Just about perfect, as conspiracy theories go

Just before my trip I finished the book Southernmost by Silas House. It opens with the Cumberland River flooding and (of course) I thought a lot about the recent flooding in central Texas. I had thought the Cumberland River would be near the Cumberland Gap in western Maryland, but it actually flows through Nashville and much of the length of Tennessee. The main character is Asher, pastor at a rural church a ways downriver of Nashville. He and wife Lydia have a son Justin, nine years old. In the flood Asher and Justin rescue a gay couple, Jimmy and Stephen. Lydia won’t let them stay at the house where Justin can watch them. Justin is described as sensitive, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Lydia wants to toughen him up and Asher sees no need to do that. Asher is also thinking about his brother Luke, who is gay and was run off by their parents. As a critical moment Asher turned his back on his brother. Jimmy and Stephen try out Asher’s church but the congregation condemns them. Asher realizes he has been preaching judgment when he should be preaching love and acceptance. But the congregation understands God through judgment and refuses Asher’s change in direction. Even Lydia rejects the change; her upbringing is too strong. Asher sees he is losing everything but does not want to lose Justin. He also doesn’t want Justin to learn the judgmental attitudes of his mother. He ends up doing something rash and stupid. The rest of the novel is about how that plays out. While a gay couple is a catalyst to the story, they make only a few brief appearances. Luke appears and only briefly mentions his lover. So this isn’t a story about gay people. It is about straight people coming to terms with how gay people are treated. And about coming to terms with the nature of God and with making a mistake. I enjoyed this book. Asher genuinely cares for Justin. My Sunday movie was Maestra. I had heard of this movie a year ago and only recently found it on Netflix. The name is too similar to more popular shows for good internet searching. The competition La Maestra was established to promote female orchestral conductors. The first one was in Paris in March 2022. This is a documentary about five of the women contestants – Mélisse, originally from Paris, but currently with a conducting job in Iowa City. Tamara from America. Anna from Krakow, Poland and the daughter of a conductor. Zoe from Athens. We get to know the lives of these women in their home countries. We don’t meet the fifth one, Ustina from Ukraine, until just before the competition begins. That’s understandable because the competition was one month after Russia’s invasion. The only one of the judges I recognize is Marin Alsop, a female conductor what had made a big name for herself in Baltimore and does a lot of mentoring of female conductors. In documentaries like this I wonder how they select which contestants to feature. Do they pick a few and hope they win? Do they pick the ones that agree to have cameras in their faces? Do they follow several more contestants than appear in the film and then include the ones that do well? The women talk about issues that face female conductors. The first is the reason why the contest was created – 97% of conductors are men. They wonder whether pregnancy will put a career on hold for a few years and would they be able to take a gig wile breastfeeding. They are told their gestures are too big or that they should smile more and they wonder whether a male conductor would be told the same thing. At the end we are told the contest allowed this woman to be offered this opportunity and that woman was able to take that job, a step up from what they did before. They also said the contest created a community of fellow conductors, less interested in competing and more interested in collaborating. In last Thursday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic discussing the MAGA revolt over the refusal to release the Epstein files.

The Jeffrey Epstein saga is just about perfect, as conspiracy theories go. At its core, it’s about a cabal of corrupt billionaires, politicians, and celebrities exploiting children on a distant island—catnip for online influencers and QAnon types who have bought into any number of outlandish stories. Yet for such a dark conspiracy theory, there’s a great deal we know about Epstein’s life and crimes. There are unsealed court transcripts, flight records, victim statements. His black book has been reported on, giving the public access to names of people Epstein is thought to have associated with (though some have said they don’t know why he had their information). There’s real investigative reporting, much of it from the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown, who spoke with detectives and victims and provided a fuller account of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking and the attempts to downplay his crimes. Brown also credits the police officers who continued to press on their own investigation as federal officials seemed to wave it away. The case is real and horrifying, which gives life to all the wild speculation: If this is true, why not that? ... Whatever happens next will be a defining moment for Trump. However strange it seems to measure the Epstein conspiracy theory against, say, the president’s approach to tariffs or his bombing of Iran, this is the stuff Trump’s mythology is based on. Trump has positioned himself as an outsider who shares enemies with his base—namely, elites. It hasn’t mattered to his supporters that Trump is an elite himself; the appeal, and the narrative, is that Trump wants to punish the same people his supporters loathe. In appearing to bury the Epstein list—which, again, may or may not exist—by calling it a “hoax” and pinning it to his “PAST supporters,” Trump is pushing up against the limits of this narrative—as well as his ability to command attention and use it to bend the world to his whims. If Trump and the MAGA media ecosystem can successfully spin the Epstein debacle into a conspiracy theory that helps them, or if they can make the story stop, it would suggest once again that his grip on the party and its base is total: an impenetrable force field no bit of reality can puncture.

And if they can’t successfully spin it? David Wallace-Wells of the New York Times discussed what is known about the Epstein mess, which is quite a bit. Then:

Almost none of this information has satisfied those seeking it, or those seeking still more. And really, how could it? As with so many contemporary conspiracies, the known picture is expansive and uncomfortable enough, with abundant detail arrayed like so much proverbial red yarn. But the logic of paranoid thinking demands ever more cycles of disclosure and running epicycles of analysis. (This is among the many ways it is an extremely good match for the age of social media.) And what is missing in the Epstein story isn’t exactly more information — it’s more meaning. Is there more to see here, beyond the striking fact of a suspiciously wealthy and curiously well-connected sex offender? Or perhaps less, with Epstein turning out to have been more a shady influence hustler and savvy estate planner than some world-historical man of mystery? We get a classic conspiracy theory, we’re often told, when disempowered people try to make sense of a disordered world, seizing on a story that gives them a comforting sense of control, at least as analysts of an otherwise overwhelming system producing improbable or inscrutable outcomes.

In the comments of Sunday’s pundit roundup are a good cartoon and meme about the Epstein mess. The cartoon was from Marc Murphy. It is titled “The Real Epstein List” and shows a dozen female faces with black bars across the eyes to prevent identification with their names and ages, which range from 14-16. Murphy added:

This is the list. I hate that it falls to me to make this as clear as I can. Every sex act with these children was rape. Rape. It’s a moral and leadership and political problem, yes. But before all of these, it was a rape.

Murphy said it because, alas, the media sources I’m exposed to (and I can’t imagine any other source doing any better) ignore the underage girls that are why this is a scandal. A meme posted by exlrrp shows the nasty guy and Epstein, each with an arm around the waist of a woman. The text says, “Wow I can’t believe Epstein killed himself before realizing it was all a hoax.” That sentence is attributed to Elon Musk. In today’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Dan Pfeiffer of Message Box discussing why he changed his opinion on the nasty guy’s involvement in the Epstein case. The full article explains his reasoning.

Trump’s behavior is so bizarre, so unhinged, and so counter to his short-term interests that the most likely explanation for his actions is that Trump either believes or knows that he is mentioned in the Epstein files in ways that are even more damaging than the blowback he is getting for not releasing the files. This is, of course, speculation. There is no evidence that Trump was an Epstein “client.”

Congressman Brendan F Boyle, writing in The Bulwark:

The question that will soon be before my party is: Should we provide our votes to fund the government—and they need our votes—knowing that Republicans may very well undo, on a strictly partisan basis, any deal we’ve made with them? I certainly don’t speak for every Democrat, but I believe we must be prepared not to do so. No one wants a shutdown, but agreeing to a deal that can be revoked whenever Trump demands it isn’t responsible. It only teaches the other side that they can do it again and again. Guided by Russell Vought, Donald Trump has set out to seize complete control over federal spending. Meanwhile, the administration is already impounding—that is, illegally withholding—billions in congressionally approved funds for public services and infrastructure across the country. We’re already in a slow-motion government shutdown. We cannot allow this blatant power grab to continue. We need to ask ourselves: Is Congress going to defend its responsibility to set and safeguard federal spending? Or are we just going to roll over?

I think this is an issue because a budget vote can be filibustered and a rescission vote to cancel previously approved spending can’t be. If I have that right then my earlier writing of a couple months ago about the death of the filibuster was not accurate. Reporting during the passage of the Big Brutal Bill also implied the filibuster is still alive. In last Friday’s Cheers and Jeers column for Kos Bill in Portland, Maine quoted late night commentary. Here’s one:

"This really highlights Trump’s dilemma. He’s desperate to tamp down the drama, but his entire career has only taught him how to heighten the drama. You can’t spend your whole life as the messy b*tch from a reality show and then suddenly say, ‘Can we have some decorum here, please?’ ” —The Daily Show's Jordan Klepper

Brian Mann of NPR went to Santiago, Chile to explore the country’s low birth rate, much lower than in the US, though the US rate is dropping and many of the reasons are the same. The birth rate in Chile is 1.6, well below the 2.1 rate of a stable population. Many social systems – the economy, labor market, and pensions – are based on a new generation big enough to replace the older ones. These systems will have problems if the new generation is notably smaller. Some of the reasons for the low birth rate: Younger women want fewer kids or don’t want kids at all, seeing them as a burden and great expense. Or they are delaying having kids until later in life after they are well established in their careers. To them being a mother means a loss of freedom and a loss of body autonomy. The number of women earning college degrees and entering the workforce is rising. They are rejecting the idea that the purpose of a woman is to give birth to and take care of children. They have almost erased teen pregnancy in the last 20 years. Immigration could relieve some of the problems of a low birth rate. But Chile is following the US opinion that immigration, even from elsewhere in South America, is seen as an invasion. They fear what makes the Chilean national character will be extinguished. Of course, conservative political leaders decry the loss of the mother-child bond. They propose policies to encourage women to have more children. The influential Catholic Church also preaches motherhood. Women respond by saying the government and the Church will not change their decision.

Do you remember the famous 97% climate study?

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that Sen. Joe Manchin may have a plan to exit the Democratic Party to become independent or switch to Republican. If the latter he throws the Senate to Republican majority. And there goes Biden’s agenda. Or Manchin could be bluffing. Or someone is spreading rumors. Or the rumors are being spread because Manchin whispered in particular ears. Whatever the case he is making obnoxious demands on Biden. And McCarter has details on those demands. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the latest poll about the Supreme Court, this one by Selzer & Company for Grinnell College. It shows 62% of Americans, broken down as 60% of Republicans, 63% of independents, and 66% of Democrats, believe that politics – not the law – drive Supreme Court decisions. Peter Hanson, director of Grinnell College National Poll, said:

This is a nightmare scenario for Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sought to protect the court’s reputation as an apolitical institution. The court faces a public convinced that its decisions are about politics rather than the Constitution, just as it prepares to make important decisions on abortion, guns, and affirmative action.

Eleveld wrote:

The public is unhappy—unhappy enough that they want to reform the court. That loss of legitimacy, coupled with public support for reshaping the Supreme Court, is indeed Chief Justice Roberts' nightmare scenario—not to mention that of Mitch McConnell.

Chitown Kev, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Justin Rowlatt and Tom Gerken of BBC News. The BBC reported a huge leak of documents show several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Australia, are asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels. The documents also show wealthy nations questioning paying poorer countries to help them to move to greener technologies. All of this lobbying is before the Glasgow climate summit to start in about ten days. Mark Lynas, environmental writer, whose new book Our Final Warning: Six Degress of Climate Emergency is out now, tweeted:

Do you remember the famous 97% study - that 97% of climate science supported the consensus on human-caused climate change? Well we have just published an update for 2012-2021 papers in the same journal, Environmental Research Letters. The figure is now... drumroll please...99.9%!

Lynas linked to articles about the paper in the Cornell Cronicle and the Guardian. He also linked to the article. Then he included a profanity laden response from that last 0.1%. Over the last week Eleveld wrote several articles about the Republican Party’s interaction with the nasty guy. The whole mess got messier when the nasty guy threatened to tell his supporters not to vote in 2022 if the Republicans didn’t find a way to overturn the 2020 election. Last Friday Eleveld wrote that the party made a big misstep when it allowed the nasty guy to keep talking. Eleveld quoted a man who said the message of a stolen election made him think he may never vote again. Why do it if his vote will be changed? Several Republican members of Congress say the nasty guy’s obsession with the last election obscures the message they want to project for the coming election. But none of them have the guts, integrity, or political capital to confront the nasty guy. That includes Moscow Mitch. On Saturday Eleveld wrote about the nasty guy is pitting Republicans against Republicans. One way he is doing it is to endorse candidates in the most critical Congressional – the ones who most eagerly embrace the Big Lie. Another is to reach into state parties and demand more sham audits. A poll shows the effect – some GOP members saying others in their party don’t deserve to be reelected. On Tuesday Eleveld wrote:

Congressional Republicans worst-case scenario for 2022 is that Donald Trump's cultists—who tend to be lower-propensity voters—stay home while Trump's dominance of the party turns off higher propensity GOP voters who can't stand him. ... Gee, maybe if you turn your party into a cult and the cult leader tells everybody the whole system is a sham, then some of the cultists might divest from the system. ... For all the focus on Trump voters potentially not turning out, the possibility that anti-Trump voters will turn out but be dismayed by Trump's continued takeover of the party is perhaps just as big of a liability for the GOP next year.

Also last Friday Eleveld wrote the National Republican Congressional Committee has taken a page from the nasty guy in its fundraising. The text begins:

You’re a traitor… You abandoned Trump. We were told you were a tried & true, lifelong patriot.

Eleveld wrote there are several things to note. First: it says “You’re a traitor,” not “You will be a traitor if you fail to ...” The reader is put on the defensive. Second, the betrayal is to the nasty guy, not the NRCC or the Republican Party. There is a bit at the end allowing the reader to make amends. Eleveld wrote:

Of course, this is cult mentality at its finest. Two near-universal hallmarks of cults are the elevation of an authority figure to near-deity status, and the threat of “shunning” and ostracism for those who try to leave. Claims of “special” knowledge that only cult members possess—such as Trump’s promotion of the Big Lie—and an overriding “us versus them” mentality are also common characteristics of such groups. Nor should we ignore the distinct possibility that, as disciples of authoritarianism, many Republicans actually crave being addressed and debased by such terminology; it’s worth noting that when asked his opinion about these texts, Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger acknowledged their effectiveness. The fact that this text boils down to a mere solicitation for money shouldn’t obscure the more profound and troubling fact that one of this country’s two major political parties has become so beholden to a single personality that all significant decisions it now makes, including how to raise funds, are inextricably tied to that person’s fortunes. The fact that this individual has a proven, lethal track record of treachery, deceit, and complete indifference to basic principles of good faith—let alone the welfare of the country and all norms of human decency—makes that solicitation all the more remarkable.

Yesterday Eleveld wrote:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants a mulligan on his failure to convict Donald Trump earlier this year during his second impeachment trial. McConnell's fumble is undoubtedly responsible for breathing new life into Trump, who has now overwhelmed the party McConnell fancifully imagined was under his command. ... "I do think we need to be thinking about the future and not the past," McConnell responded, obviously lamenting Trump's obsession with his 2020 election loss. "I think the American people are focusing on this administration, what it's doing to the country, and it's my hope the '22 election will be a referendum on the performance of the current administration, not a rehash of suggestions about what may have happened in 2020." Good luck with that, Senator.

Some interesting tweets from over the last few days: Leah McElrath tweeted quote of a tweet by A. R. Moxon:

It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied. It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.

I add: They’re declaring themselves to be at the top of the social hierarchy by making the lives of others worse. McElrath quoted a tweet from Sewell Chan with the news that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hired as the new Secretary of State a lawyer who helped the nasty guy challenge the PA election results. McElrath added:

I hate to tell y’all this, but we can’t out-organize this kind of institutional corruption. It doesn’t matter how many people we turn out to vote if they’re laying foundation to overturn the results when those results are unfavorable.

Another from McElrath:

We are taught to associate poor people with theft and to fear them accordingly. Yet it is the wealthy who steal the value of our labor and our common natural resources and leave behind broken bodies and denuded environments. Wealthy people are the real danger.

Ben Franklin tweeted (though he didn’t mention the context):

We have no idea what secrets were stolen, how badly our national security was damaged from within under Trump. It’s perfectly possible the government is so compromised that it is helpless to act now to do anything but avoid conflict.

Franklin also tweeted:

a lot of conspiracies against the public play out right in the open. you don't need total secrecy, you just need sufficient confusion.

I note he wrote “conspiracies” and not “conspiracy theories.” Adam Tranter, who advocates for safer streets for walking and cycling, included a video with his tweet:

Barcelona has an amazing school cycle bus every Friday. Wherever you are in the world, few kids will see this and think “I’d like to be driven to school instead”. When the project started there were just five children taking part. Change can happen fast.

The video shows a huge group of kids. I tried to learn more, but only saw other postings of the same video. I think describing it as a school cycle bus means there are adults to keep the kids together and safe. Ashton Pittman tweeted:

It is weird how humanity decided that genitalia makes for good insults. You never hear anyone talk about other body parts like that. Can you imagine? "I hate you, you stupid arm." "You f***ng neck." "What an elbow." "Goddam nosehole." "You pathetic fingernail bed."

Can radicalize people to violence at alarming speed.

I read through the transcript of another episode of Gaslit Nation by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. This episode is So Many Cults, So Little Time. This episode was released last Wednesday, the 26th, while the GOP convention was still going on.

The episode begins with quotes from Michael Cohen, a one-time nasty guy fixer and confidant.

I was complicit in helping conceal the real Donald Trump. I was part of creating an illusion. Later this week, he's going to stand up and blatantly lie to you. I'm here to tell you, he can't be trusted and you shouldn't believe a word he utters. So when you watch the president this week, remember this, if he says something is huge, it's probably small.
...
The president is going to talk to you about law and order. That's laughable. Virtually everyone who worked for his campaign has been convicted of a crime or is under indictment, myself included. So when the president gets in front of the cameras this week, remember that he thinks we're all gullible, a bunch of fools.

I was a part of it and I fell for it. You don't have to like me, but please listen to me.

Kendzior and Chalupa turn to the nasty guy’s children and how dysfunctional the family is. They bring them up because perhaps half of the RNC speakers were named Trump. The nasty guy is building a dynasty. But it probably won’t include Don Jr. and Eric. However, it will include the pandemic prince and princess.

When a regime promotes nepotism (and the nasty guy isn’t the only one with family in the regime) there is no discussion of policy, there is only gossip about palace intrigues. Kendzior is annoyed with the New York Times because they focus on the gossip and don’t look at the breaches of law, and theft of elections and basic rights.

One of the speakers at the convention was Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. It is considered highly inappropriate for a Sec. State to speak at a political event. Even worse, he did it from Jerusalem. That’s bad because Pompeo is a “Rapture fiend.” For those not up on conservative Christian end-times theology, I’ll explain the Rapture is when the true believers are taken up into heaven to protect them just before the apocalypse. So what Pompeo is doing is goosing events to trigger the Rapture (we’ll leave out how bad the theology of trying to make events so bad the Rapture happens – and lucky for Pompeo he believes he can make life hell on earth and the Rapture will make sure he doesn’t have to face the consequences). Back to what Kendzior said about him:

That is what Mike Pompeo is about. He has said so openly in speeches that he thinks that this is the apocalypse. He thinks that this is the end times and that he's on the right side of God and the corruption and brutality that he's participating in is something that is divinely sanctioned. Again, this is a deeply frightening thing to have to contend with, with this person as not only Secretary of State, but before that the head of the CIA.

Kendzior predicted the media will get it all wrong, framing inhumane actions as God’s will.

Chalupa said:

People have to have honest conversations with themselves about what their plan is in November should Trump and Barr be successful in stealing this election. What is your plan? Prepare yourself now, especially prepare yourself emotionally so you don't fall into despair. I just think everything that's been unfolding, especially this week alone, it's just going to accelerate from here on out.

Don't expect November to bring any relief. It's just going to be an acceleration of this constant far-right plummet towards authoritarianism that we've already been undergoing the last four years. And on top of that, even if Biden and his coalition of voting rights groups and lawyers–election protection lawyers–manages to pull off a victory, a free and fair election in November, we still have to contend with the Trump Family Republican Party.

For example, Fox News will still be out there, as will all those GOP senators recently removed from office (I hope!).

Many in the GOP say the nasty guy really isn’t part of the GOP. Pulling on a few decades of GOP actions, Chalupa said:

That's exactly who you are. You've always been anti-science. You've always been pro superstition. You've always been trying to turn our democracy into a theocracy, even though the founding fathers were very clear on the separation of church and state.

You’ve always been chipping away at the rights of women, voting rights. You needed to steal elections in order to come to power and so forth. You've always been the pro corruption, destroying the planet party. The Republican Party is the party of death. Donald Trump is the Republican Party, Donald Trump has always been the Republican Party since the time of Richard Nixon. It's the same players, it's the same bad actors.

So have an emotional backup plan to deal with these people. We might have to fight for ten years to get rid of them.

I had mentioned that the GOP did not write a platform this year, that the one from 2016 is still in effect. That means there is nothing in the platform for dealing with COVID-19 and the accompanying economic calamity. They have no intention of addressing them. Said Kendzior:

This is because their goal is to strip America down and sell it for parts. That has always been their goal. And a sick, weakened, impoverished America is easier to take apart than a strong, healthy, powerful America. They are trying to kill us. You can see that through their actions in response to the pandemic and they don't care who knows. And yes, you're absolutely right that this is an extension of what the Republican Party has been building to since the years of Watergate.

Talking about the Cold War and who won it (the oligarchs) Kendzior said:

And a lot of the events that have transpired since have just continually shifted control of the world and its resources away from representative government, away from institutional accountability, away from transparency and towards elite domination–criminal elite domination–as this line between government, and corporations, and organized crime, that line began to break down.

So, yeah, I just summed up all of Gaslit Nation's episodes in one paragraph.

Talk turned for a moment to the pandemic prince. Kendzior said:

Yes, and this realignment of the Middle East, which has been something that's been a goal of his long before he entered the White House. I thought there are multiple international actors whose goal in getting Trump into the White House was actually to get Kushner into the White House, and to get Kushner near classified information and get him in a position where he can make policy decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of Americans or of America itself.

They have to do with pleasing these international actors, among them, Netanyahu and MBS. They also have to do, with some degree, with getting him out of the enormous amount of debt he was in before he took power.

The discussion turned to QAnon. Kendzior wrote about them in her book Hiding in Plain Sight but the group has become more mainstream with a member running for Congress, so it’s important to talk about them again. Yes, QAnon is dangerous – any cult is dangerous, though this one has a history of violence.

The main claim of QAnon is that the US is controlled by sadistic pedophile elites. This claim is accurate. Gaslit Nation has covered the operation run by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine and Robert Maxwell. They procured underage children for many political elites, then they had damaging evidence they could dangle over their client’s heads. We heard little about Epstein in the 2016 election because the nasty guy was accused of raping a 13-year-old that Epstein procured.

So this story was denied for a long time, but came out anyway. QAnon supporters can then say, yes, I was right. So all this other stuff must be true too. And it’s not. The best propaganda has a core of truth. This truth is more powerful because officials and journalists refuse to acknowledge it.

Some anonymous official, code named Q, supposedly has left coded clues on the internet. Q claims the nasty guy is in office to take down the “Deep State” and is the savior of these abducted and abused children who have been hidden somewhere. The nasty guy supposedly will free them and bring about justice. Because children are involved this taps into people’s emotional center.

The nasty guy is not the savior of abused children. He has been accused of being one of the abusers. The QAnon story came at a time when the #metoo movement was thriving and elite predators were being exposed. It seemed possible the connection between the nasty guy and Epstein would come under scrutiny. So this was likely a way to flip the script – portray the accused abuser as savior.

QAnon has accused a number of public figures of cannibalism, murder, and child abuse. It has then threatened those people and extended the threats to their supporters. The nasty guy is using this to portray ordinary people as threats, prompting QAnon to also threaten the same people. Thus the nasty guy has weaponized QAnon for political propaganda.

The way to shut down QAnon is to be honest about Epstein and colleagues. But people, including Democrats, have refused to tackle the core claim of Epstein’s child trafficking. There’s a good reason: They don’t know who of their own will be implicated.

We don’t know who Q is. He’s portrayed as a government official. It is quite possible he is an invention of a Kremlin disinformation campaign, helping the nasty guy divert from one crisis or another.

Kendzior discussed savior syndrome. It flourishes during autocratic consolidation as frightened citizens search for meaning in the inexplicable actions of their failed leaders. They say the once trusted officials are not incompetent or corrupt, they’re playing 3D chess. “Their motives must be presented as pure; their tactics, impeccable and impenetrable. The abdication of the admired is too much for those seeking saviors to process, no matter their political predilection.” They tell skeptics to shut up and trust the plan.

Kendzior added:

That's why we're seeing savior syndrome flourishing yet again on the Democratic side. I think people have finally abandoned “Pelosi's going to save us”, which is where they went after “Mueller is going to save us” failed. And now it's on the “2020 election will save us”, even though that election is being rigged and compromised before our eyes. So this is a very dangerous tendency that flourishes during times like this, where people are so frightened that they don't know who to trust, they just want to follow.

They don't want to think, and so I encourage you–we know, we know how scary it is right now, this is a genuinely frightening time–but try to keep your wits about you, keep your individuality, your propensity for critical thought. It's not bad to ask questions.
…
So it's not like a matter of intelligence; it's a matter of emotional manipulation. And they're doing it among the most sensitive of topics. Topics that resonate greatly with parents, or just with anyone who worries about children and topics that are rooted in a grain of truth. … One of the things that we needed to get to the bottom of is, who is part of this movement? Who is funding this movement? What is the ultimate goal? How will it be weaponized during the election?

Chalupa said about average people:

They want to give up personal responsibility because they themselves are exhausted, they themselves are under a great deal of pressure, this is an economic crisis. There's a health crisis, so why is it up to me to fix this? So people are looking for some outside force to come along. And so all of these conditions combined make some people really vulnerable to this cult mentality.

Chalupa reminded is all elections, including local, are important. For example, New York City (where Chalupa lives) has adopted the Green New Deal and there is a city climate czar. This czar has been suing the oil giants for destroying the planet. The market value of ExxonMobil has dropped and it has been removed from the Dow Jones stock index. Local matters too.

Chalupa then talked about the pandemic prince. The Daily Beast reporter Erin Banco uncovered details. Such as back in 2017 the pandemic prince asked the Russian ambassador for a back channel to Russia, to the delight of the Russians. There were also meetings on how this US administration and Russia could collaborate while maintaining plausible deniability.

Since 2016 Putin has been spreading Kremlin linked money across the US. These tentacles lock the target in. The business ties become so close that they don’t want to jeopardize the money and won’t hold Putin accountable. This is blood money. And blood money makes the world go round. So many people were making blood money with Stalin’s Soviet Union they didn’t investigate Stalin’s genocide in Ukraine (the uncovering of that genocide is the subject of Mr. Jones, a movie that Chalupa wrote). Putin is working to recreate that protection.

Strange that the US collaboration with Russia seems to work only one way. What the US gets from them tends to be useless.

The pandemic prince is behind all the worst moves of the nasty guy’s administration. He has ties to Israel, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and various Russian Oligarchs. It is them he serves, to them our money goes, through them are rights are taken away.

Kendzior said:

I kept thinking, the litmus test of whether we have an entrenched mafia State is whether Kushner is indicted. They could have gone after him a long time ago, the lies on his security clearances where he lied about illicitly meeting with foreign officials during the campaign, but also before.

That alone was enough to get him out of office, out of power early, away from classified intelligence. We're going to be living with the ramifications of Kushner's presence in this position whether he stays or not. If they do actually manage to get rid of him, he's not going to keep State secrets. He's not going to work on behalf of American interests or on behalf of the American people.

He is part of this axis of autocrats that is trying to destroy this country from without and from within. So he's incredibly dangerous and it's been alarming to me that Mueller did not indict him, the other officials didn't. And this article is just another example of the incredible damage that he's done and the incredible danger that we're in. And so I ask again, where are our officials on this?

Why is he not stopped when there's a pandemic and he is in charge of it, and he's depriving Americans of necessary medical equipment while he makes deals with dirty oligarchs who attack our elections? How much more do you need? How much more clear cut does this have to be? How much longer does the evidence list have to get?

I’ve got a few QAnon stories in browser tabs. They sat there because I wanted to take the time to explain what Qanon is. Thankfully, I waited long enough that Gaslit Nation could explain for me. So here they are, reinforcing the points GN made.

Benjamin Franklin tweeted:

People think I'm being hyperbolic or exaggerating when I say that child human traffickers are taking over the government but all the evidence is right in front of you, as if Jeffrey Epstein wasn't enough.

Qanon is necessary to hide the complicity of the GOP, which has been well documented, and defuse a scandal capable of bringing down the entire Republican Party and government.

The problem is that this idea sounds so much Iike Qanon, and is so spooky, that well meaning respectable people are afraid to look at what’s staring them in the face. This is by design.

This is the design: When someone brings up the real scandal it can be dismissed with, “Oh, that’s just QAnon.”

In another thread Franklin tweeted:

There are lots of things that attempt to debunk Q, but I’m not aware of any that say “Q is bullshit but actually a lot of the stuff it contains is actually kind of true”. Epstein is real, NXIVM is real, Craig Spence is real, Franklin scandal is real.

Q weaves together the very real scandals into a “theory of everything” that says Trump is the savior. The only thing that can beat Q is a theory of everything in which he is the villain, which has the added benefit of being true.

But you can't win these arguments with Q people, strangers or friends, unless you understand that something big and bad is going on. Not totally clear what but how can you read these articles and say that *nothing* is going on? And it's not just the USA.

Franklin then linked to articles in The Daily Beast and Vice about a sex cult with a plot to take over Mexico, the Thatcher government in Britain covering up a pedophile ring, and a journalist arrested for investigating a pedophile orphanage in the British island of Jersey.

Franklin added:

There's something going, it's international and deeply entrenched, and it only gets worse the more reading you do. You can't beat Q without addressing this, I promise.

David Neiwert of Daily Kos wrote:

A series of recent reports suggest that the cult may be growing so rapidly and spreading so widely—amplified, seemingly, by the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying intense use of the Internet by users following stay-at-home orders—that it is threatening to grow beyond a mere trend into a tsunami of irrational conspiracism and terrorist violence that conceivably could swamp the entire nation.

Neiwert then went into detail of these reports. Then he discussed how QAnon is becoming violent. Finally, he references a study from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

What makes QAnon so potent, the study found, is that it’s a kind of meta-theory: A great gathering ground of multiple conspiracist belief systems under one umbrella, compatible with existing structures.

QAnon is becoming a part of such groups as paramilitary groups, and white supremacists. It is no longer fringe, but an ideology that can radicalize people to violence at alarming speed.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported on Marjorie Taylor Greene winning the GOP primary for a House seat in Georgia. It’s a safe GOP seat, so she’ll have no trouble winning in November. Her win is a problem because she has spouted QAnon theories. Wrote Sumner:

Greene’s words were roundly condemned by Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, both of whom declared her “offensive.” But the racism and conspiracy theories weren’t offensive to Republican voters. Racism and conspiracy theories are what the Republican Party is about these days. In fact, they are all that it is about. After all, both McCarthy and Scalise have backed up every ludicrous claim by Trump. They’ve been right there, carrying the torch, leading the party toward a horde of people … waving torches.
…
[QAnon] provides a source of hate. And the modern Republican Party is all about hate.
Somehow the people who lit this fire still don’t grasp that it’s going to burn everything.

Michel Martin of NPR talked to Travis View, who co-hosts the “QAnon Anonymous” podcast. They first discussed Greene’s win, then backed up to mention some of the theories Greene has promoted. Since she became a candidate she has tried to distance herself from QAnon, but has not denounced it. View added that they see the nasty guy as their savior, that they worship him. That the nasty guy did not denounce them and instead praised them is a really big deal. The FBI has warned that QAnon is a possible source of extremism.

Christopher Bouzy tweeted:

Inauthentic accounts linked to Russia are masquerading as QAnon followers, and these accounts are targeting high profile people on social media. We believe they are attempting to discredit people with a large following who tweet/talk about social issues and voting.

We believe these accounts are a national security threat, and we are extremely concerned because the President of the United States recently praised and embraced QAnon.