Bush and Battlestar Galactica

I missed the half-season finale of the new Battlestar Galactica series until Thursday of last week. Aside from the enjoyment of finally seeing the adventure where the obsolete Galactica meets the state-of-the-art Pegasus, all I could think as I watched was how appropos.

If you are familiar with the rather cheesy late-70's show or are a fan of the new one, you already know what has happened. The Galactica is supposedly the only survivor of an apocalyptic attack in which the Cylons, machines invented by humans and evolved into a form indistinguishable from us apart from a certain unnatural hotness in the females, destroyed all but about fifty thousand members of humanity. Initially Adama, commander of the soon to be retired battlestar, initially wanted to take the war back to the enemy but was convinced that fleeing with a fleet of civilian vessels was the only option to save humanity. Since then he's had his ups and downs, has even pulled off a coup of the civilian government, but has come to realize that life doesn't consist of military, black-and-white, chain of command decisions. He even treats the Cylon prisoner aboard the Galactica with respect and decency. Adama has become a progressive.

Now meet Admiral Cain, commander of the Pegasus. She is cold, calculating, driven by one thing: She will defeat the Cylons at any cost. She, too, once led a civilian fleet fleeing the apocalypse but instead of nurturing and protecting the civilians as Adama did, she stripped the ships for spare parts and abandoned all but the useful survivors to destruction or death in space. She replaces those in positions of power ruthlessly, practices a divide-and-conquer leadership strategy, is willing to go to any length to win, even shooting her executive officer when he questioned an order. The Cylon prisoner aboard the Pegasus is tortured and raped and the crew is willing to turn a blind eye to it - the prisoner isn't human, after all (although the Cylons have the entire range of human emotions and feel pain). Faced with the inevitability that her war is lost, she continues to fight it even to the destruction of all she's fighting for.

The metaphor isn't lost on me. She wages a futile war because that's what she does. She strip-mines the civilian population for spare parts and personnel to run her war. She allows, even encourages torture of prisoners. She's willing to kill at a moment's notice to have her way. Civilians are disposable resources to her as long as the war machine is fed. She goes against the very principles of the civilization she claimes to fight to preserve....

I'm surprised the conservatives haven't screamed about these episodes as they did about the final installment of the Star Wars hexology. Perhaps such a clear metaphor buried in a science fiction action adventure show (my one television guilty pleasure) was lost on them, all they saw was a leader doing whatever it takes to further her own agenda and not a reflection of the current administration and Republican leadership in a slightly distorted mirror.