How many times are we going to have to rehash why the Resistance exists?
Yeah, I have no clue why people have so much trouble with the Resistance. It was obvious to me just from reading the crawl and watching various scenes in the movie that the whole idea is that there’s what amounts to a cold war going on between the New Republic and various fractured Imperial Remnants (because there’s no way a Galactic Empire on a thousand worlds just ends after one battle on a forest moon), most notably the First Order, and since the New Republic can’t/doesn’t want to openly wage war against the First Order, the Resistance popped up with under-the-table Republic support. It’s that simple and was adequately explained in the film, as adequately as the Imperial Senate and the Empire’s role in the galaxy in the original Star Wars.
People complained about all the exposition and political drama in the PT and after leaving TFA I feel like a lot of those same people were saying “I wish there was more exposition and political drama!”