
QAnon Was a Theory on a Message Board. Now It’s Headed to Congress - chanfest22
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/15/opinion/qanon-marjorie-greene-congress.html
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Kednicma
To get to facts: One of Q's tenets is that Pizzagate [0] was in the right
direction. I humbly but firmly suggest that it was in the wrong direction.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory)

~~~
s9w
That article neither contains the words "bullet" nor "camera" \- so without
reading (and without having a strong opinion on the thing in itself) it's
evident that it's a typical Wikipedia article: Missing the most important
facts and only having the goal of telling you what to think.

~~~
crooked-v
And what is the significance of those words supposed to be?

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s9w
I think a traffic camera which would usually overlook the place was turned off
or faced away shortly before this happened so there's no video of it. And the
only bullet fired conveniently hit and destroyed the harddrive of some
computer.

I'm not very familiar with the details, but things like these do raise
eyebrows and in other cases result in much more skepticism - see the doubtful
light in which Epsteins death is still viewed.

~~~
belltaco
>And the only bullet fired conveniently hit and destroyed the harddrive of
some computer.

Not true, that was fabricated by people but is commonly believed among many
folks because it aligns with their "side".

~~~
s9w
The owner is on record (on youtube) saying the bullet hit the computer,
showing it. That is not the same as a drive, granted.

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JabavuAdams
As I grow older I keep thinking I won't be surprised/amused/alarmed by further
examples of broken human thinking but nope. It just keeps coming.

The idea that Donald J. Trump is a white knight in the fight against child
exploitation must be doubly hurtful to his victims.

Re-watch some classic '80s movies. Notice how the way men and women relate is
kind of stalkery by todays standards, even if you're not woke.

Consider: Trump was a coked-up party boy rich kid revered by the coked-up
party boy rich kids in Manhattan during the '80s. Do you think they were
checking drivers licenses as they were banging hookers and strippers? Even if
he didn't actually seek it out (a charitable assumption), it's very likely
he's had sex with underage women.

Never mind the rape allegations, never mind the comments, the behaviour, the
obvious personality / mental defects. Nope he's our ally in protecting
underage women. Madness.

Litmus test: your 22 year old intelligent attractive daughter wants to be a
staffer in a presidential campaign. You say avoid Bill Clinton, but hey
Trump's a really good guy. Feel free to go on an overnight with him.

~~~
dannyw
This is quite an unsubstantiated area to go off on and on the same path as
conspiracies like QAon.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Not at all. It just requires some life experience with humans as opposed to
being book smart.

The world is full of open secrets that can't be proved in court. It's a long
way from "person X shows telltale signs of being corrupt in the way that many
people in his role have repeatedly been shown to be corrupt" (my position) to
some wild conspiracy theory involving basic misunderstandings of medicine,
chemistry, biology, people, politics, history, espionage ...

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gfosco
QAnon is so mild, it's bonkers the coverage it's getting. The whole thing
revolves around the idea of "the patriots are in control, trust the plan,
justice is coming, enjoy the show"... It's like a sedative, and harmless in my
opinion. Whoever is LARPing as Q hasn't even posted in August, but the media
is amping up coverage and increasing search interest (why?).

How do you hold these 2 conflicting things in your head: 1) It was okay for
the entire establishment (including elected officials) and media to spread
(and claim as fact) conspiracy theories about the President being involved
with Russians with zero evidence of such, and 2) It's not okay for random
people to organize and share memes about an alleged gov't conspiracy?

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igetspam
Thy believe Gates is behind COVID because he wants to inject us all with AI.
This is not harmless. This is an attempt to dissuade people from vaccination.
People will die. Stupid people, sure but those stupid people will still infect
others. Many still have kids who don't know their parents are lunatics. (I
have family who subscribe to this garbage. It's insane.)

~~~
gfosco
Thanks for this elitist mind-reading and fear-mongering.

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blisseyGo
The same people who publicly supported the:

Russiagate conspiracy

Ukraine hoax

Jussie Smollett hoax

Bubba Wallace hoax

Covington Catholic Highschool hoax

Kavanaugh hoax

Doesn't report majority of the facts of Epstein case fairly

Riots are called "peaceful protests"

Antifa is called a "myth"

Looking at the Wikileaks emails is called "illegal" by media

Now they wonder why Qanon is catching up?

EDIT: I am saying this as someone who thinks Qanon is bs. But the same people
who spread misinformation for years now questioning the spread of a conspiracy
theory is quite hypocritical. Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw
stones.

~~~
api
I don't agree with all of what you're insinuating, but overall I think you're
onto something. Even if some of these allegations have legs, it's sad that our
politics mostly revolves around an endless search for the next
something-"gate" instead of really discussing the issues. It's a form of deep
anti-intellectualism.

IMHO both sides are guilty of this. Clinton, Bush II, Obama, and now Trump
were all constantly hit by any allegation anyone could find to throw at them,
and many of them were and are over-inflated or outright bullshit.

The campaign is the same. Trump spends more time shitting on other people and
trolling on Twitter than talking about what he believes or wants to do, and
Biden is basically running as "a dude who is not Donald Trump." Neither
candidate is particularly exciting. I'll be once again voting for the least
horrible of the two.

Nobody discusses the issues, and nobody _ever_ tries to problem solve.

Personally I think it's a form of bikeshedding. People would rather sling mud
than talk issues and problem solve because all the issues we face are really
hard and there are huge vested interests who like the status quo and don't
want anything "fixed."

Edit: feel like people are knee jerking to this. I am not necessarily claiming
there isn't corruption, just that there is not enough focus on actual ideas
and too much focus on personalities.

~~~
hindsightbias
Conspiracies are a means to an ends for agendas, so at the voter level it only
matters what the agenda is.

In last iteration, it’s not clear that there is an agenda on the right other
than staying in power and tweaking the left. The left does appear to have a
strategy and if we believe what the right says, they would agree there is.

Health care is a really hard problem with huge vested interests and what we
got is not some weird outlier from those points. But one party did something
and another just said NO.

~~~
crooked-v
See also the current COVID-19 situation, where the Democrat-controlled House
passed a second stimulus bill, while the Republican-controlled Senate... did
nothing. No yes-or-no votes, no counterproposals, just McConnell leaving
everything tabled indefinitely.

~~~
ghthor
Ah yes, the stimulus bill that was just a rider for budget bailouts for poorly
run democratic states and cities.

~~~
crooked-v
If you're going to pull the 'poorly run' card, consider that the actual data
shows the entire American South getting significant 'bailouts' every year.
[https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-
of-...](https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-payments-
portal/)

