I spent the last few years of my journalism career working as a general-assignment reporter for the local newspaper in the small town where I grew up. Those in the know, know that’s basically the bottom rung of the journalism ladder. I had previously scaled the heights and held positions of authority with some medium-sized dailies, highly regarded weeklies, and world-renowned wire services. I took the long fall (and the two-thirds cut in pay) voluntarily, as my late wife and I saw a need to return to our home turf for family-related reasons. Little did I know what a hot mess I was parachuting into.
Most of my job consisted in covering local government, at a time when the local government in my hometown was on the verge of total implosion. The latest independent audit of the city’s finances had found that the city was in a deep hole, with millions of dollars less at its disposal than leaders had thought. Indeed, millions of dollars less than they needed to pay for things they had already bought. In other words, on the verge of bankruptcy.
The causes were obvious: city officials had consistently overestimated the amount of money the city would receive in taxes and fees, and had written the city budget to allow officials to spend the inflated amount. So at the end of the year, there was a gap between revenue and spending – the city had spent more than it earned. And this was happening year after year, so the cumulative deficit had gotten pretty big.
The citizenry were pretty outraged, but for the wrong reasons. Officials had been incompetent and a bit negligent in performing their role as fiscal agents, but there was no evidence of actual corruption. But you couldn’t convince the taxpayers of that, though I tried to explain it in my news stories (for which I won a Virginia Press Association first-place award, by the way). All they could see was that there were millions of dollars “missing,” and someone must have embezzled them. People wanted heads to roll, they wanted arrests and prison sentences. Torches and pitchforks, baby.
This was the background, then, when I covered a certain meeting of City Council, around ten years ago. The tide of outrage was finally ebbing, as the city had been able to avoid defaulting on its debts, and there was hope that the steps that had been taken would produce long-term stability. But not everyone was willing to let go of the witch-hunt mentality. Some had agendas that they hoped the upheavals would help them advance.
City Council has just gone into a closed “executive session,” so I’m sitting with the other audience members just killing time. A woman I’ve never seen before comes over and sits beside me. She’s elderly but spry, and a bit eccentric-looking: hair in a pigtail, vaguely Native American clothing, smiling at everyone like she’s really enjoying this gathering. I’ve noticed her husband or significant other, who’s now sitting on the other side of the room: dressed like a laborer, long white Duck Dynasty beard. They’re both in their 70s, I guess.
“You’re a reporter?” she asks, as if she’s never met one before and wasn’t quite sure such creatures really existed.
“Yes ma’am, I’m afraid so,” I reply in my usual whimsical, self-deprecating way.
She asks where I think the “missing” money went, and I tell her. She listens attentively and nods frequently, and it all seems to be going well. I wrap up my little presentation and look for her reaction.
“You know about the base they’re building in Chesterfield?” she inquires, naming a nearby county. “I think that’s where the money went, I think they’re taking our money and putting it into that base, stealing it so they won’t have to tell anyone what they’re doing.”
“What base?” I ask, confusedly, my alarm signal not yet sounding.
“You know,” she says, smiling like she knows I’m kidding her. “The UN base.”
Beeeeeeeeep goes my alarm.
She starts elaborating, and I don’t try to stop her, I’m more focused on deciding whether I'll need to yell for help. It's a base for the UN to position its black helicopters and its black-uniformed troop to prepare for the attack on Washington. Because Washington is only a hundred miles from here. Not that the people in Washington are any better, they’re really in cahoots with the globalists. Because that’s what it’s all about, you know – creating a One World socialist dictatorship that will destroy our nation’s sovereignty, take away our guns, and put all right-thinking people in concentration camps.
I finally interrupt. “No offense,” I say, “but I don’t believe any of that.”
She stares at me for a moment with her eyes widening a little. Then a knowing look comes over her.
“Are you Jewish?” she asks.
I’m not going to say what my answer was – oh all right, no, I’m not Jewish, but that’s really beside the point – I just want you to contemplate the question and the context for a moment. If you don’t get it, visit the ADL website and search for “protocols.” This is what was turned loose, empowered, by the “Tea Party,” and in the past decade it has done nothing but grow in power.
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