this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 31 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (34 children)

Harry was billed in early books as this "Anti-Voldemort", who'd lead Wizardy to a gilded age and do great things... But JK Is a Status Quo loving Neo Liberal and can't imagine a better world. In all of her works the system is corrupt, but it's fine because the only thing that would make it go wrong is one bad faith actor (In this case Voldemort), who will stumble upon some obscure rule that undoes him. (In this case, killing Harry who was at that time the last horcrux)

Harry becomes a cop and doesn't change the status quo because the world as it is is the best JK can imagine it.

It's kind of like how no one did anything about Trump, they kept waiting for him to trip over some rule that sends the system crashing down on him, but it never happened.

It never happened because the system is powerless to punish anyone, because the system is just an idea, it is immaterial.

The Electoral College isn't going to magically vote for Hillary because it recognizes Trump's evil. People have to recognize his corruption and change the system to combat it...

The Democrats never learned they couldn't just wait for the System to punish the Republicans after they accumulated enough good/bad boy points

[–] PatMustard@feddit.uk 8 points 9 months ago (19 children)

JK Is a Liberal and can't imagine a better world

Wtf do you people think "liberal" means? Some people think it means communist, some think it means socialist, some somehow think it means fascist. I'd love to what you actually mean when you use a word that has a specific meaning of "anti-authoritarian".

[–] Xerodin@lemm.ee 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

In political party terms, a liberal is someone who supports the economic system of capitalism but wants to give concessions to the general population (free healthcare, cheap public transportation, etc) to placate the people from changing the system. The idea is if people are making a somewhat decent living then they will be less disgusted with the ludicrous amount of money the actual wealthy make and won't revolt. Messaging from conservative parties has purposely conflated liberals with leftist (socialism/communism) ideology in order to tie it to the Red Scare and convince lower income people that the idea is meant to take more from working class people.

[–] tryptaminev@feddit.de 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Social Welfare is neither historically nor currently a liberal value.

Generally the idea seems to be social liberalism, e.g. people should laregely do what they want, and since a few decades bastardized with neoliberal economics, which are the opposite of freedom. E.g. ideas like reinstating slavery, selling children, murdering people with impunity all based on an arbitrary freedom of contracts.

American liberals are far right conservative/reactionaries sprinkled with some gay rights by most countries standards.

[–] PatMustard@feddit.uk 1 points 9 months ago

Isn't that American "libertarians"?

[–] PatMustard@feddit.uk 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Firstly, thanks for actually giving me an answer! Secondly, that sounds insane, I've never heard any definition of "liberal" that means that, though I have heard that the USA just has their own completely different definition of the word. For instance in Britain the term "liberal democracy" is used to mean "not a dictatorship". Language is about communication, assuming everyone uses your own pejorative definition of a word is not good for discussion!

[–] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Hey OP, just in case you didn't gather this from the various other comments, in political science, Liberalism refers to a specific movement (think John Locke, social contract theory, abolishing various aristocratic privilaeges, etc) but can be applied to modern political philosophies too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Liberalism in media terms often means something quite different depending where you are in the world. But, it typically refers to something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism. Pro-market, pro-welfare (to a limited degree), somewhat focused on individual freedoms, etc. It's a wide-ranging term and can cover anything from as far right as America's gov't to as far left as something like Sweden's.

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