"How Times Have Changed"
by LLPOH
"On October 24, 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest just before he was scheduled to deliver a speech. Coughing into his hand and determining he was not lung shot, he carried on with the speech. He spoke for 84 minutes, refusing all attempts to administer him care. They were unable to remove the bullet that was lodged deep in his chest. Whatever else he may have been, for sure and certain he was, as he described himself, a bull moose.
Compare that man to the soy boy metrosexuals that voted for Biden, that can today be seen everywhere. The faux tattooed toughness is a disgrace. How the mighty have fallen.
My father was tough as old leather boots, a child of the Dustbowl. He would at times give me some horrifically hard task to do, like the time he told me to wrench a tree up by its roots as it was “too small to waste time using a shovel on”.
Having made the mistake previously of saying something or other was too hard, I tussled mightily with that redwood (a small deciduous in reality) for some time trying to rip it up. He eventually walked over and tore it out of the ground. He used force of will more than physical strength, I believe, plus he was experienced. It had been his job once – he once worked at a tree nursery where he tore trees out of the ground. Hard to believe but true story, all of it.
He never told me to do something that he himself could not do. If I dared say something was impossible, or that I could not do it, he would come do it, then give me a serious belting. The message was clear – there is little that a man cannot do if he bows his back and gets after it. And saying it was impossible was not an option. I saved myself a hiding by fighting hell out of that tree. I gave it my all. I would have been around 15. And in the end, he helped. The lessons were hard learned, but never forgotten.
I helped a young man move house a couple of years ago, as I had a truck. He enlisted several friends of his as well. Four of them grabbed his couch to load it in the truck. I asked them “what in the hell are you doing?” They could not understand the question. I explained that no couch needs four men. That they should be ashamed. They were outraged. I told them that one guy could do it in a pinch, and that I had done so many times myself (and it is true – I would flip it onto my back and off I would go). And I told them that they should look hard in the mirror until they figured out that being competent at physical tasks is one mark of being a man. They took it better than I should have expected, but doubt they gave it a moments thought.
Where have all the hard men, and women, gone? Will they ever return? I have watched the steel steadily disappear from young men over the decades. It is long gone, to where I do not know. But we need it back. Right now."
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