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Am I the only one who feels like Im living in an old-fashioned monster movie, with mobs of chanting peasants bearing pitchforks and torches as they march upon on a dark, foreboding castle? Or am I just spending too much time watching TV news and reading about politics online?

Anybody who, like me, watched the first couple of episodes of the HBO documentary series Q: Into the Storm would sure have to wonder. I wont be watching the rest; my creep quotient has been exceeded. The very idea that this international cast of oddballs could keep millions in thrall to the lunatic delusion that a secretive cabal of Satan-worshipping, baby-killing pedophiles led by Hillary Clinton rules the world and that only Donald Trump can save us

Well, its like something out of Masters of Atlantis, Charles Portis droll novel about two flimflam artists who found a religious sect based upon the lost wisdom of a kingdom beneath the sea. Soon they fall to fighting over accumulated heresies, much as QAnon adepts appear to be falling out as one failed prophecy follows another.

Herman Melvilles The Confidence-Man also comes to mind. Americans have always had a weakness for mystic lore.

The internet allows, nay encourages, like-minded cranks and opportunists from around the world to communicate: California, New Jersey, South Africa and the Philippines. Some of the same types who peddle extended auto warranties or trick you into giving your Social Security number over the phone are doing their best to monetize an ever-evolving delusional system.

So who is the mysterious Q, author of thousands of gnomic prophecies? Steve Bannon? Stephen Miller? Trump himself? Not possible. The first two are too cynical even to fake the required level of superstition. Trumps incapable of talking about anything other than himself for any sustained period.

The real question is: Who cares?

Pretty much the first thing that strikes you on your initial visit to a penitentiary or a psychiatric hospital is how ordinary everybody seems, like people you might encounter at the grocery store. Indeed, most QAnon devotees appear to conduct their ordinary lives all right: buying cars, getting haircuts, taking the trash to the curb, etc.

Its only when HBOs subjects touch upon their ruling passion that one understands that theyre rapt with delusion, imagining evil conspiracies and dark plots carrying not flaming torches, but little glowing screens.Otherwise, its downright medieval: It used to be Jews who supposedly murdered Christian infants. Now its Democrats. In the 16th century, the bubonic plague needed to be explained; now its COVID-19.

Reasoning with adepts of arcane lore is largely futile. I once had a neighbor who was deeply into astrology, pondering the heavens, casting detailed horoscopes and ascribing deep significance to the movements of the stars. He was a slender fellow with a deep, sepulchral voice youd expect to hear coming from a 300-pound defensive tackle. In real life, he was a banker.

One day my wife complained out loud about the chaotic state of my office. (I used to urge her to avoid going in there if it bothered her. Orderly filing systems never worked for me. I could find things only by remembering where they were. Now I have a computer.) So anyway, the neighbor laughed his booming laugh.

Well, its a sure thing hes not a Virgo, he chortled.

Uh-oh. Unless my birth certificates forged, a Virgo is precisely what I am. A Virgo on the cusp of Libra, whatever that is, a combination supposedly making me deeply inclined toward order; basically a neat freak.

Eleven-to-1 odds in his favor, and my man had shot himself in the metaphorical foot. If you think it gave him pause, youve known no True Believers. Without skipping a beat, he recast my horoscope to reveal a hidden passion for a deeper order than my wife perceived. After all, what is writing but the process of putting words in proper places?

Concluding that astrology is simply humbug was beyond his reach. To be fair, the newspaper in which youre reading this column probably publishes horoscopes. Its an ancient, essentially harmless superstition.Just so the impassioned necromancers of QAnon.

After the Trumpist mob failed in its attempt to reverse Dear Leaders electoral defeat on Jan. 6, the faithful pivoted to a new prediction: The Storm, so called, would take place on March 4, with Trump triumphantly reinaugurated and wreaking vengeance upon Satanic Democrats.

Mass executions would follow outside the U.S. Capitol: Hillary, Bill Gates, George Soros. All the devil-worshipping child murderers would be put to death in photogenically grisly ways. Hanging would be too good for them.

Instead, Trumps stuck at Mar-a-Lago, giving meandering wedding toasts about the lost election and going on Fox News to peddle fantasies about the Jan. 6 rioters hugging and kissing the police and the guards.If he were your grandpa, youd hide his car keys.

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of The Hunting of the President (St. Martins Press, 2000). You can email Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.

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From the desk of Welcome to the storm - Ukiah Daily Journal

A lot of them wanted to blow up Washington. Thats why they thought they were elected.

To them, my talk of trying to get anything done made me a sellout, a dupe of the Democrats, and a traitor. Some of them had me in their sights from day one. They saw me as much of an enemy as the guy in the White House. Me, a guy who had come to the top of the leadership by exposing corruption and pushing conservative ideas. Now I was a liberal collaborator. So that took some getting used to. What I also had not anticipated was the extent to which this new crowd hatedand I mean hatedBarack Obama.

On election night 2010, after Republicans made massive gains, President Barack Obama makes a phone call to Congressman John Boehner, the presumptive incoming speaker of the House. | The White House/Pete Souza/AP

By 2011, the right-wing propaganda nuts had managed to turn Obama into a toxic brand for conservatives. When I was first elected to Congress, we didnt have any propaganda organization for conservatives, except maybe a magazine or two like National Review. The only people who used the internet were some geeks in Palo Alto. There was no Drudge Report. No Breitbart. No kooks on YouTube spreading dangerous nonsense like they did every day about Obama.

Hes a secret Muslim!

He hates America!

Hes a communist!

And of course the truly nutty business about his birth certificate. People really had been brainwashed into believing Barack Obama was some Manchurian candidate planning to betray America.

Mark Levin was the first to go on the radio and spout off this crazy nonsense. It got him ratings, so eventually he dragged Hannity and Rush to Looneyville along with him. My longtime friend Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, was not immune to this. He got swept into the conspiracies and the paranoia and became an almost unrecognizable figure.

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes in 2006. | Jim Cooper/AP

Id known Ailes for a long time, since his work with George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s. Hed gone to college in Ohio, and since we had that connection, he sought me out at some event and introduced himself. Years later, in August of 1996, when I was in San Diego for the Republican National Convention, I ended up having dinner with Ailes and a veteran broadcasting executive named Rupert Murdoch. At that dinner they told me all about this new TV network they were starting. I had no idea I was listening to the outline of something that would make my life a living hell down the line. Sure enough, that October, Fox News hit the airwaves.

I kept in touch with Roger and starting in the early 2000s, Id stop in and see him whenever I was in New York for fundraisers. Wed shoot the breeze and talk politics. We got to know each other pretty well.

Murdoch, on the other hand, was harder to know. Sometimes hed invite me to watch the Super Bowl in the Fox box, or hed stop by the office. Wherever he was, you could tell he was the man in charge. He was a businessman, pure and simple. He cared about ratings and the bottom line. He also wanted to make sure he was ahead of any political or policy developments coming down the line. He was always asking who was up, who was down, what bills could pass and what couldnt. If he entertained any of the kooky conspiracy theories that started to take over his network, he kept it a secret from me. But he clearly didnt have a problem with them if they helped ratings.

At some point after the 2008 election, something changed with my friend Roger Ailes. I once met him in New York during the Obama years to plead with him to put a leash on some of the crazies he was putting on the air. It was making my job trying to accomplish anything conservative that much harder. I didnt expect this meeting to change anything, but I still thought it was bullshit, and I wanted Roger to know it.

When I put it to him like that, he didnt have much to say. But he did go on and on about the terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, which he thought was part of a grand conspiracy that led back to Hillary Clinton. Then he outlined elaborate plots by which George Soros and the Clintons and Obama (and whoever else came to mind) were trying to destroy him.

Theyre monitoring me, he assured me about the Obama White House. He told me he had a safe room built so he couldnt be spied on. His mansion was being protected by combat-ready security personnel, he said. There was a lot of conspiratorial talk. It was like hed been reading whacked-out spy novels all weekend.

I thought I could get him to control the crazies, and instead I found myself talking to the president of the club.

And it was clear that he believed all of this crazy stuff. I walked out of that meeting in a daze. I just didnt believe the entire federal government was so terrified of Roger Ailes that theyd break about a dozen laws to bring him down. I thought I could get him to control the crazies, and instead I found myself talking to the president of the club. One of us was crazy. Maybe it was me.

I have no idea what the relationship between Ailes and Murdoch was like, or if Ailes ever would go off on these paranoid tangents during meetings with his boss. But Murdoch must have thought Ailes was good for business, because he kept him in his job for years.

Places like Fox News were creating the wrong incentives. Sean Hannity was one of the worst. Id known him for years, and we used to have a good relationship. But then he decided he felt like busting my ass every night on his show. So one day, in January of 2015, I finally called him and asked: What the hell? I wanted to know why he kept bashing House Republicans when we were actually trying to stand up to Obama.

Well, you guys dont have a plan, he whined.

Look, I told him, our plan is pretty simple: were just going to stand up for what we believe in as Republicans.

Top: Fox News host Sean Hannity. Bottom: Conservative talk radio hosts Rush Limbaugh (left) and Mark Levin (right). | AP photos

I guess that wasnt good enough for him. The conversation didnt progress very far. At some point I called him a nut. Anyway, its safe to say our relationship never got any better.

Besides the homegrown talent at Fox, with their choice of guests they were making people who used to be fringe characters into powerful media stars. One of the first prototypes out of their laboratory was a woman named Michele Bachmann.

Bachmann, who had represented Minnesota's 6th Congressional District since 2007 and made a name for herself as a lunatic ever since, came to meet with me in the busy period in late 2010 after the election. She wanted a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, the most powerful committee in the House. There were many members in line ahead of her for a post like this. People who had waited patiently for their turn and who also, by the way, werent wild-eyed crazies.

There was no way she was going to get on Ways and Means, the most prestigious committee in Congress, and jump ahead of everyone else in line. Not while I was Speaker. In earlier days, a member of Congress in her position wouldnt even have dared ask for something like this. Sam Rayburn would have laughed her out of the city.

So I told her nodiplomatically, of course. But as she kept on talking, it dawned on me. This wasnt a request of the Speaker of the House. This was a demand.

Her response to me was calm and matter-of-fact. Well, then Ill just have to go talk to Sean Hannity and everybody at Fox, she said, and Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and everybody else on the radio, and tell them that this is how John Boehner is treating the people who made it possible for the Republicans to take back the House.

I wasnt the one with the power, she was saying. I just thought I was. She had the power now.

She was right, of course.

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Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates and the Birth of GOP Paranoia - POLITICO

'Vaccine-ready' is officially a look in the online clothing world, with a major retailer launching a category specifically for the COVID-inspired style.

Shopping website Revolve has divided shoppers after unveiling its "Vaccine Ready" category, featuring a range of strapless and off-the-shoulder tops for jab-accessible arms.

While the garments were not specifically made with vaccinations in mind, a Revolve representative told Insider: "We curated this page as a cute idea for our customers that captures what's going on in their lives right now."

RELATED: How celebrities are sparking COVID 'vaccination outfit' trends

In February, a Twitter user had shared an image of one of Revolve's off-the-shoulder sweaters, suggesting a perfect use for it.

Might order this for my vaccination," the tweet read, receiving almost 500,000 likes in response.

The new section of the website was later addressed on TikTok, with one user revealing her discovery in a video.

"So I was looking for summer shirts on Revolve. I don't know I'm manifesting it, leave me alone. And I was scrolling and I was like: 'What's this?'" Danni Cole told viewers.

Showing screengrabs of the 'Vaccine Ready' category, Cole laughed as she explained, "They're all shirts that you can wear to your vaccine appointment. So you can pick any of these. Or these."

"Excuse me as I get my $250 vaccine shirt next-day," she joked in her caption.

Dolly Parton famously sported a "cold shoulder" style shirt to receive her vaccine, revealing the outfit in an Instagram video from her appointment.

Hillary Clinton praised the country music icon's outfit choice, resharing an image of herself wearing a similar style in the 1990s.

RELATED: Dolly Parton's vaccine outfit receives high praise from Hillary Clinton: 'Make this a trend'

"Loved seeing @dollyparton bring back the cold shoulder as a vaccination look. Shall we make this a trend?" Clinton wrote.

Naturally, it did spark a style movement among celebrities, with designer Marc Jacobs sporting a vaccine-ready look equipped with hot pink trousers, leopard print, pink sequinned shorts and platform boots,

"Spring has sprung and second vaccine done!" he wrote in his post.

Amy Schumer wore a sparkly gold outfit with a conveniently-placed cutout at the shoulder, declaring she sported her "fanciest dress" for her vaccine, while Model Christie Brinkley took Parton's lead, wearing a one-shouldered top to her appointment.

Revolve lists a range of "cold shoulder", "off-the-shoulder" and "shoulderless" tops.

RELATED: From wearing them to making them: Your face mask questions, answered

The brand's 'Vaccine Ready' category can be found under the retailer's top sections, with items ranging from $49 - $390.

While fashion often moves in step with current affairs, curating the culture of the world through clothing, online shoppers were divided by the prospect of profiting off a pandemic that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide.

Some users called the concept "really good marketing," while another joked, "They better provide the vaccine with those prices."

"This is actually the most moronic thing I've ever seen," another wrote on Instagram.

The celebrities sparking COVID 'vaccination outfit' trends

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Online fashion retailer adds 'vaccine ready' category to website - 9Style

A skyscraper-sized container ship, built in 2018 has become wedged across Egypts Suez Canal and blocked all traffic in the vital waterway. Video Elephant

A shipping vessel that could clog the Suez Canal for weeks is the latest piece added to an ever-evolving conspiracy theory about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other members of a so-called deep state and links to human trafficking.

Communications channels where QAnon conspiracy theoriesspread were humming this week about a connection between Clinton and the quarter-mile-long ship that ran aground as high winds cut across the canal.

Those seeped into mainstream social media as well, including posts on Facebook and Instagram, where users tied Clintons Secret Service codename to the ship and suggested its radio call sign intentionally matched Clintons initials.

A Facebook user who shared the post did not respond to a request for comment. It speculates without evidence that Evergreen "is most likely a cover for human and sex trafficking."

Others pushing the same theory allude to the containers being opened on television to reveal trafficked people inside. It is the latest potential disclosure related to the QAnon conspiracy theory that says former President Donald Trump was elected to thwart a deep-state cabal of pedophiles and cannibals, including Clinton.

This photo released by the Suez Canal Authority on March 25, 2021, shows Lt. Gen. Ossama Rabei, center, head of the Suez Canal Authority, with a team walking along the bank of the Suez Canal where the Ever Given, a Panama-flagged cargo ship, has become wedged across the Suez Canal and blocking traffic in the vital waterway.(Photo: Suez Canal Authority via AP)

At about a quarter-mile long, the ship was built in 2018 as one of the largest in the world, according to the Associated Press. It first got lodged in the canal at about 7:45 a.m. March 23, halting traffic in a key shipping channel between the Mediterranean and Red seas.

The conspiracy theory goes like this: The ship that is stuck in the canal, the Ever Given, is owned by Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine and carries the radio call sign H3RC. Clintons Secret Service code name is Evergreen, and her initials are HRC.

Those pushing the theory connect the ship to human trafficking but provide no evidence. Evergreen did not respond to a request for comment.

Fact check: Antifa was not created by former President Barack Obama and George Soros

CNN reported in 2016 that Clinton, then the Democratic nominee for president, was keeping the code name assigned to her when she was first lady. Code names for the presidents family generally start with the same letter as the presidents moniker. For example, President Bill Clintons code name was Eagle and Hillary Clintons was Evergreen.

Evergreen Marine was established in 1968, according to its website, when Clinton was still in college.

Ever Givens call sign is indeed H3RC, according to MyShipTracking.com. But the initials are a coincidence as well.

The International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, Switzerland, regulates call signs. The union is a specialized agency of the United Nations.

The first two characters of a maritime call sign constitute the nationality identification for the ship, according to the 2020 edition of the agencys radio regulations. The H3 characters are assigned by the union to Panama, under whose flag the Ever Given sails, according to those regulations.

This photo released by the Suez Canal Authority on Thursday, March 25, 2021, shows the Ever Given, a Panama-flagged cargo ship, after it become wedged across the Suez Canal and blocking traffic in the vital waterway from another vessel. (Photo: Suez Canal Authority via AP)

QAnon believers have targeted Clinton as part of several conspiracy theories.

In one, a decoded email allegedly implicated her and former President Barack Obama in child sex-trafficking. Another from 2018 claims there is video of Clinton and her former aide Huma Abedin sexually assaulting a young girl, according to FactCheck.org.

Earlier this month, a website wrote that Navy Seals acting on Trumps order had arrested Clinton, even though Clinton made several public appearances after the alleged arrest.

Perhaps the most famous of theconspiracy theory involving Clinton is Pizzagate, a 2016 presidential election falsehood that claimed Wikileaks had released emails showing Democrats linked to Clinton were running a child-sex ring in the basement of a pizza shop in Washington. A North Carolina man was arrested after firing a rifle into the restaurant.

None of those conspiracy theories is true. Clinton responded to falsehoods spread about her during an interview with The New York Times in February.

For me, it does go back to my earliest days in national politics, when it became clear to me that there was a bit of a market in trafficking in the most outlandish accusations and wild stories concerning me, my family, people that we knew, people close to us, Clinton told the Times.

Then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump listens to then Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, on Oct. 9, 2016.(Photo: PAUL J. RICHARDS, AFP via Getty Images)

The claim that a ship stuck in the Suez Canal is a human trafficking vessel with links to Hillary Clinton is FALSE. Those pushing the conspiracy theory offer no proof that the ship is transporting people to be trafficked. The theory is another in a long line of falsehoods spread online about Clinton and human trafficking.

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook

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Fact check: No evidence Hillary Clinton, Suez Canal vessel ...

As attempts to refloat the wedged cargo ship in the Suez Canal continue, the unusual event has been sparking a lot of global conversations just as much as conspiracy theories.

On Telegram, an account associated with the US-based QAnon conspiracy theory has linked the Ever Given incident with the former US candidate for presidency Hillary Clinton.

According to this theory, the Japanese-owned Ever Given was "deliberately" stuck at the EgyptianSuez Canal "as a cover for a human trafficking activity."

Despite experts statements linking the incident to the fact thatthe ship, which is one of the largest in the world, was impacted by strong desert wind last week, causing it to block traffic across the vital waterway, believers in the QAnon theory havesuggested that "the ship is actually being used by a sex trafficking ring owned by Hillary Clinton, aimed to smugglechildren."

However, the message that has gone viral across the internet has provided very little proof of this claim, other than saying that the name of the company that owns the ship "is the same code name Clinton used during the 1990s."

For years now, individuals who believe inthe QAnon theory have linked several international events andAmerican politicians and celebrities who have been strongly criticized by the former US President Donald Trump to human trafficking rings.

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How is Hillary Clinton Involved in the Suez Canal Blockage? - Al-Bawaba