 Everybody keeps saying, well, not everybody, but a lot of people is like, why does everybody hate America? Or why did they bomb them? Or why are they hitting us? Or whatever. And I thought that Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man had some commentary on it. So I'm going to read two short sections from the prologue, which is before the actual book of this man's odyssey from childhood through college to New York to working for the victory paint company where you put one drop of black and the white paint to make it really white to becoming a communist and other things. So this is before all of that. Well, this is at the book starts at the end. This is who he became, the Invisible Man. One night, I accidentally bumped into a man. And perhaps because of the near darkness, he saw me and called me an insulting name. I sprang at him, seized his coat lapels, and demanded that he apologize. He was a tall blonde man. And as my face came close to his, he looked insolently out of his blue eyes and cursed me, his breath hot in my face as he struggled. I pulled his chin down sharp upon the crown of my head, butting him as I had seen the West Indians do. I felt his flesh tear in the blood gush out and I yelled, Apologize! Apologize! But he continued to curse and struggle and I butted him again and again until he went down heavily on his knees profusely bleeding. I kicked him repeatedly in a frenzy because he still uttered insults though his lips were frothy with blood. Oh, yes, I kicked him. And in my outrage, I got out my knife and prepared to slit his throat. I stayed there beneath the lamp light in the deserted street, holding him in the collar with one hand and opening the knife with my teeth when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me. Actually that he, as far as he knew, was in the middle of a walking nightmare. And I stopped the blade, slicing the air as I pushed him away, letting him fall back to the street. I stared at him as hard as the lights of a car stabbed through the darkness. He lay there moaning on the asphalt, a man almost killed by a phantom. It unnerved me. I was both disgusted and ashamed. I was like a drunken man myself, wavering about on weakened legs. Then I was amused. Something in this man's thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life. I began to laugh at this crazy discovery. Would he have awakened at the point of death? Would death himself have freed him for wakeful living? But I didn't linger. I ran away into the dark, laughing so hard I feared I might rupture myself. The next day I saw his picture in the Daily News beneath the caption stating that he had been mugged, poor fool, poor blind fool I thought with sincere compassion, mugged by an invisible man. Most of the time, although I do not choose as I once did to deny the violence of my days by ignoring it, I'm not so overtly violent. I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them. There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers. I learned in time, though, that it is possible to carry on a fight against them without their realizing it. So he lives in this basement with power and light that he has stolen from the monopolized light and power company. So he steals the energy and he goes on to explain this. This is all before chapter one. I can hear you say, what a horrible, irresponsible bastard. And you're right. I leap to agree with you. I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility. Any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible? And why should I be when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition and recognition is a form of agreement. Take the man who I almost killed who was responsible for that near murder. I? I don't think so. And I refuse it. I won't buy it. You can't give it to me. He bumped me. He insulted me. Shouldn't he for his own personal safety have recognized my hysteria, my danger potential? He let us say was lost in a dream world. But didn't he control the dream world, which alas is only too real? And didn't he rule me out of it? And if he had yelled for a policeman, wouldn't I have been taken as the offending one? Yes, yes, yes. Let me agree with you. I was the irresponsible one for I should have used my knife to protect the higher interest of society. Someday that kind of foolishness will cause us all tragic trouble. All dreamers and sleepwalkers must pay the price and even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all. But I shirked responsibility. I became too snarled in the incompatible notions that buzzed within my brain. I was a coward. What did I do to be so black and blue? Bear with me. Thank you.