muggle baiting vs. muggle torture

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 155663

> >>Betsy Hp:
> > <SNIP>
> > The twins used magic against Dudley because they didn't like him 
> > and they knew it would scare him and it would be funny.
> ><SNIP> 

> >>Alla:
> Yes, they did not like Dudley. They did not like him because he is 
> a "great bullying git". I am still not sure why this motive should 
> not matter.

Betsy Hp:
Because the twins are too powerful to throw their weight around like 
that.  It's the same reason that parents across the world explain to 
their children that not liking someone isn't a good enough reason to 
hit them.

Hmm, analogies are the best way I can think of to explain this.  Let 
me bring up the one I used before:

> >>Betsy Hp:
> <snip>
> It would be like a couple of white teenagers in the 1950's Southern
> US burning a cross on the front lawn of a black family to scare a
> kid they didn't like. They aren't doing it because the boy is
> black, they just know cross-burning scares him so it's funny. 
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
So would you be okay with the white teenagers using their status as 
more powerful whites to scare the less powerful black child, if the 
white teenagers explained that the black child is a "great bullying 
git"?

How about if two sixteen year old boys used their superiour strength 
to hold down a fourteen year old girl and rub her face in the mud?  
Would that be okay if they could show that that girl was a "great 
bullying git"?

It's young Christian boys terrorizing a Jewish boy in... some place 
where the Christian is more powerful than the Jew.  It's the wealthy 
landowner's children slapping down the sharecropper's child.

For me the issue has nothing to do with Dudley's past sins against 
Harry, or for the twins feelings towards Harry.  It's all about the 
twins using their power to take down someone who is helpless against 
them.  

At this point in time I honestly doubt the twins were all about the 
Muggle hate.  They just saw a "great bullying git" that they had an 
opportunity to "teach a lesson too".  But they are too powerful to 
indulge in such behavior.  Arthur tries, and fails, to call them on 
it.  And I think the twins suffer because of it.

Betsy Hp