I hope Flyover Country had a Merry Christmas and is preparing for a Happy New Year!!
As I was scrolling through X today, I saw a post from FiveTimesAugust on Eric Church:
https://twitter.com/FiveTimesAugust/status/1740773894955397164
I don’t follow a lot in the music industry, though, I guarantee that my fellow Flyover Country folks know Church’s work. A screenshot within the tweet shows the following quote attributed to Church:
“Our grandparents fought the Nazis.. Surely, we can get a shot in the arm.”
I find it amusing that this country musician seems to equate the “clot shot” to storming the beaches at Normandy. My initial thought is “what a tool”, but my next thought went a little deeper.
For regular readers of Flyover Country, you know that I’m a man of faith and a daily Bible reader. As it happens, the other day, I was in Matthew, and Jesus told the parable about the man who turned from evil, the demon left him, but he failed to fill his life with anything. The demon returned, found the place (his mind/heart/soul) “swept and clean” but otherwise “vacant”.
So, that demon finds seven more, and they return together and make that person worse off than before.
The tweet about Eric Church reminds me of this. He seems like an empty vessel, like so many of his fellow artists, athletes, and especially celebrities and politicians. They worship the gods of acclaim, money, fame, power. Their lives, though, aren’t filled with anything of substance or meaning.
How else to explain such a wildly arrogant quote?
How can he compare getting a therapeutic (I refuse to call it a vaccine) to fighting Nazis?
Though, I guess, when you think about it, he’s right in this sense: getting the clot shot is nearly as hazardous to your health as fighting Nazis. LOL
The point, though, is that without something deeper and more meaningful in their lives than whatever “god” they worship, these people seek to find meaning and create mountains out of molehills. That’s why so many of these “pro-Palestinian” protestors shutting down highways by JFK, LAX, and O’Hare appear to be affluent, suburban, and frequently white kids. They haven’t had any real struggles in their lives, like the heroes that stormed the beaches at Normandy or battled real Nazis in the Ardennes around this time of year in late 1944. Devoid of meaning, devoid of real struggles, and overflowing with opportunities that real heroes fought and died for, they seek to find meaning in promoting whatever “struggle” that makes them the hero of their own story.
It’s sad, really. I don’t know Eric Church personally, and I’m making some broad assumptions that may be off base. The fact that he so pompously compares himself to a freedom fighter by taking a shot in his arm, certainly suggests something about his character (and inflated sense of self-worth), though, and that tells me I’m over the target.
People who lack something spiritual and/or substantive in their lives fill that void with whatever helps them feel relevant. That’s why so many people blindly and sometimes violently, throw themselves into “the latest thing”, in order to sweep their places for a few moments before the demons return.
They want to belong and be loved and be a part of something.
They chase the “cult of us” like I wrote about last summer and make mountains out of molehills and put the emblem of “the latest thing” on their social media bios in order to briefly fill their vessels and attach some meaning to otherwise empty and unfulfilled lives. They want to “belong” and be “heroes”, and gain the praise of men to validate themselves. The reality? They’re just sad, insecure people.
And when the dust settles, and “the latest thing” dies down, they’re back to where they started:
Empty vessels.