The real Axis of Evil in the US is Russia, the MAGA controlled GOP and spineless Republican voters, putting party over country.
This is tough one to write, but someone must say these things out loud.
Happy holiday season Friday to TAT readers,
Today’s article is not an easy one to write and for a long list of reasons, but I will try to adhere to the main points, for the purpose of clarity. Our nation’s security depends on it. Please bear with me so as to fully understand the seriousness of the threat. Today’s writing will also be relatively stark and blunt. It must be due to the severity of the threat. Along the way, there will be a couple lists of previous articles, that add detailed support for the words I put on the page.
As most regular readers are familiar with, my background in national security includes an expert understanding of all aspects of influence that pertains to national security. After retiring from the US Army in 2015, I expanded my influence expertise to not only counterterrorism, but to all aspects of influence critical to the wars being waged against the US and our allies, by adversarial states like Russia, China, Iran and their satellite states like the now expanding BRICS bloc.
Due to the abject failure of the US national security community to be effective in this critical vulnerability, it has spurred me to begin writing this publication. Also, a book that I will publish this coming Spring, via brilliant new publisher, will address this topic specifically. I have had the extraordinary honor of not only working with cutting edge scholars and practitioners in this profession, at our Narrative Strategies Think/ Do Tank, but have also worked with other extraordinary professionals within the national security community. One of those remarkable and honest patriots was then, LTC Alexander Vindman, who headed the team I was part of, post Army career.
The bottom line to today’s article is that I know precisely what Putin and his fellow thugs are up to, in their ever-expanding assault on our American democracy and those of our allies, via what is known as malign influence. As you find by the end of this article, we should be very afraid of what is occurring in our nation. Professionals like me… we are terrified, equally from the threat, and that the US and allied security communities are impotent via their own decision-making, to defend us from this threat.
One of our current issues playing out, on the floor of the US House of Representatives and the Senate, is the issue of our budget, which the extremist MAGA contingent is refusing to work on, unless they can falsely equivocate, border spending and support to Ukraine. For the GOP, the border issue is dishonestly advertised as that the border threat, is as severe as the threat, from an aggressive, genocidal Putin, allied with Xi, another genocidal thug in China.
The sheer ignorance of this for informed professionals is staggering. For the GOP, it is business as usual, in support of Putin. Those who are bamboozled by the far-right, propaganda sources FOX News, NewsMax, Breitbart and most of the AM radio right-wing extremist jocks, this article will fall on deaf ears. Below are links to truth instead of the GOP propaganda, which is also part of Putin’s influence campaign against the US. Even a quick scan of the work below will show how well GOP border propaganda and Russian propaganda are similar.
Russian Propaganda Presents Fringe Views in US as Mainstream (voanews.com)
DeSantis and the GOP's myth of an 'open border' (nbcnews.com)
Will Republicans use Ukraine aid to get immigration, border changes? (usatoday.com)
Mounting a Defense on the Southern Theater: An Analysis of Russian Propaganda Aimed at US-Mexico Relations – Georgetown Security Studies Review
U.S. Border Crisis Should Take Priority Over Ukraine Support: Russia Envoy (newsweek.com)
Entrepreneurial newcomers: Russian-speaking migrant smugglers on the US southern border | Global Initiative
I have no idea how to make the threat simpler than to say, the Trump era GOP, conditioned by nearly thirty years of FOX programming, now has an audience under what the Soviet era influence operators called, “Reflexive Control” and is a part of their aggressive influence operations, called, “Active Measures.” Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, boldy and quite accurately once said:
For years, decades actually, Russia and their predecessor, the Soviet Union worked tirelessly to destroy the West by exploiting social division or as we call them in our current times, “culture wars.” These culture wars are what are at play now and have become the ideology of today’s GOP. It’s racism, elitism, worship of wealth while undermining the hard-working citizens who keep our country running and worship of a false prophet, in the employ of Putin, are what’s called the MAGA “base.”
They consistently vote against their own best interests, brainwashed by FOX and the rest and their pied pipers, US congressmen, senators, governors, state reps and attorney generals. These politicians are mere cogs in an anti-American influence machine, that will hand over our democracy to our most evil adversary, Putin. To make matters worse, they have been conditioned like Pavlov’s dog, to spew fake patriotic abuse against those of us who still believe in and defend, our actual founding principles. The whole lot of them, Putin’s stooges, intentionally or otherwise.
What the GOP spews in its Putin-favoring ideology, is as far it can get, from conservatism. To toss salt into the wound, there isn’t one single part of the GOP ideology, that comes close to principled conservatism. All of it is woven into a rope, that will drag the unsuspecting Republicans towards an authoritarian, White Christian Nationalist version of our nation. This precisely means, our constitution will become null and void.
For those who have after the past 30 years, forgotten or been brainwashed to believe today’s GOP is conservative, take a look at our last, truly principled conservative, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1956 platform. You will find it so moderate as to better compare to President Biden’s more than any GOP platform since. Both the current POTUS and Eisenhower, are what I choose to define as moderates, leaning towards a pragmatic progressivism. In my well-informed opinion, both are in keeping with the intentions of our founders. Also, for the record, our founders in today’s language, were “woke” by every measure of the concept.
Finally, those who vote Republican must face the fact that they are not voting for principled conservatism. The party itself is dominated by extremists of the MAGA type. Their ideology is part far-right extremism, authoritarian, theocratic and pro-Russian. If they actually understood this, they would NOT vote R at the polls. They don’t though and for the reasons explained previously, about them being conditioned, brainwashed or reflexively controlled.
The single scariest threat to US and allied national security these days is that neither the US nor NATO, know how to understand, Narrative Warfare or in laymen’s terms, influence campaigns. Both still depend on paying the same alleged experts that they’ve paid for forty years of failure and with not one, single thing to show for it. US and Western influence has diminished to frightening levels and yet, the Pentagon and IC/ Intelligence community are still discussing the same ole bollocks but with different terms. They have no idea how to campaign and couldn’t if they wanted to due to the bizarre, byzantine architecture of the US national security community.
Combat ineffective, the rusted, broken hulk of US Influence Operations (truthaboutthreats.com)
On the battlefield of influence, the US is unarmed (truthaboutthreats.com)
The US National Security Community has left us a critical vulnerability in US national security. (truthaboutthreats.com)
The US always fights the "last war," instead of the one we're in. (truthaboutthreats.com)
The US National Security community is incapable of managing mis/ disinformation threats (truthaboutthreats.com)
A Five Point Strategy to Oppose Russian Narrative Warfare (truthaboutthreats.com)
We can't protect ourselves from mis/ disinformation, until we understand influence (truthaboutthreats.com)
Below are three maps and they should be considered independently and collectively. The patterns of growing influence, human rights abuse and potential crisis regions are disturbing, to say the least.
The only significant difference in 2023 is that US inflation is decidedly improving, by all standards of measure. I will also add that, what is termed inflation here in the US and to some extent Europe is more price-gouging than inflation. Even this is showing signs of waning, as shoppers have slowed in making more expensive purchases.
As far as terrorism goes, START, Study and Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, is the Center of Excellence for terrorism research of the US Department of Homeland Security. Here is their assessment:
As I wind this piece down, let’s get back to the premise. The MAGA GOP, claims that the Southern US border, is an equivalent threat to defunding Ukraine’s defense against genocidal assault by indicted war criminal, Putin. What a pile of… well you can finish this sentence any way you like.
The GOP markets this propaganda because ever since Trump infamously came down his escalator, the GOP has been favorable to Putin’s interests, far more than our own. Their attempts to defund Ukraine, are just more of the same.
In fact, before you read the links below, I highly recommend opening this link to a Stanford University program that analyzes the ever-more-aggressive global far-right movement. Please keep this interactive source if for no other reason than, to remind you of how vile and un-American, MAGA and their elected representatives are. They are even worse; they are supporting Putin.
If you don’t believe me, try out these credible sources:
How the GOP became the party of Putin | Brookings
To Russia, With Love: The GOP Divide on Putin and Ukraine | National News | U.S. News (usnews.com)
Republicans' Divided Stance on Russia Is Major Boost for Putin (newsweek.com)
First-ever Vanderbilt Unity Poll reveals 52% of MAGA Republicans believe Vladimir Putin is a better president than Joe Biden | The Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy | Vanderbilt University
To quote a long-time friend, “the frontline against Russian aggression, is Eastern Europe, not the Jersey shore.”
If we don’t demand that the MAGA elected reps, holding our nation hostage, stop supporting Putin, the US will indeed be doing the same dying as our brothers and sisters in Ukraine and against the exact same foe. If we also don’t stop the un-American dishonesty of putting party over country, there will be no more US Republic. The White Christian Nationalists running the GOP and that exclude any possible still remaining, conservative, is out to destroy our nation and our constitution.
The Dangers of Christian Nationalism in the United States: A Policy Statement of the National Council of Churches – National Council of Churches
This requires voters to have a spine, instead of their current, amoeba-like dedication to fake patriotic values, spewed ad nauseum by today’s Republican Party. It won’t matter later that I and other honest experts say, “I told you so,” because our democracy will no longer exist. Putin and the global far-right movement, in conjunction with the MAGA party, will have destroyed and handed it over to Xi. Everyone will be happy but… true patriots.
My very best for your Friday and weekend,
Paul
“Only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage and such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or active measures [meaning] psychological warfare… What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that, despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”
Yuri Bezemenov - regarding the subversion campaigns of the Soviet KGB (current FSB) within the U.S.