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.”