I wonder where political allegory and the like come into the pop culture/fiction/trivialization debate. I’ve heard the Star Wars line “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause” repeated a lot in the past couple days and I think that’s fair, since the Emperor was (by all accounts) deliberately meant to be a stand-in first for Nixon and then for Dick Cheney. (With Anakin becoming a stand-up for George Bush, even paraphrasing his speeches). That strikes me more as people using Star Wars for… what it was meant to be used for, I guess?
On the other hand, Daleks. They were deliberately created to be stand-ins for Nazis, I think about that a lot, if there’s one sci-fi icon you wanna compare the upcoming Trump administration to it probably should be the Daleks in a way. And yet… pop culture (and the Doctor Who show itself) has completely diluted them. I own a t-shirt with a Dalek on it. I own two. Lots of people own shirts of Emperor Palpatine as well.