Life & Wisdom Quote by Kevin J. Anderson

Anderson’s jab lands because it skewers two modern reflexes at once: policymaking by vibes, and public fear fueled by blockbuster imagery. The first sentence is pure throat-clearing impatience, the “damned well” doing the work of a gavel: expertise isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a prerequisite. He’s not arguing for technocracy so much as basic competence before consequence.

Then comes the sly pivot to Attack of the Clones, which turns the point from civic scolding into cultural satire. Anderson isn’t reviewing Star Wars; he’s diagnosing a pipeline where science gets flattened into plot device, then recycled as “common sense” in hearings, headlines, and dinner-table panic. The joke is that no cloning expert would be frightened by a movie because experts recognize the gap between cinematic cloning (instant armies, clean identity duplication, moral simplicity) and actual biology (slow, messy, failure-prone, ethically knotted). Fear, in this framing, is less about the technology than about the story we’ve been sold.

The subtext is a critique of democratic theater: policy debates often reward the most vivid narrative, not the most accurate model. Sci-fi becomes an accidental lobbyist, not because it persuades on purpose, but because it supplies the metaphors lawmakers reach for when they don’t have the vocabulary. Anderson’s line is a defense of science fiction’s right to fantasize, paired with an indictment of institutions that confuse fantasy for briefing materials.