You Can't See That Emotion in Their Faces

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I recently had tom nichols on the podcast political scientist, and he was making the point that much of democracy is just kind of boring paper work. And to the average person, is like, that's not exciting to be part of. You can see in a lot of the especially at's happening right now, where you have these these fights between sort of proud boys on one side and and tifa on the other. I don't know that fight in the streets with proud boys necessarily accomplishes anything. It makes you feel good. Maybe there's value in that, but ultimately,. that's not how change is effected. That's not how large masses of people realize that they are

Michael Shermer speaks with Mike Rothschild, a journalist specializing in conspiracy theories, about QAnon and its followers.

On October 5th, 2017, President Trump made a cryptic remark in the State Dining Room at a gathering of military officials. He said it felt like “the calm before the storm” — then refused to elaborate as puzzled journalists asked him to explain. But on the infamous message boards of 4chan, a mysterious poster going by “Q Clearance Patriot,” who claimed to be in “military intelligence,” began the elaboration on their own. In the days that followed, Q’s wild yarn explaining Trump’s remarks began to rival the sinister intricacies of a Tom Clancy novel, while satisfying the deepest desires of MAGA-America. But did any of what Q predicted come to pass? No. Did that stop people from clinging to every word they were reading, expanding its mythology, and promoting it wider and wider? No. Why not?