Money, Things, & Beliefs

Matter More Than Humans & Other Living Beings in America

Jun 18, 2025

NOTE: The yearlong Healing America’s Narratives course begins on October 11. Details are available here. Explore whether it might be for you here.

I (mostly) agree that brevity can be the soul of wit with an attention-deficient populace, and I know that eliminating unnecessary words improves the impact of a poem, so I have spent some time trying to capture the essence of America’s collective shadow, which emerges through an unhealthy iteration of group-centric masculine energy in the absence of the healthy feminine, in one clear sentence.

Here it is (for now):

In the United States, money, things, and beliefs are more important than humans and other living beings.

Quick review: collective shadow emerges when a substantial number of individuals in a group embrace the same denials and projections.

Said differently, not everyone in the United States believes that money, things, and beliefs are more important than humans and other living beings, but enough folks—in positions of economic, political, and cultural power, along with folks without such power who choose to think and do what the powerful tell them to think and do—do believe and or act in accordance with this prioritization.

American Leadership Today

Donald Trump loves money and things, especially golden things. His primary belief is that he should do whatever comes to mind in order to make money, perpetuate the illusion of success, and show that he’s the boss. Whatever comes to mind includes making believe he’s a practicing Christian, executing Project 2025, insulting everyone, and speaking in inane superlatives. He shows no evidence of caring for humans. Beneath him are the vampiric Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, both of whom drip with glee in dehumanizing others. Down there with Miller and Noem is Pete Hegseth, whose racist, misogynistic beliefs motivate him, in the name of the warrior ethic that so characterized the cast of Fox and Friends, to replace black, female, and trans military officers with real men—heterosexual, white, Christian guys who would not have been promoted by merit to the posts to which he appointed them.

Need Proof (and if so, how much)?

Most Recently

On June 13 and 14, Donald Trump changed his policy on ICE raids that affected the agricultural, restaurant, and hotel industries after industry leaders lobbied for a change. Since they rely on low-wage immigrant labor in order to meet their shareholder obligations, and the workers were staying home for fear of being arrested at work, the prospect of ICE raids was not good for business. Career anti-immigrant chief of staff Stephen Miller, who wants a minimum of 3,000 immigrant arrests a day, was not happy with the change.1

More Generally

Land & Labor

The enslavement—dehumanization—of Africans and African Americans took place on land stolen from dehumanized Indigenous Peoples of what is now known as North America. The land theft included lies, broken treaties, and slaughter of humans who were deemed less-than-human. Enslavement and slaughter had in common the use of land, and what was beneath it, so that Europeans, and then Americans could live their lives, grow their crops, raise their cattle, and make their livings.

As industrialization emerged and grew, factory and railroad workers, miners, dam, skyscraper, bridge, and tunnel builders worked under dangerous conditions for low wages. Unions did not emerge because workers were well paid, taken care of, and inherently greedy. Workers scraped by and sometimes died while their work made others wealthy.

Dangerous Products for Profit

Leaded gasoline stopped engines from knocking. Its environmental and health dangers were known in the 1920s. In 1996 EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner said:

“The elimination of lead from gas is one of the great environmental achievements of all time. Thousands of tons of lead have been removed from the air, and blood levels of lead in our children are down 70 percent. This means that millions of children will be spared the painful consequences of lead poisoning, such as permanent nerve damage, anemia or mental retardation.”2

The Ford Motor Company, knowing of the design flaws in the gas tank of its Pinto model, put the car on the market after its risk-benefit analysis led the company to decide that it would be cheaper to settle any liability lawsuits than to redesign the tank and remove the flaw. A 1972 accident that resulted in both death and injury, resulted in a lawsuit, Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co. (1981). Lilly Gray, the driver, was killed, and 13-year-old Richard Grimshaw was burned and permanently disfigured. Ford lost and had to pay both compensatory and punitive damages.3

The dangers of DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) have been known since the 1940s. Its effectiveness in killing malaria-carrying mosquitoes and other species rendered it profitable in agriculture and public health, but its prospective impacts on humans and other life were not known early on. Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring brought the issue to a larger population. More recently, DDT manufacturers have been settling suits especially around how they have disposed of DDT. This story is ongoing.4

The Veterans Administration now includes multiple diseases as potentially resulting from the use of Agent Orange as a defoliant during the Vietnam War.5

PFAS (Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances) are considered “forever chemicals” due to their resistance to breaking down. They are found in every drop of water everywhere on the planet and are used in the manufacture of a wide range of everyday materials and products. They are linked to:

Reproductive effects such as decreased fertility or increased high blood pressure in pregnant women.
Developmental effects or delays in children, including low birth weight, accelerated puberty, bone variations, or behavioral changes.
Increased risk of some cancers, including prostate, kidney, and testicular cancers.
Reduced ability of the body’s immune system to fight infections, including reduced vaccine response.
Interference with the body’s natural hormones.
Increased cholesterol levels and/or risk of obesity.6

This is a short list. Behind every one of these examples is a habit of mind that considers money, things, and beliefs more important than humans and other living beings.

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Back to the Beginning

We’ll end the bad news where we began. Donald Trump sees Gaza as a site to be developed into a series of luxury resorts from which he might profit. His business dealings in authoritarian Russia prevent him from opposing that country’s invasion of democratic Ukraine.7

An Exception

There are, of course, many wonderful examples of Americans behaving in ways that remind us that collective shadow needs “a substantial number of individuals” (as opposed to “everyone”) in a group in order form.

Here’s one:

In 1975 as Saigon was falling to North Vietnam and Americans were being evacuated, South Vietnamese pilots had access to scores of U.S. and Vietnamese helicopters. Since they were not included in the U.S. evacuation, they gathered their friends and families and flew out over the South China Sea to search for the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet. They found it.

As many of the choppers made their ways toward aircraft carriers, Commander Paul Jacobs of the frigate, U.S.S. Kirk, whose deck was designed with room for just one copter to land, told his crew to try to contact the pilots, none of whom had ever landed on a moving vessel before, and invite one of them to land. It did. A second then squeezed onto the deck. With more filled choppers hovering above his ship, Jacobs ordered and helped his men to push the empty choppers overboard (estimates put their value at between $250k to $500k in the mid 1970s).

“These scenes were repeated on other Navy ships. Helicopters would land, refugees would jump off and sailors would quickly push the helicopters overboard to make room for more. That happened on large ships, including the USS Hancock and USS Midway, both aircraft carriers, and the USS Blue Ridge, the headquarters ship for the Navy's 7th Fleet. It also happened on other smaller ships, like the USS Cook, another destroyer escort like the Kirk.”8

The humans were deemed more important than the things.

Including and beyond these specific events, the crew of the U.S.S. Kirk is credited with helping to save between 20,000 and 30,000 Vietnamese refugees as Saigon fell.

Our musical signoff today is from Susan Werner. Enjoy “May I Suggest.”