Yes, but light can only travel so fast, so we weren’t able to take this picture until millions of years later - in 1980. It’s all relative.

A galaxy that just happens to be populated with humans who speak English. What were the odds?

Im pretty sure the Empire does not use BBY/ABY though, considering they lost that particular battle.

Edit: From another comment below, the Empire seems to use BFE/AFE (before/after Formation of the Empire), although wookiepedia mentions that this was invented in 2017.

Yeah I don't think there is a direct event that points out to the people that the government had been using events to grasp more power and dissolve power from senate, as it had been done prior to start of the serieis. One could argue this was clearly shown in the prequels. The prequels show over reach, false flag attempts, the assassination attempt, and use of order 66 to claim the Jedi order was the enemy and he needed wartime powers. Just so happened to fall around the time the Patriot Act was being signed in by Bush after 9/11.