Insolence characterizes the Deep State.  And how dare they?  Given great power, privilege, and responsibility, they insinuated themselves into every crack and crevice and became enemies of their own country, sneering at the principles they were supposed to be upholding.

In a word, they got cocky.  Machiavelli wrote, "The price of generosity is insolence."  It's a variation of "Do you know who I am?"

We do know who many of you are, you whose names are legion: Comey.  Mueller.  Clapper.  Brennan.  Strzok.  Rosenstein.  McCabe.  One suspects several out of the DoD, a whole crowd out of Langley and Fort Meade, all shadowy members of the Council on Foreign Relations, plus a throng of go-along-to-get-along types who cower lest their names become known and their parts in the betrayal revealed.  If everybody's dirty, nobody can rat.  I cover for you, and you cover for me.

When the time comes, and the evidence has been gathered, these arrogant people need to be stripped of all honors and escorted to jail in shame.  They've not only broken the law, but grotesquely violated the public trust.  We commended our wellbeing and that of the Republic into their hands, and they've sneeringly sold us out.

As a retired Army officer, I am particularly pained by the military men involved in all this sneakiness and subterfuge.  They took the same oath I took – to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.  That meant something to me.  To them, apparently, not so much.

Thirty years ago, a well loved general officer told a crowd of us at Fort Benning, "You know that stuff they taught at West Point, that duty-honor-country business?  I believed it.  I always have believed it.  I still believe it."  He was an honorable man.  He set a sterling example for those around him who aspired to high office and great responsibility.  His was a life one could pattern one's own life on.  Personal honor meant everything to him.

He must have been a vanishing breed even then.  Huge, encompassing conspiracies to take over the government don't spring up overnight.  They have to be cultivated day and night over years.  People are weighed for membership in the club and culled if it turns out that they really believe the stuff taught at West Point.  Honorable people who believe what the Founders believed – such people need not apply.

"A turning point in history is here.  If Obama goes down, the left will go down with him.  If his coup succeeds, then America ends." –Daniel Greenfield