A Tangent on Why I am Writing About Tangents
Notes on this Substack and the tangents herein. Enjoy.
This is The Newspaper is Dead, Long Live the Newspaper, a newsletter about the efforts to break democracy and stopping those efforts. Also a healthy dose of historical and literary tangents I find entertaining enough to write about. What is a good Substack without tangents anyways?
“He that breaks a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.” ~ Gandalf the Grey
No singular quote from one of my favourite books, The Lord of the Rings, may encapsulate the precipice democracy gazes over at this moment in history. On one end, the subtitle to this Substack of tangents is directly applicable towards the sentiment ‘stop trying to break democracy.’ On another, Google the quote (or do not, I highly advise not to) and you will be confronted by commentary that build an entire philosophy of Middle Earth that is neither accurate nor helpful. And the perfect mis-contextualisation of facts is somehow very apt to how the modern newspaper - Twitter, Substack, Facebook - has replaced the deep need for context in understanding contemporary commentary.
I could have chosen many other quotes from my favourite literature. “That there is some good in this world Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for,” is arguably more apt for our times and core to my own philosophy. There is also the last sentence of the epilogue to Crime and Punishment, which I will not write here to not spoil the story for those who have not read. Other Dostoyevsky moments would have been pertinent ~ Alyosha’s kiss of plagiarism at the end of The Grand Inquisitor in The Brother’s Kamarazov, or his speech at the Tombstone closing the book; both moments I plan to write essays on in here simply because they are fascinating moments in a book that deserves contemporary attention for its frank psychological assessments.
Instead, I went with the moment Gandalf told Saruman to stop breaking ‘the white (i.e., the order of the Istari)’ to find out its importance. (To the friend who suggested it ~ thanks. You know who you are.) Opposed to the typical, incorrect, and often pedantic dissection of this quote, that this is Tolkien’s stodgy attack at science, this is Gandalf’s warning against the abandonment of compassion and good-will in overseeing an order. There was a certain assumption of good-will and love that came with Saruman’s position; one that he dropped in order to seek that which promised more power, but could only be obtained through the destruction of many other lives.
To connect Tolkien, Gandalf, and Saruman to the real-world, one of the masterful aspects of Saruman’s characterisation is his abandonment of love for Middle Earth and his chase for power; simply because he saw a chance to quickly obtain power through sheer destruction. The death of democracy nearly emulates Saruman’s rush to power in Lord of the Rings. Grifters and the like saw a chance to quickly pursue and obtain power through the destruction of democratic norms.
Opposed to pursuing the betterment of democratic institutions, a better newspaper, better outlets of information ecosystems, thousands chose to pursue the death of democracy. A slow, dismantling process that has only increased in fervour over the past years. There is a gross resemblance between Saruman’s Isengard and NFTs, Twitter Spaces, Facebook’s Oversight Board, the far-right complex, the far-left complex (Oh yes, there will be tangents on Horseshoe Theory), and the meta-verse. As the newspaper began to die, opportunists incorporated perfectly reasonable people into these information ecosystems. Hence, “The Newspaper is Dead, Long Live the Newspaper.”
I am writing this introduction tangent on the 19th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, marking a particularly crucial moment for democracies. The information ecosystems feel strained and beyond a fracturing point, almost entirely in part to the grifters who attempted to break democracy. Yet, ‘almost’ entirely as a large part on the ‘death’ of democracy lies within inaction and complacency. This question of ‘action’ and ‘inaction’ is surfacing again as Russia’s relentless and horrific attacks on Ukraine continue, despite nearly every ‘severe’ sanction being leveraged and thousands of Russian citizens protesting.
I hope to raise more questions to provoke others into discussing; a democratic method of protecting our last remnants of democracy. Or maybe it will convince someone to take a double-glance at those breaking democracy just to find out how important it is.
光復香港,時代革命