What now for QAnon?

I am fascinated by cults and the people who join them. And the mother of all political cults is QAnon. As many people know by now, this was a Trump-supporting cult that believed that the Democratic party and other prominent people were part of some global conspiracy of pedophiles and that Trump was a genius strategist who was carefully planning to, in a dramatic denouement, expose them all and arrest and execute them. There are a lot more layers to this cult’s beliefs and I am just giving the highlights.

Naturally they did not accept that Trump had lost the election and thought that he would be able to reverse the outcome. As the day of Biden’s inauguration came close, excitement built up among them and they seemed to expect that just as he was about to be sworn in, federal agents would run down the steps and arrest him and all the other dignitaries and execute them, and that Trump would emerge as their victorious leader. Yes, really. (The people are watching w-a-a-a-y too many action/fantasy films.)
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China strikes back at Trumpers

The US is constantly criticizing other countries and lecturing them on how they should behave, as if the US is some kind of moral exemplar. Most countries do not respond in kind because of the US’s economic and military power but with China increasingly challenging the US in both those areas, they are in a position to respond. But the Chinese government tends to be cautious in its approach and temperate in its language even as it pursues hardline policies, an iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove approach that has helped it gain influence in the world.

So it was a surprise, to me at least, to see them imposing sweeping sanctions on high-level Trump officials accompanied by harsh language, delivered even as Joe Biden was being sworn in.
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Elections can make a difference, even in the US

As I have said so many times before, the US is a one-party state. The party is a pro-war, pro-oligarchy party with two factions that are labeled Democrat and Republican that differ on mostly social issues. But having said that, it would be a mistake to assume that there is no difference between the two and that elections do not matter. There is a world of difference from Trump being elected in November and Joe Biden winning, as we can see by what happened immediately after Biden was sworn in when he unveiled a whole raft of executive orders and legislative proposals that set in motion polices that all headed in a positive direction.
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Nature red in tooth and claw

This video that was sent to me by a friend shows what a powerful predator the peregrine falcon is.

I am always impressed at nature photographers and filmmakers. The animals in their films seem to behave as if they are following a script and one wonders how the filmmakers were able to be at the right place at the right time.T hey must be spending an enormous amount of time in order to capture events like this.

Saying good riddance to Trump

Trump left the White House without the pomp he had hoped for.

The outgoing president, who has broken with tradition by refusing to attend his successor’s inauguration, took a government helicopter from the White House at 8.18am, leaving what has been his home for four tumultuous years, and headed for Joint Base Andrews, a military facility in Maryland.

Trump had demanded that aides prepare an ostentatious ceremony at the base, accompanied by a sprawling audience, but two weeks after Trump incited a riot at the US Capitol, he got neither. The soon-to-be former president arrived at the military base just before 8.30am, and was met with a flat sendoff marked by a sparse crowd.
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The long national nightmare comes to an end

I timed this post for noon on January 20th to celebrate the end of the Donald Trump presidency.

There will be many things that the Biden-Harris administration will do in the days to come that will enrage me but I want to savor this sweet moment for just a little while.

Roy Zimmerman also serenades Trump off with a parody of ‘My Girl’.

UPDATE: Bette Midler gives her own sendoff.

Bye, Donald!

The distancing from Trump starts to gain steam

Ever since the election, we have seen the process of people who once were joined at the hip to Trump start the process of creating space between them as they try to remove the stain of the association. It is a process that Trump will find very familiar because it is his signature move, invariably saying of people who have become a liability to him that he hardly knew them, even though strong evidence exists of a close relationship. This process has now extended to those Republicans in Congress who, sensing that Trump’s star is on the wane, have also begun the process of distancing themselves from the man they once slavishly followed.
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The fracturing of the Trump cult

Once he leaves office, Trump will be in a bind. His cult followers love his bellicose rhetoric that targeted and threatened all the people he deemed his enemies. But without the protection that comes with being president, he is much more vulnerable to the consequences of his reckless speech and even he must realize that he cannot continue to speak that way. His short speech decrying violence after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol was viewed as being forced on him by advisors who warned him that he faced trouble for inciting a riot, especially if another one occurred before the inauguration.

But some of his cult members feel betrayed by what they see as him backing off and not being sufficiently supportive of them.
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Travails of the news headline writer

Writing headlines for news items is an art and I am often impressed at how they manage to capture in a very few words the essence of the story. In the case of the death of a famous person, you have even less discretionary space because you have to give the person’s name and often their age, leaving very little room to describe what they were famous for. It gets even worse when they were famous for two things: one good and one bad. How do you balance the two? While the obituaries themselves are written well in advance of death, the headline may not be and you have very little time to come up with one.

So pity the poor person at the BBC assigned to write a headline for the death of Phil Spector. Spector had an immense impact as a pop music producer but also murdered a woman and died in prison.

The first headline was:

“Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81”

It was quickly realized that being a murderer required stronger language than ‘flawed’.

So the headline was quickly replaced with:

“Pop producer jailed for murder dies at 81.”

The BBC has apologized for the first headline as “Not meeting our editorial standards.”