Day of the dead

 A little history:  I think I previously shared my theory of the creation of QAnon.  Some stoners were watching a rerun of Star Trek:  The Next Generation with John DeLancie as Q, the interstellar nuisance who periodically endangered or annoyed the crew of the Enterprise.  At some point one of them observed, "Wouldn't it be great if Q was real?"  As the others went in search of nibbles, Stoner No. 3 picked up his laptop and began to create the real-world legend of a powerful force which controls events on earth and fatally posted it on (let's say) Facebook.  The rest is history, like Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay's seminal account of mass hysteria from the South Sea Bubble to the Tulip Mania.  Of course, those things really happened.

If Stoner No. 3 came forward and explained what he had done, and why ("I was so trashed"), no one would believe him.  We know this because two guys named Doug Bower and Dave Chorley took responsibility for the Crop Circle Hoax of the 1970s and no one believed them.  It had to be aliens!  They're part of the cover-up!  People who are invested in a belief system like UFOs or Christianity will not be dislodged, even if you show them how you flattened the wheat.  Then the death threats begin.

I was thinking about all this when reading David DePape's detailed confession of his activities last Saturday morning, when he broke into the Pelosi house in search of the Speaker with the intention of tying her up and ultimately crippling her unless he got the "truth" he wanted.  DePape seems to be the only unhinged Rightzi who knows what he was up to.  All the rest -- all of them -- are invested in some bizarre fictitious story about gay sex gone bad, resulting in an 82-year-old man facing a long and difficult (and probably partial) recovery.  This they find hilarious, as only the amorally depraved can.  Read the statement.  It's in the damn National Review if you don't believe the New York Times.

Years ago the anthropologist Colin Turnbull wrote a book called The Mountain People about the Ik tribe of Uganda.  He studied them during a famine and drought when they were struggling to survive, and concluded that grim conditions had turned them into uncaring monsters who refused to share what little they had and laughed when babies stumbled into campfires.  It's now generally agreed that the book was a hit job, though perhaps an unintentional one.  Like all hunter-gatherers the Ik were tightly organized around customs of pooled resources and care for their young.  Turnbull says he "learned not to hate" them and I hope it was mutual.  Linguistic problems may have prevented him from understanding what was going on, especially when hostile neighbors accused them of savage behavior.

Few anthropologists now believe Turnbull was right about the Ik, but I wish he was around to study the American Right.  Without hostile neighbors or (until recently) unforgiving climate, they are proudly and viciously cruel.  For just one example, this is what Clay Higgins (R-LA) thought would tickle his Twitter fans:

I guess a few of them objected because "CaptClay" deleted it.  Which is more despicable, putting it up there or taking it down with a shit-eating grin?  "Oh, mah bad.  Guess that wa'nt too Christian of me," smirk.

Ol' Captain was one of the more elaborate tales (LSD?).  While his coked-up eldest joined in the fun Trump pretended to sympathize ("That's a terrible thing...Look what's happened to San Francisco generally.  Look at what's happening in Chicago").  A targeted assassination attempt becomes just another crime in a Democratic city, though committed by a white man.  Then he went on some Philly radio show and asserted that "the glass it seems was broken from the inside to the out" [sic].   Has Trump been tested for cognitive impairment?  Voters have a right to know.  What do you think, Marc Thiessen?  

To Charlie Kirk of Turning Stomach USA DePape is a "gay schizophrenic nudist" who should be bailed out by "some amazing patriot."  Kari Lake, who has promised to deliver Arizona's votes to Trump no matter what, got a big laugh by asserting that Nancy Pelosi has security in Washington but "apparently her house doesn't have a lot of protection."  I don't even know why that's funny but then I'm a reasonably evolved Homo sapiens.  It's lonely, let me tell you.  Even Republicans who condemn the attack don't even stop for breath before bringing up the shooting of Steve Scalise (among others) in 2017.  Tom Emmer (R-MN) saw nothing disgusting about tweeting video of himself playing with his gun and commenting, "Enjoyed exercising my Second Amendment rights...Let's #FirePelosi."  

Not to keep score, but Richard Ringer, a Democrat running for the Pennsylvania house, was assaulted and had his home vandalized over the weekend.  If his opponent is not already lying about it, he's a RINO.

So we beat on, boats against the sewage...