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Cockburn was finishing a bottle of brandy the other day when he nearly spat out his drink. A columnist from the Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart, compared Liz Cheney to Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Capehart said on PBS:
I keep thinking about the scene in Star Wars: Episode IV, when…Obi-Wan says to Darth Vader, “If you strike me down, I will come back more powerful than you can imagine.” And to me, Liz Cheney is Obi-Wan Kenobi. If she loses…she could very well come back more powerful than Donald Trump has imagined.
After laughing hysterically for the better part of four hours, Cockburn decided to weigh Capehart’s point. Unfortunately he was forced to conclude that Liz Cheney is nothing like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Here’s why.
Liz Cheney’s father is Darth Vader
Dick Cheney was often compared to Darth Vader when he was vice president, and even said the comparison was “an honor” during a 2011 interview with Laura Ingraham. This has been a running joke in politics for a long time, and per the complex lore of Star Wars, Darth Vader is most assuredly not Obi-Wan’s father but Luke Skywalker’s.
Liz Cheney probably won’t come back “more powerful than you can imagine”
How is Liz Cheney going to impact politics outside of office? What makes her different than all the other anti-Trumpers like Mitt Romney and Adam Kinzinger? What separates her from the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump like Tom Rice and Peter Meijer, both of whom got summarily trounced by their Trump-backed primary opponents? Liz has as much of a chance at knocking Trump down as any other anti-Trump politician (and Cockburn knows there are a lot of them!).
She has no skills with a lightsaber
This is a big one. In the films, Obi-Wan wields a lightsaber with ease and ferocity. Yet there’s no evidence of Liz Cheney having ever used one in combat before. That’s not to say it didn’t happen, but Cockburn is going to need to see some proof.
Who is the Galactic Empire, really?
Cockburn has to ask: if the evil Galactic Empire from the Star Wars movies was a thing, who would they be? Or more specifically: what did Trump do that was more evil and imperial than the lies that began the Iraq war? Cockburn thinks the Swamp is much more Empire-like than Trump will ever be, though that’s just him.
