Political narratives dominate our media and politics. Political narratives are political messaging gone wild. Since the beginning of this country, political opponents have used marketing style messaging, issue positioning, spin on the message and the issues, misleading statements and even falsehoods to win favor with the voting public. With increasing technology over the past 2 1/2 centuries, this messaging strategy & these tactics have grown to a point where it is almost impossible to keep up and distinguish fact from fiction, reality from fantasy, and lies from the truth. For example, take a look at the God & Country movie trailer below:

Featuring prominent Christian voices, GOD & COUNTRY is a new film that charts the alarming rise of Christian Nationalism and its threat to American democracy. In theaters Feb 2024. Visit https://t.co/OSnyeu6kB4 to learn more. pic.twitter.com/8DNfKiELuc

— godandcountrymovie (@godcountrymovie) December 7, 2023

This God & Country movie is as good an example of the power and purposeful misinformation with political narratives. The movie attempts to connect religion (Christianity) to a negative political narrative (nationalism). In doing so it attempts to redefine and thereby destroy the foundations of our American culture. Let’s break down this relatively new ‘Christian Nationalism’ political narrative. The anti-religious left and the media uses many negative narratives to define religion, especially Christians. The latest is 'Christian Nationalism'. Let's look at ‘Christian’ first. Christians are usually portrayed as white (which is another negative political narrative), and not at all true. The word 'Christian' allows the anti-religious left to target that group because they cannot target Jews, Muslims or other religions without being obviously contrary to the Constitution and their other political narratives around race and ethnicity. Christianity being the majority religion in the USA, they can easily isolate Christians and attach a negative political message to faith. This narrative is complementary with other political narratives around faith and religion that position the religious right as rigid, bigoted, racist, old, and out of touch. If they actually knew any religious people they would know that none of those are true. But, since the media & the left's view of faith and religion comes from political and media narratives, pushed by anti-religious activists, then it must be true, they think. If the use of these narratives is successful, two things can happen that are positive for the left. 1. anti-religious people will be further emboldened to work against the evils of religion. 2. even religious people will think, I am religious, but, I don't want to be associated with those 'nationalists'. Now’, the second part of ‘Christian Nationalism’. 'Nationalism' is a political narrative designed to attach conservative republicans to the far right of the political spectrum, what they have recently designated as ‘nationalist’. That is not the definition of any specific group in that area of the spectrum, but it has been dubbed as 'nationalist' by the political left & the media in order to attach a string of negative political narratives and make the term 'conservative' frightening, 'a threat to American Democracy', eh, another political narrative. The 'nationalist' identifier on the far right creates a next door connection to the farther right ‘Nazi'-style, 'authoritarian' (another political narrative) beliefs. Again, if you know any conservative republicans you find that they believe in America, love and respect the country and will fight to save it from all forms of authoritarian rule. They do not believe, as Nazi’s did, in an ‘aryan style supremacy’. Another narrative is attached to 'far-right nationalists', ‘MAGA extremists’. 'MAGA extremists' have been proclaimed as the ‘greatest threat to American democracy’ several times recently by President Biden. 'Without evidence', to use a media narrative, I might add. How ridiculous. But, because of the elaborate web of political narratives in this area, "far right", "christian nationalists", "Nazi’s, "authoritarian", and "MAGA", it is hard to keep the narrative noise straight, even for those who look for narratives in political media. It is like they say in court, “please expunge those statements from the record.‘ You might be able to eliminate statements you don’t like or that are inaccurate from the record, but they don't get deleted from the minds of those who heard them. To those who hear them, 'nationalism' is about power, 'authoritarian', 'racist', and a 'danger to democracy'. You have quite a list of political narratives at work in this one "christian nationalism' term: anti-religion narratives anti-christian narratives race narratives far right narratives MAGA narratives Nazi narrative inference authoritarian narratives danger to democracy narratives Almost as punctuation points, this movie also includes pictures and interviews with demonized (another narrative) Republican politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Isn’t all this consistent with what we see happening everywhere in the USA among schools, family, marriage, parenting, gender, etc..... It is not accidental. It is not organic. It is by design. Designed to 'fundamentally change this country', and objective stated by Barack Obama in 2008. To 'fundamentally change this country', you have to destroy it at its foundation. - place in doubt the legitimacy of the country's founding (CRT, 1619 project) - control its institutions (media, entertainment, government agencies, military, education, Supreme Court,....) - make enemies out of cultural beliefs (religion, patriotism, .....) - modify history (CRT, 1619 project) - destroy monuments - modify education of the young (CRT, DEI, - control availability and use of finances (ESG) - use America’s basic freedoms against it (higher education, freedom of speech, right to address grievances, illegal search & seizure,....) So what do you do to see through this web of interconnected political narratives? It is very basic, separate the narratives from the issue at hand and apply reality. 1. Be aware they exist. 2. When you see these narratives, immediately ignore them and separate them from the meat of the issue. 3. Put the issue in a realistic context. 4. Ask yourself is any of this makes sense. 5. Then determine what makes sense to you, not what you are told to think. Lastly, and most importantly, vary your news sources. This is the only way to insure you identify the real issue and can separate out the narrative messaging.