“No inspirational quote for today. Punch them if you need to.” – Unnamed football coach

America was once the very definition of competing.

The scrappy people who bobbed across the Atlantic in tiny wooden ships to form a new civilization and country brought with them the “competition gene.” They left behind the weaker and hang dog humans whose descendants barely hold on to what little they had left.

And that’s who still populates Britain and the rest of the European continent. The leftover DNA that just couldn’t cut it. When they got here, they had to fight for their lives not only the very vicious existing inhabitants, but the French, the Spanish and several other unfriendly nationalities. Then later their fellow Englishmen.

American Indians were not the peaceful, glorious, nature-loving hippies that New Agers and the media would like you to conjure in your mind. Turning fairy tales into history is their greatest skill. Keeping in mind that there were many super different tribes living their own version of being an Indian, many of them were cruel, nasty and psychopathic killers.

When hunting was scarce, they ate their horses and dogs. And occasionally meat from an unknown source. For those tribes, and there were lots of them, just killing you was not near enough to satisfy. They routinely committed horrific torture on the defeated. Both alive and dead.

Scalping was their softest version. ‘Nuff said.

The other European countries didn’t send their weakest or friendliest guys to America to kill our ancestors either. Those guys were mean and physically tough as any jungle beasts anywhere. I’m sure having to get up every day and fight them all was a bit of a chore.

Then, as the Eastern part of the future U.S. started getting civilized, the people I call “The Crazy DNA Folks” decided they missed the chaotic, hyper dangerous and nasty old days. Let’s do some more!

So they loaded up rickety wooden wagons with all their stuff and some one shot rifles, competing all the way from one ocean to the next and eventually conquering all the space in between.

Competing for land requires you put it all on the line and accepting that you are probably…most likely…going to die. CDF people of all ethnic persuasions are the reason you live in the comfort you do. Or live at all.

The majority of Americans were like that back then. Only they could compete and win in a tough, hostile environment. Combat is basically the Olympics with machine guns.

We (I mean our CDF people) did not beat Germany and Japan, two huge killer military forces, by sheer bravery and sacrifice alone. America’s giant factories had out competed the rest of the world. Pumping out consumer goods for the market…refrigerators, hair pins, cars, widgets, etc.

Then the war started. Our big corporate factories switched over to military stuff. War planes, ships, tanks, ammunition. And so on. No country could compete. We wore enemies down to a nub.

We built 110,000 tanks and armed vehicles, 6,792,696 artillery and large guns, and 637,249 aircraft, 54,931 ships (combat and transport). Our competitive nature made this possible. And saved everyone’s butts.

One of my favorite stories is how we developed the proximity fuse, the invention that finally finished off the German and Japanese armies and ended the war. Actually more deadly overall than the atomic bomb. Everyone had been trying to come up with this, including us, for years.

The Germans desperately ran five longtime projects for that device…and failed because the delicate little “computer” ran on tubes. There was no transistor. The tubes were broken when the cannon fired the shell.

Finally, the problem was solved by an American company that made hearing aids. They were the top competitor in that field world wide. The tubes were modified for cannons and bombs.

Problem solved.

Enemy obliterated.

The reason that today we are the most technologically advanced country and military is that America out competes like no one else. Mainly in the inventions for consumer goods. We have all…the Henry Fords and Elon Musks…the rest of the world just copies best they can.

Although our public schools seem to purposely churn out people who can’t even compete in elementary classrooms, luckily we still have enough of those CDF humans to keep us going.

For now.

Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.

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