Through the looking glass

https://www.rt.com/usa/500081-my-antifa-lover-book/

A romantic novel called 'My Antifa Lover’ invokes left-wing militancy in a story about a young congresswoman falling for a rioter. The zeitgeist-filled title has turned a few heads online; some couldn’t even believe it exists.

As brevity is known to be the soul of wit, the peculiar novel, written by Jessica Stranger, is just fifty-nine pages long. However, ‘My Antifa Lover’ may be compensating for this by having two whole sub-titles on the cover: the poetic “A Riot of the Heart” and the thought-provoking “Steamy Romance Against Fascism.”

The main hero, a liberal congresswoman, who incidentally shares the first name with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, falls in love with a “daring” masked protester in Seattle, Washington. The male ead is supposedly part of ‘Antifa’ a loose coalition of left-wingers who sometimes employ violent protest tactics against groups they deem 'fascist.'“After encountering him at a non-violent burning down of a federal building she can't tell what is hotter, the fire or her feelings developing for him,” the Amazon description of the book reads.

The book’s reviews on the website do not provide much of an insight into the work and seem to mostly be jokes. “My wife’s boyfriend recommended this to me,” wrote one critic, who gave “My Antifa Lover” two out of five stars.

It is worth noting that according to Amazon, ‘My Antifa Lover’ wasn’t Stranger’s first foray into political romance. The author’s previous book ‘Not My President but My Lover’ was a self-admitted satirical take on a woman Democrat falling in love with the Republican president Donald Trump.

International Terrorists

https://bylinetimes.com/2020/09/07/the-rise-of-qanon-and-the-danger-of-a-conspiracy-theory-based-terrorism-wave/

Otherwise known as the ‘QAnon’ conspiracy, a mere 13% of right-wing voters believe it to be wholly untrue

More worrying still is that QAnon now has millions of members and followers on Facebook, with membership growing by more than 600% since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal. They are based in a dozen Western democratic countries, including the UK, with myths about the Coronavirus merging with QAnon.

“In the face of the pandemic, conspiracy theories paint a world that is ordered, and controllable,” Jovan Byford, a psychologist with the Open University, told BBC News. “Conspiracy theories flourish when social machinery breaks down and available ways of making sense of the world prove inadequate for what is going on.”

But we need to stop thinking of QAnon conspiracy theorists as a group of harmless social media accounts – because they not only threaten democracy and risk exacerbating a deadly pandemic, but they also promise to unleash the next wave of international terrorism.

It is hard to see how US democracy can function when a significant portion of supporters of one of the country’s two major parties believe that the current occupant of the White House is “Making America Great Again” by slaying Satan worshippers and cannibals.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/09/07/lex-est-quod-dico-san-francisco-government-gyms-open-private-gyms-forced-to-remain-closed/#more-199128

CALIFORNIA – Gyms within government buildings in San Francisco have been open for months, despite privately owned establishments being ordered to close due to the coronavirus.

“It’s shocking, it’s infuriating,” Daniele Rabkin, of Crossfit Golden Gate, told a local NBC station. “Even though they’re getting exposed, there are no repercussions, no ramifications? It’s shocking.”

The gyms that have been open for government employees include those for police officers, judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and paralegals, according to the report. One such gym, the Hall of Justice gym, has been open since July 1.

“It just demonstrates that there seems to be some kind of a double standard between what city employees are allowed to do and what the residents of San Francisco are allowed to do,” Dave Karraker, owner of MX3 Fitness in the Castro, said.