As always a very thoughtful and much needed philosophical piece. I think you've said so much in the paragraph below.

The unbridgeable gap between empirically logical science and antiquated religions based on ignorance and myth that could maintain believers only by destroying their scientific knowledge is a significant disease vector in the death of the American ‘modern’ age.

I believe the root of our failure as a species (not just Americans) is that we have never been able to successfuly integrate science and what I call high strangeness (things our version of science can't yet explain). The best we've done around high strangeness is to rely on antiquated religions which are based, as you so rightly say, on ignorance and myth. Our knowledge of science such as anti-gravity technology, quantum physics and the mathematical reality of our universe is still sorely lacking. I stretch even further in my life philosophy to incorporate the idea of non-material reality and others, biological and non-biological, that may perhaps inhabit our quantum universe with us.

The question is are we ready to step from these antiquated religions into a more formal understanding of the quantum world? The answer is absolutely not. Most of our reptilian brains haven't evolved fully yet, as evidenced by the large amount of humans who still support and follow ignorant, cruel, destructive dictators like Trump and Erdogan and Putin.

The shock for us here in America is that we're just like everyone else in this world who has adopted a dictator for their leader. In addition like Russia we've allowed oligarchs to take away our life blood and potentially destroy our planet.

In a way I see our fight against Trump as the last gasp of a species (yes America is extremely powerful on our planet's stage) about to destroy Earth's civilization. In the next years climate change, enabled and energized by a world dominated by oligarchs like Trump, will destroy much of it.

Had we as a species been able, as you so rightly say, to step away from these antiquated religious myths which so many follow, perhaps we would have been able to save ourselves. Perhaps we would have been one of those civilizations in the larger Universe which would have stepped away and without prejudice fully embraced the complex cosmos in which we live.

Trump and his ilk are really only an iteration of a civilization and potentially a species that is on its way out. He's only hastening our demise and perhaps that is as they say his and their "karma". Ours is to fight them with everything we've got and to try and advance our civilization together with those we love and respect to the other side.