Speaking of Conspiracy Theories and Separation Anxiety...

Ex-president Donald J. Trump slunk out of town carrying the nuclear football, leaving the United States unprotected from nuclear attack for 3 hours while the football was punted back to DC. Meanwhile, The Storm, Trump's heroic mass execution plan for ridding the world of child-eating Liberals, stalled off the Florida coast and was downgraded to Class F (Failure).

Followers of the extremist ideology QAnon saw their hopes once again dashed Wednesday as President Donald Trump left Washington on the final day of his presidency, without any of the climactic scenes of violence and salvation that the sprawling set of conspiracy theories had preached for years would come.

But while some QAnon disciples gave way to doubt, others doubled down on blind belief or strained to see new coded messages in the Inauguration Day's events. Some followers noted that 17 flags - Q being the 17th letter of the alphabet - flew on the stage as Trump delivered a farewell address.

Over thousands of cryptic posts since 2017, Q, QAnon's unidentified online prophet, had promised that Trump was secretly spearheading a spiritual war against an elite cabal of child-eating Satanists who controlled Washington, Hollywood and the world. Believers in these false, rambling theories had counted down the hours waiting for Trump to corral his enemies for military tribunals and mass executions in a show of force they called "the Storm."

Source: QAnon believers grapple with doubt, spin new theories as Trump era ends: 'We all got played'

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"nuclear football" is what protects the US from a nuclear attack, not credible that the Pentagon doesn't have a backup "football." Sort of like how there was a presidential plane at Andrews AFB when Trump left West Palm Beach airport this morning. It's all probably just BS anyway -- a comfort blanket for the masses. (Not that I took any comfort in Trump and his loony appointees having access to nukes.)

(If need be, doesn't the USAF have access to jets that could transport the thing back to Andrews in less than an hour?)

Disagree on Q -- expect it to slowly fade as all fads do.

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edg's picture

@Marie

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WoodsDweller's picture

@Marie
that it was a placebo for the President. I can't imagine how many times senile Reagan must have pushed the big red button.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

edg's picture

@WoodsDweller

Reagan: (pushes big red ACME button) "There goes Russia! Buh-bye, Gorbachev! Honey, call your psychic hotline friend and see if we can get in touch with Gorby in the hereafter."

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@Marie
with Trump. A duplicate football stayed in DC with Biden. They said they deactivated the Trump football at noon yesterday. I saw an interview with a general a couple of days ago where he said they would not launch nukes if it was an illegal order.

I wonder if the Trump football really contained stuff like old junk mail and dirty gym socks. I was quite relieved when Nancy Pelosi announced that she had discussed the nukes with military representatives.

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edg's picture

@ScienceTeacher

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Azazello's picture

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

edg's picture

@Azazello

“Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Matthew 16:28.

Perhaps Q will revise their prophecy to a different date, too.

Personally, I've always thought JFK Jr would return to debunk RFK Jr's anti-vax theories. Perhaps he can also help Trump bring about "the Storm" while back on Earth.

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CS in AZ's picture

@Azazello

Good article! I'm going to have to come back to it later to finish it, a long read but quite interesting to me.

We happened upon a video on YouTube a week or two ago that featured an interview with a "cult expert" who was himself a former Moonie who escaped decades ago, and since then has focused his career on cults and deprogramming from them to help other people escape. It was a general discussion about the concepts, not specific to trumpsters or the Q-anon thing, but what he described was eerily on target to those groups nonetheless. Moving the goal posts for unfulfilled prophesies and predictions is a common move to avoid cognitive dissonance when they fail to occur. Some believers may actually realized they have been played, but my guess is a great many will not and "Q" will simply reformulate the game now and the true believers will continue to go along for the ride.

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@CS in AZ Related, I fell into a rabbit hole researching the Manson family. Being someone who considers himself to be somewhat logical, it was baffling to see how many times his predictions failed to materialize and yet, the family still believed. It was much of this same stuff that you are talking about. There were some who had their faith shaken and peeled off, but the rest not only accepted the new reality willingly, they did their part to help create it and sell it to the others.

The other thing I think a lot of people miss is the Q people have no where else to go. There's a tendency among the left to associate the QAnon stuff with the Republican party, but that isn't accurate. Yes, Q believers are more likely to be Repubs and there are elected officials who are Republicans who are true believers. But, there are far more who were willing to exploit the Q mythos without actually accepting it.

Mostly though, if Q was analogous to the Republican party, we would still have President Trump. As it was, they didn't lift a finger to help him really. His croneys stuck with him, but look at the McConnels who actually run the party. Hell, his own VP couldn't be bothered.

So where do these people go? They're pissed at the Republicans. There's no way they'd associate with the Democrats. They either have to double down and find a new way to believe or admit everything they believed was wrong and throw their lot in with the baby eating pedophiles. I am sure some will just drop out of political engagement entirely, but I think we are far from done with Q.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

snoopydawg's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter

it was baffling to see how many times his predictions failed to materialize and yet, the family still believed.

I followed Q for awhile at the beginning after I heard about him/her/they and followed lots and lots of links to articles that helped me debunk Russia Gate. I learned a lot, but some part told me to be wary of where it was going. After Sessions was fired I stopped believing that anything would happen. I still followed links, but after the 4-5th deadline for something to happen I knew it was false. I don’t understand how anyone can still buy into it now that Biden’s president. But I guess I dodged the bullet. I saw through the Russia nonsense almost immediately. So did most people here. I’m still wondering what makes people buy into propaganda so deeply?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.