Andor's most quotable line gives away one of our most cherished lies

 'Wouldn't you rather give it all at once, for something real?'

With that line, the latest Disney Plus Star Wars spin-off, Andor, lets the cat out of the bag about one of the little lies we in the West tell the world, and ourselves. 

The lie in question is a lie about suicide bombers. Whenever a suicide attack occurs, we act shocked. We act outraged. We make sure we are seen to shed tears of incomprehension over how people could be brainwashed into throwing their lives away. When one of our pampered celebrities makes the mistake of calling such actions brave, we fulminate against them until their own cowardice reasserts itself and they go along with pack morality. We say as loudly and as emotionally as we can that we don't understand.

But what Andor gives away about us is that we do understand. We understand just fine, actually. We understand the humiliations Empire imposes cannot forever be borne. We understand that even regimes of constant monitoring and surveillance cannot starve the spark of defiance entirely. We understand that when you make the world a prison you had best be prepared for a riot; and even if you are you can't prepare for riots everywhere. We understand that some people are going to get through, and when you make those people absolutely desperate they will act to do as much damage as possible, even at the cost of the life we say we value oh so highly - the life which we know, in truth, we have taken away, little by little. 

'Wouldn't you rather give it all at once to something real?' 

That's something you want to think about when you vote for those who want to make people feel desperate. And you can't really claim you weren't warned now because there's one entire section of a blockbuster franchise which is all about what desperate people do. And the Mouse doesn't greenlight things it doesn't think you don't already understand.