The Pulling Under of Myths

Driving across the United States, from Sacramento to New York, Jeff Sharlet seeks to trace the mytholigization of Ashli Babbit, how she went from an individual killed during the January 6 insurrection to a martyr. Throughout the trip, he contemplates the ways that we create myths in our minds, turning stories we hear into facts, ignoring reality in the process. On the road, he picks up a radio station with a Wisconsin preacher telling a story about his three boys drowning in the ocean and he plunging into the water. During the course of the story, the preacher shifted course, leaving the fate of his boys out of the narrative. The preacher, obviously, survived. Of this moment, Sharlet says, “The story, which we may imagine as beginning in fact, had been made into parable, the meaning of real things smoothed like sea glass. Myth carries people away.”

Myths carry us away, they sweep us up in their embrace, like nostalgia, and take us to a place that makes us feel safe. We use myths for comfort, for a way to help us explain the world around us or to help us make the world fit into our preconceived beliefs and ideas. Facts be damned. When this happens, we use the myths to reinforce our world view, leading us to ignore anything to the contrary. This mythologizing is dangerous because it refuses to engage, on any level, with a reality that would dismantle the myth.