People I’d never heard of

I think I mostly hang out with the right people (although, I was associating with a bad crowd when I was active in that New Atheist thing), because the news keeps popping up with all these horrible people I knew nothing about until they committed their crimes. Which is not surprising, since that’s how news works.

The first nobody is someone going by the moniker “Front Row Joe”, actual name Adam Radogna. His claim to fame is his membership in a cult.

Radogna is a loud and proud “Front Row Joe”—a small subset of Trump fanatics who spend days camping to secure prime spots at a presidential event. In 2024, he told NJ.com that he had been to more than 40 rallies. “We have members from all over the country. It’s no more than 30 or 40 of us and we just love to support Donald Trump,” he said at the time. “He knows who we are and we’ve all met him.”

Yikes. We already know there is something wrong with that man, but the police have found something even wronger.

Adam Radogna, a 37-year-old Ohio restaurant owner, was indicted by a grand jury for possessing dozens of images containing child sexual abuse material, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office announced Tuesday. A search warrant was executed at Radogna’s home in Brook Park, a working-class neighborhood southwest of Cleveland, after a joint federal and state investigation identified his residence as a potential location for child sexual abuse material. The search yielded multiple troubling files on Radogna’s devices, the prosecutor’s office said.

These are Trump’s people.

Another cult group I don’t follow are the evangelical Christians — there’s something wrong with all of those people. Seth and Heather Thompson Day were “popular” (again, not with me, I never heard of them before) Seventh Day Adventist proselytizers. They are firm believers in Christian love.

According to the newly released documents, the Days’ daughter had told local hospital staff that on September 22, the same day of the alleged physical assault, “[Seth Day] engaged in sexual intercourse with [her] on her bed.”

While describing the alleged incident to investigators, the complaint states that she “was very timid about details and stipulated to the details of the sexual assault as ‘yucky.’” She also described the location of a bottle of lubricant her father used in the assault.

“Yucky”. Yes, very yucky. But there’s more!

The daughter alleged her father had repeatedly physically abused her. On Sept. 22, according to the affidavit, Seth Day allegedly struck his daughter with her cell phone, “causing lacerations and multiple areas of bruising on her face.”

“She also advised there was a bruise on her chest,” according to the affidavit.

The injuries were documented by the investigating officer. The daughter also told police the abuse had happened repeatedly in the past, leading to Texas Child Protective Services Investigations, and the daughter alleged the family moved homes because of those reports.

Just say no to cult behavior. These are people I never wanted to know about, and will happily go back to my state of ignorance…except that I will have to worry generically about all the nobodies who will erupt into my awareness with other horrible acts.