Times of Turmoil: Christian End Times Thriller (Book 1)

by Cliff Ball

  Chapter 17

  Michael had quite a few things going on at the same time. He had gone to London to get a Muslim couple to adopt an orphaned six-year-old Muslim boy that he had big plans for when he was older. The boy would eventually bring together the whole Muslim world and he would be the leader of this Islamic Caliphate. Michael planned on having the boy and David Collins in power together at around the same time and then Michael’s plans would come to complete fruition, but that was at least twenty to twenty-five years away, so he would continue to work towards his goals.

  When it came to United States government agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency was filled with people who believed in Michael’s view of the world. Their first goal was to bully the small farmer and small acreage landowners to test out how far they could get away with eminent domain or by telling these farmers and landowners that their land was wetland or had some kind of endangered creature living on the land. Michael’s goal was to get these people to give up their fight for the land because of all the various regulations they had to put up with, then sell their land to one of his companies, and then Michael would be free to use the land as he saw fit in the future. Michael also had the EPA harass oil drilling companies, by having the EPA test the air and soil constantly, and then claim that the fracking they did was extremely harmful to the environment.

  Key people, disguised as concerned citizens, were placed in various cities where fracking took place, to sound the alarm about the extreme danger of oil drilling. Michael wanted the United States to stay oil dependent on oil platforms and gas companies he owned; consequently, the price of gas kept increasing every time the President of the United States discussed energy independence.

  The 2008 Presidential Elections for the United States was set to take place shortly and Michael had his cronies setting up election sites that would appear legitimate, but in reality, the election was already decided and had been two years earlier. While some elections had been partially fixed, like the bungled 2000 election was supposed to have been and the 1960 election really had been, Michael put his full effort into this one. He created organizations that would sign people up for only the Democrat party, transport those same voters to polling sites, give them the ballots that had already been filled out, and have them submit those ballots. Others were offered tons of free stuff to vote for the Democrats, some were given multiple identification cards so they could vote more than once, and Michael even had nearly the whole of traditional media in his pocket to report on whatever he wanted them to report or not to report.

  The Republican Establishment candidate was hand-picked by Michael, even though it appeared he went through a tough fight in the primaries. The Republican, Senator Allen MacMurray of Oklahoma, was considered a war hero by many, but Michael knew a secret that most didn’t — the man had been completely brainwashed when tortured by the enemy when he was a prisoner of war. So when key phrases were spoken to him, he was a very compliant person and did whatever anyone wanted him to do. No one could figure out the man’s positions; sometimes he agreed with most of his constituents and his Party, but other times, he agreed with the Democrats and their positions, and it was completely random.

  Michael’s people read various blogs and opinion sites on the internet written by various Republican and Conservative voters that they wouldn’t vote for him, which was fine with Michael, since MacMurray wouldn’t be elected anyway. Michael also had plans closer to the election that would make the Republican look even worse to the voters, but, no matter what, the Democrat would win.

  The Democrat candidate, Larry Marsh, the first term United States Senator from Michigan, was not one of the projects that the Evans family was involved with, but it was a project of one of their low-level associates, including the candidate’s own parents. Nobody had really intended for him to be the Democrat’s candidate for President, it was mostly a joke to see how far they could go before the caucus and primary voters voted for the candidate, the Senator from New Jersey, Mallory Winston, that the Establishment actually wanted as President of the United States. Marsh really didn’t know anything, every time he voted on anything he voted “present,” and everything he knew was told to him by his handlers, and then he spouted whatever they told him to say. Amazingly, he was a hit with the low and no-information young voters, so Michael decided to get involved.

  At a campaign stop in Texas, shortly before the Democrat’s primary there, Michael talked to Sally Garrett, the Michigan Senator’s puppeteer, “Sally, I think we can take Larry all the way to the White House. Show what kind of idiots American voters really are,”

  “Oh come on, Michael, do you really think we can get Larry into the White House? He’s practically Chauncey Gardner. He parrots every talking point we have, has to use a teleprompter for speeches, and doesn’t have an actual thought in that pathetic little brain of his, except for the ones we put in there,”

  “Of course I think we can get him into the White House. The low-info sheep just love him. Listen, Sally, you’ll be the power behind the man, so you’ll basically be the President. We can ignore the Constitution and pass whatever we want to pass, since we have most of Congress paid off, and you can drain the U.S. Treasury dry by giving your friends and donors as much money as you can get away with. Don’t you want that?”

  “Sure I do, but what about Senator Winston?”

  “Oh, you’ll offer her the job of Secretary of State. That way, you can get her out of the country, so she won’t know what’s going on most of the time, and then won’t have an objection to it. By the time the 2012 election rolls around, she’ll be too tired to care, and our boy will have his second term. By 2012, the elections will be under our control completely, so we won’t have to worry about another situation like what happened in Florida back in 2000,”

  “You know, I like your thinking. Ok, once the election is over with, we’ll offer Winston the State job. Any ideas who we can use for the Vice President?”

  “He has to look pretty dumb compared to Marsh.” then Michael thought about it for a minute or so, and then said, “I think I know the perfect candidate. He tends to say random, off-the-cuff stuff, and to the smart voters he sounds like a fool, but to our voters, they won’t have a problem with it. I’ll look into it. In the meantime, we’ll have our ads on TV make the Republican look bad. I’ll also being making the economy look like it’s about to crash, to make all Republicans look like they have bad economic ideas, since the current President is a Republican after all. Well, I’ll leave you to the campaign. See you later.”

  The election took an interesting turn when MacMurray picked the most random Vice Presidential candidate ever, someone that no one in the Establishment had ever once thought about or even took seriously. The pick even surprised Michael, but he supposed that since MacMurray claimed to be a nonconformist, he had to prove it to his base. Her name was Lara Bristol, the Republican governor of Montana, and she was a person that tended to tick off the Establishment, since she was no respecter of party or person. She rooted out corruption in state government, was also a dedicated mother and wife, and was a committed Christian, which annoyed everyone in the Establishment. Why MacMurray picked her, he never said, but it ticked off his staff, who tried to undermine her at times with the media.

  Michael used his contacts in the media, including the left wing bloggers and news sites on the web, to try to find as much dirt on her as they possibly could and then they would try to make it go viral. What they found was that Lara, her husband, and her children had no skeletons in their closets outside of politics, but Lara had managed to tick off all the wrong people in her rise through the Montana political system, mostly because she didn’t bow down to the party masters, nor did she let anyone tell her she couldn’t do this or that.

  Michael figured that with Lara’s ticking off of the Establishment, that it would be the perfect way to destroy her politically and MacMurray’s candidacy and any future she might want in national politics. To the poli
tical class, which included Michael, the fact that Lara also went to a regular university, which was the University of Arizona, appalled them. None of them wanted anyone in Washington who didn’t go to one of the “approved” universities, such as Harvard, Yale, or any of the elite colleges.

  The news media began picking apart Lara; her time as Governor of Montana, her religious beliefs, her education, or lack thereof in their eyes, and criticized her husband and children. Comedy shows started making up stuff that she said, which went viral, causing her to look stupid. Having a sarcastic sense of humor, she fought back with her own barbs against the mainstream media, which endeared her to voters who hated the Establishment Republicans, but a lot of them couldn’t get past the fact that her running mate was a mealy-mouthed Senator who couldn’t decide which side to be on, so they wouldn’t vote at all. Others, at least the ones that wrote blogs, said they’d vote for her as a write-in vote, but they would never ever vote for MacMurray in any way, shape, or form.

  Michael thought that this party in-fighting was great, and he would figure out ways of manipulating the fighting in the near future, but he would still make sure that Marsh won by a wide enough margin that would look legitimate, when it really wasn’t.

  MacMurray’s campaign for President imploded when Michael decided to manipulate the stock market to crash a month before the election just enough to make Republican policies look like they wouldn’t work, and MacMurray decided that such an action required no more campaigning for a week or so, so he and his fellow Senators could look into the disaster, and then they’d be able to do “something” about it.

  Lara Bristol, who enjoyed the attention and liked campaigning, publicly called out MacMurray for abandoning his campaign. “We need someone who is serious about standing for American principles, not someone who is wishy-washy about what they even believe. Americans need someone who is like a bulldog, someone who stands up to our many enemies, someone who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is, and someone who can bring American back to the great country our Founders envisioned. If you vote for me as Vice President, I will show a President MacMurray what a wonderful place America can be when the people are given a chance. Thank you and God Bless America!”

  Meanwhile, Marsh’s handlers gave him his talking points. At a campaign stop in Dallas, he said, “If you vote for me, we will make sure these banks and companies are backed with the full faith and credit of the United States, because they are too big to fail and we don’t want any bank failures in the United States, because it’ll harm all of you out there who struggle day-to-day. My administration will pump millions of dollars into the economy, after we print more money at Treasury, and we will give all you hard-working Americans out there some extra cash that will help the economy stay afloat. We will also start requiring the super-rich to give more of their income for more revenues for the federal government, so that you working poor will be able to afford that beautiful home you want, or buy that car you’ve wanted since you were a teenager. Vote for me and you’ll feel taken care of, from cradle to grave, by the government. No more will you feel lost, because we will give you a hand, and everyone will have a share in this new America. You want to be as rich as your neighbor? We’ll make that happen, by taking from him and giving to you. I am your candidate for President and I thank you for allowing me to speak with you today.”

  Two weeks before the election, Michael called up the Christian leaders he had in his pocket: Goat, Josten, and Whittier. “Gentlemen, I need you to endorse Marsh. Invite him to speak at your churches and interview him on TV. Make sure he looks like he’s more spiritual and focused on the Christian God than MacMurray is. I will make sure he parrots all the stuff the Christians are supposed to believe and Sally Garrett, who basically thinks for him, will make sure he sounds convincing. Can the three of you make this happen this week?”

  Goat replied first, “You bet. I have a talk show on my own network, so I can interview him to find out just how supposedly close Marsh is to the Lord. I’ll send Garrett the questions and what I’d like Marsh to reply with. Is that ok?”

  “Perfect. Kevin, what about your church, do you think they’d vote for Marsh?”

  “Of course they will. All I have to do is tell them that the Lord told me that Marsh was the man for the job. Just send out his wife to my church, so she can testify to his righteousness and godliness. It will be no trouble at all to convince my congregation that her husband is practically a Moses-type character because he leads his best life as a dedicated Christian and will be the moral center of the United States once he becomes President. They’ll eat it right up,”

  “Excellent idea, Kevin. How about you Ryan?”

  “I’ll see if MacMurray and Marsh will come to my church to be interviewed by me, so we can see what direction they want to lead the country in morally. Of course, I’ll favor Marsh with easy questions, while MacMurray will get the difficult questions, and being the man he is, he won’t be able to answer them adequately enough to satisfy Christians who follow me for moral answers. Marsh will easily become the forty-fourth President of the United States.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen, for finally convincing me my time invested in your work was not a waste. I look forward to what comes out of these three meetings.”

  Marsh came out of the meetings with the Christian leaders looking like a better candidate than he did before, and convinced many of the sheep to vote for the wolf in sheep’s clothing. On Election Day, Marsh won the Presidency by fifty-three percent, even without the need of the faked ballots, but they were ready to be used in case Marsh lost the election before the actual results were known. The Republicans could only get forty percent of the vote, since the Libertarians and Conservatives voted third party or wrote in Lara Bristol’s name for President instead. Michael and the Democrats viewed this as a mandate to begin all the social and economic programs that they’ve been wanting in the United States for more than sixty years.

  Seeing Lara Bristol as a major threat to his plans, Michael ordered one of his cronies, “Find out when and where the Bristol’s will be traveling to next. When you find out, eliminate them.”

  A month later, the Bristol’s were on a ski trip in Colorado. In the middle of the night, two criminals employed by Michael’s crony, broke into the rented house, murdered the family, and made off with whatever valuables happened to be within reach. The two were caught a week later when Michael informed the authorities. In prison, the two were killed by other inmates to make sure they didn’t later confess that Michael ordered the hit.

  Many Americans with a moral center mourned the loss of the Bristol family, and wondered what the future might’ve been like if Lara had ever become President of the United States. While others, mainly the extreme left, celebrated the Bristol family’s death with unbridled glee.

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