Pizzagate
It seemed like a bad joke gone wrong. Back in 2016, when the nation was already shocked by the ascendancy of Donald Trump, Edgar Welch walked into Ping Pong Pizza in Washington, DC with an AR-15. He fired the gun at a door at the back of the restaurant, blasting open the lock of a closet. Welch was searching for the stairs to the basement, where he was certain children were being held for trafficking. There is no basement to the Ping Pong Pizza building.
“Pizzagate” was a joke to most of the nation, a man so steeped in the craziness of the back alleys of the internet, that he truly believed that Hillary Clinton, the nominee for President, led a Democratic cabal of pedophile child traffickers, some hidden in the basement of Ping Pong Pizza. Part of the “proof” of the conspiracy was “coded” into the Russian hacked emails of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. In its most extreme version, the Democrats actually drank the blood of those children to maintain some form of immortality, as well as more “regular” pedophilia. It was “nuts”, just beyond crazy. But there was Welch, with an actual AR-15, firing off shots and looking for the basement.
QAnon
A lot of this craziness amalgamated into the QAnon conspiracy theories. Most normal American citizens shook their head at the lunacy: John Kennedy Jr. returning from a faked death to lead the nation, the American “secret police” ready to swoop in and return Donald Trump to his rightful place as President. But Trump, and some of the politicians who aspire to be “Trump 2.0”, continue to “dabble” in QAnon. You can see it at a Trump rally, the “Q” apparel in the audience, the QAnon “theme song”played in the background, the “Q” salute by many in the crowd.
There’s a line from QAnon to the current Republican talking points. And it runs straight through Trump, and right to the shootings at the Q Night Club in Colorado Springs.
Indoctrination Centers
I taught in the public schools for thirty-five (and a half) years. I am a “true believer” that teachers can’t “indoctrinate” kids. If we could, then schools wouldn’t need my last job, the “discipline guy” at a high school, the Dean of Students. If we really had that kind of influence, kids would do their homework, and pay attention in class, and not sell drugs in the bathroom or make love on the floor of the auditorium. But they do.
But some Republican candidates have found a way to energize voters by creating a view of public schools as “Democrat indoctrination centers”. Good schools look at their students, some of whom are gay, or transgendered, or even “furries” (students who dress like animals). They try to find a way to reach those students, to make them part of their school community. But somehow that makes schools “Democrat”. And since, according to QAnon, Democrats are pedophiles, it all fits a certain crazy sense. “They are trying to indoctrinate our kids”.
Energizing the Crazies
Think that’s not real? Millions of dollars are going into school board candidates throughout the country, from groups like the 1776 project. Part of their goal is to control curriculum, to end the mythical “Critical Race Theory” they think is taught in schools. But another part is to attack schools that try to normalize gay and transgendered children. That “normalization” fits right into the QAnon theories, though those groups would deny any connection.
Still not convinced? Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State and a potential Republican candidate for President in 2024 just announced:
“Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping? The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten (President of the American Federation of Teachers). It’s not a close call. Who’s the most likely to take this republic down? It would be the teacher’s unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids…”
Schools are teaching “acceptance” of those that are different. But accepting the LGBTQ community flies in the face of significant portion of the Republican base, who are co-opted by QAnon conspiracy theories. So if schools accept the LGBTQ, then, like Weingarten, they must be indoctrinating children into being Democrats.
Disaster
Pompeo knows better. But he’s willing to “dabble”, just as Trump is, in order to reach that part of the Republican base who will vote in the Republican primary. And that “dabbling” means advocating, “in camera”, for the craziness.
If the LGBTQ community is such a threat to American culture, how hard is it for those on the fringes of our society, already mentally unstable and with ready and easy access to weapons and ammunition, to take “control” of the situation. Whether it was Welch storming the Ping Pong Pizza store in 2016, or Anderson Lee Aldrich at the Q Night Club last week, they are “getting the message”. It’s not just from the dark corners of the internet anymore. It’s from some of the highest office holders in the nation.
