America’s Got Treason

The 1/6 hearings should win an Emmy for best limited run dramatic show.

It’s my new favorite show!

First, a tip o’ the hat to the courageous Congresspeople who have led the January 6th investigation. It’s made compelling viewing for tens of millions. As the evidence has unfolded, from the Capitol Police and the White House Counsel, to the clear-eyed recollections of a 26 year old aide to the Chief of Staff, the truth of this entire antidemocratic movement has been laid out for all to see.

With each session, it becomes harder to deny the truth. The “It was just a normal tourist day“ Congressman, Andrew Clyde from Georgia, knows. The defenders of the insurrectionists—the Josh Hawleys, Jim Jordans and Marjorie Taylor Greenes—they all know.

The people who value our democracy and the rule of law espouse a different ethical philosophy than those who are lying through their teeth. The liars know very well what the truth is, they just don’t care; they only care about having enough power to enforce their agenda.

There’s a desperate doubling down. Ms. Greene, more performance artist than Congresswoman, dropped a YouTube video in which she’s raffling off a gynormous .50 caliber military-style sniper rifle. It’s backlash against common sense. The closer reality looms, the crazier her behavior.

Instead of playing footsie with democracy, why won’t she and the others in this anti-American movement just stand up and say their truth out-loud: that they really hate what America has become. That they’re not patriots, but nationalists. Patriotism expresses love of country. Nationalism is born of hate—primarily of “the other.”

It’s worse than we think. The millions who say Trump won know with certainty that he lost, and protest anyway. Perhaps they’re hoping for an autocracy that keeps uppity women, Jews, Blacks, and gays in their place at the back of the societal bus with the other undesirable minorities.

In the run up to the second Gulf War, Middle East expert, Tom Friedman, famously observed that we would find out if Saddam was the way he was because the neighborhood was the way it was, or if the neighborhood was the way it was because Saddam was the way he was. His fear was that either way, when we pulled the lid off that trashcan, so much hate would spill out that we’d never stuff it back in again. We found out that it was both the neighborhood and Saddam, and all hell broke loose.

Donald Trump pulled the lid off of our own trashcan, enabling all the haters: the White supremacists, Dominionists, misogynists, and bullies. Now, we find in the aftermath of 1/6, the Secret Service destroyed text messages rather than turning them over to Congress. We obviously have a problem with domestic terror—some of it within the military and law enforcement communities.

Recently, an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act passed on a party-line vote with no Republicans in favor of this common sense idea.

San Diego Columnist Doug Porter describes: “It would “direct[s] the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Secretary of Defense to publish a report that analyzes and sets out strategies to combat White supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in the uniformed services and Federal law enforcement agencies not later than 180 days after enactment and every six months thereafter. The bill is currently stalled in the Senate, where the GOP leadership is blocking its passage.” Their fear of overreach is greater than their desire to protect us from a clear and present danger.

Another group of saboteurs, Confederate officers and landowners, cost us billions of dollars and 620,000 lives in the Civil War. By the 1880’s, we had forgiven all, and paved the way for the KKK, The Edmund Petit Bridge, Alabama Burning, The John Birch Society, Plessey v. Ferguson, and a whole lot of screaming when the New Deal, The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act became law.

Tighten your chin straps, because here we go again.

In the Atlantic, Brian Klaas documents how democracies die. "I've spent the past 12 years studying the breakdown of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism around the world. American democracy is dying. There are plenty of medicines that would cure it. Unfortunately, our political dysfunction means we're choosing not to use them, and as time passes, fewer treatments become available to us, even though the disease is becoming terminal. No major pro-democracy reforms have passed Congress. No key political figures who tried to overturn an American election have faced real accountability. The president who orchestrated the greatest threat to our democracy in modern times is free to run for reelection, and may well return to office."

The insurrectionists know perfectly well what they’re doing. The remaining question is who will stand tall for America. Who will champion patriotism and honesty over nationalism and lies.

©2022 Jon Sinton