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.
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[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.

Spotlight

This afternoon I went out to see the movie Spotlight. It was in one area theater for a while and the run ended perhaps a month ago. After winning the Oscar for best picture this theater brought it back for another run.

For those who don't follow movie news, this is the story of the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe newspaper. They (not their bosses) pick a story and investigate it in detail. A new boss encourages them to write about a Catholic priest and allegations of him sexually molesting kids. They accept the idea. The team encounters such things as no public records because cases were settled through mediation instead of the courts. They listen to victims telling their stories. They pore through published books of what priests are assigned to which parishes when they realize what an assignment of "sick leave" means. As the list of priests lengthens they shift their focus to what the cardinal knew and when. They shift again to document a problem in the whole Catholic system. And they come to terms with how many times the story was given to the Globe over the years which produced a short article and nothing more (the movie takes place in 2001 and the first incident was in 1972). They also learn some on the team were a part of that earlier apathy, which allowed for more victims. A well made, fast paced movie, that I think deserves its award.

I can't exactly say this is a spoiler alert because we've been hearing about the priest pedophile story for 15 years now. I mention the possible spoiler alert because there were two bits at the very end that touched me. The big article is published on a Sunday morning. A couple of the Spotlight team goes to the paper's offices even though it is their day off. The phone crew near the main entrance say they've had no calls, but had to send a few colleagues down to the Spotlight offices. The two rush into the room to hear constant phone ringing. One says most of the calls are from more victims.

The second bit was just before the credits. We get the usual notes of what happened because of the article, the number of predatory priests identified, the estimate of the number of victims, that the cardinal was removed from Boston and ensconced in a comfy job in Rome. Then came the list of cities across the country and around the world where the scandal uncovered more predatory priests. There were too many cities to be able to read them all. I think I saw three screens and three columns per screen, for a total of about 160 cities caught up in the scandal.

Just so we don't forget, this is the scandal: A priest psychiatrist said about six percent of Catholic priests molest children. When an abused child came forward the church hierarchy did all it could to smother the story, then reassigned the priest to another church, where the abuse continued with fresh victims. The requirement that a priest must be celibate is mentioned as a possible contributing factor.

Under no circumstances is it every okay

The Onion is known for using satire to tell the truth, but every so often they create a story that steps well beyond satire. The news source made up a story about a coalition of 10 year old boys holding a news conference outside the Penn State football stadium. Their message was simple.

"It doesn't matter who the boy being raped is, and it doesn't matter who is doing the raping, just please, please alert law enforcement. And by the way, under no circumstances is it ever okay for an adult to rape a 10-year-old boy, so you really can't go wrong by calling the police when something like that happens."

Don't even wait until after lunch.



If a church leader or lawmaker pushes for stringent laws against gay people (perhaps, as is proposed in Uganda, including death) they might find their efforts backfire. Their opponents may accuse them of being gay just to get rid of them.

That may have happened to Bishop John Atherton in 1640. He pushed hard for the death penalty for the crime of homosexuality and then was the second person hanged for that offense. He may have been gay (not enough evidence) or his opponents may have found a way to get him out of the way.



Jay Michaelson wrote an article for The Jewish Daily Forward highlighting the ideas in his book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. He says that all Biblical passages can be interpreted in a variety of ways. To be ordained a lawyer-rabbi was once required to be able to argue both sides of an issue.

So does that make all interpretations equally valid? Not at all. The proper interpretation is the one that matches the fundamental values of the Bible, building life, living honestly (which I see as the same as living with high mental health), and sanctifying love.

We grow as religious people because the Bible allows for reinterpretation. If it didn't we would remain ethical infants.



Retired Army captain and atheist Jason Torpy says that atheists need chaplains too. In addition to religious duties, chaplains also advise and counsel the soldiers under their care. Atheist soldiers need that counseling too, preferably from an atheist chaplain. Torpy has made a request for such chaplains. The Chaplain Corps hasn't said no, but isn't pursuing the idea very quickly.

That was money well spent

Sexual orientation is not a predictor of sexual molestation according to a report commissioned by the Catholic Church. They spent $2 million to determine something that has been obvious to lots of other folks for a long time now, that homosexual does not equal pedophile and just because the perpetrator and victim are both male does not mean the perpetrator has a homosexual orientation. No word from the Pope.

An equation that causes harm

The Right likes to confuse homosexual with pedophile and say keeping gays away from kids is for the kids protection. That may bring more harm to the kids for two reasons.

* Once the gays are gone parents relax their guard and think their kids are safe.

* Kids experiencing same sex attractions won't have someone to talk to, which is a pedophile's dream.

An example of the first reason: Eugene Evans of the Sea Scouts led the charge to get the organization recognized by Berkeley, CA in spite of its discrimination against gays. In the process he became a darling of the anti-gay crowd. He has now been arrested for 4 counts of child molestation.