I've, from the past couple of years, had experienced this up close and personal for the first time.

My choir, our current conductors, really, really invested in in doing prison outreach work.

So we took like, we took like 50 or 60 of us into a federal prison to give a full concert for the men who are incarcerated there.

And I, you know, I'm normally someone who's very much at home in the modern world.

I like single origin coffee and computers and all the accoutrement of modernity.

But I swear to you, the second I even get near like a prison facility, I turn into like a 12th century French peasant because I'm just like, there are demons here. This is demonic. This is this is a place of actual demonic activity. And I, you know, I'm like clutching a rosary and, uh, because I think

there's no other word for it. This, this is, this is a place that, that, that, that is designed to

cultivate and thrive on the, the misery of human beings. And it's so, for me, any other way of talking about it seems totally inadequate.

It's like, there has to, human beings are capable of great evil, but there are things where you

see that you're, where you sometimes think like, maybe this time they had help.

Yeah, maybe some ideas.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, and it's, you know, whether you like literally believe in demons or not, like that, it is hard to find ways to really articulate that.

Yeah, just the, the intensity of how bad things like prisons or things like deportations are.

I mean, and how like, you know, piece by piece, you can kind of see how individual people within the system are maybe acting in their self-interest or maybe like are acting out of like, you know, certain understandable motives.

But at other times and certainly in aggregate, there's this sort of like, there's like

no purpose to what's happening except to inflict suffering.

And like every person inside it is either actively denying that constantly or is like

actively interested in furthering that goal, which is like very creepy and disturbing.

Yeah.

And definitely feels like demons.

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