Now onto more serious matters...

That's no moon!

Let's talk about Star Wars. Specifically, the unique difficulties faced by empires so large that most of their occupants never truely understand the scale of the problems their overlords face.

(Note: this discussion's guiding principals are that: A) people like to be free, B) evil empire overlords make freedom highly limited for the more globally minded, C) people mostly care about themselves unless they have hero syndrome, D) evil empires are EVIL.)

The Empire. Unnecessary link, but, source for much of the information that I used in my thoughts today. Also an enourmous database of star wars shit. A bloated many-many world organization. Headed up by evil incarnate (Palpatine). Fundamentally, the empire is huge. Nearly limitless resources, but also nearly limitless size. It's basically the entire damn galaxy.

The ideal tried and true method of maintaining control over such a large population is an Orwellian Thought Police. But from my perspective, such an operation is impossible. It's too big! I mean, all Orwell could manage to do was England. I doubt even a single planet could be so tightly controlled and ruled through fear.

So they build TIE fighters, and star destroyers. Thousands of them. (like, millions or more in the case of the TIEs). Weapons of war. And place them in the hands of 100% loyal, intelligent, strong, group of clones. You know they're loyal because you made them that way. Eventually you don't need the clones anymore, there are people lining up to "get on the winning side" and clones are replaced by a 99% loyal shock troops.

The individual in the empire leads very little power until they get quite high, and frankly if you have someone higher up like Darth Vadar who can see any deception and weilds infinite veto power over the lives and fortunes of everyone... Well you don't sneak your way up the ranks because if you get high enough, his gaze will eventually fall on your head as it rises above your peers. Right until he cuts it off.

So, there's the empire. It's got problems. Unruly people. The Rebel Alliance in other words. What's to do? They have the people on their side. The god damn people who you've been oppressing and yes, you make some headway. You offer rewards for information, bounties placed with unscrupulous hunters of said bounties. You end up with many an enemy in body bags or up in front of Darth who gets more of them. But there are just so god damn many of them. Your forces are legion, but they attempt to police an empire of hundreds of billions (or more, I don't think Lucas ever pinned down an actual size of the empire, other than "big" so he could always make it bigger should the need arise)! What's to be done?

You've always ruled through fear. You can find some of the, but not all, they're being sheltered by the general population who are always overall, on their side.

Take away the shelter.

Enter the Death Star. Some people thought this was a stupid thing. It's enormous, costly, this is like permanent requires-more-vespene-gas thingy. The sheer SCALE is staggering. But what does it do?

Fear. And lots of it. People feared the empire on a personal level. Terrifying people, storm troopers, the possibility of a star destroyer attack on my ship. Oh no. The Death Star is fear on a whole new level. This is the fear of EVERYTHING YOU KNOW BEING EXPLODIFIED.

What the empire SHOULD of done, when they had proof that Alderaan (or even suspicions!) was supporting/sheltering the Rebel Alliance, and blown it up with their devastating new weapon, was tell EVERYONE. Instantly, it's no longer cool to protect the Rebels. They're a huge liability. Not just to your life, but everything. No one will let them on their world. No one bank rolls them. Nobody.

Thus, the Death Star, and even the second Death Star were totally reasonable plans right up until some git in a tiny ship blew them up.