In Kaladesh we were supposed to believe they were the plucky good guy underdog rebels.

Yes, in Kaladesh the rebels were good, the Consulate bad. And they as an organisation were mostly focused on (even if the color got few actual rebels)

Would it have been that hard to present the Kaladesh conflict between rebels and consulate as one in which both sides have been fighting each other for so long that they are virtually indistinguishable from one another?

Maybe though I always got the Kaladesh conflict was in part that the aether boon was something so new and the people still hadn't figured out the right balance of how to allot it.

Pretty much. Aether was a revolutionary invention (only figured out to use it 50 years ago) so the Consulate and the renegades simply disagreed on how accessible it should be. Supposedly a compromise was reached by Chandra's mom.

It could be done but why? Are you hoping for a story where the gatewatch tries to interfere less and lets a meaningless war continue, or one where they still help end a war but it isn't as heroic? In general I don't think making groups "indistinguishable" is great for storytelling.
If Magic was going to spend a lot of time on this plane then maybe they could do a deeper exploration a the consequences of a meaningless civil war, but from the aesthetic I don't think they should spend a lot of time on a world with so many robots. There is a limit to how much story they can make for each set and this needed to tie into the lead up to War of the Spark. The next set was going to have a "bad" ending so this one shouldn't be a downer. They wanted a quick story with a happy ending and a heroic revolution gives them that.

I'm guessing some people will say that the story shouldn't have been focused on the Gatewatch and should have been more than a stepping stone for Bolas leading to War of the Spark. It should have been focused on random individuals trying to live their lives in violent times. That's a bigger discussion not focused on Kaladesh.

It was more a factor that we were told one side is good and the other bad. We were told this, but not shown it outside one incident and a dozen to the contrary. It's hard to nigh impossible to see the rebels as being actually valid in their complaints, especially with how entitled they were coming across.

Yes, basically Kaladesh wanted the typical "good rebels versus evil sci fi government" and admitely the Consulate could get pretty **** what with literal witch hunts and hiring a professional child killer, but the reason the renegades were against them? "Bwaaa safe regulations of a highly explosive material is totally denying us basic aether rights bawww!!!"

Either way we got an offescreen compromise at the end. We don't see what it is, but it either makes the Consulate look stupid for not having thought of it or the renegades whimsical and petty. Maybe both.

They tried to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted the typical "good rebels versus evil sci fi government", but they ALSO wanted the "optimistic Federation-esque Scifi existence" which dictated that, questionable appointments aside, most of the time things had to be pretty nice.

Add in that a large section of the rebels were actual legitimately dangerous and violent criminal elements. Beyond just Gonti, the maulfists, for example, were an established gang of psychopaths.

Huh. There's quite a lot to unpack there if you want to see it as a metaphor for real life issues. But we probably shouldn't, because any issue you could relate to it is quite controversial (and the comparison would not make the debate more civil, unfortunately). Like, it could make a good subject for an essay, but trying to talk about it here would be a bad idea.

You mean the Kaladesh thing or the Kamigawa thing? The former has a few real world allegories, but not really in the way one might think (for one thing, everyone's fighting over a pretty environmentally friendly energy source), the latter I hope it is intentional as I've illustrated my case.

I meant the kaladesh thing. I don't want to say exactly what real world concepts I associated it with, because that's how flame wars start.