The Rise of Sauron in the 21st Century

Not content with hijacking "red-pilled" and claiming to be a key player in the Resistance, Musk (and his alt-right ilk) are now perversely using The Lord of the Rings to describe the "invasion" by migrants, equating the latter, and presumably liberals, with the Dark forces and aligning themselves (the Right) with the light, while the simple Shire folk have no idea what's going on in the wider world and the forces supposedly fighting in part to protect them.

A recent, deliberately twisted and perverted Department of Homeland Security social media post for ICE recruitment, reads:

“The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last, the great battle of our time.”

And it features an image showing a close-up of the hobbit, Merry's face in dark shades of blue that has him saying to his cousin:

“there won't be a shire, pippin.”

Musk maybe hasn't read the two chapters at the end of the book, missing from the films, which show the desecration of the Shire by militancy and dark Satanic mills and the chopping down of trees which, like war – a necessary evil at best, but always a source of profound suffering – J.R.R. Tolkien absolutely abhorred.

This is all very deliberate, and deeply malignant.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

Preter pereo paĝrulado (Beyond doom scrolling)

If you're like me and you're getting worried about skim reading so many articles online that it is having an adverse cognitive effect on things like reading comprehension and retention, maybe consider learning a new language.

I'm just taking baby steps in learning Esperanto (at the equivalent stage of “This is a Janet. Janet is cooking in the kitchen. And this is John. John is in the lounge reading a book.”) and I've noticed that you really have to pore over the text, re-read it, and refer back to it later, numerous times, as the meaning gradually sinks in. It's a totally different, and healthier, experience. Boy, does it slow you down to a sane pace.

The Misguided War on Woke: Part and Parcel of the Culture Wars

With the election of Donald Trump for a second term in 2025, the War on Woke, now officially sanctioned, has greatly intensified. And other figures such as the neurologist and writer Dr. Iain McGilchrist, best known for his work on the hemispheric functioning of the brain, have taken up arms in the fight: not against the war but in support.

And yes, I do appreciate that anything, including wokeness, can be taken by some to unfortunate or grotesque extremes. But for the majority of ordinary, everyday, law-abiding, sentient people, to be woke means to be aware of injustice and to have sympathy, compassion, and empathy for the vulnerable and the downtrodden.

Weaponization

As Neo says to Bugs in the 2021 film, The Matrix Resurrections: “How am I doing? I don’t know. I don’t even know how to know.”

To which Bugs replies: “That’s it, isn’t it? If we don’t know what’s real... we can’t resist. They took your story, something that meant so much to people like me, and turned it into something trivial. That’s what the Matrix does. It weaponizes every idea. Every dream. Everything that’s important to us.”