"The Ents Are Going To Wake Up And Find That They Are Strong.”
Some thoughts on the price of conservative boldness.
At one point in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf describes how the Ents, a mysterious tree-like race of beings who existed for thousands of years in relative apathy to the wider world around them, are suddenly about to make the choice to depart from this apathy and take a stand against the Dark Lord Sauron (yes I *know* it was specifically Saruman don’t you GO lighting up my DMs over this).
“A thing is about to happen that has not happened since the Elder Days,” says Gandalf, referencing the tree people’s slow, building anger against the forces of darkness: “The Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong.”
Whether or not the next four years truly usher in a Golden Age for America, there’s little doubt that ordinary Americans on the center and right are realizing once again how strong they are. The cost of being bold on behalf of conservative values, and of being unapologetic about cherishing faith and freedom is arguably lower than it’s been in years. Since the election of Donald Trump and the oft-referenced ‘vibe shift’ that somewhat preceded and certainly followed his second ascendancy to the White House, there’s been much talk about how truly effective many of the Right’s heralded changes will be. Is DOGE likely to succeed in curbing government waste, or is it simply playing on the margins? Can Trump’s slate of executive orders actually make headway against rooting out race discrimination under the guise of DEI in our institutions of education and business (answer: yes but it’s harder than anyone thinks)? And, especially among people who gravitate towards the center of that center-right constituency that’s been elevated to new cultural prominence, what about the excesses? Is there a place for the “normal right” in an era where the so-called “New Right” seems culturally dominant?
I hear this question asked all the time, mostly in the context of think pieces or panel discussions that offer far less answers than might be hoped. Indeed, the Trump-lukewarm (and certainly the Trump-critical) wing of the political Right often seems infected with a spirit of hand-wringing and sideline criticism, instead of new energy and optimism about cultural headway that can be made. This is an error, and in large part an unforced one. Swaths of the right that view MAGA as something less than the second coming believe they are somehow weak, politically defanged, and that the correct attitude to assume during Trump’s second presidency is one of perpetual criticism of the right.
It doesn’t have to be.
Read the rest, written for Young Voices, here:
