Wizard supremacy (was:Re: Nel Question #4: Class and Elitism)

[Tim Regan]

No: HPFGUIDX 125904


Hi All,

Eek, this feels like it's getting a bit heated, bringing the Nazis 
into a discussion always makes me nervous.

That said, for me it is obvious that the wizards would obliterate 
the muggles. One clear advantage is military intelligence. There are 
easy tests wizards can run to distinguish themselves from muggles, 
but there is no test muggles can use. Actually that is not true, 
there are tests, like the ducking stool or dropping muggles out of 
windows a la Neville, but the tests result in the death of the 
unfortunate muggle so would not work as a screening process muggles 
could use to detect wizzards. Wizards have a huge advantage over 
muggles in that respect, any muggle war cabinet could be infiltrated 
with wizards and the muggles would not know. At key moments in any 
conflict a few Avada Kedavras would remove all the muggle leaders 
and all muggle key strategic planners. Without a good strategy and 
without good leaders I do not think the muggles could win a 
conflict. So when GEO asks "How exactly would they bring down a jet 
fighter for instance?" my answer would be that wizards would ensure 
that the order to launch was never given.

And that's just assuming an all-out physical war. I think it's much 
more likely that wizards would use magic to undermine muggle 
technologies and muggle economies. If one morning the muggle world 
bank awakes to find that its gold reserves are really chocolate, and 
muggle power stations are running on bon-bons, and the food muggles 
fed their children has no calorific value, then it would not take 
long to move muggles back from their technologically advanced state 
to that of subsistence farmers.

For me the only way to escape this logic is if the presence of magic 
in a human body somehow reduces its capacity for logic or for 
planning. As GEO said "All the wizards have is magic and a less than 
stellar record of logical reasoning." But I do not buy that. 
Hermione and McGonagall are presented as extremely good logicians.

But I think that the trouble with this aspect of the books is that 
we are left with two choices: we can accept these inconsistencies as 
just part of JKR's writing style, i.e. the world of the HP books is 
not internally complete or consistent; or we can build increasingly 
baroque and implausible explanations of how inconsistencies are 
proved consistent after all. For me the first path takes us to truth 
and boredom while the second brings us to falsehood and lengthy 
enjoyable threads!

I've tried to write this without confrontation, but it may be a bit 
contentious, so I feel I need to borrow Steve's sign off ...

Just a thought.

Dumbledad.