Saruman just seems too… competent.

A guy who spent his early years claiming to be Leader of the Good Guys, while secretly poisoning the brains of the elderly, embracing all the worst forms of anti-environmental industrialization, and building a personality cult of Ivy League freaks does kinda feel like neoconservativism in a nutshell.

Yeah, you look competent in the early years. But when you’re trying to negotiate terms of surrender from the top of your half-flooded Ivory Tower and your next big move is to flee to a small mayorship in the hinterlands to do low rent fascism, until you get stabbed in the back by one of your most weasley sycophants?

Say what you will about the tenants of National Sauronism, but they put Mordor on the map. Saruman reeks of squandered opportunity driven by fear of failure.

:)