IMHO:
QAnon is in many ways simply reflective of an aspect of internet culture that has been around since the mid-90s. I know, I was reading it. Chemtrails, Alex Jones, Satanic child murderers, Bohemian Grove, all of it. Nothing new under the Sun.
The difference, and it’s a huge one, is that now everyone is online, these things have taken over mainstream social media, algorithms accelerate it, and it has almost certainly been weaponized by hostile nation states to use against us. OK that’s a lot of differences!
One aspect of this that I think needs to be understood about these ideas, is that in many ways they are indeed rooted in things that are true. I’m a bit out there as we know, but I actually think this even includes “esoteric” and outlier type phenomena that many people write off.
In a sense “chemtrails” are real – we know the fuel airplanes use is bad because of global warming, we know it can indeed pollute, and it actually does change the planet’s temperature (seen, for instance, in the days after 9/11 when no planes were flying). Of course the idea of actual chemtrails is bogus, but symbolically, there is some truth to it. Airplane contrails that can indeed spread over the sky under some conditions symbolize our ability to control nature, create our own clouds, be gods, hide ourselves from the Sun, if we so desire. And perhaps we know on some level, our aproach to this has been hubristic at best.
We know that powerful people conspire to keep groups of child predators safe from criminal prosecution. Epstein??? Who suicided himself very conveniently when all of the video camera equipment just happened to stop working? Like really? And does anybody not think that he was likely being used as a honeypot type operation by, I would think, more than one national intelligence apparatus? Let’s get real.
In some ways, QAnon is a totally stupid, cartoonized, ridiculous version of… what is. And people’s ability to totally flip their shit, when they get exposed to the notion that many aspects of our world are fundamentally wrong. The problem is, QAnon and things that have been around for decades that resemble it, are the absolute worst mechanism to affect positive change in the world. It’s a gag. It’s ludicrous.
Perhaps the vacuum it fills is one that has been filled by genuine spirituality, and by that I mean revolutionary spirituality, the kind of shit that gets you nailed to a cross, for instance (insert countless examples from all cultures here). QAnon is like an anti-spirituality, because it requires one give their hopes over to some mysterious force.
We all know The Powers of Good encourage people to find power and voice in themselves, and at least trying to humbly serve those we share these existences with. Not some anonymous “Q” asshole, that’s for sure.
