Category: Progressive

The Dangers of Marxism in California: Supply chain disruptions due to the electric truck mandates

The magic sauce anywhere in the world for successful government is not how much government can you make to create regulation but how much you can offer freedom to individuals and still have a stable society.  If the government becomes too large due to its expansion, you are failing as a society.  Of course, some government is needed, but when it is used as a crutch for creative enterprise, then the trouble starts.  And anywhere in the world this is true, in every country.  You can tell the success of the country and its measure of economic output, GDP, by this ratio.  Therefore, countries attempting to follow the false methods of the Masonic-driven experiment of Marxism where the government was created as a collectivist blob to replace the rulers of the world, then restricted economies are bound to occur, and that was never more obvious than in the movement against rationality with California imposing electric truck mandates that are starting to go into effect by next year, 2024.  There is no reason for the orders other than the government through its mass and force has decided that it wants to impose some limit on creative enterprise because, as a collective effort, they have a religious belief regarding climate change and its role in the universe.  A modern form of sun worship just like every other society of the past that has risen and fallen has embarked on.  Now, the government of California, and in general, the Biden administration, wants to force Americans into an electric car market one way or another.  And this government tampering shows up directly in economic health, especially in supply chain health.  Wherever supply chains slow down, look now to the size of the government and its not-so-well-thought regulations as the primary culprit. 

California has an increasingly hostile group of radical government believers. Once it is discovered that work is safest when laziness can be hidden behind government forces in size, they have decided to show their validity by disrupting supply chains to show their power to the world because they have openly embraced Marxism as a culture.  And that becomes obvious with their commitment to their power grid problems, and general approach to happy living in the world’s fifth largest economy.  California was always an obvious target for global Marxists who have infiltrated the government just as they do in the American government. Their next target is electric trucks to replace diesel semis by the middle of the next decade, starting with regulations for new truck registrations beginning during the next election year.   And they believe these regulations to be reasonable based on their purely fictional religious beliefs about sun worship.  Science or the marketplace is not driving these decisions, but the hunger for gaining the power of government rather than abusing that power to satisfy a mass religion of leftist values.  Even if the electric trucks were ready for prime time, the government’s radicalism into believing they can force society to live with the constrictions of the economy is truly dangerous.  And this is precisely the kind of behavior that has caused price increases at the grocery store during the Biden administration.  The lack of options and their price directly represent the amount of government regulating the behavior, and the result is slower supply chains and much less creative economic activity to meet the market needs of a free society.  When personal freedom is sacrificed to satisfy the power of government you get price inflation and slow supply chains in whatever industry you might be concerned with. 

Electric trucks could be an option under some conditions, but the marketplace must determine those conditions.  For instance, I have had exposure to electric forklifts for thirty years, and I generally like how quiet they are and how much instant power they provide.  But this is always the story with them; the charge rate requires at least an entire shift to utilize whereas their propane-driven counterparts can operate a total of 24 hours per day with the quick change of a tank.  So imposing electric forklift standards would force businesses to limit themselves to one shift per day where the forklift is charging and not doing work.  Or it would have to purchase another electric forklift that can operate while the other charges.  Either way, a restriction has now been placed on the business that it will have to pay for in some fashion, either in lack of output through production or the cost of more than one forklift that it will now have to maintain.  This is how the government causes inflation and disrupts supply chains, slowing the output to the end-use customer.  With the electric trucks of California, the essential same problem becomes apparent: the government assumes that employers will buy more electric trucks as an increase of the price of more than 30% each.  And that work schedules will be restricted to accommodate the lack of versatility to refuel.  Rather than make market decisions based on the logic of free enterprise, and in getting products to the consumer as quickly and efficiently as possible, the government has through force, imposed a religious belief that then limits the output of productivity.  And because they are a monopoly, there is no competitive means to measure success or failure based on competition. 

This is why Marxism generally does not like competition, because free markets expose their monopoly limits through comparison.  As a captured Marxist asset, California has all the other states in America to compete with, so the economic value can quickly become evident unless all forms, through federal mandate, are forced to do the same.  Therefore, if everyone is performing at the same level of insanity, then a better option will never be known to the public, which is their greatest present desire.  To hide their inefficiency behind government power, controlled free speech, and a lack of competitive criteria to measure against.  If electric truck manufacturers are forced to compete with other options, then their recharge time and other failings might be corrected through innovation.  But behind government force, there is no such incentive, and the limits rule the day.  And that is why the electric truck mandates in California are so disastrous and why government policy on them is so terrible.  Because of government intrusion in the free market of car manufacturing, many bankruptcies are on the horizon, and a significant impact on supply chains as old cars will suddenly become valuable because the new cars are so expensive and limited.  The electric vehicle market, in general, is representative of insanity because there are no power grid assumptions that don’t make electric bills horrendously expensive by forcing everyone to work with just another monopoly not using the best means of energy, the power companies.  We should be using nuclear power, but instead, the government has caused significant issues by going to war with fossil fuels and forcing solar energy and wind power, which is dramatically ineffective as a means of supplying energy.  And as a result, the economy of power becomes too expensive and under-supplied.  And society, in general, is much less vibrant because of the intrusions of a government that has too much power, and not nearly enough competition to keep it honest. 

Rich Hoffman

Judas Pence and the Siren Songs of Populism: People expect Republicans to win, not to be controlled opposition

Of course, the answer to Mike Pence’s comment on the siren song of populism, which has so well defined precisely who he is, is that those aren’t beautiful women posing as conservatives trying to lure well-intentioned people to the rocks of their destruction.  No, those utterances toward populism result from many years of lies by a party, the Republicans, who pretended to be a small government party but are no different from the Democrats.  I could say that about my own Republican Party in my town, but that’s not a new story.  I’ve been dealing with this balancing act since Ross Perot ran for president, and I supported him because I would never get behind the CIA. George Bush or his haphazard son, “W.”  Ronald Reagan was pretty good for a while before his assassination attempt, and after the party establishment started getting to him, he was much less effective during his second term.  Then we had the Clinton years and the fake government shutdowns.  When my wife had a chance to meet Newt Gingrich at a Republican Party event a few years ago, she refused to shake his hand because she was still mad at Newt for caving to Clinton when Republicans had him on the ropes and could have saved a lot of us a lot of grief.  No, populism is a much bigger story than just some fad.  It’s more than a movement and undoubtedly more sophisticated than some siren song attached to lustful desire and short-term gratification. 

Populism is a political strategy that seeks to appeal to the interests and concerns of ordinary people, especially those who feel that the established political and economic elites are not meeting their needs. It often involves rhetoric that frames the people as opposed to a corrupt or self-serving elite and emphasizes the importance of direct democracy and the people’s will. However, populism can also be controversial and divisive, and its effects on society and politics depend mainly on how it is used and by whom.  The conservative tether that Pence is talking about is a leftover idea fresh off of wins during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 when the Constitution was still new and victorious wars rallied people to the value.  But this Republican Party that Mike Pence is talking about is like some Dallas Cowboys fan still wearing a Super Bowl shirt from the ’70s or ’90s.  It would be best if you kept winning, guys.  You have to earn respect; it doesn’t just grow on trees.  And that is the problem with Mike Pence’s view of what conservativism is.  Conservatives have been the turn-the-other-cheek party, the party of losers.  Who cares what your principles are if you will always get your ass kicked?  That’s not good for branding.  And because they have been soft on everything, corruption has grown into a maddening contraption.  People want wins, and the Republican Party has not given it to them.  Instead, they have been happy to lose, and people are tired of it. 

I remember it well: the night before the election in 1992, I was at the Ross Perot headquarters in Dallas, Texas, getting gifts from his daughters and enjoying the patriotism of a hard-fought campaign.  Many people were mad at me for not supporting George Bush, the elder.  I was proud that Perot got 19% of the vote then.  But I hated Clinton so severely that I supported Bob Dole four years later.  He turned out to be pretty smart; he would become a big Trump supporter.  He was a pretty good guy, even if it took him most of his life to figure it out.  I supported John McCain, and he lost to the communist Obama.  And a few years after that, I supported Mitt Romney, and I remember how it was in 2012.  A bunch of people who thought they had conservative ideas all figured out.  One of John Boehner’s proudest moments was bringing the Pope to the congressional floor as Speaker of the House, as he cried like a baby at just about everything.  Republicans have been like that football team that always loses but are in your hometown, so you support them unquestioningly, like some fool who accepts losers.  That’s not how it’s supposed to be.  Especially when the Democrats have shown such a propensity for evil.  Going back to the Perot election to be in Downtown Cincinnati with many political influencers and watching Clinton give his concession speech was a real gut punch.  Would Bush have been better?  No, Clinton only accelerated the eventual drive toward populism.  As would Obama and now Biden.  Populism would come along regardless because defending the Constitution would require political victories, and nobody was promising that until Trump came along.  And that’s where things stand today.  Americans were hungry for an American First party and wanted it to be Republicans, the Party of Lincoln, the party that freed the enslaved people.  And the party of small government.  Other people allowed globalism to seep into the mix and ruin the character of America as a nation.  They did so by deceit, and people know that now. 

Americans want more than a tailgate party from their Republican Party.  They want to win and destroy the evil Democrats.  To truly stand for small government and to be fiscally responsible.  We now have a band of thieves who run the Beltway culture with lobbyists and overpaid consultants.  And it makes people sick to see.  They want victory and are turning to populism to give it to them.  People like Judas Pence sold out our country, allowed an election to be stolen, and are trying to put the country back in the hands of the people who screwed it up in the first place.  And people aren’t going to stand for it.  I am surprised to see how quickly Republicans in my region have forgotten, and it’s obvious they probably never understood the Trump years.  They were holding their nose and hoping for a return to the low expectations of party politics and controlled opposition.  But that’s never what I signed up for.  I was always a populist and more than that, I expected to win.  Not just once or twice but every time.  And unless my political party is committed to that, I’m not with them.  I will work against losers every time.  This is why Mike Pence, with all his years in politics, should know better.  Yet he didn’t, and he said those words against populism anyway, showing he learned nothing in all those years with Trump.  None of that magic dust rubbed off on him.  Is he happy to be a loser so long as he stands by conservative ideas, even if they are always just ideas and not a reality?  No, people want winners in their lives, and without victory, populism will take on a life of its own.  And if Republicans aren’t committed to winning, they aren’t committed to conservative ideas.  Because they have to be willing to fight for those ideas, and fighting means winning.

Rich Hoffman

Why We Must Be Cautious About the Power of Government: Too often the wrong people gain too much power over their rivals and they abuse it routinely

It doesn’t get talked about nearly as much as it should, but one of the biggest reasons the government should have limited power is due to the tendency toward corruption that those in government tend to be obsessed with.  It’s not just the danger of what a large government can do to those it is supposed to serve but also the annoying obsession that comes from those who discover how they can use it to destroy political rivals, which is just another form of election fraud that is so systemic in our current culture.  It’s not just the political hit on Ken Paxton at the national level that should draw our attention or the antics of the Ukraine War, the lies of the Chinese government regarding the Covid virus release out of Wuhan.  Of the Jack Smith prosecution of Trump, along with the many others who are doing everything with the power of their offices to stop the former president from becoming the next one.  But we see such abuses happening even in our neighborhoods.  For me, in Butler County, Ohio, we have witnessed Sheriff Jones go after political rivals abusing the court system to destroy competing politicians, and we have even seen a school board member from Lakota, Lynda O’Conner, call in the favor of judges to take her rival to court and attempt to destroy their life and manipulate anybody she could in the process to achieve her objective.  I could name off a long list of such instances just in my community, so across the reach of government, this is a genuine problem.  The power that the government can give worthless people.  The more Democrat-oriented the politician, the worse it gets, but government power must be a significant part of our concern.  What will a politician do to acquire strength so they can abuse it for personal reasons? 

I don’t have a lot of personal tolerance when I witness this kind of personal corruption and power of government.  Very few things make me angry more, especially the acquisition of a political office to abuse power over others to sustain some personal failing from the public eye.  I have a lot of people who report their stories of terror to me, from the harassing phone calls when they find themselves on the opposite of an issue from an influential person to the harassment that comes because of the power of government, tampering with financial transactions, digital meters mysteriously falling out of calibration for utility companies, strange people rifling through trash to dig up dirt on their political targets—open threats of violence and vandalism.  You would be surprised what people who want to abuse the power of government will do to harass their political foes.  Very few of them let the process of a republic play out honestly because they seek to abuse the power of government to gain more control; that’s why they are attracted to government in the first place.  They don’t get into government to serve the community; they seek that power to abuse it.  And it is their default mode of operation.  The tendency toward corruption is as abundant as salmon trying to swim upstream to their birthplace.  It’s a standard and is the primary reason we must maintain the smallest government possible.  To prevent such abuses from occurring as frequently as they do.  Knowing that corruption is the destination for most political figures, limited government must inspire them toward honesty because they won’t do it on their own. 

I always say it: I love all Republicans until they show me they aren’t.  Then I don’t like them anymore because, along the political scale, the more big government a person becomes, the less you can trust them as valuable people.  And you certainly can’t trust them with the power of government at their command.  And in my own regional Butler County Republican Party, I do not like to hear people referring to it as corrupt or that it’s like a mob.  That the country club Republicans are a mafia who will exert violence and abuse of the law through legal measures they control to subdue rivals no different than the kind of hits that are known in organized crime.  I have watched several very talented people interested in helping with politics run up against these influential people and see harassment of all kinds come their way, and I explain to them that isn’t how it’s supposed to be.  Many people get involved in politics for all the right reasons, but they soon find that if they don’t appease that mob-like power, they are destroyed in the process and personally harassed in entirely unacceptable ways.  And that’s not how it’s supposed to be.  Our government was designed to serve people, not to subdue them.  Looking for reasons to control the political process so it can be used as a weapon was not how the Constitution should be utilized.  But it’s the primary danger of government; we can’t just make blanket statements about rival political parties when the true villain is the size of the government itself and what weak people will do to gain the power to utilize for all kinds of corrupt reasons.  People wonder why there aren’t more good people in politics; well, it’s because we have accepted levels of corruption due to the size and influence of government that keeps good people out and preserves the power of those who least deserve it.

I even say that politics is a blood sport, and if the rivals want to lose blood, then so be it.  I’m willing to play the game to win in any way necessary.  But should it be that way? Of course not.  That is why limited government should always be our agreed-upon baseline.  The more government power there is, the worse people seek to be in it.  And if we make it profitable for horrible people to gain office, then to keep office, then we shouldn’t be surprised that the process lets us down.  We can complain about it, but what are we doing about it?  Accepting such corruption is not a position any healthy society would accommodate.  It’s all too tempting for people who gain power over others to abuse that power, so for any government that acquires such power, it is common to see them abuse it for personal reasons.  We can laugh about that level of corruption and how ridiculous the people who seek to use it are, but should we laugh it off?  I don’t think so.  If you can’t tend to things in your backyard and will put up with reprehensible behavior for worthless political seats, then we are contributing to evil itself.  I like to see good people enter political offices intending to do good work.  I don’t like to see lazy people who want to enter politics do a lousy job and then use government power to hide their lack of skill from a judging public.  Or they will clamor for a seat because it’s the only thing worth anything in their life, the only path they have to social respect.  And because they are so faulty, they will do anything to hold those seats of power by trying to destroy people who could do better than them.  In politics, if we are not creating an environment of competition to get the best people in the best spots to improve our government, then we are only feeding the tendency toward corruption for all the means of abuse that the government can utilize for all the wrong reasons.  And it should be one of our most significant concerns.  Remember when some politicians say to you, “There is misleading information about me and I want to set the record straight,” just think of the mobster who says the same thing before they try to take a baseball bat out to show how much power they have become because of the government.  Be sure to judge them based on what they do, not the worthless things they say.  Then, use the force of government to conceal.

When everyone wonders why such crappy people end up in elected office, it’s because the garbage who can do nothing else in life cleave for the power of government, then use it to stop better people from beating them in elections.  And that is a problem with Republicans, Democrats, communists, and revolutionaries.  Until we take away the power the government gives to people to use to prop up their otherwise broken and useless lives, bad people will continue to dominate in politics, whereas good, honest people who can do a million other things will do so.  And leave politics to the worst that the human race produces. Instead, it should be the other way around; our best should move into politics to help others become better because they are examples everyone should follow toward individual success.  

I’m happy to help build an excellent political team, and there are at least 20 people I can think of who want to get involved in Republican politics.  But I will not put up with weaponized bureaucracy by incompetent people who clamor for power because it gives them something they wouldn’t otherwise have: power over others.  That is not acceptable.   

Rich Hoffman

The Indians Were Not Indigenous to North America, Aliens Were: What we have learned about the giants found around the world

It’s not hard to see how it happened; if you understand politics, you know that mass populations are easily controlled by a political system that can capture a narrative, and humans, by nature, are best communicated with through story. So, if you own the story, you control the population, the primary focus of religions, and the politics that have spawned from them since recorded time. But this line of questions for me started in 2009 while at the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and I picked up a map that had known burial sites of giants, people of gigantic stature. I thought that was interesting, so I have kept my ears open since then for evidence as it has come in. And as that evidence has been collected, it is pretty evident that in the Ohio River Valley and across the world, just about everywhere, especially in mound-building cultures, are the remains of giant people. That is why there isn’t better archaeology looking into the contents of these mounds, even in China and Japan and all over the Near East, specifically the many mounds of Israel that are essentially of the same construction and design. It came alive for me after visiting Stonehenge that something was strange because I saw the same features that I saw at home in Southern Ohio. And once you learn that the mounds weren’t burial in their orientation as much as they were intended to be celestial clocks, then suddenly things start making a lot more sense, which is the case of a massive earthwork near my home at Fort Hill, in downtown Hamilton, Ohio, and Serpent Mound about an hour and a half to the east.

Knowing what I do now, I am very comfortable calling it; the earth was settled by life from other places in space, likely many different species, and they have probably been interacting with us all along.  But they come and go, and when they arrive on earth to settle or for visits, they need to know when they are.  And that is the purpose of things like Stonehenge, the features at Göbekli Tepe, and even the mysterious Keyhole tombs in Japan.  We are dealing with a culture that lived quite well and vibrantly in what we call the Archaic Period, from the age of Leo and Tauras, and dying out around the age of Aries, only to emerge into what we now call Biblical ancient.  We know that because once you stop trying to look at history through what you find lying around the ground, which decays and erodes rather quickly, and start understanding that you measure activity in celestial time, which is the purpose of inventing the zodiac always was, relevant to stable ground features described, then you start to get the picture.  And the people doing all this were huge, called giants.  And that the Bible refers to as the Nephilim.  Only they were a global culture that understood how to navigate across the oceans, and they did so frequently.  Our assumption that hunters and gatherers rubbed sticks together and migrated across a land bridge into North America during an Ice Age period is, by now, just ridiculous.

But, the world’s politics has wanted us to think of them as gods and to worship them and their time of rule on earth.  So, they have been working to conceal this information behind the mechanisms of institutionalism.  To maintain that story, they have been trying to sell us all on this idea of indigenous people and that America should never have been settled by Christopher Columbus in 1492 because we interrupted the harmony of a nature-loving group of nomads with capitalism.  But that was all a lie; the Indians were not indigenous to North America.  Aliens were.  The Indians were the latest visitors migrating around the earth for thousands of years.  The way things look, we are dealing with at least 400,000 years of human history.  Probably longer.  We only see what hasn’t eroded yet, but there has been a lot of intelligent life on Earth over a long period.  That doesn’t mean there weren’t hunters and gatherers doing their thing, just as we can find such people worldwide today.  There were always homeless people not living within a structured society.  But our assumptions about life and how we arrived where we are, based on abundant evidence, are entirely wrong.  I think today, if we had reasonable archaeology into the many mounds of the world, we would find in them skeletons, like have been found at the Miamisburg Mound just south of Dayton, Ohio, lots of 8- to 10-foot-tall people.  The fact that nobody is seriously studying this matter tells you everything you need to know.  The social narrative of the exploitation of so-called indigenous people is far more valuable to the current political order of global communism than the truth of scientific discovery.  The evidence is so abundant, mainly by private investigations, not science funded by government grants committed to a political narrative, that there is no longer a question. 

I was always weary of this kind of alien settlement thinking until I watched the world’s governments lie to our faces about COVID-19.  We all know that the virus was artificially made in China and released to the public in a way that the world’s governments knew about.  They had even role-played the response, which Bill Gates led the effort.  They were so arrogant about their ability to lie to the public through controlled narratives that they essentially painted themselves in a corner and had to tip-toe through that wet paint to reveal their guilt.  Part of the reason for the arrogance, a big part of it, was their success in manipulating religious and scientific narratives to the public, such as they have gotten away with the indigenous people’s history, arbitrarily picking a habitation date of 1600 AD to 1800 AD, and saying that they were the indigenous people of North America and that all migration was evil so that the greatness of America can be delegitimized to the world and they would clamor for Chinese style communism because of their associated guilt.  People didn’t question the narrative much, which inflated the egos of those who seek to control narratives in the world so they can easily control masses of people.  So now that we know that aliens, or rather, our ancestors, came here from other planets, do we call them the indigenous people?  Or were they the invaders of what was here before?  But we know there was a global civilization that dates back all over the world into times during and even before the last ice age.  And that what was left behind were fragments of their previous cultures that were quite advanced, as we can see in all these ground-based celestial clocks that still have crop circles appearing next to them all the time as if someone were writing notes on the ground to figure out when they were in time and space.  Since time doesn’t move the same everywhere in the solar system, the galaxy, or the universe, which is the giveaway, they were concerned with time and the way we would wear a watch to measure our rotation to the sun.  These very tall people and others needed to know relative to their orientations in space when they arrived on Earth.  Was it 100 years later, or many thousands?  And that is the way we must look at history in the future.  Not in the way we have been.  Or allow governments and institutions to lie to us to control a narrative that benefits them politically when science says otherwise.

Rich Hoffman

Isaac Adi Loses His Man Card: Despite modern woke rules, people are still people

So they have drug Judge Lyons into all this? I love the Judge, and there he was in court serving as the stooge for a failed political figure, as Lynda is calling in all the favors, hoping to turn back the tides of reality like some crazy old woman seeks the fountain of youth before the grip of old age seals her doom. These political gymnastics can’t hide the terrible report card at Lakota. Lynda was in charge, and it’s on her, which will be the subject of tomorrow. But for now, man cards are still crucial in the world, despite the attempt to use new woke rules to remove such judgments from society. Men and women still have expectations from each other that have been relevant for many thousands of years, even millions. And that was something an old friend of mine, who ran WLW radio then, used to enjoy during his Saturday radio show from 9 a.m. until 11. Back before there was ever a YouTube, through the Obama first term, I used to do a lot of talk radio all over the country, and I had a good relationship, especially with Clear Channel Radio, who ran WLW, specifically through Darryl Parks when he was the big man at the station, setting all their programming priorities. He and I had similar politics, so I was a frequent guest with him and many other Marconi award-winning personalities, and we had a good time having fun with forbidden early woke social rules. It would be woke politics that would have Clear Channel remove most of the conservative talent (Bill Cunningham is not a real conservative; he only plays one on the radio), and Parks eventually lost his title. But while he had it, we had a lot of fun and did a lot of good radio making fun of ridiculous things, such as woke policies, well before anybody even knew what they were. We would often exploit that trait on his radio show, and one of the most popular mechanisms we would employ was removing people’s man cards when they showed weak behavior in a public setting, especially men who were not standing up for traditional masculine attributes. We would talk about them on the air during his show to hundreds of thousands of people and remove their man cards as a shame for their lack of courage and strength when it was needed most.

So in that fabulous and influential tradition, we must bring back the removal of man cards when they show they do not deserve them, and that is certainly the case with Isaac Adi, the Lakota school board member who attempted to have court protection from fellow school board member, Darbi Boddy.  He and Darbi were at a conference in Florida and had several arguments, which isn’t unusual.  They ran for school board together and have turned out to be quite different politically.  It didn’t look that way at first, but since Isaac won his seat, he has essentially become much more liberal, whereas Darbi is still the conservative mom that she ran herself as.  But unlike regular politicians, Darbi didn’t say one thing and then show herself to be something else.  And that is what the establishment types call a lack of “professionalism” when politicians do what they say they will do with the naive assumption that they might be able to change anything. For most politicians, you throw populist opinions to the public to get them to vote for you.  Then you say other things to those who donate money to political campaigns.  But when you are in executive session with other politicians, you are all friends; you talk about Bill’s cat and Sarah’s new dress, and no matter who they are, Republicans and Democrats, you enjoy a kind of silent membership to the club.  Darbi was always the same person: the campaign Darbi, the fundraising Darbi, and the daily school board member.  So when efforts were led by Lynda O’Conner, a supposed conservative school board member, to get control of these two new school board members a few years ago, Isaac and Darbi, only Isaac listened.  Darbi remained independently conservative, and since then, Isaac and Darbi have had a very contentious relationship, and they argue frequently for obvious reasons. If it’s anybody’s fault for destroying their relationship, it’s Lynda O’Conner who did it.

According to court testimony on September 15, 2023, because of this incident, Isaac was admitted to a hospital for two nights and three days, and he had a medical bill as evidence. That says everything.

But the only time they’ve been violent, that type of thing was initiated by Isaac. At least two times, I know where Isaac has punched at cameras recording him, and it was women holding those cameras. Isaac has a temper and has expressed it openly. He likes to be in control, and when he feels he’s losing control, he turns to physical aggression. I never thought it was a big deal, but under the definition of harassment that he expressed to a court on September 15th, 2023, then the smeller is the feller in this case. He’s the guy in the elevator passing gas and then looking at everyone else as if it were their fault. So it is ironic that after that Florida trip for school board business, he went to the courts to file a petition against Darbi, citing that he did not feel safe around her and that she had been “bullying” him. And that she carries a gun and he doesn’t feel “safe.” Jiminy Christmas, that is not how men talk! I understand that Darbi is tough, and she has a powerful personality. I have been to the firing range with her and her husband, and I can report that she does know how to handle herself with a gun. But what world is Isaac living in? Everyone carries a weapon, or at least they should. It’s like saying that a woman has earrings. Carrying guns is a common social enterprise, so it should not have been a big deal to Isaac. But he went to the courts to seek protection from her, which was pretty embarrassing, and he felt he needed to. The judge denied the request, as should have been understood from the start. Isaac failed to present evidence that an ex parte order is necessary for his safety and protection from imminent danger.

They should have never tried to knock Darbi off the school board. They just keep digging themselves deeper and deeper.

All that might be fine in the legal world of court talk and political discourse.  And to say it’s a dysfunctional relationship doesn’t go deep enough to the true heart of the matter.  What is the purpose of these frequent confrontations?  It comes down to acceptance of honest public discourse, and what I find valuable about Darbi is that as a genuine representative of the community and an unpolished political figure, she is a good gauge of how people feel in the district.  Yet the political trend is to be one way in public and another in private, which is an inherently dishonest position, and that understanding has led to healthy conflict.  But if you are a man, you don’t run to the courts looking for protection, for the “state” to protect you.  You handle your battles and don’t seek government help to resolve them.  That is why Isaac Adi must lose his man card.  By the woke rules of the modern world, it’s OK for men to cry and be emotional.  And to be afraid of guns.  But by the fundamental laws of manhood, those are all reprehensible traits that women classicly find destructive and unattractive.  And I think Darbi’s primary source of disappointment, knowing her pretty well as I do, is that Isaac has shown himself to be everything but the kind and conservative person she ran with on the campaign.  Darbi never wanted to be a political figure in the traditional sense.  She just wanted to be on the school board to help kids get access to a better life.  And she has had no desire to become what Isaac has, and that anger spills over into their conversations.  The Lakota school board’s dysfunction started when Isaac attempted to remove Darbi from the school board with many other hostile people, led by Lynda O’Conner, literally the moment that Darbi gave her the critical vote to make her president.  So, who in their right mind would expect Darbi to get along with them at this late date or that she’d want to join hands under a banner of peace now?  She can only hope that she gets more people on the school board who are better representatives of the community to work with, and until then, she is just holding her nose, like many people are.  But compromising with people without integrity is not an option, or dealing with people who have lost their man cards. 

Rich Hoffman

The West Chester Tea Party is Not Antisemitic: Trying to control the world through managed free speech established by institutionalism

It’s all About Politics and candidates who are afraid to let people see who they really are in a setting they can’t control

Supposedly, there was a meeting at the West Chester Tea Party at the St. Gertrude the Great Catholic Church on September 5th, where accused vitriolic hatred toward the Jewish people was expressed in antisemitic rhetoric, and it was a news story that gained much attention. And it was members of the “Republican Party” who tipped off the Cincinnati Jewish Community Relations Council, pressing them to denounce the West Chester Tea Party for its actions. Apparently, there was a guest at that September 5th meeting where topics about the Jewish people’s role in the world came up. This Jewish organization wanted to attach that discussion to a form of controlled speech that we see as such a strategy of the political left, where they determine what parameters of debate anybody is allowed to have. Anyone who dares to step outside those boundaries will then be attacked publicly, such as what is being attempted by the West Chester Tea Party. And if that was all it was, we could perhaps overlook it. However, I have a long affiliation with the West Chester Tea Party and Tea Party groups in general, and of course, as Paul Harvey used to say, “there’s the rest of the story.” This isn’t about hate speech being expressed over a controversial speaker. But I would say this is all about the West Chester Tea Party coming out and not endorsing Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota school board and ensuring people knew about it. I wrote an article that has been seen by many thousands of people on August 27th, 2023, establishing that the West Chester Tea Party would not endorse Lynda for her next run for the school board. So just a few days later, at this September 5th meeting, supporters of Lynda were looking for something to attempt to water down that lack of endorsement because Lynda has been affiliated with the West Chester Tea Party for over a decade. And the Tea Party just didn’t become an anti-semantic group a few weeks ago.

How do I know all that? Well, because I know all the people involved and how it works. I know how phone calls are made and the favors from the media are granted. I understand that the West Chester Tea Party is an open, free-speech-oriented group and that the caricature created by an institutionalized religious group does not reflect who they are. Many tempers have flared in the background over their lack of endorsement. I’ve heard many of them myself and I just let it ride out. I can understand Lynda’s feelings being hurt, but she has brand damage that she did to herself. So getting mad at the West Chester Tea Party isn’t a rational expression of justice, but that has been the byproduct of their emphatic refusal to not endorse her. We keep hearing about how small the West Chester Tea Party is, yet so many people are concerned about what they say and when they say it as if they are rationalizing to themselves its importance in the community. But I like the Tea Party people quite a lot and know how they work, and they are as far from a hate group as you can get. But I do know they hate one thing I share with them. If hate is the correct expression, which I think it is, we all hate corruption, and this kind of story is dripping wet with just the sort of corruption that has targeted RINOs in the Republican Party, and that is the real essence of this story.

I write many articles, many of which are about religion.  Some of them, the West Chester Tea Party, has spread around their network, which is undoubtedly part of the criticism toward them by these institutionalized groups.  I’ve even specifically addressed the Jewish issue as conspiracy theorists think of it because it’s a natural part of modern politics.  I love the Jewish people and have said so many times.  Jesus was Jewish.  We wouldn’t have a Bible if not for the Jewish people.  I even recently wrote an article about why we should all participate in Jewish rituals such as eating unleavened bread.  Any criticism that was expressed falls under the general failures of institutionalism, which is a much larger issue.  And, of course, those who seek refuge in institutionalism to hide their levels of corruption are at the heart of the matter here, and the perpetrators of injustice are playing a dangerous game that is falling apart in this second decade of this new century.  The political game of controlled free speech.  To censor people based on what they say and do, as if institutionalism could control people’s thoughts through the act of peer acceptance.  This isn’t a new game; it’s an outdated one.  And the 2010s want their political games back.  Because in the increasing MAGA movement where President Trump continues to be the leader of the Republican Party, these games are exactly why there is a severe hatred of RINOs representing people in politics.  That is precisely why the West Chester Tea Party made sure to distance themselves from their long affiliation with Lynda O’Conner once they found out she was running again, because of the many mistakes she has made that they couldn’t endorse. 

We no longer live in a world where people care what the newspapers say or the television media in a city.  This idea of ruling over others with hurt feelings is what created the mess we are in presently, and what has given politics a bad name.  So, any hope that this story would destroy the West Chester Tea Party, by the established RINOs who want their party back, will only blow up in their faces.  The hope was to force anybody to crush free speech to stay within the parameters of institutionalized controls, which is expected of the West Chester Tea Party, to apologize, and condemn members with opinions.  Then, they minimize their message so that the RINO faction of the Republican Party can gain back some respect that they have lost.  Because of these games, the West Chester Tea Party is still around and a vital force that works in the background, especially for Central Committee members.  Party politics is never going back to what it used to be.  People are not happy with it.  And they certainly don’t appreciate being used by political figures to get elected, then to have those elected representatives turn away from the freedom movement, and align themselves with institutionalized politics.  And that is the merit of this entire West Chester Tea Party issue.  They have nothing to apologize for.  I think they will gain members with this news media coverage.  But more than anything, they will gain respect for their position against Lynda O’Conner and other political figures who have turned away from the Tea Party ways and hope to wipe their guilt away as Judas did after taking money to sell out Jesus.  When the responsibility doesn’t go away from the reflection in the mirror, getting rid of the mirror is all too tempting.  But the reflection comes in many forms, not just the bathroom mirror or a news media that is already a poor reflection of actuality. 

Rich Hoffman

Why We Should Eat Unleavened Bread: Keeping corruption out of society starting with food

It’s a good practice to have some mechanism in religion to remind you of important things, and as ridiculous as many might think, that eating leavened bread as the Jewish people have rituals against, remember one crucial thing, the descendants of the Hebrew people, of the inherited land of Israel have been around longer as a group of people on planet earth than any other groups.  They have been beaten up, killed, and spread all over the planet in displacement, but as a people, from one specific region of the world, they have remained so longer than anybody else.  So, their rituals have worked for them in many healthy ways, even if eating or not eating puffy bread is directly attributed.  In general, having some basic rules to live by from whatever religion you might happen to be is a good practice.  Not for the direct mechanisms but in that they get your mind focused on the real important things.  As it is stated often in the Bible, in consideration of many Jewish holidays, leavened bread or unleavened bread is an important ritual to invoke in their society an essential distinction between a healthy and unhealthy society.  This is certainly the case with the Jewish people and the Christian people who emerged from the kind of thinking that was quite in rebellion at the time, against the tides of the world which are playing out dramatically on the world stage today.  To surrender to the forces of nature and appeal to the sensibilities of corrupt gods and demons who plague our subconscious.  Or to rebel against those forces with deliberate laws, such as the Ten Commandments, the presentation of sexual organs, such as circumcision, and eating food at certain times of the day or year. 

Over time, in many societies, leaven came to signify corruption.  So, the feasts of unleavened bread were designed to remind people in the covenant community that they were supposed to purge sin as they celebrated redemption.  By the first century AD, the Passover and Unleavened Bread feasts were celebrated simultaneously, and their sustainability has helped the Jewish people stay organized as a community around the globe.  The actual health benefits of eating bread that has a rising agent in it or not are less the point than the psychological benefit from maintaining personal conduct with such commitments, which are obvious anywhere in the world where they are practiced.  When people from any place follow firm rules of conduct, they tend to be a much healthier society.  The question is not essential about whether God cares if we eat leavened or unleavened bread as much as we care about how we conduct ourselves and why we do what we do.  Making a purposeful decision not to do something or whether to do something has a direct connection to our success or failure as a species.  And even down to the kind of bread we eat, the proof has been observed over time that these Jewish rituals and overall, Christian views of the world have worked well against the heathen behavior of the pagan sense of sacrifice that permeates cultures that rebel against such rules and practices.  That is why we see ritual bread in religion as a little wafer, flat, and featureless consumed instead of a puffy sampling of bread.  The rising agent is supposed to represent our sense of ego.  The way to avoid corruption is to avoid applying lifting agents to the food we consume and to remind ourselves to function without such cosmetic utterances. 

Of course, it didn’t work very well in removing corruption from Jewish society; there was mass corruption from their political leaders and people in general over their long history, just as in any organization.  But the rituals at least force them to think about such things as opposed to hedonistic societies that never explore the problems that come from corruption.  A healthy culture that at least recognizes the dangerous nature of crime tends to function better than a society that ignores it, which is the entire point of unleavened bread.  Suppose there are a few times a year when an organization thinks about whether or not corruption is acceptable. In that case, it tends to impact a portion of civilization that may not fall to such temptations, and they might avoid some act of corruption when it is needed most.  And good moral conduct might save the day when other societies have no such restrictions.  Over time, the survivability of the Jewish people, no matter what anybody might think about their concept of good or life in general, can be said to have a world outlook that contributes to a prosperous society.  It may not stop evil from raiding and seeking to destroy them.  But it might keep them from killing themselves by having a way to remind their culture not to behave by embracing corruption, a lofty sense of self that can only be filled by the appeasement of others, which ultimately takes control of personal management from themselves and places it toward group consensus.  Corruption starts by seeking rising agents into your ego, a compliment from one person, or a gift from another, something that might sway you from making the best decision without inflationary considerations to alter your judgment. 

Once you can say no to unleavened bread, you can also start saying no to those who might want to bribe you or whisper sweet nothings to you to pull you away from good judgment and into self-governing, which is the key to American civilization.  In order to have self-government a person has to be able to do so, without outside forces blowing temptations that might alter the course of the individual.  The practice of not eating certain foods at certain times to keep on the top of their minds the dangers of corruption in society, in general, is an important, empowering mechanism to resist the temptations of darkness and social collapse. A community without an excellent governing philosophy will not stay a society for long, and that is certainly the mode of attack that we see being applied to America presently from lots of outside forces who want to exploit temptation for the benefit of social destruction.  Many of our current politicians, from school boards to the presidents of countries would do well to eat unleavened bread on purpose to remind themselves of the practice of avoiding corruption in their lives.  Such a position starts even with the kind of food you eat.  Once you’ve consciously made such a decision, then it becomes easier to resist that bribe from a co-worker, a donor, or a member of the media that throws enticements toward their egos to inflate them toward corruption and the appeasement of such forces at the expense of morality.  If such things could be utilized for the productive health of society in general, then we could say that things are good and value is at the core of what we do, from eating to management.  When we make purity a priority, we tend to get much better results than when such things are not recognized.  In such a fashion, any society that goes to such an extent as to eat unleavened bread to remind themselves not to fall to corruption in their lives is serious about maintaining themselves well into the future, which is where most people hope to go, but because of their personal decisions, find they too often, can’t. 

Rich Hoffman

Let’s Talk About God: Understanding the Politics of Heaven

For further conversations, it’s time to talk seriously about God and the politics of Heaven and, in general, everlasting life.  A lot of people think that death is the end of it all, but I would argue that it’s just the beginning, and part of the point of life is to grow into something that can function well in the existence of a multidimensional political universe, because as it is in Heaven, so it is on Earth.  The original sin was that God created man in his image because he wanted a family who would rule on his behalf over the Earth in ways that always had the eternal perspective in mind, and in that way, humanity was created to be over angels and demons relative to the Divine Council as it is talked about in the Bible many places, especially Psalm 82.  This is important because to understand the fight we have today, politically, we have to get our minds around the concept of God and not think of him as a solitary figure sitting on a thrown in everlasting life waiting for everyone to go to Heaven and sit around in the pearly gates to do “something” for the rest of eternity.  We tend to view Heaven as a destination at the end of the tunnel of life.  But I think that’s just where the battles begin, and what we see on earth are reflections of that eternal life, and God, Yahweh, has always been under pressure to manage the vast populations of eternal existence.  And that is why the Fall in the Garden was such a tragic occasion for him, which he has spent many thousands of years trying to resolve to his satisfaction.  That might seem strange for an entity that created the universe and everything in it.  But there is more to the story regarding the challenge of free will that is ultimately the point. 

We all know the story of the Garden of Eden, where the snake tempted Eve to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil.  This is the fruit of the lesser Gods, those in the pantheon at that time, for which Yahweh managed within this universal spectrum but constantly tried to undermine his authority.  Those Gods would be characters who had been around for many tens of thousands of years before the biblical period we are talking about here, gods like Baal, Moloch, Ishtar, Marduk, and a long list of the same names that would be called other names in other countries such as Greece, Egypt, and the Americas, but would be the same essential characters.  Yahweh was trying to do something different, and the rebellion on the Divine Council was certainly intent to challenge his authority, just as we see in our political order, which we can say reflects the actions of eternal life.  Of course, once God’s creation had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and become like “them,” the gods of the Divine Council, they had to be cast away for God to try again and again to make the human experiment work by comprehending the aspects of Eternal Life that God intended for humanity.  Not the kind of stuff they teach you in Sunday school or Church.  But if you dig into scripture and read what it tells us from thousands of years of interpretation and analysis, things start to appear much more as they indeed are. In that case, the world opens up much differently for those with the courage to eat from that Tree of Eternal Life. 

Humans couldn’t handle such a task, so they were thrown out of the Garden guarded now by Cherubim, creatures that have a recurring theme in ancient times.  And eventually, because they fell from grace and were now functioning in the politics of the lesser Gods, such as Baal, God wiped them all away with the flood story, which is very much the same story we find in the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Noah and his family are God’s chosen people, and they try to start the Garden story once more.  Only to fail when people attempted to build the Tower of Babel, again setting their sights on the kind of mistakes the Divine Council had made for thousands of years.  God came along and scrambled their speech so they could no longer build the Tower of Babel to reach Heaven.  And Yahweh sent them to the corners of the earth to separate them politically from one another.  But God doesn’t give up on this experiment with humans. Instead, he turns to Abraham and decides to make a new people from his line, which becomes the generations of Israel, Moses, King David, King Solomon, and the like.  But again, once Solomon died, his children fell to the temptations of Baal and the gang, so God allowed Nebuchadnezzar to raid his people and punish them for their discourse, which was their political alignment and worship of the lesser gods of the Divine Council.  Understanding that Divine Council, it helps to read from the ancient literature that comes out of Syria and modern-day Iraq.  No wonder those areas are war-torn today; the conflict is a mask of the truth.  Governments always want to think they are in charge as they completely are creatures eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  From there, after 70 years, God allows the people of Israel to rebuild and continue again, but of course, they fail, so he sends Jesus, his representation on earth, to be sacrificed like just another lamb out of Nazareth to solve the political problem with that Divine Council once and for all.

God’s problem, which is eternal, is how to get people to do the right thing of their own free will.  God could undoubtedly punish them and impose his desires through force.  But the divine experiment and the intentions of God’s purpose, and therefore, the meaning of life, is to create religious partners who can function for what’s right as interpreted by an eternal perspective.  Not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the political world of the Divine Council.  But the infinite aspects of all existence, as the universe knows and understands it.  God was looking for reflections of him and his intent to do on Earth as it is in Heaven and to share rule with such creations.  To say God has struggled with the Divine Council might seem odd, but the problem is free will, whether talking about people or angels, demons, and the pantheon of maniacal characters of eternal existence.  Life and death is not the goal of these considerations, but free will is.  And it is free will that is at the core of the American experiment, and it is the suppression of that free will that the world is attempting to stop presently in our political world.  But the root cause of the problem is an ancient one, considering the fall in the garden and why it was so tragic to God.  Because the politics of the Divine Council sought to corrupt the effort from the beginning, those characters would not allow God to create beings superior to them, such as humans were designed to be.  To hatch from life into death as reflections of God himself and to rule over the Divine Council.  And once that is understood, much of the trouble of our current time can be comprehended more fully.

Rich Hoffman

Meet Russ Loges for Lakota School Board: A great guy to help with some looming challenges

I liked Russ Loges the first time he ran for the Lakota school board.  I came to know of him during the last election as my focus was on the Republican-endorsed candidates in the previous election.  Russ wanted to remain independent as he was getting involved in the school board business then.  However, without any name recognition and much support outside of his efforts, he had an excellent showing, gaining several thousand votes with a noticeably conservative position.  I have since met Russ at a few events here and there, and each time, I found that I liked him quite a lot.  He’s a very likable person who has an excellent temperament.  And now that we are in September with the November election coming up quickly, one that will have a lot of Democrats voting because abortion and marijuana will be on the ballot, so there will be unusually high voter engagement during an off-year election, it’s time to get endorsements.  And Russ has already received an approval from some Central Committees around Butler County.  One of the two that are specific to Lakota schools.  So, he came to a meet the candidate night with the Liberty Township Central Committee to present himself with some questions and answers, which are shown here for those interested.  I’ve been to quite a lot of these over the years, and this one was unique.  I liked Russ Loges before the event, but after, I found my opinion of him had inflated quite a lot.  He answered many tough questions very well and cared a lot about what’s going on in Lakota and the specific challenges that are on the horizon.  Russ Loges is precisely the kind of person that the community would benefit from putting on the school board during the upcoming election, and he will win the support of many more Republicans for a party endorsement due to his excellent conservative positions. 

Yet what Russ Loges is not is a person trapped in ideology.  He’s a very even, measured person getting into the school board business from parental concerns.  We have seen over the years that, typically, the best school board candidates who become board members are passionate parents who want to make things better for everyone.  It’s a generally thankless job that doesn’t pay back any real fiscal compensation, but to play in that game, you must raise a substantial amount of money to become impactful in an election, especially in the Lakota school district, which has around 100,000 people within it.  When Russ ran before, he did it as a concerned parent who wanted to help.  This time, he has a broader approach that makes him well-positioned for much more support.  And given the crowd reaction at the Liberty Township Central Committee event, many more will become very eager to support his run for the Lakota school board.  Based on his answers, Russ is more than prepared for some of the complex challenges that are coming quickly on the horizon, and to deal with those challenges, Lakota will need people who care which was clearly expressed during the questions asked by Matt King during the event.  Russ has kids in the district and a wife who is a teacher.  Currently, he is a nurse and his bedside manner is instantly noticeable.  He’s personable, cares, and wants to help his community, so all those traits were very encouraging and made it easy for everyone who met him to get excited about it. 

On those times that I had met him, I wasn’t sure if he was the real deal.  So often, when it comes to political events and the people filling specific seats, you get images of people but not much knowledge of the person.  When I learned Russ Loges was a nurse, I instantly thought of a smart car driving, COVID mask-wearing big government type.  But I was able to meet Russ outside this event, getting out of a big truck, and he’s a good fit for the conservative base of Butler County, Ohio.  He’s outdoors-oriented and robustly presents himself.  He reminded me of many of my friends in the fast draw community, even down to the jokes.  Good, sincere people who love the American flag and the many who revere it with the pledge of allegiance.  He’s certainly not a political radical but more of an even-balanced family man who is proud of his country and wants to help it improve.  He’s a big guy with a warm personality who comes across as sincere without many pretenses.  As he shook my hand, he seemed ready to go fishing, or hunting more than anything.  He has a very natural leadership ability that is instantly noticeable.  So, it wasn’t a surprise to learn that he has already sat down with the Lakota superintendent to talk about improving test scores for the students and building a successful team that can tackle some of the challenges looming.  You could tell that he wasn’t just a nurse as an occupation, but that he was a leader as well.  He is used to managing other people because he has a balanced approach to communication that has been well-tested by experience. 

There are a lot of challenges on the horizon for Lakota and it will take outstanding leadership to meet them.  There is a teacher’s contract coming up that could be very contentious.  There is a facilities plan also emerging that will require a small fortune.  There are indications that the current school board is planning to seek a tax increase even as property value rate assessments will increase sharply due to state challenges.  So passing a levy will be even more challenging, especially in an environment where school choice will increasingly become the reality of tomorrow, regarding education.  It would be easy to sit on the sidelines and turn away from some of these community problems, especially for those who have grown kids.  But Russ and his wife plan to be in Lakota for a while.  He mentioned that he wanted Lakota to be good for his grandkids, so he’s planning to keep deep roots in the community, so this isn’t a fly-by-night endeavor for him.  He wants to help, and after meeting him, I am sure he is just the kind of person we need to work on some of these very difficult problems that are on the horizon, storm clouds coming in fast that will be painful.  Yet, those problems are manageable with the right kind of people to deal with them, and Russ Loges was very encouraging.  He could have easily won if more people had known him during the last race.  More people will know him this time so he should be able to get votes in the required numbers just by letting people get to know him.  I will certainly be voting for him, and I’ll be excited to do it.  Things don’t always go how you want them to in politics, but sometimes you get to meet good people, and if not for this school board race, I wouldn’t know Russ Loges any other way.  And after meeting him, I’m happy I did. 

Rich Hoffman

The Need for Speed in American Management: Fast Draw is the perfect sport to understand the benefits of capitalism

I had a good shooting season this year, as is usually the case.  Over the Labor Day weekend, there was one that I look forward to each year specifically.  I go all over the region to attend these gun-fighting competitions and meet many different people to satisfy my obsession with speed, which has been with me for a lifetime.  Cowboy Fast Draw is a unique sport that is very popular, and it should get a lot more news coverage.  But since it’s guns and a deliberate reverence toward a specifically American lifestyle, many woke media won’t touch it in even casual ways.  But not doing so is very disingenuous to American culture, which is the point of social rejection.  It would be like avoiding discussing knighthood in Europe or the samurai in Japan.  Gunfighting in America is one of those core elements that almost everyone can relate to, but the forces hostile to our country want desperately to remove it from people’s minds.  So we have these competitions all over the United States that are very well attended and increasing in popularity, yet many people don’t even know about them.  The shooting season occurs mainly during the warm months, from April to around October.  For me, the one over Labor Day in Darke County, Ohio, is usually the last, so it has a special meaning.  There are a few more in October and November, but I’m often too busy to get to them.  My reason for getting to as many as possible is that they are very positive experiences.  I think about many things that don’t make much sense in everyday life, but all the pieces come together nicely at Fast Draw events.  In the Labor Day of 2023 competition, I received a very hard-won award with significant meaning, and you can read the faces.  A lot is going on with these kinds of things. 

I see Fast Draw as a lot like golf; you get together with friends and see how low your score can be over some time. Gunfights usually last all day, so it’s not a one-and-done endeavor. It requires long, sustained skill that is repeatable. But unlike golf, this is a timed sport. You are forced to react as quickly as possible to the target, making this kind of competition very unusual and American. I like many things, including golf, but there are many things extraordinary about Fast Draw that I find very beneficial personally. Particularly when it comes to metaphors for speed, in regular life, where people don’t show up for gunfights with their guns on their hips and all the special equipment you get to mess around with to play the sport, there are lots of excuses for why things don’t happen or can’t. I find the typical labor position that has come out of the Department of Labor in government particularly repulsive, and since COVID was introduced to liberals, and they have used the potential for sickness not to do any work, my frustrations with the world have only increased dramatically. I do not look for excuses for anything. I think production is beautiful, but most of the world is looking for reasons, and the more liberalism in a culture, the more excuses that culture has for things that they think cannot be done. The attitude is, “If you want to do something right, you should take your time,” assumes that the faster you go at something, the worse the quality of the endeavor. In that way, the labor market that has evolved with lots of Marxism has sought to do less work and do it slower, rather than the classic American approach, which is faster and more accurate.

The reason that gunfighters in classic American Westerns were so obsessed with being faster than the other fighter is the proper metaphor for American culture, where the expectations for everything was tight. Capitalism evolved in America under the premise of speed. And, of course, the speed wasn’t of much value if accuracy wasn’t a part of the story. Of all the sports out there, Fast Draw is the fastest sport. It has elements of many popular sports, mainly drag racing. But there is nothing faster than Fast Draw, where the main objective is drawing a gun and hitting a target with a wax bullet in under half a second. And what I learn from watching different shooters from different places around the country is fascinating. And very refreshing. In the business world, slowness has been embraced because of all the socialist, communist, and under-all philosophies of Marxism running in the background, dripping wet in the compliance culture. Those who make the rules that human resource departments must follow load assumptions against the speed that a company can operate, and too often, people unthinkingly follow without pushing back against the essential premise. And it can be very frustrating to deal with, especially if you think about it, which most people avoid. In golf, you can take your time with the game and are often rewarded for going slower, so many people in business assume that slower is better and that success means making that adjustment. But from the perspective of my favorite sport, Fast Draw faster is better, and the management of speed and accuracy measures success and failure.

There are a lot of essential lessons in Fast Draw that should be directly applied to the business world, which is why I wrote a book on the subject, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business.  You must remove as much nonsense from the process to get the speed you need in the sport.  The more motion, the more steps, and the more variables there are, the slower your time will be.  And under pressure, you still must be able to hit the target.  You don’t have time to be casual.  Most of the winning times in the sport are around a quarter of a second to a half a second.  So, the pressure to achieve speed will expose anything unnecessary.  And that’s how it should be in business, whether it’s a drive-through window at a fast-food restaurant or selling a new car to a customer.  You might have noticed that since COVID-19 and the Biden administration has been in the White House, things have slowed down significantly in America.  The business world expects to go slower and blame the supply chain upstream for failure.  This is a very un-American concept, one of the biggest problems of the modern age.  And it’s very different in 2023 than in 2019 before Covid came along.  Yet, without measuring things with speed and accuracy, people might not notice that the value system was slow and, ultimately, communism with low-performance expectations.  The more Fast Draw events I go to, the more hope I have for the world because I can see people who know how vital speed is to modern culture.  Not just dressing up in gunfighter garments and paying reverence to the Old West.  I appreciate the shooters I meet and their “need for speed,” which is specifically American.  And it certainly gives me hope for the future when I see how hungry people are to win at Fast Draw.  Because if they can figure out that balance in that sport, they may do well in real life in ways that capitalism best reflects. 

Rich Hoffman