We have to talk.
OK, I have to talk. You have to shut up, I heard you already.
Your friends don’t tell you to shut up, your friends support you, look after you, try to keep you feeling good about yourself. That is not me, I’m not like that. I’m not worried about your feelings. You can trust me to tell you the truth; I hate you. Now shut up and listen.
You’re tough enough.
You’re way too tough, you are ‘step across this line and I will destroy all life on this planet’ tough. You’re a mutant psychopath that hates the world of life that spawned it. You are Rand’s sick hero, destroying everything just to prove you don’t give a fuck, no-one can hurt you. When it’s all gone, perhaps someone will remain to admire what a tough, fearless motherfucker you were, but probably not. Maybe sometime long after, some alien archaeologist is going to remove his Tilley hat in respect and whisper, “these tough bastards didn’t back down, did they?” – but probably not.
You are tough enough, but in typical fashion, it’s never enough for you. Getting tougher is all you care about, toughness is the goal, if you can ever be tough enough, then you’ll be safe from all these other tough bastards – but you’re not one of them. For you, this is defense. You are a super tough moron, is the thing – but I’m not some elitist IQ fetishist, we’re going to try not to focus on your stupidity today, I think the two things are in direct proportion and if we can affect your obsession with strength and toughness, the other thing will improve too.
Just stop it already, the violence and the . . . worship of it.
If you’re not engaged in literal war, then it’s “sports,” which is not “metaphorical” war as we pretend, but actual war training, and the skillset is always toughness. Why the Hell would every schoolboy have to acquire football skills when they are mostly staying home working on the farm or spending their life in an office? Just in case something goes terribly wrong in world politics and a giant international football game breaks out, I suppose?
Every few years, some luminary makes a beautiful speech about peace, but all day every day, your son needs to be more aggressive about taking that quarterback the fuck out. All day long, kids nowadays don’t have it tough enough.
It’s the only game in town, I get that, I do. Your kid needs to be tough or he’ll be eaten alive, I know, I was one of you once.
You are the motherfuckers setting it up, and you don’t get that.
I know, we have to be tough because of the enemy, the Islamists, the Russians. I’m talking to all of them. You Islamist warriors, you Russian strategists, you Canadian hockey moms, I’m talking to you all. You are all tough enough, cut it out already. We all have to lay down our weapons at the same time, that’s how peace works, the rare, special times that it does.
Stop with the endless “strength” rhetoric, please. It’s like listening to Charlie Sheen wax on about the joys of cocaine and prostitution. You have a problem. A see it from space, life consuming and destroying problem, and it is the very “strength” and toughness that is the only solution you ever tried and the only thing you care about that is the problem.
We’ve quite given up, in case you thought anyone was working for world peace, no, that isn’t what’s happening. I mean some are, many wonderful organizations, but basically governments have settled into endless war. Man is aggressive, it is a good life if you don’t weaken, and there will always be someone starting trouble – war is an organizing principle for society . . . they hope to control it, they hope it doesn’t go to the nuclear winter, but basically, war is a part of human life. No serious person thinks that is going to change, I don’t think. I think we’re pretty sure détente is as good as it gets.
And for that, you have to be tough and ready, so in what should seem ironic to us but somehow does not, the only peace we are able to realistically imagine requires that we all can never be tough enough.
I’m not asking people to lay down their arms before an enemy that won’t reciprocate. I’m only asking that we continue the conversation, that just because there is always some swine who’s “heard enough talk” and starts shooting doesn’t mean that some of us can’t keep talking, try to work through to the next bit of logic: OK, so it’s not possible to disarm ourselves one at a time, then how is gradually disarming us all simultaneously going to work?
My first answer is, toughness needs to be taken off its stupid, brutal pedestal and seen for the necessary evil that it has always been. I mean, you look like such a moron, fawning over the type of hammerhead whose great skill is the ability to cut you down with a stroke of his sword. That sort of strength should be admired from a safe distance, like how we admire it in a bear or a lion, it shouldn’t be brought into our homes and nurtured.
Jeff,
Jan. 14th., 2019
https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2019/02/04/people-of-earth-part-2-conservatism/
https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2019/02/06/people-of-earth-part-3-liberals/
Abuse with an Excuse 