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Redirecting that MAGA punch to the gut: how my aikido sensei helped me see things differently [1]
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Date: 2025-01-21
Like many of you, I woke up today (Tuesday Jan 21) with a feeling that I had been punched in the gut by the Tr*mp executive order sh*tshow. It brought me back to that miserable feeling I lived with from 2016 – 2020 thanks to MAGA and reminded me of how glad I was during Biden’s term not to have that. But here we are.
Many moons ago, before the internet existed, I spent a year while I was an undergraduate attending an aikido dojo (martial arts community) led by a wise and charismatic sensei (teacher). We practiced all kinds of scenarios, but while we trained, sensei offered thoughts about conflict and confrontation.
One of his primary lessons was a move where one stepped to the side when a punch was coming at you. “If you don’t want to get hit by a train, step off the tracks,” said sensei - and he meant this about the punch as well as a lesson for life in general. Many moves involved stepping to the side and pushing the head (“the head leads and the body will follow”) or grabbing an arm and pushing an attacker to the ground with a spin. Sensei spoke of redirecting the attacker’s energy (qi) in a different direction: “help them redirect their anger” and when they were lying down, pinned to the mat, “you are literally helping them see the world differently; maybe they will be less violent next time.” Oh, and while the attacker was on their way down to the mat, sensei would add “here you can pop them in the side of the head – hey, you’re only human”.
Sensei was a big fan of humor to disarm an attacker. He advised telling a quick joke in tense situations or even breaking into song. “Why not be a little weird if it breaks the tension?” His lesson was that a dynamic emerges between people in a conflict and it is essential to break those dimensions to diffuse the conflict. “Hey that’s a nice knife – I used to have one like it but in blue!”
I am thinking today about these lessons when thinking about MAGA targeting the most vulnerable in our communities. We already have Tr*mp targeting trans folks and of course immigrants, and I expect that there is more to come, let’s not be naïve. It will be on those of us who more secure to help the most vulnerable – as Barack Obama recently said, that is the true measure of strength. So we will need to stand up to MAGA and there will likely be conflict and confrontations of many kinds, and we should be prepared. But a lesson of sensei is that it is essential to envision alternatives to conflict. Maybe MAGA can be persuaded to not bully. Maybe… even Tr*mp can be persuaded to do something kind. Is it likely? No – but we need to keep an open mind for the possibility of a better outcome. Sensei would say “People who are tense – their muscular tension literally squeezes their eyeballs – it literally changes the way they see the world.”
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