People analyze Trump supporters as though they’re hanging on his every word and willing to defend his every lie, but that describes only a small hardcore faction that spends too much time on line. In reality, most of them are just not paying close attention and don’t need to do much more than deploy the standard “liberal media bias” narrative — wherein anything that sounds too “extreme” must be made up because it can’t possibly be that bad — to keep the cognitive dissonance levels down. It’s not about consciously buying lies, it’s about maintaining plausible deniability through ignorance — and that may be a tougher problem. It’s not even about convincing them of the truth, it’s about convincing them that they could potentially have access to the truth and, even worse, be held responsible for finding it.
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The talk of “treason” leaves me cold. Trump is showing less concrete deference and servility toward Russia than every president in my lifetime has shown toward Israel and Saudi Arabia, for example. This is rhetoric that will backfire on the left, just like making the cruelty of child separation be about the sanctity of “family.” And there is also the fact that people are bizarrely using this as an opportunity for redbaiting, as though Putin is a continuation of the USSR — when in reality, he is the kind of right-wing strongman that Marxist theory predicts as the outcome of a failed left project. Not to mention the lionization of the American national security apparatus. I am all for removing Trump by any possible means, but my God, my God. There is no future down this path.
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The irony of the present moment is that the right is more internationalist than the left, where the debate is centered on economic nationalism and reclaiming the power of the nation-state. Again, there is no future down this path.
An und für sich 
Just over hear freaking out and re-reading my little pocket Constitution:
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.
I don’t know the history of judicial rulings on treason because it’s almost never used as criminal indictment, but the president’s authority to make foreign policy is so great now that it’s nearly inconceivable to prove he was “adhering” to enemies for anything done in the open, publicly! That, to me, is among the more maddening elements of the Republic’s collapse.
This was a great write up. I am scared to see what happens next, scared to hear how else people can *still* defend him, just…scared for my country.