I am loathe to say it, but our nation might be described as mentally ill. It is said that we will achieve world stability by being able to strike out with ferocity unparalleled in history, including the use of nuclear weapons. We torture, we kidnap, we murder. Our role in the world is to be the keeper of a new order. Our corporate leaders will decide what this new order will be, and we will drain support for the sick, the elderly and the less fortunate in order to pay for this new role. And God approves? We are doing his work, apparently.

In America today, the mnage a trois of the godly, the government and the greedy in the guise of conservative patriotism is being used to turn our country into a strip mine for the wealthy and their offspring, while we are being distracted and appeased by the sacraments of televangelism, shoddy consumer goods, junk food and celebrity worship.

This is a cynical power that ruthlessly quells any dissent and ultimately, if left unchecked, will destroy this country and its ecosystems.

Where will the reasoned and just opposition come from? Surely not those Democrats stained by the gilded grease of the three Gs. It can only come from you and I, us ordinary people – as it did at the founding, as it did during the world wars and as it always does during times of great moral travail.

Peter McFarland, Coopers Mills