The 'Bless' Grift: From Crypto Pumps to Bibles Missing Amendments

So, let me get this straight. You take the Bible, slap a country song title on it, get an endorsement from a guy who sells golden sneakers, and then stuff it with America’s founding documents. But not all of them. You just… leave out the parts you don’t like.

This is the reality in Oklahoma, where the “God Bless the U.S.A.” Bible is being pushed into public schools. And this special edition, this holy grail of MAGA merch, is missing a few tiny, insignificant details from the Constitution. You know, little things like the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Or the 19th, which gave women the vote. Or the 22nd, which—and I’m sure this is just a complete coincidence—limits a president to two terms. ‘God Bless the USA’ Bibles being distributed in Oklahoma schools are missing 17 amendments.

Seventeen amendments. Gone. Poof.

The publisher’s excuse is so insulting it’s almost performance art. They claim, with a straight face, that “The decision was made to only include the original founding fathers’ documents, as Amendments 11-27 were added at later dates.”

Give me a break. That’s like selling a copy of The Lord of the Rings but only including The Hobbit because the other books were “added at a later date.” It’s a fundamentally dishonest framing of what the document even is. The Constitution isn’t a sacred relic frozen in 1789; it’s a living document whose entire purpose is its ability to be amended—to fix the glaring, often monstrous, mistakes of the past. What kind of civics lesson are you teaching when you hand a kid a version of our country’s blueprint that conveniently ignores the part where we fixed our biggest, most horrific moral failure?

A Holy Grift Wrapped in a Flag

Let’s call this what it is: a grift. A cheap, transparent, $59.99 grift (or $1,000 for a signed one, if you’re a real sucker). It’s not a tool for education or faith. It’s a political prop designed to fuse a specific brand of nationalism with a specific brand of Christianity, creating a feedback loop of outrage and loyalty.

The message it sends is insidious. By packaging the Bible with a cherry-picked Constitution, it tells students that to be a good Christian is to be a specific type of American, and to be that type of American is to believe in a version of history where the story conveniently stops before things get… complicated. Before we had to reckon with slavery, women’s suffrage, or presidential term limits.

This is ideological terraforming, plain and simple. It’s trying to cultivate a generation of citizens who see no separation between their faith and a political movement, who view the Constitution not as a framework for governance but as a holy text that supports their worldview. No, that’s not right. It’s worse than that—it’s a holy text that’s been edited by a marketing team to be more palatable to the target audience.

I mean, honestly, what’s next? A version of the Ten Commandments that leaves out “Thou shalt not bear false witness” because it’s inconvenient for your preferred political candidate? It’s an absolute mockery of both the faith it claims to represent and the country it drapes itself in.

Oklahoma’s Superintendent Jumps Ship

And who was the captain of this sinking ship of an educational strategy? None other than Oklahoma’s now-former school superintendent, Ryan Walters. This is the guy who made a name for himself by waging a holy war against “wokeism,” whatever the hell that means this week.

Walters’s tenure was a masterclass in performative outrage. He mandated that teachers from New York and California take an “anti-woke” exam designed by PragerU, a right-wing YouTube channel that isn't an academic institution. He pushed for the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school. He wanted Turning Point USA chapters in every high school. The Bible stunt was just the grand finale of his crusade.

And then, just as the absurdity reached its peak, he announced his resignation on Fox News—offcourse—to go lead some conservative non-profit. The timing is just perfect. He lights the state’s education system on fire, throws in a few dozen cases of constitutionally-incomplete Bibles to use as kindling, and then parachutes out to his next lucrative gig in the conservative outrage industry.

It reminds me of my own high school government teacher, a burned-out guy who just showed us movies for half the semester. At least he wasn’t actively trying to mislead us. Walters and his ilk are actively trying to create a dumber, more compliant, less curious populace because those people are easier to control. And for a state whose school system already ranks among the worst in the nation, this feels less like a political strategy and more like educational malpractice.

It's Not About Faith, It's About Control

Let’s drop the pretense. This was never about putting the Bible in schools. It was never about teaching civics. It was, and is, about power. It’s about telling a specific group of people that their version of America, and their version of God, is the only one that matters.

Handing a kid a Bible with a censored Constitution inside isn’t education. It’s indoctrination. It’s telling them that foundational American principles are optional, that history can be curated, and that faith is a weapon to be wielded in a culture war. And the people pushing it, from Trump to Walters to the publisher, don't care about the damage they're doing to a child's understanding of their country or their faith. They just want to make a buck and score a political point. It’s cynical, it’s gross, and frankly, it’s blasphemous in its own unique, American way.