Submitted by Brandon Smith from Alt Market [9]
Fake Conservatives As Dangerous To Freedom As Obama
If Americans are looking for anything in the dark clouds of political dust and powdered ash that choke our air and leave us feeling naked against the elements, it is but a simple moment of sincerity. It sounds like an easily attainable thing, and yet, we continue to gasp and clamor. The visible surface of our nation is so devoid of honest connection with our social voice that we have turned to a cynical form of loneliness. We have embraced a life without clarity, and been made wretchedly bitter, desperate for even the faintest taste of truth.
The false two party paradigm that drives America gives us a measure of sustenance. Just enough to keep us from going completely mad, but not enough to end our hunger. As this process continues, however, and the establishment grows bolder, we too become savvy in the ways of the machine. Eventually, the old standards just don’t keep the masses distracted like they used to, and so, the system, not willing to give up power, decides instead to become “like us”, at least outwardly. It steals our vision and our song and goes on parade. It tries to make us believe again…
The campaign of Barack Obama in 2008 was a perfect example of the propaganda pageant, complete with visceral slogans like “Hope” and “Change”. After eight years of the clownish George Bush Jr., when our country spiraled down into a state of disturbed and vicious adolescence, people were looking for a renewal. They were looking for a path away from the edge of the abyss. Instead, they were given a better liar, with a brand new costume. The American Dream has become harder to sustain since…to say the least.
In 2012, what I see is like a lightning bolt in slow motion. I can sense it branching out across the sky towards the ground and tearing through our surroundings, upending everything we know. Both the President and Congress have some of the lowest approval ratings in history. The question of whether anything can be accomplished through government has been answered for most people with a resounding “no”. The citizenry is on the verge of total fury.
I wish I could say that most have abandoned the fleeting hollow satisfaction of choosing the “lesser of two evils”, but that would not be accurate.
Recently, I was invited (by several separate people) to a central event in the state elections of Montana called the “Lincoln-Reagan Dinner”, and promptly tried to avoid it like a rat infested plague ship. I know from experience what these kinds of political elbow rubbing parties can be like, and have been thoroughly unimpressed. Somehow, I ended up there anyway. If your only experience of the Republican Party was to attend such shindigs, you might think the stuffy anal-retentive caricatures we often see of conservatives are well deserved. In stark contrast to a Ron Paul rally, most of the attendees were little younger than 55, and few seemed very animated. Perhaps they were suffering from the same distaste of the whole thing as I was. Luckily, a solid 15% of the crowd were Liberty Movement oriented, which helped me to weather the overall painful proceedings (I also won a door prize; a coupon for a free dinner, mmmm…), but a pair of earplugs and a bottle of whiskey would have been far more comforting.
The party also gave me a momentary window into the future of the state in which I now reside, and even the probable nature of campaigns occurring across the nation. The prospects weren’t very pretty.
If Americans plan to look to the GOP to save them from the jaws of impending disaster, they had better reconsider that foolish notion. Obama may be riding the economic collapse straight at us like a wild Mako shark, but that’s no excuse to delude ourselves with fantasies of a Republican savior. Mitt Romney (a man whose legislative record is little different from Obama’s) is just the tip of the iceberg. At the state level, a much more dire charade is taking place.
A most noticeable trend is the language that fake conservatives (Neo-Cons) have adopted in the past year, switching from die hard statism to sudden “opposition” to Federal encroachment. What happened to the GOP’s love affair with centralized government? Well, the tides of the populace have changed considerably over the past few years, and in 2012, co-option is the name of the game.
While the media goes out of its way to ignore Ron Paul, the elites in the GOP have lately decided its better to sound at least a little bit like the Constitutionalist candidate. Now, the parasites are brandishing rhetoric they wouldn’t have been caught dead uttering not long ago; railing against EPA intrusion on state jurisdiction of natural resources mostly, and the Federal Government in general, but it wasn’t much help. Speech after speech, the candidates were heavy on flag waving placations, light on substance or honor. The general message of the assembly was repeated over and over again; WHOEVER the chosen candidates were after the primaries, conservatives were “duty bound” to supplant Obama and the Democrats at all costs. That is to say, if we do not unify around the selected Republican con-squad, Obama’s reelection would be entirely the fault of the non-conformists. “Anyone but Obama” was the catch phrase of the evening…
Sound familiar? It should. It’s the same kind of campaign the Democrats were running against Bush back in 2004, and it will lead to the same kind of disappointment.
Two political front men in Montana in particular left me so disgusted I could barely digest dinner afterwards. The first, of course, was Neil Livingstone, who as far as I can tell, is the quintessential nightmare candidate from the seventh circle of hell. With ties to the CIA under Air America, Iran Contra (though he denies it), multiple Blackwater-style mercenary firms, a penchant for death squads, and backdoor deals with dictators like Moammar Qaddafi, it’s hard to imagine a worse governor for an anti-Federal pro-Constitutional state like Montana. Though we have been covering this information since Livingstone’s entry into the race [10], it’s nice to see that other outlets are finally catching on:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/neil-livingstone-montana-governor [11]
Mother Jones treats Livingstone’s record as a kind of anomaly; an outlandish joke that makes him unelectable. However, I tend to take his presence in Montana a bit more seriously. Money and friends in high places are still viable strategies in our very corrupt electoral process, and Livingstone has both. The fact that the man moved back to Montana barely a year ago just to run for the governor’s position is also disconcerting. His running mate, Ryan Zinke, a former Seal Team 6 member, stated his solution to Montana’s unemployment problems is to build predator drone factories (I’m not joking). And, both have received backing from a local retired two star general by the name of Paul Vallely who wrote a book called “The Myths Of Gitmo: Torture, Abuse Or The Truth”, in which he defends the detainment procedures of the infamous facility and claims that no torture, or at least what he defines as torture, occurs there. Though, this is not half as disturbing as the paper “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory” which he wrote with legendary military Psyop analyst and creepy occultist Michael Aquino (look this guy up for a lesson in dangerously weird).
Vallely has been posing locally and nationally as a Liberty Movement proponent with his organization “Stand Up America”, just as Livingstone and Zinke have been posing as Constitutional freedom loving traditional conservatives. Anyone who has studied the Cointelpro operations of the 1960’s and 1970’s would probably see a familiar pattern in all of this, but many Montanans I fear may not be quite so aware. Livingstone gets consistent applause for his broken record jokes on the hot button wolf problem here in the Big Sky State. And his speaking style is well trained. Like most political snake oil salesmen, he has the ability to talk a lot without saying much. It may well be that the Constitutionalist movement that is thriving here has garnered special attention, and men like those listed so far are not here by coincidence.
The second politician stealing our oxygen was Rep. Denny Rehberg, a self proclaimed Tea Party Republican who consistently votes for Neo-Con style legislation, including the NDAA. Rehberg washed patriotic during his substance-less speech during the Lincoln-Reagan dinner, wandering off on tangents about his mother and then back to push button topics like Obamacare. The one saving feature of his campaign was his opposition to the bailouts. Unfortunately, when confronted by Stewart Rhodes of Oath Keepers after the event on his support of the NDAA, Rehberg revealed his true colors.
Apparently not recognizing who Rhodes was, he accused the long time veteran of “not supporting the troops” because of his opposition to the bill. When confronted on the specific provisions of the bill which allow for indefinite detainment of any person the executive branch accuses of being an enemy combatant without trial, Rehberg denied that the bill opened doors to such action. This has been the typical response from other fake conservatives who voted for the draconian legislation.
Strangely, representatives of Rehberg have tried to contact Rhodes in the past to show support for a bill to “clarify” the language of the NDAA, but these drafts contained little to nothing to actually nullify the detainment sections. If Rehberg has no remorse over his support for the NDAA, and feels it holds no threat to the American people, why try to draft a state bill to clarify the U.S. citizen issue? According to Rehberg, the only reason was to silence Constitutionalists who had been pointing out his non-conservative, pro-statist behavior. “Clarity”, is not his true concern at all. The irrationality of the defense of the NDAA continues to escalate amongst closet neo-cons. From Alinsky style diversions and accusations, to full-on denial in spite of the evidence, they refuse to admit the nature of the legislation. Why? Because it is indefensible.
I have merely covered some local examples of fake-conservatives I have witnessed first hand, but this is a strategy being used all over the country. The incredible threat these people pose cannot be underestimated (in a follow up article, I will cover some examples of legitimate liberty candidates). With Obama sending America into a death spiral, the obvious and natural reaction by many will be to look to the conservative dynamic to put things right. Sadly, most Americans do not know what real conservatism and limited government looks like anymore. Frankly, any hobgoblin in a suit can claim he is a conservative nowadays, and then implement the same globalist, collectivist policies as the fake liberal before him. As I have said many times in the past, you have to examine the actions of these representatives, not their rhetoric. What they say is meaningless. What they do, and have done in the past, is everything. This election year, we MUST NOT play the old game of the “lesser of two evils”. The fact is, there is no such thing, and there never was.