The Real Threat (Trigger Warning: Religion AND Politics)

• A Note From Ben:
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• I’ve held off on both politics and religion, but now I simply cannot stay away from either. Too much has happened for me to sit idly by and not make my feelings known. Some of this may seem a little out there for some of you and you can write off some of it as conspiracy theories if you want, but I think I’m onto something here.
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• First off, I think we’ve all had it with religion being crammed down our throats.
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• “May the Force be with you.” Geez. Any time anyone does anything, these light-side guys have just got to say it. They can’t help themselves!
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• I’m running to the exchange to pick up blue space milk: “May the Force be with you…”
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• I’m emptying a moisture vaporator: “May the Force…”
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• I’m bullseying womprats: “May the…”
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• Haven’t you religious nuts got anything better to do than wish the Force upon me? And isn’t the Force in every living thing anyway? You people always tell us the Force flows through us, penetrates us, and binds the freaking galaxy together, so if all that’s true, then the Force is always with us and your little “space blessing” is redundant!
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• And now, all of a sudden, we’ve got to turn the whole galaxy upside down so we can find “Master” Luke Skywalker. Phht, some “Master.” He let his entire order get slain by his nephew, Ben Solo (a product of a space pirate and a princess with daddy issues), then bugged out while the entire galaxy went to bantha poo-doo.
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• Things were so much simpler when the Empire was in charge. I mean it! Take a look at the statistics from back then. Crime was at an all-time low, space travel was mostly free of scum and villainy, and, if you didn’t mind the occasional exploding planet, there was plenty of work to be had. In fact, the only ones you had to worry about were malcontent rebels and religious Jedi zealots. Sure, you had to have your identification, there were the work-a-day visits to the detention centers, and there was the occasional disintegration, but, all in all, you knew what to expect on a given day.
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• All that changed when the second Death Star (I prefer to call it a moon-sized security station) exploded over Endor.
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• The story goes that the rebellion mounted a desperate assault against all odds and managed to not only overcome the sizable Imperial fleet in orbit, but also destroyed the shield generator on the surface (with the help of the indigenous tribe of mini wookies, of all things), dropping the shields and allowing the rebels to do their thing.
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• I have it on good authority that a maintenance technician left a tool tray in the laser aspect bay and the thing shot itself all to hell during a weapons test when the beam was misdirected. But to hear the rebels tell it, there was some epic “Battle of Endor” that turned the tide for the rebellion and none other than Luke Skywalker was at the heart of it. The rebels claim that both the Emperor and his apprentice, Lord Vader, were actually on the thing when it blew. They also claim that Luke managed to get aboard said space station, talk his father into killing his long-time ally and mentor Emperor Palpatine, and ultimately escape just in the nick of time.
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• Of course, the rebels love to say, “Oh, but Luke helped his father turn to the light side!” Yeah, sure, keep telling yourself that if it helps you get to sleep at night. Luke went to the Endor Death Star to wipe out the only other people trained in the Jedi arts in the entire galaxy. He didn't give a nerf-herder’s butt about getting dear old dad to the light; Luke just wanted all that power to himself. And what did Mr. I’m-the-Only-Jedi-in-the-Galaxy do after he got all that power? He tucked tail and hid while the bargain basement Galactic Empire (A.K.A. The First Order) showed up and blew up more stuff.
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• Let’s say we buy the rebels’ propaganda about Luke and the events leading up to the destruction of the second moon-sized security station -- er, Death Star. We’ve got to then swallow the tall tale that the one, the only, the cult-leader extraordinaire Darth Vader is, in fact, Luke’s dad. All that means is that Luke comes from a dubious family line. So, according to the rebels, Vader’s son is who the galaxy is pinning its hopes on to fix things, right? Then let’s take a closer look at Luke’s dad.
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• Anakin Skywalker was a special kind of crazy ever since he was a kid. As a child, he schemed gamblers at the podrace tracks; as a teenager he stalked the Queen of Naboo and committed acts of atrocity against the indigenous peoples of Tatooine (They are referred to as “Sand People” but I find that term offensive); finally, as an adult, he killed preschoolers and diplomats, domestically abused his pregnant wife, and finally attempted to kill his own mentor. Later in life, he took up hobbies like killing his adoptive parents, destroying an inhabited planet just to see what would happen, torturing his daughter, finishing off his mentor, torturing a smuggler just because he could, and dismembering the hand of his son. In retrospect, if Luke’s apple falls anywhere in the same planetary system of his family tree, we’re all in the trash compactor.
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• Speaking of parentage, let’s look at Ben Solo’s. His father was a scoundrel who shot bounty hunters in bar fights, hung out with wookies, and swindled other scoundrels out of everything from their starships down to the shirts on their backs. But that was nothing compared to his mother. The "princess” couldn’t decide who she was attracted to more: her whiny brother or a galactic criminal on the run. Really? You had a galaxy of sentient beings to choose from and that's who your final choices were?
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• Of course, who could blame her? Leia’s father never acknowledged her and when she did visit him, he did nothing but torture her the whole time she was there. Vader was your stereotypical abusive father so it’s no wonder she was all screwed up in the men department. All this rolled downhill to poor Kylo Ren, the Jedi-Formerly-Known-As-Ben-Solo. Throw in who his uncle is and it’s clear why he’s such a hot mess.
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• You know, if the rebels -- oh, excuse me, THE RESISTANCE -- had just left well enough alone and let the First Order do their thing, we’d have peaceful space routes again. But they can’t, can they? They’ve got to go gallivanting around the galaxy in their latest X-Wings, talking about finding Luke Skywalker and blowing up perfectly good planet-sized security stations. If they hadn’t gone off and been all like, “We’re gonna stop you dark-side guys,” the Hosnian System wouldn’t have been blown up! Talk about closed-minded. Wow.
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• But what do I know? I’m just some slug on the outer rim drinking my blue space milk.