Cult 45

The Fools are Tools

Nov 07, 2021

Loony tunes.

Dipshits.

Q-quacks.

I follow a lot of bad news so you don’t have to. By “bad” news, I mean the stupid news—the signs that fringe numbskulls are going ever deeper into their imaginary worlds of politics and fantasy. If the bizarre and ridiculous political beliefs of some Americans were only that, I’d wish them well. But nowadays, the pathetic and gullible are too often captured by the powerful, with real-world implications.

I’m talking about Q-Anon in Dallas, and race panics at the school board.

In case you missed it (and I hope you did), about a thousand people went to Dealy Plaza in Dallas last week to witness the resurrection of John F. Kennedy and the restoration of Donald J. Trump. Yes, somehow, a thousand people convinced themselves that JFK was secretly alive all this time, and was going to reveal himself (at age 103!) to the world last Tuesday. In fact, both JFKs—the assassinated president and his son, killed in an air crash—would take the stage!

Even more bizarre, this audience of (stupid? innocent? foolish? naive? deluded?) Republicans believed that the two dead Kennedys were going to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency. Yes, this is Cult 45: the crowd was decked out in Trump flags, Trump hats, and Trump shirts, some reading “Kennedy-Trump 2022”. Most of them traveled long distances to witness this resurrection-restoration-revelation. The crowd included many believers in numerology, who saw secret revelations in dates and letters, and followed a diverse set of crackpot theories, from chem trails in the sky and lizard aliens in politics to secret pedophile networks drinking children's blood in invisible tunnels.

They spent money to be in Dallas, gathered in crowds the night before, and then stood in the rain, lining the very spot where President Kennedy was shot, waiting. They were wrong, and didn't care. The scheduled moment of revelation came and went in a light rain, and nothing happened. Like all apocalyptic cults, they simply recalibrated their expectations--maybe it would happen later that night?--or recalculated their dates (the 13-days difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars came in for a lot of discussion).

Indeed, this movement can only be compared to 19th Century religions like the Millerites, who constantly postponed their end-of-the-world claims, or today's 7th Day Adventists, handing out brochures declaring that the apocalypse is finally, really coming this time, soon. Belief is stronger than facts.

Of course, the danger is that Trump's tiny cult of crazies don't just hand out brochures, or stay in their basements.

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Case in point: my beloved home state of Virginia.

On the same Tuesday as the quack convention in Dallas, the gubernatorial candidate Terry McCauliffe (D-Moneybags) was soundly defeated by Glenn Youngkin (R-Private Equity).

McCauliffe, a previous governor of Virginia, was a lousy candidate, a soulless party apparatchik best known for being Bill Clinton's favorite fundraiser. So Virginia Dems ran an out-of-touch establishment candidate known for listening to lobbyists.

Republicans, by contrast, ran an out-of-touch zillionaire candidate associated with using lobbyists to rig the economic system.

So what's the difference? Critical Race Theory was the difference.

Schoolboards across Virginia (and the country) have been inundated with protests against "CRT," by which they mean the teaching of our racial history. In the 1960s Virginia was a center of "massive resistance" to school integration and civil rights. The children of people who kept Blacks out of schools are demanding that we not teach how their parents kept Blacks out of schools.

Like the Dallas Q-quacks, the race panic is rooted in unreal fears and exploited for gain by con artists from 8-Chan to Mar a Lago. There is no Critical Race Theory in Virginia schools, or any other public schools. But there is race panic: the sustained fear that my group (white people, men, the investor class) will lose control to your group (black and brown people, women, the working class).

The strongest motivation in our politics today is what Karen Stenner calls "groupiness," the urge to protect your own prospects by protecting the status of your team. In Virginia, and elsewhere, they think it is their birthright to have control of America, which is why race matters more than any other factor.

(I've previously referenced the work of Pippa Norris, of Harvard, on why race anxiety is an even larger factor today than economic anxiety, and a proxy for all other fears.)

The gullible fools in Dealy Plaza and the suburban dads screaming at school board meetings are having their pockets picked by conservative activists who know these issues are fake, and who says so, on the Internets. Don't laugh at the fools, because they are tools.

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