Understanding The Crazy
By 
Josh Marshall does something today that’s like what I did a few days ago on QAnon. He takes the crazy seriously. It’s been easy to dismiss Hulk Hogan and his lawsuit or the idea that pedophiles are drinking the adrenochrome of our children. These things are far outside the wildest imaginings of most of us. But the Hogan lawsuit was the product of outside-the-box strategy, and significant numbers of people believe the QAnon dogma or something like it and act on those beliefs. The Hogan lawsuit has distorted journalistic practice, and Donald Trump’s QAnon supporters vote and influence others.
We need to consider how they are thinking. We need to get ahead of Peter Thiel, who was instrumental in the Hogan lawsuit and is now playing multiple roles in politics. He is a mentor to the Vice President and involved in multiple grabs for significant governmental roles via companies he controls. QAnon believers are a significant chunk of Trump’s support.
The reason we need to understand their thinking is to get ahead of them and to develop strategies of our own to thwart and defeat them.
Marshall details why he did not see the Hogan lawsuit as newsworthy. Most of us have ignored the QAnon fictions because they are ugly and bizarre. It’s easy to point and laugh at the people who believe them. But those people now occupy large parts of our reality. The Epstein furor, which is weakening Trump, is a product of QAnon beliefs. The degree to which it is throwing Trump off his game is hard to understand in any other way.
We need to understand the legal jiu jitsu, which is exactly what it’s been: a way to throw us off balance. We need to understand the ugly and bizarre beliefs to find ways to undermine them.
In the Epstein case, normie logic that linking Trump to a pedophile ring is bad for him converges with the QAnon disappointment that Trump refuses to expose the pedophilia ring, so we got lucky. We need to keep it going.
As these potential splits between one ugly and bizarre faction and another show up, we need to understand what those factions think so that we can more effectively drive wedges. Trump is weakened by the Epstein furor. It’s time to go on the offensive.
Government social media accounts are now posting Bible verses and HH memes. These are the people we need to defeat.
Emil Bove, potentially a Trump pick for the Supreme Court, has been lying to Congress. Of course, Supreme Court candidates have been lying to Congress for a long time now. It’s time to call them on it.