On the day two days ago when I saw strength in quitting, my own “I will fight no more forever,” warped into “I will write no more forever,” I had rented Jet Li's movie Fearless. I figured the timing was good since Fearlessness was prominent in the web site I had just finished. Sometimes it takes more strength to quit than to fight. Sometimes fighting on becomes a way of hiding or running from truths you do not want to face.
         This I write because of that movie.
 

        When I was a child, being a male, during recess we used to fight for basically no point whatsoever. There was usually no anger in it, much as bear cubs or lions practice fighting to prepare themselves for survival. I was very skinny, having been very poor at the time, but even so I figured I was about the third best in the class of those who fought. Many did not see any point in it but would stand around and watch or cheer those who did, and chide those who lost, but never fought themselves.

         On one particular day, I even beat the two that were better than me. It was probably one of the best days in my life until then, riding high, champion of the day. That was until as a reward I was told a much larger much older kid wanted to fight me because he heard that “I thought I was tough,” because erroneously, that I “knew karate.” Later he confirmed that this was true. He almost never fought. He was so much bigger than everyone else, he never had to. He could have kicked anyone's ass and everyone knew it. I figured it was a good time to embrace the concept of non-violence and started hanging around with those who did not fight, and did not even usually watch those who did.

        About a year later, my diminished reputation suffered even more. Though we were still mostly pre-pubescent, the most openly what one could only be called 'gay' kid was added to the classes. If anyone ever had any doubts whether people are born that way, they would only have to had met this kid for overwhelming evidence, he was such a stereotype. Naturally most males wanted nothing to do with him nor tried to befriend him. Also, naturally I felt sorry for him and tried to get him to behave more 'normal'. It was not only these, sorry to have to use the term and not meaning offense, 'flying fag' qualities which were embarrassing but also that he, though bright, constantly smiled and played the most irritating fool one could possibly imagine. No doubt it was how he had previously made friends, or kept from getting his ass kicked, and was a part of his personality, but it was not helpful for anyone who tried to talk others into including him so he would not be by himself so constantly.

         Trying to hold to not fighting and sometimes sticking up for those who no one else would was not good for my reputation, but was not tragic, for awhile at least. Most remembered I could more than defend myself, and even the one I was smart enough not to fight was a decent person who did not like to hurt people. That did not last. A year later an even bigger person became the new center of the crowd I used to fight with, and he loved to beat people up for no reason. He probably weighed 3 times more than I did, and by that time, fighting not only seemed stupid to me, but I just figured he would eventually get tired of trying to taunt me into fighting with him. I was wrong.

         The behavior of my other newer non-fighting friends was telling. Seeing the crap I was being put through, obviously for no reason whatsoever by someone damn near vicious, they eventually joined in the derision, even more so than any others, by fear to distance themselves from having known me well. That is, by my experience, quite how the bulk of people are. They will join in with the crowd, do things they know are wrong or refuse to speak up, simply to get along, to not make waves, to not draw attention to themselves. It was not something I could comprehend, and though I understand it in others, could never tolerate the idea of that taking hold in myself. Courage unfortunately is notable because too often, most people do not have it, or all to rarely use it.

         The courage of the weak I have seen, those who stand up to the strong, not by confronting them, just trying to live without being unreasonably taunted, yet never willing to do what the majority would, to be complicit in that wrongness, to me I know this as the strongest strength. By what I went through, at times by choice, cannot compare to what others more unable to blend in, unable to protect themselves, have gone through with a dignity through their worse taunting, their greater humiliations, and though shaming all those who laughed at them in ways the crowds could not see or would ever admit, outshone without measure those who mistreated them, the 'stronger', the 'popular', the ones everyone wanted to be with, if only to be left alone and not taunted or abused by them.

         It is this truth of how people are truly morally weak, who see their 'strength' in externals, in those who put on displays of power to humiliate opposition, to make others afraid to challenge them, and are rewarded for it, not only by this society but by most societies, it is the most distressing thing to me about wanting to help people. One cannot help people because you think people are good. They can be, and often they are. One could even argue in a nurturing environment, all might be good or want to be good, but the world we live in rewards the bad, and one bad apple will set off a chain of misery that will eventually affect many and cause those who are afraid to confront it, and those who would go along with it and enable it, to be the ones to meet the greatest success.

         The person who beat the crap out of me for no reason I later got to know, and found he had been abused by his father. It was how he learned people behave, and how to not to get abused was to learn to abuse others first, preemptively as it were. He did not see it as beating up on the weak, on needlessly making enemies for no reason. He even remembered only the time he did something good for me, and conveniently 'forgot' the endless cruelty because he either chose to forget or could not really face what a horrible person he could be, because he too had been beaten and was afraid inside more than I ever could be, and found his 'security' in harming others, or proving to himself that he could. I was simply something to break to him. It took me a long time to learn, simply fighting back would probably have ended years of hell, but not for a good reason.

         He could have singled out anyone to taunt, and no one did he do so more than me, because he was that much larger and meaner than anyone else. Everyone was afraid to fight him and I was no different. Because the people he hung around with were the same ones I had, he knew from them that I could fight but had professed for years now that I never would, and stuck to it. I unwittingly made myself a greater target simply because, in a sense, one could argue that by not fighting or having stated I never would, simply showed to him another new and different way to break me, a different vulnerability in me others did not have. Beating up someone who can't fight back, not that he did not do that too, was not as sporting.

         But with me, it was always to get me to fight, and then to prove to everyone and myself that I really could not, and that however good anyone thought I was, without needing to prove it by fighting, that that reputation was undeserved. I never gave him that satisfaction and it brought out the worst in him. I wonder now whether I knew that fully then, if just by fighting back just once would have satisfied him enough to have left me alone, a different kind of humiliation than years of taking beatings for no reason.

         If I had known it so completely in those terms, would I have chosen that route instead, or would my pride never surrendered to give him the pleasure of breaking me in a different way? I suspect I knew that was what he really wanted, but I do know, pride or not, inner strength or not, if I could have physically fought back and won, I would have. The only question was which way to lose which would have kept the most pride intact.

         I took the beatings and ironically won his respect by it, though it was unwanted and never valued. Through learning later of the hell he went through more than I had humbled me. I would have gladly if given a choice gotten my beatings in school, as I did, than at home as he did. Publicly I was treated as a leper because of him. He was treated with 'respect' earned by fear alone. His humiliations were private but far more damaging. My harm came not from anyone I respected nor loved. His harm was beyond comparing, but sought to include others in on his suffering as others would teach the world what they knew.

         The movie Fearless, makes these points, but there is a greater reason why I mention it now than simply dredging up the past. There is a scene where the 'hero' of the movie gets into a fight you know or suspect is wrong. He fights strongly and of course wins and kills his opponent, but you know he is fighting a fools fight, that he will regret it, that he is morally wrong and making a tragic mistake. Every blow he makes, you know he is digging himself in that much deeper, bringing that much more dishonor upon himself with every successful strike, committing that much more of a wrong. When the fight is over, the greatest sin finally committed, you know, now he will learn what he has done, he will be ashamed and know he has lost far more by winning than he would have by losing.

         In this, I obviously am referring to the War in Iraq. Many Americans, not all, not most, but maybe a hundred million strong, cannot image us being in the wrong in that fight. They cannot imagine how we would lose greater by winning it than by losing it. How it was wrong to begin with, it is wrong every strong blow we make, every 'point' we score, as well as every blow that hits back at us. We may never reach or live or get the narrative to find out what it will cost us. We may never live to learn how wrong it was.

         I know why those hundred million of us cannot face this. It is not an easy thing to see or to contemplate and many think by not facing it, that it is not so. It is easier to live with the disconnect from reality than with the shame, and the longer it is put off, many think it will never have to hang on them and they can escape from it. A war of choice is fundamentally different than a war of necessity, and that is where the greatest cowardice of our leadership lives now, saying that it was a necessary war. They truly, as the story progresses and the truth of the extent of the tragedy becomes inescapable to the audience at large, retreat further into their own delusions that they had no choice, that they committed no wrongs, that there was no sin. It was entirely avoidable, entirely chosen for the wrong reasons, and winning it would or will only compound the damages irrevocably and beyond estimate.

         Every blow we strike now is not against 'insurgents' because they have the popular support of the people and its government now. We as a nation committed a sin, and we are compounding it daily every day we do not disengage from it. It is inescapable without disavowing the very concept of reality and truth. You cannot make a wrong battle, an unjust fight right by 'winning' it, for that is a contradiction in terms. There is no 'collateral damage' in this war. There are no 'accidental' civilian deaths. There is only murders, being done by them, being done by us. Children no less valuable than our own, no less sacred, no less worthy of every opportunity this world has to offer being killed every hour in a conflict which could be de-escalated the moment we as a people, through forcing our reluctant and cowardly 'representatives' simply to admit it was wrong. Not that it was a bad judgment, not that it was poorly executed. It was wrong, morally wrong, inexcusable, reprehensible, and entirely for the wrong reasons.

         No good can come from 'winning' such a fight. And no victory can come without admitting it and be willing to do some serious penance for not only having done so, but for every moment since, refusing to admit it or even just hiding in the crowd so as not to admit it to oneself let alone the world. Tell the world and by doing so, tell yourself in away you will always remember it, cannot hide ever again from it, and cannot forget it. Only that can absolve the guilt eventually, and let your children and their country be one day less tainted by it. The alternative is continuing the unthinkable and the indefensible.