The Trump era constantly reminds me of the first ever episode of @blackmirror.

The pig episode.

If you saw it, you'll remember.

If you didn't, I'm not saying you should watch it. But it is instructive.

Some royal is kidnapped and the kidnappers demand the PM do something -

UNIMAGINABLE -

truly disgusting.

And at the beginning, he clearly won't do it, no reasonable person would consider it, not a chance.

But - and this is the part that the Trump era always pings on - you then start to feel the reality shift.

Through talking heads on tv &

social media, the unthinkable becomes expected.

It's the scariest, creepiest, most stunning construction-of-reality tv experience I've ever had. And I'd never experienced it in real life until the Trump era.

First was treating the RU investigation as a hoax. It was so

preposterous, so insulting to the American intelligence community and veterans and everyone who'd ever tried to keep us safe from Russia.

But gradually, through repetition and bad faith arguments and an army of trolls and lots of surrogates with big platforms

suddenly it was a hoax and anyone who mentioned Russia was deranged and Trump was the victim of the "russia russia russia" thing.

When Barr put out his stupid memo, it was clear that reality was about to bend to fit around Trump again. And sure enough "no collusion" was the

magical enchantment that turned 10 counts of obstruction & a spy series worth of subterfuge, lies and unexplained actions (polling data to RU? really?) into yesterday's news.

Then came the pandemic.

Surely, I thought, his superpower of warping reality had met its match.

But no. No. We had the maskholes and the "just the flu" people and the ICU truthers and just every manner of absurd rejection of reality that caused actual fucking deaths on a scale equal to many, many 9/11s.

And then the election. The fucking election.

In a pandemic,

election professionals and volunteers pulled off a clean, fair and high turnout election with very few hitches. It was a masterful performance really.

And it wasn't close. It wasn't remotely close.

But - twist, twist, warp, lie - pretty soon his absurd and ridiculous

whiny-ass baby refusal to admit he'd lost had morphed into...well, you know. You know what it morphed into.

So today, when insurrectionists incited by his false claims of fraud broke down doors and windows and stormed the US Capital,

- even while it was still happening -

a track in my brain was spinning on "how do they warp & twist this"?

Two things emerged, rather quickly.

From the insane caucas (lin wood & paxton): this was actually ANTIFA.

That's the FREE SPACE on the bingo card for these guys, so, yeah, false flag antifa suuuuuuure.

More mainstream is "biden in his basement did nothing about BLM & violence by these patriots is payback for the violence over the summer".

This has no logical consistency, no moral weight and is simply word salad to fill the space & air while they wait for reality to bend.

Tonight's chatter about the 25th will likely disappear by morning.

Fox or Newsmax will latch onto some phrase that Trump fans will repeat as their mantra to make it all okay.

Orange man bad
Russia Russia Russia
No Collusion
Perfect Call

The Black Mirror episode ends with the PM doing the unthinkable awful thing only to find out it was unnecessary.

The royal had been released long before his internationally televised shame.