It’s pretty much like Frankenstein, but with less humanity and pathos. As reported elsewhere, business interests pushed for “one nation under God” and manifold other Constitutional violations in the mid-to-late 1900’s so as to defeat government regulations, earn more profit, and screw their workers. And it worked: national prayer breakfasts, references to God all over our currency and other state and federal artifacts, and so on. “Establishment Clause? It’s just words on a piece of paper, amIrite Bros?” Lots of rights for corporate personhood, and fewer rights for human personhood. All with the Lord’s apparent sanction.

So the government wound up sponsoring, at the behest of the wealthy and powerful, the promulgation of Christianity. But not just ANY old sort of Christianity, oh my goodness gracious no. What we have been saddled with is a shadow theocracy composed of the most patriarchal, repressive, and authoritarian denominations: Catholicism, Baptists, CICU, Nazarenes and the like.

A perfect plan to undermine the Constitutional system, creating a neo-feudal structure in which users can be controlled and unknowingly transformed into modern-day serfs and villeins. And it has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its creators: look at how much steeper the sides of the economic pyramid have become over the past 50+ years, and how much sharper is its point. Look at how many Americans no longer think for themselves; instead, they blindly accept the sermons of their pastors and bleatings of their favorite pundits.

Success, indeed. The rich have gotten much richer, the government has been bought and sold to the rich, and everybody else fights over the few remaining scraps and crusts that fall from the high table down to where we can grasp them. But into every Eden there must slither a snake, and one has done so in this case: the peasantry and the less-intelligent members of the elite are taking their religious indoctrination and using it in ways that Big Biz does not like.

For example, the new “religious freedom restoration” laws that are being pushed around the country. They are not that much different than many other religious laws that have been passed over the years, but these are costing Big Biz money. So Big Biz wants the laws rolled back, and the rabble are resisting.

Dr. Frankenstein’s monster turned on him, just as the neo-feudal schemes of the 1% are turning around to bite them in their corpulent kazoos. It’s instructive, and weirdly satisfying, to see evil marring evil. But the glee one feels at the discomfiture of the corrupt is tempered with the knowledge that we are still in chains forged by decades of slow, steady undermining of our system of government. And the additional awareness that it is going to be far beyond difficult to undo what we have allowed to be done to us in the name of God.

The Religion Monster is running amok, and lots of we lowly types are being trampled thereby. Time to grab the torches and pitchforks, and deal once and for all with the monster and its mad creators. And that soon.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky