Paul Cobaugh is a military veteran who retired as a Chief Warrant Officer who worked in special operations in communications and narrative strategies. He writes a blog about national security called “Truths About Threats.”
He wrote here about the loathsome Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan.
Cobaugh writes:
This is a short TAT. After all, it is the weekend. This morning, a friend posted on LinkedIn, a copy of the letter Jim Jordan sent to AG, Merrick Garland. That is what pushed me to my keyboard before resuming chores. Endless words will be written after the historical indictment of a former president. I will bring you a very different perspective on that indictment that very few will address, as I wade into this national security nightmare the beginning of next week. In the meantime… please consider my brief thoughts below, not for my sake but for all of ours. “All politics are local.”
The public square in Urbana, Champaign County, Ohio
Okay, I admit that I have a special disgust for Congressman, Jim Jordan. I will though be fair in this short post.
From a political perspective, any honest and well-informed person knows that Jordan was and in some ways, still is a Seditionist and enabler of the Jan 6th armed rebellion. He is also the Rep for the small Ohio town, where I attended 7th grade thru high school graduation. In my view, one of the finest small towns in the nation. Urbana, Ohio, the county seat of Champaign County numbered around 9000 people at the time, the biggest town in the county.
Now Jordan, is the rep of one of the most gerrymandered districts in the country. When I lived in Urbana, Ohio in the late 60’s and early 70’s, our local congressman was exceptionally well liked and respected. Clarence, “Bud” Brown represented what the Republican Party could have been, had they not deviated to scorched earth politics under the leadership and tutelage of Newt Gingrich. America has never been the same since. Don’t see this as an endorsement of the so-called, “other side” but as a statement of clear-eyed facts.
Jim Jordan’s, Ohio 4th Congressional District
This letter by Jordan to the AG, Merrick Garland shows in detail and Jordan’s own hand, the level of false narratives and utter dishonesty that keeps today’s MAGA-controlled GOP afloat. For those who have been warning about this and other indictments based on reality, research, and the opinions of elite experts, this is just another “hail Mary”, mis/ disinformation campaign designed to empower those who’ve proved that they will believe anything, if it suits their political identity. My personal and professional opinion of Jordan sees him as one of the most unethical and dangerous members of Congress.
What I once knew as a community of hardworking mostly rural Ohioans with remarkable grace, compassion and honesty, is now burdened by the weight of being sold snake oil by traitors and conmen who can’t even spell, “American values.” They largely operate on the traitorous narratives of FOX news. Fortunately there is still a solid core of great Americans in my home town but sadly, they are a minority. Even the Trumpists are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. The manipulation of their political identity by unethical, professional influencers, some domestic and some foreign, has resulted in Seditionists like Jordan and his ilk, leading the worst threat to our democracy since the Civil War.
The pain I feel for my hometown, is being played out all across America in small and large towns. The extraordinary work by U.S. Department of Justice, has thrown a hand grenade into their political identity. Now, with DOJ’s meticulously assembled public case being the news of the day, Jordan is launching a full-scale mis and disinformation campaign to support a known traitor. Not one person in Urbana would have tolerated this in my youth, despite being in one of the most reliable Republican Congressional districts in the nation.
Yes, I would also love to scream the words, “I told you so” but that will not heal America. Many Americans who were victimized by foreign and domestic malign influencers, are beginning to realize that they have been badly duped. Give them an open invite back into reality without the derision. They are family, friends and colleagues. Tragically, those who resist reality will likely never recover, because the level of indoctrination that leads to public displays of extremism, more often than not, is like rabies, mostly incurable.
It’s time for all Americans to realize that our fellow citizens are not enemies because they have different beliefs. Our Constitution, based on our founding principles, guarantees our right to our own beliefs, false or not. It’s really up to those who are willing to debate over facts and reality, to heal this nation for America’s sake, not a politcal party. It will be those who adhere to what it means to be a truly patriotic American, left, right or otherwise to put our nation, back on the path of progress, respectability and strength.
Truism: If you vote for honesty, integrity and our true American, founding principles… folks like Jim Jordan would never be in office. However you vote, we can never again allow any extremist movement to have so much say in our government, that they can once again threaten what so many have died to preserve.
Wishing everyone the most enjoyable weekend,
Paul
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you Paul. So well said.
I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania as well and my experience was just like yours. I was also a wrestler in our public school, just like Jim Jordan. Jim Jordan is not only a traitor to the values of our community, he is a traitor to the values we learned on the wrestling mat and in our schoolhouse.
We need more people like you to speak the truth and stand up for our Democracy and our common good. I admire your honesty and your courage.
Thanks kindly Rich.
All best to you
On the other hand, he’s easy to size up:
Good to see a political cartoon from Pat Bagley on here. He’s the political cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune, and one of the few media types in Utah who clearly sees a lot of issues, on particular what is being done to public education. He is a treasure.
Good people that lead insular lives are susceptible to brainwashing. The GOP is holding firm on the idea that the charges against Trump are the result of partisan politics. The MAGA maniacs are ‘standing by their man’ despite over whelming evidence to the contrary. What the GOP is saying is about as credible as the claim that the January 6th insurrection was merely a group of harmless tourists.
AMEN!!! Jordan is a disgusting disgrace as are many of the MAGA????
Not sure how to classify them……………………………….
Technically he’s American. Birthright citizenship, don’t you know? But he is every bit a Disgrace with a capital D. I occasionally drive through parts of his district. I have no idea what these people who support him fear. Their immediate neighbors are much more of a potential threat to them than any Black person in a some faraway city, undocumented workers planting and harvesting their crops, LGBT persons in their communities and elsewhere who mind their own business, or any visible neglect of their public infrastructure. And they would punish people in other states who are exactly like them except for how they vote.
Thank you so much Paul for your words of wisdom. The Ohio we have today chases our children out of the state once they graduate. We were once a shining beacon for other states to emulate, but sadly today are represented by legislators who just follow the red wave of voter suppression, book bans, and dismantling of public education. I also hope the good people of this state wake up and realize that our dangerous politicians that they have elected do not have the interests of Ohioans at heart, but just the idea of retaining power. Voting is the best way to change direction and I urge everyone to vote, especially in this August’s special election where our voting voice is at stake. Thanks for your inspiration ,
Susan from Youngstown, Ohio
Almost all of the state level politicians in Ohio and the jurists on the Ohio Supreme Court are right wing Catholics. The Church spends money against the rights of women and people who are gay, in favor of school choice (conservative Catholics publicly take credit for Indiana’s school choice legislation) and, to erode separation of church and state.
Mercer County in Jim Jordan’s district was farmed by German Catholic immigrants. When Black people traveled up the Miami Erie Canal for opportunity to farm, they were met by the German farmers with guns and the demand that they stay in the boat and go back to Cincinnati. Towns in Mercer County were sundown towns, well into the 1950’s.
The preceding is a truth that was not taught in the Ohio History classes in schools.
Ohioans, like Sen. Steve Huffman, deserve scrutiny. A couple of years ago, Huffman was fired from his job as an emergency room doctor for his comments about race. Steve’s first cousin, Sen. Matt Huffman, a leader in Republican politics in Columbus is Catholic.
Nationally, 63% of White Catholics who attend church regularly voted for Trump. The demographic segment makes up a significant part of Jim Jordan’s base.
Thank you so kindly Susan. Yes, I too miss the Ohio we grew up in. We have fallen so very far. Now I’m a Texan which is like going from the frying pan… into the fire, politically
“…It’s really up to those who are willing to debate over facts and reality, to heal this nation for America’s sake, not a politcal party.”
There is a tough one. All of the facts are a difficult matter. How the narrative that arises from the facts means almost as much as the facts themselves. Consider the story of Trump and the insecure documents.
Narrative 1: Trump has consistently followed the desires of Russia and Putin, and this is a part of that larger narrative.
Narrative 2: Trump, drunk on power, sought to control important documents in order to blackmail public figures for his own sake. The presidency was just a big candy store for a kid who liked that sort of candy.
Narrative 3: Trump is a part of one group of Oligarchs who operate behind the scenes. His possession of the documents was surely due to active participation of a staff dedicated to his ends. He cannot possibly have read these things, there being so many of them.
Narrative 4: Trump is just like all the other politicians who had documents discovered in their possession. They all “take their work home with them.” This is the attempt on the part of his opponents to make it difficult for him to defeat them in the next election.
There are plenty more stories, all or part of which can be true. The primary difficulty in argument is what part of the narrative you accept. Regarding this, motivation of the participants in the narrative is the overarching idea that ties together a good story.
Having a national debate on facts is a good start toward healing an increasingly hostile nation, but I despair that the polarized electorate will ever agree on the motivation of the main character until historians view him from the distance of time. If he succeeds in his efforts to create the United States in his image, we may never return to historians looking at facts.
Narrative 5:
Roy Turrentine Even the focus on Trump’s legal right to take documents doesn’t get to the core of the problem . . .
Regardless of the law, the problem is that no one in their right mind can say what he did with the documents was good for the nation or even a smart thing to do.
It can only be interpreted as a smart thing to do if your basic interpretive principle is to put the nation in grave danger on every level of our existence, foreign and domestic. If any person who has access to such documents wants to destroy the nation, THAT’s what they will do, and think is smart.
Voting for Trump is a seditious act. And those who STILL support a person who would do such a thing, Donald Trump, are by definition the most intellectually dull and morally defunct people on Earth. CBK
Paul’s despair about the election of Jim Jordan (the community’s implied change) is jarring for its lack of history.
Black people traveling up the Miami and Erie Canal from Cincinnati were met by the “hardworking” German farmers with guns and the demand that they stay on the boat and return to Cincinnati. There’s evidence that the towns of Jim Jordan’s district were sundown towns up until the mid to late 1950’s.
Residents of Mercer and Auglaise counties might look around and ask themselves why there are so few Black people.
You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie! Lots of things easily found. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia on Lima:
“The darker side of the progressive era revealed itself in the prominence of the Ku Klux Klan in the city. It was a center for the Black Legion, a notoriously violent subset of the Klan. On August 1, 1923, a KKK parade in Lima drew a crowd estimated at 100,000 people.”
Thanks, Greg, for the added info. If a legitimate pollster researched Jim Jordan’s voters (or, Sen. Steve Huffman’s and Sen. Steve Wilson’s), there wouldn’t be surprise at how similar Republicans in Ohio are to the deplorable Republicans in the Deep South.
Mcconell and Pelosi are disgraces. Maxine Waters disgrace, feinstein and swawell traitors
ALL FYI, for me, ANYTHING with “josh” in the title gets deleted automatically. If there was any credibility at first, it’s all gone now. CBK
He has no credibility. He’s completely brainwashed. I leave him here as an object to study and learn from. We have in our midst a spectacle worth watching to learn from. Not s word he says is persuasive or meant to persuade. It’s all insults. Like Trump, his hero.
Diane If it hasn’t been done already, Trump and such diatribes as Josh’s should be at the core of a learning section, somewhere in K-6 and then -12 and attached to any one of a number of course-types, e.g., any of the social sciences, but specifically history and civics . . . exploring the devastation and potential demise of democracy itself.
The greater “We” cannot go through another generation of such political ignorance in education. . . not if democracy is to survive. CBK
CBK,
Exactly. Josh is an object lesson. He shows us what happens when people are detached from history, facts, and reality. The interesting question is why there are people like him who believe without any grounding in facts or reality.
Diane There remains the possibility that, paid or not, josh is a troll (. . . an important part of the curriculum that exposes such things.)
As a philosophical issue, however, I have to wonder if such thinkers as josh (and I use “thinker” loosely here), know the difference between (a) their own knowing as actually being grounded in daily reality (as reasonable and evidential to them and to long-respected people–but not as automatically believed) and (b) thinking of their own knowing as merely following along with what a TV figure says or implies is real.
The difference between these two philosophical points of view is also the difference between a reasonable person and a cult follower. If we don’t REALIZE the differences in what we think knowing actually is, then we can easily repeat what the other person says without REALLY understanding the difference. It all becomes relativistic and vacuous . . . yelling back and forth. CBK