Ministry and Dementors/

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 176665

> > Magpie:
> > In general, I totally follow this, but how is this made clear in
> > the WW? Is the Ministry obviously wrong for aligning themselves
> > with creatures who would align with Voldemort? Does that mean
> > they'd be wrong to align with giants or hire werewolves? Anybody
> > who would side with Voldemort? (They shouldn't hire Slytherins 
> > either.)
> 
> Jen:  There's no offering of any freedoms to Dementors that can be 
> offered to other groups like the giants or werewolves in order to 
> work out an alliance.  There's nothing ethical you can offer the 
> Dementors.  They want humans to prey on, period.  

Magpie:
Yes, because Dementors are monsters, basically, while Werewolves are 
supposed to be like people instead of monsters. (Dementors are "Dark 
Magic"--worse than just animals going after their natural prey 
somehow, so that association with them says something hinky about 
you--magic *isn't* always neutral.) It's not that I don't *see* the 
difference. But it's still just arbitrary, imo, that the use of this 
kind of punishment is supposed to be so ghoulish as to suggest that 
the ministry has an *underlying corruption* rather than just that 
they did something dangerous. As is the case where the Twins lock 
Montague in a Vanishing Cabinet and nobody cares what happens to 
him. That comes back to bite them, but was it a sign that perhaps 
the good guys were showing some underlying corruption there? No, it 
doesn't seem so. The Ministry needed a scolding and a wake-up call 
about that, but the Twins didn't.

My point is just that yes, I see the same differences you do, but it 
still seems like one of those places where there's this artificial 
superiority marking those idiots at the Ministry as needing a lesson 
rather than a really thought-through moral idea. I get it because I 
get it, not because I really feel like these guys are good 
authorities on how to read signs that you're going to the Dark Side. 
They are supposed to be that, I just don't think they earn it. It's 
one of the places I'm aware of the deck being stacked.

-m