Menzo
1929
These people are grade-A morons.
Imagine thinking DJT is going to live four more years, let alone six more.
Timex
1931
The conspiracy theories that will take flight when his obese ass dies on the toilet are going to be bonkers.
RichVR
1932
You misspelled wonderful. :)
But I am looking forward to March 4th. When he doesn’t get sworn in as the 19th president. The chaos in the Trumpets will also be wonderful.
antlers
1933
Like Elvis, Trump will never truly die. His death will be faked; he will be sighted in all sorts of unlikely places. Finally he will be assumed directly into Heaven, from which he may return whenever the country’s need is great enough.
Menzo
1934
They’ll just pick a new date.
Scuzz
1935
So you think they will believe he is dead or if they do that of course he was assassinated.
DraiAC
1936
Just like any prudent cult would do! You don’t keep the grift going by admitting failure.
I never understood how you could keep changing the date of the apocalypse/ascension/transcendance and not lose any followers.
Conspiracy Theorist Hierarchy of Needs
- Need for validation from a community
- Need for purpose/importance in life
- Need for increased self worth by denigrating elites as evil
…
…
…
…
…
(Some number in the thousands). Need for truth
Menzo
1939
Don’t forget the need to have someone help you make sense of the seemingly random bad things that happen in the world.
Lots of people just can’t deal with the fact that bad things happen to “good” people, so they need someone else to assure them that there is a larger plan at work. Don’t ask too many questions about why 5 year olds get cancer, or why Donald Trump lost the election because you just don’t understand THE PLAN.
But it’s either that DJT is still in charge, or the lizard people are the deep state, or that Hell Demons have co-opted our reality, right? It can’t be all three. Surely if their God-King-Prophet got it wrong maybe they are barking up the wrong reptilian tree?
It’s almost as if they have the whole sunk cost fallacy thing going - “Well, I’m already neck deep in RedNeck Jesus over here that I guess I have to keep going regardless”.
It just sounds like the reason train pulled out of the station, de-railed and exploded catastrophically at some point.
I really feel for people who have family members who have gone that way.
From /r/QAnonCasualties/
“I don’t need facts. Even if you had factual proof that you are right, I wouldn’t believe it because I know how I feel and my feelings are God inspired so I base my decisions on my feelings, not facts.”
(You always have to be somewhat skeptical on how real some of the posts there are but regardless, this pretty much sums up the trump cult)
Menzo
1942
This is my quandary with all the Q stuff. If someone told me that 90% of posts about Q were trolls just seeing who would fall for the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I would totally believe it.
I’ve heard a similar line taken by Christian fundamentalists.* Some argue that faith takes priority over logic and empiricism as a method of acquiring knowledge. In the ~2001 PBS documentary on evolution, a creationist made this point by paraphrasing a bit of Scripture. It might have been 1 Corinthians 1:20, not sure:
Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
** I am not a theologian, and I presume some versions of this argument are more sophisticated.
I suppose it is because knowledge gets obsolete but faith cannot ever be?
Maybe. Of course, the propensity of empirically-derived knowledge to be overwritten by newer and better information is supposed to be a feature, not a bug.
The defining feature, one might say, else knowledge calcifies into dogma.
Seems some people see a scientist (or similar) not having all the answers right away (aka not being 100% certain on a thing) and then conclude that said scientist is completely useless and irrelevant, so Joe Bloggs on Facebook (who says 5g towers are eeeeeevilllll) is just as good a source of information, perhaps even better because academia can be boring as fck and Joe Bloggs is entertaining, and goddamit when is lockdown going to end and why can’t you just give me a straight answer Mr/s Scientist?
Now replace
Joe Bloggs from facebook
with
person in authority feeding off your fear.
…and the situation gets messed up.
Enidigm
1947
Both Christianity and Islam eventually developed “mysticism” elements to account for the ‘need’ for faith, and which (more or less) eventually overrided the need for reason in strands in both traditions. In Islam this seems to have happened in Sufism largely as an expression to the fact that (although Muslims might not like to admit it) the Quran isn’t particularly dense with insight and so in order to get that insight “deeper” or hidden interpretations are necessary in order to understand it (this is generally a Shia thing, btw). Christianity developed these mystical tendencies when pondering how to rationalize the Trinity, which really, no matter how you ponder it, doesn’t make any logical sense.
The problem is hauling these medieval and antique arguments out of their historic context into the modern world. Evangelicals use faith over reason - if they even bother to think about it hard enough to recognize that there is a problem - simply as a way of rejecting science carte blanche. They’re not rejecting the scientific method, but rejecting science whenever it conflicts with their beliefs.
Skipper
1948
This is in an apartment complex near me. The ONLY apartment flying god awful large flags on the side everyone can see. And also the crazy guy within the unit who ALSO just happens to know that, “Biden is going to take everyone’s guns, just you wait.”
Unknown: if said loony identifies as a MAGAt or Proud Boy or fou de la jour (Crazy of the day.)
