In Moore/Kerry metro-blue-state world, Bush is a moron and the war on terror, especially the war in Iraq, is a tall tale told by an idiot. In Tolkien/Bush retro-red-state world, we are in a global struggle against Mordor's Orcs (radical Islam's terrorists) to save Western civilization.
Unfortunately, Tolkien's fantastical invention seems brutally prophetic today. Even the conflicts between his characters - those willing to battle and those averse - mirror our own divisions, as summarized by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in his Tuesday address to Britain's Labor Party Conference.
Reiterating Britain's necessary alliance with the United States, he described two conflicting worldviews that define today's politics both here and abroad:
One view is that there are isolated individuals, extremists, engaged in essentially isolated acts of terrorism . not qualitatively different from the terrorism we have always lived with. If you believe this, we carry on the same path as before 11th September. We try not to provoke them and hope in time they will wither.
The other view is that this is a wholly new phenomenon, worldwide global terrorism . If you take this view, you believe September 11th changed the world; that Bali, Beslan, Madrid and scores of other atrocities that never make the news are part of the same threat, and the only path to take is to confront this terrorism, remove it root and branch, and at all costs stop them (from) acquiring the weapons to kill on a massive scale because these terrorists would not hesitate to use them.
While Blair expressed regret that the evidence on weapons of mass destruction was wrong, he said he couldn't apologize for ridding the world of Saddam Hussein. Advancing democracy in the Middle East is the only hope for security at home, he said.
They (terrorists) are in Iraq for the very reason we should be. They have chosen this battleground because they know success for us in Iraq is not success for America or Britain or even Iraq itself but for the values and way of life that democracy represents. That's why they are there. That is why we should be there .
Such is the Tolkien view and the Bush view, even if it takes a Tony Blair to articulate it clearly. Those who believe that the Orcs are hell-bent on snuffing out the light of Western civilization will vote for Bush. Those who believe that we've merely stirred up a hornets' nest by taking the war to Iraq and need a more nuanced, law-enforcement approach to terror will vote for Kerry.
The vote may be just that simple, though the stakes are something else.