Because they are approaching a target that has pretty heavy firepower and they lack consistent cover, smaller vehicles like the bikes on Endor are not a good option. For something really big -- and therefore somewhat slower, though still faster than AT-ATs, there is the question of repulsors kicking up snow in its own face, which would make return fire difficult. It also might just crush the snow into water (it's fake science, so we don't know how it would react) which would make it very bad at dealing with deep snow.

"So why not just bomb the base from the sky?" Well a) I think they did but b) the armor issue and c) they had to reach the ground at some point. AT-ATs are dumb and tacky but, if you have access to all the general types of vehicles we've seen in the series, I think they are the best choice.

Is that a motherfucking Office reference?

Holy shit, this guy gives it a dramatic title and tells you his life story just to say "Obama's bank bailouts were more important to the economy than deficit hawking and the free market". The Friedman one is even worse. Fuck the NYT.

Definitely one to archive

If the rebels are Vietcong, then having them found Socialist Space Vietnam would be pretty neat

Just like the first X-Men movie, named Logan

He's not the main character in any movie but Phantom Menace and there's never even a discussion of his heritage. It's not at all like Rey's "orphan MC trying to find out who their real parents were" thing.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was reminded of Kirby doing 9/11

On the good side you left out Luke realizing the Jedi Order orthodoxy about how the Force works and relates to morality. The twist with Rey's lack of pedigree however is so cool relative to the series that it probably counts for three points.

On the bad side you left out the general pacing, Leia's weird floating scene, and the movie being too fucking long overall.

The AT-STs consistently eat shit, tbf

You're really shortselling Seven Samurai there. It had some silly plot elements, but I generally think it was much more thoughtful than Star Wars of all things.

I think the AT-ATs are slightly justified in the context they are first used in, that being: deep snow, heavy snowfall, facing artillery fire. It doesn't fully make sense, but the long legs to carry a hard shell over deep snow and have a decent vantage point for firing at relatively distant targets isn't awful. They did more or less overrun their target with nothing more than some tie fighter support, iirc

A lot of people want to use their platform for good. They just don't want to use "too much" of it for that and/or don't have a very coherent idea of what "good" is.

Oh, I was just speaking offhand because the list is pretty extensive, but I guess it is missing things.

Judeobolshevism but Chinese instead of Jewish this time, to complement the Judeobolshevism that is Russian instead of Jewish this time.

Tbf, Berserk did that with Guts being angry murderman and then having a prequel arc showing how he became angry muderman, and it's considered iconic (though the initial arc is obviously pretty weak)

Did you direct him to Lucas saying the former?

That makes sense, I'm just worried about flailing, especially if Trump wins again or something and then the decisions, while not totally unconstrained, will be much less reasonable in terms of realpolitik.

Sorry for double-commenting

As a low-effort addition, I'll remind you that this list exists:

https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md

So you can go through this looking at events starting from about the '70s, looking at all the wacky adventures Dems were involved in, e.g. Obama having Grenada coup'd

But this is more specifically the kind of thing you seem to be looking for:

https://www.btrtoday.com/read/featured/nancy-pelosi-knew-bush-lied-about-iraq/

Also just get anything you want about Obama's bank bailouts, since that one is very widely reported.

https://www.reuters.com/article/obama-abortion/obama-says-abortion-rights-law-not-a-top-priority-idUKN2946642020090430