Monthly Archives: August 2020

C. and I arrive at Justice Center in downtown Portland on Saturday a little after 11 a.m. Unlike the night demonstrations, in which protesters pelt police headquarters with fireworks and flaming trash, the few dozen people this morning are waving American flags and shouting, "Blue lives matter!"

Which is not popular with the crew across the street, who shout back "ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS!" and that all cops must die.

Even the good ones?

"There are no good ones," an Ojibwe boy wearing a medicine pouch tells me.

He cannot name an instance where a police officer has done good for someone?

"You need to step six feet away from him," a kid at the curb tells meand, regarding my question about the police, "I am going to totally KICK YOUR ASS!"

So good morning from Day 87 of the protests in Portland, Oregon. This one is a little different: It's organized by Back the Blue, a group showing its support for police, support that includes a caravan of Trump-supporting motorcyclists who roar up and form a barrier between the opposing sides.

The call-and-response continues.

"All cops are brave!"

"Especially when they're wearing white hoods!"

"God, what a mess," says what looks to be a homeless dude, just before he wings a full water bottle at the flag-wavers.

"The Proud Boys are 100 deep and on their way in, on the MAX [light rail] train," says C. She's referring to the alt-right group behind today's "No to Marxism in America Rally," planned for noon. Last year's meet between the Proud Boys and antifa resulted in just about zero face time, in part because Portland police coordinated with various factions to keep the groups apart.

Things are different this year. Though the action is taking place directly in front of police headquarters, there is not, for the length of today's confrontation, one officer in evidence. Instead, there's a message through a bullhorn several times an hour, "This is the Portland Police Bureau. Our priority is the preservation of life and the protection of everyone's First Amendment [right] to speech We recognize there are groups with different views gathered here today"

The message's coda, to "Stop participating in criminal activity," does nothing to stop the anti-cop side from throwing eggs, throwing rocks, and shooting fireworks across the street. They are primed to fight, and they've been practicing every night since late May. The movement has grown from grief and outrage over the killing of George Floyd to demands for the abolition of all police and all forms of what it considers state-sponsored oppression.

The oppressors now appear to include anyone inside their homes at night. For two months the protestswhich during that time were mainly protests, with people of all stripes and ages marching in relative peace for the cause of Black Lives Matterwere in the main held at the courthouse blocks where we are today. But the dynamic has now changed. Each night, usually at 8 p.m., the black blocthe by-any-means-necessary wing of the movement, named for their all-black clothesmeet at a park somewhere in the city and march to the closest institution they deem problematic (police stations, social services buildings), which are graffitied, set on fire, pelted with trash and sometimes feces. Last week they added a new twist, marching through residential streets late at night and shining lights into people's homes, demanding they wake up, that they get "out of the house and into the streets!" These nightly campaigns take place citywide; residents have no idea if or when it will come down their block, which does not make for a peaceful night's sleep.

"I feel, as a community memberwe came from East Portland, Cherry Park neighborhoodand as one of many mothers in that neighborhood, we want to see the violence and the rioting end," says Christa, a petite woman standing next to a stroller holding her three children, ages four and under. "We want the city council to make a stand, to make some tough calls. We believe in peaceful protest and Black Lives Matter and all these issues. We do not agree with the collateral damage that is happening to our city. We love Portland and downtown is being ravaged by the ongoing riots; businesses are going out of business. It's just very frustrating."

She holds over her head a sign that reads "WHEELER/HARDESTYDO SOMETHING!" What does she think Mayor Ted Wheeler and Councilmember Jo Ann Hardesty should do?

"Hardesty needs to step up and support the police doing their job," she says. "People have the absolute First Amendment constitutional right to protest. They do not have the right to destroy property or assault individuals."

Christa is drowned out by the canned police announcement asking people to stop antagonizing each other.

"Right. 'Stop criminal behavior,'" she says. "The problem is, the district attorney refuses to prosecute once they're arrested. In essence, they're promoting ongoing violence by not having any consequences."

Would it be better if the police had a presence here today?

"Honestly? If the police were out here right now, it would just escalate the situation," Christa says. "When you have such a polarized issue, anything can add fodder. The police show up, this could very well turn into a violent situation."

It's already a violent situation: Proud Boys and black bloc screaming in each other's faces, golf balls and eggs being launched, pepper spray and smoke bombs making everyone cough, and the kid who promised to kick my ass whacking the sidewalk with a thick six-foot pole.

"USA! USA!

"BLM! BLM!"

"This is the Portland Police Bureau.We recognize there are groups with different views gathered here today"

"It's a testament to the passivity of Portlanders that someone hasn't gotten shot," says Kevin. Right, I tell him. Portland is not Pocatello, or Chicago. If someone is eventually shot by, say, someone who feels their home is under threat, the protesters will then have a martyr, who will be held up as proof of a racist system. It's a bit of a finger trap, really.

"And exactly their plan," he says. "For people who claim to be anti-fascist, they're awfully fascist in their tactics."

This "free speech for me but not for thee" manifests, too, in the anti-fascists constantly taking pictures of me, taking pictures of my notes, and, one time, taking my phone. The Ojibwe boy heckles me for 20 minutes. Someone posts photos on Twitter, identifying me as a "fash."

"I don't like you," a man I have never met tells me. "You spread propaganda."

What?

"Don't deny it, I've watched hours and hours of you online," he says. When I press him for these propagandistic details, he spends 10 minutes telling me he doesn't know exactly but doesn't need to know to know I am an enemy. He then galumphs toward the black bloc side, and I think how it makes sense for him to join a movement where he can feel integral without having to substantiate his reasoning, where the cost of membership is hating the people he is told to hate. As I watch him become subsumed by the crowd, another unidentifiable figure in black, I see him as no part revolutionary, more a meat-sack of insecurity.

I've encountered black bloc activists who, when alone, fold like a cheap suit, and also those who want to talk one on one, to maybe find a way toward progress together. This is not what is happening today.

A painter who's told me he paints the demonstrations because "they need to be captured in a medium other than film" gets a face-full of bear mace. A black bloc "medic" rinses his eyes with milk of magnesia. Five minutes later, C. pukes from the pepper gas.

To quote the homeless guy: What a mess.

"And it's not going to stop until the mayor and the governor let us do our jobs," a Portland police officer later tells me. Which neither have been inclined to do, framing the protests as peaceful when they visibly and exponentially are not.

What, I ask the officer, will it take for the nightly demonstrations to stop?

Maybe violence, he says. "You have a 24-year-old white kid who lives in his mother's basement get hit upside the head? He's not going to come out the next night."

The violence right now is not being doled out by the absent police, nor by the Proud Boys, who a little after 2 p.m. have started to march south. The black bloc contingent, which grew considerably as the afternoon wore on, follows close behind. Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" plays as the Proud Boys are pursued through the empty streets of downtown. A dozen young people in black run up the ramps of the Unitus Plaza building, looking like cat burglars, looking to cut off the Proud Boys, to continue the fight. What else are they going to do in a COVID-closed city on a Saturday night?

But the Proud Boys have apparently ditched, heading not into the streets but directly to the MAX train. There will be no more fight with them tonight.

There will, apparently, be a little more pepper spray.

"I can't open it," says a young woman, her eyes shut and streaming tears as she holds a bag of eye wipes. Two blocks later, C. and I minister to another girl similarly blinded.

"I used to love this city. I used to love waking up and knowing I lived here," says C., as we walk past people cheering and sloganeering in the park across from Justice Center. "Now I just feel bad. Not for Portlanders. For Portland."

What will the park crew do on a Saturday night? What they do every night, which is take to the streets, maybe your street. They will tell you, via the same six or seven slogans, that if you are not with them, you're against them. They will call it love for their fellow man. They will claim they are righting historical wrongs, and who but a monster or a racist would object to that? They will call the destruction of property free speech, and average citizens, out of fear or confusion or not wanting to be seen as a monster or a racist (because who knows what terrors that might bring?) will say nothing, or squint hard enough to think yes, yes, it all makes sense, better to be with them than against them; better, maybe, to burn it all down.

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When You Say Yes to Hate: Dispatch From Portland - Reason

Then it's caused by 5G towers, other times it was deliberately created in a lab in the United States. It's part of Bill Gates's grand plan to mandate vaccines and inject us all with nanotechnology, but a moment later it's part of the world government's agenda to introduce a universal basic income, destroy private enterprise and control us.

Like most families, mine is not unaccustomed to disagreement. But this is different. It's not possible to simply agree to disagree and talk about other things.

Even the attacks on September 11, 2001, are called into question by online conspiracists.Credit:AP

It is distressing to watch people disappear into the vortex of conspiracy theories, where every conversation leads back to yet another conspiracy. Standard definitions for what constitutes a fact or evidence no longer apply, and quantity of "research" is confused with quality of research.

Hours spent watching conspiracy videos is deemed more sound than a statement from a person who has devoted their life to studying the topic and is backed by regulatory bodies and peer reviews.

It is alarming to see how this media environment lays waste to people who are ill-equipped to critically analyse the content they are consuming.

"Proof" comes in the form of charismatic rants and memes with made-up quotes attributed to Hitler's Mein Kampf. The obscenity of comparing wearing masks to the mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust a truth that is also denied doesn't occur to those mired in the conspiracy swamp.

For the committed "truth seeker", even YouTube's conspiracy theories are too mainstream to be believed. Russian-backed websites and alt-right video sharing platforms are the preferred "news" sources. And while some articles and videos contain a grain a truth, they have been so misconstrued or extrapolated as to be beyond reason.

Working in the media I have been accused of being a handmaiden for the world government. I'm told that I write what "they" tell me to write. It's as if the person I have known and loved all my life has gone, fallen so far down a rabbit hole that there's little hope of ever finding their way out.

And the further they fall, the more lonely they become. All relationships are re-assessed on agreeing to a world view, no matter how warped. Family members are given veiled ultimatums to agree or be excommunicated. Friendships, some decades-long, are abandoned when people can't accept "the truth".

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In my case, I am not blameless in the breakdown in our relationship. In the middle of a pandemic, conspiracy theories enrage me to the point where I struggle to be civil.

If she were happy and content in her fantasy land then maybe this would all be OK. But she's not. She feels oppressed when she clearly isn't. She's terrified of shadows. She's paranoid that she's being constantly monitored with malicious intent. And having cut herself off from almost all of her friends and family, she's surely lonely too.

In lockdown, fearful and faced with uncertainty, with too much time spent watching online videos, the only winners are the shonks counting clicks and monetising lies.

Writer, author of '30-Something and Over It'. View more articles from Kasey Edwards.

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The heartbreak of loving a conspiracy theorist - Sydney Morning Herald

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Instructive bad reading, Part II: Dissecting fascism with the help of Might is Right - NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Proud Boys battle with Portland protesters on Saturday, August 22. Justin Katigbak

Here's your daily roundup of all the latest local and national news. (Like our coverage? Please consider making a recurring contribution to the Mercury to keep it comin'!)

ICYMI, on Saturday a bunch of alt-right yahoos from Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys battled counter-protesters as Portland Police made disturbing (and obviously butt-hurt) excuses for refusing to get involved. But don't fret, cop supporters! They showed up in droves to violently put down an anti-police brutality protest on Sunday night. (It's almost as if they're begging to be defunded!) Hot shot contributor Suzette Smith has the details.

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Four Portland protesters have filed a federal lawsuit against Acting DHS Director Chad "CHAD!" Wolf and 200 officers for injuries sustained from the feds' copious use of tear gas and impact munitions on peaceful demonstrators.

The Indian Creek fire in Oregon has burned close to 50,000 acres so far, and is currently only 20 percent contained.

Related: Oregon prisoners are being paid under $10 to fight the many blazes across the state, and our Blair Stenvick has more.

The Oregon Health Authority today reported 220 new positive cases of coronavirus in the state, and three additional deaths. Disturbingly, the OHA also reported on Saturday that a 34-year-old Multnomah County woman had died of the virus even though she had no underlying health conditions. WASH YA DAMN HANDS, WEAR YA DAMN MASK, KEEP YA DAMN DISTANCE.

According to a report from the AP, the governors of several states (including Oregon and Washington) were influenced by business interestssome of whom were very self-servingwhen coming up with state mandates that are being used to combat COVID-19.

IN NATIONAL NEWS:

Wisconsin's governor has called out the National Guard to respond to absolutely righteous protests following the despicable police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was shot seven times in the back in plain view of his three children.

President Trump accepted his corrupt party's nomination to run against Joe Biden in November today, while also making sure to note that if he loses, it'll probably be because the election was "rigged." (He didn't mention that if he wins it will definitely be because the election was rigged.)

The Republican National Convention (AKA the GOP Garbage Parade) starts tonight in case you're a fan of watching a rapidly moving slurry of lies, corruption, racism, selfishness, and gross ineptitude.

New York's attorney general is asking a court to force Trump's business associatesincluding son Eric Trumpto testify and turn over documents in her case to prove that the president has a long history of committing business-related fraud.

Evangelical Christian and Trump supporter Jerry Falwell Jr. has resigned his post as the head of Liberty University over allegations of a sexual relationship between him, his wife, and a business associate. TO BE CLEAR: One's sex life is one's own damn business and shouldn't have any bearing on one's job. However, Falwell is indisputably a grade-a conservative creep who shouldn't be allowed to be in control of anything, so... HA. HA. HA.

In other "stepping down" news: White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has announced she is stepping down from her post to "spend more time with her family" to whom we offer our deepest condolences.

Postmaster General and Trump crony Louis DeJoy testified before an angry Congress today, denying that any of the implementations that he's enacted since taking his post have slowed down the mail. (Narrator's voice: "Though they clearly have.")

Today in "headlines you probably don't want to read, but here it is anyway": Scientists say Hong Kong man got coronavirus a second time.

Are these two points related? As a Taylor Swift fan, I say PROBABLY.

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THE WEATHER REPORT: Sunny skies tomorrow with a comfortable high of 82.

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Good Afternoon, News: Cops Turn Blind Eye to Violent Right Wingers, Falwell (and KellyAnne) Resign, and a Black Wisconsin Man Shot in the Back by...

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way we live possibly forever. Weve seen that business can be conducted from our homes. Exercise can be done in our living rooms. Schooling can be done via Zoom. Homes may be bought and sold based on the strength of their internet connectivity. But is this new normal preferable to what we had before? Will we return to our offices when the threat is over? Chuck Stephens of the Desmond Tutu Centre for Leadership shares his thoughts on South Africas lockdown and his desire to hold fast to the old normal. Claire Badenhorst

By Chuck Stephens*

Reinhold Niebuhr famously prayed for courage to change the things he could, serenity to accept the things he could not change, and wisdom to know the difference.

We keep hearing about the new normal, as if a virus can dictate to the human race which has split the atom and landed men on the moon how to redefine our future!

Speaking of landing men on the moon, when John Kennedy announced the Apollo project, he said: We are going to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. That is not the spirit of lockdown, it is the attitude of courage that you need to be a change agent.

Sorry, but I dont want to go to church online. I like to read the Bible from a leather-bound volume, not a tablet. (I dont need a scroll!) Let me get deeper into this question of what the non-negotiables are, the things that cannot change. There is already a resistance movement to the new normal.

For example, Apple and Amazon have prospered hugely from the lockdown. Apple devices have helped with communication and with contact tracing. Amazon actually staffed up while most businesses were forced to close, in order to expand supply chains right to the consumers door. Is this the new normal?

Read also: Graphs illustrate the devastating effects of Covid-19 on the SA economy

Will we fatalistically accept the closure of small business, of local producers, of corner stores, of tuck shops? God grant us some serenity here to keep small business and micro-enterprise from extinction. Oddly enough, some shops for essentials have remained open throughout lockdown. I have never heard of massive loss of life among their employees, or for that matter of bank employees or government employees. They managed to keep their salaries coming in while so many had to tighten their belts and accept debilitating loss of income.

This goes deeper into civil liberties. In Democracies, we cherish our constitutions. We have both national Bills of Rights and international charters. To a great extent, these were suspended by governments everywhere. What about the airlines for example? Borders were closed bringing international travel to a halt. Is that what borders are for? Whatever happened to the seamless, borderless world?

The travel industry has been decimated from airlines to hotels to restaurants. Some observers read this as a trend governments trying to assert their control. Others (mostly on the Right) generated a conspiracy theory saying that governments had ulterior motives in suspending rights during this moment of disaster.

That is actually my point so why all the talk about a New Normal? What exactly was wrong with the Old Normal? Or is there an element of political opportunism in this pandemic? Making changes that were harder to effect democratically. Like shrinking the bad habit of smoking, for example.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, these come from both sides. From the Left comes the push for voting by mail. On the whole, the trending of hard lockdown was championed by Leftists and opposed by the Alt-Right. So now they are saying that the new normal can include virtual conventions and mail-in voting. Just imagine the possibilities for corruption!

In South Africa, we have not yet returned to Alert Level 1 (read: normal). And yet already R5bn is under investigation for corruption a full 10% of the R50bn that government set aside for Covid relief. Here is a great example of resistance to change. ANC patronage has blossomed under this emergency. God grant us courage to change the things we can, and serenity to accept what we cannot change. The ANC seems almost fatalistic about this patronage system, not at all courageous.

God grant that the new normal allow no space for corruption.

This points, as always, to SAs electoral system. Finally some senior leader like Lekota, Maimane and Mashaba are pushing for re-structuring of the way we vote. Take that patronage system that we call cadre deployment away and replace it with a constituency-based system. God grant us the courage to make this part of the new normal.

But there are non-negotiables that we must not allow to change, no matter how much the Left tries to seize this opportunity to force its RET agenda.

Read also: Nedbank: Further warnings as SA banks face plummeting profits

Grant us vaccines so that we can return to school, to work, and to church safely. But dont let these vaccines enrich Bill Gates who is rich enough already and Anthony Fauci which would be a conflict of interests. Big Pharma must give account. The tight wiring diagrams have exposed a cabal of such people that make the whole vaccine business look very shady.

Grant us funerals where people can meet and grieve and celebrate their heroes in the time-honored African fashion.

Grant us a media that is not on a Leftist leash. Freedom of expression cannot be for sale. Government advertising budgets should not be used as an indirect form of censorship.

Grant us fact-checkers who can see that both Left and Right have their spin-doctors. We get conspiracy theories galore, from interference by the rich in Botswanas elections to politicians who want to defund the police. These are confusing times! God grant us generous measures of serenity to hold fast to what is non-negotiable from the Old Normal, along with the courage to make some changes going forward.

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Chuck Stephens on lockdown: Can we please go back to the Old Normal? - BizNews

There are just six months left in Donald Trump's presidential term. I think it's fair to say the office isn't going to change him.

But it's possible that he just changed the Republican Party forever.

In praising adherents of the deranged QAnon conspiracy theory on Wednesday as well as publicly endorsing two overt bigots who won their nominations to represent the Republican Party in November's congressional elections Trump has officially made the GOP the party of the internet scumbag.

Mainstream Republicans for the past four years have held their noses during Trump's most embarrassing tantrums, ragestorms, and racist blurts. They've dutifully swallowed their pride and surrendered their spines. In doing so, they've allowed the rot on the fringes of the right to seep further and further into the party's core.

Trump's latest trifecta just puts the stamp of approval on the rot.

Marjorie Green won last week's Republican primary in Georgia's 14th Congressional District. It's a deep-red district, and she is widely expected to be elected to Congress.

Greene is a 9/11 truther and QAnon supporter who posed for a photo with the former Ku Klux Klan leader Chester Doles to help advertise his political group. When asked about the seeming endorsement, Greene said the question was "silly and the same type of sleazy attacks the Fake News Media levels against President Trump."

She wrote in 2018 that "Saudi Arabia, Rothschild and Soros are the puppet masters that fund this Global Evil" referring to the fictitious global pedophile ring that's central to the QAnon conspiracy theory. In 2019, she stalked the halls of the Capitol looking for Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib the first Muslim women elected to Congress to badger them into swearing their oath on the Bible rather than the Quran.

On her own campaign's Facebook page she speculated that "Demon possession" and "military grade intelligence developed weapons like Voice of God technology" could be to blame for school shootings. She's also implied that some school shootings could be fakes, according to Jewish Insider. During her victory speech last week, Greene said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was "a hypocrite, she's anti-American, and we're going to kick that b---- out of Congress."

Trump congratulated Greene on Twitter as a "future Republican star" who is "strong on everything and never gives up a real WINNER!" House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also made it clear Greene was welcome in the House GOP caucus and would be assigned spots on committees.

Separately, Laura Loomer a self-described "proud Islamophobe" who has cheered the deaths of migrants and called Muslims "savages" won the Republican primary in Florida's 21st Congressional District. It's a strongly Democratic district, and the seat is almost certainly not in danger of being won by Loomer.

Though she's well-known in far right and ultranationalist internet cadres, the 27-year-old Loomer is basically a B-list exhibitionist troll in the Milo Yiannopoulos mold. She's just as prodigious as he is at getting barred from every social-media platform, as well as by Uber and Lyft for harassing Muslim drivers but has been unable to even get arrested when flagrantly trespassing.

So embarrassing are her antics that she's even been barred from the Trump cult-of-personality festival CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference).

But rather than ignore this marginal far-right internet performance artist, Trump endorsed her: "Great going Laura. You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!" Several GOP congressmen also expressed their support for Loomer.

And on Wednesday, Trump responded to a question about QAnon by calling its supporters "people who love our country" and who "like me very much, which I appreciate."

The FBI has called QAnon a domestic-terrorism threat, and Facebook has barred hundreds of QAnon accounts it's said attempted to incite violence.

Each of these endorsements is a presidential seal of approval on an internet culture riddled with racism, overt calls for violence, and a belief that our "culture war" is just an early stage of a coming civil war.

More consequentially, Trump has stamped that same poisonous culture onto the Republican Party itself. That's how it works: Presidents are the head of the party for the time they are in office.

But president aren't kings, not even of their party.

All Republican lawmakers in Congress need to decide whether losing their seats is too high a price to pay for having principles.

This isn't a partisan issue. This can't be blamed on antifa or the "SJW snowflakes." This is an easy call.

Prominent conservative commentators such as Rich Lowry and Ben Shapiro have expressed disgust at Trump's embrace of QAnon. The former Bush adviser Karl Rove even called for Trump to disavow the "nuts and kooks" of QAnon.

When the partisan commentariat shrinks with embarrassment, it should be a clue to Joe Q. Republican that they could survive sticking their chins out to ensure that they and their political ideals are not associated with racists, bigots, and sadistic liars trying to incite a civil war.

But GOP lawmakers, with rare exceptions, have been either silent or tacitly supportive.

McCarthy stripped the racist Rep. Steve King of his assignments in 2019. Having set the precedent that rank bigotry is unacceptable in the Republican caucus, there's no justification for putting Greene on committees.

Republicans once prided themselves on being the "Party of Lincoln," or the "Party of Business," or the "Party of Limited Government." Failure to condemn racist paranoid internet trolls bearing their party's imprimatur even if it means defying the president is to forever surrender any of the principles for which the party once stood.

When the former Women's March leader Linda Sarsour who has been credibly accused of anti-Semitism appeared as a guest of Muslim delegates on a video call during the Democratic National Convention this week, Joe Biden's presidential campaign swiftly condemned Sarsour's views and reiterated that she had nothing to do with the Biden campaign. There's no reason GOP leaders can't clean up their own backyards, as well.

It's not a terribly high bar Republicans need to reach to ensure their party isn't known for being wholly indecent idiots. They can and should reject these people and ideas.

Sure, rebuking Trump invites the likelihood of retribution, but if you can't stand up to this, you can't stand up for anything.

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Trump has officially turned the GOP into the QAnon Party - Business Insider - Business Insider