The fabulous comedian David Cross, whose comedy decades ago first raised our eyebrow to lowest common denominator political American stupidity, has a great bit where he says “I would like to officially change and substitute 'casting spells and chanting' in place of 'thoughts and prayers'. Hilarious and even more American!

This is not only wonderful and delightful because it draws attention to the fact that language itself is micro magic. When a likely fake Christian politician stands at a podium after a 2nd Amendment related tragedy and utters that eye roll worthy, tired, and empty phrase, “thoughts and prayers,” instead of passing very popular common sense policies to help reduce gun violence, what they are actually doing is a kind of spiritual bypassing substituted for spell-casting, though a spell so worn down, so emptied of intention, that it has become little more than background noise. The words drift out, ritualistically, to soothe and placate, but not to transform a culture into something better.

These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos