I could barely believe it when I saw someone proudly sporting a Q anon flag in Spanish Fork this morning. For the uninitiated: Q anon is a conspiracy theory of a grand global cabal where left-wing politicians and elites are attempting to harvest the blood of children to feed their hunger and sick schemes of managing the world. This is crazy stuff, and it is linked to a belief that Trump will triumphantly return to power to kill the conspiracy.
What is unfortunate is that a lot of Republicans buy into this Q stuff, and they are increasingly able to move Republican politics. A party that pays attention to this make-believe narrative and elects nominees who believe in such will have a difficult time governing and actually appealing to those in the mainstream. A Republican party that can not compete in the marketplace of ideas is bad for the Democratic party as well in that it doesn’t check the excesses of the Democrats.
What do we do to solve this problem? Facts and arguments based in reality don’t tend to convince those who believe in conspiracies. It is like a religion, a deeply held belief that is not easily argued around. I’m not sure what a good solution is here, other than those who are leaders should marginalize these fringe beliefs instead of add fuel to the fire.
There will always be fringe among us. We should treat those with love, but not indulge their beliefs, and at the very least we should not allow their fringe beliefs to become mainstream in one of our two major political parties.
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