President Biden signing his infrastructure bill into law — a hard-won victory amid a barrage of anti-democracy narrative warfare/AP

Lisa Van Dusen

November 17, 2021

In the narrative colonization contest that is the current Washington echo chamber, the latest tactical trope is that “the Democrats have a messaging problem.”

At first glance, the notion that Joe Biden’s cannonball poll trajectory and the absurd suspended animation of Donald Trump’s political influence and electoral viability are the products of a messaging problem may seem plausible. To anyone subjected to American news lately, the perpetual parade of scenery-chewing show-trial clowns, veneered Savonarolas and inoculation anarchists attests to the possibility that, in our economically anomalous moment of mass employment migration, the multitudes who’ve abandoned their 9-to-5 jobs are now gigging as Joe Biden’s message mufflers.

This speaks well of Biden’s status as a sane, normal president unburdened by an operational imperative to monopolize the content sphere through the hourly deployment of ambient vulgarity, tactical imbecility, performative lunacy and concept-tested friendly fire. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that Biden — whose asymmetrical value as an American president who likes democracy and prefers finger gunning to coup plotting makes him an asset to Canadians, Americans and everyone else around the world whose rights and freedoms are imperilled by recent trends — is governing through a narrative warfare campaign best described by the military alphabet term Charlie Foxtrot (reflecting my ongoing effort to be less profane despite a sometimes overpowering editorial reflex to use the most accurate word).

The elements of that Cluster Foxtrot include the intractable progressives in Biden’s own party who, for the purposes of this political moment, i.e. less than a year before the 2022 midterms, are far more valuable to the narrative belligerents opposite Biden for their intractability than for their political views. Ditto the obstructionist, so-called moderates in his own party, again more relevant to this Charlie F**ktrot for their obstructionism than for their moderation. Add to those the critical mass of pseudo-journalists, operationalized commentators, covert propaganda wallahs, new world order think-tank content generators and friendly-fire political actors and this vortex of hidden agendas, Coney Island sideshows and tactical wankery makes for the most ridiculous Cluster Trotfox any president has had to govern through.

Adding “in peacetime” to such assertions no longer applies, since narrative warfare is the new war — see Belarus, engineered migrant Charlie Foxtrot. The use, per the NATO definition, of “propaganda, deception, sabotage and other non-military tactics to destabilize adversaries” has changed in recent years in the “speed, scale and intensity” of such tactics, “facilitated by rapid technological change and global interconnectivity.” NATO calls call it “hybrid warfare”. I prefer “narrative warfare” because it’s easier for civilians to conceptualize and it better captures not just the nature of the weapons but the goals of the perpetrators in essentially using corrupt, covert means to colonize and hijack reality so it can be replaced with manufactured, engineered nonsense.

In an atmosphere of trench narrative warfare, the best strategy is always to tell the truth, both because it’s true and, per Mark Twain’s observation, it’s easier to remember.

Interestingly, the Biden presidency represents the opposite — narrative warfare-wise — of the Trump presidency. During the Trump presidency, the contrived propaganda antics were coming from inside the Oval Office with democracy, truth, America and the liberal world order being the targets. This time, the hostilities dynamic has been reversed, with the authentic president on the inside and the Clustercharlie Foxf**k on the outside.

Which brings us to the challenge of formulating an elaborate, short-, medium- and long-term messaging strategy under such battlefield conditions. In an atmosphere of trench narrative warfare, the best strategy is always to tell the truth, both because it’s true and, per Mark Twain’s observation, it’s easier to remember. It doesn’t eliminate that moat of tactical Bravo Sierra (you know how this works now) surrounding the White House and immediately dousing every accomplishment in distraction, distortion and false framing. But it’s the most effective weapon.

The truth that won Joe Biden the 2020 election is that this unprecedented, uniquely 21^st-century chaos is a battle for the soul of America. Everything that’s happened since his besieged, defamed, counternarrative-obfuscated, Charliecluster F**ktrotted victory has only proven that proposition, from the events of January 6^th to the daily persistence of GOP-led democracy debasement on everything from voting rights to ridiculously racialized diversionary debates.

The most actionable political message from that truth is that the Republican Party can’t have it both ways. If they’re going to hold Donald Trump’s coat while he barks in the wings until the pre-2024 Des Moines Register online subscription-spike season, they also have to own his record. Joe Biden isn’t just building back better from the health and economic crisis of COVID, he’s building back better from a four-year nightmare during which the borderless, pan-partisan, anti-democracy covert Mafia I like to call KAOS and which Anne Applebaum refers to in her latest Atlantic cover story (with a gap or two in the org chart) as “Autocracy Inc.,” evidently owned the presidency of the United States.

The messaging Venn overlap of that reality and the Biden economic agenda is that a party bent on obliterating democracy as an Autocracy Inc. franchise doesn’t care about inflation, doesn’t really care about education, doesn’t care about health care and certainly doesn’t care about your future because any party or person bent on obliterating democracy only cares about power, not people. The last president proved that point every hour of every day, including on January 6^th 2021, in a way that makes partisanship incidental to the Republican Party’s utilitarian plausibility as a democracy undermining entity.

The daily effort to obscure that fact by deflecting attention to Democratic infighting, outlandish polls and the rest of the Bull Sierra buffet meant to rationalize an otherwise ludicrous victory in the midterms by the party undermining the very system represented by that exercise only proves that Biden is right about the nature of this battle.

Lisa Van Dusen is associate editor of Policy Magazine. She was Washington columnist for the Ottawa Citizen and Sun Media, international writer for Peter Jennings at ABC News, and an editor at AP National in New York and UPI in Washington.