Getting Out of Bed to Fight for Your Country: Most people don’t have the guts to be President Trump

There are a lot of sunshine patriots out there who will fly the American flag over the Fourth of July and cook their hot dogs on a grill. But when it comes time to do any kind of heavy lifting and to stand for something, they are nowhere to be found. Most people bootlick their way through life, and they will do so to make the most money possible while doing as little work as they can. And when times are tough, they hide under their covers and turn off the alarm clock until the danger is averted. The world is full of such people. And it is because of them that there is so much evil in the world, empowered and doing what they are doing to destroy the world. I have been warning about these things for most of my life and as people ask me about some of the chapters in my book of life and wonder about all the carnage and hurt feelings, it points back to this essential issue. When times were tough, who got out of bed and did something about it. And one thing I can say, with all the violence and debate, I did not turn off the alarm clock and go back to bed while it was storming outside. I got up, went to where the trouble was, and did what needed to be done. When I fly an American flag, I do so knowing that I have done all I could to make it proud, because the fights to have the right to fly that flag are always under threat by hostile enemies foreign and domestic. It would have been easy to just do like everyone else, take a nice vacation, go to fancy dinners, and play golf without ever talking about anything too serious. But that would never be enough for me, because there was always a lot of work to do, and America needs as many people doing it as possible.

And I saw in Trump many years ago, 2012 to 2014 a person who had achieved a certain place in life where he wanted to do the work that it takes to keep America alive and well. I would point out even back then that Obama was a socialist, and that his birth certificate had major problems and that he probably was not qualified to be president. Which at that time sounded crazy. I remember what I was doing on 9/11 when terrorists attacked the symbol of American capitalism, the World Trade Center. I sent my wife to pick up my kids from school as everyone around me was as floored as everyone across the country and our skies stopped having air traffic for a couple of days. But I never believed the narrative, what made those terrorists think they could get away with it. Globalists looking to topple America are always involved, and they are sloppier these days than back then when people still had some trust in authority figures. 9/11 was a provoked terrorist attack meant to expand government and to give the FBI, and the CIA more authority, which they have obviously abused. And it all happened right under our nose, while people went about their lives worrying about being too controversial, because they might become social outcasts. But out of all that came a few people here and there, like President Trump, who were able to do something to help the flag, so he started thinking of running for president and he was visiting Tea Party groups to build up his brand in that direction.  And I was a supporter, because I knew what kind of work really needed to be done in America, and most people were not willing to do it.

When history looks back on this time, it will remember all the sunshine patriots who sat on their hands and never engaged the enemy, which empowered that enemy to the levels of menace that we are seeing now. Their neighbors might think they are swell people. At the local wine tasting where everyone is talking about sending their children to college so they can learn about Karl Marx, essentially, people might complement the high heels of an attractive woman, but talk behind her back at all the men she is sleeping with, while an American flag flies outside looking for someone to defend it from the tyranny of a jealous world.  But it will also remember that it took 12 years of Trump to return our country back to all those worthless people who should be more grateful than they are. Everyone will be grateful in hindsight even though they did extraordinarily little to help along the way, including most of the current Republican Party. They talk tough, but when it comes time to go out into the rain to engage the enemy, they stay where it is safe, and let others do that. The very few others. Trump is one of them. Thank goodness he won that first term in 2016. And in many ways, what happened in 2020 had to happen because people needed to see just how bad this current government of criminals really was. How deep the rot really extended. They did not believe me when I told them in the 1990s, then the 2000s. And of course, in 2020. But now, because Trump was essentially a president in exile in Mar-a-Lago, and all these horrendously bad people have come after him to destroy him, do people finally see the danger. 

It was always going to take three terms of a presidency fully committed to the preservation of American life to do the job. And Trump seemed poised to do that job going back to the Reform Party. I am not new at this. I remember talking to Ross Perot’s family in the parking lot of their Texas company on the eve of the 1992 election about all this. And most people just would not get out of bed, they wanted to stay asleep. I did all I could, including being in that parking lot with the Perot family in Texas, and 19% of America knew something had to be done and supported Ross Perot anyway. That number has grown over the years to around 38% who would stand by Trump no matter what, because they get it. They are out of bed with the alarm clock off. And I think now, because of these previous two terms of Trump, one official, one in exile, that a third Trump term will put that number closer to 60% of America will finally get out of bed and do the work of patriotism that is required. And as bad as it is for Trump, he has inspired others to finally get out of bed and to fight for our flag. Sometimes it takes a person like President Trump, or a Ross Perot, people who have achieved a certain level of success in life to turn away from polite society, roll up their sleeves, and fight for their country in ways that very few have the courage to do, because they are too busy trying to build a life for themselves to get to some level of independence.  I know what it has cost me, and many people just will not do it, because they do not have the stomach for it. But that did not take away the requirements of the job. It will take three Trump terms to start to fix our country from the hostile communists who have been attacking it for most of the last one hundred years. And it will take another decade or two to implement patriotic policies to restore America to greatness. But we are seeing that process play out now, and thank goodness for people like President Trump, and an exceedingly small group around him who are doing the right things for all the right reasons. I have a lot of respect for them because I know how hard it is. And everyone should appreciate the effort for many thousands of years to come, because it was necessary.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Fall of the Credentialed Class: People are tired of worthless losers running their lives

I know it’s scary, but I have been telling this story for over four decades. It’s just that people didn’t want to hear it—not that it wasn’t a problem all along.  Communism and Marxism, along with all varieties of socialism, have been running in the background of all institutional society for more than 100 years, so what is happening now is nothing surprising.  It’s new because people assume everyone plays according to the same rules.  But they never were, and that will put us all in a modern form of the American Revolution, which will be fought in our present time.  Which for many people is scary.  But if you love war and conflict, which I happen to, this is the best time to be alive that anybody could imagine.  And the direction in which everything is heading, aside from the usual chicken little conversations about the end of the world, is obvious.  You can see it clearly in the massive failures happening all across society, but it is never more apparent than in the failures of the ”credentialed class.”  Those who could equally purchase social status by participating in progressive society protocols, such as attending college, joining a fraternity, and following the directions of our education system left behind by such socialist pioneers as John Dewey.  While the path to Hell is always paved with good intentions, and yes, the intentions were good, “fairness for all” and all those ridiculous assumptions, Hell is what the path toward a credentialed society has given us.  And now people want their money back.  All the things the communists of the world told us to do, we have found out, do not give us a perfect society.  And people are turning away from it, which is the violent rejection we are seeing now and the hurt feelings of those who have invested their entire lives toward that credentialed society.  There are a lot of regrets, which was inevitable. 

Communism was everywhere leading up to World War II.  Socialists and Marxists from Europe were haughtily flowing their European viewpoints through high society, and our political class, fresh off their years of Western expansion and criticism over how the Indians were treated, were soaking in guilt and wanting to show the rest of the world they could name wines at wine tastings and eat fancy dinners with the best of them, so they came up with this plan for all of American life, to show the world that the United States deserved respect too.  And that we could go to college and function like civilized people all over the earth have been doing.  So we endeavored to adopt many of their methods, which was to create a credentialed society and create classes of people based on that tiered system, and there are still plenty of people who still think this way.  The communist belief was that skills were an unequal way to elevate in society because some people might be better at things than other people, so to correct that situation, they came up with this credentialed system where people could take a class, get a piece of paper, hang it on their wall, then get jobs based on that effort.  That way, people who were losers but paid the money to get a credential in the education system could have access to a job and climb their way into “elite” society.  So, people who weren’t very good at things in life or who didn’t want to work very hard to acquire a skill loved this system.  All they had to do was pay money and get their piece of paper; then, they could live the rest of their days as a respected member of society because they attended some college or another method of achieving credentials. 

There is a lot of talk about corporations being part of so much evil in this New World Order, which is a shame because I like capitalism and all manner of making money.  Unfortunately, corporations are usually run by lazy people with walls full of credentials but not much skill in performing a job.  So their entire lives are filled with trying to hide that embarrassing fact from the world.  So, they have plunged themselves into more and more socialism and communism in their corporate structure and have taken their companies more toward a Chinese model of authoritarian control by default.  I call these types of people bottom feeders, even when they hold high office in an essential position, because fundamentally, everything they are was built on this premise of a credentialed society.  As long as everyone played by the same rules, nobody would find out what phonies these people were.  They can maintain the illusion as long as a credentialed society protects them from actual results.  So this is how it has been for many years, certainly coming out of World War II and the push to adopt a Middle Class and a tiered education class, which is talked about all the time now, because the belief is that if only more people had gone to college, they wouldn’t be voting for President Trump, as uttered by Katie Couric recently in frustration that nothing seems to be stopping the former President and billionaire from returning to office.  The belief all along from the communist left was that their “credentialed society” would protect them from market expectations. 

But people have now admitted that they don’t like this world created by “credentialed society,” and market forces of need are finally catching up.  Kids coming out of high school now are watching what their dumb parents did, and they don’t want any part of that mess. They certainly don’t want the debt that comes with the buy-in to credentialed society.  And they don’t like the kind of people that credentialed society makes.  The world is starving for the good old-fashioned merit-based society where the best and brightest work hard to climb to success, and the results benefit everyone.  However, the key is to unlock hard work through merit to true innovation, which credentialed society is not inspired to utilize.  For them, it was about equality and the ability to buy your way into advanced society and respect.  For the merit-based capitalist system, it was hard work and perseverance.  The equalization model has left everyone but the lazy starving for better options.  So, as we speak, that credentialed society is falling apart.  They are making a lot of noise about it, but in essence, the trend of the world is moving toward skills and hard work, perseverance, and competency.  Much to the anxiety of the communists and lazy losers of the world who thought they could buy their way into social respect.  As that trend falls apart, the screams are loud.  But it doesn’t change the fact that people want quality and effort in their social interactions, not losers who live in a higher social class just because they attended a school and received a “receipt” in the form of a diploma.  As it has turned out, that paper has shown itself worthless.  And the people hanging it on their walls who paid fortunes to get it weren’t any better off than if they hadn’t done anything.  They still didn’t have the skills to be professional because they didn’t have the guts to do the work.  They tried to cheat it by hiding in the credentialed class.  And the world is tired of it. 

Rich Hoffman

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

When You Build Something, There Are Always Lazy Losers Who Want to Take It: Lessons from Yellowstone and What it Means for America

I haven’t changed my mind on Yellowstone being run by a bunch of liberal Democrats.  But as I have said, until a few weeks ago, I had never seen a single episode.  However, everywhere I go, including in the park, everyone asks me if I dress as I do as part of the “Yellowstone” look inspired by the show.  Of course, the answer is no.  I have dressed the way I do my entire life, well before Yellowstone came along.  But as I said, I always hear references to that popular Paramount Network show thrown in my direction, so I thought I’d finally check it out with my wife.  We enjoy watching shows on various streaming services, but usually, there isn’t much time for that kind of thing.  We travel a lot, and I’m involved with a lot, so there hasn’t been a window to sit down and watch a show like Yellowstone, which is now in its fifth season.  But now we’re all caught up over the last three weeks, and I can say it’s a good show.  I get what they are trying to say, and a couple of themes crucial to the consciousness of America are emerging here that are certainly worth discussing.  The show itself, as written and produced by the actor, Taylor Sheridan is quite a commentary on the role and value of American life.  One of my big hang-ups was Kevin Costner, who starred in the show.  He has been in many good westerns, but he also supported Liz Chenay over Trump, so he kept my interest away from the show until I knew more about how his role would play out.  But Yellowstone, in every way, is good stuff, excellent entertainment.  And I’m not surprised that America has fallen in love with the show as the best entertainment that is currently available, anywhere. 

A few years ago, as the Biden administration was put in place by corrupt globalists intent on the destruction of America, I went out west with my entire family to get away from it for a while.  We traveled to Yellowstone specifically in our convoy of RVs, which was the trip of a lifetime.  Along those lines, we found ourselves in Cody, Wyoming, on a hot night in the summer of rodeo season.  So we all went out to dinner from our very excellent campsite and went into town to experience an authentic rodeo, and it was one of the best nights I had ever had.  My whole family was there with me to experience it, kids, grandkids, and others and I hated Joe Biden and his kind of people so much that a night in Cody, Wyoming, was just the right thing for me, which was a very American flag waving sort of MAGA patriotism.  Leading up to that rodeo, we had all traveled through South Dakota, to Mt. Rushmore and Deadwood, around the areas where the Sturgis Bike Rally always occurs, so we were having a wonderful time rooted deep in the heart of America and the kind of people who most make sense to me.  Additionally, we spent a few days in Yellowstone Park, seeing all the famous sites worldwide.  We were in the exact areas where the show Yellowstone took place.  So much so that everywhere I went, people asked me if I liked the show because it reminded them of John Dutton, the way I dressed and walked.  I didn’t know who that was.  It turned out to be the Kevin Costner character, which wasn’t something I took as a compliment.  I’ve also had many local people refer to me as Rip because of my role in the community.  I didn’t know what that meant.  But I do now, and I get it.  I understand all the references.  But the whole time we were at Yellowstone, the actual place, and people were deep in the show then; I hadn’t yet watched a single episode.  But now that I have, and having been there for an extended period, I think I have had a unique perspective on the whole movement in America that is going on behind the scenes, starting with that region of the world and this television show that has managed to capture that spirit in a bottle for all to enjoy.

There are a couple of significant takeaways from the Yellowstone shows that are specific to our times as America struggles to define itself in the wake of an apparent communist invasion that has taken over our government and financial system.  The first is that hard work is the way to bring morality to any good culture.  That is the constant theme of the show, where characters faltering on their moral compass find redemption through challenging work, which always tends to fix anything.  That is very much a message I support, and I am dazzled to see that a television show meant for mass audiences has been willing to tackle this critical issue.  They used to make television shows like this; Little House on the Prairie comes to mind.  And that this show is being made now says more than what might be assumed from a popular entertainment option.  It has the same values as that night at the rodeo I talked about in Cody, Wyoming.  Good stuff!

But the second thing, which is the whole background of the entire show, is the nature of human beings themselves.  It also centers around the premise of evil and what causes it, which is that when you work hard to build something, there is always some lazy loser nearby who wants to take it from you.  When you work hard, parasites always want to steal your hard work so they can have the benefits of what you have built, because they are too lazy to obtain it for themselves.  That something could be land, a woman, a new cowboy hat.  It could be anything.  But the core of the discussion is that there will always be those who want to take value from those who do create it.  And that if you really want to have a civil society, you must protect those with government who produce value.  Not to use government to protect and empower the parasites, and that is the essence of everything the Yellowstone show is all about.  If I hadn’t been there myself and thought hard about these things, I don’t know if it would be so clear.  I don’t know that the creators of Yellowstone were conscious of those traits.  I think Taylor Sheridon left Hollywood to learn ranching out in the flyover states and fell in love with the lifestyle I talked about in places like Cody, Wyoming, during rodeo season, which goes on every night during the summer.  He and the cast and crew were talented enough to capture some of that magic into a magnificent show.  But more than that, likely not to their liking, it is the essential political platform for the MAGA movement with Trump at its head.  The anti-communist political party doesn’t want takers with government alliances to steal what we worked hard to build: our families, homes, and lives in every way.  Because that is the essence of life in the West, what made Western expansion necessary and even justified?  And why do the progressives of our day, the renamed communists from the global Marxist movement, want so badly to destroy our view of Western life?  I dress the way I do to spit in the face of those Marxist ideas.  And seeing the rest of the world catching up is enjoyable, which I’m very happy to see. 

One of my daughters is a professional photographer, and she was with me when I bought a new hat at Jackson Hole.  And I was doing a bit of a photoshoot at the west end of the square, a spot sacred to me because it’s where Clint Eastwood finished the fight in one of his movies, Any Which Way You Can.  People watching assumed I was part of some entertainment company the way people were gathered around me, and people kept asking me if I was a stunt double for Kevin Costner’s character in Yellowstone, which, of course, I said no.  I had never seen the show.  However, for the people in Jackson that day, it was more about the spirit of the show they were thinking about, what it meant to America, and why they were even in Jackson Hole.  They saw me with my big cowboy hat purchased right there on the square with its giant 4” brim, and they wanted to meet the characters they saw on that show in real life.  Because they wanted to see an America that wasn’t fiction but something they could believe in.  Based on my experiences in that actual region, and now watching that show with an eye toward its cultural significance, I think we are in for a promising future in America, where the communists are going to be beaten back from their European roots in ways they can’t even imagine, currently.  And Yellowstone, the show, is part of that process by way of art and entertainment, followed by actual social expectations.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Top 1% Are Broken People, Not Elite: What many think is a virtue is really a social dysfunction

There is a kind of permeating fault wired into the human race that necessitates a need for the aristocracy to have meaning and importance over their peers in the destructive pursuit of self-importance.  To my mind, the need for it is like potty training a puppy; the rebellion of defiance of pooping on the floor and then jumping around happily once being scolded that comes from the behavior.  They are undeveloped minds broken toward advanced concepts.  Unfortunately, human beings have not yet developed a proper understanding of the value of such people because we are still struggling with that emotional development, where praise from our parents and peers in society is all important to us.  So, until it’s usually too late, do we come to a proper understanding of the all too tempting notion of measures of importance as understood culturally?  When in reality, the opinions of the masses are rooted in an undeveloped brain functioning from elements of insanity.  We’re talking about the top 1%, as they are often called, or the “elite,” as the media calls them.  They are usually the people most successful in some measurements, but they all have social dysfunction in common.  A switch in their minds that never fully develops gives them the appearance of social maturity, but in practice, they are still unrestricted with critical thinking, which might otherwise guide them toward other decisions.  And because we have never come to grips with this fundamental insecurity that most people have, the social illusion that is the byproduct is that these people are more critical in a social hierarchy, which then promotes these same people to obtain an aristocratic status with ruthlessness and destructive utterances.  In my experience, people who are in the top 1% in our society economically or politically tend to have severe problems in emotional development where the parts of their brains that tell them their problems shouldn’t do something, is undeveloped making them a liability, not a true asset to all social discourse. 

Because we mistake those traits for power and control as virtues, we have not dealt with the core problem of these people other than modes of philosophy that are just as destructive toward a prosperous society, such as Marxism.  The struggle for personal power and its impact on the rest of the world is a long struggle that has always been with us.  But to my mind, our present time is turning the corner toward those assumptions, which is the real merit behind all populism occurring worldwide.  The old idea that a few ruling elites, whether it be a king, a CEO, a politician, a business tycoon, or some other single-point personality, would rule over the masses of society like a shepherd over a flock of sheep is finally dying in our present time, and that has led to mass confusion about the merits of leadership.  What is it, and how does society function with it or without it?  For all this time, the traits that built an aristocracy were valued as special and unique when, in fact, they were essentially broken people who had not yet entirely developed the aspect of their emotional development where such peer acceptance and yearning were not part of a functioning intellect.  As in the example of the puppy, they are not yet potty trained in the world, and their minds are not yet ready to guide anybody toward anything.  That was one of the most important developments of the American system of government, to decentralize authority so that the ill effects of that broken 1% would have less impact on mass society than in other places in the world at different times throughout history. 

Generally, as a culture, Americans resent being told what to do by a centralized figure, more so than other places in the world that have not yet tasted full autonomy of thought.  So they have not yet realized how much better a society is when aristocratic fools are not guiding it from a monastery or corporate influence where the desire for power over many people corrupts the minds of the few in rule over the masses and the perceived power that comes with it.  A truly developed mind with a healthy intellect doesn’t crave that kind of power, so a lack of aristocracy is far more beneficial than having one.  It has taken a long time to arrive at this place, and it took America to give birth to it, but finally, in the world, populism has grown into this expansion beyond the control of the few over the many that have always previously persisted.  So now it is fashionable to question authority and the “elite” who have been running things as long as humans have attempted to organize mass society.  When you get a human being that does not crave power over others, you can be said to be a culture that is being born into a healthy intellect, and its evolution is quite natural and inevitable.  But it’s devastating to those who thought it was acceptable, even those who desired to be those undeveloped few who craved power to fill the vast vacancies of their emotional learning in society.  What is happening now is truly terrifying to them.  But then again so are little puppies terrified when they are scolded for pissing on the carpet.  Just because the puppies are cute doesn’t mean they don’t get hit with the newspaper for leaving their bodily discharge in the walking path of the true owners of a home. 

So, most of the crying that is going on now comes from those little dogs of our society who are whimpering from being scolded.  They thought they were in charge, just like all undeveloped minds assume until they learn the truth.  And for those broken adults who never quite develop, this behavior is more of a retardation, rather than a value.  Still at wine tastings and other social gatherings usually assembled by Democrat types of personalities, the old aristocracy is still a valued commodity, and they crave the leadership of a shepherd in their daily affairs because they, too, lack the confidence to approach life on their own merits.  They prefer to have someone to think for them, and there are always these undeveloped 1% types, “this elite,” who step forward to take on the role.  But most people grow out of such needs to be led and rule over others because their minds no longer value such things once they fully mature.  Yet, such a distinction would have never been made if not for America to provide such an example, where aristocracy and rule over others was not a value system but a rejected premise.  It continues to be the guiding light for populism worldwide, where more people crave to be wolves in their own right, not sheep looking for a shepherd.  Those craving to be our shepherds are often let down by personal failures, which then prevent a healthy society from reaching its true potential.  It was always the perceived “elite” who were the broken minds who got in the way.  And now, in the long evolution of the human race, we are finally growing away from such immature desires.  And our society is improving, even if it is scary to those who thought they were in charge all along.  They are finding out that they never were and never will be. 

Rich Hoffman

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

The Danger of Cost Plus Contractor Mentality: Elon Musk and his fantastic views on work ethic

I discovered things I liked about Elon Musk in the recent book Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, which transcends politics and other sentiments and strikes at the core of all human concerns.  As I read many books, I do not often get to read one like the Isaacson book, where we talk about a character who is essentially a real-life Thomas Edison.  But we’re not talking about him 100 years after his death, but in time, up to the moment.  And as is usual in books like that, there was a lot that I didn’t like.  I have a much different outlook on personal interactions than Elon Musk, and I would say that has caused him many problems, many things that cause him great turmoil. However, regarding manufacturing and productivity measures, I found that Elon Musk is a refreshing and essential character that reflects my core values.  And he’s great for American business.  There are things Americans have adopted from around the world that absolutely disgust me, especially regarding work ethic.  And if there is one reason that I hate, even despise globalism, it is because of its fundamental nature toward Marxism, which I want absolutely nothing to do with.  Elon Musk hates it with equal disdain, even if it took him most of his life to figure it out.  His work ethic was defined while building Tesla, and he has transitioned to SpaceX.  But after reading of his many toils in building those companies and confronting what I would call the vast evil of globalism, I have a lot of respect for him as a person I didn’t have before reading the book.  And it’s something that our government has committed great sins to promote and attach themselves to, and that is the concept of Cost Plus Contracts. 

Cost plus contractors have had it all wrong, all along

The stigma was most noticeable for Elon Musk when President Biden invited EV car makers to a White House event but did not mention Tesla because Musk does not use unionized labor.  And everything about the government points companies they associate with toward cost-plus contracts, which is essentially the anti-business model that has been destroying the world.  The government has no care for reducing costs in anything they do because there is too much power in brokering access to more money for them to apply, which they then transfer to private businesses for the exact control mechanisms.  And that concept has rotted out the core of American capitalism in dangerous and horrendous ways, infecting every aspect of modern American business.  The shell game they play is that costs are always going to overrun, and when they do, you go back to Congress and get more money, or you print more money with Modern Monetary Theory and then apply the extra cash to labor contracts, inflated budgets, and lack of performance.  If something isn’t getting done, Cost-plus Contract entities always throw more money at the problem rather than actually solving the problem.  This is a common issue in most aviation companies, such as Boeing, which has been cultured into accepting a Cost Plus Contract existence for many decades, where essentially, they get paid not to innovate.  But they find themselves in the modern world under the pressures of great competition where Cost Plus Contracts are not the mode of operation for their competition.  And they are drowning in that level of competition presently, to disastrous effect, because they weren’t built for that level of global competition. 

That is essentially what Elon Musk has been facing with his largest companies, Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter.  For any company to work right, the first thing they must get under control is the concept employees have been taught by modern Marxists that costs must be managed, and that process never happens if the game is played to turn to government for perpetually more money. This is why I have always been against school levies for public schools; they are all Cost Plus Contracts by their very nature and purposely by those intending to game the system, such as labor unions.  Marxists wanting to crush the American way of life and productivity have advocated this nonsense to the detriment of our economy, and I take it very personally.  I have very strong opinions about this problem, and until I read that Elon Musk feels essentially the same way I do about it, I didn’t know many people who did.  This game of government subsidy, such as we see applied to farmers, is horrible, and it has undoubtedly destroyed the American work ethic.  In companies that are Cost Plus Contractors, there is never an incentive to do anything because they are paid to be failures, to work only to always ask for more money perpetually.  This is why NASA could essentially never get back to the moon.  And more innovations in aviation have not occurred over the last three or four decades.  All the great innovators are snuffed out of the system to make way for more Cost Plus Contract bureaucrats who are as worthless to payroll as a dirty toilet bowl in the local bathroom.  But because of the government’s attachment to perpetual funding, nobody does anything about it, no matter what work is performed, because they get paid to be failures. 

I would say that Tesla and SpaceX are successful because they fought the temptation to become Cost Plus Contract employers.  They are profitable in the old-fashioned way through productive output, cost controls, and delivery expectations.  But they are very much alone in the world of manufacturing these days.  However, it is good to see someone keeping the American spirit of productivity alive on a scale such as what Musk is functioning from.  People can say a lot about the many mistakes in his past and the downfalls of his lifestyle.  I have always liked Howard Hughes for the same reasons that I like Elon Musk.  I can deal with personality traits that many people find uncomfortable.  However, when a person has the kind of work ethic and productive output sensibilities that Musk has, forgiveness is deserved.  And I am thrilled to know to what extent Musk has fought against the connection of Cost Plus Contractors.  That may well be his most significant contribution to the human race.  To stand up against it and win.  Most companies in the world could be successful if they did as Musk has done at his companies and rejected the Cost Plus Contract model.  Of course, the government doesn’t want the manufacturing world to do such a thing because it takes control away from them.  All the colleges teach such a relationship, so most people are lost in dealing with such assumptions.  It’s undoubtedly one of my biggest concerns in the world and has been for a long time.  However, Musk, gaining the ability to bring his work ethic to mass manufacturing on a large scale, has done more to challenge the concept of Cost Plus Contractors than anybody else has currently.  I am thrilled, and my opinions about Elon Musk are much more respectful than I had previously expressed.  His political evolution may have been a moving target, but I like him more now than I would have ten years ago.  But his work ethic is something I greatly admire.  And it transcends political sentiment in every case for me. Additionally, I would say that anybody with a work ethic like Elon Musk was bound to share political opinions eventually.  As most logical people do once they step away from a Cost Plus Contractor’s view of the world. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Sam Randazzo Committed Suicide: When a corrupt FBI, Marxist Democrats, and radical anti-America terrorists are after you, don’t run away, fight them

I hated to hear that Sam Randazzo had committed suicide the day before the State of the State speech of 2024, apparently connected to his upcoming court cases attached straight to the Governor over H.B. 6 and all the drama around FirstEnergy.  Sam was appointed as utilities director for the Governor’s office and got caught up by default into defending FirstEnergy, which the communists were after, and like many Republicans who got caught up in that entirely legitimate business relationship, they retreated from the fight by activists courts, an FBI that was weaponized for progressive administrations, and an Obama administration that had set terrorist motions forward before President Trump entered the White House, that was intended to destroy the energy grid of Ohio and convert the entire industry to solar and wind power.  Yeah, I’m not a believer that the FirstEnergy bribery scandal in Ohio was nothing more than Democrats who did not have a majority in Columbus crying about how unfair it was that FirstEnergy had no choice but to try to get members of government from the Republican Party, to build their majorities with campaign donations so that they as a company could stay open for business.  The radical left had attacked two nuclear power plants for closure in Ohio, and FirstEnergy was trying to keep them open.  As I received the news in the dome with Mike DeWine standing about 8 feet from me taking pictures with people, I had a new perspective on why the Governor’s speech was so flat that day.  This was the second recent suicide from someone involved in H.B.6.  The first guy, Nick Clark, had recently shot himself in the head while wearing a DeWine for Governor shirt in Florida, awaiting his trial over the same fundamental issues.  And supposedly, in a warehouse just down the road from the Statehouse down Mound Street, Sam hung himself, leaving behind a phone number for his wife and concern for his family’s well-being.  But he couldn’t deal with the pressure.  Pressure that he shouldn’t have had to deal with in the first place.  This was the same case over FirstEnergy, where the former Speaker of the House, Larry Householder, was rotting away in jail for essentially doing what all politicians have to do, especially in his position: make sure the party holds power with campaign donations to expand majorities.  If the Democrats could, they would do the same thing, but they aren’t very well-liked in Ohio.  But that hasn’t stopped progressive politics and outside influences from trying to rot Columbus from the inside out, which is essentially what H.B.6 was all about, starting with destroying Ohio’s power by attacking FirstEnergy with Marxist climate change policies that were extraordinarily expensive to force them into wind and solar, and to abandon fossil fuels.

Before they pulled all his information off the internet, I looked up what Sam was saying about himself as a professional who was listed as retired.  So, I put it here to counter what has been said about him.  Does this sound like the kind of guy who would want to kill himself by hanging in a lonely warehouse just a few hours before Governor DeWine’s 2024 State of the State speech?  Listen to his own words: “For more than four decades, I helped businesses on both sides of the meter, elected officials, associations, and regulators identify and thoughtfully address issues that affect the delivered price and availability of energy, communication, and other goods and services essential to a well-functioning and forward-looking economy. In doing so, I was often recognized as one of the best lawyers in America, and I combined my legal skills with a deep understanding of how accounting, finance, economics, and engineering principles must be appreciated and integrated to effectively navigate (often in a political context) towards a sustainable and practical solution. After retiring from the practice of law at the end of 2018, Governor Mike DeWine appointed me to the post of Commissioner and eventually Chair of the PUCO, and on April 11, 2019, I returned to the agency where I started. As Chair of the PUCO, I was Chair of the Ohio Power Siting Board. During the COVID pandemic, I also served as Chair of the Stay at Home Order Dispute Advisory Commission and on the Governor’s business advisory task force. On November 20, 2020, I resigned from government service for reasons expressed in my resignation letter. Since retiring, I have been blessed to have the love and support of my family and friends.”

Smiling for the camera is just another way of hiding from the real villains of our power grid

I’m not a fan of many of these Republicans; some of them, such as Matt Borges, I think are complete idiots, and I’d have no problem telling him that to his face for his anti-Trump activity within the Republican Party trying to keep losers like John Kasich in power.  But those are party disagreements on strategy.  Republicans should have never taken the bait by Democrats even to allow for any donations from FirstEnergy to be construed in any way other than what they were.  To let an activist FBI make it all a case of corruption and bribery hoping to erode Republican control in Columbus was ridiculous for a problem Democrats caused in the first place: an attack on Ohio’s energy grid.  Republicans should have stood their ground, fought and beat these losers in court, and made other people want to hang themselves in empty warehouses.  Not simi-retired lawyers like Sam Randazzo.  He should be taking his family to some nice vacation resort instead of preparing for a funeral.  It wasn’t fair to his family.  But as I say, politics is a blood sport, and the Democrats love blood, and Republicans never match the intensity because they are too nice.  They shouldn’t be. 

After hearing all this about Sam, I watched Governor DeWine, who caught my eye a few times.  Part of me felt terrible for him.  He’s a nice guy trying to play this blood sport the only way he knows how with Yellow Springs hippie liberalism and extensive government control over the levers of power.  He has learned over the years to appease these vile forces rather than fight them directly, and in the State of the State speech, he sought to appease those monsters on 3rd Street by making the whole speech about children and nothing else.  Governor DeWine signed H.B.6, which was talked about by Marxist media as a 1.3 billion dollar bailout of FirstEnergy.  Well, of course, Democrats were upset about it because they wanted to sink FirstEnergy and force them to go all in on windmills and solar panels.  They tried to kill Ohio’s energy policy, so yes, they were upset that Republicans were helping out FirstEnergy.  That is how Sam Randazzo got wrapped up in the scandal, as he found 4.3 million dollars coming at him from FirstEnergy.  But what was FirstEnergy supposed to do?  Sit around and be destroyed by climate activists and Marxist, America-hating despots?  Because that’s the real issue on the table that DeWine didn’t want to tackle, and his inability to defend Columbus Republicans left them hanging.  It’s that kind of classic Republican run-and-hide technique that has so many people supporting Trump.  And to answer a question Matt Borges brought up after the Access Hollywood tape about Trump trying to disparage him, was that locker room talk?  Yes.  That’s how people speak; if he didn’t know that, he should have.  Republican voters are going for Trump and not Mike DeWine types.  They want to see FirstEnergy thrive; they want nuclear power and fossil fuels to provide cheap electricity.  And they want the government to leave them alone.  And they certainly don’t want to see their representatives going to jail and hanging themselves in warehouses as the only option left to them in an activist, Marxist-controlled court system led by a corrupt FBI working for the Biden administration, and before them, the radical terrorist Obama.  If we’re going to play this blood sport, let the Democrats feel the pressure.  Not good people trying to stand up for the industry and Ohio’s power grid.  They knew what they were doing; when the government is prosecuting you, and it’s run by radicals who have endless money to throw at you, and you have to pay for parasite lawyers and are still facing jail time in your retirement years, what was old Sam supposed to do?  Who was going to defend him when all the other Republicans were running for the hills, trying not to be accused of bribery?  This is the same garbage they have been trying to do with Trump.  But he didn’t run away.  Mike DeWine and many others have, and that has only fed the desire for blood by the ruthless Democrats and their communist supporters at the expense of our great state. 

Rich Hoffman

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

The Eclipse of 2024 in Ohio: When immortality is observed in all its magnificance

I’ve seen eclipses before, but this one in 2024 was different, especially since it was close to where I live in Liberty Township, Ohio.  The totality band was going to be very nearby, so once we received a decent weather report and had the exact path agreed upon by analysis, we found a good RV campsite in Rossburg, Ohio, to set up a base and make a real thing of it.  My crew is very interested in those things, and it certainly made a difference that all three of my grandchildren are inclined toward intelligent things. Even at age seven, one of them is showing a Thomas Edison level of genius, so we wanted to make this a unique experience for them.  Plus, getting out the campers after a hard winter was a chance to stretch our legs a bit.  For an eclipse, the event was scheduled to occur between 1 and 5 PM on April 8th, with the totality of darkness happening around 3:07 PM.  So rather than wait in some parking lot for that specific event, we took our homes on the road and were very relaxed.  So relaxed that we stayed at that campsite for a good part of the week.  It was also my birthday on the 9th so we made quite a thing of it.  We got up on the morning of the 8th, ready for a front-row seat of a great celestial anomaly.  We didn’t have to get up and go anywhere to observe it, so already that was a good thing.  We had a nice breakfast at our campsite, the kids played fervently, and the adults had some raw downtime to talk in ways there was never time for, so we had a very nice experience. 

It was worth it; by the time the moon had blocked the sun 100%, there was a nice halo ring around the celestial bodies that blocked out most of the light from the sun, and the stars came out.  On all horizons, it looked like a sunset for about 50 miles in every direction.  But directly over our heads, it was essentially night.  I put a video up with speed advanced to see that narrow 4-minute period where day became night, and we had two sunsets on the same day.  That particular part of the world is indeed in God’s country. Our campsite was in a flat open area with no trees close, and our campers were essentially pointed in the direction of the whole event as if it were a giant IMAX screen put there for our entertainment.  For a last-minute campsite, the one in Rossburg was fantastic.  It had a couple of lakes with fish and a beach for the kids to play in, which was quite nice.  And for four minutes of totality, everyone could geek out on science and optimally enjoy the eclipse.  All my kids would be lucky to ever see an eclipse like that again in their lives, and we were happy to have the chance to share it together.  Life has so many moving pieces, and getting so many people together to do something like this is hard.  And the celestial show did not let us down.  Even I found the whole thing to be a bit of a miracle and a sensational opportunity to study science in the field and contemplate larger concepts.  The little kids, my grandchildren, were overwhelmed with the spectacle, which is what we wanted for them, and it was obvious that interests were sparked in them at that moment that would last a lifetime.

During the totality, I couldn’t help but think of Tecumseh when he famously predicted an eclipse and an earthquake along the New Madrid Faultline by St. Lewis.  I also thought of all the conspiracy theories that had led up to the eclipse as people tried to make sense of such a meaningful event to human minds.  For instance, why were their ten towns named after the Biblical Nineveh along the path of the totality in North America?  Did many of the Masons who organized these towns initially know this eclipse would happen mathematically, and they set fate to play host to some celestial significance rooted in ancient astrological belief systems?  What role did this particular eclipse play in Jewish rituals, and how planned were they for this event in 2024?  And what results were produced by the particle collider at CERN, which was supposed to have gone off at that exact moment of the totality band in America?  All that was playing in my mind as we watched the eclipse unfold.  Yet, for me, it looked purely like a regional thing.  We had gone to that location because at home, even though home wasn’t very far away compared to other places that we’ve gone, the whole experience was a regional one.  Obviously, celestial observers witnessing events discussed in the Bible would only be important to those experiencing even the most dramatic events.  Most people in the world wouldn’t even notice that there was an eclipse at all.  The sun would dim a bit, and if you didn’t have special glasses to look at it, you would not see the moon passing in front of it.  And wouldn’t even know what was happening, if anything at all. 

The world did not end, and after that event, I continued to think about how humans bring meaning to natural occurrences to attempt to understand the cosmic significance.  As creatures of nature, we tend to do that, where nature happens, and people may observe it, but the importance may not have any significance other than three celestial bodies interacting with each other, the sun, the moon, and the earth relative to their positions.  Suppose anybody hung around long enough over billions of years. In that case, our Milky Way galaxy will collide with a neighboring galaxy, and there will be all kinds of disruptive, likely destructive, celestial events on a grand, epic scale.  This eclipse was a regional thing that had harmless consequences and reminded all the humans watching it, that there was a lot more to existence that they needed to understand.  And that they attempted to bring meaning to the passage of the moon in front of the sun in very specific places in North America was an interesting observation of relativity, but not much else.  But humans have minds, and they think and observe. So many stories came to their minds saying that they were doing what nature intended them to do, to take nature and make meaningful the occurrences in a way that shapes necessity in interesting ways.  The ability to think was the most miraculous event that day, to see a celestial event and to bring human meaning to it as a greater cosmic significance.  We certainly enjoyed it; we wanted all the kids to have something important to think about and see as gloriously as possible.  And to create memories that would last for years, even longer.  There would be more eclipses, not in that part of the world, but they would happen.  But they would never occur under that collection of circumstances ever again, where meaning was created by the minds observing it.  And what is born of that meaning is better than nature for its own sake and is the stuff that makes immortality such a grand word.

Rich Hoffman

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

Democrats Have a Major Engagement Problem: It’s all catching up to them

How sure am I about President Trump’s strength in this upcoming election?  Well, it’s a simple math problem.  The traditional way of looking at things is in a panic because they know.  And for all those people I have been telling for four years that there was massive election fraud in 2020 and that Biden was illegally put into office, making everything he has touched all this time completely illegal, the proof they have been looking for is about to take place.  Because they know, they know what they did.  And so do many others.  But you don’t have to take it from me.  The facts are the facts, and everyone knows it.  Democrats have an engagement problem, which is one of the many reasons they are scrambling for voters now at the last minute with illegal immigration.  They have lost the inner city vote.  They have lost the panicky suburbanite moms.  They have lost the immigrant vote.  Biden has been so bad. Obama was also horrible during his third term behind Biden that the Democrat brand is now associated with outright communism.  And people don’t want it or like it.  And they aren’t excited about voting for it.  So without massive election fraud, like they had when they took power in 2020 under the ruse of Covid, Democrats know they have significant problems.  The media has been trying to keep it close because they desperately want the ad revenue.  We don’t want everyone getting cocky and not participating in this 2024 election, assuming that everything will be alright.  But if voter engagement stays high, and Trump gets another 75 million votes, which he can easily do, the Democrats won’t be able to keep up in this one.  They are in for a very sharp punch in the stomach, much deserved.

But Trump is only up by 4 to 6 in the Battlegrounds?  You might say.  In some polls, Biden wins by a few.  No, that’s all smoke and mirrors designed to sell political ads and keep the race close so people pump their billions of dollars into the Fox News life stream, the horse race of politics.  If you go out and poll 1500 likely voters, you are expected to get close results.  But we aren’t dealing with potential voters in this presidential race.  This is all about those who usually don’t vote, who are willing to crawl through broken glass naked to vote for President Trump, which I think will be a number closer to 80 million people.  And the Democrats will be hard-pressed to break into the 60 million range.  It’s just math; they don’t have it on their side, even with isolated cheating.  And they won’t be able to duplicate the level of cheating that has kept it close for them this time because of how outrageous it was during the last.  When Obama was running during both terms, he could not break out of the 60 million range, and many of those voters now find themselves to blame for many things in the world.  So, they are not exactly excited to vote.  Biden has been so horrible even The Rock is pulling back his endorsement because this current monstrosity has been horrible for business, the Democrat platform.  Oh, how about those gas prices and those EV mandates?  People are still sick of COVID-19 vaccine mandates imposed by a Biden executive order.  The embarrassment on the world stage.  The projection of weakness.  The corruption of the Biden family in general.  Biden has been horrendous, but that’s what happens when someone cheats to win, gets put on the stage, and nobody remembers voting for him, so they are already critical.  Then, it all starts to add up. 

There are a lot of people who can’t wait to vote for President Trump again, especially after all these court cases.  Democrats have made it personal, and people want to punch them back.  And all these criminals in government should consider themselves very lucky that most Americans are so fair, willing to live within the confines of the Constitution and punch back with a vote rather than violence.  These news shows claim the opposite who are in a total meltdown know better.  They all have it coming because of what they did and conspired to do.  When they get paid back, they deserve it, and then some.  However, many people are ready to vote for Trump to get that vote.  Biden has many people hiding because of their guilt in a string of crimes they assume would never catch up to them.  But it has.  All these years, we have assumed that there was a 50/50 split in America, where both sides were happy about their person running for office and that they would equally show up and vote on election day, making polling somewhat relevant if you could get a statistical sampling of “likely” voters.  But not this time.  This election is all about engagement and which side has more of it.  And because of the way that Democrats have been caught lying, stealing, and cheating in every way that they could, they don’t have much support except for the toxic communists who know this is their chance at revolution.  Everyone else, the idealists, the college kids, the perpetually scared suburbanite housewives who won’t let their kid leave the driveway without a Band-Aid for every scratch, nick, and bruise, are not excited about putting their name next to Joe Biden.  Some might vote anyway, but they aren’t motivated to do so.

That’s usually how it is at sporting events, where all fans enter a stadium excited about how their team might play.  But at the end of the game, when the score is 35 to nothing, people either leave to go back to their cars, happy or sad.  And when your team loses, and you have blown $500 on snacks and souvenirs, you feel terrible.  That is how Democrats are feeling right now, deep in their gut.  They studied these communist revolutions worldwide and saw how they did it, and they have tried it here in the United States.  But too many people were free.  Too many people have guns.  Too many people run their own businesses.  Too many people have access to too much information.  And there has never been someone as self-made as President Trump willing to pledge his fame and fortune to the cause of freedom.  So, the whole house of cards that the Democrats have built for global communism has fallen apart.  And people can’t wait to see it.  They can’t wait to vote against Joe Biden and the third term of the domestic terrorist, Barack Obama.  If the polling does not favor Biden, then it will not get better when actual people vote.  Because there are a lot of elements that polling doesn’t capture that will come into play.  And that is essential engagement; for Republicans, it will be very high.  For Democrats, it is low because they are the losing team, and people are not excited about the brand.  All they have is fear; most people aren’t afraid of them.  So they don’t even have that to drive people to vote.  So, Democrats have a big, massive problem.  And they deserve all the punishment coming to them, and then some.

Rich Hoffman

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

Kimonos in Japan: If America wants to be Great Again, perhaps we should dress for that greatness

You might have heard about Jimmy Kimmel’s recent trip to Japan, a topic of its own.  But he is right about several things: Japan is clean, and crime is low.  He didn’t understand why, which I’ll break down in a separate article.  However, one thing that is quite clear that I admire about the Japanese people quite a lot is their embrace of their traditional culture and their kimono dress.  I, too, was recently in Japan. I’ve been there a few times during this year, so I am very familiar with some of the unique customs that they have there.  However, during this most recent trip, I saw quite a lot of Kyoto on a Thursday afternoon and for an extended period, and I was surprised by how they dressed.  Most of the people I encountered there were walking around the streets, the temples, and the bamboo forest in full kimonos, both men and women.  And there were rental shops everywhere that kimonos could be rented to wear around town.  It wasn’t a samurai cosplay convention, which was what I thought was going on.  This was how people dressed all the time, and it was very refreshing to see.  It reminded me of something I have been saying all the time, that in America, we need to embrace more of our traditions.  While in Japan, I fully expressed American culture, which they appreciated.  In America, I tend to wear a poncho to my gun competitions and other Second Amendment activities, the kind of Western wear that is very traditional to Western expansion and hard, cold nights on the open ranges next to campfires.   I have several of them, and when I wear them, I always get a lot of strange looks.  But I don’t think they should be considered strange at all.  And when I dressed that way to go out to the store in the middle of the night outside my hotel in Kobe, nobody in Japan thought it was strange at all. 

I had a few ponchos in Japan which I like to put on instead of a jacket, especially in inclement weather.  It’s like having a wrap-around blanket without worrying about it falling off your shoulders, so it frees up your arms underneath.  It’s suitable for short-term warmth without messing around with a cumbersome jacket.  And I like that a poncho hides a lot of what you might not want people to see, such as the many knives and guns that I carry all the time.  With concealed carry across multiple states, it is better to hide the big stuff with very baggy clothing instead of trying to contain the weapons in modern-day America’s conventional dress.  In Japan, their reverence for history, especially in their samurai culture, is unmistakable, and they openly embrace it, which I thought was very classy.  It was nice to see the women dressing up in these classic robes to go shopping and be seen around town.  And the men dressed similarly to accompany them.  Instead of being repealed by the display of my own dress, a few times on this latest trip, as I wore my poncho down to the local store to pick up supplies, people wanted to take a picture next to me in my boots, poncho, and Stetson cowboy hat to show they had met a “real American.”  And they were pleased about it.  As they snapped their pictures with me, I couldn’t help but think of one of my favorite quotes from the Dune books: “How else do humans invent the traps that betray us into mediocrity?” 

Mediocrity is what we have adopted in our modern Western cultures, with our associations with communism introduced through our education system.  They have rejected this mediocrity primarily in Japan due to their reverence for traditional values.  But in America, these days, we have associated fashion with an alliance with sportswear.  Nike, Adidas, and other brands seen from college sports programs have largely inspired our public presentation of ourselves.  These days, the idea of proper dress on casual Fridays is a golf shirt that shows we are interested in sports programs.  That is something that they don’t do as much in Japan.  They love sports, especially baseball, but they don’t go out of their way to show reverence for it out of disrespecting their traditional cultures.  But in America, we want to look like the coaches and players of our sports teams, which behind them have all kinds of corporate communism attached to them.  So, our American dress has shifted from individual expressions of a rugged outdoorsman to billboards for corporate influence over our sporting markets.  And the not-so-subtle message there is to accept that individuals are less important than the team’s greater good.  And, of course, behind that is that communism defines the greater good.  So, wearing a cowboy hat in America is quite a statement.  More people are doing it now than they used to, mainly because of the popular Yellowstone television show and the failed politics of the communist left.  People want to make America great again, and like the Japanese, they are turning to traditional dress to convey that trait.  But in America, our dress directly influences our society’s condition. 

I have always worn a cowboy hat.  But over the years, I have been less inclined toward sporting goods fashion trends in favor of my traditional gunslinger apparel.  I’ve been that way for many years.  I remember many late-night encounters in my twenties where I would wear my ponchos everywhere, including the Kenwood Mall in Cincinnati.  It’s one thing to do when you are in your 50s, as I am now.  But when you are in your 20s, many people look at you weird because you are so out of step with mainstream culture.  But it’s always been a visual hedge against mediocrity, which is how I view modern dress codes, and I largely reject the premise.  A culture should strive to stand out from the crowd in everything, individually.  Not to retreat into submission to the mob.  In Japan, particularly Kyoto and even Tokyo, even though the kimonos are uniformly similar in their loose-fitting robes, they are colorful and full of individualized expression.  I thought that seeing that expression was wonderful and was a major contributor to the quality of their society.  I had a chance to eat at a very nice restaurant in Kyoto with some friends.  It was a classic place; most people wore kimonos, and you had to take off your shoes while eating.  It had a spectacular garden to walk in while you waited for your food, and they provided you with slippers to do so.  I stepped into that place, mostly having to duck because the ceiling was low, and the whole place was primarily made of paper and wood.  They gave me a very large locker for my big cowboy boots, which is what they do when you enter to put your shoes in while you eat, but I still wore my cowboy hat.  And they took notice of it.  But it wasn’t in a “you’re not like us” way.  But rather, a respect for the culture that I came from.  And they were proud of their culture.  And what we all shared was a disrespect for sameness as defined by communism and an embrace of versatility as defined by capitalist markets.  They brought us mostly raw fish and vegetables, certainly not chicken nuggets as I might otherwise be used to in the States.  But it was a good look into a culture that embraced their uniqueness and certainly wasn’t shying away from their projection to the rest of the world.  And if America wants to be Great Again.  Perhaps we should start dressing for that greatness instead of playing everything down to some corporate version of casual and accepting sameness as a value rather than uniqueness. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Communist Left is in a Panic Because Trump Doubled His Wealth: Why capitalism always beats communism

In the rock, paper, scissors game of life, capitalism beats communism 100% of the time.  It doesn’t matter that the world has been taught communism in their universities, public schools, and government centers of inefficiency.  When in direct competition with capitalist elements of any society, communism always loses.  So, as we prepare to become a space-fairing species as if we ever stopped being one, capitalism should be at the center of every culture that participates.  And there was never a more obvious example of this than in the battle to destroy President Trump by the SWAMP gas of the communist left of the Washington D.C. beltway culture.  They planned to bankrupt Trump with a bunch of corrupt courts and leftist judges and keep him from being able to run for President of the United States by the fall of 2024.  In the minds of the “left,” the political affiliates of Karl Marx, Trump would be serving 700 years in jail, have all his vast assets confiscated by the state, and his family would be broke and begging on the street.  That was their American-hating fantasy.  But what ended up happening was that President Trump, to defend his right to free speech, started Truth Social, and his total wealth value doubled to a present level of over 6 billion dollars. This infused Trump with more cash to fight all these Marxist criminal cases and took the air completely out of the plans of his political enemies, who are also our political enemies, and they are pretty desperate now.  They bet everything on this plan, and now it’s falling apart in front of their faces, as I said all along that it would.  Even a few months ago, when people said that Trump was done for in politics, I reminded them that he was far from finished.  And that he was going to win and win big.  Because capitalism always beats communism, and by the time all this work against him was done, the communist left would bankrupt itself in a way they would never recover.  Everybody laughed.

But news report after news report showed the anxiety of those who had bought into different levels of communism injected into American life, in a panic over their entire political philosophy falling apart right in front of their faces.  Where they thought the New York court cases were the end of Trump and that Trump Tower was going to be confiscated by the state, the opposite happened.  And there was plenty of desperation to go around on their part.  But America was set up so that people like President Trump could exist.  I gave an excellent little talk this past week to a group of people after I read the book about Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, which I thought was astonishingly good, and I compared it to the Trump book The Art of the Comeback which I have been saying was the guidebook for the 2024 election.  If you want to know what Trump will do next, it’s all in that book published in the 1990s.  But the point of my talk, which I told them was likely the most crucial thing anybody would ever tell them, was that while how we measure wealth might change, the creation of it still has some essential ingredients that are important to the human race.  Wealth creation, specifically capitalist systems, requires the propensity of the human race to create new things out of risk.  To take chances.  And when you hit it big, the win may be celebrated differently.  Back in the 1990s, Trump was all about supermodels, fast cars, and tall buildings made of gold.  Elon Musk in 2024 has some compelling pictures of his most valued treasures on the covers of his book, one showing Starship stacking on SuperHeavy.  Then, on the back cover is a Tesla factory with a robot working in a nice, clean facility.  Both examples show the company’s success and how the people behind the enterprise measured that success.  But what made that success was always a risk and the ability to manage it for the betterment of all. 

Communist systems are all about averting risk.  They are the antithesis of creation.  It takes risk to do anything, so when you take the risk out of life, you take away the creation of things that are positive for the human race, which is why communist cultures, such as China, Cuba, Iran, and other places, are hellholes that depend on stealing from rich countries to sustain themselves.  That is why governments have to have massive taxes; they exist in at-risk environments that must be subsidized off the looted wealth of productive people who take many risks.  The more tolerance for risk a person had, and the better they managed it, the more successful they were.  Of course, those who don’t like risk and want a mother government to take it out of their lives will resent those who can handle it.  But what leverage can they inject into the world if they don’t bring any real value to an enterprise?  While the displays between the way Elon Musk displays his wealth as one of the world’s wealthiest people and President Trump may be different, it is similar to how they can handle more risk than others and use that trait to improve the world.

That was the swagger President Trump brought to his court cases.  When he was being hit from all sides by the communist left, he had the thought to use his money to start his own social media company, and I am proud to say that I was one of the first few hundred to sign up for it, which is how I was able to get my actual name in my username, @rhoffman.  And when Truth Social went public in March of 2024, it gave Trump access to plenty of cash to deal with all these pesky communists.   Trump could have spent these last few years working to be the wealthiest man in the world if he wanted to.  Instead, he doubled his billionaire status enough to stay alive for this presidential race, and the communists, because they count on systems to protect them from risk, were no match for someone very successful in managing risk and thrived in that environment.  This is why communism will never beat capitalism, even as much as the fantasy might wish such a condition to be so.  That’s why Karl Marx died broke.  That’s why the movement of Freemasonry in Europe failed to inject the entire world with socialism; group affiliations were intended to disguise people’s aversion to risk.  But it is always the risk-takers who succeed in life.  And there are always people who instead take risks to live the safe life of bootlicking their tribal leader in exchange for food from the confiscated wealth taken by mob rule.  It is that crucial designation that indicates why capitalism will always beat communism and why Trump has succeeded so well against these communist plots against him.  Most good things in life are created by risk, including asking out a pretty girl for a date.  Or driving a car that you just spent all day cleaning up for a night on the town, starting a new company, and making a profit.  People like Trump were successful because of their comfort with risk.  And what they create with that success makes the world a better place.  Which is why he’s winning, and the communist left is losing so spectacularly. 

Rich Hoffman

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