Smart people fall for conspiracy theories. They might even think themselves rational when they clearly are not. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/hellwqrld. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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| Hello everyone, Poker and Politics here, and today I wanted to do a quick podcast about how people think that intelligence should prevent someone from falling into QAnon. | |
| And I see this happen a lot. | |
| I see a lot of people talking about how their very smart son, their very smart daughter, their very smart family has fallen for QAnon. | |
| How? | |
| How did this happen? | |
| They're so smart. | |
| They're so sharp. | |
| They get the world. | |
| They shouldn't fall for this. | |
| And there's this belief in people that the only people that can buy into QAnon are just suckers. | |
| They're fools. | |
| They're just clowns. | |
| And this isn't true. | |
| This isn't true in the slightest. | |
| Conspiracy theories do not discriminate between the dumb and the smart. | |
| They don't discriminate in any way, shape, or form. | |
| Buying into a conspiracy theory has nothing to do with your level of intelligence. | |
| Because conspiracy theories are not about the rational side of your mind. | |
| They're about emotion. | |
| They are about feeling a need. | |
| They're about something other than just Knowledge. | |
| Although the pursuit of knowledge is absolutely a way you can fall into it, but you're not doing it exclusively for that. | |
| You're doing it for excitement. | |
| You're doing it for camaraderie and brotherhood. | |
| You're doing it because it's something that you enjoy that isn't found in the rest of your life. | |
| When I was getting hard into the JFK assassination, it was because I wanted to know the truth and I was trying to figure out who really did kill the president. | |
| And it was kind of exciting to find all the little bits of evidence, all the little details, all the things. | |
| that were in the Kennedy assassination that most people don't know about. | |
| The badge man in the photo of the grassy knoll of the Knicks film which is basically the Zapruder film but from the other side so it doesn't show the assassination in his That is gruesome detail. | |
| Babushka lady, the little girl that runs along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the limo and then stops and appears to be looking up after the first shot like she heard someone shooting from the schoolbook depository. | |
| There's endless things that you can find out about and learn about in the assassination of President Kennedy. | |
| It's just a rabbit hole you can fall down for years if you so desire it. | |
| And I did that and I enjoyed it because I was just immersed in it and it was something I found so engaging and so interesting that the government withheld this secret truth and why did they do that and who were they covering up for and just all of that. | |
| It was just something that I really found beyond intoxicating. | |
| It was very, it was just something that I gravitated towards and I couldn't resist it. | |
| I watched the Men Who Killed Kennedy A&E specials. | |
| I watched everything. | |
| I was just obsessed. | |
| I actually didn't watch JFK because I thought it was kind of hokey and I thought Oliver Stone was kind of getting in on something late. | |
| I didn't, I didn't, I didn't find him to be honest in his conspiratorial mindset as it were. | |
| And then that moved me into a 9-11 trutherdom. | |
| And I wouldn't say that I was as big into that. | |
| I wasn't nearly as big into that as I was the Kennedy assassination, but I bought it. | |
| I bought it. | |
| I bought it because I hated George W. Bush and I wanted him to be behind it. | |
| I wanted him and Cheney to have done this terrible crime to validate my hatred. | |
| I knew that going into Iraq was bullshit. | |
| I knew there were no WMDs. | |
| I knew they were fucking lying about all of it. | |
| And so I knew they were lying about 9-11 too. | |
| And I watched loose change and it confirmed it. | |
| And then the thing that saved me, in a way, was just when I was yelled at by my friend. | |
| And he called me a moron and said to stop buying into this nonsense. | |
| That's when I realized that not everyone believed the way I believed and that rational, intelligent people could believe that the government was not lying about 9-11. | |
| That the government wasn't lying about Kennedy. | |
| And that was kind of a revelation to me. | |
| And I think the big thing that really helped me out was that I was a lone wolf. | |
| I didn't have a community. | |
| I wasn't a part of a group of 9-11 truthers or JFK conspiracy buffs. | |
| I didn't have people to go to and tell them, hey, my friend called me a conspiracy theorist and a nut last night. | |
| And they could be like, fuck him. | |
| He doesn't know the truth. | |
| He doesn't know that jet fuel can't melt steel beams. | |
| And that would have helped me stay in. | |
| That would have helped me be a part of the group. | |
| And that's the most insidious, evil part of QAnon, is that there is that community. | |
| There is that group. | |
| And when your loved ones tell you that this is insane, this is nonsense, you should not believe this. | |
| You need to get away from it ASAP. | |
| Your friends on the internet will tell you, stick with us. | |
| Trust the plan. | |
| Don't listen to them. | |
| We're the ones giving you the secret knowledge. | |
| We're the ones that are making your life exciting and interesting and new and telling you the hidden truth of the world and your family is just a bunch of boring blue-pilled sheep who don't know any better and one day you will educate them and you will make them understand and they will love you for it. | |
| And that's the thing, is that you can start off with an honest reason for this, like belief that there's corruption in government, belief that we need to protect children from dangerous pedophiles, belief that Epstein is not alone and that there are high-powered people trafficking children. | |
| You start with the honest. | |
| You start with the possible. | |
| You start with the things that are in the bounds of reality. | |
| And then you slowly ease your way to Crazy Town. | |
| You just make that jump. | |
| And you don't even see it. | |
| That's the thing that's so insidious about it. | |
| You don't even see that you stepped off the path of reality and on to Crazy Town. | |
| It doesn't hit you. | |
| You don't think for a moment that it actually happened. | |
| You don't even notice that it happened. | |
| But it did. | |
| And that you don't even know how to get back to reality at that point because you don't even know where you are anymore. | |
| You're gone. | |
| And so don't think that the intelligent, brilliant family and friends that you knew before somehow lost that intelligence, somehow lost that spark, lost that ability to understand and process logic and reason. | |
| They didn't. | |
| They just are seeing things in a different way and they're reacting to things incorrectly for some other reason. | |
| Again, 9-11, it was my hatred of George W. Bush. | |
| It was A desire to blame all the ills of the world on him. | |
| It was kind of like a reverse QAnon in a way, where they want to blame Hillary and Obama for everything. | |
| It's so easy to scapegoat. | |
| It is so easy to scapegoat the people you don't like and to blame them for everything. | |
| And it's so easy to get caught up in this kind of thing, this exciting narrative, this dynamic narrative, this alternate world. | |
| And it takes a lot of work to get away from it. | |
| It takes a lot of work to get out of it because that alternate world is really fun. | |
| It's nice to be there. | |
| Please explain this Brennan Russiagate stuff. | |
| Make it make sense. | |
| Basically Brennan is an intelligence officer and everyone in intelligence was in on Russiagate and also Brennan is a Muslim because all bad people are Muslims too if we can make that excuse. | |
| Hillary may not be a Muslim but she's just an outright Satanist so that's close enough. | |
| So that's really it. | |
| It's just that he's an intelligence officer they hate because they hate everyone who is in military intelligence, or I should say government intelligence, CIA, FBI, whatnot, will you? | |
| They're all bad people except for Admiral Rogers. | |
| He's a good guy. | |
| ASI Millard, bracket spooky, says, have any customers at your job mentioned Q? | |
| I had a coworker wear a Q hat at a company meeting, and our boss, our wonderful, lovely boss, | |
| used the phrase, where we go one, we go all, but he was using it in a positive, | |
| solidarity, team-building kind of way. | |
| He had no idea that what he was saying would trigger that person. | |
| And after the meeting was over, we were in line to shake hands and talk to the boss, | |
| small talk with him, and he was a little bit angry. | |
| he saw the hat and he asked her about Q and she said oh you know Q where we go when we go all and she laughed knowingly and he laughed awkwardly and that was that and I just felt so bad I was like oh my god do I tell him do I not tell him what do I do because I don't want to get this person fired I don't want to cost them their job but yeah that was that was rough Other than voting early, what should we be doing to prepare on the days of coming to the election? | |
| Get your friends to vote early. | |
| Talk to anyone you know who's apolitical or lazy and encourage them to vote. | |
| Do the text training course for the Biden campaign and start texting people to make sure they get out and vote. | |
| Just push the rock up the hill. | |
| Just fight. | |
| But, I mean, if you vote yourself, that is, you pass the test if you do that. | |
| If you do more than that, you get extra credit. | |
| But just do those things. | |
| And if you can kick in a few bucks on some Senate campaign, like Alaska, or Iowa, or the two Georgia campaigns, or South Carolina, anything, just do what you can. | |
| Biden's got more money than God, so don't worry about him in this way. | |
| But the Senate, Arizona, kick some money in somewhere if you can. | |
| Final miscellaneous question, what is your favorite thing to order at a diner? | |
| I haven't been to a diner in forever, but I would probably just order a burger. | |
| Burger, and if I was feeling particularly saucy, throw a milkshake in on top of it. | |
| Just eat like a glutton. | |
| Kiz Epic asks, how violent do you think the outcry will be if, when, remove that if, Biden will win, if, when Biden wins, do you think it'll be just five or so terrorist attacks that die off in a week? | |
| The former. | |
| actual national security threat that will claim the lives of hundreds of | |
| innocent people. The former. I don't think these people have the wherewithal and | |
| the ability to stage planned terrorism, at least not in the moments after the | |
| They're going to be so freaked out and their world is going to shatter so viciously from Trump losing that any initial terrorism will be dumb, lone wolf violence. | |
| Maybe down the line they'll get saucy and start doing Oklahoma City stuff. | |
| I hope not. | |
| I pray not. | |
| I think the Biden administration will be looking for that. | |
| Like the terrorism from November 4th up until the inauguration, if there's any of it, which I think there will be a little. | |
| It'll be sporadic. | |
| It'll just be idiots with guns doing dumb shit. | |
| It'll be people getting stopped in cars having planned something dumb. | |
| But that'll be that. | |
| I think that's where I think that's their level. | |
| I think that's where they're at. | |
| So, yeah. | |
| Yeah, I just want to do this quick thing because I just want to get this off my chest because I just I've just seen so many people think that it can't happen to my family because they're smart. | |
| And it's not true. | |
| It's not. | |
| It's these things are insidious. | |
| They're dangerous. | |
| And being proactive about QAnon and talking to people about QAnon is the best thing you can do in this situation. | |
| Let people be forewarned that save the children and drain the swamp and fighting corruption does not mean those things. | |
| Those are slogans to lure you in. | |
| It is Scientology only more murderous. | |
| So stay away from those things. | |
| Yes. | |
| So that's that. | |
| Bing, bang, boom. | |
| In, out, done. | |
| Have a good one. | |
| Stay safe, everybody. | |
| I'll try to do a full half hour or more podcast over the weekend. | |
| And then me and the crew will be back together again on Tuesday, most likely. |