How QAnon Conspiracy Is Moving Closer To Political Mainstream

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Viper1j

Diamond Member
Jul 31, 2018
4,169
3,645
136
I blame Bill Gates. Every incarnation of Windows has dumbed it down more and more to the point where any idiot with a couple of hundred bucks can plug one in, fire it up and get online.

I remember when you actually had to know something about computers in order to use one. My first time online was a 14.400 bps dialup modem, logging into a shell account on Earthlink. There were no Q cults back in the day.
 

Vic

Elite Member
Jun 12, 2001
50,415
14,305
136
This Q stuff is likely psyops by the GOP to string their base along. The question is, what happens when none of their claims come to fruition? At what point do the believers realize it's all bullcrap? How many boogie men can they keep throwing out there at people?

Nothing happens. When the end days don't occur when the leaders predicted, the leaders just push that date out, and the cult followers pretend that never happened.
I grew up in a cult that has been predicting the rapture for over 150 years. When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, it was for sure going to happen by the year 2000. "Yours is the generation that will never know death," I was frequently told. It's now 20 years after 2000, and that cult is still predicting the end days are imminent, and they have more followers than ever.
 
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woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
16,188
14,092
136
How is a proclaiming such information to be BS any better at not reinforcing their conspiratorial beliefs? You can’t reach those who are willfully ignorant but you can prevent more from being indoctrinated by limiting their exposure.

Right, and it calls attention to the post at the same time. Just get rid of it.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
23,195
12,849
136
That's the entire bases of democracy. If stupid people are the majority then stupid people get to make the rules. Your well informed and carefully thought out vote is negated by the village idiot.
Nope, then, democracy collapses. War. Then you get to try again. Maybe. Maybe.
So maybe you wanna quietly drag the village idiot out back and put two in the battery. Metaphorically speaking of course. You could start by outlawing fifth column activities. Take for example hizbut tahrir, illegal in many many democratic countries. Q... and how Fox operates ... is not far behind.
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,108
1,260
126
This Q stuff is likely psyops by the GOP to string their base along. The question is, what happens when none of their claims come to fruition? At what point do the believers realize it's all bullcrap? How many boogie men can they keep throwing out there at people?

Also, the whole Bill Gates, George Soros, etc. Cabal thing is mind boggling. As these are the same people that want less taxes and less government. The owner class worked hard, so why should they help anyone type people. Now, Bill Gates is gonna chip you all, and George Soros is gonna take all your kids /sarcasm. Money is power.

This has already happened. Multiple predictions proved false. They don't care, they're fucking lunatics.

I agree it's either being pushed by someone peripherally attached to Trump's campaign, or it's Russian propaganda. It has all the good stuff they like to push; projections of pedophilia, religious craziness, the great white saviour (Trump! LOL!)

For the nuts that buy in, their votes are a lock, and they become indoctrinated true believers. They then go out and radicalize people they know, unwittingly doing the job of the people who manipulated them. It's a sad state of affairs.
 

digiram

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2004
3,991
172
106
It’s truly disheartening and disturbing that I know so many people in the fringe. Not just suburban whites that live around me, but even some black folks in the city are bamboozled. I don’t know how to talk them out of it without making them look like fools.

GOP is so good at making people vote against their own interest.

Sometimes I wish they would just let them have their way. Take away everything and let me keep everything I earn. F it.

I know people that support gop, but own nothing, in a ton of debt, defaulted on school loans.

I did everything honestly, paid back my loans, live within means, etc.

I don’t mind if people get help. Money goes back into economy. Helps me stay employed. Most of all though, I grew up inner city and a product of social assistance. I got paper food stamps as a kid. Even threw it in the offering box at church for the lulz. I’ve more than paid back in taxes at this point. Property, sales, income, etc.

Ok I’m done rambling. Shit just doesn’t make sense to me.
 

pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
13,047
7,976
136
Poor Bill Gates must be baffled. He starts off as a standard-issue modern capitalist, only concerned with empire building and making as much money as possible. But he finds much of the population hates him and blames him every time they have any problems with a PC. Then he realises (under the influence of his old-money old-school old man?) that he better switch to doing some of that old-time philantrophist do-gooding stuff if he wants anyone to remember him positively when he's gone. So he gives up the ruthless capitalism stuff and starts giving his wealth away and doing 'good works' confident now people will finally think positively of him...only to find a big section of the population now regard him in a far more sinister light than they did when he was ruthlessly making money - to the point of viewing him as some sort of super-villain, capable of planting tracking chips in vaccines (a feat which would involve a level of genuine innovation and tech-advancement that would be far beyond anything Microsoft ever managed)
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,180
42,257
136

32 of these insane motherfarkers are running...

  • Nineteen candidates -- 18 Republicans and one independent -- have already secured a spot on the ballot in November by competing in primary elections or by fulfilling other requirements needed to get on the ballot.
  • Of those 19 candidates, five are from California, two each are from Illinois, Georgia, and Arizona, and there is one each from Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, Ohio, and Texas.
  • One candidate, in Georgia, is heading to an upcoming primary runoff.
  • One candidate, in New York, is running as a Republican write-in.
  • In total, 70 of the candidates are Republicans, two are Democrats, one is a Libertarian, and two are independents.


 
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FaaR

Golden Member
Dec 28, 2007
1,056
412
136
Regarding the QA bullshit:
You guys sure they removed lead from gasoline in Merica back in the 1980s or whenever? Seems to me maybe they buffed lead contents majorly instead because a large grouping of the U.S. population barely seems to have any brain at all anymore, quite honestly.

Then he realises (under the influence of his old-money old-school old man?) that he better switch to doing some of that old-time philantrophist do-gooding stuff if he wants anyone to remember him positively when he's gone.
It was his wife, he's claimed. Unlike himself, she came from a more modest means background. ...Which makes sense, because the rich donate far less to charity as a percentage of their overall income on average than the lower income brackets do.
 
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Thump553

Lifer
Jun 2, 2000
12,676
2,428
126
I blame Bill Gates. Every incarnation of Windows has dumbed it down more and more to the point where any idiot with a couple of hundred bucks can plug one in, fire it up and get online.

I remember when you actually had to know something about computers in order to use one. My first time online was a 14.400 bps dialup modem, logging into a shell account on Earthlink. There were no Q cults back in the day.

BS. I suspect cults like this have been around since the cave man days. I know for a fact that they existed in 70's, 80's and 90's, well before the rise of internet or even home computers. For example, up posse comitatus and/or Tigerton Dells-a bogus town these snowflakes created in WI in the 1980s. Nutjobs don't need facebook and the like to exist, but they make it easier to find simpaticos.

Old man voice: 14,400 modem? Poor baby. I was on a modem (mostly 300 bps) until the late 90's when internet finally came to my town. And I personally have absolutely no desire to go back Windows 3 or earlier (before they had a graphics shell).
 
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fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
84,029
47,997
136
I mean what percentage of people were birthers? I suspect the crossover between these two groups is high.

Sure, Qanon is crazier than birtherism but really if you’re already willing to believe that Obama’s parents planted a newspaper story about the birth of their son to support his falsified birth certificate you’re already ready to believe a bunch of dumb shit.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
69,029
26,905
136

32 of these insane motherfarkers are running...

  • Nineteen candidates -- 18 Republicans and one independent -- have already secured a spot on the ballot in November by competing in primary elections or by fulfilling other requirements needed to get on the ballot.
  • Of those 19 candidates, five are from California, two each are from Illinois, Georgia, and Arizona, and there is one each from Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, Ohio, and Texas.
  • One candidate, in Georgia, is heading to an upcoming primary runoff.
  • One candidate, in New York, is running as a Republican write-in.
  • In total, 70 of the candidates are Republicans, two are Democrats, one is a Libertarian, and two are independents.


These folks are running with a platform plank of supporting an apparently non-existent far-right version of Archibald Tuttle? The post-Enlightenment world delivers again. Invisible pink unicorns have gone mainstream.
 

obidamnkenobi

Golden Member
Sep 16, 2010
1,407
423
136
BS. I suspect cults like this have been around since the cave man days. I know for a fact that they existed in 70's, 80's and 90's, well before the rise of internet or even home computers. For example, up posse comitatus and/or Tigerton Dells-a bogus town these snowflakes created in WI in the 1980s. Nutjobs don't need facebook and the like to exist, but they make it easier to find simpaticos.

Old man voice: 14,400 modem? Poor baby. I was on a modem (mostly 300 bps) until the late 90's when internet finally came to my town. And I personally have absolutely no desire to go back Windows 3 or earlier (before they had a graphics shell).

Heck, Hofstadter (The Paranoid Style in American Politics) talk about the anti-masonic fervor in the colonies, later replaced by anti-catholic, replaced by anti-communist.. etc. It's not an excusive american things of course, but for some reason seems especially ingrained and potent here.
 
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pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
13,047
7,976
136
Regarding the QA bullshit:
You guys sure they removed lead from gasoline in Merica back in the 1980s or whenever? Seems to me maybe they buffed lead contents majorly instead because a large grouping of the U.S. population barely seems to have any brain at all anymore, quite honestly.


It was his wife, he's claimed. Unlike himself, she came from a more modest means background. ...Which makes sense, because the rich donate far less to charity as a percentage of their overall income on average than the lower income brackets do.

I read somewhere that his dad explicitly had a word with him about the subject, but I could be wrong, might have been his wife. As far as his father goes, there was a tradition among old-school rich dudes in the US to be all philantropic'n'shit (and so disprove the Biblical quote about eyes of needles?) but it seemed to die a death with the advent of tech-billionaires, who appeared to make an Ayn Rand style virtue out of conspicuous selfishness (maybe a "geek culture" thing?).

Bill Gates seemed to be the first to revert to that older tradition, for whatever reason, for good or ill. Only to find people still don't like him, just for different (and far crazier) reasons! It's curious in that it's akin to the old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds, except Gates isn't Jewish. Which I suppose could be a perverse sign of improvement. if only it wasn't for the existence of the similar crackpottery about Soros.
 

hal2kilo

Lifer
Feb 24, 2009
23,426
10,320
136
BS. I suspect cults like this have been around since the cave man days. I know for a fact that they existed in 70's, 80's and 90's, well before the rise of internet or even home computers. For example, up posse comitatus and/or Tigerton Dells-a bogus town these snowflakes created in WI in the 1980s. Nutjobs don't need facebook and the like to exist, but they make it easier to find simpaticos.

Old man voice: 14,400 modem? Poor baby. I was on a modem (mostly 300 bps) until the late 90's when internet finally came to my town. And I personally have absolutely no desire to go back Windows 3 or earlier (before they had a graphics shell).
Nah. DOS 6.2 with a Powermenu shell. Plus a a 100 batch files. The pinnacle.
 

Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
55,855
13,974
146

32 of these insane motherfarkers are running...

  • Nineteen candidates -- 18 Republicans and one independent -- have already secured a spot on the ballot in November by competing in primary elections or by fulfilling other requirements needed to get on the ballot.
  • Of those 19 candidates, five are from California, two each are from Illinois, Georgia, and Arizona, and there is one each from Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, Ohio, and Texas.
  • One candidate, in Georgia, is heading to an upcoming primary runoff.
  • One candidate, in New York, is running as a Republican write-in.
  • In total, 70 of the candidates are Republicans, two are Democrats, one is a Libertarian, and two are independents.



So I just checked each one of those, and only 1 has any shot in hell of actually being elected.

That vast majority either lost or will lose the primary to their GOP opponent or got on the ballot unopposed in solid blue districts the GOP isn't even trying in.

Only one stands a any chance of being elected and probably will be elected. And that is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Still. Incumbents including Trump have mainstreamed this batshit enough it is bigger than it has ANY logical right to be. Frighteningly big, actually.
 
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