One amusing thing I once saw was a Potter political poster calling for gun control and I was like, “wait a second, isn’t every wizard literally walking around strapped?”
Thing is, it makes sense. Harry Potter is the perfect story to embody the millennial generation. Because Harry isn't a hero. He's just born with it. And he never has to do anything with it. Things work out for everyone because he exists, and his destiny is to ... be present ... as events play themselves out. He doesn't have to work for it, he doesn't have to earn it. He just has to show up.
Harry doesn't ever really try. I mean, he can occasionally be arsed to be at a place at a time, but his success is either preordained and inevitable or else, when he occasionally fails, someone bails him out at just the right moment. Usually Dumbledore, but there's a whole cast of characters waiting in the wings to make sure Harry succeeds at what Harry is Supposed to Do Here.
So unlike his friends he doesn't really have to study or practice. He doesn't suffer. He doesn't face obstacles and overcome them with his own determination and prowess. He doesn't deal with the consequences of his mistakes. He just arrives, exists as himself, and is automatically right.
Even the sportsball game he plays is designed especially so that Harry has just one job, and that one job is to do something relatively trivial with very little opposition and then win the game automatically, rendering everyone else's effort and struggle moot, and then be hailed as MVP. He gets superior equipment to the rest of the players to make sure he has every possible advantage, and even then, there's someone in the stands cheating for him to make sure he succeeds at doing the thing.
What a role model.
It explains everything about millennials. Or maybe made them what they are. Either way, eugh. What a waste of a fun premise.
I think there's a lot of valid critique in that. There's been a lot of good posts on various sites talking about exactly that - Harry Potter basically has plot armor and has his ass yanked out of the fire by special people all around him all the time. I remember my favorite (and best) writing professor in college specifically citing Harry Potter as an example of how not to write a hero. He said, "If your 'hero' is always being saved at the climax by someone else, they aren't the hero. They might be the protagonist, but protagonists and heroes are not the same thing." And I think he's totally right. I will give the series credit that, by the end, Harry does end up being the one to finally put down Voldemort, but up until that point, yes, it's always Dumbledore or Snape or Sirius Black or his friends intervening at just the right moment. I do think that, if your really wanted to, you could say that may be part of the thematic content of the story, since it's often said that Harry's greatest strength are his allies, and Voldemort's biggest failure is how he doesn't like anyone and is incapable of love and so on and so forth, but that risks verging on the pedantic.
But, more to the point, you did exactly identify what I wanted to touch on when I get to the political underpinnings of the series and how they colored the outlook of so many Millennials. One of the biggest themes that I see in the Potter flaws with the story is that it seems that Harry's always in the right. It's a bit much to try and articulate in a comment, but it gives this feeling that there's a philosophy of, "There's no wrong methods, just wrong people using them" that definitely reflects in the Millennial mindset. I.e. they don't really care that Obama or Biden may have flouted the rules of the executive office and done bad things even more than Trump might have, but they were good people, Trump was not, so the fact that they're on the right side excuses the fact that they bent the rules.
Sorry if I stole your thunder! But I'm looking forward to you elaborating on the topic. I think there's a lot to be said about this anti-story and what it means. Totally agree about the methods/people issue.
No need to be sorry, believe me. I appreciate the input and feedback, and it's honestly kind of nice to know that I'm not crazy and others see the same thing, you know?
Oh, Harry has major initiative and agency, particularly when it comes to the most pressing problem at hand (the tragedy of book five, for instance, is that he regarded Umbridge as the prime problem.)
But I get the distinct impression that Actually Doing Difficult Things wasn't on the wish-fulfillment docket of the surviving hardline Potterites. They really *were* just looking at the aspects where he was Born Special and maintained under a platinum plot-device insurance policy. Although all of us would vehemently, and against the facts, have denied those aspects at the time.
I think book 5 is where I tapped out. If Rowling was getting around to finally giving Harry a proper hero's journey she took way, way too long. But I was just killing time on night shifts after Coast to Coast signed off. My impression the whole time was, "this kid sucks. Maybe Hermione should have been the protagonist."
"Even the sportsball game he plays is designed especially so that Harry has just one job, and that one job is to do something relatively trivial with very little opposition and then win the game automatically"
Excellent point. How would the story have been if Harry was one of the poor bastards getting beaned in the noggin by the magical murder-balls? And he had some jalopy-ass stick he had to duct tape together?
If he overcame that and succeeded against the odds, it might have been a great story. That's what kills me the most about the whole thing. I want to like it. It has all the trappings of a great adventure story, the kind I loved as a kid. But it is a black hole of suck beneath the set dressing.
The point was to 'seek'. He didn't do much, just accepted the shite and 'sought'. And eventually he found his way to Kings Cross, which is the entire point of life.
The lasting impact Potter seems to have left with me is in the realm of fictional interest. Philosopher's Stone held the first genuine, full-bodied plot twist I had ever read, and it's not hard to trace out the path from there through Death Note to filling out the (somehow) uncharted territory between Tenth Night and Monday the Twenty-seventh of April. Character-driven mystery-thrillers with a dash of the fantastic are officially my jam.
At the time, though, when I was in the full swing of it, I think my constant laser focus on What Happens Next In Harry Potter??? presented some serious opportunity costs I never noticed enough to know about, and... well. I am among those who have always desired to fall into a fantasy world. This, I know now, is a manifestation of the soul's longing for Heaven. But the Potterverse - at any rate magically speaking - is among the least transcendent and numinous fantasy worlds one could fall into. I think it is likely to have retarded me in my journey to faith, and I wonder how many - especially the kids with Christian parents inclined to burn all the spindles in the kingdom - were turned aside altogether by that false lead.
That's some interesting introspection, and I appreciate you sharing it. There is a siren song to escapist fiction that, yes, can have deleterious side-effects on the young and impressionable mind. I had my own years in the wilderness where fiction was, essentially, my substitute for spirituality, and that's why I get a bit hot under the collar about the topic - in another world, where certain things didn't happen, and I didn't learn certain lessons, and I never came back to the church, I probably could have ended up being one of these people, so I see a lot of myself in these lost souls. Most of them are just hurt, damaged, disaffected people looking for salvation in hollow, material things.
That being said, I do wonder if it was Harry Potter in particular that turned people on a certain path, or was just there and its presence happened to coincide with what was going to happen anyways. If another young adult series had been popular at the time, would that have been the iconography and symbology that these wayward people would have adopted? It's something I hope I can get to the bottom of in this exploration, but my preliminary thesis leans toward a strong no. Harry Potter has a lot of particular trappings that I think made it uniquely and singularly attractive to young people in a way that not every wish-fulfillment fantasy did. Part of that stems from the setting itself being rich and engaging (on the surface, at least), and part of it also stems from the journey and development of Harry Potter himself. Again - I plan to dissect it more, and if you have any more insight to share, I'd be interested to hear it since my own false idols laid outside of the Harry Potter franchise.
I remember liking the books up through #4, and then they got too grim for me at the time. The house-elf bullshit was always annoying. And I could never figure out, having read my uncle's D&D manual in grade school, why Harry didn't just torch Draco with a fireball. Like, why did they keep fucking around, when were they going to learn some real shit?
I don't recall that I ever compared the Potterverse to politics, but at one point I did declare that Trump was just like Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Ooof. Shameful. I'm still not sure how I pulled out of that stupid-spiral.
The house elf subplot is honestly one of the most confusing and perplexing threads in the entire narrative. Like, there's an entire race that's literally bound to chattel slavery, the only one who seems to even think that's kind of fucked up is Hermione, and when she tries to raise awareness, everyone - even Harry and Ron - just laugh her off. Even though it's literal chattel slavery. And Harry is friends with Dobby! Dobby saved his ass! And, later, I remember another elf says that, basically, it's okay because the elves actually LIKE being enslaved! It gives 'em something to do, y'know? But then it's like... but Dobby HATED it? And Harry Potter freed Dobby? Oh, no, no - it wasn't the slavery that Dobby had an issue with, just who he was enslaved by! That's what I mean when I say the morality and philosophy of Harry Potter is very binary, juvenile, and horrible for using as a measuring stick for real political issues. The issue with house elf slavery wasn't the slavery, you see... just the people doing it. And if the right people are doing it - nominally good people, or at least people who have the "right politics" - then it's fine. Another one I won't go into as much for the sake of brevity is Dumbledore and Umbridge, who replaces him in book five. The issue isn't that the headmaster runs the school like a despot... it's just the wrong headmaster. And if it was Dumbledore flouting the rules, well, he's good, so it doesn't really matter. There's no bad power or actions, just bad people who use them wrong. The series is rife with instances of this.
I liked how you tied all of this together, YA. I read the first three books to my daughter at bedtime when she was in elementary school. Millennials did get screwed but the WEFFIEs needed their conditioned generation that will "love their servitude" as Aldous Huxley noted in a speech. Soma, vidja, and porn will be their chains. Undischargeable college debt will be their chains. I could go on but i don't want to rant. Harry Potter just fits in nicely. Such a binary world with plenty of symbolism to be jammed into whatever.
Thank you! I actually was introduced to Harry Potter by my dad reading the first one too me. I remember his absolute inability to say Hermione and pronounced it "Her-mee-own". The morality in the Harry Potter story is very binary and there isn't much nuance to it, which isn't in and of itself bad, but, obviously, when applied to the real world, it explains why so many of them Trump becomes Orange Dorito Hitler Voldemort with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Because it's all good, or it's all bad. I really want to dig into that in a future installment.
"...especially because the books weren’t bad. Overrated? Yes. But bad?"
Looking after a wealthy young girl in England c.2002 I wanted her to read Treasure Island, but she wouldn't touch it unless I read Philosopher's Stone first. I thought it would be junk but I read the whole thing in a day or two and enjoyed it but forgot all about it. I'd turned off tv back in 1995 so naturally ignored all the Harry Potter stuff until last year when my 9yr old insisted we sat down over the Xmas period and binge watch the entire series. It was so good and made so much sense on so many levels I did it again this holiday period but on my own. It aligns with all the metaphysic research I've done and experienced, including the aptly named Kings Cross station.
"...both Woodstock and Harry Potter, when that praise often verges on deification and idolatry, and mythologized the way that they have been, it’s little mystery why it looks so silly to the outsiders looking in...!"
We've had our god/s removed (intentionally), and recognise something transcendent in both Woodstock and Pothead that is real, it actually exists, and is much greater than the individual. I dread to bring up fascism, but at a concert, all the spirit of all those people are turning in the same direction. That's basically the definition of fascism, regardless of what ignorant leftists believe on that score.
"My question is - why? Why Harry Potter?" and "One of the biggest themes that I see in the Potter flaws with the story is that it seems that Harry's always in the right."
That isn't a flaw, he always DOES what's right, even in crappy circumstances. In the end he is humble, consistently humble. I don't 'identify' as a Christian but there is that saying, 'Walk humbly before God.' He does that, and Kings Cross station is so named because of it.
Ya know... regarding Dobby and the creepy old elf, I had a flash reading comments and wondered if it represented a form of hierarchical casting, a literal caste system. The ancient traditions always used a caste system with priest class at the top, followed by warrior class, then merchants and artisans or peasant class. Something like that.
Muggles are slaves without being aware of it. Artisans is a nicer term if it comes to that.
Elves (and sprites which in plasma physics are a form of electrical phenomena at different levels of the strato/mesospheres etc.) are slaves to people they admire or accept as 'better' than them - literally higher up the metaphysic... current, and the wizard group know there is more to the world than the muggles, elves and so on.
So wizards would represent the priest class. Like the Jedi knights. And King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table etc.
IMHO Pothead and co. were showing those born without religion that there is a world that is true, and they can't be accepted into it unless they do the hard yards first. So they muck about with chopsticks and can't let the idea die.
Most would rather cosplay than cut the head off a snake or try and understand what it symbolises.
As a Gen Y/Millennial who actually started a family and has kids, I read my kids Harry Potter alongside a bunch of other books. Now my kids are teens, they tell me, "Harry Potter's not that great, Mom. He's whiny and he yells at his friends in book 5. Conn from the Magic Thief books is much better. We like Magic Thief better than Harry Potter."
This is what happens when the next generation comes along and shrugs off the idols of their parents.
One amusing thing I once saw was a Potter political poster calling for gun control and I was like, “wait a second, isn’t every wizard literally walking around strapped?”
Gotta keep that thang on you, G. Stay strapped. Never know when a death eater might roll up in your hood, y'know?
Per Quidditch Through the Ages, they have a canonical right to keep and bear wands.
Underrated comment
Thing is, it makes sense. Harry Potter is the perfect story to embody the millennial generation. Because Harry isn't a hero. He's just born with it. And he never has to do anything with it. Things work out for everyone because he exists, and his destiny is to ... be present ... as events play themselves out. He doesn't have to work for it, he doesn't have to earn it. He just has to show up.
Harry doesn't ever really try. I mean, he can occasionally be arsed to be at a place at a time, but his success is either preordained and inevitable or else, when he occasionally fails, someone bails him out at just the right moment. Usually Dumbledore, but there's a whole cast of characters waiting in the wings to make sure Harry succeeds at what Harry is Supposed to Do Here.
So unlike his friends he doesn't really have to study or practice. He doesn't suffer. He doesn't face obstacles and overcome them with his own determination and prowess. He doesn't deal with the consequences of his mistakes. He just arrives, exists as himself, and is automatically right.
Even the sportsball game he plays is designed especially so that Harry has just one job, and that one job is to do something relatively trivial with very little opposition and then win the game automatically, rendering everyone else's effort and struggle moot, and then be hailed as MVP. He gets superior equipment to the rest of the players to make sure he has every possible advantage, and even then, there's someone in the stands cheating for him to make sure he succeeds at doing the thing.
What a role model.
It explains everything about millennials. Or maybe made them what they are. Either way, eugh. What a waste of a fun premise.
I think there's a lot of valid critique in that. There's been a lot of good posts on various sites talking about exactly that - Harry Potter basically has plot armor and has his ass yanked out of the fire by special people all around him all the time. I remember my favorite (and best) writing professor in college specifically citing Harry Potter as an example of how not to write a hero. He said, "If your 'hero' is always being saved at the climax by someone else, they aren't the hero. They might be the protagonist, but protagonists and heroes are not the same thing." And I think he's totally right. I will give the series credit that, by the end, Harry does end up being the one to finally put down Voldemort, but up until that point, yes, it's always Dumbledore or Snape or Sirius Black or his friends intervening at just the right moment. I do think that, if your really wanted to, you could say that may be part of the thematic content of the story, since it's often said that Harry's greatest strength are his allies, and Voldemort's biggest failure is how he doesn't like anyone and is incapable of love and so on and so forth, but that risks verging on the pedantic.
But, more to the point, you did exactly identify what I wanted to touch on when I get to the political underpinnings of the series and how they colored the outlook of so many Millennials. One of the biggest themes that I see in the Potter flaws with the story is that it seems that Harry's always in the right. It's a bit much to try and articulate in a comment, but it gives this feeling that there's a philosophy of, "There's no wrong methods, just wrong people using them" that definitely reflects in the Millennial mindset. I.e. they don't really care that Obama or Biden may have flouted the rules of the executive office and done bad things even more than Trump might have, but they were good people, Trump was not, so the fact that they're on the right side excuses the fact that they bent the rules.
Sorry if I stole your thunder! But I'm looking forward to you elaborating on the topic. I think there's a lot to be said about this anti-story and what it means. Totally agree about the methods/people issue.
No need to be sorry, believe me. I appreciate the input and feedback, and it's honestly kind of nice to know that I'm not crazy and others see the same thing, you know?
So say we all.
Oh, Harry has major initiative and agency, particularly when it comes to the most pressing problem at hand (the tragedy of book five, for instance, is that he regarded Umbridge as the prime problem.)
But I get the distinct impression that Actually Doing Difficult Things wasn't on the wish-fulfillment docket of the surviving hardline Potterites. They really *were* just looking at the aspects where he was Born Special and maintained under a platinum plot-device insurance policy. Although all of us would vehemently, and against the facts, have denied those aspects at the time.
I think book 5 is where I tapped out. If Rowling was getting around to finally giving Harry a proper hero's journey she took way, way too long. But I was just killing time on night shifts after Coast to Coast signed off. My impression the whole time was, "this kid sucks. Maybe Hermione should have been the protagonist."
"Even the sportsball game he plays is designed especially so that Harry has just one job, and that one job is to do something relatively trivial with very little opposition and then win the game automatically"
Excellent point. How would the story have been if Harry was one of the poor bastards getting beaned in the noggin by the magical murder-balls? And he had some jalopy-ass stick he had to duct tape together?
If he overcame that and succeeded against the odds, it might have been a great story. That's what kills me the most about the whole thing. I want to like it. It has all the trappings of a great adventure story, the kind I loved as a kid. But it is a black hole of suck beneath the set dressing.
The point was to 'seek'. He didn't do much, just accepted the shite and 'sought'. And eventually he found his way to Kings Cross, which is the entire point of life.
The lasting impact Potter seems to have left with me is in the realm of fictional interest. Philosopher's Stone held the first genuine, full-bodied plot twist I had ever read, and it's not hard to trace out the path from there through Death Note to filling out the (somehow) uncharted territory between Tenth Night and Monday the Twenty-seventh of April. Character-driven mystery-thrillers with a dash of the fantastic are officially my jam.
At the time, though, when I was in the full swing of it, I think my constant laser focus on What Happens Next In Harry Potter??? presented some serious opportunity costs I never noticed enough to know about, and... well. I am among those who have always desired to fall into a fantasy world. This, I know now, is a manifestation of the soul's longing for Heaven. But the Potterverse - at any rate magically speaking - is among the least transcendent and numinous fantasy worlds one could fall into. I think it is likely to have retarded me in my journey to faith, and I wonder how many - especially the kids with Christian parents inclined to burn all the spindles in the kingdom - were turned aside altogether by that false lead.
That's some interesting introspection, and I appreciate you sharing it. There is a siren song to escapist fiction that, yes, can have deleterious side-effects on the young and impressionable mind. I had my own years in the wilderness where fiction was, essentially, my substitute for spirituality, and that's why I get a bit hot under the collar about the topic - in another world, where certain things didn't happen, and I didn't learn certain lessons, and I never came back to the church, I probably could have ended up being one of these people, so I see a lot of myself in these lost souls. Most of them are just hurt, damaged, disaffected people looking for salvation in hollow, material things.
That being said, I do wonder if it was Harry Potter in particular that turned people on a certain path, or was just there and its presence happened to coincide with what was going to happen anyways. If another young adult series had been popular at the time, would that have been the iconography and symbology that these wayward people would have adopted? It's something I hope I can get to the bottom of in this exploration, but my preliminary thesis leans toward a strong no. Harry Potter has a lot of particular trappings that I think made it uniquely and singularly attractive to young people in a way that not every wish-fulfillment fantasy did. Part of that stems from the setting itself being rich and engaging (on the surface, at least), and part of it also stems from the journey and development of Harry Potter himself. Again - I plan to dissect it more, and if you have any more insight to share, I'd be interested to hear it since my own false idols laid outside of the Harry Potter franchise.
I remember liking the books up through #4, and then they got too grim for me at the time. The house-elf bullshit was always annoying. And I could never figure out, having read my uncle's D&D manual in grade school, why Harry didn't just torch Draco with a fireball. Like, why did they keep fucking around, when were they going to learn some real shit?
I don't recall that I ever compared the Potterverse to politics, but at one point I did declare that Trump was just like Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Ooof. Shameful. I'm still not sure how I pulled out of that stupid-spiral.
It's alright, we all have had our moments ;)
The house elf subplot is honestly one of the most confusing and perplexing threads in the entire narrative. Like, there's an entire race that's literally bound to chattel slavery, the only one who seems to even think that's kind of fucked up is Hermione, and when she tries to raise awareness, everyone - even Harry and Ron - just laugh her off. Even though it's literal chattel slavery. And Harry is friends with Dobby! Dobby saved his ass! And, later, I remember another elf says that, basically, it's okay because the elves actually LIKE being enslaved! It gives 'em something to do, y'know? But then it's like... but Dobby HATED it? And Harry Potter freed Dobby? Oh, no, no - it wasn't the slavery that Dobby had an issue with, just who he was enslaved by! That's what I mean when I say the morality and philosophy of Harry Potter is very binary, juvenile, and horrible for using as a measuring stick for real political issues. The issue with house elf slavery wasn't the slavery, you see... just the people doing it. And if the right people are doing it - nominally good people, or at least people who have the "right politics" - then it's fine. Another one I won't go into as much for the sake of brevity is Dumbledore and Umbridge, who replaces him in book five. The issue isn't that the headmaster runs the school like a despot... it's just the wrong headmaster. And if it was Dumbledore flouting the rules, well, he's good, so it doesn't really matter. There's no bad power or actions, just bad people who use them wrong. The series is rife with instances of this.
I liked how you tied all of this together, YA. I read the first three books to my daughter at bedtime when she was in elementary school. Millennials did get screwed but the WEFFIEs needed their conditioned generation that will "love their servitude" as Aldous Huxley noted in a speech. Soma, vidja, and porn will be their chains. Undischargeable college debt will be their chains. I could go on but i don't want to rant. Harry Potter just fits in nicely. Such a binary world with plenty of symbolism to be jammed into whatever.
Thank you! I actually was introduced to Harry Potter by my dad reading the first one too me. I remember his absolute inability to say Hermione and pronounced it "Her-mee-own". The morality in the Harry Potter story is very binary and there isn't much nuance to it, which isn't in and of itself bad, but, obviously, when applied to the real world, it explains why so many of them Trump becomes Orange Dorito Hitler Voldemort with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Because it's all good, or it's all bad. I really want to dig into that in a future installment.
You're welcome. I look forward to future installments on the Potter phenomenon.
Harry Potter was a test run for the MCU cringe that happen the decade after.
"I'd rather be a wizard than a jedi."
They are the same thing.
"...especially because the books weren’t bad. Overrated? Yes. But bad?"
Looking after a wealthy young girl in England c.2002 I wanted her to read Treasure Island, but she wouldn't touch it unless I read Philosopher's Stone first. I thought it would be junk but I read the whole thing in a day or two and enjoyed it but forgot all about it. I'd turned off tv back in 1995 so naturally ignored all the Harry Potter stuff until last year when my 9yr old insisted we sat down over the Xmas period and binge watch the entire series. It was so good and made so much sense on so many levels I did it again this holiday period but on my own. It aligns with all the metaphysic research I've done and experienced, including the aptly named Kings Cross station.
"...both Woodstock and Harry Potter, when that praise often verges on deification and idolatry, and mythologized the way that they have been, it’s little mystery why it looks so silly to the outsiders looking in...!"
We've had our god/s removed (intentionally), and recognise something transcendent in both Woodstock and Pothead that is real, it actually exists, and is much greater than the individual. I dread to bring up fascism, but at a concert, all the spirit of all those people are turning in the same direction. That's basically the definition of fascism, regardless of what ignorant leftists believe on that score.
"My question is - why? Why Harry Potter?" and "One of the biggest themes that I see in the Potter flaws with the story is that it seems that Harry's always in the right."
That isn't a flaw, he always DOES what's right, even in crappy circumstances. In the end he is humble, consistently humble. I don't 'identify' as a Christian but there is that saying, 'Walk humbly before God.' He does that, and Kings Cross station is so named because of it.
Ya know... regarding Dobby and the creepy old elf, I had a flash reading comments and wondered if it represented a form of hierarchical casting, a literal caste system. The ancient traditions always used a caste system with priest class at the top, followed by warrior class, then merchants and artisans or peasant class. Something like that.
Muggles are slaves without being aware of it. Artisans is a nicer term if it comes to that.
Elves (and sprites which in plasma physics are a form of electrical phenomena at different levels of the strato/mesospheres etc.) are slaves to people they admire or accept as 'better' than them - literally higher up the metaphysic... current, and the wizard group know there is more to the world than the muggles, elves and so on.
So wizards would represent the priest class. Like the Jedi knights. And King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table etc.
IMHO Pothead and co. were showing those born without religion that there is a world that is true, and they can't be accepted into it unless they do the hard yards first. So they muck about with chopsticks and can't let the idea die.
Most would rather cosplay than cut the head off a snake or try and understand what it symbolises.
Glaceon? It's Leafeon. Read Industrial Society and its Future bub.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of Ice being supereffective against Grass. You'll need to speak up. I'm a bit hard of hearing.
As a Gen Y/Millennial who actually started a family and has kids, I read my kids Harry Potter alongside a bunch of other books. Now my kids are teens, they tell me, "Harry Potter's not that great, Mom. He's whiny and he yells at his friends in book 5. Conn from the Magic Thief books is much better. We like Magic Thief better than Harry Potter."
This is what happens when the next generation comes along and shrugs off the idols of their parents.
I sometimes worry we on the right use Tolkien in the same way, as a lens through which to view all of life and politics, and as a personality trait
Ross Douthat (yes, yes, I know), "The Muggle Problem."
Not what the title would make you think, maybe.