A quick update on my last post: See this article about how Donald Trump's racist rhetoric might be backfiring politically. This coheres with my "people are people" campaign strategy for a theoretical Democratic candidate. Trump won the election in large part by whipping up racial resentment toward immigrants. But it's one thing to talk tough, and it's another to experience the real-world effects once the tough talk is put into place. Very few people actually like seeing children torn apart from their parents or hearing of people dying of dehydration trying to make a better life for themselves and their family. And they don't usually like seeing people in their own communities deported -- it's the other immigrants they don't want in the country -- the "bad" ones. The key to pursuing a strategy of racial grievance to woo voters is to do it in such a way that said voters don't feel guilty for their racism. It's easy get behind deporting somebody who is in this country illegally in theory. It's a lot harder to get behind gratuitously terrorizing people in your neighborhood who were always nice to you.
This is especially true when few of the promised benefits of cracking down on immigration actually come to bear. As the article points out, Trump hasn't delivered much on this front -- there's no wall, crime rates haven't plummeted, and there is no spate of good, entry-level, industrial jobs in beleaguered communities (because immigrants aren't the actually cause of crime and unemployment). Trump's base will never leave him, but a lot of his voters aren't in his base -- they voted for him and are supporting him reluctantly. And the vast majority of them will do so again in 2020 (and they will vote Republican in the upcoming midterms). But in super close swing elections, stealing one voter from the other side out of 1,000, or getting a small percent of the them to stay home, could be the difference. "People are people," Democrats -- don't be afraid to say it.
Anyway...
In more personal news, I have a week of single-dadding on the horizon, as S has to take one of her work trips to Africa. I'm not exactly looking forward to it. It's not the extra time with my kids that gets to me; it's the added logistical hassle of being the only caretaker. Not being able to leave the house, even for a few minutes, without two kids in tow is brutal. You can't run a quick errand; you can't go for a jog; you can't stop by a happy hour event; you can't do anything. S also spent a few days in Cuba recently for a girl's trip for her birthday, and her parents came up to help, and even though the kids don't really let them do any "work" (I have to get them up and dressed, brush their teeth, entertain them, bathe them, put them to bed, wake up with them in the middle of the night, etc. -- S's mom does cook, however, which is helpful), just having other adults around takes a ton of stress off my shoulders. Also, this time they were able to pick them up from school/daycare, a relatively minor task -- it only takes about 20 minutes total -- but a huge help because it means I don't have to rush home from work, and I can go to my Krav Maga classes, which have become an important bit of self-care for me.
Speaking of Krav Maga, I've been trying to take it more seriously of late -- I really need to "test up" into the next-level class, but it's hard to stay committed. Again, it's not the work, it's the logistics. I really only have time to go three days a week, and I can't even keep up that schedule, because every time S goes out of town or is otherwise unavailable to pick up the kids for the night, I have to skip my class. The next test date is July 7 (having it on a Saturday also doesn't help), but I have to miss all next week because S is gone, and then I'm missing two more weeks in June for vacation, and it's apparently not the type of test you should take unless you are "studying" hard leading up to it.
So, I'll just remain a level-one patzer a little longer. It's not that bad, but I'm well past the inflection point and now getting diminishing returns. I need more of a challenge. The big thing is the intensity of the training partner. Sometimes instructors-in-training come to level one to practice working with less skilled people, and I train with them, and I get so much more out of it. On the days I get a particular weak partner, it's more of a conditioning class than a self-defense class, which is okay, but if I wanted to take a conditioning class I would just take a conditioning class. (Actually, I do, once a week I do strength and conditioning instead of self-defense, and it's awesome. You do all sorts of over-the-top, strongman-competition shit like flip tires and drag chains and carry boulders and swing sledge hammers. I don't know if that makes you stronger than just doing the machines, but it certainly is more fun.)
One thing Krav Maga has taught me is how worthless a typical person would be in serious fight. Sometimes we do stress drills, where you have to close your eyes, so you don't know when an attack is coming, or you have to do a bunch of burpees and then defend yourself when your tired -- and unless your muscles and mind are trained through repetition to handle the situation, everything just goes to shit. This is true even in a relatively basic, controlled simulation like a level-one self-defense class; imagine what would happen when shit got real. That's why this article from The Onion is so funny (the video too). People -- well, men, really -- have such an inflated sense of their own physical toughness and ability to handle stressful combat.
And to bring it back to politics, this gets at another position I wish the Democrats would adopt: Republicans promote irresponsible gun ownership. As much as some liberals might dream about making all guns illegal and sweeping through the country to collect the ones already out there, it's not a practical solution constitutionally, politically, or logistically. But, what can be done, maybe, is putting stringent training requirements on the most dangerous guns. If you want an AR-15, you have to prove you know how to use it, and, yes, this means government regulations. The honor system ain't working. One thing about trying this route is that it's something that law enforcement and the military understand and could potentially get behind. They know how ridiculous it is to allow any dumbass off the street to buy a weapon of war. I'd use that: Our military spends hours and hours training our soldiers to operate powerful weaponry in stressful situations, and we're so egotistical we think we can be just as safe and effective? Right now our society is super divided on guns, because we're super divided on everything, and it's a black-or-white issue -- you're either "fer" or "agin'" -- even though most people are somewhere in the middle. That's not allowed right now. So, I don't know if anything would work. But if I was a politician, this is the tract I would try.
Well, that's all for this week. Until next time...
This is especially true when few of the promised benefits of cracking down on immigration actually come to bear. As the article points out, Trump hasn't delivered much on this front -- there's no wall, crime rates haven't plummeted, and there is no spate of good, entry-level, industrial jobs in beleaguered communities (because immigrants aren't the actually cause of crime and unemployment). Trump's base will never leave him, but a lot of his voters aren't in his base -- they voted for him and are supporting him reluctantly. And the vast majority of them will do so again in 2020 (and they will vote Republican in the upcoming midterms). But in super close swing elections, stealing one voter from the other side out of 1,000, or getting a small percent of the them to stay home, could be the difference. "People are people," Democrats -- don't be afraid to say it.
Anyway...
In more personal news, I have a week of single-dadding on the horizon, as S has to take one of her work trips to Africa. I'm not exactly looking forward to it. It's not the extra time with my kids that gets to me; it's the added logistical hassle of being the only caretaker. Not being able to leave the house, even for a few minutes, without two kids in tow is brutal. You can't run a quick errand; you can't go for a jog; you can't stop by a happy hour event; you can't do anything. S also spent a few days in Cuba recently for a girl's trip for her birthday, and her parents came up to help, and even though the kids don't really let them do any "work" (I have to get them up and dressed, brush their teeth, entertain them, bathe them, put them to bed, wake up with them in the middle of the night, etc. -- S's mom does cook, however, which is helpful), just having other adults around takes a ton of stress off my shoulders. Also, this time they were able to pick them up from school/daycare, a relatively minor task -- it only takes about 20 minutes total -- but a huge help because it means I don't have to rush home from work, and I can go to my Krav Maga classes, which have become an important bit of self-care for me.
Speaking of Krav Maga, I've been trying to take it more seriously of late -- I really need to "test up" into the next-level class, but it's hard to stay committed. Again, it's not the work, it's the logistics. I really only have time to go three days a week, and I can't even keep up that schedule, because every time S goes out of town or is otherwise unavailable to pick up the kids for the night, I have to skip my class. The next test date is July 7 (having it on a Saturday also doesn't help), but I have to miss all next week because S is gone, and then I'm missing two more weeks in June for vacation, and it's apparently not the type of test you should take unless you are "studying" hard leading up to it.
So, I'll just remain a level-one patzer a little longer. It's not that bad, but I'm well past the inflection point and now getting diminishing returns. I need more of a challenge. The big thing is the intensity of the training partner. Sometimes instructors-in-training come to level one to practice working with less skilled people, and I train with them, and I get so much more out of it. On the days I get a particular weak partner, it's more of a conditioning class than a self-defense class, which is okay, but if I wanted to take a conditioning class I would just take a conditioning class. (Actually, I do, once a week I do strength and conditioning instead of self-defense, and it's awesome. You do all sorts of over-the-top, strongman-competition shit like flip tires and drag chains and carry boulders and swing sledge hammers. I don't know if that makes you stronger than just doing the machines, but it certainly is more fun.)
One thing Krav Maga has taught me is how worthless a typical person would be in serious fight. Sometimes we do stress drills, where you have to close your eyes, so you don't know when an attack is coming, or you have to do a bunch of burpees and then defend yourself when your tired -- and unless your muscles and mind are trained through repetition to handle the situation, everything just goes to shit. This is true even in a relatively basic, controlled simulation like a level-one self-defense class; imagine what would happen when shit got real. That's why this article from The Onion is so funny (the video too). People -- well, men, really -- have such an inflated sense of their own physical toughness and ability to handle stressful combat.
And to bring it back to politics, this gets at another position I wish the Democrats would adopt: Republicans promote irresponsible gun ownership. As much as some liberals might dream about making all guns illegal and sweeping through the country to collect the ones already out there, it's not a practical solution constitutionally, politically, or logistically. But, what can be done, maybe, is putting stringent training requirements on the most dangerous guns. If you want an AR-15, you have to prove you know how to use it, and, yes, this means government regulations. The honor system ain't working. One thing about trying this route is that it's something that law enforcement and the military understand and could potentially get behind. They know how ridiculous it is to allow any dumbass off the street to buy a weapon of war. I'd use that: Our military spends hours and hours training our soldiers to operate powerful weaponry in stressful situations, and we're so egotistical we think we can be just as safe and effective? Right now our society is super divided on guns, because we're super divided on everything, and it's a black-or-white issue -- you're either "fer" or "agin'" -- even though most people are somewhere in the middle. That's not allowed right now. So, I don't know if anything would work. But if I was a politician, this is the tract I would try.
Well, that's all for this week. Until next time...
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