Thomas Wictor

Today I learned that terms such as “brave,” “skilled,” “selfless,” and “humane” are trigger words for those who lack such attributes. We’re not supposed to praise others, because that will make the non-praiseworthy feel bad about themselves.

Not my problem.

This post is dedicated to Andrew Gabriel Rose—poet, author, and painter.

Trigger an emission

Andrew hates Israel, and he hates me. I have no clue who Andrew is. He’s angry at me for praising men who are better than both of us. Andrew despises war, which he thinks makes him piously moral.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

—John 15:13

With all due respect to the Bible, there’s no greater love than to lay down your life for people you don’t know and may not even like. In Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, Arab League and allied strategic special operators are fighting—and dying—in defense of strangers who belong to religious sects that are anathema to Sunni Islam. And yet we have irrefutable evidence that this is happening.

Because these warriors are so skilled, they manage to avoid being filmed most of the time. Only occasionally are they caught on camera.

The small man in the brown shirt is a professional soldier who’s so well trained that he can lay down a storm of accurate fire even while running.

Before crossing the alley, he wraps the sling of his rifle around his left hand, which prevents the recoil from spoiling his aim.

This solider is embedded with Jaysh al-Thuwar, a secular Arab group opposed to religion. I’m positive that the small man is a Saudi. He’s almost certainly very religious. However, he’s adopted a worldview alien to Andrew Gabriel Rose: Live and let live.

While Saudis lay down their lives for strangers, Andrew writes poetry.

Save Us

I miss Philadelphia I guess Tuesdays
no Thursdays is what I mean I miss

On Thursday maybe it was
when the sweet sanguine jewel
sweetly played ping pong
And then I saw this
dad in drag caught up
in a
crying jag he
shook and sagged
like a wind-wracked rag

I miss plus far cold walks
far cold walks to another lonely place

But

I got words vast and spare
frisk me fleas in my girdle

Unless you’re not pleased by unease
Then I’ll skip nimbly by or unhinge you

And it’s too big a number of people to talk to
too hard to tell them the stuff
Unlikely to last on the water
that moves and spreads on and on.

So I scamper up on you
the living world my mate
my cumbersome mate who quivers beside me
as we shuddering kneel.

Andrew also writes books.

That’s fine. We can’t all be soldiers. But Andrew wants me to stop praising good men. I refuse to do so.

Trigger that buried rage

Andrew likes to send me angry messages.

No, I’m not like an armchair quarterback; I am an armchair quarterback. I’m fifty-three years old, with whole-body arthritis, Meniere’s disease, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s self-evident that I’m not a soldier. But I never claimed to be one, nor do I write my posts for the purpose of aggrandizing myself. I post in order to document world-changing events.

You should see the stuff I’ve spotted but not disclosed. If I wanted to make a name for myself, I’d tell you what’s sitting on the runway at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. I’d tell you how the Arab League is bypassing defenses.

My posts cover about 10 percent of what I’ve figured out. This is all open-source material, so I’m free to discuss it.

I choose to keep mum.

Trigger…something else

People expose their issues in the most mortifying ways.

I never understood the leftist “chicken hawk” insult. Obviously Andrew expects others to take on the dangerous jobs of policing, firefighting, and iron working.

If Andrew makes use of skyscrapers that he himself didn’t build, he’s a “chicken iron worker” and a disgrace. Harrumph, I say! With enormous, dripping globs of self-righteousness.

As for emasculation, I’ve never once written about it.

Nope. I write about the weakness of westerners, but I don’t differentiate between men and women. Western women are just as weak as western men. I’m talking about fortitude, not masculinity.

I did no such thing. These are the last two posts.

Analyses by idiots make everything worse.

Fatuous self-genocide in slow motion.

You know what happened? Andrew thought that my praise of other men means that I’m criticizing him for not being manly. He’s fighting a ferocious battle all by himself. I’m not involved.

Trigger that house of cards

The main reason that westerners in general and Americans in particular have so many problems is that they can’t admit to being wrong. They create utterly fake lives for themselves. If they’re called out on even one tiny bit of fraudulence, their entire edifice will come crashing down.

By praising men for being brave, I threaten Andrew’s very existence.

You know what’s funny? Arab men don’t punch. It’s a cultural thing. The courageous, selfless Arab men defeating everyone who needs to be defeated? They probably couldn’t throw a punch to save their lives. Does that make them less heroic or somehow “emasculated”? Of course not.

I’m a very complicated person. Andrew is…not complicated in the least. As a simpleminded man, he’s reacting to his idea of me, a childish stereotype.

Andrew told me that Hamas is “gallantly resisting” the Israelis. Think about the vacuous obscenity of such a statement. In reality, Hamas is murdering Palestinians in order to preserve the status quo. The men who run Hamas are billionaires. They want the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to go on forever.

And now, someone is collapsing Hamas tunnels. My guess is that it’s Arab commandos. They’re likely the best infiltrators who ever lived. Mediocre people don’t understand that achieving perfection clears the mind. Arab League strategic special operators have nothing to prove. They’re the pinnacle of excellence on multiple levels—as soldiers, thinkers, and human beings.

That’s why I post about them. They’re works of art.

Trigger the void

I used to play the bass guitar. Drumstick bass was my favorite thing to do.

Peter Gabriel’s song “Big Time” has Tony Levin and Jerry Marotta playing drumstick bass from 0:38 to 0:54.

Les Claypool plays drumstick bass by himself.

But the best drumstick bass of all time is Trevor Horn and an uncredited drummer on Art of Noise’s “The Holy Egoism of Genius.” The song has a line that applies to Andrew Gabriel Rose and everyone else triggered by excellence.

Debussy understood that a work of art or an effort to create beauty was always regarded by some people as a personal attack.

Heroism is by definition a work of art and an effort to create beauty. Andrew hates heroism. He regards it as a personal attack.

Enjoy the drumstick bass from 3:31 to 3:53.