Anger

Distracting emotion or the fire in the belly.

I recently restacked (or at least thought I did) a post from HOLLY MATHNERD. She graciously gave me a free subscription that has run out and given the less than optimal outlook for my future, I am unable to continue as a paying subscriber. However, even if I had, she recently decided to turn off comments, thus, I cannot comment on her excellent big picture piece on the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I thought I would use her post as a start for my own. Please read her’s first, here

The Psychopath Ratio

if you haven’t already.

Her point on the Right’s belief that because they have the guns and know which restroom to use they will easily defeat the testosterone lacking girly men of the Left is spot on. To illustrate this, look at the LGBTQWTFO activists who before this letter salad was first tossed told us outright that they were “coming for your children”. The Right envisioned jackbooted thugs kicking in the doors of their homes and they bought larger bore tubes and higher caliber shot for them to defend their hearths. In the meantime, the Left took kids from them by poisoning their minds in school. The right has a history of preparing to fight on the wrong battlefield, if it ever realizes that a fight is necessary, that is.

I do disagree with her on the Right stating that it is now a war. The reality is that we have long been in a war, but one side has not bothered to fight it, thus they have lost so much ground. The statement that we are now at war is only the vocalization of a fact long true but only now realized.

While her cautions against anger are correct and needed, we have a history that indicates her concerns may be unnecessary, at least on a large scale. Individuals, specifically, need to heed her warnings lest they dash themselves to death piecemeal and provoke a smothering crackdown on all. Long time readers may have picked up that I am by nature, a hot head. I am naturally inclined to attack a target upon sight without plan nor even as much as a thought of how to do so effectively. This flaw is one reason I studied kendo, Japanese fencing.

Kendo begins with Rei, a respectful bow, and ends in Rei. Anger, expressed, is forbidden and internally, not conducive to the calm and collected state of mind of accomplished swordsmen. However, anger is among the normal first reactions to an unwarranted act of violence. When the smell of destruction still assaults the nostrils, uncontrolled anger can lead to massacres of innocents such as happened after the 1923 earthquake in the Tokyo area.

Let’s consider now, Pearl Harbor. Were our grand parents, great grand parents and if young enough, even further back in your linage not enraged at the Japanese? Of course they were. What came of that anger? A united, concentrated sense of purpose.

I have been called out for not using my actual name for my substack. What follows is one of many reasons I choose to remain anonymous, I can honestly relay experiences that would not bring honor to myself in certain quarters, and here is one, a vignette in to how anger, controlled, can be an asset. I do not recall precisely why, perhaps as a counter to some historically ignorant individual, I found myself watching for the umpteenth time, the movie TORA TORA TORA. Uncharacteristically, it filled me with rage, a quiet rage. This rage was still burning the next day during a kendo tournament. My opponents that day were not sparring partners, nor were they opponents, they were the enemy. Gone were any and all self doubts, concerns, strategizing, self awareness. All that remained, was purpose. A purpose fueled by that fire in the belly. I recall little of the tournament other than I had my best showing. My first enemy, the only one I have any recollection of, was 5 dan, I am was and am 3 dan. Always the one with the loudest kiai, mine that day stunned my 5th degree enemy allowing me to deliver unto him a perfect shomenuchi, stroke to the center of the helmet, as he stood as a statue but with saucer sized eyes. He didn’t recover and I won the bout though do not recall if he did or did not make a point against me. While I did not win the tournament, I advanced further than I ever had fueled by the angerfire (new word) in my belly.

How did we use the collective fury against our sudden new enemy, Japan, in WW2? While Japan focused almost exclusively on offense leaving their carriers almost laughably under-protected by anything other than their own aircraft and escorting vessels, we put as many antiaircraft guns on our carries as possible. Focused only on the kill, supply for their warriors often was not insufficient, it simply did not exist in many cases as they would send large bodies of men to tiny islands under orders to live off the land. A great many died due to disease brought on by malnutrition even before we ever got underway to attack them, or just bypass them. Meanwhile, we built massive fleets of supply vessels, canned fresh water for our marines and soldiers in the field to use. That bellyfire keeping us on purpose, to defeat an enemy that crossed the line, and did so repeatedly.

While we focused on designing and building ever more efficient killing machines, we were always open to their surrender, preferring that to just using our new technological horrors to wipe out as many Japs as possible. They were offered the opportunity to surrender before we dropped the first bomb on them and again afterwards. They refused, so we dropped a second. Thankfully, the Emperor decided he did not want to be that least of his line and watch his people get incinerated. Thus, I hope that Holly’s concern of our inability to cross lines as needed to get the job done while not losing ourselves in rage and revenge is unfounded.

I hope but do not know. First, no one can know the future. Additionally, I have long been absent from the States. I do not know the mettle of those there now. There is also that old problem of the Right waiting for the enemy on the wrong battlefield. As with the Left taking their kids, as they focused on prowess with firearms, she is correct that focusing only on the fact that the Right may generally be better at using firearms and have no confusion over which restroom to use, the Left have the courts, control the police and the DAs as well as education. Kirk’s assassin was reportedly turned in by his own father. How many on the Right have already been investigated because their own kids turned them in over hate speech and the like? It has happened. The Right forgets or refuses to acknowledge that the Left already occupies many of their homes, invaded through the indoctrination of their kids and the airwaves picked up and sent by our gadgets.

Holly makes the point that the attacks against Trump, socking as they were, are less so than the assassination of Kirk for we have, sadly, a history of malcontents and the deranged attacking those in office or seeking one. I agree with this, but believe there are worse or at least earlier examples of ordinary citizens being attacked based solely upon their political beliefs. A teenaged T supporter was run over and killed by a looney lefty in a truck somewhere out west, Washington State or Oregon I believe, simply because he was a T supporter. The perp was arrested but was released a short time later with a slap on the wrist at worst. There may be more to this story, but these are the pertinent facts as I recall them.

Then we have far less serious but damaging cases of being “cancelled”, again long before the term was coined. The first I am aware of is Rush Limbaugh who was not allowed to be part owner of an NFL franchise because his politics were wrong. He would later be fired from ESPN for a take the Left took as political. ESPN is now all politics with a wee bit o sport mixed in. Another was a big figure in Silicon Valley who was run out of the place because his private donation to a cause the Left didn’t approve of was made public, possibly in violation of the law. The Left has won much ground in making private political donations public domain. Each of these and others should have served as crossing of lines that are not to be crossed and dealt with accordingly, but they were not. This, as with all other ills facing the U.S., is a battle that needed to be fought decades ago but because it wasn’t, we have condemned ourselves to going though hell to get back to sanity.

Hothead though I can be, I have never relished confrontation. But I have never shied away from it either. The Right failed to confront all these issues when each was but a spark and could have been easily squashed. Instead, they allowed each to grow into the one mass conflagration confronting us today that may now be too big to extinguish. But it will not be extinguished unless enough realize that we are and have been at war and react accordingly. May the anger over the unlawful silencing of a view the Left cannot stand be the fire in the belly, the bellyfire, that drive ps us to do what must be done with purpose and the will to stay on target.