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The only reason people have come to this uncharitable view of the Jedi Order is because George Lucas is not a good writer. Simple as that.
Sorry to cut out most of what you said, but that would be too long.
The Jedi have fallen from their high point and are now struggling and sacrifices have been made. Their teaching relies on avoidance rather than learning how to resist the dark side. Their missions have become more political - controlled by the Senate and Chancellor - than moral (going to help where they are needed). The Clone Wars are the final nail in their coffin because it emphasizes everything they are trapped into doing. And they get destroyed for it.
I don’t think it is the writing, at least not this part. I think this is all pretty clear. If there is nothing wrong with the Jedi, why do they need the Chosen One to come and balance things? We are left to imagine how the Jedi would have been before all this in their glory days. But the PT does not depict their glory days, it pictures them in decline and clinging to traditions and that is included in the films.
Please explain your distinction between avoidance and resistance. That just doesn’t make any sense. If you’re talking about temptation, avoidance is legitimately the best strategy FOR resistance. It’s better to prevent a situation or avoid getting into a situation than to intentionally put yourself near it and grit your teeth and focus really hard on not doing it. But the Jedi absolutely also teach how to do that if you’re in the situation. That’s the point. That’s why they’re always talking about clearing their minds, and meditating.
Sometimes the political missions are the moral missions. If they were sent out to free slaves, that would absolutely be a political mission as well. We don’t really know the details of what their missions look like anyway, or what most Jedi are up to outside of Coruscant. For all we know, they’re serving the people perfectly well.
The Chosen One isn’t to balance the Jedi, it’s to balance the Force, which in some way involves destroying the Sith. The idea is vague and not explained well, but at the very least it doesn’t say anything about getting rid of the Jedi or fixing them.
The PT does depict their glory days. According to Lucas, that was the point of Duel of the Fates being so different from the OT duels. They’re at the height of their abilities, so they’re doing all kinds of flips and whatsits and have faster choreography.
Avoidance vs. Resistance. When you are teaching someone and you don’t want them to do things you teach them to avoid them. You focus on that. But when you want to teach someone how to get along in the real world and you don’t want them to do something, you teach them the dangers in detail. You give them the tools and knowledge to know what the dangers are and how to avoid them by resisting the temptation to do something that might make sense in one situation. In the case of the Jedi, if you don’t want them to give in to fear or anger or hate, you need to teach them what fear, anger, and hate are, and how to avoid fear turning into anger and how to keep anger from turning into hate. We see this in TPM with Obi-wan. Qui-gon dies and Obi-wan acts in anger (he skips fear). For him to avoid going further down that path, he needs the teaching (which is sometimes instinctual and for others it is not). The same thing happens with Luke in ROTJ. Both avoid taking it any further. Both resist the temptation and recenter. Ankin is not able to do this. His anger takes control and the hate sets in. He was not given the tools he needed. Even though they sense several times that he is edging the wrong way. They sense he is in danger and they do nothing to help him. A good teacher (or master) would address the situation with Anakin and make sure he had the teachings he needed.
So basically, teaching avoidance is good for things that you are certain to be able to avoid. If situations can arise where total avoidance is not possible, you need to teach to resist. So for general students, teaching to avoid the dark side might be all you need. Drilling into younglings and Padawans that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, and that all leads to the dark side might give them the ability to resist just by virtual of persistent training. Anakin starts late. He hasn’t had as much time. A good teacher would know how to adapt the teaching. Yoda should know how to adapt and be able to advise Obi-wan on what to do. But instead there is a total failure to provide Anakin any additional teaching to keep him from being tempted by the dark side. He has been taught the theory without the tools to resist a real world test.
