@wdlindsy wait, wasn’t Jonathan V Last the guy who said that the rebels were in the wrong in the original Star Ward trilogy? That Palpatine and Pinochet were benevolent dictators and that all that people should have done was be law abiding citizens to avoid getting in trouble in both the Empire and Chile?

@grammasaurus @wdlindsy The worst thing is, where does one go? They're almost bad these days. We're all running out of things that aren't objectively horrible. Especially those of us who are poor. (As good as it feels to buy something better from someone better, it's very rare it doesn't cost a decent amount more when you meet that criteria.)

I'm not asking and I'm not making excuses, I just want to get it off my chest how much it sucks that things were ever allowed to get to this point.

@grammasaurus @wdlindsy (As a side note, I have been avoiding Amazon as best as I could and haven't bought anything from there in quite a while, but I just know I'll end up having to use it for *something* sooner or later.)

@wdlindsy normies need to boycott

@nazokiyoubinbou @wdlindsy Amazon did an amazing job of convincing everyone that “you need it sooner, we can do it” and…convincing companies that they really didn’t need to have all that inventory, we (Amazon) can handle it for you, as well as shipping.

Even if you order a product from website ABC, there’s a good chance your product will be handled and shipped by Amazon. Them’s the facts.

But each of us could buy less, stream less, get rid of Prime, etc. And buy local if you can.

@wdlindsy
Sounds a bit like the General Motors streetcar conspiracy, buying up the public transit then running it into the ground

@mathematicalsynesthesia I have no idea. Do you have some links to reliable sources to back those claims up?

@wdlindsy https://web.archive.org/web/20040605061243/http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=1248&R=9E9C2AC86

@wdlindsy None of which is to say that the Empire isn't sometimes brutal. In Episode IV, Imperial stormtroopers kill Luke's aunt and uncle and Grand Moff Tarkin orders the destruction of an entire planet, Alderaan. But viewed in context, these acts are less brutal than they initially appear. Poor Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen reach a grisly end, but only after they aid the rebellion by hiding Luke and harboring two fugitive droids. They aren't given due process, but they are traitors.

The destruction of Alderaan is often cited as ipso facto proof of the Empire's "evilness" because it seems like mass murder--planeticide, even. As Tarkin prepares to fire the Death Star, Princess Leia implores him to spare the planet, saying, "Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons." Her plea is important, if true.

But the audience has no reason to believe that Leia is telling the truth. In Episode IV, every bit of information she gives the Empire is willfully untrue. In the opening, she tells Darth Vader that she is on a diplomatic mission of mercy, when in fact she is on a spy mission, trying to deliver schematics of the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance. When asked where the Alliance is headquartered, she lies again.

Leia's lies are perfectly defensible--she thinks she's serving the greater good--but they make her wholly unreliable on the question of whether or not Alderaan really is peaceful and defenseless. If anything, since Leia is a high-ranking member of the rebellion and the princess of Alderaan, it would be reasonable to suspect that Alderaan is a front for Rebel activity or at least home to many more spies and insurgents like Leia.

Whatever the case, the important thing to recognize is that the Empire is not committing random acts of terror. It is engaged in a fight for the survival of its regime against a violent group of rebels who are committed to its destruction.

@wdlindsy the last paragraph is really telling

@wdlindsy and then the closing “As we all know from the final Star Wars installment, "Return of the Jedi," the rebellion is eventually successful. The Emperor is assassinated, Darth Vader abdicates his post and dies, the central governing apparatus of the Empire is destroyed in a spectacular space battle, and the rebels rejoice with their small, annoying Ewok friends. But what happens next?

(There is a raft of literature on this point, but, as I said at the beginning, I'm going to ignore it because it doesn't speak to Lucas's original intent.)

In Episode IV, after Grand Moff Tarkin announces that the Imperial Senate has been abolished, he's asked how the Emperor can possibly hope to keep control of the galaxy. "The regional governors now have direct control over territories," he says. "Fear will keep the local systems in line."

So under Imperial rule, a large group of regional potentates, each with access to a sizable army and star destroyers, runs local affairs. These governors owe their fealty to the Emperor. And once the Emperor is dead, the galaxy will be plunged into chaos.

In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn't liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.

Which makes the rebels--Lucas's heroes--an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back.

I'll take the Empire.”

"The layoffs are solely the responsibility of inept, incompetent, and inattentive ownership and management. It inherited a great American paper and left it in the rubble, putting hundreds of talented journalists out on the street."

~ Jennifer Rubin

#WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #WillLewis #Trump
/7

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-killing-of-the-post

@grammasaurus @wdlindsy Honestly, I couldn't care less about when I get a thing usually. Plus it's usually only a day's difference anyway. If that.

Again, for many of us, it's about cost. And we can turn to, say, Walmart, or sometimes even Target, but they're both bad too... (Target used to be ok, but not anymore.)

And I mean, buy local is great, but A. costs more as mentioned already, B. going inside COVID-19 infection zones, and C. fewer options.

All we can do is our best I guess.

@grammasaurus @wdlindsy (BTW, the other half of "buy local" is sometimes local = MAGAts... Even if I buy local I'm supporting bad people.)

I just hate so much that everything is like this now.

@nazokiyoubinbou @wdlindsy I don’t have an easy answer for you. When I lived in a town of 1500 people I experienced some of what you mentioned—esp the higher prices part. I did learn to shop a lot less though! Now I’m in a town of 15,000 where a lot of people take pride in ‘buy nothing’ clubs, and repair cafes.

@grammasaurus @wdlindsy I don't really have much income, so the shopping a lot less part I have down pat.

Mostly I just wanted to say the things that just needed to be said aloud. Most of it we already know. Boycotting one means going to another, but the other is just as bad. Boycott them too and you got to something else that is bad.

Really what it comes down to is people, as a whole, never should have let things get this bad. I don't know how we get out of this anymore.

@nazokiyoubinbou @wdlindsy I don’t know either.

But every day I try to do something. Heck—at this point even reading a book is resistance!!

#staystrong

@wdlindsy was my source a reliable one?

@mathematicalsynesthesia I don't see a source in what you said beyond your own assertion. If you could point me to a source, I'd be grateful.

@wdlindsy I literally put the website with Jonathan V Last original essay called the case for the empire:

Here once again: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/1881387/the-case-for-the-empire-2/