Irbis wrote:Well, you could equate a lot of Empire's actions with what happens on Earth here, today. Should we argue a lot of states are evil entities
Yes.
This is simplistic, though. You call whole state evil because of the actions of a few individuals? Down to girl somewhere on Coruscant? When vast majority of people working for Empire not only never committed a crime, they didn't heard of anyone committing them either? Where you exactly draw the line?
You can call Palpatine, Tarkin, and pretty big chunk of command structure evil/war criminals/whatever, sure, but calling that whole Empire is like calling USA evil because some villages in Afghanistan were accidentally bombarded. Well, unless you call any state that commits any evil, no matter how small relative to the size of that state, evil, but then, the term becomes so diluted it's meaningless.
You're playing semantics games now. When we discuss the morality of the Empire, we're concerned with the actions and integrity of the State, not every last woman and child born within its jurisdiction.
And mind you, the Empire is clearly misogynistic and racist, and its citizens don't bat an eyelid at slavery, so their citizenry on average isn't glowing from my sympathy, even if there are a few good apples in the bunch.
The problem with excusing the Empire's atrocities as the actions of a few individuals is that one of these individuals is the head of their government, and the atrocities and attitudes are institutional and ingrained. There are NO MECHANISMS which act, even only in theory, to punish and discourage atrocity.
So fuck yes the Empire is evil, or at least all the parts that matter, IE. the government and military command structures. Just like Imperial Japan was, in fact, evil and saw nothing wrong with genocide, abuse of prisoners, et al.
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
