The Old Republic

I have a lot of unpleasant things to say about the three Star Wars movies that have become known as the "prequels," Episodes I, II and III, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith.  Most of my fanboy angst comes from the fact that I was desperately hoping that George Lucas could recreate the wonder of being an eight-year-old when I was in my twenties, and being profoundly disappointed that he could not.  There is a laundry list of things that are wrong with these movies: Jar Jar Binks, little kid Anakin Skywalker (and implied virgin birth of said whiny little twerp), Jar Jar Binks (did I already mention him?), sulky teenage Anakin Skywalker (and the fact that Padme Amidala actually fell in love with said sulky teenager with a rat-tail), the lack of adequate plot development and a plausible explanation for sulky young adult Anakin Skywalker suddenly becoming a raging, mass murderer... I could go on, but you get the idea.
That said, there were some things that the series did accomplish well: Finally getting whiny Anakin turned into Darth Vader, and pretty much every scene with Yoda. Particularly his lightsaber battle against Count Dooku, where sulky teenage Anakin gets his hand lopped off and is mercifully out of the way while Yoda gets his lightsaber awesome on.  But the thing that has been making me think lately is arguably something that sort of dragged the movies down, the political maneuvering that was masterfully conducted by the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, AKA Senator/Emperor Palpatine.
Palpatine worked things into place without ever taking any direct credit or blame for the way things were, all the while pulling the strings to make sure they not only didn't get fixed, but actually got worse. It was constantly presented as a dilemma where there really was no good answer, and what was right had to take a hit for the sake of security.  There's that one scene in the galactic Senate, where Padme ruefully says, "This is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause,"  that almost makes you want to forgive a whole multitude of sins in those movies (at least until the next appearance of Jar Jar Binks).
I'm wondering if the Sith have infiltrated the US government. Because for a nation that was founded and has maintained some pretty lofty ideals about government of the people, for the people, by the people, we seem to be stuck in a pretty good quagmire.  And as much as I would like, I can't throw all the blame on the Republicans.  This filibuster/nuclear option thing that is playing out right now, has been a virtual inevitability for months.  A lot of people agree that it's a terrible idea, but they are equally convicted that rolling over on their agenda to avoid it is an equally terrible idea.  So here's where we are, a longstanding procedural protection for the minority party has just been kicked to the curb.
It was officially kicked by the Republicans in the Senate, but Democrats don't get to claim immunity, they teed it up when they did the exact same thing for the filibuster of other presidential nominees besides the Supreme Court.  In other words, they don't have that much room to criticize the authoritarian nature of pure majority rule, because when the shoe was on the other foot, they planted a swift kick to the groin of parliamentary procedure.
That said, we are all worse off for these latest developments.  The voice of the minority will now be all that much weaker in the future, and that, friends, neighbors and members of the Old Republic is absolutely the path away from democracy.  There are no innocents on Capitol Hill, they are all guilty as sin.  It is a dark time for the rebellion, I'm just waiting for the Death Star to float into view.
The cynic in me wants to say that it doesn't really matter, the strings in the books have been pulled and persuaded against the people for a long time.  I want to shrug it off and say it doesn't matter if we just let the politicians play their crooked games, but something in me wants there to be hope.  Something in me wants to believe that there is still good in Vader, but I wonder if the Ghost of Obi Wan was right, "He's more machine now than man."  I wonder if the US Congress is like that, more machine than human.