The October Surprise deal with Iran did not end US secret and illicit arms sales there. Not counting the sales Associated with the so-called Iran-Contra deal, the United States sold at least $15 billion worth of arms to Iran. Billions more were sold to Iraq. These sales were illegal, violations of the Arms Export Munitions Control Act, but deemed necessary for policy purposes. According to the New York Times, Major General Colin Powell was among the first in the DOD to know that these arms were being transferred, and he facilitated the transfer of 2008 TOW missiles to the C.I.A. which was the middleman in the transaction. 1
Beginning in 1992, the C.I.A. also shared intelligence with Iraq. The act forbade third party transaction, but the latter offered some cover so North and others arranged elaborate third country arrangements. Former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Vice President Spiro Agnew also profited handsomely in arranging them. The profits were needed for Pentagon and intelligence covert operations, and some of the money went to finance the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
The weapons that went to Iran and Iraq were drawn from repositioned stockpiles without the knowledge of the NATO allies or the NATO commander. The allies would have objected as the shortage of arms would have meant at times that only a nuclear response would have been available had the Soviets attacked. The US arranged to let the Soviets learn of this arrangement through a prisoner exchange in 1986. By then the cat was out of the bag as the Italian government discovered that massive shipments were being made out of the ports of Talamone and Tuscania, and an Italian investigative judge turned out a 6,000 page on this part of the arms sales.
At that time, an arms salesman Arif Durrani testified that he witnessed \these dealings and ended up with a long prison term after a trial in which he was prohibited from introducing much evidence to support his claims. In addition, the Israelis sold huge quantities of weapons to Iran and then asked the US to replenish their arsenals. After Iran-Contra was revealed, huge shipments continued from US sources and Israel to Iran. While all of this was going on, the US through Vice President George H.W. Bush manipulated oil prices downward to assure that Iran would have problems buying everything it needed.
The idea was to make money on arms sales while still trying to pick a winner. There is also considerable evidence that Iraq received. Iraq was acquire US chemical weapons through third party channels. US authorities did not consider it a serious matter as these weapons were hard to store and use and had a short shelf life. Some chemical weapons producing equipment and others were shipped by Wakenhut from Eagle Pass,Texas to Chicago, and then to Baltimore. Equipment sometimes originated at a plant in Boca Rotan, Florida.
Some weapons purchases were made with loans diverted from US agricultural credit programs, and the department later had to mislead a House subcommittee under Charles Rose that looked into the matter. C. Nicholas Rostow, special assistant to President Bush, also wrote to departmentofficials on April 8, 1991, instructing them not to give Congress documents about this matter.
Showing posts with label Republicans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republicans. Show all posts
Monday, January 24, 2011
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Voters Poised to Ratify Destructive Republican Alterations to Our Political System
Vice President Joe Biden doubts there will be “a grand debacle” for the Democrats in November, but the experts believe the Republicans will hold a small majority in the House and come close to taking the Senate. E.J. Dionne wrote that if the election were held now, the Republicans would seize the House. Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz thinks the Republicans will gain just enough seats for a majority—39. Charlie Cook, believes the number will be in the low 40s.
Likely Policy Changes and Inquisitions
In concrete terms, this means To get budgets and essential legislation passed, President Obama will have to consent to extending all or part of the Bush tax cut for the rich. With the help of the so called “New Democrats,” deregulation will resume. Obama will have a much more difficult time extracting us from two pointless wars.
It also means that armed with subpoenas, the Republicans will be probing Obama’s role in Illinois politics and his dealings with a contributor and developer who has since gone to prison.
On instructions from the Bush White House, Michael Fitzgerald taped thousands of hours of conversations among Illinois Democratic politicians, and this will prove a treasure trove for House Republicans bent on digging up scandal.
When Bill Clinton was subjected to a massive inquisition, the drive was driven by rage that he had won and by the belief of the Religious and Hard Right that he lacked legitimacy. Now we have an African American president who has been falsely called a socialist. The coming witch hunt might make Whitewater look like a Sunday school picnic.
Ratifying Damaging Changes to Our Political System And Rewarding Obstructionism
The worst consequence of a Republican victory will be that voters would have endorsed abuse of the filibuster and legitimized tactics of bald faced lies and obstructionism. American politicians have always resorted to lies on occasion and the filibuster has been used in the past. Now the filibuster threatened routinely and political commentators simply report as though the 60 vote requirement is written somewhere in stone. The ordinary voter knows that the Democrats are supposed to control Congress, is unwilling to do any analysis beyond that, and simply concludes the Democrats are to blame for accomplishing little.
Politicians have lied in the past, but now Republicans have made the flat, outright lie a tool deployed almost daily. The lie is repeated and reported upon without correction and is accepted by many. Today’s lies are not even clever distortions or half-truths. They are not the least bit artful and are part of an approach to politics that rejects American precedents for comity, civility, and compromise. Republicans think the outright lies and continual obstructionism are natural and legitimate because they no longer subscribe to traditional American political mores. They have imported an approach from Great Britain, and a victory in 2010 would mean that voters have ratified this effort to remodel American politics and the way Congress operates.
A Republican attack advertisement being used in Pennsylvania demonstrates, in a small way, how dishonest the Republicans have become. It displays a 50 foot tall Nancy Pelosi acting as a puppeteer, manipulating ten Pennsylvania Democrats. The implications are that these Democrats do not vote as they see fit and that Democrats are required to vote in lock step. We Americans traditionally frown upon too much party spirit and too much party discipline. The Republican advertisement suggests that Pelosi in imposing the kind of discipline found in foreign countries. In point of fact, it is House Republicans who vote in lock step on major legislation. The one major exception is a New Orleans Republican who voted with the Democrats on the stimulus bill.
Now in the minority in both Houses, Republicans have decided to oppose almost every major piece of legislation. They view their responsibility as getting back in power, not helping to govern. Even when Democrats fill legislation with Republican amendments and rely upon past Republican proposals, as in the case of health care and environmental legislation, the Republicans repeatedly claim that all their ideas were ignored and that the Democrats had moved very far to the left. Senator Charles Grassley, who authored the provision paying for end of life health management, later led the party in denouncing that provision, saying it established “death panels.” Jon Kyl, the number two Republican in the Senate, openly admitted to an interviewer that since 2009, the Republican strategy was to oppose major Democratic initiatives. Why would he admit something like this? He simply assumed that the interviewer shared his belief that the British parliamentary take no prisoners approach should apply here in the United States, even in times of deep crisis.
The Followers of Gingrich Adopted the British Parliamentary Model
Lock-step voting, strict party discipline, and continual threats of filibusters in the Senate have proven to be highly effective political tactics that assure the Republicans great gains in November 2010. The obstruction has limited the Democrats legislative accomplishments and has enabled the GOP to blame the Democrats for accomplishing little and also for not quickly restoring prosperity. In some respects, they have weakened policies to the point that they might not work well. Hence, the stimulus was under-funded and the health care plan gave too much to the insurance industry. In any case, the Democrats will have to bear all of the blame.
The GOP, in both the House and Senate, have morphed into a British style party. It has been a development that has been in the works since the 1990s. It is interesting that in this year, the Brits conducted an American-style campaign and the new government has issued a “Contract with Britain.” On this side of the pond, we are into the second year of a British-style Republican Party. Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek says it is “something completely new.”
However, the obstructionism, high degree of cohesiveness, and strict party discipline have been in the works for some time and are rooted in the “revolution” former Speaker Newt Gingrich brought to Republican politics. Gingrich admired the British parliamentary system and wanted to remodel the House of Representatives along those lines. He detested as “petty politics” the traditional method of debate, haggling, and eventual compromise. He saw James Madison’s belief in political pluralism as corrupting and opposed log-rolling as an obstacle to party government. Known as a “bomb thrower,” he wanted to end the 40 years of Democratic domination of the House by attacking the tradition of civility. He thought the party’s leaders were weaklings for co-operating with the Democrats to pass legislation. He expected his colleagues to be on a permanent political war footing. This is what he considered “grand partisanship.” The idea was to seize power in any way possible.
As speaker he sought to further weaken the committees, because their mode of operation was based on the traditional way of operating; they undermined his model of party government. Republican leaders have far greater power than their Democratic counterparts in appointing and removing committee chairmen. This tight control over committee posts enables them to enforce tight discipline in the ranks. In the Senate, discipline is so tight that Republican senators are forbidden to even talk to Democrats about some matters without permission of the leadership.
Since the ascendency of Newt Gingrich, Republicans have come to believe that the House of Representatives should function like the British House of Commons. The conduct of Senate Republicans makes clear they now see politics as all out political warfare all the time—even in time of deep economic crisis. This is a foreign approach to government, which brings greater efficiency and can result in the dramatic fall of governments and new elections to test the public mood. Of course, our problem is that the president and members of Congress are elected for fixed terms.
The parliamentary model calls for one party rule, making collaboration and compromise unnecessary. When in control of the House, Republicans frequently barred Democrats from committee meetings. Often lobbyists were brought in to sit with the committees in drafting legislation. When Democrats tried to hold a meeting as a committee caucus, they were arrested. Sometimes they full Democratic caucus was even barred from using a meeting room in the Capitol. There were times when Democrats were excluded from conference committees. These actions may not been taken so much out of meanness; they simply reflected a very different view of how the House should function.
Like Woodrow Wilson, Gingrich thought it possible to informally amend the Constitution through practices, actions and precedents. Essentially, he set out to run the House along the lines of the British House of Commons.
Professor Gingrich believed that political discussions should educate the voters, and he was often the source of fresh ideas and discourses intended to educate voters. Today, however, Republicans no longer offer fresh ideas or attempt to educate voters. In fact, when not using tried and true hot button issues, they have taken to resorting to flat-out falsehoods, which the mainstream media rarely fact-checks. Instead of educating they have taken to instigating violence and encouraging people to disrupt public meetings. In these respects, they are not following the British model, but these tactics have proven to be highly effective.
Gingrich also believed in legislative supremacy, and he sought to weaken the Clinton White House. His decision to shut down government was consistent with this outlook. A consistent advocate of a parliamentary system, he sought to reduce checks and balances, seeing them as obstacles to action. Gingrich was not in office when George W. Bush was in power, but his followers continued to implement his philosophy of one party rule. The difference was that they shelved parliamentary supremacy and took orders from the Republican White House. Indeed, their willingness to trim checks and balances probably predisposed them to support the emergence of the unitary executive under Bush.
If Republicans retake the House, look for monumental clashes. Obama will be forced to surrender on several fronts, and that still will not save him from relentless probes.
Democrats in both chambers lack the cohesiveness that characterizes the Republicans. The Democratic Party remains a diffuse confederacy. Democrats are living in the past and expect the legislative process to work as it always has. They do not seem to realize that the Republicans have passed through a major transformation and that they are not likely to return to civility, bartering, and compromise.
A Time of Crisis is ideal for the Republican Changes to the Political System
The completion of the Republican transformation came at a time when voters are in a state of crisis, worried about terrorism, a fragile financial system, and lingering unemployment. Under these circumstances, people swing to the right, embracing political fundamentalism.
A majority accepts the content of decades of Republican propaganda as the conventional wisdom. This is why most people accept the claims of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell that the Republicans are not obstructionists, even though much of what they reject was first proposed by them. McConnell refers to cap and trade as part of the leftist agenda even though Republicans first proposed it as a alternative to a carbons tax. The health care reform was built on Mitt Romney's principle that each person has an obligation to buy insurance. Offering health care through the insurance companies was the heart of the Republican plan offered by John Chaffey and other Republicans a decade and a half ago.
At one point, the Republicans denounced the Obama administration for leaning too hard on BP. This is still the opinion of most Republicans in the House. The 150 member Republican Study group has taken this position and Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Energy Committee has apologized to BP for the mistreatment it received at the hands of President Barack Obama. Two Republican Senate candidates have said the same thing.
Yet, Boehner now claims that it is Obama's job to personally stop the Gulf oil leak. It is another absurd claim, but the Democrats should figure out how to point to his inconsistency and refute the claim. Given today’s climate, effective rebuttals will sway only a few voters and possible motivate a few more Democrats to turn out in November.
Most voters either have not noticed Republican obstructionism or approve of it. The new fact is that it takes 60 Senate votes to make a majority, and the public seems to be ok with it. Mainstream media people report on it as though this was long been a fact. Likewise, the many Republican inconsistencies and lies have not damaged the GOP. This is partly because the GOP far surpasses the Democrats in communications skills and political tactical know-how. In 2010, it is probably possible to make any absurd claim against the Democrats and be able to make it stick. A large majority of Republicans still think Barack Obama was born in Africa.
The Risk of Permanent Damage to Our System
A final irony is that the Tea Bag wing of the Republican Party, which touts its patriotism and devotion to American tradition, is unwittingly leading the charge to make permanent the importation of major elements of the British system. Imagine someone in the uniform of a Continental Army soldier carrying the Union Jack. They are also busy selling interpretations of the Constitution that have no basis in precedent or law. They think the Second Amendment legitimizes using violence against government when ballots do not accomplish what they want--- what they call the “Second Amendment option” and they think simple legislation can strip children of illegal immigrants of citizenship, even though the Fourteenth Amendment says otherwise. There is a certain lawlessness among these people who wrap themselves in our beloved Constitution and flag.
We could be overwhelmed by very destructive political forces, and there is no guarantee that the damage can be fixed sometime in the future. What is at stake is real damage to our political system, and this is something voters are likely to take into consideration.
Likely Policy Changes and Inquisitions
In concrete terms, this means To get budgets and essential legislation passed, President Obama will have to consent to extending all or part of the Bush tax cut for the rich. With the help of the so called “New Democrats,” deregulation will resume. Obama will have a much more difficult time extracting us from two pointless wars.
It also means that armed with subpoenas, the Republicans will be probing Obama’s role in Illinois politics and his dealings with a contributor and developer who has since gone to prison.
On instructions from the Bush White House, Michael Fitzgerald taped thousands of hours of conversations among Illinois Democratic politicians, and this will prove a treasure trove for House Republicans bent on digging up scandal.
When Bill Clinton was subjected to a massive inquisition, the drive was driven by rage that he had won and by the belief of the Religious and Hard Right that he lacked legitimacy. Now we have an African American president who has been falsely called a socialist. The coming witch hunt might make Whitewater look like a Sunday school picnic.
Ratifying Damaging Changes to Our Political System And Rewarding Obstructionism
The worst consequence of a Republican victory will be that voters would have endorsed abuse of the filibuster and legitimized tactics of bald faced lies and obstructionism. American politicians have always resorted to lies on occasion and the filibuster has been used in the past. Now the filibuster threatened routinely and political commentators simply report as though the 60 vote requirement is written somewhere in stone. The ordinary voter knows that the Democrats are supposed to control Congress, is unwilling to do any analysis beyond that, and simply concludes the Democrats are to blame for accomplishing little.
Politicians have lied in the past, but now Republicans have made the flat, outright lie a tool deployed almost daily. The lie is repeated and reported upon without correction and is accepted by many. Today’s lies are not even clever distortions or half-truths. They are not the least bit artful and are part of an approach to politics that rejects American precedents for comity, civility, and compromise. Republicans think the outright lies and continual obstructionism are natural and legitimate because they no longer subscribe to traditional American political mores. They have imported an approach from Great Britain, and a victory in 2010 would mean that voters have ratified this effort to remodel American politics and the way Congress operates.
A Republican attack advertisement being used in Pennsylvania demonstrates, in a small way, how dishonest the Republicans have become. It displays a 50 foot tall Nancy Pelosi acting as a puppeteer, manipulating ten Pennsylvania Democrats. The implications are that these Democrats do not vote as they see fit and that Democrats are required to vote in lock step. We Americans traditionally frown upon too much party spirit and too much party discipline. The Republican advertisement suggests that Pelosi in imposing the kind of discipline found in foreign countries. In point of fact, it is House Republicans who vote in lock step on major legislation. The one major exception is a New Orleans Republican who voted with the Democrats on the stimulus bill.
Now in the minority in both Houses, Republicans have decided to oppose almost every major piece of legislation. They view their responsibility as getting back in power, not helping to govern. Even when Democrats fill legislation with Republican amendments and rely upon past Republican proposals, as in the case of health care and environmental legislation, the Republicans repeatedly claim that all their ideas were ignored and that the Democrats had moved very far to the left. Senator Charles Grassley, who authored the provision paying for end of life health management, later led the party in denouncing that provision, saying it established “death panels.” Jon Kyl, the number two Republican in the Senate, openly admitted to an interviewer that since 2009, the Republican strategy was to oppose major Democratic initiatives. Why would he admit something like this? He simply assumed that the interviewer shared his belief that the British parliamentary take no prisoners approach should apply here in the United States, even in times of deep crisis.
The Followers of Gingrich Adopted the British Parliamentary Model
Lock-step voting, strict party discipline, and continual threats of filibusters in the Senate have proven to be highly effective political tactics that assure the Republicans great gains in November 2010. The obstruction has limited the Democrats legislative accomplishments and has enabled the GOP to blame the Democrats for accomplishing little and also for not quickly restoring prosperity. In some respects, they have weakened policies to the point that they might not work well. Hence, the stimulus was under-funded and the health care plan gave too much to the insurance industry. In any case, the Democrats will have to bear all of the blame.
The GOP, in both the House and Senate, have morphed into a British style party. It has been a development that has been in the works since the 1990s. It is interesting that in this year, the Brits conducted an American-style campaign and the new government has issued a “Contract with Britain.” On this side of the pond, we are into the second year of a British-style Republican Party. Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek says it is “something completely new.”
However, the obstructionism, high degree of cohesiveness, and strict party discipline have been in the works for some time and are rooted in the “revolution” former Speaker Newt Gingrich brought to Republican politics. Gingrich admired the British parliamentary system and wanted to remodel the House of Representatives along those lines. He detested as “petty politics” the traditional method of debate, haggling, and eventual compromise. He saw James Madison’s belief in political pluralism as corrupting and opposed log-rolling as an obstacle to party government. Known as a “bomb thrower,” he wanted to end the 40 years of Democratic domination of the House by attacking the tradition of civility. He thought the party’s leaders were weaklings for co-operating with the Democrats to pass legislation. He expected his colleagues to be on a permanent political war footing. This is what he considered “grand partisanship.” The idea was to seize power in any way possible.
As speaker he sought to further weaken the committees, because their mode of operation was based on the traditional way of operating; they undermined his model of party government. Republican leaders have far greater power than their Democratic counterparts in appointing and removing committee chairmen. This tight control over committee posts enables them to enforce tight discipline in the ranks. In the Senate, discipline is so tight that Republican senators are forbidden to even talk to Democrats about some matters without permission of the leadership.
Since the ascendency of Newt Gingrich, Republicans have come to believe that the House of Representatives should function like the British House of Commons. The conduct of Senate Republicans makes clear they now see politics as all out political warfare all the time—even in time of deep economic crisis. This is a foreign approach to government, which brings greater efficiency and can result in the dramatic fall of governments and new elections to test the public mood. Of course, our problem is that the president and members of Congress are elected for fixed terms.
The parliamentary model calls for one party rule, making collaboration and compromise unnecessary. When in control of the House, Republicans frequently barred Democrats from committee meetings. Often lobbyists were brought in to sit with the committees in drafting legislation. When Democrats tried to hold a meeting as a committee caucus, they were arrested. Sometimes they full Democratic caucus was even barred from using a meeting room in the Capitol. There were times when Democrats were excluded from conference committees. These actions may not been taken so much out of meanness; they simply reflected a very different view of how the House should function.
Like Woodrow Wilson, Gingrich thought it possible to informally amend the Constitution through practices, actions and precedents. Essentially, he set out to run the House along the lines of the British House of Commons.
Professor Gingrich believed that political discussions should educate the voters, and he was often the source of fresh ideas and discourses intended to educate voters. Today, however, Republicans no longer offer fresh ideas or attempt to educate voters. In fact, when not using tried and true hot button issues, they have taken to resorting to flat-out falsehoods, which the mainstream media rarely fact-checks. Instead of educating they have taken to instigating violence and encouraging people to disrupt public meetings. In these respects, they are not following the British model, but these tactics have proven to be highly effective.
Gingrich also believed in legislative supremacy, and he sought to weaken the Clinton White House. His decision to shut down government was consistent with this outlook. A consistent advocate of a parliamentary system, he sought to reduce checks and balances, seeing them as obstacles to action. Gingrich was not in office when George W. Bush was in power, but his followers continued to implement his philosophy of one party rule. The difference was that they shelved parliamentary supremacy and took orders from the Republican White House. Indeed, their willingness to trim checks and balances probably predisposed them to support the emergence of the unitary executive under Bush.
If Republicans retake the House, look for monumental clashes. Obama will be forced to surrender on several fronts, and that still will not save him from relentless probes.
Democrats in both chambers lack the cohesiveness that characterizes the Republicans. The Democratic Party remains a diffuse confederacy. Democrats are living in the past and expect the legislative process to work as it always has. They do not seem to realize that the Republicans have passed through a major transformation and that they are not likely to return to civility, bartering, and compromise.
A Time of Crisis is ideal for the Republican Changes to the Political System
The completion of the Republican transformation came at a time when voters are in a state of crisis, worried about terrorism, a fragile financial system, and lingering unemployment. Under these circumstances, people swing to the right, embracing political fundamentalism.
A majority accepts the content of decades of Republican propaganda as the conventional wisdom. This is why most people accept the claims of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell that the Republicans are not obstructionists, even though much of what they reject was first proposed by them. McConnell refers to cap and trade as part of the leftist agenda even though Republicans first proposed it as a alternative to a carbons tax. The health care reform was built on Mitt Romney's principle that each person has an obligation to buy insurance. Offering health care through the insurance companies was the heart of the Republican plan offered by John Chaffey and other Republicans a decade and a half ago.
At one point, the Republicans denounced the Obama administration for leaning too hard on BP. This is still the opinion of most Republicans in the House. The 150 member Republican Study group has taken this position and Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Energy Committee has apologized to BP for the mistreatment it received at the hands of President Barack Obama. Two Republican Senate candidates have said the same thing.
Yet, Boehner now claims that it is Obama's job to personally stop the Gulf oil leak. It is another absurd claim, but the Democrats should figure out how to point to his inconsistency and refute the claim. Given today’s climate, effective rebuttals will sway only a few voters and possible motivate a few more Democrats to turn out in November.
Most voters either have not noticed Republican obstructionism or approve of it. The new fact is that it takes 60 Senate votes to make a majority, and the public seems to be ok with it. Mainstream media people report on it as though this was long been a fact. Likewise, the many Republican inconsistencies and lies have not damaged the GOP. This is partly because the GOP far surpasses the Democrats in communications skills and political tactical know-how. In 2010, it is probably possible to make any absurd claim against the Democrats and be able to make it stick. A large majority of Republicans still think Barack Obama was born in Africa.
The Risk of Permanent Damage to Our System
A final irony is that the Tea Bag wing of the Republican Party, which touts its patriotism and devotion to American tradition, is unwittingly leading the charge to make permanent the importation of major elements of the British system. Imagine someone in the uniform of a Continental Army soldier carrying the Union Jack. They are also busy selling interpretations of the Constitution that have no basis in precedent or law. They think the Second Amendment legitimizes using violence against government when ballots do not accomplish what they want--- what they call the “Second Amendment option” and they think simple legislation can strip children of illegal immigrants of citizenship, even though the Fourteenth Amendment says otherwise. There is a certain lawlessness among these people who wrap themselves in our beloved Constitution and flag.
We could be overwhelmed by very destructive political forces, and there is no guarantee that the damage can be fixed sometime in the future. What is at stake is real damage to our political system, and this is something voters are likely to take into consideration.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
How Much Damage Will The Teabag Movement Do to America?
Maybe the great body of Tea Baggers cannot be reached, but we must answer their charges in hopes of contributing to an eventual paradigm shift for some of them. Only disconcerting facts or personal experiences lead people to change mindsets.
Many of us are tired about reading and writing about the Tea Baggers, but a few facts will help us to understand why we need to keep studying them.
Half of the unaffiliated voters in the United States say they are closer to the Tea Bag movement than to anyone else. This movement has the potential to recreate the situation after 9/11, when the political middle shrank dramatically. This time, there is the possibility that the near disappearance of the middle will greatly benefit the Right. Thirdly, Noam Chomsky, one of our brightest progressive scholars, warns that the present level of anger in politics arouses legitimate fear that fascism could emerge here.
When the Tea Baggers appeared, they very briefly seemed a little like real economic populists as they were raising hell about what the Wall Street speculators did to our economy and financial system. But they soon forgot about the bankers and focused on punishing those who voted for the TARP and upon “taking back our country.”
A Republican pundit tried to paint the Tea Baggers as playing a role similar to that of the hippie counterculture radicals of the 1960s. But the young rebels of that time read some good journalism and often had a serious theoretical critique of the system. The Tea Baggers might be like Wall Mart hippies in that they do not see through the establishment’s propaganda machine; rather they soaked up much of what it had to say.
“Pitchfork Populism ”
Time used the term “pitchfork populism” to describe the Tea Party movement. That is a reference to the Southern Populists of the late 19th Century, one of whose leaders was called “Pitchfork Ben.” That movement, starting out as the Farmers or Southern Alliance and it had genuine economic grievances against the banks and railroads. There was a brief moment when some of those deeply frustrated white farmers allied with African American share-croppers. After all they were all in the same boat. The Southern establishment eventually co-opted the white farmers by getting them excited about preventing blacks from voting and enacting Jim Crow legislation.
Some of these people were not nice, God-fearing farmers who were somehow misled. More than a few spent years in paramilitary anti-black movements and were deeply hostile to Catholics and Jews. There is a parallel here with some of the extreme right militia groups that constitute one of the two nuclei of the Tea Baggers. ( The other nucleus is libertarianism, which is far less important in TeaBaggism than some suppose.)
What the Southern Bourbons accomplished over some time in the 1890s occurred among the Tea Baggers in as matter of months. People who started out as some sort of populist soon became spear carriers for the Southern Establishment, and some of them fought strenuously to uphold every aspect of the southern conservative cannot. They became political fundamentalists.
Similarly, the Tea Baggers briefly showed a flash of economic populism when they complained about Wall Street, the insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical companies. In less than a few months, they were denouncing efforts to regulate business or the banks, and were running cover for people like Mitch McConnell, who on behalf of the banks and speculators, watered down financial reform. Like the Southern Populists, these people became preoccupied with race.
Their talk about “taking back government” seems to be about race and resenting the poor. They oppose big government but cannot define what that means other than being against taxes and programs that assist “people who don’t want to work.”
Extreme Right-Wing Populism Ratcheted Up to a Dangerous Level ??
These are hard times, and people whose incomes and security are threatened sometimes grasp at straws. Most Tea Baggers seem to have jobs and some savings, but they seem to be worried about their 401ks, mortgages under water, whether their pensions will be cut, and whether their Medicaid benefits will be cut to provide medical coverage for over 30 million more people.
For more than three decades the income of the middle class has been shrinking. Few reasonable people can deny this or argue that this will change soon. Even the slightest knowledge of what happened in 2007 and 2008 would prompt the expectation that things are likely to get a lot worse for the middle class. Some people—perhaps even a majority-- just cannot live with that kind of knowledge. Their solution is to resort to the hysterics,
anger, threatening behavior, and simplistic thinking.
Eliminationism
This writer and others have worked within the framework that classifies Teabaggism as the most extreme form of right-wing populism. Some, following Daniel J. Goldhagen, call it “ Eliminationism” because these extremists react so harshly against pluralism and people who are culturally and racially different than then. Granted, what we observe here is what might be a relatively mild form of eliminationism. None of them are talking about camps or Nuremberg laws.
Tea Baggism= “Political Fundamentalism”
On the other hand, this model may be flawed. For one thing, the Republicans have had over three decades to ramp up right-wing populism. One can doubt that there were that many more conservative religious and rural folk out there to enlist in these ranks. What is happening now is that large numbers who were formerly not affiliated have flooede into Tea Bagger ranks. They are not , for the most part, people who think mainly about such hot button issues as abortion and stem cell research. Perhaps something else is going on.
It is very difficult to draw a clear line between the two phenomena, and they sometimes merge. Many of the Tea Baggers clearly have roots in right-wing populism and the Christian Right. Today, the Tea Baggers share characteristics with right-wing populists, and there are elements of overlap. Sometimes we find in the Tea Baggers an admixture of conventional religious thought. The political fundamentalist tends toward dogmatic attitudes, violence—at least verbally, and a refusal to accept challenges to the conservative elements of the conventional wisdom. The dinclination toward dogmatic attitudes does not include carefully stated policies.
When one studies the European right-wing authoritarian movements of the 1930s, right-wing populism was there , but over time it diminished and became political fundamentalism with an inclination toward accepting authoritarianism. Political fundamentalism was at the core of those movements. It was larger and more fanatical and dangerous.. Tea Baggism is essentially a version of “ political fundamental. ” There is a strong urge to shut down one’s critical processes and hang on desperately to some elements of conservative conventional wisdom. They offer ready-made answers and are embedded in our culture and sold to us daily by mainstream media and culture. What is happening is that frightened people are simply reverting to “default” positions and clinging to them for dear life. They try very hard to convince others perhaps because they want to be convinced themselves.
A blinkered view of reality is reassuring and comforting. Political fundamentalism thrives on simplicities and simplifications. There is such a thing as “protective stupidity” which more than a few need in order to be comfortable with their lives and it is likely that conservative strategists know how to feed it. The only antidote is continual reality therapy, and it may not work quickly.
Right-wing populists are mainly concerned with cultural and values questions. Aside from the matter of race, these hot button values matters are often of secondary to political fundamentalists. People in both movements seem to have problems with race, but it is a much more central to the American political fundamentalist.
Most American populists – right or left--believe in the democratic process. No matter what the Tea Baggers say, their actions show that they are perfectly willing to do permanent harm to that process by disrupting rallies, displaying weapons to intimidate people, threatening opponents, and demanding that their elected officials do all they can to shut down the legislative process. Some even spat on Congressmen and called them vile names.
Populists differ from political fundamentalists in another important way. Back in the 1930s, the followers of Huey Long and Father Charles Caughlin embraced some very unorthodox monetary theories. It is difficult to imagine the political fundamentalists flirting with fiscal heterodoxy for very long. We have already seen how they have taken up arms to defend big business and the Wall Street bankers sand speculators from government regulation.
Political Fundamentalism is a Barometer of Crisis
The more people who are in turmoil and crisis, the more political fundamentalism there will be.
Even before 2001, there were conditions present that promoted political fundamentalism. Many people could not deal with a diverse, urban society and the anomie that went with it. Truth seemed harder to establish, and many simply could not deal with the relativity of truth. They hankered for absolute certainties, and were unable to compartmentalize things in their own minds. People were less connected to others than before, and people were so absorbed multitasking and busy with many things, that they had little opportunity to develop rich inner lives, without which there can be nothing but selfishness, fear of others, and a lack of empathy.
Then came the terrible events of 9/11 created a siege atmosphere that began to move many Americans toward political fundamentalism, and the George W. Bush administration did all it could to produce this result—recklessly insinuating that anyone who disagreed with it was an ally of Al Qaeda. Thus, Max Cleland, a US. Senator from Georgia who lost three limbs in service to his country, was turned out of office because he was said to be insufficiently patriotic. He was replaced by someone who had not worn the uniform. The onset of a near depression and the near destruction of our financial system in 2008 greatly exacerbated the crisis atmosphere.
Why Some are More Prone to Political Fundamentalism than Others
Recently, Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weller noted that many Americans have a great need for order and certainty and cannot deal with ambiguities. People who find reality difficult to tolerate have a deep need to find simple and certain explanations. They develop an aversion to unbiased information. They also need scapegoats, such as blacks, Hispanics, Moslems, liberals and homosexuals. These are authoritarian tendencies, so using the imagery of the Boston Tea Party and griping about government in general terms does not make one anti-authoritarian.
Sixty years ago, Konrad Lorenz, a brilliant scientist whose politics we rightly deplore, knew that there were many people who were naturally fearful and given to simple solutions. These people had problems facing unpleasant realities and reverted to the sunny promises offered by conventional wisdom. In a crisis, these people become political activated and embrace political fundamentalism. This is why people in Europe moved to the right when struck with inflation and the great depression. To go the other way would require ability to accept reality, question accepted wisdom, eschew simple answers, and abandon core beliefs of a lifetime.
When confronted with a crisis, it is so much easier to accept an explanatory framework that explains “everything” quickly, it is much like a religious conversion. Tea Bag ideas transform some of these people from feeling helpless and victimized to feeling empowered. Attending Tea Bagger meetings for them can be cathartic and deeply therapeutic. Many of their converts are political neophytes for whom this is not so much a political rebirth as a political birth.
Political fundamentalism is a somewhat new ideology and a metaphor for dogmatic solutions that are like panaceas. It offers black-and-white , simple answers and simple answers that do not require careful thought, weighing of evidence, or compartmentalizing things.
Teabagging became a sort of hysteria that seems to be easily moved from target to target by those who subtly directed it. At first these people thought they were victims of the banks and Big Pharms. In no time flat, they were fierce defenders of those in Congress who do the most for the banks and Big Pharms. Tea Baggers even denounced Senator Scott Brown when he did not back Republican efforts to defend Wall Street by blocking financial reform. This transformation would be amusing if it were not such a tragedy. But in all these cases, they moved naturally from brief complaints about banks, speculators, or Big Pharm to dogmatic adherence to what they think are American “givens”—opposing meddling government and regulations that could harm banks and business. They are back to the old idea that so-called free markets solve all problems. It was this outlook that nearly brought on a depression and the destruction of the financial system.
It is astonishing to watch the growing number of Americans who share this sentiment as hostility to regulation and the health care legislation continue to grow. Apparently, Americans are so stressed now that many naturally revert to some degree or other to the verities that we have long been fed by our culture, the mass media, and the Republican information machine.
Certainty Resides to the Right
Tea Bag sentiment, of necessity, tends to the right and to authoritarian positions. Perhaps they are first aroused by the misbehavior of the banks, but in the long run their quest for certainty and simple answers leads them to what they think are American fundamentals. In 2004, some of these people were deeply offended that anyone could suggest that Americans were actually torturing detainees. Once it became clear that this was the case, political fundamentalists quickly moved toward approving the torture. It was a matter of Americans versus “Others.” Some mistakenly think the Tea Baggers are essentially libertarians. A few are, like Rand Paul, but most are not libertarians. Most of them do not complain about the surveillance state and agree with Senator John Cornyn, who ridicules people who worry about civil liberties: “None of your civil liberties matter after you are dead.”
Probably not one Tea Bagger in a thousand will see the inconsistency in Governor Bobby Jindal’s and Sarah Palin’s conduct. For a long time, he said the federal government should stay out of our lives, but now it must build sand barriers and compensate fishermen. Sarah Palin sang the same song about less government and is now all over President Barack Obama because he has not figured out how to shut down the well in the Gulf or found a way to scoop up millions of gallons heading toward marshes and beaches.
Paul has talked about a planned ten-lane highway –coupled with a pipeline and rail line—that will soon link Mexico-the US and Canada—as part of NAFTA. He says there might also be a common currency. Wild stuff!
Now Rand Paul, perhaps the nation’s leading Tea Bagger, denounced Obama for criticizing BP; Paul says criticizing business is “un-American.” Maybe he forgot that the original Tea Baggers—those angry folks in Boston back in 1773—were reacting against a monopoly given to a business, the East India Company. In Colorado, Dan Maes, a Tea Bagger backed candidate for Governor, is saying Coloradans should “beg forgiveness from the energy industry that Bill Ritter chased out of this state.”
Sharon Angle, the Tea Bagger nominated to oppose Harry Reid, calls for abolition of Social Security, and the 16th Amendment. Will senior citizen Tea Baggers in Nevada become rational enough to realize she wants to stop their monthly checks? Time will tell.
One truly zany Tea Bagger, Tim D’ Annunzio, was not nominated for an North Carolina congressional seat. According to his estranged wife, he thinks he is the Messiah and tried to raise his father-in-law from the dead. He wants to abolish eleven cabinet departments.
We may be certain that the folks at FAUX News and the big conservative think tanks, as well as Richard Armey, Mrs. Clarence Thomas, and the small army of cable and radio shock jocks are pleased with their work and laughing about how these little people are so easily manipulated. Hysteria is one of the characteristics of such movements, and it is easy for skilled propagandists use it to political advantage.
Interviews with ordinary Tea Baggers have been published in several places. One of the most interesting phenomena that recur is that so many of these people say that the economy went bad after Barack Obama took office. They have the chronology of events completely wrong and they refuse to acknowledge that Obama had a role in preventing another depression. Some—though a smaller number—insist that Obama and the Democrats initiated TARP.
Chip Berlet, an expert on right-wing populism, says this movement has the force of a tornado, but he adds that “Its unpredictable. It can blow away in ten seconds, or it can blow society up.” This applies even more to political fundamentalism. Right-wing populism these days has greater staying power because it has been so well cultivated and has deep roots in culture and religion. Political populism will develop staying power if progressives delay taking it on with civility and reason. It is dangerous to let these ideas take root in fester because the false historical memory the movement promotes will become part of memory and be reinforced by intense emotion.
The Response to Hysteria and Paranoia
Now and then, someone in the mainstream media does a little fact checking on Tea Bag movement claims, but for the most part the MSM approach is to simply report what these people claim and then report whatever the Democrats said in response, if anything. Recently David Broder, dean of the pundits, wrote on the intense partisanship of the Capitol Hill Republicans. He said that they had been mistaken and had painted themselves into a box. What box? The public is rewarding not punishing them for around the clock obstructionism, and it fuels the Tea Baggers and is admired by them.
Representative Bob Inglis, a conservative South Carolina Republican has recently had a major epiphany. He fears for the future of our political system and calls for an end of “the stinking rot of self-righteousness” and a turn toward civility and willingness to dialogue.
The question is: Are we Republicans going to be people who can put people together and say “Come on, be with us?…Or are we going to be people who snarl and make mad noises at people and just constantly carp?
His opponents in the primary say he has gone soft, and his prospect of getting re-nominated are not great.
American politics changed by the 1980s, with the Republicans using all the tools of cognitive science and the entertainment industry and have made politics a matter of daily hand to hand combat. On the other hand, as Democrat Anthony Weiner noted, Democrats still “come into knife fights carrying library books.” Just recently, President Barack Obama invited Republicans to a White House luncheon in one last effort to salvage bipartisanship. The eighty minutes were spent fielding angry charges about bow Obama had not done in a bipartisan spirit to satisfy them. Well- scripted as ever, Republicans left the White House saying he was thin skinned, needed Valium, and could not take correction well. By their account, he had been dishonest in negotiating with them time after time. The leader of this chorus was Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. Some might recall how he played a double game in negotiations on the rescue of GM and Chrysler, all the while trying to shut down auto manufacturing in the Motor City. More recently, Corker led the effort to get more and more concessions for big banks in the finance reform debate. Corker used a racist political advertisement to defeat Harold Ford in his race for the Senate.
The Democrats need to start answering the lies, calling them what they are. Voters do not want to hear about the past, but every Democratic commentary should include the fact that under Bush, the rich got $2.5 trillion in tax cuts, and $700 billion was spent in Iraq. Reality therapy begins with those salient facts.
The Democrats may not be good at answering the GOP attack machine, but until the recent Hawaiian special election, they had won ten consecutive special Congressional elections. Obviously the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is doing something right. They need to share that knowledge with Senate colleagues and others.
Democrats desperately need message control and to learn communications skills. However, there is no need for counter-productive hyperbole or class warfare talk. While answering the lies, they must be very careful not to insult or demonize the Tea Baggers. Writing about political fundamentalism in Islam, the Iraniam Seyyed Hosseen Nasar wrote that secular fundamentalism made political fundamentalism grow exponentially.
A fundamental problem is that the progressives lack a narrative that is persuasive to most Americans. The Republicans have tried narratives that are convincing even if they are not true. Anything that is repeated often and effectively enough can convince a majority. Now we see that a growing body of Americans seem to return to tax cuts for the rich and a deregulated economy, even though those policies brought us to the brink of destruction.
The progressive coalition has many elements but no common message. These elements need to agree upon a common consensus narrative that explained how we have landed in economic crisis and charts a way to a better future without bankrupting the country in the process. It would be helpful if work on this narrative began now. After November, Democrats will have plenty of time to figure out what went wrong and how to readdress the American people. If they do not develop a more effective message, the rightward drift will probably continue until unemployment sharply declines.
The Danger of Fascism
Scholars are not sure if we face the danger of fascism. We need to know that history does not exactly repeat itself; rather it recapitulates itself sometimes to one degree or another through different morphologies. Certainly the aggressive and anti-democratic outlook of the Tea Baggers is a threat to our political system. Justice Louis Brandeis said that “The greatest danger to liberty lurks in the insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” His overall view is on target, but it is hard to believe that everyone now exploiting the panic of the Tea Baggers are well meaning. We are probably facing something far less threatening than fascism but very damaging to the health of our democracy.
Fascism in the past always combined extreme nationalism, racism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, paramilitary violence, and intense anti-leftism. Those who insist we have little to fear note that the Tea Baggers are anti-government while fascists looked to big, powerful government to fix problems. Those who question this argument suggest that the Tea Baggers simply oppose liberal government that helps the poor, blacks, and Hispanics. They suggest that few Tea Baggers have problems with the Patriot Act.
Scholars who say fascism is not a possibility add that in the past fascists believe in dictatorship and have grandiose notions about the use of the military and limitless goals in foreign policy. There does not seem to be a tendency of the Tea Baggers to yearn for dictatorship but most of them seem to have approved of George W. Bush’s wars. Almost 60% of them have a favorable opinion of him.
It is too early to rule out the possibility of paramilitary activities. Right wing hysteria has been so great that some Sarah Palin gatherings resembled Klan rallies, with people threatening the press and shouting violent slogans. Armed men attended Obama rallies to intimidate their enemies. More recently, there were threats against Democratic Congressmen and physical attacks on their offices.
Historians and political scientists are correct in noting that right-wing populism can evolve into fascism. What exists now are some manifestations of crypto fascism that probably will not fade. There can be little doubt that Tea Baggism is just the latest phase in a long term effort to build a Rightist majority in America. It is a phenomenon that can and probably will be controlled. Dick Armey, Rupert Murdock, and their friends have nothing to gain if the Tea Bag wing of the Republican Party goes too far and shocks a majority of Americans. What is more likely, as Professor Robert O. Paxton writes, is that a crypto fascist element will come to play an important part in our politics for a long time.
There are a few Tea Baggers out there who oppose our warlike ways and even worry about recent assaults on civil liberties. But they are a small element and unlikely to grow in influence in that movement or the parent Republican Party. Perhaps in a few years, when people tire of endless warfare, Democrats can use Alan Grayson’s “The War is Making You Poor Act” to split the anti-war element from the Tea Bag wing of the Republican Party.
Most Tea Baggers are not given to making fine distinctions, and their presence in large numbers reduces our political discourse to a level that encourages the worst kinds of demagoguery. Despite all their talk about the constitution, they are not civil libertarians. Since the rise of Religious Right, their predecessors, the Republican party seems to have put aside its historic interest in civil liberties. Republican judges have become flaming judicial activists while complaining about this tendency on the other side. There was a time when Republicans like Everett Dirksen had great respect for our political processes, more recently they have shown a disposition to play the role of wrecker if it garners votes. The Tea Bagger wing of their party seems to have a very strange notion of what democracy is and both demands and applauds conduct that could do permanent damage to our political system. What is at stake is far more important than who controls Congress in January 2011.
Many of us are tired about reading and writing about the Tea Baggers, but a few facts will help us to understand why we need to keep studying them.
Half of the unaffiliated voters in the United States say they are closer to the Tea Bag movement than to anyone else. This movement has the potential to recreate the situation after 9/11, when the political middle shrank dramatically. This time, there is the possibility that the near disappearance of the middle will greatly benefit the Right. Thirdly, Noam Chomsky, one of our brightest progressive scholars, warns that the present level of anger in politics arouses legitimate fear that fascism could emerge here.
When the Tea Baggers appeared, they very briefly seemed a little like real economic populists as they were raising hell about what the Wall Street speculators did to our economy and financial system. But they soon forgot about the bankers and focused on punishing those who voted for the TARP and upon “taking back our country.”
A Republican pundit tried to paint the Tea Baggers as playing a role similar to that of the hippie counterculture radicals of the 1960s. But the young rebels of that time read some good journalism and often had a serious theoretical critique of the system. The Tea Baggers might be like Wall Mart hippies in that they do not see through the establishment’s propaganda machine; rather they soaked up much of what it had to say.
“Pitchfork Populism ”
Time used the term “pitchfork populism” to describe the Tea Party movement. That is a reference to the Southern Populists of the late 19th Century, one of whose leaders was called “Pitchfork Ben.” That movement, starting out as the Farmers or Southern Alliance and it had genuine economic grievances against the banks and railroads. There was a brief moment when some of those deeply frustrated white farmers allied with African American share-croppers. After all they were all in the same boat. The Southern establishment eventually co-opted the white farmers by getting them excited about preventing blacks from voting and enacting Jim Crow legislation.
Some of these people were not nice, God-fearing farmers who were somehow misled. More than a few spent years in paramilitary anti-black movements and were deeply hostile to Catholics and Jews. There is a parallel here with some of the extreme right militia groups that constitute one of the two nuclei of the Tea Baggers. ( The other nucleus is libertarianism, which is far less important in TeaBaggism than some suppose.)
What the Southern Bourbons accomplished over some time in the 1890s occurred among the Tea Baggers in as matter of months. People who started out as some sort of populist soon became spear carriers for the Southern Establishment, and some of them fought strenuously to uphold every aspect of the southern conservative cannot. They became political fundamentalists.
Similarly, the Tea Baggers briefly showed a flash of economic populism when they complained about Wall Street, the insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical companies. In less than a few months, they were denouncing efforts to regulate business or the banks, and were running cover for people like Mitch McConnell, who on behalf of the banks and speculators, watered down financial reform. Like the Southern Populists, these people became preoccupied with race.
Their talk about “taking back government” seems to be about race and resenting the poor. They oppose big government but cannot define what that means other than being against taxes and programs that assist “people who don’t want to work.”
Extreme Right-Wing Populism Ratcheted Up to a Dangerous Level ??
These are hard times, and people whose incomes and security are threatened sometimes grasp at straws. Most Tea Baggers seem to have jobs and some savings, but they seem to be worried about their 401ks, mortgages under water, whether their pensions will be cut, and whether their Medicaid benefits will be cut to provide medical coverage for over 30 million more people.
For more than three decades the income of the middle class has been shrinking. Few reasonable people can deny this or argue that this will change soon. Even the slightest knowledge of what happened in 2007 and 2008 would prompt the expectation that things are likely to get a lot worse for the middle class. Some people—perhaps even a majority-- just cannot live with that kind of knowledge. Their solution is to resort to the hysterics,
anger, threatening behavior, and simplistic thinking.
Eliminationism
This writer and others have worked within the framework that classifies Teabaggism as the most extreme form of right-wing populism. Some, following Daniel J. Goldhagen, call it “ Eliminationism” because these extremists react so harshly against pluralism and people who are culturally and racially different than then. Granted, what we observe here is what might be a relatively mild form of eliminationism. None of them are talking about camps or Nuremberg laws.
Tea Baggism= “Political Fundamentalism”
On the other hand, this model may be flawed. For one thing, the Republicans have had over three decades to ramp up right-wing populism. One can doubt that there were that many more conservative religious and rural folk out there to enlist in these ranks. What is happening now is that large numbers who were formerly not affiliated have flooede into Tea Bagger ranks. They are not , for the most part, people who think mainly about such hot button issues as abortion and stem cell research. Perhaps something else is going on.
It is very difficult to draw a clear line between the two phenomena, and they sometimes merge. Many of the Tea Baggers clearly have roots in right-wing populism and the Christian Right. Today, the Tea Baggers share characteristics with right-wing populists, and there are elements of overlap. Sometimes we find in the Tea Baggers an admixture of conventional religious thought. The political fundamentalist tends toward dogmatic attitudes, violence—at least verbally, and a refusal to accept challenges to the conservative elements of the conventional wisdom. The dinclination toward dogmatic attitudes does not include carefully stated policies.
When one studies the European right-wing authoritarian movements of the 1930s, right-wing populism was there , but over time it diminished and became political fundamentalism with an inclination toward accepting authoritarianism. Political fundamentalism was at the core of those movements. It was larger and more fanatical and dangerous.. Tea Baggism is essentially a version of “ political fundamental. ” There is a strong urge to shut down one’s critical processes and hang on desperately to some elements of conservative conventional wisdom. They offer ready-made answers and are embedded in our culture and sold to us daily by mainstream media and culture. What is happening is that frightened people are simply reverting to “default” positions and clinging to them for dear life. They try very hard to convince others perhaps because they want to be convinced themselves.
A blinkered view of reality is reassuring and comforting. Political fundamentalism thrives on simplicities and simplifications. There is such a thing as “protective stupidity” which more than a few need in order to be comfortable with their lives and it is likely that conservative strategists know how to feed it. The only antidote is continual reality therapy, and it may not work quickly.
Right-wing populists are mainly concerned with cultural and values questions. Aside from the matter of race, these hot button values matters are often of secondary to political fundamentalists. People in both movements seem to have problems with race, but it is a much more central to the American political fundamentalist.
Most American populists – right or left--believe in the democratic process. No matter what the Tea Baggers say, their actions show that they are perfectly willing to do permanent harm to that process by disrupting rallies, displaying weapons to intimidate people, threatening opponents, and demanding that their elected officials do all they can to shut down the legislative process. Some even spat on Congressmen and called them vile names.
Populists differ from political fundamentalists in another important way. Back in the 1930s, the followers of Huey Long and Father Charles Caughlin embraced some very unorthodox monetary theories. It is difficult to imagine the political fundamentalists flirting with fiscal heterodoxy for very long. We have already seen how they have taken up arms to defend big business and the Wall Street bankers sand speculators from government regulation.
Political Fundamentalism is a Barometer of Crisis
The more people who are in turmoil and crisis, the more political fundamentalism there will be.
Even before 2001, there were conditions present that promoted political fundamentalism. Many people could not deal with a diverse, urban society and the anomie that went with it. Truth seemed harder to establish, and many simply could not deal with the relativity of truth. They hankered for absolute certainties, and were unable to compartmentalize things in their own minds. People were less connected to others than before, and people were so absorbed multitasking and busy with many things, that they had little opportunity to develop rich inner lives, without which there can be nothing but selfishness, fear of others, and a lack of empathy.
Then came the terrible events of 9/11 created a siege atmosphere that began to move many Americans toward political fundamentalism, and the George W. Bush administration did all it could to produce this result—recklessly insinuating that anyone who disagreed with it was an ally of Al Qaeda. Thus, Max Cleland, a US. Senator from Georgia who lost three limbs in service to his country, was turned out of office because he was said to be insufficiently patriotic. He was replaced by someone who had not worn the uniform. The onset of a near depression and the near destruction of our financial system in 2008 greatly exacerbated the crisis atmosphere.
Why Some are More Prone to Political Fundamentalism than Others
Recently, Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weller noted that many Americans have a great need for order and certainty and cannot deal with ambiguities. People who find reality difficult to tolerate have a deep need to find simple and certain explanations. They develop an aversion to unbiased information. They also need scapegoats, such as blacks, Hispanics, Moslems, liberals and homosexuals. These are authoritarian tendencies, so using the imagery of the Boston Tea Party and griping about government in general terms does not make one anti-authoritarian.
Sixty years ago, Konrad Lorenz, a brilliant scientist whose politics we rightly deplore, knew that there were many people who were naturally fearful and given to simple solutions. These people had problems facing unpleasant realities and reverted to the sunny promises offered by conventional wisdom. In a crisis, these people become political activated and embrace political fundamentalism. This is why people in Europe moved to the right when struck with inflation and the great depression. To go the other way would require ability to accept reality, question accepted wisdom, eschew simple answers, and abandon core beliefs of a lifetime.
When confronted with a crisis, it is so much easier to accept an explanatory framework that explains “everything” quickly, it is much like a religious conversion. Tea Bag ideas transform some of these people from feeling helpless and victimized to feeling empowered. Attending Tea Bagger meetings for them can be cathartic and deeply therapeutic. Many of their converts are political neophytes for whom this is not so much a political rebirth as a political birth.
Political fundamentalism is a somewhat new ideology and a metaphor for dogmatic solutions that are like panaceas. It offers black-and-white , simple answers and simple answers that do not require careful thought, weighing of evidence, or compartmentalizing things.
Teabagging became a sort of hysteria that seems to be easily moved from target to target by those who subtly directed it. At first these people thought they were victims of the banks and Big Pharms. In no time flat, they were fierce defenders of those in Congress who do the most for the banks and Big Pharms. Tea Baggers even denounced Senator Scott Brown when he did not back Republican efforts to defend Wall Street by blocking financial reform. This transformation would be amusing if it were not such a tragedy. But in all these cases, they moved naturally from brief complaints about banks, speculators, or Big Pharm to dogmatic adherence to what they think are American “givens”—opposing meddling government and regulations that could harm banks and business. They are back to the old idea that so-called free markets solve all problems. It was this outlook that nearly brought on a depression and the destruction of the financial system.
It is astonishing to watch the growing number of Americans who share this sentiment as hostility to regulation and the health care legislation continue to grow. Apparently, Americans are so stressed now that many naturally revert to some degree or other to the verities that we have long been fed by our culture, the mass media, and the Republican information machine.
Certainty Resides to the Right
Tea Bag sentiment, of necessity, tends to the right and to authoritarian positions. Perhaps they are first aroused by the misbehavior of the banks, but in the long run their quest for certainty and simple answers leads them to what they think are American fundamentals. In 2004, some of these people were deeply offended that anyone could suggest that Americans were actually torturing detainees. Once it became clear that this was the case, political fundamentalists quickly moved toward approving the torture. It was a matter of Americans versus “Others.” Some mistakenly think the Tea Baggers are essentially libertarians. A few are, like Rand Paul, but most are not libertarians. Most of them do not complain about the surveillance state and agree with Senator John Cornyn, who ridicules people who worry about civil liberties: “None of your civil liberties matter after you are dead.”
Probably not one Tea Bagger in a thousand will see the inconsistency in Governor Bobby Jindal’s and Sarah Palin’s conduct. For a long time, he said the federal government should stay out of our lives, but now it must build sand barriers and compensate fishermen. Sarah Palin sang the same song about less government and is now all over President Barack Obama because he has not figured out how to shut down the well in the Gulf or found a way to scoop up millions of gallons heading toward marshes and beaches.
Paul has talked about a planned ten-lane highway –coupled with a pipeline and rail line—that will soon link Mexico-the US and Canada—as part of NAFTA. He says there might also be a common currency. Wild stuff!
Now Rand Paul, perhaps the nation’s leading Tea Bagger, denounced Obama for criticizing BP; Paul says criticizing business is “un-American.” Maybe he forgot that the original Tea Baggers—those angry folks in Boston back in 1773—were reacting against a monopoly given to a business, the East India Company. In Colorado, Dan Maes, a Tea Bagger backed candidate for Governor, is saying Coloradans should “beg forgiveness from the energy industry that Bill Ritter chased out of this state.”
Sharon Angle, the Tea Bagger nominated to oppose Harry Reid, calls for abolition of Social Security, and the 16th Amendment. Will senior citizen Tea Baggers in Nevada become rational enough to realize she wants to stop their monthly checks? Time will tell.
One truly zany Tea Bagger, Tim D’ Annunzio, was not nominated for an North Carolina congressional seat. According to his estranged wife, he thinks he is the Messiah and tried to raise his father-in-law from the dead. He wants to abolish eleven cabinet departments.
We may be certain that the folks at FAUX News and the big conservative think tanks, as well as Richard Armey, Mrs. Clarence Thomas, and the small army of cable and radio shock jocks are pleased with their work and laughing about how these little people are so easily manipulated. Hysteria is one of the characteristics of such movements, and it is easy for skilled propagandists use it to political advantage.
Interviews with ordinary Tea Baggers have been published in several places. One of the most interesting phenomena that recur is that so many of these people say that the economy went bad after Barack Obama took office. They have the chronology of events completely wrong and they refuse to acknowledge that Obama had a role in preventing another depression. Some—though a smaller number—insist that Obama and the Democrats initiated TARP.
Chip Berlet, an expert on right-wing populism, says this movement has the force of a tornado, but he adds that “Its unpredictable. It can blow away in ten seconds, or it can blow society up.” This applies even more to political fundamentalism. Right-wing populism these days has greater staying power because it has been so well cultivated and has deep roots in culture and religion. Political populism will develop staying power if progressives delay taking it on with civility and reason. It is dangerous to let these ideas take root in fester because the false historical memory the movement promotes will become part of memory and be reinforced by intense emotion.
The Response to Hysteria and Paranoia
Now and then, someone in the mainstream media does a little fact checking on Tea Bag movement claims, but for the most part the MSM approach is to simply report what these people claim and then report whatever the Democrats said in response, if anything. Recently David Broder, dean of the pundits, wrote on the intense partisanship of the Capitol Hill Republicans. He said that they had been mistaken and had painted themselves into a box. What box? The public is rewarding not punishing them for around the clock obstructionism, and it fuels the Tea Baggers and is admired by them.
Representative Bob Inglis, a conservative South Carolina Republican has recently had a major epiphany. He fears for the future of our political system and calls for an end of “the stinking rot of self-righteousness” and a turn toward civility and willingness to dialogue.
The question is: Are we Republicans going to be people who can put people together and say “Come on, be with us?…Or are we going to be people who snarl and make mad noises at people and just constantly carp?
His opponents in the primary say he has gone soft, and his prospect of getting re-nominated are not great.
American politics changed by the 1980s, with the Republicans using all the tools of cognitive science and the entertainment industry and have made politics a matter of daily hand to hand combat. On the other hand, as Democrat Anthony Weiner noted, Democrats still “come into knife fights carrying library books.” Just recently, President Barack Obama invited Republicans to a White House luncheon in one last effort to salvage bipartisanship. The eighty minutes were spent fielding angry charges about bow Obama had not done in a bipartisan spirit to satisfy them. Well- scripted as ever, Republicans left the White House saying he was thin skinned, needed Valium, and could not take correction well. By their account, he had been dishonest in negotiating with them time after time. The leader of this chorus was Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. Some might recall how he played a double game in negotiations on the rescue of GM and Chrysler, all the while trying to shut down auto manufacturing in the Motor City. More recently, Corker led the effort to get more and more concessions for big banks in the finance reform debate. Corker used a racist political advertisement to defeat Harold Ford in his race for the Senate.
The Democrats need to start answering the lies, calling them what they are. Voters do not want to hear about the past, but every Democratic commentary should include the fact that under Bush, the rich got $2.5 trillion in tax cuts, and $700 billion was spent in Iraq. Reality therapy begins with those salient facts.
The Democrats may not be good at answering the GOP attack machine, but until the recent Hawaiian special election, they had won ten consecutive special Congressional elections. Obviously the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is doing something right. They need to share that knowledge with Senate colleagues and others.
Democrats desperately need message control and to learn communications skills. However, there is no need for counter-productive hyperbole or class warfare talk. While answering the lies, they must be very careful not to insult or demonize the Tea Baggers. Writing about political fundamentalism in Islam, the Iraniam Seyyed Hosseen Nasar wrote that secular fundamentalism made political fundamentalism grow exponentially.
A fundamental problem is that the progressives lack a narrative that is persuasive to most Americans. The Republicans have tried narratives that are convincing even if they are not true. Anything that is repeated often and effectively enough can convince a majority. Now we see that a growing body of Americans seem to return to tax cuts for the rich and a deregulated economy, even though those policies brought us to the brink of destruction.
The progressive coalition has many elements but no common message. These elements need to agree upon a common consensus narrative that explained how we have landed in economic crisis and charts a way to a better future without bankrupting the country in the process. It would be helpful if work on this narrative began now. After November, Democrats will have plenty of time to figure out what went wrong and how to readdress the American people. If they do not develop a more effective message, the rightward drift will probably continue until unemployment sharply declines.
The Danger of Fascism
Scholars are not sure if we face the danger of fascism. We need to know that history does not exactly repeat itself; rather it recapitulates itself sometimes to one degree or another through different morphologies. Certainly the aggressive and anti-democratic outlook of the Tea Baggers is a threat to our political system. Justice Louis Brandeis said that “The greatest danger to liberty lurks in the insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” His overall view is on target, but it is hard to believe that everyone now exploiting the panic of the Tea Baggers are well meaning. We are probably facing something far less threatening than fascism but very damaging to the health of our democracy.
Fascism in the past always combined extreme nationalism, racism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, paramilitary violence, and intense anti-leftism. Those who insist we have little to fear note that the Tea Baggers are anti-government while fascists looked to big, powerful government to fix problems. Those who question this argument suggest that the Tea Baggers simply oppose liberal government that helps the poor, blacks, and Hispanics. They suggest that few Tea Baggers have problems with the Patriot Act.
Scholars who say fascism is not a possibility add that in the past fascists believe in dictatorship and have grandiose notions about the use of the military and limitless goals in foreign policy. There does not seem to be a tendency of the Tea Baggers to yearn for dictatorship but most of them seem to have approved of George W. Bush’s wars. Almost 60% of them have a favorable opinion of him.
It is too early to rule out the possibility of paramilitary activities. Right wing hysteria has been so great that some Sarah Palin gatherings resembled Klan rallies, with people threatening the press and shouting violent slogans. Armed men attended Obama rallies to intimidate their enemies. More recently, there were threats against Democratic Congressmen and physical attacks on their offices.
Historians and political scientists are correct in noting that right-wing populism can evolve into fascism. What exists now are some manifestations of crypto fascism that probably will not fade. There can be little doubt that Tea Baggism is just the latest phase in a long term effort to build a Rightist majority in America. It is a phenomenon that can and probably will be controlled. Dick Armey, Rupert Murdock, and their friends have nothing to gain if the Tea Bag wing of the Republican Party goes too far and shocks a majority of Americans. What is more likely, as Professor Robert O. Paxton writes, is that a crypto fascist element will come to play an important part in our politics for a long time.
There are a few Tea Baggers out there who oppose our warlike ways and even worry about recent assaults on civil liberties. But they are a small element and unlikely to grow in influence in that movement or the parent Republican Party. Perhaps in a few years, when people tire of endless warfare, Democrats can use Alan Grayson’s “The War is Making You Poor Act” to split the anti-war element from the Tea Bag wing of the Republican Party.
Most Tea Baggers are not given to making fine distinctions, and their presence in large numbers reduces our political discourse to a level that encourages the worst kinds of demagoguery. Despite all their talk about the constitution, they are not civil libertarians. Since the rise of Religious Right, their predecessors, the Republican party seems to have put aside its historic interest in civil liberties. Republican judges have become flaming judicial activists while complaining about this tendency on the other side. There was a time when Republicans like Everett Dirksen had great respect for our political processes, more recently they have shown a disposition to play the role of wrecker if it garners votes. The Tea Bagger wing of their party seems to have a very strange notion of what democracy is and both demands and applauds conduct that could do permanent damage to our political system. What is at stake is far more important than who controls Congress in January 2011.
Monday, April 26, 2010
“Republicans are Betting on Continued Hard Times” Revisited
While cleaning out computer files, I found a piece that was submitted last year. It was entitled “Republicans are Betting on Continued Hard Times.” It was clear then that the GOP would do whatever was necessary to block recovery efforts because there was a great political advantage in doing so. At the time, it as hard to imagine how badly the Democrats would fritter away their political advantages or how inept their Congressional leadership would prove to be. On the other hand, it was recognized then that the GOP remained strong and possessed far superior communications and strategic skills.
In three important respects, the piece needs to be amended and improved.
1. “This recession promises to last a number of years and will certainly extend well beyond 2012, in part because the problems of repairing a collapsed financial system are nothing short of enormous. Everyone in Washington must grasp this, and it offers the GOP a good shot of regaining power in 2012.”
Sherm is happy to have been partly wrong here. The Obama administration did a phenomenal job of pulling the country away from the brink of depression and out of a recession. The financial system has been repaired with bailing wire and duct tape and it is possible that the Dodd Bill is being excessively weakened. Yes, there are too many carve outs for some classes of derivatives, and the majority leader has insisted on a provision that weakens it still more to save some banking jobs in Nevada. Still, the measure is better than nothing, and one must remember Dick Durbin’s comment that the banks own the Congress.
In the sense that the jobs will not come back anytime soon, the earlier article was all too accurate.
2. “ Limbaugh was probably wrong in seeing 2010 as the comeback year, but it could be if the party is successful in delaying and trimming stimulus and bailout legislation.”
Clearly 2010 will be a big comeback year for the Republicans. They intimidated the Democrats into offering a weak stimulus bill with too much in tax cuts—to appeal to conservatives—and too little in New Deal—Great Society style stimulus. Then, during the legislative process, they weakened it still more in return for a few Senate votes.
“ Some savvy Republicans may realize that recessions are good for their wealthiest and most powerful constituents. When unemployment is low, labor expenses are high. Hard times present excuses to cut hours, vacations, sick days and other benefits.”
The accuracy of this is reflected in declining union membership in the public sector, improved earnings statements, and the willingness of unions to provide give-backs in return for jobs.
What I missed was that a deep recession gave big manufacturing firms the cover to plow vast amounts of cash into the derivatives and hedge fund casinos. That is why so many lobbyists attending the hearings on derivatives were representing manufacturers.
I year ago, this writer had no idea that the manufacturers were gambling in that casino nor was the size of the derivatives market known. Now many estimate it at between $250 and $650 trillion, and one respected sources places it at twice the latter figure. now I know it could be twice the former figure.
3. “Over the course of the New Deal, FDR invested about 25% of the GDP in stimulus and was not able to completely rescue the economy. The present stimulus package is a little less that 6% of the GDP. It is only the first installment of many similar steps if we are to escape a “lost decade” similar to that experienced in Japan.
It terms of restoring jobs, it will be a tough decade. It has proven politically impossible for the Democrats to muster enough support to pass significant follow-on stimulus packages. Republicans have convinced increasing numbers of voters that somehow President Barack Obama and free-spending Democrats are responsible the lost jobs and the fact that the jobs are not coming back very quickly. Obama and the Democrats get no credit for ending the recession or finally stemming job.
Over the last three decades, beginning with Ronald Reagan, Republicans have moved the nation to the right. Now the nation is paying the price because it is impossible to do the things needed to partially restore the manufacturing sector, which would include high speed rails, stimulation of much more R and D, improved education, especially in the technical sector, repeal of legislation rewarding the exporting of jobs, and making it harder to hide money abroad.
Another reason for the Democrats’ problems is the matter of race. We forgot how many Reagan Democrats left their party because they thought too much was being done for blacks. The fact that, during the primaries, Obama did not spend or campaign in West Virginia was recognition of the problem, and the 41 point spread between Clinton and Obama there confirmed it. After the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, the polls showed that Obama was not popular among what Mrs. Clinton called “hard working whites.” Now recent polling evidence confirms that racial antagonism is a major motivating factor for the Republicans and independents who joined the Tea Bagger movement. The November election result itself may have been a fluke— with the recession prompting many independents to select the Democrat rather than trust Mc Cain with the economy. The independents, ever impatient and usually not well informed, soon turned against Obama when the worst of the crisis passed.
In three important respects, the piece needs to be amended and improved.
1. “This recession promises to last a number of years and will certainly extend well beyond 2012, in part because the problems of repairing a collapsed financial system are nothing short of enormous. Everyone in Washington must grasp this, and it offers the GOP a good shot of regaining power in 2012.”
Sherm is happy to have been partly wrong here. The Obama administration did a phenomenal job of pulling the country away from the brink of depression and out of a recession. The financial system has been repaired with bailing wire and duct tape and it is possible that the Dodd Bill is being excessively weakened. Yes, there are too many carve outs for some classes of derivatives, and the majority leader has insisted on a provision that weakens it still more to save some banking jobs in Nevada. Still, the measure is better than nothing, and one must remember Dick Durbin’s comment that the banks own the Congress.
In the sense that the jobs will not come back anytime soon, the earlier article was all too accurate.
2. “ Limbaugh was probably wrong in seeing 2010 as the comeback year, but it could be if the party is successful in delaying and trimming stimulus and bailout legislation.”
Clearly 2010 will be a big comeback year for the Republicans. They intimidated the Democrats into offering a weak stimulus bill with too much in tax cuts—to appeal to conservatives—and too little in New Deal—Great Society style stimulus. Then, during the legislative process, they weakened it still more in return for a few Senate votes.
“ Some savvy Republicans may realize that recessions are good for their wealthiest and most powerful constituents. When unemployment is low, labor expenses are high. Hard times present excuses to cut hours, vacations, sick days and other benefits.”
The accuracy of this is reflected in declining union membership in the public sector, improved earnings statements, and the willingness of unions to provide give-backs in return for jobs.
What I missed was that a deep recession gave big manufacturing firms the cover to plow vast amounts of cash into the derivatives and hedge fund casinos. That is why so many lobbyists attending the hearings on derivatives were representing manufacturers.
I year ago, this writer had no idea that the manufacturers were gambling in that casino nor was the size of the derivatives market known. Now many estimate it at between $250 and $650 trillion, and one respected sources places it at twice the latter figure. now I know it could be twice the former figure.
3. “Over the course of the New Deal, FDR invested about 25% of the GDP in stimulus and was not able to completely rescue the economy. The present stimulus package is a little less that 6% of the GDP. It is only the first installment of many similar steps if we are to escape a “lost decade” similar to that experienced in Japan.
It terms of restoring jobs, it will be a tough decade. It has proven politically impossible for the Democrats to muster enough support to pass significant follow-on stimulus packages. Republicans have convinced increasing numbers of voters that somehow President Barack Obama and free-spending Democrats are responsible the lost jobs and the fact that the jobs are not coming back very quickly. Obama and the Democrats get no credit for ending the recession or finally stemming job.
Over the last three decades, beginning with Ronald Reagan, Republicans have moved the nation to the right. Now the nation is paying the price because it is impossible to do the things needed to partially restore the manufacturing sector, which would include high speed rails, stimulation of much more R and D, improved education, especially in the technical sector, repeal of legislation rewarding the exporting of jobs, and making it harder to hide money abroad.
Another reason for the Democrats’ problems is the matter of race. We forgot how many Reagan Democrats left their party because they thought too much was being done for blacks. The fact that, during the primaries, Obama did not spend or campaign in West Virginia was recognition of the problem, and the 41 point spread between Clinton and Obama there confirmed it. After the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, the polls showed that Obama was not popular among what Mrs. Clinton called “hard working whites.” Now recent polling evidence confirms that racial antagonism is a major motivating factor for the Republicans and independents who joined the Tea Bagger movement. The November election result itself may have been a fluke— with the recession prompting many independents to select the Democrat rather than trust Mc Cain with the economy. The independents, ever impatient and usually not well informed, soon turned against Obama when the worst of the crisis passed.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The Franklin Trust Sex Ring
There is considerable evidence that the Reagan-Bush CIA operated a sex ring to entrap important people and reward its own operatives. In the Eighties, Larry King of North Omaha was considered one of the Republican Party’s fastest rising stars. An African American, he sang at two Republican conventions. He ran a credit union that was raided by the Feds in 1988. As much as $40 million of the missing money was connected to the Iran-Contra scandal, probably laundered drug money from Latin America. It seems that boys and girls were being used for sex and as drug couriers for King and others. They were also telling how they had sex with this or that famous businessman or politician. The list included the publisher of the state’s largest newspaper, a police chief, and a man who became a mayor and Congressman and was later appointed by the second Bush to head a commission studying Social security reform.
Former Republican Nebraska State Senator John De Camp, who was in office 16 years, knew King and was sure the stories were lies and was ready to refute them. Then he was contacted by a prisoner, John Bonacci, who convinced who convinced him they were true. De Camp got him out of jail, and ten years later won a million dollar settlement for him from King in a court of law. Before this, however, a grand jury investigated the matter, was aware of the complaints of 80 children, and refused to hand down indictments. The Nebraska legislative committee and the staffers who worked on this found the accusers very credible, but this reader of the evidence wonder s if some of the horrible acts attributed to the perpetrators exceeded what human being could do.
Bonacci had kept an exact diary, and forensic experts tested the ink entries to be sure they were made over a long period of time. He eventually testified in court that he helped kidnap a twelve year old boy, Johnny Goesch. Bonacci wrote about being taken to Bohemian Grove, a 2700 acre encampment outside Sacramento that belongs to the Bohemian Club, an all male organization that seems attached to reenacting ancient Druidic rituals. Alex Jones infiltrated the grounds in 2000 and filmed some Luciferian rituals going back to ancient Babylon. Members are expected to worshbip a large stone owl, the Great Owl of Bohemia. Jones claims Governor George W. Bush was there along with some security personnel. There is more than amply evidence of repeated enactment of these rituals, but it is hard to believe that anyone could take them seriously. They must be a strange form of amusement and a way of registering contempt for conventional norms. Very eminent people give lectures around a campfire to many men deep in their cups. Nudity is common. There is a pronounced homosexual subculture, particularly among employees, but it is not part of scheduled events.
Jones found nothing sinister there. There are numerous fenced-in areas, so if unusual conduct occurred in one area it is likely most of the two thousand campers would know nothing about it. According to several self-proclaimed victims, it was the remote places where that several boys were used in some sort of ritual, and one caged boy was very badly abused, finally dying after being beaten and raped by an adult. Later, the two remaining boys were taken to a house where a film of what happened was shown and they were passed around like playthings. Bonacci said Hunter Thompson directed the filming. There is no way of knowing what Thompson was doing there .Perhaps he was observing the ways of the rich and powerful? Other abductees said Hunter Thompson did “snuff” films, and Rusty Nelson, Kings photographer, testified to this in court. The diary recounted being paid for sex with men King knew at various places.
King had also found a way to get some boys out of Boys Town. The former head of Boys Town, Monsignor Robert Hupp, retained De Camp in order to get some help in cleaning up a mess there. King gave money to the institution and provided internships for boys. He also almost controlled the Boys and Girls Clubs of Omaha. A court threw out the case against the archdiocese and Boys Town. .
. Bonasci was afflicted with multiple personalities but the psychiatrists told De Camp the boy was not lying. De Camp finally decided to represent the boy, and his best friend, onetime CIA Director William Colby, told him he should write a book about it for his own safety. The investigation of Bonacci’s claims led the police to find and seal hundreds of sex videotapes that were found in Larry King’s office. There were some convictions. Among them was an editor of the Omaha World Herald.
De Camp was a former State Senator and got his colleagues to investigate. Gary Cardon, the chief investigator, called Senator Loren Schmidt from Chicago saying, “I’ve got them, I’ve got them.” The investigator’s private plane crashed shortly after leaving Chicago. Federal investigators swarmed the crash site, and none of his papers or his briefcase were officially retrieved Cardoni and his young son were both killed.
De Camp eventually found one Larry “Rusty” Nelson, King’s photographer, in prison. De Camp sprung him. Nelson became a key witness in a major case that netted one victim a million dollars. He also represented an Alicia Owen, a little girl who stuck by her guns even as other children who were witnessed disappeared. Her first attorney was creditably accused of giving privileged information to the FBI. That agency would work overtime to discredit the victims. She got 15 years for perjury for naming prominent politicians. She is still in prison and holds the record in Nebraska for time sent in solitary confinement. In her trial, the prosecutor acted as though there was noone named Rusty Nelson. De Camp got a second trial for her after Troy Boner, who had given information to Gary Cardon, swore out an affidavit confirming her statements. However, in the second trial he took the Fifth Amendment, privately telling De Camp it was that or be killed in prison. Boner had claimed that his brother, whose suicide he doubted, was a victim.
In 1993, Yorkshire Television sent a crew to the United States to film “Conspiracy of Silence” about De camp’s claims. They were thorough and even paid for extensive polygraph tests for one witness. The program was extensively advertised to be shown on the Discovery Channel on May 3, 1994. At the last minute someone bought the production rights and it was not shown.
On September 11, 1996, James Harold James , head of the Pennsylvania legislature’s black caucus, held a news conference in Philadelphia. He demanded an investigation of the drug trade, noted that the Iran-Contra investigation showed that the CIA was bringing drugs into the country, and said he wanted to know of George H.W. Bush involved. His name would be raised repeatedly from the beginning by child victims. John De Camp thought James was onto something because of the many ties between Bush and King and the multiple witnesses who placed George H.W. Bush at King’s sex parties. James Flanery of the Omaha World Herald had reported that King was heavily involved in running guns to Nicaragua; he was subsequently taken off the story and assigned out of Nebraska for a year. King’s public relations firm was used by the contras and he was a heavy contributor to one of their groups.
King boasted about his relationship with his hero, Bill Casey of the CIA. Pronto, Spain’s largest weekly, reported there was reason to believe that the child ex ring was tied to the CIA. Steve Bowman, an Omaha businessman researching the Franklin theft and sex scandal, claims he has believable witnesses who associate George H.W. Bush with the child sex ring. On the other hand, Bush could well have attended parties without knowing of the sexual activities. An Australian newsletter Inside News produced documents relating to the 1985, the Nebraska Department of Social Services investigation of stories told by Eunice (Lisa) Washington and her sister Tracey. They repeatedly ran away from their foster parents and told about the King sex ring They also said George H.W. Bush attended two of King’s sex parties. King took them to parties via his private jet. Lisa claimed she first met Bush at a Republican convention, and she also told of going to a party in Washington where the guests had guards wearing She added that King sometimes got boys from Boys Town. In October, 1984, she saw Bush at a Chicago party, and he left with a 19 year-old boy named Brent. A check of the papers showed he was there campaigning. In 1986 charges against the Webbs were dismissed. Tbe Webb foster children said they had been abused by GOP delegates at the Southfork Ranch in 1884 and also somewhere in Louisiana.
King was associated with lobbyist Craig Spence in helping the Nicaraguan Contras, and Bonacci told De Camp that the lobbyist once took a group of people, including two teenage prostitutes, on a midnight tour of the White House on July 4, 1988. King and Spence appear to have been partners in the sex trade and had two operations named “Dream Boys” and “ Man to Man.” Those operations were owned by an umbrella outfit called “Bodies by God.”. These CIA supported sex operations were expansion of the agency’s Vietnam era operation, designed to entrap members of Congress. It was run by two CIA agents and a CIA contractor who was a big time lobbyist. They brought boys into the Distinct of Columbia through Roy Cohn sex operations in New York City.
Two hundred prominent people were alleged to have used Spence and King’s services, but few of them were damaged by the disclosure. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole’s chief of staff was forced to resign due to the disclosure. The CIA claimed two of the boys worked for the KGB, but it looked more like a CIA blackmail operation. Later, the Washington Times reported that Donald Gregg, an aid to Bush arranged tours for Spence’s people .Spence seemed to have great influence, entertained lavishly, and was said to spend $20,000 a month employing various kinds of prostitutes. It was claimed that the CIA helped him photograph prominent people and members of agencies in compromising situations. After the Washington Times exposed the sex righ, Spence lost influence and seemed to have no funds. He told friends he feared “Casey’s boys” were after him. He was soon found dead in a Boston hotel room. Barbara Bush expressed pleasure that the Washington Post did not touch the story.” Spence was particularly close to a prominent federal attorney, whose career was in no way damaged by the intimate association.
There were also more conventional sex-for-votes operations available to Republican Congressmen and Senators. In the mid-1980s, Ed Rollins, a Reagan White House operative, succeeded in covering up a small operation that provided two dozen Republican Congressmen with sexual favors. Only Tom Evans of Delaware got caught and lost his seat. He foolishly confessed to his wife. This was a straight-forward operation run by a lobbyist, and there were no CIA ties. In 2006, another sex for Republican votes sex operation was exposed. This time, most the congressmen seemed to come from the Defense Appropriations subcommittee of the Military Affairs Committee. Again, only conventional adult sex was involved. It is unclear whether the CIA was involved. Porter Goss , director of the CIA, and his number three man, Dusty Foggio, attended the parties to gamble but were not involved with the prostitutes. One of the defense and intelligence contractors paying the bills was almost certainly working for the CIA in the 1980s.
De Camp relied upon psychiatrists to assure him that Bonacci was not lying to him and that over 80% of people with multiple personalities have been sexually abused as children .De Camp believed that Bonacci had been trained by drugging, sexual degradation, and torture in order to create multiple personalities who would carry out various tasks such as spying, torturing, killing, and even committing suicide. . The abuses would have been part of mind control experiments, which some have called the Monarch Project. William Colby assured him that the CIA never talked about a project by that name, but that it had to do some work in that area simply to be sure that there was no danger that someone a President of the United States met could be reading his mind. Paul claimed he was often taken to Offut Air Force Base, where he was abused. This is the center of the Strategic Air Command, and there are many intelligence people there. Lt. Colonel Michael Aquino, an allegedly retired Army officer, supervised these psychological operations. The Concerned Parents group in Nebraska said they had two witnesses who said King used to send limousines to the base to pick up boys, allegedly for parties. In the September 7, 1988 issue of the Omaha Metropolitan, There were more CIA people working out of Offitt than out of Langley, Virginia. Many psychological operations were located there, seemingly affirming claims that the children were subjects of experiments. One experimental program, acknowledge by the CIA, is MIK-ULTRA, in which children are confused and manipulated via drugs and sex.
Bonacco reported sometimes traveling with a gangster-like character called “Emilo” on various missions. On one occasion, they kidnapped a Des Moines a 12 year old newspaper boy named Johnny Gosch on September 5, 1982. . The boy’s mother, Noreen, had heard of two little girls abducted and placed in a sex ring and demanded that the police explore this possibility, but the local chief insisted Johnny was a runaway. In her book Why Johnny Can’t Come Home (2000), Noreen Gosch said that about six months after the boy disappeared, George Paul Bishop showed up, claiming to be a federal agent concerned with child abductions. He stayed in touch with her for some time and disappeared in 1985. Perhaps he was trying to help, and perhaps he was monitoring what she was learning. Bishop was arrested in 2001 on charges he had a pornographic video showing a sixteen year old boy.
AT 2:30 AM one morning in 1997, Johnny showed up at Noreen Goesch’ss apartment. He was accompanied by another male who seemed to be deciding what Johnny could say to his mother. She recognized him in part by a birthmark. He told her not to pursue the matter and not to talk about the visit. She remained silent for two years.
In 2003, a journalist/male prostitute calling himself Jeff Gannon turned up as a frequent guest at the White House and was even given press credentials. Some thought he could be Johnny Gosch. This writer has investigated the claim and finds it doubtful. Soon after people started asking questions about Gannon and tying him to the sex trade, Hunter Thompson committed suicide and Rusty Baker was arrested. Baker had served time for having a van-full of pornographic pictures. His subsequent arrest was for not registering as a sex abuser in a county where he no longer lived. De Camp managed to obtain Baker’s release. The arrest was seen as a way of telling Baker to keep quiet. Thompson was working on a story about how explosives leveled the World Trade Center and worried that he would be suicided. In a 2004 interview, he said: ”The Bush administration is a heap of Nazi shit. Bullshit. Yeah, you can put it that way. I don't know what your audience is ready for.”
When he died on February 20, 2005, Thompson was on the telephone with his wife when he allegedly shot himself, but she said she heard a muffled sound.
Chicago writer Sherman Skolnick has reported that Thompson was doing a book on the politically connected sex trade, but he offered no evidence to support this . There is only mention of Thompson in De Camp’s book, but Thompson never challenged it in court. The only other evidence comes from the Alex Jones radio program. A Thompson acquaintance had this to say:
CALLER “Scott from Texas”: I was just wondering if you guys might be able to clear up something I heard through the journalist Sherman Skolnick. He is reporting that another story or book, I don’t remember exactly which, that Hunter S. Thompson was working on was about this gay prostitution ring in the White House and supposedly that was another touchy topic that he brought out, and the wholeJONES: Had you heard that from Hunter?
PAUL WILLAM ROBERTS: Yeah, I had heard that quite a lot from Hunter. It goes back to Kissinger, I believe.
JONES: Wow.
Now that’s a big confirmation. Now for those who don’t know, We have Washington Times articles from 1989, you know—‘underage call boys in the White House’, and so this is serious . .. Hunter was working on that?
ROBERTS: Yeah, in fact Lyndon LaRouche published some stuff about that. And although, you know, a lot of his material was not that trustworthy, in this particular case there were a lot of sources cited and there was no lawsuit. And where there’s no lawsuit you can be almost guaranteed that it’s true.
Of course, no one can trust the La Rouche people even though they have produced some good material on the Middle East and the involvement of governments in the drug trade. Maybe some day mainstream investigative reporters will get into these taboo waters and sort out what is true.
A Plug for Sherm’s Book--- Sherm spent seven years writing an analytical chronicle of what the Republicans have been up to since the 1970s. It discusses elements in the Republican coalition, their ideologies, strategies, informational and financial resources, and election shenanigans. Abuses of power by the Reagan and G. W. Bush administration and the Republican Congresses are detailed. The New Republican Coalition : Its Rise and Impact, The Seventies to Present (Publish America) can be acquired by calling 301-695-1707. On line, go to http://www.publishamerica.com/shopping.
References
John w. De Camp, The Franklin ‘Cover-Up (Lincoln, Nebraska: AWT, Inc., 1992)21-79
De Camp, The Franklin Cover-Up, 100-105. It is very difficult to believe anyone among the participants could have believed in this nonsense. It must have been a a device to discredit testimony of victims.
If Kay Griggs can be believed, intelligence operatives joined the power brokers in cavorting at Bohemian Grove. Marine Colonel George Raymond Griggs, her former husband, told her about how he and other assassins went to Bohemian Gove to engage anal and oral sex and run naked in the woods. She also employed his diary as evidence and went public in 1996, before Skull and Bones and Bohemian Grove were public knowledge. She received death threats and had to seek sanctuary in the home of journalist Sarah McClendon. . He referred to the hit men as The Brotherhood or The Firm and thought they were linked together in a sort of secret ‘cap and gown” and skull and bones society. They took their inspiration from Skull and Bones at Yale and a similar secret society at Princeton. He talked about military hit squads, sexual slavery, weapons and drug sales, psychological conditioning, and involvement with prominent people such as Paul Wolfowitz, who was present in the 1970s when Grigg trained assassins in Indonesia. The colonel told her that he had been sexually molested by teachers and that many of the operatives shared this background.
De Camp, The Franklin Cover-Up, 151-158; Greg Szymanski, “The Evilo Lurking Within,” Rense.com (July 31, 2006)
De Camp, The Franklin Cover-Up194-198
“Alex Jones Interviews John DeCamp, Author of the ‘Franklin Cover-Up,’” (July 21, 2004) Prison Planet.com; “Radio Free America Interview with John De Camp,” The 7th Fire.com; “American Child Sex Rings That Reach the White House,” Whatsmells.com (March, 2003); Ted Gunderson, “Synopsis,” Johnny Gosch.com (undated); De Camp, “Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska,”Educate Yourself.org;; “Famous Kidnapping Case Implicates Political Figures in Child Prostitution Network,” 9 a radio interview with Mrs. Sosch) (no date) American Free Press.Net;Tim Schmitt, “Johnny Gosch, Jeff Gannon, Hunter Thompson and the Unravelling of a Trouble3d Tale,” Educate Yourself.com (April 6, 2006) See also the Wikopedia entry on Bohemian Grove; Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey ST. Clair, “The Truth About the Bohemian Grove,” CounterPunch,org (June 19, 2001).
De Camp, “Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska,”Educate Yoursel.org; These are excerpts from Chapter 21 of The Franklin Cover-UP; Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthjorized Biography, chapter 21 “Omaha” www.Tarpley,net; “Kidding Around–Child
EdRollins. Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms: My Fife in American Politics (New York: Broadway Books, 1996), 84-85
De Camp, “Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska,”Educate Yourself.org; These are excerpts from Chapter 21 of The Franklin Cover-UP; Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthjorized Biography, chapter 21 “Omaha” www.Tarpley,net; Frank Santiago, “Noreen Gosch: I Saw Johnny,” DesMoines Register (February 7, 1999)
Schmitt, “Johnny Gosch, Jeff Gannon, Hunter Thompson, and the Unraveling of a Troubling Tale.”
“Hunter Thompson was working on WTC collapse story before mysterious sudden death, warned he'd be 'suicided'” Toronto Globe and Mail (February 26, 2005); Adam Bulger, “The Hunter S. Thompson Interview,” FreezerBox Magazine.com (March 9, 2004)
Shermak Skolnick, “Was Hunter Thompson Suicided?” Conspiracy Planet.com ( February 21, 2006)
“GOP Child Rapists and Hunter Thompson,”GNN.TV
Former Republican Nebraska State Senator John De Camp, who was in office 16 years, knew King and was sure the stories were lies and was ready to refute them. Then he was contacted by a prisoner, John Bonacci, who convinced who convinced him they were true. De Camp got him out of jail, and ten years later won a million dollar settlement for him from King in a court of law. Before this, however, a grand jury investigated the matter, was aware of the complaints of 80 children, and refused to hand down indictments. The Nebraska legislative committee and the staffers who worked on this found the accusers very credible, but this reader of the evidence wonder s if some of the horrible acts attributed to the perpetrators exceeded what human being could do.
Bonacci had kept an exact diary, and forensic experts tested the ink entries to be sure they were made over a long period of time. He eventually testified in court that he helped kidnap a twelve year old boy, Johnny Goesch. Bonacci wrote about being taken to Bohemian Grove, a 2700 acre encampment outside Sacramento that belongs to the Bohemian Club, an all male organization that seems attached to reenacting ancient Druidic rituals. Alex Jones infiltrated the grounds in 2000 and filmed some Luciferian rituals going back to ancient Babylon. Members are expected to worshbip a large stone owl, the Great Owl of Bohemia. Jones claims Governor George W. Bush was there along with some security personnel. There is more than amply evidence of repeated enactment of these rituals, but it is hard to believe that anyone could take them seriously. They must be a strange form of amusement and a way of registering contempt for conventional norms. Very eminent people give lectures around a campfire to many men deep in their cups. Nudity is common. There is a pronounced homosexual subculture, particularly among employees, but it is not part of scheduled events.
Jones found nothing sinister there. There are numerous fenced-in areas, so if unusual conduct occurred in one area it is likely most of the two thousand campers would know nothing about it. According to several self-proclaimed victims, it was the remote places where that several boys were used in some sort of ritual, and one caged boy was very badly abused, finally dying after being beaten and raped by an adult. Later, the two remaining boys were taken to a house where a film of what happened was shown and they were passed around like playthings. Bonacci said Hunter Thompson directed the filming. There is no way of knowing what Thompson was doing there .Perhaps he was observing the ways of the rich and powerful? Other abductees said Hunter Thompson did “snuff” films, and Rusty Nelson, Kings photographer, testified to this in court. The diary recounted being paid for sex with men King knew at various places.
King had also found a way to get some boys out of Boys Town. The former head of Boys Town, Monsignor Robert Hupp, retained De Camp in order to get some help in cleaning up a mess there. King gave money to the institution and provided internships for boys. He also almost controlled the Boys and Girls Clubs of Omaha. A court threw out the case against the archdiocese and Boys Town. .
. Bonasci was afflicted with multiple personalities but the psychiatrists told De Camp the boy was not lying. De Camp finally decided to represent the boy, and his best friend, onetime CIA Director William Colby, told him he should write a book about it for his own safety. The investigation of Bonacci’s claims led the police to find and seal hundreds of sex videotapes that were found in Larry King’s office. There were some convictions. Among them was an editor of the Omaha World Herald.
De Camp was a former State Senator and got his colleagues to investigate. Gary Cardon, the chief investigator, called Senator Loren Schmidt from Chicago saying, “I’ve got them, I’ve got them.” The investigator’s private plane crashed shortly after leaving Chicago. Federal investigators swarmed the crash site, and none of his papers or his briefcase were officially retrieved Cardoni and his young son were both killed.
De Camp eventually found one Larry “Rusty” Nelson, King’s photographer, in prison. De Camp sprung him. Nelson became a key witness in a major case that netted one victim a million dollars. He also represented an Alicia Owen, a little girl who stuck by her guns even as other children who were witnessed disappeared. Her first attorney was creditably accused of giving privileged information to the FBI. That agency would work overtime to discredit the victims. She got 15 years for perjury for naming prominent politicians. She is still in prison and holds the record in Nebraska for time sent in solitary confinement. In her trial, the prosecutor acted as though there was noone named Rusty Nelson. De Camp got a second trial for her after Troy Boner, who had given information to Gary Cardon, swore out an affidavit confirming her statements. However, in the second trial he took the Fifth Amendment, privately telling De Camp it was that or be killed in prison. Boner had claimed that his brother, whose suicide he doubted, was a victim.
In 1993, Yorkshire Television sent a crew to the United States to film “Conspiracy of Silence” about De camp’s claims. They were thorough and even paid for extensive polygraph tests for one witness. The program was extensively advertised to be shown on the Discovery Channel on May 3, 1994. At the last minute someone bought the production rights and it was not shown.
On September 11, 1996, James Harold James , head of the Pennsylvania legislature’s black caucus, held a news conference in Philadelphia. He demanded an investigation of the drug trade, noted that the Iran-Contra investigation showed that the CIA was bringing drugs into the country, and said he wanted to know of George H.W. Bush involved. His name would be raised repeatedly from the beginning by child victims. John De Camp thought James was onto something because of the many ties between Bush and King and the multiple witnesses who placed George H.W. Bush at King’s sex parties. James Flanery of the Omaha World Herald had reported that King was heavily involved in running guns to Nicaragua; he was subsequently taken off the story and assigned out of Nebraska for a year. King’s public relations firm was used by the contras and he was a heavy contributor to one of their groups.
King boasted about his relationship with his hero, Bill Casey of the CIA. Pronto, Spain’s largest weekly, reported there was reason to believe that the child ex ring was tied to the CIA. Steve Bowman, an Omaha businessman researching the Franklin theft and sex scandal, claims he has believable witnesses who associate George H.W. Bush with the child sex ring. On the other hand, Bush could well have attended parties without knowing of the sexual activities. An Australian newsletter Inside News produced documents relating to the 1985, the Nebraska Department of Social Services investigation of stories told by Eunice (Lisa) Washington and her sister Tracey. They repeatedly ran away from their foster parents and told about the King sex ring They also said George H.W. Bush attended two of King’s sex parties. King took them to parties via his private jet. Lisa claimed she first met Bush at a Republican convention, and she also told of going to a party in Washington where the guests had guards wearing She added that King sometimes got boys from Boys Town. In October, 1984, she saw Bush at a Chicago party, and he left with a 19 year-old boy named Brent. A check of the papers showed he was there campaigning. In 1986 charges against the Webbs were dismissed. Tbe Webb foster children said they had been abused by GOP delegates at the Southfork Ranch in 1884 and also somewhere in Louisiana.
King was associated with lobbyist Craig Spence in helping the Nicaraguan Contras, and Bonacci told De Camp that the lobbyist once took a group of people, including two teenage prostitutes, on a midnight tour of the White House on July 4, 1988. King and Spence appear to have been partners in the sex trade and had two operations named “Dream Boys” and “ Man to Man.” Those operations were owned by an umbrella outfit called “Bodies by God.”. These CIA supported sex operations were expansion of the agency’s Vietnam era operation, designed to entrap members of Congress. It was run by two CIA agents and a CIA contractor who was a big time lobbyist. They brought boys into the Distinct of Columbia through Roy Cohn sex operations in New York City.
Two hundred prominent people were alleged to have used Spence and King’s services, but few of them were damaged by the disclosure. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole’s chief of staff was forced to resign due to the disclosure. The CIA claimed two of the boys worked for the KGB, but it looked more like a CIA blackmail operation. Later, the Washington Times reported that Donald Gregg, an aid to Bush arranged tours for Spence’s people .Spence seemed to have great influence, entertained lavishly, and was said to spend $20,000 a month employing various kinds of prostitutes. It was claimed that the CIA helped him photograph prominent people and members of agencies in compromising situations. After the Washington Times exposed the sex righ, Spence lost influence and seemed to have no funds. He told friends he feared “Casey’s boys” were after him. He was soon found dead in a Boston hotel room. Barbara Bush expressed pleasure that the Washington Post did not touch the story.” Spence was particularly close to a prominent federal attorney, whose career was in no way damaged by the intimate association.
There were also more conventional sex-for-votes operations available to Republican Congressmen and Senators. In the mid-1980s, Ed Rollins, a Reagan White House operative, succeeded in covering up a small operation that provided two dozen Republican Congressmen with sexual favors. Only Tom Evans of Delaware got caught and lost his seat. He foolishly confessed to his wife. This was a straight-forward operation run by a lobbyist, and there were no CIA ties. In 2006, another sex for Republican votes sex operation was exposed. This time, most the congressmen seemed to come from the Defense Appropriations subcommittee of the Military Affairs Committee. Again, only conventional adult sex was involved. It is unclear whether the CIA was involved. Porter Goss , director of the CIA, and his number three man, Dusty Foggio, attended the parties to gamble but were not involved with the prostitutes. One of the defense and intelligence contractors paying the bills was almost certainly working for the CIA in the 1980s.
De Camp relied upon psychiatrists to assure him that Bonacci was not lying to him and that over 80% of people with multiple personalities have been sexually abused as children .De Camp believed that Bonacci had been trained by drugging, sexual degradation, and torture in order to create multiple personalities who would carry out various tasks such as spying, torturing, killing, and even committing suicide. . The abuses would have been part of mind control experiments, which some have called the Monarch Project. William Colby assured him that the CIA never talked about a project by that name, but that it had to do some work in that area simply to be sure that there was no danger that someone a President of the United States met could be reading his mind. Paul claimed he was often taken to Offut Air Force Base, where he was abused. This is the center of the Strategic Air Command, and there are many intelligence people there. Lt. Colonel Michael Aquino, an allegedly retired Army officer, supervised these psychological operations. The Concerned Parents group in Nebraska said they had two witnesses who said King used to send limousines to the base to pick up boys, allegedly for parties. In the September 7, 1988 issue of the Omaha Metropolitan, There were more CIA people working out of Offitt than out of Langley, Virginia. Many psychological operations were located there, seemingly affirming claims that the children were subjects of experiments. One experimental program, acknowledge by the CIA, is MIK-ULTRA, in which children are confused and manipulated via drugs and sex.
Bonacco reported sometimes traveling with a gangster-like character called “Emilo” on various missions. On one occasion, they kidnapped a Des Moines a 12 year old newspaper boy named Johnny Gosch on September 5, 1982. . The boy’s mother, Noreen, had heard of two little girls abducted and placed in a sex ring and demanded that the police explore this possibility, but the local chief insisted Johnny was a runaway. In her book Why Johnny Can’t Come Home (2000), Noreen Gosch said that about six months after the boy disappeared, George Paul Bishop showed up, claiming to be a federal agent concerned with child abductions. He stayed in touch with her for some time and disappeared in 1985. Perhaps he was trying to help, and perhaps he was monitoring what she was learning. Bishop was arrested in 2001 on charges he had a pornographic video showing a sixteen year old boy.
AT 2:30 AM one morning in 1997, Johnny showed up at Noreen Goesch’ss apartment. He was accompanied by another male who seemed to be deciding what Johnny could say to his mother. She recognized him in part by a birthmark. He told her not to pursue the matter and not to talk about the visit. She remained silent for two years.
In 2003, a journalist/male prostitute calling himself Jeff Gannon turned up as a frequent guest at the White House and was even given press credentials. Some thought he could be Johnny Gosch. This writer has investigated the claim and finds it doubtful. Soon after people started asking questions about Gannon and tying him to the sex trade, Hunter Thompson committed suicide and Rusty Baker was arrested. Baker had served time for having a van-full of pornographic pictures. His subsequent arrest was for not registering as a sex abuser in a county where he no longer lived. De Camp managed to obtain Baker’s release. The arrest was seen as a way of telling Baker to keep quiet. Thompson was working on a story about how explosives leveled the World Trade Center and worried that he would be suicided. In a 2004 interview, he said: ”The Bush administration is a heap of Nazi shit. Bullshit. Yeah, you can put it that way. I don't know what your audience is ready for.”
When he died on February 20, 2005, Thompson was on the telephone with his wife when he allegedly shot himself, but she said she heard a muffled sound.
Chicago writer Sherman Skolnick has reported that Thompson was doing a book on the politically connected sex trade, but he offered no evidence to support this . There is only mention of Thompson in De Camp’s book, but Thompson never challenged it in court. The only other evidence comes from the Alex Jones radio program. A Thompson acquaintance had this to say:
CALLER “Scott from Texas”: I was just wondering if you guys might be able to clear up something I heard through the journalist Sherman Skolnick. He is reporting that another story or book, I don’t remember exactly which, that Hunter S. Thompson was working on was about this gay prostitution ring in the White House and supposedly that was another touchy topic that he brought out, and the wholeJONES: Had you heard that from Hunter?
PAUL WILLAM ROBERTS: Yeah, I had heard that quite a lot from Hunter. It goes back to Kissinger, I believe.
JONES: Wow.
Now that’s a big confirmation. Now for those who don’t know, We have Washington Times articles from 1989, you know—‘underage call boys in the White House’, and so this is serious . .. Hunter was working on that?
ROBERTS: Yeah, in fact Lyndon LaRouche published some stuff about that. And although, you know, a lot of his material was not that trustworthy, in this particular case there were a lot of sources cited and there was no lawsuit. And where there’s no lawsuit you can be almost guaranteed that it’s true.
Of course, no one can trust the La Rouche people even though they have produced some good material on the Middle East and the involvement of governments in the drug trade. Maybe some day mainstream investigative reporters will get into these taboo waters and sort out what is true.
A Plug for Sherm’s Book--- Sherm spent seven years writing an analytical chronicle of what the Republicans have been up to since the 1970s. It discusses elements in the Republican coalition, their ideologies, strategies, informational and financial resources, and election shenanigans. Abuses of power by the Reagan and G. W. Bush administration and the Republican Congresses are detailed. The New Republican Coalition : Its Rise and Impact, The Seventies to Present (Publish America) can be acquired by calling 301-695-1707. On line, go to http://www.publishamerica.com/shopping.
References
John w. De Camp, The Franklin ‘Cover-Up (Lincoln, Nebraska: AWT, Inc., 1992)21-79
De Camp, The Franklin Cover-Up, 100-105. It is very difficult to believe anyone among the participants could have believed in this nonsense. It must have been a a device to discredit testimony of victims.
If Kay Griggs can be believed, intelligence operatives joined the power brokers in cavorting at Bohemian Grove. Marine Colonel George Raymond Griggs, her former husband, told her about how he and other assassins went to Bohemian Gove to engage anal and oral sex and run naked in the woods. She also employed his diary as evidence and went public in 1996, before Skull and Bones and Bohemian Grove were public knowledge. She received death threats and had to seek sanctuary in the home of journalist Sarah McClendon. . He referred to the hit men as The Brotherhood or The Firm and thought they were linked together in a sort of secret ‘cap and gown” and skull and bones society. They took their inspiration from Skull and Bones at Yale and a similar secret society at Princeton. He talked about military hit squads, sexual slavery, weapons and drug sales, psychological conditioning, and involvement with prominent people such as Paul Wolfowitz, who was present in the 1970s when Grigg trained assassins in Indonesia. The colonel told her that he had been sexually molested by teachers and that many of the operatives shared this background.
De Camp, The Franklin Cover-Up, 151-158; Greg Szymanski, “The Evilo Lurking Within,” Rense.com (July 31, 2006)
De Camp, The Franklin Cover-Up194-198
“Alex Jones Interviews John DeCamp, Author of the ‘Franklin Cover-Up,’” (July 21, 2004) Prison Planet.com; “Radio Free America Interview with John De Camp,” The 7th Fire.com; “American Child Sex Rings That Reach the White House,” Whatsmells.com (March, 2003); Ted Gunderson, “Synopsis,” Johnny Gosch.com (undated); De Camp, “Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska,”Educate Yourself.org;; “Famous Kidnapping Case Implicates Political Figures in Child Prostitution Network,” 9 a radio interview with Mrs. Sosch) (no date) American Free Press.Net;Tim Schmitt, “Johnny Gosch, Jeff Gannon, Hunter Thompson and the Unravelling of a Trouble3d Tale,” Educate Yourself.com (April 6, 2006) See also the Wikopedia entry on Bohemian Grove; Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey ST. Clair, “The Truth About the Bohemian Grove,” CounterPunch,org (June 19, 2001).
De Camp, “Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska,”Educate Yoursel.org; These are excerpts from Chapter 21 of The Franklin Cover-UP; Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthjorized Biography, chapter 21 “Omaha” www.Tarpley,net; “Kidding Around–Child
EdRollins. Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms: My Fife in American Politics (New York: Broadway Books, 1996), 84-85
De Camp, “Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska,”Educate Yourself.org; These are excerpts from Chapter 21 of The Franklin Cover-UP; Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthjorized Biography, chapter 21 “Omaha” www.Tarpley,net; Frank Santiago, “Noreen Gosch: I Saw Johnny,” DesMoines Register (February 7, 1999)
Schmitt, “Johnny Gosch, Jeff Gannon, Hunter Thompson, and the Unraveling of a Troubling Tale.”
“Hunter Thompson was working on WTC collapse story before mysterious sudden death, warned he'd be 'suicided'” Toronto Globe and Mail (February 26, 2005); Adam Bulger, “The Hunter S. Thompson Interview,” FreezerBox Magazine.com (March 9, 2004)
Shermak Skolnick, “Was Hunter Thompson Suicided?” Conspiracy Planet.com ( February 21, 2006)
“GOP Child Rapists and Hunter Thompson,”GNN.TV
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