The most useful rating system from my POV is a 4 star scale, because people's opinions have limited precision for other people. It's hard to be more useful than "horrible = one star, mediocre = two stars, good = three, and amazing =four stars." Here I am going to extrapolate that to the level of truth of claims about martial arts:
One Star = Mythical. These are ideas that are generally unrelated to reality. An example of such an idea is "if I practice Tai Chi forms long enough, I can develop useful fighting skills without any other type of practice."
Two Stars = Hypothetical. These are ideas that some find helpful in their training, but which do not yet have consistent repeatable results through peer reviewed research. An example of such a claim is "I can feel my Qi when I am practicing my Tai Chi forms."
Three Stars = Theoretical. These are ideas that appear to be rooted in reality, and typically have peer reviewed research backing them up. An example of such a claim is "Tai Chi helps old people develop better balance and avoid injury."
Four Stars = Factual. These are ideas that are unavoidable hard facts of life, proven universally true over time. An example of such as statement is "like any other martial art, to develop practical fighting skills Tai Chi must include regular free sparring."
Note: You can get a 4 star rating from a 5 star (Likert Scale) survey. In fact 4 star ratings and Likert scales are two sides of the same coin. When you average Likert results they naturally come out on a scale between 1.0 and 5.0, so that virtually all scores come out to be 1.x to 4.x. The Likert scale then for the martial scale of truth would then be: 1 star = criminal: intentional misinformation. 2 stars = mythical: most credible evidence is against, 3 stars = Hypothetical: helpful for some but lacks evidence, 4 stars = Theoretical: most evidences suggests this is true, 5 stars = Factual: obviously true.
I once had a BJJ (Brazillian Jui Jitsu) Apologist suggest to me that I should be grateful that I have had a year of BJJ training, because the rest of my several years of mostly full contact martial arts training had been a huge waste of my life. Considering BJJ's extremely hostile attitude towards other martial arts over the years, I would like to address this extremely misguided notion here and now.
In the course of my security-related professional responsibilities from 2007 to 2017 I was attacked several times on the job and never injured, primarily due to my martial arts training I received in the late 80's through mid 90's. Let's look at what happened, and how using BJJ instead would have changed the outcome.
Veteran
A woman was trying to get into a car while a man who she did not appear to know was yelling sexual insults at her. I approached him asking "do you know her" and he proceeded to throw punches at me for a half of a city block on the side walk before he decided to walk away. I used footwork and head movement from Kickboxing and Aikido to avoid his strikes while staying close enough to him so he would focus on me, so the woman could drive away. I later found out that this attacker was a veteran who was having side effects from back pain medication mixed with alcohol. There were other miscreants observing the situation, but they did not get involved.
Let's look at what BJJ would have had me do instead:
When he threw punches at me, I would have dove for his legs and taken him to the ground.
I would have held him in a dominant position in mount, or gone for a submission.
Either way this would have injured him knowing what we found out later about his health problems.
I would have had to spend a lot more time explaining to the police what happened, and I would have been at risk legally, with possible assault charges.
I would have been let go from my job.
When the other miscreants saw me holding him down, they would have most likely moved in to help him. In that area miscreants usually carry improvised weapons for self defense.
BJJ would have turned a nearly harmless situation for me into a deadly multiple armed attackers scenario, and possibly have gotten me killed or put into prison for assault charges (as I would have been outnumbered as far as witnesses were concerned.)
Shoe Ninja
I was once chasing someone through Seattle's Sodo neighborhood who was having a mental health episode and was in serious physical jeopardy, and I was not allowed to lose direct line of sight of this person. While I was running after them on the side walk, a homeless man jumped at me out of the bushes, perhaps trying to protect the person I was following. This specific stretch of sidewalk often had used syringes on it left behind by heroin users, and this homeless man's presence made that even more likely than usual.
The homeless man started by throwing shoes at me, which I defended against with Aikido footwork and martial arts parries. I used the distancing I learned in Aikido and side stepping from Kickboxing to manage how close he could get to me as I side stepped out in the street to get around him. He was trying to physically escalate with me, but I was past him and on my way before he could get close enough to try to strike me. Shoe Ninja, if you ever read this, I have much respect for the force and accuracy with which you can hurl shoes, I never knew that was possible!
Let's look at what BJJ would have had me do instead:
I would have ran straight directly into the Shoe Ninja for the fastest possible takedown.
I would have held the Shoe Ninja in a dominant position or gone for a submission.
The person for whom I had a professional responsibility to protect during a mental health episode would have kept on running beyond my line of sight while I was trying to grapple the Shoe Ninja.
Again I would have been out witnessed, I was not popular in that neighborhood and there were other people watching, so the legal outcome for me could have had severe consequences.
I would have lost my job.
Possible risk for needle exposure was a known-known at that specific location.
With the training I had this situation was almost harmless to me, but BJJ would have put me on the ground with needles, and the person who I was supposed to be protecting would have been completely exposed to the primary threat they were facing.
Surfer Dude
I once asked a pedestrian to stop loitering in bushes on a length of sidewalk I was responsible for. He was a tall, blonde muscular young man, who's response (probably because of his simultaneous stimulant intake) was to march straight at me trying to grab or hit me. I used Kickboxing and weapon sparring footwork to keep a tree between the two of us as I continued to explain the neighborhood rules and expectations to him. He eventually got distracted and I was able to run away without getting manhandled by this guy (or having to go Mike Tyson on him and/or shut him down with leg kicks.)
Let's look at what BJJ would have had me do instead:
When he came at me, I would have changed levels for a take down.
He was a superior physical specimen to myself, so what kind of dominant position or submission I might have gotten with my two stripe white belt (1 year of casual BJJ training) is highly questionable.
Hopefully I would have gotten a dominant position, but this guy had been to the gym before. The odds are that me being on the ground with this guy would have been really bad for my physical safety.
Again the witnesses in this area were hostile towards me, and in this case there were many witnesses. If I had hurt him bad enough to actually stop him from being a threat to me, assault charges would have been likely.
I would have lost my job.
In this situation BJJ would have taken a dangerous situation I was facing, and made it far more dangerous and hazardous, by prolonging a physical confrontation with someone who might have been able to really hurt me.
Amateur Pharmacist
One time I spent about two years on a corner in Sodo preventing amateur pharmacists from conducting trade at that location. One day I was speaking to my supervisor out on that corner when one of these amateur pharmacists approached us with hostile questions regarding our presence. I stood up and he got in my face, and next thing I knew I was facing his back, as if he had stumbled past me.
What had happened is this amateur pharmacist had reeled in at me with a huge head butt, because of my Tai Chi Push Hands and Kickboxing experience, I had dodged and stepped around his attack out of pure reflex. I had to explain to my supervisor later at length in his office as to why I continued to lecture someone who was trying to physically attack me (apparently the "responsible" thing to do once he had attacked me was for me to leave.)
Let's look at what BJJ would have had me do instead:
When his back was exposed, I would have used a sacrifice take down.
I would have nailed side control with this take down.
I would have been fired before I before I passed to mount.
In this situation BJJ would have taken a situation where I got a stern verbal warning, into a situation where I would have been instead unemployed all together.
Xanax Aficionado
One time I was assigned to a neighborhood near numerous medical institutions where anti-anxiety medications were constantly traded illicitly outside, causing various public health problems. Word on the street was some were not pleased by the reduction in trade I had caused with my enthusiastic presence and optimism for the future of the community.
One day a guy walked up to me and pulled out a knife. He more stumbled towards me than walked, and I could see he might not be able to stumble his way down the street least bit make a serious attack at me with the knife, because he was just too benzo-impaired. Using the distancing I learned in Filipino Martial Arts and other weapon sparring, I stayed close enough to retain his attention but too far for him to hit me with a single lunge.
As he looked down at his knife and back up at me, I decided to use a Jedi mind trick, O' Sensei style. I commanded him that "you have to put that thing away right now, or else you are going to get into a whole lot of trouble!" I pointed my finger directing him to put his knife back into his pocket, and used full body language to demonstrate that I actually expected him to do this. He did, he put the knife back in his pocket and stumbled away.
Let's look at what BJJ would have had me do instead:
Impale my jugular vein on his knife as I try to get a take down.
In this situation BJJ would have massively intensified a dangerous situation I was facing and possibly have gotten me killed.
Mariners Fan
There was another stretch of a street in Sodo I was responsible for, and much to my dismay there was a man taking apart a sign with a baseball bat one morning before the sun came up. Not known for being a morning person myself, I yelled some words of discouragement to the baseball bat armed man. He turned towards me and started crossing the street.
Using distancing and strategy I learned in Aikido and weapon sparring, I kept him several yards away form me as I backed up and called the rest of my team in for help. The largest of us got in front of him and employed verbal deescalation while I and another got behind the base ball fan to take him down from behind should he try to attack. This was a combination of Aikido strategy and pure security experience, and we managed to deescalate instead of having to disarm.
Let's look at what BJJ would have had me do instead:
Intercept this guy in the middle of the street, attempting a take down.
I would have been at risk of getting hit with the bat, but I think I could have dove in and grabbed an ankle and put him on the ground with my shoulder before he got me with the bat, but it would have been risky.
Diving in on the pavement like that would have been risky also, because asphalt is not a mat.
Holding up traffic on a busy street before the sun comes up is dangerous also, we could have easily been hit by a large vehicle while we tussled.
There are legal consequences for getting in avoidable fights that hold up traffic.
I would have been fired.
BJJ would again have taken a dangerous situation and made it far more dangerous.
"Just Run"
I can already hear the BJJ apologist's response that I should have "just run" in all of the above situations. In every one of these situations I had a professional obligation to NOT run, there was property and people who needed to be protected, and I was being paid to protect them. But even off the clock I have had situations where I had elderly or children with me near dangerous individuals who were not fit enough to escape without my protection!
If "just running" is a core strategy in BJJ, then they need to train and spar with running techniques, or else they need to stop claiming to be experts in running away. Most BJJ schools have the mats needed for obstacle training (parkour), and falling practiced in BJJ does have some overlap with obstacle training. However, the fact is the only martial art I know of that includes obstacle training and running away is Ninjitsu, so unless BJJ ups their game and adds some kind of Parkour rules to the IBJJF rule set, I find these BJJ claims of escape proficiency extremely problematic.
We have had a hard time describing what "Tres Espadas" is over the years. The best definition has been "a club for weapon free sparring." Phil Gribbin was clearly the founder of the club. As time went on I was more and more involved with the club. Here I will explain some differences Phil and I had now that we've had time to mourn his death, and what these differences may mean for the future of Tres Espadas.
First though I want to point out that though between the two of us we had studied weapon technique from several experts in several styles, in 2010 none of those experts wanted to do what Phil wanted to do: full contact free sparring with weapons - no calling kill shots, no stopping to listen to judge's opinions, no wasting the precious sparring time that you have with frequent formalities, no spending two thirds of the round getting back into position before resuming sparring. Phil saw what the Dog Brothers were doing, and he wanted to make that safer and more casual so a wider range of friends could participate.
For Phil the entertainment value of watching people fight with weapons was more important than any specific technique being mastered. Phil was skilled at fighting with weapons as he demonstrated many times, but it was more important for him that people had fun. Because of this, it was important to Phil that the weapons look like weapons. Phil believed this had the added benefit of making the fighter react to attacks more as if that fighter was being attacked by a real weapon, but the main reason for the LARP weapons was for the spectacle.
I have had a life long passion for both games and martial arts since I was a young teenager. I have never been comfortable mixing the two together, and I am known to be very uncomfortable around people who are LARPing. The biggest disagreement Phil and I had was over sparring equipment - I wanted it to look like martial arts training gear, but Phil didn't want the interference of martial arts organizations that might attract. Phil won primarily because most of the safety gear that was high quality enough to spar with full contact and without significant regular injury was high end LARP gear.
At first most of the Tres Espadas participants were people with martial arts backgrounds from either traditional Asian martial arts, combat sports, or from people used to fighting in the SCA. At that time it was critical for Tres Espadas to NOT have a curriculum, because it was a research laboratory and we wanted as little bias as possible messing with this style vs. style experiment. Beyond that, Phil was very interested in what effect the shape and reach of weapons would have for different combinations of weapons being used against each other.
But it we had a number of newbies who wanted to do Tres Espadas without having significant previous martial arts experience. At this point I started to ask Phil some very hard questions. His vision, when we reduced it down to the very core, was the Gladiatorial Arenas of ancient Rome. When I accused Phil of essentially wanting to throw newbies to the wolves, he responded "Yes, like Christians to the Lions... Weapon fighting is natural, pain will teach them what not to do."
But it wasn't long before newbies were insisting we teach them something about technique. Phil opened his personal library, a collection of most of the Cold Steel instructional videos, and notes about the weapon technique from our previous training in Filipino and Chinese martial arts. We did not hold lineage in any system, and we had become convinced that any such association or lineage would actually impair the progress of Tres Espadas because of the politics that are inevitably involved in most martial arts organizations.
Unlike Phil most newbies didn't have the appetite to watch dozens of hours of instruction and pouring over old hand written notes over and over again. This is when we came up with the Tres Espadas badge system: each badge was a crash course in how to use each major type of weapon in Tres Espadas. We tried to keep the badges short enough to be completed in one day, and we tried to reduce the amount of techniques in the badges to only the most useful techniques for free sparring (not all techniques that work in stop and go sparring work well in free sparring, and most weapon martial arts in our area at the time did only did stop and go sparring if they sparred at all.)
The badge system however was still too time consuming, and beginners were not getting up to speed fast enough. Also without a uniform - and we were most decidedly against uniforms - where would the badges even go? To this day in the Tres Espadas supplies there are unused little weapon badges meant to go on martial arts uniforms, which we never did figure out how to use. Because of all of this, plus safety concerns for newbies, we beefed up the Tres Espadas orientation to include enough basic weapon technique that newbies would have some basic idea of how to protect themselves in a free sparring round.
And just as we were perfecting that, Phil died. A few years before Phil died, we were approached by real martial arts experts (Lamont Glass of the Black Bird Training Group and Belton Lubas of Warrior's Strength Martial Arts) who were putting together a Dog Brothers style gathering here in Western Washington, to be called the Pacific North West Warrior Tipon Tipon (or Tipon.) Over time it has proven itself to be a gentler, kinder, more newbie friendly gathering than what you typically see at Dog Brothers, and they intentionally attracted the widest variety of martial artists they can at this local Tipon. We considered this project to be extraordinarily important, and we did all we could to get the word out for the first one, but we were not convinced we should participate. One of them told us that they needed a wide variety of opponents and that we should come, even if we didn't think we were "good enough." We didn't make it that first year, and the second year Phil and I showed up as spectators. After Phil's death I participated in the 3rd year, and there has been Tres Espadas participation in most of those Tipons since.
It turns out that they were right about what we had to offer to the Tipon, even though none of us claim to be martial arts masters. But this had a very significant impact on Tres Espadas, which is it forced us to have two separate sets of safety gear: fencing helmets for fighting at Tipons, versus the plastic face shield karate helmets that wouldn't be too hard on the expensive LARP weapons (because the fencing masks literally grate the latex skin of the LARP weapons.)
Up until Phil's death, two gear problems haunted Tres Espadas after all of our research and financial investment into sparring gear. First, we never had neck protection that we felt was adequate - the longer the weapon - for reasons we don't completely understand - the more likely it is to end up in your opponent's throat, regardless of your intentions. Second, we could never get any weapons LARP gear manufacturer to make a sword short enough for us to use as a machete while sparring. This vexed Phil, who was so into machetes that when he finalized the Tres Espadas logo, he modeled the weapons on the logo on machetes produced by Cold Steel (a gladius representing the Gladiatorial Arenas and the democratic nature of Tres Espadas, a Kukri representing the eastern martial arts, and a pirate cutlass, representing a classic machete that has been slightly more weaponized, and reflecting the pirate-like rejection of authority that Tres Espadas is based on.) This forced us to do things we didn't want to do, such as having a "sword badge" instead of a "machete badge," because we just didn't have any sparring machetes.
At the last Tipon (years after Phil's death,) the famous Blood and Iron Martial Arts school from British Columbia introduced Tres Espadas members to a new brand of sparring weapon, Nihonzashi. Nihonzashi had been producing sparring weapons for traditional Japanese sword fighting arts to be able to spar with, which would have a similar heft to a real sword. If you swing a Nihonzashi sparring katana around, it really feels like you are swinging a katana or boken around rather than some hollow bamboo toy. But what Blood and Iron had brought was western Long Swords that Nihonzashi recently started to manufacture for HEMA type groups.
Upon further investigation, we discovered Nihozashi manufactured a Wakizashi. In theory, this would be the perfect sparring machete - it would look like a martial arts training weapon instead of a LARP weapon, but instead handle like a sword, and not like a flimsy fiberglass and latex sword, but like a bokken or steel sword. Funds were tight, and soon the pandemic shut down most martial arts practice in our area. But that question remained: was the Nihonzashi sparring wakizashi the holy grail for Tres Espadas?
Then it was my birthday, so I ordered a pair. Our hardest padded sparring sticks - the Dog Brothers issued super-hard action flex - were falling apart after almost a decade of abuse and we needed replacements. We recently tested the Nihonzashi Wakizashi:
First, swinging them the wakizashi is considerably more taxing than anything else we spar with. This is generally a good thing, because though not recognized outside of our club, inside of Tres Espadas it is well understood that our wrist and hand conditioning is not up to par with many other weapon fighters who spend a lot more time in drills and katas than we do strengthening their lower arms and grip. This will make sparing itself such a conditioning exercise, as well as help keep us honest about our ability to wield real metal weapons, and our need for appropriate conditioning to wield such weapons.
Second, they are about as painful as the Dog Brothers issue super hard action flex - they don't get the same speed, momentum, and whipping effect, but the strikes have more weight behind them. This again is basically good news - Tres Espadas was never meant to be a stick fighting club - Tres Espadas was always supposed to be about knifes, machetes, hatchets and spears, the weapons of survival that you might actually have to use some day. The extra heft is also more like a randomly obtained improvised weapon - rather than like a well crafted baton or staff - improvised weapons being our main practical justification for training weapons in today's pre-apocalyptic world.
Third they don't flex. Your parries and blocks actually work. This would be a first for a Tres Espadas sparring weapon. Here's what this means for the future of the club, assuming that these weapons will continue to be popular with the club members:
Good bye LARP gear. No more frivolous Calimacil, no more pricey Karate helmets with plastic face shields. We will keep and use the ones we have, but we probably won't replace them as they expire.
Most of the time you will be sparring with a Fencing mask, because the actionflex staff, Nihonzashi wakizashi and Cold Steel rubber Tanto all work well with the Fencing mask and will be our most common sparring weapons.
This means that in order to own your own head gear, you don't have to buy two helmets, just the least expensive one - the fencing masks.
The more people own their own head gear, the more hygienic Tres Espadas becomes, as sharing helmets is definitely the least sanitary thing we do at the club.
This means that functionally, there may be in the future a sort of Tres Espadas uniform, namely, the fencing mask itself.
This means Tres Espadas members may finally have a place to put their badges - on the neck guard of their fencing mask!
This is all tentative, depending on what club members decide after the pandemic as time goes forward. I would point out that this fits the vision of what Phil had in mind: a club that would continue to evolve to develop the best practices and gear set for weapon free sparring. The change is that it is probably going in more of a martial arts aesthetic direction than a LARP aesthetic direction.
I have heard that Tai Chi master Chen Ziqiang (as a coach) has had a standing challenge against MMA fighter (and fake master exposer) Xu Xiaodong for YEARS now. The challenge is that Chen Ziqiang has a team of fighters, any one of which is eager to fight Xu Xiaodong. Below is the evidence why I think this challenge exists and why I think the story is credible. But before I go on, I just want to say that I am a huge fan of both of these men, as they are both very important voices in the global Chinese Martial Arts community when it comes to advocating for the practice of sparring. They have both dedicated their lives to practicing martial arts in the most legitimate way they could.
If you don't know already, Xu Xiaodong is a MMA fighter who exposes delusional martial arts masters the old fashioned way, by challenging them to fights:
Because of the overlap with Chinese Yoga (chi kung,) Tai Chi has the worst reputation for producing people who think they can fight, but who can't. Xu Xiaodong has beat up some (so-called) Tai Chi masters over this.
However Tai Chi is just as legitimate of a martial art as Karate if you practice a complete form of Tai Chi that does more than line dancing and yoga and has actual sparring in it. Right now the most respected Tai Chi master in the world is the head coach at the birthplace of Tai Chi (Chen Village,) Chen Ziqiang. Chen Ziqiang is known for his clinch skills, and there are various YouTube videos of his fights and doing his Tai Chi wrestling against other Tai Chi fighters.
So with Xu Xiaodong berating Tai Chi, and Chen Ziqiang being the foremost defender of Tai Chi, it makes sense that Ziqiang made this challenge. Because this claim was printed in a magazine, I am going to have to here show some pictures from that magazine, which show why I was interested in this particular issue of the magazine, and where it describes this challenges explicitly. So this is the cover of the magazine I refer to:
When I thumbed through the magazine at Barnes and Noble, I noticed something unique about this issue, which is it had back to back articles from the Choy Li Fut/Tai Chi organization I originally learned Tai Chi from (Doc Fai Wong's organization,) next to an article from the Tai Chi celebrity I am most interested in meeting in the future, Chen Ziqiang (the article itself written by a different Choy Li Fut organization.) Here's the table of contents:
Here's the front page of the 4 Tenets of Tai Chi article by people from Doc Fai Wong's organization (totally unrelated to this challenge other than some wonder if people from this organization spar enough, this is just illustrating part why I was personally so interested in this issue):
And the article immediately after that was this Chen Ziqiang one:
Now this was the article I had the highest expectations for, and to be frank I was disappointed - Chen Ziqiang actually just showed off a few of the most generic applications of Tai Chi known, and they weren't even Chen style specific, almost like an explanation of how to apply the techniques shown in the Doc Fai Wong article before.
But that article ends with a huge bang. Chen Ziqiang mentions Xu Xiaodong, and explains that there are huge problems in the Chinese Martial Arts from people not sparring enough. He goes on to explain that Xu Xiadong is helping to illustrate this problem. But then Chen Ziqiang criticizes Xu Xiadong:
Yes, that is indeed a "Choy Lee Fut: Chile" shirt that guy is wearing. Anyhow that paragraph on the left quotes Chen Ziqiang as saying word for word:
...the situation that I am going to tell you happened while I was in Europe. I arranged four of my students of all body sizes, some of them tall heavier, short, or lighter, to pay a visit to Xu Xiaodong. I offered Xu to pick any of them and test his sparring skills under any rules. But he refused to choose and spar with any of my students. A hundred percent of the people who Xu chooses to fight are the ones he can confidently defeat. So, he uses this kind of arrangement to show off his skills and make his declarations. There were three reporters who accompanied my students on their visit to Xu and recorded the whole interaction on video. Since Xu could not turn this situation to his own advantage, he got scared and even called the police. When the police arrived, he asked the police to take away my students. The police refused to take my students away, because the were not doing anything wrong. The police even asked Xu that if he was such a good fighter why he still needed their protection...
This amounts to a standing challenge to Xu Xiadong from the Chen Village (where Chen Ziqiang is the head coach.) The Chen Villiage's main export is Tai Chi training, and they are known for these incredibly long training days, something like you would expect from a Muay Thai camp in Thailand. Some have suggested training up to 12 hours a day... starting off with a long run, then standing mediation practice, then form practice. That would only get you to about 4 hours... apparently the rest of the day varies from day to day and includes various weapons training, conditioning, and various forms of push hands and sparring. Consider what real traditional Tai Chi sparring looks like in the first place:
Though Tai Chi people are known for using San Shou as a type of competition and the San Shou two-man forms in Tai Chi actually predate the San Shou tournament rule set, what you see above is more like no-Gi Enshin with unlimited clinch time. After reading accounts of what Sumo and Mongolian Wrestling were like in the ancient empires they originated in, I suspect that this is the rule set most Asian martial arts sparring originates from: the goal is to take down the opponent while you remain standing, no strikes to the head allowed.
But Chen Ziqiang frequently travels the world helping to spread Chen Tai Chi far and wide. He himself has fought with San Shou rules. He fully understands the difference between MMA and San Shou, and if Chen Ziqiang says he has students who will fight under any rule set, this tells me that they are sparring and training several different ways in the Chen Villiage. Maybe that would explain this:
There Chen Village Taijiquan Denver states "The upcoming generation of young masters at the village, whom we are trying to bring to the US MMA scene." Why hasn't Xu Xiaodong given Chen Village a reality check if all Tai Chi fighters are as useless as Xu says they are?
Racism and Racial Prejudice in today's English are two totally different things. I keep having to explain this to people over and over and over again. One of the main purposes of this blog is for me to have links to my explanations instead of having to repeat myself over and over.
When I was living in the Columbia City neighborhood of Seattle, some of the young black children ages 10 to 13 affectionately called me their "Racist Dad." Them not being my children, I kept them at arms length. If I wasn't 100% sure their mothers knew they were at my place they were not allowed inside, but we had many frank conversations through the screen door of the door of my apartment - or if I wasn't answering the door that day - through the screen of the window closest to my computer.
Topics included largely sex questions. Why won't the Muslim girls at school give hugs? Is it good to watch Hentai? How old should I be when I have my first girlfriend? How old should I be when I have sex? (Hentai: ask your mom. Muslims: there are real cultural differences that need to be respected if we want to have nice things. Everything else: dating is for college, not high school, because in high school you aren't adequately empowered to make your own decisions yet, so it's not really dating, just making dating-like mistakes. This is WA, everyone goes to college, ideally community college.)
At this same time I had an altercation with a Neo Nazi at a local clothing store, who was trying to cut in line, who became upset with me when I didn't back him as a fellow white man. While he was stink eyeing me in the back of the line, I accidentally let the word "boy" slip out of my mouth while we were arguing, and like most of my altercations I have been in I solved this problem with strategy and footwork. The end result was I almost ran him over with my car as he was trying to follow me out of the parking lot on his old broken BMX (I had already ascertained he must have recently been released from prison based on his appearance, body language and lack of social resilience.) This was not my proudest moment when it comes to martial arts.
At the time I was only recently retired from left-wing activism with Seattle Indymedia. So the next time the black kids wanted to know if "Racist Dad" was there, I said "common guys, why are you always calling me Racist? Is it my haircut? What did I do? You know my kids, they are half Chinese, I can't be the most racist person you have met!"
They gave me this look like "you need to learn to be cool white boy" and explained "you need to see the Racist Cat." It didn't take them long for them to convince me I had NO idea of what they were talking about when they said "Racist":
Racism - to them - was a total ignorance around ethnicity, and a pure focus on skin tone preference. Beyond that they believed it had to do with a deep part of the primitive brain - it was a base instinct that couldn't be helped. To them, someone being overtly racist wasn't an insult - it was just being mammalian. This is part of why they were coming to me with tans-cultural questions around Muslims and Hentai, because they were running into questions about race that didn't make sense to their preadolescent world view.
And they were calling me Racist because I was White. They couldn't very well call me the N-word, could they? White people are notoriously not-offended by the most sincere hisses of "cracker," "honkey," "white trash," "wigger," "Opie," or even "Alabama." The only thing that REALLY offends white people is being called racist because they are white. Therefore, the best racist term to use against whites IS "racist", what I call "spelling 'racist' with at 'w', W-H-I-T-E."
In an era where people are calling for "anti-racism" instead of "multiculturalism", appealing to individual organizations for reparations instead when democracy has not delivered at the government level, it is really important for people to understand the difference between racism and racial prejudice. The word racism CAN mean a hundred different things in today's world, but if we are going to communicate with others in any way that makes sense, we have to use the word in the most common way that it is used. That way is this: racism means the negative side effects (usually mistreatment from other human beings) on the planet Earth from not being born white.
A "racist black man" then is not a black man who is prejudice against white people, but a black man who is prejudice against people for NOT BEING WHITE:
What then is discrimination against white people? That is racial prejudice. Racial prejudice can be had by anyone of any race against anyone of any race for being whatever race they are. If you are "ashamed to be white," you are being racially prejudiced against yourself. If you are a black person hating on an Asian for being Asian, you are being racially prejudice. If you are a black person hating on an Asian for not being White, then you are expressing racism.
We don't live in a fair world, and it is not advantageous to think that we do. Our modern world is built on a backbone of European Colonialism. Most countries on Earth have the political boundaries they do because some white dude said it should be that way. This is not because most of the Earth is white people, the world is over 50% Asian. This is because the economically globalized world as we know it today was established by a succession of European Empires. The world is a better place for it, but this process was not without its negative consequences - all progress has a shadow of unforeseen consequences that becomes the next generation's challenges to overcome. A global power structure that prefers whites was a very real thing, and to this day you are better off being born white than being born any other race.
When we talk about racism in today's world, it's this white vs everyone else dynamic that is being referred to. Whites don't experience racism unless you are using the word racism in a very informal way that is ONLY slang for racial prejudice. Yes, people can be racially prejudice against Whites, and in the part of Columbia City where I lived I was in the minority as a white person.
Now, according to my taxonomy here "anti-racist" could be considered "anti-white." And what the workplace reparations are asking for is for white workers to accept less pay than non-white workers, in order for the organization to be able to afford higher wages for non-white workers. To be clear, the vast majority of my friends who are not white are against that when it is spelled out clearly, but I myself personally support it. And that is where I am guilty of almost genocidal racism.
I once embraced the corporate lifestyle, occasionally working such long hours that I would sleep in my employers emergency shelter instead of going home to sleep, until I was fired for in retaliation against a union I helped to establish. When I was fired I had a chance to see what the lifestyle had done to my family and my own body - and it was not good. When I realized my children's health had been negatively impacted by my career choices, that was it, I snapped, and I have only worked on call or part time positions ever since. We have to live our lives, enjoy the time God has given us, be the people who were were born to be, not spend every waking hour helping someone else get richer. The way I do that is working part time.
With advanced training and competency in management and leadership, there is always pressure for me to do more for any organization I work for. However that is the cost of having me as an employee, you get my talent, but it's part time, and you will simply have to endure your lust for that time which you can not have. One of the most important things I do to maintain my lifestyle is to always be training my next supervisor, and to always be helping my current supervisor to be the best they can, helping them with their long term career goals whenever possible (within my established limitations.)
So guess what if you aren't white? I trained my female, Asian, LGBT replacement at that corporate style job I was fired from. I spent about six months getting her better at my job than I was, sensing already that the lifestyle was not working for me. Time after time my coworkers have since been trained by me to lead me, and then become my leader. And in today's world, non-whites have an advantage to getting promoted, and so that means I am more likely to help a non-white or non-male work their way up.
So yes, I use non-whites as cannon fodder to protect my privileged lifestyle, guilty as charged. I am not proud of it, but it's not the 1860's anymore and you can't rape the willing. This is mostly all due to institutional forces beyond my control. Meanwhile I love other cultures and the advantages of living in a multicultural environment.
There you have it: racism is ALMOST BY DEFINITION "institutional," where as racial prejudice is a personal feeling an individual has. Racism is the fall out from European colonization, where as racial prejudice is unfair stereotyping based on ethnicity. Racism and prejudice are not the same thing, and it is time to start using your big boy words.
I can see why some of my friends, knowing how far off into right wing land they are, would vote for Trump. But I couldn't believe more people voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016. How could he fail us as a president, right out in the top media headlines, day after day for four years and still have more people vote for him than last time?
But keep in mind the right wingers have that same feeling about Biden. A lot more voted for Joe than Hillary. They can not believe it.
It is hard to believe from either side, we are blinded in both eyes.
Can we at least try to understand the other sides views? On the most important issue - avoiding costly wars - Trump gets an A+. I am no Trump fan, but it remains to be seen if Biden will measure up to what Trump accomplished in this regard. When I mentioned this to some lefty friends of mine, a few responded that we hadn't been militarily aggressive enough over the last four years, as if they had been solid W supporters who only voted for Hillary because they did not like Trump's fashion sense.
Putin deserves a Nobel peace prize for making warfare officially cyber war. In 2015 his cyber attacks accomplished both Trump and Brexit, bringing the west to its knees. The end result is a lot less brown children being vaporized in "shock and awe" over oil profits.
These multiple culture wars in the USA are not sustainable and should be discouraged. Our self inflicted echo chambers are making it impossible for us to communicate; we can not find the words to talk with the other side anymore. It's stupid, mean spirited, and unchristian.
This is a sequel post to my 2015 post "Fencing vs Sparring." As early as 2014 I was concerned that Kumite Point Fighting - the practice that almost totally destroyed martial arts in the USA in the 1980's - was directly connected to Fencing, and that Fencing's fighting practices were one of the single most destructive forces in the martial arts. I suspected some direct connection between fencing and the origins of Kumite Point Fighting and the sport of Fencing. Now The Karate Nerd has clearly documented the connection:
So to briefly summarize: before Karate was popular in Japan, Savate was already popular in Japan. The Savate that was popular at the time wasn't organized into professional matches like Boxing or MMA today, they instead competed in something more like tournaments, which used Kumite Point Fighting stop-and-go rules, which they directly inherited from Fencing. Savate of that era considered itself to essentially be unarmed fencing. All of Shotokan's kicks with the exception of the side kick and front kick seem to be taken directly from Savate.
As you know if you read very much about martial arts on my blog, one of my biggest pet peeves is the Kumite Point Fighting round kick, which lacks the practical power and ease of use of most other martial arts round kicks. I have noticed this in Savate before, and was puzzled that it could develop in Japan and France independently, because it is so horrifically flawed:
To be clear what is wrong with this kick is that body stops moving before the leg extends, meaning that the over all speed of the impact the kick creates is much slower than if whole body was still moving with the kick at the point of impact. Whipping your shoulders, waist and hips into the kick as it connects is a magnitude of difference in power than relying on the leg muscle alone to generate the power.
As The Karate Nerd points out above, round kicks were unheard of in Okinawan Karate originally. So how did some Karate styles like Kyokushin and other knock-down Karate styles get such good round kicks that they remind us of Muay Thai rather than Kumite Point Fighitng? The Kyokushin founder's Wikipedia page mentions his Korean ethnicity, but also his participation in an early Full Contact Karate style called Bogutsuki known for two things: 1) the use of body armor, sometimes even doing karate fighting in Kendo armor, and 2) a very strong Korean influence, entertaining seminars from Korean martial arts masters. If Tae Kwon Do is the most popular Korean Martial Art and uses a lot of the bad round kicks from Kumite Point Fighting, why would we assume good round kicks could come from Korean Martial Arts? Because Tae Kwon Do was strongly influenced by Shotokan and is not considered representative of Korean Martial Arts. The most clearly Korean kicking martial art is called "Takkyeon" and in this video this Takkyeon master executes Sanda/Muay Thai style round kicks a number of times, but so forcefully his technique requires him to spin afterwords at two specific at both 1:27 and 2:28 in this video:
And we see in Bogutsuki today that their lead leg round kicks are clearly more like Sanda/Muay Thai lead leg round kicks than like the wimpy Savate lead leg kicks, even though their fighting stance and competition rules resemble Kumite Point Fighting:
This basic full power round kick I suspect has been around since before recorded history, and it is a common sparring technique in most Northern Kung Fu styles, which is the real reason it is so prominent in San Shou:
Even in Tai Chi we see Chen Ziqiang execute a low round kick (sometimes called a "whirlwind kick" in the Chen forms) to stop an incoming opponent at 7:46:
So the Kumite Point Fighting round kicks - technically and properly called "Foette Kicks" from Savate - have almost nothing to do with authentic Asian Martial Arts, and is indeed part of the cancer that fencing is to the martial arts, a direct byproduct of Kumite Point Fighting, that Karate took from Savate in Japan.
