Books Bloodline by Claudia Gray (book spoilers permitted)

So what is the public interest justification for Leia having to declare that an armoured, mind-raping fiend who tortured her turned out to be her father?

Not even Gray could make the political attacks actually make sense, while at the same time the NR claims it doesn't punish children for the sins of their parents, Leia's reply to that would be a very sharp: Oh, really?

 

I mean, I look at what certain people are concerned about in modern day politics and Bloodline doesn't seem that far-fetched.

 

The kind of speech Leia might make in response to demands to total transparency:

Senators, you all heard about my so-called 'dad'. I never knew he was, I hated the **** for decades and partied when he was dead. Don't tell Luke, but I pissed on his grave too.

Too shocking? But you wanted total transparency, yes? I woke up this morning and had the most terrible time in the 'fresher. I warned Han afterwards, he didn't believe me so had to spend time at Coruscant A&E getting his lungs de-toxed. Clearly I shouldn't have had that vindaloo last night....

 

"But her Holo-Messages!"

 

Nooooooooooooooooooo! You poor thing!

 

So is the fact that Hosnian Prime was the capital of the NR weird considering that the visual dictionary of TFA said that the capital was always moving? This fixed presence on HP contradicts this.

Anyway, I wish this book was much longer - maybe a trilogy or something. Unfortunately the politics were really superficial by nature of its brevity.

 

Yeah, doesn't help that Aftermath: Empire's End makes you think it moves every year instead of a number of years.

My headcanon prior was that it moved every four years and they'd only just settled on Hosnian Prime when the Bail Organa statue was placed there. Hosnian probably won the second four-year stretch two years prior to its destruction (which allowed a planet to be used twice in a row, with Chandrila still used from 4 till 12 ABY).

Empire's End threw that out the window (along with everything else, I ponder the Aftermath trilogy's intent anyway).

 

Maybe they just realized that since they happened to have a planet with a city called "Republic City" on it, it was too good to pass up.

 

Empire's End also makes it clear that the Senate can vote to stay on a given planet, to renew the lease, each year.

 

Would've made more sense if there were a number of years instead of one for the lease.

 

Agreed, because it means the government would be spending the majority of its time packing and unpacking instead of governing. I think the once-a-year thing was put in mainly to justify the government moving off Chandrila mere months into its creation, when it should have hung around for a few years.

 

Another thing Aftermath has done that makes no sense right?

 

I actually don't have serious problems with the Aftermath trilogy; ideally, yes, the "I"s would all be dotted and "T"s all crossed, but I really thought Rax was interesting, his interplay with SLOANE was awesome, and just seeing the grand context for the Battle of Jakku - why they were there, what they were fighting about, and so on - was great because I'd been waiting for more than two years to read about that. I don't like every character, but do I HAVE to like every character in a book to like the book? Few books are so perfect as to have NOTHING wrong in them.

 

We think Congress being in nearly constant campaign season leads to deadlock, imagine if the Capitol was moving so regularly...

If they are going to be that, why not just have the Senate be one huge holoconference?



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I FINALLY got around to starting this book. My first reaction was that Senator Casterfo displaying Imperial relics in his office was far-fetched, but then I remembered that Steve King and Mitch McConnell exist.

Spoiler

The Republic is actually closer to the GCW than we are to the Civil Rights Movement, so yeah, I guess the character is not that far-fetched.

 

Great point. Although honestly, I've learned to embrace gridlock.

 

I believe Congress being in deadlock is a feature not a bug from the way the NR is set up. At least how it's envisioned.

However, I don't actually see the problem as that's what droids and interns are for.

 

Congress being deadlocked is usually best for the preservation of freedom (both IU and OOU).

 

Albeit, that actually is the best environment for a dictator to rise in when a crisis occurs.

 

Meh. A lot of it depends on the strength of civil and governmental institutions and the relative strength of the culture/society being governed. Simple legislative deadlock doesn't lead to dictatorships. It may lead to overreach by an executive (we've seen that in the U.S. for the better part of 20 years), but even then if civil society and the other branches of government are healthy, executive overreach can be beaten back relatively easily.

Then again, authoritarianism itself is not something simply confined to a single person. And for it to actually succeed, it has to take root far beyond just the executive.

 

I think that's one of the message to take away both from current events and the state of the GFFA around the sequel trilogy: the rot that has taken hold runs much deeper than the seat of power itself. The rise and rule of the Empire was exceptionally horrible, and the Rebellion succeeded in deposing the Empire's leadership. However, the social apathy and political corruption that allowed the Empire to rise in the first place went unaddressed, or at least was beyond the power of any one government to solve. This is why, even though I liked Episode VII, I found it (and the post-NJO EU before it)something of a betrayal. The Rebellion was supposed to be the common people of the galaxy rising up and rejecting everything that made the Empire the Empire. Instead, we got the Senate from TPM with more clearly defined partisan infighting, followed by an Empire with all its worst features dialed to 11. It's depressing, partly because it's all too familiar.

 

Thankfully, it looks like they will be addressing this. The two deeper angles to Star Wars have always been the spiritual side (such as the Force, and the themes of death and emotions) and the political side.

In the TLJ trailer, it looks like they're addressing this head-on when it comes to the Force and the spiritual side, how to transcend the cycle.

Since the Populists/Centrists were Rian's idea, I think he'll also address how to break/transcend that cycle as well. I just don't know what the political solution would be.

 

Balance to the Republic!