The Boat Shoe Beat: Tough Guise

There’s an interesting scenario that played out, unfortunately fairly regularly, during my wilder and rambunctious early twenties. Those days are more or less behind me now, but it went along something like this: I go to a party, have (perhaps) too many drinks, tell a few locker-room jokes for laughs, have a good time, and then leave (hopefully, on my own volition). The next groggy morning, a girlfriend or an acquaintance urgently warns me that someone at the party, either a shy “tough guise” or party busybody, was extremely offended and “wanted to fight you.” The past tense is important here. Generally speaking, nothing ever happened, not even a stern glance from the slighted would-be warrior.

I knew at the time what it really meant – chickenshit behavior – and that person resorted to impotent threats when their target was no longer within earshot or no longer even in the vicinity. My usual response was, “Well, why didn’t they say something?” The simple answer is because the person is a coward; therefore, they resort to a “defensive” style virtue signaling (distilled down to “woulda, coulda, shoulda”). It’s also deeply hypocritical. For all the times I was warned, always after the fact, about some scary, impending altercation from a straight edge gutter punk, because I had the audacity to ask where the keg was, nothing ever came of the situation. And that same harbinger of doom, who vengefully whispered among his comrades that my ass would be totally beaten if he ever saw me again in the Fan, would damn sure sit quietly in the corner at the next party we both attended.

That same behavior can be observed when someone gets doxxed for thoughtcrime. The perpetrators of such craven behavior are usually fair-weather friends and estranged family members – although, close family can also betray. Most normal people, when finding out someone close to them harbors unusual political views (compared to modernity), just asks the person for their side of the story. The relationship is typically mended after a phone call or a chat over a cup of coffee, and life goes on. These “tough guise” folks, on the other hand, well they operate from a completely different playbook (but very similar to the brooding, yet timid, paper tiger).

Once the thoughtcriminal has been doxxed (and usually suffering ongoing harassment by Twitter apparatchiks), the “tough guise” will do one of two things: (a) they will publicly denounce, with extreme fervor and zeal, their former friend/family member on social media, or (b) they will privately denounce, with the utmost eagerness and bloodthirsty voracity, their former friend/family member in their personal social circles. The commonality between the two methods is that their condemnation, either public or private, will leave no stone unturned and nothing will be off-limits. Another shared attribute is that neither will directly contact or communicate with the doxxed victim before, during, or after they’ve discredited them.

Of course, I understand that it’s simple human behavior for people to avoid conflict. Sometimes, you have to pick your battles, too. But, it takes a really loathsome creature to pound its concave chest over another person’s behavior (or political opinions) and then not have the cojones to actually confront that person. Contrary to what the “tough guise” think about their backward bravado, it actually reveals to the world that they’re really just gutless cowards. So, when some poor bastard gets publicly cancelled for calling an obnoxious queer in a prom dress “stupid,” guess the level of bravery it takes for the pitchforks to come out on Facebook and Twitter? I’d wager very little.