DH Thoughts

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 172799

> >>Lupinlore:
> <snip
> A large part (although not the whole) of justice is 
> inflicting pain on people who deserve it.  And this is, I might    
> add, something that JKR seems to approve of broadly.  Thus we have 
> Marietta, who pays a richly deserved price for her treachery and 
> whose comeuppance the heroes enjoy quite a bit.
> <snip of other examples>

Betsy Hp:
Right, here's my very first helping of crow.  You're absolutely 
right, Lupinlore.  This is exactly what the books were saying and I 
assume what JKR believes herself. Justice is the smiting of those 
less pure.  And yes, pain is a large part of it.  I said the books 
were not built on that particular message and I was wrong, wrong, 
wrong.

It's not my personal definition of justice, of course.  I'd even go 
so far to say it's an anathema to me.  But it is JKR's and I was 
seeing something that wasn't there when I suggested that there was 
deeper meaning to Marietta's facial scars than a good laugh at some 
righteous comeuppance.

> >>Lupinlore:
> Of course, much pain is not deserved.  Fred and George and Remus    
> and Tonks and Hedwig and Dobby and others suffer injustly.  Who    
> deserves pain and who doesn't?  That is an irreducibly subjective   
> judgement, and is why we have politics.

Betsy Hp:
Well, in JKR's universe the Sorting Hat tells us who deserves pain 
and who doesn't.  In RL some folks look at what church you go to.  
Others look at what country you're from.  There's skin color and 
economic class and political affiliation and personal 
attractiveness.  There's what music you listen to and grooming 
choices and what gender you're attracted to (or what gender you are 
for that matter).  

So there's all sorts of things traditionally used to separate the 
deserving from the not so much. Even without a magical hat.  Some of 
the above have gone out of fashion of course.  But people still have 
ways of spotting the unclean "other". 

> >>Lupinlore:
> But I think it would be mealy mouthed and dishonest to claim that   
> each of us don't have opinions about who deserves to be punished    
> and who does not.

Betsy Hp:
Opinions? Certainly.  It's why lawyers try and pick jury members who 
most match the above list to their defendent (or are most opposite, 
depending on desired outcome of course).  Though, Judges routinely 
ask jurors to judge based on facts, not on personal opinion.  And 
there's a reason the statue of Justice is shown wearing a blindfold.

Is it a reality?  No.  But it's a goal.  At least, for me it is.  
Not, apparently, for JKR who seems to rather like the "sheep go the 
heaven; goats go to hell" mind set.  But I'd also say it's a goal 
we've come a long way towards achieving.  I'm a bit of a cockeyed 
optimist, but I think history backs me up. 

> >>Lupinlore:
> <snip>
> At one time many posters claimed that a theme of the Potter series 
> would be that justice is not a matter for Harry and his friends to 
> give out by way of punishing the guilty.  Exactly who IS supposed   
> to give out justice in the Potterverse is something I've never 
> understood, but the arguments were there.  Well, that doesn't turn 
> out to be the case.  The heros DO deal out "death and judgment" to 
> use a Gandalfian turn of phrase, and their right to do so, and the 
> justice of the pain they inflict, is rarely if ever questioned in   
> the story.  Rather the attitude, by and large, is "Justice is       
> Served."  

Betsy Hp:
Again, I eat some crow.  You were right and I was wrong.  Justice is 
what Harry and his friends say it is.  By virtue of their being 
Gryffindors, by virtue of Harry being tagged by Dumbledore, they 
*are* the law.  The WW runs under a cult of personality.  It's how 
our heroes (and our author, presumably) like it.

I kind of realized I was in for some crow eating when Hermione made 
that crack about not being a lawyer because she wanted to actually 
help people.  She, and her fellow heroes, go for a more personal 
brand of "justice" wherein they determine who deserves pain for wrong 
doing and who deserves a pat on the back.

So, no future Constitution or Bill of Rights for the WW.  No system 
of checks and balances.  The Hat will sort the good from the bad and 
the WW itself will worship whatever man (or woman, though this being 
JKR's world, I'm betting it'll always be a man) they think worthy of 
judging them.  Based on quidditch scores if nothing else.

I like neither this philosophy nor stories that promote it.  I, 
unfortunately, saw something in the Potter series that simply wasn't 
there.  My cold comfort is that others made the same mistake.  I'll 
be a more careful reader in the future. 

Betsy Hp (finding the crow a bit of a palate cleanser after the giant 
poo-cake JKR served up)