The 1776 Report: One of the greatest things President Trump did during his first term

I personally think it’s one of the most extraordinary things that President Trump did during his first four years in office, but it was published during that tumultuous time as he had to leave and Biden was inserted.  As soon as the election results were in, I hunkered down, knowing there would be some dark days ahead.  We had just struggled through a horrendous year with Covid and now the tunnel in those cold days of 2020 going into 2021 had just gotten much longer.  But like all things that the Trump Organization does, and President Trump himself built up the brand in ways that greatly accentuated America, even with all the chaos of election fraud and talk of insurrection, the President in one of his final moments of power commissioned The 1776 Report, which was to be part of a larger project, The 1776 Commission, that would evolve into a new kind of Mt. Rushmore park dedicated to American patriotism.  I even noticed that an old friend of mine, Joshua Charles was on it as the President picked a handful of people to record what America was supposed to be so future generations wouldn’t forget, which was clearly at that time and now, trying to be erased by globalist forces hell-bent on our complete destruction.  When it mattered most, Trump was a patriot who wanted to counter The 1619 Project, which was a hostile Marxist organization established to rewrite American history into victimized slave state criteria, when it was obviously the opposite.  America, because of its Constitution, ended slavery.  It didn’t build the nation off it as it was being proposed by the American-hating political parties who smelled blood in the water, blood they poured in deliberately.  Yet in those dark moments, Trump showed best who he was and just how dedicated he was to our country, and he truly showed that he loved it as much if not more, than the rest of us.

I didn’t expect anything out of Trump at that point, and in November of 2020, right after the election, I turned to someone I like a lot to gauge my opinions on the matter and recharge my patriotism, Cleon Skousen, books like The Naked Communist, The Naked Capitalist, and The 5000 Year Leap.  It was clear to me what was happening. Skousen had warned about it in the 1950s and 1960s, and his words were actually coming true in 2020.  I was so angry about the election, and so many people around me were asking me what to do, they were ready to pick up arms and retake the government.  So, I needed perspective as Biden stepped into the White House.  My wife and I hit the road to get away for a while as we traveled all over the United States in our RV to “think.”  It started in the deserts of New Mexico but ended up in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and South Dakota for a while and I didn’t notice myself the report that Trump’s 1776 Commission had written.  It was published to the public in several forms during that exact time, first as a PDF and then as a softcover book.  Then, as a hardcover during that following summer.  But by then the damage was well under way.  The first thing that Biden did on day one in office was decommission The 1776 Commission and attempt to stifle the report.  The Biden administration, along with their globalist insurgents, was attempting to erase America, and they were starting with all the patriotic acts President Trump had been implementing in order to demoralize our nation into submission. We weren’t witnessing a transfer of power popularly elected by the people.  We were seeing a hostile coup disguised as a free election but intended to quietly conquer us all with a well-planned trojan horse sent by globalists who were making their power move. 

But The 1776 Report was like Noah’s Ark in those dark and stormy days that clearly announced what a second Trump term would look like and is the blueprint for our resurrection from the ashes of that purposeful destruction.  I returned from those trips out west in the deserts and mountains with a renewed sense of patriotism, and I was thrilled to read the Report, which I’d recommend to everyone now.  For those looking for revenge in 2024, we have long waited for this moment, and the guide for what to do next is right there in the Report.  Anybody who questions President Trump and his intentions can only read that report and know what he has in mind.  And I’m excited about it because I don’t see just the start of a second Trump term to get back to the good days we had under him and the patriotism that was sure to be established in the wake of it.  But I was invited recently to a kind of open discussion on Elon Musk’s X platform where J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Musk himself were discussing current events in ways I have never heard before.  There were other speakers there, but it was an exciting debate that showed me what life after Trump could look like.  It all started with The 1776 Report, published in a chaotic time as almost putting Moses in a little straw boat to save America from a treacherous pharaoh wanting to preserve his power from the forces of freedom. 

It would be a good idea to get this report and pass it around to friends and family as we approach the 2024 election.  I would call it the battle plan for the next few decades of American sovereignty and the goals of our republic, and it will be one of the most significant contributions of the Trump presidency for many hundreds of years to come.  History will remember these dark days for the leaders who emerged, and I couldn’t help but think all that while listening to that event with Ramaswamy, Vance, and Musk all at the same time and place.  I could see Trump retiring after a second term, turning all this over to them and us for a continuation of The 1776 Project so that young people would never forget.  I would consider Vance and Ramaswamy very young and the country’s future.  And their guiding light, as should be everyone, is The 1776 Report.  That is what America is all about and how we need to be thinking about 2024 and beyond.  We have seen now what the world wishes for us, and yes, revenge is the correct word for it, because there can be no justice in the world if the people who did all this to us are not punished.  But punishment comes in many forms.  Living well is one of them.  And in the spirit of that report written and published as the Biden administration was attempting to erase America for all time, some of American life’s best attributes emerged.  I saw it as my wife and I traveled that year, camping in a different spot almost every night and spending my mornings and evenings reading books and writing myself.  Touching the face of America and all its glory that Trump managed to capture in The 1776 Report which future generations will understand to be the miracle of America which might end up saving humanity after all from the clutches of evil in all its forms, expressed most destructively through globalism and corporate communism that has showed us its teeth for history to remember.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

‘Godzilla Minus One’: The best movie in the world

Simply stunning

Before you think to yourself, oh, there are so many things going on in the world, why do I care about a movie review for a new Godzilla movie? Well, this is something different, this Godzilla Minus One movie. It makes quite a statement, and it is currently destroying the rest of the films being produced in the world, from Bollywood to Hollywood, all places where the World Economic Forum financing has influenced movie content. I’ve been asked several times this year why I’m not out there producing and making movies, as I have wanted to most of my life. And my explanation was that the whole machine is messed up, it costs too much for unionized labor, so the budgets are wrecked. To get funding for the movies, you must have progressive messages in them. The entertainment media has been filled with more progressive political activists who set limits as to the kind of messages that get out to the public, and the theater owners’ associations are often too sensitive to all these politics to back releases. But then there are times when the market is desperate, theater owners are drowning for good content and Hollywood hasn’t given them the kind of movies that people want to see. Online streaming content is eroding the enthusiasm for in-theater distribution. So a foreign film like Godzilla Minus One gets made under the radar and gets into theaters with great passion and enthusiasm, and people get surprised. This is exactly what Godzilla Minus One is: a magnificent surprise, and what I think is the best movie in the world presently, and certainly one of the best to come along in recent memory. On a budget of only 15 million dollars, it’s everything a movie should be, and audiences are reacting to it in very positive ways, for good reason.

I wasn’t exactly planning to see the movie in theaters, I was going to catch it on Apple+ or whatever streaming service was carrying it around Christmas time.  But my grandchildren love Godzilla; it’s been a big part of their childhoods. They were talking to me about the new Godzilla/King Kong movie by Legendary Studios coming out in 2024, probably in March, and they were very excited about it.  That’s when I said, “Well, you know, kids, there is a Godzilla movie playing at Liberty Center right now.  Do you guys want to go see it?”  And I was surprised that my oldest grandson knew everything about it, and yes!  He wanted to see it right away.  So off we went to watch a movie that I thought might have some cool monsters in it.  But it would be filled with subtitles, and I didn’t know if they’d like it much.  But, being Godzilla fans, they could at least say they saw it.  Well………………what a surprise we were in for.  This wasn’t just a great movie, it was a masterpiece.  It reminded me of the many past films I have loved, particularly Yojimbo, the great Akira Kurasawa classic.  This wasn’t just a movie about Godzilla destroying Tokyo once again.  This was a very emotional film about the state of the world and the perseverance of human civilization to overcome the mistakes of governments and live their lives honorably, nobly, and without fear.  Godzilla served as the device that brought this out in people and it was Biblical in scope and magnificent in its execution.  When the movie ended, I just sat there, stunned by what I had just witnessed.  My grandchildren were thrilled, of course, but this was undoubtedly a benchmark in history that I fully realized.  Wow!

Now, I get to go to Japan, and I like to share as much of that experience with my family as possible.  I love Western culture for all its variety, but I love going to Japan because the Japanese are honorable people with self-confidence and a spirit of perseverance.  No matter how many different people I interact with from Japan, that is a foundation assumption about them.  When I need to go to the grocery store to get food and snacks while traveling, the people I deal with bow deeply when doing business and treat the meeting like it’s the most important thing they’ll ever do.  Even at the airports, everyone you deal with is highly respectful.  Walking around Tokyo or any big city, there is no crime, and everything is spotless.  The world could learn a lot from their culture, which I talk about occasionally.  Japan is a good country with good people who are persistent and honorable.  And I enjoy dealing with them on their turf.  Godzilla Minus One is a uniquely Japanese film about their culture and the value of honor as an individual.  The entire point of the movie was about living up to honorable expectations and being a good person, which has been missing so much from all modern movies filled with progressive political messages imposed by the influence of the World Economic Forum.  All that was removed entirely from Godzilla Minus One, and the film had a wonderful sense of freedom that was jaw-dropping in its relief.  I didn’t care that the entire movie was in subtitles.  It was delightful to watch. 

The main character is a Kamikaze pilot who lacked the killer instinct to fulfill his mission, so he ducked out of a fight just as the war ended.  He felt tremendous guilt about this, and it haunted him deeply.  In the aftermath of the war, he ends up moving in with a young lady and her adopted little girl, all war orphans.  None of them are related.  But the girl and the guy sleep in the same house but in separate beds.  And there is no sex.  They lived like this for over three years.  That’s not to say there wasn’t love; they grew to love each other deeply.  But no sex.  In a World Economic Forum-financed film, the girl would have left the guy after three months of no sex, which would have been the dumb plot of the entire movie.  Godzilla Minus One is about much more than sex and relationship problems.  It’s about overcoming self-doubt, becoming great, and earning the right to lead a family by conquering personal demons.  This was great stuff; people lost in the world are soaking up this message like a dry sponge.  And you know what’s best about the film?  The filmmakers had the guts to give it a happy ending, a real happy ending in every way that an audience could hope for.  The movie is undoubtedly about Godzilla, but he served almost like a godly figure, much like Job’s story from the Bible.  Without Godzilla, Job would have had no reference point.  But because of that reference, greatness had an opportunity to grow, and it brought people together as individuals to achieve beautiful things.  What a great message in a world filled with failure.  Along comes this little ray of light that is turning out to light the way for the world in ways nobody thought was possible.  Yet, there it is.  I can’t recommend it enough!

Rich Hoffman

Disney Has Failed due to Woke Politics: And its never coming back

I told everyone, don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Disney stock is down, and it’s never coming back.  I have had many people who think they are competent to tell me that the company would bounce back and that all this political stuff was recoverable.  And my reply to them has been they were smoking crack.  Once a company like Disney loses the public’s confidence, it’s over for them.  This was the clear indication coming out of the Thanksgiving weekend of 2023, where their new film Wish was struggling to break 32 million when it should have been closer to 100 million.  It used to be that Disney would crank out movies like this that all made a billion dollars, but now, for the second week in a row, where Marvels also fell apart in a dismal way, the writing is on the wall for Disney and all those people who thought they should argue with me about the fate of the entertainment giant.  Like I have said now for years, “Go woke, go broke,” and Disney is.  What executive at Disney thought that by putting a bunch of girls in a movie and having them throw a bunch of magic around, people would show up and throw a billion dollars at it?  Because that’s what they thought when they put out Marvels.  If Bob Iger had listened, I would have told him that you can’t go out and buy up all these properties like Marvel, like Lucasfilm, then fire all the top minds, or isolate them from the industry because they were old white guys, replace them with female directors, get rid of all that toxic masculinity and replace it with a cast of women who don’t look like they could pick up a heavy box, let alone take on a universe of monstrous villains, and that it would all work out OK?  In the original Marvel movies, some characters appealed to young boys and even grown men, like Captain America, Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man; they had big muscles and were charismatic and funny.  But that Disney was going to get rid of all that and replace those tough guy characters with women, and people would love it?

Here’s a little secret, everyone: women don’t care about movies or stories in the same way that men do.  They want to find a boyfriend and snuggle up with him for two hours.  They don’t care what they are watching.  They certainly won’t be going out to buy tickets with their girlfriends to watch a superhero movie.  They want to buy pants and purses so they can go out and find a boyfriend, possibly a husband.  That is their biological inclination.  They want to see what kind of guys they are dating, and if they can respond to some admirable character in the Avengers, then maybe they might be worth a second date—maybe more.  However, Disney thought it had the power to restructure the nature of society and that their movies shaped society instead of reflecting it.  They bought the whole World Economic Forum view of the world to their detriment.  And here they are.  They put out a full slate of movies, such as the latest Indiana Jones film, which was a pretty good movie, that have all lost money.  But they have all fallen flat because people have lost their trust in Disney itself.  And once that happens, there is no way to get that trust back.  And it’s too late to start over.  It took 50 years to build that brand Disney had.  It only took a decade of commitment to Larry Fink and the gang at BlackRock to destroy it.  Nobody wants to see equity and inclusion in their movies.  They want to see bad guys get their butts kicked.  They certainly don’t want some girl power nonsense, boys or girls, women or men.  Disney aligned itself with the wrong view of the world, killing them.

I was pretty serious when I stated I wanted to take my kids to Disney World one last time.  I’m old enough to have watched several amusement parks come and go in my life.  LeSourdsville Lake, near my Liberty Township, Ohio home, was one of my favorites as a kid.  It’s a park now; the lake and all the rides are gone completely.  The same thing could quickly happen to Disney World, and I wanted to take my family there one last time before it all went away.  Many people think it’s too big to fail.  I would say that it’s too big to survive so many bad decisions.  They lost their focus on who their audience is and disrespected the public by feeding them this garbage and expecting to get paid for it.  Embracing radical political views of the communist orientation was a terrible business decision.  And it showed up in the parks.  When my family of 9 people were all riding Rise of the Resistance together, at the first ship you get into, they had a drag queen ushering everyone onto the ride.  It wasn’t very comfortable.  We had kids 7 through 11 with us, and they noticed the long black fingernails and the makeup on a man’s face and wondered what was going on.  I cracked a joke and told them that this was Star Wars.  It was a species of alien, which they were fine with.  But it was an uncomfortable diatribe for the adults with us, not just in our family.  A woman not from our family beside me inside the ship laughed when I said what I did to the kids, and she said, “I’m glad you said that.”  Her little girl looked up, smiling because it seemed like a reasonable consideration. 

The park attendance was noticeably down while we were there, which was OK with us.  Seeing so many fantastic creations on life support made me sad.  Disney cannot operate theme parks of that size without a revenue stream of movies making billions of dollars a year.  They have produced some good content on Disney+, but as I have said many times, like Ahsoka and the Andor Star Wars series, it was a little too late.  Trust is essential in any relationship between spouses, children, or families, but also with fans and the public.  When Disney committed to a Democrat view of the world and thought it had the power and audacity to shape society, they were misinformed.  They worked against the MAGA movement, which is more significant than Trump, and it has cost them now in ways that cannot be reversed.  And I didn’t want to see it happen.  I wanted Disney to survive.  I keep hoping to be wrong.  But I’m not.  I think it is very feasible that we will not know anything about the Disney entertainment company in the future.  It will only be a thing of our current time.  Future generations will not know them or care about them.  And there certainly won’t be a Disney World for them to visit.  Thank Larry Fink and the losers at the World Economic Forum for that.  They whispered into the ears of Bob Iger all this progressive nonsense, and now the destruction in their wake is more than measurable.  And it didn’t have to be that way, yet it is.

Rich Hoffman

The Biden Administration is Guilty of the Hamas Attack on Israel: If you want to be safe and protect your family, carry a gun

A very ancient evil was evident on the faces of the Hamas attackers in Israel, and they wanted the world to see it. A lot is going on with that attack, but the key takeaway I think best came from Jack Posobiec when he talked about the quality of actual intel people who should have warned the world that this attack was coming. Jack is a frequent contributor on the WarRoom podcast and has some background in military intelligence, so he should know, and it’s been my experience as well. Intel agents aren’t what we’d like them to be, which are Jason Bourne and James Bond types of characters; all too often, they are hipsters standing around the office in hiking tennis shoes sipping on coffee. What we see in the movies is a myth; it’s what we’d like to aspire to. But reality is a long way from such ambitions. And it’s because of this that the world is such a dangerous place. We invest a lot of money in government to make us feel safe, yet something like this attack on Israel can still happen. So, it has all been an expensive illusion and is a very sobering reminder of why we have a Second Amendment. Those poor people in Israel, where entire families were killed when Hamas decided to make a move of outright terrorism against their sworn enemy, the creation of Israel in the first place, would have been far better off if they had been carrying guns and could have shot back. Because in the end, that’s the only answer to such evil, which is very much a part of the world, especially the dangerous world of liberalism as radical Marxists everywhere have made it. Many evil people were blowing on the fires of that Hamas attack in the background, and the lesson is that the world is not safe, and the government is not there to protect people. Instead, the opposite is the case.

The Biden administration knew this attack was coming, and so did everyone else. That is why the border policy of the Biden people suddenly wanted to build Trump’s wall, a reversal from them that had a lot of people scratching their heads. They know what they have done, and without question, there are many sleeper cells of Hamas and other terrorists operating within the United States, hiding in the density of our cities until they decide to perform a similar attack. The only reason something like that hasn’t happened yet in America is because of the amount of guns that we own. It is significantly more challenging to behave as Hamas did in Israel when the public is as armed as in America. Gun-free zones still have a lot of danger, but the house-to-house raids, the checkpoints where entire families were slaughtered, and the young women raped next to their husbands and parents wouldn’t occur without bullets flying in the other direction. And when you see that blank look on the faces of the Biden people in the American government, and the mindless clinging to sending more money to Israel to show support is their only answer of reassurance, that’s how bad it is. Only gun ownership can protect people from such an audacious attack. And that would be my advice to everyone in the world who can; as the Administrative State continues to fail and the Deep State withers under the pressure of their destructive policies that they can’t hide from the public any longer, the animals of the world, groups like these Hamas terrorists, are going to emerge and do what humans have done for thousands of years when values are removed from their core conduct. And the danger is never far behind.

The Biden and the Obama administrations before them are to blame; they have been paying off terrorists in Iran, supporting the terrorist state with money infusion at every subversive opportunity, including the 6 billion recently that has many people talking. But rather than let the radical Marxist elements hiding behind the Quaran whither away under their weight, these progressive globalist groups have sought to keep Iran alive and well to support state-sponsored terrorism worldwide. So that is why there is a Hamas terror cell, to begin with, and as many of those Palestinian sympathizers said in New York rallies in the wake of this devastation, they see themselves as the resistance to evil and imperial Israel, which they are determined to destroy. I’ve given the history before; Islam was a tactical invention of the Arabs from the last days of the Roman Empire to push back against Christianity in the region. I’ve read the Quaran many times and know it very well, and my opinion of it is not one of divine revelation but of political intent to undermine Roman influence at that time and the Crusades that followed. It was always a creation to hide the old gods of Mesopotamia and Canaan behind a solitary figure and attack the very premise of Western Civilization. So, there isn’t any peace, as many initially supported Israel’s creation through secret societies. The people of the Near East and the East would never allow such a power to emerge, so they would always plot and scheme its destruction. The only thing that keeps them in check is the threat of force, a strong United States supporting Israel, or personal power from gun ownership.

I would say that many of the evil forces captured on video wanted the world to be outraged.  But the people committing the acts are too stupid to do much of all this alone.  They have a network of influence that empowers them, and when you pay terrorists to be terrorists, as the Biden administration has done, those malicious animals will be inclined to do what they did.  But the message to the world is frustrated fear, just as it was with Covid.  In election-year politics, the globalists are grabbing for straws now as they see where populism is going.  Ukraine hasn’t been working to unite the world behind a cause, which taps into ideas of biblical apocalypse and diverts people from the economic depression that is getting ready to hit the books.  Or the antics of the Biden crime family.  China’s desire to attack Taiwan while the world is watching the tragedy of the biblical homeland and has their minds occupied by audacity.  Everyone needs to know that you are on your own regarding safety and security.  The CIA, the FBI, and other intel agencies supposed to keep everyone safe are filled with the wrong people.  Not the tough guys of our movies but the social rejects who couldn’t get a real job doing real things.  We saw that failure during 9/11 where the CIA and FBI didn’t compare notes, and we ended up with a bunch of panicky politicians throwing money and more government at the problem as if that would solve everything.  But it only made the world more dangerous because when you pay terrorists, even with appeasement, you get more terrorism. After all, they see it gets their attention.  The guilty parties were always saying peace at all costs when the maniacal evil we could see on the terrorist faces of Hamas was so raw and quickly displayed that it continues unchallenged.  Ultimately, the only thing that keeps the world safe, somewhat so, is gun ownership, which everyone should be pushing for, not just in the United States. 

Rich Hoffman

The Morality of Speed: Bad guys are slow, good guys are fast

I talk about it every year, and it’s that time again for the Annie Oakley Festival in Darke County, Ohio, which is a yearly vacation for me. And I continue to get asked about it because it’s work for a lot of people but a paradise for me. I have participated in several annual events at the Annie Oakley Festival, some for over 20 years. And out of all the things I could do, I find this particular weekend, the last one of each July, as my refuge from the mundane effects of the Administrative State. I hate slow people in life. Even though most people are pretty slow, they frustrate me tremendously, and out of all the other days of the year when I have to deal with them, I always look forward to the Annie Oakley Festival because it is there where speed and accuracy are celebrated in the traditional American ways rather than this slow New World Order globalism garbage. I love speed and have always been obsessed with it because when it is experienced, there is a morality to it that is unique to American culture, and each year at that event, I get to experience it without restriction and be around other people who appreciate it with a kind of raw understanding of morality. The world under the misguidance of the Administrative State is designed for slow, stupid people, and I find it pathetic. My idea of a vacation is to be away from those kinds of people, even though I may be exhausted at the end of all the competitions, which last all weekend. It’s a good tired. Because it is refreshing to be away from slow people, lazy people, and people who hide behind the Administrative State to appear valuable when all they are, are mindless bureaucrats.

Many of the old stunt performers, cowboys, gunslingers, and general roughnecks I hang around in some of these Western preservation groups all understand something that most people have forgotten, which will likely be returning shortly. In traditional American Westerns, which most of the world still enjoys, speed dominating evil is a consistent theme at the core of all values. When the good guy was faster to a dueler’s pistol, we cheered for the demise of the slower bad guy—the villain. (villains lost because they are slow) The value of speed was directly connected to the morality of capitalism, and society generally understood the metaphor. I spoke this year with many of these old fast-draw professionals who feel like they are a dying breed. I told them this year that I thought that young people might find themselves very attracted to the old fast-draw traits as globalism’s effects were failing worldwide, and people would be looking for a replacement. There are consistently good Westerns doing well on streaming services, like Hell on Wheels, and shows like Yellowstone. Some video games, like Red Dead Redemption, are very popular with young people, so it’s not like Westerns are dead or dying. It would only take a film studio like Angel Studios to start making traditional Westerns again, and people would flock to see them because they enjoy those kinds of stories. Hollywood may be a dying business model, but that doesn’t mean the Western will die with it. Hollywood used to be all about Westerns, and their demise started when they stopped committing themselves to Westerns. You can tell how people feel about Westerns at these shows I go to, especially the fast-draw events. There is always a crowd watching, and we are amazed that we shoot real guns that fast, competitively. Most of them have only witnessed that in movies and television shows.

Part of the suppression of Westerns, starting with those who finance movies, was the desire to build a global administrative state to mask production from performance expectations.  As globalism has proposed, the administrative state’s goal is to slow down the world to the communist intentions of centralized authority.  Those were the villains in the old Westerns, so it’s no wonder they don’t like Western values.  They want to slow the world down with bureaucracy so that centralized communism can rule.  But they are so slow and pathetic.  No wonder they want to legalize marijuana because they want people brain dead and too slow to think, to ask questions, and to meet reality head-on.  Most of my life is about dealing with slow-minded administrative state losers who seem only to want to slow things down.  So when I get to compete at Annie Oakley, speed becomes the priority, and it is just so refreshing.  I practice Fast Draw most every day in some form or another, so I’m always thinking fast about things.  But to express that speed in public, where people appreciate it, is very refreshing.  Usually, this Annie Oakley event charges me up for the rest of the year, just those few days.  I attend other fast draw events throughout the year, but what makes Annie Oakley stand out is that it’s done in a public forum with audience attendance.  Most competitions are held in private venues, so the general public cannot witness them.  At Annie Oakley, it feels like it would be like to have been in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.  And I love it!

Many Americans have been polite about the slow world of the administrative state and the ridiculous European concepts of the World Economic Forum.  They don’t have a culture in Europe or Asia where people can express themselves with guns, rapid draw in the classic Western way of dueling a bad guy as the Bible would define villainy, to establish individualized law and order.  Speed was the way to achieve justice, and the action was from a superior individual against the masses of slower bandits.  I’ve never learned to accept a lack of speed in life, no matter what it is, production, driving down the road, going to the grocery, everything.  I read fast.  I think fast.  I am happiest when things are fast.  I’m a guy who will drive a 51-foot RV rig at 85 miles per hour, happily zipping in and out of traffic, and I don’t care how much gas it burns.  Because I like to go fast.  But there isn’t much more satisfying in life than the fast draw events at Annie Oakley, whether with bullwhips or traditional six guns.  The participants and the audience appreciate speed; when you see it, you know all is right with the world.  And in the end, when the World Economic Forum types must face reality and deal with the speed of American culture outside of their Davos forums, where they talk to each other in a vacuum, they’re going to learn that they are the bad guy, and slowness is not going to be acceptable.  Americans like things fast, whether it’s a Chick-fil-A drive-thru, highway traffic, or a running back on a football team.  Americans want things quickly, and Cowboy Fast Draw represents American culture in so many satisfying ways that I am happiest when I compete with other fast gunslingers.  I’m more comfortable than anywhere on Earth under any condition.  And I never get tired of it.  Slow people are terrible.  But fast people, the world could use a lot more of those.

Rich Hoffman

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A Review of ‘The Sound of Freedom’: God’s Children are not for sale

Boy, that was a good movie, the Sound of Freedom. I intended to see it on the 4th of July when Angel Studios released it, a bold move considering they were putting a critical box office movie in the middle of summer between the new Indiana Jones film and the latest Mission Impossible project. I like these Angel Studios guys; I’ve worked with independent studios in the past, namely the Atlas group for the Atlas Shrugged films, so I have an appreciation for how difficult it is to make a movie in the first place, especially one with a big message like the Sound of Freedom has. But that’s only half the battle. Getting a movie distributed through the theaters is the biggest hurdle, and it’s been in that way that finance has been able to take over the movie industry. Putting this movie out on the 4th of July was hard because it competed with other big studio films with big marketing budgets. I think we should see this kind of thing more often because people hunger for good movies. And it’s usually not an either-or kind of decision. There’s room for Indiana Jones. And there is room for Sound of Freedom. I honestly didn’t expect much from the Sound of Freedom. I thought the movie would have a good message and was important to support. So when I tried to buy tickets for the film on July 3rd and 4th when my wife and I had some free time to see it, I wasn’t too disappointed that I couldn’t find any theaters that weren’t sold out in my area, or if they did have open seats, that we couldn’t find two together. We weren’t going to go to the movies and not sit together; that was ridiculous. So I waited until the following weekend, and we had the same problem. But we did manage to find two open seats for a Saturday afternoon in the third row, which I usually wouldn’t do because it’s too close to the screen. But we bought the tickets, went to see the movie, and were both blown away by what we saw.

The Sound of Freedom was actually, technically, a great film. It reminded me of Schindler’s List, one of my all-time favorite films. But pacing-wise, it reminded me of the Clint Eastwood-directed American Sniper. The Sound of Freedom was of excellent quality, on the level of those kinds of movies, and at a different time, this would undoubtedly be the Best Picture of the Year for the Academy Awards. The director, Alejandro Monteverde, put a lot of love into this film, and it sure showed. It was more of an action-adventure picture, more like Taken, rather than a documentary on child sex trafficking. To be honest, after seeing lots of clips from Jim Caviezel, I thought this film would be more of an activist movie. It certainly was; this film was made by really good people for good reasons, from top to bottom. But it was a far better movie than what usually comes out of those intentions. The director Alejandro Monteverde made a great movie with Jim Caviezel and the cast based on the real-life exploits of the Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard without knowing how the movie would get to the public. The movie has been done for five years; it was first going to be distributed by Fox, then Disney owned the rights, and they sat on it for a long time. Eventually, this new studio, Angel Studios, came along and picked up the rights. They are the studio behind the very well-done television show, The Chosen. So they picked it up and brought it to movie theaters.

Since most of the film production was Mexican, it brought the life of the cartels into sharp focus in ways that I hadn’t seen before. It was a very gritty movie that put viewers into the world of sex trafficking without being oppressively difficult to deal with. The Sound of Freedom walked that very fine line between being tasteful and hopeful, with Jim Caviezel playing the real-life Tim Ballard with such optimism that it wasn’t hard to fall in love with these people. I say all the time about movies, one of the biggest problems is that the writers of these things often don’t have much life experience. You can see that in big studio pictures where the writers clearly hang out in Santa Monica, and their perspective is from that world. The Sound of Freedom was written and directed by people who know the world’s dark underbelly but have not become hopelessly lost in it. What ended up on the screen is really something stunningly special. A movie everyone can enjoy that is much more optimistic than I thought it would have been. And not to give away spoilers, but I think it’s important to note because I honestly wasn’t fighting too hard to see this movie because they are usually depressing. While you want to know about these problematic subject matters, who wants to experience a depressing story? But I can say this movie has a very happy ending. I will likely see it many more times because it really was inspirational, hopeful, and bold. 

At the end of the movie, Jim Caviezal came on and gave a little speech, which was very appropriate, during the credits. They also put up a QR code which I took a picture of for this blog site. They encouraged people in the audience to buy tickets for people who couldn’t afford to go to the movie with a Pay it Forward campaign, which I thought was pretty clever and smart marketing on behalf of Angel Studios. There is a lot to like about this entire enterprise that will undoubtedly give hope to anybody who goes and sees it. For those who feel pretty hopeless about the world’s condition, I would strongly recommend The Sound of Freedom as soon as you can get to a theater and see it. I would recommend buying tickets and sending them to someone who might be on the fence. Not only for the box office need for a film like this, because this is how these kinds of movies get made. If they do well at the box office, it impacts the rest of the industry, which is precisely what is needed now with the amount of genuinely sinister aspects of culture that are on our nightly news. This movie is a ray of hope and deserves all the credit that can be given to it. I would personally like to see a lot more out of Angel Studios because this project is a real treasure. And the world could use a lot more from them. But it takes money to tell these kinds of stories, and this is a movie that was done on a high level as a kind of leap of faith. And we are lucky to have it. The world is better because of it. And maybe people will become educated enough from this movie to do something about sex trafficking and the amount of it that is destroying the lives of the innocent before they ever have a chance to live life for themselves. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Woke Disney’s Glaring Problem: The negative impact of Showing the New Indiana Jones Movie at the Cannes Film Festival

I always get excited about new Indiana Jones movies, and I know enough about this upcoming one, the fifth movie in the series over a 40-year period of time, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, to say I think it’s going to be a pretty good movie, and that I’ll like it. Whenever I go to a bookstore, I see Indiana Jones’s impact on publishing. Most of the top ten books sold in publishing have some kind of Indiana Jones influence. That character was a wonderful creation of George Lucas, a guy who wanted to be either a drag racer or an anthropologist; instead, he became a filmmaker. And what he did was much better for many industries, especially history; he made it fun through the character of Indiana Jones. I see Indiana Jones all over each copy I receive of Biblical Archaeology Review, which I have been getting for over 40 years now. It’s undoubtedly my favorite topic. Because of my very popular blog that, I operate like a newspaper, many people think I am obsessed with politics. And I am very interested in politics. But mythology, comparative religion, and history, in general, are what I put most of my efforts into. I spend about 70 hours a week professionally. I spend about 30 hours a week on political “things.” And the rest of the time, I spend reading, exploring, and contemplating. It is not uncommon, as many people with hostile intent have learned, that I am up often at 2 AM walking around my yard or going up and down my street thinking about things I have read. I don’t sleep much because I love history topics so intensely, and I am always in some sort of study of those topics. Indiana Jones made history as an industry that made normally boring topics, fun, and I think this new film will do much as the previous films have done for the study of history, bring joy and adventure to it, and the human consciousness will grow in healthy ways. 

And because I’m interested in this subject, I watched the coverage of the Cannes Film Festival, which played in the middle part of May in France, where Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was shown to a large audience. The Disney people, especially Bob Iger, the CEO, think they have a good movie in the new Indiana Jones film, and they decided to rush it out to reviewers to get some positive buzz going on the film. And they need it; as I have been talking about, Disney is in big trouble on multiple fronts. They have invested too much in ESG scores, BlackRock political values, and their company’s commitments have been slowly destroying them. They are not the same company they were ten years ago, and ten years from now, I think we will perhaps not see them in entertainment as an influencer at all. It is that bad for Disney. And I’m not a fan of Bob Iger, a big-time liberal who has committed to the global citizen movement, gambling that globalism would be the new transition economic force, so he has steered his company in that direction. But globalism is failing across the world. People want American nationalism, and even in broken-up countries on the other side of the globe, people want to think about the idea of America, not a bunch of bureaucrats in the European Union who the Administrative State so paralyzes they can’t even tie their shoes or a China approach with centrally managed communism that completely steamrolls the individuals of society into mashed potatoes who serve corrupt oligarchs like some top-heavy aristocracy. 

But I don’t think Bob Iger is an idiot. I think he did a pretty good job as the Disney CEO over the previous decade. However, it was a house of cards that was eventually going to fall, so I think it was a horrendous idea for him to return to attempt to save Disney because he was just going to sink himself in the process. He knows he needed a hit with Indiana Jones, so he stepped in and encouraged the filmmakers to make a film that people would want to see, to take out some of the Kathy Kennedy from Lucasfilm’s wokeness that was showing itself to be very unpopular with Bud Light, Target, and essentially the rise of the MAGA movement in politics. Bob and the gang made a pretty good movie that they thought would serve fans enough and not compromise their commitment to ESG measures, and they were in a rush to show it to the public. And, of course, the results were devastating. It was the worst thing they could have done. It would have been better in this media climate to surprise everyone at the release date instead of trying to create positive buzz for the film a month early. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny comes out on June 30th, so that’s a lot of time to have people who now hate Disney because of its commitment to woke policies to criticize everything that they do, from The Little Mermaid to the destruction of Pixar, the ruin of Star Wars, and now another Indiana Jones film that many of the critics who saw the film are saying is worse than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. 

I personally liked Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It injected into publishing hundreds and hundreds of interesting books that I spent many thousands of hours reading over the last decade, so I was very happy with it. And I think that will certainly happen with this new movie, The Dial of Destiny, with the plot point being that of the Greek mathematician Archimedes. I think the concept for this film is much more interesting than a time travel movie like Back to the Future. This one deals with quantum entanglement, which people know is something I spend a lot of time considering and the nature of dimensional reality outside our four dimensions. But Disney underestimated the negative power of new media, so once their critics like Variety and the BBC came out negatively against the new Indiana Jones film, the new media types on YouTube, who have become the new influencers, pounced. It didn’t matter how good or bad the new Indiana Jones film was because it’s a Disney project, and as a company that has been committed to woke policies, they have made themselves open season for intense criticism, which will impact the opening of the new film. Iger should have held his cards and just let the film tell its own story when it was released. I’m sure I’ll find things I like about the new film, and I’m sure that the wokeisms will be there and I won’t like those. But I do think that Disney realized that Indiana Jones required some fan service and that they attempted to give that to this new film as a peace offering to their audiences. But it has had the opposite effect, and in some ways, I feel sorry for everyone involved in the film. They are feeling the pain of using their movies to sell political messages that the world doesn’t want. And when they thought they had surrendered to the fans a bit, they have only been slapped harder, which is the story coming out of the Cannes Film Festival. No matter how good the movie is, because of any connection to woke Disney, people are going to hate it because that is the political climate we are all in now. Globalism is the enemy; people know it and express themselves accordingly. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The 19 Different Species of Aliens Who Work with Earth Governments: American intelligence agencies do not work for us, they work for them

I have not been cancel cultured out of existence over the last thirty years because there are many things I do that people want and, in many ways, are much more valuable than gold. One of those things is process improvement and troubleshooting cause and corrective actions. I have a very deep background in Lean Manufacturing, and I often take it way beyond the sensei masters who travel the globe as consultants, and that’s very unique in the marketplace and extremely valuable. But I can’t turn off those skills just because of American intelligence, and actually, global governments hiding behind a façade of spy networks desire to keep all humanity locked behind a veil they have created with secret societies and various religions for complete control over the human race, as just another cog in the wheel of an adored aristocracy. Just before Christmas in 2022, the Biden administration refused to release the evidence of who killed JFK. Mike Pompeo, who I have met and spoken with, under Trump, did the same even though full disclosure is perfectly justified. Obviously, the CIA and the FBI, as institutions, are protecting themselves from the implication of their role in it. This points to many other disturbing trends that come from American intelligence, such that they control elections and are accountable to something besides the American voter. They are audacious in abusing power, almost daring anybody to challenge them.   They consider themselves more important than the presidents we elect or the members of congress we put in place to keep things running in the government. They are, in all essence, a shadow government, and they take orders from something besides the American people. And if you are doing a cause and corrective action on the many ways and whys, there is corruption in our government, everything inconveniently points in one direction and one direction only. That there are likely more than 19 different species of alien life, not domestic to birth on earth, that the governments of the world interact with, and the veil is hidden behind the mechanisms of intelligence agencies, and that is why they are not accountable to us but to them. 

Part of the scam is to convince everyone that such a suggestion is outlandish and crazy. And before what we caught the American intelligence agencies doing during the Trump administration, then up to and during Covid-19, the election fraud that took place in 2020 and continued into 2022, I would have been very skeptical of the evidence that aliens were running everything behind the scenes outlandish. But it has bothered me since Robert Temple wrote his really interesting book, The Sirius Mystery, in 1998, and for 15 years, intelligence agencies around the world worked really hard to destroy him for writing that book. As I did my own investigations, I ran into Michael Salla’s book Insiders Reveal Secret Space Programs & Extraterrestrial Alliances, which I read from in the included video. There is too much there to repeat here; I would recommend the video for the details. But in essence, this notion that our governments are not reporting to their voters but several species of alien races is not new. Many have been complaining about it for years. As the world has become smaller and everyone now has their own portable television studio with their cell phones, the rate of communication has increased to the point where a cause and corrective action as to why is obvious. We are being treated as a flock of animals by an unworthy aristocracy, a kind of new age religious priest class who put themselves between the people of earth and all these groups of alien species for the classic reasons of control. They want to take what they learn from these groups of visitors, who have been coming to earth for millions and millions of years and use that relationship for their quests for power over minds they consider weaker and easy to dominate. 

There are too many things to consider, such as the location of the Eye of Africa and the specific knowledge that the tribe of the Dogon people from that particular region has about the planets from the Sirius A, B, and C region of the sky, one of the brightest stars we see at night and the central character in so many of the world’s religions. The same tricks that were used to conceal these truths of alien visitations from the public in mass were used to a failed effect with the Covid crises created by the government for the purposes of global government control. The suppression of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine at the beginning of the global economic lockdowns to prevent a cure of the Covid crisis was the same kind of arrogance that was witnessed in Roswell, New Mexico, upon the crash there and how the military reacted to it, harassing witnesses and trying to paint them as kooks to the public. I have visited the various sites in Roswell to see everything for myself. I was alarmed to visit the excellent museum there to see their vast library of UFO sightings and details of alien encounters. There is just too much to have them all explained away in coincidence. Governments this time in the modern age were caught in lies, lies about election fraud, lies about a virus they created so to control the world for all the dumb reasons that kings and nobles of history have tried to control their people by being the conduits that spoke to the gods, which is what kept them in power. 

One of the biggest giveaways to this plot, wrapped around the world, is the Antarctica problem. No country claims it, and the evidence points out that the big continent was not always at the south pole. Instead, it was at a time in a climate where dense vegetation existed, and likely, people lived there. There is a history that needs to be studied under their ice caps. If you peel back the layers of concern from the climate crazies, the real fear is that the ice from Antarctica might melt, as it has many times in the past without man-made climate change, and we might learn the truth of our real human history. But currently, which was obviously a goal of the Vril Society of Germans who fled there to continue their space program, it looks like it’s been an easy place for interplanetary travel to come and go without air traffic and governments to report the happenings. Hey, I just saw a UFO over my house.

Actually, my daughter did and recorded it for me. They are careful not to get caught, but they happen everywhere, and people see them. But they aren’t talking to us; they are talking to those who have interceded on our behalf in the class power model that violates the Constitution of the United States. But the goals of the World Economic Forum and the desire for a one-world government come from those same people who have been talking to these 19 different species all along. And for them, they envision a kind of Star Trek Federation kind of world. But many of us don’t want that. We want sovereignty, and just because aliens are coming and going all the time, sometimes at war with each other, sometimes helping us, sometimes trying to hurt us, and our various governments are sticking themselves between them and us, one thing hasn’t changed, and that is that America is the best country on the planet and those ideas are the future of the human race. And no government, not a domestic one, or some alien one, has a right to violate our constitution. And there is no security that American intelligence has a right to use that violates our constitutional rights for our own safety. Nothing is more significant in America than protecting the voters’ constitutional rights. There are no shadow governments allowed. No CIA mind manipulation allowed. And if the 14-foot winged aliens called Draconians think they have some rights over us, they have another thing coming. And it’s at that point that we have to look at all the evidence and consider what to do with it. It’s not technology that makes a society great or even its history. Its philosophy and I would argue that the American Constitution is one of the greatest works of philosophy anywhere in the galaxy. And if the aliens really had it together, they wouldn’t be coming to earth and talking to a bunch of loser intelligence agencies, who are some of the dumbest people on the planet. There wouldn’t be so much secrecy to undermine us so audaciously. And that is the real truth they are hiding, not to protect us from them, but to protect them from us all so they can have the illusion of power they never had before or deserved.

Rich Hoffman

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The Message from the SWAMP: Voters are not in charge, the administrative state is

I’ve thought from the beginning that there was massive election fraud in the 2020 election. I watch these kinds of things intently and was watching the news coverage as the steal took place late in the night when people went to bed witnessing a sizable Trump lead, where even Vegas was calling it for Trump. Then in the morning, Biden suddenly had these huge spikes of voter infusions. I watch enough of these things to notice that something was very wrong with the performance of the vote counters, to say it lightly. At that early time, it wasn’t the evidence of voter fraud that we had to go on, but it was the continued behavior of the SWAMP itself, after the Durham Report, the two impeachments over nothing, the spying on the campaign, the actions of the FBI, the complicity of the media, we knew on election night November 3rd that they weren’t all just going to go away and suddenly give up. As I say all the time, judge people based on what they do, not what they say, and you’ll know the truth even in the most voracious lier. So in that regard, the election fraud was blatant, even if, at that moment, we weren’t sure to what extent. Now, after two years of trickling evidence, which grows by the day, there is no question that Trump had the election stolen from him, but worse than that, it was the real people’s pick that was stolen, and that is a problem far greater than the mess we find ourselves in now. We are seeing a conflict play out that goes back to before the Revolutionary War itself, the clash between the idea of America and the conformity of Europe, to the world suddenly being smashed together through technology in uncomfortable ways. The election problems of 2020 were about a lot more than just getting Trump out of the White House.

Essentially, by the morning of November 4th, the collection of bureaucrats, thieves, insurgents, and international bankers were saying with a smile on their faces, “you, the people, are not in charge. We, the administrative state, are, and there is nothing you can do about it.”  They stole the election to essentially protect the same premise that the War of 1812 was all about, can people govern themselves, or were they always to be at the mercy of the aristocratic administrative state types? The answer was evident in their actions. They would not live in a society where people ruled themselves because it invalidated everything they stood for as people. They were refusing to let people govern themselves, and if they had to be obvious about it, instead of hiding in the background allowing the poor fools to believe they were running things, then so be it. They dared us to challenge them and now are panicked by the results. Even going into the details of what happened over Covid, we saw a world thrown together that was run mainly by socialists and communists who were jealous of America in so many ways that they were going to destroy it any way they could. They no longer cared if people knew what they were up to or not. They had lost patience with the whole debate, and that’s why with smiles on their faces on November 4th, they felt utterly validated to declare that Trump had lost and people were just going to have to get over it. Their message to all of us was to put our masks on and shut up. And if you question the election in public, we’ll destroy your life, as they attempted to do with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mike Lindell.

I have always said that people, especially in America, will follow the rules until they no longer work. Even now, obviously, the government has been caught in not just stealing the 2020 election for its own reasons of self-preservation, but they murdered people behind the Covid social conditions, and they knew what they were doing as they were doing it, which will be the subject of much future material for me. The evidence in hindsight is quite clear to see the purposes for social distancing, masking, and mandatory vaccinations. The types of people who love the administrative state and their role in it were literally willing to kill to preserve it. So election fraud to them was a gift. At least people weren’t massively slaughtered in the process of a coup in the White House, and people should be happy about it. That’s why it was so terrifying to them what happened when voters with some impassioned instincts about not certifying a fake election stormed the capitol on January 6th in frustration by what they had witnessed. Several hundred thousand people had come to hear Trump speak at a Stop the Steal Rally at the White House, and that was terrifying to the administrative state, which had organized so many mass riots and caused so much damage during all of 2020. Even after a year of Covid, people were willing to come out into the cold to support President Trump or even the idea of him, a people’s pick. At the end of the day, a portion broke into the Capitol Building to let the politicians know there that they weren’t in charge; the people were. 

Many people have offered that the efforts of the January 6th Committee and the optics that have been shown on television are purely put on to hide the bad inflation numbers of Democrats controlling all three houses of our government. Or the many other missteps that are destroying the world, especially the liberal commitment to eradicating the economy of America to save the world from their religion of fanatics regarding climate change. Their actions on gas prices, food shortages, and other deliberate terrorist acts are far more radical than the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center by running planes into them or the actions at WACO, Ruby Ridge, or Oklahoma City. The January 6th Committee is about more than anything anybody has so far put their mind around. It is about aspects of many things, but at its heart is the hatred of people who think they can rule themselves and not have their “betters” ruling over them for their own good because the answer to that question is one that the human race has never had to answer, except to leave places and to resettle in areas with less bureaucrats in them over the last 10,000 years. The human race collided for the first time because the planet was too small to any longer ignore the question. As Trump likes to call them, the Unselect Committee has one purpose and one purpose only, to ensure that the administrative state is in charge and that voters were not.

To become in charge, you had to be in the “in” group like they were. You couldn’t just rule yourself. They were happy to play along all this time and let us think we were in charge, so long as they pulled the strings. But after two elections of Trump, they had lost patience to play the game any longer, and they expected us to kneel to their power. And when we didn’t, then insisted that we were still in charge, like many did that day on January 6th, well, that was a bridge too far for them, and that’s where we find ourselves presently. They aren’t willing to give up power or what they think is power. And they will do anything to keep it, even kill if necessary. In that way, we know who we are dealing with, and there is no way that this all ends in peace.   The question is, can it end without lives lost. That will depend on the authenticity of the next election. People are willing to give elections a chance. But they will not be ruled by incompetent losers from the administrative state, and that for those who are, is the scariest thing in the world—not having power and knowing that the people of the world refuse to be ruled over by the administrative class.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Why The New ‘Top Gun’ is So Popular: Americans like rule-breakers, not conformists

It is funny to hear industry analysts trying to figure out why the new Top Gun: Maverick movie is doing so well going into its third weekend. I’ve listened to and read several hundred reviews of the film at this point. Unlike other kinds of movies, I have not yet found anybody who understands why the American market is flocking to see it many times now. Is it patriotism and the lack of wokeness that is in the movie? Or is it Tom Cruise himself, which many in the trades would like to think is the case? Well, Tom Cruise was smart to make Top Gun the way it needed to be, especially coming out of the Covid years. The film was done well before there was ever a pandemic, and Paramount sat on it for several years because of the uncertainty of the future of Hollywood, Top Gun: Maverick has the feel of a movie made in a different time and a different country, all the way back to 2019. I remember being on an airplane flying out of Orlando and watching Comic-Con footage of the movie for a 2020 summer release, so it’s been out there for a long time. But the film was released during a market recovery in a post-Covid world, and all kinds of forces were at play that inspired Americans to return to the movie theaters to see a movie worth leaving the house to view. Yet, there is an element to Top Gun that is very much reminiscent of the 80s when Tom Cruise was making so many blockbuster films, along with other movie stars, that say more about Americans to the world than anybody has seen in a while. It is that element that was on raw display in the new movie and is why the film is doing well without the rest of the world driving a majority of the box office numbers, specifically the Chinese market. 

The character of Maverick is a rule-breaker, and that is a trait that Americans love. They don’t like someone who follows the rules to the letter. Americans want out-of-the-box characters who will bend or break the rules to accomplish something great in the world, even down to the name of the Tom Cruise character. Tom Cruise himself is not like Maverick. But he was wise to play a character like Maverick and let all the elements of a rebel within the military shine in many reckless ways. Just the name of the character, Maverick, indicates a loner, a rugged individualist, someone who goes their own way in life. And that is not how the rest of the world is. Only American cultures celebrate such traits. The stories other cultures put on the silver screen are conflicts with conformity as opposed to what we see in Top Gun, a character so reckless that he costs the military hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in just this one movie. Maverick crashes two very expensive aircraft and puts at risk many more in his exploits of individualism that are often audacious, unapologetic, and way over the top. In most cultures, Maverick would be in jail. But in America, he is considered the top navy pilot that the military has, and audiences love it.

Literally, in the movie, all the people who have trouble are those who follow the rules. There is a scene where all the best pilots are in a bar talking about the upcoming mission, and they wonder who will be able to teach them anything. And of course, it is Maverick who has been picked to lead the mission because for it to be successful, it will require someone willing to break all the rules and discover what nobody yet knows. There is a scene where Tom Cruise playing Maverick, stands in front of a giant American flag and tells his students to throw out the rule book because it’s what your enemy knows. To succeed in this movie, the characters must learn to “not think” and act on “instinct.” It’s really the message of the first Star Wars movie from way back in 1977 and is a yearning that most people often experience in their lives. The desire to be their own authentic person and not some caricature of social order. The only way a mission like the one featured in Top Gun: Maverick can be accomplished is by breaking all the rules because the enemy is stuck in rules and is their ultimate weakness. It’s not the military jets, the companionship, or even the music that makes people love movies like this one. They help sell the story, but the essence is that Americans love rule breakers. So does the rest of the world, but they can only experience such things in American movies, and that is precisely why all these woke politics have infected the industry to the extent they have. For the producers of Top Gun to turn loose a character like Maverick again into the movie business was a very deliberate act, and the results are apparent. 

In much the same way that ESG scores are failing the financial industry because the world does not value those measures, they have been artificially created to inspire liberal political change to a climate change fanatical religion. Real value is what people are encouraged to see in the movies, not just in the act of buying popcorn actually to see a movie just because it’s there. It’s what the story tells that matters to people, and in Top Gun, it’s about recklessness over logic. It’s about breaking the rules in a rigid military environment to do what the military itself can’t do. It’s thinking out of the box to solve the problems society at large gets stuck on. And that’s why this movie Top Gun: Maverick is doing such good business while other movies come and go, and people forget about them five minutes later. So there is much more going on with this new Top Gun movie than just great music, interesting visual effects, and a vintage throwback to the kind of movies made in America during the 80s. Americans love rule breakers, before and after Covid. Covid was everything that Americans didn’t want to be. They gave authority a chance in case it saved lives, but knowing what we do now in hindsight, they would never do it again. Instead, millions of Maverick types sit in a darkened theater cheering on the new Top Gun because they see themselves in the character. And they want characters like that to succeed, to win at all costs. That’s the American way of doing things, and the rest of the world is fascinated by it. Even though they can’t relate, they will still buy a movie ticket to see it in the fictional character of Tom Cruise’s Maverick. For them, it’s the closest thing they will ever get to a society that thumbs its nose at procedures and conformity and embraces adventure and the treasures found in recklessness. And like all great movies, because Maverick was so reckless, so brash, and such a rule-breaker, he saves society in the process, which says more about us all than any other measure of human achievement.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business