Never a better time for this restack: Shoring up democracy against the MAGA onslaught
TAT readers,
This restacked essay is the first of two essays today. If you have seen it before, I apologize for burdening your reading list. As you may have noticed, in the runup to this coming Tuesday’s election, I have restacked several essays that get right to the core of what our constitutional republic, is all about. In my opinion, it’s not enough to simply be against something, even something as willfully heinous as MAGA, but we must also be for something.
Our republic is built onto the most extradentary principles, primarily a direct descendant of the Scottish Enlightenment, not the Christian principles today’s MAGA hordes believe in. Sure, there are a few shared concepts between the Scottish Enlightenment but that’s not the point. The very principles written into our founding documents are elite, because they recognize “inalienable human rights” not those of a specific religion.
Those who wrote, passionately debated and brought to life, the principles of our nation, were brilliant and scholarly, and passionate philosophers. In fact, because of this, our founders were a colonial version of “woke” and radical progressives for their time. Those who read history, know this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve written a couple of deep essays about what our nation’s principles really are. They stand in stark contrast to the dishonest and fake patriotism of MAGA. Today I am sharing a small handful of these essays regarding our founding principles. I don’t expect everyone to read them, especially on a beautiful Autumn weekend but, should anyone be needing facts that “Shore up our Democracy from the MAGA Onslaught”, the essays below are for you.
The four horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse: Autocracy, Oligarchy, Christian Nationalism and Violence
What is Christian Nationalism and why it is a threat to democracy?
Our Founding Fathers were "Woke" and also... radical progressives, for their time.
Patriotism requires knowing our true founding principles, not MAGA's fake American values
If you want to see what MAGA governance looks like, look no further than Texas.
Now for me, it’s back to writing today’s essay about protecting women from MAGA’s assault on American women. I hope that you enjoy and find value in what is presented in this first essay.
Back later with the brand-new essay in support of women citizens!
Paul
Shoring up democracy against the MAGA onslaught
TAT readers,
Well, it is finally the weekend, and the week has been quite busy. In Thursday’s edition, I promised another piece on Friday but have been a bit under the weather ever since. Today, I will offer something a bit long, to fit your morning coffee tomorrow morning, or for evening reading. As a PSA, reading this evening may require an adult beverage.
First and foremost, I will remind everyone that this election is about far more than politics and is in fact, just one more phase in MAGA’s civil war, intended to overthrow our constitutional republic, and replace it with a dictatorship, run by oligarchs and underpinned by White Christian Nationalism. The roadmap for Trump and his cronies is Project 2025. Trump and his henchmen are publicly running away from their association with this insurrectionist manifesto. Still, it is permanently chained to them by the authors, including JD Vance, who wrote the foreword and more than a dozen members of Trump’s administration and informal advisors.
Even though we now have a great deal of energy behind VP Kamala Harris and her choice as running mate, Tim Walz, we are not out of the woods until there is a successful defeat of MAGA at every level in November. It is critical for those who believe in true American values, rather than MAGA’s fake patriotism to work together and most especially in battleground states and in red states where large-scale MAGA legislators have legalized all manner of elections obstacles to their opposition.
The threat of MAGA opposition anywhere, is a MAGA threat everywhere. Battleground states are the key to most elections but even more so, in 2024. We must remember here, that in Russia’s and the Trump campaign’s steal of the 2016 election, it was in a handful of battleground states that the Russian/ Trump campaign dirty tricks were played at scale. As that these types of influence operations are fully in my wheelhouse, I and other similar experts will clearly assert, that it was these operations that gave Trump and MAGA, the election.
Russian and GOP collaborative influencers, employed a wide variety of tactics and their primary goals were to trigger responses that immersed Republican voters, incrementally deeper into persuasive conspiracy theories that are now part of Republican, not conservative voter identities. Now as they say, “the bad guys own them.” In lay terms, I am talking about, “brainwashing.”
Their goals were and still are, to captivate the base with conspiracy theories and deliver around the clock doses of fake news content that drove them to the polls, in record numbers. A secondary effort was to dissuade opposition voters to not vote by suggesting that their votes didn’t really matter. To do this, they primarily messaged minority populations of voters who at some point or were currently, disadvantaged. The evidence of all I say, is quite well documented both in publicly available information, and in classified reports and analysis.
Some of the best tactics to thwart the MAGA/ Russian and GOP propaganda machines are to leverage your personal relationships to drive voter turnout. Again, this matters twice as much in swing or battleground states. As one raised in the polite Midwest, I fully understand that speaking publicly or publicly acknowledging your views goes against the cultural politeness, that we were raised with. Until the Trump era, I had never in my long life, broken the unspoken Midwestern rule, regarding discussing politics in public. Tragically, MAGA has cornered all of us into taking actions that rub our instinctive politeness the wrong way. Now we have no choice, if we are to preserve our democracy. It is not just Midwesterners either, it is every honest American.
With not one hint of hyperbole, I can declare that democracy is quite literally on the ballot, and for the first time since the presidential election, that gave us Abraham Lincoln.
Here are a couple of clues to what opposition to Trump/ MAGA must do.
Stop simply reacting to the exhaustive false content and conspiracy theories of MAGA. Like sports, you cannot win with defense alone.
Proactively employ stories about what the good guys are doing and have accomplished over the past four years and for heaven’s sake, not in the dry policy terms so typical of campaigns by the left.
Tell the stories or rather narratives proactively about why the Harris/ Walz ticket is what true America looks like, behaves like and role-models.
This is the key to a successful offense. It will force MAGA into a reactive mode, just as they have been doing to honest Americans, for nine years now.
Fact-checking alone, is near useless and there are few researchers in my profession, that will disagree. On the other hand, fact-checking that expresses the truth and framed in US founding principles and as interpreted by your friends and family at the local level, changes the stark facts, into far more successful messaging.
In other words, discussing patriotism for MAGA as, “God, Guns and Trump,” works for them. Opposition folks must talk about their talking points in terms of authentic American patriotism as expressed in our founding principles.
I suppose that all political campaigns must also include negativity regarding opponents. In this point, Trump and MAGA, make it easy but again, when deploying negative messaging about Trump and his party, remember to frame it in the principles of our republic. An example or two:
Project 2025 obliterates our constitution. It is helpful when criticizing to talk about “why” it destroys our constitution. Project 2025 empowers a state religion based on Christian Nationalism, which is overtly unconstitutional.
Project 2025 completely undermines the checks and balances built into our constitution by its writers, mostly James Madison. It steals power from the Legislative and Judicial Branches in order to base all power into the Executive Branch, which could hardly be more unconstitutional.
Most of what is embodied in MAGA ideology and as expressed by their 2024 platform are major deviations from our founding principles. When you hear the saying, “God, Guns and Trump,” this translates into a so-called, “Christian Nation” empowered by revolutionary and heavily armed patriots in service to a populist dictator. We must recognize that while there were a majority of Christians in the colonies at our founding, our constitution and its scholarly authors, determined without hesitation, that the US would not tolerate a state religion, under any circumstances. It is as adamant about no state religion as it is supportive of citizens being able to worship in any religion of their choosing… or not at all.
Another primary MAGA false narrative, is that our economy has failed and that we are experiencing “inflation.” Nothing could be further from the truth, but simply quoting facts will not cause MAGA to doubt their beliefs. It is how we talk about the facts and even, by who talks about them.” Narratives by default, require narrators. In your own communities and circles of participation, you are the best narrator, as are those whom you empower with knowledge and truth.
MAGA followers are not only pursuing unconstitutional agendas, but they truly believe that they are patriotic and moral. AS noted, they are in lay terms, brainwashed. They believe this because they are victims of a Narrative Warfare campaign waged for three decades by FOX News and their ilk. American voters are still vulnerable to such types of cognitive warfare, because our national security community refuses to even understand it. Even if they did, they are so operationally impotent, that they are still of no use to voters. We must do this ourselves. This is why that I write on this subject, nearly as much as other threats like Russia, China, Axis of Evil, Iran and so many other things.
The so-called “Fake News” era is really, a modern version of Yellow Journalism. In the late 1890s, publishing oligarchs, William Randolph Hearst would publish nearly any lie just to drive revenue for their newspaper industries. Now, Nation-states, corporate oligarchs and political parties buy media like FOX News, to gain power that in the end, erode our constitutional rights and pick our pockets at the supermarket and gas pump. It is up to us, to put a stop to this. Congress won’t act because it is those oligarchs, that write the biggest checks called campaign donations. Even via the Citizens United decision. our Supreme Court has endorsed oligarchy over the objections of our founders’ constitutional attempts to protect us.
My friends and family, the only way out of this self-inflicted wound of modern politics, is to vote for candidates and issues, that focus on our prestigious values, not the vapid political promises of those who refuse to live those values, after they are elected. If we can do this, there will be transparency in campaign finance, reliance on actual science, knowledge and wisdom, instead of what is now served up in culture wars.
If you look at MAGA agendas, their incessant culture wars are meaningless, and absolutely of no consequence to any American enjoying their constitutionally guaranteed rights. The pomposity of gender wars has zero to do with our constitution. Christian Nationalism is the antithesis of religious freedom. Their border accusations are as false as their patriotism and their dishonesty about our economy and price-gouging, the same.
If I meandered a bit today, my apologies. I suggest that it’s the combination of not feeling well and being a bit foggy from the meds. Still, my heart like all of yours, beats true to American spirit of who we are and were always intended to be. Our values and willingness to rebuke any attempt to take them, have seen us through every crisis in our history. If we do as we have throughout our history and guard our values preciously, we will do so in November. To be blunt, it is up to every one of us. I’m all in. I hope that we can all join in.
I will leave all of you with this; the old adage of, “the truth will set you free” also means… that the truth will keep us free.
My very best to all for your weekends,
Paul
HI Paul,
Once again, you have made your case loudly and vociferously over everything that you see wrong with the Republican Party. Granting, for the sake of a sane and measured conversation, that your basic premise is accurate, what would you suggest as a viable alternative for the American citizen who desires to fulfill his or her civic duty and cast a vote in next week's presidential election? In short, my friend, you repeatedly describe the problem from your perspective but never give an alternative solution.
Again, assuming for the sake of a rational discussion, that a possible alternative solution at the ballot box would be to vote for Democrat Party candidates, where is the positive incentive for me to do so? Given that Democrat Party leaders have gone out of their way to slander over half the American electorate with vile insults for their conservative values and Republican Party affiliation why should I vote for a political party whose leaders view persons such as myself with such utter contempt?
And just in case you need substantive evidence of these slanders and slurs, please consider the following litany of insults: "Bitter Clingers" (Barack "He is the One" Obama); "Deplorables" (Hillary "The Smartest Woman in American Politics" Clinton); "Garbage" (Joe "The Greatest President since FDR" Biden); and, during this campaign, "Fascists" and "Nazis" (Kamala "Word Salad" Harris). Why should a political party be allowed to govern when their leaders despise American citizens?
Since the only alternatives available to voters are to abstain and not vote (not a viable course of action), vote for candidates from some minuscule fringe third party (likewise not a viable solution) or vote for Republican Party candidates (the only remaining option). If you see another possible option, please enlighten me.