I have been thinking about Judo lately, played between nations…  Or it is actually something more akin to a combination of Judo and Chess.  Judo, for those who are unaware, is a Japanese martial art whose primary focus is defense by using your opponent’s own strength and/or inertia against them.  The simplest possible example would be someone running up to attack you, you step to one side and trip them. That’s the judo. The act of planning to do so, the strategy, is the chess.  

So how does this play into the world stage, as well as our country?  We’re having this very redirection of action used against us by players who have been at the game far longer than we have even existed.  The recent uproar over the rise in childhood obesity comes to mind… Much of which started with kids in my generation, maybe one generation before, playing Atari, Colecovision, and Packkuman (PacMan,) while exercising nothing more than a few fingers, eye muscles and, sometimes, facial muscles.  This was later followed by Nintendo, Sega, Sony Playstation, and more recently the Wii, and PS3 and Microsoft’s XBOX. Yes, you can exercise with a Wii, let’s not go there. Most people buy it to play, not to get fit.

To take down a larger, stronger opponent, you must either redirect his energy, or make him weak.  Or both. Notice that all of the video gaming systems, with the exception of the XBOX line, are Japanese…  And kids are, as they have for 30 years now, sitting around getting fat playing video games. And not in shape to fight, should they be called to as adults, or even walk more than 50 feet in some cases.  Diabetes is on the rise, health care costs will continue to sore… And remember, all of this is mostly coming from an “ally” we shamed and defeated in World War II… The Japanese create business plans that span CENTURIES.  Do you think, honestly, that this action isn’t planned? You don’t have to fly a jetliner or two into office buildings to kill thousands of Americans (and others,) you just have to get them sitting around on their asses, playing games, and becoming bigger, fatter, shorter lived burdens on our country.  Who is the bigger, more successful terrorist… Osama Bin Laden or Namco, Atari and Sony?

It happens on another front, as well…  In Sweden and Norway, Volvo is Chevrolet. In Germany, Mercedes Benz is Ford.  Nearly everyone owns one, they are very common, and not expensive. Here in the United States, a Benz is a “Luxury Performance Sedan” and the Volvo is “The World’s Safest Car.”  And a model that costs 50% less in its homeland is sold as a luxury premium item here. Do you think any German citizen would pay $60k for a Chevrolet Malibu if we stuck some wood, leather and fancy audio equipment, all totaling about $1000 into it?  If so, GM needs to get on it, because we’re missing something. The reality is, we’re missing something, all right… We allow marketing and celebrity endorsement to have more weight on our lives than plain common sense. We’re taking an economic ass-kicking for it, too.  It weakens us.

Germany and Japan are just two quick and easy examples.  The fact is, we, as a country are allowing ourselves to be weakened, torn down slowly, poisoned by complacency, luxury and convenience.  100 years ago the idea of having a gym to work out in would have gotten you laughed at. So would buying something that is not worth what you’ve paid for it.  

You don’t need to uses guns, bombs or bioagents to take down our great nation…  It’s more effective, it seems, to do it with Twinkies, video games and shiny objects.  I believe the Romans called it Bread and Circuses. They were the greatest civilization of their time.  

Until some very skilled enemies learned how to tear them apart by having too much fun and becoming complacent, fat and lazy.

Think about it.  It’s judo and chess, and we’re the ones who don’t understand how to play the game or use the art.  And we’re playing against nations that have been doing it for 5000 years. I think we’re gonna get schooled if we don’t get smart.  And maybe, just maybe, the Japanese are still a little pissed about having been the only nation to ever have a nuclear weapon dropped on them.

Originally posted on my FB October 10, 2015.

Judo On a World Stage by Jerod J. Husvar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.