The GOP Follies: CoIntelPro Redux

The latest news on the GOP's merry competition for a 2016 candidate is the revelation that, back in May, Bill Clinton had a long phone conversation with Donald Trump, during which he urged Trump to try for the Republican nomination.  The more intelligent Republicans are screeching over this, because they know -- and have been saying for awhile -- that Trump is absolute poison for the Republican Party, and this phonecall shows that Trump's campaign is a Democrat plot to get Hillary Clinton elected.

The real irony is that they're right.  Trump, and his ham-fisted appeal to the worst elements of the Republican voters -- the foaming right-wingers, to be precise -- have already alienated the majority of voters, and if he won the nomination he'd guarantee a victory for Hillary in 2016.  That would cripple the GOP for years to come, if not forever.  They know because they've seen this done before. 

It's a trick the FBI invented, 'way back in the late '60s to use against the anti-war movement and then the women's movement, called CoIntelPro.  It didn't work against the peaceniks and hippies because the anti-war and counter-cultural movements were amorphous, with no central authority that could be brought down, whose collapse would destroy or at least cripple the whole movement.  The FBI did manage to destroy Students for a Democratic Society, which had originally been the center of the student movement for civil rights and against the Vietnam war, but that didn't stop the movements SDS had inspired.

CoIntelPro did work against the feminists because, back then, the center of the women's movement was the National Organization of Women.  Destroying NOW stalled the feminist movement for a good ten years.  The way the FBI worked it was to choose a real political lunatic named Andrea Dworkin, an obese and slobby lesbian who really did hate men, and hype her to NOW with a lot of covert and overt media coverage.  Her big message was that pornography encourages rape, and therefore must be censored out of existence.  There are always fringees, hangers-on, in every organization, and Dworkin really appealed to the wing-nuts in NOW.  Once NOW publicly agreed with her on the porno angle, this drove a wedge between the organization and all the defenders of free speech and the First Amendment.  When Dworkin, encouraged by carefully-primed flatterers, began making such off-the-wall statements as "Men must give up their precious erections", NOW lost all alliance with the Sexual Revolution movement.  Step by step, publicized idiocy by idiocy, Dworkin alienated all of NOW's previous supporters until there was nothing left and the organization died.  The feminist movement eventually recovered, but that's another story.

Donald Trump is to the Republican Party what Andrea Dworkin was to the National Organization of Women.  He appeals to the fringees -- the foaming reactionary right-wing nuts -- in the GOP, and he's covered intensely by the media (who may or may not be complicit in the game).  Now a good CoIntelPro campaign depends on the absolute ignorance of the spoiler him/herself -- Dworkin never could figure out why the media stopped listening to her after NOW dissolved -- and Trump sails on with his incredibly stupid statements, apparently not realizing that all this media attention is revealing his idiocy to the world.  His fool claims about Latinos has cost the GOP their vote.  His crude attacks on McCain have lost him the support of veterans.  His history of raiding and bankrupting various companies has made the more intelligent of the business community back far away from him, and his well-noted past statements about women's rights and environmental protection have lost him all hope of their supporters' votes.  Group by group, he's peeling the Republican Party like an onion, and -- provided the GOP is stupid enough to nominate him -- by election time there'll be nothing left but the reactionary right-wing nuts, and that's absolutely not enough to win any election.  Yes, even before being nominated, Trump is guaranteeing a Democrat victory.

So now we know, folks.  The fix is in, the professional political manipulators are in place, and Hillary will be the next Pres.  Brace yourself for a lot of disastrous laws, worsening economy, and concerted attacks on the Constitution.

What can we do about it?  Spread the word: "A plague on both their houses.  Vote Libertarian."  Of course the Libertarian Party won't win any offices above small local ones, but the point is to collect a bigger chunk of the vote.  The professionals who analyze elections will notice if enough voters become disgruntled enough with business as usual to abandon both major parties and vote for a minor one -- one that's all for cutting the size and cost and powers of government, which is anathema to the Big Two.  This will, at least, shake up the Rs & Ds and make them reconsider their positions.  At best, if the LP gets more than 10% of the vote, the media will take notice and just might jump ship to hitch their wagons to a rising star;  they just might start hyping the Libertarians and reporting on them truthfully at long last.  The presence of a viable third party just might make the Big Two clean up their act and start actually listening to the people for a change.


--Leslie <;)))><