Objectively speaking, I would agree that it doesn't matter if people like the prequels and special editions or not, if the originals weren't being deliberately suppressed. However, on an emotional level, it in fact does disturb me a great deal. I fervently wish they had never been made at all, both because I loathe the revisionism and because I hate the fact that this whole 'controversy' even has to exist.
Moreover, I feel like a fool looking back on the time when I actually did like them and was taken in by their flashiness. Like Marion's father towards Indiana Jones, it took a hell of a lot to alienate me from Lucas. For a long time I cheerfully accepted the company line that the SE's were so much better, and thought TPM was just dandy. AotC began to set me on the path of realising something wasn't right, but RotS at first seemed to make it all okay again. It wasn't until the sheer awfulness of the 2004 dvd's, which I didn't buy until after RotS came out, that it fully sunk in for me just how rotten things had become in Denmark . . . er, Star Wars. Being as focused on sound as I am, I could possibly have even accepted those further changes if the dvd sound mix hadn't been so disgustingly terrible. At that point I finally took a good hard look back at all the stupid things Lucas had been doing, and for the first time saw them for what they truly were. It was a sobering experience to say the least.
Watching the original versions of the films again for the first time in eight years was like getting back together with old friends I hadn't even known I'd missed, that I had unthinkingly abandoned to be with the superficial popular crowd. How could I have ever been made to think they were lacking or in need of revision? Then I discovered this forum and learned about all the sound mixes and other small differences even the originals have had over the years, and became interested in them from a technical perspective as well as what made them artistically superior. I also re-read Timothy Zahn's works and saw how much better his ideas were than what Lucas actually did.
So in the face of this tremendous unwilling disillusionment with something that has meant so much to me over the years, the notion that people would continue to actively believe and support LFL's nonsense is something I find utterly repugnant. It might sound snobbish to say, but I think I learned a valuable lesson about what it means to have good taste, as opposed to lapping something up simply because it has the name "Star Wars" on it. I hate that it has to be this way, and part of me still longs for the days when there was no split and the creator hadn't ruined the integrity of his own story, which could only be if the prequels and special editions had never been made.
Undoubtedly Star Wars means different things to different people, but that the now-official view bears no resemblance to what it used to be, and cannot be reconciled with the way I myself see it, means that the people who do support the party line on some fundamental level just do not get it. They don't know what Star Wars is really about, they don't understand what it is that makes it work or not work, and seem to be incapable of distinguishing between the two.
Still, despite how much it took to alienate me, I was never really one of them, because I never actively derided the original versions of the films. To me, they used to be one and the same. I didn't extracate myself until it sunk in that Lucas meant to suppress the real films and replace them, and that the prequels' contradictions were meant as active retcons rather than simple oversight. Unlike prequel gushers, I do not want to think about the ways the newer material fundamentally (and nonsensically) alters aspects of the story. Unfortunately, the vile truth is that many people will continue to believe Lucas' revisionist crap, either not knowing how the story has been changed and destroyed, not caring, or thinking it to be a genuine improvement.
And that is why I hate the fact the prequels and special editions even exist.
