Quo Vadis GOP?

[Syt]

"I'm not a journalist, I just play one on TV!"

[Sheilbh]

"I'm not a journalist, I just play one on TV!"

Reminds me of the case here where a breakfast TV host, Lorraine Kelly, successfully argued that she actually just plays or performs a character - "Lorraine Kelly" - on TV.

Got her out of a massive tax bill.

[crazy canuck]

The Colbert Report - now that is a parody.

[Admiral Yi]

Reminds me of the case here where a breakfast TV host, Lorraine Kelly, successfully argued that she actually just plays or performs a character - "Lorraine Kelly" - on TV.

Got her out of a massive tax bill.

How in the world would that affect her taxes?

Do actresses pay lower taxes than reporters?

[Sheilbh]

How in the world would that affect her taxes?

Do actresses pay lower taxes than reporters?

Is Lorraine Kelly actually an employee of the TV company who should have been paying income tax and national insurance, or a freelancer providing services (in this case performing as "Lorraine Kelly")?

Edit: To avoid expanding the hijack - it wasn't a news channel just mainstream light entertainment breakfast TV. It's like the high end of the Uber cases - was she genuinely self-employed (Lorraine Kelly, of Lorraine Kelly Ltd performing as Lorraine Kelly) or was that just a sham contract to avoid taxes and she was actually a worker.

[Admiral Yi]

Well, I don't see how being a reporter or actress impacts her freelance/employee status, but I don't want to hijack the lovely Quo Vadis thread.

[Razgovory]

The focus on Marjorie Taylor Greene's insane antics has taken attention away from the horribleness of Madison Cawthorn.  But even by wacky Trumper standards, Cawthorn is really, really awful.

Well, at least if Cawthorn's preferred government come into power he won't get to enjoy it very long.  "Useless eater" and all that.

[Sheilbh]

Generally I think it's worth ignoring Trump (though this thread is madness). But I thought this little clip was interesting:
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1419077108933013507?s=20

"How about the vaccine? I came up with the vaccine. They said it would take 3-5 years - going to save the world. I recommend you take it, but I also believe in your freedoms 100%. But just so you understand, it was a great achievement."

It must be so galling for Trump that because his fans hate the vaccine, he can't fully and easily take credit for it

[Admiral Yi]

 

"I came up with the vaccine."

Actually Donald, you said it would take 6 months and the grown ups said it would take a year.

[Oexmelin]

I'm a Parkland Shooting Survivor. QAnon Convinced My Dad It Was All a Hoax.

Bill's final semester at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was already difficult enough.

He was part of the final graduating class of survivors of the 2018 shooting, and they all had just marked the third anniversary of the day 17 people were killed, nine of whom were Bill's classmates.

But Bill also had to deal with his father's daily accusations that the shooting was a hoax and that the shooter, Bill, and all his classmates were paid pawns in a grand conspiracy orchestrated by some shadowy force.

Bill had worked hard to get over his survivor's guilt after the shooting, but for the past five months, his own father has been triggering it all over again.

"He'll say stuff like this straight to my face whenever he's drinking: 'You're a real piece of work to be able to sit here and act like nothing ever happened if it wasn't a hoax. Shame on you for being part of it and putting your family through it too," Bill said in an anonymous post on Reddit last week.'

Bill first posted his story on QAnon Casualties, a Reddit thread dedicated to helping family members and friends of QAnon believers.

VICE News spoke to the poster and confirmed the author's claims about being a survivor of the school shooting. Bill is not the student's real name as they only spoke to VICE News on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns about attacks from members of QAnon forums if his identity was revealed.

As is true for many who fell down the QAnon rabbit hole in recent years, Bill's dad's descent coincided with the pandemic.

"It started a couple months into the pandemic with the whole anti-lockdown protests," Bill said. "His feelings were so strong it turned into facts for him. So if he didn't like having to wear masks it wouldn't matter what doctors or scientists said. Anything that contradicted his feelings was wrong. So he turned to the internet to find like-minded people which led him to QAnon."

But until January, that was as far as it went. Then Bill's father saw a video of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing Parkland survivor David Hogg in 2018, while he was visiting Washington to advocate for stricter gun control. Greene has repeatedly voiced support for QAnon and claimed the Parkland shooting was a hoax.

"He is a coward," Greene told her followers.

Ever since then, Bill's father has become convinced the shooting his son survived was a so-called "false flag" event and that the shooter was "​​a radical commie actor."

"From there it snowballed into what he is today, believing that if the government is able to overthrow an election, then everything else is probably a lie too," Bill added.

Bill is 18, and now that he's graduated high school he's looking to get out of the toxic situation he finds himself in.

"I do have options that can have me out before August, which as of now I'm planning to do," Bill said. "I've been delaying it because I've felt stuck trying to 'fix' my dad."

But Bill said that after he posted his story on Reddit, members of the QAnon Casualties community have been able to help him "push through that obligation I felt and leave before I completely lose my mind, because I'm already halfway there."

Over the course of the last four years, but in particular since the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, the QAnon conspiracy cult has been tearing families apart, and many family members say their loved ones have transformed into different people in front of their eyes.

"Burgundy-colored T-shirts [the color shirt worn by the shooter] make me uncomfortable and he used to be so understanding he stopped wearing it around me. That person is completely gone and I miss him so fucking much," Bill said in his Reddit post.

Bill says his relationship with his mother has also suffered.

"The relationship with my mom is dependent on whether my dad is there or not, 'cause then it's pretty much all about conspiracy theories," Bill told VICE News. "[The relationship] used to be fine but deteriorating quickly, [especially] after telling her that if she doesn't start putting her foot down, I'm leaving with no interest in seeing my dad again."

But despite the threats to leave home, Bill's mother has not stood up to his dad.

"It's not really going anywhere because she's too naive to think he'll magically get over wanting to constantly retraumatize me and I'm not waiting around for that," Bill told VICE News.

Bill also says he's been unable to talk to any of his fellow survivors about what he has been going through with this father.

"I never talked about it with them," Bill told VICE News. "As far as I know he's only held that belief—at least so strongly—since January. Our last semester was difficult enough with Feb. 14 marking 3 years since the shooting, along with emotions leading up to us being the last class of survivors to graduate."

"It wasn't—and still isn't—easy to bottle up, but telling them my dad thinks the absolute hell we went through, where nine of the victims were in our class, is a hoax is not a pain I want to put on them. It's difficult enough knowing that belief even exists at all."

At this point, Bill has little hope in ever seeing his father return to the person he was before he became obsessed with QAnon conspiracy theories, and even if he did, too much has happened to ever repair their relationship.

"He'll never stop on his own, because there are always new theories and goalposts being moved," Bill said. "I don't know how to help someone that far gone. My guess is restricted access to the internet and lots of therapy. But even if there was hope he'd eventually snap out of it, it wouldn't change my mind on never wanting to see him again. So it doesn't really matter anymore."

[Caliga]

Ugh... 

[Eddie Teach]

Always hard when your parents join a cult, I'd imagine. 

[Oexmelin]

It is. Except that cult is now a leading party in the US, and controls many of its powerful government and institutions.

I am increasingly convinced that this is going the way of the school shootings: seen as an intractable problem, for which nothing can be done, only elicit shrugs. A part of life in the US.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - I don't really know how a country recovers from this:


And, off the top of my head, I can't think of one that has. Not impossible, perhaps, but I don't know where you go.

[crazy canuck]

It is striking that the Republican numbers did not budge even after it became clear the conspiracy theories were nonsense.