Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal

A Return to Comet Ping Pong

Looking at the quiet facade of this restaurant and concert venue during the day, it’s hard to believe that not too long ago it became the center of a national firestorm, forever affected the national psyche, and even shifted the dynamics of a Presidential election.

I was on my way to Politics and Prose, a first visit. Oh my God, I said to myself…I’m standing in front of it. I had seen it from the inside of a cab, but never realized the two businesses were that close.

Let me be clear: I have no reason to believe that James Alefantis is involved in child trafficking, and I’ve found no evidence to support such claims.

In any case, downstairs at the bookstore, I got a delicious cup of coffee at The Den, a busy and warm space filled with relaxed people and yes, their kids.

There was no sign of anything wrong.

Soon I was trying to convince myself that everything was normal—that the whole Pizzagate episode had been a fever dream, a bizarre conspiracy that spiraled out of control.

(Comet sells pizza, but the scandal centered on the Podesta brothers, who don’t own the store.)

But this neighborhood has its own unsettling texture. I did notice symbols, references, and “jokes” that echo themes associated with MK-Ultra, occult imagery, and even child trafficking.

I’m not going to reproduce any of them here; doing so isn’t helpful, and I have no interest in making unfounded accusations or dragging individuals into debates that overshadow the larger systemic patterns.

Anyway, the point is not whether any single example is “real,” but that the abnormal often hides in plain sight. That’s one of the recurring patterns in corruption: people imagine it announces itself like a cartoon villain, but in reality, life is messy, ambiguous, and confusing—especially when you’re trying to make sense of signals you were never trained to interpret.

Also, when you’ve been exposed to reports of terrible things, it’s easy to overcorrect and start seeing threats everywhere. That’s its own kind of distortion.

I still don’t fully understand everything that unfolded during that period. The “pizza code” language that circulated in leaked emails clearly meant something to the people using it. I have established an opinion, but nobody has been charged. Perhaps we will never know.

Beyond evil hiding in the normal, a deeper issue is that we don’t yet have a shared sense of what counts as normal. That ambiguity breeds unease. It’s unfortunate that events escalated the way they did at that restaurant, and tragic that a man—Edgar Maddison Welch—lost his life this year, nearly a decade after being drawn into the chaos.

My hope is that we evolve beyond the Looney Tunes version of good and evil—beyond simplistic narratives, beyond panic, beyond the reflex to see monsters everywhere or nowhere.

More than anything, I want people to be safe.

(Written with the help of Copilot AI. My photo.)