Muay Thai is the Best Martial Art for Consumers

Muay Thai, over all, is the best martial art for most martial arts consumers. I will compare it here to the gold standard of martial arts, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ.) People decide to study martial arts in order to defend themselves in situations where they do not have an advantage:

1. Being attacked by someone with a knife.
2. Being attacked by multiple people.
3. Being attacked by a bigger or stronger person.

In all of those situations, plan A should involve staying on your feet. In all of those situations you need footwork to manage distance with. While boxing seems to cover this more consistently than Muay Thai, Muay Thai training usually does cover this kind of footwork. This is especially critical when being approached with a knife. I have never seen or heard of this being covered in a BJJ class, so that if it is covered, it is rarely emphasized.

In the case of being attacked by multiple people, this is the situation where staying on your feet is most important, because staying on your feet and using footwork makes it harder for everyone to attack you. If you end up on the ground as is plan A with BJJ, it becomes much easier for multiple people to strike you at once, because footwork is then impossible.

In the case of being attacked by a larger opponent, footwork is very helpful for defense. However the two most important offensive tools against a larger opponent are leg kicks and overhand/hooks:

For getting both of those techniques covered in one style, Muay Thai is the obvious choice. If either technique is ever covered in BJJ, those techniques are massively under emphasized. And the same goes for clinch grappling technique: while on one hand Muay Thai has effective strategies for knocking out opponents in the clinch or throwing opponents to the ground from the clinch while staying on your feet, BJJ in the clinch seeks to go to the ground first and always.

But MMA is the best striking style [1], and since MMA is more or less BJJ, BJJ is thus the best striking style [2,] and anyways grappling is more important than striking [3,] and BJJ is the best grappling style [4,] and  has "combatives" and "Combat BJJ," and many BJJ blackbelts are also Judo black belts and everyone knows that Judo kata is great for teaching people how to throw to the ground while staying on your feet [5,] and in the end BJJ has the most ergonomic form of sparring where you can go almost 100% speed and contact [6,] so that therefore BJJ is the best martial art for most martial arts consumers [7,] right? Wrong:

1. We can see that broader rule sets allow for more analysis of weather techniques are effective, which is why MMA is such a valuable tool for critical analysis of techniques in the first place. (For example BJJ has a far broader rule set than wrestling. The techniques which are only found in wrestling that don't get used in BJJ can therefore be seen to be less effective: pins. In a fight, if you get on top in side control and just wait, you risk outside interference.) When this concept is applied to striking, the well known combat sport with the widest variety of technique allowed is Muay Thai. There is a lot of stand up technique from kumite point fighting by the likes of Wonderboy Thompson that is occasionally used in MMA, but which is virtually never seen in high level Muay Thai fights. What this tells is is that MMA is not as good as Muay Thai for striking technique that people need for self defense situations like weapons or multiple attackers, because it promotes stand up striking technique that almost always fails in Muay Thai.
2. In the first few UFCs BJJ people like to show as an example of why BJJ is supposedly the best martial art, the biggest size difference victory was actually a Kempo guy knocking out a 600 pound Sumo guy using an overhand right striking attack. In later UFCs, Muay Thai ended up being more important than BJJ. Grappling is only inevitable against trained grapplers. Trained grapplers usually don't roam the street looking for victims.
3. When in a self defense situation, stand up clinch and striking is much more important against multiple opponents than submission grappling on the ground. The key to victory in such self defense situations is mobility, which you lose when you hit the ground. Most people who attack others on the street are not trained grapplers anyways, unlike in an MMA fight. Pulling guard on one of two people trying to punch you in the face is the best way to get punched in the face by both people at once.
4. BJJ has holes in it comparable to Wrestling. Neither allow significant amounts of striking, and striking has been proven to a very effective part of a ground fighting strategy in MMA. While Wrestling overspecializes in pinning the opponent, BJJ also overspecializes in various low % techniques when it comes to likely success in MMA. Both BJJ and Wrestling are missing important concepts from each other's styles as well. In fact I know of only one complete grappling style, and that is MMA itself. The best style of grappling is MMA, not BJJ, and yes any MMA fan can observe that there is a world of difference between MMA and BJJ.
5. If Judo matches and randori are any indicator, Judo kata is a terrible non-sparring way to practice staying on your feet when you throw, as evidence by the fact that in Judo this rarely happens, and when it does happen it's often is such a technical, subtle way that a casual onlooker wouldn't notice the thrower actually did anything useful at all by MMA standards. Yes Judo is great for taking people down, and sorry it's terrible for staying on your feet. Likewise the lack of striking sparring associated with BJJ combatives is reminiscent of the non-existing strikes in Judo sparring, even though they have some striking in kata. It's almost like BJJ got it's striking in kata only traditions from Judo. As for Combat BJJ, that is unicorn rare stuff like Kudo or Combat Sambo, all three of which have a strong preference to going to the ground when you throw.
6. The more authentic your Muay Thai, the lighter contact your free sparring is. If boxing sparring is spastic hard, it's grappling equivalent is injury-prone wrestling. If BJJ is extremely laid back and ergonomic compared to wrestling, BJJ's striking equivalent would be Muay Thai. However I have done my share of Muay Thai and BJJ sparring, and I must say that the occasional lumps, bloody noses and black eye injuries from Muay Thai and other contact striking sports healed very quickly compared to the elbow and shoulder soft issue injuries I have gotten doing BJJ, and Muay Thai does not share BJJ's reputation for stress on the lower back.
7. Let's say we have 2 different people train for a year, one in Muay Thai one one in BJJ, and at the end of that year you have them first fight each other one on one, and then have them each alone fight the same three joggers from the local YMCA. The BJJ person will definitely lose against the three joggers, but will have a 50/50 chance of getting the Muay Thai fighter on the ground before getting stopped by strikes (BJJ is notoriously weak on all stand up and throwing techniques in the first year of training.) The person who did Muay Thai will not only have a 50% chance of stopping the BJJ fighter, he will also have about a 90% chance of taking out all 3 joggers. The average martial arts consumer is not trying to become a life-long martial artist, and therefore Muay Thai is far and above the best martial art for martial arts consumers.

For the average martial arts consumer what martial art is the best for:

• Fighting multiple opponents? Muay Thai.
• Fighting an armed opponent? Muay Thai.
• Fighting a larger opponent? Muay Thai.
• Being easy to learn? Muay Thai.
• Being fast to learn? Muay Thai.
• Being the most efficient for producing results for how much TIME you put into it? Muay Thai.
• Being the most efficient for producing results for how much MONEY you put into it? Muay Thai.
• Being the most efficient for producing results for how much injury you endure? Muay Thai.
• Fighting at longer kicking range? Muay Thai.
• Fighting at clinch range when strikes are likely to happen? Muay Thai.
• Staying on your feet when you throw someone? Muay Thai.
• Learning how to punch someone in the face when they are trying to kick you in the leg? Muay Thai.
• Learning how to kick someone in the leg when they are trying to punch you in the face? Muay Thai.
• Learning evasive footwork so you can escape? Muay Thai.
• Females holding their own when attacked in a parking lot? Muay Thai.
• Safety? Muay Thai.
• Fun? Muay Thai.
• Ergonomics? Muay Thai.
• Getting in touch with your primal self? Muay Thai.
• Using as a base from which to learn other martial arts? Muay Thai.
• Having as a first martial art to learn basic martial arts principles and simple techniques? Muay Thai.
• Tradition and honor? Muay Thai.
• Understanding Traditional Martial Arts Techniques? Muay Thai.
• Cross training in to make sure you have your basics covered? Muay Thai.
• Learn deadly street fighting techniques? Muay Thai.
• Learn what how to really use those moves you learned in your Tai Chi class? Muay Thai.
• Building strength and flexibility for longevity? Muay Thai.
• Getting in shape? Muay Thai.
• Understanding eastern philosophy? Muay Thai.
• Getting in touch with how your ancestors probably defended themselves? Muay Thai.
• Doing traditional rituals? Muay Thai.
• Getting away from ranks and focusing more on pure skill development? Muay Thai.
• Getting away from strange uniforms you wouldn't want to be seen wearing in public? Muay Thai.
• Avoiding LARPing in Martial Arts? Muay Thai.
• Avoiding organizational/hierarchical tendencies towards cult-like behavior? Muay Thai.
• Being as close to MMA as possible to have exposure to developing techniques and strategies not found in Muay Thai? Muay Thai.
• Being compatible with TMA so that you can develop techniques not allowed in Muay Thai? Muay Thai.
• Learning magical-looking self defense powers like Aikido people train to do? Muay Thai.

It doesn't have to be this way. Almost any Traditional Martial Art can (and in some place in the world has) adopted Muay Thai's general focus on remaining standing on their feet while trying to put the opponent on the ground and get in more strikes than the opponent, all practiced through generous helpings of free sparring. My least favorite martial art is Olympic Karate because of Kumite Point Fighting, but even those nerds can shine like when they they have the same best practices as Muay Thai:

3D Abortion

There are a lot of theories about who votes for who in the USA. But the fact is that most people who vote conservative can't be persuaded to vote progressive for primarily one reason: Abortion. The most important thing they can vote for is getting a president who will stack the supreme court with conservative justices that will allow states to defy Roe vs. Wade, if not overturn Roe vs. Wade.

It's that simple. NPR listeners will known that many a Trump supporter's 2nd choice in 2016 was Bearnie Sanders. Today's conservative populists are potential supporters of many progressive agenda items. But are they going to sign on with baby killing? Nope.

But abortion is NOT that simple. As a progressive who has spent time in intercity communities, I can tell you that abortion is very important to keeping our society going. You don't want kids in our society being raised by women who wanted to abort them. A conservative may look at his 3 kids and his neighbor's 3 kids and ask "which of these children should have never been born?" But what he does not appreciate is the world those children live in would be far more dangerous if people who did NOT live his conservative lifestyle were raising more kids than they are now.

But that conservative does not only oppose abortion because abortion prevents childbirth. It's not just that abortion is wrong according to his view on the Bible. A fetus itself is a relatively intelligent organism which in a perfect world would not be subjected to pain or destruction, which is why various progressives are anti-abortion as well.

But it goes much deeper than that: what if your son gets his girlfriend pregnant, how can you defend that fetus from its mother if she decides to get an abortion? That fetus would be that conservative's grandchild. And this gets immediately to the real issue at hand, which is the reproductive rights of males, which categorically do not exist. When abortion is legal men have almost no reproductive rights what so ever.

A man can not have a baby without a woman's consent, but a woman can have a baby without a man's consent. Once that baby is born, how that baby is raised is primarily up to the woman, and this is all reinforced through our court system. The mom has the final say on the child's education, upbringing, religion, all of it. If a conservative's son gets his girlfriend pregnant, how can that conservative protect that fetus from being raised as a hedonistic criminal?

Both sides of the Abortion argument are:

1. 100% correct and virtuous.
2. Totally blind to the other side.

There is no easy answer to the abortion question. However we can and should reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Birth control should be free and strongly encouraged among all females not specifically trying to have children. This protects the women as they have to make important decisions for their own life, this protects any men they may be involved with from unwanted life changing surprises, and makes it less likely for abortions to happen in the first place.

But the intellectual laziness we have fallen into on this issue will continue to divide the USA, wreaking havoc on our political process for the foreseeable future. If we do not get into some serious 3D Thinking on abortion soon, it will continue to take the USA into darker and darker political futures.

3D Thinking

I am very talented at holding opposed opinions simultaneously. I am not sure WHY this is, it could be because of:

• My extensive formal training in human systems theory, which taught me to value the perspective of others while simultaneously pursuing a larger truth.
• Being raised first very Church-going knee-jerk 1980's conservative, then later as an adult to have my political views change drastically, forever imprinting in my mind the value of discovering when I am wrong.
• Exposure to an MLM scam that was considered socially acceptable by my community but which I eventually realized was basically criminal, forever imprinting in my mind that the status quo does not protect us.
• Growing up with 3 military bases in one county, there was a tremendous amount of martial arts knowledge combined with a transient population, so that martial arts schools were constantly coming and going, forcing me to pick up martial arts knowledge from different martial arts with drastically different strategies and techniques.

But I know people who have had at some of those experiences above who are not as good at holding opposing opinions simultaneously. "Cognitive dissonance" is the stress caused holding conflicting beliefs. Why I entertain opposing views simultaneously is probably due to the above experiences along with a gifted tolerance for cognitive dissonance.

This results in what I call "3D Thinking." We see in 3 dimensions only when we can see from both eyes, as both eyes are different viewpoints. If we look at a cone from the top we see it is a circle, if we look at a cone from the side we see that it is a triangle. The cone can only be fully appreciated for what it is when you look at it from the side and top simultaneously.

In order to do 3D Thinking you have to truly believe that others you disagree with have valuable opinions that are well thought out. You seek opinions you disagree with in an effort to get a more accurate picture of a situation for yourself. To do 3D Thinking, if you are on team circle that sees the cone as a circle, you must absolutely hunt down team triangle and get every piece of knowledge you can from them on why they believe the cone is a triangle, or you will never discover the truth that the cone is a cone. You must have contempt for the limits of what you already believe!

Let's take my views on Gun Control for example. As a progressive is I am concerned that guns are dangerous and all together too common, and I give side eye to the legal arguments behind around the 2nd Amendment. But looking at "guns = freedom" more deeply, two issues immediately emerge:

1. The more rural the environment, the more likely you are to be confronted with wildlife that is trying to kill you. An assault riffle seems entirely more necessary when being stalked by a pack of coyotes in Kitsap County than when being confronted by an aggressive panhandler in Seattle. To this end, guns literally improve our mobility in wilderness areas with predators capable of preying on us. Guns do, under certain circumstance, protect our freedom.
2. In the second amendment there is this language used around the phrase "militia." Militia members I am aware of are weekend warrior gun nuts. You know what these people never do? They never let their firearms end up in the hands of gang members, they never let their children accidentally shoot themselves with firearms, they never commit crimes with these weapons.

So the real problem then is casual consumers getting into weapons they have no appropriate training in. What is wanted then is regulation on who owns firearms, not what type of firearms should be owned. The Utopian standard would be a gun owner's license roughly equivalent to a driver's license. Strangely TEXAS ALREADY HAS THAT SYSTEM, arguably tested and ready for national adoption: 

But most people can't see it, because they have chosen one side of the argument and can't handle the cognitive dissonance needed to entertain the other side of the argument. In fact many people demonize others with 3D thinking, accusing them of hypocrisy or being two-faced. But understand when you read my blog, I am not satisfied with your two dimensional views.

Small Government Creates Small Economy

This is an "I told you so" post on my theory that socialism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin, and that a reduction of socialism results in a reduction of capitalism . But here I also am warning there are other huge parts of our economy that are disastrously under regulated, and they are also going to cause major problems in the future. In 2015, renowned Capitalist/Captain of Industry Bill Gates gave the following prophecy of doom predicting our current COVID-19 pandemic:

Also in 2015 President Obama set up The Office of International Health and Biodefense specifically to deal with pandemics.  In 2016 Trump was elected on a wave of anti-government Tea Party sentiment, and true to his supporters President Trump left many cabinet positions understaffed, underfunded, and in many cases totally unfilled. This led to the gutting of The Office of International Health and Biodefense, which President Trump specifically state was to save money on government spending:

To be clear, the World Health Organization started asking countries to take drastic action in February. New Zealand was able to take the sort of swift action we would have taken if our Office of International Health and Biodefense had been in tact, and this is opening their economy much faster than what we will be able to do in the USA. But we had no one even assigned to our Office of International Health and Biodefense when that WHO conversation happened, so we were caught totally flat footed. As a result, the COVID-19 virus was able to spread for weeks if not months longer, causing magnitudes more damage to our economy.

The formula is simple: Small Government = Small Economy.

There are 3 main types of pyramid schemes: Ponzi Schemes, Classic Pyramid Schemes, and Multi-Level Marketing (MLM). What makes MLM companies different from Ponzi and Pyramid Schemes is a concentrated effort to make the scheme appear "Legal." However when MLMs are brought to court, their business structure NEVER holds up to serious legal scrutiny!

To give you an idea of how pervasive MLM is in our economy, in 2017 MLM did $35,000,000,000 in sales. Holywood had a very good year in 2017 and made $43,000,000,000. That means a segment of our economy comparable to the media industry, IS A HUGE SCAM SUCKING MONEY OUT OF THE ECONOMY INTO THE HANDS OF SCAM ARTISTS/CRIMINALS. In MLM, the customer buys a business, and in return gets completely ripped off. Over 99% of people who join MLMs lose money! This takes would be entrepreneurs and financially ruins them, it's the most financially devastating thing to the potential of our economy I can imagine. MLM shouldn't be allowed at all, and the full economic damage can't really be understood until we end the practice and see what that $35,000,000,000 recycled back into our economy year after year actually does for us.

The problem is that MLM has corrupted our government:

1. The Podesta Group is a lobbying powerhouse serving the Democrats. In an ultimate conflict of interests, they also serve notorious MLM Herbalife. This influenced the Clintons, but has even recently influenced other Democrat presidential candidates.
2. President Trump is something of a pyramid Pharaoh himself promoting both ACN and the "Trump Network."
3. Trump has Betsy Devos in his cabinet, who is the wife of the Pharoah of the most famous MLM of all AMWAY!
4. He has Steve Mnuchin in his cabinet, who made 3 million dollars in Madoff's famous pyramid scheme.
5. The big sports stadium in Orlando Florida is actually called "The Amway Center." It would be less criminal to name a sports stadium in Chicago "The Al Copone Center."
6. Many other lesser known politicians such as Orin Hatch have been completely purchased by the MLM criminal industry.
7. The entire Bush political dynasty has been heavily influenced by Amway and continues to associate with them:

Like our small government approach to COVID-19, our small government regulation of MLM isn't going to end well for us. Pyramid Schemes, like other government corruption, has leveled nation states before:

A Cop is a Krampus

Me and the law went our separate ways in my undergrad Human Services program at WWU. Two of my internships made me realize that though law enforcement is necessary to keep us all mindful of obeying the laws of the land, law enforcement per say NEVER pursues our own self interest.

1. The FBI failed to get records requested from Seattle Indymedia where I was an intern studying NPO management, so they actually physically confiscated our servers (not actually a big deal for hackers who were laying the social and technological foundations of what would later become Wikipedia.) 
2. At the King County Jail in downtown Seattle as an intern serving as an assistant teacher for ESL and GED classes, I began to realize that many of my innocent students were "pleading guilty for time served." Time served is the time you spend in jail for your day in court, so if your punishment is time served, that means you get to leave jail immediately, but with a criminal record. The more responsibilities they had outside of jail (family, work, etc.) the more likely they would take a guilty plea to get back to those responsibilities. The real professional criminals without much outside responsibility were actually more likely to be declared innocent by a court, because they had all the time in the world to fight the accusation.

Since college I have had a few brushes with the law, and though none of it has resulted in my having a criminal record, I have learned a few very important details you need to know if you don't know already:

1. As soon as any law enforcement does anything even remotely like reading you your rights, like saying anything like "you have a right to an attorney," or "you don't have to speak to me if you don't want to," or "anything you say can be used against you," any ONE of those things, declare you will not speak to them any further without your lawyer there, and then do NOT speak to them further.
2. ANYTHING you say to them they will try to find a legal problem with and charge you for. I must emphasize this again: there are many, many laws. Several times a year most of us without knowing commit felonies or misdemeanors that could result in criminal records destroying our career. Once law enforcement starts getting info from you, it's no-holds-barred with how they are going to take you apart - if they have to talk to you, you need to learn your lesson, PERIOD.
3. This is because by that point, they have already decided you are guilty. NOTHING you can say to them, show them, point out to them, etc. will change their mind. If you have video footage of your innocence or if you have direct witnesses of your innocence they will use that information to try to find you guilty of a completely unrelated crime, they have already decided you are going down. At this point your ONLY chance of being declared innocent before a trial IS YOUR LAWYER.
4. $7,000 might sound like a lot of money, but compared to the damage law enforcement hopes to do to your life, it's nothing, it's frivolous by comparison. The law is designed to make an example out of you - not so much for breaking the law - but for wasting law enforcement's time for not avoiding the APPEARANCE of evil! Most lawyers have a payment plan if you don't have the cash. Some lawyers might take your case for a lot less.
5. Keep this change in the bank, do whatever it takes to save $7,000 and keep it there. If you don't need it, a loved one most likely will eventually!

The media is very misleading about how law enforcement really works in real life. The creators of media are mostly English majors with no life experience saturated in postmodern ideology, and are either writing from the cops perspective or from the criminals perspective, both completely irrelevant to the innocent in real life. Law Enforcement are the monsters creeping around in the dark to punish bad children who don't listen to their parents. A cop is a Krampus or boogey man, meant to scare us into being mindful of the law. But if a Cop/Krampus is reading you your rights you must lawyer up immediately, because all they are doing now is trying to make an example out you: