[HPforGrownups] Why Voldemort is a fascist...

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 109183

Nora:
>really.  Getting ahead is far too dependent upon who you know,
>money, etc.  I will defend the oft-maligned and questioned concept
>of the meritocracy against all comers. :)

I've argued elsewhere that the Ministry _requires_ a certain amount of
meritocracy to administer its swollen empire, if only because there just
aren't enough aristocrats left. But also that that transition was the basis
for the disaffection among the aristocrats at people running the country and
they have _no tapestries at all_!

Agree with your comments about the issue of patronage.

>I want more information on the governmental structure of the WW; how
>we get a Minister, how things get passed, etc.  But my deep
>suspicion is that the WW, never going through things like
>urbanization, never learned a lot of the lessons that Muggles did
>about how to govern themselves in a state of societal flux.  I think
>another big point is that the WW itself has been a proving ground
>for world destru...I mean, they've gotten themselves into a lot of
>their own problems.  Is the use of power a big theme (to reference
>another thread?)  Oh yes yes it is.

I found myself musing about longevity and how it's affected the WW. . For
us, the 17th century is so long ago that it's pretty alien, and it's natural
to think that the Statute of Secrecy and the Ministry are so ancient that
they've been around virtually for ever. But consider it this way. We know
that Dumbledore is aged around 150 (and often assume that wizards live about
twice as long as muggles as a result). But he doesn't come across as someone
late on in life (compare the description of the elderly, frail,
feeble-voiced Armando Dippet) and doesn't seem to be anywhere close to
stepping down from the Headship (I don't know if the WW would understand the
concept of "retirement"). So he would have been born round about 1840. In
OoP, we were introduced to Griselda Marchbanks, who is old enough to have
tested Dumbledore (which would have been round about the late 1850s).
Arguable how old she would have been at the time - perhaps they moderated
exams internally rather than externally at the time and she was on the
staff, at round about McGonagall's age. Let's say (I am going somewhere with
this, honest!) that she's around 50 years older than Dumbledore, so she
would have been born around 1790 and her formative years would have been in
the 1790s and 1800s. Assuming that wizards live three times as long as
Muggles, that would make a wizarding generation 90 years. So her parents
would have been born round about 1700, in the years just after the Statute
of Secrecy. And her grandparents would have been born round about 1610, far
enough ago to have been participants in the decision to go underground but
near enough to have been alive for 20-30 years after Grisel was born. You
have someone alive today who had direct contact with someone directly
involved. That's got huge implications for people's mental attitudes.

Something similar could be true for Lucius Malfoy (who we know is in his
40s) - if he grew up on stories told by his 18th century gran and granddad
about how things used to be when pure blooded wizards had some proper
respect, it could go a long way towards explaining how he turned out the way
he did.

But JKR alone knows all

Ffred

O Benryn wleth hyd Luch Reon
Cymru yn unfryd gerhyd Wrion
Gwret dy Cymry yghymeiri