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#QAnon (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Juxtatarot
- Start date
Grace Under Pressure
Footballguy
“But the Trump administration is fighting really hard every day behind the scenes to fix the child trafficking issue which is actually the real pandemic!”
“Ghislaine Maxwell, we wish her well!”
“Ghislaine Maxwell, we wish her well!”
yak651
Footballguy
The last week a bunch of my Trump supporting friends have been re-posting about child sex trafficking. How mask make it easier to happen, we should look at numbers of children missing not covid numbers, etc. There must be some big talking point going out to MAGA fans
So is the whole ‘save the children’ movement that’s all over social media mainstream Q or just another way to downplay COVID. Seems like some of it is completely well intentioned but then quickly dives into pizzagate and Q while, of course, leaving out all of the ties to the Trump administration. Some of it is horrible like they’re using masks to make trafficking easier or that any reference to pizza is code for pedo. It would be easy to write it off as some nuts but it’s much more mainstream right now.
Yeah, there was a long article in the NYT today about how the well meaning stuff gets combined with the conspiracy stuff.
QAnon Followers Are Hijacking the #SaveTheChildren Movement https://nyti.ms/3iv7V52
Grace Under Pressure
Footballguy
"Weeks ago, influencers on TikTok and Instagram began speculating about baseless allegations that Wayfair, an online furniture site, was trafficking children under the guise of selling expensive cabinets. The conspiracy theory went viral, and QAnon believers began sprinkling in their own supposedly incriminating details. They claimed, falsely, that a Wayfair employee had once been photographed with Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been charged with recruiting underage girls for Mr. Epstein."Maurile Tremblay said:
Um, there's like 20 photographs of Donald Trump with Ghislaine Maxwell, at least. WTF?
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Juxtatarot
Footballguy
I got the impression from that that Trump just doesn't want to hurt Taylor. Supporting a Republican (particularly one that would likely vote his way 100% of the time) is more important to him.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
whoknew
Footballguy
![[scooter]](/data/avatars/m/22/22287.jpg?1659477690){kind=avatar}
[scooter]
Footballguy
Based on this story, there seems to be a correlation between "Qanon enthusiasts" and "people who have lost custody of their children or have lost their job for refusing to take a mental health examination".
The Q theory is really proof positive that we lack mental health resources in this country
-jb-
Footballguy
I’ve actually been more compelled to open Facebook these days just to check in on an old college friend who has gone off the deep end. At first, my thought was, “lol he definitely ate too many mushrooms,” but now I really feel sad and worry about him. I can’t fathom what will happen long term. He has a wife and kid. Where are these people going to wind up in 5-10 years time? Will they come back to reality or are they gone forever?
Tactical Turtleneck
Footballguy
I think they are gone forever...i just think the internet is going to have them go deeper and deeper down the hole.
I was thinking about this earlier today: In the 1990s, the fringe ideologues patronized mail-order booksellers that catered to their sectarian passions. For libertarians, Laissez Faire Books was the big one. It apparently still exists, though it doesn't seem to sell books anymore. I remember getting their mailed catalogs and browsing titles by Ayn Rand, Thomas Szasz, Frederic Bastiat, Milton Friedman, John Stewart Mill, Thomas Sowell, Adam Smith, Lysander Spooner, F.A. Hayek, Albert Jay Nock, John Locke, Robert Nozick, Ludwig von Mises ... ah, the memories. There were some pretty idiosyncratic thinkers in there (e.g., Spooner) and some true dogmatists (e.g., Rand), along with a great number of distinguished authors of genuine classics. This was the reading list for the most fanatical libertarians, and yet ... you can't really get all that radicalized by reading John Stuart Mill.
Similarly, the far-left fringe had Noam Chomsky, Karl Marx, Catharine MacKinnon, Michel Foucault, John Rawls, and a host of other literate essayists.
Being a political radical back then was for nerds who read books!
Today, it's different. The political fringes are dominated by people who do not read books, but who get their information from cable TV infotainment, at best, or Facebook memes and CrazySteve69's YouTube channel, at worst.
It's a whole different kind of extremism that has led to an acute new receptiveness to preposterous disinformation. I don't know how to counter it. Getting people to read books again is probably out of the question.
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IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
I've had a similar conversation with folks as well. When I was a right-winger in college, we had people like Milton Friedman to serve as role models. There's really nobody like that today.
Edit: Well, obviously people like Alex Tabarrok exist today. But no 20 year old would stumble across them unless they happened to be undergraduates at George Mason.
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whoknew
Footballguy
I'm sure people will argue Ben Shapiro.
But we both know that Ben Shapiro is no Milton Friedman.
Nobody can plausibly argue that Ben Shapiro is an intellectual heir to Milton Friedman.
Maybe Richard Posner? Niall Ferguson? David Frum? Greg Mankiw? Charles Murray? Yuval Noah Harari? The answers are not really, no, no, no, no, and no, but they are the closest people I can think of.
I was going to say maybe Thomas Sowell, but I figured he was pretty much retired and therefore ineligible. I just looked him up on Wikipedia to see if he'd written anything recently, and it turns out that (a) he has published a few books in the last couple years, so we can add him to the list; and moreover, (b) he's somewhat of a Trump apologist. This is fairly shocking to me.
Thomas Sowell immediately becomes the most intellectually impressive Trump apologist I'm aware of, displacing Peter Thiel atop the list.
Edit: On second thought, Sowell may not qualify as a Trump apologist. Sowell was critical of Trump during the Republican primary, and his main reason for supporting Trump over Clinton in the general election seems to be his belief that Trump would be easier to impeach.
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Ilov80s
Footballguy
I left out part of the story here that had somehow slipped my mind. The early 1990s was actually about when the statement above changed. If people wanted to learn about politics from TV, they were stuck with C-SPAN (or, for the extremely adventurous, C-SPAN 2). If people wanted to learn about politics from print sources, they were stuck with serious newspapers, wonky magazines, or nerdy books.Maurile Tremblay said:
But what I'd somehow forgotten about was radio. Rush Limbaugh had risen to popularity about this time, and I believe that marked the beginning of the popularization of politics. Fox and Friends may not have existed back then, or Infowars, but Rush Limbaugh did bring political subjects, perhaps for the first time, to everyday non-dorky folks. He took a subject that had previously belonged to nerds and he made it accessible to anyone with AM radio. He made his listeners feel smart because they could suddenly have (i.e., regurgitate) opinions about formerly esoteric matters like the filibuster. (I believe this is similar to how QAnon believers feel smart for doing "research" on YouTube that the NYT-reading sheeple are oblivious to.)
Popularization is often a valuable service -- think Carl Sagan on science or Lin-Manuel Miranda on early American history -- but in Limbaugh's case, a lot of the value was offset by rank partisanship and its distorting effect.
In any case, the current QAnon phenomenon can arguably trace its intellectual roots back to 1990s talk radio, I believe.
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Joe Summer
Footballguy
One thing that I have noticed about conspiracy theorists – in real life, as well as on the internet, including this forum – is that they have a remarkable ability to "compartmentalize" their irrational thoughts. They may zealously believe that Qanon is real, while simultaneously holding down a job, raising a family, and otherwise being a normal and productive member of society. They are able to separate the irrational beliefs from the rest of their life.-jb- said:
(IMO, this is a sign that at least part of their brain realizes that Qanon is not real; and that part of the brain works extra hard to make sure that the irrational thoughts are isolated.)
So, I don't expect these people to be filling up mental institutions in 5-10 years (or ever). I think they'll continue to live normal lives, while utilizing Facebook as an outlet for their crazy side.
General Murmur of Agreemen
Footballguy
To me, it's not all that different from the adults who know professional wrestling is a staged, phony product but watch and root for it regardless. A suspension of disbelief because the entertainment value is more important than the veracity.
lardonastick
Footballguy
Key difference being sane, rational adults don't try to pass pro wrestling off as something "legitimate" to their friends and family.
-jb-
Footballguy
whoknew
Footballguy
Thunderlips
Footballguy
How are they going to rectify Trump losing? I thought Trump was supposed to be the Messiah to these people and that there was no way he was going to lose because he was setting the chess board for Nov. so that he would win?
Encyclopedia Brown
Footballguy
Snorkelson
Footballguy
Haven’t you seen avengers:endgame? He will lose because it’s the only way for them to win.
Herb
Footballguy
There is no individual on earth singularly holding more personal responsibility for where we are as a politically divided nation than Rush Limbaugh. The type of hateful partisan rhetoric from the left and center directed at Trump and his supporters that conservatives have only recently begun noticing and chastising has been pouring out of this guy's piehole for over 30 years.
Continuing my thoughts on this "man" will get me a long vacation so I'll be done now.
Continuing my thoughts on this "man" will get me a long vacation so I'll be done now.
sho nuff
Footballguy
Juxtatarot
Footballguy
OrtonToOlsen
Footballguy
msommer
Footballguy
Would be interesting to have that broken down by party affiliation because these people will not be going away any time soon
Juxtatarot
Footballguy
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Among Republicans it's:
33 - Yes mostly true
23 - Yes partly true
13 - No not true
19 - Never heard of Qanon
12 - Unsure
***
33 - Yes mostly true
23 - Yes partly true
13 - No not true
19 - Never heard of Qanon
12 - Unsure
***
msommer
Footballguy
So, if I read that right, potentially 75 million Americans believe that Democrat politicians, such as Hillary Clinton, are running a pedophile ring in a non existing basement of Comet Pizza?
Or has it evolved?
toshiba
Footballguy
Whatever happened to the people that pushed that conspiracy on this site? They still around?
msommer
Footballguy
Most of them are very quiet. A few still post, I shan't mention names as that might entice a(nother) banning
Juxtatarot
Footballguy
msommer
Footballguy
There was one more active in the Seth Rich thing that defenitely is still active. Not sure whether he/she posted in this thread
I believe there is a candidate for Senate from one of the Southern States that actively endorses QAnon. I forget her name but she won her primary recently
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Snorkelson
Footballguy
I think Q is Steven Miller.
