this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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Ted Kaczynski made a lot of really solid points, but bombing people, especially civilians, is wrong.
People still cheer for Luke Skywalker though.
Humans are more tribalistic than rational. They pick sides and justify later.
The Death Star was a military installation that had already shown itself to be aggressive with death tolls in the literal billions. Not a fair comparison.
To be fair, Tarkin misused what was clearly a mining tool. Planets are too valuable a resource to blast into high-velocity debris. The Tarkin doctrine only works if Imperial policy is fair to begin with (which it isn't) otherwise it is the reverse of common COIN theory (hearts and minds).
Tarkin behaved stupidly and provoked a terrorist attack that successfully (and spectacularly) disabled a huge Imperial asset.
Yeah I never understood that about star wars, like why are they so keen on blowing up planets. I know that's an incredibly evil thing to do, but what the hell did they get out of it?
I actually like the sequels, but the fact that every threat had to be a planet destroyer, despite the fact that that makes absolutely no fucking sense to anyone trying to establish long-term dominance over a region, just made no fucking sense.
I think Lucas was simply looking for a nuclear analogy or something comparable to the carpet bombing the U S did in Vietnam and Cambodia. It needed to look like it made sense.
That said, the Death Star is easy to retroactively justify. There are plenty of planets / dwarf planets / large rocks that have tasty minerals in their core, and are not otherwise usable for settlement or even an outpost. A super-laser would be a great tool at lower power settings to crack such rocks open to save on drilling, much the way hydraulic fracturing is used today. If the Imperial government is more inclined towards military spending than civilian projects, it then makes sense to sell it as a Mother Of All Lasers wrap it in a mobile space base.
That's how it goes in my headcanon, but like the IMPS videos, the troops are allowed to put sexy nose art on their mechanized armor.
Yeah but the second time it wasn't even finished yet. They were still under construction.
It was pretty clear what the purpose of it was.
And Luke didn't have anything to do with the second Death Star being blown up. That was Lando and Wedge.
EDIT: I guess he helped getting the shield down. They wouldn't have gotten the Ewoks on their side if Luke didn't levitate Threepio.
I'm just saying, a construction job of that magnitude would require a hell of a lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer. I'll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing.