Religious Long Cons and the Levers of Power
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
The history of governments utilizing religion to obtain an acquiescence from citizens who otherwise might find fault with the overall project has been long established. Even so, and for all of the many crimes and faults coming down from the American “founding fathers” one of the worthy attempts was that of separation of church and state. It was, like all things they did, likely fueled by self interest in that these guys knew that times change, opinions shift and you don’t want to be on the wrong end of a new wave of religion in your government. Best to just attempt to keep a barrier in place because you or yours could be on the opposite side of such human superstitions. Of course, over the years religion has wiggled its way into halls of power, but the generally accepted precedent was that it was to stay in its own lane. Most even religious individuals understood this, but through the decades, there’s been a rumbling push to disrupt this long-established underpinning of the country. One of the few aspects worth saving.
Ironically, those who deeply fetishize the views against gun control from men who had…..what like muskets? Well they have conveniently decided to become cafeteria constitutional constructionists, taking a little lack of personal arms control jello but passing up the religious separation mashed potatoes. They pick and choose at that buffet, making sure their plate is an unhinged blend of food unpalatable to all but their shady ilk.
What better way to subjugate and silence the masses than to utilize religion? Anyone with an eye to the horizon can tell that, barring massive technological innovations created not for wealth, but for society betterment (truly only likely if it comes from an arena not under the control of late-stage capitalism), than we are headed to some serious resource deprivation and climate change chaos in our near future. I’m sure the Federalist groups have been salivating at worldwide theocracies and their level of control with such issues at hand. It’s also one of the most effective ways to keep the rabble at each other’s throats, sometimes literally, and to continue the plunder and parasitism in a fluid manner, maintaining that unfair perch as things get weird and rough at the bottom.
As far as limiting individual rights…..perhaps a lack of bodily autonomy? No worries when you are in that power elite group—you always have the means to get what you want, be it a European abortion or simple access to birth control—it’s for the workers to have no means to control their lives. Rules for thee, not for me. It’s simply an extension of the already in place, wage-work or die, your body truly belongs to the state. A marriage of religion and government takes the steam out of much of the population who might revolt as many already have a tragic fascist and patriarchal mindset from their upbringing. The rest are left toiling and scraping along, just trying to survive the dark times.
Think of what many core Christian ideals entail……wealthy individuals getting stuck in needles and such. At one point, the leaders of Rome decided that the best thing to do would be a hostile takeover of the religion and the insistence on subservience and being lamb-like became quite an instrument of control in its own right. If you can’t beat them, join them and change the narrative to what you want it to be. Humbling the human spirit to become herd animals leads them all to the slaughter much more easily, even if the slaughter comes from working them to death over decades, while being presided over by hypocritical religious overlords. What we are seeing attempted now is not different from so many moments in history, that of those already on the top as far as resource extraction and wealth deciding that they greedily need to control the very soul of their population to ensure the continuance of their power.
This enterprise in the United States has been quietly simmering, whether it be the manner in which the we want less-government conservative types like a Goldwater (a dick yes, but a fairly consistent dick, philosophically) were hijacked into eventually falling in the evangelical Christian camp and now loving government intervention (as long as it is imposing your will on a class of people who you don’t belong to) or the way our government has obtained a rubber stamp from the population over the years by framing imperialism into a convenient—oh those Muslims aren’t part of “civilized” society so it’s probably fine to bomb them with white phosphorus. All of these actions have been setting the stage for a white Christian theocracy with almost no real push-back from any of the parties along the decades that could have brought mitigation or the cessation of such nonsense.
Currently, we are looking at actual road-maps to install a nation such as this. Project 2025 is an atlas of a looming hellscape for most. A nation that gets rid of endeavors like Head Start, presumably to open up any needed “charity” to religious institutions. As in, you want to eat, take this bible and ingest it first before I help. So proselytization at the end of a gun or the end of a soup bowl. And, of course, the assistance from religious groups is woefully inadequate to deal with social ills clearly from a background of our no-nets capitalism (even if you can tolerate the implied conversion connected with it). It just won’t do the job. In short, it’s a recipe to create a more miserable existence for all but the very lucky few at the top who control the reins of power through the merger of church and state. It’s what they’ve been wanting all along, the top probably not really believing in any of it, but knowing this is the optimum way to control the workers. They have a willing bureaucratic class of believers (the Amy Coney Barretts and such) to do the actual work and malignant monsters like Clarence Thomas who simply seem to enjoy inflicting pain writ large due to some sort of festering inner insecurity. If I have to hate myself so much, I want the rest of the world to be as miserable as I am kind of guys……..
We have seen when given the opportunity to actually vote in regard to many of the pet projects of the religious reactionary right, most people don’t want that to be part of their lives, even in solidly red states. The problem is that the more it is normalized, the more it will become what seems like an impossible edifice to dismantle. Once religion and manipulation has firmly taken over just ask the woman burning at the stake or the guys with their hearts cut out how easy it is to speak reason to monolithic power structures of religion and the state.
Sadly this is all real, unlike the controlled and make-believe opposition of high level Democrats who will simply use a slide towards superstition as a happy fundraising method. At this point, those of us who do not believe in trash religion ruling our lives will need to work on “proselytizing” just as hard as they have and sadly, due to our politeness, they have quite a head start on us (that head start they are fine with). We need to keep in mind that a harsh materialistic mindset (as in people have no tangible inner spark, we are all just wormfood) is not the appropriate antidote to the plastic violent fakery they are selling. Each and every single one of us is full of wonder, imagination and have a true right to lives of meaning. We are not to be trifled with in such a manner by the charlatans.
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