RPG sourcebooks are secondary lore at best, and it would have far less things like rebellions, chaos cults and even fucking Inquisition civil wars if it was able to run a police state.
And no,
only some planetary governors are "tyrannical despots".
40k does not employ a tier canon system to my knowledge. If I'm incorrect, please cite the relevant quote from Games Workshop. To my knowledge everything is canon.
Further the RPG book was one example one others ranging from novels to the core rulebook all of whom agree with each other.
Which incidently says "many" planetary Governors are despots.
While in contrast your link goes to a Reddit post where people involved seemly give opinions rather than cite evidence. Meaning its worthless.
If you want to cite Caves of Ice you need to cite the specific examples from the text so everyone can independently determine what, if anything, is being shown. Afterall
@Aldarion cited a Governor simply showing up to military meetings that had to be dumbed down as "makework" as above the norm for Imperial leaders. Which is a bar Biden could quite possibly shuffle his way under. So what makes a competent leader is always going to be somewhat subjective.
Imperium is huge and varied. This is the equivalent of arguing whether forge worlds or feral worlds are representative of the Imperium.
And yes, it is needed in light of Imperium's circumstances.
Okay. That would be fair if you were saying the Imperium is wide and varied and there is no consistency. Which is not your argument. Rather you have argued in favor of Aldarion's position that the Imperium which is that the Imperium is more free/ less oppressive/less shitty than Western nations. Ie that there is a baseline which can be favorably compared to our world's Western Nations.
Now if you wish to argue with Aldarion that they're wrong and you can't meaningfully compare the Imperium because it's just too varied with no two worlds alike be my guess. I would love to see it.
Imperium is not "a society". Imperium is a billion societies loosely tied by several imperial organizations, and so anyone trying to generalize conditions in it is merely demonstrating own ignorance. It's incredibly hard to find much in common between Elysia or Hydraphur and Fenris or Iocanthos.
More accurately they're a somewhat loose confederation of planets subjugated by Terra and much like the Roman empire there is much transferer of values including a law code all worlds are under as well as most pressingly for our purposes a harsh authoritarianism against the "other".
Or in other words if you wish to claim Elysia is different from Fenris in ways that are relevant to the discussion you would need to cite examples of them not being authoritarian dicks. Which is possible. Space Wolves are some of the nicer Space Marine chapters.
All of which ties back to your core problem of making claims and shifting the burden of proof to the other person then resorting to insults when called out on it.
Cancel culture cannot exist in a vacuum. It's a variation of general "social conflict" adapted for leftist infiltrators of liberal societies. In different times and places, it did exist, however it usually involved far more torches and pitchforks, literally sometimes.
Not really. Cancel Culture has its roots more in Marxist group politics forcing homogenous of opinions and ostracizing and punishing those who, even for good intentions, have "wrong think". That is very different from people applying social pressure to say make Gays keep a lower profile.
One is an artificial, typically perpetually ramping mob mentality to advance an agenda while the other is a natural self-corrective that helps keep a society relatively stable. You may notice we've lost the latter while gaining the former much to our societies detriment.
Have you read a description of a
daemon world?
Demon worlds are planet who have been engulfed in the warp, yes? Like the eye of terror. Which would presumably be the end result or end goal of a Demon cult since stable holes into the Warp don't happen every day. I mean the Laer had a dedicated cult worship of Chaos and their planet was not a daemon world.
Further if you and your entire family have been burned to ash does it matter if it was on a Daemon world or by Imperials. Dead is dead.
and you have made no argument how its existence makes it easier for agents of chaos, overt and covert, to take power.
Well the easiest way for a faction known for insidious corruption would be to simply corrupt the church's leadership. The top down nature of the Imperium would make it hard for anyone to realize and speak up unless they were higher on the totem pole.
As was the case of
Vraks and Cardinal Xaphan. Showing the downside of amassing power in small groups of people when there's instant crazy madness floating around.
The funny stuff happens when the "marketplace of ideas" decides that indeed it very much doesn't like some ideas and their adherents especially. What can it do about them?
Well Free Will has its downsides but I'd rather argue with people why socialism is a stupid idea than trust the guy who thinks he can personally decide what is and isn't acceptable.
And broadly speaking I think the people drawing the line in the sand, and doing the "dirty work", should be the ones most reluctant to do it not the most eager. Restraint and moderation should be good watch words in these circumstances.
As i said, in 40k some matters related to politics and religion are not like in our time, merely attempts at internal social power games, but a desperate attempt to limit the damage caused by xenos and extra-dimensional entities who are hell bent on killing, eating, enslaving or worse all humans they can get their tentacles on, no ifs and buts. They don't follow our political theories, our laws, and in the latter case, not even the same laws of physics we do, in this pursuit.
Well that's very much a point where we disagree. Your position seems to be Classical Liberalism only works in a "good" universe and it won't work in 40k. Essentially agreeing with the Left that we must jettison our liberty, our values ect because of the EMERGENCY.
In contrast I believe the opposite Classical Liberalism made the goodness of our time line rather than was a product of it. I think good ol American Exceptionalism would fare a lot better with a lower body count than Imperium's fanaticism and pre-Enlightenment values.