Two Traitors

I made it through “The Vietnam War” to where the little girl – Kim Phuc—burned by our napalm is running naked and crying from the conflagration.

Then I wept. I wept for her and for all the wasted deaths and the destroyed cities and villages and for the realization by America in those turbulent times that our elected government lies to us and to itself and to the world.

I wept because we have elected traitors to the highest office in this once proud land. I wept because of the divided nation we were then and have become again because of those traitors. 

I have not the slightest doubt that Donald Trump and his gang of political thugs have committed treason in their dealings with Russia and my deepest and gravest hope is that they will be soon found out and pay the full price for betraying their country out of hubris and greed and the evil rot that is in their souls.

Richard Nixon was the arch traitor and for him to have a memorial library is a stain on this country’s history. His sacrifice of countless thousands of young American lives by his back channel disruption of peace talks with North Vietnam to insure his election was an act of criminality beyond belief. Lyndon Johnson flat out called it treason. And yet Nixon was allowed to betray his country by those who knew about it, Johnson chief among them. That is shameless beyond belief.

Yet Nixon’s treason is in a perverted political sense understandable. Donald Trump’s treason vis a vis Russia has not been uncovered – yet –but to me his greater treason is an ongoing, daily, sometimes hourly betrayal of  those values and ideals that America’s sons and daughters have given their lives and limbs and even their sanity to  gain and preserve . He seems bent on betraying every word of the oath of office he took on that dreary January day.

Not only is he actively betraying every man and woman who has served or died for this country, he is betraying their fathers and mothers and sons and daughters  as well as every other deserving American citizen.

Nixon, by comparison, was a kind of one-dimensional monster. Donald Trump is a total monster, still in the making. His betrayal of his country could conceivably lead to carnage that would in its vast horror make Nixon’s betrayal pale by comparison. Donald Trump seems bent on seeking and destroying all that is good and true in this country, leaving a withered, unrecognizable husk in the wake of his unhinged zealotry

Richard Nixon was pardoned by Gerald Ford to spare the country the agony of a jailed president. Had Nixon’s hidden treason been publicly known, perhaps that wouldn’t have happened.

Nixon was a seasoned, hardened professional politician to the tips of  his wingtips. Trump is a bumbling amateur to the tips of his stubby fingers. What they have in common is a mania to win at all costs – moral, ethical, legal – just win. And this mania led ultimately to Nixon’s downfall.

Donald Trump’s downfall is still in the legal and political stars and in the future unhinged, unbalanced actions and utterances he is sure to commit if past performance is any indicator. Hopefully, they will not provoke the unthinkable.

The wheel turns. Tricky Dick. Dirty Donny? Or Traitor Dick and Traitor Donny?

They all fit. What’s your addition?