Harry Potter and Democracy

One of the things J.K. Rowling gets so very right is that democracy is often untidy and always imperfect. For example, in Volume 5 of the Harry Potter series we see the Order of the Phoenix assemble to deal with Voldemort. And the Order is a bit chaotic, impractical, emotional, and confused a lot of the time. But they work together fairly well. Still, they are annoying since they seem so clueless.

And that’s the whole point. These are the Good Guys. But in order to confront evil they have to discuss, decide, squabble… and so on. Voldemort doesn’t do that. He just issues orders and acts without consideration.

The insight Rowling gives us is that democracy, where people actually care for each other and seek to do the best thing for everyone, is a scruffy, full-time job that can be tedious and is definitely slow. Dictatorship might look good for a few moments (they get things done, after all) but it is pretty repulsive if viewed for any length of time. It looks easy, decisive and business-like. Actually it’s horrifically destructive of the human soul.

Think about that when Trump makes his sweeping statements about what he’s going to do “so fast it’ll make your head spin”, and when he makes unilateral declarations of any kind.