The day began funny as the promised “Reinstatement Day” of Donald Trump brought out some hilarious tweets. The tweets are still real laugh out loud funny, but “reinstatement” as a topic isn’t funny.

As some predicted, a top U.S. intelligence official reports an “alarming uptick” in “incredibly dangerous” online social media talk, calling for violence due to Trump’s “Big Lie,” and the fact that a cold hard reality keeps standing up to their belief that the election was stolen.

The lack of any sort of development, proof, evidence, worry, all the stuff that would come about if an election really was stolen, is leading to rage and today was highly symbolic.

CNN’s Pamela Brown discussed the matter with Alex Marquardt, who is CNN’s senior national security correspondent, who talked about his reporting:

John Cohen, the chief of intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, said the chatter is “strikingly similar to what was out there before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

What he’s saying is that some of this online chatter, so on social media and in different online platforms, they include phrases like, ‘The system is broken.’ They call on people to take action into their own hands and to ‘bring out the gallows. It is hard to underestimate how significant these comments can be because as you know, on Jan. 6, we heard calls by the Capitol insurrectionists to hang Mike Pence. There were actually makeshift gallows on the national mall.”

The anger won’t die because the conspiracies won’t die until Trump stops his lies, which – of course, won’t happen:

“And that lie simply won’t die, because people continue to talk about it. We still see the former president going around the country saying that the election was stolen from him. People like Mike Lindell, a big supporter of the former president, saying he has proof that the election was illegitimate — which of course has been widely debunked.”

His report concludes by acknowledging what we’ve set out as stochastic terr0rism, lone wolves, disorganized, type of stuff that can coalesce at one time and place:

“There is no specific threat, they say, but they have said it could lead to deadly violence, and now you have the head of intelligence at DHS pointing to these comments and saying they are incredibly dangerous and they are growing.”

It doesn’t take a genius to note that this is what happens in a “war” in which one side has the overwhelming advantage. We have the legitimate federal government in charge of the military and police (local police are less reliable), and a significant percentage of people who believe that they are the real Americans, patriots, and freedom fighters, with nothing to do but fight “asymmetric warfare.” They will try to make hits here and there, think Oklahoma City but with twenty to thirty people behind it.

Scary. But predictable and anything but funny.

The opinions expressed by contributors and/or content partners are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of LeftScoop.news. Contact us for guidelines on submitting your own commentary.