November 11 is Veterans Day in the United States. It (and the Sunday preceding) has become a day of holy worship for many. Churches as well as today’s temples of worship – the sports arena – will bear witness to this glorious event. The throngs will cheer uncontrollably.
They cheer for their heroes, those who have died so they could live free – free to pay a 50% portion to the state, free to have every form of communication monitored, free to be forced into all sorts of activities and prohibited from many others, free to turn their children over for brainwashing, free to be seen naked before flying.
Free.
For the maintenance of such freedoms, the heroes are worshipped. For their sacrifice.
Sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals to a higher purpose, in particular divine beings, as an act of propitiation or worship.
Sacrifice. The American religion requires sacrifice. It is a sacrifice of blood. Human blood:
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings, usually as an offering to a deity, as part of a religious ritual (ritual killing). Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practiced in various cultures throughout history. Victims were typically ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods, spirits or the deceased, for example as a propitiatory offering…
The heroes, worshipped in the church and sports halls, offer their blood on the alter – the sacrificial blood. The religion requires such sacrifice.
They sacrificed in 1812 for the sake of bringing the Canadians into the fold; they sacrificed in 1861 to ensure the people of the south could remain free under a state they no longer wanted; they sacrificed at the turn of the last century to free the Philippines from Spanish rule; they sacrificed in 1917 so the Germans could remain free under Hitler; they sacrificed in 1941 so a totalitarian like Stalin could take over half of Europe and so the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (along with countless civilians in dozens of cities throughout Europe and Japan) could achieve freedom from life; they sacrificed in 1951 in Korea so the communists wouldn’t take over Asia; they sacrificed in Vietnam to prevent the communists from taking over the world; they sacrificed in 1991 so the Kuwaiti’s could save their babies in incubators; they sacrificed in Iraq so 500,000 children could starve and countless others could suffer death and destruction; they sacrificed in Afghanistan to capture and kill a man who likely died a decade earlier.
They sacrificed for making the world safe for democracy.
It is their blood, offered as sacrifice to the god of the state – all in the name of the national religion.
I pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.
The religion requires blood. The heroes offer theirs.
The congregants offer praise to those who have been and will be sacrificed. They sing their hosannas:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on.
Glory, glory Hallelujah. Just ask them.
The sacrifice brings on a religious frenzy.
The bosses get talking so tough And if that wasn’t evil enough We get the drunken and passionate pride Of the citizens along for the ride
This drunken and passionate pride will be on full display on this celebration day of sacrifice.
