Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
I’ve been watching the second season of Andor, a TV series about the organizing process of the Rebellion against the Empire in Star Wars. Before it was a Rebellion, it was a bunch of brush fires, and before that it was a lot of unhappy people, none of whom were experienced or practiced in subterfuge or underhandedness. They were leaderless because none of them had yet decided to lead, and also leaderless because none of them had recognized persistent patterns of oppression. There were some who wanted to change the system to something better. There were people who saw awful things happening in myriad little ways, none of the events big enough or nasty enough to keep opposition consistent or persistent enough, except for those who had never stopped fighting, like Saw Guerrera. I couldn’t for a moment remember his name; my mind autofilled with Lex Luthor, who in the currently popular Superman movie has never stopped fighting against the villain he sees in Superman himself. Saw similarly is a terrorist, fighting and fighting and never expecting to win but keeping the fight going because it is his passion to continue and never give up, even in the face of obvious hopelessness. Saw will never live peacefully, even if the Republic were restored in its fullness in his lifetime.
The show is named after Cassian Andor, who is a main character in the movie, Rogue One, in which he died. The show is the years before that: what made him a rebel? How did a good man, an ethical caring man, become a fierce relentless tactically gifted fighter with lots of experience? He’s not even that much of a fighter, but a tactician, a planner and executor of plans, willing and able to improvise as needed. And he’s causing the Empire lots of problems. But he’s not doing it alone. He has a leader he follows: Luthen.
Luthen is an art dealer who travels all over the galaxy looking for artifacts and bidding on them, bringing them back to Coruscant and selling them to the wealthy and powerful of the Empire. He bugs their homes and offices; he gathers information and passes it on, to his own operatives and to Saw. He uses money from the sales and money given him by donors like Senator Mon Mothma. Mon is a Senator fighting against the Emperor’s terror plans, trying to get senators to vote in favor of better conditions and against oppression. Seeing it’s not working, she helps fund Luthen.
Luthen takes the money and pays for information gathering, including having a contact within the ISB, the Imperial Security Bureau. He sets up attacks that take down imperial installations and steal huge amounts of resources, as his operatives are able. He has an assistant and boss, a woman who keeps all the threads in order in her head. She’s possibly the real brain and spine of the operation, the mother of the rebellion Luthen is forming. Really they prop each other up; they disagree, but they cooperate.
I’m halfway through season 2. It’s becoming plain that Luthen’s objectives include hurting quite a lot of people, not healing them, but driving wedges between them and the Empire’s soldiers and administrators, trying actively to give birth and organization to a real rebellion against the Empire. Luthen feels people are too comfortable, too willing to go along to get along, so he stirs the pot, sticks his stick in it, tips the pot over as far as he’s able.
Catching Luthen and Andor has become a cause celebre of the main ISB antagonist, one who wants the Empire to continue and wants it to win. This antagonist is a woman, a white haired woman with fierce sternness. Orson Krennic, procurer of supplies for the Death Star, directs her to drive people on the planet Ghorman as far towards rebellion as possible, so that the Empire can seize the planet and mine it thoroughly for a precious mineral rich in its interior. The mining will be so thorough that the planet will possibly fall apart, yet Ghorman produces a valuable fabric of the wealthy and is not at all rebellious.
When a nascent rebel cell asks Luthen for help to gather evidence to rouse their people to action, Luthen sends Cassian to evaluate. Cassian sees they are not ready to actually revolt. They’re inexperienced and will be slaughtered. He’s not willing to do that to them. They do not appreciate his assessment; neither does Luthen. The Gormanites want to steal weapons as evidence without realizing the extent of retribution from the Empire. Luthen wants them to instigate that retribution so that it will incite other places to revolt. The ISB wants to use their actions as an excuse to come down hard on Gorman and take over.
I’m realizing that Luthen is every bit as much a villain as Krennic, in that he is actively hurting people; his motives are different, but his modus operandi is not.
I’m asking myself, it’s relatively easy to start a rebellion as they show it, but how do you rebuild trust afterwards? How do you get people to cohere, to work together, to forgive and try again? To trust that they will help and be helped?
Part of what God did to the family of Noah, is force them to work together for survival. Part of what God did to the Nephites and Lamanites at the death of Christ, is force them to face themselves as they really were, and take away every physical thing they had. They learned even before Christ appeared to them, that they would die if they did not reach out to help each other.
Must we reach that point here? Must we become so stressed that we are on the brink of death, before we make helping each other our top priority?
Am I making helping others my top priority? How can I do better?
