10 responses to “The Lord works in mysterious ways — 6/20/2025”

1. 

   granville

   06/21/2025

   It’s crazy how many friends I had growing up who were sent off to a church “retreat” to reform them. I don’t think I thought about it for a minute after high school until Evan Wright, the guy who wrote “Generation Kill” about embedding with a Marine company in Iraq and a bunch of other gonzo books, appeared in one of them and killed himself right after.

   https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/16/evan-wright-death-cause-generation-kill-author-los-angeles

   Nobody I know was “scared straight” by one of these things, but I never knew how many people were scarred by them.

   Reply
   1. 

      Doug Holland

      06/21/2025

      This deserves a way more thoughtful response than I’m capable of tonight. Join me after breakfast tomorrow, please.

      Reply
   2. 

      Doug Holland

      06/21/2025

      Sending kids to a church-run concentration camp is a direct confession that God is fake and can’t do anything. Humans do it, this and everything, and we do it hellishly as a rule.

      You knew several kids sent to such places? God, I’m lucky that the church I grew up in was nominally sane, never participated in cruel bullshit like this. In a worse church or with worse parents, it could’ve been me.

      I wasn’t sure what you meant saying Wright “killed himself right after,” and the article’s clumsy about it. Correct me if I’m piecing this together wrong, but Wright was executive producer of Teen Torture, a mini-series about Christian concentration camps for kids, like the one he was sent to. Teen Torture was released in July 2024, only a few weeks after Wright killed himself, and you’re thinking that re-immersing himself in that horror might’ve been what nudged him to suicide?

      Fuck Jesus, the damage done in his holy name never ends.

      Generally keeping away from all things military, I haven’t seen or read anything by Wright. Oh wait, the article says he was “chief pornographic film reviewer” for Hustler in the 1990s, so I probably did.

      Reply
      1. 

         granville

         06/22/2025

         Hey Doug, sorry I messed up that sentence. Wright was the subject of one of those documentaries, called “Teen Torture” I believe, and killed himself I believe less than a week after it aired:

         https://xcancel.com/evanscribe/status/1810861435079328224

         I met him a couple of times and we had another friend in common who knew Wright longer than I did, even before he was successful. Obviously he had a lot of issues, same as anyone, and it’s likely not fair to immediately connect the two. But he thought being sent to a “scared straight” camp really fucked him up and it’s not too much to chart that from adolescence to where he eventually wound up. I haven’t been able to watch it and his books, which were really fun stories, I just imagine reading again. He had kids and I just have so many unresolved feelings about what he did. But I don’t think there’s a huge mystery about what was the final trigger.

         It did happen a lot! I grew up in the poor part of a rich town and several of my friends were sent out to these church retreats, or they disappeared to a nearby “teen rehab” which integrated counseling with confinement. None of them had anything like a drug problem, some had never touched drugs in their lives. The level of teenage rebellion was, in retrospect, extremely mild. But if you have money and worry about your family’s reputation, apparently it was fashionable to pack your kid off to one of these things. Maybe we can think of it “outsourced corporal punishment.” All of these people were very genteel and I can’t imagine them beating their kid. So they paid someone else, Man of God or Man of Science, to do it for them. Very genteel indeed.

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         1. 

            granville

            06/22/2025

            That should have read “I just can’t imagine reading again…”

            Reply
            1. 

               granville

               06/22/2025

               And why not, should add one more bit. For most of the ’10s Evan wrote for TV, but lately had been writing a book about his “scared straight” experience. Our mutual friend told me after he passed that Evan had been writing it for years and seemed lost in it, which was pretty unusual for him. I’ve been thinking about it since we’re coming up on the anniversary and I wonder if he couldn’t finish the book because it hadn’t resolved all of his trauma. It kept getting more and more baroque, I guess. That the people who ran this place he was abused at had been architects of Reagan’s drug war, then Abu Ghraib, then MAGA.

               Not really fair to pontificate about this I guess, nobody’s read it, but it seems like writing solved all of his problems except the one that made him, as he said in the tweet I posted above, a writer. Sad story.

               Reply
               1. 

                  Doug Holland

                  06/23/2025

                  > … the people who ran this place he was abused at had been architects of Reagan’s drug war, then Abu Ghraib, then MAGA

                  They have their warped fingers and minds into everything, and I don’t think there’s a solution. Humans are fuckers, that’s all. Everyone’s either victim or victimizer, and it’s better to be the former.

                  Writing never solved my problems, but it helped me understand them. Sounds like it did the same for Evan Wright, and that’s as close to a solution as we’ll ever get.

                  Reply
                  1. 

                     granville

                     06/23/2025

                     Yeah I agree. I read something from Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was a novelist before he was a filmmaker, that he could use his writing to diagnose himself but never to cure.

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         2. 

            Doug Holland

            06/23/2025

            “Outsourced corporal punishment,” Jesus fuck & fuck Jesus.

            So you kinda knew the man? That’s gotta make it worse. Condolences.

            Sending kids to a place like that should be illegal, or at least require a court order or a psychiatrist’s prescription or something, and the camps themselves need to be regulated if they’re allowed to exist at all. Maybe all of parenthood should be regulated, but who could be trusted to do any of the regulating? You *know* all the regulators would be perving on the kids all the time.

            Teenagers are adults under construction. God and godly people shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near that process, but what’s the right way to handle difficult teens? Hah. I’m childless by choice because I knew I’d be a lousy father. I’m clueless.

            Thought about watching Teen Torture Inc, but I don’t think I could stand it. I get the message, without having to get the message, you know?

            My niece was a troubled teen, and got sent to a Christian boarding school 2,000 miles from home. I could never do that to a kid I love, but that’s easy to say and I can’t really second-guess the kid’s mother, my sister. She’s smart and sane and must’ve felt it was necessary.

            I haven’t asked my niece whether it was teen torture, but I know her as an adult and she’s AOK in my opinion. Saner than most of the family. She’s a lesbian, but I think she already was before being sent away, and obviously, having no interest in men is a logical perspective for any woman.

            Reply
         3. 

            Doug Holland

            06/23/2025

            As a rule, I try not to second-guess suicides. There ought to be help for people who need it, but there usually isn’t. You wish the departed hadn’t departed. I make an effort to reach out when someone I give a damn about seems to be in trouble. But in the end, people gotta do what people gotta do. Hell if I’m gonna block the way of someone who wants to leave.

            Reply

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