The Three Stigmata of J.R.R. Tolkien
Understand the thoughts that a person or a nation won’t allow itself to think and you grasp something crucial about that person or nation. Find the source of the barrier that keeps either one from entertaining those forbidden thoughts and you know something even more important. As America stumbles blindly forward into an unwelcome future, the self-imposed cognitive deficits that keep so many of its inmates from doing anything constructive about their current trajectory have become a massive political fact. Anything that allows even a little additional clarity about those deficits is thus a gift worth having. With this in mind, I’d like to suggest that some of the most crucial of the self-inflicted blind spots that burden Americans just now have a very straightforward source. They follow on the gargantuan cultural impact of a work of fiction, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. J.R.R. Tolkien. It really isn’t his fault. I hasten to say that none of the blame belongs on Tolkien