Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

The revolution will be supervised.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

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107Comments

  3. 3.

    BruceK

    Courtesy of Bill in Portland Maine, the One Word Answer Man answers:

    No.

    Longer answer: Comparing him to Jar-Jar is an insult to Mr. Binks. Beck’s more like that cackling, yapping, little *thing* in Jabba’s palace.

    With delusions that he might someday be as cool as HK-47.

  7. 7.

    Michael

    Does anybody have a picture of Erickson? In my mind, he’s chubby, stubbly and has an AWESOME model of the Millennium Falcon hung over his bed, where he reads his porn stash to the light of a Stormtrooper lamp……

  10. 10.

    vacuumslayer

    @Michael: I think it’s a rule that all conservative pundits must be doughy, fat-faced and pear-shaped. So just start there and let your imagination run wild. Just don’t picture Glenn Beck and Ross Douhthat making sweet sweet love.

  11. 11.

    Morbo

    Here’s a Star Wars related blog post title for you Erick: “Is Erick Erickson the internet’s Porkins?”

  16. 16.

    amorphous

    Everyone here seems to be forgetting how the Star Wars Trilogy was one of the most bestest conservative movies ever.

  20. 20.

    asiangrrlMN

    @amorphous: Neither. That would be the Chunky Reese Witherspoon standing over the both of them with a whip. I just hope she has the foresight to ball-gag both of them.

    Aaaaargh! My mind cannot handle the image!

  24. 24.

    MikeJ

    If Erick was capable of building a buffybot his fapping wouldn’t pause for enough time to write a blog post. Which is why it sucks when your foes are evil *and* stupid.

  27. 27.

    The Moar You Know

    “Is Glenn Beck TV’s Obi Wan Kenobi?”

    I recall less tears and snot, but I’m starting to get up there in years, and could well have missed Obi-Wan’s copious weeping and habit of going to pieces faster than a hand grenade.

  28. 28.

    gnomedad

    @amorphous:

    Everyone here seems to be forgetting how the Star Wars Trilogy was one of the most bestest conservative movies ever.

    If you add the unintelligible moral logic of the prequels, you’d have a good case.

  29. 29.

    steve s

    @linda:

    That’s a great video. But I’m suspicious. How many cute brunettes in their 20’s are as jaw-droppingly stupid as Erick Erickson? I wonder if she was a plant.

  31. 31.

    steve s

    All those pics of Erick, it’s just a matter of time before someone photoshops the Red State Trike Force…

  33. 33.

    Ash Can

    I don’t even know WTF Erickson’s talking about by comparing Beck to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Leaving aside the fact that there’s no actual boycott going on (just confronting sponsors with transcripts and threatening further action, IIRC), how is losing sponsorship making Beck more powerful? It makes no fucking sense — although I’ve long since come to the realization that, for the right wing, not making any sense is a feature, not a bug.

  35. 35.

    asiangrrlMN

    @linda: Yes. We need more of this, especially in the faces of his Republican colleagues. I love the disdain in his voice as he dresses down that young woman. She had the look of, “Oh shit, what did I just do?” as he excoriated her. Very satisfying.

  36. 36.

    MattF

    ITS A PLOT! It’s… them, doing…. bad things. Which is totally completely absolutely different from… us, doing… good things.

  37. 37.

    El Cid

    Is he saying that Obi Wan-Kenobi is the Glenn Beck of the Star Wars trilogy?

    ‘Cause, that just seems weird.

  38. 38.

    Zifnab

    That’s right. Beck was number 2 on all of cable television behind Nickelodeon.

    If it was between Glenn Beck and Spongebob Squarepants, I can see how people considered it a toss-up.

  39. 39.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    Whiskey Fire finds what may be the greatest Erick Erickson post ever.

    I think you mean “so far” because I have no doubt that CINC RSSF will outdo himself someday. He probably has a cape and a light sword at the ready for a special event where he can proclaim the awesomeness of all the awesome being brought forth by the awesomemest teabagger. (Whoever that might be next time.)

  43. 43.

    John PM

    I guess you could compare Beck to Obi Wan to the extent that Obi Wan failed to keep Anakin from turning to the dark side and also failed to keep the Republic from becoming an Empire. Of course, Obi Wan was actually fighting against those two things, while Sith Lord Beck would have actively been cheering them on. I think the only way the comparison would really work is if Beck went to live in the desert for 20 years.

    P.S. I have now determined that comparing a live person to a fictional character is one of the dumbest rhetorical devices ever and should really eliminate the person making the comparison from ever being taken seriously again. I usedbto think to myself a lot that presidents should sound like Michael Douglas’ character from The American President, until I kept reminding myself that he is a fictional character. If I truly want to make a point to these Republican idiots, I will instead quote Lincoln, T. Roosevelt or Eisenhower, you know, real Republican men instead of the p_ssies they have produced for the last 35 years.

  45. 45.

    Scott de B.

    BOB:

    Aren’t you aware those 912 groups are government plants to make it easier for Obama’s minions to round all of you up and put you in internment camps! Don’t fall for it!

  46. 46.

    EnderWiggin

    @linda:

    just because it’s a delicious way to start the day—barney frank prevails with humor:
    tbogg.firedoglake.com/2…..-is-a-god/
    ‘like talking to a dining room table…’ has to be one of the best putdowns by a congressman evah… lol

    I saw that and rushed over here expecting a post adding some more snark to the already awesome snark. Paging DougJ …

  48. 48.

    Notorious P.A.T.

    “Who is the bigger fool: the fool or the fool who follows him?”
    –Obi Wan Kenobi

    I wonder if Obi Wan went around saying “this is horrible to say, and I wonder if I’m alone in this — you know it took me about a year to start hating the Death Star victims’ families?”

  49. 49.

    Chad N Freude

    @steve s:

    Oh, please! I suppose there’s nothing like a little right-wing-style paranoia to start the day.

    Nothing personal here, I just think the idea that she was a plant is silly on its face. Putting aside the fact that she has the intellect of a houseplant.

  52. 52.

    Brick Oven Bill

    Do you realize how many cartons of cigarettes it takes to get 609 ACORN members to only go vote? These Glenn Beck folks just do it. They write articles about the Constitution all on their own. They are literate!

    Smart people make better citizens.

  53. 53.

    amorphous

    @John PM: I don’t know, I’d say that Secksy (Glenn not David) Becksy is a real life dead-ringer for Ellen Burstyn’s character in Requiem for a Dream.

  57. 57.

    JK

    Glenn Beck is a malignant media carcinogen and Erik Erickson is several fries short of a happy meal. They both need to resume taking their anti-psychotic drugs.

  58. 58.

    Chad N Freude

    @John PM:

    Oh, I dunno. Isn’t Obama a lot like Superman? Maybe with a little Kryptonite in the area? Isn’t Rahm Emanuel a lot like Batman? Isn’t Hillary Clinton a lot like Wonder Woman? Isn’t Sarah Palin a lot like Wonder Woman? Also?

    You make an excellent point. Although I still like comparing Dick Cheney to Darth Vader, although as far as I know DV never went on Fox to promote his memoir. And George Bush is a real Oliver Twit.

  59. 59.

    JGabriel

    Petty Star Wars point: Did Obi-Wan really come back stronger after Vader struck him down?

    All Kenobi ever did afterwards was say things like “Trust the force, Luke” or “C’mon Yoda, give Luke a chance” and appear all translucenty and ghosty and shit.

    Sorry, but I fail to see the stronger in that. Presumably, Beck will be about as effective.

    .

  63. 63.

    JGabriel

    @steve s:

    How many cute brunettes in their 20’s are as jaw-droppingly stupid as Erick Erickson?

    Presumably about one out of six, i.e., about the same ratio as any other subpopulation.

    .

  64. 64.

    jenniebee

    Found this through a link at Pandagon – Holy Shit Running down the list:

    An Israeli speaks to reporters about Israel’s nationalized health care and how much he likes it, so…

    A woman wearing an Israeli Defense Forces t-shirt yells “Heil Hitler” at him, so…

    He tells her off for saying that to a Jew. She tells him that as a Jew he should be against Obama. He tells her that he had to go to an emergency room without insurance, and 2 hours in the emergency room cost him $8,000, to which she replies:

    “waaaahhh!” Seeing this action going on…

    He is surrounded by her friends who tell him that he is “done” and to “go away”.

    The woman tells him that she got stuck for a $15,000 hospital bill, Obama hates Jews, and…

    Whatever happens, her tax dollars are not going to be taken to pay for abortions, or, as she puts it, “somebody else’s Friday night on the town.”

    Then she gets her own interview. Her husband is uninsured, she’s underinsured, and that’s just the way it is because there is no right to health care in this country.

    These people are insane.

  66. 66.

    Chad N Freude

    @Brick Oven Bill:

    Thanks for the link. I was particularly taken by the last couple of paragraphs:

    I am going to assume that some amount of immigrant diversity is valuable or inevitable, or both. Given that assumption, our goal should be to carefully select diverse immigrants who do the least harm to social capital. If immigrants could possess certain characteristics that tend to increase social capital, then the impact of ethnic diversity could be at least partially mitigated.

    People in less intelligent populations will be less willing to set up networks for potential long-term payoffs, make personal investments in the community, and follow basic norms of behavior with the expectation of future reciprocity.

    I intend to focus on one such important characteristic—how smart the immigrants are. Intuitively, it is not a stretch to believe that smarter people are better at organizing networks and understanding the long-term benefits of cooperation, and a burgeoning academic literature confirms that intuition. IQ, a construct that psychologists use to estimate general intelligence, has been separately linked to elements of social capital, such as sophisticated ethical thinking, altruism, planning for the future, political awareness, adherence to informal community standards of behavior, and cooperation for the greater good. Despite this research, the direct link between intelligence and social capital has been drawn only in a handful of technical articles. It is time to bring the IQ-social capital link out of the academic journals and into the policy debate. Doing so could help us deal realistically with the problems Putnam has identified.

    Hasn’t something like this been tried in the past? Some European country?

    Along this line, there is a <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons” classic science fiction story by C. M. Kornbluth called <a href=”http://www.wattpad.com/111513-The-Marching-Morons-C-M-Kornbluth” “The Marching Morons”. It depicts a society strangely like early 21st Century US, including — amazingly– TV game shows (no kidding). The problems are the result of the stupids outbreeding the smarts. Totally worth everybody’s time. (BO Bill — you can use it to defend the article’s thesis.)

  68. 68.

    Chad N Freude

    Part of the blockquote got chopped. Also. Here’s the whole quote:

    “Some clear policy implications follow. What we want are immigrants who are most likely to be cooperative, trustworthy, and concerned about the welfare of the community. No one has any simple, reliable way of ascertaining whether an individual possesses these qualities. But we do have a simple, reliable way of measuring another quality that is correlated with them—cognitive ability, as measured by an IQ test or an educational credential. The smarter our immigrants are, the more likely they are to trust and cooperate, and the less likely they are to subtract from our existing stock of social capital. Selecting immigrants for intelligence (or a proxy indicator like education) could lessen the negative impact of ethnic diversity on American society.

    This proposal works especially well in the broader debate over immigration. Many economists have advocated that the United States de-emphasize family preferences in favor of skill-based selection, much as Canada and Australia have already done. Though few people ever describe “skill” selection as a search for people with high IQs, immigrants with advanced degrees and sought-after talents are usually quite intelligent.

    Skill selection is a desirable way of addressing the problem of ethnic diversity because it is already a policy option on the table. More intelligent (or educated) immigrants would be more productive workers, and they would also have a much less objectionable social impact on the United States due to their enhanced ability to cooperate. Putnam’s concerns about deteriorating social capital form another argument for immigrant skill selection.”

  70. 70.

    Zifnab

    @Chad N Freude:

    This proposal works especially well in the broader debate over immigration. Many economists have advocated that the United States de-emphasize family preferences in favor of skill-based selection, much as Canada and Australia have already done. Though few people ever describe “skill” selection as a search for people with high IQs, immigrants with advanced degrees and sought-after talents are usually quite intelligent.

    We already do that. Immigrants with advanced degrees are given preferential treatment over those without. Immigrants with jobs waiting for them in the states (de facto “educated individuals” that can get a job at an international firm) are fast tracked through immigration protocols.

    But the major push in immigration isn’t at the high education / income levels. A nuclear physicist working out of Argentina rarely has it so tough that he needs to relocate. A highly successful El Salvadorian businessman might be useful in the United States from an economic angle, but he’s got little motivation to leave. You’re basically saying, “We need to encourage successful people to come to the United States” but successful people typically don’t have a lot of reason to relocate. On account of them being so successful where they’re at.

    People migrating to America in large numbers are the ambitious but uneducated – the day laborers and the fruit pickers and the blue collar workers that simply want to take advantaged of the larger US services industry and higher wages that the increased demand provides.

    This isn’t a matter of cherry picking the best and brightest from foreign soil. This is about dealing with the flood of young and untalented who are coming into our country whether we like it or not.

  73. 73.

    Brick Oven Bill

    Unless you believe that natural selection is a thing of the past and that the world that went from 1 to 7 billion humans in the last 100 years can make 49 billion humans this century, population management is something to keep an eye on.

    This is why I am so surprised that the Obama Administration is assigning different values to different individuals in their health care plan.

    I guess the Administration’s vision is to assign lower values to old people, because old people as a group didn’t vote for the Administration, and you can make the clear case that they have less value than a 20-year old. But the dollar value of a human being can also be closely correlated by IQ.

    There is probably a much closer correlation between IQ and human worth than age and human worth. Glenn Beck, it should be noted, goes hyper whenever governments attempt to assign different citizens different dollar values. This is because he knows where it leads. He is a very moral man, but not as moral as he thinks.

    A managed transition to eugenics is the best possible outcome for the human species. A good start would be for those on public assistance to have their reproductive rights limited.

  74. 74.

    Notorious P.A.T.

    @JGabriel:

    That is true. But maybe since Obi Wan became an indestructible ghost who could still teach Luke that was what he meant.

  75. 75.

    Ed Drone

    What I never understood about the “Marching Morons” is that smart people would have found ways to deal with the cretins without the “ultimate solution” of putting them in rockets and ejecting them in space (a very expensive method, to my way of thinking).

    No, a smart government could easily cut the moronic birth-rate with contraceptives in the water supply (those “in the know” would have a separate water supply, or an antidote pill available). And to reduce the number of living morons, there’s always nationalism and wars.

    Oh, wait …. I think I’m going to stop drinking water!

    Ed

  78. 78.

    Ann B. Nonymous

    Bricko, human biodiversity is not your friend. You’re swimming in the stupid end of the gene pool, and if you really believed what you preached, you’d use your Rocky Mountain oysters as a topping.

    Incidentally, many eunuchs look like Glenn Beck. That puffy, weepy face.

  79. 79.

    Chad N Freude

    @Zifnab:

    People migrating to America in large numbers are the ambitious but uneducated – the day laborers and the fruit pickers and the blue collar workers that simply want to take advantaged of the larger US services industry and higher wages that the increased demand provides.

    Some of them also try to get their kids educated and out of fruit-picking and house cleaning and manual labor, and succeed.

    Uncontrolled immigration is not good, but the solution is not draconian punishment or eugenics but rather creation of similar opportunities for life improvement in the places the immigrants come from.

  80. 80.

    Brick Oven Bill

    People get all angry with Hitler, and say he was a bad guy. But if you assign a ‘bad’ factor to people based on the amount of human suffering that they will create, the worst people are the World Health Organization and UNICEF types.

    Hitler was at least partly responsible for 80 or so million deaths. In contrast, these do-gooders who feed dumb people without insisting on population controls are responsible for generating an unsustainable human biomass, billions of whom will likely starve this century.

    Yes, Hitler was a bad guy, and I denouce him. But compared with Mother Theresa, Hitler will have caused less human suffering in the final analysis, if you do not index suffering to IQ, which is a whole different discussion. Therefore, Hitler was more moral than Mother Theresa.

    Overpopulation.

  81. 81.

    Bubblegum Tate

    @Notorious P.A.T.:

    I wonder if Obi Wan went around saying “this is horrible to say, and I wonder if I’m alone in this—you know it took me about a year to start hating the Death Star victims’ families?”

    Ha! Good one, although I’d change “Death Star” to “Alderaan.”

  85. 85.

    PaulW

    Glenn Beck = Jar Jar in an Ewok outfit screaming “Puppy Power” ala Scrappy Doo. And wearing Cousin Oliver’s glasses.

  87. 87.

    Michael

    Erickson is now eating his own. LMAO

    The headline itself is worth a click.

    redstate.com/erick/2009/08/19/dear-senator-mike-enzi-and-heritage-foundation-shut-up/?preview=true

    Dear Senator Mike Enzi and Heritage Foundation: Shut Up. [updated]

    The article is a winner, too.

    The Heritage Foundation, which played a vital part in building conservative support for Romneycare in Massachusetts, is setting the stage for Republican capitulation on healthcare. This is the second time in less than a year that Heritage will have been instrumental in organizing a conservative collapse in opposition to big government. The first time was when Heritage gave conservatives cover to support TARP, calling it “vital and acceptable.” Now with healthcare, because Heritage is trying to be “helpful”, confusion is starting to crop up among Republicans in Congress at a very critical time in the healthcare debate. Capitulation and compromise are now on the table using a bastardized version of a Heritage proposal.

  88. 88.

    bago

    “Conclusive Statement: And it is not as though I walked into the Senate chambers with a carbonite explosive. I could continue slaughtering politicians for decades and not make a dent.”
    ―HK-4

  90. 90.

    Donald G

    @bago:
    A carbonite explosive? !? Every STAR WARS geek worth his Kessel spice knows that carbonite was the substance Han Solo was encased in for transport to Jabba, and that it was a thermic detonator that Jabba’s cronies were afraid of when wielded by a disguised Leia in RotJ.

  92. 92.

    Paul MacDonald

    @amorphous:

    No, actually Lucas’ inspiration for the trilogy was based around Nixon and Watergate. Parts II and III of the second trilogy drew from post 9-11 hysteria.

    Where you get the conservative notion is beyond me. I always assumed people knew the underlying themes in the most popular film series of the past 30+ years.

  93. 93.

    Doctor Science

    Has BOB really gone over the insanity horizon and now all we’re hearing is the Doppler-distorted scream as he accelerates away? Or is he ratcheting it up like a toddler when you’re just now paying attention to him?

    Is this a bid for attention, or medication?

  95. 95.

    Chad N Freude

    @Doctor Science:

    Clearly a bid for attention, which I am happy to give him because he is such a great straight man (in the vaudeville sense, not the sexual politics sense).

  96. 96.

    Bubblegum Tate

    @Paul MacDonald:

    amorphous was being sarcastic; only wingnuts think SW are “conservative” movies in much the same way they think Ghostbusters is totally a conservative movie becuase there’s that one joke where Bill Murray says the difference between academia and the real world is that they expect results in the real world.

  97. 97.

    Tsulagi

    Commander EE is about two lightsabers short in a two-saber mental arsenal.

    Additional comedy was on RedState about two weeks ago when the RSSF mobilized staging in Atlanta. They were to bond into a starbursting real force. They answered the call; their numbers swelled into the tens. Have a feeling some of the R-pols Erick conned into attending were thinking “WTF” seeing this group.

    Best comedy was in the comments sections by troopers who posted links to their personal photo albums of the event. ComicCon geeks would point and laugh at these dweebs. One had a grinning Colbertesque photo of himself with his arm wrapped around a Cuban guy from FL running for the Senate. Could have been captioned “This is my Hispanic friend!”

  100. 100.

    Warren Terra

    @ JGabriel, #59
    Yup, I had the same reaction. After all, while Alec Guinness delivered the line very impressively, and it was a good boast, in fact either Vader had a severely limited imagination or Old Ben was full of it?

    I mean, post-death, all Kenobi managed was to encourage Luke to trust the force and to tell him to go visit Yoda; I don’t remember him even responding to anything Luke said, just delivering the messages – and neither of the messages even required any new information, just faith and knowledge Kenobi that had possessed for Luke’s whole life. He could just as usefully have left Luke a note, or gotten around to telling Luke before his death.

    As you point out, Dead Ben also told Yoda to give Luke a chance – but, again, what were Yoda’s options; was he going to wait around for the next half-trained Jedi to come along instead of Luke? Especially as Yoda somehow managed to live for some incredibly long time and then conveniently expire of old age or disease just after teaching Luke?

    More powerful than Darth could imagine, huh?

  103. 103.

    Wile E. Quixote

    Fuck, I need to get my ass into the gym, otherwise people are going to look at me and say “Look at that fat, dweeby looking fuck. He’s probably a goddamned conservative pundit. Asshole.”

    Oh, and not only is Erick son of Erick another doughy, conservative sack of shit, but he’s a doughy conservative sack of shit who was never in the military. What are the two things you don’t find in foxholes? Atheists and prominent conservatives.

  104. 104.

    Wile E. Quixote

    The thing is that when you look at the events that happened in the second (or first, depending upon how you count) trilogy all of the bad things that happened are the fault of one man, Obi Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan Kenobi fucked up, massively, and in doing so launched the career of Darth Vader and guaranteed the reign of the Emperor Palpatine. Don’t believe me, well let’s look at how things played out.

    OK, end of the movie,Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker, or perhaps I should say Darth Vader the Jedi formerly known as Anakin Skywalker, has gone to the volcanic planet Mustafar to wipe out the rebels against the empire in order to provide Emperor Palpatine (né Senator Palpatine, aka “Darth Sidious”) with a spot of positively Cheneyesque plausible deniability. Padmé’s Amidala chases after him in another ship aboard which Obi-Wan Kenobi has stowed away.

    Anyways they get to Mustafar, the volcanic planet, and Padmé pleads with Vader (né Anakin) to run away with her. Obi-Wan comes out of Padmé’s ship and Vader (né Anakin) gets pissed, thinks that Padmé is delaying him so that Obi-Wan can sneak up on him and uses the force to choke her into unconsciousness (Have you ever wished you could do that to the people who answer tech support phone calls? “I’ve told you twice, I have rebooted.” “Well sir try rebooting again.” “You have failed me for the last time.” “Choking sounds from other end of line, muffled sound of a body hitting the floor.”)

    OK, Obi-Wan and Vader (né Anakin, oh fuck this, it’s annoying. I’m just going to keep calling him Anakin) start fighting. Much light saber action, Shzooom! Shzooom! Shzoooom! Mmmmmmgggggnnnng! Shzooom! Shzooom! Fwip! Faba dapa dap! (or whatever sound light sabers make). At one point Anakin accidentally whacks the conveniently accessible self-destruct switch for the facility with his light saber (You’d think that people would learn to stop having those installed, but no, they never do. Just like granite countertops conveniently accessible self-destruct switches look great but are hard to maintain.) and things start to fall apart around them on Mustafar (Which was some really impressive digital cinematography, especially the views of the sky.). Anakin and Obi-Wan continue to fight as the facility falls apart upon them and end up jumping on to separate floating mining platforms, and chase each other, still fighting, across the lava sea.

    The light saber action continues. Shzooom! Shzooom! Fwip! Fzapa! Ploink! Finally Anakin jumps onto Obi-Wan’s platform and starts to really kick Obi-Wan’s ass. Obi-Wan finally breaks free by executing a huge backflip off of the platform and onto a rock at the shore of the lava sea (Obi-Wan’s incredible back-flip and of their ability to breathe in this environment is obviously the result of their strenuous Jedi training and mastery of the Force).

    Anakin stops the platform and is about to jump off and resume kicking Obi-Wan’s ass when Obi-Wan warns him not to try it, telling him that he can’t make it because Obi-Wan has the high ground. But Anakin isn’t listening, and why should he? He’s been doing a right proper job of kicking Obi-Wan’s ass, which probably feels really good after the 40 million or so admonitions he’s received from Obi-Wan and the other Jedis to chill out, and face it, Obi-Wan is probably just saying this so that Anakin will stop kicking the shit out of him. So he jumps, and as he does so Obi-Wan swings his light saber and Zip, Whack! Shzooom, Zip, Shzooom! Zip! Shzooom! and cuts off Anakin’s left arm and both of his legs below the knee. Ouch! So now Anakin’s a quadruple amputee (having lost his right arm to Count Dookie, er, I mean Dooku in Attack of the Clones) and maybe he should consider changing his name from Darth Vader to Darth Matt or Darth Bob.

    So, here’s this poor, sad, mad bastard who has just had his remaining three limbs amputated (I’ll tell you, having one cut off hurts more than I could ever describe. I can’t imagine three) lying at the edge of the lava sea and starting to burn and what does Obi-Wan do? He does the wrong thing. He does nothing.

    Now, Obi-Wan could pick Anakin up, sling him over his shoulder, and, barring any mad behavior on Anakin’s part ala the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (“Oh! Had enough, eh? Come back and take what’s coming to you, you yellow bastards! Come back here and take what’s coming to you! I’ll bite your legs off!”), haul him away and stick him on a high shelf somewhere (or drop him in a swimming pool and let him bob around) until things are sorted out and then try to rehabilitate him? No. Obi-Wan chooses not to do this.

    OK, fair enough, perhaps upon more considered judgment Anakin’s too dangerous to live. Perhaps he can’t be rehabilitated at this point, after all, he’s sold out to the Sith, slaughtered the Jedi younglings, tried to choke his pregnant wife to death and given Obi-Wan the ass kicking of a galaxy a long time ago and far, far away (I don’t mention the slaughter of the Tusken raiders because everyone hates the fucking Tusken raiders, they hate them almost as much as they hate the fucking Ewoks and the fucking Gungans. The only people who give a shit if you slaughter any of these annoying alien bastards are bleeding heart liberal fuckheads at the GCLU (Galactic Civil Liberties Union) and even for them it’s pretty much a pro forma objection).

    Anakin is a dangerous, mad bastard, a rabid dog that needs to be put down. So does Obi-Wan take care of things, stab him through the heart with the light saber, or cut him in half lengthwise with it or perhaps ram the light saber through his head and leave it there until his head explodes (And you would be 100 percent correct, if, from reading the preceding sentence, you came away with the impression that I would love, love, absolutely love to have a light saber. Oh man, I so want a fucking light saber! A lot of people couldn’t be trusted with that kind of power, but I know that I could.) or simply pick him up and drop-kick his ass into the lava sea? No, Obi-Wan chooses not to do that either.

    Now, either one of these choices would be consistent with the traditions of the Jedi. If Obi-Wan rescues Anakin and rehabilitates him then he’s acting in the highest traditions of the justice and mercy that the Jedi claim to serve. On the other hand if Obi-Wan kills Anakin, well, the Jedi are not averse to shedding blood, as the headless corpse of Jango Fett and several hundred legions of dead Imperial Storm-troopers will testify. By Obi-Wan’s moral code both of these choices are good, both of these choices are right.

    Neither of those choices appeals to Obi-Wan though because Obi-Wan, although a Jedi, is enraged. He’s been betrayed by Anakin, whom he regarded as a brother, he’s seen what Anakin has done to the Younglings and to Padmé, everything he cares for is turning to shit around him and he’s barely survived the most viciously brutal and terrifying fight for his life he’s ever had. At this point it’s not about justice any more for Obi-Wan, no, at this point it’s about revenge. Obi-Wan wants Anakin to suffer, horribly, for what he did, before he dies, so Obi-Wan does nothing; he just walks away.

    It gets worse. Consider this: although Anakin has gone over to the dark side, although he has been anointed by the emperor as Darth Vader, although he’s done bad things, he hasn’t done a lot of them yet. He has committed mass murder, killing the Jedi Younglings and the Tusken raiders, but he hasn’t aided in the destruction of any planets yet. So, if Obi-Wan did the right thing, either rehabilitating him or killing him, Darth Vader’s career, a career which caused the deaths of untold millions of victims all over the Empire, not just those who cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced with the Death Star destroyed Alderaan, would have been nipped in the bud.

    This is not at all similar to the “would you kill Hitler in his cradle before he grew up and went on to his career of evil?” dilemma. This is more like, “would you kill Hitler in der Führerbunker in 1941 before the invasion of Russia but after the invasions of Denmark, Norway, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Czechoslovakia and North Africa the bombing campaign and U-Boat war against Great Britain and the massive deportations of Jews from Germany, Italy and the Axis occupied territories?”

    The hypocrisy of the Jedi is breathtaking. The Jedi were always telling Anakin to control himself, to control his anger lest he fall prey to the temptations of the Dark Side. But when the shit comes down, when things get ugly and their backs are against the wall the Jedi are just as likely to give into their anger and to the Dark Side as any snarling member of the Sith. Mace Windu wants to execute Darth Sidious. Obi-Wan turns into a sadist who wants Anakin to suffer and die. Their actions are no different than Anakin’s in slaughtering the Tusken raiders. At the end of the trilogy Yoda is the only survivor of the Jedi who hasn’t given in to the Dark Side and Obi-Wan’s hypocrisy and failure have guaranteed that agents of the Dark Side, most notably Darth Vader, will claim even more victims.

  106. 106.

    Steeplejack

    @Wile E. Quixote:

    Dude. Awesome. You magnificent Cheeto-huffing bastard. I can’t believe no one has commented on your hilarious and mind-bending rant. Best thing I’ve read all day. And I’m serious. Know that you have been read and appreciated at least one place.

  107. 107.

    Luthe

    @ Wile E. Quixote:

    It is arguable that Obi-Wan chose to walk away out of anger. Based on his last words to Anakin (“You were my brother! I loved you!”), it is entirely possible he loved Anakin too much to kill him, but also thought Anakin was too far gone to be saved. So he left Anakin to what he thought was a certain death, because it was the easiest thing to do. Of course, he discounted the will of the Force, but unfortunately, that happened a lot in the prequels.

    /uber-geek

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