My Life In Fandom: Using Star Wars To Talk Civics

This was unexpected: remedial civic in a Star Wars lore video. Good on Eckhart's Ladder for trying.

Nevermind that this avoids several realities behind why constitutional republics fail, such as needing a high trust and low time preference national culture lest the corruption that comes of low trust and high time preference hollow out your republic like a ravenous maggot, or that some nations simply cannot reach the level of trust and time preference required for a republic to function as intended.

I'm giving credit to Eck here simply for broaching the subject at all. Sure, he'll be rebutted good and hard in the comments by plenty of people, and some of those rebuttals will actually be worth a damn, but this sort of world-building talk doesn't happen outside of Sperglandia often enough and I think a little more like this would be useful.

Why?

For the same reason zombies facilitate talking about disaster preparation. The use of a popular fiction to facilitate talking about something that is both real and important is a good idea; it dilutes or negates the resistance to useful talk that otherwise exists, which is important in getting people to engage in the subject at hand. Yes, even if that involves pointing out that a given environment is unlikely to produce the proposed system. (e.g. any government in Star Wars where Force users aren't the shot-callers, defacto or dejure)

There's a limit, of course, but Eck's not hit that yet with this sort of video. He's not sperging out; this is just useful civics discussion, for now.