At this point, the evidence is overpowering: May 9 was a well-planned military/intelligence operation — achieving certain objectives by evoking and leveraging public sentiment through the arrest of Mr Khan. The assumption of impunity here is too astounding to be ignored.

To not be able to see the several connections leading to this conclusion, one would need to have been through an insurmountable dose of ideological brainwashing.

We can now easily infer the identities of the key managers of this operation and also where the ultimate authorization came from.

There must be hundreds of uniformed functionaries who directly participated in this sinister operation or who have somewhat direct knowledge of it. This realization leads to a sinking feeling in the heart.

Can the very concept of “republic” even have relevance in such a governance system?

People now recognize that the military brass — while it claims to be non-political — has openly engaged in massive arson and destruction of public property in order to gain leverage against a political party. (Not to mention quite a few citizens killed, many through direct firing by the armed forces.)

And then the same “mujahids” are so scared of the truth that they want to create military courts to try the leaders and members of the “undesirable” political party.

(It doesn’t matter to the Geniuses that some 80% of the country’s 225 million people support this party. It is also irrelevant to them that — as a result of their conduct having become transparent over the past year — people have developed grave misgivings about the military, especially the army.)

Effective propaganda has already normalized treason in the nation’s body politic. Everyone considers it normal that the Syndicate always manipulates elections and controls the state apparatus at its whim — even though such conduct constitutes High Crimes according to the Constitution.

Additionally, “contempt” laws are there to ensure none is able to squeak about anything too revelatory in this regard. Ironically, these laws label truth as treason. (In his novel “1984,” George Orwell coined the neologism “newspeak” to capture this phenomenon.)

The “hobbies” of our military brass would be a source of shame to any self-respecting nation. To us, denial and delusion provide the remedy.

But May 9 is a new standard in brazenness — a new low in disloyalty to the nation — and shows the desperation of the Syndicate.

The question then is: Will the nation allow the Syndicate to normalize such conduct too?