At the movies with QAnon

My family is religious, and I'm vaguely aware that my two living brothers, Clay and Dick, are both right-wingers. It's not a problem, because we never talk about politics.

Clay and his wife Karen go to the movies fairly often, and everyone in the fam knows I'm a guy who likes movies, so Clay and Karen always tell me about the movies they've seen. They're usually movies I've never heard of, which in itself is suspicious. 

Some of the movies they tell me about, it's obvious that they're "Jesus movies," though Clay & Karen never admit it. Sometimes I'm invited, but of course the answer is always no.

A few weeks back, they invited me to see Sound of Freedom, and told me that in it, Jim Caviezel, famously nailed to a cross in The Passion of the Christ, leads a ragtag band of volunteers who rescue children who've been kidnapped and forced into sex work.

"Oh, it's great," they gushed. They'd be happy to see it a second time, they said, and I could come if I wanted. They even offered to buy my ticket.

Ah, no. From their description, this movie was clearly either Jesus malarkey or right-wing malarkey. I gave it not another moment's thought, until reading this article in Rolling Stone:

Sound of Freedom is a superhero
movie for dads with brainworms

Turns out the movie my brother invited me to see is a "QAnon-tinged thriller," endorsed by Donald Trump, full of bullshit to back a batshit political agenda.

It's a terrific article, more than a movie review. Read it. Or if you don't want to read it, at least read the last paragraph:

There is visible suffering all around us in America. There are poor and unhoused, and people brutalized or killed by police. There are mass shootings, lack of healthcare, climate disasters. And yet, over and over, the far right turns to these sordid fantasies about godless monsters hurting children. Now, as in the 1980s Satanic panic, they won’t even face the fact that most kids who suffer sexual abuse are harmed not by a shadowy cabal of strangers, but at the hands of a family member. To know thousands of adults will absorb Sound of Freedom, this vigilante fever dream, and come away thinking themselves better informed on a hidden civilizational crisis… well, it’s profoundly depressing. Worse still, they’ll want to spread the word.

7/23/2023   

 itsdougholland.com
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