California Dad Kills Kids Over Q-Anon Conspiracy Theory
My knowledge of, respect for and interpretation of the Contstitution's Bill of Rights came from my sixth grade teacher, Edna Smith. There are some teachers who leave lasting impressions on their students and she was one of them. She had been raised in South Carolina, before the Civil Rights movement had integrated schools and opened up voting rights to African Americans. She was one of those people who saw injustice and, because of the circumstances and influences in her life, determined to do something about it. The nine week long unit in Sixth grade social studies on the Bill of Rights was one of the most memorable school experiences I've ever had.
From Miss Smith came the concepts of personal responsibility, respect for the rights of others and being accountable for your words and actions, all accompanied by personal life experiences. Not only did she demonstrate that in the way she operated her classroom, but she impressed it upon us from her personal convictions and life experience. I learned, not only from her words but also from experience, that earning the respect of others because of the respect and responsibility demonstrated toward them is very beneficial and valuable, and is a key component in realizing your goals and ambitions. It is "free speech" exactly the way the founding fathers imagined and intended.
What our teacher emphasized to us was that having a healthy respect for the rights of others, being thoughtful and taciturn, rather than loud and boisterous, and exhibiting a quality of character that included being honest, was what it meant to be responsible when it came to the exercise of our right to free speech and expression. Recognizing that everyone else around us, regardless of their race, ethnicity, social status, family income or the size of their house, has exactly the same rights as I have, and respecting their freedom of expression was the principle she passed on to us. And she told us that if we took that message to heart, and lived by it, it would earn us a measure of respect that would contribute to our success. She was exactly right.
So it becomes extremely difficult to put feelings into words when I first read this news story about a California father who took his two children to Mexico and then stabbed them to death, because he believed a lie that came from Q-Anon. Specifically, he believed that his wife had passed along "serpent DNA" to both children, known as the "lizard people conspiracy." Frankly, the only way I can understand a father doing something like that to his children is that his mental capacity and stability broke down somewhere, because if it wasn't something like that, and he really was acting on a conspiracy theory, then I can't be respectful in expressing my contempt for what he did. And I'm angry about it. I don't even know them, but there are four lives ruined by stupidity and by some politically motivated idiot who didn't know them either. Someone should be paying for that kind of callous disregard for the lives of others.
Contempt for the Intelligence of Those Who Become Your Followers and Supporters
The fact that there are adults who actually believe the lizard people conspiracy, or that Democrats in politics are covering up a vast child-abduction and trafficking ring and are exploiting those they abduct, in some cases committing canibalism by eating their bodies, would be a gigantic joke if not for the fact that there are those who act as if they believe this garbage is true, and their actions put other people in danger. Anthony Quinn Warner, the guy who detonated a bomb in his RV in the heart of downtown Nashville on Christmas day 2020 was a firm believer in Q-Anon conspiracies. The consequences of his suicide, which he determined would make him a man that Nashville would always remember, included eight injuries and millions of dollars of structural damage, business closures, lost jobs and wages. And had he chosen another day and time for his demonstration, the loss of life could have been staggering.
Many of those who have committed mass shootings in recent years have left behind plenty of evidence of their dabbling in conspiracy theories. The only evidence left behind to help figure out what are otherwise senseless actions is the fact that most of the perpetrators believed implicitly in some dark, demented conspiracy theory about how mankind is doomed, or that there are humans whose bodies have been taken over by aliens in order to control the world. The theories almost always have a right-wing perspective, with the behavior of those on the political left, the progressives and liberals, being the ones whose bodies have been occupied by serpents, evil spirits or space aliens. How convenient is that?
It is entirely possible that the sources of all of this trash actually do believe what they promote. But what I find more plausible and reasonable is that this is pure manipulation. Those who push this, particularly the Q-Anon idiocy, have political power as their goal. They are counting on the fact that there is little legal accountability for their lies, distortions of the truth and "alternative facts" and that there is a vast audience of people who are gullible, ignorant, and either uneducated, or grossly undereducated, glued to their phone screens and lacking in common sense, incapable of critical thinking. So those who are behind the conspiracy theories must have a very low opinion of their own followers.
I don't see this on the political left, among progressives, moderates and liberals, and I have looked for evidence of it. Q-Anon is clearly built on attacking Democrats and appeals almost exclusively to right wingers. My theory is that since the political right has offered nothing but obstruction or trickle down nothingness for more than a decade now, this is becoming a necessity in order to motivate their voters. Consipracy theories aimed at people who don't know any better and won't make any effort to find out the truth, and that emphasize being a victim and feeling persecuted for "not thinking like the government wants you to think" have some success in getting people to the polls.
The Gap Created by Ignorance Fills with Conspiracy Theories
Watching some of the interviews of those who are now facing the consequence of prison time and job loss as a result of their poor decision to participate in the January 6th Trump Insurrection, one of the most common threads in their comments is an almost total lack of understanding of anything having to do with government, the Constitution and its guarantees of individual rights, along with a complete lack of any personal responsibility or accountability. Even a basic, grade school understanding of how these things work seems to be completely missing.
The ignorance expressed by virtually all of these individuals is appalling. We're not talking about people who are mentally incapacitated, or psychologically impaired, we're talking about reasonably intelligent people who live and work all around us. The proliferation of media and technology has incapacitated the development of common sense in many people. And it is obvious that most of them missed the point of the part of their education devoted to their history, heritage, and civics. They don't know what democracy is, or what tyranny means. And it's completely selfish. There is absolutely no consideration whatsoever that other people, who hold different perspectives, have the same constitutionally guaranteed rights. Selfishness is the enemy of democracy.
We've failed, as a nation, to educate our people in how our particular form of democratic government works. We've had leaders in both politics and education for most of our history who realized that an educated and informed electorate was the key to the success of democratic government and who have worked to put in place systems which would lead to the achievement of that end. But here, in the twenty-first century, we seem to have experienced at least partial failure of those systems, enough to create circumstances that have put democracy at risk.
The gap created by ignorance and lack of education is filled with conspiracy theories.
Lessons Learned from History
I'm a firm believer in free speech and free expression as essential elements of the human spirit. So when I see a father murder his children because he got some idea in his head that he couldn't control, or a man who commits suicide and takes the better portion of the center of a city with him, it is difficult to reconcile where the boundaries exist. Most of them, which we know from experience, depend on most people being reasonable, well informed, able to think critically and most importantly, respectful of the rights of other people.
It takes generations to change the patterns of ideas. Racial and ethnic differences are, from my perspective, the most difficult ideas to change. The law can change behavior, and it provides a measure of accountability. The father who murdered his children will spend decades in prison, the consequece of his actions. Those who were the worst offenders on January 6th will also pay for their crimes. Some are experiencing genuine remorse, and some sort of "awakening" or realization that their thinking was skewed and their actions offensive but most are defending what they did as consistent with being a "patriotic American," because they can't see the truth through the conspiracy theories.
These people, the January 6th crowd that's being called to account for their crimes, doesn't have a clue about personal liberty and unalienable rights. All they know is what they want and that they think their rights mean that they should have it. To them, the definition of tyranny is not getting what they want, and having to submit to their political opponents when they win elections and take control of the government. They have absolutely no idea what tyranny is, so they selfishly apply it to themselves and leave everyone else out of it. And they have no respect for the lives of anyone else.
Education will only address the information gap. Common sense, rational behavior, criticcal thinking, these are all things that come from relationships we have with each other. But with so many people having a closer relationship with their phone than with other human beings, including their parents, extended family and the influences in their lives with whom relationships teach common sense, it is sorely lacking. That's a dark spirit that has already escaped from the box.
But education is the one thing we can do something about. History and Civics should be considered equally important to the skill subjects. Every student in America should have a social studies class every day of every year they are in school, with four years required for graduation from high school. And students should have enough working knowledge to interpret evidence which shows that an election was not stolen. They should also know that defending the constitution as a patriotic American means guaranteeing the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another. That's a cornerstone of American democratic government and it is one of the most important responsibilities of a sitting President at the end of their term.
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