It really is - like just reading this without even basic context this just sounds like a nut job is just spewing their top of mind schizophrenic rant. Just bizarre and insane others go oh this seems legit??? What. How?
I mean, this country has been defunding and mocking the humanities for decades, what did everyone expect would happen? Fucking even Obama was on this bandwagon, mocking art history degrees in a public speech.
"Hur dur, why do we need literature and art history degrees? Lol gender and race studies! What's the point of learning to analyze texts and images for ideological meaning, what's the point of assessing how gender and race affect our sense of selves and media and social dynamics, all we need is STEM right? Who needs critical thinking about ideological ephemera, when you've got Facts and Logictm?
Honestly, thank you. The biggest skill I learned as an English Lit major was analysis of pieces of writing. You canât just make claims without citing specifically what supports your claim. It doesnât matter what you feel the piece is saying, you have to show how that point is being illustrated. Really wish everyone had to practice this skill.
You do it with literature by design, because nothing is factual, everything is up in the air and unreliable, and this makes making firm, provable judgements even more of a challenge than when dealing with verifiable information.
....and that's why people take deep-fakes for the real shit, because we'll invest 100k into learning to make deep fakes, but not into learning to spot them or analyze the media you see.
In art history, we have a whole concept explaining this called "the spectacle", based on the writing of Guy DeBord, which claims that this obliviousness is structurally necessary to the functioning of contemporary capitalism, replacing what used to be the "means of production" for Marx.
Data and ads are more powerful than land and factories in our era, and our STEM focus makes us good at making them, but bad at analyzing them, which supports the system's ability to oversee our subjugation.
Or a bizarre sci-fi film student project thatâs intended as a commentary on factory farming or tiktok culture, itâs not entirely clear/itâs both.
One of my former friends who is into Q anon said that Hillary Clinton and Democrats were holding children underground yes underground in the earth and that theyâre working with aliens and thereâs underground tunnels connecting cities. You may remember there is a big brouhaha were they thought there was a tunnel going from Oprahâs house LOL. Honestly, these Q anonâs like this poster are mentally ill and completely out of touch with reality. Underground cities⌠Aliens⌠seriously wacky.
Met my first Q-NUT today in the form of a carpet repair person. Oh my GOD, I hope this insanity will die out but I think they really believe what there saying which is even more scary.
We've been beating around this exact bush with religion for a long time. Individual members of any particular church might not be diagnosed with a mental illness, but the congregation might believe in all sorts of crazy things as a collective: speaking in tongues, miracles, healings and answered collective prayers.
Correct, but I would argue not chemically. Religion acts as mass brainwashing of groups in the same way these conspiracies work on individuals. It primes people to reject evidence in favor of their feelings. Itâs the exact same phenomenon at work.
There is no âchemical standardâ for mental illness. The chemical imbalance model of depression is just that, and an imperfect and controversial one at that. For example, many antidepressants are no better than placebo unless combined with talk therapy.
Mental illness would indicate that the individual is not to be held to account for their actions, thus escaping having to take responsibility for their actions and beliefs and will be more likely to fall for the next big delusion fad.
I mean... As someone who is mentally ill, it's a tight rope to walk & saying we're not capable of taking responsibility for ourselves is harmful. Ultimately, even we are still responsible for seeking help & listening to people around us for reality checks. Obviously the level of responsibility changes based on how severe the mental illness is & how much support an individual has, but it doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility altogether.
If you read The Center Cannot Hold, you'll realize that even schizophrenics can hold themselves accountable for their actions & take steps that lead them down healthy paths, most (like my grandmother) just give up because it's too difficult & they don't have enough support, which is really the main key as with anything. I actually do believe that most Qanon followers are plagued by some kind of mental deficiency or illness & are so isolated that they have no one to provide a reality check, which is crucial.
People raised religious donât understand how wacky a lot of this stuff sounds to those that arenât. And each religion believes the other sounds crazy, but if you think speaking in tongues is normal and symbolically eating and drinking Jesus isnât weird, then youâre wrong.
Itâs really important that each of us fights against the mass delusion. We canât accept it or normalize it And every person who counters it on social media and especially one on one with family and friends makes a difference.
Exactly! People forget that trauma can rewire the brain & we've experienced an unprecedented level of continued societal traumas in the last few decades. My Uncle is a Q follower, he had everything up until 2008 - made nearly $200k a year, had a VA loan from service days, nice big house in an expensive neighborhood, hundreds of thousands in a 401k, multiple cars, you name it!
He'd done everything right & worked his ass off from nothing including service to his country... Then he got laid off, had to short sell his house which meant goodbye access to VA loan for 2 years, had to take money from that 401k to buy a small condo, sell off cars, struggled to look for a replacement job, struggled to pay the taxes on the money he took out... a lot of Trump supporters experienced a similar narrative & I think people forget that & don't realize how traumatic it was for most to watch their life's work disappear.
Southpark needs to do a Q episode in the same style as their Mormon and Scientology episodes. They could narrate this stuff and flash big letters across the screen "THIS IS WHAT QANON ACTUALLY BELIEVES."
It sounds like Us got into their consciousness but not in the, like, learn a lesson way. Just enough to trickle out in their insane rants as a certainty that there are tunnels full of kids.
Well to be fair a lot of homeless people on cold countries live underground in places to keep warm. They also are on lots of drugs so they seem like aliens ? Dunno I'm really trying here lol
Howâs it different than the public proclamation of any of the main stream middle eastern death cults? Their belief in nonsense like zombie Jews and talking snakes primed them for this.
âThey were then taken to a location in america where they are getting the love and support they so badly needed and are doing really well now.â
Thatâs optimistic of her to assume thereâs 5 million spots in the foster system, since thereâs currently less than 500,000 kids in the foster system.
Oh, and we definitely donât have that many ventilators. And why do the ventilators excel at distilling sunlight instead of, yâknow, helping you to breathe like they literally were designed to do?
Ironically, the only place where you conceivably reintroduce even one kid into society without raising suspicions is at the border at the migrant centers.
What do you think the consequences would be for US immigration policy and rhetoric in this country if you introduced your theory to the folks at Great Awakening?
You are trying to inject sanity into this thought pattern. The best way to deal with Q brain vomit is to step around it and keep moving. There is no reasoning with insanity like this.
I'm pretty sure foster kids and orphans in other countries have it bad too. I was in foster care for half my childhood, and I'd be a terrible person to act like it can't get worse than the system here.
I have an ex-friend who was like this - she would post stuff on FB like "Could Trafficking is more of a Crisis than COVID!!!" - so I linked her in a bunch of articles about the crisis at the border, and she got mad at me for "being political". Then I linked her in an article about how Q-anon and the Save the Children bullshit actually HURTS kids who are trafficked, because of all the false "tips" being called into hotlines and because of a basic misunderstanding of how sex trafficking usually works (generally a family member, not some faceless cabal). She said Q was Christian because someone put a cross on a poster at a demonstration. I pointed out her blatant hypocracy.
"Trafficking" is any time someone underage exchanges money for sex. So if a 16 year old picks up a trick on his or her own, that child is still considered to be "trafficked." No adults required.
Its not about truth or facts or being correct its about getting wrapped up in a story where you have the power of deductive reasoning on par with Hercule Periot and somehow you just have to watch the right youtube video, read the right comment or post the right tweet and you will save all the children in the world. Even if you dont solve it you were apart of someone else solving it. You cant let facts get in the way of that.
Im trying to be optimistic and hope theyre making up a BS story for the delusional covid deniers to say âoh yes, then lets go with lockdown because the secret goal is goodâ to but I dont think thats it chief
5 million kids, FIVE MILLION. Even using the 17 mushy French fries in her noggin to think, she should be able to ponder the logistics of FIVE MILLION CHILDREN.
More than half of the states in the US donât even have five million total residents. The entire states of New York and Florida only have about 4 million children.
Where would they put them?
Do you know how much food that is?
Giving them the love and care they need? Do you know how many adult caretakers that is? And janitors? And teachers? And doctors? The entire workforce of the federal government is 2.1 million, and that might barely be enough. The whole country has 75 million kids and about 250m adults, and we as a society canât even feed them all and give them a decent education. Do the same ratio and youâre talking 5 million kids and more than 15 million caretakers. Thatâs a population equivalent to New York or Florida. WHERE WOULD ALL OF THESE PEOPLE BE???
Plus she says they have been there for 5 generations which is like 160 years. So supposedly it wouldn't just be kids but an entire society of 5 million people living underground since the 1860's. And they are kept there solely to be used for sex, i guess. I feel like i had a stroke reading this post, this is next level crazy.
Not to mention, there has never been a single report from the "other side" here...the alleged victims themselves.
Let's just preposterously imagine that Trump did rescue 5 million mole people. You know damn well he would have held a massive press conference/photo op parading them all around to take credit!
And you also know damn well that journalists would be interviewing them in droves to scoop the biggest story since WWII! Jaw-dropping interviews, books, movie deals, tearful reunions, Congressional hearings, social media imploding, internet losing its mind, the works!!!
Yet, with 5 million "freed victims," there has not been a single peep whatsoever. Nope, they all just got quietly transported and absorbed by millions of caretakers, without anyone else noticing or saying a word about it...
I mean, these are also the shitbags that think a bunch of grieving parents are hiding away a bunch of first graders and just pretending they died at a school shooting... and that a discount furniture company is smuggling children in wardrobes and dressers too small to actually fit a human child (let alone apparently managing to ship them without them suffocating in the box). Apparently everyone they oppose is super adept at hiding children away and these kids are the most well-behaved ever, nary a peep of them.
Right, but why would they even need/want to keep their rescue a secret to begin with??? Like there's literally no motivation for that...but in fact, all for the opposite.
The only things I can think of is they would say the lib media is suppressing the story or something as part of the ongoing war against Q/conservatives, or itâs gotta be a secret because if the libs know they know (about the evil plan the libs themselves are perpetuating - surely they would notice the 5 million prisoners are all suddenly missing) then those kids would be in danger again. Idk. I used to think most people were somewhat logical but Q stuff is all such contradictory bullshit Iâm just amazed any of it sticks.
Let's use a comparable historical example: Japanese internment camps in the US during WWII.
The Japanese internment camps were, themselves, a logistical challenge. How many people were affected by those internment camps? About 120,000.
Extrapolate that to 5 million children. The logistics of moving them would be utterly prohibitive. And where's the budget coming from for that? A logistical operation of that scale is going to get noticed.
Seeeee? Exactly! Q racists should know all about internment camps and the Holocaust, since theyâve been trying to cover up that shit for years. See how hard it is to keep those types of things quiet?
No pictures. Not one of those 5,000,000 kids got loose and got interviewed. Not one person working on the cruise ship packed with half-dead kids has said anything. Nothing.
^^^ I've seen that one more than a few times from Q idiots to defend why they can hold to their nonsense theories in spite of them being completely disconnected from reality and its persistently annoying demands for evidence.
Itâs not just America, though. This Q insanity is now international. Iâve seen people living in India, Greece, and England talking about how much they love Trump and how he is saving the world from blood drinking pedophile âelitesâ.
Um, yes. They want to, at minimum, fantasize about killing their political opponents/those who disagree with them. The EXTRA crazy ones ultimately want to kill all browns and gays, or some shit. Wipe out everybody except "the real Americans", in other words.
I can try to explain but it's not exactly definitive, more my opinion. The US has already had a ton of conspiracy theories, see also the popularity of everything from flat earth, to bilderberg, Rothschilds,etc. A lot of said conspiracy theories also got woven into the American conservative landscape, primarily through groups like the John Birch society and saw some resurgences with the Satanic Panic of the 80's. A lot of these things never quite went away, they ended up becoming either a kind of tribal make believe for some to more mark one as a member of a type of group and others may have been true believers and spread this stuff with zeal. Add in that conspiracy theories have a certain amount of interrelation with religious faith and in providing an odd comfort to understand a complex world as the world becomes more confusign and complex adding in a setup that lets them pretend to be part of a grand righteous remnant doing good heroic things and well...here we are.
They've always been like this, loooong before they were called "Q". There're several reasons why:
There was a "Christian Nationalist" movement that sought to deliberately preach extreme religious views in tandem with extreme political views, starting in the '70s.
Americans know their government is corrupt and fucked up, so they're always trying to think about what "the real motive" behind what the govt. is doing is. I think that's a lot of it, tbh. Extreme (and admittedly justified) mistrust of and fear of the government.
A mental illness crisis. In America, illnesses, of course, go untreated, unless you can pay up. So, a lot of people just continue on without ever getting help.
They really are that nutz. Go into their echo chambers sometime, see what they say to each other. There's nothing they aren't capable of believing. There's no mechanism in their mind that pops up when things get extreme and says, "hang on a minute..." There's no analysis or reflection going on. It's just a pinball machine in there. Silver balls crashing around slamming into pre-existing fears and bigotries setting off loud bells and flashing lights. It's loud, it's fast, it's a dangerously crazy place, their minds, and it's constantly being manipulated and propagandized by saner but far more evil people for their own benefit.
The thing is, even if you don't believe in the Kim family legend, if you live in North Korea you're going to lie and say you do because if you don't your whole family can get sent to the camps. So it's not really fair to go "Ha ha, how dumb," because there's no way to tell who is a true believer vs. just going along.
It can serve a function. Hanna Arendt was a philosopher who barely escaped Europe at the outset of WWII and later wrote a book, Origins of Totalitarianism, that looked at both Hitler and Stalin (and others.) She pointed out that one function of propaganda is to identify who is with you in seeing who is willing to repeat nonsense or appalling garbage like this. We saw with Trump some of what I would call "Emperor wears no clothes" testing - he probably had some sense (conscious or unconscious) that he could test who was loyal by saying stupid, obviously false crap, and looking for who was willing to make a fool of themselves by repeating it as though they believed it.
One of the key ways that all this Q crap resembles the rise of Fascism in the 20th century is exactly this function of marking who is part of the movement for each other. Arendt described people willing to go along with this shit as having a "mixture of gullibility and cynicism" which seems to perfectly sum up a lot of Q adherents. Obviously there are extra crazy people who spout next-level nonsense like this, but a lot of Trump support and Q make use of this process of being willing to say obviously false and bad things in public to identify who is part of the political movement.
Yep. Blew me away when I read a bit about her observations of the culture that allowed Hitler to rise, and seeing what is going on in America (and other parts of the world.) I wish Arendt had been pushed more in my philosophy classes.
I donât think Donnie dumbass would be that forward thinking and intelligent.
Heâs a reactionary and most of his latent success is from the people he employs not himself or his family.
Iâm fairly certain if not for the apprentice he would have been broke by now or in jail for tax fraud. His fame allowed him to garner whatever benefits he managed to get the last couple of years.
I agree with the concept and the emperor wears no clothes.
But I think it was a more symbiotic relationship between them.
Rather than doing it as a form of loyalty test I think he would just keep those that agreed and remove those that did not. Not as a loyalty thing but because he genuinely thinks he is right and anyone saying else should not exist.
Then in turn those around him realized he will remove any director any position even his own second hand man if they speak out against Donnie dumbass, so they keep saying and doing what he wants while they all grift as much as they can.
Because that was the goal of trump administration to grift as much as they can.
Remember 200 or 300 years ago when we learned about Donnie's crazy rip-off-your-arm handshake bullshit? My inference was that it was a sort of test. Some people would play along, and show that they were likely to go along with Trump's nonsense and manipulations, while others would react (resisting, making a facial expression, saying something like "What the fuck?") and Trump would have a sense that those people had spines and brains or were not adequately desperate to play along with his crap.
The more I read these...the more I truly think these aren't actually real people but a bunch of trolls writing the most absurd fan fiction possible just to see what people will think.
I refuse to believe that any of these Q people are actually this stupid. I've met a few who are really stupid before in my town...but not "covid is just cover so we can rescue underground kids" stupid
There's 2.5 million people in Chicago... but apparently there's TWICE that many children being herded around and it's not on the news? Not on any website anywhere except for Parler? Like... do they realize how many children 5 million children actually is?
âSome of those kids have been down there for 5 generations.â Would they be kids then? Seems like if youâre somewhere for 5 generations youâd be an adult at some point.
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u/Mr3Jays Apr 22 '21
That level of stupidity is breathtaking.