Ha! If your friends told you to jump off of a …
oh shit.
(No joke though I truly feel bad for this woman and her family. She was only 29 years old. Her life must have become a nightmare. This is horrible.)
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I want to know what these Qanon “friends” told this man. They are the ones who should be held accountable as accessories to murder, especially if they understood this man was mentally ill and had the potential to commit an atrocity.
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Yes. All QAnon beliefs are absolutely what I would call crazy, but people seem unwilling to label them as mentally ill, both because of how that links them to other mentally ill people who aren’t complete assholes and a seeming reluctance to admit that such a huge number of people could all be having this shared mental illness at once. So if we accept that they are in fact NOT mentally ill, just very stupid, evil, and gullible, and that one can believe in secret Democrat-run child-molesting rings, lizard people, vaccine microchips and similar nonsense, essentially living in a completely separate reality, while still being sane, then I don’t see why this man should be allowed to use an insanity defense. His beliefs are no more out there than any other Q person’s, and I’m sure many of them would readily do the same thing if their fellow cultists, or Trump, told them to, especially if their former loved ones don’t share their wackadoo conspiracy theories.
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Hypothetically, if there was a good reason to believe his wife was a child abuser and he murdered her in a fit of passion, he might get a lesser murder sentence with the possibility of parole and lowering of the sentence in prison.
“Cult” probably is the right term for this. This man and QAnon folks aren’t insane, they are fanatics. Believing in god isn’t considered insanity, and if someone kills an infidel he won’t be considered insane. I still feel he should be held responsible for his actions.
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Probably a good way to think about it. GQP is no longer a political party, but a religion with zero tolerance for apostacy or heretics. And lots of cross-over with white nationalism and Christofascism. I fear we are witnessing the birth of a new, violent and tremendously frightening cult.
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True that. Although I’m not seeing anything that says his wife actually was trans. Given some of the idiotic “ways of telling if a woman is trans” ideas out there, it may be he decided she was in the same way he decided he was getting mental radio transmissions. Either way, my sympathy to her.
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there are numerous reasons i call the modern g.o.p. the death-cult.
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Yeah… I am at a loss to quantify wtf is really going on.
I see the worst of human behavior normalized, popularized, publicized on not only Far Right platforms (forums, social media, I refuse to name them) but also at school board meetings, farmers markets, on Fb, etc.
Whence comes all this vitriol, I ask myself. Is this something new? The sheer quantity of it… is this all attributable to “quiet parts now being said out loud” nationwide? To this end, I am struck by the depth of reporting in this BBC series (and my apologies y’all, there is still no transcript available):
Once objective truths become debatable, all facts made subservient to opinions, and reason gets replaced entirely by feelings and reflexes that bypass logic, human culture is on a fatal trajectory.
It’s not just the bleach-drinking, the January 6ers, the Decline in Civil Discourse, or the stochastic terrorism that comes from cynical manipulation of people whose sanity is already at peril. It’s all the collateral damage we see with every school shooting (/mass shooting), the family members who end up like the ones mentioned upthread and elsewhere.
The other thing that gets to me is the wholesale vilification of compassion, a trait perceived as either (a) weak and naive ; or (b), a great way for bad actors to take advantage of or actually threaten violence against, oh, say, compassionate family members, exhausted health care workers, beleaguered school teachers and librarians, essential workers like restaurant workers and really when it comes down to it all workers and fellow humans.
None of this is taking place in a vacuum.
Somehow, a major circuit breaker flipped on the western industrialized culture breaker panel, and now… we are… here… “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” *
* I have foraged for wild mushrooms for much of my adult life.
I carry a few full color guides with me, a ruler, a magnifying glass, some paper bags, a pocket knife.
I know old cautious wise mushroom hunters.
I know young wise mushroom hunters.
I do not know any incautious unwise old mushroom hunters.
Substituting ignorance for knowledge can cost an unimaginable price.
We are seeing payment every day, now, as COVID patients die in hospitals, denying to the last that COVID is a hoax.
ETA: grammar
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I see that the worst of human behavior normalized, popularized, publicized on not only Far Right platforms (forums, social media, I refuse to name them) but also at school board meetings, farmers markets, on Fb, etc.
Hmmm, I’ve heard that before somewhere…
Oh, yeah, here!
The Second Coming
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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Some QAnon people are legally sane folks who glom onto batshit belief systems. Some of them can be medically diagnosed with some kind of mental illness. We cannot paint all of them with the same brush or responsibly make assumptions about any individual’s mental state, that’s what the experts are for.
In this case the medical experts have testified that this man is not fit to stand trial and belongs in a mental institution. I have no reason to question those findings.
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Mercy mercy.
My hopes lie now in the young people of this country, and of all countries.
The Hill We Climb
By Amanda Gorman
When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.
We braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.
But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain.
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the West.
We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked South.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.
The new dawn balloons as we free it.
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
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I guess even your well regulated militias have their bad apples.
That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it, and it has nothing to do with him being drunk and her taking the last slice of pizza.
The Yin to Yeats Yang. I like it.
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come on, it’s friday – can’t we have an outsized bunch of GOOD things to talk about, just for today? this is awful.
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Does It exist?
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I very much doubt it. But it’s a useful narrative device for (say) comic book writers who need an excuse to keep bringing back Batman villains who logically should have been deemed too dangerous to ever be released again after the first time they were apprehended.
“You see, we NEED an unaccountable vigilante to deal with the criminals because the justice system isn’t equipped to deal with that kind of evil!”
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Before the incident, Warner had espoused the QAnon-linked fringe belief that reptilian humanoids control the world.
Wait. Don’t Scientologists believe something like this? Volcanoes, engrams, aliens… It’s been a long time since I saw that Boston Legal episode…
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Sadly QAnon has gone worldwide, each with their own twists on it.
QAnon Anonymous had an interesting interview with a German journalist about the differences between German and American QAnon.
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