“Fear,” a great Jedi master named Yoda once said, “leads to anger,” which leads to hate, which leads to suffering, which, of course, leads to the Dark Side.
And while Yoda’s warning was directed at the long-ago problems of a galaxy, far, far away, we’d do well to take it in stride right now in the United States in 2015.
That’s because fear has reached an absolute fever pitch in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, and, as Tuesday night’s Republican debate showed, it’s taking our politics into a dark and very disturbing place.
When the candidates weren’t coming up with fun and unique ways to start World War III, they were debating whether or not Muslim human beings deserve rights like other human beings, and talking about ISIS like it’s an army of fascist zombies that owns its very own Death Star.