Tag: bad behavior

The Evil of Staying in Your Lane: How bad behavior stays hidden and active

For all those people who are saying, “if I ever see Rich Hoffman out somewhere, I’ll give him a piece of my mind.” Well, I’m out and about a lot, and I talk to a lot of people. And when I do, nobody talks very tough to my face. So if you want the chance, I am at the Back Porch Saloon in West Chester a lot. And on one such occasion this past week, I was having lunch with a person going for their Ph.D., and he told me about the process and all the things he had to do to get into that elite club. And, in essence, that’s what it was, a club. The other Ph.D. panel members decide what the candidate must do, and if the applicant wants to be in the club, they’ll do it. The criteria differ from school to school and peer group to peer group. So really, getting a Ph.D. is similar to the rigors that are undergone to pass the BAR exam or any number of higher education gateways to an elite order. And socially, going to the college itself in our society is seen as one of those gateways, and the goal isn’t always what was taught but that the applicant endured the experience. All this came to my mind while I was listening to this guy list all the frustrating hurdles he had to jump over to achieve his goal. I thought about the situation at Lakota schools, where it was quite evident that people were having trouble confronting evil at face value. Most people privately had an opinion on it, but socially, they felt they had to stay in their lane and that they weren’t qualified to pass judgment on anybody, lest they be judged themselves. But why was this the case?

Well, most people go through something in their life where they must be initiated into some kind of group order. Usually, it starts in high school. And if it doesn’t happen there, it happens in college or the military. Hazing rituals for all group behavior are common experiences for people, even in religious groups, to some extent. All groups of people have barriers to entry, and to become part of it; people have to surrender a part of themselves to join the power of the group.   A homeowner’s association is a form of this. They may require you to keep your garage doors closed when not using your garage to maintain street face value. You can’t have boats in your driveway. You must keep your grass cut—those kinds of things. Very few people are indeed free to think what they want, about what they want, and when they want. They must do what groups tell them to do through their memberships because we are all taught early in life that acceptance by our peers is of utmost importance, whether it’s obtaining a Ph.D. for our career path or being selected in a local Mason lodge to advance to the higher degrees. And the truth of the matter is, most people stop intellectually growing at age 15, likely much lower than that these days and they put as a priority not fighting for truth, justice, and the American way but in “staying in their lane,” as people who don’t like to be challenged like to say all the time. And there just aren’t enough adults who make it through all these gateways of group associations to stand up to evil when it presents itself. They might have personal feelings about evil when they go to vote; so long as nobody is looking, they’ll express it. But in front of other people, they have been taught to stay in their lane, and that makes them trustworthy to all the slugs who accept them into their group associations who want to trust that smarter and better people won’t come along to knock them off their perch, which is what the group associations are really about, no matter what level they are pursued. People think there is power in groups and are willing to trade away personal value to gain access to that power without having to really do anything themselves. 

I remember my college days; I had friends in all the local schools who would invite me to house parties at the various fraternities and sororities at Ohio State, Miami University, and the University of Cincinnati. One I remember well occurred in Cincinnati, where I arrived to meet my friend, and I broke all kinds of rules that the fraternity brothers were distraught with me over. First of all, I walked across the emblem on the sidewalk outside without paying homage to all the ritualistic ways they required all people to do. So we got off to a rough start that didn’t improve as the night wore on. The party’s purpose was that the fraternity had hired a stripper to have sex with one of their newer members, a kid who was very shy with girls, so the fraternity brothers hoped that a really outrageous experience with this stripper would cure him of his shyness. So he had sex with the girl in front of everyone right there in the living room. Then once he was done, the rest of the fraternity members took turns with her, and this all went on in full view of a window where I could see police walking around down the sidewalk.

Additionally, the stripper was managed by her husband, who watched as if his wife was selling lemonade or Tupperware. It was awkward, I couldn’t wait to leave, and I did so at the earliest possible moment once it was clear I had satisfied all the reasons that my friend had invited me. It took a few years, but gradually, I stopped being friends with that person because we simply lost common attributes. Once he stepped over that line, there was no going back, and we had very little to talk about. That was the case with many people from that time, friends who turned into compliant people happy to stay in their lane in exchange for an easy job that they were well paid to essentially not challenge anybody in authority. 

Understanding that, it’s not hard to understand why people turn into turtles when they are confronted with evil. And evil knows it. They know that group associations are more important to most people they deal with, so they conduct evil right in front of everyone’s faces audaciously because they expect everyone to stay in their lane and never challenge them. Because they have their own skeletons in their closet, and who are they to judge anybody? That is the danger of becoming compromised. It might be fun at the moment. It might be nice to have the herd’s protection and rely on that protection to get jobs in life and financial security without having to work too hard or display much bravery. There are plenty of people in the world who are happy to pay people to stay in their lane, and that is ultimately achieved by joining group associations, whether a Ph.D. or a fraternity, where the brotherhood becomes more important than your own family. And that is why when bad things happen, there aren’t enough people around to stand up to it and to fight evil when it presents itself. Because once people participate in evil to be accepted into a group association, they are tainted for life and never feel once again that they have a right to pass judgment on anything. And they cower in fear when evil is so audacious that they end up feeding it with their complacency instead of doing what must be done to defend the world from the mechanisms of tyranny and the schemes of the stupid. 

Rich Hoffman

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Without the First Amendment, Government Schools Would Have Nothing to Fear: The problem with a liberal education is it’s full of “liberals”

The problem with government schools, specifically liberal education, is that it is full of liberals, and until very recently, conservatives just dropped off their kids and wondered why later their children wanted to attend gay rights parades suddenly. More conservatives, real conservatives, are starting to get involved in school boards, and there is some hope out there that Republican values will guide public schools away from the runaway train that always follows Democrats. And when I say Republicans, I’m not talking about softies like Charlie Crist, formally a Republican, now a Democrat, or Mitch McConnell, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney types of RINOs. To be Republican and considered conservative, in the way we are talking, you need to be resolute in your values and not willing to yield to the whims of Democrats. In politics, you might not always get what you want, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it. You can push back and fight for what’s right, even when you are outvoted in a government body. The conflict has a value all its own. But too often, conflict is avoided in public education, starting on school boards. They hide hard decisions behind lawyers, who are progressive disasters of an occupation all their own, and a whole topic for many other days. And they hire radically progressive superintendents who can make the teacher unions happy and create a façade of management by giving them the keys to the car and then wondering why they don’t come home at midnight as promised. Then to hide all the bad behavior that evolves when the rooster running the henhouse starts showing signs of corruption, the school boards go on lockdown on virtually everything because it’s their only move. On the one hand, they look permissively incompetent; on the other, they look publically ineffective. 

As more and more conservatives start entering the school board business, unlike how it has been in the past, especially in Florida, where under Ron DeSantis, we are seeing a real coalition of education reform occurring, school systems are actively looking to gain control of the media to control the narrative, which often isn’t good by default. The problem is you can’t put that many liberal people in one institution and then expect them to all behave. So many bad things start happening, leaving the school system, putting all their efforts into trying to keep those bad stories from the public. That’s why they want to get control of the media, then try to hide behind a façade of lawyers to protect them from public opinion. But that’s why there are so many laws in favor of transparency. Whenever a government body does the work of taxpayers, that is why precisely there are so many records kept meticulously on everything. Because traditionally, we can’t trust public officials to do the right thing without vast amounts of oversight. It drives liberals crazy because they want to operate with supreme authority and hide their bad behavior behind social status and professional titles. But history shows that it is precisely the seeds of corruption that we must always be cautious of. That conflict is why the Biden White House wants very much to have a disinformation board of some kind to regulate what people can say about government institutions and to limit free speech dramatically. Governments, by their nature, are prone to corruption without oversight, and liberals simply don’t like that much scrutiny because they know they can’t live up to the expectations. So now that more conservatives are getting on school boards across the country, governments increasingly want to limit free speech by any means necessary because they can see the writing on the wall, which means an end to their way of life. 

There is an assumption by liberals that if they capture an institution, such as journalism, just like in the game of chess, they win the game by gaining control of the pieces. But that’s not the reality; citizen journalism has proven to be much more effective than the mainstream sources, who aren’t part of the game. Those chess pieces aren’t even on the board of play to capture, so in the world of the liberal education view of things, they don’t know how to fight this whole First Amendment thing or the concept of a Second Amendment to defend the First. Or a Fourth Amendment that prevents government authorities from imposing themselves on a population by force to control what they think and what they say to others. This whole Bill of Rights is a disaster for the corrupt who seek jobs in public education to hide their bad behavior from the world and apply it to the safety of like-minded people who gravitate to the public education profession. I’ve been covering bad behavior in public schools for a few decades now, and I’ve seen and heard absolutely disgusting things, leaving contemplation to wonder if any of it is worth it. Public education, because most of the participants lean liberal politically, has a lot of bad characters in it who should not be teaching children anything. I don’t come close to reporting every story I know about because if I did, I’d have time literally for nothing else. Public schools are such negative places with so much bad conduct occurring that I personally find them revolting. But if not for citizen journalism, certainly not the lazy losers in the mainstream outlets, public schools would be so much worse than they are. If not for people poking around in meeting minutes and occasionally speaking at the school board meeting, mostly complaining, but for a good reason, public schools would be much worse than they even are now. 

I would recommend often calling the bluff on those pinheaded liberals who want to control the flow of information with threats that might end up in a courtroom. These people can’t afford such situations because there are public records. After all, there are witnesses, and there is usually lots of evidence. Public schools want more than anything to shut people up and keep things contained because so many laws force them into transparency.   One thing they can’t do is afford to have people talking in more public forums, like courtrooms or at Friday night football games. Because of free and open communications and the flow of information and people’s opinions on that information, it’s really the only check that keeps behavior under control in the public schools. Otherwise, there would be many more stories of sex with students, abuses of power, and sheer crime that is often present wherever community oversite isn’t present with the First Amendment. Liberals would like to have supreme control of social circumstances where expectations are never set to limit their bad behavior, but thankfully that is not the world we are living in. Instead, we are going in the opposite direction, as more conservatives get on school boards and start to bring those values to public education. Maybe then, and only then, will there be a chance for government schools to work. But less free speech, less oversite, more centralized control from a Biden White House of what can be said and how it’s defined is simply not an option and never will be. Because that causes deviant behavior, not enough oversite, and people are afraid to speak up when it’s required. The way to keep things honest is to say something when you see something and keep things from being shoved under the carpet, so innocent people are none the wiser.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business