Sawyer’s point about Star Wars was that its clear demarcation of good and evil causes us to forgive the bad things the good guys do. I loved the part about Skywalker as slaver and how no one noticed sentient droids being denied entry to a bar as a parallel to civil rights. I never noticed, has anyone else?

As for Jeremy’s question about whether we still need to use fiction to disguise critiques of the power structure, I offer three points:
1. There are plenty of places in the world right now where saying what you think will get you arrested and/or killed.
2. There are plenty of powerful people even here in the US who would love to do away with our First Amendment rights. And anyone who wants to avoid trouble had better be careful what they say about anyone our government has labeled a terrorist.
3. Fiction often does social critique considerably better than op-ed articles and general essays, perhaps because it has room for more subtleties. Sawyer makes that clear. In good fiction, right and wrong are rarely easily labeled, so you have to think about issues in a much more complex fashion.