To Castrate a Balrog...

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!