Stealing

 It's Saturday Night and Biden and Harris have given their inspired  and touching victory speeches. This is what the The Church's website has looked like through the election from the morning of November 3rd until tonight of November 7th, 2020:

You can see the title of the main article. It clearly references "this time of anxiety and racism," obviously referring to their contempt for Trump. But it goes beyond this, the Sunday morning after that speech featured there was given, the The Chruch's president, someone we regard as a living prophet, echoed those sentiments (starting at 11:00) :

So how is it so many LDS voted for Trump? Not everyone did, Romney didn't, I sure didn't. But obviously many did, as Utah was quickly called for Trump this election.

It is no coincidence that Utah is associated with so many Multi-Level Marketing schemes and so consistently votes GOP. Since George H. W. Bush, no Republican has been elected into office for a first term by the popular vote. The electoral college, a group of government appointees, has overturned the will of the people in a sad example of socialism trumping democracy, in the case of both the W and the Trump, who both proved to be horrible villains indeed once they got into the oval office (with the W using lies to get us into protracted wars in the middle east and Trump intentionally stoking racial divides in the USA.)

LDS conservatives are incredibly comfortable with theft, doing little or nothing about the Multi-Level Marketing schemes emanating from Utah and wreaking economic havoc all over the world. The only GOP politician that raised concerns about Trump's incredibly extensive involvement in Multi-Level Marketing schemes was Mitt Romney, but obviously most of the voters in Utah ignored him, just as they ignored their leaders four years later in this election. That's why they have no problem with the GOP using any excuse at all to be opportunistic: be it stealing the vote from the popular majority through socialist loopholes in the constitution, or be it stealing the appointment of a supreme court justice, stealing is 100% fine as long as they can get away with it.

The Book of Mormon warns against this type of behavior. One of the ongoing plots in the book is an organized crime sabotaging, subverting, waging war against and eventually toppling the Utopian government described in the book that rules "by the voice of the people." Eventually that wicked and corrupt society faces the wrath of Angry Jesus, who destroys most of their cities, and then goes on to explain to everyone just exactly why each city he stomped had it coming. One city had it coming the most, in 3rd Nephi Chapter 9 verse 9 it reads:

9 And behold, that great city Jacobugath, which was inhabited by the people of king Jacob, have I caused to be burned with fire because of their sins and their wickedness, which was above all the wickedness of the whole earth, because of their secret murders and combinations; for it was they that did  destroy the peace of my people and the government of the land; therefore I did cause them to be burned, to destroy them from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints should not come up unto me any more against them.

According to that verse toppling democracy is pretty much the very worst way to piss off Jesus there is. You want to know God's worst pet peeve? I present to you: GOP behavior, with Trump doing everything he could to stop votes from being counted in 2020, from screwing with the post office to dumping tons of misinformation out in his tweet tantrums. The problem is that this idea of stealing elections is just how the GOP does things. They know they don't have the will of the people behind them and they want to run things anyways in an obvious affront to God himself:

Capitalism is going to need to adapt to survive mechanization, namely universal income and universal health care. Yet conservative LDS voters have the audacity to call that "socialist stealing." The conservative LDS voters have no grounds to call anything stealing, when they overtly support disproportionately taxing the poor in order to benefit the rich, utilizing the socialist electoral college to steal voting decisions from the masses, and the stealing of elections outright through voter suppression. If you are LDS and voted for Trump once, shame on him, but if you voted for him twice, shame on YOU!

Martial Art vs Fighting Style

A "Martial Art" could literally be anything you practice to get good at in order to defend yourself or hurt others, ranging from Parkour to driving in a destruction derby, to archery. Even more confusingly it can refer to the differences between cultures in practicing various techniques (as with "karate" versus "kung fu",) or it could refer to very specific techniques such as "the art of throwing a good straight punch" or "using situational awareness." But most of the time "Martial Art" refers to something more specific called a "fighting style."

Boxing is certainly a martial art, but I would say that it isn't a fighting style. Mayweather is a boxer who has a career of 50 undefeated fights. Tyson is a boxer with 44 knock outs. If martial arts were the same thing as fighting styles, these two fighters would be very good at most of the same strategies, but in reality they are both known to have very different yet common fighting styles known to exist within the martial art of Boxing. Even their fighting stances have well established names, Peek-a-Boo for Tyson's hard-hitting front stance fighting, and Philly Shell for Mayweather's careful and precise side stance fighting. Other fighters who trained with Tyson's trainer had basically the same style as Tyson, and Mayweather's Philly Shell is a multi-generational family fighting style:

I trained with Vern Miller before Margaret McGregor's male vs. female boxing match in 2000 (she won.) Vern Miller was more known for his kickboxing fighters, and also taught Tai Chi and Choy Li Fut. Choy Li Fut was his primary "martial art" and the combat sports and Tai Chi were part of that. The fighting style he drew from his martial art involved a front orthodox stance, left foot forward, unless you were left handed, then you fought south paw, right foot forward.

A about a decade ago I had a close friend train at Bumble Bee's Boxing in Seattle, the most famous boxing gym in the Seattle Area. We were surprised when it turned out they fought from more of a side stance, and that left handed people who trained there also fought orthodox. These were two very different styles of boxing in an hour's driving distance from each other, and what style you boxed at had everything to do with who the most experienced instructor was at they gym you trained at. Here's a side stance fighting Bumble Bee's fighter verses a more front stance Mexican-style boxer:

We can contrast boxing, which is a sport and a martial art but not a fighting style, with Judo which is both of those things AND a fighting style. Most Judo black belts can demonstrate all of the 67 throws of Judo. However when they spar, most Judo black belts will focus on only the throws that work best for them, typically around a dozen of the 67 throws. Which dozen throws depends on the individual black belt. Going by this we would be tempted to say that each Judo black belt has his own style of Judo, but the fact is almost all Judo black belts train in very similar techniques in very similar ways, and again they can all do all 67 techniques. So Judo is clearly a fighting style even though it is also a sport and a martial art.

The name of a martial art is not always specific enough to know the fighting style taught there. Something as broad as "Kung Fu" or "Karate" will never tell you the fighting style, as there is a world of difference between the fighting styles of Olympic Karate and Kyokushin Karate. In Kumite Point Fighting (like the tournaments you see in the Karate Kid/Cobra Kai franchise) because everyone seems to be fighting more or less the same way, it looks like they are all doing the same fighting style. However, the competitors train in extraordinarily different ways, and could come from all sorts of martial arts backgrounds, and for many of them the Kumite Point Fighting might not even reflect how they do sparring most of the time in their training. Because most Kumite Point Fighting participants come from different fighting styles, Kumite Point Fighting is NOT a fighting style. 

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is most definitely NOT a fighting style. Even for the rare fighter that only trains for MMA and never trains in other fighting styles, their specific gym they train at is guaranteed to have their own MMA fighting style that will be significantly different from many other gyms that also only train for the sport of MMA. This is not to say anything negative towards the Martial Arts of combat sports athletes. Mike Tyson's Peek-a-Boo fighting style would be devastating in a street fight, a very practical option for many self defense situations, a potent fighting style in and of itself by traditional martial arts standards. "Martial Arts" is a very broad term that also includes "fighting styles," and fighting styles are ways of training for using specific techniques and strategies in a fight. 

Management Studies at Antioch University

I have a Masters in Management from Antioch University. This is one of the oldest fields of study in one of the oldest school in the country. Founded in 1852 by the father of American Education, Horace Mann, Antioch has always been about hands on education, with a focus on leadership and applicability to the workplace. One of the most important thinkers in the history of management studies is the author of "The Human Side of Enterprise," Douglass McGregor. His concept of theory X vs. theory Y is foundational now to almost all other workplace leadership theories. He was president of Antioch University from 1948 to 1954.

When I was attending the Seattle campus in 2004 to 2006, that robust management program had merged with other programs that were dwindling in student interest ("Organizational Psychology," "Whole Systems Design," and "Environment and Community,") to form a new university department at the Seattle Campus called The Center For Creative Change. At the same time the over all Seattle University system has a PhD in Leadership and Change program, which did not have a Master's degree option, and took in very few students who didn't already have a master's degree. When you graduated from the Center for Creative Change, if you were going to a PhD program it was Antioch's Leadership and Change program, and some of the faculty of the Center for Creative Change were graduate students in the PhD in Leadership and Change program.

As a graduate assistant I helped promote The Center for Creative Change at a few events. I myself was attracted to this Antioch's Management program as an alternative to MBA programs which at the time were a dime a dozen and focused primarily on the operation of spreadsheets, only to reconsider changing my major to Organizational Psychology or Whole Systems Design instead (though I did not.) I saw this play out at these events, with undergraduate students coming to the Antioch University table first to look at the Management program, but then also start to get interested the other majors in the Center for Creative Change. 

So many management students chose to take less generic sounding majors after having decided to enroll, that they changed the Management major title to "Management and Leadership." But eventually the Center for Creative Change decided the Management major was no longer necessary. I protested that this would put too much distance between the Center for Creative Change and their market for students (primarily the MBA market,) and in a handful of years the Center for Creative Change disintegrated and was no more. 

However by this time the rest of the Antioch University had already compensated, with Green MBA programs at various campuses, and the PhD in Leadership and Change program starting to create their own specific master's program, the Masters in Leadership Practice. Much of the leadership faculty from the my Management program had been drafted to help with the greater university system as a whole (Shawna Horman and Mark Hower.) Now in 2020 the over all Antioch University System continues in the tradition of the Center for Creative Change with all sorts of leadership and management studies, in fields ranging from non-profit to tech to medical. I have never regretted studying Management at the world's foremost institution for doing so, Antioch University. 

Your Crap

In my recent "Rush to the Middle" post I decried agendas of the far left and far right in the USA. Though my views haven't changed much over the years, because of shifts in national politics my views have gone from being moderate-libertarian to far left to now center left (and are epitomized by capitalism-saving policies such as universal health care and universal income.) When I called the agendas "your crap" in the above post, I insinuated that the far left and far right agendas were basically the same thing. And that's exactly what I meant. 

 First let me define what I mean by far left and far right. If you can't vote for Biden because he's "republican lite", then you are far left. If you hold your nose and reluctantly vote for Biden your are moderate enough to be considered center left. If you hold your nose and vote for Trump because you can't handle what the left has been up to lately, you are center right. However, if you enthusiastically support Trump, or think that Trump should have more than two terms, you are far right. In other words you don't have to be a full blown communist or white separatist to be far right or far left, you just have to be really enthusiastic about Trump or so enthusiastic about Sanders that you are threatening within a month of the election to not vote for Biden. Let's look at what is the crap flowing from the far right, and then the crap flowing from the far left, so that I can tell you exactly why it is the same crap. 

First the far right bemoans the loss of a Christian America. But this specific brand of Christianity isn't the Black Church, it isn't Catholicism as is practiced by most Latinos, and contrary to popular belief it is most definitely not LDS. The Christianity they are talking about is primarily White and mostly North American, and has historically been very hostile towards other religions such as Catholicism, LDS, Islam and eastern religions. The white separatists I have talked to aren't anti-people-of-color, what they want is white-affirmation, "we want a world safe for white children." The so called loss of Christianity on the right is not much different.

Second the far left seeks for the English language to change in order to affirm minority groups, especially African American and LGBT. This is startling at first to those like me who are extremely concerned for our heterosexual male black friends who are at high risk to be brutalized or killed by law enforcement, because most of those black victims are straight and male. But now with a scortched earth victories in the supreme court on both abortion and gay marriage, where else is the far left to go with their culture war? 

But as one of my center left friends has pointed out, "equal rights for _______ is not _________ affirming." So for example, "equal rights for White Christians is not White Christian affirming." As we can see with this example, this affirmation seeking is essentially asking for a form of supremacy. If American Christianity needs to be preserved through legislation, that is clearly legislating white supremacy. This is the problem with the "your truth/my truth" or "your lived experience" verses "my lived experience" of post modernism, is it validates personal prejudices based on personal experiences, and thus validates racism in general. This is evident in both the far right and the far left right now.

The right was infiltrated by the cancer of post modernism in the George W. Bush years through that president's total reliance on Orwellian language, or what he called "truthiness." But now the far left seems infiltrated by the same mentality, unable to commit to vocabulary needed to form coherent policy. If "toxic masculinity for her may be different than what toxic masculinity for me," then toxic masculinity isn't really anything at all, because for words to be meaningful, they have to mean something. Policy is built on words, no words = no policy.

All of this extremism is very destructive for our democracy, and empowers villains like Trump who thrive in these chaotic circumstances. The far left is perfectly fine with Sanders branding himself as a "socialist," a word the far left fully understands alarms over 50% of the voters in the USA, and distinctly calls for a different form of government than what we have now. Likewise the far right sees the safety of fetuses as more important than a stable democracy. What they both fail to understand is their extremist views are only possible because of our democracy they have such contempt for. If the constitution fails, it is likely that whatever follows will not support the freedom of speech that make their extremist views possible.

Rush to the Middle

My politics haven't changed much in the last 4 years, but COVID-19 pandemic politics have taken my favored policies from being considered radical left to being main stream or moderate left: universal health care and universal income. My views didn't change, the world's views did.

And I am starting to consider a 3rd issue as important as these two, and that is the 1st Amendment, freedom of speech. Radical groups in the USA seem to be attacking this key requirement to making democracy function. On the left we have "cancel culture" seeking to demonize anyone who doesn't comply with the latest post modern jargon and slang. On the right we have Trump supporters endorsing a war against the media, journalism and anything even remotely like politically independent fact checking. The radicals in the USA are becoming incredibly information resistant and extremist.

The fact is Trump is a real threat to democracy, he even says so on a regular basis, asking for more terms, openly interfering with elections, praising dictators, and so on. Trump's followers when pressed seem to believe that our republic has failed as it has legalized abortion, so that democracy is no longer their preferred form of government. 

And what does the far left do in response? The same antisocial and ineffective things they did in 2016, only 100 times worse, with their childish riots and attempts to butcher the English language. Most protests aren't riots, but the riots that have happened have completely replaced the videos of police brutality in the voting public's mind. Their justification for endangering our democracy is that maybe something more Marxist will replace it.

Regardless if you are a left wing or right wing radical, know that something better isn't coming along to save you from representative democracy. If your traitorous antagonism causes the constitution to fail, the USA is done. Power holders tolerating your post modern linguistic games? Done. People tolerating your armory of a gun collection? Over. Your radicalism is a luxury of our constitution, and without it that luxury will no longer be afforded by what follows.

And so yes, the grown ups have work to do. The never Trumpers and moderate liberals have to come together to save our country from your crap. The more you throw tantrums over it, the more you show what an incurable baby you are.

Heinkido: Aikido's Salvation

I have pleaded in the past for Aikidoka to save Aikido through sparring. I have speculated that this may require some Aikido black belt (which I am not) to:

1. Train in MMA to fill out the gaps in Aikido training.
2. Fight in a Tipon/Gathering (weapon fighting event) to find the REAL combative value of Aikido's kata.
3. Cross train in Chinese martial arts to get a sense of the sparring that has been largely lost in Aikido.

Though he didn't wait for me to make these suggestions, Aikido Fresno's Sensei Christopher Hein has done just that:

It's worth noting that Hein is a direct student of the legendary Tim Cartmell, the USA's most respected internal martial artist from an MMA perspective. Tim Cartmell studied the Chinese internal arts until he was winning Sanda tournaments in China before returning to the USA and mastering BJJ as well. He's one of the ultimate masters of that Sumo-like Push Hands sparring missing in Aikido:

And going beyond also studying combat sports, Hein actually fought in a Dog Brothers Gathering using his Aikido weapons technique! So having met all my criteria for saving Aikido (actually a good while before I made any of those suggestions,) what is the quality of Hein's Aikido?

Yes, he REALLY gets Aikido. He gets the exact niche Aikido should fill, covering blind spots missed in combat sports. He really gets live training, and he really understands and appreciates the practical application of Aikido technique:

And you can see the influence of Push Hands in that practice, which is reminiscent of Sumo. And then it becomes obvious - the real application of Aikido is with weapons standing wrist locks are almost useless against an unarmed attacker, but have a higher chance of working against an armed attacker if your goal is to get the weapon rather than to take down the attacker: 

And that's when it becomes obvious that Hein sees Aikido from the most practical view of all, as art that uses weapons:

But Hein's understanding of the unarmed application of Aikido is the most advanced I know of:

Now I don't agree with Hein on a lot of things (what appears to be some very short sparring rounds, certain aspects of knife fighting technique, etc.) but I am not primarily an Aikido practitioner anyhow. I think he's starting to make some serious contributions to the martial arts beyond Aikido. In this video we see actual, factual, legit knife grappling (something we've aspired to at Tres Espadas for years):

Social Media Fasting

At the beginning of the summer my family and I started a bathroom repainting that slowly turned into something of a remodel. It was going to take two weeks. Three months later I realized we were less than half way done, so I decided to fast from social media for until it was done. It was done a few weeks later (a few hours ago.) 

For me social media is primarily blogging, YouTube and facebook. Between the three I spend a vast amount of my spare time. When I sacrificed those until I was done with my goal, I became very focused on completing my goal, AND I had more time for working on it.

I will probably be doing more fasts soon because I am behind on various Game Arts Guild projects. But first I need to get caught up on what I have been missing on YouTube...