They’re all the same, politicians and pastors.
Both groups pay themselves large salaries to fund lifestyles, far above what their tax payers / tithe paying congregants could ever hope to achieve.
Are pastors any better than the kleptocratic governments they lament when they spend the tithes they collect on private schooling for their offspring while their tithe payers can’t afford school shoes for their own? Or to pay for the bonds on their upmarket townhouses, while their congregants shelter from the summer thunderstorms in tin shacks? Or to pay for annual “pilgrimage tours” to Israel (the spiritual home of their religion) or America (the spiritual home of their economic philosophy) when the people who fund their lifestyle through their weekly offerings have never seen the sea?*
(*All real-life observations.)
At least with politicians, sane people know what they are getting – after all, no-one with a moral compass ever wanted to have power and control over another human being. That implies that all the candidates who voluntarily stand for election are “questionable” at best. Also, living in a democracy we have to accept the fact that politicians, elected by the largely uninformed (yes, even in the most developed countries, the less well educated, less well informed are in the majority, which explains a lot about politics) majority, are a fact of life. As is the fact that we have to pay those same politicians taxes, under certain knowledge that our money will be spent on things we do not want or need, whether we like it or not. That’s the price we pay for “civilisation”.
We do, however, have a choice when it comes to religious leaders. They are optional. As are their expense accounts. Choose wisely.
(And perhaps can we all try a bit harder when it comes to the politicians we pick too? I’m pretty sure the current bunch of world leaders are not the very best Earth has to offer.)