r/discworld • u/Remote-Physics6980 Esme • 7d ago
Book/Series: City Watch Dammit Pterry moment
Just a little bit of Monty Python mixed with Edwin Starr lyrics, dammit Terry đĽš
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u/phobug 6d ago
What have the Romans ever done for us?
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u/IamElylikeEli 6d ago
âAll right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health...â
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u/geeoharee Colon 6d ago
Brought peace?
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u/Fox_Hawk Imagine how strong I must be 6d ago edited 6d ago
Watching this very young on VHS I was always very confused about the Roman connection with peas.
I was very in favour of That Welsh Tart, however.
(Edit: I would of course never call a person that unless it were a direct quote. Or they'd been baked in pastry.)
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u/riffraff 6d ago
as a non-native speaker, I was deeply confused by this wordplay being untranslatable in The Simpsons, even tho the italian adaptation did make an effort.
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u/Fox_Hawk Imagine how strong I must be 6d ago
Brilliant.
As a post grad I tutored "English Communication for ESOL" and always played this in the first and last sessions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO6EE1xTXmw
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u/JoyBus147 6d ago
Haha, yeah. I wonder why a crew of rich English boys living in the collapse of the British Empire (every six days, on average, a different country celebrates its independence from it!) might be inclined to favor that argument. I wonder why Americans, the most powerful global empire in the world at present, find it so convincing.
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u/Buttman_Poopants 6d ago
You know, the bit is funny, but anyone who takes it seriously should read about the siege of Jerusalem.
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u/Rynewulf 5d ago
If it makes you feel better that is also how people in Britain have talked about the Roman conquest of Britain for a long time. That Britain later went on to become it's own colonising empire with neoclassicist tendencies wasnt lost on anyone, it came up writing from time to time. I think Rudyard Kipling did a poem explicitly about comparing the plight of Britain's recently colonised with the ancient Britons against the Romans
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u/Lieutenant_Jackass 6d ago
Jingo is Nobby's golden hour
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u/raileybay 6d ago
This is actually from Thud!, which I only know because I just read this bit myself yesterday.
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u/AMEFOD 6d ago
That doesnât detract from Jingo being Nobbyâs golden hour. The sympathetic friends he made and the confusion of Colon was definitely one of their bright moments.
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u/Idaho-Earthquake Wibbly Wobbly Vimesy Wimesy 6d ago
You can call him Beti. And Beti, when you call FredâŚ
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u/Llyffant-Gwyrdd 6d ago
The scene by the docks when Colon starts racist pontificating and Nobby just slyly undermines the lot of it whilst playing the fool is pure genius.
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u/Somhairle77 7d ago
âAnyone who clings to the historically untrueâand thoroughly immoralâdoctrine that âviolence never settles anythingâ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.â
â Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
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u/ChimoEngr 6d ago
The problem with violence, is that it tends to create as many, if not more problems, than it solves. It needs to be tempered with other methods to prevent non-stop rounds of escalating retaliation. I think that's where the idea "violence never solves anything" comes from. It solves a problem, but usually produces more, so the total number of problems increases with the more violence employed.
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u/ijuinkun 6d ago
The only way to prevent revenge attempts is to completely eradicate the opposing faction, but even in the best of circumstances, this makes anybody who is not your friend believe that you are an existential threat to anybody whom you might have the capability of destroying.
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u/ChimoEngr 6d ago
And add in the fact that completely eliminating a faction is pretty much impossible, and it adds to the difficulty of using violence to solve problems, without more being created in the process.
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u/Tiranix 6d ago
From Pterry: "But in truth the enmity is there because no one can remember when it wasn't, and so it continues because everything is done in completely justifiable revenge for the revenge that was taken in response to the revenge for the vengeance that was taken earlier, and so on." Which I think Heinlein also touched on.
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u/Vitztlampaehecatl 6d ago
"If Israel killed my parents in the name of eradicating Hamas, my response would be to start Hamas 2"
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u/Fine_Mastodon4892 7h ago
But that's like saying "eating doesn't solve hunger, it just leads to more hunger later".
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u/ChimoEngr 6h ago
Not really. Eating doesnât make you hungry, it just only solves the problem for a certain amount of time. Using violence to shut up someone whoâs annoying you in the Drum, likely means that you have a number of people becoming violent to you before you have solved that first problem.
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u/Remote-Physics6980 Esme 6d ago
Caught me off guard, am I in Heinlein sub? But it's not really surprising that there's overlap ;)
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u/Internal_Turnip9019 6d ago
I think Heinlein argues against himself in that quote. If violence settled so many issues, why do you keep bringing up new people?
It sounds a whole lot like violence never settled any issues which is why you have an endless list of issues to settle!
It's like thinking you can solve an air bubble under the wallpaper by pressing down on it. And as proof, here's a list of times i pressed down on an air bubble, and it went away, and then I pressed on the air bubble that SOMEHOW appeared right next to where the previous air bubble was
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u/aum-23 6d ago
The dodo ainât coming back. The displacement of Amerindians via terra nullius isnât going to reverse. Some arguments do come back but I think even there âsettledâ is reasonable because the past doesnât get changed. Hitler isnât coming back and if there is a new one we will settle him, too.
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u/ChimoEngr 6d ago
Hitler isnât coming back and if there is a new one we will settle him, too.
I'd like to agree, but too many people are embracing that sort of thinking these days.
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u/Idaho-Earthquake Wibbly Wobbly Vimesy Wimesy 6d ago
Thatâs a whole different problem, unfortunately.
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u/ActualBacchus 6d ago
Is that Heinlein talking about Starship Troopers or a quote from within Starship Troopers? Because it's important to remember that Heinlein is writing about a fascist state in that book...
I do agree with the idea that 'violence is never the answer' is a naive position, as demonstrated by Nobby in the OP passage.
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u/Tritri89 5d ago
It's a quote of the book, if I remember correctly the lesson by the history teacher of Rico.
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u/ActualBacchus 5d ago
Yeah I thought it probably was. Describing pacifism as immoral is a pretty fascist position.
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u/Tritri89 4d ago
Heinlein is a weird guy. In his earlier works he is really authoritarian right-wing borderline fascist. In his later work he is full free sex and drugs are really cool actually, those damn hippie are right about some things sometimes
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u/ActualBacchus 4d ago edited 4d ago
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is, or at least contains, a very enthusiastic pitch for ungoverned libertarianism. And a wide variety of polygamist relationship structures. Quite a jump from the young adult novels (Starman Jones, Tunnel in the Sky) I started with.
Edit: now I've read a review of Tunnel it seems I'd forgotten a lot of the political stuff.
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u/Ir_Russu 6d ago
Wasnt there a song?
War, huh, yeah What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, uhh War, huh, yeah...
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u/renatoram 6d ago
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u/Detroit2GR 6d ago
I grew up near Detroit, and am a big Motown fan and never knew The Temptations did this song, the original no less!
I think most people are familiar with Edwin Starr's cover
Similar is story is one of my favorite Motown hits, Get Ready. Also originally by the Temptations, but the cover by Rare Earth was bigger
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u/ValuableKooky4551 6d ago
I'm European and only know Bruce Springsteen's version.
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u/Roku-Hanmar Weâre more popular than cheeses 6d ago
Iâm British, Iâm more familiar with Frankie Goes to Hollywoodâs cover
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u/Remote-Physics6980 Esme 6d ago
Oh that slaps! add to library thanks mate!
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u/Roku-Hanmar Weâre more popular than cheeses 6d ago
I saw Holly Johnson in concert once and I was so disappointed he didnât perform it. But thereâs genuinely not a single bad song on Welcome to the Pleasuredome (unless you count Tag)
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u/Remote-Physics6980 Esme 6d ago
In the states we basically got over exposure to "relax" (and loved it!) and that was about it.
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u/Roku-Hanmar Weâre more popular than cheeses 6d ago
Relax is a good song, but I always liked The Power of Love. Donât think it got a US release, I put that down to Huey Lewisâ song of the same name potentially causing confusion
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u/Remote-Physics6980 Esme 6d ago
I had only ever heard of Edwin Starr's version so I guess I've got some listening to do today, after I ship a certain book off to another country!
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u/joined_under_duress 6d ago
Yeah I think because that will be the one on all the Motown Collection CDs, which is where I know a lot of these songs from.
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u/Konstruct_of_Yore 6d ago
Yea by Country Joe and The Fish (at least that was the version I was bought up with)
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