Autopsy of the election day failure to protect our republic
Dear TAT readers,
Last Thursday, I wrote about assessing the four primary entities to blame for electing a serial rapist, racist, pro-Putin traitor and a Republican party, hellbent on overturning our constitution, hence our constitutional republic, to office.
Last Tuesday was a “perfect storm” so-to-speak, of massive entities operating with obsolete thinking, strategy and worse, a failed understanding of the identity, of working-class Americans. Even worse, they haven’t the faintest idea how to reinforce true patriotism in Americans that has been systemically replaced, by the fake patriotism of MAGA. All four operate on near doctrinal, failed operational paradigms and refuse to learn from those failures. Now, without a stern and honest “autopsy” the failure will continue. These failures unaddressed, will hand our nation over forever to the fascism of MAGA, as defined by the Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse.
Not one substantive improvement has been achieved in decades, in any of the four groups, named below. Today, we will look deeper, and I would encourage enough advocacy by those unwilling to give up on our “great experiment,” that we will be able to restore, what Trump, Putin and their lemmings have stolen. Please proceed at your own risk as that sometimes, truth does indeed hurt. No intentional hurt is intended but problem solving requires truth, facts and the courage to accept it.
Onward
This is how I described those four entities in the previous essay:
The DNC which has been a failure at campaigning for decades. They seem to not understand working class Americans and are evidently, incapable of talking with us in any meaningful way. This is not Kamala’s or Tim’s fault. It is the imbeciles who run the party’s campaigns. They don’t understand Narrative Warfare, which is the most powerful of all influence strategies, if understood. Dozens of daily texts begging for money by both parties is not only obnoxious, but not what our republic was designed for.
Media drives competitiveness for advertising revenue. They still call the GOP conservative when it is nothing of the sort. Principled Conservatism for those not afraid to read previous GOP platforms, is best described in President Eisenhower’s Platform of 1956, the year I was born. That platform by comparison, is not a great deal different from Joe Biden’s. That is how far that the GOP has deviated from reality with their Platform, inspired largely by Project 2025.
Global media is owned by relatively few oligarchs, personal and corporate. Their subsidiaries and cooperative partners largely fall in line with those at the very top, for a variety of profit driven reasons. This makes a handful of owners and boardrooms, the controlling faction of what we see, read and hear. This is a thinly veiled attempt to deny any site or service not under their control their voice.
I hold a particular and well-informed grudge against the US national security community, for their past four decades of waste, fraud and abuse within the communities responsible for protecting Americans from foreign and domestic, malign influence. They have failed miserably and dangerously. Global democracy has slipped precipitously and our enemies like Russia, now openly and covertly, collaborate with GOP influence operations.
Voters, on both sides and of any other political persuasion are to blame as well. Both sides adhere to their own narratives and with false narratives on both sides. Still, those on the left, pale in comparison to the bizarre and endless false narratives coming from MAGA.
First up… the DNC/ Democratic National Committee
Hands down, my three favorite philosophers are: Will Rodgers, Samuel Clemens/ a.k.a. Mark Twain and Albert Einstein. The quote above by Rodgers, did not only apply when he first spoke these words, but exponentially worse, today. In fighting, being dictated to by party leadership and failure to assess honestly, learn and adapt, apply as an accurate follow-up to Rodger’s quote above.
In my lifetime, every single Democratic president save three, have been charismatic and brilliant orators. Two of these presidents who were not, are Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden. Both ethical and dedicated leaders, came to office after massive GOP failures, which overcame their lack of persuasive influence over the voting electorate. LBJ, came to office after Kennedy’s assassination and declined to run for a second term. In his first, he had defeated Republican Barry Goldwater, the first to employ the racist Southern Strategy that the GOP employs still, to this day. While the DNC, claims to and by actions, has supported working Americans far better than any GOP administration in my lifetime, it never once demonstrated competence in campaigning among them. Were it not for dynamic and largely successful D presidents, the GOP would have won always, based on campaign competence.
While that I appreciate that the DNC enables wild and exuberant family infighting, they are simply incompetent on talking to the entire nation. Dry policy or singular focus on one or two issues, does not speak to the working folks in America. Sure, abortion was a serious motivating factor and the abuse of women and all gender related issues by the GOP, but it did not address something far more important to working folks, their dishonest perception of the economy and especially, the false narrative of “inflation.”
The primary failure of the DNC though, is that they are reactive and fail to campaign 24/7 and every single day of the year. The MAGA/ GOP, supported by Russian influence operations, runs around the clock and creates most of the false narratives that that MAGA operates on. I will address this a bit later in the section about the willful failure and impotence of the US national security community. I will add this under this section… counternarratives alone are the influence world equivalent of, planning to fail.
Not once was there a single campaign of substance to instill a truthful narrative about the border, or “inflation” in the past four years. There was no real party effort to narrate the significant successes of the Biden Administration either in the moment, nor post success. Right up to the moment that my fingers touch the keyboard writing this, the overwhelming majority believe in an alleged border crisis, that inflation is out of control and that our economy is failing. Every voter left or right that believes these things has been left undefended from false narratives and their supporting propaganda. Where the hell was the DNC, narrating at least, equivalent to the steady stream of lies and dishonesty of the GOP about the issues?
If Americans at least heard truthful narration as much as the tsunamis of mis and disinformation broadcast incessantly from the GOP, at least there would have been a far better chance of a more factually inspired outcome to last Tuesday’s disgrace.
Secondly, it’s time to look at media not as left or right, but as the tools of oligarchy to sell more of what fellow oligarchs offer. There is a near non-existence of journalism ethics today in the board rooms of media corporations and their mega, global media conglomerates. In the propaganda outlets, like FOX News, there is a quantifiable aversion to ethics of any sort, not just journalistic ethics.
In other words, the desires of board rooms and pandering influence for advertising dollars, now dominate newsroom narratives. For example, some of my former and most dependable news sites, like Reuters and the BBC, are now banned from my source list, due to their near antisemitic, flawed reporting about the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon. Their efforts in my professional opinion, supported not only Hamas and Hizbollah but Iran, Putin and Xi via my analysis of the global Axis of Evil and their incestuous relationships with evil organizations, including terrorist organizations.
US media in particular, still reports on the GOP as conservatives, although not a shred of evidence exists that the MAGA agenda/ a.k.a. Project 2025 is in fact, “conservative.” There is a wide chasm between principled conservatism and the extremism of today’s GOP. MAGA is pure right-wing extremism, based largely on the extreme right-wing ideology of Putin’s controlled Russia. This is not speculation at all. Serious members of communities that understand extremism and its relationship to ideology, will tell you the same. I am professionally, part of these communities and have been for a very long time. The media supports such ideology by not doing their research and reporting based on many factors, like those regarding profits, already noted.
The bottom line on media is that there is little chance of breaking the “spell” that Russian supported, MAGA GOP operatives have imposed on their lemming-like GOP voters. This may sound harsh, but as a recognized expert in Narrative Warfare, I can assure you that this may be harsh but is also perfectly accurate.
This is not to say that the left also doesn’t have their own false narratives that prevent them from succeeding. The Russian, Chinese, Iranian and terrorist influence operations used to spawn campus protests, were built on false narratives about Israel, the Palestinian people and how the war in Gaza was being fought. This directly cost the state of Michigan last Tuesday, while playing a role in other losses as well. It cut the motivation of young, especially college student voters to even go to the polls as well.
Bottom line here… the majority of US media, must be carefully evaluated for their ethics. There are some excellent and free media evaluators. Use them. In the link below, I discuss this in more depth.
Third up is my deeply held and, extremely well-informed grudge against the US national security community, that is involved in influence, from the perspective of national security. Yes, this is and long was, my own professional community.
Again, after a succinct as possible explanation of their failing, I will also share links to some of my deepest possible analysis regarding these failings. This issue is as intensely complicated of a threat as there could be, and in my professional opinion, the most dangerous.
The US national security community responsible for protecting the nation at home and abroad, has failed miserably at their profession, since the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War, the US, in conjunction with NATO and other allies, ended up winning against communism for two relatively mundane reasons. First, we campaigned and in the widest variety of ways. We won more battles than we lost, and we never stopped campaigning around the clock… every single day of the year. Today, campaigning in influence at all, is quite nearly impossible within the architecture of the national security community. Even worse, even if we did campaign, we no longer know how.
Combat ineffective, the rusted, broken hulk of US Influence Operations
Unrestricted Social Media platforms are a severe threat to the US/ NATO and all democracy.
Influence Operations are centric to every aspect of National Security
Protecting our nation from Mis and Disinformation, requires true expertise at Ethical Influence
We can't protect ourselves from mis/ disinformation, until we understand influence
The entire community still trades on 1990s doctrine while changing the names of the components every 4-6 years, in order to secure more dishonestly acquired funding for research. For the decades that I have been part of this community, not one single improvement of substance has been achieved. Still, billions have been wasted. Let me repeat this… “billions have been wasted.” The defense contracting community continues to hire from the list of the same failed experts that wasted billions, and now continue to add to that list, newcomers promising magic via AI and approaches that depend exclusively on technology. This is the utter nonsense we get when those that hand out contracts to those who market them, have zero operational experience.
The result of perpetual, “waste, fraud and abuse” has been an ever-decreasing ability to protect US citizens from the constant stream of propaganda from our adversaries. As I have said for well over a decade, “US national security is unarmed on the cognitive battlefield.” The reason GOP voters vote in solidarity is that in lay terms, they are “brainwashed” or “conned.” In professional terms, we lost them due to Narrative Warfare because of sustained, decades-long propaganda from sources like FOX News and in the past decade, their overt synchronization with adversarial influence operations from the likes of Putin, Xi, Iran, Gulf States, etc. This last sentence is the furthest thing from speculation. The cold hard truth has been known for a couple of decades and acutely so during the Trump era.
The most succinct explanation of Narrative Warfare is, having such an intimate understanding of an adversary's identity that you can predictably control them, almost always in a subconscious manner. This gives our adversaries near complete control over the thoughts and actions of those impacted. Rarely, do they even consciously understand that are being controlled. This explains the GOP's inability to deal with facts. The only person or persons that can provide information that they will internalize, are those narrators they have been conditioned to believe. -Cobaugh
The entire world clearly understood that Russia swung the 2016 election to Trump. They also understand that Putin’s fingerprints are on nearly everything that the GOP says. The data is beyond clear. Still, a piece of the world’s loss of faith in American primacy, is that we clearly are impotent to defend our citizens from foreign and domestic influence.
My community is dominated by nepotism, fake expertise and selfish wannabe experts, trying to make a name for themselves by selling the contracting community, snake oil. On the operational side, the Pentagon’s impotence is a failure to train with modern knowledge, learn from operational expertise, and a doctrinal architecture so dysfunctional as to be laughable. They continue to discuss utter nonsense and are clueless regarding how to operate.
To make matters worse, there are no trained operators in the US military system. They teach specialties but never what influence really is and how to achieve it. My professional experience as an operator, came mostly from me making it up as I went based on deep research, operational agility and working for a command that prizes results, not doctrinal processes. Those from my small team, are very few indeed and that team no longer even exists. Don’t look to the IC or rather Intelligence Community, as that they are no better.
The bottom line here is that Russia, China, Iran, terrorist movements and even corporate interests such as oil, and oligarchs like Elon Musk, have more influence than the best trained national security personnel and their tools.
This is why I preach incessantly, that if we are to win against the adversarial influence campaigns by the collaboration between Putin and the GOP, we must do it ourselves. This was the original reason I began writing this publication. The American people, our republic and global democracy are at severe risk and no one at the Pentagon, ODNI/ Dir. of National Intelligence, Dept. of Homeland Security nor the FBI, has a clue about what to do. They are far too invested in big expensive systems and continue to ignore the basics of defense The key to defense is and always will be the cognitive resilience of the population of a country, not how many ships, planes, and battalions they have. The ever-deepening failures of the Russian army in Ukraine, are a powerful example of this.
Finally, the fourth category is the voters themselves.
This final section will be brief and quite possibly, a bit hurtful to many. The intent is not to hurt people’s feelings but deliver that proverbial slap, often thought to snap someone out of their shock or a bad habit. My intent is to help us restore reality about our nation and its values, along with the courage to express them in defense of those values. The fight for American democracy cannot be achieved solely, in private groups, dotting the pages of Facebook, LinkedIn and others. Many and for good reasons must protect themselves in these groups and cannot speak safely outside of them. Still, those who can and will, must take their beliefs public. Democracy dies in darkness is not just a saying… it is starkly true. If the outside world never sees resistance, they have no reason to reevaluate their beliefs. All democracy either dies or sustains itself, in the public square.
Like many after the 2016 election, I joined several online, private groups that commiserated about Trump, MAGA and the inherent fake-patriotism in both. My joining though was more about being able to better understand why, common-sense, decency and truth had failed to win the election. In fact, much of my work on and participation in social media, doubles as lab work for better understanding how adversarial influence impacts my fellow citizens.
My comments on social media never represent anything but the truth as I see it, while concurrently giving me a window into what adversaries believe and why and more importantly, what inspires those who defend good against evil. I wish to make it clear that I am never attempting to “influence” family and friends, other than deploying truth to be used by those who would also defend it. Think of my efforts as, passing the ammunition to warriors for justice.
Understanding the identity of audiences is the heart and soul of Narrative Warfare. Social media provides ample opportunity to better understand those identities, both friendly and adversarial. To be blunt, so long as Trump and MAGA control the entire GOP, it is the enemy of American values. Many who vote for the MAGA GOP truly believe themselves patriots, but that doesn’t matter so long as they put the enemies of true American values in office, where they can continue to further degrade our republic.
If all voters cannot be the type of citizens expected by our founders, or rather, well and accurately informed," there is no possibility of sustaining our republic. The only way to alter the thinking of MAGA/ GOP voters to accept truth, is via Narrative Warfare principles. Although all Narrative Warfare is about influence, telling the truth via Narrative Warfare principles so that all voters could make well-informed decisions is in my mind, far more ethical than what Trump, Putin and the GOP have been shoveling down the throats of America’s right.
Okay everyone, let’s summarize this autopsy.
There is a great deal to absorb in this abbreviated autopsy of the catastrophic 2024 nationwide election. In order to keep this somewhat manageable, I’ve limited it to four, primary categories that must be addressed urgently if we are to recover our republic from the Trumpian and Putinesque, jaws of death.
Every single citizen has at least one opportunity to achieve progress in one of these categories and many, two, three or even all four.
In order for any democracy or republic to sustain itself within the guardrails of their constitutions, truth matters. No political party should resort to the perpetually failing approach that the DNC seems to be addicted to. Like all power, the absence of leadership only creates a vacuum that will be filled rapidly with the most assertive players. When those players are as immoral as today’s GOP, which is supported by Russian influence operations consistently fills the vacuum left by the DNC, there will always be massive losses.
Most often in Narrative Warfare, he who gets there first… wins and wins bigly, as MAGA’s soulless leader likes to say. Secondly, counter-narratives don’t work, unless there is already a persistent and well-accepted narrator’s voice established among audiences. The DNC couldn’t do this today, even if they tried. They abjectly refuse to listen to anyone with operator experience, outside of their all too narrow version of political campaigning.
Of course, so long as MAGA generates more compulsive followers, marketers will push media to service their believers rather than telling the truth. In interest of their bottom lines, they don’t care who wins so long as they pile up the ad dollars and please their oligarchical boardrooms.
Considering the perpetual and willful negligence of the US National Security community, it is now exclusively up to the party, voters and media to accurately inform the public. As discussed, very little can be accomplished in these categories unless they learn, adapt and overcome their deeply ingrained, failed habits. I hold little to no hope for the national security community to make any significant improvements in the near future. Overall, they are currently so full of “road apples,” as to be useless. In fact, due to their lack of understanding about human influence, they are actually worsening our cognitive threats. I will debate this with any representative of the community.
Not to rain on your Monday and make it worse than any other Monday, but someone must tell the truth and nothing but the truth, without sugar-coating it. I take no pleasure in this but also am terrified for my grandchildren regarding the world that MAGA will impose on them, especially daughters and granddaughters.
If anyone wishes to learn more, please don’t hesitate to reach out or begin doing “autopsies” within the communities you are engaged with. For the record, each of these four primary focuses today, are easily a book’s worth of discussion. We all are now operating against time, and my next book will address just how brainwashed today’s GOP is, with Russian, far-right extremist ideology. The title will be, “Conned.”
I will leave everyone with the following imperative. Narrative Warfare takes time. It took the GOP roughly the same decades it took FOX news to capture their audience’s good sense and replace it with extremist ideology. That ideology was and still is, largely supplied by Putin. There is a reason that I use FOX News as the example, and I have been researching them for years. That is an essay for another day though.
It will take time as well for the US national security community, the DNC and the media to pull their collective heads from where the sun doesn’t shine. If they do not begin their course-corrections now, there may never be another chance to restore our republic, based on our founders’ beliefs and intentions. If we don’t start now, there will not be enough time to accomplish them before the Midterms and then, the 2028 election. None of the categories I have addressed in this autopsy essay, even acknowledge their roles in this debacle, let alone have any intention of fixing anything. This depends on pressure from us, the honest American people. My essays are my form of that exact advocacy. I hope with all of my heart, that you will join me in pursuing the restoration of our republic.
On a personal level, I don’t even recognize the meaning of the word quit and I imagine that most of you feel the same. I am humbly honored that so many of you have subscribed and follow TAT. It restores my faith in a nation, increasingly engaged in a civil war with fascists. We have succeeded before, and I have faith that we will succeed again. Godspeed our success.
M very best for your week,
Paul