Dixie, The Shire & the Fate of Western Man
or, Standing on the Shoulders of Dwarves: How Merry & Pippin point the way forward for all of us
New Orleans, a Safe Haven for Endangered Art
I am a life-long country boy. But back around 2005 I got to spend a week exploring the once-beautiful city of New Orleans. This was a happy trip, exploring some family connections there, finding the lost and forgotten jazz music which was born there but has since been entirely forgotten by the locals, outside of a few tourist traps.
It was a great city for art. I dug several galleries on Royal and Orleans. I like the idea of art galleries and visit them when I can but they’re usually depressing displays of “abstract, post-modern, representationalist, neo-primativist deconstructionist” art, which is to say, jars of urine and shit like that. But the French Quarter is a haven for art. Impressionism and Romanticism have strong presence in New Orleans, or did twenty years ago. That might have changed.
The height of the visit was my tour of the Memorial Hall Museum, billed as the “second largest collection of Confederate artifacts in the world,” according to the always untrustworthy fake news site, Wikipedia. It was beautiful. By the way, I just checked. Miraculously it is still there. But it is under constant siege by lawfare activists, so visit it while you can.
Here’s what I want to tell you about: The museum featured several genuine and authentic officers’ uniforms and formal dresses once worn by officers’ wives. These textiles are displayed on wicker mannequins so you can see how they formed and fitted the folk who wore them. And they were tiny. I mean teeny ity bitsy tee-niney tiny.
You’ve heard that we “stand on the shoulders of giants?” I’m here to tell you, we stand on the shoulders of dwarves. These hardened men of war, these heroes of the Revolution, champions of Mexico and 1812, these devils who harassed the living shit out of the evil and murderous Yankee Imperials for four hard years, stood about 5’1” and weighed perhaps 110 lbs at most.
That’s what a male human form looks like when you live your entire life on cornmeal and hog meat and a few oranges at Christmas time and just work work work like a slave in the hot sun all year long. Tiny and hard, like wolverines. I was deeply humbled. Compared to 21st century Man, these heroes were like Hobbits.
I got to thinking about that when I saw this meme depicting Orcs. Instead of using Tolkien’s original language to describe them, they are depicted as “vibrant enrichment” and such like. Haha. It’s an interesting concept.
Dixie is like The Shire. And The Shire is like the West. (Western culture, not cowboys and Indians, you understand)
The thing about The Shire is, it can only exist and survive if it is strongly guarded. In Tolkien’s epic, the Hobbits learn that the Shire has long been guarded by the Rangers of the North, by Elves and by Gandalf. They ask for nothing in return, recognizing that the Shirefolk’s insular ignorance of the outside world of Middle Earth is key to its survival. Despite the sophistication of the Elves in arts and music, and despite the superior strength and valour of the Rangers, in times of pressing danger they take their greatest comfort in the simple ditties and rhymes and merry antics of the Hobbits.
These heroes of the West wanted merely to preserve the Hobbits and guard them, to protect their simple beauty. Because, in so doing, they preserved something they themselves needed and found deep meaning in. And what did the Enemies want? Well, Sauron wanted to enslave and corrupt them, to make them like Smeagol. And when he finally got his chance, Saruman wanted merely to reduce them to miserable suffering.
It wasn’t just the Orcs and Goblins that challenged the Hobbits. The rough men of Bree and the sinister Southrons forced the Hobbits to change their behavior. In Bree all was suspicion and danger. And the Hobbits, who never once had to censor themselves in anyway, learned to be guarded and secretive in their dealings or pay a swift price.
Aragorn warning the Hobbits of the dangers of Bree, by the Brothers Hildebrandt
Even the heroes presented a danger to the Hobbits. Fordo, Merry, Pippin and Sam were all profoundly changed by their adventure. Frodo had to go away forever. Having “seen the Oliphant” he could never go back to Bag End. And Merry and Pippin were darker and more grim for having found their inner courage. But they were also changed forever by drinking of the Entwash. Grown taller and burlier than any Hobbits ever were, they were the bulls of the Shire forever after.
I imagine that the Hobbit lasses were extremely attracted to these newly-returned uber-Hobbits and lined up to bear their babies. Their imposing stature and adventurous spirit became a fixed trait. And later generations of Hobbits, visiting the Museum there at Bag End, and seeing Frodo’s smock and Mithril shirt displayed on a tiny wicker mannequin, must have marveled at the tiny stature of the Hobbits of old.
Gandalf knew that the Wizards’ and the Elves’ time was past, and that a new Age was dawning. So too he must have known, when he defied Elrond and insisted the younger Hobbits accompany the Fellowship, that a newer, harder breed of Hobbits would have to rise to defend and protect what innocence and beauty could be salvaged and preserved in The Shire.
What shall become of us, then?
We men of the West have been beaten and smothered for the past century. Our Enemies have plotted, seduced, poisoned and corrupted our sons and daughters for too long. And whatever Wizards and Elves there ever once were have long since withdrawn. Our women are blue-haired walruses who feed on the blood and tears of dead babies. Our men are painted and prancing drag queens, addicted to cartoons, stuffed animals and video games, and having been rejected en masse by our daughters, can only find human intimacy in each other’s assholes.
And the Orcs are storming the gates. Bill Gates plots to corrupt and enslave us. And Soros only seeks to destroy everything Good and Beautiful and True our fathers ever built, and to make us suffer.
We’re in a bit of a pickle.
We should and we must preserve our music and art and poetry. But we don’t need any more musicians and artists and poets right now. We need a transformation in the Men of the West. We need to be born again hard.
“We are… in a world… of shit.” Private Pyle finally understands.
Lance Peckerwood loves music and art and literature and he hates war. He is the Senior Editor and Chief Writer for Dies Irae, a daily chronicle of the Outpouring of God’s Wrath, and topics of general interest to Christian Men. Follow him on Twitter. Send him mail.