America’s Traitors

Treason, famously, is the only crime defined in the Constitution. Its conditions are specific: It requires warring against the United States, or — also famously — providing “Aid and Comfort” to its enemies. Only ten convictions exist across our history; half of those involve World War II.

Neither Tokyo Rose nor Axis Sally took up arms against their nation, but their roles as the voices of our enemies — propaganda broadcasters — were sufficient to merit trial and conviction. Their words were deemed as damaging as bullets.

Treason is a crime against a state, and the nation it represents. To commit treason is to undermine the state, to attack the nation, for the benefit of its adversaries.

We call such people traitors.

And right now, traitors are running our country.

This shouldn’t be difficult to express. It should, in fact, be painfully obvious. And it was, in December — early December — when the news broke that the CIA had concluded that the Russian government was behind a sustained attempt to undermine one presidential candidate in favor of the other.

At that moment, America’s traitors stepped forward — and did nothing. They have done nothing since. They have not used their power to investigate the attack upon our democracy to the fullest extent possible. They have not sought to identify those responsible, nor to determine what weaknesses in our defenses require repair. They have stepped aside as the attacks continue, and will continue into the next election.

They have done this because they benefit from the actions of our enemy, personally and collectively. Their loyalty does not lie with our nation, or the Constitution that defines it. Their only loyalty is to themselves, and they welcome the support of any enemy who can enhance their own power. They look away, they deliberately look away, and seek to block or derail any attempt to get a clear view.

This much is obvious, has been obvious, and will continue being obvious. The language exists to express it. That language is not being used.

This reticence to see traitors clearly and state what they are works to their benefit. For these traitors are not passionate crusaders for a socioeconomic ideology that runs counter to our own. They are not misguided idealists advocating for a system that has no foundation in human nature. They are the most fundamentally cynical people we will ever encounter in public life. They hide behind the civic politeness that presumes good faith in all participants. They know this protects them and their crimes, for those crimes become literally unspeakable.

So let us speak. Let us break the taboo. Let us name names, instead of allowing The Act That Must Not Be Named to persist in our silence.

Mitch McConnell is a traitor. Paul Ryan is a traitor. Mike Pence is a traitor. Each and every Senator and Representative who does not demand and pursue a thorough accounting of the Russian attack upon our nation, and hold collaborators responsible, is a traitor.

And Donald Trump is the most outlandish traitor of them all.

27 Comments

Bravo Nojo. So perfectly and eloquently said.

And let’s not forget the “reasonable” or “maverick” Republicans who have not publicly called this out:

John Kasich is a traitor.
Jeb! is a traitor.
Susan Collins is a traitor.
John McCain is a traitor.
Lindsey Graham is a traitor.
Rob Portman is a traitor.
Dean Heller is a traitor.
Lisa Murkowski is a traitor.

Shall I go on?

@SanFranLefty: Plenty to go, and we need to get in the habit.

@nojo: Oh. Right.

Cory Gardner is a traitor.

Considered including him at the top, but then I would have to explain why I skipped down the list to call out an unfamiliar Colorado asshole.

@nojo: Nobody has ever described him as being a moderate or maverick though.

@SanFranLefty: It’s not that Cory has ever pretended to be moderate, it’s that he tweets about North Korea every chance he gets, and has said nothing about Russia.

We have been attacked. Silence is complicity.

@SanFranLefty: Do you know Natalie from my class? I shared a video she made on my wall.

Keeping an (R) after your name at this point brands you. Polite society and all that. You shall be judged, and you shall be punished.

@blogenfreude: Shame… Shame… Shame… Shame…

@JNOV: This of course requires seeing Mitch McConnell walk the streets of DC naked, but we all must make sacrifices for the good of the country.

@nojo:
Maybe Arya might need to visit The Freys… I mean the GOP?

@JNOV: Yes I remember her, and fuck cancer.

Politico has a must read piece on how the treasonous GOP became the Party of Putin. Fascists gonna fascist.

@¡Andrew!: Bookmarked. America does love its dictators, but time was they were our sonsabitches.

Russia’s intelligence operatives are among the world’s best. I believe they made a keen study of the American political scene and realized that, during the Obama years, the conservative movement had become ripe for manipulation. Long gone was its principled opposition to the “evil empire.” What was left was an intellectually and morally desiccated carcass populated by con artists, opportunists, entertainers and grifters operating massively profitable book publishers, radio empires, websites, and a TV network whose stock-in-trade are not ideas but resentments.

That’s the most succinct description of the GOPnazis I’ve read recently–and it’s from a former GOP insider!

@¡Andrew!: Yup. That suns up what’s been said in bits and pieces elsewhere.

You and I might add that it has ever been thus, at least in our lifetimes — that conservative intellectualism was always a bad-faith sham — but I’ll let that be a separate conversation. Whatever they were, this is what they are now.

Also, traitors.

@nojo: St. Ronnie and his cabal at least had plausible deniability because no one had tried their perverse, bullshit scams on a national level before, plus geopolitical events that occurred which had little to do with them yet they were eager to take credit for. The CaliguBu$h crew decapitated the Frankenstein’s monster of “intellectual” conservatism, which is the primary reason we have such KKKrayzee morons in power today.

Also, traitors.

In addition to screamin’ about jobs, healthcare, and inequality, the Dems need to brand the GOP as the party of Putin, incompetence, and treason.

@¡Andrew!: On the money. So to speak. In other news, Spicey resigned today.

@Dodgerblue: And now Melissa McCarthy belongs to the ages.

@Dodgerblue: I read that Tantrum Spice has been doing RepubliKKKan PR since 1999(!). Tantrum Spice was not very good at his job. Even Joseph Goebbels would’ve scrunched up his face and asked “what is this bullshit???”

Oh well, out with the Tantrum Spice, in with the Scammymucho. You’d have to be completely mental to take a job in the Twitler regime–we’re mere months away from underground bunker time.

@¡Andrew!: Everyone’s cooing over how smooth he is, because what America really wants is a better liar.

Reagan was the bodice-ripper of liars, so this comes as no surprise.

That time that Spicey took a stupid right turn into Holocaust denial while the newsticker corrected him with “(Hitler gassed millions)” hails as his best moment as the sweaty, screamy, beady-eyed face of this insane regime.

@nojo: Don’t know much about Scumbagmucho yet, but he’d have to be the type that’ll be shrieking his “Heil Twitlers” right up to the noose.

Shit Rapidly Approaching Fan. Blast radius uncertain.

@nojo: Scummy-mucho buys custom-made shiny suits that fit around the neck. And like Trump sons, uses a car motor’s worth of oil to juice his hair.

Therefore, he’s so sexy/slick. No fat lesbian will imitate him on SNL. /Oh wait a second, paging SNL now…

@SanFranLefty: They all look like Gordon Gekko to me, which I guess explains it. Oliver Stone created a Plutocrat Hero.

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