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Wither Q?
Q is a cult, and its prophet and instrument of salvation is Donald Trump. As of last Sunday the faithful were still insisting that the Plan would be fulfilled. What’s the Plan? Why, it’s a brilliant, complex, breathtaking long-game effort to take down the hydra-headed pedophiliac crime syndicate that controlled The Swamp. While things may have seemed dark on Sunday, the faithful were assured that everything was still working. The president was not in Washington, but in Texas; the White House videos had been filmed in front of a green screen to distract the enemies. Trump was actually directing the military from a secret base.
Later in the afternoon, some people on Twitter started a story about DC’s air traffic shut down completely, with massive numbers of troop-carrying planes on the runway. Debunkers posted shots of air traffic from flight-tracker apps; people whose accounts had lots of numbers in there names and eagles in their bios noted that jets had flown over their house very low and loud, so yes, it’s happening.
Except it didn’t, and it won’t. Donald Trump will leave office without making the Q prophecies come true. You have to wonder what that means for the cult. There’s a precedent, after all. Some recalculate the date of the Rapture; some turn on the person who was supposed to lead them to heaven; some fall away, disheartened, and pull a caul over the episode in their life and move on, abashed.
In a way, it already happened. After the election, Q had to revise its predictions to accommodate events, and for some the Stolen Election was proof of the existence of powerful contrary forces. But moving on past the inauguration means losing faith in Trump as the powerful force that will sweep away iniquity. Obviously, he wasn’t, and didn’t. The Deep State wasn’t supposed to win. Pelosi was supposed to be in Gitmo wearing Clockwork-Orange eyelid-spreaders watching film of all the things her minions did to children in the catacombs under a pizzeria.
The left is not burdened with Q-type nonsense. The Putin-Puppet stuff came close. Fitzmas was another. But compared to Q, those are garden-variety political-scandal narratives with an institutional conclusion. I wonder if the left can move past these things easier because they have deeper narratives that offer solace. They can always fall back on the comforting certainties of American sinfulness, the knowledge they are virtuously embroiled in a long twilight struggle against the idea of American exceptionalism. The country is fatally corrupted by racism, sexism, and capitalism, with slavery the Original Sin that taints every atom of ink in its founding documents – but that somehow this uniquely immoral construct can be redeemed by a devotion to a slow-grinding, never-ending rearrangement of its fundamentals, punctuated by violence to encourage the stragglers.
Marxism is Q without the “best by” date printed on the label.
Published in General
The bulk of posts on Ricochet are on topics outside your list. If you want to write posts on those topics, go for it, they are important topics. But we are all free to write about what we want except for . . . well, I can’t get into the details but it involves giraffes.
If that’s what you got, more. :)
Judy Dench was also very good at irritated.
I’d be the first to admit that a James Bond trivia quiz is probably more fun than a Qanon trivia quiz–
Question 5: What do the following names have in common?
Seth Rich
Mark Zuckerberg
Baron von Rothschild
Moses
GLDIII…… Threadjacker,
Given the absurdity of the whole Q thing, I think I can live with it.
They were each found floating in a basket and adopted by people of high social standing?
I mean, that’s true. But is it what you were thinking?
It’s also an example of a deeper problem with human nature: amazingly, humans seem to be capable of believing that they believe something, without actually believing it. The effect is something that looks and feels, to the believer and to others, just like actual belief but which actually is not. I suspect that many if not most Q “believers” fall into this category. Few would actually bet their lives on the truth of Q dogma, which means that as much as they feel that they believe it, in fact they do not.
That’s a fascinating point, and I think you’re on to something. I know a few people who believe some stuff because it’s possible, and the wrong people say it isn’t. Whether they’d go to the wall for it, I don’t know.
Over at Vice: QAnon followers know him as “Neon Revolt.” In real life, he’s a failed screenwriter from New Jersey named Robert Cornero, Jr. The story says he has 635K followers on Gab. Given that most people on Gab probably don’t follow to see what the other side is up to, as you have on Twitter, maybe that’s 600K followers who like the message. Peel away a third and say they’re just here for the lulz. That leaves a lot of people who absorb this stuff, and while they don’t think the GEOTUS will use the Global Broadcasting System tonight to announce the round-up has begun, well, they wouldn’t be surprised if he did, y’know?
As William F. Buckley might have put it, we are ah capable of simultaneously perambulating and chicle mastication. And I’m not in favor of purging Q because otherwise the left will hang it around the neck of the right; I’m in favor of doing it because it’s the right thing to do.
Next thing you know, they’ll say there are more than two sexes.
Purging Q from what? How?
Go for it, whatever it means. Can’t wait to see all the Q warriors go even harder after all of the other even more important things because they are the right things to do.
Personally I’d “go to the wall” for few things, and I sincerely pray I don’t have to find out which ones any time soon.
I’m curious how you are going to “purge” the subterranean and obscure Q faction? And are you giving it/them WAY TOO MUCH credit for influencing anything to do with the GOP or the conservative movement? <Whispering> Perhaps there are many spineless Republican politicians and self-avowed conservative commentators who have had more influence in tearing apart the GOP and the conservative movement…it’s just a theory I have. But be careful. I also subscribe to Ann Elk’s theory about dinosaurs.
There were several Ricochet members who believed that President Trump was intimately colluding with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election for the better part of three years and perhaps a few who still believe that.
A few days ago, a Ricochet member offered up that President Trump was planning to assassinate Mike Pence.
There will always be kooks of any political stripe or even hazy, murky, amorphous, nebulous, and indefinable ideology.
White supremacist, Richard Spencer – once a supporter of Donald Trump – jumped over to supporting Joe Biden. Clearly not a deep thinker and a man of ever-shifting principles…kinda like Mitt Romney.
Doesn’t a great purging of Q ascribe to it even more attention and credibility than it deserves and thus have the unintended consequence of validating Leftists assertion that most Republicans endorse Q nonsense? Such a campaign would certainly validate all the idiotic claims by commentators like Jennifer Rubin, Bill Kristol, Mona Charen…about Trump supporters. I could name more but I don’t want to thrown onto a bonfire.
I dunno. A lot of people also think Bush faked 9/11, Obama is a Muslim, FEMA builds concentration camps, etc. Q seems kind of tame by comparison.
Like I said earlier, I’ve had friends and family go down various conspiracy trails. It’s not a pretty sight, especially when they act on those beliefs in ways that are otherwise irrational.
A lot of this is driven by the ridiculous number of social taboos in our society. They make people feel the reality reflected in spoken language isn’t the one that actually exists. So long as America continues to have a stupid number of unspoken taboos we will continue to be a hotbed of conspiracy theories.
If it were any other source than Facebook, I might have taken this seriously.
Their tracking software would record a curious visitor who got an ad bounced from another curious visitor, who got there via another curious or misdirected visitor, and that kind of tracking could easily make 100 active members out of 360,000,000 people look like several thousand or a million.
Shouldn’t it be whither? Or is it a play on words?
Facebook, and I don’t have a lot of trust in NBC not to find a set of numbers to present the narrative they desire.
I like to fish but mostly in the ocean. I occasionally catch a shark. I more often catch a remora.
From the conservative movement
Anathemize the beliefs and the people who trade in them, or wink at them for political gain
It’s like saying can’t wait to see all the election fraud warriors go even harder after CRT and race-science believers in the Biden DOJ. Raising one subject does not mean it’s top priority to be addressed at the exclusion of all others.
A) I don’t know how prominent conservative leaders calling out Q as nutwad drivel validates Leftist assertions, but saying nothing doesn’t. A good communicator could wrap up the message in an attack on the nonsense that percolates on the Left, and worse than Q, is accepted uncritically by far more people. Yeah, we have a smattering of Q, but you have an infestation of Antifa. Go on the offensive. Strike back twice as hard, as a friend once said.
B) Rubins gonna rubin and no one cares, and any assertion of principles – any – will be twisted by the commentariat. Dogs bark, caravans move on, and all that. I’ve no interest in trimming sails because some bad-faith writer will fit the statement into their preexisting narrative.
Replace “Q” with “Flat-earthers” or “Lizard-alien believers,” if you wish. Imagine everyone goes to the mat for years defending Gen. Flynn and he turns out to believe that the Queen of England is a shapeshifter from another world. Maybe cut loose the pols who just can’t bring themselves to say “no, Mike’s wrong about that”?
Forgive me…for a moment I thought you wanted to go on a mission to “purge” Q not simply call them out as nutwads engaged in drivel in a one-off Ricochet post. I can’t for the life of me understand where I got that impression.
The bad faith writers and NeverTrump commentators were alluded to only to point out that a campaign to purge Q only validated their already inflated notions about how influential Q is with the 74 million who voted for Trump. When it comes to proportionality these commentators are chicken feed and useful idiots to the larger media and Big Tech complex who will just use them to validate the assertion that QAnon loons and white supremacists make up the bulk of Trump’s support…”Don’t believe us? Read what Bill Kristol, or Mona Charen say.”
You’re really worried that Gen. Flynn will somehow achieve some sort of prominence and influence in the right side of the political spectrum? And what? Steal the thunder from a rising star in the party? He should be the least of your worries or the GOP’s problems, as should Sidney Powell whose lawsuits never panned out or the histrionic spotlight hog Lin Wood. On my last days on Twitter even before the Georgia run-off both Powell and Wood had come in for a great deal of well-deserved criticism from Trump supporters.
James – Since I hit the 500-word wall, permit me to add that QAnon is not in the conservative movement. It/they are in the conspiracy theory mongering movement and likely couldn’t coherently articulate anything about conservative ideology. But one of them has some pretty fancy headgear.
Finally, I think a response to my Comment #137 would be much more interesting to read.
Cheers.
They do this because it’s easy, meaning it would require more work to break down people who voted for him into other categories.
Voted for Trump = QAnon supporter (if not secret member)
See? Easy math!
What are the beliefs of Q and why do you think they are already in the conservative movement?
Correct. There are always many issues that need addressing. However, which issues you raise and which you don’t and when you raise them of course says something about what you think of the relative importance of the issues and how you view the world.. I don’t even know why you’re arguing the point. Q is not on the same level as CRT, election system problems, or even timid/incompetent/false Republicans. Not even close. I’m commenting because your choice is emblematic of a disconnect from me. A broader movement disconnect in terms of what we value, how we prioritize, and how we react to the disconnection.
Isn’t that why you’re writing about Q though? Someone claims Q belongs to us so you’re hopping to?
James, the answer is right there in the comment you quoted. Disagree with Brian’s point, but at least acknowledge it. You’re giving it more attention and credibility than it deserves and in the process accepting that Q is currently part of the conservative movement and is something to be answered for. If I don’t say anything about flat earth does that mean I’m validating it?
I love the Purge Q stuff. So how you guys planning that? Lock them or just stand them against the wall and shoot them? Cancel them? Get them kicked out of their jobs and livelihoods? Maybe just take their kids? Their houses, their property? What wonderful conservative way do you want to bend these people to your conservative collective will?
Wow, James. I was with you until you revealed yourself to be a shapeshifting reptilian alien denier. And it’s not just the Queen. The entire royal family has been replaced by the reptiles. Time to open your eyes, man.