Comments

2

I only recently have become familiar with the Q-adherents. I can't even. Their insanity knows no bounds, as evidenced by their willingness to attack DC at the behest of someone on the internet they don't even know. Q could be a bored Bill Clinton trolling dumbass magas for all they know.

3

...so two more cops have been implicated in the siege at the Capitol... so we have a bunch of cops, a State representative, an Olympic gold medalist, the son of a Brooklyn judge.
Just for starters.
These people are connected, they will have a lot of supporters. There is inevitably going to be a lot of tension between "those people were violent insurrectionists, throw the book at them" and the pleas for clemency.
(I confess I want to see them all charged with the max and do serious prison time)
But Trump and his MAGA supporters are increasingly going to be put in a very awkward position.
Easy to condemn lawbreaking in the abstract but when the lawbreaker has influential family and friends...
It bolsters my contention that Merrick Garland is soon to become the second most powerful man in America. It will be his decisions that drive the daily news cycle for the foreseeable future.

4

"This is huge if true."

Finally, SLOG news roundups have a new tagline.

5

RE: QAnon thinks Trump is communicating to them in Morse Code now

Trump's not that clever.

6

My story of the day is from yesterday: "Why Aren’t We Wearing Better Masks?":
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/01/why-arent-we-wearing-better-masks/617656/

We've gotten so used to being a shithole country that we seem to have collectively lost the imagination that better is possible. Now, to put things in a proper context, it looks like Europe is in the same boat. There's a lot of shame to go around.

8

Can we just stop pretending anyone wants free speech?

12

@2 "I only recently have become familiar with the Q-adherents."

They've actually been around for years in the form of people like Nick Kristoff from the NYT and Seattle against Slavery here is the Seattle area.

Qanon is just the right wing version of the sex trafficking panic myths the media, politicians and cops have been pushing for the last 10 years. In America, we always need a moral panic.

15

Apparently Oprah Winfrey of all people was recently implicated in the Qanon/human trafficking conspiracy theory:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/18/oprah-winfrey-qanon-conspiracy/

This is the same way the Salem Witch Trials, the Satanic Panic and every other nut job conspiracy comes to an end. After thousands of innocent people are destroyed and killed, the rich and powerful ultimately get accused in the panic they created, so they call the game off and come up with a new panic to justify why they need to work outside the Constitution.

16

Luddite5 @15, why are you engaging in your own sly disinformation? "After thousands of innocent people are destroyed and killed, the rich and powerful ultimately get accused in the panic they created,..."

You make it sound like (A) this is just blowback for Oprah's own involvement in starting up Qanon, and (B) that Qanon was the doing of some "rich and powerful" cabal.

Please tell us, Luddite5, who are the rich and powerful people who created Qanon?

17

@16: My money's on Vladimir Putin.

19

I've been trying to wrap my head around Q lately. It's far more insidious than I had previously thought, and now it's gaining traction in Japan.

Here's a great article about how Q works for anyone who is interested: https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5

20

@19: I wouldn't be surprised if there are Qanon Furries.

21

@16: I'm not that clever. I'm on the debunking side of conspiracy nuts, not the promoting side.

Great book about American Moral Panics by Jesse Walker: "United States Of Paranoia."

Also a great podcast "You're Wrong About" with local journalist Michael Hobbes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/human-trafficking/id1380008439?i=1000465289965

Also a great website by sex positive sex worker/ex librarian and published author Maggie Mcneill who has spent the last 10+ years tracking and debunking the Qanon/sex trafficking panic.

You can also just google moral panic/human trafficking/Qanon and you will get pages of hits.

American's have had a moral panic every 10-20 years since the early "White Slavery Panic" of the early 19th century (about every 40 years since the 1600's) leading up to our most current sex trafficking/Qanon panic, which is really just a repeat of the previous 40 panics with the same scenery and script, different actors.

The broad pattern is always the same. A group of grifters play on America's fear of sex, immigrants, and "the children." Politicians and law enforcement find this is a great way to win support, (and get elected) get more money by spreading fear with ever escalating panic that they are "coming for your children and young girls!" Ultimately the panic is taken over by other elements (the nut job right wing Qanon crowd) and used against those who started it. In the Salem witch trials, the killing didn't stop until the killing reached the elders who had started the entire thing in a bid for more power and control.

The numbers and stories grow increasingly outrageous and ridiculous as women report someone who looked at them in a mall was really a sex trafficker out to steal their baby "in plane site," "that white van was never a really just white van." and ridiculous claims like "500,000 young girls were victims of sex trafficking last year!"

Pretty soon politicians like Josh Hawley (who got himself elected on this moral panic going after a low level Asian massage place as "fighting sex trafficking!"), Donald Trump, Dan Satterberg and multimillionaire grifters like Swanee Hunt and Cindy MCCain use the panic to call the cops on interracial couples at airports (this being America it our aversion to sex always includes a racialized element):

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-refute-cindy-mccain-s-claim-child-airport-was-trafficked-n968726

Those in power (cops, politicians, millionaires waning to become billionaires, failed legacy media outlets looking for click bait to save their failing companies) bypass the Constitution to raise money along with grifter NGO's that spend all their money on "raising awareness," and "raising paychecks" for themselves by promoting more incarceration of the same marginalized groups they always get targeted. Rinse, repeat.

Sex Trafficking panic was used in the early 1900's to pass the Anti-White Slavery Mann Act to incarcerate famous black boxer Jack Johnson for dating a white sex worker who he would later marry (noticing a pattern here?). It is still used today to "arrest people for crossing state lines for moral purposes) and is still almost always used against interracial couples.

Most moral panics have a seed of truth. For instance, there really is a very small, but serious problem with human trafficking primarily in our failed fostercare system and with teenage runaways. You can tell it's a moral panic because for the all the millions they raise, almost all of it goes to politicians, law enforcement and shady NGOs with practically none of it spent on helping the groups they claim to care about through more housing options and actual support to get them out of their terrible position.

There solutions usually make the situation worse. Like the current plan to help women by shutting down their websites and pushing them out onto the street. What could be better than creating a crisis, than claiming you are going to fix it? For additional money and political power, of course.

22

Typo: White Slavery Man Act: "crossing state likes for IMmoral purposes."

Translation: The crime of interracial sex.

No wonder a cheap grifters like Donald Trump are such big fans of promoting this racist garbage.

24

Looks like Trump's people have started getting rid of those who know too much. A little Novachik for the good doctor, perhaps?

And it was a common condition of pretrial release for my clients that they avoid drugs & alcohol. I wonder if it's the same for the little Rittenhouse weasel?

25

The Cheetahmen ran off....
And now......
The Cheetahmen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGgLtGVE07M

26

@16: "Please tell us, Luddite5, who are the rich and powerful people who created Qanon?"

After looking back at your question I realize I might have misunderstood.

Donald Trump (2.6 billion, much of it inherited from his Dad), Swanee Hunt (over $500 million, mostly given to her by her oil tycoon father), Cindy McCain (, $400 million. Inherited her family's beer distribution company, Hensley & Co). Aussie billionaire mining mogul Andrew Forrest).

These are just a few of the multi-millionaires that promote (and in many ways profit from) the sex trafficking/QAnon moral panic mass incarceration model.

Was I wrong to refer to these people as rich and famous? Do you consider them part of the poor and downtrodden?

Show up to a John School sometime. Count the minorities, the immigrants and those who can barely speak English that are the primary victims of this strategy in Seattle. Do you consider these the rich and powerful and if so, how long have you been a Republican?

28

The whole Q-Anon thing boils down to the same old Blood Libel.

31

@28: According the to Human trafficking/Qanon panic crowd, the head of the "pimp lobby" is George Soros.

Who purely by coincidence happens to be Jewish. Funny how that works.

One of the lead groups supporting the sex panic is Exodus Cry, who have a history of being “homophobic” and “anti-choice.”

https://www.christianpost.com/news/exodus-cry-responds-after-melissa-mccarthy-pulls-support.html

Along with Anti abortion religious fanatics Shared Hope out of Vancouver.

Why any local politician would feel comfortable aligning with groups like this and Donald Trump is beyond me.

33

Don't worry, AOC's proposed Ministry of Truth will squash those who say despicable things.

Poor America

34

I am complaining about a totally real thing that is not make believe for reasons that are unclear to me at the moment so please don’t ask.

35

I forgot the link:

https://reason.com/2021/01/14/aoc-rein-in-our-media-literacy-trump-capitol-rots/

37

@33. So you think denying the Holocaust in Germany shouldn't be a crime?

38

@36: Of course, it's all fine with you having a member of your party/ideology saying that.

@37: So you think snarking in a non-sequitur barb makes you look intelligent?

39

@38. What about denying the Holocaust in Israel? Should that not be illegal?

40

@38. What if an American on Twitter denies the Holocaust on Merkel's or Bibi's Twitter page? If Twitter refuses to take it down, how will they enforce domestic laws on a platform with global reach where anyone can bypass the rule of law of individual nations and what they consider despicable and illegal speech?

42

@38. Because you're basically asking Twitter et al to ignore the rule of US law by giving a free pass to those who can't advocate their positions without inciting violence or engaging libel, dismissing all Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution, because anything other than the state of nature is the Ministry of Truth, and corporations can have infinite digression in their oversight or lack thereof because freedom of speech and they are people by definition.

43

LOL Raindrop. Trying to dunk on AOC when Trump was running a Ministry of Propaganda a la 1984 using the White House comms team.

44

Like, imagine I am a hacker hired by a rogue state to spread a rumor that raindrop thinks it's okay to deny the Holocaust. I program a bunch of chat bots to flood social media to spread this lie on German and Israeli websites. I do so anonymously and convince a bunch of my good friends or people who may have a bone to pick with raindrop to say the same thing. I take things he has said or done out of context and push relentlessly. Of course raindrop didn't say this, but there is so much of the lie out there, that people come to believe it and start making his life a living hell. He can no longer post without getting a flood of angry people shouting him down. People stop caring about the truth. But the platforms refuse to take down the speech because they want to uphold the first amendment, and the platforms are making money hand over fist because hate and fear and anger sells and the ad revenue is off the charts.

How should the government of individual nations respond to this situation, raindrop? Who is really the Ministry of Truth here?

45

The failure for you guys to extricate from your echo chamber to look at this from all sides is absolutely astounding. The government has no business in determining what the truth is or it is not in regard to speech. No equivocation, unless "fire in a crowded theatre" and we already have laws on that.

46

@45. So you're saying that libel laws are superseded by social media platforms.

50

@45. "The government has no business in determining what the truth is or it is not in regard to speech."

I wish more Republican voters thought this way before they demanded that the legislative branch open a commission to overturn the election "to find the truth" that Donald Trump won and voter fraud on a massive scale with unimaginable illegal votes in only a few states but not others was defending the Constitution.

51

@50. I've had too much coffee. Or covfefe. Either way, have a nice day.

52

@46: Yes, add Libel laws.

@49: Would you have the same disposition if Ted Cruz was entertaining such "concepts to explore."

@50: Yes, lies get said. But we deal with it.

@51: Looks like. I suggest Indica/CBD tincture in hot tea.

54

@52

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/14/chris-krebs-capitol-riots-insurrection-trump-nr-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/

And 1. Here's a hot take on the matter from Chris Krebs, Trump's former top cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security (hardly an "extreme progressive").

I haven't touched the stuff in five months and still off. Somehow I spent the majority of last year NOT high, with a rather, ehem, "foggy" period in the middle there. Go figure.

55

@35: I agree with what Robby Sauve said here about the first amendment even though I am not a libertarian.

Still, isn't it strange how for both Conservatives and Liberals the the value of limited government power libertarians generally embrace only makes sense while they are out of power, which they forget the moment they are back in power.

If I were cynical, I might suspect this is was about consequential teleology where two tribes simply define their moral values in opposition to each other rather than an actual set of core beliefs.

I despised President Trump and am glad he is gone. Yet, I suspect in March, 2020 if he had come out strong in favor of wearing masks, liberals would be having cuddle parties and arguing that wearing a mask is a clear violation of their rights. For their part, the conservatives would be arguing that everyone not wearing a mask was an anti-scientific nutjob out to kill a lot of people out of pure selfishness. Strange how that works.

Of course, we all support the police when the are swinging their unaccountable billy clubs for a cause we support.

This is were you tell me how you are the one exception to all this.

56

Stay focused, @prof. Ahem, I already mentioned "fire in a crowded theatre" and laws like that in @45. I also acknowledged Grab's pointing out libel laws.

@55: No, you have some good insights into the human political condition.

57

Once a year in Rome on Saturnali, the slaves would become masters and the masters would become slaves.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/17/romans-celebratory-day-roles-master-slave-reversed-2/

There is a deep Wisdom in this tradition we have lost. If for a day the police became prisoners the prisoners the police; the homeless the rich and the rich the homeless; liberals the conservatives and the conservatives the liberals, so many American pathologies could be cleared for many. There would always many who learned nothing, but they have always been the dead weight in every society.

59

"... liberals would be having cuddle parties
and arguing that wearing a mask is
a clear violation of their rights."
--@Luddy

not this one
but maybe that's
'cause I'm a shade
or two further Left than 'lib'.

60

so Libs are anti-Science
... as well as antifa?
so Much to
Learn so
Little
time

61

Dr. Harold N. Bornstein died of TRUMPVID-19.

Happy Birthday, Betty White!

Now the neofascist insurrectionists believe Trumpty Dumpty is "speaking to them through Morse code"?!? Further evidence that MAGAs suffer from abysmally low IQAnon. What next--UFOs from Mars will save them from the War on White Supremacist Rapists?
@5 Urguthat Forka: BINGO.
No further questions, Your Honor.

62

Yes, happy birthday Betty White. She'll probably outlive George Burns (100).

63

@58: Why am I not surprised you missed the message beyond the obvious.

Goodnight and Good luck.


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