None of the movies are Science Fiction, they are all Science Fantasy Adventure films. The prequel having failed being good movies fails them at being good in their genre. Science Fiction has a speculative element to it that asks "What if" especially in regards to technology and it's impact on humanity, something that doesn't apply to Star Wars. Action is far more subjective. If your bar for a good action movie is "Explosions" then I can't argue with that.
Obi-Wan might have described it as a utopia, but what kind of utopia contains people selling Death Sticks, Assassins, crime lords, smugglers, slavery via
explosives etc. Clearly Obi-Wan lied, like he does on a lot of other things. He lies to protect Luke and to motivate him, mould him in a way he should have done with Anakin. While lying is a "Bad thing", it was the correct course of action. Had Obi-Wan told the truth, Luke would be either dead, turned or imprisoned. Obi-Wan lies is part of what gave him depth in the OT, this was a man who on the outside is a shining pillar of truth and Justice but was pragmatic, he understood the greys of morality. Just because he is a lair, it doesn't make him a bad person. Another things is that Obi-Wan could simply be unreliable as far as story telling is concerned.
You give Jedi far too much credit and far over estimate their effective power on the individual level and as a group. If they really were as powerful as an army, why didn't they fight those set piece battles by themselves? Why did they have to run away from the trade ship? Why so much trouble against Jago Fett? Simple, they are better, faster and a little bit more sturdier than the average human, but they are not what you would call a super hero. Even Superman can only do so may things at once. Don't tell me that every single Jedi is more powerful than Superman because they are as close to that as you and I are.
If the Jedi had just been monks in a temple and you saw Storm Troopers running around keeping the peace fans would have bitched about Obi-Wan being an even bigger liar than he is already accused of.
You misread and are mixing two different posts addressing two different ideas. One was an improved story arc that was written as an example of something better than what GL had come up with that took me no more than 5 minutes of thinking. The trade federation is made of clones and the Republic is everyone else banding together to fight.
The other is part of the argument that government needs institutions to function. the Jedi aren't subservient to the government and the government aren't influenced by them. The Jedi are not much more than a group of vigilantes.
You tried to describe parts of the Prequels as "C-span in space". If this had any truth to it, why didn't they talk about the institutions that make up the Republic like the Tax Office or Department of trade and tariffs or law review court, anti-corruption agency, the Central Bank, Ministry of Justice, DMV? These are the tools of government and when something is decided upon it is up to these institutions to implement them. The "Government" represented in the prequels had none of this. It didn't have even something as basic as a diplomatic protection service as you see everyone were forced to bring their own security or hope they have a Jedi with them. The Republic shown had no power, the leader is no more than a mediator, has no proper processes to do anything and even the word of a Jedi has no power. It wasn't a government, at best it was a forum where fundamentally benign fussed over.
What of the rules of the government? One was a vote of no confidence for a leader change, which is simple enough. Another was a call for an investigation. But who was going to go investigate? Didn't we already investigate and have a report already? Does a Jedi word mean nothing? Who makes executive decisions? Write laws? Runs commissions? Where is the human drama? Go watch the West Wing or the House of Card as examples of good political drama to see why the prequels failed so absolutely in this regard.
The Empire in had these at least in an implied sense in the form of the stromtroopers, the dissolved senate, the space navy, planetary governors with direct control via stromtroopers.
It all boils down to a simple fact. The prequels are terrible movies as they are ill thought out, badly shot, boring, tensionless, horrific writing, poorly acted, even more poorly directed that made real peoples lives worse off. The prequels being terrible movies is a far easier explanation for all the wild inconsistencies than to try to cover them up after the fact.
If you like them, fine, we can move on and stop this nonsense, but they aren't good movies by any measure other than "Has Explosions".
*Don't mention the books because none of that information is "Canon".
**You're constantly having trouble keeping different bits of information bleeding into each other resulting in unreadable messes.
***Order 66 is what killed the Jedi and Vadar went after the stragglers.
**** The Emperor had taken control of the Republic via silent Military coup assisted by apathy and kept the Senate as a form of control.