1. If they, whoever they are, cared so much about saving the children, they'd be putting their energies into slowing school reopening till same can be done safely and responsibly. Or maybe even doing something about school shootings, an approximately daily event. Gonna go out on the limb here but I bet more will suffer and die as a result from those two than from Democratic deep state pedophiles.
2. "'I know people personally who follow Q; they’re not crazy.'" Au contraire; by definition they are in fact crazy. The requisite denial of reality to accept what you can call QBS as well as Donnie's lies is per se crazy.
3. I know it's an ancient shibboleth but except for that anomalous period encompassing Vietnam and Watergate, the establishment media are per se not liberal. So. Someone going to show me I'm wrong on that?
4. About the only thing I'm enjoying about Donnie is how he constantly recycles right wing shibboleths. Every now and then he triggers a squirt of nostalgia for my youth. Occasional, brief spurts. Of course, also by definition, conservatives co-opt; they cannot really create. So, heavy recycling of shibboleths instead of creating anything new.
Conservatives care deeply about "the children." As long as you define children as "clump of fertilized cells," or "abstract object with which to slander Democrats."
It is a safe bet that if conservatives are expressing Concern for any demographic group other than straight, white, rich male evangelicals, it is only because they have decided that group would be useful as a cudgel.
The local Albany, NY stations covered the local SOC protest as though it was a legitimate grassroots thing. Not a single word mentioning Q-Anon or any of the bizarro conspiracy theories behind it. And this DESPITE footage of the protest showing people waving hand-lettered signs about "dracos" draining children of their blood to supply adrenochrome to those who are kidnapping the kids. The actual protest was tiny--not even a dozen people--so it was impossible to shoot it without showing these looney signs. Yet, the local news media somehow managed to not mention those signs.
And then, of course, there's the overall credulousness of the media. The woman who was the ostensible leader of the demonstration prattled on about how thousands of children are being trafficked right here in the Albany area. Nobody questioned her assertion. So we have to assume that there are thousands of people who had children, and those children disappeared, and those parents did not even bother to report their kids had gone missing!
Indeed. I'm hoping the Q-Anon people were well and truly pissed that the station did that smidgen of public service--which the Q-Anon assholes must certainly have taken as a major diss (and disservice) for them.
"people waving hand-lettered signs about 'dracos' draining children of their blood to supply adrenochrome to those who are kidnapping the kids."
So, blood libel, 21st-century style. Throw in a fascist blender with a cup of "rootless cosmopolitanism" and a cup of "recovered memory." Add pure white ice and pulse at intervals.
Hope you had a good break, Roy. It's really great to have you back. Though I *genuinely* feel some concern for your overall well-being seeing you dive into this stuff so very regularly. Keep up the good work but take care of yourself, too.
Fawning media will be the death of us all. It would be so easy to ask an organizer, "Name a case, name a missing girl, name as many as you like." Crickets would be the only response.
Emboldened this group will show its real intentions: anti-Semitism (a lot of their canards go way back to the Protocols), white supremacy (most trafficked minors are from minority populations, but Q's obsessed with little blonde girls), and soon enough queer people. It's obviously a millenarian cult.
I loved that book Foucault's Pendulum: that was exactly the same situation and we discovering the exact same outcome.
Heck, just put an organizer on camera and ask them straightforward questions about some of the slogans on their signs. "What is adrenochrome? Who, exactly, is the 'cabal'?"
"Cabal" itself is a term that arises from anti-semitic conspiracy theories, right? The word has shifted into more general usage, but yeah. It's suspicious as hell. And isn't adrenochrome from Naked Lunch? I think that too has long-enduring conspiracy associations (I think it was in the Satan sex-abuse craze of the 1980s).
I saw an interesting tweet that stated the Venn diagram of QAnon supporters who believe liberals are trafficking blond girls and those who would disbelieve a child if they told them they were being abused by a family member is a perfect circle.
Save the children from everybody but yourselves apparently...
I mean, at the end of the day: QAnon is part rightwing revenge fantasy and part Conspiracy Theory Greatest Hits. You've got your Satanic Panic, your JFK assassination, rebranded Illuminati, crossover with antivax shit...
The media has shifted into "objective" print-anything-people-say reporting and talking heads analysis (a.k.a a stream of hot air), but very few journalists actually ask questions with any teeth. For example, couldn't a reporter ask a MAGA-ite "What do you think the president's signature policy achievement has been?" It's not even a confrontational question. Hell, ask Susan Collins or Cordy Gardner that same question.
I will say with conspiracy theories, there is no amount of evidence that will contradict your belief. For example, Trump tweeted out that the Democrats omitted God from the Pledge of Allegiance, but there is video showing otherwise. Doesn't matter. The video probably came from the Deep State or the Satanist Cannibals or whatever dumb fucking shit people believe.
"...Trump tweeted out that the Democrats omitted God from the Pledge of Allegiance, but there is video showing otherwise."
That's why I think all reporting on Donnie and questions at press conference should start with or include "What the fuck??" or equivalent -- prevent Donnie from owning the story. And really, that kind of framing is pretty spot one, better than how the big kids are handling it.
S.V. Dáte was the reporter who asked Trump if Trump regrets all his lies (obviously the president didn't answer). For every reporter like Dáte, there are probably a hundred who would rather kiss ass and keep access to the White House.
All me to channel the conservatives I know personally, if presented with such video: Well [exasperated frown] of COURSE they say it when the cameras are turned on!
Oh, I thought the Q people did research by asking themselves what they'd do if no one was watching and then attributing that to democrats and Hollywood. But then, Trump does lack imagination, so maybe he needed practical research.
Retelling Bryant's history is a bit of optimism for the morning, I think. If you can look past the smoke drifting down the street here in northern California, the heat, the pandemic that's killed less than half of its eventual victims, the two hurricanes rolling up the Mississippi Valley: Bryant didn't just lose, she lost big.
Or maybe not, because we're much closer to the authoritarianism Bryant wanted. She didn't win the war but we haven't either.
“I do know I agree with them as far as saving our children,” Carter said.
And that's really the biggest issue in politics. So many people are AGAINST saving our children, and in some ways actively support denying children dessert or one more bedtime story.
You know what? I don't give a shit if people think they are there because they genuinely care about "the children". Every single person there has walked past at least one abused child on the way to that fucking rally, and ignored it. Some of them, I'm willing to bet, are abusers who think they're just disciplinarians. You assholes want to save the children, ask a few questions when your kid's friend comes over with the bruises. Hey, even consider the kids in cages! The kids who get shot by cops. The kids who get shot in schools. The kids who don't have homes, or any goddamned food. Do something about them. Oh, but that would be messy and awkward and effort instead of just feeling like a hero. Fuck them all. I can't with QAnon. Every single one of them is an asshole, and while we waste time and money and effort on kids who don't even fucking exist, we'll ignore the ones who do.
Right wing Christians tend to look at former hookers like I look at spiders: they're interesting, and I think people shouldn't treat them like monsters, and I want people to know about them, and I like reading about them, but they still creep me out, I like them to stay away from me while they're being useful to me, and I don't really trust them at all. When they find out I was hooking at fifteen, they go from "Oh, that's so awful I'm glad you escaped" to "Slut and pervert" in the span of a couple questions. No, I wasn't sex trafficked, my girlfriend got me into it, it was a job I could have without getting permission from my parents, and I was acting out against years of sexual abuse. Also, I don't credit them or their god with "getting me out".
I take this shit very personally. More than I should, probably, but this shit isn't funny, and is getting people killed, and isn't remotely plausible, and the only possible upside is trending a hashtag so they can feel important, meanwhile it harms the mentally ill who are sucked into it, and redirects efforts from combating actual abuse and trafficking.
I like a conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but not the ones that hurt people.
They don't actually care about "the children." They care about having their hatred of the Fox News Enemies List validated and seeing those people punished.
It's all cosplay. The entire right wing social/political cavalcade. Boogaloo is cosplay. QAnon is cosplay. Anti-abortion "we revere life" is cosplay. Most of their Christianity is fucking cosplay. No wonder they love Trump. He's the biggest fake, fictional character of them all, who speaks in nothing but lies. They act as though as long as they *believe* something is, or should be, or could be, true, then it pretty much IS true. That, to them, is what "freedom" means.
Of course, in a healthy society, that attitude would be identified as constituting insanity. But that ship has sunk.
I'm no mental health pro, just a life long neurotic, but all these conservatives, #MAGAts, inches, alt-right, Boogaloos, Q's, whatever I'm leaving out, are insane by my definition, the willful disregard for facts.
"There's one born every minute" isn't just a catch phrase, especially in the U.S. If the Q crowd weren't involved in that crackery they'd be throwing themselves at the feet of Creflo A. Dollar.
What a great tie in to the Anita Bryant campaign. It seems whenever the Looney Tunes come out of the woodwork it's always about the "children" Remember the McMartin and other cases during the 80s? Which were all debunked after causing much suffering to everyone. And yet they don't give a shit about all the children that D.Sidhe lists above in her comment.
I know it was fun trying to pick out the actual multiples from the ones who'd just had their brains fucked with. And then everybody's talking about it and suddenly as a queer plural I'm the trendiest fucker on earth, and shrinks are actually taking us seriously for about two years and then they're back to convinced we're not real, even more. Not the biggest suffering caused, but it did derail a certain amount of therapy.
Glad I scrolled down to the end of comments, to say if anyone else made the connection. QAnon has basically replaced Bryant's homophobia with some old fashioned '80s Satanic Panic.
First Phyllis Schlaefly with that Mrs. America series, now Anita (a day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine) Bryant? Boy, that guy who said the past isn't even past wasn't kidding. Nice catch Roy. The classic cons are classic because they always work.
The whole Qanon thing is just so weird. People are getting more and more frightened every day, buying into this half-baked cheese log of a global conspiracy is a harbinger, but not a good one. These next 2 months are going to be balls-to-the-wall insane, and then its gonna just get weirder and uglier if Joe wins in November, and that's the best case scenario. Liberals like to say the Republican Party needs to be destroyed, and I agree, but I don't see anyone attempting to think through what that looks like. Trump is going to be a martyr if he loses, whether he goes to prison or not. Q has the potential to be a "John Doe" club with Trump as Gary Cooper. And that's outside of the Party structure. The core problem of frightened angry white people is not going away even if the Republican Party does (which it won't, it's just too useful to rich people).
1. If they, whoever they are, cared so much about saving the children, they'd be putting their energies into slowing school reopening till same can be done safely and responsibly. Or maybe even doing something about school shootings, an approximately daily event. Gonna go out on the limb here but I bet more will suffer and die as a result from those two than from Democratic deep state pedophiles.
2. "'I know people personally who follow Q; they’re not crazy.'" Au contraire; by definition they are in fact crazy. The requisite denial of reality to accept what you can call QBS as well as Donnie's lies is per se crazy.
3. I know it's an ancient shibboleth but except for that anomalous period encompassing Vietnam and Watergate, the establishment media are per se not liberal. So. Someone going to show me I'm wrong on that?
4. About the only thing I'm enjoying about Donnie is how he constantly recycles right wing shibboleths. Every now and then he triggers a squirt of nostalgia for my youth. Occasional, brief spurts. Of course, also by definition, conservatives co-opt; they cannot really create. So, heavy recycling of shibboleths instead of creating anything new.
Conservatives care deeply about "the children." As long as you define children as "clump of fertilized cells," or "abstract object with which to slander Democrats."
Actual living, breathing children? Not so much.
It is a safe bet that if conservatives are expressing Concern for any demographic group other than straight, white, rich male evangelicals, it is only because they have decided that group would be useful as a cudgel.
[Astronauts meme format, with a giant "Q" phtotshopped onto the earth]
Surprised Astronaut: "You mean... it's all just a rightwing revenge fantasy?"
Astronaut with Gun, with Travis View's clipart avatar in his helmet: ""Always has been."
Endorsed
The local Albany, NY stations covered the local SOC protest as though it was a legitimate grassroots thing. Not a single word mentioning Q-Anon or any of the bizarro conspiracy theories behind it. And this DESPITE footage of the protest showing people waving hand-lettered signs about "dracos" draining children of their blood to supply adrenochrome to those who are kidnapping the kids. The actual protest was tiny--not even a dozen people--so it was impossible to shoot it without showing these looney signs. Yet, the local news media somehow managed to not mention those signs.
And then, of course, there's the overall credulousness of the media. The woman who was the ostensible leader of the demonstration prattled on about how thousands of children are being trafficked right here in the Albany area. Nobody questioned her assertion. So we have to assume that there are thousands of people who had children, and those children disappeared, and those parents did not even bother to report their kids had gone missing!
THIS kind of coverage is what is killing America.
What are the call letters of this Albany station?
WNYT. NewsChannel 13, as they call themselves.
"This is Jordan. We do what we like."
LOL -- you have to go to the Google Cache to see that story -- they blooped it off the live website! https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1RFAsrb_iKcJ:https://wnyt.com/albany-new-york-news/save-our-children-rally-held-in-albany/5835927/%3Fcat%3D11953+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Click the link at their website and you get a 404: https://wnyt.com/albany-new-york-news/save-our-children-rally-held-in-albany/5835927/
The only redeeming factor of that story is that they focused on actual abuse and trafficking and how to seek help from legitimate organizations...
Indeed. I'm hoping the Q-Anon people were well and truly pissed that the station did that smidgen of public service--which the Q-Anon assholes must certainly have taken as a major diss (and disservice) for them.
This is probably why they took the story down. The Q's didn't see anything about adrenochrome...
which is fucking delicious by the way
Once the plague is over, I'mma get one of these mugs, put it on my desk at work, and see how long it takes someone to notice.
https://www.teepublic.com/mug/4851639-adrenochrome-for-light-backgrounds?store_id=262096
I'm going to guess they got a whole bunch of emails from viewers saying WTF?!?!?! It was pretty pathetic.
"people waving hand-lettered signs about 'dracos' draining children of their blood to supply adrenochrome to those who are kidnapping the kids."
So, blood libel, 21st-century style. Throw in a fascist blender with a cup of "rootless cosmopolitanism" and a cup of "recovered memory." Add pure white ice and pulse at intervals.
Hope you had a good break, Roy. It's really great to have you back. Though I *genuinely* feel some concern for your overall well-being seeing you dive into this stuff so very regularly. Keep up the good work but take care of yourself, too.
Fawning media will be the death of us all. It would be so easy to ask an organizer, "Name a case, name a missing girl, name as many as you like." Crickets would be the only response.
Emboldened this group will show its real intentions: anti-Semitism (a lot of their canards go way back to the Protocols), white supremacy (most trafficked minors are from minority populations, but Q's obsessed with little blonde girls), and soon enough queer people. It's obviously a millenarian cult.
I loved that book Foucault's Pendulum: that was exactly the same situation and we discovering the exact same outcome.
Heck, just put an organizer on camera and ask them straightforward questions about some of the slogans on their signs. "What is adrenochrome? Who, exactly, is the 'cabal'?"
"Cabal" itself is a term that arises from anti-semitic conspiracy theories, right? The word has shifted into more general usage, but yeah. It's suspicious as hell. And isn't adrenochrome from Naked Lunch? I think that too has long-enduring conspiracy associations (I think it was in the Satan sex-abuse craze of the 1980s).
I saw an interesting tweet that stated the Venn diagram of QAnon supporters who believe liberals are trafficking blond girls and those who would disbelieve a child if they told them they were being abused by a family member is a perfect circle.
Save the children from everybody but yourselves apparently...
I mean, at the end of the day: QAnon is part rightwing revenge fantasy and part Conspiracy Theory Greatest Hits. You've got your Satanic Panic, your JFK assassination, rebranded Illuminati, crossover with antivax shit...
Literally the Abulafia computer from Foucault's Pendulum...
The media has shifted into "objective" print-anything-people-say reporting and talking heads analysis (a.k.a a stream of hot air), but very few journalists actually ask questions with any teeth. For example, couldn't a reporter ask a MAGA-ite "What do you think the president's signature policy achievement has been?" It's not even a confrontational question. Hell, ask Susan Collins or Cordy Gardner that same question.
I will say with conspiracy theories, there is no amount of evidence that will contradict your belief. For example, Trump tweeted out that the Democrats omitted God from the Pledge of Allegiance, but there is video showing otherwise. Doesn't matter. The video probably came from the Deep State or the Satanist Cannibals or whatever dumb fucking shit people believe.
"...Trump tweeted out that the Democrats omitted God from the Pledge of Allegiance, but there is video showing otherwise."
That's why I think all reporting on Donnie and questions at press conference should start with or include "What the fuck??" or equivalent -- prevent Donnie from owning the story. And really, that kind of framing is pretty spot one, better than how the big kids are handling it.
S.V. Dáte was the reporter who asked Trump if Trump regrets all his lies (obviously the president didn't answer). For every reporter like Dáte, there are probably a hundred who would rather kiss ass and keep access to the White House.
All me to channel the conservatives I know personally, if presented with such video: Well [exasperated frown] of COURSE they say it when the cameras are turned on!
Crud. *Allow me to
Fun fact. Their orange archangel fighting the Deep State was close friends for 25 years with a trafficker in underage blond girls.
"Doing research. Must you libs always impugn the values of a decent man?"
Oh, I thought the Q people did research by asking themselves what they'd do if no one was watching and then attributing that to democrats and Hollywood. But then, Trump does lack imagination, so maybe he needed practical research.
Bringing facts into it is cheating.
Retelling Bryant's history is a bit of optimism for the morning, I think. If you can look past the smoke drifting down the street here in northern California, the heat, the pandemic that's killed less than half of its eventual victims, the two hurricanes rolling up the Mississippi Valley: Bryant didn't just lose, she lost big.
Or maybe not, because we're much closer to the authoritarianism Bryant wanted. She didn't win the war but we haven't either.
"But Bryant left behind a great strategic legacy, certainly, for other hardcore conservative groups..."
She also inspired one of the most delightfully offensive songs ever recorded:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBe2Bq4jYPA
This is a jam: as a queer person I fucking identify with the spirit
“I do know I agree with them as far as saving our children,” Carter said.
And that's really the biggest issue in politics. So many people are AGAINST saving our children, and in some ways actively support denying children dessert or one more bedtime story.
You know what? I don't give a shit if people think they are there because they genuinely care about "the children". Every single person there has walked past at least one abused child on the way to that fucking rally, and ignored it. Some of them, I'm willing to bet, are abusers who think they're just disciplinarians. You assholes want to save the children, ask a few questions when your kid's friend comes over with the bruises. Hey, even consider the kids in cages! The kids who get shot by cops. The kids who get shot in schools. The kids who don't have homes, or any goddamned food. Do something about them. Oh, but that would be messy and awkward and effort instead of just feeling like a hero. Fuck them all. I can't with QAnon. Every single one of them is an asshole, and while we waste time and money and effort on kids who don't even fucking exist, we'll ignore the ones who do.
Yesterday a cop in Kenosha shot a Black man in the back while he was getting in his car with two kids in the back seat. So much saving!
There's no glory in actual social service, so these choads fantasize about being "white saviors" without having to do any work at it.
Actually, that's pretty much the definition of whiteness right there
Right wing Christians tend to look at former hookers like I look at spiders: they're interesting, and I think people shouldn't treat them like monsters, and I want people to know about them, and I like reading about them, but they still creep me out, I like them to stay away from me while they're being useful to me, and I don't really trust them at all. When they find out I was hooking at fifteen, they go from "Oh, that's so awful I'm glad you escaped" to "Slut and pervert" in the span of a couple questions. No, I wasn't sex trafficked, my girlfriend got me into it, it was a job I could have without getting permission from my parents, and I was acting out against years of sexual abuse. Also, I don't credit them or their god with "getting me out".
I take this shit very personally. More than I should, probably, but this shit isn't funny, and is getting people killed, and isn't remotely plausible, and the only possible upside is trending a hashtag so they can feel important, meanwhile it harms the mentally ill who are sucked into it, and redirects efforts from combating actual abuse and trafficking.
I like a conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but not the ones that hurt people.
I agree -- yes they are totally hindering the laudable efforts to stop trafficking & child abuse
They don't actually care about "the children." They care about having their hatred of the Fox News Enemies List validated and seeing those people punished.
It's all cosplay. The entire right wing social/political cavalcade. Boogaloo is cosplay. QAnon is cosplay. Anti-abortion "we revere life" is cosplay. Most of their Christianity is fucking cosplay. No wonder they love Trump. He's the biggest fake, fictional character of them all, who speaks in nothing but lies. They act as though as long as they *believe* something is, or should be, or could be, true, then it pretty much IS true. That, to them, is what "freedom" means.
Of course, in a healthy society, that attitude would be identified as constituting insanity. But that ship has sunk.
I'm no mental health pro, just a life long neurotic, but all these conservatives, #MAGAts, inches, alt-right, Boogaloos, Q's, whatever I'm leaving out, are insane by my definition, the willful disregard for facts.
"There's one born every minute" isn't just a catch phrase, especially in the U.S. If the Q crowd weren't involved in that crackery they'd be throwing themselves at the feet of Creflo A. Dollar.
What a great tie in to the Anita Bryant campaign. It seems whenever the Looney Tunes come out of the woodwork it's always about the "children" Remember the McMartin and other cases during the 80s? Which were all debunked after causing much suffering to everyone. And yet they don't give a shit about all the children that D.Sidhe lists above in her comment.
I know it was fun trying to pick out the actual multiples from the ones who'd just had their brains fucked with. And then everybody's talking about it and suddenly as a queer plural I'm the trendiest fucker on earth, and shrinks are actually taking us seriously for about two years and then they're back to convinced we're not real, even more. Not the biggest suffering caused, but it did derail a certain amount of therapy.
Glad I scrolled down to the end of comments, to say if anyone else made the connection. QAnon has basically replaced Bryant's homophobia with some old fashioned '80s Satanic Panic.
First Phyllis Schlaefly with that Mrs. America series, now Anita (a day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine) Bryant? Boy, that guy who said the past isn't even past wasn't kidding. Nice catch Roy. The classic cons are classic because they always work.
The whole Qanon thing is just so weird. People are getting more and more frightened every day, buying into this half-baked cheese log of a global conspiracy is a harbinger, but not a good one. These next 2 months are going to be balls-to-the-wall insane, and then its gonna just get weirder and uglier if Joe wins in November, and that's the best case scenario. Liberals like to say the Republican Party needs to be destroyed, and I agree, but I don't see anyone attempting to think through what that looks like. Trump is going to be a martyr if he loses, whether he goes to prison or not. Q has the potential to be a "John Doe" club with Trump as Gary Cooper. And that's outside of the Party structure. The core problem of frightened angry white people is not going away even if the Republican Party does (which it won't, it's just too useful to rich people).
First night of Honkies on Parade: "She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie...."