You know things are bad when you can find some positive things to say about Richard Nixon in comparison  to the current president. But that’s where I, and many others, are at. Richard Nixon, despite his now infamous claim that he was not a crook, was exactly that. He disgraced the presidency, he embarrassed our country, throwing us into turmoil and shame. According to sources, following his demise he spent hours wandering around his San Clemente estate, often with his dog and often late into the night — a lonely and haunted figure. Yet here is where the positive elements intrude: I think he really did love this country. And despite his unhealthy desire for power, his disrespect for the law, and his belief that he was above the law, Richard Nixon did not want to destroy our democracy.

Compared to the egotistical narcissist now occupying the Oval Office (when he isn’t hitting the links at Mar-A-Lago) that’s actually, these days, a commendable achievement. This is how low the bar is now — if you don’t want to dismantle America’s democracy, if you don’t want to turn us into a dictatorship run by a megalomaniac, we’ll find something good to say about you. How far we have fallen, and Donald Trump, according to his own claims, is just getting started. I have no idea if America will survive his time in office, however short or long it is. I know the environment has suffered enough blows under him that he has moved the planet closer to a meltdown. And let’s please not forget that the Doomsday Clock was just moved up by 30 seconds. We’re now two minutes to midnight.

Since Trump gleefully used the word “treason” some definitions are in order. Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution. It is defined as levying war against the United States or adhering to enemies of the United States, giving them aid and comfort. So according to Donald Trump, who has almost certainly never read the Constitution, Democrats refusing to stand and applaud him equals levying war against the United States. For the White House to then try and pass his comment off as a joke is obscene. One of the great things about our democracy is that we can protest without fear of being killed, which happens swiftly in countries like North Korea.

The word “traitor” is a less legally binding term for a person who has indulged in acts that could be interpreted as treasonous. So, Donald Trump, I personally think you are a traitor to American democracy, to freedom (and that includes freedom of the press), and to the Constitution. The latter is a document you might want to read someday, since you’re so good at taking an ax to it. The Founding Fathers were brilliant. They thought of almost everything. They just couldn’t have foreseen Donald Trump.