I jokingly dashed off this bit of satire (or bitter sarcasm) on Facebook last week. I didn't give it much thought, but it meshes nicely with an article in a magazine I received today.1 Author and professor Jessica Hooten Wilson uses Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as an example of the difference between those who seek power for power's sake, and those who seek to live a "good life" by resisting the desire for power -- by themselves and others -- as an end in itself.
Wilson recalls that in his quest to Mount Doom, carrying the Ring, Frodo is burdened, physically and mentally, to the point that he can't recall the happier memories of his life in the Shire. In the film based on the Tolkien epic, Frodo's stalwart companion, Samwise, reminds him that there are values worth savoring, values for which the defeat of Sauron is but the necessary means:
Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It will be spring soon, and the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they'll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields. And they'll be eating the first of the strawberries with cream? Do you remember the taste of strawberries?
Although force was required to defeat Sauron, as well as guile, those qualities were not what life is about. Wilson compares The Lord of the Rings with Homer's Odyssey:
Homer's story relies on xenia (hospitality) for its distinction between good and evil. Tolkien emphasizes resistance to power against lust for power. In the Odyssey, the good characters know how to make strangers into guests (instead of into meals); in The Lord of the Rings, the heroes banded together into fellowship and friendship to withstand the One Ring. Those who crave power have no friends; only temporary alliances. They have no joy in singing, dancing, or telling stories. They lose the taste of strawberries.
They also lose their taste for the beauty of gently falling fresh snow. Trump leaps into mind, and hurls himself all across the author's pages, although his name is never mentioned.
If asked, I suspect the author would reply that Trump is but an archetype, an exemplar of the sort of person that's become all too common. More accurately, of a sort of person that has always been all too common. Again, referring to Tolkien's epic:
For the story to work, Tolkien depends on an audience that will refuse a compromise that exchanges one's delight in small ordinary things for the provision of great power.
Yet, I worry this audience is diminishing.
Many of us hoped for a Democratic candidate this year who, like a knight with a shining sword, would destroy the Trump presidency. Instead, what we got was someone more like Frodo. An experienced politician, certainly, but in many ways a small, gentle, quiet man. A man who gladly interrupted his campaigning to encourage a boy suffering, as had he, from a bad case of stuttering. Who later, away from the glare of journalists and PR men, called the boy at home to suggest remedies that had worked for him.
Very nice, I'm sure many thought, but that's wasting time needed for the battle against Trump.
Sauron wasn't defeated by the great armies of men and elves arrayed against his forces down on the plains. He was defeated by a shy hobbit, a hobbit with an atypical (for a hobbit) sense of adventure, but nevertheless, a hobbit who would rather have been sitting at home back in the Shire, smoking a pipe and telling stories. (A person somewhat like Tolkien, I suspect.) A hobbit who was too insignificant to catch the attention of the all-seeing eye of Sauron until it was too late, until he had climbed Mount Doom and -- with some unintended help from Gollum -- hurled the Ring into Sammath Naur, the Cracks of Doom.
Joe Biden quietly told his stories to the American electorate, ignoring the posturing and taunts and braying of his opponent. But he won. He vanquished Trump, the self-described Chosen One. It was no landslide, but Frodo himself came very close to failing.
Someone else might have beaten Trump by a larger margin, had he or she been more Trump-like. I'm reassured and happy that the Dark One was vanquished by something more like the Light. How good a president Biden turns out to be remains to be seen. But by being the man he is, he represents our nation's better instincts. He will be the symbol of America, witnessed by the peoples of the world. His victory has been a victory for human decency.
He's a president who cares about a kid with a stammer. He's a president with a taste for strawberries.
-------------------------------------1 "Return to the Shire," America (January 2021)
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