Americans love Tolkien’s Middle Earth. It’s just like home!

Larry Kummer, Editor

7 years ago

Summary: The Lord of the Rings tells us much about the new America now emerging. It is a stratified society of great and small people, just like Tolkien’s Middle Earth. But there is still time to build a different America, if we have to the will and wit to do so. A revised version from the archives.

“United we stand, divided we fall.”
— From Aesop’s fable, “The Four Oxen and the Lion“.

This is where the rich people live.

Always on the top of my reading list is the London Review of Books, with each issue overflowing with insights about our past, present, and future. As in this excerpt from Jenny Turner’s brilliant essay “Reasons for Liking Tolkien.”

“Depressed people report feelings of powerlessness to be an index of their condition; and just look at how power is distributed on Middle Earth. Aragorn has it, Gandalf has it, Galadriel has it, because of what they are (a king, a wizard, an elf-queen) rather than what they do. To hold power is to be good-looking: ‘great and beautiful’ (Galadriel), ‘in the flower of manhood’ (Aragorn).

“There isn’t a lot of magic on Middle Earth: rabbits don’t come out of hats, no one gets turned into a stone or a poodle.

Its place is taken by something more plausible-seeming and refined. Political power (being a king, a wizard, a queen) is elided with willpower, an ability to make things happen. Powerful people run faster and have stronger characters (which, as we know, is why they cannot bear the Ring). They have and make use of televisual devices (the palantírs of Orthanc and Gondor, the mirror of Galadriel), bending them to their bidding. They build sanctuaries – Rivendell, Lórien – in which they can protect the beautiful and the good. ‘An essential power of Faerië is thus the power of making immediately effective by the will the visions of “fantasy”,’ as Tolkien says in ‘On Fairy-Stories’.

“In a politics like this, hobbits are in a subordinate position, always slightly left out.

They don’t have any special powers or dispensations, unless they can cadge some from the big guys: hospitality and amulets and potions from Elrond, Galadriel, Treebeard.
They offer themselves as pageboys, they hitch a ride on Gandalf’s horse.
They bow deep to Théoden, Denethor, Faramir, Aragorn.
They are ‘flotsam and jetsam’, ‘small ragtag’.
Once or twice, they even get mistaken for orcs.

“In the movie trailer Cate Blanchett murmurs some placatory nonsense about how even the smallest person can change the world, but that is the same tokenism that allows a hobbit to stab at an evil ankle. Gandalf says at one point that the Shire has a sort of magic, but it is just small-town volkischness, sentimental and slightly sinister. This is especially evident when they arm themselves with hammers and axes in ‘The Scouring of the Shire’. In the end, hobbits are small and weak and furry-footed, and Tolkien has given tallness and strength and glinting grey eyes far too much weight in his world for this not to count.

“The politics of The Lord of the Rings, in short, comprises a familiar mixture of infatuation with power with an awareness of one’s own helplessness beside it. One’s best hope, really, is to suck up to the big people, in the hope they will see you all right. It’s the perennial fantasy of the powerless.”

The last point is the key. In Middle Earth the commoners look up to and obey their betters, as Sam does to Frodo. All the greats are people of high lineage, from the angel Gandolf to the four hobbits – three of whom are from the Shire’s leading families. The fourth, Sam, is Lord of the Rings only instance of upwards mobility. He goes from gardener to Mayor by virtue of being protege to one of Middle Earth’s greats (Frodo) and briefly wearing its god-like talisman (the One Ring).

We too live in Middle Earth

Americans live amidst powerful wizards who can accomplish deeds beyond the imagination of us lesser folks. Some of these are celebrities who live out their hedonistic fantasies, unrestrained by our laws and moral codes. Some are politicians to whom we give our hearts, such as Obam and Trump. Some are wealthy businesses people who flout our laws and rape our economy.

These elite groups form the 1%. They own our government. Charities orient themselves to serve their priorities. Their hired hands write our laws and pass judgment in our courts. Their police suppress protests. Their Wall Street banks are engines shaping society to their design. The news media tell their narrative to explain events (as in this op-ed by suck-up expert David Brooks). Their lavishly funded think-tanks create stories justifying their plans for America. They have grand dreams of molding the future in new forms.

See the OECD’s latest report about social mobility, comparing it among nations. The US has some of the lowest social mobility among our peers. Oddly, few Americans know this – any most pride themselves on America’s high social mobility. This shows that we have lost a feature of America that we value most highly.

American politics-as-usual is jousting among factions of the 1%. Republican presidential candidates compete to see who can tax the rich the least, shift the most of the tax burden to the middle class, and slash the largest amount of benefits to the poor. Both parties agree on massive military spending and the forever war, plus allegiance to Wall Street. Success comes to those who most skillfully pander to their needs and most successfully advance their interests.

Example: Bill Gates, a next-gen American prince

See his version of Rivendell, built on a hillside overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington: 66,000 square feet on 5.15 acres; with an assessed value of over $200 million. It is 61 times the size of my home and 1400x times its assessed value.

Our future

“Every nation has the government it deserves.”
— By Joseph de Maistre (lawyer, diplomat, philosopher). From Letter 76 dated 13 August 1811, published in Lettres et Opuscules.

We serve our ruling elites best by squabbling amongst ourselves. The Left’s focus on identity politics is their greatest gift to the 1%, as is the Right’s loyal service to the 1%. Both have become our foes, a situation both perilous and unique in our history.

Finding a path to a better future will be difficult. I believe the only course with any hope of success is rebuilding in some form the populist – progressive alliance that powered the New Deal. The terms will differ but the need to work together remains the same. Preventing this is the top goal of our ruling elites. Helping the 1% are the leaders of the Left and Right, who work to keep us divided into squabbling tribes for their own benefit.

These trends become pathologically weird as America descends into ClownWorld.

Only a people with the deepest love of liberty and care for the future can make this happen. It will begin with decisions we make as individuals, one by one. The Founders knew this would happen, as Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist Papers. They had faith in us. Let’s be worthy of that faith.

“It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.” (Paper #1.)

“{Liberty} must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government. And here, after all, as intimated upon another occasion, must we seek for the only solid basis of all our rights.” (Paper #84.)