Treason! The new party game that everyone is playing

Here come the ghosts of Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn. There is no longer room for reasoned debate in America. If you’re feeling uncomfortable and unable to defend your ideas, just censor all discussion with “I won’t listen to this because… ,” “You’re a Nazi,” “You’re racist,” or, most popular, “You’re a traitor/agent of Russia.” A great clincher to use any time: “I’m posting your address online.”

In this age of the Electronic Zombie Apocalypse and the instant proliferation and blind acceptance of crazy ideas, it hasn’t taken long for Treason! to catch on as the most popular party game around.

{mosads}Here’s how to play: You pick names at random from a hat and proceed to complete this thought: “Treason! (Name from hat) is guilty of treason against America and should be jailed because …” (Of course, the hat is stuffed with extra “Donald J. Trump” cards and you can present any “evidence” available, even if it is totally made up.)

Let’s give it a try.

First an easy one: Treason! President Trump is guilty of treason and should be jailed because he gave an awkward and complimentary (to Vladimir Putin) press briefing in Helsinki. The Russians obviously have something on him! He is colluding with the Russians!

Another popular one: Treason! Hillary Clinton is guilty of treason and should be jailed because she mishandled thousands of national security documents and made them available to Russian and Chinese government hackers; sold American uranium to Russia to make nuclear weapons in exchange for millions of dollars in speaking fees and contributions to the Clinton Foundation (haha, now defunct with no more uranium to sell); and buddied up to Putin and tried to create friendly relations with Russia through a “reset” policy.

Some more good ones:

Treason! Barack Obama is guilty of treason and should be jailed because he subverted the Constitution, destroyed American institutions and illegally weaponized the IRS, FBI, and U.S. national security apparatus to spy on American citizens and disrupt an American presidential election; quietly told the Russian leadership that he would have more “flexibility” to give in to their demands after his re-election; and ridiculed 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney for suggesting that Russia was a threat to the United States.

Treason! Former Sen. John Kerry is guilty of treason (clearly in the aristocratic mold of Kim Philby) by being the only member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to vote against an amendment to the Magnitsky Act to require providing Congress with detailed justifications for keeping secret any names of human rights abusers, and by delaying action on Magnitsky, which punished Putin’s cronies and has been America’s most powerful political tool against the Russian leadership. (Of course, the Russia-leaning Obama White House rewarded Kerry with secretary of State for defending Putin’s interests.)

Treason! Former FBI director James Comey is guilty of treason and should be jailed for deceiving the FISA court to spy on American citizens by using phony information obtained from Russian intelligence agents.

Treason! Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe is guilty of treason and should be jailed for leading a conspiracy to use the FBI to launch an attempted coup against a newly-elected U.S. president.

Treason! Former National Intelligence director James Clapper and former CIA director John Brennan are guilty of treason and should be jailed for monetizing U.S. top-secret security clearances to leak secret information to the press and lying to Congress about it. NBC and CNN are complicit in that treason by paying for this information.

Treason! Special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigative team are guilty of treason and should be jailed for using a now-obviously fictitious Russian collusion investigation to weaken American executive leadership and aid and abet Russian interests. Wow! The spy game really is a game of mirrors: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Special Prosecutor! Of course, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gets a piece of this treason charge for using the probe to cover up his part in the FISA warrant debacle.

Treason! Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is guilty of treason and should be jailed for complicity in covering up and defending the treasonous actions of the Obama administration.

More obvious names in the hat: Bill Clinton, former national security advisers Susan Rice and Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former attorneys general Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, former CIA director David Petraeus, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — it’s just so easy to play, and don’t even get me started on the media and Hollywood. We could even nail Govs. Jerry Brown of California and Andrew Cuomo of New York for undermining the U.S. Constitution by allowing non-citizens to vote, fully corrupting the American democratic process.

Isn’t this fun? Let’s party like it’s 1954!

Grady Means is a writer and retired corporate strategy consultant. He was special assistant to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller for domestic policy in the Ford White House, and was an economist and policy analyst for Secretary Elliot Richardson in the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare from 1971-73.