Second Vermont Republic's Thomas Naylor Lashes Out At Vermont Occupiers

As a part of his continuing campaign to promote the notion that the baas knows best, the Second Vermont Republic's Dixie singin' founder unleashed a barrage of criticism at Occupy Vermont in his most recent essay, Occupy Wall Street Revisited: Who Is Being Occupied By Whom?

Naylor's claim in his essay that the "(f)rom the very outset (he) was an enthusiastic supporter of Occupy Wall Street" is, like much of what he says, untrue. He'd been a hectoring observer, at best. But he really went into overdrive last week in a broad spectrum attack on virtually every aspect of the Occupy movement in Vermont.

This sort of attack is nothing new for Naylor. Whenever some part of society disappoints him by not playing his secessionist game entirely by his rules, he strikes back and pillories the offender(s) for their not going secesher - when Bernie Sanders didn't quit his day job in Congress to run as Naylor's anointed Vermont gubernatorial candidate, Naylor viciously attacked him (and still does to this date); he attacked all of Vermont's voters when more than 99% of them didn't vote for his unhinged gubernatorial candidate in 2010; he's smeared all of Vermont's legislature, executive branch, statewide officials and congressional delegation for not seeing things his way; he's spewed hate for all of Vermont's churches, schools, institutes of higher learning and beloved public institutions for not becoming his a shill and, as I wrote here:

"He's condemned prominent state environmentalists, the churches ("No group is more loyal to the American Empire than are the Vermont clergy"), attorneys, all of the instate media including his former SVR flack, Shay Totten... He's likened the Vermont left to the "White Citizen Council" (sic) and the KGB. So what's left?"

Well, me. He's said something about me being a "CIA-style cyber smearer" or words to that effect. I'm surprised he hasn't sought to link me to the Mossad.

So it should come as no surprise that Naylor's turned his out of control enmity on the local Occupy movement when it failed to follow the directions meant for the Vermont occupiers that he'd fired off in several essays this fall and winter. The short version of that message: "Sezession über alles!"

Admittedly, I've had my own issues with a small segment of the Vermont occupiers who promote the highly criticized research work of racists and anti-Semites to explain economics and have provided an information portal to some of the most hateful websites imaginable, but overall my belief is that every group deserves a turn at bat. If such a group should fail, it's not going to be the fault of some diabolical conspiracy but, rather, a failure mostly of their own creation.

It is not an overstatement to say that the occupiers have substantively accomplished more in their brief existence than Thomas Naylor and his tiny claque of spellbound supporters have in the twenty or so years since he first began peddling his personal fantasy of secession. Under Naylor's highly incompetent leadership, SVR, seceshers as a group and the idea that Vermont will secede from the US has become an embarrassing joke.

Naylor's had more time at bat than he and his band of nincompoops deserve and it's long past time that they left the field in shame. Shame for their years long alliances with racists, anti-Semites and homophobes; shame for the vitriol they've injected into statewide forums and the election process; shame for their reliance on whacked out conspiracy theories to explain their inability to gain any traction whatsoever with the Vermont electorate; shame for their ongoing efforts to to establish partnerships with out of state extremists and the fringiest of nutters; and shame for their continuing treatment of their Vermont neighbors and political adversaries as enemies to be turned out and destroyed.

In his diatribe against all Occupiers in Vermont, Naylor wrote:

"Until Occupy Vermont came along, I thought surely the Second Vermont Republic had already attracted most of the crazies in Vermont. I was mistaken."

A surprising admission from someone who'd argued that his crazies were the right stuff to lead and govern Vermont in the future. But clearly his delusions persist when he suggests that there could be anyone crazier than someone who'd follow him.

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