As I was told in an English class my first day of college, America is a country of binaries. The next thing that professor did was write a long list of existing binaries on the chalk board for us to write about. While everyone chose young/old, rich/poor, or skinny/fat, I tackled Republican/Democrat, and I was the only one. That in-class essay was a four-hundred word diatribe on the methods rich republicans use to keep poor democrats poor, thus forever perpetuating the plight of democrats and minorities especially. That essay might go much differently today. It’s not that I’ve switched allegiances or that Id go back and vote Republican if I could, I just have a much more clear understanding of what it means to be a Republican, Democrat, or anything else. I know why talking head Republicans on television are always yelping about big government and taxes. I know why minorities feel so comfortable when Democrats are in office. What I also know is that none of our problems can really be fixed with ideology because the bridge between ideology and action is one you have to build first, after that, crossing the bridge every day is easy. The world’s reluctance to build that bridge properly since the beginning of civilization tells me that the human race is going to arguing about politics until politics causes their extinction.
Maybe a Ron Paul-style fitness libertarian movement is what we need, some say it's already going on.
I’m more apt to taking a side, the conservative side, when it comes to my profession. When it comes to being fit and explaining it to others, I’m not only a conservative, I’m a libertarian. I feel like a right-wing columnist writing for the New York times, a right-wing television host on MSNBC, or a Republican candidate trying his best to swing votes from a Democratic incumbent. In other words, the rest of the world is too liberal on exercise, and Scalesonfire.com has just become
the FOX News of fitness.
I’d like the podium.
American people, what I’m going to tell you may shock you, mostly because it’s not what you’re used to hearing. The fitness industry, our current administration, is addicted to spending. Now, just to be clear, that’s your spending they’re addicted to. They’ve done an incredibly clever job of finding ways to get you to believe you need certain things-most of which involve spending money and full dependence on a method, program or activity. The country is also overrun with people who support these methods, praise them as if they work, but also do things that adversely effect the methods and still expect results. It’s bad enough that these fitness liberals working in the fitness industry push this agenda of comfort and dependence, thinking that increasing the government and turning it into a large machine fueled by corporations is really good for people trying to be active and fit, but most regular fitness liberals, raised and spoiled on the current system have no idea why they vote for the current administration, they just do, and continue to believe ridiculous lies. They continue to use a calorie system much like our system of personal spending by: overeating for no particular reason the way many say liberals over-spend; eating and thinking that the food “doesn’t count” and doesn’t effect the body the way liberals are said to pile up credit; and they treat fitness and nutrition like a debit program, giving here, taking there, rewarding themselves, and never, ever exercising enough.
Sound familiar? The truth is that just like in our society where the poor outnumber the rich, so-called “minorities” outnumber the whites, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans and liberals outnumber conservatives, in fitness, the liberals outnumber the conservatives and the fat outweigh the skinny. The reason may be the same ones we have in politics. Liberals believe in family, support, the village raising the child, big government, working families, having a choice. They think that conservatives are harsh, xenophobic, simple, oppressive, and old-fashioned. Conservatives believe in values, saving, small government, personal independence, and understanding the rules of life. They think that liberals are lazy, frivolous, self-pitying and dependent.
Many of those things are also ways fit and fat people describe each other, and in the very same ways the arguments and animosity between the two sides continues to brew. Think of gyms as the different political television programs and news organizations you see. Bally’s is ‘Meet the Press’ Gold’s Gym is ‘The O’Reilly Factor.’ If you look closely at a gym, you’ll automatically see the liberal or conservative aim they have. Sometimes, cheap things are sold on television with the aim of coaxing liberals into thinking conservatively for a brief second, and that is how info-mercial schemes for everything from diet plans to pull-up bars control large segments of the population. It’s the same way there are television commercials offering deals on foreclosed homes or credit consolidation in the middle of the day, while only hardcore liberals are at home-selling typically conservative ideas to liberals is a way to have liberals make you rich.
The comparison is much deeper than media though. In politics and fitness, there are not only liberals and conservatives, but amongst liberals there are: Democrats, or people who think that any workout plan should work for them if they work for it and they will always vote for it in such a case and be completely turned off when it’s not, socialists and communists, or people who think that exercise is only enriched in group form, leftists, who think that hard work at the gym means the gym is elite and should provide comfort and luxury for its members (see also, things that have nothing to do with being fit), liberal media, or people and organizations who show fitness a small part of life amongst the many beautiful, tasty and lazy things out there and mock fitness more than enrich it. Amongst conservatives there are: Republicans, or people who think that the system is them working every day for themselves enriching their own lives with exercise no matter in which form it comes, Tea Partiers, or people who have come to understand that the rules created by the fitness industry are restrictive to real progress and no longer want to pay the monetary ‘taxes’ on frivolous programs that don’t work, Libertarians, or people who believe that the basics that have been provided can run the government and prosper that way (these are typically yogis and calisthenic freaks), and until now, there’s been no real conservative fitness media.
In the coming days, weeks, and months, I’m going to explain why becoming a fitness conservative or a “player” as I call it is the only way to making sure that fitness, exercise, weight and self-esteem are never a problem. Now, it may cause a lot of political conservatives to rethink their fitness habits or some fitness conservatives to think their political habits, but my aim here isn’t political, it’s to show you that there are some sectors of life where it doesn’t pay to be liberal and that self-rewarding is relative. I hope to turn everyone I encounter, engage and am employed by into a player. Scalesonfire.com’s slogan is “Why keep score when you could be a player?” and I implore all of you out there to never be scorekeepers.
