Gary Kohls

"Who should freedom-loving people vote for?"

There are two important national elections coming up in the next two years and the corporate-controlled mainstream media (MSM) is trying to orchestrate another series of “too-close-to-call” (TCTC) “cliff-hanger” elections. In the heat of the campaigns, we voters must be careful lest we blindly allow our future oppressors to win.

There are many dangerous stealth candidates who are beholden to hidden, powerful, anti- democracy groups, think tanks and wealthy individuals, all of whom want to continue their behind the scenes control of government. Such entities are called plutocrats (“the ruling class of rich people”) and they already have total control over a large number of members of Congress, candidates for Congress and Supreme Court justices. Many of these “lapdogs for plutocrats” do not share the interests of average middle or lower class citizens. These candidates and their paymasters are found in every political party (except perhaps for the Green Party and some socialist parties) although it is worth noting that the Democratic Party does still have a number of altruists in its ranks who have not yet lost their souls to the devil.

No matter how dangerous or inept are the candidates, the MSM and their ubiquitous talking heads treat them all with unwarranted respect and want their readers, listeners and viewers to pay obsessive attention to their shows which, if the political races are TCTC, their ratings, market share and advertising revenues will increase, a winning situation for everybody except for us citizens.

The slickest and most well-funded think tanks are the right wing think tanks (Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, the Koch Brothers [that underwrites Sarah Palin and the Tea Party] and about 400 others).

Who should freedom-loving people vote for?

By freedom I don’t mean freedom from paying legitimate taxes. I mean freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, freedom from police brutality and freedom from being forced to kill.

I mean freedom from the oppression of tyrants and their tyranny; freedom from war-mongers and their wars. I mean freedom from bigotry, persecution and the possibility of living under the jackboot heels of a theocratic state.

A couple of months ago I wrote a column entitled: “How Fascist-Leaning is Your Political Candidate? (Suggested Criteria to Apply Before Supporting Political Parties)

That column referenced a very sobering article about the 14 characteristics of fascism and the abuse of political power. Professor Lawrence Britt’s article was titled “Fascism Anyone?” It can be found at: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=britt_23_2

In that column I suggested that voters carefully scrutinize the political parties and candidates by learning about the corporations, institutions, churches and individuals that they are beholden to, the business affiliations that they have had and the uttered (or unuttered) political and/or theological beliefs they espouse. These often hidden realities may reveal how fascist-leaning their paymasters are and how likely they are to become our future oppressors.

There is a class of unusually ruthless political operatives known as “NeoConservatives”, a nefarious right-wing movement that includes the members of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), who dictated the political agendas of the late, lamented, Constitution-shredding Cheney/Bush/Rove administration and its disastrous, illegal and bankrupting wars.

Despite losing political power in 2008, the NeoCons have been trying to regain governmental control by their avowed intent to cause the Obama adminstration to fail through GOP gridlock, propaganda, dirty tricks and endless unfair criticism of the administration for its inability to quickly and magically resolve the financial disaster that the Bushites and their paymasters had created in the first place (not that the Obama administration hasn’t suffered its share of self-inflicted wounds).

America is already a highly militarized society that spies on its own citizens, has a highly censored press and imprisons its peaceful street demonstrators. It has a permanent war economy, a punitive law enforcement culture and a punitive judicial system that is ripe for a George Orwell “1984”-style fascism. Sinclair Lewis, in his novel “It Can’t Happen Here”, pointed out the risks of a fascist America back in 1935 around the time when there was an actual fascist coup attempt against FDR.

Advice for citizens who still have hope for America

America is now lying nearly moribund in the rubble of the Bush economic crash of 2008. It meets all of Dr. Britt’s criteria for fascism. Therefore it behooves us true patriots to learn the lessons of pre-Nazi Germany in which the plutocrats and their Nazi hit-men legally, through the democratic process, gained control of the government and ended the messy democratic experiment.

We need to study the history of right-wing authoritarianism (fascism) by reading Britt’s article (and other essays at www.gotfascism.org/essays.html), and then, before voting, read the list of sobering quotes below from members of America’s proud right-wing political movement (who have already partially completed a coup during the chaotic events following 9/11/01) and may want to complete that coup. And then, no matter what political party your candidate represents, withhold your vote until you have been convinced that he or she will not become one of your future oppressors.

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A Small Sampling of Quotes From American NeoConservatives

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our (Trilateral Commission) meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march toward a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” -- David Rockefeller, in a speech, given to the Trilateral Commission in 1991.

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."-- Henry Kissinger

"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists."-- J. Edgar Hoover, former head of the FBI and probable co-conspirator in the JFK assassination

"I said on my program, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again."-- Bill O'Reilly (who never honored his promise)

"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus—living fossils—so we will never forget what these people stood for."-- Rush Limbaugh

”In my opinion, the right to privacy doesn't exist in the United States Constitution."-- Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.)

"Environmentalists are a socialist group of individuals that are the tool of the Democrat Party. I'm proud to say that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans."-- Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska)

"When you strip it all away, Jerry Garcia destroyed his life on drugs. And yet he's being honored, like some godlike figure. Our priorities are out of whack, folks."-- Rush Limbaugh (just before being investigated for abuse of prescription drugs himself)

"I don't understand how poor people think."-- George W. Bush

"Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him."-- Rep. James Hansen (R-Utah), talking about President Bill Clinton

"We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs."-- Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas)

"Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist."-- Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas)

"I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period."-- Pat Robertson

"Probably nothing."-- Jeb Bush, when asked what he would do for black people

"The homosexual blitzkrieg has been better planned and executed than Hitler's."-- Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-Calif.)

”I tell you this morning that George W. Bush in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."-- Lt. General William G. Boykin, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense

"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."-- Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conf., 02-26-02

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."-- Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform

"The fact of the matter is that this (increased American casualties) is a sign of the success of our operation, not its failure."-- Ralph Reed, GOP strategist

"Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men."-- State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC)

"My biggest fear is going to be going to the funeral of some young Iowa man or woman who dies in this conflict and having their mother or father come up to me and ask whether or not their son or daughter died for America, or died to save Bill Clinton's presidency. I don't know what I would say to those grieving parents. For that reason I believe the President must resign immediately."-- Rep. Jim Nussle (R-IA)

“If the American people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched."-- George H. W. Bush

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"-- Barbara Bush, on the day before the Iraq war started

"I'm the commander—see, I don't need to explain—I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."-- George W. Bush

"Some people believe we Rockefellers are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family … as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."-- David Rockefeller

“God told me to smite Osama bin Ladin, so I invaded Afghanistan. Then He told me to smite Saddam Hussein, so I invaded Iraq. Now he wants me to work on the Middle East problem...”-- George W. Bush

"I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."-- Gen. George Patton

“Patrick J. Buchanan used to print slime about Martin Luther King in the St. Louis Globe Democrat which was fed to him by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, which was so outrageous the latter did not wish to be associated with it.” -- Dave Lukens

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Dr. Kohls is a concerned observer of the human situation, a student of fascism and is therefore a critic of fascism’s major components: corporatism, militarism, racism and economic oppression. He is an advocate for peace, justice and planetary sustainability and a believer in the power of nonviolent resistance to evil.