Spoiler Alert: if you have never read the Lord of The Rings books or watched the trilogy movies, this contains spoilers. Also, where have you been the last few decades?

Back in September, I decided to reread the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I read it once a long time ago as kid, before the Peter Jackson movies, and then again some years after the final movie.  So, it’s been a while.  I decided this time, I’d listen to the books because Tolkien was a linguist and, for linguists, how it sounds is important too.  Also, as a sort of riff on medieval tales in general, it’s meant to be heard. There are songs in the story. They are meant to be sung. Back in the Middle Ages, maybe not many people might be able to read, but almost everyone could hear.  

Then it came to choosing between Andy Serkis’s reading of the books and Rob Inglis’s.  I went with Rob, the traditional pick. The only problem was, my hold place in line was 158th for 1 of 30 copies available at my public library. And so, I waited, and waited and waited.  In late March, LOTR became available, and I started listening. In hearing the book, rather than reading it, I realised there was a lot of things I had not picked up on before. Ah, the benefits of mixed modalities! 

As I started LOTR, I put a hold on the Two Towers, the second book in the series, thinking I might have a long wait. There were only 12 holds but only the 2 copies available. Apparently, fandom falls off a cliff after book 1. I was able to get Two Towers  just a week after I finished LOTF. So, that was my April book. What struck me about TT, that I never realised before, was that Frodo was actually responsible for Golum’s death because Frodo actively used the ring’s power to make Golum swear a terrible oath. I found myself wondering how Frodo felt about that, after it was all over and he was back in the Shire. Yes, I think about things like this. Long after wars are over, people revisit their actions in the privacy of their thoughts. 

I also found myself thinking a lot about what’s missing from the books. That is to say, while Frodo writes a contract to sell Bag End in LOTR, we don’t hear about lawyers, or judges. And while we get an inkling of business enterprises in TT, from a discussion of tobacco farming and sales and somewhat shady doings of the Sackville-Baggins’s and the men of Bree, we hear nothing about businesses per se. We know some people have jobs. Samwise is a gardner. Some people are farmers. Gandalf apparently sells fireworks? But we don’t really hear about people having jobs. As close as we come to any sort of work, is hearing about Elves weaving or the metallurgy of Dwarves. It doesn’t seem to matter to the author.

Another very striking thing is that despite all the different cultures and types of beings that inhabit Middle Earth, not one of these groups has a religion or deities of any kind. Every action in the books is down to personal and or  group agency. There are no miracles, very little magic (science?), and only fleeting moments of metaphysics. I’m not a LOTR expert. I don’t know all of the lore written by Tolkien about Middle Earth. I’m just going by the 3 books, so I may be mistaken. But it’s fair to consider Middle Earth to be a place that is truly “godless” but largely filled with basic goodness.

 It’s just weird because Medieval literature of the West is always mentioning religion. For example, the counting of how long something was baked in an oven was measured by the number of rosaries one could recite in that period. You want that crust crunchy? That’s going to be 20 rather than 15 rosaries. And language is full of words related to religion, which linguists (and everyday people) of Tolkien’s period would be aware of.  I said to the IT guy this week, “My computer gave up the ghost. Can you come and fix or replace it?” Of course, the IT guy said “what does that mean – give up the ghost?” So, the power of the Numenoreans is clearly fading.

While I was thinking about all this, I requested the last book, Return of the King, of which there was only 1 copy available, and only 1 person reading it, and only my 1 request. How sad, I thought, that so few people reached the end of the tale! But I did understand.  People watch the movie and then get the books only to realise, nope, not really the same thing.  LOTR is the book you read on many a long winter night by the fireside. I didn’t have much time to lament the fact I was one of the few. On the way home from work, at the Entish of May, as I was heading to the airport to go and see my folks for the Memorial Day holiday, a man stopped short in front of me on the freeway (because he went over a hill and suddenly, unexpectedly, saw a line of car dead stopped before him).

I stopped short, and short of hitting his car by about 5 ft. The lady behind me however, in the SUV, going 60? Not so much. She hit me and pushed me into the car ahead of me.  There was a minor bend to my front fender, and crumpling of his rear plate. Whereas the trunk of my car now is bent to resemble the Misty Mountains’ Caradhras. The frame was bent, so much so the doors did not align any longer. The metal of the well wells were pushed into the tires.  It was totalled. A Halligan tool was required to get my things out of the trunk.  The SO does love a reason to buy a new tool.

I was hurt, but not so much so that I had to go to hospital. The same could not be said for a friend at work, who on the same day, at the same time, also leaving for a trip, but going the other direction on the same road, was also rear ended and totalled. She is still not back to work. Needless to say, my holiday weekend got cancelled. But, I was alive and, thanks to prescription anti-infammatories, I was able to return to work (and start treatment) as expected the following week. As I’m writing this, I’m wearing a spica thumb/wrist brace. That’s my current typo excuse.

I requested the hold on the Return of the King but since that wasn’t an immediate go, the SO bought me David Sedaris’s latest book is The Land and Its People, which is brilliant and just the perfect read for a person post car wreck. They don’t make Hallmark cards for car crashes unfortunately. The SO looked. Which is strange as there are way more car wrecks – 6 Million per year – than marriages of which there are only about  2.4 Million. Anyway, I highly recommend it ( the book, not the car crash). 

I did get my grubby little mitts on the last book, finally, on June 1st.  I’m in Book V right now. This is the part where the forces of Sauron attempt to take the city of Minas Tirith in Gondor, thinking (mistakenly) that Sauron’s “one” ring of power is there. I had not really taken in the scope of what was happening in this section before. That is to say, all the different groups in the battle on the fields of Pelennor, before the White City. Something else I had not considered before was that, ultimately, it is not a man, but a woman and a hobbit who defeat the Witch King of Angmar, and that, while all these groups are out in battle trying to save Middle Earth, where is the Steward of Gondor (the old white man)?  He’s in the halls of the dead trying to burn himself (and his son, Faramir) alive because he thinks all hope is lost (at least that’s what Pippin thinks). I have issues with this attitude.

I don’t mind that Denethor has given up hope (more on that in a second). I mind that Denethor doesn’t think he should die in battle leading Gondor’s men, making a last glorious stand, doing what a great leader would do, even though he has lost all hope. Although a lot is made of the hopelessness initially, ultimately, once the story is unpicked by Gandalf,  it comes down to the fact Denethor is actually selfish. He doesn’t want Gondor to win because he thinks it will negatively impact him personally. So for that? To prevent that? All Gondor should fall? Wow.

But let’s backtrack. We are told he has lost all hope. Why? Because he’s spent an inordinate amount of time all alone,  looking in the palantir, trying to discern things. Unfortunately, the palantir was controlled by Sauron, who only allowed the stone to show Denethor things that would dishearten him. And, FYI, nobody was supposed to be looking in the stone after everyone knew Sauron had one. So, first mistake?  Denethor glued himself to a screen he considered a source of truth, but wasn’t. Isolated with his tricksie screen, he doesn’t realise he is being manipulated by Sauron, that he is being caused to fall into despair, so that Sauron can more easily take Gondor.  People should really treat Denethor’s story as a cautionary tale. 

When Gandalf arrives to try and save Denethor or at least Faramir his son (who is unconscious), he finds soldiers fighting with each other – instead of the actual enemy at the gates! – such is the division Denethor has created by his selfish stupidity. Denethor refuses all help. Gandalf asks Denethor what it is he really wants, and Denethor, tellingly, replies “I want to go back to the old days, when the stewards ruled Gondor in peace. I don’t want to give up my position to an upstart” (the real king, Aragorn).  And there we have it. Denethor is depressed because he thinks Gondor will fall. But, he’s also not wanting Gondor to go on because his position would be lower with the arrival of the true King.

A man addicted to a lying palantir wants to “go back to the good old days.” He wants to keep the powers that belong to others only to himself. When the moment comes be heroic and unified, he divides the people and he thinks only of himself. He’d rather die – and let his people die – than do the right thing. Sound familiar? In the end, only Faramir is rescued by Gandalf and Pippin; Denethor self-immolates. Denethor had put himself in such a state that there was no saving him. His freewill choice was death. And that brings me back to the lack of a deity of any kind in these books. 

This is a world where beings make choices and there are intended and unintended consequences but they take responsibility (for the most part) for their actions. Each being is seen as capable of leading their own life, without deity involvement. I wonder if people who read these books think about this much. Given the amount of “religious” wars, that are actually wars of people who want power for themselves alone,  going on in the world today, you’d hope readers would think about it. Hiding your war behind your supposed “god” who supposedly ordered it or ordained it, is just silly.

To some extent, Denethor’s fate is what happens when people forget their place in the world. By this I mean, he isolated himself to spend time looking into the palantir.  He lost touch with his people, with the sum of Gondor’s history, of which he was a part. He lost touch with the actual past (and replaced it with a sentimentalized good old days) of his world, and though he had a living son, he was choosing to kill him rather than fighting for his life, for staying connected to a future world, a future Gondor, one which  he would not control (if a rightful king returned) as he and his family once had. Denethor chose to become isolated, made himself prey to manipulation, and that resulted in personal despair, which he took out on the public by giving up on Gondor. 

Denethor is probably not a character people think much about, but he’s like a lot of people these days: isolated from reality, manipulated by others, depressed about the future, fearful of loss of power that never belonged to them, divisive, angry. My response to that is “Please, look away from the palantir. It’s lying to you. Come back to reality.” Their answer is usually, “No” Apparently it’s a hill they want to die on, like Denethor, and if you can’t stop them, you just have to save who you can and let them destroy themselves.

 In ancient Rome, when the government was made up of oligarchs, those men understood there was a trade off happening.  Citizens gave up all rights and powers, but they received free bread and circuses. I’m mentioning this, because in many ways, American society (a large portion of it at least) is caught up in Denethor’s mindset. Circuses only work on groups made of people who isolate themselves, become addicted to the false information people who want them to fall feed them, and get depressed as they fall into an existential vacuum, feeling everything is meaningless, that they don’t matter, that what they do doesn’t matter. Those parts of society end up self-immolating, as a choice. It’s preferred to returning to reality, to community, to being a part of history. 

Tomorrow, a once fine country, will be celebrating its “250-year history liberal democracy” with a circus paid for by the oligarchs. On the semi-torn down White House’s lawn, fake wrestlers will via in fake wrestling matches to be viewed by fake spectators (selected audience members from the military required to be of a certain height and weight– and probably gender and race) – proxies for “the people.” This is just one of a number of circuses being provided. The video of bombs illegally executing foreign fishermen as “drug dealers”, the showy murderous ICE attacks on citizens and immigrants, the needless Israeli forever expansionist war in Iran are all just part of the constant stream of “made for tv” circuses. 

Most people have noticed the constant profiteering, nepotism, graft, double dealing for self enrichment. Most people notice the inflation due to tariffs and wars, the collapse of democracy, the general corruption of the executive, congress, and the courts. It does seem fair to say that this is largely because America’s oligarchy is more incompetent than any that  Juvenal lived through.  American oligarchs don’t provide free bread, don’t care if people can afford bread, don’t even care if Americans eat. The American oligarchy only provides circuses, which I think American news organizations forget. 

America does not have a government right now. It has a tv show, where appointees (who look the part, eg, the current Dept of Defense head) and other incompetent loyal sycophants are rewarded with taxpayer money so long as they keep the show going, keep ratings up, and protect and enrich their “stars” of the show. There isn’t an actual national government with actual policies, only government at the state, county or city levels. But this situation is why individual citizens matter. Democratic government is by and for the people. It can keep happening at the local level.

When individuals break free of their self-inflicted isolation, addiction, and hopelessness, they realise they matter, and that they can fill their own lives with individual meaning, when they can exercise independent thought, listen to their own individual conscience, and walk out their own chosen purpose. When people do that, things change. When enough people do this, society changes. One of the hallmarks of Americans has always been that we choose our own meaning, that’s what the individual rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are based on.  We need those things, to create a life of meaning. It was assumed we could direct ourselves toward what was meaningful to us individually (with or without a deity). 

It’s the Constitutional goal of our society to guarantee a government that knows this to be the meaning of American society and fosters it. Our society has always aimed to be a petri dish. A free place where we can experiment, discover and be who we are, a place where I can peacefully live out my values while you,  my neighbor, can do the same. We were always a community of people who saw the value in freedom, rule of law and liberal democracy. If the government takes as its goal to support societal freedom at home and protect it so people can live out their own individual meanings, as the founders intended, that would indeed be a good government.

If you are looking for an appropriate Flag Day entertainment to watch tomorrow, I recommend watching all 3 of the LOTR series by Peter Jackson. It’s full of the values our flag was meant to stand for and for which average Americans thought they were fighting the Revolution. And Andy Serkis is amazing as Gollum (and other characters)!