Folks, time to calm down. Pompeo is talking shit and WH officials are leaking their "second term" plans because they know that if pro-democracy forces panic, it strengthens their hand. We must stay calm, square our shoulders, and insist on reality: Biden is the next president.

They can say stuff. They can write plans. They can fart in their hands and smell it. None of this changes the vote total, unless we start running around and handing them power by acting like their shit-talk has the force of law behind it. It does not.

Biden is taking the correct approach. Trust me: The way you deal with gaslighters is not to say, "OH SHIT OH SHIT THEY ARE TALKING SHIT I GUESS I HAVE TO AGREE NOW."

You deal with gaslighters by staying calm and insisting on reality. https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1326269246926548992

Just remember: They want you to be scared. They want you to panic. They know that makes their fantasies a little more powerful.

So the way to fight back: Do not panic. Do not be scared. We already defeated this coup.

I have no doubt Rudy and Eric showed up at the Philly convention center with big dreams of riling up a crowd to storm the vote-counting center. Instead, they were run off by a group of locals armed only with cardboard signs.

They are paper tigers. Act like it.

This is not a call to “downplay” what Trump is doing. He is committing treason and I hope is tried for it. But that his intent is serious does not make it competent. Know the difference. We got this. Don’t be scared of shadows.

Remember, the reason Trump hopes his puppet show of a pretend second term will work is he understands power is a social construction — and if you trick people into believing you have it, that's as good as having it.

So your job is not to be tricked. We all have a role to play.

One more thing: I'm not saying this stuff because I'm unconcerned. I'm very concerned — but a this point, mostly that Trump will somehow trick us into giving up our power. We have to refuse. Square shoulder. Calm affect. Insist on reality. We can do this. Stop panicking.

Sigh. I see some folks are determined to misrepresent what I'm saying. So I will try again. To begin with, "don't panic" is not the same thing as saying "everything is fine". There is plenty to worry about — for one thing, most of the GOP leadership is fully fascist now.

But on the narrow question of whether Trump can brazen this out and make himself president simply by willing it so, don't panic. His paths to doing that are narrow. There's only one, in fact: Making you panic. So every time you panic, you are helping him win. So don't panic.

"How does my panic make Trump's coup likelier to succeed?" you ask. This is where a solid liberal arts education — or watching "Game of Thrones" — helps us understand. Because power is a social construction. Or as Varys said on GOT, "Power resides where men believe it resides."

Trump has failed at the traditional ways that the presidency is socially constructed: Through an election where the person who wins the most electoral votes through state-run elections is the president.

So he's trying to forge a new path: The president is socially constructed because he says he's president and enough people agree with him, either because they want to or because they're scared to disagree, that it makes it so. This is how coups work.

So when Trump says, "I am president", and you go, "HOLY SHIT HE SAID HE'S PRESIDENT PANIC PANIC", you are imbuing his words with power. You are help making true what was not previously true, which is that his words have the power of law.

In contrast, when Trump says, "I am president" and you say, "No, you are not, you babbling baby," you are refusing to imbue his words with power. You are removing his only path to stealing the presidency, which is intimidating us into going along with it.

Social constructions require widespread consent. "Marriage" used to be only between a man and a woman. Now it can be same-sex. This is true because enough people started saying so and we hit a tipping point where more people were saying it than not.

Trump is trying this trick. We fight him by refusing to consent. And panic is, whether you like it or not, a form of consent. It's saying "I see power" and therefore power manifests. Because power is socially constructed. Resist. Be calm. Hold the line.

If you want to learn more about power and social construction and how this all works, I recommend reading this 101-style intro instead of constant doom-scrolling. https://www.vox.com/features/2019/11/11/18273141/postmodernism-donald-trump-lyotard-baudrillard

And remember: If you want Trump to fail, which he is almost certain to do, stop giving him what he needs to succeed. What he needs is your panic. So deny him it.

Sigh, people are in a panic spiral and/or enjoy panicking for some reason. (Personally, I find panic unpleasant.) So they are determined to misinterpret me. Well, I did what I could.

But seriously, we need to succeed. And your panic only contributes to failure.