Do you really want to go there? My .02

Greetings TKellians.

There has been so much going on here that it is hard for me to even keep up, but I will leave the updates to the newsletter. A cool thing that I will mention however is that some of my blades were photo featured in a recent article in American Handgunner titled 'Defense or Deceased' written by Steve Tarani. I will not pretend to be near on level with the knowledge of, or skill set involved with defensive knife use like Steve is. Steve is in my opinion (and many others) the leading SME (Subject Matter Expert) on this in the world. We are like minded on this subject, but he is far and away the expert. Read his article, heed his advice on training and choose your blades based on what you learn. Additionally, Steve has many writings and publications on this subject that will serve you well in blade knowledge and use. As well as classes and course work that you can attend. look it up.

I will speak to a different subject with my .02. I will repeat things I have written before for those of you new to my opinion pieces. This is a subject that I am quite passionate about. I do not need to speak to what Steve wrote about. Steve is the expert, and I will leave that to him.

What I want to talk about is the aftereffects of what your actions are. And the training we need in that arena. Do you realize that if you discharge a firearm that, you cannot get that projectile back, it goes a long way, and takes a lot to stop it? Do you also realize that if you use a blade on a person that you must be really close to them and that it can seriously harm them? Are you prepared for what it means and what it takes to severely alter or end another human's life using something you carry on your waist? If not you’d better take a few steps back to self-examine your intent. This does not just apply to EDC gear either. It is applicable across your every interaction with humans. Today too many people look at right now, what makes me feel the best, and people are very selfish and self-centered. We need to take some time to step back and think about other people, what our actions do to other people, what our words do to other people. Do you realize if you sit behind your keyboard and spew nastiness (because you are an American and that is your protected right) that you can seriously alter some one’s life? Even causing them to consider and in some case follow thru with self-harm? The people on the other side of the screen have a family, they have people that depend on them, people that love them. Yes, you have a constitutional freedom to speak to what somebody else does or how they believe. That in NO way gives you the right to destroy that human with your words, with your blade, with your pistol, with ANYTHING. It makes me sick to see the absolute callous towards other humans. I have a theory.

For example, last week we went to the mall (something I typically try to avoid) to try to find a copy of the American Handgunner magazine. My Wife, my grown Daughter, Myself, and our 6-year-old are in-tow. Our innocent younger child accidentally does what younger children tend to do and bumped into one of the employees in the store. A young female (female because she does not deserve the term “lady”) early to mid-twenties. She turned around with a disgusted look on her face, looked down at our child with utter disdain and anger. Because we are firm believers in "a gentle answer turns away wrath” and knowing that minding your tone can change the outcome of a situation drastically, we politely apologized. The employee said nothing, ignoring us she leered at our daughter with disgust, ignored our kindness, and turned around to continue her conversation. My Wife is far better at the "gentle answer" than myself. For me it is a daily struggle for me to not react to people that act like this. An anger immediately rose within me over this person’s reaction that caused me to want to confront the selfish twit. However, I said nothing, gently marshalled my daughter away from this vile human, and walked away. Still, I felt the hurt inside that comes with seeing someone that is not endeared towards children. Let me be clear, I am in no way saying that you have to have children to be a good person. I do not believe that you have to desire your own, and you can choose to not have them for any number of perfectly acceptable reasons, be those personal, medical or otherwise. The issue I have is that despising an innocent human child shows extreme callous. Not feeling like a helpless human needs protection and grace shows a lack of care for your fellow human.

How did we get here? This did not used to happen, people understood they might be bumped into from time to time. It is clear to me that we as an American society got here because of what we have allowed our young persons to grow up thinking is OK. We stopped taking the time to teach people how to treat each other and left them alone, unchecked, and at the internet’s influence. We let this generation be raised by phone apps, and the fact is tik tock is not going to do it for you, YouTube is not going to do it for you, Facebook is not going to do it for you, no social media that you allow people to consume for 14 hours a day is going to teach the next generation how to be a decent human. In fact the self-centeredness, say what you want, do what's best for you, follow your dreams, if it doesn't feel good don't do it, if it's hard skip it, if the job sucks quit it attitude that is promoted on every media outlet, every magazine, every phone application that is completely centered around what makes someone feel good for a half a second is ruining American Society.

At some point we got too lazy to train young folks, to instill values in the next generation. All because we also wanted to consume what we wanted, without being bothered to do something for others, to be free to say what we want instead of having some self-control, act how we want without being called out for being a selfish little shit. When we as humans do wrong, we by nature want others to do the same. That makes it easier to cope with our wrong doings. It erodes our conscience. Self-sacrifice has died.

The self-sacrificial faith-based ideals that the United States of America was founded on are quickly dying, and being sub planted with the socialist ideals that people are just bodies, that there is no soul, there is no feelings, that all those things are completely unnecessary in life. Whatever your beliefs, this country is great because of the ideals our forefathers founded it on. Why are we letting it be destroyed by mindless idiots with ZERO life experience? Most people have zero clue about how life is in socialist countries, what it is like to live oppressed and beg the government for basic needs like food and heat. We as Americans take these freedoms and use them as weapons to destroy each other. We are voting to make illegal, canceling, and protesting the reasons we can live this life. It's insane. If we destroy everyone who's opinion is different and eradicate the ability of others to practice the values we were founded on we will sink into ruin. History proves this, so what do we do? Do we remove and protest history because it does not fit our insane selfish ideals? History happened, it’s not all glorious but it’s the account of what actually happened. We must study what happens from other trials. If they failed, we learn not to do that. These "woke" beliefs are not new. Ever look up Sodom or Gomorrah? That is over 2,000 years old, not new. How about the leaders that pushed the same EXACT social changes we see happening here now, like Marx, Engels, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Maduro just to name a few. Are we a society of idiots now? Millions and millions of dead bodies at the hands of "Social Change". We do not have it wrong folks, we do not need to renovate America we need to REMEBER America.

Now we teach that life is all about what makes you happy instead of teaching that you must sacrifice some of your happiness to make others life a little better. What happened to “it’s better to give than to receive”? You must train to use a blade, to use a firearm and the same goes to be a decent human. We need constant self-assessment and training. Now we sit on our phones, do not speak to the people that are in the same room, we let people do what they want without words of caution for fear of making them sad, we do not hold them accountable and let them do what they want. We encourage kids to do what is easiest for them, even going as far as to facilitating selfishness by catering to their selfish needs. We remove the hard work and the lessons learned from it; we make it easy for them to get what they want. Hard work used to be the measure of what we had. Now we celebrate surgeries to get the look we want instead of telling people they are perfect how they are; we applaud lavish vacations while our children are passed off, ogle at pictures of people’s body instead of teaching that a person is not measured by what their body looks like. It is Disgusting that is how we measure humans now. We measure each other by applauding the fruits of living a completely self-centered selfish lifestyle. We are letting children tell us what to believe and letting them "wake" us. HELLO, you are 13 you do not know shit about life, how can you decide that you were born wrong at 13? You cannot even drive a car at 13 (much less decide your life direction) because you are an idiot with the attention span of a gnat that would crash into others and kill them. This is what "woke" is? No thanks idiot, me and my house will stay asleep and survive, thank you.

It takes being selfless and hard ass work to do what is best for other people. These things we have left to raise our kids are designed using the knowledge of what dopamine is produced by and its addictive properties do when you click ‘like.’ The science proves that we know this to be true. It is not innocent, it is not innocuous, and it is not a "generational difference." They want your attention because, they want to control what you buy, push their agenda, to gain power over you. To get us to believe it they call it the opposite of what it is, they try to play on our American sense of pride. It is the opposite of woke, it is lulling you to sleep. Your actions have consequences, and it is not all about YOU. Remember your blade, your bullet, your actions, and your words can save, or ruin a life. The choice is up to you. Choose to be a decent human and think about where your blade, your bullets, your actions, and your words fly before you send them down range.

Stay Sharp My Friends,

Tim