If you talk to God that’s called prayer

If God talks to you that’s called schizophrenia, unless you’re a white conservative evangelical, in which case it’s called an alternative belief system which we must respect for reasons:

Many of Donald Trump’s most dogmatic supporters see a mass protest in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6—just two weeks shy of Inauguration Day 2021—as their last chance to disrupt President-elect Joe Biden’s win. But for the president himself, it’s just another day to complain.

Two people familiar with the matter say that in recent days, Trump has told advisers and close associates that he wants to keep fighting in court past Jan. 6 if members of Congress, as expected, end up certifying the electoral college results.

“The way he sees it is: Why should I ever let this go?… How would that benefit me?” said one of the sources, who’s spoken to Trump at length about the post-election activities to nullify his Democratic opponent’s decisive victory.

Another thing to which we’ve become largely inured is Donald Trump’s completely open sociopathy. The notion that he might consider some factor other than whether something benefits him personally is so bizarre as to remain outside the realm of contemplation.

The president’s exact plans for the Jan. 6 events remain unclear, and it has been common for him to lend his support to these rallies or protests via enthusiastic-sounding tweets, only to then stop short of doing much else. Since last week, Trump has asked certain aides and allies what they think would be good ideas for him to mark the occasion, such as a speech, a flyover, or a recorded video, the sources said.

The day should not lack for drama. Several House Republicans, as well as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), have signed on to a quixotic, destined-to-fail effort to object to the certification of the electoral college’s results. Wednesday’s rally-goers want to pressure more Republicans to join the effort—or even, quite literally, block Democrats from reaching Congress.

“Must block Dem and [Republicans in Name Only],” one planning graphic posted on pro-Trump forum “The Donald” read, showing a map of key streets around Congress that protesters want to obstruct. “There’s 535 politicians and ~3500 guards.”

On the day itself, protesters plan to meet in the northeast corner of the Capitol complex, where they’ll hear from a list of speakers that includes Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Trump adviser Roger Stone, and Rep-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has supported the QAnon conspiracy theory. Trump has promoted the protest on Twitter, urging his supporters to attend.

“Be there, will be wild!” Trump tweeted on Dec. 19.

The White House, the president’s legal team, and Trump campaign spokespeople did not provide comment for this story. But among Trump’s most devoted followers the idea that he would continue fighting on, even after the 6th, is a no-brainer.

“You can’t give up,” MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump ally who has funded and spoken at several efforts to challenge the 2020 election, told The Daily Beast. “If these people [around the president] don’t end up standing up, they are just as bad as the people who tried to commit the crime.”

For Lindell, the push to overturn the election results is not just a matter of politics but of religion as well.

“God chose Donald Trump for eight years, not four,” he said, adding that “even if Biden is inaugurated, there’s no statute of limitations [on election theft]. Yes, I will keep investigating this, [even if he’s sworn in], and I’m not going to stop trying to get this out there to the American people.”

While others have not spoken in such theological tones, they have shown no less vigor in encouraging Trump’s challenge of the results. In an appearance on an online talk show, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn predicted that millions of people would show up on Jan. 6. That prediction seems destined to badly overestimate the actual number of attendees, after an earlier November rally in Washington protesting Trump’s election defeat drew, at best, tens of thousands of people to Washington.

The Jan. 6 rally comes after two earlier Washington protests in November and December failed to save the election for Trump or stop his campaign’s nearly perfect record of courtroom defeats. But the protesters’ mood ahead of the Jan. 6 protest has turned even more desperate.

Trump diehards from across the country have organized their travel to Washington on “The Donald” forum. One of the hottest topics on the site is how protesters can bring guns to D.C., which would count as a local crime in nearly all circumstances under Washington’s strict gun laws. Others have talked about breaking into federal buildings or committing violence against law enforcement officers who try to stop them from storming Congress.

“I’m thinking it will be literal war on that day,” one popular comment posted last Wednesday read. “Where we’ll storm offices and physically remove and even kill all the D.C. traitors and reclaim the country.”

Now see if somebody said “the Lizard People chose Donald Trump for eight years not four,” we could treat that person as obviously insane, but if you say “God” instead of “the Lizard People” we’re not allowed to point out that you’re a delusional lunatic, because that would be disrespectful of your particular brand of delusional lunacy.

Also too, the degree to which our political and legal culture simply tolerates open sedition — again, offer only valid to white Christian conservatives, don’t try this at home kids — is truly striking. Note that in this completely typical story open sedition by the most prominent leaders of one of the nation’s two major political parties is described as “quixotic” as opposed to, you know, open sedition,

And before anybody gets to that, there’s no comparison whatsoever to Barbara Boxer’s genuinely quixotic lone protest vote back in 2005. I’ve noted before that this was a foolish gesture on her part, but she was quite explicit about the fact at the time: nobody in the Democratic party elites, starting very much with John Kerry himself, was actually trying to reverse the results of the 2004 election.

Again I think that kind of symbolic politics are bad precisely because they’re not serious. What the Republicans are trying to pull off here is deadly serious: people who keep insisting that there’s nothing to worry about because there’s no way they would actually do this if they had the votes in Congress to do it are in their own way as delusional as the believers in the Lizard People, or an omnipotent beneficent being who wants Donald Trump to be president for four more years but apparently isn’t quite omnipotent enough to have flipped the 22,000 votes in three states that would have punished the heathen with that particular outcome.