Rinzai Did Nothing Wrong.

**[10:40-11:22:]** "*But I've said in my reviews that so many of the supposed 'heroes' in* Rings of Power *are evil, and the show doesn't seem to realize it, and it seems like the showrunners genuinely don't understand what Evil is, themselves. Tolkien's world was black-and-white; there was Good and Evil, and they were battling. But not this one. Not in *Rings of Power*.  [...]  Sauron was evil. And yes: you can have good people who fall to Evil, but **they are good or evil;** there is no 'anti-heroes'*." ** Disparu.  [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHQ0pLK1SBg]** That sums it up, and it resolves a problem plaguing modern writers that I've tackled with great force and perseverance: moral ambiguity in place of genuine discernment and complexity. If there is an objective moral truth, then one can't say that "we are all the devil, deep within even the purest Soul," since it is in one's choices and one's actions that one...

Tolkien was not a Fascist, but his anti-Fascist politics were nonetheless as playful and escapist as his stories, and I can’t imagine that the irony of his own contradictions had been lost on him. There cannot be an abolition of control, since abolition is control. One cannot be arrested for professing what is in the interest of State, since only States can make arrests. (A “citizen’s arrest” is nonetheless a *legal* possibility.) There is no friendship without loyalty to common goods and expectations; there can be no noble aspirations without class distinctions, and a monarchy without a constitution is a tyranny. If all are born with evil in their Souls, then any has the obligation to control it, both in Self and Others; this especially is true if only some are evil and the others good, for any innocence must be protected. Men cannot defend those worthy of protection if there is no rational consensus in between them about who is worthy. All of our moral aspirations strive to the fulfi...