Order Only
Sep. 9th, 2011 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_macnairHad some time to think this week, mostly reading through different reports about the explosion at the Quidditch Cup and such. Also re-read what you wrote, Black, condemning those who were involved. I assume that what you wrote was meant to be an expression of the mindset that most of the Order share - the ones who weren't forced on you, anyway.
Thing is, I'm still not really clear on what we do. The Order, that is. Snape and I traveled together because we both saw we shared a common goal: ridding the world of one of the most dangerous megalomaniacs it's ever known. So far, I haven't heard much talk of how to make that happen.
Rousing the people themselves to depose of the "puppets" is well and good, but there are too many people who don't realise who the puppets are, or even see that they themselves might be one. Not all the vital cogs in the Protectorate wear the mark. Most of them - like the camp administrators, the mid-level Ministry workers - probably consider themselves decent folk who are just trying to keep their head down and ride things out.
The only people who are moved to action right now are the ones who have already suffered to extremes, and because of that, their goal is one built on revenge, not change. I share your condemnation of their plots because they are chaotic and put others in harms way, in addition to making more people fear them, the resistance, than the one they should really fear.
But, I can't fault them for their desire to take action, even if the way they go about it is wrong-headed. What if the explosion at the cup had been better executed and Voldemort had been killed. Would the deaths of those innocents not have been an acceptable loss?
Because innocents are already dying every day, and in slower, far less merciful ways. Smuggling in wands and hiding people away in a sanctuary doesn't do the rest of them any good. Neither does passing the job of deposing on to people who have shown themselves to be unwilling.
Thing is, I'm still not really clear on what we do. The Order, that is. Snape and I traveled together because we both saw we shared a common goal: ridding the world of one of the most dangerous megalomaniacs it's ever known. So far, I haven't heard much talk of how to make that happen.
Rousing the people themselves to depose of the "puppets" is well and good, but there are too many people who don't realise who the puppets are, or even see that they themselves might be one. Not all the vital cogs in the Protectorate wear the mark. Most of them - like the camp administrators, the mid-level Ministry workers - probably consider themselves decent folk who are just trying to keep their head down and ride things out.
The only people who are moved to action right now are the ones who have already suffered to extremes, and because of that, their goal is one built on revenge, not change. I share your condemnation of their plots because they are chaotic and put others in harms way, in addition to making more people fear them, the resistance, than the one they should really fear.
But, I can't fault them for their desire to take action, even if the way they go about it is wrong-headed. What if the explosion at the cup had been better executed and Voldemort had been killed. Would the deaths of those innocents not have been an acceptable loss?
Because innocents are already dying every day, and in slower, far less merciful ways. Smuggling in wands and hiding people away in a sanctuary doesn't do the rest of them any good. Neither does passing the job of deposing on to people who have shown themselves to be unwilling.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 07:22 pm (UTC)But maybe that's not a bad thing, that you're challenging us to think about what, exactly, we're doing here. I wish we were doing more, not to save just a person here or there, but to do something, something big that will take down this whole rotten regime. Well, not by committing mass murder. Or at least--
Hmm....if Voldemort had been killed on that day, what then? Would the whole miserable apparatus continue to grind on, enslaving people, and someone else equally as despicable would simply step into the Lord Protector's role? What could get this yoke off our backs once and for all?
I may need to go for another walk.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 07:33 pm (UTC)But he's right. It may hurt like bubotuber pus to admit it, but we aren't.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 07:36 pm (UTC)If I stop to think about it, the sheer horror of it all would prevent me from doing the bit that I can do.
Private message to Arthur Weasley
Date: 2011-09-09 10:02 pm (UTC)Re: Private message to Arthur Weasley
Date: 2011-09-10 07:32 pm (UTC)Re: Private message to Arthur Weasley
Date: 2011-09-10 08:14 pm (UTC)Re: Private message to Arthur Weasley
Date: 2011-09-10 09:32 pm (UTC)Re: Private message to Arthur Weasley
Date: 2011-09-11 12:18 am (UTC)I'll have to think about it.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 09:59 pm (UTC)A lot of good's being done here, I can see that. But there's a lot of tentativeness too. Maybe a desire to protect the gains that have already been made is favoured over bolder moves.
Don't know if Voldemort being killed would have changed things overnight, but I'm inclined to think it would have emboldened regular folk in ways we can't really imagine. What's the Protectorate without its Protector?
In some ways, he was a fool to fashion himself as a god.