4 Aug 14
Where is the glamour?
“I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s sixth husband. I know what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t know how to make it ‘interesting.’”
Milton Berle
A potential student asked my yesterday, “… and do you do all the stuff I’ve seen in Rambo movies?”
I replied, “Do you have any idea what the real world is like, son?”
Too much time spent in front of a TV screen makes a dull boy, and one with unrealistic expectations!
Living within the borders of CONUS, many of us get the false impression that what we see about us is “typical” of the world and of world history. Not so! In fact, we live on an atypical, and ever-shrinking, island. The “typical” condition of the rest of the world can be best described as “barbarism,” and that pretty much describes most of world history too.
And, brutal barbarism is alive and well today! Assuming you have the stomach for it, you can see it for yourself at:
I came face-to-face with this in Vietnam forty-five years ago. I haven’t forgotten, and never will!
Thus, precious little of what I teach in my Courses is “glamorous,” nor “sexy,” nor “voguish.” Basic skills rarely are any of those things! The personal journey to becoming an Operator is filled with drudgery, repentance, and just plain work.
My students understand that from the beginning!
Basic, life-saving fighting skills that we teach are designed to prepare students for a desperate world they will some day (maybe today!) find themselves in.
We don’t have a lot of time, and I have scant patience with starry-eyed adolescents who spend too much time watching Rambo, and not enough watching the news!
“Just because you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.”
George Carlin
/John
