By Curtis Everette Gatewood
“MY “TOUGHEST” SERMON TO A NATION THAT CLAIMS TO BE “TOUGH ON CRIME”” – Curtis E. Gatewood
America spends more of its money on military, police, jails, prisons, youth detention, and mass incarceration than any other nation, by far. This is largely because America’s own propaganda has led gullible voters and citizens to the idea that we are a “nation of laws,” the “world’s police,” and are subsequently the world’s example of being “tough on crime.”
In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact of the matter is, our most deadly and costly wars overseas have been driven by outright lies, war crimes, genocide, greed, White nationalism, bullying, and other evil or hidden agendas.
Additionally, Americans have allowed their most criminal and terrifying presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, W. Bush, Trump, etc., to pretend to be “toughest on crime.” These aforementioned men were all “criminals” themselves, whose “war on crime” was nothing more than a violent and costly “WAR” on Black Americans. I therefore believe our righteous God, who is no fool and is truly “tough on crime,” has said to the aforementioned – “to hell with them.”
Donald J. Trump, who is a modern-day Barabbas, is a known criminal, terrorist, insurrectionist, narcissist, and self-centered pathological liar who is obviously possessed by a demon. Therefore, a justice-centered God who loves the poor and oppressed – God who is “tough on” sin, is likely looking down and saying “to hell with Trump and America” right now.
Jesus, who clearly attached himself to the world’s most oppressed and “the least” powerful (i.e., “the least of these”), is saying to America and its “rich men” – “For what has a man profitted if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?”
As I use my Gospel imagination, I can see Jesus saying to America – “For as much as you have done it unto your enslaved, the descendants of slaves – those you have systematically locked into your prisons, poverty, and hung by your gallos of oppression unjustly, you have done it also unto me [Jesus].” Furthermore, “it would be easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for you to enter my Kingdom.”
Lastly, America, when have you been “tough on crime?” America was “discovered” by a “criminal” pirate who historically led land takings based upon lies, theft, aggression, and violent “crimes” against Red natives. America’s notion of a “superpower” was built economically and criminally by Black slaves.
While America was fighting wars around the globe, you were sinfully carrying out the domestic “crimes” of institutional racism, Jim Crow, Jane Crow, Jim Crow, Jr., Jim Crow, III, and so forth – enforcing the lie-based “laws” of “White Supremacy,” and reining the deadly terror of domestic terrorism upon your most vulnerable, systemically deprived, and oppressed humans. In short, “America the beautiful” has never been “tough on crime,” you have instead been exemplary of satan’s “toughest and ugliest criminals.”