Like everyone else before Covid-19 changed things, I used to see a lot of people. If you add together all the years I’ve been teaching and coaching and tutoring, the number exceeds fifty. Years. Not people.
Lots of students, colleagues, athletes, parents of students, parents of colleagues, parents of...well, you get the point.
Thousands of interactions with thousands of individuals, and yet, as hard as it is to believe, not one of them identified as a Satan-worshipper and abuser of children.
Not one!
Now maybe that’s the kind of thing you want to keep to yourself. It doesn’t open doors, spur a promotion, move you to the front of the vaccine line, excuse you from the TSA check-in, but still—thousands of interactions with thousands of people of all races and ages and genders and not one of them ever said to me when I asked how things were going, “Tough worshipping Satan and abusing children with QAnon around.”
Never happened.
And yet if you listen to the aforementioned QAnon quacks, you would think these Satanists are everywhere—Democrats, financiers, billionaire pedophiles, baby-eating Hollywood stars, and deep state operatives like Hillary Clinton. And who is the only man properly equipped with the courage and fortitude to save us? The same man who couldn’t even win re-election and lost the presidential contest by seven million votes.
In years past conspiracy theorists were harmless wackos convinced that we had captured aliens and were poking at them in a Hostess Twinkies warehouse in Coeur d'Alene. We laughed at their bizarre suspicions when we saw them in some tabloid at the check-out counter, then went about our business.
But today’s conspiracy nut isn’t funny. Instead he or she rallies supporters with guns and encourages assaults on perceived enemies. Hang Mike Pence! Shoot Nancy Pelosi! And people die as a result.
Rosanne Boyland was a QAnon supporter: she died January 6 on the Capitol steps, crushed by “allies” driven by the same misinformation. Ashli Babbitt was a QAnon supporter: she was shot to death by a Capitol policeman on January 6 when she tried to breach the building. They died for their cause, which is to say they died for nothing but a massive ego that still slobbers about in Mar-a-Lago, and still maintains that the election was stolen from him even though that assertion will lead only to more loss of life.
For there will be other assaults, there will be other deaths. The blood of all those victims puddles at Trump’s feet. He could put an end to it, but will not.
And the QAnon sympathizers now in Congress—if they truly believe that children are being abused, why not champion legislation to equalize educational opportunities, hire more counselors, fund more extra-curricular activities, augment school lunches and breakfasts, work on programs to educate parents—do all the things to improve a child’s educational experience...and childhood in general. But of course with no Satan or cannibalism involved, headline hogs like Marjorie Taylor Greene would not be interested.
Remember Do? His real name was Marshall Applewhite and he led a cult united by weird predictions of the afterlife—new bodies after death, etc. Then in 1996 he learned of the approach of the Comet Hale-Bopp, inferred that it was disguising a spaceship, and declared that said spaceship was coming to transform the members. Downside? They had to die first. Thirty-nine of them, including Do himself, obliged. Most members took barbiturates and alcohol and then placed bags over their heads. They wore Nike shoes and black uniforms. Incidentally, the spaceship did not claim the bodies—that task was left to the coroners.
But Do—lunatic as he may have been—actually existed, and appeared, and spoke, and took responsibility for what he said, whereas QAnon, as the name implies, hides behind anonymity. It’s cowardly, but befitting a person whose only interest is deceiving the gullible and ignorant.
QAnon, the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three-Percenters—unless the authorities get a handle on these groups and the terrorism they aim to inflict, it’ll be the coroners again who clean up the mess.
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