Category: Butler County

Taxation is No Different from Human Sacrifice: Governments desire more than anything to be worshipped like gods from the past

There is a good reason that taxes should be viewed as evil.  We’re not talking about the maintenance of a government to do the work of its people that it represents. Instead, modern taxation has more in common with religious practices and pagan rituals than it does the practicality of a healthy society which should concern everyone.  When a government demands that you pay your fair share, they are demanding sacrifice to them in the ways that people sacrificed to the gods, hoping to win them over in some primitive way.  Because the government wants to be your god, they are jealous of the other gods you may worship because they desire to be all-powerful as a collective entity.  In that way, a government is not unlike the cells of a body that serve a single entity, working together without concern for individual input so that the collection is then worshiped as its god.  And the taxes you pay to it are like the goats and humans that societies would kill with blood offerings to appease the insatiable hunger of that god and its evil intentions.   The concept of taxation came from the same minds that used to sacrifice their first-born son to the alters of Moloch and Baal.  Or the farmer who would hire a prostitute in front of his wife to appease the sexual perversions of Ishtar, hoping that it might rain and that he could bring in his crops.  Taxation in the modern sense is no different, and it’s just as effective.  The progressive tax act of 1913 was a compulsory evil that forced all people to sacrifice their income to the gods of government or be punished, and it set America off in a disastrous direction.  It took several years for that disaster to be fully known, but the modern result has been nothing short of a destructive society that is no different from the superstitious stupidity of the Aztecs, or the Maya, cutting out the hearts of their victims to appease the god, Huitzilopochtli, the hummingbird god of Aztec culture.

We tend to think of the people of the world who built exotic temples for their gods only to kill their people in dedication to the gods’ hunger for blood and death as primitive.  And we might snicker at their ignorance just as we pay extraordinary amounts of our income to the taxation of our governments.  And the result is just as stupid.  In our modern sense, we have transferred the concept of god to government, and tax replaces human sacrifice for appeasement.  And just as Aztec culture in the reasonably recent past would sacrifice thousands of people to Huitzilopochtli in a single night to the point where the temple steps were slippery with blood, and the people being killed would mindlessly follow the obedience of the god’s desires, we pay taxes to the god of government with the same mind numb ambition.  And it wasn’t just pagan gods, but Yahweh himself who demanded quite sophisticated sacrifices, whether it was the firstborn son of a real wife in Isaac by Abraham, or the design of King Soloman’s temple to be oriented to the east, and the high priest would kill a well-prepared goat then carry it into the Holy of Holies to sprinkle it upon the Ark of the Covenant where the laws of Israel were placed to appease God in ways we might find barbaric today.  Yet when we receive communion, we receive at church the body and blood of Christ as offered at the Last Supper and before the son of God was killed in a crucifixion.  The idea of sacrifice to the gods is hard-wired into us, and the government has grown to exploit it and become a new evil. 

China certainly sees itself as a god; its government wants to be worshipped as the collective incarnation of a deity where all the people are to serve it.  It’s to the point where they don’t even want to acknowledge the gods of any previous civilization.  There is quite an effort by the Chinese government to deny its history and prevent people from reporting on it because it wants to be the exclusive god of modern people.  And like most gods, it’s a hungry one that demands the sacrifice of the things they value to appease its insatiable appetite.  And in many ways, the World Economic Forum has adopted this position as a modern manifestation of the ancient gods of Mesopotamia.  The gods of the cosmos and the worship of planets, such as Venus, have changed names and removed the face of identity to make the worship seem less barbaric.  But instead of the blood cults of Kali in India, or the perversions dedicated to Baal in the Middle East, or the ripping out of hearts at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula, the human mind has never overcome this desire to appease some deity that it considers superior.  And the World Economic Forum wants to be worshipped in its way as a government of governments.  A god that unites them all, the world’s nations, to the same spiritual sacrifices that gave power to the gods in the past.  Taxation is just another form of human sacrifice, a recognition of supremacy for the sake of devastating power.  If a person wants to continue breathing, they will do what must be done to appease that power for the sake of sheer evil. 

I recently provided a definition of evil appropriate to the modern mind.  Evil is the destruction of something that is created.  So, of course, any form of human sacrifice to a deity is evil because it destroys what is designed to appease a god’s desire to abuse and consume.  And as mindless as most people in government are as to their role, they act by this ancient desire for appeasement with the same moral conviction.  God is hungry and wants to consume, making us all part of a vast evil.  By confiscating the wealth of culture toward the sacrifice of its value to some mindless concept of god is to play in the same destructive elements that drive the Vico Cycle worldwide, the eventual collapse of all civilization into that endless wheel of time that causes the rise and fall of all societies, of known history, theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, and anarchy.  The cause of social failure always points to the consumption of its value in the form of sacrifice to a deity that never appreciates it because the belief of its appeasement is considered the act beneficial in some way that has never been defined.  The ultimate seduction of power is that government be treated with such reverence that its people would sacrifice to it everything they value.  And in such a way, people would recognize the power of government and those who make it be.  Progressive taxation was one of the evillest concepts ever to be introduced to a society of any kind and is just as sophisticated as having a policy of killing humans and ripping their hearts out to appease a deity who otherwise could care less and can never be made happy.  So it is also of taxation and the things that can be done with that confiscated wealth that solidifies the government’s ego toward global domination. 

Rich Hoffman

The Law of Fallow Ground in America: Corporations and Communist Governments are not in charge and never will be

One of the reasons I enjoy my time around Fast Draw Shooters, as a sport, is that most of them have reverence for old westerns and the values of the gunfighter instilling justice against bad guys as typically defined by a social dedication to the Ten Commandments.  I was at an event in Cleveland this past weekend, and we had a friendly little discussion going on about the moral erosion that is obvious to everyone.  Now these events are fun because everyone is armed with guns, and we wear our gun belts all day, and nobody thinks anything of it. It is productive because it puts me in the right frame of mind to discuss these things.  And I reminded people that the world isn’t as different as it always has been.  I reminded them of my report from traveling around the world that most countries, including England and Japan, love American Westerns, especially old ones.  If you turn on the tv in those places, you will constantly find a lot of old American Westerns playing.  Hollywood changed along the lines of the BlackRock view of radicalism that has caused much of the modern trouble.  But people are still people, and they always will be.  And I told these old gunfighters what I’m about to say to you, dear reader.  Never forget the Law of Fallow Ground, which, if you are a farmer or know farmers, is the deliberate rotation or avoidance of planting crops into the soil to allow it to replenish its nourishment.  If you keep growing the same crops in the same parcel of land over and over again, the product that comes out of the ground becomes compromised and much less efficient. 

I told those old gunfighters that America was going through just such a period.  For many years we planted good things in the ground of capitalism, and the return to society was fantastic, and the world clamored to be a part of it.  Our old westerns were reflective of that culture.  People always did love them, and they always will.  The decision not to make those Westerns by a radicalized leftist culture of communist sympathizers run by financial tyrants is a kind of Law of Fallow Ground in the greater scheme of things.  This is a period in America where we are letting the soil rest.  For too long, Americans got used to everything coming out of America being good.  It will be again, of course, the yearnings of the Trump administration and his supporters represent that hunger.  But the world needed a break from what America produced because they didn’t appreciate it when they had it.  People are seeing how good those crops were and having conversations like the one I was having with those gunfighters, talking about how messed up the world is now, they are getting hungry for the good stuff.  They should have appreciated America when America was producing good crops.  They are not happy with this Fallow Ground period.  And when America is great again, maybe they won’t take things for granted as they have been.

I was getting a hamburger just north of Columbus, Ohio, at a Hardees, and I caught a conversation with a woman with the cashier complaining about how high the prices were for fast food these days, and she was shocked.  On the store sound system was a station playing 80s greatest hits because music isn’t very relatable these days, just like the westerns that used to be expected on television.  Occasionally something good comes out in entertainment, but most of it is garbage compared to how it used to be.  The people at that Hardees were far from political people, but they missed the excellent ol’ days when fast food was cheap, great music came out every week, and people had a generally optimistic view of things socially.  Human potential was celebrated, and American culture cultivated it in everything from hamburgers to pop music.  This was never more obvious than our plans for a Disney trip with the grandkids we had been planning for a while.  I have personally been very hard on Disney.  When I think of Disney programming, I think of Davy Crocket and the Zorro television show.  As a little secret that I don’t usually talk about, I was deeply inspired as a kid by the Zorro television show, and it’s no accident that my life as an adult reflects those values.  So despite all the woke garbage that Disney puts out now, I want them to see the amusement parks while they are still there.  Yes, I predict they will be gone in the not-so-distant future.  They will not survive this Fallow Ground period because they took people for granted.  People are moving on since Disney no longer represents those classic American values.  I have been shocked by how badly Disney has fallen on vacation planning.  Their brand damage is substantial and unrecoverable.   They haven’t planted anything new for a long time, and their crops are stunted, wilted, and not consumable.  So, they are dying.  Ten years ago, planning a Disney vacation was a much different experience.  They are almost begging people to visit now, which they never used to.  But in many ways, what is happening to Disney will happen to every American corporation.  This plot to collapse capitalism into a communist centrally planned society was destined to fail from the outset. 

Just because people see a barren landscape and that the Law of Fallow Ground was imposed on a culture by a hostile society, such as the levels of Marxism we now see injected into the American economy by radical leftists; the unfortunate answer is that we needed to let this happen so that we could restore greatness to the soil of our economy.  Giving the soil time to rest by allowing other things to grow, mostly garbage has been good because people will appreciate the good stuff when it returns.  And it will return.  Companies like Disney will likely be gone forever, as will many companies that have tried to take advantage of this Fallow Ground period and grow weeds in our gardens.  But once pulled and cleared, many companies won’t be there any longer.  But the values of our culture, shown in all those American Westerns which people worldwide appreciate so much, will return in whatever form they grow into.  And as I told those gunslingers, the values are still desired.  Because communist corporations have tried to plant weeds in our culture, people will tire quickly of their offerings and want a restoration of the good stuff.  So I don’t see all this depletion as permanent.  It’s a trait of the Law of Fallow Ground.  It’s a necessary period that people need to gain an appreciation for what America has produced in the past.  Once our culture makes those things again, people will appreciate it more because now they will have seen the option.  When Zorro was on television for the first time, produced by Disney, people expected a good society that understood why that show was essential and enjoyed.  Now they see the benefits and want more of it in the future.  The lesson is that corporations and communist governments are not in charge.  The market economy is the desires of people and values that most represent them.  And what we see today is just the Law of Fallow Ground, and the good crops from that ground will return. 

Rich Hoffman

The Tyranny of Digital Monitoring: There is no greater threat to freedom than centralized bank’s control over your digital footprint

There have been videos showing a young woman either buying goods at a market, such as a shelf check out, who has a chip in her hand, or the reader is scanning her palm print and using that to approve her transaction in her account.  And she’s smiling and is excited about it, as if it’s the next great thing for the human race.  The belief is that the technology is terrific and can be trusted. We should all put our faith in centralized bankers committed to communism, who will then gain power over us regarding whether we are allowed to have a business transaction.  I have been on the other side of the world more than once, where my account was turned off because someone at the credit card company flagged me for “unusual behavior.” After all, I didn’t notify them of my travels the way they wanted me to.  It’s a real problem putting our lives in the hands of these pinheaded bureaucrats, especially as a cash supply.  Turning off our access to the things we need and converting everything to digital is dangerous.  It might appear convenient, but the goal of the centralized financial institutions and the communist governments behind them, such as the intentions of the World Economic Forum, is to get us hooked on convenience so that they can gain power over us.  Some easy ones that come to mind are calibrations on the stupid smart meters on our homes that can be cranked up to read more usage than is happening, jacking up your price because they tag some ESG requirement onto your bill that you don’t support.  Because the reader is not mechanically driven but is digital, it can be changed at will, just like they want to do with a digital currency, where they can decrease or increase the value of it depending on who is using it. 

I recently had a significant problem with the monopoly company that supplies water to my home.  It’s so bad that I’m about to dig a well and get off the grid.  Whenever you call them, they give you nonsense and act like you are wasting their time.  There is no customer service because they don’t have to; they are a government monopoly, essentially just like Duke Energy is.  I had some $200 water bills because the meter misrepresented my usage.  Since they converted to a digital water meter, it has been a problem and a constant fight.  Technology did not improve my life; it has wasted vast amounts of time talking to stupid people who could care less and has surrendered thoughts to technology.  This is not “smart” technology; it is bringing us tyranny.  It is giving people power over us who don’t deserve it, and they want more of it.  Letting them see what we are doing all the time and trusting them to give us access to things like power, water, or currency, which they can turn off if we don’t behave the way the ruling government wants us to, is a horrendous mistake.  In all the examples I have provided, the honest answer is never to trust technology and to use a more traditional form of exchange, such as in some faraway countries where your credit cards get turned off.  Good ol’ fashion cash is still the best option and is what I used to get out of that situation until the stupid banks in New York figured out that the problem was on their end. 

I get so tired of hearing stories about “national security,” whether it’s China spying on us, Trump taking home souvenirs from his time in the White House, or some justification for giving money to Ukraine for corrupt politicians to money launder their interactions with illegal activity.  Or aliens landing on Earth and threatening to take over the world.  Nothing is more critical to national security than digital currency, smart meters, and centralized control over our digital accounts without other options to provide freedom from companies that suddenly have more power over us than they ever should.  What they did to gain that power, in using Covid as a bioweapon that killed people and harmed many others to steer society in this digital control direction, should be part of a war crimes commission, and people must be prosecuted.  These are people assaulting free people worldwide, and their dangerous partnerships with our representative governments are diabolical and highly illegal.  But most people haven’t caught on to just how bad all this is.  Forget about sending troops off to some faraway place to fight a war that governments told us was important, killing innocent people and saying they are doing it for “freedom” when they are allowing these communist corporations to have so much power over our daily lives, and letting them get away with murder.  No wonder support for military action is declining everywhere.  We can’t trust the government that starts these wars, and we certainly can’t trust them to defend our rights and freedoms from the real enemy, these terrorists in finance who control these companies who then control our digital footprint. 

I always find some alternative to these companies, even the monopolies.  The way to hurt them most is to get off their grid–financial system, power, water, and internet networks.  I can live quite happily without any of their stuff.  I remember life before the internet; the world was much better.  Convenience is not worth surrendering freedom to; that is the deal all these companies want to make with you.  That’s why they want a chip in your hand to complete every transaction, so they can track you with AI and develop an account that gives them ultimate control over you no matter where you are.  And if you don’t behave as they want, they’ll turn you off.  I am grateful that I could live just fine without their stuff.  Camping a lot has shown me that plenty of technology, such as solar-powered generators and water purifiers, can still give you the comforts of modern life without being a part of their digital controls.  I can live a great everyday life in my RV without being a part of any government-controlled grid. I recommend that everyone use that competitive option whenever possible to fight against all this tech tyranny.  The way to hurt them most is to take away their power over you.  There are plenty of options, and you should use them whenever possible.  In truth, this is one of the reasons I have traveled so much in 2023.  I have wanted to be off the internet grid, away from the water supply, and away from all the hidden ESG penalties with Duke Energy and other companies that BlackRock has hijacked to impose climate change standards.  All while a bunch of dumb politicians cheers on some war with Ukraine like some brain-dead seal clapping for a fish.  I like to get away from their grid and read many books not connected to the internet.  It is an excellent vacation to be away from incompetent people who have suddenly been given too much control over our lives with digital monitoring that will eventually be completely controlled by Artificial Intelligence programmed to do the bidding of communist governments like China.  Digital monitoring is the greatest threat to national security, and until people start dealing with it in that regard, they’ll keep getting away with it.

Rich Hoffman

The Rich Hoffman Definition of Good and Evil: How to Make Heaven on Earth and Defeat the Bad Guys

It’s that time again; over the next year or so, many things will make you question life itself and whether or not all this is even worth it.  The temptations of evil are and will be overwhelming, as they always have been, and many people will fail to arrive intact to their eternal satisfactions.  I talk about good and evil a lot, which I am very interested in discussing.  And I always intend to stay true to do good in the world, no matter the temptations.  Yet to do that, you have to have a perfect definition of what evil is and what it isn’t so that the good work of good can be done.  To that point, the old movie The Never Ending Story, I have always thought, did the best job of talking about the nature of evil.  Because without good definitions for things, it is easy to become lost in chaos, and evil proliferates under those conditions.  So, what is it, and why should we not like evil and fight for good?  What’s the purpose of any of it, especially since it’s so hard.  Well, the eater of everything in the movie Never Ending Story was the “Nothing,” sort of an all-encompassing consumer of everything, like a black hole in the imagination.  Something that “doesn’t exist.”  At all.  And the Bible is nearly entirely dedicated to this examination, the fight for good against the temptations of evil.  The pantheon of gods that Yahweh is fighting and trying to save humanity from is quite a vicious struggle that often gets lost after the opening pages of Genesis.  Why was god so furious with Baal and the gang of Mesopotamian deities who inhabited the land of Canaan explicitly?  An even better question is, why should people care if a public school board turns the other way when pedophilia is on the minds of the administrators and other employees?  Or care about the massive crimes of the Biden administration?  Without a good definition of evil, evil grows and consumes everything, which of course, it wants to do.  The only thing that can stop it is righteousness rooted in a desire to do good.  And the first thing evil does to destroy good is to destroy the definitions of goodness, which is undoubtedly the problem of our modern times.  But to put it simply, evil cannot exist without good to suck off of for its own sustenance.  In the beginning, there was no evil.  Evil only arrives as a byproduct of free will and the decisions of thought to produce or destroy.  Something has to exist first to have any consideration, so evil will always be a parasite of good.  Not an entity onto itself. 

So I’m happy to provide the Rich Hoffman definitions of evil because it works and will do quite a lot to destroy evil in the world, which is a hobby of mine.  I don’t think I enjoy anything more than destroying evil.  I do sincerely love it.  I wouldn’t want to do anything else.  But that is because of my definitions of good and evil and the nature of evil.  So essentially, going back to the Book of Genesis, God said let there be light, so there was, and our story begins.  Something was created, and it was good.  Good, by definition, is a value judgment given to something that is created.  The intentions of the powers of creation in human culture could be said to be good.  Now relative to other people, they may not like the product or have different opinions on its value.  But in essence, creating something with the imagination of human intellect, we could say, is to mimic the acts of God at the beginning of creation, and the universe views the process as “good.”  Evil is committed when something attempts to undo that creation or hinder that creative process.  Evil is all about destruction; it is the anti-creative force.  Something that tries to destroy that which is created. 

The ultimate form of evil in the world is laziness.  Someone who doesn’t want to create and desires to destroy the creations of others because they don’t want to live up to a high measure set by the excellent work of others.  To me, it is evil to do bad work or not work at all because they deny the world the acts of creation from the human intellect.  Drug use is wrong because it seeks to blunt the effects of human thought.  Financial scams are bad because they seek productive enterprise rewards without the actual effort of wealth creation.  And AI is wrong because it seeks to think for people who otherwise should be performing the work of a feeling being.  When someone wants to cheat because they are too lazy to do something, under my definition, they are committing evil because they don’t want to do the work of thinking.  And at the most primal stage of existence, the review was the purpose of creating human beings in God’s image.  We were meant to do on earth what was in heaven.  We were told to make heaven in the world and expand God’s kingdom.  The fall in the Garden of Eden was a tragedy more about the nature of free will than what the temptations of a snake could provide through eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  To do so was to be like the Gods, and that was not the point; the various forces that conspired to work against Yahweh in the Divine Council since before the beginning of time itself, which was a creation in and of itself to the excellent work of good in the universe, against the forces of nothingness too lazy to do anything else but consume the world around them for their sustenance.  Adam and Eve were supposed to know better and maintain heaven on earth to continue good.

With that definition in mind, then why am I against public schools?  Isn’t that trying to destroy something made by the government to educate children?  That is the mask of evil in how it tries to contort reality.  Public schools are designed to eliminate the mind of children and make their natural ambitions toward goodness unachievable, and, hinders their creative process making them agents of evil by the time they grow up.  Which I consider reprehensible.  And along that line of thought, why should we care about pedophilia, especially in public schools?  It is a very evil thing to do to a new and growing mind to rob it of its individual will toward goodness, to grow up to be productive and creative, and to expand the fruitful nature of the universe through heavenly output.  A ruined person in the form of an adult who has made many mistakes in their life has no right to rob a young person of their full potential.  Evil has no right to destroy the efforts of creation from the mind of the good. Suitable as a product might be relative to the beholder, but the process itself is good by the needs of an ever-expanding universe and is the point of all existence.  And the lazy way out of a troubled life is to consume from others what they couldn’t do for themselves, either by stealing virtue or innocence before a mind is fully formed and can act on its own accord.  That is why pedophilia is evil, public schools are wrong, drug dealers are horrendously bad, and a lazy employee is detrimental to all existence.  That is why we should all fight for good and destroy evil wherever it presents itself.  Then, of course, the world will be a much better place.

Rich Hoffman

Yes, My Wife and I Have Been Married for more than 35 Years: Danger is the key to happiness

On a lighter note, it has come up almost every day since the Nancy Nix fundraiser on Friday, August 4th.  Yes, it’s true; my wife and I have been married for 35 years.  It was at that event because I was sitting right next to the stage where some excellent comedians were performing next to my wife where I was the set-up for a joke that personal details about my life would be discussed in public.  I knew as I sat in a room full of people that I would be the subject of their comedy acts, but that was part of the fun.  After all, I am shy and like to keep a low profile, which helps me come out of my shell a bit.  So the comedian asked me how long my wife and I had been married, assuming we were much younger than we were.  He was working on a joke that poked fun at our conservative nature.  My wife is attractive, and it’s always an assumption that people make when they meet us in person that there must be some interesting story and that premarital sex would likely be involved.  That’s where the comedian was going with the line of questioning.  He asked how long we had been married.  I told him 35 years.  There was a bit of a gasp from the audience and in his face because it blew his set-up.  People don’t think we are that old, but we are.  And the following line of questioning was that we have kids in their 30s, which is also unusual.  Because his joke required us to have children older than our marriage, and in our case, that just wasn’t possible.  So to recover from this mild disappointment, he asked me if we ever argue, assuming that I would say the typical thing for a long-standing marriage, that we get along great and love each other emphatically.  My response was that we argue daily, which drew a laugh because everyone assumes conflict is destructive for a marriage.  But it’s the only way I can have a relationship with anybody, especially a wife. 

Since that nice fundraiser, I have been asked about the length of our marriage and whether it was true that my wife and I argue daily or if it was all just a joke from many of the people there.  No, it’s true; we have been married for 35 years and argue daily.  People wrongly assume that getting along is how you have a good marriage, and spicy conversation is the key, at least for me.  I like to fight; I will fight about anything, anywhere, about anything.  Peace is boring to me.  I would be mind numb if there was no conflict, so for me, conflict is a heavenly device, and the more conflict there is in my life, the happier I am.  However, arguing with someone doesn’t mean that you don’t love them.  It means you care for them; otherwise, you wouldn’t try to convince them of your opinion.  If you didn’t love or care for them, you likely wouldn’t want to convince them over to your position.  In the case of a marriage, through an argument.  And I can say honestly that my wife and I have argued over something passionately nearly every day of those 35 years and likely will for another 30 years.  The reason is that I am a very volatile personality.  And she is a very cautious person.  She gets what she doesn’t naturally have in me: a constant presence of danger and instability.  In her, I get someone to argue with.  It’s a recipe for a great relationship. 

I could tell stories from now until the end of time on a few examples, but a few that come to mind for context is one recently where we were in the mountains of Idaho driving down into Utah from a very high elevation with our RV in tow.  The wind was gusting so severely that there were cautions about going in it.  So we had our RV blowing behind us like a giant sail that felt like it would drag us right off the mountain.  We had much of our family in the car, four adults and a few children, and a dog, and there were very few guard rails.  A wrong move, and we could have easily been swept over a thousand-foot drop to the river below.  My wife was white-knuckling any handhold she could grab and was terrified with each wind gust.  She wanted me to stop immediately and wait out the wind, which would not happen soon.  We were in the middle of nowhere, and going backward was just as dangerous as going forward.  So I did what I did in most of those situations: I went faster and more aggressively and enjoyed the whole thing immensely.  We had another such incident just a year before, where we were outrunning an incoming snowstorm coming out of Colorado into New Mexico.  And the roads were covered with snow and ice drifting across the desert.  It was the same situation; we were hauling our RV at a high rate of speed, trying to outrun the storm after driving 13 straight hours to Roswell, New Mexico.  She wanted me to stop because we were sliding all over the road, and I had to go fast to outrun the cumulous cloud above us that was gaining steam from the setting sun.  It was night, and the lack of a sun fueled the storm into a monstrosity of more cold air, and it was moving across the desert at over 80 miles per hour.  She was furious with me, and I had a giant smile.  Those are what keep marriages together for 35 years. 

I would be bored out of my mind without experiences like that, and truthfully, she loves having those experiences with me.  I can only tell you how happy she was when we arrived in Roswell, New Mexico alive, or Vernal, Utah, with all our family safe after that scary trip on the mountain tops at over 6000 feet.  Surviving those kinds of things make the microwave popcorn taste a lot better when you get to camp and enjoy the luxuries of home in some distant place, in a favorite foldout chair.  And that’s also why we sat right next to the stage at that comedy event.  Being safe is not fun for me.  And if not for me, my wife would not push herself to expand her boundaries of comfort.  She is rarely comfortable with how I do things, but if she didn’t grab on like she does, cursing at me and all, there are a lot of crazy stories she wouldn’t have in life that have made our life together very interesting.  I could tell of one from Paris recently that is very funny, and it involved a bicycle and a few more of my kids as we were trying to catch a train.  We still joke about it at Thanksgiving dinner, which makes for an exciting life.  And while people make assumptions about safety being the root cause of happiness, I can report the opposite as accurate.  Danger is the best thing for a long marriage; to maintain a long one, comfort zones must be pushed to have a healthy relationship.  And zest is undoubtedly the key ingredient to frequent arguments.  Docile compliance would be disastrous.  Arguing is very beneficial in almost all circumstances in all parts of a life, marriages especially.

Rich Hoffman

It’s Not About Unity in the Community or the Power of a Vocal Minority: But entirely a standard of right and wrong

This will be a nice yard sign for Trump supporters who can’t wait for next year to vote for, or against some anti-American political enemy.

Because I, like many people involved, I must at least provide fair warning. Enjoying people is one thing; agreeing with them is an entirely different matter. This was grotesquely obvious while driving by Lakota West in West Chester, Ohio, on August 8th, 2023, where the special election was a significant focus. As far as the eye could see from the road were Vote No signs, a blatant reminder that the progressive government school there is a factory of liberal politics intent to convert confiscated wealth from property owners and to turn it into Democrat activism. And many Republican-leaning people have been suckered into the game, even to support it against conservative, traditional values. Even on issues like Issue 1, which would have made it more difficult to change the Ohio Constitution, Lakota schools are aggressive in favor of change. That’s the purpose of their existence, to change our traditional American culture into some monstrosity of liberalism. And that election day was just a reminder of that sentiment and the genuine catastrophe of the upcoming fall election in November. Lynda O’Conner is up for re-election, and many people close to the matter have been hoping that she wouldn’t run because the opposition against her is on a crusade that has not been seen at Lakota in all the years of its existence. Before things get too messy here, I would call to mind a few monumental memories of the past, such as when the Tea Party had to take a stand against John Kasich after he turned into a progressive after his loss with the state labor unions. They turned him into a progressive pretzel, and many of us worked hard to destroy him because we had to. In a few short years, you don’t see him around anymore. And many of the people who are now pushing for Lynda O’Conner to be re-elected this fall, after all that’s happened, went after Speaker of the House John Boehner and essentially knocked him out of the Republican Party because he was too much of a RINO.

The plan is for these to be everywhere

It’s an old game; we all get it. Friendships are made with people who are politically dangerous so that they can be controlled and perhaps worked against their original positions. And that certainly has been the case with the Butler County Republican Party. It’s always tempting to be invited to the cool kids’ table just so they can control you, not because they really like you. I just spoke about an excellent event with Nancy Nix where some of us have had some cantankerous hostilities toward each other. But at that event, we put a lot of that aside and had a nice evening together and enjoyed the comedians who were performing. It was a nice story. But all that is about to go sideways with Lynda O’Conner, which is fine. But the belief that friendships and private meetings would turn the resistance against her into captured assets of compliance with party sentiments was ill-advised and has only stirred up the hornet’s nest. The people involved with this next generation’s fight against the progressive objectives of Lakota schools will not be enamored with the shiny keys of friendship and gaining a seat at the table with the cool kids of power. The people I know standing against Lynda O’Conner for this upcoming election have a moral problem with her. It goes far beyond even calling her a RINO. They are not interested in Unity for the Community or coming together as a Republican party; this is all about right and wrong and standing up to the intrusions of a progressive political machine that works against conservative values in every way possible. And the passion is much greater than in those days of Governor Kasich and John Boehner. Many of the people involved in those old battles are now part of the cool kid’s club, and they like it, and they are supporting Lynda for the upcoming election and have been whispering in her ear and thinking that little secret meetings and emails of consensus building might work as it had on them in the past. I heard about some of these attempts while driving by Lakota West on that August election day, and I feel compelled to warn everyone that this is different, and there will be severe brand damage in the aftermath. This is unlike anything yet experienced in politics, which says a lot. And I don’t think many people understand.

There is a really graphic version of this one that will be used later

The advice that I have been giving to people is that this is a throw-away election. If a new school board will not work with a three to two majority to eliminate excessive administrators to save runaway cost losses at the government schools, then what’s the point of any of it? Cutting 20 or 30 equity and inclusion administrative hires could save many millions of dollars, which Lakota needs to do. But there are a lot of soft-shelled tacos out there, some in the GOP who would be running as Democrats if it wasn’t Butler County who want to feel good about themselves by supporting a big government school. The trans issue has been a challenge forcing people’s real politics to emerge along those lines. I would say that because of the way everyone has treated Darbi Boddy as a school board member to let them choke on it. Let the rope go and let Lakota destroy itself; let the liberals have their way. Let them do what Biden has done to the country because then and only then will people wake up. The campaign to fight them will become more apparent when people see what they are about and can’t focus their union efforts of progressivism against someone like Darbi. And for the soft-shelled types who want to support Lakota under Lynda’s leadership, the tax levy they have in mind will change their sentiments quickly. And we’ll be back to fighting tax increases instead of legitimately trying to control the costs.

The people I have been talking to who are thinking of running and don’t think they have much of a chance, I have told them the same thing I’ve said to Lynda in the past. The union threshold is around 7000 voters. That is a baked-in number. If you want to beat them, you must get over 8000 voters, however possible. Lynda hopes to blend that a bit with GOP support, and enough RINO types are willing to cross that line because they don’t want more of a fight than what we have seen so far with Darbi on the board. Yet Lynda’s role against Darbi has woken up something new in the Lakota school district that goes far beyond typical political disagreements. Something that traditional politics has no way of dealing with. This is a battle over ethics and the essence of right and wrong, and the way Lynda handled the superintendent issue and the protection of children at Lakota is a deeply emotional issue that there is no compromise on. This isn’t like the days when the Tea Party wanted John Boehner out, and a more Tea Party type like Warren Davidson was put in, and everyone shook hands and ate a sandwich together. This is more of a civil war, casualties included. Many Lyin’ Lynda types have been waiting for this opportunity, and it’s only fair to warn everyone involved. Because I generally like everyone involved. But right and wrong are not negotiable. That’s certainly always been my position. If people wanted to be friends, okay, I’ve been willing. But I’ve never been willing to compromise right and wrong as determined by conservative, Republican politics. I’ve never been some dope-smoking libertarian. I’ve always been a traditional Republican party supporter. However, some of this new generation are perfectly willing to abandon any pretense of friendship to defend traditional, conservative values. And they are far more interested in doing what is suitable than compromising with what’s wrong to have unity in the community and an intact Republican party. And I provide that warning with sincerity for the good things in the past that have been done and the good memory of them.

These are the kind of teachers Lynda, Julie and Doug want teaching your kids at Lakota. Here is a recently hired teacher at Endeavor Elementary

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

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The Joke Joe Biden Is: America’s enemies are laughing at us

What did anybody expect? I’ve been talking about the corruption of Joe Biden since he was vice president.  Even longer than that, the Democrats have run their party like a mob, and this Biden term is the culmination of all those years of taking advantage of good, regular people.  So nobody should be surprised by what we are learning about Joe Biden now.  His family has been getting rich off selling access to the many political offices he has held over the years.  And now, all the bad guys are cheering him on because every day he is in office is another day that the bar is lowered for future expectations.  And if you hate America, which most of the world does, because of the freedoms we expect to have, you love Joe Biden because he makes a fool of our country by holding an important position.  But the various news outlets seem perplexed with Joe Biden, with the level of corruption that is coming unraveled.  Well, news flash, Joe Biden is not the only one.  He is normal for members of the House and Senate.  Joe Biden has been doing what most of them do, revealed for years in Peter Schweizer’s books, such as one of his most recent, Red Handed.  In Biden’s case, as in Mitch McConnell’s, selling their offices has been easy money.  It has been a problem for a long time, and now people are learning what the rest of us have always known, and the difficulty is figuring out what to do about it.  Because there is so much to do something about.  When we talk about the government being filled with criminals, we aren’t making inflammatory statements but truthful ones rooted in a real challenge.

From the perspective of a criminal, Joe Biden is a perfect president because his very existence is undoing our society of law and order.  For the communists worldwide who want to see the American Constitution and Bill of Rights eradicated, which is undoubtedly an objective of the United Nations, Joe Biden makes a mockery of America in ways they have always fantasized about.  And what’s sad about it is that Biden was put in place with election fraud and an apparent exertion of power to show us that we were not in control of our elections or political system.  Biden was the biggest fool they could have given to us too, and they laugh about it each time Biden falls down the stairs and gets caught eating ice cream looking like some oblivious old man who can’t find his car.  Or he stumbles through a speech where nobody can hear him.  Their statement is essentially a dunce cap, “This is the leader of the free world?  Consider yourselves conquered.”  I knew in the 90s, and I used to write about it back then, that when Bill Clinton lowered the bar to what we expect from a president, a door was being opened for the destruction of America.  It started with “I didn’t inhale, and I did not have sex with that woman” to the Biden crime family openly selling the office of the presidency to China, which is a proven fact at this point, three years into his first term.  It was obvious where all this was headed, so it’s unsurprising.  Even though many of the Beltway types who want to think the gravy train will go on forever seem surprised.  All this was bound to happen once we let our guard down with Clinton. 

I always held it against Ronald Reagan that he frequently had raunchy jokes behind the scenes that I thought were inappropriate for anybody in the Executive Office, and he disappointed me.  So all this we are seeing now is unfathomable.  But the good news is that we don’t have leaders in America.  Just because Joe Biden was put into office doesn’t mean that all of America will follow him into oblivion.  And that is something the rest of the world hasn’t figured out about us.  We are not defined by “leaders” in America.  Just because Joe Biden is an apparent criminal sell-out, America doesn’t rally behind him, just as America hasn’t rallied behind the loser Women’s Soccer Team.  Americans like winners, and Joe Biden is not one.  So people are not supportive of Joe Biden.  In America, we like winners; they have to earn the right to represent us through merit.  That is the key to our culture; you must have respect in America.  You are not given consideration just because of a title.  So when hostile forces gave Joe Biden the presidency to America, he didn’t just win over 300 million people’s support.  That is how things work in China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and other communist, socialist, and totalitarian countries worldwide.  But not in America.  People must earn the right to represent Americans.  We don’t have leaders, and if that leader is corrupted and made a fool of, Americans will quickly divorce themselves from that person.  Which then leaves them oddly displaced.  The general view of Washington D.C. is not supportive, and that’s how most Americans feel about their politicians.  But it doesn’t mean to them that their country is a disaster either.  Americans do not connect their success with the success of their politicians. 

That is good because the head of America is not so easily cut off.  But it also allows people like Biden and many other politicians to get away with massive crimes because people would rather not pay attention to their actions.  The political system in America is so little respected that people generally tune them out, which is precisely why we have the mess we do have.  The enemies of America are happy with this result. It prevents good management of the country’s resources because people aren’t paying attention.  So, the worse news about Joe Biden, the more Americans tune out politics and allow the criminals to loot openly off the system.  Even though America can live well without its political class, it still makes a condition where massive crimes can be committed because nobody wants to consider them.  In such a climate, it is no wonder we have criminals in many of these elected positions.  The mob doesn’t have to operate in the darkness anymore.  There is far more easy money and crime to enjoy in politics.  While most people are disgusted by the process, as they turn away from the management of their country, it leaves the eyes off the real crimes that occur with increasing frequency, climaxing with Joe Biden and his fellow government conspirators.  And because people aren’t paying close attention, it makes them vulnerable to the many lies told to the American people to keep them asleep.  The result is what we see in American politics, a joke of a system filled with a criminal class that has made us look bad on the world stage, much to the delight of our enemies.  And you better believe it; we have enemies, lots of them.  And Joe Biden is their kind of guy.  Then as long as we put up with these criminals in government, we are sure to get more of them and have the problems that we do, because they know that the public isn’t watching them. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Larry Fink: The President of the World and power of the new country, BlackRock–as created by the Fed

Here’s the problem with the Federal Reserve, and it goes back to 1913, when after many attempts at centralized banking, the Fed was created to handle monetary policy.  And it hasn’t been an experiment that worked, it simply ushered in a communist approach to banking that was aligned with a progressive invasion of the United States at the turn of the last century, and essentially the policy of the Fed has been to cover up its many mistakes over that entire duration.  I am not so much of an anti-Fed guy.  I think a country needs to manage its money supply.  But letting the banks form a partnership with the government has been disastrous, and the ultimate form of that destruction was in the creation of Larry Fink, the most dangerous man in the world.  Larry Fink would be nobody if not for the Fed.  Jerome Powell, Janet Yellen, and Ben Bernanke used reckless quantitative easing to print endless amounts of money and pour it into Wall Street, where people like Fink would flow it into the economy.  And the net result of that scandalous activity has made BlackRock, the company Larry Fink manages that controls around a ten trillion dollars of assets, the most politically active company in the world, and Larry Fink is far more powerful than an American president, even to the point where this unregulated power can then control elections and policy that superseded the American constitution in dangerous ways.  By printing phony money and giving it to people like Fink to manage, the Fed gave the government power it never would have had otherwise, and now the results are out of control.  Most of the bad things we are seeing now in the political world are because of Larry Fink, his connection to the World Economic Forum, and a leftist radicalism that is being imposed on people that they would never vote for. 

People are starting to get it when these are the discussions on the Joe Rogan podcast, which discussed this topic recently.  People are now seeing how out of control this Larry Fink thing is.  Larry Fink, because of BlackRock and the way the Fed made it powerful with Modern Monetary Theory, and that it now manages the money in China, as the only money manager that can do so, is essentially the president of the world, ruling behind the scenes and imposing politics that is far removed from any representative form of government.  This was a hostile takeover using Larry Fink as the figurehead to do what people like Napolean, or Genghis Kahn, the legendary figure in history, known for his conquests and his role in founding the Mongol Empire. He was a skilled warrior and a brilliant strategist, and his military campaigns changed the course of history. Despite his reputation as a ruthless conqueror, Genghis Kahn is still remembered as one of the most influential figures in world history. Alexander the Great similarly comes to mind.  Larry Fink is right there with the rest of them. Still, he was not a warrior; he was a person willing to carry the water of the shadow government running behind the Fed. This corporate alliance sought to take power in the world, and they made their move by propping up Larry to be that new world conqueror.    

And you conquer this new world by not taking over countries.  You ignore the politics of nations, take away the people’s will, and take control of where they work, how they spend their money, and on what.  Larry wanted to be in politics during college and just happened to be in a position to acquire wealth through Wall Street.  He only had success once he was willing to partner with the Fed after the housing collapse of 2008.  But what risk was there really when the Fed was ready to print infinite amounts of wealth and pump it into Wall Street through Larry and his friends?  The writing is certainly on the wall with this one, much more dramatic than in Nebuchadnezzar’s time, the attackers planned the downfall of America, and the plan was to cover it all up before people realized it with Central Bank Digital Currency.  It was a different kind of war which Fink has been talking about in his letters to CEOs, such as the one in 2022, “In consultation with our stakeholders, BlackRock has also joined the global effort to isolate Russia from financial markets, the ramifications of this war are not limited to Eastern Europe, they are layered on top of a pandemic that has already had profound effects on political, economic, and social trends.  The impact will reverberate for decades to come in ways we can’t yet predict.”  Then ultimately, Fink finished up his address by saying, “As I wrote in my letter to CEOs earlier this year, (2022) access to capital markets is a privilege, not a right.  And following Russia’s invasion, we saw how the private sector quickly terminated long-standing business and investment relationships” to implement political objectives.  I’ve read all of Larry’s dumb letters to CEOs each year and always thought of him as a fool.  But he’s a very politically active fool who was given the power of money through fake monetary Fed policy to take global military power through the private sector to bypass the actions of war generally regulated to countries to play out. 

That is why Larry Fink, the very left-leaning political activist that nobody voted for, is directly connected to the radical Marxist activism of the World Economic Forum and was given the power by the Fed, which is also connected to the World Economic Forum, and strategies by China for global communism is the most dangerous person in the world.  He now manages most of our 401K plans and conquers us by capturing wealth, part of his leftist ideology, whether we like it or not.  And now that BlackRock is the majority shareholder of most American corporations, he has taken away the average shareholder values and converted them to ESG-driven stakeholder values.  And at some point, people will be furious at Larry Fink and the Fed.  But they hope that before people figure out what they have been doing, America will be on a digital dollar, and they can hide their scam behind the push of a button where a centralized authority will control all value for all money.  So while the world looks at the conflict in Ukraine, the potential conflict in Taiwan by China, or the latest missile flight in North Korea, the real fight has been by BlackRock, led by Larry Fink, to take over the world’s supply of money, and to place it in the hands of the real threat in the world, the World Economic Forum.  And because we are all a little complicit in the action because of our money management, we tend not to look at it in favor of a more classic interpretation of war.  But those wars no longer matter.  The real fight is with finance, who controls it.  Larry Fink is now more powerful than any president in the world, and he knows it.  But he didn’t get that way from well-fought battles as a master strategist.  But because he was willing to be the bag man for the Fed, which is a power they never should have had in the first place. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Fed’s Plans for a CBDC: It’s the entire reason for the Biden presidency, and they are close

I love Jackson Hole, Wyoming; I spent some time there recently with my family.  It’s where the Fed gets together with bankers from all over the world, it’s the bean counter version of Davos, and it’s something I have paid attention to for a long time.  It’s also where one of my favorite movies, Every Which Way You Can, was filled.  While there, I had to visit all the filming locations for the big fight at the movie’s end.  And it is there that my daughter and I like to get new cowboy hats; there is an exceptional store on the square that is fantastic.  But it is there that I wanted a hat because I wanted to think about the notion that much of the world’s problems are created through monetary policy, and it’s a reminder that Jackson Hole, as lovely as it is, brings out the most pretentious in these stiff bankers, and aligns them with all the horrendous out-of-touchness that is typical at the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos.  Smart, stiff people suddenly surrounded by beautiful mountains who start to think of themselves as the gods from Mt. Olympus.  Then suddenly, they lose track of reality and become the kind of tyrants people scream “freedom” from.  But that doesn’t make Jackson, Wyoming, a bad place because people go there and create bad monetary policy.  I see it as a place of adventure, and during that most recent trip, I pulled my RV through the McDonald’s drive-thru to get my grandchildren some chicken nuggets before heading south into Utah for the next leg of our journey, which caused quite a stir.  They had never seen anybody do something like that, which maybe is the actual message. Perhaps they should because a bit of managed recklessness is essential to significant economies and avoids disastrous discussions about the Fed proposal of a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency)

Of course, the Fed wants to abuse its power, most institutions find those temptations too seductive, and there will never be a group of people who handles too much responsibility well.  That doesn’t mean you never have groups of people with massive responsibilities, it just means that you can never allow them to have too much power, and that is what all central bankers are looking for in the world, more security for them and less freedom for you.  It’s also why I say that the election fraud was so bad in 2020 because many financial forces aligned with the World Economic Forum are looking for stability that the Trump economy was set not to provide for them.  So they conspired together to commit the most significant election fraud in the history of the world, and they did it essentially to make a CBDC in America possible. (Central Bank Digital Currency) The Fed is already practicing Modern Monetary Theory, so it’s all on the table with a CBDC to control every aspect of our lives. That’s the plan and has been the plan coming up every August at these Fed meetings in Jackson Hole for a long time now. Suppose you know anything about those timid types who desire with all their hearts some centralized stability in global communism. In that case, you can understand why they cheat in elections, especially in 2020. They will do anything to win again and protect their worldview. ANYTHING!  The current status of Central Bank Digital Currency is that many central banks around the world are exploring the possibility of creating their digital currencies. The goal is to provide a secure and efficient way of conducting transactions while maintaining control over monetary policy. Some countries, such as China, have already begun testing their digital currencies. However, many questions and concerns still surround implementing CBDCs, including privacy, security, and financial stability. It will be interesting to see how this technology develops and how it will impact the global economic landscape in the future.

Joe Biden was put in place in 2020 over President Trump to establish a CBDC during his term.  The first term would set up the conditions; the second would get it done.  This is the one world currency discussed and why the World Economic Forum wants to go to a cashless society.  Most everything the radical leftists in the world, who now run many of these central banks complete with ESG scores as their primary drivers, is to impose a China model, communist-driven, CBDC into the American economy, which will then give complete control of governments over people by changing values of money with the push of the button.  This is why Biden’s radical communist party has no concern whatsoever about the debt and why Modern Monetary Theory, which they deny they know anything about, is such a lucrative strategy for them.  They can wipe away debt with the push of a button because the value is determined by those controlling money, not the actual production provided by economic activity.  And suppose it’s a one-world currency controlled by the influences of the World Economic Forum, which already controls the Federal Reserve in the United States. In that case, nothing can stop them from completely dominating the world’s money supply.  That is the end game that the Fed is talking about this year in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as they look at the lovely mountains and sip lattes early in the morning as they watch elk cross the street.  Isn’t nature so beautiful?  It makes you want to impose ESG scores on banks to fulfill fake climate change criteria to advance the concept of a CBDC into a Liberal World Order. 

It is with a CBDC that the Biden administration hopes to disconnect people from their lives by turning them off entirely from economic activity.  If the only currency available is those controlled by corrupt centralized governments, people will have no choice but to capitulate.  That is how it is in China increasingly, and the Biden administration is drooling over the prospects in the United States.  They couldn’t quite get it done fast enough to be in Biden’s first term, so they plan to do it in the second if he lives long enough.  But that is why they want a brain-dead stooge in the White House.  For them, Kamala Harris will do just fine.  All she has to do is sign where they tell her to.  They could care less about anything else because if they control the money, they control all of society.  If you don’t like it, they don’t care.  They can turn you off at the gas pump with the flick of a button.  They can steal all your savings.  Take your home if you don’t vote how they want you to.  And life as we know it will then be controlled by the lunatics at Davos because of the Fed policies set at Jackson Hole every August, as they have been working toward this CBDC concept.  And yes, it’s every bit as bad and more than you can imagine.  Yet they think nobody will catch them on it until it’s too late, which has already blown up in their face.  That means that this year’s trip to Jackson Hole by the global bankers, especially those directly connected to the Fed, is to do damage control.  Not to present the status as much as how to keep it alive through this next election cycle and the threat to them of another Trump term.  Good for us, bad for them.  Very bad.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

It’s a Wonderful Life in Butler County, Ohio: Because Nancy Nix is in it

I don’t usually talk about the social life that goes on at fundraisers for the GOP, but there were so many interesting stories at the latest Nancy Nix event at the Elks Club in Hamilton, Ohio, in Liberty Township. But there was a moment of absolute truth that was worth recognition. At this event, some hilarious comedians told great jokes that made the audience laugh hard. But hidden in those exchanges was talk about the movie It’s a Wonderful Life that was applied to the life of Nancy Nix and was very accurate. Like all comedy, the truest things are often the funniest because of their roots in the things many people hope to remain secret. But in talking about them in a comic setting, the mass exposure to truth sets off the relief valve, and people bond due to the shared experience. And ironically, then, while people are sharing those unique moments of honesty, it opens the door to profound truths, and that was the comparison of Nancy Nix to the character from that excellent Christmas movie to George Baily, the honest banker from the fictional town of Bedford Falls. Nancy is now the auditor for Butler County, Ohio, as she has been the treasurer for many years. And the people in the room at her fundraiser were all influencers to a vast degree, and it was a moment where your life flashes in front of everyone, and a potent truth becomes apparent, what would the world be like without you and in the case of Nancy, how much better is Butler County, Ohio because she is in it. And the answer is cinematically evident in the ways that happy endings to movies are most hoped for. Only this was reality.

Things have been contentious in the Butler County Republican Party this past year. You can tell that without a Republican in the White House to set the temperature in the room of politics; people have drifted. When Trump was president, more Republicans were unified toward an America First agenda than they have been in the year of indictments, now that Covid has been over and another election year was coming up. Biden has been a massive but predictable failure, and Republicans, through federal, state, and local elections, were finding themselves lost a bit, and there have been some significant disagreements. There was nothing so wrong that they couldn’t shake hands at the next event, such as the Nancy Nix fundraiser. But some of them were very serious and contentious within local party politics. And in some cases, there were very emotional disagreements, politics as a blood sport was messy, and people were hurt in the process, which brings up the entire problem of whether or not people should even get along if they’ve done terrible things to each other. Is it even honest, moral, or proper to think such things? In many ways, the problems that George Baily had at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, the entire premise of the movie was that he wanted to commit suicide because he was being crushed by the immense evil in the world, and his good sensibilities just couldn’t hold up to the pressure. For a dramatic comedy, that is a severe way to start or end the movie. And those same themes were undoubtedly in the air at Nancy’s fundraiser. What was the purpose of party politics if so many people disagreed with each other within their party? Was it more important to be authentic to your beliefs or to find a way to get along?

Ironically, the solution to George Baily’s condition was to see how the world would be without him, to be shown how much his impact on his community was better because he was in it.  And if he had committed suicide, so many lives would fall apart, and much evil would be unleashed.  But authentically, that was what happened at the fundraiser for Nancy Nix; through the comedy of some very talented people, the life of Nancy Nix was put into a sharp focus by how the room had united behind her, and people put aside their differences, if just for a few hours because she is a genuinely good person who makes Butler County so much better. After all, she is in it.  And the comedy of the evening was essentially a celebration of her life, even if moment to moment it doesn’t feel like it, or it doesn’t seem as though anybody ever cares to do the right thing.  When someone like Nancy Nix is being celebrated, it all comes into focus, and the best in people finds its way to the surface.  And the world is indeed a much better place.  It is a wonderful life, and when many talented people find focus through friendships, it makes life better for everyone else, especially Butler County. 

I enjoyed talking to some people I hadn’t seen in a while, primarily because of all the contentious issues.  I stay pretty busy anyway, and my wife and I have been traveling for most of the summer.  So it was good to see so many people again in one place and to see them generally happy and unified.  That is what politics is all about, managing community resources and nothing more.  All the personal needs don’t mean anything because the entire effort is about ensuring people get what they need out of government.  It gets complicated because politics is a popularity contest, and you have to raise money, work with other people, and find a way to work with others who are all doing the same things.  Maintaining authenticity can be difficult under the best circumstances, so I’m pretty forgiving of mistakes because there is often so much pressure, and things go wrong.  But often, good intent does improve the world positively for people in general.  And I couldn’t think of anybody in that room, which is most of the major players of Butler County, who weren’t doing what they did with the best of intent, from their perspective.  When we talk about the path to Hell being paved with good intentions, that is often how everyone arrives there.  But what prevents hell from happening is when those good intentions are focused behind the efforts of a genuinely good person, such as Nancy Nix.  And she is the real deal.  Whatever preferences other people have, like in the famous Jimmy Stewart movie, their efforts are made better when a good person is the glue that holds them all together.  And that is the role Nancy Nix has in Butler County politics.  It’s why Butler County is one of the best Republican Parties in the nation and continues to do great work for the people who vote.  Butler County has many talents, which is always apparent when they find themselves in one place together.  The difference in leadership is when it becomes evident that Nancy Nix, like the fictional character of George Baily, is not such a fantasy but a reality in Butler County after all.  And sometimes, we do get happy endings, and everyone is better for it, which was evident at the Nancy Nix fundraiser.  We have much to be proud of regarding the Butler County Republican Party and that life is worth living, rather than jumping off a bridge because it doesn’t always feel that way.  

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business