- Location
- Toronto, ON, CA
The War Within
1989-1994: Dick Gephardt / Lloyd Bentsen (Democratic)
1988: George Bush / John Ashcroft (Republican)
1992: Bob Dole / Dick Cheney (Republican), Ron Paul / Bo Gritz (Independent)
That Gephardt's victory was only established after a recount in California and weeks of court cases and smears of illegitimacy from the Bush camp was an ominous sign. Much was accomplished: the Farmer's Rescue Bill, the Biden-Kennedy Infrastructure Act, three supreme court justice nominations, the Cold War brought to a relatively peaceful end. And yet, to too many Americans, he was still an accidental president. Or as ominously put by Lee Atwater and a few more provocative Republican legislators, the incidental president. While a strong response to the early 1990s recession guaranteed a decisive re-election, the strong result for Ron Paul made sure that even then the waters were muddied.
Early into his second term, several standoffs occurred between law enforcement and militias and in rural states; communities ravaged by the farm crisis of the previous decade, empowered by new right and radicalised by its defeat in 1988. They didn’t want Gephardt’s handouts; after all, most of them were going to the inner cities. They wanted a strong, Christian nation where the government knew its place and looked after their own. They were egged on by Ron Paul and the odd Republican congressman denouncing the overreach of the authorities in enforcing tax collection and gun laws. In the autumn of 1993, a car bomb failed to detonate and destroy the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles and a months-long siege by US Marshals ended with the deaths of the majority of the Montana Freemen led to escalation by both sides. A panicked Gephardt fired his Attorney General and tried to pass legislation giving federal law enforcement greater powers to combat a disparate array of violent groups. In the midst of all this, Vice President Bentsen suffering a debilitating stroke was the last thing he needed.
1994: Dick Gephardt / vacant (Democratic)
1994-1996: Dick Gephardt / Dianne Feinstein (Democratic)
A beleaguered president took a huge, calculated risk with the new vice president. But it was, in hindsight, the obvious choice. As Governor of California Dianne Feinstein had earned a reputation for a zero-tolerance approach to crime and illegal immigration and was already being spoken of as a likely candidate in 1996. She was approved by Congress by large bipartisan majorities, even as Republicans and soon-to-be independent Congressman Ron Paul denounced the political establishment for promoting a dangerous San Francisco radical.
Vice President Feinstein had a short honeymoon. Four FBI agents were shot dead in an ambush in Texas. A car bomb detonated at the United Nations and killed dozens. The UN decamped to Geneva; the world’s remaining superpower looked unstable and unsafe. The new Vice President soon assumed the mantle of “Security Czar” becoming the face of the administration's crackdown and fight with right-wing extremists. As the face of that campaign, she was also the focus of the rising hatred of the militia and their political sympathisers, referred to by many a radio host and more than one legislator simply as “that woman”. But elsewhere she was admired by the political establishment and much of middle-America as a figure of strength and steadfastness, the Iron Lady strongly contrasting with her beleaguered boss.
By 1996, while there were still sieges and the odd bombing and shooting, the militia movement was widely believed to be a shadow of its former self. Vice President Feinstein was now running for president, and while she was facing an uphill battle against the Republicans her approval ratings were higher than Gephardt’s.
But on the fourteenth of January 1996 Dick Gephardt went to Seattle to give a speech on healthcare reform, and everything changed.
1996: Dianne Feinstein / vacant (Democratic)
A car bomb along the highway hit President Gephardt’s motorcade. While inside involvement from local law enforcement was suspected, it was never proven. When Dianne Feinstein, meeting Senators in the Capitol, was informed of the attack and that the President was in a coma. By the time she arrived in the White House Situation Room, Richard Gephardt was dead.
Later that evening, President Feinstein gave a grave address from the Oval Office, calling for calm and announcing a state of emergency. This was an act of war. The War Within as the speech famously coined it. And she promised that every last militia in the country would be hunted down and brought to justice.
1996-2001: Dianne Feinstein / Sam Nunn (Democratic)
1996: Dan Quayle / Carroll Campbell (Republican), Ron Paul / Helen Chenoweth (Independence)
President Feinstein had an enormous mandate for this quest. Congress approved her Vice President and wide-ranging emergency powers legislation with large bipartisan majorities, the only holdouts being a small but not insignificant caucus of Republicans who felt that the groups the new president was singling out had some legitimate concerns. But they were shouted down in the tension of the moment, as armed police forces raided and besieged encampments and farms across the country and arresting and harassing many more. The Republicans found themselves squeezed between those who approved of Feinstein’s taking charge and the surging campaign of Ron Paul and his condemnation of the overreach of “That Woman” against well-intentioned Americans in the heartlands. Never able to establish a lead in the polls, Dan Quayle’s unguarded comments about “many fine patriots” getting caught up in bad crowds finished off his campaign and earned the president a landslide re-election.
It wasn’t immediately obvious what the President would do with it.
Another wide-ranging piece of national security legislation was passed with bipartisan support, but now many left-wing activists joined the scepticism of the SECURE Act, which appeared to target many radical left groups and greatly restricted the rights of migrants without the right papers. There was some healthcare reform, and some more deregulations; Feinstein increasingly referred to opponents and any and all aspects of her agenda as part of this War Within against American democracy.
The War Within pressed on. Two car bombs detonated outside federal buildings in Chicago; more concerningly Feinstein ally Ted Kennedy was nearly gunned down near his Cape Cod summer retreat. To protests, presidential candidate Ron Paul was arrested and charged with mail fraud and financing terrorism under the SECURE Act, becoming a cause celebre for the right as his legal troubles stretched on for years.
But the real climax of the conflict took place on what nascent internet forums described as “red Sunday” in the Autumn of 1998. The FBI (now under the jurisdiction of the Department of Security) conducted simultaneous raids upon militias across the Rockies and prairies. A dozen law enforcement agents were killed; dozens of militiamen and their families were killed. This operation was so successful that there was surprisingly little blowback. A few riots, a few minor bomb scares. That the FBI could not keep to a coherent explanation as to how many of the deaths of both law-enforcement and unarmed residents of militia compounds died only became a problem later on.
2001-2005: Dianne Feinstein / Sam Nunn (Democratic)
2000: H. Ross Perot / Dan Lungren (Republican)
With a booming economy, That Woman cruised to re-election. The Republicans, with their political establishment disintegrating, nominated a businessman who was sceptical of the hawks and free traders in congress, and spoke sympathetically about “federal overreach”. He got a lot of endorsements from Paul supporters, which meant that Feinstein in turn got many endorsements from moderate republicans.
It was not obvious what Feinstein would do with a second full term, which made her the longest-serving president after Franklin D. Roosevelt. There was another healthcare reform bill, but the legislative wranglings and botched implementation only sapped political capital. Abroad America was beturning inwards; a pink tide of socialist leaders came to power across the Global South, NATO was dissolved, and President Lebed was allowed to run roughshod over Russia’s dominions, with the work of protecting Eastern Europe falling to the ever-closer European Union and its new defence force. After Islamist terror attacks hit Britain and France, Feinstein was disinterested in joining them - and Lebed - in bringing the terrorists to justice with only non-military American resources being committed to that conflict.
Meanwhile, at home, the far-right regrouped. Though not with the frequency of before, there were still car bombings and mass shootings. Ron Paul’s conviction in late 2002 only incited and united the far right, who organised through the internet and successfully won many political offices in the midterms, and cowed many more Republicans in the process. Feinstein’s agenda slowed to a crawl, and her administration become sclerotic. She had always kept a small inner circle but she increasingly became insular and paranoid and attempted several purges of government ranks, having to settle with a major cabinet reshuffle. By the end of Feinstein’s term the excesses of the SECURE Act were coming to light, with hundreds of thousands unjustly detained and convicted. The administration went to great lengths to block these congressional and journalistic investigations, and ended up facing charges of obstruction of justice themselves.
Perhaps the worst moment of her presidency was in the fall of 2003, when Feinstein unleashed the full force of the SECURE Act law enforcement against civil rights and green activists protesting the G10 summit being held in San Francisco, with the world’s media broadcasting the resultant riots and violence across the world. They also broadcasted the president’s remorseless defence of the crackdown in front of her uncomfortable fellow world leaders, where she declared that the protestors, the media and the many government whistleblowers also, in fact, represented “The War Within”.
2005-: Rand Paul / Elizabeth Dole (Republican)
2004: Robert Kennedy Jr. / Jim Webb (Moderate), Dan Morales / Andrew Cuomo (Democratic)
There are many reasons given for why Congressman Rand Paul was able to become the 43rd President of the United States. That his father’s supporters had taken over much of the machinery of the Republicans, with an establishment prepared to acquiesce to conspiracism and occasional violence and voter suppression after sixteen long years out of power, was one. That Paul’s softer tone, speaking more against authoritarianism and government spending and less about the plight of militias and lost causers was another.
That the Democrats, weighed down by an unpopular president, picked a defective nominee that immolated halfway through the race from a string of corruption charges was another still. That a former Democrat activist, running on a bipartisan ticket of environmentalism and libertarianism was there to pick up the left half the Democratic base while agreeing with Rand Paul on so many key issues is another contributing factor.
But the most obvious reason is that in 2004, America entered a recession. the long boom of the nineties ending after a stock market crash and a string of bankruptcies in the financial and tech sectors, which Feinstein had enthusiastically deregulated. That most Americans simply felt a bit poorer on election day explains the result as much as any other cause, such feelings trump any and all political memories. And Rand Paul’s message was as much about economic freedom as individual freedom.
Freedom for certain individuals, at least. On his second day in office President Paul pardoned his father, and many others accused and convicted of far-right terrorism, declaring that the War Within was over. He couldn’t have realised that the opposite was true: the War Within had only just begun. Again.
1989-1994: Dick Gephardt / Lloyd Bentsen (Democratic)
1988: George Bush / John Ashcroft (Republican)
1992: Bob Dole / Dick Cheney (Republican), Ron Paul / Bo Gritz (Independent)
That Gephardt's victory was only established after a recount in California and weeks of court cases and smears of illegitimacy from the Bush camp was an ominous sign. Much was accomplished: the Farmer's Rescue Bill, the Biden-Kennedy Infrastructure Act, three supreme court justice nominations, the Cold War brought to a relatively peaceful end. And yet, to too many Americans, he was still an accidental president. Or as ominously put by Lee Atwater and a few more provocative Republican legislators, the incidental president. While a strong response to the early 1990s recession guaranteed a decisive re-election, the strong result for Ron Paul made sure that even then the waters were muddied.
Early into his second term, several standoffs occurred between law enforcement and militias and in rural states; communities ravaged by the farm crisis of the previous decade, empowered by new right and radicalised by its defeat in 1988. They didn’t want Gephardt’s handouts; after all, most of them were going to the inner cities. They wanted a strong, Christian nation where the government knew its place and looked after their own. They were egged on by Ron Paul and the odd Republican congressman denouncing the overreach of the authorities in enforcing tax collection and gun laws. In the autumn of 1993, a car bomb failed to detonate and destroy the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles and a months-long siege by US Marshals ended with the deaths of the majority of the Montana Freemen led to escalation by both sides. A panicked Gephardt fired his Attorney General and tried to pass legislation giving federal law enforcement greater powers to combat a disparate array of violent groups. In the midst of all this, Vice President Bentsen suffering a debilitating stroke was the last thing he needed.
1994: Dick Gephardt / vacant (Democratic)
1994-1996: Dick Gephardt / Dianne Feinstein (Democratic)
A beleaguered president took a huge, calculated risk with the new vice president. But it was, in hindsight, the obvious choice. As Governor of California Dianne Feinstein had earned a reputation for a zero-tolerance approach to crime and illegal immigration and was already being spoken of as a likely candidate in 1996. She was approved by Congress by large bipartisan majorities, even as Republicans and soon-to-be independent Congressman Ron Paul denounced the political establishment for promoting a dangerous San Francisco radical.
Vice President Feinstein had a short honeymoon. Four FBI agents were shot dead in an ambush in Texas. A car bomb detonated at the United Nations and killed dozens. The UN decamped to Geneva; the world’s remaining superpower looked unstable and unsafe. The new Vice President soon assumed the mantle of “Security Czar” becoming the face of the administration's crackdown and fight with right-wing extremists. As the face of that campaign, she was also the focus of the rising hatred of the militia and their political sympathisers, referred to by many a radio host and more than one legislator simply as “that woman”. But elsewhere she was admired by the political establishment and much of middle-America as a figure of strength and steadfastness, the Iron Lady strongly contrasting with her beleaguered boss.
By 1996, while there were still sieges and the odd bombing and shooting, the militia movement was widely believed to be a shadow of its former self. Vice President Feinstein was now running for president, and while she was facing an uphill battle against the Republicans her approval ratings were higher than Gephardt’s.
But on the fourteenth of January 1996 Dick Gephardt went to Seattle to give a speech on healthcare reform, and everything changed.
1996: Dianne Feinstein / vacant (Democratic)
A car bomb along the highway hit President Gephardt’s motorcade. While inside involvement from local law enforcement was suspected, it was never proven. When Dianne Feinstein, meeting Senators in the Capitol, was informed of the attack and that the President was in a coma. By the time she arrived in the White House Situation Room, Richard Gephardt was dead.
Later that evening, President Feinstein gave a grave address from the Oval Office, calling for calm and announcing a state of emergency. This was an act of war. The War Within as the speech famously coined it. And she promised that every last militia in the country would be hunted down and brought to justice.
1996-2001: Dianne Feinstein / Sam Nunn (Democratic)
1996: Dan Quayle / Carroll Campbell (Republican), Ron Paul / Helen Chenoweth (Independence)
President Feinstein had an enormous mandate for this quest. Congress approved her Vice President and wide-ranging emergency powers legislation with large bipartisan majorities, the only holdouts being a small but not insignificant caucus of Republicans who felt that the groups the new president was singling out had some legitimate concerns. But they were shouted down in the tension of the moment, as armed police forces raided and besieged encampments and farms across the country and arresting and harassing many more. The Republicans found themselves squeezed between those who approved of Feinstein’s taking charge and the surging campaign of Ron Paul and his condemnation of the overreach of “That Woman” against well-intentioned Americans in the heartlands. Never able to establish a lead in the polls, Dan Quayle’s unguarded comments about “many fine patriots” getting caught up in bad crowds finished off his campaign and earned the president a landslide re-election.
It wasn’t immediately obvious what the President would do with it.
Another wide-ranging piece of national security legislation was passed with bipartisan support, but now many left-wing activists joined the scepticism of the SECURE Act, which appeared to target many radical left groups and greatly restricted the rights of migrants without the right papers. There was some healthcare reform, and some more deregulations; Feinstein increasingly referred to opponents and any and all aspects of her agenda as part of this War Within against American democracy.
The War Within pressed on. Two car bombs detonated outside federal buildings in Chicago; more concerningly Feinstein ally Ted Kennedy was nearly gunned down near his Cape Cod summer retreat. To protests, presidential candidate Ron Paul was arrested and charged with mail fraud and financing terrorism under the SECURE Act, becoming a cause celebre for the right as his legal troubles stretched on for years.
But the real climax of the conflict took place on what nascent internet forums described as “red Sunday” in the Autumn of 1998. The FBI (now under the jurisdiction of the Department of Security) conducted simultaneous raids upon militias across the Rockies and prairies. A dozen law enforcement agents were killed; dozens of militiamen and their families were killed. This operation was so successful that there was surprisingly little blowback. A few riots, a few minor bomb scares. That the FBI could not keep to a coherent explanation as to how many of the deaths of both law-enforcement and unarmed residents of militia compounds died only became a problem later on.
2001-2005: Dianne Feinstein / Sam Nunn (Democratic)
2000: H. Ross Perot / Dan Lungren (Republican)
With a booming economy, That Woman cruised to re-election. The Republicans, with their political establishment disintegrating, nominated a businessman who was sceptical of the hawks and free traders in congress, and spoke sympathetically about “federal overreach”. He got a lot of endorsements from Paul supporters, which meant that Feinstein in turn got many endorsements from moderate republicans.
It was not obvious what Feinstein would do with a second full term, which made her the longest-serving president after Franklin D. Roosevelt. There was another healthcare reform bill, but the legislative wranglings and botched implementation only sapped political capital. Abroad America was beturning inwards; a pink tide of socialist leaders came to power across the Global South, NATO was dissolved, and President Lebed was allowed to run roughshod over Russia’s dominions, with the work of protecting Eastern Europe falling to the ever-closer European Union and its new defence force. After Islamist terror attacks hit Britain and France, Feinstein was disinterested in joining them - and Lebed - in bringing the terrorists to justice with only non-military American resources being committed to that conflict.
Meanwhile, at home, the far-right regrouped. Though not with the frequency of before, there were still car bombings and mass shootings. Ron Paul’s conviction in late 2002 only incited and united the far right, who organised through the internet and successfully won many political offices in the midterms, and cowed many more Republicans in the process. Feinstein’s agenda slowed to a crawl, and her administration become sclerotic. She had always kept a small inner circle but she increasingly became insular and paranoid and attempted several purges of government ranks, having to settle with a major cabinet reshuffle. By the end of Feinstein’s term the excesses of the SECURE Act were coming to light, with hundreds of thousands unjustly detained and convicted. The administration went to great lengths to block these congressional and journalistic investigations, and ended up facing charges of obstruction of justice themselves.
Perhaps the worst moment of her presidency was in the fall of 2003, when Feinstein unleashed the full force of the SECURE Act law enforcement against civil rights and green activists protesting the G10 summit being held in San Francisco, with the world’s media broadcasting the resultant riots and violence across the world. They also broadcasted the president’s remorseless defence of the crackdown in front of her uncomfortable fellow world leaders, where she declared that the protestors, the media and the many government whistleblowers also, in fact, represented “The War Within”.
2005-: Rand Paul / Elizabeth Dole (Republican)
2004: Robert Kennedy Jr. / Jim Webb (Moderate), Dan Morales / Andrew Cuomo (Democratic)
There are many reasons given for why Congressman Rand Paul was able to become the 43rd President of the United States. That his father’s supporters had taken over much of the machinery of the Republicans, with an establishment prepared to acquiesce to conspiracism and occasional violence and voter suppression after sixteen long years out of power, was one. That Paul’s softer tone, speaking more against authoritarianism and government spending and less about the plight of militias and lost causers was another.
That the Democrats, weighed down by an unpopular president, picked a defective nominee that immolated halfway through the race from a string of corruption charges was another still. That a former Democrat activist, running on a bipartisan ticket of environmentalism and libertarianism was there to pick up the left half the Democratic base while agreeing with Rand Paul on so many key issues is another contributing factor.
But the most obvious reason is that in 2004, America entered a recession. the long boom of the nineties ending after a stock market crash and a string of bankruptcies in the financial and tech sectors, which Feinstein had enthusiastically deregulated. That most Americans simply felt a bit poorer on election day explains the result as much as any other cause, such feelings trump any and all political memories. And Rand Paul’s message was as much about economic freedom as individual freedom.
Freedom for certain individuals, at least. On his second day in office President Paul pardoned his father, and many others accused and convicted of far-right terrorism, declaring that the War Within was over. He couldn’t have realised that the opposite was true: the War Within had only just begun. Again.
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