A Warning from the Gods

"Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad."

Whether the warning comes from Euripides or Sophocles is unclear but it is part of the wisdom of the ancient Greeks. It dovetails with their notions of Hubris, arrogance, and Nemesis, retribution.

Many, certainly most of us see no end of hubris in the American president, Trump. It's part and parcel of his psychopathy. No end of mental health professionals have weighed in on Trump's narcissism, his unbounded grandiosity and his sadistic cruelty.

To the world at large and most Americans, Trump's malignant character is off-putting. Yet it seems music to the ears of his flock, particularly the rightwing extremists, the worst of a very bad lot.

Trump has become identified as the fuhrer of the followers of QAnon, a group of hyper-conspiracy theorists who see the Great Orange Bloat as a latter day el Sid to put to the sword the Democratic pedophilia cabal.

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory detailing a supposed secret plot by an alleged "deep state" against U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters.

Q has falsely accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking officials of being members of an international child sex trafficking ring. Q also claimed that Donald Trump feigned collusion with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the ring and preventing a coup d'état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros. QAnon believers commonly tag their social media posts with the hashtag #WWG1WGA, signifying the motto "Where We Go One, We Go All".

According to Travis View, who has studied the QAnon phenomenon and written about it extensively for The Washington Post, the essence of the conspiracy theory is that:

"there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything. They control politicians, and they control the media. They control Hollywood, and they cover up their existence, essentially. And they would have continued ruling the world, were it not for the election of President Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump in this conspiracy theory knows all about this evil cabal's wrongdoing. But one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected was to put an end to them, basically. And now we would be ignorant of this behind-the-scenes battle of Donald Trump and the U.S. military—that everyone backs him and the evil cabal—were it not for 'Q.' And what 'Q' is—is basically a poster on 4chan, who later moved to 8chan, who reveals details about this secret behind-the-scenes battle, and also secrets about what the cabal is doing and also the mass sort of upcoming arrest events through these posts."

Followers of QAnon also believe that there is an imminent event known as "The Storm" in which thousands of people, members of the cabal, will be arrested, possibly sent to Guantanamo Bay prison or face military tribunals, and the U.S. military will brutally take over the country.The result of "The Storm" will be salvation and a utopia on earth.

It's easy to dismiss QAnon as a gaggle of lunatics, just another tinfoil hat brigade. The FBI doesn't take them so lightly

An FBI "Intelligence Bulletin" memo from the Phoenix Field Office dated May 30, 2019 identified QAnon-driven extremists as a domestic terrorism threat, the first time a fringe conspiracy theory had been labelled as such. The memo cited a number of arrests related to QAnon, some of which had not been publicized before. The memo says that "The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts."

"This is the first FBI product examining the threat from conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists and provides a baseline for future intelligence products. ... The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts..."

A Guardian investigation finds that QAnon is gaining footholds outside America, including:

the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. The largest international QAnon groups documented by the Guardian were German, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Australian and British.

“The response from all social platforms to the harm and threat of QAnon has been slow and anemic,” said Travis View, a researcher and co-host of QAnon Anonymous, a podcast that documents and debunks QAnon. “But Facebook stands alone in how much it has enabled this conspiracy theory-driven extremist community.”

“Not content with merely hosting QAnon propaganda, Facebook continues to recommend QAnon groups to users, essentially providing free marketing for a movement that has already inspired people to commit terrorism, murder and conspiracy to commit kidnapping,” View added.

It would be comforting to write these Q followers as a bunch of loons living in their mothers' basements and I'm sure many are. There are others who are harder to dismiss.  Here is Mike Pence yucking it up with Broward County SWAT members in 2018.

 It's easily overlooked but the guy on the left has a Q badge on his uniform.

Apparently Sgt. Patten was booted off the SWAT team after the badge was spotted, triggering a controversy. I wonder how long he'd been rocking that patch before his superiors had to act.