Needless digressive polemics in the middle of an adventure story.

From Into the Raging Sea by Rachel Slade. Page 256.

From the moment labor organized, America’s power brokers have hacked away at it. William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, used his tabloid papers to disparage all unions, but especially the maritime unions. He called organized labor anti-American at best, communism at worst. Case in point: conservatives loathed the fact that merchant seamen received medical care through a system of public health hospitals first established in 1789. Seamen’s hospitals were founded to prevent the spread of disease and, over time, grew to serve military dependents, coast guard personnel, and the poor. These hospitals were once financed by a tax on imported commodities, but as of 1884 that money went straight into the Treasury’s general fund rather than specifically supporting seamen’s health. After World War II, Republicans went to great lengths to dismantle the hospital system in support of their tax-cutting agenda. As president, Ronald Reagan finally succeeded in eliminating the hospitals from the federal books, and now the entire population those facilities once served, including America’s mariners, receive care at private hospitals at private hospital rates.

Another instance where Slade let's her Mandarin Class critical theory self get in the way of telling a good story.

This particular story is pretty much guff. She is projecting her imputed motives onto others without understanding the other motives they might have. Her disgust with private hospitals making money in their business has nothing to do with the El Faro story. What is it doing here? Where are the editors? Come on Slade, tell the good story that you clearly can and leave off lecturing your readers on the finer points of foolish political obsessions.

And if you want to focus on the horrendous conditions of maritime labor, why not tell the story about war time merchant marines who not only had one of the highest casualty rates of all branches of service but also ceased to be paid the moment their ship sank.