This is amazing and appalling

While the debate last night may suggest a modest recovery of rationality, the United States is still going haywire, or at least a fraction of its population is. Even if you are not stunned to learn that half of Trump supporters believe his QAnon nonsense, you should be surprised that 18-20 per cent of Biden supporters either believe it or aren’t sure what to think.

There is absolutely no evidence for this child sex-trafficking allegation against Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or other top Democrats. There is a lot more circumstantial evidence that Donald Trump was a possible beneficiary of child sex-trafficking when he was paling around with Jeffrey Epstein, including photographs of him at parties where underage girls were procured. Do we really think Trump never took advantage, or that he never sought an underage sex partner? Remember: Trump has publicly expressed sympathy for Epstein’s accused procurer-in-chief, Ghislaine Maxwell.

So what is this all about? It may not appear to be about race, but I think it is. The overwhelming majority of people who believe this nonsense about Democrats involved in sex trafficking are white. What this QAnon trash talk does is express their loathing for Democrats, whom they view as people who no longer defend or protect whiteness. Race is supposed to convey privilege. It no longer does that as well as it once did, so someone must be responsible. Who better to blame than those who don’t stand up for racial superiority?

White supremacists are unavoidably status inconsistent in American society today. They think of themselves as superior but are not treated as much that way as they think justified. Nor can they demonstrate their superiority. People whose self-assumed status is inconsistent with their actual status report seeing a lot more UFOs. Why shouldn’t they also fantasize about who is responsible for sex trafficking?

What is to be done about people who believe fabricated conspiracies about their political enemies and view their own political leader as incorruptible even though his bona fides are in doubt? The temptation is to ignore them. It is not worth your while to argue with such nonsense. It is intended to offend, not to describe. It gives satisfaction to people who can’t look themselves in the mirror without seeing failure.

That approach is however problematic. Some non-trivial percentage of these people are armed, organized, and dangerous. Their leaders are telling them that the only way Trump can lose the election is by fraud. We’ve taken to calling their armed groups “militias.” They are not militias. They are armed gangs actively planning to interfere with the election, prevent votes from being tabulated, and even block Biden from being inaugurated. The proper term for politically motivated violence of this sort is terrorism. The biggest threats may be in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Oregon, but there is no telling where else they might strike.

So far, the FBI seems to be doing its job. The arrest and prosecution of one armed gang for plotting to kidnap Michigan’s governor is to be applauded. But how many more plots of this sort are there? And how many less dramatic efforts to intimidate voters, poll workers, journalists, and canvassers? We are allowing people who claim to believe Hillary Clinton is a sex trafficker to carry lethal weapons in public. How smart is that? It’s amazing, appalling, and dangerous.