Silent Treason

The List Of Traitors Extends

In the last 11 days, much has come out about those who attacked the US Capitol, of who they were and what they wanted, and how they came to believe they should have been there.

Many people are now being accused of treason - Senators Hawley and Cruz, Members Boebert and Taylor Green, namely - but for some reason, they cannot get my ire. They are traitors - that is beyond dispute - but they don't get my anger. They cannot get my attention long enough to be angry, which is both a sign of my fundamental brokenness and a sign of how treasonous they were. But, there are a group of people who have gotten my anger, and they can be personified with one man - Gabriel Sterling.

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You probably remember Sterling, the foul mouthed, tell it like it is Georgia elections official who has twice called self aggrandizing press conferences to admonish the President, debunk some election myths, and warn of violence if this doesn't end. What you probably don't remember is that he voted for the GOP Senators in Georgia and tweeted his endorsement, because that's a totally normal thing for a high ranking election official to do in a democracy. Sterling is clear eyed about the threat the GOP poses, both to democracy and to public safety, and yet he voted for them anyways. Far from the hero many want to make him out to be, he is the worst kind of traitor - the one who knows he is wrong, but doesn't care enough.

Sure, it's all well and good to go on TV and make yourself the story with a pithy rant that will inevitably go viral and ensure that every news network will offer you a job when you inevitably leave your current one, but Gabe Sterling also had the most important sanction one can use in a democracy - his vote. Georgia voters were the only ones given a chance to weigh in after the events of Trump's treasonous push to steal an election, and he therefore could actually put country ahead of party with his vote. He chose not to.

The GOP are now a party of sedition and of treason, and Gabe Sterling knows it - and he knew it before January 5th. I know he knows it, because he said so himself, not in so many words, but in essence. He understands that what the GOP is trying to do would be the end of democracy, and he decided that that fundamental question was less important to him than tax rates or whatever else made him vote for the GOP.

A Canadian political writer, Paul Wells, once related a story of his time studying in Paris, and how he was talking with a friend once about the Second World War, and the quote has stuck with me ever since I ever read it. 

"'Everyone’s grandparents fought in the Resistance,' my roommate said. He paused for a beat. 'The Resistance wasn’t that big.'"

I am sure that if America manages to survive this treason intact, Gabe Sterling's retelling of these events will portray himself as a hero, a saviour, someone who stood up for right over wrong and decency over treason. I'm also entirely sure that his retelling will omit the fact that he then proceeded to vote for two of the co-conspirators the day before an attack on the US Capitol.

Fortunately, we aren't under any obligation to accept his delusions. It is one sin to believe the President's terrifying delusions, and another entirely to know he is lying out of his ass to save himself and to still commit such a treasonous act as to vote for Loeffler and Perdue, both of whom echoed the lies and encouraged the vile rhetoric. Gabe Sterling is no hero, and we shouldn't, under any circumstances, pretend that he is one.