Happy Star Wars Day!!!

We're Exceptional!

Trump Aspires to Turn Americans into Baby Killers

In the Republican debate last night Donald Trump defended his monstrous idea to murder innocent women and children to retaliate against ISIS.

So, let me get this straight, Mr. Trump. If you were president today, you would have the infant daughter of the San Bernadino terrorists killed. A baby who happens to be an American citizen.

And you'd have her grandmother killed too, because she must have seen those pipe bombs on the floor of the apartment. And the baby's grandfather too, on general principles.

Because if you didn't have that baby executed after promising that you'd kill the families of ISIS terrorists, you'd be caving in to them. You'd be making idle threats that you'll never carry out. You'd be exposed as a gutless braggart who can't back up his big mouth with big actions.

And you couldn't do this in secret, and just have the news report that you'd had a baby executed. No, you'd have to put the whole sorry spectacle on YouTube, just like ISIS does when it beheads foreign aid workers who are just trying to help the people displaced by war.

And you couldn't have some hooded executioner kill the little girl. No, to prove you're not a pussy, you'd have to pull the trigger yourself and blow her brains out. Or better yet, you'd use an AR-15, like the terrorists did in San Berdoo, and unload a full clip into that tiny body, splattering blood all over, maybe even getting some of that sweet, sticky baby blood on your face...

Is this is the sick fantasy of Donald Trump and the people who support him?

How will Trump respond when one of his sick sycophants carries out Trump's threats of retribution against the infant daughter of Malik and Farooz, or some other innocent Muslim child who's easier to find?

Trump and his sycophants just don't get it: ISIS terrorists are suicidal maniacs who believe the Apocalypse is nigh and that those killed by their enemies are martyrs and will go straight to heaven without passing GO, and will collect 72 virgins. That includes their families, who will be with them in heaven that much sooner if Trump murders them.

Carrying out Trump's threats of intentionally killing babies and grandmas would be the greatest gift the U.S. could give ISIS: millions would sign up, rather than thousands.

The way to get these guys is not to make them martyrs, but to show them as the cowardly scum they really are. Adopting their tactics legitimizes them, lowering us to their level. Doing that would bring the murderous chaos that daily fills the streets of Iraq and Syria to the streets of America.

Once you uncork that bottle, the genie won't go back in.

Red Alert!

Quite coincidentally, when the climate change conference was in full swing in Paris last week, the Chinese government issued a "red alert" smog warning:

Starting Tuesday and continuing for three days, the more than 20 million residents of Beijing will have heavy limitations imposed on their daily activities. Schools will be closed, outdoor construction will be halted, and as the BBC reported, “cars with odd and even number plates will be banned from driving on alternate days.” It’s the first time China’s highest alert has ever been enacted in the city. 

Beijing, December 2015

In recent years cities in China, India and Iran have been socked in by suffocating smog, often for days at a time. Scenes like the one on the right are becoming increasingly common.

We used to see these sorts of things here all the time in the United States and in Europe. In 1952 London experienced a "killer fog" that killed about 12,000 people. On December 7th visibility was reduced to one foot. At noon it was pitch dark. The air was so filthy that the coal smoke penetrated people's clothes and made their underwear filthy.

London, December 1953

For decades Los Angeles had terrible problems with smog. New York City experienced killer smogs in 1953 and 1966 that resulted in the deaths of hundreds. Donora, PA had a killer smog that killed 20 in 1948.

As in China today, most of the smoke in London came from burning coal. Londoners heated their homes with coal, in addition to using it to generate electricity (China has the same problem today).

In the United States, the pollution that caused deadly smogs came from automobiles, industry (steel plants and smelting), coal-fired power plants, and so on. By the late Sixties it was clear that business as usual was no longer possible. So on January 1, 1970, Republican Richard Nixon signed the legislation that created the Environmental Protection Agency.

New York, November 1966

The EPA drafted regulations to clean up power plants and industry. The EPA enacted standards to reduce emissions from automobiles and increase mileage.

Because of the EPA, cities like New York and Los Angeles have much lower smog levels, and our skies are blue most of the time. Literally millions of American lives have been saved because of EPA regulations.

Yet when you hear Republicans, especially Republican presidential candidates, talk about the EPA, they just bitch about "burdensome" regulations or the "war on coal."

The same pollution that causes the smog that kills vulnerable adults with asthma, children, and the elderly also causes climate change. The same coal plant emissions that poison our lakes and rivers with mercury and other heavy metals also cause climate change.

Republicans like to think of themselves as rough and ready individualists. They idealize freedom as driving a big 4x4 pickup truck that gets 10 miles a gallon and belches black smoke. They cast it in terms of the lone hunter going hunting on the back 40.

But the Republican ideal of individualism doesn't scale up in modern life with antique fossil-fuel technology. We can't all drive inefficient pickup trucks to work in New York and LA and Houston and Chicago, or even Minneapolis and Milwaukee. We can't build that many freeways -- or parking lots -- and the atmosphere can't absorb that much pollution and CO2.

The same thing is true for generating electricity: you can't generate electricity for 350 million Americans with coal: it's just too dirty and inefficient. Natural gas is better, but it still generates CO2, which is causing climate change.

Now, nearly every Republican elected official denies the fact of climate change. They pretend scientists are perpetrating a gigantic hoax and a conspiracy, but we all know for a fact they deny it because they're paid to do so by the oil, gas and coal industries. How do we know this for certain? Because they also want to eliminate EPA regulations that regulate power plant and automobile emissions that were originally enacted by Republican themselves because, as we saw for decades since the industrial revolution, pollution kills people. By calling for repeal of EPA regulations, they are denying that pollution kills people in exactly the same way they're denying CO2 causes climate change.

Our population has simply grown too large to continue to burn things for energy and heat: just as we had to move away from wood-fired fireplaces and coal-fired pot-bellied stoves to oil- and natural-gas-fired furnaces, we now now have to move away from all forms of combustion.

We could continue to burn fossil fuels -- if the population of the United States and the world were what they were five centuries ago: the earth's natural systems can absorb a limited amount of CO2 and other air-borne toxins. But to do so we'd have to wage a major campaign of limiting population growth, but also of actively reducing the world's population.

Are Republicans advocating we commit mass genocide so they can continue to burn coal and drive gas guzzlers?

In order to maintain and perpetuate the kind of individualistic lifestyle that Americans are accustomed to -- and the rest of the world wants to attain -- we have to turn to renewable, clean sources of energy. We have to drive cars that run on electricity or renewable fuels, like hydrogen generated by non-polluting carbon-neutral processes.

Republicans still refuse to acknowledge this reality, but the business world already has: the stock of coal mining companies has tanked and several have gone bankrupt. The prices of gasoline and natural gas have dropped precipitously as demand has dropped and supply has spiked. However, they'll almost certainly go up again as drilling companies go bust, the production bubble bursts and demand increases. (Market economies are notoriously volatile and unstable, aren't they?)

Now is the time to begin phasing out coal completely, because there's nothing good about burning coal: it's dangerous to mine, it leaves wretched scars in the earth, it's bulky and expensive to transport, it produces toxic pollution and CO2 when burned, and presents a huge waste disposal problem with millions of tons of toxic ash that spills on regular basis, killing millions of fish and poisoning our waterways.

We can replace all the jobs lost in coal mines with better jobs building, installing and maintaining wind and solar facilities: instead of working in dark and filthy mines, workers can build wind turbines and solar panels in high-tech factories and install them in the clean, fresh air.

Rugged American individuals can install their own solar panels and Tesla Powerwalls, achieving their own energy independence, something that's impossible with fossil fuels. A clean renewable independent energy future is much more in line with historical conservative ideology, rather than toadying to oil barons like the Kochs and petro-dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia.
In any case, we're going to run out of oil, gas and coal at some point. Fossil fuels are dinosaurs, literally and figuratively. We need to switch to the next thing while we still have the energy and resources to do so, instead of descending into war and chaos over dwindling fossil fuel supplies.

The End of Fossil Fuels

Great piece from CNN about the climate agreement in Paris.

The Paris Agreement, which came out of two weeks often-sleepless negotiations at a conference center here in a Paris suburb, is just the type of blaring signal the world needs that the era of fossil fuels is coming to a rapid close. Countries around the world pledged to do the near-impossible -- limit warming "well below" 2 degrees, and below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels if feasible. That basically requires the world to move rapidly toward 100% clean energy, producing zero net greenhouse gas emissions between about 2050 and 2080.

Yep.

If I were a firm in the fossil fuel industry, I'd think about getting out now. Oil is bad for business.

Perhaps that's why I haven't heard any of these lies lately. No one is listening.

WWJD?

What would Jesus Do?

It's a question every Christian ask themselves at one point or another in their lives. I think that Canada just showed us what He would do.

Dedicated To Gun Bloggers and Gun Blog Commenters

Look In The Fucking Mirror

Since Barack Obama was elected president, we've heard quite a bit about fascism, Hitler, and totalitarian states from the Children (aka conservatives in the United States). They've foamed at the mouth and fretted their little noses about fascist states and re-education camps.

Yet, their support for Donald Trump and his call to ban all Jews...oops...I mean Muslims from the United States shows just how adept they are at the art of projection. As the Times recently noted, this attitude has spread across Europe and it's all rooted in that same insecure, "appeal to fear" nationalism that we saw in the late 19th century.

It was this same nationalism that gave rise to Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. A key ingredient to this form of totalitarianism is a scapegoat and, boy oh boy, do we have one now. As I have said for quite some time now, conservatives are deeply bigoted and support the policies that Trump is espousing.

Thankfully, we have people like Doris Matsui to remind us when our country has made horrible mistakes.

Combat Vets Torpedo Good Guy With A Gun Myth

Some combat veterans recently torpedoed the good guy with a gun lie and it was fucking brilliant.

“I think there’s this fantasy world of gunplay in the movies, but it doesn’t really happen that way. When I heard gunfire [in Iraq], I didn’t immediately pick up my rifle and react. I first tried to ascertain where the shooting was coming from, where I was in relation to the gunfire and how far away it was,” said retired Army Sgt. Rafael Noboa y Rivera. “I think most untrained people are either going to freeze up, or just whip out their gun and start firing in that circumstance. I think they would absolutely panic.” 

Many combat veterans believe that civilian “good guys” taking on the “bad guys” during an active shooting isn’t as simple as it seems in movies and video games. Although more weapons owners are taking weekend-long tactical weapon training, that doesn’t instantly make a “good guy” ready for combat.

Considering that many in the Gun Cult play video games and use its lingo ("target rich environment") to strategerize how they would save people, rationality and logic are way past gone.

I think about all the gun bloggers and commenters out there and I have to wonder...would their tits get in the way when they tried to pull out their penis extension? I doubt they would even be able to walk a few steps without huffing and puffing.

Don't have to be in good shape to use a gun effectively?

The NRA's Vision is Anarchy

Check out what this former gun rights supporter and police chief of Milwaukee had to say recently....

The result is a huge increase in guns and violent crime in Milwaukee, Flynn contends, and a situation where police safety is in jeopardy. Under the current law, he says, “we are doing everything we can to make sure our criminals have unfettered access to high-quality firearms and get to carry them in record numbers. There are more guns out there every year.”

“The law was dictated by the NRA,” Flynn charges. “The NRA’s vision for America is anarchy. We are supposed to believe the founding fathers wanted to arm our pirates, the highwaymen and anyone else who wanted to tear down democratic institutions. It’s insane.”

Yep.

How About A Mock Mass Shooting?

Any doubt that the Gun Cult should be locked up or neutralized should be gone now after this pile of shit.

Gun rights groups, in protest at Texas campus, plan mock mass shooting

I say we give these assholes what they are the most afraid of...a re-education camp. Maybe somewhere in San Francisco? :)

Our Terrorism Problems Aren't in Afghanistan and Syria, They're in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

Republicans have been criticizing the president for "not doing enough" to stop Daesh, as ISIS hates to be called. But what more can be done? We're already bombing the hell out of Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and we're backing Iraqi, Kurdish and Syrian ground troops, as well as sending in special forces to conduct various missions.

Trump wants to carpet bomb the entire region and destroy every oil production facility in Iraq and Syria to prevent Daesh from making money from smuggling oil. Numerous Republicans have demanded we mount another full-scale invasion of Iraq and Syria, apparently having forgotten that we just did that in 2003, which is what created Daesh in the first place.

On the home front some Republicans are demanding we ban all Muslims entering the country. Tashfeen Malik, the female half of the terrorist couple behind the San Bernadino attack, entered the United States on a K-1 visa a couple of years ago. Authorities now believe that she had been "radicalized" for a considerable time.

Malik was a Pakistani who had spent more than half her life in Saudi Arabia. This one woman embodies the real source of the current terrorism problem: conditions in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

The war in Afghanistan has dragged on now for 14 years. This is in large part due to the fact that Pakistan is a haven for the Taliban, and Pakistan has been actively backing the Afghan Taliban for decades. The Pakistani secret service believes that a free Afghanistan will somehow come under the control of India, and Pakistan has an unreasoning fear of India.

But we're afraid to do anything to Pakistan because they've got nuclear weapons (they also sold the technology to North Korea that gave the Kim dynasty the bomb).

Osama bin Laden was from Saudi Arabia, as were most of the terrorists in the 9/11 attacks. Back in the day, the king of Saudi Arabia cut a deal with the Wahhabi sect of Islam. In exchange for endorsing his claim, the king gave the Wahhabis free reign to establish religious schools, making it the de facto state religion. Wahhabism is an extremely conservative sect that teaches other Muslims (Shiites, Sufis, etc.) are not real Muslims, and should all be killed for their heresies. The fact is, Daesh kills thousands of times more Muslims than Christians -- their main goal is to establish a caliphate and wipe out Muslim "heretics."

The only way to stop Daesh and the Taliban for good is to cut off their supply lines of money, weapons and ideology from their benefactors in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

The problem is that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are ostensibly our allies. We're afraid of doing anything to piss off Pakistan because they've got nukes. And we're afraid of pissing off Saudi Arabia because they've got oil, and could trash the world economy if we don't play ball with them.

The solution to the problems of Daesh and the Taliban is much more complicated than just bombing the hell out of the Middle East and Afghanistan. Republicans who spout more hatred and fear against Muslims so are not only turning Muslims around the world against the United States, but are also turning American Muslims against their own country. Donald Trump's unconstitutional rants are only creating more Syed Farooks.

To destroy the Taliban we need to get Pakistan and India to resolve their issues. To destroy Daesh, we need to eliminate the monetary and moral support they receive from Saudi Arabia.

The first is a very tall order, but since Afghanistan, India and Pakistan are all our allies, we have some leverage. The second is actually a whole lot easier.

Most Saudis don't have to work because the country is awash in oil money. The Saudi government just hands out cash to citizens (like Alaska used to), and all the work is done by immigrants. So instead lots of Saudis spend all their time studying the Qur'an, under the tutelage of Wahhabis.

If Saudi Arabia didn't have so much oil money Saudis would actually have to work, and wouldn't have so much free time to get all bent out of shape about heretics. Plus, they wouldn't have all that oil money to give to terrorists.

The best thing we could do to stop Daesh, therefore, is to make sure the Paris climate talks are successful. The sooner we reduce our dependence on oil, the sooner we stop funding countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia, who fuel international terrorism and war.

A Good Comparison

Convicted Rapist Endorses Trump

Man, the opposition research teams for the Republican presidential candidates are really incompetent.
 
It didn't get much play at the time, but convicted rapist Mike Tyson endorsed Donald Trump in October. This is salient not just because Trump has characterized Mexican immigrants as rapists, but because after Tyson was convicted in 1992 of raping beauty queen Desiree Washington, Trump proposed that Tyson instead just pay a lot of money and get off without doing any prison time. At the time Trump was trying to arrange a boxing match between Tyson and Evander Holyfield that would make Trump millions.

Republican candidates are getting slaughtered by Trump in the polls, yet it took Mother Jones magazine to dig up the dirt on Trump's plan to let rich rapists get off. Trump's got tons of dirty laundry like this, but his opponents just let him suck up all the media time with his insults against female reporters and proposals to deny Americans their basic rights.

The Tyson episode illustrates clearly that Trump's line about being against the "elites" is total bull. A Trump presidency would be the worst sort of corrupt oligarchy, where justice is apportioned not by guilt or innocence, but by how rich and how useful you are to Donald Trump.

If Trump is elected, how much will he charge for luxurious presidential pardons?

Ban 'Em All!!!

I find it hilarious that people are shocked by Donald Trump's recent call to ban all Muslims from entering this country. I have no doubt that his poll numbers will go up as a result of this exclamation. As I have been saying for quite some time, Trump is popular because he is the living embodiment of the GOP-xenophobic, adolescent tantrums.

This is they guy they want to be their nominee and I think now, after several months of polling in all the early states, he is going to be their pick and I think that's absolutely perfect. The part of the country that doesn't pay much attention to politics...the independents and casual voters...need to see what the GOP has been about for the last several years.

Without a doubt. Donald Trump is the poster child for conservatives in 2015.

Kinda Like Grandpa

The Profiling We Should Be Doing

In the last several months we've had mass shootings and terrorist attacks committed by a white supremacist in Charleston, an anti-abortion nut in Colorado Springs (where a kook with a gun walked down the street shooting random people not long before), an angry white loser in Umpqua, Oregon, another angry white loser in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Muslims in San Bernadino.

There are so many that it's impossible to remember them all: they're coming so fast and furiously that flags are still being flown at half-mast for the victims one of mass shooting when the next one goes down.

Republicans, naturally, only paid attention to the San Bernadino attack. They are on a rampage, demanding that we profile Muslims, put them in computer databases and surveil mosques.

Clearly, that would do little to stem the tide of mass shootings: most of them are committed not by Muslims, but by "regular" Americans, mostly white, mostly male.

But all mass shooters have one thing in common: guns.

So instead of wasting time and manpower surveiling mosques and churches, or collecting the phone and Internet search records of all Americans we should be profiling people with an interest in guns.

This idea came to after I saw this article about about the San Bernadino shooters practicing killing people at a gun range.

We should be watching people who frequent the temples of death: gun stores, shooting ranges, and gun shows.

Instead of harassing people at their places of worship, where the vast majority of people abhor all violence, we should be watching people who frequent the temples of death: gun stores, shooting ranges, and gun shows. We should be watching who buys lots of weapons, and large quantities of ammunition. Instead of monitoring everyone's Internet activity, we should be watching who visits websites that sell guns without background checks, bulletproof vests and other tactical gear. We should be monitoring people who visit Internet forums that discuss weapons, especially ones that describe how to modify semiautomatic weapons for full auto.

The right argues that such surveillance is unconstitutional, that it would violate our right to privacy and the Second Amendment. Which is interesting, because ever since Row v. Wade, the right has insisted that the Constitution doesn't include a right to privacy. And monitoring all email and Internet traffic, which the vast majority of Republicans think we should be doing, is a completely unwarranted invasion of privacy. And surveiling mosques and churches (because churches are a haven for anti-abortion terrorists) would infringe on several clauses of the First Amendment.

We also need to crack down on straw purchases of guns. The San Bernadino shooters got some of their weapons through friends. The vast majority of guns used in crimes in big cities come from states with lax gun laws (Georgia, for example). How can gun store owners selling weapons to shady characters in Southern states be certain that those guns will never be resold to terrorists?

Another source of guns used in crime is burglary: criminals break into people's houses for the express purpose of stealing cash, jewelry and guns. All gun owners should be required to store all their weapons and ammo in locked safes. This would also reduce the number of accidental shootings by children, as well as cut down on the number of suicides. (I mean, a house flying the Confederate flag might as well have a sign out front that says "Come steal my guns while I'm at work!")

Monitoring the Internet and mosques for terrorists is an impossible task. Flagging every jerk who writes a flaming "Obama should be gunned down like a dog"  or "Death to Amerika" post, or attends Friday prayers will generate millions of leads, far too many to track down.

Monitoring people involved with guns will help to narrow down the pool of suspects to people who have the wherewithal to commit terrorist acts. And it will also help law enforcement stop idiots like the one who shot up the theater in Colorado.

Finally, it is the height of idiocy that Congress forced the FBI to delete records of gun purchase background checks. These records should be retained indefinitely and cross-checked against anyone who is subsequently put on the terrorist watch list, listed as mentally ill, commits domestic abuse or any other crimes.

Guys like Trump like to think they're tough when they say, "We're going to have to do some hard things to stop terrorism." They're referring to torturing suspects and violating the privacy of every person in the country. They say, "If Muslims aren't doing anything wrong, they shouldn't be worried about the government watching their mosques."

But when it comes to keeping an eye on people who buy and use weapons of mass murder, conservatives suddenly get all squishy and liberal about violating Constitutional rights.

Gun Idolatry

From The Qu'ran?

This video made me laugh my ass right off of my socks...

"George, is everybody in outer space white?"

When the first trailers for the new Star Wars movie came out there was a lot of carping from some Star Wars fans. One scene showed a black man is in stormtrooper armor. They complained because in a previous film it was established that the stormtroopers were all cloned from the same guy, played by Temuera Morrison, who is Maori. (I think these complaints are bogus, as discussed below, but let's run with it for now.)

These objections in turn raised numerous reactions from others who have called such comments "racist." But this is misguided: when people said, "What's a black guy doing wearing stormtrooper armor?" they weren't necessarily complaining that he was black, but that he looked nothing like the original actor that all stormtroopers were supposed to be cloned from. It's not unreasonable to mention that the actor was black to emphasize the fact that no attempt whatsoever was made to maintain continuity with the facts established in the previous film.

However, the original complainers were wrong to object in the first place: one of the plot points in the original movie was that Luke and Han don stormtrooper armor and infiltrate the Deathstar. During Leia's rescue she comments about Luke being a little short for a stormtrooper. He wasn't shot on sight, so it's clear all stormtroopers are not identical (and if you watch the film you can clearly see that stormtrooper height varies).

Furthermore, the events of the latest film take place half a century after the establishment of the clone army. Is it so hard to believe that, with so many political and military upheavals, the military, in order to meet quotas, was forced to recruit normal human beings instead of relying on a limited number of factories to pump out expensive clones? Clones that can't hit the broad side of a barn with their blasters? That alone is reason enough to start looking for a new source of stormtroopers.

One of the criticisms of the original film was that the actors were all white. This raised eyebrows at the time:

There’s a famous story about the first Star Wars film told by filmmaker John Landis, director of Animal House and a close friend to George Lucas. “I remember after George Lucas shot Star Wars in London, he showed it to all of us and I said to him after the screening: ‘George, is everybody in outer space white?’”

In later movies Lucas cast actors such as Samuel L. Jackson, Billy Dee Williams, Jimmy Smits and Morrison in major roles. The latest movie is simply continuing that trend.

But it raises the question: what skin color would people in outer space have?

If they're like humans here, it depends on the environment they originally came from. Skin color correlates with UV exposure. People who live near the equator have darker skin, due to higher concentrations of melanin. This is a protective mechanism that lessens skin damage due to UV exposure, preventing skin cancer. Most humans have the ability the boost the melanin in their skin to increase their UV protection. This is how tanning works.

But there's a downside to melanin: the human body produces vitamin D through exposure to UV radiation. Vitamin D deficiency causes rickets, a disease marked by soft bones and skeletal deformities, as well as asthma and cardiovascular and cognitive problems.

When humans migrated northwards from Africa their exposure to UV lessened. At some point evolution began to select for lighter skin to counteract the vitamin D deficiencies caused by melanin in excess of what was required for UV protection. Vitamin D is especially critical for women of child-bearing age -- for this reason women typically have lighter skin than men of the same population. Scientists estimate that it takes about 10,000 years for natural selection to adjust the amount of melanin in a human population at a particular latitude, balancing vitamin D production against UV shielding.

Skin color is one of the most easily observed aspects of human evolution. Similar variations in human evolution exist, including the ability to drink milk in adulthood and the adaptation to high altitude that evolved separately in Tibet and the Andes.

With this background we can address the question about skin color in outer space. A human society with a high level of technology, who wear clothing, use sunblock (dark-skinned people are still vulnerable to sunburn and skin cancer) and spend significant time indoors and on spacecraft would tend to develop lighter skin. It would probably take longer than 10,000 years because people with high melanin would simply take vitamin D supplements, instead of letting natural selection kill them off. Finally, over many thousands of years, intermarriage would tend to homogenize skin tone.

Of course, that presumes these humans in outer space don't engineer their own DNA. And considering that they cloned an entire army of soldiers and can create perfectly functioning cyborg hands, they obviously have the wherewithal to select the skin color of their children and change their own skin color on a whim. Which makes the whole argument moot. It's science fiction; all of these things are possible. It's therefore not unreasonable that all members of long-lived homogeneous technological society would all have the same skin color. So Lucas was not technically wrong to use all white actors in the first Star Wars film.

But that misses the underlying point: the Star Wars movies aren't made for people in a galaxy far away -- they're made for us right here on earth. Rightly or wrongly, people look to movies and books not just as mindless entertainment, but as a source of inspiration and self-validation. For whatever reason, lots of people have an easier time empathizing and identifying with people who look like them.

Does it really make any difference whether Jimmy Olsen or Captain America are black, or Spider-man is Hispanic, or Thor is a woman? What matters is not their ethnic background, but the events that shaped their lives and how they deal with their own shortcomings and the challenges life throws at them.

But the fact is, life in America throws a lot more challenges at women, blacks and Hispanics than it does at white men. And your ethnicity affects how other people treat and react to you.

Rich white men love to say that race shouldn't matter, that blacks and Hispanics and women and gays shouldn't get special treatment. So let's take them at their word: if race shouldn't matter, then why not cast a black man as the Human Torch, or Idris Elba as the next James Bond? If Bond can be a Scot or an Englishman or an Australian, why not a Sierra Leonean?