No Heroes, As Far as I Know

 There's this "stan" culture thing I don't really get. When the actual Eminem video for his song, "Stan" came out, he didn't mean it to be a good thing to be a "stan"--it was scary and dangerous and terrible. Idealizing, forming a parasocial relationship with, and inappropriately engaging with and revolving one's life around some other person is self-destructive. 

Social media made it easy to get to know people and feel like you really know them.  I follow Mark Hamill, Lynda Carter, Henry Winkler, and Jon Bowman on Twitter. I can tell my 6-7 year old self I follow Luke Skywalker, Wonder Woman, the Fonz, and Bowzer from Sha Na Na on the futuristic thing called the internet and she would be really impressed. These are her heroes. The human beings are far more complex and actually, they are or seem to be pretty good folks. Their good opinions and decency IRL make me pretty happy with my early appreciation.

But I don't do heroes now that I'm grown. People in the real world are real, and they can disappoint. You can't invest in people you don't even know with ride or die fervor. That isn't being real--that's being in a whole fucking cult. (See also: Biden fans don't need flags and swag and what not.) 

I did a little thing not too long ago about Jim Caviezel and RFK, Jr. Conspiracy theories are sometimes about filling in the difference between your own worldview and the differing worldview of many others as you confront them. It's hard to incorporate different points of view. Making up neo-narratives is one way of handling the difference. 

But you have to understand it is "made-up". A lot of conspiracy theories are just a "cope"--a way of dealing with the difference between the world in your head and what's actually happening. 

Q is a "cope". It uses old tropes about blood libel to insist on a cabal of baby eaters and human traffickers to smear "some people". (But so many little children rapists are youth pastors--isn't that weird? Seriously, just put "youth pastor rape" in a search engine.)  The Lugenpresse is a "cope". It relies on the idea that all reporting is suspect because reporters need money to pay rent and eat and whatnot. Of course it can be bought. Why believe anything the press says? 

So I want to look at Tim Ballard and Russell Brand. Tim Ballard was just depicted by Jim Caviezel (a Q guy) in a movie, and some of the narrative is getting undone.  My sarcastic brain feels like this is sort of on the nose but no--this is just bad. It isn't "proving some weird idea in my head about how religious-Saviour folks are almost always fucking grifters." I' m definitely not happy to hear in my head so-called "operatives" telling some willing person to "think of the children" while sexually harassing others. 

And as for Russell Brand--are these allegations supposed to be new?  He sort of presented "left" for a while, and then made a dramatic pivot to the exact people who would support and shelter him in case of rape accusations? I mean, I'm just asking questions about a guy with a little bit of cult following?  His ignorance and what he embraces are stupid and typical. 

Whether you're sorting out how to handle Tim Ballard getting a woman into a shower or bed while reminding her, creepily, "It's for the children" or Russell Brand grooming a 16 year old girl, you have to set something of your desire to see anyone at all as good in this fucked up world aside. 

Sometimes your heroes need to go away, because you are grown, and know right from wrong. Sometimes people disappoint you, and not because they tell you the uncomfortable truth, but because they were living in the bullshit lie. 

Anyway, don't kill the messenger when a solid truth is dropped and don't hate the game when the player is at fault for his own bullshit.