THE SILLY SEASON: ROGUE NATIONS AND ROGUE POLITICIANS

Maybe it's those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer – but the Silly Season is apparently upon us in full force. Let's start with the US State Department, which has just announced that the term "rogue state" – which, as we all know, is any nation that refuses to grovel convincingly at the feet of Madeleine Albright – has been officially banished from the lexicon of our leaders. In answer to a question from Diane Rehm, host of a talk show on WAMU, a local radio station, about the "rogue state" of North Korea and its roguish leader, Kim Jong Il, Albright explained (no doubt with a straight face) "First of all, we are now calling these states 'states of concern.'" Say what? Imagine the memos, meetings, and focus groups that resulted in this momentous announcement: Perhaps they discovered that a "rogue," in the real world, can often be engaging, even sympathetic – especially when up against an overwhelmingly powerful and malignant opponent.

LINGUISTIC REVISIONISM

According to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, this linguistic revisionism is America's response to warming relations with Libya – which handed over the suspects in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 – and rapprochement of the two Koreas. But don't be misled by the warm-and-fuzzy euphemism, we aren't letting down our guard: "If we see a development that we think is in the US interest," Boucher said, "we will respond. If we see states of concern that continue to be of concern because they are not willing to deal with some of the issues we are concerned about – whew!" And I just want to make that perfectly clear. . . .

HITLERIAN CALCULUS

This attempt to manipulate and degrade language in the service of American foreign policy could backfire, however, if the American people ever find out what their government is doing to the people of Iraq. How will Boucher explain that we are sentencing 5,000 Iraqi children under the age of five to death every month – because Iraq is "a country of concern"? It certainly is that, although not in the way Boucher and his ghoulish boss understand it. In her infamous interview with Leslie Stahl on Sixty Minutes, Albright was asked: "I understand that 500,000 Iraqi children have died due to our sanctions...was it worth it?" Opining that it is a "hard decision," Albright averred: "It was worth it." This Hitlerian calculus ought to do more than merely "concern" us – it should horrify us, enrage us, and compel us rise up against the monstrous evil that has usurped the name and the honor of these United States.

A SINISTER UNDERTONE

It's silly season all right, but there is a distinctly sinister undertone to the frivolity: In answer to the charge by Vuk Draskovic that the government recently tried to assassinate him, Vuk's detractors claim that the whole thing was staged and that he basically had himself shot. And on the home front, the silly season has effortly merged with the preliminaries to the political season, with the antics of the Stop Pat movement in the Reform Party taking the prize. . . .

FULANI'S FOLLIES

For comic relief during the summer doldrums of political reporting, the defection of Lenora Fulani was the perfect story. Here is the leader of an obscure Marxist-Leninist grouplet who, through long and patient boring-from-within tactics, has somehow managed to finagle herself into being a factor in Reform party politics – an avowed revolutionary communist who stunned some of her own followers when she endorsed Pat Buchanan and signed on as one of about seven or eight co-chairs of the campaign. This led to a veritable orgy of lurid revelations and "investigative" journalism into the enigma that is Lenora Fulani, notably in the New Republic, and gave the smear artists of the Anti-Buchanan Brigades an opportunity to fulminate against the rising threat of the "Red-Brown" coalition. The apologists for Bush in the conservative movement went ballistic with glee at this godsend – here, at last, was evidence that Pat had gone Red! Hillary Clinton even got in on the act, taking the opportunity to bash both Buchanan and Fulani in her speech to the Fulani-controlled New York Independence Party. Articles poured out of the "mainstream" media, smearing Fulani and her mentor, Fred Newman, as anti-Semitic, thieving, violence-prone totalitarian cultists, whose mesmerized members were conditioned by psychological brainwashing disguised as "therapy," like left-wing Moonies. Fulani did the whole talk show circuit, explaining to all who would listen what a revolutionary communist and Patrick J. Buchanan had in common, which was . . . .

FULANI – THE ENIGMA

It wasn't clear to me exactly what that point of commonality ever was. Oh, sure, I've read her vapid blatherings in WorldNetDaily, and I've heard her on TV: I even met her in person, when she spoke at this year's Antiwar.com conference. I listened very carefully to every word of her speech, and (I am ashamed to say) we even posted it here, a transgression for which I humbly beg the forgiveness of our readers. For none of it ever made the least amount of sense to me, and I know that I am not alone in this. To understand Fulani-ism is to grasp the wind; one might as well try to interpret the patterns formed by the mist as it rolls in from the sea. Her turgid prose weighed down with leaden phrases like "democracy," and "process," and "opening up," not to mention "independent politics," Fulani's vapid message is all form and absolutely no content. Her speech to the Antiwar.com conference, aside from obligatory and passionless references to "imperialism," was completely bereft of any analysis or explanation of why imperialism is undesirable except that the Democratic party is for it. Read in a monotone, her oration continued at such relentless length that a question and answer session was impossible – and lucky for her. She had mobilized her local followers to attend, and they gazed up at her, their eyes shining with vacuous adoration. But from where I was sitting, I could see the puzzled and disgruntled looks, hear the sighs of boredom and the sounds of discomfort, both physical and ideological, coming from this largely conservative crowd: after a solid forty-five minutes of Fulani's soporific rhetoric, people had started to slip out the back door, and I was concentrating very deeply on how I might make a run for it without being too conspicuous when her relentless drone finally (finally!) came to a halt . . . .

WHY BUCHANAN?

When Fulani was vilified by such organs of political correctness as the New Republic and the Nation, I was naturally impelled to defend her in this column: I have a penchant for taking on the hardest jobs, and, besides that, I was genuinely convinced that most if not all of the anti-Fulani hysteria was really anti-Buchanan vitriol diverted to another target. But I was frankly baffled at Fulani's endorsement of Buchanan: in spite of all the talk about how building a "left-right" coalition would "open up the system" and "democratize" America, it seemed to me that any successful third party candidate could easily fit Lenora's bill. Why not Ralph Nader – why Buchanan? But I didn't really question it all that much: if she wanted to endorse Buchanan, I was the last person who was going to try to talk her out of it. Besides, her acolytes were well-trained in ballot access laws, and they had been buried inside the various "independent" parties that later merged into the Reform party since the very beginning. Better to have them for us than against us – right? It wasn't until the conference, held in March, that I really began to have some doubts about the veracity of my cost-benefit analysis.

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

In the weeks leading up to the conference, I was literally deluged with phone calls and emails from a various cogs in the Fulani machine: Jackie Salit started bombarding us with her missives after we posted one piece, and I received a number of communications from various Fulani apparatchiks asking all kinds of questions: what would the audience be like, what were we doing about the media, would there be a separate room for press interviews, what about Pat's availability? It was as if the attendants of the Queen of Sheba were preparing her royal highnesses' bath, making sure that the temperature is right and perfuming the water with her favorite fragrance. For a revolutionary communist, who theoretically believes in egalitarianism and simplicity, Lenora Fulani sure travels in style. For the conference we put up all our speakers, of course, but Lenora demanded two separate hotel rooms: one for her, and one for her aide-de-camp. In the interests of unity, and the much-vaunted "left-right coalition," we complied, but I privately wondered if this wasn't a little odd: in getting approval for the extra expense from our much-harried Board President, Burt Blumert, I asked "what does she need an aide for? What does her aide do?" Well, I found out soon enough. . . .

ME AND MY SHADOW

Omar was an extremely softspoken young man with a sallow face and an ingratiating manner, and from the moment we were introduced by the local Fulani-ite leader, he seemed always at my side. Armed with his little notebook, he asked questions that seemed always to be open-ended, yet was reticent about himself. He claimed to be a student, although it was never clear to me where, or what was his subject of interest: his connection to the Fulani organization was equally vague, but he clearly had one purpose in life, at least for the moment:, and that was to follow me everywhere. I had lunch with him, and he asked endless questions, mostly personal, all the while scribbling furiously in his notebook, occasionally looking up to flash a smile of empathy. But there was something distinctly spooky about Omar, who asked so many questions that at one point I wondered if maybe he was planning on writing my biography. He kept turning up everywhere, but I managed to lose him in the crowd at several points: obviously, he had been assigned to shadow me. Unfortunately for him, I didn't feel like being shadowed, and somehow eluded his clutches for the rest of the conference. Talk about weird . , ,

A STRANGE ENCOUNTER

After the conference, I received a personal note from Lenora, on her embossed ultra-fancy stationary, thanking me for the invitation, and we continued to be showered with the missives of Jackie Salit. In addition, I met the local Fulani-ites for the first time, and had a long meeting with their leader, Joyce Dattner. The occasion for the meeting was the selection of delegates to the national convention from San Francisco, and it appeared there was a problem: the Buchanan campaign had tapped me for a delegate spot, and I had agreed to run. But Joyce, who claimed to be for Buchanan, had been elected chair of the San Francisco Reform Party and clearly thought she had dibs on the delegate spot. She came to my house, a very calm woman about my age, perhaps a little older: she is the director of the San Francisco Center for Social Therapy,. the psychotherapeutic arm of the Fulani organization, and she struck me as very single-minded. While I went through the amenities, and tried to make conversation, to touch on a subject that might interest her – the meaning of a left-right coalition, the internal politics of the Reform party, Pat's latest media appearance, organizing a Reform Party in the Bay Area – she always steered the conversation toward the nuts-and-bolts matter of was I or wasn't I going to run against her for delegate to the national convention from San Francisco? I finally gave up trying to find out what makes the local leader of "Leftists for Buchanan" tick, and let Ms. Dattner make her case for why I shouldn't run for delegate status in Long Beach. Number one, said Dattner, "I'm for Buchanan and will vote for him at the national convention," and secondly she said she was planning on running for a statewide at-large seat, and if she won I would be the delegate. Naturally, I was looking to get out of having to run, because that would mean I would have to attend at least one meeting, and probably more: as a full delegate, I would be obliged to actively participate in the proceedings. Dattner kept assuring me that she was for Buchanan, and that it didn't make any difference who cast that vote. As an alternate I would be free to observe, while having access to the convention floor: this, I figured, would be an ideal setup. And it was – for the Fulani-ites. . . .

THE STAB IN THE BACK

The next I heard of Ms. Dattner was from the Buchanan coordinator. I had called him, in desperation, after hearing news reports that an anti-Buchanan resolution had been submitted to the state Reform party convention that threatened to have his name removed from the California ballot. According to my informant, none other than Joyce Dattner was the author of that resolution. Uh oh, I thought, as I read the numerous news reports of the infighting at the state convention, in which the name Jim Mangia was always prominent, remembering what Dattner had told me about him. Not only was he gay, but he was also an ex-member if the Fulani cult, as were other Reform party activists who had broken with the Fulani group over the alliance with Buchanan. "I have trouble keeping my own people in line," Dattner complained to me during our little tete-a-tete, "this left-right coalition is very difficult. We've lost some of our people over this," including Mangia, whom she claimed had been a member of Fulani's communist party.

MARX DESERVES BETTER

Now, I don't really want to red-bait Mr. Mangia, who has become a one-man media center for the dissemination of smears against Buchanan, because if the meaningless pap Fulani feeds her foolish disciples is Marxism-Leninism, I'll eat a copy of The Communist Manifesto. Try reading one of Ms. Fulani's articles without falling asleep, and then turn to the language of that talented and colorful rabblerouser, Karl Marx: the bold language, the sweeping grandeur of the phrases, the passion – a passionate hatred of the good, to be sure, but still it is an authentic passion, filled with an emotion that floods even the dispassionate with vivid imagery and quickens the blood of the most unsympathetic reader: "Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win." If the bland generalities of Fulani's fakery are all that is left of revolutionary communism, then it has fallen even lower than its worst enemies could have imagined. Not even Karl Marx deserves this.

OMINOUS PORTENTS

The whole prospect of going to Long Beach, I must confess, fills me with trepidation. Certainly the signs of the impending political battle have been ominous. I don't pretend to follow the bureaucratic infighting that takes place within the Reform party apparatus – with its endless committees, arcane rules, and complicated nominating procedures – but the recent "purge" of the convention credentials committee by the edict of the newly-installed national chair is definitely not a good sign. Even more ominous is the carefully-orchestrated atmosphere of looming violence that longtime Perot aide Russell Verney and national secretary Jim Mangia, working as a kind of tag-team, have whipped up in the media. Particularly worrisome is a recent story off the AP newswire which reports that Reform party "national convention organizers say they have increase the security budget by as much as 15 percent. Some activists are pushing for even more safeguards." Threats against Buchanan from far-left groups have been the real security concern, as every nut group on the left targets Long Beach to display their devotion to political correctness. In a recent new story, Mangia made it clear that he welcomes the prospect of violence, as it would prove that he was right about Buchanan all along:

"'There may well be a brawl on the convention floor. It's a real possibility. That's what happens when you let brown shirts into your party,' said Jim Mangia, the party's national secretary, who is aghast at what he views as a right-wing takeover of the party by Buchanan."

WRECKING CREW

In a concerted campaign to sabotage the Reform party rather than let Buchanan have the nomination, Mangia, Verney, and now, apparently, the Fulani-ites, have joined together in a United Front against Buchanan. In a working alliance with the liberal media, which reports each and every allegation against Buchanan and his supporters as if it were "news," the wrecking crew is moving in to demolish the party it couldn't control. But there are a few light notes to this very seedy operation, such as the sudden entrance of John Hagelin and the nutcake Natural Law Party on center stage.

HAGELIN, THE GURU, AND THE NUTBALL UNITED FRONT

Salon solemnly reports that "Mangia and other anti-Buchanan Reformers are defaulting to Hagelin, a physicist from the Natural Law Party who has quietly been working to place his name on the ballot alongside Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination." What Anthony York, the author of the piece, fails to tell us is that he teaches physics at "Maharishi Maheesh Yogi University." And how is it that the hotshot investigative reporters over at Salon failed to even mention the intimate connection between the cult of the Maharishi and the Natural Law Party? This is why York's description of Hagelin and the NLP is so perfunctory: Hagelin is portrayed merely as the Anti-Buchanan, and the ideology of the NLP is never described. But the NLP has never tried to hide that it was founded at the orders of the Maharishi, to spread to doctrine of Transcendental Meditation by means of the ballot box. First item on Hagelin's agenda: state-funded "meditation centers," where presumably the ordinary citizen can achieve the feats of levitation ascribed to the Maharishi. That the tiny group of malcontents led by Mangia and his cohorts has now turned to the nutball followers of a recognized cult like TM, and its front group the NLP, speaks volumes about their political integrity – and the willingness of anyone in the media to call them on it. Fulani, Hagelin, Mangia, and Verney – their collective absurdity melds quite well with the media's preconceived image of the Reform party as a "circus."

A GIANT AMONG PYGMIES

What is striking, to me, is the kindness and sheer class of Buchanan's reply to Fulani's outrageous letter – here is a giant among pygmies. Buchanan's enemies seem to think that they can cut Buchanan down to the size of a Fulani, or a Mangia, or any one of a number of Reform party characters: this is his punishment for daring to go against the party establishment, and thinking he could do an end run around the ruling elite's electoral monopoly. But if Buchanan can pull it off – and it's going to be a bitter battle – this November the voters will indeed have a choice when it comes to foreign policy. They will be able to vote for a candidate who wants to bring our troops home from Korea, and who would start pulling the troops out of Kosovo as soon as he took the oath of office. Here is a President who would end the murderous sanctions against Iraq, and call off the dangerous expansion of NATO. Here is a candidate who defends American sovereignty against all comers, and refuses to back down in his fight against the rising tide of political correctness that is stifling all debate in this country and destroying the conservative movement. As Dubya's father said of the Iraqi reconquest of Kuwait – "This cannot stand." As to whether Buchanan can stand against attacks from both the left and the right – from Fulani's commies and Hagelin's carpet-flyers, to Pat's less outlandish enemies on the neoconservative Right, zealously guarding Dubya's right flank – is hard to say. Every registered Reform party voter in California just got a full-color mailing package from the Hagelin campaign, telling them how to request a ballot and it appears that the Stop Buchanan movement does not lack for adequate funding. Hagelin's slick website, and most recent news stories about him, fail to mention the TM connection, but watchers of cults are quite familiar with the pathology of the group's activities.

HAGELIN – A CERTIFIED WACKO

It's been a long way down for George Harrison's favorite guru. Since the 1970s, when they enjoyed the favor of the Beatles, the Maharishi and his followers have taken a rather strange turn: according to the Maharishi, there is a worldwide plot to destroy Transcendental Meditation involving the CIA, the American Medical Association, multi-national pharmaceutical companies, agricultural companies promoting genetically engineered foods – and now Pat Buchanan! The major complaint against the Maharishi and his cult seems to be the group's hostility to medical science: seeking help from non-TM doctors, therapists, or any sort of clinician, including chiropractors, is strictly forbidden. Even talking to clergy about your marriage problems is highly suspect, since only practitioners of TM have access to The Truth. The Maharishi exhorted his followers to enter politics to reshape "world consciousness" by means of government institutions. Today, his Natural Law Party is established in virtually all industrialized countries. The "Tracenet" cult-watcher's website informs us that "at various times his groups have played an active part in the politics and governments of the Philippines, Nepal, Zambia, Mozambique, Brazil, the Balkans, and other nations." If tales of violence, kidnapping, and drugs, as well as the financial scandals and charges of child molestation that have dogged the TM movement aren't enough to discredit Hagelin and his fellow wackos, then what about some recent political pronouncements from the Vatican of the TM movement, Maharishi U, which are quite, uh, interesting, to say the least:

"Maharishi University of Management celebrates the dawn of a New World Order of Peace, as demonstrated by the invincibility of President Fidel Castro of Cuba, the freedom of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the Divine Rulership of President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia, and the casting off of corrupt democracy by President Robert Guei of the Ivory Coast. These four Heads-of-State are four great forerunners of a forthcoming New World Order of Peace. The present strength of their leadership is the first visible effect of improvement in the administration of nations. Their special qualities of ideal leadership demonstrate a rise in the world of Global Administration through Natural Law, and foreshadow a time soon to come when every nation will be sovereign, self-sufficient and invincible, yet will be united with all other nations in a world family enjoying perpetual peace."

FULANI'S UNITED FRONT OF MALCONTENTS

Fidel Castro is celebrated for his "invincibility": Mugabe is hailed as an upholder of "freedom; and Wahid is a "saint," the "first Divine Ruler of Indonesia." And as for the heroic President Guei, he has "thrown off the faulty and corrupt democratic system imposed on so many nations by their former imperial overlords" and instituted a military dictatorship that promises to raise up "the poor" who "remain pressed under the weight of their misery." Now, who could possibly be against that? It seems like the Commie Fulani-ites and the levitating NLPers are natural allies.

SPARE ME THE HATE MAIL

Please spare me the outraged letters from NLPers protesting that their fruit-loopy party has no formal connection with TM or the Maharishi: as party leader Bob Roth, at the NLP's headquarters in Iowa, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "There has been extensive coverage about TM and the party. It's no secret this is the TM party.'' In looking at Hagelin, and the rest of the characters that are yelping about the prospect of a Buchanan candidacy, I am struck by what a gaggle of cranks they appear to be – yet they are eagerly quoted by such "mainstream" media outlets as AP, Reuters, and Salon, as if their pronouncements had news value or significance, and deserve to be taken seriously.. Lenora Fulani is on TV right now as I speak calling for Ralph Nader to enter the Reform party race, after explaining to all and sundry why Pat's refusal to back her for national chair of the Reform party led to her dis-endorsement. In spite of all her high-toned hot air about "democracy" and political "reform," it seems that all she really cares are the perks and prestige of high office. In her rambling and pretentious letter, Lenora claims that Pat has been talking almost exclusively about social issues like abortion – but a single visit to his website, which has archived all his public statements to date, reveals that his public pronouncements have mostly concerned the evils of globalism. His opposition to overseas intervention and his denunciations of the various trade agreements far outnumber his statements on abortion and homosexuality – in spite of the fact that the latter is what the media wants to report.

THE DARK SIDE

The Battle of Long Beach is shaping up to quite an event, and we shall see what new obstacles the wrecking crew throws in Buchanan's path to the nomination: but whatever happens, you can be sure it will mark the culmination of the Silly Season – and give us a good glimpse of its increasingly sinister aspect.

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