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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6434 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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Don't forget that the whole school is open-carry and it's mostly the bad guys are in favor of "Common Sense Wand Control".

I wrote about it at length before, but it's interesting that Rowling wrote a fictional universe that made sense to her, a liberated late-boomer/early gen X feminist, and it ended up enshrining values that are diametrically opposed to her stated world view.

It's as if writing a universe from scratch requires thinking about the values in it from first principles, and that this can lead you to very different conclusions than those you would get if you just stuck to the values that were imprinted on you by your environment.

It's very British and difficult to understand outside of that context. JK Rowling, like many of her generation, "knew her place", and wanted to look up to her social betters - that is, to have "betters" actually worth looking up to. So, the high drama is replacing the unworthy aristocrats with worthy ones, the long-lost prince returning to high society and mogging the bureaucrats. Ron and Hermione are the good servants of the prince, the stolid man (it's not a coincidence that Ron is red-headed and has a big family, that's saying he's the wizard equivalent of a Celtic Catholic) and the brainy woman, who represents the fantasy of a nerdy girl wishing she had a worthy man to serve, with the Platonic nature of the friendship making the service more pure. It goes back to to the middle ages - think about Robin Hood's relationship to the Good King Richard and the Bad Usurper John.

I wrote about it at length before, but it's interesting that Rowling wrote a fictional universe that made sense to her, a liberated late-boomer/early gen X feminist, and it ended up enshrining values that are diametrically opposed to her stated world view.

Or her stated worldview just isn't as radical as younger wokes, which is one of the reasons she got herself into a lot of trouble.

She just didn't write in the hyper-doctrinaire way people do today. This is a woke more correct situation since they pointed out that JKR is the moderate white: for things like equality but not for revolution. Hermione is shown to be silly, but the end result of that entire SPEW episode is that house-elves being paid instead of indentured servants becomes supported by Dumbledore, who is also a pro-magical creature rights, just not an obnoxious child about it.

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