Most Americans have heard about recurring patterns in history. What needs to be said is that half of these patterns are destructive patterns, and half are saving patterns. In political history, the destructive pattern is monarchy or autocracy. The constructive pattern is democracy or republicanism.
America is currently so ignorant of our own history and of Western democratic history that we are engaging in historically familiar destructive patterns without any clue why they are so destructive or even that they are happening. There are four of these patterns blazing out into the open today, and all of them are related.
First, I’ll call the “Robber Baron” pattern. This pattern last reared its ugly head 150 years ago, and it took America 50 years to beat it back. Our latest return to this pattern started in earnest, maybe 50 years ago, in the 1970s, and has been gaining steam ever since. Today, we don’t remember anything about the Robber Barons or what was done to tame them. We think that it is wrong to put any curbs on the accumulation of money, whether it be income, assets, gifts, inheritances, tax breaks, or any kind of wealth. Today, we accept the Christian “prosperity gospel” doctrine that says God wants righteous people to be rich, even if at the expense of other people. Certain political leaders promise to quickly make everybody rich as well. Church and state seem to be of one mind on this exploitative concept.
However, if we let greedy millionaires become centi-millionaires by whatever means they wish, and centi-millionaires to become billionaires the same way, they will all soon enough be pouring evil out of their mouths, wringing evil out of everybody else’s necks, and showing off evil purchases of some of the more expensive things they buy for themselves, like pocket politicians, monopoly corporations, rogue churches, and lots of wars designed to make more money for the military-industrial complex.
Back then, in the early 1900s, we remembered the Bible’s Isaiah warning about untrammeled wealth and our own history in England before we migrated here, both of which said that money is the root of all evil. We then curbed the unregulated accumulation of capital by regulating it. We need to do the same today.
The second pattern is the “monarchy” pattern. The “No Kings” protests today provide a clue to the fact that some Americans have at least a vague memory of the history of Europe and Asia during the Dark Ages, when monarchy was the only real political “science” available to the great mass of people. The science of monarchy asserted that God never fails to choose a particularly rich, handsome, and charismatic king and his family to create a long-term dynasty of kings to rule over all others, who must be subject to their every whim. Once again, we remembered the Bible warnings against kingship and our own sad history under monarchy in England. Today, we are ignoring both of those lessons from history. The Bible says all human beings are made in the image and likeness of the humanitarian and capable God of heaven.
Third is the “discrimination” pattern. This pattern says it is only natural and perfectly fine to discriminate against other classes of people, because some classes of people are inferior to our own very exalted class of people for one reason or another. The poor are inherently inferior to the rich, who have God’s exclusive blessing in everything. Minority people of color are genetically inferior to white folks. Women take a back seat to men because they are just not as competent and as powerful as men.
The fourth pattern is the misread “Kingdom of God” pattern, which says that God and heaven give their stamp of approval to all these other patterns, or at least give us permission to ignore them and hide under a rock when they are breaking out in society. Why does religion often go down this road? It is because religious folk believe God in the form of Jesus Christ is poised to imminently return to save us all, so we don’t have to do anything to save ourselves and our neighbors. Just chill and have faith.
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