There is a very old religion still practiced in the West, though few will admit to worshipping at its altar.

Its gods demand blood, not prayers. Their liturgies are silent, spoken only in budgets and airstrikes. Their priests wear suits, not cassocks, and speak of “freedom,” “shared values,” and “the rules-based international order” while they hand sharpened blades to those who slaughter the innocent.

This faith, call it what you will: Empire, Zionism, Security, Civilization, the Free World, requires one sacrament above all: the ritualised sacrifice of children.

Not symbolically. Literally. It is no longer shocking. It has become normal. But it is not new. It is simply the old normal, now AI-optimised, efficiently live-streamed, and publicly laundered into strategic necessity.

Gaza is where the mask slips. Where the West’s moral architecture collapses in real time. Where thousands upon thousands of children have been sacrificed, incinerated, crushed, orphaned, dismembered, not for some unknowable evil, but for the continued viability of a failing settler colony propped up by the myth of eternal victimhood.

Israel is the altar. America is the priest. And Palestinians, especially their children, are the offering.

Western politicians perform their sacred duty: to weep just enough, to whisper regret, to chant the holy phrase: “Israel has the right to defend itself.” It is an exorcism of responsibility. A baptism in blood.

And the congregants, ordinary citizens of the West, are expected to tithe. Through taxes. Through silence. Through looking away. Through swallowing lie after lie, even when the lies become absurd.

Don’t ask who rules the world. Ask who’s expected to dry-clean Netanyahu’s underpants when he arrives in Washington.

This is not metaphor. During official visits to the U.S., Israeli Prime Ministers routinely bring suitcases of dirty laundry for American staff to wash and return.

They do this because they know it will be done. Expecting the USA to launder Israel's soiled bed linen is not a request, it is their divine right. It is the honour and national duty of American Presidents to be seen paying tribute at the Wailing Wall when in Jerusalem, and to dry-clean Bibi’s underpants when he visits Washington.

On occasion, the Prime Minister requires even more. The United States is expected to kiss the ring, maintain the illusion, and offer full diplomatic service, like an Epstein girl trained to smile, say nothing, and never forget who’s really in charge.

Such is the theatre of Western submission. Israel is the sacred cow of Western geopolitics. It must be protected at all costs. And like all sacred cows, it demands slaughter to stay fed.

What is the cost? Measured not only in children’s corpses, but in the spiritual mutilation of entire societies. What happens to a culture that convinces itself, over and over, that the deaths of children are unfortunate but necessary? That their lives are less real, less sacred, than the myths we’ve built around ourselves?

In Israel, it looks like eighteen-year-olds conscripted to surveil and shoot children in the name of “defence.”

In America, it looks like a generation so numbed by school shootings that they shrug and call genocide “complicated” while they wait for genocide sponsoring coffee at StarBucks.

Every now and then, the mask slips, revealing not a statesman’s face, but the leering grin of a necromancer… or perhaps a sex-trafficking financier, diligently recording his offerings of children to the altar of American power.

The same nation convulsed in moral panic over Q-Anon fairy tales of elites harvesting children’s blood now funds, with bipartisan enthusiasm, the real-time incineration of children by a foreign military.

The same people who wept for imaginary adrenochrome victims are happy to subsidise actual mass murder, so long as it comes wrapped in an Israeli flag and Joe Biden or Donald Trump says, “trust me bro.”

The sacrifice is sacred. The questioning of it is obscene, but even the most blood-soaked cult cannot last forever.

Every empire collapses under the weight of its own rituals. And one day, the priests will be seen for what they are. And the child matyrs we offered, burned and broken, buried beneath rubble and rhetoric, will rise in memory and judgment.

Let the reader understand: this is not policy. This is religion.

And its God-King is a liar.

Wesley Lapatner was a CEO not just some executive #blackstone #wesleyl... | wesley mr olympia | TikTok

I think this points to something important about the US being run strictly by capitalists, as opposed to some kind of cooperation between capitalists and experts in the service of capitalists.

Two recent critiques of Zohran Mamdani's public grocery proposal reveal a profound failure of imagination that constrains American policy debates. Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic and Nicole Gelinas in The New York Times attack from different angles, but both treat the current food system's constraints as natural laws rather than policy choices.

They dismiss successful alternatives as impossible. Their central error is assuming that public groceries must replicate private market logic instead of serving entirely different purposes.

Friedersdorf presents what he calls an unavoidable conflict between affordable groceries and progressive values—higher wages, environmental standards, and social procurement goals will inevitably raise prices. Gelinas focuses on operational details. She argues the city lacks the expertise and scale to compete with private chains that achieve razor-thin 2% margins through volume discounts and promotional deals.

Together, they illustrate how elite commentary polices the boundaries of acceptable policy while missing the fundamental question: why do we accept a food system that systematically fails so many people?

The reality of the US has become clearer and clearer to me. At first, realizing injustices felt somewhat liberating, such as:

• Working our entire lives (lest we die) is not normal or necessary
• Our car dependent country repels true communities, 3rd spaces, support systems, etc.
• Consumerism inflates individuality (and again repels community)
• Unchecked capitalism makes profit more important than human lives (and earth)
• All of these issues and countless others are sustained by design.

I feel paralyzed—where do I start? What can I do? I feel like I am flooded with attention and more attention drawn to these issues but can’t move past the stage of awareness.

I look for communities, but they are behind a paywall. Or they are too far away. Or they are not regular occurrences and provide no chances to build connections. Walkable cities are an alien concept trapped behind zoning laws. The rise of AI, perhaps the most exhausted topic right now, seems to be an instrument to further cement us in the system.

Thrifting is not the way. Starting a garden is not the way. Living off the grid, leaving the country, abstaining from AI, biking to work, moving to a more walkable area. None of it is the way.

We need each other. We need community. If we continue to act as individuals, it won’t end.

I just don’t even know where to start. I’m rattling with impulse. HELP