Fanatics Anonymous
It's one small step, two steps backward, for mankind.
When I was young, my father pointed out to me that the word "fan" was the diminutive of "fanatic". Huh, I thought. I had always associated a "fan" as being a good thing. A fanatic was something altogether different. Fanatics can be unhinged. Dangerous even.
I think he said this not long after my heart was broken by the Dallas Cowboys in a playoff game against Bart Starr and the dreaded Green Bay Packers. I was questioning just how much of a "fan" I was of the loser Dallas Cowboys.
When I was in my youth I remember catching wind of a comment made by a science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard. He was quoted as saying at a science fiction writer's conference in 1948, "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion." L. Ron Hubbard was the founding father of Scientology.
Huh, I thought. I'll bet he's not the first hominid who ever uttered those words or had those very same thoughts.
Amway was a popular multi-level marketing "opportunity" when I was growing up, as I am presuming it still is. One of the reasons I am such a fan of the movie Go, which is a dark comedy with Timothy Olyphant, Katie Holmes, Sarah Polley, Jay Mohr, Taye Diggs and William Fichtner along with what appears to one very high character as a telepathic cat, is its skewering of enterprises like Amway that depend on gullible individuals and unadulterated faith.
Which brings me to the wide-ranging conspiracy theory known as QAnon.
I hate to provide it with oxygen, however, as we approach the most consequential elections in our lifetime, it keeps cropping up in the news. And, as Ben Collins from NBC News says,
I try to preface conversations on [QAnon] by saying something like “This might sound nuts, but this is what these people actually believe.” It’s important for people not to believe this is standard political wrangling.
First came the news from the previous August that the FBI had classified QAnon conspiracy theorists as domestic terror threats.
Second, a woman running for office in the state of Georgia, for an office in the U.S. House of Representatives, declared herself an unabashed believer in the QAnon conspiracy theories. She won the GOP primary in her district and will most likely be seated in the U.S. House of Representatives come January 2021.
As it turns out, she is one of more than 30 identified politicians who are currently running for office or previously held office who believe some or all of the QAnon conspiracy theories.
And last, but not least, of course, our president is neck deep in this horseshit as well. On Wednesday, a White House correspondent asked him about QAnon, and before I print his response, I am going to have Will Sommer of the Daily Beast who has explored it much more in depth than me, provide you with a brief synopsis.
QAnon believers think that Donald Trump is engaged in a shadow war against a cabal of satanic cannibal-pedophiles in the Democratic Party, Hollywood, and global finance. They believe this cabal is responsible for all the problems in the world, but that Trump will soon order the mass arrests and executions of political opponents like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a massive purge called “The Storm.” QAnon believers base this idea on clues from “Q,” an anonymous figure who has been posting on online message boards since 2017 who QAnon fans think is a high-ranking Trump administration figure — or maybe Trump himself!
It is nutty. It is lunacy. It is unhinged.
It is also growing in popularity due to our isolation in the time of a pandemic, the siren song of the internet rabbit holes, our need to belong to something, our need to explain things that are practically inexplicable and a president who embraces chaos with fervor. I suspect it is quite simple. It's a big chunk of his base, he's the hero in this story and they LIKE him.
It's the same grouping of factors for why he will not disavow white supremacists or the alt-right or white nationalists.
Here is his response to being asked about QAnon at a White House press briefing:
I don't know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate.
And then...
I haven't heard that - when explained the premise behind the conspiracy theory before joking - Is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?
To be fair, he had more to say than just these two comments, but at no point in his response did he unequivocally state that he thought it was a bunch of gobbledygook which any normal human who could be readily institutionalized by their families, or tranquillized for being a threat to themselves, would have done.
I don't believe he sees it as a joke.
We've seen him muttering onstage about the Deep State. We've seen his retweets about many of the QAnon conspiracy theories. He, alone, kept the Barack Obama racist birther conspiracy theory alive.
As the prolific prose version of Paul Revere, I felt it to be my duty to bring this to your attention. Because QAnon adherents look like the checkout person at the corner grocery, your Aunt Hattie, your high school baseball coach, the woman at the Department of Motor Vehicles. In other words, just about anybody.
I'd hazard to guess you are just as likely to know a Q supporter as you are to know someone who tested positive for the coronavirus.
I suspect there is someone, or some persons, profiting greatly from the spread of this hogwash. There are already people scoring big through the merchandising angle and the YouTube and TikTok channels.
L. Ron Hubbard would approve.
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Endearing Animal video day!
Also, on the 18th of August it was the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. It is important to note: women weren’t given the right to vote, they fought for it. Check out this PBS special.
