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With the third installment in cinemas, it appears that director Peter Jackson has buried Tolkien's mythic tragedy under an avalanche of tricks. One wants to hiss along with Gollum: "Stupid hobbit! It ruins it!" We are left with a crackling good adventure, but have lost something precious.

This was a bomb for me, and then he drops it to speak of events and themes in Silmarillion. Phooey!

His writing is a carefully veiled attack on the legitimacy of American power. When he associates fascism with a populace's will to defeat mortality, he is pointing an accusing finger at the Anglo-sphere. Is American power now fed by such a wanton and irresponsible lust for life and influence? To ask such a question is to ignore the power of the Enlightenment's premise of rationality. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington wouldn't have been deterred by Heidegger's dilemmas. They were too busy thinking about temporal freedoms and how to keep them safe. I think their answer to the 'existential question' would have been to suggest farming.

By the way, it's no accident that this writer's nom de plum is Spengler.

He's cackling as we falter.

Oswald Spengler

He hasn't seen our real strength yet. Because it's the strength of freedom. He underestimates how simple it is to just want to live without chains. He fails to realize that once tasted, liberty unforgettable.

This is an excellent essay although I do have some nits to pick. I do agree about the movies, Jackson reamed the character of Frodo which I think was the largest of the various departures. The movies are still wonderful entertainment but they lost something important.

I also think he is on to something important in Tolkiens taking the theme of nations although I think the proper term for what he's describing would be "tribe". There is no doubt that among various European peoples these terms are interchangeable and that this is a cultural axiom that Americans do not hold. We are based in a creed, we are not based in a bloodline.

Tolkien clearly saw that there is value in supporting and defending your own tribe but that that defense had to be subordinated to higher principles. This is the lesson I see in the Simarillion and the tragedy of the sons of Feanor. Feanor specifically rejected the advice of the Valar because he reasoned that Melkor was of that tribe, "And is he not Vala as are they, and does he not understand their hearts? Yea a thief shall reveal thieves!". Since Melkor was a Vala, Feanor judged all the Valar and dismissed them. His sons held the commitment to tribe above all other considerations and that was their curse and downfall.

Obviously the idea that America is cultureless comes from a narrow definition of culture. Yet there are literary works that proclaim American culture, the chief among these being the Declaration of Independence. The ideas embedded in the founding documents mean the same no matter what language they're spoken in.

I enjoy "Spengler", have for years. In him I see my own conceit, vanity, hubris, as in a mirror. "Spengler" is terribly funny, his droll mockery aimed at himself as much as everyone else.

Notice that "Spengler" never mocks the Chinese. Notice that his mockery is the image of Chinese foreign policy. Notice of course that Asia Times is an agent of the Chinese "new class."

Asia Times provides an interesting window into the tensions between the Chinese "new class" and the factions one might describe as "People's Liberation Army", the non-technocratic, non-English speaking, "reactionary" group. (Maybe "gerontocracy", or "the old ruling class".)

Most interesting about The Asia Times is the view it provides of frictions within the "new class" itself.