I bet if you zoomed out of that photo you'd find a beer in Hax's hand.

If they had any shame, they would simply call themselves channelers instead of Aes Sedai.

Well, "Aes Sedai" means "Servants of All" in the Old Tongue, so the name really is quite noble in origin. So you can understand how you'd cling to that if you want people to trust you.

Edit: I'd also like to add that I don't think Cadsuane is stupid. I think she's bloody brilliant, as Luckers evidenced. I also think she would fail miserably in her pursuits due to her own pride. A failing that most Aes Sedai have, and that she is no exception to. Due to those two, I've never really been able to make up my mind about her. On the one hand, I can respect her cunning and knowledge. On the other hand, I can't respect her arrogance which shows through in her interactions with everyone.

You want to compare her to Moiraine, but somehow you ignore the fact that while Cads mission may be roughly simuliar to Moiraine's, she is dealing with a Rand that is litereally 5x as unstable, untrusting, and nearly insane.

Actually...I believe I did mention that. And pointed to it as a reason why Cadsuane should be even more careful around Rand than Moiraine was.

She chose a path that I think is entirely destructive and any success on her part is due to Min's prophecy staying Rand's hand rather than her own brilliance.

I'm going to take Leigh Butler's side on this:

Cadsuane: speaking of annoyance. Although, the thing about her is, the reason she’s so annoying is because nine times out of ten she is absolutely right about whatever she says or does, and most of her actions (as I’ve said before) would be accounted awesome had they been performed by any other character. You’ll note that she was the one to react instantly when the Red sister was attacked, for example. It’s just the WAY she says or does things that makes me want to gnash my teeth.

 

And actually, now that I look at it, my annoyance with her behavior is pretty much specifically limited to the way she treats Rand. Her telling Toram to shut up was actually really funny (“caterwauling,” heh), and in her own irascible way she treats most of the people around her with a rough kind of respect (those she feels deserves it, at any rate). Like reassuring Samitsu that she is one of the best Healers around (something I left out of the recap), or saying that she can tell Min is no milksop, and comforting her when she’s distraught about Rand. And you can tell she likes Amys’s style at the end. Even Flinn, evidenced by the fact that she doesn’t attempt to interfere with him.

 

But Rand, Rand is a whole different ball of wax, and I’ve never understood why she takes the tack of treating him like a five-year-old. I’ve noted before that the function of most of the women in Rand’s life is to remind him that he is human and flawed, and not a god, but there is quite a big difference between telling him to wash his ears, and smacking him across the face. The former might bring him down to earth, but how is the latter going to do anything but piss him off?

 

I just don’t get it. Showing no fear of Rand is good; fear generally only induces either compassion or sadness in him, but of course only we know that, and even Rand can’t help feeling contempt for those who fear him as well, sometimes. And no one can respect or be expected to listen to someone they find worthy of contempt, however subliminally.

 

And from an outside perspective, showing fear (which is to say, weakness) to someone as powerful as Rand can be actually dangerous; at some point it becomes about a pack mentality thing, if that makes any sense. The wolves of Randland are a bit more honorable (and sentient) than real wolves, but in the real world, wolves who are too different and/or weak are generally driven out of the pack or even killed. And anyone who’s seen schoolground bullying in action (i.e. everyone) knows that in a lot of ways we are still not all that far evolved from the same mentality.

 

Woo, tangent.

 

Anyway, back to Cadsuane: so, not showing fear = good, but there’s no way she can be not fearful of him AND show respect at the same time? Like, say, Bashere, or Lan, or even Berelain? I mean, I’m not asking for a lot here – just, you know, NOT slapping the savior of the world in the face!

That's concerning chapter 36 of aCoS.

TL;DR: Cadsuane is brilliant in her adaptive capabilities. She's incredibly knowledgeable and insightful. But she's also far too overbearing. The problem with Cadsuane is that she's what Moiraine was for a long time, turned up to 11. She has the Aes Sedai arrogance on full-tilt, but she doesn't have a prophecy telling her she's going to "die" to get her to sober up and do what's necessary to get Rand to trust her.

Rand was already incredibly wary of Aes Sedai when he had Moiraine around. And yet Moiraine could not get through to him in the slightest because Rand has the personality of a mule. He's a Two Rivers man, and Moiraine was simply not used to dealing with that. So she tried to browbeat him and argue with him and get him to see reason. Then she realized that she was going about it the wrong way, and submitted to Rand. I'm setting aside genders here, even. It had nothing to do with Moiraine being a woman and everything to do with Moiraine being an Aes Sedai. She needed Rand to trust her so that she could teach him what needed to be taught.

Cadsuane needs Rand to trust her so that she can teach him what he needs to be taught. But Cadsuane merely tries to browbeat him. And no matter how brilliant Cadsuane is, no matter how adaptive she can be, she fails in that she refuses to give up her pride for the greater good. I can respect her for her intelligence. But I respect Moiraine infinitely more for seeing how to get through to Rand.

Look at it this way: if Rand didn't have a prophecy via Min that he needed Cadsuane...what would he have done? Exactly what he did in tGS. Except much sooner. And Cadsuane would have utterly failed from the get go in trying to actually help Rand.

Why are you so mean to me, Hax? You'd think you'd be happier to see me.

Or are you not drunk enough?

Have some more alcohol and come back.

Guess who's back. Back again.