Flit

RANDOM LORD OF THE RINGS

RANDOM LORD OF THE RINGS THOUGHT OF THE DAY

The major contemporary myth cycles vary from each other in part because they have roots in different militaristic traditions. Star Wars? That's Air Force... all flyboys and individualism. Star Trek? That's all navy. Collective cohesiveness and mastery of one's vessel. (Characteristics not unfamiliar to the big bomber crews, it seems: creator Gene Roddenberry was a B-17 pilot in the USAAF.) The Lord of the Rings? Army of course, with a primal emphasis on terrain... lots and lots of walking, interrupted by long sequences of holding until relieved. (If Tolkien had been at Jutland instead of the Somme, one imagines he'd have written a very, very different book.)

What do the Marines get? Starship Troopers, of course... the book, not the movie.

I think David Brin said something similar once. Here's a thought that occurred to me while reading his most recent essay on Tolkien: the Gondorians and Elves, with their obsession in past glories rather than future greatness, and low-tech, spiritual means for taking down a technological enemy they see as utterly evil and threatening to their way of life... for using the enemy's weapon (the ring) against him and destroying it in the process, by flying undetected into the heart of their kingdom and destroying their greatest accomplishments with stealth and undeniable cunning, rather than fighting toe to toe in a battle they know their armies will lose... who, looking back at Sept. 11, would the fellowship really remind us of?

THIS IS JUST SAD The

THIS IS JUST SAD

The old guy managed just two entries (both no doubt written by some Young Lib hanger-on) on his blog, before he actually ran out of things to say over a week ago, now. We have a new winner for the He Just Doesn't Get It award for blogging: Paul Martin, MP, Canada's next Prime Minister.