The Tithes that Bind

The awareness that religiously affiliated and identified people are dragging us into perdition confronts us always. Seeing that clearly, the origins of earlier episodes of insanity stand in stark and illuminated relief. Among the legions of the more recent offenders are the evangelical degenerates swarming out of the South like a plague to infest us everywhere. They support Trump and do his terrible bidding, degraded hawkers and shills. "Beau" Sessions, Scott Pruitt, David Perdue and Tom Cotton are examples.

Irish Catholic white men, typified by the bootlicking faction at Fox, share the cultural heritage of their southern bros in having been utterly defeated and occupied--reduced to groveling, pathetic losers at the feet of their women, the experience for which they still try to compensate by showing their mettle and strength as bullies and cowards. The irony is obvious, if painful to see. False pride and retribution for lurking feelings of inferiority have been behind too many wars and other stupidity. 

Jewish neoconservatives mired us in an incomprehensible mess in the Middle East, placing our officially religiously unaffiliated country in the same position as Israel, now fair-game for the horrors of terrorism and every kind of venomous tribal enmity. Mitt Romney and some Mormons vent their legitimate, if ancient, grudges against the government in various ways, wanting to see it weakened and humiliated just like the southerners. Who, in all of this, is looking out for the well-being of the state?

Who is looking out for the well-being of average Americans? No one, effectively, that I can see. The religious fanatics and grudge-holders might still reduce secularists like me to prayer or acting on our fantasies of escape. I want more than anything to get away from them.