Are You Sick of Killing People as an American Taxpayer?

by | Jun 5, 2026 | Opinions & Commentary

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim, Unsplash

Are You Sick of Killing People as an American Taxpayer?

by | Jun 5, 2026 | Opinions & Commentary

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim, Unsplash

We aren’t willfully participating in the atrocities being committed, but it’s impossible to divorce ourselves from what our leadership does in our name, and this is the struggle so many of us find ourselves in.

Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz

I’ve been trying to place the heaviness within me these days; the nagging sickness that resides in the pit of my stomach every morning, regardless of what I do to try and push it away.

It isn’t merely the growing nihilism that comes from realizing how quickly the bedrock of our Republic is dissolving.

It isn’t just the black despair from watching the rapid and seemingly inexorable erosion of human and civil rights.

It isn’t only the leaden grief that comes from witnessing so much unnecessary suffering, so much preventable pain, so much manufactured chaos.

Along with all of that, I think the real heart sickness comes from realizing my complicity in crimes against humanity.

As a taxpaying American, I am partnering in the genocide in Gaza.

I see the breath-stealing videos of Palestinian children torn apart by AIPAC-funded drone strikes, of elderly people executed by IDF soldiers, of Israeli political leaders applauding the barbaric destruction of Gaza, and I know that my taxable income is funding the carnage.

As a taxpaying American, I am murdering the people of Iran, Lebanon, Cuba, and Ukraine.

Watching our leadership waging or permitting deadly, wasteful, and unprovoked wars of greed, distraction, and geography all over the planet, and knowing that I am in some way aiding and abetting them is cause for mourning.

As a taxpaying American, I am starving people to death in New Jersey.

The tortured souls languishing inside the hellscape of Delaney Hall, forced to eat maggot-infested food, denied basic healthcare, shown no human comfort, enduring a deadly squalor that has no reason to exist other than the cruelty of the sociopaths who constructed it with the resources of my life’s work.

As a taxpaying American, I am assaulting girls and young women in Texas.

Realizing that the horrors inside an inaccessible compound in San Benito and the unthinkable brutality that is being visited upon the most vulnerable and helpless there do not happen without my unwitting, yet still real, financial assistance.

As a taxpaying American, I am viciously terrorizing immigrants.

Watching a masked Gestapo-esque army of perverse monsters relentlessly hounding my black and brown neighbors in the places they work, study, worship, and raise their families is made all the worse by the knowledge that the sweat of my brow is fueling them.

As a taxpaying American, I am violently persecuting queer people.

It breaks my heart to know that despite my work to try and be an LGBTQ ally and to advocate for the inherent worth of every human being, my taxes are bankrolling the homophobic and transphobic legislative assaults on transgender teens, on gay couples, on marriage equality.

Like most people who call this place home, I was weaned on a story of this nation that was part curated myth, part racist whitewashing, part genuine aspiration, and part American exceptionalism that steadfastly refused to admit culpability for inhumanity.

The central narrative I inherited from my pastors, teachers, parents, media, and politicians was that the United States was a place that, though terribly flawed, still endeavored to be a brilliant beacon for the vulnerable, hungry, and hurting of the world.

It may have been a mix of ignorance, privilege, and wishful thinking, but I bought into the lie, and it’s sobering enough to realize that this story was never true. That’s enough of an existential gut punch.

And it’s another matter altogether to realize that for your entire life, but profoundly in these present days, your work and creativity have funded the very hatred, inequity, and brutality you’ve spent a lifetime intending to eradicate.

There’s a futility that comes from when that truth settles in; when you are a person of peace who is subsidizing war. I think that’s what’s so hard for so many of us right now. We’re trying to fight for and with our country simultaneously.

I know that we are not powerless in these moments, but I confess that the road out of this is unclear.

All I can say for certain is that as a taxpaying American who loves humanity and who hates the nation we have become, it’s hard living with so much blood on my hands.

Note: Of course, we aren’t willfully participating in these atrocities, but it’s impossible to divorce ourselves from what our leadership does in our name, and this is the struggle so many of us find ourselves in.

John Pavlovitz

John Pavlovitz

John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.

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