[Pitchwife]

I think it's fairly obvious that the text doesn't intend to satirize Tolkien but rather to satirize Mr Trump using Tolkien's legendarium as its foil. I also think that the (real) author knows their Tolkien well enough and had to in order to make the satire work.


As to how the text achieves its purpose, I'd like to tackle a few of the questions Bêthberry posed in her original post. How are Smaug and Gandalf used in the text? The speaker (who is not the author, and whom I shall call thus in order to avoid the question whether he represents the real Mr Donald J. Trump accurately) - the speaker, I was saying, discusses Smaug's merits as a businessman and investor comparable to himself and finds him wanting because the dragon, lacking any spark of entrepreneurship, is content to lie on his hoard all day and snack on pony flambé occasionally instead of using it to make more gold and invest in 'classy' architecture. This slightly misses the point of what it means to be a dragon, but not by much, as Smaug and the speaker at least share a common interest in material wealth.


It gets downright absurd when the speaker judges Gandalf by the same standard and pronounces him a total failure. What the speaker fails to grasp is that Gandalf's character and conduct, unlike Smaug's, are determined by motives and principles completely incompatible with those of the speaker himself, so much so that the speaker is incapable of even understanding them. (Much like Saruman, actually - a lot of what the speaker has to say about Gandalf reads as if written with Saruman in mind.)


This is where our own knowledge of Tolkien comes into the story. The text wants us to realise that the speaker completely misconstrues Gandalf's character and motivation, and to draw according conclusions about the speaker's own character, motivation and capability of moral judgment; and we can only do that because we know better - because we understand Gandalf as the Professor meant and wrote him. We know that Gandalf has no interest whatsoever in polls and towers but is guided by love, kindness and obedience towards an Authority higher than his own, and conclude that the speaker is untouched by such things.


Whether this conclusion which the author intends us to draw is valid is not for me to say, as I'm even further removed from American politics here in Europe than Bêthberry and Gal55. But I'd much prefer the next steward of Gondor to be somebody who understands Gandalf.