America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!
– “America the beautiful,” K. L. Bates (1911)
The threat of global war arising at this moment in history presents American sinners struggling to be Christian, as individuals, with an urgent need to critically scrutinize the political-economic context in which their struggle for freedom is undertaken.
“Economy” does not exist independent of “society,” which in most human cultures historically has had a significant spiritual component. The question arises what exactly is the “spiritual component” of “economy” in the USA?
In considering this question, and as a healthy exercise in self-awareness, I invite American sinners struggling to be Christian to compare the context and practice of Christianity in their country with the context and practice of Christianity in Russia, the country that is their current and prospective enemy in global (potentially nuclear) war. “Looking back” just to 1980, less than 50 years ago, it should be self-evident which of these two countries has gotten better and which has gotten worse:
The year 1980 was a “point of inflection” in the USA with the rise to power of Ronald Reagan and the onset of the great “Reagan economic miracle” – the final elimination of any hint of Christian principles in American “economy.” Reagan’s unsuccessful electoral opponent, Jimmy Carter, had proposed to Americans that consumerist-economy had inflicted a kind of spiritual malaise on society, and that the “endlessly rising canon” of consumption could not be sustained in the long run. Reagan preached exactly the opposite doctrine – the more you consume, the more you will have. Reagan enabled a new era in “economy,” whereby the old “good economic news (savings, bedrock of the economy, are up)” passed “through the looking glass” into the new “good economic news (the reciprocal of savings, “consumer confidence,” is up, the economy having become based on credit).” “Economy” became something analogous to “cancer” in that it had to expand in order to survive.
Much has been written about the contribution of “individualism” to the evolution of American society. And it cannot be denied that this has not been devoid of positive aspects. But the change in American political-economy after passing through this “point of inflection” was associated with a change in the nature of “individualism.” The “American dream,” that hard work would pay off in a world of competitive “individuals,” had legitimate meaning for people raising families in bona fide communities where care for neighbors continued to exist. But the “Reagan economic miracle” turned “individualism” into a mere “buzz word,” a marketing principle in what can best be described as a commercialist-consumerist “cult of individualism” where “neighbors” became people that one waves at as their automobiles pass by. American urban land area approximately doubled in just twenty years with the emergence of what I call the “asphalt steppes” – an endless expanse of strip malls and parking lots. Real estate developers built larger and larger houses that were farther and farther apart from neighbors. “Individualism” was exploited very successfully to manipulate consumers and to sell more and still more products and services. And indeed the commercial success of the “cult of individualism,” already amplified by American personal automobile-based reality, became hyper-charged with the onset of smart phones, social media and personal web pages. It became impossible to be “poor and happy” – a “modest” life became a miserable life. Meanwhile, more and more rungs were added to the “ladder” that American “individual” consumers had to climb in pursuit of their material dreams. The spiritual malaise identified by Jimmy Carter became a full blown and very serious chronic disease.
It goes without saying that the Masters of the “Reagan economic miracle” (hereafter simply “the Masters”) succeeded in “skimming off the cream” as their percent share of national income since 1980 approximately doubled while that of the “middle class” nearly halved. Meanwhile, in their efforts to propagate and defend what they called “democracy,” these same Masters, in the name of the American public, started wars under various pretexts in Lebanon, Panama, Libya, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran (leaving aside the complicated question of the US-financed war in Ukraine). The national debt steadily increased from 31% of gross domestic product in 1981 to 125% in 2024.
As a consequence of the “Reagan economic miracle,” the “spiritual component” of “economy” in the USA became, to be blunt, Satanism. This political-economic order is an embodiment of what I call “mechanical capitalism.” It’s “mechanical” character derives from its “efficiency” in “automatically” maximizing the “return” on “investment” primarily by promoting ever-expanding consumption. And it leads to a “mechanical” way of life, mass-produced, automated, cookie-cutter franchised, that minimizes human interactions within a conceptual framework of “time is money.” The social context of “every person for themself” that this promotes is the antithesis of a “love thy neighbor as thyself” society where sinners struggling to be Christian live in peace and repentance, struggling to BE their prayer, acutely aware with each breath that they take that life is not “mechanical” but rather holy and that their brief “time” is all that they have.
“Mechanical capitalism” is demonstratively “Satanic.” My use of the term “Satanism” in this context does not refer to the overt, formal worship of Satan but rather to the worship and elevation of the ego of individual consumers – the path of self-consumption whereby individual consumers become entrapped by their material desires and ruled by their lower nature, by their greed, lust and self-interest. “Mechanical capitalism” thrives on consumers living in an endless cycle of desire and consumption defined by the physical senses and attachments to the material world and characterized by a constant need for external validation and avoidance of the introspection that is critical for spiritual awareness. “Mechanical capitalism” “commodifies” human persons within a consumer-technical construct. It deliberately promotes egoism as a vehicle for increased sales even as it systematically “de-humanizes” society. It pursues no other goal than the expansion of national income, of which “the Masters” (who determine the results of “elections”) take the lion’s share, with complete disregard for whether this achieves a peaceful, stable, “quality” life for the people.
For all its hype about “democracy” and “constitutional pluralism” and “individual rights” and “separation of church and state,” the USA became a theocracy under a de facto state church – Mammonism. Days go by now in this society as a veritable liturgy of Mammon served by the long since discredited “priests” of “constitutional pluralism.” Elections regularly deliver the best Congress that money can buy, consumers having been given a binary (and nominal) choice between “Christian-Satanists” and “Satanist-Humanists.”
Americans are proud of the patriotic song “America, the beautiful” which teaches that “God shed his Grace on thee.” And this is, in my view, really true. God did “shed his Grace on thee.” And what did Americans do with it? I draw an analogy in this regard between the emerging fate of Americans and the fate of “the chosen people” as related to us in the Christian Bible. Judaism had “the law.” But in the long run it wasn’t enough. And God made a new plan – we could call Christianity “Judaism 2.0.” Americans had “democracy” but in the long run it wasn’t enough. America became fatally polarized – arguably a predictable outcome of its “Satanization” by “mechanical capitalism.”
What exactly Americanism 2.0 might look like remains an open question.
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