Saga Does Democracy work in a Galaxy Far, Far Away? So much squabbling!! They need someone wise!

Good to know we have somone here who understands geonosian. What did the union say?

It's called an equivalence. No movie adaptation yet though.

 

Yeah, except they were foolishly trying to grab them.

What version of the movie was that? Or were you referring to this cannon:


Those are Republic cannons at a Separatist house. They aren't just pointing either.[/quote]


They were pointed at starships that were escaping with criminals and weapons of destruction.

No, the Jedi and the Clonetroopers were sent to prevent an attack on the Republic by the Separatists, who openly said that was going to happen. Just like if the US had advanced warning that Japan was about to bomb Pearl Harbor, they would have bombed Japan first and cripple their airfields.

First off, I didn't say that they knew that the Sith were involved. I said that you're forgetting that Palpatine and Dooku control the war and would go ahead with the attack to start the war. We're not dealing with a normal war situation.

Second, Obi-wan said and I quote, "The Trade Federation is to take delivery of a droid army here... and it is clear that Viceroy Gunray is behind the assassination attempts on Senator Amidala. The Commerce Guilds and the Corporate Alliance have both pledged their armies to Count Dooku and are forming a--"

Not a mega corporation. And then there's Bail Organa himself.

BAIL: "The Commerce Guilds are preparing for war. There can be no doubt of that."

So, either he's a war monger pretending to be peaceful, or he's smart enough to conclude that the Separatist Movement is about to go to war with the Republic. Or are you going to argue he was just stupid and naive?

 

Trying to grab an intruder obviously justifies them being slaughtered.

Oh, just like Iraq and WMDs?

It's a horrible argument that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of real lives unnecessarily lost. It's an evil argument and one I don't respect based on such whimsy logic and evidence.

Yes, that's what I've been saying. They were prepared. They wanted to leverage their power to force the Republic to recognize their independence. And the Trade Federation, Commerce Guild, Corporate Alliance, Techno Union, etc. are megacorporations.

 

Sneaking up on and trying to grab them, would justify using a defensive tactic. Maybe if they had just stepped out and asked what they were doing there, then Anakin wouldn't have attacked.

Except there were thousands of Battle Droids that were built for war, versus no WMD's. Lucas wrote and directed this film way before the Iraq invasion.

Which means using force to do so. They already showed their ruthlessness by hiring an assassin to try and kill a Republic Senator. They're not as benevolent as you wish them to be. They're being run by a warmonger who is willing to go to war.

 

High ups in the Separatists

Gunray: "I want her head on my plate!"

Dooku: "Patience, my friend, she will die."

That seems a bit act of war-y right there, considering they were actively trying to murder a Republic senator.

 

In the Legends New Essential Chronology this question is dealt with to some extent "the republic was born crippled". A multi species institution with countless divergent interests, political opinions, and so on is very difficult to hold together.

Hyperspace travel helps but sigh the republic's issues a galactic society just could not hold together.

 

Yeah, that's totally what the Secret Service would do if you jumped the White House fence...

It doesn't matter if there was or wasn't. The point is that going pre-emptive is not right.

No, it doesn't. The Soviet Union didn't need to drop a nuclear bomb on the US in order to use its leverage of nuclear weapons so it wasn't attacked.

When did I ever say they were benevolent? Their leadership was evil, and I would have sided with the Republic personally. But the people of those worlds had legitimate grievances, and building a droid army to protect their declared independence is a rational thing to do.

 

They're not the Secret Service and the Droid Factory is not a royal palace.

So you'd rather wait for the attack and risk innocent lives, because you want to be hung up on a bit of morality?

Stalin and his successors didn't want to go to war. Dooku and Palpatine need the war in order to take out their enemies and gain political control. That's the difference.

The difference is that they let their grievances and movement be controlled by the enemy. They didn't build the Droid Army, the Separatist Council did and not to declare independence, but to take out the Republic so that they could keep their wealth and power. Not for some noble cause against a corrupt government. The ten thousand systems that rallied to Dooku's cause, only did so because he manipulated them into doing so. They weren't going to do so on their own until then. And what about Kashyyyk and all the other worlds that didn't want to be part of the Confederacy? Why did they invade and try to take over?

 

Yeah, it's even more important, or at least as important. It's their national defense.

[quote[So you'd rather wait for the attack and risk innocent lives, because you want to be hung up on a bit of morality?[/quote]Yes, because I have morality.
And no, for all they knew, an attack wasn't inevitable.

My point
your head

The Separatist Council was allied with the Separtist movement, allied with the independence movement. That's what they're supporting. Because they think they'll become wealthier under a different, less-bureaucratic government.

You really don't understand the prequel trilogy. Their grievances were legitimate, you can't manipulate feelings that don't exist. The Republic was flawed and failing already, TPM shows us that with how Naboo goes and how the Senate handles it, and more.

I'm guessing there was a military base there (or something of strategic value) that the Separatists wanted to stop and would have settled giving back during peace treaty negotiations. Kind of like why the CSA invaded Pennsylvania, that was in the Union, despite wanting independence and not conquest of Pennsylvania.

 

They were employees working on droids. They don't know if Anakin and Padme were invited there or not. If you're going to attack someone, be prepared to defend your self.

They all had a strong feeling that it was. Look, think about this. If the Republic did nothing and an attack did happen, a lot of innocent people would be killed. Is that acceptable to you? Or is it more acceptable to do a preemptive strike that might save nearly two trillion people from being injured or killed? Much less stop a war from breaking out beyond Geonosis?

No, you miss the point. The war was going to happen. It needed to happen. It didn't need to happen for Stalin to get what he wanted. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a big game of chicken that they would back down. Palpatine prefers to crash his truck into the other truck, rather than swerve.

And that was the problem. They were only interested in themselves, not the common good. Their cause was corrupted by the Sith.

We don't know what their grievances were. The ten thousand systems. We only know what the Separatist Council's were and that was wanting to hold onto their power and wealth, because they were greedy and power hungry and feared to lose their power.

It was a navigational point for the Republic. Nothing more. What about the other planets? Like Ryloth?

 

The Republic and the Separatist were both pawns in Palpatine's plans. If the Republic weren't so flawed, then their be no room for a Separatist movement. The TF and the Separatist knowingly followed Sith Lords. The Republic were being controlled by bureaucrats and Palpatine knowing the Republic's corruption took advantage. Palpatine had Tarkin present the Taxation on the Trade Federation. For those who don't know Tarkin was in Politics before and possibly during TPM.

 

Let's see - at least 1,000 years of peace and prosperity under democracy vs 20-30 years, filled with suffering, corruption, and violence under dictatorship.

I can definitely see why is the latter that works so well.

As for bickering and debating taking too long - well, to paraphrase the Simpsons: do you want something done fast, or do you want it done right?

 

*1,000 generations

 

In the newcanon, there was once an "Old Republic" predating the present one which had "stood for 1000 years" with characters saying "There hasn't been a full scale war since the formation of the Republic" and "There hasn't been battles like these since the days of the Old Republic" and "This lightsaber was stolen from your Jedi Temple by my ancestors during the fall of the Old Republic."

So the Jedi can have existed for 1000 generations - with the present Republic only having lasted 1000 years - and the Jedi having served much longer than that - serving the Old Republic first, before it fell, and another Republic was raised in its place and having 1000 years of peace.

 

To clarify, that is why I said at peace. (Plus, those thousand generations were all peaceful in legends, and sounds like they aren't in the new canon either. Still, very impressive to last that long all things considered, especially compared to real life governments)

 

I am a talking about at the time of the prequels the Republic was Corrupt and the Jedi followed them. I am not saying the Republic and Jedi couldn't work, but when corruption takes over it leaves room for opportunities and the Sith took advantage of it. Of course the Jedi and Republic over the 1,000 years have done a lot of good, but during the PT the Republic was very Corrupt. Of course Democracy can work with the right people in Office.

 

I don't believe it does no, the Legends essential chronology made this point clear the Old Republic even though in Legends it lasted for 25 thousand years was born crippled and was certain to die.

The galaxy is simply too vast, with too many different species and worldviews. Hyperspace isn't sufficient to bridge this problem.

The galaxy needs benevolent autocrats such as the Fel Dynasty in Legends

 

Although we don't have much else to go on, Obi-Wan is a pretty unreliable source.

 

Palpatine says this in AOTC, in front of Mace and Yoda:

 

I have read the book, and I think the book presented it more as ruling something as big as the galaxy is pretty much an unsolvable problem, as no centralized government could have to resources to extend its reach everywhere.

Which, frankly, makes autocracies in an even worse position than democracies. With a democracy, at least the scattered parts of the galaxy feel a certain level of buy in and thus a desire to keep the whole thing going, whereas an autocracy needs to actively project its force outwards, which will take a lot of resources.
Which in turn was a big weakness of the Empire in both versions of the canon - even with its vast military, it was still overstreched, and there were just too many places for rebels to hide.

Not to mention, even if we ignore that it wasn't all that long on a galactic timescale until we had a Fel turn evil and try to wipe out some planets, if the essential problem is that there are too many different people with too many different interests...well, then no matter how benevolent, I don't see how an autocracy would help. I doubt any one person could learn the names of every planet in the galaxy, much less their various cultural, social, and economic interests. How are people in the galaxy going to get their needs served better by essentially ignoring their needs and all having it come down to one person's whims? People can only have a hope of having their needs met by having their voices heard - and while that can be hard in a place with a million voices all shouting, it is certainly better to do it that way than having only one person speak.

And when push comes to shove, calling something that lasted five times longer than all of recorded human history "born crippled and certain to die" is....well, at the end of the day nothing lasts forever, but that is a lot closer to forever than anything could reasonably hope to get. Particularly since in the end its "death" was a relatively brief interruption.
Speaking of lasting, most political dynasties last somewhere between 150-300 years. Given some extra time for Star Wars exaggeration...well, Legends may have ended with Legacy, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Fels ended up being a historical blip on a galactic timescale, and the whole period from the Clone Wars to Legacy bunched together as a brief but nasty interregnum (or whatever the democratic equivalent of an interregnum is), maybe called the Last Sith Wars or the Civil Wars Period or something.

Hmmm....a fair point....I mean, assuming we are going off the OT alone, but then we wouldn't see a lot of the stuff that makes democracy look bad though.

Hard to describe exactly, but still the whole way the movie is set up and the feeling it gives suggests to me that he was right though. And this is a work of fiction - while it is fun to look at things from a purely Watsonian approach, I find it hard to ignore the Doylist point of view entirely.

 

A galaxy-wide government may be impossible in the long run. The EU ended with the galaxy split between a few superpowers. This may be the best option for stability.

 

So recent post in this thread got me thinking about this one, to consider where the galaxy ultimately ends up at the end of the Skywalker Saga, and where it lands on.
I think "It's just..people" in TROS is probably the closest you would get to an indication as to where the galaxy's government would go, which would be people standing up for themselves as individuals and not taking orders from a figurehead, be it malevolent or benevolent (if somewhat toothless). Honestly, the Republic is literally said to be mired in corruption "no civility, only politics", the Empire was a totalitarian State, the New Republic didn't do anything and got exploded and the First Order/Final Order were savage planet destroying lunatics.

So yah, nobody is running anything big picture. Just people. So yah galaxy-wide governments seem to be inevitable to collapse across the entire series.