The post-reality reality

 Here is a presentation by David Neiwert about the explosive growth of the preposterous Q-Anon fantasy not only in the U.S., but around the world.

This is highly disturbing, to say the least. This is an utterly preposterous belief system that it seems no sane person could think was anything but an elaborate joke, for even an instant. For those of you who just returned from a vacation in outer space, the basic idea is that prominent Democrats are actually leaders of an international child sex trafficking ring that not only sexually assaults the children but also murders them, extracts hormones from them, and eats them. Yes, eats them. It isn't clear what's taking him so long, but at some moment (which has been predicted, and come and gone, at various points in the past) their hero Ronald T. Dump is going arrest them all and have them executed.

Okaaaay. The thing is that now several duly nominated Republican candidates for office, including the U.S. congress, are proponents of this insanity, and they have the full backing of their state parties and the RNC. Dump himself has congratulated and praised them, and he frequently re-tweets Q-Anon material. Several of what now appear to be millions of followers have committed, or attempted to commit, acts of violence, and more are sure to come.

The Internet was supposed to make information free to everyone, and create a vigorous market for ideas and usher in a new age of enlightenment.  Instead it has led millions of people down rabbit holes into delusional worlds. We can have a polity in which people debate based on differing values, differing priorities for policy, and in which people may differ over legitimately disputable factual matters. But we cannot survive a polity in which there is no such thing as objective truth. 

Note: Several commenters on Neiwert's piece propose that this is a Russian intelligence operation. That seems quite plausible. The Russians may not have started it, but they appear to have jumped on it and are now promoting it and giving it most of its vigor. Just one more way in which we have been captured by an adversarial foreign power, to go along with their highly effective blackmail of the White House occupant. You might think this would bother any remaining Republican voters who are not themselves insane but evidently it does not.