The Empire is Naked: Part One

There is nothing left to strip away. I'm just here to point out the obvious.

What if I told you that there is no separation of church and state, and there never was?

They have always operated in tandem, serving to shield and protect one another from the scrutiny that both rightly deserve. Because what makes a religion “uncivilized” if not human sacrifice? But state takes the credit for the tons of blood spilt on the way to “progress.” Then religion steps in, carefully keeping its feet clean, and ordains the bloodshed holy in the aftermath. And once it has done so—voila. The state is also god-ordained.

The two of them together, if they are formally recognized as aligned forces instead of pretending to be strangers while benefitting from one another’s existence, lose all legitimacy. If the bloodshed was officially sanctioned all along, the god in question is clearly a believer in human sacrifice, and the pretense at spreading something amongst the “savages” that is better than what they had before falls away. It’s the vagueness of Manifest Destiny that makes it seem like anything more than a simplistic assertion that might equals right; a flat out rejection of King Arthur’s radical premise that might should be used for right instead. Nothing but a bully’s creed.

Which means the culture wars were never, in fact, a fight to maintain the separation between church and state (which was always mythical), but rather have always been a farce designed to reinforce the illusion that the collective fate and soul of humankind is fought in the battles between believers and secular humanists.

In reality, the fate and soul of humankind rests upon our ability to get along well enough to organize ourselves around our common goals and create the caring community we all dream of sharing, against the wishes of folks quite literally hell-bent on concentrating power as much as possible so as to have everything and everyone at their private beck and call.

But we can’t stop having comment wars! Let’s get a hold of ourselves, why don’t we? Let’s work on our emotional intelligence. Wild, isn’t it? That the fate of the world rests upon our ability to be civil to folks with whom we vehemently disagree?