Politics as a religion

I predict they will add animatronic mechanisms to Hugo Chavez's mummified corpse within a few years. We have the technology! Some might think using a dead person as a puppet to say things with their authority is ridiculous. It may be, but ridiculousness doesn't stop people from doing it.

At the 22nd Party Congress in 1961, Nikita Khrushchev arranged for an old Bolshevik woman named Dora Lazurkina to stand up and announce:

"My heart is always full of Lenin. Comrades, I could survive the most difficult moments only because I carried Lenin in my heart, and always consulted him on what to do. Yesterday I consulted him. He was standing there before me as if he were alive, and he said: "It is unpleasant to be next to Stalin, who did so much harm to the party."

While Communists are officially atheist, it is apparently okay to take counsel from ghosts.