The Sleeping Giant Awakens

The Sleeping Giant Awakens

I tried my best to explain all of this to Gail; I pleaded with her to reconsider her automatic pilot vote for Obama. I pulled out all of the stops: I explained in painstaking detail what life was like in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco under the radicals. I told her about walking a gauntlet of paranoid, drug-addled derelicts on Telegraph Avenue, about the frequent attacks on tourists in San Francisco. I reminded her of my own mugging, and informed her that everyone out here has a similar story -- or knows someone who does.

And, I told her, the worst part of it is that no one seems to care -- that citizens have become so programmed in the dogma of white privilege that they offer themselves and their children up as sacrificial lambs. Like the hostages of Stockholm, Berkeley-ites defend their abusers, protecting them rather than guarding themselves.

And finally I explained that Obama was cut from the same radical cloth -- that he surrounds himself with the type of militants who hold Berkeley captive. And, I warned her, should Obama be elected, the antisocial behavior that is tolerated in Berkeley will become the new normal all across the country.

Gail listened politely, though ultimately she voted for Obama. While she listened, she didn't really understand. Of course, she didn't -- how would she?

This wasn't her world. When you live in a safe, sheltered reality, you have no idea what it's like for people in Berkeley or Oakland or Detroit. You can't grasp what it's like to hear story after story of horrendous crime; of what it's like to attend a meeting at work one day and hear gunfire outside, as I did; or how it feels to walk to a restaurant on a cloudless blue-sky day and find yourself lying prostrate minutes later, with nose broken and two black eyes.

....

Gail told me this week that her only child, Justin, was playing basketball in the well-manicured park down the street with his college-aged friends and his girlfriend. Suddenly they were surrounded by a group of black guys from somewhere else who began taunting them, invoking racist language.

Her son and his friends yelled at them to go away, but one young male lunged at Justin, punching him in the face. Justin fell and was knocked unconscious. The hoodlums then ran away; luckily, one of the kids got their license plate. I hope and pray that small-town USA takes unprovoked street violence more seriously than places like Berkeley.

Justin became conscious again after a few minutes, but he sustained a deep gash that required several stitches. Any head injury is potentially serious. But perhaps even more worrisome than his physical wounds are the emotional ones sustained by Justin and his friends.

These are good kids, well-raised, polite, and tolerant. They have held no malice towards anyone based on the color of skin.

But will racial hate now be planted in their hearts? Will it corrupt their trusting souls? Of course, everything that is happening right now, whether in New Jersey or Wisconsin, is purposeful.

The radicals want to promote anarchy. But it's more than this: they want the hate that blackens their souls to warp others as well.

My dear friend, Gail, was in tears, shell-shocked, incredulous. She kept repeating over and over again, "How could this happen? How could this happen?" She struggled to find the words for such barbarism; she had not a clue of how it could invade her insular world.

I spoke to Gail tenderly, as though I were calming down a frightened child stirring from a deep sleep.

"I'm so sorry, sweetie. This is horrible. Justin didn't deserve to be treated this way, and his friends didn't need to see such brutality.

"But, Gail, it's not just happening in your small town, but it's happening all over the country, and it's getting worse every day. There have been random mob violence against white people in Iowa, Chicago, Atlanta, in Wisconsin, where dozens of white people were beaten up, even pulled out of their own cars."

"But why?" Gail asked me plaintively. "Why is this happening now?"

"It's Obama," I explained. "It's what I told you a few years ago. This is what happens when you put someone in power like Obama. Something spreads, like a virus. It's subtle; it's almost invisible. But it poisons one person, and then another and another, until soon the whole country is corrupted.

"It's a sickness called hatred, Gail. Most black people are good, law-abiding, moral people. Obama comes from a far-left fringe group of militants who hate America and want to drag us down. Those same people have degraded and exploited poor black kids for years. These radicals use them as their foot soldiers. Obama would never get his own hands dirty.

"I know these militants, Gail; I live among them. They hate America; they want to devolve us back into some primitive brute state. This is why things are getting worse and worse in this country: the economy, the Middle East, and hate crimes against whites."

After I finished, Gail was quiet for several seconds. Then she said, sounding heartbroken, "But he made so many promises. He seemed so nice."

"Yes, that's true, sweetie," I answered. "But people aren't always as they seem."

Three years ago, I sounded the clarion call to my friend Gail to wake up and discern the person behind Obama's carefully crafted mask. I tried to make her see what would happen to this country if the radical left seized power.

Back then, she didn't understand what I was saying; she simply couldn't.

She is starting to understand now.