Though the numbers have declined, you still see them as you drive around the region, predominately in rural areas — the Trump encampments. Flags and banners carry such declarations as “Trump Won,” “Biden is not my president,” or “Trump 2024.” Like the Japanese soldiers who were found holding out on Pacific islands in the years after World War II — the last surrendered in the 1970s — the inhabitants of these encampments refuse to accept reality.

It is little wonder since their leader, Donald Trump, does all he can to perpetuate the lie about the 2020 election.

Their choice as to whether to continue to hold out, or for any citizen to continue backing Trump and his lies, is now a stark one. Your loyalties are either with Trump or with the U.S. Constitution. They can’t be with both.

Of course, that has been the choice for a long time. Loyalty to Trump or the Constitution was the choice after we learned President Trump in 2019 held up arms sales to Ukraine, approved by Congress, in order to try to strong arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into producing dirt on the man who would defeat him in 2020, Joe Biden.

Loyalty to Trump or the Constitution was the choice when, after his 2020 defeat, Trump perpetuated the Big Lie that nefarious forces had rigged the election. Trump tried to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to take part in a scheme to block electoral college votes for Biden and replace them with a trumped-up set of electors. When Pence chose allegiance to the Constitution, Trump directed a mob toward the U.S. Capitol. The rioting disrupted and delayed the recording of the electoral votes that made Biden’s victory official, tragically ending the nation’s long history of a peaceful transition of power.

For these acts that violated his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," the House twice impeached Trump. And twice a majority of Republicans in the Senate refused to do their duty and convict Trump, a verdict that would have removed him from office and prevented his ever seeking the presidency again.

Yet people can rationalize most anything and believe what they want to believe. Those in the Trump encampments saw nothing wrong in Trump’s Ukrainian efforts to expose all manner of conspiracies about Biden and his ne’re-do-well son, Hunter. They bought the Big Lie that forces aligned against Trump stole the election and that the efforts to reverse the outcome were justified, even patriotic.

But now Trump, in a social media burst of honesty that he quickly regretted, has made it clear he places himself, and loyalty to him, above the Constitution. That is what aspiring dictators do.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” wrote Trump earlier this month on the social network Truth Social, the network he created.

Trump prefaced that statement with the question, “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?”

Of course, you can’t meet your oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” and at the same time call for terminating portions of it when it suits your purpose.

Trump has now made it clear that if — God forbid — he was again to become president, he would be prepared to “terminate all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” if he — and he alone — decided some great fraud or injustice had been perpetuated against him or his policies, perhaps, say, by Congress or the courts or the press.

If those in the encampments, or anyone else, still want to back Trump, that is their constitutional right. Just be honest about that choice. It is a choice to support a man for president who has said it is OK to tear up such constitutional protections when he finds them inconvenient.

And don’t dare call yourself a patriot. You are a loyalist — not to the Constitution or the Republic — but to Trump.

Paul Choiniere is the former editorial page editor of The Day, now retired. He can be reached at p.choiniere@yahoo.com.