I saw their ads on TV, on billboards, in my browser. They promised a quick fix to bullies, home wreckers, and neighbors with early morning leaf blowers. They welcomed the weak and powerless, the timid and fearful, and trained them in the ancient ways of violence. Students arrived soft and vulnerable and left hard and mean, combat-ready, lusting for battle. The ads said they turned victims into victors. Whether you were cut off in traffic, pushed around in class, or humiliated in the boardroom, just a few quick lessons at the Emergency School of Karate would make you a champion of justice, a defender of the oppressed, a righter of wrongs wherever they occurred.
They called their style Crisis Combat, and like Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do and Ed Parker’s Kenpo, it was a hybrid martial art, a blend of the best techniques from fighting systems around the world. Strikes and punches were taken from karate and boxing. Throws and takedowns were adopted from judo and aikido. Chokeholds and jointlocks were stolen from jiujitsu and wrestling. It was a lean style, with a small repertoire of moves that emphasized efficiency and expedition. Students learned to incapacitate their opponents as quickly as possible with minimal effort. It was very popular with stay-at-home parents and investment bankers.
There were complaints, of course, from old masters, shifu and sensei alike, about the lack of any philosophical foundation, the emphasis on shortcuts and surprise attacks, the proliferation of tricks and dirty techniques, but most of all, they complained about the celebration of aggression and the veneration of vengeance. With great power, comes great responsibility, they said, unaware they were quoting Spiderman. The Emergency School countered that they simply taught people how to defend themselves without subjecting them to, or requiring them to pay for, a bunch of mystical horsepucky.
A journalist I know, Kate Duncan, investigated the Emergency School of Karate after a wave of violence swept through the local high schools. It started when a handful of students took a few lessons and beat the shit out of their bullies. The bullies took notice and booked their own lessons in an attempt to regain the power they had lost. The situation spiraled as more and more students learned the secrets of breaking bones rather than the subtleties of conjugating verbs. Soon the city’s high schools were warzones with gangs of students prowling the hallways and throwing perfect punches at the slightest provocation. Eventually, the terrified administration, barricaded in offices and lounges, called the police.
When Kate went to interview management at the Emergency School of Karate, I tagged along. We knew something was strange when we pulled into the parking lot and found an empty building with a “For Lease” sign on the door. Peering through dirty glass, we saw ten thousand square feet of vacant space thick with dust. Clearly nothing had been here for years. I figured Kate had the wrong address, but she assured me that this was the address several students had given her. We walked around the deserted parking lot to the back of the building, and next to a dented and rusted dumpster I found the one clue that the Emergency School of Karate had ever been here: a long, wide white belt made of cloth with a smear of blood at one end.
Back in the car, I turned on the radio while Kate noted some notes in her notebook. Then, as we pulled out of the lot, a speeding car ran a stoplight, forcing Kate to swerve up onto the sidewalk to avoid a collision. The other driver seemed to laugh in the rearview as he sped away. Furious, Kate flipped him off and spewed a stream of obscenities like an incantation to open the very gates of hell. I tasted her rage coiling in crowded air of the small car. Her hands shook as they squeezed the steering wheel, and her jaw pulsed as she ground her teeth. Then on the radio an ad: “Are you tired of being pushed around? The Emergency School of Karate can help!” Her article forgotten, Kate smiled a wicked smile and picked up her pen and wrote down the number.