Enemies Within

Guest Opinion

By Walt Wood | Aug. 15, 2026

Since our nation’s birth, Americans have cast one another as worthy winners and hapless losers. Embracing these roles leaves millions pursuing an American Dream they will never realize. Countless automatons worship a false prophet who preaches money lust above all. How else can losers become winners in the American econosphere? Attaining financial independence is the ultimate goal, after all—any true American’s highest calling.

It started at our founding with slaves, the original “losers” captured and purchased to service the “winners,” owners of people and plantations. Ever since, we’ve been locked in a tragedy that persists to this day. Through the Civil War and subsequent horrors, we’ve struggled to form “a more perfect union,” knowing we could only improve, then stumble. The human condition disallows perfection.

Some disagree. “The final perfection… a model of perfection in every sphere of life, will stand like a polar star above mankind” (italics mine). That was the Fuhrer describing his National Socialist State in 1936. The unkillable Nazi worldview of “final perfection” still carries the price tag of absolute loyalty, violent brutality, and the biological “purity” of the white race.

Today, in America, we have resurrected that fascistic nightmare. History repeats itself as complicit taxpayers enable a corrupt government to build internment camps on American soil, while actively killing non-whites around the globe through the destruction of USAID, the decimation of Gazan and Lebanese Arabs, extra-judicial killings of brown people in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, murders committed by ICE agents against innocent immigrants and citizens alike, and finally, the illegal war against the brown—and conveniently Muslim—people of Iran. Who’s next? Panama? Cuba? What in God’s name are we doing?!

It’s up to all of us, of course, to decide whether we want to continue this 250-year experiment in the multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural pursuit of civilization, or chase instead the barbarous vision of exclusionary, perfectionistic, disinfected dominance over those damned with “inferior blood.”

As a Christian of conscience, I tell myself I am at odds with empowering and enriching those who already have power and riches—the “winners,” while abandoning the downtrodden and disenfranchised “losers.” There is nothing Christlike in congressional action that dismantles progress made in the humane treatment of fellow human beings while simultaneously siphoning the wealth of taxpayers into the pockets of billionaires.

But hold on a second, Hypocrite. Aren’t you yourself a winner? Your investments are humming along quite nicely. Judge not, lest ye be judged, Sinner. Alas, I must confess, the autocratic regime is benefiting my investor class. Meanwhile, the great unwashed, currently crushed under the weight of unregulated capitalism, struggle to survive.

Millions lose ground daily while my financial portfolio grows. I’m not struggling. The nationalist faux-Christian white supremacists now running the country are serving my interests. Their vision leaves the undesirables—“sub-human vermin”—in the dust, and the profits filter down to me.

I should just ignore the spectacle—let it play itself out. I’m safe, here in my 20-acre sanctuary in the woods, out of danger, out of range of drones and missiles. I’ll just lounge around in my comfy cozy house, safe and sound, complacent and complicit—and count my money. But hold on there, Pilgrim. You cannot serve two masters, God and mammon, and call yourself a Christian.

Christ spoke of loving our enemies. Turns out, we are the enemies, refusing to share the bounty and grace of God with the underprivileged. If we’re honest, we really just love ourselves, socked away in our spiritual vacuums. But what are we to do, if we expect to … to what? Avoid hell and get into heaven somehow on the big day? Forgive ourselves for enabling the exploitation, demonization, and elimination of non-whites, immigrants, and the indigent?

I believe true Christians want to care for their neighbors—all of them. An improved American Dream means peace and prosperity for everyone. If we’re serious about righteous living, let’s return to the 1st century Christian communities, wherein the cooperative model of love for one another was practiced on a daily basis. They shared everything they possessed with everyone, promoting the promise of Christ’s witness for humanity.

Empathy is strength! Generosity is love in action! We need to stop treating each other as competitors in some arbitrary zero-sum money game. Snap out of it! Embrace instead the truth of who we actually are: Children of God. Each one of us is a sacred gift from our maker to this world and to one another.

Our Lord Jesus opposes criminals foisting mayhem upon God’s creation, and calls forth his disciples to affirm his eternal love for all of humanity, exemplified in his life and ultimate sacrifice. How will Christians of conscience answer that call and share that love in this moment?

Walt Wood is a retired mailman, current Lutheran, and essayist focused on political philosophy and the intersection of religion and democracy.