I am increasingly hearing references to QAnon in news media. I don’t know all that much about it, but I have been fascinated with QAnon for close to a decade now. QAnon has really upped its visibility since Donald Trump came to power.  I follow several websites and blogs which could readily be summed up as “flighty”!!! Several of them reference QAnon regularly.

Apparently QAnon is a channel with seemingly “inside” news of the Trump administration. Its posts (are they all through “Twitter”?) are very esoteric, and often confusing. Thus they are open to a wide range of interpretation.

And QAnon is strongly pro-Trump. Apparently this source has been increasingly picked up and promoted by conservative, right-wing religion. In one of the recent protest marches which are currently so prominent on TV news, I saw a woman holding up a sign reading, “Q for Trump”, or something of that sort. So, Q (as it originally was known) is being talked about, and noticed more and more.

Apparently, one of Q’s messages is that Donald Trump came to power specifically to “drain the swamp”. He is supposedly going to get rid of the “powers-that-be”, often called the “ruling cabal” or “ruling elite” by Q’s followers.

Now, I have no trouble recognizing that the actual people “calling the shots”, the ones “pulling the strings” are largely invisible, behind-the-scenes, powerful leaders. We talked that sort of talk back in the sixties and seventies when I was a young man!! We recognized that the person in power, in elected office, was not the one actually in power. We knew there were shadowy figures in the background.

Remember, I grew up in the time when the Kennedys were assassinated, and Martin Luther King. It did not take me terribly long to realize that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill President Kennedy. We all knew that there were powers at work behind the scenes to accomplish these nefarious ends.

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone! And a lot of QAnon’s stuff comes under that rubric. As I said above, I really do not know a lot about Q. But I do have questions about the little I do know. For example, QAnon has been linked with the Epoch Times, which is a commonly distributed newspaper of Chinese origin. I can pick up a copy just about anywhere in Calgary, where I live. There are indications that this newspaper has strong ties to the Falun Gong, an outlawed, quasi-religious sect in China and among Chinese people around the world opposed to Communism. And the Epoch Times is a strong supporter of Trump for president. The Chinese people see him as the best bet to overthrow Xi Jinping, the leader of the Communist party of China. I heard recently that the Epoch Times has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the entire world!

What that all means, I do not know. I know that anything associated with China or Chinese people has the potential to be big, if nothing else! So I fear this support for Trump.

Another thing which comes under the heading of conspiracy stuff, is the revealing of UFO and extra-terrestrial information. Just today, June 20, 2020, I saw an interview with Trump where he kind of slyly hinted that he knows stuff about that topic which he might reveal at some point. If he does that close to the election, that could swing the vote in his favour.

As I pointed out in my previous post, earlier today, Trump will do anything to get re-elected. He does not care how much it hurts the country, how much it undermines democracy, how much it upsets the world order, how it may hurt individuals. If it allows him to hold onto power, he will do it. As John Bolton says in his book, there is no other consideration for Trump.

Also, in my previous post, I noted that at the beginning of Trump’s presidency I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. As his ineptitude, his moral and ethical deficit, his pathological mental incapacity became clearer and clearer, I vowed not to get too worked up over it. I tried to refrain from fierce arguments with my many friends and family who support Trump. I figured everything would work out alright in the end.

But I heard a commentator on air the other day saying that we cannot afford to waste time. We have this pandemic shutdown time in which to think, to consider what we are facing. And it is up to each individual to speak out. We can no longer afford to be silent. I know I have few readers of this blog; but it is one voice I have, and I will be conscientious and speak my mind. I will share what information I have. I will share my opinions. I welcome any response, on any side of any of these arguments!!!!

Little Donnie has sure been successful in getting not only his country, but the entire world into one huge pile of [manure]! When he was first elected, I recall sitting on the couch watching the results come in. I was in absolute stunned dismay. But I figured (back then, in 2016) I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. Surely, once he was in office, he would become somewhat more presidential. He would fill the office; the office would help mold him. He would exhibit more proper leadership than I had yet seen out of him during the campaign. Surely there were people in the Whitehouse who could ameliorate some of Trump’s unethical craziness. As we can all see, that has not come to pass. He has gotten worse and worse in his seemingly utter inability to do anything constructive.

Steve Benen, in his new book, The Imposters, states that Trump, and subsequently the Republican Party, care nothing for policy. They are not interested in actually running the country. They have one aim, and one aim only, and that is power. The party has been that way since losing the 2008 election, says Benen. Once Barak Obama came into power, the GOP had only one objective, and that was to block everything, absolutely everything, that he wanted to do while in office. Mitch McConnell’s publicly stated aim was to make Obama a one-term president.

So, with Obama’s time in office winding down (after two terms!!) the Republicans found the perfect candidate to continue their “post-policy” agenda (Benen’s term). Trump cares nothing for the country; he cares nothing for the American people. He doesn’t care for the minutiae of governing. He wants one thing only, and that is power.

Another book, just coming out, is John Bolton’s memoir of his 17 months inside the Trump administration. He, like Benen, stated that he could think of nothing Trump did while he (Bolton) was in office that was not geared to re-election.

The latest in a long string of power moves happened yesterday, in a now-familiar Friday night news dump. Trump removed everyone in leadership at the “Voice of America” broadcasting network, replacing them with one of his own, Stephen K. Bannon-approved, men. Admittedly, I did not know much about the VOA group of stations, and what they did. I had always thought of them as WWII and cold-war programs. There aim has always been to get truth out to the world, especially to those areas of the world where truth was hard to come by. There were a half-dozen or so various stations under the VOA umbrella, apparently. Yesterday, all of them had their leaders fired; all of them had their entire boards of directors fired.

Is this a move to obtain a media voice of his own which will repeat ad nauseam all of his “fake-news”? Trump had been getting increasingly unhappy with the performance of his previously sycophantic news network, Fox (or should it more appropriately be called “Faux News”?!!) because it wasn’t toeing his line as much as it once did. So Trump needed a new outlet for all his gas-lighting efforts. Will this be it? Will Trump be allowed to get away with this blatant grab for power?

During the previous few months of coronavirus lockdown, I have been off work, self-isolating at home, giving me lots of time for reading and watching. One of my projects is a thousand plus page book on Winston Churchill. I have also binge-watched the three seasons of The Crown, and, more recently, World War II in colour. So I’ve renewed my awareness of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. And there are frightful parallels to some of the moves Donald Trump is making. This recent (just last night, remember) grab for power seems so Adolf-like, that I am really scared.

I’m sure everyone can see Donald Trump’s fascination with totalitarian leaders. He admires their holds on power, and clearly envies them their positions. Could he be attempting such a move in the USA? I know, I know, that the 1930’s German situation was vastly different than the 2020 US. But I can’t help but see patterns. And it does not reassure me.

I can only hope the Democratic Party does not foul up their chances to win next fall’s election. I think the DNC was largely responsible for losing the 2016 election; I hope they’ve learned some lessons. And I hope the Democrats win not only the Whitehouse, but both houses of Congress as well. And then I hope they pursue investigations into the criminal activity of the current administration. I would like nothing better than to see little Donnie, Billie and Mackey (McConnell) all dressed up in orange jump suits and sharing a cell!!!

There is one stinking, huge pile of manure we are facing, and I’m not sure how we will deal with this mess. I want to continue my thoughts, but I will do that in a separate post. This is long enough!!!

The presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, Joe Biden “. . . is expected to offer his sympathies to [George] Floyd’s relatives and record a video message for Floyd’s funeral service, which is taking place later in the day (June 8, 2020) in Houston, [Biden’s] aides said. He is not expected to attend the service to avoid any disruption to mourners that could be caused by his Secret Service protective detail.” This is from the Reuters news agency, emphasis my own.

Last week, on the other hand, President Donald Trump, ordered protesters who were peacefully and legally gathered on the street and in the plaza in front of his residence removed forcibly. These people were protesting the same violence which led to George Floyd being killed. And what was the reason Trump wanted them removed? For one brief photo op in front of the church across the street, St John’s Church. Police used tear-gas and “flash-bangs” plus officers on horse back to very violently clear the area so that Trump could casually walk across the street, hold up a Bible (upside down, it appears!!) and get his photo taken.

The contrast could not be clearer. On one hand, Biden was sensitive to what his presence could mean to the memorial service for George Floyd. On the other hand, Trump caused major disruption, discomfort and injury just for a completely selfish, vain photo-shoot.

Earlier, a few days ago, I heard a news commentator, in another context, characterize Joe Biden’s actions as, “. . . what we used to expect our President to be like.” Trump, on the other hand, exhibits absolutely no sensitivity or concept of what his narcissistic behaviour looks like. He doesn’t care who gets hurt, or who is pushed around. When he decides he wants something, he cares nothing for anyone in the way.

Our nation cannot afford four more years of this kind of unfeeling, bullying behaviour.