What the hell are posts 56 and 57 talking about?
I forget, are we still talking about Star Wars or is this a real-lfe political thread?
Sailboat
The political situation in Florence when Machiavelli wrote “The Prince”.
Posts #39 & #50.
Gotcha ya!
Bane was never a Jedi. He was originally a force user who was picked up by the Sith and trained. He might have not become a monster had he not fallen into their laps, but c’est la vie.
Secondly, it’s not clear that Machiavelli was actually the “manipulative evil genius” we think of today. His principles can be summed as “do what you must to get what you need.” This was not bad advice to the Borgias, who tended to a little toward cruelty, selfishness, and wantonness in their affairs (sometimes literally 
). He wasn’t advocating absolute immorality, only doing neccessary limited actions to preserve yourself in a sane manner against unscrupulous men; he recognized that outright evil was self-defeating and tended to create more problems than it solved.