Better than Nazis!
Feb. 10th, 2008 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
So I just checked.
Nazi Germany's worst instance of collective punishment listed at Wikipedia, where one German soldier was worth X civilians, is 642. Currently only about 1,200,000 civilian Iraqis are dead for 3,000 American dead on 9/11, a mere 400 to 1 ratio. Therefore, we're only about 2/3 Nazi Germany's worst retaliation. As long as the number stays below 1,926,000, we're marginally better than Nazis! As long as you don't count Afghanistan, of course, that puts us over. Also, Nazi Germany started off at much lower ratios of 1:5, 1:10, etc, so on average they actually killed far fewer in reprisals. But if we ignore that, and Afghanistan, then we're currently not quite as bad as the actual Nazis.
Yay.
Nazi Germany's worst instance of collective punishment listed at Wikipedia, where one German soldier was worth X civilians, is 642. Currently only about 1,200,000 civilian Iraqis are dead for 3,000 American dead on 9/11, a mere 400 to 1 ratio. Therefore, we're only about 2/3 Nazi Germany's worst retaliation. As long as the number stays below 1,926,000, we're marginally better than Nazis! As long as you don't count Afghanistan, of course, that puts us over. Also, Nazi Germany started off at much lower ratios of 1:5, 1:10, etc, so on average they actually killed far fewer in reprisals. But if we ignore that, and Afghanistan, then we're currently not quite as bad as the actual Nazis.
Yay.
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Date: 2008-02-11 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-12 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-13 04:58 am (UTC)Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!
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Date: 2008-02-14 03:29 am (UTC)The way things are headed, though, I'm beginning to think it's inevitable that someday an unfortunate casting decision will lead to the fandom woobification of one of history's great monsters. Fangirls have already demonstrated that they aren't turned off by mass murder (c.f. Sweeney fen, "But the judge was so mean to him!") or even ethnic cleansing (c.f. Slytherfen, "The Purebloods are more cultured than those Mudblood swine! They're just trying to protect their heritage!"). They also seem unable to grasp the difference between fiction and reality (c.f. Severus Snape, women married to). You could even make the argument that Slytherfen already are woobifying Hitler (c.f. JKR, complete lack of subtlety).
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Date: 2008-02-14 04:07 am (UTC)Take the "for their own good" bit. We're supposed to hear this and be horrified, yet the main thrust of the books is "look how TOTALLY AWESOME it is to live in the wizarding world. Look how TOTALLY AWESOME the things they can do are. Look how TOTALLY AWESOME everything around them is. Look how TOTALLY AWESOME it would be just to eat their candy." Even if you're just a squib, your life is so much better than it is as a muggle.
And the thing is, on a very basic level, the wizards are superior. This isn't like someone saying black people are dumber than white and need protection. This is a matter of one person being able to call lightning out of a clear sky upon their enemies. It's a matter of being able to raise the dead as an army, to kill with a word, to heal broken bones in seconds and grow trees in minutes. The wizards are objectively superior to baseline humanity - they have an ability we lack. Honestly, the whole argument she made gives me flashbacks to that horrible D&D movie that ended with the main character making nonmages equal to mages and me screaming BUT THEY AREN'T EQUAL ONE CAN DO STUFF AND THE OTHER CAN DO ALL THAT STUFF AND ALSO MAGIC YOU CANNOT HAVE EQUALITY ONE IS OBJECTIVELY BETTER ONE IS EXACTLY THE SAME EXCEPT HAVING AN EXTRA ABILITY THAT IS WHAT SUPERIOR MEANS DO I HAVE TO SHOW YOU A STAT LAYOUT OR SOMETHING and anything that makes me remember that movie is clearly bad.
This isn't to say that there isn't a long streak of crazy there, but when you look at the mixed messages and how the stated intent (Wizard Hitler!) often conflicts with the basic situation (letting muggles into the wizarding world! Letting them know about dragons and unicorns and magical healing potions!)...Well, it's less a matter of siding with Wizard Hitler and more arguing that he wasn't Hitler and her borrowing of retoric was a cheap way to block actually considering his points.
There's also that the Slytherin are very much the underdogs even though she meant them to be privilaged. And the thing is, a lot of people want to side with the underdog, so when a writer so completely screws up the dynamic like this, a lot of kids seem themselves in Slytherin. And when she hamhandedly tries to paint the traits they identify with as the source of all evil, they react with denial, that it's not really that way but everything's slanted against them. It's worse with the series like this because a lot of people initially identified around book two or three, so they view the new information as an attack.
As to Snape's wives...I got nothing.
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Date: 2008-02-14 04:34 am (UTC)Basically, in the event that Wizarding society were integrated into Muggle society, both sides would stand to have something to gain. The magical world isn't really in any position to be storming in and civilizing us savages.
(Besides, the Slytherfen I was speaking of were followers of Voldemort rather than Grindlewald. They seemed to be in favor of making Wizarding society more insular, not less. "Protecting their heritage" and all that.)
As to Snape's wives...I got nothing.
I think they have that effect on everyone.
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Date: 2008-02-14 08:42 pm (UTC)I mean, screw the internet. They don't even have a card catalog in their library. They deal with the idea bad people are using bad spells by hiding them so the good guys can't even identify it. They somehow live in between the normal world and have to travel through it to get from one place or another, yet have absolutely no experience with it - and despite a steady influx of muggleborns making up the majority of wizard children, people like Ron's father are the closest thing to experts on muggles.
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Date: 2008-02-14 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 08:46 pm (UTC)The praise Hermione gets, in other words, is basically like holding up a black person as a "credit to their race", the exception that proves the rule. Her message of egalitarianism is not that muggleborn aren't generally inferior, just that some that work very hard may be the equals of the average pureblood so they should get the chance to prove themselves.
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Date: 2008-02-14 05:41 pm (UTC)All they have going for them is jedi mind tricks and healing, really. That and cultural retardation.
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Date: 2008-02-14 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-13 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-13 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-13 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 09:00 pm (UTC)E. E. Cummings says it better than I could.
Date: 2008-02-12 02:35 am (UTC)let's all be thankful as hell
and bury the statue of liberty
(because it begins to smell)