Western religions, however hypocritically, at least talk up goodness: mercy, justice, charity towards strangers, compassion for the needy, and finding the best in people. Au contraire, the MAGA reign of terror.
With insular tribal certitude, sacred scriptures divide the world into reductive, absolutist opposites: believers vs. infidels, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, heaven vs. hell—in sum, Us (worthy, ordained) vs. Them (unworthy, thus inferior). Messaging is simplified, focussing on the universal quest for paradise (wherever that is). For Catholics, salvation is personal, mandating good works and God’s grace, deifying Jesus via faith, baptism, and confession; for Protestants, salvation comes to the faithful elect from God, signaled by living justly and respecting Christian tenets; for Islam, paradise rewards mixing ardent faith (in one God, scriptures, Day of Judgment, divine decree) and righteous deeds. For Jews, less personal salvation is imagined collectively for the tribe, though with commandments to align one’s life with God’s will, doing good, honoring the ancient laws, community and repentance.
Despite life-asserting “religious” virtues (most equally valued by secular humanists), organized religion also embraces the nastiest, most death-driven commitments. Transparent proof surfaces when ferocious war-makers proclaim “God is on our side” or that “the just are instruments of the Almighty,” or “who but the enlightened elect can and must save the unblessed, uncivilized pagans?” History is thus a litany wherein hypocritical denominations talk peace, love and harmony while empowering the most horrendous holy wars designed either to eliminate or convert whatever enemy tribe owns something valuable (gold, land, labor). Old-time religion has produced extraordinarily enlightened peacemakers like M.L. King or Nelson Mandela, willing to sacrifice all but also to forgive.
Yet, tens of millions back violent, genocidal crusades against threats: enemy evil-doers, unbelievers, or overt deniers who dare challenge the invaders’ sanctities. Fanaticism grants full citizenship and civil rights only to its tribal congregants, all others are grist for the mill. Beyond militarism, with hostility trumping “love thy neighbor,” religion pushes divisive, hierarchical orders and regressive values: racial and male superiority, that one’s sect monopolizes spiritual/heavenly truth, plus the gall to punish dissenters who refuse or deviate from incontrovertible dogma. The political murders in Minnesota, bristling with anti-abortion fanaticism, are just the latest faith-driven atrocities.
Obsessed with glory and gold, not goodness
Here, alas, fits a similar self-righteous MAGA mindset, reinforced by white, Christian nationalist power, racial prejudice, hatred of undocumented and menacing “foreigners,” outrage towards essential elites (top experts, the better educated, the more affluent, the deep state), homophobia plus disdain for law, courts and the Constitution, and readiness to use force when not getting its way. Where in this hate-filled disgust by supposed Christians are Jesus’s core, blatantly humane, merciful teachings. Reminds me of an old saw, “There’s no hate like Christian love.” Trump and MAGA seem oblivious to what positive, transcendent values distinguish Christianity—instead seizing the opposite values of ego, greed, control, bigotry, petty vengeance and unbridled selfishness.
Boosted by gun control defiance is the MAGA commitment to aggression, even violence, that weaves through support for endlessly belligerent rhetoric, cruelty to opponents, insurrectionist assaults, and identification with strongmen addicted to punitive, secret police, lawless imprisonment, and imperial invasions. The only “positives” here are hardly spiritual: abject loyalty to the messianic leader, consensus about (specious) solutions, and first-class political organizing thanks to Musk-like oligarchs in sync with anti-government, anti-authority, go-it-alone delusions.
Though Trump the self-absorbed narcissist lacks a “religion gene,” his mastery at manipulating believers (playing off procreation, culture and diversity) splits the populace into hostile, irreconcilable tribes. MAGA’s fascination with top down authoritarianism fits perfectly with fundamentalist devotion to similar hierarchies: God on top, then he-men leaders, fathers, boys, mothers, girls, finally innocent animals and pristine landscapes. Western religion openly awards mankind dominion over nature with armies, ideology or machines, whether worker/serfs, crops or minerals. There’s a massive gap, greater than right vs. left, between secular, data-driven rationalists vs. faith-alone believers loyal to heaven-sent, literalist gospels. Thus, a global, climate catastrophe in the making.
Faithless leader preys on the faithful
Believing only in himself, Trump still invokes invisible, higher powers (endorsing his greatness and ordination), thus awarding himself “dominion” over the world (until stopped). Wannabe autocrats must subvert religious incantations to fuel slavish, gullible cults, arrogantly distorting dissenters as enemies. Because all wars are holy wars, even if against citizens, minorities, and immigrants, the Pretender-in-chief must lie constantly, with every shifty fabrication cemented as unimpeachable dogma. Such as being the pathetic victim of evil election connivers (only when losing), or of late the fantasy of rebellion in L.A., thus justifying violating the Constitution. Like religious fundamentalism, MAGA Trump broaches no dissent, indeed feeds upon opposition to justify undeserved privileges—as one fixated congregation declares all others false and sacrilegious, even demonic deceptions. Infidels only inhabit religious realms.
Because religious manias—desperate for absolute guarantees—dismiss nuance, ambiguity or complexity, the faith-alone are especially vulnerable to the cynical, authoritarian hurricanes promising the moon and delivering neither civic virtue nor life-asserting payoffs. That justifies cutting Medicaid and food stamps for the undeserving, slothful poorest. These political cruelties undermine solid, original religious obligations to comfort the discomforted (and discomfort predators). That’s how dogmatic politics and religion merge, serving as cultural cleaver that fuels tribal hatred, bitterness and divisiveness. What is more dehumanizing than for one sect of earthlings to misuse sacred terms to oppress foes as infidels, sinners, and worthy of damnation. Recall Christopher Hitchens’ quip that “An evil man will do a good deed if it benefits him. But it takes religion to make a good man do an evil deed.”
Thus, fighting over unprovable truths, religious systems and leaders hypocritically embrace force and violence when “God is on our side.” Trump law and order be damned as Michael Cohen (Meidas) writes:
Trump wants violence. He needs chaos. He feeds off the illusion of mayhem like a vampire with a Twitter account. If he can’t find real enemies, he’ll invent them—brown-skinned ones, preferably.. . .Trumpism doesn’t recognize humanity. It recognizes leverage. Immigrants, particularly undocumented ones, are the perfect scapegoats. . . . That’s not policy. That’s sadism dressed as nationalism.”
Who in the end can readily distinguish MAGA justifications from dogmatic religious agendas? Nothing in history matches the mass death toll from religious warfare over the ages, with today’s scorched earth Mideast the latest example. The “opiate of the people,” religion for Marx parallels other critiques, as from Frederick the Great, “Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses,” or from Napoleon, “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” Skeptic Mark Twain opined, “Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.” Adds Robert M Pirsig, Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.” Or Voltaire, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
So this skeptical humanist can’t resist one final, gob-smacking, comic evisceration from George Carlin:
You have to stand in awe of the all time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: Religion. No contest. Religion easily has the Greatest Bullsh-t Story ever told. Religion has actually convinced people… that there’s an invisible man… living in the sky… who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of 10 things he does not want you to do… and if you do any of these 10 things he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever and ever til the end of time. BUT HE LOVES YOU! He loves you. He loves you and HE NEEDS MONEY! HE ALWAYS NEEDS MONEY! He’s all powerful, all perfect, all knowing and all wise… somehow … just can’t handle money! Religion takes in BILLIONS of dollars. They pay no taxes and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good Bullsh-t story…”
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