Tag: Ayn Rand

The Rise of the Resistance is Now Open: What a marvel of techical mythology

I plan to geek out on Star Wars for the next several weeks. I’m sure I’ll cover other current events as my readers expect, but for my own enjoyment, there is a lot to enjoy as a Star Wars fan that I think is very relevant to our modern world and the philosophies that spawn off them. Star Wars if you peel away the stories in space, the black and white view of good and evil, the fairy tale aspect of the mythology is unique in that its essentially about the tyranny of rules and how humans crave the freedom to be whimsical and untethered to the concoctions of authority. As the new ride opened up in Galaxy’s Edge called Rise of the Resistance and I watched the live streams of the opening ceremony, I couldn’t help but think of how wonderfully unifying the whole thing was, as people of all kinds of political backgrounds could at least agree on something showing that we all have more in common than not. I had been looking forward to the opening of this Disney attraction for a very long time writing about it way back in 2012 with great gusto. Well now its here, and I have some opinions about it that are worth talking about.

Even as a little kid I loved the making of Star Wars as much so, if not more than the movies themselves. I see the creative process as an opportunity to break previous rules and to innovate and that has always been at the core of all Star Wars experiences that are good, whether the endeavor is in literature, film, television, amusement attractions, comics, video games—Star Wars is always best when they are breaking the rules of previous assumptions and the hope when Disney bought the franchise from George Lucas back in 2012 was that something like this Rise of the Resistance attraction, and the Galaxy’s Edge land in Disneyland and Disney World would actually happen. And when it did, the rules would be pushed to the creative limit and we’d all get something very special.

On the opening day of this new ride the traffic was backed up at the gates of Hollywood Studios well before 4 AM in the morning. And the rides for the entire day were already booked up before 8 AM. The energy and anticipation for this ride attraction is astonishing and for good reason, the technical achievements that were made to make it were mind bending cool and the best that modern technology could utilize. It’s something that only Disney as a company could do due to their massive cash reserves and collection of very imaginative people within their Imagineering group. It has taken a while for the Disney Company to figure out their role in this new ownership, and to step beyond the temptations to limit the scope to modern political concerns and social justice perspective, but its quite clear to me that with all their efforts at Galaxy’s Edge and the story of Batuu, they have done a great job. Over the past several months I have read all the comics about this exciting new land at Disney World, read the books, The Black Spire and The Resistance Reborn, and I have been excited to see how the media company would be able to tie all these elements together into a grand modern mythology.

For perspective, I am the kind of guy who geeked out in Canterbury, England because I was able to walk the sites of one of my favorite books, The Canterbury Tales. I feel much the same way when it comes to James Joyce and is work in and around Dublin, Ireland. Wherever great acts of thought and imagination have taken place I find reverence there because for me, that is one of the most important things in the entire world, creativity of thought and action. And typically, we only see those kinds of things spring out in the world through some great literary work, or a good movie or musical piece. And we go through our entire lives and see such things only here and there and not too often. But with Star Wars, we see a lot of creativity and we always have. The stories are always about the perils of tyranny and living under the thumb of too many rules where individual rights are smashed to give way to a compliant society. But that’s not it, Star Wars both in front of the camera and behind is about unleashing the imagination so that something bigger and better could be born, and people can feel that even if they can’t articulate what it is they feel.

When people rushed to be the first to ride Rise of the Resistance, which is without question the most technical ride in the history of the world up to this point, they were pushing to touch this aspect of Star Wars that makes it so special. The ability to enjoy something that is specific to human beings, not only to think of a story that communicates to so many people across so many demographic barriers, but to entertain ourselves with its complete immersive environment. As I say that I have been playing a lot of Battlefront II with my oldest grandson lately which is just another layer of this new mythology. Additionally, in November I took a long weekend and shut off the world professionally to just play the new Star Wars game, Fallen Order, which was wonderfully entertaining. To be able to explore these places in a video game environment to me is a jaw dropping experience given that my background was at the start of the video game age. What they can do these days to me is amazing. But to step out of the movies, books and video games and into a real environment like what they have created with Rise of the Resistance at Disney World is nothing short of awe inspiring.

It gives me a lot of hope for the human race whenever these big Star Wars events happen and I can see so many people excited about it. I enjoy conventions and big video game releases because of this very element, but its been a long time, if ever that I’ve seen anything like the energy that came out of the opening of Rise of the Resistance at Disney World. The energy of the participants was amazing as viewed by the videos within this article. To see the level of detail that the Imagineers at Disney World were able to pull off with this attraction is more than impressive, but what’s better is that so many people appreciated it to the extent that some of them were willing to wait for days to ride the ride. Yet Disney deserves the credit for putting their money where their mouth was. They spent a billion dollars on this attraction and it shows, which was a massive investment on their part into their fans. People can complain that Disney is too expensive and that they are a giant media corporation that has a monopoly on talent. But they gained all that prestige through being good at what they do. And its not often that people can get such a return on investment as we are all getting with Rise of the Resistance, the ride.

Rich Hoffman

A Look Behind the Democrat Veil: There is nothing but smoke, not even a mirror

My history with lunatics, sword swallowers, and magicians helps me more often than all the people I know with doctorates and master’s degrees in understanding the truly life ending behavior of the Democrats, which might not be covered by anybody else in the entire world, even Rush Limbaugh. And so it went that the strategy of the entire DNC was on full display Thursday, December 5th as Nancy Pelosi announced that her congress would move forward with impeachment of President Trump. The less observed truth to their entire strategy was revealed by a fight at a rally for Mayor Pete, Joe Biden called a guy “fat” as he sparred with him over his own corruption scandal in Ukraine, and Hillary Clinton attempted to reset her dismal personality on the Howard Stern Show, almost simultaneously. In short, the objective is to get rid of Trump with impeachment so that one of the DNC candidates can make some ground, then try to create their own Trump moments to capture the attention of voters. The only problem is, they have no idea what they are doing or why people voted for Trump in the first place.

Democrats are trying to be Trump without having the authenticity of character that made so many people vote for him for president in 2016. They think they can play act some of his character traits, like going onto Howard Stern and “winging” it with flamboyance and bravado and that suddenly it might catapult them into the hearts and minds of America. But the crowds tell the whole story, what was astonishing in both Joe Biden’s townhall where he fought with the old man at that event challenging him to a push up contest and calling him names, or at the Mayor Pete event that sounded like it only had about four people there including the old lady who tried to hit a protestor with her walker. There just isn’t any excitement for these people yet the media who are fully in on the act, are trying to make them appear legitimate, but its not working.

In Biden’s case, the entire impeachment premise that the Democrats have put forth assume that Joe Biden was Donald Trump’s rival for the 2020 seat. But that guy isn’t in the running, he’s certainly not in first place. After watching him over these last several weeks, the polls that show him as the front runner must be phony, because if that is the best that the DNC have, (which I think he is) then they are in real trouble. Talk about a gaffe driven loser, between his comments about kids jumping in his lap and wanting to rub his hairy legs, then this mess with calling this guy at his townhall fat, Biden will never survive the one on one debates with Trump. And apparently everyone knows it, which is why they are trying to at least tarnish Trump with some impeachment scandal that is completely phony, so they can hope to have a shit shots chance in Hell at getting some votes in the next election. But I say it’s over for them before they can even get started because what they are trying to do is way too obvious. They don’t have any original ideas of their own, or personalities that inspire leadership, so they are copying elements of Trump without understanding why it worked in the first place. It’s one of the most pathetic things that I’ve ever seen, especially taken not individually, but rather in the context of the DNC presidential strategy for which they are all trying to play some part.

Hillary was right about some parts of Trump’s success, he did do interviews with anybody anywhere, even in his pajamas. His access to the media was explosive, but even if she had done the same, she still wouldn’t have won, and here’s why. Nobody cared about what she had to say. Nobody wanted to hear about her stupid glass ceiling of victimization womanhood, nobody wanted to hear her cough every five seconds. And nobody wanted to hear the way she really screws up saying “R’s.” She’s the crazy working mom that nobody wants to play at her house, because she’s so overbearing, stiff, and unimaginative. And she’s what the Democrats thought of as their best.

We’ve watched for a few years now the Democrats attempt put out on the market what they think voters want espousing issues that they hope people care about, like marijuana legalization, socialism for all, and open borders. Yet their people are really just used up pot heads who don’t have any pizzazz because they are cardboard cut-outs of what they think are real people. Trump is a complete person with a big personality who is where he is in life due to his wild life and many wins that have shaped him into an interesting character who can get things done. People want an achiever, not a copycat—they want authenticity. What’s insulting is that these people, Joe Biden, Clinton, Mayor Pete—and all the rest of them both in front of the camera and behind—and with all their educations, professional experience, and power in politics—they can’t come up with anything better. And that is the sad truth for them.

Then what’s worse is that while they feel they have to copy elements of Trump from 2016 to win some votes and get their base excited about something, they have conspired with a phony claim of corruption, for which Joe Biden is actually guilty of, to remove Trump from office before the election even happens because they have no other cards to play. If you think of things that way, the whole situation is entirely pathetic. That they think we are all that stupid is even worse. Because they do think that little of us.

You can tell a lot about people when the pressure is on, how they manage the stress. Biden folds like a piece of wet paper. He will never be able to go toe to toe with anybody in prime time, he can’t even do it when the media is rigged in his favor. Hillary already failed to match Trump in an election. She tried, but she was exhausted. In hindsight, she may want to do more interviews, and attend more campaign stops to match the Trump effort, but she just doesn’t have the health and stamina to do it. Talking about it is one thing, doing it is quite another. It takes a lot more than just going on Howard Stern, you must have something to say that people actually want to hear. And the rest of the DNC candidates aren’t any better off. Nancy Pelosi is even in on the game trying to copy elements of the Tea Party in her impeachment delivery sounding more like Butters from South Park than some historian evoking the sentiment of our founding documents. She misses the mark as bad if not worse than the rest of them because she thinks that by copying the Tea Party, which is where Donald Trump came from in the first place, that she will inspire action toward her Democrats. Which of course is the worst miscalculation in the history of politics. Taken all together the DNC is a disaster without a plan, character, or original ideas. And copying what does work won’t save them.

Rich Hoffman

The Coastal Communists of Michael Bloomberg: Understanding what makes America and why we must defend it

I don’t watch normal television much. I still carry cable because I want the option, especially like it was over the Holidays where I had more time than usual to watch television, especially football games. And it was there that I saw Michael Bloomberg advertisements for President, and it had the feel of coming from some other country. If there is one thing, I learned from my hard motorcycle riding days which took up about a decade of my life, its that my measure of political validity is that if it doesn’t pass the smell test of Deadwood, South Dakota, then its not American. Back then I was thinking of doing a documentary about motorcycle riders and why they think the things they do, and why so many people were drawn to places like Sturgis Motorcycle rallies which Deadwood is certainly on the to-do list. That region of the world produced interesting American characters such as Wild Bill Hickock, Seth Bullock and Teddy Roosevelt, and it remains today an accurate measurement of political temperament. Viewed with the lenses of options, the communist attempts of the American left are obvious, and candidates like Michael Bloomberg are easy to understand as opposed to the coastal areas of North America that is easily consumed by unsophisticated concerns so long as they can go to the beach somewhere nearby.

The Bloomberg advertisement was a sharp reminder of just how divided we are as a country, where the coastal communists seek to impose themselves on the Deadwood lovers of the midlands, and their desire to ride free and die hard. The gap couldn’t be more pronounced. It also said a lot about how poorly the political left understands their position. Bloomberg thinks because he’s a billionaire that he will be able to duplicate Trump’s 2016 run, except from the vantagepoint of the communist left. The people who watch the network television stations are typically soft minded types open to other ideas because they have little firm convictions themselves, so he mistakenly measures that his ad time will boost him in the polls which I would think it won’t. Likely, not at all. The fact that he would think so and would pay the best in the business that money can buy to allow him to spend on such an ad says that nobody on the left really has a clue as to what is going on. They are still on point, for their leftist agenda. They don’t see or understand that the 2016 election was a rebellion, not just luck and money.

I agree, my views are hardline options that are scary to moderates. My thoughts were forged from experience, including many hours on motorcycles traveling the country and thinking about these things, and writing books about my opinions and gauging the reaction of the public. I wouldn’t consider myself a bestselling writer by any measure, but over the years I have developed a nice autograph signature that came as a result of book signings. I have sold enough books to develop an autograph signature and that was something I had to explain recently while signing Christmas cards professionally. And when you can say such a thing about yourself where a signature is actually sought, you earn the right to have opinions that are outside the norm as a change agent, which is what I would call my role. The trend is that more people think the way I do than they don’t which is reflected by the recent elections. Its also why you will never see someone like Michael Bloomberg campaigning in Deadwood, South Dakota where Trump would be carried around like a king on a throne. The communists in our country are trying to change opinions and most good people will give them a listen. But once they find out what they have been up to, they get mad. I feel I have a right to be very angry at communists like Michael Bloomberg, who is at the very least a sympathizer to Chinese communism. Or our school systems funded by tax money who wish to convert our children into future Michael Bloombergs. They are attacking our American lifestyle, and that earns the right to anger. So there is nothing wrong with coming out on one side of it, especially if you are like me and have made a point to draw attention to it using whatever platform one might have earned in life.

In the context of those motorcycle riding days where you see and taste this fine country from the back of an unprotected 1500cc beast through raging rain storms, hard snowstorms, and intense heat, when you find out the plans of the political left, you see it as an attack. Michael Bloomberg and his leftist New York friends want the kind of communism that China has for America or the kind of socialism that Scandinavia has presently. Both are born from the mind of Karl Marx which came about toward the end of the Victorian Era and is how that type of thinking entered New York under the name of progressivism, ultimately by the same Teddy Roosevelt I praised from hanging out in Deadwood during his pre-presidential days. It was always an attack on America and the minds that made it great. Roosevelt surrendered to it after his many days in the White House and his roots as an aristocrat in New York got the better of him eventually. Teddy traveled out to Deadwood to spend time with people like Seth Bullock to get his mind right. But at the turn of the century, not even that helped him, and he eventually ended his life thinking more like Michael Bloomberg.

Know that it is our minds and lifestyles that are under attack by these communist infiltrators, we all have a right to be a little pissed off. In fact, we have a right to be a lot pissed off! The kind of communism that runs China is exactly what Michael Bloomberg wants, and it is astonishing to see that the main networks of television have fallen lockstep into that effort, as most of them are based in New York where much of this thought movement entered our country like a Trojan horse ready for battle. As many think I’m too critical, too colorful in my hatred, and too resistant to the works of Marx as a philosophy, I would say otherwise. Based on the foundations of this country, which can still be seen in places like Deadwood, South Dakota, or Liberty Square in Disney World, I don’t think my opinions are too strong at all. And we were not wrong in voting for Trump. And the world that Bloomberg wants to go is one that we have already rejected, that his money won’t be able to buy. So, in a lot of ways, its good that he’s running. He will put a dagger through the heart of communism in America once and for all, without meaning to do it. But never forget what they intended to do, and still do even to this latest hour. Bloomberg doesn’t just want to take away your soda drinks, your straws, your money, and your guns, but the very nature of your American life. What he needs as a result is a good ass kicking at the polls and I think he’ll get it. But what a vision of the world it is to see it firsthand instead of just implied inuendo. That is when you realize just how close we all came in 2016 to the end of our country, because these relics still don’t realize they lost, and are still saying the same things that destroyed them in the first place.

Rich Hoffman

Tesla’s New Cybertruck: A Picasso design that reflects American lifestyles

Everyone is talking about the wrong things in regard to the new Cybertruck from Tesla. Elon Musk during the recent unveiling of the new electric vehicle from his line of products was demonstrating the impact resistant glass, and it shattered. But that didn’t matter to me, when I first saw the vehicle I instantly fell in love with it, and would buy one right now if I hadn’t just bought a new car, one of the big Chevy Traverses that they are making these days for the SUV market. For all the reasons I bought that car I would like to have a Tesla Truck, and then some. I thought the design was brilliant and way out of the box, and it is on my list to purchase the next time I’m buying a car. What’s not to like?

For me, a bullet proof car made out of stainless steel is a very attractive option. I do have a need for such things. It would also be good for ANTIFA protests where demonstrators attack capitalism with bats and sticks. The hard-pressed steel panels would hold up and still look good for dinner later that night. No scratched paint, no dents from parking lot foils. You could take it off road and through the brush without tree limbs and rocks kicking up and scratching your paint job. I can think of a million reasons to own a Tesla Cybertruck. Finally, someone is giving us a look into the kind of future that we should have had all along, and I like it.

I think I’m looking at the Tri Motor AWD option when I do get one, it goes 0-60 in 2.9 seconds and has a towing capacity of over 14,000 pounds. There are concepts for a Cybertrailer that goes with the truck that I think would fit my lifestyle in a very good way for the next decade so I’m excited about it. Very. The vehicle itself I think is much more American than even the traditional truck market has been, which to Musk’s point, hasn’t innovated much since its inception a hundred years ago. This vehicle is a bold new step into a world of out of the box lifestyles that are typical for most Americans and a perfect compliment. I can think of a lot of uses for a truck that goes that fast and can travel 500 miles on a single charge.

When people say something is “genius” which I would apply to this new Tesla Cybertruck, is that it breaks the mold of some status quo and is being disruptive toward previous assumptions. I think that is true in science, economics, and certainly vehicle transport. Something like this truck has been contemplated in science fiction for years, yet unimaginative designers at the big three automakers have just been lazy, and complacent to allow themselves to chase after the Japanese automakers, instead of really giving American truck drivers what they want. My son-in-law just bought his dream truck, a Ram which I think is wonderfully large and complete with a top tech approach to the big roads of American lifestyles. And as I said, we just bought in my household a very nice Traverse from Chevrolet. Big like a truck, but as maneuverable as a sports car in a lot of ways, with great power. Much better power than I would have expected. But always in these products is the feeling that they are just a bit better than other offerings. Why not be a lot better? What would be wrong with that? I feel like that is what Tesla is trying to give the market, especially in America.

I’m not a big electric car advocate, in fact that is the only drawback I see on this Cybertruck design is that it runs on batteries. I hate the idea of not being able to stop easily on a long trip to South Dakota and not get a ten-minute fill-up then be back on the road. But for the power that these new electric engines do give, I’d be willing to overlook some of those pitfalls. Without question, Tesla is getting more power out of its electric engines than traditional fuel combustion can, and that is exciting. Power for me is more important than practicality. And that is true of most truck buyers in America. I need something that has tremendous power, that can ride off road in some remote areas getting pelted with rocks, rammed by bears and elk, and still be ready for a night on the town with just a good rainstorm to clean away the mud. As much as I like my new Traverse I still park it a hundred yards from the nearest car in a parking lot because I worry about some runaway shopping cart hitting it from some distracted mother trying to buckle in her screaming kid from nearby, not tending to her business. With the Cybertruck, I wouldn’t worry nearly so much because its essentially a tank.

Watching the unveiling Elon Musk had outside on display the DeLorean from Back to the Future and the Lotus from the movie The Spy Who Loved Me, which were two of my favorite cars growing up as the inspiration of this Cybertruck. That obviously is part of the appeal for me, as people in my age group have been thinking about these kinds of things all of our lives. People have been critical of the angular shape of the Cybertruck, but I think its all extremely practical and American. Hard lines meeting at unique angles to tell a kind of Picasso story of American outdoor life, that is what this truck says to me and the design is actually very brilliant to my eyes. That’s what you get when you think that far outside the box of a very established truck market. Tesla continues to push the limits and it gives me great reason to root for them. This is one of their most exciting installments yet.

Innovation for me is far more important than protecting existing markets. If there is a way to make something better from what we’ve always assumed was a dead market, then why not. And if the electric engines turn out to be better, then why not use them. That is obviously the case with the emerging Skycar markets which is another consideration. If we use skycars more and more in the future for our casual transportation, then we will certainly want something like the new Cybertruck to fulfill our recreation needs. It all makes a lot more sense than in what we’ve been seeing over the last several decades and finally gives us a peak at the possibilities of tomorrow. I can see so many reasons that I’d want to use this truck over other offerings that the benefits far outweigh the draw backs. I have been thinking of getting a big RV for some of my needs for the upcoming decade, and that is still very much a need for me, but this new Tesla Truck has changed my thinking on the matter quite a lot. And that is a very good thing which I greatly appreciate. This is one of the most exciting vehicles I’ve ever seen and I think I need to find a way to put one in my driveway for many adventures to come.

Rich Hoffman

The False Nature of Teams: Reflections on the Ohio State win over Michigan

I saw some of the most bizarre behavior during the Ohio State football game at Michigan in Ann Arbor over the weekend that its worth some observational notes. I don’t watch much college football all though I enjoy the ambiance of all fall football. The details are often too boring. The students are not yet perfected to the level of the pros and I don’t enjoy watching them. I think colleges hold back people; it doesn’t enhance them. They are good for educating people into procedures and to be good employees, but not so good in turning out unusual thinkers willing to push the limits and during the game my concerns were more than confirmed. If the goal is to find one’s place into some pecking order of procedural thinking, colleges do what people spend their money on. But they do not make leaders—I find that colleges openly lie about this objective and they charge way too much money for it, yet they convince people to pay it due to these sports programs.

Watching the Michigan side, complete with Tom Brady providing commentary in favor of the “Blue” of his former school there were these bizarre statements about teamwork, and that the team is greater than any individual, any player, any coach, anything. This was astonishing to me because I hear that come out of the mouths of many people all through my professional life from the statehouses across the country to the intimate business meetings that happen hour by hour. People say these really dumb things and it makes you wonder where they get this information. Well, I know that the colleges have become in America excessive liberal factories trying to program political activism into their students and charging a lot of money for the opportunity. In trade, most companies, especially large ones agree to hire the kids from the colleges because secretly they just want nice employees who won’t rock the boat with new, breaking thoughts. They will just do what they are told and suppress any frustrations that might arise from the arrangement. But here, at the Ohio State game was lies about the arrangement, that no individual is more important than the team and that’s just not how the world works. The snake oil salesmen have obviously been hard at work in the broadcast booths of our nation’s college football games.

In the end the game was a blowout in favor of Ohio State winning 56-27. The point of the whole exercise was to make people who have attended these universities over the years, which is the point of all college sports programs, is to give those who have graduated, a continued value for their money spent. These days its like getting DLC content for a completed video game. It gives the participants a feeling of unity and a kind of family atmosphere in those massive 100,000 people stadiums where these games are played. But right after the game is done and everyone goes home, the specifics are forgotten and its off to the next thing. The whole experience is to unify people into the team concept of college sports and to coax them into continuing to spend money on the perceived results. For the amount of money that we are talking the whole scam is pretty pathetic.

So it went at the start of the game and during all this fluffy commentary about team work being so much greater than any individual, yet the results of the game was all about individuals being better than others, and the rest of the team sat on the sideline cheering them on along with the people in the stands. The terms, “we won” as was the common term used after the game, or “we lost this one,” were ludicrous. Ohio State had better individual players who picked up the team and took them to victory. In this particular game the quarterback and the running back were the two main positions where exceptional play took place, but most of the rest of the game was just a bunch of average people fulfilling their positions. Sure, the quarterback needs someone to throw the ball to, and the running back needs blockers—but in those positions, most anybody can play those roles, which is normal for the college experience. Most any graduate can be hired or replaced, and nobody would notice. But, the exceptional players J.K. Dobbins finding holes to run through or some of those deep, accurate passes from Justin Fields weren’t part of some team other than they needed to follow the instructions of the leaders in running the proper routes and getting open to make a play. The individual efforts were far more important than any collective message about unity.

Tom Brady’s comments in support of Michigan were bizarre as well. Let’s try an experiment, let’s take Tom Brady off the New England Patriots professional football team and see how many games they win. Or let’s take away their now famous coach. The lie that a team is what wins football games is told everywhere in modern culture, people buy it completely due to these kinds of recreation events justifying their comments, but reality is not being observed. The hard work that Tom Brady has always put into the game is why his teams have changed the players but they always continue to win. He is the stabilizing factor; the players come and go but the victories are the results of the many extra hours of hard work that Brady does to stay ahead of the competition. The teams under him get the ability to win a Super Bowl ring by sitting on the bench as opposed to playing for some other team where they might be expected as individuals to do more. But the truth is, they are irrelevant to the winning process, but Tom Brady is the key to a chance—and nobody else.

And it wasn’t Michigan who made Tom Brady who he is. They didn’t give him his natural talents. They gave him a chance to show it off but Brady didn’t come out of his big win over Ohio State a number one draft pick. He had to work his way up and work harder than everyone else, and still to this day he does that. That’s why he’s over 40 and still has a starting job in the NFL. Who else is going to be better than him? In the end, it comes down to the exceptional who carry the masses—always, in sports, in business, in politics—in everything. Everything. The colleges lie to justify their roles, and the masses buy the lie so that they can feel like they are part of a winning formula. But it always comes down to individual effort that leads teams to victory. Not the other way around. Everytime someone says something so stupid as the “team” is bigger than any one person you can always know that the person saying it has no idea how the world really works, and they are faking leadership. Because leadership is not about team victories, its about doing what leaders tell you and riding their coattails to success. And like I said, a good quarterback, running back, or business partner needs someone to throw the ball to. But wins and losses do not happen as a team, they happen as a result of leadership by individuals over those hungry to be led somewhere for an effort they couldn’t get any other way. That is a truth many aren’t prepared to contemplate, yet it’s the true essence of this ever-present reality.

Rich Hoffman

Skycars are Ready: Yet we have to wait for stupid rules and regulations to catch up

If there is one thing that I’ve learned and developed over these many millions of words of contemplation and the questioning of virtually everything we assume in our political and social order, it is that we lose something very valuable in our teenage years for which we work so hard to develop as children, and that is fertile imaginations that take advantage of our very unusual brains and drive for improvement and creation. It would be my offering that developing that over a lifetime is the meaning of life for the human species. We were never meant to replicate nature and to learn to live within its rules. We were meant to question nature and to improve it the way an artist improves a blank canvass with strokes of paint and the thoughts that took a lifetime to build. And that any human invention of philosophy that has been put in place to restrict such an approach to life is evil, even if the intentions were good to start with, as we all know the path to Hell is paved with.

I was asked by several members of the business community about this new book of mine, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business as to why, earlier in 2019 when they learned I was doing it. As they asked, what could possibly be done new in that field that has not been done by thousands of other people already. Well, that has been the difficult aspect of it and is something I’m untangling due to my unusual life and experiences. Its not just about business that I’m concern, such as understanding why Lean Manufacturing is largely rejected by western cultures while eastern cultures thrive with it. Understanding why the original Walt Disney was a genius, or George Lucas was so successful while so many others try to copy but fail. The new film Ford vs. Ferrari is about the same kind of interesting characters who push the limits of social order in passionate ways for good new things to come forth. So was the great film produced by George Lucas about Tucker: A Man and His Dream. Or the Aviator by Leonardo DiCaprio. What makes genius in a culture and how can we protect it so we can get more of it? Then there is the piece of the puzzle that I think is most unique, tying that to the ownership of guns in a society and how that invention has allowed for minds to flourish and step away from tyranny so that imaginations could flourish. It’s not our education system that has produced such people, its in a mind free of fear either by daredevil minds or those growing up in households protected by family and friends with closets full of guns. My investigation has taken me to that precipice and its certainly virgin ground that has gotten deeper the more I probed. But it has been worth it. The quest has been very rewarding, and revolutionary.

It is in this context that I do much of what I do and think the same. Newcomers or occasional readers here might think that I am a mean, vicious person. However, the people who know me best understand that I am a very unencumbered person 24 hours a day. I wouldn’t say childlike. I would say rather I am unrestricted in my imagination which is vast and is the key to much of my problem-solving ability. People associate this way of thinking with a child, but to me children are learning to think like this, they don’t have the developed thoughts yet, the way an Einstein or a Nietzsche may have. Thinking is the thing that humans do, so doing it well is very much part of the puzzle and to people like me, the worst thing you can do to such people is put too many rules on them, to restrict them to people who don’t dare to think so deep or far. That is where destructive social orders come into play, the things we allow into our political discourse regardless of party affiliation. To me, if it restricts imagination, its evil. From the local zoning board that constricts the plans of a creative architect with stupid rules, or the inventor of a new mode of transportation that must wait for a cumbersome FFA to get their minds wrapped around an idea. To that last point is the subject of today’s article, but also the first step into a series of thoughts that I have on this matter that are paving the defined criteria of this new book of mine. But also serve as a contextual representation for the 21st century and the many challenges of this particular point in history.

For much longer than I’ve been writing here, or writing books I have been a big supporter of skycars. At first it was the Paul Moller Skycar M400 that I worked whatever political angles I could to help it along in the 1990s, where everyone laughed at it infuriating me tremendously. I was working for Cincinnati Milacron at the time and they were creating a kind of pre-Amazon parts delivery system to support their products all over the country, which at the time I was part of organizing with a fleet of vans to provide delivery within the day. Essentially a call would come in, we’d pick the part from inventory, carry it down to our vans, and drive to wherever they were in the country having the part to the customer that day, sometimes within a working shift. I tried to convince people that a Skycar could do the job much faster and due to the political response, I understood that it would take probably another 20 years to get the human race to catch up, and to me that was just stupid. Why weren’t people advanced enough to see the potential? That is the reason I used the M400 in my book The Symposium of Justice. I had Hollywood connections at that point in my life and I was hoping they would take the baton and run with it. But they didn’t. It was a very frustrating period for me to observe.

Well, now its that time and skycars are getting ready to hit the market. Dubai is bringing them into the mainstream in the next few years and the new electric concept called BlackFly is ready right now to fly from your driveway to work at the touch of a button. The problem is, and continues to be even in Dubai, that a political class protected by a lot of silly rules and regulations are standing in the way as they have for so many decades and that is what evokes my anger. The imaginations of the human species has done their job, but the weak and timid are holding back what we could all become due to their lackluster view of the world created artificially with restrictive, timid thoughts. While we justify the rules that are in our society as keeping people safe, the true nature of our beings is to be recklessly imaginative and to allow ambition to fuel product creation and implementation. Our regulatory culture is the problem, or obsession with silly rules to restrict imaginative growth is the problem and has been for a very long time. It is not the job of the unrestrictive imaginations to encumber themselves with those who have limited themselves to thoughts that keep them grounded and under control of the local masters who only want to hold their power given to them by the rules of the day. Its for everyone else to rise to the highwater marks set by the great thinkers who have worked their entire lives to become something unique. And the flying cars are the products of such thinking, and finally, they are ready for the market. Yet they wait for the lazy minded to get it. But first they’ll have to await the results of the Ohio State game against Michigan before they have room in their brains for the task, or some other college game where the small minded gather to reassure themselves that institutions are the boons of existence, and not the imaginations of the most daring. The point of my efforts is to give a scientific opinion on this obscurity, so that perhaps we can change it from what it is now in a highly regulatory business environment into something that allows such inventions to materialize in years instead of decades.

Rich Hoffman

The Smart School Board of Indian Creek in Ohio: With a vote of 5-0 the kids are much safer

Not every school system in the world is insane. The Indian Creek School District in Jefferson County, Ohio passed this week just ahead of Thanksgiving Day a resolution by their school board to allow teachers to carry guns by a vote of 5-0. Now what is wonderful about Jefferson County and many other rural areas in the midlands of America is that they still have people in them who haven’t been ruined with progressive thoughts and can still think for themselves. Their parents taught them how to open a can of beans with a can opener and they can still change their own oil in their cars, so when they vote on important issues, they still have a bit of self-reliance left in them and can imagine how a teacher might be competent enough to carry a gun and stop a hostile assailant without hiding in the corner and waiting to be killed. Where city thinking has permeated, these types of self-reliant options are not so obvious. But its still good to see that not every school district is filled with losers setting children up for danger to claim them at the slightest provocation.

I know from more information than experience that my school district of Lakota does not have such courage. A few of the school board members do, but the majority are weak-minded people who are panicky parents themselves, or have spouses who work in the school and they have been drinking the helpless cool-aid for a long time, which is common when institutionalism eats at the mind like corn on the cob during one of those Thanksgiving Dinners. What’s left isn’t pretty. They tend to be weak people who can’t hold their liquor at education conferences, can’t manage their own finances, or are just liberal hacks seeking justification for their existence on the backs of extorted money from a government school. So their modes of thinking are not challenged by reality, leaving them dangers to themselves and others. In that regard they can’t imagine that teachers might be responsible enough to carry a gun in school to stop a mass shooter, as an extra safety measure. They can’t trust themselves so how could they trust anybody else.

That is usually what we find in city government offices, panicky people afraid of their own shadows who want to believe that safety can be legislated into validation with words on a paper and that they can gamble with people’s lives with the same odds that a lottery ticket buyer plays for a big pot of money. And that’s how budgets get out of control because with fearful people comes big spending, especially when its other people’s money. That is how all these anti-gun thoughts seep into society, by these weak-minded losers who find personal management difficult. How else would you describe people who vote for these kinds of things in schools who spend their recreation facedown drunk in public with half their clothes missing? And that’s not a specific reference, but a common one. You can hear such stories from most school districts from such people, and it is they who decide how safe or unsafe we are from attacks.

It’s refreshing to hear from real people in real districts like the Indian Creek School District along the waters of the Ohio River with West Virginia just on the eastern horizon. In places like that most everyone has shot a gun, they know how to use them, and criminals don’t have much of a feeding ground as a result. You don’t find much crime happening in communities like that because the people are self-reliant and respect each other’s property. Part of the resolution on gun carrying that passed there was teachers would have to complete a training course and get re-certified on a yearly basis. That’s reasonable, and it’s a sure bet that a mass shooting won’t happen there. This debate has been going on for a long time and nobody is saying that we just put guns on teachers and send them into classrooms without support. But the real issue at hand is that everyone must understand that blind trust in a system ran by the worst and weakest of our civilization is not conducive to a safe world. If you want that, you must give it to yourself on an individual basis. If a teacher wants a safe classroom, they must give it to themselves. If voters want to live in a safe world where they can defend themselves from attacks, they must carry guns and call the police to clean up the mess. None of this “duty to retreat” garbage. Guns represent an equal playing field much more than any other measure, and those that have them can stop violence when the odds fall on people’s fate.

It really comes down to the quality of people, rural areas preserve the quality of people’s minds because they are left alone from the daily concerns of group linked activities more so than in cities where collective concerns are a much more dominate consideration, from traffic lights to grocery stores. When people get some space to think, they tend to think better and more oriented to their individual needs, which is why people flock to the rural areas to begin with, so they can be away from snoopy neighbors, drunk losers who hide behind school board positions, and generally lazy minded people who want to hide in the crowd so people don’t see their true character. People from the country don’t have anybody to hide behind, so they tend to carry guns and defend themselves when pressed in ways that institutionalism has been trying to eradicate for thousands of years. After all, institutions of all kinds do not want independent people, they want dependents who cleave to them like babies seeking a mother’s milk dripping from a worn-out nipple.

You have to drive a few miles to get there but I would rationalize that if parents wanted to send their kids to a decent school, and if we had School Choice which we don’t, then the Indian Creek School District in Jefferson County, Ohio would be a good place to send your kids to school. But that is exactly why we don’t have School Choice, because losers who know they can’t compete with better managed districts want more than anything to remain in the background and hide in collectivism hoping like any drunk would, that if only they odds worked in their favor through sheer mass, that nobody would discover they don’t have a damn clue how to actually solve a problem, or defend our most valuable assets, children. They are hoping that the odds of being a victim of a mass shooter are the same as the state lottery and that their spouses won’t find out what they really do at education conferences once the drinks start flowing. In Indian Creek, if a school board member were found drunk on their faces in a public forum, the whole town would know about it because there isn’t as much noise there to hide the scandal, so behavior tends to be better, and so at least it is somewhere. And that’s better than nothing.

Rich Hoffman

The Future of Government: Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s pace setting changes

A friend of mine gave me a nice book by Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum which I’ve had for a few weeks and browsed through with some enjoyment. Given the Thanksgiving break, I was able to set aside another 7 hours to complete the book and found it very enjoyable, especially with his views on government. Now in reading this with an open mind, I had to put his support of Palestine against Israel into perspective and also consider the large amount of drama that has been following one of the world’s richest men and the driver of Dubai’s leap into the future, especially in regard to his daughter, the missing princess. But great energy and intelligence are often criticized, and nobody ever fits into the square holes that society gives us as we are all circles, triangles and rectangles and usually don’t fit unless we beat them into place with a hammer.

I like Dubai very much and I especially like what they are doing in that region of the world with the Hyperloop and the efforts at skycars. It takes a person thinking like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to do big things like that. In the United States we do have a mind thinking like this in the Oval Office in President Trump. There is less democracy in Dubai, so it is far easier for a big personality like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to have his way and get things done. Often very wealthy people like this are hated by the lazy and stupid, so much of the smoke that comes from these types of people is scrutinized with more of a focus on pushing them into one of these square holes instead of understanding their true value to the context of the human story. With that said, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s opinion on government is something worth considering as I share his sentiment.

I make it no debate; I hate government as it has been presented to me over the years. They are slow, unambitious and filled with people afraid of real performance. They get to work too late in the day and they leave way to early. Just a trip to the BMV is a miserable experience, the hours of operation is in the middle of the work day so you have to take time out of your schedule to get silly things like drivers license renewals completed which is an extremely low value add contribution to the day of people who are really doing things in life. Government in the United States especially is too expensive and does not serve customer interests nearly enough, especially for the cost. They are corrupted by liberal labor unions that push back against very basic requests and are generally a huge waste of time. I was happy to read in Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s book that he feels much the same way that I do about government and in the UAE he is pushing reforms with the following sentiments:

• The government of the future is open for service 24/7, all year round. The private sector remains open for business so why not the public sector?” We want our government to be just like an airline—available around the clock.

• The government of the future competes with and surpasses the private sector in service quality. We want our government to welcome customers more professionally than hotels; we want our government to manage processes better than banks.

• The government of the future is connected. Citizens should be able to complete any government transaction at any government service center. Integrated service centers will spare citizens long trips from one entity to another.

• The government of the future is available anywhere. We want to shift government services onto smartphones so that customers can file and follow up on transactions using mobile devices at their convenience.

• The government of the future is innovative and constantly able to generate ideas. In 2012 the UAE government was able to generate over 20,000 fresh ideas to simplify and improve its services. Our goal is to create an environment that encourages people to generate innovative ideas. Implement them and constantly measure their effectiveness. Innovation is the capital of the future.

• The government of the future is a smart government with integrated and efficient technical systems. A smart government is so much faster in completing various kinds of transactions.

Now, all that sounds very logical to me. It makes perfect sense. In the United States when I complain about taxes being too high it is because I have always my business hat on, which requires the kind of thinking that Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has set as targets for his own government in the UAE. And I am quite sure that they are working to make that a reality in the city of Dubai. Its important to realize that this is what the United States is competing with, its not Europe, or China or anyplace other than the very innovative thinking coming out of the UAE. I noticed this first actually while visiting Harrod’s in London and seeing on the top floor all the future plans for cities of the future in the UAE. London was no longer the cultural center of the universe, nor was New York, or Hong Kong, but rather it was Dubai and more specifically this way of thinking from Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The forces at work in the United States that are keeping us from matching the ambitions of Dubai are what I would call domestic enemies because they are standing in the way of the kind of innovation that we need to be utilizing aggressively. Every time I hear some teacher’s union complaining about less kids, less work hours and more pay it makes me literally sick, because the rest of the world is starting to realize that people like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum are shaping the future. And it should be the United States that everyone should be emulating. It also makes me very angry to see that our own government would rather fight to protect the status quo by attacking our own President Trump, who wants to think ahead of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. But instead, they want to impeach him any way possible so that they can resist the need to change their behavior in government.

A healthy hatred of government if it proves to be a detriment to productivity and a happy life is good. We shouldn’t expect something to be bad just because its government and rationalize that we can’t do anything about it. Government works for the people, not the other way around and for too long governments around the world have grown complacent and more intrigued with their aristocratic status than in being known for what they accomplish. That isn’t acceptable to me and it was refreshing to hear that Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum doesn’t find it acceptable either, that some people in the world do get it. That is why it is good to read books, especially from cultures that are not native to your own, so that ideas can be generated, and understandings met. The media certainly wouldn’t report this information, I didn’t know much about Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum until I read his book except that he had family problems with one of his daughters. The media will report that, but not all these thoughts about government. And that is another huge part of this problem that we should all be angry about.

Rich Hoffman

Why Kids Like to Play Shoot with Toy Guns: The Mandalorian is all about cool gun fights

Another reason The Mandalorian is such a great show is because it’s the first that I can think of where gun fights are embraced in a very long time. Watching these episodes, I can’t help but think of all the radio broadcasts I had done at WAAM talking about this very subject with a guy who loved Disney so much that he left radio to work for the company. We were perplexed that Disney had a policy at the parks that did not allow for guns on costumes due to the very progressive stand the company had toward the Second Amendment. All in the name of security. Well, and I’m very happy to see it, but all that is out the window now. The Mandalorian isn’t just a show about the nobility of violence, but its also about gunfights in ways that only classic television westerns were, and this is a good sign of many great things to come.

When I was growing up I play fought all the time. At recess me and the other kids of my class would pretend anything was a gun and we’d shoot at each other religiously. Of course none of us grew up to be mass killers, play fighting is a natural state for young people, especially boys. So the primal necessity of having gunfights in The Mandalorian is an admission of sorts from the Disney Company that they understand that what will follow, as they have Star Wars events at their theme parks and the general nature of the cosplay culture that fans will be dressing up as their favorite Mandalorian and their guns, and there won’t be much that Disney can do about having their name on it. They bought Star Wars and guns are a huge part of the property, so if they want to get the value out of their purchase, they have to embrace that culture and know that little kids have a need to play fight with each other for needs that they will need to understand once they become adults.

What’s even better in The Mandalorian is that the fights are not confused with the nobility of Jedi fighting with lightsabers. Its all about guns. Watching through the first three episodes and noticing the online reaction to them that primal need is alive and well with people. Even though public education has sought to drive the desire for such recreation out of the mind of their students, the play fighting that was always so important to me growing up using combs, rulers and our own hands to pretend to shoot guns, has moved online to the video game world. The people making The Mandalorian obviously have been playing Star Wars: Battlefront II and other shooting games that are much more popular than many people in politics are willing to admit. This whole notion of gun control politically is going against the tide of human desire. Disney has had to come to terms with that, and the rest of the world will soon follow. The Mandalorian is just the product coming about to support a market need. The need was always there, but it was politics that slowed down the fulfillment as social experiments to the contrary were fully in place.

The Mandalorian is so good in fact that I can’t imagine that millions of young people, boys and girls, are going to rush out to buy some version of their favorite gun from the series. And I understand. I have hanging from the mantel of my fireplace in my home, right next to my reading chair, my DL-44 in its official Han Solo holster complete with all the little greebles that only hard-core Star Wars fans would understand. It’s a toy, but I like looking at it so I keep it out so I can see it every day. When I was a kid, the toy Han Solo gun was one of my favorite things to have and over the years that was my first introduction to guns which is still a very healthy hobby of mine. What they have today is much cooler, so young people have so many more options than I did. I can’t imagine how exciting it is for them that they can not only have such weapons, but that they can turn around and play Battlefront II all weekend when they aren’t in school with all their friends in a squad. In so many ways, play fighting has never been easier, or more popular than it is today, which is saying a lot.

Entertainment companies like Disney have had to come to terms with their responsibility in the whole political order. In entertainment, all companies have an obligation to the market needs of the consumers, for which young people want guns to play with for all kinds of very legitimate psychological reasons. The politics against guns is due to an infantile desire for the political class to have power over others and by promoting the disarming of society due to safety concerns, they are in the end seeking to make their jobs easier. The effort has nothing to do with making a better and more peaceful society, its just seeking to suppress human need for freedom so that earlier in their lives, children will learn to behave to a higher authority.

Obedience doesn’t sell very well in a free and open marketplace. There is a reason pop culture music is rebellious by nature and there is a reason kids like to play at violence and fighting. The fantasy in both cases is to break away from the social norms of existence so that something new might be carved out of the effort. In most cases, the children will grow up and become nice little conformists. However, when they are young and full of dreams, they play shoot hoping to be that cowboy, that Mandalorian, or that desperate smuggler from Star Wars looking to break free of the system and to create some heroic adventure in the process for themselves. They aren’t looking to be conformists to the social norm. Play fighting is to become good at overcoming oppression so that they might have the courage to do the same when it really matters later in their life.

Of course, a Disney theme park with all kinds of safety concerns, political parasites trying to extract money from them all the time, and insurance adjusters making everything a potential lawsuit, the easiest thing they can do is eliminate the temptation for something dangerous to happen. So they come up with their no gun policies in regard to cosplay and if there are guns they have to have those stupid orange colors on the barrels or the entire guns so that police don’t confuse them for the real thing. It’s easier on the political class, but terror on the kids who want to play with the guns and learn the basics about shooting through their leisure.

During those referred to radio broadcasts, I thought it was a pointless endeavor for Disney, and that has turned out to be right. If anything the need was only suppressed and now that the cat is out of the bag, I anticipate a steep increase in young people admitting to the world that they want to play shoot guns and they want their guns to look cool and realistic. Even though they are only toys, it is good to be thinking about these things as early as possible because there is honesty and hope in that kind of play that the political class has sought to destroy, and if their feelings get hurt in the process, so be it. They should have never attempted to tamper with the necessities of human development to begin with. They instead should have done their jobs and not sought to make it easier on themselves by altering the way kids play, and why they play it.

Rich Hoffman

Baby Yoda and the Mandalorian: Guilds, fraternities and organizations are no match for a good smuggler

Needless to say it, but I am very happy with The Mandalorian, the latest Star Wars show revealed on the new Disney+ streaming service. I think it’s the best show I’ve seen on television in quite a while, and I don’t just say that as a Star Wars fan. The first three episodes have completely captured pop culture with the revelation of the now famous baby Yoda and suddenly we have something very special on our hands that is bringing people together in a time where Democrats are trying to impeach President Trump so that they don’t have to run against him in 2020. Knowing how politically active the modern Disney Company is I was surprised that they even allowed for The Mandalorian to be made since the plot is essentially a “lone gunman” fighting his way for life after the events of Return of the Jedi and the fall of the Empire. There are lots of gunfighters and the way the episodes are filmed are very reminiscent of early Clint Eastwood westerns. But Disney more than anything is about making money, which they should be, and after the let downs of political tampering so far in the Kathy Kennedy era Star Wars shows, everyone seems to have learned their lesson and is making The Mandalorian in a way to make up all that to the fans. Needless to say, I’m a fan.

As all this is happening my wife and I are planning a trip to Disney World, its about time for me. I’ve always loved Disney because of their more traditional programming, such as Zorro and Davy Crockett which are both available on Disney+ and I have been watching them for the memories. Disney World and all those Florida theme parks are intended to be such optimistic places which a person like me feeds off of. But being the big corporate target that they are, not all management at Disney gets it and they do pander to Democrat and more dangerous progressive ideas way too often such as they had with Star Wars which I have covered here voluminously. Frozen II is out and doing good business, but it has several political messages that will be considered dated in the near future, especially in regard to gay and transvestite concerns and that’s a shame. So there is bad with the good and Disney as a company is trying to make money off everyone, so the Disney products are not traditionally safe and family friendly as we’d assume them to be, and I find that problematic. Frozen II was green lit a few years ago, before Trump was elected, so I can understand their mistakes, even though the box office has yet to reveal it to them. The Mandalorian however shows that at least Disney listens and is looking to make a course correction with Star Wars.

Disney as a company has always been about ideas and that is obvious in the theme parks. Their films and television shows generate sentiment, but it is the theme parks that drive the mythology home and make those ideas into something you can see and touch. I’ve always thought of their entertainment vision as bold and beautiful. I look at Liberty Square in Disney World as a temple of American reverence and it would not exist if not for the greater appeal of Disney as a company. To a point I’m willing to overlook political work like Frozen II or the lectures about global warming from a company that took a swamp in central Florida and completely reformed it for the benefit of amusement, because the end product is very good. In many ways The Mandalorian is the embodiment of the Disney Company itself and the metaphor has not been lost to me. At the start of the show the bounty hunter was well respected and wealthy. But along the way it has had to undergo some transformation that has inspired it to find the now famous baby Yoda and save it from the clutches of an evil Empire seeking to restore itself to power. To do so, The Mandalorian must turn against the Bounty Hunter Guild to do the right thing. Pretty good stuff.

As far as Star Wars mythology goes I had been liking The Mandalorian as a character when he was presented as the lone gunman type, but all this attachment to his Mandalorian culture is not something I admire. This “way” they keep talking about is not something I can relate to. But Star Wars has a lot of things for a lot of people and for me, the “smuggler” class still is far superior. They are not held to the rules of an organization the way these bounty hunters appear to be so I find their efforts far superior as a philosophy, and that is obviously understood by Disney as well as they have made their theme park attraction Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios a dedication to those types of people in the Star Wars storytelling experience. Even when the big organizations fail, such as the Empire did, or the First Order is attempting to restore, or the Rebellion succeeded but failed to properly organize a replacement government leaving the Resistance to attempt to stand up to the First Order, or the Mandalorians are trying to reestablish themselves in the wake of war, it is the smugglers and outlaws who manage to see the reality of such things due to their lack of investment into the social order of things, and that is very much a sentiment I can relate with.

There’s a lot going on and media and the things people enjoy coming from it is happening at a rapid pace. Political sentiments that were started in 2015 look like ancient history by 2020 so for a company like Disney trying to be all things to all people, its hard to pin down and I’ll give them a little room for that. By what has so far been seen of The Mandalorian Disney at least has shown that they aren’t so committed to Democrat talking points that they’ll penalize themselves as a profitable company. If Disney can continue to put out the kind of content that they are with The Mandalorian there is a bright future for Star Wars even if they have stumbled through much of this present decade. There is a lot of room to repair that relationship and they are off to a good start with baby Yoda and The Mandalorian.

More specifically I do not find The Mandalorian such an admirable character as he is more attached to his culture than I would like to see. Belonging to a guild, a fraternity, or club is a social security blanket that many people can’t see beyond, so I understand the reason its part of the story. I prefer the lone gunfighters who are also smugglers and don’t crave the company of others to make them feel a sense of belonging. But The Mandalorian is great in all other aspects and I look forward each week to the new episodes. It is certainly some of the best television I have seen in a number of years. And it looks like that is only going to increase.

Rich Hoffman