Content warning 75/
Vimes might suspect the City's character, but this, in its own way, still accepts the proverbial terms of debate that his fellow Morporkians establish: that the fault lies squarely in the character of a foreign country and its people.
Content warning 76/
The real lesson, however, is that neither Ankh-Morpork nor Klatch trust their own citizens; in the first place, for states to justify fighting each other over stupid shit, they have to persuade Us that Them can't be trusted.
Content warning 77/
Vimes reflects on this well before he confronts Ahmed, but it takes Ahmed for the penny to drop:
> It was because he wanted there to be conspirators...
Content warning 78/
> ..It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact...
Content warning 79/
> ...that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people.
> It was so much easier to blame it on Them.
Content warning 80/
> It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them.
Content warning 81/
> No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.
It's a far greater commentary on racism and xenophobia than Witches Abroad could ever be.
Content warning 82/The Turtle Grows
I've gone 3000 words without saying it: I will fucking suplex you if you think this thread smacks of anything that suggests we need to """""CANCEL""""" #Discworld.
Content warning 83/
No writer comes out of the womb aged 55, poised with the worldwise knowhow to write bestseller after bestseller. They grow. They change.
Content warning 84/
New Discworld readers are told not to start with Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic for a good reason: parody ages fast, and spoils faster. They've never been Pratchett at his best.
Content warning 85/
But satire? Once you understand the world's stories, and sympathise with the people those stories are about, a great satire never tarnishes. Johnathan Swift's "Modest Proposal" is as morbidly funny and cathartic today as it was nearly three centuries ago.
