The Ten Commandments as Interpreted by a White Guy With a Yacht, a Porn Habit, and a God Complex
An Unholy Liturgy of Flags, Lies, and Midlife Theocracy
There was a time when the Ten Commandments meant something. Not in the real world, of course. Just in the sanctimonious brains of boomers who hung them over their toilets and voted for men who broke all ten before breakfast. The tablets were never laws. They were branding. A religious bumper sticker for the delusional. The divine prequel to “Back the Blue” and “Let’s Go Brandon.”
This series is not here to defend the commandments. That ship sank somewhere between the Crusades and Hobby Lobby. These essays are here to do something holier. They are here to track each commandment like a rabid animal and show you the red-fanged mess the conservative movement made of it.
We are not investigating sinners. We are prosecuting the pulpit. The very people who scream loudest about morality while cheating on their wives, skimming donations, and passing laws that could make Jesus vomit blood. We are taking each of the Ten Commandments and holding them up to the MAGA mirror. Then we are watching them shatter.
Article One begins where it should. With the only Commandment they should have been able to understand.
Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
Spoiler. They failed it by breakfast.
No Gods Before Me, Except Your Wallet, Your Flag, and That Bloated Tangerine Messiah
When God laid this one down, it was simple. No other gods. No idols. No cheap substitutes for the divine. And yet modern conservatism is one big orgy of false worship. It is not a church. It is a shrine to a thousand petty gods, each with a slogan and a merch table.
The average conservative Christian today does not worship God. They worship Capitalism, wrapped in a flag and soaked in the scent of diesel and Chick-fil-A sauce. They genuflect to the stock market. They tithe to Amazon. They anoint oil executives with prayer breakfasts and call it a national blessing.
They worship Nationalism. Not love of country, but blood-soaked, white-knuckled, isolationist mythology. They turned America into the golden calf and tattooed Jesus on its side. God is now a citizen. A veteran. A property owner. And He always votes Republican.
They worship the White Nuclear Family, the most boring idol of all. This bland, sterile fantasy where Dad is king, Mom bakes trauma into casseroles, and the kids learn shame before they learn math. If your family does not look like this, you are either an abomination or a Democrat.
And then there is Trump. The man so blasphemous that even the golden calf would sue for defamation. He is not their idol despite his cruelty. He is their idol because of it. He sins the way they wish they could. Loud. Proud. Consequence-free.
This is not a breach of the First Commandment. This is open rebellion. They are not just breaking the law. They are spitting in its face, lighting a cigar with the parchment, and live-streaming it from CPAC.
Mammon Never Left. He Just Got a Lobbyist
Jesus had a few clear things to say about money. None of them ended with a yacht. He said you cannot serve God and Mammon. That it is easier for a camel to fit through a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. That the love of money is the root of all evil.
So naturally, conservatives turned wealth into holiness. Prosperity gospel. Trickle-down theology. They preach that poverty is a moral failing and wealth is divine favor. The preacher with a Bentley must be doing something right. The single mom in the food pantry must be lazy.
The result is a mutant strain of Christianity where billionaires are prophets and the poor are parasites. God loves you if you tip well. God helps those who help themselves by cutting Medicaid. God wants you to own land, pay no taxes, and never stop punishing anyone who makes less than you.
And if that theology sounds suspiciously like capitalism dressed in choir robes, that is because it is. Mammon got ordained and now runs half of Congress.
Project 2025. The Rapture is Now a Policy Platform
Project 2025 is not a policy document. It is an exorcism performed on the American republic. It is 900 pages of fascist Christian cosplay disguised as government reform. Drafted by the Heritage Foundation and rubber-stamped by every GOP think tank with a cross in its logo, it lays out a blueprint to reshape the executive branch into a weapon of divine vengeance.
It fires career civil servants and replaces them with true believers. It dismantles reproductive freedom, LGBTQ rights, environmental protections, and anything else that smells like compassion. It rebrands the presidency as the throne of God and treats dissent as heresy.
This is not even subtle. They literally want to impose biblical morality through state power. You can forget the separation of church and state. Project 2025 is building a theocracy with corporate donors and calling it patriotism.
If the First Commandment warned against false gods, this document is a user manual for building one.
The Big Beautiful Bill. Or, Mammon’s Boot Stomping on a Poor Face Forever
As if Project 2025 were not enough, we now have the Big Beautiful Bill. Named like a bad porn parody and written like a suicide note to the social contract, this bill locks in tax cuts for the rich, deregulates everything that breathes, and slashes social programs while singing the national anthem.
Its defenders say it promotes freedom. What it promotes is starvation with a flag sticker on your forehead. It worships capital. It canonizes billionaires. It feeds the stock market and lets the homeless starve behind churches that now charge for parking.
God told us to care for the poor. The bill tells them to get a job and die quietly.
This is not legislation. It is an altar to Mammon, written in blood and ExxonMobil ink.
The Only God They Recognize is The One Who Hates the Right People
They do not need God to love. They only need Him to hate. That is the secret. That is the emotional core of the entire conservative religious machine. God is useful only insofar as He justifies their cruelty. When He feeds the poor, they ignore Him. When He forgives sex workers, they roll their eyes. But when He flips tables or talks about fire, suddenly He is invited to the convention.
Their God is a weapon. Their theology is a gun. Their faith is a flag. The First Commandment is no longer a rule. It is a lie they tell while serving every idol they can name, then calling it virtue.
Conclusion. No God Before Me. Unless He Has an Offshore Account
If Moses came down from Sinai today, he would not find a holy nation. He would find a megachurch wrapped in LED screens and buried in stock portfolios. He would find Mammon on the pulpit and Jesus in a holding cell. He would not drop the tablets. He would beat a senator with them.
The First Commandment was not vague. It was a line in the sand.
And conservatives built a Whole Foods on the other side of it.
Bibliography
Carlin, George. When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? Hyperion, 2004
Jones, Robert P. The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy. Simon & Schuster, 2023
Posner, Sarah. Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump. Random House, 2020
Stewart, Katherine. The Power Worshippers. Bloomsbury, 2020
The Holy Bible, King James Version. Thomas Nelson, 1987
Gorski, Philip. American Babylon. Routledge, 2020
Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership (Heritage Foundation)
“Senate passes Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.” New York Post, July 1, 2025