Would the Force even WORK in our galaxy?

[Praeothmin]

Then you're about the only one who doesn't: it was like the central theme of Eps. II and III.

Actually, the central them was the Jedi's ability to use the Force'S clairvoyance, or "prescience", that was affected...

From Yoda, in AotC:

Yoda: Hmmm. The Dark Side clouds everything. Impossible to see, the future is.

And later:

Yoda: Blind we are, if the creation of this clone army we could not see.
Mace Windu: I think it is time to inform the Senate that our ability to use the Force has diminished.

So while they did indeed mention the diminution of their Force powers, it seems pretty cleat that they mean their "prescience", not the rest.
At no point in the movies we here things like "Oh, if we still were as powerful as before, I wouldn't be struggling against these droids", or other remarks like this.

And Palpatine was a very cunning person, and clearly used that cunning to do most of his gains in power.
He only used the Dark Side to cloud the ability of the Jedi to foresee things, but his political manipulations were clear for us viewers, and he did so without the Force...

[Mike DiCenso]

Something to add here. The earlier discussion about Obi-Wan versu Jango Fett reminded me that that is not the only instance where we see him going up against a Mandalore warrior. In TCW's "Duchess of Mandalore" Satine and Obi-Wan are ambushed by a Death Watch assassin, and as seen here in this video, the assassin holds his own quite well against Obi-Wan, even disarming him in close quarters hand-to-hand combat until Satine manages to retrieve Obi's lightsaber and return it to him.
-Mike

[KirkSkyWalker]

Then you're about the only one who doesn't: it was like the central theme of Eps. II and III.

From Yoda, in AotC:

Yoda: Hmmm. The Dark Side clouds everything. Impossible to see, the future is.

And later:

Yoda: Blind we are, if the creation of this clone army we could not see.
Mace Windu: I think it is time to inform the Senate that our ability to use the Force has diminished.

So while they did indeed mention the diminution of their Force powers, it seems pretty cleat that they mean their "prescience", not the rest.
At no point in the movies we here things like "Oh, if we still were as powerful as before, I wouldn't be struggling against these droids", or other remarks like this.

And Palpatine was a very cunning person, and clearly used that cunning to do most of his gains in power.He only used the Dark Side to cloud the ability of the Jedi to foresee things, but his political manipulations were clear for us viewers, and he did so without the Force.

You can't separate the two. If the Jedi can normally see the creation of a lone army on a planet, then they would likewise have been able to see all of his manipulations behind his divide-and-conquer strategy; and so the Dark Side is a very powerful ability in allowing Palpatine to hide all that Sith-activity from them by disguising it as mere separatism-- just like he made them think tht the attempts on Padme's life were separatist assassins, and he used their failure to advantage as well.

So there's no doubt that Palpatine was a political genius and master, but the point is that he couldn't have done it without using the Dark Side.

And likewise after he attained power, he maintained it for like 30 years via his
omniscience/prescience whatever, and was only undone by all of the remaining Jedi working against him-- including Anakin.

[Mike DiCenso]

It's that whole "Bringing balance to the Force" thing that's responsible for everything that happened. The Force, whatever it actually is, decided up and one day to to kill off most of the Jedi, and eventually completely wipe out the Sith. Darth Sidious/Palpatine was merely the main tool in that scheme, which not only resulted in the deaths of nearly 10,000 Jedi and their padawan and Youngling learners, but also billions of innocent bystander sapients all around the galaxy in decades of war and oppression.
-Mike

[Lucky]

No, in fanon the UFP is a spineless, peace at any cost "space hippies" who have no idea what a real war is, or how to properly fight one because the series tries to work things out diplomatically, and avoid blood shed. The wars are near constant from what I've seen of Trek, but in the background.

Maybe under Picard, when Star Trek definitely devolved into leftist morals of elite "doormat" pacifism, and condescending, touchy-feely preaching that it's "the lesser of two evils" blah blah blah like they were talking down to the audience in a "Barney" manner as if they were 2-year old children. Disgusting.

However under the original Trek, Kirk represented a moral of using force when necessary, but only when the objective was toward preserving populism vs. dictatorship. That's why when Khan tried to "save humanity" by taking over the Enterprise with his army, no one would follow him; even though the senior officers admired him from the past (in a way that Spock found shocking and disturbing), they were still against his ways in the present out of a belief in individual freedom.
For this reason, the Federation likewise does not allow conscription; when McCoy says "I was drafted" in STI:TMP, he was being facetious, according to Roddenberry in the novelization.

We will have to disagree then. If the UFP was like that then many of the surrounding powers would have eaten them alive, and we know the UFP has at least fought every other power in the area to a stand still if not won the wars at one time or another, and some of those wars are happening during the series, or have just ended.

The worlds in Star Wars on the other hand is far more like the fanon UFP. They think three million soldiers is a large army for a Galactic power like the Republic to have. 10,000 jedi was all that was really needed to police at least 100,000 worlds.

The worlds policed themselves, the Jedi were just there to keep peace between them. However here it was more like 1984, where a small illuminati "Big Brother" Jedi could watch over everyone-- and dispatch the Jedi to "resolve" any problems.

Or it's just really peaceful. During the Clone Wars we almost never see these native forces, and on Naboo the military seemed to just be the royal guard armed with pistols, and a sports car with an RPG mounted on it.

The Republic really should have had a military of it's own if only to deal with pirates. It's not like there aren't other powers that would be happy to attack it.

You mean Jar-Jar? Palpatine carefully arranged for that-- he needed an idiot-senator who'd do whatever he needed, while he got Padme out of the way, at the same time setting her up with Anakin to make him more suseptible to the Dark Side.
It's not the first time that a ruthless conniving tyrant appointed a "useless idiot" to power-- in fact Papa Joe Stalin built his empire on doing just that, as did many others.

I meant the senators we see in general. I seem to recall a group of them wanting to cut military spending when the fighting was at it's worst during the clone wars, and if they had written the bill that put Palpatine in charge carefully his legal reign would have ended with the clone wars.

Again, this was all Palpatine's doing, by using the Dark Side to keep the Jedi from seeing what he was up to; however it's exactly what happened in the history of real-world politics, via "divide and conquer" strategy of a covert dictator destabilizing peace and creating fear on one hand, while agitating for war on the other.It's an age-old story.

I find the whole thing more believable if he won because he was not using the force.

So you're saying that everything that the series claimed is untrue, with regard to the Dark Side clouding the judgment of the Jedi Council, and rendering then unable to use the Force.

I don't recall anything being said about the Dark Side clouding the judgment of the Jedi Council.

Then you're about the only one who doesn't: it was like the central theme of Eps. II and III.

As for Star Wars people being stupid for being fooled by the Sith, the same thing happened right here under the Whigs. Iit's easy to criticize, when it happens to someone else in 20/20 hindsight of fiction; meanwhile ironically you yourself probably fail to recognize identically ruthess politicians who use "The Dark Side" of politics under the same rationalizations of pragmatism, whether their first name is Palpatine or Abraham; both lied out o both sides of their ass in the finest traition of Machiavelian prgamatism.

I just don't see a reason to attribute the events to a supernatural force when things could have just as easily been done in a mundane way.

There is no reason to assume magic when the mundane fits just as well, or better.

I didn't "assume" anything, it was stated quite clearly and expressly in the dialogue of the Jedi Council. I have no idea how you could have missed that central theme; it's like watching "The Crying Game" and not knowing that THAT WOMAN IS A MAN, BABY!

I find people always using the force to explain why characters are incompetent, or stupid to be very annoying as it assumes that suddenly when off screen they will be 100% more effective. We are never given any reason to think the behavior we see in the series is anything, but what is the norm.

The Jedi were only limited in very minor if to them noticeable ways such as not being able to see events weeks in advance.

[KirkSkyWalker]

It's that whole "Bringing balance to the Force" thing that's responsible for everything that happened. The Force, whatever it actually is, decided up and one day to to kill off most of the Jedi, and eventually completely wipe out the Sith. Darth Sidious/Palpatine was merely the main tool in that scheme, which not only resulted in the deaths of nearly 10,000 Jedi and their padawan and Youngling learners, but also billions of innocent bystander sapients all around the galaxy in decades of war and oppression.
-Mike

Whether the Force used Palpatine, or Palpatine used the force, it's all part of the same animal when it comes to whether or not the Force would work in our galaxy.
In my original Fanfic here, I said that the midichlorians were a race of collectively-intelligent parasite that had infested the entire SW galaxy-- just like the ones who killed Kirk's brother in "Operation: Annhilate!"
These parasites likewise created the Force via channelling every being's bio-electric energy, as well as being able to monitor every being's thoughts and changes in it (emotions etc).
This created Force-powers, as well as omniscience and prescience; likewise, the midichlorian parasites would divide-and-conquer by keeping their hosts in conflict in orer to feed off their emotions, and to keep them from getting wise-- another reason why they have no doctors or radiation-treatments, only medical droids and "bacta" which won't harm the midichlorians.

If these spread to our galaxy, then it might be too late to stop them, and the Federation might have to travel back to the SW galaxy in order to nip this problem in the bud.

[KirkSkyWalker]

under the original Trek, Kirk represented a moral of using force when necessary, but only when the objective was toward preserving populism vs. dictatorship. That's why when Khan tried to "save humanity" by taking over the Enterprise with his army, no one would follow him; even though the senior officers admired him from the past (in a way that Spock found shocking and disturbing), they were still against his ways in the present out of a belief in individual freedom.
For this reason, the Federation likewise does not allow conscription; when McCoy says "I was drafted" in STI:TMP, he was being facetious, according to Roddenberry in the novelization.

We will have to disagree then. If the UFP was like that then many of the surrounding powers would have eaten them alive, and we know the UFP has at least fought every other power in the area to a stand still if not won the wars at one time or another, and some of those wars are happening during the series, or have just ended.

What part of “using force when necessary,” do you not understand?

The worlds policed themselves, the Jedi were just there to keep peace between them. However here it was more like 1984, where a small illuminati "Big Brother" Jedi could watch over everyone-- and dispatch the Jedi to "resolve" any problems.

Or it's just really peaceful.

As Spock said, “and as little freedom,” with the Jedi Council monitoring everyone every move, thought and action to see if it’s in accord with “the Force—“ even before they do it. (“Minority Report,” anyone?)

During the Clone Wars we almost never see these native forces, and on Naboo the military seemed to just be the royal guard armed with pistols, and a sports car with an RPG mounted on it.

TCW is EU; and on Naboo these forces were enough before Darth Sidious forced the Trade Federation and other worlds into separatism and blockades etc.

Again, this was all Palpatine's doing, by using the Dark Side to keep the Jedi from seeing what he was up to; however it's exactly what happened in the history of real-world politics, via "divide and conquer" strategy of a covert dictator destabilizing peace and creating fear on one hand, while agitating for war on the other.It's an age-old story.

I find the whole thing more believable if he won because he was not using the force.

Then you must not believe that the Jedi Council had any ability to sense such actions through the Force—in spite of what Yoda and Mace Windu expressly stated; as usual, you choose to ignore it.
If they could have normally seen the creation of the Clone Army on Kamino, then it would be impossible for Palpatine to win without using the Force to hide his actions.

I didn't "assume" anything, it was stated quite clearly and expressly in the dialogue of the Jedi Council. I have no idea how you could have missed that central theme; it's like watching "The Crying Game" and not knowing that THAT WOMAN IS A MAN, BABY!

I find people always using the force to explain why characters are incompetent, or stupid to be very annoying as it assumes that suddenly when off screen they will be 100% more effective.

It’s even worse when you refuse to accept DIRECT STATEMENTS by the characters themselves, such as regarding their ability to sense things under normal circumstances, and that the Jedi Council had maintained peace and order in the galactic republic for thousands of years, before the Sith suddenly returned and caused the war.

We are never given any reason to think the behavior we see in the series is anything, but what is the norm.

Except THOSE STATEMENTS.

The Jedi were only limited in very minor if to them noticeable ways such as not being able to see events weeks in advance.

Excuse me? The Clone Army was created and undergoing development for TEN YEARS, and they didn’t sense a THING.

[Praeothmin]

You can't separate the two. If the Jedi can normally see the creation of a lone army on a planet, then they would likewise have been able to see all of his manipulations behind his divide-and-conquer strategy; and so the Dark Side is a very powerful ability in allowing Palpatine to hide all that Sith-activity from them by disguising it as mere separatism-- just like he made them think tht the attempts on Padme's life were separatist assassins, and he used their failure to advantage as well.

So there's no doubt that Palpatine was a political genius and master, but the point is that he couldn't have done it without using the Dark Side.

And likewise after he attained power, he maintained it for like 30 years via his
omniscience/prescience whatever, and was only undone by all of the remaining Jedi working against him-- including Anakin.

I agree that Palpatine did use the Force to cloud the Jedi's senses, or the Force allowed him to do so as Mike said, which is why I said this:

He only used the Dark Side to cloud the ability of the Jedi to foresee things, but his political manipulations were clear for us viewers, and he did so without the Force

But he was indeed a cunning Politician, and ascribing all his victories to the Force is basically saying he cannot do anything without it.
Problem is, he turned Anakin by playing on his fears, not through the Force.
He organised everything that happened in the "seccession" through his cunning, not the Force.
He himself was unable to see everything, as when he declared on Endor that "everything is happening as I've foreseen" while his troops were getting slaughtered by Teddy Bears.
He wasn't even able to foresee the destruction of his first DS either, so he was not so reliant on the Force as he was on his cunning, and later the fear he put into people's hearts...

[Lucky]

What part of “using force when necessary,” do you not understand?

Then why argue a point you agree with?

As Spock said, “and as little freedom,” with the Jedi Council monitoring everyone every move, thought and action to see if it’s in accord with “the Force—“ even before they do it. (“Minority Report,” anyone?)

You give force users to much credit. They are never shown to be able to easily do what you are suggesting.

Agian there are only 10,000 of them, and at least 100,000 locations with problems they will need to deal with.

TCW is EU;

It out ranks and overrules the EU.

and on Naboo these forces were enough before Darth Sidious forced the Trade Federation and other worlds into separatism and blockades etc.

Their best weapons were not up to the task of fending off a bunch freighters with a few weapons tacked on. They were ripe for the pickings.

Then you must not believe that the Jedi Council had any ability to sense such actions through the Force—in spite of what Yoda and Mace Windu expressly stated; as usual, you choose to ignore it.
If they could have normally seen the creation of the Clone Army on Kamino, then it would be impossible for Palpatine to win without using the Force to hide his actions.

Neither group needed the force really to do what is seen oin the movies, and TV series., and again what you are suggesting has been shown to be unreliable at best.

It’s even worse when you refuse to accept DIRECT STATEMENTS by the characters themselves, such as regarding their ability to sense things under normal circumstances, and that the Jedi Council had maintained peace and order in the galactic republic for thousands of years, before the Sith suddenly returned and caused the war.

We see them sense things just fine. What ever was being effected was not a power they needed to do there jobs.

Except THOSE STATEMENTS.

The Jedi's powers were not weakened beyond some very minor and unreliable powers.

The Jedi/Sith's rep does not match reality.

Excuse me? The Clone Army was created and undergoing development for TEN YEARS, and they didn’t sense a THING.

Seeing the future is an unreliable power in the best of times, as is knowing there is something of importence happening just down the block.