The following three sentences from Ben Domenech’s article “The New Star Wars Trailer, Analyzed” caught my attention:

The internet comment threads are filled with frustrated confusion about this. How can people forget about the Jedi a mere thirty years after they orchestrated the collapse of the Empire? Did they all get their minds wiped?

Return of the Jedi came out in 1983, half way into Ronald Reagan’s first term as President. We are 32 years removed from that year. Similarly, The Force Awakens takes place around 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi.

A mega-trailer was debuted on Monday Night Football. Watch it and pay attention to the scene described below:

The most interesting detail Monday’s new trailer revealed is that the events of the original trilogy — Episodes IV, V and VI — have become mythologized in the Star Wars universe. ‘There were stories about what happened,’ says Rey in a voiceover. ‘It’s true. All of it. The Dark Side. The Jedi. They’re real,’ responds Han Solo (Harrison Ford).

In 1983, my first son was two-years old. My second son had not been born. There are tens of millions of Americans who have only a passing acquaintance of the time before Reagan when Iran was holding Americans as hostages and interest rates and inflation were in double digits.

Unless you’re close to my age or older, you probably don’t remember how bad the economy was and the “malaise” that settled over it. Reagan came with a message of optimism. “It’s morning in America again.”

Watch this short video as an example of how in the passage of 30 years millions of Americans have had their minds wiped.

Since then, tax rates have risen, and the number of people working has decreased so much that “8.5 million Americans still don’t have jobs” and “some 40 percent have given up even looking. . . . [T]he labor force participation rate remains mired near 37-year lows.”

Vermont U.S. Senator and socialist Bernie Sanders has said that the real unemployment rate is 10.5 percent, nearly double the “official” rate. Others put the real unemployment rate even higher

“More than 46 million Americans have been on the [food stamp] program for 35 straight months. . . . In 2010, the number was at 44 million. In 2009, nearly 39 million people were on the program. In 2000, the figure was 17 million.”

Businesses are hoarding cash because they’re afraid of another economic downturn. The reason interest rates are so low is because the Federal Reserve (not a government agency) is afraid if it raises rates the economy will crash.

There’s so much more. . . .

How did we go from the days of Reagan to the days of Obama? In small steps and a loss of historical perspective.

In time, Reagan succumbed to the Dark Side when he raised taxes instead of curbing spending. “As president, Reagan ‘raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,’ including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan ‘a dear friend,’ told NPR, ‘Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.’”

Now we’re all socialists, and it only took 30 years. Of course, the seeds of our demise were sown decades before.