PS: I will check out your comment with new info on the betting style polls, Mr. Hail, if it's not the one I've seen already - been checking on your blog regularly.

The only part of the debate I watched was what VDare showed, which was highlights that were about the immigration invasion. It's about 14 minutes long here:

https://vdare.com/articles/after-gop-candidates-debate-trump-still-has-immigrant-patriot-edge

PS: Mr. Hail, thanks for the additional elucidation on how QAnon works. Your comparison to Ron Unz's "I knew nothing about ..." is funny, because at least he tries.

"I knew nothing about QAnon and wrote them off as another bunch of internet wastes of time, until I read 14 books on then last weekend..."

My thing is, "I have too much to do, so no matter what QAnon is up to, it's too much. I can easily ignore everything about them and just work on my job, blog, and family matters. It could be very important, but I JUST DON'T CARE anyway. I know, that sounds bad.

PS: "One Nation Under Blackmail" looks pretty good at first glance, Mr. Smith. I'll keep it in a tab here. I've read only a little bit from Whitney Webb on "The Unz Review". I remember from one column she was pretty solidly anti-Covid-Panic.

PS

-- On the Republican debate's results: Trump and Nikki Haley win, DeSantis doesn't lose --

I don't know if you watched the Republican debate two nights ago. But all the talk predictively became about "Who won," "Who lost."

Several of the big newspapers lined up their ten "best pundits" across the spectrum and had them rate the performances 1-10, and the final results were all jumbled up. (the New York Times neocon Brett Stephens, still worked up about the deportations to Martha's Vineyard Island last year, staged a digital funeral for Ron DeSantis 2024). And everywhere you turn in political-news, someone is talking about winners and losers.

The betting-market data is an objective (?) way to look at winners and losers, theoretically avoiding the worst of the spin-doctors and lessening the post-debate hype, even if bettors are not totally immune.

Here it is:

https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2023/05/27/the-2024-republican-nomination-betting-market-update-may-2023-trump-50-desantis-28-other-22/#comment-51514

If link fails, search under my "The 2024 Republican nomination — betting market update" post for:

....."WHO WON THE REPUBLICAN DEBATE of AUGUST 2023?"

PS

Mr. Moderator writes: "I thought that maybe the Epstein/PizzaGate crowd...would be singled out in the movie.. But no, as one might expect, this was another sob story, albeit with lots of action."

This is a key thing to understand about the whole QAnon phenomenon. It was not a real opposition, especially after the revelations about who was running it.

The purpose of the QAnon movement was something familiar to the world of intelligence services who meddle in foreign countries' affairs by creating false oppositions to weaken a true opposition or water it down or something similar.

QAnon was always about "trusting the plan." It was ultra-elaborately done, and decked out with elements of traditional anti-secret-society stuff revved up to a more cynical age, but the message was always: Do nothing. Fear not. Believe. Trust us.

There was an indirectness with QAnon that involved initiates learning to see signals in the noise, and if the controller(s) of this psy-op could get people believing silly things, they had them coralled, which was easier than ever in the Internet age, and highly dangerous to human dignity and well-being (cf also the social plague of TikTok).

The LACK of direct mention of some of the key features that are being alluded to is typical of QAnon. I don't think the creators of the movie were core QAnon believers, but the whole thing here does fit in the wider world.

Another final thing I'll say about QAnon is it represented a real (if slow-moving) moral collapse of basic institutions in White-Western society.

Back in the eras of some of our forefathers, people would look to the churches, or some other non-state fraternal groups or civic institutions, clubs of like-minded men, networks of men bound by mutual learning or endeavor, even the socialist parties of early generations were quite healthy in this way (even if we say their ideas were wrong, they were socially healthy by being a network of White men giving mutual support and identity).

By the 2010s, something like the QAnon-psyop (artificial, ridiculous, controlled opposition) could succeed, in part because institutions in the Bowling Alone era were not quite powerful enough to stop it or present alternative streams of opposition or identity. Make no mistake, there were people who based an entire identity around QAnon. Not many in absolute terms, but political movements are always about determined minorities. For me this was absolutely a bad sign.

-- --- --

For some reason, I've felt compelled to write a lot of words in this comment-thread on QAnon and related topics, from a hostile perspective in part because I've never once seen this topic mentioned here at Peak Stupidity, as you say you have never paid much attention (paraphrasing Ron Unz's usual opening-line of his essays?).

As for mentions of QAnon here at Peak Stupidity, Yandex reveals no discussion ever, except a few appearances always in the quoted lines of others.

PS: One Nation Under Blackmail Vol. 1 & 2 (20mb .pdf)

https://tinyurl.com/b3ckjndz
http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=One+Nation+Under+Blackmail

☮

PS: "...by 2 of you..." Dieter and Mr. Hail

PS: Since Alex Jones was mentioned by of you, let me give my opinion. I lean more toward Deiter's appreciation for the insight of this man. Sure, he didn't mind making lots of money selling stuff, but since he saw disaster coming to this country, the selling of prepper stuff is not too out of line. (Instapundit Glenn Reynold's wife sells some things - books, I guess - that relate to the Professor's Conservative/Libertarian viewpoints, some prepper stuff, but a lot that has nothing to do with anything but #CommissionEarned, as she writes after each quick sales post.)

Alex Jones has been against the US Gov't for 2 decades or more. I think he's been in the right all that time. However, he has shifted more to the crazier, but sometimes true, theories over the years about what's being done to us - not just Americans but the world in general. He's been wrong on some of this, and he's been right on some.

A particular specific thing Mr. Jones has talked about - first time I actually watched/listened to him in a few years - is his contention, from personal contacts in the TSA*, that there will be mandatory face masking again. Beyond a discussion of the repetition of this stupidity, if Alex Jones is right on this, consider that maybe he has some good sources around for his info.

Of course, he's been wrong plenty of times...


* The TSA was put in charge of that masking business starting in Summer of '20. In case you don't recall, that stupidity was to end in April '22 on some specific date, got extended twice for a few weeks or a month both times, but was finally ended by a Florida judge a week or 2 before one new deadline.

PS: Speaking of being not so aware, this QAnon group that Mr. Hail has just given us a nice review of is also something that I haven't spent any time learning about before. I'd seen QAnon in some headline having something to do with the controversy over this movie "Sound of Freedom".

It's your first portion and then the 2nd-to-last paragraph of your treatise on QAnon (and the movie) that relate to my getting a bit interested in the movie, keeping in mind that we had 2 free tickets and my wife wanted to go. (I mean, I'd have refused if this were some standard woke movie like most of them are today, but my wife is better than that. Luckily!!) I thought that maybe the Epstein/PizzaGate crowd, whatever was real and whatever is simply too far fetched (as you allude to) would be singled out in the movie - the rich perverts north of Richmond. That'd have been something.

But no, as one might expect, this was another sob story, albeit with lots of action. (As Mike Tre noticed, the last portion was very much like "Apocalypse Now".)

That's really something, this whole controversy around the movie being postponed and shifted 3-4 years later due to the PanicFest.

PS: Thanks, Adam, for looking it up and straightening out the "Pancho and Lefty" songwriting credit. That song goes way back, over 50 years, but all I'd heard was Willie and Merle's version, and that probably 15-20 years after they first sung in in '83.

PS

Mr. Hail - - - your Q-Anon theses/ observations are interesting. Alex Jones as a mule of the deep state in the role of the fun-fair peddler of magic potions - - - a betraying betrayor - - - . - Ok.

But then: Isn't there more to him? - The storyline gets a little complicated - but can't such a figure, directly out of Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausens 30-year-war-novel Simplicius Simplicissimus - can't such a modern version of A 30-year-war-street-wise figure be a betrayer and still say things of great insight and importance? -

- I remember how  - - - Joe Rogan was looking back at the - evolving - - - Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine-Maxwell-story and how it than dawned on him that he had been unfair/unjust to Alex Jones in this regard, but not because he did know better, but because he could not bring himself to admit that the Alx Jones fun-fair-peddler actually had been right about this stuff - for years! - - And he, Joe Rogan, had just written him off as phony - and did have a hard time when it became inevitable that the Epstein/Maxwell story was the story we (in part at least!) .n.o.w. know to  be true - and that lots of what we now all think is true (and horrible) - had been said by none other than Alex Jones - - : - - For years!

An addendum to this Joe-Rogan appendix: - -

- - Whitney Webb says a lot of the horribilities Alex Jones boasted out - ahh: Whitney Webb dives deep into this child-molesting-stuff in her two-volume book about the Epstein/Maxwell case. I don't know what she says about the agencies being behind Q-Anon - but seen from Whitney Webb's perspective, child-molesting was a thing amongst the elites.

- Did Whitney webb walk two-footed into the agencies' mind-games trap with the Moldbug-clone playing with her like a puppet on a string? - And finally, Mr. Hail, would I misread your remarks about Moldbug in thinking that you at least did not rule out that Moldbug too is agencies-related?
     
Here's Glenn Beck talking this through with Whitney Webb in a very well structured interview - Duck! it - -

How Elites Will Create a New Class of Slaves | Whitney Webb | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 162 - YouTube

Here's a link to Whitney Webb's book

One Nation Under Blackmail Part II - -

- - part I must be out there too - - but amazon Germany would not want me to find it - - - oh dear, the world is a strange affair - - 

https://tinyurl.com/4suxz9rs

PS
Adam - right - - . ( - I always mix up the two: Zevon and van Zandt).
Hehehe - what I never fail is - to love Luxury Liner - the Emmylou Harris album that brought Poncho and Lefty to my attention in 1978. - - As it happened, I met a friend from these old days on Wednesday - he does peek in at PS from time to time - - and I had it in the back of my head to talk to him about this album, which he bought back then and the cover-(photo) of which just - hit me! _ This Emmylou-Harris-face, these - -- lines - - - and then the irony of the title-song Luxury Liner: Perfect, I thought (and still think!).
Btw.: Emmylou Harris said in interviews, that after a while, she simply thought that Poncho and Lefty - that she is still singing - - is hers - while van Zandt said, that he could not claim it to be his, because, he said, he did not feel as if he would have written it, but rather that it had been sittin'somewhere out there (in the universe, see - - - ) and chose him to be channeled through him and become known on earth (far-out, hehe, hippie-stuff - - - those were the days - - - ).

PS: Good evening, gentlemen,

"Pancho and Lefty" was written by Townes Van Zandt...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zprRZ2wFQD4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3LQeRqTBK4

Cheers! ☮

PS

"Now I understand more clearly why Christian groups wanted to support this movie and, yes, I gotta admit, goose up the numbers..."

You believe that "Christian groups" wanted to support the Sound of Freedom movie because a certain actor, initials J. C., formerly played the role of the Christian religion's founder, the latter also initialed J. C. (by birth-name J. of N.; upgraded to J. C. by popular acclaim and mandate).

Let me "flesh out" a secondary point you seem to imply: Some Christians with an explicitly post-European vision of North America (notionally right-wing Rainbow Christians) may consciously support an open-border policy, which leads to support for the Sound of Freedom movie.

A loose "border policy" can be personalized as a pipeline by which oppressed Christian (or potential-Christian) children can be saved, saved from satanic sex-traffickers who live in Non-Christian Darkness somewhere out there. The children brought into Christian Light in the USA, it is a great moral triumph.

This is a moral perversion as it prioritizes Nonwhite foreigners over White Americans. But it fits with the Regime ethos so the impulse (probably based in unmoored cognitively-feminine thinking) meets the lightest of resistance from the Regime's ideological commissars along the way. Heck, normal Regime-media treatment of the latest "crisis at the border" usually ends up highlighting children, and does a snap-to-attention pvlovian thing for both the Kushners and the Ivankas of the world, sleazy opportunitsts and feelings-first-and-forever airheaded do-gooder types, respectively (Ivanka famously shed a tear over a photo purported to be from Syria and that very day demanded her dad to launch missiles to hit at some Bad Guys, which he obligingly did).

Tis second view of the movie's political message is probably a mix of cause and effect. The makers may involve a lot of people like this, and the fans may be largely people like this (notionally right-wing Rainbow Christians). It also attracted enough attention to get people like the honorable Mike Tre's attention.

Mike Tre is with the majority of Whites in North America who don't want to be part of this process and seek outlets of resistance and ultimately some kind of guarantee of White-European future in North America. There are few serious-seeming cases of this -- if excluding juvenile and shock/troll types, but those who are morally unserious -- that a new one said to be in the area stands a chance of getting attention. (The Steve Sailer blog has long been one, even though Steve Sailer consistently disappoints hard-liners over recent years with his ever-more-moderate rhetoric and views).

The danger of demagogues is high: demagogues such as Trump and the snake-charmer-salesman Vivek Ramashamiey, and to some extent the makers of the Sound of Freedom movie, in a negative reading of what it is. In part the demagogue-attraction to the White-Christian Right is because people so want an opposition to be a reality that they resist criticism. Mike Tre had the courage to identify the movie as such and turn against the movie. But this idea leads me to another big theory of what Sound of Freedom is about, which I don't think you've given so much though to: QAnon.

-

---

------

-- -- -- -- -- --

.

-- On the theory of "QAnon" as behind Sound of Freedom --

Among the other theories for the movie's popularity, I feel compelled to mention the QAnon theory and explain it a little. This one is pushed by some on the Left, but I think it has merit enough to be considered.

What I understand to be the QAnon theory of this movie's popularity posits that the movie consciously attempts to straddle the worlds of:

(1.) mainstream-Christians who can and do buy things for money under their own names (including movie-tickets for themselves or for charity-via-QR-code in this case), and

(2.) QAnon-believers, who (it is claimed) earnestly believe(d) that trump was a great hero rooting out satanic conspiracy by a network of elites who maintain their secret power by an elaborate set of rituals involving child-sex (and trafficking amongst themselves of children sex-slaves), child blood sacrifice, and possibly cannibalism of White-Christian children. (All these ideas pushed for years by Alex Jones, as well.)

The energy or passion of (2.) connected with the money of (1.), in this theory, is one of the few real monetizations of an important social phenomenon of the late 2010s which was mostly was not monetized at all, except by self-consciously fringe and demagogic characters like Alex Jones soliciting donations and purchases of health pills, flashlights, t-shirts, and water-filters. (Alex Jones had been running such a business-model himself since the early 2000s).

The popularity of QAnon at its peak should not be underestimated. It was revealed, several years ago, that QAnon was a psy-op run by a center-left Jewish government employee in Washington, who by tempremeant was a lot like by the Jewish political commentator Curtis "Moldbug" Yarvin.

QAnon was also only possible because of the Internet and the pseudo-reality allowed for and encouraged by the Internet.

But to dismiss QAnon for the above reasons or any others reasons fails to get the point: QAnon helped reinforce an important, hard 'core' of the Trump Cult, or what the Trump political-cult evolved into by the end of the 2010s. The holdovers from which are still with us in 2023.

The QAnon people are usually good people, and while its public-facing adherents often eccentric (like the guy with the bison helmet on January 6th, 2021), the mass of its followers were generally of relatively lower-IQ compared to other politics-followers, generally lower-socioeconomic-status. These characteristics are also why the QAnon phenomenon hardly penetrated the Steve Sailer blogging commentariat, because his commenters not of the target demographic.

These QAnon'ers are fine people who are, by no fault of their own, desperate for salvation, desperate for some, ANY, White Survival scenario in North America. They may not have been the highest test-scorers in school, but they are smart enough to see that the Regime wants to stamp them out, and is far advanced in doing it, and has no plans to stop nor even a feasible braking mechanism. Trump, a typical political narcissist, walked into the position and demagogued his way to the bank through people like this all across Middle America, flipping so many White-supermajority counties from around 50-50 to around 80-20 for him.

Meanwhile, right as QAnon was growing strong, core ideological supporters of Trump 2015-16 like Ann Coulter were getting OFF the Trump Train -- and in many cases they were seen running alongside the train-tracks yelling that the main at the wheel and his cronies operating the train were a mix of frauds, liars, incompetents, and all-around dangerous for wasted time at the least and probably because of big betrayals. Trump failed on his core immigration promises (and I analyzed the Trump years in terms of White birth-share changes under his watch, and the outcome was poor, whereas his supporters all would have believed White birth-share would naturally rise, maybe substantially, under Trump immediately, but really it looks a lot like he was a "business as usual" president).

The QAnon Cult's purpose was to siphon off enough people who might have gone the Ann Coulter direction to stay with Trump, and it succeeded in part by creating a parallel-ideological core loyal to Trump, and not just loyal but viewing the Trump/MAGA movement as something supernatural.

The QAnon movement's adherents were basically all of White-Christian origin (even though the man running it was Jewish), and for that group, millions-strong, the religious tone ended up blending Trump and Christianity religiously, in the way the Hindu religion is said to be so versatile ever since the Aryan Invasion of India thousands of years ago because Hinduism is always blending and re-mixing its pantheon of gods, elevating some as others fade or are repurposed.

To return directly to Sound of Freedom, the movie: It is said to have been a product of the period ca. early 2016 to ca. late 2018, in that this period is when the script, the important production decisions, and then filming all proceeded, with post-production complete by about late 2018. A dispute with a film-distribution agency prevented its anticipated release in 2019 and then they shelved it during the Lockdowns and the discouraging development of plummeting movie-attendance in 2020-21. It finally got around to release on July 4, 2023 (another tie-in with the political-religious blended nature, bringing in the USA civic-religion by that date; granted, July 4 is a common general-release date, up there with Thanksgiving Weekend).

The QAnon theory for the origins of (and popularity of in summer 2023) the Sound of Freedom movie gains credence by the timing of the production (2016 to 2018). QAnon was near its peak at the time.

I was occasionally at political rallies in this period and began seeing QAnon paraphernalia at them, an interesting development for such an online "movement" (run by a Jewish psy-op guy well-connected in Washington), but testament to QAnon's strength. The Pizzagate shooting was in December 2016, and QAnon was well connected with it from the earliest days.

The QAnon Cult, which was a hard-ideological core of the wider Trump Cult, became poised into an enviable place of both politics and religion in the 2016-2018 period when Sound of Freedom was produced. The "religion" part of QAnon may have been harder to see, just as the Corona-Panic of 2020 wasn't immediately obvious to have been a religious movement. (The Corona-Panic is so embarrassing to many of its one-time adherents that no one wants to talk ab out it more. DeSantis was the only person involved in the Republican debate of August 23rd to bring up the word "Lockdowns," and no questions were asked about it by the Fox News moderators.)

QAnon is an embarrassing phenomenon to remember. The core claims of QAnon were discredited with the way the Corona-Panic operation, the "anti-White pogrom" riots of mid-2020, and the way Trump was booted out of office with the mystery-ballot bonanza of November 2020 and the subsequent events up to Jan. 20th, 2021. But there was a great power in QAnon in its time, and since the movie was done and dusted, produced and awaiting release, by late 2018, it aligns with the peak-period of QAnon's power and influence.

(One unresolved question is what became of the man who ran QAnon, the Jewish center-left guy with ties to the Washington permanent bureaucracy and probably to intelligence agencies. It would seem he disappeared after January 2021, though probably still draws his generous government paycheck(s) somewhere out there.)

The release of Sound of Freedom in mid-2023 can be seen as a coda to the QAnon movement which sought to expose supposed networks of satanic, anti-Christian, child-sex-ritual-doing, possibly-cannibals elites, which is cheap demagoguery. The movie was actually about a heroic White man trying to safe Nonwhite children abroad, but the subtext as would have been understood by many a few years ago was about the child-sex-trafficking in the elite with supposedly Hillary Clinton and her close aides near the center of the trafficking network along with Epstein and the Podestas, and an outsider hero named Trump destroying the network and freeing the captive children and expelling the satanic Democrats.

QAnon was never real, but its popularity was both real and a metaphor for something much bigger: the drive for White-Christian Liberation. Those who identified what QAnon was relatively early on realized that it was a controlled-opposition movement meant to distract and channel efforts into stupid directions, which itself could be a political summary of Sound of Freedom, from what Mike Tre and others have said of it.

PS: How does a German guy know more about country music, dammit? Well, if it's Warren Zevon, I suppose it's not country per se, more folksy. Thanks for that correction, Mr. Kief. I was a big Emmy Lou Harris fan, but never heard her version... I guess not a BIG fan, but I did play her greatest hits CD over and over.

I will yandex more on this ...

PS
I know - "... we could have had him any day. We only let him slip away... out of kindness I suppose" - the Willie & Merle song comes into my head about every time I read that handle.
It's a Warrnen Zevon song, actually. I like Emmylou Harris version very much  - - 
to be - - ducked***
Emmylou Harris "Pancho and Lefty" - YouTube

***new word for googled - hehe - first time this hear peakers!

PS: "We are, in fact, fast reaching the point where 40% of the population is illegal aliens."

But, but they are only 11 million. That's what the news has been saying, steadily, for 25 years.

And, I've got some land you might be interested in down in Monroe Country, where no gator is illegal! But, you're already by the water...

Illegals could be 10% of the population, probably are, and commit those 40% of the crimes.

PS Not even a little bit surprising. Pick any crime, and 40% of arrestees for that crime will be illegal aliens. We are, in fact, fast reaching the point where 40% of the population is illegal aliens.

PS: Hah! That was pretty good, Alarmist. I'm accumulating a lot of good memes, as they call them.

PS

Even the legal ones can be problematic...

this is funny

https://voxday.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/image-26.png

🕉