Lions in a time of great need

I know our society has grown sick with the need to politicize tragedy, but I have to feed those flames here. I had a rattling (and tragically, representative) experience this morning. I left my house in a nice suit to attend Mass and an awards ceremony. I ended up standing guard while a police convoy escorted those same children from church back to their school. In the blink of an eye! I wrote about the event itself in this X thread. I don't intended to delve into the details much in this piece. What I want to talk about, the thoughts I must share, is what happened in response…

As those inside my project know, I attend a children’s Mass connected to their school. It's an indescribably beautiful experience largely because of its indescribably powerful location. I went inside early as normal to sit in the pews my wife and I prefer for this private locked-door gathering. But an event that runs on a very tight clock never began today. What I assumed at first was an early reading of scripture by a group of students always there at that time, I realized had become something else. The priest was praying the rosary. The children were echoing. They would later pray some words I had never heard in there. The halls were silent otherwise. No one was entering. It was as if time had stopped. I then got a frantic text from my wife which sparked the rest of my frantic morning. I don't usually film inside church out of respect, but I snapped this today because the scene was so… surreal. At this moment, I wasn't entirely sure what was going on. The children’s words were honestly haunting at the time.

There had a been a stabbing nearby and the suspect was on the loose. Unusual stabbing and early rumors of a jaw-dropping victim that caused big panic (UPDATE: rumors unfortunately true). I suddenly found myself in a lockdown. I was able to leave, but this was all about the children. We had some inside and we had a bunch about to walk into possible harm’s way. The area exploded into action! And it's that action I want to hone-in on…

The first person I saw move was an old man behind me. He realized something was amiss about the same time I did. He followed me from the pews to the door. I already knew I had an army of two. The leader of the school was on top of this scene like General Patton. Much calmer and cool and still flashing warm smiles at concerned parents, it was like watching a battlefield command. Lion! That man is a lion. You could almost feel that in his presence. He isn't a big strong man. That's not what I mean.

As I moved around and tried to piece together what the hell was going on and most importantly was my daughter safe, I realized our coalition at the front of this church was swelling quickly. Lions. I didn't know most of them, but I didn't need to right then. We knew all we needed to know about each other at that moment. It was incredibly reassuring to know there was such resistance right there at the door. These weren't officers with guns; they were dads with coffees (and some probably guns).

At one point, I stepped outside. I had already hooked up with the Mrs and knew she was safe. Our Commander in Chief had thankfully told us the kids walk had been halted and they were on lockdown at school. Family was safe, I got antsy and needed to know what was going on outside. (Side note: my lady, bless her NY Italian heart, was melted down and in tears believing her favorite priest had been the victim. She heard the rumors we all heard and he was the only one not there. In addition, she had driven by a further away scene of sirens and stretchers and so we hadn't ruled out some larger scale event playing out. But in the end, at a moment of most needing her faculties, she was mentally consumed battling a monster of her own creation… and losing.) Outside was buzzing! Sirens everywhere. Our leader came out to give another update and this time I was on the sidewalk instead of by the altar. Public sidewalk. It was a surreal scene as this man spoke to a large crowd circling around; sharing info of suspects and crime details, strategies on what we we’re doing now to get this batch of our precious treasure back to their campus. Boy, my day had changed quick! I was in a fancy blue suit. Lol I'm usually in a hoodie. They were not short on volunteers. It's not the first time a community leader stood on that same public square over the past half-millennia issuing orders to concerned parents of children.

During this moment is when I first slowed down a bit. It's also when I was having these thoughts I'm sharing about lions. There was one man in particular who stood out to me as we were gathered around the Deacon. I guess I had kind of sized-up who all I'm with. He was a huge man! Burly. He looked like a former biker. His eyes had wild but restrained fire. They were flashing everywhere! I mean, I'm not sure he heard any of the Deacon's info. His mind was on full patrol. It was glancing right down by the bridge; back up left to the college area; it darted at every noise; scanned everyone who approached. Nobody asked this dude to post up. Nobody had to. His body sensed emergency and that becomes duty. I guarantee you if that maniac had surfaced, big boy would have been the first person on them. If they drew a knife, he would not have cared. If they drew a gun, I'm still certain the strategy would not have been surrender. Nobody was getting to those children inside by this point. Not because of law enforcement (although they were nearby too), but because of citizens. Because our country is one of lions! It's how we got here. That's who built this magnificent place. Pioneers oozing of strength. Similarly to this micro situation, that type of man would be the first line of defense if his nation was under threat. Or his state, or county, or community, or block, or neighbor. That's what these molds do. Honestly, his posture was so intense at that moment that I wouldn't be surprised if he served or was a former cop. But this energy I'm touching on isn't about that. Those are professions that take lions and train them. Turn them into very important societal tools.

There is an irony here, and that's part of why I wrote this. The type of man I am describing meets almost every one of the categories our matriarchal Progress guard has spent decades painting as wrong and trying to whittle and weed out as abhorrent. He didn't dress very nice and doesn't appear to follow a lot of rules. I bet he swears a lot and drinks beer. He was white as they come. Kind of orangey hair and lots of tats! Probably used some foul misogynistic language in his time. Might still today. None of that fucking matters. It doesn't matter one iota in the context I've spent the last half-hour describing. When real shit hit the fan; when actions and behaviors were needed, not hashtags and scholarly articles. I wrote a thread recently about this energy rearing its head when Hurricane Milton came through here a couple weeks ago. You see big strong-ass men gearing up to go do work in the storm as the rest of society hunkers down and shelters (myself included). Most probably don't even have Twitter accounts. Meanwhile, we have FEMA leadership melting down about how emergency management needs to include their Queer+ fantasies and unicorns… needs a federal agency to function as his father. I'm sorry, “Their” father, because they have multiple gender spirits at FEMA. We have Progress flags on fire trucks.

The literal championing of weakness as a paint job on civil service fleets. Unfathomable. Yet, it's the case across the nation even here in Florida in our 2 or 3 areas under FrankenFemme leadership. And understand, I'm not talking about size and strength here. Being a lion does not mean you lift (although lions sure like to!). It's not about being big or tough or showing off like a bad ass. In fact, most of them don't show off at all. If you ever meet a typical Marine grunt who is new, you'll pick up that they are a Marine very quickly. If you ever meet a Special Forces operator, you likely won't know that until they tell you. There were lots of men around me that you might not pick out of a lineup or random screenshot as a lion. Some old, some real young; some tall and others short; some bad-ass and others unimposing; black brown white and everything in between. Again, none of this stuff matters in moments of boiled-down reality. That's the “Equity” academic masturbation that matters so much at Columbia and Yale.

What ultimately drives this engine is innate. It catches fire once you have your own to protect. This is interwoven in both our design and DNA. And it isn't just about men, of course. You should have seen the Mama Bears buzzing around that place! Not all of them teared-up like mine. Lol but I'm not talking about that here. I'm talking about something else. Yeah, there are some ladies like Amanda Nunez who could literally kick your ass. But that's an anomaly that strikes against our blueprint. We didn't need any orders issued this morning. Everything flowed exactly as it’s meant to. Our citizenship is strong here! Florida is united and surging. There is nowhere I could have felt safer.

All this stuff ties together, folks. I wrote a thread a ways back about seeing 6 or 7 cop cars crash down on some shoplifters once in Jax Beach. Some replies criticized the scope of response. They don't get it. We want our cops to roll up like that. We focus on the rights of law abiding citizens, not the dogmatic principles of “restorative justice” and its cult-like fixation on empathy. Probably the most bad-ass dude I saw today was the lieutenant who showed up to lead the group of squad trucks that took those children back to school (they decided it just didn't make sense to walk them even with all of us around). Man walked out so damn jacked he almost looked round. Big beard, big guns on his belt, cool as a cucumber. That's some legit masculinity right there! Guy strutted with it. If a war broke out, I want him as captain.

I sing these notes for a reason. It's not because I think I'm tough or to show off. I've seen enough real tough that I specifically don't think I'm that tough. I just hear the calls of nature. I know my role and that's largely because my father instilled these understandings in me. He is a lion, still today in his 70s. He paid it forward as I now do my own. This is the cycle of life. These are the natural forces our youth have been radicalized against in the name of “Progress”. The bottom-floor foundations that hold everything together. Chipped away, chipped away, chipped away…

What we need to re-set in society is so obvious. It presents very poignantly when all the academic gets brushed aside by the crashing waves of reality. We'll one day be conducting a massive WTF postmortem in this country. We've allowed a decades-long destructive moral panic.