Obama.  Every day is Halloween as I hear Vincent Price echoing that name in my mind like a warning in a horror movie...sure to haunt me until my dying day.

As we near the election, a graduation speech comes to mind: "We've have had a long four years.  We've made new friends, and sadly lost some.  We've learned a lot about each other and ourselves.  We face a future that will be as bright as we ourselves will make it." (You can cast off your robes now.)

In what seems like an eternity ago, before Obama, I was passing people on the roadside holding "Bush lied, people died!" signs.  I knew people who held National Security Clearances that expressed, in hushed tones, that they wouldn't mind seeing Bush "gone." Wink wink.  My coworkers excitedly flipped pages in their "Days Until Bush Out of Office Countdown Calendars" as if they were doing their bit for world peace, and the lion would soon lie down with the lamb.

In the years after the terrorist attacks in 2001, conspiracy theories and websites flourished, blaming Bush and his evil cohort, Dick Cheney.  "Steel doesn't melt!" I knocked my head against the wall until it hurt.  What would happen during the next administration if people were already this far gone?

In 2007, I began to hear rumblings about a presidential nominee -- a rising star who had energized the Democratic National Convention in 2004.  In March 2007, I watched a man named Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Fox News' Hannity and Colmes.  For the first time, I heard about Black Liberation Theology, and became alarmed about Obama and his presidential bid.

I read about Obama placing phone calls from the campaign trail to Raila Odinga, soon-to-be Prime Minister of Kenya.  I heard of Sharia Law for the first time.  By January 2008, I sent a link to a critical article about Obama to a coworker.  My friend responded saying, "I don't intend to waste my time reading anything about Obama until he is the nominee (which I doubt he will be)."  If my coworker didn't want to read about him, his high school kids already had.  Dreams From My Father had been required reading in many curriculums, and Obama was already their hero.  In August of 2008, Obama was declared the Democratic nominee for President.  By September my coworkers were rubbing their eyes and wondering aloud who he was, while I was falling out of my chair in shock reading James Simpson's American Thinker article Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis.

A patriotic mood swept the country that was reminiscent of the jubilation marking our Bicentennial year.  America wanted to make history electing its first black president and feel good about itself.  Keg parties were being planned and nothing was going to stop them.

I read.  I watched.  I learned.  As evidence mounted that the country was going in a very scary direction with this new president, I started to share more and more of my concerns with my friends.  One friend, who leaned conservative, stopped all political talk and nearly all communication with me immediately after Obama was elected.  She whispered she'd rather not discuss politics, her husband was a Democrat.  Eventually I got full disclosure from her: "I will not try to debunk your conspiracy theories, because in a paranoid imagination people believe they are right...Talk about mindless!"  After I wrote an article about Obama in American Thinker, my friend wrote me one last message "Congats! You've managed to spread doom and gloom all over the internet! Be careful! The government is gonna get you!"  And so ended a friendship of nearly 20 years.

This was the beginning for me.  It was the beginning of Obama wedging himself into every aspect my life.  The beginning of Medicare changes for my elderly parents, who I had to move into my own home and care for while holding down a full time job.  The beginning of scraping together every last dime to pay the increasing costs of their medications.  Hours spent on the phone trying to cut through red tape, new rules and regulations that put a roadblock in front of every medication or test they needed -- a literal battle for survival.  The beginning of boarded up businesses that had served my community for ten, twenty and fifty years.  The beginning of high oil, gas and electricity bills combined with increasing healthcare premiums and high food costs.  It was the beginning of police cutbacks, TSA gropings, higher taxes and harder loans.  I watched as one by one, house after house, cars would remain in my neighbor's driveways instead of leaving for work in the morning.  Eventually my car ramined too.  Jobs were being cut or sent overseas.

I watched blacks and whites who were once friends become enemies.  I watched class warfare turn employees against employers.  Most disturbingly, I watched the mainstream media totally disintegrate into spin and blatant lies until there was no one left to trust except carefully vetted websites.

I wonder, will this long national nightmare be over in November?  Who believes that an election will stop Simon Bar Sinister's mission to destroy us and tear us apart?  Obama deserves credit for one thing however: Never have so many of us reread the Constitution and other Founding Documents with the clarity that only a national crisis can bestow.

Unwaveringly I cling to my faith in the American people, the Underdogs, who I believe will swoop in to save us this November from Dinesh D'Souza's scenario for 2016, and another four years of hell.  I can only hope that we "doom and gloom conspiracy theororists" will be on the historical record for sounding the alarm, and God willing, saving a Republic.

Susan D. Harris is a freelance conservative writer located in Central New York.