One ought to ask, why is it that Republican conservatism and the Christian Right is aligned with Putin and Russian Orthodoxy, and why is it that right-wing Roman Catholicism is aligned with both? All demand a divine order of supremacy with a few, who you might call oligarchs or the Powers, at the top, and the rest of us lower and lower. Bad as it is now, what happens when these factions realize the other sees themselves at the very top? #

Remember, unlike at the beginning of World War II, all of this is happening in the context of nuclear weapons. The oligarchs believe they can survive a nuclear war because they have the money to buy islands in far away places and build bunkers deep beneath the ground. We are seeing this being played out in Ukraine today. #

In the United States we are are too far removed from the Thirty Years war that preceded the birth of our nation. Consequently, we forget the importance of the establishment clause of the first amendment that is intended to prevent our government, the seat of power, from using religion to instill and maintain tyranny. The sole focus on individual religious freedom, which is only half of the first amendment, is a redirection to hide in plain sight what the Powers are doing. The assimilation of religion into politics has been the real purpose of the fight over abortion started by the Reagan administration. #

Ironic, given the talk of the Anti-christ that the Christian Right likes to use to fuel their fear-based power.#