Why would he say this? What does he have to gain by emphasizing something so far away from reality? Wouldn’t he be found out by something so blatant? How could this be a reasonable thing to say? Is there a perspective from which he is being transparent?
I really was trying to make sense of what perspective would produce these words, but eventually it struck me: he’s saying it because it would be good for him if you believed it, and he thinks he can get away with saying it without you catching him out.
I agree with Christian that there’s more going on here, but I interpreted Evrart as counter-signaling mean-ness. By mentioning literally how open and on-the-same-team he and the company are, he is communicating that no, they are very much not on the same team, and enemies, and you really really don’t want to go sharing damaging information with them.
That is, the absurdity of his performative niceness is meant to try to communicate that he is very much not going to be nice on this issue. As an example, he says
“I’m just a nice guy, Harry. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I wasn’t nice.” He slams his fist into his hand. “Politics is all about emotions, and I want you to have positive emotions when you think of me.”
Well, obviously he didn’t get where he is now by being nice, he got there by being mean. While he is literally telling you he’s nice, what he means is he will fuck you up if you try to fuck him up here, as emphasized by his fist slamming into his hand.
As christian mentioned, he is threatening also to embarrass you by revealing you lost your gun too. But presumably you’ve also done other shady stuff for this guy. You’re meant to think, “wait, if all of this isn’t secret, what about all the shady stuff I did for him?”. Then you implicitly have a choice about which narrative you can live in. You can live in the world where all of that is in fact secret, where you “cooperate” with the guy by not revealing his secrets, or you can live in the world where nothing is secret, you “defect” with the guy, and both of you are harmed in the process.
I agree with Christian that there’s more going on here, but I interpreted Evrart as counter-signaling mean-ness. By mentioning literally how open and on-the-same-team he and the company are, he is communicating that no, they are very much not on the same team, and enemies, and you really really don’t want to go sharing damaging information with them.
That is, the absurdity of his performative niceness is meant to try to communicate that he is very much not going to be nice on this issue. As an example, he says
Well, obviously he didn’t get where he is now by being nice, he got there by being mean. While he is literally telling you he’s nice, what he means is he will fuck you up if you try to fuck him up here, as emphasized by his fist slamming into his hand.
As christian mentioned, he is threatening also to embarrass you by revealing you lost your gun too. But presumably you’ve also done other shady stuff for this guy. You’re meant to think, “wait, if all of this isn’t secret, what about all the shady stuff I did for him?”. Then you implicitly have a choice about which narrative you can live in. You can live in the world where all of that is in fact secret, where you “cooperate” with the guy by not revealing his secrets, or you can live in the world where nothing is secret, you “defect” with the guy, and both of you are harmed in the process.