Power in America doesn’t come in just one form. It is usually a three‑headed beast made of money, religion, and intellectual authority. Each head feeds the others until they are indistinguishable, roaring in unison whenever anyone suggests the system should serve the many instead of the few.

Money is the most obvious form of power. It buys protection, writes laws, and bends the rules in your favor. It secures better health care, safer neighborhoods, and access to education that opens still more doors. It turns mistakes into recoverable setbacks instead of life‑altering disasters. It purchases time to rest, to think, to plan, while those without it spend their hours surviving. With enough of it, the obstacles most people face become optional.

Most people don’t think about religion being a type of power, but it is. Not only in the sense of personal belief, but as an institution with moral authority, cultural reach, and political influence. In the United States, the blending of certain forms of Christianity with capitalist ideology has produced a strange moral inversion. In theory, a Christian nation would follow scripture’s calls to care for the poor, welcome the stranger, and humble the rich. It would remember the teaching that to whom much is given, much is required. Yet in practice, the wealthiest Christians often use both scripture and wealth to defend the hierarchies that make such care unnecessary. Prosperity is framed as divine approval. Poverty is framed as personal failure.

This inversion is especially stark when you notice how many people with little still give so much, while those with abundance give comparatively little. If the poor can sacrifice from scarcity, then the rich can give vastly more without feeling its absence, yet too often they do not, and pointing that out is met with venomous righteousness.

Intelligence is another kind of power, though weaker than it once was. There was a time when skill and knowledge could upend the order of things, when reformers and public thinkers could meaningfully shift the balance. Today their voices are often drowned out unless backed by capital or an institution. Brute strength, once the blunt tool of rulers and armies, survives in the threat of enforcement and intimidation. Cultural influence hovers over it all, setting the boundaries of what feels normal and what feels radical.

These powers do not exist in isolation. They merge. The same people and institutions hold the purse strings, the pulpits, and the platforms. Money defends religion’s political reach. Religion sanctifies money’s dominance. Both sideline the insights of those without resources, ensuring that the only wisdom broadcast to the masses is the kind they have approved.

This is where the unspoken hypocrisy lives. We are told over and over again not to tell the rich how to use their money, because it belongs to them. Many also try to convince us that we live in a Christian nation where caring for the poor is a sacred obligation. These ideas cannot both be true unless one is hollow. When the same voices preach both messages, it is not a mistake. It is a choice.

Why do we not expect the rich to step up? Perhaps because deep down we know they will not, not from the goodness of their own hearts. Stepping up would mean surrendering more than money. It would mean giving up the myth that their wealth proves they deserve to lead. It would mean exposing the fact that their moral authority is often just a costume for their economic interests.

And so, whenever change is mentioned, the tantrum begins. They are not afraid of the specific policies. They are afraid we might stop believing the story that keeps them in charge. Any pushback is framed as disrespect. Any demand for fairness is painted as asking for too much. But we are not asking for too much. We are asking for what we are owed, and we deserve more than crumbs from a table we built.

Until then, we remain in the shadow of the beast, told that its roar is the voice of God, the voice of reason, and the voice of the market, all at once. But shadows break when enough of us stand together, refuse to bow, and hold our ground. The beast only wins if we stay on our knees.