when Haymitch says that Proserpina wasnāt a bad person, but just extremely clueless, he backs his argument by saying that she wasnāt evil, she just had a lot of things to unlearn. which is a funny choice of words, cause while Katniss see her team as dumb kiddos, who couldnāt know any better cause they simply didnāt have the brains to do so, Haymitch doesnāt see their problem as a lack of education. In fact, by saying she had a lot of things to unlearn, instead of saying that she wasnāt very intelligent or that she needed to learn better, he is subtly recognizing that the crux of the problem is not necessarily the quality of the education or how much capable those people were to absorb it, but how biased their system was in stimulating the critical process of their children. As far as we known, the Capitolās strategy was to corrupt their minds with the strongest method of brainwashing: systematic Information control. They held unlimi-ted power of how further their children could go in terms of knowledge. they manipulated the truth, made up scenarios and changed the narrative so they could force them into unnoticed submission.
Intelectual control is the best way to make sure your people wonāt start questioning your methods, cause as long as they donāt know any different, they donāt have anything to compare you to. and if you can hold the power of how much of the reality they know, you can easily control their natural desire for changeā¦
and saying they are like that because they are child-like dumb is pushing them way too shallow into the conversation. the point of the capitol isnāt the lack of education. the real problem is how much their academic influence arenāt used as a tool of ideolo-gical control. the smartest kid at school will still look up at the games as a blessing, because snowās intention was to efficiently erase the reality off their brains so they could work in his favor. so as long as you donāt have a reason to think out of the ordinary, due to some specific experience, or has the means and desire to educate yourself against what the common sense says, you wonāt go any furtherā¦
and itās fun cause most of those people wouldnāt even try to go out of the box, because that system was comfortable for them. if your choice is either to be starved in a war or to be comfy with your family in your three stores mansion, eating shrimps and going to parties in your fancy clothes at weekends, and the price for it is just to watch, for a week every year, twenty-four unknown children sacrificing themselves for the cause (which most of the people in the capitol believed to be a privilege to them, since that was the propaganda the tributes had to sell during interviews āwhich is another can of worms i am not going to open now), why would you want it to end? if all the government asks you in exchange for your protection is to be in line and donāt let your mind wonder to uncomfortable thoughts you didnāt even want to visit anyway, why would you? thatās the world youāve been living on since ever, you donāt know anything else. in school they teach you that this is the only normal and you donāt have anything else saying it isnāt, so why would you think that way? at home your mom and dad tells you the games are fun, so why wouldnāt you think theyāre fun? should you feel bad just because you were lucky to be born in the capitol? thatās not your fault, thatās just what it is. if the districts choose to revolt years ago and then lost the war because of it, thatās their fault, not yours
As Katniss says herself:
āIn fact, all three are so readily respectful and nice to my mother that I feel bad about how I go around feeling so superior to them. Who knows who I would be or what I would talk about if I'd been raised in the Capitol? Maybe my biggest regret would be having feathered costumes at my birthday party, tooā Catching fire, page 46
my question is, in this line of responsibility, where the submission ends and the oppression begins? if we canāt blame them for the way they think, be-cause of how much knowledge they were granted by snowās tendency of masking the reality, can we blame them for not realizing sooner that it was wrong? and not being to blame for the ideals that had been violently carved into their scowls, does exonerate them from everything they did?
i donāt know, those people are just so interesting
[and to be clear, i am not talking about the high classes of the capitol. itās implied that those whoād access to real information, either from somehow being related to politics or for fitting the category of sponsors who were more or less involved in the underground outcome for the victors, are part of a limited range of people! the majority of the capitol, though still extremely problematic, werenāt granted a close view to the backstage, thus most of their knowledge about it came exclusively through Snow and his controlled, manipulated narratives]
