Religion keeps us from questioning authority, racism helps us justify the acts authority commits.

I feel like contributing to the rise of Nationalism and the reluctance to criticize institutions like the police and the armed forces has a lot to do with the successful attempt to bring the religious sector into the political fold, now obviously those in power don't want criticism and never have so there has always been opposition to the idea, but it seems like that since the Right started courting Christian population it has become a lot more overt I guess?

Time was the hardcore religious crowd, the Evangelicals and their like, didn't really participate in politics on the national level, they were a group that didn't turn out in huge numbers, and didn't turn out reliably for a party or candidate, however that began to change as the parties began courting them, a battle the Republicans won by being more conservative and offering a seat at the table so to speak, they more or less run the show now, and while it has basically always been true that any candidate had to at least pay lip service to a religion to have a shot at election, one of our parties is basically the hardcore Christian political wing now.

You can't have a group with such an influence on, well, everyone without internalizing some ideas, and the main one that organized religion pushes, more than sin and redemption, is that questions are bad. Oh not all questions, stuff like, "what does the Bible tell me to do in this situation?" Are encouraged, but anything that starts with "why" tends to be frowned upon.

I realize that perhaps some of you reading are religious and would disagree in your particular case, I don't care, I am talking about general trends here and don't actually give a damn if your pastor/preacher/rabbi or whatever has a big old argue about god debate day every Sunday after the service. If you know anything about your religion's history, and your religion is a bible based one, then you must know it has a large, possibly majority, portion of it that encourages Authoritarianism and looks down on questions.

Anyway, when you view a nation as a religious nation, then criticism of the country and its government changes from a political critique to a religious one, suddenly we aren't arguing policy or protesting injustice, but instead going against God's will and that of his anointed leaders. The troops are holy warriors, and the police are enforcing God's law and since God is infallible, those punished must surely be deserving.

I am not saying that it is a conscious thought process, I don't think every cop that executes an unarmed black kid is thinking to himself that he is doing God's work while he does it, but the ideas subtly permeate every part of our culture and we make those associations unconsciously and generate opinions based on them, one we have that opinion we look for ways to justify it, fortunately the other institutional thought process that we are stuck with as a country right now, racism, comes to help us with words like "thug" and locating dumb Facebook pictures.

Religion keeps us from questioning authority, racism helps us justify the acts authority commits.

Not everything is tied to racism of course, sometimes we must rely on institutional sexism or homophobia or whatever to justify the cruelties our power structure inflicts on us constantly, but our culture gives us a pretty large toolbox to help no matter the situation or the victim.

That's kind of always been around, the increase in overt religious Authoritarianism in our government helps shine a spotlight on it I think, and that kind of is ending up being a good thing. The more we see the hidden bigotry that our culture allows us to hide easily being outright stated, the easier it is to question it, and increasingly it seems Americans aren't liking the answers, or lack thereof, we are getting.