Treason, Really?

Ok, if you read this and you're a Trump supporter, it's time to try thinking - just a little. It won't hurt much, I promise.

        The guy you blindly follow, in the wake of the Op-Ed which recently ran in the Times and was attributed to an "anonymous administration source" erupted, predictably, with the usual shit- storm of Tweets, complete with ALL CAPS and meaningless superlatives. What was truly troubling though, in addition to the rambling, partial sentence, fragmented thoughts to which, sadly, we’ve become accustomed, was his use of the word "Treason" to describe what is simply criticism.

        Understand this point. This man sees any criticism of his actions as treason. While this may not trouble many Trumpists, many, perhaps most, of whom aren't really all that familiar with our governing document, (you know that “Constitution" thingy?) it should. The word “Treason is defined as it is (look it up, US Constitution, Article Three, Section Three) to specifically apply only to acts against the nation, and then in time of war. Trump has conflated this, in his typical five-year-old bully who has never been told "no" style, to also mean disloyalty to him personally.

        The reason the framers, conservatives as they were, wrote the document to define Treason as they did, was that another puerile tyrant (George III of England (who had an excuse, he wasn't sane most days) saw himself in the same vein as had his "divine right" predecessors and peers throughout Europe. That was, as Louis XIV of France would so eloquently put it, "L'Etat...c'est moi!" or in English, for the non-liberal arts folks, "I AM the state." (literally, “The state…it is I”) The doctrine that kings and queens had a God-given right to rule and that rebellion against them was a sin was common through the seventeenth century and was urged by such kings as the aforementioned Louis XIV.  

       This extended "treason" to cover basically anything the King didn't like. It was sometimes even conflated as even more heinous, since the King is divinely chosen by the great Sky magus, then any untoward utterance (act not required) was also tantamount to heresy. As a matter of fact, "dissing" the King was "High Treason. This latest tirade would seem to indicate that Donald Trump may see himself through that same lens. This almost makes Richard Nixon, a man who also saw personal loyalty, no matter how flawed his actions, as his God given just dues, seem relatively well adjusted by comparison.

        It is, unfortunate that so many of our countrymen are abysmally ignorant of things such as this, a foundation stone of our democratic representative republic, yet so expert on the inner thoughts of those same men regarding guns. Trump is squarely in this camp, and in fact, if Bob Woodward’s recent book, “Fear,” is anywhere close to his usual multiple Pulitzer laureate standard (bet on it), then Trump may be even farther off the rails than most of us fear.    

        Irrespective of that, the President isn't the state, and treason can't be "committed" against him. What next, Melania opining that we should simply shut up and eat the cake?