Category: Aviation

China’s Attack of America Through the Tyranny of Safety: Most of Cincinnati called off work over a little snow

I always hate to see mass call-offs of work when there is a significant storm or some other weather emergency. To me, it’s a distinctly American thing to work hard, work more than eight silly little hours a day, and work weekends. I have worked well over 24 hours per day when it’s called for, and I’ve spent many years working seven days a week. Of course, I have slept when needed, but I have never understood people who don’t get going when the going gets tough. There is something very un-American about calling off work and sitting around in your pajamas when productive things need to be done. When I was a kid, I was the one who had perfect attendance in school. And as an adult, I am always the one who never calls off. I have worked through severe injuries, including three times when I had bones sticking out of my hands. I always finished my shift and got stitched up later. I superglued my skin together to get through the rest of the work period to stop the bleeding. When I’ve had major surgeries that I was told would keep me in bed for months, I returned on the next available workday after and pushed myself to recover within a few weeks completely. When it has snowed too much to drive a car, I have ridden motorcycles and bicycles to work, whatever worked. And if I got to work and felt it better to stay until the weather cleared, I always have done so, as long as it takes, so the work that needed to get done always got done. So, on February 3rd, 2022, a snowstorm hit the Cincinnati area. Most of the city decided to call off work based purely on what the weather people said on television; it made me sick and reminded me of the real meaning of the war we are in with China. 

One of my favorite chapters in my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business is the chapter titled “The Tyranny of Safety.” When I wrote that book, I felt some things needed to be addressed in American business that was being ignored. Yet, every company everywhere wanted to know the secret sauce to success and how to unlock it within their work cultures. I am a practitioner of all the trade’s modern Lean tools and process improvement tricks. But due to my long experience and work history, even plowing through injuries to get a competitive advantage over a rival, whether they be domestic or some foreign power, nobody wants to deal with the elephant in the room that China set out years ago to destroy the West. They mean to do it by attacking us through every little measure of safety protocol that can be imagined. They don’t follow their own safety initiatives, which have flowed down through WHO, the UN, and into the CDC. Just as they don’t follow climate initiatives, they push us to follow them to commit economic suicide in their favor. The Chinese have intended to get us in the West to play by different rules than they do, and they have done so by getting us to fall for Wokeness, Climate Change, and Workplace Safety. They have spent a lot of money buying up politicians that would sell these attitudes to the public, in media that would strike fear in all who watch and listen to their programming over every little snowstorm.   Their goal has been to get us to work less so that China could catch up to American GDP and eventually overtake it within this decade. That is the emphatic goal of China and the world in general. Whenever I see massive call-offs over snowstorms and other weather-related issues, it makes it very apparent that China is attacking us in a worse way than with the use of any military. 

When I say that all labor unions are communist organizations, I mean it—every single one of them. Labor unions trace back to the start of Karl Marx and all his followers through the early 20th century, and we can’t help but talk about Chinese communism as we see the impact of their strategy of work stoppages. Communists everywhere want to see less work to leverage the money generated. The current supply chain problems in the United States are caused by China restricting its supply and the labor unions at the shipping ports refusing to work harder and longer to unload what’s coming in. Why, well, Covid is the new global snowstorm that communists have used to get people to call off work and stay home. And remember, China made the virus, and they did so for this very reason, to slow the world down to catch up economically. It wasn’t so much to kill people but to kill economic activity. I was at Kroger right before the snowstorm came through Cincinnati, and the shelves were mostly wiped out. Add to that the problem of supply chain issues on imports, and what we have are communist unions and communist countries who are trying to slow down the engine of our country for their own benefit. 

After two years of Covid, people have become used to calling off work over everything, making this 2022 snowstorm different from past snowstorms. This time, the media culture that had been scaring everyone to death over Covid had their ear when they cried about ice and snow hitting the Midwest, and people were calling off work before they even got up and gave it a try to get to their employers. They just gave up without much of a whimper, and that is the work of the powers against productivity that are well at war with America’s can-do spirit and have been for centuries now. The way to beat America is to convince it to stay home and not be productive while the rest of the world works and churns out their widgets at a maddening pace. China is making a show of playing lockdown with Covid, but you can bet they won’t sacrifice a dollar of GDP to it. But America has found itself crippled by the value of safety over productivity as a new measure. Productivity is now viewed as reckless, while staying home, staying safe, and staying unproductive is now promoted by our governments as a virtue. The terrible governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, was quick to announce on the news that people should stay off the roads, let the government workers do their jobs, make it easy for them to keep the roads clear, to hell with the production needs of our society. Whether it’s snow or Covid, the message from the government is, all the same, it’s an act of God, and we don’t control God. So yield to the more powerful powers than us, including the almighty centralized government.

Nobody is saying that we should have an unsafe society. That is the point in my book.   But safety is not about staying home and hiding; it’s about being skilled and competent. And if people don’t have those skills, they need to work hard to get them. That is the American way. But this “safe” way preached in our industrial compliance culture these days does not come from our need for safety. Still, foreign desires to slow down America and ultimately control our output with many communist tentacles that ultimately extend back to China in almost every way imaginable, where money flows in the bloodstream of an unseen monster, is a real threat to all that is good. Yes, China’s war machine is “safety,” and it flows down to us through our bought and paid for governments for the strategy of stopping American productivity. Every time people stay home from work over conditions of concerned safety, that is what is happening. We see the actions of war and our inability to meet the foe where they live and strike back. Because too many people are hiding from the snow, the rain, and every cut finger because they believe the experts without knowing who really controls those experts. It’s war from China for sure, just not the kind of war people expect to see. The way to beat western capitalism from the view of the orient is to convince them to stay home, not to work, and get used to a big government check, while the communist Chinese surpass America in every way imaginable.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Trick or Treat in February at Lakota: Darbi Boddy wants to remove masks and give parents freedom of choice, the LEA wants to impeach her over it

The Union Wants to Impeach the School Board over Mask Freedom

I watched the school board videos from January’s Lakota meetings several times, and I still think they are very good. But apparently, the mask police at Lakota is so insulted by Darbi Boddy’s proposal to remove mask mandates from the Lakota school culture and give parents the right to choose has caused the LEA union to begin proposing talk of impeaching the young school board member. During the last meeting, you would think it was trick or treat at Lakota as the mask lovers got up and left while Darbi was talking, obviously meaning to show her disrespect. But none of that is a surprise. This has been a problem for a long time at Lakota, where the inmates run the asylum. Actually, that’s how it is in most public schools, the unions run everything, and the school boards get sucked into believing their goal in life is to show uniformity. I would argue that the point of having five members on a board is to fight it out and debate to convince two other voters to either approve or deny a resolution. The goal of a school board is not to get along but to run the business of a local school the way our “republic” was designed. And to me, that’s what I see happening. This was Darbi’s second meeting, and she’s very passionate. There are a lot of high expectations behind those who went door to door for her to win, and she feels the need to get there and get something done instead of just being another bobblehead on a school board. She ran on getting rid of masks in the schools, as other schools have done around the state of Ohio. So short of getting more comfortable with the rules of school board business and not feeling like a sell-out for doing so, I am more than happy with how the Lakota school board is functioning for the first time in three decades. 

I know people are wondering, especially the sweat bees from the teacher’s union, what my relationship is with all this. Just remember what some of those same people who are all stirred up over Darbi, what they did to me about ten years ago in the parking lot of Kroger by Lakota East. Julie Shaffer played her role in that along with Joan Powell and many other tax increase supporters back then. So now is not the time to play innocent. I’ll stay mad over that forever; I will never forget. But that isn’t the fault of the current crop of kids moving through Lakota or many of the characters who are now involved that want to make the public school work for the benefit of the area’s parents. It took Lynda O’Conner more than a decade to win me over to believing that she was a Republican. I know her to be a very good one now. But I used to be so angry at the Lakota school board that everyone on it was what I thought were scum bag liberals. It took seeing Lynda at many GOP events over the last several years that I learned that Lynda was one of the good people. We have very different ideas about the worth of public education. She really believes in Lakota and is hopeful about public schools’ role in all our lives. I personally want to blow it all up, metaphorically, as a concept given to us by the significant progressive loser, John Dewey. I had been asked to run for school board many times, but that just wouldn’t be fair. We all pay taxes to the school, right or wrong; I’m happy to not get in the way if people like Lynda who want to fix it to the best of their ability. I’m also happy to offer solutions or help people who want to be part of the solution find their way to the school board by helping connect all the right dots. But for me personally, I’m all about getting rid of the Dewey system completely. 

Lynda and I usually agree to disagree on education, and when we see each other, we talk about other things besides school board business. Usually, we have a shared interest in GOP-related topics locally and nationally. If we talk about school board items for too long, I quickly blow it all up intellectually, while she desperately wants to save it. I tell that little story to those who are wondering, which are quite a few people these days. And I can also relate to the problems that new school board members like Darbi and Isaac Adi are feeling now that they are inside. It’s empowering to help be a part of the solution. The rules of the game are there to make it something of a functioning republic, and most of the time, no single person gets it their way all the way.

In Darbi’s case over this mask resolution issue, it’s her job to get two other votes on the board to support her. Many people backing her might think it’s a sell-out to work with people on the board. But they aren’t on the board. It’s tough, at best, to represent so many people and still do what you think is right. I have a policy that I do not pick up the phone, or text anybody ever, like Sheriff Jones might do, to never put my hand on the scales and threaten people to vote a certain way. I would never call up Lynda and tell her that I wouldn’t like her anymore if she didn’t vote the way I wanted her to. I believe firmly in finding people who want to do a job correctly and putting them in power to do that job. I may not always like what they do, but they should know more than me about it in a republic, which is why they are my representative there. You must trust the people you vote for to do the ultimate right thing and always keep the big picture in mind. If they don’t, then you vote them out. That’s the way the game works. 

But for the teacher’s union at Lakota, they already don’t like Darbi because they can’t imagine how they might get her under control and intimidated by their presence. That is something they have been doing for years, threatening school board candidates first with the offerings of friendship but then taking away that civility if they step out of line. That was what was implied by them walking out on Darbi in the second meeting of the year while she was speaking. I can understand not liking what Darbi was saying. It may not be their politics. But if they really wanted to understand what’s going on in the district, they would know that Darbi represents people in Lakota who think worse of public education than I do. I’m a moderate on the issue, believe me, there are lots of people who hate it far worse, and to them, Lynda might as well be Satan incarnate because she doesn’t put everyone on trial and burn them at the stake. Nobody will ever make everyone happy, but what we want is for good people to do good work on behalf of the kids and taxpayers who are stuck paying many thousands of dollars a year for this ridiculous product. And there isn’t a lot of tolerance for these teachers’ union shenanigans. As Issac and Darbi get more acquainted with the conduct of these school board meetings and the agreed rules of the game, they will get better. But so far, these meetings are what I think all school boards should look like. They may be a little bumpy. But I’ve never liked a lot of hand-holding, especially when millions of dollars are at stake and many lives are impacted. And for those who are used to bullying their way into a one-sided argument, well, those days are over.  

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Good Government of Lakota Schools: Yes, elections do have consequences

Lakota is Off to a Great Start

Sometimes we get to talk about good things, which this article is one of them. The first Lakota school board meeting of 2022 was an excellent example of a good government. Over the years, I’ve watched thousands of hours of school board meetings, not just at Lakota, but from all over the states of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, and I will have to say that this particular meeting which is included below, is perhaps the best one that I have seen. It was good, of course, to see that Lynda O’Conner was again President of the Board. But what made the meeting so good, aside from how smoothly Lynda transitioned from topic to topic, was the additions of the newly elected Republican endorsed members, Isaac Adi, who was designated already as the Vice-President, and the freedom representative Darbi Boddy. I was very impressed with those two new additions and the kind of questions. As they learn the job, if they can keep up with that level of engagement, Lakota will be very successful in the years to come. That is precisely how government should work. Not everyone will get along. But I will say that the attention to everyone in the room was outstanding, constructive, and conducive to conversation that leads to problem-solving, and that is fantastic. In all these government schools, chaos has been ruling for a long time, and those elements of chaos are indeed circling the campfire of that Lakota board meeting, waiting for everyone to go to sleep so they can feast. But I have a feeling, especially knowing the personalities of these new school board members, that the chaos will wear out before they do. Good to see!

Of course, most of these meetings are never very sexy. For instance, a school board member like Darbi, that ran on a platform of national concern and parent transparency, will find that she might only get to spend 5% of her time on the topics she cares most about. Most of the meetings will be votes on boring issues, like application fees for substitute teachers or the latest call-offs of the bus drivers. These may seem like small, inconsequential things, but there is good work to be done on all of them, and that is usually where school board candidates get bored and start to tune out. But in watching Darbi and Isaac, it is clear that they are going into the job with the right frame of mind. They are keeping their important campaign promises in focus while they also indulge themselves in the job’s nuances and extract value out of the tiniest little bits. It’s not always the big sexy things that determine the success or failure of a school district; it’s the thousands of little things that lead up to the big things, and if those get dealt with, with the enthusiasm that Isaac and Darbi showed on this first meeting, the 20th meeting will be much, much better and so will Lakota and all the participants in the district. 

For instance, as an example of tiny details that are of paramount importance, Superintendent Matt Miller gave an update to the Covid situation, the bussing call-offs, and the general below-the-line problems of managing hundreds of employees, where generally 5% of any work culture will use any excuse to call off work, excused. Covid has created a situation where those types of people are empowered to call off perpetually, without any recourse. Of course, the teacher’s union loves this problem because it benefits them, and Matt gave his summary in a manner where he felt like a victim of circumstance. The district’s management had been taken out of the Board’s hands and placed at the alter of the  Butler County Department of Health, and the union had a free pass to call off work as much as they could. Obviously, the way to break up this labor impasse would be to have plenty of substitute teachers ready to call at a moment’s notice to keep classes moving. But as we learned, there is a government fee within the county of more than $125 just to apply to be a substitute teacher. This was revealed in the meeting by a bright personality named Alicia Davis, who wants to be part of a solution to the staffing shortages but needs help getting through the bureaucracy of government to get to where the need is. There are likely thousands of young women just like Alicia who are willing and able to cover that 5% call-off ratio. However, obviously, the fee is a problem, a discouraging one. If anybody wanted to solve the problem, it would be wise for Lakota to find a way to cover the fee, get the applicant, and ultimately the resource. That may seem like a little thing, but little things lead to big things. 

For instance, the next time a labor contract comes up for a vote. Teachers want to be collectively paid more money and are threatening to walk; if Lakota has a bunch of sharp-witted volunteers waiting to be called into class to teach to keep the schools open, then that network would already be established. When I talked about chaos ruling these schools, this is one of the ways it happens. A superintendent like Matt is trying to navigate all the rules and regulations and finds himself reacting to everything over time. The Board needs to give him proactive solutions to these problems that also pave the way for possible labor strikes from the teacher’s union at the slightest provocation. If they decide to leave work and management has the task of keeping the school open, what else could be done. The chaos is caused by the high cost and bureaucracy of becoming a substitute teacher; the $125 usually scares off most applicants because they couldn’t afford to pay it for a part-time job they may not get much return on the investment from. So, the vacancies go unfulfilled, and solutions are never presented to the labor problem leaving the school a victim to the labor force that can be very politically active at times.   I would say that Lakota is a great place to live because of people like Alicia, not because of any measure of labor that might be employed at any given time. Good parents make good kids, and good kids make a good school. The purpose of government, in this case, is to remove those barriers, not to throw $125 roadblocks up to feed chaos. But to remove chaos from the management process because in chaos is where many lost dollars disappear.

But there will be time for more of that kind of talk for later. For now, I’m just happy to see an actual, functioning school board that has the look and feel of real management. I’m sure there will be trouble, but the measure of good management is how well that trouble is handled, and by the looks of Lynda, Darbi, and Isaac, everything is off to a great start, and it is very encouraging to start the year off. This school board meeting was the kind of school board I have been hoping for, for over 30 years. And although it’s only one, the obvious signs of future success are there for all to see. There is an excellent reason to be excited, and I am. Perhaps things will get better, and that all starts with elections because they have consequences.   

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

I Love Corruption: Knowing the nature of people is worth more than the wealth of the measure

Corruption is Good if you Capture Human Behavior

Personally, I love corruption. There is a chapter in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, called “Money is Not the Root of All Evil, It Reveals It,” that deals specifically with this unique way of looking at the world. Corruption is caused by the insecurity of a person, or a group of people, in their ability to produce. A person lacking corruption and is confident in their ability to produce will not seek shortcuts to success because they understand that the opportunities for which money is generated are always available to them. Whereas the cheaters trying to scam their way through each day feel they will only get a few open doors to financial opportunities in their lives, and they will bend their ethics to step through those open doors. Now all too often, those open doors are traps set by other people for the opportunity to take whatever value someone else has, and the whole game can seem very treacherous and bloodthirsty. But the value is in the money, which then reveals the content of the game’s characters. Once you can see and measure what people will do for money, you can then know everything you need to know about them and turn their efforts toward the success you want to see happening. Corruption shows what kind of people are playing the game, and knowing who is corrupt and who is not is very useful in playing the great games of value. There is a lot of evil in the world that would not be seen if we did not have the value of money to measure it and witness what people will do to get their hands on it.

I tend to view many things in life from the perspective of Poker. The religions of the world have tried for centuries to figure out the motives of mankind and to contain ambition behind otherworldly rules of conduct that, like Santa Claus, might get you into Heaven if you are a good little boy and girl. When religion doesn’t work, we turn to governments to regulate behavior, and the fear of being put in jail might keep us all honest and trustworthy in our interactions with each other. But what these methods essentially only do is to push corrupt behavior deep down and out of sight. It essentially makes all of society like a Thanksgiving Dinner with a family that doesn’t really like each other; when we pass the corn, it’s always very civil and polite. While behind everyone’s backs, there is always plotting and scheming going on. But at the table everyone is polite. That is what we generally have in society and why we are so shocked when we discover that corruption has been happening. Like how shocked many are to learn that Dr. Fauci has been a corrupt administrator in government health for most of his career. He can hide his corruption behind the façade of social rules and conduct. But when we study what he is willing to do for money, or how money moved from government to government employees as him acting as the broker for funding, the need for power is instantly recognizable, and that behavior tells us a lot about the people we are dealing with. The measurement of money reveals a lot about the people trying to possess it. The most corrupt people are the most insecure about how the value of money is generated. People least corrupt understand that money is produced from the value of production. But those naturally lazy and not wanting to produce in life will have all kinds of insecurities about their ability to acquire money and will jump easily at every opportunity to become corrupt to get it because they don’t think many such opportunities will come their way in their lives.

It really comes down to the question of what we want to know about people and if we want to really know it. Governments would like to believe that human behavior can be controlled through fear, such as fearing the law, fearing the power of government, or fearing the opinions of others. Religions believe that good conduct can be controlled in society by fearing what might happen to you in the afterlife. And if only you might listen to them, then maybe you might have everlasting life. Instead, to my eyes, a good poker game tells you everything you need to know about people, and a good player can control what everyone at the table is doing and thinking based on how big the pot gets. Poker is a uniquely American game that is born out of pure capitalism, and it’s actually much more moral than we have been led to believe by the same forces who today want us all to fall into centrally controlled socialism. Playing Poker reveals a lot about the characters playing the game to acquire the total sum of the pot bet between game rounds. The good and honest player will be willing to toss away a bad hand and play again in the next round. The corrupt player will try to cheat and stuff cards up their sleeve to pull out when the pots are significant because they fear they might miss such an opportunity if they don’t cheat in some way to make the conditions of the game more favorable to them. To my eyes, knowing such information about people is much more valuable than in the value of the money itself. Money is just a measurement of value. But what people will do to have it is far more critical. 

So it is in that way I see corruption as a good thing to see because it tells you who you are dealing with. The rules of society might make the preacher look like a bastion of Heavenly summation. But when alone with children of the congregation, they might be abusing them all in the name of God. Or the politician might seek legislation to provide good conduct in social interaction while they are taking money from a donor to do something voters don’t want. But the temptation of money makes it hard to turn away from. The social face may look like an outstanding citizen, complete with power dress and nice shoes. But what goes on in the politician’s mind is another matter, will they take shortcuts to get the money, or will they hold true to constitutional principles? Are they worried that they only have a few chances in life to make wealth for themselves, or is every day an opportunity to hit the jackpot and they play the game for the joy of it, knowing they will have plenty of chances for success because of their character? These are the fundamental ways to understand social behavior, and yes, corruption is just one more measurement of a thriving culture. If we have a society with a lot of corruption in it, we obviously need to change something to inspire different behavior. But we can’t delude ourselves into believing that the rules of mankind might encourage good behavior. Instead, we must understand that we must first see it with some kind of measurement and act on that knowledge. Pretending that corruption isn’t happening because we refuse to measure it is not a way to solve problems. Half the battle is in knowing, and when we have money to measure corruption, we can then see a lot that is true about the health of our society, which I find extremely valuable.   

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

How To Make a Two-Party System Work: We are a Republic, not a flea-bitten “democracy”

We are a Republic

Every time I hear some political ignoramus say that we need to “save our democracy,” it is like someone scratching a chalkboard. All this “dagger into democracy” talk is as stupid as stupid gets. We are not a “democracy” in America; we are a “republic.” We are a government “of” the people, not “by” the people. But we are taught in every way of life imaginable that everything is a popularity contest, especially in our public schools. That majority rule, and if you are not in the majority, then you will never rule. Well, when we talk about the majority, we are talking about every drug addict, every sex-starved lunatic, every illiterate fool, ever degenerate imaginable. If we only consider popular elections by a majority, then always the dumbest will rule the smartest, and our society will indeed be equal, equally deficient. So it is no wonder that people get frustrated with politics when they see the system not working. They show up once every four years and vote for some people, and ultimately, those people let them down, then they get discouraged with the two-party system. At the same time, the media drives home the point they learned in their public educations, that democracy is all about the popular rule and that the only way to achieve fairness is to punt everything to a much more centralized government to sort out. This is especially true now where people can see that the party system isn’t working for them, Democrats are off doing the work of outright communism, and Republicans seem to be fighting Trump, a natural outgrowth of the Tea Party movement. People who don’t pay much attention to politics are obviously frustrated because, for some reason or another, they thought they could show up and vote every so often, and that would be the end of it. The world would just carry on and work.

But what I say to all those who want to disparage the two-party system, or who get upset when parts of their chosen party look bad and don’t represent a majority of the people associated with that party, is that the time to work out those elements is always in the off-year elections. For instance, right now, in the early months of a New Year, 2022 is the time for the philosophy of the Republican Party to be worked out in the trenches. The primary season is upon us, and that is when candidates battle each other for the general philosophy of the party. I would say that the system works great as a two-party system so long as people participate. You may not get everything you want in the candidates. I’m hardly ever happy with where things are, but if you don’t participate, then your point of view will never get a seat at the table.   After all, this is what’s going on in the Republican Party right now and what Democrats have continued to fail to match. The news analysts think that Trump is an extreme version of the Republican Party when he is a natural outgrowth of the Tea Party movement that has become more involved in party politics starting at the central committee levels, voting in primaries, and other off-year activities. The establishment types aren’t happy about it, but that representation grew over time from the Tea Party into MAGA and the American First Policy Institute. Democrats have incorrectly assumed that Trump was just an extreme right-winged version of the establishment, so they have tried to counter with their own version, where the Biden administration is now, representing the radical progressives, giving them a voice they have never had before. The progressives took this admission as a mandate, and as a result, they have over-extended themselves.    

To a political outsider not participating in these processes, and looking at presidential elections as the only ones that matter, they will see disfunction because the system is not working the way they were taught, through popular vote, only every so often. But in a republic, we are a nation of laws, not the mob. And those laws are created during off-year elections, not presidential elections every four years. Right now is the prime time to work out the general philosophy of a political party, and if you are not engaged in that debate, you should never be surprised when you are not represented in the final product. But even if you do participate, there are other people involved, and their minds have their inputs, so what you end up with will ultimately not be 100% you.   But at that point, you can’t just pick up all your game pieces and cry like a baby and leave. You have to continue to fight it out, to push for your ideas, and let come what may. That is what a republic looks like. Politics is not supposed to be nice. It is supposed to be contentious so that only the best ideas survive into law and policy. The whims of mankind are meant to be tempered with time and a lack of tenacity. If you want a friend, get a dog. If you’re going to be the master of your own universe, stay at home and never go outside. But if you want your republic to function, participate. When people disagree with you, strengthen your argument to win them over or have your ideas crushed under the weight of analysis. But don’t think for a second that your vote is a one-and-done kind of relationship at the ballot box. There is a lot more to it, and our republic requires people to participate all the time. Not just when it comes time to vote. 

China keeps talking about how efficient they are, and of course, big bureaucrats in Washington D.C. culture want to have the same kind of control that communism gives to those countries. They want to rule by administrative state, so they throw gas on the fires all the time about the follies of our current political process.   Of course, when the government can just tell people what to do, it’s a lot less messy for them. China’s present argument is that “American Democracy” is too messy, too slow, and does not serve the “people’s” needs. They would love to see an end to the two-party system. They love to say things like, “we’re putting daggers into our democracy.” They want to plant that seed and watch it grow into a change state from a capitalist nation into a communist one. If they can convince voters that the system doesn’t work, they may be willing to throw it all away for something that does. But it’s not our republic that is failing; it’s the people participating. Because of their lack of effort, the strength of the two-party system doesn’t get fulfilled the way it should, and the people who end up in charge are the worst because they were the only ones who showed up.   That is clearly the problem with Democrats. Republicans had the Tea Party, and the establishment is very unhappy about their continued presence, but Republicans have a much better party as a result. But punting to default and saying that none of it works is just a falsehood. The only thing not working are people who have been taught wrong from the beginning what their proper role in government always was. And how much influence they really have for the future of our “republic.”

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Ocasio-Cortez and Republican Sex: What’s at the heart of all communist activity

Sex and Ocasio-Cortez

It’s not just because Ocasio-Cortez looks like the donkey from Hee Haw, but the suggestion that the socialist advocate had regarding her belief that Republicans were frustrated with her because they wanted to date her and ultimately wanted to have sex with her said a lot that was laughable. It goes well beyond the suggestions of sex lifestyles in general, but more to the mass psychosis that tends to follow liberalism ultimately. And it reminded me of the excellent book about communism from Ayn Rand called We the Living, which I’ve said for years, should be required reading for every school child as a fundamental background of education in America. Without meaning to, Ocasio-Cortez, otherwise known as AOC, put her finger on a significant problem in liberal politics, the assumption that Democrats have better sex than Republicans and that the value of that endeavor is far greater among socialists and communists than in capitalist building Republicans. As a young person in her early thirties, the former bartender and waitress have had plenty of people who wanted to pollinate her young body, ignoring the face, of course. Luckily for biology, men were built to engage in sex with a knothole in a fence if needed to procreate our species. Men can at times not be very discerning about where they plant themselves in sexual engagement. They are wired that way because not everyone can be pretty, and not everyone can get the best-looking mate to provide DNA to the next generation. And when a young woman like Ocasio-Cortez has spent time around men twice her age who have wives at home that are well past their prime and are withering away in front of their faces leaving beauty a distant memory, young women like the socialist from New York and her young body and smooth skin can seem appealing. AOC has obviously confused this condition with reality and tried to make it fit her worldview. It comes from being young, and the great apprehension women have at that age because they realize that their female gifts are going away, and a world without those things is scary. 

Democrats, by nature, are too focused on sex because they never really develop themselves emotionally beyond their teenage years. People like Ocasio-Cortez, who aren’t very smart, naturally turn to the biological observations as the center of their mentality, leaving them to think that a night out in pursuit of sex is worthwhile. Sex is a shared practice; it takes cooperation to engage in it. And as long as the rules of sex are understood and prioritized, it makes it easy to control mass populations. It was never an accident that the internet made it possible to have so much access to sex and that online dating was such a centralized feature. Liberals, and their communist roots, as articulated well in that Ayn Rand book, have always intended the destruction of the American family by removing the kids from their parents, promoting divorce among the adults so that the state could manage their affairs, and that a lifestyle of sex obsession would dominate the minds of the masses in every way possible. Communism loves sex because it’s the ultimate communal activity, and sex with more than one partner is the ultimate expression of abandonment of the concept of private property. When Ocasio-Cortez sees that Republicans are moving away from Democrats in a way that she can’t control as part of the progressive caucus, her instinct is suitable to attempt to reel them back in with sex talk. It has likely always worked for her as a young woman needing tips in the service business, and those same rules generally apply in politics where favors are a currency equally desired. 

But Republicans are different; they think about more than just sex. They find joy in starting businesses, building houses, families, acquiring new cars. They enjoy making things, not so much the wasted time ritual of pursuing sex for an evening. Sex, of course, can always be enjoyed, but so can other things, like building a business and providing jobs to lots of people. Many people who are Republicans or who become Republicans learn that there is much more to life than sex and they handle aging much better because life doesn’t end at 30 when everyone’s bodies start to rot away back into dust. In many ways, the trajectory of the Republicans is a natural order that is consistent with all life. Hopefully, before it’s too late, people realize what a waste of time sex is before they get too old to have the choice taken from them in an undesirable body, kind of where people like Ocasio-Cortez are now. Once women like her have wasted their lives sleeping with everyone they can out of some infantile need for a shared experience, they hit a wall they can never come back from. The crises won’t be so bad for them if they have other things going on in their minds because people won’t want to sleep with them once they lose their sex appeal. In the Ayn Rand book, it is there that I learned that the term “Let’s Party” came from way back in the 1920s. The intent was to empower the youth, out with the old, in with the new, so that communal politics could take hold and rule the day with Karl Marx’s philosophy. That same trait is in our current culture, where older people are cast aside, and everything is catered to young, new-bodied people craving sex at every moment. 

However, such small-minded pursuits are creepy, and when compared to the many other options that a person finds in a capitalist culture, sex is easily avoided. There are many other things besides sex, and Republicans figure that out, even if biologically they still feel the tug. In a capitalist culture where it’s much more fun to develop a mind and build something new is an option, then temptations like those suggested by Ocasio-Cortez are much easier to ignore. And for her, that is a significant crisis because she has built her entire political platform in selling communism and socialism to the world through her young, flowering body, which she took for granted would always serve her. But now the panic is the same with all feminists who waste their early lives running around topless and having reckless sex with every degenerate that suits their fancy. The government does not make a very good husband, and older people don’t want to waste their time with someone everyone in the world has had sex with. It becomes a gross reminder of young bad decisions when other things become more attractive to a developing mind. And that is a little secret that most progressives nurture at the most fundamental level. Sex is a very primal thing. It’s a big deal to teenagers for biological reasons, but as humans, we do best when we find other things to do with our time than spending it on such a wasted effort. But socialists have built their entire political philosophy around such wasted efforts, and when they see people not joining them, it is the scariest thing in the world to them. This is where Ocasio-Cortez finds herself early in 2022. There is no nice man to settle down with. There is no future. And her body is aging, and all she has is a history of socialism, of dedication to the parental state to offer to someone who might want to share a life with her. Which, of course, is unappealing to any sane person with a developed intellect. At that point, relationships become a private property argument; nobody will invest in something that everyone can have for free, whereas liberalism always fails. Conservatives prosper, and ultimately that significant gulf between them can never be brought together.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Ray Epps is all that Matters: January 6th was a government entrapment plot, based on the behavior of Richard Trask

Who is Ray Epps

As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t anything to talk about regarding the so-called January 6th Insurrection if the name of Ray Epps isn’t involved. The guy was everywhere in D.C. the day of the Trump rally and the night before trying to instigate people into a froth of anger and enter the Capitol building in protest of the election fraud that had so many people already disappointed. You can tell by the federal government’s behavior that there is something really wrong with this case. They have arrested people who had far less to do with inciting violence and vandalism than what Ray Epps was caught on camera doing. Yet, Ray is driving around his ranch in Arizona without a care in the world while many people rot in jail, stuck without due process by a government that has turned against them completely. If that weren’t enough, while we sift through the smoke a year later of what happened on January 6th, and establishment types try to use it to hide all the other destructive behavior that has been going on in the SWAMP, the kidnapping plot story of Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan has taken on a life of its own, thanks to a wife swapping, tattooed freak of an FBI agent, Richard Trask and the night he tried to beat his wife’s head in after a swingers party that unveiled to the world a level of entrapment that the FBI had directly been involved in. 

At this point, do I have to remind people of all the times over the last decade that the FBI has been caught tampering with crime to provoke an outcome? Because that could go on for days, I’m thinking presently of the evidence coverup from the San Bernardino Christmas terrorists; remember that one? I haven’t forgotten, that’s for sure. The Trump years in the White House have clearly shown that the culture of the FBI is in political outcomes, not a blind pursuit of justice. Also, from me, a bit of a disclaimer, I have several former employees who have left me for these kinds of aims in life, so I know quite a lot about the subculture of police work at all levels. There is currently a young man I am quite proud of who is working in the White House as a Secret Service Agent. He was there when Trump was, and he is doing just the same good job for Biden currently. Good kid. But…….I have many people I know who are just like Richard Trask, even down to the swinger’s lifestyle, who have populated local law enforcement, the FBI, and other roles. So I can say with a lot of confidence that Richard Trask as the lead FBI agent who entrapped militia groups in Michigan into plotting the kidnapping of the governor during the Covid lockdowns in retaliation for her brutal behavior, is common. Richard Trask is not unusual, even though many are shocked by the revelations of his character. 

Trask was an anti-Trumper to an extreme, leaving behind many social media posts forecasting his behavior. Ultimately, he used his power as an FBI agent to steer angry people into a direction the government wanted them to go so they could make a story about it. Left to their own devices, those militia people would have sat in their cabins complaining about the government while they cleaned their guns. But Trask and his fellow FBI agents wanted to shove them into a story by pretending to be one of them, complete with the crazy wild beard and tattooed bodies. The FBI stoked the plot to kidnap Whitmer, then once the followers in the militia started making plans, Trask turned it into a public relations incident that the media then took the handoff and broke the story in a way that made everything sound like a vast, right-winged conspiracy, especially coming from Disney owned ABC News. 

Well, while a lot of this was going on, Trask’s personal life was a strange brew of characters. He was trying to get his wife to buy into some experimental sexual escapades when they found themselves at a swinger’s party at a hotel in Michigan near Kalamazoo. Apparently, Trask drank too much or was drugged while there. Whatever the case, the couple left the party feeling like many couples do at things like that, guilt in what they were doing, exposed sexually in uncomfortable ways, and not really knowing what to do with their emotions after. Once they returned home, they got into a big fight in their bedroom where Richard Trask proceeded to beat his wife’s head against the bed while he choked her in a way that looked to intend a terminal outcome. She called the police; they picked him up. Because of the unusual behavior of a federal officer, the story got out. Over the months that followed, we learned that this was the same FBI agent who planted the story of the Whitmer kidnapping. So, there you have it all within the Trask case, a motive that it’s a cultural problem at the FBI, not just a single individual. Trask didn’t do all these things by himself, he had a lot of help, and even after he nearly killed his wife, it took the FBI a few months to officially fire him, which they had to do publicly. But just think of how many Richard Trasks are out there working as FBI agents right now who are just like him? In my experience, it’s most of them. It comes from the way they recruit, the kind of agents they hire. As I said, I know the type very well. 

Knowing all that, let’s move to January 6th. The FBI knew there would be hundreds of thousands of people coming to the Trump rally angry at election fraud. The FBI needed to do something about it because that’s what they are expected to do. Of course, just as they did with Richard Trask, they would attempt to infiltrate some of those groups to influence them into behaving in a way that the government could use as public relations against the angry Trump voters. They felt they had to put such a large group of people on their heels while the government tried to cover what they did with Covid and the election results. Such as, who told five states to stop counting ballots on election night 2020 just shortly after Vegas bet makers had called the race for Trump? What form of Ray Epps is there in that story? People had a right to be upset, and the FBI wanted to change the story. So, there was Ray Epps, doing essentially what Richard Trask did, and the only reason Ray is still out there is that he didn’t do anything stupid like go to a swinger’s party and try to swap his wife for the night for some strange sex with drug-laced losers and low life intellects. Instead, Ray did what all federal plants try to do; he is staying low keyed on his property, hoping the story will cool down at some point so he can re-emerge back into the public. But a year later, independent reporters are starting to get it. They have been going to see Ray at his home to find out why the FBI has never picked up Ray, even though many people are still in jail awaiting some sort of bogus charges for the “insurrection” at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Sadly, the evidence points back to a guilty government where many politicians are playing their part in the coverup, particularly Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi. The hundreds of thousands of people who came to hear Trump talk that day scared them to death. And they needed some way to take the light off them, just as Trask tried to do for his favorite political governor, Gretchen Whitmer. She was in trouble with the people for the draconian lockdowns, and Trask took it upon himself to bail her out with this entrapment plot of militia groups. Now, does anybody really think that the FBI didn’t take the same sort of extreme action against Trump supporters on January 6th? The fact that Ray Epps has not been arrested tells you everything you need to know.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Corporate Selfishness: They don’t respect our time, or money

They Don’t Respect our Time

It’s not enough to talk about the Constitution as it applies to the government and the people who elect it. One of my concerns about the purpose of my Gunfighter’s Guide to Business is to more appropriately define the relationship that corporations have with society and government in general. This has essentially been a problem since the Jackson administration, where Cornelius Vanderbilt first exposed the cracks of corporate power in the years that followed. Now, of course, I’m not a believer in heavy regulation, and I do not think the government can manage power well at all. So they are certainly not capable of controlling corporate governance and shouldn’t even try. By nature, they always need money, and corporations all too easily buy them off with donations, which is why most of the corruption we see these days is happening. Corporations do not care about the Constitution. I have never been in a business exchange in all my years where business people suddenly said, “oh, that might be unconstitutional.” They simply will say, “well, if people want to get paid, they’ll put up with it.” That is why Biden attacked the vaccine mandates the way he did. The American Republic is most vulnerable through its corporations rather than through Constitutional mandates, so this is a long-time problem that needs a very modern solution. I have started to tackle this need in my book, and I’m sure many discussions will spawn from the continued necessity. 

So it is in that context, I say, especially among the new tech companies, that corporate America does not respect the people they do business with, and that needs to change dramatically.   It is a good thing that all companies should cherish to have a customer. But, corporations, whether it’s McDonald’s, Disney, network television, Wal-Mart, etc., have evolved over the years under government protections to disregard the customer experience. With more and more technology emerging, they have really come to abuse their relationship with consumers. And consumers have accepted this abuse by default because it’s coming from every direction so fast and furious that we haven’t really taken the time to understand what is happening to us. This is most obvious in the complete disregard of our personal time and freedoms concerning our corporations. Corporations, by their nature, are like only children; they assume they have exclusive access to the attention they want without considering all the other elements that are competing for the same time and money. For instance, McDonald’s isn’t thinking about the time and money that P&G is committing to new shampoo when it comes out with a new fish sandwich for the season of Lent. But the consumer only has so many hours in the day and so much expendable income. So when all these various elements seek selfishly to consume every waking hour of a customer’s life, there are lots of adverse effects that cascade off the experience that has a negative impact on the nature of our government in general.

For instance, I’m a Call of Duty player. I’d play it a lot more if I could, but I sleep about 7 hours a day these days. The rest of my 24 hour day is carefully planned in 15-minute increments. I do not have “free time.” I have lots of managed time, but I do not have empty time that is filled by random behavior. So I maybe get a half-hour a day to play Call of Duty which I consider a luxury. Now when you are in the Call of Duty world, or the platform of PlayStation in general, they make it so that you could easily spend 24 hours a day playing their game and their game only. It is quite a culture of game players, and I can see why many people who want to be good at it would easily stay home and play that game all day, all night, for seven days a week. There is enough content to really just live in the Call of Duty world. No wonder our employment numbers are so low now that the government has taught people that they are willing to pay people to stay home. I look at the number of people playing Call of Duty with me whenever I am playing and think a lot about all the lost productive time spent on that game. Sometimes, if I worry about something and can’t sleep very well, I get up at 2 AM and play a few rounds, and there are always thousands and thousands of players in the queue ready to play any game I pick within the Call of Duty environment.   But it gets even more complicated than that. Call of Duty is just one game out there; many other games are just as popular, such as the Madden games, Fortnite, and many others, all that have their game bases filled with people willing to spend their time and money on those products. But, time in a day is not infinite, so there is a management problem that we have to deal with as a modern consideration. And the corporate influence is committing the same problem they always do. They assume that the consuming public will put 100% of their time into their product in the same way that an only child expects their parents always to be available to them. 

But, while we are trying to find all our passwords to all our media accounts, and playing all these games, and are under pressure constantly to update our media accounts and to read all the legal agreements with each one, people have no room to figure out the origin of Covid, or the FBI tampering in Michigan with the Whitmer case, or the paradox of Ray Epps and the FBI attempting a false flag on January 6th, as they usually do when the government needs to make a political case beneficial to them, there is no time for people to give to these subjects because they are too worried about what their password is to their Diseny+ account. Or their bank is changing their account number because they are doing a system update. And at work, people might have an account for Microsoft Teams, their inventory systems, their clocking systems. Everywhere people turn these days, there is some technological incursion for their time that is not being managed, hurting the American family and their productive output. I would say that the solution is not more regulation, but is more like I say in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. The way to punch back at corporate selfishness is to hit them where they genuinely care to protect, in their self-preservation. Right now, they assume that consumers will always be there for them whenever they decide they want them. But by applying constitutional concepts to even corporate culture, as it should have always have been from the start going all the way back to the Jackson administration, many of these modern problems could have been alleviated. Consumers could still be consumers, but they would be more than that to the world of corporate America. And that’s what’s missing now, is that people are people who should be respected first and foremost, starting with their time and money. Because just as every only child must learn at some point, they are not the only things in the world that matter. And to truly be balanced in the world and good, they must learn to deal with the rest of the world respectfully and with excellent quality.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Stupidity of a Billion Dollars for Tri-County Mall: Its bad behavior that killed the shopping complex, money can’t fix that

A Billion Dollars for Tri-County Mall

Believe me, I want Springdale, Ohio, to succeed. My idea of going into the big city when I was a kid was going to the Tri-County Mall and the surrounding areas. They had everything there, and I have always loved it. When I was first married, the Forest Fair Mall opened just down the highway at Forest Park, and it had all kinds of exotic stores and places to eat, along with a movie theater. I thought I was in heaven. I raised my family in these malls, and I would love to see them stay alive. But I think the city council of Springdale is smoking crack if they think voting to spend a billion dollars on refurbishing the Tri-County Mall into a mixed-use development is going to work. It’s enormously stupid and is doomed to fail, and they should not do it. Instead, they need to understand why those malls failed, why all those stores and restaurants left, and make changes to their communities. Because if you don’t change the behavior of a community, throwing money at it won’t improve a thing. Instead, money is made in all economic activity because of behavior. Behavior is not changed by money. Behavior makes money. Bad behavior destroys money. 

From Springdale’s point of view and that of Forest Park, they blame Liberty Center’s success a few more miles north along I-75 for their demise. That state-of-the-art mixed-use community is a real treasure, and it’s where I go these days when I want to go out on the town. I love Liberty Center. It’s great to go see a movie. Eat at a nice restaurant. It has a traditional mall environment, and it also houses an outside mall area that feels like a downtown kind of atmosphere. But you know what it doesn’t have, thugs walking around with their pants half down acting like they will beat up all the customers. Liberty Center is privately managed to get rid of scum bags and losers when they threaten the positive shopping experience of the guests, and they do. They don’t put up with gangs of kids hanging out at Liberty Center, which is why the shopping area is doing well. That is also what destroyed Forest Fair Mall and Tri-County Mall. It wasn’t the change in box store status that came with online retail shopping. It was more that moms found it easier to shop for things from their living rooms rather than go to these malls where young people hang out and misbehave, dropping F-Bombs as they walk by and acting like they might be raped at any moment.  

This isn’t a racist thing; as much as progressives would like to make it so, it’s a behavior issue. When I was young, Tri-County and Forest Park were considered great places to live. Fairfield, which was just next to Forest Park, was voted in Playboy magazine to have some of the most beautiful girls in the country. I went to church in Fairfield. I dated lots of girls from Fairfield and Springdale. I used to be a driver for some of the old Cincinnati Bengals players after they retired, and they lived in Forest Park. I would take them home to their wives in their nice Forest Park homes. Those cities were family-friendly and full of economic prosperity. But as liberal politicians moved into their city councils and mayor positions, they brought many progressive ideas, which we all talk about now. But I was pointing all this out 20 years ago, and the writing for the decline was on the wall. The more liberalism moved into Springdale and the Tri-County area in general, the more that families moved out, north into Liberty Township, West Chester, and Mason. The smart money is left to get away from the bad behavior of progressive politics. And that same story could be said in just about every city that has seen its wealth leave, dropping the value of their communities to derelicts, government addicts, and substance abusers. People do not enjoy being around lousy behavior, and when they see it, they avoid it with other options. That is what killed Tri-County Mall and much of the retail in that area. The local government failed to protect their families by allowing bad behavior to move in and take power with some woke view of the world from a progressive perspective. 

Putting a billion dollars into the same bad behavior will not succeed in Tri-County. Case in point in Over-The-Rhine in downtown Cincinnati where Vine Street repurposed itself to give the illusion of a safe space. The problem is, the surrounding areas are still hives of gang activity and bad conduct up and down Liberty Street and around Findley Market. Instead of crime happening on those streets, gangs like the Glacier Gang follow millennials back to their homes in the suburbs of Sycamore Township and Mason and rob them there. It’s not something they are talking about on the news because they are afraid that people might stop going to downtown Cincinnati for a night out, but it’s a real problem that always stifles economic growth. Bad behavior kills the making of money. 

Oh, I’m sure people reading this who are in denial will say that such judgments are “racist” or are coming from the mind of “white supremacy.” Well, I’m none of those things. I would tell anybody who wants to know to interview any mom-type outside of the I-275 loop and ask them what they think of Tri-County. They’ll say openly that they don’t want to get robbed, raped, or groped because many moms over the last decade who have shopped at Tri-County Mall have been harassed in some way by gangs of youth who didn’t respect the shopping experience. Was getting raped an exaggeration on the part of the moms? Maybe, but it’s how they felt while going to the mall, so they instead turned to online shopping to avoid the threat altogether. Then once Liberty Center opened, they went there instead or made the drive over to Kenwood. With that said, Liberty Center has its own problems. It needs a government bailout as we speak because it’s not hitting the targets it needs to financially. Much of that is due to the changing market of box stores compared to online shopping. It’s a challenging environment these days under perfect conditions. But then-Governor DeWine of Ohio shut down the state economically, which hurt Liberty Center immensely. They still haven’t opened their playground there over liability concerns. The government often gets in the way of positive economic growth, which is undoubtedly the case at Liberty Center. 

To show how stupid government can be, just think of the Springdale City Council, knowing all I have said here but refusing to admit to themselves because of their progressive politics that somehow a billion dollars of investment will change anything. Who in their right mind will invest in a restaurant or store in this new complex knowing that the people who will be giving them money will likely bring trouble with them? And who is going to live in these new apartments? People who don’t care about getting their cars broken into? Or harassed as they are walking down the sidewalk with a gang of kids playing rap music out of the trunk of their car and selling pot out of the front seat? No, you can’t put lipstick on a pig and pretend it’s a flower. It’s still a pig, and until the government puts value on good behavior in their society, they will always see a loss of revenue 100% of the time. It’s a fundamental law of economic activity which progressives choose to ignore. But it certainly doesn’t make it any less relevant. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Mythic Realm: Understanding Elon Musk, Bob Iger shortcomings at Disney, the Build Back Better disaster, and why communism always fails

The Mythic Realm

I could actually write a book just about this topic of the Mythic Realm. Still, recently, an opportunity came up professionally where I had to talk to many political people and business people in the same Christmas setting.  I was near a whiteboard so I could tell the story of what I put on the video here contained.  The subject was a bunch of things that flow together to my eyes.  But to the groups of people, they understood some of it, but not all of it, because of the bubble concept that I explained in the video.  Most people all their lives never leave their bubbles of understanding, and I don’t look down on them for it.  I see it as a natural condition of the human race.  But when the topic of Elon Musk came up and all that he was up to, and understanding why Build Back Better is such a bad idea, or the vaccine mandates for Covid are so destructive, the answers to all those questions are often outside of the bubbles that people live in.  So I put together this little video to explain it to people who want to begin understanding some of these kinds of things, such as where economic power comes from.  It’s not the Political Realm or even the Business Realm.  All economic activity comes from the Mythic Realm, and it is there that we should always focus on creating more!

I also put in this article the WSJ interview with Elon Musk in its entirety where he said that the Build Back Better concept should be “deleated.” As I explained, Elon Musk is more shaman than industrialist, even living in a state of depravity to stay authentic to himself.  To my mind, our American society should be producing hundreds of Elon Musk types instead of a few here and there.  When I think of Elon Musk, aside from his tamperings with the political and business realm, I think of people like Thomas Edison, Tesla, the actual man, and Albert Einstein.  What people call genius, they say such things because, from their point of view in one of their social bubbles, the ideas from the realm of myth seem so extraordinary.  But really, it’s all point of view.  What always matters is the Mythic Realm because it is there where all ideas that generate all economic activity are created, which then cascades into all the organized elements of society.

I provided in the video an example about the aviation industry.  Where Prometheus came from stories about building fire or Indian legends about Thunderbirds who could fly, the idea for flight came from the human imagination in thinking what could be.  Then along came the Wright Brothers, who converted their bicycle profession into the first functioning plane.  From there, the political realm instantly saw the benefits, decided to utilize the airplane during World War I, and created rules and regulations for constructing airports, parts suppliers, and general aviation functions.  Then, of course, the Business Realm figures out what companies need to form to meet the world’s growing political need for airplanes.  And from there comes the Cultural Bubbles of all the individual companies that started making airplane parts and the workers who inhabit those cultures.  The exact trajectory of thought could be said to emerge from the auto industry, smartphones, everything that we consider economic value.  When I talk about intellectual currency, this is what I’m talking about.  Financial currency is needed to flow in the political, business, and cultural realms.  But intellectual currency is required to feed the Mythic Realm, and without that position, nothing new in economic energy is produced.  Therefore, the goal of our society or any society should always be to make more Elon Musk types, or even George Lucas, who created Star Wars.

I always talk about Star Wars because, as a kids product, it does a great job of creating ideas in the Mythic Realm among people in our society.  There was an excellent interview with Bob Iger from Disney, who is stepping down now as CEO.  I think he did a pretty good job stabilizing Disney as a company, but his problem was that he spent his entire time as CEO in the border between the Political Realm and the Business Realm, where most CEOs and CFOs think all the real value is.  But when it came time to make more Star Wars movies, he was lost, and what he made was a bunch of corporate woke garbage.  The fans became angry at Disney because the new films and books were made by a guy who was obsessed with the titles he held.  He made a mistake almost all corporate people make, putting their imprint on something that flows out of the Mythic Realm, but that they never understand the ideas. They end up smashing them into the bubbles of business culture, assuming that everything will just work out.  But it never does.  That is why Elon Musk tends to disparage titles in these companies and offices.  In the Mythic Realm, he likes to have all the executives close to where the action is.  As a modern company, Disney does OK if it sells the fantastic work created by people like Walt Disney.  But because they live in their corporate bubble, people like Bob Iger are paralyzed to do anything new, much like the Chinese suffer from their centralized communism. 

This is essentially why socialism and communism never work because they insist on an old aristocratic European view of the world that never figured out these things.  I feel I can talk about it because, really, for the first time in mass culture, we have a time where we can look at all these elements as an entire whole.  I read so much and from so many different sources that it is evident to me.  I don’t know that such an understanding of social constructs would have been possible 100 years ago.  But with the benefit of hindsight and great modern examples of success in the Mythic Realm, we can see these things clearly now.  When I shared these insights with that large group, they all seemed to have an “oh my gosh” moment, so it seemed like a practical thing to discuss.  When we want to understand the world around us, whether it’s Build Back Better, Star Wars success under Disney, Elon Musk and his quest for Mars colonization, or the intricacies of why capitalism works better than communism at managing society, understanding the Mythic Realm is the key. I’ve said for years that despite all my interests, I appreciate nothing more than mythology because what humans do better than any other known form of life is generate imagination, and therefore a change in circumstances directly derived from the mind.  No matter what someone thinks about God, it cannot be questioned that the purpose of human existence is to use the imagination to continue expanding what goes on in the universe.  We are not so insignificant as a species to assume that nature rules over the minds of humankind.  But that humankind is part of nature and the ever-evolving process of creation which the universe craves.  And once you understand that, everything else makes a lot more sense.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business