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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28892 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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I think my problem with the hobbit mindset is that Hobbiton will not be left alone. Hanania seems to have a deep-seated disdain for mundane domesticity and, as the Zoomers say, "vibing". I just don't believe the hobbits will be allowed to vibe. If the ring doesn't get to Mordor, the Shire will be perfected by Sauron; if it does, the Shire will still be scoured. The hobbits' complacency only allows Saruman to sweep in and turn it into a police state virtually unopposed — and I don't believe for a second Tolkien didn't have an allegory in mind when he was writing that.

and I don't believe for a second Tolkien didn't have an allegory in mind when he was writing that.

The place where that became unrealistic to me was how stupidly Saruman behaved after he got news the ring had been destroyed. The Shire under his control, like everywhere else in Middle Earth, would have felt the reverberations from the destruction of the ring and the fall of Sauron. Saruman would absolutely have known that the Fellowship hobbits were going to return back home soon (knowing their temprament and desire for domestic life) and would fight him for control there.

The very first thing a smart Saruman would have done would have been to completely ethnically cleanse the entire Shire of hobbits by genociding them all (and we know that by this point he was evil enough to do so) and replacing them with Uruk-Hai, so that when the inevetable battle happened at least the locals would side with him instead of against him. And if you read the chapter you'd quickly realise that the fellowship hobbits wouldn't have been able to muster their successful rebellion had there been no more living local hobbits left.

For whatever reason Tolkien didn't write the chapter in this way though... Perhaps it would have been even more anticlimatic than The Scouring of the Shire is on its own, but it would definitely have been more realistic.

Not really more realistic. Saruman's goal was never to depopulate and replace the hobbits, it was to enslave them. And the timing: the whole time period under discussion only lasts about seven months. Saruman wouldn't have had time to ethnically cleanse the Shire.

by genociding them all (and we know that by this point he was evil enough to do so) and replacing them with Uruk-Hai

With what forces? Saruman was not keeping spare army in case he would lose.

And when Lotho sent his Men they got no change out of him. Tooks are lucky, they’ve got those deep holes in the Green Hills, the Great Smials and all, and the ruffians can’t come at ’em; and they won’t let the ruffians come on their land. If they do, Tooks hunt ’em. Tooks shot three for prowling and robbing. After that the ruffians turned nastier. And they keep a pretty close watch on Tookland. No one gets in nor out of it now.’

Yeah, when Saruman had power and was building up his forces, his immediate aims were to get Rohan under control (and he did that by using Grima to undermine Theoden, not by marching in a conquering force) and then move on to Gondor, all the while sucking up to Sauron who, justifiably, didn't trust him not to be planning some backstabbing of his own if he ever got his hands on the One Ring.

Even if he had wanted to, he couldn't move his own Uruk-Hai army into the Shire without Sauron's knowledge and permission, which I doubt he would have obtained as Sauron would have seen this (again, correctly) as Saruman trying to build up his own base of power.

Besides, Saruman wasn't planning for "what happens after Sauron is defeated", his entire rationale for throwing in with Sauron was that he was convinced he was going to come out the winner, and Saruman wanted to be on the winning side. He had lost all his wisdom, and wasn't capable of foreseeing that the Hobbits would survive and come out the victors and he would therefore need to be three moves ahead in destroying their homeland. He didn't see this because he didn't want to see this, he wanted the position as trusted viceroy after the victory of Sauron.

When he was overthrown, and therefore wanted revenge, he had lost all his powers. Gandalf had stripped him of everything, so that all that remained to him was the ability to persuade others, and to pick up what shreds of control that remained to him. Due to using Lotho as a catspaw, he was able to introduce his band of Ruffians into the Shire first under the guise of 'post-war reconstruction' and then, as he tightened his grip on power there, to do away with Lotho altogether:

Wormtongue halted and looked back at him, half prepared to stay. Saruman turned. ‘No evil?’ he cackled. ‘Oh no! Even when he sneaks out at night it is only to look at the stars. But did I hear someone ask where poor Lotho is hiding? You know, don’t you, Worm? Will you tell them?’

Wormtongue cowered down and whimpered: ‘No, no!’

‘Then I will,’ said Saruman. ‘Worm killed your Chief, poor little fellow, your nice little Boss. Didn’t you, Worm? Stabbed him in his sleep, I believe. Buried him, I hope; though Worm has been very hungry lately. No, Worm is not really nice. You had better leave him to me.’

A look of wild hatred came into Wormtongue’s red eyes. ‘You told me to; you made me do it,’ he hissed.

EDIT: As an aside, this bit always kills me, Saruman just casually throwing it out there that there may not even be a body to bury because Wormtongue cannabalised Lotho: Buried him, I hope; though Worm has been very hungry lately. And people say there's nothing dark in Tolkien, it's just simple Good Guys versus Bad Guys (and racially-coded bad guys, if we go with the progressive critiques).

Saruman had been much more occupied with foiling Gandalf, who even as far back as the events of "The Hobbit" (as retconned) was worried about the return of Sauron, and Saruman had to work in secret there since suddenly popping up with an Uruk-Hai army would have revealed all too early. There were other reasons that Saruman couldn't simply march an Orc army into the Shire, thanks to the restoration of the Kingdom under the Mountain and the Dale men:

From Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, Part III: The Third Age, III: The Quest of Erebor:

"I was very troubled at that time," he said, "for Saruman was hindering all my plans. I knew that Sauron had arisen again and would soon declare himself, and I knew that he was preparing for a great war. How would he begin? Would he try first to re-occupy Mordor, or would he first attack the chief strongholds of his enemies? I thought then, and I am sure now, that to attack Lórien and Rivendell, as soon as he was strong enough was his original plan. It would have been a much better plan for him, and much worse for us.

"You may think that Rivendell was out of his reach, but I did not think so. The state of things in the North was very bad. The Kingdom under the Mountain and the strong Men of Dale were no more. To resist any force that Sauron might send to regain the northern passes in the mountains and the old lands of Angmar there were only the Dwarves of the Iron Hills, and behind them lay a desolation and a Dragon. The Dragon Sauron might use with terrible effect. Often I said to myself: "I must find some means of dealing with Smaug. But a direct stroke against Dol Guldur is needed still more. We must disturb Sauron's plans. I must make the Council see that.'

..."That is true," said Gandalf. "Poor Thorin! He was a great Dwarf of a great House, whatever his faults; and though he fell at the end of the journey, it was largely due to him that the Kingdom under the Mountain was restored, as I desired. But Dáin Ironfoot was a worthy successor. And now we hear that he fell fighting before Erebor again, even while we fought here. I should call it a heavy loss, if it was not a wonder rather that in his great age he could still wield his axe as mightily as they say he did, standing over the body of King Brand before the Gate of Erebor until the darkness fell.

"It might all have gone very differently indeed. The main attack was diverted southwards, it is true; and yet even so with his farstretched right hand Sauron could have done terrible harm in the North, while he defended Gondor, if King Brand and King Dáin had not stood in his path. When you think of the great Battle of Pelennor, do not forget the Battle of Dale. Think of what might have been. Dragon-fire and savage swords in Eriador! There might be no Queen in Gondor. We might now only hope to return from the victory here to ruin and ash. But that has been averted – because I met Thorin Oakenshield one evening on the edge of spring not far from Bree. A chance-meeting, as we say in Middle-earth."

As an aside, this bit always kills me, Saruman just casually throwing it out there that there may not even be a body to bury because Wormtongue cannabalised Lotho

Also, Saruman is running on pure spite toward everyone - including some of his actual followers. And ends paying price for that soon after.

That's part of his fall; he always did think he was better than anyone else, but now he's reduced to this miserable ball of spite and hatred and mostly impotent anger. Wandering in rags like a beggar, where he had hoped to be one of the lords of the earth (and was in his origins indeed one of the lords of the universe).

And people say there's nothing dark in Tolkien

Of all things that you could claim/invent/legitimately have a point... Some people went with this one? Really? Really?

Maybe Book of Mazarbul was to subtle for them? ("The Watcher in the Water took Óin — we cannot get out. The end comes soon. We hear drums, drums in the deep.")

What about literal genocide? Poisoned and ruined land of Mordor and Marshes? Multiple characters with severe mental illness (and well depicted one)? Mind control and possession? Horrific death in multiple varieties? Story of Entwifes?

WTF they want? Explicitly described rape scenes were one of few actually missing things.

(I am being charitable and limiting things to LOTR and Hobbit, if people are going to claim that there's nothing dark in Silmarilion, then I can only assume trolling or some deep confusion)

Explicitly described rape scene

I think it's the lack of explicit description that makes people think this; Tolkien knew about bad things happening, he didn't feel the need to put the gory details down on the page. Just because he didn't write ten pages describing Celebrian's torture at the hands of the Orcs doesn't mean he had no clue about evil.

He did speak about this in a 1956 letter:

So I feel that the fiddle-faddle in reviews, and correspondence about them, as to whether my 'good people' were kind and merciful and gave quarter (in fact they do), or not, is quite beside the point. Some critics seem determined to represent me as a simple-minded adolescent, inspired with, say, a With-the-flag-to-Pretoria spirit, and wilfully distort what is said in my tale. I have not that spirit, and it does not appear in the story. The figure of Denethor alone is enough to show this; but I have not made any of the peoples on the 'right' side, Hobbits, Rohirrim, Men of Dale or of Gondor, any better than men have been or are, or can be. Mine is not an 'imaginary' world, but an imaginary historical moment on 'Middle-earth' – which is our habitation.

Besides, Saruman wasn't planning for "what happens after Sauron is defeated", his entire rationale for throwing in with Sauron was that he was convinced he was going to come out the winner, and Saruman wanted to be on the winning side. He had lost all his wisdom, and wasn't capable of foreseeing that the Hobbits would survive and come out the victors and he would therefore need to be three moves ahead in destroying their homeland. He didn't see this because he didn't want to see this, he wanted the position as trusted viceroy after the victory of Sauron.

This isn't my reading. By the time the Fellowship reach Rohan, Saruman has already attempted to double-cross Sauron (by attacking the Fellowship at Rauros with the intention of stealing the Ring and taking it to Isengard). See this Brett Devereaux post for why Saruman's plan was very unlikely to work. My understanding is that the Unfinished Tales confirm this reading, and that Saruman had been actively concealing the likely location of the Ring (which he had guessed based on Gandalf's excessive interest in the Shire) from Sauron several years before the events of LOTR - with the implication that the offer made to Gandalf before imprisoning him (to join in a Saruman-led scheme to use the Ring to defeat Sauron and seize power for themselves) was sincere.

Saruman absolutely intended to backstab Sauron, and Sauron was well-aware of this. But I think Saruman concentrated more on the problems on his immediate doorstep (Rohan) and left the Shire to be dealt with at his convenience. Sending his own forces off to occupy and ethnically cleanse the Shire would have been wasteful, he would expend resources that he needed to take on Rohan/Gondor and then later Sauron. What is Saruman going to do, with his army sitting there in the Shire twiddling their thumbs waiting for any fleeing Hobbits to come back, all the while the action is diverted South and Sauron versus Gondor is going on? Whoever comes out the winner of that, they're not likely to be friendly to Saruman, and unless he's planning to flee to the Shire himself sans Ring and make some kind of fortified land on the edge of the immediate concerns of the victor, dividing his attention like that isn't sensible.

If he'd stopped playing silly buggers and had genuinely thrown in with Sauron, then sending his force North to aid in the Battle of Dale might have turned the tide for the Mordor forces and the bad outcome Gandalf feared could have come true:

Think of what might have been. Dragon-fire and savage swords in Eriador! There might be no Queen in Gondor. We might now only hope to return from the victory here to ruin and ash.

I think Saruman suspected Gandalf's interest in the Shire because he couldn't imagine that one of the Istari would like the Hobbits for their own sake. There had to be an ulterior motive. It was just a lucky coincidence that he guessed right about where the Ring had finally turned up. His offer to Gandalf may have been sincere, but Gandalf was right that only one person could wield the Ring and the second Saruman got his hands on it, that would be the end of their 'partnership' and the end of Gandalf, too.

Isn't Saruman at lower level of divine pyramid (or how it's called?) than Sauron and cannot defeat him in any case?

and cannot defeat him in any case

This is proved wrong by Sauron being defeated (ok, it is heavily implied that God was meddling in it but still it shows that Sauron being more powerful than any of Istari is not unsolvable)

Both are Maiar. Sauron is clearly more powerful (both in various mundane ways like army size and territory controlled, and through his power over the Rings), but they are at the same level of the divine pyramid.

Saruman believes that he can master the Ring, and that if he does he will be stronger than Sauron. There are strong hints that he is wrong about this, but the matter is never settled as his orcs grab the wrong hobbits and Frodo escapes across Anduin with the Ring.

I believe Sauron, Sarumon, and Gandalf were all Istari and one step below the Valar (who were second to Erú Illuvatar himself); Sauron worked directly for Morgoth, and the Istari worked for the other Valar.

Mostly right. The first group of beings under Eru Iluvatar were the Ainur, some of whom migrated to Middle Earth. The greater powers among the Ainur in Middle Earth became known as the Valar, which included Melkor (later Morgoth), Manwe, Varda, Aule, Yavanna, etc. The lesser powers among the Ainur were the Maiar, which included the original versions of Sauron, Saruman, and Gandalf under other names (Meiron, Curunir, and Olorin, IIRC).

The Istari (aka Wizards) were a group of five Maiar who were incarnated into human guises and sent to Middle Earth as the representatives of the Valar in response to the evils of Sauron (Saruman and Gandalf are the narratively most important of the Istari). Saruman vs. Sauron heads-up is probably a Sauron-wins, unless Saruman has the Ring, though both would be operating at non-peak Maiar power for different reasons. (After all, Sauron without the Ring pretty clearly had the upper hand mind-to-mind across the Palantir connection, and neither party should have a native advantage in that environment.)

Saruman was ruined at that point, and all that was left to him was petty revenge. He no longer had the power, much less the wisdom, to carry out his plans about cosying up to Sauron and getting a place at his right hand, and when Sauron fell that was it, game over.

But he could still do something in a mean way, and even if he knew the survivors were coming back to the Shire eventually (and he may have gambled that the destruction of the Ring would also mean the deaths of Frodo and any others with him, or that the Hobbits would have been killed in the fighting even before the fall of Sauron), he still had time to get there first and spoil as much as he could.

Merry looked round in dismay and disgust. ‘Let’s get out!’ he said. ‘If I had known all the mischief he had caused, I should have stuffed my pouch down Saruman’s throat.’

‘No doubt, no doubt! But you did not, and so I am able to welcome you home.’ There standing at the door was Saruman himself, looking well-fed and well-pleased; his eyes gleamed with malice and amusement.

A sudden light broke on Frodo. ‘Sharkey!’ he cried.

Saruman laughed. ‘So you have heard the name, have you? All my people used to call me that in Isengard, I believe. A sign of affection, possibly. But evidently you did not expect to see me here.’

‘I did not,’ said Frodo. ‘But I might have guessed. A little mischief in a mean way: Gandalf warned me that you were still capable of it.’

‘Quite capable,’ said Saruman, ‘and more than a little. You made me laugh, you hobbit-lordlings, riding along with all those great people, so secure and so pleased with your little selves. You thought you had done very well out of it all, and could now just amble back and have a nice quiet time in the country. Saruman’s home could be all wrecked, and he could be turned out, but no one could touch yours. Oh no! Gandalf would look after your affairs.’

Saruman laughed again. ‘Not he! When his tools have done their task he drops them. But you must go dangling after him, dawdling and talking, and riding round twice as far as you needed. “Well,” thought I, “if they’re such fools, I will get ahead of them and teach them a lesson. One ill turn deserves another.” It would have been a sharper lesson, if only you had given me a little more time and more Men. Still I have already done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives. And it will be pleasant to think of that and set it against my injuries.’

Saruman didn't send an occupation force into the Shire because he didn't have one to spare; all the efforts were concentrated on the great final push against Gondor and Rohan, and in the aftermath of victory, he presumed, then he could put in his claim to be overlord of the Shire for Sauron. He didn't much care about it except as a way to poke Gandalf in the eye, it was too unimportant without anything there of interest for him. A slave-land filled with slave-Hobbits was enough for him after the dust had settled, but as it fell out, he couldn't even get that much, though he was able to gather together a rag-tag bunch of bandits to help him take over, with Lotho at first as his puppet quisling face of authority.

And they didn't have it all their own way, even from the first:

‘Have they got any weapons?’ asked Merry.

‘Whips, knives, and clubs, enough for their dirty work: that’s all they’ve showed so far,’ said Cotton. ‘But I dare say they’ve got other gear, if it comes to fighting. Some have bows, anyway. They’ve shot one or two of our folk.’

‘There you are, Frodo!’ said Merry. ‘I knew we should have to fight. Well, they started the killing.’

‘Not exactly,’ said Cotton. ‘Leastways not the shooting. Tooks started that. You see, your dad, Mr. Peregrin, he’s never had no truck with this Lotho, not from the beginning: said that if anyone was going to play the chief at this time of day, it would be the right Thain of the Shire and no upstart. And when Lotho sent his Men they got no change out of him. Tooks are lucky, they’ve got those deep holes in the Green Hills, the Great Smials and all, and the ruffians can’t come at ’em; and they won’t let the ruffians come on their land. If they do, Tooks hunt ’em. Tooks shot three for prowling and robbing. After that the ruffians turned nastier. And they keep a pretty close watch on Tookland. No one gets in nor out of it now.’

I think Tolkien was more interested in showing internal corruption; the Shire is not an earthly paradise, even if it is a good place to live. The dealings with the Sackville-Bagginses, where Lotho has his authority go to his head, and he is enriched by trading with Saruman, and hence gives Saruman a foothold in the Shire, and the co-operation of the likes of Ted Sandyman who are all too happy to help with 'progress' (but really wrecking and pulling down things), all done at first under the guise of working with the local authorities (i.e. Lotho) - that, as much as the unpreparedness of the Hobbits for an outside invasion force, is what lets Saruman establish control there.

An invasion force of Uruk-Hai that wiped out all the Shire Hobbits won't give you that, or the warning that you can't safely and smugly assume all the 'bad things' are out there, away over yonder, and not lurking at your own fireside.

The very first thing a smart Saruman would have done would have been to completely ethnically cleanse the entire Shire of hobbits by genociding them all (and we know that by this point he was evil enough to do so) and replacing them with Uruk-Hai, so that when the inevetable battle happened at least the locals would side with him instead of against him. And if you read the chapter you'd quickly realise that the fellowship hobbits wouldn't have been able to muster their successful rebellion had there been no more living local hobbits left.

Smart saruman would guilt trip the hobbits for colonizing traditional elf lands and tell them that not accepting their uruk-hai migrants into the shire would not be very nice.

"Today we meet to acknowledge that the Shire occupies a portion of the unceded ancestral lands of the Laiquendi branch of the Nandorin Elves, who were displaced by the colonizers from Númenor*" 😀

*After a long chain of natural and unnatural disasters

Their complacency only allows Saruman to sweep in and turn it into a police state virtually unopposed

But the Hobbits did resist in quiet ways, and once they had leaders they turned the tables quickly. It's the great powers underestimating the Hobbits all the time that brings about their own downfall. Our friend here sneering at the Hobbits seems to have turned tail and run back to the big city, he didn't stick around and by virtue of his superior crinkled brain, get-up-and-go, and sharp, hungry, novelty-seeking contrarianism rise to the top of the heap and become cock of the walk round them there parts. The sleepy stodgy Hobbits ran him off because he couldn't deal with them.

The guy just does not understand people:

Both of my parents came from vastly different regions of the country, and had themselves been raised in itinerant families that regularly relocated to where the money was. To me moving all the time is just something that normal responsible middle class people do to achieve prosperity, but in many parts of the agricultural Midwest there appears to be something of a stigma to it.

You know who moves around all the time going to where the money is? Beggars. Tramps. Hoboes. The Joads moving to California out of necessity, not choice. People who are the new serfs, being moved around by their bosses at the convenience of the business (move to the new plant/office three hundred miles away, uproot your family). Itinerant farm workers, seasonal workers like the immigrant labour brown people he probably wouldn't like being compared to.

By contrast, having something you own that is yours, where you can tell those who would move you around like a chesspiece to go to hell, is valuable. For all his talk about the bovine Bavarians versus the proud and fierce Ulster Irish, he has no realisation that the Scots-Irish also would tell him to go to hell if he tried moving them off the plot of land that is now theirs, and no landlord can evict them or make them shift.

You're not an entrepreneurial adventurer, Big Boy; you're a tumbleweed who goes with the wind, a servant like those of the Centurion who says "And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” You have no roots and nothing to fall back on against those who have power over you to say "come here, go there, do it now!"

Where do you come from? The Sun Belt? The various states your parents grew up in and moved to with their itinerant families? Where do you belong? Where are the graves of your ancestors, or do you even know that much? You're a disposable, replaceable cog in the economic machinery who will be discarded the second you can't "move to where the money is".

I am sympathetic to the Auron MacIntyre framing that the side that wants to win always beats the side that wants to be left alone. At present, I don't have a well-constructed ideological vision for how to maintain Hobbiton indefinitely, but I think I can trivially observe that the power-seekers lauded in the original blogpost have utterly failed to do anything constructive in the places of conflict (California, New York, DC). The lack of a good solution for the dissolution of high-trust communities by bad actors doesn't really get to me a place of actively preferring a conflict-zone of racial animosity.

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