Free Republic

There’s some weirdness afoot over at The Atlantic, where they’re running contrary pieces on the “Dark Brandon” phenomenon. Molly Jong-Fast argues in her piece that Joe Biden “is a phoenix,” rising from the ashes just at the moment when all looks darkest. We’ve heard a lot this week about Biden’s “string of wins” and a lot of wishcasting by the media that Biden’s momentum is beginning to change, and this is the moment it all turns around and his approval rating surges back above 40 percent. But seriously, Joe Biden is a phoenix. IRL LOL #DarkBrandon pic.twitter.com/GTyumSRz1k — jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL)...

Anxiety about the nation’s children, which is at a steady simmer in the best of times, boiled over in the summer of 2020, when the digital soldiers of QAnon occupied the otherwise innocuous hashtag #SaveTheChildren. Around the same time, major social-media platforms had started blocking overt QAnon accounts and hashtags. From their new beachhead, the digital soldiers were able to disseminate a cascade of false information about child trafficking on Instagram and Facebook: Children were being trafficked on the hospital ship USNS Comfort, then docked in New York City, and through tunnels underneath Central Park. As outrageous as these allegations...