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On Truth Social, the President of the United States called for a group of Democratic members of Congress to be hanged for sedition and treason. They must have committed a very serious crime for Trump to be asking that they be hanged. What happened is that a group of Democratic lawmakers, many of them being veterans or with national security backgrounds, released a video telling members of our military that they must refuse unlawful orders, emphasizing loyalty to the Constitution over political directives.  Trump on his Truth Social account labeled their actions as “seditious behavior from traitors”  and claimed their conduct was “punishable by death”. He reposted a comment calling for them to be hanged. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Trump did not literally want executions, but rather accountability. Accountability for what?  What law did they break? She was arguing that the lawmakers were undermining presidential authority over the military, so she says, but in reality, she is trying to spin Trump's contempt for democratic norms.

Has Trump given the military illegal orders? I believe so. As of the 21st of November, at least 83 people have been killed in 21 known strikes on 21 vessels. We are not at war with Venezuela. They were in International Waters. Our government has produced no proof that they have committed a crime. We were part of the investigation into Nazi Crimes after WWII and helped establish that just following orders was not a defense for the crimes that were committed. As a nation, we should never put our young men and women in the military in the position of having to determine whether an order is lawful or not. If there is any doubt that the order is not legal, the order should not be issued. We should not be turning the people who have sworn to protect our Constitution and our Nation into murderers.

By framing the Democrats' actions as sedition, Trump invokes the most extreme constitutional punishment, death. By casting his opponents as traitors, he reinforces his narrative of defending “real Americans” against corrupt elites.  This just fits into Trump's overall style of using inflammatory language to rally supporters, even at the risk of normalizing threats of violence. The lawmaker’s video was about protecting the integrity of the military. Trump's reframing it as disloyalty undermines the constitutional safeguards. Calling for the execution of elected officials – even rhetorically – can destroy democratic norms and heighten the risk of political violence.  The fact that Trump is doing this on social media shows how he is using this rhetoric to continue to divide an already badly divided nation.

History is constantly repeating itself. We had a Senator from Wisconsin by the name of Joseph McCarthy. He branded opponents and intellectuals as “communist traitors”. He targets his “Red Scare” towards academics, journalists, and government officials. The intended effect was to consolidate power through fear and to silence dissent. McCarthy did experience short-term political gain, followed by long-term discrediting of his anti-communist crusade.  Then there was the person whom Trump is compared to the most, Adolf Hitler. Hitler framed political opponents and minority groups as “traitors to the Volk” (traitors to the fatherland). He mobilized mass support to justify persecution. He consolidated his totalitarian regime and promoted catastrophic violence. Millions would die. Joseph Stalin used the “treason” charges in many show trials against party rivals and military officers. His goal was to eliminate opposition and instill fear. He established absolute control and carried out mass purges. It has been stated that millions died from Stalin's mass purges. Some estimate that the number of people who died under Stalin's policies and repressions ranges from 6 to 9 million. I had a friend who said to me, people who don’t study history are meant to repeat it. We have seen people like Trump throughout history, but we still gave him a platform to install his racism, bigotry, and hatred.

Unlike authoritarian regimes, the U. S. has constitutional safeguards, but rhetoric like Trump's can erode them.  His framing of lawful dissent as “sedition punishable by death” undermines the civil-military norms. His amplification of executions calls blur the line between political theater and incitement. We need to recognize the danger of equating dissent with treason. We must reaffirm our military oath to the Constitution and not to the person who sits in the Oval Office. We need to strengthen our protections for dissent, which is guaranteed by the Constitution. We must have accountability for those who threaten violence against those who legitimately dissent, as is guaranteed by the Constitution.

Democracies do not collapse overnight. They erode when leaders convince citizens that dissent is treason. I remember George Bush saying, you are with him or against him, trying to silence dissent as he sent us into two wars based on lies. As I have said, we have seen this story before. As a nation, we cannot afford to see it again,

 

 

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