Awkae
February 02, 2025
Freedom Of Worship
In the United States, “freedom of worship” is an empty joke. Ask the Arabs under surveillance by the Patriot Act or the families separated by ICE.
This is “America”, where the only sacraments are greenbacks and drone attacks on children in the Middle East. Where people swear allegiance to a trinity of greed, state worship and willful ignorance (not just in geography). Blessed are the warmongers, for they shall inherit the decaying empire.
The Hypocrisy of Selective Sanctity
The First Amendment preaches freedom of religion, but the US has systematically criminalized Arab and Muslim communities since the 1980s. The 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act expanded guilt by association, while post-9/11 policies like NSA wiretapping, the NYPD’s Muslim surveillance program and Trump’s “Muslim ban” have reframed entire religions as threats. Meanwhile, far-right racist Christian nationalists lobby to incorporate their dogma into law (e.g. abortion bans, Ten Commandments in classrooms), exposing “religious freedom” as a tool for majority rule.
Gods of Profit and War
The real cathedrals of the United States are Wall Street and the Pentagon. Congress funnels more than $900 billion annually into war machines, while cutting school funding and never doing anything to improve the wages and working conditions of its people. Corporations like Lockheed Martin sanctify “defense” contracts as a divine right, even as their bombs raze neighborhoods in Gaza and Yemen. Blowing up civilians, from children to the elderly, is very Old Testament indeed. The faithful tithe to Apple and Amazon, whose monopolies drain local economies.
The Cult of the Flag
Blind patriotism is the state religion. Dissidents who don’t kneel during the anthem are branded heretics; Edward Snowden is exiled for treason for exposing the crimes of the God-State. Schools preach a mythologized history, erasing genocide and slavery to sustain the fiction of innocence. The Oath of Allegiance replaces critical thinking with allegiance to power.
The Gospel of Ignorance
Ignorance is not a blessing, it’s a policy. Florida bans books about Ruby Bridges and LGBTQIA+ lives while funneling billions into private prisons that profit from incarceration. Media conglomerates peddle fear and false equivalence, turning the news into a sacrament of apathy. Questioning the “invisible hand” of capitalism or the “humanitarian strikes” of the military is blasphemy. A nation that idolizes AR-15s instead of libraries, that dismisses vaccines as “tyranny”, worships at the altar of its own death.
