Excerpts
Introduction: My Motivation to Write This Book
“You have to write a book about your experience!” one of my mentors, Barbara McGraw, exclaimed to me in mid-February 2023. Her words carried weight with me not only because of our friendship, but also due to her esteemed roles as a professor of social ethics, law, and public life at Saint Mary’s College of California. Barbara’s extensive work as an author, speaker, and commentator on American identity, the role of religion in public life, and the moral foundations of the American political system made her advice impossible for me to ignore. Still, her suggestion stimulated incredulous laughter in me. “You’re kidding me, right?” I retorted, almost reflexively. “Not at all,” she asserted. “It’s crucial for people to grasp how someone like you, someone totally dedicated to peace, could be drawn into QAnon.”
Read more… (Full Introduction)
Stephen’s Advice
Question: Was there anything your husband did or said that helped?
I’m in a similar bind with my ex-fiancé. It’s hard to talk to him without getting into arguments.
I’ve asked Stephen to answer that question for you. Here’s what he wrote:
The first critical question to answer for yourself is: “How important is this relationship to me?” If this is a relationship that you feel strongly you want to save, then you can do that. It will require putting some of your own beliefs aside—at least for the time being—so you don’t spend precious energy arguing about things you clearly disagree about.
Patience is key. This may be a phase, and this may be long term—even a forever shift. You just can’t know. I was advised to contemplate this two ways:
One: Think of this akin to something far less contentious, like a nonreligious person finding Jesus and becoming a Born Again Christian or embracing some other evangelical belief system. Once converted, the world is different for them.
From Chapter 39: Healing and Reconciliation
Undoing Social Conditioning That Fosters Conflict
“Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.”
~ Bell Hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope
The difficult truth is that we have been socially conditioned to dehumanize and disparage each other, and this social programming serves structures of control, colonialism, or “empire,” as some people call it. We have been actively influenced for generations to use strategies of dominance and submission, imposing power over and power under relationships, rather than engaging in the far more respectful dynamic of power with. Respect cannot flourish in unbalanced power dynamics; “power with” is a pre-requisite to harmonious relationships.
This topic of social conditioning contains far more than can be adequately addressed here. However, Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication, wrote a comprehensive introductory book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, which delves deeply into this meaty and important issue.
In chapter 2, Marshall introduces a topic which he calls “communication that blocks compassion.” In Marshall’s own words:
Sidebar Notes
I’ve peppered this text with annotations in the form of grey-shaded sidebars that serve several purposes but most often provide context and additional information on topics I did not vet during my time on the QAnon roller-coaster. Here are several examples:
2023 Reflection – What I Learned
There actually is a chemical compound created by the oxidation of adrenaline called “adrenochrome,” but it is not what QAnons believe it is. The name and idea of adrenochrome likely caught appeal in QAnon because of its mention in pop culture, having been mentioned in Aldous Huxley’s book Doors of Perception, the novel A Clockwork Orange, and the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A similar mythical brew is included in the movie Death Becomes Her. Monsters Inc. has also been cited in connection to adrenochrome.