One of the most important questions a revolting man must ask himself is when is it acceptable to rebel? The founding fathers had to ask this question. Christianity and the entire history of the world to that point seemed to scream that submission was required in all things no matter what and so there could never be a justification for revolt. And yet another part of every man's conscience tells him that there is a point when he must resist tyranny and evil if he is to not be guilty of it. But where is that point? When can a man take a stand, trangress the laws and authorities that in the past he was accustomed to obey, and know in his heart he is in the right? After all, any thief or murderer can, and many do, claim they are freedom fighters resisting tyranny when really all they are is self serving criminals who are the reason government is necessary to begin with. In America we attempted to answer this quesion with the Declaration of Independence, which claimed that our Revolution was justified by King George's trampling of our "certain inalienable rights and that among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." It's an argument I am not comfortable with. I believe that the American Revolution was a just rebellion. But I am not comfortable with the reasoning laid out in the Declaration. I take exception with the phrase "inalienable rights." Inalienable means something can not be taken or given away. It is an inseparable part of you, no more able to be excised than your soul or consciousness. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not inalienable though. The laws of every nation and indeed the conscience of every person allow for execution, incarceration and the socially sanctioned loss of property. There is nothing you possess, not land, not family, wealth or even life, that can not be morally taken from you under some circumstances. A murderer can be executed, a molester can lose his children, a fraud can lose his wealth; and all of them can be locked away for the rest of their lives. The fact that societies are judged tyrannical or free based on the mechanisms they use to take away their citizen's life, liberty and goods is all the proof you need that these things are not rights that are "inalienable" to you. They are freedoms. They are liberties. In some quarters they are considered indulgences or allowances, but they are most definitely not inalienable rights. So what are your inalienable rights? Do you have any? If your very life can lawfully be taken away from you what could you possibly have that would be "inalienable"? Our Declaration of Indepence, our most important and most flawed founding document, was written by our least important and most flawed founding father, Thomas Jefferson. I won't go into all of the reasons for my antipathy towards Jefferson. His failings are well known. He was arrogant, disloyal and petty. His treatment of John Adams was deplorable. But his worst sin was his total immersion in the so called Enlightenment and humanism. These twin ideologies of death led to the nonsensical idea that there is some intrinsic wellspring inside the human soul that extends outside itself to protect those things and people dear to it. It's a lie and one of the worst ever told. And it is a weak argument to base a revolution on; not only demonstrably false, it also set one group of people's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness against another group's with no mechanism to determine who was in the right. Could the British be deprived of their lives and property in order that the Colonist could enjoy theirs? Why? Can anyone declare that they are unhappy and their liberty threatened and begin to take the same from others? The Declaration did a great job of listing the Colonists' grievances and served more than fair warning that they weren't going to sit idly by and endure them anymore, but did it establish the moral authority under which they were upending the legal framework of the last 1,700 years? I don't believe so. A much more cogent argument would have been to list our only true inalienable rights and declare that the exercise of those rights had led the Colonists to demand certain liberties. If they had done so much of the misery of the revolutions to follow; the French, Haitian and Bolshevick at least, may have been averted. These revolutions were based on this idea, put forth in the Declaration of Independence, that the desire for and the ability to exist in certain liberties was intrinsic too and inalienable from every person. Subsequent events have proven this idea to be very wrong. So what are our truly inalienable rights? What is the legitimate basis for a rebellion against tyranny, whether it be personal or corporate, internal or external? The only two things you possess that can not be taken away from you and can justify your every action is your ability to decide what is good and evil and to resist the wrong to death. These things can not be taken away from you. No matter what, you can decide in your heart what is good and what is evil. No one can stop the meditations of your heart. And once having decided what you believe is good, no one can stop you from resisting what is evil. The very act of imprisoning you or even killing you assumes continued restistance so that even if you are blinded and your toungue cut out and you are chained in a dungeon, you are still capable of resistance. Your very existence in that case is resistance. These facts; that moral agency and the the ability to resist on some level can never be taken away from you, are self-evident proof that you have the right to rebel. In fact you have no other rights at all, only liberties that are secured by the exercise of your true rights to decide between good and evil and to resist the evil. Now to make exercising these rights less costly there are some liberties that should never be given up. It is easier to resist evil if you can convince allies to join you so the freedom of the press and of speech should be guarded jealously. And since your right to resist can be fraught with peril, the freedom to bear arms should never be relinguished. Because while you have the right to resistance, you are not insulated from the results of that resistance or even the resistance of others to you. God help you if you are confronted by an evil stronger than yourself, but don't expect mercy if you have been weakened by your own hand. The freedom to be robustly armed should never be relinquished because then your other freedoms become nothing but indulgences allowed to you by another and can be taken away at any time along with your property and loved ones. So this then is the philosophy of Revolution. This is how a man can know when it is morally acceptable to rebel. It is always morally acceptable to decide what is evil and rebel against it. It is an inalienable right of every man, who because he can not be prevented from choosing between good and evil, and once having chosen can not, short of death, be stopped from resisting on some level, to revolt against those people and institutions he deems evil; recognizing that he is also subject to the resistance of other men who also can not be stopped from choosing between good and evil. Let no one tell you then that revolution was only for a certain time and has been dispensed with, and while it was once a great virtue it is now a grievous crime. Revolution is the natural result of exercising your only two God given rights. With it you can secure for yourselves and your posterity the blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, things which no one else can or will secure for you. That is what our Founding Fathers did. This is what we are called on to do every day in our personal lives, and maybe one day in our civic lives.
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"And another boy!"
It’s a cry that has been echoed countless joyous times as parents, doctors and midwives have welcomed newborns, viewed ultra-sounds and placed happy, excited phone calls to jubilant friends and family. I’ve said it myself, pumping my fist wildly in the air and trying not to be too exultant. But those memories will be forever darkened for me now. Because now I've heard it said by a medical assistant with quiet enthusiasm and subtle self-satisfaction that was impossible to reconcile with the off handed and almost bored way that he was picking through what remained of the tiny body that was spread between two petri dishes on the counter in front of him. "I can’t find the legs," he had said with mild curiosity and even milder interest before being able to conclusively identify the dismembered little body in front him, "And another boy!" Did you read that? He could tell by looking that this was a baby boy. "Do you want an eyeball?" asked the doctor next to him. That means the baby boy’s eyes were already formed. This was no faceless, soulless tissue mass. The doctor affirmed that herself when she showed her visitors the petri dishes, "It’s a baby," she said with a flourish, and that baby had eyes and he was a boy. This wasn't a scene from a sick horror movie. It didn't happen in a Nazi concentration camp. This didn't spring from the diseased mind of some horrible person doing unspeakable things in secret. This happened in a brightly lit room, in the presence of witnesses and under the guise of medicine in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. You can watch the video here. The news has been full of this story since it broke. All of the usual players have rushed to their corners and they are all making the same claims and moves that have ultimately never changed anything so far. I resisted watching the Center for Medial Progress investigative videos targeting Planned Parenthood for some time. I did not want those images in my mind. I did not want to feel the intense emotions and the helplessness that would follow. Our world can already be so ugly and barbaric that I hesitated to ingest anymore. And it’s not like it would change anything. I have believed my whole life that abortion is an abomination and an indelible stain on our nation, one that we will pay dearly to have blotted out. I couldn’t change that and watching those videos was only going to upset me. It was a line of reasoning that cowards have used to justify inaction for all of time. It doesn’t sound very convincing when you watch a doctor push a baby boy’s eyes around a petri dish and cautiously price them in $50 - $75 range. She added in his brains and kidneys and estimated the sum total of that baby boy’s value to be $200. She defended pricing the child by each organ as an incentive to efficiency. "I think the per item thing works a little better because we can see how much we can get out of it," she observed. She looked that little dead boy in the eyes and offered to sell what was left of him for $200, ostensibly for the conduct of life-saving research. She offered to sell this child she had most likely killed herself for "life-saving research." The irony wasn’t lost on her though and she apologetically admitted it was a subterfuge by explaining that, "…putting it under the research gives us a little bit of a, a little sort of overhang over the whole thing." "And another boy!" I keep remembering one of the times that I uttered that phrase myself. My wife and I were staring at an ultra-sound monitor. We had just learned that we would soon be receiving another son. I was exultant. This would give me one more son than my father, a silly thought but one I enjoyed. As we looked at the tiny body on the monitor he turned and looked right at us. We had a clear view of his face and we both were shocked. There in that grainy, standard, black and white ultra-sound we recognized the face of our older son. And that wasn’t just some kind of hysterical new parent fantasy. Even now people will ask us if the boys are twins. My wife remembers seeing the ultra-sound of one of my step-daughters and being amazed at much she looked like her father. These ultra-sounds are taken at twenty weeks, in the middle of the second trimester, the approximate age this nameless baby boy was when he was ripped apart in his mother’s womb, suctioned out and dumped in a petri dish to have his eyes sold for $50-$75. You could already see what he would look like. When that doctor looked that child in the eyes she could have said if he looked like his father or his mother. Or at least she could have if he had not have been subjected to a procedure that left his head, in her words, "Blasted out." Recognizing that the baby’s brain would not be useful for "life-saving research" in that condition, she hypothesized that a child further along would be easier to extract, "So I don’t think it would be so war torn." Of course Planned Parenthood maintains that they have broken no laws, an indictment less of them than of our laws. Imagine the perversity of ripping a child apart with forceps, nonchalantly picking through his remains and then quibbling about whether you are selling his organs or being reimbursed for them. If the brutal dismemberment and horrible ending of that tiny life is not immoral then why would we balk at the price? Can that really be what separates this child’s death from being illegal, how we allocate his organs? That doctor looked into that baby boy’s eyes and told those around her, "Here’s some organs for you, they’re all attached. Here’s a stomach, kidney, heart and adrenal…" but somehow we’re supposed to take comfort in the fact that those organs weren’t for sale, they were just available for donation after the payment of a reasonable fee. How can that possibly make a difference? If we can justify drawing and quartering that baby in a manner not seen in medieval torture chambers then why would it matter how we dispose of his parts? That doctor should have been able to ask if the buyers were going to pay with cash or credit and whether they preferred paper or plastic bags. If you can justify what happened to that baby boy in your mind then why should it matter if he was sold or donated? The chances are that, like me, you were not going to watch those videos. Like me you knew what you would be seeing. Like me you don’t want to think about it. But you have to. It’s being done in your name. Your tax dollars are flowing to these clinics. Donations made to Planned Parenthood are tax exempt. When that baby boy was shredded in that clinic his death certificate might as well have been stamped U.S.A. in red, white and blue. Currently there are over a million abortions a year in America. There have been over 57 million performed since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. That’s roughly an abortion every 30 seconds. Every 30 seconds we kill another child, some of them as old as 24 weeks, viable outside the womb. Every 30 seconds a child with organs, a face, fingers and toes that can be counted is killed, usually because they were inconvenient to their mother. Every 30 seconds a callous medical assistant will intone, "and another boy." Every 30 seconds a doctor who has sworn to do no harm will gesture cheerily to a petri dish and announce, "It’s a baby." And they’re doing it in your name and with your money. If you stand by and do nothing then they are doing it with your blessing. The least you can do is ask Congress and the president to stop giving your money and your sanction to this barbarity. The least you can do is ask some hard questions about why roughly 20 % of American pregnancies are aborted. We kill 20% of our children before they ever see the light of day because they might inconvenience us. This can’t continue. We can’t go on like this. No society can kill its children and survive. I can’t even bring myself to ask God to have mercy on us. All I can do is ask that He protect the innocent and punish the guilty for His name’s sake for how can He claim to be a righteous Judge before the nations if He lets us spill so much innocent blood? There is an online petition you can sign here. Its the least you can do. The other night the Beloved Bride and I were trolling around on Netflix looking for a movie and we settled on a good one. If you haven’t already, then you should really watch Apocalypto.
Now let me preface by saying that I love Mel Gibson movies. All three of the movies I’ve cried during; The Patriot, We Were Soldiersand of course The Passion of the Christ, were Gibson flicks.And while some of his movies have not been so hot, I’m particularly thinking about Air America here, and at least one of them I refuse to see, the original novel for The Man Without a Face was supposedly about a hideous topic, for the most part Gibson makes great movies. Braveheart ranks in my top 10 favorite movies of all time (if it were possible to compile such a list) and other movies of his I really enjoyed were What Women Want, Conspiracy Theory, Maverick and it goes without saying, every Lethal Weapon movie even though Danny Glover is a moron. And while this isn’t the place, or at least the time, both Signs and Gibson’s Hamlet deserve far more credit and scrutiny than they receive. But back to the original point of all of this, Apocalypto. For those of you supercilious types I will admit up front that some of the movie is predictable, but let’s face it, there is nothing new under the sun and most movies are completely predictable so get over it. Alright, first things first, this is a movie about men, for men by a man. There is plenty of action, coarse jokes, blood and boobs. If you don’t like those things then you’re probably not going to like this movie. A few notes on the boobs; here at The Revolting Man we are huge fans of boobs. We like them. A lot. However they are frequently handled incorrectly in our culture. In Apocalypto they are handled in a fairly novel and frankly effective way. Don’t watch this movie if you are looking for fake monstrosities or to be inundated with nudity, but they are frequently in the background adding a little spice, but enough of that. The main story is that of Jaguar Paw, a young leader of a slightly idealized jungle tribe who struggles with his inner fears and a very chaotic and changing world. Of course for me the most compelling storylines were those about the men trying to live up to their concept of manhood. Both Jaguar Paw and another character named Curled are attempting the feat and while Curled’s story is the more interesting of the two, Jaguar Paw though is an archetypal Revolting Man. His fight with himself and a foreign and overpowering but decaying culture is one that will resonate with every man trying to protect his family and dignity in modern America. Gibson has said that the movie was at it’s a core an attempt to rejuvenate the chase/action genre but it’s hard to ignore that he frequently tells stories about men at odds with themselves and the world around them. These characters main motivation is protecting a traditional family. You could go through many of his movies and find similar undercurrents but none more pronounced than Signs. Yes I know the two movies couldn’t be more different on their surfaces but both of the protagonists are facing nigh insurmountable civilizations and inner demons all while trying to save their families. Both are successful in similar ways too. It makes sense though; Gibson himself wrestles with inner demons and is at odds with much of the dominant culture. That his characters and movies would revolve around those subjects only makes sense. I love to think that Mel Gibson is a guy just like me, trying to live up to his own ideal of what a man should be while not egregiously transgressing what society says a man should be. I think it’s telling that in Apocalypto the main character withdraws from the corrupt society and the possibilities of a new invading society to try and realize his ideal. And even though he is escaping scarred, battered and bereft of worldly goods, he is in possession of what he values most, his family and inner peace. I would imagine it’s an ending Gibson is looking for in his own life, and one I would like for mine. I am afraid I have to join the thousands, maybe even millions, of writers who have started a column with a Bob Dylan lyric.
But first I have to tell you that the sole purpose of this column is to the throw the editorial weight of this column behind Rick Santorum in his bid to be the Republican 2012 presidential candidate, but more on that later. First to set the stage, which requires the use of the aforementioned Dylan lyric. And unfortunately I am not even going to pick one of the lesser known ones. No, I am about to launch this column with the very familiar line, the times they are a’changin’. I humbly beg your apology for falling back on this much used truism, but the fact is that is true and how. The world we live in looks nothing like the one I grew up in and promises to look nothing like the one my children are growing up in. It feels like history is either going to bring one of its cycles full circle or shoot off into a whole different path. We are either going to return to our roots or grow into something completely different. Part of this feeling is caused by the presidential campaign of course. Since 1992 every election has been touted as the most important in a generation and for the most part they all have been. This is because America has to choose between liberalism and conservatism. The two can no longer coexist. One of these ideologies must defeat the other and the main field this battle is being fought on is in the government, mostly because it has already been decided in the arts and academia. And this is why every election is so critical as of late, the stakes really are very high and will be until one idea beats the other. Obviously the philosophical girders of The Revolting Man are extremely conservative, to the point of liberalism in some cases, and most conservative elites are claiming that is vital to deny President Obama a second term. To this end they are urging conservatives to coalesce behind a consensus candidate that they have deemed to have the best chance to defeat Obama in the general election, Mitt Romney. I reject that line of reasoning from its premise onward. The first priority is to defeat liberalism, the ideology of death. While Obama is certainly the most pure liberal to ever take the White House, he is not liberalism itself or even its most dangerous purveyor. I want to make myself very clear, I do not believe Mitt Romney when he claims to be a conservative. He was a “moderate Republican” his entire life before seeking national office when he quickly and conveniently converted on social issues. He was raised in Washington power circles, he lived in Washington power circles and he will be unable to resist the pull of those power circles on him if he is elected. The White House under Mitt Romney will not sound or act substantially differently under Mitt Romney than it has under Obama. A vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for conservatism to get blamed when liberalism fails. And liberalism is headed for a gigantic failure. In fact I almost despair that it can be prevented at this point. But if it is to be prevented then it must be done so by the unabashed, unapologetic trumpeting of conservative ideals. I believe two candidates, three before the Perry withdrawal, are capable of that right now. Newt is a strong candidate and his passion and eloquence are very persuasive. I could easily support him. Rick Santorum however brings with his consistency and sense of decorum a gravitas that I think a president needs. His conservative credentials are impeccable on social issues and while he may have brought some bacon home to Pennsylvania while he was in the Senate, he was by no means a serious offender. So I urge voters in South Carolina to get behind Rick Santorum. He has run a clean campaign on a shoe string budget and I believe he would make a good president. Here at The Revolting Man we strive to be revolutionary. While others are looking left, we look right and vice versa. It is here that we hope you find that perspective, that bit of commentary, that story that you don’t get anywhere else.
For instance, this week the whole of the country was talking about one of two things;Tim Tebow or the 2012 presidential primary. So of course one would assume The Revolting Man, in a never ending quest to be revolutionary, would not discuss either. And you would be correct, because today we will be discussing Tim Tebow AND the 2012 presidential primary, so as to be both revolutionary and relevant. Of course The Revolting Man would never just state his opinion on Tim Tebow (wonderfully inspiring and humbling) and the 2012 presidential primary (vaguely disturbing and worrisome). It must needs be accompanied by some obscure analogy and to illuminate some obvious but overlooked truth of the world of men, and that dear reader is no mean feat. Especially as there is almost nothing The Revolting Man can add to a purely technical discussion of football or related topics. As an avowed baseball man he finds football a little too straightforward to offer much diversion. It seems the bigger, faster team will invariably win and that most contests of the kind can reasonably be predicted at the outset. There are times though when the storyline can add drama and interest to an otherwise two dimensional sport. In the case of the 2012 presidential primary that would have been the now politically departed and greatly lamented Herman Cain who unfortunately will not be mentioned in this column again, even the parts that are about the 2012 presidential primary. In the NFL it is the marvelous Tim Tebow who is bringing the depth and heart which is largely lacking in politics. Tebow, as most readers will already know, was a legendary college quarterback. He led his Florida Gators to two national championships while winning a Heisman Trophy and breaking multiple records, but his move to the NFL was not as seamless as his college career would suggest. For many reasons he was not predicted to perform well at the next level and was dismissed and some would say disrespected by some NFL-ers and the sports press. Nevertheless, Tebow has proven to be a resilient winner while maintaining an air of professionalism, maturity and for lack of a better word, groundedness. It’s been a very impressive display of character, judgment and discretion for a young man. The naysayers included well respected figures in his field and on his team. Despite that he maintained not only his dignity and humanity but his drive and confidence. The Revolting Man aspires to do as well in similar circumstances. In fact, Tebow represents everything that is good about sports. He is showing us who we could be, that strong character can and should accompany professional excellence. He is rejuvenating the once ubiquitous but now discredited concept of an American masculine ideal. Now here is where the 2012 presidential primary comes in. The Revolting Man realizes that in the midst of a truncated football season, immediately after the holidays and right before tax time, that most men are looking for some innocent escapism. We want to focus on Tim Tebow and his revival of the best that’s in all of us. We do not want to focus on 7 guys talking about the taxes we’re trying to ignore, national decline, foreign policy or forestalling the worst in all of us. And that is exactly what politics is all about. It is boring and dry and largely negative. We don’t think we can change anything and no matter which side we choose half the country will end up hating us. Meanwhile, Tebow requires nothing of us. You can love him or you hate him but either way it’s inconsequential. It doesn’t matter if Tebow wins or loses. It won’t affect your job or your kids. It won’t anger or mollify your wife. You won’t have to be embarrassed or worried at all. You can either revel in the fact that you were right or ruefully pontificate about why you were mistaken but there are no bad consequences. This is of course refreshing. Most men love to be able to focus our inner lives on the inconsequential; it’s a wonderful escape from the rest of our world. We can love or hate Tebow for whatever reason we want and never have another thought about it. Not so the 2012 presidential primary. It has huge import for our future and its players were not all likeable. The choices are not clear cut and the decision is going to have to be lived with. This is not appealing to men. It requires much of us. We must stick our necks out, make decisions and take stands. That can be a very uncomfortable place sometimes, at least when the decisions we stand on have very real consequences. As men we love making decisions and taking stands, when they don’t matter. That’s why sports and video games are so seductive; they fulfill that drive to feel purposeful and resolute without requiring us to purpose or resolve anything. So here’s the challenge men, get involved for real. We all love Tebow and there is definitely a place for mental rest and relaxation, but after the work is done. The work to be done right now is to pick a candidate, make your choice known and try to sway others to your point of view. You see the revolting man is one who sees that while Tebow is a man of action, his exploits are to be enjoyed by men at leisure. If you are to be a man of action, you have to keep leisure in its place, take the risks, get out of your comfort zone and accomplish something, live a high stakes life of consequence. Then go enjoy Tebow. He’s a hell of a guy. Halloween brought a rare treat for the Revolting Man this year which is a little odd since he is not a big fan of the holiday.
It’s not that there is anything wrong with costumes and merriment and candy; these are wonderful things. It’s just that they lose some of their sweetness when coated with death. Nonetheless, the Revolting Family was trick or treating when they encountered a man who at first blush seemed a little ridiculous, but as with most things that seem ridiculous at first glance, this fellow proved to have something of the sublime about him. In the beautiful little town the Revolting Family lives in, it is customary for many people to trick or treat in the neighborhood where, not at all coincidentally, the more affluent reside. In fact, there were several hundred costumed people canvassing the area looking for any house with so much as a nightlight burning to indicate the possibility of some kind soul dispensing candy. If one had squinted hard it might have been possible to pretend that the whole event was an Occupy Wall Street offshoot, except the costumes were nowhere near scary enough and there weren’t as many treats, violations of hygiene and decorum or aging hippies. Instead the crowd was comprised of young families portraying all of the usual characters. Amidst this good-natured swarm was a large-ish man with several children, a wife, and a sister. But what was most noticeable was the flashlight, not that it was anything more than a normal flashlight. In fact it wasn’t even an exciting flashlight with LED bulbs or heavy aircraft aluminum construction. It was one of those old plastic, 2 D batteries, regular old, never work when you need them because the kids have been using them for light sabers, junk drawer flashlights. Except this one did work, it worked well enough that the dad in question was using it to further illuminate a street that was well lit enough to read on, even though it was well past twilight and there were far more bats, both real and of the costumed variety, out than robins, the real and costumed variety combined. And if the various streetlights, porch lights and said flashlights weren’t enough light, the extremely prepared father was also wearing a headlamp, which did come with an exciting array of LED lighting. The Revolting Man, who prides himself on his minimalist approach to all things but especially preparedness, couldn’t help but chuckle at the expense of the extremely prepared father. The man seemed so proud and excited to be protecting his family that he almost beamed as bright as his various lights. Of course not long after that the Revolting Family had to cross a deserted residential street. The Beloved Bride stopped all of the various progeny at the curb and turned to wait for the Revolting Man to stride into the street and make sure that it was indeed as empty as it seemed. He stood there with erect carriage, his glaring eyes in constant motion, searching for some car to magically appear and threaten his family. What he would have done if one had is anyone’s guess. But the point is he was there looking for, perhaps hoping for, some threat to emerge so he could spring into action and do battle on the behalf of his loved ones. On its surface it was much more ridiculous than the very bright father who had just been the unknowing bearer of the Revolting Man’s amusement. Even the Revolting Man couldn’t miss the humor in how he strode into a deserted street and dared non-existent cars to try and run him over. Nonetheless, as everyone arrived safely on the opposite side-walk, he expressed gratitude for the gift he has been given. Because in this safe, boring world we live in, the Revolting Man has an adventure just crossing the street, when anything could go wrong with disastrous results that ripple out and harm dozens of people. That father with all the lumens might be walking down a well lit and crowded street in a safe neighborhood in a friendly little town he grew up in but that doesn’t mean he isn’t the only barrier between the lives of everyone he holds dear and utter calamity. It may sound like a cliché or a joke, but it is not. When the comfort and well-being of others rests on your shoulders then all your actions are of consequence, your every decision is far-reaching and your every move is critical. The Revolting Man has sown some wild oats. He has traveled to the bright lights and in some dirty, dangerous places. But he never had a high stakes life of consequence until he had a family. Being reminded of that was a real treat. It’s an image that all men fantasize about. We’ve all imagined ourselves the secret agent, sneaking into some foreboding lair, evading traps, overpowering guards, picking locks, hacking computers on the way to a thunderous gunfight, a massive explosion and a daring escape with an exotic woman so overawed by our magnificence that she succumbs to our desires as soon as the last echoes of destruction fade away.
It’s an exciting image that the vast majority of us unfortunately will never really believe we could portray. Nothing about the life of the modern American man smacks of excitement or intrigue. Much of the time we don’t even seem necessary. Our pacified world does not require us as protectors, at least for the moment. The marvels of electricity, hydraulics and the internal combustion engine have reduced the need for our strong backs. We are no longer the primary bread winners. In a world with no absolute truths our innate sense of justice and logic is not needed. It gets worse too. Just this week it was announced that science has cloned the first human embryo. Soon we will not even be necessary as sperm donors. Women could live their entire lives without ever once noticing the lack of a man in it, women who a mere century ago couldn’t produce enough to provide for themselves let alone any offspring they might have. And so the plight of the modern man seems somewhat less than his fantasies; marginalized in every sphere he seems more a dependent relative who has to be as untroublesome as possible to avoid being thrown out on his ear than a secret agent saving the world from destruction and tyranny. And yet most men are highly skilled operatives waging high stakes battles whose outcomes carry heavy consequence. With traps and pitfalls on every side most men take on powerful challenges and make deep sacrifices, many times unrecognized even by the people who benefit from them the most. In fact is there any better analogy for being a husband and father than that of a commando parachuting into danger armed only with his wits and what weapons he can carry to save the world for generations to come? Maybe it seems silly or melodramatic to someone not engaged in the fight. The life of a modern man seems like anything but an epic struggle, but appearances are deceiving, like a modern day Bruce Wayne his apparent indolence and irrelevance are a cover for a selfless warrior fighting unending battles in secret for the good of others. If the world truly needs heroes, then it’s in luck. There are millions of them everywhere one looks, fathers and husbands who keep fighting, even when the way is unclear and victory is uncertain. It’s a shame most of them will never see themselves that way. |
AuthorThe Revolting Man lives at the end of a dirt road at the bottom of a hill at the top of a valley in the foothills of the Appalachians. Archives
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