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MAGA and butterflies and..., jeez, it's wierd

So in case anyone wants the shorthand of what's actually going on here:

This National Butterfly Center is a private property adjacent to the US-Mexico border, and during Trump's border-wall push, the Center unsuccessfully sued to prevent the US government from seizing its property along Rio Grande for wall construction, losing an appeal in the US Supreme Court in late 2018. Two months later though, Congress prohibited any federal funds from being used for wall construction in a few select areas, the Butterfly Center being one of them. The Trump Administration sued to overturn that legislation but failed.

Historically, those of the political persuasion that steadfastly supports Trump in the present have been forcefully (and sometimes violently) opposed to federal seizing of private property for any reason. However, because personal loyalty to Trump is now considered a higher priority than pre-existing political principles, formerly fierce land-rights conservatives see the National Butterfly Center's land-rights battle simply as disloyalty to Trump; and the fact that the Center finally "won" by way of legislation that Trump could not (or did not get the chance to) overrule or disregard makes the Center by extension a symbol of the disobedient "deep state" that stifled or resisted Trump's agenda.

So what you are seeing now is a vindictive punishment for that perceived disloyalty. They created phony evidence to support an accusation that the National Butterfly Center was "assisting human traffickers" in hopes of mobilizing the violent populist rage they've been capitalizing on against these people who stood up to their guy.
 
Thank you Checkmite.

This particular crazyperson now seems to be on the outs with both Mark Finchem of We Stand America and Christie Hutcherson of Women Fighting for America, who are Qnuts of the highest order in their own rights, and because they have chosen to exclude Lowe from their events, she's taken to labeling them as 'loony left' sympathisers.

I've included links, but I highly recommend not wasting your time looking through them.
 
Checkmite said:
So what you are seeing now is a vindictive punishment for that perceived disloyalty. They created phony evidence to support an accusation that the National Butterfly Center was "assisting human traffickers" in hopes of mobilizing the violent populist rage they've been capitalizing on against these people who stood up to their guy.
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I don't think many of these people, especially the most dangerous ones willing to actually show up on the doorstep, are insincere in their belief.

These QAnon freaks actually believe that human trafficking is some huge, hidden problem in this country. They also believe that Trump was working, mostly behind the scenes, doing valiant battle against the forces of evil. Where a normal person might see the legal fight over this land just a routine part of the stupid politics of a border wall project, the QAnon CTists see it as the tip of a much more insidious iceberg. To them, Trump engaging in the routine business of being the President is mostly a sideshow that occasionally hints towards a more convoluted, insane reality.

The QAnon CT works well as a mystical wing of the Trump movement, ascribing supernatural attributes to Trump's rather ordinary political enemies.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
I don't think many of these people, especially the most dangerous ones willing to actually show up on the doorstep, are insincere in their belief.
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I disagree; I believe that the majority of people who profess belief in QAnon conspiracy theories are insincere to one degree or another, whether in pretending to believe a certain theory that they really don't, or believing a certain piece of "evidence" is real or valid when they are well aware that it isn't or simply don't actually care.

Sure, there certainly are a great many who genuinely are that gullible; such people have been around long before QAnon and have believed essentially the same thing or something very close to it for going on decades now.

But the majority are grifters or opportunists. They just really like QAnon because QAnon targets people they already hate, and because the future it aspires towards is a future they too wish would come true for reasons entirely independent of whether or not Democratic congresswomen actually drink the blood of molested babies to get high.

Like, just in this one example, we have a claim that is entirely built on a single phony picture. The individual QAnoner who created it knows the picture is not real; but they posted it to the community anyway in order to justify calling for exactly this kind of action and harassment against the Butterfly Center.
 
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QAnon CTs, other wild CTs, panic over CRT... all tools used to one end: continue to avoid the use of fact-based history books that simply list known events, let alone discuss motives. From abroad, the take is that Europe was happy to rid itself of diehard religious extremists, many of whom were extremely influential in shaping the US. With each other initially as enemies, freedom of religion was a well understood need and goal in early America in order to avoid the kind of bloodshed many of these sects took part in on the old continent. Fast forward, and now that the cultural dominance of Christianity is in question, and the fact that these religious sorts are not big on reading history, the various sects in the US are now coalescing around a common enemy, no longer fearful of each other. Assuming they succeed in creating a quasi-theocratic state, given today's SCOTUS, only then will they have time to relax just long enough to turn on each other. Absolutists, after all, only allow for pure dogma and loyal adherents, all else being heresy, especially that which is insidiously only slightly off, as if perverse and scheming. And the worst enemy of all is history, a factual accounting of the misdeeds of those who would hold themselves above their fellows.
 
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What a bunch of lying sociopaths - if they were actually looking for child abuse, they would start their church at their local churches.
It seems rather obvious that they are desperate to look everywhere but their own community, because are afraid of what they would find.
 
Checkmite said:
<snip>
But the majority are grifters or opportunists. They just really like QAnon because QAnon targets people they already hate, and because the future it aspires towards is a future they too wish would come true for reasons entirely independent of whether or not Democratic congresswomen actually drink the blood of molested babies to get high.

Like, just in this one example, we have a claim that is entirely built on a single phony picture. The individual QAnoner who created it knows the picture is not real; but they posted it to the community anyway in order to justify calling for exactly this kind of action and harassment against the Butterfly Center.
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I think a lot of the leaders are grifters and opportunists, but I'm coming around to the depressing idea that most of the followers are gullible and sincere. Yes, whoever photoshopped that picture knows it's fake, but that person is just cynically manipulating a broad, gullible QAnon base.

As a parallel, some of the things I've seen from climate change deniers are real facts taken badly out of context. Whoever originated the misleading memes knew full well they were misleading, but I think that my climate-change-denying friends and acquaintances are wrong but sincere when they forward such things.

As another parallel, we've all seen creationists quote Darwin: "To suppose that the eye...could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree" as if this was Darwin's entire thought on the subject, although his next line is "Yet reason tells me..." Whoever extracted that quote knew full well that, without context, it was misleading. But I believe that there are millions and millions of sincere creationists in the US.
 
dasmiller said:
I think a lot of the leaders are grifters and opportunists, but I'm coming around to the depressing idea that most of the followers are gullible and sincere.
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I think many of them come from end times Christianity or similar belief systems. They have been raised since birth to expect the Rapture/Second Coming will happen any day now. Many of them will have followed Pastors who made claims about specific dates - and when those dates came and went they just made word-salad reasoning to explain and moved on. Others come from New Age belief systems which mirrored some aspects of end-times Christianity, but with aliens or ancient earth spirits or such in place of the Christian god.

And I have no idea how much adherents to such belief systems actually believe. How much is real belief, how much is just virtue signaling, how much is ritual that reinforces inclusion in the belief system without believing that the words of the ritual are literal truth?

It is an odd sort of sincerity. It's real, like you say. But at the same time, they kind of don't believe it. And yet they do believe it. They seem to completely believe these things* will happen and yet they'll be not the least bothered when such things don't happen because they'll still believe that these things will happen, soon.


(*Trump back in White House, Hillary in jail, mass executions, Redneck Jesus come down from heaven with his AR-15 Freedom Rifle passing judgement on the libs, all that.)
 
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I would call it earnest insincerity. Not unlike Orwell's concept of doublethink, it's the belief running directly contrary to the truth that counts. A fact is just a fact, but a known lie believed as fact is proof of loyalty.
 
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Wow. This is not too far from me and I had no idea. I know the Butterfly Center is a huge attraction with the Winter Texans, along with the World Birding Center.

Politics ruins everything, doesn't it?
 
TragicMonkey said:
I hope they don't go after the snow monkey sanctuary in Texas next.
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Different state, but maybe send them to that nature sanctuary out near Denver International Airport. You go out there to the sanctuary, and you can see all these little tunnel openings - but they won't let you go in there. I mean, with all the CT's about that Airport, there must be something in those little tunnels. Those MAGA-Q nutheads ought to go into the little tunnels to investigate. Maybe they are stashing immigrants or sex slaves or illuminati or pizza ping pong tables or something else dangerous.

The little tunnels are full of lions and tigers, its a big cat sanctuary. The tunnels are artificial dens. The Q-nuts would become tiger snacks.
The Wild Animal Sanctuary
 
dasmiller said:
I think a lot of the leaders are grifters and opportunists, but I'm coming around to the depressing idea that most of the followers are gullible and sincere. Yes, whoever photoshopped that picture knows it's fake, but that person is just cynically manipulating a broad, gullible QAnon base.
Click to expand...

Again - I disagree, definitionally (if that's a word). Based on the observations I've made over time, I'm confident saying that the person who created the picture isn't some troll, some external agent of chaos "manipulating" "real" QAnoners for their personal fun or profit; it was a QAnoner, consciously manufacturing evidence for a thing they profess to believe because that is simply a completely acceptable activity within the QAnon community; and the biggest reason for that is because the individual claims themselves and the "evidence" for them aren't as important to the QAnon identity as the act of performatively being outraged about them.
 
The most recent QAnon Anonymous episode is an extended interview with the woman running the butterfly sanctuary who has become the target of these conspiracy theories.

unfortunately it's currently behind a paywall. I hope the hosts make this one free, more people should know about the victims of this nonsense.

Notable in her interview is that she's very pessimistic that local law enforcement is going to do anything, despite what she describes as a case of trespass, assault, and robbery by these cranks (they refused to leave the property, threw her to the ground, and forcibly took her phone).

When complaining to the police, things took a turn when she mentioned the group was affiliated with Michael Flynn, whom the local police chief then described as a "patriot". It's quite clear from the interview that she does not have much hope that local police will do anything to intervene in this escalating criminal harassment campaign against her person.

https://soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/premium-episode-159-qanon-vs-butterfly-sanctuary-sample

She also describes in detail the defamation campaign that this group is engaged in. It's not exaggerating to say that these people are trying to get her killed by the outrageous accusations they are making about her to their deranged fanbase.

Closing the site seems the responsible move, as keeping it open would expose her employees and visitors to undue risk. She probably should not visit the property unless she is heavily armed.
 
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Checkmite said:
Again - I disagree, definitionally (if that's a word). Based on the observations I've made over time, I'm confident saying that the person who created the picture isn't some troll, some external agent of chaos "manipulating" "real" QAnoners for their personal fun or profit; it was a QAnoner, consciously manufacturing evidence for a thing they profess to believe because that is simply a completely acceptable activity within the QAnon community; and the biggest reason for that is because the individual claims themselves and the "evidence" for them aren't as important to the QAnon identity as the act of performatively being outraged about them.
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Lying for Jesus is just another way to get to the truth.
 
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