The Incalculable Evil Of Theocratic Dictatorships--
The Incalculable Evil Of Theocratic Dictatorships--
One year ago today, New York Times writer David Brooks penned an Op-Ed entitled "When Dictators Find God." The title was meant ironically of course, since the very notion of a benificent and just Creator in whose image and likeness we are made is entirely antithetical to that of a homicidal and sadistic dictator, who brutalizes his own citizens in the name of that deity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/opinion/autocracy-religion-liberalism.html
The article itself is a study of the depths of cynicism to which Vladimir Putin, his co-thinkers and followers have descended. Yet, the Putin example unfortunately typifies the history of those world leaders who abrogate to themselves unchecked power over the State, while wearing a cloak of religious authority under which they rule. The same evil cynicism and hypocrisy of course also applies to the several other dictatorships which abound today, including Hungary, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, as well as that which is sought by the so-called "Dominonists" who have anointed Donald Trump their "god-sent" King of the USA.
Such leaders invariably build their empires, cities, and legacies upon a mountain of dead bodies, the persecuted, tortured and exploited, and wield their religious scriptures as a club for beating their own people into submission and conformity. Possibly that image is the source of the "Seven Mountains" symbolism of the Dominionists. (That would make a good edgy political cartoon, seven mountains piled high with the current and future victims of Christian nationalism, if someone could pull it off)
This is why, in the light of such history, the US Constitution's founders, even with their flaws and moral compromises, insisted upon a secular state governed by universal philosophical principles, not religious doctrine, dogma or laws. They understood well the origins and dangers of the religious wars and domestic terror which rendered Europe, Asia and the Americas slaughterhouses of perpetual warfare and autocracy, reaching back to the era of the Crusades. This by rulers whose incalculable crimes were committed in the name of religions whose prophets and philosophers came in meekness and reflection, who taught and preached kindness and universal love, rather than enforcing religious Orthodoxy through inquisitions and bloodletting.
It was not Jesus, Mohammed or the God of Abraham who built, inherited or ruled over empires based on slavery or murder. It was those Emperors and Kings who corrupted their teachings, and were thus enabled by charlatans and power-grabbers in clerical garb, who then constructed lying religious arguments in defense of history's greatest crimes. These were men who fundamentally represented the exact opposite of what their holy scriptures assert as guiding principles.
Those who would argue otherwise are either brainwashed, ignorant, or the most despicable of sophistical liars.
This is why I was interested in the timing and content of the "Times" editorial, as it was published only days after I wrote a blog article on exactly the same subject, titled "What You Need To Know About Russia Today," linked below. Not that I thought there was any connection, just odd coincidence.
For many readers, my article and the Times piece were counterintuitive. It is an axiom buster to most that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is a deeply religious person, or that the population of Russia is as well. Given the history of Soviet state suppression of organized religion, and imposition of dialectical materialism as the heart of Marxist political/economic thought from childhood, one might think that religion and Russia wouldn't mix. That is the trap of believing that culture is merely a product of the "Zeitgeist," rather than cross-generational, transmitted over centuries or more.
Vladimir Putin was a KGB officer before he chose to seek political power. Consider the bloody history of that agency and the training of its members from its inception under Stalin and Beria. He still thinks and acts according to that outlook, yet claims to have undergone a religious conversion to the Russian Orthodox Christianity of his Mother in 1993. (Documented by Fiona Hill's excellent Bio --lfr)
One would think the two outlooks are irreconcilable, but in the case of Russian Christianity they are not. To understand why, it is necessary to understand the historic difference resulting from the split which occured within Christianity between East and West with the collapse of Rome and rise of Constantinople. All versions of Christianity, both ancient and modern, as should be understood, are not the same. They are crafted or configured to the particular culture of nations by those who lead them, to serve their long term interests. In the case of the Eastern Rite, it's theology has always conformed to its culture of top down despotism. (That is however subject for a longer piece.)
Often the theology of dictatorships flows from their choice of an enemy, whether internal or external. (This was emphatically the case with Adolph Hitler and his backers from within the Nazified Christian churches whose leaders he elevated, whose anti-semitic outlook was a historic feature of their ideology. It is also characteristic of the Catholic Church enabled dictatorships of Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain, which came to power on political platforms to roll back "godless communism")
Sometimes it is shaped by natural disasters like Plague or drought which they believe to be God's retribution, (and for which they pick a convenient scapegoat) or determined by hastily contrived interpretations of prophecy. Or prophecies invented out of whole cloth by religious scholars who are but bureaucratic employees of the theocratic state, who need some extra leverage through which to exert control. (or to dole out some false spiritual hope here and there to keep people happy in their servitude)
Whatever you might have thought about Russia, it has now mostly succumbed to the tenets of Putinism, those of a religious fundamentalist dictatorship. This is not solely due to Putin's top down political control. It is that his regime is symbiotic with the institutional and religious authority of the re-emergent Russian Orthodox Church. The proof of this should be evident by the literally religious arguments endorsed by both Putin and the Church's leaders that the territory of Ukraine is by divine right the sacred blood and soil of "Kiev Rus" and belongs to Russia. This is why the support for Putin's invasion by the Russian people is an overwhelming majority. (except for many of the soldiers fighting there and a minority of dissidents. It is important to face this ugly reality, rather than buy in to western press hype regarding the Russian opposition)
Russia does have a democracy movement, and they are culturally more in tune with the West, but Putin has used the war effectively to isolate and dismantle it, jailing or exiling its leaders such that for now it is contained and has little power. They are as isolated as are the priests and Bishops of the Vatican who wish to reform it from within, to allow marriage, family planning, gender rights and financial transparency. They are voices howling into the wind, which may or may not be heard.
The relevant point here is that wars and dictatorships which carry the banners of religion are the most destructive of all, because it's adherents believe they are instruments of God and therefore infallible. But the Gods with whom they communicate are solely the "voices in their head" born of psychosis, trauma, acculturated hatreds, resentments and grievance. Their spiritual experiences are closer to the hallucinations of "acid heads," not divine revelation. By their nature, they cannot compromise, negotiate, surrender, or grant mercy, because they are operating on a script of predestination, written by an authoritarian Creator which they cannot edit, whose ending cannot be rewritten, and which they believe should literally dictate the day to day living of everyone, all of the time. In fact, "God's Plan" according to this theology is so permanently inscribed in stone that not even God itself can change it! Therefore, in the mind of religious fanatics, perpetual war is God's Will until the proverbial end of time.
This is why the global unholy alliance between Russia's Vladimir Putin and the so-called "Dominionists" is so thoroughly committed to eradicating the US Constitutional system which provided for a secular state, through explicit separation of church and state. The pro-dictatorship religious fundamentalists of Moscow and Dallas Texas share the same visceral hatred for the United States itself, because it is an obstacle to the unchecked power they personally wish to exert.
That is something to consider for those modern historians who find it easy and convenient to trash the American Revolution and its founders as an across the board failure, carried out by hypocrites. Rather it was born with enough potential to allow for justice and equity that it is both despised and distorted by the biggest of failures, and the worst of hypocrites today. That is, the white Christian-nationalist MAGA, which worships both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump as "god-sent" leaders, whose reigns they believe are prophecied to bring back the Savior in whose name they will rule.
These are not actual religions. They are anti-Christian heresies, and cults.
And remember this, the goal, the ultimate objective of many cults, are to join with their falsely contrived deities in eternity through mass murder/suicides. That's what the most hard core members of the worst of these cults historically do, and the examples are numerous. This is the end game of cult leaders, whether it is the "End Times Armageddonists," the old believers in the Russian "Third Rome" prophecy, the events of Rev. Jim Jones' Jonestown, or the final showdown at Waco with the Branch Davidians. The last thing that a healthy society should ever allow to happen is to allow a religious cult to seize political power. That is what has happened in Russia, and that is the danger we are now verging upon in the United States.
This reality should inform the activities of all of us for the next sixty days, as we enter the crucible of political warfare against the hostile invasion force known as MAGA, to ensure the "Blue Wave" which we all know we need. Mobilize the vote for your candidates of choice, but don't get caught up in personalities, because what we are fighting, both for and against, is far bigger than they.
On that note, the article by me from last year.
https://therosenreport.blogspot.com/2021/09/what-you-need-to-know-about-russia-today.html
