The Best and Worst Advice I got as a Child

I wrote in past posts about this story, but in light of current events, it bares repeating.

I am a warrior, and not by choice.

When I was seven, I started getting bullied by older kids. Being that I was tall for my age, bullies saw me as a soft target. They would beat me up and call me names.

I didn't fight back because I was told through teachers, numerous PSA commercials, and a whole slew of school materials that fighting was wrong, and I should always avoid it. I was told to tell a teacher, or an adult, about a bully so that they could deal with the bully themselves.

Boy, was I naïve.

There were a few times I didn't listen to all of the adults, because they had refused to control the bullies. Of all those times, I can tell you about a bully named Dan. He was my babysitter's kid.

Dan would beat me up all the time because he knew I wouldn't fight back. His parents knew about it, but they didn't do anything to him. He would call me names and I'd tell on him, only to be told, "Don't be a tattle tale". Yet if he told his parents on me for saying something back, I'd be scolded. Dan was probably aware that the double standard existed, because before long, words turned into physical violence.

Dan beat me up all the time, and his parents did nothing. I would constantly be crying over the abuse he gave me and they didn't say anything. So finally, I had enough.

One day, I got into an argument with Dan and I knew he was going to come at me, like he always does. Except this time, I wasn't going to let him beat me. I was ready.

Sure enough, after the argument got heated, he came charging at me, ready for battle. I put my right foot back, and hit him in the face with a hard right fist in the mouth.

That son of a bitch dropped like a sack of potatoes. One fucking punch to the face, and he was screaming, crying to his mom.

I chipped the shitbag's tooth, or so his mom told me.

The mom, who had long allowed for her kid to bully me, went apeshit on me. It didn't matter that for well over a year, he had bullied me. He beat me into dust. She did nothing then. Now, she was yelling and spanking (yes, spanking) me.

If I had known then what I know now as an adult, I would have called her out on her bullshit and hypocrisy. I would have told her that she deserved an ass beating too, and I was ready to deliver. Yet as an eight year old child, all I knew was that I was in trouble.

I stood up to my bully, and I was paying the price.

In my subconscious mind, I learned that you will be punished for defending yourself. People are coming to hurt you, nobody is going to help you, and you will be punished for defending yourself. That was just one of many bullies that I had similar experiences with until I was twelve.

Another one was with a different Dan. That Dan would beat me up after school in the sixth grade routinely. After I finally took enough abuse from him, I went to the assistant principal.

I told her the whole story about how Dan would bully me as soon as I got off the bus. That he would hit me. That he would hurt me and knock the wind out of my stomach for no reason. When I asked her what she would do about it, she very pointedly told me that she would do nothing.

Why? Because Dan worked in the school office. He was the "teacher's pet". Aside from whooping my ass on a daily basis, he was a model student. Because of that, the assistant principal didn't give a shit that he was a bully. He had a free license to beat me up, and there was nothing that the authority figures would do about it.

In those years, I had many bullies. Adults did nothing to defend me from them, but they always told me the same lie: If you fight the bully, you're just as bad as they are.

I was stupid enough to believe it.

"Don't fight the bully, or you're as bad as he is", is the worst fucking piece of advice I had ever received as a child.

Then seventh grade happened.

I was in an office meeting with my school counselor for the third time, dealing with bullies. I don't remember the name of my counselor, but he was a good man. The past two times, he pulled the bullies into his office and scared them enough to not physically bully me anymore (emotionally, he had no control over). But by the third time, he was exasperated.

It was at that moment, he gave me the best advice I had ever received from an adult:

"You're going to get in trouble for it, but you have to HIT BACK."

That was his advice. I might get in trouble for it. The adults won't protect me from the bullies when they try to beat me, but I have to fight, and be ready for the punishment that comes from defending myself.

As an adult now, I really, really wish that it hadn't taken me his permission to do so, but as a kid, it was all it took to truly wake my ass up. He put a real truth in my brain that has always been in my mind since:

People are coming to hurt you. Nobody is going to help you, and you will be punished for defending yourself. Fight anyway.

I had a strange confidence after that. If anyone had decided to talk shit to me, I'd tell them to fight me. Most refused because I was a giant. No longer a gentle, pacifist giant. A giant ready to tear their limbs off.

Eighth grade was another story. I spent half of my time in In School Suspension because I was taking shit from nobody. Bullies didn't touch me because I was ready to fight. Most of my time in In School Suspension was because some bully decided to verbally abuse me, and I responded by knocking his head off.

In high school, I started doing karate. I was no longer just the guy you didn't want to fuck with, but I was protecting other bullied kids. Sure, there were some bullies that tried to mess with me emotionally, but once I said, "YOU WANT TO SING IT, OR BRING IT?!", they would back down real quick. Real fucking quick.

To this day, I remember the worst advice that was given to me by adults: Don't fight the bullies, or you're as bad as they are.

I always keep in the back of my mind the best advice that I got from my seventh grade counselor:

People are coming to hurt you. Nobody is going to help you, and you'll be punished for defending yourself. Fight anyway.

Yeah, I became a warrior. Not by choice, but because my options were either to fight, or be crushed.

I kept that advice from the counselor in the back of my mind long after high school, when I joined the Army as a result of another group of bullies attacking us on 9/11.

That bring us to today.

Last week, there were bullies gathered by the hundreds that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. Those disgusting bullies, that screamed evil things like, "Jews will not replace us", "Blood and soil", and eventually rammed a car into a crowd of people that were protesting such bullying.

As it was in my childhood, the "authority figure" that was supposed to denounce such bullying instead blamed "many sides", except there isn't many sides. There's only three sides; the bullies, those that they're bulling, and those that aren't bullied but fight on behalf of the bullied. I've been on the both of the latter parts. The "adult" that's supposed to condemn the bullies instead enabled them.

He gave the same bullshit speech that I heard many times in my youth. That speech is a lie.

"If you fight the bully, you're as bad as he is."

"If you fight the Nazi, you're the real Nazi."

Yeah, I've heard that speech before. That same, lying speech that adults told me to keep me from defending myself as a kid is now being spewed forth by the supposed president of the United States. The same bullshit that I was told by adults when I was defending my friends from bullies.

If politics is like high school, our "president" is the new assistant principal. The one that won't attack the real bullies because they're the teacher's pet. They're the ones that got him elected. He doesn't want to punish them.

"If you fight the bully, you're as bad as he is" is a lie. Bullies don't respond to kind pleas for you to stop hurting them. They don't respond to reason. They don't respond to acts of kindness. They only will stop bullying you when punch them into the face so hard that they have a chipped tooth and go crying to their mom. And then, and only then, they'll stop when you tell their mom, "WHAT?! YOU WANT SOME OF THIS? COME AT ME! I'LL BREAK YOUR TOOTH, TOO!"

So as it went then, so it goes now. The fascists are coming to hurt America, nobody is coming to protect us, and we will be punished for defending ourselves. Fight anyway.

The Death Threats Made Me Laugh

I was going to call this, "Absurdism in Dangerous Times", but the title above is a bit more catchy.

It's been over three months since I've written anything, and it's not without reason. I've been working constantly, and when I've been home I've been helping to raise my kids. It's given me very little time for writing, but I've been wanting to write this story for a while.

A few months ago, a very outspoken friend of mine on Facebook was being targeted by some Neo-Nazis. She found that a Facebook page called, "You Can't Run or Hide Antifa Scum" had put up a picture of her after she, in no uncertain terms, told some white supremacists to go fuck themselves.

The page was created with the supposed intention of exposing anyone that's a part of the Antifas movement in the hopes of getting them to be too scared to do a little Nazi punching. In reality, they were posting a lot of pictures of elderly women, dads holding their kids, and other people that aren't connected to the Antifas movement in any way, but were also outspoken against white supremacists online.

My friend isn't a part of the Antifas movement, nor am I. It's not that we're not sympathetic to the cause; both of us believe that white supremacists need nothing short of a good ass kicking. It's just that we're both parents with full time jobs, so beating the shit from skinheads and klansmen isn't something we can fit into our busy schedules. We may tell some racist shitbags off online from time to time, but actually finding the time to beat the shit from one is a luxury that neither of us have. But she told some white supremacist somewhere online to go drink bleach or whatever, and that was enough to get their attention.

So when that Facebook page attempted to dox her, I very calmly said to myself, "This cannot stand. These people must be dealt with. It's time for to unleash some trollfuckery."

Maybe it's the new anti-anxiety meds that I'm on (more on that in another post), but despite having a history of internet stalkers that drove my political blogging ass into anonymity, I decided to hit them up on Facebook using my real name and identity.

The plan was very simple and was meant to be run with precision. The first part of my plan involved me taking a selfie of myself wearing my "Fuck Racism Punch Nazis" t-shirt, and post it on Facebook under the line: This Machine Trolls Fascists. That went off without a hitch.

The second part got a little more complicated, as I'll tell below. The second part was to go on their page, spew just enough trollery to get noticed, and let my photo get shared on their page.

After it got published, I was going to respond with a whole shit-ton of laughs, and this video:

I called it, Operation: Trolling Phonebook. The purpose of it was twofold:

1. Show that they weren't really exposing anyone in the Antifas movement, and
2. Let them know that nobody was afraid of them. After all, if I, a man not a part of the movement with a full time job and kids was willing to troll them, they really aren't that scary.

It was meant to be a two-fold operation that discredited the page.

So after posting my photo, I went on their page, and spewed just enough shit to get their attention. But the day I did that, I noticed that posting on their page ground to a halt. No new names were being published. All the activity was being done in their comment section by strangers.

I realized that I had been too late to the party.

Some real, online members of the Antifas movement had been on to the owner of the page for quite a while and managed to get him banned from Facebook the day I began my operation. Those magnificent BASTARDS managed to disrupt a perfectly planned plan!

A few days later, the page was shut down, but not before some other white supremacists saw my work on the page.

And that, as John Mulaney said in his bit about the Salt and Pepper Diner, did things go from good to great!

Remember how I told you about my public photo of the T-shirt that says "Fuck Racism Punch Nazis"? Well, holy shit. Did they respond! I literally said "This Machine Trolls Fascists" to tell them why I posted it, and they took the trollbait, anyway.

They responded with trolling. They responded with threats to be me. They responded with death threats. And I just laughed.

Like this guy, Mr. Rich Hickman (find him on Facebook if you want):




"I'll talk to you very very soon". Bwahahahaha!

It's been well over two months, and despite his promises, Mr. Hickman has yet to buy a plane ticket to Detroit International Airport  Neither did the dozen or so white supremacist shitbags that trolled my Facebook photo in the months since.

I told you earlier that I was planning on titling this "Absurdism in Dangerous Times". Well that's for a reason.

I posted a long time ago that it was, of all things, a cartoon show that showed me the philosophy of absurdism. After that, I started reading about it a lot. I delved into the works of Alfred Camus.

Absurdism is the idea that life is meaningless. You accept that. You don't try to find some meaning in the meaningless, but instead enjoy that it has no meaning. You are Sisyphus rolling that stone on the hill. The only way to rebel against the gods is to smile at the meaningless of doing so. To take joy in it. You smile as you know that your existence is without meaning or purpose.

It was at the moment that I saw my friend's photo posted on that page that I accepted it as a part of political activism. I used to be afraid to show myself online or in person because of cyberstalkers of years' past. I was afraid of what they could do to me if I allowed myself to be exposed. But at that moment, I took the advice of Morty to full heart:

Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die. Come watch T.V.

That's why I had the courage to allow strangers on the internet to try to find me. It's why I laughed as they threatened me. I accepted that my life has no meaning, so fuck any white supremacist that would dare come at me.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I was living without fear. Without that fear, I was having the time of my life fighting fascist idiots online. I found what those in addict counseling call, "your higher power". That cause that is bigger than myself.

I recently read the book "The Power of Habit", and it discussed the role that religion has in helping addicts deal with their addiction. In the twelve step programs, it was shown that believing in a faith helped those deal with addiction not necessarily because of the supposed powers of their newfound deity, but because that faith had helped them believe in a cause bigger than themselves. I found mine in fighting fascists on the internet. It was through that that I discovered how absurdity can make one fearless.

We do live in very dangerous times. Like I wrote in my widely (at least as far as this little blog is concerned) shared post, we are now under the presidency of a man who thinks that nukes should be used as conventional weapons. That should scare anyone of sound mind. Yet many of us aren't because of faith or discovery of the pointlessness of life. That includes me.

But like I learned defending my friend, we should embrace absurdism so we remember that the fun is in the fight.

Even though I found joy in the meaningless of life, it doesn't mean that I lack empathy. I still feel great anger when a cop shoots a black man that was legally armed just as I was when I got pulled over by a cop and the cop laughed as I pulled my gun from my glove box into my cup holder. I still feel great anger at the idea that millions of people could lose their health insurance if Obamacare is repealed. I still feel great anger at racism, sexism, and the threat of war hanging over our heads. I'm angry that I have to work six days a week and miss out on free time that I need to spend with my kids and my own mental welfare.

Yes, my empathy causes me to feel great anger at the injustices of this world, but it's remembering the philosophy of absurdism that gives me the courage to fight. It's the knowledge that life is meaningless that makes the fight fun. Our lives might be meaningless, but goddamn it, is it fun to fight evil assholes.

Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die. Go punch a Nazi. Or troll them online. Or write your congressman. Whatever works for you.

If You Want to do Something Right...

It didn't take long for me to get back to my peak strength levels on the Starting Strength program. I even exceeded my previous bests on my squat (235x5 reps). After doing that, I decided that I need to work on becoming faster and have better endurance as well.

Some time last year, I heard about a book called Hybrid Training, which is one of the few books that is dedicated to making someone an all-around superior athlete. Their workouts look great, but they're suited for someone who is in moderately good shape in all areas. My speed and my endurance are lacking.

With that in mind, I decided to start a bodybuilding routine to keep my current strength levels, and be able to run until I can run three miles in under 30 minutes.

I decided to pick the Buff Dudes 12 Week Plan, Third Edition. For those that don't know, Buff Dudes are two fitness models that have their own YouTube channel. There's a thousand different weightlifting channels on YouTube, but their videos are by far the most entertaining.

Here's a playlist of the videos from that plan.

As far as bodybuilding plans go, it's great. If your primary goal is to get a great looking body, I highly recommend it.

And the first phase of the workout was good, too. There were only two days when you worked your legs (and this is only because Buff Dudes are under the mistaken impression that the deadlift is a back exercise and not a leg exercise), so I was able to run on the other days I worked out.

Unfortunately, by the time phase two hit, I was working my legs three times a week. Two actual leg days, and one back day where you're doing deadlifts. I couldn't run with a shit on phase two.

Watching their videos, one of the brothers said that he wasn't even doing cardio anymore because the weight training was too exhausting. And all they do for cardio is fast walking!

Walking is fine if all you want to do is gain cardiovascular endurance. But I feel the need, the need for...

You 80s kids know the rest.

"Well, fuck it", I told myself. "If you want to do something right, you're going to have to do it yourself."

So, I created my own workout plan, mixing all of what I know about lifting and running, and doing a goal assessment.

My long term goals are:
1. A squat and deadlift of 450 pounds
2. A bench press of 300 pounds
3. Be able to do pullups
4. Run a sub 8:00 mile

My short term goals are:
1. At least maintain my current strength levels, if not increase them
2. Run three miles under 30:00
3. Decrease body fat so I can run faster
4. Do this in as short as workout as possible (I still got kids at home!)

The short term goals are harder than they sound. I've found since having bariatric surgery that the following is true:

1. Gaining strength is easy
2. Losing body fat is easy
3. Doing both is extremely, extremely hard

So this plan isn't intended to gain strength. It's just meant to keep what I have. If my strength increases, great, but it's not necessary.

I'm combining bodybuilding with megsquats' program to get you to do your first pullup, and Higdon's novice 5k plan.

The first exercise is the primary exercise, done in four sets of 10/8/6/4. The exception is back day, where my primary exercise is the reverse pullup from the megsquats routine. The primary exercise is meant to make you worn completely down by the time it's over. The weight you lift is based on your one rep max. There's plenty of apps to download to your phone (and this website) to help calculate your one rep max. Based on that, you figure out how much weight to lift on each set.

For example, if you know that you can lift 205 pounds for five reps, your calculated one rep max would be 236 pounds. Based on that, you would do a set routine of 180x10, 190x8, 205x6, and 215x4. You're rounding up to the nearest five on every one.

By the time you're done with the first exercise, the muscles you worked should be officially done for the day. That's where the rest of the workout comes in.

You have to do at least one more isolation exercise for that muscle group for 3 sets of 10, and then on most days, you'll be doing two accessory exercises for the arms for 3 sets of 10.

The idea is that you work your body past its breaking point. It builds endurance, and you get to spend the rest of the week recovering, so you don't have to worry about muscle strain, either.

So here's the first week of my six week plan to get me ready for Hybrid Training:

Sunday (Chest and Biceps):
1.5 mile run
Reverse Pullups
Bench Press: 10/8/6/4
Cable Crossovers: 3x10
Bicep Curl: 3x10
Zottman Curl: 3x10

Tuesday (Back):
1.5 mile run
Reverse Pullups
T-Bar Row: 3x10
Pull downs: 3x10

Thursday (Shoulders and Triceps):
1.5 mile run
Reverse Pullups
Overhead Dumbbell Press: 12/10/8
Barbell Upright Row: 3x10
Overhead Tricep Extension: 3x10
Overhand Cable Push-Downs: 3x10

Friday:
Squats: 10/8/6/4
Deadlifts: 1x5
30 minute incline walk on treadmill

The running routine falls in line with the Higdon program. The next week would be a 1.75 mile run on the first and third run days, 1.5 miles on the second, and 35 minutes of incline walking on leg day.

There's a lot of people that like to save the cardio for after the weight lifting. When it comes to running, I like to do it first, just because running is always harder for me than lifting.

As the weeks pass, if I find that I'm not able to break my muscles down into mush after the first exercise no matter how much I lift, I'll add another compound exercise (for example, an Incline Bench Press on chest day). The goal is to leave the gym feeling like I've got my ass kicked. The workout is broken down enough to avoid injury, short enough to have a life outside of the gym, and can meet my short term fitness goals.

So far, the workout has been great. I've noticed that my strength is increasing slightly, and even though this isn't my goal, I'm seeing a lot of added muscle on my body. While I can say that it's not my goal to look strong, it feels pretty damn good to see that in the mirror. :)

If you decide to give this routine a go yourself, remember to see a doctor before beginning any new exercise program. That's my legal disclaimer so you can't sue me. Enjoy!

Time

I don't have enough time.

Time for what? Everything.

I'm constantly working. I was promised more money at my new job. I get paid more by the hour, but I also work a lot less hours than I did than at my previous job. This means I'm making less money.

So I beg for overtime. I get what I can, but my new job picks overtime on a seniority based scale. My old job had an overtime policy of, "Just give it to The Grasshopper. He'll take it." That was much more preferable to my current situation.

What little time I have when I'm not working, I either spend at the gym or watching my kids.

I make this complaint because after I posted about my return as a political blogger and activist, I literally have no time to do either.

If you don't write about politics everyday, good luck keeping up with the clusterfuck that our latest presidency has become. Another day, another new heaping pile of bullshit. As of today, Trump is accusing Obama of having tapped his phones during the 2016 campaign, and is doing so because he read an article on a right-wing blog.

Trump has access to literally everything that our government can get its hands on, and he's relying on morning news shows and conspiracy-theory websites instead of our intelligence agencies for information. It's beyond mind-boggling stupid.

And yet tomorrow, there will be some other clusterfuck coming from this administration. What will he do next that will boggle the mind? Start a dog fighting ring? Make a sex tape? Start a war based on his viewing of Killer Clowns from Outer Space? We don't fucking know. We just know that he'll be a bigger idiot than he was the day before, and it'll be equal parts entertaining and horrifying. We'll keep worrying about how low our country has sunk while being mesmerized by the spectacle all at the same time.

I don't have the time to keep up with all of this dumbfuckery. How do you occasionally blog about politics when Trump's dumbfuckery comes at you at a 1,000 miles an hour?

I wanted to be more politically active in the real world as well. I was hoping to attend political meetings, attend some rallies and protests, and otherwise do my part to make some change.

That's hard to do when you have two kids at home, and work 48-56 hours a week.

Every time I see some rally or meetup on Facebook, I look at the day. It's always on a day that I'm working. I tell myself, "Well, maybe I can do it before work...oh, wait. I've got kids. Nevermind."

A few months ago, I watched an incredibly cathartic video of the white supremacist shitbag known as Richard Spencer get punched in the face by an Anarchist.

There's been hundreds of videos, but this one is my personal favorite

I started reading up on Anarchism after that, because I knew that they didn't believe in the concept of a government, but didn't know much else about them. It turns out they don't like any groups at all. No governments, no corporations, nothing. Just all men on their own.

I don't agree with that philosophy, but it is damn nice to see them punching Nazis. I can disagree with their philosophy all I want; if there comes a time for punching Nazis, I'm calling them. You can't count on liberals for that shit.

One of the things I did read on them mentioned that most Anarchists are active either in a) Early adulthood, or b) The years after they turn fifty.

The author explained (sorry for no link, I can't find it right now), that this is because like just about every other activist, they get married, have kids, and have to work to provide and pay bills. Raising a family takes priority over setting the world on fire.

So it's going to be up to the college kids and the grandparents to save the world. Again. As per usual.

I still hope to do what I can when there's time. My wife will stop teaching in the summer, so hopefully I can do something other than call my representatives until they get sick of hearing from me (that's about all I can do right now).

In the meantime, I still wear this around town while I run my errands:

Come at me, wingnuts. Y'all ain't shit

Stronglifts and Starting Strength Suck

You might be looking at the title and thinking, "What the fuck? The Grasshopper has been singing praises of these workouts for the better part of a year. Why is he telling us not to do them?"

Look, despite my many posts talking about how great they are, I was completely wrong. Sure, it made me lift heavier weights than I ever had in my life, but they just aren't going to do the same for you.

I could give you all sorts of reasons for it, but all I can say is that you have to trust me on this one.

It has nothing to do with the fact that every time I've hit the gym as of late, no matter what time of day or night it is, I find that there are lines for the squat racks at my gym.

Nope, nothing to do with that at all.

It has nothing to do with that fact that I go to the gym after work at midnight, MIDNIGHT FOR CRISSAKES, and find that the gym's TWO (not ONE, but TWO) squat racks are already being used!

It has nothing to do with the fact that I see the guy in front of me doing sets of five, and I know he's doing the exact same fucking workout that I'm about to do, and I have to patiently wait as he gets done with all his sets before I can jump in and claim that squat rack as my own.

It has nothing to do with the fact that when I go into the gym I turn into Samuel Jackson, and all I can think is, "I'VE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING GUYS ON MY MOTHERFUCKING SQUAT RACK!"

What kind of lunatic goes to the gym at midnight, anyway? Except me, of course.

There was a time when I could go into the gym late at night, and there'd be one other guy there running on a treadmill like a hamster on a wheel. Not anymore!

Look, if you want strong legs, there's a leg extension machine with your name on it. Go ahead, give that a whirl.

Squats and deadlifts are just bad for you. Don't worry about all of the scientific data that directly contradicts me on that, just go with me on this one guys!

Pretty please?

The Grasshopper Returns!

Ten years ago, I was one of the top political bloggers in the state.

That and a dollar will get me on a bus. It would have done the same ten years ago.

In the years between 2006 and 2009, the liberal "netroots" had reached its peak, and there was no stronger a state to find it than in Michigan. While every state had its own network of bloggers, in the netroots community, Michigan was known as "the Juggernaut". At our peak we had over 80 blogs discussing politics in our state. We were the largest collection of bloggers in the country, and we were damn proud of it.

I had my own blogger handle that was picked out for me when I was young.

In the 90s, back in the days of usenet groups and dial-up modems, I was given my name when I was 15 years old.

I got it because I had just started doing karate in those days, and every time I advanced to the next belt, I wrote about it on those usenet groups to my online friends to boast of my accomplishments. Those friends named me:

The Young Grasshopper

Like any 90s kid that does martial arts, I was a fan of the show Kung Fu, and loved it. I owned that name. I made email addresses out of it. It was my name on every internet related thing I had to sign up for (back in the days before you could simply sign into something by giving your Facebook profile).

So when I started political blogging in the mid-aughts, that was my name. DJ The Young Grasshopper, usually as the acronym that had all the first letters in that name. I blogged because during the beginning of those times, I was in Iraq, and netroots activism was all I was able to do to do my part to fight against the Bush Jr. administration. In 2004 I was mad that the war in Iraq (before I deployed) had already gone to shit, and wanted to do my part to get the war to end. By the time I deployed, I was writing.

I became one of the top bloggers in Michigan for that very reason. Blogging when you're serving in Iraq (and even after I came home) gives you a ton of street cred, and also makes you a powerful weapon against chickenhawk assholes that would dare call anyone against the war traitors. I would remind any trolls that we came across that I did my time in the sandbox, so where the fuck where they? I didn't serve with them. They were at home preaching about the need for this needless war, while I was over there, wondering if I would see tomorrow.

The years passed, and I made a name for myself in the Michigan juggernaut by having both an extremely sharp wit and equal parts cynicism and self-righteousness that made my posts as entertaining as they were biting. I would attack both Republicans and Democrats alike (but mostly Republicans) when they were involved in any kind of state or national fuckery.

While my name carried zero recognition in 99.9% of the state, politicians in Lansing knew me quite well, and many were scared of me. I was told by another liberal blogger that the state GOP had files on all of us. We were scary enough to them that they did opposition research on us. I gave zero fucks on that, because they had nothing on me. What are they going to say, that I'm an angry Iraq war veteran? Shit, at that time in the war, if you were going to go after an angry veteran that had become disillusioned by the war, you'd have to take a number. Three quarters of us were against the war at the time.

But, things changed.

Because of a situation that I can't discuss much about because it ended in a lawsuit settlement (I can tell you that I ended up being on the better end of it), I stopped blogging. I really can't discuss that lawsuit, but what I can tell you is that the actions that happened before that lawsuit scared the hell out of me. I feared for my life for a very long time because of actions taken by a certain person.

Back then, before the neo-nazis and the mens right activists fucked it all up, even trolls had rules. You kept the shit online and impersonal. That person broke them. That's all I'll say on that.

By the time the dust settled on that situation, blogging had become archaic. I was fine with that, because I was too scared to do any political blogging again. It was easier just to post news stories on Facebook.

After I had kids, I had very little desire for any type of political activism, even the type that you do online. Hell, it's one of the bigger reasons why I wish that Clinton had won the election.

I still debate politics online under names that aren't remotely related to my blogger archetype. After the election, I told right-wingers that they didn't realize what they had done. We old(ish) activists were tired. I was hoping that Clinton would win for many reasons, but a big one was that I was just too damn tired to be an activist anymore. Yeah great, Clinton wins. She already knew that she wasn't going to get any cooperation from the GOP in Congress, so she'd carve her own path. Great, it means that I don't have to get in the dirt anymore. I can just do my day job, raise my kids, continue to kick ass at the gym, and be done with the whole damn thing. Her victory would have been the best thing to happen to the right, because we on the left were just too goddamn tired of fighting, and her victory would be enough to take a long rest while the right would continue to do battle.

But here we are.

Yep, here we fucking are.

The right didn't realize that Trump's win would do more than energize us. It made us lose our fucking minds! I'm now hearing conversations from the left about arming ourselves and getting concealed weapon permits (I already have guns and permits, but thanks for joining me guys). That's a sharp turn from just a few months ago. We didn't just get motivated, we got fucking militant. We saw a guy become president by not just losing the majority of the voters, but one that was actively helped by white supremacist groups. One that was helped by Russian interference into our democratic process. A man that has no goddamn business having access to the nuclear codes.

The left isn't tired anymore, and we're a fuck-ton more motivated than we were in 2005. We're ready to do one thing, and one thing only. Destroying Nazis.

We want our scalps.

Before this election, I would listen to "Fight to Live" by The Bouncing Souls, and scream about how, "the fight to live is the only fight, I got left in me". After the election, I got a lot more fight left in me. Enough to last four years.

I started this blog with the intention of logging my weight loss and fitness journey after I had bariatric surgery. I found that this wasn't enough, as parenting and mental illness were just as much as part of my fitness journey as hitting the gym and watching what I ate.

I never intended to start writing about politics on here, and did my best to avoid doing so, but I can no longer pretend that politics isn't a big part of my life and interconnected to my health and well being. Politics is a major part of what happens in all our lives, whether we want it to or not. I can no longer talk about fitness, health, and mental illness and leave discussions of the fate of the Affordable Care Act out of it. I can't blog about my mental illness without discussing the fear of our country being ran by an insecure, narcissistic idiot that is both Russia's puppet and has the ability to get us all blown to hell in a nuclear holocaust at worst and will lead us into another recession where I'm scared about money problems at best. I can't blog about raising two wonderful girls to be strong, independent, and healthy without talking about feminism. I also can't refuse to talk about racism, implicit bias, and prejudice and call myself a decent person.

Hell, at this point, net neutrality is being threatened, and I may not be able to blog at all without that!

I can't separate the political and the apolitical on here anymore. They're both connected, and I'm done with pretending that they aren't.

The Grasshopper is back from retirement. I'm too old to be The Young Grasshopper anymore. Just call me The Grasshopper, or Grasshopper for short.

And should any trolls try to come after me, keep in mind what happened to the last guy. The local trolls can tell you all about him, and it's why they fear my name. I could always use another settlement check.

Just sayin'

I'm also armed, carrying, and I train while you sleep.

A Rant That is Two Months Overdue

I was doing really well on November 8th. I had just been hired for a new job that provided better pay and more opportunities for advancement. I hadn't had a panic attack in months. I was physically stronger than I had ever been. My mental, physical, and financial state were all looking great, and I was optimistic about the future.

It was election night. All the polls pointed towards a win for the first female president in history. A flawed woman, so it was, but a woman that was far more qualified than her male opponent. I looked forward to telling both my daughters when they were older that they were born just in time to see history being made; to tell them both that they too, can be president someday.

My wife and I watched the results of the election on CNN. She doesn't follow politics as much as I do, so I showed her the states where Hillary Clinton was expected to win. That includes my state. Michigan. A state that had been reliably blue for over two decades.

We watched the election results unfold. I laughed when I heard that Florida was turning red. Clinton's firewall was strong enough to withstand our craziest state going red. Yeah, great. "Florida Man" is going to a guy that brags about molesting women. What a shock.

And then, I saw Michigan going red. And with it, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Prior to that moment, I didn't have the slightest bit of fear over this election. Donald Trump had revealed himself to be the most unqualified candidate to ever run for the highest office in the land. Over the last year and a half, he showed that he not only doesn't know how our government or Constitution works, but he didn't even care to know. He says he wants to register Muslims? Fucking great. It goes against the First Amendment and is racist as fuck, but he's not going to be president, so who gives a rats ass? Seriously...

But watching those states fall, all I could think was:

"America, what have you done?" 

I know now that the majority of America didn't choose this, but it doesn't matter. It happened. After watching the whole block of reliably northern blue states fall, my fight or flight response was activated, and all it said was, "RUN!"

The next two months were awful for me mentally. Jesus Christ, I was doing so well before election day, but my fear of what's to come caused me to go into panic attacks routinely. My anxiety was through the roof. I pleaded with my wife to take the kids and run away to Australia.

I fell into a deep depression. This kind of depression is a new mental illness for me. I've had depression in the past that masked itself in anger, but this is far new. This is what classical depression feels like.

Where I had depression in the past and it manifested itself in anger, this classical depression came with the symptoms of non-stop sadness and a severe lack of energy. I stopped going to the gym, not because I no longer had a desire to achieve maximum fitness potential, but simply because I had no energy. I could barely force myself to get out of bed, let alone hit a gym. I felt hopeless. I ate very little, but I drank A LOT. It was those eating and drinking (booze) habits that caused me to lose much of my muscle mass and still keep my weight the same as it became replaced with booze-calorie infusing fat. All the time, I wanted to run away to a place far away from the damage that's about to consume this country.

Why run, you might ask? Well, if I wasn't a white man, I could say that it was due to Trump's desire to put Muslims in camps. I could say that it was his desire to use racism to convict innocent black people of a crime they didn't commit. But I am a white man, so as horrific, racist, and unconstitutional those stances are, they don't affect me.

But no, here I am, a white man in his 30s, scared of a Trump presidency for this reason:

He thinks nukes should be used as conventional weapons.

Seriously, he had briefings with intelligence workers, and openly wondered why he can't use nuclear warheads as conventional weapons.

On top of that, Trump spoke favorably about dissolving NATO, the greatest military alliance the world has ever had, and the one alliance that kept us from nuclear war.

In a reasonable, sane world, that would have been enough to disqualify this openly stupid piece of shit from holding the office of dog catcher, let alone the presidency. But apparently, we are not living in a sane world anymore.

These things are what have kept the Western World from falling into chaos. They're what protects us from a nuclear war, and Trump has declared that he just doesn't give a shit about any of them.

That's why my "fight or flight" response told me to run. I spent the next couple of weeks trying to convince my wife that we need to leave America for Australia.

She refused, so here we are, still living in the United States.

So if I still have to live here, let me ask those that voted for Trump (or who voted for Gary Johnson but now support Trump now that the election is over) a few questions:

1. Why didn't Trump's stance on nuclear weapons (based on all the links that I showed above) scare the ever loving fuck out of you?

2. If you're not racist, why did Trump's history of racism not offend you? Why did his Hitleresque talk about registering Muslims not disgust you? Why didn't his hiring of Steve Bannon, an honest-to-gosh, card-carrying member of the white supremacist movement, not piss you off enough to vote against him? Why in the goddamn, ever-loving fuck, did the KKK's endorsement of Trump not be enough for you to be like, "Fuck this shit I'm out" as far as his election was concerned?

3. If you're not sexist, why did his comments against women not offend you? When multiple women came forth and said that Trump had molested them, after he had admitted that he molested women, why was that not enough for you to vote against him? Why, to any man that has daughters, was that not enough for you to want to send that piece of shit to the dustbowls of history? I know that if any man grabbed my daughters like that, I'd douse gasoline on them, set them on fire, and gladly do the jail time. Where the fuck were you, dads?

4. When Trump openly mocked a disabled reporter, why in the fucking hell did you not decide that Trump is a worthless piece of shit that should die of canceraids?

My good friend Charles Gaba posted a tweet that sums up all that perfectly:

Yeah, you might not be personally racist, but you decided by damn sure that you weren't offended by it. Congrats on coming to terms with knowing that you aren't offended by racism. Do you feel great (again)?

And for those fragile snowflakes that might feel some white fragility from that line, let me throw something else in to make you see the sickening reality of what you voted for:

Yeah, you sold the rope and looked the other way. Fuck you.

You gave a madman access to our nuclear stockpile and looked the other way. Fuck all of us.

And it's with that line above, I'm going to address something that's pissed me off royally the past few months.

I'm fucking sick of being gaslighted. I'm sick of people acting like I'm the weird one for worrying that Trump is going to get us killed. I didn't come to this because of some stupid, irrational thought process (you know, like the one that wingnuts came to when they claimed that Obamacare was going to lead to all our rights being taken away).

Jesus Christ, you shitbags were protesting against people having HEALTH INSURANCE!

No, this fear is rational. This fear is based completely on the things that Trump has said he will do if elected president. He talked about using nuclear warheads as conventional weapons. He's said that he will disregard the Constitution and discriminate against people based on religion. He has said he would go after the media in a blatant violation of the First Amendment.  He has shown a complete and utter disregard for what the Constitution says, and for how our checks and balances system of government works. So yes, I am afraid, and that fear is completely rational, so any attempts to claim that I'm paranoid are simply a refusal to either admit that you voted for a psychopath, or from a desire to normalize what isn't normal.

None of this is normal. I refuse to be gaslit, and I refuse to normalize any of this.

And for those few that might be whining that I got all political on a blog that's supposed to be about weight loss and fitness, just eat a fat dick. I constantly post my love of the Starting Strength program. The founder of that program, Mike Rippetoe, constantly posts videos of right-wing extremist James Yeager on YouTube (go ahead and search it, I won't link to any of that shit). Rippetoe constantly lets little right-wing zingers into his videos as well as videos with right-wing extremists, and I let that shit go because I want to get better at fitness.

If he can make videos with right-wing extremists, I sure as fuck can post on MY OWN FUCKING BLOG our political situation that is currently scaring the ever loving shit outta me!

I'll still post about fitness and mental health for sure, but I won't begin to be silent on politics on this blog anymore. Not when our country and democracy are at stake.

I will end this blog on a hopeful note, though.

I hope that I'll be wrong and Trump doesn't do a bunch of shit that causes us to all get nuked into oblivion. If that happens, I can say that all of the forces against Trump - all of the anti-racists, the pro-women's rights people, the LGBTQ rights advocates, didn't and aren't going anywhere. We were around long before the election, and our presence was made known at every protest, and in every piece of pop-culture that has been around in the past few years (yeah, racist shitbags, we even have a black superhero in the mainstream now, and he's awesome as fuck). Black Lives Matter isn't going anywhere, and neither are those that fight for the rights of any other minority group.

We're still here, and we will resist.

I've also gone back to hitting the gym, so to all the white supremacists still fighting for Trump, come at me, fuckers. I'll be ready.

I'm also armed, and better trained than you.