The Modern Blood Cult?
Author Michael Steinberg writing for MR Zine wonders if blood sacrifice has really left our modern world and if the new cult of the sacred soldier is the replacement.
“Perhaps we have relocated the ritual instead of abolishing it. We are reasonable, kind-hearted, and modern folk, so we evicted blood lust and blood guilt from our mosques, synagogues, and churches and turned it over to specialists. It has become the province of the military. The military, in turn, has acquired the charisma of the sacred. This would explain the otherwise mysterious idealization of the American armed forces…The army, Kipling’s thin red line, are the virtuosi of death, a band of brothers linked in sacred loyalty by their common task of killing and dying on behalf of the rest of us. Our social and political lives then shrink in proportion until nothing is left but the bare obligation to Support Our Troops. Any attempt at building human ties apart from that empty uniformity is as welcome as heresy was to mediaeval Rome.”
But our modern (and perhaps newly sacred) military is honored, and their killing (and being killed) sacred only when the high-priests of the political machine are ready for the camera close-up. Their sacred status lasts only so long as they mouth the right phrases and kill the right enemies. Soldiers who question the motivations of those who send them to the killing, or grouse about their meager benefits after the killing is done are quickly ignored, demonized or silenced.
Perhaps in the end America is the land of easy faith and easy action. Our soldiers are sacred but not so sacred that we want to hear from them after the latest round of yellow-ribbon fever has died down. Faith is expected to bring you rewards instead of challenging you. The easy path of intolerance is exploited while the more difficult road of coexistence is pushed to the margins. I think the one thing that would improve our existence is to stop looking for the easy or popular answer and instead look for the best one.
One response so far
No blood cult?! I was under the impression that Catholics drank blood and ate flesh every time they took Communion. The military is an essential part of the Big Daddy Death Cult(s).