10 Apr 23
“In a real fight, I would no sooner kick someone in the head than I would punch him in the foot!”
Bruce Lee
Real vs Superficial
There are two general types of Japanese swords.
“Old Swords,” purpose-built strictly for battlefield use, most being made prior to 1600AD. These wonderful weapons are devoid of frills and decoration, as they were uncompromisingly designed to faithfully serve their owners as single-purpose, eminently-capable implements of lethal fighting. The “beauty” of these swords is concealed within their exacting functionality, amazing durability, humility, Spartan simplicity.
By contrast, “New Swords,” were built after the Battle of Sekigahara (fall of 1600AD). This battle marked a change in feudal Japan, from more-or-less continuous civil strife to the relative stability associated with the Tokugawa Shogunate.
After that time, many former warriors forgot all about true fighting and took-up the pursuit of beauty and spirituality. Results-oriented fighting skills, weapons, and training were universally de-emphasized (with the exception of a very few).
Accordingly, “New Swords” were ecumenically glittering and glamorous, made mostly to look beautiful and reflect well upon their owners, who ever conspicuously exhibited them before admiring (and jealous) friends, but never actually used them for anything but “display.”
Thus, over a short time, uncompromising weapons of war devolved into little more than “jewelry!”
Likewise, in what we today call the “Martial Arts,” methods and techniques developed over centuries to be suitable for “serious purposes” have nearly all been banned from modern “fighting competitions”
In most modern Western martial-arts competitions, points are awarded for “style” and flashy panache, rather than for far-less-glamorous moves designed to quickly render an opponent helpless/incapacitated (in many cases, permanently).
Even at MMA events, there is a thick “rule book,” every page filled with moves that are “illegal”
Likewise, in modern shooting competitions, flashy, but utterly impractical, awkward, ponderous, maladroit clunks routinely masquerade as “guns,” and are used with silly “holsters,” wimp ammunition.
Irrelevant degrees of academic accuracy prevail.
Tactical movement, down-to-earth equipment, legitimate use of cover, practical accuracy, etc are irrelevant and not rewarded.
We have been warned of this in the past (see above)!
Still, trainers and Operators must always keep such things in mind when we train. Our training and weapons must never be compromised.
History bears this out!
“When the martial-arts style you practice naively declares any move ‘illegal,’ from that point foreword you will be perpetually defenseless against that move!”
Phil Messina
And, as if to confirm:
A witness to the violent attack at a bank in Louisville, KY today stated:
“Police were coming out of their cars with ‘black rifles’ in-hand!”
Apparently not with “less-lethal,” paraphernalia, nor with “restricted-capacity” magazines, nor with purple-haired “mental-health therapists” wielding megaphones.
Imagine that!
“Black rifles,” cynically disparaged as “weapons of war,” and derided, despised, lampooned, loathed, and maligned incessantly by emotionally-overwrought leftist politicians, and their loyal cheerleaders in the media, are all-of-a-sudden apparently okay, indeed desperately wanted!
Like it or not, even hard-core, woke, hypocritical Democrat/leftists will continue to thank Heaven for the presence of “black rifles” in the hands of good Americans, at the critical moment, as we see!
/John
