Pope Leo spoke truth to power regarding the weaponization of faith this week, warning against individuals who use God and religion as cover for power. Guess what these Christian Nationalists and Christian Evangelicals have been doing in the United States for years now? Exactly this weaponization of faith.
They’ve been using religion including hijacking parts of Christianity to justify their often times immoral, ethically challenged, and criminal conduct. Those who run churches in this manner also gain tax exempt status, can end up raking in millions of dollars from their followers (often times spending that money on their own luxurious lifestyle). If there was ever a time when the phrase “actions speaking louder than words” meant something, this is it.
Below is his speech (full transcript)
But woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic or political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.
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The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet a lifetime is often not enough to rebuild. They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found. Those who rob your land of its resources generally invest much of the profit in weapons, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of destabilization and death.
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The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters! They are the descendants of Abraham, as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. Let us look into each other’s eyes: we are this immense people! Peace is not something we must invent: it is something we must embrace by accepting our neighbor as ourbrother and as our sister. We do not choose our brothers and sisters: we simply must accept one another! We are one family, inhabiting the same home: this wonderful planet that ancient cultures have cared for across millennia.
The billions that are spent on the military industrial complex in the U.S. could be better spent on its citizens and crumbling infrastructure. But when it comes to things like universal healthcare or affordable college education, the propaganda long spoken by the “conservative” politicians is that “this is communism/socialism” and “something that cannot be afforded by the government”. Yet they are so eager to throw billions of dollars into the military using another piece of American propaganda that all politicians have sold the American public on; that is of national defense.
While foreign threats do exist, it’s been overblown to justify the huge military budget. Politicians have used the old reliable psychological aspect of fear to get people to accept this massive spending budget for “military defense”; there is always some foreign nation that is made into the enemy. They sold the American public on the need to support all of these military bases around the world, as a way to “take the fight to them instead of an American soil”. And it has been effective sell job of propaganda.
Many of those existing military bases on foreign soil were a result of a mutual partnership after WWII in terms of the collective defense along with the United States status as a then emerging super power due to its nuclear capabilities (deemed as a benefit to those allies). That worked well when the U.S. didn’t have “unserious about governing” criminals running the government. Current day leaders in this alliance are now experiencing what it is like dealing with a transactional criminal regime that is proving itself to no longer be that reliable ally/partner. Unfortunately, politicians and diplomats have to also unlearn what they knew (they’ve tried to treat the American president like a regular politician versus the criminal mob boss that he is).
Short tangent: I’m a product of Japanese who emigrated from Japan because in similar fashion, the Japanese government was pumping money into building up its military empire. Regular people therefore had to struggle with the basic necessities, and many looked into those opportunities to emigrate elsewhere for a better life. In the 1920’s, things were not helped when southern Japan experienced crop failures across multiple prefectures (Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, parts of Kyushu). Not all of those were of initial benefit to those first immigrants (especially in South America where the promised land that was promoted, turned out to be non-fertile; the ones who promoted that knew it would be impossible for those immigrants to also return since it was already costly for the one way trip via ship).
While mainland Japanese had been allowed to emigrate for plantation work opportunities in what was then, the Kingdom of Hawai’i starting in the 1860’s (nearly 4 decades before it was illegally overthrown and became a U.S. territory in 1898), Okinawan’s were forbidden until after 1900 when the government lifted the restrictions on Okinawa Prefecture; Okinawa (and the Okinawan people) at the time was treated as inferior to mainland Japan by the government and general population.
My paternal great grandparents were one of the first Okinawan immigrants to Hawai’i. My maternal grandparents emigrated to Hawai’i from Yamaguchi-ken in the 1920’s as a result of the before mentioned crop failures and scarcity of food. This is the unfortunate reality when a country prioritizes something like their military over the well being of regular citizens. Sadly in the U.S., a decent percentage have been brainwashed to believe that we need to spend these obscene sums of money on our military at the expense of meaningful social programs that help everyday American’s. But I digress… End tangent
Post September 11, 2001, American’s have heard (from their government) how various acts of terrorism on American soil had been thwarted. One has to wonder how much of this is actually true now versus just a convenient narrative in order to continue the massive amount of spending that goes into homeland security, intelligence, and a global military force. Maybe that government conspiracy stuff actually had some truth to it.
But as this conflict in the Middle East is showing, exactly who is doing most of the terrorizing? Israel and the United States. They easily claim Iran commits global terrorism via its proxies. The U.S. does the same via the CIA with its own clandestine proxies. How many countries have we gone into this way and destabilized for the worse? How many times have we taken our military into a country and wreaked havoc, only for it to not meet its actual objectives? Look at Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
With Iran, we’ve blown through billions since February 28th where the regime is asking for more to continue funding this idiotic war (that has made things worse) while the idiot-in-chief keeps saying “we’ve won”. Both Israeli and American governments can lie all they want about the actual success, but none of this is making the world safer. Sure, the government (by making American’s a target) can now sell the need for this defense; it’s all self-created and the sad part is a good portion of American’s will believe it again. On the flip side, at least more are waking up to the propaganda.
The “united” part of the United States is an oxymoron at this point because there really are two distinct ideologies that are diametrically opposed to each other where we’d be better off as two separate countries. The ones who continually vote against their own self-interest or continually engage in these divisive culture wars, belong in another country being ruled by those politicians that view universal healthcare as a bad thing, believe that a specific religion should be dictated, and believe that terrorizing other countries via its military apparatus is a necessary thing.
This current regime and its supporters would naturally label people speaking out this way as radical traitors. The reality is folks like myself are de-radicalized American’s making it clear that the old status quo (including the long running propaganda) is no longer going to fly. Change isn’t going to happen overnight though; something like this will take a generation of election cycles and/or the complete collapse of the American empire (which for anyone paying attention, will see is starting to happen in realtime).
Myself, I side with what the Pope has said (not only in this speech, but his prior ones which decry this sort of punitive military conflict) because it transcends a specific faith and religion itself; it’s about caring for your fellow human. The true radicalized traitors in the U.S. are the ones who are engaged in this feud with him.
