May 27, 2025 • 52 mins
With Andor Season 2 now complete, Road to Rebellion takes a powerful turn into the heart of what makes this series so resonant — its politics. Join hosts Pete Fletzer and Nick Mielke as they welcome author and political commentator Stephen Kent (How The Force Can Fix The World, Geeky Stoics) for a provocative, full-spoiler conversation about liberty, resistance, and the cost of rebellion in the galaxy far, far away.
They’ll break down the political philosophies behind Andor's key players — from Mon Mothma’s Senate speech and Luthen’s moral tradeoffs, to the Empire’s bureaucratic machine and the chilling cover-up on Ghorman. How does Andor mirror real-world regimes, propaganda, and moral compromise? What can we learn from it about courage, truth, and fighting authoritarianism — both in fiction and reality?
📞 Want to be part of the finale? Call 504-321-1501 to leave a voicemail for next week’s fan Q&A episode!
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Don't miss out on the excitement! Join us as we explore the galaxy together.
(c) 2025 Pete in the Seat Studios
They’ll break down the political philosophies behind Andor's key players — from Mon Mothma’s Senate speech and Luthen’s moral tradeoffs, to the Empire’s bureaucratic machine and the chilling cover-up on Ghorman. How does Andor mirror real-world regimes, propaganda, and moral compromise? What can we learn from it about courage, truth, and fighting authoritarianism — both in fiction and reality?
📞 Want to be part of the finale? Call 504-321-1501 to leave a voicemail for next week’s fan Q&A episode!
🎧 Subscribe to Around the Galaxy on your favorite podcast app
🌌 Part of the SSWNetwork | YouTube.com/@TheSSWNetwork | @TheSSWNetwork
Connect with us:
Website: TheSSWNetwork.com
TikTok: @TheSSWNetwork
Instagram: @TheSSWNetwork
Facebook: Facebook.com/TheSSWNetwork
Twitter: @TheSSWNetwork @ATGcast
Support us on Patreon: Patreon.com/TheSSWNetwork
Voicemail: 504-321-1501 Join this channel to get access to perks: / @thesswnetwork
Don't miss out on the excitement! Join us as we explore the galaxy together.
(c) 2025 Pete in the Seat Studios
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Of all the things at risk, the loss of an
objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away,
when it is ripped from our hands.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
We become monera to the appetitle.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Whatever monster screams the loudest, and the monster.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Screaming the lovedest time, the monster he helped create, the
monster who will come for us all sooner is empra Putty.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well, Hello, Star Wars fans, and welcome to Wrote to Rebellion.
The official atg and Or after show. I am Pete Flitzer.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
And I am Nick Milky, and I want to thank
you for hanging out with us here on around the
galaxy part of the SSW Network.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, now that the season has ended and we've seen
all twelve season twelve episodes of Jesus Boy, I wish
we had twelve seasons, but twelve episodes of two of
and Or, we're going to take a look at the
politics of and Or and the Star Wars galaxy at large.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
And as we have done every week on Road to Rebellion,
I want to stop very quickly and give a warning.
This is a full spoiler show. We're going to talk
about indoor seasons one and two. We're going to talk
about Rogue one. We're going to talk about other parts
of the Star Wars galaxy. If you're not caught up
on it, you may want to pause. I mean, there's
not a lot of worry that we're going to ruin
Ahsoka for you, but all these things are directly connected
(01:38):
to and Or. You definitely want to be caught up
on that, So pause it, get caught up and then
come back and listen to us, because we know we
want you to be a part of the conversation, but
we don't want to ruin it for you either.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
No, we do not. And each week on Road Rebellion,
Nick and I have unpacked the story, the characters, the
big moments, the little details, and everything in between. But
this week, Nick, we are joined by friend of the show,
Stephen Kent. That's right, Pete, and I'm excited to have
this conversation. Stephen Kent is the host of the Geeky
Stoics YouTube channel. He's the author of the book How
the Force Can Fix the World, a thoughtful exploration of
(02:10):
the deeper lessons in Star Wars about liberty, empathy, and
bridging our divides.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Wow, what a concept in these modern times. Steven's work
lives at the intersection of pop culture and political philosophy,
which I love. From the Geeki Stoics newsletter to his
appearances on national news outlets, he brings a unique, often
center right perspective to these conversations. And today we're going
to dig into the politics of Andor with him, especially
how the series reflects the real world tensions we're sitting
(02:37):
right now around power, resistance, moral compromise. So I am
proud to say, Stephen Kent, welcome to Wrote to Rebellion.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Hello, guys, good to see you. How are you have
you been? I've been very well.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
I have missed around the galaxy, so it's nice to
be back.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
We are excited to have you back. Before we get
into what you thought of and Or season two, maybe
give us and our listeners a little bit of background
on your Star Wars journey. You have done so many
different interconnectivities between the real world and Star Wars, So
tell us a little bit about that history.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Oh my gosh, that's a little bit, a little bit,
that's a storied history. I mean, you know, I was coming,
you know, awake to the existence of politics in high
school in two thousand and five. I'm dating myself in
the opposite direction. You know, I was a junior in
(03:31):
two thousand and five watching Revenge of the Sith of
my best friends and coming to understand right at that
moment some of the things that they were talking about,
the rhetoric around the Iraq War, the invasion of Afghanistan
and everything in the wake of the War on Terror,
this US against them sort of thing going on in
the country. And you know, that interested me in Star
(03:53):
Wars at a hugely deep level for most of my youth,
and that continued into adulthood and was certainly reawakened around
the time of the Force Awakens and Star Wars coming back.
And I started this podcast called Beltway Banthas in twenty fifteen,
which was dedicated to basically doing like Hannity and Calms,
but you know, for Star Wars. So, you know, if
(04:15):
you're if you grew up in the day when Hannity
had someone to spar with on Fox News, he had
this squishy liberal named Alan Colmes that he could kick
around all night, and we wanted to do like a
show like that with one of my really good friends
at the time, Suarez Sale, like a solid leftist, great guy,
(04:35):
and we just just discussed what Star Wars means to
us on a deeper level and sometimes would have it
out and do debate and move on and do another
show the next week. It was a great time. And
that kind of bridged into doing a book on the
same subject that you mentioned, how the Force Can Fix
the world, And in my political commentary career, because I'm
(04:57):
a political writer by day and do p that's also
led me to kind of be like the Star Wars explainer,
the conservative geek on like the Glenn Beck Show, and
going on Fox from time to time to tell them
why Disney Star Wars is actually pretty good. So it's
been an interesting, interesting journey Star Wars. Politics is what
(05:19):
I'm all about, Yeah, And it's you know, I think
people forget that the second word in Star Wars is
war and war is politics and or rooted in politics.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
So I got to ask you season two van Or,
how did it hit you? How to strike you? What
were your overall thoughts before we start to really dig
into some of what some of the underlying politics might
have been.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Oh my gosh, I'm just like daydreaming about Star Wars,
you know, right now. It's one of those special things
that when a Star Wars show does it right, or
a Star Wars movie does it right, you just find
yourself zoning out in the middle of the day just
revisiting some of those scenes and the landscapes and going
back to Gorman and trying to understand how that situation
(06:01):
unraveled and fell apart the way that it did, and like,
could the people of Gorman done anything different to avoid
that situation on their end? How much were they baited
versus how much did they ask for it? Like, it's
just there's so much going on there, and I just
am going, man, I wish I had a political Star
Wars podcast where I could be delving into and or,
(06:22):
because this is the show that this that that was
made for, you know, and or it takes politics seriously
and presents it in a way that adults can understand,
unless you are like some of these very very peculiar
adults on Twitter who refuse to acknowledge the existence of politics.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And a galaxy far far away. We're not allowed to
talk about that, right, This is a kid's show, right,
I go to Star Wars to get away from politics. Well,
oh yeah right.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
I think for me, the main thing that I've been
thinking about in the wake of and Or has been well,
how cool the ISB is for starters.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I would like a membership card.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
It's been Nemes manifesto from season one.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
This freedom is a pure idea. It spontaneously and without instruction.
Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy.
There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that
they've already enlisted in the course. Remember that the frontier
of the rebellion is everywhere, and even the smallest active
(07:41):
insurrection pushes our lines forward.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
And it has been this this wonderful monologue that we
get between the rebel Nemic who's talking to him about
how fast the pace of oppression is growing across the galaxy.
He says it outs trips our ability to understand it,
like this is a means of control. And you could
(08:04):
call it Google controlling us all with Google Maps, or
you could just call it like the government's agenda in general,
to make us dependent on anybody but ourselves. And this
whole thing with Mnemic comes back at the end of
andor in the very last episode or two, as you know,
the part of Gas, the imperial ISB chair is listening
(08:28):
to his manifesto because it has spread across the galaxy
just like they predicted. You know, it is like a virus.
It just spreads and spreads and spreads, and you can't
plug all the holes that are popping out. And Nimics
says in his manifesto, just something that is so so
powerful and so true, which is that.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
The control is so desperate because it is so unnatural.
Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Authority is brittle, oppression is must see it remember the
time people long for freedom. That is a human instinct,
just as much as the instinct for control. Like we
kind of swing as human beings between wanting order and
wanting total freedom. And he says, tyranny requires constant effort,
(09:18):
and that's what the ISB is. Every single day you're
putting out a fire, stamping out some sort of some
sort of speech around the galaxy. And he says that
imperialism is brittle, that authority is brittle, and that it's
always breaking. And then the ISB officer kills himself and
(09:38):
some of the jokesters. Some of the jokesters on Twitter
are like, this is what happens when a fascist listens
to the Communist Manifesto over the first time, Like about that,
I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure when a proto fascist
reads the Communist Manifesto, They're like, I'm definitely fascist.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
I want one more of whatever this is. This is
not right. You are you are reinforcing my beliefs. Thank
you very much. Yes, this book is and everything I
ever gets.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
There is a ton to choose from in season two.
But for you, what do you see as kind of
the core political themes in this season or even in
the two seasons overall? And does it kind of refine
for you what Star Wars has always talked about. We've
had this for going years now, and it does something
(10:34):
to me where it continues to refine what we knew
it was about in nineteen seventy seven, and what we
knew it continued to be about, Yeah, in nineteen eighty
and nineteen eighty three. Having something like and or that
digs into it. I've said for a long time, this
is my West wing Star Wars. This gets into the
nitty gritty and it gets into you know, the dialogue.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
So for you, what are those core.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Themes that really get refined as we look at this season.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
So the core themes that are refined that kind of
go back to Star Wars as it's always been. Yeah,
I think so Star Wars for me, as it's always
been has been that Luke Skywalker has to contend in
the cave with the possibility that the man under the
mask could be just like him. That when he busts
(11:21):
Oap in Darth Vader's mask and that vision and that
force cave, that it's his face he sees, and then
we take that to return the Jedi and he cuts
off Darth Vader's hand on the Death Star and he
sees the wiring come out, and he looks at his
hand and he goes, I could become just like this.
For me, that is Star Wars' central message, and that
(11:44):
is the morality that underpins all of it, which is
why a lot of the self righteousness and finger pointing
that goes on in Star Wars phantom about who's the
bad guys and all that. I'm like, you've missed the
entire point. The point is that you could wake up
tomorrow and have stumbled into evil and not recognize it.
And so you see that in the prequels of course. Uh,
and then that's also like happening there in and Or
(12:07):
in these weird ways like Nemics. I'm sorry, not nemics.
Cyril's story. Cyril's story is of course along these lines,
because he's not a lunatic. He's just kind of like
a you know, he's a mama's boy. He loves order,
he loves rules. He was a cop, and then he
(12:28):
witnessed this crime, this act of terror that occurred on
Pharyx that was you know, linked to Cassie and Andor,
and he's he's kind of getting radicalized by this idea
of the galaxies coming apart, and they just need people
who believe in rules to keep things together. And I
think you should at some point in the show feel
(12:48):
a little bit like of sympathy for Cyril and go
like he came. He's not a monster. He's actually just
a relatively normal person who just wants like the ship's
drawn on time or the trains drawn on time. But
then it turns out there are people like Ded Dramiro
and Partigaz and Krenic, who are very content with massacring
(13:13):
people to make the trains run on time. And it
turns out in a and it's so fascinating, Cyril's actually.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Not into that, right, He's not into that.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Like he we kind of like laughed about him being
sort of like the proto fascist of the show or
like the alt right, you know, kind of pipeline guy,
and he does represent that to a certain extent, but
then it turns out he's really not into massacring in
some civilians and it completely pulled the veil off of
his eyes. And so for me, it's just like people
(13:45):
are complicated. You can become the bad guy if you're
not careful and you don't check your own power. And
also the bad guy can actually be good. They can
be misled, they can be helped sometimes. And like the
fact that the Gorman, the Gorman Front, like they they
know he's an imperial, they know he might be spying
(14:07):
on them, and still they're kind to him. Still they
outreach to him, they show their human face to him
and their underground meetings and they make him ask questions
about his morality in this empire that he serves. And
you don't get to see a lot of it. But
they got under his skin. Yeah, they got under his
skin in a big way. And then when it came
(14:27):
to when it came to killing these people, he was
not there for it.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
So I think there were such a good juxtaposition because
about halfway, maybe a little bit before the halfway mark
of the season, he's with Dedra, He's in the room
they're having the secret meeting. You know, he's kind of helped.
He's a part of the thing, and he feels so
cool and like he has that, but he's like, why
aren't we keeping on going? Like we're here to do
this thing. He wants to be a part of it,
and it comes from, you know what has informed him,
(14:54):
his overbearing mother, his desire to you know, not be
have his uncle held over his head, and all those
kinds the things. So, like you said, all of a
sudden he looks up and he's then over his head
and doesn't realize what he's gotten himself into, unwittingly, because
he wanted to be a part.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
He wanted to be cool, he wanted to be involved.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And then the Gore, the Gorman, they did start to
get to him.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And I think you're exactly right.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
And so about the time we see by the time
we reached the end of Cyril's journey, he went a
wait a minute, and you can see the cracks showing
up in that facade.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, I think it's you know, one of the things
that I was gonna ask you about, Stephen, is, you know,
how do people reconcile who are Star Wars fans and
you know, don't realize that, you know, maybe the empire
is happening around them. I tend to think that Cyril
may be one of those guys who who who might
(15:49):
have a YouTube channel, who's angry about things, and then
get into that real situation and say, wait a second,
that's not what I thought I was supporting. Right, So well,
I know you have opinions about this.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
I mean, yeah, I mean cial Cyril definitely definitely has
a YouTube channel. No, I'm sorry, what's where? Where are
all the right wingers now? They went off to some
other platform Rumble Rumble, right, he's got a Rumble show
and the sponsored by Dave Rubin or something.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
No. I just.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
I think in general, I mean Cyril's character, he knew
that he was participating in an empire that was plugging
all the holes left by the Clone Wars and all
the pain and devastation of the separatist movement. I mean,
I think one of the things we often forget in
(16:43):
Star Wars fandom when we're analyzing these these things is
just how bad the Clone Wars were. Like, the Clone
Wars were really, really horrific, just mass holocaust after mass holocaust.
And so you come out of that situation with a
lot of people who are like.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Never again. Whatever whatever led to that or facilitated that.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
I want the opposite, And I'm not going to go
like around here waiving my history books, but like I
just finished redoing a study of Benito Mussolini, who was,
you know, also like Adolf Hitler, a veteran of World
War One, ashamed of Italy's treatment at the end of
(17:26):
the war. Turns out like Italy was actually on the
other side. So they fought against the Central Powers in
World War One. They were on the opposite side of Germany,
helping the Allies, and they felt like they got shafted
in the spoils of war. And so SyRI or Cyril
Mussolini was one of these veterans of that war who
(17:47):
had a chip on his shoulder about it. He felt
like Italy had been emasculated, and you know, he came
up with this this thing fascism. You know, that was
the idea of us all coming together or you know,
the actual fascist symbol. The word is a bundle of
sticks with an axe cleaver on top, that the collective
(18:07):
can become dangerous when they come together. They can chop
down a tree, they can do anything. And like Benito
Mussolini gets completely left out of our understanding of what
fascism is and what like far right politics can do
when it goes wrong. The only literacy that we have
(18:28):
in this country for understanding evil and bad things is
Hitler and the Nazis. It's actually it really, I think
is a huge danger to our civilization. And I might
be going off on a tangent here, but I think
it really puts us in a bad place that we
only have one way to understand evil politics, and it's
(18:48):
Nazis and Hitler, and we just completely forget this other
mode that fascism can take, and that that form of
politics can take. You know, Benito Mussolini's fast Japanese imperialism,
you know, stalinistic communism or Stalinism, and it makes us
blind to all the things that can happen around us
(19:10):
in our government. If we're only looking out for the
bad guys in black with the skull and the crossbones
on their jacket, you will miss when dangerous people walk
right by you wearing suits and ties. That's kind of
like what your question just kind of makes me think of,
is like, how do we know when we're in the
(19:31):
empire or the empires forming around us? I just think
Americans have their head in the sand about what it.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Will look like. Is Indoor more important now than it
was when it came out five years ago, when Star
Wars came out fifty years ago, or is it just
another great piece of fiction that is reflecting a period
(20:00):
that we live in at this time.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
It came out originally in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Right, Yeah, the first season was twenty two.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Yep, Yeah, well, I mean the second season here is
definitely more impactful and speaks to I think something that
people feel.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
You know, it feels prescient.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
And when I go back to the prequels and you talk,
there's all this talk about George Lucas and you know,
the influence of the Iraq War in Afghanistan and the
war on terror.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And some of it is true.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
There was like one or two instances of script tweaks
where George Lucas was trying to make a statement, if
you're not with me, then you're my enemy, says George
Lucas or George W. Bush to the UN. I think
it was He's like, I think the terrorists, you know,
just to speak to people. But it really obscures the
(20:53):
fact that George wrote this thing in the nineties. You know,
that this story was gonna go this way no matter
what was happening in American politics, like our self centered,
our self centered worldview, that everything that happens on screen
is a reflection of what's going on with Republicans and
Democrats and not. You know, like a Russian audience member
(21:17):
who was shown on the news in two thousand and
five coming out of the theaters seeing Revenge of the
Sith and going, this feels very similar to what is
going on in Russia, you know, and the you know,
Vladimir Putin, like other people relate to this story. Star
Wars is a global tale, and I find it frustrating
(21:41):
when Star Wars fans hear mon Mathma say the word genocide,
and then she says it again, a genocide, and then
they're like tweeting she said the word, she said genocide,
and then they put up their Palestine flag, as if
that's the only thing going on in the world. That
(22:01):
there is not a genocide going on in South Sudan still,
or Mayan mar that there's not still this mass holocaust
of Christians and the Azids going on in Syria and Iraq. Like,
there is a lot of stuff going on in the
world that is important and does not always interest like
niche progressive activists in the US, you know the most.
(22:25):
I think interesting example of like the Empire in and
Or they're talking about mining Gore Gorman. They're going to
destroy these people, They're going to mine their planet. They're
going to kill them if necessary and make them the
bad guys in the situation and use basically the fruits
of the planet to finance their oppression of the galaxy.
(22:48):
I mean, in my day job at work, for the
past two years, we've been doing a campaign raising awareness
of how Putin's Russia is sending mercenaries into the country
of mali enslaving thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people
in the rural villages of Mali and forcing them into
(23:09):
pits to mine gold, to then pull the gold out
of the earth to pay their soldiers, because most of
their soldiers fighting in Ukraine have not been paid in
a long time. They are actually like committing a small
scale genocide enslavement to finance their war in Ukraine. And
(23:30):
so like this is going on, and it's not super
interesting to people. And I just get really annoyed when
people go and ors speaking to my thing. This one
thing that only progressives in the US hate. It's a
lot more impactful than that.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah, Yeah, And I seem to remember when you and
I had spoken when you were guess some other time
about that same sort of concept about you know, Revenge
of the Sith was it spoke to people around the
world and different people in different different times. And maybe
that's what makes it so good, right, is the fact
that it doesn't matter where you're seeing it. Hopefully it's
(24:11):
waking you up to you know, what could be happening
around you. And and yeah, so I think.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
That's what God is it, you know, like, what good
is it if if Star Wars said something true in
Return of the Jedi about our morality and it said
something true about taking sides or moral relativism and Revenge
of the Sith, but it only applies to the War
on Terror and the early two thousands, then what good
(24:39):
is it?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Right?
Speaker 4 (24:40):
And so like that's that's the thing that I try
to always educate people on and ask them to consider.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
And you know, I'm a right winger, Like.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
That's I I'll just like say the words, I'm not
a conservative, I'm a right winger. I think these stories
are really important for understanding the world. And it just
is counterproductive when people go Star Wars is political, man,
don't you know George Lucas named Newt Gunray after Nut Gingrich.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Like what good is that? Like? What is that? Like?
Speaker 4 (25:11):
What does that even mean? That doesn't make those movies political?
It means he's playing word games with his characters. What
is political. It is the message of those movies, and
they're as true today as they were twenty.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Years Yeah, And I think that's what's so prescient about
and or running at the same time as the twentieth
anniversary of Revenge of the Sith, in that people were
now watching Revenge of the Sith again and being reminded
of that movie and going, oh my god, he was
telling us what we need to know now, and the
fact his it was a twenty year old movie and
he wasn't predicting the future of twenty years He was
(25:45):
predicting or commenting on what was happening at that time.
So and again, Tony Gilroy's smart.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
I mean, Tony Gilroy has been playing the same you know,
tactic when he's doing his interviews and saying like, I'm
not looking at the news to write this, I'm reading books.
I'm reading history books because the cycles of oppression and
control and then revolution and freedom movements, it just goes
round and round and round and round. And you know,
(26:14):
if if you're only source of like understanding the world
is what's going on on the propagandistic television networks, I
think you just have a really limited understanding.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Of the world you live in. Yeah, and again that
leads to some of that bigger theming around propaganda and
how easily it is to lose sight of things around,
et cetera. But so I'm going to switch gears just
a little bit. I want to talk a little bit
about Luthan Saw and Mond Mathma because they each offer
sort of different philosophies of what resistance is right I
(26:45):
want to go about it. So how do you interpret
their sort of ideological conflict? Do you see like any
real world analogs for their you know, the necessary evil
sort of approach of both Luthan and saw or this
moral purity that we saw for mod Mathma when she
saw and Or shoot somebody in front of her for
the first time. It was the first time she was
exposed to the fact that people died during these things.
(27:07):
So how nice for you. That was one of the best.
So good.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
So, I mean, my my hot take and this is
this is probably not actually that hot, But I basically
I think you're looking at a show and or that
is dressed in leftist esthetics, sort of looking at the
world through a leftist worldview and a lens.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Tony Gilroy like is who he is, and the show
is still really great politics and this show is authentic.
And in every political movement left right center, you're always
going to have your establishmentarians and your moderates and your
radicals and your people who kind of want to like
burn it all down, and your agitators somewhere in the
(27:58):
middle and right there in mon Mathma, Luthan and Sagerera.
I mean, you've got your neoliberal I think Hillary Clinton
mon Mathma, You've got Luthan Rail I don't know who
he represents exactly, but he's like a broker between the
two sides. But then you've got like your Chay Guevera,
(28:19):
just hardcore revolutionary. You know, we are going to not
just win this war, but we're going to have executions
at the end.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
And also, I don't know what I'm building.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
To me, like, those kind of figures exist on the
right as well, like the people who are like deconstructionalists
want to burn it all down, and the people who
really want to preserve the system. But there's just something
about the revolutionary energy of the rebel alliance, particularly in
and Or.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And I'm not saying this.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
About every other piece of Star Wars, but particularly in
and Or, which just sort of codes to me as
left politics, and that's like what Sagerera is. And I'm
glad that they made Sagarera less sympathetic this show. I
think Rogue One did paint a picture for us of
the chae Govera type revolutionary who's not really interested in
(29:09):
compromise liberalism. But this show went a little bit of
a step further, was like, he's crazy, he's on crack,
he kills people. He's not a guy that we should,
you know, look up to as some sort of leader.
And they really helped man Mathma. Man Mathma before the
and Or series really did struggle from looking like a
(29:32):
total squish. She looked like the person who stayed in
the Empire Imperial Senate for as long as possible, got
out when it was convenient for her.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
And then I came.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
In to be the white savior of the rebellion and
just be very neat and tidy. And then by the way,
she completely ruins the New Republic. Like man Mama's legacy
in the books has been tainted by her management of
the New Republic. She does a horrible job, and so
like this show kind of helped her a little bit
(30:03):
to say, like, no, she was brave, she was courageous.
She did the hard thing, which was actually staying in
this situation for as long as she did and leading
and putting herself on the line with that speech that
she gave on the Senate floor. I think it's interesting
just because like political revolutionaries, there will always be different
(30:26):
roles that you have to play, and Luthan rail understood
the roles. He understood that Sagerero was the person on
the outside pressuring the rebel alliance to up their game,
and if the rebel alliance didn't up their game, then
the crazies who do bombings against civilians will take over
(30:47):
most of the rebel action. And so Luthan is like, no,
we need an organized rebellion. Mon Mathma is actually super
important to being a rallying figure for this, and I'm
going to push her to leave her comfort zone so
that Saw doesn't win. And that's that's real, folks, Like
that's reality.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
But I also I loved the fact that he took
on man Mathma face to face or hologram the face
yeah its yeah, yeah yeah, and they had those arguments. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
And I think the other part of Rebels not only
you know the big speech that kind of culminates outside
the temple when the R five droid or whatever it
is projects and they have that kind of showdown, but
even that episode leading up to that, where Ezra and
Sabine and they go to take out the comm's tower
and he ends up rescuing them and picking them up,
(31:43):
and it puts before them, hey there's another side to this,
and they're faced with, oh, we're doing it with the rebels,
but there's this other guy who's kind of taking action.
And you see, for somebody like Sabine and Ezra, that
has the potential to be intriguing, like, oh, we're actually
going to go blow something up and get something done,
as opposed to sitting back and playing what to seem
(32:04):
to them may have seemed like a long game or
seeming like a different way. So obviously they're parts of
the media help explore that and that relationship between them
even more, which I think just adds to it.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
Yeah, and it's just it's just it's historically relevant, you know,
the same as with with X Men. X Men often
gets drawn back to discussion of the civil rights movement.
Magneto is is very much more of like a Malcolm
X figure, you know, versus the the Martin Luther King is.
(32:37):
You know, we are all equal and can live together,
you know, as brothers of Professor X. You know, that
is something you can't get away from when discussing X
Men and and in Star Wars, I mean, there's there's
something like similar going on here too. There are just
different stripes of rebellion and action. I mean, Martin Luther
King was not an un challenged leader of the civil
(33:01):
rights movement. He had to contend with Stokely Carmichael of
the s and CC, He had to contend with Malcolm
X and other people challenging his leadership and saying nonviolence
is not going to work, this is not the way
to go. We actually should be more militant. We should
go the way of the Black Panthers. We actually should
not have integration. We should have black communities, white communities,
and we should defend our communities. There are differences of
(33:24):
opinion in revolutionary movements and movements that we look back
on as being universally good. And there's like a thing
happening in American politics right now which I think is
really really interesting, which is that Mlkaism has basically been
the scripture of American history since the nineteen sixties for
(33:48):
five decades, and we're in this weird cultural moment where
it kind of feels like Malcolm X is sort of
being revisited by progressives on the left and racialists, where
his version of what should have happened after the Civil
rights movement is very much steeped in what we see
today in Black Lives Matter. And that's like my side
(34:09):
Tangent just to say that rebellions are complicated. Rebelling against
tyranny and oppressive systems is never unified. And I just love, love, love,
and rogue one gave it to us first that we
now have a rebellion that is real. It is complicated,
it's fractious, it's really ugly, and people within it had
(34:32):
to do really bad things. Lutheran Rail it's a bad guy.
He did a very good thing so that we could
all see a sunrise that he will never see.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Well, as we've talked about Luthen and saw on myn Mathma,
we kind of have another side of this coin that
I want to dig into for a minute. And in
in Or we get the bureaucrats on the side of
the empire.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
We've got Dedra, we've got part of Gaz.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
We've got critic and we've got them wielding this power
and pushing this machine forward. What do you see in
that certainly real world political figures movements that kind of
mirror some of this. Obviously you're going to have the
big leaders at the top of these chains, but you're
going to have the other people coming behind them making
some of the suppression happen. Do you see it even
(35:30):
in some of the stuff we obviously we try not
to minimize it too much to us politics, But we've
got the Elon Musks of the world and some of
these other people driving some of our politics.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Right now, Where does all that land for you?
Speaker 4 (35:43):
Well, you know, people who say that will always have
to contend with the fact that Elon Musk is eliminating
government jobs, not adding them. So you know, it's just
that that makes these these conversations a little bit a
little bit hard, you know, Like, ah, the people who
we think are the empire based on our politics are
always trying to slash government spending and have people educate
(36:07):
their own children instead of the government. So that's my
quick defense from a conservative lens. But like I will
tell you that what goes on in the ISB is
very very Trumpian, and Trump's administrative style and the way
that he runs his White House, which we saw in
(36:29):
twenty sixteen or twenty twenty is the apprentice. He pits
his underlings against each other, he always did it.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
I'm having trouble, like we're calling specific names, but like
you start with like his first apprentice, that was Steve Bannon,
who was in the White House in the first administration.
And then he encourages and some of the books, some
of the books that were already written a by the
Trump administration. He pitted people against each other. He likes
(36:59):
the conflict, and in a way, that's very Sith style leadership.
Sith style leadership is I will have multiple apprentices, they
will be pit against one another, and they will fight
to be stronger and then one day to kill and
replace me. And that is what you then see played
(37:20):
out in the Empire. Palpatine's mode of being a Sith
Master is exactly how his government works. The Imperial government
is a reflection of his Sith values, and Donald Trump
does have a lot of that.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
He he feeds.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
On conflict, and he likes the power games, and he
loves the game of thrones in his presence. And so
I'm just like I'm looking at the dog eat dog
nature of Cyril gets eaten by Dedra, Dedra and Partigas
get eaten by critic, and critic gets eaten by Tarkan
and Tarkian, you know, answers to Vader and Palpatine. I mean,
(37:58):
this exists in every polytical circle, but it's pretty unique
to this particular president who loves running his administration like
a game show of.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
No, I think it's it's a fair observation to say
the ice B is very trumpy and that it's uh
because you even saw it with like here and all
the Lonna Young was able to sort of survive in
that by sort of staying quiet.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
And to be clear, I mean when I when I
look at the ISB, I have a couple of thoughts,
and it's it's one it's it's how this current administration works.
But you know the other one is just like what
does this group of people do all day? They are
listening to intelligence, They are following online conversations like imagine
the ISB in that circular room is basically like keeping
(38:47):
an eye on Twitter. They're keeping an eye on all
the conversations that are being had, and these ISB officers
are presenting No. There's been a little outbreak of discussion
on YouTube about this particular subject, and part of as was, ah, well,
then what show do we do about that, we should,
we need to put out that fire. I mean, the
first thing that I think about every time is going
(39:08):
to be the FBI having meetings with the former heads
of Twitter and Facebook to squash conversation on issues that
they didn't like. From twenty twenty to twenty twenty four,
it happened in mass and it did, in fact happen
in government buildings, and nobody likes to talk about that,
but it's true. And so like when I see that
(39:29):
group there putting out fires of little things they don't like.
I'll never forget when I had a YouTube show associated
with a major news network and our episodes were scrubbed
from YouTube during the pandemic because we had conversations that were.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Not approved by Google.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
But that was act but that was actually coming from
the White House, and that's a fact. And so we
got to be really real with ourselves about how close
our government gets and the permanent government gets, like the
government that exists between administrations two major companies that control
(40:09):
our conversations.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, well, I mean I think I think the Gorman
episodes really dramatized that entire sort of media positioning of everything.
So you know, that's I was going to ask you,
you know, if you how you see it in modern
news cycles, but you just you know, you just sort
of said it there. But it is. It was really
(40:31):
interesting to kind of watch that, you know, when when
when Cyril said to his mother, you're watching too much
Imperial News, I felt like, too is he was saying,
you know, hey, Boby, watching too much Fox News, right?
Speaker 4 (40:42):
And why does why does all the news have to
be like Hunger Games? The Hunger Games, the Hunger Games
culture is like also what they had in and Or
for for sure, Yeah, I'm pretty convinced Jesse Waters of
Fox would would also like fit in there. You just
need to like turn his hair purple. And Stephen Colbert
would also like be really great with like like Hunger
(41:05):
Games hair just flared up to be a propagandist for
the regime. Jesse Waters and Stephen Colbert as handmaidens of
the state.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, for sure. But it was interesting because where I
would draw sort of that, you know, from a story standpoint,
the way I saw the end of the Gorman episodes
where Edie is watching Imperial News her son died a hero,
(41:38):
never knowing what happened. All she knows is that the
empire was attacked by these terrorists, and and and then
there was hundreds of deaths of very brave imperials. And
to her her I look at it. My perception is
that she sees that if her son died as a
(41:59):
member of the empire, it was part of this, you know,
very a sort of prideful moment, if you will. It
was the right thing for them for him to be
there at that time. So I guess, maybe I'm crazy.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
She didn't even Yeah, she didn't even believe that. I mean,
she I don't understand her complex, But I think that's
the point. Is like she wanted big things for him,
but she always whenever he had a big thing, she
kind of thought he was like in over his head
or undeserving of it. But I wonder what she says
to friends, you know, I imagine, well, I don't know
(42:34):
she says to her friends when she says, you know,
my son died on Gorman. Do you think she's like,
he shouldn't have been there at all? He was, he
was unqualified.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
No, I see it the other way. I see it
as her finally having that win, that pride, that she
could be proud of her son who this very important
moment in the empire, and he was the only out.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
Of him when he's dead, correct, right, Yeah, no, but
it's part of her twistedness. I think for her, when
her son is alive, all she can ever do is
make him feel small, But when he's dead, she will
lionize him for her own self, aggrandize at cocktail parties.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, close this out with asking you a question that
you know, let's let's look at this from a really
positive side. In your book, you highlight hope and empathy,
and how do you see that coming from some of
(43:40):
the messages and even the political narrative of and Or
season two? Where do you see the hope, the empathy
and the the you know, it's sort of where we
started the direct connection to what Star Wars can possibly mean.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Man, rebellions are built on hope. I just so, I
guess I just want to sound off on that. I
mean the fact that that at that line which was
so impactful from Rogue one, which is delivered by jen
Urso to the committee, the rebel committee to compel them
to action, to go make this end run on the
(44:15):
Death Star. She got that from Cassian and Or when
he says it earlier in the movie, and we find
out that Cassian picked it up from a bellman at
a hotel. I used to be a bellman at a
Hilton hotel. I did two years in management.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
It was great.
Speaker 4 (44:33):
I worked at the front desk, and so in that moment,
I was like seeing myself as like, oh, a hotel
bellman passing on words of wisdom to a guest, And that,
to me is just that's what it's all about. Like,
real everyday people are where rebellion is going to come from.
If your rebellion has to come from established political interests,
(44:58):
the people with the most money, or a podcasting or
YouTube class of very influential people trying to force your
very niche opinions on the rest of the country, now
you're not going to have a rebellion. Rebellions are going
to be organic. They're going to be from the bottom up.
They're going to be from regular, everyday people. And that's mnemic.
(45:20):
That is what Knimic was writing about, that tyranny and
oppression is unnatural, that freedom is a pure idea, and
that it's just going to be like one person after
another that breaks the siege that the empire has put
on and that to me, like, that is hope. That
(45:41):
is a reminder that people matter. If your politics are
not rooted in what everyday people care about, you will lose.
And that is a message that should go straight to
the political right and the political left. Some of the
lefts very weird niche issues that they try to advance
(46:02):
and like the Republicans like weirdly like saying that now
tariffs are cool and you should only have five pencils
and three dollars for Christmas or something, and they're basically saying, like,
do it because it's patriotic, you know, have less stuff
as patriot.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
That's maoism, right.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
That is MAOIs communism masquerading as maga.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
It's very weird. So anyways, I will take it back
to the book.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
That is a message of hope that like comes right
out of and or a belief in people. And also,
like you mentioned the empathy factor, and empathy was a
big part of my book, Cyril carn Is a story,
uh that was that should direct us towards empathy. Like
if you are still in the end of season two
and demonizing Ceril as some like radicalized in cel, you're
(46:54):
you're missing the point you've missed, you've missed the point
of and have some empathy for this guy and try
to understand what got him here and then figure out
a way to pull him out. Because people in that world,
and I've known a lot of them, I said, I'm
a right winger. I've lost a lot of people in
my world to radical stuff. They're gone, they've just gone
(47:17):
off to the dark side. You can pull them out,
and that's going to take love, it's going to take empathy.
It's going to take hope that they can be brought
out of those things and shown the light again. Or
you can just hate them and you can kill them
if you really want to, Like, there are a lot
of people out there who their political ideology just ends
(47:38):
that we'd have to eliminate these people's that's not the
country we want to live in.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Wow at all? That was Yeah, that's such a great
way to put it.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Love then, well, Steven, we do want to thank you
for joining us tonight and for having this conversation before
we get you.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Out of here.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Where can people follow you online and keep up with
what you're doing, Like my.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
Tweets at steven x that's s T. E. P. H.
Ean kent X, I would love to talk with you.
And uh, We've got videos up on YouTube for Geeky Stoics.
It's a philosophy and pop culture channel. It mostly deals
in Star Wars. There's a lot of new and or
videos up. We just have one up on mon Mathma's
(48:21):
courage and a connection to Cato the Younger. Last week
we did a video on mon Mathma's boomer style feminism
and it's limitations. So you know, there's there's a lot
of stuff in there for for different people with different stripes.
And we'd love to have you over and and and Pete.
I hope we can do another episode where we get
to yell at each other.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
We have we can. I was expecting to debate tonight.
I was, you know, it's funny. I'm more than happy
to but no, I think, but I wanted to What
we really want to do with this episode, and and
I think it happened was just to get a deeper
(49:00):
understanding of the politics and recognize that it's you know,
it's it's not We said it early on, right. The
good stories are the ones that have an impact and
that can stick with us whether we like what it
says and where we are or not so, but yes
(49:21):
we have to debate again, we'd spen spin too long. Yes, sir, well,
that's up for this week's episode of Road to Rebellion
The and or After Show. Thanks for joining us on
this journey as we've broken down season two.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
Just because the show is over doesn't mean that we
are done just yet. We are going to bring a
special finale episode next week with your questions and comments.
We would love it if you would call us and
leave us a voicemail at five zero four three two
one one five zero one. If you want to be
a part of next week's show, you could also email
us or go to the website and find us on
social media and leave a question. But the easiest thing
(49:58):
to do is call and leave a voicemail because we
can play your voicemail on air.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
So one more time.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
That number is five zero four three two one one
five zero one. Call us, leave us a voicemail, and
we're going to do a voicemail wrap up show next week.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Absolutely, and if you are enjoying the show, make sure
you're subscribed to the Around the Galaxy show wherever you
get your podcasts, and don't forget this is only one
of the shows on the SSW network.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
In addition to this Around the Galaxy podcast, you can
find us live almost every Thursday night on our YouTube channel,
which is YouTube dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
At the SSW network.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
We do Star Wars News of the Week, celebrity and
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It's a Star Wars show for the people, and buy
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Speaker 2 (50:46):
And if you want to support what we do, the
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Speaker 1 (51:00):
And if you love what we do, please leave us
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Share it with your friends.
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You've got an uncle, a grandfather, a coworker, somebody who
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And one more time, that voicemail line by zero four
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Speaker 2 (51:19):
That's it for this week. Thanks again for hanging out
with Steven. We really appreciate it, and thank you to
our listeners, and until next time, may the force be
with you. And this is the road to rebellion. Always wait,
we got to give Steven the share. Steven, then force
me with you always. Road to Rebellion is copyright twenty
(51:40):
twenty five Pete in the Seat Studios. For more information
on this show and other shows than the SSW Network,
please head over to THESSW network dot com. Audio clips
our copyright twenty twenty five for Lucasfilm
Of all the things at risk, the loss of an
objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away,
when it is ripped from our hands.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
We become monera to the appetitle.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Whatever monster screams the loudest, and the monster.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Screaming the lovedest time, the monster he helped create, the
monster who will come for us all sooner is empra Putty.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well, Hello, Star Wars fans, and welcome to Wrote to Rebellion.
The official atg and Or after show. I am Pete Flitzer.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
And I am Nick Milky, and I want to thank
you for hanging out with us here on around the
galaxy part of the SSW Network.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, now that the season has ended and we've seen
all twelve season twelve episodes of Jesus Boy, I wish
we had twelve seasons, but twelve episodes of two of
and Or, we're going to take a look at the
politics of and Or and the Star Wars galaxy at large.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
And as we have done every week on Road to Rebellion,
I want to stop very quickly and give a warning.
This is a full spoiler show. We're going to talk
about indoor seasons one and two. We're going to talk
about Rogue one. We're going to talk about other parts
of the Star Wars galaxy. If you're not caught up
on it, you may want to pause. I mean, there's
not a lot of worry that we're going to ruin
Ahsoka for you, but all these things are directly connected
(01:38):
to and Or. You definitely want to be caught up
on that, So pause it, get caught up and then
come back and listen to us, because we know we
want you to be a part of the conversation, but
we don't want to ruin it for you either.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
No, we do not. And each week on Road Rebellion,
Nick and I have unpacked the story, the characters, the
big moments, the little details, and everything in between. But
this week, Nick, we are joined by friend of the show,
Stephen Kent. That's right, Pete, and I'm excited to have
this conversation. Stephen Kent is the host of the Geeky
Stoics YouTube channel. He's the author of the book How
the Force Can Fix the World, a thoughtful exploration of
(02:10):
the deeper lessons in Star Wars about liberty, empathy, and
bridging our divides.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Wow, what a concept in these modern times. Steven's work
lives at the intersection of pop culture and political philosophy,
which I love. From the Geeki Stoics newsletter to his
appearances on national news outlets, he brings a unique, often
center right perspective to these conversations. And today we're going
to dig into the politics of Andor with him, especially
how the series reflects the real world tensions we're sitting
(02:37):
right now around power, resistance, moral compromise. So I am
proud to say, Stephen Kent, welcome to Wrote to Rebellion.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Hello, guys, good to see you. How are you have
you been? I've been very well.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
I have missed around the galaxy, so it's nice to
be back.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
We are excited to have you back. Before we get
into what you thought of and Or season two, maybe
give us and our listeners a little bit of background
on your Star Wars journey. You have done so many
different interconnectivities between the real world and Star Wars, So
tell us a little bit about that history.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Oh my gosh, that's a little bit, a little bit,
that's a storied history. I mean, you know, I was coming,
you know, awake to the existence of politics in high
school in two thousand and five. I'm dating myself in
the opposite direction. You know, I was a junior in
(03:31):
two thousand and five watching Revenge of the Sith of
my best friends and coming to understand right at that
moment some of the things that they were talking about,
the rhetoric around the Iraq War, the invasion of Afghanistan
and everything in the wake of the War on Terror,
this US against them sort of thing going on in
the country. And you know, that interested me in Star
(03:53):
Wars at a hugely deep level for most of my youth,
and that continued into adulthood and was certainly reawakened around
the time of the Force Awakens and Star Wars coming back.
And I started this podcast called Beltway Banthas in twenty fifteen,
which was dedicated to basically doing like Hannity and Calms,
but you know, for Star Wars. So, you know, if
(04:15):
you're if you grew up in the day when Hannity
had someone to spar with on Fox News, he had
this squishy liberal named Alan Colmes that he could kick
around all night, and we wanted to do like a
show like that with one of my really good friends
at the time, Suarez Sale, like a solid leftist, great guy,
(04:35):
and we just just discussed what Star Wars means to
us on a deeper level and sometimes would have it
out and do debate and move on and do another
show the next week. It was a great time. And
that kind of bridged into doing a book on the
same subject that you mentioned, how the Force Can Fix
the world, And in my political commentary career, because I'm
(04:57):
a political writer by day and do p that's also
led me to kind of be like the Star Wars explainer,
the conservative geek on like the Glenn Beck Show, and
going on Fox from time to time to tell them
why Disney Star Wars is actually pretty good. So it's
been an interesting, interesting journey Star Wars. Politics is what
(05:19):
I'm all about, Yeah, And it's you know, I think
people forget that the second word in Star Wars is
war and war is politics and or rooted in politics.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
So I got to ask you season two van Or,
how did it hit you? How to strike you? What
were your overall thoughts before we start to really dig
into some of what some of the underlying politics might
have been.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Oh my gosh, I'm just like daydreaming about Star Wars,
you know, right now. It's one of those special things
that when a Star Wars show does it right, or
a Star Wars movie does it right, you just find
yourself zoning out in the middle of the day just
revisiting some of those scenes and the landscapes and going
back to Gorman and trying to understand how that situation
(06:01):
unraveled and fell apart the way that it did, and like,
could the people of Gorman done anything different to avoid
that situation on their end? How much were they baited
versus how much did they ask for it? Like, it's
just there's so much going on there, and I just
am going, man, I wish I had a political Star
Wars podcast where I could be delving into and or,
(06:22):
because this is the show that this that that was
made for, you know, and or it takes politics seriously
and presents it in a way that adults can understand,
unless you are like some of these very very peculiar
adults on Twitter who refuse to acknowledge the existence of politics.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And a galaxy far far away. We're not allowed to
talk about that, right, This is a kid's show, right,
I go to Star Wars to get away from politics. Well,
oh yeah right.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
I think for me, the main thing that I've been
thinking about in the wake of and Or has been well,
how cool the ISB is for starters.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I would like a membership card.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
It's been Nemes manifesto from season one.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
This freedom is a pure idea. It spontaneously and without instruction.
Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy.
There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that
they've already enlisted in the course. Remember that the frontier
of the rebellion is everywhere, and even the smallest active
(07:41):
insurrection pushes our lines forward.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
And it has been this this wonderful monologue that we
get between the rebel Nemic who's talking to him about
how fast the pace of oppression is growing across the galaxy.
He says it outs trips our ability to understand it,
like this is a means of control. And you could
(08:04):
call it Google controlling us all with Google Maps, or
you could just call it like the government's agenda in general,
to make us dependent on anybody but ourselves. And this
whole thing with Mnemic comes back at the end of
andor in the very last episode or two, as you know,
the part of Gas, the imperial ISB chair is listening
(08:28):
to his manifesto because it has spread across the galaxy
just like they predicted. You know, it is like a virus.
It just spreads and spreads and spreads, and you can't
plug all the holes that are popping out. And Nimics
says in his manifesto, just something that is so so
powerful and so true, which is that.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
The control is so desperate because it is so unnatural.
Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Authority is brittle, oppression is must see it remember the
time people long for freedom. That is a human instinct,
just as much as the instinct for control. Like we
kind of swing as human beings between wanting order and
wanting total freedom. And he says, tyranny requires constant effort,
(09:18):
and that's what the ISB is. Every single day you're
putting out a fire, stamping out some sort of some
sort of speech around the galaxy. And he says that
imperialism is brittle, that authority is brittle, and that it's
always breaking. And then the ISB officer kills himself and
(09:38):
some of the jokesters. Some of the jokesters on Twitter
are like, this is what happens when a fascist listens
to the Communist Manifesto over the first time, Like about that,
I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure when a proto fascist
reads the Communist Manifesto, They're like, I'm definitely fascist.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
I want one more of whatever this is. This is
not right. You are you are reinforcing my beliefs. Thank
you very much. Yes, this book is and everything I
ever gets.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
There is a ton to choose from in season two.
But for you, what do you see as kind of
the core political themes in this season or even in
the two seasons overall? And does it kind of refine
for you what Star Wars has always talked about. We've
had this for going years now, and it does something
(10:34):
to me where it continues to refine what we knew
it was about in nineteen seventy seven, and what we
knew it continued to be about, Yeah, in nineteen eighty
and nineteen eighty three. Having something like and or that
digs into it. I've said for a long time, this
is my West wing Star Wars. This gets into the
nitty gritty and it gets into you know, the dialogue.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
So for you, what are those core.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Themes that really get refined as we look at this season.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
So the core themes that are refined that kind of
go back to Star Wars as it's always been. Yeah,
I think so Star Wars for me, as it's always
been has been that Luke Skywalker has to contend in
the cave with the possibility that the man under the
mask could be just like him. That when he busts
(11:21):
Oap in Darth Vader's mask and that vision and that
force cave, that it's his face he sees, and then
we take that to return the Jedi and he cuts
off Darth Vader's hand on the Death Star and he
sees the wiring come out, and he looks at his
hand and he goes, I could become just like this.
For me, that is Star Wars' central message, and that
(11:44):
is the morality that underpins all of it, which is
why a lot of the self righteousness and finger pointing
that goes on in Star Wars phantom about who's the
bad guys and all that. I'm like, you've missed the
entire point. The point is that you could wake up
tomorrow and have stumbled into evil and not recognize it.
And so you see that in the prequels of course. Uh,
and then that's also like happening there in and Or
(12:07):
in these weird ways like Nemics. I'm sorry, not nemics.
Cyril's story. Cyril's story is of course along these lines,
because he's not a lunatic. He's just kind of like
a you know, he's a mama's boy. He loves order,
he loves rules. He was a cop, and then he
(12:28):
witnessed this crime, this act of terror that occurred on
Pharyx that was you know, linked to Cassie and Andor,
and he's he's kind of getting radicalized by this idea
of the galaxies coming apart, and they just need people
who believe in rules to keep things together. And I
think you should at some point in the show feel
(12:48):
a little bit like of sympathy for Cyril and go
like he came. He's not a monster. He's actually just
a relatively normal person who just wants like the ship's
drawn on time or the trains drawn on time. But
then it turns out there are people like Ded Dramiro
and Partigaz and Krenic, who are very content with massacring
(13:13):
people to make the trains run on time. And it
turns out in a and it's so fascinating, Cyril's actually.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Not into that, right, He's not into that.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Like he we kind of like laughed about him being
sort of like the proto fascist of the show or
like the alt right, you know, kind of pipeline guy,
and he does represent that to a certain extent, but
then it turns out he's really not into massacring in
some civilians and it completely pulled the veil off of
his eyes. And so for me, it's just like people
(13:45):
are complicated. You can become the bad guy if you're
not careful and you don't check your own power. And
also the bad guy can actually be good. They can
be misled, they can be helped sometimes. And like the
fact that the Gorman, the Gorman Front, like they they
know he's an imperial, they know he might be spying
(14:07):
on them, and still they're kind to him. Still they
outreach to him, they show their human face to him
and their underground meetings and they make him ask questions
about his morality in this empire that he serves. And
you don't get to see a lot of it. But
they got under his skin. Yeah, they got under his
skin in a big way. And then when it came
(14:27):
to when it came to killing these people, he was
not there for it.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
So I think there were such a good juxtaposition because
about halfway, maybe a little bit before the halfway mark
of the season, he's with Dedra, He's in the room
they're having the secret meeting. You know, he's kind of helped.
He's a part of the thing, and he feels so
cool and like he has that, but he's like, why
aren't we keeping on going? Like we're here to do
this thing. He wants to be a part of it,
and it comes from, you know what has informed him,
(14:54):
his overbearing mother, his desire to you know, not be
have his uncle held over his head, and all those
kinds the things. So, like you said, all of a
sudden he looks up and he's then over his head
and doesn't realize what he's gotten himself into, unwittingly, because
he wanted to be a part.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
He wanted to be cool, he wanted to be involved.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And then the Gore, the Gorman, they did start to
get to him.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And I think you're exactly right.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
And so about the time we see by the time
we reached the end of Cyril's journey, he went a
wait a minute, and you can see the cracks showing
up in that facade.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, I think it's you know, one of the things
that I was gonna ask you about, Stephen, is, you know,
how do people reconcile who are Star Wars fans and
you know, don't realize that, you know, maybe the empire
is happening around them. I tend to think that Cyril
may be one of those guys who who who might
(15:49):
have a YouTube channel, who's angry about things, and then
get into that real situation and say, wait a second,
that's not what I thought I was supporting. Right, So well,
I know you have opinions about this.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
I mean, yeah, I mean cial Cyril definitely definitely has
a YouTube channel. No, I'm sorry, what's where? Where are
all the right wingers now? They went off to some
other platform Rumble Rumble, right, he's got a Rumble show
and the sponsored by Dave Rubin or something.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
No. I just.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
I think in general, I mean Cyril's character, he knew
that he was participating in an empire that was plugging
all the holes left by the Clone Wars and all
the pain and devastation of the separatist movement. I mean,
I think one of the things we often forget in
(16:43):
Star Wars fandom when we're analyzing these these things is
just how bad the Clone Wars were. Like, the Clone
Wars were really, really horrific, just mass holocaust after mass holocaust.
And so you come out of that situation with a
lot of people who are like.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Never again. Whatever whatever led to that or facilitated that.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
I want the opposite, And I'm not going to go
like around here waiving my history books, but like I
just finished redoing a study of Benito Mussolini, who was,
you know, also like Adolf Hitler, a veteran of World
War One, ashamed of Italy's treatment at the end of
(17:26):
the war. Turns out like Italy was actually on the
other side. So they fought against the Central Powers in
World War One. They were on the opposite side of Germany,
helping the Allies, and they felt like they got shafted
in the spoils of war. And so SyRI or Cyril
Mussolini was one of these veterans of that war who
(17:47):
had a chip on his shoulder about it. He felt
like Italy had been emasculated, and you know, he came
up with this this thing fascism. You know, that was
the idea of us all coming together or you know,
the actual fascist symbol. The word is a bundle of
sticks with an axe cleaver on top, that the collective
(18:07):
can become dangerous when they come together. They can chop
down a tree, they can do anything. And like Benito
Mussolini gets completely left out of our understanding of what
fascism is and what like far right politics can do
when it goes wrong. The only literacy that we have
(18:28):
in this country for understanding evil and bad things is
Hitler and the Nazis. It's actually it really, I think
is a huge danger to our civilization. And I might
be going off on a tangent here, but I think
it really puts us in a bad place that we
only have one way to understand evil politics, and it's
(18:48):
Nazis and Hitler, and we just completely forget this other
mode that fascism can take, and that that form of
politics can take. You know, Benito Mussolini's fast Japanese imperialism,
you know, stalinistic communism or Stalinism, and it makes us
blind to all the things that can happen around us
(19:10):
in our government. If we're only looking out for the
bad guys in black with the skull and the crossbones
on their jacket, you will miss when dangerous people walk
right by you wearing suits and ties. That's kind of
like what your question just kind of makes me think of,
is like, how do we know when we're in the
(19:31):
empire or the empires forming around us? I just think
Americans have their head in the sand about what it.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Will look like. Is Indoor more important now than it
was when it came out five years ago, when Star
Wars came out fifty years ago, or is it just
another great piece of fiction that is reflecting a period
(20:00):
that we live in at this time.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
It came out originally in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Right, Yeah, the first season was twenty two.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Yep, Yeah, well, I mean the second season here is
definitely more impactful and speaks to I think something that
people feel.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
You know, it feels prescient.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
And when I go back to the prequels and you talk,
there's all this talk about George Lucas and you know,
the influence of the Iraq War in Afghanistan and the
war on terror.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And some of it is true.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
There was like one or two instances of script tweaks
where George Lucas was trying to make a statement, if
you're not with me, then you're my enemy, says George
Lucas or George W. Bush to the UN. I think
it was He's like, I think the terrorists, you know,
just to speak to people. But it really obscures the
(20:53):
fact that George wrote this thing in the nineties. You know,
that this story was gonna go this way no matter
what was happening in American politics, like our self centered,
our self centered worldview, that everything that happens on screen
is a reflection of what's going on with Republicans and
Democrats and not. You know, like a Russian audience member
(21:17):
who was shown on the news in two thousand and
five coming out of the theaters seeing Revenge of the
Sith and going, this feels very similar to what is
going on in Russia, you know, and the you know,
Vladimir Putin, like other people relate to this story. Star
Wars is a global tale, and I find it frustrating
(21:41):
when Star Wars fans hear mon Mathma say the word genocide,
and then she says it again, a genocide, and then
they're like tweeting she said the word, she said genocide,
and then they put up their Palestine flag, as if
that's the only thing going on in the world. That
(22:01):
there is not a genocide going on in South Sudan still,
or Mayan mar that there's not still this mass holocaust
of Christians and the Azids going on in Syria and Iraq. Like,
there is a lot of stuff going on in the
world that is important and does not always interest like
niche progressive activists in the US, you know the most.
(22:25):
I think interesting example of like the Empire in and
Or they're talking about mining Gore Gorman. They're going to
destroy these people, They're going to mine their planet. They're
going to kill them if necessary and make them the
bad guys in the situation and use basically the fruits
of the planet to finance their oppression of the galaxy.
(22:48):
I mean, in my day job at work, for the
past two years, we've been doing a campaign raising awareness
of how Putin's Russia is sending mercenaries into the country
of mali enslaving thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people
in the rural villages of Mali and forcing them into
(23:09):
pits to mine gold, to then pull the gold out
of the earth to pay their soldiers, because most of
their soldiers fighting in Ukraine have not been paid in
a long time. They are actually like committing a small
scale genocide enslavement to finance their war in Ukraine. And
(23:30):
so like this is going on, and it's not super
interesting to people. And I just get really annoyed when
people go and ors speaking to my thing. This one
thing that only progressives in the US hate. It's a
lot more impactful than that.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah, Yeah, And I seem to remember when you and
I had spoken when you were guess some other time
about that same sort of concept about you know, Revenge
of the Sith was it spoke to people around the
world and different people in different different times. And maybe
that's what makes it so good, right, is the fact
that it doesn't matter where you're seeing it. Hopefully it's
(24:11):
waking you up to you know, what could be happening
around you. And and yeah, so I think.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
That's what God is it, you know, like, what good
is it if if Star Wars said something true in
Return of the Jedi about our morality and it said
something true about taking sides or moral relativism and Revenge
of the Sith, but it only applies to the War
on Terror and the early two thousands, then what good
(24:39):
is it?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Right?
Speaker 4 (24:40):
And so like that's that's the thing that I try
to always educate people on and ask them to consider.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
And you know, I'm a right winger, Like.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
That's I I'll just like say the words, I'm not
a conservative, I'm a right winger. I think these stories
are really important for understanding the world. And it just
is counterproductive when people go Star Wars is political, man,
don't you know George Lucas named Newt Gunray after Nut Gingrich.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Like what good is that? Like? What is that? Like?
Speaker 4 (25:11):
What does that even mean? That doesn't make those movies political?
It means he's playing word games with his characters. What
is political. It is the message of those movies, and
they're as true today as they were twenty.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Years Yeah, And I think that's what's so prescient about
and or running at the same time as the twentieth
anniversary of Revenge of the Sith, in that people were
now watching Revenge of the Sith again and being reminded
of that movie and going, oh my god, he was
telling us what we need to know now, and the
fact his it was a twenty year old movie and
he wasn't predicting the future of twenty years He was
(25:45):
predicting or commenting on what was happening at that time.
So and again, Tony Gilroy's smart.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
I mean, Tony Gilroy has been playing the same you know,
tactic when he's doing his interviews and saying like, I'm
not looking at the news to write this, I'm reading books.
I'm reading history books because the cycles of oppression and
control and then revolution and freedom movements, it just goes
round and round and round and round. And you know,
(26:14):
if if you're only source of like understanding the world
is what's going on on the propagandistic television networks, I
think you just have a really limited understanding.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Of the world you live in. Yeah, and again that
leads to some of that bigger theming around propaganda and
how easily it is to lose sight of things around,
et cetera. But so I'm going to switch gears just
a little bit. I want to talk a little bit
about Luthan Saw and Mond Mathma because they each offer
sort of different philosophies of what resistance is right I
(26:45):
want to go about it. So how do you interpret
their sort of ideological conflict? Do you see like any
real world analogs for their you know, the necessary evil
sort of approach of both Luthan and saw or this
moral purity that we saw for mod Mathma when she
saw and Or shoot somebody in front of her for
the first time. It was the first time she was
exposed to the fact that people died during these things.
(27:07):
So how nice for you. That was one of the best.
So good.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
So, I mean, my my hot take and this is
this is probably not actually that hot, But I basically
I think you're looking at a show and or that
is dressed in leftist esthetics, sort of looking at the
world through a leftist worldview and a lens.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Tony Gilroy like is who he is, and the show
is still really great politics and this show is authentic.
And in every political movement left right center, you're always
going to have your establishmentarians and your moderates and your
radicals and your people who kind of want to like
burn it all down, and your agitators somewhere in the
(27:58):
middle and right there in mon Mathma, Luthan and Sagerera.
I mean, you've got your neoliberal I think Hillary Clinton
mon Mathma, You've got Luthan Rail I don't know who
he represents exactly, but he's like a broker between the
two sides. But then you've got like your Chay Guevera,
(28:19):
just hardcore revolutionary. You know, we are going to not
just win this war, but we're going to have executions
at the end.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
And also, I don't know what I'm building.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
To me, like, those kind of figures exist on the
right as well, like the people who are like deconstructionalists
want to burn it all down, and the people who
really want to preserve the system. But there's just something
about the revolutionary energy of the rebel alliance, particularly in
and Or.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And I'm not saying this.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
About every other piece of Star Wars, but particularly in
and Or, which just sort of codes to me as
left politics, and that's like what Sagerera is. And I'm
glad that they made Sagarera less sympathetic this show. I
think Rogue One did paint a picture for us of
the chae Govera type revolutionary who's not really interested in
(29:09):
compromise liberalism. But this show went a little bit of
a step further, was like, he's crazy, he's on crack,
he kills people. He's not a guy that we should,
you know, look up to as some sort of leader.
And they really helped man Mathma. Man Mathma before the
and Or series really did struggle from looking like a
(29:32):
total squish. She looked like the person who stayed in
the Empire Imperial Senate for as long as possible, got
out when it was convenient for her.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
And then I came.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
In to be the white savior of the rebellion and
just be very neat and tidy. And then by the way,
she completely ruins the New Republic. Like man Mama's legacy
in the books has been tainted by her management of
the New Republic. She does a horrible job, and so
like this show kind of helped her a little bit
(30:03):
to say, like, no, she was brave, she was courageous.
She did the hard thing, which was actually staying in
this situation for as long as she did and leading
and putting herself on the line with that speech that
she gave on the Senate floor. I think it's interesting
just because like political revolutionaries, there will always be different
(30:26):
roles that you have to play, and Luthan rail understood
the roles. He understood that Sagerero was the person on
the outside pressuring the rebel alliance to up their game,
and if the rebel alliance didn't up their game, then
the crazies who do bombings against civilians will take over
(30:47):
most of the rebel action. And so Luthan is like, no,
we need an organized rebellion. Mon Mathma is actually super
important to being a rallying figure for this, and I'm
going to push her to leave her comfort zone so
that Saw doesn't win. And that's that's real, folks, Like
that's reality.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
But I also I loved the fact that he took
on man Mathma face to face or hologram the face
yeah its yeah, yeah yeah, and they had those arguments. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
And I think the other part of Rebels not only
you know the big speech that kind of culminates outside
the temple when the R five droid or whatever it
is projects and they have that kind of showdown, but
even that episode leading up to that, where Ezra and
Sabine and they go to take out the comm's tower
and he ends up rescuing them and picking them up,
(31:43):
and it puts before them, hey there's another side to this,
and they're faced with, oh, we're doing it with the rebels,
but there's this other guy who's kind of taking action.
And you see, for somebody like Sabine and Ezra, that
has the potential to be intriguing, like, oh, we're actually
going to go blow something up and get something done,
as opposed to sitting back and playing what to seem
(32:04):
to them may have seemed like a long game or
seeming like a different way. So obviously they're parts of
the media help explore that and that relationship between them
even more, which I think just adds to it.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
Yeah, and it's just it's just it's historically relevant, you know,
the same as with with X Men. X Men often
gets drawn back to discussion of the civil rights movement.
Magneto is is very much more of like a Malcolm
X figure, you know, versus the the Martin Luther King is.
(32:37):
You know, we are all equal and can live together,
you know, as brothers of Professor X. You know, that
is something you can't get away from when discussing X
Men and and in Star Wars, I mean, there's there's
something like similar going on here too. There are just
different stripes of rebellion and action. I mean, Martin Luther
King was not an un challenged leader of the civil
(33:01):
rights movement. He had to contend with Stokely Carmichael of
the s and CC, He had to contend with Malcolm
X and other people challenging his leadership and saying nonviolence
is not going to work, this is not the way
to go. We actually should be more militant. We should
go the way of the Black Panthers. We actually should
not have integration. We should have black communities, white communities,
and we should defend our communities. There are differences of
(33:24):
opinion in revolutionary movements and movements that we look back
on as being universally good. And there's like a thing
happening in American politics right now which I think is
really really interesting, which is that Mlkaism has basically been
the scripture of American history since the nineteen sixties for
(33:48):
five decades, and we're in this weird cultural moment where
it kind of feels like Malcolm X is sort of
being revisited by progressives on the left and racialists, where
his version of what should have happened after the Civil
rights movement is very much steeped in what we see
today in Black Lives Matter. And that's like my side
(34:09):
Tangent just to say that rebellions are complicated. Rebelling against
tyranny and oppressive systems is never unified. And I just love, love, love,
and rogue one gave it to us first that we
now have a rebellion that is real. It is complicated,
it's fractious, it's really ugly, and people within it had
(34:32):
to do really bad things. Lutheran Rail it's a bad guy.
He did a very good thing so that we could
all see a sunrise that he will never see.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Well, as we've talked about Luthen and saw on myn Mathma,
we kind of have another side of this coin that
I want to dig into for a minute. And in
in Or we get the bureaucrats on the side of
the empire.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
We've got Dedra, we've got part of Gaz.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
We've got critic and we've got them wielding this power
and pushing this machine forward. What do you see in
that certainly real world political figures movements that kind of
mirror some of this. Obviously you're going to have the
big leaders at the top of these chains, but you're
going to have the other people coming behind them making
some of the suppression happen. Do you see it even
(35:30):
in some of the stuff we obviously we try not
to minimize it too much to us politics, But we've
got the Elon Musks of the world and some of
these other people driving some of our politics.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Right now, Where does all that land for you?
Speaker 4 (35:43):
Well, you know, people who say that will always have
to contend with the fact that Elon Musk is eliminating
government jobs, not adding them. So you know, it's just
that that makes these these conversations a little bit a
little bit hard, you know, Like, ah, the people who
we think are the empire based on our politics are
always trying to slash government spending and have people educate
(36:07):
their own children instead of the government. So that's my
quick defense from a conservative lens. But like I will
tell you that what goes on in the ISB is
very very Trumpian, and Trump's administrative style and the way
that he runs his White House, which we saw in
(36:29):
twenty sixteen or twenty twenty is the apprentice. He pits
his underlings against each other, he always did it.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
I'm having trouble, like we're calling specific names, but like
you start with like his first apprentice, that was Steve Bannon,
who was in the White House in the first administration.
And then he encourages and some of the books, some
of the books that were already written a by the
Trump administration. He pitted people against each other. He likes
(36:59):
the conflict, and in a way, that's very Sith style leadership.
Sith style leadership is I will have multiple apprentices, they
will be pit against one another, and they will fight
to be stronger and then one day to kill and
replace me. And that is what you then see played
(37:20):
out in the Empire. Palpatine's mode of being a Sith
Master is exactly how his government works. The Imperial government
is a reflection of his Sith values, and Donald Trump
does have a lot of that.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
He he feeds.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
On conflict, and he likes the power games, and he
loves the game of thrones in his presence. And so
I'm just like I'm looking at the dog eat dog
nature of Cyril gets eaten by Dedra, Dedra and Partigas
get eaten by critic, and critic gets eaten by Tarkan
and Tarkian, you know, answers to Vader and Palpatine. I mean,
(37:58):
this exists in every polytical circle, but it's pretty unique
to this particular president who loves running his administration like
a game show of.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
No, I think it's it's a fair observation to say
the ice B is very trumpy and that it's uh
because you even saw it with like here and all
the Lonna Young was able to sort of survive in
that by sort of staying quiet.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
And to be clear, I mean when I when I
look at the ISB, I have a couple of thoughts,
and it's it's one it's it's how this current administration works.
But you know the other one is just like what
does this group of people do all day? They are
listening to intelligence, They are following online conversations like imagine
the ISB in that circular room is basically like keeping
(38:47):
an eye on Twitter. They're keeping an eye on all
the conversations that are being had, and these ISB officers
are presenting No. There's been a little outbreak of discussion
on YouTube about this particular subject, and part of as was, ah, well,
then what show do we do about that, we should,
we need to put out that fire. I mean, the
first thing that I think about every time is going
(39:08):
to be the FBI having meetings with the former heads
of Twitter and Facebook to squash conversation on issues that
they didn't like. From twenty twenty to twenty twenty four,
it happened in mass and it did, in fact happen
in government buildings, and nobody likes to talk about that,
but it's true. And so like when I see that
(39:29):
group there putting out fires of little things they don't like.
I'll never forget when I had a YouTube show associated
with a major news network and our episodes were scrubbed
from YouTube during the pandemic because we had conversations that were.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Not approved by Google.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
But that was act but that was actually coming from
the White House, and that's a fact. And so we
got to be really real with ourselves about how close
our government gets and the permanent government gets, like the
government that exists between administrations two major companies that control
(40:09):
our conversations.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, well, I mean I think I think the Gorman
episodes really dramatized that entire sort of media positioning of everything.
So you know, that's I was going to ask you,
you know, if you how you see it in modern
news cycles, but you just you know, you just sort
of said it there. But it is. It was really
(40:31):
interesting to kind of watch that, you know, when when
when Cyril said to his mother, you're watching too much
Imperial News, I felt like, too is he was saying,
you know, hey, Boby, watching too much Fox News, right?
Speaker 4 (40:42):
And why does why does all the news have to
be like Hunger Games? The Hunger Games, the Hunger Games
culture is like also what they had in and Or
for for sure, Yeah, I'm pretty convinced Jesse Waters of
Fox would would also like fit in there. You just
need to like turn his hair purple. And Stephen Colbert
would also like be really great with like like Hunger
(41:05):
Games hair just flared up to be a propagandist for
the regime. Jesse Waters and Stephen Colbert as handmaidens of
the state.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, for sure. But it was interesting because where I
would draw sort of that, you know, from a story standpoint,
the way I saw the end of the Gorman episodes
where Edie is watching Imperial News her son died a hero,
(41:38):
never knowing what happened. All she knows is that the
empire was attacked by these terrorists, and and and then
there was hundreds of deaths of very brave imperials. And
to her her I look at it. My perception is
that she sees that if her son died as a
(41:59):
member of the empire, it was part of this, you know,
very a sort of prideful moment, if you will. It
was the right thing for them for him to be
there at that time. So I guess, maybe I'm crazy.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
She didn't even Yeah, she didn't even believe that. I mean,
she I don't understand her complex, But I think that's
the point. Is like she wanted big things for him,
but she always whenever he had a big thing, she
kind of thought he was like in over his head
or undeserving of it. But I wonder what she says
to friends, you know, I imagine, well, I don't know
(42:34):
she says to her friends when she says, you know,
my son died on Gorman. Do you think she's like,
he shouldn't have been there at all? He was, he
was unqualified.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
No, I see it the other way. I see it
as her finally having that win, that pride, that she
could be proud of her son who this very important
moment in the empire, and he was the only out.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
Of him when he's dead, correct, right, Yeah, no, but
it's part of her twistedness. I think for her, when
her son is alive, all she can ever do is
make him feel small, But when he's dead, she will
lionize him for her own self, aggrandize at cocktail parties.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, close this out with asking you a question that
you know, let's let's look at this from a really
positive side. In your book, you highlight hope and empathy,
and how do you see that coming from some of
(43:40):
the messages and even the political narrative of and Or
season two? Where do you see the hope, the empathy
and the the you know, it's sort of where we
started the direct connection to what Star Wars can possibly mean.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Man, rebellions are built on hope. I just so, I
guess I just want to sound off on that. I
mean the fact that that at that line which was
so impactful from Rogue one, which is delivered by jen
Urso to the committee, the rebel committee to compel them
to action, to go make this end run on the
(44:15):
Death Star. She got that from Cassian and Or when
he says it earlier in the movie, and we find
out that Cassian picked it up from a bellman at
a hotel. I used to be a bellman at a
Hilton hotel. I did two years in management.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
It was great.
Speaker 4 (44:33):
I worked at the front desk, and so in that moment,
I was like seeing myself as like, oh, a hotel
bellman passing on words of wisdom to a guest, And that,
to me is just that's what it's all about. Like,
real everyday people are where rebellion is going to come from.
If your rebellion has to come from established political interests,
(44:58):
the people with the most money, or a podcasting or
YouTube class of very influential people trying to force your
very niche opinions on the rest of the country, now
you're not going to have a rebellion. Rebellions are going
to be organic. They're going to be from the bottom up.
They're going to be from regular, everyday people. And that's mnemic.
(45:20):
That is what Knimic was writing about, that tyranny and
oppression is unnatural, that freedom is a pure idea, and
that it's just going to be like one person after
another that breaks the siege that the empire has put
on and that to me, like, that is hope. That
(45:41):
is a reminder that people matter. If your politics are
not rooted in what everyday people care about, you will lose.
And that is a message that should go straight to
the political right and the political left. Some of the
lefts very weird niche issues that they try to advance
(46:02):
and like the Republicans like weirdly like saying that now
tariffs are cool and you should only have five pencils
and three dollars for Christmas or something, and they're basically saying, like,
do it because it's patriotic, you know, have less stuff
as patriot.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
That's maoism, right.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
That is MAOIs communism masquerading as maga.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
It's very weird. So anyways, I will take it back
to the book.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
That is a message of hope that like comes right
out of and or a belief in people. And also,
like you mentioned the empathy factor, and empathy was a
big part of my book, Cyril carn Is a story,
uh that was that should direct us towards empathy. Like
if you are still in the end of season two
and demonizing Ceril as some like radicalized in cel, you're
(46:54):
you're missing the point you've missed, you've missed the point
of and have some empathy for this guy and try
to understand what got him here and then figure out
a way to pull him out. Because people in that world,
and I've known a lot of them, I said, I'm
a right winger. I've lost a lot of people in
my world to radical stuff. They're gone, they've just gone
(47:17):
off to the dark side. You can pull them out,
and that's going to take love, it's going to take empathy.
It's going to take hope that they can be brought
out of those things and shown the light again. Or
you can just hate them and you can kill them
if you really want to, Like, there are a lot
of people out there who their political ideology just ends
(47:38):
that we'd have to eliminate these people's that's not the
country we want to live in.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Wow at all? That was Yeah, that's such a great
way to put it.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Love then, well, Steven, we do want to thank you
for joining us tonight and for having this conversation before
we get you.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Out of here.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Where can people follow you online and keep up with
what you're doing, Like my.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
Tweets at steven x that's s T. E. P. H.
Ean kent X, I would love to talk with you.
And uh, We've got videos up on YouTube for Geeky Stoics.
It's a philosophy and pop culture channel. It mostly deals
in Star Wars. There's a lot of new and or
videos up. We just have one up on mon Mathma's
(48:21):
courage and a connection to Cato the Younger. Last week
we did a video on mon Mathma's boomer style feminism
and it's limitations. So you know, there's there's a lot
of stuff in there for for different people with different stripes.
And we'd love to have you over and and and Pete.
I hope we can do another episode where we get
to yell at each other.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
We have we can. I was expecting to debate tonight.
I was, you know, it's funny. I'm more than happy
to but no, I think, but I wanted to What
we really want to do with this episode, and and
I think it happened was just to get a deeper
(49:00):
understanding of the politics and recognize that it's you know,
it's it's not We said it early on, right. The
good stories are the ones that have an impact and
that can stick with us whether we like what it
says and where we are or not so, but yes
(49:21):
we have to debate again, we'd spen spin too long. Yes, sir, well,
that's up for this week's episode of Road to Rebellion
The and or After Show. Thanks for joining us on
this journey as we've broken down season two.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
Just because the show is over doesn't mean that we
are done just yet. We are going to bring a
special finale episode next week with your questions and comments.
We would love it if you would call us and
leave us a voicemail at five zero four three two
one one five zero one. If you want to be
a part of next week's show, you could also email
us or go to the website and find us on
social media and leave a question. But the easiest thing
(49:58):
to do is call and leave a voicemail because we
can play your voicemail on air.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
So one more time.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
That number is five zero four three two one one
five zero one. Call us, leave us a voicemail, and
we're going to do a voicemail wrap up show next week.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Absolutely, and if you are enjoying the show, make sure
you're subscribed to the Around the Galaxy show wherever you
get your podcasts, and don't forget this is only one
of the shows on the SSW network.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
In addition to this Around the Galaxy podcast, you can
find us live almost every Thursday night on our YouTube channel,
which is YouTube dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
At the SSW network.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
We do Star Wars News of the Week, celebrity and
guest interviews, calls, live call ins. We'll throw the link
in the chat sometimes and get you involved with the show.
It's a Star Wars show for the people, and buy
the people.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
And if you want to support what we do, the
people need money, so head over to Matrea dot com
flash the SSW Network. You'll get early access, exclusive content
and a chance to be a part of what we
feel is the best Star Wars community out there.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
And if you love what we do, please leave us
a five star review.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Share it with your friends.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
You've got an uncle, a grandfather, a coworker, somebody who
likes Star Wars, say hey, check these guys out and
find us on social media at the SSW network everywhere.
And one more time, that voicemail line by zero four
three two one one five zero one.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
That's it for this week. Thanks again for hanging out
with Steven. We really appreciate it, and thank you to
our listeners, and until next time, may the force be
with you. And this is the road to rebellion. Always wait,
we got to give Steven the share. Steven, then force
me with you always. Road to Rebellion is copyright twenty
(51:40):
twenty five Pete in the Seat Studios. For more information
on this show and other shows than the SSW Network,
please head over to THESSW network dot com. Audio clips
our copyright twenty twenty five for Lucasfilm
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