I guess Poe Dameron is a leftist

I am taking this moment to note that plans being changed between Star Wars installments is nothing new. 

During The Empire Strikes Back, it seemed clear that the dominant romance of the first trilogy was Leia and Han. I still believe (or at least I hope) that no one had decided that Leia and Luke were twins yet when she planted that kiss on Luke to annoy Han and Luke sat back grinning.

Maybe making Rey the granddaughter of Palpatine to make her a dyad with Kylo Ren was important to give their "love" extra credence, but it was also part of a larger trend of making the series less woke.

Perhaps if we get back to the kid with the broom, he is descended from Count Dooku. 

(I guess the Sith aren't celibate.)

Charting the regression from where The Force Awakens starts to how The Rise of Skywalker ends....

• The amazing new force-having person is in fact descended from other powerful people with the force, just not the ones we like.
• Rose Tico will be sidelined.
• It is so imperative that Poe be straight that Keri Russell gets shoehorned in for a hot minute to give him a potential romance. Then two barely seen women kiss to appease those disappointed that Poe and Finn don't end up together.

I say that as someone who did not really pick up that vibe between Poe and Finn, but Commander D'Acy having a wife (a Black wife no less) who had not appeared in the other movies on was one more thing that felt forced.

Sure, there was a lot of online hate. The main cast was a woman, a Black man, and a LatinX man. Trolls objected to all of that, but in a series that is ultimately about the triumph of light over dark, good over evil, you're not supposed to give into the trolls. 

Then, when you try and appease the trolls without admitting even to yourself that you are doing it, it might lead to lower quality writing and plot points that don't feel organic.

If you don't admit it because there is a part of you that doesn't feel right when the hero is not a white man, you might overly favor the leading white guy. 

You might also find the not-Black guy close enough, and overly favor him.

Poe's refusal to trust that the women in charge led to a lot of deaths and loss that such a small force couldn't afford. . 

Oscar Isaac has charm and charisma in spades -- so you want to like him -- but there still should have been a reckoning. 

His plotting happened more during The Last Jedi, defying orders for a counterattack that takes a lot of lives early on, then sending Finn and Rose on the pointless Canto Bight mission and starting a mutiny toward the end. Maybe Rian Johnson would have dealt with that if he had done the last film, but there was enough mess in The Last Jedi to not think that's the answer.

Yes, you would not expect the Resistance to be as domineering as the First Order, but defying orders and mutiny tend to have severe punishments. There are good reasons for that, just as there are good reasons for there being exceptions if the orders are go against laws and ethics. However, "I think I know better than you" may not fit under that.

At some point there should have been guilt and anguish, even shunning by others, for arrogantly assuming that he knew better and the damage he caused.

It might be hard for a white male director to conceive of such a thing. 

Looking at the podbros, they are still insisting that Biden had dementia and Harris would have been exactly as abusive as Trump. that their reasoning was good, and they did not cause any damage, and show that they would rather go all out on supporting rich boys with Nazi tattoos than someone who understands governance, hard work, and commitment.

Being truly heroic requires listening and learning, not just being really passionate and having participated in something good before.