I Made a List

I kept a folder. Then a longer folder. Then a document that would not fit on my screen without scrolling. Every time Trump did something that benefited Vladimir Putin, in went a line. I told myself I was being thorough. The truth is I was looking for the bottom.

I have not found it.

Some essays one resists writing because they feel like explaining gravity to people who keep falling down. The obvious has become its own form of disinformation. When something has been true for so long that the country gets bored of saying it, the saying of it becomes radical again.

The earliest entries are the ones people forget, because we have all been conditioned by the firehose to believe that anything older than 90 days is ancient history. It is not. It is the foundation. In December 2016, before Trump even took office, Michael Flynn, his pick for national security advisor, was on the phone with the Russian ambassador suggesting that Russia not retaliate against Obama’s sanctions, because the new administration would revisit them. Russia obliged. Trump tweeted: “Great move on delay (by V. Putin) I always knew he was very smart!”

Read that again. The president elect of the United States congratulated the leader of a hostile foreign power for not retaliating against punishment imposed by his own country, because that hostile foreign power had backed his own election. Nothing in United States history parallels this. Treason is too narrow. Treason implies a country one is loyal to, which is being betrayed. This was something cleaner. This was a transfer of allegiance, broadcast in real time, in a tweet, with an exclamation point.