On Masculinity...

David Reimer was born in 1965 in Canada. Because his doctor was a fucking idiot, he lost his penis when the doctor botched the circumcision. The parents didn't know how to deal with it, so they went to see Dr. John Money in Baltimore, who was known as the top psychologist on gender roles in the world at the time. Because it was 1965 and medical ethics were completely fucked, he decided to use Reimer for a social experiment. He was to be given a surgical sex change and be raised as a girl.

To say that it didn't go well is an understatement. David (called "Brenda", at the time), told his parents he felt like a boy, refused to wear dresses, and fought his brother to play with his "boy toys" of guns and cars while refusing to play with dolls.

I'll mention why I'm bringing this up in a bit.

A few years ago I first heard of the concept of "toxic masculinity", and what I read about it was originally in the context of teaching men why we need feminism, which made it easy to digest and didn't cause me to have a knee-jerk reaction of "How dare you say being manly is bad!"

The article explained that as men we're expected to do things that are awful. Not just awful to women, but awful to other men, and awful to ourselves. We're told to repress emotions. We're not allowed to feel sadness, fear, or well, pretty much anything other than joy or rage. This causes us to be unnecessarily aggressive towards people, and causes depression. Showing emotion is "girly". You're also not allowed to do "girly" things, like baking or cleaning the house.

That really struck a chord with me. For years I was suffering from depression and I didn't know it, because it manifested itself as anger. I was in the Army for most of my 20s, and you're not allowed to be sad in the Army. The Army doesn't issue you any tears, soldier! You're allowed to be angry, though. So I was a ball of rage for most of my adult life. This led to me being kind of a shitty person. Or as my wife once told me, "Yeah, you were kind of an asshole back then."

The article concluded by saying that we should be willing to embrace what is seen as "girly" to become better men. Be free to be sad sometimes. Do the fucking dishes. Bake some cookies.

I took that advice to heart. I work on trying to be more honest about my emotions, even when it puts me in a position of vulnerability. I've turned into quite the chef. I'm still a slob, but I'm working on it.

I also took the main idea of that article to heart. Men need feminism. When society truly sees women as equals, doing all that "girly shit" won't be seen as bad.

So the years have passed, and I'm working on being a better man. But there's something that has been on my mind for a while:

What is masculinity without the toxicity?

The left has really failed to answer this question, and I think that's a big reason why there's been a massive backlash to the new feminist movement.

I imagine that some folks are reading this and thinking, "Are you shitting me, Grasshopper? People are against feminism because they're sexist assholes! Are you trying to tone police us?"

Of course not. There's always going to be a sexist backlash to any feminist movement, and yet I think that a lot of that backlash could be dealt with if we had an answer to the question I've been asking myself: What is masculinity without the toxicity?

The left has done a great job at showing why being more, well, "girly", for lack of a better word, isn't something that men should be ashamed of, but they've failed at creating an idea of masculinity that doesn't have the toxic elements traditionally associated with being a man.

If you go on social media to search for "positive masculinity", you'll find groups, pages, and Twitter feeds showing men being good, decent people, but I'm often at a loss when I ask myself how their actions are masculine in nature. Yes, these men are doing good things, but I don't see how anything they're doing is masculine. The positivity part is there, but the masculine part feels lacking. What are they doing that could be different from a woman expressing femininity?

Oh, so you're saying we should have well defined gender roles? Geez, why not just start quoting Jordan Peterson while you're at it?!

No, that's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that there's going to be traits and actions that men have and do to express their masculinity, just as women have and do the same to express their femininity. We need to start talking about how we men can express our gender identity without being toxic.

Which brings me back to David Reimer.

The man who was born a boy but raised as a girl hated being forced into his role as a female. He felt he was male. He wanted to do things that boys typically do. He didn't want to play with Barbie dolls. He wanted to play with toy guns and cars. No matter how much he was forced into a role as a girl, he knew he was a boy. He identified as a boy, and wanted to do the same stuff that boys do.

This is common with transgender people as well. A friend of mine recently posted a story on Facebook that revealed a study that showed that transgender people tend to have brain activity that resembles the cis-gendered people of the gender they identify with. We have scientific proof that gender identity is more than about physical attributes. We cis-gender men and transgender men have masculinity as part of our identity, and we need to know how to express it without the toxic elements.

So this isn't about gender roles. It's about gender identity, and how best to express that identity.

Expressing gender identity is different than gender roles. Gender roles dictate we must do things because we are a man or woman. Men are required to be stoic, angry, and be the bread winner in the family. Women are required to be passive, submissive, know how to cook, and raise children. Gender roles are limiting and lead to harm.

Expression of our gender identity, on the other hand, is when we choose to do things because we are a man or woman. We want to express our masculinity or femininity. This brings freedom and self-care. We need to have a conversation over what that means. We need to start talking about what it means to be masculine without being toxic.

However, I think we on the left are scared to have this conversation, because we're worried that we're going to be dragged.

The left loves to eat their own, and if you make even the slightest misstep in talking about gender, Leftbook and Twitter will fuck your world up. Nobody wants to be set up for being bullied and dragged through social media because they accidentally said something problematic. So having this conversation is scary. I'd be worried about it if my blog reach expanded anywhere past my friends on social media. Even so, I've spent several hours reading and re-reading my blog draft to make it clear that I'm not talking about gender stereotypes or gender roles. I'm saying that we need to start talking about how men can express themselves as men without being toxic. And I'm certain that despite my best intentions, I still fucked it all up somehow.

It doesn't matter. This needs to be said, because the right is having this conversation, and if I, a 37 year old feminist man is wondering what it means to be a man without toxic masculinity, I can guarantee that there's 17 year old boys that are asking themselves that. And if Roosh V, Jordan Peterson, and the Proud Boys are the only ones willing to have this conversation, we're going to have another generation of misogynistic, angry, and mentally unhealthy men to contend with.

There is, however, one place in all of the internet that I have found as a good source of information for wholesome masculinity. The Art of Manliness has been around for some time, and it provides a great resource for advice for men in a very non-toxic manner. It has advice for everything from basic things like how to make small talk or tying ties, to more complex things like parenting and relationship advice. And it does it without all the aggressiveness and false bravado that you get from toxic masculinity.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Let the dragging begin!

How to Have a Healthy and Nutritious Thanksgiving

Worried about how to have a Thanksgiving without adding on a bunch of calories? I'm here to help!

Here's my tried and true way to make a Thanksgiving dinner that's nice and healthy!

Step 1: Don't.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk!

Seriously though, no matter how dedicated to health and fitness you are, there's three days where it's completely acceptable to stuff your face.

1. Christmas
2. Your birthday
3. Thanksgiving

Don't be so dedicated to fitness that you don't get to enjoy life. Go ahead, eat the pie.

If it helps, just tell yourself you're bulking. :)

Starting Over Is Hard

There's a reason why I haven't written in over six months.

Back in May, I lost my job. I lost it despite the fact that I thought I was irreplaceable. I was an EMT at a security firm that couldn't afford to lose EMTs. I lost it by doing the one thing that I could do that would cause me to lose my job. I crashed a patrol vehicle.

Over the past months since, I lost that job, got placed at a less paying job that didn't care about my EMT skills, and ended up taking a much better paying job at a place I love working at.

There's a lot of thing I wanted to write in those six months, and even have a long draft written on the whole deal. I decided to not publish it because it's only half done, and at one point, I realized I was writing a novel.

But I can't write about anything else until I mention that. So to sum up the last six months:

1. Losing your job sucks. I don't care who you are. Even if you're a socialist (as I am), losing your job feels like a judgment on your self worth.

2. I was depressed during that time, which was why I wasn't working out much.

3. I tried a new workout during that time, but I kept getting injured, so I gave up on that, so now I'm starting over with the 5x5 method until I do something new.

That about sums it up. I've been wanting to write more on all of this, but since I've not written anything in the last six months, here it is.

There's a lot more I want to write about. Everything from fitness, to politics, to everything else. But I couldn't get started until I finally finished this. So good, we're done. Moving on.

The Quest for a Better Cheeseburger

This post is at least two years in the making.

I love cheeseburgers. They're my Achilles' heel any time I'm trying to cut weight. No matter how good I'm doing on a cutting plan, I eventually give into my craving and go get a burger. I fucking love them. Most of us do, too. How many of us go a week without eating a burger? I'm guessing that absent my vegetarian friends, there's not too many of us that do so. Like Samuel Jackson said, they're the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast.

Was he being sarcastic? I'm not sure.

So I've spent no less than two years trying to find a way to make one that's low in fat and doesn't taste like ass. This has been one major headache after another, with massive fail after massive fail, and I'm going to share all of that with you now before I get to the good version. Consider it a cautionary tale so you don't do all this shit yourself.

1. Just buy the lean stuff (96% fat free) and cook it as you would a normal burger

Why does this fail? Because the stuff is as dry as the Sahara. Until you try this, you don't realize how important fat is in making a juicy, delicious cheeseburger. On its own, this stuff takes like mushy, overcooked steak. I even put this shit in spaghetti sauce once and it didn't do anything to make this nasty stuff any less dry. On its own, it's fucking awful.

2. Buy the lean stuff and put fat in it

I did this when I went to Medical Weight Loss Clinic a few years ago when I made a hard effort to cut weight. Because I was allowed one tablespoon of Land O' Lakes spread and 4.5 ounces of lean ground beef, I put the two together after I read some stuff on the internet suggesting adding fat to the ground beef. This did work to make the burger taste good, albeit with a slight buttery flavor. However, I stopped doing it after I ended my MWLC diet plan because I found that when you add fat to the burger, you're pretty much breaking even with 80/20 traditional ground beef. I could get away with that when my diet was restricted to 1,600 calories a day. Not so much now.

3. Use a substitute for ground beef

I do enjoy a good 85/15 turkey burger. It's not as good as ground beef, but it's good nonetheless. Still, after I checked the calorie content on turkey and ground beef, I found that when you account for an equal percentage of fat, the difference in calories is pretty negligible. The only way to see a severe reduction in calories is by getting the super lean ground turkey, which leads to the same issues as above.

Bison is another substitute for ground beef. Like its turkey counterpart, it's delicious in its own right. Unfortunately, it also has 17 grams of fat per 4 ounce serving, and is also expensive as fuck. You will never find bison on sale. It's always going to be $11-$12 a pound, and the fat content is about the same as your average 80/20 ground beef (18 grams per 4 ounce serving).

Don't even bother with that ground chicken shit. I love chicken and still won't touch that garbage.

4. Grind up your own lean steak into ground beef

This really sounded great on paper when I decided to try it. I bought an inexpensive meat grinder on Amazon, set it up, and tossed in some lean sirloin.

You know what happens when you grind up lean sirloin and try to cook it as a burger? It turns right back into a steak. Steak is delicious, but you don't do this because you want a steak. You want a burger.

5. Find success on accident

Since I watch a lot of healthy recipe videos on YouTube, I stumbled onto a channel from a guy that calls himself Remington James. The first video that I came across showed how to make a mini deep dish pizza made with fat free shredded cheese. Until then, I didn't even know that fat free shredded cheese existed. 

Fat free cheese is very hard to find in Southeast Michigan, which made it pretty infuriating that it was obvious that Remington James was buying his stuff from his local Kroger. It wasn't until a few months ago that my local Kroger started stocking fat free cheese slices and fat free cream cheese (which I've used to make some delicious low calorie protein cheesecake). I downloaded apps from several grocery stores into my phone, only to find out that the closest place that has fat free shredded cheese is at a Walmart two towns away. I'm letting you know this in case you need to know how to get it yourself. Download all the apps of nearby grocery stores into your phone, and search until you find one.

I just realized I turned this into one of those annoying Instagram posts where the writer shares their life story before getting to the recipe. Ugh. My apologies. Recipe is coming up, I promise. I just want to give credit where credit is due.

Anyway, after watching his pizza video, a few others from him popped up in my "recommended" section, and two of them really stood out for me. The first was his "High Protein Bodybuilding Grilled Cheese Sandwich". I'm trying that later this week, as it looks like a tasty way to make breakfast. The second was his video for a "Healthy Bodybuilding Bacon Cheeseburger Recipe". Here's the video for that:

The macros for this is 15 grams of fat, 24 grams of carbohydrates, and 70 grams of protein.

For those of you that can't view videos for some reason, here's the breakdown of that recipe:

Ingredients:

A half pound of 96/4 lean ground beef

garlic paste (no measurement given, use to taste)

diced jalapenos (optional, I did not use)

28 grams fat free shredded cheddar cheese

One slice of fat free American cheese

One sandwich slim hamburger bun (we both used Kroger brand, I don't know if other stores have them)

Two slices of turkey bacon

I had never used fat free cheese or turkey bacon before, so I was worried about the taste. It came out fantastic. Trust me on this one.

Take all the ingredients except your cheese slice, sandwich slim, and turkey bacon and mix together. I recommend using a substantial amount of garlic paste to help add moisture to the burger.

Set your frying pan to medium heat and spray your frying pan with non-stick cooking spray (lean beef WILL stick to your pan) and cook the burger for about five minutes on each side, making sure the burger is cooked all the way through (unless you like a little red in your burger, that's up to you).

After the burger is cooked, put your cheese slice on it and set aside. Fry your turkey bacon and add it to your burger. Place on bun and eat.

This burger tasted great. The garlic paste and shredded cheese helped to add moisture to the burger without adding fat calories. I'm really surprised at how good the fat free cheese tasted. And turkey bacon is a lot better than it has any right to be. I just wish it could get super crispy like pork bacon.

I'll be making this again for sure.

Getting Old is Scary

When I was fifteen years old, I decided on some random Sunday afternoon to go to the park and shoot some hoops. Normally this is something that I would do on my own, but for some reason my dad wanted to play as well. So I went with him, my brother, and my step-sister to the park to play some basketball.

We ended up playing a game of twenty-one. While my dad was dribbling the ball down the half-court, I went in for a steal and swiped at the ball. My hand landed on one side of the ball, while my dad's hand was on the other. To this day he says I drew a foul, but I'll go to my grave saying that my entire hand was on the ball. That move was all it took to dislocate my dad's shoulder.

Ten years later, he was still getting surgeries to repair that shoulder. He was 41 when he got that injury. I'm 37.

Like I said in my last entry, my doctor said that I have calcium deposits in my spine. Right now, they don't hurt unless I'm squatting heavy. My doctor says that in twenty years, it's going to be an issue.

Despite our best intentions to not end up like our parents, sometimes we just can't help but end up that way. I've always had bad knees, like my dad. I've blown each of them out six times. My dad had to quit wrestling in high school because of them.

I also remember that my dad would make various attempts at health and fitness, but being that it was the 1980s and information on health and fitness was sporadic at best, most of his attempts were ham fisted and yielded little results. He bought an old school rowing machine with the metal arms. He used it for a week and then it just sat around. He bought a punching bag, and stopped using it after a week, after which is went away to parts unknown. He took the bag down and I didn't see it again for another twenty years after he had long divorced my mother and moved into a new house. This irritated my brother and I, as we enjoyed punching the bag as well. He even tried Jenny Craig once, which went about as well as anybody who does Jenny Craig.

You can't blame my dad for sucking at fitness. It was the 1980s. It's not like there was a lot of information out there, and even with the information that did exist, the science behind exercise was kind of a shit sandwich compared to now. He did what he could to increase his fitness

I think my dad did all this because he didn't really know how to navigate the world without being strong. Despite working an office job, he liked to intimidate people into getting his way (which is one of many reasons we don't spend much time together nowadays). When his body started falling apart, he started having mental health issues. I don't know much about that, other than family members have said that his medicine cabinet is filled with pills.

My dad has been a giant mess most of his life, and all of mine. I'll spare you the details.

The point is that I'm reaching the age where his body started falling apart, and I'm starting to notice the same happening to mine. I still have calcium deposits on my shoulder that have been there for years, and will probably be there until the day I die. My spine now has issues. My knees have always been pretty fucked.

Getting old is scary.

Don't get me wrong. Despite my gut reminding me that it's time to cut weight, I'm still in great shape. In my MMA classes, I notice that I'm probably the only guy that lifts weights, and isn't intimidated when the instructor "punishes" the class with pushups (why he, the Army, or literally any place on Earth that needs people to be physically strong thinks that threatening people by making them stronger is some sort of punishment is a mystery to me), and I'm hardly winded when class is over. This is despite the fact that many of the students are half my age and sucking lungs at the end.

It still doesn't change the fact that my time is coming. I'm going to be too old for this shit. My body will give out. Sooner rather than later. And that's fucking scary.

The most frightening thing to me throughout my life has been that I would be in a position where I can't defend myself. Where my dad got scared because the loss of his strength meant that he wouldn't be able to intimidate people, I fear being in a position where I'm defenseless.

People are coming to hurt you. No one is going to protect you. You will be punished for defending yourself. Fight anyway. That's been the voice in my head since I was a teenager. A hidden mantra, tucked into my subconscious for years until therapy pulled it to the surface. It worked great until I had to face the reality that I don't have too many years left where I'll be able to defend myself.

Normally I'd try to put a positive spin on things in my posts, but I can't do that here. I really can't emphasize enough that getting old is scary. No matter how strong I am, no matter how well trained I am, my body has an expiration date, and that time is coming quick. And there ain't shit I can do about it.

I gotta leave some sort of pic or video for the Facebook crowd, so here it is.

It's Been A While

I know I haven't written in a while. There's a few reasons for that.

The biggest one is work. I've been working a lot of hours and haven't had much time for writing.

The other is that every time I thought I was going to write about something, I ended up on another part of my fitness journey.

Shortly after the last entry I wrote about making my way to the thousand pound club, I stopped working out for a little over a week. When I got back into the gym, I noticed I was squatting a lot less than before. I couldn't squat nearly as heavy as I once could without feeling intense pain in my lower back. When I couldn't squat 225 without feeling pain, I realized that it's not a lack of strength that was keeping me from lifting. I was injured. Off to the doctor!

After an exam and an x-ray, I found out that I don't have an actual spinal injury (thank Christ), but I do a calcium deposit on my spine that, when squatting, touches a nerve in my spinal cord. This causes intense pain.

The doc said that this is just an inconvenience for now, but in about twenty years, I'm kinda fucked. Goddamn, getting old sucks!

So my plan to get to the thousand pound club by the end of the year is put on hold. But I needed to put it on hold for another reason.

I really, really needed to start cutting weight.

I had been scared to start cutting weight because I didn't want to lose muscle, but with the calcium deposits on my spine fucking with my lift, I decided it was time to start dropping some body fat, anyway. I had already planned on doing this immediately after joining the thousand pound club, as I was getting concerned with what all the bulking was doing to me. My weight had gone up to 308 pounds. When I was bulking, I kept telling myself, "Don't worry about your weight. Just increase your lifts. We'll start cutting weight later.", but I was growing concerned with weighing more than 300 pounds. I promised myself I'd never weigh that much again. But after my plans to join the thousand pound club went to shit, I decided it was time to drop some weight.

Fortunately, one of my favorite YouTube channels, Buff Dudes, had started their own cutting plan right around the same time. So I started that one and also started doing MMA again. I've gotten my weight below 300 pounds. I'm still not lifting anywhere near where I want to be, but at least my weight is down.

The Buff Dudes are bodybuilders, not powerlifters, and bodybuilding is hard when you haven't done it in a long time. When you're powerlifting, you work the legs in just about every workout. You do a few sets of squats and maybe some deadlifts, and you're done. When you're bodybuilding, you work the legs once or twice a week, and you're doing several exercises. It really tests your muscular endurance. My workouts are also a lot longer, which makes it a struggle to find time to hit the gym.

The MMA classes are surprisingly easy. All my years in the gym has certainly paid off, as the classes feel like low-impact cardio.

There's a lot of other stuff I want to write about, but don't have the time to do so right now. Hopefully I can get it done during the week.

I'm Probably Going to Piss Off Everyone With This Post

We had bought some guns too, in stores, and later a church in the North raised money and got us better rifles. The Klan discovered we were arming and guarding In the summer of 1957 they made one big attempt to stop us. An armed motorcade attacked Dr. Perry’s house, which is situated on the outskirts of the colored community. We shot it out with the Klan and repelled their attack and the Klan didn’t have any more stomach for this type of fight. They stopped raiding our community. -
Williams, Robert F.. Negroes with Guns (Kindle Locations 657-659). Martino Fine Books. Kindle Edition. 

In the days following the Sandy Hook massacre I, like many people on the left, started calling for a ban on assault rifles. Most of my readers have known me for a long time, and you know that I got very good at making the case that the Second Amendment wasn't intended for people to own firearms for personal use. I spent a lot of time debating the subject online, and got quite good at it.

One of the days that I was debating gun control and the Second Amendment I was shown a link to a piece written by Huey Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense titled, "In Defense of Self Defense". In it, he wrote:

"The racist dog oppressor fears the armed people; they fear most of all Black people armed with weapons and the ideology of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. An unarmed people are slaves or subject to slavery at any given moment. If a government is not afraid of the people, it will arm the people from foreign aggression. Black people are held captive in the midst of their oppressors. There is a world of difference between thirty million unarmed, submissive Black people and thirty million Black people armed with freedom and defense guns and the strategic methods of liberation.

It was the first pro-gun piece of literature that I had read where I thought, "He makes a good point." During the height of the Freedom Movement, it would make sense for minorities to own weapons to defend themselves with against the Klan and other white supremacist forces that want to kill them. But I told myself that it's 2013, and that that world is different from 1964.

What a difference a few years makes, huh? The world doesn't seem so different now. We're smack dab in the middle of a new civil rights movement with a president that got elected by appealing to the racist fears of white people, an attorney general that has one gigantic hard on for the Klan, and the highest amount of hate crimes being committed in what is probably my lifetime.

After Charlottesville, doubts that I had about the ownership of rifles had dissipated. I had decided that the left needs to be armed. Heavily armed. With AR-15s, AK-47s, pistols, shotguns, and just about every damn thing we can get our hands on. And, we need to start organizing. Nazis are out there, they want to kill us, and they have a whole lot of guns. While we were arguing on the internet about whether or not assault rifles should be legal, they've spent the past decade buying them. We're outgunned. That's the reality.

And yes, I know that many of us on the left do have some guns. Before I get lit up by friends in the comments, yes, I know you have some guns. Some of my left-wing friends have hunting rifles, pistols or shotguns. It still pales in comparison to the weaponry that the right-wing has spent the last decade stockpiling.

I have very little faith in law enforcement to protect us from the neofascists. Not when reports have come out saying that a whole lot of Nazis have become cops. Not when they've actively worked with white supremacists to bring down anti-racists. It's more than reasonable to acknowledge that we have an expectation that the police will NOT protect us when we're on the streets protesting.

I know for some of my liberal friends, that won't be enough to change their minds. You still don't want assault rifles to be legal. You're disgusted by the latest school shooting, and you'd have to be a sociopath to not be. But we've been down this road already. The past five years has shown that not a damn thing is going to come of this. There's going to be protests. There's going to be walkouts. And it won't do a damn thing. Hell, the kids that are protesting are already being smeared by the right as being "crisis actors". Trump is calling for arming teachers. Nothing is going to change.

I'll probably make a post on the ineffectiveness of protests someday, but it won't be today. I'll just tell you that nothing is going to come of it. We're not getting any new gun control laws anytime soon. That's the reality.

So you're saying that you don't care about schools getting shot up? You're saying we should do nothing?

No, that's not what I'm saying. My oldest kid is in elementary school now. My wife is a teacher. I worry very much about both of them. What I am saying is that like it or not, things aren't going to change anytime soon. Yet we have a paradox at work here. Regardless of your stance on gun control, the only way we're going to get it is if the left is heavily armed.

The right won't give up their guns now because they're the only ones that have them. That tips the balance of power to them, and they don't want to give that up. What will make them support gun control will be when we're armed and organized, because then they'll want to take that power away from us.

History has borne that out, and not just with guns. The Mulford Act was created explicitly to disarm The Black Panthers. Voter ID laws were created with the intent in mind of disenfranchising poor communities, especially those that aren't white, just to help right-wing politicians get into office that wouldn't otherwise. Wherever the left has found a way to gain power, the right has tried to take it away.

So here's our reality:

1. Fascists have spent the past few years stockpiling weapons
2. Fascists want to kill us
3. We're not going to have new gun control laws anytime soon
4. If we are armed, organized, and able to defend ourselves, maybe we'll end up getting gun control, anyway. At the very least, the right won't be fucking with us.

Lorenzo Raymond wrote a great article called, "Why the Left Needs a Gun Culture". In it, he says:

If leftists believe they are accomplishing anything by personally boycotting guns, it’s not working either politically or culturally. Whether pacifists like it or not, bearing arms is a US citizenship right—and has been a citizenship right for most of our history. If conservatives have successfully claimed this privilege, then it makes no sense for the Left to disarm itself and unilaterally renounce the Second Amendment. The Right won’t follow their example, but will instead briskly proceed to consolidate their monopoly on non-state force. There are ample signs that progressives are coming to understand this. The Liberal Gun Club, a national organization with nine chapters, reports a surge in membership since the election; a more radical local group, the Phoenix John Brown Gun Club, has a long track record of promoting armed defense against white supremacists in Arizona.

While left-wing self-defense won’t make the country any more dangerous, it is likely the only hope of making it safer. The genie of violent neofascism is out of the bottle. It’s an outgrowth of the shrinking of old economic horizons, which in turn is partly a result of now-irreversible climate change. The years of living dangerously are here to stay. The only question is will those of us who value an egalitarian internationalist community survive them. This doesn’t mean that leftists ought to shoot at common racists, much less at authorities, merely because of political differences. The majority of activity should continue to be nonviolent direct action. But as social movement analyst Francis Fox Piven has noted, guns can “be used strategically, and often defensively to permit the disruptive action, the withdrawal of cooperation, to continue” in the face of right-wing vigilantism... 

The Left is correct to denounce the right-wing’s fetishization of brute force, but we are getting nowhere mirroring it with an equally crude fetishization of vulnerability. We can no longer dream that the Electoral College, or a CIA coup, or a safety pin, is going to save us in the age of brutal white power reaction. We must recognize that dissidents and oppressed people are on their own for the next four years—and possibly longer—and must take defense and security into their own hands. When racists and fascists declare “open season,” we will not allow innocent people to be the prey. We must vow to protect each other by any means necessary. 

We've got Neo-Nazis coming to Michigan in a few weeks. I'll be among those protesting them. I'll also be armed.

Achieving Greatness (on a Budget) II

I got inspired to write this after I saw an ad for Rogue Fitness in my Facebook feed yesterday.

For those that don't get pestered with their ads, Rogue Fitness is known for selling some really goofy fitness equipment, for unreasonably high prices. Rogue Fitness is like Rule 34, except instead of porn, it's exercise equipment. If it could ever be built or conceived of, they have it.

So it was an ad for this weird piece of equipment that inspired this post.

It's a glorified dumbbell, modified to hold a weight in place on one side, so you can do mace training. All yours for $189.99, plus tax and shipping.

I remembered a video I saw from Buff Dudes that showed how to make an exercise club for way cheaper.

For anyone who took my advice from Achieving Greatness (on a Budget), you learned you could do HIIT training from home, for the price of whatever you're currently paying to broadcast YouTube into your house. So if you decided to do that, you're probably enjoying the benefits, but also want something new. This will show you how to get a couple of pieces of new exercise equipment on the cheap to up your game.

There is one downside to this post, and it's that most of America is currently experience Hoth-like weather conditions. This equipment is meant for the outside, so you might have to wait a few months before you can get some use out of this. You might have to come back to this post after the country has thawed.

The first piece of exercise equipment is the above-mentioned exercise club. This is real easy to make, and relatively inexpensive. Giving credit where it's due, here's Buff Dudes' instructional video on how to make it:

DIY Duke says in the video that they went with 18" long pipes, but if you're short in height or want to save money, you can go with 12" pipes. Since I'm a tall man, I went looking for 18" pipes online and found a website called Gamut.com that can sell them in that length without having to do a specialty cut. With tax and shipping, getting the base parts for the club (one 2" thick pipe, one 1" thick pipe, one reducer, and two caps) runs about $60. I'm definitely ordering this when I get paid. In the future, I'll buy more pipes to add weight to the club. If the cost of the base parts is too much for you altogether, you can buy them separately over time.

The second piece of equipment is free if you can find the right people. A gigantic tire.

Now, you don't need a giant tire to do mace training. You can just go outside, swing that bad boy around (there's a bunch of instructional videos on YouTube that'll show you how to do it properly), and build a whole lot of strength. But can you think of any exercise more fun than slamming a giant metal club into a giant tire? I truly can't.

YEEEAAAAAHHHHH!

This link shows how you can get a tire for free, or close to free. Giant tires weigh hundreds of pounds, so you will probably need one or two strong friends to help you carry it.

If you check that page, it shows a link where you can learn how to make other DIY equipment. Give it a look if you're interested in making your own gym equipment on the cheap.

You can also do more than just slam a club on a giant tire. Tire flips are a lot of fun.

Along with being low in price, these exercises are also fun as fuck, and that's important when you have kids. My daughters are getting older, and before long I plan on getting a small tire for them and a pipe to use as a club.

I'm planning on incorporating the club and tire into my workouts after I reach the thousand pound club.

Anyway, that's a couple ideas for cheap workout equipment. Enjoy!

Injured

Yesterday, I loaded up my barbell with 225 pounds to do a warmup set of squats. I could tell there was something wrong because those squats felt less like a warmup and more like a new personal record. Nonetheless, I ignored the pain and did a set of three reps at 275 pounds. Then, I loaded the barbell up with 280 pounds. After one rep, I quit. The pain in my lower back was too much.

The past two weeks I've been ignoring the strain that I've felt in my lower back when I do squats. As the gap between my max squat and max deadlift started to shrink, I would feel some strain in my lower back when I would do my squats, and struggled to keep my form straight. At least one rep in any one of my sets would have me leaning forward too far, and I was doing a "good morning squat".

So, I'm injured. Nothing too serious, but I'm not doing any max lifts anytime soon.

Conventional wisdom says that you should rest when you have an injury, but sometimes conventional wisdom is just stupid. I'm taking the advice of Alan Thrall's trainer on this one.

Today, instead of just being immobile, I did a few sets of barbell squats with no weight added, and tossed in a set of good mornings (real good mornings, not squats with shitty form). I'll gradually increase my weight over the next few days.

Next week, instead of continuing on the Candito program, I'm going to spend a week working on increasing my higher rep maxes. This will help me work on my squat form while using a lower weight.

As if YouTube had been reading my mind, another Alan Thrall video discussing squat form popped up in my feed, and gave some good advice to unfuck my form. I'll be making sure to take that advice. Here's the video: