Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy
Wednesday
The satiric website McSweeney’s has the measure of those Republicans who complain about Trump while embracing all that he makes possible for them. What are we to make of the anonymous White House staffer who wrote to The New York Times or of Congress members like Bob Corker, Ben Sasse, and Susan Collins who complain but never do anything? They are like Lucius Malfoy had he complained about Valdemort. Since the Death Eaters are obviously supposed to run everything, why can’t Voldemort clean up his act and stop embarrassing them.
The starting point for Thea Raymond-Sidel’s satire is Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse saying “that he thinks about leaving the GOP every morning.” But it could have been those in the White House who, so the Times editorial writer assures us, are protecting us from Trump crazy as they can pass the good stuff (ruinous tax cuts, reactionary judges, comprehensive deregulation). Or Sen. Corker, who admits the truth of Bob Woodward’s damning revelations about the White House but shrugs his shoulders with resignation, as though he’s helpless. Or Majority Leader Paul Ryan, who shakes his head in sadness.
If they were really interested in protecting us, why didn’t they stop the Muslim ban, the forced child separations, and the reversal of clean energy measures?
In the McSweeney piece, Lucius Malfoy wonders what it will take to make the wizarding world great again:
Every morning, when I wake up, I think about what it would be like to leave the Death Eaters. To walk up to the Dark Lord and say, “I’m through. This organization is not what it used to be. We used to stand for something — a pure Wizarding race, a fully, proudly insular society, the great black hope of the magical world. But now I just don’t know anymore.”
The leadership has lost sight of the purpose of our movement. This wasn’t about separating children from their families, or sorting people into categories — this was about Us: The Purebloods, the protectors of the magical community, our bloodlines, our livelihoods. We are the descendants of Salazar Slytherin, the party of Gellert Grindelwald, guardians of purity and alliteration. We believe in the promise of a fulfilling magical life for all wizards born with three magical grandparents. And we believe we deserve to live freely, out in the open, with our superiority ablaze for all Muggles to see.
And who is to blame for what has gone wrong. Not the Death Eaters’ vision of the world. No, sir, the problem is the Death Eaters’ leader:
But it has become increasingly clear that the leader of this organization doesn’t care about that. He just cares about taking shots at the Order, about fulfilling some prophecy, when we’ve already won! He’s living in my house, using my wand, just talking to his snake and spending all of my gold while we hunt down his precious Harry Potter. All he talks about is killing that boy and taking over that school, stewing up there in my office, by the way.
So what is Malfoy going to do about all of this? Exactly what members of the GOP have been doing:
Tomorrow, I will serve him as if nothing has happened, as if I had never had these subversive thoughts that I have shared with the Daily Prophet. But every day I will wake up with the conviction that something is deeply, terribly wrong within the Death Eater organization. That we have strayed down a dark path and we cannot turn back. That our values have been co-opted (so easily! It is astonishing) for something so mean and loud and ugly.
But I am not a quitter. I will fight to fix the Death Eaters from within — I will fight every day, I promise you. But, very quietly, I pray that one day a hero will come and vanquish it, so that I may instead fight him, because I am far more comfortable with that.
Incidentally, to read class politics into the Harry Potter books is hardly stretching things. One of my political science students made a compelling case, in a fantasy class I taught, that the Death Eaters stand in for old money folk who desire a return to the old class ranking system.
One other literary thought. A popular theory about the anonymous White House staffer is that we’re witessing Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. In that mystery, as I’m sure you know, everyone on the train has an alibi for the murder because everyone on the train collaborated in the murder. In other words, the column was collectively written.
Given that the staff member sounds like pretty much any Republican enabling with Trump these days. I’m open to the idea.
