Monday 30 October 2006

Reasons I Don't Understand America Part 9

Via Lawyers, Guns & Money (yes I read a site that's named for a Zevon song, odd, huh?), comes yet another article on Battlestar Galactica. Wait! Come back. It also looks at how right-wingers have managed to completely misinterpret Star Trek, too:
Last year, a Star Trek rerun inspired Minnesota Star-Tribune columnist and warblogger James Lileks to concoct a plan that would eliminate any liberals who opposed abusing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. "It’s time to institute Disintegration Chambers in our major American cities," wrote Lileks, referring to a Star Trek episode that featured two tribes who preferred to fight wars by disintegrating their own people rather than sending them into live combat. Even though the episode was actually an allegory about the perverse methods governments use to shield their people from the brutal costs of war, Lileks took quite a fancy to the idea of forced disintegration, especially for his ideological foes.

Anyway, back to BSG:
"The more I watch the new Battlestar Galactica series, the more the Cylons seem like Muslims," wrote "Michael," the author of the Battlestar Galactica Blog, back in March. "They believe they are killing humans for their god. This is very much like the Muslim concept of jihad, which instructs Muslims to spread their religion through war."

So, a technologically more advanced society overwhelms another with a pre-emptive airstrike in order to spread the word of one god, right, and the overwhelmed guys are the Americans. I'm not sure that that works.

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