Before we get into it let’s compare a few other stories that share themes.
The guitar riff is a rusty hinge swinging in a desert wind. “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked.” It’s not just a song; it’s a modern parable. A triptych of desperation: the sex worker, the mugger, the corrupt preacher. Each one a ghost in the machine, greasing the gears with their morality, singing the same hymn of exhaustion. Money don’t grow on trees. I got bills to pay. It’s the liturgy of late capitalism, a hymnal for the damned trying to be decent in an indecent system.
And it hits me — this is Job in denim and desperation. Not tested by a celestial bet, but by the relentless, mundane pressure of rent, healthcare, and hunger. Where is God in this parable? He’s been replaced by the unblinking eye of the market. The test isn’t faithfulness through suffering, but whether you can keep your soul intact while participating in the very machine that grinds you down. The “wicked” aren’t evil; they’re the exhausted, the cornered, the compromised. Their rest is eternal, not moral. Even in eternal rest you can awake, or awoke if you will.
This is where the green-skinned girl and the glittering blonde float into my mind. Wicked. We got it wrong. The musical isn’t just an origin story; it’s the same parable. The Wizard’s Oz isn’t a fairyland; it’s the system, all smoke, mirrors, and desperate narratives. Everyone is trying to pay their bills, feed their mouths.
Elphaba isn’t born wicked; she is cornered. Her values — defending the Talking Animals, seeking truth — are the bills she has to pay. The price is her reputation, her love, her very identity. She becomes the “Wicked Witch” not out of malice, but because the system has no room for a righteous woman who won’t comply. Her rest only comes when she “closes her eyes for good,” faking her death to escape the narrative cage.
And Glinda? She’s just as trapped. Her currency is popularity, her bill to pay is maintaining the illusion. She sings of being “changed for good,” but at what cost? She becomes the public face of the very regime that destroyed her friend. She is “Good,” but complicit. We are all both Glinda and Elphaba. Every day, we make small compromises to glide through the system (Glinda), while a part of us rages against the machinery, feeling the green skin of otherness stain our soul (Elphaba). The “wicked” and the “good” are binary archetypes sold to us to simplify the messy, exhausting spectrum of survival.
The frontier didn’t vanish; it digitized. The “Wild West” is now this blinking cursor, these vast social plains, these digital gold rushes. It’s still lawless, driven by hustlers, preachers, and desperate souls. Every new idea is a land grab. Every algorithm, a new sheriff with ambiguous loyalties. We’re all still prospectors, panning for relevance, security, and connection in chaotic streams.
Which brings me to the most poisonous idea sown in this new frontier: the weaponization of cultural appreciation. The term “cultural appropriation,” when stripped of its original, necessary context of power and parody, has become a border fence around the human experience. The intent is now an afterthought. To claim that admiration and respectful adoption is a form of theft is to argue for a world of isolated, purist tribes. It is the ultimate triumph of the binary: you stay in your story, I’ll stay in mine.
That’s not how humanity works. We are a story-trading species. Food, music, style, ritual — these are languages. To learn another’s language is the deepest compliment. The bitter guardians of these borders aren’t protecting culture; they’re building cages. They’ve traded in the weary, shared struggle of “bills to pay, mouths to feed” for the cheap, performative currency of moral superiority. It’s another bill, another mouth to feed — the insatiable hunger for social capital. It divides us precisely when the parable of the song and Wicked reveals our shared, exhausted condition.
So here we are. Walking down a digital street, shadows creeping, pretty illusions approaching, preachers on screens stealing faith. We’re all just trying to make it until we close our eyes for good. Sometimes we feel green and misunderstood. Sometimes we feel glittery and empty. Always, the wheel turns, demanding payment.
The rest for the wicked — and the good, and all of us in between — might not exist in this life. Maybe the only defiance is to see the machine, see the other struggling souls within it, and for a moment, refuse to call them wicked. To share a song instead of a judgment. To pass a cup of water, even if our own throats are parched. The frontier is endless. But we don’t have to ride alone, and we don’t have to shoot on sight. Hey ICE, FUCK YOU for protecting murderers with your archaic tribalism. Y’all should be ashamed and judged to the full extent of the law.
Originally published on Medium. It lives here now — new essays land in the Journal first.
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