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Monday, October 24, 2016

Donald Trump is Saruman



This has been a very difficult time for me.  The election has consumed me to the point where I find myself spending less and less time talking about and obsessing over my love of all things geeky.  My conversations regarding the practicalities of the Starkiller base or why Spike is far superior to Angel have been overtaken by conversations of hacked e-mails and the hate speech of Donald Trump.  I wanted to write something about my feelings regarding this election (even though everyone who knows me knows that “I’m With Her”) but I wanted to do it in a way that remains true to my geek heart.  I think I found a way…
                Donald Trump is Saruman.  Now I’m not talking Saruman before the events of Lord of the Rings, I’m talking Saruman during Lord of the Rings; the Saruman who decides to use the Uruk Hai to try to take over Middle-earth for himself.  Trump, like Saruman, sees the potential for a shift in power now that the ring is in play (aka the US election).  Saruman decides to use the evil spawned from Sauron to help him win the ring.
                Sauron is the big evil, the big bad.  In this context he’s Xenophobia, Islamophobia, Misogyny, Anti-Semitism, Bigotry, etc.  Trump is not the big bad but he’s using the instruments of the big bad in the same way Saruman used the instruments of Sauron, to try to win control.  Trump might not be in bed with the likes of David Duke or the neo-Nazis & white supremacists who follow him but he isn’t disavowing them, and he’s using their support to try and win the White House like Saruman is using the Orcs to find the ring and rule Middle-earth.
                Not all of Trump’s supporters are the hate spewing spawns of Sauron, others more closely resemble Grima Wormtongue, but you know them as Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie & Ben Carson.  Like Wormtongue they are servants who are there to weave discord to help favor their master who has promised them favors for their loyal support.  In Grima’s case he was promised Eowyn while Giuliani, Christie & Carson have been promised cabinet positions in Trump’s America.  Somehow I doubt the three of them will converge on Trump and murder him should he fail to win the Presidency but you never know.
                In the end, as we know, Saruman is defeated and we can only hope it won’t take Ents to help defeat Trump on November 8th.  I hope you enjoyed my attempt at weaving the election into something geek related to help bring me back to my roots which are inane ramblings regarding various aspects of geekdom.  Perhaps I’ll find the time one day to explain how Hillary Clinton is like Gandalf.