Stay away from rabbit holes; and taking a break.

I want to address, briefly, a thing that's made the rounds on social media over the past couple of days. It was sparked by a Substack post (which I'm not linking to because I don't want to amplify it) quoting a guy who claims to be a former CIA agent and who supposedly participated in an NSA forensic audit of the 2024 election. The purported NSA audit supposedly found that foreign interests manipulated the election results and that Kamala Harris actually won the election.

Here's why I think it's bullshit.

geralt | Pixabay

For starters: The Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency are different federal agencies. The NSA has its own agents. Why wouldn't they use people from their own agency to conduct an audit? Why pick an ex-CIA guy whose security clearances may or may not still be any good?

Second: The feds don't do nationwide audits of election results. Each state runs its own elections and performs its own audits. The graphics you see on TV on election night are pulled from reports provided by election officials in each individual state, and they compile them from results provided by election officials in each individual precinct. Ballots and voting apparatuses aren't even held by a state agency, as far as I'm aware; election officials in each county are responsible for keeping their own stuff under lock and key.

Third: There have been challenges to the 2024 results in several states, and time and again it's been acknowledged that the machines and their software have not been tampered with, and in fact could not have been tampered with. All the challenges were resolved when Biden was still president. Now, this fellow is claiming that some sneaky code disguised as an update to vote-counting software allowed foreign malefactors to mess with the numbers. Really? Really?? Wouldn't the locals have noticed if their numbers changed when they got to the state level? And didn't we go through this with the 2020 results? Except then it was conservatives claiming the votes were tampered with -- and it cost them a lot of money when it was proven in court that they were making it all up.

Fourth: The guy is an author of a book on international human trafficking. His book is available for free. Reportedly it's 900 pages long. I'm not interested in giving him a download, but this poster on Reddit has done it, and here's what he has to say (all syntax issues are the original poster's): 

"This is classic internet conspiracy word salad nonsense. From what I can piece together he believes that the wars in Ukraine, and Gaza are directed by a global mafia that runs Israel, Russia, China, and the United States to name a few of the nations. He ties in human trafficking, slavery, pedophiles, all of it into his global conspiracy. This is the same pedophiles run the world right-wing conspiracies just rebranded by a left leaning audience."

In other words, it's QAnon for lefties. Look up "pizzagate" and see where that has gotten us before.

I could go on (i.e., anybody can get a Substack; anybody can publish a book and upload it for sale; anybody can offer their book for free -- heck, I've done it), but I said at the top that this would be brief. 

What concerns me is the same thing that concerns that Reddit poster: People are taking this and running with it without thinking about whether any of it is plausible.

I know it's tempting to hang onto hope that the disaster we're living through is the result of evil machinations. And social media's algorithms are designed to keep serving us more and more of what we've already consumed; it would be so easy to get sucked down a rabbit hole into a lefty version of QAnon.

But please don't. Step away from the screens, take a breath, drink some water, use the john, and think about how likely any of this is. 

***

I will be scarce here on the blog for the next couple of weeks. This coming Friday, I'm going in for carpal tunnel surgery on my right hand -- something that I probably should have had done 30 years ago. I'll still be wearing a splint on my right hand when next Sunday rolls around, so no blog post from me that day.

Then the following weekend -- assuming all goes well with the surgery and whatnot -- I'll be back in my hometown for my (gulp) 50th high school reunion. 

So let's make a tentative date to meet back here on Sunday, August 24th. I should have lots to tell you about by then.

***

These moments of non-rabbit-holed blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe, and go drink some water. Seriously.

QAnon and the New Age.

You would think a person who purports to dislike DC so much would have raced to eliminate all ties to the city (other than those to friends and relatives) immediately upon moving away, wouldn't you? And yet I still have a digital subscription to the Washington Post, and probably will keep it for the forseeable future. It's not super expensive (I'm looking at you, NewYork Times) and their coverage of national news is excellent.

Sometimes, however, they kind of go off the deep end. So for the second time in as many weeks, I'm using a WaPo story as a springboard for a blog post. (I'll get around to writing about writing again eventually, I promise.)

PublicDomainPictures | Pixabay

This week, an article in their Sunday magazine set me off. It's entitled "QAnon's Unexpected Roots in New Age Spirituality," and in it, the author strives to make a connection between the New Age movement and the guy in the furry headdress who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. I'd read a little bit about this character, whose real name is Jacob Anthony Chansley but who goes by Jake Angeli and who is also known as the "QAnon Shaman." I'm sure you've heard about him, too; he's the guy who complained that his jailers wouldn't serve him organic food, so a judge ordered him transferred to a different jail.

The get-up he wore to the insurrection was a mishmash of quasi-spirituality: the horned headdress was a call to Native Americans, sorta kinda, and among the tattoos on his torso is a rune associated with white supremacy that Heathens in the Pagan movement have disavowed. The author of the WaPo article, Marisa Meltzer, says she recognized the combo as a "cringeworthy and offensive display of appropriation." I agree with her. She goes on to say that Chansley is the founder of the Star Seed Academy, a New-Agey place in Arizona that promises to help people "awaken, evolve and ascend!" His lawyer told Meltzer that Chansley is committed to ahimsa, a principle in some Asian spiritual traditions that relates to nonviolence.

When I read that, I said aloud, "Then what the hell was he doing in the Capitol on 1/6?" 

Well, he's also a follower of QAnon. And Meltzer says that fits because of this thing called conspirituality, which she describes as a "politico-spiritual philosophy" based on two beliefs: that humanity is undergoing a profound awakening in consciousness, and that there's a shadowy group out there somewhere that's controlling society.

She says Robert Bly's 1990 book, Iron John, is one of the seeds of conspirituality. Bly's book created a counter to the women's movement by highlighting masculine tropes in Jungian archetypes and fairy tales. In order for men to claim their true masculinity, he claimed, they needed both to perceive themselves as warriors and to make themselves emotionally vulnerable. 

I remember when Iron John was published. It sold really well. And there's nothing wrong with a man being emotionally vulnerable in his relationships; it kind of helps, actually. 

But then Meltzer tries to tie this view of masculinity to those held by groups like the Proud Boys and evangelical Christianity, where the ideal of men as women's protectors morphs into a belief that women should stay home and shut up. From there, it's a short hop to QAnon. 

Okay, but QAnon attracts a lot of women, too. And whatever happened to Bly's belief that men need to be emotionally vulnerable?

Look, there are some shady New Age characters out there. In my opinion, the New Age movement is less a religion than a self-help phenomenon; misappropriating Native American practices is just one of the sketchy things I've seen. I'm not against self-actualization, but you have to be really, really careful when you search for a "guru"; a fair number of them are only in it to separate you from your money.

And I'm thinking the QAnon Shaman might need to spend some of his time in prison reading Iron John. 

***

These moments of appropriate blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Mask up! Wash your hands! And get the vaccine when you can!

When the broken people see the light.

 

Gerd Altmann | Pixabay

Now that we've had a week and a half or so to settle our thoughts after the debacle at the US Capitol on January 6th, I'm starting to see some anecdotal evidence that some people -- particularly some of the folks who fell for the QAnon conspiracy mess -- are beginning to come around. 

Maybe it's not a lot of people yet. But at least a few folks who fell down the rabbit hole into Trumplandia or the QAnon insanity saw the anarchy on TV that day, learned that people died because of it, and realized what they'd gotten themselves into.

Getting themselves into it was easier than you might think. A game developer wrote a very interesting Medium post that explains how QAnon appeals to people. He says it follows the basic structure of an alternate-reality game: a mysterious stranger hands a player a clue in the form of a puzzle; solving that puzzle gives the player another puzzle; and on and on through the game. Players have to free-associate to solve the puzzles (the author says there's a term for that: apophenia, or seeing a meaningful pattern in random thoughts or ideas). Sometimes players band together in groups to discuss possible solutions. 

The difference is that in an alternate-reality game, the players know it's just a game. With QAnon, people were led to believe it was real. In the author's words, QAnon is "[a] game that plays people. (cue ominous music)"

I'm not a gamer, but I do write fiction, and I'm confident I've used the trope of the mysterious stranger a time or two. But I'm making stuff up. I'm not sending readers off on a real-life snipe hunt -- certainly not one that could get anybody killed.

So let's go back to the QAnon believers who watched the storming of the Capitol on January 6th and woke up to what they were involved in. What should be done about them?

I vote for compassion.

That's not to say that everybody involved in the riot should get a pass. Those who broke the law -- by breaking windows, ignoring law enforcement orders to stop, beating cops with flagpoles, stealing from congressional offices, defecating in the halls of Congress, and all the rest -- should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Any members of Congress who assisted the anarchists should also be prosecuted, and it would be really swell if they also lost their jobs. And those at the top who encouraged this -- up to and including President Trump -- should pay a price for what they've done. Trump has already been impeached a second time for encouraging his followers to storm the Capitol; I hope this time the Senate convicts him and makes sure he can never hold office again.

But what about Mom and Pop at home? They've seen the results of all the stuff they've been led to believe, and maybe it's not sitting too well with them now. What should we do? 

I suggest giving them space to grieve. They were all-in on a common cause. They probably made friends -- and I am here to tell you that online friendships are every bit as real as in-person friendships, and it hurts just as badly when they fall apart. Losing all of that is going to be tough. Give them room to process it, but be there if they want to talk about it, and be kind to them when they do. 

Because just like the people who were killed and injured at the Capitol on the 6th, these folks are victims. They were taken in by accomplished liars. They're already going to be kicking themselves. Don't make it worse by making fun of them or practicing some kind of tough love. Because that will drive them away at the precise moment when we want to bring them home to reality.

This, my friends, is how we're going to heal our country: by granting forgiveness to those who have seen the light, one broken person at a time.

***

In other news: I should have mentioned this earlier, but my Facebook author page is kaput. After I fought so hard to get the page back from the scammers in November, I thought maybe I'd keep it around. But the final straw was when I got a couple of requests to join the Woo-Woo Team from folks with seriously sketchy Facebook profiles. (One said she was from New York, Florida; then she changed her location to Botswana. Uh-huh.) It felt to me like the scammers were trying to get into the back end of my page via the group, which is not a thing I would ever allow and I'm not sure how it would even work. In any case, the author page is now gone for good. But the Woo-Woo Team still exists - yay! And we're still taking members -- double yay! 

In still more news: I need to get busy on editing the NaNo novel, which still doesn't have a title. I expect it will be slow going, now that I'm working as a proofreader for the New Mexico Legislature. This year's session starts Tuesday and I'll be working seven days a week (remotely, thank the gods) until it's over on March 20th -- which also happens to be Ostara. Normally I'd release a new book around that date, but this time I'm going to shoot for Beltane or thereabouts, and we can all be pleasantly surprised if it's done sooner.

***

These moments of compassionate blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. You know the drill -- mask up, social distance, and wash your hands!