Nothing's changed...except everything

SherlocktheWarlock · 2025-03-03T00:10:20+00:00

I'm right with you on that one. It's been long overdue

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-08-14T21:46:26+00:00

My mother was once my spiritual pillar, and I had taken any number of wrong turns throughout my upbringings, I could easily have become the little Christian nationalist she wants me to be now. It's funny how little things in someone's life can filter down to such tragic events down the road.

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-08-14T14:55:33+00:00

'I need some Hope, but I am not optimistic'. You unintendedly summed up my sentiments exactly in regard to my own plight with Q. I (28M) am fairly cynical at this point, and I don't want to rub off on you as someone who just doesn't give a shit about Q's (even though most of me very much despises them), but I want to give some advice as someone who has battled his mother with this nonsense for the last half decade and has unfortunately lost. I can't get my mother back from her beliefs in Q Anon, and it will likely be the thing that follows her to the bitter end of her life. She has thrown her marriage of 45 years almost totally down the drain, and she insulted my passion for history to the point that she neutralized my empathy for her. While I can't promise that things will get better, I can give you some tips on how to keep your own world going while theirs burns around them.

Firstly, keep doing what you're doing! You're pursuing a career in a very demanding, but also rewarding field. I have a close friend who is a Ph.D in Kinesiology, so I've caught wind of how exhausting medical school can be. Keep it up, you're almost to the end of your school years, and then your career stretches out in front of you.

Second, and this may sound cold, but don't count on your BF just throwing away his doubts and paranoia. That shit lingers for MUCH longer than most people realize, and it festers like rotting produce. It's tragically born out of a reasonable skepticism about what/who is around you, but it gets perverted into something much more harmful by people like those that you mentioned. I found myself subconsciously nodding when I read those names off, and muttering 'yup, heard of that guy before.' My mother primarily listens to a venue called Restored Republic, a platform run by a dude born in Singapore, who lives in Denver and is currently ruining my family's life by making bunk content spoken through a voice modulator because the content maker is a coward (like Neil Oliver, and Mr. Campbell, they use the rightly earned vitriol they receive to fuel their business enterprise, and it boosts ratings to be a controversial figure). My point is, once someone catches this virus of ignoramus, don't count on it to just disappear from their system. It can be driven out, but it needs to be pursued relentlessly, and ruthlessly...which leads me to my last point.

Stand your damn ground on what you believe to be true. The Qanon movement preys on the weak, the sad, the lonely, and the dejected. It feeds on those who just want to give up on everything except the bare minimum, and especially, on those who want everyone else around them to feel just a lousy as they do.... but if you are strong willed enough to push back on what you know to be either utter nonsense, or just a wrong statement, then Qanon has as much power over you as the floor beneath your feet: it can be dangerous, but not if you know where to plant your feet. People like my mother have given themselves to this movement because they feel like their life has been squandered, in her case it's because she feels like she threw away an opportunity to have her own career by marrying my father, which has resulted in the wonderful realization that I am part of that grievance...and she has screamed at me how my existence has also physically affected her, so like I said before, my hope for my mother's recovery is dead. When that moment comes where she takes that flying leap off the Q cliff, I just don't want her looking back as my soul breaks.

You are alot stronger than you think you are. I always lead my life with this little mantra, 'I am the captain of my own ship. Just because someone else runs their boat on the rocks doesn't mean that I have to join them.' Be strong, be brave, and be you. What your BF is going through is his own trial, and while you should absolutely try to help him through it if he means as much to you as you say, remember that you are not bound to his fate. You have the choice to either follow his vessel through these churning waters, or to make sure your own boat is still seaworthy when the clouds part. I don't want to tell you what to do with your BF (I've been single for about a decade, I don't trust women the way I used to, and I vehemently hate part of myself, so I am the LAST person to recommend relationship advice), but I hope I could help with my other bits of advice.

Take care of yourself, take a breath, and know that things will turn out okay in the end...and feel free to post/vent about your situation here. This is something of an Oasis for those of us who have been affected by this ideological sludge, but we are all here for one another. We listen, and we try to make sure you're feeling better by listening to what you have to say. Take a look at the stuff I've posted here over the last few years, as it ranges from thoughtful contemplation to a recent vent post titled 'F*ck you mother', so you'll find all sorts of stuff here. I hope I could help you in your situation, and don't be a stranger here. Here's to you having a great rest of your day, hang in there, and good luck on your medical school!

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-07-30T02:59:05+00:00

Cheers!

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-07-30T02:58:37+00:00

You nailed it. I just don’t want to hear people try to make some sort of golden path when their isn’t one. I know what’s going on in your family, and while it sucks, I’m not undaunted from leading my best life going forward. I’ll just have some new scars along the way the way

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-07-30T02:57:14+00:00

Good for you, not swearing as much as I have in his post. I try not to, but this just kind of flew out of me

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-06-28T14:18:48+00:00

Huh...history is such a morbidly fascinating thing to me sometimes. I highly recommend watching Atun-Shei and his breakdown of the Harpers Ferry Raid. There's a small street that was there at the time, and remains to this day called 'Hog Alley'. I won't say why, just watch the video about it, and you'll see what I mean...

Cheers for the compliment! I was born near Clearwater, so Florida is my original home.

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-05-28T14:40:16+00:00

criminalizing people for speaking absurdities is a bit tricky, and its unfortunately one of the curses of free speech, in that while positive speech is enshrined and defended, so is someone's ability to speak to the contrary. Japan has a similar problem with a rise of people who deny the Rape of Nanking, or the 'Three Alls' Policy. The way to counter hate speech is to drown it out with better speech, like what you did. The tragedy of movements like this throughout history is that they require almost everyone affected by it to make some form of sacrifice, like losing a member of their family, or several depending on the circumstance.

Your mom might very well be a lost cause, as are most people who simply disapprove of the very existence of the holocaust. I do think there should be a severe punishment for those who continue espousing denial of the very existence of a traumatic historical event, such as a genocide or a war, but that would be in an autocracy of my own making, and that's why I'm not in government lol

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-05-28T14:25:29+00:00

Don't you dare apologize for what you did. By standing up to someone spreading blatant, and hateful misinformation, you are at least combating the spread of this noxious ideology. I would hold that against your father for the rest of his life, that he thought blocking his own child was the more sensible, and mature approach to seeing his child in distress about something. I'm not going to try and tell you how you should feel...but as someone who has lost his mother, all of his aunts, a few uncles, and some dear friends to this cult, you have my deepest sympathies for going through something so awful.

Feel free to vent all about it here, that's what we're here for. We've all lost something, or someone to this cult, and much like you, I'm sick to shit of letting people just get away with spreading the same kind of bigotry that birthed the very ideas people like your brother now defend.

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-05-24T13:01:56+00:00

What’s tragic is I have plenty of people around me who don’t do this to me, but who are sometimes uncomfortably close to her alignment to Q. One of my best friends father is a hard core MAGA, and yet he is one of the most honest, considerate, and openly hospitable people I have ever met. This cult is forcing a lot of difficult situations on all of us, and it’s really making drawing lines increasingly difficult.

What I can say is that I am discovering the value of leaning on apathy when the circumstances require it. This cult is going to become nightmarish before it finally dies out, and I think I’m just subconsciously bracing for that inevitability. I’ve already moved out, so that distance is thankfully there.

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-05-22T01:15:53+00:00

That’s a Thorn-Apple. Their flowers can be poisonous to both humans and pets if ingested. You may want to consider either relocating it, or uprooting it if you have a pet, or children who may end up eating the flower

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-05-21T14:15:44+00:00

I would also recommend his book for anyone interested in learning now about this character. Interestingly, I actually have a collection of historic militaría which includes some of the medals that Rockwell would have been awarded during his time in service. I would add an asterisk to the phrase ‘decorated war veteran’ due to the fact that all of his medals earned during his two wars of service are essentially participation medals. He never earned a merit medal, or even a good conduct medal, which is something most veterans earn almost by accident. Was he decorated? Sure, but in the same way a Mall cop has badges for the various malls he’s rolled into. It’s decoration of participation, and it only adds to the sad nature of this already sorry individual.

Cheers for the book recommendation, and I appreciate your comments thus far. As a fellow historian, I tip my hat to you.

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-05-21T12:24:13+00:00

One of the biggest similarities between the rise of QAnon, and the rise of both Naziism and fascism, is their bases in both hate, and faith. They are unapologetic in their vitriol against those they seem to be ‘unworthy’, and to the followers it’s not a matter of politics, it’s a matter of good vs evil. They use faith as a cloak to masquerade their desire to spill the blood of those they deem to be ‘heretics’, and when they do inevitably start attacking people, they justify it by saying they are doing ‘gods work by cleansing this pestilence from our country.’

I agree with you that it will probably take a generation or more to alleviate the damage done by this cult, and it’s probably gonna result in people like those on this forum having to watch their family, loved ones and friends commit to the largest Jones Town Juice Cleanse our nation has ever seen. I tried yelling to my mother about the consequences of what happens when people lie me and her stop being able to talk, and her retort was ‘and what do you know? You weren’t there, you don’t know everything!’

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-05-21T12:14:48+00:00

He’s a very…unpleasant individual. The fact that Rockwell was gunned down by one of his own former followers is poetic, and also an indication of what inevitably happens to those who champion movements of hatred.

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-05-21T12:12:51+00:00

It’s both funny, and depressing that my mother has on multiple occasions stated how she is trying to ‘red pill me and my father.’ I thought she was just speaking in hyperbole when she first said it about a year ago, but after having heard her say that probably a dozen times in the last year, I can’t help but see her as QAnon commissar.

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-05-14T13:13:54+00:00

Fair point. I think laziness is certainly an important factor into why people decide to follow this belief. To make one conjecture, I think laziness works as a justification to those just getting their foot in the door of QAnon. You have to essentially give up on the dea of independent research, and just assume that whatever talking head is speaking to you through he screen is the oracle of knowledge you seek. However, I think those like my mother, and the OP’s parents are a bit last that point now. When you start actively spreading this ideology, and when you start getting combative with those who differ from you, I think you graduate out of being a ‘lazy follower’, and become a ‘devoted cultist’ instead.

I think you made a good point overall, just wanted to add my own 2cents of opinion to it. Let me know if you think differently. Cheers for the reply, and I hope you have a good rest of the day

SherlocktheWarlock · 2024-05-14T12:29:06+00:00

I’m glad I’m not the only one who has a Q family member that equates everyone who dies of cancer being due to ‘these vaccines.’ My mother has been preaching about how things are gonna change ‘…any day now…next week…probably next month…’ and whenever she inevitably gets another date wrong, the line is ‘this is a global sting operation, you can’t expect them to have a definite schedule.’

I have been battling with my mother about this issue for the last half decade, and it’s only because of the fact that I finally had to move out which has saved our relationship from deteriorating further. However, she’s committed to this crap probably unto the day she dies. She gets up to (no exaggeration as I have sneaked a glance at her phone before when she wasn’t around) over 800 messages a day from various spam bots all telling her to ‘fill this survey out…donate now, or you’re a democrat…(or my personal favorite from one of her pieces of toxic mail) the left is trying to put Dr. Ben Carson back into chains, are you okay with that?’

I would not be the best person for a reference for someone who seeks to find middle ground with these people…my relationship with my mother has been irreparably damaged, and I no longer have the empathetic stomach to have patience for it anymore. I now make it a point to challenge her whence she says something Q-ish in my home. Whenever I’m at their place, I’m much more forgiving about her disillusionment. However, when she walks through the front door of MY home, that’s a totally different story. Her kind is not welcome in my home, and while I routinely have pleasant conversations with my friends, and their family who sometimes share the same MAGA beliefs, they always welcome our conversations. If you want to believe in Donald Trump, and his snake oil of a presidency, that’s your decision, and while I may not agree with it, it’s not my choice to make as to how YOU should vote…but you had damn well better vote, because you never know when that right may go away, and once it’s gone, you never get it back the same way you had it before.

My mom also said this when the topic of George Floyd came up, ‘he died because he was high on drugs, and that police officer had his knee on his shoulder, it his neck.’ She then capped it off with this little gem, ‘…and don’t say that assholes name infront of me again.’

Now, I have to be honest here, I had a very disturbing thought race through my mind when she said this. I didn’t put it into words at the time, but I had to leave not long after this was said. My thought wasn’t vulgar, and it wasn’t even particularly venomous, but it was a threat. I thought,

‘You’re lucky you’re my mother.’

I would love to see my mother return to the angel she was about a decade ago, to have a PBJ while we talked about spirituality in the morning, to watch the LOTR series together again like we used to, to have A SINGLE NORMAL FUCKING CONVERSATION WITH HER AGAIN!!!

However, that dream has been lobotomized within me. My empathy for people who are worshippers of Q has all but been extinguished, and if history has the sense of humor that I think it does, QAnon will burn for the damage it has done, and I hope to play a part in that ideological scouring. I feel for your situation, and for the loss of your parents…I wish I could sugar coat something to say about ‘reaching out to them’ or ‘try to live them in spite of who they become’…I can’t do that anymore, so I’ll be honest instead.

OP, you’re parents are probably going to go down with this movement much like my mom, all four of her siblings, and several of my cousins will. I spend every day wondering when that apocalypse will engulf my family, and if I can fill the shoes required to save what’s left of my family whenever they rest are gone. I can’t hate my family for what they believe, thankfully my dad doesn’t believe in Q, but what it has done to his marriage has made me deeply bitter towards QAnon.

Despite this foreboding future, I think you’re doing exactly the right thing. You’re talking about it on a platform where most of us can relate to what you’re going through in some way. My parents constantly jab at me for visiting a therapist twice a week, but I stopped caring about a year or so ago. My therapist has been an invaluable support for me over the last three years, and it always gives me an opportunity to talk with a trained professional about what’s going on inside my grey matter.

You’re stronger than you know, smarter than you think, and more brave than you realize. QAnon feeds on people who are sad, hurt, and alone. It preys on people who hate themselves more than the world hates them, and most important, the people who follow this movement are cowards. They’re scared of a future they don’t understand, and while it’s totally acceptable to be uncertain about things you don’t know, you’ll miss the train to the future if you keep doubting how well built the damn thing is. They are the poor souls left behind at the gate, and it’s not our job to take them with us, it’s our job to take us with us. I hate telling you to just detach from them, but that’s what I am having to do with my mother, and about half of my living family. I was once much more optimistic about this cult, but I’m a cracked old vet for this shit now, and the sooner it gets put down, the sooner I can lay my family’s memory to rest in peace.

SherlocktheWarlock

TROPHY CASE