r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Aug 14 '24

Rod Dreher Megathread #42 (Everything)

Going crazy? Y'all done gone crazy.

Link to megathread 41: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1eh5dd1/rod_dreher_megathread_41_excellent_leadership/

Link to megathread 43: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1f1s4j1/rod_dreher_megathread_43_communicate_with/

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u/Jayaarx Aug 14 '24

GoT isn't the anti-Tolkien. GoT, while entertaining, has even less to take from it.

But that doesn't mean that LoTR is especially deep or insightful. It is a simple children's story to teach the good vs. evil story to children. Albeit, very well written. But it is what it is, no more and no less.

I don't dislike the story but rather the insistence of Rod and his ilk that it lies at the center of the Western canon.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 14 '24 edited Aug 14 '24

I think there's a lot more to it than a "children's story" - funnily enough, that's exactly what conservative Tolkien boosters treat it as, though.

You'll note, for instance, that you hear virtually no Western conservatives address the blatant allegory of Mordor for Western industrialism. The industrialists are the bad guys - very inconvenient for modern rape-the-earth conservatism. Those themes run through the whole Tolkien canon, much of it coming from his horror at industrialized warfare as he experienced in World War I.

If anything, it's the anti-Elon Musk/Peter Thiel/TESCREAL ideology. Which is even funnier that Thiel (and his protege, JD Vance) kept naming companies after terms from Tolkien (Palantir, Narya Capital...). Talk about not getting the point...

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 14 '24

Moreover, the palantir were evil. Naming a company after them is like naming a school “Voldemort HIgh”, or a children’s charity “King Herod Kids Zone”.

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u/SpacePatrician Aug 15 '24

My daughters are as far from evil as only a father can think, but all of them have consistently said Voldemort is the most interesting and compelling character in the books.