Ever ask yourself, “What the hell are we doing?”
That’s not just rhetorical. It’s the scream behind every protest, every march, every mother’s tear and every silenced voice. It’s the cry of a civilization teetering between evolution and annihilation. When Rodney King was brutally beaten by LAPD officers in 1991—an act caught on video, seared into our collective conscience—he didn’t demand retribution. After those officers were acquitted in 1992 and the streets of Los Angeles exploded in rage, he offered a plea, childlike in its simplicity, profound in its innocence:
“Can we all just get along?”
More than three decades later, we still don’t have an answer. Or rather, we do—and it’s a resounding no.
Back then, America saw a mirror. Today, we’re watching a rerun with a new cast. In 2025, in Donald Trump’s America—a nation so fragmented that truth itself has become a battleground—King’s words echo like a ghost no one wants to face. The acquittal of officers in King’s case was not just a miscarriage of justice; it was a forecast. Today, that forecast has become a storm.
Once, we rioted because we believed justice should prevail. Today, many protest because they believe justice never existed. One was a cry of betrayal; the other, a howl of nihilism.
Martin Luther King Jr. warned us long before either event unfolded:
“Violence solves no social problems; it merely creates new and more complicated ones… The shores of history are white with the bleached bones of nations that failed to follow this command.”
His words weren’t poetic metaphors—they were road signs. And we sped past every one.
What connects the chaos of 1992 to the instability of 2025 is not race alone, or class, or politics. It is hubris. Our inability to compromise. Our obsession with being “right.” Our spiritual bankruptcy disguised in the armor of ideology. Greed, power, and fear have replaced truth, compassion, and courage. We don’t live in a democracy—we live in a marketplace of delusion, where human lives are commodities and facts are for sale.
In the Christian tradition, Hell is a place for sinners. But if you believe in metaphor—as Jesus often taught through them—then Hell might not be beneath our feet. It might be right here, in the way we treat each other. The flames are not sulfur and brimstone. They are hatred, ignorance, and willful silence. We built this inferno with our own hands.
Look around. The West clings to a savior who has yet to return. The East calls upon Allah to fix a broken world. But what if, as Carl Sagan said in The Pale Blue Dot:
“There is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves”?
What if the gods we wait for are merely symbols of the better selves we refuse to become?
Prayer without action is a whisper into the void. Going to church on Sunday and turning your back on your neighbor by Monday is not faith—it’s performance. Love must be more than ceremony. It must be daily rebellion against indifference.
And yet, indifference reigns.
Where was the moral outrage when the government’s 9/11 narrative fell apart under scrutiny? Where were the questions, the doubts, the cries for truth? Instead, most swallowed the “official story” without protest, numbed by fear, distracted by entertainment, and sedated by convenience. We became silent partners in our own manipulation.
This is not an anti-American tirade. This is a plea for accountability. A nation is only as strong as its people are honest. And honesty begins with facing our own reflection, no matter how grotesque it may be.
America has fought war after war—many of which it ignited. And though we rightfully support the troops, our sons and daughters in uniform, we should stop pretending these wars were always noble. Iraq was not about weapons of mass destruction; it was about control. And when those lies were exposed, there were no riots. No reckoning. Just silence.
It’s easy to blame politicians, governments, or shadowy cabals. But the truth is more uncomfortable: we are complicit. Our apathy is a weapon. Our silence is violence.
We can no longer afford to wait for the world to change. We are the world. If we don’t roll up our sleeves and start loving one another—openly, actively, even sacrificially—then we will carry the weight of this hell into our next lives, our children’s lives, and every lifetime after.
And here’s the final twist: at some point, we will all learn how to love. We’ll be dragged into it through suffering, if not guided there by wisdom. Because the great irony is that despite all our hatred, division, and destruction, the end of every soul’s journey is the same—unconditional love.
How long we choose to take the scenic route through pain, fire, and chaos, is entirely up to us.
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