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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   31284 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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pied piper of Hamelin

What's the moral of the tale, to you? (This is a 20 year mystery for me.)

What's the moral of the tale, to you?

Be sure to pay the piper if you want to call the tune.

When you make deals with the Devil, do not try to welch on the deal, it never ends well.

Clearly the Piper is not an ordinary human being, and when you think about it, neither is the plague of rats. If you have a mysterious plague then hot on its heels a mysterious figure turns up offering to fix it for you, pay the goddamn gold and be glad that's all you had to hand over. The city officials were both greedy and stupid, and the entire town had to pay the price as a result.

Maybe also "government officials have always been on the take" as well.

Pay your pest control contractors or they'll murder your children.

pied piper of Hamelin

To be honest, I don't recall the details of the actual tale. I was just using the phrase in its usual metaphorical sense - I just double checked Wikipedia, about this, and it suggested that "The phrase "pied piper" has become a metaphor for a person who attracts a following through charisma or false promises.".

Skimming the Wikipedia page for this makes the tale, and its history, sound pretty interesting in its own right, but I don't have much to add to that.

I suppose, as normally used, it's "short term gains mean long term losses". Being enticed away by something that sounds good, to the point you ignore all other intervention, then you end up losing everything.

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