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Monday
In the past, when I’ve returned home after an extended visit elsewhere, I’ve sometimes recited “The Road goes ever on and on,” just as Bilbo does at the end of The Hobbit. Upon coming back to the United States this time after spending seven weeks in Slovenia, I’m thinking of a different hobbit homecoming.
I feel as though I’m returning to a country that has been seized by Saruman in my absence. Although the genial Joe Biden is still in charge, we’re about to see Lotho Baggins installed as “Chief,” a new position giving him authoritarian powers. And if Lotho is Trump, then Saruman would be one of his puppet masters, say Vladimir Putin or Elon Musk or Peter Thiel.
The hobbits’ first shock upon their return is to find a hostile reception awaiting them as they pound upon the city gates:
‘Who’s that? Be off! You can’t come in. Can’t you read the notice: No admittance between sundown and sunrise?’
‘Of course we can’t read the notice in the dark,’ Sam shouted back. ‘And if hobbits of the Shire are to be kept out in the wet on a night like this, I’ll tear down your notice when I find it.’
Then there are reports of hard-won earnings going to tax cuts for the wealthy “gatherers” and “sharers”:
‘What’s the matter with the place?’ said Merry. ‘Has it been a bad year, or what? I thought it had been a fine summer and harvest.’ ‘Well no, the year’s been good enough,’ said Hob. ‘We grows a lot of food, but we don’t rightly know what becomes of it. It’s all these ‘‘gatherers’’ and ‘‘sharers’’, I reckon, going round counting and measuring and taking off to storage. They do more gathering than sharing, and we never see most of the stuff again.’
Among the new shortages is the Shire’s famous pipeweed:
‘There isn’t no pipe-weed now,’ said Hob; ‘at least only for the Chief’s men. All the stocks seem to have gone. We do hear that waggon-loads of it went away down the old road out of the Southfarthing, over Sarn Ford way. That would be the end o’ last year, after you left. But it had been going away quietly before that, in a small way. That Lotho——’
‘Now you shut up, Hob Hayward!’ cried several of the others. ‘You know talk o’ that sort isn’t allowed. The Chief will hear of it, and we’ll all be in trouble.’
The Hobbits learn more as they go along, including how Lotho done his own version of weaponizing the justice department, which is establishing “the Chief’s men” to go after perceived enemies. One hobbit informs the returning travelers about how the new system works:
‘If we all got angry together something might be done. But it’s these Men, Sam, the Chief’s Men. He sends them round everywhere, and if any of us small folk stand up our rights, they drag him off to the Lockholes. They took old Flourdumpling, old Will Whitfoot the Mayor, first, and they’ve taken a lot more. Lately it’s been getting worse. Often they beat ’em now.’
‘Then why do you do their work for them?’ said Sam angrily. ‘Who sent you to Frogmorton?’
‘No one did. We stay here in the big Shirriff-house. We’re the First Eastfarthing Troop now. There’s hundreds of Shirriffs all told, and they want more, with all these new rules. Most of them are in it against their will, but not all. Even in the Shire there are some as like minding other folk’s business and talking big. And there’s worse than that: there’s a few as do spy-work for the Chief and his Men.’
One of the new toughs in town sounds a lot like Steve Bannon, who recently threatened Trump’s enemies with the declaration, “[You] don’t deserve any respect, you don’t deserve any empathy, and you don’t deserve any pity…You deserve what we call rough Roman justice, and we’re prepared to give it to you.” For comparison, check out one of the toughs enforcing the new dispensation:
‘This country wants waking up and setting to rights,’ said the ruffian, “and Sharkey’s going to do it; and make it hard, if you drive him to it. You need a bigger Boss. And you’ll get one before the year is out, if there’s any more trouble. Then you’ll learn a thing or two, you little rat-folk.’
In response Frodo and company, drawing on tradition, arouse the Shire in revolt—“Awake! Awake! Fear, Fire, Foes! Awake! Fire, Foes! Awake!”–and take back their country, disposing of Saruman in the process. Although the country’s wealth has been looted and the environment devastated, in the end the citizens take collective action and restore civil society.
Sadly, our own attempt to raise the Shire was the election and that failed, leaving the “Gatherers and Sharers,” the thugs and the autocrats, in charge. Whether they can maintain power remains to be seen, but we’ll be taking a beating for a while.
