More People Need(ed) to Read Harry Potter

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

I know, a provocative title in this community, but we have concrete evidence that reading Harry Potter leads to a small, but significant, increase in antipathy toward Donald Trump and his policies.

https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/new-study-shows-reading-harry-potter-lowers-americans%E2%80%99-opinions-donald-trump ; (Link through to the actual study in article.)

A while back I posted about a study that found that identifying with Harry Potter led to decreased bias toward stigmatized minorities.  At the time, I wondered how reading the series led people to feel about how to deal with their enemies given the vindictiveness the series shows in a close reading.  As it turns out, the more Harry Potter books someone has read, even controlling for "party identification, gender, education level, age, evangelical self-identification, and social dominance orientation," the more opposed they were to violence and punitive policies (like torturing their enemies as advocated by Trump) and authoritarianism.  This is in addition to confirmation of the decreased bias against outgroups.

You don't have to like Harry Potter, and I completely agree that the books have a lot of problems.  But let's not loose sight of the fact that the world is entering a dangerous, if not outright fascistic period.  There's too much hatred and divisiveness driving our politics; hate crimes have risen by several hundred percent since Trump's election.  If reading Harry Potter does help lead people to greater tolerance and mercy, we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Comments

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Why should city voters have their voices over-ridden by (fewer) rural voters? Unless you're one of those people who use "urban" to mean "colored" and "rural" to mean "white" in which case everything becomes clear. Democracy means that all votes are equal, not that some are worth more than others depending on where they live (or who they are).

You also have a very odd definition of "bullying" wherein pointing out that someone has said something offensively sexist is trying to censor them and saying that it's wrong for the will of more than half the voters in a DEMOCRACY to be overturned by an archaic mechanism designed to disempower all but the wealthy, white elite is bullying the less than half of the electorate who voted for the technical winner. Which technical winners are the ones who went out and caused a several hundredfold surge in hate crimes once the election was called. Who's the "sore" bully here again? Victim complex? Or perhaps you're simply uncomfortable trying to defend unearned privilege.



And thank you so much for illustrating my point so clearly by running away like you do every single time someone tries to pin you down on an issue you can't defend. Flounce off saying they're stupid or it doesn't matter anyway. Good bye, authoritarian coward, fare thee well.