Back in the day, I had a co-worker who hated the sight of people eating with chopsticks, at a Chinese restaurant, in south Georgia. Chopsticks, he claimed, was not only un-American it was anti-American. Of course, forks were brought over from England, so not strictly American, but I occasionally used chopsticks in the office while eating lunch just to watch him melt down. It was interesting in that he personally invested in chopsticks being the antithesis of American values but cell phones, clothing, and thousands of plastic items from China polluting the waterways were perfectly fine.

It should be noted that injustice is practiced, and nearly perfected, when it comes to conjuring excuses to colonize violently those places deemed desirable. Once the early settlers became strong enough to declare war on those who helped them survive, one of the tried-and-true methods was religion. In due course, the settlers accused the natives of Satanism, for they knew nothing of Christianity. In Central America, the Spaniards would hand a local leader a bible, and if he failed to be able to read it, they would kill him and loot his kingdom. Greed, the psychological desire to possess more than enough, drove the Spanish to destroy ancient and advanced civilizations, and erase cultures from the maps of history. Christianity was their excuse of choice.

Of course, destroying a civilization isn’t the only horror to be laid at the feet of the Genocidal Marriage of Greed and Christianity within the boundaries of this nation. Slavery was used to kidnap, murder, rape, and to steal the lives of people whose only crime, or only sin, was to be born of a darker skin color than the men who held money and land. For four hundred years, enslaved people could be, and would be, kept in bondage and made to work, getting nothing for their labors but the barest of necessities. Women were used as breeding stock, men were worked to death, and nothing, no bright point of existence could be experienced without the permission of those who were pocketing the money the slaves worked for.

Greed, in all of its various forms, has always been accompanied by spiritual heroin. The rich can convince the poor their lives are only meaningful by their submission to the way things are, by the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and obeying those in power is the only real virtue. After all, how could the rich have all the money and all the power if they weren’t those selected by the gods to have them? Who are the poor to questions this?

It’s no mystery why churches in America are tax exempt. It’s the tithe they receive from those in power for keeping the poor looking past their own lives for something better. Here, in this lifetime, they must be productive, meek, and work themselves to death, very much as the slaves did. The misery they endure will be assuaged by some mythical creature, but only, never before, they die.

Take Care,

Mike