#evil!Plo

[dukeoftheblackstar]

Plo Koon acting like a cat and breaking mugs while Wolffe's patience tried is hilarious! How did the whole thing end?

S AU C E ♥

I think it's the safest he can afford of causing mischief. It's not very 384-year old Jedi Master thing to do. But if it meant helping getting the his boys distracted for the Clone Appreciation party the Jedis are planning then he will do more.

So ended up with Wolffe's patience still intact and errantly procuring the mugs from the Corries for Plo to break, Plo would need to find more ways to entertain Wolffe.

Let us not forget Plo is also a ho for knowledge and his curiosity knows no bounds. Absolute no - fucking - bounds.

So how does it end?

If Plo casually pushed the 104th mugs off the counter to break, Plo would do the same but excruciatingly slow to the point of doing in-between things to really rile up Wolffe.

Imagine a mug with Fox's face in it, barely a breath away from the edge. Plo would precisely leave at so and check his datapad or comm someone with the most unimportant bullshit ever. Probably comm Kit about something he made up and Kit, bless my PloKit Heart, would get the hint and they'd chatter.

This will drive Wolffe up the wall because (1) it's Fox's face on the mug, (2) tease, and (3) it's Fox's fucking face on the mug about to plummet and break.

Let it be known that Wolffe is not above going over General Plo Koon's head but would never do so even tho the mug mysteriously fell to the ground and broke.

Plo then moves on to using his claws to scratch at the the walls and any surfaces making Wolffe twitch a little.

BONUS:

Itty, bitty force ghost Qui-Gon Jin is in tears, proud of his shot boii bff ♥

[fakakta-art]

digitizing some sketches i made for my etsy and a completely unrelated song, because i like to add songs :)

[totallycorrectjediorderquotes]

Palpatine: Master Jedi, I have half a mind—

Plo: HALF a mind?

Plo: Haha, no.

Plo: I think you have more like an eighth.

[veny-many]

What if Plo Koon could actually feel others emotions or thoughts?

Like

Anakin: We need to fine her!! She needs me!!

Plo: She would be fine.(Feeling aggressive and unstoppable little 'soka's energy far away)

Or

Obi-wan: We need to stop her from leaving...

Plo: No... (Feeling deep disappointment and sadness in little 'soka that could not be changed)

Or

Boost: Someone will looking for us right?

Wolffe: (oh no I can't tell them truth that we will die here but I can't give them false hope either what should I do)

Wolffe: (What would General say in this situation? Oh if General would help me...)(Looks to General)

Plo: We will do what we can for chance of survival. We have work now.

Or

Wolffe: General, you look like so shaken. Are you all right, sir?

Plo: I'm alright for now, thank you for the concern, Commander.(Feeling all the death screams and pains of thousands soldiers death in cold space)

[artemismatchalatte]

What if my booktok was just a front to get people to read Anne Bronte? :)

[maulfucker]

not resisting the urge to create the weirdoest starwar ocs possible. I need to create a horde of jedi of black and white species

[reconstructwriter]

I mean in canon the Jedi find out the super-suspicious origin of the clones and their reaction was: 'these are good men, we trust them. Lets not say anything to the public to make their lives worse.'

You'd have to be Sith level Evil to crush the heart willingly given to you despite their suspicions of you.

And the clones aren't that evil. They thought they were. They passed all the tests and then the Jedi just hand their hearts over, trusting, and every one of the clones F's.

Clone Wars AU where instead of chips, the clones are actually raised to be undercover as loyal soldiers knowing they'd betray the jedi ("traitors") on the order, and are all ready to complete their mission—

But uh. The jedi are really nice?? And kinda dumb??? And they reaaaally don't know how they survived this long when they are just so dumb and trusting and oh no they're attached.

There are many unfortunate realizations. The clones form a support group to rant about their stupid jetii because "—guys you don't understand he loses his lightsaber every two seconds and then smiles at me when I give it back and has decided since I have it so much I should know how to use it and this week he ordered chocolate for everyone what do I do—"

Bly be sitting in the corner, rocking because "Oh no she's hot"

Wolffe is sitting there holding in manly tears because Plo is a buir but he's a traitor but Plo is such a buir can he be my buir

Rex is like "listen I know Skywalker is supposed to be the one non-traitor of the bunch but like. He's crazy???? And the Commander is also crazy???? How am I supposed to keep up with them???? How much worse would they be without Kenobi????????? And I think Skywalker might actually murder us all if anyone touches the commander or Kenobi???????????"

And meanwhile Fox is all "I keep pulling this one weird jedi out of the dumpster and I can't get rid of him. How do I get rid of him, he's growing on me like mold and I hate it."

Meanwhile I cant decide if the Jedi know that somethings up with the clones and are keeping them close or if they just are genuinely like "man those guys are so great ❤️❤️❤️ I'd trust my life with them ❤️❤️❤️ if they don't tell me smth they def have a good reason ❤️❤️❤️"

[dragoneyes618]

"Moral non-Jews who fail to counter antisemites often suffer because of them. For example, during the 1930s, American isolationists regarded Nazi antisemitism as an unpleasant feature of a country that was otherwise highly civilized. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, they refused to see Hitler and the Nazis as dangerously evil, and urged Americans not to fight them. Indeed, the leading isolationist, Charles Lindbergh, warned American Jews against fomenting anti-Nazi feelings in the United States. But had Hitler been confronted earlier - when his evil was primarily expressed through his antisemitism - not only would six million Jewish lives have been saved, so too would fifty million non-Jewish ones.

During the 1970s, the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin sent a message to the United Nations announcing his admiration for Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution." At the time, only Jews and the American ambassador the U.N. protested. Fortunately, Amin was in no position to carry out his evil designs against the Jews. But several hundred thousand Ugandan Christians whom Amin later butchered suffered from his evil nature, which should have been universally apparent from his antisemitic utterances.

When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini assumed power in Iran, his first act was to occupy the Israeli embassy in Teheran, which he immediately turned over to the PLO. The world dismissed this as the Jews' problem, until the Iranians took over the American embassy less than a year later, and held over a hundred people hostage.

Finally, widespread hatred of Israel in the Arab world is often dismissed mainly or entirely as a Jewish problem, one that reveals little about the Arab or Islamic states. But clearly, the Arab world's hatred for Jewish nationhood is not an unrepresentative quirk of otherwise tolerant lovers of democracy. Rather, it is a quite precise moral indicator, as evidenced by the Christians of Lebanon, who have suffered far worse from Muslim hatred than have Israel's Jews. As Dennis Prager and I have written, "There is often a direct correlation between the ferocity of a Muslim leader's hatred of the Jewish state, and his hatred of democracy and other Western values. Iran's Khomeini, Libya's Qaddafi and Iraw's Hussein are three such examples. Conversely, Arab and other Middle Eastern Muslim societies that are less characterized by despotism and wanton cruelty, such as Tunisia and Turkey, are also characterized by a greater tolerance of the Jews" (Why the Jews?, pages 197-198)."

- Jewish Wisdom, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, pages 462-463

[raleighrador]

On of my least favorite fanon tropes is the idea that Anakin was reckless in a way that needlessly endangered his troops. That he pursued strategies that killed more of them than necessary.

It leans into a (in my mind) common misread of his character which effectively posits that Vader was the inevitable end for Anakin (as opposed to an utterly shocking - and avoidable - change that literally no one could believe or saw coming).

It also just... blatantly contradicts every meaningful canon portrayal of his relationship with the clones.

It is kind of a big deal that Anakin goes out of his way to save clones. He gets upset when they die. When Rex is like "hey wild conspiracy theory but Echo who died years ago might be alive, what's the play?" Anakin's answer is "we ball IMMEDIATELY". He is attached to them in a way that no other Jedi is and that is the point.

People go on and on about Plo Koon but homeboy was ALSO LOST IN SPACE with the clones. What was he meant to say to them? "You're right, I don't care".

People go on and on about Shaak "clone mom" Ti, who blithely describes clones as "Republic property".

(I assume Plo likes the clones, I don't really care either way about Shaak Ti, that isn't the point, but we don't have anywhere near as many portrayals of them going out of their way for the clones in canon as we do in fanon).

Anakin's heart and his attachments are his downfall, not that he's always been evil or callous.

Anakin cared for his troops. Anakin cared for his troops more than the other Jedi and I believe you don't get it if you don't see that.

[phoenixyfriend]

what do you like about Ahsoka(genuine question)

I tend to gravitate towards female characters that have something very wrong with them, usually some violent adjacent trauma and maybe something a little existentially Other. Examples from past fandoms include Leah of Hel, Anevka Sturmvoraus, Nico Robin, and Uzumaki Karin.

Ahsoka is notable because she's the first that I think has had such struggle with remaining a good person and managed it. Leah has never quite fit into a real framework of good and evil, because she's a queen of death. Anevka was kind of a dick right up to her death. Robin got removed from her bad situation and given a truly reliable support network for the first time in twenty years, and Karin was an asshole until the violence was over for long enough that she was allowed to mellow out, and even then she's still working for a retired supervillain.

Ahsoka was good. She was put into a situation that drove uncountable numbers to madness and cruelty, and she stayed good. She struggled, she lost most of her support network, she was not given a way out, and she stayed good. As a teenager in war, as a young woman surviving a genocide, as a black ops agent running missions solo more often than not and without having heard from her only known remaining friend in fifteen years, she stayed good.

Fucked up. Snappish and standoffish to protect herself. Secretive. But good. She tries to be kind, even when she's hurting, tries to be everything she was taught to be about how to be a good person, a good Jedi, by all the role models she had growing up, by Plo, and Obi-Wan, and Tera Sinube, and yes even Anakin, messy as he was.

I've made a post before about how I like characters better when they have to struggle to find and remain good, rather than just being it intrinsically. Ahsoka started good, yes, you could argue that she is 'intrinsically' good, but everything around her was meant to push her to darkness, and everything that tried to do that failed.

I like a fucked up gal, but there's something incredibly powerful that hits me about a character that is given every reason to become cruel, to become a monster, and... doesn't.

Refuses to bend and break and become what they hate.

Bitchy, sure. Cold, sometimes. Traumatized and untreated, definitely.

But still good. Still trying to do good.

Fuck, who can't love a character like that?

(This also applies to Obi-Wan in a lot of ways. Lots of venn diagram overlap in reasons to love them.)

[edenfenixblogs]

Preface: Death is always a personal tragedy.

Even evil people who die are tragedies because they’ve wasted their lives toiling in hatred rather than loving others.

Which is why I will never celebrate a death. Even if someone is terrible. However, I will not make myself mourn for such people either. Please nobody comment here with either “oh? Are you sympathetic to a dictator?!” Or “I bet you’re sooooo pleased he’s dead.” Please do not read intent into my words that is not there.

I will only say as I have said of other men who have cause great harm to many: I mourn the loss of life and the waste of potential to do good in this world. But I do not mourn the man, nor do I rejoice at any death.

Post:

Is it confirmed that the president of Iran is dead? If he is dead, what does that mean internationally? Will his death create a power vacuum? And, if it does, is it likely to be filled by whichever extremist is most aggressive and violent? Or do experts think this will sufficiently destabilize the regime enough for the populace to take control?

Terrorist cells are known for being resilient and being able to rapidly reconstitute from within. But The Islamic Republic of Iran has been funding and supporting Hamas and trying to undermine the PLO for quite sometime. I think people are prone to think that the destabilization could be good for limiting Hamas’ attacks and funding.

But I’m really worried that the people who rise to power after this will instead make their names by being even more ruthless and channeling rage to the levant. I mean, TIR is really closely allied with ISIL, which, for those unaware, stands for rhetoric Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

I’m really concerned for what this means for the safety of everyone in the Levant. Anyone have insight into this?

[astheforcewillsit]

Clones get so lost in the argument of whether or not the Jedi partook in their treatment and I wanted to talk about it, because in an interesting way it mirrors how canon treats the clones.

They talk about them and their benefit to the galaxy, but they don't talk about them.

And whether or not you believe the Jedi had any responsibility in what happened and continued to happen to the clones, arguments to defend the Jedi use the clones as canon fodder just for the purpose of proving the Jedi did nothing wrong.

Even arguments to show how bad of a General Anakin is (which are thinly veiled to show that the Jedi didn't harm the clones), the focus is never the clones and the dehumanization they go through for that purpose.

The purpose of their pain is to either benefit the argument that the Jedi are good to them (ie: the senate is actually the one who treats them badly, not the Jedi), or to benefit the argument that Anakin is a bad leader compared to the rest of the Jedi.

This is consistent in every argument I've seen.

In a conversation about a group of men being dehumanized, the spot light is never on them or their needs. It's on the Jedi and why this is unfair to them. It's about the Jedi, who will always have it significantly better than the clone troopers.

And that's always so disturbing to me in these arguments.

Like regardless of what you believe about the Jedi's role in what happened to the clones, they (the Jedi) can go home at the end of the day, go out with their friends whenever, take a break from the war, leave the Order, have bodily autonomy and medical consent, question the teachings of the Order. Their children get to be loved and cared for by their superiors. They are not brainwashed or forced to fight on the field against their will.

The Jedi have so much freedom compared to the clones, and all arguments defending the Jedi don't pay attention to this aspect nearly as much as it should.

None of the arguments defending the Jedi discuss this aspect in detail, or even mention how uncomfortable this is. It's as if this fact is lost in the argument completely.

They are not and will never exist on the same level or in the same sphere of oppression. And the Jedi are absolutely mistreated by the senate, and I think to some extent oppressed and used. I think we see this the best through Mace, who's constantly at a position where he's realizing that his Order is losing power and the Senate is backing him into a corner where he is unable to do anything.

(also Mace & Plo are the best Jedi to the clones, i'll stand by that)

But not it will never be comparable to what the clones experience.

The clones do not have the same freedom the Jedi have, and I think this should be discussed more often in these arguments.

If a clone tried to tell a Jedi they did not want to fight or do their job, the chances of them being left alone would be very low.

Ahsoka left the Order because she was betrayed by them. The Republic betrays Rex everyday, and if he left he'd be arrested.

I wish in the arguments about how great the Jedi were to the clones, we took a moment to focus on just why we're having the arguments in the first place.

And I think in pointing out the inequalities and the sheer power imbalance between the clones and the Jedi, we can start to understand that the Jedi have at least some fault in what's going on, even if it's a little bit.

And maybe that's why the clones aren't focused on in depth during these arguments. Because why to the Jedi get to live the way they do while the clones cannot even make their own medical decisions?

Anyway this is never me saying the Jedi are an evil organization that is 100% behind the clones enslavement. Truth is imo they're not even the main cause. They were put in a shitty situation where it was very difficult to say no, and nearly impossible. And they put some policy in place so that the clones were treated better, and are arguably the best people to have them aside from the clones themselves. t's what they do with the decision to accept the clones that i have thoughts on.

This also isn't a post to argue on what or what the Jedi didn't do, it's just more to point out something I've noticed. So please don't make it that.

[antianakin]

@theneutralmime

Oh I have a LOT to say about this, this got really long.

For one, comparing ONLY Luke and Anakin ignores the MANY MANY MANY other Jedi we are introduced to in the PT who seem perfectly successful and happy as Jedi, most notably Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Mace Windu. If we include TCW, you can bring in a bunch of others like Luminara Unduli, Aayla Secura, Quinlan Vos, Kit Fisto, Plo Koon, Adi Gallia, Eeth Koth, Saesee Tiin, Jocasta Nu, and Tera Sinube. All Jedi Knights and Masters of varying ages and species who are all VERY happy and successful Jedi. So it seems a little disingenuous to ONLY compare Luke to Anakin and come to the conclusion that full training doesn't work when there are plenty of OTHER Jedi from the Prequels era who weren't, you know, genocidal maniacs.

And sure, some Jedi can leave. The Jedi don't force anyone to stay. But let's look at those people who left. Nearly ALL OF THEM leave because they end up turning to darkness and becoming evil, so I feel like that doesn't really speak to the Jedi having done something wrong and more about how if you leave the path of the Jedi, you're probably going to lose your sense of compassion and selflessness. But even among those people, the thing that causes them to turn on the Jedi is generally NOT THE JEDI THEMSELVES, but an outside force or event. For characters like Barriss and Krell, it's the war and the hopelessness and despair it creates. For characters like Bode and Malicos, it's Order 66 and the loneliness and trauma of that sudden loss. For Ahsoka, it's being framed by a friend who was no longer a Jedi and a lack of trust in herself (this changes after the Disney buy-out and Ahsoka DOES start blaming the Jedi for leaving, but she doesn't initially, and for a while she's still intentionally said to ACT like a Jedi and is implied to be seriously considering returning to the Order before Order 66 happens). Dooku is more disillusioned with the Republic and the Senate than he is the Jedi themselves (this, again, has been more recently changed to be a disillusionment with the Jedi, but that's not at all true in earlier iterations of him). Even with Anakin, what causes him to betray the Jedi isn't actually a dislike of the Jedi themselves, but a fear of losing someone he cares about who isn't even a Jedi herself. So all of the people we know who leave the Jedi in this era don't actually do so because the Jedi do something wrong and most of them become evil as a result.

It's also notable to point out that if we're counting Luke as "half a Jedi" because he didn't get the whole experience that someone during the Prequels era got, Anakin counts as one, too. He came in late and wasn't raised among the Jedi, he never got that kind of experience, so making the comparison to Anakin is an even worse comparison than normal because it's comparing an abnormal experience to another abnormal experience. It's like comparing a Satsuma tangerine to a Mandarin tangerine and saying, "See? The first one is better than the second one because it's only half an orange." Neither one is a real orange, they're tangerines. Anakin cannot be used as an example of the Jedi experience during the Prequels era, so the idea that you could claim Luke "worked" and Anakin "didn't" specifically because Luke only got partial training makes zero sense.

For two, it seems a little ridiculous to act like the Jedi who exist post-Order 66 are "half a Jedi" at all. They're not. Just because being a Jedi looks different during this period doesn't mean they're not Jedi or only sort-of Jedi.

There's characters like Kanan Jarrus and Cal Kestis who were Jedi Padawans when Order 66 happened and were also "half trained" I suppose, but they were RAISED as Jedi in a way Luke was not and both choose to come back to it and that reclamation of their identity as Jedi is immensely important to them. I don't think either of them would consider themselves "half a Jedi."

And LUKE would never consider himself "half a Jedi" at all. The famous line from ROTJ isn't "I'm half a Jedi, like my father before me" is it? No. Luke is a JEDI, wholly and completely, I don't care how much training he got in comparison to PT Jedi, he considers himself a Jedi Knight and so does everyone else he ever meets, generally. And the only other character similar to him that we see is Ezra, who ALSO seems to consider himself a whole Jedi and not "half a Jedi" despite the fact that he, like Luke, came to training later than was normal during the Prequels era.

But also the entire statement of "If the Jedi had allowed people like Luke to exist" is so funny because like... gee who do we think TAUGHT Luke to be a Jedi? Could it perhaps be, I dunno, TWO JEDI MASTERS FROM THE PREQUELS ERA JEDI ORDER? The Jedi DO allow people like Luke to exist because OBI-WAN AND YODA LITERALLY TRAIN LUKE TO BE A JEDI. I don't know what more they need to see to understand that Luke WAS allowed to be a Jedi by GETTING TRAINED TO BE A JEDI BY TWO JEDI MASTERS. This isn't even like Ezra getting trained by Kanan who was only a Padawan before, this is YODA AND OBI-WAN, two Jedi MASTERS who were on the COUNCIL before. I guess the idea behind this statement is that they only "allowed" it because Order 66 happened and they had no choice, but like... this is ridiculous. If Yoda and Obi-Wan truly believed Luke shouldn't be a Jedi, they just wouldn't have trained him.

What I think this person means by "people like Luke" is people who were raised in a regular nuclear family and only start training to be Jedi in adulthood, with the assumption that this means Luke's first priority is still like... his family and friends MORE than being a Jedi. This goes along with the assumption that Luke succeeds "because of his attachments" and because he "goes against the Jedi's teachings" in the end with Anakin. There's this common belief that Luke choosing not to kill Anakin on the Death Star is Luke acting UNLIKE a Jedi, or at least, unlike a PREQUELS Jedi. All of these assumptions are wrong. Straight up flat out WRONG.

Luke succeeds because of his compassion, because he acknowledges his own anger and darkness and chooses not to act on it. It's not that he refuses to kill Anakin because Anakin is his father, he refuses to kill Anakin because if he did, then he'd be doing so out of ANGER and FEAR, because Anakin is no longer a threat and is lying defeated on the ground so killing him at this point makes him a murderer. Luke would have made this same choice NO MATTER WHO HE WAS FACING IN THIS MOMENT. And I find this to be something a lot of people miss and misunderstand about this moment. Yes, Luke cares about Anakin because Anakin is his father, but the connection he makes with Anakin in this moment isn't between father and son, but between two people who have felt fear and pain and let themselves be controlled by it. Luke sees the mechanical arm after he cuts off Anakin's hand and it forces him to remember Bespin, the fear he felt for his friends and the advice he chose to disregard from Yoda and Obi-Wan then, and what it ultimately cost him. And it forces him to realize that Anakin, for all that he's done monstrous things, was once a person who got scared and angry, too, who let it control him the way Luke once did, and it cost him. This allows him to feel COMPASSION for Anakin, to see Anakin not as a monster or as this broken dream of his father, but a PERSON. A person who was once like him.

And then by stepping back and refusing to kill Anakin and making the pronouncement that he is a Jedi like Anakin once was, it also then forces ANAKIN to see that same connection. Luke sees him as a person, a person who made mistakes just like Luke did, so maybe he can see himself as a person who can make the same CHOICE as Luke is making, too.

So it's not about their personal connection to each other as father and son at all, really. Like they HAPPEN to be father and son and maybe this allows Anakin to make that connection a little easier because he cares about Luke enough to make that sacrifice (I don't personally believe Anakin would've made that sacrifice for Han or Lando even if they'd refused to kill him either), but for Luke? It isn't about that.

The anger from earlier, though? THAT was the attachment. I imagine this person you were speaking to probably didn't know that Lucas (and the Jedi as a result) use the word "attachment" in the way Buddhism defines it, which refers to a relationship with someone or something (it could be a place, an ideology, a dream, even a piece of clothing) that you cannot let go of because of the way it makes you feel, even after it starts being detrimental to yourself and the people around you. Luke's feelings for Han and Leia are what push him to Bespin to save them, even though both Yoda and Obi-Wan are telling him it's a trap and there's likely nothing he can really do to help them so he's better off staying on Dagobah to continue his training. And Luke ends up getting some information he's not ready for, he doesn't save Han OR Leia, Leia and Lando have to actually come back to save HIM, and he loses a hand. Luke doesn't go to Bespin because Han and Leia need him, he goes to Bespin because he can't bear to LOSE THEM. On the Death Star, he attacks Anakin because Anakin threatens Leia, and his fear of losing her causes him to get angry. It's not really about saving Leia because what Luke is becoming in this moment isn't someone Leia would ever support, but because Luke can't bear to lose her. THAT'S what attachment is. His attachment to Leia nearly costs him his father (consider the parallel between how Anakin's attachment to Padme DOES cost him HIS father figure because he refuses to stop fighting Obi-Wan and reconsider the choices he's making).

The attachment isn't what saves Anakin, it's what nearly kills him. It's the Jedi COMPASSION that saves Anakin. It's only because Luke EMBRACES what being a Jedi means, wholly and completely, that Anakin doesn't end up killed by his own son.

So what this person MEANS is, the Jedi would've been better off they'd allowed people to be more Western, if they'd let people grow up in a nuclear family structure, if they'd let people get married and have children, and if they'd let their members prioritize their personal connections over the fate of the galaxy because that's how they define love. What this person might not REALIZE is that their personal biases are devaluing any kind of life other than the one they're familiar with. They can't conceive of growing up in a more communal family structure where this isn't a specifically clearly defined "mom" and "dad" raising their kid(s) together. They can't conceive of a culture that either never feels the NEED to get married or have children or doesn't mind making that sacrifice (this isn't even specifically Western, Catholic nuns and priests make the same sacrifice because their relationship to God is more important than getting married and having children). They can't conceive of a culture where they actively choose to love everyone equally and never prioritize their own family and friends above strangers.

So this person you were speaking to I think has a fundamental misunderstanding of Luke as a character and his relationship to being a Jedi as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Jedi were and a personal bias against a culture they're unfamiliar with. We're so often fed this story that if you aren't in a romantic relationship, then your life is basically hell on Earth. Everyone everywhere must be looking for this one special person, they MUST want that above everything else, and if they don't, then something in them is BROKEN. So the Jedi can seem very aloof and distant and fundamentally broken to viewers primed to see something like this as like... signals of an evil character, signals of a repressed character who needs to be saved, signals of corruption. But in fact, the Jedi are supposed to be symbols of the best humanity has to offer. They are the LEAST corrupt people in this entire story, the least evil people in the whole galaxy. They are a people who have figured out how to become the best version of themselves and spend their entire lives in service to the rest of the galaxy, passing on their wisdom and using their abilities to help anyone they can. They are an ideal to strive towards, not a cautionary tale.

Luke is not a success because he DOESN'T act like the Prequels Jedi, or because he is able to rise above them and become what they could not or what they had forgotten how to be. He is a success because he DOES act like them. He is a triumph because he represents the return of these people who always symbolized peace and compassion and hope.

I've called the Jedi a barometer for the galaxy's health before. The more there are, the better it's doing. At the beginning of the Prequel Trilogy, there are thousands of Jedi and the galaxy seems like it's GENERALLY fine, but with the return of the Sith, we also see our first Jedi death. And then in AOTC, a war starts and almost 200 Jedi die. By ROTS, even more Jedi have died and the Sith are more in power than ever before, and it ends with the Empire rising as the Jedi are all murdered. If we ignore all the different TV shows and skip ahead to the Original Trilogy, things only start to get better when the Jedi start coming BACK. Obi-Wan leaves Tatooine and brings Luke with him, who has just started Jedi training, and the Death Star is destroyed, saving the Rebellion. Luke commits to being a Jedi and the Empire falls, the Sith are destroyed, and the prophecy completed. Jedi represent all that is good, they represent a healthy balance in the galaxy. The galaxy ISN'T OKAY with the Jedi gone and it's at its best when the Jedi are at their strongest.

The Jedi DO allow people like Luke to exist because Luke is representative of the Jedi who came before him, the BEST the galaxy had to offer. Luke is representative of a culture that only ever did their best to be kind. Long before Rey, LUKE was "all the Jedi" because there didn't used to BE anybody else. Luke was the sole person keeping the Jedi's culture alive and he is bringing with him the training he got from two of the best, wisest Jedi Masters of the Prequel era. ALL OF THE JEDI were like Luke. All of them. Because they were ALL compassionate, they were ALL capable of putting aside their fear and anger in favor of understanding and acceptance, they were ALL people who fought back against the darkness and won. Luke succeeds because he becomes more and more like THEM.

The last thing I'll point out is that the Jedi's defeat doesn't happen because the Jedi failed at anything. The Jedi did everything right. But as everyone knows, you can do everything right, and STILL LOSE. They lose because the world and people around them failed, becauase the Senate and Anakin gave in to their own selfishness and fear and greed. All those "normal" people who were raised in regular family structures and prioritized their personal connections above their duty, they FAILED. But it was the JEDI who paid the price for that failure, so fans continue to blame them for everything instead of recognizing them as the victims they are.

[eretzyisrael]

by Ruthie Blum

When all hell broke loose over Schocken’s mendacious depiction of an Israel that only exists in the minds of those who wish to see it disappear, he issued a clarification.

“I’ve reconsidered what I said,” he announced on Thursday. “There are many freedom fighters in the world and through history, perhaps also on the path to the establishment of the State of Israel, who carried out shocking and dreadful terrorist activities and harmed innocent people in order to achieve their goals. I should have said, ‘Freedom fighters who also use terrorist methods and need to be fought against.’ The use of terrorism is not legitimate.”

The implication was obvious: Jews also employed evil methods to achieve statehood. Whatever neat trick he thought he was pulling flopped at generating sympathy, let alone applause.

Which brings us to the second speech, that also had a jaw-dropping effect, but for the opposite reason. This one was delivered by former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

At a rally on Wednesday for Kamala Harris in the swing state of Michigan, Clinton appealed to the voters who’ve come out against the Democratic candidate for her administration’s ostensibly unforgiveable support for Israel. He did this by setting the record straight about the Palestinians’ attitude to the Jewish state.

Though opening with a call for a re-start of the “peace process,” he acknowledged the culprit behind its repeated failure.

“I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died,” he began. “But if you lived in one of those kibbutzim in Israel, right next to Gaza, where the people there were the most pro-friendship with Palestine—the most pro-two-state-solution of any of the Israeli communities were the ones right next to Gaza, and Hamas butchered them.”

He continued: “The people who criticize [Israel’s response] are essentially saying, ‘Yeah, but look how many people you’ve killed in retaliation. How many is enough for you to kill to punish them for the terrible things they did?’ That all sounds nice until you realize what you would do if it was your family and you hadn’t done anything but support a homeland for the Palestinians, and one day they come for you and slaughter the people in your village. You would say, ‘You have to forgive me, but I’m not keeping score that way.’ It isn’t how many we’ve had to kill because Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded by civilians. They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.”

Invoking the authority born of having hosted the 2000 Camp David Summit to forge a treaty that would result in the creation of an independent Palestinian state, Clinton admitted, “Look, I worked on this hard. And the only time [PLO chief] Yasser Arafat didn’t tell me the truth was when he promised me he was going to accept the peace deal that we had worked out, which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel—and they got to choose where the 4% of Israel was. So they would have the effect of the same land of all the West Bank. They’d have a capital in east Jerusalem.”

Pausing to express sadness mixed with frustration, he interjected, “I can hardly talk about this.”

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From Mosaic Magazine:

How Mistaken Beliefs Led to Oct. 7 -

• The frame of mind that animated the defunct peace process continues to inform Israeli, American, and European political, administrative, and military actions. This is because the peace process is a conceptual framework rooted in a particular worldview.

• At the tactical level, Israel assumed a defensive, rather than offensive, military posture reliant on technological superiority. Like the rest of the West, Israel believed that its technological advantage was a sufficient deterrent. A "small, smart army" would therefore suffice because technology had made large ground wars obsolete. But our enemies were not deterred by our superior technology. They adapted to it and used low tech to subvert it.

• Israel's first choice was negotiations that would establish an agreed-upon border between two nation-states, tired of wars and determined to move toward cooperative coexistence. But peace was not forthcoming, when in 2000, then-prime minister Ehud Barak offered Yasir Arafat all the Israeli public could stomach and then some, only to be turned down and rewarded with the Second Intifada.

• So Israelis chose unilateral partition from Gaza with the 2005 disengagement. It was a trial-run for Palestinian statehood, based on the hope that the Palestinians would come around and realize, after tasting political independence and economic opportunities, the folly of endless war.

• The trial failed almost immediately. Rockets kept raining on Israel's towns after the disengagement and, in 2007, Hamas violently eliminated the PLO in Gaza, establishing a terror quasi-state. A regular, unending influx of international aid rendered economic development unnecessary. Aid flowed in because Israeli intelligence believed a higher standard of living would help pacify the Strip.

• Israel imagined the Palestinian national movement in the image of ours. We assumed that national self-determination was its goal and that Palestinians would seize the opportunity to assume political independence so they could build their political and economic future. But nation-building was never on their agenda. We would have understood this if we had studied their political culture seriously, instead of assuming they share ours.

• It was folly to imagine that of all Arab peoples, the Palestinians would prove the exception that would produce a stable nation-state. The principal grievance of the Palestinian cause is not the absence of a desired nation-state but the existence of another one.

• We also projected our own misconceptions of human nature onto the Palestinians. Contemporary Western elites assume that we all want a decent job, food on the table, and a safe environment to raise our children. But when we conceive of all life in these materialistic terms, we lose the ability to imagine the human capacity for evil.

Encouraged by assumptions from America and Europe, Israelis failed to believe in their neighbors' sinister intentions.

We did not take seriously their theology of hate, their deep-seated racism, and the depth of their barbaric sadism.