Tag: Ayn Rand

“Fat Han” in X-wing Miniatures: “I’m in it for the money”

When I participated in my first tournament for X-wing Miniatures I was still learning all the rules—but knew enough to build a squad of ships that would be competitive against even the most seasoned players. However, when I revealed my squad to my opponents, they immediately assumed that my use of Han Solo on the Millennium Falcon which encompassed a point build of 55 points out of 100 meant that I was a rookie player who did not trust my piloting ability. The Falcon fires in a 360 degree arc as most of the other ships fire in a 90 degree arc coming off the front of their ship. Most seasoned tournament players at the time if they did use the YT-1300 were using Chewie or Lando and using two B-wings or some other assortment of support ship to save points. Nobody was using Han, which made no sense to me. He was after all one of the highest pilot rating cards in the game and he has a wonderful re-roll ability that makes him very powerful. His card on the Millennium Falcon looked to my eyes to be one of the most powerful combinations in the game, and I thought it would be crazy not to use him in a tournament.

Well, about three months later some of the best X-wing players in the world used almost the same build at the Nationals played at Gen-Con 2014. In reaction to the new TIE Phantoms released at the end of June 2014 a new type of Rebel build called “Fat Han” emerged in the meta game to deal with the incredible maneuverability and fire power of the new Empire faction ships. In fact Paul Heaver who is the current world champion used nearly the same build as I had to climb into the top four at the nationals.

I never published my build anywhere and Paul and I never spoke—yet to his experienced eyes he picked that particular build to deal with the new elements coming into the X-wing game. And he wasn’t alone at the nationals; there were many other top players who were flying “Fat Hans” in competitive play which changed the game for the better. It is doubtful that Paul Heaver received the same sideways glances that I did when I placed my YT-1300 on the board. I was a newbie, Paul was a seasoned champion. But it made me feel good to see that even in a game where I am not comfortable with all the rules and certainly lack the experience of that kind of competitive play, that I’m able to fairly quickly jump in and identify trends that are out on the edge and not yet fashionable.

This was an important observation as I spend a great deal of time pointing out trends that are coming as opposed to the ones that currently exist. If the ability is gained, it can be applied to virtually everything in life even in areas where others are much more proficient. The “Fat Han” builds are now the complaint of the X-wing Miniatures world because of their extreme effectiveness and they will continue for some time until something else knocks them off in the months to come. But for me the experiment was very telling, and useful.

I left my tournament feeling like I could have done better and that I was close to something big as far as a strategy. The other players were so polished and knew their stuff—citing the rules from top to bottom quickly and were certainly at the top of their game. So I thought there might have been something to their complaints about using Han Solo and the Falcon in such a way as I was. But as it turned out, the best X-wing players in the game soon after turned to the very same strategy because the meta game pointed tactics in that direction. What I’m proud of is in seeing the trend before it occurred. Part of it is that I have a personal preference toward the Millennium Falcon, but when all the cards are looked at, it is beyond refute that the YT-1300 is by far one of the best tactical pieces in the game and that it should be included in any Rebel build.

I know much more about X-wing Miniatures now than I did during my first tournament, and I will know a lot more in a year than I do now. But the trend of seeing strategies and cycles beyond the curve of orthodox thinking is something I have been able to maintain even when others knew a great deal more about something than I did. It’s not some magic act, but simply a confirmation that Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality strategies are employable on every level of endeavor, even in gaming. I do pretty well in life staying in front of the curve of social trends in most everything I do—even leisure. So it was fun to feel the scorn of the X-wing community—even though it was friendly jousting at the time—then find just a few months later that the entire meta game is moving in that direction.

I remember what it was like when I was a kid and I was the one who loved Star Wars above all the other social trends that were occurring at the time. It was considered very “uncool” to like the science fiction epic publicly. But I knew at the time—even as a very young kid, that there was something unusual about the stories and that the values conveyed in them had meaning beyond the social trends of the time. Now, 30 plus years later Star Wars fever is everywhere even to the extent that drones have been flying over the filming locations looking for a hint at the storyline. The only people now who think Star Wars is “uncool” are the backwards thinking lost in time souls who can’t identify with the values of the stories. They are people stuck in the past—in the policies of the New Deal, and progressive utterances inspired from the pages of Karl Marx.

I have a shirt that I like to wear when playing X-wing Miniatures with Han Solo on the front of it—not unlike the kind of shirts I used to wear as a 9-year-old kid that says, “I’m in it for the money.” It is a very capitalist message and I first saw it in Hollywood Studios, Florida while coming off the Star Tours ride. I was surprised that Disney did not filter that pro capitalist message as there are many progressive executives who work for the large entertainment company. But, Han Solo is an unequivocal capitalist—an Ayn Rand type of capitalist in the Star Wars saga and he is one of the most popular characters there is. In fact, while downloading the new Star Wars game Commander onto my iPad I noticed that the characters on their load screen featured Han Solo, not Luke Skywalker because Disney knows where the money comes from in the series. It’s not the altruistic Luke Skywalker that people want to emulate; it is the capitalist Han Solo. This is a trend which will increase now that Star Wars is socially cool—altruism is out, capitalism is in.

That capitalist philosophy has spilled over into the X-wing game as the designers were careful not to weaken the message when designing the Han Solo game card. If played right, a “Fat Han” build can take being shot by opponents while dealing consistent damage during an entire match. It’s a very capitalist build and I think that the hatred for the build early in the game meta can be traced back to the fact that so many people are trained from their educations to hate capitalism. But—the meta of the game has moved by need of competition to utilize “Fat Han” builds just as the new Star Wars films and television shows soon will do the same on an epic level under Disney’s care. They know there in the hallowed halls of “Mouse Town” that capitalism is the key to social order and I could see that emergence as far back as the release of that Han Solo shirt featured at Hollywood Studios. We’re all in it to win, we’re all in it for the money—and that is why “Fat Han” builds have risen to popularity and why capitalism will emerge triumphant from 2020 to 2030 in ways that have never been seen before.image

I’m so sure of it that I’d bet everything I have. With the same assurance that I built a “Fat Han” build in X-wing Miniatures during a time when it was considered too novice-like to even think of bringing it to a tournament—I can see that capitalism will crush socialism under the care of the Disney handling of the Star Wars franchise. Some people may bellyache and complain, but the trend is already emerging. I can see it as plain as a sun in the noon day sky on a cloudless day around the equator. It’s so bright that it burns. Meanwhile, I have to change my tactics to stay competitive. “Fat Han” will no longer work because everyone is using it. So my new build is something I’m called “Dashing Han” which is more akin to how the Falcon actually flew with Han Solo at the controls. It is very difficult to fly, but should provide an advantage that will last a while. Because the name of the game is to always stay out in front of the meta.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The College Menace: University of Boston stupidity

So much has been said over the years of the value of a college education—as if just by attending some institution of higher learning that it naturally equated to intelligence. Well—that myth has been busted more than once over the last decade. College graduates continue to show well into their adulthoods that they have been taught not to think—not how to—and are lacking a very basic understanding of the world and how it works. This is the fault of the education institutions themselves for marketing a product which has turned out to be a complete scam. Colleges have not lived up to their promises but instead seem to have regressed society due to the overly liberal leanings of most of the employees at the hallowed halls of academia.   This has never been clearer than in a recent random sampling of the Boston University students exhibited on a Jessie Waters segment of Fox News. Waters asked the college students there what they thought about the terror group ISIS, which has dominated news headlines for several months—and these were their answers.

A society cannot succeed if people are educated in such an inept fashion. The college kids in that segment are a pretty good sampling of the type of average college kids on any campus in America. I should know, I spent a year living on campus at the University of Cincinnati and got to know well all the layers of life at that particular college from the frat houses to the Alumni association parties. Every college is similar, and produces the type of people shown in the Waters’ World segment above. Democracy—which is so advocated by the political left requires some intellectual curiosity to succeed, but as seen by the sampling of college students at Boston, that curiosity is non-existent. The young people don’t possess any—let alone some.

This is a failure of the blind trust that society has placed in these institutions to do what they promised with the vast amounts of money which has been given to them. What they’ve done is waste it and teach instead liberal philosophy and social collectivism—and spent the rest on parties and opulence. The by-product of this behavior has built a nation of fools in America lacking basic common sense and intellectual aptitude leaving the concept of a democracy completely open to liberal take-over from within.

Stupidity is what is celebrated at such colleges like Boston University. Nobody wants to be that guy at a party who knows who ISIS is, or who the president currently is—because the culture at colleges celebrates ignorance, not intelligence. It is more popular to be the girl passed out on a floor with her face in her own puke being gang raped by those still standing than the book-worm know-it-all who is up to date on current events and could answer all of Jessie Waters’ comments fluently. The result of that value system is what we see today—a society of fools following other fools over an intellectual cliff which allows a bunch of knuckle dragging imbeciles like ISIS to look like a valiant fighting force.

Those same college kids will grow up unprepared to vote correctly, purchase groceries, or create businesses. It is no accident that many entrepreneurs are in fact college drop-outs instead of those who graduate at the top of their class. Most likely in a free society like America the valedictorian will end up being the assistant to the drop-out who starts and runs most businesses. But the valedictorian in most cases will not be the one to start anything from scratch as they have been taught to follow orders, not to give them from the perspective of vision. They are not taught to see, they are only taught to feel—which is a direct attribute to their college educations. This is the reason that even with all the news about ISIS, most college kids have no idea what is going on half way around the world.   If ISIS were involved in a song discussed in popular culture college kids would know all there was to know about them, because music invokes feelings. But when the situation involves just raw data, knowledge of history, and general philosophy—they are completely lost.

I’ve said it many times—why do we support this public menace called colleges? Is it because we like the sports programs that often come from them, or because we remember the fun parties we had when we were in school? Because colleges are ineffective as learning institutions and do very little to create complete individuals—they are only good for building recruits for liberal viewpoints. Colleges take public money from tax payers and they take vast amounts of American savings accounts in the form of tuition—but for what—so kids can grow up and know nothing?

It is time to consider other options. Because the college path is all but useless and if it is continued will lead to the end of civilization—not the further advance of it. The terrorists of ISIS are in all reality only discombobulated religious radicals not unlike the KKK which used to operate openly in the American south. But they appear to be a superior fighting force when society fails to identify the value of their assaults and in the case of today’s college kids—they don’t even know that ISIS exists—let alone know what to do about them. And that greatly strengthens the enemy—not quells the emotions of radicalism. Colleges have made America weak—and the folly of those attributes is the fault of the education institutions themselves. They own the condition of modern youth and all the stupidity that follows. So it is time to give that responsibility to the proper owners and let the rectification begin for a new way of obtaining knowledge that is not controlled by a liberal viewpoint driven by government preservation.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

A Plane Crash in Liberty Township, Ohio: The pathetic display of the Butler County police

A couple of pilots in a stunt biplane crashed practically into the back yard of one of my children over the weekend killing both aviators in a raging inferno.  I thought most of the people interviewed in the media circus afterward were well-mannered, and even intelligent about the whole issue describing that the plane had been performing stunts and had been engaged in a backward stall never pulling out of the dive that followed.  The plane could have crashed into any of the densely packed homes in the neighborhood behind Wyandot Elementary but somehow the pilot managed to thread a needle flying between two houses before smashing into the ground in a backyard space only clipping away part of a garage.  The pilot had to know that he was going to die at such a speed but had the courage and wherewithal to maintain his cool saving the lives of the people inside.  Given that my kids were in the proximity I’d have every excuse to panic about such a thing—but I never do.  I enjoy those kinds of pilots and love watching them practicing stunts.  I want to see them continue.  If something goes wrong—like it did in this case the pilot did the responsible thing and minimized the damage.  The two pilots ended up burning up beyond recognition but turned a situation that could have been a lot worse into a minimal amount of damage that was pretty easily cleaned up.

However, the display of the police was pathetic.  It looked like every police officer in Butler County was at the scene and they stood around most of the day following the tragedy.  It looked like a beauty pageant of fat-gutted middle-aged men parading around on a catwalk trying to impress the audience with their authority.  The family in the house that was most in danger was eating breakfast and managed to get out of the house after the crash without any help from any authorities.  The fire department showed up within about 5 minutes to put out the fire—which is expected given that Liberty Township has a fire department every couple of miles holding a bunch of public servants always sitting around waiting for something to happen.  In this case they were needed and the danger was averted within 15 minutes of the crash.  But then came the police who showed up on the scene and brought with them a level of panic that was totally uncalled for.

Of course they started putting up blankets so that people surrounding the area couldn’t see the carnage and they quarantined a section of the neighborhood limiting the freedom of the homes not involved in the plane crash.  The entire escapade was entirely self-serving for the police.  It gave them something to do on a Saturday morning in Liberty Township and they seemed to enjoy the heightened drama too much.  Essentially, a plane crashed, the pilot steered away from the danger as best he could.  The fire department put out the fire, and the coroner pronounced the deaths using dental records to identify the victims.  All that was left after was for the FAA to do their investigation and clean up the mess letting the insurance companies cover the damage to the homes so that the residents could get back to their lives.  End of story.  But no, the police had to make the whole scene appear that a new virus had been unleashed upon the earth and that the crash site had become a quarantine zone that aliens might emerge from at any minute.

It was a rather disgusting displaying showing the gross over-employment of police in Butler County.  There were too many at the site leaving the question to be asked—what do they all do when there isn’t a plane crash in the normally quiet community of Liberty Township?  Because at the crash site there wasn’t much to do and they pretty much stood around all day trying to look important.  On a normal Saturday where have all these police been hiding because they certainly aren’t necessary?

The whole crash could have been handled with a handful of government employees, a small investigation team and the coroner.  The rest of the neighborhood could have gotten back to their business of an early weekend morning in the fall within an hour, mowing their grass, cleaning their garages, and living their lives as normal.  The media could have taken their pictures and been done by noon.  Yet the police overdramatized the entire incident making the media even more dramatic standing between photographers and the crash like protective parents securing the serenity of small children not yet ready to see the gross realities of the world.  It was as if we were all small children going to the movies with a panicky parent afraid to let us see images on the screen that were too violent afraid that we’d have bad dreams after.  Their censorship was over dramatized and unnecessary illuminating their useless employment to a great extent.

The crash wasn’t that big of a deal.  Sure people lost their lives, but likely that is the way pilots like that want to leave the world and they did their best with the situation until their last breath.  Likely I have watched the stunts in the sky from that very same pilot many times and enjoyed it—and I’d like to continue to see them from other pilots who often practice flying over Liberty Township using the Butler County Regional Airport as a staging ground.  There is nothing about that crash that would cause me to feel otherwise.  Sometimes bad things happen, but most of the time they don’t—and those times are worth the danger.  But the display of public employees trying to look important at the crash site was grossly evident.  They had the same fake pretension that is seen at fashion shows where 19-year-old girls are dressed up for an evening on the town only to sell cloths to fat, overly stressed women who look nothing like the girls at the show.  The police were only selling an image of security as the danger had already come and gone—but because they had nothing else to do.  They knew the media would flock to the scene, it was a chance for them to look important for the cameras—and that is all they really did.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

China’s Jack Ma: The Capitalism of Jags Steakhouse

There were a lot of great points made by Rush Limbaugh recently when he noted that China’s Jack Ma spewed nearly identical Reganomics sentiments regarding the future of his country’s economy as what came out of the American 1980s.  Ma’s company Alibaba was ridiculously successful when it was a public offering on the New York Stock Exchange making the young man the richest man in China.   Now that rich man wants to help other people become rich in his country with a similar pro capitalist message.  Meanwhile, the wealthy in America have allowed themselves to be scorned by the lazy, ignorant and needy into stagnation.  It wasn’t the Hong Kong Stock exchange or the Beijing financial district which made Ma so wealthy—it was the capitalism of America that did it—yet Americans have fallen into a disservice of that economic system through guilt provided by an education system that teaches the opposite of what Jack Ma proclaims.   Listen to that broadcast with Rush Limbaugh below.

There is no other blame than the American education system for the obvious embrace of socialism over capitalism which has led to the current crises.  I realized how bad it was when I became involved in local school levy issues serving as a spokesman for some of the very rich in my school district.  They were very happy to let me go on the news every few days and represent them to the media becoming the target of countless controversies until I decided I wasn’t going to take a lot of back-talk from those parasites who wanted desperately to tarnish my public reputation. Even that assumption was presumptuous in assuming that even I after all that I had said publicly that I would even accept the progressive definition of things in America and cave in to the pressure of a bunch of rabid feminists regarding school taxes and deficient parenting.  Those same supporters quickly went underground hiding from those progressive terrorists even though many of them had a lot more at stake financially than I did.  Yet they didn’t defend themselves, instead they used charities and other social events to cater favor from the political class to leave their capitalist endeavors alone.  I pointed out to them that this was essentially communism—that they didn’t have to yield to the pressure of a bunch of saggy assed despots and that they didn’t owe them their time and attention.  But there was a fear in their eyes that defied reason and it was in those movements that I realized to what extent socialism had taken hold in America.

The guilt about possessing wealth starts in public school.  During those same school levy campaigns the general philosophy of the pro tax advocates was one much more at home in Jack Ma’s home country of communist China than in the United States and several generations of people have now been trained to believe that their wealth creation efforts are bad unless they give more money to schools, charities and the needy.  But what never gets mentioned in those same schools is the reason that people become needy in the first place.  Capitalism is routinely attacked in public education institutions which is as stupid as attacking the nature of a human heart for beating in a chest.  Capitalism is the heartbeat of the American economy and it needs to be defended not avoided.

One of my favorite local restaurants in West Chester is the Jags Steakhouse.  It is one of the most expensive dining experiences in the city of Cincinnati and offers some of the best food around.  Michelle Brown in 2013 was voted with the best chef award and she deserves it.  What she puts on a plate is sheer art and worth the $30 to $50 dollars it costs to eat there.  A typical dinner for two will cost anywhere from $200 dollars per couple to around $1000 depending on what kind of wine is used during dining.  And of all my visits during all times of a day—during lunch, during dinner rush, or even late in the evening after a movie the restaurant is thumping with business.  The dining rooms are divided up nicely allowing customers to space themselves out in relative privacy.  The staff from the front podium, to the valet parking to the floor management is always spot-on attentive.  But it’s not just the food that I love—it’s the honesty.  Inside the Jags restaurant capitalism is embraced without fear and I often think that places like that should be a model the rest of the world copies, not resents.

But outside of the parking lot of that fine establishment comes the utterances of the jealous.  When the word Jags is mentioned to the typical gas station attendant they think of the movers and shakers of society and there is a bit of scorn in their dialogue.   That scorn is the hatred of pure capitalism and the sometimes crony capitalism where business owners take a member of government to dinner at Jags to win them over to their side of an argument to get some regulation approved that otherwise wouldn’t occur.  The capitalist often believes they must do such things to stay in business—and they also believe that they must toe some line of progressive belief to avoid a boycott against their businesses which is a real shame.  The outside of Jags to those who are more socialist in their political beliefs than capitalist looks menacing and uninviting.  Because of the cost of entry, many don’t even attempt to dine there.  But once inside, those who are willing to pay such prices for food are typically capitalists in some regard or another and at least while they are at Jags—are not afraid to flaunt it a bit.  It is that standard that I think I like the best—there is an expectation of excellence the moment you step into the parking lot and I find it refreshing.  That experience is often worth a $500 meal when a similar experience could be had for under $100 in a rival restaurant.  Chef Michelle Brown is worth that extra margin and the management at Jags unapologetically embraces capitalism making it in my opinion to be the finest place to eat in the Midwest including many of the offerings in Chicago.  What puts that restaurant over the top is its embrace of capitalism and trickledown economics—which is now becoming fashionable in communist China of all places by Jack Ma.

Without America Jack Ma would have been just another penniless dreamer, just as every government worker in the United States would be destitute if not for the taxes looted off American enterprise for jobs created to further the grips of bureaucracy.  The people who make those American enterprises in the Midwest can often be found dining at Jags on any given night and are a cut above the rest in the way they think.  It is good to sit around such people who at least during dinner service are not afraid to flaunt their wealth and excess.  At Jags they are not afraid of reporters quoting them with a socialist slant to their articles and can relax a bit and be themselves.  But it shouldn’t take a nice restaurant to bring this out in them, they should possess that honesty at the grocery, at public meetings, and at the gas station because capitalism is a standard everyone else in the world should be measured against.  It is a bar that people should rise up to meet, not to chastise because they are too lazy to reach up to the challenge.

Capitalism is mostly an invention of America and it needs its protectors.  Limbaugh is right; Jack Ma should not be the most vocal defender in the world of trickledown economics.  Government parasites don’t create jobs that actually make wealth; they only make jobs that confiscate the wealth that others make.  The people who routinely eat at Jags actually create the jobs that drive an economy and they should not feel that they must hide in a darkened dining room just to be among their own kind.  It is not their fault that most people want to be slugs—and they should not feel guilty to show their excesses.  Expensive dresses, watches, and cars are signs that a person has been more productive than what they personally consume as people—which means their efforts have a trickledown effect to all sectors of the economic spectrum from the poor and needy to the young and hungry.  Without the efforts of the capitalist, nothing happens.  This is a concept refined in America.  It doesn’t need a Chinese guy to explain it to the world—and it doesn’t require the endorsement of the official communist country of China.  It is they who are late to the party and it’s about time that America defend itself once and for all, and stop hiding in the shadows.  Bring Jags to the world, not the world to Jags.  Chef Michelle Brown is already busy enough.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

A Little Slice of Heaven: The Millennium Falcon up close and personal

On more than one occasion I have discussed the Batman film Dark Knight Rises as possessing an ability to change cultural opinions in a very dramatic way. I have said the same about the new Superman: Man of Steel. And of course I have professed on for pages and pages the importance of Star Wars and its dire warnings of institutional corruption and need for individual atonement. So it is not a surprise to see the director of the new Star Wars film having fun with the director of the next Superman/Batman film with careful social media plugs that have been going on for weeks. They know what these films mean to several generations of fans—and they are doing a good job of stoking the fires of mythology further. But J.J. Abrams went to another level when he released his latest video of a full scale Millennium Falcon from the set of the new Star Wars film that combined the Batmobile from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy to it. It was exciting to see as the detail on the movie prop was exceedingly meticulous—which was the point of the video which prompted the following reaction from the online site, Clever Movies:

Star Wars VII director JJ Abrams shows off the new/old Millennium Falcon and reveals a connection to a certain Dark Knight. If you’ve been on the internet in the last few weeks, you’ve probably noticed a slew of pics and videos have surfaced showing off the full scale version of Han Solo’s famous ride, the Millennium Falcon that will be part of next year’s Star Wars Episode VII. Well, it looks like director JJ Abrams has seen them too and decided it was time to show off the ship that “made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs” on his terms. Abrams released a video titled “Hunka Junk” on his official Bad Robot channel that shows a close-up view of the Falcon while the classic Star Wars music plays. But things aren’t exactly as they appear as the music quickly changes we pan around the ship. If you don’t recognize the music, it’s the theme to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy and as the camera comes to rest underneath the ship, we see Batman’s Tumbler has now become a fixture of the Falcon.

Now, for those of you wondering why on Earth the Batmobile would be on the Millennium Falcon, it’s all part of a Star Wars/Batman/Superman mashup that Abrams and Batman v Superman director Zack Snyder have been playing throughout production on both films. It all started back in July when Snyder tweeted this image of Henry Cavill dressed as a Sith Lord with the caption “#SuperJedi”. Abrams followed that with a photo of new Star Wars cast member John Boyega dressed as Batman holding a blaster with the caption “#BOYEGAMAN”. Snyder than tweeted out an image of Batman and R2-D2 together in a scene resembling that from A New Hope a few weeks later. Abrams countered with his own droid inspired photo featuring C3PO as The Caped Crusader. Things seemed to die down until Snyder once again tweeted out this photo over the weekend. It features a Stormtrooper being arrested by Gotham’s finest with the new Batmobile in view. The photo was a response to recent rumors that one of the Batmobile’s had went missing from the set. It was that photo that lead to today’s Millennium Falcon reveal. These Star Wars/Batman/Superman mashups are definitely unconventional, but considering both filmmakers are notoriously protective when it comes to set leaks, it’s a fun way to tease fans with details from the films and just gives us all a major nerdgasm.

In the past the Millennium Falcon was built for shots in the original trilogy, but certainly not to the detail that Abrams was showing off. The detail was excessive and was a small example of what fans of the new film can expect from the new Star Wars film. I can’t say how many times I have looked at Millennium Falcon models and wondered about what all the hoses and pipes would possibly do on that ship. I once stood at the actual model of the Falcon at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. trying to look at all the detail underneath the ship in the very area showed off by Abrams just to see what was connected to what and trying to figure out what everything did. But I never imagined that there would ever be a giant model built of the Falcon to this scale where such detail was committed to the smallest detail. That was what Abrams was showing off, and it was quite enticing. I have watched the video now well over 100 times in just one day and I’m not done. It is excessively exciting.

This is just a sample of things to come. It is a very exciting time indeed.

Rich Hoffman  

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Steve Almond’s Salon Review of ‘Atlas Shrugged Part III’: Rush Limbaugh’s Dream

Whenever one of these Atlas Shrugged films hits the marketplace or something along the same lines—the hard core left reveals their true beliefs.  Out of all the negative reviews of Atlas Shrugged Part III by progressive types one by the ultra liberal Salon Magazine writer Steve Almond jumped out as exceptional for all the wrong reasons.  Of course, being like a young twenty something child who thinks they rolled over in the morning and knew everything about the world there was to know because somebody told them so—the typical New York liberal believes the rest of the world is driven by the same vagina minded passivity which motivated them—and they actually believe that all counter thoughts to their progressive tripe is “fringe.”  The fly-over states to the west of New York City is a scary place full of dangerous right-wingers who listen to talk radio—not readers of Salon, or the European salivating New York Times.   But on rare occasions they find a way to get their thoughts down in writing for all to see, allowing some measure of their disjointed philosophy to be measured.

Below is a recent article written by Almond as referenced by a Rush Limbaugh dream disguised as a review of Atlas Shrugged Part III.  It is hilarious and before anybody at Salon decides to take it down at any point in the future, I have put it below including the link. I even provided the link to Almonds anti-football book.  (Yes, he is on a campaign against American football as well).  It is hard to believe there are people out there who know so little about the world, yet think they know so much.  So for proof, please read this Salon article in its entirety below.

Here’s what I think happened. I think Rush Limbaugh had a lousy day at the office and drowned his sorrows in bad Mexican food — something along the lines of three El Charrito’s Enchilada Grande packs — and then I think Rush fell asleep on his sofa and had a beautiful dream.

In this dream, all the most powerful and talented Americans finally get fed up with big government and its bureaucratic parasites and follow a hunky guy named John Galt to a gorgeous valley in Colorado, where together they declare themselves on strike against the government. This means they get to live in harmony and throw awesome Caucasian dinner parties and invent miraculous technological devices and pay for everything with shiny gold coins.

And because this is all happening inside Rush Limbaugh’s mind — with its misty yearnings for underage third-world prostitutes and endless Oxycontin — the production values of this particular dream have the quality of an off-brand soap opera.

It’s all pretty awesome. Weaselly government leaders meet in back rooms filled with cigar smoke to plot new ways to steal money from rich people and nationalize industry and force scientists to invent torture devices so as to control the population. Then they swish brandy around in snifters and blow smoke rings.

Meanwhile, back in paradise, this hot babe named Dagny, who runs American’s only remaining train company, crashes her plane and John Galt finds her and carries her back to his pad where he doesn’t have sex with her — not just yet. First, he’s got to introduce her to all his badass friends, like the doctor who examines her with his killer new medical gizmo and says, “It’s amazing what can be accomplished without red tape!” Or the mom who explains that she’s home-schooling her kids because “I wouldn’t put them in an educational system that doesn’t teach them to think.” That’s maybe the coolest thing about this particular utopia: Everyone speaks in Republican National Committee talking points.

Unfortunately, Dagny has to leave paradise before she even gets to have sex with John Galt, because the government has nationalized her train company and is running it into the ground. Bummer. In fact, the entire country is falling to pieces without men like Galt, who is both a brilliant engineer and a professional hair model. But that serves America right because, as Galt explains, “the powerful try to make us feel guilty for our success.” And that is so totally not cool.

Alas, Dagny leaves the valley and heads back to grubby old America and it’s just as poorly lit and effed-up as you’d expect, though she does get to have sex with John Galt (who comes to rescue her), an act of coitus that is performed on her desk. This sort of eases the comedown of living in a reeking dystopia.

Then John Galt gives a big speech on TV during which he asks some tough questions of the American people, who are mostly huddled outside pawn shops staring at televisions through the security bars. “Have you noticed that as everything in your world seems to decline, one thing still grows?” he asks. Everyone kind of nods. “It is the power of your rulers. None of their plans and directives have solved your problems or made your life better. The only result has been the increased control over you at the cost of your freedom.” He goes on to explain how business leaders got tired of being called “greedy exploiters” and decided to follow him. Why? Because they finally “recognized the honor they deserved and rebelled against the guilt you wanted them to feel.”

It’s not exactly “The Gettysburg Address,” but the media response is off the charts. Sean Hannity appears on-screen, looking engorged with gravitas. He loves the speech. Glenn Beck salutes Galt’s moxy. Ron Paul arises from his Cycronic crypt to predict the End Times, which is sort of a reflex at this point. The crowds outside the pawn shops start chanting John Galt’s name. It’s a movement.

Naturally, government thugs capture Galt and drag him to a secret lab where they strip off his shirt and punish him using their special new Torture Machine, which involves a lot of sparks. Galt looks a lot like Jesus Christ, if you can imagine Christ with stubble and chinos. But then Dagny and her pals rescue Galt and all the ubermenschen fly off together to their mountain hideaway where, Rush is pretty sure, they eventually build a PGA-quality golf course and hire Playboy Bunnies to wax your balls.

Except — spoiler alert! — Rush wakes up before this last part can happen. Worse yet, he has diarrhea. The beautiful thing is that even in the midst of his diarrhea, Rush is able to get online and right there in his email in-box is an invitation to the premiere of the new film, “Atlas Shrugged III.”

And now El Rushbo realizes why his dream felt so gosh darned familiar: because it’s the plot of the third and final part of Ayn Rand’s 1957 potboiler, which will debut tomorrow, Sept. 12, mostly in those precincts of the country where citizens still call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression.

If this were an actual movie review I would, at this point, pretend to give a shit about the film’s quality. But as anyone who sits through “Atlas Shrugged III” will tell you, the filmmakers themselves don’t give a shit about the film’s quality.

Back in 2011, when the first installment came out, most reviewers agreed to regard it as a “major motion picture,” though it was funded not by a studio but by an exercise machine mogul named John Aglialoro. As a piece of art, and a form of entertainment, “Atlas Shrugged I” flopped hard.

But if there’s one thing the conservative movement of this country has proved, it’s that it can move even the most imaginatively inert product. With the ardent promotional support of Fox News and the Tea Party’s corporate arm, the film managed to earn out in video. And thus we got a second “Atlas,” with an all-new cast and even lower production values. This final chapter has an exhausted, obligatory air. It’s like watching the final phases of a botched plastic surgery.

The director — and co-writer — is a man named James Manera, whose previous work includes a documentary about music and an episode of the television show “Nash Bridges,” which he directed in 1996. I think I’ve said enough about the movie.

The larger curiosity here is Ayn Rand herself. It would be easy to write her off as a demented Cold War hack no longer relevant to our cultural and political discourse. But that would be a huge mistake. Because Rand’s slobbering conception of laissez-faire capitalism is not only alive and well, it remains a galvanizing ideological force.

Consider the young darling of conservative circles, former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Ryan worships Rand. He once gave a speech confessing that he went into public service because of her. He also asked his staffers to read her novels, so they could learn about the free market. During the 2012 campaign, Ryan did a good job of playing down his devotion, because Rand was an atheist.

But her fingerprints are all over his famous Budget Plan. To the “takers” in our society — the aged and the sick — Ryan would provide rationed healthcare. Federal budgets for education, transportation, energy and veteran services would be slashed. The rich, meanwhile, would be handed billions in tax cuts.

The whole idea is to do like John Galt says: obliterate any restraints on personal greed. The Ryan Plan is a document so enthusiastic in its fraudulence, so casual in its cruelty, and so certain of its own virtue that it could only have been dreamed up by a man born into money, educated by Ayn Rand, and given finishing lessons in Congress.

For all the low-budget absurdity of this new movie, the famous speech Rand penned for John Galt back in 1957 still stands as the Rosetta Stone of modern conservatism. This country wasn’t built by men who sought handouts! Sweep aside those parasites of subsidized classrooms! On and on Galt yammers, forever propelled by grievance and self-pity.

His vision of capitalism is a cartoon that plays over and over again on Fox News: no poverty or environmental ruin or lack of equal opportunity. Mercy is a mug’s game in this world, a false impulse. The pursuit of wealth, by contrast, is a form of heroic purity. If only bureaucrats would get out of the way, our intrepid industrialists would beat a path to paradise and leave the moochers to rot. Rand’s mission — now taken up by Ryan and company — is to present capitalism not as an economic philosophy, but an impeccable moral system.

The writer and critic Gore Vidal characterized the philosophy of Ayn Rand as “nearly perfect in its immorality” and a number of critics described “Atlas Shrugged” (the novel) as a narrative driven by hate.

But my take on the book, as well as the movies it spawned, is just the opposite. For all the contempt that Rand (and Galt and Ryan) aim at the government, the predominant emotion they express is one of unbridled self-love. Rand herself was a kind of golem of narcissistic excess, a woman with delusions of grandeur. And she tapped into the crushing insecurity of the wealthy, the manner in which they must constantly remind themselves how much they deserve their privilege.

What animates these people and drives their chintzy propaganda isn’t rage at all, but a kind of annihilating self-hatred.

Rush is going to love “Atlas Shrugged III.”

It’s not just a movie to him. It’s a dream come true.

Steve Almond’s new book, “Against Football” will come out next month.

MORE STEVE ALMOND.

 

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/11/sean_hannity_and_glenn_beck_in_a_bizarre_ayn_rand_fever_dream/

That is just hilarious!  Amazingly short-sighted, ignorant, presumptuous, and impossibly foolish—a piece of work which belongs exclusively to Steve Almond and Salon Magazine.   Please visit their site at the link provided.  They likely need the web traffic, so help them out with some pity for the good laugh.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Treachery of Mr. Thompson: Thorium’s tenacious enemy

For me, there were several moments in the new film Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who is John Galt which was particularly powerful.  But the most powerful attribute of the film based on the 1957 novel by the same name was the actual electric motor invented by John Galt which runs nearly self-sustaining and provides all the power needed in Galt’s Gulch.  In the film when the police come to arrest Galt and take him to see Mr. Thompson they attempt to break into the room where the magic motor is kept only to discover that there is nothing there.  This was a neat concept as the motor seemed to be hidden from the world through a dimensional fold in space-time continuity which further substantiates the quality of the John Galt figure as an expert in physics.  In the film it was science fiction, but little do many know that such science is actually quite factual.

Several years ago I wrote an article about the technology of Thorium—which has the ability to provide power—extremely clean energy, and cheap to every home in the world.  A revolution in Thorium could give the simple hut in the middle of Africa or Brazil electric power without complicated infrastructure, and costly imports from foreign suppliers.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.    By clicking that link, you will see dear reader that the kind of energy shown in Who Is John Galt is not just science fiction, but is entirely rooted in reality.  But as usual, the reason that we do not have such technologies are the same ones provided in the film—the desire for power by characters like Mr. Thompson prevent technology from arriving to the marketplace because it denies the intellectually insecure control over the delivery method.

I have been a student of management methods for most of my life and I know all too well the cause of most misery in the world—its self-inflicted neurosis by the power-hungry to control the many through laws, technology, and other forms of manipulation.  There are many who work for organizations like the Red Cross—who get invited to Washington parties due to their altruistic endeavors overseas who would despise seeing a Thorium reactor powering a village in Africa.  Deep down inside they want African people dependent on charity organizations to bring food and medical supplies to the poor so that they have something beneficial to do with their lives.  They want the death and misery because they believe it will get them into heaven through some distorted grasp of Biblical teaching.  They cannot accept that by giving the people of Africa power that they might care for themselves—therefore not needing the West to care for them at all.  So they deem Thorium technology dangerous and a threat to the earth—so to take the debate off the table.

Another set of characters who do not want Thorium power, or anything like it, are those who work in the dirty energy business—oil and coal.  Although there are great uses for these energy providers today, at some point in the future—we can do better.  Thorium is but one potential source.  However, the energy industry does not want to alter their market plans—their labor unions don’t want the competition, so they lobby politicians to maintain the status quo.   Many publications against fuel sources like Thorium are created through this method—to scare the public into submission of dirty fuel forever—leaving greenie weenie activists plenty of ammunition to utilize against such industries as environmentally hazardous.  So in a stalemate between the environmentalists who believe the printed articles against Thorium and the dirty energy companies making great livings off the old technology—nothing happens.  After all, the goal of the typical progressives is not to advance forward as mankind but to make the developed world more like the undeveloped—to demonize technology until everyone lives in a kind of hut—like the poor Africans.  Watch the following video documentary about Thorium to learn much more.  

Since I wrote that article about Thorium nothing much has happened to advance the technology just as nothing much has happened regarding the Mollar flying car.  The technology is there to cure cancer, to fix bodies through regeneration, to have self-sustaining electrical power, to completely revolutionize the transportation industry—but what is in the way are too many people like Mr. Thompson in Atlas Shrugged Part III.  For those who criticize Atlas Shrugged, if people like John Galt were free to think and act without restriction, world hunger would be eliminated, poverty would be nearly eradicated, disease destroyed, cancer solved and society would advance greatly.  But the trouble is we allow people like Mr. Thompson to stand between us and fate.  We give them power because we fear the responsibility of it.  Mr. Thompson in the film Atlas III was a complete idiot, he does not fear that responsibility, but is addicted to the power it gives him making him an opposite menace.  There are many like him running governments and companies the world over and they are there because we fear what might happen when altruism is stripped from our reasoning.  Society fears not having problems that require charity—because their ideals of religion and good living have been defined by misery—and stupidity.

So it was wonderful to see the science fiction of a world where at least someone has broken through the shroud of foolishness and actually built a perpetual motor that runs off static electricity naturally existing in the world around us—which never ceases to run and does not need government, infrastructure, labor unions, or the Red Cross to operate.  As usual it is groups of people who stand in the way of what human beings can invent for themselves to advance their culture—but through advancement those who currently have power would lose it if they could not adapt to the changing circumstances.  It is those who run those groups who fear losing their power to the self-empowering technology that comes with invention.  It almost always comes down to poor management ability of personal and external resources and the secret desire to control those resources so that options are limited.  Some examples might be the fearful husband who tries to keep his wife lacking a car because he fears she may seek to cheat on him.  It doesn’t occur to him that if he were a better husband, that such temptations might be avoided.  So rather than deal with the effect of the cause, he denies the mechanism for performing the task out of fear of losing control of the wife.  The same might occur when a boss sees in a subordinate ability that might challenge their authority in the future, so they find ways to clip the wings of the subordinate through management tricks so to keep them grounded and under control.  This actually happens every day in virtually every place of business on the face of planet earth.  Or consider the lazy parent who attempts to make their children fearful of everything because they don’t want to get up off the couch to help teach a curious child—so they numb that curiosity with fear so that they can be free in the afternoon to catch Jerry Springer at 5 PM.

Governments run by people like Mr. Thompson have strangled our future through such methods and most accept that reality as a fact because they are beaten and defeated people intellectually crippled at birth by an anemic education system and faulty parents.  But a few, people who went to see Atlas Shrugged Part III and enjoyed it—even with all the flaws of the film technically were able to see the miracle of the John Galt motor and know that the possibility for such a thing is very real—and immensely intriguing.  I think I’m going to see that movie a few more times before it leaves the theater just for the pleasure of seeing such a world alive even in the fantasy of a darkened theater.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

11 Ways You Know You Live in a Country Run by Idiots: The sad truth of our modern age

 

There has been a lot of talk in the news lately about abused wives who stay with husbands who beat them—primarily due to the latest round of NFL domestic violence cases. The level of amazement persists from millions who wonder why gold digging women would stay with men who beat them routinely. But for the answer, all anyone need to do is look at themselves and wonder why they allow the same type of abuse when their government is doing the same on a larger scale. That abuse tends to be more psychological as opposed to physical, but it is still abuse and representative of a dysfunctional household. Below are 11 ways that you know you live in a country run by idiots prone to abuse. To continue to allow these idiots to have such power over the population is allow an abusive relationship to continue. Here they are:

1. If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally, you live in a country run by idiots.

2. If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion, you live in a country run by idiots.

3. If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor or check out a library book, but not to vote on who runs the government, you live in a country run by idiots.

4. If the government wants to ban stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines with more than ten rounds, but gives 20 F-16 fighter jets to the crazy leaders in Egypt, you live in a country run by idiots.

5. If, in the largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not a 24-ounce soda because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat, you live in a country run by idiots.

6. If an 80-year-old woman can be stripped searched by the TSA but a woman in a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched, you live in a country run by idiots.

7. If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more, you live in a country run by idiots.

8. If a seven-year old boy can be thrown out of grade school for saying his teacher’s “cute,” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable, you live in a country run by idiots.

9. If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government intrusion, while not working is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, subsidized housing and free cell phones, you live in a country run by idiots.

10. If the government’s plan for getting people back to work is to incentivize NOT working, with 99 weeks of unemployment checks and no requirement to prove they applied but can’t find work, you live in a country run by idiots.

11. If being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you more “safe” according to the government, you live in a country run by idiots.

There is no dispute in these assertions. Yet they continue and prosper—and the reason comes from the same people who point to the NFL and call for Rodger Goodell’s head for allowing domestic violence to occur from his players. The government is engaging in far worse abuses—yet we keep coming back time and time again. The reason is the same as the abused NFL wife—because people become comfortable even within abusive relationships as they function from low self-esteem—which a predator like the government will always take advantage of.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/10/glenn-beck-reads-11-ways-you-know-you-live-in-a-country-run-by-idiots/

 

Rich Hoffman  

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Grinding Hurt of Betrayal: John Aglialor’s ‘Atlas III’ interview with Nick Gillespie

The third and final installment, Who is John Galt? hits theaters on Friday, Sept. 12, 2014 and John Aglialoro sat down with Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie to discuss the completion of the Atlas Shrugged films, their negative critical reception, and the enduring influence of Ayn Rand’s thought. As usual when it comes to Gillespie, it was a good interview and covered a lot of ground. It is a tough task to adopt a film from a novel that means so much to so many people, yet a movie is the perfect gateway to bringing more people into the Objectivist philosophy. Many hard-core Rand fans from the novel want the salacious sex that Ayn Rand wrote about—which was greatly removed from John Aglialoro’s renditions. Personally, I’m grateful as the sex could easily overpower the story in such a movie and I appreciated the tastefulness that it was handled by the Atlas Shrugged trilogy.

http://reason.com/reasontv/2014/09/08/producer-john-aglialoro-on-ayn-rands-imp

Every time I watch Aglialoro in an interview it is easy to see the hurt behind his eyes. Like Rand, who thought that the unspoken and neglected businessmen would flock to her support of them after the release of her 1957 novel, most cowered in the darkness like idiots paralyzed by the political left into silence. Aglialoro during the second film premiered Atlas II in Washington D.C. right before the 2012 election. Not a single politician, not Ted Cruz, not Rand Paul and certainly not Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan showed up for the movie as they tried to maintain their political distance—so not to have people from the left call them names. Ryan had been an open Ayn Rand supporter before being put on the national ticket with Mitt Romney. Nobody from the political class showed up in Washington D.C. to show their support of a conservative leaning movie featuring ideals that the political right should have openly embraced with great enthusiasm. Republicans played it safe and guess what………….they lost in the 2012 elections all across the nation.

I have felt the bite of that kind of pain a time or two, most recently when I was on 700 WLW radio dealing with a controversy—a sexist accusation by my political enemies who were trying to the same smear tactic used against Rush Limbaugh and Mitt Romney at the time. Unlike those guys, I defended my position proudly. In 2012 I was a spokesman for a group standing against higher school taxes, which was a very unpopular position. I had in my circle a number of high-profile movers and shakers and was proud of them for supporting such a controversial topic. My plan with the pro tax people was in full swing, they were attacking our side by calling us greedy businessmen, so I attacked back with the truth—that a majority of the pro tax advocates were fat assed, out-of-touched parents. Of course they didn’t like it—because the truth hurt. I meant for it to. So I was on the air ready to defend our position and those prominent local businessmen and politicians sent a press release to the station while I was on the air distancing themselves from me. The controversy I didn’t mind at all. The betrayal did bother me. I shut off interviews for the rest of the day as I recalibrated my position. It hurt terribly to trust people then watch them fall for the old liberal tricks of guilt abasement. I couldn’t let that hurt come out in my public statements—which is a really tough thing to do when an entire city is ready to pounce on your every word.

The motivations of those fearful dissidents are the same at every spectrum, from Ayn Rand, to John Aglialoro, to me—we have all been left at the alter by those we were trying to help. It feels like being cheated on by a spouse—just as you are declaring your love for that significant other, you learn that they have been doing the horizontal shuffle with the very people you are fighting—and it hurts. It hurts whether it is sex or politics—in both cases you end up screwed. It is that screwed look that Aglialoro has on his face with each interview he does. He was much more hopeful after Atlas I did respectable opening night numbers, but by the time Atlas III hit theaters he had a hurt look on his face from all the betrayals he had experienced over the last couple of years, while making the movie. For him he continued to make the movies even though very few supported the endeavor. The enemies of the movie were perplexed as to why he continued even though the films were box office failures and did not have majority support from the public. What those same people did not understand was that John Aglialoro made the movies for himself, not for the public. He did it to accomplish a task, not to win approval as a second-hander. Since most of society functions as second-handers, they don’t understand Aglialoro, or his movie. So there is sadness when he talks about the films. He knows as the words leave his mouth that nobody really is going to understand why he made the films—yet he does it anyway in a hope that something will change—someday.

Atlas III won’t be any different. People who understand it will love it, various others who have skin in some type of political game, even within Ayn Rand circles, will hate it. They’ll hate it for Aglialoro’s point of view in making the movie—they’ll complain about the lack of sex, the lack of depth, the lack of good actors, the lack of budget, the lack of public support, the lack of technical aptitude, and every lack of anything else they can think of. But what they can’t accuse John Aglialoro of is a lack of heart and determination. What he did was hard and deserves admiration in the face of much hurt which only those who have been betrayed in a similar fashion can understand.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Atlas Shrugged: Now, Non-Fiction

I’ve been involved with literary driven “think-tanks” for several occasions in years past covering everything from James Joyce to Thomas Mann. All those authors were wonderful in their own way, even the collectivist Victor Hugo and Russian recluse Leo Tolstoy. But they were not as good as Ayn Rand who changed the literary narrative with her larger-than-life characters. Rand’s characters are not like Marvel Comics superheroes, they are every day people lacking magical powers, but they are non-the-less super. They are an inspiration to all who ever wanted to be a superhero as a corporate businessman or woman—and continue to resonate particularly in America as a mold to follow. Ayn Rand is one of the most prolific and most important writers in American history which is saying a lot. Her work of most importance was Atlas Shrugged and began as a kind of science fiction fantasy in 1957 and has proven itself to be astonishingly prophetic in 2014 just prior to the third release of a movie adoption based on John Aglialoro’s interpretation of the novel. The movie hits theaters on September 12th, but the book continues to sell, and sell, and sell because the content which appeared sensational at first—and unrealistic is occurring almost on queue just as Rand always thought it would. The producers of the new movie have put together a wonderful little documentary which features clips from the new film seen below called Atlas Shrugged: Now, Non-Fiction and is well worth watching. In addition to clips from ASP3, this video includes commentary from liberty leaders including Ron Paul, Matt Kibbe, Jonathan Hoenig, Phil Valentine, David Kelley and more.

Atlas Shrugged is not for everyone. It is however for the kind of people who work hard and try every day to be the best they can be. If you are the kind of employee who usually works later at the office and is the first to arrive in the morning—you will like Atlas Shrugged. If you are the kind of person who runs over rate in a union shop—even though there is intense opposition against you for doing so, Atlas Shrugged is for you. If you are the kind of person who is constantly hounded by family and friends to step down off your “high horse” so that you are more “likable” and approachable, you will like and enjoy Atlas Shrugged. However, if you are the kind of person who hates those who do all or even part of the above—you will hate Atlas Shrugged and will do everything in your power to disgrace the literary work from being recognized as a literary endeavor.

For the same reason that the co-worker who feels guilty by leaving the office before the star of the company does attempts to put pressure on that person by saying “it’s time to get out of here” Atlas Shrugged is slammed and ridiculed.   Not because it is a bad novel written poorly—but because it makes guilty people feel bad about themselves. They feel bad because they have sold out. Their ideal of a superhero has been regulated to someone who is bit by a magic spider—or someone who comes from another planet. They don’t look in their mirror and see anything super about themselves and they are too lazy to develop it on their own. Atlas Shrugged   shows how average people are super just by having values and fighting to maintain those values. It is also about how it is that adherence to value which makes the engine of the world run, culturally, economically, and philosophically.

When John Galt proclaims that he will stop the engine of the world in the new film version titled Atlas Shrugged Part III he is stating that by removing his value from an organization, or society in general that the parasites of reality will have nowhere to hide and civilization will collapse. What prevents this collapse from occurring is that the few protect the masses with their values. But over time it gets harder and harder leaving the looted few to eventually become depleted and perish. The masses expect this sacrifice to occur—they expect the few to serve the many and those with value to give it to them in their vacancy. It is this belief that destroys the world and why the classic novel Atlas Shrugged has now been declared non-fiction—because it has all come true.

The people who hate Atlas Shrugged are also the same people who hate those who try to be good—too good. They are advocates for complacency—for setting the bar low so that they can easily achieve success in life. Ayn Rand’s novel points to that tendency as the invisible destroyer of the world and spits on it placing value where it deservedly always belonged with the heroes of creation—those who work late, early and often—who don’t live their lives through others, but in spite of the efforts to stop them. That hatred is very real. The masses of existence—who advocate so loudly for democracy are the same people who wish to believe that because they outnumber the truly good they can capture the definition of good, and bad, profitable, and unprofitable, and of success or failure. Atlas Shrugged was not written for those people—it was written for those who see heroic deeds in getting up in the morning to face the troubles of the world as an individual without apologizing for working every day to do the best in every aspect of their lives that they can. Ayn Rand’s heroes are not drunks, sexual deviants, or crooked politicians. They are not truly fearful of anything—because they know that it is they who are ultimately in control—so they trust themselves to overcome any problem that comes their way. This gives the heroes a god-like presence in the Atlas Shrugged novel as interpreted by the weak, frightened, and complacent.

Atlas Shrugged was so brilliant because it goes literally against thousands of years of sacrificial belief by the human race. Rand could have played it safe and given the world a novel reminiscent of War and Peace. But she didn’t instead she wrote an epic book of similar length and content but along the way tackled directly the philosophical failure inherit in human beings ridiculous belief that achievement of anything is caused by “sacrifice.” Rand challenges that premise and her heroes refuse it revealing the true success of all societies that prosper. It is literally the best kept secret—and Ayn Rand exploited it putting it in story form so that it would be easy to understand. It has taken literally a half of a century for most of America to figure out the meaning of Atlas Shrugged. Even today, after decades of contemplation, only a handful of the population anywhere in the world understand the message because in any company, any institution, any endeavor what-so-ever, there are only a few who work 12 hour days for the joy of it, get up before the sun even considers rising, because they are trying to squeeze more life out of daylight once it arrives, and do good work not for the pat on the head, or even a pay raise—but because it makes them feel good to do good work.

Atlas Shrugged is essentially the first major literary work in human history that recognizes the benefit of good work and productivity over the emotional pleas of the democratic masses who lobby with every effort to stop the productive who make them feel guilty for being less than robust. It is for that reason that Atlas Shrugged continues to draw scorn from intelligentsia because they want a monopoly on social opinion built upon the foundations of laziness. It is also why Atlas Shrugged is only playing in a few hundred movie theaters and why even in those theaters there will be only 5 or 6 groups of people seeing the movie. The people attending will tend to be the last to leave at their places of business, and the first to arrive, they work hard and take pride in doing a good job—and they can relate to the kind of society that John Galt builds in Atlantis during the film. And as every organization in the country knows, there are always those few who do most of the work. Atlas Shrugged is made for them, not the other idiots who stand at a time clock five minutes before the end of a day and flee to the parking lot like escaped convicts once their work is over for the day only to complain and bitch about how sucky their lives are for the rest of the evening. What happens when people stop doing the extra work for the pure enjoyment of it? You get the events of Atlas Shrugged—now-nonfiction.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com