Could billions of human beings on thousands of different worlds with a vast array of different cultures support a conformist, totalitarian government like the Galactic Empire?

How diverse is the Humanity of the Star Wars Galaxy?

America overall is pretty heterogenous. There many different kinds of people living here. For example, I myself am Native American on my father's side and North Irish (Green) on my mother's side. As I write this I am in a room with two Jewish Caucasians (male and female), a woman who is Irish and Italian who is married to an African American with a Diverse child, and a white protestant woman. We're all different ages ranging from about 24 to 58, and I'm 39. The student body at my school is wildly diverse, and we have just about every nationality on the planet at this school minus cannibal tribes, and in no way am I exaggerating. Northeast Philadelphia has an incredibly broad gene pool.

I imagine that, realistically, a Humanity that spreads over thousands of worlds would in thousands of years become even more diverse, vastly more diverse. This is not even counting the so-called 'near-humans' such as the Kiffir such as Quinlan Vos. What shades of color, variance of shape and size and, most importantly, flavor of sociopolitical culture would so many expressions of Humanity have in that Galaxy?

Would all of these Human cultures be so easily and happily united under a sinister powermonger like Palpatine and his New Order? Imagine all of the firm friendships with other species many of these Human cultures would have in that Galaxy which would be terminated, effectively, by the New Order of Human Dominance and alien suppression. The disruption of these cultures and their friendships, cultivated over centuries or millennia (as depicted in the long history of the Star Wars universe) would be a powerful source of resentment and anger across the whole known Galaxy. What Empire or government could survive that?

Of course Palpatine managed to create allies amongst some of the more darkly-motivated species, and people like the Trandoshans aren't anybody's friends (ask the Wookies). Still, it's no surprise that many Rebels are aliens; it also doesn't surprise me there are so many Humans. (We are making the supposition that this isn't simply because it's too expensive to outfit most of the extras with alien costumes while filming things like the Hoth battle sequences.) There would be many Humans' lives and cultures and worlds disrupted by the New Order and its demands.

I know that the diversity of tens of thousands of worlds would be a staggering project, but someone should certainly create a comprehensive cultural atlas of the Star Wars Galaxy, with at least brief historical and sociopolitical synopses. Lucas could create a committee that would approve a large number of fans to help with this under supervision. It could be released inexpensively on CD-ROM after it is examined and approved by Lucas. It would be part of a kind of 'Star Wars Silmarillion' (ala Tolkein and LOTR) that could provide a wealth of source material and a strong support of historical continuity for future creativity. It would build Star Wars' legacy as a great body of mythology.

It could also help to study the effects of various sociopolitical events on a galaxy-wide Human culture and its relationships with alien cultures, under a variety of different forms of government. It could help people to understand a great many things about the way things work for cultures and nations in many different situations in our own world. After all, mythology has always helped to teach us about human life in the past; Star Wars has already proven to be a powerful teaching tool to many of us here. We can extend its value in this regard by studying the lives of the cultures that live in that world by first creating them via the diverse minds of its fans.

In the meantime we can learn what makes people follow totalitarian trends in governance, which is what is happening to us right now in the so-called 'bastion of the free world'.