What Did Justin Bieber Have To Do With Reviving The PizzaGate Insanity On Tik Tok?

"I duz know Pizzagate be real cuz I research it! Oh, and Justin did give us a signal with he hat!"

'PIZZAGATE CONSPIRACY' THRIVES ANEW IN TIK TOK ERA'

So screamed  the header in yesterday's Denver Post (p. 4A),  catching my attention, especially as I had thought the vile Pizza Gate conspiracy bunkum was long since dead and buried.  So I was not prepared to read this lead- in paragraph:

"Four minutes into a video that was posted on Instagram last month, Justin Bieber leaned into the camera and adjusted the front of his black knit beanie. For some of his 130 million followers it was a signal."

Who would have believed the idiotic conspiracy nonsense known as "PizzaGate" would surface again in this election cycle?   And from a purported "signal" by Justin Bieber, or so millions of his followers construed it.   (To quote Janice: "Those kids need to get a life away from the stupid screens!")

For those who don't remember  PizzaGate was born in 2016 in online forums like 4chan and Reddit, where right-wing supporters of Donald J. Trump pored over hacked emails from John D. Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s senior campaign adviser, looking for evidence of wrongdoing. Some emails referring to Mr. Podesta’s dinner plans mentioned pizza. A 4chan participant then connected the phrase “cheese pizza” to pedophiles, who on chat boards use the initials “c.p.” to denote child pornography.

A huge pusher was Michael Flynn, the recently released (thanks to Bill Barr's interventions) co-conspirator with Trump in the Russian 2016 interference, who had tweeted at the time:

"Until Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story."

The dimwit clearly not grasping that there is no logical basis to prove a negative. One proves positive claims or propositions (see e.g. my posts on symbolic logic) not negative claims.  But this is par for the course in Trump land.  Flynn even went on to write:

"U decide. NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails. Money Laundering. Sex Crimes w. Children etc."

In fact, the NYPD blew no such whistle, and indeed the FBI admitted they had nothing, i.e. on trying to tie Anthony Weiner's emails to any suspect and nefarious misdeeds.  Never mind, the thing was humped right up to the election, even as articles came out pointing to the transparent rubbish, e.g.  as one writer from the UK Guardian put it:


"In any other year a story like 'Pizzagate'  would get you laughed out of a room. The conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was part of a sex-trafficking ring run out of a pizza shop is bizarre and disturbing from start to finish.  But in 2016, a year when nothing makes any sense any more, it can be cited as a motive for a crime".

Never mind, the hijacked brains invested in this bullshit were 100 percent convinced  they were really global citizens conducting a "worldwide citizen investigation" to rout the "evil motherfuckers and elites"  behind it.

The nature of the whole fiasco, when I considered it in retrospect, was that it had much more in common with a mind virus, packaged as a conspiracy ideation,  than a "theory".  Indeed the latter is absolutely the worst term to use.  When one speaks of a theory he at least means something with a residue of rationality, a degree of empirical evidence and consistent explication and sense, even if later proven wrong.

The  mind virus is radically different, but must be understood if we are to parse the latest Pizzagate mutation.    This evidently started with a documentary:  “Out of Shadows,” made by a former Hollywood stuntman,. This offal was released on YouTube in April and passed around the QAnon community.  See e.g. the nature of QAnon in this earlier post:

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

 Recall  that the three primary attributes of a mind virus (as originally set out by Jacques Monod, in his Chance and Necessity) are: 

1) performance value, 

2) propagation value and 

3) infectious value.

Performance value incorporates the particular vehicle (or medium) that produced the most immediate and pronounced changes in the brain exposed to it.  There is little doubt this was the mockumentary 'Out of the Shadows' which had all the earmarks of a psychotic ideation ripe for dispersal to the uninformed, ignorant and gullible. 

 Propagation value indicates how far and wide  the particular  mind virus is spread, and what means were employed to achieve this.  Again, not hard to discern:  In May, teenagers on TikTok - with too much free time on their hands-  began promoting both the mockumentary and codswallop about Justin Bieber touching his beanie as a signal he was a Pizzagate victim. as reported earlier by The Daily Beast.

Specifically, someone  with little more than air between the ears had posted a comment asking Bieber to touch his hat if he had been a victim of a child-trafficking ring known as PizzaGate. Thousands of comments then flooded in, but there was no evidence that Bieber had seen that message. However, his innocuous gesture set off a flurry of online activity, which highlighted the resurgence of the mind virus.  As with all such viruses, any unrelated gesture, word, or wink is instantly transmuted into something sinister.  Add in some confirmation bias and Voila!  the "conspiracy" is alive and well.

Infectious value embodies the ease with which other brains can be infected. And we now know that most of Bieber's followers - since he did touch that hat-   became convulsed with hysteria as the apparent confirmation appeared. Viewers quickly uploaded hundreds of videos online analyzing Bieber’s action. Of one thing we may be sure: None of those videos had any remote resemblance to the Zapruder or Nix  films of the JFK assassination.  That was hard, cold brutal fact with a head exploding and brains erupting.  As opposed to superimposed brain burps on mental flatulence.

But this is how infectious value takes hold and so the videos were translated into Spanish, Portuguese and other languages, amassing millions of views. Fans then left thousands of comments on Bieber’s social media posts asking him if he was safe. Within days, searches for “Justin and PizzaGate” soared on Google, and the hashtag #savebieber started trending.  All now translating into powerful confirmation of a mind virus at work in millions of infected brains.

 Now, fast forward: A  week ago (as reported in the NY Times), Rachel McNear, 20, watched “Out of Shadows,” which has now garnered 15 million views on YouTube. She then turned to Twitter, where she came across Mr. Bieber’s supposed association with PizzaGate. After reading more on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, she created a one-minute description of her "research"  on the topic and posted it to TikTok on Monday.

Okay, here's a newsflash: NO serious research of any sort is "posted" to a medium like Twitter or Tik Tok - which I refer to as cartoon media.  If you wish to post serious research you do so in a blog post, or better a paper that has a chance of publication in a magazine or journal.  So what Ms. McNear produced was not "research" but a verbal cartoon begotten from a mind virus she absorbed after being exposed to the original source of infection, 'Out of the Shadows'.   One can only express sympathy for her, as with the other infected, and hope that in future they inoculate their brains with critical thinking.  (Which, alas, is no longer imparted in our educational system  - even a university level.)

More worrisome, PizzaGate is now reaching a level that nearly exceeds its 2016 fever pitch, according to an analysis by The New York Times. TikTok posts with the #PizzaGate hashtag have been viewed more than 82 million times in recent months. Google searches for PizzaGate have skyrocketed.  All this again points to the infectious value as well as propagation value of the original meme.  This is especially given it soon appeared in bogus publications like The Vigilant Citizen and The New Nationalist on Facebook and Instagram. On Twitter and YouTube, other users amplified the content.
  
According to the Times analysis:

"In the first week of June, comments, likes and shares of PizzaGate also spiked to more than 800,000 on Facebook and nearly 600,000 on Instagram, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool for analyzing social interactions. That compares with 512,000 interactions on Facebook and 93,000 on Instagram during the first week of December 2016. From the start of 2017 through January this year, the average number of weekly PizzaGate mentions, likes and shares on Facebook and Instagram was under 20,000."

Let's again note this is not a joke, and while the temptation is to howl with  laughter at the kids' gullibility - it can lead to tragedy.  Weeks after the November 2016 election, Edgar M. Welch, 32, a North Carolina resident, drove six hours to Comet Ping Pong to free what he believed were enslaved children. He shot several rounds from a military-style assault rifle into a locked closet door of the pizzeria and eventually surrendered to the police. In 2017, he was sentenced to four years in prison.

According to Alice Marwick, a disinformation expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, quoted in The NY Times:

“PizzaGate never went away because it encompasses very potent forces,  including children’s safety and the power of elites.  But now there is so much scaffolding from people who have researched it, it wasn’t hard for others to pick up from there.”

Which, of course, doesn't explain why the sordid bunkum is tied to stalwarts in the Democratic Party and its leaders, Why not the Repukes who are, after all, the corporate party who have given trillions to the wealthiest and now want to rip away health care in the midst of a pandemic?  It doesn't add up.  Logic would dictate that the GOP and Trump be the presumed instruments for such foul deeds, but that isn't the case, it's Hillary, Podesta and other Dems for god's sake.

Pat Banister the Bajan psychiatrist who I've cited in previous posts, in connection with her theory of mind to do with conspiracy ideations, had to deal with similar hysteria back in 1973.    At that time Barbados was rife with rumors of children being taken for Obeah purposes.  (Obeah is a kind of primitive Bajan practice analogous to the Haitian voodoo).  Kids around the island -  166 square miles so rumors spread fast- became convinced the "Baccoo man"  was out hunting for them to use in an Obeah ritual.  The unfounded rumors spread after it was (mistakenly) reported some kids had "vanished".  (They'd actually been sent away to relatives in the states, mainly Brooklyn, a prime Bajan destination.)  This then led to several cases of hysteria that Dr.Banister had to deal with.  The only solution at that time was for the teens to be committed to the Psychiatric Hospital where they'd usually be administered  ECT and given largactyl.

One would hope the teens and others infected by this latest PizzaGate mind virus would not also need similar therapy to secure their mental release from the "demons" of batshit crazy bunkum  now infesting their brains.   As the Guardian author concluded his piece:

"Pizzagate is a lie but what it says about our society is real"

What it says about our society  - much of it - is that it has lost the ability to reason. A nation capable of reason in a critical thinking context would never fall for transparent  twaddle like PizzaGate.

See Also:

2020 Elections | Internet

TikTok Teens and the Trump Campaign: How Social Media Amplifies Political Activism and Threatens Election Integrity

Excerpt:

TikTok teens and K-pop fans took over anti-Black Lives Matter hashtags such as #WhiteLivesMatter and drowned out the anti-Black Lives Matter messages with GIFs and memes. When people on social media platforms look for these hashtags, they’re met with seemingly unending images and fan videos of popular K-pop groups such as Twice and EXO.  This, in turn, leads algorithms on social media platforms to classify such trending hashtags as K-pop trends rather than political trends, thwarting the anti-Black Lives Matter activists who tried to use the hashtags to promote their messages.

Yesterday's House Judiciary Hearings - Another Disruption Effort By Reep Renegades, Screwballs & Traitors

Conspiracy Peddling Ape Owen Shroyer Gets Frogmarched Out of Hearings yesterday.

Corn pone Reeptard Doug Collins uses Milk Carton image of Adam Schiff to try to turn House Judiciary Hearings Into a Three Ring Circus

Monday’s  House Judiciary hearing - lasting nine hours - did not open smoothly and so it was just as well Janice was not able to watch the repeated antics of the Reeptard monkeys, apes and swine.   After all,  these derelict renegades and their hangers on behaved worse than monkeys and apes - and swine - in a zoo.  From the outset, in what ought to have been a somber and serious space (and time) when Congress began arguments on what that testimony meant, the Reep traitors were determined to try to turn it into a circus.

.

Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, indeed,  had barely begun introducing the session when a bearded ape named Owen Shroyer  got up from the public seats at the rear of the chamber and initiated a disturbance.  Much like the Reep gangsters who invaded the SCIF secure room (for deposed witnesses)  two months ago, e.g.

Reepos "Storming" House Committees' SCIF Site S...

This punk was committed to chaos..  He screamed like a Mandrill ape stoked on a mix of MJ candy, meth and crack:

“Americans are sick of your impeachment scam! Trump is innocent!You’re the one committing treason. America is done with this!”

Clearly, the bearded baboon has got his treasonous perps mixed up. It is in fact the likes of him and the assembled 17 Reeptard renegades guilty of treason.  Thankfully, a uniformed Capitol policeman frog marched the scum ball from the chamber, even as he yelped: “You can kick me out, but he’s the one committing crimes.”    

Thereby reaffirming the urgent need to toss the imp into a rubber room and apply the wires for ECT - oh and while in a straitjacket.  That Shroyer is a certified nutcase was already well known given  he'd worked at the now discredited far-right conspiracy web site Infowars.  That would be the same Infowars set up by the crackpot Alex Jones, e.g.


Seriously, folks, take a gander at that mug and tell me he doesn't have twenty screws loose! Now tell me any loon who works for him wouldn't have 40 screws loose.

To refresh everyone's memory, Shroyer was the same loony tune actively spreading the most atrocious  conspiracy ideation of the 2016 presidential election, that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring through a string of pizza restaurants. The spreading of those misshapen ideations and fabricated memes led to staff at the targeted restaurant (Comet Pizza in D.C.)  being subjected to threats and harassment, with an armed psycho turning up with an AR-15 assault rifle in December 2016.   The kook threatened staff and then shot off the lock of a cupboard, supposedly determined to liberate the chained and manacled Hillary sex slaves. Fortunately, no one was killed, and the phantasmagorias of psychotic Reich wing sewer dwellers reached a benign ending.

No, folks, you cannot make this shit up. It happened, and it was driven by crazy asswipes like Shroyer, Michael G. Flynn (son of indicted criminal  Mike Flynn) and Alex Jones.  Their insane allegations further, were not "free speech" in any manner, shape or form. Their psychotic babbling and conspiracy lunacy were the ravings of  madmen that could have gotten lots of people killed.

Though the deranged gunman was sentenced to four years in jail. Shroyer is evidently still in business, mindfucking millions with this gibberish.. Indeed, as the UK Guardian reported, his Twitter account recorded his arrest, pushing the hashtag #FreeOwenShroyer. 

I have a better one: #ECT Shroyer'sApeBrain

But let's be clear here: Shroyer’s disruption was not just an incidental disturbance, but an opening salvo in the real battle underlying the impeachment hearings: a battle over the power to shape reality.  As the hearings continued, the Reepo members repeatedly tried to drown out Nadler’s remarks and loosen his grip on proceedings, shouting out points of order, and then demanding a rollcall vote on them. 

The repeated votes,  each requiring committee members to voice an 'aye' or 'nay', ensured that they all remained in the chamber throughout the hearing. One of the points of order, raised by Mike Johnson of Louisiana, complained that the argument of the majority counsel, the lawyer making the case against Trump, “impugns the motives of the president”. Therefore it represented a violation of parliamentary rules – ignoring the fact that that is precisely what impeachment is all about. (Also, that given the lawyer was not an actual member of the Judiciary, such a point of order would not apply anyway.)  But this again is the Reeptards' game, to keep the shitstorm churning and hopefully also the viewership down.

Shroyer is on the leading edge of a massive effort to create a parallel universe, conjured up from a constantly replenished cloud of fabrications. The Pizzagate incident demonstrated the real-world consequences of such an invented reality and why we can no longer play games or pretend it's harmless or doesn't exist. 

 I earlier quoted  journalist Julia Ioffe on 'All In' two weeks ago - who noted the predicament of this country now with half its citizens mind-fucked by false news, misinformation and outright propaganda, e.g.. 

"What we're seeing is two parts of the population are living in parallel information universes only one of which is true. That also exists in Russia and now we have that happening here."

Adding that: "as the scandal started brewing and continuing through the hearings,  the people trapped in the right wing media kept harping that 'Oh they never got over the Russia hoax' and they kept on about the Steele dossier.  It's like those conspiracy theories never went away.  It's like Devin Nunes asking 'Hi, witness, have you heard of conspiracy theory 72 B.?  That stuff is all from the Mueller era and it's been baked in."

And make no mistake the Reeps, the Infowars conspiracy wackjobs and their allies are determined to keep the pot boiling with bollocks.   As I also wrote in a previous post, e.g.

The Clueless Media Are Not Our Friends As House Ju...

The media  - most of it - are not perceptive reporters and information brokers, but rather clueless dupes who play into the hands of the reality -destroying renegades like Shroyer, Jones, and most of the Republican trolls (e.g. Doug Collins, Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan) determined to protect the criminal occupying the White House.  They do this by treating the whole lot with too much deference and respect when they've done nothing, nada, to earn it.  Most accounts of the Reep efforts at chaos, e.g. hurling their points of  order and spurious parliamentary challenges in cascading volleys -  were treated in too many press reports as "business as usual",  a normal part of the formal hearings.  Not as outlandish aberrations from a party that has devolved into swine, traitors and trolls.   Those interruptions sometimes reached the level that Mr. Nadler – a 72 year-old congressional veteran – struggled at times to fend them off, hammering away with his gavel, his authority teetering at times before he ultimately steadied himself.

As media specialist Eric Boelhert observed in a recent blog post:

"Extreme times call for extreme measures, but the Beltway press just isn't willing to make that move in the Trump era. As a consequence, the news media fail to accurately capture the radical changes now underway in the country, and how today's Republican Party has become purposefully untethered from reality.  

Donald Trump remains a resolutely radical player who has eviscerated decades of protocols and traditions. Yet so much of the press refuses to cover him that way, opting instead to cling to Beltway traditions for how presidents are normally covered (i.e. We can't call him a liar!). But as the high-profile impeachment hearings confirm (along with Trump's recent disastrous and embarrassing trip to the NATO summit), new and bolder language is needed to accurately describe what's transpiring." 

I am one of those who choose to use "bolder language" to describe what the Reeptards and crazed asswipes like  Shroyer and Jones (as well as Limbaugh) are doing.  And I make no apologies for not using niceties of  language that signals a modicum of respect. Why would I if  I'm describing the visible actions of two- legged rodents and roaches?   Would I do so for the 4 or six- legged vermin? Then why would I for the 2-legged form out to destroy our Republic?  Am I then convinced beyond any doubt that the Republican protectors of Trump are all acting out of uniformly bad faith, bad intentions, with no exceptions? You bet your sweet bippy, I am!

Read more  The aim now of the REEPs and their associated conspiracy allies (e.g.  claiming that  that secret Clinton emails had been hidden on an internet server located somewhere in Ukraine.)  is to insulate Donald Trump from damaging facts as well as legal accountability.   In effect, so that he could ultimately, as he has boasted, shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and get away with it. The Republican strategy in Congress is to fight on two fronts, arguing there are no facts that warrant impeachment while at the same time pursuing a disinformation campaign promoting the Crowdstrike Ukraine conspiracy theory

 The King of Corn Pone Traitors-  Ranking Repuke member Doug Collins- tried to get creative with his traitor enabling of Trump by resorting to the display of a 4 ft high poster showed Schiff in a “Missing” notice on the side of a carton of milk.  Reeptardo that he is, Collins evidently had no clue that  as chair of another panel (the House intelligence committee), Schiff was not supposed to be there.  Never mind, the objective wasn't to adhere to facts or reality but to foment a sense of conspiracy around the hearings.  I.e. so the lower half of the IQ curve wouldn't accept them. 

Here's the main takeaway on why the House Dems merit being treated with respect - as well as the impeachment inquiry -  and the Republicans (Repukes) merit only contempt. The Democrats are making every concerted effort to emphasize the import of the moment, with the fate of the Republic at stake.  They are not treating impeachment lightly but as a constitutional duty faced with an upstart who really believes he can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.  This is the mindset of a monarch, or a person of such monstrous ego and narcissism he believes he's a monarch.  

The Republicans, by contrast have sought to make light of and denigrate the proceedings as much as possible, including treating them as a distraction when they aren't actively disrupting them.  Hence, using chaos and gangsterism they are attempting to delegitimize the entire process.  They are, in other words, acting like spitball- throwing juvenile delinquents in a class,  who - as Brother Dominic of Pace High did more than once 56 years ago - was not averse to lifting by the ear and hurling  out of his English 2A classroom.

  This is why I make no apologies for the free use of epithets and disparaging terms ("Reeptards". "Repukes" etc.) whenever I refer to the Republicans, irrespective of who they are - as long as they're providing cover for Traitor Trump. Even the Reep lawyer (for the House Intel Committee)  Stephen Castor,  lied through his teeth yesterday, claiming Ukraine didn't know Trump was extorting the country by withholding military aid, saying:

"At the time of the July 25th phone call officials in Kiev did not know the security assistance was paused. They did not know it was paused until it was reported publicly in the U.S. media on August 28th."

Which is a bold- faced lie, so Castor lied under oath.  We already know (and heard, and saw) Laura Cooper, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Russia, Ukraine & Eurasia, testified during the Intel impeachment hearing: "Flag Ukrainian concerns" in an email the same day as Trump's July 25th phone call.

So Castor merits no more respect than the other Reep thugs, liars, and traitors.  Thus,  unlike the bought out media I see the Reeps for what they are:  human vermin- who warrant no respect nor any efforts to dignify their traitorous acts and attempts to destroy this nation. Those who don't appreciate my colorful descriptors are free to ignore them or my posts. Your choice!

As for Janice's reaction to the Repug zoo and the hearings?

"I am just exhausted by the political scene. A big part of that is witnessing the craven descent into sniveling, bootlicking  servitude  of elected Republican members of Congress."

See also:

Media | Republicans

The Press Doesn't Have—or Won't Use—the Proper Language to Describe Today's Radical Republican Party

And:

Donald Trump | Impeachment | Senate

The Senate Trial Will Be a Shitshow. Can Democrats Beat Trump's Disinformation Machine?

Barr Disgraces DOJ By Invoking Cockamamey "Russiagate" Conspiracy Idiocy - To Justify Criminal Investigation Of DOJ

"You shall do my bidding catching  flies as a go-fer conspiracy toad until I say no more!"


"I think this is the most concerning development out of the Justice Department we've seen since Donald Trump became president.  Look, obviously if there was a crime committed it ought to be investigated. But we know more about the Russia probe than probably any investigation in the Justice Department's history.  Bob Mueller wrote a 450 page report that became public, the DOJ released a FISA application which it's never done before in its history...and through all of that we've never seen a single evidence of a crime, or an allegation of a crime that would give a single predicate for an investigation. 

I think it's notable in this story it doesn't say what the allegation of a crime is that the Department is now investigating.   I don't think it's a coincidence that the day after an ambassador goes up to the hill and gives incredibly damning evidence about the president extorting a foreign government that we see this leak from the Department of Justice. And I think it's incredibly concerning about the administration of justice and the rule of law in this country."  -   Matt Miller, former Director of Public Affairs, Justice Department, on 'Last Word' Thursday night.

"What do you do when one party stakes its faith — and ultimately government itself — on observable, measurable realities while the other has made the cynical decision to cast these principles away? How do you strategize? How do you cope?"  - Jennifer Senior, NY Times Friday,

Assume for the sake of argument there is a parallel reality in which one nation's political party believes it can control that nation's governance in perpetuity. Impose an indefinite rule of autocratic, one party fascism if you will.  That nation has a constitution which decrees a separation of powers and the existence of a co-equal branch of government to the executive. However, this political party fancies it can rig the system - with the right president-  to remain in power as long as it wants. Also to render the co-equal branch a neutered nonentity. How to do it?

First define a 'unitary executive' doctrine giving an authoritarian president not only total power over the executive branch but also transcendent power over all branches.  

Second, enable this power to be tested with the election of the "right" candidate. Preferably a flouter of norms who also believes the constitution is just a piece of paper and that he can bully or intimidate any group in the nation: intelligence agencies, media, any other political parties, or other voters, i.e. who never voted for him.

Get this character to then commit impeachable offenses, say collaborating or conspiring with a foreign power to steal an election to shoehorn him into office. Then challenge any supposed co-equal branch to hold him in check or administer  constitutional justice. Such that even if he shot someone on the parallel reality's 5th avenue there'd be no crime, and he'd get away with it.

Then third, to escape any predicament of accountability (by media and the co-equal branch), recruit an attorney general who will not be independent but do this odious autocrat's bidding and investigate the investigators of the original debacle and conspiracy, i.e. that got him into office.   This will come in especially handy when he's later caught shaking down the head of another foreign power to dig up dirt on a political opponent.

Far fetched nonsense? Nope, it's already unfolding even as we've seen William Barr now commence a criminal inquiry into the alleged "Russiagate" conspiracy despite Mueller's judicious probe (involving dozens of FBI agents and others) that led to the Mueller report, e.g.

www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

In other words, Barr and his Justice Department is in the process of opening a criminal inquiry into its own  Russia investigation.  See e. g.  NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/politics/john-durham-criminal-investigation.html

How can this head popping anomaly be, you ask? Well, because the DOJ has now been taken over by rank authoritarians and puppets of such who intend to push the specious doctrine of the unitary executive to its limits, devil take the hindmost.  

No surprise then that Barr has mutated into an officious, hop scotching  human toad -   hopping all over the world trying to dig up dirt on his own agency, the intelligence agencies under its roof (the FBI) and ancillary investigators who probed the Russian infiltration into the 2016 election.  Except in this case it isn't to go after the Russkies (and Trumpies who collaborated with them), but those who investigated the conspiracy to steal the election for Donald Trump. In other words Barr has debased the DOJ by converting it into an expeditious vehicle for Trump's political revenge.

Of course, by shamelessly acting on Trump's behalf, Barr has now put himself into impeachment jeopardy. . He's also created enormous embarrassment for the nation in his desperate antics, even as everyone with a brain knows exactly what he's up to: providing an alternative "criminal inquiry" to counter and offset the Democrats justifiable impeachment inquiry. One, I might ad, that now has even more ballast after a federal court judge deemed it legitimate and that the DOJ and Barr now must turn over all previously concealed (e.g. grand jury) materials from the Mueller probe.  See:

Impeachment Inquiry Is Legal, Judge Rules, Giving Democrats a Victory

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/us/politics/house-impeachment-subpoenas.html

As for embarrassing the nation, Giuseppe Conte,  the  Italian prime minister was asked by Italian lawmakers to explain what in the world the U.S. attorney general wanted. The New York Times published this striking account yesterday:

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy said his country’s intelligence services had informed the American attorney general, William P. Barr, that they played no role in the events leading to the Russia investigation, taking the air out of an unsubstantiated theory promoted by President Trump and his allies in recent weeks.

“Our intelligence is completely unrelated to the so-called Russiagate and that has been made clear,” Mr. Conte said in a news conference in Rome on Wednesday evening after spending hours describing Italy’s discussions with Mr. Barr to the parliamentary committee on intelligence. 

Mr. Conte publicly acknowledged for the first time that Mr. Barr had twice met with the leaders of Italy’s intelligence agencies after asking them to clarify their role in a 2016 meeting between a Maltese professor and a Trump campaign adviser on a small college campus in Rome, Link Campus University.

As bizarre as this may seem, Barr appears to have also gone to other allied nations in his Quixote- like tilting at fantasy conspiracy windmills. The toad was driven by the need to find something, anything to save Trump's butt, looking for damaging information about American officials involved in "Russiagate" , which he thought might help Donald Trump.

Italy, not surprisingly, had no such information, and seemed baffled as to what the United States’ top law-enforcement official was looking for.

The precise details of the relevant  conspiracy idiocy -  I can't dignify it with "theory" -  are mind-numbing in themselves.  They apparently involve George Papadopoulos, who served as an adviser to the Trump campaign, a London-based Maltese professor named Josef Mifsud, and assorted characters. The sum of the accusations, speculations and misinformation are enough to blow a hole into the sanity and mind of a normal person, but would do a QAnon zombie proud.  To be sure they are absolutely  ridiculous, almost on the level of the "Pizzagate"  rubbish that pushed the hare -brained malarkey that Hillary was operating a child sex slave ring in the basement of a D.C.  pizza parlor.

You laugh, but one Trumpie imbecile actually took a rifle to the suspected establishment to mete out justice and a tragedy was only averted by quick thinking - and reaction.  Needless to say I am not going to waste time (or blog space)  regurgitating this latest horse shit. Anyone who really wants
 more information can obtain it from Thursday night’s A block and this Vox piece from last month. Be sure you ration your neural exposure time!

In the end, sadly, the Trumpies and their cabal have succeeded in literally reducing our country to a laughing stock.  If my Revolutionary War ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh was alive to day to see this, he'd puke. The United States – the world’s preeminent superpower, ostensibly the global leader on matters of international affairs – has an attorney general who has gone to foreign countries, cap in hand, looking for dirt on his own country’s officials, begging for help with a ridiculous conspiracy, only to be told by our allies, “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”

If that doesn't embarrass any red-blooded American I don't know what would.

See also:

https://www.salon.com/2019/10/25/bill-barrs-alternate-universe-investigation-has-a-goal-right-wing-authoritarian-rule/


And:

The Trump Administration | 2016 Elections | William Barr

Watch Out for Bill Barr's Flunky John Durham to Fabricate a Report That Would "Absolve" Russia of 2016 Election Interference

And:

Donald Trump | Republicans

What Would Republican Senators Do If Trump Shot Someone on Fifth Avenue?

And;

Donald Trump | Republicans

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'The Great Awakening'? How Does A Piece Of Q-Anon Conspiracy Garbage Make It To No. 1 on Amazon?

Can any sane person really believe this Amazon ranking for this piece of trash?  People interested in conspiracies - REAL ones - are better served going to my book on the JFK assassination:

My book is the product of  35 years of research into the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy, incorporating acoustic analyses, image analyses as well as exposing the sundry deficiencies of The Warren Report. In other words, it's grounded in reality,  not fantasy.

By contrast, 'The Great Awakening' was hatched by QAnon freaks,  likely on an all night bender of booze, bennies and  opioids, mixed with  MJ candy .  It is designed to appeal to the  indiscriminate Pizzagate conspiracy trolls and gullible gobblers,  the ones who believed (in 2016)  Hillary Clinton had a stable of child sex slaves.   I would say also  similar to  the wacko  delusions of Alex Jones of Info Wars fame, but even he has now admitted his false flag ideation about the Sandy Hook massacre was a result of severe mental illness.  What excuse do these latter dispensers of toxic mind rot have?

The Amazon book, which says it was written by a dozen “anonymous Q followers, decoders and citizen journalists known collectively as Where We Go One We Go All (WWG1WGA),” takes up where the Pizzagate rubbish left off. It claims that Democrats murder and eat children and that the government created AIDS, polio and Lyme disease. Then there’s the belief that the world is run by a Satanic cabal led by Hillary Clinton.

NBC News, which first reported on the book's placement on the Amazon charts, noted that the book received an algorithmic boost from product recommendations. The book, written by an anonymous author, averaged 4.5 stars and has been flooded with positive reviews.

Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy-theory expert, told NBC that the book is just another way for the QAnon movement to cash in on its gullible followers, calling it “a bold new step in the endless grift at the heart of Q.”

Nevertheless, the book keeps selling and racking up questionable glowing reviews, which Jason Kint, CEO of the trade association Digital Content Next, chalks up to manipulation and the lack of oversight on Amazon’s part.  As Kint explained to NBC:

“To be clear, they absolutely shouldn’t be censoring the availability of books like this. But the fact we’re left only with the publisher’s own description of the book and a clearly gamed set of 5-star reviews — how is the average shopper supposed to know this is toxic garbage?”

Uh, how about critical thinking? How about having an I.Q. that exceeds room temperature digits? 

Amazingly,  even Reddit now appears to be coming to its senses.  Last September it banned a forum dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory, saying users repeatedly violated its content policies.   This isn't difficult to parse because after Pizzagate nearly incited a tragedy (unhinged Trumpie entering D.C. Comet pizza parlor with loaded rifle to "liberate Hillary's child sex slaves")  there can be no issue these are dangerous loons.

Let's also get it very clear from the get go that the assorted nonsense being peddled does not qualify as conspiracy theories. They are conspiracy 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 were 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.  

By contrast, the 'conspiracy theorist' put forward conspiracy conjectures but didn't back them up with evidence. Or, if evidence was provided, it didn't meet elementary scientific standards for acceptance, such as consistent selection, coherent and accurate data assessment, and avoidance of confirmation bias.

The bottom feeders of the classification scheme were conspiracy crackpots or clowns, like Alex Jones.   Jones is most famous for his off the wall bunkum that the Sandy Hook/Newtown massacre was a federal "false flag" operation. Those slain  kids weren't really dead, they were merely actors- as well as the teachers- in an elaborate script to befuddle the public and make them demand gun confiscation across the land.  Jones claimed he'd watched "films over and over and just seen those kids walking in circles".  At least now he's admitted to being mentally unbalanced.  We now await the authors of The Great Awakening to do likewise.

How would Dr. Bannister, if she were alive today, describe a convoluted, paranoid -infused mental mosh pit like "The Great Awakening"?   Basically, she'd probably call it a psychotic's phantasmagoria and schizoid ideation attempting to make sense of disparate, suspicious elements in the contemporary U.S. - driven by social media. 

 She'd also make note that such fever dreams don't need a whole lot of external memetic fuel to get started: a coincidence here, a loaded word from Trump there, an obscure reference to "deep state" there- oh  and some "genius" who first puts it all together in his mother's basement and posts it on 4chan. Whereupon a susceptible brain will be infected and spread it on to other gullible souls, searching for meaning in their vacuous lives. Well, to be sure, it's probably a bit better than using opioids!

 It would be great if we could just ignore these looneytunes-  or dispatch them to an asylum for general ECT and lithium therapy. But alas, their fevered baloney can have real world consequences and act outs - especially when a virulently infected zombie gets activated - like the guy who fired a round into the D.C. pizza parlor looking for child sex slaves. Or the other screwball who tried to block traffic headed for the Hoover Dam.

These people desperately need help, but it seems there are just too few professionals around now to get the job done.   Where is Dr. Bannister when we need her?