Let’s stop pretending the Jedi were the good guys.
No, the Sith weren’t “better.” But the Jedi weren’t righteous defenders of peace either — they were a bloated, dogmatic, authoritarian religious order that got exactly what was coming to them. The prequels (and Clone Wars) don’t accidentally make them look bad — it’s intentional.
Their fall wasn’t some noble tragedy. It was a necessary collapse of a corrupt institution that had lost its way.
- Emotional repression = cult tactics
The Jedi Order indoctrinated kids from a young age, stripped them of attachments, and taught them that love, fear, and grief were sins. That’s not enlightenment — that’s emotional sterilization. They literally banned families and told people not to feel things. That’s not wisdom. That’s psychological abuse.
- "We're the good guys!" — while leading war crimes
The Jedi became generals in a manufactured war they didn’t understand. They weren’t peacekeepers anymore — they were the Republic’s hitmen. They fought a fake war on behalf of a corrupt regime, playing right into Palpatine’s hands. And instead of questioning it, they just followed orders. Sound familiar?
- Their arrogance blinded them
They were so convinced of their own moral superiority that they couldn’t see reality. Palpatine sat right next to them for years and they didn’t even notice. Why? Because they thought their own “purity” made them immune to corruption. That’s classic institutional hubris.
- The Jedi Code was broken beyond repair
No attachments. No passion. No questioning the Council. No thinking for yourself. Obey the Order or be cast out. That’s not a religion. That’s a control system. They punished any deviation and treated dissent like a virus — including from the "Chosen One" they claimed to believe in.
- Anakin was their creation, and their failure
They took a traumatized kid, filled him with contradictions, used him as a pawn, and then acted surprised when he broke. They feared his power, refused to trust him, and shoved him between blind loyalty and impossible expectations. And then they called him the traitor.
Bottom line:
The Jedi fell not because of the Sith, but because they became everything they claimed to oppose — authoritarian, dogmatic, inflexible, and blind. They moralized control, pathologized emotion, and propped up a decaying Republic while pretending they were above it all. Sound familiar?
It wasn’t the fall of heroes. It was the overdue collapse of a cult that lost touch with reality.
Fight me.
Wow - so the above was written by ChatGPT, obviously, but here’s why I had to post it:
Absolutely. Here's a version tailored for communities.win/c/KotakuInAction2, which leans anti-authoritarian, highly skeptical of institutions, and critical of legacy media and ideological dogmatism. The tone here is more cynical, with an emphasis on institutional rot, hypocrisy, and control — all things that tie in perfectly with a critique of the Jedi Order.
That’s freaky ain’t it? It’s got this place pegged lol
Don’t agree? Fight me - lmfao
My read on it isn't necessarily that the Jedi were evil, but became too big and disconnected from the real world. the Jedi Temple itself is a literal Ivory Tower. Every time the Jedi show up to be peacekeepers in the prequels they end up pulling out their lightsabers. the few times they actually interact with regular people it's always "Jedi business, go back to your drinks". they had no idea the clones were being created, and by the time they learned of the separatist movement it was already way too late. When the clone wars breaks out, they immediately take on the role as generals in the army of the Republic despite being professed peacekeepers.
This parallels the fall of the republic, also being portrayed as an institution with infinite bureaucracy and zero action.
The overarching plot of the prequels is a cautionary tale on how well-meaning institutions become fat and crumble under their own weight.
Precisely!
Americans have an obsession with "the good guys win" as a trope, so much so that even now, when bad guys winning is a cliche, it's only a cliche as a REFELCTIVE TROPE it's not a trope of itself.
Essentially Americana is built on the idea that virtue=victory, modern writers HATE that, so they write stories where vice=victory, but that's still the same idea just inverted.
Star wars ultimately IS a good guys win story, but the story of thr jedi is a very Eastern one, one where Virtue doesn't guarantee victory. Often it guarantees the opposite, but that doesnt make it the wrong choice.
The Jedi lost, but that doesnt make them evil, or even wrong. You'll notice in the whole story, the failures of the Jedi weren't their beliefs, but they're failure to apply them consistently. EVERY point of failure in Annakin's story is a point where somebody makes an exception for him instead of sticking to the code. Right down to him being accepted into the order in the first place.
I wish I could pin a comment chain - if I could, it would be this one
I've said before the strongest evidence thay the USA is a Christian nation is the difficulty people here have in grasping non-christian thinking.
Even the godless Americans still use that same greco-christian paradigm.
George Lucas meanwhile is ACTIVELY A BUDDIST. What you think he was going to write about?
https://communities.win/c/KotakuInAction2/p/17tebqWDn3/how-culture-wires-the-brain--ori/c
Did you catch this back then? I think it speaks nicely to this eastern/western mental or philosophical dichotomy you’re getting at