TAT readers,
So, this week started roughly due to a recurring health issue, but I have made enough progress to sit at my desk for a couple of hours. Fortunately, nothing to worry about over the long-term. It’ll take a few more days to get back to my normal, hyper-self, however there are couple things that need to be said with the time I can spend at my desk. As an advisory, a couple of these issues may become relatively pointed regarding some issues leading up to inauguration day. You will see some of this in today’s essay.
I started this publication a little over two-years ago in order to help readers understand our most serious and complex national security threats, in plain language. Our national security community is full of languages unintelligible to the outside world and more often than not, even to communities within that world. Over the last couple of years, I have found myself focusing far more on the Trump, MAGA/ GOP and cooperative global authoritarian threats as our primary and most acute national security threat.
Sure, I would have loved to not have to deal with this very sensitive issue, but we cannot solve any national security threat at home or abroad, until Trump and the MAGA Republican Party are dismantled. To be blunt, it is exactly this simple. For this reason, plenty of MAGA threats will dominate my writing going forward. I will also try to portray these threats in the context of actual American values, based on our founding documents, especially in regard to our constitution.
Going forward, I will be treating MAGA and everything about it, as a malignant cancer, sustained on the brainwashing of their membership. Like cancer, I will be supporting a handful of mutually supporting treatments such as, 1. strengthening our immune system. This is called resilience in national security, 2. Radical surgery to remove the most threatening tumors. This is the act of bombarding your elected representatives with a demand to honor their oath of service and voting them out at every opportunity, should they not heed your demands and finally, 3. using your voices collectively. This means not staying within private groups where you believe it safe to talk and express frustration. It no longer safe to hideout quietly. The stakes are too high.
Without a shred of hyperbole, I can tell you with absolute conviction, that Trump and his sycophantic voters, will undo our constitution and eliminate many of our constitutionally guaranteed rights, while that they legally design and build an autocracy. Project 2025’s so-called transition plan or as it is labeled on their website, The 180-day playbook, is the first phase of the civil war coming on January 20th.
Today’s Pete Hegseth Senate confirmation hearing is a perfect example of incompetence on display by the incoming administration. Their nominee, with zero experience running a large, complex bureaucracy, marginalized by his own National Guard unit for far-right extremism, who has a lifelong record of sexual predation, alcohol abuse, misappropriating funds from charities, racism and hardcore misogyny, is on the hot seat to become our next, Secretary of Defense. Republican Senators are fawning over him. Mike Waltz, a former distinguished service Green Beret and incoming National Security Advisor sang his praises and my own Veteran congressman, Tony Gonzalez of Texas, is apparently in winter hibernation and equally absent from leadership.
Trump’s picks for other high-profile national security posts are just as deplorable. Tulsi Gabbard, the Putin and Assad worshiping congresswoman from Hawaii, Kash Patel at the FBI, John Ratcliffe at the CIA, etc. etc. are just as egregious. No experience, no loyalty to the constitution but absolute loyalty to the convicted felon, armed insurrectionist leader, lifelong sexual predator and conman soon to inhabit our White House. Yes, it’s ours, it belongs to the American people.
Other than the national security threats from incompetent and immoral nominees, this is only one of our primary threats. A Republican controlled Congress that is fully subservient to Trump is hellbent on their Russian inspired culture wars that will deprive US citizens of our constitutionally guaranteed rights and pick the pocket of every American with their support for oligarchy rather than democracy.
We must keep pressure on every single Republican serving in any elected office to protect our constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Greg Abbott and the Texas Taliban
Next up, it wouldn’t be a day ending in “y” if I didn’t tell the truth about our shameless suck up governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. This is personal to me since I live under the rule of the Texas Taliban, a.k.a., the Texas Republican Party. Call it petty if you will but I am furious that yesterday, “Hot wheels,” the pejorative used by many Texans of all different political beliefs, to describe Abbott, signed an order to fly the flag at full staff on Inauguration Day, simply because Trump whined about it being at half-staff for POTUS Jimmy Carter for 30 days. Like any Texan who has read both the Texas and US Constitution, I am furious with Abbott and his GOP henchmen who are behind some of the most unconstitutional agendas in the country.
No person nor party is moral or ethical by suggesting and implementing things like Biblical curriculum in Public Schools, School vouchers for private school, including private Christian Schools, blockading the Customs and Border Patrol and ICE from doing their job at the border, racism in our voting laws etc. The preceding issues are merely the tip of the iceberg for Hot Wheels, who won’t be happy until Texas is run like what Trump is doing nationally, turning Texas into, The Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse, Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and Political Violence.
Hot Wheels is perfectly free to keep sucking up to Trump, but he’s not free from being shamed for it either. There is no longer the slightest conservatism, morality or patriotism left in the TX GOP. They will be a focus of mine also in the coming months and years. Full transparency… I use Texas often in my writing, as an example of what MAGA looks like, from those who live under its oppressive, dictatorial politicians.
Pete Hegseth’s Senatorial Hearing today
I won’t write a whole new bit here but rather will copy and paste my comments on LinkedIn today about the ongoing hearing.
“Hegseth will deeply undermine US and allied national security.
This is precisely the reason for my deep disgust of all Republican Veterans in Congress. No one doubts Mike Waltz's qualifications for his position in the new administration, but Waltz nor any of the other 70+ GOP Veterans in Congress, have the moral spine to tell the truth. In plain language, they are subservient to a Right-Wing-Extremist POTUS elect, who has already led an armed insurrection against our nation. This is an overt, disgraceful failure of both their military oaths to the nation and their congressional oaths.
To be blunt, I am deeply ashamed of every damned one of them, including Michael Waltz. My congressman, Tony Gonzalez here in TX #23, is the same. Hegseth, A man who wasn't trusted in his military unit and has zero experience running an organization as massive and critical to US national security, has zero qualifications to sit in the SECDEF's seat.
Add to this Hegseth's seemingly endless array of immoral personal traits and I don't see how any sane, nor moral person can vote for him. Normally, I could care less about political parties but what the hell, GOP, you're not even a party any longer, you're a definable far-right, violent extremist movement masquerading as conservatives.
Yes, I know a thing or two about extremism, CT, CVE/ PVE etc. from long experience in and out of the military. January 6th was a terrorist attack by any definition within the US national security community. Now the MAGA/ GOP has become the state-sponsor of terrorism. Conservatism has become extinct in the Republican Party. Pete Hegseth is just a high-profile example, right along with his supporters.”
Finally, my inauguration day plans
This is a very short section. I can barely fathom that Americans, the majority claiming to be good Christians, have voted to put a serial sexual predator, convicted felon, leader of an armed insurrection against the United States of America and lifelong conman once again into the Oval Office.
I refuse to watch the inauguration ceremony any further than seeing with my own eyes just how much smaller his crowd will be than for any other POTUS of any party. Due to singing at Trump’s inauguration, Carrie Underwood has now been removed from any of my playlists. I feel the same about anyone supporting anything regarding MAGA. They are complicit in the destruction of our republic, by supporting him. As I like to say, “I will continue to work towards forgiving family and close friends, but I will never forget.”
I left X after the Uvalde school massacre. I no longer read the LA Times or Washington Post due to the owners, Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, becoming Trump suck ups, just like Governor Abbott. I remain only on Facebook and carefully manage my minimal time there, simply because there is no other way at this time, to remain connected to a large family and friends from all over the world. As an expert in the field of adversarial influence operations, I cannot emphasize enough, just how much of a snake pit that FB is. No cable news plays on the TV at home and the mention of FOX News, elicits some very unsavory language by me, just by mentioning it. Raised in very polite and mostly rural Ohio where politics were never mentioned publicly by anyone, I now will engage in defense of US values, against those who spew Trump/ MAGA GOP talking points.
In my opinion, January 20th, 2025, is D-Day and the beginning of the war between honest Americans that respect our founding principles, and those who vote for whatever the MAGA GOP is plotting. Those GOP voters may be brainwashed and incapable of discerning reality, but while I can be professionally, a bit sympathetic to their self-inflicted distorted reality, I also cannot permit myself to offer silent refuge. Reality comes with consequences and although I choose to not lose more family and friends if I don’t have to, I also must go forward with doing all possible to ensure the sanctity of our republic. Should we survive Trump, the children and grandchildren of those friends and family, like my own, will enjoy the rewards of restoring our republic.
My job in writing these essays, is to make the case to you fine folks, for keeping our republic safe and committed to the “inalienable human rights” we sought in breaking with England. Considering the ever-increasing subscribers and followers, I see that all who read TAT, feel largely the same way. I could hardly be more grateful to each and every one of you. I’m not arguing for a political party or any other such reason. My career is national security, and I write to portray threats truthfully without the sugar-coating. Our founding values, if adhered to, will dictate the best politics. At this moment in our history, an immorally brainwashed GOP is the biggest threat to US and global security.
Cheers and my best until we meet again, later in the week.
Paul