It was Easier to Believe President Donald was a Duck than a Quack
How the QAnon conspiracy theory attracted millions of followers, many of whom were willing to drink the Kool Aid and die for their beliefs, will always be for me one of the modern marvels of mankind. Somehow it was easier and more logical for millions of people who needed hope to believe Bill and Hillary Clinton were reptilian aliens who were leading a pedophile cult that secretly gathered to eat babies in the basement of a pizzeria that served as a front for their underground sex-trafficking railroad to Epstein Island than to simply believe Donald Trump was inept.
Back when I blithely knew nothing about QAnon, I actually had one of its lead propagandists (a true believer), who published some of my articles on his popular QAnon website, call me up and spend forty-five minutes earnestly trying to convince me all of that was real in order to proselytize me into the Trump Cult. The Great Pumpkin, Agent Orange himself, (my monickers for Trump, not his) was going to take all of the Reptilians out in a final flourish of genius and herald a new aquarian age on earth at the end of 2020, a bizarre year that can barely be believed even in hindsight.
It was easier and more logical to believe for four years that putting Goldman Sachs executives in charge of the US Treasury and the National Economic Council and a Rothschild banker, known as the King of Bankruptcy, in charge of the Dept. of Commerce, while putting military top brass in charge of all White House staff and installing them as leaders of the multi-headed hydra of security and intelligence agencies that steer the slithering US government ... was all a 4-D chess masterplan to drain the swamp by distilling the deep state into one central location in order to take them all out at once than to simply believe Donald Trump, a politician, was not actually doing what he promised and draining the swamp.
It was easier to believe that massive corporate tax cuts and estate-tax cuts were truly intended to help the common man than to believe Donald Trump, an owner of a large corporation born with a golden spoon in his mouth who will soon leave his real-estate holdings to his children, was just helping himself and his own kids. It was easier to believe, after thirty-five years of trickle-down tax cuts that never raised the wages of the average man or woman, that Joe and Josephine Sixpack would be better off with another trickle than by focusing all tax cuts as a stream directly into their pockets. And it was somehow logical to believe that a factually flat average of 2.1% GDP growth in 2019, accompanied by a slide into a manufacturing recession over the summer, was not actually the same as Obama's average, but was proof of the "best economy ever," just as it was easier to believe that Michelle Obama is actually Michael Obama, a closet transexual, even though she has two girls who look a lot like her when transexuals are not, yet, known to be able to give birth.
Somehow, if you pointed out the possible illogic of any of that, you were actually stupidly consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome because it would be easier and more logical to believe the real Donald Duck became president of the United States than to simply believe @realDonaldTrump was a quack. It could not possibly be that Trump Derangement Syndrome causes its sufferers to believe everyone else in the world is crazy while they are sanely flying with ducks.
The poppies are potent in the US.
It doesn't pay to stay
Look at Mike Pence, thrown under the bus and submitted for execution by a Trumped-up Lynch mob. And how did it all end for Trump's most ardent advocates who stayed to the bitter end to fight his numerous legal battles?
The ones who helped spearhead the most extreme chapters in the broader crusade to nullify the election outcome are now besieged by their own legal battles. Several of them have complained that friends aren’t talking to them anymore, or have huffed and fumed over Twitter banning them for life for spreading dangerous misinformation. Several of the Trump-allied attorneys are just trying to hold onto their law licenses, under calls for disbarment for their participation on the Team Trump efforts....
In the three months since the election was called for Joe Biden, most of the lawyers and MAGA enthusiasts who decided to play a consequential role in the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the Democratic nominee’s 2020 win (efforts that led directly to the Jan. 6 mob violence), have had their jobs or businesses shredded, their personal lives shaken, or their reputations irrevocably tarnished—all while Trump’s been relaxing and playing his rounds of golf in the Sunshine State.
Even the My Pillow guy, Mike Lindell, is now having a hard time sleeping at night. Having served as Trump's Minnesota co-chair and a big financial backer of Trump's legal cases against the Biden victory, Lindell announced that Mattress Firm, his biggest retailer, will no longer carry His Pillows. It turns out that backing the biggest loser in history (a 60+ court-case defeat) is making Lindell a loser because many stores have stopped carrying his products, including Kohl's and Bed Bath & Beyond.
Lindell is also facing a possible huge libel/slander case from Dominion Voting Systems where he will have he chance to prove in court that he was right about how their machines were rigged, or they will have a chance to prove once and for all that no one was right about it -- that none of the evidence stands. Apparently, they believe they can prove their case.
Meanwhile, Trump is now badmouthing the attorney Lindell funded, Lin Wood, as being "a crank." But that is what Trump does to loyalists who fail him. It is what he has always done. (So, apparently, Trump now agrees with the State of Georgia, which has said Wood needs to undergo a mental evaluation if he is to continue to practice law.) All three -- Trump, Lindell and Wood -- have been detweeted. Is there any greater indignity known to befall mankind?
Even the jowly Powell is now being pursued by her own kraken, as lawyers in in Michigan seek to have her disbarred. Likewise, the New York State Bar Association has moved to expel (or dispel?) America's favorite mayor, who came the closest to looking like Sidney Powell's kraken when he bled squid ink out of his temples. Powell and Giuliani will finally get their chance to air their kraken case now that Smartmatic has filed a $2.7 billion libel case against them. Apparently, Smartmatic, like Dominion, believes they can prove the kraken has no beef.
Most of Trump's other lawyers, were hung out to dry by the president, himself, before he was deposed, and are now jobless.
The Coverstone Conspiracies
Lindell was a big believer in prophecies:
I'm serious, this is biblical. This is Revelations. This is Mark of the Beast stuff. This is that vaccine and all that garbage.
He now lives in hiding, surrounded by ex-special forces. May he rest in peace.
How can it be surprising, then, during the past year of QAnon and crazy lawyer parades that hundreds of thousands of my fellow Christians decided to follow a self-anointed prophet named Dana Coverstone, and that he and many other pentecostal "prophets" just like him actually powered the Trump campaign into the perpetual labyrinth of postpartum election paranoia that closed the year?
While listening to the QAnon cult on one side, I was also battling the prevaricating Prophets of Trump on the other side, who endlessly steered around vast obstacle courses of their own failed prophecies through the year.
Having successfully predicted after the fact that the United States would fall into a mask-wearing plague in the early part of the year and become engulfed in riots, Dana Coverstone went on to make the Great Mistake of all false prophets by trying to predict the future, instead of the past. This is where it always breaks down for them. They come online telling us all how they rightly predicted to their church the events that just happened, for which they can produce many witnesses that they never actually produce, and then they go on to tell us what is about to happen.
Here is the original video of man who is "not a prophet" but who has "prophetic dreams" that he knows are from God:
Their 2020 hindsight somehow blurs a bit when looking ahead. Thus, entering the world of renown with a perfect prophetic score in June of 2020, Coverstone spent the rest of the year giving ambitious prophecies that never proved true, but his adherents were great in ardor and found ways to cover for Coverstone by rationalizing every failure into faith. (If something really happened, it was, of course physical and literal reality, proving the worth of the prophet; but if it didn't, it was spiritual truth that only the faithful could comprehend.)
Coverstone asked us all in the video above to call him "an idiot and fool" if his predictions didn't happen by December 1, 2020. So, here is a list of some of the most obvious Coverstone fails from his various "prophetic dream" videos in the months when they were predicted to happen. (Always a bad mistake for self-anointed prophets to put hard dates on things.) I tried to point out these fails along the way, managing to convince no one except the faithless few like myself who already disbelieved: (Please feel free to call Pastor Dana, as he said you could do, on the basis that he promised he would be the first to admit if he was wrong, though he never did; so maybe he needs your help to get over his own pride.)
Events predicted to happen in October:
The US dollar would crash (as opposed to holding flat in October, as it did, then sinking as it did in November and December only to recover again as it always has).
US mint would stop minting coins and then ones and fives. (Said after the mint had briefly stopped minting coins due solely to COVID keeping its employees away.)
This would happen because the dollar would lose about 2/3 of its value in hyperinflation, making coins useless.
The heads of politicians would explode with rage. (Ostensibly Democratic heads because they were going to lose the election.)
Christians in nursing homes would be slaughtered.
The false prophets who preach only for money (like Kenneth Copeland in the next video) would be silenced. (If only! Please, God!)
Events predicted to happen in November:
Widespread bank failures in the US. (There were none, even though that seemed a reasonable guess.)
Churches and homes being maliciously burned so that people start to live in hiding.
Donald Trump, as God's chosen, would be victorious, but Trump's victory would be challenged (as opposed to Biden's victory challenged by Trump in sixty lost court cases).
The United States would break into the greatest riots seen all year. (In spite of the crazy election contentions, November actually turned out to be one of the least riotous months of the year.)
Chinese and Russian troops would occupy and patrol US streets to maintain order with the president nowhere in sight. (That might have seemed a bit improbable, as it would require defeat of the whole US military and government, not just an election loss; but, hey, aim big! The big lie is easier to sell.)
Events predicted to happen in December:
"The Democratic candidate for the office of President of the United States" would lie in state in the Capitol. (Whether that meant Joe Biden would die or his candidacy would die became a matter of debate, but it was to be a fact by Dec. 17, the most specific date in the Dana Dreams.)
Biden would are assassinated. (One would have thought that prediction would have cleared up whether Coverstone was talking about Biden's candidacy lying dead in the Capitol or his actual corpse, but it didn't.)
Biden's body would be seen no more. (Last I saw he is now seen more than when he was a candidate in the Biden Bunker and is rather upright in form.)
Harris would ride roughshod over Biden. (She never did but always graciously stayed within her VP status, giving honor to "JoBiden.")
There would be three failed assassination attempts on Donald Trump. (Hard to believe that one proved wrong. I thought it was a slam dunk.)
Because of their loss, Democratic politicians would converge on the White House and explode with rage (instead of Trump followers converging on the Capitol and exploding with rage. Oh well, just off by a political party and one long block.)
The House of Representatives, because it was divided, would no longer stand. (Well, it was knocked out of operation for six hours, but it still stands and managed to impeach the president and this week the senate is trying him for insurrection, a unique historic-scale event -- as a second impeachment trial of a single president -- that actually did happen that the prophet failed to see entirely. If he had predicted something as unlikely as that, we might have had reason to believe his credentials as a prophet. Alas, big opportunity missed.)
It's a prophetic tour de farce
Now, you night think, Why is Knave Dave wasting his time on covering this insignificant and peculiar niche of the world as if it somehow mattered in the grand scope of all that happened last year?
I'm here to tell you it did. So, is the The Telegraph. (Yes, this odd little sidetrack of humanity and the many other false prophets who tred the same trail, rose to become a story of international importance as a key driving force behind Trump.)
The Telegraph article begins with one man's story that easily represents thousands:
As lawmakers prepared to impeach Donald Trump for inciting a mob to attack the Capitol and D.C. readied for Joe Biden's inauguration, Cliff Dyrud wasn't focused on man-made actions. He was listening for the words of prophets.
Five years ago, a prophetess Dyrud follows said she'd gotten a message that Donald Trump would be president and save Christian America. Trump would be "as fearless as a lion being robbed of its cubs," and cause the "tall and lofty mountains" of establishment types to fall, her prophesy went.
Trump certainly became the anti-establishment president, but the chorus of prophets all predicted he would successfully defeat the deep state and drain the swamp, not that it would drain him. The mountain of the establishment (and of democracy) may have trembled, but they did not fall.
Some of these prophets became known when they predicted (sometimes after the fact, but a few before) that Trump would win in 2016, which he did. They all also claimed, however, that he would go on to victory for a second term, with most of them saying that would be decided in 2020:
Dyrud, a 73-year-old missionary, saw her words come true. So last week, he brought his "Appeal to Heaven" flag from Fargo to D.C., and marched with thousands of other Christians: Christians who, like him, believe another dimension - high above the news frenzy - is in charge, a supernatural one where God reigns, and where Donald Trump has very clearly already been prophesied to serve a second term.
Following Donald Trump's more-than-obvious defeat ...
Another prophet Dyrud follows ... assured him that "Trump is still our president," and is facing a moment much like when Moses and the Israelites fled Egypt and were enot able to cross the Red Sea until God parted the waters for them. God will do the something miraculous for Trump, too, Dyrud believes.
And, so, prophetic madness was AND IS a significant force driving people to continue to believe Trump has really won because God has declared it through his prophets. Therefore, God will work a miracle to bring it about, which we shall all see. When that didn't happen in the courts, the timing was revised to December 14 when the electoral college would seal the Trump victory. When that failed, the followers would march on the Capitol and overturn the electoral college's vote on January 6th.
When I pointed out in my own comments on numerous Coverstone prophetic videos, how all of the above had failed, including the last possible date for the election to be overturned, I was reprimanded with, "Just wait until Inauguration Day. You'll see." And, of course, I was told I was a faithless knave and a flea-bitten scoundrel for daring to speak against the prophets of God Almighty because it was impossible they they were not his prophets in that they they claimed to be. As proof, some of them were famous singers in the prophetic chorus.
Images and references to being on the march for Jesus were common at the massive Jan. 6 rally - and later, riot - including a segment of American Christianity that believes it has the power of prophecy. Some experts say charismatic, prophetic Christians who operate largely outside denominations make up U.S. religion's fastest-growing subset. In recent decades, millions have been increasingly seeking out these prophets and apostles on YouTube channels, in books, group prayer calls, via regular group text chats and at conferences where breakout groups practice faith healing and raising people from the dead. And nothing has focused this disparate, independent group like Donald Trump.
Indeed. Trump has proven to be a prophetic catalyst as people invested their hopes in the Great Pumpkin, instead of in their God. They believed God was on Trump's side, instead of ever asking if the Man of Almighty Arrogance was on God's side.
Many familiar voices of Christendom joined the prophetic fray:
"I believe something dramatic is going to happen before Congress votes on those electors. Something very dramatic that will change the outcome of that vote … the holy spirit will enter into this situation and it's going to be something very dramatic," televangelist Pat Robertson told his Christian Broadcasting Network audience Jan. 4, on the eve of two days of rallies in D.C. After the deadly Capitol siege, the prophesies continued - that Trump will remain in power.
Ooops. Pat, at least, finally admitted he was wrong, but he'll get an endless number of new chances to be a prophet. He always has. Sadly, it no longer matters among a large swath of Pentecostal Christians whether prophets are true -- only that they are famous, charismatic, entertaining, and say what people want to hear or what they fear, which gives a big adrenaline rush that makes the message urgent.
Do not think these voices in the wilderness do not have the ear of the president of the United States of America. He has attended their prophetic church meetings, where they have laid hands on him and predicted his victory for a second term, and that kind of prophesying continued even after congress counted the vote:
"Anyone who think this ends tonight is totally mistaken … you are still the president and we need you to stay on the front lines, sir," prophet Mario Bramnick, one of Trump's faith advisors, said Jan. 7.
One of these prophets -- humorously and insanely presented (along with some of her colleagues) in the following masterful video -- even sat in the White House as Trump's official spiritual advisor:
What a circus. But, hey, it was 2020!
Failure doesn't stand in the way of belief. Now that Trump has failed at every conceivable juncture ...
God's move to keep him in power will be even more spectacular - evidence even more likely to spark a religious awakening or revival.
It is just opportunity for greater success. This huge movement has been building as a political force of prophecy for awhile:
Presidential candidates Rick Perry, in 2011, and Bobby Jindhal, in 2015, hosted "prayer" rallies of tens of thousands of people in huge arenas, featuring prophets. Mario Bramnick met multiple times with Trump officials about immigration reform.... Leaders of five White House "faith" offices were introduced at a prophetic event in Beltsville, Md., just before the 2018 midterms. And the charismatic queen of American prosperity gospel, Paula White, has been by Trump's side through his presidency, overseeing his faith office. In November a video went viral of White prophesying that God has dispatched angels from Africa and South America to help Trump achieve victory.
False prophets of the man of false profits
Prophets of the Old Testament, like Elijah, called down real fire from heaven (1 Kings 18) in order to prove their credentials to the people as prophets of the Almighty. I'd like to see any of these do that. Instead, the self-professed prophets of today call for events the rest of us are smart enough to know will never happen and, when they do not happen, their followers find elaborate excuses to cover for them to avoid accepting the obvious truth of failure. That is the one thing about these prophets and their followers that is always predictable. It is more important to the ego to be seen as right and view oneself as right than to find and follow what is right, which starts by confessing one's own failure.
2020 became a year, thanks in good part to all the false prophets like Dana Coverstone, where hundreds of churches turned themselves into a national Trump cult, making endless excuses for this deeply flawed human being as if he just had a couple of minor flaws that are common to all. Their love and admiration for him still comes as close to idolizing a human being as anything I've ever witnessed.
They deny that he regularly told more lies in a day than most people tell in a month or than some tell in a year. They overlook his frequent adultery and his molesting of women. They excuse his extraordinarily vehement and unkind trashing of everyone else for his own failures (even to the point of publicly disparaging loyal Christian Puppet Pence over and over for simply refusing to step outside the constitution by doing things he had no legal authority to do just to keep Trump from ending up a failure). They excuse the numerous times he's backed out of deals he said he would do as though honor and integrity are meaningless.
They overlook his uncontrolled, raging temperament behind closed doors as well as the chaos and conflict he notoriously loved to create in the White House by his management style. They don’t care that his divisiveness polarized the country with more rage than I've ever seen in this nation on both sides of the political divide, inciting us to the brink of civil war. They even praise him as a great lover of Israel for the way he divided up the land of Israel in order to established peace treaties, which is all something many of these same Christians used to say the Antichrist would do.
However, most of all, they dismiss, as if God doesn’t care about such things, his extraordinary life-long amplitude of arrogance, which matches up nicely to King Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible, whom the Bible says God used to bring destruction to Israel and then deposed for a time (Daniel 4), stripping him of his reign, and then all of his wealth and driving him insane until he was finally humbled. When I pointed out how that part of scripture fit Trump's new trajectory far better than the victories Coverstone prophesied, they only pointed how wrong I was. Trump really won, they claimed, and we'd find out come Inauguration Day. What could be more obvious than my own blindness in all of this?
But, hey, I'm obviously the lunatic here because I find some of the above a little odd.
In my next Patron Post, "QAnon and on and on," I'll follow up with what is happening with many of the QAnon conspiracy followers and their bizarre prophecies now that nothing they believed actually happened, wrong as I was about all of the above predictions being ... well, wrong.