ABOUT THIS EPISODE
What if the greatest enemies of endless war are the very men most determined to wage it?
In this episode of Metamodernism Uncensored, we unpack Tolkien’s haunting observation “Oft evil will shall evil mar,” and follow it from Gollum’s destruction of the Ring to Trashcan Man’s nuclear annihilation of Randall Flagg’s kingdom in The Stand.
Again and again, evil does not need to be conquered by something purer than itself. Sometimes it merely needs enough rope, enough power, and one final act of hubris.
Then comes Iran...
Trump, Netanyahu, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and the architects of American interventionism wanted this war to demonstrate strength. But what if the Iran war becomes their Gollum instead? What if the catastrophe they unleashed finally does what decades of antiwar arguments could not: convince Americans that the machinery of permanent intervention is itself the enemy?
The Ring made Gollum. Flagg gathered Trashcan Man. And the war hawks may have created the very disaster that finally unmakes them.
Sometimes evil is defeated by good. Sometimes evil simply reaches too far.
