"The person down the street who votes differently than you is not your enemy. They are your neighbor. They worry about the same things you worry about. They want their kids to be safe and their bills to be paid and their country to be a place worth living in. They have been manipulated just like you have been manipulated, fed a different flavor of the same poison, sorted into a different tribe by the same algorithm, pointed at you as the enemy by the same people who point you at them.
The working class Republican and the working class Democrat have more in common with each other than either of them has with the billionaire class that funds both parties.
You share the same struggles. You face the same rigged systems. You are being crushed by the same economic forces that have transferred more wealth upward in the last fifty years than at any point in human history. And instead of uniting against the people doing this to you, you are screaming at each other on the internet about pronouns and flags and whatever fresh outrage the algorithm served up this morning.
This is exactly what they want. A nation at war with itself cannot resist a takeover. A people consumed by mutual hatred will accept any authority that promises to protect them from the manufactured enemy. Every empire that fell was divided before it was conquered. Every free people who lost their freedom were set against each other first.
The red versus blue war is not real. It is a show put on by people who own both teams. It is professional wrestling and you think it is a real fight. The wrestlers go backstage after the match and laugh together while you are still screaming at the guy in the other section who was rooting for the wrong character.
This Is Our Country Not Theirs
This nation belongs to the people who live here and work here and raise families here and will be buried here. It does not belong to billionaires who hold citizenship in three countries and will flee to their bunkers the moment things get bad. It does not belong to tech oligarchs who view democracy as an obstacle to efficiency. It does not belong to foreign interests who have purchased so much influence that they might as well be writing our laws themselves.
We have to stop letting them divide us. We have to start seeing each other as fellow Americans again instead of enemy combatants in a culture war that was manufactured to keep us weak. We have to remember that the person screaming at us online is also a victim of the same manipulation, and maybe if we stopped screaming back and started talking, we might realize we have been fighting the wrong enemy this entire time.
Turn off the television. It is not informing you. It is programming you. Question everything, including the sources you trust, especially the sources you trust. Talk to people who disagree with you and do it without trying to win. Listen to why they believe what they believe. You might discover that the monster you have been told to hate is actually just another person trying to make sense of a confusing world with imperfect information, exactly like you.
Remember who you are. You are an American. Your ancestors came to this land or were brought to this land or were already on this land, and regardless of how they got here, they built something together that was supposed to be different from the old world’s tyrannies and aristocracies. That project is not finished. Every generation has to fight to keep it alive against the forces that want to drag us back to a world where a handful of rulers own everything and everyone else serves at their pleasure.
Stop letting them divide you. Your enemies are not your neighbors. Your enemies are the people who profit from your division and are building machines to replace you the moment you are no longer useful.
Start acting like it before it is too late". —The Wise Wolf
If active duty troops invade Minnesota and kill civilians, all bets are off anyway. I think the Insurrection Act is an exercise in self-deterrence, such that it is becoming an excuse to refrain from doing what is necessary to stop a tyrant. Trump couldn’t care less about demarches, strongly worded memos, or even threats of impeachment by some Republicans. I constantly see comments about how we should keep protests peaceful and to be careful not to “give Trump what he wants,” but I find this admonition comical, given the very obvious fact that our cities (Minneapolis in particular) have already become militarized. Plus, given the Republicans’ acquiescence to Trump on the Venezuelan War Powers Resolution, I’m pretty confident that even a river of blood flowing in the streets of Minneapolis would elicit little more than the usual pearl-clutching by Collins and Murkowski.
Let’s face it, the Republicans know that they’ll be clobbered this November, which is probably why Trump is openly musing about cancelling elections. I know we keep saying that Trump can’t legally do that, but as J6 demonstrated, the legality is not really the point. What is the point is creating enough chaos to allow for a fait accompli, similar to what he’s trying to execute in Greenland. Given that Republicans could impeach, convict, and remove Trump today for any number of high crimes and misdemeanors, we can only conclude that Republicans are hedging for now to see how this plays out, but the fact that they are even slightly open to the idea of accepting the invasion of a state and the killing of American civilians means that governors are going to have to exert their role as CinC of their respective states’ National Guard a lot more aggressively and creatively than they may be comfortable with thus far.
I would have thought, after Walz made his MN National Guard "on alert" statement, that he would have immediately followed up after word of Reneé Good's killing came through, and called the NG to active duty. The chances that happening after trump calls in the 11th Airborne is net ZERO, unfortunately, for I would think should be obvious reasons.
The 11th Airborne isn't meant for Minnesota. It's a force being staged for the invasion of Greenland. There's no need for Arctic specialist battalions to be in Minnesota. There are plenty of NG troops available in MN, ND, etc.
Malcolm Nance just said the same thing----he's invading Greenland. Goodbye NATO, post-WW II rules-based international peace. Hello global instability, every nation races to get nukes (like Canada!!), land grabs from Putin beyond poor Ukraine, tripwires for a nuclear war set all over the planet. Gee, thanks, Diaper Donnie.
I was thinking the very same. Just like pushing Walz out of the governors race, my only guess is that the timid and spineless DNC leaders have put a choke collar on him. After all, as Schumer pushed back, the Dems are focusing primarily on the affordability crisis. 🙄 People are dying and disappearing, for fuck's sake. Read the room, Chuck.
Sadly, I agree, though I think he has shown at least gumption to show up in the Ukraine and Greenland. But you’re right: he’s routinely opining on matters well over his skis.
Well... he sat in a foxhole when I sat in the sit room.
That's the difference in our analytical strength.
He approaches strategic problems as an operator. I've seen it a million times. There's a reason why most operators don't wind up senior field or flag officers. It's not because they're not smart, it's because you cant use your revolver to change the channel on your television, and you can't use your TV remote to stop a guy rushing at you with a knife.
Even with all that said? I still think Nance is a boob even from the operator's perspective. Much of the shit he says and writes is just straight up wrong.
Yes. I’ve noticed. The same trait with the Canadian dude he’s teamed up with (Dean). The latter has a panache for overselling his headlines with the content of his actual posts.
High crime? Certainly. How is this (gestures broadly) not treason? By any objective measure the regime is "levying War" against the United States, and has been since at least January 6, 2021.
Let’s start with the boring part, which is also the important part: treason is a very specific crime.
Under the Constitution—and the statute that codifies it—you commit treason only by doing one (or both) of two things:
1. levying war against the United States, or
2. adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
That’s it. No vibes. No moral outrage. No interpretive flexibility.
Conviction is even more problematic. You need two witnesses to the same overt act of treason, and neither witness can be a conspirator in the act of Treason itself. As a consequence, very few people have been convicted of Treason.
This is where most commentary immediately goes off the rails. Treason is not a catch-all for “things I find abhorrent,” nor is it a synonym for corruption, authoritarianism, or abuse of power. It was deliberately drafted narrowly because the Framers had watched English kings turn treason into a political bludgeon—and wanted none of that nonsense here.
Which leads to the next uncomfortable fact: government officials, almost by definition, do not commit treason.
Official acts—however reckless, immoral, or catastrophic—are presumed to be acts of the United States itself. You cannot meaningfully “wage war against the government” while acting as the government. Even providing “aid or comfort” to an enemy, if done under color of office, collapses legally into misconduct, not treason.
This is where people conflate treason with sedition, and the difference matters.
Sedition is not treason’s little brother—it’s a different offense entirely. Sedition involves deliberate attempts to obstruct, undermine, or overthrow the lawful operation of government. It is typically committed by non-official actors seeking to interfere with constitutional processes: insurrectionists, conspirators, organizers, and mobs with purpose.
Which is why I refuse to call the January 6 participants “rioters.”
Rioters smash windows. Seditionists try to stop the government from functioning.
January 6 was not a spontaneous riot that got out of hand. It was a directed attempt to interfere with the constitutional transfer of power. That makes the participants seditious actors, not merely disorderly ones. The distinction is not rhetorical—it is legal and moral.
Now, about “levying war”: no, that phrase does not mean “doing something wildly unpatriotic” or “behaving like an aspiring strongman.” It is a term of art, and stretching it to cover presidential demagoguery violates both the law and the logic behind it. A sitting President cannot meaningfully “wage war against the United States” in the legal sense. His subordinates, associates, or followers might commit treason or sedition—but the President himself occupies a different constitutional category.
And this is where the Framers were neither naïve nor confused.
They explicitly contemplated the scenario we witnessed: a President who foments rebellion against Congress and the Republic in order to retain power. Their conclusion was unambiguous. The remedy was not criminal prosecution—it was impeachment and removal.
That is precisely what impeachment was designed for: political crimes that cannot be cleanly addressed through ordinary criminal law without destroying the constitutional order in the process.
Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell had other priorities.
So here’s the answer, stripped of passion and fantasy:
Treason is narrowly defined—intentionally so. Sedition is real, distinct, and applicable to January 6. A President is unlikely to be criminally charged with either. But the Constitution squarely contemplates—and demands—the removal of a President who encourages others to commit them.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact. If there are no checks and balances - child please, this Sup Ct, this Congress - we are then required to rebel and throw off the chains of a tyrannical government. I do not disagree with your analysis, although I cannot accept the position that anything a sitting president is OK. Donald Trump does not give a hoot in a rain barrel about “terms of art.”
Well.. I'd just point out some practicality issues.
1) If overthrow is your lot, only through victory are you vindicated. Otherwise, you're lined up against a wall and shot.
2) There are checks and balances, but they don't operate on a logic of morality but instead on a logic of reputation and political cost. If you read the original piece i wrote, that might help.
Congress won't act because it suddenly grew a brain. It will act because it can no longer justify the cost of the frieght.
The checks and balances exist, they just don't function the way you were taught in school. Nobody cares about what's "right" - instead, they care about what's the most costly strategy. At the moment, Trump's abuses are less costly than showing him the door.
I think if the GOP continues on its path of maximalist excesses, that calculus is going to rapidly change.
Like Hemingway's bankruptcy, the fall of our republic came slowly and then suddenly. bin Laden has been successful beyond his wildest dreams. Homeland Security (odious phrase), ICE, et al., fearful reactions to control and militarize civil society. Was Guantanamo the original sin?
A feckless Congress has given us:
Occupation of American cities by masked federal thugs.
People summarily executed by masked federal thugs in the street, and federal officials say nothing to see here but it was her fault.
The invasion of Venezuela to seize its oil to enrich Trump and his oligarch minions.
The imminent invasion of Greenland and war with out erstwhile allies.
Your comment that nobody cares about what's right is the death knell of the Republic. It makes me sad.
Thank you Mr Finnegan for this post.. what was the American Revolutionary War but a small group of scattered ordinary citizens who pushed against the British Empire's occupying troops? Your point is powerful: republican collaborators won't be able to escape the sweeping effects of martial law. They havent thought it all through: an occupying army holds everyone captive or as you pointed out, tries to. And then there was our big mistake in Vietnam, and our costly stupid effort to occupy the Vietnamese. Here we are again.
Trump. Walz. And, quite frankly, because Minneapolis is a pluralistic, tolerant society with a high density of ethnicities. I mean, honestly, you wouldn't really think about it, but the areas that ICE is operating? Yeah, lots of various ethnicities. In some respects, Minneapolis has more identity balkanization than, say, New York or Chicago. It's just not as big.
The other thing is that the district ICE is most militant and operating in? Is also Omar's district.
So there's a fair amount of things at play here. But the reality is that Minneapolis has a significant ethnic population. The other thing is that Minnesota was largely seen as one of the states most capable of resisting Trump's nonsense. So, the idea of prison yard rules is probably also at play here--break the guy who allegedly says he's tough.
This regime really gets off on retribution... when I saw the 'one of ours, all of yours' placard on ICE Barbie's podium, it made me think that they also hit Minneapolis, MN because the people of MN found guilty and convicted a white Derik Chauvin for publicly murdering a black George Floyd... hence the 'One of ours, all of yours' sign that they thought was soooo cryptic...
A call for unity from ocean to ocean:
"The person down the street who votes differently than you is not your enemy. They are your neighbor. They worry about the same things you worry about. They want their kids to be safe and their bills to be paid and their country to be a place worth living in. They have been manipulated just like you have been manipulated, fed a different flavor of the same poison, sorted into a different tribe by the same algorithm, pointed at you as the enemy by the same people who point you at them.
The working class Republican and the working class Democrat have more in common with each other than either of them has with the billionaire class that funds both parties.
You share the same struggles. You face the same rigged systems. You are being crushed by the same economic forces that have transferred more wealth upward in the last fifty years than at any point in human history. And instead of uniting against the people doing this to you, you are screaming at each other on the internet about pronouns and flags and whatever fresh outrage the algorithm served up this morning.
This is exactly what they want. A nation at war with itself cannot resist a takeover. A people consumed by mutual hatred will accept any authority that promises to protect them from the manufactured enemy. Every empire that fell was divided before it was conquered. Every free people who lost their freedom were set against each other first.
The red versus blue war is not real. It is a show put on by people who own both teams. It is professional wrestling and you think it is a real fight. The wrestlers go backstage after the match and laugh together while you are still screaming at the guy in the other section who was rooting for the wrong character.
This Is Our Country Not Theirs
This nation belongs to the people who live here and work here and raise families here and will be buried here. It does not belong to billionaires who hold citizenship in three countries and will flee to their bunkers the moment things get bad. It does not belong to tech oligarchs who view democracy as an obstacle to efficiency. It does not belong to foreign interests who have purchased so much influence that they might as well be writing our laws themselves.
We have to stop letting them divide us. We have to start seeing each other as fellow Americans again instead of enemy combatants in a culture war that was manufactured to keep us weak. We have to remember that the person screaming at us online is also a victim of the same manipulation, and maybe if we stopped screaming back and started talking, we might realize we have been fighting the wrong enemy this entire time.
Turn off the television. It is not informing you. It is programming you. Question everything, including the sources you trust, especially the sources you trust. Talk to people who disagree with you and do it without trying to win. Listen to why they believe what they believe. You might discover that the monster you have been told to hate is actually just another person trying to make sense of a confusing world with imperfect information, exactly like you.
Remember who you are. You are an American. Your ancestors came to this land or were brought to this land or were already on this land, and regardless of how they got here, they built something together that was supposed to be different from the old world’s tyrannies and aristocracies. That project is not finished. Every generation has to fight to keep it alive against the forces that want to drag us back to a world where a handful of rulers own everything and everyone else serves at their pleasure.
Stop letting them divide you. Your enemies are not your neighbors. Your enemies are the people who profit from your division and are building machines to replace you the moment you are no longer useful.
Start acting like it before it is too late". —The Wise Wolf
If active duty troops invade Minnesota and kill civilians, all bets are off anyway. I think the Insurrection Act is an exercise in self-deterrence, such that it is becoming an excuse to refrain from doing what is necessary to stop a tyrant. Trump couldn’t care less about demarches, strongly worded memos, or even threats of impeachment by some Republicans. I constantly see comments about how we should keep protests peaceful and to be careful not to “give Trump what he wants,” but I find this admonition comical, given the very obvious fact that our cities (Minneapolis in particular) have already become militarized. Plus, given the Republicans’ acquiescence to Trump on the Venezuelan War Powers Resolution, I’m pretty confident that even a river of blood flowing in the streets of Minneapolis would elicit little more than the usual pearl-clutching by Collins and Murkowski.
Let’s face it, the Republicans know that they’ll be clobbered this November, which is probably why Trump is openly musing about cancelling elections. I know we keep saying that Trump can’t legally do that, but as J6 demonstrated, the legality is not really the point. What is the point is creating enough chaos to allow for a fait accompli, similar to what he’s trying to execute in Greenland. Given that Republicans could impeach, convict, and remove Trump today for any number of high crimes and misdemeanors, we can only conclude that Republicans are hedging for now to see how this plays out, but the fact that they are even slightly open to the idea of accepting the invasion of a state and the killing of American civilians means that governors are going to have to exert their role as CinC of their respective states’ National Guard a lot more aggressively and creatively than they may be comfortable with thus far.
I would have thought, after Walz made his MN National Guard "on alert" statement, that he would have immediately followed up after word of Reneé Good's killing came through, and called the NG to active duty. The chances that happening after trump calls in the 11th Airborne is net ZERO, unfortunately, for I would think should be obvious reasons.
The 11th Airborne isn't meant for Minnesota. It's a force being staged for the invasion of Greenland. There's no need for Arctic specialist battalions to be in Minnesota. There are plenty of NG troops available in MN, ND, etc.
Malcolm Nance just said the same thing----he's invading Greenland. Goodbye NATO, post-WW II rules-based international peace. Hello global instability, every nation races to get nukes (like Canada!!), land grabs from Putin beyond poor Ukraine, tripwires for a nuclear war set all over the planet. Gee, thanks, Diaper Donnie.
I was thinking the very same. Just like pushing Walz out of the governors race, my only guess is that the timid and spineless DNC leaders have put a choke collar on him. After all, as Schumer pushed back, the Dems are focusing primarily on the affordability crisis. 🙄 People are dying and disappearing, for fuck's sake. Read the room, Chuck.
Your best yet. Thanks.
This is the best piece I've read from you and I read everything you write.
So, what’s your take on this? A head fake? Plausible?
https://substack.com/@malcolmnance/note/c-201801279?r=4pli7r&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
(Sigh) In general, I think Malcom Nance is a boob.
Nothing in that note changed my opinion.
Sadly, I agree, though I think he has shown at least gumption to show up in the Ukraine and Greenland. But you’re right: he’s routinely opining on matters well over his skis.
Well... he sat in a foxhole when I sat in the sit room.
That's the difference in our analytical strength.
He approaches strategic problems as an operator. I've seen it a million times. There's a reason why most operators don't wind up senior field or flag officers. It's not because they're not smart, it's because you cant use your revolver to change the channel on your television, and you can't use your TV remote to stop a guy rushing at you with a knife.
Even with all that said? I still think Nance is a boob even from the operator's perspective. Much of the shit he says and writes is just straight up wrong.
Yes. I’ve noticed. The same trait with the Canadian dude he’s teamed up with (Dean). The latter has a panache for overselling his headlines with the content of his actual posts.
High crime? Certainly. How is this (gestures broadly) not treason? By any objective measure the regime is "levying War" against the United States, and has been since at least January 6, 2021.
Let’s start with the boring part, which is also the important part: treason is a very specific crime.
Under the Constitution—and the statute that codifies it—you commit treason only by doing one (or both) of two things:
1. levying war against the United States, or
2. adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
That’s it. No vibes. No moral outrage. No interpretive flexibility.
Conviction is even more problematic. You need two witnesses to the same overt act of treason, and neither witness can be a conspirator in the act of Treason itself. As a consequence, very few people have been convicted of Treason.
This is where most commentary immediately goes off the rails. Treason is not a catch-all for “things I find abhorrent,” nor is it a synonym for corruption, authoritarianism, or abuse of power. It was deliberately drafted narrowly because the Framers had watched English kings turn treason into a political bludgeon—and wanted none of that nonsense here.
Which leads to the next uncomfortable fact: government officials, almost by definition, do not commit treason.
Official acts—however reckless, immoral, or catastrophic—are presumed to be acts of the United States itself. You cannot meaningfully “wage war against the government” while acting as the government. Even providing “aid or comfort” to an enemy, if done under color of office, collapses legally into misconduct, not treason.
This is where people conflate treason with sedition, and the difference matters.
Sedition is not treason’s little brother—it’s a different offense entirely. Sedition involves deliberate attempts to obstruct, undermine, or overthrow the lawful operation of government. It is typically committed by non-official actors seeking to interfere with constitutional processes: insurrectionists, conspirators, organizers, and mobs with purpose.
Which is why I refuse to call the January 6 participants “rioters.”
Rioters smash windows. Seditionists try to stop the government from functioning.
January 6 was not a spontaneous riot that got out of hand. It was a directed attempt to interfere with the constitutional transfer of power. That makes the participants seditious actors, not merely disorderly ones. The distinction is not rhetorical—it is legal and moral.
Now, about “levying war”: no, that phrase does not mean “doing something wildly unpatriotic” or “behaving like an aspiring strongman.” It is a term of art, and stretching it to cover presidential demagoguery violates both the law and the logic behind it. A sitting President cannot meaningfully “wage war against the United States” in the legal sense. His subordinates, associates, or followers might commit treason or sedition—but the President himself occupies a different constitutional category.
And this is where the Framers were neither naïve nor confused.
They explicitly contemplated the scenario we witnessed: a President who foments rebellion against Congress and the Republic in order to retain power. Their conclusion was unambiguous. The remedy was not criminal prosecution—it was impeachment and removal.
That is precisely what impeachment was designed for: political crimes that cannot be cleanly addressed through ordinary criminal law without destroying the constitutional order in the process.
Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell had other priorities.
So here’s the answer, stripped of passion and fantasy:
Treason is narrowly defined—intentionally so. Sedition is real, distinct, and applicable to January 6. A President is unlikely to be criminally charged with either. But the Constitution squarely contemplates—and demands—the removal of a President who encourages others to commit them.
The failure wasn’t legal.
It was institutional.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact. If there are no checks and balances - child please, this Sup Ct, this Congress - we are then required to rebel and throw off the chains of a tyrannical government. I do not disagree with your analysis, although I cannot accept the position that anything a sitting president is OK. Donald Trump does not give a hoot in a rain barrel about “terms of art.”
Well.. I'd just point out some practicality issues.
1) If overthrow is your lot, only through victory are you vindicated. Otherwise, you're lined up against a wall and shot.
2) There are checks and balances, but they don't operate on a logic of morality but instead on a logic of reputation and political cost. If you read the original piece i wrote, that might help.
Congress won't act because it suddenly grew a brain. It will act because it can no longer justify the cost of the frieght.
The checks and balances exist, they just don't function the way you were taught in school. Nobody cares about what's "right" - instead, they care about what's the most costly strategy. At the moment, Trump's abuses are less costly than showing him the door.
I think if the GOP continues on its path of maximalist excesses, that calculus is going to rapidly change.
Like Hemingway's bankruptcy, the fall of our republic came slowly and then suddenly. bin Laden has been successful beyond his wildest dreams. Homeland Security (odious phrase), ICE, et al., fearful reactions to control and militarize civil society. Was Guantanamo the original sin?
A feckless Congress has given us:
Occupation of American cities by masked federal thugs.
People summarily executed by masked federal thugs in the street, and federal officials say nothing to see here but it was her fault.
The invasion of Venezuela to seize its oil to enrich Trump and his oligarch minions.
The imminent invasion of Greenland and war with out erstwhile allies.
Your comment that nobody cares about what's right is the death knell of the Republic. It makes me sad.
Thank you Mr Finnegan for this post.. what was the American Revolutionary War but a small group of scattered ordinary citizens who pushed against the British Empire's occupying troops? Your point is powerful: republican collaborators won't be able to escape the sweeping effects of martial law. They havent thought it all through: an occupying army holds everyone captive or as you pointed out, tries to. And then there was our big mistake in Vietnam, and our costly stupid effort to occupy the Vietnamese. Here we are again.
You have brought your A game to this post and your essay on political system variance. Thanks Mr. Finnegan, clarity is fucking traumatizing.
Yeah... that it is.
Trump. Walz. And, quite frankly, because Minneapolis is a pluralistic, tolerant society with a high density of ethnicities. I mean, honestly, you wouldn't really think about it, but the areas that ICE is operating? Yeah, lots of various ethnicities. In some respects, Minneapolis has more identity balkanization than, say, New York or Chicago. It's just not as big.
The other thing is that the district ICE is most militant and operating in? Is also Omar's district.
So there's a fair amount of things at play here. But the reality is that Minneapolis has a significant ethnic population. The other thing is that Minnesota was largely seen as one of the states most capable of resisting Trump's nonsense. So, the idea of prison yard rules is probably also at play here--break the guy who allegedly says he's tough.
This regime really gets off on retribution... when I saw the 'one of ours, all of yours' placard on ICE Barbie's podium, it made me think that they also hit Minneapolis, MN because the people of MN found guilty and convicted a white Derik Chauvin for publicly murdering a black George Floyd... hence the 'One of ours, all of yours' sign that they thought was soooo cryptic...
That's a Nazi saying. They used to massacre everyone in a town if one German soldier was harmed. It was a cold blooded message.
Yep! Nasty...