Patriots vs. Traitors

We've Never Had an Election That Presented a Starker Choice

I’m of above average intelligence and old enough to have seen a few things. Yet, every so often something happens that baffles me or shocks me or both.

I’ve said it here before that there are aspects of the Trump and MAGA phenomena that have done that. For most of my life I would’ve sworn that the American people would never tolerate a convicted felon or a rapist or a liar or a man who betrayed his oath of office in any elected position much less the presidency. Yet, now we know better.

But of all the aspects of Trumpism that I find hardest to grasp it is the fact that Trump is actively anti-American and, to compound the offense, actively supportive of our enemies. He is by any definition of the word, a traitor. What is more…what is even more confounding…is that each time his disloyalty is revealed, he doubles down on it and tens of millions of Americans seem to be willing to support him nonetheless. Indeed, with a perversity that will require generations of psychohistorians to fully comprehend, those supporters celebrate his anti-Americanism as a kind of patriotism. Every time he takes a step to diminish the U.S. and strengthen our most vicious enemies, they hold a boat or pick up truck parade and with banners flying they declare that he and they are once again trying to Make America Great Again.

This is nothing new. But this week we have been reminded of it as in the past few days, Trump has embraced and even boasted of the support of lunatic fringe candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk. All three are actively pro-Kremlin in their views. (Gabbard’s twisted thinking has even extended as far as celebrating yet another mass murderer, Syria’s Bashar al Assad.)

Taken with the fact that Trump has chosen another pro-Putin fellow traveler, J.D. Vance, as his running mate, the former president has done something astonishing. He has somehow made it even clearer than when he invited the help of Russia with Hillary Clinton’s emails, even clearer than when he passed along classified information to Russian officials in the Oval Office, even clearer than when he kowtowed to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, even clearer than when he sought to do Russia’s bidding by withholding funds from the government of Ukraine, even clearer than when he stole national secrets…that he is the single greatest threat we face as a country.

If Trump was accused of being pro-Russian before (because he was), his response to investigations that proved his treachery has been to say, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” (Which according to Google Translate is “Ты еще ничего не видел” in the original Russian.)