Nearly three in ten Republicans say they believe the widely debunked QAnon conspiracy theory that “there is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power (i.e., Joe Biden and the Democrats) and restore the rightful leader (i.e., Donald Trump).”
Source: Public Religion Research Institute
And if you think that’s fucked up, the same survey said that…
28% of Republicans say that “because things have gotten so far off track” in the U.S., “true American patriots may have to resort to violence” to save the country.
Or how about this?
Almost a quarter of Republicans say they agree with the baseless QAnon allegation that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation.”
What the hell is happening in — and to — America?
Written for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt.
This, That, and the Other 
Lots of people think we are headed for a civil war. But choose your revolution: the American, French, Russian or perhaps Spanish? I think we may be heading in the direction of the former Yugoslavia; neighbors going after neighbors, old grievances given violent freedom to flourish, and a break up of epic proportions.
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Sadly, I am finding believers even in here, in rural Canada.
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Say it ain’t so!
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I wish I could. So disheartened.
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I’m shocked and saddened to be reminded every day that there are so many idiots who believe this garbage. 😯
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It is unfathomable, isn’t it?
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Indubitably so. 😦
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My best stab at an explanation for this bizarre phenomenon is that social media has enabled all of the members of the left hand side of the IQ bell curve to get together and reinforce each others’ lunatic beliefs in a feeding frenzy fuelled by mendacious media morons (such as Faux Noos and others) who smelled a money pit of gullibility.
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That’s as good an explanation as any, I suppose.
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People become intrigued with conspiracy, there are some folks still seeing Elvis
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It is worth noting, although it doesn’t take away all of the awfulness, that there’s now fewer GOP members. They shouldn’t be allowed to use the word republican to describe themselves, because their behavior doesn’t match the definition of the word. I quit Facebook when that kind of garbage showed up in my feed. The magnification machine we have going includes CNN and MSNBC. They have article after article about this, for click bait, but the result is that they wind up validating this as a topic to discuss. Jake Tapper, and some others, has tried to modify to not do this. But it takes more than a few. It takes the social media firms removing these incendiary posts, but that will always be a game of whack-a-mole, the real solution is for people to not click on them. Even the debunking articles. We are suffering from too many news sources for the amount of news and they’re desperate for content. They have created a model where opinion is news to fill that gap.
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“They have created a model where opinion is news to fill that gap.” Yes, that is very true. They have to fill up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and get people to watch or click, so what “news” has become is sensationalism. My post today probably contributed to it, too.
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We have a difficult situation to maneuver. Figuring out how to get information, and get valid discussion going about real things without feeding the TubeFace Google Monster.
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I’ve always thought I was somewhat naive and gullible, but never in a million years would I have been a QAnon follower or one who would believe the crap that Trump and his Republican cohorts put out. It’s scary, truly scary, that so many Americans follow this path, not understanding that their cognitive thought process has been so profoundly damaged.
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It is scary and so disheartening that this is happening in our country.
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The people I know who are lost to QAnon are not well — either too much alcohol or mental illness. You literally cannot reason with them. It’s scary.
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It’s very scary!
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I honestly can’t understand how educated adults can believe this stuff!
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I know. I can’t either.
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So, 30 percent of Republicans; 28 percent of Republicans; and 24-25 percent of Republicans. We could round up to an average of 27 and a half percent of Republicans, which is less than 14 percent of the voting public — probably more like nine percent. But close to one in ten is still troubling.
Something that bothers me is that we’ve seen there are sex trafficking rings, and that famous and powerful people are often involved. We just haven’t seen that it’s a Democrats thing, but that’s where the kooky folks focus. It’s a distraction from serious efforts to clean up corruption.
And that’s consistent with the idea put forth earlier, by xingfumama’s comment, that these topics are filler for presentations called news but not quite news or newsworthy. I don’t think there are too many news outlets, but I think most do what is easier to fill time rather than to to dig deep.
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“…most [news outlets] do what is easier to fill time rather than to to dig deep.” And also what will attract the most viewers or get them the most clicks.
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If people cared more about victims than about one of two sides of politics, they’d want to read and pursue specific criminal stories and convictions. And they wouldn’t let the Justice Department under Trump off the hook for the epstein “suicide” — and would have more to say about Ghislaine Maxwell, tax haven foundations and other nonprofit organizations, and anonymous LLCs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghislaine_Maxwell
In 2000, Maxwell moved into a 7,000-square-foot (650 m2) townhouse on East 65th Street, New York City, less than 10 blocks from Epstein’s mansion. Maxwell’s townhouse was purchased for $4.95 million by an anonymous limited liability company, with an address that matches the office of J. Epstein & Co. Representing the buyer was Darren Indyke, Epstein’s longtime lawyer.[5] In April 2016, the New York townhouse where she had lived was sold for $15 million.[5]
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President Donald [another friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s] Trump’s “charity” was shut down for being fraudulent.
Bill Gates also hung out with Epstein. And so on.
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I still can’t believe that they don’t think Trump is a elite. When has he ever been the “average” working person?
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For real. 🙄
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very scary
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Yes it is.
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Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and draw their own conclusions weather or not one chooses to accept or deny something to be debunked or not. That’s the beauty of being an American with free speech.one thing that is indisputable, the truth anyways comes to the surface, sometimes it’s not quite as fast as some would like it to.
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“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion…” Yes, but not to their own facts
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I’m struggling to understand how so many people could be this far off balance. I just recently learned my dad fell down the Fox rabbit hole & I’m not having a lot of luck deprogramming him.
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My father-in-law was a staunch Republican who was hooked on Fox News, but he died in 2009 and I have to believe, were he still alive today, he wouldn’t be a Trumpist.
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