Talking with our MAGA family and friends, to save the republic from Trump and his henchmen.
TAT readers,
Yes indeed, election day is just two weeks from today. This presidential election year is more a battle in the ongoing civil war between MAGA and every single other American, than politics. Still, and just as in 1861 - 1865, the opposing sides are both family, friends and fellow citizens. November 5th is not conservatives vs. liberals, but fake conservatism vs. as noted, everyone else living in reality. As most TAT readers already know, history and professional insights via my national security profession, play a large role in what I write about. Today, I will reference those writings but mostly, it’s a personal story about keeping the lines of communication open between MAGA family, friends and fellow citizens.
First, a bit of background. By family tradition, as used to be the custom in the Midwest where I was raised, people did not discuss politics, religion or family “dirty laundry” in public. It has been only in the Trump era, that I have become vocal, and this is due exclusively, to honor my military oath, “to protect and defend the constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.” MAGA is in my professional opinion, the most severe threat to our constitutional republic, since our Civil War that cost roughly 600,000 lives and devastated enormous swaths of the nation.
The Confederate ideology was eerily similar to today’s MAGA party, with the exception of autocracy and what I have termed, “The Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse: Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and violence.” The problem with ideology, is that it really never dies. It reforms itself into a movement, changes its name to protect the guilty and slashes at the fabric of our nation. The other problem with ideology is that like MAGA, it is often violent and when in the hands of professional influencers, exceptionally dangerous. Examples would be Nazism, Soviet styled Communism, white supremacy, incel types, antigovernmental types, anarchy, etc.
The last thing that I will add to this background is that the other primary difference between the Confederacy is that now, professional malign influencers, foreign and domestic have collaborated for the entire Trump era and before, to convert that patriotic identity of the Republican party into and extremist movement. Principled conservatives have either left the party, taken a sabbatical or stay quiet to avoid the bullying of the MAGA zealots, often violence oriented or at a minimum, intimidators.
The psychology and tactics of influence they employ are my professional specialty, from the perspective of protecting our national security. Brainwashed and conned are just two of the lay terms that aptly describe the majority of the party. Professionally speaking, this is Narrative Warfare, and the specialty of our US based, national security focused Think Tank, where I am the VP, called Narrative Strategies. What makes Narrative Warfare so dangerous is that it alters the identity of those subjected to its dangerous and relentless content. What this means in the simplest terms, is that the lens that an individual or group views the world through, is conditioned to slowly see the world exclusively through the content from their favorite narrators, like FOX, Trump and the other thousands of like entities.
Thirty years ago, plus, FOX News/ actually a propaganda channel, began “conditioning” small changes in their viewers’ identity to believe in the fake patriotism and revisionist history we see today. Today, FOX viewers and now a long list of similar and collaborative sites, bombard Republican voters to believe in what can roughly be described as, God, guns and Trump-styled patriotism. FOX anchors and hosts, write alleged history books with subtle changes to our history, to justify their un-American rants and dogma.
This means that truth will not be accepted by the audiences of MAGA narrators like FOX, no matter how many fact-checks they are confronted with. The only thing they will believe is what those alleged newscasters say, write or film. Not one outside bit of information will get through to those most thoroughly “brainwashed.” This is where we are in America today and our national security community remains impotent to protect us. The answer that they refuse to accept and largely because they never listen to the handful of influence operators. There are damn few of us and an even smaller number that have campaigned successfully with narrative. This is another long story, but not for today. Below are a couple of links for those willing to dig deeply into Narrative Warfare.
What DHS and the FBI, who are both the primary entities for protecting our homeland, refuse to understand that the answer is fairly simple but will take a generation or so to mend. The answer is that they must stop fully depending on technology and talk to the American people. Censorship is not the answer unless there is an imminent or likely threat. After 9-11 and the creation of DHS, they and other government officials talked with the American people, on a daily or near daily basis, in order to inform them about threats, signs of a threat, who the threat was, and countless other types of critical information. Today, we mostly hear silence from the same.
Talking to our fellow Americans” is still the right answer but nearly non-existent and creates a perfect segue to the second part of today’s essay. Talking to each other, because it is apparent that the national security community won’t.
Now, my story…
The reason that I have begun engaging family and friends in the Trump era is simply because it is not only the right thing to do and that as aforementioned, the US national security community won’t.
Narrative Warfare which is fully dependent on understanding the identity of those in a discussion is not only part of my expertise, but who better than someone who shares multiple layers of identity with family and friends, to talk with, not at them? My profession requires vetting facts rigorously and the near complete absence of them in MAGA ideology is infuriating. Anger and nothing but anger is a poor bridge building tactic, especially between family and friends. So… I began talking with those fully steeped in MAGA beliefs. Human beings instinctively desire the respect of being heard. Why not accommodate them if it allows you to both respect them and past relationships, especially should it provide an opportunity to build bridges for understanding.
So, a handful of years ago, I slowly began politely engaging my old high-school friends on Facebook. I don’t trust FB for a lot of very good professional reasons but having moved away immediately after high school in 1974, it was one of the few ways to maintain contact. This also applied during my Army career when friends would move every two or three years. I was careful about personal data and still am. After Facebook’s nefarious role in the 2016 election, there is never a reason to trust them again. My initial engagements were to introduce some facts into conversations with old friends and family who had fallen under the Narrative Warfare spell of MAGA, supported by oligarchs and Russian influence operations. Those engagements quickly turned into deeply personal attacks for simply attempting to add reality to the conversations.
Those attacks continued by most MAGA friends until the advent of extreme right-wing social media sites, especially Truth Social. At least a third of my former friends in the MAGA camp left for Truth Social or at least partially so. Fortunately, those that remained were less “under the influence” and would listen to dissent, albeit often begrudgingly. Not many altered their overall beliefs, but at least the conversations were open and the respect and courtesy I grew up with, mostly returned. This is what happens when core insights into identity connects with the identity of the audience.
I never tried to “win” an argument but at least we kept interesting discussions going. We exchanged ideas and opinions, almost always civilly. Things continue to improve but my efforts to provide reality, are still pursued with the utmost caution. I want to hear my friends’ thoughts out of respect for over 50 years of friendship. I carefully push back on more aggressive comments and remind them of Ohio’s reputation for politeness. Typically, this works. Every audience has their own unique identity and a deep part of the identity of the Ohio that I grew up in, is good manners.
Less than a month ago, I returned from my fiftieth anniversary, high school reunion. Those in attendance, may have political differences, but we once again laughed, ate and celebrated without a shred of tension. To be fully transparent, decisive evolution of identity takes years, perhaps decades to alter. It took the FOX and supporting characters, nearly 30 to produce MAGA. My one constant worry and something that I have researching for years, is whether or not, Russian influence operations initially had cooperation with FOX. The tactics, ideology and identity very much aligns with Russian, far-right ideology. Putin has exported this ideology around the world, for decades.
Below you will find my response to my friends while discussing a FOX/ MAGA piece of propaganda from last weekend. It does a better job of illustrating my approach, than me describing it here. I believe that it could possibly be instructive to others hoping to rekindle respect in relationships, that have come under a great deal of stress, in the Trump/ MAGA era.
The comment below is in response to an old friend who agrees with me but takes a bit harder line in his comments. My response was to explain why I engage in these MAGA type discussions. The topic was an incident over the weekend at a VP Harris rally in Wisconsin where she was interrupted by anti-abortion rights activists shouting at her while she was speaking.
“I truly do love all of our old friends and want the best for them. Like you, I am concerned daily regarding the absence of any factual grounding. Psychologically, I understand precisely how the folks that are Trump supporters, have been manipulated by decades of propaganda to believe in an alternative reality. Yes, Russia is partly behind this and to this day, not only amplifies MAGA type conspiracy theories, but also creates them. This has been my career for decades and at some of the most elite levels.
My primary concern is to talk through things with family and friends to help them understand that their political beliefs, are not American values and more often than not, devoid of facts. This is professionally called, Narrative Warfare. I'm not trying to tell folks how to vote, but to ground them in reality so that they can make informed decisions. For example, over thirty years of FOX, people have been conditioned to believe in what is best termed, "God, guns and Trump" as patriotic. Nothing could be further than the truth. Even a superficial understanding of our constitution, history and the writings of every major Christian Church in the nation, have warnings about Christian Nationalism.
This type of Christianity is the complete opposite of the loving and compassionate Christianity I was raised with. On my mom's side, I come from dozens of "teachers and preachers," mostly small town and rural Methodists. Last year I believe, I wrote, an entire essay called, "What is Christian Nationalism and why it is a threat to democracy?" In the essay, I quote several mainstream churches such as Methodists, Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists etc. Even more powerful is the public advisory from the NCC/ National Council of Churches, that warns of the threat to democracy from Christian Nationalism.
By the way, our founders were adamant when writing our constitution, that they had no appetite at all, for a state religion. It is in fact, a false narrative that our nation was founded on religious principles. Our constitution and Declaration of Independence were the product of the Scottish Enlightenment that focused almost exclusively on inalienable human rights. This is explored in-depth in another of my essays. Our Founding Fathers were "Woke" and also... radical progressives, for their time." These were brilliant men, schooled in morality, the classics, deep religious studies etc. Our first Muslim congressman was sworn in on Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Quran. George Washington's letter to a synagogue in Rhode Island is a testament to his commitment to respecting all religions. The US has extraordinary values that have been undermined by selfish politicians and our foreign enemies for their own selfish desires.
Believing in our true national values, not those imposed on us by sneaky professional manipulators of our friends and family, is the key to unifying our nation. For this reason, I do often go the extra mile to hear people and nurture factual conversations. This is the precise problem with MAGA's conspiracy theories, there are no facts. MAGA beliefs are as far from pure patriotism and true Christianity as possible. MAGA is not even conservative if you compare it to principled conservatism of President Eisenhower, who was president when most of us were born. This is another deep essay, "Being a Republican today, doesn’t make you a Conservative." In this essay I lay our verbatim, comparison of Ike's 1956 platform to the 2022 TX Republican platform. The national GOP did not write a platform since 2016, until this year. Now it looks a great deal like Project 2025.
Finally, I would call people's attention to another essay, "Conned, the conversion of the GOP conservatives into right-wing extremists" where I explain how all of this occurred from a professional psychological perspective. I approve of any legitimate political belief system in our constitutional republic, but do insist that to make them worth hearing, these must be grounded in facts. When professional psychological influencers like Russian Intelligence is involved and working fulltime to elect Trump and MAGA Republicans to office, our nation and its principles are under severe threat. This is simply, a cold hard fact.
Anyway, this is very likely too long an answer to your question but it’s my attempt to explain that we aren't enemies but still family, friends and neighbors. You and I are sworn to a different standard though. We swore a sacred oath to, "protect and defend the constitution, from enemies both foreign and domestic." Your advocacy for truth, is you honoring that oath and which I applaud loudly. We just use different styles of honoring our oaths. Occasionally, when someone becomes personally insulting and often, I have responded more harshly. No American should be assaulted for expressing and defending our true values. Besides, as an Army Warrant Officer, it is kinda in my professional description.
I'm sure you can relate to this
Cheers
As they say, “the moral of today’s essay” is that had I not worked hard to keep the lines of communication open, I would have had the opportunity to reintroduce reality into my MAGA friends. I have known these people for at least 54 years and know them to be good, honest people, that have been immorally influenced by those who use their votes as weapons against them and the rest of us. Those votes are intended via Project 2025 and its close brother, the 2024 GOP Platform, to destroy our constitutional republic.
Divisiveness is a death knell to our form of government and our enemies know this. That is why Russia and the Soviets before them have always reinforced the societal divisions in the West. Now, Trump and the MAGA dominated Republican Party, have joined forces with them. If we can reunite with our family and friends and nurture conversation back towards reality, no outside influence can harm this. That is called building resilience. Resilience, not censorship is the answer and not one damn decision-maker in the US national security community gets this. They are too absorbed with the glitz of high-tech answers that absolutely will not solve our problems with mis and disinformation at this time. In fact, my professional opinion is that technology, without operator input, will make matters far worse and to an extent that will likely be unrecoverable for our nation.
For heaven’s sake, what the hell is so hard about patiently talking with our family, friends and fellow citizens? Even worse, why is it so hard for DHS and the FBI, whose job it is, to do so? We must again, rally to the cause and do what government is apparently incapable of doing. That is, if we value our republic.
My best for your week,
Paul