Talk:Palpatine/@comment-27525272-20190419175114/@comment-1672596-20190423173748

I know that's what the films try to paint, but considering the films also had the Rebels trying to restore what was essentially a massive nanny state with a boatload of corruption (with some sources even implying that said corruption even predated Palpatine's time in the senate), not to mention that the Jedi were depicted in the Prequel films and to a lesser extent ROTJ as such nihilistic relativists that they had absolutely no qualms trying to manipulate a boy into murdering his dad just to settle a grudge against the fall of the Jedi Order (to say little about how they held contempt with holding families, or how they tried to sabotage a friendship between one of their own and the Supreme Chancellor specifically to make sure said Jedi remained under their thumb aside from defending the Republic, and that was BEFORE they learned of the Supreme Chancellor's role as Darth Sidious), or heck, how expanded universe materials for the original films had the Rebels engaging in behavior more befitting of the Jacobins or Bolsheviks, I'd have to argue the Empire's closer to being actually good. Doesn't help either that the Rebels were not only based on the Vietcong, but Lucas implied fairly recently that he knew full well the Vietcong, the Rebels' basis, had been a terrorist group at the time he started making the films.

And funny you should make that comparison with Gaston. If you ask me, both Palpatine and Gaston (the animated original, I mean) would have probably been better off if certain aspects about them were swapped around. Gaston, for instance, would have been better off if he didn't gloat his entire plan to the village, or at the very least the tavern, kept it a secret to all but LeFou and maybe Tom, Dick, Stanley, and that other guy. Let's face it, in reality, Gaston, no matter how popular he might be to the villagers, would most likely have them turned against him were he to brag about outright framing Maurice as a madman to blackmail his daughter. By contrast, Palpatine, since he's pretty much de-facto in-charge of the Galaxy, and is an extremely powerful Force User, making him virtually unstoppable, actually COULD afford to gloat about blowing up Alderaan a'la the Gaston song, had no real need to hide it (I've seen plenty of Communists brag about similar stuff to the public, like the hanging orders from Lenin, for example), especially when the Galaxy would have very little chance of stopping him anyway, ESPECIALLY after his shutdown of the Senate.