Still Working For Change
I understand the frustration, especially among regular Montanans, with the non-responsiveness of our government. I’ve tried to address the problem by running for the U.S. Senate as “A Working Man for a Change,” first against U.S. Senator Hatfield and U.S. Congressman Baucus in the 1978 Democrat Primary, and many times later, ending in the depths of the covid epidemic when, instead of parachute buttons, I spread Ace of Hearts playing cards around Montana at places memorializing Montanans Compassion and Courage. During that campaign I spoke to two people, one on his front porch in Troy and another next to his barn in Dagmar. I recrossed our state to recover all of the cards, so as not to litter. Though running as a Republican I spent so little of my own funds, I didn’t meet the $5,000 legal threshold for filing a Federal Elections Campaign finance report. My thinking at the time was that regular Republicans, were no different than the decent people from Miles City, to Butte, to Hamilton, to Helena with whom I’d been a student, a worker, a Catholic, a soldier and a state office holder. I ran as an “Abraham Lincoln Republican,” hoping to attract those same decent thoughtful people I’ve known in Montana my whole life. I’ve no regrets though I was again unsuccessful.
In 1984, I was ordered, as the Major responsible for Operational Security of the Montana National Guard, to drive a staff car to Kalispell and meet FBI agents who were working to dismantle the ‘silent brotherhood,” which had held up an armored car in California using at least one sidearm purchased in Missoula, robbed a couple of banks in Seattle using the proceeds to buy a safe house on Big Mountain, assassinated a Jewish talkshow host in Denver using the names of dead babies off tombstones in Missoula, killed one of their own members with a hammer for talking too much in a Spokane brothel, and ambushing FBI agents on an island in Puget Sound. I read their signed Declaration of War against our U.S. Government, which they called the Zionist Occupational Government. I then toured Montana Guard units explaining the difference between the right wing and the left wing, and how both are virtually in-distinguishable as far as threatening the middle road of Democracy. All that work morphed over the years into a close understanding of the armed confrontations at Waco and Ruby Ridge and Jordan, and the horrific bombing in Oklahoma City. After 12 years monitoring this metastasis, at the U.S. Army War College, I wrote “A Chaordic Threat, Right Wing Terrorism in the United States,” published by the Defense Department and still on the internet.
In that 1996 Strategic Research Paper I concluded that the threat here in Montana and the Northwest, was serious, survivable and intent upon overthrowing the U.S. Government. By then the movement had progressed loosely to the “concept paragraph” of a field order. When Trump said, “Stand Back and Stand By,” he added the mission paragraph. You know that to be true. Now, after all these years of being quiet, I’m advising you, “Get back on the right side of the line, or there will be hell to pay."
I feel differently now because Trump controls the Republican Party and I must say there can be no decent excuse for supporting him. Trump’s a Fascist, identical to the people our parents fought to the death in World War II, when Hitler sent his finest SS divisions in a surprise winter attack against an all-American defensive line he thought would break and run because we are mongrels, I’m proud to say our citizen soldiers didn’t break and run in The Battle of The Bulge and Hitler killed himself in a bunker. If these truths upset you, I’m not sorry. Make an informed decision about reality. I am no longer a Republican nor should you be.