Can We Change?

Redemption in Star Wars

(For more thoughts about redemption and identity in Star Wars, try “There’s Good In Him” from a few years back.)

Obviously, there’s little I can write in a space like this that matches the bravery of the people in the Twin Cities who are protesting against ICE agents, even in the face of injustice, murder, and repugnant racism; or the people in Iran who are desperately protesting for their freedoms against a theocratic tyranny, as the world fails to unify around a common moral struggle.

But I will say this: I believe we can change. And that’s the radical belief at the center of Star Wars. That people can fall into darkness, that evil can transform and corrupt, that goodness is not settled. But, also, that darkness is not a permanent state, and that one can be revived inside, reignited, and rediscovered.

The Empire did not take over the galaxy by force. It did not invade the Galactic Republic and defeat it. The Galactic Republic and The Empire are one and the same: a seamless line where one is transformed into the other. Palpatine did to the the Galactic Republic exactly what he did to Anakin Skywalker: stoked its fears, presented it with an enemy, grafted himself to its side, divorced it from its best intentions, and then asked it to voluntarily bow to him.

There’s something hopeful, a glimmer of light, in this dark dedication to the idea of corruption. It’s a belief that people can change. It’s a belief that nothing is settled in us: not our sense of ourselves, not our political systems, not our shared story of history, not our power.

We see that in the US right now: a lack of care about what came before, a willingness to just trample, like a toddler, over the world, without a care of what is lost. The East Wing, for example. USAID. The Constitution. NATO. Yes, it’s easier to break things with a hammer than build them like an architect, but at the core of this is a sense that nothing is sacrosanct or permanent. There is a belief that one day your political opponent might be calling you Hitler, and then he can be your Vice President.

To make the world a better place, to bring it to the light, one needs that same dedication to a belief that the world can change. Rey believed beyond all reason that Ben Solo could be reached, well past the point that anyone else believed it. Luke Skywalker looked at the most fearsome man in the galaxy and fought until that man found himself again. The real victory in each story is not through force but through faith.

It’s no mistake that one of the most powerful tools of the Empire, and the federal government, is the mask. The mask of the stormtrooper, of Vader, or the ICE agent doesn’t just hide their identity from the Rebels or protestors: it also robs the person under the mask of their own sense of self. It’s easier for a 26 year old ICE agent, whose face is covered up, whose self has been suppressed, to shoot someone on the street. He is being taught he is faceless, a weapon, an arm, a gun. The person his mother raised to be better than this is nowhere to be found. He doesn’t see that person in the mirror, and he doesn’t see the humanity of his fellow agents when he looks at them, either.

One of the most hopeful things I have seen in Minnesotans standing up against masked (mostly) men is not the response to tragedy. It’s a harsh reality, really, that people have to lose their lives, on camera, before the political world slowly responds to the truth. I am moved by the people who talk to ICE agents, who say, (even before they are murdered) “I’m not mad at you, bro.” Who ask them what they think they’re doing. Who use their words to try to make them see reason or feel shame. Who believe, despite fear of terminal reprisal, that there’s a person under that mask, and maybe, just maybe, that person can hear them.

One of my brothers, Dan, decided that his sympathies aligned with Donald Trump over the course of the last year or so. It was confounding to me, because he has only recently been a hardcore Bernie Sanders guy who bought members of our family BLM t-shirts after the death of George Floyd. He lives in Minneapolis (quite a few members of my family do) and as a gay man, his marriage is something that many Republicans would love to dismantle. I did not understand what had happened. But he decided that the left was untrustworthy, or not going to help him fiscally, or any number of objections, and it was extremely difficult to see and hear. We haven’t really talked for months, because this put a huge strain on our relationship.

Now, to be fair, we’ve had a complicated relationship for a lot of our lives, and it’s not like we talked a lot anyway. But I’ve been avoiding reaching out to him: it always seems to result in a fight. And I was imagining whatever algorithmic soup he must be in, and that made me imagine what things he might say about Renee Good or Alex Pretti. I didn’t want to know. I was not going to reach out to him.

But is this who I want to be? He’s my brother. His city is a cloud of fear and violence, even if it’s what he voted for, it’s also, you know, not what he voted for. I’d like to imagine.

Another of my brothers, David, and his partner, Alexis are out there in the streets, in the cold, taking action. My stepmother and father are helping, writing, objecting. Donning the Rebel Alliance Loon. But Dan, I don’t know how he is, and I was afraid to find out.

But, in the end, I did send him a message just to say that I hope he and his husband are safe. Because, I don’t want to live in a world where I stop worrying about him. And I don’t want the division that has been actively sown in our society by greed and hate to be any part of our estrangement. (We had enough trouble talking to each other without their help, thank you very much.) I have to believe that change is possible. For my family, for my country, for my state, for myself.

For you, too.

If a government can fail, it can also succeed. If we can fall, we can be redeemed. If we can lose ourselves, we can find ourselves too.

Godspeed Rebels.