Good guys of LOTR clueless?

[davem]

I'm not sure we can attribute complex thought processes to Sauron, at least not by this late stage in his devolution. He seems to me to be focussed so much on his desires that he doesn't analyse the situation in great detail. I think he was so caught up in achieving dominance, convinced of his inevitable victory & simply not thinking of defeat. He's probably a whole lot less smart than Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel or any of his enemies. I think Galadriel can say with absolute truth that she Knows all his thought, because his thought isn't all that complex. Take Morgoth. His whole desire was to reduce everything to primal chaos, yet where would that have left him?

To my mind Sauron is very powerful, but not very bright, & probably lots of thoughts passed through his 'mind', but none of them would register sufficiently to overcome his basic desire. I think its entirely possible that he didn't know how his Ring worked, or at least had forgotten. His focus always is power, control, domination.

Look at the Nazgul, & the Mouth. They are simply not 'intelligent' creatures. They have become over the millenia focussed into 'devices', with a single purpose, like automata. Sauron simply doesn't have the capacity for complex, detached reasoning, the analytical capability that you're attributing to him . He's certainly powerful, but he's stupid, because he can only conceive desire for control. At the end, when Frodo stood at the Sammath Naur, & suspect that his reaction wasn't 'intellectual' - ie, that he realised his situation & his danger. I suspect he suddenly suffered a kind of unexpected 'spiritual' punch in the guts, & went into a blind panic, like a terrified animal.