Originally Posted by
godisawesome
Yeah... there's a lot of badly applied and incorrect pop-culture "history" applied to trying to justify the New Republic being bad - and it often all ignores how much emotional drama was going on at the time. Like... yeah, much of Europe did nothing about Hitler's rise to power, but it was because they were emotionally shell-shocked from WWI and terrified of repeating it and thus desperate to see if they could maneuver out of a repeat, while Nazi occupations were often bitter affairs when the war did happen; Carthage died slowly over years in bloody-minded defiance of their fate, not simple capitulation, because they knew they were doomed.
People don't just forget trauma automatically, or ignore warning signs; the way they react to it might be ineffective, but, for example, Chamberlain wasn't actually sticking his head in the ground for appeasement in the 1930s, but trying to buy time and avoid doom at the same time.
There's an element of dubiously underplaying the horrors of the Empire and how it would have traumatized much of the Galaxy that I don't like about how they try to write some of the post-ROTJ Galaxy - especially since they tend to then love playing up and embracing the horror in material set during the OT.
Apathy and even tacit support makes sense for some of the elite of some worlds... but the OT and its related material often make sure to show that even the elite in the Core are still in danger and far from being universally distracted by breads and circuses, with Alderaan's destruction being the most prominent and often being played as the dystopian nature of the Empire becoming terribly clear to everyone. Meanwhile, just about every Mid-Rim and Outer Rim world seems to objectively catch a much worse deal under the empire than they did previously and then everything ends with Operation: Cinder adding salt to almost every wound and even striking against hardcore loyalist worlds.
It's only whenever the writers want to feed and addiction to portraying the heroes as always underdogs and rebels that they ignore all the stuff they were doing before, and always in the most frustratingly shallow and unchallenged way... and it still always ends up being matched with not writing the villains as intelligent or capable of anythign beyond overwhelming their opponents, and often writing lackluster wars as well.
It's like they go "If it's the OT, then the Empire is kicking a dog every second on every planet and only ruling through naked force and fear of naked force, and everybody is catching **** and defined by it... but if we're past the OT, than we need to pretend that wasn't happening because, dammit, I don't like having to write clever villains who have to be resourceful and I just want to be formulaic!"
It's not a coincidence that when we have effective and dangerous villains with solid war stories (The Empire in Andor and Rogue One, the First Order in The Force Awakens, the second season of The Mandalorian, and even just solid episodes of Rebels, Ahsoka, or The Mandalorian Season One) they don't feel the need to portray the New Republic as idiots... but its like whenever they feel the need to write the villains in a bit of a lazy and stupid way, then we have to see them caricature the New Republic as a bad parody of politics to excuse why the villains don't just get wiped out.
When its implied the Galaxy gives a crap, its when Hux is an effective, no-nonsense villain and First Order Stormtroopers are badass enough to be meme-worthy (TR-8R); when the writer wants Hux and the Resistance to both be morons, the Galaxy is written as not giving a crap. When they've got Moff Gideon set-up to be a decent and effective antagonist lurking in the shadows of the Galaxy and staying hard to find, the New Republic isn't smeared as worthless; when they have a lazy idea for Gideon that is all flash and no substance, they need the New Republic to be clearly labeled as idiots.
...and my mild fear is that because Filoni is not naturally inclined towards Zahn style clever conflict writing, we might get a Thrawn who does obvious but boring tactics he just tries to sell with Lars Mikkelsen's performance while he just makes Xiono saying dumb things and SNL actors cameoing as idiot bureaucrats the New Republic's thing... partially cause he already did that in Ahsoka's finale, with "Send in the canon fodder the way any other imperial would, but let me explain it in a way that's pretending other imperials wouldn't also do this" as Thrawn's main tactic.