Tag: Ayn Rand

Observational Realities: What the premier of ‘Solo’ in Los Angeles tells us about the future

I am the type of person who could write a novel about the reason that a person might change the way they hold a fork. Observational changes in nonverbal communication are an obsession with me and are a constant companion. I would have to say that nothing happens that I don’t notice. I am always on the lookout for why someone might have changes to their eye movement, or the tip of a head as it’s positioned on the shoulders, does it drop more than usual, or is it cantered off to the left or right more than typical. Is there an unusual emphasis on words when somebody is speaking and if there is, what does it mean—those types of things. So I enjoy big pop culture events because of all the mass information available to the way I think. I love going to baseball games where there are lots of people, because it tells me so much about the temperature of our culture, and I love big entertainment movie premiers—especially for projects that I am excited about like this new Star Wars movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story because there are always important things that can be learned about the nature of our society. And the thing that I thought was most compelling at the Solo premier in Hollywood this past Thursday wasn’t the usual fanfare that comes from most Disney productions that they know going in will turn in big box office numbers—it was that Bob Iger wasn’t there. I would encourage you dear reader to watch the whole red-carpet coverage. It was quite impressive.

Going even further was the lack of VIP formality at the event, even after the premier. The after party mixed cosplayers and celebrity actors together in ways that were very unusual for Hollywood which is kind of a theme with this new Solo movie. Freedom from social pretension is the underlying message of this new Star Wars movie and the absence of authority figures in our lives is the goal of Han Solo, and Disney wisely embraced that during this premier. This Star Wars movie is quite different from any other in the past, and it reaches back to recapture that feeling so many people had in 1977 when the first film came out where a much younger George Lucas put out a very unusual movie he had made with his wife in what were some very happy days for the fledgling filmmaker. Not happy on the business side, or the marital side, but from the ideological position where observations made were translated into unique characters placed into the Star Wars movies, like Han Solo—maybe one of the most independent characters ever put into film. That revulsion for authority figures was actually quietly part of the Disney movie premier. There were no special speeches by anybody from Disney or Lucasfilm before the three theaters started playing Solo: A Star Wars Story—all that happened were that the lights dimmed, the movie started, people had a good time, and afterwards everyone mingled together no matter what their social standing was. If you were at the premier, you were someone and therefore welcome to interact with anybody, anywhere within the scope of the premier. It was all very unusual. The richest person in the world was at the premier, but nobody made much mention of it. At the after party mixing with fans dressed in their favorite Star Wars outfits was a bald guy introducing himself as, “HI, I’m Jeff.” No pretension what-so-ever.

What these movies about Han Solo do for the Disney franchise of what is coming in 2020 and thereafter is that they use the main character to open up the entire galaxy to new stories. Solo is the thread that is connecting the massive mythology that is being planned by Lucasfilm and that is important in many ways. Lately I have been talking a lot about the scientific changes that are coming to us in real society, like the Uber Elevate sky cars, the missions to Mars by NASA and Elon Musk’s Space X, and just yesterday The Boring Company finished digging a tunnel under Los Angeles meant to carry traffic under the busy city with car pods and Hyperloops. Currently there is a video from Boston Dynamics that is freaking people out displaying a robot running across a park and jumping over a log in much the way a human does, so we are seeing a competitive species of a living thing that humans have invented moving into our world and it is causing some anxiety. There are a lot of things changing and what I see in pop culture are ways to intellectually deal with them that are emerging in our art, like in these Star Wars movies. For many people they need science fiction and fantasy to open their minds to the explosion of new ideas that are coming to the human race in a very rapid fashion and companies like Disney are trying to embrace their role in the whole thing in a proactive way.

Humans need conceptual tools to help them navigate ideas—in much the way that Star Wars needs Han Solo to open up the context of future stories, the elements of the films—the space travel between planets, the way that space travel is conducted, the type of people who will do it, and even the tools that humans use while doing all these things—like robots, religion, and even the type of “can do” spirit that everything takes are part of movies like Solo: A Star Wars Story. The movie exists to make money for Disney and all the merchandise retailers, but of course there is a deeper meaning that people like Bob Iger may not be consciously aware of, but the greater purpose is certainly part of the overall strategy. I watched very carefully the interview with the two Kasdens who wrote this new Solo movie and just like Larry was when he wrote the great film Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back, he knew what he was doing with his son on this latest film. It is just the kind of movie that people are looking for at this particular time in our lives where technology once again, as it was in 1977—is taking over and we are wondering what our place is in all of it. The original Star Wars movies told us it was OK to embrace the future and what we ended up with was the fabulous 1980s. I think the Donald Trump presidency had a lot to do with why the original Solo movie directors were fired, because Disney had planned a certain kind of Guardians of the Galaxy Star Wars film featuring Han Solo, but that wasn’t going to work in a post Donald Trump world and Kathy Kennedy wisely made the change to more of a traditional western as opposed to a color popping change that might have been a much more progressive film. I noticed that Disney has been very careful not to put Woody Harrelson on the red-carpet interviews, because he is a major pot supporter. He’s done a few interviews, but not much—he’s not even featured in the Denny’s cards from the promotional tour—and that says something.

Everything means something and there is a lot going on with Solo: A Star Wars Story. Disney is giving fans what they want in a Star Wars movie even if they don’t personally like the direction the franchise is going, because they have their eye on the bigger prize—the furtherment of human civilization as a whole, and the part they play in it as artists. While the company of Disney may not want to do a modern cowboy movie with hot rod spaceships, the fans want it, and that’s what drives merchandise sales and brings people into the parks where the real magic happens for Disney. That’s also where new technology gets its cutting-edge tests for public consumption, and directly leads to the world we are all stepping into. We are all going to space and our daily lives are changing with all this new technology. As humans we are looking for ways to process all this information into the context of stories, which is what we have always done when processing new observational realities. And it’s all very exciting!

Rich Hoffman

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Uber Elevate in West Chester, Ohio: Getting ready for the future, because its on our doorstep–all we have to do is open the door

Sign me up, Uber doesn’t even have to sell me on it. I have been all about skycars for over two decades now and understand that this form of transportation was always the key to our future as human beings—everywhere in the world. It is time for that great technical leap and I am prepared to do whatever needs to be done to bring a skyport to my town of West Chester, Ohio. Let me provide a situational necessity for why Uber Elevate is needed not just in my home city of Cincinnati, but in every city. Here is a problem I run in to several times a year, I have business guests from out-of-town. At the conclusion of our business day they go back to their hotel, usually a few miles down the road in the heart of West Chester, Ohio. Before they leave, I offer to take them to a Reds game, which they almost always accept, especially in the Diamond seats for the full Mercedes-Benz sponsored luxury experience. The game starts at 7:10 PM, but to take advantage of the dinner option, we need to arrive an hour early. Our business day ended at 5:30 PM but the relatively short drive from West Chester to downtown Cincinnati just to the south takes an hour due to the traffic congestion. That doesn’t leave my guests any time to change cloths and get ready, and still have time to get to the game without missing something. What I need in those situations is to go to a Uber Skyport over by the Top Golf complex with my three guests and fly down to the stadium landing at the Uber Skyport at the Banks. From there we would simply walk into the stadium and enjoy our game without any delays or traffic anxiety. And a successful day of business would be concluded in the most optimal way possible. After the game I would dial-up a Uber Elevate vehicle from my phone app which would be waiting on us at the skyport pad to take us all home. The reality of that experience is about five years away with a realistic projection date of 2023.

I watched the Uber Elevate presentation that they did this past week with great enthusiasm. When I saw that NASA was affiliated with their project I was even more impressed, finally after many years there was a viable plan to take transportation into the air where it belonged with a viable business model. Most of the technical problems have been worked out ironically with the toy drones that we can all get at Target or Wal-Mart. But these drones are just bigger and can hold passengers. The variable speed engines to provide the lift and computer-controlled adjustments that had to be made to deal with wind shears and other weather anomalies were present and it was now time to finally have an intelligent discussion about personal transportation by way of sky transport.

The Uber Elevate concept would need to be in high population areas to work well and my town of West Chester is just the perfect location for one of the opening cities. Already Uber Elevate is set to start operations in 2023 in the Dallas area and in Los Angeles. But quickly they will spread to other cities once public trust can be built with the new technology. With most of the current skycar designs there really isn’t any way that the vehicles will fall out of the sky. There are too many propellers on them to allow a vehicle to fall, the resistance of the air passing through the blades would have a kind of paper airplane effect in case of irreparable power failure. But that is a worse case scenario. In so many ways the Uber Elevate vehicles would be many times safer than a conventional car because it has upward mobility to keep it out of the trajectory of other vehicles. Riding in a Uber Elevate vehicle would be very comfortable and not violent in any way. It would be smooth and transitional from takeoff to destination landing. It would be no scarier than riding an elevator in a sky scrapper and looking out the windows once at the top levels.

Like it or not this is where transportation is going—its where it must go. There will always be a need for cars and large trucks will always be in demand to deliver goods and services. But for personal transportation from city to city or even across a large metropolis, the Uber Elevate is the best option there is. Getting from one end of Manhattan to the other is best achieved by flying over everything, not with an expensive taxi ride stuck in traffic every block of that big city. With Uber Elevate you would just walk to a building near Central Park and take the elevator up to the top floor where a Uber Elevate Skyport would be located and grab a transport to the financial district with a short five-minute flight over blocks and blocks of traffic. There is no infrastructure investment either at the ground level or underneath the city, everything would be vertical, which is the whole purpose of cities.

Even though part of the Uber Elevate presentation makes the assumption that cities will continue to grow vertically, such as in Mexico City, I can say that I don’t think people will be moving into cities—cities tend to expand outward as the tax problems of urban development pushes away wealth into the suburbs. That means that for people who work in the cities but live out in the suburbs the highway system just can’t deal with all the commerce, which is why it takes in Cincinnati an hour to drive down I-75 a mere 12 miles during rush hour. Getting to a Cincinnati Reds game from where I live is very difficult and in West Chester that is where so much business is done these days in the Cincinnati area. It’s not done downtown because it’s too difficult to get in and out of the city. But with Uber Elevate, much of that problem is solved. I can think of at least one downtown Cincinnati parking garage near City Hall just south of the Convention Center that would make a perfect Uber Elevate Skyport—and it would do big business in that location.

That means what is left to do to make all this happen is we need to get some money people together for the initial investment and we need to solve the political problems and all the regulations that currently stand in the way of making such a thing happen. The prototypes are already there and will be ready for flight by 2020. That only gives us three years to build the skyports and work out the navigational routes—for instance in the example I provided, buying the land and building skyports in both West Chester, Ohio and on the Banks in Cincinnati. Eventually of course within the subsequent years there would be hubs of skyports all around the I-275 loop, just as there would be in every big city that could transport people in and out of their cities easily and to all points around their metropolitan areas. Once that network was established then there would be city to city travel, such as from Cincinnati to Indianapolis, or Chicago to Detroit, Los Angeles to Las Vegas and so on. That is the way of the future and I am happy that we are now on the doorstep to it. Now all we have to do is open the door. I’m ready—are you?

Rich Hoffman

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Iran is Finished: Those with money always determine the rules–and the outcome

How wonderful it is that Donald Trump as President of the United States pulled America out of that treacherous scam of a deal with Iran. With all the talk about how dangerous it was I have not heard a single media outlet tell the truth about Iran and why the Democrats under Obama were so willing to give so much to them without anything coming back in return. The answer which is key to the entire situation is that it was Marxist revolutionaries that moved in and took over the Iranian government in the late 1970s and they still rule to this day. Hidden behind the radical Islamic practices of showing anger toward the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 is the not so subtle push to spread Marxism to the entire planet, and to use force wherever necessary to do so. Most everything done in the Middle East including the support of Saddam Hussein of Iraq was to deal with the mess created by Sykes-Picot and the spread of Marxism that was generated in anger over that World War I negotiation. In the stalemate of a century of policy failures in that region it was always Marxism and a strong desire to spread socialism and communism to despot countries around the world, like Cuba, El Salvador, all of Africa, North Korea, Vietnam, Russia—virtually everywhere—which drove the politics of the Middle East. And the deal Obama’s administration made was meant to provide money to the struggling economy of Iran to keep them active in that original aim of spreading Marxism to every corner of the world through terrorism. Isn’t it something that nobody is talking about any of that?

The truth of the matter is that Iran isn’t much different from what happened to Venezuela in South America. Sitting on major oil reserves the world was willing to put up with the socialism and Marxism that was destroying the governments of those two countries—because of their oil. Socialism had already infected Europe, so they had no real reference point to judge the evils of the behavior in Iran—since they weren’t far from being in the same boat. Obama’s deal negotiated by John Kerry was designed to tie Europe, the United States and Iran together in an effort to keep the economy of the failing Iran together so they could perform their role in the great scheme of Marxist expansion.

Any college professor in America could tell you what I just did dear reader, which is why they support Iran mysteriously even though currently the country is the number one sponsor of terrorism. That is because most liberals support that Marxist spread of influence, and they are rooting for Iran to do their damage for the acquisition of socialist triumphs globally. But for everything to work the United States had to be involved because it is only from that capitalist country that there is any real value for Iran to loot and continue to exist. What Trump did was cut off that support. The deal Iran has with everyone else suddenly became worthless—Europe doesn’t have anything of any value to add. With the United States out of the deal, Iran has no cover and no way to prop themselves up on the world stage to hide their acts of terrorism, or to fund it.

Put another way that might be easier for people to understand, many years ago I had a group of family members who wanted me out of their way. They didn’t want me in the family and they wanted control of my wife. When I wasn’t intimidated by their outright aggressiveness toward me they regrouped and decided to play nice to my face in order to bring about financial ruin behind my back. The trouble was, my wife and I had great love for their children so if we wanted to see those children have a good life, we had to deal with these people in a civil fashion. These family members calculated they could put us in a dangerous position to bring about financial ruin to my family achieving their objectives of destroying me to get me out of it, because if I had no money, the thinking was, my wife would divorce me and they’d all live happily ever after—from their point of view. They didn’t care about my own children, or even my wife, they just wanted me out-of-the-way any way possible. So when frontal aggression failed to scare me off, they decided to make a “deal” and they used their children as the bargaining chips knowing we wouldn’t do anything to risk their wellbeing.

Once the father of these kids realized that I would do anything to make sure his kids were well off he became lazier and much less motivated to work. He spent most of his time lying around the house feeling sorry for himself and complaining that he wasn’t wealthy. Eventually the whole family ended up moving into my house because they had no place to go. I had to put up with it because the fear was that great harm would come to the children if we kicked them out. They had in many ways made themselves addicted to my every effort.

For many months on and off over several years the entire family loafed around and mooched off my efforts. My wife was a housewife, as she stayed home with our children. I was already carrying my whole family the way men have always been expected to. But now there was an entire family of five living in my house composing of nine people and essentially only one adult working. My situation was a perilous one, it was a situation that directly affected my wife.  I thought having a knock down drag out fight might be needed which is how I prefer to do things, but then that would have damaged the children and the larger aspects of the family, so what was I to do? Things are almost never literal enough for a good fight, strategy is often the most important combatant, and winning without physical confrontation. Well, I worked three jobs, two of them full-time and one part-time on the weekends and I made enough money to cover everything. In doing so I accomplished two things, I gained leverage of the situation over the lazy parents who found themselves addicted to my efforts, and because of that, it gave me power over the situation to protect the children, for the sake of everyone involved. But for the husband of that ridiculous couple, I showed him that he wasn’t man enough to keep pace with me and he gradually withered away in guilt. It took a few years, but the experience destroyed him as a person, as he deserved it. I did all that work and I still made time to play with all the kids and help them anyway I could, and it had a major impact on them. They grew up moderately intact. Not the way they would have if my wife and I had raised them, but better than they would have been without us in their lives. The couple ended up divorced once the kids were grown, and in exactly the condition we predicted they would at the time. Looking back, I am proud of how we handled a very delicate situation. The key was that by having all the money in the situation it gave us the moral authority to do what needed to be done in the long run. Instead of giving them what they wanted, which was to crush me out of existence, I simply showed that I was so much of a man who I could hold up the entire world and then some—and still smile and have fun with life.  Gaining the high ground is important in every major conflict if you can get it.  Money in all civilized society decides who has the high ground and holding the high ground in an effortless fashion, meaning you do not give your enemy the impression that you are exhausted is the most demoralizing thing you can do to win over such opponents.  And when they have ill intentions for your life–who the hell cares how much you hurt them.

Essentially this is what Trump has done with the Iran deal, only he has cut it off at the time when everyone was most addicted to America’s money. Like my situation, he had to wait for the kids to grow up, when they could no longer be harmed by any action on our part. For the United States that time came when North Korea decided it would rather have season tickets to NBA games from the West rather than carry on the failed policies of Kim Jung-Un’s communist father and grandfather. Once Iran was isolated, the time to choke off their income was there, and because they had grown dependent on the efforts of the United States, they are now unable to survive without the money from the most successful capitalist country on earth. Iran has no money to carry on their nuclear program, just as North Korea didn’t. And the Iranian people are tired of a Marxist regime limiting their opportunities for the future, so they are ripe for their own revolution back into a capitalist country. But they won’t act until the current Marxist regime is broke of money—so Trump made a move that Iran can’t survive. They will be crushed without anybody having to fire a single shot. Europe will be fine, and perfectly safe, because everything always depended on the United States, because it was they who had all the money. And when you have the money, you get to rule the circumstances.

Much like my personal story, the Iranian deal centers on financial power. Rather than sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves, we always had the power to solve the problem by using our money to control the situation. Trump held his cards long enough to squeeze out North Korea so now is the time to make the move against an only slightly stronger Iran. But Iran unlike North Korea already has internal rebellious elements hungry to seize power back into the people’s control. Marxism has failed in Iran, and everywhere else it has been tried. Their plan was to loot off the United States until there was nothing left, just like the family I described who wanted to get rid of me tried to work me into my own death—literally. But once that failed and all the financial leverage was on my side of things, they found themselves crushed by the guilt and their own lack of resources and the rest is now history. Iran has suppressed their own people and they will no longer be able to bring death to the West by looting America until there was nothing left. Now all the wealth is in our court and they need it to survive—so they’ll have no choice but to submit. Mark it down on your calendars. Iran is as good as gone.

Rich Hoffman

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Elections are the Alternative to Violance: Two more FBI agents quit ahead of mounting legal problems at the agency

The big speech that Donald Trump performed at the NRA meeting in Dallas, Texas culminated one of the most incredible weeks we’ve ever had in the United States. Virtually as Trump spoke two of the FBI agents close to former Director Comey left the agency, the much-maligned Lisa Page and James Baker. Of course, we were told that them leaving was unrelated to the Trump case, but in Baker’s situation he is leaving the FBI as one of its top lawyers and is now going to the Brookings Institute to write a blog on National Security Law. Give me a break, I write a blog every day—it’s not a full-time job. I can promise that Baker won’t be writing more than I do, nor will his content be as thought-provoking, or detailed. So his position at Brookings is simply a place to hide as the FBI hopes that all this mess that James Comey has gotten them into will boil over and they might all return to a normal life. Lisa Page of course was the person having the affair with another FBI lead investigator who muddled up the Hillary Clinton email case quite on purpose for political purposes then wrote all those text messages which are now unraveling the law enforcement agency more day by day as more is learned. Then there was the condemnation from the federal Judge T.S. Elilis III in Virginia Friday May 4th who slapped away the intentions of the Mueller special investigation quite publicly as a political witch hunt of the Donald Trump presidency. Taken individually, all these stories were extraordinary, but put together into the reality for which they represent and we see clearly what was behind the curtain of law and order all along, and it is pretty scary.

We should all hope that we never need our guns to take back our government from people like James Comey, Robert Mueller and useless bureaucrats like Lisa Page and James Baker. I’m sure that Lisa Page is a nice lady to have lunch with, but in her institutional role, she was serving as a vile tyrant using the law to pick and choose political players—along with her lover and companions outlined in those damning text messages found on her phone. It is for this reason, where parts of our government might go ideologically off the radar to take over rule away from the electorate that we have the Second Amendment. It should always be our hopes that we can correct these types of problems through elections, as we have with President Trump. When he goes to the NRA meeting in Dallas and indicates that he is enjoying these big legal fights, it is refreshing, because that’s what it takes. It keeps the rest of us cleaning our guns instead of having to use them to take control of our government again from people like James Comey who were obviously abusing their authority under institutional context.

I think I speak for most Americans when I say that I don’t recognize anybody on planet earth as my “better.” I don’t have a “better,” someone who is intellectually, physically, and morally superior to me in any way. I am a free person born that way and I intend to keep it that way doing whatever needs to be done to see that basic assumption through. I’m willing to be a law-abiding person so long as the law is trustworthy. But if it isn’t I will not submit to the authority of our legal system. To my way of thinking what does it matter if someone is under oath if they don’t believe in God, and the evidence is quite clear that many of these villains revealed by the current FBI are not believers of God—so what do they care if they lie to the public. What is there for them to fear if they don’t fear eternal damnation, because after all isn’t that the basic premise of being under oath? How can someone swear to the truth and nothing but the truth so help them God if they don’t really believe in God, Heaven, Hell and the concept of damnation? Yet many of these characters in modern government don’t believe in such things, instead they believe that government has replaced God which is the basic assumption of progressive society and that is an epistemological failure that defies the nature of our country. Without that basic agreement, there is no law and order which leaves us with two options. Elections which can reset the epistemological premise philosophically so that the United States is functioning on an agreed legal assumption, or violence, to literally destroy the criminals who are trying to take over our government and replace them by force. The Trump presidency has allowed for us to delay the violence in the hopes that elections might still work. But obviously, the Mueller investigation is all about undoing that election, so the situation is tenuous.

I’ve known for a long time that the legal system was rotten in America and like many people have played along to get along because we were not willing to surrender everything to chaos and anarchy. We always had hope that an election here and there would take care of the issue. That is how Trump was born, as a last resort to solve the corrupt nature of our legal and political system starting in Washington D.C. then cascading down through the rest of society through the states and local municipalities. Nobody cares if he had sex with some porn star or even a thousand porn stars. Donald Trump was a playboy who lived in the fast lane most of his adult life. Everyone knew that when they elected him, and they did so because they wanted someone in the Executive Branch who had been there and done it all and wouldn’t be seduced by the power of the office or become hypnotized by the décor of aristocracy. More than all that, he was used to legal threats and he knew how to deal with them when needed. Trump has experience with mob bosses and lawyers, mayors and regulations used to control a process so he was the perfect guy at this point in time to retake the White House for the electorate, and because of that election, it has kept our guns on our shelves. And that has been a good thing.

Yet that is how far we have all come. We are literally on that precipice of civil war where real people will get hurt instead of just a bunch of words being cast at each other. Both ideologies cannot live in the same country, one that wants a big centralized state that progressively controls everything and everyone, and a country run by the Constitution that assumes everyone believes in some concept of God and that the rule of law is rooted in a lack of desire to spend eternity in Hellish damnation. Intellectuals may laugh at the naiveté of our Christian nation to place such trust in oaths of office and moral indignation toward evil, but it’s a pretty good starting point when you have to keep rogue FBI agents from attempting to start their own country behind the mask of a corrupt legal system. They should all consider themselves lucky that there is such a system, because it has prevented a lot of violence. If those basic rights are not respected, that of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then the only next step is to take those guns off the shelves and retake the government by force. Compliance as progressives would assume based on the behavior of their rank and file, is not an option. It is better to see everyone fired at the FBI than to accept the vile conduct that their agents have conducted against the American people by allowing themselves to become weaponized and serve a political party that is specifically strong in the Washington D.C. area, but not around the rest of the country where Republicanism is still quite strong.

Rich Hoffman

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The Revealing Statement Made by James Comey: Beating the law at their own game

One of the greatest fears that people have is of the law. They think that because our legal system is written in such a way that it defies the type of education that we get in school, and that only specialized lawyers can interpret it for us, that the law is something they cannot defend against. We can protect our homes and families with guns, but when it comes to the law we are at the mercy of specialists and the court system which we all innately know can be leveled against us to serve the interests of our enemies. We know and understand that if our enemies want to come after us that we might have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees just to keep what we had before the legal incursion—so when the law comes after you, it means to destroy you and can be quite vicious. The law is never about individuals, it’s essentially about the institution of normality which has been established through collective case-law, to impose the order of the masses against individualized effort. That made James Comey’s comments recently particularly powerful when he spoke about his wishes that Hillary Clinton were president and what impact that might have had on his future. To me this one comment encapsulates the entire case against Donald Trump from the Mueller investigation, the Rod Rosenstein rebellion and the general behavior of the FBI over the last three years toward presidential politics:

“I think I would still be the FBI director…Secretary Clinton is someone deeply enmeshed in the rule of law, respect for institutions, a lawyer,” Comey said in response to a question about what he thought would have happened to him if Clinton had won the election.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/comey-id-still-have-a-job-if-hillary-clinton-won/ar-AAwAQcN?ffid=gz

Then consider what Rosenstein said about the mounting pressure to submit documents to House Republicans, that the Justice Department was not going to be extorted—obviously he forgets who he works for. Yet in the context of what James Comey has said, now with everyone under great pressure, pressure that the FBI, CIA, and all the career bureaucrats within the Department of Justice have never had to contend with in their entire lives—they are starting to say what they really think and we are learning a great deal about the values of our legal institutions which were always at the cores of our fears. Confirmations of our worst nightmares has surfaced, in a constructive way.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/justice-dept-won’t-be-extorted-rosenstein-warns-republicans/ar-AAwBVNM?OCID=ansmsnnews11

You should never have to fear the law unless you are up to bad things, but that’s not what we are talking about in this case. The people who are having their lives destroyed because they are somehow affiliated with Donald Trump’s acquisition of the Executive Branch wouldn’t find themselves in the trouble they are in now if they had not fallen on the wrong side of politics and that is the danger. We don’t elect people like Rob Rosenstein to office, we elect presidents who do fill those positions, so everyone in the Justice Department works for the President and should be more respectful. Comey should have been more respectful before he decided to leak information to his friend to inspire the special investigation that Robert Mueller is now conducting on his witch hunt, which is all it is at this point. The institutions of government as formed by ideological moderates in both the Republican and Democratic parties are using this investigation to keep an aggressive president from changing their good life as politicians being enriched by a corrupt process. They have been using for years the institution of law and order to preserve their racket, and its very disgusting. In the past when there have been challenges to the institutional system, those people were destroyed by James Comey and Rod Rosenstein—and people lost their net worth’s and even went to jail fighting the law which was protecting a corrupt band of Washington politicians.

People like James Comey have sold the purity of their institutional roles to themselves by not looking at the corruption which created the laws, but on the laws themselves as law enforcement officers. In a similar way that a cop collecting traffic citations to raise money for the local municipality will tell their victims, “I’m only enforcing the law” they rid themselves of the responsibility for the imposition by not paying attention to how that money is spent. They surrender their judgment to the greater aspect of the institutions they serve. Maybe city council members swipe money out of the coffers to pay for strippers in Las Vegas, or perhaps to fund a new government project that helps them get elected at the next election cycle, the money and how its used is of no mind to the law enforcement officer—they are only there to enforce the law. In the same way, Comey has surrendered his thoughts to the merits of law enforcement choosing not to deal with the corruption of the laws in the first place, and why they were created. In Comey’s world and that obviously of Rob Rosenstein, lying to the public isn’t hard because they are protecting the merits of the institutions that they serve, and in their world that is task they are bound to by duty. They don’t see anything wrong with doing such a thing because they are protecting the institution for which they are a part. When Comey said of Clinton that she had respect for institutions, what he meant is that like him, Hillary Clinton put individual value behind the need of institutions to function. He is blind to someone like her who functions beyond the scope of institutions because she has always been one of the law makers which formed the institutions in the first place. That’s why his statement is so interesting and revealing.

Many people in life associate their value by the role they serve in the greater world of their occupations. A lawyer will introduce themselves at a dinner party as such—an engineer will as well. A FBI Director likely will think of themselves completely by the role they play in society—not necessarily as a dad, a husband, or perhaps a collector of coins, Legos or baseball cards. What they do for a living is what they are to the world at large—they base their value on their status within the institutions they serve. However, thinking in such a way can make such people weapons against the innocent because those who control those institutions might be malicious and up to no good and if law and order can’t be counted on to protect the innocent, then who can? The answer is nobody. Comey, Rosenstein, Mueller and many others are functioning from this assumption that they were the top of the food chain of institutional value, and that their jobs were bigger than the Executive Branch. This occurred because previous presidents yielded to the awesome power we’ve given to our institutions of law and order, because of that basic fear we all have of the law, that we think we aren’t smart enough to translate laws for ourselves and need lawyers to protect us from that scary foreign language.

The case against Trump by the federal government is exposing this massive weakness in institutional judgment. The law is clearly on the wrong side of history and now they are finding themselves caught in the quandary of their own failed philosophies. It’s not enough to say to the world that they “serve” the institutions of law and order when we can see clearly that those institutions have been used against us for years, and now that we have a president in the Executive Branch we are seeing things we always suspected clearly for the first time, and we—the electorate—don’t like it.

We should not have to fear our own system of law and order. The institutions of the FBI and other government agencies should never seek to impose themselves on the public with fancy terminology that can only be interpreted by an overpaid specialist or the judges they play golf with on the weekends. If the law doesn’t serve the people of our Republic, then it’s no good. And Donald Trump was elected by us to represent our needs, and if the institution is picking a war with him, they are essentially picking a fight with all of us. And I can say this as a guy who has fought the law many, many, many times—sometimes even representing myself as legal counsel—I’m not going to take it. That’s for sure. While its true, I do have a lot of guns to protect myself from thugs, better than that I have a mind that isn’t afraid of any lawyer or judge. And neither should you dear reader. If you want our Republic to work properly, you need to stop fearing our own legal system, and to take command of it. Voting for a good person in the Executive Branch isn’t enough, obviously.

It’s time to change the title to this song–because they “ain’t” going to win this time.

Rich Hoffman

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An Amazing Amount of Information: The turning point

It was bewildering to listen to the so-called pundits try to analyze whether or not Donald Trump played a “role” in the sudden North Korea group hug that is taking place across the globe. From a tyrannical regime just a few months ago threatening nuclear war to a world stage icon, the threat of North Korea has been melted away by the new American president and all the institutional addicts are perplexed as to how and why. Most interesting was the comments from the despot of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said that Trump was not qualified to be a world leader and negotiate in any way because he was a builder of buildings and only a businessman—as if a politician were some kind of godly position. And within that statement and the presumptions of the entire political class around the world I think the Ayatollah hit the sweet spot on why everyone is so upset with Trump who have made livings for years scaring normal people into believing that their politicians were gods incarnate and meant to rule without question.

It was absolutely fascinating to watch the Trump supporters Diamond and Silk (Ms. Hardaway and her sister Ms. Richardson) voice their concerns in front of congress about social media platforms attacking conservative groups. I can’t imagine anything like that happening prior to just two years ago, yet they did it and it was quite interesting—and exemplifies the difference between the static order of old, and this new light on their feet brand of conservatism that is emerging so spectacularly. We are learning now what Trump conservatives are, and they are not like the Reagan conservatives at all. People like the black entertainment artist Kenya West are a part of it ironically and the old rules that have been dividing our society up over many thousands of years are coming apart right in front of our faces, and its very interesting to watch.

As the White House Correspondents Dinner was happening in Washington D.C. President Trump came to Michigan to host a rally against the establishment—fresh off a diplomatic week of massive productivity, state visits from France and Germany as well as constant negotiations with North Korea to set up the official end of the Korean War. And instead of giving those media personalities the illusion that they were a part of a shadow government, Trump cut them off and left them hanging wet on the cloths line—and he should have. They are part of that old Ayatollah mentality which believes that aristocratic politicians are superior to individuals of business and opinion. Yet everywhere we look these days the old guard is fumbling with this new attitude best exemplified by Trump and people like Diamond and Silk.

With all the weapons they have had at their disposal, such as has been revealed by James Comey trying so hard to pretend that the intelligence agencies of the United States have not been weaponized—they are failing and there is a very gentle panic beginning to emerge in them. James Comey and Ali Khamenei ironically have the same opinion of Donald Trump and the same belief in the old order which propped them up to be leaders of their respective societies. They can’t accept that a businessman like Trump is a superior caliber person to the old-style rulers of the old world—the aristocratic societies of yesteryear, of which the United States was always rebelling away from. That was the point from the inception of America, to rebel away from Europe. We were never meant to copy those aristocrats. Washington D.C. was never supposed to be a swamp in the way it has become. The swamp formed because good people were too busy settling out west and forming their own companies and families independent of king’s courts and political associations. The politician in America was always supposed to be a servant, not a “better.”

The more James Comey spoke on his book tour culminating with the Fox News interview he did with Bret Baier the more obvious it was that he was genuinely hurt that the world he understood was melting away and was being replaced by this new world full of rules he knew he wouldn’t be good at. I would suggest that this world of Trump and activists like Diamond and Silk were always supposed to be part of the American experience—so its his fault that Comey thinks the things he does. It was his fault that he failed like so many others in our social tapestry have, to recognize the obvious. Human beings do not like institutionalized concepts. They may have used them to bridge over from the Neolithic periods of early mankind, but the destination was never going to be more authority figures in our lives running everything that we know and love. It was destined to be less.

While James Comey and his wife were part of that Beltway society that thought they understood the rules and toasted each other with expensive wines in Georgetown backyards, the rest of the world yearned to be free of such aristocrats. In truth the social media platforms like Facebook that have worked so closely with American intelligence agencies to collect data on people without warrants and complicated legal procedures have helped accelerate this issue of necessity for freedom. I have no doubt that Facebook wanted to shut down the popularity of Diamond and Silk’s page, just as they would have loved to have stopped the Donald Trump presidency. But the nature of social media is freedom to communicate with people within their circle of influence with more ease and that has created in the mind of people a yearning for more of what they already want—freedom from overseers.

People generally want a society that is productive and filled with justice. But if left to their own devices, they despise authority. There are a percentage of people out there in the world that have an intense desire to rule over other people for various reasons, so they turn to institutions to provide them that ability, whether they end up as teachers in a public school, or the head of some military branch—the desire to rule over other people has always been at the center of war in human societies, from the beginning. But most people don’t have such yearnings, they just want to be free of such people and to live their lives on their own terms and they are the clear majority of people functioning out there across the planet. America was born because of that intense desire and now social media has caused that longing to become much more defined.

Where it goes from here is truly an unexplored territory, but its exciting. Trump’s achievements are the result of a person functioning outside of institutionalism, that has been developed by the merits of capitalism to solve much more complicated problems than the aristocrats of the old world could manage. That is how America became such a great country to begin with, when private enterprise was able to work around the political class to truly achieve objectives that people yearned for. And that is precisely why Iran is an armpit of a country currently because it is still run the way countries have been run for thousands of years—and that top down model just isn’t valid any longer. North Korea had to see the writing on the wall when Trump didn’t back down the way politicians in the past did, and he decided for his own good to join the world. Iran will have no choice either, and that truly scares those types of people who try to use institutionalism to bring meaning to their lives by giving them authority over others based purely on the rules of artificial parameters of human politics.

Rich Hoffman
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The Wonderful World of Winning: Eating at Chuy’s and the Democrats suing Trump, WikiLeaks, and the Russians

I had a wonderful lunch the other day at Chuy’s in West Chester, Ohio. It wasn’t my first visit to the popular Tex Mex dinning establishment but this one was better than other times I had been there. It was a business lunch and the subject of discussion was two of my favorite books of strategy, The Art of War by Sun Tzu and The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. Whenever I get a chance to talk about those books people are usually put on their heels a bit with my enthusiasm which is difficult to turn off once things start flowing. But this day was more unique on the subject of those two books simply because the discussion point was in how you can determine who on the other side of an objective is about to fail—which is clearly one of the primary ingredients needed in understanding proper strategy on anything. As I was talking about how you can know who is about to fail and when to pounce on their positions, I received the news that the Democratic Party had filed a lawsuit against President Trump for a conspiracy between the Russian government and WikiLeaks to rob Democrats of the 2016 presidential election. It was pretty stunning stuff, because it essentially announced to the world who knew how to read the tea leaves that the Democratic Party had just announced its end.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-democrats-lawsuit-russia-20180420-story.html

The Democrats have lost the news story of Russian collusion and many of their ranks are about to be pulled into the insane story about James Comey as that former FBI director continues to make an absolute ass of himself on his incriminating book tour. The Mueller investigation for Democrats has sputtered into a big nothing going further nowhere leaving a lot of money spent with nothing to show for it. Trump is having personal success in spite of all the mechanisms of power that have been thrown at him from FBI lying and spying to the entire entertainment industry coming after him. He is still bringing peace to North Korea, something that hasn’t happened in nearly seven decades by lots of supposedly smart people. Trump has accomplished the task in just a matter of months and that’s not all. He has been successful in Syria against Russia and continues to have success in the Middle East. The economy is doing well and the culture in America is changing for the better, and people are starting to feel it.

Fundraising is down for the Democrats and as they come to the primaries and the midterms that come after there just aren’t a lot of “blue” candidates who can win “red” seats in spite of all the Republicans who are retiring from Trump’s control over the GOP. The Democratic Party knows it has no other hope to win anything other than in scoring some major publicity victory which at this point isn’t going to happen. They have just announced that they are suing one of the most sued people in American history—in Donald Trump. If anybody knows how to handle the rigors of court drama its Trump. Trump’s legal team can now counter a lawsuit and depose evidence that the Democrats have long sought to hide, like the DNC server, because you can’t prove anything was hacked without presenting the evidence—and that evidence for the Democrats is very damning and is what got all of them into trouble in the first place.

The entire case that the Democrats are presenting is based on an early 2016 press conference that Trump had where he jokingly asked the Russians to produce Hillary Clinton’s delated emails that she had destroyed obviously to hide crimes she had committed as Secretary of State when she set up her private server to conduct her electronic communications. As a public servant she wasn’t allowed to do that. She ignored the rules and thought she was going to get away with running for another public office when she obviously disregarded the rules of conduct prior to that attempt. It has been amazing to listen to James Comey talk during his book tour because as the head of the FBI it would seem that he’d have better knowledge of how the rest of the country thinks, but what we’ve learned is that he is just a beltway liberal who has very activist objectives. He’s a lot like Hillary Clinton in that he thinks he’s entitled to things, just as she thought she was entitled to the presidency—her lifelong goal as a meal ticket of womanhood. When reality didn’t match up to their expectations they flubbed up—Comey in trying to hide his activism as the head of the FBI, and Clinton in operating her campaign in illegal ways trusting that people like James Comey would run cover for her, and that nobody would challenge them. Trump simply threw the issue on the table joking about Russians which exposed the Clinton campaign and really put pressure on the FBI investigation into her activity as a candidate. Trump had forced both the FBI and the Clinton campaign into a series of mistakes that culminated into an early July 2016 blunder by the FBI once Loretta Lynch had met with former President Clinton to work out a deal to keep Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign alive even though there was a “there” there.

One thing I really like about Chuy’s, as a restaurant experience is that it looks crazy as a fusion mix of Texas enormity and Mexican chaos. Mexican culture is a mash up of Aztecan heritage, Spanish Catholicism and the mixing of two radical cultures into one impoverished Marxist enterprise—color pallets that don’t go together, hubcaps on the ceiling, exotic tropical resorts which give the country some forms of legitimate business to front for all their illegal drug activity. Yet the food underneath all the colorful forms of chaos is all very fresh and you can trust that everything you are eating is nearly right off the farm quality. There’s a lot going on at Chuy’s which I find very stimulating. Not because I like crazy, but that it is metaphorically pleasing to me to immerse myself in those types of environments because they are emblematic toward the many layers of life that is in our present society. On the surface the things we see clash and meet in ways that seem disconnected, but under all those layers is high quality and competency.

Once you understand the chaos on a story like the Hillary Clinton case, you can enjoy the quality that is behind an endeavor, and that was the reason I knew that the Democrats were in serious trouble, which I had been predicting for a long time. As I was eating at Chey’s with some business friends talking about the long history of samurai warfare and the ability to understand victory long before anybody else could—it was obvious that President Trump had punched through into a new good place for the country. And the Democrats had sealed their own fate with that announced lawsuit. For the Democrats, their much-coveted Mueller investigation was imploding and the waters of the swamp had dropped several feet unmasking lots of slimy creatures who had been hiding just under the surface. As I ate my tortillas on a fine spring day in April, I could smell victory for the Republicans in the air and the wonderful understanding what winning for America feels like once again. And it was a grand sensation.

Rich Hoffman

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Support Allegiant Airlines: Don’t let panic driven people ruin everything for the rest of us

Let me just say in defense of Allegiant Airlines that I would have no problem flying on them with my entire family anywhere they are going, be it Las Vegas, Orlando, or anyplace else. As a discount carrier I think they do a fantastic job and provide a wonderful service. Being able to fly to far away destinations for under $100 per seat—in many times much less than that—helps bring down the prices in an industry obsessed with attempting higher and higher costs on the consumer. I was personally disgusted with the hit job 60 Minutes conducted against Allegiant this past week and how it set off a subsequent parade of negative aviation stories—especially after Southwest Airlines actually had a CFM-56 engine blow up at 30,000 feet killing a passenger. Let me tell everyone something, the FFA does not need more regulations for god’s sake, accidents happen, especially in an aging fleet of planes that have been flying for a while. What happened with Southwest Airlines is an extreme rarity, the containment case should have captured that shrapnel from the exploding engine. It certainly doesn’t mean that every exploding engine will produce the same effect as the panicky people on the 60 Minutes episode by Steve Kroft articulated based on their experiences with Allegiant.

https://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/news/2018/04/17/how-allegiants-woes-could-hit-tourism-in-pinellas.html

What I see happening in general toward Allegiant is a similar hit that CNN did against Sea World—an attempt to bring down a company using the media by competitors. In this case Allegiant puts a lot of pressure to bring down costs in the airline industry, which is desperately needed. The unions and other airlines all have an intense desire to use every excuse to drive up prices, so the safety record of Allegiant is attacked so that it forces them to comply with industry regulations designed to appease the labor unions. It’s no different from when panicky moms and school teachers use “children” as an excuse to raise taxes in a local school district, because it presents an indefensible position that is emotionally driven. Allegiant Airlines is providing a low-cost service using planes that have seen a few miles without all the luxury that other flights might offer to get customers to faraway places without breaking their bank accounts, and I think its wonderful. I don’t care if the planes shake, rattle and roll a bit in flight, they are safe enough to fly reliably. The only thing they are doing wrong in relation to the industry as a whole, is that they are forcing other airlines to lower their own prices.

Listening to those losers on the 60 Minutes segment was utterly disgusting. Flying is supposed to be something of an adventure. The way flight was invented in the United States always had with it a bit of living on the edge where the pioneers of flight endured the many unknown dangers associated with flying with valor and a confidence that anything could be overcome. Passengers had the same type of spirit. A rickety craft over the South Pacific or the jungles of the Amazon carrying some business to faraway lands was a positive experience in every way. The lives of the passengers were never in much danger at the hands of a competent pilot and the ambition that kept aircraft going into the sky by ground crews inventing everything as they went with duct tape and glue.

The larger problem of today isn’t the fault of the airlines, it’s the type of people they are dealing with. There are always a percentage of the population that have been raised on panic television, who watched the Jerry Springer Show entirely too much that are looking for every available lawsuit, and those people ruin life for the rest of us. It is their fault that there are too many regulations, too many stop signs, ridiculously low-speed limits—because they bitch and complain about everything which forces companies to waste money trying to appease them. It made me sick to see that big girl interviewed by Steve Kroft talk about how she feared she wouldn’t see her children again when the engine blew on that Allegiant flight. Let me say that if I had been on that flight I wouldn’t have even stopped reading my book. It is disgusting that such panicky people are out there complaining about every little thing and are so terrified about basic things in life. Just because somebody cries about their fears about something doesn’t mean the entire industry should change what it’s doing for everyone else.

Airlines like Allegiant allow big girls like that 60 Minutes complainer to fly to Vegas and have access to all those bottomless pit buffets because they offer cheap flights. Without those cheap flights most, people wouldn’t be able to afford going to places like Vegas for the weekend. People like that lady want Allegiant to go out and invest in a new fleet of aircraft that aren’t so worn and rickety but they don’t expect to have to pay the higher ticket prices associated with new aircraft investment. It’s just like that idiot Jessie Jackson coming to Cincinnati to protest Kroger for not keeping failing stores open in poor neighborhoods because they were losing their ass due to theft, vandalism, and poor-quality clientele. The expectation is that companies have an altruistic obligation to society to give all their profits to the poor and needy. Well, people who think like that are completely wrong. Go see how that mentality has been working in Cuba, North Korea and Iran. Go visit Africa and tell me how that “profit sharing” is going. The truth is, profit drives ambition, which drives industry. Vegas thrives off cheap flights and buffets. It could be argued that Vegas is a sinful place that brings no good to the moral condition of society. I would say that Vegas is a lot of bad things but it’s also a lot of good—they have great shows in Vegas and great food. We have a better society because there are places like Vegas in the United States and Allegiant does a great job of getting people there who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to go.

Sea World is still reeling from the hit job CNN did to them way back in 2014. That same hit job media is in full court press attack mode against President Trump. And now it’s after Allegiant for all the same reasons. The competition doesn’t like change or a society that has options, so they use the media to exploit the fears of stupid, panicky people to give them a competitive advantage over a rival. Essentially when something is good these days some parasitic cape rider will seek to jump on for a free ride and use the anxious sentiments of federal regulators to attempt to slow down the best to the cumbersome exploits of the weak—and its utterly disgusting to see. The TSA has been much better under President Trump, but they are still a laborious unionized organization of make work efforts designed to appease a panicky public. Every time someone complains about something like exploding engines—which are facts of life in aviation—or terrorists, or smelly buffet participants fresh from a trip to Vegas, someone writes a new law that slows down the entire industry and that is much more destructive than some occasional mechanical failures. It costs a lot of money to run an airline and people are lucky that there are companies like Allegiant out there. Without them the ticket prices would be so high that few could afford to travel—which wouldn’t be good for anybody. I would encourage everyone to book a ticket on Allegiant and take a weekend vacation to some exotic destination, and to support them in this time of bad publicity. They deserve the support.

Rich Hoffman

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Thoughts on the Nature and Value of Geeks: The last hope of a rare few who have not given up on intellect

There are plenty of negative news stories out there but what they all have in common is that most of the participants of those stories, both on the end of generation, and on the receipt, all share crippled minds created for them by institutional restrictions socially mandated on previous historical context. Most of the problems of our society can be traced back to this essential problem. With that in mind I have been exploring over these last couple of weeks the incidents of society where positives are emerging, and I identified the Star Wars franchise as one of those things that create new, imaginative context to a new way at looking at old problems. While I agree that most of our human species is mired in dank, miserable thinking, I would say that roughly 5% are not. I meet a few here and there who are operating outside of the modern limits, who don’t care about baseball statistics and the NBA playoffs, or what’s going on in modern politics. They are seeking to fill their active minds any way possible. Most of the time their net results are that of social misfits whom nobody will ever listen to, and they will have no impact on the social circumstances around them, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any merit in trying, which they appear to be doing.

I was at the Barnes & Noble in West Chester at 9 AM sharp the day that James Comey’s tell nothing book came out. Actually, it told a lot—it said that in the Comey household James does what his wife tells him to do, and she was a Hillary Clinton supporter. So he broke the law to make her happy—its pretty much as simple as that. But I was there to get another book as well, the new Star Wars book Last Shot that was all about Han Solo, which I had been very eager to read. While I was in line at the checkout there were three other people there with me and they all had the Last Shot book in their hands—but none of them had the James Comey book. That told me a lot about the state of the world. I’m sure Comey’s book will sell, but the real interest was in fantasy alternatives to the present reality, and for people daring enough to ask, Star Wars was offering something to think about. All the people holding that book looked to be under 35, two of them were male, one was a female and they reminded me that there are people out there in the cracks of life who haven’t given up on a potential future—and I found that encouraging.

For my birthday last week my kids gave me a little Millennium Falcon Lego set to build with my grandson. While he was over during the weekend we took the time to build it and once we completed it he was very impressed with our work. He wanted to display it prominently on a book cabinet that I have which has a lot of models and trophies on top of it, because to him it meant a lot. As I’ve said before, the Lego Company has been doing some great work for years—both in video games and in toys. Every time I do a model kit of theirs I am always impressed with they way they engineer their products. This particular Millennium Falcon is a simple ten-dollar toy kit that you can get at Target, but I found it remarkably sophisticated in how it went together. After seeing my grandson’s reaction, I immediately considered getting the new Ultimate Collector Series Millennium Falcon set. It has 7500 pieces and costs about $1,200. He probably needs a few years before working on that one, but it did spark my imagination on how productive such an experience could be. That’s when I found this video from the Tested guys, who are part of the Myth Busters television series.

All of the adults in that Tested group reminded me of the kind of people who were with me at Barnes & Nobel at 9 AM sharp to buy the latest Han Solo book. Society from the outside looks at people like these people and thinks they are wasting their time on fantasy, but what I see and have experienced with them is that they are in acts of rebellion against the status quo—they are standing against the tide of lackluster thinking that is so prevalent in modern society. Yes they are geeks, but that is to say that they are people who have not yet surrendered their minds to the apathy of modern society. They can’t find what they need in society to fill their minds, so they have turned to fantasy to satisfy their hungry intellects. It makes me very happy to see all those grown adults sit down and tackle that Millennium Falcon Lego build with such unbridled enthusiasm. I would say that there are more people like that in the world now than there were 30 years ago, or even 60, which is important to note.

People don’t spend $1,200 on a Millennium Falcon 1500-piece puzzle essentially because they don’t like to think. As I mentioned earlier this week about the opioid crises, the main cause of drug abuse is an intellect in conflict with their environment. I would dare say that those people in the Tested group probably don’t go out and get drunk very much, and they probably don’t do drugs because their minds are in harmony with their existence. It’s a shame that they had to turn to fantasy to get that harmony, but at least it’s a mechanism they have discovered which allows for such a positive relationship with themselves. And when you visit the toy aisle at Wal-Mart and Target, they have entire sections dedicated to Lego and puzzle games because they obviously are selling. Just as people don’t show up at 9 AM to buy the latest Han Solo book because they want to go out and smoke crack—to turn off their minds. Reading, no matter what it is turns on a mind and is a very positive experience.

Most of what drives our world to evil is the vacancy left when people have surrendered thought to the lazy whims of groupthink. Sports in many ways is a groupthink activity and is very popular with modern civilization. But more and more I am seeing the influence of fantasy elements like Star Wars creating in people a desire to sit down and build Millennium Falcon models and read books about that ship in stories that mean something to those who participate in the task of discovery. I saw in those three-other people in the bookstore line with me that day hope in their eyes. The world around them was letting them down in many ways and they were thoughtful enough to contemplate the issues. But their minds were hungry, and society wasn’t feeding them, so they turned out with me at 9 AM to buy a book they couldn’t wait to get their hands on. And I’m noticing more of these people year by year, and that gives me a lot of hope for tomorrow. They are still in the extreme minority, but maybe, just maybe, they will become the majority in a few hundred years—and that would be a great thing for the human race!

Last Shot was the first Star Wars book that I have read since 2013/14 and I admit I only did it because it featured Han Solo as the primary character. I wanted to see how they were going to deal with Solo ahead of the movie coming out on May 25th. I have said many nice things over the past years about how important I think Star Wars books are to the next generation for all the reasons outlined in this article. But I have been very skeptical about the direction the Disney ownership has taken their acquired Star Wars franchise from a person I greatly admire in George Lucas. I am not happy about the more progressive direction that Star Wars has taken, but I am very happy that it is fueling the imaginations of people like those great Tested guys. I can say that after reading Last Shot I enjoyed it enormously and I will probably go and read the long list of new books that have been published since 2012. There is plenty of good value in those stories that justify the investment and all the fun that a grandpa can have with his grandkids for the next thirty years. And that all by itself is a wonderful attribute. It was a good book, and it made me very happy to have the opportunity to read it—which I did voraciously!

Rich Hoffman

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A Trip to Denny’s For Han Solo Merchendise: Why all the fuss?

It wasn’t just this that we did for my 50th birthday this past week, my family did a lot of things for me to show how much they appreciate me. But when they asked me what I wanted to do, I said that I wanted to find a Denny’s near our home so I could get a Millennium Falcon cup from the new movie Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the new Topps collecting cards that you can only get at the promotional event that they are doing at most Denny’s restaurants. And I wasn’t kidding about it. If we were planning to do a dinner for my birthday and go out somewhere anyway, I wanted to do something fun that I’d like, and could share with my kids and grandkids. After all, we all like Star Wars. I always used it in the way it was intended, as a modern mythology that had embedded in those kid’s films an essential epistemology in regard to philosophy that is needed in this fast-moving world, so one of my daughters found a nice one about an hour and a half outside of downtown Cincinnati, just outside the city limits of Indianapolis, Indiana. Han Solo was always my favorite character from the Star Wars movies so it was fun to make the Denny’s promotion a fun birthday event that everyone could enjoy. As an added benefit Disney had released the last trailer before the new movie opens on May 25th, just over a month from this writing so it made for an interesting birthday dinner at Denny’s. We didn’t hold back on the Solo merchandise!

I think Alden Ehrenreich will do a great job playing Han Solo as a younger man, a tough job to take over from one of the most iconic film roles Harrison Ford brought to life. It’s a tough job that everyone has in their head differently, so no matter what Ehrenreich does, someone isn’t going to like it. But, from what I’ve seen, the kid gets it—and that’s all that matters. It works for me and I hope it leads to a lot more Han Solo in movies that take place before the events of episode 4. I like the new pointy nose on the Millennium Falcon, I like the idea of new Star Wars music about to be released. I love the DLCs that will be downloaded on Star Wars: Battlefront 2. I love all the toys being released for the movie, its more generational stuff to share with my grandchildren for which all this is new to them so they are having fun with it for the first time. I see it all as very positive and it generally puts a smile on my face to have a new Han Solo movie because that character represents everything I love about Star Wars.

Of course, part of what makes 50th birthday celebrations what they are is in the reflection that you have about your life up to that moment and what might be ahead. For many it’s a time when they look at their life and consider that their best days are behind them. But not me. I have had a lot of very good days and I am sure there are a lot more ahead of me, and the Denny’s meal day was surprisingly fulfilling, not just from the Han Solo gear, but I enjoyed eating Denny’s food again after not having it for over 25 years. Denny’s was one of those places I used to go because they were open all night where I’d go to read after I’d get off work from my second shift jobs. When I was young and worked two fulltime jobs to make ends meet and our house was too small to leave a light on otherwise it would wake up the whole house at night, I’d read my books at all night restaurants like Waffle House, Perkins and Denny’s to make myself tired enough to wind down for bed. After a good meal and about 10 refills of a Coke at 2 am I’d go home and sleep for three or four hours and do it all again at the crack of dawn. Somewhere over that 25-year span Denny’s left the Cincinnati area so it was fun to have it again on my birthday. It was even more fun to have a Star Wars inspired menu with the new Han Solo on the cover. I had the “Two Moons Skillet” which was Heaven on earth for me.

All this of course led me to consider how much Star Wars had evolved over time and what role it plays in a modern sense. I’ve written many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of words as to what Star Wars means culturally, but I think I’ve been leaving out the epistemological definition in referring to it. After all, I write about some pretty serious subjects most of the time, so when I switch gears and do these Star Wars articles, to some it seems out of character, but to me it all runs together. It’s relevant to the missile attacks of Syria this past weekend, the teacher strikes in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Arizona, the opioid epidemic—just about every topic one might consider can be traced back to the epistemological failures of modern society—and Star Wars was created, and does a good job of maintaining it for children a basic epistemology of values that are designed for modern life. The world is otherwise very confused, their religious values are all over the map, politically we have factions that want to take mankind back to a theology while others are wanting to plant flags into anarchy, democracy and those who presently have power want to keep everything in an aristocracy. We are moving to space as a species while the political powers in office want to cling to mother earth and environmental concerns because that is how their power bases were established—on earth with earthly rules. The truly wonderful thing about Star Wars is that it takes all the value of the world’s mythology and applies it into a modern context, which is why kids, and kids at heart love it so much. It’s a much different thing than other pop culture rituals. This one is actually very healthy for modern human beings. It’s meant for kids, but it works for adults too in very meaningful ways.

When I was in grade school showing a love for Star Wars was extremely taboo. I make no attempt to hide my contempt for the way public school operates—I often say that public school is like using a public restroom or a drinking fountain. Yeah, it does the basics, but not very well. In public school, too many people establish their basic epistemological essence in those public institutions because they don’t have reliable families at home to help them, or other positive influences. The school becomes the basic foundation for that while it was quite clear that George Lucas was intent to provide a competing epistemology for young people, so the pubic school system rejected the competition instead of embracing it, the way they should have. However, I was never one who backed down from a fight—never one day in my life. The more kids made fun of me for wearing my favorite Han Solo t-shirts to school, the more I did it, and my love for Star Wars actually got me into a lot of trouble. It’s not like that today, kids can show their enjoyment of such things without getting into fights over it, and that is actually some real progress. Concerning education, I see that Star Wars has given many people who missing epistemology that they should have been getting from school, or their families and the stories are keeping pace with the concerns of our modern age that is coming at us much faster than ever. It’s really the only thing that is—which to me makes it extremely important culturally.

One of my many hobbies is the study of world cultures and religions. It doesn’t pay much money otherwise I’d do that task fulltime because as I say here often, mythology is my favorite topic. I could talk about world culture all day long and what the pros and cons are. You can often read in hindsight why cultures failed if you know the details and why that’s important is so that you can prevent it in your own culture. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about the American Indian or Roman and Greek societies, you can see through the gifts of historical hindsight why they all failed, and I apply those lessons daily with the millions and millions of words I have provided for free to my readers—because I don’t want to see people fail. Professionally, I don’t have to read in a Denny’s at 2 AM anymore because the lights in the house keep everyone awake. I’m doing well at age 50, as is expected given my role in our family, and my community. So I don’t mind sharing things I love in writing and mythology if it might improve the life of one person—let alone helping many people. The human race in spite of all the faults we could list off for hours on end is actually plotting into positive uncharted territories for the first time in history and it is really only the epistemological values of Star Wars that are successfully preparing the minds of our modern age with the intellectual means to deal with everything in a positive way.

This morning I was at the Target department store near my house shopping for Han Solo toys and I couldn’t help but notice that The Last Jedi just hit the shelves from its Blue-Ray release, and here we are talking about another Star Wars movie being released in a month. The cultural values of the last Star Wars movie are still simmering, Lego hasn’t even put out their video game yet for The Last Jedi. And there are lots of beach towels and clothing out for consumers to enjoy and all this is happening as Space X and Virgin Galactic are taking over the civilian colonization of space and Amazon is delivering packages within hours of ordering from virtually anywhere in the world. Artificial intelligence is taking over as the new rudimentary task supplier in a rapidly expanding economy where there simply aren’t enough workers in the world to do all the jobs coming available. I’m not kidding when I say Alexia could take over the teaching profession. With a second Star Wars moving coming out and all that comes with it culturally, it will be interesting to see what happens. And that’s not all, there are at least eight more Star Wars movies in development right now, along with Star Wars television, video games, books, music and so many other items. What impact that has on the human race I think is a fascinating topic on the epistemological level of consciousness.

As I was paying the check at Denny’s it was a big one, and many of the Indiana farmers looked at me a little side-eyed. My oldest grandson and I were very openly showing our excitement at getting the Han Solo card in the stack I bought. I of course was hoping to get that particular entry. Those are the same kind of people who used to make fun of my Han Solo shirts on the school bus—they didn’t understand what all the fuss was about and thought I should be thinking about something more—real. But little did they know, or little did they know that day in Denny’s that what I was excited about was more real than just about anything they were considering and Han Solo has always best exemplified my excitement for it—the optimism of what is always potentially just around the corner. Han Solo is a very positive character who believes he can get out of anything he gets into under any circumstances and in so many ways, he represents the current position of mankind on planet earth in the early parts of the 21st century. That makes these movies more important than just an entertainment option. Even more than that, it made for me a really fun birthday!

Rich Hoffman

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