One Loon for Tea

Is this state rep the craziest right-wingnut in Washington?

State Rep. Matt Shea is very busy down in Olympia. That’s probably why he’s been unable to discuss with us why he thinks Obama is Hitler, if not merely Stalin, or explain his belief in the planned takeover of America by a secret Obama army, despite the many messages we’ve left for him.

The first-term Spokane Valley Republican and attorney has introduced a state sovereignty bill to keep the feds at bay, partly in the belief that there is a conspiracy by the White House to impose martial law. In his red-state world of black helicopters, Shea also says the movement to control climate change is the administration’s plan to take control of Americans, and that FEMA is using the Hitlerian tactic of recruiting church pastors to pacify dissenters.

He was responding to queries last week from radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who spoke of purported plans by the National Security Council to “take over every federal agency outside of Congress.” Jones mentioned that federal law says all governors “will serve at the pleasure of the President during emergencies,” and said that the feds are “deploying 20,000 combat troops, they say for riot control and crowd control.”

In other words, the President, whose one gun measure so far has been to expand firearm use to national parks (see story below), is coming for us.

Unlike Seattleites, the “patriots,” as Shea calls his Spokane-area supporters, are particularly worried about such conspiracies, he said. They are “voting with their pocketbooks and their feet and going to the sports stores and taking ammunition in boxes as they can. And I think that underscores a concern of a lot of the general public on some of these very socialistic programs that are coming down.

“And I would actually start to use the word ‘communism,’ because [that] really is what it is. Trying to take over nationalized banks, trying to nationalize different areas of industry, trying to implement this draconian climate-change legislation, which is starting to happen here in Washington state. It really isn’t about the environment. It’s not about anything more than control.”

Communism, he said, wasn’t the only ism we have to fear. Consider also White House fascism and FEMA concentration-camp-ism.

Though even Glenn Beck has debunked such a notion, Shea gives the prison-camp rumors credence: “And most particularly disturbing about [the camps] is that they’re gonna be on former military bases.” Also, “there’s some very eerie similarities between using pastors to pacify people now as happened in Nazi Germany. And I’ve done some research on that. There was a paper done by the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, back at that time on how the Germans and the Nazi party, in particular, took the churches and turned them into a vehicle to help pacify people and bring them along with their agenda.

“And I think it’s very scary that that’s what’s being mentioned right now. As some people say, ‘There’s nothing new under the sun.'” People, Shea later told Jones’ listeners, “need to wake up…they need to let their legislators know that they’ve had enough. This is looking too much like the precursor to Nazi Germany and communist Russia.”

“Well, sir,” said Jones, “I’m glad you’re so informed.” He apparently meant it.