#WhatTheyVotedFor
The thing is that when all is said and done, only the bigotry and bullying will remain. This is what the Trump election is about; the bullies don't want their privileges revoked.
In Florida, meanwhile, the Department of Justice has just announced the arrest of a Tampa, Florida–area woman who—believing, like Jones, that the deaths at Sandy Hook were faked—threatened to kill one of the bereaved parents of a Sandy Hook victim. From the DOJ:
On or about January 10, 2016, Richards made a series of death threats to a parent of a child killed in the Sandy Hook School shooting. The parent resides in South Florida. Richards' believed that the school shooting was a hoax and never happened allegedly motivated her to make the charged threats.
The parent in question, Len Pozner, is what New York magazine described in a September piece as "the de facto leader of the [Sandy Hook] anti-hoaxer movement"; he operates an advocacy organization for family members of mass-killing victims who've been harassed by truthers and has filed a lawsuit against one prominent Sandy Hook denier for invasion of privacy. Pozner told the magazine that he was actually once an Infowars listener himself before losing his 6-year-old son Noah in Newtown. Said Pozner: "I probably listened to an Alex Jones podcast after I dropped the kids off at school that morning."
(Mathis-Lilley, "Sandy Hook"↱)
And, well, you know. It only goes downhill:
The bizarre "Pizzagate" online hoax theory that Hillary Clinton operates a satanic pedophilia ring out of Comet pizza in Washington, D.C., has now expanded to encompass pizzerias in at least three other cities, local outlets report:
• In Austin, Texas, according to the Austin American-Statesman, the East Side Pies mini-chain has been the subject of online and phone harassment (and one incident of IRL vandalism) by individuals who have "interpreted the restaurant’s logo as a symbol of the 'illuminati,' questioned the meaning of photos of pizza-eating children on East Side Pies’ Facebook account, inferred that a picture of staffers with former Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell was proof of nefarious political ties and claimed co-owner Michael Freid, an alumnus of the Culinary Institute of America, had 'connections to the CIA.' "
• DNAInfo writes that an employee of the Brooklyn pizza restaurant Roberta's received a telephoned death threat after it was identified as a hub of satanic activity in a YouTube video posted by an individual who made similar claims about a restaurant in Amherst, New York, which is near Buffalo.
As Slate’s Christina Cauterucci and Jonathan Fischer wrote Tuesday↱, part of what seems to have made Comet pizza a target of the far-right white nationalist crowd is that it has long been a welcoming environment for "eccentrics, queers, outsiders, and their art," hosting punk shows and art installations. East Side Pies and Roberta's are both also located in predominately liberal areas with thriving music and arts scenes.
(Mathis-Lilley, "Pizzerias"↱)
Still, though, what the hell? Edgar "Maddison" Welch explained that he "just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way."
What was his original plan?
Mr. Welch, the father of two daughters, said he woke up Sunday morning and told his family he had some things to do. He left “Smallsbury,” a nickname for his hometown, for the 350-mile drive to Washington with the intention of giving the restaurant a “closer look” and then returning home. He wanted to “shine some light on it.” As he made his way to Washington, he felt his “heart breaking over the thought of innocent people suffering.” Once he got to the pizzeria, there was an abrupt change of plans. Mr. Welch would not say why he took a military-style assault rifle inside the restaurant and fired it. According to court documents, Mr. Welch said he had come armed to help rescue the children.
What did he think when he discovered there were no children at the pizzeria?
“The intel on this wasn't 100 percent,” he said. However, he refused to dismiss outright the claims in the online articles, conceding only that there were no children “inside that dwelling.” He also said that child slavery was a worldwide phenomenon.
Where did he learn about the fake news involving Comet?
He said it was through word of mouth. After recently having internet service installed at his house, he was “really able to look into it.” He said that substantial evidence from a combination of sources had left him with the “impression something nefarious was happening.” He said one article on the subject led to another and then another. He said he did not like the term fake news, believing it was meant to diminish stories outside the mainstream media, which he does not completely trust. He also said he was not political. While once a registered Republican, he did not vote for Donald J. Trump. He also did not vote for Mrs. Clinton. But he is praying that Mr. Trump takes the country in the “right direction.”
(Goldman↱)
Mr. Welch added, "I regret how I handled the situation."
This is the sort of thing we just can't make up. As fiction, this is genuinely unbelievable. Indeed, even conceding that truth is stranger than fiction, belief―acceptance that reality is real―seems something more suited, on this occasion, to
asking Alice↱°.
So here's our looking glass:
On Nov. 7, the hashtag #pizzagate first appeared on Twitter. Over the next several weeks, it would be tweeted and retweeted hundreds or thousands of times each day.
An oddly disproportionate share of the tweets about Pizzagate appear to have come from, of all places, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Vietnam, said Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University in North Carolina. In some cases, the most avid retweeters appeared to be bots, programs designed to amplify certain news and information.
“What bots are doing is really getting this thing trending on Twitter,” Albright said. “These bots are providing the online crowds that are providing legitimacy.”
(Fisher, Cox, and Hermann↱)
To the one, sure, if it brings some thin comfort, there is the popular vote.
To the other, more and more all these self-assured, smarter-than-thou tinfoils who just helped elect a president are apparently getting played by international jokers, swindlers, and psyops. And, you know, that's the thing about the whole, "We're #1 USA!" jingoism. There was this hilariously creepy moment―and if you weren't old enough during the eighties I simply cannot convey the wrecking ball to the tender places the line actually was―Betty White's character in
Golden Girls had this line about her sex life with her husband that floored pretty much everybody, which resulted in Rue McClanahan, the house "slut" as eighties societal mores went, expressing her surprise that the prim and proper character had a vibrant (or, by the societal mores of the day went,
dirty) sex life. Betty White responded that she always figured you didn't need to talk about it if you were busy doing it, which of course was a scandalous burn on Rue McClanahan's character.
Oh, right. Something about patriotism goes here. Dunning–Kruger in living application.
No, really. Maddison Welch claims to not be a Trump voter, but his sad tale is wrapped up in the same phenomenon, and
David Dunning↱ himself looks beyond Trump voters: "The problem," he wrote earlier this year, "isn't that voters are too uninformed. It is that they don't
know just how uninformed they are."
Thus #PizzaTruthers and other such patriots are nothing more than fodder for international twittery. Unwitting assets is one thing, but they don't seem to mind; any excuse for a shitshow, and all.
