With Virginia's gubernatorial election only a week away and the polls between the leading candidates narrowing, desperate Democrats have opted to go low, throwing all they have at Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, hoping something sticks.

The object of focus is the novel Beloved, authored by the late Toni Morrison in 1987.  It is a story of a family of former slaves that features explicit descriptions of bestiality, sex, violence, and infanticide.

A recent Youngkin advertisement featured a mother who in 2013 waged a legal battle against Beloved being included in the curriculum for her young son after he claimed that the novel gave him nightmares.

In the advert, the woman narrates how she took her concerns to the Republican-led General Assembly of Virginia.  Then, in 2016, the Assembly passed the bipartisan bill called the "Beloved bill" that gave parents the right to let their children opt out of sexually explicit readings.  The bill was supported by Republicans and 18 Democratic lawmakers.  But then-governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed the bill on two separate occasions.

Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin raised concerns about the book's use in high schools. 

It may seem like stating the obvious, but parents should have the right to decide what is right for their kids, irrespective of the artistic merit or historical context of a book.  Studies have shown that violent or sexually explicit material has a detrimental effect on the mental health of young children.

However, desperate Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe branded these concerns as a "racist dog whistle."  Coming from a man from the party of Ralph Northam, it's kind of rich.

There are others who are making false claims that Youngkin and the concerned mother want to impose a ban on the book when they merely wanted it removed from the syllabus.

When a Democrat is part of any election, it isn't a matter of if, but when the race card is played.

Once upon a time, a time that most humans probably cannot remember, to brand anybody a bigot was a serious matter.  To ascribe bigotry, there needed to be ironclad evidence of a consistent record of pejorative attitudes and discrimination against individuals or group owning their race, nationality, religion, ethnicity, etc. 

For instance, since its founding in 1829, the Democratic Party fought against every major civil rights initiative and has a long history of discrimination.  The Democratic Party defended slavery that caused the Civil War.  Democrats opposed Reconstruction, founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynching, and fought the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s.

That is beyond any doubt the description of an organization that was systemically racist.

To take a comparable parallel, in South Africa, the National Party that was voted to power in 1948 immediately enforced policies of racial segregation.  Race laws were enforced that denied basic human rights, resources, and wealth to South Africans.  Interracial marriages were illegal, blacks could not vote, and they had to carry identity cards at all times.  This was known as the Apartheid era in South Africa and was undeniably and systemically racist.

What do we have today?

There are left-wing organizations such as BLM whose existence is based on a claimed prevalence of racism in modern society.  They have appointed themselves the moral authorities matters of race.  They certify who is racist and who is not.  Whenever there is a high-profile occurrence that highlights racial discrimination, it often results in a spike in their donations.  Consequently, they are always on the lookout for occurrences through the prism of race, hoping that one of the incidents will cause massive outrage that will result in more donations. 

They often make exaggerated claims that race relations are at their worst now, conveniently ignoring the eras of slavery and segregation.  The frenzy they create prevents any rational discussion.  Quite often, people donate and support handsomely to be regarded as "one of the good ones." 

When they cannot find acts of racism, they invent "dog whistles."

Dog whistles are defined as a subtly aimed political message intended for and understandable only by a particular demographic group.  This has often been used as a tool by real bigots because they cannot euphemistically express their bigotry in the open.

However, the left has hijacked the term to brand even the most innocuous of acts and their opponents as racists.

If you are critical of President Obama's policies, you're doing it because you don't approve of a "person of color" in the White House.

If you thought Meghan Markle's exit from the British royal family while retaining all her royal privileges was hypocritical, again, you are a racist.

Concepts from the 1980s and 1990s like "law and order" and "inner city" — phrases well used by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — have been called racist dog whistles.

It has reached a point that anybody who stands up to the Democrats is branded a racist and even a White supremacist.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, the self-proclaimed civil rights leader, told Politico that Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have said they oppose scrapping the filibuster, are "in effect supporting racism." 

When a nonwhite man, Larry Elder, challenges Democrat governor Gavin Newsom in an electoral race, he is called the Black face of white supremacy.

When someone is accused of bigotry, the instinct is to be shocked by the allegation.  Quite often, the individual takes two steps back.

Most people do not have the time or the financial means in the form of legal fees to fight these scurrilous allegations.  They also do not want to be ostracized by society or be rendered unemployed.  Hence, they choose to retire into silence hoping to keep the mob away.

To silence opponents and compel them into submission has always been the objective of the left by fabricating allegations of racism.

However, if they really were against racism, they would respect every nonwhite individual for his choices.  Larry Elder would have been confronted on principle, not for the color of his skin.

This is another form of bigotry, where they support only those minority groups who endorse their worldview.  If individuals from that group develop a mind of their own and oppose them, they are castigated and even physically attacked as Larry Elder was.

The result of these overstatements and fabrications is that the water has been muddied.  For instance, since the neo-Nazis, the KKK, and Larry Elder are all termed as equally racist, the neo-Nazis and the KKK, who really have a record of racism, get a pass.  News consumers think if they can accuse a nonwhite man of being a white supremacist, perhaps they are fabricating charges against others as well.

The seriousness of the charge has been diminished owing to frivolous over-usage.  Hence, confronting and eventually eradicating real bigotry is almost impossible.

The left, perhaps unwittingly, enables, empowers, and protects racists, because if everyone is racist, nobody is.

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.

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