How Much Right Does Might Make?
The math behind fucking around and finding out squares only rarely.
Let’s call it FAFO-logy. The science of Fucking Around and Finding Out could arguably be claimed to have reached its apotheosis in the year of our lord 2021, January 6th, specifically. According to ABC News over 700 “accused rioters” faced charges post the inauguration insurrection designed to, if not keep Trump in office, make it impossible for the presumed winner, Joe Biden, to take it.
They showed up at the request/behest of Trump, and truly and honestly believed that they weighed more than Russia.
Who, what, where?
Let me explain: during Stalin’s heyday, though many could claim that never ended, he had, as a result of some show trials and summary executions based on forced confessions, turned his attentions to two holdouts. These prisoners of conscience refused to sign the pre-written confessions regardless of the torture designed to bend them to doing so.
The interrogators returned to Stalin and reported this very fact. Stalin, after urging them to use sterner measures and those also failing, had asked them, seemingly out of the blue, if they knew how much Russia weighed.
Most of us would have laughed this off, but no one still breathing spent much time laughing off much of what Stalin said. They said they would get him an answer. They considered the number of armaments, the land mass, the populations, crunched some numbers. It was clearly a knowable figure, even if unknown.
When Stalin next called them in though, knowing defeat could mean death, and a wrong answer would be even worse, confessed to not knowing. Stalin needed to simplify, apparently, and so asked the question that put it all in focus: Did the holdouts weigh more than Russia?
They got it, so did the holdouts and so did Stalin. The confessions, that is.
“If you think there’s a correlation to punching me in the face and your girlfriend’s love I am willing to have you prove it out. That is: how many punches will it take for you to believe she really loves you?”
And here it is that the January 6th rioters, capping off a social media-fueled frenzy/tendency to see violence as a necessary corollary to whatever so-called philosophizing that preceded it viewed it as right, normal and natural. If words had consequences because, of course, they must, right? Aren’t those consequences to be celebrated?
Most recently by way of something that happened in my neck of the woods. That is: the MMA community. Known associate and professional Mixed Martial Artist Jake Shields had been engaging in an online war of words with another Mixed Martial Artist Mike Jackson. Encountering each other in public, a scuffle ensues. Jake calls Mike a racist for, presumably, calling him a Nazi.
Mike, post-scuffle, calls Jake a vile thug. Lawsuits are threatened, from both sides and from both sides, no matter who you side with, you’re probably largely feeling like something significant was achieved.
Which is why I am here. To call bullshit on that. Which might seem strange for someone who has written a book called Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass Kicking But Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking, but the reality is, violence solves nothing…significant.
Let me explain. Angry boyfriend discovers that I have been having back channel discussions with his girlfriend. He calls, enraged, all matter of threats are flung. I listen. I owe him at least that. I make no mention of the fact that she had invited me to call in the first place. I am, above all else, a gentleman.
But time is fleeting and so I make an offer: “I can see you’re upset. So I’ll tell you what: gimme an address and I’ll show up and you can kick my ass.”
He pauses, smelling “trick” or at the very least “trap” all over this.
“Nah. I know you’re a fighter you piece of…”
“No. Listen carefully,” I say. “I’ll show up, and you can punch me as long as you want if you think it will improve your relationship.”
Silence. So, I continue: “If you think there’s a correlation to punching me in the face and your girlfriend’s love I am willing to have you prove it out. That is: how many punches will it take for you to believe she really loves you?”
“You’re an asshole.” And the phone goes dead.
I re-told this story to someone who had seen me punch other humans in the face before and so the query stood: if violence solves nothing how did I explain that?
“My mother is not dead, Mr. McElroy….But just to show you my heart’s in the right place I am glad to offer you not one, but BOTH of my sweaty nuts, to gargle with. It is really the least I can do.”
“I’m rarely not giving people a choice. As the logical conclusion of a philosophical argument I never resort to violence first though sometimes it must be asked, as I have: ‘is it your desire that I strike you?’ If the answer is ‘yes,’ as it sometimes has been, then I am just a service provider. Much like a house painter. Or a furniture mover. Both jobs I used to do.”
“What I am not is someone trying to teach another someone a ‘lesson.’ No one learns, certainly not under these circumstances. So what’s the point?”
What I am is also a guy with the same name as a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who is about eight years older than me. Eugene H. Robinson writes for the Washington Post. I’m unsure if he sometimes gets my mail and checks, but I sometimes have gotten his. And what I get a lot of, as of late, would be his hate mail.
If he has a TV appearance or an opinion piece where he proclaims as he ostensibly did last week that, for example, Kamala Harris would make a great president (something I disagree with, just FYI) my inbox lights up. With hostile vitriol. Which might be a drag. For him.
For me? It’s an opportunity for…well, JOY!
Knowing that people are expecting a response from a Pulitzer Prize winner I often offer to have sex with their mothers, their fathers, them. I offer any number of vile and thuggish outlays. I answer as long as they respond, right up until they block me. I shy short of actual threats but it’s all deeply and darkly disturbing because these are the watchwords of the age.
While I am unsure of how many of them figure out it’s Eugene S. Robinson and not Eugene H. Robinson, I don’t much care. I am giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s and here is the important part: without any real belief in its efficacy.
That is, I don’t expect to achieve anything, of significance, or real impact. I don’t expect or want to change anyone’s minds, about Kamala, or much of anything else. I’m not steeped in the importance and the inviolability of me or my ideas. I am, to put it perfectly, one of the least sensitive people alive here in my realization that, to quote Travis Bickle, there’s no reality to any of this.
None.
AND I like to watch the world burn.
So, all of this energy and belief in the algorithm that keeps us at each other’s throats and in each other’s feeds, signifies nothing outside of another beach bungalow for Musk or Zuckerberg. Sure, I am adding to the noise as well with every word I write here. But “here” for me is ensconced in some sweaty underwear fresh from two hours of doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and realizing that for all the internet mud that exists in and around us, the purity of being choked, for absolutely no reason at all other than the fact that I’m not that into golfing, is above all else, the goal.
“Bahahahahaha! You're cracking me up, fruitcup! You must suck as much as a ‘journalist’ as you do in life. Your dead mother must have been so embarrassed by how much of a failure you are. You should kill yourself,” said Facebook’s Edward McElroy, who uses a bluebird (of happiness?) as his icon.
“My mother is not dead, Mr. McElroy,” I say. “But just to show you my heart’s in the right place I am glad to offer you not one, but BOTH of my sweaty nuts, to gargle with. It is really the least I can do.”
I sent it and it bounced back. He had blocked me. And, probably, not a minute too soon.