It doesn’t matter how loud you scream in your opposition to religion being intertwined with politics. The decision has already been made. For those of you who thought perhaps the Democratic party had finally woken up to the idea that us ‘nones’ are an important enough minority that our desire to have a true separation of church and state would influence their policy. We were tantalized with the possibility of a political platform that made no unnecessary mention of God, but this was all a smoke screen. Democrats had already shown their spinelessness by including a passage about the important of faith, and reaffirmed their commitment to fund, with taxpayer money, the spread of all that fucking nonsense.

This, I could have stomached. It was already an unbearable intrusion, but I understood where it came from: Democrats are always pushed to religious extremes when conservatives shake their tree a little by claiming they’re a bunch of godless commies hell bent on destroying America. So in an effort to try and double down on crazy, they caved and decided the best way to lead a nation is to look like weak, spineless cowards.

The decision to include God or Israel in their platform was put to a false vote in an effort to pretend the majority of attendees agreed with the motion. The prompter was already telling you what the verdict was, but their inability to convincingly pass this shit through only goes to demonstrate the fact that us ‘nones’ have no real political party. It clarifies the fact it matters little how much we bother to scream and shout our discontent: we will be ignored. The decision to include religion in government (and sending a big gigantic finger to Palestine) had already been made, and fuck anyone who disagreed. Anyone hoping Obama had nothing to do with it would be disappointed to know the request was apparently his. So much for being on our side.

That’s what I find so terrifying about America. Making progress is impossible when it’s so easy to be dragged down into the mud. You can’t even honor the very first amendment in your own constitution, for pasta’s sake!

It wasn’t always like this. Back in the day, Presidents like James Garfield were gutsy enough to say the separation of church and state should be absolute. He even called on churches to be taxed. This obviously popular idea might perhaps explain why he was assassinated after less than a year in office, shot by – you guessed it – a crazy preacher.

So what do we do? We’re obviously powerless to stop it in our current form, and the system has shown itself as essentially corrupt. How can we hope to make change if this is true?

I believe the problem has to the systematic dismantling of religion from all OTHER aspects of our lives before we can hope to get it out of politics. That system is old, controlled by old people, who frankly don’t have the interest of future generations in mind. They are slow to act, and quick to condemn. Religion has infiltrated itself in government in almost every form (in the military, in office, and in the Supreme Court), and expunging it now seems almost impossible. With so much financially at stake (faith based organizations get more than simply tax cuts) you can bet that money will go a long way to protect their own interests. Is there a solution to this madness? Will we ever be able to make headway against this entrenched enemy?