War Under the Waves-The Struggle for Political Control of Forsyth County

Comments on Trump Assassination Attempt

The arti­cle you will read below these intro­duc­to­ry com­ments I wrote pri­or to yes­ter­days assas­si­na­tion attempt dur­ing the Trump ral­ly in But­ler Penn­syl­va­nia. Giv­en that at least one inno­cent ral­ly attendee was bru­tal­ly mur­dered, and oth­ers appar­ent­ly seri­ous­ly injured, I ques­tioned myself whether this would be the appro­pri­ate time to pub­lish the fol­low­ing chap­ter in the series of arti­cles I have been writ­ing on the sub­ject enti­tled above. And in view of those trag­ic events, before I go any fur­ther I want to send prayers for the vic­tims and fam­i­lies of those who were either killed or injured. There is no excuse that the US Secret Ser­vice and local law enforce­ment could have allowed that attack to occur. That is all I will say in that regard at this time.

And I expect we all express grat­i­tude to Prov­i­dence for the wisp of air which may have influ­enced the assas­sins bul­let to veer a quar­ter inch to the left of its intend­ed tar­get. Hav­ing lived through the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, even at the ten­der age of 8, I can tell you that those few sec­onds in Dal­las changed the world, in a hor­rif­ic way. Those moments became what I gen­er­al­ly refer as a hinge-point in his­to­ry. Had the bul­lets of Novem­ber 1963 missed their mark, the world in which we live would like­ly be much dif­fer­ent than it is today, in a much bet­ter way. Although yes­ter­days bul­lets missed their intend­ed mark, we can expect his­to­ri­ans will look back at those few sec­onds in But­ler, and rec­og­nize them as a sim­i­lar his­tor­i­cal moment. The nature of any new direc­tion for Amer­i­ca or the world, how­ev­er, we will have to leave as a project for future schol­ars as the impact of yes­ter­days events can­not be known with clar­i­ty at this time.

My deci­sion to pro­ceed pub­lish­ing todays arti­cle aris­es from the fact that, moments after the failed attempt on his life, the dif­fer­ence between Trumps sur­vival and an unspeak­able tragedy being as slight as one cen­time­ter, and cer­tain­ly knowl­edge­able of the prospect that addi­tion­al assas­sins may have remained lurk­ing among the crowd, the world wit­nessed Don­ald Trumps icon­ic behav­ior, the irre­press­ible 45th Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, fist in the air, face stained by his own blood, defi­ant­ly urg­ing all free­dom-lov­ing Amer­i­cans to con­tin­ue to, FIGHT! FIGHT FIGHT! The image I describe is one I expect few alive today will ever for­get.

In Novem­ber, 1863, while express­ing a set of remarks at Get­tys­burg, Pres­i­dent Lin­coln expressed his sen­ti­ments, sim­i­lar in cer­tain ways to Trumps, choos­ing the fol­low­ing words to cap­ture the moment:

Of course, Lin­coln had the ben­e­fit of time to con­sid­er his remarks, using sev­er­al qui­et hours aboard the Pres­i­den­tial rail­road car bound for his Penn­syl­va­nia des­ti­na­tion the day before, and also dur­ing a peri­od of con­tem­pla­tion with­in the still­ness of his quar­ters the night before offer­ing his famous speech. Trump, in his defense, had just been grazed with a high-veloc­i­ty pro­jec­tile, buzzing through the tis­sue of his right out­er ear, trig­gered by an unknown assailant or pos­si­bly a team of the same, find­ing him­self sur­round­ed by Secret Ser­vice agents hope­ful of lim­it­ing him from fur­ther dan­ger as they escort­ed him down the stairs and to the safe­ty of his vehi­cle.

In the end, how­ev­er, both Amer­i­can pres­i­dents used dif­fer­ent words to encour­age Amer­i­cans to accom­plish the same goal. Dur­ing his cir­cum­stances, to con­tin­ue to fight for Amer­i­ca and the Amer­i­can way of life is the mes­sage Pres­i­dent Trump urged us all to pur­sue. Com­pa­ra­bly, to take increase devo­tion to the cause of free­dom, and to pre­serve gov­ern­ment of, by, and for the peo­ple is what Lin­coln, the even­tu­al vic­tim of a suc­cess­ful assas­si­na­tion him­self, urged us to do. Ulti­mate­ly, I see very lit­tle dif­fer­ence in those assign­ments. Thus, to hon­or Trumps exhor­ta­tion, and obey Lin­colns instruc­tion in recog­ni­tion of his per­son­al sac­ri­fice, and to hon­or those through­out Amer­i­can his­to­ry, includ­ing those who yes­ter­day sac­ri­ficed for the sake of lib­er­ty, that is the task I am pur­posed to under­take in decid­ing to pub­lish todays arti­cle.

To set the stage for what you are about to read, I first want to strike a par­al­lel between our local cir­cum­stances in Forsyth Coun­ty, and those Pres­i­dent Trump thank­ful­ly lives to deal with on a nation­al, and even inter­na­tion­al lev­el. I do so by bring­ing for­ward two para­graphs writ­ten yes­ter­day morn­ing before the events in But­ler tran­spired, con­vey­ing a mes­sage I believe is ger­mane to both sets of cir­cum­stances. Most of my read­ers rec­og­nize that there is anestab­lished polit­i­cal orderin this coun­try at the lev­el of the Amer­i­can fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Don­ald Trump is the out­sider whom the estab­lish­ment, or Club at that lev­el seeks to defeat and deny polit­i­cal pow­er. The rea­son they do that is that they have their own pur­pos­es, oth­er than the will of the peo­ple they rep­re­sent, which they hope to accom­plish as elect­ed or appoint­ed gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Trump is in the way of them accom­plish­ing those pur­pos­es. There­fore, the dif­fer­ence between the cir­cum­stances Pres­i­dent Trump deals with, at his lev­el, and those we deal with, at ours, is only a mat­ter of scale and inten­si­ty. The prin­ci­ples caus­ing con­flict are the same. The poten­tial for esca­lat­ing con­flict at both lev­els, as we wit­nessed yes­ter­day, is very real. That said, yes­ter­day morn­ing I wrote the fol­low­ing:

As I close todays intro­duc­to­ry com­ments, I implore every­one involved in Forsyth Coun­ty pol­i­tics, to put down your fig­u­ra­tive weapons. Stop the non­sense. If you are an elect­ed offi­cial, or seek elec­tion to become one, turn your atten­tion to your true source of author­i­ty, the peo­ple you rep­re­sent. Leave any per­son­al agen­da at the door. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment is not about you.It is about those you rep­re­sent.Let yes­ter­days events become a hinge-point in the his­to­ry of Forsyth Coun­ty. Do the work of the peo­ple, even those with whom you dis­agree. Seek their coun­sel, not the coun­sel of spe­cial inter­ests hop­ing to accrue ben­e­fit from your pol­i­cy mak­ing. You rep­re­sent your peo­ple. Let oth­ers rep­re­sent theirs. Rep­re­sent­ing the pub­lic inter­est, and not your own, is the only job of elect­ed office. Respect that pur­pose.

I wrote the fol­low­ing arti­cle pri­or to the events in But­ler, Penn­syl­va­nia yes­ter­day after­noon:

Touch

Per­haps you will find this inter­est­ing, as do I, that with­in thir­ty min­utes of post­ing a link toChap­ter Oneof this series of Sub­stack arti­cles, the post was removed by the social media giant Face­book, as if they have noth­ing bet­ter to do than check Han­ks lat­est post, offer­ing me the expla­na­tion that my link con­tained a cyber-secu­ri­ty threat. Of course, the link con­tained no such thing. Thir­ty min­utes was all it took. And every time any­one would attempt to re-post that arti­cle, or any of the two sub­se­quent pub­lished chap­ters, each post was also removed, imme­di­ate­ly, Face­book offer­ing no expla­na­tion, just dis­ap­pear­ing those posts with­out a word. Appar­ent­ly, some­one in the Club knows the right peo­ple at Face­book.

Sub­se­quent­ly, two weeks ago I pub­lished the3rd chap­ter in this series, the intro­duc­tion of which I wrote after dis­cov­er­ing that a mem­ber of the Forsyth Coun­ty Re-Club-licans had under­tak­en a cam­paign of intim­i­da­tion against cer­tain mutu­al acquain­tances, demand­ing the inno­cent bystanders pub­licly con­demn both me and the truth I had writ­ten, and label me a liar. You see, that is how the Club oper­ates. Appar­ent­ly that it what it is for, to grow and main­tain polit­i­cal pow­er, even by bul­ly­ing and intim­i­dat­ing indi­vid­u­als to coop­er­ate in their bid­ding. Rather than con­fronting the truth by com­ing direct­ly to me, and mak­ing a case against the evi­dence I sub­mit­ted, we see Club mem­bers con­sis­tent­ly work­ing behind the scenes to influ­ence indi­vid­u­als, many times by bad­ger­ing or bul­ly­ing, hop­ing that those they seek to influ­ence will kneel to pres­sure and do what­ev­er they are told, in the process imply­ing a threat to use what­ev­er lever­age the Club­ster believes nec­es­sary should his or her sub­jects fail to com­ply. For that rea­son, in my Chap­ter 3 intro­duc­tion I warned Club mem­bers not to test the extent of all I am will­ing to to reveal. I do not like mak­ing that kind of state­ment. But, damn, a com­mu­ni­ty of free cit­i­zens can­not allow their elect­ed offi­cials to threat­en them into sub­mis­sion. Indi­vid­u­als who suc­cumb to that kind of bul­ly­ing will become as slaves to their elect­ed over­seers. That is not the Amer­i­ca I know.

A free peo­ple should heed Jef­fer­sons wis­dom,When gov­ern­ment fears the peo­ple, there is lib­er­ty. When the peo­ple fear the gov­ern­ment, there is tyran­ny.Any­time mem­bers of elect­ed gov­ern­ment effec­tive­ly union­ize to accom­plish their com­mon per­son­al pur­pos­es, and use their col­lec­tive polit­i­cal pow­ers to form a mutu­al sup­port net­work, as we see mem­bers of the Club doing, a very real dan­ger to pub­lic lib­er­ty is an inevitable con­se­quence. And that is what is present­ly hap­pen­ing in Forsyth Coun­ty.

Club Undertaking Cyber-Warfare for Protection

But the Club was­nt done mess­ing with my Face­book page. After pub­lish­ingChap­ter 3, a week ago last Mon­day I awak­ened to dis­cov­er that the same Face­book account on which I orig­i­nal­ly post­ed this series of arti­cles, an account which I main­tained through thick-and-thin for 14 years, had been sus­pend­ed, appar­ent­ly per­ma­nent­ly, the Face­book pow­ers-that-be claim­ing that I had vio­lat­ed rules on my Insta­gram account and that my Face­book account was being sus­pend­ed as a result. One prob­le­mI dont have an Insta­gram account. And the account ref­er­enced on the noti­fi­ca­tion seem­ing­ly does not exist. Accord­ing to Face­book, I would have 180 days to appeal, how­ev­er, to do so I would have to login to my non-exis­tent Insta­gram account and appeal the action there. So, appar­ent­ly, as a result of pub­lish­ing this series of arti­cles, arti­cles which BTW con­cern only LOCAL issues in my home coun­ty, Face­book has dropped my page into a cyber black hole, leav­ing me no options to regain access to my old account, and its over 8000 sub­scribers.

But, all that I describe is sim­ply pol­i­tics, as it is prac­ticed by unscrupu­lous politi­cians and pro­fes­sion­al polit­i­cal oper­a­tors. It is the polit­i­cal world I con­sis­tent­ly warn about. I am not sur­prised in becom­ing the object of this brand of cyber-war­fare because this is what unscrupu­lous polit­i­cal oper­a­tors do. They make moves, anony­mous­ly, under the waves, as I have described, such that they expect to main­tain a degree of plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty in what­ev­er under­hand­ed polit­i­cal oper­a­tions they under­take. And that is what I have been reveal­ing about the Club since pub­lish­ingChap­ter 1sev­er­al weeks ago. Some­one, seem­ing­ly with­in the Clubs midst (and it real­ly should not take much thought to rec­og­nize who that is), pos­sess­es enough reach into the nether regions of the cor­po­rate social media uni­verse, to ini­ti­ate the kind of cyber-sab­o­tage I describe.

Oh but, Hank, its just a Face­book page.

Yes, per­haps. But, viewed as a weapon formed to counter a Club of polit­i­cal actors strug­gling to con­trol my home of Forsyth Coun­ty, Geor­gia, that Face­book page was one pri­ma­ry means to spread knowl­edge of their works IN THEIR OWN BACK YARD. With­out that out­let, at least for the time, I am lim­it­ed to com­mu­ni­cat­ing with a few thou­sand organ­ic sub­scribers here on Sub­stack. Those sub­scribers are cen­tered in Geor­gia, how­ev­er spread far and wide. So, you see why it was impor­tant for them to cut off at least par­tial access to my local audi­ence, to what­ev­er extent my for­mer Face­book account pro­vid­ed. To the Club, sev­er­ing my access to the Forsyth Coun­ty casu­al read­er is like cut­ting a vital sup­ply line deliv­er­ing ene­my ammu­ni­tion to the front lines of the war they ini­ti­at­ed, sup­plies which could be used against them in their strug­gle to polit­i­cal­ly con­trol Forsyth Coun­ty.

In that regard, all I can say iswellTouch. Well done, Club. I told read­ers from the out­set, the Club has begun a war of aggres­sion to con­trol the fastest grow­ing coun­ty in the Unit­ed States, and that is what they mean to do. Why? Well, for one thing, the demand for dimin­ish­ing, devel­opable land in Forsyth Coun­ty, along with the result­ing ris­ing prices, and the con­trol of how that land can and will be used, as well as who will use it, is a poten­tial “pot-of-gold for who­ev­er has that pow­er. Per­son­al enrich­ment is there­fore like­ly a major fac­tor moti­vat­ing the kinds of aggres­sive behav­iors we see from cer­tain ego-cen­tric, even mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal Club mem­bers. There are oth­er rea­sons as well. But to accom­plish those pur­pos­es, the Club must main­tain a unit­ed front, each Club mem­ber com­ing to the defense of oth­ers, in the process pro­vid­ing evi­dence of a vir­tu­al, tac­it, mutu­al defense oper­a­tion, a Forsyth Coun­ty NATO of sorts, pur­posed to repel all who oppose its mem­bers, while oper­at­ing under an assumed, but very real under­stand­ing, that those mem­bers should coop­er­ate as a unit, pro­mot­ing each oth­ers polit­i­cal inter­ests, while watch­ing each oth­ers backs.

More Club Dirty Tricks

Last week, we saw evi­dence of the Club car­ry­ing out what one might call a dirty tricks, cam­paign, while retain­ing the abil­i­ty to plau­si­bly deny their hand­i­work, even though Club fin­ger­prints can be found all over the fig­u­ra­tive crime scene. This past week, appar­ent­ly the Club, or cer­tain oper­a­tives with­in the Club, decid­ed to broad­cast a well-cir­cu­lat­ed, well-pub­li­cized mass-text poll, osten­si­bly pur­posed at solic­it­ing pub­lic input on the future can­di­da­cy of Dis­trict 24 State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Carter Bar­rett. The Club would do that because Forsyth Coun­tys over­seers want Bar­rett gone from his seat in west­ern Forsyth Coun­ty, and desire to replace him with a can­di­date whose pur­pos­es gel with the pur­pos­es of the Club.

Short­ly after its release, the Club spread word through its social media vol­un­teer net­work, alleg­ing that the poll was designed and con­duct­ed by fel­low non-club mem­ber Brent Cox, the state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Geor­gias 28th Dis­trict on the North side of Forsyth Coun­ty. That alle­ga­tion was quite a stretch, the Club­sters pur­pos­es obvi­ous­ly rest­ing on the belief that most vot­ers know very lit­tle about the mat­ters about which you are read­ing.

So, under­stand what is going on here. The Clubs text poll was a clum­sy, psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tion designed to cre­ate con­fu­sion, but also to, in effect, soft­en the beach­es pri­or to the Club mount­ing a polit­i­cal oper­a­tion to unseat Bar­rett in 2026. In so doing, the poll was also designed to cre­ate sep­a­ra­tion between Bar­rett and Bar­retts per­ceived ally, Cox, while also cre­at­ing space between Bar­rett and a notable pri­vate, polit­i­cal fig­ure in Forsyth Coun­ty, a charis­mat­ic indi­vid­ual the Club appar­ent­ly hopes to ingra­ti­ate into its ranks, and whose name, there­fore, also appeared in the poll.

Fur­ther­more, that psy-op was designed to con­vey to those receiv­ing the text that the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Geor­gias 24th Dis­trict has mean­ing­ful oppo­si­tion with­in his own par­ty, while tac­it­ly invit­ing the pri­vate indi­vid­ual appear­ing in the poll to join Club ranks and seek office against Bar­rett. That kind of oper­a­tion is known in polit­i­cal cir­cles as, Balka­niza­tion, or maybe, divide and con­quer. The Club wants to recruit a local, allur­ing, polit­i­cal fig­ure under their influ­ence, and in the process char­ter a cam­paign to muster the polit­i­cal pow­er nec­es­sary to unseat the pop­u­lar Dis­trict 24 rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Carter Bar­rett, in 2026. That is what Club­sters do. That is how they oper­ate. Recip­i­ents of the ref­er­enced text poll were sub­jects of polit­i­cal manip­u­la­tion. It is not only good for peo­ple to rec­og­nize when they are being manip­u­lat­ed, but also to rec­og­nize who is doing it. So, there you go.

In a sim­i­lar fash­ion, as I wrote inChap­ter 1of this series, the Mark Mor­ris let­ter, pub­lished as an op-ed in the Forsyth Coun­ty News, among oth­er pur­pos­es, was designed to polit­i­cal­ly weak­en the Geor­gia rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the 28th Dis­trict, Brent Cox, and also weak­en the rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the 25th, Lau­ren McDon­ald, soft­en­ing the beach­es for a full-out polit­i­cal assault against both in 2026, Mr. Mor­ris, him­self, being one of the like­ly can­di­dates to attempt to unseat McDon­ald in the dis­trict Mor­ris for­mer­ly rep­re­sent­ed.

On the sur­face, those receiv­ing the text poll to which I refer like­ly took it on face val­ue. On the sur­face, that poll is just like many oth­er solic­i­ta­tions we receive dai­ly since our cell num­bers were all cap­tured and dis­trib­uted across the great social media data­base in the sky. But on the sur­face is not where we find the activ­i­ty in the Clubs strug­gle to con­trol Forsyth Coun­ty. That war is fought under the waves, below the sur­face. And last week we wit­nessed one more way in which the Club endeav­ors to achieve and main­tain unas­sail­able polit­i­cal con­trol over Forsyth Coun­ty, effec­tive­ly telegraph­ing their pur­pos­es to remove and replace three Forsyth Coun­ty state, rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2026, Carter Bar­rett, Brent Cox and Lau­ren McDon­ald. What I report here is how suc­cess­ful polit­i­cal oper­a­tions are car­ried out, first by soft­en­ing the beach­es, prepar­ing the pub­lic mind for a pri­ma­ry polit­i­cal assault. Appar­ent­ly, that is what last weeks text poll cam­paign was all about.

No Complaints Here

I am not going to com­plain about any­thing the Club tries against me. This is pol­i­tics. I know that. I knew what I was in for when I made the deci­sion to reveal what is actu­al­ly fair­ly well-known about the Club. Cer­tain­ly, they are not with­out where­with­al. Good for them.

And if you do not live in my home coun­ty of Forsyth in Geor­gia, rest assured, you like­ly have your own Club hard at work in what­ev­er coun­ty or town you may live. In any juris­dic­tion, regard­less of size, there is gen­er­al­ly an estab­lished polit­i­cal order. Once estab­lished, each mem­ber works to sur­round him or her­self with like-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als, both as notable and vocal pri­vate sup­port­ers, but also as elect­ed or appoint­ed pub­lic offi­cials. All of that is fine up to a point.

But at some point, an estab­lished polit­i­cal order begins to act as a machine, a sort of Boss Hog oper­a­tion. And that polit­i­cal machine turns into a grinder of sorts, designed to car­ry out polit­i­cal oper­a­tions to pul­ver­ize and sub­vert any and all oppo­si­tion, espe­cial­ly elect­ed offi­cials or can­di­dates who choose against swear­ing alle­giance to the machine, rather than the peo­ple they are elect­ed to serve. And very unfor­tu­nate­ly, what I describe is the state of affair in Forsyth Coun­ty pol­i­tics today.

New Social Media Links

Before I leave you today, should my Sub­stack sub­scribers be inter­est­ed, I have two social media links for you to con­sid­er sub­scrib­ing. First is my brand new Face­book page, which I would be glad for you to fol­low.Here is the link

and here ismy X page, which I pledge to use in increas­ing fre­quen­cy

Next upChap­ter 5.