Dec 27, 2019Member-onlyWhy Revenge of the Sith Is a Good Movie Almost Ruined by Excessive Fan ServiceOne of the biggest problems with the new Disney Star Wars films is the way they rely on fan service for their biggest emotional moments. Whether it’s Han Solo’s death in The Force Awakens, Luke Skywalker’s surprising character arc in The Last Jedi, or the return of Emperor Palpatine in…Star Wars13 min readStar Wars13 min read
Dec 26, 2019Member-onlyWhy Attack of the Clones is Way Better than You RememberOne of the clearest signs that George Lucas actually cared about his movies is the time he took to make them. Whereas Disney set itself a ridiculous timeline of releasing a new Star Wars movie every year since they purchased the franchise, Lucas took three years between The Phantom Menace…Star Wars16 min readStar Wars16 min read
Dec 24, 2019Member-onlyWhy The Phantom Menace is Actually an Ironic MasterpieceI was only 10 when The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, and while I saw the movie in theaters four times, I didn’t appreciate until I was an adult how unsettled it must have made older Star Wars fans feel. It had been sixteen years since Return of the…Star Wars13 min readStar Wars13 min read
Nov 4, 2019Member-onlyThe 2020 Election: The New Silent MajorityFifty years ago, on November 3, 1969, President Richard Nixon gave his famous “silent majority” speech, a televised address in which he asked Americans to support his plan to end the Vietnam War, what he would later in 1973 describe as “peace with honor.” “And so tonight,” Nixon said on…Politics5 min readPolitics5 min read
Jun 7, 2019Member-onlyThe 2020 Election: On the Possibility of Political RealignmentThe term “political realignment” is perhaps thrown around too liberally (no pun intended) by commentators always looking to emphasize the historic nature of whatever election just happened. Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 was considered by many to be a realigning election, as he not only put together a new coalition…Politics5 min readPolitics5 min read
May 24, 2019Member-onlyThe 2020 Election: The Ghost of George McGovernOne of the prevailing historical narratives of the last fifty years is that our country has veered in a sharply conservative direction. It’s not just the Republican political axis of Nixon, Reagan, the two Bushes, and Trump but also the corresponding Democratic presidents of the same era: lackluster Jimmy Carter…Politics8 min readPolitics8 min read
Apr 10, 2019Why I Love and Hate Game of ThronesThe world has changed in many ways over course of the now almost twenty years of the twenty-first century, but one development that I probably wouldn’t have predicted back in the year 2000 is the worldwide popularity of Game of Thrones, an HBO television show based on an epic saga…Game Of Thrones12 min readGame Of Thrones12 min read
Published inArcturus·Oct 22, 2018American MadrassaFiction by Aatif Rashid — The mosque in my California suburb doesn’t really look like a mosque — no minarets and shit — and instead is just a brown stucco building in a bland business park, as unremarkable as the chiropractor with which it shares a parking lot and the police station across the street…Short Story28 min readShort Story28 min read
Jul 12, 2018Thanos, Disney, and the Invisible HandAVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, the latest of the Disney/Marvel products, is interesting only in that its villain is also its protagonist. Thanos, the big purple alien with a very on-the-nose name (Thanatos is the personification of death in Greek mythology) is presented by the film as both the ultimate force of…Movies4 min readMovies4 min read
Jun 14, 2018The Force SlumbersSOLO: A STAR WARS STORY was the first Star Wars film for which the process of buying a ticket and sitting down in a dark theater didn’t bring with it the tingling anticipation I’d come to associate with each new Star Wars film, first for The Phantom Menace, which I…Star Wars5 min readStar Wars5 min read
