PT If you were Mace Windu, which three Jedi would you take with you to confront Palpatine?

"No no you will die" in defense of the guy who showed nothing but disrespect to Anakin his entire life. Whom Palpatine managed to shake confidance with. Through his entire life Palaptine was his friend and Windu was quite frankly not kind and distrustful. But, Anakin is not empty headed. Had he gone with Windu to arrest Palps then Palps would not have been able to react as he did.

you misunderstand what I'm saying

Palpatine: I can save lives, even your wife

then *I'll pretend to be weak to get him on side*

would make any normal person think: you were feeding me bull earlier about being so great, why should i help you out now?

"IF THE JEDI DESTROY ME, ANY CHANCE OF SAVING HER WILL BE LOST!"

If someone told me they have the power to make my girlfriend immune from death, I would jump at the chance to have that power which is exactly how Anakin felt after PalpSidious told him that Darth Plagueis story. Anakin didn't have the time or patience to figure out if PalpSidious was toying with his feelings because weak or strong, Anakin believes that PalpSidious has the key to saving Padme's life and he wasn't going to let Mace take that opportunity away from him.

You'd chop off someone's arm and then slaughter thousands of people (your comrades in arms), including little kids, for that chance?

All because someone told you they could make your girlfriend immune from death?

Cool.

Well, I wouldn't really go that far because unlike Anakin, I know that there's no power to cheat death.

I think if Anakin were the least bit capable of/willing to invoke rational thought at that point, he might have at least asked Palpatine to elaborate on his so-called ability to cheat death before selling his soul to join him.

Unfortunately Anakin's fear of loss was extreme enough to make him insane, and Palpatine knew exactly which of Anakin's buttons to push.

He actually didn't seem insane right After becoming a Sith, when Palps was giving him orders. So I don't think so..

But at that stage he had given into his fear too many times, and was far enough in to feel selling his soul was the easiest way out. I think some people overlook the intoxicating aspect of the darkside. He had used the darkside enough times to fall completely under Palpatine's spell.
The darkside can arguably be related to insanity. Perhaps he wasn't insane, but he was definitely strained, stressed, and desperate. Then he had helped kill a Jedi Master and the darkside was seemingly the answer.

I don't know. Darth Vader in ANH didn't seem insane at all and he was "a master of evil" aka the dark side. He was very rational and composed

That was twenty years later- he'd had time to develop a tolerance for the drug.

"Rational and composed" does not equal sane. And nothing about Anakin/Vader in ROTS was rational. If he were rational, he would not have believed Palpatine could stop death with no more proof than his word, and he certainly would not have believed that attacking the Temple would give him the power to stop death.

But a belief in dark side abilities is not exactly irrational, given that dark side abilities are known to exist; in EU the dark side does eventually provide the ability to "stop death", assuming the practitioner is talented and committed enough.

As Palpatine mentioned, these dark side abilities are not stories the Jedi would tell him. I understand that he felt close to Palpatine, however, the lengths that he was willing to go--attacking and killing the people he had lived with and called "family" for ten years--simply because Palpatine said it would make him powerful enough to stop death? There is nothing rational or sane about that.

Yes, he was desperate, and it was exactly that desperation that made him insane.

And Anakin was never a rational person even in his best moments; I'm surprised that people are arguing that he was being rational at his worst.

Insanity does not take away his responsibility for his choices; he still made those choices. Insanity merely explains why.

He's seen a Sith use lightning. He knows that dark side abilities exist, aside from the mere fact that there is no particular logical reason that they should not exist. And the story that the Jedi "wouldn't" tell him - the supposed legend - is actually the recounting of a relatively recent event which they weren't around to witness and thus didn't know about in the first place, while I doubt they refused to tell him about the encounters with darksiders that presumably appear in old Jedi records.

I'm not saying it wasn't a long shot or desperate. But he seemed to be presented with only one possible option to save Padme. Everything boiled down to what Palpatine said: If the Jedi destroy me, any chance of saving her will be lost. As such it was a rational, though immoral, decision.

To say Anakin was insane is a disservice to those who are actually insane,

Insane people can't suddenly switch it on and off, and said people wouldn't have made the choice he did at the end of ROTJ
because of the love of his son, it doesn't work that way, Anakin made conscious decisions.

I never said Anakin didn't make conscience decisions. I said that insanity led him to make those decisions. Are you arguing that he was in his right mind at the midpoint of ROTS? I don't see how that is possible.

Insanity has more than one image. I'm not a psychiatrist, but my best guess is that Anakin was suffering from a type of PTSD from both the war and the loss of his mother (not to mention the brutal way that she died) and it made him paranoid and delusional.

I'd say it does a disservice to insane people to assume that they are incapable of making the decision that Anakin made at the end of ROTJ. Why would a mentally ill person not be capable of rescuing his son?

I don't think "insane" is the best term, nor do I think that any comparison to mental illness is really apt. The general idea of mental illness is that they have some actual barrier to thinking or acting rationally. As I understand the film, Anakin is perfectly capable of rational decision-making. He simply makes a willful decision to do something irrational in that one instance.

being insane and having a mental illness are not exclusive

I could do loooong post on why insane people don't have rational thought, but this isn't the thread

this

I accept the argument that "insane" isn't the best word and as I said, I'm not a professional in the mental health field and I'm not in a place to diagnose anyone. But as far as Anakin being capable of rational thought, I disagree. Anakin was never rational even on his best days. He certainly would not be at his most desperate hour (as he sees it). And turning rational thought on and off is harder for some personality types than others.

I'm sure there was a part of him that was capable of stepping back and looking at the situation rationally, but Palpatine, by knowing exactly which buttons to push, ensured that that part was deeply buried. He played on Anakin's fear of loss and his growing paranoia, and unfortunately he played well.