The Star Wars universe, at least in the old EU and now the new trilogy and its affiliated reboot canon, is really kind of a crapsack. None of our hero's hard fought accomplishments seem to last more than a few years or decades before they're upended by the next galactic war, revolt, invasion, or reversal of fortune. I get that it's kind of inherent in the name Star Wars, but damn, give these people a moment's peace. The longest peace came offscreen in the thousand year peace of the Old Republic mentioned in the Prequel Trilogy, so I guess Yoda got to spend the first eight and three quarters centuries of his life in relative tranquility, on a galactic scale at least. So that's something.
If they really wanted to subvert expectations in the new trilogy, and not in the "reject everything that was clearly set-up and established in the first film to be followed up on by the next" way, they should have had the First Order (or just call them the Empire, because they still were, just a smaller one) assume the rebellion role of the ragtag underdogs fighting the larger and more powerful government, only this time the rebels were fighting for an evil cause, like the Confederacy, either the real American one or the fictional one from the Prequels. It would have been interesting seeing Leia in the role of galactic leader marshalling her fleet against this persistent Imperial nuisance and dealing with treacherous Senators from former loyal Imperial worlds undermining the Republic.
They said this was the dynamic of the prior few decades, but TFA immediately decides to reverse fortunes again and return us to the OT status quo of our heroes being the ragtag plucky Rebels, sorry Resistance, fighting against the galactic superpower with all the giant ships and superweapons again, even though it doesn't make sense that a galactic government would allow such a rival to develop unchecked right on their border. Or that said galactic government could be taken down completely by the destruction of even five major worlds. If an enemy nuked Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston in a surprise attack, it would be a devastating blow to the country and caused mass confusion, yes, but the US would not cease to function as an entity capable of fucking your shit up with its massive military in the meantime. It would retaliate, with overwhelming force, even if most of the leadership had been wiped out.
So the whole set-up of the Resistance didn't make much sense to me, and was too obviously trying to copy the Rebellion dynamic of the OT, because that's what Abrams does very well, takes other people's ideas and makes crowdpleasing and entertaining if ultimately somewhat shallower facsimiles. And it's not like the source material was playing in the deep end of the pool or wasn't derivative of other earlier works itself, just not as much.
I don't even recall what the thread was about... Oh yeah, letting the Not Empire win at the end of Episode 9. I would be okay with that, I guess, if they wanted to go through with yet another trilogy iteration of the New New Republic rising from the ashes of the Old New Republic, because at least their fall would have been earned over the course of the current trilogy instead of just being the result of one devastating attack. It would have been derivative again though.
