{"id":1203,"date":"2016-05-25T22:31:29","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T22:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/?p=1203"},"modified":"2017-12-07T15:56:09","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T15:56:09","slug":"special-report-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/special-report-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Special report: politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Disturbing Encounter With Hillary Clinton<\/span><\/p>\n

By Michael H. Brown<\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps not in our lifetimes has there been an election for President like the current one, and perhaps never before has America reached such a level of danger.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

No matter which way the election goes, there is bound to be turbulence — and perhaps an unprecedented level of it. I believe the election of one candidate will tend to bring the social-uprising aspect of purification while the other will bring more of the natural events.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

How’s that for wild presentiment?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But anyway, buckle your seat belts.<\/span> Sit back.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Pray.<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Are there deep issues with both candidates? Even evil, or at least, in one case, the occult (my focus this time)? How will America react? What does it all portend for the future?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I virtually never discuss politicians by name (the divisive, detracting, and harsh elements of that all are not becoming of our faith), but there are certain things, including spiritual aspects, that I will<\/em> discuss in these special reports.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I’m no political expert, but naturally, like so many others, alarms are ringing (big-time).<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I’ll discuss both major candidates <\/span>but let have to admit that much of this deals with Hillary Clinton, with whom I had a brief but too-close encounter years ago, a brush that I once reported in a secular book for Harper and Row and one that left me, well, startled.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I have no intention of being a “political” commentator here, a “pundit,” in the overused expression; just a reporter. I’m not a promoter of any candidate. But I will start out, to be even about it, by mentioning Mr. Trump (amazing candidate for sure, in the most mesmerizing primary of our lifetimes). <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Are there problems with him?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There are certain facts we all know, and some many don’t. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump’s personal life is not a subtle one. He always has been surrounded with buxom beauty contestants. A recent investigation by The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0(though compromised, in part, when one interviewee recanted), involved fifty women who knew Mr. Trump and paint a very disturbing picture (here<\/a>). His casino in Atlantic City had a large strip club. He is the epitome of glitzy materialism. His name is emblazoned on everything from his skyscrapers to his plane. The high priest of hubris. He exhibits a phenomenal level of, granted, the rodomontade. \u00a0At any rate, not what the dictionary uses as a graphic next to the word humility. He has had to deal with mob guys in New York. You may be hearing more about this. There is Trump University. He is a king of amusements — big too is Las Vegas. \u00a0He has mansions and penthouses and estates. Greenwich. Fifth Avenue. West Palm Beach. The Blessed Mother constantly warns about just such materialism. He has a fantastic excess of wealth (if everything he says is his is his); I’m not sure where it has been shared; perhaps we’ll find out. Hopefully, we will be pleasantly surprised. No question, he is divisive. We see this at his rallies. And debates. Says the Virgin of Medjugorje in her last message, “Satan is strong and wants to put disorder and unrest in your hearts and thoughts.”\u00a0He can be warlike. He has hurt many people with very and sometimes shocking uncharitable remarks. He himself has described his past as “greedy.” There are tax returns. It’s hard to emphasize how many times, at various apparitions — Medjugorje, Kibeho, San Nicolas: just about all of them — Mary sways us from the type of worldliness Mr. Trump embodies.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n


\nI recall a near-death episode in which a fellow<\/strong>\u00a0named Don Brubaker found himself plunging in a dark tunnel in the presence of Satan, who told him he could avoid all pain and anguish and have anything he liked if he would just follow him. “Visions of wealth appeared before my eyes,” said Don, “like a three-dimensional movie. Diamonds, money, cars, gold, beautiful women, everything. I was overwhelmed by the vision. I could almost touch it, it seemed so real.”\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

At Medjugorje, the devil appeared as an extremely handsome man and offered the seer “happiness in life and love” if she would follow him (instead of the Blessed Mother).<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

A good side? Perhaps a great one, for all we know. How can we know the bottom of his heart? Trump certainly connects with the average person. And he certainly has more of an affinity for Christians than many do, certainly more than many current prominent Democrats (although if it were Bernie Sanders, or Joe Biden, as nominee, an argument could be marshaled that both of those men are closer to Pope Francis than is Donald Trump, except for the issue — and a crucial one it is; a defining one it is — of abortion).<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One goes back and forth with perceptions. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

On the other side, to be objective (and some still aspire to that trait), Mrs. Clinton has many of the same characteristics as Mr. Trump; added to that are the truly disturbing and alarming problems that surfaced with her husband, and the fact that she is possibly the strongest supporter of abortion ever to run for this office (though President Obama, as a proponent, while in the state legislature, of partial-birth abortion, is difficult to exceed), and a dilemma there is. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It’s impossible to get past abortion.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But I’m not going to judge her either. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I am going to relate — and it is the crux of this report — a personal experience with her that I still find perplexing.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

To be candid, I’m surprised the Democratic former First-Lady-Senator-Secretary-of-State ever made it this far — within striking range of the highest office — and for that matter that her husband got near the White House. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Let me explain.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I won’t judge them as people.<\/em> I don’t know what God does. I don’t know the truth of many allegations. I don’t know what’s in their hearts. And I don’t know the burdens and baggage they were born with. Both work exceptionally hard and have obvious talents. Hillary Clinton, for all the denunciations, was a proficient secretary of state. The e-mail server issue tarnishes her job. But she proved to be more than up to it. Her competence is not in question.\u00a0One can get into the “enabling” of her husband when it came to other women, and the way she supposedly sought to quiet them (if reports are to be believed). One can also delve into the disquieting notion that Mr. Clinton, for all his talents, might return to Washington. He paid $850,000 as a settlement to a woman who accused him of sexual assault and recently it was learned that he has taken at least twenty-six trips abroad on a private luxury jet owned by a billionaire who has done prison time for sex with and trafficking underage women. It’s hard to even write this.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But there are other things.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I “met” former Secretary Clinton<\/span> on the phone in 1986. At the time, I was working on a book called The Toxic Cloud<\/em> about harmful contaminants that are being inserted into the air we breathe. I’m not speaking about global warming and the “greenhouse effect” (carbon emissions). I’m speaking of the dioxins, pesticides, and solvents — chlorinated compounds — that you can’t see or taste — and aren’t even tested for in most cases. You find them in many places with pockets of high cancer (see Louisiana, Texas, and New Jersey).<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"FormalIn one Texas location,<\/em> cows had died mysteriously and scientists testing the environment told me they’d found compounds so complex\u00a0they had never seen them before<\/em>. They didn’t know what they were — our regulators!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This is in a region of tremendous petrochemical production as well as massive refineries (so large they create their own little local weather patterns, called the “heat-island” effect).<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Not to far north of Texas is another major transgressor: the state of Arkansas.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Enter the Clintons.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

While researching my book as a secular journalist, I conducted a little investigation into a company located in El Dorado. There, an incinerator was taking in PCBs and burning them. It wanted to increase its rate of incineration to 5,210 pounds an hour.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Just know this: when you burn PCBs, you can not only get dioxin coming out the stack, but a nearly equally toxic compound called furans.\u00a0Now bear with me one more moment.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The people, some of whom lived within a couple thousand feet of the incinerator, were in an uproar. It was so hot and heavy that Vice President George Bush, swinging through the state on a fund-raiser, was drawn into the fray. The prominent and poor alike were protesting — filling auditoriums, marching in the streets. The incinerator was owned by a company called ENSCO (for Environmental Systems Company).<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

These are wastes that the government doesn’t even like to burn far out at sea!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A local attorney who opposed it, John H. Vestal, noted that the incinerator was said to burn more PCBs than any other in the country.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

At public hearings, several doctors fretted about what they perceived (I can’t prove of any of this) as elevated levels of cancer, respiratory problems, and nasal deformities. Even the mayor and a local judge spoke in opposition to it.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There was a school nearby.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But the company had the state on its side — the state of Arkansas<\/em> — and so skeptical were citizens that they were willing to pool their own money to study the risk (rather than let the state conduct it).<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Some of their cynicism probably came from the fact that the governor’s wife<\/em> — a woman I’d never heard of before, Hillary Rodham Clinton — worked for a law firm that represented ENSCO; I was told that the very desk in Governor Bill Clinton’s office (I had never heard of him either) had been loaned by a firm owned by the wife of the incinerator company’s chief executive!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Kids were at risk. <\/em>And yet political levers were being pulled, it seemed.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When I asked Vestal, the lawyer, how I could document his assertion that Clinton’s antique desk — the desk he used as governor! — was on loan from the company (or an affiliate), he said, “Why don’t you just call the governor?”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I thought he was joking. “How am I supposed to do that?”\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

“I have his private number,”<\/span> Vestal replied — and gave it to me: t<\/strong><\/span>he number for the private quarters at the Arkansas gubernatorial mansion.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It was a Friday, if I remember correctly. I called. The phone rang just a couple times and a woman answered. I assumed it was a secretary or the maid: an assistant. I asked for the governor. I can remember the episode like it was last year.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>“Who’s this?” she asked very bluntly.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

“Well,” I answered, “who’s\u00a0this<\/em>?”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

“My name is Hillary Clinton,” she said, in a less than cordial tone. “His wife. He’s not home.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

“Well that’s okay,” I said. “I have some questions for you too.” Like I said, her firm represented ENSCO.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I asked Hillary if it were true that the owner of ENSCO, Melvyn Bell, was a friend. She proceeded to<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0describe him to me as “a friend, sure — he just gave $8 million to our engineering school at the university on Saturday, but he’s somebody who’s a friend — that’s right. Wouldn’t he be your friend?”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It’s hard to convey the tone,<\/span>\u00a0which dripped with disdain, but in short it was a nasty, unpleasant exchange. She won. She caught me off guard with her attitude. When we hung up, I held the receiver and stared at it, smiling in a bit of astonishment. \u00a0I also remember, clear as a bell, saying to myself, “That’s the most arrogant person I’ve ever spoken with.” Excuse me for that. But I was taken aback.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

(Now, let me add here that being the haughtiest person was a fairly tough thing to do in the world I was in: at the time I lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But that’s not the whole story. Never mind that those residents and kids may have been at risk from the incinerator. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What I remember most<\/span> was the incredible feeling that came upon me — and my entire apartment — after hanging up.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I was new to the Holy Spirit (at least in an active sense; my conversion was underway and had started just a couple years before), \u00a0but I immediately felt an enormous oppression, as if the air in my apartment was preternaturally fuliginous: a descent of darkness. I could feel it. It wasn’t just brushed off. It was like a curse. Despite my “newness” to Christian charisms, I immediately felt it was the “spirit of witchcraft.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And as I sit here now, thirty years later, I still don’t know the origin of that oppression.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

My concerns are not on politics but on the “spirituality” — and especially any occultism — that may move into the Oval Office (unless this was just some passing phase).<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I seriously doubt that Mrs. Clinton took the time to “curse” me, or even would know how to level one. Was it just something that automatically came from her or her environment? This I can say: it permeated my apartment for a good two hours. I sat down and prayed it away from me.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>And I was astonished, soon after, to see the Democratic Party had chosen her husband to give the keynote at their convention — a speech that was the ignition for his national recognition. How could they allow someone who had ignored reports even of cancer among kids in El Dorado to speak for the party? I wondered.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Again, excuse my bluntness. I don’t doubt there is good in everyone. I don’t doubt there is goodness in them. We are told to see Christ in everyone; when we look, we can usually find Him. Sometimes it is harder than at other times.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Excuse me for this: I’m just being candid.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

You can imagine how it was<\/span> to later see them ascend to far greater heights — and now, she is a top contender for the Presidency.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

My question decades later remains: Why did I have the reaction I did? Where did the darkness originate?<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t know. Maybe it was my imagination. If so, I had never imagined something like that before and haven’t since, at least that I’m aware of. It was an\u00a0oppression<\/em>. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Has Hillary dabbled with the occult? <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t know that either.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I do know that when<\/span> she was First Lady, Hillary famously invited some New Agers to Camp David and the White House and that one was Marianne Williamson — the deeply occult author who promotes a “course in miracles.” (Father Benedict Groeschel, who knew Williamson’s mentor and ministered to her on her deathbed, described that mentor’s death as the “blackest” thing he’d ever experienced; prayer need there.) Another guest (or\u00a0“adviser,” as it was worded) was\u00a0Jean Houston — co-director of the Foundation for Mind Research, which was described as a group that studies the psychic experience and altered and expanded consciousness, according to a news network.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Houston has been portrayed as “an influential adviser” who urged Mrs. Clinton to write her book, It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us<\/em>, and in the process “virtually moved into the White House” for days at a time to help with revisions, the Chicago Sun-Times<\/em> reported.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

At one point, according to reports,<\/span> Mrs. Clinton was advised by one of her guests on something that sounds like channeling (she framed it as more a psychological tool). According to legendary reporter Bob Woodward (the source for the Sun-Times<\/em> article), the First Lady “held imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi as a therapeutic release.” He further noted, in a book called\u00a0The Choice<\/em>, that\u00a0“The first lady declined a personal adviser’s suggestion that she address Jesus Christ, however, because it would be ‘too personal.'” It<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0reminds us a bit of the seances Abraham Lincoln’s wife held while he was in office.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Not a good thing.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Not something that brings good “luck.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There is a recent video floating around YouTube from a fellow who knew the Clintons back in Arkansas and claims (please underscore the verb “claims”) that Hillary used to fly to California to participate in a wicca-like organization (wicca is the religion of witchcraft).<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I certainly hope none of that is true, and have seen not a shred of concrete evidence for that — though, to be blunt, it would go a long way in explaining the feeling I had back in that Manhattan apartment. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

If she ever was<\/em> involved, \u00a0I wonder if it was just a phase — a lark, a psychological exercise, a short flirtation in search of spirituality — or something more.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary talks about being a practicing Methodist and quotes the Bible, which she says she often reads. I hope this is true. Many of us go off the right path in our youths. I certainly did. Many searching for spirituality initially find it (like love) in the wrong places.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But I fear that the spirit lives.<\/span> She is a candidate who backs abortion like no other ever has. Abortion, as far as I’m concerned, has a connection to witchcraft. It’s a blood ritual (unbeknownst even to most abortionists). Many who pray at clinics have felt the spirit. She supports Planned Parenthood like no other politician on the national stage. She has sung the prais<\/strong>es of its founder, Margaret Sanger,\u00a0<\/strong>a Rosicrucian and editor of a newspaper called Woman Rebel<\/i>, the motto of which was “No gods, No masters.” Quite the women’s libber, Sanger urged women to “look the whole world in the face with a go-to-hell” attitude. <\/b> Unknowingly controlled by what famed occultist Aleister Crowley called the “secret chiefs,” Sanger was trying, in essence, to involve an entire society in an occult ritual of Saturnalia.\u00a0<\/b><\/span>If Spiritualism was the demon of magic, this was the demon of lust. The sexual revolution was on its way (made possible by contraception) and its fruit, abortion, was tantamount to another ritual of witchcraft: as I said, blood sacrifice.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

For centuries witches have promoted just what Sanger was promoting: free extramarital sex and the sacrifice of innocents. <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Now this too is being done on a massive scale — by Planned Parenthood (America’s largest abortion-provider, and apparently also a supplier of baby parts, bringing us full circle back to Nazism).<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

In 2009, Clinton proudly<\/span> accepted Planned Parenthood\u2019s \u201chighest honor,\u201d the coveted Sanger Award<\/a>, saying\u00a0that she was \u201cin awe of\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Sanger. Does that disturb one? Of course it does.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The occult spirit engendered by Spiritualism and nurtured by the secret cults is now integrating itself in society’s mainstream under the disguise of liberated sex and feminism. <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Sanger was the Marx of sexuality. She described herself (in My Fight For Birth Control<\/i>) as part of a “secret society” of “agnostics and atheists” who were waiting for the “coming revolution.”<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe what I felt sprung from the future First Lady’s affinity for people like that.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe either would be a great president. Either might bring a new level of cohesion and leadership and competence. Who knows. I hope so. People change. One can hope. At least with Trump, there is no sense of occultism. I will continue to try and report on them objectively (we have enough subjective emotion and vitriol elsewhere). Hate has no place. I pray and love and hope the best (spiritually, as far as eternity) for both. Perhaps they will be there above when the time comes and end up lending me a hand when we seek to climb out of purgatory.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

For now, I sense a turning point for these United States, and whatever the decision, real danger.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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A Disturbing Encounter With Hillary Clinton By Michael H. Brown Perhaps not in our lifetimes has there been an election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}