“Seriously, I don’t get it. What, you shoot luck lasers out your eyes? It’s just hard to picture. And certainly not very cinematic. I mean, luck? What coked-out, glass pipe-sucking freakshow comic book artist came up with that little chestnut? Probably a guy who can’t draw . . . .” – Deadpool 2
In calculus class, never sit with identical twins on either side of you. It’s hard to differentiate between them.
I recalled one particular wrestling match in high school when getting ready to write this post.
I was a senior, but the opponent I was to wrestle that night was undefeated. That was all I knew, since I’d never wrestled him. Late in the season, hearing your opponent was undefeated was pretty scary for any wrestler because it was an indicator that they were pretty good. While my record only had a few losses, undefeated was much, much better than “a few losses”.
As the home team, we had to move the wrestling mat from our practice room into the gym. As I helped roll up the mat, fretting a bit about my looming match, I looked down – there was a brand new quarter exposed after I moved the mat. I picked it up, and popped it into the pocket of my jeans. I didn’t give it much more thought, but I was happy at that point my name wasn’t Roy. Why? Because if anyone saw me pick it up and put it in my pants they might call me quarter Roy.
The time for the match came. The match started with an introduction, where the opponents would be announced, and run to the center of the match, shake hands, and then run back into the line. The line started with the little guys (98 pounders) and finally worked up to the big guys. I didn’t wrestle, heavyweight, but I was the next weight class down. We Wilders are a hearty folk.
We never cried, though. People would have thought the truck was headed for a breakdown.
When I shook his hands, he didn’t seem so tough. He looked, well, like a guy I could beat. My apprehension started to melt away. Besides, I had found a lucky quarter.
When I wrestled him, I did beat him, pinning him in the second period. When it was time to meet him at the District Championship, I met him in the finals. Pinned him in the first period during that match. And before the match, I could see it in his eyes – he was already defeated. He knew that I would win, and he was just hoping I wouldn’t pin him again. He knew he had no chance.
A lion would never cheat on his wife. But a Tiger Wood.
The first match was mine based on skill and strength. The second match? It was mine because he knew that I was going to win. The point of this story isn’t to tell you how utterly awesome I am – you already knew that. No, the point was to present Wilder’s Law #541:
The easiest way to win is if your opponent convinces you that you’ve already lost.
This is the game that’s being played against us today. The nonsense about the January 6 riots being a THreAt to MuH DemOcrACY is one of those. If the 81 million people who voted for Trump had wanted to take and hold the Capitol? It damn sure would be in our hands this very minute and Nancy Pelosi would be sober and asleep right now. In jail. The purpose of the Congressional inquiry and the convictions are actually a relatively brazen attempt to make you think that we’ve already lost.
I could give dozens of other examples of this behavior, and so could you. I might even post in depth on one of them on Monday, but I might change my mind.
I guess that would give me an open mind?
The point is a simple one: almost all of the power that the Left has is built on illusion, smoke and mirrors. An example of that was the power of the NKVD (later the KGB) over the average Russian. The power was this: the Russians were beaten. They were convinced that the Communist Party had one. They were stared down, and looked away.
Fortunately, this wasn’t the case in most of the Western world. Many have tried to stir up fear to create tyranny, and this is a practice that has happened again and again. Yet even as the tyranny approaches, the people of the West push it back.
The process is often ugly, it’s often bloody, and it sometimes takes not a month or a year, but decades. The Mrs. is fond of quoting the actress Audrey Hepburn, who said, “You can have everything, just not everything all at once.” There is a lot of truth in that statement – we might have freedom, and we might have prosperity, but it is now clear to me that we can’t be guaranteed both at once.
I’m expecting someone to go full Batman® soon.
And that’s fine. Heck, it’s even preferable. I love a challenge, mainly because if there isn’t a real challenge, it’s not nearly so fun. I mean, the idea of a velociraptor in a room full of kittens isn’t a lot of challenge, unless you’re one of the kittens.
Has the world been in worse shape? Certainly. Is this something we can fix? Absolutely. Will it be the toughest thing that most of us will ever do in our lives?
Without a doubt. But we have one other thing on our side.
That quarter I found when I was rolling up the mat? I still have it. I figured it was a lucky quarter. I knew that I was good, but even at 17 I knew Wilder’s Law #443: Being good is great, but being lucky is even better.
There are many things that I’m certain of, and this is one of them: we are the luckiest people, ever.
Is it a silver quarter? 🙂
Ha! No, the werewolves are utterly safe from my saved quarter!
Like my Daddy used to say “boy I’m going to pull of your head and change your mind” some of these things (people) need a little change !!!
Yup, and often I’m the problem.
John, one of the things I wish would bring back is the Art of Challenge. I just re-read the Heike Monogatari (Tale of the Gempei War), and there is nothing more heartening to one than to roar out a challenge.
Musashi’s dictum of truly defeating one’s enemy is to break their spirit – after that, there is no need for concern (to your NKVD/KGB example). It can become a bit more challenging in a world where so often images and words offer a very one-sided view of the world – but that same technology can work the other way by encouraging others.
It is. When living in the moment, it is the ultimate joy, and I think many kids don’t get that at all in our current world.
As for being beaten, wisdom, circa 1978, from my late, 20+ yr. older cousin “Cat”, who played for Bama pre-Bear…”Yeah, Penn State had much more talent than us.” Me: “So, what was the difference?” Cat: “Coach has his boys convinced that Bama never loses.” Great life lesson that I never forgot.
If you don’t know what you can’t do, sometimes you can amaze yourself.
John, I know that you shoot for “motivational Fridays” and this is a good column with much truth in it today. However, the biggest problem is the insidiousness of the challenge we face. Staying strong to one’s beliefs in the face of people with pink hair and nose rings (see Tim Young’s excellent esay from yesterday, https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/14/dont-tolerate-people-who-hate-you/ ) is certainly nessesary but unfortunately not nearly enough.
Yesterday I was thinking about my college years and trying to compare them to the upcoming graduation this December of my eldest grandson. I came across this chart:
https://budget.utk.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2018/06/FeesAndTuitionHistory2018-19web.pdf
I graduated from UT Knoxville in 1977 when the rates were even cheaper than the ones shown for 1982. UTK was on a quarter system then, so I paid the maintenance and activity fee of around $250 three times per year. This is all in line with my memory of having to earn $750 in a summer job to cover an acedemic year of tuition, which I did pretty handily by waiting tables over the summer at a Holiday Inn out on I-75. Room and board were equally cheap, er, subsidized. I didn’t realize how good I had it. Back then was a far cry indeed from today: $32K per year in-state, $51K out-of-state.
https://onestop.utk.edu/cost-of-attending-ut/undergrad/
My Class of 2023 high school granddaughter makes $10 per hour at the day care center at the Y. Her path leads into the student loan abatoir cattle chute. Sigh.
What year in that first chart was the decisive year to stand up to stop the madness and channel Howard Beale?
https://tenor.com/view/im-as-mad-as-hell-and-im-not-gonna-take-this-anymore-angry-mad-furious-gif-15630856
What year? Any year. Every year. But…didn’t happen. Instead of telling us we were DEFEATED, the enemy TOLD US WE WERE WINNING. In more ways than one! “Education Wins in Tennessee ! Since the Lottery began in 2004, more than $6.5 billion has been raised for education programs in the state.” Yet…”Nearly two-thirds of the students who received scholarships funded by Tennessee’s new lottery lost their awards in the second year of college because their grades slipped, according to the first detailed look at the program by the state’s Higher Education Commission.” And…”In Tennessee, per-student funding levels from the state for 2016-17 were almost 14 percent below what they were in 2008, the report said.” I could spin out headline bullet points like this all day. Hey, the lottery! But kids aren’t educated, and state funding is quietly siphoned away….
Your message about don’t be disheartened by those who say you are losing is an important and valid one. But even more so, don’t be disheartened by the ones who say you are winning…when you aren’t.
“Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
“Higher Education” DOWNWARD Spiral? College tuition escalation, Student debt, etc.? ALL started with the “G.I. Bill of Rights”
SAME “Bankers”.
There comes a time and place where it’s not possible to be told “you’re winning” and have anyone believe it. And that’s where we are today.
Sooner or later you have to get onto the mat and wrestle. It seems like our side isn’t even showing up.
They will. And when they’ve started, they won’t feel guilt. They’ll leave that to the next generation.
You know, I’ve been thinking this for a while. They’re acting crazier and crazier. The indictments, arrests, and subpoenas strike as last ditch moved. People are pissed, and not the kind of pissed that has them burning down neighborhoods.
It’s the kind of pissed that has them hauling our politicians and their supporters to be tarred and feathered (or, whatever the modern equivalent would be – superglue and styrofoam pellets?)
“whatever the modern equivalent would be”
PAINT them from head-toe THICK Gold paint?
Yup. And it’s headed to a time where logic will have no place.
The power the left had USED to be smoke and mirrors. Not anymore. They have proven that repeatedly over the past couple of years. They locked us down, they forcibly poisoned MILLIONS of us with the ‘jab’. They commit all manner of crimes with total impunity while simultaneously destroying ANYONE who openly opposes them.
They OWN OUTRIGHT the media, academia, Big Tech, EVERY Fed level LEO agency and the VAST majority of sitting judges. In short the left are now TOTALLY IN CONTROL and there isn’t a DAMN THING the rest of us can do about it. They committed the Crime Of The Century in 2020 by OPENLY stealing the election and the White House and they will DO IT AGAIN come this November. TINVOWOOT. Want freedom? Saddle up, sack up, lock and load, step off the porch and start hunting commies….or demonrats. The terms are synonymous.
Or… Pick an institution. Say the public library. Read the minutes of the last year’s board meetings.
Discover whether DIE / Land Acknowledgement / BLM directors & staff are and who opposes them.Atart showing up to those meetings to support the good guys. Organize friends and family, dittp.
Pay the $10 per year fee to join the state library association and get on the email listserv. Copypasta and share with parent groups. Identify bad actors, track down to local library systems and see above paragraph. Identify, isolate, and oppose them.
Or, you could just roll over and play dead.
Certainly more peaceful.
I didn’t take the jab. And as the news reports come out – they will say it was all voluntary. Which it was. If more had said, “no” than tens of thousands would still be alive today.
Agreed. The Father gave us that gray matter for a valid reason and a soul to boot. We all stand on our own 2 feet. If you got conned into taking the jab well that is on the person 100%.
Yup.
Perchance? Actually You in the mind changing pic?
Nope. Just a meme. I try to avoid actual cameras. They break too easily.
Of course lions would never cheat on their spouses. That would offend their pride.
Ha! I used a variation in tomorrow’s post!