The Curse of the Goat for All of America

Last updated on: November 3, 2016 at 7:20 am by Anne Kennedy

The Curse of the Goat for All of America 2016-11-03T07:20:34-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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Trying to understand this goat curse. Had never heard of it before this week. Even after much reading I confess that I don’t really understand. This is partly because every article I clicked on confused the issue by including a lot of words about baseball, which I know even less about than goats. The only thing I know about baseball is that little boys are dead cute when they play it.

So this goat, if I can understand it, was not allowed into a game because of its foul stench, and so the owner of the goat departed with the ominous threat that the Cubs would never win again. I look forward to corrections and explanations in the comments.

I did read Jonah Goldberg before last night’s triumph about how it would be really sad if the Cubs won because this goat curse is one of the last vestiges of romantic superstition in modern public life. We need this goat curse, he said, because “If it disappears the magic and mystery of life will be a teeny bit diminished.”

I agree, absolutely, but I’m wondering if maybe the curse isn’t gone, if perhaps it’s been transferred to the nation as a whole. Is it possible, in the spirit of making light of everything, that the Curse of the Goat has leapt off the field and landed in every ballet box in America? Because for real, someone is going to win the election on Tuesday (or maybe in the weeks after) and that means we all lose, the soul of America throws up in her mouth just a teensy bit.

All the components of a good curse are there, for this election. There’s the goat stench (coming from all the directions). There’s the ominous cloud of divine wrath brewing on the horizon. There’s the inevitability of it all–the entire nation is helpless to rid itself of either candidate. All our prayers and bringing more goats into the picture availeth nothing. It’s like the curse hasn’t gone away, it’s just gotten big enough to include everyone.

I’m not really a superstitious person. I even sometimes walk on the cracks in the sidewalk. And I don’t worry about jinxing myself by speaking about the weather, or an exhausted child sleeping through the night. I am totally rational and enlightened. But I am charmed by the mysterious forces of the universe, God included, who refuse to be controlled no matter how much we dance and sing and insist that we can control them.

The deep helplessness of America should be a comfort to all who have an inkling of the sovereignty of God. When anyone thinks she can do and effect many things and people, but then cannot control whence her communication derives (that’s Hillary), or the words that come out of his own mouth (that’s Trump) we can know that we have not somehow reordered all things so that God isn’t required or has in some otherwise been superseded. We can try to control everything, but in the end we will utterly fail. And that’s as it should be, goat or no goat.

Bring on Tuesday!

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