You're splitting semantic hairs here based on your own arbitrary judgement. There is no way to define aikidoist except as someone who trains aikido.

What on earth is a "true budoka"?

Aikido is certainly not a waste of my time. If it was, I wouldn't do it.

First, what makes you think I came by my opinions "all of a sudden"? Read more of my blog and I think you'll find that's not the case at all. Second, MMA is not any sillier than aikido (which, by the way, many people find very silly), and is not new.

Right, just like every other activity that requires time, focus, effort, and sacrifice.

The only way "to know what really works in a fight" is to get into fights. Unless you're doing that, or at least learning from someone who has done that, you don't know what really works in a fight, no matter how devoted you are to a particular martial art.

Congratulations. My number one priority is being a husband and a father. My number two priority is the music that has been my life's work. I don't have a problem with your priorities being different from mine, so why does it bother you so much that my priorities are different from yours?

First of all, what you call my "lack of dedication" doesn't need an excuse. The fact that I do not feel the way you feel does not have to be justified. Second, make sure that when you use quotation marks you are actually quoting me. What I said was, "I don't care that much." The word that denotes specificity. I don't care enough, specifically, to go multiple days a week without seeing my wife, to uproot my family, or to be regularly beaten with a stick. Are you suggesting that every aikidoist needs to be willing to do these things?

Except I do walk those blocks and I do enter the dojo. I acknowledge all this "ignorant information" and yet am still willing to devote a significant amount of my time to training. I think that suggests that all this "ignorant information" isn't the threat to aikido that you think it is.