If this was Italian neo-realism that would just be how we are. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? Son, I didn't sell out. I bought in. Dude, that's it. That's what we do. Beyond a certain point, it just feels wrong to keep trying to stick it to the man. Or other people will give you the look of terror.

This is utterly, unredeemably, irrevocably incorrect and you should feel bad. The antagonists of Harry Potter are innovators. They're the ones changing the rules. They're the ones upsetting the status quo to benefit themselves. The message sent is that bad people innovate. And you have accepted it hook, line and sinker.

We're all consumers on some level.

You are substituting an absolute for a gradient: you are arguing that a kid drawing a "cool S" on his Trapper Keeper is no different than a kid buying a Deathly Hallows™ sticker for his car.

698 if you count Warp 11. There are others.

Again, you are arguing that "two" is the same as "seven hundred." This is an argument beneath your rhetorical skill, and illustrates that you are debating from a position of weakness for reasons unrelated to the debate.

Presuming Rowling herself had some weird motivations, she appears to be a flaming liberal. Could be unconscious, but what actually happened in the book aside there is an archetype about the middle-class white saviour complex. It's all fun and games until you're actually made uncomfortable by "the poor." Until you try to establish anarchy at your local art show and Jason rolls through with a case of beer and trashes the place.

...at which point you fall back on your cultural mores in order to get you over the hump. My basic argument is that the cultural mores that JK Rowling embraces are the ones that produced Downton Abbey, not the ones that produced The Sex Pistols and pretending Harry Potter is some how "punk rock" is like pretending Coachella is Woodstock. The Harry Potter novels are authoritarian because JK Rowling believes in an authoritarian universe and fundamentally preaches the glories of authoritarianism to little girls and boys. Even though she thinks she's a liberal.

Really what it usually is are adults trying to get you to stop hurting yourself so you can live.

No. No it is not. There has been a definite shift that way due to Jon Walsh, America's Most Wanted, the ABC Sunday Night Movie and the general "small child in peril" school of journalism that has dominated since the '80s but in no way has it ever been "adults trying to get you to stop hurting yourself so you can live." It has ever and always been "adults trying to get you to take care of yourself so they can get back to drinking and sleeping in on weekends."

You mentioned the dictatorial power the Ministry of Magic has in the books but I can't imagine how the story could make any sense without it.

We call that a "fundamental flaw." When we say something is "fundamentally flawed" we mean that there is no way to fix it without making it "fundamentally" different. The argument is not "if only JK Rowling had done X different Harry Potter would be a wonderful series" the argument is "Harry Potter, as a series, is fundamentally flawed."

Fucked shit happens around you all the time as a kid and it's a lot easier to stand by than do something and many, many times it's not like fighting back accomplishes anything.

This is exactly the consequence of books like Harry Potter - your instinct is to fucking take it. This ignores the fact that adults in general care about adults, that generally whatever hardships kids are suffering are opaque to adults, and that even if you were to ask for things to be better, suck it up, buttercup.

What you're missing is that most kids who are reading Harry Potter novels aren't dealing with hardships at a level of Harry Potter. They're dealing with early curfews and restrictive dress codes. My high school class was given ID cards; we threw them into the ceiling of the lobby where they were embedded too high for anyone to pull them down and walked out. There were no ID cards for us for three years. The high school class below us was given ID cards; they took them meekly. The next year they closed the campus. The year after that they forbid students from driving. The year after that they put up metal detectors. You, King Rebel of all Rebels, have internalized the idea that it's better to suck it up than fight for your right.

And I blame Harry Potter.

Harry Potter appeals to people you might describe as outcasts because it posits the existence of a secret world with hidden powers that nobody else (the normies) can see.

LOL Harry Potter is two theme parks and $7b in box office revenue. We aren't talking about The Warriors here. It's really "an authoritarian head-trip" and part of the trick is that she's got you thinking you relate to it because it appeals to outcasts, not because it's completely fucking universal. You're right: Ender's Game is a deeply fucked up book from a deeply fucked up man. But that doesn't make Harry Potter NOT fucked.

They don't fight back any more than anyone does in real life.

Your argument is bad and you should feel bad.