I'm sure this will come as a surprise to all of you, but I spend a lot of time at the sort of message boards where science fiction gets discussed a lot.
Anyway, I've noticed a curious phenomenon. Ever since season three of
Battlestar Galactica started, conservative fans of the show have exploded in a fit of apoplexy and are becoming increasingly incoherent. It's truly a delight to behold.
You see, near the end of season two, the humans decided to settle on a planet they called "New Caprica." In the final episode of season two, the cylons showed up in an overwhelming force and conquered New Caprica. A number of humans escaped on ships, but the majority of humanity lived under cylon occupation.
During the break between seasons, a number of
webisodes were released that described what happened during four months of cylon occupation. Certain humans almost immediately started a resistance which the cylons referred to as an "insurgency." Most of the human attacks on cylons involved improvised explosive devices that targeted cylons and cylon military units. When the bombings started, the cylons started cracking down on the humans, implementing a curfew, rounding up random humans in the middle of the night never to be seen again, torturing human prisoners, etc. The more the cylons tried to crack down on the insurgency, the more humans rallied to the cause of the insurgency.
Then season three started.
With season three, the insurgents became even more fanatical. They started using suicide bombing tactics, and the bombs were often targeted not at cylons, but at other humans who were working with the cylons. The cylons started kidnapping more, torturing more, ect. I'm sure you can see where this is going.
What's funny is that the conservatives who normally delight in Battlestar Galactica have all of a sudden started yelling and screaming about how the New Caprica storyline has
nothing to do with Iraq. Nothing at all. The arguments for these claims are comical as they involve the kind of mental gymnastics only a conservative deep in cognitive dissonance is capable of.
Among the arguments I've seen:
- New Caprica is an allegory for Vichy France and only Vichy France. Any similarity between the New Caprica storyline and Iraq is purely a fantasy cooked up by desperate liberals. Only France, do you hear me? Only France!
- The cylon occupation of New Caprica has nothing to do with the American occupation of Iraq because the cylons weren't looking for WMDs.
- The cylon occupation of New Caprica has nothing to do with the American occupation of Iraq because space ships didn't fall out of the sky and save the Iraqis.
I'm not saying there aren't also parallels to other examples of foreign occupation in human history. There are also parallels to Vichy France (including human death squads killing other humans after the occupation is over), the Israeli occupation of Palestine (hey, Iraq isn't the only occupation in which suicide bombings were used), the Soviet occupation of easter European countries, etc. It's just funny listening to conservatives trying to convince everybody that the story has
nothing to do with Iraq despite the fact that the series creators stated quite clearly that they planned to cover up-to-the-minute controversial topics before the series even started.
The collective apoplexy by conservative BSG fans keeps getting better and better. The more we argue with them, the angrier they get and the more bizarre their arguments become.
Here is a short article detailing the conservative reaction to the New Caprica story in BSG. It's worth reading just for the writer's use of the word "dorkofascist." It had me laughing a few times.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12172Enjoy.
PS -- if you haven't been following Battlestar Galactica before, you
must start now! Many TV critics have declared it the best show on TV (not just the best sci-fi show), and with good reason! If you want to catch up on the storyline, you can read a variety of sites on the Internet, rent the DVDs from Netflix, download episodes from iTunes, or buy the DVD sets.
PPS -- in addition to the Iraq parallels, after the occupation ended, president Zarek set up secret courts to try collaborators. These courts operated with no basic protections of the rights of the accused, although the jurors convinced themselves they were being impartial and "going by the evidence." I wonder what that might be parallel to....
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