The definition of hyperbole is an obvious and intentional exaggeration, or an extravagant statement or figure of speech.

But after reading the indictment charging former president Donald J. Trump, is it hyperbole to say it is the most important document ever created since our nation’s founding?

Every American citizen should read United States vs. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta. Every one of us. How could you not?

Sure, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are arguably more important. If they didn’t exist, would we even be having this conversation? Nope. You could make the case that the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address are both more important. The declaration of war in 1941? Historic Supreme Court rulings? Yes, all important.

But United States vs. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta? If you consider the future of our grand republic, our experiment in democracy, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say it’s the most important public document right now.

Here is what I think from my perch in Northampton, having had the privilege of serving our nation in the United States military and having had access to classified documents to do my job.

As an officer in the United States Air Force, it was clearly understood and well known that people risk their lives to provide senior leaders and military personnel with intelligence — information to protect our national security.

Such documents were marked classified for a reason. Classified material, which everyone in national security knows, must be under the personal control and observation of authorized personnel and then stored in approved locked containers. Violators will be punished severely, and many have been, from top national security figures to lower-level civil servants.

I can’t tell you the number of times I would sit through a briefing where I was told the consequences of not protecting classified information: “We will catch you and you will go to Leavenworth,” was the message, heard loud and clear. That, folks, was my life every day.

Trump, of course, knew all these things, too, and on the campaign trail in 2016 vowed to everyone that he would protect our nation’s classified information. You can read his statements on Page 9 and 10 of the federal indictment. “No one will be above the law,” he told us.

The charges I read over the weekend don’t even address Trump’s other alleged crimes. Those crimes include his obvious attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to incite sedition.

Now, the Trumpers are doing the “what abouts.” What about Hillary and the server? What about Biden and the classified materials at his home? What about Pence? What about Obama? What about Hunter? And on and on. Yeah, what about them?

“Whataboutists are adult children whose mothers never taught them: Two wrongs do not make a right,” writes Andrew Bjelland in The Salt Lake Tribune. “Whataboutism,” he says, “is the first refuge of those who attempt to defend the indefensible. It is a mode of distractive manipulation.”

The Soviets used it during the Cold War whenever criticized for human rights violations, he writes. “For example, when cited for the ill-treatment of inmates in the prison camps of the Siberian Gulag, the Soviets offered stock responses: What about Americans’ treatment of Blacks? What about all those past lynchings and present unjust incarcerations?”

What I know is that Trump is a pathological liar, and he should never be allowed to run for any office in our country, ever.

We should be unified as a nation in condemning Trump, but nope, the Trumpers are out there in full force defending their man, and here’s what I fear the most: Some Americans are now calling for violence. And they are being supported by elected officials.

After everything we now know about Trump, he is still the leading candidate in his party. His followers aren’t giving up. You still see Trump flags and lawn signs in people’s yards. Right here in Northampton, by the way.

If our country does not hold Trump accountable, then our republic is over. Many of us will do everything we can to save it, but I fear that the disinformation campaign that has been waged for years now will continue unabated and will continue to infect more and more Americans like a contagion until our nation will become what many believe it already has become in many parts of our nation — an authoritarian theocracy.

For the Trumpers out there, if that’s what you intend for me and my forebears — a country where it is acceptable to lie and to demand allegiance to one person or to the Bible or “God’s law,” and you win, then it’s game over, as far as I’m concerned.

And that is why United States vs. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta is the most important document in my lifetime.

John Paradis, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, lives in Florence.]]>