The Q from my New Hampshire porch
The Q from my New Hampshire porch
Intersectional politics and fruitcakes. Also, take Chris Sununu, literally, but not seriously (or maybe both).
Sitting amongst my daily dose of junk mail I spied a mailer. At a glance it resembled a political mailer. I tend to read these standing over my recycling bin. This one was titled “The True Story of Qanon.” My first thought to myself was “well we have trouble, right here in New Hampshire.”
Here’s something you should know about me. I am a conspiracy denier. A long time ago I learned that the best method to avoid arguments with folks on conspiracies is to reject all conspiracy theories, lock, stock and barrel. Three minutes of research on Qanon is all I ever needed to determine folks under this banner are delusional. Fellow Racketeer, David Thornton, wrote about QAnon just following January 6. Qanon is top shelf delusional, even among imbibers of the conspiracy universe. Enough said.
What troubles me is that I may need to change my image of Qanon folks. I have pictured these folks as residing in basements with keyboards and internet, drinking Jolt, eating Cheetos and trading strange tales. Receiving a mailer makes me pause. It is unknown who paid for the mailer (we are researching to find out). But a wide distribution mailer demonstrates a level of organization and a desire to recruit. Maybe it is a false flag activity. That possibility does not make me feel much better.
Maybe there is a veneer of mainstream coming into play here. Could there be in an intersection developed between the rabid libertarians and Qanon believers here in New Hampshire? Could a subset of the folks that wanted New Hampshire to secede from the United States, also be followers of Qanon? A marriage of Qanon conspiracy with establishment political action? I do not waste time on conspiracy nonsense so I will stop the “what if” line of thinking. But I will sit, as curmudgeons do, and watch what happens from my New Hampshire porch.
On a different (laugh) track …
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu placed himself in the national spotlight at last Saturday’s Gridiron Club dinner. The Gridiron event is another one of those Washington insider politician comedy gatherings. What made Sununu’s remarks interesting is that he chose this high profile occasion to make sport of Trump. At a time when elected Republican officeholders are walking on egg shells regarding the former guy, Sununu was willing to publicly declare that the emperor has no clothes. Sununu may be early staking out the ‘Not Trump’ brand of the GOP. I enjoyed reading about it. It especially irritated Trump band-boy, Corey Lewandowski. It also irked Trump-striped local political types. I can now add their names to the list of folks up here in New Hampshire that I will not vote for any time soon.
Here is an excerpt published from the NH Journal. See the link below for more detail.
“You know, he’s probably going to be the next president,” Sununu said of Trump, musing about his “experience,” “passion,” “sense of integrity” and the “rationale” he brought to his tweets. As the room quieted to see where he was going with this, he paused, then yelled: “Nah, I’m just kidding! He’s F***ING CRAZY!” The ballroom roared with laughter. “ARE YOU KIDDING?! Come on. You guys are buying that? I love it … He just stresses me out so much! … I’m going to deny I ever said it.”
It didn’t stop there: “The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And I’ll say it this way: I don’t think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain’t getting out!”
Trump Is F’ing Crazy!’: Sununu Steals Show at D.C. Insider’s Dinner (NH Journal)
Quick update concerning the NH Secession post I made a while back. The New Hampshire House adopted a motion to kill the bill as “Inexpedient to Legislate”, by an overwhelming and expected margin or 323-13. Glad to be still in the USA, even with all the toxic politics.
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A couple of theories on the postcard after reading more about it elsewhere:
* It was sent and paid for by someone off their rockers. The QR code leads to a long PNG image that reads like a religious text stored on the distributed InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)[1]. I haven't read the entire "text" yet, but I can't see (yet) any side scheme to hack folks clicking the link (unless the image itself is compromised in some way) or do something shifty like mining Monero in the browser[2] while reading the tract.
* It's the first step in a more sophisticated social engineering scheme. Other than the (seemingly) harmless image link (might not be harmless if it's exploiting a browser-based zero-day exploit targeting PNG processing - explore at your own risk), the other call to action is to e-mail the GMail address pictured on the back of the card. Similar to the reason scam e-mails are intentionally poorly written[3], the person at the other end of the e-mail is waiting for victims to self-select by contacting them, and follow-up communications will then exploit those who e-mail.
* It's a false flag operation intended to discredit Qanon by invoking the names of demons such as Asmodeus[4] and to annoy people in general. (I find this one the least likely as there are simpler ways to do this than what they're doing here.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
[2] https://monerominer.rocks/
[3] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/82814/secretly-smart-reason-scam-emails-are-poorly-written
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmodeus