satellite news network uplinks so she can cut anything that gets out of line. FCC will issue emergency orders granting her access to make it all look legal. NSA has already set up mock news studios in their underground facility in Utah, just in case. They've even co-opted several reliable network news dupes to make everything look authentic. Any opposition will be gone in a minute, starting with a certain cable network and a few talk show hosts they've wanted to gun down for years."
"But people will organize and fight back once they find out what's happening."
"They won't find out and if they do, they won't be able to talk. NSA's already hacked the key Internet hubs and when the time comes, they'll take control of all main trunk fiber optic connections. NSA Central in Utah is ready to monitor and filter everything, total censorship. Anything they don't like will be blocked in an instant and the perps arrested. People will see only what DeWitt wants them to see."
"And the courts?"
"Suspended and replaced by specially empaneled People's Courts to handle the 'unprecedented' emergency."
"How about the local police? Won't they be a problem for her?"
"Nope. They're ready to roll. That's her fifth column, given all the money Washington dumped on them over the past 10 years. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, high powered weapons, body armor, special forces training at government bases and so on. They're all wannabe robocops now. She owns just about all of them. State police, city police, big and small. They're all pretty much paramilitary units now and run by her handpicked guys, biding their time, waiting for the word. They got themselves a regular corps of storm troopers out there, ready to follow orders, her orders, just so long as they get to play soldier and brutalize the population. Washington made a good investment there. It's a wonder no one realized what was happening. Local control? Ha! What idiots thought it was normal for local police to have armored tanks, high powered military ordinance, spy cams, and drones? To collect traffic tickets? Now they'll know. Pay off time. They won't know what hit to them!"
"So, they get power, then what?"
"They implement the moonbat dream. Draconian laws. No more free speech or, God forbid, gun rights, no political parties, no freedom of the press, nationalize large corporations, slash the military, end the carbon based energy economy, establish a 'green republic,' open borders, write a new constitution turning most of the power over to appointed agencies. Become a country governed by committees of benign overlords appointed by a super Senate of experts who, in turn, are appointed by the new president. Ya'know, just the neo-fascist basics," says Jim.
"So, in other words, the country will be run the same way college campuses have been run for years?"
"Yep."
"And this is their Reichstag Fire?"
"Well, yeah! And besides a few urban bombs, they were even toying with a plan for an environmental crisis. They were playing with the idea to make the Indian Point Nuke, about 45 miles north of New York City, go all Fukishima. Millions of people exposed, massive relocation, commerce disrupted, demonstrates the great need for a strong national executive. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste!"
"And, given her greenie-weenie policies, DeWitt to the rescue?"
"Yep. Salvation sister to the rescue. They were gonna say it was a bunch of tea party types who did it with the intent of blaming it on the radical enviros. They were even ready to produce some faked footage and a few dead bodies."
"How long have they been planning all this?" asks Ben.
"From what I can make out, quite a while," says Ryan.
"Who's in on it?" asks Phil.
"Well, the Indian Point gambit, only a small group but, overall, just about every major left wing, progressive, moonbat organization, politician, movie actor, feminist studies professor, juiceboxer media exec, academic stink tank and Wall Street banker in the country. They all want something done and most aren't too squeamish about details. I got lists of names. At the top, however, there are only about 25 real insiders who know everything, but they're the crème de la crème of the movement. The ultra-orthodox fundamentalist lefties."
"How did it start?"
"Well, the seeds seem to be back when Gore lost. It sent a bunch of them over the edge. They began to theorize that a country this size, in the modern age, couldn't be run as an eighteenth century republic with a constitution that permitted what they thought were wrong outcomes. A modern state, they figured, needed a centralized authority without meddling from a lot of yokels, archaic state governments, the Electoral College and messy popular elections. The modern world, they said, is too complicated to let ordinary sheeple have a say in how it's run. So, they set out to change the game."
"First, they tried Obama. Nice guy, inspiring speaker, worked well with a Teleprompter, did what he was told, a regular moonbat's moonbat, but an empty suit. But you know what happened. Their first big power grab, Obamacare, inflamed the public and gave rise to the tea party movement. Then his lame economic policies screwed the economy, then the money printing, the collapse of the dollar. The foreign policy debacles. Total disaster at the polls. They were nearly wiped out. If it weren't for the staggered six year terms in the Senate and the rigged Electoral College vote, they'd have lost everything."
"But Obama did make one important gain, from their point of view. He established the precedent that a president could rule without Congress, by decree, enforce only those laws or parts of laws he agreed with, ignore some, and re-write others. The last two years of his regime, it was all rule by decree. The courts were politicized and supine, the Congress was impotent."
"To the neo-fascist progressives, the rejection by the public of Obamacare, their global warming hoax, print and spend economics, open borders, and crony capitalism was proof to them that you couldn't trust the people to understand what was good for them. They went crazy over gun control and campaign financing, radio talk show hosts and that cable network. It drove them nuts, totally paranoid. They became convinced that to accomplish anything, they needed complete and total control."
"So, using their billionaire boys club, they started the Progressive Party and bought their way into the media they didn't already control. Then the big time funding of candidates with secret contributions from shadowy interest groups, public employee unions, and phony PACs. They built up a network of Internet front groups and captive think tanks to grind out propaganda and orchestrate the army of true believers. There was also a big push and a lot of big time funding to get their candidates elected as secretaries of state, the people who supervise how the votes are counted. Ha! Remember when people used to complain about low voter turn out? Now, lots of precincts regularly have way more than 100% turnouts! Need I add, Progressive precincts?"
"That's how DeWitt sailed to her nomination, much of behind the scenes manipulation, undercover fund raising, illegal voting, vote fraud. She was going to be their ticket back to power."
"But the social chaos her people caused during Whitman's year as president came back to haunt them. Things were too far gone. The economy was in shambles. She didn't know what to do. And worse, the social chaos she started was taking place mostly in the areas she controlled and not in the rest of the country, the producing part of the country."
"The producers started going all Ayn Rand on her, refusing to play her game. Refusing to cooperate. Refusing to produce. The producers went on strike."
"That's when the secession movements started and then the state currencies. Then came the big bombshell, the libertarian push back, the Constitutional Convention."
"They didn't see that one coming. The Convention scares the shit out of them. They know they need to act quick or else. No second chance. So, next week they'll roll the dice, kill Munson and execute their coup. No more strategies, no more playing the game, just the iron fist."
"Is there no one we can go to blow the whistle on this?"
"Who? Not really, except to the people at FAXNEWS but from what I can tell from these files, everyone at FAX is under 24x7 surveillanc
e and the NSA has the kill switch. If FAX starts broadcasting anything about this, their satellites go dead. And a lot of their people, too."
"Crap!"
"Well, it does sound bad, I'll grant you that," says Phil. "Your basic revolution thing but lets look on the positive side. Any chance this means I could unload my student loans?"
They glare at him.
"Just kidding."
"And if they get control, what then?"
"The usual. One party state. Governed by an oligarchy of moonbats. Like Central America, a small ruling oligarchy at the top and a massive oppressed, exploited underclass below. Southern California and Silicon Valley are pretty much that way now. The filthy rich rule the place and live in estates at the beach while the underclass live in squalid tracts and are their gardeners, pool boys, factory and ag workers."
"How will they do all this?"
"They want to replace capitalism with a 'shared' economic system, basically a socialized command and control economy a fair share scheme where the fat cats don't need to compete and are guaranteed their profits, then they close the churches, make Gaia Worship the state religion. The basic Peoples Republic stuff that worked so well in Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela."
"I don't think I like the sound of that. So, what are you doing now?"
"I'm indexing the whole collection, doing a