I met Herman the first time in Las Vegas, as the guest of Andy Miller at the American Majority gathering. I was writing at RedState at the time, and coming from the private sector had been looking for a leader not only “not from the political establishment” but specifically from the “private sector”. Herman had not announced at the time, and I interviewed him on New Years Eve, 2010, and published Part I of that interview, “On the Intangibles and Continuity of Leadership”, which became one of my last at RedState as they had decided to go with another candidate and asked me leave.
My greatest sadness in the passing of Herman Cain is that he was unable to witness firsthand the successful completion of a crusade he began in 2010-2011. His leaving us now is like God deciding to leave Moses on Mt Nebo, not allowing any of the original Hebrews from Egypt to enter the Promised Land.
Herman would understand, even if you don’t, but still it’s a great sadness because he did blaze this trail four years before anyone ever took Donald Trump seriously. But more than that, he left markers for Trump to know what would lay in store for him inside the Republican establishment. When Herman became the early front-runner, and then suddenly major news broke about his skirt-chasing while an executive, causing Herman to step down, it was believed it was dirty tricks by the Democrats. Only no, it was Mitt Romney’s campaign, although no one thought to inquire at the time that there might have been any collaboration between the Romney and Obama camps. But clearly, Herman represented a threat to both, as history has proved.
And Donald Trump profited, for he was able to avoid a lot of landmines laid by a secret cabal between the parties no one knew existed, all because Herman had tripped several of those wires a few years earlier.
My good friend JadedbyPolitics has penned a better tribute to Herman Cain than I ever could anyway at UnifiedPatriots.com so I wanted to finish on a note about this disgraceful notion put forward by all the mainstream media, in unison, (this New York Times piece just one of many, all similarly aimed, just Google “Herman Cain, mask” to get a sense of the width of their writing talent) that the most important lesson Herman Cain could have left (black America) is the danger of not wearing a mask, which, they inferred, killed him.
Bolshevik?
No, really.
Herman’s not wearing a mask carried with it the understated notion that black men are inclined to be cavalier with health risks, just as there was also a subtle understated, and also racist, notion that successful powerful black businessmen also have an eye for the ladies (not their wives), which sadly made the Romney campaign slur more believable, because it was stereotypical. But the most damnable thing is it was not true, for Herman Cain was always a Christian husband, but moreover, also a decent and caring boss for people who worked under him who would gladly help an employee financially without expecting an between-the-sheets payback. (I know that’s a “southern thing” northern urbanites wouldn’t understand or believe, but I was very close to a captain of industry much bigger then Herman’s company, so know this to be true.)
I admit I’m not sure that God intended to take Herman Cain on the same day they would lay to rest one of his pretenders, John Lewis, to bring forth all the “Wormintongues” of his generation to celebrate a life “remember-ed with great advantages”, but I can think of no more marked contrast to the life of Herman Cain, knowing his no-mask choice, viz his medical precondition, but also knowing of a loving God who awaited him, chose to risk leaving this life, but as a free man, with all the choices afforded to every free American, rather than be just another “Yowza boss” lawn jockey for a white Democrat establishment that has methodically killed millions of black babies, and facilitated the murder of hundreds of thousands more grown Americans, black and white, by poor black teenagers…with no hope, no how.
God rest you, Herman.
