Post by Tony Savage on Dec 9, 2019 20:02:47 GMT -5
Fanatics, ideologues and absolutists are humanity’s greatest scourge. Whether they’re the leaders or the followers, fanatics are people who indulge in a heady, intoxicating and toxic concoction of self-affirming, know-it-all confidence that they have unique access to absolute truths, truths so perfect that they have to impose them on everyone.
The absolute truths that fanatics latch onto might be religious or political, right wing or left wing, Christian or Islamic, libertarian or communist, new age spiritual or old-time religious. It’s not what they believe that makes them fanatics but how they believe it, that they have final word, no need to consider further evidence, no need to ever wonder or doubt themselves again.
Fanaticism is a drug. Let loose on society it's like crack cocaine or alcohol only worse. Fanatics drive through life like alcoholics driving under the influence. They think they’re perfectly fine driving. They kill innocent bystanders, sometimes by the thousands or millions.
Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D.
After that quote fades from the screen, Tony’s face pops up. He’s enjoying a rare reprieve from his hectic touring schedule in the office of his home in Dallas. Why shouldn’t he; after all, today is his birthday.
30 years old. He had to admire that. Considering his years of combat inside and out of a ring, even he is amazed he made it this far. The things he’s seen, done, they’ve shaped him, and often, nearly broke him.
This is, after all, a man that used to get into gunfights in third world countries while others wrestlers were blogging about Pokemon and airing their personal dirty laundry out on the line for public consumption. He’s experienced some fucked up shit.
Wrestling was no different. Some of the freak-shows and barely functional malcontents he has to dispatch on a weekly basis tend to make him shake his head and wonder if he needs more CAT scans per year. But this little girl, barking at traffic constantly like a poorly reared purse dog until they tired themselves out, she was up there in the Hall of Fame of dysfunctional.
Worst part was, Dana was either full of shit, running a con job by capitalizing on a current hot button issue…
Or she was a brainwashed zealot, looking to remake Premiere in her own twisted, Orwellian image where no-one, save the ones she deemed worthy, could exist.
Either way, it was time to make a stand. And the best way to fight fanaticism was with Reason.
They hate that shit. Critical thinking is like Kryptonite to a suicide bomber; what kind of person would let something as trifling as common sense and dignity get in the way of falling on your sword for a cause?
Tony: Two years in Afghanistan gives you a damn good perspective into the mindset of zealots. Al-Quaeda, Taliban; they were some nasty customers. You name it, they pulled it; kidnapping, rape, genital mutilation. Sometimes, they’d just flat out slaughter entire settlements.
There was this one village my patrol found one day during a deployment in the North, near Pakistan. This happened merely days into my first deployment, so, I hadn’t the misfortune yet to realize the gravity of the situation I was in. We stopped after we got reports insurgents were using the place as a way station to hop across the border. I was expecting a firefight.
What I saw was even worse.
One of the village elders told my section chief about what they did to a little girl, made me sick. 12 year old child, killed by militants, because she was reading a book to her little brother.
For reading a God…Damned…BOOK!
His face might as well have steam seeping out of his pores when he recollects this chapter in his life. He has to stop and calm himself down before he continues, his teeth clenching.
Tell you the truth, I wanted to waste that entire place. A few fucking nut-jobs with guns come in, pushing their sick version of how the world should be, and people just went along to get along. I saw too much of that; extremism. Contaminating personal lives, dividing families, driving people to do unspeakable acts just because they believe they’re way is t he only way to live.
Thought after I got back home, I wouldn’t have to see that crap again, especially in wrestling. Don’t get me wrong, Planet Spandex is filled with aspiring psychopaths and dictators looking to reign supreme over their adversaries. Some of them even get as far as control over the entire company. Usually, though, as bad as their motives are, they’re simple enough to understand. Simple greed; they want money, power, a shiny belt. Most of them don’t make excuses or justify what they do with anemic claims of doing the world a favor.
But this girl….wow…this one takes the cake. It’s bad enough our organization hired this loudmouthed, twitchy, delusional rookie that thinks one good debut match is enough to stand next to people that have spent years shedding blood and ripping themselves and their opponents apart to earn their place in the sport…
She has gone so far as to claim pretty much everyone with male genitalia, especially me, a batch of toxins that needs to be purged from the company and the sport in general. She has threatened Premiere with economic blackmail via complaining to sponsors, she turns on anybody in a blink of an eye and vows blood revenge that even slightly deviates from her doctrine.
She’s alienated almost everybody she contacts, and well before she’s even wrote a paragraph in her career’s chapter, she’s going on a full fledged jihad to burn the book of wrestling and do like almost anyone these days who enjoys revisionist history and protocol…
What she decides is right for everyone, damn the consequences, or how much of a hypocritical sociopath it makes her look like.
He looks away from the camera, hands tucked under his chin, thinking.
There’s a reason I’ve been off the airways for awhile, and that’s because, unlike our new “Dear Leader” and Britt, who gets slapped around verbally every time she tries to step to me on social media…
I like to think I try to measure my actions and words carefully, try to take a step back and evaluate the scenario before acting. I took a good hard look, and this is what I realized…
*huff*
I wanted to think that this woman, whose name I’m now officially done speaking because I’ve already given her and her idiotic crusade to make a federation with a management team and roster already primarily female dominated a refuge for women, that doesn't let icky mean boys play without a note from mommy, way too much mileage by mentioning, is just riding a current events gimmick to get a rise out of people and ruffle some feathers. Or, at least, explain why she’s on social media ranting like a homeless person with a “the end is nigh” sign on them at all hours instead of actually enjoying life, the thing she’s going out of her way to stifle and control concerning others.
But, the symptoms she displays tell me otherwise.
Her refusal to take advice or at least consider differing opinions, her overblown Messiah complex, the meandering, repetitive, and borderline psychotic diatribes on Twitter. And the worst crime of all…
Introducing corrosive, hateful, segregationist, and at times, violent rhetoric and politics into professional wrestling. The very thing the game is supposed to be a refuge from because GOD FUCKING KNOWS EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS DAMN WORLD IS CONTAMINATED BY OFF THE RAILS POLITiCS ON ALL SIDES OF THE SPECTRUM!
*whew* Sorry, folks. Brought back bad memories of Thanksgiving dinners. There’s a reason we don’t let Uncle Jody drink at family shindigs anymore.
I’m not perfect by any means, oh no. Anybody that actually follows my career knows I’ve had, and still have, bad tendencies. You want a list, I’d be happy to give it to you, let you figure out what to do with it. But one thing I have never done is threaten to turn a federation into some nightmare Orwellian world where zealots and absolutists get to dictate what grown ass people can and cannot do, and anybody that’s found to not follow their template of what a wrestler should be are stuck in the back of the bus, or expelled.
Funny how an alleged fighter of equality has no problem trying to establish her own version of Jim Crow laws on the undesirables. But then again, take it from a guy that used to hunt people that rolled like that for a living, those that dictate every aspect of a person’s existence…
Moral, dignity, collateral damage: who cares if the results are what you want, huh?
Yeah, you can see why this shit concerns me so much, unless you’ve chugged a whole pitcher of her Kool-Aid.
This woman is a threat to Premiere, to the business as a whole. She has made it perfectly clear if you do not toe her line, she will go out of her way to destroy you, and as soon as management stops humoring her cancerous goals, she will turn on them, too.
This has gone beyond competition. About titles, prestige, a big paycheck; this has now turned into a battle for the soul of the game.
I want the rest of the roster to think about what I’m saying. Are you comfortable with a green as grass rookie fringe being permitted to confine you and your career into parameters of her design? Are you willing to have your lives, careers, and your revenue stream being manipulated and threatened by somebody who not only doesn’t give a shit about your thoughts and feelings, but will move mountains to force you to convert to her religion?
I sure as hell ain’t!
He opens up a drawer on his right side. He’s gripping his dog tags, rubbing the chain with his thumb and fingers.
I thought when I came back to the game, things were going to be different. All I wanted to do was reclaim my spot, and maybe, just maybe, improve the competition I face.I make more money when my prey is better, sue me.
Just fight and make money. Should be enough for everybody. But there’s always somebody trying to bring Hell on Earth, and call it paradise.
This is gonna get ugly, kids. It has to. Take it from an expert; you don’t stop extremists before they get a foothold, everybody suffers.
No matter what chromosomes or beliefs you posses.
The absolute truths that fanatics latch onto might be religious or political, right wing or left wing, Christian or Islamic, libertarian or communist, new age spiritual or old-time religious. It’s not what they believe that makes them fanatics but how they believe it, that they have final word, no need to consider further evidence, no need to ever wonder or doubt themselves again.
Fanaticism is a drug. Let loose on society it's like crack cocaine or alcohol only worse. Fanatics drive through life like alcoholics driving under the influence. They think they’re perfectly fine driving. They kill innocent bystanders, sometimes by the thousands or millions.
Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D.
After that quote fades from the screen, Tony’s face pops up. He’s enjoying a rare reprieve from his hectic touring schedule in the office of his home in Dallas. Why shouldn’t he; after all, today is his birthday.
30 years old. He had to admire that. Considering his years of combat inside and out of a ring, even he is amazed he made it this far. The things he’s seen, done, they’ve shaped him, and often, nearly broke him.
This is, after all, a man that used to get into gunfights in third world countries while others wrestlers were blogging about Pokemon and airing their personal dirty laundry out on the line for public consumption. He’s experienced some fucked up shit.
Wrestling was no different. Some of the freak-shows and barely functional malcontents he has to dispatch on a weekly basis tend to make him shake his head and wonder if he needs more CAT scans per year. But this little girl, barking at traffic constantly like a poorly reared purse dog until they tired themselves out, she was up there in the Hall of Fame of dysfunctional.
Worst part was, Dana was either full of shit, running a con job by capitalizing on a current hot button issue…
Or she was a brainwashed zealot, looking to remake Premiere in her own twisted, Orwellian image where no-one, save the ones she deemed worthy, could exist.
Either way, it was time to make a stand. And the best way to fight fanaticism was with Reason.
They hate that shit. Critical thinking is like Kryptonite to a suicide bomber; what kind of person would let something as trifling as common sense and dignity get in the way of falling on your sword for a cause?
Tony: Two years in Afghanistan gives you a damn good perspective into the mindset of zealots. Al-Quaeda, Taliban; they were some nasty customers. You name it, they pulled it; kidnapping, rape, genital mutilation. Sometimes, they’d just flat out slaughter entire settlements.
There was this one village my patrol found one day during a deployment in the North, near Pakistan. This happened merely days into my first deployment, so, I hadn’t the misfortune yet to realize the gravity of the situation I was in. We stopped after we got reports insurgents were using the place as a way station to hop across the border. I was expecting a firefight.
What I saw was even worse.
One of the village elders told my section chief about what they did to a little girl, made me sick. 12 year old child, killed by militants, because she was reading a book to her little brother.
For reading a God…Damned…BOOK!
His face might as well have steam seeping out of his pores when he recollects this chapter in his life. He has to stop and calm himself down before he continues, his teeth clenching.
Tell you the truth, I wanted to waste that entire place. A few fucking nut-jobs with guns come in, pushing their sick version of how the world should be, and people just went along to get along. I saw too much of that; extremism. Contaminating personal lives, dividing families, driving people to do unspeakable acts just because they believe they’re way is t he only way to live.
Thought after I got back home, I wouldn’t have to see that crap again, especially in wrestling. Don’t get me wrong, Planet Spandex is filled with aspiring psychopaths and dictators looking to reign supreme over their adversaries. Some of them even get as far as control over the entire company. Usually, though, as bad as their motives are, they’re simple enough to understand. Simple greed; they want money, power, a shiny belt. Most of them don’t make excuses or justify what they do with anemic claims of doing the world a favor.
But this girl….wow…this one takes the cake. It’s bad enough our organization hired this loudmouthed, twitchy, delusional rookie that thinks one good debut match is enough to stand next to people that have spent years shedding blood and ripping themselves and their opponents apart to earn their place in the sport…
She has gone so far as to claim pretty much everyone with male genitalia, especially me, a batch of toxins that needs to be purged from the company and the sport in general. She has threatened Premiere with economic blackmail via complaining to sponsors, she turns on anybody in a blink of an eye and vows blood revenge that even slightly deviates from her doctrine.
She’s alienated almost everybody she contacts, and well before she’s even wrote a paragraph in her career’s chapter, she’s going on a full fledged jihad to burn the book of wrestling and do like almost anyone these days who enjoys revisionist history and protocol…
What she decides is right for everyone, damn the consequences, or how much of a hypocritical sociopath it makes her look like.
He looks away from the camera, hands tucked under his chin, thinking.
There’s a reason I’ve been off the airways for awhile, and that’s because, unlike our new “Dear Leader” and Britt, who gets slapped around verbally every time she tries to step to me on social media…
I like to think I try to measure my actions and words carefully, try to take a step back and evaluate the scenario before acting. I took a good hard look, and this is what I realized…
*huff*
I wanted to think that this woman, whose name I’m now officially done speaking because I’ve already given her and her idiotic crusade to make a federation with a management team and roster already primarily female dominated a refuge for women, that doesn't let icky mean boys play without a note from mommy, way too much mileage by mentioning, is just riding a current events gimmick to get a rise out of people and ruffle some feathers. Or, at least, explain why she’s on social media ranting like a homeless person with a “the end is nigh” sign on them at all hours instead of actually enjoying life, the thing she’s going out of her way to stifle and control concerning others.
But, the symptoms she displays tell me otherwise.
Her refusal to take advice or at least consider differing opinions, her overblown Messiah complex, the meandering, repetitive, and borderline psychotic diatribes on Twitter. And the worst crime of all…
Introducing corrosive, hateful, segregationist, and at times, violent rhetoric and politics into professional wrestling. The very thing the game is supposed to be a refuge from because GOD FUCKING KNOWS EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS DAMN WORLD IS CONTAMINATED BY OFF THE RAILS POLITiCS ON ALL SIDES OF THE SPECTRUM!
*whew* Sorry, folks. Brought back bad memories of Thanksgiving dinners. There’s a reason we don’t let Uncle Jody drink at family shindigs anymore.
I’m not perfect by any means, oh no. Anybody that actually follows my career knows I’ve had, and still have, bad tendencies. You want a list, I’d be happy to give it to you, let you figure out what to do with it. But one thing I have never done is threaten to turn a federation into some nightmare Orwellian world where zealots and absolutists get to dictate what grown ass people can and cannot do, and anybody that’s found to not follow their template of what a wrestler should be are stuck in the back of the bus, or expelled.
Funny how an alleged fighter of equality has no problem trying to establish her own version of Jim Crow laws on the undesirables. But then again, take it from a guy that used to hunt people that rolled like that for a living, those that dictate every aspect of a person’s existence…
Moral, dignity, collateral damage: who cares if the results are what you want, huh?
Yeah, you can see why this shit concerns me so much, unless you’ve chugged a whole pitcher of her Kool-Aid.
This woman is a threat to Premiere, to the business as a whole. She has made it perfectly clear if you do not toe her line, she will go out of her way to destroy you, and as soon as management stops humoring her cancerous goals, she will turn on them, too.
This has gone beyond competition. About titles, prestige, a big paycheck; this has now turned into a battle for the soul of the game.
I want the rest of the roster to think about what I’m saying. Are you comfortable with a green as grass rookie fringe being permitted to confine you and your career into parameters of her design? Are you willing to have your lives, careers, and your revenue stream being manipulated and threatened by somebody who not only doesn’t give a shit about your thoughts and feelings, but will move mountains to force you to convert to her religion?
I sure as hell ain’t!
He opens up a drawer on his right side. He’s gripping his dog tags, rubbing the chain with his thumb and fingers.
I thought when I came back to the game, things were going to be different. All I wanted to do was reclaim my spot, and maybe, just maybe, improve the competition I face.I make more money when my prey is better, sue me.
Just fight and make money. Should be enough for everybody. But there’s always somebody trying to bring Hell on Earth, and call it paradise.
This is gonna get ugly, kids. It has to. Take it from an expert; you don’t stop extremists before they get a foothold, everybody suffers.
No matter what chromosomes or beliefs you posses.