Bert Roberge posted:

Would anyone here feel comfortable with Baloogan around their children?

Montasque posted:

Literally Voldemort.

quote:

Which makes the thrill of becoming a magical initiate in the Potterverse remarkably similar to the thrill of being chosen by the modern meritocracy, plucked from the ordinary ranks of life and ushered into gothic halls and exclusive classrooms, where you will be sorted — though not by a magic hat, admittedly — according to your talents and your just deserts.

I am stealing this magic-and-meritocracy parallel from the pseudonymous blogger Spotted Toad, who wrote a fine post discussing how much the Potter novels and movies trade upon the powerful loyalty that their readers feel, or feel that they should feel, toward their teachers and their schools. But not just any school — not some suburban John Hughes-style high school or generic Podunk U. No, it’s loyalty to a selective school, with an antique pedigree but a modern claim to excellence, an exclusive admissions process but a pleasingly multicultural student body. A school where everybody knows that they belong, because they can do the necessary magic and ordinary Muggles can’t.

Thus the Potterverse, as Toad writes, is about “the legitimacy of authority that comes from schools” — Ivy League schools, elite schools, U.S. News & World Report top 100 schools. And because “contemporary liberalism is the ideology of imperial academia, funneled through media and nonprofits and governmental agencies but responsible ultimately only to itself,” a story about a wizarding academy is the perfect fantasy story for the liberal meritocracy to tell about itself.

Especially because (unlike reality) it writes the Muggles, the genuinely ordinary people, out of its political clashes and good-versus-evil conflicts. In the Potter novels the selective school is conterminous with wizarding society as a whole (allowing for some elves and goblins to do maintenance and keep the books), and thus the threats to that world’s liberal integrity all come from within the academy’s walls, from Slytherin House and its arrogant aristocrats, who must be constantly confronted in the halls and classrooms of the beloved school itself. Voldemort, the dark lord, has Muggle blood, but he isn’t trying to rally an army of non-magic-wielders to seize Hogwarts’ towers; he’s trying to remake meritocratic — er, magical — institutions in his own dark image. And so the battle for Harvard — er, Hogwarts — is the battle for the world.

Which is basically the premise of a great deal of youthful liberal activism these days — that once the last remnants of Slytherin are eradicated from the leafy quads of Yale or Middlebury, once Draco Malfoy’s frat or final club is closed and the last Death-Eater sympathizers purged from the faculty, then the battle of ideas will have been finally and fully won.

But even if it were, beyond the walls of the imperial academy all of our world’s Muggles would still remain, with an agency and a power that they don’t have in the Potterverse.

Montasque posted:

I get the point, but maybe I'm too young to remember this, but in the 1990s did The New York Times have Star Wars/politics themed hot takes?

Addamere posted:

fits my needs posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/880917801887817734

Lastgirl posted:

Is This Infinity?

Mariana Horchata posted:

needs to be animated tho for best results.

Guy Goodbody posted:

Hey so our baby can only live when hooked up to several machines and experiences only pain because it's locked in a constant seizure. We gotta keep that tyke alive as long as possible, it's pain sustains us

MaxxBot posted:

https://twitter.com/internetofshit/status/882300963784192000

Lastgirl posted:

http://i.imgur.com/6WMKTbu.gifv

Guy Goodbody posted:

The point of that episode was the bad guy could turn himself into metal, so the only way the Flash could punch him hard enough to actually hurt him was if he was travelling at above the speed of sound

You're right about the Flash being underestimated by writers in general, but in that specific case it's the opposite of your complaint

consumed by normies posted:

first they came for the meme makers

Nichael posted:

Everyone is dril

Rah! posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IKUeIEdRMY&t=215s

Shalebridge Cradle posted:

whoa whoa whoa

it was 2.5 billion dollars lol

Turdfuzz posted:

powerball will never have a bf to try to keep

Turdfuzz posted:

i hear hitler is single

GrimGypsy posted:

man of steel was funny b/c it ends with superman, after leveling an entire city, petulantly smashing a drone because how DARE anyone think to maybe keep track of this alien demigod

zegermans posted:

My favorite thing about the French primary was not 1 hour after the results came in people in the Suck Zone were complaining about how Melenchon (who didn't even come in 3rd) only lost because of backstabbing

Kurtofan posted:

why minions

Yinlock posted:

3rd time ive seen this exact post from you

GrimGypsy posted:

lol when did pewdiepie transition from making lovely letsplays for 8 year olds into conservative thinkleader?

jBrereton posted:

I for one cannot wait for Trump the elder statement turning up to sort out israel or similar

Nichael posted:

it's a massive failure of democratic messaging that something as simple as "Netflix will be more expensive because of loving Donny and the GOP" isn't communicated

fits my needs posted:

Squizzle posted:

all of the finer arts forums should be fyad lites like cspam

theyd be a million times better

PostNouveau posted:

60-meter asteroid doesn't sound all that big.

Citizen Tayne posted:

What class would tank Donald J. Trump?

????

Admiral Ray posted:

Samurai Sanders posted:

Could the Dem policy of making deals with whatever devils they can only to lose elections over and over again be in question finally?

Rah! posted:

lol there are people who think the "alt-left" is a thing and that it's racists

peeonwe posted:

i dated a union organizer she made 40k and they gave her a car and she got six weeks of paid vacation a year and a free unlimited everytthing phone and awesome insurance

she didnt do poo poo