Category: The Symposium of Justice

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

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

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

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

The plan is for these to be everywhere

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

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The Scam of Cyber Security: What’s the rush for all this technology–who benefits from it–not us

Each week I have a lot of people trying to waste my time regarding cyber security, and I’ll say here what I say to all of them.  I don’t trust computers, I think it’s ridiculous to put so much private information online, and I can live quite well without it.  Cyber security is a scam, like many things from institutions today.  The same people who will likely hack your computer and steal your information are the same people who are telling you that cyber security is the only way you can survive in the future.  This is the case with Microsoft from the 90s.  People realized that Windows-based systems were particularly vulnerable to viruses.  Then, of course, to operate Windows, you would have to subscribe to some anti-virus software to use the dumb program.  It’s still that way primarily, and it all comes down to a scam.  Ironically, this is precisely how Bill Gates has inserted himself into the world as the Health Minister, he helps unleash viruses so that you have to buy the vaccine he is behind to control all of society.  If a company is talking about cyber security, they are telling you that their software isn’t ready for prime time and that the only people who benefit from it are the bad guys in the world.  The most secure thing to do would be not to use their software if they find that they, as a company, can’t provide that level of security for their customers.  My policy is to keep as little online so that some propped-up villain can’t hack it.  If these systems aren’t more secure than they claim, why use them?  The only people benefiting from all these cybersecurity methods are those making the software. 

All the two-way authentication methods need to be faster.  If you have to slow down your life as much as these modern companies suggest, then all the tech gadgets are worthless.  It’s regressing our culture, not making it better.  With all this concern over A.I. hackers and hackers having easy access to our online activity, why are we making ourselves so vulnerable?  The only people benefiting are the one-world government types who want to funnel all information into a centralized source so they can control us.  Technology isn’t helping the rest of us improve our lives.  Increasingly, we are finding that we must wait for technology to catch up.  I hear from many IT departments worldwide who essentially think it is permissible to slow down their companies and their opportunities for production because they believe that cyber security is more of a priority.  I had a case recently where I was working late at night on multiple projects, at around 1 to 2 in the morning, and suddenly my computer went into a mandatory update.  I didn’t tell it to, it assumed that at the late hours, I would be sleeping, so it went into an update mode that took well over 15 minutes.  The computer figured I had all the time in the world to sit around waiting on it to do its stupid thing.  But I didn’t have the time.  I tossed the computer across the room and turned to the old-fashioned way of doing things, with sheets of paper and raw calculations written upon them.  If technology doesn’t speed my life up and make it better, then it’s an enemy.  It’s that simple. 

Technology is not in charge, as much as the World Economic Forum people want us all to believe.  They are the ones who are creating the marketplace for all the identity theft and other fraudulent activity online.  Because they want technology to take over the world essentially, they are pushing it out upon the world too fast because they want it. It certainly isn’t beneficial for us ordinary people.  It helps them get to their cashless society, digital fraud-based currencies, and centralized control of all means of production.  That’s what they are after with their double authentication codes, where every time you are away from your computer for a few minutes, you must sign back in with passwords that constantly change.  And to work your computer, you have to have a phone tracking you all over the place so that some mindless A.I. program can call you to ensure you are using the computer.  Online banking only helps these power-hungry globalists get control of our lives, making us wait on them to get their products to work right.  But if everything is so insecure, then why are we using it in the first place?  What’s the benefit?  Those are the questions we should be asking.  We should not be waiting on technology to “work.”  I would rather deal with a person directly than some computer interface.  Call it old-fashioned, but I don’t want to mess with all that ridiculous security.  It’s not worth it to me to use some computer that is essentially spying on everything I do so that it can go to the NSA to be analyzed by hostile forces in government.  That isn’t my idea of an intelligent approach to the future. 

If these computer interfaces are so insecure, the companies putting them out need to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to improve them before offering them to the marketplace.  There is no rush for most of us.  The push for computers and online transactions to become such a big part of our lives comes from the goals of the United Nations and their masters at the World Economic Forum.  They want us to be inconvenienced with their products to fulfill their dumb 2030 targets for international commerce, which takes power away from countries where they can manage them and puts it all in the hands of mindless European bureaucrats.  They are the ones who want digital currencies that they can manipulate with Modern Monetary Theory and can turn all of society into a cashless society.  So the burden for security falls on them.  Not the rest of us slowed down to a mind-numbing speed because of all their dumb technology and the cyber security needed to make it usable.  Cyber security, as it has always been, is a scam to make technology appear better than it is.  Forcing it into the marketplace has only created a new breed of criminal in the world, the hackers who otherwise would have a more challenging time stealing people’s money.  Technology makes it easier for them to prey on innocent people, which Bill Gates is pleased about.  But for the rest of us, we should be asking why we are rushing to get all this technology into the marketplace only to be restricted by its limits.  All the companies buying into this cyber security scam will find themselves less profitable and greatly limited by the slowness of technology rather than any real benefits.  If something is as insecure as computer technology over the internet, we shouldn’t use it for anything other than information.  But personal banking and business networks should be done the old-fashioned way until technology can get it together as it is now. It’s just a scam that only benefits the bad guys in the world.  And why would we want to do that?

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Market Decides Success, Not Governments: Modern Monetary Theory’s attempt to inject Marxism into the world economy

The good news is that there is an obvious path to victory regarding all the scary intentions of the Deep State and their Administrative State terrorists.  It all comes down to the classic failures of Marxism and the incredible intelligence of capitalism, as expressed by Adam Smith and his fantastic book that every leader of every country should read, The Wealth of Nations.  Hidden behind this current corporate partnership with the government, which has become apparent during Covid, the long-established plans were set bare, and now we know what they were up to and for what reasons.  Governments want to avoid violating countries’ Constitutions by backdooring everything with corporate loopholes.  And those who lobby governments and put money in the pockets of politicians, who secretly want to control the world, use governments’ power to extort corporations into playing along for their own good. The fear of regulations by governments forces corporations to play in partnership with the government to give the government power that the Bill of Rights doesn’t allow.  And once these forces control the finance industry, you see the genuinely frightening tyranny we are presently in.  But, the entire concept, which is wrapped up in failed Marxism from the start, is the very foundation of the whole scheme, and yet the attackers do not understand the trajectory of failure, and that includes people like George Soros, Rupert Murdoch, and his family at Fox News, and all the major studio heads.  The plan was to fake the Marxist takeover of the world’s major corporations with this arraignment using phony made-up money using Modern Monetary Theory to buy off the depleted stock values, tricking CEOs into believing that the next excellent value system would be ESG, which is well underway now.  But in the end, the market is in charge, not the government or corporations, and once the smoke clears, all these characters will learn some hard lessons.  

It was embarrassing to see all the top people in the industry miss the market trends in the latest movies hitting during the summer.  For instance, the box office disappointment of the latest Mission Impossible is a good representation.  The belief was that because Top Gun: Maverick by Tom Cruise made over a billion dollars, his next film would do just as well because it’s another action picture.   When Mission Impossible started off slow, the industry panicked because the assumptions were all wrong.  Mission Impossible is a different kind of film than Top Gun, so the trend was concerning. At the same time, The Sound of Freedom was a surprise smash hit and has been very profitable for Angel Studios.  Now this is where it gets tricky because BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard as money managers are now the top stockholders for all these capitalist endeavors, from movies to fast food restaurants, and they have bought that stock and control with largely phony money, with Larry Fink’s relationship to the fed, Janet Yellen and the gang.  Yes, the same Janet Yellen who loves communists and was seen bowing to the ruler of China, President Xi Jinping.  By printing fake money at the Federal Reserve and dumping it into Wall Street, to Fink and the gang, this partnership has caused even these movie companies to stop making movies for actual stock value, driven by box office results, and instead to appease that new market of partnership with the government because the government can then print unlimited amounts of money.  But people still vote with real value for what they consume in the marketplace.  See where this is headed?

And Rupert Murdoch, in all his foreign arrogance, thought that Fox News had a lot more power than it did.  This is the same kind of stupidity that you will hear at dinner parties among the very wealthy, where they can’t smell their own bad breath, and nobody will tell them so because they like rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful.  They believe people are too stupid to think for themselves, so they will buy anything corporations put out because that’s what people do.  And I knew many people who believed that Ron DeSantis would be the guy because Fox News picked him to suppress Trump for the next presidential election.  I listened to people try and tell me last year that Trump had no chance because either Fox would sink him or the government would destroy him, so I needed to get over my support of Trump.  It was never going to happen again.  Then I would tell them, “Guys, the government is not in control.  Corporations are not in control.  The marketplace is in charge and will ultimately decide.”  People think Rupert Murdoch must know something special just because he is rich.  Sometimes people get lucky, and many rich people are in that condition.  Or, they are more ruthless than others and don’t have that valve of morality that tells them not to crush everyone around them needlessly.  Whatever it is, they aren’t that smart usually, and they have a false belief generally in the power their money can buy, fake or real.  Ultimately, as Adam Smith figured out in 1776, the invisible hand of markets is driven by desire.  Fulfillment of that desire is profitable.  Controlling that desire with market controls like disguised Marxism through Modern Monetary Theory still leaves people with resentment and anger, which is why things are these days as they are.

The attack of private investors into government, and government into corporations, to bring about economic philosophy that will change the world is just as stupid as the concept that Ron DeSantis would destroy Trump and ultimately put control of the populist movement into their hands.  The Deep State, which controls all these forces through various means, wants to think they can continue to put their people into the American government.  So far, they have been successful because they have stayed in secret. But now that pressure has forced them out in the open, it’s a different story.  They are learning that market value is real, whether it’s movies at the theater or presidential picks for the Executive Branch.  These people were never really in charge.  They only gained a political advantage through deceit.  But once that cover was blown, which it is, all their assumptions about how markets work, and any need, fell apart in front of their faces.  And that’s how all this will end as well.  The control of all the major corporations through stock buys built off Modern Monetary Theory by complete losers like Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke, and Jerome Powell was always going to fail because it assumed that value could be controlled by printed money, not market need.  And now that they are all caught, and there are many tens of thousands of perpetrators, they should all be going to jail or punished in as severe a way as possible for messing with the money supply with an attempted Marxist takeover that essentially has wrecked the lives of millions of people.  And they have been caught, just as Rupert Murdoch has been seen, believing they had more power than they did and that people would serve the markets rather than the markets serving the people, as it would always be.

Rich Hoffman

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The Goal of the Deep State: Pedophilia on a mass scale

I didn’t arrive at this conclusion lightly.   It is the sum of a lot of work, study, and life experience.  And any suspicions I had on the matter that wanted to think otherwise evaporated with the latest school scandal at Lakota, in my neighborhood, where yet another administrative staff member had been found to have excessively sexual lifestyles, and kids were part of the role-playing fantasy.  Watching how all the various authority figures moved to cover up the actions was stunning, especially since I knew many of the personalities personally.  That experience was incredibly educational, but it wasn’t the first time.  Over the last few years, including some people that I knew very well and would never guess that they would have temptations toward pedophilia, and were actually hard-core pastor types of the local church, were caught trying to give nude backrubs to 11-year-old girls.  It was everywhere, and many members of the administrative state went out of their way to cover it up, but why.  And just how bad was it?  So when you ask what the root cause of the Deep State is, why a small group of people who consider themselves the wealthy elite, I call them the Desecrators of Davos, want so intensely to acquire so much wealth and power, it can only then start to make a bit of sense.  When you ask that question seriously and stacked with behavioral evidence, you find that it is sex addiction and the power it gives some over others that is the real problem, and eventually, almost all roads of that lifestyle lead to pedophilia.  And that the entire purpose of a Deep State rooted in globalism, hidden behind social causes as a mask to conceal the evil, is to have access to children to fulfill that vile objective. 

I started this effort by talking about personal experiences that showed me how bad this situation really is and how people you know well are investing themselves directly or indirectly in pedophilia.  But that is an answer in the micro that connects to massive evidence in the macro.  People understand that over 2 million children a year go missing if you have seen the recent Christian-based movie, The Sound of Freedom.  It was shown to President Trump, and he has declared that if he’s president again, he will go to war with the Deep State and their various criminal cartels, which are purposely allowed to break all rules and moral norms to terrorize the innocent.  We have to then look at the way the members of the Deep State spend their time, specifically the shocking case of Jimmy Savile, the very popular BBC celebrity, and the extensive pedophilia that he engaged in with a large number of people in the entertainment industry, who interacted with the Royal Family regularly and was considered a pimp to Jersey Island, the English territory just north of the French mainland that is a known haven for the rich and famous seeking sexual interaction with children, boys, and girls.  When you consider that Mr. Climate Change himself, King Charles knows about all this, a stunning revelation comes into sharp focus.  The point of the Deep State isn’t just to run the world.  But they want to run the world so that they can have a way to satisfy their immense sexual appetites.  If they run the world, they can live above the law, which is what we have seen with Jeffery Epstein in America and from what we know and are learning about in regard to Jimmy Savile, which involved every kind of sexual perversion that could be imagined.  And people propped him up as a celebrity anyway, knowing full well what he was up to, government members, law enforcement, and everyone at the BBC.  And once the story got out, the key member of the BBC who had been facilitating all the behavior had to leave for another job as the head of The New York Times. 

If you’ve ever been in a fraternity or witnessed a hazing ritual, you will know that public debasement is part of the team-building process.  The same idea applies to corporate heads, political figures, and social influencers.  Members of rock bands understand this all too well as groupies, many of them extremely young, throw their young bodies at stinky, sweaty members of the band to be close to them.  The managers turn the other way because it gets the band members addicted to the sex and keeps them coming back for more.  They wouldn’t get that kind of attention in any other life, but in being a rock star.  And once down that road, there is no way back to normal.  Sex is a never-ending appetite and usually ends in some form of pedophilia.  This is true of the creepy next-door neighbor or the wealthy mover and shaker at the top of the political pyramid.  And the people who want to rule the world want to facilitate that weakness.  Why does anybody think that porn is essentially what the internet provides?  Everything else is a front for pornography, just as almost every type from the progressive leftism in the world, earth preservation, racism, and Modern Monetary Theory are all fronts for the pursuit of sex with the power acquired and the ability to exist above the law because everyone else is so compromised.  Back to my personal story in Lakota schools in Butler County, Ohio, the reluctance to punish the crime was that so many in the decision-making process were compromised themselves.  They had behaved poorly in public, people had a video of the acts, and they couldn’t afford to have a moral position.  And many people in authority found themselves in the same position at all levels.  They couldn’t punish the threat of pedophilia because they were either guilty themselves or were thinking of becoming guilty because they wanted to participate.  They weren’t outraged by the behavior because they wanted to be just as bad if given the chance and acquire the power to do so. 

Preying on the gullibility of the innocent is part of the charge behind the sexual intrusion.  So by taking that sentiment to its logical conclusion, the entire point of the Deep State is to acquire power, using infinite wealth to inflict that power, to have access to sexual manipulation and conquest over others.  And the younger, the better because it is a very powerful temptation to steal innocence from those not yet tarnished in the world and to be the first to leave your mark on them.  The Deep State is an ancient menace that is rooted in perversion for all the animal instincts that have destroyed mankind since the beginning of time.  And the quest for political power to indulge in those activities is enormous and not talked about enough.  It’s a topic people would like to avoid because they don’t want to know.  But it’s at the center of all political discourse.  And if you ever doubt it, just visit K-Street in Washington, D.C.  Everyone knows what’s going on, including the police and the politicians.  But nobody stops the prostitution there, just a few blocks from the White House.  The root cause of most of the political trouble in the world is sexual, and it’s impossible to have a proper society when such a priority is the reason for all activity.  Yet that is the truth of it when you pull back all the talk about socialism, charities, renewable energy, everything, you have a mask that is intent to take advantage of someone sexually, an intern, a prostitute, or a sex trafficked kid to satisfy some unquenchable desire, that brings great evil into the world through the ultimate theft.  And once a person crosses those lines, as most people do in some way, there is no going back or hope to restore a life without such terrible things happening in the world.

Rich Hoffman

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The Government Caused Mess of PPP Loans and Student Loan Forgiveness: To stay in power, they are planning the next pandemic released through a deadly bioweapon

Mark it on your calendar; the Democrats aren’t just going to give up their criminal empire with the Global World Order.  They have been taking advantage of Americans behind a thin façade of helpful activism recently.  But they were always out for the worst the human race can imagine.  The Biden White House is preparing for another “pandemic,” as the communists at the World Health Organization are starting to talk about again because they see what’s going on with populism around the world, and it’s getting harder to cheat in elections.  They aren’t going to play fair; they will try and implement another Covid virus, this time one that is deadly because it’s their only option.  The Biden White House is soaked with serious scandals; people already don’t believe that Biden was ever elected president.  And now people are catching on to how bad this pedophilia problem is everywhere.  We’re not just talking about sex tourism in Vietnam or Jersey in the British Isles right off the northern coast of France.  We are talking about a massive problem that goes well beyond Jeffery Epstein.  People are learning, and they are seeking action.  So, you better believe it; they will try to unleash another virus to halt the impact of the 2024 election where nothing else has been able to stop Trump.  And before they let him in office to crack down on the cartels and drain the Swamp in Washington D.C., they are looking toward another virus to unleash before they all end up in jail for the damage they caused during the first pandemic, which was wholly made up by governments as a bioweapon and released in partnership with China to establish a global Great Reset of all capitalist economies and to gain centralized control converting them into communist ones along the lines of China’s model.   Don’t kid yourself; yes, these people are killers, and they are that malicious.  They will kill a significant portion of the population before they get caught and punished for what they’ve done in the past, and they are indeed planning it as we speak. 

And this is an excellent opportunity to think about what they did do before, which has come up lately regarding student loan debt and the PPP loans provided during Covid to allow businesses to continue paying their payroll as the government shut down the economy leaving everyone in indecision as to how to handle even basic business needs.  What they share in common is a government that stuck itself into the middle of everyone’s lives and made a mess of things.  In America, when we talk about “freedom,” we mean freedom from the stupidity of government.  The government is supposed to serve our essential management needs for a country, but they aren’t supposed to get in the way and rule over us like some spoiled brat aristocracy.  And since the falsely placed Joe Biden has been trying to buy votes among stressed-out young people who are encumbered with too much student debt from a product grossly inflated, which is a college education made that way because the government has tampered with the market by supporting labor costs driven that way from teacher unions and other progressive activism.  The defense of using the government to give relief to those loans by government forgiveness was thrown in the direction of the PPP loans as if they were all the same thing.  And they aren’t.  With Student Loans, that was a choice to hopefully buy into the aristocracy of a tiered system created by the government to manage society with opportunities to “teach” kids Democrat platform options, such as communism, by providing them with a gateway opportunity to get paid more money as an office bureaucrat in the Administrative State.  The government caused PPP loans as a reaction to a condition the government caused, which was the purposeful mismanagement of the economy which businesses must function within. 

PPP loans are loans provided by the Small Business Administration (SBA) to help small businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. These loans were meant to assist enterprises struggling to stay afloat during these difficult times. The loans could cover payroll costs, rent, utilities, and other essential business expenses. The loans are forgivable if specific criteria are met, such as using the funds for eligible expenses and maintaining employee headcount and salary levels. Overall, PPP loans were an essential resource for small businesses looking to weather the economic challenges caused by the pandemic, which the government caused.  Covid 19 didn’t happen in nature; it was made horrible by people who work in communist governments and want to use terrorism to drive people from capitalist markets into communist ones.  And people have been trying to throw them all into one basket as an either-or situation.  PPP loans for many companies were necessary because governments tampered with their way of life.  Student loans are kids trying to buy into an aristocracy of the Administrative State driven by more government activism intent to control society and regulate economic activity as a central communist authority.  I can personally convey the horror stories of the PPP loans because the government was hostile, primarily through the IRS.  They tied up a lot of money, and when it was time to return it, they didn’t want to.  Many companies didn’t make it through Covid because of the government, and it has cost people a lot, which has never yet been redeemed. 

And here we are almost four years later, and nobody has gone to jail over what they did during Covid, for the purposeful murder of people with the bioweapon that was made in a Chinese lab in Wuhan and released, purposely to be just one of the many contributing causes of election fraud in America.  Yes, the people involved are that bad, even worse.  And to cover up their crimes, Biden’s communist-oriented administration has been telling kids to go to college, get liberally indoctrinated, and grow up to become wishy-washy Democrats for the first part of their adult lives, and they’ll pay off their debt.  So, they can pay all those incredibly expensive and equally worthless college professors, mostly all Democrats, a wage they clearly wouldn’t get in the free market where their value is much less.  The college debt was a choice.  The PPP loans were not; that was survival, which, even so, often didn’t work.  And years later, companies are still trying to sort things out from the government mess they injected into the situation.  And it’s all bad and created by government stupidity, which they want to provide more with a communist takeover of the global economy.  No thanks.  They have done quite enough damage.  And now that they are caught, people realize just how bad they have been and who did what to whom; punishment is on everyone’s minds.  That is why they plan to do it all again and expect to use student loan forgiveness to at least put the young people back to sleep so they can stay in power a bit longer through a rigged 2024 election because it’s their only option.  Besides killing off those seeking justice, most people are screaming because it’s their only way out, this time from an angry mob that isn’t as gullible in 2023 as they were in 2019.  Just don’t underestimate how bad government can be or how deadly when fighting for their own survival.

Rich Hoffman

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It Would Be Easy to Defend Trump on this Third Indictment: There’s only one horse in this race, all the others are still in the barn

I’d be happy to volunteer for President Trump’s legal team to argue this third indictment.  I could do it in front of an entirely Democrat jury and make a successful case for a not-guilty verdict.  Without even reading the specifics of the Jack Smith prosecution of President Trump and any connection to the January 6th insurrection dialogue that the perpetrators of election fraud to put Joe Biden in the White House instead, is clearly a free speech case that will fall apart quickly in a courtroom.  Just as most of these Democrat prosecutions will if they ever see a courtroom.  I don’t think this one will be from Jack Smith.  My opinion about it is that it’s pure desperation from a bunch of people who know they were not elected into their positions and that their power and authority are completely phony.  Trump was elected legitimately, and these government prosecutors have been involved in a political coup that utilized with undeserved power acquired through theft and manipulation.  And this is getting way too predictable.  We all knew they were going to try to do this because they have no other way of trying to stop Trump from being elected.  And again, Joe Biden was going to get destroyed by this upcoming IRS whistleblower, so to defer attention in the media, they did what Democrats always do; they tried to make the story about someone else.  So, they played this card hoping to shake attention away from Old Man Biden, who is the real guilty party.  Yeah, I would happily defend Trump in court on this one.  Any lawyer should be able to if it even sees a court date.  I do not agree with many of the theories that are out there that are in love with the horse race of politics.  This abuse of power by the Biden Department of Justice is a short-lived threat. 

In the end, there is only one horse in this political horse race; all the other horses are still in the barn.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the Republicans or the Democrats, Trump is the only horse on the track, and there isn’t anything anybody can do to change that.  This is not China, as much as many of the Administrative State people looking for perpetual security with government jobs would like to think.  These personal abuse legal cases motivated purely out of self-preservation of the bad guys aren’t going to last long.  All it does is give people who like to talk about the horse races of politics something to discuss.  When it comes to the actual race, Trump has already won.  Many talking about that horse race think that the Democrats have this all figured out and are using these indictments to make Trump the Republican nominee because it’s making him so popular.  And that Democrats want to run against Trump as opposed to all the other options.  And that Trump will be killed in the general as all the suburban moms and soft-shelled tacos will drift back to Biden, and the long string of corruption associated with the Democrat Party can then continue.  News flash, the Democrats aren’t that smart.  They don’t have that kind of horsepower. 

Clay and Buck, on the new show that has replaced Rush Limbaugh, is nowhere near as insightful as Rush was.  Rush would understand what’s going on, but those guys and their Fox contracts keep them from seeing reality.  Or maybe they just miss it because they are too conventional.  I heard them utter that theory about Democrats, and it’s clear that they are swinging and missing.  Trump isn’t in trouble.  There could be 100s of indictments by this corrupt government, which won’t change one thing about this upcoming election.  People are mad; they want revenge for the way Trump was ripped off during his first term and had his presidency taken from him in an all too obvious coup, ran by our own government with Covid, that sought to destroy our entire economy just to preserve the losers in the Swamp.  And if Trump isn’t on a ticket where they try to strip him off the ballot in all 50 states with some made-up technicality, then there will be a lot of unleashed anger that the Democrats are all too aware of.  They’ve looked at the numbers, and they know they cheated and by how much.  And they know that the American people do not support the Democrat platform.  And now we are at another election, and more people believe that the 2020 election was stolen than during that first year.  The movement has only grown, and Democrats are terrified of those eventual ramifications.  They hope they can run out the clock by keeping Trump out of the election because they know they won’t be able to beat him in the general.  Because Joe Biden never had 81 million votes.  They rigged the election the old-fashioned way, the way elections have been rigged in China, Venezuela, Russia, and all over Central and South America and Europe.  They cheated on so many fronts that it’s almost ridiculous at this point, and people have seen it for themselves.  The Democrats who played along have some tough days coming, with or without Trump.  And they know it.

I watched a recent Fox News interview with Trump and Bret Baier carefully, as it was important for the reporter to remind President Trump that he did not win the election.  That was coming from Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s position as a media owner from a foreign country.  That wasn’t a reporter letting the facts take him wherever they went.  That was an activist trying to preserve the Beltway institution from an outside challenger who clearly won, but that victory was canceled by nefarious means, such as judges who refused to review the case for the implications it would have caused to the institution of government itself.  And the reminder that all 50 states had a recount and that Trump still lost because they counted all the same fake ballots that were put in place by Facebook, and a lot of FBI activism to finish off the coup they started while Trump was in office, revenge for firing Jim Comey and not bending the knee to the fourth branch of government, which was never supposed to exist in the first place.  I’ve talked to Frank LaRose, our Secretary of State in Ohio, about this election fraud issue.  Everyone knows what states like Pennsylvania and Michigan did to stuff ballots.  Frank did well in Ohio, so there was a good margin for Trump.  But other states had more open laws made more open by early voting and Covid mail-in ballots.  And the cheating got so out of hand that it took 81 million votes to beat the actual real number that Trump received, which was more than any other president in the history of America.  The suburban moms did not stay home the way Fox News said they did.  Trump had a frightening number of votes even after all that was thrown at him.  And his support has increased; it hasn’t gone down.  That’s why they are doing what they are now with the Department of Justice and the dummy Jack Smith, who is willing to make himself look like a fool to save his friends in government who have built quite a criminal empire out of their positions.  But in the end, the Bill of Rights matters, and these ridiculous charges are going to be exploited easily.  

Rich Hoffman

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The World Economic Forum Has Declared War on America: Under all rules of engagement, they are guilty

A few years ago, I covered the day I was with my family at the Kings Island Amusement Park, and there was quite a lot of commotion upon learning that they would go completely cashless. Where did that decision come from? Suddenly, there was no other option to use at a popular tourist destination than a credit card. And that credit card company was fully involved in the efforts of globalism as defined by the World Economic Forum, a shady group of anti-American activists hell-bent on global domination through controls of finance and centralized banking. If a country attacked our power grid to raid the lives of Americans in some way, we would openly declare war on the aggressor. The same would happen if China amassed a military force in the Gulf of Mexico intending to invade New Orleans. Maybe they want to take control of the Cajun food market. The declaration of war would be evident and committed. We have gone to war for other reasons, supposedly to protect Iraq from the aggression of Saddam Hussain. We have gone to war in Vietnam to protect that country from the encroachments of communism—the same in Korea.   We went to war in Afghanistan to combat the recruitment and training of terrorists. We went to war in World War II to help our friends deal with a global menace in Europe, primarily because they kept attacking our ships and pushing our buttons to drag us into the war, finally with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. You could go down through history and look at the reasons America has been pushed into war with other countries and see a clear pattern, which all involve threats to our sovereignty which were clear and obvious.

And as ridiculous as it has become, the premise of the whole war in Ukraine is supposed to be over border violations between Russia which used to hold the territory, and Ukraine, which is an obvious United Nations asset strategically implemented to fulfill the goals of a New World Order. Both characters are pretty unsympathetic and up to their own maniacal schemes, yet we are supposed to care one way or the other as Americans about the outcome and to spend countless amounts of money on them in the process of war that has been declared. But when it’s evident that America has been attacked at its financial roots, such as what happened at Kings Island, and most prominent public venues, such as sporting events which suddenly wouldn’t handle cash, we were supposed to be fine with all these centralized bankers suddenly gaining control over our entire economy. A vote by the people of America didn’t decide the push to have a cashless society. It came from a collection of corporations at the World Economic Forum who suddenly revealed that they thought they were in control of the world’s economies and were announcing, without saying the obvious, that they were in control and people would do what they told them to. And a cashless society was their goal, and people would have to deal with it. Our politicians didn’t agree to it. And people certainly didn’t want it. I mentioned it then and predicted it would cause trouble, which it has. But something much more sinister than just inconvenience has emerged. The World Economic Forum has declared war against life in America and is disrespectfully imposing itself on our nation, which has threatened national security. 

Every time we talk about classified documents being a threat to national security, or the military declares something as classified, such as a UFO because it could be a threat to national security, but we watch the World Economic Forum openly plot the end of America right in front of our faces by controlling the American economy, and nobody gets upset about it, the same people who want to go to war with every country which threatens us in some way, then you know something is very wrong. What the World Economic Forum has done to America openly has been to plot war against American sovereignty, and every politician that has helped them do it, and every company who has worked with them for that cause, are guilty of treason and sedition. Under all the classic definitions, any action threatening the health and happiness of the American people would constitute war and the destruction of the threat. And the World Economic Forum has done more than threaten us. They have taken aggressive action to control our way of life by controlling the money we use for economic opportunity. It’s not different than attacking our oil supply, invading some port, sinking a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, or killing American tourists in some faraway land.   Attacking America’s money is an attack on our country and its people. The World Economic Forum has declared war on America, and we have yet to meet the challenge for a number of reasons. One of which is that many of our own people have been seduced by the prospect of easy money from those who control the mechanisms of finance. So we have quite a tangled web of deceit and mayhem here to deal with.

A large part of the problem is who do you declare war against? The World Economic Forum doesn’t really exist anywhere, it’s just a collection of people, just like a country is, but it lacks physical assets to attack. This isn’t a war over bridges, railroads, and highways. But it is over banking, the internet, and how money flows from one place to another. It requires us to redefine where threats come from because the World Economic Forum is currently hiding its aggression by not having a physical country to rally against. The big secret of globalism is that they exist without borders and are openly attacking all concepts of nationalism in an obvious effort to topple them. The most obvious example which affects everyone is the cashless impositions. Most people assume that the decision was made by people smarter than them in the nefarious world of finance, and they don’t care much until they realize that their credit cards can be turned off to control social behavior once most people have been pushed into the system through these aggressive actions. And the World Economic Forum has clearly indicated in public these strategies.

And to make matters worse, as has been extremely obvious with everything associated with their Great Reset, Covid was a military tactic by them that harmed many millions of people and has only been hidden because the aggression came from a corporate collection of hostile agents using our governments as their agents of destruction. We’ve never dealt with this type of menace in human history, so the lack of definitions clearly creates chaos and confusion among the voting population. Nobody is voting for these things, yet they are happening against our consent. And nobody is stopping any of it from happening, even though under all definitions of aggression, America should have gone to war with the World Economic Forum a long time ago. They are hostile to American interests and think they are protected from retaliation because they lack a country to call their own, and countries can only declare war against other countries. I’d say no. War can be declared against hostile individuals too. And when it comes to the World Economic Forum, there are a lot of hostile individuals working against the American way of life, which calls to order retaliation over severe examples of duplicity and terror that have been quite purposeful.

Rich Hoffman

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The Way to Beat Secret Societies: Hidden power gained through hidden rules to create the illusion of knowledge

Usually, when people talk about secret societies, there is a level of dread that is associated. Secret societies seem ominous because, as human beings, we think of the things we don’t know about as being powerful and godly, which is part of the appeal that drives people into secret society membership. And this is a problem when you are trying to run a transparent society where you understand the characters and their motives. In an honest world, there shouldn’t be any desire for secret societies. There shouldn’t be any secrets. But as we have learned over the last several years, many secret societies work in the background and are attached to many of the messes that are part of our modern problems. The quest for secret knowledge to leverage power over others is a strong aphrodisiac to the kind of personalities who want to rule over others. That has made secret society membership a menace to society because it keeps people from dealing squarely with one another. If so many secret societies ask for supernatural, occult aid, how should a straightforward, election-based culture operate? And that is where we currently find ourselves, especially in Europe and America–those who want to be like Europe. I know of many secret societies, and I know the kind of people who are members, and they aren’t very secret, especially in a society that has as much information access as we do these days. Secret societies aren’t so secret anymore because everyone knows where everyone else is and what they’re doing. Which leaves the question pending, why join one in the first place? What could they possibly do for anybody? 

Well, I have a very different take on secret societies that I have formed over a long period of time. And what helps that perspective is that I have never wanted to be in one. I tend to like to be in charge. I was like that as a little kid, so working my way up in a secret society, like the Masons, or some other group, was never for me. I never liked being told what to do, and I always required full autonomy for my independence. So, it was easy for me to say no to those kinds of membership offers. I once had quite a fight with an entire fraternity because I went there to see a friend of mine with my wife, which apparently there were all kinds of rules against. And on our way up to the fraternity house, she walked across the seal on the sidewalk for their membership. There were house rules on how to serve that seal best, and not knowing anything about those rules as a visitor, she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to walk over it. The entire house rallied to assault us, but I have an unyielding personality, so a stalemate ensued because they really didn’t want to fight. They were obligated by the fraternity charter to conduct themselves in such a way, but they were all wimps who really didn’t want to fight that they were forced to stew; as I visited my friend, he toured me around the house, and we left uneventfully. My friend was removed from the fraternity after we left, which is a common passive-aggressive action that low-conflict threshold people perform when faced with a challenge to their invisible authority. 

This is what the weakness of all secret societies have, whether it’s just a college fraternity or the Skull and Bones Society that the Bush and Kerry families were members of. The training for this way of thinking often starts early for people so that by the time they are fully functioning adults, they are largely governed by secret social rules that aren’t openly expressed, which then makes managing a stable society a challenge because you have people worshipping lots of rules that are not part of the ethics of a social construct. And I have found all such people to be weak and easy to beat in whatever the engagement is, whether it’s physical, legal, or purely social. People drawn to secret societies want secret rules and power to protect them from their insecurities, which is why they are attracted to such powers in the first place. The power is an illusion because other people can’t know what those powers are. And this little shift in social engagement gives the illusion of power. In some ancient cultures, a high priest might acquire such power by understanding when an eclipse would occur and might point at the sky and declare power over the heavens. And because the information about how eclipses occur was secret to the society, who did not have access to that information because of some tyrannical regime, the high priest appears to have a secret power over the heavens. But the whole gag is about a lack of knowledge, not in full disclosure. And this is what draws people into secret societies, invisible rules to create the illusion of secret power. 

There is also a strong desire for weak people to hide in the herd to not be independent. They fear being singled out in society, so they seek membership in groups to hide in the safety of the masses. Group membership tells the world that people value them enough to be associated with a secret handshake and an exchange of some fundamental shared values. One of the most insecure things for people is to grow up and away from their parents; most people never develop that ability. So to fill that void, they seek a brotherhood and create a new family out of secret society membership, such as the Masons. Companionship is one of human beings’ most primal needs, so group consensus associated with limited access is a very persuasive motivator. And that is all innocent enough until those mentalities are brought into elected politics, where you expect representatives to perform on a job based on a platform they were elected to. Not following some rules of the secret handshake in the Skull and Bones Society which dominates Beltway politics within the intelligence agencies and operates to social practices that the rest of society that pays for their government through taxes has no idea about, like my story about the fraternity seal. To the outside world, the seal meant nothing. But to the fraternity brothers, it was everything; it represented their secret fears glazed over by symbols and rules only they knew about, which gave them the illusion of security in a scary world. And that is the key to beating such groups. If they were secure people, they wouldn’t seek group membership. But they do because they aren’t powerful people. They depend on numbers to hide their timidity as individuals. Once that is known and exploited, they fall apart quickly. Just as the scam of the high priest predicting an eclipse. If other members of the society understand how to read star alignments and know the cause of eclipses, the phony power of the high priest will lose all its influence. Because the power is based on ignorance and group association to maintain that illusion, but once that curtain falls, the power of the secret society is gone, which is where we find ourselves in the modern world. Many high priests are making their livings off secret society membership to rules only they know about. But the public isn’t as ignorant as they once were, because of the vast amounts of available shared information. And because of that and the need for independence in people who are not timid, the powers that have ruled the world in secrecy are desperately vulnerable and not nearly as scary as they once were.

Rich Hoffman

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