A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (37 page)

She referred to a passage from Cloward and Pivens on how to destroy capitalism and replace it with socialism:

Gradually expand government spending until the country nears fiscal collapse. At that point, a public accustomed to its entitlements will presumably turn on its capitalists masters when they propose cutbacks to restore fiscal balance...and turn the nation’s fiscal crisis in a socialist direction.

Sharon returned. “The ideas of Karl Marx have killed one hundred million people,” she said. “It’s starting all over again—
here in America
. Through high powered satellites, drones and massive databases, government can track and control us by using our cell phones, cars, credit cards, driver’s licenses, and passports. Government agents can secretly open the mail of American citizens, read our e-mails, listen in on our phone calls and serve search warrants without authorization of a judge. Local police are being federalized; AmeriCorps is building a private army. The Constitution is being shredded before our very eyes.”

A man identified as a former FBI agent came on to stare boldly into the camera as he related how he went undercover to infiltrate a radical organization led by President Anastos’ confidantes Bill Ackart and Bernadine Samson-Ackart. At one of their meetings, he said, the conversation turned to the subject of how to best counter obstructionists by building “reeducation camps” and “mental health facilities” in the American Southwest. Those who were too hardcore to the right to be reeducated would have to be eliminated.

“There I was,” the agent said, “sitting in a room with thirty other people with graduate degrees, powerful people in government, listening to them figure out how to eliminate twenty-five million people—and they were dead serious.”

The agent had been killed in a mysterious hunting accident afterwards.

Sharon displayed an official-looking document.

“This is a copy of the Presidential Directive that establishes presidential continuity of government provisions, or ECG—
Enduring Constitutional Government,”
she explained. “During an emergency, the President of the United States may declare ECG and maintain it until
he
decides the coast is clear. It involves emergency action that can be implemented in the event of a national crisis, such action including the arrest and detention of ‘traitors,’ ‘insurrectionists,’ ‘criminals’ and other malcontents by military commanders appointed to run state and local governments.”

Nail realized he was sitting on the edge of his chair and hadn’t taken a single bite from his sandwich. He couldn’t help sensing death trains or their equivalent being marshaled in rail yards across the nation. Long chains of cattle cars filled with human cargo to be hauled to mass graves. Unexpectedly, he thought of Lieutenant Jack Ross and the enigmatic phone call from Ross’ wife: “They’ve taken my husband!”

“There are four conditions that must be present for Marxists to make their move to power grab the government,” Sharon continued. “They are: a bad economy; high unemployment; high dependency on government; uncertainty and fear among the population. Doesn’t it sound like everything might already be in place waiting for a crisis to set it in motion?”

George Zuniga appeared on the screen. A large-headed, ageing man whose East European accent completed his villainous appearance. “Zee main obstacle to a stable and just world order is zee United States,” he said.

Sharon pointed out that Zuniga had been influencing elections for years. “Expanding his influence,” she said, “through groups such as ACOA, World Alliance, and the Institute for Open Societies.” Zuniga, she continued, was the primary source of funding for scores of organizations promoting Progressive agendas.
Time
magazine reported that “not another single outside group has had so much sway over the government as The Institute for Open Societies.” An “open society” meant Marxist.

“I don’t think it’s going too far to compare him to the evil emperor from
Star Wars
,” Sharon continued. “President Anastos carries a Blackberry around in case Zuniga calls. What Zuniga wants, Anastos gives him. Zuniga supplies the talking points and makes policy in virtually everything.”

His Open Societies was donating millions to buy up journalists and media outlets, most recently National Public Radio. Sharon played a clip of a mainstream news interview with the “Spooky Dude.”

“In view of recent evidence suggesting that zee incendiary rhetoric of Zenergy News’ hosts such as Sharon Lowenthal may incite violence,” he maintained, “I have now decided to support organizations that will hold Zenergy News accountable for the false and misleading information they so often broadcast. I am supporting NPR and other media in an effort to more widely publicize zee challenge Zenergy poses to civil and informed discourse in our democracy.”

Immediately after this pronouncement, the “drive-by media” had taken up the howl. Sharon demonstrated with clips.

“We can’t just dismiss Lowenthal,” a popular CNN anchor expostulated. “There is a good reason why we have exemption of free speech. We need to regulate and protect people from irrational, uncomfortable or offensive speech through passage of Senator Wiedersham’s FAD bill.”

Speaker of the House Barbara Teague came on, staring out from her expressionless Botox surgeries. “I looked up the definition of sedition, which is ‘conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state.’ A lot of these statements coming from the likes of Sharon Lowenthal rub right up close to being seditious.”

“We need to do whatever we can to regulate and control capitalist speech, eliminate it if possible,” chimed in President Anastos’ Regulatory czar, Sam Shrader, on another clip.

A shiver ran up Nail’s spine at Sharon’s summary: “The mainstream media has fallen into Zuniga’s toilet and are splashing around in it like it’s holy water. They have got to take out Zenergy News in order to move forward in the shadows. They have got to take me out.”

Jerry Baer had already been
taken out.

Sharon was standing up now, moving about on the TV set at Zenergy. She stopped. The camera closed in. She looked directly into it. Her boldness, her raw courage surprised and delighted Nail. At the same time, it made him nervous and unsettled about her safety.

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a minister in Germany when Hitler rose to power,” she said. “He tried to get other ministers to join him in opposition. ‘Silence in the face of evil is itself evil,’ he preached. ‘God will not hold us guiltless.’ America, freedom is being crushed today in countries around the world. If America goes into decline, the light of liberty will start to flicker everywhere in the world. No other country is going to ride in to save us. Americans are all alone on a hostile planet. Speaking out is becoming harder and riskier because we didn’t speak out at the beginning. America, you are going to have to stand up against some of the most powerful people and institutions on the planet.”

She let that sink in before a quote from
The Coming Insurrection
popped up on her display screen. That and Alinsky’s
Rules for Radicals
were the playbooks for American Progressives campaigning to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

Visibility must be avoided. But a force that gathers in the shadows can’t avoid it forever. Our appearance as a form must be reserved for the opportune moment. The longer we avoid visibility, the stronger we’ll be when it catches up with us. And once we become visible our days will be numbered. Either we will get in a position to break its hold in short order, or we’ll be crushed...

“America, the masks are starting to come off, but they’re not visible yet. We must make them visible and watch them scurry. What you see and hear on this program during the next few weeks will shake you like never before as we run down these cockroaches and show them to you in the full light of their intentions...”

Nail sprang to his feet in sudden comprehension, his sandwich and Coke forgotten. Before Sharon returned to New York, she had been talking about secret international meetings and summits the “Shadow Government” was holding to discuss the final transformation of the United States to a socialist nation. If someone could discover where these summits were being held, she pointed out, and sneak inside to expose them...

Students Demand More Funding

(Washington)—
Tens of thousands of students staged marches in cities across the nation today to demand more public funding for higher education. The unexpectedly large protests were backed by faculty, the National Education Association and the Public Employees International Union (PEIU). ACOA, American Progress Center, The Institute for Open Societies, and Students for A Democratic Society (SDS) were also represented...

There were reports of windows broken and fires set in several locations. Homeland Security Director Vladimir Gonzalez warned that violence is being initiated by Rightwing counter groups bent on discrediting peaceful student demonstrations...

Chapter Sixty-Six

Green Country, Oklahoma

Militia cells across the breadth of the United States were organizing and arming themselves, creating intelligence networks and communications’ links, training for revolution against their government. It was nutcake to think a few farmers and good ole boys armed with pistols and rifles could take on the power of a United States corrupted by One World commies. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Karl Marx and the other socialist crusaders of evil who made the 20
^th
Century the bloodiest in the entire history of mankind were sniggering in their moldering graves.

In Big C Brown’s opinion, it was already too late to peacefully wean the country from Big Brother’s teat. Polls showed that forty percent of Americans in general—seventy percent of those under the age of twenty five who had attended public schools—openly approved of socialism.

“Even if we do stop Marxism this time,” Sharon Lowenthal often warned, “it’ll be only a matter of time until it reemerges—and the next time it will take over if we go back to sleep. These people will never give up their crusade to stomp the boot of communism on our necks.”

Once violence started, it was unpredictable where it would end. Still, there came a point when a free man had no choice but to fight if he intended to remain free.

“What are we going to do, Corey?” Judy pleaded.

She felt so small and vulnerable in his big arms. “Judy, we must be soldiers.”

“I can’t go back to him,” she protested. “Not after
us
.”

“You have a mission,” he reminded her. “If Trout’s notebook contain information like you say, we need get it to Sharon.”

He felt like a pimp asking her to do it. All he needed was a pink Cadillac, a Super Fly hat and baggy pants wiping out his tracks. He would miss her country girl innocence not yet jaded by the big city, in spite of all she had gone through, but for her to stay with him was too dangerous.

Big C put out feelers to the Defenders after his meeting with Marsha Ross and Carolyn. Tom Fullbright was the new commander of the Defenders, having assumed leadership after Big C cleared him by exposing Colonel Mosby as the snitch behind Ron Sparks’ hanging. He was a wiry Cherokee of about thirty and, like many of the Indians from the hills of eastern Oklahoma, a man of few words.

Gary Philby, the District Homeland Security Director who took Kimbrell’s place, was putting pressure on the militias in his area. He was organizing groups like the New American Protective Society and the Homeland Security League to develop informants and spy on disloyal neighbors. To avoid being noticed, Big C met with Fullbright and some of the other Defenders in an old abandoned store in the secure little community of Hanson near Sallisaw while Judy waited for him in a Sallisaw motel room. There was no electricity in the meeting place. Someone produced a kerosene lantern and placed it on an upturned vegetable crate in the center of the room where it illuminated about a dozen tense faces. The militiamen were a rough-hewn bunch, not particularly well-educated by Progressive standards, most of whom were living on the edge of poverty after having lost their jobs due to the tanking economy or because of pressure from Homeland Security. Big C kept to himself any reservations he entertained about the Defenders’ ability to take on a heavily-armed contingent such as that guarding the “mental health facility” in Colorado.

“We might be able to recruit the Colorado Sons of Liberty,” Fullbright suggested. “They’ll almost double our force. They have a .50-caliber Browning machinegun.”

Having lost two men to the AmeriCorps raid on the Bunch schoolhouse, the Defenders were eager to take the fight to the enemy. Big C recalled how, once before in America, a few farmers got together to fight for liberty—and won.

Big C stood up in the yellow light from the lantern and explained how it was the militia’s duty to rescue Lieutenant Jack Ross and as many others as possible from a secret extermination camp and bring them to the American people as irrefutable proof of what the Anastos’ administration planned for the nation. For security reasons, he withheld the location of the camp. He couldn’t afford loose lips.

In that humble, isolated shack built in a previous century, Big C concluded with a short speech in the strong, simple language that ordinary men of the soil understood. Sharon would have declared it worthy of John Adams.

“That watchman Paul Revere who made the most famous ride in history of the world is riding again,” he began in a ringing voice. “We must likewise have balls to muster with the free and the brave, else we be judged cowards unworthy to live free. We are drawing a line in the sand to tell a repressive government
No!
No more commies in the White House, no more laws, rules and regulations that oppress people. Not one inch more will we yield. The time is arrive! Rebellion is at hand!”