Our troubled heritage

It seems white supremacy is in the national DNA. Christian white settlers employed it to justify occupying the land of Native Americans and enslaving Africans. The American Constitution institutionalized it, and the gene morphed into racism with the science inspired by Charles Darwin. Some try to exorcise it, but it remains latent and easily aroused.

Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is an acquired trait. It came when the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s replaced the New Deal and WWII ethos of community and shared wealth, responsibility and sacrifice with the radical individualism of F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, popularized by the novels of Ayn Rand.

National angst descended upon the country with the loss of postwar global hegemony and loss of manufacturing jobs and social equity in a globalizing economy mismanaged by neoliberals. National dystopia followed soon thereafter with the election of Donald Trump. Trump faced contempt from a neoliberal elite who failed to take him seriously; but when he won in 2016, he gained their support and control of the GOP by tax cuts, deregulation and transforming class anger at the country’s monied into evangelical and white-supremacist anger toward non-Christians and non-whites … especially such immigrants. It’s Trump, neoliberals, evangelicals and white supremacists who now define American greatness.

Sadly, when a raging biblical prophet is desperately needed to express righteous fury at the follies of man and the ruin of God’s creation, Christianity is fragmented and marginalized, if not itself contributing to the present dystopia through moral uncertainty. DAVID SIXBEY Flippin