I don’t care much about the Chinese “spy” balloon gliding silently through the upper atmosphere over the United States. But I’m clearly in the minority.

Once the news got out, the balloon quickly became the latest political brouhaha, momentarily usurping the fake debt-ceiling fight. The Biden administration decided not to shoot the meandering airship down. That gave Republicans the perfect opportunity to paint the president as weak and finger-point his ineptitude, as the war hawks pulled out their mallets and started pounding the war drums.

From what I’m hearing, the average American views the balloon as a threat. The most frequently asked question is, “Why don’t ‘we‘ shoot it down?”  followed by the emphatic assertion that “‘we’ can’t let the Chinese get away with this!” As if anybody yelling “we” has the capacity to shoot down a balloon drifting some 60,000 feet above the earth, or the average Chinese person had anything to do with floating the balloon this way in the first place.

This is precisely why I don’t really care about the balloon. I’m not part of the “we” that created this drama. It’s not my circus, and it’s not my monkeys.

While most Americans view this as an “us” against “them” situation, I see it as a “them against them” saga. We have one violent gang in Beijing that claims China as its territory antagonizing another violent gang in Washington D.C. that claims the United States as its territory.

And I’m just over hear wishing they would both go away.

It’s like living in a neighborhood run by the Bloods. Am I really supposed to get all bent out of shape about the Crips antagonizing the Bloods just because I live in the Blood’s hood? In reality, I’m just going to try to keep my head down and stay out of everybody’s way.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not naive. I understand that as an American, the Chinese government could theoretically impact my life. The Chinese army could march into Tarpon Springs and put me under its subjugation.  But the fact is the U.S. government impacts my life negatively every single day. I’m under the dominion of Washington D.C. right this minute. Why should I get all bent out of shape about a Chinese balloon spying on me when the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is gobbling up all of my electronic data on a daily basis? And stealing a big chunk of my income to fund its surveillance state. (Not to mention its global empire.)

Yes, I am disturbed by Chinese “aggression.” But I’m more disturbed by American aggression around the world because it is supposedly done in my name. And I am even more disturbed by the fact that people will point at the sky, rally around the flag, and fuel a burning desire to kill Chinese people in the name of “security.” In my mind, that’s not different than wanting to kill people the next neighborhood over because it’s Crip’s territory.

Most Americans have hopelessly tied their identity to the gang that rules over them. They might rant against it, but when the proverbial rubber meets the road, they will kill or be killed at the behest of the gang leaders. As Randolph Bourne said, “war is the health of the state.”

His words should serve as a warning.

“The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war. For the benefit of proud and haughty citizens, it is fortified with a list of the intolerable insults which have been hurled toward us by the other nations; for the benefit of the liberal and beneficent, it has a convincing set of moral purposes which our going to war will achieve; for the ambitious and aggressive classes, it can gently whisper of a bigger role in the destiny of the world…

The moment war is declared, however, the mass of the people, through some spiritual alchemy, become convinced that they have willed and executed the deed themselves. They then, with the exception of a few malcontents, proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the environments of their lives, and turned into a solid manufactory of destruction toward whatever other people may have, in the appointed scheme of things, come within the range of the Government’s disapprobation. The citizen throws off his contempt and indifference to Government, identifies himself with its purposes, revives all his military memories and symbols, and the State once more walks, an august presence, through the imaginations of men. Patriotism becomes the dominant feeling, and produces immediately that intense and hopeless confusion between the relations which the individual bears and should bear toward the society of which he is a part.”

The real root of my indifference is that my allegiance is not to any earthly kingdom. The American state and the Chinese state are just two incarnations of Babylon. I am a citizen of the Kingdom of God (as are many Chinese people). My lord is the Prince of Peace.  That’s where my loyalty lies.