Voting for Treason: Five Reasons You Betray America if You Support This Man

Donald Trump will not make America great again. Donald Trump will annihilate us.

Ted Cruz and John Kasich have now jumped ship on the run-up to the Republican nomination, leaving Donald Trump as the presumptive GOP nominee. And that’s very, very bad for the United States of America.

Trump was entertaining for a spell, in that can’t look away from watching a botfly extraction on YouTube sort of way. It was even interesting at times to see the political usual suspects try to address concerns closer to home. Trump was a rodeo clown, a contrast of comic relief in an arena of potential peril. Yet, incredibly, he is going to be the GOP nominee for President of the United States of America.

This is no longer mere spectacle, and no longer schadenfreude. Now it’s sadism.

These are five reasons why Donald Trump is the wrong person for the job, and would spell disaster for our national and homeland security:

5. Donald Trump is a Liar

“I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you’re asking me a question that I’m supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.”

When Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles in March of 1935, representatives from Great Britain, France, and Italy, met in Stresa. Like toddlers without a concept of object permanence, we closed our eyes to the obvious lies and blundered forward with eyes wide shut, essentially hoping for the best. Things turned out terribly. It wasn’t like we couldn’t see it coming. In May that year, Winston Churchill, addressing the House of Commons, said:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong — these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

In other words, as Santayana observed in 1905, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Electing leaders who have inflamed our baser passions through recklessness or impudence cannot and should not be reasonably expected to cease being inflammatory, nor to credibly newly re-imagine their prior bloviations recast as courage or resolve. Trump’s Ministry of Truth is the same as Orwell’s — it’s all doublespeak, and can only be engaged in historical falsification, not in truth.

In fact, Trump has already claimed “I will be so presidential, you will be so bored.” The implications are clear: he’s lying now, but there is a real Donald Trump, a rational and sane one, and there’s really nothing to fear, because soon all will be revealed. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, because the lie is the truth. Despite his assurances that he will, eventually and magically, become more “presidential,” you are not investing in a future Donald Trump. What you see is what you get.

Or in this case, and more dangerously, what you forget.

4. Donald Trump is a Demagogue

“We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning. Believe me, I agree, you’ll never get bored with winning. We never get bored. We are going to turn this country around. We are going to start winning big on trade. Militarily, we’re going to build up our military. We’re going to have such a strong military that nobody, nobody is going to mess with us. We’re not going to have to use it.”

History is replete with examples of leaders whose popular appeal belies an agenda we are all too willing to turn a blind eye to — failing to consider the consequences of short-term actions or appeasement for the sake of gratification or one-upmanship. Feels good. Until morning.

Few would seriously dispute the seemingly obvious observation that the United States is not a sports team, and that geopolitics is not a game. Talking about winning and losing may appeal to our love of spirited competition, both as a species and a community, but this is dangerously close to transmuting global relations into some kind of dystopian Hunger Games, for the amusement of a new President Snow in his mansion in the Capitol. It is not convincing to recast the competition in the heat and simple milieu of the campaign trail; Trump isn’t merely talking about winning the presidency — he’s talking about conquering the World.

If you don’t think that’s got nation-states and pesky non-state actors perking up their ears with interest and concern, wincing and salivating at the impertinence at the same time, you haven’t been paying attention. Folks, Germany is looking at this guy like he’s the incarnate Antichrist. Listen to GERMANY. I can’t even imagine the horrors of dealing with anti-Western extremists under a Trump presidency.

3. Donald Trump is an Isolationist

“I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me — and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

The bluster and bravado may play on the stump, but the global community isn’t shaking its head in that knowing half-smile of dismissal any longer. With the exit of Cruz and Kasich, who despite being distinctly attuned to certain domestic party doctrines, were at least perceived as having some semblance of awareness of the complexity of global relations, the laughable implausibility of a Trump presidency is no longer certain. The World is beginning to wonder just how gullible the American public really might be, and how that ignorance could translate to votes that impact the rest of the planet.

Trump’s calls for surveillance on mosques and banning all Muslims from entering the United States has been met with horrified gawks — and an almost desperate pleading for some level of solemnity or diplomacy in his positions and tenor. His walking-back, if not patently hostile attacking, of rights for women, LGBT, minorities, immigrants, and any group under the “other-than-Trump” banner bodes poorly for the progressive ideals of tolerance and inclusion upon which the Republic was founded.

If Trump being more presidential can be inferred from what amounts to his first “foreign policy” speech in April, we all have cause for concern about his ill-defined or understood doctrine, and the security of the United States, or lack thereof. His “America First” agenda represents an earth-shattering departure from US foreign policy, reeking more closely of the isolationist positions for staying out of World War II (which movement, by the by, used the exact same phrasing, and Trump simply lifted it). Even more concerning, though certainly not surprising, is his stunning cognitive obliviousness to his own geopolitical incompetence in excluding the rest of the planet. This isn’t smart, and it’s not viable strategy. This is stupid, sloppy, and reckless.

2. Donald Trump is a Fascist

“It’s okay to know it’s Mussolini. Yeah, look Mussolini was Mussolini. It’s a very good quote, it’s a very interesting quote, and I know it… I saw it… I saw what… I know who said it.” (On being questioned about retweeting the famous quote, “It is better to live one day as a lion than one hundred years as a sheep.”)

Robert Paxton, professor emeritus of social science at Columbia University, describes fascism as:

…a mass nationalist movement intended to restore a country that’s been damaged or is in decline, by expansion, by violent attacks on enemies, internal as well as external enemies, and measures of authority, the replacement of democracy by an authoritarian dictatorship.

So Trump tweeted a Mussolini quote. Does it make him a fascist? Not in and of itself, of course not. Look, Trump is no Nietzsche, but that’s never stopped a supremacist from believing he is Übermensch, ordained for salvation and control through sheer force of his own will. Trump’s narcissism, his violent posturing and incendiary aggression, are not open for dispute. They are on full and continuous display.

“Make America Great Again,” Trump’s campaign slogan (appropriated shamelessly from Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign and then trademarked by Trump to keep his rivals from using it), certainly punctuates the point. This is not a man looking toward the future; this is a man seeking to recapture the glories of an imagined past empire, under the impression that the spoils will be his as Conqueror. Read Paxton’s description and see if you can distinguish it from Trump’s platform. I sure the hell can’t.

We may be blind to it, or convince ourselves it cannot happen. The World isn’t blind, and won’t believe it isn’t possible. We’ve seen this before.

1. Donald Trump is a Terrorist

“The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.”

This isn’t sensationalism, and I’m not making this up. Terrorism is the use of violence or intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. This isn’t his standard distasteful baiting and name-calling. Not by a long shot.

It bears little necessity of further discussion, the irony of Trump’s psychology of fear as a measure of control, and his unbelievable display of ignorance in threatening to kill women and children to effectuate political and military power. His perception as a trigger-happy cowboy isn’t helping the West. At all. More importantly to our analysis, given the opportunity to back off from his blatant disregard of the Geneva Conventions, US law, and basic human dignity — to say nothing of fundamental ethics or morality — Trump didn’t.

He doubled-down in the GOP debate in March, saying military leaders would obey him if he ordered them to kill terrorists’ families.

Under pressure later, of course, he said he’d reversed this position. Actually, he said everyone in the World must have misheard or misunderstood him. Bullshit. At this point, I’d say a quick peek at the first item on this list might be a good idea.

He is, simply, a bully. He is, categorically, a terrorist. And he absolutely cannot be trusted.

So What?

Why all this matters should be obvious:

WE ARE ELECTING THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

This person, for good or ill, is the singular embodiment of our nation. In this Republic our representatives wield power on our behalf — of, by, and for the people, we said — and it is our most solemn patriotic duty to defend ourselves from all threats, foreign or domestic. Donald Trump is a dangerous virus in our system. We would do well to remember that authoritarianism, fascism, threat majorities, and mob rule are not the hallmark of that system. And this is still a representative democracy in the Madisonian sense, as opposed to a direct democracy — which means we are not powerless to save ourselves through reason. As Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 10:

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, a greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.

This isn’t a domestic issue any more, and it’s not a sitcom. The World and the wolves are watching now, and we should heed the lessons of history. We should remember the words of Santayana and Churchill. We should do it now, while there’s still time. Some serious damage has already been done to our global standing and our security, and the RNC needs to find a way to correct this dangerous course for itself and for us. If they can’t, or more likely simply won’t, it’s then up to the American people, who need to come to their senses at the ballot box in the general election.

And in that moment, we, and our representatives, would do well to think on whether we are willing to commit a blatantly treasonous act, betraying our own country so manifestly by abandoning the principles of our founding, and voluntarily casting our votes for a despot, a liar, a demagogue, an isolationist, a fascist, and a terrorist.

Trump has divided the Republican Party, and in so doing has irresponsibly divided the country and precariously removed us from the world community. The party would do well to look to the words of Lincoln, who appealed to a divided country in his first inaugural address:

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

We have been irresponsible enough to let it get this far. Let us hope our better angels prevail. Let’s hope we all do our duty.

I hope you do yours.

Want even more honesty in politics? Read 5 ‘n Dime’s Bullshitter Smackdown: Donald Versus Hillary.

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