by Dr. William Scott

I wrote an article that appeared in The Tidewater News in July 2015. It was called “Remember them, yes!” Yes, but for who they really were — quislings. The article spoke to the Confederate monuments and the Confederate war flag still being presented in the area as victorious symbols to a war that tried to divide and separate this country. In my view, all those who participated in that war were turncoats against our form of democracy — constitutional government.

These local monuments were erected at the opening of the 20th century (1902, 1905 and 1911) some 40-plus years after the Civil War ended and reflected an attitude of victorious defiance. You can still see them along Clay Street’s small parks. In a very real sense, we are still fighting that war. It will never end until those who were defeated lay claim to that fact. We are witnessing the rise of the “far right” who espouse returning to those “good old days” when everybody lived together in peace, “master and slave.” That was the sentiment of Roy Moore of Alabama, who the RNC and its head supported. Of cause that’s nonsense because the system Moore and the RNC backs is based on narrow-mindedness, prejudice, intolerance and immoral practices; all contrary to alleged Christian values — in short, “White Supremacy” of which the evangelicals advocate and embrace.

Despite these social ills reflected above — and of which we have been living with for a very long time — I remain hopeful that this country will eradicate these past ills, and I’d say, eventually completely exterminate them from our culture.

However, now, and I mean right now, what we face as a nation is tantamount to quisling. It is the same mindset (frustration and bitterness) that caused Benedict Arnold to betray his countrymen by leading the British army in battle against the men whom he once commanded — “Quisling’er.” It is the same mindset that John Wilkes Booth, the Abraham Lincoln assassin, garnered, trying to reverse an already won victory — even the defeated foes resented his modus operandi — “Quisling’er.” How Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, with a similar mindset, provided the Russians (the Soviet Union) with valuable information during the early ‘50s — “Quisling’ers.” Or even John Walker’s family of spies for nearly two decades (1968-1985) spied for our major adversary the Russians (former USSR) — frustration, bitterness and money was the motivator — “Quisling’ers.” And lastly, the Edward Snowden espionage exploits of 2014, have put our country and our way of life at risk. Snowden — the “Quisling’er,” the collaborator, the colluder, the traitor — is still being securely protected by Vladimir Putin, the leading oligarch of the Russian Federation.

As a retiree of the intelligence community, I am keenly aware of and knowledgeable about the spy activity of our major adversary and our counter-activity against them. What I have been witnessing via the news outlets (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Face book, Twitter, Instagram) since the Trump campaign and his election to the presidency is a blatant denial that the Russkies where being consciously (maybe innocently) helped by people in the Trump orbit — that, to me, is treasonous activity. Any claim of innocence, however, cannot be sustained since the campaign intelligence briefings would have provided ample alert data of that possibility.

If you have been following the Robert Mueller Special counsel investigation of Russian involvement within the 2016 Presidency election and its cyber attach on our democracy via hacking, the term that has been used throughout these proceedings is collusion. Collusion is a softer word for a collaborator, or a traitor or a turncoat — it is tantamount to treasonous activity at the highest level of government.  Less we forget, as President Barak Obama has warned: Remember the Norwegian war-time leader, Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonsson Quisling, who headed a domestic Nazi collaborationist regime during WWII. Do we too, like the Norwegians, have Quislings everywhere?

DR. WILLIAM SCOTT is a guest columnist for The Tidewater News. He can be reached at garwhit2@charter.net.