What Lovecraft saw. Posted on Wikipedia.

What Lovecraft saw. Posted on Wikipedia.

First, here’s my take: assigning the evil of the Trump era to Cthulhu and Morgoth seems entirely reasonable. This is a time when America has fallen into its most morally weak state. Actually, the only state possible under para-fascism. At our moment of greatest vulnerability, we are faced with certain environmental catastrophe, with America at its most morally weak state. (Thanks a lot Trump.)

Cthulhu (discovered by H.P. Lovecraft) and Morgoth (discovered by J.R.R. Tolkien) come from very different ideological places. I will use examples from my Generally True Patterns (GTP) to show that difference.

A thing becomes a thing following its move from an abstraction to a concrete reality or process (Chapter 8 GTP)

The origins of Cthulhu are obscure. It simply is and always has been. As a non-rational being, it has no motivation perceivable by us. But like measles, it is something one best get vaccinated against. Otherwise, look out. Its allies: people who convince you that prevention is your enemy and the disease unimportant. (Raison d’être #1 of the Trump administration.) Manifestation: white supremacists such as skinheads who particularly hate other white people.

Morgoth is rather more interesting. First for having a history, e.g. it was created as an Ainur, one of the first beings in existence. Also, it has motivation: wrecking havoc for the pure enjoyment of it. (Raison d’être #2 of the Trump administration.) Its allies: the Mob. It has a long rap sheet at the FBI, known as “Melko” on the street. Manifestation: Wahabbi jihadists.

Both of them start as enfolded potential—look out when they become unfolded reality.

All things, events, and processes arise in our perception from somewhere. (Chapter 2 GTP)

Morgoth is like “a cloud that cannot be seen or felt,” kind of like carbon monoxide. Pissed off since getting the stuffing knocked out of “him” at the end of the First Age, he reanimates out of our own perception generally, and out of need, specifically, by some among us. (As an aside, Morgoth got his comeuppance from Fionwë who was the General Dwight D. Eisenhower of the First Age and reputed to be a political moderate after the war.)

In the beginning Cthulhu “had shape…but that shape was not made of matter.” Whoa! A nihilist! For all that these creatures are like ether, and in most ways beyond our comprehension, when the form they take is what we define as evil, their presence or at least their influence can be perceived.

A change in the environment of an area will be accompanied by a change in the population of that environment (Chapter 6)

An example of this is the increasing prevalence of flood-drought cycle disrupting the climate in previously stable areas. Existing life forms may be eliminated as the changed conditions create better conditions for new ones, or for returning ones in the case of Cthulhu.

So at a time and place of weakness, bad things find the opportunity to creep in. But all this is about symptoms, not causes, that is, Trump as symptom of things going wrong, not the cause. My guess is that Eärendel, wielding a disinfectant light known as a Silmaril, who chosen by the Ainur to guard the borders of our world from evil at the end of the First Age, has fallen down on the job. Low battery warning perhaps.

The above argument is proven by the fact that both Cthulhu and Morgoth have certainly returned. (Thanks a lot Trump: these beings are irresistibly attracted to moral weakness.)

By the way, I have heard that there is an evangelical-run museum somewhere maintaining that dinosaurs and cavemen inhabited the earth at the same time. Now that is ridiculous.

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