let them eat bullets

   introduction

“Let them eat cake.”
 
Whether Marie-Antoinette ever really said such a thing or not, the saying does capture the contempt that the French ruling aristocratic class had for its less advantaged fellow citizens.
 
 But today’s American aristocratic ruling class sneers a far more grotesque and wicked variation on the theme: “Let them eat bullets.”
 
What do I mean? Well, let’s see.
 
 

   defending the indefensible…

After months and months of squabbling over whether and how to offer even a few measly crumbs to Americans financially suffering as a result of the purposefully uncontrolled pandemic, the U.S Senate, controlled by the pro-death Republican party, and the House, controlled by the corporate Democratic party, recently passed a veto-proof $740 billion annual “defense” spending bill—and this is only the portion of spending that will be accounted for (if we are lucky); there will be much more under-the-table defense spending. Keep in mind, now, that the aristocrats of these two plutocratic parties can agree on nothing—not even democracy itself. Yet they find concord when it comes to committing murder and mayhem in every corner of the planet—rather like the Herodians, Romans, and Jews, who could agree on nothing but the need to murder Jesus.
 
Yes, this nation’s ruling plutocracy can agree to commit 740 billion dollars to indefensible military “defense” spending even though the nation possesses not one damn enemy on any one of its four utterly secure borders. This warmongering nation can agree to spend 740 billion dollars on military “defense” when its instruments of war are already so numerous and powerful that it could destroy three quarters of them and still possess more military hardware than any other country on the planet. This murderous nation can agree to spend 740 billion dollars on military “defense” when it spends more in “defense” spending than the next ten countries combined.
 
But, it isn’t like we weren’t warned. Satan warned God that he would “buy up armies and navies and reign with blood and horror on the earth.” I am not sure that even in his wildest dreams Satan could have ever imagined that he would have as agreeable a companion or as faithful a disciple in his planned rebellion against the God of heaven as the United States of America has proven itself to be.
 
Yes, it is satanic. It is positively obscene. Pornography of the worst kind.
 
 

   while refusing to defend the defenseless

But it isn’t simply America’s ruling class’ willing commitment to Satan’s militant plan that is so obscene and pornographic. While these “patriotic” spend-thrifters shell out “defense” dollars like a drunken corporate CEO tipping his latest long-legged high-end“ escort,” they have, for months, refused to spend a single penny in defense of millions of individual Americans who are, under the threat of pandemic, suffering under the worry and actuality of having too little food and losing safe shelter.
 
Every single study, both private and public—including those conducted by federal, state, and local governments—report the same tragic conclusions. People are going hungry and being evicted from their homes. Their children are going hungry and suffering homelessness. And it will get worse unless congress acts… now and “bigly.”
 
“Although various federal and state moratoriums on [mortgage and rent payments], as well as on evictions and foreclosures, were enacted, such protections will eventually end. And the moratoriums don’t negate renters’ or homeowners’ obligations to settle accounts with their bankers and landlords somewhere down the line (which for many Americans may, in the end, prove an impossibility)...”[1]
 
“Analysts say nearly 12 million people are thousands of dollars behind on rent. Between 30 million and 40 million renters are at risk of losing their homes when an already flimsy moratorium on evictions set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expires at the end of the year…”[2]
 
“Despite a nationwide moratorium ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a few remaining state and local restrictions, evictions are ticking up across the United States. If Congress does not approve emergency rental and other assistance before the end of the year, today’s trickle of displaced tenants will become a flood that would be unprecedented for its size and speed….
 
“‘The eviction crisis we are facing right now is historic,’ says Diane Yentel, head of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a social-policy organization in Washington. ‘If government doesn’t intervene, we’re looking at the very real possibility of tens of millions of people losing their homes this winter during this height of the coronavirus spread.’” [3]
 
“Just before the coronavirus struck, 35 million Americans, 11 million of them children, experienced food insecurity, the lowest figure in two decades. This year, those numbers are projected to reach 54 million and 18 million respectively. In 2018, 4% of American adults reported that at least some members of their family did not have enough to eat; by July 2020, that figure had hit 11%...
 
“The SNAP increases… now under discussion in Congress would add less than one dollar to a four-person family’s maximum daily benefit.”[4]
 
“In what is traditionally a season of celebration, less than half of US households with children feel ‘very confident’ about having enough money to afford the food needed over the next month, according to the US Census Bureau’s latest pandemic survey. A staggering 5.6m households struggled to put enough food on the table in the past week.
 
“Overall food insecurity has doubled since last year due to record unemployment and underemployment rates. For families with children, hunger is three times higher than in 2019, according to analysis by Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, director of the non-partisan Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University….
 
“Hunger is not new in America. Even before the pandemic, 35 million people relied on food banks every year, according to Feeding America. But the pandemic has been catastrophic – despite initial lauded federal interventions such as the stimulus cheques and enhanced unemployment benefit. As many as 54 million people could experience hunger this year, including a quarter of all children.”[5]
 
This is only a miniscule sampling of the true and godly witness we can bring against America’s wickedly guilty ruling elite.
 
Congressional and Senatorial purveyors of murder and misers of charity, along with their anti-Christ followers, will often dress up their persecution and hatred of their vulnerable fellow citizens in the garb of anti-socialistic dogma[6] and “fiscal responsibility.” But, even if such dress were not obscenely see-through, exposing their naked selfishness, the lie of their fake expressions of virtue are revealed through their immoral and active labors to “buy up armies and navies and reign with blood and horror on the earth.” They can’t declare themselves virtuous anti-socialists by refusing to care for the vulnerable, and, at the same time, spend hundreds of billions of dollars on military procurements that are unnecessary for national defense and serve only to murder vulnerable, defenseless non-American peoples the globe over.
 
If they wish me, for one, to buy the faux virtue of their anti-socialism and fiscal conservatism, they will need to strip off their harlot’s little black dress of violent and murderous deeds. If they can find nearly a trillion dollars to defend a nation with few viable enemies, they can find a few hundreds of billions of dollars to defend their own nation’s vulnerable citizens. Otherwise, they become butchers, cannibals slaughtering and devouring not only of the world’s innocent, but their own. Such deviants are only worthy to be damned to hell.
 
 

   bullets for bread

In my series of homilies on the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,”[7] I argue that, rather than representing a single, one-off individual or era, each horse and its rider represents a pattern of human attitudes and behavior that has been repeated many times by many individuals and nations over every age of world history.
 
To be brief, this pattern[8] demonstrates how individual and national desires to “conquer” or dominate other individuals and nations (first horse, white, and rider) leads to the breach of peace and the propagation of war and killing/murder (second horse, red, and rider). The absence of peace that is the result of unholy desires for dominance, and the attending war and killing/murder leads to economic disruptions—disruptions that disproportionately impact vulnerable populations (third horse, black, and rider). The absence of peace, the propagation of war and violent death, and the consequent economic disruptions they bring lead to the spiraling out of control of violent death and the damning of the souls of both perpetrator and victim of the predictable chaos (fourth horse, pale, and rider).
 
For the purposes of this Mad State post, we limit our comments to the third seal’s horse, black, and its rider. Here the rider measures out wheat and barely (the latter an inferior grain for making bread) at severely inflated prices. The cost for these basic necessities is so high that survival, especially for the poor, is most uncertain if not unlikely. The reason food prices are inflated is to be found in the nature of war, especially in the ancient world. Attacking forces maraud and destroy crops. Food producers and distributors leave farms and business for the safety of secluded areas. Opposing troops trample crops to the ground as they wage battles. Innocent, non-combatant civilians suffer.
 
All of this familiar to ancient populations. It is familiar today in many parts of the world. More often than not, it is humans themselves that cause famine and hunger rather than too conveniently blamed climatic factors. In addition to the proceeding factors leading to economic disruption brought on by war, one other should be mentioned. Defending forces must be provisioned and fed. Such provisioning and feeding draws additional resources away from the general population.
 
This latter cause of vulnerable populations going uncared for by their own government is at work in today’s America. Even if America’s wrong Right cared a lick about and wanted to assist the nation’s most vulnerable citizens—which it does not for the fake dogmatic reasons mentioned above—it is unable to do so because of the resources it so unwisely and wastefully devotes to defending the most naturally secure nation in the world history—a “defense” that, it turns out, is nothing but institutionalized murder and violent mayhem the globe over.
 
 

   conclusion and execration

But, just as Satan warned us about his intention to buy up armies and navies to reign with blood and horror on the earth, the Revelator warned us about the consequences of the sort of unremitting warmongering in which America has engaged itself over the past seventy years. Not only is the nation’s militarism guilty of murder and mayhem the globe over, but the political leaders who fund the satanic enterprise commit violence against its own citizens as they waste resources that might have been used to care for their own citizens on murderous pursuits.
 
Given the fact that America’s political class have been warned, both by the power-hungry Satan and the inspired Revelator, one questions whether there is any retribution upon them that could be sufficiently harsh in either its character or duration.
 
Make no mistake about it, that day and that retribution will come.
 
Until that day, I will hope and pray that the faithless government officials who, in lieu of defending the vulnerable poor whom they despise, persecute, and abandon, fill the already stuffed oversized wallets and feed the insatiable appetite of America’s military industrial complex choke on the metallic bullets they produce. I will pray that Mary’s insight into the meaning of the babe that grew in her womb will finally and happily come to pass.
 
“He hath shewed strength with his arm;
   he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats,
   and exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things;
   and the rich he hath sent empty away.”[9]
 
Yes, Lord, let America’s political leaders eat and choke on the bullets they needlessly produce to starve their own people.
 
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.


[1] “54 Million Americans Are Projected to Be Food Insecure by End of Year,” Ramon Menon, truthout.org

[2] “The Senate’s Latest COVID Stimulus Won’t Solve the Hunger and Housing Crisis,” Mike Ludwig, truthout.org

[3] "'Am I going to be evicted?' Answer now may hinge on Congress," Belsie and Roll, csmonnitor.com

[4] “54 Million Americans Are Projected to Be Food Insecure by End of Year,” Ramon Menon, truthout.org

[5] “‘No end in sight': hunger surges in America amid a spiraling pandemic,” Lakhani and Singh, theguardian.com
 
[6] They can also dress it up by appeal to the “founding fathers” and their constitution. This, of course, is not so nakedly false, as the founders’ constitution was meant, above all else to safeguard the wealth of a few white men and keep wealth from being too widely distributed. So much for their “inspiration.”

[7] The reader can find these in the homily archive located at the bottom of the “Homily” page of this site.

[8] Found in Revelation 6.1-8

[9] Luke 1.51-53