One of the earliest and most valuable lessons I learned in life is that you have to stand up to a bully. Take a couple minutes and watch this:
bul·ly/ˈbo͝olē/noun a person who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable.
Now for those who haven’t known me all my life…I was a runt. It’s true, I swear. I was just a little popcorn-fart of a kid. Most of the kids my age towered over me at school, and in the neighborhood I was damn near the youngest of the bunch…and the few kids that were younger were still bigger than me. I’ll never forget the number 83. That number brought laughter from everyone in my 8th grade Phys. Ed. Class. I weighed a whopping 83 pounds at the end of middle school…I was one of the only males who hadn’t reached triple digits yet and I was still missing that mark by a bunch.
I caught up to everyone in High School and graduated probably somewhere near average height and weight. Trust me when I tell you, though…the runt gets a lot of opportunity to stand up to a bully.
Most of my career was spent standing up to bullies. Hussein, Aidid, Escobar, Khaddafi, Bin Laden….call ‘em dictators, call ‘em drug lords, call ‘em terrorists….at the end of the day, they’re nothing more than an over-inflated bully….and dammit, America takes no shit from a bully. We never have…we risked it all to stand up to King George. We stood up to the Kaiser and then turned around a few years later and stood up to Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini all at the same time. We Stand Up To Bullies. It’s part of the fabric of who we are.
When I see the video of that police officer kneeling on the neck of a person in cuffs, what I see is a bully. Someone who is using their perceived strength to intimidate or harm someone else. It’s kind of hard to see it that way though…cuffs off, no badge and no gun in a one-on-one fight….smart money would have been on George to whip the shit out of that cop….but four on one with the badges, guns and cuffs….Bullies….no doubt.
When I saw the initial demonstrations what I saw was people coming together to stand up to a bully…actually four bullies. It was admirable. It was actually beautiful. Then it all went to hell in a hand cart.
What you have going on right now is ANTIFA and BLM being bullies. Their perceived strength (and our absolute vulnerability) is this shit sandwich we’ve all been force-fed over the last decade…political correctness. People are afraid to speak out against them lest they be deemed a racist, fascist, conservative, heretic or (heaven forbid) “Trump Supporter”. That’s the bottom line…those idiots are running a muck because no matter how much destruction they do, how many lives they ruin, or how many historic monuments they deface…if anyone uses force to stop them they’ll be the “Bad Guys” when the smoke clears.
So…nobody’s standing up to the bully. Cities have surrendered police precincts, courthouses…hell entire city blocks filled with their citizen’s businesses to these assholes. We’ve got hours and hours of video of moral decay as law after law is broken and nobody does a damn thing. This is not about perceived injustice…this is not about fighting a corrupt system…this is about politics and “feelings”. As a city you have the muscle of your police force. As a state you have the National Guard if need be. And yet nobody’s willing to bring force to bear to solve the problem as cities are decimated. So a bunch of twenty-something pussies with a hurt feeling, their knickers in a knot and a political agenda have put down their video game controller and crawled out of their parents basements to throw a hissy-fit and they’re calling the shots? The message that sends, not only to our citizens but to the rest of the world, is that we’ve surrendered. The bullies are becoming more and more emboldened, every other country in the world is pointing at us and laughing, and the people elected to keep this nation in tact are twiddling their thumbs trying to figure out a way to solve the problem but not look like the “Bad Guy”.
I told people two decades ago that political correctness was going to be the downfall of this nation. I’ve been chastised most of my adult life because I refuse to practice political correctness. The first time I sat in a command briefing and listened to a lecture on “Words Hurt”, I was physically ill. Words Hurt…who the hell came up with that? Whatever happened to “Sticks & Stones”? I knew right then that we were heading down a bad path and as you can clearly see watching the news, I was right. I hate…yeah…I’m using the word “hate” here….I HATE that I’ve been right about this one.
If it sounds like I’m a little pissed tonight….well, yeah….I am. Opie Taylor at age 10 had more balls than anyone making a decision in this country right now. That is an absolute crying shame. It’s an embarrassment. I am embarrassed for my country right now. The world…the WHOLE fuckin’ WORLD…looks to us for guidance…they look to us to be the example and set the standard…and our guidance (by our example) at this moment in history is “Stand down and let the bullies rule”.
I gotta tell ya though….I love how much thought the bullies put into their latest tantrum…”Defund the Police”. Y’all should’ve thought that one through a little better….the police are the only thing standing between you and a nation full of pissed off people who are tired of your antics. Hope y’all win that one…shut the police down and when there’s nobody there to enforce the laws you’re going to run into someone like me….and you’ll learn the difference in the pain threshold between words and sticks & stones.
One final thought…when’s ANTIFA coming to Appalachia? I’m interested to see how that one plays out.