As I watch religious-conservative outrage in other countries in response to reports of Koran desecration, then watch our own morally upright conservatives denounce Newsweek for "treason" and demand a purge, as I watch Islamists call for jihad and our godly right-wingers respond with absolutist calls for nothing less than the transformation of the world (occasionally using the word "crusade"), this passage in Anthony Lane's New Yorker review of the new Star Wars movie seems oddly appropriate:

...the Lucasian universe is drained of all reference to bodily functions. Nobody ingests or excretes. Language remains unblue. Smoking and cursing are out of bounds, as is drunkenness, although personally I wouldn't go near the place without a hip flask.... What Lucas has devised, over six movies, is a terrible puritan dream: a morality tale in which both sides are bent on moral cleansing, and where their differences can be assuaged only by a triumphant circus of violence. Judging from the whoops and crowings that greeted the opening credits, this is the only dream we are good for. We get the films we deserve.

Is that our world now? Revenge of the Clash of Civilizations?