The 21st Century Satan

[Watchman]

Pff. You think the US is on the decline ? It ain't got anything on China. If that place doesn't undergo some direly needed reforms (which its leaders don't want to carry out) sometime fast to fix at least the worst of its mounting domestic troubles, my bet is they're going to have another honest-to-God Communist revolution, civil war or somesuch in a few decades.
And being the police state they are, the problem-solving instruments they have in place mostly involve violence against dissidents. Not quite what's going to be needed to avoid a major domestic rupture and/or economic meltdown I'd say.

The poor have always demonstrated a willingness to only put up with so much crap before the choice between dying of starvation and dying with a weapon in hand trying to take down the system starts tilting in the favour of the latter.

Yup. And a spectacular one it'll be. From afar, that is.

Meh. It's not religion they're fighting about but the usual murky soup of politics, conflicting interests, cultural schism and whatever. Religion just gets its usual role as the convenient rallying point and blunt instrument for the radicals.