Our Last Independence Day?
By
Edward L. Haugland
Guest Editorial
Released and Distributed by the Stand Up America US Foundation
As we celebrate each Independence Day, we must do so knowing it could be our last as this great experiment in democracy, freedom, independence, and opportunity is not guaranteed.
The line between tyranny and freedom is thin and gray and blurred as we are outmaneuvered in an ongoing cognitive war. A war being fought in the most critical of domains – the cognitive domain – for which we remain unaware, unprepared, and ill equipped.
The cognitive war is a war that has been waged for a millennium prior to the founding of the United States of America, and it is a war that will continue for the next millennia and more. In simple terms the cognitive war is a war between those who seek to advance tyranny, control, and subjugation versus those who seek to advance freedom, humanity, and democracy. It is a war of ideas, ideology, and narratives – enabled by varied means, methods, and measures – to include at times violence, kinetics, and asymmetric warfare. It is a war in which deception, deceit and dystopian views are crafted in a manner to be passed off as the truth and fact.
The cognitive domain, the domain of the human mind, is defined by ideas, ideology, function, reason, etc. The cognitive domain encompasses all other domains – as an umbrella in which mankind operates, functions, learns, advances or regresses. All other domains – cyber, air, land, sea, subterranean, space, sub-surface – are all one operating domain, not separate.
The next crises we face may well be unrecoverable[1]. Venezuela, Hong Kong fell to tyranny. Few predicted their fall. Covid (aka China Flu) and Solar Winds crippled America. We live in a bubble that can burst at any time, with a false sense of security.
The cognitive war is fought to influence the balance of the Information Equilibrium[2] towards tyranny and control, or freedom and independence. It is a war that is global and domestic – and we are losing both. Domestically we see a level of division, ignorance, hate, and extremism growing in our country – extremism I refer to as comufascism.
Comufascism articulates the fact that both communism and fascism are really two ends of the same circle – both using basically the same tactics of division, hate, demonization, manipulation, false narratives, and propaganda to advance a tyranny of the few over a majority. Comufascism is the greatest, real, near-term threat to our independence and freedoms. Our foreign adversaries leverage the chaos and false narratives of the comufascists to advance a similar agenda.
One-hundred years plus ago we faced similar challenges in the form of the Spanish flu pandemic and the rise of communism in America, closely followed by the rise of fascism. We rose to the occasion, fought two world wars, several other, and a decades long cold war to cease the slaughter of tens of millions and advance the freedom and independence of hundreds of millions.
Yet, one-hundred years later, we repeat history, as we watch the rise of the comufascists, the real extremists, grow in numbers and influence. They include members of congress, corporate America, a once free press, senior national security officials, and social media companies. Rather than celebrate our history and the great American experiment – the comufascists denigrate it, censor the truth, weaponize our justice and national security systems against opponents as they push their false utopia under the guise of social justice and equality.
Today, more and more Americans take our freedoms for granted and fail to the sacrifices of others. Whether a dictator, storm, disaster, or downtrodden, we help, give, and come together. We remain a true melting pot, that the comufascists wish to turn into a boiling pot.
The progressive left are comufascists and true extremists. They do not celebrate, but denigrate our nation’s sacrifices, our giving, and our unity while trying to divide us by pushing a utopian extremism that advances false narratives and blatant racism. Every American citizen, by virtue of our freedoms and opportunities, are the most privileged in the world. For example, just look at the average salaries by race, and you see reality, vice their propaganda.
To ensure our next Independence Day, we must overcome the comufascists domestically. Concurrently, we must learn how to fight and win this ongoing cognitive war against our foreign adversaries. We succeeded many times in the past via the unity, sacrifice and will of the greatest generations of Americans. We must live up to the standard they set, not lower them to ensure our freedom, independence, as we value each individual citizen vice see them as collateral damage in a blood thirst quest for absolute power.
[1] Unless we adjust our future CONOPS and S&T Investments to account for the paradigm shifts that have occurred under our feet, our nation and its intelligence operations will once again awaken too late, to a different reality, which is likely to end badly with significant and long-term impacts to our nation’s security and place as world leader. I project such a negative and reactive outcome to occur either because we lost the cognitive war totally, our adversaries succeed undermining our institutions and democratic foundation to such an extent they are no longer viable, or, because our efforts to counter in the cognitive domain came too late. If we fail to act in the cognitive domain, we will likely end up in a major kinetic conflict resulting in devastating outcomes, in physical and human toll – recovery is questionable. Edward L. Haugland Future Military Intelligence: CONOPS and S&T Investment Roadmap 2035-2050 (The Cognitive War) | NSI (nsiteam.com)
