All I ever needed to know about not acquiring My sociopolitical views from authors I learned from Terry Pratchett. This will ruffle a few feathers I’m sure and I don’t care because it’s true. Literally every value that Pratchett expounds on in his writing is wrong headed and stupid. Let’s start out with a couple simple examples shall we?

Men are essentially stupid and ruin everything. One need look no further than the Tower of art to make it very clear that all of the things that men get up to are bad and dumb and cause damage to the world and only by keeping those men under control is the world prevented from destruction.

Women are essentially good and do all of the important good things in the world. One need look no further than the witches of discworld to understand that women who are essentially whores like Mrs ogg are important for everything and without which nothing would ever get done. Women who are essentially hatchet-faced harpies like granny weatherwax are and should be the most important beings on the planet and if they are mean to you you deserve it. The gods are all worthless and play games with the lives of humans unnecessarily – this begins in the color of magic and is a recurrent theme throughout the series. The best thing to happen to criminality is having it be regulated and controlled by the government, preferably by a tyrant whose word is law and cannot be disobeyed. And government-controlled criminality is not only important but vital to the piece of a Nation. One need only to look as far as the thieves guild the assassin’s guild the musician’s guild and all of the others that are implied but never mentioned, all being essentially controlled by a single man who is all powerful.

Banking is a vital and important institution which cannot rely on a gold standard or in fact any standard but bullshit. And the postal service if run by the right kind of shyster is the most valuable asset in the land. It is not by accident that Pratchett puts a con man in charge of those two institutions.

Captain carrot the only real monarch is the only good kind of monarch, the kind that is dumb and does a menial task. the only meaningful police leader is one who is arrow straight but under control of his government and his wife. What color is the sky on your planet Terry?

Sex is indistinguishable in the underclasses (dwarves) and the big hulking muscular minorities (trolls) our only good for grunt work and only develop intelligence under very specific circumstances. Jesus that’s the klan playbook.

Terry was a brilliant wordsmith. He was more than exceptional at developing his characters and giving the stories a connection and continuity and appeal to the reader’s emotions. The books are a set piece that may never be equaled or challenged. But God forbid you start taking sociopolitical advice from this man because he is as obtuse as it is possible to be.

Yet another person who should have listened to Samuel Goldwyn, to whom this quote is most often attributed

“Mr. Goldwyn,” he said, “this is a wonderful opportunity to point out labor’s battle against capitalism. You have a chance here to bring a great message to the people.”

Goldwyn looked at him. “Messages, messages,” he said. “From Western Union you get messages. From me you get pictures.”