Where To Find Me

The Power of Patience and Truth

This is a follow-up to a previous post about a former student of mine, who got caught up in the Qanon conspiracy theory.

After the attack at the Capitol and Biden’s inauguration, with both events not triggering The Great Awakening, my daughter-in-law sent me an article about how some number of Qanon believers felt duped. They’d begun to suspect that Q made a mistake or maybe didn’t actually exist, that they’d lost friends and family over a conspiracy that in the end was bullshit. They watched Donald Trump take off in Air Force One for Mar-a-Lago. They watched Biden walk into the White House and get to work. What the hell?

Sam, my husband, said he’d heard a piece on N.P.R. about how to reach out to those who’d spent the past year insisting Trump spoke in code, Covid was a hoax, and The Storm was coming for sex-trafficking, blood-sucking liberals. You let them know you love them. You let them know that you are still there, waiting, after they’ve made their way out of Qanon’s bizarre echo chamber.

So I emailed my former student, who I’ve dubbed Kay, and told her that my connection to her was unconditional, and even though I couldn’t be with her while she was in the throes of such a toxic delusion, I would be waiting when she emerged.

My email got no response, but I didn’t think it would. Kay spent a lot of time leading up to Qanon alone in quarantine, and she must have felt so embraced and validated by this mysterious community who told her that she was one of them: righteous superior beings who’d cracked the cosmic code. It’s got to be really hard to go back to just being a person who, in a search for community, bought into a terrible myth.

I hope that Kay allows reality to do its debunking work, that she once again trusts her eyes and ears and very competent brain, that she once again believes facts and science and that a rising tide lifts all boats. Unanswered email notwithstanding, I feel better knowing that she knows I’m still here, and where to find me.