Hey, it's me. said:

It gets to me when I hear 'Palpatine cleverly manipulated the Senate and fooled the Jedi'. No he didnt. Anyone with half a brain cell can see that. This civilisation is so clever they've mastered space travel, built fantastic planet sized cities, numerous species harmoniously interact with one another. But noone amongst them was savvy enough to studiously watch the increasingly and openly suspicious Palpatine? Corruption is rife amongst the Senate. Is it really? And how do you know this? Why are you not reporting who is corrupt and allowing the Jedi to investigate and deal with these corrupt senators? You obviously seem to know a lot, so come on, give us the full SP.

I agree with this. That Palpatine was able to deceive so many people is a huge stretch. People sometimes refer to the shroud of the dark side of the force clouding people's judgment, but to me that's just a lazy explanation (or lack of explanation) for the sheer stupidity of all the people in Coruscant, the Senate, the Jedi Order, etc.

I grew up thinking the Jedi Order was this group of badasses who were in touch with common people and protected them from oppression. They could have been like magistrate judges. In reality they were a bunch of boring, narcissistic fools who just sat around doing nothing but waiting 10+ years for answers to magically come to them. A bunch of lazy, uninspired dolts who thought doing nothing was the best approach.

Then again, all this bears striking similarity to how we deal with political and social issues in our culture and world. Maybe Lucas really is a genius and we just haven't seen it. ;)