“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”

Isaiah 55: 6-7

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Something is Wrong in Charlottesville, VA

Yesterday on my morning walk, I called my good friend Ed Rose. We had spoken on the phone the night before, and I had forgotten to tell him something. I thought it was important, so I called Ed to tell him about it.

Ed and I joined the University of Virginia faculty in the fall of 1979. Ed is a pulmonologist. He joined the Medical School faculty. I specialized in strategy and leadership. I joined the McIntire School faculty. Ed’s wife, Karren, and my wife, Katie, became good friends, too. Ed and Karren have two children. So do Katie and I. Ed’s and Karren’s children are about the same age as our children. During our first year in Charlottesville, Ed and Karren and Katie and I attended the same church, Trinity Presbyterian. Over the years, our families became very close, and we have remained close.

At the end of spring semester 2004 after serving on the UVA faculty for 25 years, Katie and I retired and moved to Lake Hartwell in South Carolina. At that time, our daughters, Melanie and Rebekah, lived in Charlotte, NC and Atlanta, GA, respectively. Our home on Lake Hartwell was about equidistant from them. Ed retired from UVA at the end of spring semester 2021. He and Karren still live in the Charlottesville-Albemarle County area.

I did not plan to retire in 2004. Yahweh told me to retire and to move away from Virginia, so I did. There is a story behind that. You can read about it in this SnyderTalk editorial: Yahweh’s Precision Timing: He’s Never Late and He’s Never Early.

While Katie and I lived in the Charlottesville area, we had a second home on Smith Mountain Lake between Lynchburg, VA and Roanoke, VA. We introduced Ed and Karren to the lake, and they liked it. Several years ago, Ed and Karren bought a second home on Smith Mountain Lake. Katie and I still visit with them regularly in Charlottesville or on the lake. Since I retired, Ed has kept me informed about the goings-on at UVA, in the Charlottesville area, and in Virginia. A lot has changed in Virginia since I retired.

Yesterday morning when I talked with Ed, he said, “Have you seen the news?”

I said that I had not, so he said, “UVA is under orders from the president to lock down in place. There has been a shooting. It involves several football players.”

Ed’s and Karren’s oldest granddaughter is a first-year student at UVA. As you would expect, they were especially concerned about the shooting incident.

UVA is not the same place that I retired from in May 2004. Neither is the Charlottesville area. That became crystal clear to me in August 2017. Radical woke protesters on the left collided with radical right protesters when the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from Market Street Park in Charlottesville. I wrote about the brouhaha when it happened. See the SnyderTalk editorials below:

When that incident first happened, news reports about it made clear that the opposing groups of protesters were herded together by public officials. The groups were supposed to stay far enough apart to avoid violence, but someone who had the authority to change the plans decided to ignore that risk and bring them together. That virtually guaranteed a violent clash.

The clash in Charlottesville in August 2017 was orchestrated by people who wanted to create a narrative. In the end, they wanted to blame President Trump for it, and that’s exactly what they did with great success. To this day, people blame President Trump for the Charlottesville incident, even though he was totally innocent. Read “The ‘No Moral Equivalence’ Argument is a Radical Left Con Job”, and you will see for yourself.

Articles about that incident that appeared in several newspapers were deleted or they were changed significantly to suppress the information about public officials herding the opposing groups of protesters together. I have first-hand knowledge about it, because I had to revise several of my SnyderTalk editorials when the storyline was changed. It is obvious that the August 2017 Charlottesville incident was orchestrated to build an anti-Trump narrative.

That is not news reporting. It is spreading propaganda to create a false narrative. When I left Virginia in 2004, that would not have happened, but today, it is to be expected. People who rely on news reports coming out of Charlottesville need to take everything they read and see with a grain of salt, because they are reading and seeing a slant on the news that is intended to convey a politically correct or woke perspective. Again, that is not news reporting.

When the dust settles on yesterday’s shooting incidents in Charlottesville that left three UVA football players dead, I will not be surprised if the narrative has shifted completely to gun violence and gun control. I say that because those issues played an important part in the recent gubernatorial election in Virginia that saw a Republican governor elected.

It will not shock me if the media tries to convey the false impression that Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is ultimately responsible for the shooting incidents yesterday at UVA, because he is a Second Amendment rights advocate. The woke crowd in Virginia, many of whom live in the Charlottesville area, opposes Second Amendment rights, and it opposes Governor Youngkin. I have seen the narrative shift before in Virginia to support a woke cause. It could happen again.

Something is wrong in Charlottesville, VA, but guns and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Meriwether Lewis and William Clarke are not the problem. Dark, sinister forces are at work in Charlottesville, and they have been at work for a while. The woke crowd in Charlottesville wants to create a narrative that makes the things they want to highlight appear to be the problem. Guns could become their target this time.

Again, take all the news reports you read and see coming out of Charlottesville with a grain of salt. Maybe a few grains of salt. My experience suggests to me that they cannot be trusted.

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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”

John 10: 14-18