COLUMN: Yellow vests, Qanon a case of invulnerable stupidity

Yes, the world’s most pathetic conspiracy theory has now come to the Great White North.

A protester in a yellow vest protests on Bay Street in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., on Saturday, Jan. 5, 2019. (BRIAN KELLY/THE SAULT STAR/POSTMEDIA NETWORK)

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Recently in Alberta and across Canada, people came out to protest. They donned yellow vests, criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and, in some instances, brought madness into the mainstream with Q-shaped signage.

Yes, the world’s most pathetic conspiracy theory has now come to the Great White North. It seems that every time people have legitimate grievances, nonsense always seems to pop up out of nowhere like some sort of societal version of herpes.

If you are not familiar with the utterly kooky concept I am mentioning, it originated in the less trafficked corners of the internet shortly after the election of President Donald Trump set the United States on a dastardly descent into ruin and made many leftists go out and seek therapy.

According to believers of the insanity, President Trump is secretly battling a global pedophile ring involving Hillary Clinton, liberal philanthropist George Soros and, yes, even Trudeau.

Parts of the nonsense called Qanon changes on the daily. But in general, someone going by the identity of ‘Q’ drops cryptic information online that is then obsessed over by people who behave like an uncle not invited to family dinners after an inappropriate relationship with a teenager. They claim a storm is coming, a global cabal exists and that only Trump can put a stop to all the awful horror with his “very good brain.”

To be blunt, this is stupid. It is demonstrably false and a product of the polarized times we are in.

Disliking and loathing a leader are fine. No one on Earth should be immune from criticism and to suggest otherwise is to pine for a fascist society where the brilliant comrade can do no wrong.

However, if the criticism is not rational and fair, it has no place in the public conversation.

Saying that former President Barak Obama is a Muslim is nonsense, claiming that Trudeau is secretly the product of a tryst between his mother and former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is absurd. Can no one be dinged on their actual actions anymore? Must rightists and leftists (yes, liberals come up with nonsense too) constantly cook up things like a Hollywood producer in the midst of a two-week cocaine binge in the horrifying and oddly colorful times of the ’80s?

For now, it seems like, yes, they need to. And that makes me, and hopefully you, sad. In the future, stand up and do something about it. In earlier decades crazy people got forced off the radio and other platforms for spouting nonsense. Let us do the same for the Faith Goldy’s and Alex Jones’s of today and any others who propagate nonsense like Qanon. Come on Canada, we are supposed to be better than this. Where is the smugness that scoffs at American concepts?

To buy into this and the people who promote it and other craziness is horrifying. It damages the intellect of those who read about it and deeply rots our presently civilized society from within.