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:
- It explains the zeal with which Republican governors pursue
the goal, which otherwise makes no sense.
- 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.
- 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.’”
- 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.
- Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi has been arguing that
religious freedom allows the spreading of covid since last
year.
Against:
- This is a far-too-easy-to-believe conspiracy theory, and a
great many people have gone down such ratholes.
- 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.
- 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.
