Hey, there,
Andsigil, don't you go a-moping!
Darkness may be on the rise, but light is still a-coping!
If you're drawing parallels between life and this Story,
Don't forget that post-defeat's Eucatastrophic glory!
Okay, so depending on your opinion of Bombadil that may have made things worse, but a girl's gotta try.
In all seriousness I have to reject this statement because it doesn't take into account the general decline of things that's supposed to happen in the transition from the Elder Days to the Middle to these the Youngest--namely, everything is supposed to get lamer. Sauron isn't nearly as awesome as Morgoth was, and the army that challenges him at the Black Gates isn't anything like what faced him at Dagorlad, which in turn is dwarfed by the Union of Maedhros and the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Yes, Sauron may still be floating around as a disempowered spirit, but he can't be everywhere at once, and the little power that Tolkien attributes him when asked about this sort of thing isn't nearly enough to account for all the evil in the world. By the Third Age, even, evil is not as monolithic as it once was (if it ever
was monolithic in Tolkien: cf. the ambiguity surrounding Ungoliant)--Saruman is not so much corrupted by Sauron as by his own ambition (if you think he was, you've been watching too much Jackson), and then we've got the blackened heart of Old Man Willow and the petty characters like Ted Sandyman and Lotho Baggins. If you want to point to Morgoth as the source of all of this, since he essentially sang evil into the world, I'll buy that--but not Sauron.
Fast forward to today, where evil is not hooded, cloaked, and riding on black horses, but micromanaged at the bureaucrat's desk or carelessly pursued by the young rake or unwittingly accepted by the decent gal who just doesn't have the
time to help out right now. The difference between the Elder Days and the Younger is that our struggles are not as epic--but they're still important, possibly more so because we never know whence the next attack will come. The important thing is that if we acknowledge this kind of struggle as going on today, we have to acknowledge also the pure Joy that emanates from Tolkien--even in the bleakest moments of the Silmarillion we get the beauty of Beren and Luthien and the hope of Earendil's rising--made still more wondrous by the contrast of all the darkness that surrounds them--and find the ways that they, too, resonate in our world.
They cannot conquer for ever!