I’m not either. It lands with such a clunk. Maybe Magical Britain lets anyone in, but it’s clear that muggles have few rights that Wizards feel they need to respect.
And that last line—ugh:
On that score, at least, no Muggle had the right to look a wizard in the eye.
It doesn’t even make sense. You “have a right to look someone in the eye” based on the totality of who you are versus what they are. Selecting out one point on which you are in error and they aren’t really invalidates the metaphor.
Given all that Harry finds objectionable and even barbaric about Magical Britain, how much indifference they have to the suffering of others, and how his allegiance is more to a scientific culture with rule of law, that last line seems largely just false to Harry’s character. Whatever faults he sees in muggle Britain, he sees as many of more in Magical Britain.
And why is universalist Harry all of a sudden in a twist over muggle Britain, especially?
It seems much more like the line is a gratuitous crack of the riding crop to one of the author’s favorite hobby horses. All pissed off about UKIP’s recent strong showing in elections?
I find open borders consistent with Harry in general, but making that a particular outrage, and particularly aimed at Muggle Britain as compared to Wizards, really doesn’t work for the story or for making the moral point.
Agreed—it’s a complete non-sequitur, crowbarred in with a tenuous link. And the wizards are far more intolerant.
I doubt Muggle Britain lets everyone in—for one thing, it has approximately the same ethnic composition as muggle Britain, for another, I seem to remember that Hogwarts is one of the best magic schools in the world, in which case parents would move to Britain, increasing class sizes until Hogwarts was approximately the same standard as other schools.
Incidentally, do Wizards in third-world countries have the same standard of living as first-world wizards? If so, they see no problem in letting muggles starve on their doorsteps.
All pissed off about UKIP’s recent strong showing in elections?
This may be a slight tangent but I’m amazed (edit: amazed is the wrong word. I’m disappointed) at how the UKIP’s performance has made many people lose all sense of proportion, and become thoroughly mindkilled. About half the discussion seems to be ‘one UKIP supporter said something rasist/sexist/homophobic’. UKIP has 37 000 members. This isn’t just an adhomen attack, its an utterly statistically insignificant adhomen attack.
Worse, a friend of mine who is a lecturer in sociology endorsed a plan to send bricks to the UKIP’s freepost address, thus wasting their money. But if the UKIP supporters then send bricks to the left-wing parties, then all parties lose money and the postal system slows down.
I would have thought a lecturer in sociology would understand about not defecting and keeping the moral high ground, but apparently I was wrong.
I doubt magical Britain lets everyone in—for one thing, it has approximately the same ethnic composition as Muggle Britain
This should be false(r) in HPMOR, given the number of cameos from readers all around the planet. I worried that I was making Hogwarts seem unrealistically multiethnic, and then decided, hey, wizards have had Apparition and portkeys for centuries, it’s a wonder they even still have national cultures.
HPMOR is more ethnic (and gender) balanced than canon, and IMO does seem to have a realistic ethnic composition given teleportation (as you mentioned) and border controls. But its nowhere near 50% Asian as one might expect if there were no borders.
BTW I hope I don’t sound too critical. I have hugely enjoyed the rest of HPMOR and I just think that comparing real-world politics to Voldemort’s indifference is unnecessary mindkilling.
I’m amazed at how the UKIP’s performance has made many people lose all sense of proportion, and become thoroughly mindkilled...
I bet the mindkilling predated UKIP’s victory, and only afforded an impetus to action for those already mindkilled.
About half the discussion seems to be ‘one UKIP supporter said something rasist/sexist/homophobic’.
Why do you find this surprising? That’s the standard attack. It’s simply background music.
Worse, a friend of mine who is a lecturer in sociology endorsed a plan to send bricks to the UKIP’s freepost address, thus wasting their money.
In Western democracies, the Left fights for power and is serious about it. Any means available.
But if the UKIP supporters then send bricks to the left-wing parties, then all parties lose money and the postal system slows down.
When does the opposition to the Left ever respond with a little tit for tat? In the US, there are all sorts of people mouthing off big words about fighting government tyranny, while meekly standing by while their children are sexually assaulted by the TSA purportedly looking for nuclear weapons in their underwear.
I would have thought a lecturer in sociology would understand about not defecting and keeping the moral high ground, but apparently I was wrong.
What he understands that you don’t is that his enemies won’t fight back. If your enemies are fundamentally pacifists toward your aggression, why ever stop?
When does the opposition to the Left ever respond with a little tit for tat? In the US, there are all sorts of people mouthing off big words about fighting government tyranny, while meekly standing by while their children are sexually assaulted by the TSA purportedly looking for nuclear weapons in their underwear.
Ah, I’m no expert in US politics, but I thought that was a Right-supported program? With what little of the Overton Window that covers “this is an absurd overreaction” lying on the metaphorical left-hand side?
Both left and right support the screenings, but it’s fair enough that while this made for an instance of government tyranny that people might oppose but don’t, it wasn’t a good instance of one pushed predominantly by the Left.
Unfortunately, it was (and is) a universally supported program. A pretty good example of Yvain’s Moloch, too—no serious political group can afford to be tarred with the “leave America defenseless before the terrorists” brush...
I remember a story about Rick Perry trying to pass a law limiting the kinds of things the TSA could do in Texas airports before relenting after the FAA threatened to ban flights to Texas airports if the law passed.
Well the right wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh opposed it from day 1.
Also I remember a left wing political cartoon from shortly after 9/11 implying that Republicans were in bed with the corporate sector for not wanting to nationalize airport security (which was then provided by private contractors).
(Nationalizing airport security seems orthogonal to the TSA search issue, though.)
Private contractors hired by and answerable to the airports (and to a certain extend the airlines) have more incentive to not annoy customers than a national agency with fuzzy accountability.
Whatareyoutalkingabout? (I couldn’t find the one where a neo-reactionary asks Scott how many people he wants to kill.) Is this meant to imply some self-refuting statement about the LW community?
I think what he’s getting at is: the Right shows at least as much sign of trying to win by any means possible as the Left, and doesn’t behave at all like a bunch of fluffy pacifists who never fight back when attacked.
[EDITED to fix horrible typo—“off” for “of”—which I think was the result of autocomplete on a mobile device.]
I bet the mindkilling predated UKIP’s victory, and only afforded an impetus to action for those already mindkilled.
I’d agree, it has at most increased the mindkill.
Why do you find this surprising? That’s the standard attack. It’s simply background music.
“Amazed” was the wrong word, used in a sloppy rhetorical sense. ‘Disappointed’ might be better.
When does the opposition to the Left ever respond with a little tit for tat?
Well, of course UKIP didn’t respond in kind, including when the prank escalated to sending blood and shit. And of course, it’s UKIP who are the fascists, so let’s hit them with sticks!
What he understands that you don’t is that his enemies won’t fight back. If your enemies are fundamentally pacifists toward your aggression, why ever stop?
Thing is, I do understand this, but maybe I’ve haven’t fully internalised the fact an intelligent person can think that they are ‘fighting the power’ (he argues that UKIP are extremely similar to Nazis) while crushing anyone who dares to utter a contradictory opinion. I would say I can’t understand this behaviour, but that would be purely rhetorical, because I do know what compartmentalisation is.
And when you have an iron grip on the moral high ground because anyone who disagrees with you is racist, then I suppose you can afford to defect constantly.
I’m not either. It lands with such a clunk. Maybe Magical Britain lets anyone in, but it’s clear that muggles have few rights that Wizards feel they need to respect.
And that last line—ugh:
It doesn’t even make sense. You “have a right to look someone in the eye” based on the totality of who you are versus what they are. Selecting out one point on which you are in error and they aren’t really invalidates the metaphor.
Given all that Harry finds objectionable and even barbaric about Magical Britain, how much indifference they have to the suffering of others, and how his allegiance is more to a scientific culture with rule of law, that last line seems largely just false to Harry’s character. Whatever faults he sees in muggle Britain, he sees as many of more in Magical Britain.
And why is universalist Harry all of a sudden in a twist over muggle Britain, especially?
It seems much more like the line is a gratuitous crack of the riding crop to one of the author’s favorite hobby horses. All pissed off about UKIP’s recent strong showing in elections?
I find open borders consistent with Harry in general, but making that a particular outrage, and particularly aimed at Muggle Britain as compared to Wizards, really doesn’t work for the story or for making the moral point.
Agreed—it’s a complete non-sequitur, crowbarred in with a tenuous link. And the wizards are far more intolerant.
I doubt Muggle Britain lets everyone in—for one thing, it has approximately the same ethnic composition as muggle Britain, for another, I seem to remember that Hogwarts is one of the best magic schools in the world, in which case parents would move to Britain, increasing class sizes until Hogwarts was approximately the same standard as other schools.
Incidentally, do Wizards in third-world countries have the same standard of living as first-world wizards? If so, they see no problem in letting muggles starve on their doorsteps.
This may be a slight tangent but I’m amazed (edit: amazed is the wrong word. I’m disappointed) at how the UKIP’s performance has made many people lose all sense of proportion, and become thoroughly mindkilled. About half the discussion seems to be ‘one UKIP supporter said something rasist/sexist/homophobic’. UKIP has 37 000 members. This isn’t just an adhomen attack, its an utterly statistically insignificant adhomen attack.
Worse, a friend of mine who is a lecturer in sociology endorsed a plan to send bricks to the UKIP’s freepost address, thus wasting their money. But if the UKIP supporters then send bricks to the left-wing parties, then all parties lose money and the postal system slows down. I would have thought a lecturer in sociology would understand about not defecting and keeping the moral high ground, but apparently I was wrong.
This should be false(r) in HPMOR, given the number of cameos from readers all around the planet. I worried that I was making Hogwarts seem unrealistically multiethnic, and then decided, hey, wizards have had Apparition and portkeys for centuries, it’s a wonder they even still have national cultures.
HPMOR is more ethnic (and gender) balanced than canon, and IMO does seem to have a realistic ethnic composition given teleportation (as you mentioned) and border controls. But its nowhere near 50% Asian as one might expect if there were no borders.
BTW I hope I don’t sound too critical. I have hugely enjoyed the rest of HPMOR and I just think that comparing real-world politics to Voldemort’s indifference is unnecessary mindkilling.
It’s interesting, especially given that no one seems to care that the current EU head is a not-quite-repentant former soviet apologist.
I bet the mindkilling predated UKIP’s victory, and only afforded an impetus to action for those already mindkilled.
Why do you find this surprising? That’s the standard attack. It’s simply background music.
In Western democracies, the Left fights for power and is serious about it. Any means available.
When does the opposition to the Left ever respond with a little tit for tat? In the US, there are all sorts of people mouthing off big words about fighting government tyranny, while meekly standing by while their children are sexually assaulted by the TSA purportedly looking for nuclear weapons in their underwear.
What he understands that you don’t is that his enemies won’t fight back. If your enemies are fundamentally pacifists toward your aggression, why ever stop?
Ah, I’m no expert in US politics, but I thought that was a Right-supported program? With what little of the Overton Window that covers “this is an absurd overreaction” lying on the metaphorical left-hand side?
Both left and right support the screenings, but it’s fair enough that while this made for an instance of government tyranny that people might oppose but don’t, it wasn’t a good instance of one pushed predominantly by the Left.
Unfortunately, it was (and is) a universally supported program. A pretty good example of Yvain’s Moloch, too—no serious political group can afford to be tarred with the “leave America defenseless before the terrorists” brush...
I’m not sure about that. At least I have a hard time finding anyone on the internet, in either political camp, who supports it.
Look at it from the other side—which serious political group loudly opposes TSA?
I remember a story about Rick Perry trying to pass a law limiting the kinds of things the TSA could do in Texas airports before relenting after the FAA threatened to ban flights to Texas airports if the law passed.
Well the right wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh opposed it from day 1.
Also I remember a left wing political cartoon from shortly after 9/11 implying that Republicans were in bed with the corporate sector for not wanting to nationalize airport security (which was then provided by private contractors).
Ah, interesting! I didn’t know that. Props to Limbaugh et al.
(Nationalizing airport security seems orthogonal to the TSA search issue, though.)
Private contractors hired by and answerable to the airports (and to a certain extend the airlines) have more incentive to not annoy customers than a national agency with fuzzy accountability.
What are you talking about? (I couldn’t find the one where a neo-reactionary asks Scott how many people he wants to kill.) Is this meant to imply some self-refuting statement about the LW community?
I assume few people try to make self refuting statements.
I guess we’re even, as I have no idea what you’re talking about either.
I think what he’s getting at is: the Right shows at least as much sign of trying to win by any means possible as the Left, and doesn’t behave at all like a bunch of fluffy pacifists who never fight back when attacked.
[EDITED to fix horrible typo—“off” for “of”—which I think was the result of autocomplete on a mobile device.]
I’d agree, it has at most increased the mindkill.
“Amazed” was the wrong word, used in a sloppy rhetorical sense. ‘Disappointed’ might be better.
Well, of course UKIP didn’t respond in kind, including when the prank escalated to sending blood and shit. And of course, it’s UKIP who are the fascists, so let’s hit them with sticks!
Thing is, I do understand this, but maybe I’ve haven’t fully internalised the fact an intelligent person can think that they are ‘fighting the power’ (he argues that UKIP are extremely similar to Nazis) while crushing anyone who dares to utter a contradictory opinion. I would say I can’t understand this behaviour, but that would be purely rhetorical, because I do know what compartmentalisation is.
And when you have an iron grip on the moral high ground because anyone who disagrees with you is racist, then I suppose you can afford to defect constantly.