America's Greatest Pastime
Money for nothing.
America’s greatest pastime is not any sport.
It’s charlatanism. Scam artistry. Long cons. Short cons. Ponzi schemes. Multilevel marketing. Deceptive business practices. The very American phrase “there’s a sucker born every minute” was coined for a reason.
We’re not special. It’s just that our type of economy is a perfect fit for the unscrupulous. For those who are always looking to make a quick buck. Which makes all of us chum in a shark tank.
I just completed the HBO miniseries Q: Into the Storm.
In my opinion, the Q phenomenon cannot be disregarded. (We disregarded the Tea Party, and look how that turned out.) At least two legislators in the House of Representatives are Q believers. Twenty-two other Q candidates ran in the last election and lost. A large portion of the Republican base are caught up in some portion of the Q quagmire of crazy. A large percentage of the insurrectionists who attacked our government on the 6th of January were Q adherents. They represent the most fanatical of the fanatics on the right.
Once they are “red-pilled”, they become fervent proselytizers – red-pilling refers to the movie - The Matrix - when Keanu Reeves is offered a red or blue pill.
This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill: the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill: you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. - Morpheus played by Laurence Fishburne, The Matrix
The creator of the six part miniseries may have exposed who the mastermind was behind Q, and Q has been quiet for some time now–this is the three month anniversary of the failed overthrow of democracy–but we are nowhere close to being out of the woods with this sort of digitally-generated mass hysteria. The blueprint for how to manipulate the public has been laid bare for all to see.
In the documentary they discuss how easy it is to “game” the algorithms of social media sites so that anyone’s theories can be amplified exponentially. As we can see from the hysteria, obstinance and denialism over masks and vaccinations, this is child’s play for the internet savvy. This isn’t shooting fish in a barrel. This is dynamiting fish in a pond.
What works to draw people to the belief system of something like the Q “drops” works for Roger Stone’s trademarked Stop the Steal and all the other right wing dogma. It works by keeping gullible people in a fevered pitch. It works by demonizing journalists and mainstream media. It works by one political party being unwilling to deny the conspiracy theorists oxygen.
America is ripe for these kinds of ruses.
What makes the Q phenomenon so insidious is that, since it’s not bilking marks directly out of their money like previous online scams of the early aughts, it’s allowed to proliferate unchecked protected by free speech. The unknown creator or creators are simply pushing an agenda, though a scary agenda, which scarily includes former high-ranking military personnel along with an untold number of active military personnel. Like Michael Flynn, probably his brother and Paul T. Vallely. At this stage of their lives, these three are closer to being kooks than being patriots.
I was joking with a friend the other night that what some internet hacker “white hats” need to do is start pushing a world wide conspiracy theory that the Iraq War or the war in Afghanistan were/are hoaxes perpetrated on the American public to gin up their patriotism and we’ll quickly see how the military likes having psychological operations turned against them. It would be far too harmful to veterans, but it would certainly smoke out the nutcases who will believe anything if they think it was all part of the Illuminati and Rothschilds’ plan to enslave the human race.
What’s frightening about the success of the Q phenomenon was that it did not take that much effort to get the ball rolling. What’s also frightening is the ordinariness of the main players, as well as they are all–to be polite–odd ducks. The other frightening take away is that it did not require that much capital.
What may have begun as a lark and a LARP (live action role-playing) brought thousands to DC and inspired them to breach the Capitol Building and, if a few circumstances had turned out differently, could have led to some–even more–horrific bloodletting. Q was not the only catalyst for January 6th. The lies stoked online and in the media were major contributing factors. The whackadoodle universe of Q; however, prepped the former guy’s faithful following to be more fanatical.
Lest you forget, members of Congress–more than likely the two who publicly espouse Q conspiracies–aided and abetted the attackers in ways that - hopefully - the law enforcement agencies who are looking into the cellphone records soon discover.
I don’t know where the answer lies in combatting the virality of internet conspiracy theories and the spread of untruths but it seems obvious we can’t go blithely into the future without addressing the issue. The European Union enacted what they call the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and I have read that Biden has given it his thumb’s up.
The law changes the rules for companies that collect, store or process large amounts of information on residents of the EU, requiring more openness about what data they have and who they share it with. For instance, you may ask the company to delete your stored personal data.
In the U.S., legislators on either side of the aisle are discussing reforming Section 230, a provision in the 1996 Communications Decency Act that gives legal protections to Big Tech–Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al. Conservatives are upset because they think they are being unfairly targeted and censored. Liberals are upset because disinformation is of epidemic proportions and social media companies seem incapable of getting it under control.
Incredibly, there is a bipartisan bill in the Senate called the PACT Act that makes an effort to bridge the difference within the parties and provide a solution. After all, 1996 was the homesteading days of the internet and much has changed since then. The rules and regulations are way past due for an update.
Holding the social media companies liable for their content moderation is a start but the another idea may be to allow consumers complete control over online identities and how our identities get commodified. I’m a one-dimensional checkers player, not a very good one, nor am I a chess player, so I am incapable of thinking more than one move ahead, incapable of envisioning the mechanics of all that and incapable of imagining the unintended consequences of such a move.
Basically, I’m just grasping at straws.
I just know something needs to be done. 1996 rules and regulations for the internet are like applying concepts of the 1700s to how we deal with firearms today.
On the positive news side of things, our new and vastly improved government is no longer a purveyor of these fantastical notions. That, by itself, will go a long way toward moderating the damage that can be done. In addition, our new president is not fanning the flames of conspiracy theories and as Jeff Tiedrich likes to point out on Twitter:
75 days in, Joe Biden's 0 golf trips have wasted exactly 0 taxpayer dollars
The steady hand on the government tiller, however, shouldn’t lull us into thinking all’s right in the universe.
Q, having possibly been outed, may have dropped his last incoherent clue over a month ago but Republicans have seen the value of these dedicated, easily duped “digital soldiers”, as former general, former prisoner Michael Flynn calls them. I’m sure some compelling scam is already wending its way through the bowels of the online world.
Or, as in any good game of Mafia, someone will seize the moment and claim the exposed Q is an imposter and they are the real Q. And the cycle will be renewed.
I highly recommend Q: Into the Storm. Cullen Hoback takes you on his wild goose chase of Q from its origins to January 6th at the Capitol, from Sapporo, Japan to Italy and Manila.
Also, vaccination humor.
Thanks for reading, sharing and getting in touch.
Just a head’s up.
Spring has sprung, rafting season has come back around and I am full vaccinated, so there are going to be some gaping holes in my writing schedule. Thankfully, with the former guy in the rearview mirror, there is only the usual set of topics to rile me and everybody else up. In other words, just the normal dumpster fire of life. Not the non-stop three alarm dumpster fire we had become accustomed to. - JLM