One of DS9’s episodes had Bashir stating that Section 31 had been hiding in the shadows for three centuries.
I don’t remember if it was the first episode? I think it was the one where they were trying to save Odo from the Changeling virus.
I had the distinct impression that Lorca sought out those specific people to be the crew on Discovery because they were his friends in the MU. His logic must have been "They're reliable there, they must also be here"
I'm not gonna start a new universe when a single line from one show is contradicted by the going ons in another. It's really not that important.
More than a single line has been contradicted over the last couple of seasons. But it is far more than that for me.
A gray area human vs. a "nice" Terran are probably are in the same range of moral scale - I definitely agree that the two are probably very, very similar and it would have been nice to see that play out at the end of Season One, rather than the full mustache twirling descent into villainy that was portrayed. It would have been better played straight and serious - do you back the genocidal Emperess that looks like your mentor, or your new Captain that lied to you - but has admirable goals, like claiming to bring Federation values to the Empire, at whatever cost is necessary.
Are you saying Cornwell was a moron? The only questionable thing she did was in the finale where she decided her background as a therapist somehow made her qualified to disarm a torpedo, but that's more the result of bad writing than it is evidence Cornwell was a moron. As you know, "Visuals aren't canon."
Her decision to turn on a dime about the genocide plan made her look pretty stupid, too. “What? Genocide is bad? Well!”