WhiteDragon25
White Lightning FTW!
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2017
- Messages
- 1,274
- Likes received
- 6,459
The difference is that the Empire doesn't bother to pretend about what they are unlike the Federation.
One: that's not an excuse or justification for their crimes. Two: the Federation freely admits that it isn't perfect, but sincerely tries to be better anyways out of general principle.
For all that we love to mock the Feds for their poorly-explained vaguely-communist economics, and Starfleet's mildly-military self-denial, they at least make an attempt to hold themselves to a moral and ethical standard. The Empire on the other hand gleefully glasses entire planets just because they didn't like the way the native aliens looked.
That, and once you get rid of Sidious and COMPNOR (basically clean house), the Empire actually becomes better than the Republic. We see this in the Imperial Remnant after the end of the Galactic Civil War, with many people in the Mid Rim and the Outer Rim seeing them as more effective than the New Republic with all its bureaucracy, hand-wringing, and factionalism. Later on, after the Yuuzhan Vong invasion and the rise of the Fel Dynasty, the Empire rebounded and gained control of most of the Rim, and indeed, completely supplanted the Galactic Federation as the legitimate government of the galaxy towards the end of Legends.
And how much of that was because of Inmates Running the Asylum Syndrome in the writer's room? Also, getting rid of Palpatine and COMPNOR wouldn't - and didn't - fix the Empire overnight: it took a decade of vicious civil war between feuding warlords to winnow away the crazies and psychos. And even then, the Empire was still an authoritarian military dictatorship at the end of the day.
Plus, it's laughable to say that the Empire was more effective than either the Old or New Republic's bureaucracy, factionalism, and inefficiency, since the Empire retained much of the Old Republic's baggage and made it even worse.
Last edited: