Is the Trump "reinstatement" fanfic actually dangerous, or just hilarious? (Spoiler: Yes)

Mike Lindell, the Minnesota pillow entrepreneur and enthusiastic promoter of election-fraud conspiracy theories, appears to see himself as a crusader for truth and justice, undaunted by the scorn and mockery of those who refuse to take him seriously. (A category that encompasses nearly everyone in politics and the media, including many allies and supporters of Donald Trump.) Nothing about Lindell's performance seems insincere, which is one of the things that makes him stand out in a landscape of near-universal mendacity.

Lindell is probably the proximate source of the torrid fanfic fantasy that Donald Trump will somehow be returned to office in August, through some as-yet-unexplored method of undoing presidential elections because you really, really want to. (Lindell himself has already tried to kick this imaginary can down the road to September, but online true believers heard August, so August it is.) Trump reportedly likes the sound of this, and why wouldn't he? Then again, he also liked the idea of buying Greenland, setting off nuclear bombs inside hurricanes and injecting bleach to kill the coronavirus.

It's disheartening enough, to begin with, that this delusional scenario, evidently whispered into the morose ex-president's ear by a pillow salesman, has produced an entire wave of news stories about what Trump thinks and why he thinks it (an especially barren field of inquiry, suggestive of Nietzsche's maxim about staring into the abyss). I don't really know what term to apply to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who launched this idiotic meta-news cycle with a