The FT's Edward Luce: 'Muricans Need To Focus on the REAL Terrorists: Q Anon

"As awful and dangerous as Trump undeniably is, there may be something worse ahead for Republicans. That thing is called QAnon, the online phenomenon that has declared war on an international conspiracy of elitist pedophiles and cannibals, which, of course, doesn’t exist."  - Joe Conason, 'How A New Racist, Extremist Cult Is Eating A Debilitated GOP Alive'

The warning from the Financial Times' columnist  Edward Luce (Sept. 10,  'QAnon Cult Shows America Should Fear Enemy Within')  ought to be taken 1,000 times more seriously today than any mindrot blabber about "Islamic terrorists".   The reason, as Mr. Luce shows, is that QAnon and the Right's batshit crazy conspiracy hatchers are the real threat to our Republic - along with Trump the Traitor.   As Luce writes (ibid.):

"Mention terrorism and most Americans will instantly think of Islamist extremists.  In reality, America should nowadays be far more worried about far-right threats. Two-thirds of its terrorist incidents last year were carried out by homegrown extremists from the far-right. That rose to 90 per cent in the first five months of this year. Many of these were inspired directly or implicitly by QAnon, the extremist cult that is often downplayed as a fringe conspiracy group."

Luce is absolutely spot on correct. Worse, we have now beheld - as I noted in my Aug. 20 post-  at least one major media (CBS)  correspondent (Nancy Cordes)  comparing the real and serious JFK assassination conspiracy to the batshit nuts  QAnon claptrap.  

Cordes spouted:

"The QAnon conspiracy theories -  as nutty as they sound -  are not even that new.  Some of the theories resemble the plot of Oliver Stone's movie 'JFK' thirty years ago."

Adding that:

"polling finds that five to ten percent of Americans actually believe this stuff. That President Trump is this secret crusader working to take down a cannibalistic cabal within government"

But as I observed, Stone made no reference   to any "cannibalistic" cabal or conspiracy, i.e. which accuses one party of worshipping Satan,  eating babies and committing sex acts on children - as the loopy QAnon nuts believe.  So where is Cordes and her prof getting this baloney?   Clearly, she's just pulled it out of her ass like Trump has the conspiracy codswallop he peddles. 

Where I differ with Luce is when he writes:

"That label (fringe conspiracy group) should be kept for UFO spotters and people who think the British royal family killed Diana, Princess of Wales. As the FBI has concluded, QAnon bears all the ingredients of a “domestic terror threat”. 

Ok, hold strain!   I am a "UFO spotter", and make no apologies (or excuses)  for being one. This is given the object I observed (with about 50 others in 1962, in the parking lot of a Miami Gardens shopping center), was as real as a heart attack.  The full description of the event can be found in one of my first blog posts:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2007/12/perspective-on.html

The orange object - the size of the full Moon - darted overhead, hovered,  darted again then vanished within seconds.  No man-made craft could have imitated that velocity and at the relatively low altitude (est. 1,500 ft.) it was observed.  Indeed, Carl Sagan - we now know, See e.g.

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=76926

is also in this company.  Further, we know scientific investigation of so-called UFOs is feasible, i.e.

Is Scientific UFO Inquiry Possible? - Brane Space

So, Luce here chose a bad analogy.  Worse, he made the error of mistaking a bogus conspiracy ideation for a real conspiracy (i.e. not a fringe threat) just because the bogus version itself poses a real threat.   But a conspiracy claim can be pure twaddle  and still be a genuine domestic threat, especially if backed up by a horde of crazies who need ECT.

The perfect treatment for most QAnon conspiracy spreaders would be ECT, as Dr. Pat Bannister used to order for paranoid schizophrenics in the 1970s.

Leaving aside Luce's unfortunate miscues and false analogies, he is spot on  when he writes:

 "QAnon has the sympathy of senior U.S. figures, including, implicitly, that of Donald Trump. Whether the president knows much about the group’s bizarre cult theology is beside the point. He retweets them and welcomes their support. 

Luce's point regarding QAnon's crazies "having the sympathies of senior U.S. figures" is no exaggeration.  Indeed, we learned only yesterday (Denver Post, p. 6A) that "Vice President Mike Pence and top officials from Donald Trump's campaign are slated to attend a Montana fundraiser next week hosted by a couple who express support for the main QAnon conspiracy theory."

Actually, main  QAnon "ideation" as I keep saying. Which would be that (ibid.):

"Trump is fighting entrenched enemies in the government and its deep state which involves satanism, cannibalism and child sex trafficking."

No, you cannot make this B.S. up.  The top officials of our government are actually in neck deep to monumental conspiracy horse shit and a mind virus that could well bring this country down if it spreads much further.

The great danger to the U.S. will come if Mr. Trump loses in November as opinion polls indicate is likely. In QAnon theology, that will be the equivalent of the infidels occupying the Holy Land. QAnon’s world view is literally predicated on Mr Trump as their only hope of defeating the satanic forces that control America’s deep state. Many Americans do not take the threat seriously. This is despite the fact that QAnon-inspired gunmen have carried out or attempted several recent attacks."

But there is no danger if we are aware of this, and what these crackpots might do if the Dotard loses. So we then have National Guard troops as well as SWAT teams ready across all 50 states, and we order them to act as they would be trained to do in response to any terrorist outbursts.  You break the law with violence, you pay the price.   What we cannot do is allow ourselves to be intimidated by QAnon or any other domestic, Reich extremist terrorists.   In particular Luce's words below are apt and need to be taken seriously:

"Americans are used to screening out white perpetrators as lone wolves or people with mental health problems. They should listen more closely to the FBI, which says QAnon has the crucial markers of a terrorist group. QAnon thinks we are in a Manichean fight between the forces of dark and light. ...  QAnon claims that George Soros, the Rothschilds and other well-worn Jewish culprits are behind the plot. "

Adding:

"That one wraps itself in Islam and the other Christianity is beside the point. Nor are technological differences salient. Al-Qaeda exploited the early internet. QAnon is the spawn of social media and the dark web. What binds them is a violently apocalyptic world view."

These are critical insights that Luce has offered, and even more remarkable given how he blew it in regard to the "UFO spotters" balderdash and QAnon being a "real" conspiracy because its believers pose a threat.    Indeed, QAnon, as my Psych post doc (now tenure track) niece Shayl observes is "composed of sociopaths who have too little going on in their lives so discharge their skewed energies by investing in irrational beliefs that provoke violent reactions."

But left unsaid is how many "normal' citizens are still lured into the nutso loop of QAnon by investing or attending to seemingly ordinary coalitions or organizations. As Luce informs us:

"Barely a day goes by in the U.S. when groups of parents do not hold a “#SaveOurChildren” protest. Some are witless recruits to what sounds like an obvious cause. Others believe that “dark hats” in Washington protect a subterranean cabal that literally snatches children off the streets."

Luce (above) is referring to how this past year QAnon's minons, in an effort to grab some kind of normalcy, tried to co-opt the group.  This led to a temporary blocking of the hashtag on Facebook.  What thinking Americans need to process here is that all the most pathological mind virus-seeded belief systems seek to harness legitimate cover for themselves, to dupe the unwary into becoming unwitting allies.   Hence, it is essential to always have one's "spidey" radar up and working. That includes having that radar full on when one enters a social media domain. As Luce writes (ibid.):

"Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube bear huge responsibility for directing users towards such derangement. It took until June — almost three years after QAnon emerged — for Facebook to start taking down the group’s posts. "

Which is an absolute travesty and shows the extent to which Facebook -  in its lax approach to "free speech" -   bears enormous responsibility for helping to spread this mind virus. But it is also wise to know WHO are the most virulent spreaders of this pathogen of the mind. Mr. Luce takes pains to point out one,  Marjorie Taylor  Greene,  who  "describes Mr Trump as a righteous sword against evil."

In effect, Greene confers on the orange maggot pestilence fouling the White House and the nation a preternatural nobility or sanctity.  Presumably against the "left wing hordes" and "deep state"  these cranks believe are poised to take over the country under Biden.   This leads Luce to arrive at his somber conclusion:

"Common sense suggests the biggest terrorist threat would thus come in the aftermath of his defeat, which would trigger QAnon thoughts of apocalypse. The group’s theories existed before the arrival of “Q”, an anonymous poster who claims to be inside the deep state. Its first attack came a month after Mr Trump was elected when a man named Edgar Welch broke into a Washington pizza parlour with a semi-automatic weapon. He believed the parlour was run by Hillary Clinton and kept child sex slaves in its basement. “The intel on this wasn’t 100 per cent,” Welch later admitted in what ought to be the motto of our age."

Indeed.  And in the wake of a Biden landslide, now being predicted by more and more pundits, we need to have ready the full array of lawful authorities and state military deployments (e.g. National Guard) if need be.

This is to deal with any sore loser QAnon types who believe Trump's (rightful) clobbering represents some nefarious plot to destroy the nation.  In fact, it will be Biden and the 'good guys' who deliver a return to normality, decency, honesty and civility - totally absent during the past 4 years of Trump's malevolent reign. 

See Also:

How a New Extremist Racist Cult Is Eating a Debilitated GOP Alive

by Joe Conason |

And:

Conservatives and the Right

The Making of a Right-Wing Armed Insurgency: Homegrown Terrorists, Armed, Dangerous and Confronting Social Justice Demonstrators

by Bill Berkowitz | September 11, 2020 - 5:57am | permalink

AND:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-trump-his-rallies-are-church-and-he-is-the-gospel

CBS' Nancy Cordes Proves She's A Gullible Idiot By Comparing QAnon Conspiracy Manure to Oliver Stone's 'JFK'

Jackie lurches over the rear of the limo trying to snatch a dislodged fragment of JFK's skull. As Oliver Stone showed in his film 'JFK' the kill shot clearly came from the front, not the rear (where Oswald was alleged to be.)  Thus, one expects the momentum from GK rifle shot to propel blood, skull fragments backwards over trunk, which Jackie's motion supports.

Many in the Beltway- New York Media axis still harbor a grudge at Oliver Stone for his movie 'JFK'. They hysterically assert he "defiled history", "lied about the assassination" and "misled moviegovers".   If any of these clueless morons actually had clue one, they'd see Stone was closer to the truth of what happened that day in November, 1963, than anything the Warren Commission's puppets and tools claim today.

But when I saw and heard CBS' correspondent Nancy Cordes  this morning,  parroting a "professor's" words analogizing  'JFK' to the QAnon conspiracy,  it left me speechless, and dumbfounded.  It also signaled again the corporate media's inability to do critical thinking on the fly, which is worrisome given their inability to cover Trump in the 2016 fiasco election.

Cordes spouted:

"The QAnon conspiracy theories -  as nutty as they sound -  are not even that new.  Some of the theories resemble the plot of Oliver Stone's movie 'JFK' thirty years ago."

Of course, Cordes didn't expatiate on this balderdash. Why? Because there are NO points of comparison, analogy or likeness!    She proves it in her next remark, i.e.

"And yet the professor's polling finds that five to ten percent of Americans actually believe this stuff. That President Trump is this secret crusader working to take down a cannibalistic cabal within government"

But Stone made no reference   to any "cannibalistic" cabal or conspiracy, i.e. which accuses one party of worshipping Satan,  eating babies and committing sex acts on children - as the loopy QAnon nuts believe.  So where is Cordes and her prof getting this baloney? 

Let's also get it very clear from the get go that the assorted horse shit being peddled by these ignoramuses do not qualify as conspiracy theories, they are conspiracy ideations, claptrap or refuse. In  previous blog posts I noted Barbadian psychologist Pat Bannister's categorization of those who invoke conspiracies and how she differentiated them. As part of her construction of a theory of mind, specifically showing the role of lying in young children, she also noted adeptness at detecting lies was linked to accurate detection of real conspiracies.

Dr. Bannister's classification was simple:

1- Conspiracy analysts

2- Conspiracy theorists

3- Conspiracy crackpots or cultists


At the top of the hierarchy were conspiracy analysts, such as Mark Lane, Peter Dale Scott, Harold Weisberg, Richard Charnin and others (like yours truly).  These comprised serious people possessing some measure of intellect who brought their scientific, mathematical and other aptitudes to the investigation of multiple aspects of a putative real conspiracies like Iran-Contra and the JFK assassination.  These people put in real man hours and actually published their work in authoritative media (e.g. BOOKS - real books!) and respected forums as opposed to spreading bunkum through half-assed posts in the lowest dreg regions of the net, like 4chan and 8chan.

All of which latter garbage spawned the nascent QAnon conspiracy psychosis some three years ago, which mind virus left the dregs of 4chan for Youtube, and Facebook, where the virus infected millions more febrile brains.

By contrast, Stone was spot on in his presentation of 'JFK',  for example, the portrayal of the frontal head shot that actually killed the 35th president, which had to come from the grassy knoll.  The proof of the frontal shot was delivered by Parkland surgeon Charles Crenshaw in his book,  Conspiracy of Silence', a pdf version of which is given below.  

http://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Conspiracy_Of_Silence.pdf

Excerpt from Preface:

'"Through the years, there have been a thousand instances when I have wanted to shout to the world that the wounds to Kennedy's head and throat that I examined were caused by bullets that struck him from the front, not the back, as the public has been led to believe. Instinctively, I have reached for the telephone many times to call a television station to set the story straight when I heard someone confidently claim that Oswald was the lone gunman from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book De­pository, only to restrain myself-until now."

Stone's depiction of a clandestine CIA operation mounted against Kennedy was also spot on.   What most infuriated the CIA was Kennedy's willingness - after the Bay of Pigs debacle  (planned and orchestrated by the CIA) -  to exclude them from critical roles,  oversight and assignments as well as reorganizing the agency, e.g.  from the available archive files on Kennedy's response:

"Kennedy went further, creating a Defense Intelligence Agency, responsible to him, and soon mandating all overflights of Cuba be done by the Strategic Air Command, not the CIA. He also defined a list of directives on what the CIA could and could not, do. By the end of 1961, JFK's 'Special Group' had no less than 17 recommendations for the "reorganization and redirection of the CIA"."

Stone's portrayal of Oswald as the patsy in the conspiracy was also spot on.  Most researchers who've delved into this in much more depth than superficial 'buffs' come away with the conviction Oswald was set up as part of ZR/Rifle. A classic decoy.  However,  with the plot now turned against Kennedy. Oswald was likely used as the dupe or decoy so the actual perps (likely Cuban exiles, and trained assassins - from the Army's Ft. Benning Assassin school) could escape .   We also know these assigned mechanics would have used the CIA Assassinations Handbook, available since Operation PBSuccess in 1954, see e.g.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

As noted in Document 1:

"The idea of forming assassination teams ('K' groups) apparently originated with Castillo Arenas in 1952.  Adopting Castillo Arenas' concept the [  ] chief routinely included two assassination specialists in his training plans.  CIA training for sabotage teams in early 1954 also included creating a 'K' group trained to perform assassinations."

There is no doubt such a 'K' group was set to target Castro under ZR/Rifle (in 1962), but could easily be redirected to target Kennedy in late 1963.  The proof in the pudding was the letter ‘D’ – on the cover sheet of Oswald’s 201 file – indicating a  CIA Staff D  SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security Agency or NSA. As pointed out by Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994): 

“In 1961, when William Harvey headed Staff D, he was assigned the task of developing the CIA Assassinations Project, ZR/Rifle.”

When ZR/Rifle was turned from targeting Castro to JFK- probably in late 1962 or mid 1963 -  it was all over except for the triangulation of gunfire that took the 35th president out.  Far from being a case of: 'Oh the JFK conspiracy theorists just couldn't handle a nobody taking out Kennedy' - it was instead a case of  'My God! What have we come to as a nation when a sitting president can be dispatched in a veritable coup d'etat?'  The latter was based on intelligent, energized researchers having the guts and will to dig deep into those earlier assassination templates and files. 

For example, the (1975) Church Committee hearings and testimony were critical in establishing the existence of ZR/ Rifle.  Former CIA Director Richard Helms -in one session - spoke to the Committee at length about ZR/Rifle.  When pressed he even identified two hit team members by their code names: WI/ROGUE and QJ/WIN.  He described the former as "a stateless soldier of fortune and a criminal" (Church Committee Report, pp. 43-44) .

He summarized the second in these terse terms (ibid.):

"If you need somebody to carry out murder I guess you had a man who might be prepared to carry it out.”

More compelling still, a direct link of Richards Helms to William Harvey and QJ/WIN appears in a February 19, 1962 memorandum from Helms to Harvey obtained from the Assassination Archives in Washington, D.C.

Since the Assassination "K-Group" for ZR/Rifle would have had multiple members ('mechanics') it would perfectly fit Oliver Stone's portrayal of assassination using three teams in a triangulated crossfire. 

Further,  Stone's  key Pentagon character (played by Donald Sutherland) telling Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner) that the origin of the Vietnam War lay in LBJ's National Security Action Memorandum 273 is also dead on.    

Again, for more on the backstory of LBJ's NSAM -273 check out the information in the link below:

http://www.jfklancer.com/NSAM273.html 

 As Michael Parenti aptly put it (Dirty Truths, p. 156):

“To know the truth about the assassination of John Kennedy is to call into question the state security system and the entire politico-economic order it protects. This is why for over thirty years the corporate-owned press and numerous political leaders have suppressed or attacked the many revelations about the murder unearthed by independent investigators like Mark Lane, Peter Dale Scott, Carl Oglesby, Harold Weisberg, Anthony Summers."

None of the backup docs and sources (including Dr. Charles Crenshaw's book)  I've provided here, i.e. showing Stone's 'JFK' was on target in outlining  that conspiracy's major aspects,  has any remote resemblance to the QAnon horse manure.   Why?  Because there are NO legitimate documents that exist to support QAnon's wild, psychotic claims.  Something Nancy Cordes ought to have known before mindlessly parroting nonsense in her opening CBS News segment.  

See Also:

Bannon’s indictment confirms that the American right is made up of con artists


And:

• Let's Get This Straight: QAnon Are Conspiracy Cra...

And:

The GOP is a refuge for bigots and wackos

And:

‘They like Me Very Much’: Trump Gives a Horrifying Answer When Pressed on QAnon

Excerpt:

"The conspiracy theory behind the QAnon movement holds that Trump is secretly working to dismantle a satanic child trafficking ring at the upper echelons of society. It is completely out of touch reality,"

Will Young, Immature Voters Give Us 4 More Years Of Trump? A Sobering Take From The FT

Colorado College students yell 'Obamanos!' on their way to the polls in November, 2008.  Twelve years later too many 18-29 years old see no difference between Trump and Joe Biden -according to an FT article.

Ah well!  Just when one garnered some hope - from watching the Dem convention - we'd finally be on our way to ousting Trump, there appears a disturbing Financial Times piece by Patti Waldmeir ('Youngest American Voters Dislike The Choice In Front Of Them').  To which my initial response was: 'Huh? What choice? There is no choice!'    If you are given the choice of four more years of Hitler Jr. and a normal Democratic administration - what friggin' choice is there?  If you have to pick between a Nazi -loving, white nationalist loving swine and a decent human - albeit 78 years of age-   how hard can that be?

Evidently, pretty damned hard for the youngsters who think a national election is the same as a beauty contest or election for Prom King.   According to Ms. Waldmeir:

"America's youngest voters could hold the key to whether the U.S. elects its  oldest president in history in November. But, as Democrats convene online for a pandemic-plagued conventionthis week, they must face the fact that Generation Z (loosely defined as those born between 1995 and 2015)   are far from thrilled with the choices before them. 

That could translate into  fewer of the youngest Americans bothering to vote at all. A recent Pew Research Center showed that among 18 to 29-year-olds, strong support for their presidential   candidate was almost the same whether that person was the Republican president"

  WTF!?  Are you kidding me?  "Strong support"  for a petty, authoritarian racist wannabe Hitler?  What? Are these kids on an opiate and MJ high?   Any assclown with  an I.Q. over 10 can see there ought to be ZERO support among the young for Trump!  He is the one who will ensure their student debts keep piling up as his GOP enablers increase loan interest rates if he gets re-elected. Further, the ACA will be totally dismantled so they will have NO health care, period.  Plus, by the end of a 2nd Trump term we can fully expect 670,000 plus dead from Covid -19, the same number killed during the Civil War.  These imps really want to go there? Really? Or are they too fucking drugged and dumb to care? (Like the lowbrow college kid caught yelping "It's just a hoax!" on the NBC News last night- when challenged on his partying.)

 In the real world where normal brains and intelligence operates the young voter ought to be pro -Biden by 99-1. At least!  Oh, and they literally ought to be dragging their scrawny asses over "broken glass" to get Trump voted out. To use the metaphor from the 2018 midterms.

Ms. Waldmeir then cites a Pew Research poll of these young sprats, which at least found a 1-point advantage of Biden over Trump:  11%  to 10%.  Be still my heart!  I can scarcely believe it! A whopping 1 point margin..  Maybe these kids at least have a measurable I.Q. - even if not Mensa level.

She goes on (ibid.):

"And in the Pew survey, 67 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds do indeed put  themselves in the Biden camp. But a surprisingly high 30 per cent said they would either surely or possibly vote for Mr Trump, defying the  conventional wisdom that most Trump voters are older."

Again, one expects the younger vote would have more sense than aged Trumpie dotards, but evidently not.  I can only conclude from this that these Gen Z and Millennial voters are too low information to grasp the full dimension of the horrors Trump has already unleashed - and what he will if given a 2nd term to wreak havoc. 

"Even worse news for the Democrats: a Harris Poll conducted days before the convention found that 59 per cent of 18 to 39-year-olds said they would rather live in a socialist country  than a capitalist one, up 9 percentage points since last year. That could mean  only tepid support for the centrist Mr Biden, who ousted Bernie Sanders, the  favoured Democratic candidate among youthful socialists, in the primaries.

Speaking to Gen Zs from both ends of the political spectrum to find out how keen they are to vote, I learnt that some supporters of Mr Trump and the Democratic Socialists of America  have serious doubts.  Olivia Litzenberg, a 23-year-old DSA member from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Democratic convention is nominally being held, said the presumptive nominee most definitely will demotivate young voters.  You're not going to see us knocking doors for Biden!"

Uh, okay.  But can you at least get off your butts and bestir yourselves to vote for him?  As a long time DSA member myself, I also would have loved to have seen Bernie in the running, but also know the commie card would have been played against him big time by the Trump rats.  So the moderate voters we need to win in the general election would likely have themselves been demotivated to vote for a socialist.   But now, with Joe Biden the nominee, there is no luxury to pick and choose.  We have got to get rid of the embryonic Hitler in the White House, e.g.

Waldmeir quoting Lutzenberg again:

"She added, I am transgender, and living another four years under Trump will be directly deleterious to my standard of living. "

Standard of living?  How about being forced into a gender re-education camp guarded by QAnon recruits?    Think this is a joke?  Look at the history of how Nazi Germany came to be when the Reich laws replaced the normal ones.  And hey, anyone with even a normal I.Q. will grasp if he wins re-election Trump will be totally unfettered with no more elections to face.    

Even more degraded by 'stupid' (ibid.):

"Biden is the back to normal, and the normal sucked!"

Sucked more than the concentration camps you will get with Trump?  The slop you will have to eat in those camps, and the horrific treatment the QAnon guards will mete out to "make this trans kid cry"?

And of course there's the usual purist bellyaching - again disclosing radical immaturity and only rudimentary frontal lobes:

"Ms Litzenberg's partner, Pamela Westphal, 21, says the fact that Mr Sanders did not become the candidate was a wake-up call for a lot of young people, who felt that the system is failing us. She thinks Democratic turnout will be  suppressed. adding, 'I haven't met too many young people who are too gung-ho for Biden."

Awwww....poor widdo, disappointed kiddies.  You didn't get your guy picked in the primaries (never mind more voted for Biden, especially African Americans) and now you want to throw your sippy cups on the floor.  Or have another four years of Trump's horrors and Covid deaths.

As I wrote  in my June 16 post;

 "Here's what few of these idealist voters (and not- yet voters) don't get:  Not voting, going only the protest route instead, leaves the door open for much WORSE actors and outcomes. Exhibit A: Donald J. Trump.  In the words of a recent TIME essay (June 15, p. 30):

"If the George Floyd video was the match and the coronavirus the kindling, Donald Trump provided the gasoline. Since the start of his term Trump has turned the Oval Office into an instrument of racial, ethnic and cultural division. A man who both -sided a white supremacist march, went to war with NFL players protesting police brutality, called African nations 'shithole countries' and told American congresswomen to 'go back' to where they came from, was never going to appeal to harmony now."

Adding:

"I return to my theme that voting isn't just about getting "the ideal" candidate into office or having him or her perform to a preternatural, ideal standard of righting all wrongs, or sealing a "green New Deal". No, it also means,  even more importantly  - preventing the bad guys remaining in office or grabbing more power - like Trump, William Barr, Lindsey Graham etc.  Hence, the uber objective is stopping these vermin from completing their destruction of this democratic experiment.  In other words, voting is as much or more about limiting damage and eliminating toxic leaders as it is putting in the best."

The best thing these young, picky, undecided youth voters can do right now is get hold of   Masha Gessen's 'Surviving Autocracy', which sheds light on the destabilizing demagogue, Trump. As she writes: 

"No powerful political actor had set out to destroy the American political system itself - until that is, Trump won the Republican nomination. He was probably the first major party nominee to run not for president but for autocrat. "

  The past three and a half years, of course, have revealed not only his penchant for authoritarianism  - and worshipping autocrats like Rodrigo Duterte - but also for side -action destruction of the state and its protections via dismantling of regulations, blowing off congressional subpoenas,  and attacking everything from health care to women's  procreative rights and the environment. Oh, and sending storm troopers to attack protesters as in Portland.  It doesn't take a Mensa level IQ to see that all the above are set to be magnified in another Trump term. 

The youths covered in the FT piece notably display the same dismay at the "system" and their "powerlessness" to change it they always have.  But they seem disconnected to the fact they could wield the necessary power if they just voted in the same proportions  (65-70%)  every year as seniors do.   Waldmeir again:

"Those who feel ignored should vote to change that but they often don't. America's youngest voters could hold the balance of power in this election, but  that power matters little unless they choose to wield it. "

So why don't they? Who knows? But my best bet is political immaturity, especially those who express any indecision, or lean to Trump by even a minuscule degree.  Put simply, they have their heads screwed on backwards, or "up their asses" to use Janice's parlance.

Hopefully, the Young Turks will come to their senses in this pivotal election and before it's too late.  The WWII Germans who grew up in the Hitler era regret they never took the chance to keep Hitler out of power when they had it. None of them took him seriously, or his pronouncements and warnings.  They've had over 80 years to rue that lack of wise choice and remain one of the most hated peoples in Europe.  Let us hope our people are smarter,  or at least smart enough this time around to deny Trump another 4 years  in which his excesses will rival Hitler's first two years.

See Also:

Donald Trump

‘They like Me Very Much’: Trump Gives a Horrifying Answer When Pressed on QAnon

And:

Trump’s backing of far-right conspiracy theorist frames the stakes for 2020

Excerpt:

"No one should refer to what Trump is doing as “culture war politics” or “stoking divisions” or even “crazy Trump being crazy Trump.” It’s extreme radicalization. And we need to get the language right this time."


And:

Mission Imperative: Come November, Trump Must Go

by Michael Winship | May 13, 2020 - 5:50am | permalink

Excerpt:

"There must be one mission above all, one goal supreme: Vote this monster out of the White House. And along with him, tow to the nearest dump the clown car of malefactors who gave him license to cripple our republic.

HBO's John Oliver Blows It Conflating JFK Assassination With Kooky COVID Conspiracies

John Oliver- left- analogized John Hinckley's  1981 attempted assassination of Reagan with the 1963 Kennedy assassination on his show 'Last Week Tonight'.  Alex Jones (center) is the epitome of the low grade morons who create conspiracy codswallop- like his Sandy Hook false flag bunkum. Meanwhile, Mark Lane (left)  has all the attributes of a professional assassination researcher, see e.g.http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/05/rip-mark-lane-one-of-earliest-jfk.html

"How do we know that our own rational rejections of conspiracy theories are not themselves infected with beliefs so strong that they are, in effect, conspiracy theories too?" - Matt Ridley in 'Maybe We're All Conspiracy Theorists', The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 10-11, 2011

"Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: 'Do you actually think there's a group of people sitting around in a room, plotting things?' For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together - on park benches or carousels?"-

Michael Parenti in 'The Dirty Truths', p. 174

John Oliver, usually a bright guy, fell into the usual doo-doo trap of conflating unrelated conspiracy phenomena on his July 19th edition of 'Last Week Tonight'. What did he do?   In a whole segment headed 'Conspiracy Theories'- which included the cockeyed ideations about Covid -19 such as spun by  Judy Mikovits in her mockumentary 'Plandemic'-  he included the JFK assassination.   He cited it under the error of what he called "proportionality bias" or the erroneous belief that "big events must have big causes or actors".  

Hence,  Covid 19 has been rendered a huge event (by the media) because  Bill Gates wants to use it as an excuse to mount a vaccination scheme to inject microchips into an unsuspecting population to control them.  By the same token, "the JFK assassination caused such havoc and global shock that people could not believe one lone gunman did it" - so had to confect a much grander conspiracy.   

 Prompted by this misconstrued meme he goes on to compare the Kennedy assassination to the John Hinckley -attempted 1981 assassination of Ronald Reagan.  He plays a clip from a Barnard College "academic psychologist" named Rob Brotherton,  author of the book 'Suspicious Minds' e.g.

 who says:

  "The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan was a similar event in all regards except the president survived.  It was a smaller event in terms of its outcome so therefore we're satisfied with smaller expectations.  And so there have been almost no conspiracy theories about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan either then or subsequently."

Of course there were no conspiracy theories  after Hinckley's attempt on Reagan. Why would there be?  It's a 'chalk and cheese' difference  which Brotherton would know if he'd done the least bit of serious research into the JFK assassination, instead of making facile assumptions. First, the  two events are not the same in any respect, contrary to Brotherton's bollocks.  In the Reagan attempt it was one lone punk trying to fire a handgun at his target.  In the Kennedy assassination three teams of snipers had taken positions in Deaely Plaza for a triangulated crossfire to take him out.   The chances of success were  essentially 100 percent.

Sketch of Dealey Plaza and 3 of the 6  shots  fired at JFK (from Robert Grodin's 'Killing of a President')

The above  sketch shows the trajectories of 3 of the 6 shots fired at JFK.  Another reason comparing this hit to the attempted assassination of Reagan is imbecilic. Again, just because a person is a professor doesn't mean he can't also be an imbecile.  Certainly in matters of deep politics which requires vastly more familiarity than 'shoot from the hip' takes from dime store psychology.

Let's also note the rifles which fired that day in Dallas featured bullets with full metal jackets.  According to one 2001 echo correlation analysis (by D.B. Thomas) published in the journal Science and Justice (Vol. 41, p. 21), no fewer than 6 rounds had been fired at JFK including the fatal head shot that blew his brains backwards and which exposed the back of his skull -  missing on a Parkland table:

This photo appeared in the David Lifton book, 'Best Evidence', and was supported by Parkland surgeon Charles Crenshaw who attended to Kennedy's wounds.  See the Preface of  his book 'Conspiracy of Silence', a pdf version of which is given below.  

http://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Conspiracy_Of_Silence.pdf

Excerpt from Preface:

'Through the years, there have been a thousand instances when I have wanted to shout to the world that the wounds to Kennedy's head and throat that I examined were caused by bullets that struck him from the front, not the back, as the public has been led to believe. Instinctively, I have reached for the telephone many times to call a television station to set the, story straight when I heard someone confidently claim that Oswald was the lone gunman from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book De­pository, only to restrain myself-until now."

So no, with the high powered weapons arrayed against JFK he never had a chance.  With  the lone handgun pointed at Reagan, at least he did.  But I doubt either Brotherton or Oliver ever read a page of Lifton's book, or Dr. Crenshaw's. Why would they if they consider it on a par or spectrum with the piffle churned out by QAnon or the batshit crazy Covid quacks and deniers like Judy Mikovits?

Further, let's note the difference in enemies. Reagan was a hero of the military -industrial complex (MIC) as he proposed to spend trillions for new weaponry.  He did and by the end of his 8-year reign had run up a $2.7 trillion deficit. JFK was regarded as a traitor by the MIC  especially given his plans to pull out of Vietnam by calendar year 1965 under National Security Memorandum 263.

Add to that  his earlier rejection of Gen. Curtis Lemay's demand to bomb and invade Cuba during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when Lemay compared him to Neville Chamberlain.  As per the source article in The Baltimore Sun ('Bomb Cuba! Lemay Urged JFK',   based on the declassified tapes, where we read:

"Blasting Kennedy's cautious approach, the Air Force Chief, Gen. Curtis LeMay, told the President at a White House meeting on Oct. 19, 1962, ‘This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich…"

Kennedy also did something Reagan would never have done, i.e. to sign the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty with Khrushchev (in August, 1963)  which prohibited even anti-missile systems.  The Right wing and the military - national security complex went bonkers.   Finally, the coup de grace had to be JFK's effort at a secret rapprochement with Fidel Castro in the spring of 1963.  Key to this was ABC reporter Lisa Howard:

Who had  offered herself as an intermediary for the first bilateral talks between U.S. and Cuban officials in April, 1963.  (This was soon after doing a fairly sympathetic TV special with Castro earlier in the month. )   Further, Ms. Howard offered her 5th Avenue New York apartment as a venue for meeting with the Cuban ambassador to the UN.  This was already accepted as a report by the UK Guardian notes, e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/26/cuba.julianborger

Wherein we learn:

"The administration gave a nod to Ms Howard, who set up a chance meeting between Mr Attwood and the Cuban ambassador to the UN, Carlos Lechuga, at a cocktail party in her Park Avenue apartment.

The apartment then became a communications centre between Mr Attwood and the Castro regime. Castro's aide, Dr Rene Vallejo, called at pre-arranged times to talk to Mr Attwood, and in the autumn of 1963 suggested that Mr Attwood fly to Mexico from where he would be picked up by a plane sent by Castro."

Does anyone believe Reagan would have allowed anything analogous? Say secret meets with Libya's Muammar Ghaddafi? Give me a break. Yet Brotherton is dumb enough to believe the attempted hit on Reagan and the JFK assassination are "similar in all regards" without remotely processing why JFK's enemies were ten orders of magnitude more formidable than the lovesick little loser who tried to kill Ronnie Raygun.  And, of course, given all this, no one would have expected to see thousands of 'WANTED for Treason' posters, e.g.


As JFK faced in Big D the day he was killed.

But John Oliver is so mesmerized by Brotherton's balderdash, i.e. that the two events are similar except in one there was failure, that he responds: 

"Exactly! That kind of makes sense. So one man suddenly changing the world is inconceivable.  But one man failing miserably is not the least surprising."

But again, "one man" didn't change the world.  A coalition of conspirators did, including CIA  assets who had a bundle of reasons (including the firing of Allen Dulles).  For the extensive backstory read:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/ike-jfk-also-hostage-to-national.html

 As I note, what most infuriated the CIA was Kennedy's willingness - after the Bay of Pigs debacle -  to exclude them from critical roles, assignments as well as reorganizing the agency, e.g. 

"Kennedy went further, creating a Defense Intelligence Agency, responsible to him, and soon mandating all overflights of Cuba be done by the Strategic Air Command, not the CIA. He also defined a list of directives on what the CIA could and could not, do. By the end of 1961, JFK's 'Special Group' had no less than 17 recommendations for the "reorganization and redirection of the CIA"."

Oliver's lack of preparation for his 5 minute blitz spot with Brotherton discloses a sad unwillingness to plow just a little into the background of the assassination, including the existence of Oswald's intel  (e.g. 201) files and connections.  Hence,  his arguing Hinckley  was  just "another lone gunman" but in an unsuccessful attempt, while Oswald (coincidentally)  happened to be successful.  Except one minor problem: Oswald never killed JFK.  No way in hell - not with the pathetic excuse for a WWII edition Italian carbine (Mannlicher-Carcano)  he was purportedly using, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-fhe-jfk.html

John Oliver's egregious assumptions  to do with 'proportionality bias' applying to the JFK hit include not only this conflation but trying to put Oswald into the same 'lone nut' mold as Hinckley.  (Who had fantasies of offing Reagan to please his imagined paramour, actress Jodie Foster)  In this way, Oliver also succumbed to what I call  the "A useless nobody kills big shot in random world" meme.  This trope is not new but has been peddled in various forms for nearly 55 years now.  For example, mathematician John Allan Paulos fell for it when he wrote in his book Irreligion,(p. 6):

"Lee Harvey Oswald was an unprepossessing nobody who seemed ill-suited for the job of Giant-slayer. There had to be something more, and maybe there was, but one added reason for the intense fascination with other possibilities was that significant consequences must necessarily be the result of significant perpetrators."

But again, in this (JFK)  case there were  'significant perpetrators'  - but not Oswald.  Further we now have all the files available (which we didn't in 1964-65 when the Warren Commission Report came out), to at least know the Kennedy assassination was based on a coherent conspiracy - and also that Lee Oswald was not part of it, e.g.

A Hard Fact: All Necessary JFK Files HAVE Been Rel...

 Problem is the mainstream media was muzzled on presenting the details. (Likely on account of the CIA's 'Operation Mockingbird nexus). As author Michael Parenti opens eyes in his book, The Dirty Truths, Lee Oswald was no John Hinckley:

“Lee Harvey Oswald spent most of his adult life not as a lone drifter but directly linked to the U.S. intelligence community. All of his IQ tests show that he was above average in intelligence and a quick learner. At the age of eighteen in the U.S. Marines he had secret security clearance and was working at Marine Air Control in Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan, a top secret location from which the CIA launched U2 flights and performed other kinds of covert operations in China. The next year he was assigned to El Toro Air Station in California with security clearance to work radar. “

Parenti 's claims of an intelligence connection all emerged in John Newman's book, Oswald and the CIA - which I will bet neither John Paulos or John Oliver ever read. Though they feel themselves qualified to speak or write of Oswald:  a) being involved in the first place (other than a patsy) , and b) as a "nobody".   Indeed, examination of Oswald's CI/SIG file showed he had access to:

“The locations of all bases on the west coast, all radio frequencies for all squadrons, all tactical call signs, strength of all squadrons, the number and type of aircraft in each, names of commanding officers, and authentic codes of entering and exiting all ADIZ radar ranges.”

If then Oswald was as lame as claimed by the likes of Paulos, Oliver  and also  CBS anchor Eric Sevareid  in a special 55 years ago, i.e.

"Who could believe power and majesty can be wiped out in an instant by a skinny, weak-chinned little character".

Then he'd not have been entrusted with the critical material and information noted above.  Here, of course, Sevareid can perhaps be excused for his unprofessional belittling of Oswald's import because the JFK Records Act was still some 25 years away when Sevareid made that remark. But the  two Johns -- Oliver and Paulos -  ought to have known better and at least should have done some minimal serious research before either writing Oswald off as a nobody, or comparing him to the loser John Hinckley or worse, imputing the assassination to him at all. 

Lee Oswald then was no kook but a bona fide intel operative. Most researchers who've delved into this in much more depth than superficial 'buffs' come away with the conviction Oswald was set up as part of ZR/Rifle. A classic decoy.  However,  with the plot now turned against Kennedy. Oswald was likely used as the dupe or decoy so the actual perps (likely Cuban exiles, and trained assassins - from the Army's Ft. Benning Assassin school) could escape .   We also know these assigned mechanics would have used the CIA Assassinations Handbook, available since Operation PBSuccess in 1954, see e.g.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

As noted in Document 1:

"The idea of forming assassination teams ('K' groups) apparently originated with Castillo Arenas in 1952.  Adopting Castillo Arenas' concept the [  ] chief routinely included two assassination specialists in his training plans.  CIA training for sabotage teams in early 1954 also included creating a 'K' group trained to perform assassinations."

There is no doubt such a 'K' group was set to target Castro under ZR/Rifle (in 1962), but could easily be redirected to target Kennedy in late 1963.  The proof in the pudding was the letter ‘D’ – on the cover sheet of Oswald’s 201 file – indicating a  CIA Staff D  SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security Agency or NSA. As pointed out by Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994): 

“In 1961, when William Harvey headed Staff D, he was assigned the task of developing the CIA Assassinations Project, ZR/Rifle.”

When ZR/Rifle was turned from targeting Castro to JFK- probably in late 1962 or mid 1963, it was all over except for the triangulation of gunfire that took the 35th president out.  Far from being a case of 'Oh the JFK conspiracy theorists just couldn't handle a nobody taking out Kennedy' - it was instead a case of  'My God! What have we come to as a nation when a sitting president can be dispatched in a veritable coup d'etat?'  The latter was based on intelligent, energized researchers having the guts and will to dig deep into those earlier assassination templates and files. As opposed to taking the easy way out,  say by erroneously invoking a "proportionality bias" like John Oliver did.  

As Michael Parenti aptly put it (op. cit., p. 156):

“To know the truth about the assassination of John Kennedy is to call into question the state security system and the entire politico-economic order it protects. This is why for over thirty years the corporate-owned press and numerous political leaders have suppressed or attacked the many revelations about the murder unearthed by independent investigators like Mark Lane, Peter Dale Scott, Carl Oglesby, Harold Weisberg, Anthony Summers."

On the face of it, and in hindsight, Oliver would have done better in his main story on CTs to leave the JFK assassination totally out of his examples, and focus instead on the real nutso Covid crap like 'Plandemic'  etc.  

 The end result was that, while trying to focus on how the Covid conspiracy ideations are wreaking havoc on our pandemic response, the interjection of the JFK assassination needlessly muddied the waters via a useless conflation of real and unreal conspiracies.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-pre-assassination-framing-of-lee.html

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-pre-assassination-framing-of-lee_1807.html

And:

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