Interesting view on Lord of the Rings

[Minionman]

I'm sure there are a lot of people who have read the books/seen the movies and thought all that stuff about "pureblood numenorians", and "perfect elves", and "the true king returning" was a pretty silly part of the books. This article takes those ideas further. What I really liked, and really picked up on thanks to the history class I'm in talking about "chriastianizing natives", and "social darwinism", was a bit from the last part about, if this were a real history, what Sauron was actually doing.

My point? Well, LOTR is obviously an account written after the Ring War ended, long ago. Right? An account created by the victors.

So how do we know that Sauron really did have red glowing eyes?

Isn't some of that over-the-top description just the sort of thing that royal families used to promote, casting exaggerated aspersions on their vanquished foes and despoiling their monuments, reinforcing their own divine right to rule?

Yes, I'm having fun with words like "really" -- relating to a made-up story. But come along with me for a minute. Next time you re-read LOTR, count the number of examples... cases where powerful beings are vastly uglier than anybody with that kind of power would allow themselves to be. Why? How does being grotesquely ugly help you govern an empire?

Then unleash your imagination to take the story a bit farther. Have fun!

Ask yourself - "How would Sauron have described the situation?"

And then -- "What might 'really' have happened?"

Now ponder something that comes through even the party-line demonization of a crushed enemy. This clearcut and undeniable fact. Sauron's army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.

Hm. Did they all leave their homes and march to war thinking "Oh, goody, let's go serve an evil dark lord"?

Or might they instead have thought they were the 'good guys', with a justifiable grievance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy topped by invader-alien elves and their Numenorean colonialist human lackeys?

Picture, for a moment, Sauron the Eternal Rebel, relentlessly maligned by the victors of the Ring War -- the royalists who control the bards and scribes (and movie-makers). Sauron, champion of the common Middle-Earther! Vanquished but still revered by the innumerable poor and oppressed who sit in their squalid huts, wary of the royal secret police with their magical spy-eyes, yet continuing to whisper stories, secretly dreaming and hoping that someday he will return... bringing more rings.

Also, has anyone read this particular article before?