Ginni Thomas' texts show the Big Lie has metastasized into a Big Delusion. Enough already.

It’s high time the majority of Americans who still have both oars firmly in the water come together – whether they’re liberal, conservative or otherwise – and shout one word at the conspiracy theorists in our midst who have turned the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election into the Big Delusion: “ENOUGH!”

Enough of this abject nonsense. Enough parroting unhinged garbage that should never have drifted beyond the darkest, most fetid fever swamps of the internet.

Enough already.

We learned recently that Ginni Thomas, a conservative “activist” and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was routinely texting then-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff conspiracies about the 2020 election. And not just mild conspiracies about voter fraud (a lie debunked seven different ways to Sunday) or rigged election machines (also wholly debunked in every way imaginable). Thomas was texting things that would make a person wonder if perhaps their friend had lost all touch with reality. 

Military tribunals? C'mon.

According to reporting by The Washington Post, Thomas sent then-chief of staff Mark Meadows a text two days after the 2020 election that included a link to a YouTube video from Steve Pieczenik, a former State Department official “who has falsely claimed that the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was a ‘false-flag’ operation to push a gun-control agenda.”

The YouTube video was labeled: “TRUMP STING w CIA Director Steve Pieczenik, The Biggest Election Story in History, QFS-BLOCKCHAIN.”

Okey doke.

More from Rex Huppke: Listen up, libs, it’s not voter fraud when former Trump aide Mark Meadows does it. Duh!

In a Nov. 5 text to Meadows, Thomas shared this: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”

If those words are coming from a person near you at the end of the bar, this is the moment you start looking for a seat elsewhere.

Thomas peddles QAnon theories

Thomas even dove into the waters of the bilious and beyond-bonkers QAnon conspiracy, repeating a pulled-out-of-thin-air theory that Trump had used specially watermarked mail-in ballots to track and prove voter fraud.

“Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states,” Thomas wrote to Meadows.

You have now left the bar for your own safety.

There are ample questions regarding Thomas’ direct connection to a Supreme Court justice who was the lone dissenting voice in January when the high court rejected Trump’s attempt to withhold documents from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But beyond that, the adults in the room here in the good ol’ United States of America should be alarmed that Trump-spawned conspiracies about “white hat” military sting operations and watermarked ballots and military tribunals were treated as gospel by someone so close to the highest levels of power in our government.

Imagine if the tables were turned

Rick Wilson, an outspoken never-Trump conservative and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, asked in a series of tweets Friday that people imagine how Republicans would react if the spouse of a Supreme Court justice appointed by Democrats were texting such things: “Imagine she promoted the idea Republicans were ‘being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.’ Now imagine her husband was the sole vote to protect the losing President from scrutiny. I'll tell you what they'd do. They'd burn Washington to the damn ground. They'd salt the earth. They'd call for sanctions, impeachment, removal.”

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Every word of that is true, but at this juncture, I’d settle for everyone whose brain hasn’t been turned into lumpy gravy simply standing up and saying: “Enough! This is nonsense and anyone spouting it should be shunned from civil society.”

The same week Thomas’ texts were revealed, other Republicans showed us the degree to which the Big Delusion has metastasized.

Refusing to say Biden is duly elected

During the Senate confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, the attorney general of Alabama, Steve Marshall, testified against Jackson’s nomination and demonstrated his allegiance to the Big Delusion, repeatedly refusing to acknowledge that Joe Biden is the “duly elected” president.

Marshall would only respond: “He is the president of this country.”

Whether in Alabama or Washington, D.C., Marshall should not be treated as a serious person. Enough.

America is in danger of falling apart. We need to act now before it's too late.

And for anyone wondering whether the Big Delusion is now mainstream GOP orthodoxy, look no further than Trump pulling his endorsement of Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks’ U.S. Senate campaign. Brooks has been a staunch ally of Trump and spoke at the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He all but polished Trump’s shoes.

But Brooks committed the inexcusable crime of not going all-in on the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. For that, the former president labeled Brooks “woke,” a kiss-of-death moniker in today’s GOP, and rescinded his endorsement.

Down the rabbit hole

In MAGA world, you either leap headfirst down the rabbit hole of the Big Delusion or get banished.

I know there are grounded and reasonable people on the right and in the middle who are disgusted by this stuff. But they need to speak up louder. Just having liberals call such nuttiness out isn’t good enough.

Columnist Jill Lawrence: Is this the beginning of the end for Trumpism or the Republican Party?

We don’t have to agree on much.  But if we can’t agree that Ginni Thomas texting the president’s chief of staff a bunch of tinfoil-hat-level conspiracy glarble-flarble is straight-up bananas, then this dangerous nonsense will continue to take root, and drag more people down the aforementioned hole.

It’s way past time for the grownups to call out anyone who seriously mutters these fictions and say: “Go peddle your nonsense elsewhere. You’re not welcome in this society until you shake whatever demon has a hold on you. ENOUGH!”

Follow Paste BN columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook: facebook.com/RexIsAJerk/