You Think Trump's America Can't Get Any More Crazy and Then QAnon Comes Along

[updated 8/14/20]

One would usually argue that one of the primary functions of a President would be to unite the people of America around a reality based on facts discerned from the experience and solid research of trained professionals. He or she would do that in order to have a fact-based debate about how to address the nation's problems. But just writing those sentences seems so quaint, so old fashioned, so Obama.

We live in the age of Donald Trump, an era in which our President has hawked fake coronavirus cures, denied the citizenship of his predecessor, linked Ted Cruz’s dad to the JFK assassination, suggested climate change is a Chinese plot, asserted the noise from windmills causes cancer, inferred Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered, and connected vaccines to autism. You could fill a book with our President's conspiracy theories and expect many new ones in the coming months leading up to the November election.

So, no one was shocked when President Trump's rallies started to draw a bunch of people holding signs and wearing t-shirts emblazoned with QAnon, a group whose beliefs even embarrass moon landing and JFK conspiracy theorists. So who are these people and what do they believe?

Newsweek: "Writing on the Daily Beast, Will Sommer, who monitors right wing media in the U.S., explained the core of the theory."

“The general story,” he writes, “is that every president before Trump was a 'criminal president' in league with all the nefarious groups of conspiracy theories past: The global banking elite, death squads operating on orders from Hillary Clinton, deep-state intelligence operatives, and Pizzagate-style pedophile rings. In an effort to break this cabal’s grip, according to Q, the military convinced Trump to run for president.”

And, for a slightly different take on their "core beliefs"....

Business Insider: "They believe that a top government official, codenamed Q, is responsible for a series of cryptic clues left on the messaging boards — with a large and obsessive online following devoted to unraveling them.

"Supporters believe that the clues expose a "deep state" plot by intelligence officials, senior Democrats and Hollywood stars running a secret child abuse ring."

Back in 2018, Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami professor and expert on conspiracy theories, told The Guardian that QAnon supporters are a tiny "fringe," mainly made up of Trump-supporting evangelicals." But, two years later, QAnon is now part of the GOP's mainstream with a plethora of candidates signing on to their lunacy. And, of course, even Donald Trump has joined the bandwagon, recently praising QAnon follower Marjorie Taylor Greene as a future "Republican star."

If this President has proved anything, it's that there are a bunch of people in America that will buy into conspiracy theories, no matter how ludicrous. And, Trump will do nothing to rein in such beliefs even if they damage the public's trust in government. On the contrary; he will use them this Fall to re-energize his campaign against the "deep state."

By: Don Lam & Curated Content

#Trump #lies