But Isn't It More Important To Be A Good Person Than It Is To Follow A Particular Religion. My Religion

But isn't it more important to be a good person than it is to follow a particular religion. My religion says that if I help those around me and if I am a good person to people without a care of their race, gender, sexuality etc. and if I wish to follow certain teaching from my religion that make me a better person without devoutly worshipping the gods of my religion and devoting myself to certain deities, then I am a better person in the eyes of god than someone who follows the religion devoutly, prays everyday and loves certain deities deeply. My religion says I don't have to love God and I don't have to believe in him to be a good person, and God would still love me. Not everyone who is devoted to God is a good person.

The Bible states that there is no one good, or righteous. No one.

Besides, a person's 'goodness' is entirely dependent on what moral values he puts his faith in. Everyone has a religion, even if they don't call it that, and their sense of righteousness is dependent on that religion.

In which case, wouldn't following the right religion be more important than being good?

Lovely.

Adam: I wish I could marry you.

Blake: *chuckles* no one wants to marry me, I'm too much of a handful.

Adam: I do. I have two hands, don't worry.

reblog this if you're pro-life 🤍

Killing Palpatine is catch 22 of sorts: you have to have a plan capable of taking Palpatine by surprise, but such a plan would likely alert Palpatine either through the force, or through whatever spy network or mundane security measures Palpatine has in place.

But Palpatine, like any force user, should be vulnerable to physical harm that can bypass the force. Darth Vader's level of force power is unique and even then Darth Vader can be taken down through skillful application of tactics.

So I have to agree, Palpatine is physically easy to kill, the problem is getting past Palpatine's defences.

one thing I find interesting is how easy palatine would be to assassinate. in single combat you'd likely lose, but sneak a bomb on his ship? or a droid suicide bomber? even palpatine can't survive the vacuum of space

Okay, so this is my head canon and I have no idea how many people agree with it, but--

I think Palpatine is easy to kill, period. I know why as a story concept he needed to be strong enough to fight off a bunch of the best Jedi in single combat in RotS, but like, when does this man train? You think Palpatine sweats? You think he works hard when he can take the easy way out? You think he has a bunch of beefy, overqualified killing machines as his apprentices because he's not scared of them being better than him?

Fuck no.

Palpatine is devious, charismatic, clever, manipulative, and unscrupulous. He's just good enough at combat to keep those under him in awe. The rest is smoke and mirrors, being prepared, and having no lower bound for how cruel he is. He doesn't fight anyone at their peak strength. He breaks you down mentally and emotionally and when he can physically before you even get to him. Before you make your first strike.

His entire plan for the destruction of the Jedi Order and usurpation of the Republic revolves around setting up elaborate schemes where his "allies" and enemies kill each other. This isn't just for fun. It's not just for the politics. It's because if he had to fight for more than two minutes together, he'd be a wheezing, sobbing mess on the floor. You think he wants a planet destroying space station because he likes giving his minions nice toys? No. That's his major project, his giant space laser. Vader is the one who asserts the Force is enough that they don't need the Death Star. Palpatine immediately builds a second one. A bigger one. Like that will make a difference or something.

The difficulty in killing Palpatine is a) realizing he's the main villain not just some harmless old man, b) catching him off guard so he doesn't have time to remind you of your dying wife and how you failed to save your mother or whatever other traumatic shit he can throw at you, c) catching him away from whatever more competent bodyguards he keeps to wear you out or distract you, and d) exposing him as a villain publicly so that when you kill him you aren't accused of treason (or you know, kill him after he's outed himself and there's a whole rebel faction behind you).

Darth Vader literally picks this man up with one hand and a wrist stub and throws him into a hole. Vader is actively dying of electrocution and suffocation and kills Palpatine. Vader was just taken down by his own son, and he had enough oomph to kill Sidious.

I'll buy that Palpatine is as resistant to blaster fire as any Jedi who's decent with a lightsaber. So many normal mooks would have a tough time of it. But like, canonically so many of the Jedi are killing by enough clones shooting at them at the same time. So it's not off the table.

You often quote the Bible, why is it that you think that one particular religious book is correct

I don't so much think the bible is correct as I have faith that the bible is correct.

Life is vanity. All is vanity.

The only thing that matters is what you believe in and live for.

The Bible says that ALL I have to do is believe that Jesus Christ, because he died and rose again, has defeated death and is the only way to salvation as a result.

That makes sense to me and it is easy. So I believe that the Bible is correct.

I don't think the Jedi are portrayed as evil per se, but rather they are ineffectual and complicit in evil.

They are Republic Agents

Building off allronix, Legends material in general just doesn't like Jedi at all, the Old Republic era just being particularly negative. What is it with the old Star Wars EU wanting the Jedi to be assholes? Their whole shtick is helping people, so were did all the writers for the games, books, and comics get "bad as the Sith, got it"? I mean, my bet's on the whole obsession with "grey" morality, fanboyism for the Sith aesthetic, and Lucas' message going over a few million heads, but who knows.

Anon, you may have the wrong blog. This is a Jedi hate zone. I do not care for the Jedi. And I don’t have to even glance at Legends canon to come up with some pretty fucking damning asshole moves by the Jedi Order. Legends writers didn’t “want” the Jedi to be assholes--they were assholes, they have always been assholes, they are still assholes. The PT and TCW are part of Disney canon, and there is plenty to unpack in those alone.

A very very very incomplete list of shitty things the Jedi have done, in Disney canon, just off the top of my head:

The Jedi knowingly and deliberately send a 14-year-old into an active war zone and this is not framed as remarkable or objectionable at all. That’s the plot of the pilot of TCW: Ahsoka, then the equivalent of a US eighth grader or high school freshman, joins Anakin and Obi-Wan in the middle of a war zone. She remains in active war zones for most of the next several years of her life, acting as a commanding officer for a bunch of manufactured 11-year-olds created specifically to fight and die. That’s an asshole move or several.

Obi-Wan mindfucks some dude in a bar for offering to sell him space drugs. Relatively minor, played for laughs, but dear god that’s fridge horror.

Luminara advises Anakin to abandon Ahsoka and Barriss to die when they’re trapped under rubble--because going looking for their apprentices, making any effort at all to save them, is a sign of untoward emotional attachment, and that’s bad, that’s the dark side talking. That’s an asshole move.

The Jedi throw Ahsoka to the wolves and won’t even admit that they fucked up; they frame their hideous mishandling of the situation as a test from the Force so that Ahsoka can prove her worthiness to be Knighted to the people who just threw her to the wolves and a probable execution in the first place. That’s an asshole move.

The Jedi High Council shames a 9-year-old Anakin Skywalker for missing his mother and being afraid when he’s lightyears away from home, surrounded by strangers who clearly don’t want anything to do with him. Because attachment and fear lead to the dark side, or whatever. That’s an asshole move.

(Don’t even get me started on the ways orthodox Jedi doctrine as depicted in the PT/OT/TCW is a toxic unhealthy dysfunctional shitshow ...)

Aaaand the big one: the Jedi are complicit in slavery. The clones are slaves. The Jedi don’t object to this; they don’t even acknowledge that slavery is happening, much less do anything to try to stop it. They just ... say vaguely nice basic-decency-level things at their enslaved soldiers, often with a nice patronizing cherry on top, and then go right back to utterly failing to lift a finger to actually fix the problem. (Often while rubbing the clones’ expendability in their faces by contrast--whatshisnuts Piell gets a moving eulogy when he gets killed on a mission, while the clones who died along the way don’t get a single word of recognition.) That’s--you guessed it!--an asshole move.

I could go on but it’s like 2 am so fuck it.

The Jedi Order’s purpose is not actually helping people. It’s just ... demonstrably not. Their purpose is some combination of:

to serve the Republic, which means to serve the interests of the Senate, which I hope you’re willing to grant is a wee bit corrupt

to maintain their own hegemony over the study and use of the Force (and use it for the benefit of the state)

to serve the will of the Force, which is conveniently ill-defined and vague and mostly useless for practical purposes such as “eliminating poverty” or “freeing slaves who aren’t the goddamn Chosen One”

Individual Jedi sometimes take it upon themselves to go above and beyond, but ... as an institution? Bullshit. They don’t help people-in-general, or people-who-need-it-who-are-right-in-front-of-them. They help people who are useful, people who are expedient, people who are strategically advantageous. Anything else would “exceed their mandate.” And god forbid you help someone you’re personally attached to. (Especially if your last name is “Skywalker.”)

As for ~Lucas’s message~ ... ugh. Look.

The point of the PT--or maybe just the point I personally took away from it, since we self-evidently do not agree on what these movies Really Mean--is that good intentions are not enough to save democracy from getting warped into authoritarianism. All the “good” institutions of the Old Republic were fatally flawed; all the “good” people in a position to do something to stop the rise of the Empire were also fatally flawed. Their hypocrisy and complacency and willingness to compromise the ideals they claim to hold (i.e., the fact that they were assholes) allows--and sometimes directly causes--terrible things to happen. Those terrible things eventually reach critical mass in ROTS.

The Jedi hurt people, by action or by inaction, and while they didn’t deserve to die for it, it is not surprising that their repeated, systemic, colossal failures bit them in the ass. It’s a tragedy. That’s how tragedies work.

Regarding the Sith: it’s not a zero-sum game, here. The Sith are awful, canonically. The Jedi are also awful, canonically. The nature and scope of their respective awfulness may not be the same, but just because the Sith are morally worse doesn’t mean the Jedi are morally good. Remember how the Jedi are complicit in slavery? That’s usually the purview of the bad guys, in fiction, but since the Jedi are framed as good guys I guess that makes it more okay or something.

And the thing is, I think I get why we have this disconnect. Or at least one of the major factors. The content and the framing of the narrative--PT, TCW, OT, everything--are not always in alignment. The content says “these people are morally questionable at best.” The framing (and, of course, the marketing) says, more often than not, “these people are the heroes, never mind the morally questionable stuff, shhhhh.” TCW is absolutely terrible about this, which is why I hate it, but the movies are not exempt, which is why they can be so goddamn frustrating.

At least in Legends canon you’ll occasionally see a character who says “wow, the Jedi are total assholes” without being immediately painted as morally bankrupt or a dupe of evil.

Anyway I’m off to make more tea in my Darth Vader mug, which I shall sip while wearing my Darth Vader t-shirt. You really caught me on a thematically appropriate night.