I have on more than one occasion wondered if Glenn Beck reads from this site and gets inspiration for his shows based on the content. Too many times I have said something on a particular day only to hear him discussing it two days, or two weeks later. However, the likely scenario is that I share with him the ability to calculate the future based on observational computations and can pinpoint at a particular point in space and time the need to address an issue. The accuracy of those computations for people able to perform them is as simple as 2 + 2 is 4 or 4 + 4 is 8, they represent a logic that is observable and predictable if the acknowledgment of reality is pure. This has never been truer than when Beck announced recently that he was done with politics because he saw it as a game, and that he had plans to run his company, The Blaze, as a culture building mechanism as opposed to a political pundit reporting service.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372988/new-glenn-beck-eliana-johnson
I have thought this for a very long time, and have pointed often to the modern Star Wars saga and Walt Disney from the past, as tools in this arsenal, which mankind needs desperately. One episode of a 30 minutes Star Wars cartoon is maybe 100 times more potent than a typical political speech which is often reported by the news in the same way that ESPN reports the happenings of a baseball game. The real power to change the world is to affect culture not the news that comes from the culture once it’s established. This is why The White House in a desperate push to get more health care enrollees by the end of March turned to YouTube in an attempt to reach young people. Most of society is not watching Fox News, MSNBC, or the nightly news on the primary networks—they are plugged into entertainment culture—which molds the ideals that we all function from everyday. As Beck said in the article linked above, the news is simply the tail of the dog—which is culture.
On so many occasions I have been asked to be a part of the political establishment, as my wife has railed in protest. She knows what my real talents are, and she doesn’t want to see me distracted with petty pursuits which waste time. Often elected office is responding to the tail of the dog as it wags it and I would rather deal with the dog. That is not to say that other people shouldn’t tend to those kinds of things, but everyone has to do what they are good at—and I am at my heart and soul, a culture builder. From the time that I was a little kid to the present time, I have been obsessed with cultural aspects and how they relate to one another. In my present form, many consider me to be the most manipulative person they know, because they sense fractions of what I often do to them upon interaction—but in the end they end up thanking me for the effort. Hind-sight often shows the logic, but foresight proves most will be lost—and I gave up trying to explain it to them a long time ago, because it just slows things down.
There is nothing more important than culture building whether it is a business, an educational philosophy, a family unit, a local government, or a national government, without a proper culture things always go amiss—100% of the time. It is never important to discuss the tail of a dog, it is important to deal with the dog and by the time a school board makes a decision, or a group of trustees takes action after many meetings and the collaboration of many minds, or a president signs an executive order, the opportunity to solve the problem occurred many decisions ago in the cultural aspects of the decision, not the decision itself. Culture determines the quality of a decision otherwise all decisions are like throwing darts—you can get close, but accuracy is often random and plagued with uncontrolled variables.
Glenn Beck has announced that he is producing motion pictures, specifically one about Christmas, which is important and another about just how bad Thomas Edison was in his climb to power and how he was used to give power companies a monopoly on every home in America—as designed by J.P. Morgan. For most of our lives in America we were told that Edison was a tireless worker and inventor who created electricity. But in reality, he was corrupt and motivated by greed when a pupil of his, Tesla showed far more promise—and innovation. That part of history has been suppressed culturally which led to the political acceptance of a financial system of electricity delivery designed by a wealthy financier in Morgan to expand his holds and influence in a negative way—a way that still persists to this day—even though lots of options exist. Beck instead of attempting to discuss this corruption through news outlets is going to take the message to the cultural level and make a movie about it. This has infinitely more power than thousands of hours of Beck standing in front of chalk boards trying to explain to a few intellectual types the error of their ways. A movie has the power to reach the masses, and actually change culture.
This is why Hollywood hates John Aglialoro’s efforts at making Atlas Shrugged into three films, the last of which is coming out in the fall of 2014. A movie is the captured turf of modern progressives, and they want to maintain their ability to impact culture without the competition of other ideals. Their hatred of the Atlas films is motivated exclusively by this realization. Beck will experience even more intense hatred as his projects begin to percolate into cultural competition—because the enemies of his work know what is at stake.
So it makes me very happy to hear Glenn Beck declare what his future plans are—because he is once again way ahead of everyone else. It may not be so obvious today, in 2014, but in 2100 it will be very obvious, and history will remember these efforts in how culture changed in dramatic ways. One of those molders of culture will be Glenn Beck, and history will owe him a lot of thanks.
Rich Hoffman
The Overmanwarrior 