Four For the Fourth: Friction In the Air

(Here's the second article in this 2025 Four For the Fourth)

You say you want a revolution?

You want to stand up against the growing fascism of the trumpian regime?

You might want to watch Star Wars Andor series to get in the proper mindset then (via Derek Pharr at Nerdist):

Andor doesn’t just sideline the Jedi, it reframes the entire rebellion without them. There’s no Force and no Midichlorians. No elegant solutions from a more civilized age. Just people. Flawed, desperate, courageous people, who decide that enough is enough. The result is the most grounded, morally complex, and weirdly hopeful take on resistance the franchise has ever given us. Andor isn’t just “what if Star Wars was prestige TV?” It’s a reevaluation of who actually fought the Empire and a reminder that revolutions are won by the people who show up, not the ones meditating about it...

Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth: the Jedi failed. Not metaphorically. Not in a “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” way. They were spectacularly bad at their jobs. While Palpatine engineered a fascist takeover in broad daylight, the Jedi were too busy pontificating about balance to notice the galaxy was slipping into totalitarianism. Their detachment wasn’t just a quirk of their order. It was their fatal flaw.

Andor doesn’t waste time pointing fingers at them. It simply moves on. The Jedi aren’t mentioned, and frankly they aren’t missed. What replaces them isn’t another elite class of heroes. Instead, it’s working-class people, loners, bureaucrats, and ex-cons who decide to resist in whatever way they can. There’s no talk of prophecy or destiny in Andor. No one’s “the chosen one.” They’re just the ones who showed up.

Through two seasons, the show set up the path of Cassian Andor from youthful dispossessed jungle child into one of the Rebel Alliance fighters who uncover the secret plans that reveal the (engineered) weak spot of the dreaded superweapon Death Star. While the movie Rogue One already spelled out Cassian's fate, the show takes the time to show how and why he stood up against a massive Empire in spite of the overwhelming odds.

Cassian evolves from regular thief stealing Imperial ship parts in a way the government's intelligence agency - the ISB - couldn't identify with any pattern, into a minor participant of a bank robbery to fund the fledging Alliance that sparks an ISB crackdown on galactic civil liberties that underscores the banal cruelty of that regime. Cassian gets imprisoned and forced into a labor facility understaffed and overtly brutal, making it clear how evil and sadistic the Empire is (the side story of Cassian's friends getting tortured and killed adds to that sadism). Aiding in a mass breakout of the prison, Cassian makes his way back to his Alliance handlers and - after listening to an earnest and meaningful manifesto from an early Rebel intellectual (one who died in that bank robbery and ironically so minor a figure in the Alliance even the ISB can't identify him) - actively signs on to the fight.

Interwoven into Andor's narrative are the characters many Star Wars know will be major players in the Rebellion - Senator Mom Mothma for example, destined to denounce the Emperor's cruelty on the Senate Floor and the pure leader around which the Alliance will form - underscoring how the tides of history against oppression are inevitable. Intermixed are incredibly moving monologue's - Nemik's Manifesto is just the first - from others drawn into the fight - like Kino Loy's call to fight to break open the Imperial prisons and Luthen Rael's speech about his emotional sacrifices "I fight to make a sunrise I know I will never see" - that could stir any soul into rebellion.

Towards the end of Season Two, another major Star Wars player gets a monologue of his own, when Saw Guerra - a resistance fighter from the Clone Wars turned violent insurrectionist - explains his motivations to a new recruit (Cassian's young friend from Season One Wilmon). It's one of the most stirring and unsettling calls to fight in television history.

Saw Gerrera: There it is.

(Approaches rhydonium fumes and inhales)

Wilmon: (horrified) What are you doing?

Gerrera: (to the fumes) I have always loved you.

Wilmon: How can you do that?

Gerrera: (turns to face Wilmon) Because I understand it. Because she's my sister, rhydo, and she loves me. That itch... that burn... You feel how badly she wants to explode? (taps Wilmon's shoulders) Remember this. Remember this moment! This... perfect night. 

(Pauses, sees Wilmon's terror)

Gerrera: You think I'm crazy. (smiles) Yes, I am. Revolution is not for the sane. Look at us: Unloved, hunted, cannon fodder. We'll all be dead before the Republic is back and yet... here we are. 

(Pauses again, grabs Wilmon's shoulders harder) 

Gerrera: Where are you, boy? You're here. You're not with Luthen, you're here! You're RIGHT HERE and you're READY to fight!

(Wilmon's eyes go from fear to understanding. He willingly removes his mask to inhale the fumes, breathes deeply, coughing)

Gerrera: We're the ryhdo, kid. We're the fuel. We're the thing that explodes when there's too much friction in the air. 

(Wilmon's gasps and chokes as he accepts his fate with the Rebellion)

Gerrera: Let it in, boy. That freedom calling! (laughing mad) Let it in! Let it RUN! Let it run WILD!

If you've watched the whole Star Wars storyline from the prequels to the Clone Wars animated series to here, you'll know Gerrera's backstory and how he lost his sanity: fighting first the Separatists that enslaved him and killed his sister, and then the Empire when the Republic fell. And yes if you're wondering, Saw Gerrera talks and acts a lot like his real-world model Che Guevara because the series storyrunners wanted a more violent yet charismatic rebel leader to highlight the more nobler goals of the main Alliance the fans already recognized. 

In that speech, Gerrera speaks to the revolutionary as an unloved fighter, romanticized as Margaret Killjoy puts it in her blog: 

I think a lot about the romanticization of suffering. When I lived in a van, it wasn’t because I wanted hashtag vanlife, it was because I had almost no money and I wanted somewhere dry to sleep and a way to get from place to place to keep doing activist work. I hated the romanticization of van life, the pristine photos of perfect beaches and fifty thousand dollar vans...

Eventually, after years, I moved into an off-grid barn, and slowly saved up the money to build a 12x12’ A-frame off-grid cabin on my friend’s property. From vanlife to tiny house. All the things you’re supposed to romanticize.

A tiny house is only an improvement if you’re coming from no-house, if you ask me. Most people are not happier living off grid. Most people are not happier living in their vehicles.

But if it’s what you have, it’s useful to find beauty in it. It’s useful to romanticize it. Some nights in the van, with the wind whipping through the trees, I was happy. Some summer days in the hammock in front of my cabin, I was happy.

When two revolutionaries, caught up in the ethical imperative to overthrow the galactic empire, start huffing fumes and waxing poetic about their perfect night of crime, they are making the right decision. If you’re going to die before you see your revolution succeed, might as well make the most of it. Might as well fill your brief life with as much meaning as you can possibly cram into it...

There’s this old book, Catechism of a Revolutionary, from 1869. It’s by this Russian nihilist named Sergey Nechayev. People get pretty hooked on this book sometimes. It’s intoxicating. The revolutionary is a doomed man, it says, right in its first sentence... 

According to the catechism, essentially anything is justifiable in the name of revolution. It was written in a time of tsars, less than a decade after the end of serfdom, and during a period where a lot of people were trying awfully hard to find a way to turn the tsar from one full-size person into a bunch of tiny little pieces of person, generally through the application of explosives. Which is, of course, a reasonable thing to do to autocrats.

But it’s worth understanding that the guy who wrote this book, Nechayev, was a piece of shit. That’s the technical term for it I think. Not just “he was so devoted to revolution that he was callous with people,” but just aggressively a bad person who, by my read, was rather detrimental to the movement he claimed to love...

I don’t have a high opinion of Catechism of a Revolutionary, nor of its author. It seems written to excuse a man doing whatever he wants (including imprisoning the woman who turned him down).

Yet when Saw Gerrera talks about “this perfect night,” I think about the pure beauty that can be found in an anti-police riot, when you and others make it clear that you will not accept to be ruled by unaccountable men with guns. Sometimes, you need to shout “fuck you” at the bastards and mean it. You need to shout “you are my enemies” and mean it. Sometimes you need to say “what are you going to do, kill me?” and know that they might, well, kill you, but that it needed to be said anyway.

You don't have to be as violent or terrible as the likes of Saw, or Che, or Nechayev. As much as they speak to the spirit of revolution, the power of pure resistance is more attainable. 

Be that fuel, that friction in the air. Just keep the struggle going. Be the signal, the call to action. Be free in the perfect moments.

Try.