@discworld@lemmy.ml @discworld@a.gup.pe
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I’m reading “Guards! Guards!” by Terry Pratchett for the umpteenth time, and realized that the bad guy, Lupine Wonse, uses the same technique Donald Trump does.
Terry Pratchett really did know everything.
*****
"Let the other societies take the skilled, the hopefuls, the ambitious, the self-confident. He’d take the whining resentful ones, the ones with a bellyful of spite and bile, the ones who knew they could make it big if only they’d been given the chance. Give him the ones in which the floods of venom and vindictiveness were dammed up behind thin walls of ineptitude and low-grade paranoia.
And stupidity, too."
*****
“Ye gods, I’m good at this, thought the Supreme Grand Master. I can play on their horrible little minds like a xylophone. It’s amazing, the sheer power of mundanity. Who’d have thought that weakness could be a greater force than strength? But you have to know how to direct it. And I do.”
*****
“It was so easy. All you had to do was channel that great septic reservoir of jealousy and cringing resentment that the Brothers had in such abundance…”
Sir Terry was clever, especially with nomenclature. Lupine Wonse, if taken in its roots… Could mean Lupine- Wolf or Doglike… Wonce- Old Eng. for "once. Once was a dog/wolf… Or Always will be a dog/wolf.
A good name for a sneaky, controller of people.
And thank you. Your insightfulness is what made me search for the translations/roots of these names and helps me realize how clever Sir Terry actually was, at all turns.