I haven’t seen the newest Star Wars movie yet. I’ve been trying to avoid any kind of reaction lest there be spoilers, but it’s clear that people either love it or hate it. It’s the haters, though, that I’m strangely fascinated by.

I understand being disappointed in a movie you thought would be better. But the feelings of betrayal or anger?

It’s not that I’m not a Star Wars fan, or haven’t been since childhood. There may or may not be an excess of Star Wars Lego sets at my house (all for my kids, of course). I’ll even watch the prequels if they’re on, as cringe-worthy as they are in so many ways. I want The Last Jedi to be awesome, and deep, and fulfilling, with Oscar-worthy dialogue and plot. I want it to make me feel like I felt watching Empire Strikes Back as a kid.

But no movie can match the expectations created by 40 years of nostalgia, and therein lies the rage I think so many people feel. It’s like folks think they’re owed something from the franchise. And that is a symptom of a wider cultural problem.

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Let’s look at this phenomenon in the context of some of our current political debates to illustrate. Take net neutrality, a set of heavy-handed regulations that are just 2 years old which required essentially everyone in the country to subsidize your Netflix marathons. Somehow, the internet worked just fine prior to 2015, but now the end of the Information Age is at hand. We don’t want Internet service providers (who we currently are free to choose between) shaping our online experience, but somehow people want unelected bureaucrats working for Donald Trump to have the power to do the shaping?

I like binge-watching old TV shows on the cheap as much as the next guy (OK, maybe more), but why do people feel entitled to do so? I didn’t build the electronic infrastructure that allows me to access the sum total of human knowledge (or LOL cat videos) at any time or place, and I certainly don’t begrudge the people who did from making a profit from their innovations. The government may have helped develop the first computer networks, but that doesn’t mean we have some collective right to cheap Internet any more than you’re allowed to steal a GPS unit because NASA launched the satellites. And with many ISPs out there to choose from, none of whom desire to torque off their clientele wholesale, I just don’t see the doomsday scenarios of net neutrality proponents coming to pass.

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How about the new tax relief bill? Senate candidate Jacky Rosen’s biggest complaint about it seems to be that wealthy people aren’t actively harmed by it, which seems silly to me, even by today’s low standards of populist demagoguery. I am not worse off if rich people get richer in this country, and neither is anyone else. The only way to argue that letting wealthy people keep more of their own money is a “burden” on the “middle class” is to persuade people to embrace greed, covetousness and envy, convincing them that they are entitled to other people’s property.

Democrats also complain that it will add $1 trillion to our national debt over the next 10 years, and on this I agree – adding to the debt is nothing more than a tax increase on people not yet old enough to vote. But this complaint rings hollow from those who stood silent when more than $1 trillion was added to the national debt every single year on average during the Obama Administration. Besides, this argument, too, is undergirded by a sense of entitlement. To really reduce our debt, we need to spend less (which means fewer unrealistic promises to voters), not take ever-more money out of a productive economy.

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Everywhere you look, there are people arguing we need more government involvement and control in our lives – more environmental regulation, more health-care regulations, more tax dollars funneled to private business interests, all with the increasingly unrealistic but fervent and angry expectation that such involvement will secure our employment forever, make us infinitely healthy, or protect us from “The Other” of the month. But government isn’t magic – it’s just regular people working within a vast bureaucracy. Some things our government does really well most of the time, others not so much. I’m not bagging on government employees (I am one, after all), but there are limits to what we can – or should – expect any large and distant group of people to solve any of our individual problems.

And that’s under the best of circumstances. Anything we ask “government” to do for us is something we have to be willing to risk guys such as Mark Manendo, Ruben Kihuen, the prosecutors who botched the Bundy trial or Donald Trump himself being responsible for. We should accept the responsibility as an electorate for these duds and find better candidates next time, while also recognizing that politics has never been and will never be completely free of the corrupt or inept.

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Here’s what I can say for sure about The Last Jedi – I’m going to enjoy it. I don’t expect any flick about space wizards to change my life, and no one is forcing me to pay for the tickets. Disney owes me absolutely nothing. It’ll cost me and my family a couple hours and the money you’d spend on almost any night out these days, and that’s it. At worst, it’ll be a big, silly movie with spaceships and laser swords and over-acting, and my kids will love it. My arm may even be twisted into buying more Legos. And who knows – I may even really enjoy the plot as a bonus!

Good government is obviously more serious to our daily lives than a good movie. Nonetheless, we’ll be happier, healthier and get more out of both when we stop creating unrealistic expectations, and then wallowing in rage or despair when the inevitable disappointments follow.

Orrin Johnson has been writing and commenting on Nevada and national politics since 2007. He started with an independent blog, First Principles, and was a regular columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal from 2015-2016. By day, he is a deputy district attorney for Carson City. His opinions here are his own. Follow him on Twitter @orrinjohnson, or contact him at [email protected]. He wishes you all a very Merry Christmas!