Two Legs Good

So, David Brin. The man looks like a bald Rowan Atkinson and wrote The Postman—yes, the dry version of Waterworld. With a track-record like that, I'd have killed myself a long time ago, but I'm capable of shame.

So he wrote about how Star Wars is terrible, "backward-looking", fascistic—in a nutshell that George Lucas ought to be sent to the Gulag for counter-revolutionary agitation. Let's go line by line through what he says Star Wars' message is.

Elites have an inherent right to arbitrary rule; common citizens needn't be consulted. They may only choose which elite to follow.

Um, do you honestly mean to tell me that you don't realize that "they may only choose which elite to follow" is absolutely co-terminous with the party system that dominates your precious "democracies"?

"Good" elites should act on their subjective whims, without evidence, argument or accountability.

Aside from the fact Jedi are all about suppressing their whims, please tell me you're aware of what's known as "the judicial usurpation of politics", which is where unelected judges use judicial review powers to enact laws they feel should exist, "without evidence, argument or accountability".

Any amount of sin can be forgiven if you are important enough.

Mary Jo Kopechne on line 2. More to the point, it's true, about sin, as opposed to crime (it's just that everyone's important enough). But the distinction seems lost on Brin, who insists on identifying not only the civil order, but his specific political theories, with the moral law.

True leaders are born. It's genetic. The right to rule is inherited.

Well, it is, even in a "democracy"—oh, unless we were to abolish birthright citizenship. Tell me, Brin, how do you feel about Starship Troopers?

Justified human emotions can turn a good person evil.

Wait, you mean you disagree? I'm sorry, but are you actually concerned to deny that people do evil things from good motives? Just shut up right now; the grownups only have so much patience.

Basically Brin decided it was okay to stop learning about the world in eighth grade, and he was obviously deeply, deeply affected by civics class. Only guess what? Societies cannot avoid having elites; inequality is an inherent trait of the universe, since no material thing can partake absolutely of any good. But there's a right way and a wrong way to deal with an elite. The right way is to acknowledge them, and try to set limits on their behavior—using the benefits of their rank as a carrot, and some form of penalty (often shame, an emotion Brin doesn't appear acquainted with) as a stick. The wrong way is to deny the elite's existence, thus depriving society of the means, the right, to control it. Everyone's equal, we're all comrades...and yet for some reason when one of the comrades gives speeches, nobody wants to be the first one to stop clapping.

Basically, children, what happens when you declare all animals equal is that some are more...you know where it's going. So here's a question: Orwell understood that, but wasn't smart enough to avoid dying of syphilis (a treatable disease even then, and one quite easily avoided by not going to brothels). Brin does not understand it, so how is it he's managed to avoid eating anything out of a container with a skull on it?

Elsewhere in the same article, Brin says:

It is essential to understand the radical departure taken by genuine science fiction, which comes from a diametrically opposite literary tradition—a new kind of storytelling that often rebels against those very same archetypes [Joseph] Campbell venerated. An upstart belief in progress, egalitarianism, positive-sum games—and the slim but real possibility of decent human institutions.

Huh. Well. Even to the extent that is true, and it largely isn't, so what? A certain economic and social theory explicitly characterized by "an upstart belief in progress, egalitarianism, positive-sum games—and...decent human institutions" killed 120 million people in 72 years, so why in hell should we want that to inform our literature?

Then there's this:

"Star Wars" belongs to our dark past. A long, tyrannical epoch of fear, illogic, despotism and demagoguery that our ancestors struggled desperately to overcome, and that we are at last starting to emerge from, aided by the scientific and egalitarian spirit that Lucas openly despises. A spirit we must encourage in our children, if they are to have any chance at all.

...

But over the long haul, history is on my side. Because the course of human destiny won't be defined in the past. It will be decided in our future.

And we will bury you! You and your capitalist imperialism will be consigned to the dustbin of history! And we strike a glorious blow against despotism and demagoguery by murdering the Tsar and his family!

And hasn't anyone noticed by now—well, other than Chesterton, who talks about it in What's Wrong with the World—that people who talk so much about the future are always trying to screw you in the present? Or that "fear, illogic, despotism and demagoguery" is a better description of the 20th century than of any century before it? Progress is a myth; the goodness or badness of a given era is not even correlated with, let alone caused by, its occurrence earlier or later in time.

Brin is probably not a Communist, but he has, in common with them, an inability to distinguish politics from morality—"that which advances the program" is alone good. For Brin, it doesn't matter if you strive in every way to enact justice, dignity, and prosperity for your people; if you weren't elected to the post that lets you do it, you're evil. He's an idiot, of course—direct democracies aren't workable, and "representative" ones always become dominated by an elite. If you're not going to have hereditary elites, you'll have an elected one (that is, advertising will become the basis of political power) or a scholarly one (acceptation by the various academic cliques will become the basis of political power, and academic fads will be the de facto law of the land).

Does anyone else really get tired of these little apple-polishing true believers preaching to us? I actually do have a soft spot for children's uncritical acceptance of everything they learn in Sunday school, but that's about supernatural, avowedly mystical things. If you have that attitude of simple, childlike faith in a political ideology, I for one have no interest in being one of the millions that dies while you traverse your sharp learning curve.

Idiot.