PlzGibHugs

You could argue the cultural impact, I guess, and the confederacy’s impact on following American policy. Still, this is a bit of a stretch given that there was no shortage of racists in power in the north either.

and is stronger than ever

Arguing semantics here, but this is a bit of a stretch. Iran has suffered very significant damage. A more accurate assessment would be that it withstood the US’s onslaught without having their military or their government broken, and have exposed the US military as being too inept to properly wage war.

The takeaway is similar in the context of the war, but its the US that has fallen rather than Iran having risen, which has much more significant global implications.

For transparency, I’m a second hand source, close to multiple people who lived across the region.

Generally, the region is both extremely distrustful of government and outsiders, as well as being extremely prone to superstition and magic thinking. Obviously, there is the spectre of colonialism, but more recently than this, governments in the region are generally corrupt, violent and unstable on a scale westerners would find unbelievable. For example, (if I remeber right) Nigeria recently issued new bills but then much of the money “”“disappeared”“” before reaching banks and other organizations. The president claimed snakes ate the money. More relevant to this, with the inconsistent enforcement of laws, doctors are often unreliable or outright dangerous, such as giving sugar pills instead of medication. I have no idea of the authenticity of this (which is part of the problem), but from my own circle, there were stories of patients of the last ebola outbreak taken for quarentine, and then left unattended to or without food and water. Given all this, its not suprising that they wouldn’t trust outsiders taking people away.

At the same time, there is an abundance of superstition and magical thinking. I’m not sure how much of this is cultural versus reglious versus trauma and oppression versus lack of education, but belief in conspiracies, witchcraft, demons/spirits, and other such stuff is widespread to the point where it make the American south look tame. This is fed into further by the same sorts of social media rumors and misinformation that have become popular globally, but with far more gulibility and far less ability to disprove them (due to lack of education, and lack of local resources).

Taken together, you have basically the perfect cultural environment for this sort of anti-science movement.