1/ It's kind of spectacular, the colossal hydra of lies Trump & the QAnon crowd have summoned - especially now that it has grown so large that it devours even those who once thought they were its masters. A crowd-sourced monster of paranoid delusions, born of social media & hate

2/ It seems in so many ways a living, malevolent thing that has spilled over from a land of fevered nightmares and now its strength derives not from a single source but hundreds of thousands of cultish devotees cobbling together more labyrinthian lunacy by the day to give it life

3/ I'm not celebrating it but I am in awe of it, in much the same way I would be of a tornado bearing down on my town. Other eras have had their Communist scares and satanic panics, but arguably never a nervous system like Youtube or Facebook to coordinate their limbs

4/ It ably adapts to the inherent prejudices of its acolytes & incorporates them into a narrative whose very implausibility somehow gives it strength and power. If we're in any position to do so I imagine it's a phenomenon that will be studied for years after it exhausts itself

5/ In essence it has become a surrogate reality, a parallel world where every half-baked theory springs to life and every real fact is dismissed or becomes bent through a prism of conjecture and unending layers of secret meanings. It's the Rosetta Stone of madness.

6/ It's going to claim more lives, this thing that now walks openly among us - and not only those whom its gleeful racism targets. It's running headlong into the impending removal of Trump from office and only picking up speed and arming itself as it goes.

7/ I hate sounding alarmist but we know this is coming and should brace for impact. It's not a joke. There are going to be a lot of people in our communities that will wind up in its crosshairs and they will need people sticking up for them, looking out for their safety.

8/ We're already seeing the effects of it now, with the spike in militias and hate crimes. January 20th is just going to solidify those cells into full-blown terrorists. I know a lot of you know this already, but we can't pretend that's the end of the fight to restore sanity.