Current Affairs

Today's email Inbox contained a query regarding when this blog will get back to blogging about the state of the Vermont secession movement and its supporters here or have they simply become so irrelevant that there's little that needs to be said any longer about them.

In answer to the second question first; while it's true that the Second Vermont Republic and its sister website at "Vermont Commons" have become nothing more than an e-bumper sticker movement, they're still trying to come up with a plan for their eventual takeover of Vermont's government and many of its public institutions. Much of their activity amounts to little more than repeating the same old tired, uncompelling talking points that have yet to sweep Vermonters up into their movement. One change has been that the seceshers no longer use the word secession, preferring instead euphemisms like being geared toward "emerging independence" (patently untrue) and "decentralization."

The mathematically challenged "Senator" Robert "Needed Killin' " Wagner is engaged in a weak kneed campaign to enlist similarly deluded nutbars into running for a Vermont senate seat under the banner of secession and the Ron Paultard Revolution.  Someone should tell the "Senator" that for more than two weeks the Paultard campaign has been in a state of full retreat, suspending operations, dropping out of primaries and is financially belly up.  I'll have more on the success, or lack thereof, of Wagner's effort to takeover the entire Vermont Senate later next month.

Also, there's a scheduled meeting of Vermont secesher bigwigs in the late summer where the "rebels" plan to marinate in a daylong celebration of hatred, Jew-baiting, self-delusion, Glenn Beck style gold peddling and windmill tilting, featuring a lecture from noted South Carolinian, neo-Confederate-American delegate (read: windbag) to the Southron National Congress, Kirkpatrick Sale, who once famously said that Israel was a "mistake" and that the "mistake" of Israel can be undone. It should prove to be as boring, poorly attended and insignificant as their previous "conventions" - remember them? Not to worry; no one else does either. Thomas Naylor, the the Dixie singin' baas and founder of the nonexistent Second Vermont Republic plans to take a backseat role at the meeting and focus his energies on his function as the Dr. Kevorkian for the Vermont body politic while running the sideshow will be Vermont Commons' douchenozzle publisher, Rob Williams, who'll co-chair the the secesher dog and pony event with Vermont Commons' web and content editor, Vermont's F35 NYMBY queen and sham radical, Juliet Buck. Political theatre vs. substantive action being their schtick, I'm sure that a clown car has been reserved to chauffeur the out of state revelers. Sounds like oodles of fun.

As for the email sender's first point, it'll be a pleasure to kick sand in the face of one of the most unsuccessful and ineffectual movements to be brought to the Green Mountains by carpetbagging allies of the racist League of the South in a generation over the summer.  In March of 2010 I warned the seceshers that I'd be reviewing their campaign materials later that year and they know how that turned out; whilst they were laying the groundwork for the most disastrous collective electoral effort in recent memory, I was reading their plans that they'd left for all to see on the Intertubes (here).  The secesher machinations were a laugh riot that garnered election results in the single digits or less.  Even Vermont's own Magnolia Vermonter, Tommy Naylor, felt moved to comment when it was over about the complete failure of his handpicked candidates,

"In spite of the paucity of votes attracted by (secesher gubernatorial) candidate (Dennis) Steele, his campaign seems to have been perceived as a major threat to someone."

"During the four weeks before the election, Steele and the entire Vermont independence movement were the object of a vicious, CIA-style, cybersmear campaign. Three websites and a well-organized network of anti-secessionists bombarded cyberspace with charges of racism, homophobia, and anti-semitism. The exact nature of the relationship between the smear network and the hostile websites was unclear. What was clear was that the entire effort was extremely well organized and well financed."

If by "well organized" Naylor meant blogging about the abundantly available facts then I'd plead guilty, but as for "well financed" Naylor's yet to present evidence rather than innuendo regarding that assertion since facts aren't Tommy's strong suit. He's also said,

"...Both the Second Vermont Republic and the Texas Nationalist Movement, the two most high-profile secession movements in the United States, have recently been the object of WikiLeaks-like cyber attacks."

"For over a year twenty Vermont Internet cowboys engaged in an intense Internet debate about secession on a private network known as the Free Vermont Framework. All participants thought the network was confidential and secure. They were mistaken. Six weeks before the November 2nd election the content of the network, including all Internet conversations over the past year, was released to three Vermont Technofascist Truth Squad websites which were hostile to the Second Vermont Republic and its election candidates. The leaked information was then used to wage a vitriolic CIA-like smear campaign against SVR and its candidates."

Source

This year's slate of potential secesher candidates promises to prove to be equally feckless, so let me repeat my earlier warning to these idiots:



More to come.

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For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.