Lit Rooting for the Empire (or certain Imperials)- why?

And everything is now as it should be. Nice entrance, well done.

 

Alien corporatists that he led and brought together as an alliance- as you've acknowledged in the past.

The number of deaths in the clone wars was dismissed with:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-empire-is-not-bad.19785902/page-11#post-19843403

though I suspect that if we could hear from them, the citizens of Humbarine would have taken issue with that rationale.

 

I'd say it would go to his head... but I'm sure one of his many hats would keep it under control.

 

Perhaps for the sake of this discussion we could leave "Grand Admiral Jello, Imperial Loyalist" at the door and concentrate on what you, personally, objectively using your rational abilities to the maximum, feel.

If the SW universe was a real one, and you were transported into the SW universe- would you offer all your knowledge to the Emperor in the hope that he would somehow use it to survive future events?

Or Senator Palpatine?

Or the clone Emperor?

Would you obey every order he gives, no matter how vile- in the hope that somehow, the Vong invasion and the fall of Coruscant will be thwarted in the future?

 

Best to just let it go Iron Lord. Tis all in the name of good fun.

Personally, I wish I could argue so passionately and amusingly for another group in Star Wars...maybe the CIS? I dunno - their ideology is rather incoherent, so it is hard to write a good speech for? The Vong - well, then I would have to learn how to spell their silly names. Mandolorians? Been done I think....

 

This is something that is important to remember. Out of universe, we know so much more than anyone could hope to know in universe: not just raw facts even, but also what is true, and what the very creator of the universe intends for his creation. In-universe we couldn't know though.

Personally, my opinion on who is the good guy or not if I lived in the Star Wars galaxy would depend a lot on where and in what conditions I lived.

And another factor - I know it is tempting to think of ourselves as the hero who always does what is right no matter what. But the atrocities of our history have been as much done by normal people like you and me as by psychopaths - and for a simple reason: when it comes down to a choice between killing someone you never met, or taking a stand, being dragged off to be tortured by ISB and putting your family in danger for some guy who is probably just going killed by a more obedient soldier anyway....well, then rationalizations come quick and easy.

 

42.
It was all done with mirrors. And magnets. Kriffing magnets...

 

Possibly for the same sort of reasons Traviss was so worried about people who genuinely believe that the Jedi were acting "morally correctly" in using the clone army.

I may not be the only one:

 

I can see no one (except His Chancellorian Majesty) actually knowing how many clones there were, and random numbers circled around the Senate when important people discussed about important things they knew nothing about:

Senator 1: So you are the one who leads the war ministry?
Senator 2: Yes, that's me.
Senator 1: I just heard a rumour that we have just 1.2 million clones. Can that be true?
Senator 2: 1.2? Wait, I write it down. No, that can't be, because I heard that there are quadrillions of droids. But you know that to be false, being the head of intelligence.
Senator 1: Yes yes *writes down 'quadrillion'*.
Senator 2: It's a good thing that you are here to cut the wings of rumours.
Both (to the audience): Why does no one tell me anything?

 

Your faith is clearly not as strong as you purport it to be if you need to wait for Star Wars to be real to do that.

If you were a true follower, you would realise that the great Waru has chosen Star Wars as his medium in which to reveal himself to us in this world.

 

* High Galactic for "the spaceships are cool". - Ed.

 

It can be difficult to tell when someone's roleplaying and when they're serious.

Though that might be because I haven't been here all that long.

 

Jello is always serious when he's roleplaying.

 

Just to chime in:

I've always found it kind of difficult to tell where Jello's roleplay ends and whatever he may really believe begins, but then he recently went on a posting spree about Nazism and its manifest faliings over in another thread that pretty much gave me exactly the reassuring demarcation I was looking for!

Oh and as to Traviss' notion that the Jedi could not possibly be acting morally in using the clone army, that's far from the case. If it were thought that not using the clone army would entail a greater level of death and destruction for the Republic and its citizens than using the clone army, then under utilitarian morality, which tends to be the morality of war, it would be quite morally correct! I find quite a bit of what's attributed to Traviss to be quite emotive at base, rationally considered, given the nature of the trap, the Jedi didn't do all that badly. They didn't win but that was never on the cards in the first place!

 

Good point.

Probably fair to assume that this applies any time Palpatine is described as "kindly" and "saviour of the galaxy".

 

In an attempt to steer this conversation back towards the original topic...

I suspect rooting for the Empire, or more accurately, introducting sympathetic Imperials within that Empire, has become more prevalent over time. The EU has a lot to do with this. The OT sets up the Empire as unrelentingly evil across basically all ranks and stations. Nobody objects to anything particularly horrid Imperials, such as Tarkin, do, and the general officer is shown to be arrogant, sneering, and vaguely mean.

The EU, by going into more detail, humanized the men (and occassional woman) working for the Empire. This bends rather gradually across the arc of Star Wars history as well. The further we get from ROTJ, the more decent and professional the Imperials seem, until by the time we reach the post-NJO era they actually come across as more civilized than those former Rebels in the Galactic Alliance.

I think there are a couple of reasons for this. First the narrative simplicity behind the Rebellion, which was essentially that they oppossed the evil Empire because it was evil, struggled with expansion and the necessary transition into a ruling government. This happened so extensively that outside of rare outliers like the Black Fleet Crisis we rarely see the democracy trying to tackle any galactic problems in a legitimate way whatsoever. Instead the NR and GA governments quickly descended into the realm of charicature, culminating in absurd events like Jacen Solo conducting a coup via legal droid, an insane woman being appointed chief of state, and a malevolent force entity assassinating the chief of state on the floor without even stopping debate. So the Empire has come to look better and better simply via comparison.

Additionally the EU has also allowed the Empire to reform, and in the process put forth a strange undercurrent narrative that roots the evils of the Empire squarely upon the actions of Palpatine himself. The Empire is at its most ruthless under Palpatine, and gradually moderates itself in an series of leadershp figures who follow: Ysanna Isard, maliciiousand cruel but really only because she believes its the best way, to Zsinj, only malicious and cruel when he feels it ehances his operations, to Thrawn, hardly malicious, cruel only in the face of incompetence, to Daala, not cruel simply insane, to Pellaeon, autocratic but otherwise decent, down on to Fel, decent and barely autocratic at all. I notably left out Dark Empire because by re-introducing Palpatine in his super-cackling stage it feels very out of plae with surrounding works, which only reinforces this narrative.

In a sense there were two Empires: Palpatine loyalists, who were in fact rather horrible people because the Emperor deliberately chose them so, and ordinary Imperials, who were much more garden-variety members of a military government. The first group starts fading the moment Palpatine dies, and is all but eliminated either over Byss or at Toss Beacon. Due to this shift, and because of the generally antiquated 19th-century style social system Star Wars possesses, the otherwise ordinary military government that replaces Palpatine's Empire has a great deal of appeal.

 

Marvel was doing it first- showing a stormtrooper from Alderaan- who supports the Empire because he genuninely believes it stands for order.

There's also those officers who are tired of Vader killing so many- and attempt to assassinate him, unsuccessfully.

 

That's why the Confederacy has been such a failure in development - with all the ROTS opening crawl about "heroes on both sides", they've given us extremely little in the way of genuine supporters - the only 'good guys' we see get inevitably betrayed by the CIS. Can we see some genuine supporters that were tired of the Republic and genuinely wanted to make a fresh start?

 

This has actually led to one of the EU's greatest weaknesses, IMO.

Obviously every single being working for the Empire isn't an irredeemably evil, cackling jerk....most are just normal people complacently going about their lives, either unaware of or in denial about the atrocities committed by the government they serve. And yes, a few could even be called noble, though they necessarily must be mistaken about a great many things given what we, as outside observers, know about the Empire.

But the EU has all but made it a mission to portray the New Republic and any other vaguely democratic successor government as so criminally weak and incompetent that the galaxy would rather be ruled by a benevolent dictator. I'd like to know why this is. Do the writers and plotters of the EU legitimately dislike the concept of democracy? It may seem a little extreme to impart such motives to them, but what else can one conclude when we have a significant number of fans who view the Fel Empire as the ideal government....and when, because of the way the New Republic and Galactic Alliance have been written, there's actually a pretty solid case to be made for that view?

 

I believe Moorcock argued that "Hero" is an essentially authoritarian, anti-democratic concept:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/moorcocks-starship-stormtroopers-essay.50009070/

This might be why the New Republic and the like look so bad, because most of the books give us a crisis that democracy can't exactly deal with- so the Hero has to.

That said- his conclusions aren't necessarily right.

 

As long as the "hero" is ultimately accountable to a democratically-empowered public, I don't see why there must be a contradiction. There's no reason why the EU couldn't have given us stories where our heroes work constructively with the government to solve problems instead of always facing insurmountable corruption from their elected leaders and having to constantly strike out on vigilante missions.

I don't think George intended for the message of Star Wars to be: Democratic republics transforming into autocratic empires is a good thing, next time just hand over all the power to the right strong man and things will be aces.