Racing Turtles

it’s just hard not to think about the fact that in 1915, JRR Tolkien went to war not with but certainly in the same army and many of the same battles as his 3 best school friends, all nicely upper class young men who had never known much loss, and only he and one other came back alive - and a couple decades later, he wrote a book in which 3 nicely upper class young men (and one very excellent gardener) who have never known much loss go to war together, or at least they start out together, and they all come home alive. (Though one cannot bear it, and does not stay.)

What more it wasn’t just losing his friends, he was a commanding officer of a battalion of working class men. All farmers and miners from the same area of Lancashire. He felt affinity for them, but wasn’t allowed to socialize between the ranks due to military protocol and he hated it. 

 "The most improper job of any man … is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.“

I don’t think it was even 6 months later that he contracted trench fever and was sent home. 

His entire command was wiped out in one charge shortly after, the majority of a whole countryside’s youths slaughtered while he survived. Youths who were brave and steadfast, but thought of as lesser than their superior officers while still being the ones carrying the actual battle. Youths who deserved fellowship, respect, and above all to go home and dance with their own Rosie.

“My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself”. 

TRIES NOT TO CRY

There is a reason Frodo, who represents the English gentry, in the end falls and is caught by Samwise, who represents the common man.

But there is a soldier in Lord of the Rings who does not come back, and I don’t mean Boromir.

I mean the being who was a common hobbit, but who became corrupted by darkness and poison, who’s face is described in ways reminiscent of a gas mask.

The soldier who doesn’t come home, who is poisoned by gas and stress and insanity.

Is Gollum.

I see a lot of posts that boil down to, "hey, poor people, the middle class is your ally, not your enemy!" but I never seem to see posts that say "hey, middle class, the poor people in your city are your allies. You're never going to be rich, so stop selling out the poor in an attempt to maintain your own social standing."

Like, if I as a person living in poverty am skeptical and wary of the middle class neighborhood down the road, it's because they keep proving to me that they want to throw me and my neighbors under the fucking bus so they can pretend they'll be Bezos-rich one day.

I'm tired of seeing really condescending "the middle class is not your enemy!" posts when I never see "people living in poverty are justified in their rage, because living in poverty is a FUCKING NIGHTMARE" posts.

If me being tired of eating rice and ramen noodles for six months straight makes me vent-post about how tired I am of driving past cookie-cutter middle class houses on my way back to my 900 square foot apartment with six people living in it, I get dogpiled by people telling me that the middle class is not my enemy.

And that's fucked.

"We have to band together to fight our real enemy, the rich" is what you should be telling the middle class jackasses who keep looking at people in poverty and going "ew, icky," NOT the poor people looking at the middle class and saying, "yeah, they're parroting all the same shit that the rich are, and I don't fucking trust that they won't sell me out the second my back is turned."