MARX DESCRIBES THE WINGNUTS

I've tried to look at our modern wingnuts in psychological and historical terms in order to understand them better. I came across this passage, originally written in the early 1840's¹, in a biography of Marx², and I thought it was a pretty good description of wingnuts, especially the Fundies.

...because the real situation of these gentlemen in the modem state bears no relation at all to the conception that they have of their situation; because they live in a world situated beyond the real world and because in consequence their imagination holds the place of their head and their heart, they necessarily turn towards theory, being unsatisfied with practice, but it is towards the theory of the transcendent, i.e. religion. However, in their hands religion acquires a polemical bitterness impregnated with political tendencies and becomes, in a more or less conscious manner, simply a sacred cloak to hide desires that are both very secular and at the same time very imaginary.

Thus we shall find in our Speaker that he opposes a mystical/religious theory of his imagination to practical demands . . . and that to what is reasonable from the human point of view he opposes superhuman sacred entities.

Marx was referring to the Prussian ruling class but we can see that key points, such as a denial of reality and a flight to religion, also characterize modern day wingers.

¹ "Debates on the Freedom of the Press and on the Publication of the Parliamentary Proceedings" in K. Marx, The Early Texts, ed. D. McLellan (Oxford, 1971).
² Karl Marx: A Biography. David McClellan, Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.