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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

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Wednesday, April 14, 2004
11:46 - Spooky ninja powers

(top) link
On a mailing list that I help run, the topic of self-defense came up. It was all going along very amicably, with reasonable points being raised and good anecdotes being told.

Then, this one person, who had introduced himself by claiming to be taking ninjitsu classes, from an instructor who could "kill you with your own fingernails if he tried", says:

If any man in the american millitary can take Hatsumi I will pay them a
thousand bucks.

Mentality or not, no redneck military guy is going to pound someone who
dedicates 50 years to a martial art.

Several people, including the list's other moderator, replied with stern rebukes, pointing out that to tar all military people as "rednecks", or to show this kind of blithe, contemptuous disrespect to people whose job it is to protect us with their lives, is odious in the extreme. Y'know, just-- lay off the unthinking epithets, all right? We understand you believe wholeheartedly in the Real Ultimate Power, but even a ninja is susceptible to a kick in the balls. Or, say, a gun.

We thought that might be the end of it. But nooOOooo:

Don't bitch about stereotypes when you compare some crash course in self
defense given by an elitist jock club to a multi thousand year old technique
that's been practiced for more generations than this country has existed.

With all the fraud in the industry in the US, it's kind've annoying when
people downplay martial arts because they're comparing military guys to some
poorly run organization lead by a guy who gave himself a black belt.

What floored me about this quote was the part about "elitism". He's complaining about elitism in the midst of a contention that all modern military training is inferior to ancient martial arts, particularly the kind he's taking classes in.

It never fails to amaze me how people can completely miss the irony in what's coming out of their mouths or spewing from their fingertips.

And this is to say nothing of the fact that there were no ninjas on Flight 93:

What troubles me about Fielding's statement is that all of our system's did not fail. One of them succeeded --- the ability of the citizens of this country to identify a threat and take action as individuals to elminate it. The ability that was demonstrated so dramatically --- and successfully --- by the passengers on Flight 93, the only hijacked plane where the terrorists failed in their mission to crash into a valuable target.

As I wrote one year after the 9/11 attacks, I don't believe that America began responding effectively to Al Qaeda when we invaded Afghanistan. I believe we began responding effectively the moment that the passengers of Flight 93, fed information via cellphone calls from the ground, recognized what the terrorists on their flight planned to do --- and acted to stop it.

After all the hearings that the commission has had on the failures of our government to prevent 9/11, or even to respond effectively while it was happening, shouldn't there be at least one hearing to discuss what went right on that day? Where is the session devoted to studying the actions of the passengers of Flight 93, and their success at foiling the terrorists they confronted? Is there nothing at all to be learned from their actions, and their sacrifice -- or is the comissison just more interested in finding fault than in actually recognizing success?

No ninjas at all.

UPDATE: The following post reached the list today:

As much as we may all say we love to hate the millitary we must still be
very proud of them. I am proud to live freely as a canadian and am proud of
the peacekeeping work my country's forces do to try and spred that freedom
to other nations. So with out any any hesitation I salute all of north
america's men and women who have, are now, and will give to keep our great
nations free and proud.

I can't tell you how pleased I was to read that.


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