Hermione Luck / Chief Columnist
Aside from a vocal core of obsessive devotees wearing antlers and warpaint, the average person in America wouldn’t be able to tell Q devotees just by looking at them. A Q adherent could be a grandmother who runs the annual church auction, or the personable florist who always adds two extra flowers to your order, or the accountant who saved you money and without question believes the figures you submit.
What binds these impassioned citizens of America? Why are they so sure that they and their cause are right and everyone else is wrong? Why do they believe in relentless and wild conspiracy theories?
The people of Q believe there is a coterie of dark forces pulling the strings of politics. Who can blame them? They don’t have to look any further than Washington D.C. and the lobbyists who feed the dragon. Some of the more radical people of the QAnon movement believe their children are in danger of sexual abuse because these dark forces need the blood of others to survive. These devotees yearn for a biblical apocalypse and the retribution of its awakenings to come true.
The bottom line is that the people of Q believe they are witnesses to a biblical struggle between good and evil with their places of worship reinforcing the premise. These Christian churches make clear that the best way to insure employing God’s vision of humanity is to attack evil whenever and wherever they see it.
Regardless of our beliefs and on which side of the fence someone might see good or evil, as a whole we live in a different world now, a pandemic world, a world that we may be able to harness and maybe not.
It is January, 2021. The first full winter of Covid has arrived. We are locked down, married to our cellphones, glued to our television sets, and in the process of this isolating pandemic, our way of life is meeting the mirror of its discontent.
Along the way, so many things have been made clear to us – street protests confirm that our Civil War never ended. Climate change is only getting worse. And ironically, the remote learning that our school-aged children have been forced to endure, has wiped out the threat of their being gunned down in class.
Politically and culturally, as we absorb the election of a new president with both liberals and conservatives backed into their respective and isolated corners of self-righteousness, we’ve come to the end of a twelve-year run of what could be called the era of ‘the black and white’ presidency.
The black man presiding for the first eight years was like the Beatles. He was at the right place at the right time. Smart, connected, ambitious, he could hit the three. Following him was the white man who won by the math of division … a narcissist, a huckster, a moneymaker, a fraud looking to increase his brand.
The black man provided the vehicle of vision, the white man provided its exhaust. What a strange pairing left behind for those who will judge us in the future … and all of this following the clear misogyny of the Hillary era.
Regardless of whether regurgitated theories of deception and conspiracy circulating our society are true or false – regardless of where we worship, to what school we send our children, in what community we live … clearly, there are problems we must solve together.
Neither paranoia on the right nor cancel culture on the left are viable glues for these challenges. There is work to be done, and unfortunately, the politicians we have elected are not up to the task. That doesn’t mean we have to hang these people. We just have to remove them by voting them out of office.
So as for January 6, let’s be clear, this was no coup as far as we know. This was a mob, pure and simple, a fringe element that exports its racism and vitriol in the name of freedom. Some believe this was the best thing that could ever happen to America. The canker sore has finally been lanced. The monster of racism and jingoism no longer lives in the shadows.
With most of us jaw-dropped, the date January 6 will now live alongside 9/11 and November 22 in the infamy and conscience of America. And for those who deny what really happened on January 6, shame on you and the politicians who protect you, the politicians who pander for your vote and money, the politicians who are the keepers of the flame of the political cowardice that stalks our country with little idea of how to lead or how to bring our people together.
And above all, shame on this former president, a huckster and narcissist who encouraged this mob, and still isn’t done trying to make America give back his throne. There is only one thing to say. We can do better.
We must if we are to survive.
– Hermione