“America is a death cult and its god is called Liberty”
“The altar to Liberty runs red with innocent blood”
“The police force is the priestly caste of the American death cult”
“A police state is a theocracy of suicide”
“Murder is the highest worship in the land of the free, murder-suicide: divine grace”
“Excommunication is imprisonment”
“Death is an article of faith: some are meant to die, so it is written”
“Stopping death is a sin, improving life more of one”
Some notes on parallels I see:
The American Christian death cult has a twisted sort of Manichaean worldview: life is suffering, only the blessing of the divine can reduce suffering, the only place without suffering is the afterlife. Therefore, death is a gift. (See Manichaean views on material/spiritual.)
Reducing suffering as a human is tantamount to playing God, and to leading people astray by making the afterlife less palatable by comparison. It’s Satanic.
If you have received the blessing of the divine to have a less horrible life, your life is important so that you can increase death. All the others who don’t suffer increase death too, so it is a sign from God who his chosen priests are.
This explains a lot, from anti-abortion but anti-life views to the militarization of police, increased inability to access healthcare, lack of interest in reducing any suffering at all, etc. And because the United States is uniquely hard to stay healthy in, clearly it is God’s chosen nation.
I don’t think any of this is a conscious thought, more just the overall construction of the various American thoughts in these American minds. It’s how the pieces fit together.
Anyone can contribute to this. It's too inchoate for me to pull it together yet.
I've been playing with some of these ideas and phrasings in Twitterland. I'm a nobody with nothing over there, but it's incredibly polarizing. I have the pro-protest people evenly divided on whether I'm being hyperbolic (lol obviously) or I'm telling God's own truth.
There's a theme in the split: relatively privileged people don't like the idea so much. More oppressed people or people who have had hard lives regardless of privilege seem to really like that wording.
Personally, I think that means I'm on the right track. So death cult America it is. Just need to figure out how to structure the piece.
I planned on posting this in the "Suu demands to know what you are listening to" thread, but I think it fits here.
This is the most intensely religious song I have heard. It was written and performed by a Canadian Jew dying of leukemia.
You Want It Darker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nmHymgM7Y)
They're lining up the prisoners and the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons, they were middle-class and tame
I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim
You want it darker
There is never a bad time to listen to Leonard Cohen.