I don't think he's wrong to question it, but people have taken that questioning and lack of answering to be a failing of Tolkien and LOTR when in reality that's

I don't think he's wrong to question it, but people have taken that questioning and lack of answering to be a failing of Tolkien and LOTR when in reality that's just not the scope of the book. It's a mythical battle of good and evil, not a true-to-life description of a society that happens to have magic. Both LOTR and ASOIAF try to say something about humanity by holding up a funhouse mirror, just one produces an "ugly" and "gritty" distortion and the other produces a "stylized" and "ideal" distortion.