A history lesson about true American values, not the fake patriotism of the MAGA/ GOP
A special edition of sorts
TAT followers,
Today I will offer something a bit different, a combination of former posts that make up the foundation of my writing about defending our nation and our values, from adversaries and imposters.
How this TAT will work is that I will open with a short introduction, and then weave some of my most detailed and historically based pieces into a foundational essay, intended to support our national resilience. Resilience, as it applies to national security, is to rebuild the American identity with the building blocks of our true national values, not the fake patriotism of MAGA. Every step we take in the rebuilding process, is an investment in our national security. Together as Americans we can do anything. Without a common identity, America will have lost its soul, hence zero resilience.
Since influence, my core specialty is incredibly complex, it will take several essays to build a decent foundation. It is my intent that today’s work will be something that you may wish to save, in order to refer to later. Everything in today’s essay, will help to save our November elections from another unconstitutional, extreme, right-wing administration, underpinned by oligarchy and Christian Nationalism.
All of the essays reintroduced in today’s work, can be read together with this piece or individually. Altogether, today’s work is a mini library of America’s true values, the essay’s included, are also some of my favorites, over the past nearly two years of TAT.
Onward
Introduction
As an expert regarding narrative and Narrative Warfare, I am well positioned to argue that our American identity, largely defined by our founding principles, is the core of our national strength. No matter how powerful a nation’s military is, they are a failure if there is no resilient strength of character, that bonds a nation together for its defense, they will fail on the battlefield. The once highly regarded Russian army’s debacles in Ukraine, are a perfect example. The Russian people struggle with unifying over anything coming out of Putin these days. His primary hold on them is fear. That is a poor bonding agent for the people of a nation. It deprives them of what the military calls, “the will to fight.”
Until 2016, Americans have always unified, regardless of any prewar politics, to fight a common, foreign foe. Pre-WW II, America was nearly as disjointed politically as it is today. Some nefarious movements were tearing the nation apart until… Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Our political differences evaporated, almost overnight in our rush to fight together as Americans against fascism and in defense of liberty. This despite the fact that two of the nation’s biggest prewar movements were the KKK and the American Nazi Party or the German American Bund.
In 2016, Russia, manipulating Trump and the GOP, was a first in that the GOP already MAGA indoctrinated, sided with Putin and largely, still do. Considering that Republicans make up roughly half of the American electorate, the chances of us unifying for the common defense against today’s most aggressive adversaries, is somewhere between slim and none. It doesn’t matter if a Republican or a conservative because the national party, is fully controlled by MAGA, hence, their agenda is a MAGA agenda. That agenda is in no way, principled conservatism and is in fact, fake patriotism over fake American values.
Our most pressing adversaries are what is now termed, the new Axis of Evil, Xi, Putin, Iran and N. Korea. They cooperate in a wide variety of ways that not only threaten US democracy but all global democracy. Tragically, the US and NATO national security communities either don’t understand or willfully misunderstand narrative, and its role as the core of national security. Besides this misunderstanding and willful ignorance, neither competes on the battlefield of influence and indoctrination. Our adversaries, selling fake patriotism to a complicit GOP have become the most serious threat to US national security and in fact our very republic, since the Civil war, 1861-1865. In fact, ideologically, we have never fully healed from the Civil War.
The US civil war was the only other threat to our very union, that threatened all that our founders foresaw for our nascent republic. Until 2016, we were never as threatened by internal divisions as we were over the fake patriotism of the Confederacy. Ironically, un-American ideology drove both the Civil War and 2016’s pro-Putin, anti-American GOP agenda. The only other time that we actually approached similar, ideology driven hyper partisanship, was just prior to WW II. This is the first essay that I will replay in today’s work. It was written just last week to explain overcoming hyper partisanship in order to fight WW II’s Axis of Fascism.
Like all of my essays, this one is also full of the most credible sources, accessible via embedded links. The links to the individual essays themselves, are at the embedded links in the captions of the graphics used for each essay.
The essay explaining this first portion of today’s essay is: A different story about D-Day and WW II A different story about D-Day and WW II - by Paul Cobaugh (truthaboutthreats.com)

As that MAGA whines incessantly about patriotism and how they are the only true patriots, let’s take a look at how they came to believe in their fake patriotism. First and foremost, NW/ Narrative Warfare is essentially a battle of identities. For example, the fake American values of the deep south during the Civil War, did not reflect our constitutional and founding values. In fact, we as a nation, really never got over the competing ideologies of the Civil War. Evidence of this can be found in the oligarchical, White Christian Nationalism of today’s MAGA movement. It was just as apparent in my youth, during the Civil Rights era.
The thing about NW is that since it is built around a person or group’s unique identity, it is something very difficult to alter. To be fully transparent, it takes a very long time, unless you have the professional knowledge and understanding of how to analyze “identity,” and then operate effectively with that analysis. In short, there are only two ways to know a person or group’s identity; to either understand the difficult and time-consuming analysis or to build it yourself by incrementally conditioning audiences (as in Pavlov’s famous dog experiment) over decades.
This is precisely what FOX News and their ilk have done over the past three decades. They have created an audience, built around fake patriotism best defined as, God, Guns and Trump. The lay term for all of this, is “brainwashing.” They now can trigger a predictable response with a few words, symbology, colors etc.
The essay that explains this section properly, is titled, Without factoring "brainwashing" into the equation for 2024, we're doomed to another far-right, extremist administration, no matter what pollsters say.
What exactly are our founding American values and where did they come from?
Today, the MAGA controlled GOP argues that America was founded as a Christian nation. This is fairly far from the truth. I have a deep historical respect for our founders, who they were, what they intended and why. There are few days indeed, when I am not reading history in some form or another. One of my most worn out sources is the National Constitution Center.org. Our nation’s founding is for me, a top 2 topic for reading and studying. In my well-informed opinion, our nation was born of Founding Fathers, who were "Woke" and also... radical progressives, for their time. I explain this in detail, including the deep historical references, in this section’s essay; Our founding fathers were “woke” and radical progressives for their time.

To support the essay above, one of my absolute favorites, is the historical essay below about, The state of our American Republic, through the eyes and words of our founders. Our founders were brilliant, largely innovative and open-minded men of vision, conscience and integrity.

The scholarship of our third POTUS, James Madison as he prepared for the constitutional convention was nothing short of brilliant. He sat down and analyzed all ancient and modern confederacies (democracies) from the ancient Greeks up to and through, his French contemporaries inspiring the spirit of all men to adopt the radical democratic ideals flooding France and Europe with hope for true liberty.
Being raised by a history and government teacher, I have studied both, throughout my life. Even in my teens as I followed family tradition and entered the Army at 17, at the very end of the Vietnam War, I could see the fractures in our national foundations that erupted in the turbulent sixties and carried through much of the seventies. I had a front row seat as the nation struggled to resolve Who we are as Americans and wrote from that seat about the experience in 2016, in the essay linked below the red, white and blue graphic. I hope that you find this essay about my experiences below, worth reading. Yes, it is short.
The identity of nations, just like people evolve over time. It is quite rare though for them to evolve in a manner in which they shed the core elements of their identity. This is the primary finding of my essay about “who we are as Americans.” To this day, the core elements of our American identity are still intact, but holding on by our fingernails, when half of American voters are brainwashed with fake patriotism. Their identities are now fully addicted to that fake patriotism of MAGA.
The only way to win our true identity back, is via Narrative Warfare and our entire national security community responsible for influence, refuses to learn about it. They have left the US unarmed on the cognitive battlefield. This means that electorally, we run a very high risk of another 2016 sellout to fascism, oligarchism and White Christian Nationalism, via MAGA voters.
Of all the threats, the one that violates our constitutional rights in the most un-American manner, is Christian Nationalism. As that religious values are always tough to discuss, it is also crucial to know when fake religious values are a threat. For this reason, another of my favorite essays in one explaining what Christian Nationalism really is. In this detailed essay, I support my opinions with most of our major Christian religions’ accounting of Christian Nationalism, including a powerful policy statement from the NCC/ National Council of Churches, warning us about its perils to democracy.
Another hallmark of MAGA is the endorsement of Oligarchism vs. the rights of the people. Oligarchism is the antithesis of what our constitution condones. In fact, many scholars consider our constitution, the “anti-oligarchy constitution.”
It would shock most Americans to know that oligarchical abuse of power has not only been a threat from the beginning of our republic, but today’s abuses of elite power, are at one of its recurring, cyclical peaks, in American history.
Understanding oligarchism is critical to all Americans, especially as the MAGA folks blame the current administration for so-called “inflation” when it is really price-gouging by personal and corporate oligarchs. Big oil is one of the worst offenders but are far from the only.
A third primary vulnerability to our constitution, hence our republic is the John Roberts Supreme Court that backs both Oligarchism and Christian Nationalism. Unfettered investment of dark money into campaigns by PACS supported by oligarchy has done powerful damage to our once considered, “anti-oligarchy constitution.” These investments, codified by the Citizens United SCOTUS decision now give oligarchs the entire advantage over citizens at the ballot box. That my friends… is NOT democratic. The cases that give SCOTUS the opportunity to rule in favor of oligarchism, are backed by who else… but oligarchs. These are often the ones handing out rewards to sitting justices like Alito and Thomas. In the same vein, the right side of the SCOTUS bench are proven Christian Nationalists, imposing their religious views onto the entire nation. Roe vs. Wade’s overturning was a direct result of their Christian Nationalist views.
Finally, I have saved my favorite research for last. It is titled, Being a Republican today, doesn’t make you a Conservative.
I think that most Americans, except for MAGA, will find this piece of great interest. Over the thirty years of FOX News’ conditioning of GOP audiences towards fake patriotism, they have become brainwashed to believe that they are in fact, “conservatives.” They are nothing of the sort and this essay proves it by the words written exclusively by Republicans.
In the essay, I lay out the 1956 presidential platform of the ultimate, principled conservative, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and compare it to the Texas GOP’s 2022 Midterm Platform. I provide and use cut and pasted excerpts from both to compare and contrast both against each other. The new Texas GOP Platform (as expected) is the precise opposite of Eisenhower’s in almost every single respect. The Texas version is best described as far-right extremist, not conservative and in fact, the furthest thing from it.
The reason that I selected the Texas Midterm platform is because it’s the latest I could find from the MAGA crowd. The RNC hasn’t written a platform since they anointed Trump, dictator-in-chief, in 2016.
I will wrap this up by saying that there is nothing wrong with differences of opinions from well-informed debaters. That is really a foundational element of being an American. Our problem now is that there are zero principles within the GOP, and absolutely not a shred of evidence that they actually have principles. What I do in my essays is provide the history and credible sources for all that I write. I never mind being wrong but hey, to date, not one GOP voter has given me any credible source for their conspiracy theory, pro-Putin, Oligarchical, Christian Nationalist or just plain racist. ideology. Yet still, they believe every word from their orange pied piper and his party sycophants.
Our nation not only was founded to support spirited dissent among its citizens, but constitutionally encourages it with our First Amendment. This is healthy for our republic, so long as it is grounded in reality and within our constitutional guardrails. Today’s MAGA dominated GOP can never do this. They rely on their brainwashed lemmings to follow them over the proverbial cliff at the ballot box. Since their ideology is in no way, based on American values, MAGA represents the most serious threat to our national security since 1865 and the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.
The only way to avoid another Civil War at this point in our history, is to break the spell of Trump/ MAGA conspiracy theories holding sway over our fellow citizens. I don’t see this happening unless all Americans, pitch in with our true history and values. Regardless of party, everyone that sees reality rather than MAGA propaganda as true, must not only vote, but engage within their communities. It is not hyperbole to say, that our republic hangs in the balance. For me, an eternal optimist to say such a thing, is alarming. I will retain my optimism though, but it grows tenuous with every passing day.
I hope that today’s history lessons via my essays, has helped readers to put this complex puzzle together enough, so that we can all see the threat more clearly. I will continue to do my part, here at the keyboard while wishing in the vein of famous patriot, Nathan Hale, that I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. More specifically more hands to type more truth about threats.
My very best for the rest of your week,
Paul