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A Closed Letter re: An Open Letter to People Who Have Problems with "Open Letter."

edwardspoonhands:

In my song “Open Letter” I discuss what I see as problems with the Wizarding World. This is a risky position to take, but my overall point is that becoming a Wizard, while it would be fantastic, comes with it’s own set of problems.

I do worry about the economy of the Wizarding World, it doesn’t…

I didn’t really want to go into all the wrong of this song, but if he tumblrs it, what choice do I have.  And trust me, Hank dear, I will manage to take issue with every argument you make.  Even the slaves and protectionism.  Cause I’m a nitpicker like that.

His main points:

• “when it’s angels vs. demons, it’s not hard to pick a team”
• “wizards work at schools or the ministry”
• “goblins control the whole economy”
• “i don’t see how much business gets done, when a wand only costs 7 galleons”
• wizards don’t prevent muggle death/disease
• the MoM didn’t ask for any help from foreign wizards
• Lucius Malfoy is an influential politician (known racists in government)
• House Elves make food

So given that some of your larger issues fall outside the scope of the novels, meaning we can theorize whatever the hell we want to, I’m essentially going to be theorizing the opposite from you, for the hell of it.

Angels vs. Demons

Obviouslythe novels portray a (not so) simple Good Guys-Bad Guys show down.  That’s how this kind of story telling works.  You know.  Children’s stories.  Like these.  Even with the Good Guys vs. Bad Guys Rowling still manages to develop complex in-between cases, like Snape, and Malfoy.  Snape turning “good” for perhaps the wrong reasons (just to save Lily, due to a deep seated infatuation), and Malfoy trying to be “bad” due to familial pressure and expectations.  So it really does seem harder to pick a team than you make it out to be.  There does seem to be a large enough portion of the wizarding population who sees themselves as a kind of more evolved species of humans, which doesn’t justify power (I’m not really pro-eugenics over here), but explains why they find the necessity to hide tiresome.  It’s sort of a Wizard Pride movement run amok.  They’re like Humans Plus, doing everything humans can do, plus more, so why should they have to limit themselves around Humans, is the way the line of thought works.  That at least makes the “Demons” line of thought understandable, if not fully relatable. 

Clearly the heart of the matter is more complicated than Hank likes to imagine (morecomplex, even, becausethe (fictional) truth seems to be resisting simplicity).  Given that this entire series tries to parallel Hitler to some extent, if it was that easy to pick a team, how did Hitler everactuallycome to power.  In the real world.  As a problem here.  Clearly there were complicated issues in play at the time. 

Wizard Jobs

This is one of the, limiting the scope of the wizarding world to what is presented in the books detailing the lives of SCHOOL CHILDREN, points.  Just because you mostly see SCHOOL TEACHERS AND THE GOVERNMENT affecting the lives of SCHOOL CHILDREN, doesn’t mean no other jobs exist.  Here are just a few others we see within the scope of these novels:

• Shopkeeper
• Journalist
• Author
• Healer
• Curse Breaker
• Dragon Expert
• Bus Driver
• Ice Cream Maker
• Innkeeper
• Black Market Dealer
• Librarian

And by extension, you can easily imagine a wizard version of many of the jobs we have in our economy.  There’s clearly a wizard publishing company churning out all those Bathilda Bagshot works.  Just because there’s no wizard VLOGGERS doesn’t mean they only produce TEACHERS AND GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, Hank.

Gringotts

No, Hank.  The economy is notonlydetermined by where you store your money.  Even if the currency is produced at Gringotts, not only goblins work for Gringotts.  Bill works for Gringotts.  HUMAN BEINGS WORK THERE, TOO.  Do you think wizards would really let those they’ve had disputes with previously to have this kind of sole power over their money.  They allow them to because they are skilled at the care and protection of money and treasure. 

But even this us vs. goblins attitude is kind of disturbing, given your later point about House Elf rights.  Aren’t goblins a part of this society as much as wizards.  Why would it be such a problem for them to be involved in the banking industry.  Are you racist against Goblins, Hank?

Wand Cost vs. Business

First off, way to completely rip off the Harry and the Potters song.  I know you’re besties now, and probably think you were making a cute ref to their work, but I mean it’s not like THEY’RE the inside joke here.  YOU ARE.  Meaning they are more legitimate as part of the HP fandom than you will ever be.

So this is a money issue, if you take into account the cost of unicorn hair, dragon heartstring, and phoenix feather.  But who says they are buying all these at cost.  They probably have a system worked out if they’re able to charge such low prices.  And who knows the price quote we have wasn’t some kind of first time Hogwarts Student deal.  Or even a Harry Potter deal.  Maybe some wands are more expensive, or adult wands are more expensive.  A galleon is equal to 17 sickles, which is a lot.  You could say a wand costs 119 sickles.  Does that seem like more to you, Hank?  Or 3451 knuts?

More over the wand shop isn’t the only shop on Diagon Alley.  We all know Ollivander was a little touched in the head over wands.  He probably wasn’t thinking too hard about things such as galleons.  Certainly a lot of other business gets done just fine.

Wizards vs. Muggles and Death

Here’s your biggest mistake, Hank.  Wizards would have to revise the statute of secrecy to help out muggles with their diseases and prevent their deaths.  This is one of the major reasons the statute of secrecy was put into place initially.  So that muggles wouldn’t constantly be bugging wizards for a magical solution to all their problems. 

Furthermore, you can’t exactly be expecting wizards to go around spending all their time solving muggle problems, when they have their own business (as clearly demonstrated above) to attend to.  MUGGLES CAN’T DO MAGIC.  This is what makes them muggles.  So it’s not like you can just be like, OH YOU JUST DO THE CURIO CANCEREO SPELL AND YOU’LL BE FINE.  You’d have to do the spell for them each and every time.  And there’s only so many Arthur Weasleys who get off on that kind of thing.  Like you said, there’s only about 3000 wizards against 62.6 million muggles in the UK.  That wouldn’t even be feasible. 

Finally, who says they evenknowthe cure for muggle diseases.  Who says they don’t just live long because the magic in their blood prevents them from deathly muggle diseases.  They certainly know magical cures for magical diseases, and Snape is clearly able to PUT A STOPPER in death when it comes to magical curses (see: Dumbledore’s hand, Dumbledore’s WIZARD CANCER), which doesn’t necessarily mean this stopper will hold indefinitely (it won’t).  It just slows death down.  But it might not even be applicable to muggle illness.  Stop assuming simplicity, Hank.

“Isolationist Tendencies”

How do you KNOW FOR SURE, HANK?  How do you KNOW the Ministry didn’t reach out to other nations.  Because it wasn’t in the book?  We saw the ministry only when they were involved with Harry.  We didn’t see them overly much when Voldemort came to power, and saw how they were domestically involved in containing his threat, yes, but did not see their foreign diplomacy.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, we could just as easily imagine that they did.  You don’t know the history of the relation between the Ministry and foreign Ministries.  Maybe there were some wizarding wars in the history books which don’t exactly make for easy allies.  Other nations could have seen it as a domestic issue, and not wanted to involve themselves.  Furthermore, the Ministry fell fairly quickly after they recognized Voldemort as being in power again.  They probably didn’t have too much time (in government time) to attempt much diplomacy.  Even the diplomacy we do see (Hagrid’s envoy to the giants) falls through.  It’s a huge assumption on your part that they are “isolationist”. 

Racists in Government

Because that’s the first time that’s happened in the HISTORY OF GOVERNMENTS.  There are no RACISTS IN GOVERNMENT TODAY.  NOT A ONE. 

Secondly, Lucius Malfoy is akin to a racist, but is muggle a race?  He’s more a magical bloodist.  A purist.  It’s more concerning that he was allowed to get off as, Oh I wasn’t really into the whole Voldy thing before, while he’s clearly a shifty character, shopping down Knockturn Alley left and right.  How the wizarding government is so gullible.  Is the bigger issue.

House Elves

My favorite example of you completely ignoring the complexity of the issue you bring up in your song.  Are House Elves slaves?  It’s left as morally ambiguous, and deliberately so.  House Elves are a domesticated species, meaning they rely on humans.  They so happen to enjoy serving humans.  This brings pleasure to them.  It’s hard to parse the nature vs nurture going on here, but I think you can assume there is some degree of nature in this.  It’s not just how the society is structured, but their biological composition that makes them feel compelled to help humans.  Why should we prevent them from doing so.  I’m fully on the Weasleys side in this argument (and Hermione’s efforts were seen as a bit extreme/ineffective).  But I guess nerdfighters do like to conceive of themselves as a bunch of “coolest girl in the world” Hermiones.  Clearly Dobby was an anomaly among House Elves.  A mutant House Elf.  Winky is more your typical House Elf and you see how she responds to job loss.  Not working for humans significantly reduces quality of life in House Elves, so why wouldn’t we partake of this symbiotic relationship.  The elves get their whole well-being from it, and we get our simple chores accomplished.  Clearly there are power dynamics in play, but not always by the human’s choice.  It’s due to the House Elf nature. 

Whereas true slaves are enslaved against their will.  True slaves share the same composition as their enslavers which is what makes it so morally reprehensible.  (We clearly don’t feel as bad “enslaving” animals to do our will, because we feel like riding around on them or because we love eating their flesh and/or drinking/eating what comes out of their breasts). 

Pretty much Hank would be arguing for the extermination of the whole House Elf race if he didn’t want that kind of relationship existing.  As long as House Elves exist, they will exist to serve humans.  Hermione was just overzealous, but then again she was 14.  You’re a grown man. 

But if you’re so concerned about rights, why not worry about how fellow humans are treated within the wizarding community.  I’m talking about squibs.  Treated as an embarrassment, as if they’re in any way to blame for their nature.   How about Ron (half-apologetically) laughing at Filch?  (He argues, I know squibs (magical retards) aren’t supposed to be funny, but as it’s a magical retard I don’t like, HA HA HA). 

Or what about other magical creatures.  What about garden gnomes?  Or DEMENTORS.  Being enslaved to guard Azkaban, although clearly the power dynamic here is quite the reverse.  I don’t get why the dementors put up with our human bullshit anyway.  They should create human slaughterhouses so they can just feed on humans indefinitely. 

Anyway clearly magical creature-human relations are complicated.  Not as easily painted as black and white as you’d like it to be. 

Please don’t take this to be borne of the ramblings of a Harry Potter fan who is so enamored with JK Rowling as to think she can do no wrong.  She makes mistakes constantly (just take the wand order fiasco, for instance).  She admits to not knowing how the Ministry was going to work until working on the 4th/5th book.  She’s not really interested in creating an airtight story (in an AIRTIGHT TEMPORAL SETTING — The year is 1997 and Men in Black has just been released in theaters), she’s more interested in telling the story of love and death.  And there’s nothing I love more than tearing her down with nitpicking.  Except, of course nitpicking your own productions, Hank.  Cause I really don’t think you do know these are complicated issues, given the way your lyrics simplfy them.  But by all means, keep sticking to them. 

I’ll keep sticking to my own issues over here, such as whether giants are legally able to consent to interspecies sex, or whether Hagrid’s dad, too, was a raper.