Month: April 2017

The Value in Judging Other People: How a McDonald’s employee prevented murder

 

Steve Stevens, the cold-blooded murderer from Cleveland who killed an innocent man on Easter Sunday claiming to be emotionally deficient after breaking up with his girlfriend was in Erie, Pennsylvania ordering a 20 piece chicken nugget meal at McDonald’s. There a drive-thru employee spotted Stevens and after taking his money notified police.  The McDonald’s staff tried to stall the killer at the pick-up window, but the fugitive knew something was up and fled the scene without his French Fries.  Police were quick to get there and give chase leaving Stevens with no choice but to take his own life, just as the inmate murderer Aaron Hernandez just did hours after. When the law painted these thugs into a corner where there was no other option left to them—they simply killed themselves—which is a good thing.  The former professional football player facing life in prison hung himself knowing that his life was ruined forever for the murders he committed, and this Steve Stevens guy knew that the Facebook testimony he gave would see him convicted of murder for sure—so he shot himself in his car before authorities could arrest him.  The whole event was set off by a McDonald’s employee who was keenly aware of what was happening in the world.   Bravo.

http://www.abc15.com/news/national/mcdonalds-employee-recognized-steve-stephens-as-he-was-ordering-at-drive-thru

And that is really how crime is fought—by individuals doing the good work of observing their environments and taking action when necessary. Luckily in this case the citizen action didn’t require guns, but sometimes it may.  However by having eyes and ears on the ground level, police were able to pin down Stevens and force him to take his own life—which makes everyone happy.  Our society saves the money of prosecuting the loser, and further killings were avoided as this guy was obviously spiraling downhill fast.  If Stevens hadn’t been arrogant enough to go through a McDonald’s drive thru, there is no telling how long the ordeal would have transpired.  And in this case it was a slam dunk of a case—but if he had to be prosecuted the cost would have been enormous to the state of Ohio—and the media frenzy would have been very distracting.  Things are much better this way—with him killing himself.

The Aaron Hernandez case was never in question, yet it took the former Patriots tight-end turned murderer years to move through all the legal gates to arrive at his sentencing and eventual fate in a single cell prison. Once there and all the means of appeal exhausted, he had no other choice but to kill himself, which if he had done so sooner would have helped everyone out.  Hernandez committed a horrific crime, and there was no question of his guilt during the trail—and we could have all saved a lot of money if we had removed the hope he had of getting away with it.  If he had committed suicide years ago the entire legal profession would have been less strained.  But here’s the problem, there are so many parasites who work in the legal profession that make a lot of money off long celebrity trials like Aaron Hernandez’s case—that justice is not the objective—milking the crime for all that can be obtained is.

If this Facebook killer—Steve Stevens had been arrested, the same kind of long legal proceeding would have occurred—it would have taken years to get that guy in jail convicted for life. And if he turned out to be a death penalty case—he would have cost the state of Ohio many millions of dollars of maintenance for the next twenty years until the justice system could finally enact the penalty. But when the threat of quick justice is present it certainly puts pressure on fugitives from justice to either escape or to kill themselves before someone else beats them to it.  So without that McDonald’s employee’s sharp eyes, this terrible ordeal would have prolonged for many more years unnecessarily.

Citizen action is paramount to our free republic. Without it, we cannot have justice in the world.  You have to engage suspicious people and to always question intentions.  This of course goes against the progressive tendency against passing judgment on other people.  It is in fact our ability to judge that makes us a civilized nation.  For instance, if that McDonald’s employee had not judged that the drive-thru customer handing her money might be the killer of the elderly person from Cleveland on Easter Sunday, the killer would have driven away and he’d still be free to terrorize people.  But that’s not what happened.  The McDonald’s employee passed judgment on the physical features of Steve Stevens, the kind of car he was driving, the manner of his voice, the amount of eye contact that he made—and she acted accordingly.  That is the first line of defense in our society—judgment.  And when we pass judgment on bad guys, they often don’t expect to deal with civilians as part of their antagonism, or their escape plans.  It is absolutely true that a well-armed population in America prevents many lunatics like this Steve Stevens murderer from stepping into a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and doing what they desire unimpeded.  There is no way that America as a vast rural landscape could ever hope that the police might defend each and every person.  Just like with all the police, FBI, and CIA that are out there spying on us constantly with input from the NSA and Homeland security, they can’t prevent us from harm.  They can discourage bad guys from doing bad things, but when people like Steve Stevens or Aaron Hernandez who realize that if they wanted to, they could pluck off a large part of society on a whim and nobody could do anything about it.  When people get involved and the bad guys are put on television complete with social judgment against them—there is no place for such people to go—not even a McDonald’s in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Villains depend on people to be terrified of them and to rely on the inefficient “state” to evoke justice. They also require that good people hide their thoughts from the court of public opinion so that progressive insurgents can hopefully get them off the hook when they do commit crime—which was the hope of Aaron Hernandez.  Once his fate was eventually sealed and he had to admit to himself that he was no O.J. Simpson—and that he was going to do hard time for the rest of his life—he killed himself—and for that we are all better off.  Steve Stevens was at least smart enough to know that the legal system would chew him up and spit him out because of the vast testimony he provided against himself—himself. The reason that statists and criminals alike push for society not to “judge” is so that they can roam about unmolested harming anybody they wish whenever they wish.  That’s also why those same people are against personal ownership of firearms.  However, when each and every citizen in the United States has the right to a firearm—and the power of judgment between right and wrong in their arsenal of living—they are very dangerous to bad guys.  And even a worker at McDonald’s can be a hero with just their judgment as their weapon and the courage to act on instinct.  That is how justice is enacted in the most efficient way possible.  People need to be involved, personally.  The cops are there to build a case.  They can’t always be there to prevent harm from happening and that must be understood in any civil society.  You can’t drive evil from the world with good intentions and a progressive education.  You need guns and people who are able to judge good from evil.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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What Causes Factories to Die: The benefit of a good work ethic

Something strange occurred while my wife and I were trying to get to the Kings Island Gold Pass preview night last Friday night. Back in my twenties when we lived in Mason I worked at several of the area manufacturing opportunities, but since moving back to Liberty Township, we really only come back to the area to visit the Fields Ertle shopping district, or to go to Kings Island.   But because the traffic was so terrible at Kings Island that night I had to take a bunch of side roads to escape and return home because there was no way of getting into the amusement park because it was obviously saturated with people trying to get in on a beautiful Friday spring night.  That brought me out on Route 42 by the Huston Restaurant then across the street to a little road that would take me back into Liberty Township along the Mitsubishi Plant. It was there that I saw that a large manufacturing plant that I had spent a lot of time in was up for sale, and that shocked me—even through Worthington Custom Plastics had sold off their automotive division way back in 1999.  It was just at that moment 18 years later that I had driven by that building once again—and that place was something I could have never imagined seeing empty.

We were in our late twenties and in need of a lot of money as we were raising children. My wife was homeschooling our children mostly.  They did attend Mason schools back then, but we didn’t like the job they were doing, so she took care of most of the deprogramming as a house wife.  I fully supported that kind of thing, but on the weekends to make extra money we had two Door Store routes that we delivered—which was a kind of coupon newspaper that we delivered door to door.  We’d pick up the papers on Friday night then spend the weekend rolling them into plastic bags which we delivered on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.  That job alone took up most of our weekend together and was a lot of hard work.  But it was an independent way to make the money we needed. But that wasn’t our main income—it was my job at Worthington Custom Plastics that was.  I worked there an astonishing 16 hours per day through the weekdays and every single weekend from 4 PM to midnight.  Most of my work there was on overtime and I worked on the big projects, particularly the Corvette facias which were made completely with injected plastic at that Mason facility.  From there they went to the Bowling Green Corvette manufacturing facility for installation and I sometimes had to go there for quality audits.  I was very busy and I was making a lot of money doing something that was very important—and my wife and I were literally working every minute of our lives on something.  When I hear kids complaining about being overworked these days with a 50 hour work week I look at them like they are social rejects because honestly, we worked much harder and still enjoyed our lives.  So they have nothing to complain about.

The only time that Worthington facility shut down and we turned off the lights was for Thanksgiving and Christmas. All other times of the year that big plant ran all around the clock all week long.  Now I knew what was coming even back then.  They were paying me enormous amounts of money to do general manufacturing work which was cutting into their margins big time. Good workers were hard to find, so they let me work all I wanted.  But in business, that is throwing good money into bad practices and it eventually caught up with them.  Within a few years of my employment there they announced that they were selling their automotive division.  But by then I had obtained a job at Cincinnati Milacron working on precision machines and I never looked back at Worthington—or what had become of them.  Even though we go as a family to Kings Island all the time which is very near Worthington’s old plant, I never drove by it—but around it except for that nice spring day in 2017.  It was strange to see that old vibrant place completely dead and for sale.  Something which had provided so many jobs to so many people was just sitting there a dead plant.

Most people go to their jobs and do their work never really thinking of what it takes to make a business work, or how close to the precipice of becoming extinct their jobs really are. They complain around the water cooler about their bosses and everyone thinks they can do a better job.  But they never do, they never get involved in the management side of things and if things go bad, they simply get another job.  I was never like that.  I always wanted to help management be successful—even when I was too young to be taken seriously.  And I really wanted Worthington Custom Plastics to succeed and I felt it could if only I worked harder—which was always in the back of my mind.  Part of the reason I left was that it had the feeling that it was going to run itself into the ground—even though when I did go to Milicron it seemed like that would never happen. The place was just too busy.  But a business cannot operate at negative margins for long, and employees should appreciate the health of whatever company they are working for so to prevent such things from happening to them in the future.

These days it’s my job to make sure that a company doesn’t find themselves in the same fate as Worthington. Even though I say the same things that I’ve always said, now I’m old enough that people actually listen—and they are better off for it.  But seeing a big vibrant company like the one I worked at in my twenties gone the way it was, reminded me of how close almost every company out there really is toward their own extinction.  A good healthy company is something everyone should strive for even if you are an employee that only pushes a broom.  Good jobs should never be taken for granted.  I worked at Worthington doing 96 hours per week for two years.  One the weekends my wife and I delivered Door Stores an additional 20 hours per week.  On a typical Saturday I got off at midnight from Worthington and my wife and I delivered Door Stores until 4 AM.  We rewarded ourselves with White Castles from Fields Ertle Road.  We got up at 8 AM then did our walking route through downtown Mason until 2 PM.  We’d grab lunch then I went to work at 4 PM—and that was my weekend.  During the week, it was 16 straight, go home, take a shower, sleep, then I’d go back.  And I did that for two straight years without complaint.  Later the same year that I moved to Milicron we got dinged by the IRS for not paying enough self-employment tax on our Door Store route.  So to pay off our taxes I took a night job at Wendy’s by Kings Island and I worked there for another three years to pay off our tax burden to the IRS while working 60 hours a week at Cincinnati Milicron.

It is just something to consider when you are working somewhere that you should do everything you can to keep that company alive—and not take it for granted that it will always be there. Places of business are like living beings, they have to be fed and maintained in a healthy fashion, otherwise they die.  And it was sad to see Worthington Custom Plastics in Mason dead.  But it was.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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‘Star Wars’ Land Updates: Toy guns and realistic play contribute greatly to a healthy, and sane life

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I know there are a lot of big things going on in the world, but from my perspective, some of the most important are happening in Orlando, Florida with the Star Wars Celebration.  The reason is that one of my favorite topic is human cultures, their influences, and how they vary from region to region and I see Star Wars as one of the greatest positive contributors to the future of our human race, psychologically, philosophically, religiously, and scientifically.  It’s a fun topic but under it all I see the potential for tremendous opportunities in the future.  And as we celebrated Easter at my house and I went out to Target and bought up a bunch of Star Wars Nerf guns for the kids to play with on a really nice Sunday in Ohio I watched the footage of the Imagineers at Disney World conducting their Galaxy in the Making update on their two Star Wars themed worlds to be opened in Orlando and Anaheim during 2019.   Check out what they have in store.

I love guns—everything from my favorite .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum to the Star Wars Nerf guns.  My mom bought me for the fun of it a little Cassian Andor Nerf pistol which I wrote about during the Christmas of 2016 because I was deeply impressed with it.  When I was a kid, I loved the Star Wars guns, but they didn’t shoot anything.  That didn’t stop my brother and I from playing war all the time.  There were several years of my youth that playing war with the kids who lived near me was my favorite thing to do and if I had the guns that kids today can buy at Target and Wal-Mart I would literally have been in Heaven.  Star Wars for me was always about gunfights and being able to play some of those gunfights in real life which was just great.  Knowing all the kids were coming over for Easter I stopped by Target to buy their specific Cassian Andor sniper rifle which is just something special.  It has a clip that holds 12 shots which can be fired as fast as you can pull the trigger.  The trigger pull activates a cool little internal light that charges up your glow in the dark Nerf darts and they come out of the gun’s barrel looking like tracer fire.  The gun fires off compressed air generated by a fan which takes away some of the mechanical aspects that might complicate a real AR-15.  The gun operates much better than I would have guessed.  We had a lot of fun with that gun after our Easter Egg hunt.  I now have a nice collection of these Nerf guns and am a real fan.

But the guns and other toys available to kids these days are just part of the Star Wars experience.  The fun is in being able to play in real life what you mythologically experience through the movies.  And as I’ve said, these days the options are much better than what I had when I was a kid.  For instance, my favorite toy when I was a child was my Han Solo “Empire Strikes Back” version blaster which made a whine sound when you pulled the trigger.  The gun itself wasn’t very impressive because it just made a noise—and not a very good noise at that.  But we’re talking 1980 when I had that gun, yet what it symbolized to me was very special.  However, I just bought the Han Solo Nerf Blaster from the Force Awakens and it is very impressive.  These new Nerf guns not only make great blaster noises that sound like what they do in the movies, but they really shoot.  To get both functions to happen seamlessly is part of the magic of these new toys.  What they are talking about doing down in Orlando at Disney World is something that is certainly next step exciting.  If blasters and games from Star Wars are enhancing the kind of imaginative activities that take place at home—those big theme parks have to go well beyond what the movies can offer, and that’s what they are going to do with Star Wars at Hollywood Studios and Disneyland at Anaheim.

When I first started talking about these new Star Wars Lands at the Disney Parks I was very excited about this because as I said then, many new scientists and philosophers will have their imaginations explode in those places.  Yet, what they are doing with Star Wars Land is far beyond what even I imagined. They are going for a full experience here and that’s a game changer for all amusement parks.  The Disney and Lucasfilm employees in charge of this project are really bringing us the future in every category and the results will be jaw dropping.  We’re talking about full scale spaceships like the Millennium Falcon sitting around that people can see and touch. Imperial Walkers in full scale excitement—a new lightsaber technology that will be patented and developed for Disney World—this is very exciting.  Imagination is now merging with real science to tell stories which evoke leaps in further technological develop which we will eventually find in our daily lives.  Ideas are born in such places and that’s what makes them important for discussion.  The people attending the Star Wars Celebration in Orlando are movie geeks.  But the product of their enthusiasm eventually advances our culture because they spend a lot of money on Star Wars products and Disney reinvests that money in new ways to keep them coming back.  But in the process, they all unlock the human potential available to our species, and that is a beautiful thing.

I know a lot of people.  Some of them are big shots in the world—and some of them run comic book stores and spend all their time escaping in fantasy environments.  I’m not some dude living on a mountaintop in the Rocky Mountains who is out of touch with reality—quite the opposite, and honestly I am probably one of the sanest people alive in the world.  My mental health is excellent.  I can’t imagine anybody being healthier than me and I became that way playing with guns all of my life.  And my first experience with guns came from Star Wars.  Later it came from the great westerns of our movie culture—which eventually migrated into what Star Wars became.  Just like our first five years of life where all we do is play, adults do best when they continue playing well into their mature years—because that’s how we learn as people.  And what Disney is doing at their theme parks with Star Wars is a chance to make play a part of our lives in ways never done before.   And there is nothing wrong with that.

Sure Star Wars is about war, and guns, and people dying.  But it’s about ideas and optimism too and moving beyond the things that scare us.  Guns are the first step in that journey because once you learn to master them, you learn not to be afraid and new ideas can then come to your life.  So the toy guns, the light sabers and confronting villains is a part of our life within Star Wars and making it more real only makes the myth making that much more powerful.  The more playing we do in this realm of overcoming our fears—the better we all are and that is precisely what Disney is creating at its theme parks and I think it’s just riveting.  I am very much looking forward to the new Star Wars Land opening up.  But in the meantime, I think I’ll enjoy the Nerf guns and play Star Wars with my grandchildren as much as possible!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Don’t Worry about World War III with North Korea: Its about economics, not firepower and that stupid fat kid doesn’t have any money

It didn’t surprise me at all that the North Korean missile test blew up just off the launch pad.  There is technology that allows for that kind of thing. Kim Jong-un’s military show that was on display during the 105th birthday celebration looked like just that, a 30-year-old grandson who didn’t know what century he was in.  As a country North Korea is about as far behind as anyone on earth.  The people of North Korea are essentially victims of the movie, The Village where through their educations and state-run television have no idea what’s going on in the outside world they or what the abilities other countries around the world might posses.  They are taught to worship the ruling family of North Korea with a cult-like effort which looks incredibly pathetic when it is shown on full display.  Strategically speaking, North Korea has already lost this new war with the world—particularly the United States, and I said so yesterday which provoked a comment from a person who had some thoughtful things to say.  This commentator shown below holds a belief that many people around the world continue to entertain—that the United States is on the precipice of war and that World War III could break out at any moment.  So Instead of answering that guy directly, I’ll do it below to share with the class.

Attacking North Korea would potentially start WW3 and that would not be good for anybody let alone the USA. Not all dope smoking Americans are progressive liberals looking to destroy America from the inside out but instead hardworking, free thinking individuals that want to see America thrive and prosper all the while not always meddling in things that do not concern us. Just an outsiders opinion

Rolltide

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/853583417916755968

Here’s the big secret that nobody wants you to know dear reader—including China and Russia who are the supposed super powers in today’s world.  Socialism and communism have destroyed most of the world’s economies—particularly in North Korea which is completely dependent on foreign resources.  China has used North Korea as kind of a barking dog to keep tensions high for a throwback war so that they would have negotiating leverage with other countries who didn’t know any better.  North Korea in such circumstances is like having that sign in your window that says “beware of dog.”   But really, the dog is a toothless, lazy concoction of flesh when you get to know it—and in North Korea’s case, this isn’t the same country that America fought during the early 50s.  The only thing that will happen is that Korea will try to bolster its world profile and America will keep embarrassing them to the point where the people on the inside of the country will begin to lose faith and North Korea will collapse from the inside out.  There won’t be a World War III—so don’t worry about it.

Like most things in life the entire issue comes down to capitalism and socialism.  America is a rich country not out of luck—but because it has an economic philosophy that is conducive to wealth creation.  But nobody else on the world stage has anything close—so they can’t fight a war.  Wars are expensive and the most terrifying aspect of the MOAB which was dropped into Afghanistan last week is not its raw power to create a blast radius that was a mile wide—it was its cost to manufacture.  It was circulated by Glenn Beck and many other anti-Trump pundits that the MOAB cost $314 million each—which of course the Trump White House allowed to circulate.  The actual cost is $170,000 but Kim Jong-un doesn’t need to know that because his country or any other around the world wouldn’t be able to produce one—so by the time he could buy one, it would end up costing him almost the entire GDP of North Korea.  So let them think it cost that much because the psychological warfare is much more potent than the actual blast. Even if they wanted to, North Korea doesn’t have enough GDP to fight a war with one American state—let along the entire country.  So there won’t be any fighting, because nobody can afford it—but the United States.

The world wants to still think they are all relevant at the United Nations and on the stage of world affairs—but they aren’t because they have artificially limited their economies over the last five decades to the point where they have nothing to fight with.  It was part of a global strategy of disarmament that all countries participated in to some extent, but the end result has been extreme limits on financial excess and that is what Trump’s White House is able to exploit now.  We promised to defend Japan from North Korean aggressions, so Trump moved in a naval fleet between the two countries which allows for countermeasures in case of another North Korean missile launch.  But honestly, it is possible now to win such a war without even firing a shot—because science thrives in rich countries—and the USA has a lot of science.  We could make it so that North Korea might never fire another shot outside their country with science.

Kim Jong-un never had to face such an embarrassment and his country really can’t endure a public relations challenge from the United States.  The old tricks simply won’t work.  Nobody is afraid of the toothless dog, or the sign in the window.  Everyone knows that North Korea could easily be wiped off the map just by cutting off their resources from China.  Trump played the right cards and will force China to cut off North Korea—so there will never be a World War III.  All North Korea has is some missiles and ground troops that are totally irrelevant in today’s fighting.  They have no money.  North Korea’s total GDP for 2015 when Kim Jong-un was in his hey-day of 28 years old was a measly $25 billion dollars.  Donald Trump himself has a personal worth of half that—and there are many other billionaires in the United States worth more than that.  North Korea is that little distraction that would-be hostile nations like to hide behind.

They have given North Korea resources so that they could use them as a shield to their own aggressions—so long as North Korea was out there rattling sabers, countries like Russia, China and Iran could slide under the radar of attention.  But before Trump’s 100th day in office the threat of North Korea has already been diffused—no country that only produces $25 billion of GDP is going to be in a war with the United States.  There is more value in United States assets sitting in the South China Sea right now than the entire economy of North Korea and in the United States we don’t even notice it. The average person has no idea where North Korea even is—and they certainly haven’t a care in the world about battleships and aircraft carriers stationed there ready to protect Japan from aggressions.  They might if there were steel rations like there were in World War II, but the American economy is so much stronger now than it was back then.  We could have a war with the world and people in America wouldn’t even know it, because the abundance of our production means would keep personal sacrifices off their minds and that’s what’s different now than say 50 to 60 years ago.

Kim Jong-un is fighting his grandfather’s war and back then such displays of military might would have terrified military generals.  But not any more.  “Left of launch” strategies can keep North Korean missiles from ever leaving their launch pads and now that the United States is off the coast, that 30-year-old fat kid who is running North Korea is caught in precarious situation.  Trump will make a fool of the kid and what happens in the wake of that is that the world won’t have any use for Kim Jong-un anymore forcing them out in the open—and the North Korean people will realize that their leader isn’t the “god on earth” that they learned about in their public educations.   He’s just a stupid fat kid who inherited his grandfather’s tiny little communist plot of land on the Korean peninsula—that is bankrupt.  And once North Korea is stripped away, it forces all the countries that have been hiding behind it out into the open.  So there won’t be any World War III.  There is nothing to fear from the American vantage point.  Because this war isn’t about missiles, troops and airplanes—it’s about economics—and North Korea simply doesn’t have the resources to even think about fighting.  And those are the facts.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Beating the Drums of War: Time to take North Korea away from the stupid fat kid

Obviously I’m not a dope smoking libertarian who wants the United States to be a live and let live Constitutional Republic which allows for the legalization of pot and ignores threats around the world hoping everyone just behaves. While I like the Constitutional Republic part I am an expansionist—I think the world would be a lot happier if they’d just become another state in the United States.  They can keep their integrity and culture so long as the pledge allegiance to our flag.  The world is simply too small now to allow lunatics of theocracy like Iran, North Korea, and Syria to host tyrannical dictators.  I knew what I was getting with Donald Trump and he’s doing exactly what I wanted him to do—flexing the muscle of American military around the world fixing the numerous problems that 28 years of weak American presidents let brew out of control.  I understand that the only way to get to the kind of prosperity America enjoyed in the past is to be the top dog on the world stage—and we should be.  We are the best country with the best ideas and we are open to sharing those ideas with places not so fortunate.  But the bad guys need to be taken out-of-the-way.

I’ve written and written, and written about the effects of Socialist International around the world and how dominate it is really everywhere.  Russia has a former KGB agent from their communist days as their president and China is an all out communist nation.  Europe is all diseased with socialism and all the poor countries of Indochina are rotten with communism.  Stop by Cambodia sometime and walk the streets and 12-year-old girls will throw themselves at your feet offering sex because that’s the only way they can make enough money to eat.  The same in Kenya, Vietnam and the east European nations still trying to develop economies after the collapse of Russia—the world is unstable and many people are suffering for it.  So the grim reality is that nobody in the world is a reliable trading partner with the United States until these problems are solved.  The biggest difference with Trump is that he’s not in love with United Nations group hugs approach.  He’s fine to let NATO and the UN ride on America’s back as long as they shut up and do what he says.  The minute they don’t, they lose their United States funding and they’ll drown with the rest of Europe.  That is the Trump message to the world and as my representative, that’s what I sent him to Washington to do, along with about a 1000 other little things.

America can’t have peace so long as North Korea and many other countries empowered by the 20th Century failed experiments of social engineering remain alive—and that means cleaning up on all the unresolved issues started by past American presidents and getting back to polices that put North America the center of the world, not Brussels.  Since the Korean War ended in 1953 North Korea has been a pain in the neck and the excuse of many United States presidents to have reasons to have military spending as a cover story for their other failures.  And now there is this fat kid who runs the country like a spoiled brat teenager who was given a Lamborghini by his dying dad and he has nuclear warheads which can threaten United States partners in South Korea and Japan.  For the uneducated in the ways of geography, South Korea makes Samsung phones and televisions as well as Kia cars. So right now, they are a very important partner in the United States economy, so we do have a major interest in the area.  Then of course there is Japan who we fought in World War II, and beat.  We took away their weapons and now they are completely dependent on United States protection to produce one of the most powerful economies in the world—so we gave ourselves the responsibility to protect them from China and North Korea both of which have been making moves against that tiny little island in Pacific Ocean.  The American general Claire Lee Chennault warned what would happen if America left the region after World War II and our stupid government allowed communism to spread into China, the Korean peninsula and down into Indochina.  That pulled us into two major wars and essentially a half century stalemate which needs to be broken before there will ever be peace in the region.

This mess extends right in front of the Himalaya Mountains across the impoverished continent of India and into the chaos of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran which then borders Iraq and Syria. The average dope smoking American anti-war pacifist couldn’t find any of those countries on a map, so they have no idea what the dangers are in leaving those places free to produce dictators and theocratic nightmares.  There is a tremendous economic cost to the United States in addition to the moral cost of turning away and letting millions of people rot or rush American borders so they can try to escape.  Melania Trump happens to be one of those East Europeans who were lucky to have perfect super model features, like long legs, the proper height and facial features to be a top model in Paris.  If she had been two inches shorter she would have had to be a prostitute of some kind to escape the poverty of her native country in Slovenia.  People who don’t travel much and see the world for what it is who preach legalization of pot and think they can play video games through life leaving everyone alone, have no idea how bad things are out there beyond the borders of the United States.  And open border progressives love all this chaos because they want refugees of the wars they have caused to over burden our American capitalist system and to change it from the inside out.  Just listen to the average American college professor who preaches to our youth to hate those “rich white guys” so that the displaced refugees will flee to America and replace freedom with the only thing they’ve ever known, domination by dictators and failed economic opportunities.

So I say to hell with North Korea.  Let them send their “pre-emptive” strike. Because I’m tired of hearing about them—it’s time to call the bluff of that ruling family.  The solutions have always been there in these hostile countries—we just didn’t have the political will to do anything about it.  But now we do and the world needs to see what will happen to North Korea.  Let them try to fire a missile at the VP in South Korea or at any of the American Navy vessel parked in the waters off North Korea—and the THAAD system that is now in place will shoot them down and that fat kid running things will learn a hard lesson.  Trump can take that victory and negotiate all kinds of good stuff with China and Russia for the first time in over two hundred years of American foreign policy, which is exactly why I supported and voted for Donald Trump for president—to end these problems instead of just letting them simmer from one generation to another.

The best way to put America first is to defend American ideas around the world and to stand up to the bullies who want to end it everywhere.  The human race has to make a decision—will it be freedom or tyranny, because the world is too small to have both.  The world must pick—and they have to do it now.  Smoking another joint and listening to old Led Zepplin songs won’t solve the problem—instead, America must have peace through superior firepower and let bad guys know it when they step out of line.  That’s the way it has to be for a while until all those untied disputes are finally settled.  And based on Trump’s performance as Commander and Chief—it won’t take long.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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‘The Last Jedi’ Movie Preview from Celebration, Orlando: Ending the Vico Cycle philosophically

IMG_4424I cover a lot of Star Wars news because, as I’ve said before, it’s the best mythological tool that the human race has right now—which sets it clearly apart from other movies.  It’s special and even though Star Wars these days is made by people who likely voted for Hillary Clinton 100%–the people who work at Lucasfilm are the best in the business of making movies on a commercial-scale.  The stories of Star Wars clearly extend beyond modern politics.  I think they are extremely important to our status as a culture on planet earth.  So I pay close attention to Star Wars and enjoy very much when they have their Celebration activities.   It just so happens that this year Celebration is in one of my favorite cities in the world—Orlando, and I find it creatively refreshing to hear the latest news from the Star Wars universe.  And this year, there was a lot of news, some of which is shown below.  But the biggest news was the release of the movie trailer for the next film due out this Christmas.

I’ve loved Star Wars most of my life—it actually opened a lot of doors for me.  I completely understand that Star Wars was intended for 12-year-old children, but in a lot of ways that part of me is still very much alive.  Even if I didn’t have grandkids, and my own kids didn’t still love Star Wars, I’d spend a considerable amount of time enjoying the art and ideas that come out of the Star Wars stories.  I understand why George Lucas made the films and what his source material was and I plunged myself into that world quite dramatically, not as the 12-year-old material for which became Star Wars, but the great literature of James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Joseph Campbell and many great literary figures for which Star Wars was based—including the Holy Bible. Star Wars for me was the gateway to much more serious literature and it has enhanced my life greatly.   So I’m quite open for my joy toward all things Star Wars.

Specifically, what I see in this new trailer for the film that is called The Last Jedi, is a philosophic contemplation on ending the Vico Cycle which is something that was heavily featured in the great literary classic Finnegan’s Wake.  I talk about the Vico Cycle a lot, because our present civilization is at one of those points in our history, so it doesn’t at all surprise me that Star Wars is addressing that very challenging philosophic concept.  George Lucas always said that if there were more Star Wars movies beyond Episode 6 that he’d deal with the philosophic challenges of the life battle between pairs of opposites.  It’s a motif that is as old as human civilization—probably longer.  So yes, Star Wars is all about making movies for kids—but there is more to them than that.  Adults could learn a lot too.

Obviously Han Solo is my favorite character and there is a lot of that guy in me. I saw Star Wars 40 years ago with my parents as a third grader and it stuck with me—especially the character of Han Solo.  I knew that was who I wanted to be when I grew up—and that is largely what happened.  As it turned out, I’m a lot smarter than Han Solo, but I can certainly relate to him.  For my recent 49th birthday my youngest daughter made me the picture featured above, which is what she does.  She’s a marvelous illustrator and this picture of Han Solo fighting it out with stormtroopers using dual pistols is an original picture that can’t be found anywhere else and to me it was quite an astonishing work of art.  She knows I’m excited for the new Han Solo movie coming up within a year or so, where the character is much younger—so she made the picture as a tribute to a much younger Han Solo.  As I’ve said many times also, Han Solo is essentially an Ayn Rand character within Star Wars—and that’s why he’s so popular.  George Lucas may have wanted to have Han transform into a compassionate human being by the end of the series, but the best elements of Han Solo are his Ayn Rand hero traits of acting out of self-interest.  And that is the brilliance of Star Wars—lots of competing ideas can fit into the storytelling and still have a role to play because they are grounded in historical motifs specific to the human race.

When Luke Skywalker says that it’s time for the Jedi to end—he’s talking about a very large idea of taking mankind beyond the pairs of opposites battle that has always been a part of our culture from the beginning. I’ve been thinking about that for a very long time because it is essentially the Vico Cycle, theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, anarchy then rebirth.  And that is a bigger concept than just making a movie for kids.  This stuff is important because it has the potential of taking us all to a new level—as a species.  It’s much more than just a movie or a way for Disney to make money.

For me it’s fun to see my grandkids getting into Star Wars because it at least gives me something to share with them.  My oldest grandson without a whole lot of encouragement has already gone to great lengths to learn all he can about it—which is a great way to have discussions about other topics.  During my birthday celebration, he couldn’t pull himself away from TV where I had Rogue One playing.  As a little boy the hand to hand battles with guns had his mind racing and he was running around the house pretending to shoot at invisible villains—which is very healthy and natural.  It’s a primal concern—especially with little boys.  I’ve spoken in the past also about the great little miracles that Nerf makes as far as Star Wars guns.  These are a lot better than what I grew up with and I have to say that my Han Solo Nerf Blaster is one of my favorite things that I play with around the house.  I will have countless hours of fun with my grandchildren shooting those things and if not for Star Wars—they wouldn’t exist.  The guns and action are part of the Star Wars experience.  Once you get into those, the deeper aspects of the stories become accessible, and if you really go down the rabbit hole—like I did—a whole new world of fresh ideas emerge—and that is a wonderful thing. Even though I’ve been hard on The Force Awakens, my favorite part of that movie is the Rathtar scene and when my grandson comes over he wants me to play the Lego game as Han Solo to beat the Rathtar level because the monsters are scary to him and he likes to see me defeat them.  He amazes me at all his observations even though he’s only four.

I’ve watched all the old Zorro movies and Flash Gordon serials that Star Wars was based on.  I’ve seen all the Akira Kurasawa movies that inspired the Star Wars movie, A New Hope.  But what George Lucas created and these new filmmakers at Lucasfilm under Disney’s ownership are doing is quite a lot more sophisticated.  I think most of the credit goes to Joseph Campbell than anybody—or even John Williams who has created so much wonderful symphonic music for our modern generations that Mozart and Beethoven aren’t even relevant any longer.  Our culture is much richer because of Star Wars than it otherwise would have been, and by the premise of the new movie, there is a lot to look forward to.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Bomb the Towels Right off the ISIS Heads: The joy of getting a bag of chips out of a vending machine

It continues to be a topic of fascination how the world of politics deals with Donald Trump. They are just bewildered by him, one minute he’s for dismantling NATO.  The next he’s for it.  One minute he’s anti-China—the next he’s shaking hands—palm up with the communist leader and talking about trade.  Then there are the accusations of a “bromance” with Vladimir Putin—then the hammers of war being beaten in the direction of Russia. The people in politics and those who cover it are literally about to explode with frustration because they don’t understand what Donald Trump is doing.  But I do.

It’s a long story but today marked something of a personal milestone in achievement. I bought a bag of potato chips out of the new vending machines of a beautiful new manufacturing facility that I along with many other people breathed to life.  Whenever I do something like that I like to do little things like enjoy a bag of potato chips from there because it tastes very sweet due to all the effort it takes to get such a monumental task accomplished.  The road to get to where you actually put vending machines into such a place is a long one, and many pitfalls and challenges have to be navigated, so once you get the vending machines installed, you always achieve something tremendous.  But to get there you are constantly negotiating with other people, you are always employing some kind of strategy, you are always fighting something—because you have to remember that the world of government looks down on achievement—so you are always fighting various aspects of government corruption to do anything productive.  It could be zoning, unfriendly socialist trustees such as in the township where I bought the aforementioned potato chips.  There are three trustees there.  George Lang is a good one.  Mark Welch is another one.  But then they have a socialist who is always trying to build some sidewalk with tax payer funds, or yacking about his military record in the same breath as declaring himself a minority candidate.  He doesn’t understand business at all, so lucky for West Chester, there are two votes against that guy so business can happen.  But not every place is so lucky.  Many places around the world, especially in California, Seattle and other progressive areas, the good guys get outvoted by the bad guys (the anti-business people) most of the time.  So it is always a good feeling to get to a point where you can buy a bag of chips out of a vending machine because it’s nearly a miracle these days to get to that point.

But the administration part is only the beginning, there are deals that are constantly being made with other human beings to move a project along, and for someone like Donald Trump who has operated most of his life as a high-end developer, the chance to buy a bag of chips out of a vending machine is a very tall road to climb—indeed. The kind of person that does these types of things has to be unique because often it’s the thrill of accomplishment that drives such people—not necessarily the payday.  And for a person to master those skills means they can operate at many human levels of communication and are masters of negotiation, manipulation, and strategy.  Donald Trump is certainly all those things and I think he will be viewed by history as the unquestionably best president we’ve ever had in America because what he will produce during his time in office will be something that is rare.

You have to understand dear reader that for most of human history mankind didn’t have much of an economy that was driven off free market ideas. Always there was some king or emperor in the way skimming off the top of any national endeavor—and this effectively put the shackles on human production because people just don’t do much unless they are free.  They may work in the fields all day to pick rice, but they don’t think of better ways to pick that rice unless they can have the opportunity to get rich off it.  So without the free market system—innovation just doesn’t happen.  People don’t invent better ways to do things so some ruler can take their idea and live well off it.  If there isn’t some concept of reward, human beings keep their thoughts to themselves which is why socialist societies just don’t make it very long.

Now for complex economies where many people are pushing and shoving other people for a chance to win big, things get very complicated. In order to navigate any project where many such people are a part of your success you have to learn how to read everything about them to get some leverage that is mutually advantageous.  I say that because if you screw people over you may win once, but they won’t deal with you in the future.  So you must learn to read every non-verbal sign of body language, every variability of sentence structure, every hidden motive to learn how to move people to where you need them to be—where they also come out smelling wonderful.  And that is hard.  Very hard.

This is what we might call a “dynamic personality.” They tend to see things well ahead of other people, and are also personally courageous—perhaps to the point where they are thrill junkies who thrive off great risks.  Without them invention and economic expansion doesn’t happen.  Most people in the world are very static.  They learn the routines of their days starting with their very first experiences as human beings and once they level off in adulthood they are quite comfortable taking orders and falling in behind the leaders of society because it allows them to live within a framework of routine that is comfortable.  They don’t like risky behavior because it might make them late for dinner—that kind of thing.

Politics is built around static people—very predictable and having their roots back to aristocratic days when clear social levels could mandate what kind of home you lived in, what types of sexual encounters you might experience, and what the fate of your children might be. But when you introduce dynamic people suddenly the lives of the static people are always in jeopardy—because they don’t like change and dynamic people are all about change.  For many centuries, political people have prevented dynamic people from holding offices.  They allowed them to somewhat thrive in business so long as they could tax and control them through some legal means—but they didn’t allow them into politics. That makes Donald Trump the first of his kind to break through that invisible barrier for the long-span of the human race—and this dynamic has made the static order very uncomfortable.

That is why Trump’s negotiation skills are so frustrating to the static order of today’s politics—because the sheer dynamism of Trump threatens the future of the entire political system. As a businessman, Trump may want China to put an end to North Korea’s threats while closing the gap between the trading deficit.  So he does what he needs to in order to achieve that objective.  He may need to threaten war, or he may offer a bottle of wine—whatever is needed at that moment.  To the static political culture used to predictability—in fact their entire existence depends on it—this is a nightmare.  But for Americans in need of an American renaissance—its precisely what is required.  Just today Trump dropped a massive bomb on an ISIS hideout in Afghanistan.  Guess he wasn’t joking about ending ISIS—and the capital earned off that bombing will help with Russian deals, Chinese negotiations over territory and trade, and stop the butchering of innocent people in Syria.  In the end, everyone will get what they want because that’s what deal makers do.  And that really is the only way you can get to a bag of chips in a vending machine—you have to navigate very complicated engagements to arrive at such an opportunity. With that in mind, for the first time in the history of the world such a person is running things on the political levels, and the dynamism of that reality is shattering the static world of politics—likely forever.  And that is such a wonderful thing.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here: http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707 Use my name to get added benefits.

The Terrible Customer Service of Airlines in America: United’s horrible public relations nightmare is just the tip of an incberg

We’ve all heard by now about the Poker playing doctor who was dragged off a United Airlines flight in Chicago because the airline company had overbooked the flight. The policy is ridiculous, the mistakes made by everyone numerous, and the degrading condition of airline travel in the United States made embarrassingly clear.  For what we pay for an airline ticket, the airlines should be a lot more appreciative.  Instead, they have come to treat the experience—especially in the economy class—as a miserable endeavor.  And it was on full display for everyone to see.

Here’s the main problem, that doctor should never have even been flying from Chicago to Louisville—it would have been quicker to drive the distance. The only time I’d fly such a short flight would be a connecting flight after a much longer journey—which often occurs when traveling overseas.  When doing such a thing most flights arrive domestically in Charlotte, Chicago, or Detroit then you have to catch a transfer flight to your home destination.  But for just flying from one city to another within the United States such as from Chicago to Louisville—a car is much faster by the time you waste all your time with the TSA and the booking process.  Airlines have lost their way and become entirely too callous to the service of their passengers.  Flying now is like riding on a public bus—and that is just a miserable state of affairs for something that should be a luxury experience.  So if I were that doctor who was singled out to lose his seat on an overbooked flight which the airlines have a right to do unfortunately—I would have taken the money and rented a car—and just drove down to Louisville.  I wouldn’t have allowed myself to be stuck in Chicago one more night waiting for another flight the next day.  That is just a ridiculous waste of time.  It’s only a four to five-hour drive from Chicago to Louisville taking your time—so the people on that flight had options that were much better than the violence that eventually occurred.

And that’s what I would suggest that people do—just don’t fly unless you have to. When I need to travel overseas, there isn’t much choice but recently on a trip back from Europe I noticed that the British Airways flight crew was top-notch while the American Airlines crew just sucked.  They had bad attitudes and were miserable to deal with—and that comes from their labor unions and essentially the lack of competition that the airlines have enjoyed for half a century.  Well, those days are coming to an end, other transportation modes will be competing with the airlines soon and that will change things significantly—such as the upcoming Hyperloop.  But even while in Europe I watched the flight attendants union for British Airways protesting at Heathrow for better wages and benefits which looked terrible.  All the employees in the commercial air professions have a lot to relearn about customer service—because presently it is just terrible and that is the first problem that United had with their policy which failed so spectacularly in Chicago.

The other major issue is the authority that the TSA and the airlines now have over individual sanctity—which is a direct cause of over-reaction to terrorism. The United States response to terrorism after 9/11 was just wrong to become a bunch of scardy cats afraid of their own shadows.  What should have been done then is what Trump is doing now—single out the terrorist activities and throw aggression at them making them think twice about attacking us again.  Airline travel should be as easy as the air shuttle is at Lunken Airport in Cincinnati.  The air shuttle there flies people to New York, Chicago, and Charlotte at just a little bit over what a commercial flight costs—but the hassle is much less.  They are very respectful of your time and person at Lunken and that makes it a much more desirable option.  They still work for people’s business there and don’t take it for granted that you have to do what they say.

On another flight, recently from overseas a flight attendant who thought she had way too much power was harassing a young couple who were trying to keep their baby quiet with videos on their smart phone. It was working and the noise level was next to nothing.  But that didn’t stop the woman from telling the young parents that they needed to put head phones on the baby because open sounds were not allowed on the plane.  Their response was that what they were doing was quieter than a screaming baby.  The stewardess very nearly pressed the issue—which under the airline rules, she had the authority to do.  Luckily, she let the situation slide, but not before tempting the desire to throw her weight around—which was considerable as she was an obviously union protected monstrosity who could barely fit down the aisle of the plane.  Not a good image for the airline to begin with.  Obviously, the tendency toward customer service was missing—customers these days are treated as a nuisance when they fly.  They are practically raped before getting on the plane and once there you are at the mercy of questionable pilots and power-hungry stewardesses who are well into their 40s and miserable because they feel guilty leaving their families behind to fly around the world for a living.  I mean really, if I want my mom to serve me drinks I can go to her house—part of the flying experience should be to be pampered a bit and to get where you want to go with a bit of adventure and zeal to it.  Not misery and some menopausal deformity with hairs coming out of their noses pouring you a Coke on a bumpy plane.  It’s a lot more palatable to have an attractive female in her mid-twenties tell you to fasten your seatbelt than some angry relic from the baby boomer generation.  I’m just being honest.  For what we pay, airlines are not giving us customer service and the issue is not looks—it’s just respect for the whole experience.  Ugly people as employees are just the icing on the cake—airlines don’t even go that far as to care about such things.  They are too busy overbooking flights and ripping people off airplanes to cover their management inefficiencies while the TSA is pulling down the paints of little boys and checking them for bombs they know aren’t there.  But the little pedophile in them hope to find something—likely unrelated.

I hate flying these days unless it’s in first class. Even then, the last time I flew overseas on a United flight in the nice seats they gave me a gay guy as an attendant.  My ticket cost as much as a car and that was all they could give me?  I mean it’s not about sex, it’s about taste—it is much nicer to have an attractive woman passing you drinks on a psychological level and working around you while you are trying to sleep than the hairy arm of some guy who acts like he wants to molest you.  Even for women, a flight to Japan or to a destination in Europe that isn’t encumbered with a PC culture of old people is more pleasant with a 25-year-old women full of wonderful estrogen handing you food—purely from a sanitation point of view because they at least care about their appearance so you can deduce that they at least washed their hands. And if airlines can’t at least give you decent looking people to serve you, then they should just leave you alone.  But flying is extremely intrusive and personally violating so with the uncomfortable burdens of jet lag and time zone adjustments—these added problems are just not worth the experience.  So whenever possible, I find some other way to travel these days—and that’s the best way to correct the behavior.  Take money out of their pockets and they’ll have to adjust.

For passengers of that United flight where the guy was drug off screaming like a trapped raccoon, they all should have been taking a car to Louisville—because the distance just doesn’t justify the extreme hardship of flying. By the time most of those passengers arrived at the airport, checked their baggage, went through security, found their gate terminal in that large airport—they could almost have driven to Louisville from Chicago.  Then there is the time it takes to taxi out and take off and actually fly to Northern Kentucky along the Ohio River, which is very fast—but still part of the process.  But that’s not all, once you land, find your bags, get a car—you could have long been at your hotel if you had just driven the distance.  And if I were you dear reader, that’s what I’d start doing.  Don’t give those slugs at United your money for a terrible experience. Don’t reward terrible behavior.  If they can’t give you something special for your time and money—then don’t give them the money.  It’s that simple, and if everyone did that United Airlines and the rest of them would be forced to become more customer friendly.  And from my vantage point—that is long overdue.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Syrians Thank President Trump: Little birds, cockroaches and knives

Obviously now, in the days after the Syrian air bombing by the Trump administration, does everyone understand what the real game plan of the political left has been—which was actually articulated within the secret Skull and Bones Society for which both Bush presidents were a part of. War for many decades now has not been used as an objective by globalists to win territory or even gain cultural expansion—it has been used to displace people and force them like cattle into a slaughter-house of the global orthodoxy’s choosing.   The way that Trump conducted the bombing exposed the progressive trend to use displaced people from destabilized regions to change the cultures of their destinations—such as the United States where it would be assumed that those people would become Democrats holding their hand out to the government to care for under our welfare system. When Syrians came out in favor of Trump’s actions against Assad in Syria—the liberal press and politicians like Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren had very little to say in defense other than to utter the playbook of their open border campaign contributors.

Syrians if given a choice don’t want to flee into the United States—they want to stay in their homeland which completely dismantles the leftist open border position. Now more people than the typical reader here can see that all along the wars in these third world locations from the Middle East down into Africa—South America and over into Indo-China—India and Indonesia were created to force tribes of people into other zones of population to drive the open border mentality and manipulate the gene pool toward nefarious leftist Utopian dreams of a one world culture all mixed together in a stew they control to serve to unknown dinner guests.

Trump’s bombing campaign took away everyone’s excuses which was the genius of it—from just about every side of the argument. But most effective of all were the thanks that came from the Syrian people toward America for aiding their existence.  I have spoken a lot lately about this Trump move and the strategic importance of it—but additionally I have gone so far to examine the nature of being that nosy neighbor who helps defeat evil when it’s obvious that they can’t help themselves.  The “law” isn’t very good at defining such things—but let me illustrate it this way.  When I see some little bug stuck in a situation I stop and help it out of my pool, or free it from being stuck between the glass of a house window if I can. Life is life and I try to do what I can to help the little things live just a few hours longer if possible.  Just over the weekend, I was mowing my grass and a little bird had got its feet wrapped around some string somewhere and had managed to get all that wrapped up into a little tree where the thing was beating itself into oblivion in a panic to get away.  It didn’t help that the bird was stuck low to the ground and was within my eye line, so the mower was terrifying the bird.  It was shitting itself dry just scared nearly to death.

Now……………I had several decisions to make. I could just leave the bird and let some cat or coyote come along and eat the creature.  After all, life lives off life and the coyote and cat need to eat too. However, as a human being I have a mind that allows me to think beyond animal necessities and as a result I am the top of the food chain.  So it is truly in my power to decide the fate of the little bird.  Under that consideration I took out my knife and cut the string wrapped around the bird about two feet back from its foot and freed it so that it could at least limp away and chew away the rest of the string back in the safety of its nest—if it’s leg wasn’t broken.  And that appears to be what happened when the bird fell to the ground disoriented and with a new lease on life.  Once it realized that escape was a possibility the bird took off for some hidden away security that only birds know about.  I went back to mowing my grass.

The Rand Paul philosophy would have left the bird and not intervened. I run into the same problem with spider webs.  If I see some bug not yet completely stuck, I help it out.  But, the spider did go to a lot of trouble to spin a web so that things would fly into it—so the spider could eat.  If you let the bugs fly free, you are denying the spider needed food so something is always bad for something else.  And if spiders didn’t eat so many insects the world would be overcome with them.  So the non-interventionalist stays out of it things and for good reason.  But I’m also a free market guy and I think that by helping littler birds and bugs out from time to time that I improve the hunters who must drive themselves just a bit further to eat.  Sure they might be pissed off at me for taking away their easy meal, but in the end they’ll make themselves better for it—or they’ll die trying.  However, liberals are the types of people along with their progressive counterparts in all global political parties who deliberately set traps for birds so that they can evoke in my empathy action that they caused.  For instance, they might put that decision gate in front of me to drive an answer from my actions that are favorable to them—such as getting the bird stuck to the tree with some string and when I drive by doing nothing they might photograph it and use the experience to move me in some position of guilt.  Or when I stop to help the bird they might hope that I accidentally kill it so that they can call me a murderer even though they were the ones responsible for the bird’s situation—hypothetically speaking of course.  But the political left probably isn’t prepared for me to be carrying a nice, big, sharp knife that easily cut away the bird so that I could resume my grass mowing and listening to the Reds baseball game on the radio over my headphones.  What Trump did was pull out a knife in the form of missiles to help out the “bird” (Syria) and free it from what was trapping it.

Whatever fox or cat that might have been counting on that easy meal had to work harder that day. I decided that—and I stand by my decision as head of the food chain.  I can be ruthless to the fox and compassionate toward the bird if I want to—and the same goes for spiders.  And that is the role of America in the world—as a capitalist country it is our decision to be compassionate or ruthless depending on the point of view of who we are dealing with.  And when it comes to children—100% of the time, we must help them when they are caught—because they don’t deserve to be someone’s easy meal.  More than anything when we do such things we can see who the real villains are by those angry that the sweet little birds of our lives fly free.  Likely that sweet little bird will give me many nice songs this summer and will bring joy to the world in many ways that a cat or a fox doesn’t.  So I’ll take the side of the bird.

But I must say that a few hours later I saw a cockroach in my house sitting on the ceiling. I have a rule for cockroaches—because they are dirty characters that multiply rapidly and once they get out of control, you could end up with a massive population of them where you sleep.  So I caught the thing and flushed it down the toilet.  I didn’t smash it quickly to put it out of its misery because I wanted it to scream as it drowned in ways that only cockroaches can hear because I want all his friends to learn an important lesson.   (They can live underwater for quite a while)  I did not act out of compassion with the cockroach because of its nasty nature that is not compatible with my existence and as head of the food chain—it’s my right to decide if it lives or dies.  So, I killed it.  And most Democrats that I know—they are just like cockroaches and the same fate is the only one for them (metaphorically).  You do it without thinking about it because the role they play in our society is a negative one—and little birds deserve to live a good life not caught in the strings of traps placed by global elites for an objective no honest person wants.

That’s why what Trump did was a good, moral thing. And it’s nice to see the world realizing what a blessing it is to be cut loose from those progressive traps out there which is all that Assad really is.  Nobody expected Trump to pull out the knife and free them—which is why he is the master of manipulation for the good of the human race—and that is a very good thing for all life—even the cockroaches.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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The Morality of Confronting Evil: Donald Trump’s Indiana Jones moment

I’ve listened to the critics of Donald Trump’s Syrian airstrike for several days now and it’s time to put some clarity to the matter.  While I’m an America first kind of guy, the solution to many of the world’s problems is not to live and let live the failed cultures of the globe, but to impose on them our values for the sake of our own preservation.  Many would say “who are we to do such a thing when those places are sovereign countries?”  But here’s the reality, when people want so badly to come to America to the point where it might threaten our own sovereignty, then we have an obligation to confront evil around the world so that it’s effects don’t spill over our borders into our country.  Put another way, when you are the best and everyone wants what you have—you must expand your territory not only for your own preservation, but for the assistance of those who would love to join the American team only from their own homelands.

I have many times gotten myself into a lot of trouble “getting involved” in other people’s business for the sake of confronting evil.  When I know something bad is going on around my house, like drug sales, abused women, neglected children—or just scum bags living as parasites against others—I do get involved.  I’m not going to say what I do obviously—because that would be stupid to put down in writing.  But in short—bad guys don’t do well near my home.  If I see some dude beating the crap out of a woman—I don’t care how interventionist it might be to stop him—I do it and have done that for as long as I’ve been alive.  It’s a morality situation that does not fit well under the written laws of our societies.  The need to do the right thing does not fit well under the umbrella of the law because such a thing requires context and context can vary depending on what culture we are talking about.  What’s good for one culture may not be so for another.

Yet, there is a morality to the human race that is well-known at our most biological instincts which is perceived rather than learned under institutions of law.  When I saw what Donald Trump had done in Syria I thought of a scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where a little child was being whipped.  Jones sees what is going on and even though he could have served himself well by minding his own business and leaving with his treasure he instead threw a rock at the villain not thinking of what might happen next.  This is an instinctive element to heroism which we all have and the Indian Jones movie articulated it well at a primal level.  Obviously Donald Trump was having his Indiana Jones moment and he was doing what was obviously right without thinking about what the world might say about it.  Kids were harmed by the Syrian government.  Trump had a rock to throw to stop it—so he did it.  I would have done the same thing.

When you walk down the street and you see a couple being robbed, do you just keep walking to mind your business?  Of course not, you step in and beat the shit out of whoever is doing the robbing and you save the people from harm.  That’s what human beings should do for each other.  That doesn’t mean you become a busy body always poking into other people’s business, but when you are confronted with evil as it is defined within our biological essence—you must fight it wherever it appears.  If I’m in a position to help someone I do it 100% of the time.  If you live under a code of valor—which everyone should—you can’t just turn your back to evil just because our laws don’t have a good way to define the context of how evil moves from culture to culture under the umbrella of sovereignty.  If America is generally accepted as the most moral country on earth—not defined by religion, but by individual values—then we have an obligation to spread that influence to those not so lucky to live in North America—because honestly we can’t support the whole world.  But we can teach the world to support itself.  That means that tyrannically charged regimes that stand in the way of that freedom will have to be deposed so that good people can live freely.

So how do we go about determining who is good and who is bad?  Well, it’s really not that complicated.   In Assad’s case, under no circumstances should chemical weapons be dropped onto innocent children.  The kids didn’t do anything to deserve such a thing and there is no way to justify it.  I often get accused of being judgmental regarding other people’s families who obviously don’t put as much into life as I do—and I really don’t care if it pisses them off.  If adults are openly ruining the lives of their children by putting stupidity into their heads, then I make it known my disdain and if those kids want my help—I help them.  I’ve gotten into a lot of trouble over that kind of thing but I never regret helping.  It is my moral duty to help those who cannot help themselves if through my actions I can improve their “individual” state.  Ultimately, I want people to be able to thrive as individuals no matter where they come from, so I always help if the situation arises—even when it’s not convenient.

In Syria, if people are so desperate to leave because Assad is such a terror, then his problem becomes Europe’s problem and America’s problem because refugees will flood our borders trying to get away.  If you turn them away as we must because we can’t risk terrorists hiding in their midst’s then you must stop the evil they are trying to run from.  If you see a robbery, you have an obligation to stop it.  If you see a 14-year-old girl prostituting herself out on K-Street—you have an obligation to hunt down her pimp and end the threat to her.  If you know a drug dealer is ruining the minds of kids down the road from your house—you have an obligation to stop the behavior—by whatever means—preferably legally.  And if a country is killing its people for some collective cause—America is the only place on earth capable of making a moral judgment on the matter—and it must step in and act.

The Syrian situation was clear.  There was no reason children should have been attacked with nerve gas. Trump did what I expect him to do—he attacked the evil that perpetrated the villainous behavior.  Yes, Rand Paul is right; congress must give permission for war—“legally.”  But sometimes when you see evil being conducted and you have access to a rock and can stop it—even temporarily—you do it.  Because it’s the right thing to do.  Doing what’s right isn’t always “legal.”  But it is always right.  And helping kids have a potential for a good life is always right.  In those cases you have to live and let die because there is good and evil in the world, and you must stand for what’s good.  There is no middle way in such matters.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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