Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, notify me at [email protected] and indicate which you would like. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.
Tuesday
Even as Twitter (or X) plunges into a rightwing abyss, it’s still good for an occasional laugh. I loved the following Xeet, which exposes the difficulties the mainstream media is having with the 2024 election. Both-siderism is a real problem when one of the candidates is essentially promising to end democracy if he is elected while the other is, well, acting like a traditional president.
Juxtaposing pictures of Gandalf and Saruman, Xeeter JRR Jokien sarcastically observed,
But they’re BOTH so OLD! Gandalf can barely remember his passwords and even forgot that people called him Gandalf (yikes), while Saruman betrayed the Free Peoples of middle-earth and led an insurrection that stormed Helm’s Deep. You can see how they’re equally bad choices.
Jokien may be referring to how the media paid more attention to Biden’s memory lapse than it did to Trump encouraging Putin to invade NATO allies—words that may have contributed to the murder of Alexei Navalny, although that’s something that can’t be proved. If you need a refresher course on Tolkien, here are the Gandalf references. The first is to the wizard’s initial failure to open the gates to Moria after reading what is inscribed upon them:
“The words are in the elven-tongue of the West of Middle-earth in the Elder Days,” answered Gandalf. “But they do not say anything of importance to us. They say only: The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter. And underneath small and faint is written: I, Narvi, made them. Celebrimbor of Hollin drew these signs.” “What does it mean by speak, friend, and enter?” asked Merry. “That is plain enough,” said Gimli. “If you are a friend, speak the password, and the doors will open, and you can enter.”
As it turns out, it’s a riddle: if one “speaks ‘friend’” in the Elven tongue, the doors open. At least one Tolkien enthusiast with knowledge of the Silmarillion (@joshcarlosjosh) came to Gandalf’s defense after reading Jokien’s Xeet:
To be perfectly fair to Gandalf, it wasn’t actually HIS password. It was Celebrimbor’s, and he’d been dead for thousands of years. Conversely, the password was written right on the door, and Gandalf read the inscription multiple times.
As far as forgetting that people once called him Gandalf, that moment occurs when the wizard appears to Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn after escaping from and defeating the Balrog. No longer Gandalf the Grey, he has become a figure shining in white:
At last Aragorn stirred. “Gandalf!” he said. “Beyond all hope you return to us in our need! What veil was over my sight? Gandalf!” Gimli said nothing, but sank to his knees, shading his eyes.
“Gandalf,” the old man repeated, as if recalling from old memory a long disused word. “Yes, that was the name. I was Gandalf.”
Helms Deep, meanwhile, is Saruman’s first target after betraying his former allies, the Rohirrim. His Orcs attacking the walls are like Trumpists swarming the Capitol:
The enemy surged forward, some against the Deeping Wall, others towards the causeway and the ramp that led up to the Hornburg-gates. There the hugest Orcs were mustered, and the wild men of the Dunland fells. A moment they hesitated and then on they came. The lightning flashed, and blazoned upon every helm and shield the ghastly hand of Isengard was seen. They reached the summit of the rock; they drove towards the gates.
It’s worth noting that Gandalf saves Middle-earth by surrounding himself with good people–he doesn’t do it all by himself–while Saruman places his future in the hands of mindless hoards. And yet there are news outlets suggesting that Joe Biden mixing up the heads of state of Egypt and Mexico is of the same order as Trump instigating an attack on the Capital or promising retribution against his enemies.
Imagine how the hobbits, elves, dwarfs, and men of Middle-earth would respond to such a claim.
