We are killing ourselves. In a thousand different ways, we Americans steadfastly ignore the wisdom of the ages in our headlong rush to increase suffering and destroy what little we had that would have worked. We have so many pharmaceuticals in our water and food supply, most of which we know nothing about long term affects, we insist on acting as if wealth grows out of computers, that money is whatever we want it to be, that human need translates to imperative while we ignore the God who made it all… There’s not much we haven’t done wrong.
Worse, we have carried this same toxic environment to other nations. There is hardly any political entity on earth which has not suffered our attempts to meddle. Part of our massive deficit spending has been funneled through the CIA and other clandestine services, never mind massive military expenditures, wasting our own resources and laying waste to others. Having served in the military, I can not imagine a more wasteful bureaucratic morass. There is a semblance of efficiency in things which matter not at all, while we pay a premium price for junk which no for-profit company would ever accept. We would save money if we simply carpeted all the dry land surface of the world in $50 bills.
Our national hubris knows no bounds. Today we are funding a fake revolution in Iran because the current government won’t kiss our national posterior. Meanwhile we can’t keep our own lips off that of Israel. We dare to lecture China about “human rights” while we have attempted to drain their national output into our pockets. This, because they dared to rid themselves of pestiferous wealthy gadflies some 60 years ago. They decided whatever it was we were promoting, it couldn’t be better than some of the alternatives. Today the citizens of the People’s Republic of China are more free than we are, and their future prospects look far better. Talk all you want about their loosening market controls — as if we had much to do with it — but the more important point is we were messed up long before most Americans living now were born. At their worst, they have been more humane than even our child welfare bureaucracies. Their culture regarding humanity is closer to the Bible than we have ever been in the last century.
What makes it really sad? As we go marching off to Hell, the Left and Right will both affirm they are leading us to Heaven. The only difference between them is which hat we wear as the flames rise to consume us.
Neither capitalism nor communism, nor fascism nor libertarianism, nor any other -ism can reflect the Word of God. They are all man-centered abstractions of materialism and sin. When you stop caring so much about material goods, you suddenly realize you are at war with no one on earth, but they are at war with you. Yet they cannot possibly do much to harm you. Sure, they can take your stuff, and take your life, but you can defend those only at the price of poking your finger in God’s eye. This life is short and miserable already. The only thing you can hope to gain and take with you when you leave it is God’s favor. The nation which was once the USA does not have that favor.
So in the coming months — maybe tomorrow — we will pass some invisible tipping point. That tipping will be the value of the dollar against other currencies, by which we currently suck up the resources of other nations cheaply. At that point, it won’t matter how many digits in a computer the Fed spins over, or how much expensive green ink on expensive paper the Treasury prints off; it won’t be worth anything. A boatload won’t buy a basket of fruit from Indonesia. At that point, only what we produce for ourselves will be available to meet our human needs. As you might know, there really isn’t much of that going on right here in the USA, so there will be some friction as we transition our collective habits to spending our time making our own bread, clothing, shoes, and shelter. It will be very painful at first. We have indulged ourselves in so very many frivolous habits and time-wasters, and those habits will die hard. Your teenage son will stare at you with utter incomprehension when you tell him there will be no more cellphones and Internet games, and your daughter will throw a hissy fit when you explain she has to help weed that pitiful little garden in the back yard of she won’t get to eat.
Meanwhile, when the paychecks for police and fire services stop buying food and paying rent, you’ll have to keep an eye out for the predatory gangs, which many of those former public servants may be joining. Maybe you have a community capable of figuring this all out quickly enough to maintain some semblance of peace and order while everyone struggles to survive. Maybe your local situation will decline gracefully. By then it will probably be hard for any of us reading this today to discuss it with each other, since anything can happen to electricity providers and networking carriers. No one of us can guess what will happen, but I honestly believe the change will be sudden, very large, and far too many won’t be ready in any sense of the word.
Too much depends on things not in our hands, you and I. If we cling to these things, life will be dreary and ugly. If there are things for us too much more important, that we simply take it all in stride as background noise to the real issues of life, then it will hardly affect us. Back when we allowed the ruling elite to tell us gaining stuff mattered, and we bought into it, we sold our souls for a bowl of bean stew. Call America “Esau.”
