Avoidance of Reality Is Visible On Left & Right - In Aversion To The T-word

"Tweet for me, little Donnie Bird, and invite me to the White House".

"No matter how vulgar, gross, threatening, cruel, illegal  or insane the Right becomes,  it's always the Left that is warned against piping up too loudly".  Katha Pollitt, The Nation, July 30, p. 7)

"Many people tried to speculate on what it was,  what kind of Kompromat, the Russians had on Trump. When the answer - like infidelity or death-  was staring them in the face. Yes, Putin has something on Trump he helped him win. That's the Kompromat." - Julia Joffe, from 'GQ' and on 'All In' Friday night.

"There is a non-trivial chunk of the American population who think that Brennan is corrupt, that Clapper is corrupt, that this is made up and the Russians didn't do any of this. And even if they did it doesn't really matter. We cannot let this become normalized. This is not normal."  - Former NSA head Michael Hayden, in The Financial  Times.



Never let it be said that traitors have no defenders.  As we slip further down the rabbit hole, it is evident that the Traitor-in-chief's quislings, poltroons and media defenders are working overtime to upend reality and make people believe what they behold with their own two eyes doesn't exist.  Already this normalization trope is starting to infect otherwise rational and objective websites and outlets like slate.com,  where we are now informed that continued use of the T-word, say by left media and the progressive base,  is "making Trump more powerful".

Sorry,Slaters, but that is only in the distorted perceptions of his base and personality cult.  79 percent of whom on the Repuke side, according to a new Axios/ SurveyMonkey poll, approved of the way Trump handled himself with Putin in Helsinki.  One has to wonder what universe or planet these twits are living in  or on. It can't be the same one I inhabit.

Those who are patriots,and possess IQs over room temperature, know what they saw at the Helsinki farce and no bundle of lies spewed out by the TRAITOR is going to change that.  

Now, let me back up a bit, because I want to invoke former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance's parsing of the definition of treason from last Wednesday on ''All In.'  As she noted it does not mean conforming to the legal standard as espoused in Article III of the Constitution:

"Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."

Obviously, it can't conform to the Article III definition because we are not at war with Russia.  But, to Vance and others - like Robert Reich - that doesn't mean no treason has occurred.

The use of the word treason by those of us parsing the Helsinki travesty and now Trump's invitation of Putin to a White House  "summit",   is more centered on political grounds, such that: a) he is providing aid and comfort to a hostile adversary,  already shown to have interfered in our 2016 election (bolstered by Mueller' recent indictment of 12 GRU agents), b) Trump's own renunciation of his oath to protect and defend the Constitution by overtly siding with this adversary against his own intelligence community, and further c)  Trump continuing to ignore the intel community's verification that the attacks are ongoing, continuing into our upcoming midterms..  Again, standing idly by - and even using his soapbox - to denounce the Mueller investigation. 

Look, let's clear the fog. At the end of the day our Presidents - even illegitimate ones like Trump - are issued just one basic set of  instructions, as embodied in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution: "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and to faithfully execute the duties of the office."  Trump did NONE of those at the Helsinki debacle, and no one of sound mind or of IQ over 100 can tell me he did.  On the dais at Helsinki all Trump had to do - one fucking thing - is confront Putin re: the attack on our 2016 elections. The scum with the morals of a slug wasn't up to that task. Case closed.  And it's not just me that believes this turd is out of his depth or Putin's pawn. A number of historians do as well.  See  e.g.


 Michael Beschloss: “We are Living an a National Emergency” - Daily Kos

Lastly, Trump openly and brashly invited Putin and the Russians to hack his political opponent on July 27, 2016 - a day that will live in infamy. He said before the rolling  cameras:

"I will tell you this, Russia if you're listening, I hope that you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. You will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."

So Trump, in full public view, asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton.  Did this just come out of the blue as a random brain fart? Not at all, given we know Russia has been funding Trump since the late 1980s. As per The New Republic (Aug./Sept. 2017, . p. 29):

"A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, or even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money .....Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics....It's entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters."

To quote Robert Reich:

"Never before has a President of the United States so brazenly sided with a ruthless dictator intent on destroying American democracy. If this is not treason, what is it?"

All these in tandem amount to treason in the political sense, as opposed to the purely legalistic sense.  And yet, we are informed by more and more nabobs that we are incorrectly grasping the reality unfolding before our  eyes, and it is we who are "unhinged" and suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome".   Or we are not applying reason in the proper sense.Hence, we were wrong to think anything malign was afoot when Trump cheered Putin's proposal  (at Helsinki) to drag Americans like Bill Browder and  former ambassador Michael McFaul  to be interviewed by KGB thugs.

We are also informed (even by leftie scribes who should know better) that what Trump has done the past week - including tossing allies under the bus - is mostly just more breaking norms or personal quirks. But see, when I read lefties' prose about "using reason rather than treason" and "there is no evidence yet" that tells me their brains have already been hijacked so that what emerges from their neurons can no longer be trusted.  They are no longer faithful reporters of reality, but dupes mired in Trump's disputatious, liar's fantasy realm - where up is down, black is white and left is right.  Oh, and right is wrong, and wrong is right!

As Exhibit A,  I  refer to blogger Tom Gallagher in his post last Friday on smirkingchimp.com, e.g.

May We Speak of Reason, Rather Than of Treason?

Like most left critics he overthinks his own arguments and ends up pissing down his own throat and choking on his codswallop.  Reading through his piece, for example, he conflates Trumpian violations of existing policies and norms - via his "transactional" modus operandi-  e.g. unraveling the North American Free Trade Agreement, with treason.  Failing  to grasp that the latter accusations have a real basis, i.e. providing cover for a hostile foreign power - for which Dotard has already been shown ample foreign intercepts and other intelligence - concerning active meddling in the 2016 election. 

So Gallagher mixes chalk and cheese in scolding those of us who opt to use the T-word, by himself dragging in irrelevancies to do with affronts to norms * - and not giving us the credit or common sense to see these would not be treason as I've defined it.  So, it's not a case of "hurling any charge at hand" or "the kitchen sink"  but rather citing the specific charges and actions. 

(* At the same time, in the wake of last week's Helsinki meet criticisms, Trump has become even more like an untrained mutt that needs to be brought to heel, cf  'President Digs In Against Critics', WSJ, July 21-22, p. A1,  "Trump ended a turbulent week by shrugging off criticisms of his use of tariffs to influence trade and pubic scolding of the Fed.")

For example, as we beheld at the Helsinki meet last week, Trump  hurled his own country and intelligence community under the bus to provide cover for a guy he knows instigated the  election attack!  He also, by the end of the week, invited the same putative attacker to a new "summit" at the White House this fall - awarding a rare honor to a known election meddler who got Dotard into office!  How fucking hard can this be? 


Another example of a vacuous non sequitur from Gallagher:

"perhaps the shortest route to recognizing the ultimate vacuousness of the charge of treason is remembering that what’s treason to some is heroism to others."

So, seriously, you're going to tell me that a goodly set of people interpreted Trump's actions last week as "heroism"?  Oh wait, wait! That's right, his low IQ base would ascertain that... but see, we are talking about normal people, not brain -jacked dolts drooling every second at Fox and Friends.

He also claims, for example:

"The bottom line is that treason is a vacant, rote charge; a wasted opportunity to talk about real things."

Huh?  A "wasted opportunity to talk about real things"?  Please don't compel me to believe you're like the Trumpies, Tommy. You mean, like Trump inviting Russians to hack Hillary's emails isn't a real thing? So it's a fantasy thing?  Like Trump willy- nilly finding it "an incredible proposal" by Vlad to send American citizens to Russia to be interrogated - if Russia sends its 12 GRU operatives here? Sheesh! We truly are through the looking glass.

But say one thing, say the next. As chowder-headed and myopic as Gallagher's essay is,  it can't compare to the manifestly pathological detachment from reality in Michael Anton's Friday WSJ op-ed piece, 'Why Trump's Detractors Cry 'Treason'' (p. A17).  No, for deranged freaks who badly need a high voltage dose from Dr. Pat Bannister's  ECT machine, Anton tops the list.  Among the  alter - realities ("alternative facts")  he asks us to accept in his screed:

- Mr. Trump said three times on camera that Russia meddled in the 2016 election"

He also contradicted that over 60 times and repeatedly called such claims a "hoax"

As David Corn noted: 

"Throughout the campaign, and while the attack was going on, Donald Trump and his lieutenants were saying it's not happening. Even when he was briefed by U.S. intelligence he came out and said, 'nope, nothing happening."

-  Mr. Trump does not side with Russia over his own intelligence agencies

Hmmm...could have fooled me with that Helsinki performance!

-There is plenty of  evidence of illicit American interference  in the 2016 election to defeat Trump and elect Hillary Clinton.

Yeppers, we saw how that worked out.  One question, if the goal was truly to get Hillary elected, and the FBI agent  (Peter Strzok) was as dedicated to doing that as James Clapper and James Comey, why didn't he just blow the whistle on Trump in the fall when he'd opened up the case?  One phone call to the NY Times would have sunk the Donald, and yet he didn't do it. Why not? 


 But alas, that's what it's come to, reality and actual logical reasoning are no longer a part of discourse.  Those grounded in reality and the use of appropriate language to correctly describe it, vs, those who wish to say we are unhinged for doing so. Who wins will matter, because if the "reality is unhinged" side prevails it means the full normalization of everything Trump has been doing- including his betrayal of nation and Constitution, and we sink even more into the distorted cesspool of his own unreality.


As Dr. Jeffrey Sachs aptly put it:

"We have a one person wrecking ball right now that is going to destroy global trade through his individual ignorance and whims. We have a one person wrecking ball who is undermining every alliance and the publics abroad are stunned....they want nothing to do with our country. Trump is breaking our alliances, endangering our security, endangering our economy and he's psychologically, absolutely unfit for office.

And, for god's sakes, by enabling this, the Republicans in congress must understand they are putting the entire country in jeopardy"

Excellent points, and at the end of the day his comment is a clarion call for more citizens to use the T-word, not fewer. 

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/ed-tant/80282/if-politicians-won-t-confront-trump-s-treachery-the-people-must

Excerpt:

"Some dare call it treason. After President Trump kowtowed to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin during the recent summit meeting in Finland, former CIA Director John Brennan fumed that “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.... If politicians will do nothing to curb the treason and treachery of Trump, then it becomes the responsibility of the people to do so in the streets and in the voting booth. As American author John Steinbeck said more than 50 years ago, “I am troubled by the cynical immorality of my country. It cannot survive on this basis.””

And:

In Wake of Helsinki, Congress Faces a New Charge: Complicity

Is Donald Trump a Traitor? - YouTube

Update:

Now we've learned (7/23) from Huckleberry Sanders that Preznit Fucktard is considering withdrawing security clearances for any former officials who've criticized him including: former CIA director John Brennan; former FBI director James B. Comey; former CIA director Michael V. Hayden; former national security adviser Susan E. Rice; former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr.; and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

According to Missy Inbred:

“The president is exploring these mechanisms to remove security clearances because they’ve politicized and, in some cases, actually monetized their public service and their security clearances in making baseless accusations of improper contact with Russia or being influenced by Russia,”

All the more reason to take this POS  Traitor clown down as soon as possible. Mr. Mueller, where is your indictment when we need it?