The Walking Dead Got Aikido Right 2

I was absolutely triggered yesterday by an Aikido video correctly explaining that O' Sensei was of the opinion that Aikido in practice would be over 50% atemi (striking.) The Aikido master in that video understood very little about atemi, and it was right there on camera just how wrong he and his students were about simple things (maai/distance) anyone taking a kickboxing class would understand after a few rounds of sparring:

But why would I assume anyone in the Aikido world would know enough about martial arts to waste my time watching any such video? There's this urban legend called "Hatenkai Aikido" that seems to be a lot more like what some of us were exposed to in the the late-80's/early-90's, than what you see in most Aikido classes today:

But in North America this art is no where to be seen. The next best thing, Tomiki Aikido, is so rare that I have never actually encountered a practitioner of it in person. However there are honest efforts in mainstream Aikido to revitalize it, such as Lenny Sly's efforts:

But it is no secret that I believe O' Sensei intended Aikido to be a modern Saumarai art, and most of his sparring was sumo or with the boken. I think Aikido's value to the martial art's world today is as an improvised weapon system for using things like walking sticks or butcher knives to fend off opponents, a practical application of what O' Sensei actually taught:

Any other explanation of Aikido asks us to believe very condemning things about the art:

1. O' Sensei was so delusional that he thought a regimen of very basic wrist lock kata, foot work drills and Chi Kung could prepare you to fight multiple opponents, OR
2. He wasn't that delusional, only his current generation of followers are.

Aikido isn't the only walking stick system designed for handling multiple opponents, in fact that is rather the point of "walking softly and carrying a big stick." Consider for example the traditional self defense art of Portugal and Spain, the "game of sticks":

O' Sensei grew up in a world of military evil and tons of firearms. His definition of "non-violent" was "don't rape them, stab them with your bayonet and burn their body with the rest of their village" as Japanese warriors of his era were notorious for. O' Sensei was an experienced enough marital artist to know that the joint locks he taught as his primary unarmed finishing strategy were very injurious, likely to permanently cripple an attacker in his age where they did not have access to the advanced sports medicine we enjoy today. In other words, for O' Sensei, stabbing someone once in the stomach or giving them a concussion with a walking stick would have been just as "non-violent" as his arm-breaking and throwing-people-on-their-head techniques.

Aikido schools are closing, the internet generation is too hip to take Aikido seriously, and Aikido is dying off, serving as an example of cultural Darwinism. How do you explain Aikido to people?

• You can't say "it's a type of Japanese Tai Chi" because you are so ethnocentric on your martial arts views that you can't accept the obvious fact that Aikido is derivative of Chinese internal martial arts of one generation or another. 
• You can't say to them "Aikido is a more sophisticated style of Sumo for average people to defend themselves with" because you don't spar enough with Aikido techniques to be able to match up those techniques with O' Sensei's personal martial arts history. 
• You can't say "it's Samurai arts for self defense" even though that is how you are dressed, because of your self-assured, self-congratulatory philosophy which leads you to the worst possible ethic for any martial art - pacifism - as it justifies you being too lazy to spar. 

Because of the internet, the popularity of combat sports will continue to explode, leaving less and less consumers interested in traditional martial arts. When I was trying to explain to kids the influence Aikido has had on the weapon technique we use, I showed the kids the following video by the leader of the Aikikai Foundation so these kids would know what Aikido was, and they laughed it to scorn associating it with humor videos on YouTube about fake martial arts:

Most Aikido fails to deliver on its promises to students even worse than other traditional martial arts, so it will probably cease to exist as we know it today within a generation. Like it or not, The Walking Dead got Aikido right!

Update: I have a continuation of this idea involving Ninjitsu!