THE last days of Rome. Sodom and Gomorrah. Hitler’s bunker. Brookside. History is littered with cultural apocalypses and each instance is tied together by an enlightening common thread. That when all the cards have been played, the curtain is falling and the endgame looms, the damned will always revert to primal instinct – seeing out their last with a panicked frenzy of mass fornication.

The White House is likely abundant with pulsating piles of naked, knotted flesh at the moment. It's perhaps the reason Melania Trump wears those vertigo-inducing heels – ably stepping over writhing bodies on the plush Oval Office carpet with one mighty bound. Unsolicited orgies might be the least of her husband Donald's concerns at the moment, however.

According to new American mass political movement "QAnon", Trump's got a shadow government that's enslaved the American people to expose. Yes, 'draining the swamp' apparently means more than binning a few bad apples in Capitol Hill. According to QAnon zealots, the President is actually the righteous white knight the world's been waiting for – destined to expose one of the biggest conspiracies in the history of humanity's brief reign. At the moment, however, such intel is apparently highly classified – privy only to governmental apparatchiks who are blessed with top-level “Q” security clearances.

It’s perhaps ironic then, that the anonymous whistleblower who kicked off the whole QAnon phenomenon – by claiming to have access-all-areas Q credentials for the Trump administration – has recently convinced his cult that it's actually them who are getting gratuitously screwed on a daily basis. The true sex-crazed deviants? A villainous cabal of power families, paedophiles and paper-shuffling bureaucrats who, apparently, rule the entire world. Oh yes. The problem is, lots of Americans now believe - thanks to a now infamous true patriot known as "Q".

Last October, this mysterious, all-knowing online phantom began posting cryptic messages in notorious internet forum 4Chan under the title “Calm Before the Storm”. He claimed to be tasked with “posting intel drops” for the Trump administration.

Q's aim? To covertly inform the public about the President’s true modus operandi – to stage a Trojan Horse-style counter-coup against the cancerous, omni-tentacled bureaucratic monster known as the “Deep State”. Namely, a shadow government of bureaucrats, lawmakers, CIA, FBI and the Clintons. And, of course, the Obamas. And – worst of the lot – the compliant, subservient mainstream media (MSM) who earn a crust mocking such paranoid, conspiratorial claims. Boo hiss.

A storm gathers

Over the past few months, Q’s ‘Storm’ has become a hurricane as visible as Jupiter’s great red spot – spreading virally through the internet’s bowels and arriving at the central nervous system of Reddit, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Q’s postings are now very much mainstream, evangelising an immense army of devout followers.

And despite Trump’s inner circle being picked off one-by-one like teens on Elm Street, these QAnon believers still see a President on top of his game, a genius ready to take full command of this inconsequential wee rock spinning eternally around a nuclear furnace somewhere in the backwaters of infinity.

Mibbie he is a genius. Who can’t marvel at how Trump subverted his perceived moronity to a winning advantage last week, deliberately misspelling ‘Smocking Gun’ twice on a Tweet. Look at what became the lead news story that day – it certainly wasn’t the lurid revelations of the Mueller investigation.

And the result of the President painting himself as a clown? He remains the President, one who quite consciously amplifies his most lurid and grotesque characteristics. He hides in plain sight. And it’s in this febrile climate of reality distortion and mass distrust that the QAnon phenomenon thrives.

The cult of Q

LAST Friday, Floridian police sergeant Matt Patten was relieved of his duties. His crime? Sewing a wee homemade patch onto his uniform – the letter Q. The main issue was not Patten’s allegiance to an online conspiracy theorist, or his dodgy needlework, but the fact he wore this wonky wee homage during a visit by Vice President Mike Pence.

This was controversial because underneath Sgt Patten’s Q, visible to the media cameras, was also the sewn-on phrase ‘Question The Narrative’ – which must have taken ages. “It’s spreading,” Q posted online soon afterwards, alongside the pics. Pence didn't look amused.

That someone claiming to be a top government insider has almost overnight amassed a cult – or army – hundreds of thousands strong is all thanks to the paranoid mindsets who frequent a notoriously “unmodded” website called 4chan. Its forum /pol/ stands for “politically incorrect” and attracts myriad tinfoil-hatted headbangers who all log on when David Icke isn’t touring.

This is where Q first found an audience last October and just one year on, Trump rallies are abundant with Q banners and quotations. It’s a very real phenomenon – some of the most popular online videos on “QAnon” boast millions of views – and the controversy has turned America’s Twitter into a battleground that makes Brexit look like a neighbourly hedge height dispute.

With QAnon’s fire granted the oxygen of life by media commentators, politicians and celebrities such as Roseanne Barr, it was only a matter of time before it sent some vulnerable person off their trolley. And earlier this year, a man armed with a rifle and a handgun drove an armoured vehicle to the Hoover Dam on what he said was a mission from QAnon. Other incidents have followed, such as the stalking of Stormy Daniels’ lawyer and other shootings, said to have been inspired by Q’s hardline rantings.

So what’s QAnon’s appeal? Simply, herd-think solidifying the enduring belief that the planet is controlled by billionaire fascists and that we are all bound to their will. Q’s insistence that such horror is our reality taps into primal, deep-rooted fears – paedophiles with ‘elite’ status and secret Illuminati rulers – painting a dark portrait of an enslaved world chained to omnipresent forces that infect our lives like a cancer. With Donald Trump being the only cure. Perhaps Sgt Patten could be offered the role of the President’s new Chief of Staff.

The Trump card?

With such a high estimation of The Don’s genius, one wouldn’t be risking ridicule by insinuating Q is Trump himself. Having had to acknowledge the static surrounding QAnon, the White House has officially stated: “The president condemns and denounces any group that would incite violence and certainly doesn’t support groups that would promote that type of behaviour.” Unless they’re white supremacists, of course.

Those who believe Trump is behind the whole charade often cite Q’s post: “Nothing is random. Everything has meaning. +++” Seven minutes later, Trump sent a tweet and also ended it with +++. Then there was a photo posted by Q, the location of which which matched the coordinates and landmass Air Force One was flying over at the same time it was posted.

The more sensible members of the QAnon movement, however, simply believe Trump is in cahoots with the real Q and is indeed using them as a conduit for truth – bypassing the lying, hateful, enemy of the people mainstream media.

It all certainly points to Steve Bannon’s brand of mischief making, yet he – and most of Trump’s inner circle at the time of Q’s initial posts – are now either in jail, sacked or touring the planet sewing seeds of suspicion and discord at high profile “debates”.

So, everyone is gone but Q keeps posting. Leaving, only, Trump. And Melania, of course.

And finally ...

AS a multi-millionaire property mogul, self-made entrepreneur and global brand name who fills stadiums all over the USA, Dolly Parton certainly isn’t dolly. And neither is Donald Trump. Both are lucid American dreamers, masters of theatre and subterfuge, elaborate barnets effectively diverting attention from the whirring cogs underneath.

A compulsion to cloak their true selves in grotesque caricature isn’t all they’ve got in common. Both acutely understand that life is a confidence trick in assimilation and folk will often mock those who fail to conform to feel superior. It’s a common conceit among the herd that serves only to empower walking cartoons such as Trump, who can get down to some serious work under their projection of eccentricity.

Turning yourself into the joke relieves enemies and rivals of their ammunition, and Trump is untouchable for this very reason – the liberal intelligentsia who despise him can only endlessly repeat accusations of idiocy, an insult losing its potency each time thanks to the law of diminishing returns.

Revelling in being reviled by liberals, Trump – and Q – are winning. QAnon is now a movement – a bowel one, of course – but logic no longer applies to politics. The seeds of a world fed on junk information are finally sprouting, and poisionous weed infestations are almost impossible to get rid of once they take root.

Twitter: FutureShockBB