this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
113 points (100.0% liked)
Slop.
720 readers
436 users here now
For posting all the anonymous reactionary bullshit that you can't post anywhere else.
Rule 1: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.
Rule 2: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.
Rule 3: No sectarianism.
Rule 4: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome
Rule 5: No bigotry of any kind, including ironic bigotry.
Rule 6: Do not post fellow hexbears.
Rule 7: Do not individually target other instances' admins or moderators.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
saruman reads like "brought railroads to uncivilized people", so he is spiritually british, enslaving local peasant society. (although economics of hobbiton doesn't make goddamn sense anyway, samwise is hereditary gardener/butler)
We weren't shown really much, but it does make sense, Bilbo and Frodo are local gentry kulaks that did not worked a day in their lives, but we weren't show people who labour for them, except Sam who is literally a house slave. Merry and Pippin were failsons of the kulak clans who each fatten up on a good portion of Shire. Between the names of Baggins, Took and Brandybuck they had so much power in Shire that they did whatever they wanted there.
but kulaks imply they produce something with local impoverished peasantry, they don't even do that? they sit pretty in their home and buy food on local market (presumably, garden seems decorative), don't collect rent, don't do import export business on local psychoactive substances so ??
The shire is a confusing place where the logic makes no sense bc most of its lore was established before tolkien knew his satire of modern rural english polite society would be going into his fairy tale.
In lotr he tries to salvage it a bit with the chapters showing the shire outside of hobbiton, and the whole very clearly premodern social systems, but that just makes the rural victorian aesthetics (rsvp letters! umbrellas!) stand out more and beg for explanation.