Up and Comers
…A New Hope or The Last Hope
PLEASE NOTE: No references to rebellion and revolution in this post are meant to advocate violence despite the confrontational language employed.
Star Wars: Episode IV (1977), the first Star Wars movie, added its afterthought subtitle, -- A New Hope, in 1981. The is consistent with Obi-Wan Kenobi saying that the young Luke Skywalker character “is our last hope” in Star Wars: Episode V -- The Empire Strikes Back (1980). When Yoda responded with “no, there is another,” he was either referring to Luke’s sister Leia Organa or to another up-and-coming Jedi. The point was and still is that a new younger generation was the best hope for revolution and the overthrow of the Empire.
The character Cassian Andor says to Jyn Erso in the prequel Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), “Yea, rebellions are built on hope,” which she later repeats to the Rebel Council. That emphasized the point already made in the pre-prequel series, Andor (season 2, episode 8, 2025) [1] where that phrase was given to Andor by Thela, a young hotel desk clerk on planet Ghorman during the Empire’s massacre of the Ghor.
Youth and hope are called out as the necessary ingredients for a successful rebellion. The character Padmé Amidala warned us in Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith (2005), “This is how liberty dies … with thunderous applause.”* When existing leaders have been co-opted and the public has been fully hornswoggled, those applause may be the last sound we and liberty hear.
Fiction as forerunner: The authors of fiction can be prescient. From Dick Tracy’s wristwatch in the comics [2] to the autonomous car in the Knight Rider TV series [3], these technologies and many more such imagined conveniences exist today. We are still waiting for today’s version of the Star Wars vessel, The Millenium Falcon [4], to appear but an analogue of the Galactic Empire down at our planetary scale is what we now resist. Less fun than dreams of galactic space travel is the political prescience in fiction that has come to pass. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four description of a totalitarian society [5] exaggerated dictatorships that had already occurred and have come true to some extent in many places today, now enhanced by high tech methods of surveillance and control of media.
The Hunger Games movie series shows us an interesting version of an autocratic state because in that storyline, it is the youth who eventually successfully rebel.[6] After all, the young are the ones who will live the longest under whichever form of government survives. They have the most at stake.
HOPE! -- The ubiquitous counsel
We see this advice everywhere, not just in the Star Wars franchise. On a recent visit to a medical office in early May, after beginning to write this note about hope, I encountered a display with the expected “April showers bring May flowers” surrounding the word “HOPE.” Intended to cheer folks with serious illness, it nevertheless confirmed my suspicion that the concept is somehow endemic to the human survival instinct and a basis on which to build (or incite) action.
Saviors: So, young wide-eyed idealistic up-and-comers are the best last hope we have for staunching decline from a democratic republic toward a cultish authoritarian oligarchy. They cannot be bought off or scared into compromising their integrity, but my question is, have enough of them been well enough versed in the principles of democracy to know what they are defending? Free speech, a free independent press, a respected independent judiciary, and free and fair elections with universal enfranchisement— will they understand and voraciously preserve those qualities whether explicit in law and constitution or only in norms and tradition? Let’s hope!
They have the energy, stamina, imagination, digital savvy, and the naïveté -- if they don’t know “why they cannot prevail,” then they just might! They will not be the “fools who rush in where angels fear to tread” for they are our prospective angels, our better angels.
Focus: As is true for any high-powered enterprise, its energy must be focused and directed at identifiable targets. Sidetracks, distractions, and well-meaning scattershot efforts deplete the drive needed for overcoming an entrenched, clever, and deceitful resistance. The built-in contradiction of a fight for independent free speech and thought while requiring conformity to support a single attack plan is tension defined. Only a strong charismatic leader can provide the vision and temporary coherence needed to overcome a natural diversity of views and to triumph.
Urgency: Every day, reliable newscasts document appalling oversteps of the boundaries we thought existed between power hungry greed and intolerance on one side and respect for law and equity on the other. This is happening today. Gestopo-esque tactics are in our restaurants and on our campuses. Nose-thumbing retorts respond to court orders. The sinews that secure the framework of our agencies are weakened and cut as we watch. AI-driven, psychologically trained algorithms and malicious web-bots are foisted upon us with every click of the mouse. I wish this were a melodramatic overreaction to what will turn out to be normal back and forth policy excursions that heal themselves. But that pendulum is broken, and the bob is stuck on the right.
Unfortunately, history has taught us that the well-orchestrated insidious misdirection of the levers of government and the crippling of a free press and effective means of dissent reach a point of no return. We cannot afford to wait until we see that point behind us or until the uncomfortable heat of a summer day finally drives people into the streets. Circumstances don’t offer leeway to delve into an esoteric examination of the true meaning of democracy and the symptoms of its impending demise. A reason to hope with a strong dose of realism is what we need now.
Design & structure
A vexing strategic issue is deciding how and where to launch and pursue a peaceful attack. Fighting a battle where supporters of the enemy are absent is a waste of energy and talent. It would be overly self-promoting and introspective. In other words, the fight must be brought to them. It must be where they are, speak in their tongue, console and conspire to win over the winnable and outflank the diehard obstructors.
Easily said. A palace coup that replaces one autocrat with another is essentially what one gets when people power is not part of the transition. (Watch for an upcoming post on “Substitutes.”) Practical benefits coupled with lofty ideals is the magnet that draws folks in and gives them more than proverbial but real hope, New Hope. Cadres, platoons, teams of interactive warriors infused with that hope and the confidence that they are doing good, will find that it’s contagious, that their enthusiasm infects the open-minded not-yet-enlisted average person. Campaigners, voters, and just plain neighbors with a mission can be indominable.
Command and control: Permeable intermediaries are needed. For a large movement, not every foot soldier can chat at length with a top leader. A middle manager is needed who is permeable. They let the leader’s orders filter down while they allow concerns of the troops to filter up.
Seniors’ roles: What of us old folks? Well first, I’ve gone on long enough about the younger generation or two being the ones who need to save us. The arrogant presumptiveness of assuming that we oldies get to “assign” to our juniors the job of fixing the nation is breathtaking. Have we asked if they are still living in their parents’ homes, struggling with income generation and relationships, and just figuring out where they fit into their surrounding milieu? No, we have not.
In less urgent situations, we could wait for a sufficient number of potential objectors to grow their “sea legs” and decide to devote energies to reversing the trend away from democracy. Because the slide has begun, we seniors need to join the fight in word and deed with all our juniors who are ready.
All of the wisdom we have supposedly absorbed is unlikely to be useful for a revolution. Offering our moral support is good, in fact necessary, but only goes so far. And, we are liable to pontificate too much, to advocate solutions that may have worked in the past but are devoid of nuance and understanding of today’s information landscape. Providing resources without strings attached is one role, a necessary one, that can be played by those of us who have accumulated the means to pay it forward.
Cute and coy
As we type today, the national news is warning of the potential demise of our childhood (and for some of us, current) friends pictured below. Not because of low viewer ratings on the PBS Television Network, but because along with the destruction of agencies that save real lives in Africa and in other underdeveloped regions, our wise and compassionate government in the US is now defunding the parent of PBS. The “P” in PBS stands for Public, but nowadays, to which public we belong determines our treatment at the hands of our purportedly well-meaning overseers. Apparently, we are being protected from ourselves. The message that we should be kind to everyone is just too dangerously ecumenical and smacks of something called WOKEness that must be stamped out. Bye-bye Big Bird and the rest of you. But as you wander off into the broadcast desert, never forget what Elmo once said to Fat Blue, “Where there is life, there is hope.”[7] If appeals to hope from the fictional characters of a galaxy far far away are not compelling enough, then perhaps the fictional fuzzy characters of our childhood can convince us to act.
Cute and coy won’t cut it
Are these appeals to the dialogue and characters in the movies and on television (and streaming on our phones and pads), to the untested wisdom of authors and screenwriters, useful in the real world? Are we “crying wolf” well before the wolf arrives? Will a call to action in a Substack post do more than temper the anxiety of its author? All good questions. Are there any good answers? Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? The vast diversity of thought that reflects the laudable makeup of our country makes arriving at a consensus for action really tough. If toying with analogies and raising red flags about every nook and cranny of democracy being poisoned grabs the attention of even one more citizen who would otherwise not be on board, then I say yes. We are not ‘crying wolf’ and whatever helps to resist, even if by itself is small, is well worth the effort.
The best way to end is with an excerpt from a commencement address given by Tom Robbins in 1974 but only unearthed in 2022. He said, “As for heaven and hell, they are right here on Earth, and it is up to each of you in which one you choose to reside. To put it simply, heaven is living in your hopes and hell is living in your fears.”[8]
* Confession: Our introduction to this essay may have been influenced by our beginning to compose it on 4 May, Star Wars Day – May the 4th Be With You.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Day. All references to Star Wars dialogue can be found in a plethora of web sites. Too many to usefully list as explicit citations here.
Credits: Star Wars collage image from Disney+ network email “May the 4th Be With You” 4 May 2025. disneyplus@messaging.disneyplus.com.
“HOPE” image from author’s collection.
“Broken Pendulum” image from openai.com’s DALL-E image generator.
“Sesame Street” image from www.thewrap.com.
[1] https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/andor-season-2-rogue-one-rebellion-hope.
[2] https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/2-Way_Wrist_Radio.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KITT.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Falcon.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four.
[6] Ross, Gary. 2012 et seq. The Hunger Games (movie). Los Angeles, USA, Lionsgate.
[7] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063951/quotes/?item=qt0446894.
[8] https://rainshadownorthwest.com/2025/02/09/the-lost-commencement-address-by-tom-robbins.
See also, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/obituaries/tom-robbins-dead.html.
Nota Bene: Others may ruminate differently. But be warned: In my case, seeing or hearing something quite trivial -- a saying, a store clerk’s mannerisms, or bad grammar on a food product’s label – triggers a stream-of-consciousness extrapolation toward grander notions and generalizations. That is what often happens in these posts. ADDENDUM: Those subscribers who have been here for a while will have noticed that at times Ruminations has veered into diatribes. I make no apology. I just want my readers to know that it’s quite intentional. When events come close to making the ‘blood boil,’ that discontent bubbles up here.
Disclaimer: Any and all opinions expressed here are my own at the time of writing with no expectation that they will hold beyond my next review of this article. Opinions are like a river, winding hither and yon, encountering obstacles and rapids, and suffering turbulent mixing of silts from its depths and detritus from its banks. But just as a river has its clear headwaters and a fertile delta, so do opinions, notwithstanding any intervening missteps and uncertainties.
Reminder: You can visit the Cycloid Fathom Technical Publishing website at cycloid-fathom.com and the gallery at cycloid-fathom.com/gallery.
Forthcoming posts (unless life intervenes)
The Interview
…A trip through dreamland
23 June 2025
Scale
…or sizing everything up
30 June 2025
Articles and Particles
…minor and major
7 July 20254
The Substitute
…Do this, not that; Live here, not there; Use this, not that; and Fill these shoes
14 July 2025
The Purpose of Purple
…Political pigments and dichotomies
21 July 2025
Are we there yet?
…The age of patience
28 July 2025
