We lost about 500,000 people battling fascist imperialist forces in World War II. Russia sacrificed 20 million human beings. Were it not for Russia, we would probably be speaking German right now.

Besides, the United States is now in the prefigurements of fascism. We are becoming the very threat from which we allegedly saved the world.

America needs to maintain its leviathan military industrial complex to ensure its security and to spread freedom and democracy

The United States spends more money on “defense” each year than the rest of the world combined. With the vast arsenal of weaponry we possess, it is beyond farcical to suggest that our security is seriously threatened at the existential level.

We maintain military bases in 130 countries. We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan preemptively (which is a war crime for which we hanged Nazis). Yet we tenaciously strive to perpetuate the inane assertion that we are not an empire. Capitalism demands perpetual growth, meaning capitalist nations inevitably engage in imperialism to expand their markets, enhance their profits, and find cheaper wage slaves. We utilize the legions of the empire to spread the misery of “free markets,” consumerism, exploitation, and environmental rape.

America is a Christian nation.

While many argue endlessly over the separation of church and state, or whether or not the United States was founded as a Christian nation, an equally profound question receives far too little attention.

What is the nature of the Christianity that our nation, in which a large number of denizens label themselves as Christians, collectively manifests?

Our rigid Puritanical roots still maintain a tenacious grip on our psyches. This impedes our capacity to overtly experience life’s carnal, sensual pleasures without experiencing guilt at violating taboos. Denying ourselves reasonable indulgence triggers the bacchanalian excesses that lead to rampant addiction to pornography, drugs, and alcohol.

The isolation, rage, and spiritual emptiness engendered by our consumerist, narcissistic, and violence-obsessed culture catalyze events like the ones at Columbine and Virginia Tech. With lamentations and hand-wringing, the mainstream media repeatedly expresses its utter astonishment when people snap to such an extent. After all, human beings living in a spiritually vacuous, hyper competitive environment have an infinite capacity to absorb insults, loneliness, rejection, exclusion, bullying, and hatred without reacting violently, don’t they?

One of the basic principles Christ espoused was to practice the Golden Rule. Whoops. Slaughtering millions of human beings throughout our history leaves us well short of the mark on that one.

Perhaps the most inspiring spiritual wisdom the Jewish carpenter conveyed to humanity came in the form of the Beatitudes. How do we manifest them in the United States?

The poor in spirit are considered to be impotent and irrelevant in a culture that thrives on egoism and self-promotion.

Those who mourn over moral injuries and tragedies are instructed to “get over it,” take some pills to mask the pain, and “move on”.

The meek are crushed by aggressive, acquisitive mobs.

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