The wind comes off the lake cold sometimes, even in June, whistling through the gaps in the elevated train tracks down on Wells Street. It’s the kind of morning where people duck their heads, hurrying to get inside, some to the high-rise trading floors with the panoramic views, others to the windowless cubicles where the fluorescent lights hum like an old refrigerator, and a few to the break rooms of the machine shops, clutching thermoses of drip coffee.
The other day, I was listening to one of those immaculate talking-head analysts on a premium financial network. He was wearing a tie that cost more than a machinist’s weekly grocery budget, speaking about the Middle East. With a straight face and a practiced air of academic detachment, he remarked that the regime in Iran “cares very little for the suffering of their own population.”
I had to chuckle, though it was a bitter sound. How short-sighted do you have to be to look across the ocean to spot a ruling elite that doesn’t care about its people?
You don’t need a passport to find an establishment that values the donor over the constituent. You just need to look at our own neighborhood clinic, or rather, the lack of one.
The United States spends more on healthcare per capita than any nation on God’s green earth, yet we sit at the bottom of the ledger among developed nations for actual health outcomes. Infant mortality, life expectancy, the numbers don’t lie. For thirty years, through five or six presidential administrations of every political stripe, the folks in charge have consistently looked past the person in the waiting room to catch the eye of the pharmaceutical lobbyist in the hallway.
But there’s a newer, more cynical twist to this old American hustle, and it’s being run by the grand poobahs of the Trump administration, while the corporate evangelicals line up behind dear leader Trump.
“They’ve taken a first-century carpenter and turned him into a corporate logo for a country club that doesn’t allow outsiders.”
I talked to a fellow named Pete a few days ago, a retired steamfitter from over on the South Side. Strong union man, hands like gnarled oak roots. He tells me he votes straight ticket Republican now. He’s got the hat, he’s got the bumper sticker.
“Studs,” he says to me, tapping his chest, “it’s about standing up for Christian values. This country’s lost its moral compass.” So I asked him, mild as you please, “Pete, what did Jesus say about the immigrant?” Pete looked away, watched a city bus hiss past. “Well, we gotta have laws, Studs.”
That’s the core of it right there.
The modern conservative movement has decoupled Christianity from the actual, living words of the gospel and turned it into a cultural identity card. It’s a tribal badge. It’s not about the Sermon on the Mount anymore; it’s about owning the franchise. If you actually open that old Book, the one they like to hold up outside boarded-up churches for the cameras, the mythology they claim to revere becomes an indictment of everything they do.
Let’s look at the ledger:
| The Myth | The Policy |
| “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” (Matthew 25) | Cutting food stamps for families, eliminating school lunch programs, and installing razor wire in the rivers to keep the tired and the poor from finding a safe bank. |
| “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10) | Passing trillions in tax breaks for the billionaires while telling the kid working two retail jobs that minimum wage increases will ruin the economy. |
The greed, the systemic hatred of the vulnerable, the profound, navel-gazing selfishness, it isn’t just a departure from Christian mythology. It is its direct antithesis. Jesus didn’t use power to enforce compassion; he used compassion to challenge power. He spent his time with the sick, the broken, and the outcasts of the Roman Empire, not with the high priests who cut deals with Caesar to maintain their tax-exempt status.
Today’s MAGA movement are terrified of a cultural decline, terrified of losing their place at the head of the table, so they’ve traded trust for capture. They want the state to enforce their identity because they don’t trust their own gospel to survive on its own merits. Whether you’re sitting in an ergonomic chair typing spreadsheets until your eyes blur, or standing on a concrete floor running a lathe, you know when you’re being conned.
You know the difference between a man who cares about your soul and a man who just wants your compliance.
The tragic comedy of our time is watching millions of decent people buy into a theology of scarcity run by multi-millionaire hucksters. They’ve been told that to love God, they must hate their neighbor. And that is a gospel that didn’t come from heaven, it was manufactured in a boardroom, designed to keep us looking at each other’s differences while the house is being cleaned out.