Category: Education

Defending Alex Jones: The stageplay that hides the many crimes of the Administrative State

No matter what someone might think of Alex Jones and his Infowars broadcasts, he continues to be the example that the administrative state uses to enforce their vision for policy control. We saw it clearly when he was banned from YouTube a number of years ago. What followed after that was shocking to many, but Alex Jones saw the strategy first. And of course, in this crazy trial where supposedly Sandy Hook victims from that terrible school shooting are allowed to seek financial compensation for how they feel about what Alex Jones said about the case, which was essentially that it was a school shooting scripted by government characters designed to advance changes in social sentiment toward guns. For that belief and his broadcast of it to others, we are supposed to clap and cheer that the court and jury are awarding to those victims millions and millions of dollars of confiscated wealth from Jones as punishment for not believing in the official narrative issued by the government about the tragedy of the story. It’s a clear violation of 1st Amendment protections, but the calculation is that nobody in their right mind would defend Alex Jones for his preposterously inflated statements. Everyone, including Jones, can agree that Sandy Hook was a tragic school shooting. But the beliefs of what should happen as a result of that school shooting have been wide-ranging, and obviously, the characters who are behind the school shooting with direct complicity needed a certain kind of narrative to hit the public so that control of that public can be maintained, unimpeded by people like Jones.

Like many people who find themselves in these crooked courts these days, I like Alex Jones. I think his show is valuable in asking questions that should be asked in a free society. But obviously, from the administrative state perspective, and this is undoubtedly the case with Warroom with Steve Bannon as well, questioning authority was never in the plan of these new globalist insurgents. I say new because Americans aren’t very familiar with them. Up until Covid came along, Americans only knew about these types of people from Alex Jones broadcasts, and I would say without insulting him that Jones is just an ordinary guy uniquely looking at the world and asking questions the way a typical person who attends demolition derbies, and flea markets might. Alex Jones represents how many people think about things, which is the key to his success over the years. That is also why he’s a target because the administrative state wants to show that Alex Jones can be taken down, and so can anybody else.   The whole point of the trial, which is the front page news of every outlet in the world presently, is to demonstrate that a rigged court could destroy Jones and his Infowars, and there was nothing that could be done about it. Yet when Jones talks about the court being rigged, the deck is so stacked against him that much of what he says comes out sounding like a lunatic. Because nobody can coordinate the way he suggests, people just aren’t that smart. Jones always misses the root cause of the conspiracies because he often gets soaked up in what happens in the world, not so much in why. But because of this case, I think it’s probably time to get into the details of who these administrative state people really are and why they are so dangerous. And how America was formed to eliminate them from the world stage. 

Alex Jones often touches on many of these demonic and cryptic characters, and his analysis can be funny, entertaining, and boisterously over the top. I enjoy his broadcasts, but they often do not get to the details I like to deal with. But if he were like that, the show’s entertainment value would disappear, and he would not be as popular to the masses as he is. I often think of things as a stage play, and the media, our courts, and our political order are presented to us in a way that we might attend a play. What happened on that stage, which was clearly the narrative of the court case against Alex Jones, was the crucifixion and complete destruction of a leading figure who used the First Amendment to resist the power of the global administrative state. But what makes that play work are the ticket takers, the ushers, the stagehands behind the curtain, and the costume makers; they all play a part behind the scenes to make that show on stage happen. And we are only supposed to be watching the stage, the things they want us to look at. But if you really want to understand the play you are watching and to determine its quality, then you have to look at everything, including what’s behind the stage, to the real essence of the show. Alex Jones has made his living talking about the things that are backstage while people are watching him on stage. Hearing him talk about it is one thing, but seeing it and understanding it is much harder because what he’s talking about is concealed from the public’s view. The media is the curtain, and the real elements that keep the play alive are concealed there.

The court proceeding’s primary goal in the Alex Jones case was essential to ignore the American concept of free speech, to make a person liable for other people’s feelings. They were to confiscate the wealth from Jones in much the same way that the inquisition in Europe used to against enemies of the court for precisely the same reasons. It’s a show of power that the court doesn’t deserve to have, and America was formed to destroy in the world. And here it is in our courts, hiding behind victims of a terrible school shooting for the purpose that the school shooting occurred. The question about what motives created the shooting is not discussed, and for having a theory about what those might be and how insensitive they were to the victims is the point of the massacre, to establish case law that can then be applied to many more cases in the future. If Jones can go down for the opinions of others, then the door is opened for many other issues over much more minor infractions. And because Jones is such a wild figure, most of the people in the best positions to defend him are silent because they don’t want to be tagged with a “conspiracy” title next to their names. So they remain hidden from the conflict without opinion so to avoid the disaster of affiliation. And in that way, the courts are just as Alex said they were; it was a coordinated attack. Only the participants aren’t exactly conscious of it. Instead, they know their job in putting on the play; they learned how to play their parts in the show during their many years of public schooling and college. So they often do those jobs without being told and, in that way, are complicit. The evil isn’t conducted in the way we are trained to see it in movies and books; the narrative is not on the stage; it’s off behind the curtain. Alex stands on the stage like a maniac and talks about how evil it is just outside of everyone’s vision. But, unfortunately, people only see Jones, under the lights and with the microphone talking about it. And thus, that is how the show goes on and why Alex Jones is being isolated and destroyed by those invisible hands who have always run the administrative state. 

I think Alex Jones will be fine. He could do his show in the back of a car if he wanted. He could run Infowars as a guerrilla operation with a limited staff, so his show will go on. But what we have learned from his trial is another matter. That administrative state has shown itself in ways that have people curious about what’s happening behind the scenes, and they may be ready to hear it. And for that, I think I can help show them around, and will. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Root Cause Analysis of All Political Problems: Mankind was meant to have dominion over nature–nature by itself is pretty dumb

The root cause analysis of all political problems is a very ancient one. I would say that it goes all the way back to the start of our present recorded history and likely goes back much further than that. What was invented in America was very special and has been part of an evolution that well exceeds the last 10,000 years, but is best expressed in the opening books of Genesis in the Bible, particularly Genesis: 28 “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be Fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” I would say until that passage was written in the Bible, put together by the Romans to unite their empire, mankind had been stuck on the Vico Cycle rut that always created a society of perpetual beginnings, moving through the standard cycles of theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, then anarchy. Over many thousands of years of civilization, the Egyptians never figured it out, and they look to have built most of their society on a previously unknown ancient civilization, and what they gained from them was only a fraction of what was. Greek and Roman societies studied the Egyptians, who were essentially oriental in their approach to the everlasting, and saw themselves as perishable, except when it came to the embodiment of reincarnated Egyptian gods born again as Pharaohs. The Romans put together selected parts of the Bible but left out many others to control mass populations in Europe as they pushed their competing religions East into the orient. There has been a lot that went on, but everyone got it a little bit wrong until at least mankind began to think in the way of that which was put in the first pages of the Bible in the Book of Genesis, where God gave mankind dominion over nature. Not the other way around. 

Suppose you dive down with a root cause analysis of all the major political and religious movements of our current time and ask why so many people hate each other. In that case, the problem starts with mankind’s relationship to eternity and the misplaced idea that materialism is bad and that dying into a spirit is good, without question that is the core problem with the current climate change activists. Suppose you speak to them with the cameras off where they are comfortable and unguarded, perhaps with a few glasses of wine down their throats. In that case, they will admit to some variation of the four major religions presented to us by the standard bearers of humanity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. Of those four, all of them view the modern world’s materialism as evil and the ascendency into the world of the dead as good, to leave the material world behind and embrace our spiritual natures. But, and I would cite the great work of the great Peruvian shaman Pablo Amaringo, a hero of the climate change religious fanatics of the world, that the greatest thing in the entire universe that includes quasars, black holes, concepts of a multiverse, anything and everything is the consciousness and imagination of the human being. I don’t say that just because we are all human and we can’t think of anything better due to our own human limits of perception. But in the observations of the universe and the rules that govern it. The creative force of the mind captured in a human form takes the tools of nature and puts them to the best use. The concept of America, while it might have been formed in rebellion against the tyranny of the Catholic Church, guided by what was left over from the Roman empire, what was created, as I often state in my own book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business is a unique new kind of human with a different kind of religion in America, where materialism reflects the boundless energy of nature captured and put to practical use by human beings and their wondrous imaginations. And the importance of this is that it has broken a destructive cycle of continued rebirth that has been limiting human development for many thousands of years. As intelligent as the Egyptians appeared to be, with lots of lost technology that we are still trying to figure out, it’s evident that their civilization wasn’t the first to rise and fall. We see those forces at work now in the modern age, violently and with great panic.

The current political order, especially Democrats and progressives, is trying to fit the world to that old religious model of sacrifice to the gods and yielding to the forces of nature. But our human intellect, captured whether on purpose or by accident in the creation of the Bible and passages like those in the Book of Genesis giving mankind dominion over nature, to use the tools of nature to create and perpetuate thought, which looks to be the greatest power in the universe, or the multiverse, then now we see what all the fuss has been about. The world’s religions, as the limits of mankind’s translations, presented them, have not been big enough to consider the true implications of what it meant to be human. To begin with, what role did humans play in the cosmos, and why did they have such vast imaginations? Even though the human being may be very small in relation to the rest of all matter in the universe, which may just be but one little cell in the grand body of God, the conscious reality of that small contribution looks to be the key to everything. Imagine if the cells of our own body decided to allow disease to manifest within us and did not fight them. We’d become sick. And so it is with the schemes of the universe. Our role in the whole thing is not to sacrifice ourselves to the body of nature but to act with our minds to correct nature with our imaginations and ability to think. 

I often point out what a mess nature is if allowed to grow independently. What the human mind brings is conceptual understanding and an ability to organize. Nature by itself can only do so much. It needs the human mind to make it better, and when the Book of Genesis was created as a conceptual faculty of thought, and America was the first time in history it was allowed to be put to use, then great things started happening, and the greatest country in the history of the world formed, and everyone wants to come to it to enjoy what can be done with a free mind and the toolbox of nature to perform great things. Yet, the rest of the world, the nations, and the religions that control them have not yet accepted this new way of thinking, this morality of materialism that runs contrary to all the things they understand about how the world works. I would say that all of them, millions and millions of people over many tens of thousands of years, have been wrong. They missed the point. Nature says that in its chaos of calamity, we can have a Younger Dryas period that has a comet hit Saginaw Bay in Michigan and created a life-ending cataclysm that likely destroyed a civilization that was much more advanced than the Egyptians were, that everything the Egyptians knew was part of the Vico Cycle where much was lost in the translation. But dominion over nature says we destroy the comet before it destroys the earth, and humanity continues to think about big things rather than wasting all their time sacrificing to the gods and trying to catch enough food to live another day. Nature is dumb; it’s not in charge. God, whatever version of God or religion that gives a relationship to such conceptual needs, is a thinking human being that can act with imagination and make nature better. And until the rest of the world figures out what Americans already know and defend it with their guns, they will continue to struggle as civilizations always have. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Thomas Hall Wins the 46th Ohio Representative Seat: Sheriff Jones has no clothes

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a political candidate who deserved election or re-election more than Thomas Hall did in a very tough year where districts were redrawn at the last minute. There was more internal party opposition against an opponent than what he not only survived in an August 2022 primary but excelled. In the end, Thomas Hall beat his rival, Matt King, by almost 12%, although with the addition of Liberty Township to the new 46th district, it looked like the race might tighten up. By the time the smoke cleared, it was an easy win for Thomas Hall despite the opposition. Part of that was that he has had an excellent record during his first term. But the rest of it was that he just worked so hard to win, personally knocking on over 6000 doors and meeting voters face to face. And many members of the Butler County Republican Party, led by Sheriff Jones, threw everything they had at him, including the kitchen sink and all the plumbing, to defeat him. But it didn’t make a dent in Thomas, which didn’t surprise me in the least. I had called the race over eight months ago and given my personal endorsement. And as history shows, when I endorse someone, they tend to win. Not so much for anything I do, but for the quality of people, the candidates tend to be and for knowing the trends in politics. Nobody was going to outwork Thomas Hall, and as I have come to know him, he’s a good, sincere person to his very core. Nobody would beat Thomas Hall as long as he let voters know who he was, which he did, walking neighborhoods for many weeks now, shaking hands and talking to people instead of just sending out mailers, robocalls, and hit pieces on Facebook. Thomas was well funded and did all the usual political stuff, which I mentioned. But in addition to that, his campaign put in many thousands of hours of labor into direct communication with real people cutting out all the traditional media from hijacking the process. And for voters, they have come to realize they are lucky to have someone like Thomas to vote for. 

The sad part of this story, as positive as it has been, was the tragic fall of Sheriff Jones, who made it his personal vendetta to destroy Thomas Hall in every way, shape, and form. For several months now, I have felt sorry for Sheriff Jones. I see what he is going through now in many of the competitive shooting events that I do throughout the year. It’s tough to be the best at something, then suddenly, some young kid who can do it better, faster, and more often than you comes along, and it hurts. I’ve seen that kind of jealousy destroy many people, and many never recover from it. Thomas Hall wasn’t willing to kiss the ring of one of Butler County’s kingmakers in the Republican Party. Jones obviously took it personally and decided to primary Hall for a second term in the Ohio legislature as a Representative. I watched over much of the fall of 2021 as many fellow Republicans were unified and would attend events together in great camaraderie, to suddenly being enemies with one another. That’s about when Sheriff Jones went on WLW radio and went out of his way to embarrass Thomas Hall because the Sheriff didn’t like his voting record. So, he wanted to show himself as the kingmaker in Butler County and put his aggressive efforts behind Matt King to primary out of office Thomas Hall. Suddenly, many of those same Republicans weren’t getting together anymore, and by the spring of 2022, the sides were split. Most Republicans who wanted to maintain a relationship with Sheriff Jones had turned against Thomas, betting that his political career was over because Sheriff Jones had decided it was. 

I’ve known Sheriff Jones for a long time. I have liked him most in the early days of the Tea Party movement, then again during the first Trump term. To his credit, he was one of the first area Republicans to join behind Trump in 2016. But I remind people often that Trump used to be a Democrat. So did Kari Lake, for that matter. Sheriff Jones, to me, has shown himself to be a big government Democrat who dresses as a 50s-style cowboy sheriff. I like the look. But his actions are much more Democrat than conservative. We had a mutual friend in David Kern, so we have tolerated each other the way relatives do at Thanksgiving Dinner. Sometimes we got along, sometimes not so much. I’ve always liked what he brought to the “Republican” brand as an image. But have been embarrassed by him often as a public official. I understand that he’s never done anything but public life. So it’s been a relationship I’ve been willing to take the good with the bad. That holds until I see him start abusing his power as he clearly did with Thomas Hall. Then anything good Sheriff Jones had done all these years suddenly gets tossed out the window as he does the very Democrat thing, abusing his authority to exert power over others. He went way out of his way to make an example out of Thomas Hall, and many other Republicans followed after him. 

In the end, the good guys won. Thomas won due to his great reputation and his very hard work. He didn’t need a party endorsement, even though he should have had it as a good incumbent. Nobody wanted to cross Sheriff Jones and feared what their own political futures might become if they did. So, things got very ugly during the campaign. Nobody would have thought poorly of Thomas Hall if he had caved under pressure. I always thought he was the clear winner, and I would tell him that. I knew if people could get to know Thomas the way I had, that they’d easily vote for him no matter what Sheriff Jones said. I also knew that Sheriff Jones didn’t have the political capital that he thought he had. Outside of some Lakota school board members, some reporters at Fox 19, and some thankful tax increase moms in the neighborhoods around his house in Liberty Township, a lot of people don’t like Sheriff Jones because they have come to know him as a bully. And so long as Jones has stayed in that bubble, he hasn’t had to face the truth about how people really feel about him when his back was turned. I have often thought some of those feelings were unfair. I always thought Sheriff Jones meant well, looking at him through the eyes of someone like the late Liberty Township trustee, David Kern. But after what Jones did to Thomas Hall during this election cycle and other Republicans who dared to support him, I could see why so many people would not like the Sheriff. So, I knew when it came time to vote; people would pick Thomas Hall. And, of course, they did. After all the money that was spent against Hall by the Sheriff Jones-led Matt King challenge, it’s evident that many of those characters were stuck in the past and had not learned the lessons of recent political trends. You couldn’t buy elections anymore with ads in the paper, simple yard signs, or robocalls with the Sheriff talking endorsements. I had many tens of thousands of hits on this site over the last several months from people looking for more information on Thomas. And what they found was the truth, the truth better than paid ads and sheriff endorsements can give. People were able to see Thomas Hall for the excellent person that he was. And that’s why he won and will continue to well into the future. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

What ‘Bob’s Burgers’ says about American Society: What people will do to have a good family

At face value, it would be one of those strange mysteries. But when you dig into the issue a bit, it makes a lot of sense and says a lot about what kind of society we really are as Americans. I’ll admit, I was perplexed as to why any studio would produce a Bob’s Burgers theatrical release. With so many streaming services that are out there these days, why would anybody make a movie of the somewhat popular cartoon on Fox called Bob’s Burgers, which is a version of the typical animated formula that they have made so popular over the years with other offerings like The Simpsons, and Family Guy? I’m not too fond of Bob on Bob’s Burgers; I think of him as a loser. He’s not very ambitious; as a dad, he’s perpetually broke. He runs a little New England burger place in a resort town, and he can barely rub two pennies together.

Most of the episodes are about the problems they have as a family because they never have enough money to do things. And of course, my famous saying to people complaining about not having enough money is just to work and make more. Especially in America, if you want money, you can have it. You may not make all the money you want in 8 hours of work. Forty hours a week may not be enough; you might have to work 80. When I was raising a family, I have told the stories of only having one car, and I rode a bicycle 25 miles a day, so my wife could have the car for the kids and worked two full-time jobs to make the money we needed as a family. So, I can’t relate to Bob in Bob’s Burgers, and I find it odd that young people like the show so much. But, apparently, they do. Enough so that they made a theatrical movie release this year as something they thought was justifiable. 

I also had a unique experience while attending various comic cons with my daughter, an outstanding illustrator who does exhibitions of her work at those types of events. As I have said, it’s interesting to watch people cosplay at comic cons, the kind of outfits they want to dress up in, and invest so much of their time to bring characters they enjoy to life in some way. I can understand the various Star Wars characters and those from the Marvel movies. Those are action movies that make you feel good when leaving the movie theater in some way, so it makes sense that people would want to dress up as those characters during Halloween and at comic cons. Bringing fantasy to life is a specific function of the human imagination, a conceptual vehicle that expresses inner values that manifest in mythological impressions during social exchanges. Dressing up as a favorite character is a way to vote for the kind of values that you see in pop culture. Imitation is the ultimate compliment. But while I was at these events, I was just a little shocked to see young people dressing up as characters from Bob’s Burgers, which is hard because they are all cartoons. It’s not easy to bring a cartoon character to life, yet people did, and some were really good costumes. Why? I’ve watched many episodes of Bob’s Burgers, and I just don’t enjoy the show that much. For me, it’s often filler in the background while I’m doing five or six other things. I occasionally watch it because I like the colors of cartoons. But I can’t relate to the characters much at all. 

Oddly enough, my wife likes Bob’s Burgers a lot. I’d say it’s her favorite show, so this problem has been something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Yet, in working to understand the current political sentiment of our mass society, I felt something was going on with Bob’s Burgers that was worth noticing, significantly if film executives believed that a theatrical release of a subpar cartoon series on Fox justified its own movie. So the one thing that really jumps out about Bob’s Burgers that is likable is that all the family members like each other. Bob, his wife, and his three children all live in a little dump of an apartment, yet they don’t act like a bunch of losers who are waiting in line with a bottle of booze to buy lottery tickets. They work hard for the money they make and love each other as a family while running the family burger business. Bob is always a few cents short of whatever the family needs, but his wife never talks about leaving him for a better life with a more ambitious lover. The kids are just happy to have mom and dad together in the house. The brothers and sisters aren’t out to kill each other; they go on many neighborhood adventures and solve problems like rational people. They are a very “traditional” family. 

And that’s what it is with Bob’s Burgers; like many of the other Fox primetime cartoons, they all have in common a mom and a dad in the home who love each other. That is certainly the case with Family Guy, a very progressive show that features a family that stays together. There aren’t step-parents and step-children in these cartoons. They are all very traditional. Other animated shows have tried to make it with more progressive storylines, but they always fail. The ones that stick around over the years are the cartoons that feature traditional family settings. The Simpsons have been on for decades now, a very long time. And yet, with many hundreds of storylines, Homer and his wife Marge still love each other and work through marital problems together in a way that never ends in divorce or a family breakup.   And that was the key to this Bob’s Burgers mystery. Here was a family on an animated show with many problems, and they seemed limited in their ability to solve those problems. But, they enjoy each other as a family. You don’t see Bob running around on the town to cheat on his wife. Or running away from the attention that the kids obviously want from him. He’s a good dad, even if he’s unambitious socially. And his family loves him for it. Obviously, the audiences who can’t say the same about their own families have found a reliable father figure in Bob’s Burgers. In Bob’s Burgers, they see the family they always wanted and never had in the fictional settings. And it has such an impact on them that they even dress up as the characters in cosplay. It says a lot about the true state of our society when those types of fictional stories indicate what people really feel inside. Their vote for the type of entertainment they wish to enjoy says what all people really crave outside of political theater. Most people would give up a lot to have a family like Bob’s Burgers, where at least mom and dad loved each other, and their siblings worked together to help make the family a family. In a world full of disappointments, at least Bob and his animated television family were willing to fight through disappointments for the key ingredient to all happy societies, a good family that might not have a lot of money, but at least they had what all humans crave, a genuine love for each other. And that is worth noting and something that should give us all hope for the future. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Midterms Aren’t Enough: This problem goes back thousands of years

As we talk about the midterms and the massive increases of House and Senate seats that are projected for the GOP and watch with mystery the obvious ruse of Nancy Pelosi poking the stick at China, seemingly going against the Biden administration’s pro-China policies, we need to understand just how desperate Democrats are and to what extent globalists around the world will fight to keep power. And we also hear that Joe Biden has Covid yet again; the Democrats saw that Joe polled better when he hid in the White House residence, just as he did when he ran for President by hiding in his basement; they intend to exploit every advantage they can get their hands on fully. The Never Trumper movement will do anything to keep Trump out of office, including running a third-party candidate to help Gavin Newsom get pushed over the top as Bill Clinton did. Never-Trumpers don’t mind dealing with the Democrats in office. And, of course, Democrats will do anything to obtain power. They aren’t just going to accept a red wave vote and disappear into the night. They will fight until the very death of themselves and their party. They aren’t going to respect the will of the voters. So be cautious of every trick and expect them all to be played. It might be too late for them to correct course by the midterms. Just like the recession forecasts that have been talked about all of 2022 only to come true ultimately, the midterms will also. But Democrats will spin it with their eye toward the next goal, much as they did with the economy. They are what any definition would call the very foundations of evil. Not because they think differently, but because of their intentions toward mass society, and they are getting ready to make their final stand. Once the midterms are won, the fight will just be getting started. It’s not very long until 2024, yet it’s a very long way away as well, and a lot can and will happen. 

For Democrats and global progressives, the political fight in America is not just about ideas on how to manage society. It’s a religion to them. That is why they are willing to work with Never-Trumpers, and there is essentially a “uniparty” in Washington D.C.  Most politicians in political theater, whether it’s Fox News or CNN broadcasts are essentially the same. Everything they have ever been was shaped by two opposing forces. Yet the MAGA movement is the natural evolution of a third political force that has tried for many years to manifest into reality but has always been lost by one of the two basic religious philosophies. President Trump represents a threat to that entire world order which is older than history itself.

On the one hand, members of the dualist religions believe that all life on earth is evil, driven by materialism and that the goal of all humanity is to escape from the limits of the body and be resurrected as a spirit for eternal life. Then there are those religions, such as the Roman Catholic Church, which intended to be the government on earth over every micromanaged aspect of people’s lives. They intend themselves to be the gates to God, putting themselves between everlasting life and the material needs of existence. No matter what time humanity has found itself, one of those two forces has shaped all political theater suppressing any other ideas that might have emerged. So what the administrative state, as we call it, is fighting for is nothing less than a preservation of the old order and preventing any new ideas from emerging. 

There is a reason no other ideas emerged beyond those two forces, the dualist religions and the kinghood of the other dominating entire regions to the embodiment of a ruler on earth. Most of the secret societies we always hear about have operated in the background to preserve these orders, and they are hard at work right now to keep this threat of President Trump from emerging again. Donald Trump is an exciting creation of the American lifestyle. This materialist literally lived in a golden palace high atop America’s most capitalist city of New York with his beautiful supermodel wife. He had top-rated television shows, wrote books, and was the face of American capitalism in ways that significantly threatened the order of anti-materialists who have always maintained the religions of dualism, earth bad, eternity good. Trump showed that a person could be a materialist and could be smart about eternal life. He is an eternal optimist, never crying in public and not even slowing down for the death of people close to him. Trump is very much a creation of the Power of Positive Thinking, which is uniquely American and is terror to the old religions of the world who use the fear of fire and brimstone to control people from birth until their graves and claim to have influence even into eternity. That lack of fear and respect for the duelist religions and the king state concepts of the modern pope or some monarchy are reprehensible to the political left. And they will not disappear into the night with a golly-gee, shucks mentality. They will be out for blood and must be dealt with knowing that.

Expect every trick in the book. Splitting the vote with a three-candidate field is the most obvious, but I would caution everyone not to fall for it. This new Republican Party under Trump is something very different from what it has been in the past. Immigration running from terrible conditions worldwide is looking toward the Republican Party. They don’t want America to become the kind of places they ran from. Democrats planned that those immigrants, illegal and otherwise, would vote for big government because of the giveaways. But most people coming to America, no matter where they came from, want the preservation of family, want the freedom to make money, and try for the American dream. They reject globalism because they have seen what it does to communities where it has sunk roots. And none of that is part of the Democrat plan. It’s not part of the Never-Trump plan either. For the first time in human history, something is emerging in America that is different from the other stagnant religions of the world, the duelists and the king-state. What Trump has represented is a uniquely American idea of religion that is not controlled by the previous embodiments of social organization. It honestly terrifies those who currently want to be in charge. These new rules are what the next elections are all about. Yes, there was election fraud in the last election, at least. There has likely been election fraud in the previous decades as well, knowing what we do now about how political parties run elections while they are in charge and just how little they think of people in general. And they will try again. But what’s different now and likely for the first time is that people are aware of the problem and act honestly in their own self-interest. That self-interest was defined by one of those two previous religious ideologies. But now, there is an American stamp on it that transcends all the aforementioned controls and the administrative state in the halls of institutionalism that had run the terror. They don’t know what to do to hold on to power when so many people continue to turn to Trump for a change, a change away from them and their rules. And to maintain their illusions, don’t underestimate them at all. Because they will do anything to keep power. Cheating in elections is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Rich Hoffman

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Want to be Free: Learn to wear a hat

The problem is that people talk about fighting for freedom, but often by the time they are voting age adults, they are so beat down with compromise that they no longer know what freedom is or why they should be fighting for it. We talk about it all the time, fighting for freedom. Yet very few people are remotely free in their lives; they have bosses at their jobs, spouses often working at odds with them, and peer pressures in their neighborhoods. Medical professionals always tell us what to do, which was common before Covid became a government policy disaster. Then there are the various governments in our lives, the local zoning board as to whether or not a water garden can be built on our private property, whether a state governor can ruin our lives with lockdowns and other fears of economy, or an executive branch at the federal level who will sign a piece of paper that could actually destroy our physical bodies with a vaccine mandate. Most people are so burdened with obedience to many other people in their lives that they have no idea what freedom is or what they should be doing with it. So it’s hard for them to know why they should be fighting for it or even why they should value it at all. Oddly enough, as I was thinking about all these things, I have grandchildren who are at that magical age of deciding who they will be for the rest of their lives. They were asking about these matters, for which I gave them their first hats and told them why I have always worn a hat of some kind and what benefits it can provide them in the quest for personal freedom and benefit their lives in magnificent ways. 

One of my favorite hat stores in America, at Jackson Hole, Wyoming

It was a pretty good moment to explain why I have always worn a variation of a cowboy hat all my life to my grandchildren because they wanted to know. But the message has value well beyond family advice on how to live a better life, which is worth sharing. I learned early in my life that being unique was a freedom that had value in it, and to protect that freedom when you are too young to fight it off physically and mentally, is to shake off your attackers with audacity. So, I wore hats to declare my own unique look. Being young or old and having hair or not are conditions of nature, but wearing a hat was a proclamation of controlling your own appearance by choice, by invention. Even in the third and fourth grade, I started this process, and I wore my hats even to bed at night, and I found that within that simple measure, I was teaching myself to love personal freedom and making decisions that showed I had control over my appearance and was not a victim to public opinion. Of course, whenever you make such a declaration, people will make fun of you for it. And sometimes, those opinions can be brutal. It is amazing how threatening to people a kid wearing a hat can be, but I heard some of the worst and most violent talk when I was age 10 through 15 that you can imagine, just because I showed up in public places always wearing a hat. But those were some very valuable years because I learned not to care. And as I learned not to be shaped by the opinions of others, I learned to have real independence in my life, which has dramatically frustrated a significant number of people. 

We all wear hats in my family, always have

We were indeed a better society during periods where people wore hats, even though the social stigma favored them, such as during the Revolutionary period with the tri-cornered hats that were common to the day. Or the cowboy hats of western expansion. Then there were the fedoras of the roaring twenties up until the socialist incursions of the 60s. Hats were a statement of independence and control over nature. If it started raining, you could use your hat to shield your head from the elements of chaos coming in the form of weather. If you were balding, you could fashion your own style of cosmetic appearance with a good hat. Hats showed individual taste, they could be whatever color you wanted, and they projected your values to the world. But to those who wanted to reject those values, hats were dangerous because they showed individual expression, which was a real threat to the collectivist intentions of Marxism. Some of the cruelest comments that came in my direction about my hats as a kid came from the drug user class of long-haired hippies and dope smokers. When I wore a hat, it threatened them and their desires for social conformity. That safe place where a stoned mind and social camouflage could insulate them from the opinions of others. They certainly didn’t want to stand out in a crowd; they wanted to blend in. And when they saw someone who didn’t feel those social fears, it truly scared them. 

At that Jackson Hole hat shop, getting my latest one steamed to shape

I told my grandchildren that people would ridicule them for wearing their hats in public. Anything they show to the world that they valued would be ridiculed to no end, and if people could steal their hats and destroy them, they would do it to punish them for even wearing them in public. I explained that people are cruel because they don’t want to live up to the expectations of personal independence and crave to hide in the shadows where it’s safe. Wearing a hat publicly was a declaration of independence and a real threat to their existence. So be ready for anything and everything. But the benefit would be that by the time you are an adult, which will be most of your life, you will have been well practiced in being your own person. Nobody really cares what you look like after age 30, so don’t waste your lives trying to look like a teenager.

Enjoy your life no matter how old you are. Wear a hat that reflects who you are and how much you like it. Don’t let them make you feel bad for self-expression. And by the time you are 40, 50, and 60 years old, nobody will care if you wear a hat in public. They’ll avoid you most of the time, but making fun of you will stop. So the task of being young and out of control of your social circumstances because so many other factors are still governing your lives is to learn not to care what the opinions of others are. And when you do that, you will gain valuable freedom that will spill over into other parts of your life and enrich yourself. To have real freedom in life is to be free of the opinions of others. Once you do that, you can understand freedom’s basic premise and why it’s worth fighting for. A society of people who have worn hats to express that freedom had a better ability to maintain that freedom. But a society of people who care too much about what other people think are not going to understand why freedom is worth fighting for. Because essentially, they aren’t free anywhere in their lives if they constantly fear what the opinions of others are. So as I told my grandchildren, wear your hats. Don’t listen to what people say to you, and learn to love the controversy. Because when people’s opinions no longer control your actions, you can start to see yourself as a free person.

Rich Hoffman

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People are innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around: The media often helps the real villains get away with crime while the innocent are prosecuted

One thing I have no tolerance for is bullies. I’ve never looked away from bullies when they show their ugliness in the world, and I’m not going to start now. When people wonder why I get up at 4:30 AM in the morning every day to write on this site and do the number of news stories I do, its because I have a lot of experience with the courts, I have known a lot of judges, lawyers, and media people, and I know how the game of law and order works from all sides of it. So to answer the question that I have heard from dozens of people over the last few weeks when they say that they have noticed that I have been supporting a lot of people who are accused of pretty serious crimes, I say to them, I don’t support criminal activity or law-breaking. If I come out in support of someone in some way, it is because I think them to be good people who are victims of bullying, and when I see it or even hear about it, I will help them at every opportunity. Not to the point where it leads to a trap, but where applicable. And when it comes to Steve Bannon from the Warroom and the false prosecution against him from the Biden Department of Justice, or the Darbi Boddy drama at Lakota schools in my neighborhood, or the Roger Reynolds case of corruption in Butler County, Ohio by the Sheriff’s department, if I come out in support of them, its because I think they are victims of abuse of authority by political bullies, and that is not something I am willing to tolerate. That is the reason I run my own news service in the form of this blog. I have learned over the years that the media is too lazy or lacks the philosophical parameters to explain things the way they need to be stated for the general public to understand, so I just do the job myself. So if I come out in support of some controversy, there is a really good reason why. 

The Steve Bannon case is self-explanatory. I know firsthand how the law can be used as a weapon to destroy people, and that’s clearly what is happening with Bannon. I like Steve; I have corresponded with him on occasion. We both have busy lives and work in different spheres of influence, but I greatly sympathize with him. The Biden DOJ is clearly abusing its authority in prosecuting him, just as Congress has abused its authority in the two impeachments of Trump, and this phony January 6th commission to attack Trump allies on popular podcasts to attempt to scare off a second Trump term. The law is being manipulated and used purely for political theater, and people’s lives are being threatened to be destroyed because of it. I would point to the local George Lang case of purgery several years ago where the very good man in the now Senator Lang was drug through the courts purely to attack him for knowing John Boehner. The target was Boehner, who was poised to be Speaker of the House in the not too distant future, and his political enemies wanted to get to him through his friends. It was one of the most disgusting court cases I had ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them. If I live another hundred years, I still would not have exceeded my many personal court appearances and ridiculous entanglements with the law. Just because you are accused of something doesn’t make you guilty. We are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but in cases like the one against Steve Bannon, and others like him over the years, who are convicted just because they know someone who is the real target, political assassinations through twisted concepts of law and order are not acceptable and must be punished. In the end, that will be what happens coming from Steve Bannon. The bad guys will get it in the end because tolerating the kind of society that would convict him is not acceptable. 

Darbi Boddy at my home school district of Lakota has made national news over essentially being attacked as soon as she was sworn in after she had just won an election. I understand that not all the school members like her or like each other. I get that the administrators did not like the newly elected school board member who asked too many questions and didn’t seem to respect the administrative red tape that they hide so many bad things behind. For instance, the attempt to vote her off the board over a minor incident and to make a media circus out of it was reprehensible. It showed a willingness by the board to undo a person the voters had just assigned to do a job. Then to make matters worse, the school superintendent added fuel to the fire by citing her with trespassing in two of the schools as Darbi went to them unannounced as part of an official investigation into CRT, which other board members were dragging their feet on. What makes this case so bad is that the superintendent, Matt Miller is not a person of high moral integrity. Based on things he has done, he should not have a job, and he only does because other school board members have helped him keep it. I haven’t said much about it because I have not wanted to destroy Lakota schools. I have wanted to see this new school board work. But some people are really afraid of Matt Miller and what he did to Darbi Boddy; based on what I know about him was a classic case of transference, where a guilty party will assign blame to other people for actions for which they are really guilty of. That kind of behavior is a classic problem of liberalism when they abuse law and order to hide crimes they are actually guilty of. But Darbi is not a danger to student populations. There are many more accusers of Matt Miller who would say that he is the dangerous one. I have been willing to look beyond accusations in his case for the benefit of the school and the school board in general. But it disgusts me to see someone attempt to put crimes of trespassing and other bad conduct out to a predatory media intent to destroy Darbi just to protect all the other bad things that I know are going on behind the scenes; that probably should be the focus of everyone’s attention. With all that said, I am very happy with Darbi Boddy and would like to see many more like her on the school board at Lakota. She is doing a great job.

Then there is the case of corruption thrown at Roger Reynolds. I’ve known Roger for a long time. I think he and I both love Liberty Township and remember how it used to be. I think Roger, an auditor for Butler County, has done a great job. I’d go on to say that I think he is one of the best auditors in the country for any county. I think the charges against him are politically motivated, and the Sheriff’s office could not hold up to the same scrutiny they have put on Roger. When evidence is presented to a grand jury the way it has been, they have no choice but to advance the cause. But if the tables were turned, I could think of dozens and dozens and dozens of people who would happily come forward and accuse Sheriff Jones of abuse of authority and unlawful interest in public contracts. That wouldn’t mean he’s guilty of those accusations, but there are plenty of people who would accuse him of it, and that would be enough to present to a grand jury. The media has pretty much thrown Roger Reynolds to the wolves with a play-by-play narrative that clearly is trying to destroy him as a person. I haven’t wanted to see the same applied to Jones; he’s been a good sheriff. Ending a career with so many black marks would not be good. It wouldn’t be good for Butler County. But the case would be much worse if the same investigations leveled at Roger Reynolds were applied to Sheriff Jones. So in that context, I support Roger Reynolds, he is being bullied for personal reasons, and the law is being used as a weapon to make it happen. If the law were equally applied, we’d lose a lot of public servants. Maybe it should be. But this picking and choosing of law and order to take out political rivals, there is no place for that in any society. And it’s a case of bullying that is reprehensible whenever it’s done and is unforgivable. 

Just because people are accused of something doesn’t make them guilty. Often, what it means is that the accusers are up to far worse and hope to divert their crimes to the innocent. Unfortunately, this is a common practice dramatically under-covered by a complicit media that has helped perpetuate it to the doom of our culture ostentatiously. And when I see it, I have never accepted it and never will. We have a very corrupt society because law and order are not respected by those most in their care. And if we ever want that to change, we must see through the smoke screens and the media hype at the real villains who are often the most vicious accusers because what they are attempting to hide is often far worse.

Rich Hoffman

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The Elephant in the Room: Why the new ‘Top Gun’ movie is so successful and what it means to ESG scores in corporate America

I have always looked at box office results as a kind of vote for what the temperature of the political world truly is. As we know now, elections are often rigged, especially regarding the digital machines and ballot stuffing efforts that have been common in big American cities for years. So political votes don’t often reflect what people really desire culturally. But when a person is willing to get out of their chair and go out into a darkened theater and share a movie experience with perfect strangers, which is a discomfort of its own, the kinds of choices people make reflect a lot about their true character. So I have always looked toward box office numbers to understand what’s happening worldwide and the kinds of mythologies the human race responds to. Knowing all that, I was not surprised that Top Gun: Maverick did well at the box office; it looks like it will come in over 1.2 billion dollars for the summer of 2022. It has been remarkably strong for what I consider a typical 80s movie. I grew up in the 80s, so I remember when there was a movie like Top Gun coming out every weekend, and then when you got back in the car to drive home, there was a new top 40 hit on the radio. We had a thriving culture back then mainly because Ronald Reagan, as an actor, knew how to sell America to America, and people felt good about their country. Hollywood rushed to make movies that appealed to them, which was reflected in the movie-making industry. 

Obviously, I loved the new Top Gun movie, but as I said, I don’t think the film is a technological masterpiece. It will likely win some awards because the kind of people who pursued careers in movie making are happy that finally there is a movie out there that reflects why they got into the business in the first place, the way Hollywood used to make movies before all the woke ESG rules took over and ruined everything for everybody. While Top Gun has been doing well, another film franchise from Disney, Thor: Love and Thunder, came out over a similar summer season release. It died on the vine by the second weekend because it embraced all the woke ESG garbage injected into corporate America, and the voting movie audience decided they didn’t want any of it. For a film with big intentions to gain a billion dollars at the box office from a global audience, Thor: Love and Thunder quickly fell out of favor, while Top Gun: Maverick continued to be in the top 10 even after two months in theaters. Because of this behavior, there is a massive elephant in the room to talk about that I have heard nobody in the commentary business from entertainment or politics nail down, which is worth discussing because of what it means. What we see with movie audiences is a total rejection of the globalist push for ESG values that will undoubtedly be reflected in society in general, and what has been happening in the movie business will ultimately be reflected in society in general, with restaurants, business commerce, and populist politics. The only way the ESG system was ever going to work was to take away all people’s options for what they really wanted. Top Gun: Maverick shows just how successful breaking the ESG formula can be for anybody who dares to, and now that people have seen the benefits, the ESG attempts will fail miserably.

Considering that Top Gun: Maverick was entirely filmed before Covid came along to destroy its original release date for the summer of 2020, the film was not a conscious effort to push back against the globalist trends toward ESG. It was able to get funding because it had been in the works for many years and had Tom Cruise attached to it, so the movie got made. But the global sabotage with Covid, as I said in the beginning, was more of an attack against American culture in every way and the intent was to destroy American capitalism. Small businesses were meant to be destroyed. Amusement parks bankrupted. And the American film industry was targeted to be choked off, even though the political lefties in Hollywood were kissing the ring of the globalists most aggressively. Those market sectors were intended to be destroyed before the year of 2020 ran out, which was the goal of the World Economic Forum members behind the Covid virus, using China to be the face of the disruption. The world was going to have a Great Reset, and America would come out of it under the fold of global socialism run by health agencies controlled by the United Nations, and that was the end of the story. Paramount Pictures was shrewd to wait out the storm and hold Top Gun: Maverick for another two years to hope the American movie industry would survive and that theater owners would not all go bankrupt. Along the way, Paramount listened to its potential audience, and they decided to tweak the film toward a domestic market and ignore China completely, which many considered to be suicidal. But once the movie was released and movie theaters finally opened into something resembling normal, great things happened, and people were hungry for a non-woke movie without ESG goal posts that told a pro-American story that people could feel good about. And the rest is history.

It’s not that Top Gun: Maverick is a great movie. But it offers a non-ESG story that people are starving for, and they have voted with their feet. There are so many other options now with streaming services that people could easily have just stayed home and watched hundreds of other options. So it says something any time people are willing to go to the theater to see a movie of any kind. But what we are seeing happening with this particular movie is that people are voting against the ESG world that is being imposed on them, and the first real offering of American patriotism since President Trump was removed from office through political upheavals is the true sentiment of the voting public. You can’t fake personal choice. Ballot stuffing and other forms of fraud can manipulate results to look like more people than really do support progressive causes. But the tickets bought for a darkened theater in direct competition with other offerings, like Thor: Love and Thunder, show the true sentiment of the public when choice is the deciding factor. With most movies these days being produced for a global audience, especially from Disney, it had been considered suicide to focus on a domestic release, which is what Top Gun: Maverick boldly did. And the result was that the world came to the doorstep of the movie because they wanted to experience American life with their movie purchase. Not to see the same old ESG political nonsense that all the other films were offering, the same homosexual propaganda, the soft stories without defined heroes, and the noticeable lack of patriotism that was clearly part of the plan for a post-Covid world. Top Gun: Maverick broke all the rules and returned to what worked for years. And because of that success, many other industries and political movements will follow. 

Rich Hoffman

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Trump Can’t Ride Off Into the Sunset: There is a reason for all the political anger, and it must be expressed

I generally like Elon Musk, but his comments about Trump and how he should ride off into the sunset were misguided and foolish. I hope Elon Musk accomplishes his goals with Space X. But I think Tesla will be headed for rough waters mainly because of how government has tampered with the electric car market. They are saturating the industry with assets that nobody wants, creating competition where there wasn’t demand, and making buying regular gas cars a taboo that will last for decades. Before the Biden administration stuck its nose into the electric car market, Tesla was a pretty cool option for people looking for a vehicle alternative. Tesla could support its own network infrastructure, complete with charging stations. They didn’t need government. But government has now interrupted that market and made electric cars something people hate. So Elon Musk has some trouble coming because of government tampering. And with that said, without government, Elon Musk would not be so wealthy and gained so much prestige. Elon Musk’s place in the world is very much a creation of government. Like most people who strike it big, Elon Musk made a good bet, and in his case, several, and he became wealthy. He’s not a magnificent genius beyond our comprehension that knows a bunch of things that we don’t as a species. He played with house money and came up big. But in his case, that house money was from the government. Without government subsidies, Elon Musk would be just another computer geek trying to buy expensive coffee at Starbucks. So his comments about Trump have been extremely misplaced. His political advice is worthless because he has too many government tentacles in him and foreign nations to have a proper opinion on the matter. I hope he has continued success. But his political advice is worthless. If anything, we don’t have enough drama from Trump. The world is angry, and for a good reason. The last thing we need is a tool from China telling us what to think, and because Elon Musk needs China so much, we can’t trust a thing that he says about political opinion.

We are living in a world where Hunter Biden has put so much of himself on video with known prostitutes smoking crack that it’s beyond comprehension. This is the President’s son, who is seen by the world committing serious crimes, and nothing is being done about it. Forget for a moment the many other scandals that are out there or what anybody might think about Joe Biden as a person politically. To have a direct member of the President behaving so badly is enough to justify profound anger at the world’s injustice. If there were never a Trump, never a Tea Party, never any opposition from political parties, the behavior of Hunter Biden would be enough to justify a revolt of the American population against the Biden administration for the embarrassment that it has brought to our nation. But then consider all the crimes of Covid by government imposed on the American people. Consider the inflation rate. The war on fossil fuels that have pushed up the cost of gas to unforgivable standards. The impact of the stolen election in 2020 which is now apparent. After the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision on drop boxes, it’s clear that there is a trend in America that is finally figuring out that Joe Biden should have never even been inaugurated. People have a right. Actually, they are obligated to be upset about the crimes committed in 2020 between the government-created Covid pandemic and the election fraud that followed. If people weren’t outraged, it would be weird. It’s perfectly justifiable for people to express themselves with anger at the Biden government, the people who put him in power, and the governments of the world that have imposed themselves on everyone’s lives in such destructive ways. Trump represents that anger in a manageable way, and everyone should be happy that there is a Trump out there to discharge all pent-up anger.

This anger in the world, in general, didn’t just happen during the Trump administration. The Trump administration was a creation of that anger. The lead-up to it occurred for many decades. Most noticeably during the 90s, when the political left tried to cram down America’s throats a liberal view of the world that was revenge for the eight good years of Ronald Reagan. Reaganomics was revenge for what America saw during the Carter administration. Ford was destroyed because of his association with Richard Nixon. Nixon was destroyed because he was a threat to the administrative state. Kennedy was killed because he was a threat to that same administrative state. Bobby Kennedy was killed because he was a disruption to that partnership with the administrative state and the façade of organized crime that ultimately could be traced back to government. This has been a political fight that has gone on for a long time, and it was evident to conservatives that after 2003 the media would not give George Bush a fair shake. Bush was hated, and the political left pushed that anger to launch Barack Obama, a terrorist candidate from Bill Ayers launched in the living room of a Weather Underground radical. They lied about it to our face even though we had the evidence. They lied about his birth certificate. They lied about Benghazi. They lied about everything, and those stories mounted to the point where people lost trust in everything. Mitt Romney in 2012 was another loss for conservatives who had been burnt by losers like John McCain over the years, moderates who wanted to play by the rules while the political left broke the law and rubbed our faces in it. By the time Trump offered himself in 2015, people were ready to fight back, and they elected him despite the administrative state’s goals to stop it. 

Things were good under Trump; the country worked. We discovered that a lot could be fixed in the world if only we had someone in the White House who wanted to solve problems. The administrative state wants perpetual problems because that’s how their funding works. They never wanted to fix anything, and Trump showed what a scam everything they said really was. Then they took Trump away and expected people to just put up with it. No, that’s not how it works. All that has happened was that the political left represented in America by the Democrats stole away the natural sentiments of what America wanted and imposed on them the desires of an administrative state they didn’t want or support. In more polite times, they might have held their nose and put up with it, but after all the years of disrespect by the left toward the right, things finally broke. Trump was the discharge of that anger, but now that anger is far greater than it was just a few years ago. America is not a centrist nation. The media has all the wrong terms for left and right. When they talk about the political left, they are talking about communists and socialists.

Nazis were socialists; they were not the “far right.” America has its own definitions for conservative thought, and most of the nation is conservative. They are not “centralists” as the Beltway defines them. The way America is was always determined by the flyover states, not the crazy lunatics who live on the coasts. So the more crimes the left commits, the more lies they impose on America, and the more bad behavior disrespecting America will only lead to more anger. That anger isn’t going to go away. It’s only growing; until it is dealt with, there will be lots of “drama” in politics. And that drama will continue until respect is given to those who actually run the country, Trump supporters, and the person they picked for President, President Trump.

Rich Hoffman

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Abuse of Power in Butler County: And it’s not Roger Reynolds doing it

I’ve talked about it before; I sympathize with the Steve Bannon contempt of congress case that is happening at the end of July 2022 more than other cases because it’s personal for me. I don’t communicate with him a lot, be we occasionally do. He has shared some of my articles on social media, and we have exchanged text messages on occasion, so it’s more personal to me to see what is happening to him than it would be if I didn’t know something about the person himself. As I watch him go to federal court every day and the judge lecture the defense about not making a circus out of the case, it is bewildering to think that Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress in 2012, yet no punishment ever came his way. But because Bannon is a member of the Trump White House, he is being treated like a criminal, guilty before proven innocent, just by association. And all this has made me think of the case of George Lang several years ago, who was facing jail time just for knowing John Boehner, who was poised to be speaker of the house, and the Democrats wanted to sink him through his friends. George, of course, was found innocent, but it was scary for sure. We could all point to misconduct in court proceedings that were purely politically motivated and shake our heads. But we often don’t say much about it because we fear that injustice being turned in our own direction, so we just move along and try to ignore it. Yet, I see the same thing happening to Roger Reynolds in Butler County, where political rivals are accusing him of corruption in his office. And I just don’t see it in any of the indictments, for which a 6th came out just recently to add to the pile, intent on knocking him out of office. It’s an election year, some rivals want Roger out as a political character, and they’ll do what they must do to sink him. 

Believe me; I’d rather talk about a million other things than this case, which I’ve discussed in detail. I’d prefer to leave all this mess to the courts to decide but based on a ridiculous article by Jennifer Edwards Baker from Fox 19 about the details of the 6th indictment against Roger Reynolds, which now involves Lakota schools, the issue is so preposterous that we just can’t ignore it. Obviously, the prosecution in the case against Roger, much like the case against Steve Bannon, doesn’t have much to go on, so they are prosecuting the case in the court of public opinion through reporters who might sway public sentiment ahead of upcoming elections. And that is the entire goal of the proceedings. And we can’t ignore the case because it could be any of us falsely accused. It’s not that I love Roger Reynolds. I think he has been an excellent auditor. But he’s made political enemies over the years, which is all part of the blood sport of politics. I think he could handle many things better regarding social interactions, but I recognize that he’s an A-Type personality, as is Sheriff Jones, and a clash among those types of people is bound to happen. I see it as more of a human resource problem than a legal one. If those two people have problems, they should resolve them in some other way than in political tricks ahead of elections and wasting the time of courts for personal vendettas, which is clearly the case with this indictment against Roger involving Lakota schools.   

The Fox 19 article says many things that could easily be misconstrued, leaving out all the relevant factors, such as all the axes to grind among public employees, especially those who handle money. The indictment indicates that Lakota schools were due to get back $750,000 from the auditor’s office. Roger suggested to the treasurer Jenni Logan that they spend that money on the Four Bridges Golf Course in a partnership. A whole series of emails between Jenni and the school attorney show an interest in Roger’s proposal. Ultimately, they decided it probably wasn’t a good idea, so the concept was rejected. That was back in 2017, a long time ago. So why is this story coming out now? Jenni is retiring on August 1st, 2022, and this is something for the road that fits into the motivations of Sheriff Jones and his political needs regarding putting someone else in the seat of the Butler County Auditor. So, they completely made up the word “coercion” in the indictment and tried to build a case that forced Roger to prove he wasn’t guilty of it due to pressure from public opinion, rather than proving that Roger actually used coercion in any way during the proposed spending of the money. When people see $750,000, they might think that’s a lot of money, but in reality, within the budget of Lakota, it’s much less than 1% of their expenditures and is actually about 11 or 12 teachers. Teachers make a lot of money, despite what the unions say about compensation. I can easily see how Roger would suggest that Jenni spend the money on something more useful, like an elevated lifestyle for the students of Lakota, rather than just blowing it on more activist teachers. Jenni must have thought the idea a good one because she pursued it through emails which are part of the case. But she did so voluntarily. That is not coercion; it’s a discussion among professional adults. 

All this doesn’t change my opinion of Roger Reynolds. As I indicated, I could tell stories all day long about court cases that were purely intended to destroy a political rival and had nothing to do with actual justice. I mentioned a few here based on personal experience. But it’s quite common as a practice. I’m all for law and order, but justice should be blind. What is going on with Roger Reynolds is that laws are being applied against a political rival instead of uniformly applied. It’s an abuse of authority, but it’s not Roger doing the abuse. It’s the accusers, not the recipient. I’ll still be voting for Roger Reynolds in the upcoming election. All the people participating in the investigation against him should be trying to work with Roger instead of getting rid of him over their personal problems they might have. Destroying people’s lives is not the way to solve a problem. It might be common, but it’s certainly not right.

The courts are not private playgrounds to bully people into fight resolution that might have been settled on a playground when everyone was kids. As adults, judges, attorneys, and media bottom feeders are not replacements for fists to the face. When the courts are abused, as they are clearly being abused in this Roger Reynolds case and the case of Steve Bannon, that gives politics and our justice system a bad name, and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves, as far as I’m concerned, all six of these indictments against Roger Reynolds are political witch hunts. If I had been Roger, I would have handled things differently, where there was no question as to blurred lines. But social mistakes aren’t against the law. Intent to commit a crime is, and to assume intent where there clearly isn’t any evidence, just for the political theater of altering an election is despicable at best and gross abuse of authority at the very least. 

Rich Hoffman

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