On lacking

Hello from my new desk, now in our library instead!  Let's see if this new writing venue improves my punctuality.

This week we read "The Tower of Cirith Ungol."  Leaving behind the rest of our heroes, we return to the land of Mordor, and Sam's rescue of Frodo.  He is in enemy territory and at a disadvantage at every turn.  During one confrontation with an orc we are told:

But the orc was in its own haunts, nimble and well-fed.
Sam was a stranger, hungry and weary.

Sam's disadvantage is clear.  However, the contrast is not as structured as it could be.  In its own haunts/stranger are opposites, but nimble/hungry and well-fed/weary are incorrect.  Nimble and well-fed should be switched.  Although, even if the Creative Wizard had aligned those words, nimble and weary are not really opposites.  What does this construction teach us?

The orc is defending his home.  He is quick and has eaten recently.  These things are important in that order - he has home advantage, as well as an advantage of being quick.  Being quick isn't much help if you're in enemy territory, where you may not know where to go.

Well-fed seems an afterthought in comparison.  Danger is afoot!  Food can wait.  Especially if he's recently eaten.

But Sam is out of his element.  On top of that, he is hungry and tired (Particularly poor conditions for a hobbit).  All three of these things will weigh him down.  Danger is afoot and food can wait - but even if he wins the fight there is no guarantee of food (or rest).

The orc can consider his agility because he is well-fed.  He is not weary to the point it doesn't even bear stating.  Even if Sam could be nimble, he will not be now.  We've all been hungry.  Being hungry sucks.  It can make you cranky and impact anything else you do.  Whatever your potential is, hunger will inhibit it.

Being weary similarly can affect you, but for me anyway being hungry is worse.  Maybe it's all those years at summer camp and working campus security - I not only have experience working odd hours but I really liked those jobs!  Even if you can't get a full sleep at the moment you can at least get a quick 5-minute shut-eye.  That's achievable in most places of our lives.  But hunger requires something from outside - something we may not have on-hand.

Alternatively, perhaps because food is usually readily available to me (and eating is pleasurable) hunger is worse because I wonder how did I let myself get to this point?  Why haven't I eaten?  It's so easy to fix, whereas a quick shut-eye, in and of itself, isn't particularly pleasurable.

Biological needs, if met, can be forgotten.  But if you ever need to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom or sit down and you're not able to then it suddenly becomes urgent.  I think that's why hunger comes second but well-fed comes third.

It is a good reminder that not only do people experience needs differently, but the experience of needing can upend ourselves.  When our needs are met it can be easy to forget what it's like when they are not.  That means we have less compassion for those who are lacking - precisely those who need compassion more than others.  It is important, then, to remember that lacking something is more than the lack; it also saps a person's energy or mood.

Learning people's points of view is essentially to living ethically - even if you disapprove you need to understand them in order to hope to persuade them (and if you don't hope to persuade them then you must endure their alternative point of view (or seek to kill them)). But people's points of view are more than the intellect and experience behind them.  They are also their state of mind - hunger, exhaustion, pain, fright, etc.  If you live comfortably, your persuasion of someone who is uncomfortablele ought to take that into account.  Otherwise, your attempt will seem ridiculous and breed only contempt.

This had been a patreon-supported project, but that proved too annoying to maintain.  If you would like to financially support this project, drop $1.11 (or any amount, I suppose) into my Venmo!

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Against political violence

This week we read "The Black Gate Opens."  Gandalf, Aragorn and nearly everyone else rides to the gates of Mordor to challenge Sauron.  They do this not to win but to divert his attention from Frodo, whom they merely must hope remains alive.  They know they will never defeat Sauron in a battle of arms; this battle is only a tactic to distract him.

Even if they win Sauron will eventually send another wave of minions, and another and another. It is fortunate the Ring is destroyed during the battle, interrupting it. Had Frodo and Sam been delayed a day, or even another hour, they would have prevailed at a much higher cost.

Last week former President Trump survived an assassination attempt.  It seems to have been a close thing - an unsteady hand, unexpected gust of wind, or his own sudden movement saved his life.  Nonetheless, one innocent person was killed and two more were injured.  The shooter was also killed.

Political violence is bad.  We should all oppose it.  Saying this is a false-flag operation, or a plot by his political opponents, or bemoaning that we were this close to being rid of this unique threat to our Republic only fuels the fire.  Political violence is bad and a society that rejects it is better off.  Not only morally, but in material safety.  A Democracy of the Survivors presents very perverse incentives.  Further, as we have seen, shooters and weapons aren't perfect.  If we have more assassination attempts we'll also have more innocent deaths.

President Trump is a unique threat to our Republic, and we'd be better off if he weren't running.  That doesn't justify killing him.  The means and the ends must each be justified.  Murder isn't justifiable.

What stuck with me reading this chapter was the image of this huge melee, all so Frodo can have an opportunity to destroy the Ring.  That's what matters.  The battle is just a tactic.

Killing a political opponent is also a tactic towards political outcomes, but it will never get us what we want.  Whether you hit or miss you have now legitimized your opponent to break the rules to reach whatever goal of theirs was enraging you.  And if you do kill them there's always going to be someone to take their place.  What then?  Do we kill our way through our political opponents until the rest surrender?  These people have principles just like we do - would we be so easily cowed?  Would we not organize and strike back?

Stated like this I think it's clear it is delusional thinking to believe assassinations will lead to the political outcome we want.  Assuming Trump had died I think we can all agree that wouldn't have been the end of it. MAGA would strike back. I'm reminded of this quote, from Fellowship of the Ring.

[Sam said to Galadriel] 'I wish you'd take his Ring.  You'd put things
to rights... You'd make some folk pay for their dirty work.'

'I would,' she said. 'That is how it would begin.
But it would not stop with that, alas!'

It is easy to begin political violence - maybe even righteously!  But reprisals would come for those who took their lives; or at least those who were blamed; or at least those who could be acted against.  And then counter-counter-reprisals, etc.  How would it stop?  Who would be the person to see someone on their side killed and say "That's enough, it stops now - no more reprisals."  Tolerance is a big ask!

It's worth recalling tolerance did not come from high-minded thinkers who then persuaded society to live and let live.  Tolerance, in the Western tradition, came out of centuries of religious wars in Europe which pitted Catholics against Protestants.  Each side thought God wanted the other side wiped out, but that was proving impossible to do.  Tolerance arose because these 'forever wars' of the day were making life unbearable for everyone.  No particular person said "That's enough, it stops now."  Society did.

A sustained presence of violence, of any kind, undermines society's ability to function.  And society would recognize, above the incentives of individuals and political tribes, that it has to stop.  And sometimes it stops with democracy (Post-bellum America) and sometimes it stops with fascism (NAZIs, Soviets, Taliban).  Once you enter the abyss of societal dysfunction it's hard to predict the outcome.

This answers another issue I've been wrestling with - the battle does not end because Frodo destroys the Ring.  It ends because (or perhaps merely after) Frodo betrays the Quest and is attacked by Gollum who takes the Ring but then falls into the Crack of Doom.  The world is saved, of all things, by Gollum's greed!  A Eucatastrophe: An event we cannot plan for and should not hope for.  Indeed, who could have predicted the religious wars of the 1600s would have resulted in greater religious tolerance?

It's easier to predict the outcome of an election you lose: More elections.  Election cycles necessarily are followed by future election cycles - and will at some point produce results your opponents will not like.  But you don't want them empowered to kill whoever you voted for.  Thus, you must lay aside that power.  Better yet everyone must agree that option is unavailable and, if ever used, swiftly punished.

Ethics means doing the harder thing.  For politics, that means accepting defeat as a possibility, making coalitions with those you don't totally agree with, and refusing to despair and catastrophize (which is what gives us permission to break the rules of civil society).  Committing, or even encouraging, political violence is to say "I will recognize the government's authority only when I like the outcome."  And if one person has that position, it motivates others to take it.  The only solution is for nobody to take that position, and for those that do to be ostracized and punished - before they act.

'I wish you'd take his Ring.  You'd put things to rights...
You'd make some folk pay for their dirty work.'
'I would,' [Galadriel] said. 'That is how it would begin.

But it would not stop with that, alas!'

Let's say Trump somehow cancels elections in 2028, or runs a third term and wins.  He'll be 82.  Maybe he lives to be 100, and remains lucid throughout.  So worst case scenario he's in charge until 2046.  That's bad, but I don't believe we'd completely end as a republic.  The NAZIs ruled Germany for 12 terrible years, and then Germany was split for almost 45 years, but Germany reunited and has returned to being a democratic country.  Italy was ruled by Mussolini for 21 years!  Democracies, once they fall to fascism, are not stuck down there.

Picture this:  America has the same president for more than 10 years in a row, leading until he dies in office.  He imprisons a hundred thousand Americans based on their race, denies immigrants wishing to enter the country and tries to pack the Supreme Court when they rule against him.

The administration you're picturing has already happened - FDR was elected for four terms and did all of those things.  Yet we survived as a republic.

I need more evidence that this time will be different, and cannot even comprehend the evidence I would need to support political violence against Trump.  Because it would not stop with that, alas!

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On preparation

This week we read "The Last Debate," during which Aragorn, Gandalf, and others discuss what to do, now that Sauron has been beaten back from Gondor's gates.  They all agree he will return with even greater strength, and that there is no victory for them possible by fighting.  Their only hope is Frodo - whom they hope is in Mordor.  They decide, then, to bring the fight to Sauron's gates and challenge him to battle, not so that they might win, but so he might become distracted from the real threat within his own lands.

When they agree to this, Gandalf adds this to the conversation:

‘Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a
servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the
world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we
are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after
may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

I like this image of clean Earth contrasted against the weather.  We can only do so much to provide for future generations.  They will have to make their own choices and deal with problems we cannot forsee.  But there are things we can do to give them the best start we can.

Of course, there is an obvious problem with this analogy.  We are doing things to make the weather worse.  As I write this we're entering a third week of an ongoing, if inconsistent, heatwave.  It's been above 90 degrees for over half the days since this month began.  Even with the small breaks it's been remarkably hot.

It remains an analogy, but the question is what can we do with unforeseen consequences.  After all, people did not know what we know now back in the 60s, the 30s, the 1800s when industrialization took off.  Some of them knew in the 80s, but people also used to think we'd overpopulated the planet and that's not going to happen.  I find it hard to fault people for not deciding which of the predicted problems was going to be correct, although that some of those people were within oil companies reduces my leniency a little bit.

For future generations, we have an obligation to provide for them the best groundwork we can while also acknowledging - and reminding them - we cannot provide for everything.  There are unlikely to be impossible problems, but there will be ones they were not ready for.  Maybe we could have!  But how were we to know Mexico was going to sink into the sea and thus a wall between America and Mexico would have prevented, or at least mitigated, the great Southern Flooding of 2143?  For example, of course!

But maybe I've been focusing on the wrong part of the text.  At the start Gandalf says Sauron is just a servant of evil.  Destroying Sauron will not end evil.  Perhaps nothing will.  While is right to give our descendants clean Earth and to try to avoid unforeseen consequences, if that is possible, the best preparation we can provide is to remind them evil will endure, and spring anew.  They will always have to fight - hopefully not every day, but within their lifetimes they should expect some kind of fight for good.  They must expect it.

Recently I've been recalling a saying:  There are those who think the world is bad, and all the joy a result of our labor, or the labors of others; and there are those who think the world is good, and all the pain a result of our labor, or labor of others.  I don't think either is particularly better - one encourages striving, the other encourages simplicity.  But both give you some sense of purpose and an expectation of where to focus your efforts.

While we should do all that we can to materially prepare the next generation, we should emotionally prepare them as well.  Evil isn't an enemy to be conquered, but an enemy to struggle against forever.  However much we wish it weren't the case.

This had been a patreon-supported project, but that proved too annoying to maintain.  If you would like to financially support this project, drop $1.11 (or any amount, I suppose) into my Venmo!

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On immunity

I've tried to avoid writing about current events, but this week we encounter a convergence of events too ripe to ignore!

On Monday the Supreme Court ruled, in Trump V United States (God, that's an incredible name for  a real court case!) that American Presidents are given a hefty amount of criminal immunity for some of their actions during office after they leave office.  Thursday was July 4th, Independence Day.  While American independence was largely about a desire for the representative government which English subjects in England had had for centuries, it is now remembered as an ideological battle against monarchy.  A monarch, of course, has a lot of immunity for their actions.  And because they rarely leave without dying, post-reign prosecution is impractical.  On top of all that, our text this week has a lot to say about the duty to act against a leader sho is doing the wrong thing, something which is difficult to do when that leader has immunity.

This week we read a double portion, "The Pyre of Denethor" and "The Houses of Healing."  We'll be looking at the first of those chapters.

Previously, Denethor has taken Faramir's body to an underground area called Rath Dinen, where previous kings and stewards had been buried.  Denethor, convinced Gondor is going to lose the war, has decided to hurry his and Faramir's entombment.  Most of his guards assist him, but Pippin has fled to get Gandalf for help.  Pippin has by this time been been released from Denethor's service - it's not clear what he would have done if he were still bound to him, and it would be too easy to say he would have done the same.

But on his way to find Gandalf he finds his friend, Beregond, another member of the Guard.  He tells him Denethor has lost his mind, and urges him to do what he can to delay what's about to happen.  Beregond is uncertain what to do - it would be disloyal for him to leave his post.

That's where we last left our characters.  This week Gandalf and Pippin return to find Beregond has in fact acted.  He killed one guard to get inside and now stands in front of the door where Denethor and Faramir are, trying to hold off two other guards who are trying to get in with the torches Denethor ordered them to retrieve.  As they arrive, Denethor opens the door from behind Beregond, bearing his sword.  Gandalf sets himself in the middle of everybody and orders Denethor to stop what he's doing.

 ‘Since when has the Lord of Gondor been answerable to thee?’
said Denethor. ‘Or may I not command my own servants?’

‘You may,’ said Gandalf. ‘But others may contest your will,
when it is turned to madness and evil.'

Gandalf then goes to the platform Faramir has been laid on (it is made of sticks, and he has been covered in oil) and picks him up and bears him away.  In response, Denethor snatches one of the torches brought by his guards, throws it on the platform, and lies down to burn.  He dies right then and there.

Gandalf turns to the loyal guards, who are horror-stricken at what's happened,

'You have been caught in a net of warring duties that you did not weave.
But think, you servants of the Lord, blind in your obedience, that but
for the treason of Beregond Faramir, Captain of the
White Tower, would now also be burned.'

Gandalf clearly uses the word treason ironically - it is not a stain on Beregond's reputation, but an honor.

The application to our current events is obvious - Denethor should have been stopped, and much earlier.  If he had survived, he should have been able to be tried for his actions.  Treason against a mad lord is sometimes justified.  Nobody is perfect, thus we must retain options to rebuke them.

But I do have complicated feelings about this ruling.  Given my interest in foreign policy and geopolitics, which are much more amoral than domestic issues, I do think Presidents should be immune from some prosecution.  My issue isn't so much "A President should be able to do what they want, without consequence," but that "if a President thinks they'll be punished, they now have a new cost to consider, and may act in their own interest instead of the nation's"  I think a lack of immunity does introduce a level of hesitation which may have severe consequences.

The main example I can think of is Obama's attack on bin Laden.  If that raid had gone poorly, with more civilian casualties, could he be prosecuted for their deaths?  If bin Laden had, in fact, not been there, could he be prosecuted for sending Americans into harm's way needlessly?  If those costs needed to be considered would he still have given the order?  It was 2011, he still had another term to win.  Failure, of course, could have been used against him in the 2012 election, and the success of that operation no doubt was a feather in his cap during that campaign.  But what if losing that election also could have led to him being tried in court, personally?  He might have acted differently.  He might have taken longer to weigh his options, and thus missed the opportunity.  If he missed the opportunity, could he have been tried for not acting?

I don't think a President should be personally liable for military action (or inaction).  I don't think it's a good idea, per se, and I think it would come with lots of other negative consequences.

And there are many more laws than we usually think about.  There are laws about how money gets spent.  Can a President be prosecuted for overspending, or understanding?  Or for reappropriating?  I'm sure there are also many more examples I cannot fathom, but which the Supreme Court know well.  While I obviously think our President should follow the law during their time in office, I don't think they should be punished for every example of law-breaking, because then it will be in our Presidents' interest to do as little as possible.  Moreover, the kinds of people who will want to become President will change, and I don't think a litigious, self-protective person will necessarily make a good President.  Immunity should be available, at least as long as some amount of good-faith exists.  But then how do we prove that?

But there's another issue with holding a President accountable for crimes they commit in office. The president doesn't do most of what they are responsible for.  Obama wasn't there when bin Laden was killed.  He didn't pull the trigger.  Similarly, Bush didn't lie to the UN about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - Colin Powell did.  Trump, also, didn't try to steal the election - his followers did.  He didn't storm the capitol on January 6th.  He didn't organize fake electors.  How can we hold him responsible, legally, for what his followers did?  They all had agency, and he had no way to compel them to act if they didn't want to do those things.

To wit: Trump did call the Georgia governor and demand he "find 11,780 votes" and suggested not investigating would be a criminal offense.  When he refused Trump didn't do anything about it and nothing came of that threat.  It's grotesque, but I don't think it's actually illegal to tell somebody to commit a crime.  The threat is more within the realm of criminality, but Trump has a reputation of overblown rhetoric that I think he could reasonably get off if that was the only charge.

If the President, personally, shoots someone on 5th Avenue maybe they actually are immune to prosecution.  If they order someone else to do that, that's still illegal for that person.  Presidential immunity is not transferrable to their staff or followers.  The FBI still has to follow the law - the President is immune from prosecution, not the whole executive branch.  The American military also can't perform operations within the borders of America, though a declaration of martial law may change that.  The National Guard is a separate issue I don't know enough about.  I'd look it up, but this post is running along already.  Suffice to say I believe it would be illegal for any branch of the military to conduct any operations on American soil without some extraordinary legislation passing Congress, and then Presidential immunity is not longer the sole issue.

Most of what we are worried about Trump doing involves someone else doing it for Trump.  That person is not immune.  They could obviously be pardoned, though, if convicted federally, but of course there's the more immediate worry they'd have of someone attacking them in the moment.  If you shoot someone on 5th Avenue the promise of a Presidential pardon provides no protection NYPD's inevitable response.

The case for accountability is easier to make.  There should be limits on power, and enforcement of those limits.  But I do think the Supreme Court has a valid point that we don't want incoming Presidents to prosecute outgoing ones (and we certainly don't want them to campaign on that).  We also don't want Presidents to be overly concerned with their own legal jeopardy when making decisions.  Presidents who know going into the job that they must act in ways to protect themselves from even the most inane prosecution will not be the best kind of Presidents they can be - and those who choose to run will not be the best we can get.

We've had generations of Presidents who could be held accountable and we haven't devolved into dueling partisan trials.  I disagree with the Court we were on the cusp of that.  But I understand what they were trying to avoid.

The good news I'll say here is a President can still be impeached.  We should try to elect legislators that represent their state/district rather than to support/oppose the President according to their party affiliation.  But that's not going to happen just because those reading this blog decide to do so.  It must be a national, cultural change in how we understand the legislative branch, that their job is to not pass laws which the President can tout as achievements, or bring forward messaging bills when they're in the minority, but to represent the interests of their constituents.

I originally was going to write "Denethor benefited from his immunity," but he died on a pyre of his own making (Well, to drive the point home, his guards made it).  It is difficult to see that as a benefit.  Denethor would have benefited more from listening to the doubts of others, and to being open to their concerns over his own.  Denethor had the opportunity, but he didn't take it.  Then again, he lived his life above the rest of the people, and surely began to believe his position as Steward was deserved through merit, and not through bloodline.  He was the product of generational immunity - we shouldn't be surprised he couldn't simply shake it off.

Our future Presidents, as time goes on, will test the boundaries of this immunity more and more.  To be clear, I am not talking about Trump.  While he is a unique threat to our Republic, I think the real problems of this ruling will show themselves in 30-50 years, when we have a generation of Presidential hopefuls who grew up both wanting to be President and knowing Presidents have this kind of immunity.  When they cross a line - for surely there are lines - we must hold them to account.  However, that may set off the war of dueling partisan prosecutions this ruling sought to avoid.  I have no solution to that - to any of this.  But thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk out my thoughts.

Our text is clear - power is bad.  If so, unaccountable power must be worse.

This had been a patreon-supported project, but that proved too annoying to maintain.  If you would like to financially support this project, drop $1.11 (or any amount, I suppose) into my Venmo!

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On our response

This week we read "The Ride of the Rohirrim" and "The Battle of Pellenor Fields".  Finally, the Rohirrim arrive at Gondor.  In the ensuing battle, of course, comes one of the climaxes of our text:  The end of the Witch King.  The battle is won, but not without losses - Theoden is killed, crushed by his horse, Snowmane, which had been felled by "a black dart".

Theoden's body is taken to be buried at Edoras.  The Witch King's body, of course, has vanished without a trace.  As for their steeds, the men of Rohan and Gondor decide to give them last rites:

So they laid them apart from their foes and the fell beast and
set spears about them. And afterwards when all was over men returned
and made a fire there and burned the carcase of the beast; but for
Snowmane they dug a grave and set up a stone upon which was carved
in the tongues of Gondor and the Mark:
Faithful servant yet master’s bane,
Lightfoot’s foal, swift Snowmane.
Green and long grew the grass on Snowmane’s Howe,
but ever black and bare was the ground where the beast was burned.

We've spoken about this previously, how the beast is so foul even its destruction cannot fully undo its damage.  It's a powerful metaphor about the need for swiftness.  The longer evil persists, the more irreparable harm it might do.

But reading the text this time - 10 years later - I was struck by a different question.  What ruined the ground, the beast or the burning?  If Snowmane had been burned, would the ground also be "ever black and bare"?

These are not the intended results.  Snowmane wasn't buried to enrich (enchant?) the ground, and the beast wasn't burned to desecrate (curse?) the ground.  Snowmane was buried out of respect.  Snowmane fought on the winning side - which we also know to be the right side.  Respecting the body is an opportunity to show to everyone else that, if they fall in battle, even their animals will be treated with respect.  It will inspire them.

Similarly the beast is burned out of disdain, and perhaps confusion.  Text describes them as:

And behold! it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds,
and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast
pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank.
A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold
beneath the Moon, outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood,
apt to evil. And the Dark Lord took it, and nursed it with fell meats, until
it grew beyond the measure of all other things that fly;
and he gave it to his servant to be his steed.

They're not sure what to do with it, and in the battle Eowyn beheaded it.  So they decide to burn it.  This is what we see the Riders of Rohan do with the Orcs they slew outside Fanghorn Forest.  It's their custom - a way to get rid of the bodies of the enemy.

But we know if we saw Orcs or any other servant of Sauron or Saruman burn the bodies of any Free Peoples we would be horrified.  They should be buried!  The text, too, would disapprove.  Whenever fire is used, it is usually a negative.  "Fire!" is what is called out when the Shire is under attack (we hear it in the story of the encroaching Old Forest, and we'll hear it again during the scouring).  The Rings, of course, were made by a great fire.  Saruman's explosives are ignited by fire.

Fire of course can have positive uses, like campfires, torches, the beacons of Gondor.  But it is generally a negative, which makes sense given the medieval setting of Middle Earth.  The dangers far outweigh the positives.  Even campfires can give away one's location.  And fire is very dangerous if it gets out of control.

The men who bury and burn make their choices intentionally.  Snowmane is to be honored, the beast is to be destroyed.  The ground is forever impacted by their choices.  But what if it was their choice, not the animal, which creates these diverging paths?

The Creative Wizard suggests the beast is "apt to evil," but this describes only a tendency.  It could be raised to be good.  We know Mordor takes horses from the Rohirrim for its own use, and while those horses are used for evil, they obviously aren't inherently so.  Burning the beast suggests something about the beast, itself, is irredeemable.

Of course, it is dead.  It's deeds are done and, if we were to count them, its evil would outweigh its good, even if we agree "bearing the Witch King" is a relatively minor form of evil, and one the beast may do without any awareness of the evil.  Sauron nursed the beast - how is the beast to know its master was evil?  It is possible for something to be "apt to evil" through ignorance.

Fire may be an analogy here for power.  Occasionally useful but usually ruinous.  We'd all be better off if we could minimize its use.

I think the men of Gondor and Rohan bear responsibility for the results of these last rites.  By using fire, they make the evil of the beast permanent.  Worse, they don't even mark the site.  Snowmane's grave is given a tombstone.  But they could at least make a sign like "The ground here, ever ruined by those the Dark Lord tamed, so we may never forget the cost of obeying evil."  Even if fire is the cause of the ruin, it would then be done with intention.

The lush grass and the dead earth are not signs of two beasts of different temperaments, but of responses to the end of the conflict.  If we try to purge the world of evil, and punish it even when it is already defeated, we will find many things wanting.  In a democratic society, if we determine some of our fellow citizens - or immigrants wishing to become citizens - are inherently evil or broken, or even if they simply have a dark aptitude, we'll soon become a democracy of the survivors.  And the winner gets to rule over the ashes.

This is especially important when deciding what to do when you win.  If an opponent is actively fighting against you and your values, fight back - but cleanly.  But if they surrender, or change their minds, or want to stop fighting and talk it over, we have an obligation to do the right thing, and not the thing that feels good.  "All men are created equal" does not mean, at their defeat, that equality evaporates.  We must punish cautiously and with purpose instead of passion.  Otherwise we risk stoking the flames of another round of the fight we only just won!

It would make for an ugly country for some patches of grass to be lush and yet for some to be barren.  Scars may tell us the past is real, but they are not the only way to record history.  And anyway, we must allow for the growth of a lush, green future, despite everything.

This had been a patreon-supported project, but that proved too annoying to maintain.  If you would like to financially support this project, drop $1.11 (or any amount, I suppose) into my Venmo!

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