Like Sauron, Like Trump
Even in the best scenario, the cleanup and repair will take years
If you were one of those Middle-Earth obsessed geeks, as so many of us were in the 1960s, you may remember that March 25 (in the Shire reckoning) was the day the Ring of Power was destroyed in Mount Doom. A fellow hobbit freak called me last year to remind me, and said he wished it would be that easy to get rid of Donald Trump.
Well, I might be tempted to march across Mordor in bare hairy feet to accomplish that. But my Bag End buddy forgot two things of extreme relevance: One, in the novels, getting rid of Sauron permanently was anything but easy, and a lot of people and other creatures died in the process, and Two, even after he was vanquished there was a lot of mess; things to put right and a lot of evil people still around.
Plus, since it was fiction, everything appeared to have been put right within a year or two, except for a few like Frodo whose souls were permanently maimed.
Returning to decency and something resembling normal civic discourse will take years, if it can be done at all. In today’s world, a long-dead Cesar Chavez can be made a non-person in an instant by allegations that he is in no position to try to refute or deny. But we have twice elected a president who has been convicted of a sex crime, and who has bragged on videotape about abusing women,
The world, and countries who were our allies, are now getting used to a country led by a dangerous, ignorant, lying and unpredictable leader who we have twice elected. And at home, we have gotten used to not only irrationality and the most outrageous lies from those we elect to lead us, but an incredible coarseness that was unimaginable even in 2000. Can we get beyond this?
In the movie Braveheart, a mad Irishman tells William Wallace just before a battle, “God tells me he can get me out of this, but he’s pretty sure you’re fucked.”
We have to hope we aren’t, or rather, that we can somehow unfuck ourselves, and that may be far harder than anything any hobbit has ever done.
Because Chavez' alleged victims were Latinas,the machismo culture into which they were born marked them inferior to males,meaning even so revered a figure as Chavez might have seen them as s*xual marks.Remember,Mohandas Gandhi thought Africans inferior to Englishmen and Indians such as he. No perfect human has ever or will ever live,and as a 72-year-old black Canadian/American chap who's been an avid reader since before age three,I realize that even people lionized for good deeds can commit atrocities.
Professor,it seems Sr. Chavez' s*x crime victims are credible and have been vetted for veracity.If he's guilty of this abhorrent behaviour,he's another fallen idol in an era in which people desperately need moral giants.