It's a Book World

Eddard Stark went to the window and sat brooding. Robert had left him no choice that he could see. He ought to thank him. It would be good to return to Winterfell. He ought never have left. His sons were waiting there.

(AGOT, Eddard VIII)

Compare as well the way that Ned once described his relationship to his own foster brother (deeply ironic, in this context. As an aside) with his initial hopes for Jon and Robb:

Ned shook his head, refusing to believe. “Robert would never harm me or any of mine. We were closer than brothers. […]”

(AGOT, Eddard II)

Lord Eddard seemed much younger this time. His hair was brown, with no hint of grey in it, his head bowed. “… let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them,” he prayed, “and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive …”

"No less do I love mine." Ned thought, If it came to that, the life of some child I did not know, against Robb and Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon, what would I do? Even more so, what would Catelyn do, if it were Jon's life, against the children of her body? He did not know. He prayed he never would. - Eddard, AGoT

Beyond a doubt," his lord father said. “Come, let us see what mischief my sons have rooted out now.” He sent his horse into a trot. Jory and Bran and the rest came after.

(AGOT, Bran I)

He did more than that. The Starks were not like other men. Ned brought his bastard home with him, and called him "son" for all the north to see. When the wars were over at last, and Catelyn rode to Winterfell, Jon and his wet nurse had already taken up residence.

(AGOT, Catelyn II)

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So let’s be honest: if Trump had kept funding institutions like PBS at that same level, would you actually care about the violence the US is carrying out today or would you just go on with your day because PBS and NASA are comfortably funded?

It does make me wonder if he is lying about Cersei destabilizing the realm being all part of his plan, or is he simply trying to impress a teenager. The more I think about him the more he strikes me as an opportunist, good at putting his men in the right places and social climbing, two moves ahead but never more than that.

LF got lucky. And he never appreciated how lucky he was.

He was lucky his father managed to meet Hoster Tully, and so he got the chance to meet Lysa Tully. And so she would fall in love with him. She was so obsessed with him that even after he got kicked out because he tried to (somehow) stop the alliance between House Stark and House Tully because he was obsessed with Cat, she didn't stop being obsessed with him.

So he was lucky to have a good education, and it was so good that he was hired to manage the port of Gulltown.

And he was lucky that Lysa never forgot about him, and that in her new seat of power, as the Lady Arryn, she convinced her husband to hire him as the Master of Coin. He was lucky because it was thanks to Lysa being obsessed with him that he was in a position to manage the treasure and finances of the Crown of the Seven Kingdoms. He. Was. Lucky.

It wasn't just his own merits. He lived in Westeros, where you are lucky if your skills are noticed and your merits lift you up in position. And Littlefinger, a noble with a small, insignificant seat, was noticed because the wife of the Hand of the King was obsessed with him.

He never appreciated it. He never cared for it. He was so sure of his own power that he abused it for ambition, greed, and pettiness. And that's the whole point.

Every character has a weakness. Littlefinger has his hubris, the more ancient than time weaknesses of humans. He is so sure of himself that he doesn't see that his pettiness (his grudge against the Starks because Cat didn't love him and Brandon Stark, more dead than the Targaryen Crown, humiliated him by being kind to him and only defeating him with a scratch in his chest) will be his downfall:

He is letting Sansa know how his mind works. Admit a lot of his crimes. Part of his plans.

He is the culprit of the War of the Five Kings. Forget Cersei and Jaime's incest. No, contrary to what he believed, he is not the mastermind behind Cersei's own failures as regent, but he instigated the fire between the Lannisters and the Starks. He told Cat that Tyrion was the one who tried to kill Bran. Before that, he helped Lysa kill Jon Arryn (who I'm sure had a plan to deal with the Lannisters' bastards) and told Lysa to tell Cat that it had been the Lannisters. He made sure Ned Stark would be done (either by taking the black or being killed as a traitor), and was responsible for Lysa Arryn not providing the help Robb and Cat (and the Riverlands and the North) very much needed.

He put the whole continent in jeopardy of any danger, either against Dany or the Others, or the Ironmen. All the external dangers Westeros faces are because LF was annoyed at the Starks not liking him.

He is also doing a lot of work to destroy everything, and the moment he faces justice, he will have nowhere to run. He killed the only person who could protect him because he was so sure of himself. Is putting the remaining Starks against him, and he is already despised among his own Valemen.

So, no. I don't think LF has plot armor.

He is lucky, and it's not against how a lot of assholes came into power in real life.

In times of democracy, dictators came into power because they were lucky that the country faced a crisis.

Just look at Hitler's history: The guy would have never come into power if not for the Great Depression. And even among his people. Before that, he was lucky he was found by a cult of occultists who liked how he talked in the first place!

He was also lucky the world didn't want to stop him, and he got away with invading a lot of countries (just invading one country is bad!) before the others said, "Uhm, maybe we should try to stop him?" And in the first years, he got away in the war because Germany had already been preparing in secret to arm themselves, so he had much more equipment than Germany should have because people before him had the thought that they shouldn't leave their country unprotected. It was when he was the one behind the battle plans that Germany failed in battle! The German military wanted him dead because he was so sure of himself and his fantasy that he sacrificed people! Seriously, read what really happened, how he came to power, and you will realize that part of the reason Germany lost the war was that they had a madman as the head. The only good thing he was good at was talking. Everything else was because others made the plans, from the propaganda to the development of technology and infrastructure, to, yeah, the fucking Holocaust. All of that was the plan of others. He

Look at your decaying white supremacist empire in the eye.

Everything that the Trump administration has ever done has precedent in American history.

Trying to cast him as a “Russian asset” is an attempt to rearrange the ingroup-outgroup dynamic of American political power to say “No-one from the proper ingroup would do this.” But Trump is a part of the one ingroup that trumps all others: he’s fucking RICH. And what about the entire right wing faction that is right there with him, contributing their own efforts and ideas to the reactionary project? Are they all “Russian assets” too?

He’s kind of like a combination of the worst attributes of previous Rich Guys In Charge, like he has Clinton’s sexual predation, Reagan’s entertainment industry background, G.W. Bush’s brutal foreign policy, et cetera.

Liberals look at the brutal crackdowns on immigration, and are like “where did this come from?”

But they cannot answer where the Chinese Exclusion Act came from. Where Executive Order 9066 came from. Why post-Civil War Reconstruction was dismantled. Where Jim Crow Laws came from. Who created DHS and ICE. Who continued to fund DHS and ICE for the last 24 years. Et cetera.

People say that the attack on Iran is unprecedented. But it has deep historical precedent, the USA has a long history of unilateral invasions, and the ruling class of the USA has been trying to generate consent for invasion of Iran for over 50 years.

I’m tired of all of this. I just want people to face reality.

In short:

TODAY IS A GOOD DAY.

Of course we're modern educated people who don't believe in fairies