Easily the most scary thing about this election happened on January 6th and that attempt at insurrection which came too close to doing some real damage to this democracy.

Many of the people involved in that event were also involved in the conspiracy theory QAnon, which trades in some mighty wild theories indeed.

Its fair to say QAnon is a cult and its biggest followers are cultists.

Yesterday I noted I feel for them and that remains the case. These are people who have bought into an alternate reality and become disconnected from the real world.

Yesterday, during the inauguration of Joe Biden, QAnon adherents talked about the military within Washington D.C. rounding up Joe Biden and Democratic leaders and jail them while Donald Trump would begin his second term as President.

When Donald Trump left Washington in the early morning and when the hour approached for Joe Biden’s inauguration, some QAnon adherents desperately clung to the alternate reality that we’re about to witness Trump’s ultimate triumph instead of Biden’s inauguration…

Needless to say, this isn’t what happened.

Instead, we had -surprise, surprise!- the inauguration of Joe Biden as President and the departure of Donald Trump. To add insult to injury for some who participated in the January 6th insurrection, no pardons were issued to any of them.

These people, sadly deluded by the alternative reality ravings which got them to commit their lawless actions, now face the consequences of their actions and for many, this will involve jail time.

Again, I feel for them. I have no desire to see people suffer, especially people who have hitched their notions of reality to a fantasy like QAnon.

Following the inauguration and once it became obvious the QAnon fantasies were not going to come true, there were several stories written about the reaction of QAnon people to this. Some were in disbelief while others -and I hope there are many of them- realized they were being duped. Still others “moved the goalposts” and opined that Trump would come back to power in March or some other silliness.

Over on CNN they offered the following article by Brian Fung and Kaya Yurieff concerning the reactions by those who frequent the various QAnon sites:

QAnon believers are in disarray after Biden is inaugurated

One is tempted, given the gravity of what happened on January 6th and, before that, in states like Michigan, where armed morons invaded the capitol and a group of them were arrested following planning to kidnap the governor and various officials and, presumably, try and execute them, that these people should be punished and punished hard.

Some of them very much deserve this but there should be a focus given to deprogramming these individuals.

For too many years we’ve had right wing radio (Rush Limbaugh, for example) and right wing “news” stations (Fox News being prominent) promoting an alternate reality where liberals are always wrong and dumb and so very, very evil while those on the right -and the more right wing their politics the better- are always right and noble and All-American and you-name-it.

This ignores the fact that our country has a diversity of views and, to function properly, it requires compromise when moving forward.

Unfortunately, the talking heads in the right and far-right wing stratosphere have been for too long talking about never compromising and this has poisoned the government and, IMHO, led to too much disfunction.

Do liberals have totally clean hands?

What-aboutism, where one blames “both sides” for a problem is something that’s been used way too much to excuse extremists. While left wing pols have protested and, yes, even had protests where property was damaged, I have yet to hear any left wing politician or indeed any left-wing person express happiness with the idea of protests leading to property damage.

And the stark reality is that it wasn’t left-wingers who were behind the events of January 6th or the Governor Whitmer kidnapping plot in Michigan.

Again, though: It’s my hope -and maybe I’m being naive here- that we tamper down some of the extreme dialogue. And if we can’t do that, I hope that those who’ve been held in its thrall do indeed wake up to the supreme nonsense they’ve been fed all this time.

Reality bekons!