The 'Ring' and the remnants of the West

The most important cultural event of the past decade is the ongoing release of the film version of J R R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. No better guide exists to the mood and morals of the United States. The rapturous response among popular audiences to the first two installments of the trilogy should alert us that something important is at work. Richard Wagner's 19th-century tetralogy of music dramas, The Ring of the Nibelungs, gave resonance to National Socialism during the inter-war years of the last century. Tolkien does the same for Anglo-Saxon democracy.
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It's more than a little scary when people use works of music or literature as a basis for their view of the world. Hitler was a big fan of Wagner's Ring cycle. What mischief will LOTR fans cause when they try to apply LOTR to reality? When they cast their enemies as orcs and gollums, it is not only OK to kill them — one must kill them. After all, they aren't human.

From the Virgin Ben...

The Palestinians . . . Millions of Gollums?

A thought occurred to me tonight. I'd like to throw it out there for comment, to those who have seen The Two Towers. Aren't the Palestinians and the Arab/Islamist world a lot like the psycho-evil Gollum personality? "Those tricksy Zionistses, they stole it from us. Tricksy, false! We'll poke out their eyeses. Or . . . we could have Saddam do it. Yes! That's it! We'll have Saddam do it. And then, when they're dead, we takes the precious."

"The Palestinians . . . Millions of Gollums?" Update

I saw "The Two Towers" yesterday and they had a Palestinian Orc. He was the one who ran with the torch into the explosives under the fortress' wall. Since he blew himself up along with the wall, he must have been a Palestinian Orc. I do NOT want to envision what 72 Orc virgins look like.
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