Of Aardvarks and Zebras - Politics and Me

I very rarely engage in political debate. Some have pointed out that this habit is very odd, for a lawyer. After all, don't lawyers like arguing? Especially about matters legal?

I have thought about that for a while, and this is my answer.

I do not judge people based off their words. Fact is, words are just too easy. Too easy to say, repeat, and eventually start believing. A man can build entire illusory palaces with his words, worlds that become real over time. So real, in fact, that he will start attacking anyone who threatens his ephemeral creation. It gets too easy to get embroiled in conflicts over things which ultimately are not real.

My first question, when considering any source of opinions, is "What has this person done? What do they really know, and what is just bullshit that they are guessing about?"

There is a certain authority that comes from taking action, and having real experience. I can talk about war, but my words are academic. They pale in comparison to those have gone through the visceral experience of life and death struggle in the service of one's country, witnessing the rending of flesh and the death of comrades. I can speak about war as an intellectual concept, but I do not know it.

And you bet your ass that when someone who actually knows war talks about it, I listen to his opinion and give it a hell of a lot of weight, because it ain't bullshit and speculation. The rest of us, despite how educated and respectful we might be, are only making guesses.

The guesses are not worthless. Some guesses have lead to revolutions in the way we live. But I give those guesses a certain weight. It is considerably less than observations based on direct experience.

This is why I avoid many political discussions.

In our political discourse, this country has developed a cottage industry of professional "opinion-havers", who say much but have rarely, if ever, actually had their "boots on the ground" in the areas they speak so passionately about.  I have a hard time having any meaningful dialogue with these people, or any of their devoted sycophants.

Strangely, it is often these people who are guessing the hardest that are the most vocal in their opinions. I am not a psychologist, but I suspect this is based off the insecurity that comes off of pure "guesswork". Look at it this way: if you've never seen a certain animal, and you think it is an aardvark, your conclusion is a pure construct of thought. The aardvark is a guess. If someone says it isn't an aardvark, their opinion is a real threat - it is an idea, just like yours. The two compete on equal footing. On the other hand, if I see a zebra with my own eyes, touch it with my hands, and know it's a zebra, you can call it an aardvark if you want to. That won't particularly threaten me. While I am willing to listen to your logic... I know I saw a fucking zebra. It isn't a mental construct. It ain't guesswork, either.

Knowledge and experience.

I'll share a particular illumination I experienced about immigration and this country. Like many Americans, I believed that coming here illegally was wrong and unfair to the citizens of this country. It was a nice, tidy, easy unilateral idea. Then, as an assistant public defender, I had the opportunity to really talk with and work with many people who had come here illegally. In my experience, the vast majority were decent, hard-working, and humble people. In fact, I found many of them to be more decent, hard-working, and humble than many natural-born Americans.

I had a good discussion with one man in particular, from Juarez, in Mexico. If you haven't been reading the papers, this is one of the most violent parts of the world, outside of war zones. The violence perpetrated by drug cartels is unbelievable. People are gruesomely and horrifically murdered. This man told me about his life there. He had a wife and three children. The picture he painted of his daily life was visceral and deeply unsettling. Nothing in his life was untouched by the shroud of violence and corruption that hung over that place. He explained that his options were to stay in that hellhole of misery and violence, at the mercy of corrupt government and drug cartels, or illegally come to the United States.

I imagined what it would be like if I was in his position. I imagined if my family was in such danger, and there was a safe place I could get to within a day's drive. It didn't take long to figure out what my decision would be if my wife and child were on the line: I'd do what he did, and I wouldn't lose a millisecond of sleep over it. Maybe this makes me ignoble, immoral or unpatriotic. I'm willing to live with those labels, but I suspect that there are a lot of folks out there that agree with me that the safety of their family trumps damn near everything.

How am I any better than that man? I won the freaking lottery. I was born to educated parents in a free country where people have rights and a good shot at prosperity. I didn't chose that. I just lucked into it. His situation was the reverse. From a moral standpoint, I just can't bring myself to look down on him. It is easy to talk about what he should or shouldn't have done when we, ourselves, have not been in that particular crucible.

I still agree that it isn't good for people to come here illegally, but that idea is seasoned with what I've learned from people that have really had to wrestle with the problem from a very human position. People who know that problem. Not just the talking heads.

Having said all this, I guess the reason I rarely discuss politics with people is that I have little to no desire to argue over imaginary aardvarks. I am willing to engage in political discussion, but it is only with people that A) are not trying to bludgeon me with a perceived threat to their imaginary aardvark and B) will appreciate a pure idea for what it is - an educated guess that always weighs less than actual zebra experience.

Introduction: Safety First Posts

One of the byproducts of training in martial arts for about a decade is the periodic "Will you teach me basic self-defense?" that I get from friends and family. What these seekers inevitably have in mind is an investment of an hour in which they can learn some "stuff" to use in a situation where they are threatened. My general policy has been to respond politely, but firmly, in the negative.

It ain't cause I'm worried about giving away the magic.

I've inherited some of my teacher's beliefs. He always called these little self-defense primers "bag of tricks" sessions and condemned them pretty strongly.  His reasoning was fairly simple: martial arts isn't simple. A martial art is a collection of complex skills that have to be honed over time, through a process of intensive, focused repetition. Retaining access to all the education you get in martial arts while under the influence of stress takes years of exposure and desensitization.

Ever heard the phrase "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing?" In few places is this more true that martial practices. The worst thing I could do for someone would be to give them a few extremely rudimentary skills, and endanger them with a false and unrealistic belief in their own ability to defend themselves in a violent situation. It would be like sending someone into a gun fight armed with a feather duster. Thus my firm "no".

About a year ago, I decided to say "yes", but on my own terms.

My friend asked me the inevitable question regarding my "stuff", and in that moment, a devious plan formed in my mind.

Instead of turning her down, I said, "Sure thing. I'm up in Tampa on Saturday anyway. There's a place I go up there to work on my stuff. We can meet up there at 6:30, before I'm set to meet everyone else. Just wear comfy clothes."

She agreed and I gave her the address.

I pulled up in front of the place and leaned against my car. I took out my phone and waited. See, she is a total gadget-lover, and I knew that her smart phone would be dictating the directions to her. I knew that at some point, she would figure out the problem with my plan. The phone buzzed in my hand.

"Pat, I think you gave me the wrong address!"

"I might have," I said, "Go ahead and read it back to me."

She did. "Nope, you've got it perfectly."

"But this is a Starbucks!"

"Exactly. I'm out front in my red pullover."

"I thought you said you came here to do martial arts sometimes!"

"I said I come here sometimes to work on my stuff. The beauty of the term 'stuff' is that it is inclusive... it is martial arts, but it is also a lot of other things."

"You're going to throw me around in the Starbucks parking lot?"

"Even better. I'm going to talk about some stuff that will make you safer."

I could tell she was disappointed, but she agreed to humor me. She pulled into the parking lot and we went in and got some coffee. (Well, in truth, I got a latte.. I think Starbucks has terribly burnt coffee. I can't remember what she got.)

We sat down at that point, and I talked to her. I think it took about an hour to peg down all the details. We went through all of her daily habits and I gave her some safety advice. I suspect I did more good in that one hour than I could have done with a few days of teaching her how to crank on someone's wrist or bust them in the face.

This began the evolution of a process. I've now shared this information in a similar fashion (minus the Starbucks ruse) quite a few times now. It was, in fact, just such a sharing that prompted me to write this in the first place. ("You really ought to write this down somewhere!") The following is a collection of information which I think is useful safety information, which frankly will probably keep you safer than even the fattest "bag of tricks".

Who am I to share it? Certainly no expert of any kind. I'm not an expert in martial arts, criminology, sociology, psychology, or military strategy. What I am is a guy who spent half a decade dealing with street crime as part of my job, and spent more than a little bit of that time talking to criminals in a very candid nature about what they did and why. This advice is the embodiment of a lot of the very predictable, over-arching patterns I saw in civilian criminal violence in this country.

All of the posts related to this topic will carry the label "Safety First".