Damian Dovarganes/AP/File

The Los Angeles skyline is seen Feb. 9, 2024. Critics decry the Golden State’s environmental regulations and liberal policies as bad for business. California’s cheerleaders note its year-round sunshine and sandy beaches.

California lost a major multinational business this month when Chevron announced plans to move its headquarters to Houston. This comes on the heels of another high-profile defection from the Golden State – Elon Musk saying in July that he’ll move both SpaceX and the social media platform X, also to Texas.

With the 2024 presidential race now headlined by a California Democrat, Kamala Harris, the political question surrounding such moves is in the spotlight. Put simply, are people and jobs being driven out of California by a hostile business climate?

How hostile the state is depends on whom you ask. Critics and defectors decry the Golden State’s aggressive environmental regulations, high taxes, and socially liberal policies. California’s cheerleaders note its top rank in a host of economic metrics and quality of life, symbolized by year-round sunshine, sandy beaches, redwood groves, and jagged Sierra peaks. 

Its dazzling Hollywood history and tech titans attest to the promise that maybe you, too, can strike it rich here with the right idea, the right connections, and perfect timing. The state motto is still “Eureka!” 

While the Ancient Greek word means “I’ve found it,” the million-dollar question for many today is more “Can I keep it?” High costs have become a key factor behind increasing outward migration by people and businesses. Critics say the Golden State economy is no longer golden. 

“It’s an economy that simply exists by sheer strength of being the most wonderful place on the planet,” says Lance Christensen, head of policy and government affairs for the conservative California Policy Center.

But the picture here is a nuanced one, and California’s advocates say the state should hold its head high.

Ashley Landis/AP/File

California lost a major multinational business this month when Chevron announced plans to move its headquarters to Houston. Gas prices are displayed at a Chevron gas station in Long Beach, California, March 9, 2022.

“When you’re backward-looking, you have one point of view,” says Lenny Mendonca, former chief economic and business adviser to California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. “When you’re forward-looking, I don’t think there’s a state in the country that would not trade their economy for California’s.”

CEOs see California as worst state for business 

California is the most populous state in the United States, with 1 in 8 of the nation’s residents. But after tripling in the last half of the 20th century, the state’s population growth has slowed steadily over the last few decades, falling behind the national growth rate from 2010 to 2020. For three of the most recent years, residential numbers were in the red until returning to a slight increase in 2023. 

Those shifts are consequential: California lost a congressional seat after the 2020 census. And the outward migration from 2020 to 2022 cost the state over $100 billion in lost revenue from personal income tax. 

A recent survey of chief executives ranked California the worst state in which to do business, citing burdensome regulations, labor costs, and high taxes. More than 350 businesses moved their headquarters out of state from 2018 to 2021. Eleven of those were Fortune 1000 companies. And they’re moving mostly to Texas, Tennessee, and Nevada, where corporate taxes are lower and labor is cheaper. 

Lower costs are the simple draw. Companies aren’t leaving because of the climate or other amenities, says Kenneth Miller, director of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College. “They’re leaving because they think it’s more affordable and they can make more profit in Texas than in California.”

This may help explain why Texas’ growth has outpaced California’s so far this century. In 2000, the Lone Star State’s economy was a little over half of California’s; by 2023, it was closing in on two-thirds. In the last year alone, Texas’ growth rate was more than twice that of California – the biggest one-year gap in almost 20 years.

High tech, high costs, and tree nuts

But the number of California tech startups – more than 7,600 in the past five years – far outweighs the number leaving. And for the first time in a decade, California is the state with the most Fortune 500 companies, with 57. 

“California spends no time trying to get other companies from other states to move here,” says Mr. Mendonca. “We grow our own.”

Innovation is at the heart of California’s business culture, whether it’s world-changing technology or fantasy-inspiring entertainment. 

“That’s part of the California myth, or belief system, that we can be creating things that can be world changers, right?” says Professor Miller. “We’re right at the top.”

The global tech center accounts for 30% of the state’s economy, when factoring in financial ripple effects, according to the California Foundation for Commerce and Education.

Manuel Orbegozo/Reuters

The logo of Google, one of California's corporate crown jewels, is seen outside Google Bay View facilities during the Made by Google event in Mountain View, California, Aug. 13, 2024.

But in recent years, especially since the pandemic, the luster of an idea-based economy, which designs things but doesn’t always make them, has dulled. Americans have learned that global supply chains can break down and that it’s risky to rely on a geopolitical rival like China to make America’s goods. 

Still, global trade remains a big part of the California economy, from inbound containers of Asian-made goods to outbound exports like tree nuts and fruits from the state’s nation-leading farm sector.

“As long as we can continue to hold a place in the global knowledge economy, we will continue to be a very high value added and therefore rich state, with a lot of poor people ... driving around because we have extreme income inequality,” says Martin Kenney, a community development professor at the University of California, Davis and co-director of the UC Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy.

Terry Chea/AP/File

Employees inspect almonds in the processing facility at Stewart & Jasper Orchards in Newman, California, July 20, 2021. California is the world's largest producer of almonds.

For richer, for poorer

That inequality is inescapable. Nearly a third of Californians are poor – living in or near poverty. That’s a 2.4% uptick from two years earlier. And California has more homeless residents than any other state, up about 20% in five years.

The meaning of “well paid” is different here, as the cost of housing outpaces wages. California homes hit a median sales price of $900,000 this summer – a first – and more than twice the national median. Other things such as groceries and utilities cost more here, too.

Still, the California dream persists, bringing dynamism to the state’s economy.

Small businesses – those with fewer than 500 employees – employ nearly half the state’s workers. Between 2021 and 2022, some 130,000 new small businesses formed in California, but more than two-thirds as many closed in that same year.

Every small business is an opportunity, says Loren Kaye, president of the California Foundation for Commerce and Education. 

“Every one of those that close or move could wind up being the next Tesla, or name your success story, not happening in California. That’s a big risk,” he says. “You just don’t want to have systemic disincentives to form small businesses that do provide those employment opportunities.” 

Among those disincentives are aggressive environmental regulations. California’s landmark environmental law is a 44-year-old novel-length list of codes and procedures aimed at minimizing the environmental impact of any development. The state has lofty environmental mandates: an 85% cut in 1990-level emissions by the year 2045, and all electricity from carbon-free sources by then, for example.  

Chevron’s exit “didn’t happen in a vacuum” says Mr. Christensen. “It happened because Gavin Newsom’s Legislature made it inhospitable to do business in California, and even the biggest, oldest, and most wealthy business in California decided that they wanted nothing to do with this.” 

Chevron has long been vocal about the difficulty of doing business in California, where thousands of employees will remain even when the corporate leaders move. But some of the decline in its own business prospects here reflects the transition toward a cleaner economy where other employers can prosper in the future. 

“California isn’t for everybody, but it’s certainly for a lot of different businesses and industries,” says Mr. Kaye. “You pay a price for being here, but you also get something for it.”

Staff writer Laurent Belsie contributed to this report.

Editor's note: Martin Kenney's title has been updated to give his correct area of specialty as a community development professor.

Floods and tornadoes as storms like Hurricane Francine move inland. Raging wildfires across southern California, which experienced near triple-digit temperatures after Labor Day. An American summer shaping up to be one of the hottest ever – even though August temperatures were relatively temperate.   

Is it all because of climate change?

The answer is complicated.  Scientists know that humans have made the world hotter, largely by burning fossil fuels like gas and oil.  They also agree that more heat – aka energy – in the atmosphere can lead to a host of increasingly intense, and less predictable, weather events. 

But when it comes to connecting any one extreme weather event to climate change, scientists agree that the answer is about likelihoods, not certainties.  And within the finer details – how rising temperature will impact California fog, for instance, or how it is impacting the frequency of hurricanes – there are still scientific unknowns and debates. 

“We are seeing increases in many types of extreme weather, which is consistent with theory and predictions and modeling,” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles. But what that means, he adds, “really does vary by the type of extreme weather we’re talking about.” 

Noah Berger/AP

A firefighter uses a drip torch to burn vegetation while trying to stop the Park Fire in Tehama County, California, Aug. 7, 2024.

This all might seem nuanced, and maybe even like “in the weeds” science. But understanding the details when it comes to climate change and extreme weather – where models work and where they don’t, where human behavior is the main culprit and where we still don’t know – matters tremendously, experts say. It has implications on everything from where houses are built to how to ensure humans have enough food. 

“There are certain people in the world, like people who work in insurance and reinsurance, people who build dams and manage water resources, people who plan for hurricane landfalls; they don’t have the luxury of believing whatever they want to believe,” says Roger Pielke Jr., a University of Colorado Boulder professor whose research is cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “They need to stick to what we can and can’t say with the science.”

Climate change and extreme weather: what scientists know

The clearest information we have about the warming atmosphere is on the global level. The Earth is clearly warmer than it once was, and scientists know – from studying carbon isotopes, historical patterns, and climate modeling – that the reason for this warming is the accumulation of heat-trapping, or greenhouse, gases, primarily from fossil fuels like coal or oil.

But those planetary-wide numbers don’t necessarily say what’s happening in your neighborhood – or let you predict what might happen next month.

Overall, Earth is about 2.45 F warmer now than the average temperature in the preindustrial 19th century. But the global mean temperature can seem abstract, without telling people much about what’s happening on the ground in a particular place and at a particular time, says Dr. Swain.

“The global mean temperature, of course, is not a number that any individual human or animal or plant on Earth ever actually experiences, right?” Dr. Swain says.

Heat waves and climate change: more complicated than you’d think

Even temperature can get complicated. The air over land has warmed faster than over the ocean. Temperature increases happen in both the winters and summers, nighttime and daytime. Throughout the end of the 2024 summer, for instance, the western U.S. did not break high temperature records, but experienced hotter nights than ever before – something that can have significant impact on people and ecosystems.

“If people can’t cool their body temperatures at night, that makes them more susceptible to heat the next day,” says Erinanne Saffell, state climatologist of Arizona. “Heat is cumulative.”

Because of the complex interactions among land and air and ocean, a few degrees of warming in some places can have cascading effects. 

Felix Marquez/AP

Margarita Salazar wipes sweat off her brow inside her home amid high heat in Veracruz, Mexico, June 16, 2024.

This is arguably best understood when it comes to extreme heat – and why a few degrees of warming can result in temperature spikes that go much higher than even the global land surface average. This is because as the temperature increases, the hotter air sucks moisture out of the soil. With less water in the soil, more of the energy from the sun goes to heating the earth as opposed to evaporating moisture. This creates an accelerating feedback cycle, as that hotter earth then heats up the surrounding air even more.

But it’s hard to definitively say if any given heat wave is because of climate change or normal weather fluctuations – and even more so when it comes to storms, wildfires, and droughts.  Scientists have connected increasing heat in the atmosphere to more intense hurricanes, for instance. But determining whether a particular storm is a ”climate change storm” takes research, modeling, and analysis. 

How “attribution science” helps identify climate’s role

This summer, researchers using a relatively new tool called “attribution science” found that many of the world’s heat waves were made much more likely because of climate change. But it’s important to recognize that attribution science deals in probabilities. So July’s heat in the U.S., for instance, might have been three times more likely in a warmer world, according to attribution science – but it also could have happened without any global warming at all. It would have just been much less likely. 

And even if climate change did cause those heat waves, the calculations are about the duration and peak temperatures. Climate change didn’t transform five 70-degree, low-humidity, lovely summer days into the 98-degree steam bath that many Americans experienced this summer. The change is in what scientists call the graph’s “tails”: As peak temperature goes up, hot weather lasts longer. 

In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, the heat lingered this year, with Portland, Oregon, seeing multiple three-digit temperature days at the beginning of the school year.

“September is pretty late to be seeing multiple, consecutive 100-degree days” in that region, Dr. Swain said on his Weather West podcast. “The city itself might tie or even break the record for the latest 100 degree day in a calendar year as well as the record for the cumulative numbers days over 100 degree.  That’s fairly remarkable given that August was actually cooler than average and featured multiple rain events that were highly unusual.”

Ashim Paul/AP

Trees swing during heavy winds and rains caused by Cyclone Remal along the coastal areas in West Bengal, India, May 27, 2024.

The models have variability. Does that mean global warming isn’t to blame?

Still, despite the limitations, attribution science has allowed policymakers and advocates to more quickly, and clearly, identify the climate change fingerprint on events that directly impact humans. The science, says Jeff Masters, a meteorologist and co-founder of Weather Underground, is a remarkable but limited advance. “The tools they use are things we didn’t have 10 years ago,” he says. “But at the same time, they’re very crude tools.”

Attribution models, for instance, compare sea temperatures with and without human-caused climate change, and examine the difference. This provides a bare-bones estimate, says Dr. Masters, but is inconclusive about exactly how much of extreme weather is due to climate change or natural climate variability. 

“You can get some crazy extremes ... without climate change,” he says. “So apportioning all that is a heroic task.”

Some who downplay the role of climate change use these unknowns to suggest that global warming isn’t actually causing extreme weather events. But Dr. Masters and many of his colleagues believe that models are underestimating the role of climate change. Just because there is variability, or because human behavior often ignites events like wildfires, it doesn’t diminish the fact that more energy in the atmosphere leads to surprises.

Why it matters: climate disaster preparedness 

How we understand the connections between climate change and extreme weather events can impact a slew of individual, economic, and policy choices. 

Dr. Pielke’s work, for instance, has found that much of the increase in financial damages regularly attributed to climate change storms is actually a result of more people with more valuable property located along coastlines. Other experts have come to similar conclusions. 

“The issue really lies in the fact that humans are in the way, and we’ve built structures in the way of these riskier zones,” says Libby Zemaitis, senior manager for resilience programs and policy at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. 

After all, wildfires can be beneficial for ecosystems, but devastating when homes and infrastructure are in their paths. Flooding is barely noticed if towns or roads are not in the water’s path.  

But given the growing unpredictability of these extreme weather events, and the reality of increased vulnerability, policymakers have a lot of work to do, she and others say. Although it might be impossible to directly tie, with 100% certainty, any series of extreme weather events to climate change, a clear pattern of the unexpected – of floods, heat waves, and fires at unexpected times and in unexpected places – is emerging. 

Communities must increasingly prepare for multiple, sequential extreme events – wildfires and landslides, for instance – that a decade or two ago would have been viewed as impossible, says Rebecca Carter, director of climate adaptation and resilience for the global and U.S. climate program at the World Resources Institute. (After all, not so long ago the Pacific Northwest was viewed as a climate haven. In recent years, it has endured triple-digit heat waves.)  

That idea that something is going to happen, even if we don’t know exactly what, concerns many climate scientists, even those who are more conservative about wanting to see a lot of proof, and over an extended period of time, before making the connection with specific extreme events. 

“Climate change is always going to be a risk management problem,” says Dr. Pielke. “We’re changing the energy balance of the Earth system. It is going to have consequences.”

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include recent extreme weather events and additional material to provide context. A few sentences from the original story, published on Aug. 29, were cut in the interest of brevity. 

Kent Nishimura/Reuters

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for president on the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention, at the United Center in Chicago, Aug. 22, 2024.

The passage ran for a brief 480 words, it was short on detail, and constituted a mere sliver of the 38-minute speech Kamala Harris delivered at last week’s Democratic National Convention.

Yet it drove home a message heard round the world – and gratefully received by America’s closest allies overseas.

For Vice President Harris used the occasion to make an explicit commitment to a brand of American strength, international engagement, and leadership that allies worry has been on the wane, eroded by a tighter focus on domestic politics.

For the allies, her message was doubly impactful because it was not meant mainly for them.

It was directed at her domestic audience – to the voters who will decide whether she wins in November.

Her foreign policy remarks seemed in part a bid for support from so-called Nikki Haley Republicans – shorthand for the minority inside Donald Trump’s party still committed to the bipartisan consensus forged after World War II, that America’s network of alliances was central to its global interests.

Allied leaders will draw the conclusion from Ms. Harris’ remarks that she, too, remains wedded to that vision.

That’s in stark contrast to Mr. Trump, who as president often downplayed the importance of U.S. alliances, favoring more unilateral, transactional, and unpredictable arrangements with friend and foe alike.

Still, even if Ms. Harris does win, the practical policy implications of her broad vision remain unclear.

Wali Sabawoon/AP/File

A U.S military aircraft takes off from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 28, 2021, part of a massive airlift as the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, ending a nearly 20-year deployment in the country.

Her speech provided only hints, to be pored over in allied capitals from now until election day.

In Europe, where Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has provoked the most serious conflict since the Second World War, Ms. Harris vowed to “stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.”

But with what level of military support? For how long? With what diplomatic endgame in mind?

In the Middle East, where Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians is still raging, she paired a pledge of unflagging support for Israel’s right to defend itself with a call for a cease-fire to relieve the plight of Palestinian civilians.

The aim, she said, was to ensure that “Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.”

But how would she wield U.S. power to reach that goal? What would America do, along with its allies in the region and beyond, to secure calm, stability, and reconstruction in Gaza?

And critically, how deeply and for how long would Washington remain committed to that task when its principal geopolitical rival lies many thousands of miles eastward: Xi Jinping’s China?

Susan Walsh/AP

President Joe Biden is applauded after signing a document in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 14, 2024, imposing major new tariffs on electric vehicles, semiconductors, solar equipment, and medical supplies imported from China.

China came first in her convention remarks but merited only a couple of dozen words. “I will make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence,” she said. “That America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century.”

The brevity of the reference, and the narrowness of its focus, appeared to convey a message in themselves. She seemed to be committing herself to President Joe Biden’s targeted tariff and regulatory curbs on Chinese high-tech while also seeking to avoid an all-out rupture with Beijing, and to retain communication, even some scope for cooperation.

But as allied analysts parse each sentence, they know that many of these policy choices will depend on America’s domestic political landscape following the November election.

Top of their minds, of course, remains who wins the presidency.

But who controls the two chambers of the U.S. Congress will also matter, especially if Ms. Harris wins. Will Republican legislators echo Mr. Trump’s worldview and, for instance, press to end U.S. military support for Ukraine?

The core of policy advisers around a new President Harris would also hold considerable sway. All of them seem certain to share her broad view of the need for a leading U.S. international role.

Yet her national security adviser at the moment is Phillip Gordon, a former Clinton and Obama administration foreign policy expert whose involvement in policy decisions during the Syrian civil war taught him the practical limits of U.S. power.

It is that sense of limits, borne out in America’s retreat, under successive administrations, from involvement in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, that has fueled the belief among a number of allies that Washington is reorienting its policy priorities away from assertive world leadership, and toward domestic policy challenges.

And that helps to explain the importance being attached to Ms. Harris’ convention comments, brief though they were.

Because when it came to the importance of America’s involvement in the wider world, she could hardly have made herself clearer.

Not just because she committed herself to retaining the “strongest, most lethal fighting force” in the world, nor her pledge of support for America’s allies, nor even her impassioned vow never to waver in placing America on what she called the right side of the “enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny.”

It was a simpler, yet even broader, commitment: that as president she would ensure that “we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership.”

Until recently, “The Lord of the Rings” seemed as unassailable as the fortress of Minas Tirith.

In the 70 years since J.R.R. Tolkien published the first volume in the summer of 1954, the series has sold more than 150 million copies. It’s been translated into 80 languages. (Though not, alas, Elvish.) It’s influenced everything from “Star Wars” to “Game of Thrones” to Led Zeppelin lyrics. Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations netted 17 Academy Awards and a billion dollars. The second season of Amazon Prime prequel “The Rings of Power” arrives Thursday – and new film iterations are expected both this year and next.

Of late, though, Tolkien’s lore has gotten mired in controversy. Politicians in Europe (populist) and the United States (MAGA) including Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, have said that “The Lord of the Rings” reflects their ideology.

Concurrently, the story has become a culture war battleground. When “The Rings of Power” cast people of color in 2022, it sparked a vitriolic response. A loud online faction claimed that a fictional country populated by Hobbits, Orcs, and Elves should be totally white. In Britain, a counterterrorism program called Prevent flagged “The Lord of the Rings” as a key text for white nationalists. Some commentators on the left aren’t surprised. They claim to detect racist subtext in Tolkien’s works. 

So much for “one ring to rule them all.”

Then again, even the rancor between Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and “the race of Men” was supplanted by a fellowship. Tolkien’s stories make an argument for setting aside differences. Many fans and scholars say that the author, who fought in World War I, was aware of the dangers of nationalism. Yet “The Lord of the Rings” avoids political messaging. Its mythology endures because it’s rooted in humane qualities. Tolkien invites us to see our better selves in the modest Hobbit heroes, Frodo and Sam.

Courtesy of Kellie Rice

Kellie Rice is a fantasy novelist, producer of the YouTube series “Happy Hobbit,“ and co-author of “Middle-earth From Script to Screen: Building the World of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.”

“His stories speak about the light, about friendship, about hope, about loyalty,” says fantasy author Kellie Rice, who uses the pen name K.M. Rice for her “Afterworld” series. “A lot of the other postmodern or modernist writers that came out of World War I were very misanthropic and very malistic, after what they’d been through. ... [He] still saw a message of hope and a message of, ‘No matter how dark it gets, you will find the light.’”

A history of interpretation about Hobbits and Ents

When “The Lord of the Rings” broke out as a cultural phenomenon in the 1960s, it resisted political capture. It was beloved by conservatives at National Review and liberals at The New Republic. Counterculture hippies felt an affinity for Hobbits, far-out “halfling” creatures who didn’t wear shoes. Environmentalists loved the stories, too. The plight of the Ents in Fangorn Forest might tempt even a logger to become a tree hugger. 

Now, decades later, “The Lord of the Rings” has become enmeshed in culture wars. Some political leaders have claimed the series as a cultural touchstone. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, for example, has said, “Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in.” (Long before she developed a taste for elegant pantsuits, Ms. Meloni liked to dress up as Tolkien characters and also attended a far-right “Hobbit Camp.”) As she sees it, Tolkien’s mythological world represents cultural homogeneity and an ethnocentric order. Some have gone even further. They imagine Middle-earth as a mythological representation of white supremacy. That fueled some of the fuss over multiracial casting in “The Rings of Power.” Some conservatives objected because they believed the casting choices were driven by “woke” social justice messaging. 

“If you are not bothered by dragons whose wings could biologically not carry that level of weight, if you are not bothered by the conceit of an evil ring that twists the spirits of everyone around you, and you are in fact bothered by an Elf that has melanin, I simply think you must go take a long walk and reconnect with the trees that Tolkien himself so loved,” says Tolkien superfan Anna María. 

The young millennial, who dropped her last name due to safety concerns during her work as a community organizer, helped online fan forums navigate the “nasty, racist discourse” in 2022 and beyond by fostering productive conversations.

@onlyannamaria

J.R.R. Tolkien fan Anna María attends the red carpet premiere for Season 2 of Amazon’s "The Rings of Power" at BFI Southbank, Aug. 20, 2024, in London.

A survivor of the bloody Battle of the Somme, whose children fought in World War II, Tolkien feared nationalism in his own country as well as abroad. It’s a point Tolkien scholar John Pagano made last year to a political science student, who asked for his thoughts on Ms. Meloni’s appropriating Tolkien “to bolster her particular stance on immigration and nationalism.” 

“I pointed to the irony of such a stance referencing Tolkien for support, since the Fellowship he lauds as the only chance to combat Evil is composed of multiple races working in harmonious collaboration,” he says in an email. 

“Influenced by Tolkien”

Years ago, Senator Vance told a podcaster that Tolkien is his favorite author. “I’m a big ‘Lord of the Rings’ guy, and I think, not realizing it at the time, but a lot of my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien growing up,” he said. Mr. Vance added that the British author was grappling with big problems, in much the same way as Tolkien friend and fellow author C.S. Lewis.

How, exactly, Tolkien influenced the Ohio senator’s worldview isn’t clear. He didn’t elaborate. Yet, last month, left-wing TV commentator Rachel Maddow caused a firestorm when she asserted there was a Tolkien-related meaning in a name that Mr. Vance chose for his venture capital firm.

“He called it Narya, N-A-R-Y-A, which you can remember because it’s ‘Aryan’ but you move the ‘N’ to the front,” Ms. Maddow told MSNBC viewers. That’s despite the fact that Mr. Vance’s wife, Usha, is Indian American and they have multiracial children.

Narya is the name Tolkien gave one of the rings of power. 

In fact, Tolkien rejected “wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.” In 1938, a German publisher expressed interest in translating “The Hobbit” into German. But, first, the publisher wanted to verify that the author was of Aryan stock. 

“In the letter of publication he had to give his ancestry, his genealogy, and note that he had no Jewish blood,” says Bradley Birzer, author of “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth.” “He wrote back a scathing letter in which he said it’s terribly tragic that I don’t have that noble blood in my ancestry. And he refused to have them publish it because of that. It’s just a beautiful anti-racist letter.”  

What did Tolkien really want to convey?

While his books are interpreted in many ways, Tolkien found allegorical interpretations as distasteful as Gollum’s appetite for raw, wriggling fish. Scholars say his stories aren’t pedantic. They eschew doctrine. The lines between good and evil aren’t simplistic. Numerous characters succumb to greed and the temptation of power. For example, Sauron wasn’t evil to begin with. Even Frodo has shortcomings – he ultimately fails to relinquish the corrupting ring of power. It’s Frodo’s unassuming best friend Sam – a character inspired by the salt-of-the-Earth soldiers that Tolkien fought alongside in the trenches – who emerges as perhaps the most heroic figure. 

Chris Chapman

Tolkien scholar Nick Groom is the author of “Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today.”

“There’s a lot of unanswered questions and I think that’s a great strength of the book,” says Nick Groom, author of “Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today.” “There’s no single theory for making sense of the world as we experience it. There are lots of different day-to-day theories, and that’s really what the book shows. Different people make sense of Middle-earth in different ways and they’re not always compatible.”

It’s that complexity that draws Anna María in. She first read “The Hobbit” at 7. When a prominent character died, she recalls handing the book to her father to read aloud because she was sobbing. By 12, she’d devoured “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Silmarillion,” using flash cards, highlighters, and a glossary to keep track of Tolkien’s dense lore. She still rereads all the books annually. 

She says that her peers, who grew up online, are prone to thinking that they’re experiencing the end times in ways previous generations have not. Nonetheless, Anna María says, her online generation doesn’t have much of a filter against darkness in the world. The weight of the world can feel as heavy as the ring at the end of Frodo’s quest. That’s why Tolkien’s themes speak to her. His beautiful and poetic stories don’t shy away from horror. But they never lose sight of hope.

“The story he created [is] grounded on themes of love and fellowship across nations and races,” says Anna María, who recently attended the red carpet premiere for the second season of “The Rings of Power” in London. “We still have each other and that is literally all we have. That is literally what we must fight for. You can’t get more timeless than that.”

Jenny Jones grabbed what were arguably the best seats in the house.

For the past 20 years, she has been bringing members of her church to Boston Common for the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s annual free summer Shakespeare plays. For one of the company's productions of “The Winter’s Tale” (which ran through Aug. 4), Ms. Jones arrived six hours early to secure a large enough spot on the lawn near the stage. Her fellow parishioners from St. Cecilia’s in Boston were nearby, each with picnic fare that wouldst rival the feast that Romeo doth crash at the Capulets’.

Nael Nacer, who starred as King Leontes, understands the appeal of an outdoor show for audience members like Ms. Jones and for the actors. He has performed three times on the Common with the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company and proclaims each experience “magical.”

“We can often see the moon in the sky,” Mr. Nacer says, “and there’s a lot of beauty there that I’m struck by.”

The first half of “The Winter’s Tale” is its own complete tragedy. Jealousy and guilt consume Leontes, who believes he has been cuckolded. His wife and son shuffle off their mortal coils, and his newborn daughter is banished forthwith. “King Leontes believes his heart is broken,” Mr. Nacer explains. “It all comes from love.” 

Where the first half of the Commonwealth company's production was bathed in somber hues – monochromatic purples, blues, and grays – the comedic second half cloaked the cast in a riot of color. “I almost feel like they have taken every colorful piece from their closet and put it on all at once,” director Bryn Boice says. “Everything goes together; nothing goes together.”

“The Winter’s Tale” is one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known works. But for Ms. Boice, it was only natural that she would choose to direct it.

“It doesn’t fit into a neat box and feels very much like life,” she says. The play’s language is “gorgeous and powerful and difficult ... and it really begs to be seen.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

PATERNITY IS SUCH SWEET SORROW: Actors (from left) Omar Robinson as Polixenes, Marianna Bassham as Hermione, and Nael Nacer as Leontes perform during a dress rehearsal.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

ALL THE COMMON’S A STAGE: People sit on the lawn picnicking before the play begins. Crowds arrive as early as 2 p.m. for the free evening performances.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

MUCH A-BLUE ABOUT NOTHING: The sky and stage are bathed in color while Mr. Nacer (at left) and Tony Estrella, as Camillo, perform.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

THE LADY DOTH DIRECT SO MUCH: Director Bryn Boice closely watches the action with her crew during a dress rehearsal.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

TO THINE OWN CELTS BE TRUE: Cleveland Nicoll (in basketball jersey), performing as the clown, and Richard Snee, as the shepherd, look at a box of gold during a rehearsal.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

TO BEAM OR NOT TO BEAM: The character Time (portrayed by Paula Plum) is illuminated in “The Winter’s Tale.”

For more visual storytelling that captures communities, traditions, and cultures around the globe, visit The World in Pictures.

Reuters

Haiti's Prime Minister Garry Conille talks to journalists at a Port-au-Prince hospital where he was visiting police officers and civilians injured during a police operation.

For over a century, Haiti has seen four large-scale foreign interventions that tried to quell violence in the fragile Caribbean nation. On Tuesday, the latest attempt saw its first measure of success. Two months after their arrival, foreign troops working with Haitian forces took back a gang-infested part of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

The operation did not garner much attention perhaps because of 109 years of past failures by outside countries to restore order. “We must be patient,” a newly appointed prime minister, Garry Conille, told his very impatient 11.8 million people – nearly half of whom survive on aid – after the operation.

His tone of caution reflects a long learning curve on the limits of armed force to reshape torn societies like Haiti’s. Yes, the United Nations has mandated up to 2,500 foreign troops to work in the country, with most of those due in coming weeks. And yes, the United States began transferring armored vehicles to Haiti in the past week. In places where gangs are not in control, such as critical roads, the national police now feel confident to stay put.

With the new foreign military support, the capacity of the police to “track, respond to, and prevent gang movements will be greatly reinforced” within six to nine months, reported the U.S. aid group Mercy Corps. And, it added, foreign help will lower civilian casualties. In the past three years, an estimated 12,000 people have been killed because of political turmoil and a rise in the power of gangs.

Yet as Xavier Michon, a U.N. representative to Haiti, noted, inclusion is vital to Haiti’s future and ability to hold an election. “This is not just about casting a ballot but about building a more cohesive society where everyone feels part of a greater good,” he wrote in Americas Quarterly.

The biggest move toward such cohesion began in May and June when Caribbean countries along with the U.S. brought together all major social and political groups to create a transitional body with Mr. Conille as prime minister. He has since announced an anti-corruption strategy and made other reforms while working with civil society.

With such trust-building as well as the deployment of foreign forces, “the gangs operating in the capital have mostly retreated to their strongholds, where they have built barricades and trenches,” wrote Renata Segura and Diego Da Rin of the International Crisis Group in Foreign Affairs. “Improvised markets have taken over busy streets, and buses have established new routes (the violence having forced them out of their old ones).”

That sort of grassroots response – or Haitians feeling they have the freedom, safety, and agency to fix their society – may provide the lesson needed after a century of trying to rely mainly on armed force as a solution.