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Monday
The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser just came up with a good Lord of the Rings analogy in describing the Speaker of the House’s about-face on aid to Ukraine. After spending half a year in thrall to what some are calling the Putin wing of the GOP, Mike Johnson had a Théoden moment and allowed the House to vote on it. It passed 311-112, albeit with more Democratic votes than Republican. (All the no votes were Republican.)
Glasser reports that Johnson’s words were “unexpectedly passionate”:
Invoking this “critical” moment in the world, Johnson said, “I can make a selfish decision”—namely, keeping his job by not moving forward on the aid for Ukraine and, once again, caving to the sort of angry nihilists who have bullied the past three Republican Speakers out of the House. “But I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing.” He talked about why aid for Ukraine was “critically important,” adding, “I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten.” This was yet another heresy for many Republicans, who, following Trump, have spent years tearing down the truthfulness and reliability of America’s intelligence agencies.
Susan says that the scene brought to mind that moment when the king of Rohan breaks free of Wormtongue and “suddenly returns to himself—an accommodationist no more, revivified, ready to fight.” The scene in the book begins with Gandalf functioning as one of these intelligence agencies, although probably with a more dramatic information session than the one Johnson received. Imagine Wormtongue (or Grima) as Marjorie Taylor Greene (a.k.a. “Moscow Marjorie,” as the New York Post called her):
Casting his tattered cloak aside, he stood up and leaned no longer on his staff; and he spoke in a clear cold voice. “The wise speak only of what they know, Gríma son of Gálmód. A witless worm have you become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lightning falls.”
He raised his staff. There was a roll of thunder. The sunlight was blotted out from the eastern windows; the whole hall became suddenly dark as night. The fire faded to sullen embers. Only Gandalf could be seen, standing white and tall before the blackened hearth.
As with Johnson, there’s a dramatic difference between before and after. Before, Theoden is a feeble old man leaning on a stick. (In Johnson’s case, a dithering politician sucking up to the MAGA extremists.) After, there’s this:
From the king’s hand the black staff fell clattering on the stones. He drew himself up, slowly, as a man that is stiff from long bending over some dull toil. Now tall and straight he stood, and his eyes were blue as he looked into the opening sky.
“Dark have been my dreams of late,’ he said, ‘but I feel as one new-awakened.”
In Théoden’s case, Saruman has been infiltrating Rohan, with Wormtongue as his chief agent. Donald Trump, of course, has been Vladimir Putin’s chief agent, although he has had plenty of help, both from the GOP caucus (including figures like Greene and Boebert) and from grifters like Paul Manafort, now back on Trump’s campaign. Greene, like Putin, has been calling the Ukrainians Nazis, and the situation became so dire that, two weeks ago, Republican Mike Turner, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said that Russian propaganda has seeped its way to Congress. Hill noted,
“It is absolutely true we see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.
As of last week, we have a clearer sense of what Putin is up to thanks to a secret Russian Foreign Ministry document obtained by the Washington Post. The ministry is apparently calling for
an “offensive information campaign” and other measures spanning “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” against a “coalition of unfriendly countries” led by the United States.
“We need to continue adjusting our approach to relations with unfriendly states,” the document contends, adding, “It’s important to create a mechanism for finding the vulnerable points of their external and internal policies with the aim of developing practical steps to weaken Russia’s opponents.”
The parallels between Saruman’s infiltration of Rohan and Putin’s of the United States go even deeper when one looks at the historical events that influenced Tolkien’s fantasy. Saruman is partly based on Stalin, who used his non-aggression pact with Hitler (Sauron) to make inroads into Finland, the Baltic republics, and parts of Poland and Rumania. Théoden’s dithering is reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s.
Given these 1930s parallels, it’s interesting that a number of commentators have been applying a famous Winston Churchill quote to Johnson’s change of heart—that “the Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.” Unfortunately, six months of Johnson trying everything has badly damaged Ukraine. As Washington Post commentator Jennifer Rubin notes,
The delay had serious, widespread consequences for Ukraine. Max Bergmann, a former State Department official and director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells me, “Their power sector has been decimated by lack of air defense, which will be incredibly costly to repair.” He adds that on the front “Ukrainians have lost a lot of soldiers because if you don’t have artillery you have to hold the line with men.” In other words, Ukraine has “lost a lot of people simply because we stopped providing them ammo.”
In Théoden’s case, the situation proves less dire. Although Saruman’s Orcs have made deep inroads into Rohan, with the help of the Ents he is able to defeat them at the Battle of Helm’s Deep and even capture Isengard itself. How much Ukraine can accomplish with the new American aid remains to be seen, but at least they now have a fighting chance.
I fear that Mike Johnson, on the other hand, will return to the darkness after this one bright moment. In the current GOP, sadly, Wormtongue reigns supreme.
