Santorum and The Lord of the Rings

[pegkerr]

I winced when I read this story:

Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has been drawn to Iraq instead.

Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic Lord of the Rings, to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.

"It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.," Santorum continued. "You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."

In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, sister paper of The Intelligencer, the 12-year Republican senator from Pennsylvania said he's "a big Lord of the Rings fan." He's read the first of the series, The Hobbit to his six children.

A spokesman for Democratic opponent Bob Casey Jr. questioned the appropriateness of the analogy.

"You have to really question the judgment of a U.S. senator who compares the war in Iraq to a fantasy book," said Casey spokesman Larry Smar. "This is just like when he said Kim Jong II isn't a threat because he just wants to "watch NBA basketball.'"

A blogger at the National Review opined:

That comment ought to anger Tolkien fans—I think this voter bloc will now swing toward Santorum.

Well, no, my sympathies will never sway toward Santorum, no matter what his opponents might say or imply about LOTR.

Tolkien hated allegory and fiercely resisted, for example, comparing the story of the Ring's destruction to, say, World War II or the atom bomb. I think Santorum's comments illustrate why Tolkien intuitively distrusted the pernicious uses that an allegorical interpretation might make of his work. As I said in an earlier post, it is tempting to think of us arrayed against the foe as being like Theoden riding out from Helm's deep--but we must never fail to remember that to the other side, we're the orcs.

George W. Bush delights in speaking of the war in apocalyptic terms, good vs. evil. That is what Santorum is doing, too. So I can see why the LOTR analogy to them is appealing. The danger is that it is very easy to fail to see the darkness in one's own heart but to simply project it onto the enemy, if one insists on seeing the enemy as nothing but orcs. Viggo Mortenson, I know, has spoken fiercely on this topic, refusing to allow the analogy that the right wing wishes to draw, and instead pointing out our similarity to Saruman's position. (I was not able to find the specific clip, although in this clip he does explain some of his criticisms of the Bush administration).

The most instructive example Tolkien gives us as an artist, I suppose, is the battle for good and evil waged within the human heart. He gave us plentiful examples of this too, within the story arcs of Galadriel, Aragorn, Boromir, Gandalf, Faramir, Sam, Frodo and Gollum. It is difficult to easily dismiss with smug superiority the other as "evil" when one sees and recognizes the darkness in oneself. It is certainly very difficult to accomplish this in today's political climate--and, even harder to, as Frodo did, see and recognize and give credit to the goodness that still resides in Gollum.

Comments

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

One more reason (as if I needed one) to loathe Santorum and love Viggo....

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Stephen Colbert treated that with his usual skewering (with action figures) last night on The Colbert Report. I haven't found it on YouTube yet but I'm sure it will get there soon.

[vass]

Oh good. The first thing I thought on reading this, after "WHAT, WHAT, WHAT?" was "I can't wait to see what Stephen Colbert says about this!"

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Here it is!

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Wow, you make some great points. I can see this being an op-ed in a paper.

[silme.livejournal.com]

Santorum continues to prove that he truly is an idiot.

With the exception of my niece in DC and me here in England, my personal biological family all reside in the Philadelphia area. None of them has ever voted for Santorum, and they are doing their best to make sure he doesn't return to the US Senate. *sigh*

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

That comment ought to anger Tolkien fans—I think this voter bloc will now swing toward Santorum.

Why on earth would that anger Tokien fans? I for one am glad that Casey brings the sanity. Thank goodness he's ahead in the polls! We might actually stand a chance of ridding ourselves of Santorum's idiocy once and for all!

The very idea of Iraq being Mordor and all of us here safe at home being Hobbits is abhorrent. The Doonesbury strip from the day before yesterday provides a little perspective. And just days after those girls were killed in the one-room Amish schoolhouse our state representatives, in their wisdom, voted down such gun-control measures as limiting a person to buying one per month and having to report a firearm being stolen or lost. Which is bad because--? Yeah, I don't have an answer either. Gah.

So tired of people like Santorum and Bush who have the most screwed up priorities ever running the show.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is that when I first heard Santorum's remarks, I understood the viewpoint he was coming from. I don't agree with it, of course, for a wide variety of reasons. The impulse to allegory, or to drawing allegorical relationships between dissimilar situations, is very strong in humans. Something in our wiring makes those leaps easy to follow; it's the same wiring that makes poetic imagery so powerful. The tie down to our emotions is strong and it takes the full force of our intellect to avoid being manipulated by it.

[pufftmg.livejournal.com]

Brought here from the journal or a friend of a friend. I can't make heads or tails of the allegory.

Is it just me or does Santorum say that the U.S is effectively Mordor?

Well, if that's the case, then it is interestingly perceptive of the man (taking into consideration the view of Tolkien, of course).

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I think that he is equating Al Queda (or generic terrorists) with Sauron, and that by engaging them in Iraq (Mordor), we (the hobbits) are keeping them away from the Shire (the U.S.) That's the best I can guess at what he means. It is rather muddled.

[sageofgodalming.livejournal.com]

Here via kelleyscorpio's flist.

As I recall, it was Aragorn's frontal attack on Mordor that drew Sauron's attention from Frodo. So, basically, Santorum is saying the Iraq operation is a feint, something that no doubt the people of Iraq are glad has been clarified for them.

You'd think the lesson of Tolkien is obvious: anyone whose name begins Sa- is bad news.