Encouraging Wild Religious Beliefs Among Those Trained To Kill
Pete Hegseth has launched an Office of Religious Affairs in the US Military that will administer religious tests for people holding the most grave public office of all: Soldiers who are trained to kill and destroy.
Meanwhile, the Christian Nationalism of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been shown in a new study to be associated with cognitive dullness. What could possibly go wrong?
Full Transcript:
Welcome back to Stop Christian Nationalism. This is the first episode of the eighth season of Stop Christian Nationalism.
The 7th season ended back in May of this year. It's now October. I needed a bit of a break from this because, you know, it's disheartening to see what's happening in our country, the United States of America.
The USA used to, at least in theory, be a place of freedom, where you had the right to believe whatever you wanted to believe, to associate with the people you wanted to associate with, to say what you wanted to say, and the government was supposed to be neutral, you know, and it was supposed to be a representation of the American people.
The American people are diverse culturally. There have always been non-Christians in the United States of America. What do you think Native American groups were? Do you think they were all praising Jesus back in 1776? We had Muslims, we had Jews.
The USA is not supposed to be a Christian nation. There is not the word Christian or Bible or Jesus, or God, anywhere in the Constitution. In fact, the Constitution says you're not supposed to have any religious test for public office, but boy, now do we have a religious test for public office.
There is no more deadly public office than to be commissioned in the military. To have any position in the U.S. Military is a really serious thing. Whether you like going to war or not, we can all agree that is a really serious responsibility.
You give somebody access to guns, and bombs, and even more deadly weapons than that. We have people controlling killer robots in the United States military. When you give people access to that, you want to make sure that those people are responsible, that they are mentally healthy, that they are in touch with reality.
Think about a nightmare scenario. Is having a portion of the population that has, beliefs, ideas that are unhinged from reality, fantasies about magical beings, and prophecies, and they believe that they have a right to control the country, does it seem like a good idea to train those people how to use nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, bombs?
No way.
What if that group decided that it wanted to take control of the military and then train the members of the military in its ideology. That would be pretty serious, right?
Well, that is what has happened.
Pete Hegseth has given one of his speeches. You know when Pete Hegseth gives a speech it's not going to be boring, that's for sure.
Pete Hegseth announced at the end of last month, just about a week ago, that there is going to be a new office in the military, the Office of Religious Affairs. You may remember that in the 1st amendment, it says there's not going to be any establishment of religion, no government establishment of religion, but now here we have a U.S. Military Office of Religious Affairs.
Wait until you hear about what the mission of the Office of Religious Affairs is.
Its mission is to assess “spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience” across the military.
What on earth is spiritual fitness? What is spiritual readiness? What is spiritual resilience? Can anyone define those things?
Spiritual refers to spirits. Christianity is a religion that believes in the literal reality of spirits, of angels, of unicorns, and dragons, and sea monsters, and uh, ghosts, and um, oh, angels too, and also gods. Other kinds of strange creatures are implied.
The idea is, and you will hear Christians say this a lot, some more than others, that they believe that they are at war with demonic forces. You know what else they say? The Christian nationalists say that Democrats are demon, that liberals are demons, or at least in league with the demons.
So, you may see where I have a little bit of concern. Spiritual fitness in a military that is designated by its civilian leadership to be a Christian organization means that you're a good Christian. It means that you’re a good Christian, according to the ideology of the military leadership, which is Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth has crusader tattoos and once chanted, in a bar, “Kill all Muslims. Kill all Muslims!” over and over and over, again. That is who is determining spiritual readiness in the US military.
But, rejoining reality, How are soldiers supposed to be ready for spirits? Are they just supposed to be praying a lot?
In his speech, Hegseth talked about putting on “the full armor of God”. Earlier this year, the United States of America launched an unprovoked war against Iran, and months and months later, though they told us it was just going to be maybe a week or two, we are still stuck in that war.
That war has resulted in American deaths and Iranian deaths, a huge number of children killed. The United States has now been accused of war crimes as a part of that war.
Pete Hegseth has declared that the purpose of that war is to promote Christianity, that he's doing it because it's what he thinks his spiritual leader who is a dead prophet who has been dead for thousands of years, but he says has come back from the dead to become his spiritual leader, has given him instructions. Those instructions are to go to war.
Now there is an office in the U.S. Military that is going to be dedicated to spreading this ideology of holy war.
What could go wrong?
Well, a lot of things can go wrong.
Unlike Christians, I do not pretend to know the future. I don't believe that there is any sacred destiny. I don't believe that there are any prophecies that tell us what is going to happen in the future, but a lot of things for sure, could go wrong.
This is especially so given the context of a study that was published just recently in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. The author of this study was Samuel Perry, from the university of Oklahoma.
The study looked at the cognitive abilities of people who have Christian nationalist ideology. The study found that not only are they illiterate in history and science and have lower educational achievement, (that's not necessarily cognitive ability, but it's associated with it) but the other thing is that they have lower language skills. They recognized fewer words. They are not able to articulate ideas or understand ideas to the extent that other people who are not Christian nationalists are able to do.
In other words, Christian Nationalists just aren't as intelligent as other Americans. That means they're more gullible.
I don't think that that's a genetic predisposition. These are not people who are just born that way, but they grow up in a tradition that discourages independent thought.
You know what other organization does that? The United States military. It's well known as a place where you're just supposed to follow orders.
And what can happen in a U.S. Military, led by an impulsive person who is quite willing to start a war that is totally unprovoked? What else could happen with that US military increasingly occupying American cities, as we approach an important election?
Bad things could happen. Really bad things could happen.
Spiritual training, spiritual resilience, spiritual readiness, is nothing more than the willingness to accept gobbledygook, and wild assertions about magic and other leaps of faith without evidence. Training people also how to kill.
In just about one month, we have an election coming up.
No, it's not a presidential election, but it's an election where we can take back one branch of the U.S. Federal government.
Right now, all 3 branches of the United States, federal government are controlled by extremist, Christian Nationalists.
We can take back the U.S. Congress. Both houses are within reach.
This is not to say that, you know, just because you get a Democrat in, that they're going to vote against Christian nationalism, there are Christian Nationalist Democrats too. So, it is an uphill battle, but right now we have extreme Christian nationalist in charge and refusing to stand up against fascism and against Christian nationalism.
We have a Congress that put Pete Hegseth in charge of the U.S. Military, putting us all in literal danger.
So I want to encourage each and every one of you to go out and vote. Vote for the candidate who is the most likely to stand up against Christian nationalism. Vote for the candidate who is the most likely to impeach Pete Hegseth, and hey, Donald Trump.
You may have been told that impeachment is just not a possibility, but that's not true. We still have the rule of law.
We still need to try. If we stop trying, there's no hope at all.