The majority of Americans still have no idea that they are living in the midst of a low-boil civil war.

They sit back on comfy couches, watching on TV or computer screens little snippets of the “new normal.” They see chaos enveloping large cities – Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Baltimore, Chicago, New York and D.C. – but don’t believe it will come to their small city or suburb.

They believe Dr. Anthony Fauci and certain health experts who tell them it’s best to stay inside, even as they watch increasingly shocking events play out on their illuminated screens.

For lack of a better term, let’s call these people “the believers.”

They take whatever is said by their favorite media personalities, their politician of choice, at face value and have lost all ability to engage critical thinking skills, if they ever had any to begin with.

They will only realize that they are being herded like sheep into a new type of society, where authorities talk down to citizens and bark orders at them like a parent would scold a child, after the low boil gets turned up to a roaring flame.

The heat has in fact already been turned up from “low” to “medium,” as attacks on random cops and Trump supporters have resulted in death and severe injury to dozens in the above mentioned cities.

The cancel culture is escalating. It’s no longer just people’s freedom of speech being curtailed but their very thoughts. To sit in silence as the revolution proceeds is no longer acceptable. You must actively and enthusiastically voice your support for its twisted values.

“White silence is violence!” shout the protesters, described in the media as “mostly peaceful.”

“Own your white privilege” and “learn to control your implicit bias,” the HR departments of big corporations instruct their human capital [formerly called employees].

It’s been going on for years, at public schools, universities and corporate workplaces.

But now the thought police are venturing outside of these spaces to engage with the general public. You never know when you might encounter one of their jack-booted thugs.

A peaceful night out on the town turns violent
It happened in Roanoke, Virginia, last Friday, August 28, in an incident that did not get reported in any media until now.

Joe Mantle [not his real name], was sitting with his girlfriend in an outdoor dining area along the downtown square in Roanoke about 6:30 p.m. They were among about 100 diners enjoying a summer evening of rare socialization during the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam.

Roanoke has a black mayor and a black police chief, but that hasn’t stopped large crowds of BLM protesters from holding rallies through downtown, demanding an end to what they believe is the nationwide targeted killings of black men by systemically racist police departments.

A disturbance and a quick decision
Suddenly, while dining near the 202 Restaurant in the city market area, Joe heard loud voices along the street leading to the outdoor café. A group of at least half a dozen men, dressed all in black with black facemasks, entered the outdoor dining area. As they moved toward the center they started talking to diners in an aggressive manner. [Editor’s note: This paragraph originally stated that Joe heard the intruders asking diners if they support BLM. It has been corrected to clarify that he only saw them talking aggressively to diners but couldn’t hear the content of the conversations].

Now, Roanoke is no tiny town. Its population is 100,000 and it is home to several small colleges, but nor is it anywhere near the size of Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis or Washington, D.C.

The intruders, who appeared to be in their early to mid-20s, identified themselves as BLM.

When Joe saw what was going on, he got up and approached his waitress.

“We’re not here to support BLM, we didn’t come here for that, we’re not going to have a conversation about this, and that made them [the agitators] very angry,” he said. “We had already ordered our food. I told the waitress, ‘I’ll pay you for the dinner but we’re not going to stay under these circumstances. You either control the environment or we leave.'”

BLM rally in Roanoke, Va., on May 30 included signs that said ‘Black Lives Matter over property. Black Lives Matter over capitalism.’ Photo/Roanoke Times
Not seeing any police or any action on the part of restaurant staff to remove the agitators, Joe and his girlfriend got up to leave.

“I just told her we’re going to walk back to my place, three or four blocks away, so we walked down a side street toward my apartment.”

That’s when things got, as Joe described it, “pretty crazy.”

After they’d proceeded about a block and a half from downtown, Joe noticed four of the black-clad agitators, three white men and one African-American, heading toward the couple and yelling, “No justice no peace!”

“I didn’t really know what to do. They saw us and we saw them,” Joe said. “They started walking faster toward us. I just told her to run in the opposite direction and try to get back to the downtown area where all the people were at. I can’t run because I have a foot issue. She was frantic and upset. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen but I wasn’t going to let them run over the top of me. I’m just not that type of guy.”

‘Lay on the ground and beg for forgiveness’
Joe, an options trader and former radio talk-show host in his early 50s, tried to stay calm, believing perhaps he could draw on his gift of gab and talk his way out of a dangerous situation.

The conversation lasted about five minutes. The more they engaged, the angrier the BLM agitators became.

“It came down to this,” Joe said. “They said ‘you either raise your fist in solidarity or you get on the ground and lay before us and beg for forgiveness.’ They were yelling at the top of their voices at me.”

As the conversation started to run in circles and Joe could see it wasn’t going anywhere, he issued the following ultimatum.

“I will not be lying down before you and I will not be raising my fist, so I would suggest that you calmly walk away from me right now,” he said.

The four men started laughing.

“One of them leaned toward me and tried to hit me with his right arm. I just ducked out of the way and he missed me, and then I hit him in the throat as hard as I could. He landed on the ground,” Joe said.

“The other guy proceeded to attack me, so I hit him hard. They could not breathe. One was crying and the other was screaming in a lot of pain.”

The third BLM thug flew into a rage. “I’m going to kill you right now!” he yelled.

 “I just put my hand to my side, didn’t say anything, and he took a bold swing with a stick, which looked like a broom handle. I caught it in my hand, and I caught him off guard and he went face first into the sidewalk.”

“I think he broke his nose,” Joe said. “There was blood everywhere.”

BLM protest May 1 through downtown Roanoke, Va. Photo/Roanoke Times
When he looked up the fourth BLM agitator was gone and the other three were getting up and walking away.

By the time a police officer arrived, all four were gone.

“My girlfriend saw it all from a distance, it was only our fifth date, and she was like, ‘I’ve never been on a date like this in my life.’ I said, ‘neither have I.'”

Joe stands 5-foot-11 and weighs about 198 pounds. He said at least two of the attackers appeared bigger.

“I never imagined something like this happening in Roanoke. I’ve seen it happening elsewhere since they started calling for defunding the police,” he said.

But looking back the signs were there.

He said BLM had held daily protest rallies for weeks out in front of the city police station.

The mayor of Roanoke, Sherman Lea, allowed BLM to paint its anti-police graffiti on a portion of the highway leading up to the center square.

“He’s a Democrat mayor so he let them put that out there. On a personal level I’ve asked to speak to the mayor about financial issues related to the budget and he refused to have a conversation or meet with me. But, ironically, the lady from BLM said she had met with the mayor three or four times. I told her, ‘imagine that, I’m trying to look out for the financial fortunes of the city and you are with what I consider a terrorist organization and you get to meet with the mayor but I don’t.”

Joe said he will not be going out to eat downtown anymore.

“We were having a great time up to the point they started harassing people. We’ve never seen anything like this before in our city,” he said. “There will be no more freedom in the world if we fail to stop this in America.”

“If you stand up to them they’re less likely to cause problems, and that’s what we need to do as a town, as a county, as a nation,” he added. “And sheriffs need to deputize people right now to be ready to defend their towns.“

These in-your-face public demands to submit to BLM are not just happening in Washington, D.C., and now Roanoke.

Check out the video below of the chaos caused by BLM supporters after they burst into a crowded restaurant in Rochester, N.Y., Friday.

Remember, the believers will need to see the violence right in their own city or county before they will acknowledge there is a problem. They don’t realize that they won’t be able to sit this one out. They won’t be able to watch on the sidelines and stay above the fray.

The believers have been conditioned to believe technocrats like Dr. Fauci, the politicized scientist who picks and chooses the science of the day based on how he wishes to manipulate the herd. They appear to represent the majority right now in America, living in an alternate reality of their own convenience. They are the ones who wouldn’t hesitate to call the police or the health inspector on a restaurant owner who wasn’t requiring masks or the grocer who isn’t making customers obey all the rules laid out by the government.

But others aren’t so gullible. They have discernment to read the signs of the times and are already preparing for the day when the lever, currently set on medium boil, gets turned up to high. Whether it comes next week or next month or next year, they know it is coming.

Leo Hohmann is an independent freelance journalist and author of the 2017 book “Stealth Invasion.” If you appreciate these articles, please consider a donation of any size to support our continued work on the front lines of the culture wars.