What now for the disciples of Trump Christ?
I was musing this morning.
I recall seeing on other people's FB feeds and occasional news articles people deep within the QAnon bullcrap who were firmly convinced Trump was the Chosen One who was going to lead the kidnapped children out of their underground prisons and bring down the Deep State. Those of a religious bent were extending this to Trump being God's Chosen One who was etc. etc. etc.
Even after his election defeat they were still going on about how the truth would out and he would serve a second term. They seemed very precise; Trump was going to be President on 21st January; Biden was not going to be inaugurated. God had it all under control.
I suspect that some thoughts like this were behind the Capitol storming business; people believing they were God's/Fate's/whatever's instrument in bringing about the vindication of their Orange Messiah.
It struck me that once that failed, his followers were a bit like the disciples after the Crucifixion. Except Trump's presidency will not have a resurrection. It is over. Biden has succeeded him. He is no more. He has failed.
What will these people do now? What will those who confidently said that God had told them clearly that Trump would serve a second term say now? Will it precipitate crises in faith? Will the QAnon believers go on believing in the Deep State, now that a key part of that whole belief system, Trump on his white charger, has ridden off into the distance with no dragon slain?
Anyone closer to these people know? How are they parsing the failure of their Messiah to live up to their claims about him?
I recall seeing on other people's FB feeds and occasional news articles people deep within the QAnon bullcrap who were firmly convinced Trump was the Chosen One who was going to lead the kidnapped children out of their underground prisons and bring down the Deep State. Those of a religious bent were extending this to Trump being God's Chosen One who was etc. etc. etc.
Even after his election defeat they were still going on about how the truth would out and he would serve a second term. They seemed very precise; Trump was going to be President on 21st January; Biden was not going to be inaugurated. God had it all under control.
I suspect that some thoughts like this were behind the Capitol storming business; people believing they were God's/Fate's/whatever's instrument in bringing about the vindication of their Orange Messiah.
It struck me that once that failed, his followers were a bit like the disciples after the Crucifixion. Except Trump's presidency will not have a resurrection. It is over. Biden has succeeded him. He is no more. He has failed.
What will these people do now? What will those who confidently said that God had told them clearly that Trump would serve a second term say now? Will it precipitate crises in faith? Will the QAnon believers go on believing in the Deep State, now that a key part of that whole belief system, Trump on his white charger, has ridden off into the distance with no dragon slain?
Anyone closer to these people know? How are they parsing the failure of their Messiah to live up to their claims about him?

Comments
The abiding attraction of cults is that they give people community and meaning (via particular revelations). I think Qanon will be around for a while. It may fragment of course. Some will repudiate Trump but hold onto the central story. Some will defend Trump and say wait and see. Some will recognise that they have been conned (or Qanoned).
That way the right wing vote will be split for a loooong time to come. Win win.
Though the United Church of Bacon might object (it is actually a thing this church).
Something more akin to the Great Disappointment then?
I'm not closer to any Trumpists or QAnon cultists than the internet, but most of the ones I've seen have been working through the various Kübler-Ross stages of grief. Most of them seem to be in denial (including a theory that around midnight before the inauguration all the malefactors were rounded up by Trump and are now in office under death threat unless they carry out the will of shadow-president* Trump), anger, or bargaining (like the QAnon follower who posted "To and and all federal agents browsing this website: every post I have ever made on this website is satire").
I have a friend who is a radical feminist in Georgia. She posted a Q video from Parler on her Facebook in order to refute it. She found herself restricted on Facebook. Luckily, the ban will be lifted this Saturday.
And, if we're lucky, the media will completely ignore it. I still contend that had they done so four years ago, we would have been spared the disaster that he was.
Yeah, that's what I'm asking.
Julia Duinn has a good piece over on the getreligion blog: https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2021/1/19/when-covering-the-trump-prophets-listen-up-heavenly-inauguration-is-in-the-wings
Within the leadership itself there is a mix of people who have doubled down, a minority who have recanted and the majority have gone on without comment (and will no doubt move to the next thing in time). From personal experience the charismatic movement is very good at memory-holing as a tactic. I suspect that for most the struggle against the 'Marxist' administration will take most of their energy (this language isn't confined to charismaticism and has been repeated at the fringes of conservative thought - and is common in Republican circles more generally).
It's interesting too that Charisma Magazine have moved from hedging on Q to publishing mild admonitions against Q.
One of her retweets showed a bust behind Biden's desk which was of a labour organiser "this shows the direction he is coming from" (paraphrase).
I've asked for prayers for her over the weeks - they haven't worked yet. I think she is talking too much for God to get through. And listening too much to the voices of the mad.
Well, that much is true, anyway. Yes, that's why it is there.
I was much taken by internet chatter about Bernie Sanders' coat-and-mittens combo at the inauguration. It was a nice trip down memory lane, back to Michael Foot's 'donkey jacket' (which is much swisher than a real donkey jacket, in the flesh, and can be viewed at Manchester's own People's History Museum - highly recommended).
And Penny's friend's clock is three minutes slow.
One of the more irritating characteristics of American conservatives is that despite calling themselves "originalists" or "strict textualists" or some other moniker to indicate how seriously they treat the law, most often what they're in favor of is whatever they think the law should be rather than what it actually says. For those who are wondering, the presidential oath as laid out in the Constitution is:
If you were paying close attention to yesterday's inauguration you probably noticed that Kamala Harris swore a different (and longer) oath because the vice presidential oath of office is not explicitly laid out in the Constitution. The exact wording is established by law and cribbed heavily from the oaths given to members of Congress.
Getting hung up on technicalities like this reminds me the time a spokesman for Senate candidate Roy Moore stated that it was the law that elected officials had to be sworn in on a Bible and therefore Muslims shouldn't be allowed to hold office in the United States. He had this look of gobsmacked confusion when Jake Tapper told him that the law didn't actually say that.
Section 1 of the Twentieth Amendment states (in part) "The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January . . . " It does not specify whether the oath is supposed to be administered prior to this or afterwards. There was a bit of a kerfuffle at Obama's first inauguration. John Roberts read the words of the oath incorrectly, which caused Obama to mis-state them. Roberts re-administered the oath the next day just in case anyone wanted to make an issue out of it. I'm not sure anyone's willing to argue that there was an interregnum of one day when Joe Biden was legally president.
I don't know if that's the reasoning or what, but he did in fact take it about 10 minutes early (I accidentally broadcast the whole oath to the vaccination room when I was there, thinking I was tuning in early!) and an article I read stated that it was always done that way, a tad early. I don't suppose it matters. I mean, supposing you-know-who was in fact a "real" president (in the sense of someone who behaved presidentially and had presidential priorities), it would simply mean that there was a ten-minute period when America had two people sworn to defend her and the Constitution, etc. Which would not normally be a problem. (I note that there is no official time limit in the oath itself that states starting and stopping times.)
This is the typical M.O. for failed prophets.
Quote from this article:
Horse. Barn. U.R. Fucked.
As far as I could see, no hint of apology or "I got it wrong".
In any reasonable narrative that would be the case, but this narrative is inherently unreasonable. For example, the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory went down in flames when someone took an AR-15 into the pizza restaurant where the vile deeds were supposed to be happening in the basement and discovered the place doesn't even have a basement. You'd think that would be enough to permanently destroy a theory's credibility, but eight months later QAnon was launched recycling most of the same stuff.
That's deliciously ironic.
--teenagers or college students who started it as a prank, then found it got serious;
--one or more T relatives ("Ooo, look what I can do to help!");
--a project by college students of politics, psych, sociology, religion, etc.;
--a T opponent who thought *surely* this would discredit T;
--themes and variations with other players;
--and/or someone else took it over at some point;
--and/or someone who read "Foucault's Pendulum", started it as a joke, then fell into it theirself;*
I'm presuming it's not the Q Collective from the "Star Trek" universe.
*NOTE: I do NOT recommend "Foucault's Pendulum"--one of the bleakest, most disturbing books I've ever read.
Apparently this is "third time's the charm" for both of them.
Since there were very serious threats to Biden's life, I can imagine the Inauguration committee decided to move the time of the oath of the office just a few minutes forward to throw off any potential sniper or drone attack.
I reckon the fracturing of the Republican Party will have two possible consequences. First, it will keep the Democrats in power. Second, it will halt the Party's drift to the left, as moderate Republicans and their money begin to drift over to the winning side of politics. I state this as a concrete debating point, but don't think the discussion is worth having until Trump goes the full Bull Moose.
Don't get me wrong. I am itching for Trump to do this, not as a friend of America but for the sport of watching what happens. My sincere hope is that the next for years are focused on the boring bread and butter issues of dealing with the Coronavirus, rebuilding the economy, and doing the important reforms needed for the USA to be a fairer and easier place to live.
You forgot:
--Russian troll farm;
Included under "themes and variations with other players".
I would have thought a divided opposition would allow the Democrats to tack left as they could win seats with fewer votes, so they could afford to lose a few centrists.
Q anon for liberals.
One has been ill and found genuine help which worked from people on the fringes of sensible - cut out all wheat and allied grains from diet. This has led to "human beings aren't meant to eat grains" and hence down the rabbit hole. (The Neolithic expansion in population is irrelevant.) She thinks it is OK to join demonstrations against doctors outside hospitals - and these demos can be vicious about the "fake" covid, and the "fake" vaccines - because doctors are dismissive of patients and do not listen to them. Knowing how she got there doesn't help to pull her out. She doesn't seem to have worrying attitudes to Trump.
The other seems to have got in via a strand in Judaism which can be glimpsed in the TV programme about some evangelical support for Israel. I have hoped and prayed that she would come across a rabbi with more sensible ideas, but it is clear from her tweeting that if she does, she goes off online to other rabbis who support her views about God having chosen Trump, and Biden and Harris being useless. She gets angry if challenged. We haven't had much contact for a few months. I tried directing her to a few pieces of evidence that she is wrong about covid and vaccines and 5G and... including the antisemitic strand in the Cardinal she thought well of, but all I get is more "evidence" from her having "done her own research" - without peer reviewed citations.
Both of them "do their own research" whch seems to the a Q-Anon theme.
To me, "doing your own research" should involve something of the following:
1. Doing practical work in collecting data from observation or experiment to test out hypotheses.
2. Doing literature searches to investigate the work of people who have done the above, which have been peer reviewed, and including checking out the sources they cite.
It should not include an assumption that everything in Wikipedia - including the references at the bottom - is deliberately wrong, or that anything on the "filthy" BBC is deliberately wrong, or that the "main stream media" is deliberately wrong, and predicated on the establishment of a new world order via the administration of Bill Gates vaccines and nano-technology to control the populations of the world, unless there is independent evidence that this is so, derived from processes 1 and 2 above, and confirmed by sources which are not Q-Anon or its clones.
Ummm, I haven't been doing my own research on this according to my own rules.
That's an interesting question. The last election here (NZ) resulted in a landslide for Labour. They attracted votes from National (the more conservative large party), and electorates that had been solidly National for decades were won by Labour. It seems to me that they have responded by moving more towards the centre, rather than further left because they are hoping to keep at least some of those supporters in the long term.
I think it helps to understand the cultural spaces in which it came to prominence. There's a long history on message boards of posters appearing suddenly and claiming to reveal hidden information of various sorts, coupled with was the deliberately absurdist and provocative style of 4chan. The difference in the case of QAnon (as opposed to HLIAnon or CIAAnon) is that it first crossed over to reddit (4channers creating a subreddit to absorb debate, a lot of which was actually hostile to Q) and then social media via YouTube (profiting from the phenomena of streamers cross promoting each other, just like many movements before it, including the new Atheists, Gamergate etc).
Q started on 4chan and later moved to 8chan/8kun, and at this point it seems very likely that Ron Watkins (8kun administrator) either authored some of the more recent posts or at least knows the person/people behind the current incarnation of Q.
I think what you see in Q is a confluence of where a particular culture meets a particular way of making money via the current internet infrastructure.
I see some R woman on the Capitol is filing papers of impeachment against Biden! According to the Twitter account I wasn't going to look at - but there's a news story about a Haredi wedding of 400 people broken up by police in North London, and I thought she might have something to say about it. But no.
I can't.
I only found out who Alex Ferguson was when he retired. I knew he was something to do with football but that was all. If it's possible to have a negative level of interest in something, that's me and football.
My brother can’t. Like me, he’s never watched a football match in his life.
I have; I was dragged because boy #1's school was given some free tickets. That's two hours of my life I'm owed back. I've never been so bored.
The assumption that blokes can always talk football has been one of the banes of my life. I listen politely as they go on and on and on about their specialist interest, despite it being a matter of complete and utter tedium to me, but the moment I make mention of any of mine they run away and never talk to me again.
I have a theory that loads of blokes are undiagnosed autistics whose specialist subject just happens to be Queens Park Rangers, an absolute obsession with which doesn't raise concerns the way an equally absolute obsession with historical linguistics does.
It strikes me that DIY research is a bit like DIY plumbing or DIY car maintenance. If you know what you're doing, the results can be beneficial and satisfying, but it's easy to take on something you don't realise is beyond your capabilities with disastrous results. I once discovered this after connecting a washing-machine in my first-floor flat, and so did my downstairs neighbours.