Ever watch LOTR: The Rings of Power? I honestly can't recommend it as a show. For the most part it's a slog. A boring slog. And I've read the Silmarillion twice! But there are some truly great moments on the show. Like, mind-blowing moments. True moments of greatness. My favorite part so far has been in season 2 when Celebrimbor is glamored by Sauron. While Celebrimbor's people are fighting a grim battle for survival outside his walls, Sauron has him believing that everything is fine, and that he's doing great work in creating the titular rings of power. But soon Celebrimbor figures out that he's been tricked, and that his patron is actually Morgoth's ol' lieutenant. And that's when shit gets real grim.
Celebrimbor turns against Sauron, and for his efforts he watches as his life's work is thrown into a fire. It's one of the most horrifying scenes in the show. I know that might not have much of an effect on others, but to see knowledge destroyed is the worst crime that can be committed, I believe. This knowledge is written only on those scrolls. Celebrimbor also has that knowledge in his head, but, well.
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Human progress is really the most important thing we're capable of. Rape used to be a common tool of war back in the days when battles were fought with swords and spears. When you invade an enemy, you're supposed to kill every man in sight and rape every woman you can find. That was not just socially acceptable, it was encouraged by warlords. That horrible feeling you've got in your guts right now, reading this paragraph? That's human progress. Because you *don't* want to think of rape as something that's supposed to happen. Humanity worked a fucking long time to get to this point (tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of years), but we got there.
When you destroy knowledge, you don't just stop human progress. You regress. If you don't believe me, think about the Dark Ages. In England, for example, the Romans had been gone for so long that no one knew how those roads were built or by whom. Without that knowledge, things turned to shit. When the Renaissance came, it was a breath of fresh air. Human progress was back on the menu.
I know this may come as a shock to you, but I'm offended by the mere existence of the Trump Administration. He and his court of lowlifes and scumbags and fuckfaces and dipshits are guilty of a lot of horrible crimes, but I think one of the worst is what he's doing to America. He wants to reverse human progress. I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to make rape a common tool of humanity, not just of war, where men rule and women obey. White men, that is. No one else need apply. And there's another thing right there. We've come so far with race. If you say something racist in public (in most places, I should amend), people are going to stare daggers at you. Unless you're in the current White House, of course.
His attack on the Department of Education and putting RFK Jr in charge of healthcare is the equivalent of destroying knowledge. Trump's chief tool is lying relentlessly so those of weaker minds, the ones who fall for his Jedi mind trick, hang on his every word. When you lie so often and so hard, knowledge is your real enemy. So why not put an antivaxxer in charge of keeping people healthy? Vaccines are proven to work. If they didn't, we'd still be succumbing to small pox. When was the last time you saw someone in an iron lung? But the guy in charge of health has decreed that we're regressing to the old days when disease could kill you at any moment. As for education, I think this says everything for me:
By destroying the Department of Education, Trump is trying to trap you into a shit life with no hope of escape. You will obey. You won't know any other way.
And it sucks that everyone destroyed their files and went digital because now you can twiddle that shit on the back end, like a corporation changing prices on a digital sign when they know you've just been paid, or a fast food restaurant in their app. Except now the authorities can change our perception of reality by just changing digital documents.
I think the real reason Trump moved the Declaration of Independence to the Oval Office was so no one could actually read the original document. Meanwhile, they can change what the document says because who is going to go to the library to look up the Declaration of Independence if they want to read it? In this day and age, you're going to google it, and Google can just tell you what Trump wants it to tell you. They already changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico, and they did that before our very eyes. Imagine the digital shit him and his band of assholes can get up to now.
If we don't impeach him (or give him the Mussolini treatment) we're going to wind up in a world where no one knows anything. They have to go to the authorities to get that info. And there is no way of fomenting a revolution to save ourselves at that point. Revolution? What's that? America was always here, from the start of civilization. King George III? He had nothing to do with us. He tried to invade us once, but we were too strong for him and sent his redcoats packing. Per Trump, we've been allies of Rome since the ancient days. How long before something like that ends up in a history textbook? If he has his way, not long.
Knowledge is one of the most important things we can have. We need more of it, not less. Those who would throw Celebrimbor's scrolls in a fire are the lowest scum on the planet. Perhaps El Salvador has room for Trump?
That would ordinarily be the end of the column, but I was looking for a meme that would show Trump talking about being allied with Italy since Ancient Rome. Instead I found this. It's very interesting. I enjoy comparing our modern life to Ancient Rome, particularly the Decline and Fall. But there's one throwaway comment in there that made me think about Trump's obsession with the border. I mean, we all understand why he's going off on Mexico, as awful as that might be, but the shit he's pulling with Canada? That's left field shit. The article talks about the black market created by Ancient Rome's tariffs and how traders got around them. I anticipate a new black market being born. It may already exist! But more importantly, cracking down on the borders would, indeed, make it harder for those traders. As my character, Slate, likes to say, "It's something to consider."
