A hoary plot line of melodrama reduces the hero and heroine to dire straits; they’ve tried everything in their power to escape doom; the soundtrack crescendos in a minor key. “Pray,” he says. “It’s in God’s hands. Only a miracle will save us now.”

Melodrama musters the miracle more often than not. Feel-good endings make feel-good box office.

Handing off a situation to God is tantamount to saying, “We’ve come a cropper, the jig is up.” Praying in cataclysm is like pumping the brakes after the car has left the road.

Arizona updates its gas chamber for hydrogen cyanide. South Carolina adds firing squad to its execution suite.

Texas will make it easier to carry pistols and harder to vote.

The U.S. Senate has blocked investigation into the insurrection.

The woman in the painting is in the cat’s hands. A certain country is in God’s.

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