In my last post I wandered all over the place. Now I’m going further afield. Please enjoy a parable from my life:
Once upon a time, through chance alone, I wound up in a big deal tournament. It wasn’t the Podunk level where I belonged. I was paired against a guy half my age, twice my size, and (this is the important part) with skills that made mine a rounding error. I was among the cannon fodder high end guys wade through before they meet in later rounds.
I was terrified! I was also doomed.
I reasoned “it’s safe” but that didn’t help. A guy from the round before was sent to the hospital. There’s degrees of safe. One of those degrees bled all over the ring.
Could I do this? I didn’t know. I just sat there, watching them mop up blood. It wasn’t much but it took forever to clean it up! It was the longest wait in my life.
My name was called.
I stood up and entered the arena…
I’m still proud of that. I entered the arena.
Life has a thousand spectators for each one that’ll step up. Everyone thinks they can enter the arena. They dream about it. They imagine it. They tell themselves they could do it if they wanted.
They can’t. If they could, they’d be there.
With the ability, comes the desire. If you can, you want to.
You’re wondering how I did? I lost.
I was always going to lose. Real life ‘aint a movie plot. The power of “main character” doesn’t defeat a superior adversary. Everyone knew I was doomed the minute I started.
Regardless, the contest was a good one. I went at him with hammer and tongs. I tried to catch his timing and went for the kill. When his footing was off, I went full howler monkey on a kick that came ever so close to a full win. Some other moves were blocked, but it was always close. Then, I got through! Past his block and landed it. Yay me! Meanwhile, his attacks came at me like a nightmare. Experienced highly skilled people are a whole different dimension of speed and power. You have to see it to believe it. Even so, I blocked just enough to stay in. I did not dominate, but I was not dominated. Eventually he got through; but it was just barely. I was still in the competition! Then, after a few more exchanges, I blocked but a half second too late. The judge called it. I’d lost. At least he’d had to work to defeat me.
It was a good experience. The second they called my name, my jitters vanished. I didn’t have fear. I had joy. I did all my skills and body could do. It took him a while to put me down.
What more could a man want? I walked in of my own free will. I fought honorably. I walked back out.
It was one of the best days of my life.
Until I did that, I simply didn’t know if I could.
If you haven’t done it, you don’t know either.
Since then, I’ve noticed something. I hear barflies and students and dumbasses and politicians talk about “fighting”. For most of them I instantly know they’re talking shit. It’s an automatic assessment. I feel it in my bones. There’s no hesitation. I know.
Maybe I used to think they had something. Now I know better. They don’t have spine. They don’t have balls. They don’t have heart. They’re not quite adults and never will be.
President Potato is exactly the kind of hollow man I’m talking about. A fifty year politician from a State nobody cares about. A life so bereft of heart that he has to tell made up stories from odd jobs as a teenager.
He’s your drunk Uncle explaining how he’d do better than the quarterback at a football game. He really imagines himself out there. He couldn’t make it to that arena. He’s not even allowed to try. Put him on the field and he’d be dead on the first play. But in his mind, he’d have thrown a better pass than the guy who’s really doing it.
Biden himself picked a fight with 80 million citizens. His whole administration teeters at the mere thought that the system might have to back up his blustering rant. Being a weak poser himself, he imagined 80 million limp noodles. Were starting to find out how wrong he was.
He’s angry and frustrated. We don’t respect him and he senses it. The guy that beat me in the tournament; I respected him. Afterwards, I bought him a beer. He bought the second round. We had a great time drinking at the bar. Neither one of us would piss on Biden if he were on fire.
Biden screwed up when he threatened people who are mostly better than him. Many know he’s talking shit. The ones that don’t are sensing it from those who do. Bluster is all he’s got. He doesn’t belong in the big chair and everyone knows it.
Biden might be the perfect representative of the giant army of mediocrity that made “before times” a reference to 2019. Unfocused, inept, insecure, losers; they are many but they are weak. Unaccomplished desk jockeys. Paper pushing irrelevancies. Ineffectual Walter Mitty dreamers. Clueless lackeys. Window licking morons. “Revolutionaries” that have never had an original idea. Box wine guzzling harpies; faces frozen by Botox and furious to have naught but a cat for companionship.
Collectively they can destroy. There’s proof; our economy is in shambles, gas costs a fortune, and grocery stores are empty. Yet none of those losers can build back anything. Each day is their newest failure. They’ve been at it less than a year and they can barely keep the lights on.
President Corn Pop, who talked about wrapping chain around his knuckles, couldn’t handle press questions about Afghanistan. Nobody asked him to fly a helicopter or fire a rifle. He couldn’t even talk. “Stand at this podium and explain what you’re doing.” It’s a basic skill of any politician. Public Speaking 101, the elective even retards pass. It was too much for Biden. He was given a test. He blew it.
I was given a test. I passed.
That’s why I’m vaguely optimistic. Almost everyone, including President Geritol, is pushing to create violence… but they’re complete zeros. Their will to rule by iron fist feels a lot we’re like getting nibbled to death by ducks.
Biden’s a man who never stepped into the arena. He’s leading a gaggle of losers who never stepped in the arena. They can’t think the real world into submission. Nobody can. That’s why, Biden looks more like a marketing failure than the boss. He’s New Coke. A one man shambling Impossible Burger. We chant mockery at him… because we should.
What a chump. Soon (I hope) we’ll know how strongly reality reasserts itself. I’m a big fan of reality. I have no idea what’ll happen next but at least the wait is over.
A.C.
P.S. I highly recommend the speech by Teddy Roosevelt called “The Arena“. This is the section I love the most:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Both of these pieces are great.
👍👍👍
Thanks!
Most every post here is a treat for the mind, the heart, and the soul. These last two are awesome. Thank you.
Glad you like it.
Never trust a man who hasn’t been punched in the face. Good quote.
There is possibility of two factions of our population coming to ‘argue loudly in publicly with actions’. One side, fueled with knowledge that our government will do little to punish them. We are being herded into committing violence so that martial law is enplaced. THEN the true intent of why this was being done will come out. I just hope it isn’t too late.
I don’t know if it’s too late or not. So far we’ve been oppressing ourselves. We could stop if we had the rationality. The real Jack booted thug action has been in disarmed places like Australia.
Oz has a lot of guns, probably less effective ones if you count only legal weapons but there are more of those in actual numbers than before Howard’s ban.
There are also quite a lot of eaten by a roo guns out there, maybe half or more of banned weapons.,
Its even more in NZ
Problem is one of purpose and organization.
Leave me alone doesn’t start revolutions. A thirst for power and revenge does and without a purpose its just chaos. You cannot expect people to go to civil war mode or to even organize without a clear “what if we win plan” and not one faction has one other than the Commies.
Half the problems we face are because trustworthy conservatives aren’t on school boards or doing the work of administration.
Too busy making money.
And yes I get folks want these things gone , till you can get them gone, you have to run them.
As Paul says in Dune
He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing.
The mental picture I got was how it went in South Africa after they decided the Right thing to do was run the white farmers out and give the land to the ones who were Entitled to it.
They built back Better,, Coff Coff
I agree, however in the US nobody seems in a hurry to take up the farmer’s workload. They’ll leave the farmers to work to death and just steal the food.
Maybe we’re closer to Venezuela where you’d see formerly wealthy people driving decent cars but unable to buy anything. When there’s nothing to buy and inflation is taking your money you get poor without even seeing the trend. I remember a photo of what looked like a soccer mom in a Volvo in Venezuela. She was well dressed but slowly starving. We’re not there yet but our grocery stores in 2021 look barely stocked… like nothing I’ve personally seen in my life. Every move to socialism always includes oppressed people and starvation… damn near no exceptions.
“Everybody has a plan… until they get punched in the face.”
I’ve long held that there are two sides in violence debacle. One side has the the desire, but not the ability. The other side has the ability, but not the desire.
The left wants to screech and fight anyone who disagrees with them. They have the desire. But the only vehicle they have for that desire is to use the government – to give orders to people with ability. They might form a mob and terrorize a few people, but when anyone stands up to them, they scatter like roaches in the light.
The right has the ability. We were fighters, we were soldiers, we’ve stood on our own feet. I’ve been both shot and shot at in the line of duty – I know what it’s like. I know what fighting entails. What the right lacks is the desire – mostly, I just want to be left alone, to live out my life and to not have to do again the things that I’ve done.
Where is the threshold? To me, that’s the operative question, and I have no idea. When do the people being given orders by those without ability stop and say “Nope, no more.” When do the people who just want to be left alone say “Alright, that’s enough, dammit.” I honestly would have guess the threshold was a point that is way behind us right now. I hear the rumblings but I’ve heard the rumblings for a long time. I don’t know that the threshold is ever going to come, at this point. If it was going to, it would have, and I think that the sky screamers know it, too, and they are counting on it.
I might have been imperfect in my communication when I said “with the ability, comes the desire”. I meant desire in light of personal growth, testing, and challenge; the drive to do something difficult and even dangerous, in part to know your own self.
I didn’t mean anything about political revolution. Only that I have earned self esteem and that’s different than false self esteem so common in politicians like our current Potato in Chief. That dude feels like the textbook blowhard. “Let me tell you how I bossed around the Ukraine!” I could say similar things about Obama who talked about bringing knives to fistfights and so forth. I dislike any politician who says he/she will “fight” for me. It’s bullshit. None of them have had a job that didn’t include wearing a tie. They won’t “fight” for me. The best I can hope is they’ll have meetings and process paperwork with me in mind. Or at least refrain from fucking up.
The arena is part of the thing that keeps civilization. If you have the ability to step into the arena, you want to. If you have the ability to meet a challenge, you wish to. If you can keep it in the ring, that’s the best place for it.
I can hold my own. That doesn’t mean I want to get into a barroom brawl. That would be dumb.
Also, the arena could be anything; climb a mountain, a perfect score at the rifle meet, shave a half second off a lap time, bag that trophy buck, or (an example I went for) playing (not watching!) football. The point I wanted to make is that there’s a big difference between the QB who does his best and the braggart who thinks he’d do better. Some fat slob who can barely stumble from his couch to the fridge is unworthy. His opinion is irrelevant. As for me, the arena was a ring with all the physicality that such things entail. I stepped in knowing I was doomed and might very well get my ass kicked. I did it because I could, because I wanted to, and because I wanted to know for sure I was more complete than a braggart who wears a football shirt with some other dude’s name on it. There are a lot of people who think they’re awesome but surprisingly few who can actually do things.
That said, I don’t want to oversell myself. I didn’t embarrass myself before a far superior opponent. That’s all I did. I’m not the next Muhammad Ali.
First if stuff was happening, it wouldn’t get reported so there is that.
The post below is fiction so take as such.
Imagine for a second I was the most badass guy you know. I’m not. I just a guy with a keyboard but imagine you wanted to recruit me an some friends to your movement.
We can be trusted, yeah or nay so no worries there.
We sit down over coffee and discuss things.
I say “You want me and my boys to risk our lives. What’s on the table?’
You start blathering about The Constitution, Being Left Alone all the usual jazz and what said badass is gonna say.
Hard Pass.
Do you know why? People don’t fight for a weak horse. They fight for power, for revenge, for personal gain. They fight for a belief system. You’ve got nothing but a vague remembrance of the past
People want a future and until they get one, they are out.
“People want a future and until they get one, they are out.”
That’s a very wise observation!
Sorry, I am late to the party, but I just had to comment on this. I played high school sports. I actually was pretty decent, and had the chance to play football in college, with several different schools, including one with a full scholarship, for the first year. Instead, I fell in love, and spent my life working in a foundry. I don’t regret my life, I ended up with loving relationships and great kids.
The thing about high school sports is, no matter how good you are, I have always tried to tell people that it has to always be not about winning, but about character. I hate to lose, I hope everyone who plays a sport does. But I also know that part of sports is learning how to lose with dignity. My sophomore year, my football team lost to one school 56-0. We beat that same team the next 2 years, badly. But I learned more in that loss than I did in the 2 blowouts of the final 2 years.
Of course, doing 56 pushups, windsprints, down ups, etc. has a way of sticking in your mind, as well. lol.
The thing is, I never stepped foot onto the field of competition, be it football, baseball, track, or wrestling, afraid of my opponent. I often went up against others who I knew were bigger than me, or faster, or in baseball, threw good enough to make it all the way to the major leagues, in a few years. But I learned that by going through things in my mind, before the actual competition, I was more than ready once the game began. In baseball, I had already batted against the guy who threw 90 mph, and had a slider that was almost unhittable for high school players.
In football, I was almost 6′ tall, and weighed 210, and blocked a lot of guys much bigger than myself, and handled them, since I had already done so, both in my head, and in practice the week before, imagining that my team mate was the guy that I would be facing.
In high school baseball, I sat the bench of the varsity team for 3 years in a row. My senior year, I finally was a starter, finishing with a batting avg. of .400, being the 6th leading hitter in our 3 county area. I was only the number 2 hitter on our team, my twin brother was number 1, beating me by 8 points. But I learned by sitting on the bench for those 3 years. And I hope that I also taught others as well. I know that it is a part of who I am, and that I am not a quitter, and that I learned that by the lessons I learned in high school sports. And it would not have mattered if we would have won or lost, I still would not quit. And that is why I think that high school sports are so valuable and deserve to be funded.
I have said that after I learned to read, the only reasons that I needed school was for sports, and to learn to play music. Because I was such a voracious reader from the very beginning, I taught myself more than any school teacher or tutor could ever have begun to teach me. But I loved high school sports, and it was through school that I learned to play nearly every wind instrument, with saxophone being my first love. I have never been tested in a knock down drag out fight, and hope that I never have to be. But I know that in defense of a loved one, or someone weaker, I am willing to step up, if for no other reason than that is how I was raised, to protect those who need to be protected.
You’re always a good read – and this one was no exception.
Taj Mahal does a fine version of a reggae standard – “Johnny Too Bad”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEdcoaCukH4
That’s the earworm I had for a day or so after Brandon’s threats.
Sorry about the ‘live’ link – I intentionally put it in plain text but the software apparently didn’t agree with me.
I think it’ll post ok as is. Don’t sweat it.