Is Covid a Weapon in a Religious Civil War?

By encouraging the spread of covid among children, Republican governors have made children into vectors of a deadly disease. Is it a deliberate strategy?

If Christian Dominionists and Reconstructionists wanted to destroy the US public education system and crash the US health care system, encouraging the spread of covid among children would be an effective strategy. Have the shadowy figures that set Republican policy at state level adopted this as strategy? It would explain the discipline with which Republican governors work to spread the disease among public school children.

But this is the sort of territory where one risks ending up wearing a tinfoil hat. On the one hand, conspiracies exist. On the other hand, most scary conspiracy theories are not credible. So, here, I’ll lay out the arguments for and against and make a stab at weighing the likelihood.

For:

1. It explains the zeal with which Republican governors pursue the goal, which otherwise makes no sense.
2. Destroying the public educational system has long been a goal of Christian Reconstructionist and Dominionist radicals. Protestant extremists want an educational system run by their churches, while the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) similarly longs to reassert its control over education. The Reconstructionist/Dominionist opinion was largely in laid out in Rushdoony’s 1963 book, The Messianic Character of American Education. Trump’s Secretary of Education, Elisabeth Dee “Betsy” DeVos was likely on board with this program. The USCCB position is articulated here.
3. Reconstructionists and Dominionists are similarly opposed to public health care systems, indeed, opposed to any non-religious health care system. Frederick Clarkson of Political Research Assocites, writing in 1994, commented that in the Reconstructionist Kingdom of God, “No social services would be provided outside the church, which would be responsible for ‘health, education, and welfare.’”
4. In Texas, one of the states where the governor is committed to spreading covid, a destructive anti-abortion law has been passed, which the Roberts Court, in a remarkably incoherent decision, has allowed to take effect, is very much in line with the Reconstructionist/Dominionist agenda.
5. Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi has been arguing that religious freedom allows the spreading of covid since last year.

Against:

1. This is a far-too-easy-to-believe conspiracy theory, and a great many people have gone down such ratholes.
2. I have little direct evidence of this beyond Governor Reeves’ remarks. I have not seen documents that support it and this is a big operation – one would expect some leaks.
3. The people who would formulate such a strategy would have to be utterly devoid of human sympathy. To deliberately make children into disease vectors is a strategy as cruel as any German Nazis strategy. But this is what is actually being done, so I think this objection falls.

The evidence, though indirect, is strong. In the language of the intelligence community, I regard the hypothesis that Reconstructionist/Dominionist ideology is at least an influence on the decision of various Republican governors to spread covid as highly probable (9 in 10 odds.) That it is part of an organized strategy, I regard as probable (2 in 3 odds.) That foreign actors are involved, also probable. Give weight at least to the thought that very likely there is influence.

As to the idea that this is in fact organized, 2 in 3 odds are not certainty, but they are good reason to investigate further. If I worked for one of the three-letter agencies and had the authority, I would order that investigation.