This is actually a reply to a most excellent comment offered
by my friend Alapip on my post “Tale Bobbing a Checkerboard CueBall” below. Where this will stand on its’ own it will
make more sense if you read what prompted it first.
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Indeed, the trusted messenger who carries the deception. Brings to mind Sauron, Sauron the deceiver (
JRR Tolkien’s classic example from his truly epic fantasy fiction... cited so
as not to play favorites among the religions/mythologies currently working).
In the days when Sauron seduced the Numenorian’s into such
arrogance as to enact suicidal folly he still wore the body of a man, would
appear fair to beautiful in the eyes of the world, and of course was still a
Mia (empowered servant) of the fallen first Ainur (primordial spirits from
before the world was made solvent) Melkor who was later renamed Morgoth, “Dark
Enemy” (read “Devil” as is used today). Point
is, Sauron (at that point in the tale the conquered captive of Numenor) seduced
the once noble Numenorians using exactly the same tactics, fears and divisive
lies that were used to seduce the once noble American Conservative.
The question before us is “who in the modern world is in
the role of Sauron?” With a total salute
to Professor Tolkien’s genius I’m going to use the name of his character to
represent the enemy of today, the forces and powers who in our world reprise
the actions of Sauron in the service of his master Morgoth.
There is a reason the Conservatives (~Republican) were
attacked first... they’re the homogenous core culture of America. The Progressive, the Liberal (~Democrat) are
not, they are the various offshoot cultures, the sum of them approximately
equal in numbers to the core, and yet internally not one but rather several
cultures who form alliances and coalitions to represent the various agendas
sponsored by their varying motives.
Where they cooperate they do NOT truly trust each other internally,
their motives are to disparate for full internal trust... net result being no
ONE line of persuasion/propaganda would be effective against all of them, and
their internal distrust would make it likely any one seduced would be set upon
by the others. The common culture Conservatives
were near bulletproof to any external source, but being naively trusting
internally totally vulnerable to a Sauron trained operative who once accepted
was able to emulate their culture while corrupting it (dare I say Ronald Reagan?...
oops, I just did...).
Since the core culture of America
is predominantly Christian the churches became both victims and contagion
vectors of the attack. Sauron skillfully
exploited the contradictions, the rationalizations inherent to any religion to
disable the internal ethics of those he attacked. Once the rationalizations had been in place
for a generation or three they’d migrated into the culture, and the political structures of religion that validate the ethical content
of any culture embracing their belief structure became autonomous allies in his
cause, ever more compromised and corrupted in any comparison between the ethics
of the modern and the theologies evolved across the ages.
Of course Sauron worked malice on more than simply the Men
of Numenor, his malice was directed at all the free peoples. In many places across the ages of middle earth
he built alliances between essentially estranged peoples focused against some
single group using the very lies he’d foisted on the one group to unite the
others against them. He was actually
very, very good at letting others do the dirty work for him so that when his
Orcs marched against them all they’d all been weakened.
Which brings me to my greatest fear in the present. As I said earlier, the Liberals are not one
culture, they are in fact several cultures and as with the speaking people’s
who were Tolkien’s characters quite often quite estranged one from another. Looking at the modern world objectively I am
afraid Sauron is again using his old tactics: having corrupted the
Conservatives is now using that corruption to unify the Liberals to the point
they are terribly vulnerable to being deceived and seduced by some singular lie
based on the focus of their alliance (most probably a lie impacting the
spiritual, the theological elements of their lives that serve as the reference
standard for ethics and the morality those ethics enable... convince them that
the corruption they see is the result of Christianity and they're not likely to
remember say the deeds of Zeus in his control of Olympus, or the actions of
Loki or Spiderwoman... all the religions have equivalent characterizations of the
same modes of thought, and the best way to get people to ignore the teachings
of their own religion is to get them convinced “that only happens to those
damned Christians/Pagans/Jews/Hindus/Muslims... ).
For those who might read this who are of the Conservative
mindset (~Republican) I implore you to understand how it was your very
strengths demanded Sauron attack you first, and how those strengths are not
lost, the metal of them still lives among you and may be re-forged into new
understandings beyond Sauron’s deceptions even as Anduril was re-forged from
the shards of Narsil to arm the Dark Lord’s most feared enemy!
For those who might read this who are of the Progressive or
Liberal (~Democrat) persuasion I implore you: beware, and be wary! The next stroke of Sauron’s war will fall on
YOU!
