Politics and theater go together like peanut butter and jelly… like hopes and dreams… like a slap in the face and the sharp pain that goes with it.

For five plus years now, America has been treated to a remarkable performance by the Republican Party. They are actively attempting to stop America from ever becoming the diverse “E Pluribus Unum”-style democratic republic some of our founders knew we could be. Though James Madison had a tortured relationship with slavery (he opposed it in action but compromised with it in the abstract), he still grasped that America’s diversity – the gathering of the nations of the world into one new nation, that was and remains America’s secret sauce. Diversity is American Exceptionalism. But not everyone treasures our diversity. The Republican Party sees it as a threat to their very existence.

This is the motivation inside our “bad actors” – the Republican Party.

The GOP aches to turn America into the authoritarian state of their deepest, darkest wet dreams where a shrinking white minority rules with an iron fist in perpetuity. They could never have “sold” that to America’s voters via retail politics of course. “Permanent Minority Rule” isn’t likely to be a winner of a campaign slogan. Instead, Republicans have used gerrymandering and voter suppression. But even that wasn’t good enough; in the end, the Republican Party turned to treason and made treason integral to their brand.

If you want to be a Republican, you have to go along with treason. And if you’re going to go along with treason, you’re going to have to learn how to sell it. Voila “Republican Treason Kabuki”!

Stone cold fact: as of June 25, 2016, the Republican Party’s leadership knew that their soon-to-be candidate, Donald Trump, would pose a grave national security risk if elected president because – as they themselves agreed in the room “Putin pays [Rohrbacher and] Trump.” Rather than take their suspicions to the FBI (as their oaths of office demanded), the Republican leadership followed then Speaker Of The House Paul Ryan’s advice to keep the subject under discussion secret. “That’s how we know we’re family,” is how Ryan put it.

That means when the GOP nominated Trump a month later, the GOP nominated him KNOWING Trump was a traitor, owned outright by a hostile foreign government bent on undermining our whole way of life. That means the Republicans KNEW that when Trump brayed “Hey, Russia, if you’re listening…!” and asked Russia to find Hilary Clinton’s 33,ooo emails, he was doing it as a national security threat asking a hostile foreign government to help him win an election.

That’s some pretty impressive treason kabuki, don’tcha think?