[Raynor]

Originally Posted by David Brin

LOTR clearly reflected this era. Only, in contrast to the real world, Tolkien's portrayal of "good" resisting a darkly threatening "evil" offered something sadly lacking in the real struggles against Nazi or Communist tyrannies -- a role for individual champions.

Come on. I bet that every country that was under Nazi or Communist oppression has a wide folklore about the resistors. Even my small county has, and they are honored to this day by books and whatnot.

His elves and hobbits and uber-human warriors performed the same role that Lancelot and Merlin and Odysseus did in older fables, and that superheroes still do in comic books. Through doughty Frodo, noble Aragorn and the ethereal Galadriel, he proclaimed the paramount importance -- above nations and civilizations -- of the indomitable romantic hero.

I wonder what has struck Mr. Ph.D as super-heroical about the hobbits, be they of the fellowship or not. Their hairy feet? Ability to eat several times a day? Inhuman precision at rock throwing? I guess he missed the part about humble turning the wheels of the world, rocking the towers of the wise, etc.

Wouldn't life seem richer, finer if we still had kings? If the guardians of wisdom kept their wonders locked up in high wizard towers, instead of rushing onto PBS the way our unseemly 'scientists' do today? Weren't miracles more exciting when they were doled out by a precious few, instead of commercializing every discovery, bottling and marketing each new marvel to the masses for a dollar ninety-five?

I am sure that what has made the humanity advance in their contact with the High Elves was the later keeping their secrets from the former.

Didn't we stop going to the Moon because it had become boring?

And now we are bored of Earth and going back to the Moon.

"There's a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled."

I wasn't aware that monarchs had it going so bad, being forced to live in luxury and all that. I guess I was wrong!

This fits the very plot of Lord of the Rings, in which the good guys strive to preserve and restore as much as they can of an older, graceful and 'natural' hierarchy

No, they were just praying that their efforts were not too late to help them _survive_. Preservation of the past is more of a elvish motive, and LotR is human-centered.

manufactured power-rings that can be used by anybody, not just an elite few.

Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor? I guess not, and it takes the steam out of that statement.

Consider the rings.Those man-made wonders are deemed cursed, damning anyone who dares to use them.

Man-made rings indeed!

The only people with dark skin in Middle-earth are the Orcs

W-o-s-e-s.

Let's not ignore, but instead openly acknowledge the underlying racialism and belief in an inherent aristocracy that J.R.R. Tolkien weaved into the books, without even much attempt at subtlety.

Anyone care to send Brin a link to a good old fashioned Barrow Dowsn "LotR is not racist 101" thread?

Or might [the armies of Sauron] instead have thought they were the 'good guys', with a justifiable grievance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy topped by invader-alien elves and their Numenorean colonialist human lackeys?

Yes; elves had human lackeys and slaves working their fields.

In fact, toward the end of this essay, I'll offer my own small bit of ironic take-off. A different, and possibly much better, way of viewing Sauron, the evil Dark Lord.
...
Picture, for a moment, Sauron the Eternal Rebel, relentlessly maligned by the victors of the Ring War -- the royalists who control the bards and scribes (and movie-makers). Sauron, champion of the common Middle-Earther! Vanquished but still revered by the innumerable poor and oppressed who sit in their squalid huts, wary of the royal secret police with their magical spy-eyes, yet continuing to whisper stories, secretly dreaming and hoping that someday he will return... bringing more rings.

Why, oh, why did I read Tolkien's version instead of this. Ashes and sorrow!

All right, I read Tolkien's epic trilogy a bit unconventionally, starting with The Two Towers and backfilling as I went along.

See, _that_ is how you read a book and make a critique about it. That's a proven way to get the story and its theme right. I bet you all have been doing wrong all along.