THE STEEL-CAGE DEATH MATCH REVISITED
Time to push back the hordes. Despite the wrapping of themselves in the cloak of Democracy, they mean nothing of the sort. You would be best advised to repel them.
If anyone has a brief shelf life in the world of human relationships, it is Yours truly, particularly on the professional level. As a dancer from 1979 through 1983, gigs and shows came sporadically and were brief. In the world of film production, freelancing saved me from involvement in multiple homicides.
Clients . . . not me.
One benefit of 40 years of such brief encounters? Kept me nimble and learning new things. The other benefit? A dearth of beating people to death with a crowbar, and except for an altercation with an Egyptian restaurant manager and a dustup with a Teamster, I managed to keep the physical encounters to a minimum. No shortage of shouting and vague threats, but I escaped unharmed, and that is saying something.
And why is that? I am not a big man. Since the age of 26, I've remained about 5'10" and weighed in at a manageable 165 pounds. I am athletic and have taken decades of dance, martial arts, boxing, and strength training, but MMA has nothing to fear from me. And it ain't like I go around spoiling for a fight.
A former colleague of mine probably put it best, "I don't invite confrontation, but I will not run from one."
Or, as another former colleague once said, "Never be afraid to beat the crap out of a Teamster, if you REALLY have to."
After staring down an inebriated union thug on a shoot in New Jersey, I understood.
While the need to engage with someone on a job, or in personal lives appears to have disappeared with the onset of Clint Eastwood's geriatrics, there is a need today, perhaps more than ever, to not shrink from the fight.
As a population, as a people, the thugs and animals are trying to take away our livelihoods and, to an extent, our lives. Now is not the time to allow the emboldened bullies cow us into herds of cattle. Letting the police be neutered, most of whom are excellent people, is a mistake. There are problems, as there are with any institution run by humans, but do NOT cede the Blue Line’s underpinnings.
The second line of defense in a civil society is moral character.
What is happening on our streets is WRONG. It is not The Right to Peaceably Assemble before our eyes. The hysterics and anarchists have wrapped themselves in the American flag and claimed they burn, destroy, and injure because it says so in the Constitution.
It does not.
Our state and local invertebrates, tasked with enforcing the law, have failed. Is it too late to hold them to account?
Yes, I am afraid it is.
The third line of defense in a civil society is You and Me. Will we fight if confronted? Will we collapse like Rome did in the face of the Barbarians? Or will we push back the hordes as the stalwarts did at the Gates of Vienna when the Ottomans were kept from destroying the Western Civilization?
Thirty-Five years ago, I'd have said "Yes.”
Now, the answer is an emphatic, "I don't know."
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