GOD AND COUNTRY

We get born into a world already in progress. Stuff is going on as we slowly become aware of it. All around us throngs of human beings participate in this stuff with varying levels of obedience. Jokes are made, but mostly forgotten.

Folks tend to go along with the program.

It may therefore surprise you to learn that the concepts of god and country are entirely artificial inventions created by our ancient elders. And subject to revision.

Or dismantling.

Both these concepts create instances of pleasure and pain. Like drugs the so-called authorities have been prescribing forever, there are side effects to god and country we are required to put up with. We do so willingly, for the most part, with only a little grumbling. Death and taxes, and so forth.

They say we need these drugs, that we will die without them. They tend to gloss over the reality that many of the side effects are also fatal.

The fact that god and country can get you killed ought to be obvious by now. The jackpot question is whether or not we needed to take these drugs in the first place. It's just not a question you're encouraged to ask.

The concepts of god and country are protected by millennia of high-powered PR. They are bedrock notions designed to be unassailable. Not just invincible, but existing beyond any actual need for defense.

God and country are a given, validated by oceans of spilled blood.

You could say so many people have died for god and country it would be a disgrace to abandon these ideals now. The obvious conclusion is that the rest of us also need to die for god and country. After all, this is the sacred tradition of the human club.

All hail, and all die!

Which might make a kind of sense if you were convinced the world was about to end. Why rock the boat now? It's almost over!

Of course, that's a very Christian point of view. Christianity got its start as an end-of-the-world cult. I think some of those guys have managed to forget this fact.

(The persistence of the world is rather embarrassing, really.)

The ideas of god and country are inextricable linked. As it says in the final verse of the Star Spangled Banner, we need to: "Praise the pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation." And make no mistake, that power is god.

God created this country for us and now we need to trust in god to preserve it in the future. The end.

(As to how god came to be here before us, best not to ask.)

The notions of god and country carry with them the highest glory—and the most numerous deaths. Glorious deaths, if the concepts are correct.

Pointless, horrible deaths if they are in any way defective.

The problem is, both god and country were designed and manufactured by human beings, the shoddiest, most delusional craftsmen in the universe.

Can't say I'm liking the odds.