Would You Believe?
I’ve been following some of the news about Iran’s attacks on Trump—hacking his campaign and allegedly plotting to assassinate the man himself and some of his former aides. And the news about Russian attacks on the Harris/Walz campaign, e.g., the attempt to smear Walz with a charge of abusing a student. And I am led to wonder: why is it that Iran wants to take Trump completely out of the picture, while Russia wants to support the Trump campaign? If US intelligence agencies are even close to right about the level of interference in our election by these two regimes, I think we should be concerned. And I also wonder why these two allies appear to be taking opposite sides in the election.
One possible explanation is that all these attacks are just an effort to disrupt US political culture at a time when it is already fragile; perhaps there is no greater purpose than making trouble. Certainly, both Russia and Iran would “benefit” from disruption in the US, whatever their political relationship might be. (I’m not sure that “benefit” is an appropriate word for a small but favorable shift in the global balance of power, but I am sure that both these countries would see it that way.). But there is much about the Trump presidency that suggests a different explanation.
It’s not difficult to understand why Russia (or Putin) would favor a Trump presidency. During his time in the White House, Trump did the Russian autocrat several favors. Putin wanted NATO destabilized so that it could not effectively oppose the first steps in his effort to rebuild the Soviet empire. Trump obliged by threatening not to pay, or even to withdraw. Putin wanted to deploy some of his missiles in a more aggressive posture toward Europe. Trump withdrew from a treaty, thereby allowing Putin to do so. Trump even went on international TV with Putin to apologize for how badly the US had treated Russia. I’m sure Putin could use such a friend in the White House.
It is also not difficult to understand why Iran might despise Trump enough to want him dead. Things were looking up for Iran before the Trump presidency. As it became clear that Iran had stopped significant efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, sanctions were being reduced and the economy was improving, which reduced internal dissent. Iran’s theocrats had every reason to believe that they could reap the benefits of participation in the modern world while still preserving a medieval theocracy at home. But Trump lost no time in destroying this arrangement.
So maybe Iran and Russia are simply pursuing their individual interests in ways that will not damage their alliance. Or maybe not. Since we live in an age of conspiracy theories, let me propose one for your consideration. My conspiracy theory is a variation on the idea that they are just stirring up trouble, but with an agenda.
Iran is explicitly a theocracy—a nation governed by religious authorities in accordance with the principles of a particular religion. Russia is not explicitly a theocracy, but the Orthodox Church provides the metaphysical and moral justification for Putin’s political vision.(1) In both cases, religion grounds the politics of oppression. Here in the United States, there is a substantial demographic that is actively seeking the same for our country. Call them what you will—Dominionists, Christian Nationalists, White Christian Supremacists—they are seeking to bring a white, Christian version of theocracy to the US. Perhaps, just perhaps, our own White Christian Fascists (WCFs) are in cahoots with the Russians and the Iranians. Perhaps the disruption of our elections is intended to give the WCFs a chance to seize power and implement the practices and policies of Project 2025 or some other such fascist vision. Perhaps we are seeing the emergence of a new theocratic alliance poised to create major changes in the global power structure.
But what, you might ask, could ground an alliance between US Evangelical Christianity, Russian Orthodox Christianity, and the Shia Islam of Iran? Well, it has been my experience that only one thing gets religious fanatics more exercised than the existence of other religions, and that is the existence of people or nations who embrace no religion at all. Such an alliance could stand against the threat of explicitly secular China or increasingly secular Europe. Perhaps we are at the dawn of a glorious new era of muscular religiosity.
Anyway, this is no more silly than a lot of the tripe that pollutes our political culture these days. I suspect that the coming election will give us a clearer idea of the extent to which the citizenry of the United States has abandoned evidence-based critical thinking. And we might get a bit of first-hand experience of what happens to a country governed by that demographic.
____________________________________________________________
