I haven’t even seen Sound of Freedom yet, but I’m already convinced I need to based on the absolute hysteria emanating from the left.

As I reported yesterday, The Guardian set off the parade of stupidity by tying the movie, which is based on a true story, to QAnon. Does the movie mention QAnon, Hillary Clinton, Pizzagate, or anything of the sort? Not even a little bit. Rather, it’s just a story about saving a girl from human traffickers in South America.

Admittedly, I severely underestimated how triggering that would be for some people, and now a reviewer from Rolling Stone is having a “hold my beer” moment.

We’ll start with his actual article, but the continuation of his freakout happens elsewhere.

I watched Jim Caviezel's QAnon-ish child-trafficking drama "Sound of Freedom" with the kind of muttering, coughing, "Amen!"-bellowing boomers who have made it a right-wing indie hit. Hard to overstate just how disgusting it was! https://t.co/SA1Q1OMnsD

— Woke Mind Virus Supersoldier (@youwouldntpost) July 7, 2023

“Based on a true story,” I heard from somewhere across the theater.

The familiar words had appeared on screen, and an elderly man had taken it upon himself to read them aloud, to the rest of a sizable audience seated for a matinee showing of the anti-child-trafficking thriller Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel. For the seasoned moviegoer, this phrase is a joke — we know that cinema will stretch almost any “truth” to the breaking point — and the rank insincerity of such a pronouncement is the foundation of the prankish opening titles of Fargo. But this crowd, I could tell, would view the events depicted over the next two-plus hours as entirely literal.

Let me stop there because if I’m reading that right, and I think I am, this reviewer is actually suggesting that it’s a problem for movie-goers watching this movie to believe that human trafficking is real. Does Miles Klee think human trafficking doesn’t exist? I’m left wondering what great harm is even being perceived here. That people might take human trafficking too literally? Of all the things to rage about online, that seems like a rather odd choice.

Miles didn’t save his attacks for just the movie itself, though. He also went after Tim Ballard, the man on whom the movie is based, and his anti-human trafficking organization, Operation Underground Railroad.

Ballard himself has dabbled in Q-adjacent conspiracy theories, such as the Wayfair trafficking hoax, while his organization has far-right affinities and a long record of distorting its botched “raids,” which rely on bizarre tactics like asking psychics where to find victims for rescue. Ballard, Caviezel, and others of their ilk had primed the public to accept Sound of Freedom as a documentary rather than delusion by fomenting moral panic for years over this grossly exaggerated “epidemic” of child sex-trafficking, much of it funneling people into conspiracist rabbit holes and QAnon communities. In short, I was at the movies with people who were there to see their worst fears confirmed.

I read a paragraph like that, and I’m left wondering exactly how we got to the point where saving kids from human traffickers (which is absolutely a real, documented issue in the world) became so partisan. Whether one agrees with Ballard’s techniques, and I have a feeling Miles is stretching matters, or not, that shouldn’t drive someone to essentially become an apologist for human trafficking. Yet, that’s exactly what’s happening.

From there, Miles launches into a tortured critique of the film, but he then went to Twitter to essentially mock human trafficking as a real-world problem.

here we go!! pic.twitter.com/qxJXxsOgpt

— Woke Mind Virus Supersoldier (@youwouldntpost) July 7, 2023

yes, this photo was taken shortly before i was trafficked pic.twitter.com/WMxWiVbis8

— Woke Mind Virus Supersoldier (@youwouldntpost) July 8, 2023

We are talking about a run-of-the-mill action thriller about extracting a little girl from human traffickers. How is that so objectionable that it’d make a grown man act that way? I understand partisanship rules all, but man, maybe take a break every once and a while. There is no grand army of QAnon followers going to see Sound of Freedom. It’s just normal people wanting to see the type of movie that used to be very popular in Hollywood. The leftist conspiracy theories surrounding it are deranged. They are telling you who they are. We should probably believe them.