Karl Marx famously referred to religion as the “opium of the people.” The full quote is:
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”Marx believed that, like opium, religion relieved their pain, but, like opium, it sapped their will, making them complacent. Religion reinforced the status quo, giving power to the elites (the nobility and capitalists) and prevented the people from fighting against real social problems.
In Soviet Russia the government took Marx’s dictum as a warning against a harmful addiction. The Soviets repressed religion, though Stalin’s 1936 constitution guaranteed freedom of religion and freedom from religion.
The Soviets never stamped out religion: they didn't tear down churches or ban literature with religious overtones, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Instead, the Orthodox Church was co-opted by the Soviets and made subservient to the government, but kept at arm's length. Religious minorities who refused to toe the line -- notably Jews and Pentecostals -- were routinely persecuted, imprisoned and murdered, with the blessing of the Orthodox Church.
When he came to power, Vladimir Putin recognized the Soviets' error: instead of suppressing religion, Putin has taken complete control of the Orthodox Church. He has in fact turned everything completely around: now his government goes after atheists and people who break a law that makes it a crime to "insult the feelings of religious believers." Putin has harnessed the homophobia and misogyny of the Church and turned it into official state policy.
The Pussy Riot arrests were just a taste of the theocratic dictatorship that Putin is constructing.
This did not go unnoticed by Donald Trump. Trump has never been a religious man. Every time he mentions religion ("Two Corinthians," "I don't bring God into that picture") it is clear he neither knows about nor cares anything for religion.
Yet he has promised American evangelicals the moon: more restrictions on abortion, the ability to discriminate against homosexuals, denying women access to birth control and any medical treatment they just don't happen to like. He's feeding them the opium they demand.
Trump's entire life history is a catalog of deadly sins that evangelicals used to rail against: lust (the divorces, the womanizing, bragging about sexual harassment), gluttony (he even lies about his obesity), greed (huge tax cuts for himself, the casino gambling, "My whole life I've been greedy, greedy with money"), sloth (exercise uses up finite energy), wrath ("Get even with people"), the envy (the constant obsession with his wealth compared to others), and of course, pride: he can't go five minutes without bragging about himself in the most expansive terms possible, and demands everyone around him constantly shower him with empty praises.
Yet some American evangelicals claim that Trump was ordained by God to be president. When it came to light that he paid a porn star $130,000 to keep quiet about having sex with him just after Melania gave birth to their son, Tony Perkins of the conservative Family Research Council said, "Yes, evangelicals, conservatives, they gave him a mulligan. They let him have a do-over. They said we'll start afresh with you and we'll give you a second chance."
But it's not a second chance. It's the hundredth or thousandth chance: almost every day there's another story of Trump's egregious moral failings, from outright lies, to constant vulgarity, to sexual predation, to banging porn stars, to casual racism, to normalizing Nazis, to giving himself gigantic tax cuts to the elites that Trump promised to take down.
Are evangelicals so doped up on opiods and religion that they can't see they've made a bargain with the devil?
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