Donald Trump is a traitor.

I take actually no pleasure in typing that accusation, and I do not take the accusation lightly.

In his three years in office, Trump has repeatedly betrayed this country. By siding with Vladimir Putin over American intelligence at a meeting in Helsinki in 2018. By undermining U.S. security interests by leveraging aid to Ukraine for help framing his political rival. By continually turning his head and denying an enemy’s repeated and flagrant attempts to interfere with our free and fair elections. By intentionally dismantling the federal government in order to allow the further poisoning and endangerment of Americans for the purpose of expedited profit.

These charges go beyond conspiracy theories and deep-internet forum ramblings. These are merely documented facts and documented instances of Trump’s blatant betrayal of Americans.

The coronavirus pandemic presents a new and frightening chapter of Trump’s continued disloyalty as he took to his favorite propagandist Sean Hannity’s show on Thursday and announced his flirtation with letting Americans die.

“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” Trump told Hannity, referencing New York’s worsening crisis. Before it was over Trump criticized governors who “take and take” but refuse to show him gratitude.

This was more than empty rhetoric or a frustrated president letting off steam with his favorite sycophant.

This was a preview of a possible genocide.

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One of our major problems as a society in our inability to move beyond preconceived notions and definitions. Our myths about authoritarians have left us unable to recognize one in our very midst. Our devotion to the myth of leadership and the solidity of American government has prevented us from seeing Donald Trump as a despot-in-the-making. And our misplaced optimism and faith have allowed creeping authoritarianism to destroy our institutions one at a time.

Now, as we stand on the precipice of what could be a historical atrocity, we rely on dated and limited definitions of genocide to hide our fear of a storm that is set to rage and kill an untold amount of Americans.

Let us be clear: genocide does not require violent, hands-on killing. Guns are not necessary. Mass death camps are not necessary. Simply holding back necessary supplies and aid for political purposes constitutes genocide and has led to some of the most tragic moments in human history.

We’ve seen it with Stalin, with Mao, with Pol Pot, with the British Empire in India, in colonies around the world.

In the United States with the systematic eradication of the Native People.

What we see coming at this moment is a textbook genocide, a targeting of individuals for purposes of political retribution. Trump has already said as much, laying out a requirement that governors and citizens praise him in full and worship him relentlessly should they want the help of the federal government. His plans to “reopen” the country draw a clear distinction between liberal hotbeds like New York, California, and Washington and “the Bible Belt,” as he called it, and what former Vice-President candidate Sarah Palin infamously referred to as “Real America.”

It is a quiet genocide. A slow-moving genocide. But it is as brutal as anything anyone can imagine. People who die from coronavirus suffer terribly as they gasp for air and as they are kept from their loved ones and denied even the most basic human connection. As Trump makes his decision he is undoubtedly keeping an eye on the electoral map from 2016 that he always has at his ready. He is callous and irredeemably broken enough to let such superficial things influence his judgment.

I’ve written extensively about the Cult of the Shining City, the evangelical cult that worships Trump as a messiah following decades worth of political indoctrination and manipulation. This group, which is comprised of millions of Americans who have no idea they are ensnared in this insidious movement, are already wrapping their heads around the coronavirus pandemic as a plague from God, a sign of the End Times and that the almighty - a racist, Neo-Confederate God - is doling out his punishment on the sinners who have hurt this country.

Readers will be familiar with this type of nonsense. Every hurricane, every earthquake, charlatans like Pat Robertson will take to the airwaves to proclaim it’s a punishment from god for gay marriage or so-called immoral behavior. It has, for years now, divided America into two separate camps, two distinct national identities.

The problem is that carving separate national identities is one of the first steps in carrying out a successful genocide. This has always been Trump’s operating procedure. As human rights activist Charlotte Clymer said in a recent interview: “The only way Trump and Pence can consolidate power is by telling their supporters, look, we are on a team and those folks are not on our team…anybody who does not fit the white, Christian American mold.”

In genocides throughout history, the only means of accomplishing the mass killing and mass death is by establishing these fictional conditions. There has to be one side and another side. Resources have to be limited and in dispute. It’s life or death and if you want to live you’d better choose death for the The Other. We’ve seen that in America over and over and over again. With the Native Americans. With African-Americans. With every vulnerable minority whose very existence challenges the white patriarchal, evangelical order.

Heading into the Easter holiday, which Trump has promised will be the beginning of an American resurrection, the ingredients are there for one of the great tragedies in American and human history. A Red State America celebrating the resurrection of their lord and the rebirth of their country in a religious, civic stew that has come to define their worldview. A Blue State America on ventilators, swarms of suffering patients dying by the minute. A pandemic that has yet to be revealed in the Heartland as they watch on and see if as God’s judgment.

Trump holds so many cards, and he has already shown a willingness to play all of them. His vilification of governors and “ungrateful” states should worry everyone. He is so unendingly insecure, so inhumane and devoid of empathy or duty, that he will not hesitate to damn states that denied him electoral votes. His work to make them the other, to separate Americans into two separate camps, has always been about this need to strip the humanity and compassion from our discourse.

For a long while anxiety has run wild that a new civil war might break out. That our differences could result in violence and bloodshed. Unfortunately, those fears were well-founded. We simply didn’t understand that guns and battlefields of old wouldn’t be required. All that was needed was one broken man’s inability to care.

Jared Yates Sexton is an author and political analyst whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere. He is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. Currently he serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of the Muckrake Podcast.