I rewatched the Lord of the Rings movies over the holidays, immersing myself in the magic of Middle Earth. I love the sweeping scope, the fight for the heart of the world, the rallying of good against evil.

There’s not much nuance in Middle Earth. It’s pretty clear: hobbits and elves good; orcs and ringwraiths bad. Sauron is motivated by a want for power, cut and dry. It’s not his dead wife or a want to do good in the world or a misplaced dream. He wants to act for himself, and he’s willing to do anything to get what he desires.

It feels like a morality of a begotten age. To Tolkien, as a British soldier in World War I, the world probably felt a lot more cut and dry. These days, most of the time when I hear about “defending the world against evil,” it’s from fire-and-brimstone preachers who I write off pretty quickly. I remain unconvinced that the evils of this world are in movie theaters or malls.

It seems this post-Vietnam-War relativism has leaked into our stories. We’ve grown accustomed to Deadpool-like anti-heroes, and Loki-adjacent sympathetic villains. Spoilers for The Hunger Games, but the rebel forces turn out to be as bad as the Capitol, and we haven’t had a decent Disney villain in fifteen years. Then when there is a pure evil villain, they’re often inhuman (like the infected in The Last of Us or the demons in The Good Place).

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of nuanced storytelling. The twist in The Hunger Games has stayed with me since middle school, and I adore the moral ambiguity of Dune. But it feels strange to me that it’s been a while since we’ve had a world-threatening evil without a fridged wife or dying child.

I should also acknowledge that, historically, good/evil dichotomies haven’t been too great either. Lord of the Rings has been widely criticized for its othering of non-white cultures. The good-guys hobbits are clearly representative of the British, and the bad-guy human armies are clearly meant to look Middle Eastern. Not great. But the fact that we saw evil where it did not belong does not mean that evils do not exist in this world. And I feel like this movement towards ambiguous storytelling is indicative of a wider shift towards moral relativism. If Lord of the Rings was published today, Sauron would have a tragic backstory, and fans online would call him misunderstood. Sarumann would get the Joker treatment and have thirst edits go viral.

I was raised as a “two sides to every story” kind of person. When I was in elementary school, I told my grandma my classmate was being mean to me, and she said, “I feel sorry for her.” Hurt that she wasn’t immediately taking my side, I asked why. She said, with an unusual flash of emotion, “She must be a very unhappy little girl.”

When Trump was elected the first time, I tried opening conversations asking how people could overlook his blatant sexism, racism, and selfishness. I spent four years listening and trying to understand.

Now that we’re approaching his second inauguration, I’m bombarded by headlines about his cabinet and his threats to American allies. To be honest, I’m exhausted. I’m tired of trying to understand and trying to be the bigger person. I’m not sure there’s a “two-sides” answer to this. We should be able to call this how it is. Filling the presidential cabinet with unqualified sexual predators? How can that be anything but evil?

I’m not saying Trump supporters are evil. I’m hesitant to call Trump himself evil because that seems to erase room for growth or redemption. People are more complicated than pure good or pure evil. But I believe that we can call out actions or agendas as evil, and it doesn’t have to be a debate. While it may be complicated, it doesn’t have to be morally gray. Sometimes it feels like we’ve become so preoccupied with fighting polarization that we’re willing to compromise our morals, but adding an asterisk to condemning evil feels like a betrayal of the good.

Now, I’m trying to find hope in the people still fighting for the good. I smiled this morning hearing about tough questions in senate confirmation hearings, and I’m reminding myself that activism doesn’t stop in a supermajority. There are still people pushing back. I’m determined to stay steadfast in my station and do all I can to find the good.

Tiffany Kajiwara

Tiffany Kajiwara graduated from Calvin in 2022 with majors in literature and writing. Now, she continues to live in Grand Rapids and works at Baker Academic Publishing as a marketing assistant. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, thrifting, and psychoanalyzing cartoon characters.