And because so much of this narrative is internal and invisible it's really easy to do
You get tons of extremely pat narratives about how anything that went wrong in your life was a test or a punishment for unaddressed sin, and then God took care of it as soon as you prayed
This is just why I'm generally averse to "spirituality" in this vein even divorced from theology
It is very important to understand, as the writer of Ecclesiastes did, that everything does NOT happen for a reason
The sense of control and comfort people get from having something to thank when things go well is not, in my view, worth the burden of being Job and being stuck looking for a reason when things go wrong
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(The song is from the POV of dock workers loading the bananas for shipping, hence the subtitle "The Banana Boat Song"
So it's not technically a "sea shanty" but it's shanty-adjacent)
Seriously, one of the verses of the song is about how when you're exhausted at the end of your shift and tipsy because you've had a little nip to take the edge off is the perfect time for a tarantula to ambush you
I'm sitting here weighing the idea that you could get rid of a lot of what's toxic about the word "working-class" (as well as misleading, hypocritical, inconsistent, etc.) in ordinary discourse by just committing to saying "poor" instead
Yes I know that in Marxist theory etc. it has a specific meaning
I'm saying that meaning has been so messed up by the way people use it and bicker over it that outside of an academic context, "poor" works much better
It's just really grating hearing about "the working class" to refer to people who own giant ranch houses and huge pickup trucks and a whole arsenal and so forth, and who turn out to own businesses and have employees
I already expressed my feelings about Ashley Babbitt so let me just say it's certainly interesting seeing the same accounts that were calling her a "Wife. Veteran. Patriot" suddenly turn on her as a "sexual deviant" and "antifa plant"
It's just funny how powerful narrative is
Before anyone knew anything about her they'd spun this narrative that she was a decorated combat veteran, mother to three children, devoted Christian, etc that they just made up
One phrase, "Air Force vet", and it's off to the races
Anyway if we were actually "grading on points" then the fact that she never really participated in any foreign wars and that she's a queer poly weirdo should theoretically make someone like me more sympathetic to her
Like as a fellow believer you're supposed to carefully and patiently go "Well pray on it deeply to ensure you aren't being misled" even though YOU KNOW you can just say you "felt God pushing you" to do any damn thing
Like even just charitably speaking about people who really do believe they hear God's voice -
I strongly believe it's really important to at least try to understand why you're making a decision when you make them
This kind of mystical shit is directly designed to obscure that
There was huge drama between the Booths over this, like shortly after New York audiences "canceled" John over making a public anti-Lincoln rant Edwin had a huge fight with him in private and told him he was no longer welcome at his house
And then he went and got himself arrested on suspicion of sedition in St. Louis and had to spend a ton of money to get out of it and Edwin had to do the whole "Famous actor refuses to comment on estranged controversial brother" thing
The story goes that when the news of the assassination got out, Edwin Booth read the papers and blurted out to his family, "He's done it, he's ruined me, he's ruined all of us, our family name is destroyed"
For every one of him there's two or three cops who were joking around taking selfies with the attackers moments earlier and there's a dozen off-duty cops from all over the country who flew to DC to participate in the attack
I'm thinking of that awful paragraph in that article about a Black Capitol PD officer venting to one of his colleagues "You just let this happen!" and breaking down in tears
Goodman did what he did because the system he signed up to be a part of did not actually have his back and did not actually stand up for the values it claimed to exist to protect
I still remember a line from a speech that "heroism is always a failure of leadership"