I have been fascinated by conspiracies, ever since I majored in History at Holy Cross College in 1963. It is impossible to objectively study the subject, unless one accepts the reality that conspiracies exist and have existed since recorded history began. A conspiracy can be accurately be defined as a secret plan by at least two or more people to do something unlawful or harmful, such as assassinate an emperor or a president. Political coups are also conspiracies.
In today’s political climate everything a politician does not like is often labeled by the pejorative term of a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory is often used by the powers that be to literally dismiss the arguments and evidence of rival groups that threaten their power. Use the term and the door closes swiftly on all discussion and investigations. Let us not forget, that while Ike had warned of the Military-Industrial Complex in 1960, we now have been made aware of the Deep State which has now grown into more of a corporate media and academic state whose collective goal is to absorb all major organs of government, information and cultural expression.
The Left has been a master of using the term to obfuscate the irreparable harm their philosophy of government has inflicted on the American people over the last 100 years. Yet they are not bashful for concocting their own conspiracy theories, such as the canard of the Russian involvement in the election of President Trump in 2016. For four years they conspired, plotted and connived, often using the very departments of American government, to block Trump’s positive agenda of reform and economic growth because it enhanced the personal freedoms of the American people and threatened the Left’s collective political power. Only the Wuhan Virus and a highly suspicious election could bring President Trump down.
This political conspiracy is no theory. While it started with some very important Marxist baby steps in education and taxation under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, it made large strides under the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama, who politicized virtually all sections of the executive branch, especially the DOJ and the IRS. It remains to be seen just how long and how far, President Biden can carry the water for his mentor, whose shadow lurks behind the Oval Office curtain. I see the Biden presidency as more an embodiment of Obama III.
Progressive power has become so dominant in our politics—many Republicans are as much a part of the political swamp, Trump’s name for the Establishment—that the future is bleak. Their power is so entrenched that they will shamelessly expose their power grab in public in what Socialist H. G. Wells, called in his novel, The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for World Revolution, published in 1928. The book is, in his own words, a scheme to thrust forward and establish a human control over the destinies of life and liberate it from its present dangers, uncertainties and miseries. It proposes that largely as the result of scientific progress, a common vision of a world politically, socially and economically unified is emerging among educated and influential people, and that this can be the basis of ‘a world revolution’ aiming at universal peace, welfare and happy activity that can result in the establishment of a “world commonwealth. To me this sounds largely like FDR’s Guarantor State, which proposed to take care of people from the cradle to the grave.
During his own lifetime, Wells was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. Even though his book was a work of fiction, the plans, on the heels of the League of Nations, presented a plausible design for world government. It has been a major goal of progressives since Wilson.
Time Magazine’s February 8th-15th issue has an article that is worth reading for any person who wants to understand what really happened in November of last year and what it bodes for the future of this country. It was written by Molly Ball, and entitled The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election. When I read it the first time, even though the main points were thickly painted in liberalese, I could not believe my eyes. This was Time Magazine, one of the many media voices of the Left.
Time would never print something so open and transparent. My thoughts quickly reverted to 1985 and the legendary story of ersatz New York Mets pitcher, Sidd Finch, whose fastball was clocked at 169 miles an hour, an incredible feat, shattering Nolan Ryan’s mark of 104 MPH. They had a full spread of pictures, with Finch fraternizing with his Mets teammates at Spring Training, including manager Davey Johnson. As incredible as it was, it had to be true or why else…?
The article, written by George Plimpton, appeared in the April 1st-8th edition, a publication owned by Time. It took Hall of Fame sportswriter, the editor of our local paper, Bob Broeg, to put me straight. He said the whole thing had been an April Fool’s joke. My embarrassment turned my face crimson. So one can understand that I might have been skeptical of Time’s recent article. I checked the date twice and it was still February.
Ball’s article details the Left’s conspiracy to prevent Donald Trump from winning the second term. Trump was favored until the Wuhan virus, adopted the role of the Democrats’ Deus ex machina, killing several hundred thousand American citizens and derailing our economy’s historic revival, all in several months. This rendered the election a toss-up. What she reports is shocking in how bold the Left is in admitting that they plotted behind the scenes to save, not only our democracy, but presumably our planet from the outrageous threat of Climate Change.
The fear was palatable. The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. But nothing happened. Peace reigned on election day 2020 and Biden’s election saved the day for all Americans.
Trump had been certain his populist tide would sweep him to victory, as it had in 2016. Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted. Thus the election rose to the controversies of 1876 and 1960, when cheaters and corrupt deal-makers had arguably trampled over the true election results.
How did all this happen? Ball candidly admits, in a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. This conspiracy was an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.
The unique handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary ‘shadow effort’ dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, this mostly Democratic cabal of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Just what institutions was she writing about?
Ball tells us that even though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. Ball would have us believe that this secret operation had nothing more than patriotic intent and was not trying to insure Biden’s election. This is just one of the many incredulous statements she makes in her article. To believe her one has to have the implicit naivete of a Finch dupe.
Ball says that their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction.
I refer to the Carter Election Reform Commission in 2005 that concluded because it takes place outside the regulated environment of local polling locations, voting by mail creates increased logistical challenges and the potential for voter fraud, especially if safeguards are lacking or when candidates or political party activists are allowed to handle mail-in or absentee ballots. These expanded and unsupervised voting changes in the laws are exactly the ones proscribed by the Commission. Their preparations to ward off Trump’s predictable and prophesied reaction was not a conspiracy theory but a bone fide attempt to prevent Trump’s re-election. Her actual use of the word conspiracy earlier should have been a red flag for anyone reading her article and looking for the truth. Conspiracies are illegal acts, done in secret and she also mentioned more than once that this was done behind the scenes and not open to public scrutiny.
I have no idea if Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger had read Ball’s essay but I did notice that he got very curious about the Democrats’ use of the term our democracy. He concluded that the Left’s version of real democracy is a false narrative that in reality meant agreeing with and voting for their belief in progressive government. What they really mean is their democracy. He also underscored the recent usage of their apocalyptic notion of a threat to our democracy. Thus the only unity that Joe Biden promises is that which comes from the 74 million Americans adapting their progressive views.
There is a very astute and popular contributor on-line who recently raised an enlightening question: would moral considerations prevent Democrats from cheating to oust Trump? Or, to put the question in the positive: would Democrats deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Joe Biden? The answer to the first question is no: Moral considerations would not prevent decent Democrats from cheating to prevent Trump’s reelection. The answer to the second question is yes: Decent Democrats would deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Biden.
Ball identified their self-admitted secret conspiracy’s architect as Mike Podhorzer, a political data geek, who was involved in the founding of Catalist, the flagship progressive data company. For nearly a quarter-century, Podhorzer was a senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union federation, for whom he has marshaled the latest tactics and data to help its favored candidates win elections.
In the fall of 2019, Ball tells us…Podhorzer became convinced the election was headed for disaster–and determined to protect it. According to Ball we are supposed to believe that he valiantly answered the call of patriotism and stifled his partisan beliefs to save our democracy and our progressive way of life from the likes of Donald Trump and his minions. This is a totally outrageous statement, and smells of pure propaganda, more fitting to early thirties in Nazi Germany.
Protecting the election would require an effort of unprecedented scale. As 2020 progressed, the conspiracy expanded to Congress, Silicon Valley and the nation’s statehouses. It drew energy from the summer’s racial-justice protests, many of whose leaders were a key part of the liberal alliance. Eventually it reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans, appalled by his attacks on democracy. The attendant fear of the Wuhan virus made Americans more susceptible to radical changes in their voting habits. Progressive leaders never met a crisis they didn’t take advantage of. They used old favorites, such as former House Majority leader, Missouri’s Dick Gephardt and a Republican named Zach Wamp, who Ball calls a Trump supporter, to coordinate a bipartisan election-protection council. As early as 2015 Wamp tweeted that the future president, was a sore loser…and should never be president.
I wonder if this secret committee to save the election was not the same one that Joe Biden identified well before the voting began in a video of his boasting that his election team had created the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics. His handlers quickly tried to dismiss his boast as just another of his gaffe or perhaps Biden may have been referring to his campaign’s massive election program, which included former Attorney General Eric Holder and hundreds of other lawyers in preparation for the legal battle they knew was going to happen over this purloined election.
What happened next, implies much more than it actually says. Ball reported that during the election returns, Trump was running way ahead and the Democrats were despairing. But Podhorzer was unperturbed…the returns were exactly in line with his modeling. He had been warning for weeks that Trump voters’ turnout was surging. As the numbers dribbled out, he could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose. Note he said votes, not voters.
The liberal alliance gathered for an 11 p.m. Zoom call. Gloom reigned. The conversation that followed was a difficult one, led by the activists charged with the ‘protest strategy’. We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street…Protests that devolved into violent clashes would give Trump a pretext to send in federal agents or troops as he had over the summer. And rather than elevate Trump’s complaints by continuing to fight him, the alliance wanted to send the message that the people had spoken.
So the word went out: stand down. Podhorzer credits the activists for their restraint. They had spent so much time getting ready to hit the streets on Wednesday. But …Wednesday through Friday, there was not a single Antifa vs Proud Boys incident like everyone was expecting. And when that didn’t materialize…Activists reoriented the Protect the Results protests toward a weekend of celebration…
Just what was the Trump plan, other than to use all legal means available to protest the election results? Why does Ball not mention anything more than following the suggestions of the Carter Commission? Unless they were part of the conspiracy, how come the Proud Boys did not riot and burn businesses on Wednesday? Did Podhorzer have control of them as well? That the Democrats would even entertain the idea of using planned violence to stop the President’s re-election is contemptible and far beyond the pale of proper political activity.
There was one last milestone on Podhorzer mind: Jan. 6th. On the day Congress would meet to tally the electoral count, Trump summoned his supporters to D.C. for a rally. Much to their surprise, the thousands who answered his call were met by virtually no counterdemonstrators. To ensure they couldn’t be blamed for any mayhem, the activist left was strenuously discouraging counter activity… Trump rallied his followers and further claimed that his re-election had been stolen. He told them to fight like Hell, shades of Harry S Truman and several other Democrats over the years. Nothing Trump said could have excited them anymore than when they first arrived. That is the lie of the second impeachment. Many had come for the battle declared in social media that the country thought would happen. Theirs was not an armed militia but more a disorganized mob. The conspiracy had outfoxed them and one might add, set them up.
Without any trained leadership, the mob followed a kind of herd mentality that met with so little resistance that their passions, not Trump, egged many of them on. The one identified Antifa member in the throng was overheard to urge them to torch the place. They easily breeched the Capitol police’s few barricades, who were surprising undermanned. And unlike the protests in Portland and Seattle, nothing in the Capitol was ever burned. This was surely not anything close to an insurrection or a coup.
Contrary to other published reports, former Chief Steven Sund said he had requested help from the FBI and the National Guard but was rebuffed by his bosses in Congress, the House and Senate Sergeants-at-Arms, who were also thrown under the election bus by their bosses, Paul Irving by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Michael Stenger by Senator Mitch McConnell, who beat Chuck Schumer to the punch. While there have been some reports that some rioters were armed, no weapon was ever brandished or used. The only shot fired was by Capitol officer, who killed a Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, who was inside the Capitol building. She was unarmed. On top of all this is the quiet retraction of the New York Times’ accusation that Officer Brian Sicknick had been bludgeoned to death during the riot by a fire extinguisher. From all reports there was no trauma to his head and may have died of a stroke on a heart attack. He was not killed by a protestor.
Another twist in what has become high drama in the early days of the Biden administration is the latest possible connection of Speaker Pelosi to a set-up of Trump’s brainless mob on January 6th. The Democratic House Managers at the second Impeachment trial of former president Trump called for witnesses at the last moment, only to scuttle the proposal quickly when they realized that the Republicans, led by Senator Ted Cruz, planned to call Speaker Pelosi as their witness. Pelosi can testify as to when she knew about the threats on the Capitol, what she knew specifically, Cruz said.
The Texas Senator added that Republicans had heard that the House sergeant at arms turned down National Guard protection for the Capitol on Jan. 6 because of quote the ‘optics,’ and I think Speaker Pelosi can testify as to whether she made a decision on optics and politics, not to have additional protection at the Capitol to prevent the terrorist attack that played out. Her sworn testimony would have shed light on what has become another political mystery with serious consequences for American Democracy. Though Ball does not carry her expose on the Democratic conspiracy this far, the videos from the storming of the Capitol certainly provided the Democratic Party with perfect optics for future conspiracy theories.
