Giving birth to baby Q’s

Remember Q Anon? I haven’t heard anything about them in quite a while. As a matter of fact, I think the last time I read anything about them was back in 2021, after the Presidential election, or maybe even before then.

But they are not gone.

They might have evolved…

…into baby Q’s.

The root theory of government

Q Anon conspiracy theory was that the elite Democrats and Hollywood stars were actually pedophiles kidnapping children to extract their essence in the effort to lengthen their lifespan.

Or something like that. I don’t remember the exact details other than it was outlandish and had the vibes of the X Files’ the Truth is Out There. People would research for the truth and fall down rabbit holes like Alice in Wonderland and come upon weird theories about how America works.

T was supposed to be some kind of hero who was going to clean the swamp and get rid of the pedophiles. There were lots of memes of him being a superhero, battling his Democratic enemies.

Some college educated people believed in this.

John F. Kennedy, Jr. coming back to life

Then the theories got crazy, as if they weren’t already crazy. The last really crazy one that I remember was the one about John F. Kennedy, Jr., the young son, showing up in Dallas and joining with Trump to run as Vice President, never mind his Democrat pedigree. (Robert F. Kennedy flipped over to the Republican party so people can change.) A group of believers went to Dallas to wait for him.

I have no idea what happened to them. The story died.

Then he lost. Because he never got around “to cleaning the government” before he lost, the Q people seemed to subside and maybe slink away.

Huh. I just asked CoPilot for the latest news about Q Anon and learned they are still around. The most surprising fact is that believers in Q Anon moved from 14% in 2021 to 23% in 2024. (The Harvard Gazette, “Toll of QAnon on families of followers”, Christina Pazzanese, 8/30/2024)

Holy crap! What happened?

The birth of the baby Qs

The original Q Anon theory appears to have evolved. Or maybe it has birthed other conspiracy theories, creating baby Qs.

The latest are:

• The government created Hurricane Helene and Milton and directed it to Republican states.
• FEMA is disbursing money to those in need in a scheme to then be able to take over their property and make profit off of the lithium found on their property.

Debunking the babies

Can we first say that these conspiracy theories are false?

First, no one can create and control weather. Right now, it is not possible; otherwise, we would have been calling forth rain to get rid of the drought or to quench the fires. The geological weather system is probably too bit and probably requires manipulation of huge energy that we can’t do today.

The second one, if FEMA or the government wanted the land, they would have just grabbed it through eminent domain and skip the money ruse. They don’t need to lend money to grab the land, they don’t have to do anything to grab the land. If they truly wanted the land, they would have done it by now without that ruse.

I didn’t think anyone would believe such rubbish. I’m pretty sure that most people do not believe government can control the weather (Marjorie Taylor Green may be one of the few, but I don’t think she believes it.)

Repercussions from the lies

At first, I didn’t really think that any real harm would come out of the conspiracy theories or the fake images coming out of the hurricane disaster.

But it turns out that some people do believe in those conspiracy theories and have opted to not reach out to FEMA for help. We have people in real need of help refusing to reach out for fear of losing their homes.

That is just mind blowing the damage that the lies will cause for these people.

Then there are the fake images showing those in devastated areas. The FEMA people will go out there, based upon the fake images, and then learn that there is no one there. It was all fake.

FEMA wasted precious time and resources in going to areas that did not need assistance.

Then there are the threats to FEMA such that they had to halt their work, further delaying the delivery of help.

This Washington Post article gives a great explanation of how people can fall into these lies. In this story, I personally feel the lies is being run by a guy out to grift or to harm those deemed “the others” or “the wicked government”. The guy running this does not appear to be there to help the people.

Can we not charge and convict these people who are spreading these harmful lies?

I don’t know if it is legally possible, but it would be nice to be able to charge and convict these people who would place innocent people in harm’s way or to defraud them somehow with these lies about disaster assistance. These people, having undergone a tremendous trauma and most likely lost everything, do not need these evil people to make their life harder.

Now, do these people who have suffered such trauma believe in Q Anon or such conspiracy theories? I don’t know. But they may be at a vulnerable point in their lives that they can fall into these rabbit holes, so I wish we could squash these conspiracies.

How do we teach people to think better? Or do we need to train on how to be more resilient?

We are going to have more disasters so we need to figure out a way to combat these vicious lies.