Rebels with Death Stars
How Both Sides Became the Empire—While Pretending to Fight It
“If you only point one finger, be sure the other three aren’t flipping you off.”
Jon Stewart is back behind the desk on The Daily Show, doing what he does best: using irony and sarcasm to spin complex political narratives into digestible morality plays. His latest episode (June 16, 2025) was a masterclass in cleverness—and a perfect example of how the modern liberal commentariat has become blind to its own projection.
Stewart’s big argument? That MAGA is staging a kind of Iraq War-style regime change campaign against the Democrats. He frames it like the Right is using the language of insurgency, weapons, and holy war to justify suppressing, toppling, and demonizing their opposition. And to a point, he’s right: the rhetoric on the Right is intense, angry, and often wrapped in a flag and a rifle rack.
But here's what Stewart leaves out—what makes his satire feel hollow and, frankly, dangerous:
The Left is doing the exact same thing.
Only they do it with courts, platforms, intelligence leaks, nonprofits, and narrative gaslighting.
🎭 Mixed Metaphor #1: MAGA as Bush-Era Regime Changers?
Let’s take this apart.
The Right—especially MAGA—has spent the last decade trying to take down the liberal establishment, yes. But let’s be honest: they’re not invading a foreign country. They’re targeting cultural and bureaucratic institutions that have long been unaccountable to voters.
Calling that “regime change” in the Bush-Cheney sense is… poetic, sure. But misleading. Because if MAGA is trying to take down “the regime,” they’re doing it via elections, protests, and yes, rhetoric. That’s politics.
Meanwhile, the institutional Left has been running a far more coordinated, reality-bending operation against Trump and his base:
Endless legal campaigns (not just indictments—coordinated lawfare)
Ballot access lawsuits
Platform bans and algorithmic suppression
Weaponized intelligence community leaks
Cultural censorship wrapped in DEI language
Labeling political opposition as domestic terrorism
That’s not resistance. That’s a color revolution turned inward.
And the irony? They’re doing it from positions of power. From within media, tech, the academy, and the civil service. The idea that they’re the rebels? That they’re resisting some hostile takeover of democracy?
Come on. They are the system.
🧠 Mixed Metaphor #2: Trump as the Coup
Let’s set the record straight: Donald J. Trump is the 47th President of the United States. He was elected (again) in 2024 by both the popular vote and the Electoral College. The GOP controls the Senate. The House has a working majority. SCOTUS leans conservative. There was no coup.
Yet somehow, Democrats, media pundits, and liberal satirists still treat him like an invader king, a dictator who snuck in through the air vents. Stewart is mocking MAGA as if they’re trying to topple a government from the outside—when in reality, they are the government, and it’s the Left who can’t accept it.
And when the people who scream “democracy” the loudest spend all their time trying to prevent the leading opposition candidate from even appearing on the ballot—you start to wonder if they even know what the word means anymore.
🌀 The Anti-Democracy of “Defending Democracy”
This is the paradox nobody wants to admit:
In trying to stop Trump from running, from winning, or from governing, the Left has become anti-democratic in the name of democracy.
They claim they’re “saving the republic.”
But their methods are pure banana republic:
Lawfare.
Impeachments not to remove, but to stain.
Ballot disqualification schemes.
Platform bans justified as “misinformation.”
Coordinated media campaigns to criminalize dissent.
All while claiming it’s the other side who’s the authoritarian threat.
Here’s the deal: if your democracy only works when the “right” people win, you don’t have a democracy. You have a monarchy with media management.
Even if you think Trump is dangerous (and many reasonable people do), you don’t get to neutralize him with procedural traps. That’s not bravery. That’s cowardice wrapped in process.
🤔 Where Was the GOP's “Resistance”?
Let’s talk about respect.
During Biden’s presidency—especially between 2021 and 2024—the GOP did plenty of grumbling. They mocked his speeches. They made memes. But they didn’t:
Weaponize the 25th Amendment
Call for his impeachment over every bad policy
Try to cancel him off ballots
Raid Jill’s sock drawer
Coordinate with intelligence officials to block coverage of Hunter’s laptop
Stage symbolic arrests or indictments of his inner circle during election season
They let Biden govern. Not because they liked him. Not because they agreed. But because they respected the process.
They didn't see Biden as a holy figure. But they saw the office as something worth preserving.
👑 The Camelot Delusion
This is the root of the cultural psychosis. The Obama era wasn’t just a presidency—it was treated as a secular Second Coming. Camelot. The restoration of America’s virtue. Biden was meant to be the old wizard who sealed the deal.
So when Trump came along, it wasn’t just a political challenge—it was blasphemy. It was a heretic at the altar of secular liberalism. The Left didn’t just lose an election in 2016. They lost their narrative of destiny.
And when he came back in 2024, despite everything, it wasn’t a defeat. It was a trauma trigger. Because if you see your own ideology as the arc of history, then anyone who wins against it must be cheating, evil, or illegitimate.
🗡️ Mutually Assured Narrative Destruction
Today, both sides demand:
Heads.
Scalps.
Ears.
Exile.
Indictment.
Social cancellation.
Literal prison time.
Both sides believe they’re in a fight for the soul of the country. Both sides believe they’re reacting to existential threats. But here’s the catch: they’re also both actively creating those threats.
You can’t call for peace while throwing punches. You can’t accuse the other side of sedition while actively trying to criminalize their voters.
This isn’t just hypocrisy. It’s madness.
👨🚀 The Rebels All Think They're Luke
Every American political tribe now sees itself as the Rebel Alliance:
The Right thinks they’re fighting globalists, tech tyrants, corrupt elites.
The Left thinks they’re fighting white supremacists, fascists, religious extremists.
But here’s the twist: they’re both flying Death Stars.
They’ve both got the firepower. They’ve both got the media wings. They’ve both got the institutional leverage. They’ve both got think tanks, PACs, and billionaire donors.
And every time they launch a “trench run,” they say it’s for freedom—while vaporizing the rule of law in the background.
🚨 Final Thought
This isn’t a battle between rebels and tyrants.
It’s a civil war between two rival empires that both believe they’re the only legitimate heirs to the throne of American decency.
Jon Stewart isn’t wrong to mock the Right’s apocalyptic language.
He’s just being dishonest by pretending it’s one-sided.
Both sides now:
Claim to be defending democracy
While trying to remove their opponent from the ballot
While criminalizing dissent
While holding the reins of media and tech
While calling it resistance
That’s not rebellion. That’s regime warfare by another name.
And somewhere, in the middle of all this, is the American voter—trying to figure out whether their vote even matters when all the games are played upstream from the ballot box.
🗂️ FAQ
Q: Isn’t Trump a threat to democracy?
A: If he is, he should be defeated at the ballot box. Preventing him from running only proves his point that the system is rigged.
Q: Aren’t indictments and court cases legitimate tools?
A: Yes—until they’re used selectively to sabotage one side’s candidate during campaign season. Then it’s lawfare.
Q: Isn’t the GOP guilty of authoritarian moves too?
A: Sure. No side is clean. But this piece is pointing out that the side yelling “coup!” the loudest is using every trick in the regime-change handbook themselves.
📘 Glossary
Color Revolution: Foreign policy tactic using protests, media, NGOs, and legal levers to overturn or delegitimize a regime. Once exported. Now imported.
Lawfare: Using the legal system as a weapon of political control.
Managed Democracy: A system where democratic outcomes are only accepted when they reinforce elite consensus.
Narrative Warfare: The weaponization of language, media, and symbolism to delegitimize opposition.
Death Star Politics: Political factions that believe they are rebels while using all the firepower of empire.
🎯 TL;DR (For X, Threads, or Reddit)
Jon Stewart mocked MAGA for acting like Bush-era regime changers. But the Left has been running a domestic color revolution against Trump since 2016—with media, lawfare, and ballot bans.
Both sides think they’re Luke.
No one admits they’re the Death Star.