The fusion of Christianity and capitalism

These assertions triggered some thoughts: "America isn't a Christian nation. It is a capitalist nation that has used Christianity as a tool for profit and it continues to do so."

The statement is highly consistent with historical, sociological, and legal trajectory of the US. It is reductive but captures a dominant reality: American Christianity and American capitalism have fused. The latter usually shapes and controls the former. In particular, the current legal trajectory of American Christianity is it imposition by the six Christian theocrats that dominate the USSC. They are well on their way to imposing Christian religious belief and rights above all other rights. That is theocracy, the opposite of secularism. 

Forgotten and distorted history

As is always prudent when thinking about unregulated capitalism, an inherently immoral, authoritarian endeavor, keeping an eye on where power and wealth tends to flow helps keep less distorted reality in sight. Contrary to the popular narrative of a linear religious founding, the modern concept of America as a unified "Christian Nation" was significantly engineered in the mid-20th century as a political weapon against the New Deal. The capitalists of the time, just like the ones now, hated the New Deal.

Historians have documented the rise of the Christian Libertarian Alliance. In the 1930s and 40s, corporate leaders operating under the National Association of Manufacturers allied with conservative clergy to rebrand unregulated capitalism as a core tenet of Christianity.

Those elites didn't just reframe capitalism, they reframed freedom. Their alliance sought to dismantle the New Deal's freedom from want, which implied government welfare. That was to be replaced by freedom of contract and freedom of unregulated markets. By linking capitalism to God's will, they successfully framed government regulation not just as bad economics, but as pagan statism and other very bad things.

The result was no surprise. Integrating Under God into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and In God We Trust as the national motto in 1956, were not returns to 1776. They were but Cold War-era branding exercises that sanctified the American capitalist economic system against godless communism.

The claim that Christianity has been used as a tool for profit is most visibly validated by the systematic transformation of religious holidays into engines of consumer spending. In the 19th century, Department stores like Macy's, and Wanamaker's transformed Christmas from a religious feast with a rowdy carnival to a domestic, gift-giving mandate. Santa Claus was standardized by Thomas Nast and Coca-Cola marketing to drive 4th quarter retail solvency.

Similarly, in the 1870s, milliners and clothiers converted Easter from a religious observance of the resurrection of Jesus into a spectacle of new spring clothing. The Easter Parade was started as a display of new spring clothing, not a religious procession. In the 1980s, capitalism sink its claws into Halloween and transformed it from a localized prank night into a multi-billion dollar season by candy manufacturers and costume retailers. It's now the second-largest commercial holiday.

Sacred rest vs. sacred retail hours

Arguably, the repeal of nationwide Sunday Blue Laws is the smoking gun for the dominance of capitalism over Christianity. When the religious imperative to keep the Sabbath holy clashed with the commercial imperative to maximize retail hours, the laws were repealed across the country. The Christian Nation effectively voted that shopping was more sacred than holy rest.

Regarding the flow of power and wealth

Finally, what about the flow power and wealth? Also no surprise there. 

In recent decades, the language of religious freedom has been weaponized to transfer power from the public sphere to private corporations. The USSC invented the corporate "soul" in its 2014 Hobby Lobby decision. The USSC’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was a critical turning point. By granting closely held corporations rights previously reserved for human beings, including the right to a religious conscience, the court allowed commercial entities to opt out of a number of federal laws. The law that triggered that lawsuit specifically, was the Obamacare's contraception mandate.

The Hobby Lobby decision granted corporate owners commercial interest the power to override the public interest, e.g., universal healthcare access, by claiming a religious shield. It is not It is not merely the case that the state is becoming religious. More importantly, corporations are adopting the legal privileges of religion to evade state regulation. and social obligations.

Circling back to the opening assertions, America isn't a Christian nation. It is a capitalist nation that has used Christianity as a tool for profit and it continues to do so, one can argue that the statements are accurate from a both a sociological and a historical perspective. Yes indeed, millions of Americans practice a genuine, non-commercial faith. But that does not change the fact that the institutional function of Christianity in American society has been that of a chaplain and quiet enforcer supporting capitalism's wealth and power goals. 

And us deceived and betrayed taxpayers are supporting and empowering it, whether we know it or not, or if we do, whether we like it or not.

Sources: 

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030/ 

https://newrepublic.com/article/121564/gods-and-profits-how-capitalism-and-christianity-aligned-america

https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/sunday-blue-laws/

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7756407M/Consumer_Rites

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/122132/the-battle-for-christmas-by-stephen-nissenbaum/

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/682/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00213624.2019.1594528

Exactly what did DOGE do? Exactly what MAGA intended it to do

The NYT and other sources have reported on the cost-benefit of DOGE. Although the DOGE initiative was billed as cost cutting and saving, that was never a credible description of intent. Instead, it looked like and actually was primarily an effort to intimidate federal workers, and begin to disrupt and weaken public interest functions such as protections for consumers, workers, federal employees and the environment. And as usual for MAGA operations, Trump and MAGA elites lied about it. One analysis found actual savings were about 3% of what DOGE claimed.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk from January to May 2025, claimed to have saved the federal government between $150 billion and $199 billion through widespread cuts to contracts, grants, and federal employment. However, comprehensive analysis by The New York Times, the Cato Institute, the Partnership for Public Service, and other authoritative sources reveals the claims are false. Federal spending actually increased during DOGE's tenure. Many of its largest savings claims were demonstrable lies. DOGE probably cost taxpayers more than it saved when accounting for lost tax revenue, rehiring expenses, and productivity losses.

Project 2025 explicitly outlined plans to dismantle federal agencies and the administrative state before DOGE was announced. Russell Vought, a key DOGE architect, was a Project 2025 author who explicitly stated the goal was to put federal workers in trauma in 2023. In a 2023 speech Vought, now the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, attacked federal workers explicitly, saying "We want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains"​, "We want to put them in trauma"​, and "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected".

The obvious problems with bureaucrats doing their jobs is that they get in the way of dictatorship and kleptocracy. They clearly need to go.

Thus, Project 2025, Trump's history, and the broader MAGA agenda made the actual anti-public interest intent clear from the beginning. Taking the "cost-cutting" rhetoric at face value was and still is irrational when all evidence pointed to MAGA's anti-public interest goals.

From the Trump and elite MAGA point of view, it was MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! 👍 for DOGE.

How a person sees things can depend on their point of view. 

Trump, with his cruelty and lawlessness

A couple of months ago, a post here focused on reporting about the fall of CBS News to the authoritarian, kleptocratic MAGA dark side. At that time, Bari Weiss, a vehemently pro-Trump, radical Zionist propagandist was put in charge by a pro-Trump billionaire's fortune and power, David Ellis. Last Sunday, Weiss censored reporting about Trump's cruelty and lawlessness in a segment that was to be aired on 60 Minutes. 

Weiss censored the segment because it plainly shows exactly what Trump is doing. At least at the moment, the segment can be viewed at this link. CBS has been trying hard to protect Trump by blocking this video to hide from the public what Trump is doing. This video may disappear.

Reasonable people should be furious with Trump, MAGA elites and their morally rotted demagoguery

Various sources are reporting that the corrupt, lying Trump administration released a faked photo allegedly from the Epstein files. MAGA's intent is to smear Democrats with a fake photo. The reporting says that the photo was taken years ago at a Democratic Party fundraiser. The photo shows Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and the redacted images of two children. The redactions were allegedly "to protect their identity" the children's identities as victims of Epstein sex trafficking. The reporting says that it's a lie. The reporting claims that children were Diana Ross' kids and they were at a Democratic Party fundraiser, not sex trafficked minors in some hellhole sex den.

Here's the reason for fury. I was unable to find the original photo online, so I have no way to verify that MAGA scumbags working for Trump lied about the origin of the photo. It is perfectly believable that Trump and his morally rotted scumbags would try such a dirty trick. But given decades of constant disinformation that MAGA and its predecessors have poisoned American society with, I want to see the original, unredacted photo for myself as proof that MAGA scumbags tried to lie to us by smearing Clinton and Democrats. 

One can rationally be furious at years of MAGA's shameless, morally rotted lying and slandering. That created the conditions for deep distrust. Also, years of failure by the mainstream media's poor quality reporting is just enough to tip too many people into distrust of most or nearly all of what the MSM reports.

Absent the proof of seeing the original photo, one is left to form an opinion without that evidence. The track record of constant, shameless mendacity of Trump and his MAGA scumbags is crystal clear. Yes, they lie to us all the time. So despite too many inexcusable MSM failures, one can still reasonably believe the MSM's reporting that Trump is yet again again insulting us by lying to us with his faked photo. 

But, take that belief with a grain of salt. 

Irrational cynicism or rational skepticism?

With a "no conclusion without primary evidence" mindset, it's a matter of of intellectual humility and "evidence‑first" thinking. Some experts now argue is necessary to resist demagoguery and motivated reasoning from any side. One can argue that fury at this situation is appropriate. 

The erosion of public trust is not just random cultural drift. The state of moral rot in American politics is the result of years of bad choices by parties, media corporations, and demagogic actors who accumulate wealth and power from a public wandering in a permanent epistemic fog. As Steve Banon eloquently puts it, the demagogues' mind fogging tactic is called flooding the zone with shit.​ That society-bamboozling tactic dates back at least to the 1800s with the rise of mass media sources. Recent research on demagogues and social media reveals that demagogues weaponize platforms by constantly generating controversies, lies, and outrages so that fact‑checking cannot keep up and citizens lose any stable sense of what is real.

The demagogue's goal

From a pro-democracy point of view, refusing to draw strong conclusions without seeing the original evidence is not irrational cynicism. It is rational, protective skepticism in a deliberately poisoned society.

Whose fault is all of this? My estimate:

Years of demagoguery by anti-democracy special interests (Fox News, etc.), MAGA and MAGA predecessors: ~45%

Years of MSM reporting failure: ~20% 

Unwarranted public ignorance and false beliefs: ~35%

Obviously, opinions will differ.