Dear Washington State: Tips From The Midwest

 Psst...Hey, You!

Yes, you up in the Northwest.  Yes, I'm talking to you, state of Washington.

Hot up there, isn't it?

Yeah, global warming is a bummer, huh?

No, I'm not gloating...I'm commiserating.  Because the ugly heat you've been experiencing has been a part of our summer weather for my entire life.  It hasn't always been the level of heat that you're having right now, but we've had enough of it that I feel qualified to give y'all up there some advice on how to survive your present round of dashboard-egg-frying weather.  So here goes....

No A/C?  Try Fans And Frozen Shirts.

No, this is not a prank.  It's how I survived over fifteen years in housing with no aircon whatsoever.

The trick is to use more than one fan.  You put one in a window on the east side of your house, the other in a westward window (both facing inward).  Turn the west one on in the morning, which will draw in the cooler air on the shaded side of the house;  as the sun shifts to the west, turn the west fan off and the east fan on, to get the cooling air from the east.  If you can't be at home all day, buy a couple of cheap plug-in timers, set them for the appropriate times, and plug the timers into the outlets and the fans into the timers.

And at night, open all your windows and use both fans.

Along with this, you can wet a few t-shirts or tank tops, wring them out until they're damp, fold them up, and put them into the freezer.  Take them out after a couple of hours and put them on.  Aaah.  As they warm up and melt, you can sit in front of one of your fans and feel better all over again!

Granted, it will still be warm.  But it will be better than the crazy heat outside.

Use Your Natural Resources.

There are two things you folks have in abundance, depending on which direction you face.

Turn to the west, and you have the ocean.  Turn to the east, and you have forests.

So...pick one and go there.  

I know that sounds simplistic, but hear me out.

One mature tree absorbs 48 (or more) pounds of CO2 per year.  This produces a cooling effect.  The tree's leaf canopy also absorbs sunlight, which heats the air just above the canopy...but underneath, the shaded area is like being under a dark parasol.  Plus, the tree "breathes out" water vapor along with oxygen;  this is called "transpiration," and that plus the "parasol effect" is why you feel much cooler stepping from direct sunlight to the shade of a tree.

A forest multiplies these benefits.  So spending a day or two out there is a good way to cool off.

And one of your boundaries is all seaside!  Breezes blowing off the water will be cooler, and the water (despite global warming) will still be cool enough to be enjoyable.

Just don't forget your sunscreen.

Get A Taste For The Night Life.

The nights may be even shorter than ours up at your latitude, but nighttime is the right time!

It may still be muggy, and it may still be warm...but once the sun has gone down, it will still be cooler than high noon for getting work done, running errands, or eating meals.  And if you socialize outside with friends, you won't need sunscreen!

Lastly...Cool Off On The Inside.

Cold drinks have been a staple of life in the Midwestern summers since forever.  I haven't any evidence, but I bet if you could talk to the Osage, Chickasaw, Sac, Fox, Illini, and all the other First Nations tribes that once lived in this region, they could have told you where they found fresh, cold water to drink on a hot day.

All we latecomers have really done since then is add ice and flavoring.

So while you're finding ways to stay cool on the outside, don't forget to cool off your insides, too.

Plain water is always good, as well as being non-fattening.  But if you have to be out in the heat and you're sweating like a pig...

(This, by the way, is a faulty saying.  Pigs don't sweat.  That's why they wallow in mud--to stay cool.)

...then you may need something with more substance.  There are energy drinks that have fewer sugars and more actual electrolytes (essential salts), so read your labels before you buy.

Iced coffees and teas are nice-tasting, but don't forget that they are diuretics--in other words, they make you pee more, and thus lose water.  And no matter how cold that brewski or that cocktail is, any alcohol will dehydrate you.  So go easy on the alcoholic or caffeinated stuff.

Hang In There....

I'll end with one thing:

As bad as it feels right now, and however tired you may be of triple-digit heat...it won't last forever.  Nothing ever does, especially when it comes to weather.

(Yeah, okay, it nearly always rains in Forks, but you get what I'm saying.)

Your heat wave will break.  And eventually, it will be fall and winter again, and you'll probably have a cold snap that will freeze your collective cojones and make you wish...

What's that?  That it would warm up again?

Final, final tip from the Midwest:

Be Careful What You Wish For!

This Is The Election That Was

 Election 2020:  What.  The.  F$@#???

Well, it's June of 2021, and Joe Biden is still President of the United States.

Somehow, despite conspiracy sites and white-supremacist militias...despite voter purges, mail slowdowns and baseless accusations of election fraud...despite an actual physical invasion of the U.S. Capitol building during the certification...somehow, we did it!  We evicted that fat, orange son of a bitch!!!

I have never prayed so hard for anything in my life.  And even after getting an actual "yes" to my prayers,  it's taken me four months to get used to an Executive Branch made up of serious people who are doing their jobs, rather than a blustering bully and his ever-changing stable of sycophants, none of whom seemed to have any knowledge of what they were supposed to be doing.

So you can understand that the reason I'm so behind the curve with this post is that it's only now that I can finally believe that the nightmare is over.

But getting here was its own little nightmare inside the larger one....

COVID-19:  Worse Than It Needed To Be

I was already having a crappy year when the pandemic hit.

First, I had to have a root canal done.  Then, my eye hemorrhaged, after which the retina detached.  The latter might have been prevented if I hadn't picked up the flu right before they were supposed to do exploratory surgery to find out why the hemorrhage occurred;  as it was, the delay made the surgery more invasive and expensive than it needed to be.

How expensive, you ask?  Well, my deductible was wiped out before the end of April, 2020.  That ought to tell you everything that you need to know.

And on top of all this personal drama, the damn country locked down.

I'm not sure anyone really believed COVID would make it to our shores;  after all, there had been swine flu, bird flu, SARS, MERS, Zika...and we'd made it through those virtually unscathed.

But COVID was both more vicious and less picky about its environment...and a whole lot more contagious.  From its humble beginnings in Wuhan province in PRC, it spread, and spread, and spread...and jumped borders, gaining speed as it hit the EU and then Britain.  Trump tried a piecemeal ban on travel from China, but he not only did he not ban travel from Europe, he also failed to quarantine our own citizens who were returning from abroad.  So of course, COVID made it here.

Now, we have good people who know all about how to study and fight diseases.  Our star player in this respect is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been studying this stuff since I was a grade schooler.  He did as he was supposed to do and advised the President on basic things that could be done to stop the spread of the disease until treatments and vaccines could be developed.  Those remedies would take time, so people would need to restrict their movements, limit social gatherings to home folks, wear protective gear, wash hands often, and keep six feet apart.  Relatively simple stuff, and with some help from our government, we'd be able to hang in there.

So of course, Trump put on his big-boy pants and got to work organizing PPE shipments, wearing a face mask, making speeches about how we needed to listen to what our amazing scientists were saying, and proposing aid packages that would help keep the economy afloat...

Oh, wait.

Trump did nothing of the sort.

Instead, he accused the Democrats of blowing the pandemic out of proportion.  He refused to wear a mask, and indeed continued to hold rallies at which he trotted out lies and more lies about COVID:  it was just a flu virus;  it would go away come spring;  hardly anyone would die from it...and oh, by the way, Obama had just as bad a thing happen on his watch, so why wasn't anyone talking about that?

The Democrats, who since 2018 had a sizable majority in the House of Representatives, put together a pandemic response package.  It passed, but then hit a wall in the GOP-controlled Senate;  only constituent outcry and some compromise by the Dems got a slightly watered-down package through.  Trump did sign it, but then he took the ridiculous step of having his own name printed on the checks we got!  Yeesh.

And, It's Election Season!

Ever since the beginning of 2020, Trump had been in high gear on reelection.  Besides the aforementioned rallies, he had his merch machine going, and there were "Trump 2020" and "Keep America Great" stickers, hats, yard signs and even flags popping up like strange mushrooms, even before the lockdown eased up.  (Later, there were even masks, which was absolutely surreal considering Trump's attitude toward the virus.)

On the Democrat front, we had a lot of candidates to choose from;  they ranged all the way from Bernie Sanders, who was about as hyper-progressive as you could get, to Joe Biden, who was about as Establishment as you could get.  In between, you had folks like Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bloomberg.  Of all the latter, I was most suspicious of Bloomberg, who had done some pretty ugly stuff as Mayor of New York City.  Also, his big talking point was how he had started a successful business (Trump said that too, remember?)...but when I researched that, it turned out to be a "luxury" business, geared toward the needs and pocketbooks of other wealthy people.  There's nothing particularly wrong with that, but could such a man relate to the needs and viewpoints of the 99%?  He didn't convince me, and apparently no one else bought his spiel, either, because he was out of the race not too long after he entered it.

(BTW, I really wanted Liz Warren to get the nomination.  I loved Bernie, but he was a bit too much of a curmudgeon, and although he promised to really kick corporate ass,  I'm not sure how far the Constitution would let him go with that.  Liz had good ideas, and I thought she could win.)

But when all the internecine warfare was done, and the dust settled, Joe Biden was the one the DNC nominated.

A lot of people (myself included) sighed and crossed our fingers.  Because Biden was about as vanilla as you could get.  Not a big hellraiser, very meek and mild...hell, Trump thought it would be a walk in the park!

But...Remember COVID?

It certainly hadn't forgotten us.  And Trump was now well over the rainbow about it;  he implied that injecting bleach (or something like it) might stop the virus.  I listened to what he said about that, and although it doesn't sound like he was actually telling people to do that (though he did seem to be suggesting that doctors should study injecting it), a lot of ordinary people apparently believed he was, to the point that the makers of Clorox and Lysol issued strong statements urging people not to take any of their products internally.

He also touted the use of hydroxychloroquine as a virus treatment, and took it himself for two weeks to keep from getting it himself  (Didn't work - he tested positive for COVID in late September).  And he gave kudos to some of the weirdest people, like Stella Immanuel, a doctor and church founder who pooh-poohed wearing masks and advocated hydroxychloroquine as a COVID cure along with a couple of other drugs...oh, and she also believed that sex with demons is the root cause of gynecological problems in women, that the medical industry uses alien DNA in medicines, and that they are trying to create a vaccine to prevent people from being religious.

Wow.  Is this guy a nut, or what?

Meanwhile, Back At Biden's...

It was all very low-key back in Demland.  No big rallies, at least not IRL.  Joe Biden chose instead to run his campaign out of his home, making speeches over the Internet;  later he made a few at deserted venues.  He talked about what he wanted to do, not about what a jerk Trump was being.

And by God, it worked.

Biden began to gain traction, and Trump began to get nervous.  When Trump gets nervous, he starts name-calling.  "Sleepy Joe" was the most common one, but at this point a lot of people felt like the frogs must have felt in that Aesop's fable of King Log and King Stork:  After 4 years of King Stork, King Log would at least give us some rest!

Of course, there was also the fact that Biden believed the science.  He was keeping socially distanced, he was wearing a mask, he was setting an example...in short, he was acting like a leader, which the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was decidedly not doing.

And when he chose Kamala Harris as his running mate,  I was fully on board.  Because Kamala knows how to kick some ass, and we needed that as much as we needed rest from the EF-5 Tweetnadoes.

When Oranges Attack!

Trump wasted no time in trying to undermine Biden and Harris.  He also went out of his way to make some ugly suggestions that his opponents were going to rig the election through mail-in voter fraud (which was weird, since he voted by mail--absentee, because he wouldn't be in his home district on Election Day).  He packed the empty seats on the Board of Governors of the Postal Service with his own sycophants, and with a strong laissez-faire-capitalist majority, they appointed Louis DeJoy to be Postmaster General.

Now, if he had needed confirmation by the Senate, there would have been a hell of a fight;  even some of the Republicans would have defected.  Because DeJoy held a bunch of stock in a company called XPO Logistics, a contractor for the Post Office.  That's a conflict of interest right there.  Plus, DeJoy had no experience at all with the Post Office;  he didn't even know how much it cost to mail a postcard!

Nonetheless, he immediately began screwing things up:  removing postal drop boxes, cutting back on personnel, closing some locations, and--perhaps worst of all--removing all the automatic sorting machines.  The USPS already had reduced staff, so taking those sorters backed the mail up by geometric progression.  Stuff piled up in warehouses--not just letters, but packages...including perishable food (sorry, Fruit-of-the-Month Club subscribers), essential medicines (sorry, Grandpa--your insulin probably won't make it in time to keep you from going into diabetic coma), and live animals such as baby chicks (yes, those are often sent in the mail).  The animals died, the food spoiled, and it was a huge mess.

Now, understand:  the Post Office does need an overhaul.  But what DeJoy was doing was purely destructive.  We were in a damn pandemic, and we needed our letters and packages.  He could have waited until we got the COVID mess under control.  But he didn't.

Why?

Because people were beginning to vote in advance, by mail.  We were not optimistic at all about our chances of staying safe in a crowded polling place, so we signed up for absentee ballots and used them.  A number of states passed emergency measures to give as many voters as possible access to ballots.  Trump in turn ramped up his "voter fraud" lie and assured his followers that the only valid way to vote was in person, on Election Day.

And as if all this weren't pain and chaos enough...the cops killed a Black guy.

The Murder of George Floyd

On May 25th, 2020, a cop knelt on a Black man's neck for nine minutes.  The man's name was George Floyd, and his murder was caught live on video.

Actually, there was more than one video;  the one I saw was taken by a guy who kept telling the officer kneeling on George Floyd's neck (it was his neck;  you can clearly see that) to ease up, let the man breathe, that this was wrong....

But of course, Officer Big Swingin' Dick did no such thing, and a Black man died for passing a phony twenty.  Later, it was found that Floyd had drugs in his system--but sorry, taking drugs isn't a capital crime, either.  And that finding stank of victim-blaming anyway.

The video went viral, and the entire world took to the streets.  Here at home, people marched and chanted "I Can't Breathe" and carried signs that memorialized not only George Floyd, but other Black people killed by police.  Folks began calling for police departments to be de-funded.

The reaction was predictable:  victim-blaming from the usual racist suspects, tear gas and rubber bullets used on protesters, militias toting guns "to help out the cops."  People got hurt, people got arrested, and property got destroyed when a few people went rogue and started rioting and looting.

Then Trump got involved.  He urged the governors to crack down on the protesters, even saying "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."  He sent out "anonymous" federal agents to deter protests, and even threatened to declare martial law!

But the protests--which remained mostly peaceful--continued.

Trump's Biggest Mistake...

If I had to mark one pivotal mistake--the one that really cost Trump the election--I would have to say it was the breaking-up of a peaceful protest being held between Lafayette Park and St. John's Episcopal Church on June 1st, 2020.  

Trump, apparently, wanted to walk to St. John's and have a photo taken of him holding up a Bible.  He decided to walk through Lafayette Park, and predictably, some folks started throwing stuff.  That set off the National Guard and the US Park Police who were with him, and they started firing tear gas into the crowd and telling them to disperse.  Most of them did, but many of the people who got gassed weren't the ones causing trouble.  Among those choking on the gas was a pastor who was supplying water to the protesters.  The Episcopal bishop, Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, was not happy about the photo op;  it hadn't been announced, no permission was asked, and it smelled like a publicity stunt.  Plus, she felt it disrespected the Bible and the words contained therein.

She wasn't wrong.

People commented on the fact that Trump held the Bible as though it were an unfamiliar object (he actually wasn't holding it upside-down, though some swore he was, with appropriate jokes about his possible Satanic affiliations).  Me, I wonder a) why he walked through that park accompanied by police and National Guardsmen who just happened to be armed with tear gas, and b) why the hell he decided to go to that church, at that time.  Surely there were other DC churches where he wouldn't be bothering anybody, right?

But in Trump World, it's other people who are in his way.  And if you get in Trump's way, you get shoved aside, run over...or tear-gassed.

The Debates At A Glance

There are only a couple of points I want to make here.

One:  Neither Trump nor Pence seemed inclined to actually answer any questions about COVID, the economy, the legitimate grievances of the protesters, or indeed anything of substance.  And both of them, when asked if Trump would leave office peacefully if he lost, said glibly that they didn't think he would lose.

Two - okay, Two and Three:  Biden getting fed up and saying,  "Aw, shut up, man"  over Trump's crazy rant;  and that fly on Pence's head during the debate with Kamala Harris...those, fellow worms, are moments that nobody's going to forget soon!

Election Day At Last!

Early on, it looked grim for the Democrats.

Not only did most of the states look very red indeed, the down races were going GOP, too.  My state kept its Republican governor and its Republican super-majority in the State House;  we had a few Dems win local races, but the widespread gerrymandering we've had here for the last thirty years mostly paid off for the GOP.  I got more and more depressed at the idea of four more years of Trump, but I battened down the hatches and prayed.

And lo, a miracle!  The states were red because the immediate tallies were mostly from in-person voters - Trump supporters who had followed their leader's dictate that early voting and mail-in/absentee ballots were for stupid wimps who actually believed all that shit about a global pandemic!

But then, they began counting the absentee ballots, and the picture began to change.  States began to flip and turn blue.  When all was sorted, sifted, and counted, Biden had won the popular vote by over 7,000,000 ballots.  The final Electoral College tally was 306 votes for Biden, 232 for Trump--but it took over a month to get all those popular votes counted and the various Electoral votes done and certified.

Trump Goes Nuclear:  The Big Lie

I swear, I think I saw a blinding actinic flash from the general direction of Washington, D.C. as Donald Trump exploded.  He had already been complaining about how he was "winning big" when suddenly, "they started finding all these ballots."  I can't believe that anybody could possibly be as ignorant as Trump seemed to be about why the totals changed, but...well, his history of ignorance does make it a reasonable deduction.

But "reason" had nothing to do with what he did next, which was contest every battleground state in which Biden won.  He had his little Sontaran-look-alike lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, making speeches and promoting Trump's Big Lie that the election had been "stolen";  that all those mail-in ballots were fraudulent;  that election officials, state officials, and even state legislatures were in on the cheat;  and even that the automatic ballot machines had been compromised!  That last claim was a doozy--it involved Hugo Chavez and Venezuela and flash drives that could add, subtract or flip votes.

All of these wild conspiracy theories were dutifully parroted by the ultra-right-wing media, even while saner talking heads at the major networks were all packing up their graphics and saying it was over, Biden won, who do you think he'll choose for Secretary of Transportation?

(One funny note about Rudy's fake-ballot claims.

(In one of his f$@#ed-up press conferences, he claimed that "Joe Frazier can vote here in Philadelphia," then reminded us that Mr. Frazier was dead.

(Now, it seems pretty damned obvious to me what happened--how about you?

(So I did a tiny bit of research, using the online white pages...and sure enough, when I typed in "Philadelphia" and "Joe Frazier,"  I got the name of a Joseph Frazier living in that area.  If I wanted to know more, I would have to pay money and subscribe to the service, but--well, you get it, right?  This isn't Joe Frazier the dead boxer;  it's someone else with that name!  And I am absolutely sure that Rudy knew that.  He was inserting a speck of truth to add power to a lie.

(I said that this was funny;  but living voters have been "accidentally" purged from the voter rolls for just that reason of sharing a name with a voter who died...all because some yahoo in a county office was too lazy or too busy to check and make sure they were purging the correct person.  So this really wasn't funny at all.)

And Trump refused to concede.

He just kept telling that poisonous lie, not only in person, but also on TV and on Twitter and Facebook.  Both of the latter began adding disclaimers to his posts, saying that his claims were unfounded.  On YouTube there were links to actual government sites that would tell you exactly how elections worked and how we ensured that our votes were secure.

Meanwhile, his own AG, Bill Barr, said that the election wasn't stolen and that it was secure.  So did an official with the Department of Homeland Security.  Both of these were Trump appointees.  And Vice President Mike Pence, whom I had always assumed to have been born without a spine, said that he would certify the votes of the Electoral College.

That, plus the fact that every court case his cronies tried to file got denied or was lost...all except one, which gave first-time voters less time to confirm their identification for their ballots.

Oh, and there were also three appeals to the Supreme Court...which the Court refused to hear.

January 6th, 2021:  Insurrection and Infamy

The day on which Congress was to meet to confirm the will of We the People in our choice of Joe Biden as President, Donald Trump held an outdoor rally down the street.  Lots of people showed up, including many sporting Confederate battle flags, Trump flags, #StopTheSteal signs, and lots of camo gear.

That, and a buttload of weapons.

Google that speech Trump gives.  He tells them to go to the Capitol and cheer for those who are ready to do the right thing.  He says he will walk with them, and it will all be peaceful.

He spends God knows how long reeling off a bunch of conspiracy theories about there being more votes than people here, how such and so many thousand people there match the names of dead voters, how the Dominion machines are a disaster, how the mail-in ballots are fraudulent, how he really won the election, and if Mike Pence will only do the right thing, he'll still be President and everything will be so great!

And the attendees did march to the Capitol (without Trump).  But they didn't remain peacefully outside, chanting "Stop the steal" or anything like that.  That was how it started...but then people started talking violence and encouraging anyone who was a true patriot, who was ready for confrontation, to move forward.  And suddenly, there was a mob moving in on the Capitol:  They smashed windows, climbed walls, ran a Trump flag up under the American one...and invaded the building.

(Video shows the Capitol police trying to tell them they can't go in, but no real attempt is made to stop the Trumpists at first.  Maybe they didn't believe that these folks were for real!)

The insurrectionists tried (and failed) to break into the House chamber;  in the process, one of the invaders was shot.  Some tried (and succeeded) to break in to Nancy Pelosi's office;  by now, that picture of the idiot with his feet up on her desk is so familiar that I don't need to show it to you...but here it is anyway:

Soooooo mature.  And I don't know if it was the same guy, but someone was later photographed holding a piece of mail swiped from Nancy's desk.  Guess what, folks?  Stealing other people's mail is a Federal crime!

Oh, and someone stole a podium.  (Piano-clink blink.)  And apparently someone else dropped trou and shat in the Rotunda.  Because when you act like an animal, you have to mark your territory like one!

The Defenders:  Casualties

138 police officers were injured while defending the Capitol from the insurrectionists (one of the female Trumpists, when asked by a reporter what they were doing, enthusiastically said,  "We're storming the Capitol!  It's a revolution!").  One died while engaging the invaders;  two others later committed suicide.  One suffered a concussion while trying to keep the invaders from reaching the top of the Capitol steps;  another lost a fingertip...oh, and over thirty officers tested positive for COVID after the invasion.  Because these were Trump supporters, and many were not wearing masks!

It took over four hours for the cops to get the rioters out of the building.  I was biting my nails the whole time.

So Where Was Trump?

Short answer:  At the White House, watching it all on TV.

Eyewitnesses said he seemed entranced by what he saw;  when asked to do something about it, he seemed slow to react.  When he finally did go on air to speak, he told the insurrectionists that they were "special" and that he loved them, but that they should go home now.

Which infuriated me no end.

These people were not special;  they didn't need "love."  They needed a good kick in the pants.  And Trump never even said,  "I never meant for you to do this, and I'm sorry for the miscommunication.  What you are doing is wrong;  stop it at once."  If he had said that, of course, I wouldn't have believed him.  But still.

By the way:  As of June 10th, 521 people had been arrested for their part in the riot;  another news source calls it more than 465 people.  Either way, that's a lot of people who barged in, ready for a fight...and, according to one video source, ready to make those "traitors" pay "the ultimate penalty."

And Yet...Congress Persisted

After sheltering in place during the attempted invasion, Congress got back to work.  Some Republicans, shaken by what their fellows had done, offered no more objections to certification and indeed seemed willing to finally concede that the election was over;  a few held on to the Big Lie (and still do, to this day!) and tried to raise more objections.  But they failed, the results were certified by the House, and the vote went to the Senate, where Mike Pence confirmed that Joseph R. Biden, Jr., was the duly-elected President of the United States.

Inauguration Day...

...And guess what?  Nothing happened.

Maybe that was because it was almost a virtual event.  The police were on their guard this time;  they were not going to be caught napping again.  A very nice girl named Amanda Gorman read an inspiring poem, Lady Gaga sang the national anthem, and there were stars like Tom Hanks, Jennifer Lopez (I hope she didn't do that pole dance from 2020's Super Bowl halftime...), Eva Longoria, the Foo Fighters, and John Legend performing at the much-subdued Inaugural event on Wednesday night.

And yet...

Q Who?

Many of Trump's wild conspiracy theories were not original to him.  They came from a mysterious online persona called Q, who posted on a channel called 8kun.  (I assume this channel is related to 4chan, hangout of grouchy "incel" men complaining about all the evil, mean women who won't date them...but seriously, fellas, if you want women to like you, don't hang out on message boards with suffixes that sound like manga diminutives--"chan" is a cute term for "girl"; "kun" is used by a girl to refer to a boy she is close with.)

He first turned up in 2017 on 8chan (later 8kun), bearing a coded message that "The Storm" was coming.  He said that President Trump would be the instrument to break up a world-wide cabal of Satanist, cannibal, child molesters and sex traffickers (of whom many leading Democrats were ringleaders).  Whew!  That's quite a list of crimes.

It's all made up out of whole cloth.  But thousands of people actually believe it.  Q has moved the date of "The Storm" several times, and said that Trump would declare martial law on Inauguration Day and arrest Biden and Harris.

His (her?) latest lie is that Trump will be reinstated as President, just as soon as the ballot audits in the battleground states prove that he really won (supposedly, some time in August).  But as Beau of the Fifth Column pointed out, by Constitutional law, if Biden were shown to have actually conspired to rig the election, he would be impeached, and likely convicted, after which he would be removed from office--along with Kamala Harris, who would also be complicit if the accusation were true--and the new President would be the next person in the order of succession:  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi! 

There were a lot of Q followers;  they had their own little online club known as QAnon.  There were QAnon followers all over the Internet until YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter started banning them.

But here's the thing:

After the Inauguration, after all the snide insinuations and character assassination, Q announced he was packing it in, and advised his followers to get on with their lives!

But many haven't;  they still tout the Big Lie and all of Q's barking-mad conspiracies, and even a few wiggy government officials (cough *Marjorie Taylor Greene* cough) have bought into the lies.

So we still have work to do....

Epilogue:  Spread The Truth!

Debunk QAnon wherever you can.  Trump, ditto.  Support your local voting-rights group;  give money if you can, and time and effort whether you give money or not.  Find out who your state reps are and write them.  Let them know that voter suppression is not cool, and if they won't listen, vote the bastards out!  Find out everything you can about your local candidates (even a County Medical Board has influence) so you can vote with understanding.  Make sure your voter registration is current, and help your neighbors do that, too.  Call--or go online--and find out when all the elections are for this year.  Find out where your polling station is.  Make a plan to get there.  And...vote.  Not just in the general elections, but in primaries and local elections, too.  It's our greatest power as ordinary citizens.  We came way too close to losing that power;  let's all work together to make sure we keep it.

One Final Note...

The New York Times has posted a 40-minute compilation of the various footage of the January 6th Capitol riot.  It's well worth your time, though it is sobering to watch.  Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWJVMoe7OY0

Also, here is the video from which I got the female insurrectionist's words:

https://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-news-reporter-speaks-woman-162518552.html