History Memes

I was rewatching Community again and got to the Starburns funeral episode. Basically, the study group manages to start a riot and destroy the school, yada yada yada.

Anyway, prior to the riot, each one in the study group is asked to say some words about Starburns, and they end up trash talking the school. We get to the Christian mom of the group Shirley.

When asking her to come up to say her piece, the Dean says something along the lines of "What about you, Shirley? I think we can all use a little bit of Jesus during this time."

Now I've seen this episode....countless times and I highly doubt that Dan Harmon actually meant this to be a critique of religion but it was the first time it really hit me that this must have been how kings and dictators use religion to placate society. How useful it would have been to use an invisible, all knowing, all powerful god.