You may remember this famous schoolyard retort popularized by Sally Field in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump. It means that we reveal ourselves through our acts. Stupid people do stupid shit – intelligent people less so. Much the same can be said of piety, I think.
Today, I read a Daily Kos diary that sought to understand MAGA using the insights of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, a 20th Century, German, Lutheran theologian and philosopher, wrote about human behavior explaining that evil and stupidity were distinct human traits. He noted that while stupidity was not itself evil, it was easily coopted by evil.
A few years later, in the wake of Eichman’s Nuremberg trial, Hannah Arendt said something similar in the phrase, the banality of evil. Alas, Bonhoeffer had already been hanged by the Nazis.
I invite you to read the Daily Kos diary by clicking on the link above. It’s a study in sociology and the lengths to which people will go in order to belong.