Chicago Police Corruption: The Rubber Gun Squad, race baiters, and FOP unions

Here are two very good articles about the police shooting of a black teenage kid in Chicago and the subsequent protests by the Black Lives Matter crowd, who as we have covered before is a black insurgency group driven by a communist ideology seeking to implant itself in black communities. Both the Chicago police and the Black Lives Matter people are born of the same liberal womb—they are the creations of progressive police and government expansion seeking to use each other to advance the spread of less individual rights with each news story demanding more public safety through increased support of both. Before I provide a more proper commentary read the below I-Team report from ABC 7 below, followed by a Reuters article. Both tell a story that should be very disconcerting to all. I put them up in their completions with the links included because months from now when this story is lost to time—people will still need to remember the dynamics of this particular case and the context I’m presenting will still need to be preserved for ease of reflection.

By Chuck Goudie and Rob Elgas

Wednesday, November 25, 2015 10:55PM

CHICAGO (WLS) —

The ABC7 I-Team has obtained new police dash-cam video of the moments leading up to Laquan McDonald’s deadly encounter with police. The new videos from five police vehicles show Officer Jason Van Dyke, who faces first-degree murder charges in McDonald’s death, in pursuit of the teenager before the shooting. One of the blurry videos is from inside Van Dyke’s police vehicle. On Oct. 20, 2014, Officer Van Dyke and his partner were in a convenience store parking lot when the call came in and they responded. Video from another police car shows Van Dyke on the move, weaving through traffic, rushing to a report of a man wielding a knife. GRAPHIC VIDEO: Click here to watch new, unedited dash-cam video from five police vehicles the night of Laquan McDonald’s death During the incident, you can see McDonald, 17, crossing right in front of his vehicle, carrying what appears to be a knife. Thirty seconds later, he collapses to the street, shot 16 times.

The video shows the view Officer Van Dyke had of McDonald while sitting in the passenger seat during the pursuit. It puts Van Dyke on the trail of the teenager and involved in the chase about 30 seconds earlier than first thought. At this point in the video, the vehicle emergency lights had been turned off. That should also have switched off the dash-cam, but for some reason, Van Dyke’s dash-cam continued recording despite an “off” icon on the screen. Regardless, the video continued recording as his police car pulled up to the scene where McDonald is walking down the street. It is at this point – about 30 seconds after he apparently first spotted McDonald – that Van Dyke got out of his vehicle and opened fire, emptying his police pistol. Video from a different dash-cam shows McDonald’s body on the street after the shooting, still alive before paramedics arrived. The dash-cams are supposed to record audio, but during the McDonald incident, none did. Only the muffled sound of sirens can be heard, but no voices. On Tuesday, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy addressed the absence of audio on dash-cam videos. “There were apparently technical difficulties, but in no way shape or form is there any evidence that anything was tampered with,” McCarthy said. Wednesday night, a Chicago police official said there was no audio because the batteries in the dash-cams had been put in improperly and facing the wrong direction, which disables the audio part of the recorder. CPD says officers responsible for maintaining their dash-cams are being retrained to avoid this. “Sometimes officers need to be disciplined if they don’t turn it on at the right circumstance which is why we’re working out all the details of our body cam project,” McCarthy said. The fatal shooting occurred in front of a Burger King, which may have captured some of the moments leading up to the slaying. The restaurant manager said that four or five police officers asked him for the password to his surveillance system the night of the shooting. A camera allegedly caught one of the officers touching the DVR. The manager told ABC7 that the Independent Police Review Authority showed up later, it had been determined that up to 15 files had been deleted. However, police officials had said the FBI had determined there was no tampering.

http://abc7chicago.com/news/new-video-shows-officers-pursuit-of-laquan-mcdonald/1099885/

Newly released police dashboard camera videos from the scene of the shooting of a black teenager by a white Chicago patrolman could raise fresh questions over documentation of the killing, as the city braced for an organized protest march on Friday.

Like the first video released on Tuesday, the new footage lacks discernible audio of the Oct. 20, 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Officer Jason Van Dyke. Audio and video should be automatically activated on the cameras, according to police department policy.

Van Dyke on Tuesday became the first Chicago police officer in decades to be charged with murder for on-duty use of lethal force and is in jail pending a second bond hearing on Monday.

Protests over police killings of black men have rocked a number of U.S. cities in the past 18 months. Chicago has seen muted reaction thus far to such incidents, even though police shootings there have been more frequent on average than in the bigger cities of New York and Los Angeles.

The new footage from dashboard cameras on squad cars, sent to Reuters and other media in response to public record requests, does not show the actual shooting.

McDonald’s killing and the 13-month delay in charging Van Dyke and releasing the video led to demonstrations on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The powerful Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is supporting a Black Friday march along Michigan Avenue, an upscale shopping street, organized by civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson.

“We have watched in anger and disappointment as the city has covered up police violence,” CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said in a statement. He accused Mayor Rahm Emanuel of delaying release of the videos while he was running for re-election, which he won in April. Emanuel and other officials said they delayed releasing the video to avoid tainting the investigation of Van Dyke.

There were no signs of protests on Thursday despite some calls on social media for demonstrations at the annual Thanksgiving Day parade.

Police guarded the parade through Chicago’s downtown business district, which was packed with families and tourists watching high school bands playing instruments and dancing as inflatables hovered above their heads.

A HISTORY OF COMPLAINTS

Van Dyke had 20 misconduct complaints against him but he was never disciplined, according to the Citizens Police Data Project, a database of 56,000 misconduct complaints against Chicago police officers compiled by the Invisible Institute, a transparency organization.

However, a federal jury in a civil trial against Van Dyke and Thomas McKenna found in 2010 that the two officers had used excessive force during a 2007 traffic stop. The city was ordered to pay the plaintiff, Edward Nance, $350,000 in damages as well as $180,000 in legal fees, according to documents in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

TECHNICAL PROBLEM

The first tape of the shooting was released under court order hours after Van Dyke was charged. It showed McDonald as he was gunned down in the middle of a street.

Police said the sound was missing from the first tape due to an unspecified technical problem. A spokesman for the department did not immediately respond on Thursday to an e-mailed question about why the footage released on Wednesday also does not have audio.

One of those new videos is from the patrol car that Van Dyke was in and shows McDonald running away from the vehicle. The shooting occurs off camera.

Prosecutors and police said McDonald was carrying a folding knife and had the hallucinogenic drug PCP in his system.

The Chicago Police Department directive on dashboard cameras says they “automatically engage audio and video recording when the vehicle’s emergency-roof lights are activated.”

Officers are supposed to verify cameras are working properly and immediately notify a supervisor if they are inoperable, according to the directive. Police can also manually activate the system.

Chicago police have shot an average of 50 people a year over the last seven years. That average exceeds that of the larger cities of New York and Los Angeles.

Of those shot by Chicago police, 74 percent have been black. On average there have been 17 fatal police shootings in Chicago each year since 2007.

(Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Mary Wisniewski in Chicago; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Paul Simao and David Gregorio)

Read more at Reutershttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/26/us-usa-race-chicago-idUSKBN0TF22R20151126#RvOEV7AP5mQBCb7m.99

Without question, the Chicago police covered up the incriminating evidence of a fellow police officer in this particular shooting. I view police as necessary, but because of my long history with them I can testify that they cannot be trusted without private oversight, particularly when it comes to the police union. Police should not be allowed to unionize, so long as they can, this kind of corruption will go unpunished, because their FOP unions prevent proper discipline. If you’ve ever seen the film The Wolf of Wall Street, our police forces are every bit as corrupt, only not on the financial side of things. What goes on and why it does would make your skin crawl. I hate that police corruption so much that I even wrote a book about it—The Tail of the Dragon. In short, there is no way our society can ever just trust the police in a gun free society. They are prone to be power-hungry and love to abuse that power. Police cannot be allowed to go unchecked and mismanaged, and so long as they are members of a police union, they will be potential menaces to individual citizens.

However, they are necessary in a society. Cops are often exposed to so much human degradation, particularly in poor communities where human values are quite vacant that they begin to lose their minds. If not for the labor unions, those cops would be otherwise placed on the “rubber gun squad” which is essentially desk work and removed from public interaction until they get their minds right. When a police officer sees too much and their personal value system finds it can’t cope, those cops need to be pulled off the street. Officer Van Dyke behaved as if he should have been on the “rubber gun squad” a long time ago. Likely he wasn’t because the labor unions do most of the personnel management in police forces keeping police chiefs from taking action when they know they should otherwise be placed on desk jobs until their psychological evaluations clear them for their regular police tasks.

So there is a lot going on with this case. Liberals and their war on poverty have used blacks and their conditions of discontent to be the next Martin Luther Kings with race baiters like Jesse Jackson to make good money through the exploitation—and they never seek to actually solve the problem of helping black kids with actual intelligence based educations. Profiteering race baiters purposely keep black children in a victimized state so that they will harass the police and be street thugs to advance the marketing of political money pouring into those communities so they can skim some off the top for their own decadent lifestyles. The police led not by their chain of command, but their labor unions abuse their authority all the time and frequently step over the line of proper conduct abusing people’s Constitutional rights on a constant basis. The two sides are played against each other by liberal politics for the primary purpose of marketing both with publicity, even if it’s negative, for the expansion of more confiscated tax burdens.

The real solution to all of this is less police, eliminated union membership and more individualized based property protection—in other words, a strong national commitment to the Second Amendment. This does two things, it decentralizes the security of a region and it takes the money out of union membership dues making police forces a much less lucrative safe-haven for corruption and manipulation. Cops are needed; brave cops are better—valiant souls who truly want to do the right things. But these idiots who just want to break down doors, and get blow jobs from innocent girls trying to get out of traffic tickets are abusing their authority to extraordinary degrees, and it needs to stop.

To prove I know something about this issue let me provide come clarification, and evidence based on personal history. I had a good friend who worked for me for a time who left my employment to become a cop in Hamilton. Ohio—a fairly nice Midwest town in the southern portion of the state. He left my employment for more money as a cop, his wife was already a cop in Franklin, Ohio and most of their social networks were cops. They had parties together often and associated frequently with cops all over the region. They were also swingers, as a couple. I had them at gatherings at my house a few times and learned a lot more than I cared to learn about off-duty cops and their lifestyle habits. That guy was later busted for pulling over attractive girls and letting them off with a warning in exchange for oral sex. The police force tried to help cover it up, but the evidence was just too overwhelming, so he moved to another city and became a cop there. These cops have a massive network and they help each other. Not all of them, but more than a few sleep with each other’s wives and conduct their personal life in a pretty disgraceful fashion. I have many more examples—in fact, I could write several books on what I know about them, but to me the worst example is that old friend of mine. I took him for a brave young guy who was an adrenaline junkie that could be used for good. Instead he was a sex maniac who wanted to use his power and authority to commit vile evil on innocent people. We stopped being friends after I learned about what he was doing with the girls in the cars. It’s not just blacks in poor neighborhoods—it’s everyone. You just don’t have communist groups uniting the young girls of a local high school to protest against the police because nobody is going to feel sorry for a bunch of pretty white high school girls. But blacks have a history with civil rights and Martin Luther King marches that can be exploited by thieves and other treacherous characters to advance sympathy and garner donations.

Of course I got to know that friend’s wife. She had slept with half of the male members of her police force and they all had wives they were cheating on with her—and those women knew what was going on, and everyone was very open about it. But I didn’t respond and she lost interest quickly probably considering me too “uppity” for them. I was her husband’s boss at the time, so she held her tongue around me, but I can only imagine what she said after they were together away from my ears, because his behavior toward me changed after that. That’s when I realized that these cops and their personal ethics were dreadfully vacant. As government employees, I would never trust them with my life. I like the job they do most of the time, but I would never trust them exclusively. You never know if they are up for the “rubber gun squad” or when they will be. For many of them, the sex and other forms of recklessness is a form of balance to bring them back from the brink of what they see on patrol, the battered bodies in car wrecks, the domestic violence, and the bad social conduct of the people they are forced to see during routine calls. It takes a steady mind to hold up to the rigor, even in nice neighborhoods. And only a few out of hundreds are up to that level of conduct. The police unions cover up the other cases and there’s nothing a mayor or police chief can do about it.

Police are trained incorrectly how to deal with stress. Too many police are shooting not just blacks, but everyone. Blacks are the only group protesting under organized assault. Per capita it might look like blacks are disproportionately being targeted, but that is largely because they are often confined to a poor neighborhood connected directly to government housing and other benefits. Black youth appear to be so badly out of control because they are largely fatherless, which is the primary cause of their behavior. Government has a lot to do with the reason those black families are fatherless, and government is also behind the bad behavior of cops. So government has been the cause of most of the problem, their mismanagement in both situations. Given that, there is no way that government can even consider making a case for dismantling the Second Amendment. Government can and does abuse its obligations and when they get caught, just like in the Hillary Clinton case and with Lois Lerner at the IRS, they lie, delete emails, and hide behind their labor unions to cover up their crimes. Government is a big problem; they purposely make people poor so they can use them to advance an agenda. Their employees are out-of-control, and they destroy evidence which only they can use to prosecute. The Chicago case of November 2015 is just one small example of a long history of abuse. And the only conclusion we can make is that they can’t be trusted, any of them. We can’t trust the civil rights activists because of the inclination to communist influence, and we can’t trust the cops because they are prone to corruption by the very nature of their jobs. When they are mentally unfit for service, their labor unions protect them from the “rubber gun squad.” So what are we to do? Protect the Second Amendment, because you’re going to need it—if only to keep all this government mismanagement away from your dinner table.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

What Hillary Clinton has in Common with Adolf Hitler: Salon.com reaches deep for a way to smooth reality

To be fair I even took the below Hitler quote from the very progressive online source, Salon.com so that the readers here can reference it to understand how the other side of these diabolical menaces actually think. Salon even went so far to use a University of Chicago professor to attempt to create doubt about the credibility of Adolf Hitler’s desire to control firearms in German society—which of course led to the tyranny of one of the most vile killers of the 20^th century. Salon through their source laughably refers to the much stricter gun control legislation of the Weimar Republic, which preceded Hitler’s rise—which was imposed after WWI. What they failed to mention is that because of the bad economy and the crushing impositions by the allied nations against Germany, the path for Hitler’s rise to power was ushered in because of the extreme oppression which preceded him. Additionally, asking a University of Chicago professor to provide accurate history without muddying it with progressive tripe is like ask a sex addict to speak out against pornography. Salon and the University of Chicago are hopelessly liberal; they may even be politically left of Hillary Clinton who agreed with ruthless dictators that societies should ban firearms and confiscate them for the safety of their nations. Here is what Hitler supposedly said–which is consistent with every ruthless human being to ever face down the masses with a desire to control them with heavy-handed legislation and individual tyranny.

This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!

Adolf Hitler (1935)

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/stop_talking_about_hitler/

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and almost every other Democrat, socialist, vile progressive and old pot smoking, Pink Floyd loving hippie thinks the same way as Hitler. Isn’t that nice to know that the leaders of the Democratic Party are essentially in line with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Mussolini who all favored gun control of their citizens. Guess what happened to the people in those countries. Let me put it this way; they didn’t get to spend their leisure time watching Monday Night Football at Hooters. Their style of life was barely above that of a dog, sort of like the poor people in North Korea and China—who should be liberated, not admired. Yet the same polices that oppress those people are the same ones that Barack Obama and his assistant Hillary Clinton are so enthusiastic about. Of course Obama has connections to the University of Chicago—where many of his Marxist ideas have evolved from student ranting to community organizing.

Hillary Clinton can’t even be trusted with email, let alone the lives of innocent Americans. We need guns in our lives within America to protect our society from insurgents, like these would-be dictators who rule through executive order and lawyerly manipulation of the placement of words within legal phrases. People who will lie to our faces like Nancy Pelosi did in regard to Obamacare right before Christmas—“we have to sign the law to know what’s inside it.” Or Lois Lerner pleading the fifth over the IRS scandal, and its White House origins. Or Benghazi. Or Fast and Furious. Or the Black Panthers harassing voters at polling places. Or the arming of Syrian rebels. Or the attack on Gaddafi to destabilize the Middle East into an Islamic caliphate. Or the criminal spending into oblivion more debt than all the previous presidents in American history put together—all hidden behind the efforts of racism. Everyone is afraid to criticize these criminal actions because they are activated by a man of color—paralyzing white America from judgment. It’s not criminal to point at these people and declare them to be criminals, insurgents, and hostiles to the American Constitution. The evidence is overwhelming—which is why they seek to destroy the evidence, legislate through executive orders, and coercion of the media—just like what Hillary Clinton’s campaign is doing to the Laugh Factory. Take away the guns of Americans and those people will be completely in charge of your safety—and we know they can’t be trusted. So why would we surrender our guns to them. The Second Amendment isn’t there to allow us to hunt rabbits, or even shoot a Turkey for Thanksgiving. It’s there to keep these government types from getting in their corrupt heads the notion that they can rule through force, because their track record indicates that they are very inclined to the type of tyranny that was evident in the worst of the dictators and emperors of history.

Don’t kid yourself. These are bad people and they want you to surrender. A quick look at all the mass gun shootings around the country up until 2015 including the recent one over the last weekend in Louisiana, and the villains were all young people and Islamic inspired despots—clearly victims of the kind of progressive idiocy that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton support through public education indoctrination. Yet the intentions always were to ruin those minds to fester the induced violence so that American support for more gun control would be demanded as a natural reaction to curb the incidence of violence. Clinton has often pointed to the Australian gun confiscations as a justification for the path of gun control in the United States. Every tragedy will be exploited with torturous rigor until the Second Amendment is surrendered—which is their game plan. Part of that game plan is to carry us all into a type of Weimar Republic where an overloaded debt destroys the value of our money so that the world can reestablish itself to a new standard of currency. By their time-table a new type of Hitler would have room to emerge from such devastation, and they hope that their Party leader is the one who controls the wheel of power.

Is this saying too much? No, the evidence dictates that honesty be used to approach these matters. We are dealing with ideological zealots who want to destroy the American concept of capitalism and replace it with global socialism. Just look at the donors to the Clinton Foundation. What do those foreign governments want in exchange for that money? They want a seat at the table and a disabled America so that they can compete for a change from the vantage point of socialism. They are like the classic villain who purposely sabotages a superior opponent so that they can have a chance of winning. They must lie, cheat, and steal to survive and to make it easier for them to do these things they have started to disarm America.

Salon of course is in on the scam, they want to “progress” beyond traditional America just as the University of Chicago has desired for several decades now. There are many collective villains and you can easily spot them because they want to do like Hitler has done in the past—support gun control so to enable them to rise to power—because that’s all they really care about anyway—power for power’s sake. Any real student of history knows about the Weimar Republic and how it was established. The same path is being placed before America by the same allies who supported that action against Germany in 1919. Their hope is that they can bring America into the global union and put all nations on an equal footing economically. But before they can do that they have to take our guns, and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—along with most of the Democratic Party want exactly what Hitler wanted—gun control so that they could work their deeds without the fear of insurrection. And they’ll play every dirty trick to bring down the United States if that’s what it takes. They are what we term in Constitutional reference as a “domestic enemy” for which we are required to protect our Constitution from—particularly the anti-Federalist Bill of Rights.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Cowboy Fast Draw Member 4265: My alias is Cliffhanger

About a decade ago when my oldest daughter’s boyfriend from Europe was trying to win me over for support, he put more than the average effort in to impress me. He joined me with my bullwhip friends in competitions and became pretty good. He and I worked for many hours in my backyard developing further the bullwhip fast draw modeled after the Ohio Fast Draw Association that also competed at our events for years. He even started dressing like me in some ways, with his own spin to the outfit. This of course made my daughter very happy and convinced her to make a long-term commitment to the fella. Whereas bad fathers are the type of people who make the common sluts and bar trash that are so prevalent these days, good fathers raise girls who think about bigger things so endorsements of potential mates are important to such daughters. For her the icing on the cake was that my future son-in-law bought himself an outback hat similar to mine and started wearing it everywhere very proudly.

One night, he and I were philosophizing about life and the nature of it in my backyard and he asked me about why I wore a hat so much. I told him that it was to distinguish myself from the common flock of people. In America the Cowboy Way was a code of conduct that exhibited a value system which exceeded modern boundaries and that my hat was an obvious show of support for that value system. Wearing the hat was my way of dressing for the part and my role in preserving that way of life. I went on to say that my values exceeded even those of the Cowboy Way—I was more stringent on many of them and went further on others. My favorite cowboy movies were not the John Wayne classics, or even the Lone Ranger, but they were Zorro and the famed Clint Eastwood westerns like Pale Rider and The Outlaw Josie Wales. High Planes Drifter to me is one of the most sophisticated westerns ever filmed—it was essentially Ayn Rand set in the west—it was an overman which came to a town to straighten out the justice which was long overdue. Whether the protagonist was a ghost from the past or a highly skilled more than man type—it was my favorite western and when I wore my hat, it was a tribute to those types of philosophic ideals.

I’ve been content to keep things pretty much independent of the outside world. I don’t need a lot of social support, so my way of doing things has worked just fine for me. My adherence to the Cowboy Way has been a silent code that I have not rammed down the throats of everyone I have met too much—other than wearing my hat in public most of the time. It did the job with my son-in-law and let him know what kind of family he was marrying into and I was happy with that. However, the days where that was enough are gone—the world has moved further away from that Cowboy Way in recent years and I don’t find that acceptable. Politically the Trump run for president has been a godsend, because he is covering a lot of the topics I have for the last five years, but on a bigger stage with the press eating out of his hand. So I don’t feel a need to continue beating on that drum, since somebody else has it covered—at least for now. Additionally I have a respectable number of grandchildren all of a sudden, and like that impressionable potential mate that my future son-in-law was—kids need much more of a role model figure much earlier which is my job—and I take it very seriously. My son-in-law was around 15 to 16 at the time of our talk in the backyard; he’s now climbing toward thirty fast. Time does move quickly and if you want to make an impression, you better do it quick. Kids are ruined if you don’t get to them by the age of 11 or 12. In my son-in-law’s case he was lucky to have been raised in England with a traditional way which protected him from the corruption of progressive cities like London, New York, and San Francisco. But he wanted more and he was on my doorstep looking for it, and it was my job to make sure the young lad was at least pointed in the right direction not just for his sake, but my daughter’s. After all, you raise these kids, give them all this hope, and they need to have people in their lives who share those values. The task is a rather large one. But by the time I knew him, most of his foundation thoughts were already in place. What I was saying might have small influences over how he conducted his life, but major ones probably wouldn’t be possible that late in his climb toward manhood. I promised myself that when I started having grandchildren that I would step up this Cowboy Way philosophy for their sake so that they’d have the right tools equipped intellectually to deal with a modern world spiraling over the precipice. I am one hundred percent sure that the Cowboy Way is the answer to much of what sickens America right now, and that is one major thing that Donald Trump cannot have much impact on as a presidential candidate. So I have taken major steps in advocating the Cowboy Way in a fashion that I had long been thinking about—taking up Cowboy Fast Draw as a sport.

As a grown man I probably shouldn’t have been so excited to join up with the Cowboy Fast Draw Association. My package of materials arrived the day that my new granddaughter arrived home from the hospital after being born. It was a huge forty pound package that contained a lot of lights, timers and targeting equipment. Included was my new membership card and some pins that will come in handy down the road. My membership number is 4265 and of course my alias is Cliffhanger. In Cowboy Fast Draw all members must have an alias so of course mine would be Cliffhanger which is the philosophic foundation of this whole endeavor. In my fictional pulp series The Curse of Fort Seven Mile I wanted advance the direction of the character—but before I could do that of course I had to live the reality first—as my fiction has to reflect reality—otherwise I’m not interested in doing it. My membership card clearly has CLIFFHANGER written on it with a disclaimer on the back for police officers saying, “THE BEARER OF THIS CARD IS A PROFESSIONAL FAST DRAW COMPETITOR AND CARRIES SINGLE ACTION REVOLVERS FOR PURPOSES OF DEMONSTRATION AND COMPETITION.” In short, when roaming around wherever and need to maintain my practice with single action revolvers to maintain and increase my skills toward the Cowboy Way, cops shouldn’t be concerned or alarmed, because I’m a member of the Cowboy Fast Draw Association. Of course if that isn’t enough and I end up in some kind of self-defense altercation, I’ll call my buddies at Second Call Defense and let them handle the police—which is the other reason I have suddenly become so openly pro gun and an advocate of Second Call Defense. I have to protect my investment.

The Cowboy Fast Draw Association reminds me of how our Wild West Arts Club used to be over a decade ago. In a lot of ways, its much better. It was quite a privilege to open up my membership material and see several issues of the Gunslinger’s Gazette included. The group is working on expanding their membership base to over 5000 of which I was number 4265. I’d like to see it at over 20,000 and climbing, because I think it contains within it the essence that every American should be striving to behold as a nation built on philosophy and freedom—the Cowboy Way. The Gunslinger’s Gazette is essentially a publication dedicated to the Cowboy Way so it was wonderful to see a physical copy of the paper instead of the online edition I had been reading.

But to top it off the culmination of all this has not been easy. I have been a bullwhip guy for many decades, so accepting a new skill has not been painless for me. However, I have done pretty much what I can with bullwhips. I like what some of my friends have done to break records with them, but as a symbol of the Cowboy Way, bullwhips need help because they are not part of the American consciousness the way that single action firearms have been. So I needed to add that skill to my wheelhouse and I promised myself at a certain time “professionally” that I would buy my new Vaquero by Ruger and start this journey. Well that time came for me a few weeks ago. It had taken me a long time to get there, but I eventually did, and the very first thing I did was purchase the Vaquero which now sits by my side everywhere I go. I have to work with it all the time to build the muscles up in my hands, and that was the final gate to this new section of my life.

Needless to say, I’m proud to be affiliated with the Cowboy Fast Draw Association under the name of Cliffhanger. I’m also proud to be a part of Second Call Defense which helps make this new sport possible with the legal support that will help protect the validity of that membership card by CFDA. Having a firearm is an essential part of the Cowboy Way just like wearing the hat. One of the reasons my son-in-law was attracted to American life was that they didn’t allow firearms in England. He met my daughter and wanted to win me over essentially so that he could own firearms. It was my job to help him find what he was looking for. But that need doesn’t end with him, there are millions of people in just the same situation—they just don’t know how to go about it. That’s where introducing them to the Cowboy Way will help—it explains why the Second Amendment is so important and if the police get too power hungry at the sight of Cowboy Fast Draw Association members armed with single action Ruger Vaqueros on the plain states of Iowa, or Montana at a local burger joint on the way to a competition, Second Call Defense will be there to help preserve that Cowboy Way when the questions are asked. It is within these types of people who America needs to get to know itself once again—those who read the Gunslinger’s Gazette.

My grandchildren are going to get what they need; I’ll make sure of it. And of that necessity is a strong understanding of the Cowboy Way. I don’t preach to people who don’t want to listen, and I raise children that way, under a laissez-faire approach that allows individuals to invest of themselves into what I’m selling. If they walk away, they walk away, and I won’t track them down to the ends of the earth to help them. Rather I live by example, which is one of the most important parts of the Cowboy Way. And with my new membership into the Cowboy Fast Draw Association, and my friends at Second Call Defense, the gunsmithing equipment at Brownells the powder purchases from Cabela’s and many other support organizations, we’re going to protect that Second Amendment from the trying times that are before us. And it all starts with the beauty and simplicity of the Ruger Vaquero. This is going to be fun!

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Cowboy Way: Living by a code of honor with guns as a centerpiece

Those who don’t know much about guns or their place in American culture are easy to seduce toward the diatribes of those who fundamentally want to change our nation into something else—a much less morally reticent and overwhelmingly evil utopia for the socialist of heart. They think of the NRA as a mean spirited organization resistant to change. Well, resistant to change is true—because what gun-grabbers want to change America into is something that gun owners typically don’t like. I am obviously a member of the NRA, but also of satellite groups within it—affiliates such as Second Call Defense. I’ll remind you again dear reader, if you go to the Second Call Defense website and type in Overmanwarrior, they’ll give you your first month free—and you should do that—for your own good. I am also a very proud new member of the Cowboy Fast Draw Association—which reflects my new hobby/career as a gunfighter. I’m so serious about it that I’m thinking of listing it as my new official profession. As we speak I am turning the basement of my home into an indoor shooting range specific to that hobby—and I’m very excited about it. The reason why is that I love the type of people who are in these groups—especially the CFDA. They live by a very specific code of ethics called the Cowboy Way. Below are a few examples of that way of life for which gun owners in the CFDA adhere.

Gene Autry’s Code of Honor

A cowboy never takes unfair advantage – even of an enemy.
A cowboy never betrays a trust. He never goes back on his word.
A cowboy always tells the truth.
A cowboy is kind and gentle to small children, old folks, and animals.
A cowboy is free from racial and religious intolerances.
A cowboy is always helpful when someone is in trouble.
A cowboy is always a good worker.
A cowboy respects womanhood, his parents and his nation’s laws.
A cowboy is clean about his person in thought, word, and deed.
A cowboy is a Patriot.

Hopalong Cassidy’s Creed

The highest badge of honor a person can wear is honesty. Be truthful at all times.
Your parents are the best friends you have. Listen to them and obey their instructions.
If you want to be respected, you must respect others. Show good manners in every way.
Only through hard work and study can you succeed. Don’t be lazy.
Your good deeds always come to light. So don’t boast or be a show-off.
If you waste time or money today, you will regret it tomorrow. Practice thrift in all ways.
Many animals are good and loyal companions. Be friendly and kind to them.
A strong, healthy body is a precious gift. Be neat and clean.
Our country’s laws are made for your protection. Observe them carefully.
Children in many foreign lands are less fortunate than you. Be glad and proud you are an American.

http://www.jcs-group.com/johnwayne/literary/codes.htm

When people or groups of people criticize the “Wild West” and “cowboys” in general they are essentially attacking the values expressed above. In today’s world those values might appear to be out-of-step, and archaic—but I think they are a whole lot better than what anybody in the world of today is adhering to. The mythology of the American gunfighter as expressed by the values of old cowboys like Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy is worthy of more serious consideration. When I talk inflamingly about being an American gunfighter it isn’t so much to have the ability to shoot human beings—it is to behave in a way to protect the Cowboy Way reflected above. Being a gunfighter isn’t about fighting with guns—it is about fighting for them and propping them up as a symbol of those Gene Autry values. I dare anybody from any gun-grabbing group to criticize those Cowboy Way values—because those who do have designated themselves villains against the American philosophy that built our nation.

Guns in American culture is not about killing, or even hints at violence—although those are certainly associations most common to weapons of all kinds. Guns are about preserving the Cowboy Way, which is why NRA members and other shooters tend to embody respectful values toward one another that reflect those elements because the traditions that guns protect are rooted in the Cowboy Way. That Cowboy Way was established during a period of western expansion that took place after the Civil War and was built up through a mythology of the American gunfighter. The strength of that mythology lasted well into the next century all the way up essentially until the 1960s when communist insurgents implanted themselves in the hippie movement and advocated against those Cowboy Way values.

Being a gunfighter is an essential part of American culture and with every gun grabbing politician and modern entertainer who stands against that Cowboy Way mentality we all have a right to be extremely angry at them for what they are trying to do. One of the ways I am combating that imposition and channeling that anger in a constructive way is in taking up membership with the Cowboy Fast Draw Association so that I can preserve the way of the cowboy from an older generation that needs some support. They are directly an affiliate of the NRA—so they are gold in my book. Additionally, I have lent myself to the Second Call Defense for the same precise reason. An armed America is a good America because the roots of gun ownership resides with the philosophy of the Cowboy Way—which is a whole lot older in this country than the recent progressive slant toward European sentiment.

When I say I intend to be a gunfighter as a profession, it doesn’t mean that I plan to assassinate bad guys with a gun—although if I do find myself in a self-defense shooting, I have my Second Call Defense card and I’ll let them handle the police when and if it happens. So far Second Call Defense has an excellent track record. Most self-defense shootings by members aren’t even going to trial because of it, because police know that with Second Call Defense they can’t use a shooting to politicize an issue or justify their false interpretation of the law under the scrutiny of a pro Second Amendment lawyer. So they just leave the case alone to avoid the embarrassment of prosecution in court. A lot of times the shooter in those self-defense cases has a lot more rights than they think they do, and gun-grabbers hope that the general public never learns that reality—so they can continue to weaken the Second Amendment due to ignorance. I see Second Call Defense as a perfect way to strengthen the Second Amendment, so I am a supporter. I carry my membership card proudly.

Yet for me that’s not enough. I want to be even more proactive in defending the Second Amendment especially due to the latest round of incursions from the political left. We have talked about this gun-grabbing time for a long period leading up to this latest phase, so now is the time to buckle down the defense of the Second Amendment into something more voracious. That’s why I’m proud to be a member of the Cowboy Fast Draw Association. They stand for the roots of firearms ownership, the Cowboy Way—the mythology built around gunfighters and the capitalist oasis that they paved to become the greatest country on earth. There is no way to remain a great country without private gun ownership because it all starts there—not with the intent to kill or maim with them—but in honoring guns as the instrument of focus for establishing a Cowboy Way of thinking evolved through the heart, bravery, and tenacity of the American gunfighter.

The Cowboy Way is a mode of thinking that not only needs to be resurrected in American culture; it needs daily maintenance to solidify into something for which society can build their foundations upon. It completely changes the way people interact with one another—it’s a code of conduct that works hand in hand with capitalism to bring prosperity to all who dare wake up in the morning to enjoy it. It’s unlike anything created anywhere on the face of planet earth during any period of history ever known. So there is no comparison to other nations and what they are doing to ban or reject guns from their societies. America is unique, and part of that story comes from the Cowboy Way. It’s not something we need to change or further contemplate—it is something we need to be proud of and to strictly adhere to from here on out—and that begins with maintaining a love with guns that has been abused due to political influence that is completely unwarranted, and destructive.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Being a Big Fish in a Small Pond: Sheriff Richard K. Jones running for congress

It was spring of 2015 and I was at the Brazenhead in Mason, Ohio having a beer with some heavily connected conspirators fresh off the ear rings of Judy Shelton, the local Republican protector of John Boehner within the ranks of the Central Committee where I first learned that the Speaker of the House in Washington D.C. was planning to step down. It was also there that I learned that Sheriff Richard K. Jones was eyeing Boehner’s congressional seat which evoked some interesting thoughts which had been percolating for quite some time. At times I have liked Sheriff Jones. He once gave me a well done portrait sketch drawn in a way that made him look like a Wild West superstar—which I liked. But he lost me when he supported the union position against Governor Kasich’s Issue 2 in 2012, and the Lakota levy in 2013. As larger than life and John Wayne-like that Sheriff Jones wanted to be, he was a strictly local hometown celebrity who would be like a tropical goldfish cast into the frozen waters of the Artic Ocean if he were to go to Washington where much bigger fish than he experienced in Butler County, Ohio were there to eat him quickly—so I thought it odd that he’d even consider risking his reputation at his age to such a politically dangerous enterprise. After all, in Hamilton, he was a big fish in a small pond—but in Washington, where the GOP is changing rapidly under Tea Party influence—the game had changed in front of his face not in his favor.

I get the opportunity to work with lots of people from other parts of the country. In my work with bullwhips locally I was always well-known to be the best that anybody had ever seen. I grew up with that designation where literally everyone I met had never witnessed a person who could crack a cigarette out of the mouth of a willing participant with a bullwhip. For me it was not enough to be a big fish in a small pond, I had to know that I could be a big fish in a big ocean too—so I pushed myself to get better and compete against people from all over the world. Competition after all makes everyone better, even if you don’t like the results. I knew as a bullwhip artist that I could never truly consider myself one of the best in the world if I didn’t challenge myself against people who also considered themselves the best at the craft.

My journey took me to many competitive events; winning several trophies competing with the best that are out there. I even have had some stints in Hollywood dazzling celebrities with my whip work. I know what it feels like to stand in the middle of the road on Brand Blvd in Glendale California where television producers and movie stars were gathered around stopped traffic to watch me perform because they had never seen what I was doing before—and were fascinated. For me personally, it was then that I deserved to call myself a big fish in a big ocean. I had challenged myself and I had to. My life goal was to write stories about the pulp hero Cliffhanger and as the author; I had to know that I could have the swagger in real life of the character I had created. As a writer I had to know that I could do what I demanded my character to do. I never wanted to be one of those sickly writers who live through their art. Rather, my art had to reflect my reality—so I demanded of myself to be really good at the things I wrote about. Yet prior to the year 2000 few people knew about me outside of my hometown. I was a big fish then too, but the pond was small and easy to win in. Outside of my town the water was much larger and there is always the theory that there is somebody better than you. Until you test yourself against them, you don’t have a right to consider yourself the best—and if that’s your goal, you have to step out of the small pond and into the big one and compete.

Between 2005 and 2008 I had satisfied my goal. I had met and worked with some of the best bullwhip artists in the world. There were a few I didn’t get to meet, but at a high level, everyone is pretty even, so you get a good idea of where you stand among them. And it was very satisfying to realize that with all the hard work, that I could swim with the biggest fish in the biggest water possible and hold my own. I didn’t do such a thing to fulfill my personal ego, but to satisfy my literary needs for my own personal work of philosophy. After I achieved that goal I was ready to move on to the next thing and was quite secure in my place in the universe. Those who watched me and competed against me who worked hard to get better and better, I am happy for. I never felt a need to keep up with them or to outdo their efforts—because I know what they are trying to do—which was the same thing that I was—they need to know that they can swim with the biggest of fish. And I respect people who strive to do that. There is lots of room for big fish to swim in a big ocean. There are plenty of little fish to eat, so there is no reason not to cheer on other big fish to grow even larger—and impressive.

When Sheriff Jones first gave me the poster of himself I thought of him as a big fish. The day he gave it to me Fox News was going to have him on that night to talk about immigration issues on the border of Arizona. And during the Issue 2 union debates he and I were frequent guests on 700 WLW radio—so I thought of him initially as a big fish in a big ocean. But over time it was obvious that he was happy to be the big fish in the small pond, because the ocean out there was a bit too threatening. He’s a local boy who will always be the hometown hero, the public servant who marches in parades and made good by the area he grew up in. But going to Washington D.C.—that’s a big ocean that requires more than just tough talk—you have to actually be tough.

Jones showed what kind of person he was during the Issue 2 debates where he thought he was a conservative Republican who attended Tea Party events and was fighting to preserve American tradition. But his view of that tradition was much like John Boehner’s, a progressive touchy, feely, sentiment about conservatism that belonged more in a Sunday school class than in the halls of Congress. As the government in Washington started changing slowly under the Tea Party influences, Jones stood against that tide attempting to preserve the Republican standard nurtured by crony capitalists and pink middle-grounders just a few steps away from socialism on the scales of political philosophy. Issue 2 exposed him as a labor union supporter who refused to see the damage collective bargaining was doing to local budgets. He certainly lost my support, and many others like me who are looking for a purer version of a constitutional republic than we presently have.

When I heard that he wanted Boehner’s seat the first thought I had was that he’d be reluctant to test himself against the big fish of Washington. I remembered my first bullwhip competition against some really talented people—particularly Chris Camp who had won about everything there was to win in the bullwhip arts. He was a star in Vegas, had several world records and was the bench mark of a really good professional bullwhip artist. I worried for days before the competition about having a respectable showing against him. That was nearly 15 years ago, but I remember well how nervous I was about it. It was a bone chilling paralysis that sucked the life right out of you. The reason I was so nervous was that I thought I was pretty good with the bullwhip, but if I couldn’t hold a candle to Chris, I would know that I didn’t have what it took to be the best. Since the bullwhip was one of my signature attributes it was very important to me to be one of the best, so I pressed on. In 2005 after working very hard, I won every event there was against the best competition that the nation provided. I earned their respect and I earned the right to consider myself one of the big fish—and it was one of the proudest days of my life. In the scheme of things, it was a pretty minor deal—a competition at a regional festival. But, in the world of bullwhip work, it was a big deal to me because I had a lot to lose in the attempt.

In the world of politics becoming a congressman at the federal level is like winning that bullwhip contest against a really skilled group of guys. And Sheriff Jones I knew when I heard the story from the political insiders at Brazenhead that the local sheriff wouldn’t risk the disgrace. It’s not that he’d lose the race. I believe he would be elected if he ran for the seat. Butler County is the most populated area of Boehner’s district, which runs all the way up to Greenville, Ohio. Jones could run and win I think pretty easily. I share with him a passion for two big platform issues, his stance against drugs and illegal immigration. But on most other issues, he is as soft as Boehner was, and the now former Speaker of the House was just chewed up and spit out of Washington by a Tea Party wing of the Republican Party that is fast emerging to dominate the party. Those like the local apologist Judy Shelton who have fought so hard to keep Boehner in power all this time are well behind the political current of the times. Conservatives are demanding to move back to the right, they don’t like the left, or even centralist’s positions. And that is where the big fish swim these days. And in that pond, Sheriff Jones is a little fish who will have to scramble for his very life. That’s not a risk I think he is willing to make at this stage of his life. The time for him to test himself with such a feat would have been twenty years ago. The insurrection that is currently happening on Capital Hill for which Donald Trump and several other outsiders are a part are going to change politics from now on. Boehner saw that he was not equipped to handle the hard decisions that are ahead for a Speaker of the House, or even a congressman. So he jumped off the train singing songs. Sheriff Jones is of the same mind. If Sheriff Jones wants to be remembered as a big fish—he better stay in the small pond, because if he goes to Washington, he’ll be eaten rather quickly.

The talk went on that evening and I listened casually while looking at all the magnificent cannons decorating the Irish Pub. It was an appropriate setting for political intrigue and maniacal subterfuge among the socially manipulative. And that made the beer taste better. But I only half believed those sources when they said that Boehner was going to step down. So I have to also believe that Sheriff Jones is going to climb out on that limb and try to take Boehner’s seat. My advice to him would be to keep his image of a big fish alive for the sake of his grandchildren. An embarrassing experience in Washington would be hard to recover from unless he thinks he’s savvy enough to take on the candidates coming out of FreedomWorks. Because they are the future—the past is John Boehner and progressive radio hosts like Bill Cunningham. Sheriff Jones has more in common with them than the candidates nurtured along through FreedomWorks. Getting elected is only half the battle. Getting trampled as a RINO on the house floor is far more embarrassing.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Chuck Norris in Iceland: How National Geographic unveiled American treasures

Kids make you most proud when they do things that adult experience dictates are productive, and memorable exchanges destined to build positive intellect. For instance, no parent wants to hear that their child got drunk and ground the night away pointlessly with some member of the opposite sex at a night club. Not only is the behavior useless and primal, anyone can do it—so there’s nothing unique about the act. For every baby born is the hope from a parent that the little life will grow up and do something significant—that is unless the parents are the typical lottery ticket, chain-smoking trailer trash types who only go to the mail box hoping for the next welfare check—for which children mean additional benefits from the government. Everyone else in the world hopes their children will do something good with life and not waste the opportunity to pave their own path through the roads less traveled and do something special with the gift of life they were given.

My kids often give me much to feel good about. More than other parents even, I expect my children to be unique and to make the most out of every day. And within the restrictions of reality, they do. My oldest daughter and her husband just returned from Iceland over this past weekend which was an unusual trip for a couple of twenty-somethings that illustrated a number of interesting parallels worthy of note. When I discuss how the destruction of American culture by the progressive intelligentsia class is intentional, it is one thing to say it, it’s quite another to have proof to compare to. It should also be noted that some people who know me best know that I have a soft spot for people who are foreign, and I am rather hard on people in America who grew up taking for granted the wonders of capitalism. I once got into a pretty significant fight with an old friend of mine when I told him he had a “Hamilton attitude” which was reflective of a type of blue-collar mentality that evolved in my hometown as I was growing up that I personally find reprehensible. Even thirty years ago when I said the term, I saw where it was taking our culture and I didn’t like it. A “Hamilton attitude” reflected the limited global perspective of the typical Fisher Body worker, or Armco employee from Middletown. It was a glass half empty reference as opposed to my perpetually glass half full outlook. I see people with a “Hamilton attitude” as destroying our nation. And I didn’t limit the designation to just friends and associates but family members as well. Those people are on a slow decline toward a place our society can never recover where sex, drugs, alcohol, lottery tickets and bad living destroy families, political structure, and economic growth. However, most foreigners who come from someplace else in the world who believe in the type of the American dream shown in motion pictures remind me of what we all used to be like. Most foreigners remind me of the type of people my grand parents were, hard-working people who believed strongly in family, personal intelligence, and responsibility. So my personal record is that I’m very hard on people whom I designate have a “Hamilton attitude” and very accommodating of people who come from other cultures to pursue the American dream in the traditional way.

Listening to my kids tell the story of their trip after their plane finally landed back to our hometown of Hamilton, Ohio after two weeks of back country struggles, high winds, glaciers, lava fields, freezing oceans and serious car problems I heard my kids tell a story that America could learn a lot from. I’m sure my daughter will go into more detail about the specifics, but for my purpose I’ll stick with the philosophical aspect that should be considered a warning shot for American culture. Iceland would be nothing if not for the American military base that was established there in Reykjavik. England built another airfield and from there Iceland assimilated with the rest of the world as a mixed culture of those two countries. The people of Iceland have evolved into the type of people who are often found within the United States in rural areas—determined, responsible, kind, and with an emphasis on tradition. They are not like the typical New Yorker—progressive, confused, and scribbles of human flesh dancing into an eventual fire for which they will eventually be incinerated. Iceland and its people are examples of the type of society you get when you get government out of people’s lives and let them live relatively freely. My son-in-law who is from Canterbury, England about an hour west of London enjoys aspects of European sentiment and ritual, while my daughter is all about the wild west of capitalism. As they told their story it was clear that Iceland had evolved into a nice mixture of the two without all the progressive nonsense.

But why Iceland? Well, my daughter is a professional photographer who does quite well for herself with commercial jobs around Cincinnati. She travels quite a lot throughout the year photographing for money, but that doesn’t quite do it for her. As a baby she was practically raised by National Geographic magazines. I used to actually read them to her before she knew anything about how to read a word; she’d look at all the pictures with me. When she went to bed, her mother and I used to watch the Discovery Channel religiously—back when they had an emphasis on science. And as one of the first big trips she remembered, I took her to the National Geographic headquarters in Washington D.C. to essentially show her the gates of Heaven where some of the greatest photographs on planet earth have been taken for that publishing empire. She strives to take National Geographic style photographs, so Iceland was the best opportunity to do such a thing—which was the purpose of their visit.

But my son-in-law being from Europe, who traveled a lot over the last decade, and watched the gradual decline of the American TSA system knows better, and he didn’t want my daughter—his wife—accosted in the embarrassing fashion that they suffered through once while returning from London via Raleigh North Carolina. The TSA agents were aggressive and ridiculous leaving him to proclaim never again. The next time they left the country, they decided to avoid the American TSA all together. They drove up to Toronto, Canada and flew out of there for nearly a half priced ticket. There the security was much better, and professionally accommodating. To make a long story short, it is more reminiscent of how America used to be during the 50s and 60s—professional, eager to serve, and bright-eyed—not half dead like some gage-ringed malcontent at JFK in New York.

My kids drove 8 hours out of their way to avoid the American TSA agents and to save half the money on an oversea flight, which was more than worth it. The gas to get there was about a $100 which was about the tax on an American ticket on an airline to a foreign destination. No wonder foreign markets are expanding so rapidly. American airlines within the states are choking on regulation and union regulations have driven up ticket prices treacherously. So people like my kids vote with their feet—and they saved a lot of money and had a much better experience.

Landing in Iceland, it was one lonely security member who stamped their passport. No physical accosting, no harassment, just a hello, and a stamp. They drove around the island for the next two weeks photographing shots that belonged in National Geographic, which was of course the point.

They camped in caves, in the tent bought from the Cabela’s in West Chester on opening day, and bounced around from one rustic village to another eating food mostly grown on the island because there just wasn’t enough population on Iceland to attract many American corporations.

So everything is pretty much homegrown and authentic regionally. Iceland is about the size of the state of Ohio. But the population is only about 329,000 whereas Ohio has over 11 million people. So my kids traveled for vast spans of terrain without seeing many people, and the villages they did stay in were like little Wild West towns with populations of only a 100 people or so.

That’s why the end of their trip after two weeks of trail food, soup, water and freezing winds brought them to a little oasis that I have long talked about, the influence of America throughout the world and the hope that it has brought people. They ate what they think is one of the best hamburgers they’ve ever had at the Chuck Norris Grill in Reykjavik on Laugarvegur. Obviously the owners of the restaurant are fans of Walker, Texas Ranger but it was one of those little treasures that speak for itself.
Out of all the global influences in the world open to Iceland’s economy, the Chuck Norris Grill is a thriving hot spot highly sought after by weary travelers who just want a hamburger and a cup full of fries. A timeless American tough guy has substantial appeal throughout the world, still, and there is a serious lesson to be learned from that. It surely wasn’t lost to my kids. They understood it and immediately sent me pictures. After all the brilliant scenes they had witnessed, that little western style hamburger place had put a nice exclamation point on the essence of their trip. Iceland had become more American than most of America. They are what we used to be, tough, kind, enterprising, intelligent, and creatively ambitious.

My kids landed in Toronto then drove back down to Cincinnati staying on the north side of Lake Erie the whole way until Detroit. The security on the way back was professional. Not lax, but certainly not intrusive. There was a sense of quality in Toronto that impressed my children. And when they hit the American border, it was by car. So it was just reasonable questions and the stamp of their passports. Not the kind of thing that would let terrorists in, but not the harassment that weary travelers should have to endure when all they want to do is get back to their home and lay down in their bed after a hard trip. Within a few hours they were back home and at our house for a long needed get together. It was one of my grandchildren’s birthdays. My wife and I had been out all day buying her a new car, which was an interesting and positive experience that I’ll write about in another article. To celebrate all these fine events I picked up about a hundred dollars worth of Chick-fil-A food and we had a nice little party—looked at pictures, and compared stories.

Our evening and the time we spent together was the opposite of that “Hamilton attitude” that I have said so much about over the years. Even though we still live in Hamilton, and I was born there, I am not happy to surrender what I remember best about it to this new age behavior of negativity that often comes from people who smoke way too many cigarettes and have an idea that a good time centers around a cheap 12 pack of beer from a gas station. It’s about hope, determination, and all the things that Chuck Norris represents to American culture. And behind all that is a love of family and the bonds of a life well lived together. The way it used to be, and should always yearn to continue. Other places in the world understand it, but America has clearly forgotten.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Donald Trump from 1988: What he said then and what it means now

For those who think that Donald Trump is a policy swapping former Democrat, the below clip from 1988 is rather telling, and astonishing. Trump was critical of the Reagan administration because of its policy on exports—for not being conservative enough. This is Trump as a young man shortly after writing The Art of the Deal on the newly created Oprah Show extremely confident and riding on top of the world. What is even more astonishing is that Trump has stayed on top of the world really his whole life. Aside from a few marriages, he’s been remarkably successful for a long period of time without any kind of emotional meltdowns along the way and it’s due to his extraordinary confidence. This is the Donald Trump that I grew up with, and he is the reason I think he would be a great president. What’s really interesting is the very political answer he gave while talking about the field of candidates in the 1988 presidential election, from Bush to Jesse Jackson. I think many people hold his non-committal political positions against him because they don’t understand business. For successful people, one very key ingredient is that you have to know how to navigate around people who might get in your way. Trump showed that he was hedging his bets no matter who won the nomination because as a business man, he knew the consequences of a government aligned against him. And he wanted to continue to be successful. Watch for yourself.

Being in business is very dangerous. Politicians are always looking for a contribution and you have to be careful who you say no to. If you give to the wrong guy and the other person wins, that person might come after you legislatively. It happens all the time. Regulations are used to extort vast billions of dollars a year from business people. A lot of the reason that business people use the Chamber of Commerce and other community organizations to keep orthodox politicians in their seats of power is to protect their businesses from activist government regimes. Market fluctuations and political fall-out are two of the most troublesome elements for a business person’s career. Those who have not had to deal with a zoning board, they don’t understand how difficult political tides can work against you. In Donald Trump’s case, New York is notoriously progressive. It has been for years, so there has always been a lot of liberalism associated with those city government positions. If a rich businessman like Trump gives money to both parties, the zoning issues get resolved quickly. If he only gave to Democrats or Republicans then there would be trouble during subsequent administrations. That’s a ridiculous fact of life in the world of commerce.

Government should not have that kind of power over commerce. But it does and will for quite some time to come. It’s a game all business people have to play. If you don’t play it, you will lose your business. What’s remarkable with Trump is that he has survived for so long with so many parasitic politicians always looking to soak up every last dime that they could extract from him. People have to understand the nature of a politician, and for those who are not rich, or even wealthy and in business, they likely believe that politicians do good things on their behalf with each election. They don’t. All they want is to get elected. Their primary function is to raise money for more elections and they owe the people who give them money constant legislative favors. The vote occurs with donations, not the voting booth. Business people do not give money for any other reason but to protect themselves from intrusive government. Sometimes money is given for more government interference so to perhaps destroy a rival. But the money given is always about getting something. It’s not given for fun.

Trump in that 1988 clip understood this concept very well and he was commanding those around him with the leverage he created even back in the Reagan administration, which was comparatively very business friendly compared to what it is today. When Trump’s father warned him that the family business did not have what it took to make it in Manhattan, it wasn’t the business of real estate that he was talking about, it was about being an aggressive enough mover and shaker to survive that political environment. Jesus would not make a very good businessman. He was a good man, but sometimes when playing aggressive games, you have to be an aggressive person. Trump is often criticized for his use of eminent domain occasionally as a fault—which it is. But it’s a tactic developers often use to get what they need done. I’ve been on both ends of that kind of dispute—and if you think you are right, you have to fight them—the developer. They respect when you fight them, because it either strengthens their position or it shows them the faults of their proposal. Ultimately, they are often grateful even though things do sometimes get violent. I wouldn’t have done to the guy in Scotland what Trump did when a homeowner refused to move the junk off his property so that an exclusive golf course could be built with all the lush trimmings near it. But I’m not a billionaire like Trump is. One of the elements of the great book on strategy called The Art of War is that you must have the heart to take hearts. And if you are in business, you sometimes have to think like that. There are lots of times where I’ve had to run down nice people because they purposely put themselves in the way of something I need to accomplish. Is that right or wrong—well, the Pope might not like it, but capitalism says it’s morally correct. Jesus might turn the other cheek, but that’s not necessarily the right thing to do. Being successful is about more than money, it’s about having the heart to take hearts when such a thing is needed. The result of conquest often results in victory for all—because everyone gets better due to the competition.

Donald Trump represents a different kind of politician. I would vote for him just because he managed to build the Trump Tower in Manhattan where it overshadows Macy’s. The politics involved in that deal would have been enormously difficult. For Trump to purchase the air rights next to his proposed tower design was extremely creative. Without question Trump made decisions on where to purchase concrete from, what anchor stores would be inside the tower and how it would fit into New York politics based on his strategic intentions. He really is a master strategist, which is showing in the presidential race.

As a president, you really can’t afford to paint out half the country the way Obama has. Republicans have been happy to limit themselves to those limits much to their own detriment. Trump is uniquely positioned to recruit voters who might otherwise vote for Democrats as he has knowledge of the entertainment industry that is very unique for a presidential candidate. He may have shown various sides of himself over the years, but at his core, he is the person who appeared on Oprah in 1988 and knows how to get things done. He telegraphed it way back then, he said he’d run for president if he felt the country was too screwed up for anyone else to solve the problems. Well, that’s where we are, and he’s positioned to do the job—best positioned. The world is a mess and internal politics is a disaster. Nobody else has what it takes to get the job done. So why not? If Jesus Christ were running for president, I wouldn’t vote for him. We don’t need someone who will sacrifice themselves to the cross and turn the other cheek declaring love for all. We need someone who knows how to win, any way possible. And that’s what Trump is an expert at doing. That might sound harsh to people who don’t think about life in competitive terms, but for people who are used to winning, they understand what it takes, and how important victors are—even when others don’t see the value as quickly as they can. Those people just enjoy the benefits of someone like Trump and his towers along with the wealth they build for the American economy.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Escapes: Why we have government and drug cartels in charge

How corrupt is Mexico, for those who think that Donald Trump’s comments were over-the-top? You know people……………………….when I wrote the Cliffhanger story, Sacrifice of Santa Maurta, I was trying to teach you about these things. In story form, I wanted to instruct normal Americans how drug cartels work and demonstrate how close they were to actual governments—who often operate in much the same fashion. There really isn’t much difference between a drug cartel and something like the Mexican, or U.S. governments. They all operate as organized crime operations that either confiscate money under force, or push products that are deemed illegal by a rival gang to a market hungry for the product. After watching the many scandals of the recent White House and the Saul Alinsky mobster-like defense of those actions, the conclusion that the federal government is reminiscent of the many mobster families over time that have taken root in America is not outrageous. Organized crime institutions are designed to extract control by using fear to encourage a free population to hand over that control willingly. In the United States, even though the government wants that control, the Bill of Rights prevent their easy acquisition of such power. But in Mexico, they aren’t so fortunate. Their constitution was created in 1917 at the start of global progressivism and has an emphasis on “social justice.” This had the unintended consequence of creating a large central government and a nation of weak individual rights. As a result, since the profit motive has been removed from the population illegal activity to satisfy individual needs rose up, and a nation of corruption has evolved. This has led to the rise, fall, and continuous escapes of one of the largest drug lords in the world, Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, who just last night escaped from a maximum security prison yet again just a few miles west of Mexico City. Obviously he had help in escaping; inside people at the prison who helped him leave custody after the United States had put out a reward of $5 million for information leading up to his capture, which had finally occurred in February of 2014. He was wanted for murder and drug trafficking and was put in prison for what should have been the rest of his life. But just over a year later, he was free once again.

The Mexican people in their progressive society have been deliberately taught not to think through their education system leaving the nation desperately poor and willing to follow the orders of their managing government. In the United States the hope by progressives was that the off-spring of that 1917 Mexican constitution, which is essentially a communist proclamation that guarantees a good job and decent housing to their people, would expand into the United States through illegal immigration by flooding the border with social justice activists whose children would overwhelm American politics and force a military style insurgency against the United States Constitution. The goal is one of emphasis on collective rights versus individual rights. That is the reason that the Washington Cartel for lack of a more appropriate definition wants essentially an open border policy between Mexico and America. The ultimate hope is that as Mexican people assimilate into American culture they will bring with them the demand for social justice that they were raised with in Mexico, and surrender their individual rights to the authority of a government. For instance, in Mexico, the government is responsible for the economy, which has led to massive corruption, and paved the way for drug cartels to essentially run the country—because they are an industry that produces a lot of money—and money is what the Mexican government is responsible for providing. Without having any competition to correct bad behavior, it is far easier for the Mexican government to rely on the drug cartels for their livelihoods than to come up with actual economic stimulus.

In the United States under free enterprise that type of thing goes on too, such as Warren Buffet’s acquisition of a railway system that runs across the Canada, and United States border and hauls oil to the Pacific instead of down the Keystone Pipeline. CLICK TO REVIEW. Buffet to seal the deal and stop the Keystone Pipeline advocated for higher taxes in America to essentially crush any competitors who might challenge him, in trade for a president who would veto any attempt to build a pipeline that would challenge his monopoly on moving oil by train to Pacific destinations—that is essentially why there is no Keystone Pipeline. It has nothing to do with the environment, or social justice for nature—or feasibility studies by the government. It’s about helping out a buddy to the administration. If Buffet were arrested tomorrow for bribery, extortion, and perhaps other crimes, he’d be out of jail in a similar way as Guzman just escaped—because the administration needs him. They need his support of higher taxes, his wealth, and his connections to the business world—so they would make sure he’d stay free to operate. But in America there is still a free market system and challenges to Buffet still come from rivals who put pressure on all this clandestine activity and keep it underground. It’s not the justice system that keeps Buffet and President Obama honest; it’s the threat of competition. If the government in America was in charge of the economy, that threat would go away.

In essence, that is what has happened in Mexico. The Mexican government needs the drug trafficking of Guzman to keep them all employed. Since the United States is concerned about drugs illegal flooding their population and destroying the minds of their citizens, Mexico has to pretend that they are against the activity in practice, but from within the country it might as well be the Wild West during the gold rush days. There is no law in Mexico. If you get on the bad side of a drug cartel, they will attempt to kill you, and if you don’t have access to the rocket launchers and military style weapons like they have, you can forget a defense of yourself. It’s an appalling situation.

When Hillary Clinton declares that the drug problem in the United State is the fault of its people with an “insatiable” demand for illegal drugs, she is talking from experience as her husband and his brother used the Arkansas government to traffic drugs into the United States as governor. But she’s only telling half the story. She intentionally takes the burden of behavior away from Mexico and places on the United States emphasizing that the villain is the demand so that she can make subtle arguments against capitalism and free-market manipulation. If she can sell regulation using drugs as an example, she can sell regulation against all businesses—in her mind. But by forcing a stalemate of consensus, she can then pave the way for drug cartels like El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel to flourish unmolested. As a member of government who also wants some of the indirect benefits of cartel business—as his family has in the past, weakened border patrol agents underfunded, overly unionized, and understaffed have created a situation on the border that makes it easy for Guzman to move his product to American markets. It doesn’t matter to American politicians that the Sinaloa cartel is every bit as violent and dangerous as ISIS is in the Middle East—the antics are overlooked in favor of easy money, and the sex trafficking that many politicians enjoy in Washington D.C. that is also smuggled in through Mexico. For anyone who has been to Cancun, you will know that there is a sex mall called Plaza 21 just down the road from the airport. There is also a place called Pleasure Principal that does in hotel sex visits on the strip. Where does everyone think those girls come from? And what does anybody think happens to them when they are too old to be sexual fantasies for couples, perverted men, and other deviants like corrupt politicians from the United Nations who have “Green” seminars in such places to bring the focus of the world on global environmentalism—they don’t pick those exotic cities for the food—it’s for the drugs and the women. Don’t kid yourself, what happens to those girls after a few years in “the business?”

Guzman was freed because the Mexican government wanted him free. They want his money, and his power—which exhibits precisely why the Mexican Constitution was always such a joke. The emphasis on social justice and collective salvation has left the entire nation ill prepared to deal with economics, morality, and any kind of intellectual ethics. They are a conquered people just trying to scrape by in life. But they weren’t conquered by the capitalism of the United States; they destroyed themselves with a poor political philosophy centered on social justice instead of individual liberty. And out of jealousy, there are cartel members who do hate the United States because it is such a good country, and they have no problem torturing its citizens with death hits whenever possible. They enjoy it with a hint at national pride, because their communist constitution has all but destroyed their people, whereas in the United States where people actually have money to buy their sex trafficked women and their narcotics, the root of that money is a mystery to them that they can only be angry at. And that root is capitalism driven by the free market—which is a threat to drug cartels and government cartels of all types and formalities. To understand more about this very important topic, I’d suggest you read my Cliffhanger series. It goes into more detail at the level of the individual players and their motivations. Personally, I hate drugs, I hate drug cartels, sex trafficking and large government interference because to me they all embody an evil that goes against the heart of every human being—the desire to be free. And now Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman is free, but not because he deserves to be, but because the government wants to enslave everyone else with his tyranny.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Helping Chief Blackwell: Cincinnati needs more guns–not less

Gun grabbers and pacifists are licking their lips with all the recent violence in Cincinnati involving guns. As Channel 9 released the report below and the Cincinnati Enquirer pandered to the same class of the panic driven drivel, the root cause of the gun violence was ignored in favor of a progressive objective seeking to demonize personal firearms. Here is how Channel 9 presented the case for which the burden fell on Chief Blackwell.

Cincinnatians have been barraged with the reports of 168 shootings so far this year. They include the recent gun battle on I-75, gunfire ringing out on our streets in broad daylight, teen-agers getting shot and teen-agers doing the shooting. There’s one thing all these incidents have in common: a gun.

That’s what I wanted to talk about with Chief Jeffrey Blackwell when I sat down with him Friday. Guns have been on his mind too.

He produced a daily report showing shootings are up 23 percent this year compared to the same period last year. Homicides are down, but he agreed that the recent violence has created an atmosphere of unease.

His short-term response to the outbreak of gun violence is to create a new “gun-reduction program,” a group of 13 officers who will focus on the people police know of who are responsible for much of it.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/06/03/sentinels-support-chief/28408041/

http://www.wcpo.com/web/wcpo/news/crime/cincinnati-police-department-90-day-plan-includes-moving-more-officers-to-the-streets

So I’m going to do Chief Blackwell a favor, and explain to him the cause and how to remedy the problem that the city manager of Cincinnati has placed upon his shoulders. First of all the reason for the increase in gun violence is that the news reports from Baltimore and Ferguson have shown the criminal minded how to avoid prosecution and harassment by the police. Now that they’ve seen how mobs of people can protest the police and how the police have been neutered, particularly in places like New York City, and Chicago—respect for the law is at an all time low. Poor quality politicians and the media have fanned the flames of violence provoking it in many cases in inner cities where government dependents reside in a high concentration. The net result is an increase in the statistical violence involving guns in Cincinnati, and just about everywhere else where large concentrations of public housing, and welfare dominate the per capita population.

Yet in areas where there is a high concentration of gun ownership, like Mason and West Chester, Ohio—there is almost no gun violence per capita or by volume of gun ownership. That is because the quality of people in those areas are different—there are less thugs per capita in those areas. So a simple gun reduction program won’t work, because guns have been invented and bad guys will find them just as they do illegal drugs. Reducing gun ownership within the city of Cincinnati will only guarantee more violence, not less—because when those who behave with an animalistic desire to suppress others drives criminal behavior against the innocent—the lack of guns allows for an unbalanced defense against thugs. Thugs are those who wish to impart violence against others to fulfill their own personal objectives. The victims may not desire to take part in that desire but if they don’t have a gun to equalize the ill intent, the thug will have the advantage 100% of the time without any resistance.

Progressives and other community advocates who lazily wish that guns had never been invented and fantasize that more government workers could manage all the elements of society into peace if only there were no more guns are the cause of the violence and the delay of the solution. They are the cause of the increased violence coming and going then point at the guns as the villains. Well, they have lost their seat at the table. There is enough history and facts now to dispute their fear based diatribes. Fewer guns increase violence, more guns reduce it. It’s a very simple equation.

If the violence within Cincinnati were to truly be reduced, then more homes with more guns should have them. There may be a slight spike at the beginning of such a proposal where the guns are used to dispel the efforts of a bad guy but once word hit the streets, the cockroaches would return to their hiding and keep their crimes from the eyes of humanity—for the most part. Give some shotguns to the old men who sit on their porches in Avondale talking about the old days—and let them eliminate the violence on their streets, the car break-ins, the drug deals, the gang gatherings—and it will quickly be shown how effect a pro gun program in the hands of private citizens truly is.

Take those same old men in Avondale sitting on their porches with shotguns painted against the reality of our day and they would be arrested for poor handling of a firearm and disturbing the peace while the members of a gang stand on a street corner down the road and laugh. The old men are an easy arrest for the police and keeps their captains off their backs for lack of arrests—but the kids down the road are difficult. There are legal entanglements and revenge killings—and they are just too much trouble. No cop with a family wants a cartel killer to show up on their doorstep, so they leave the kids alone. The gang is just too much trouble to deal with. Cops will show up to take a report after violence has occurred, but they just can’t do anything until a crime is committed making them virtually powerless to stop anything before a thug committees a violent act.

So what is Chief Blackwell supposed to say to a bunch of panicky politicians wanting a quick fix to a problem they created with progressive policies? Tell them the truth, or tell them what they want to hear—that he’ll focus on getting rid of guns off the streets. To liberal progressives, that is music to their ears, so they might be appeased—for a while, but it won’t solve the problem. Violence will continue because those in charge have been deemed weak by the thugs, and that will only breed more thugs—not less. Before crime can really be solved management must admit that some of their citizens are thugs, and that they seek to correct that behavior with a basic respect for humanity. Those failing to adhere to that basic respect must be dealt with in the only way they understand—with force. Then and only then will violent trends decrease, and assumptions toward civility be cultivated successfully.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

‘Fury Road’: Rebelling against Giambattista Vico

I have a general assumption about mankind that is quite opposite of typical academia. Civilizations rise on the backs of innovative individuals and flourishing capitalism. They decline with more centralized control and absorption of individual achievement into the fabric of a collective society. When an unworthy king or bureaucratic democracy takes over the direction of economic enterprise and invention, a society is in decline. It is due to the hard wiring of human beings trained from their infancy to follow the Giambattista Vico cycle always witnessing societies fall only to be born again in a much regimented pattern. This holds true no matter what the society, whether it be the Mayan people, the Inca, the Mongol, the Roman Empire—all societies so far have followed the Giambattista cycle. This is why anybody with any honesty looks at George Miller’s Mad Max films and declares him a genius. It’s also why it was more than symbolic that Mel Gibson showed up at the premier of Fury Road, the latest Mad Max film now staring Tom Hardy. Studios didn’t want Gibson in the film as the Vico cycle declares that what’s old must be recycled to make way for the young and new. But Gibson showed up to give the young Hardy a bit of support because any Mad Max fan knows that Mel Gibson will always be the iconic Road Warrior. It all started with this movie.

Our current world is not very far from the world of the first Mad Max movie. Police are now being openly murdered and Vico’s final phase of anarchy is fully at hand. What happens next is the rise of a theocratic society followed again by aristocratic, then democratic rule, followed by chaos once again. In the film Fury Road we find that in the period between the first Mad Max film society has devolved into the rise of theocratic civilization. No longer is society concerned with missions to Mars or inventing a new iWatch—now the primary concern as it has been in the past is to establish a new deity figure for the society at large.

I have always loved the Mad Max character because he maintains himself throughout the entire cycle as a constant reminder into the phase of the Gambattista cycle from which everything was taken from him, his wife, child, friend, career—everything he cherished from that time. Unlike the rest of the world he finds himself standing up against the tide of regression. He is a representation in these Mad Max films as Nietzsche’s ubermensch-otherwise translated as the overman. Nietzsche’s ubermensch is one who has graduated from mankind and stepped away from the Gambattista cycle all together—and has decided to advance their life based on individual creativity. But this is a dangerous road, Hitler tried to take Nietzsche’s ubermensch and advance Germany, but failed in his interpretation and instead moved his country into a Karl Marx inspired socialist democracy—followed by war defined anarchy, then back to a theocratic/democratic existence where it currently finds itself in a European Union—otherwise a democracy that is once again plunging into anarchy now inspired by the failing economies of Greece. Mad Max is the figure who refuses to submit to these tides of the world.

I have no doubt that George Miller would agree with this assessment. He knows all too well what he’s doing. He’s not just making a popcorn action thriller with great car stunts and bizarre characters. He’s making a rejection statement against Gambattista’s famed cycle. He may not have set out to be conscious about that statement but rather let his intellect drive those elements of the story along as evolution of the various aspects of the story evolved, but based on the presentation of Fury Road, it is clear he understands what he’s doing all too well. It’s also clear why so many people are excited to see such an apocalyptic story and why after all these years it’s so close to the hearts of so many people. This is not a typical summer blockbuster film.

So, how excited am I for the upcoming Fury Road? Well, let me tell you, I have dedicated this upcoming Friday to seeing it. I will certainly be one of the first, and I will likely see it several times. I love the action, I love Mad Max and all that he stands for, but more than anything I love seeing the Gambattista cycle challenged. The world may have went crazy in relation to the advanced days of invention when oil was being produced to propel cars from city to city, to instigate the growth of economies of various trade. All that can and will fall apart within just a few decades of human development—just like the Maya abandoned their cities apparently very fast—as if they just evaporated. It’s not that such people abandoned their cities because they left earth for alien destinations, the people of Ur did not suddenly become equivalent to the Neanderthal after building hanging gardens and massive temples—they regressed because they emerged into war then reinvented theocracy starting the Vico cycle fresh again losing all that they had gained before. Mad Max is that personality in these George Miller movies who in spite of everything that he has lost and continues to lose, refuses to give up on his heroic past and be the last representation of a time when mankind was truly great.

How many people do you know who would at the drop of a hat become one of the mindless followers of some future attempt at theocratic rule? The current Muslim obsession is but the latest. How many maniacs would kill the masses for a chance at everlasting life in the hereafter because some slug of a wanna’ be king dictated that such a thing would bring redemption to the soul? The answer is probably everyone that you know. Most of the people shopping at the grocery and working in a corner cubical would gladly trade in their suits and ties for a thong and Mohawk if some skull inspired death cult instructed them that through worship of his heavenly presence that someday they too might rise up to greatness if only they adhere to the tenets of collectivism. Miller’s brilliance is that he was able to see such a clear vision from our present age. It’s not easy to see that overweight school levy supporter buying meat at the grocery as a future sex slave to a blood thirsty cult fighting over the worship of water—but Miller does, and with a grand design. It’s not easy to see that corrupt politician kissing babies and whatever else as the skull wearing Immortan Joe hunting down the wives who are desperate to leave him. But in Miller’s films, it is quickly recognizable that most people we know under similar conditions would find themselves as some character in that wasteland. It doesn’t take much to forgo everything we have ever been and throw it away in exchange for basic human necessities, like food, water, and sex.

I am excited for Fury Road, but for reasons that go well beyond the visual spectacle. I love it for the rebellion against Vico. On one hand the Vico cycle is shown in all its brutal honesty, but through the character of Max—using almost no dialogue—Miller beholds the ubermensch—a character that launched the career of Mel Gibson who in almost every movie refused to buckle under the pressure of Vico to decline—but always to advance. Whether it was Riggs from Lethal Weapon or William Wallace from Braveheart, Mel Gibson started as Mad Max, that hero from the past who punched through the Vico cycle with the throttle down and the skill of a Road Warrior as the rest of the world attempted to drag him back into the Stone Age. That’s why Fury Road is more important than a four-year degree in college studying history and the Vico cycle. Because Fury Road shows through art the results of that path—and how treacherously close we always are to falling off the edge of reality into an abyss controlled by maniacs like Immortan Joe—or the Toe Cutter.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

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