ChapDisc: DH 18, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 182710

> Nikkalmati:
>  
> What DD has done to several people (Harry, Snape, Dung and probably 
> others) was more like the Bay of Pigs, invasion where the US 
> Government told the Cuban mercenaries they would have US aircover
and  then changed their minds after the invasion started, or the Gulf
of  Tonkin supposed attack on US warships by the North Vietnamese
which,  I guess, never happened the way it was reported. Somebody must
have  thought those decisions were "for the greater good."
> 

Pippin:
The US government is supposed to be representative. The Order of the
Phoenix is not. Dumbledore governed the Order as a despot -- a benign
and enlightened despot possibly, but someone who believed that "humans
do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for
them." (PS ch 17) 

That's not a exactly a trumpet call for informed consent, majority
rule, or decision-making by consensus.

Someone with Dumbledore's philosophy would expect  letting people
choose for themselves to be ruinous much of the time. Yes, he 
believes choices are important -- so important that one ought to be
very careful about letting just anyone make them.  But AFAWK the
Order has no expectation that they're going to decide how Voldemort
will be fought, so it's not like they're being cheated.

Yes, they're being used, but they agreed to it. Snape said, if you'll
remember, that he'd do anything. Harry made a similar promise.

Dumbledore didn't force either Snape or Harry  -- unlike Moody he
never threatened anyone with punishment for disobedience. Nor was
anyone going to be publicly shamed if they quit. 

 Appealing to someone's emotions is not the same as manipulation
-- it's only manipulation if you conceal your purpose. Dumbledore did
not -- his purpose was always to destroy Voldemort with as little loss
of life as might be. But he didn't promise the Order that their lives
were going to be conserved over others. 

He told Harry that he thought his life would be safe while Dumbledore
was with him -- and that was true as far as it went. The moment when
it was no longer true was recognized by Harry and Dumbledore at the
time.  Harry did not realize that it was always meant that he would
outlive the status of a protected child, and Dumbledore tried to
protect him from finding out. That was foolish, but I can't see it as
wicked. 

I don't think Dumbledore thought of himself as acting for the greater
good after Ariana died. I think he believed he had to act for the good
of those like Ariana who had no power and no voice. That
explains, I think, the seeming shifts in his policy, so that, for
instance, he took heed for young Tom's Muggle victims but left the WW
to its own devices. It also accounts for his championing of
werewolves, giants, Muggleborns, Dobby and others like them. It might
even explain why he was hands-off with the Dursleys. Who was really
the weaker party? The magical and possibly deathless child or the
mean-spirited but merely mortal and Muggle Dursleys? 

But as to the Bay of Pigs example, there's no  disagreement within the
Order on *how* Voldemort should be opposed -- it's not like one
faction supports containment and the other thinks that Voldemort's
forces should be confronted whenever and wherever they may be. In fact
it's the absence of such hawkishness that seems to confound (should
that be confund?) so many readers. The Order seems to be, as many of
their names imply, unanimously behind Dumbledore's Fabian strategy.
Why that should be so I think is explained by the history of VWI --
the Ministry took Voldemort head on and kept losing. They couldn't win
Voldie's kind of war because even Crouch wasn't prepared to be as
ruthless as he was.

IMO, Dumbledore's plan to extract Harry from the Dursleys misfired not
because of  infighting over strategy but because Dumbledore
overestimated his enemy's intelligence. He didn't expect Voldemort to
attack. He thought, IMO,  that Voldemort would realize that it would
be vain to confront Harry without a wand far superior to any "poor
stick" of Lucius Malfoy's. 

But as Dumbledore himself discovered, the illusions of one's youth do
not always tiptoe quietly offstage when experience enters, or content
themselves with commenting on the action like a Greek chorus. Nope,
when you least expect it, they mug the hero and try to take over the
show. Voldemort  should have known that a pure-blood's wand was not
necessarily something special, just as Dumbledore should have known
the ring would only do him harm, but did they think of that? Hah!
 
So Dumbledore goofed. But  was his plan needlessly risky? Wouldn't
information about the Order's plans have reached Voldemort even if
Snape hadn't revealed it? I think that was a real possibility, since I
know of no reason that Voldemort couldn't have forced an Order member
to talk as easily as Snape did.

If Snape had not produced the information, Voldemort would have tried
to get it elsewhere, and doubtless he would have succeeded. Surely he
wouldn't simply have taken the Ministry's information as a given.


IMO the "epitome of goodness"  remark needs to be considered in
context. JKR was answering a question about whether writing  good
characters was boring, and her answer applied to the characters she
created, not good people in general, IMO. Was there a better example
than  Dumbledore of a good character in the books at that time? 

Pippin