From the time I started paying attention to the Republican race for the Presidency, something has been bothering me. Out of the eleven candidates that made up the original field, there was only one who openly stood against the neocon agenda. The rest made every attempt to prove how loyal they were to the Bush Doctrine — misnamed, since the "Bush Doctrine" is truly the PNAC doctrine.
The majority of Republican Presidential candidates have been issuing extraordinarily clumsy rhetoric; part bravado, part insanity with equal parts fear-mongering and logical absurdity. To a man, Republican candidates not named Ron Paul, promised to continue and expand wars while proclaiming a u2018pro-life’ stance. Their platforms showed utter disregard for 70% of the American public who wanted an end to the Iraq war. Why aren’t these men afraid of committing political suicide? Do they know something we do not?
What do they know?
The same caveat applies, perhaps more so, to the Democrats. In 2006, Democrat promises to end the Iraq war, led voters to give them a majority in the House. Yet, when the opportunity arose to make good on their promises, the newly elected Democratic leadership folded. It was eerily similar to the budget showdown between neocons and the Clinton White House in 1995.
While watching a Democratic debate on YouTube, I found myself imagining that the theme from the Twilight Zone would begin playing and everyone would have a good laugh. Sadly, that never happened. A majority of Democrat candidates were saying that we should continue our military adventurism. This led me to wonder how they could sleep at night.
It wasn’t until Daniel McAdams wrote the following that I finally understood what was so bothersome:
Although other bloggers have been cited elsewhere on the Barbour, Griffith PR firm move to replace Maliki with Allawi, they have all missed the point: This is NOT a Democrat plot to undermine Republican policy in Iraq, dude: This is “The Party” shifting tactics toward open conflict with Syria and Iran. Anything else is diversionary propaganda, especially when it comes from an ensconced neocon at Hudson Institute.
Case in point: Barbour, Griffith is a Republican firm. No doubt about it. Look at the staff. But its highly paid push to replace Maliki who is veering wildly off the reservation has been picked up without skipping a beat by Democrat neocon Hillary Clinton, who has enthusiastically endorsed the replacement of Maliki. Quoth Hillary: “I share Senator Levin’s hope that the Iraqi parliament will replace Prime Minister Maliki with a less divisive and more unifying figure when it returns in a few weeks.”
What they "know," is that we, the voters, are inconsequential.
Hillary’s statement is almost sublime in its calculating shrewdness; yet it is sinister in what it represents. The statement is directed toward the neocon elite who run the system and its controlled media, not those who will be casting votes. You are but an afterthought in her mind. She is essentially saying to the neocon elite, "I understand the Plan. I’m with you."
The PNAC plan calls for war against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. The neocons will accept nothing less than that. That’s why Barack Obama doesn’t have a chance to win the Democratic nomination. He may be too warmongering for our tastes, but the neocons who write the plans don’t just want any old war, especially not one that seeks to put focus on the terrorists who attacked on 9/11. Barack’s stated target is terrorists in Pakistan. That’s not in the plan. The Plan is everything. You either play along or get dumped. Hillary makes it clear that she understands this. She’s talking to them.
The neocons have almost complete ideological and physical control of the media through both ownership interests and by virtue of the fact that they control the government which issues the media’s licenses to broadcast. However, the neocon star is falling in terms of ideology. The days of growing the movement are long gone. So, this is a desperate time for them even if they do not yet recognize it.
These neocons are like, scratch that, they are literally and figuratively, petulant children. Three spoiled children of prominent political families, Kristol, Podhoretz and Bush, along with their good buddies from the fraternity houses of Ivy League schools, have been given the keys to dad’s car and they’re out drinking, partying and wrecking the neighborhood, just like their fathers before them.
They will not relinquish the keys without throwing a world-class temper tantrum. The Presidential candidates in "both" parties, save three, do not currently see the electorate as a barrier to power as evidenced by their rhetoric. The only barrier they view as important to gaining power is approval from the neocon gatekeepers. This is why their campaigns make no attempts to appease the anti-war contingent of the electorate.
This sycophantic exercise also has another purpose. It seeks to undermine public confidence. For many, the subtext goes un-noticed. In the case of Hillary’s statement a large portion of her listeners will thoughtfully nod their heads in agreement. "Why yes, that Maliki fellow must be evil." For those who do notice its implications, the intent is that we fall to cynicism and inaction. If they are that arrogant, then we must be powerless against them because they know something we don’t.
That is a trap. We are not powerless. Furthermore, we know something they do not. In spite of their best plans to control ideological thought and its dissemination, they have failed utterly. The message of freedom is spreading by means and methods which they did not foresee and cannot possibly control. It is that powerful.
If they manage to stifle the internet, we will simply find other ways to promote the ideas of liberty. There wasn’t an Internet in 1776. "Common Sense," the ideological spark of the first revolution, was barely 46 pages in length. Yet it set the Colonists on a path to independence.
This market cannot be controlled. If all we do is ask everyone we meet whether or not they’ve heard the name Ron Paul, it won’t be but a few months before everyone has. The people who think they can control the outcome of this next election are the same who claimed they could control the situation in Iraq. They are the same who have been trying, without success, to prevent natural consequences in the financial markets from occurring.
As Ron Paul says, restoring our once-great republic should be fun. If Ron Paul the man and the message he espouses has affected you the way it has me, then there is no reason why we can’t prevail. The message sells itself. That’s what they don’t know and will never understand.
