A Sad Day for the Star Wars fandom.......

It has come to my attention that Carrie Fisher has become one with the force.  She has passed away today at the age of 60 due to her recent heart attack.  Her loss is a significant blow to Star Wars fans everywhere.  The Star Wars Saga has seen many of its great collaborators pass on over the years, with the actors for Count Dooku in the Prequels, Sir Christopher Lee, as well as the actor for R2D2 passing on very recently. But this? This is the equivalent of losing a Beatle. 

We, the fans, never think of our heroes as being mortal but they are. It is now time to thank Carrie for taking the role of Princess Leia Organa despite what others thought at the time about sci-fi movies. Carrie paved the way for other SF heroines on film and TV and thereby inspired so many girls and women with her character.  Princess Leia was a important and crucial figure in both current canon and the old Expanded Universe Legends canon.  Leia's devotion for peace  and democracy was part of what fueled the leadership of the Alliance and in the new canon, the leadership of the Resistance against a resurgent Neo-Empire, the First Order.  Let’s hope Star Wars VIII uses Leia well, in both the marketing of the movie and the movie in general, and gives her a proper sendoff .  

It was truly marvelous that she not only was an icon in Science fiction, playing the role of Princess Leia and all, but the sort of challenges she went through in her own life and how she managed to overcome the challenges and adversity that she faced.  Fisher, had a long history of drug abuse in the 1970s and 1980s. She turned that experience into the comic novel Postcards From the Edge to raise awareness of drug addiction.  The novel was adapted into a film by Mike Nichols in 1990, which brought even more awareness to her condition.  In the 1990s, she further revealed her diagnosis with bipolar disorder and her experiences with depression.  This in turn raised awareness of how she deals with these issues and why there is a need to address physical and mental barriers.  Carrie Fisher didn't just fight Space Fascists as a badass space princess, but she also fought a more real and tangible battle dedicated her platform to mental health awareness & female empowerment.

What was important about her fight for awareness was how open it was, she made no secret of her mental conditions.  Fisher gave honest testimonies of the trials and tribulations of battling drug addition addiction and bipolar disorder, and gave no quarter when it comes to discussing the realities of mental health conditions.  In her final column, published in November, Fisher advised “Alex,” a twenty-something looking for guidance on living with bipolar disorder.  She stated that "We have been given a challenging illness, and there is no other option than to meet those challenges. Think of it as an opportunity to be heroic – not “I survived living in Mosul during an attack” heroic, but an emotional survival. An opportunity to be a good example to others who might share our disorder. That’s why it’s important to find a community – however small – of other bipolar people to share experiences and find comfort in the similarities"

It was very appreciated for the media to focus and give emphasis on this part of the legacy.  I don't have much faith in the media for reasons I will not state here.  Yet, it was very appreciated that they didn't gloss over this part of her legacy but gave a significant degree of emphasis to it. 

In regards to activities on this blog, I had the idea of two Star Wars centered articles that I wanted to post regarding how the themes of Star Wars are relevant to our own society.  However, one of them is on indefinite hiatus because I have simply lost the will to post that one due to this tragic moment and the other one is cancelled permanently, I feel that the theme of at least one of them is totally obsolete now considering the plot changes that need to happen now, and any way to drag this plot point up that I want to happen now to make the sociopolitical themes I want to make will now be totally unethical and insensitive.  Thus that post will not appear on this blog, ever.  

May the force be with Carrie and her family now mourning her loss, always

The Far-Right in the absence of a Strong Left: A Warning

This post actually isn't mine per say but it came from a blog called skeptic.ca, the author is an anarchist, through he has a degree of sympathy for the NDP while it was under Tommy Douglas.  This post was written as part of a longer post on that blog regarding the author's concerns about the NDP's movement to the center, which accelerated under Mulcair and his "third way politics" and cost them arguably the 2015 election. 

I decided to share it, while I may not agree fully with the ideology of the original writer, because of it's relevance to politics in both the US and arguably Canada too(not to mention that it kinda predicted Trump).  We may think that we have it so smug(despite the fact that our society was also founded as a settler colony at the expense of the indigenous population and rooted in racism too) or that we're somehow progressive and post-racial.  Yet, within days of Trump's victory, we have seen alt-right hate propaganda spreading across Canada targeting racial minorities, and a potential Trump in the wings in the form of Kellie Leitch.  Never mind we have our own racist demogorgues and maniacs in the form of Ezra Levant and Lauren Southern.  As I mentioned in my post back from my long hibernation, the rise of Trump was tied to the failings of neoliberalism.  And as Justin Trudeau is becoming more and more of just another neoliberal, maybe we ourselves need a strong progressive movement or face the same consequences as America. 

The post below.  The original post can be found here:

Back in the Bloggers Chair: Thoughts on the 2016 election.

I’m back on the bloggers chair after a long hibernation!! Yay!  Originally I wanted to update reguarly, but grad school got in the way.  I apologize for any mess that this has left and I will try to make up for it....if I can!  Below are my thoughts on what has transpired with the victory of Donald Trump.

The Election of 2016: My Thoughts

First of all, the 2016 election.  I was not surprised that Donald Trump won.  Donald Trump's victory could boil down to two different factors.  One factor was of course the racism and misogyny prevalent in America.  Trump spoke to the darker elements of American society, the alt-right, the KKK, the white nationalists, the neo-nazis and formed a far-right populist bloc catering to the worst elements of racism, ultranationalism and xenophobia.  Trump promised law and order, as well as the most extreme policies perpetuated against illegals and muslim-Americans.  He overall took advantage of the xenophobia and wounds, hidden by the myths of post-racialism, within American society and offered the idea that if a certain minority, be it Mexicans or Muslims, be removed completely from America, that things will be better.  Trump has dug up hatred, and brought it to the surface.

Yet the narrative that Trump simply galvanized dark and racist forces, while true, is not sufficient to explain everything.  Trump also reached out to elements of American society, such as the rust belt, that lost out to neoliberalism and the movement of industries and jobs overseas.  He manipulated these elements of rural and working-class America with promises that he will "drain the swamp", that he will preserve America for the working class and get jobs that were lost back.