Okay, can we please talk about how UTTERLY SHITTY it was to give Anakin a mission where he not only had to deal with slavery, but where he was in the position of coaching Ahsoka on being a slave? It's such a horrible thing to make him do; even worse than making him rescue a Hutt to secure an alliance with Jaba.
404: Jedi Compassion Not Found.
#another for fucking real#I’m absolutely sure it was teach Anakin something#like letting go of his feelings about slavery#because the jedi seem to be as into the technique of flooding as fucking cesar milan is#for those of you who don’t know:#flooding is as pleasant (and effective pfft) as it sounds#it’s not just exposing a person or animal to a phobia/trigger/negative experience that frightens or angers or otherwise severely affects#but throwing them into it and forcing them to stay in it/experience it/deal with it until they stop fighting it and reacting to it#usually the victim of this extremely harmful and denounced psychological technique stops not because they’ve seen that the thing cannot#harm them anymore but because they’ve psychologically cracked and submitted entirely to the fear/disgust/pain etc#they’re now too damaged to even react to the stimuli and/or situation and/or memory not healed or cured or better in any fucking way.#But they won’t react negatively anymore!#Until they do.#And it’s nasty and violent every time.#So yes totally a Jedi technique I’m sure.(via)
I’m still wondering if making Anakin part of the Jabba mission wasn’t the biggest dick move of the two. Yes the mission to Zigerria was more traumatic, but at least the purpose of the mission is ostensibly to do what Anakin became a Jedi for, to free slaves.
With Jabba they’re making him complicit in an alliance with slavers, with the same slavers that held him and his people in bondage. I can’t imagine how much that would have fucked him up.
Good point, especially since Anakin actually says that exact same thing during the mission.
Honestly, the whole movie is basically a test to see how compliant Anakin can be in the face of things he finds objectionable. Anakin doesn’t want a padawan. Let’s see if we can force him into taking one against his will. Anakin doesn’t think we should ally with hutts and slavers. Let’s make him personally cement the alliance by telling him it’s for the Greater Good. The last, I suspect, was arranged by Sheev to see how far he could bend Anakin’s moral compass and also set up the whole ‘the Jedi are evil’ mentality, but the first was pure Yoda.
Crap I can’t remember exactly what happened. I distinctly remember Palpatine pushing for the alliance when others (can’t remember f it was the Jedi, senators or both) were reluctant, and I can’t remember if he was the one who suggested to send Obi-Wan and Anakin on that mission.
But in any case, the Council did agree he was a good choice because I remember one of them saying something along the line of his prior experience with the Hutts could be useful (which made me swear at my screen).
And it is totally part of where the Jedi walked right in Palpatine’s hand. They spent 13 years teaching Anakin he should obey order over listening to his own moral compass because it was “for the greater good”. I guess it never occurred to them it might be turned against them one day.
Setting aside moral qualms in favor of the Greater Good of people in power is pretty much the Jedi way. It’s not just Anakin who does it. In fact, Anakin is one of the few who occasionally manages to do the right thing in defiance of orders. See the Malevolence arc and the Geonosis arc for details. He just get increasingly brow-beaten into compliance over the course of the series until he fully submits himself to Palpatine’s authority in RotS.
Every single one of the Jedi makes moral compromise after moral compromise during the course of the war and it ultimately gets them all killed. It starts with Mace and the Council going along with Yoda’s plan hide that they didn’t know about the Clone Army from the Senate and just picks up steam from there. Depa overrides her objection to commanding an army. The entire council and Anakin agree to conceal what they know about the Clone Army. And it kills them. By not coming clean or really even investigating, they set themselves up to be killed in Order 66. And that’s not even getting into the small compromises, the times they looked the other way from injustice, or made an unsavory alliance, or any of the other things they did that helped the average citizen feel their deaths were justified.
Yup, ultimately, the Jedi Order fell not because Anakin turned but because they tied their own noose around their own neck. The Republic fell pretty much the same way, And the people at the top of both only realized the noose was a noose when it started strangling them.
Palpatine was very good at that, I bet he did the same thing to the Separatists.
This doesn’t at all absolve anakin for what he did cuz he did a lotta shit but it really paints him as a pawn in the schemes of the Jedi and palpatine. Even though all the choices he made were set up he still chose to do them.
No one is denying Anakin made mistakes or that he is responsible for his actions. The point here is that even if Anakin hadn’t acted as he did, they were still doomed. Anakin was the weapon used to destroy the Jedi not the reason they were destroyed. The downfall of the Jedi started long before Anakin was even born. Palpatine had been manipulating the galaxy since he was young man. And he only succeeded because the Order was already broken due its own internal issues. He didn’t corrupt the Jedi Order. He used their corruption against them.
The failings of the Jedi Order are part of the reason Anakin fell. But Anakin is not the main reason why the Jedi were destroyed. As long as Palpatine was alive and in charge, the Jedi were doomed. If Anakin hadn’t been there, Palpatine would have used someone else to do his dirty work.