I’ve been asked several times now how we deprogram Qanon, because so many millions seem to be infected with really wackadoodle ideas now. I’m not a cult expert but the whole idea of a powerful evil pedo cabal running things is an old culty conspiracy theory that metastasized.

The algorithms of Facebook and YouTube sent conspiracy or merely just off the mainstream interested folks straight into the arms of Q, so your raw milk drinkers and anti-vaxxers were recommended the Q groups.

A great many folks have some conspiratorial ideas...somehow the confluence of Trump and social media sent anti-pedophile teachers marching arm and arm with white supremacists and alt-right agitators on the US Capitol.

But again people get caught up in conspiratorial movements all the time...once you remove the spiritual leaders of these movements (like Trump), the motivation to march and act is greatly reduced and it goes back to screeds on Facebook.

Counter-messaging works much better if it is on a personalized level or engages someone in a way they feel empowered to make the world a better place.

Therefore I believe time and less exposure to the high intensity of the political frenzy will cool down things a great deal.

Unfortunately there really is a group of elites/corporations/oligarchs who benefit from splintering the population into meaningless fights while they clean up, make 40 LLCs to get the PPP loans, and pay 0% corporate taxes.

Power through democracy, fair voting, equal representation...these things balance our rights to food, housing, clean air, clean water vs the big CEOs and their private beaches and dumping mercury in the streams and pumping the air full of pollutants.

If we feel empowered as individuals we don’t need conspiracies. We also don’t need grievance politics.

Most of us have the same values! We don’t like pedophiles, racists, or corruption. We allow the parties and the media to fracture us and argue about whether Ted Cruz can post lies and conspiracy theories on Twitter.

Therefore I propose an anti-Ted Cruz party to bring most of us together (too glib? Too leftist? Can’t we all get together at least on this one obvious thing?) No, seriously, I wish we could be arguing the actual issues than the straw men fed to us by media and politicians.

We can’t have these arguments in a fact free zone...and that’s the real problem to solve.

Also, authoritarian-curious political parties and politicians need to be burned out at the root.

And I exercise my free speech rights to block anyone responding to my call for free and fair representation and accountability as “communism”. 100 million people died in the 20th century due to communists and fascists and I will tolerate neither.