of Naboo, via some weird custom whereby they elect teenage girls to be sovereign… and then the actual power are the advisors who manipulate them (which is not really all that unusual historically… Many hermit Kingdoms in Asia (notice Queen Amidala’s costuming) have similar customs of picking or raising children to rule who are then dominated by their courts… The Dalai Lama of Tibet maybe being the most famous example. George combined this with the ancient Germanic custom of electing kings (as well as some shrine maiden customs from the subcontinent) to create a weird but plausible governing mechanism… Thus they can always manipulate the perpetually underaged queen, and presumably they can get rid of a Queen who goes against the real power on Naboo (Padme’s later move to being a Senator is almost certainly an extraordinary promotion).
Yet despite this overwhelming and necessarily complete inability to be qualified for the role… and the almost ceremonial nature of it… It is her that has ultimate responsibility thrust on her for the suffering of her people, her that will be remembered as the greatest failure in her people’s history if things go wrong, and her that can and will be killed if any faction involved finds it expedient to kill her (as we see many times), and despite having nothing really in the way of experience or education to rule (how qualified can you be at 14? Many of her advisors talk circles around her), it is her who has to wield the symbolic power of sovereignty in war and appear in danger on the battlefield for the morale effect (much as many child kings had to do in European history)… I suspect the critics and awful Gen-X men-children upset it wasn’t about space smugglers banging hot chicks turned their brains off for the annoying politicy talkie bits or dismissed it as “kids doing things in an adventure movie”… But the entire plotline of Queen Amidala is very plainly thematically and visually inspired by the films Seven Years In Tibet, and The Last Emperor, (and in part by the J.G. Ballard biopic Empire of the Sun. Arguably the best film ever directed by Lucas’ friend Steven Spielberg, and the one where he most accurately depicted concentration camps)
Film critics and Film Nerds should have understood these visual and political analogies, indeed Lucas poured maybe millions of dollars into Amidala and her handmaid’s costuming alone to highlight and evoke these films… And yet neither Red Letter Media nor any critic I’ve ever seen ever commentated on the use of this genre of film… because none of the Film “Experts” actually have much if any expertise. Memoirs of A Geisha (based on the 1987 book) released in theaters in 2005, same year as Revenge of the Sith… No one noted any similarity between the Character who tragically died in the biggest film of the year and the hit book adaptation’s character in themes or character development… Despite George Lucas very obviously choosing that exact visual language to highlight the enigmatic lead character’s being divided between social roles with her life on the line… Her Character even speaks in different accents depending on whether she has the makeup on or not, that even the voice of the queen is not her own… But because there isn't a line of dialogue where someone spells for the slow children that “The queen is expected to speak not with her own voice but the voice of the ancients”… People instead attacked Portman’s ACTING, despite her very plainly speaking tenderly, sarcastically, angrily, wittily, etc. In her scenes where she is posing as “Padme the handmaiden” instead of “Queen Amidala”.
And no the problem was not that “Kids didn’t get it”, Kids liked these movies. Kids understood intuitively. It was adults that didn’t get it. And then obsessively attacked the films, I’m convinced partially out of resentment for the kids who did get it… (If there was ever a film designed to drive a wedge between precocious 120Iq 9 and 10 year olds and their mediocre 95iq “teachers”, it’d be these films)
“Now the Experts in the Media could not understand, and they actually wrote articles: ‘Emperor Palpatine’s attacking himself? It makes no sense’. Adults cannot understand children level ideas. Child. Level. Ideas.”
-Alex Jones
Likewise Anakin’s employment is as a mechanic/trader working in a profession where most of his ‘peers’ are adults decades older than him… Not unlike historical indentured apprentices of various guilds and crafts of medieval and early modern societies, Indeed not unlike Child Actors and entertainers today… but whereas indentured apprentices’ period of indenture eventually ends, Anakin is a slave. He will never be freed, and when he’s an adult presumably his skill will only make him more valuable for sale, much as educated Ancient Roman slaves only made them more valuable to trade… though he says he’s trying to figure out how to free himself by locating the tracking chip/explosive the Tatooine regime has hidden in his body.
(Notably by Return of the Jedi this system does not work and the Hutts are reduced to keeping their remaining slaves in chains dingy dungeons and on pleasure barges, presumably because the empire criminalized and functionally ended slavery, as Anakin said he would)
These are both profoundly mature, and according to 1990s boomer critics, unrelatable setups for child characters…
However this is entirely relatable for anyone who was a kid in the 90s or after… The pressure cooker environment of middle-class striver culture in the western world around university, the obsessive terror of your parents, families and teachers, in which you had to be absolutely exceptional to even hope to be middle-class or receive opportunities where you had to “create your own credential” and get into university, and get professional certifications… Only to once you’ve succeeded, be slotted into some permanent entry-level role in which rent consumed greater than 50% of your paycheck if you were male, or to be put on the bizzare predatory tightrope of female “girl-bossery” in which none of your success is actually related to your ability (despite the lies that you’re just SO good) and none of the things that will destroy you can be avoided via any of the skills you were supposedly hired for, because you’re not there for your skills… you’re there because you have a vagina and some social markers of status… And Your employers and other players will reward, manipulate, exploit, or seek to destroy you because of that based on entirely random chance related entirely to their motivations and hidden intentions, and nothing in anyway related to whether or not you were actually skilled in whatever qualification you had.
Kids of the 2000s and later grew up knowing in no uncertain terms that the only way to avoid becoming a permanent underclass and dying of a fent overdose after a lifetime of misery and depression (That you’d 100% deserve, don’t you dare think of blaming anyone else) was to be 100% perfectly exceptional… And then the second you somehow jump through all the hoops successfully you get rugged pulled that it doesn’t matter… some entirely tertiary thing (Politics, Diversity, Who you sleep with, Whether some boomer finds you attractive or sexually threatening, whether your good stupid or bad stupid according to some hiring manager’s office politic goals) is entirely decisive, and that that doesn’t even matter because Housing prices are functionally fixed at the rate that will keep you maximally impoverished and working to pay rents, health insurance, and social security/Medicare to boomers (because handouts are morally good when its to the already wealthy elderly). And all of it is intentionally capricious and not tied to anything related to the credentials: standard, elite or exceptional you exerted extraordinary effort to achieve… The actual test is entirely in the capricious discretion of people who hate you or see you as a pawn to wield, and you will never learn why or how the test passes or fails. And your family, if they are about, are seemingly entirely incapable of navigating this or giving good advice… Even in cases where you’d think they should know (Even most executives, if they aren’t ruthless cynics, give their kids horrendous advice, and then blame them when it doesn’t work).
Anakin wins the Pod-race and becomes the only human and certainly the youngest to win it in decades, but that’s not what wins his freedom… His freedom is the product of an elaborate bet between a slave holder and a stranger he only met that week, which comes down to a literal Die Roll.
Merit is not enough for Anakin, and merit was never even in the question for Padme…
This gets even more egregious when they finally get to Coruscant, what is supposed to be the home and center of the Jedi and the Republic…
The Republic is not what it once was. There is no interest in the common good. There is no civility, only politics.
-Senator Palpatine
Anakin of course faces the Jedi council who despite him objectively being the most qualified candidate ever put before them, highest IQ ever tested Midichlorian count ever tested, literally foretold by prophesy… But they reject him entirely off vibes. Because his nervousness, and concern for his mother’s welfare gives them the ick makes them uneasy, and raises concern that he’s racist prone to attachment.
And he’s too old, AT 9 years old.
However old the Jedi are finding and recruiting the force sensitives of the core worlds into a life of monastic celibacy and military combat… Apparently 9 years old is concerningly late for keeping their little child soldiers brainwashable and controllable, despite us knowing from the original trilogy that a force sensitive can be trained in the force and lightsaber to be great Warrior/Wizard starting as late as 19 or even later given its implied Leia will be trained after the events of Return of the Jedi.
Padme likewise gets nowhere… Learning that her daring escape and risking the lives of all her most loyal followers… Won her exactly nothing.
The Chancellor moves to shove the issue off on a committee so he can pretend he did something, and she successfully (under Palpatine’s Manipulation) initiates a vote of non-confidence to change the government…
But She’s only traded one delay for another (as Palpatine is well aware and foresaw).
So Padme does a daring assault on the Planet of Naboo, Anakin goes along… because outside of Qui-Gon he has no one in the world and Qui-Gon resolves to train him as a Padawan one way or the other on the sly…
And via the most extraordinary super-human effort from both Padme and Anakin… They manage to resolve the conflict via sheer miracles, dumb luck, and the divine intervention of the force (on top of their own extraordinary ability)…
Such that Naboo survives and Anakin finally… After Qui-gon dies and Obi-wan delivers his ultimatum, is accepted as a bare apprentice… Something which on a core world would have been his birthright/enforced via effectively kidnapping.
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Not a single thing or institution in the galaxy works. Not a single thing functions. And those that seemingly miraculously hold the whole thing together such as the Jedi Order or the Naboo Monarchy/Democracy seeming depend on extracting extraordinary effort, sacrifice, risk, and alienation from the young and children especially… Whilst they seemingly have little concern or responsibility to those same children given the way the Jedi have just accepted slavery as the cost of peace in the Galaxy, or that they can just discard children like Anakin who they don’t want, and exploit those they do, not even attempting to look after his interests by say ensuring his mother is not left in slavery.
(of course the Liberal logic dictates they not help his mother… After all why would they buy/free that one slave and not any other? It would be a conflict of interests for them to help or show barest concern for the families of their Padawans… What do you mean what about the Padawan’s sacrifice!? It’s a PRIVILEDGE to be inducted into the Jedi and isolated from the world and all hope of attachments! … Why yes this is the logic the university system, and most boomer institutions use to extract labor and research and life destroying sacrifices form their privileged Grad-Students and Ph.D candidates. To the point where I’m surprised there isn’t a scene of Yoda showing off his house and Tenure track income to the Padawans)
It is in Attack of the Clones however that all of this really comes to a head.
I won’t relitigate the romance between Anakin and Padme… Or actually maybe I will…
On Sand
Every Zoomer commentator has said the overwhelming awkwardness, and struggle, and sense that neither is saying the right thing in the right way.. The feeling that Portman and Christiansen are “Acting Poorly”… Is the essence of the Zoomer dating experience, it is the most relatable possible thing about it. And no it is very plainly not some accident, given how widely both actor’s actual range in the films are…
“I don’t like sand” is not some random line out of nowhere. Immediately prior Padme had spoken about her childhood and her nostalgia for the time before she was Queen and was just another girl swimming at the lake…
Then Anakin goes into his famous “I don’t like sand” ramble.
And I’m convinced the instinctive cringe of the Gen-Xer at a guy being “bad with girls” is the real objection, that he’s not cool and they aren’t having a Han Solo fantasy of being a sexy space-pirate…. Not Christiansen’s acting.
That they had their faces shoved in the fact that the real love they feel they missed out on, isn’t the result of being cool or smooth or other things that they can imagine they improved on, but that it is a result of bravery and the willingness to face the awkwardness and risk of rejection.
“I don’t Like sand” is at once completely awkward, popping Padme’s nostalgia, oversharing, and actually really creepily leering… And by no stretch is it “Bad acting” or “Badly written”. It’d actually be hard to direct the combination of awkward emotions by accident, they even seamlessly edit between the shots of Anakin not liking sand, and then awkwardly trying to explain himself whilst digging himself deeper saying here “everything’s soft and smooth”, then awkwardly going to touch Padme but hesitating really creepily… This is 5-6 six shots composed together seamlessly… It took maybe 20-40 takes.
Its very intentional… And instantly relatable to anyone who grew up in the era of 2010s feminism and walking on eggshells or the post online dating madness…
And of course it instantly make sense that these two hyper isolated people who had their childhoods ripped from them and had their entire lives defined by pressure cooker expectations and adults treating them not only not as kids, but responsible for all the adults concerns and neuroses… Because the Future of Naboo, or The Jedi Prophesy, or the Future of Women’s progress, Rape culture, racial equality, the legacy of slavery, the holocaust and DEMOCRACY… Well it all comes down to Them, because of course the adults around them are incompetent or psychopathic, or merely dependent on systems that sacrifice the young, and can only control the future by emotionally manipulating and abusing children.
Anakin had accidentally popped her nostalgia… Projecting his own miserable lack of a childhood onto her brief bittersweet memory, “we used to lie out on the sand”, “I don’t like sand”. But it’s meaningful: Tatooine is only sand, that’s his entire home planet, he’s implicitly saying he’d never been happy or ever had a pleasant childhood moment of safety like she’s remembering… they are entirely different, but the same in their misery… And somehow, miraculously, through the beauty of love… in their fumbling hopelessness they realize they’re the only other person in the Galaxy that they can relate to.
For awkward and psychologically abused zoomers it is an overwhelmingly beautiful moment, something the opposite of the institutions where even the most extraordinary skill and effort cannot get you anywhere due to the spite that runs it…
A profound moment of beauty, grace, and destiny… Which seemingly could never have been earned at how fumbling, incompetent, and awkward the two maladjusted naive lovers are, and yet the genuine sincere love and attraction… largely because of the naivety… saves them, because they’re actually in the presence of someone who likes them. Maybe for the first time in their life.
That the love of youth prevails via its own beautiful logic… even as the elderly design to destroy and grind them down in every other way…
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This triumph against all odds, and in many ways against themselves, is intercut with t the real geopolitical tension rising in the Galaxy… It is the A Plot to the profoundly inhuman B-Plot
The Politics of Attack of the Clones is this beautifully clockwork machine of hidden intentionality and building intention which I don’t want to unpack…
But the Core thing for our purposes that’s laid out in Attack of the Clones is the two armies.
Into the Meat Grinder
The Droids vs. the Clones…
Both are artificial creations, without love, without family, without any affection or feeling… we tour the two factories where the fighters are being mass produced there’s a sorta cheesy, sorta fun for the kids action/comedy sequence in the Droid Factory which doesn’t really work to my mind, but its actually the sequence from the Trilogy that’s most like C3P0 and R2-D2 comedy on the Death Star in 1977 Star Wars… (this is a trend that the weakest elements in the Prequels are the ones most tonally similar to the Original Trilogy)
And the setting is of course visually very similar to the the Cloning vats on Kamino already established… But there is a profound moral difference between clones and droids…
Droids are not alive, they are purely machines.
The Clones are alive though. They are people. They are people who are reduced to machines and expended as disposable assets in other people’s wars and causes…
Whilst Gen-Xers who never played the games or never read the books might dismiss this as two disposable armies of non-people…
They misunderstand entirely.
The Clone Wars is maybe the closest any fictional piece of media ever came to predicting the Ukraine war… Of flesh and blood men who bleed and suffer and form emotional attachments being sent to be killed by disposable machines whose destruction is merely an attrition of a consumable logistical item… And then the horror of realizing the regime you’re fighting for sees you exactly the same way.
The Clone Wars are the stories of clones with double aging… the youngest in the battlefield 9 years old, just like Anakin in Episode 1, and most of them in their low teens, just like Padme and her body doubles in episode 1.
This is very intentional… And none of the Zoomer Prequel fans fail to understand this.
The Clones and young Jedi Padawans are the characters Zoomers Identify with… throughout the games, both Clone Wars animated series, the books… The Republic Commando expanded franchise…
And this is the theme they see most in the Original Trilogy: Obi-Wan and Yoda are lying to Luke. They’re manipulating him into being their assassin.
The Rebellion is USING Leia, a teenage girl to smuggle state secrets, and the first time we see her is her being captured and sentenced to die for the missions others sent her on the second she was able to even follow the politics.
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And this is how the Zoomer Fandom sees Star Wars, not as adventure films… but war films… Analogizing something like the clone wars to World War 1 or Vietnam.
Such as in this Mashup with Kipling’s Poem “Boots”:
And this theme… Core to the prequels of Irresponsible politicians and adults sending the young to suffer, die, sacrifice, and be denied basic human connections in ways that Older never did and never intend to…
This is really the core of the Zoomer Anakin meme.
All of this is NOT reinterpretation to match modern politics, it’s not “Sonic says Trans-Rights” its just the Core of the text of the prequels. These are the themes and story points George Lucas wrote with loving detail…
And the Boomers and Gen-Xers who even now are publishing pieces in Europe and elsewhere about how they need a draft to fight Putin or whatever, even as the women of the west (like Anakin’s mother) are being raped and murdered by sand-people the governments are intent on doing nothing about (and attacking anyone who tries).
Anakin is a Former Child Soldier Forced to Lead Child Soldiers and Forced to Kill Them
Beneath all the “Anakin was Right” posts on twitter invariably some Gen-Xer or Boomer will reply with “He killed younglings!”
Who were the Clones? Yoda and the Jedi threw millions of 9 year old clones into the Meat Grinder with no concern for their innocence…
Who was Anakin? Another 9 year old they ripped from his mother (The jedi never went back for her, presumably because they couldn’t justify saving one slave Anakin cared about over any other…. that THAT would be corruption, or self dealing… but him sacrificing his entire childhood, arm, and chance at love for them is just what they were due)
Who was Padme? Forced into the crushing responsibility of Queen at 14 and almost immediately a target for invasion and killing.
Who were the Jedi Padawans like Ahsoka Tano? Who in their teens were leading clones to their deaths much like 19th century teenaged midshipmen in the royal navy.
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No one in the Galaxy, certainly not the Jedi and not the Republic, And not the Governments of the UK, or France, or America, (or of Ukraine based on recent revelations) respects the innocence of children.
Yoda and Obi-Wan certainly don’t leave Luke and Leia out of it by politely sending them to be raised by their wealthy father after their mother dies, you know the way rivalled European courts might return the family of another they are at war with… Instead they are 1 hour old and Yoda and Obi-wan are conscripting them into one side of the fight irrespective of blood or their mother’s wishes.
No one in the Star Wars universe “Leaves kids out of it”… And no one does in ours.
Despite having zero risk factor for Covid, no government left children out of the vax mandate. They do not leave kids out of the flurry of white guilt and shaming for real or alleged racial or sexual grievances the kids can have had no part in… they are the primary target for the emotional warfare and guilting anyway BECAUSE they are children and uniquely vulnerable to manipulation via emotional trauma. “White Children Don’t Deserve innocence” according to the famous quotation… They don’t leave the children out of pressure campaigns to Trans kids (which somehow never happens to the Black or Muslim kids)… And of course they are not spared by the most powerful in the world in the Epstein network.
Nor are white children spared by The Migrant Rape Gangs in Britain or by the violence of black adults and children in America and across the west in their racially motivated beatings, assaults, and killing.
Yet at the same time not a soul on earth cares for the welfare of the children the regime rejects from it’s love… Selective humanitarianism is appealed to cynically for Migrant Children and every cause under the sun.
That the second a sad photo of a drowned child trying to cross the Dardanelles or Rio Grande, that some parent or family member is exploiting the child to gain entry… suddenly that means that infinite humanitarian resources much be poured into assisting the invasion… That if a 28 year old male migrant burns his passport and claims to be 15 he must be given infinite welfare and placed in a highschool next to actual children he can assault.
The supposed “norm” of Empathy for children is not a “norm” other people have, its a weakness they know you have which they can exploit.
That when you try to deport or imprison the people invading the country, suddenly THEN the welfare of children matters. Suddenly THEN when it can be weaponized to hurt you, and only then, does the innocence of children matter.
Yoda sent hundreds of Padawan child soldiers and Millions of Clone child soldiers into the meat grinder…
Yet when Anakin finally takes moral action of his own to prevent a coup, stop a second Galactic Civil War, End the Clone Wars, and Save his unborn Children’s life…
Now suddenly the innocence of children matter. Suddenly those 271 Younglings in the Jedi temple represent innocence, as if Ashoka Tano and Padme weren’t forced to lead children younger than them into combat at 14, and Anakin didn’t have the Fate of everyone put on him at 9, both in the Pod-race, and in the battle of Naboo…
Suddenly, when it’s the Jedi being put under blaster and the lightsaber… That’s when they cry “think of the children”.
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Anakin would have become an Accomplished Pod-racer if he had been left to his childhood. Padme would have a been a young Naboo noblewoman by the pool… the clones would have probably been let go if the Jedi cancelled their contract upon hearing of this unethical human experimentation being done in their names... If the Jedi had let the Padawans go they’d have been returned to their families.
If Luke and Leia had been returned to their father when their mother died of a broken heart thinking Anakin dead (not his gentle/sexy force choke)… then they would have grown up happily and peacefully in the core worlds.. Hell Vader would have probably found the strength to kill Palpatine for their sake within the year (much as he did the first time he, Luke, and the Emperor were together)
If the law had been merely enforced the victims of Rotherham or Epstein would have been freed…
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But what happens if Anakin lets those Jedi Younglings go? They’re an indoctrinated and brainwashed warrior elite belonging to a death cult.
There is not a single example in Star Wars canon I know of that a Young Jedi who survived Order 66 did NOT go on to launch a war against the empire and kill dozens or hundreds of Imperial soldiers and civilians. Every Jedi who ever survived waged bloody war on the Empire. And Anakin knows that’s what they’ll do.
The Exact same way we know even the youngest Channel Migrants will grow up to attack the white population of Britain or the teenagers convicted of participating in the Migrant Rape Gangs will be released only to reoffend and do worse as adults…
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So Anakin makes the Choice he has to make… That if he is going to protect the children he cares about (his children) he has to commit violence against those who will be their enemies.
No one spared him, or Padme, or Ashoka, or The Clones who followed him, no one’s going to spare his children. And he cannot spare the children who will become his future enemies.
Indeed One could plausibly argue Anakin’s attack is more legitimate in that he actually has a plausible pathway to ending the conflict and ending the suffering of children…
Likewise if you simply machine-gunned the migrant boats they’d stop coming and no children would drown, get machine-gunned, or cut up and served into Kebab meat.
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Anakin makes the choice to put the survival of his Children over that of the Jedi Younglings…
In the heatmap meme of moral concern, he decides to side with his kin and ingroup tightly enough that he can do it.
The child who runs up and calls him “master” (the title the Jedi had denied him, but which the child believes) is purposefully chosen to resemble Jake Lloyd's young Anakin… And you can see the sadness in Anakin at what he has to do… But he has the moral clarity and concern for his own children to do it.
This is the Ultimate Meaning of Zoomer-Anakin
This is why all the screaming “But he’s evil! He kills children!” “He turns to the dark side!” Does not matter and is unpursausive…
The entire meaning of the Zoomer-Anakin meme is a rejection of the telescopic empathy and humanitarianism by which the regimes of the west emotionally blackmail whites and white zoomers in particular into handing over their country without a fight.
It is the rejection of the idea that the highest thing you could be is a “decent human being”… We know what the people whose “humanity” you are appealing to are like. We’ve seen for decades just how much open nigh genocidal hatred, black, brown, Muslim, Jewish etc. Have for white children, and indeed what little love Boomer Whites have for white children… and the idea some shared humanity is a high-bar to be lived up to instead of some subterranean non-concern we’d struggle to ever dig our way down to… is laughable.
It is the realization that the exact same GOP Conservative shouting “Think of the Children! The Dreamers!” or that Remigration is too cruel, are the exact same ones who cheer when Israel or Trump bomb a hospital or girl’s school.
That the exact same Liberal women who scream about their bleeding hearts for those poor migrant children, are the exact same ones who called 11 year British girls prostitutes and slags who deserved it.
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It is the realization that the same “master Yoda” so concerned about the younglings Anakin killed, was the same Yoda who sent millions of 9 year old clones to their deaths with 14 year old Padawans leading them.
That the same Obi-wan yelling and weeping that Anakin was his “brother” was the exact same one that left Anakin’s mother in slavery and never went back for her.
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The Prequels, whether in the complicated politics, romantic awkwardness, Degenerate Military Advisor/DEI Senator Jar-Jar, or the utter cruel indifference of the Jedi was NOT being unrealistic or poorly written… It was too Realistically written! It reflected reality too well!
The Boomers and Gen-Xers didn’t hate it because it was badly concieved or hard to understand, they hated it because George Lucas held a perfectly accurate mirror up to them and their Liberal Democratic world and values… And they did not like what they saw looking back.
They hated George because he depicted actually beautiful innocent young love in all its awkwardness, not their hip-cool pickup lines and faux world weary bravado they used to debauch girls they offered drugs at some concert whilst impersonating a space-smuggler.
They hated George because he showed the actual moral grayness and complex motivations of actual geopolitics that boomers cannot stand instead demanding some talking head tell them why Putin, or The Serbs, or Saddam, or Ghaddafi, or Hamas, or Iran… Is actually Hitler and they don’t need to think about it.
They hated George because he depicted a young man seeing through their bullshit and not being corrected and plainly shown he was wrong.
They hated George because he told them the truth.
And they hated Anakin most of all because he treated their self-insert characters, the Jedi, the exact same way they treat the children who happen to be in their way… Like the Girls of Rotherham, or kids who don’t want to be beaten into commas during desegregation, or Yemeni kids who don’t want to be starved, or their own sons who don’t want to have to pay a boomer a million dollars for a house…
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This is what Anakin represents most of all, the idea that everything cannot be papered over by telling someone younger than you to “rise above”, “sacrifice for the greater good”, or “have empathy” whilst the elderly make no sacrifices and exercise zero empathy.
That the whole of George Lucas’ Star Wars is America’s National Epic and the boomers rejected rejected the prequels not because they were unworthy or said nothing, but because they said too much.
That the logical conclusion isn’t the young willingly sacrificing for some moral abstraction invented two minutes ago that not a one of the moralizers themselves intend to sacrifice for… It is the young seeing plainly through the hypocrisy and staring straight into the liars, politicians, and boomers with a gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun.
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Kulak knocks it out of the park again
I wonder if the 3 murder-bot factories had parallel scene or settings work
Imagine if someone managed to make it so the assembly line of the drones, the helmet hand off of the clones and the education of the young jedi; all had some little details that all matched.