OUT ON A LIMB: The government is not your God.

Politics is a bad religion.

People may argue about the purpose of religion. For some it is a moral code—a set of principles that provides guideposts to living a virtuous life and that helps man to win the fight against his own human nature. For others, it creates a sense of purpose or belonging to a community.

Of course, wherever there is a religion that people follow and a related deity to worship, there are sure to be bad actors that try to exploit others’ faith. Any religion has to balance that potential for downside against its upside.

Now, I am a person of faith, and while I can’t tell you exactly where you can find God, I am willing to stake a large bet that God is not in Washington, D.C.

Politics has come to encompass both the veneration and exploitation that happens in religion. Politics has all of the bad aspects of what can go wrong with worship, following and faith, with absolutely none of the good.

Since we’re currently living in the version of the Matrix that was programmed by Tom Wolfe before his death in 2018, it’s worth quoting from in his epochal 1976 article, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening:” “It is entirely possible that in the long run historians will regard the entire New Left experience as not so much a political as a religious episode wrapped in semi military gear and guerrilla talk.” (That line was written with early ‘70s radical chic in mind, but reverberates quite nicely today, given Antifa’s current love of paramilitary cosplay.)