Bizz-arre, stir-range

Next: Looking for Jim Morrison

“There is one word in America that says it all. And that one word is: You Never Know.”

— Joaquin Andujar

As hard as it is to believe — and our friends on the left might keep their smelling salts handy — there are folks out there who don’t believe this page has enough conservative commentary. These editorials, Cal Thomas, Star Parker, Victor Davis Hanson, Michael Barone — the various regular columnists over on the opposite page

— are dismissed. Too liberal. Leftists. Fellow travelers.

And the joke is, we’re not kidding. You should see some of the complaints. Mostly anonymous.

Just as there are extreme leftists who’d shut down police departments, there are extremes on the right who’d . . . . Well, that’s where the story begins today.

Apparently this QAnon business really does convince people of vast conspiracies. And what could be more vast of a conspiracy than for a famous member of a famous family to fake his own death 20 years ago, in preparation for making a messiah-like comeback after having predicted (20 years ago, remember) that Donald Trump would 1) run for president, 2) win, 3) lose re-election, and 4) make a comeback. The head swims.

On this past Tuesday, at the site overlooking where his father was assassinated, John F. Kennedy Jr. was supposed to emerge from the dead to announce that he was running on the Donald Trump ticket for 2024. Hundreds of people turned up in Dallas to see the event.

It didn’t happen. Still: Hundreds of people showed up.

Why John-John would pick Dallas and that particular spot is anybody’s guess. Why John-John, from a famous Democratic family, would team up with Donald Trump is anybody’s fantasy. But people wore Trump-Kennedy 2024 shirts. And carried signs. And spoke freely with the press. When the miraculous didn’t happen, they wandered away, some telling the media that John Jr. would show up later. Must’ve miscalculated the timing.

This behavior is bizarre. It’s strange. It might even be funny to some. But not everybody thinks it’s harmless.

For example: Jared Holt, who’s a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. He follows extremism in America closely, and monitors online communities like QAnon. He was quoted in The Washington Post: “For people to be in the state of mind where they are utterly and hopelessly detached from reality opens up very dangerous possibilities for what that individual may do going forward,” he said. “Even though this event is ripe for mockery, and I think people should allow themselves to laugh, I think we need to reconcile with the fact that hundreds of people turn out for a celebrity who has been dead for two decades.

“What drove them out to the streets is a kind of a representation of a broader sickness.”

This sickness might get a gullible type to walk into a pizza joint with a gun to stop the child trafficking going on there. As happened in 2016 in Washington, D.C.’s Chevy Chase neighborhood. Look up Pizzagate.

Surely some of the people at Dealey Plaza on Tuesday were just there to see the show. But then, how did they learn of it? They had to be on QAnon’s website or mailing list. The better to make the shirts and signs beforehand. We’d recommend against.

Us? We’ll stick with the newspapers.