Sine QAnon: the Publishers Clearing House of Conspiracy Theories

What, precisely, is QAnon? The Second Coming of, I don’t know — Jesus Christ? No, no, no! Try Jerry Springer, or Jimmy Swaggart, even. QAnon appears to be more of a likeness than an actual thing; provisionally, we could describe it as a peculiar conspiracy theory that aggregates all the other conspiracy theories…

Now, looking back to the official beginning of the current pandemic in America, the irrational run on Toilet Paper stands out as a critical signpost marking the Consumer-Citizenry’s awakening to the drastic nature of the crisis. Somehow, this product in particular, and its conspicuous absence, reflected both a heightened yet seemingly displaced awareness on the part of the Public. Put another way: There was a new flu in town, so suddenly everyone was worried about wiping their own asses…

Here in St Louis, this state of collective anxiety persisted for around 10 weeks, as revealed by typically empty shelves, despite the fact that this “essential” commodity was being tightly rationed. Nevertheless, although the COVID threat — or the hype promoting it — continues, and the TP-rationing regime remains solidly in place, the Toilet Paper stock has quietly returned to local shelves in copious quantities…

However, as abundantly trivial as a Toilet Paper Shortage is in the context of a global economic health crisis, I still can’t seem to flush this lingering thought: Was the Toilet Paper Market manipulated? Was it all just an experiment in Citizen-Consumer behavior, perhaps? To be honest, my first encounter with the TP-scarcity phenomenon of 2020 came through a randomly scanned news report on Yahoo! from Australia at least a week before the TP-run appeared in American stores. So: What did the Aussies know then that Americans did not? Had America’s almighty CIA dropped the intelligence ball, again? One could also surmise, by sinister analogy, that if America caught the “new flu” from China, then we were similarly infected with a Toilet Paper Shortage by Australia, our heretofore trusty, Oceanic ally…

Of course, these could simply be COVID-brained speculations, since everyone not hunkered down-deep in an Afghan cave has at least a bit of COVID-19 on-the-brain by now. Curiously, given all the wild COVID-speculating going on everywhere, since everyone’s got COVID-on-the-brain syndrome, it is noteworthy that the “increasingly” visible QAnon Ven-diagrammatical mapping conspiracy theory has yet to post a sign or arrow on this most pressing subject of the great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020. Perhaps the enigmatic “Q” has been too constipated to “drop” any “crumbs” on this obviously COVID — thus conspiracy — related issue?

To back up a bit, so to speak, we should reiterate what QAnon appears to be. Recently, this Internet entity has received a lot of inkernet, especially mainstream “liberal” inkernet, which depicts QAnon as quite dangerous, and a thing to be de-platformed wherever it rears its conspiracy “Q” head.

A recent Daily Beast post, for example, describes QAnon as an “increasingly violent far-right group…that is relatively new, increasingly unhinged”; moreover, and possibly most damningly, it is seen as “promoting coronavirus disinformation.” Well, of all the corona-nerve! No doubt “Q” is spreading this disinfo “increasingly,” as “increasingly” seems to be a key characteristic of QAnon…

To go back a bit further, the QAnon phenomenon initially arose in 2017, during Trump’s first year in office, and makes the slobbering claim that the World is being stage-managed by a cabal (it’s always a “cabal”) of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. The primary Satanists of note, supernaturally enough, are probably “legion,” but also happily include such usual subjects as: Hillary Clinton; Bill Gates; George Soros (Satan’s favorite palindrome?); the Bilderberg Gang; Hollywood (except for James Woods, of course, a true patriot/misogynist); the CIA; any Rockefeller or Rothschild; FDR; Vladimir Nabokov (or maybe not — but didn’t he write that book..?); Jeffrey Epstein (presumably whether or not he was “suicided” by Billary and their minions); the Atlantic Monthly Council on Foreign Relations; Chatham House and the House of Saud; Nebuchadnezzar feasting on Babylonian baby loins; Satan him-or-herself, and many Others besides. QAnon, in other words, is a grab bag or Rorschach Blot of every conspiracy theory in existence; or, if seen from a research angle, it is a rather convenient database. Just follow the White Rabbit down its White Rabbit holes…

So, QAnon is a “thing,” but equally a “thing” not really. Still, one of the goofiest things about QAnon, this “liberal” Media-celebrated phenomenon, is that Donald Trump — of all the crazy cartoon characters in this deliriously zany CIA “cut-out” of a “theory”– is supposed to be the Caped Crusader who nabs all of these Satanically-demented trying-to-be World Rulers, which is to say: This calamitous cult of seemingly omnipotent Child Molesters! So, according to “Q,” who is purported to be, ironically enough, a guy (not a gal, Patriarchy forbid!) very high up in the U.S. Intelligence universe, Trump — of all the “Clowns in America” — is cast as the diarrhetical shitter of tweets who’s gonna bring this modern Molochian monolith down… If not exactly admirable, it’s certainly an impressive — albeit juvenile — hallucination, this QAnon-sense “theory…”

QAnon’s bizarre promotion — and, yes, for the sake of argument, we’re giving them “agency” here — from total obscurity to an increasingly more “normal” lunatic fringe status asymmetrically mirrors a much more famous Trump-era conspiracy theory; namely, Russiagate. Interestingly, “Russiagate,” which has been predominantly “liberal” Media-driven as well, derives from a similar source as “Q”; i.e., the so-called “Deep State.” Left or Right, Conspiracy’s in the air, and no matter which way one turns, our first Cartoon President is the out-of-focus focus. Famously, according to the “Russiagate” narrative, certain “Deep State” sources have leaked intelligence to the effect that Donald Trump is a Russian “cut-out” and, most ominously, an agent of the nefarious Russian president, Vladimir Putin. A tale of two Vladimirs, perhaps — but both conspiracies are really better suited to a novel format, and not leading storylines of a serious, real-world Public discourse. Yet, here we all are, COVID-iotized beyond belief, and with “Russiagate” many times disproven (“Just another hoax, folks!”), while QAnon keeps chugging along, getting all that “liberal” gas on-the-cheap, which is pretty much the most efficient model for running a “conspiracy theory” these days…

So, whatever QAnon is imagined to be, it’s clear that it is an “intelligence” cut-out of some form or another; after all, it’s right there in QAnon’s “mission statement,” which places “Q” at the apex of the American power pyramid. Maybe QAnon is a kind of Game of Thrones re-boot, or sequel? The more interesting angle, I believe, is how the QAnon “theory of all conspiracy theories” maps the ideological landscape in such a way that anything to the Left is absolutely verboten. It’s really straight-up Right Wing porn, so no questions asked about health care, ordinary human rights (not lefts!), basic prevailing economic conditions: like why are so many contemporaneous humans living in Poverty when no one chooses to be Poor, yet we are all instructed that we have Free Will so, theoretically, we can all freely choose to be Rich or Poor or, failing that choice, simply Middling-class..? What is most noxious, and disturbing, about QAnon is that the “liberal” Mass Media Establishment is actively promoting this Right Wing garbage: these “crumbs” left to float willy-nilly in the Ocean of the Public’s consciousness, blocking out natural thought processes like a form of cognitive pollution.

Of course, when it comes to Power, which wears many masks these COVID-days, there is no right or left; one is simply playing an automaton to get along, trying to avoid an early grave. In summation, QAnon is like MK-Ultra-lite: it’s empty calories, but not as filling as the propaganda you were stuffing your cranium with before. According to the QAnon “theory,” your brain can breathe easier on a diet of child-molesting fantasies — not that any average human being has typical passing thoughts about “molesting children,” but that’s what “Q” transparently wants you to be thinking about. To Kill a Mockingbird, indeed! Easier said than done — What! Another “crumb”?…At least the TP’s back in stock, not to mention the QAnon…

This article was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2020 at 5:07pm and is filed under Satire.

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