I find myself again in the shrinking minority that found this episode actually interesting. It's criminal that so many horrible, badly written political themed episodes preceded this and Heroes On Both Sides - I think the reaction to them would have been different.
The real issue seems to be who is this show for? It's not for kids. Kids don't watch C-SPAN. And judging from the reaction around the web, it's not us, either. We want to see things blow up. So do kids. Win, win, right? So what's the issue? Before and during the prequels, a lot of us clamored for more sophisticated and adult story telling. That's more or less what we're getting here. The inside baseball on the Republic's moral failures is remarkably sophisticated for a cartoon, let alone the films they follow. I appreciate the effort, at least. In these episodes, and even in the Kamino arc, we are seeing a society that values absolutely nothing, not even the men that die for it. It's rotten to the core. It got that way either because of greed or entitlement or both. We're meant to see this as a reflection on our society. Kids certainly aren't registering this, and the CW team probably doesn't mean for them to. So it seems like a cannon shot to us, especially when it's so ham-handed as it was in the Mandalore arc. It takes a lot of nerve for the creative team to center so much attention on the least active characters - Padme and Satine (Hasbro must be losing thier minds) - and position them in opposition to the war on which the entire series (and marketing) is based.
Who is this show for? What is this show about? It's not about things that blow up, all though they do. It's about something more, and I am willing to go along for the ride, so long as the driver knows the road.