Normalizing Treason

Yesterday was a rough one for America. It was downright tragic. A US president stated on live television, on an international stage, standing next to our biggest foreign adversary, with the entire world watching-- that he was aligning himself with our enemy. Full stop.

There you have it. If you were able to stomach yesterday’s news cycle, you’re feeling the hangover of despair and depression today. If you’re unlucky enough to still have friends and family supporting this treasonous regime, then you’re probably carefully planning the words in your next encounter. Or whether or not you should maintain those relationships or let them die quietly in the dark night.

Like our democracy did yesterday. Although, one could argue that it was not a quiet death yesterday.

What are we left with? A country where more than half of the population is questioning how to save a democracy and another large portion of the population blindly normalizing treason.

And I think we need to all step back and acknowledge that fact for a moment. Millions of people in this country, right now, are justifying the fact that our president stood in front of the world and pledged allegiance to a foreign enemy who is regularly (and successfully) attacking our country through modern warfare.

That’s right. Millions of people are accepting and normalizing the fact that their president openly committed treason and then supported his decision after the fact.

If any of his staff had any semblance of a spine or any shred of patriotism, they’d resign. Today. En mass.

But they won’t. Because they’ve normalized treason.

The heads of departments running the very organizations tapped with keeping this country safe from foreign adversaries, should stand up and openly, publicly with a shit ton of fan fare, denounce this man and call for his removal. Publicly. Openly. Leveraging their collective power to remove this traitorous regime from office.

Generals, politicians and government leadership should come together and take every action possible to save our country. To remove the cancer that’s plaguing us now.

Maybe they will. Who knows. But I’d wager a year’s salary on the fact that most of this regime’s political appointees have already normalized treason.

Hell, half of them are already on the Russian payroll. That’s more than obvious in their actions, statements, photographs and monetary connections to Russian foreign agents. A gaggle of Senators spend July 4th IN RUSSIA for fucks sake!!!

So, they’ve obviously already normalized treason. They’re actively engaged in it.

What do we do? What does the everyday citizen do in a country that was just handed over, publicly, to our biggest adversary? We can’t make laws, we can’t file impeachments, we can’t wage coups.

What can we do? I’m asking. I don’t have an answer. A national strike might be a good place to start. But does that work with only half the country participating? I simply can’t imagine millions of Americans actively engaging in civil disobedience that involves not participating in the economy in any way— no big banks, no big box stores, no purchasing, no work— no nothing.

I don’t know if Americans have the stomach for inconvenience and avoiding consumption. The trending hashtag for most of yesterday had to do with Amazon’s website not working on it’s giant “buy a bunch of shit you don’t need and get discounts” campaign. That’s right, #amazonprimeday beat out #treasonsummit, #impeach and #treason. All fucking day.

Voting in November is the only action we can really take, but here’s the thing, Russia hacked the election in 2016. We did nothing. I researched voting machine vulnerabilities in 2006 for an investigative journalism story and these machines are so easily hacked and have been for well over a decade. But we’ve done nothing.

Russia has evolved its ability to hack an election, and still, we’ve done nothing. Russia repeatedly attacks our power grid and nuclear power plants through cyberwarfare and still, we do nothing.

So, while the patriot in me likes to get warm fuzzies over taking back the House and Senate in the midterms, the practical side of me knows that we’re relying on a broken system, controlled in part by Russia, to save ourselves.

That’s just doesn’t seem wise. There has to be other options.

Or have we gone too far down this rabbit hole. Is normalizing treason simply the final nail in this coffin?

I don’t know, I’m asking.

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