Remember when Benjamin Franklin was asked, “What kind of a country is this?” and he replied, “A republic — if you can keep it.” Maybe what he should have said was,
“A republic — unless you get so stone stick stupid that you can’t keep it anymore.” That’s what I fear is going on.
We have our dual narratives of reality running side by side for the first time in history. That, coupled with the failure of the educational system and the overall dumbing down of America, has led to a lack of critical thinking skills on the part of a great many people. The question now becomes black and white: How many Americans are living in delusion and how many are grounded in reality?
The “Freedom Convoy” which is an offshoot of the same thing in Canada, started out on February 22 in California and it’s supposed to arrive in Washington, D.C. tomorrow.
Why are they going to D.C.? What’s the point? They’re there for “accountability” according to Sara Aniano, an extremism researcher who has been following the convoy on Telegram. And beyond accountability, there’s a wild conspiracy theory involving Donald Trump driving their actions, imagine that. NBC News:
According to extremism researchers following the movement, the convoy now consists of several dozen tractor-trailer trucks and hundreds of cars. The group is staging in Hagerstown, Maryland, on Friday and ramping up for its final protest somewhere in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. […]
“That could mean financial accountability. It could be physical accountability. It could be legal accountability. Their inability to distinguish what exactly that means is where the concern lies,” said Aniano, who recently published a report on QAnon’s growth after Jan. 6 for the International Centere for the Study of Radicalization, a London-based nonprofit group. […]
But as its Covid mission has become less clear, the group’s channels have turned to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where conspiracy-minded thinking has flourished. While some group members have admonished Russian President Vladimir Putin for the invasion, QAnon and anti-vaccine contingents within the groups have seized on a false conspiracy theory that the war is a cover for a military operation backed by former President Donald Trump in Ukraine.
The conspiracy theory, which is baseless and has roots in QAnon mythology, alleges that Trump and Putin are secretly working together to stop bioweapons from being made by Dr. Anthony Fauci in Ukraine and that shelling in Ukraine has targeted the secret laboratories. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has emerged in the past year as a main target for far-right conspiracy theories.
This is sheer lunacy, but there are people who believe it. This is the same crowd that gathered in Dealey Plaza and awaited the return of JFK, Sr. or Jr. or both. Think for a moment about the shape you have to be in mentally to go camp out in a park and wait for dead politicians or their spawn to magically appear.
Aniano said the vague, ominous messaging is worrying, pointing out a Friday morning Telegram post that read: “We can’t fail. We are not GOING to fail. We are gonna fix this.”
“In their fantasy, Trump comes back, and the military tribunals commence over Covid tests,” Aniano said. “But I don’t think they know what they want. They are just mad, and they want a reason to express that.”
As long as they don’t smash their way into government buildings and smear caa caa on the floor, I guess we’ll be okay.
A portion of America has gone mad. I think that we all understand full well what it is to live a life of quiet desperation. Most of us have felt that way at some point in our lives and many people live their entire lives feeling that way. But to deal with that kind of normal frustration by adhering to fantasy and joining a destructive political cult can’t end well.
I think they’re going to be getting calls from their insurance companies and the banks that hold their loans. That’s more than three weeks without having paying jobs, and bills are coming due.
I wonder how many of these mental pygmies would say they drove across the country to protest high gas/diesel prices???
*smirk*
Honestly, I have not understood a single thing about this stupid “Freedom Convoy.” They’re not making any money from this protest and, I’d think that, given the whole supply chain problems we’ve been having, these idiots would’ve stayed on the West Coast to load their trucks with goods to take to the stores and warehouses waiting for those goods.
But, for some weird insane reason, they decided to take a cross-country trip for some “protest?”
You should ask yourself how these idiots on parade can afford to continue to parade. Who is paying them to do this mindless stupid stuff and continue to do it? How can they continue to afford to be this stupid?
I would bet that whoever is backing the repugs is backing these “convoys”. You have to know that “dark money” is what is holding all the crap together.