Online Far-Right Movements Fracture, as 'Gullible' QAnon Supporters Criticized (nbcnews.com) 233
"Online far-right movements are splintering," argues NBC News:
Users on forums that openly helped coordinate the Jan. 6 riot and called for insurrection...have become increasingly agitated with QAnon supporters, who are largely still in denial that President Donald Trump will no longer be in the Oval Office after Jan. 20... [QAnon adherents] have identified Inauguration Day as a last stand, and falsely think he will force a 10-day, countrywide blackout that ends in the mass execution of his political enemies and a second Trump term...
According to researchers who study the real-life effects of the QAnon movement, the false belief in a secret plan for Jan. 20 is irking militant pro-Trump and anti-government groups, who believe the magical thinking is counterproductive to future insurrections...
While several specific doomsdays have passed without any prophecies coming true, experts who study QAnon believe another failed prophecy on Inauguration Day could further decimate the movement. Fredrick Brennan, who created the website 8chan where "Q" posts and has spent the last two years attempting to have the site removed from the internet for its ties to white supremacist terror attacks, said he believes reality may devastate the movement on Inauguration Day. "This week has been hugely demoralizing so far and that will be the final straw," he said. "Even though Q is at the moment based on Donald Trump, it is certainly possible for a significant faction to rise up that believes he was in the deep state all along and foiled the plan."
The fracture is "apparent on viral TikToks and Facebook posts," reports NBC News, with one TikTok post mocking "the number of the gullible people who are still out there saying Q is going to run to the rescue."
Users on forums that openly helped coordinate the Jan. 6 riot and called for insurrection...have become increasingly agitated with QAnon supporters, who are largely still in denial that President Donald Trump will no longer be in the Oval Office after Jan. 20... [QAnon adherents] have identified Inauguration Day as a last stand, and falsely think he will force a 10-day, countrywide blackout that ends in the mass execution of his political enemies and a second Trump term...
According to researchers who study the real-life effects of the QAnon movement, the false belief in a secret plan for Jan. 20 is irking militant pro-Trump and anti-government groups, who believe the magical thinking is counterproductive to future insurrections...
While several specific doomsdays have passed without any prophecies coming true, experts who study QAnon believe another failed prophecy on Inauguration Day could further decimate the movement. Fredrick Brennan, who created the website 8chan where "Q" posts and has spent the last two years attempting to have the site removed from the internet for its ties to white supremacist terror attacks, said he believes reality may devastate the movement on Inauguration Day. "This week has been hugely demoralizing so far and that will be the final straw," he said. "Even though Q is at the moment based on Donald Trump, it is certainly possible for a significant faction to rise up that believes he was in the deep state all along and foiled the plan."
The fracture is "apparent on viral TikToks and Facebook posts," reports NBC News, with one TikTok post mocking "the number of the gullible people who are still out there saying Q is going to run to the rescue."
Cults are like that. (Score:5, Insightful)
We Subgenii have observed that cult leaders will make a prediction of doom, and that when it doesn't happen, some of their followers will abandon them. The leader makes another prediction ("The end of the world is coming on July 5th!"), or revises the date for the previous announcement, and when that date comes and goes, a few more people leave - but fewer than the first time. Eventually the leader ends up with a core of people who have doubled down and who are prepared to believe anything, no matter how stupid it might seem - no matter how many predictions don't come true, or how many end-of-the-world deadlines come and pass. As long as there are enough of them, an Us-or-Them division makes it very hard to talk them down, and the worst cases end in violence or mass suicide.
Cui bono?
Re:Cults are like that. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Great link.
It's not difficult to understand why people who've invested so much time, faith, and energy in such a movement struggle with their cognitive dissonance when events manifest that clearly contradict their belief set.
The great quandary is why so many folks are attracted to such a movement in the first place. It may be that folks find great comfort in being in a group that knows things others' do not. Perhaps, people just need to belong to a group, or to believe in something... I suppose poli
Re:Cults are like that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget the whole Trump Won thing is also magical thinking. It's just varying degrees of kookiness, from the "he will save us from the pedophiles" up top down to the "all Republicans are traitors to Trump if they don't start a special investigation now!" people.
Re: (Score:3)
Look, you idiots just refuse to accept it. No matter the idea, some mentally trouble people will jump on it and do silly things. This whilst by far the majority just playing with and having fun with the idea, do just that.
The mentally troubled individuals, is the fault of society, the failure to properly care for it's citizens, the negative reactions are not the the fault of the majority sharing ideas, that idea is insane.
It was clear from the beginning the QAnon was mainly political marketing for Trump an
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Cults are like that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporations hate and silence and disparage Greens at every opportunity, that's true.
Not true for Libertarianism, at least the US form (and as exported around the world by them), i.e anarcho-capitalism. It is the preferred ideology of corporations because it is all about unregulated capitalism and the reification of "property rights" as the sole moral precept of society. They want a neo-feudal system based around their version of the Golden Rule - "he who has the gold makes the rules", and the rules are for you and me and everyone else but not them, their wealth puts them above any laws or rules.
They don't need to expend any particular effort promoting "Libertarian" ideology any more - they've been doing it for so long that it's the dominant social paradigm, almost every American believes in it. It's the default mode of thinking and of seeing the world. It has tainted everything, even most of the world's centrist and center-left parties have accepted most of its core premises.
US-style Libertarians are the useful idiots of corporations and the ownership class (i.e. the .01%, those who own the corporations and pretty much everything else). They've been brainwashed into thinking that what's good for the ultra-rich is good for them, like turkeys who insist on voting for Christmas because the non-stop propaganda tells them that one day they'll magically lose their feathers and turn into wolves...or, at least, lap-dogs allowed to eat some of the table scraps.
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed. Great link.
It's not difficult to understand why people who've invested so much time, faith, and energy in such a movement struggle with their cognitive dissonance when events manifest that clearly contradict their belief set.
The way I see it is that Trump support is like supporting a sports team.
You can't go to your sports-buddies one day and say "Our team sucks, they haven't won a single game this year, I'm going with the a different one". You simply can't. You have to double down, wear more team shirts, more face paint, etc.
There's no room for reality and logic. Sports fans don't sit down at the start of every year and decide what would be the best team to support this year and neither do political party supporters.
In the cas
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I got eternal salvation! PRABOB
Re: (Score:3)
A+++ cult. Would worship again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Cults are like that. (Score:2)
Cut 'em some Slack.
Re:Cults are like that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, "mass suicide" would be beneficial for everybody in this case.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the chuckle, but you're correct. Exaggeration, prediction, and projection have done more harm to scientific studies that suggest certain behaviors imply better outcomes than the anti-science crowds' contrarian information dissemination.
Of course, now that science and logical consequence have been sacrificed at the political altar, we're likely doomed. Sigh! The universe had such high hopes for us.
Re: (Score:2)
maybe you should expand your horizons and realise that the future extends beyond the next financial quarter.
mind-blowing, i know, but it's true.
Re: (Score:3)
I grew up 3 above the equator. The temperatures used to run from low/mid 20s to low 30s. Nowadays, it's typically in the low 30s to the high 30s.
There's many island nations that have lost a lot of land to the ocean.
But sure. Continue to call it a cult or a conspiracy.
Lol (Score:2, Funny)
Tangerine Taliban Trumptard Terrorists Triggered. Tears delicious.
Re:Lol (Score:5, Informative)
Would love to see the meltdowns (Score:5, Funny)
To be a fly on the wall in the same room as them when Joe Biden is sworn in on the 20th as the next president. The gnashing of teeth, the gushing of tears, the rending of garments, the apoplectic fits they'll be tossing themselves into would be something I'd pay to see.
Re:Would love to see the meltdowns (Score:5, Insightful)
Not going to happen. Once you go full fantasy, you don't need to deal with that sort of reality.
Trump was a member of the deep state all along, it turns out! He was undercover to help figure out who Q was and get him executed. Just more evidence that the deep state exists, and we need to keep up the good fight against the satanic pedophile democrats and the traitorous republicans.
When you're into a cult deep, you need to just keep telling stories until it all makes enough sense to you that you can sleep at night.
Re: Would love to see the meltdowns (Score:3)
Some are already pushing the goalpost to Mar 4. The new theory is that Trump is going to abolish the US Corporation and take the IS back to being a country. Which normally had inauguration on March 4. Its sovereign citizen nuttery.
Re: (Score:2)
Not going to happen. Once you go full fantasy, you don't need to deal with that sort of reality.
Indeed. Joe Biden is actually John F. Kennedy Jr in a mask, say QAnon conspiracy theorists [news.com.au]
Re:Would love to see the meltdowns (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, it's not the real Trump. It's a clone! Now we must get into the sub basements of the White House to rescue the @realDonaldTrump!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not going to happen. Once you go full fantasy, you don't need to deal with that sort of reality.
Trump was a member of the deep state all along, it turns out! He was undercover to help figure out who Q was and get him executed. Just more evidence that the deep state exists, and we need to keep up the good fight against the satanic pedophile democrats and the traitorous republicans.
When you're into a cult deep, you need to just keep telling stories until it all makes enough sense to you that you can sleep at night.
I doubt it, Qanon is a subset of Trumpism, expecting them to disown Trump is like expecting Scientologists to disown Hubbard.
Instead they'll craft some narrative of how Trump is still at it. Probably leading the top secret "legitimate" US government that's just waiting for the right moment to unleash the evidence and retake control of the government. In fact, he's probably skipping Biden's inauguration so he can go to the real (secret) inauguration for his second term!!
Fun Fact: I just realized my nick also
Re:Would love to see the meltdowns (Score:5, Insightful)
You're defining "Deep State" down to "entrenched bureaucratic interests" and "partisans with civil service job security," fair enough. But there is nothing inappropriate in investigating whether an apparent Russian stooge is an actual Russian stooge. What is in appropriate is using an investigation for political purposes, like when the head of the FBI released a letter saying that he was investigating more "Clinton Emails!" just days before the election.
Re: (Score:3)
Bureaucratic interests means they look out to make sure the actual LAW is followed, and not just presidential whims. People who want a dictator hate the deep state, but those who respect the rule of law like that there are people who can uphold it against tyrants.
Re:Would love to see the meltdowns (Score:5, Insightful)
No one in the FBI believed Donald Trump was a Russian agent. However, there was very strong evidence that Russia tried to influence the election towards a Trump win. But, the Trump fans insist on rephrasing this Trump helping the Russians because that is easier to deny, and because Trump would be pissed off that he couldn't win on his own (and actually, two elections in a row he lost the popular vote, so sad, tears so big).
Re:Would love to see the meltdowns (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no idea whether the FBI believed that Trump was a Russian agent, but I do. Not a fully owned agent, but definitely someone on a string.
That's "asset", not "agent".
Re: Would love to see the meltdowns (Score:2)
You can. They have plenty of boards out there you can watch. I already have my spot staked out. The tears on inauguration day will be delicious.
Re: (Score:2)
To be a fly on the wall in the same room as them when Joe Biden is sworn in on the 20th as the next president.
If we can fake the moon landing, we can surely fake an inauguration.
Re:Would love to see the meltdowns (Score:5, Insightful)
The Papua New Guinea highlands were isolated from the world, and were in stone age till 1920s when they were discovered by explorers. In about 15 years that part of the world became thick with the Pacific theater of the WW II, with airbases built there, planes flying in and out. Bringing "cargo", incredible things for a culture encountering metal for the first time!
They created a theory that their ancestors, who move to the cloud world after their death built all these flying machines and were sending them down to them from the skies.
And as fast as it started the war ended, cargo stopped coming from the skies. They fashioned head sets out of coconut shells, braided ropes for wires, built wooden towers and strung the ropes, sat in rows and chanted the invocations they have heard as best as they could, "kam eeen chaarly ... chaly deltaa ..." "kaam eeen" No cargo ships appeared from the sky.
Suddenly a mystique predicted the arrival of messiah, some john or some name. And he got huge following there. He kept postponing the predicted arrival date, kept changing the messiah's description, kept changing his stories of how he is communicating with the messiah, but through it all the faith his followers had in him never wavered.
Rest of the world came out of stone age mere 5000 years ago. A blink of an eye in the time scale of evolution. Our brains have not evolved any better than the Papua New Guinea cargo cults. We have the same brains. ...
Re:Would love to see the meltdowns (Score:5, Insightful)
I take it you mean February 20th, when citizens finally realize they elected a man suffering from dementia to lead a country?
No, no, we did not elect Donald Trump. That's just what he keeps telling people. Don't believe the lies.
Americans are gullible in general (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
We spotted a messiah bearing the message, "Get A Brain, Morans!!" [imgur.com]
Re: (Score:2)
We can't have people competing and not accepting horrible practices of the precious megacorporations, can we?
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously. What did you expect from decades of under-investment in education?
Do gullible, under-educated and low IQ all go together?
Are conspiracy theories rampant in third world countries and we just don't hear about it?
The US does seem to have a lot more of these people than other developed countries. Is it a coincidence that religion remains much stronger in the US than in other developed countries? There does seem to be something different in the personality of the country.
But despite all the strongly held religious and other beliefs, it is mostly peaceful. In a
Re: (Score:2)
Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic, everything else is a liberal plot to enslave our citizens. Fire all the civics teachers who instill dogma in our children about the false god of democracy!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I'd bet that on easily measurable factors Americans are better educated than they ever have been. What's missing is the holy grail of education: critical thinking. Nobody's really figured out how to teach that, possibly because trying to teach that conflicts with getting easily measurable results.
Simple and easily measurable artificial frameworks are no match for what's out there -- a natural ecosystem of nonsense that has survived a kind of cultural natural selection. One of the big ideas we're facing is
Re:Americans are gullible in general (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Americans are gullible in general (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps he's not American. You know - other countries DO exist outside "America". And not like Puerto Rico.
So which is it then? Alaska or Hawaii??
Re: (Score:2)
YOU
Re:Americans are gullible in general (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps he's not American. You know - other countries DO exist outside "America". And not like Puerto Rico.
On the other hand we're 99% certain that the parent AC *is* American :-)
Ya, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
[QAnon adherents] have identified Inauguration Day as a last stand, and falsely think he will force a 10-day, countrywide blackout that ends in the mass execution of his political enemies and a second Trump term...
That's not how America works.
Congress has certified Biden's win, Trump lost. How ever you feel about that, it's the way it is. If you don't like it, organize politically to increase the chances of Republicans (or whatever party it splits into) winning the *next* presidential election -- like Democrats did this time around. Stop blaming this loss on unproven and unfounded allegations. Yes, a lot of people voted for Trump, but 7 million more people voted for Biden -- actual, living, legally eligible people.
Increased voter turnout is a good thing, regardless of their political affiliations and that was helped in part by measures taken to mitigate the pandemic, like increased/expanded mail-in and early voting -- which allowed many more people usually unable to vote or discouraged from voting, like people who couldn't afford to take off from work, to vote this time. (Election Day should be a national holiday).
Don't become a literal enemy of the people/state simply because those people didn't vote your way. Look to the next election, the Country will still be here -- unless you become the traitors you claim to fear and ruin it with seditious actions.
Re: Ya, no. (Score:3)
Congress can't do anything but certify the win. Only if outstanding court cases where still active could they attempt to stop certification.
60 court cases gutted due to lack of evedience. The fact they thought they could stop proved the stupid and antidemocratic thoughts of everyone who went.
Re: (Score:2)
Congress can't do anything but certify the win. Only if outstanding court cases where still active could they attempt to stop certification.
Yup, I knew that, but thanks. (Also, pretty sure Sens.Cruz and Hawley, who both clerked at SCOTUS, know that too...)
My meaning was that it's official -- and there's no Constitutional way to undo it. Sorry if unclear.
Re:Ya, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Republican House representatives have been representing less than 40% of the population, won the popular vote only once in 32 years. Same with the Senate
Republicans are losers and losing it. They are maintaining political power by gerrymandering and shrewdly exploiting concessions given to small States to join the union back in 1776.
They have been fed a series of lies and misrepresentation that they are the majority and they actually deserve all the seats they have been getting and the seats won by the Democrats are somehow unworthy. This is the mainline rank and file Republican party, not the nutcases believing in QAnon or racists or other fringe groups. Its time the mainline, rank and file, regular Republicans to face the fact they are not winning hearts and minds of most Americans. No matter how entitled they feel to rule this country, no matter what lies their preferred news vendors are telling them, no matter how strongly they believe the votes Democrats are getting is not real, legitimate, they are the minority.
Till Republicans adopt popular positions in environment, climate change, abortion, guns, war on Christmas, they will continue to lose more and more votes.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Sigh, correct but misleading. From [wikipedia.org]:
I could put it another way: the Republicans have won the presidency without wining the popular vote twi
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You're ignoring third parties.
The only times that Republicans won a plurality of votes since 1988 were 1988 and 2004 The other seven, had Democrats with the plurality.
Re:Ya, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Both siderism is the reason why we are in a mess.
Trump incited a mob to attack the Capitol and you are saying both sides?
Nice misdirection here pointing out Democrats winning the US House and Senate. Redistricting is done at the State level. And Republicans own state legislatures 60 to 40.
67% of the redistricting committees are in Republican control, now, after 2020 elections. 10% are in Democratic control. And you normalize it, minimize it, and pretend to by above the fray and take the high road. But you know Republicans are a lot more vicious when it comes to exploiting these rules and perpetuating what favors them.
Re:Ya, no. (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh, correct but misleading. From [wikipedia.org]:
I could put it another way: the Republicans have won the presidency without wining the popular vote twice in the last 32 years, and the Democrats have also done it twice. The presidential race looks like a fair fight to me.
No they haven't. The win is not determined by being above 50%, it's about being the largest number in the tally. In two of those years there were three candidates. In every year there were uncounted votes due to the usual issues. As a result the numbers look like this:
1988 Rep. (Rep popular) 53.37% George H. W. Bush vs 45.6% to Dukakis
1992 Dem. (Dem popular) 43.01% Bill Clinton vs 30.7% to Bush
1996 Dem. (Dem popular) 49.23% Bill Clinton vs 40.7% to Dole
2000 Rep. (Dem popular) 47.87% George W. Bush vs 48.4% to Gore
2004 Rep. (Rep popular) 50.73% George W. Bush vs 48.3% to Kerry
2008 Dem. (Dem popular) 52.93% Barack Obama vs 45.7% to Mcain
2012 Dem. (Dem popular) 51.06% Barack Obama vs 47.2% to Romney
2016 Rep. (Dem popular) 46.09% Donald Trump vs 48.2% to Clinton
2020 Dem. (Dem popular) 51.32% Joe Biden vs 46.9% to Trump
At no point did the democrats win the presidency without also winning the popular vote. But republicans have done it twice.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Ya, no. (Score:4, Informative)
Unless, of course, some people (Republicans) decide to minimize the number of polling stations and put them in remote locations so it takes you 4 to 6 hours of travel and waiting in line to vote. See Texas in 2020 as a recent example [theguardian.com].
"The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you'd ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again," Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends [twitter.com]. -- March 2020
"I don't want everybody to vote," Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980 [youtu.be]. "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Trump 2024 (Score:5, Insightful)
These fools will have Trump or a Trump equivalent/clone to rally them in 2024 .. especially if they drive some narrative about crime and the economy. I mean, during Obama crime actually decreased or stayed the same .. yet the narrative was that crime had increased dramatically due to illegal immigration. The economy too was recovering but the right wing narrative of the economy being worse than the great depression won. Obama even got blamed for Ebola although not one American citizen died on US soil of US-acquired Ebola. Thanks to Bush's and Obama's willingness to assist foreign countries early on in pandemics, we controlled the SARS pandemic in 2003, MERS in 2011, Ebola in 2012. Meanwhile by following Reagan's 1980s "ignore the AIDS epidemic -- it doesn't affect us" response plan, Trump has negligently or deliberately killed nearly 400,000 people. Those negligent murders were helped by his disbanding of the global pandemic response team in 2018 and then him and his followers calling COVID a hoax. Trump was bamboozled by many people, think of all the people he hired who he later had to fire as disgraces. Remember when he called Bush a moron for selecting John Roberts to the supreme court? Well Trump's own misjudgement of selecting judges was on display when his own supreme court picks voted against him. Another example of how Trump is too easily tricked.
Re:Trump 2024 (Score:5, Interesting)
These fools will have Trump or a Trump equivalent/clone to rally them in 2024 ...
Trump? See: 14th Amendment, Section 3 [congress.gov]:
No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Only takes a majority vote by the House and Senate, both of which will be controlled by Democrats in 4 days.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
And since Dems have lowered the bar to literally nothing, when the Republicans win back the house and senate in 2 years they can impeach Biden & Harris immediately.
Re: (Score:3)
Senators going into 2022 midterms are the ones who rode the coat tails of 2016 Trump wave. In two years, Trump mystique will be totally demystified. The Trumpists will be in fractured into two or three factions blaming each other and fighting internecine battles. Republicans who always relied on voter turn turn out to carry them through will be facing severe headwinds.
Remember this: Republican Presidents got more votes than Democrats only once in the l
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Truly unlikely.
Trump never won the popular vote, he won the electoral college the first time around by a lot of luck. He did everything in large part because no one had ever tried it before. Now that we now about it, a lot of things will go differently. It is NEVER the same election as last time, at least not in an election politics.
1) The GOP candidate will be going up against a 2nd term Biden (or a 2nd term Harris), who will have demonstrated to most of the nation that they are not crazy. Versus goin
Re: (Score:2)
Neither Biden nor Kamala are good orators. Sorry neither of them excite the people. Do you hear of anyone excited to go to a Biden or Kamala rally? It's not going to be entertaining, inspiring, or exciting.
...'Gullible' QAnon Supporters... (Score:5, Funny)
As opposed to all of the non-gullible QAnon people?
Re:...'Gullible' QAnon Supporters... (Score:5, Informative)
Those would be the professional grifter celebrities in the movement who are profiting from it but secretly know it's all dangerously insane bullshit. And I suppose some of the politicians trying to surf the movement to power in the hopes of being in the good graces of whichever politician Q makes into their next savior figure - maybe trying to become that figure themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
You have to admit that what they seem to believe is more than just "special".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Gullible is a pretty good name for them, as opposed to 'terrorist'.
When you call them terrorists, you are feeding their self-image. They are mighty, they are feared. When you call them gullible it is more like saying that they are fools, pawns in someone else's game. That hurts their self-image.
Generally speaking, when you pander to their self-image with compliments like 'terrorist', you encourage their behavior. When you laugh at them and damage their self-image they retreat and they can look for a new dir
It's just the leadership yanking the lease (Score:5, Insightful)
What gets me is we see this same pattern again and again and again through the world.
Re: (Score:3)
The top 0.1% will take the wealth from the rest of 1%.
Since 99% of the population has nothing worth losing, why wouldn't they choose socialism?
Just to prevent the 99% rising up with pitchforks and do the elites what the Russian peasants did to the Russsian aristocrats, they should leave some crumbs for the top 2%. That 2% is the buffer that keeps rest of 98% in check while the top 0.1% continue their decadent ways.
Bigotry & Wedge Issues (Score:2)
The pattern is thousands and years old. I'm more than a little angry we don't teach it in schools, but I'm smart enough to know why.
Re: (Score:3)
No matter how angry upset unnerved and apprehensive we are as Americans after Nov 2020, at the time scale you are talking about and the scale you are talking about we are living the time of peace and tranquility and we are actually becoming less violent and more progressive.
The evidence is clear. Homo sapien skulls 100,000 years or older are classified as "robust", with much thicker crania
With the amount of information we have (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
What gets me is we see this same pattern again and again and again through the world.
That has a simple explanation: The average person is not only deeply stupid, but also completely incapable to learn from experience or observation.
The election denialism is really stunning (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't get how some people find it easier to believe in a vast conspiracy which would require the involvement of hundreds of thousands of people... versus accepting the fact that one guy is just repeatedly lying, plus maybe a handful of confederates repeating the lies.
Re:The election denialism is really stunning (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And global warming is a "hoax", and that Jesus wants them to harass LGBTQ, and that minorities are taking their jobs and/or welfare money. The extra power given to them by the Electoral College allows their dangerous and cruel ideas to screw up society and the planet.
Re:The election denialism is really stunning (Score:4, Interesting)
The minimum required life skills to just to live in USA is on a rapidly advancing rate. You need to have enough money management and time management skill to keep one car in working condition, remember to pay all the taxes, and tax returns in time. Remember to pay the bills in time.
For many the switch to paperless bills and move to the net is bewildering.
I am from a email desktop user. For 30 years. Was active in Usenet back in 1990s. But I am confused and stumped by many things in the smart phone based communications. User interface is becoming more and more cryptic to me. What happened to the settings button? Now it is a gear icon. OK thanks, Hey what happened to the gear icon? Now it is a ham sandwich. OK. Hey! the ham sandwich is gone. yeah yeah, now it is a kabab. How do I know there is a hidden active control at the bottom right corner of the screen? "OK boomer"? What does that mean?
I can easily imaging the older folks being completely bewildered and be persuaded to believe, they are sane rest of the world has gone insane.
My wife's business is getting harder (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife is an independent practitioner, and the increasingly corporate-friendly changes to the medical billing world are costing her major time and effort. If she weren't married to a software developer she would be paying major bucks to consultants and "practice management services".
I agree that aspects of the modern world are increasingly complex.
I believe however that it is not inevitable, these transitions are by design. Most corporate "leaders" want to be at the top of the largest possible financial pyramids, with the attendant concentrated economic and consequently political power.
I saw the word "neofeudalism" upthread and could not agree more. Too much concentrated power attracts the worst sort of narcissistic sociopaths, who will stop at nothing, who would kill as many as necessary to achieve their desired domination.
I've read several arguments (usually proposed by "conservatives") that the plain people, the rabble, cannot be trusted with sovereign rights of voting citizens. As far as I am concerned, a reasonably well-informed broadly representative and represented citizenry is FAR FAR more trustworthy than assholes who would sell their own grandmother's kidneys for a higher stock price.
Re: (Score:2)
If you have no fact-checking ability whatsoever, all this just looks right!
Re:The election denialism is really stunning (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
You're overlooking the obvious - perhaps they eat the parents as well.
Re: (Score:2)
I get you are trying to be funny, but there are a lot of abortions in the US every year. So maybe?
Best profiteer (Score:3)
Amateurs. The best profiteer from gullible fools is Alex Jones, who sells them "natural supplements" with names like Alpha Power and DNA Force Plus. Yet those pills are far from healthy, they contain known carcinogenic alkaloids (cancer-causing plant chemicals).
Wacko. (Score:2)
But on meth IT IS!
QAnon was made to mock the right (Score:3)
The idiocy level of QAnon and some conspiracy theories (Bill Gates microchips in vaccines, covid-is-a-hoax, etc) leads me to believe these things were put out there to make fools of the right.
It is ironic that those seeking to be clever in identifying conspiracies are so stupid. It's like they have no common sense. Common sense is a thing they try to teach AI's. Like that purely contextual test (in a recent CACM magazine) where you have figure out what the pronoun "they" refers to: "The city councilmen refused the demonstrators a permit because they [feared | advocated] violence." Only context, based on those millions of rules of thumbs most humans have, would indicated who "they" would refer to, depending on whether "feared" or "advocated" was used.
I have to wonder if the true believers of these conspiracies could pass AI tests.
Gullible? Not at all. (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean - it's not gullibility.
It's the same attitude Rush Limbaugh had most of his career - it's a form of humor that isn't quite comedy.
Rather - it's a sort of "I can't believe I'm getting away with this" pushing of luck that triggers the same feelings of comedy, like the laughs a class gets when they're messing around with a substitute teacher.
It's not so much because the person taking part really wants the result in all cases... but they think that's what the rest of the group wants.
It's why they're comfortable with that group to begin with - because the appeal of the group IS the low expectations and subversive fun of it. But exactly because of that, the group gets on a downward spiral it follows as long as it can get away with it.
It's also why there's very, very few super-hardcore conservative comedians - they honestly don't need them. There's more than enough of that humor flying around that the idea holds little appeal - it's just not jokes for the most part.
And none of it is super new - it existed in yellow journalism way long ago. If you ever read any of those old comics from the 1800's you might not think there's any jokes there - and you'd kind of be right - it's that same version of humor.
They're going for the conspiracies because it feeds that excitement and humor feelings - it feels like winning in those groups.
Ryan Fenton
Re:Gullible? Not at all. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
>>Unfortunately, given how much active violence and the like associated with QAnon there has been, it is clear that even if some core bunch are joking, a lot of believers don't think that's what is going on.
But that's why I distinguish between the humor of these groups and comedy.
Comedy is packaged into jokes - both to make points, and to separate it from other statements so not to take it seriously.
When groups like this use humor though - it's not packaged into jokes, and it isn't separated from othe
Re: (Score:2)
>>Satire is the word you're looking for, I believe.
No - what they're doing isn't any form of classic comedy. That's why I used the word humor, which is the larger category comedy falls into. And while it isn't purely cruelty - it usually involves folks imagining that what others want to see is cruelty - and playing to that.
Satire for instance, when done well involves taking the view under consideration, and representing it faithfully, but exaggerating a portion of it to highlight a contradiction. A
Re: (Score:2)
The Great Disappointment, and When Prophecy Fails (Score:5, Interesting)
Two examples come to mind. The Great Disappointment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment [wikipedia.org] occurred in 1844 when the then large Millerite Christian sect was told that the Second Coming would occur on October 22, 1844. It didn't. At first Miller and others tried to predict dates slightly in the future. Jesus did not return for those either. In time, the religion fractured, but not without acrimony. Miller's followers did however go on to form a bunch of different religions, and were a major influence on what eventually became the Seventh Day Adventists.
The other example that comes to mind is the book When Prophecy Fails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails [wikipedia.org] about a small UFO cult in Chicago and what happened when their predicted apocalypse did not happen. While many believers left, a core became even more committed and believe that the end times were actually stopped and their deity has chosen to spare the world. Those hardcore believers went on to try to spread this excellent news to all who would listen.
Both of these examples suggest that we'll be dealing with a core QAnon group for a very long time to come. And their beliefs will likely become even stranger, more convoluted, and more extreme.
Bad description of "the storm" from QAnon (Score:4, Funny)
I've followed some people who are prominent in QAnon circles and none of them say that. What they actually think is going to happen is that Trump is going to have a bunch of people, including Biden and Harris, arrested for a huge number of crimes.
"Arrest the President-Elect?" Well yeah, it's not irrational if you stipulate the rest of the conspiracy: namely that Trump is sitting on a ton of classified data, sealed indictments, etc. and waiting for his enemies to rally in DC.
Then pop got the warrants, insurrection act gets used. The swamp gets torched.
I think it's wishful thinking, but it's not even remotely "ermagerd, bigfoot shitting dem 5g-enabled chemtrails so he can rape us with the help of reptilians from alpha centauri."
Now that you mention it (Score:3)
Given this topic, I have to wonder just how many participants/poster to /. hold QAnon beliefs? Remembering back to past posts I have seen here there must be some. QAnon aside there are at least a few people here who clearly believe that Donald J. Trump is a can-do-no-wrong virtuous best-president-ever. Who is the true victim in all this. Who is constantly treated so unfairly by the media who was always out to get him.
And if not that then definitely much better than Hillary would have been.
Is it just me or have they gone really quiet recently?
Blame the 11th commandment (Score:2)
Republican decorum was famously characterized by Ronald Reagan as the “Eleventh Commandment,” which declared, “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” Reagan credited Gaylord Parkinson, state chairman of California Republicans during the 1960s, with originating the idea, and in his 1966 campaign for California governor, Reagan pledged to honor it.
This is where the rot started. Once Republicans stop criticizing each other, they lost their ability to examine the ideology and motives of their own. All it mattered was a label, Republicans that is all. So every egomaniac, authoritarian, cynical selfish politician found it easy to ride up the ranks of the Republican party. All that mattered was to mouth the same platitude the leadership was saying, and the competition was on who says it more convincingly.
It is exactly what happens when the body loses it
If Q is actually Donald Trump... (Score:5, Funny)
...that would explain why Q is always wrong about everything.
Nutoff (Score:2)
Nut A: "The world is obviously flat."
Nut B: "No, it's a cube! Bible says it has corners."
Nut A: "Nope, flat!"
Nut B: "Your wife is flat, the only flat thing on her fat body!"
Nut A: "This means war!"
Nut B: "Save it for the Dems."
Nut A: "Oh, alright. Down with Dems!..."
HFC (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
YES. One CAN accuse someone of something one is doing themselves – that's called hypocrisy (if the accusation is true) or projection (if false, legally "slander").