Thanks for the reply, D.W. One thing to keep in mind is what Seriati said about who the Christians were: poor, often oppressed people, and a minority. When reading a passage like this I would suggest removing present-day baggage from the reading and trying to see what is really being said, and to whom. You seem to be taking into your reading of it the idea that this is a message coming down from on-high: we are the powers that be, and you should obey us. But that's not at all the context or intent. Nor is Paul a stand-in for the powers that be, suggesting that obeying the government is the end-all in life. One thing that can be deceiving here is that Paul wasn't a political philosopher. He didn't write about how to achieve worldly ends or be a good Roman citizen or whatever else. The entire chapter should be viewed within context of a theological framework, so if he's making an argument about a person's relationship to the local government it would be in context of how, more broadly, to be a good Christian.
In particular, a few comments. What you call "window dressing" includes this passage:
whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
The next section, which sounds to you like a threat, contains the following:
12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
Sure, you could read this as a cult "the end is nigh!!!" kind of thing. OR you could read it as the Good News saying that you don't have to wait for salvation until Kingdom Come (the Jewish 'end of days'), which presumably would be very far in the future; rather the new message is that you can attain salvation as soon as you die, which indeed is a great deal 'sooner' from a temporal point of view. But the part I want to highlight is "let us put aside the deeds of darkness." We might well ask what these 'deeds' are; is this a generic way of saying let's not do bad things? But within context of the rest of the chapter I wonder whether he may not have been referring to specific acts of sedition going on at the time to show defiance to Rome. That, I don't know, but in any case if follows from the previous quote that "loving your neighbor" (which includes the Romans) shouldn't involve trying to harm them or undermine them. That's pretty crazy if taken as a strictly political statement, since in theory it would mean giving aid to an oppressive regime. And that's why it has to be seen in the faith context, as Seriati pointed out. The way to fight isn't with swords.
I think a bit of a clue about what he's talking about can be found in the last section:
13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.
The next portion follows immediately after "deeds of darkness," listing examples of this, and its final clause - we might suggest, the culmination of the point - says not to indulge in dissension and jealousy. These are listed among various physical luxuries such as debauchery and drunkenness. The entire above commentary about respecting local government must, I think, be understood as being in this context, that Paul is asking his fellows to avoid licentious behavior, among which he includes being rebellious. This alone can probably stand an entire treatise to plumb it out, since we could well ask whether the implication is that
the reasons why his fellows may have been doing whatever he thinks they've been doing isn't from purity of intent but rather because it made them feel invigorated, or adrenalined up, or whatever else. I've personally known people who thrive on finding things to rebel against or be outraged about. It makes them feel like they've got an enemy to attack, a righteous backing behind their bitterness, and other such reasons.
I suspect that diving deeper into the points being made in Romans 13 are beyond my grasp, but it does seem clear to me that this is an extremely difficult chapter to parse, especially in light of how difficult the message of "swords into plowshares" is in the first place. It's a serious question, how to reconcile the message of Jesus regarding violent resistance (like the zealots) with what one should actually do when confronted by a hostile regime. But It seems to me more or less implausible to suggest that Paul meant for this to say that one must support various regimes (or a particular one) because God says they're great. One needn't support them at all, even while still obeying the laws. The point in the Gospels seems more to be that there are ways to resist the system other than going toe to toe with the police.
ETA - However I can certainly see that passages like these
can be taken to mean something fascistic, just like how the Nazis twisted Nietzsche to mean what it certainly didn't. To whatever extent corrupt people use good text to rule I agree with you that we should be cautious about blindly following what others say.
