This is a war of Truth.
It is not a war fought over territory, resources, or trade routes. It is a war fought over the fundamental acceptance of objective reality and the rule of law. It is a conflict between those who believe in the imperfect but necessary institutions of a democratic republic and those who have surrendered their individual agency to the whims of a demagogue. It is a war of civic faith where the aggressors seek to dismantle the shared trust that allows a diverse society to function without violence.
I remember the exact weight of the rifle I carried in service to this country. I remember the smell of the grease, the grit of the sand, and the bone-deep exhaustion that comes from standing watch over a fragile peace. But most of all, I remember the oath. It was not a casual promise. It was a sacred vow taken freely and without mental reservation. I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
For years, we trained to identify threats. We learned to spot the subtle signs of destabilization in foreign lands. We studied how insurgencies take root, how warlords radicalize desperate populations, and how fragile democracies crumble under the weight of authoritarian pressure. We never imagined that the most dangerous threat to our Republic would not come from a cave in the mountains or a rival superpower, but from the Oval Office itself.
January 6, 2021, was not a protest. It was not a riot. It was a tactical assault on the seat of American government, orchestrated by the Commander in Chief and executed by his loyal foot soldiers. It was the opening salvo of a new American civil war, one that is currently being fought not with muskets and cannons, but with lies, intimidation, and the systematic dismantling of our institutions.
To call it anything less is to lie. To suggest that Donald Trump did not attempt to overthrow the government is to reject the evidence of your own eyes and ears. It is an act of willful blindness that betrays the very concept of patriotism.
The bond between a soldier and the Commander in Chief is built on a specific trust. We trust that they will not spend our lives casually. We trust that their orders, lawful and just, serve the Constitution we both swore to protect. Donald Trump shattered that trust. He did not just fail to protect the Capitol. He aimed the weapon.
A coup does not require tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue. In the modern era, a coup is a bureaucratic strangulation coupled with mob violence. Trump spent months priming the charge. He eroded faith in the election process before a single vote was counted. He pressured state officials to manufacture votes. He weaponized the Department of Justice to validate his delusions. When the soft coup of legal pressure failed, he turned to the hard coup of physical violence.
He summoned the mob. He fed them the lie that their country was being stolen. He directed them to the Capitol with the explicit instruction to fight like hell. And then, as the perimeter fell and police officers were beaten with the very flag they claim to revere, he watched. He did not rush to the Situation Room to coordinate a defense. He did not order the National Guard to restore order. He sat and watched television, delighted by the spectacle of his power.
This was a dereliction of duty so profound that in any other era, it would have resulted in immediate court-martial for a military officer. For a President, it was treason. He abdicated his role as the protector of the laws to become the leader of an insurrection against them. He chose his own ego over the continuity of the Republic. He proved that his loyalty was never to the Constitution, but only to himself.
It is comfortable to blame only the leader. It allows us to pretend that the rot is confined to the head. But the truth is far uglier. Donald Trump did not storm the Capitol alone. He did not beat police officers. He did not smash the windows or smear feces on the walls of the legislature. That was done by his followers.
The MAGA movement can no longer be dismissed as a collection of economically anxious voters or people who feel left behind. By January 6, it had distilled itself into a weaponized political cult. The individuals who marched on the Capitol were not innocent dupes. They were adults with agency. They had access to the same information as the rest of us. They saw the court cases thrown out for lack of evidence. They saw the audits confirming the results. They chose to ignore it all.
They chose to believe a lie because that lie made them feel powerful. They chose violence because they believed their desire for power superseded the law. When they breached those doors, they were not tourists. They were enemy combatants. They were domestic enemies of the Constitution.
We must stop coddling this behavior. We must stop pretending that there is a moral equivalence between those who uphold the democratic process and those who try to burn it down. The people who attacked the Capitol believed they were the true patriots, which is the most dangerous delusion of all. Every insurgent in history believes they are the hero of their own story. The Confederate soldiers who fought to preserve slavery believed they were fighting for their heritage. Their belief did not make them right. It made them traitors.
The MAGA loyalists who aided Trump are complicit in his treason. They provided the physical force necessary to threaten the transition of power. They terrified elected officials. They disrupted a sacred constitutional proceeding. They did this willingly. They did this proudly. And in the years since, they have not repented. They have mythologized their crime. They call the prisoners hostages. They are rewriting history to turn a day of infamy into a day of glory.
This civil war is harder to fight because the front lines are invisible. The battlefield is everywhere. It is in our school boards, our election offices, our churches, and our living rooms. The objective of this war is the complete subjugation of the American reality to the will of the MAGA movement.
They are fighting to establish a world where facts do not matter. In their reality, the person with the loudest microphone and the most violent followers determines the truth. If the law says they lost, the law is corrupt. If the votes say they lost, the votes are fake. If the Constitution stands in their way, the Constitution must be suspended.
This is an asymmetric war against the pillars of civilization. They attack the press to destroy shared truth. They attack the courts to destroy shared law. They attack the election system to destroy shared governance. It is a total war on the Enlightenment values that birthed this nation.
As a veteran, I know that you cannot negotiate with an enemy who denies your right to exist. You cannot find common ground with a movement that views compromise as weakness and democracy as an obstacle. The Republican Party has largely capitulated to this insurgency, becoming the political wing of a radical movement. They have purged the dissenters who dared to speak the truth about January 6. They have normalized political violence.
We are dangerously close to the point of no return. The institutions we relied on to check this power have been eroded. The judicial system has been slow and often timid. The political system is paralyzed by the very polarization Trump exploits.
The military, the institution I served, is being politicized. There are those within the ranks who sympathize with the insurrectionists. This is the nightmare scenario. A military divided by political loyalty cannot stand. If the chain of command is broken by partisan zealotry, the Republic falls.
We must be hypercritical because the time for politeness is over. There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist. You cannot hear both sides when one side is pouring gasoline on the house. Donald Trump lit the match. His followers fanned the flames. They watched the smoke rise and cheered.
If we lose this war, we do not just lose a political cycle. We lose the American experiment. We lose the idea that power is derived from the consent of the governed rather than the barrel of a gun. We lose the promise that no man is above the law.
I stood at a post to defend this country. I took an oath that has no expiration date. That oath compels me to speak this hard truth. The greatest threat to the United States is not a foreign army. It is the man who once held the highest office in the land, and the millions of Americans who are willing to destroy our democracy to put him back in power.
The Capitol attack was not a mistake. It was a rehearsal. The war is here. The enemy is inside the gates. And if we do not wake up and fight back with the ferocity of free people defending their liberty, we will look back on January 6 not as a tragedy, but as the beginning of the end. The Republic is fragile. It is maintained only by our collective will to keep it. Right now, that will is faltering. The treason was real. The threat remains. We are losing.
