Saving the Shire

Modern Life Complexities Not Found in the Shire

Pictured above is a hobbit hole in Hobbitenago, Guatemala. It features not only trails with Lord of the Rings kinds of things but also attractions like panoramas featuring volcanoes.

The volcanoes are close enough to be something of a concern. But in the original Shire which inspired this park, they did not have to think about Artificial Intelligence and related electronic complications to life.

This week, I had another odd Social Media Experience. FB sent me a message that one of my friends had a new post. I seldom check this friend's page, and the post turned out to be a slightly snarky article in BlazeMedia by Owen Anderson proposing a thought experiment: What if the commies were right after all? What if the rich folk were the dangerous, permanent oppressors of the world?

He proposed an alternative:

The left condemns concentrated wealth while demanding concentrated political power, the only kind backed by guns, prisons, and law.

He discussed some of his own experiences with leftists and made some suggestions for countering their influence.

Normally, I would not have paid much attention to this piece. But one of my friend's friends, I'll call her "young teacher friend" seemed upset and begged her to learn what democratic socialists believed, "from primary sources".

I looked at Young Teacher Friend's FB page, and it included almost no personal information - just run-of-the-mill memes for leftist causes and a single post - an essay supporting protests by students, including elementary school students. Though she acknowledged the authority of school districts to enforce mandatory school attendance.

My friend expressed surprise that the Blaze piece had shown up on her FB page. I have never seen her post anything political before. And this piece was certainly not her style. How did it get there? Why was I notified of this post? Was Young Teacher Friend also notified? Was the algorithm trying to start a fight?

Anyway, I took it as an opening, and posted the new DSA platform on my friend's page as Young Teacher Friend had suggested (can't get a more primary source than that). I admit that Young Teacher Friend is not the primary intended audience here:

DSA program and platform, July 2026 “DSA has written this program for ending capitalist oligarchy and creating a real democracy. Some of these demands may be won under our current system, but we know complete victory will require building a new society from the ground up. We push these demands to their furthest extent today, so we can fight for their fullest realization in a socialist future. Join us.” - - “For the working class to govern, we need a new political system. End political corruption and legalized bribery: get rid of lobbyists, dark money, and Citizens United, and publicly finance all elections. Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

Replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy. Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting in all elections, and abolish the Senate.”

https://program.dsausa.org/

If you follow the link, you may be surprised, and maybe a little alarmed, at the simplicity of the language in the entire platform.

Do you think anyone will get the message about what the DSA's real goals are? Why are young people attracted to these failed programs and ideologies?

Absolutely insane:

Two-thirds of Americans don't know who Mao was. Half don't know who Xi is!

It's no wonder Americans tend to be so unconcerned about the rise of China when they know so little! https://t.co/fljCDP7wXz pic.twitter.com/iSHHbg45Qh

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) July 15, 2026

Keeping the generations in touch with each other

Johann Kurtz has written an interesting piece which will likely lead to some lively discussion: Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

On the surface it does seem as if the young are fine. Real median incomes are higher than they were for their parents at the same age, unemployment has spent most of the past decade at historic lows, and purchasing power has risen roughly 63 percent since 1973. Televisions, clothing, food, and air travel are cheaper than ever.

And yet this generation is also not marrying, not buying homes, not having children, and seem pretty miserable. I think we’re clearly in the midst of a tremendous measurement failure.

My argument is that previous generations received an enormous stock of social capital: trusted neighbors, functional public schools, a productive courtship culture, predictable career arcs, and a public square in which children could roam and adults could be relied upon. That stock, once given for free, has now been substantially liquidated.

(emphasis mine). So, maybe it really does "take a village". Not just a village that consists of government programs?

What actually got cheaper over the past fifty years? Electronics, entertainment, fast fashion, processed food, toys, screens of every kind. And what got more expensive, usually by many multiples? Housing, education, childcare, healthcare, insurance.

Absurdly, both of these movements register in the statistics as progress: one shows up as asset appreciation and the other as consumer surplus. But the lived reality for families feels like a pincer.

Housing is the least ambiguous case. . .

The entire essay is worth thinking about.

Saving the Shire

The Secret Anguish of the Median Voter

This is my favorite scene in The Lord of the Rings movies.

The four hobbits are riding home to the Shire, having come through hell and back. Frodo has saved the world at terrible personal cost. Pippin is now a knight, wearing his mail and tunic bearing the White Tree of Gondor. Merry is still dressed as an Esquire of Rohan.

All of them are in outlandish clothes, and laden with exotic treasures of dwarves, elves, and men. They have been utterly transformed by their journey.

But Everard Proudfoot (a contrivance of the film) has not been transformed by their journey. He spent the last year in the Shire, with its ordinary rhythms and expectations, and he thinks they are fucking weird.

It’s a big change from the books of course, where Saruman has brought the conflict home, and the hobbits have to drum him out.

I like both versions of the story — but what I like about the scene in the movie is that Everard Proudfoot represents the totality of their victory. They truly saved the Shire — completely intact, exactly as they left it.

If we win the way we hope to win, all the people who think we are weird and disreputable will have no reason to change their minds. (In fact — as in the film — the way we win may confirm all their suspicions.)

But imagine trying to get Everard Proudfoot to vote to save the world.

A few weeks ago, my wife got her hair done by the Median Utah Voter.

Lately I’ve been using the term “median voter” instead of the n-word (normie) — but in this case I mean it literally.

White, married, middle-class, homeowner, “some college”, late fifties. She lives in a safe neighborhood, where she still sees most of her neighbors at church.

She couldn’t afford her house if she had to buy it now, but she doesn’t have to buy it now. Her husband is closing in on retirement; they saved responsibly, she mostly just cuts hair to have something to do.

She’s not political, except in the ambient sense that she watches the TV news sometimes, and feels bad about the things she’s supposed to feel bad about. She doesn’t like to see people being nasty to each other.

She voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024 (though probably not in 2016), because she’s a Conservative, but she doesn’t like him personally — or at least, she doesn’t like “the way he talks about people.”

When she sees Trump (and Trump surrogates) being harsh and insulting on TV, she thinks about how she tries to treat people — the kind of people she meets in her real life, in her safe neighborhood.

The Mexican guy who fixed her water heater was polite and efficient, and gave her a good price. She did a service project for a refugee charity last Christmas, and seeing those families smile as they got their care packages made her feel really good.

Nothing (in her real life) justifies being Nasty, or Hurting People.

You’re not going to convince this woman of The Big Picture.

There’s no bar graph you can show her that will convince her that her neighborhood is dangerous (it isn’t), or that the contractor who installed her water heater is a threat (he isn’t), or that the refugees at the charity are about to make a fire with her Beautiful Oak Door — they aren’t (at least, not any time soon).

She lives in the real world; she Touches Grass. She isn’t going to care about any of the stuff you care about until she sees it right in front of her physically, and by then it will be way, way too late.

Of course, her moral attention can be redirected parasocially, but not by you — not in the totalizing way that activates a person politically. She’s not going to update her worldview — which, again, is very much wrapped up in her moral attitude toward dozens of real relationships in her real life — because you showed her a meme, or a statistic, or even a lurid atrocity video.

Read the entire essay for more nuance and information about "Median Voter", but the "X" post gets to the nitty-gritty:

“Do you want your grandchildren to be foreigners in their own country?” In political conversations with older people with kids, no other point has shaken them awake quite like this one.

— Theseus' Star Destroyer (@theseus365) July 17, 2026

From the end of the Old Testament:

Malachi's prophecy is literally true

If the hearts of the fathers are not turned to their children & vice versa, nothing will change until the earth is smitten with a curse, & the barbarians are literally, physically at the door

From the essay:

If the Median Voters - - the cozy Everard Proudfoots of the world - - understand themselves as atomized individuals, they will never take action until the earth is smitten with a curse, and the barbarians are literally, physically at their doorstep.

(Again, the individualist frame was inculcated with the express purpose of lowering these defenses.)

The only way to make them see what is coming - - what is, in fact, already happening - - is to turn their hearts to their children.

Weekend

Congratulations, Duncan. You, as much anyone I know -- more-- were dealt a crappy hand as a working artist, kicked aside by the system, wandered in the wilderness, and are turning it all around in a passionate, winning, meaningful fashion. This is going to be great. https://t.co/dabAX4Nupd

— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) July 16, 2026

The Week in Pictures: Don't Get Buffalo'd Edition

Let’s see: Gulf War III is back in full swing, Mitch McConnell has become Schrodinger’s senator, but the biggest stories in America right now are a buffalo trying out to be an NFL placekicker, and Taco Bell deciding that a life-imitating-art menu is the best life after all. Too bad about the Whirled Cup soccer thing, but losing to . . . Belgium? Maybe we can appeal to the Whirled Court. Oh, wait. . .

Music

The Shire

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's thread, July 11, Can we afford utopian education?

Notable comment:

"It's a system built on envy of those who have more than the self-anointed "best and brightest".

And again, here's another quote from F.L. Lucas. I think this guy has potential.

“Thence it is possible to arrive by easy stages at the happy notion, not uncommon among 'intellectuals', that taste consists of distaste, and that the loftiest of pleasures is that of feeling displeased; and thus to end by enjoying almost nothing in literature but one's own opinions, while oneself incapable of writing a living sentence.”

Posted by: Archimedes at July 11, 2026 11:32 AM

Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

posted by K.T. at 11:23 AM

| Access Comments