Tag: Bullwhips

The Hit Job: Understanding the impeachment attempt and the crimes behind it

I’ve said it all along, and so have many others, and now the start of a massive bombshell is starting to reveal itself to a sleepy public. The Trump impeachment hearings and attempt have always been about only one thing, trying to get rid of Trump so that he loses his ability to uncover the real conspiracy, that is the Obama White House is who tampered with the 2016 election attempting to put things in favor of Hillary Clinton. And they used their powers of government through the various intelligence agencies to weaponize their political intentions—which is way worse than Trump’s Ukraine call they are so up in arms about. The amount of villainy shown by Democrats in general, connected to the previous administration is absolutely so unbelievable that its difficult for most people to get their minds around. But the proof is coming out, specifically the evidence uncovered by Inspector General Michael Horowitz that an FBI lawyer manipulated a key investigative document related to the secretive surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser.

To make matters worse, since it was the Democrats who have been bringing up the Watergate scandal lately, trying to apply it to Trump for which there is absolutely no connection. If the cover-up in Watergate was the real crime, then what do you call an entire political party and previous presidential administration that has spent the last three years trying to pin every false narrative that they could to overthrow an election while covering up their own crimes in the attempt, and their massive corruption in dealing with Ukraine that consists of many people. I don’t know that there has ever been a bigger cover-up of crimes involving so many people than this case of the Democrats against President Trump. The only reason they have been so embolden has been because they have controlled the law. And now with the Trump administration, they control the Justice Department and it is terrifying to them that they will be found out. That is why they are coming after the President so hard.

If anybody cares to read the documents that were recently released on the Kennedy assassination, it will become very clear that our own government played a part in the execution of a president. Its no longer a conspiracy theory, and for a long time that fear is what kept presidents from looking too closely at things. Elected presidents were expected to play their part, do their ceremonial duties, and stay out of the business of the career politicians and unelected bureaucrats. The intelligence community has not been shy about it, they want everyone to make sure that they know who is really in charge and if presidents get in the way, they will be eliminated.

The political hits that are conducted by our intelligence agencies whether they get into the head of some lone gunman with daddy issues and drug problems and plant the seeds of destruction through psychological mechanisms or they do the work themselves, they have new methods of assassination these days that don’t connect so directly back to their fingerprints. In some ways the character assassinations they do these days are worse than just blowing the head off the president in a motorcade car. The sissy strategies of today’s metrosexual males and power climbing females are to assassinate characters, not people. Its cleaner, and less obvious. Killing a character isn’t technically against the law since they are public people usually anyway. Killing a person is, so this new strategy of killing characters is their new preferred method and the intelligence agencies committed to stopping Trump from getting elected were doing everything they could to manipulate that election, then blame their actions on everyone that wasn’t involved.

But if they could just make Trump disappear, don’t think they wouldn’t. These days with the improved secret service, and high visibility media culture, it is much harder to spin a story that a lone gunman took an assassination shot from some open window. So those avenues are not much of an option, instead they have resorted to actually trying to overturn elections which in many ways is an attack on our entire system as a republic. Its far more dangerous for them to assume so much power and to act on it than to just attempt to arrange the physical assassinations of the president and their people. It’s the intent here that we should all be concerned about, and the attempt to cover up the evidence through malicious means and the destruction of people’s character no matter what it costs. What we have witnessed from our government over the last three years should scare everyone, to the Supreme Court fights, to the fake Russian investigation, to this impeachment trial. It says a lot that Trump has had such a clean life that nobody has really been able to pin any kind of scandal to him. Probably the best result of putting a president in the White House that was used to celebrity and living under a magnifying glass for his entire life. In the end, that is probably the best skill Trump has had for this job, to protect himself from the character assassinations taking away that weapon from these new age assassins.

For myself, I don’t trust any of these institutions, especially now. If we ever want to repair that relationship, then they are going to have to come clean. As Horowitz has discovered, if an FBI employee is willing to modify a FISA document to falsely surveil a political target this time, they’ve done it before and likely many people have done the same thing, only they didn’t get caught. So how can we trust any of them ever for any case whatsoever, anywhere? We can’t, and that is the problem. We could apply the same standard to the Michael Flynn case where it appears that the FBI manipulated official records against the former general and national security adviser. If they will do it to Flynn, they certainly wouldn’t hesitate to do the same against you and me dear reader. These are bad, vicious people who have political revolution in mind, and they will do anything to see their intentions through. Anything.

So that is the story of this whole impeachment case. Its not that Trump did anything wrong, its all about trying to pin on him what the accusers have done themselves. They have been caught in an insurrection and their best way out of it is to destroy the administration that could bring justice to their doorstep, especially now that they’ve made an enemy of him. Things might not have gone so dark if they could have kept Comey close to President Trump and they just endured each other for a while, but Trump was smart and started firing everyone he suspected of sedition, and now things are starting to become clear with the bureaucrats out of the way, we are seeing the truth for the first time with hard evidence. These are dirty people sucking our taxpayer money up for their insidious deeds and a fight with them is inevitable. But we don’t need to take up arms against them. We can beat them at their own game as the first option, and that ladies and gentlemen, is what is about to happen. Enjoy!

Rich Hoffman

The Communist “Red for Ed” Teachers of Indiana: Working against America and using children as a hostage

The only thing I could think of as I watched the teachers of Indiana conduct their “Red for Ed” march showing force and solidarity toward the state legislature demanding more money, was that they’d have a lot more money if they didn’t eat so much and weren’t so monstrously fat. I mean, wow, what a bunch of fat slobs. Just contemplating the average weight of the protestors was enough to give scales everywhere room to pause with mechanical anxiety. And I can hear you now dear reader, that’s not very nice to say about teachers. After all, most of us know someone who is in the teaching profession and we don’t think of them as enemies of the state. They are our babysitters while we are off working and we want to think of them as good people, to ease our own minds. But make no mistake about it, these people are not our friends. What they want to teach our kids is not good, or healthy. The red part of their march is for the communism behind the teacher’s union movement, their core philosophy for which they want to teach our children. And the rest of it, the money they are demanding is to feed their fat faces while they sit on their asses all summer spending it on desserts, mixed drinks, and lattés.

All these participants of “Red for Ed” are public employees out of control advocating communism, and they are enemies of American life. When they say they are marching for “the children” they are lying to you. They are marching to take more money from taxpayers so that they can feed themselves with abundance doing as little as possible to earn that money. And most of us are just as guilty, we have given them control over our children just to get access to the free babysitting service that public education gives people, while they busy themselves with other things in life, ruining the minds of children everywhere. Most of us are products of public education, so we are shy about being critical of it, because in so doing, we must be a little critical of ourselves. But the whole scam has been a mess, and these losers are exacerbating it in ways that look to me to be threatening, and actions against our nation as domestic enemies.

Of course, pay is one of their concerns, but testing is another. The teacher’s union is against measures of success for which they are judged. Its hard for many to believe but that nice, bubbly teacher who lives down the road is a communist and enemy of the state because we envision that such villains would have a thin mustache and some uniform of the Soviet Union to designate them as such menaces, but their red t-shirts tell the same story. Just not one that we have been so inclined to identify due to our own need to avoid conflict on the matter. We could after all say the same thing about one of the worsts socialists that we have ever witnessed, Adolph Hitler. I’m sure someone loved him, he had a mom and dad and friends. He had a woman who loved him, heck, most of Germany loved him for a period of time. But he was still an evil socialist just as these “Red for Ed” teachers are blatant communists. What makes them dangerous is their ideas, and these days they are not shy about admitting so much. Their choice of the color red tells the whole story.

Their march in Indiana was intended to be a show of force, to show how they could bring the state to their knees much the way they did in Kentucky recently. It was intended as a threat to show how many free baby-sitting services would be lost to voters if the teachers walked off the job. More money or the children would suffer was their message and to many panic driven parents, they believe it. When parents put their children’s lives in the hands of communists willing to extort money from the taxpayers for a silly job that lasts only 9 months out of the year, the danger of these people could not be underestimated. They are not likely to blatantly torcher their students on some rack of pain, but rather their intentions are to destroy the minds of the youth and rob them of their wings of free-thinking flight. How else to explain the terrible international comparisons for American education measured against the world. For what we spend on public education, we should be the top. Instead, we are nowhere close, in most cases everyone is better than the American education system, and these losers want less measures, less testing, and even less children and hours in the classroom.

And who says that if they want to make a certain amount of money that they shouldn’t work a second job. For as little as they do work, they have plenty of time to do it. Why should they get paid well to sit on their asses for most of a 24-hour day? That is what they are demanding, a level of pay that their jobs clearly don’t deserve, and they want less testing so that nobody will really know how little they really do. I have to point out that when I’ve said these things to my local school system they offered to let me teach a classroom for a day, which I accepted. I even said that I would be willing to teach four classes at once, and of course they turned me down, because the teaching profession is easy compared to other things out there. Teachers aren’t sacrificing anything for our children. Teaching is a profession for those who generally don’t want to “do” in society. Those who teach can’t do you might say, otherwise they’d do something that pays them the money they are looking for to feed their voracious diets and expectations for leisure hours.

If they were just lazy fat slobs, as most of them appear to be, it wouldn’t be so enraging. But to make matters worse, they are openly advocating for communism, not by naming it, but by color. They are not even hiding their motivations anymore, and when they put it in front of our face like that, they are taking hostile actions against a Constitution that I love and cherish. I’m a person who has copies of the Federalist Papers, the Anti Federalist Papers and the Ohio Constitution right next to my reading chair that I go through leisurely at least once or twice a week while watching television, after I’ve read them all many times thoroughly. In the context of the philosophies of American life, represented in those documents, the “Red for Ed” teachers are hostile agents of villainy that want to clip the wings of our children’s intellectual growth, and they want us to pay them more money to do it, which is sheer insanity. And to make it even worse, they give us these huge asses to look at and squeaky mouths with turkey necks of fat dangling from their faces and expect even more from the taxpayer. At some point we have to say, enough is enough. We need a choice, a better system of education that does not involve a communist inspired teachers union, and we need people who care enough not to take a day off to threaten state legislators who should be representing the Constitutions of the states and federal level of government instead of listening to a bunch of government paid insurgents.

Rich Hoffman

America Should Support the Rebels of Hong Kong: The need to break the back of communism in China, for good

One of the saddest events I think in history was when in 1949, the communists took over China and brought tyranny of the highest order to that country and its people after America worked so hard to prevent it. I read with great horror the specifics in Joseph Campbell’s Oriental Mythology the hard reported events of that communist take over and also read in the great book Way of the Fighter by my favorite military general, Claire Lee Chennault the warnings of the communist take over that would eventually lead to the Korean and Vietnam Wars—and the long cold war we are currently experiencing. With an educated opinion on the matter provided by these books and many others, I am convinced that the same types of people who are in the American government going after Donald Trump’s presidency are the same ones who pushed presidents then like Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower into allowing communism to seep into Asia and to use it as a platform for global domination, and it pisses me off something awful. It always has, but now in the context of the protestors in Hong Kong, a proper context within history is clear for all to see.

It is my position, which requires all Americans to take one, that America support the rebels in China once the election of 2020 has concluded, because it would be the right thing to do. China, as a communist state has been a threat from day one, and it has only been recently that the cracks in their carefully crafted façade have been broken. There are of course agents around the world, many sitting on the boards of some of American’s greatest corporations who are indifferent to communism. Most corporations have their fair share of socialist sentiments, so its not a far stretch for them anyway. But that doesn’t make it right and never has. The people of Hong Kong want to be free. They are looking toward America for guidance. Their black market is giving them exposure to American concepts and products and they need support for their own freedom. And the least we can do is to back them as a continued stab at communism as we have endeavored for most of the last century. Why stop now?

While its quite obvious that pro communist forces in the American government didn’t want Claire Chennault to be successful in protecting China from the communist invasion coming out of the Soviet Union. They only wanted to protect China from the Japanese. Once it was clear that American forces were going to be successful against Japan, Chennault had his hands tied behind his back by General Stilwell who was put in place after the famous Flying Tigers had done their deeds of protecting China in the opening days of American involvement in World War II. Any careful scholar comparing these days to those days will see clearly that the point of World War II, and of propping up Hitler and so many other ruthless dictators around the world was to create a power vacuum for which the United Nations would fill, and communism was going to be their mode of government. It didn’t work of course, and the seeds of that intention lasted for the rest of the 20th century, even into the present. A few years ago, these things would have been considered conspiracy theories, but by the evidence we have about the attempted Trump impeachment proceedings we now have evidence as to how the deep state has always worked, and why they believed the things they have. Communism in China was always going to be the way the rest of the world came to that political ideology, and our American corporations like Google, Nike, and the NBA were going to deliver us all to that doorstep. That was always the intention.

You could see it even in small, normally unrecognized issues in entertainment where production companies were weary of pissing off the communists of Chinese censor boards who are careful not to allow western influences into their country by way of film. That left giant companies like Disney trying to have it both ways, to get their products into the Chinese market of over a billion people while still putting on their happy face of branding. In the movie Kong: Skull Island, the pandering toward communism was too obvious, and American audiences hated it. The film didn’t do well, just as the obvious communist sentiment from Godzilla: King of the Monsters didn’t do well either intending Asian markets to love the film while still pandering to western audiences. The result wasn’t very good. Production companies have been chasing a ghost in China, the black market is far more reaching than the traditional theater presentations. There is more money to be made in China through the black market than in the communist endorsed primaries, which is what is fueling this rebellion in Hong Kong. For the purpose of defeating communism, America should support that greater rebellion into the mainland for the sake of those plus billion people, and break communism once and for all.

Silently, most of the big American corporations have been steering consumers toward communism so that they could have access to that large market in China. But what they have been willing to give up in freedoms and intellectual property to get a boost to quarterly results have been devastating, especially when you measure the results in decades instead of years. You can see the results everywhere as corporations have agreed to make a compliant society where China has set the rules for their own benefit, to gain knowledge they couldn’t produce in their society under communism by robbing creativity from the western cultures. You can see from any Chinese knock off that they lack imagination which only thrives under a free culture. The compliance culture that so much impead American business these days and has been bolstered by the communist loving academia culture in the west that has already been conquered by the Chinese long ago, have further pushed business into compliance toward the communists of Asia. Where else would they go, the plan was always to limit their options so that China could benefit with their sheer size of population. The gig worked until President Trump turned everything on its head, and now the people of Hong Kong see their chance to make a move, or never at all.

America is responsible for the people of Hong Kong, not just through the western influences that have found their way to the black markets and into the homes of many people looking for hope, but for our abandonment of China when the communists took over in the first place. Many of our own people contributed to that evil and its time to reverse the decision in favor of justice. So it would not be unreasonable to stand behind the rebellion now, once the election is done of course. China is not good as it is now, and communism is an ever-present threat to capitalism, which requires diligence on our part to defeat it from both foreign and domestic enemies. And make no mistake about it, they are our enemies.

Rich Hoffman

 

Choice, The Fear of all Communists and Democrats: What attempts at impeachment and the protests in Hong Kong have in common

One new outlet for news coverage that I enjoy is the Spectrum News Channel from my cable provider. Sure, they are liberal as hell, but I enjoy watching how and why other people think things and I find them infinitely fascinating. Most of my readers here have probably cut cords to their cable subscriptions by now and probably don’t know about the Spectrum Channel. There are so many entertainment options these days that I wouldn’t fault anybody for their lack of experience. However, I do tend to give them about 15 minutes of my time each night before I wonder off into slumber to see what they think of the world, and what I saw the other night was hilarious. I’ve heard it elsewhere since then, but the crux of it all is that the wild, lunatic, institutionalists had such a bad week with their impeachment trial of President Trump that they are already making excuses for its failure, and get this, they just discovered what you and I have known for over a decade.

The blame for the poor performance by Democrats to gain ANY traction against President Trump was placed on consumers having too many options. The Spectrum News Channel explained that during the Nixon impeachment and that of Clinton, the big three television stations were pretty much the gate keepers on information and were able to control the narrative. They rationalized that these days with social media, talk radio, blogs, video broadcasts of all kinds that the mainstream media is nowhere near as influential. Well, duh. There was a news flash. I can’t imagine that anybody has said that before. Just kidding, I’ve been saying that for the last 30 years. It is so ridiculous looking back in hindsight that the mainstream media types thought that if they drove Glenn Beck off the air at Fox, Bill O’Reilly, and Alex Jones, and many like them, that the narrative would go back to their side of things.

The trend, just as it is with gun ownership, freedom from public schools, and even the protests in Hong Kong are that people desire to be free and to have options. That was the reason for the foundation of America, and that is why social media was even invented, to fulfil a market need that the state-controlled media couldn’t fill. And ultimately that’s why we voted for Donald Trump, the very first social media president who was a huge part of the invention of reality television. Its not that Trump coerced people into voting for him, they did it on their own free will. Just as they wait in line for hours to see one of his rallies and are happy to do it, because it represents their free will as an enterprise. The trend of human history is to have more freedom, not less and what liberals have a hard time believing is that they were not picked.

Liberals thought all along that they were for the people, but what they have found out is that the people don’t like them, or their thoughts. They don’t want to share their space with their local liberal. They want to be away from them, and that has hurt their feelings. Even when they have gained great political power, they still have a hard time understanding that people don’t want them in charge of their life. People are not inclined to trade security for freedom. There are times in most people’s life where they will, but they don’t like it. When given a chance, they will pick freedom every single time. That is especially true when it comes to the news media. Spectrum may be a little cable start-up, but they certainly represent the trend of media types working in the industry, and they are perplexed why more people don’t believe the same things they do. But instead will voice their concerns on social media.

Democrats hate choice as a result because people don’t choose them. They are frustrated that there are too many choices and they can’t compete with any of them. Most media companies have had to learn this the hard way and are still slow to react. They must deal with reality or be put out of business. And the grim reality for them is that even if they did control the media completely like they wish, and could gain control of the Internet, and all the social media platforms, that people would still vote for options, and they would still vote for Trump, because they want an option. The protests in Hong Kong are made of the same kind of stuff. The communists can attempt to scare the protestors, but Hong Kong has tasted a little bit of capitalist freedom, and they aren’t giving it back to live under the tyranny and restriction of a communist society. That is why the Chinese communists are so terrified of options, especially coming out of the west. Options give people hope and ideas, which communists want to remove. And we have the same kind of types of people in the Democrat party, people who loved Cuban communism and many college academics who lick the feet of every communist dictator praying for sanctimony for the common good as they define it.

You know something is truly good if somebody chooses you over other options. If you are a good movie, and people rush out to see that movie and it makes a billion dollars at the box office, it was made that way because people chose it as an option. The same with a restaurant, if the food is good, people will choose to go there. Choice is the centerpiece of all western civilization and it forces everyone to be better as a result. And because America has a First Amendment, if the traditional sources of media suck, other forms will emerge. The same with presidents, if the political class sucks, as it has for a long time, people will choose an alternative. You can’t impeach your way into forcing people to love your stupid way of thinking. You can’t force a woman or a man to love you by taking away all their options in life. That is what liberals are trying to do, force us to love them by taking away our options. That is what China is trying to do with the protestors of Hong Kong. And that is certainly why Democrats are trying to impeach President Trump. After a week of trying to win the hearts of Americans, by the end of it the reality was that even with all the power the media thought it had, nothing changed in public sentiment, and now they are all holding their pitch forks but nobody is cheering them on. Instead, they look stupid and lost. And they should, because they attempted to be gallant at the expense of choice assuming they knew better for us than we do. Which was a tragic mistake—for them.

Rich Hoffman

The Nature of Rules: Conformity, compliance and innovation often do not get along

The project I am currently working on, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business is really an idea I’ve been exploring my entire life. It’s on my mind because I’ve spent the last week enjoying all the various Star Wars mythologies that are spawning out of Disney, the new Mandalorian tv series, the video game Jedi: Fallen Order, the new book Resistance Reborn which is setting up the new Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker. All while planning my trip to the Galaxy’s Edge at Disney World with my wife. I remember how it was in the beginning when I was just a young 20 something hanging out in Washington D.C. at the Smithsonian with the Joseph Campbell Foundation for which George Lucas was on the board of directors and seeing the models from the films which had filled my imagination all during my youth. Joseph Campbell had done for mythology what I want to do for business, and after half a century of work, those mythic efforts are finally starting to shape our culture in a positive, and measurable way.

Campbell taught at the little maverick school Sarah Lawrence College where he was free to conduct his outside the box academics to his liking, and to be truthful, if he hadn’t, Star Wars likely would have never happened. But it was a slow go on an obscure topic that took a long time to form roots. And in many ways, I consider Joseph Campbell one of my primary influences growing up. I’ve read all his books many, many times and listened to his various lectures most of my life. And my plans for my own life have been similar, but very different from his. My subject matter goes many steps beyond his study of cultures and comparative religion, but to the source of all activity among the human species. That is why my focus is on business and why this book I’m working on is such a big step that keeps getting deeper and deeper the longer I work on it.

The theme of my two previously published books, The Symposium of Justice and The Tail of the Dragon explore the nature of rules in our society and what their usefulness is. Nobody would argue that having a society of rules is what keeps everything we build together and that is certainly true in business. But rules by their nature prevent innovation, which is the key to all business expansion. My pick of the gunfighter period of the American West, around the 1870s to the 1890s is due to the lawless period of the American experiment that brought forth so much upcoming economic activity, which then created so many opportunities for people who otherwise wouldn’t have had them. The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald captured some of this very well, the idea of old money and new money. The old money was from the aristocratic class migrating from Europe while the new money was made in America by new innovations spawning from this Wild West period. While shortly after the Gatsby novel Ayn Rand wrote her classics, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged which did a good job of getting to the meat of the American experience as opposed to other influences around the world.

I grew up with a natural, and healthy hatred of rules. For as long as I have memories, I despised the limits others placed on me and dedicated myself to solitude and the treasures that could be found there. My best friend growing up was my books, especially the works of Joseph Campbell and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Once I figured out the nature of rules when I was still under ten years old, I stopped caring about them. Teachers and their homework assignments would take a back seat if I had something better to do. Society and their rules for going up and down escalators, speed limits, or not standing too close to a steep edge were all open invitations to me to break those rules to see what society was trying to keep me from. When I could drive a car, I routinely always drove 100 MPH everywhere. Functioning under the speed limit to me was forcing me to live by the averages of mundane people who weren’t interested in pushing any limits but confined to live within the limits of very average, and boring people. And yes, I was involved in several fiery crashes at those speeds. Not where I was driving, but other people, so I know what it feels like and after each one, I resolved to go even faster and defy death even more.

I could tell stories from here to some distant planet well outside our solar system about the many perilous adventures that have spawned off this tribute to pushing limits and questioning every rule that there is. I am far from an anarchist so I do like rules to a point, but I think a culture should always be pushing up against them and that insurance agents and politicians should not be limiting our intellects with stupid conformity to concepts invented by lazy minded losers. So putting all these thoughts together into this Gunfighter’s Guide to Business has turned out to be incredibly revelatory. I have gone back through all the education of the years that brought me to this point in my life, the rules based education of Lean thinking, of college MBA programs, of the kind of talking down that goes on in those endeavors and have crippled the scope of business to this very day, and am flipping all those concepts on their heads. But like all rules, you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. You don’t break all the rules only to have anarchy allowing for open theft of possessions by the destitute. There has to be some structure to it all that is conducive to risk-taking and risk mitigation.

Guns are the perfect combination of the two necessities so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are part of American culture the way they are. If you are reckless with a gun you can hurt lots of people, including yourself. But in shooting you unlock all kinds of gut instinct mechanisms that are obscure to the mind under any other condition, which is the nature of rule breaking so that innovation can flourish. By the time I’m done with this, I think it will have a very Joseph Campbell effect, not on mythology which was his thing, but on business, which is my thing. Looking at something differently than 5000 to 10,000 years of human evolution is a tough undertaking, but it takes being willing to break the very rules of assumptions by their very essence to get there. And that is what I am excited to see percolating out of obscurity in a very unique way. Rules are too often not put into place to help, but to hinder. The rule makers tend to be unenlightened and create the rules to keep challengers from dethroning them from some position of power they have acquired by learning the rules better than their competition. But rules in themselves don’t open the doors to the future, thinking outside of the rules does, so that new rules for new ways of thinking can then be applied. While we can’t have chaos, we can’t allow rules to hold us back from innovation. And that, once its understood has a marvelous potential that I am very, very excited about.

Rich Hoffman

No Outrage Toward College Sports Sexual Abuse: Yet Ambassador Yovanovitch feels threatened, Roger Stone was convicted and the NFL suspends the great Miles Garrett–explaining it all to you

Without question there is a lot going on, however people’s interpretation on it depends on how much they have been broken, like some horse due to their exposure to institutionalism. As an example, and you can see this in most any office environment where people proudly display their continued loyalty to the college they graduated from, and will put on their garments ahead of a big weekend football game with genuine excitement. In my part of the country it is common to see such references to many colleges, especially Purdue and Ohio State, whereas in the North East its Harvard, Princeton, MIT and other such listings. Yet when bad news comes out that the sports doctor for Ohio State had been molesting athletes for decades and people knew about it, nobody knew what to say. The same quandary occurred and still lingers over the Penn State sports program due to the massive amount of homosexual molestation that was going on in their sports program. And in so many ways the events of Friday November 15th 2019 were so earth shattering that the institutionalists who are so trained to think only in that fashion were completely lost.

I am of course referring to the impeachment trial of President Trump as given by Ambassador Yovanovitch, the guilty conviction against Roger Stone, the president’s first campaign manager and behind the scenes confidant, and the massive fight that took place between the Pittsburg Steelers and the Cleveland Browns where the Browns player, Myles Garrett ripped the helmet off the Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph. The world watched in horror as if the entire event came straight out of Westworld where the robots revealed that they were aggressive and potentially dangerous. The trial and conviction of Roger Stone is that institutional way to pretend that all is safe, that the parameters of danger could be controlled by the processes put in place by the institutions and these occasional outbreaks of violence and rebellion, such as the election of President Trump, the fights that happen between NFL players on and off the field could be controlled. And when the evidence is so overwhelming in just how evil the institutions truly are, such as the sexual molestations of student athletes in college sports programs there are no thought processes to prepare them for that reality, so they just ignore the information and stare at their college swag, their coffee mugs dedicated to Ohio State, their photos of a Saturday game and pretend that all is well.

I didn’t see anything wrong with what Myles Garrett did. What does anybody expect? With the level of trash talking that goes on and the expectations to win, tempers are bound to flare up. I’m sure Myles and Rudolph will be friends again. In fact, if the event didn’t happen on television in front of millions of people, they likely would have gone to dinner together an hour later and made up. They are guys, and that’s how guys are with each other. But this window into a primal world for which the NFL has placed itself where safety and good social conduct are supposed to take place over a priority on winning, the fans are noticeably not happy with that direction of the business model. Even though these kids playing football all come from these institutional colleges and were the best that came from those sports programs even knowing all the bad things that go on behind the scenes, fans in the stands are never supposed to see the inmates rebel with such examples of blood letting as was seen in that Pittsburg/Cleveland game. I have seen fights like that in the stands of a Pittsburg/Bengal game between the fans. Football is a violent game and fans love it. Why the NFL or anybody else is so outraged is a bit of a mystery, unless you understand the dysfunction of institutionalism itself.

Such a dysfunctional understanding about the way the world works was obvious during Ambassador Yovanovitch’s testimony against her experience with President Trump. Here was a career bureaucrat that had been released of her duty by Trump for being an Obama era holdover that he didn’t want in the position and the crux of the entire questioning revolved on the termination of government employees from one administration to another. Most people in the position of the President have been broken into thinking that the system is greater than their opinions so that they don’t go and try to change that system. Trump has shown that he doesn’t need any of them to help him make a decision which is just reprehensible to the institutionalist. They are aghast about the entire process and the lack of respect that Trump and his supporters have shown for their value. They are so upset about it that they have been attacking anybody close to Trump, such as Roger Stone as a warning. Stone’s conviction isn’t about doing anything wrong, its about being close to the President and daring to work against the established system of institutional control.

The behavior traces back to any average public education high school environment where peer pressure is used to control all participants so long as the objective is agreed upon by the institutional rules and regulations. For example, molesting children, labor union activism, and transgender bathrooms are outside the scope of institutional instruction as progressive society is establishing those issues as part of their greater agenda of destroying the American family, or families in general so that borders between homes are lowered and the parental aims of government can then replace such sentiments of tradition. However, if an individual wears the wrong shirt to school or shows anger toward some established norm, like gun possession, the enjoyment of a non-establishment form of music, or does not like the local college sports team, then the institution supports violence of any kind to apply peer pressure toward those individuals. They will either be destroyed or converted, but they are not allowed to have their own thoughts for things. Even the most robust anarchist plays their part in the process, they are used most by the institutional to drive peer pressure, they are supported as the threat of enforcement from being socially castigated. They are used in the same way that the government used ISIS and terrorism in general, to say, “see, you need our protection from those bandits, (that we helped to create) join us, or die.” And that is what the institutional told Trump, “follow us or we will put all your friends and even you out on the street. We control the courts, we control the rules and regulations, and we ultimately control you, not some measly election by a bunch of NFL lovers who would rather see a fight than a good old handshake at the end of a game between rivals.

Rather than be upset about it though, it is fascinating to watch and I’m intrigued to watch this social monstrosity, known as intuitionalism die this death of the ages. These are not new thoughts, they’ve have been around since the city states of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the long history of ancient Egypt. But America was born with all the nationalities of the world to rise against that trend, not to preserve it. And that is beyond the scope of their learning, the “institutionalists.” They are process driven due to their natural timidity exacerbated by their life-long journey toward institutional instruction and in this modern age of rebellion, by people not so broken that they know enough to vote for President Trump, the impact of that resolution is far beyond them. They only know that they should punish Myles Garrett and throw Roger Stone in jail and hope that institutional controls will outlast this rebellion as it has for many, many centuries. But I don’t think so. Rather what I think is that I am going to go out and buy myself a Myles Garrett jersey. Because after that game the other night, I think I am more of a fan of the Cleveland Browns as a result.

Rich Hoffman

The Professional Nerds: They want impeachment to hide their uselessness

One thing that everyone must deal with if you achieve any level of success at life are the professional nerds who ride the coat tails of previous achievement and always establish some kind of coup to claim ownership from the bold who came before them. That was certainly on display in Washington D.C. during the so-called impeachment hearings led by the former prosecutor Adam Schiff. Now prosecutors have never scared me, nor do depositions. In times past when pressed I have done my own legal work and quite enjoy tearing to shreds losers like Adam Schiff who are the very embodiment of that professional nerd culture that has essentially taken over in the Beltway and everywhere else where performance is measured by the layers of bureaucracy established. They are the modern metrosexuals who are afraid of flies and mosquitos and would let Rome burn to the ground while they come up with some consensus driven procedure to save it. Getting rid of them from our government is exactly what we mean when we say “drain the swamp.” If that is the best that Adam Schiff can do given all the resources he has extracted from taxpayers to do it, its pretty pathetic.

I mention the legal scenario of acting as one’s own attorney because I’ve seen this kind of arrogance plenty of times from this class of loser people. They think they have some information that they’ve read from a book, some boon like Prometheus might have obtained in gaining fire from the sun to return it back to earth after Zeus had hid it away. They don’t expect to encounter someone who can read more than them, experience more than them and is smarter than them. Their understanding of the law is formed within the Bar Association and the rules of conduct that they utilize. So anyone outside of that little clan they think of as ignorant, leaving them baseless to deal with reality when confronted. I find it enjoyable to stumble such arrogant people within their professional efforts because their intent is always malicious, even if they hide them behind good deeds. Their malice for effort is easy to exploit because their true philosophy in life isn’t a joy in intellect, it is through group association that doesn’t raise the bar for their personal performance, it just lowers it to uncover a laziness that they are so good at hiding that they don’t even see it in themselves.

Bureaucrats are the creation of this social veil because as timid souls they must conceal their lack of achievement by looting off people who do things so that they can share ownership. That is the entire root of their entire existence. They think that by getting some degree in college and reading a few books here and there that they can have the right to make important decisions, yet when they find out that they aren’t the smartest people in the room, it destroys their basic grip on reality. So long as they belong to some unique guild, like the Bar Association, they can hide behind that veil and they can trick people into respecting them. But once you learn its all a farce, as I learned very young by getting into so much trouble that I had gone to court more times than years on my age by double, the patterns of deceit are clear to see. And it was easy to see at that impeachment hearing by the dubious Adam Schiff. You would think that an attempted coup by a Democrat in congress would have smarter people involved, some ultimate movie villain that we see often on the silver screen. But much to our disappointment, in reality, these villains are just stupid professional nerds who gained their notoriety in life by boot licking and claim jumping. And while under pressure, they fold every time.

It was always clear to me, but now it should be clear to everyone else that the hatred of President Trump spawns from his competency in rooting out losers like Adam Schiff. Not that it was a malicious deed by the president but it always happens when a competent person of experience meets a professional nerd who are the come lately thieves who steal away the achievement of those who came before them and actually build a career off that effort by putting rules and regulations between them and their targets. A guy like Trump who has spent a lifetime taking risks and enjoying the winnings has exploited this ruse just by his election, and his actions throughout the years he’s been in office have further confirmed that all along it wasn’t some special sauce of leadership coming out of West Point, or the most elite Ivy League schools that makes a great president, its guts, and experience that do, which has shattered the world of the professional nerd. Anytime you want to see it and some lawyer demands action from you within a court of law, you’ll see them melt when they learn that you know their secret language meant to hide their incompetence—and that you aren’t a member of the Bar Association, or of congress.

Much of the testimony provided in the hearing on impeachment was of the nature of dissidents who were upset that Trump did not need them to perform his job. Normally, consultants are brought in to advise a president, but being a man of action, Trump doesn’t need them, so they have played along with this Adam Schiff attack willingly in hopes that the professional nerds could resume their ruse through impeachment. Their hatred for Trump is the same hatred that their type always has for people of achievement. While they need such people more than they need food and water, they secretly resent them because the dependence is so one sided, especially when it is put on trial. They need their victims to thank them for looting them with big words and obscure terminology that they have studied all their lives. What the professional nerds are terrified of is that the people they deal with don’t seek their counsel or interpretations but act anyway on their own such has Trump has. He hasn’t needed the generals, the advisors, and all the other professional nerds which has left them standing around waiting for someone to acknowledge them. And before people learn how useless they truly are they are trying to impeach President Trump so to preserve themselves for the future.

But its too late. It has been for me for many years now. I learned early in my life thankfully just how useless these people are. And now everyone can see it. Yet even I am a little disappointed that Adam Schiff couldn’t put on a better show than what he did. As a looter he clearly depends 100% off others for his sustenance and when he is forced to do anything on his own merit, he fails. He certainly did fail on the impeachment trial, which was clear on day one. Its not just a partisan interpretation of the events, it’s the accurate observation, and reminder that professional nerds have built up a scandal that was concealed so long as people never asked questions of them. They needed the exchange to be one sided only and when it wasn’t, they fail every single time.

Rich Hoffman

A Review of The Mandalorian: Boys never wanted the girls to invade their tree house.

There is no impeachment, even though that is the news of the day. All there is or ever was regarding the attempts of the Democrat controlled congress to attempt to get rid of President Trump is a frustrated attempt to manipulate the law in an effort to avoid their perilous fate of a 2020 loss even more embarrassing than over the past two elections. And my resolve is not to care too much about it unless they try to remove my president from his elected office, where I will then grab whatever volunteers are needed to defend him with the Second Amendment from those villains that have infected our government. Its that simple. No further commentary needed. Meanwhile, and I was glad for the options, Disney+ opened this week and we were all finally able to watch the new Star Wars show, The Mandalorian and let me just say this, it was fantastic.

I also say that for me visiting any story within the Star Wars experience is like a vacation for me. To understand that I’d refer to a recent article I wrote on the value of thinking like a 12-year-old. Children think in big, broad terms with solutions in focus and are not restricted on how to create the questions that might complete such a journey, so I see great value in it. The adult world would say that such a way of thinking is immature, but then look at their lives. They are heavy on burdens with limited options to deal with them, and their lives are most of the time a complete disaster. Nobody should listen to them under the best of circumstances. Star Wars was never meant for adults, but specifically for boys between the ages of 7 to 12. Of course, Disney wants to reach out to girls and older audiences if it can get them, but Star Wars as we have always known it was geared toward the problems of young boys. Visiting that way of thinking has always been fun for me because I like to explore lots of options with infinite optimism, and when everything fails in the real world, Star Wars has always been a place that values those sentiments.

As I have pointed out the new Disney owned Star Wars has not been as good. It’s been like that moment when all the young boys had a boys only tree house and the girls found out about it and wanted to join in. To be nice the boys let them but started grumbling when the girls brought with them dolls, cooking utensils and brooms to replace the guns, knives and acts of war of the boys. And instead of play fighting the boys found themselves talking about raising families and the difficulties of getting to the store, and they were noticeably upset about it. Under Disney, Star Wars became less about war and more about social justice and the skin color of the actors, and it became just boring. The Mandalorian much to my delight was made for the boys. Girls of course are invited, but the show was certainly an attempt to put Star Wars back to what it does best, and I think it exceeded at that.

The key to understanding big issues, such as this impeachment fiasco is in thinking without all the constraints that most adults learn to live with, and within Star Wars stories where big concepts are always at the front of discussion as we are talking essentially about the problems of a type 3 civilization, one that can use the power and resources of an entire galaxy yet have all the challenges of our present condition, it helps put the mind at play to behold the concepts. While most adults scratch their heads and attempt to put whatever the context of the modern problem is, such as the perplexity of the current congress to even attempt impeachment. That is because the reality of the present circumstances do not fit the adult assumptions of our understanding, which is precisely what the villains of modern government are counting on. To understand their game, you have to pull back your vision enough to play with various thoughts so that the true intention can only then be seen.

Such lofty thoughts are certainly at play in The Mandalorian, which was a nice science fiction/spaghetti western platform to tell some very interesting stories from. It was energetic and reminded me a lot of many Clint Eastwood westerns, everything from For A Few Dollars More to The Outlaw Josey Wales. It was fun and remarkably girl free. Not that girls are a problem. But the focus of The Mandalorian is being faster on the draw, not whether or not he cooks breakfast for his wife. I was a little shocked reading the most recent Star Wars book Resistance Reborn, which sets up directly the events of the next Star Wars film Rise of Skywalker, that the old hero Wedge Antilles was cooking breakfast when pilots arrive to recruit him back into the fight. Its not that cooking is a big deal, but the book was written by a woman and women think differently about things than boys. Wedge was a great warrior of the rebellion, yet the focus of his efforts was on cooking. Not something boys are naturally concerned with. That’s what I have been talking about with Star Wars with girls inviting the tree house of thought the boys would otherwise prefer to be in.

This is also why women are so easily tricked in politics, because their concerns are so quickly trapped by political theater and their natural predilection is not to fight, but to conform. When you can fight back against oppression, you tend not to find ways to live with it, and at the heart of Star Wars is that premise. Girls are invited, but its clearly a boy concept, and with The Mandalorian, that is clearly what is happening and its good to see that Lucasfilm can still reach that place even after so many progressive missteps toward social justice. Yet in other reviews about The Mandalorian the value of the largely female reviewers was that they thought it was great that the male leads in the show were from diverse backgrounds, one black, one Latino. I personally don’t care as long as somebody is shooting someone else. Its not about being white male that attracts me to a plot line, it’s the body count and the kind of guns they used. To get to the big ideas of anything the main character needs to be over the primal fears of a herd, and with women, they typically are trying to live with the world, not trying to change it.

Concerns about cooking, and feelings about things are not the natural state of boys. But overcoming problems and oppression are, and The Mandalorian certainly put its focus on those items. So, it’s the perfect entertainment to divert too while in real life congress is attempting to perform the worst scandal in human history. The goal is not to live with the consequences of that endeavor but to fight back against it. Star Wars was always about saying no to complacency and endeavoring for real change, not concerns of docile domestication, but in saving the galaxy from itself in spite of itself. And watching The Mandalorian it showed that the makers of Star Wars still understand what that looks like, and I’m looking forward to a lot more.

Rich HoffmanRich Hoffman

The Louisville Toll Bridge Scam: Who it really hurts and why bringing it to Cincinnati would be a disaster

There is a bridge extending from Louisville over into Indiana that is part of the 1-65 highway system managed by RiverLink, which is a toll collector that has been very controversial. I was quite surprised to learn after going across that bridge a few times to visit destinations on both sides of the Ohio River that I received a bill in the mail after cameras photographed my license plate demanding payment for a bridge that did not have the traditional toll signs that we have all come to expect from such toll collecting activities. I wrote an article about it which continues to be one of my most popular. It has many tens of thousands of impressions since I wrote it a few years ago, including from RiverLink which attempted to defend their poor signage and toll collecting practices. That article can be found at the link below along with the many comments from people inspired to contribute their thoughts.

https://overmanwarrior.blog/2018/01/21/the-river-link-scam-louisvilles-theft-of-the-innocent-through-a-toll-bridge-to-depraved-economic-activity-in-clarksville/#comment-63440

I don’t get many comments, not because people aren’t reading, but usually because the nature of my content is not conducive to it, and just like in any classroom setting, the audience does not feel comfortable raising their hand first. Once a few people do string together some thoughts, more join in, but most of the time, reader engagement is low due to the nature of my content. But occasionally a contributor like Christina chimes in, seen below, and the true scope of the issue comes into focus. I present it here as she wrote it. She is obviously upset and the sentence structure and emphasis show that. Essentially she represents why RiverLink is a massive scam created by stupid politicians who wasted the money we gave them on everything but what they should have, and they’ve passed on their incompetence onto this bridge for people like Christina to fund out of desperation and massive amounts of inconvenience. In her case, such as many other stories of people who move onto one side of the river and may not know about the toll bridge, but simply need to get to the other side to get to a job, they could unknowingly rack up many hundreds if not thousands of dollars before they get their first bill in the mail. And it does cause them a lot of pain, which is the nature of her comment.

christina
November 10, 2019 at 5:38 pm Edit

are you SERIOUS? i ONLY went across the bridge to go to work to feed my family!!!!!!!! yes i know that i owe them money and i was paying them what i could but then the charges got bigger and BIGGER! i was charged a total of $170 in fines just to send me a BILL!!!!!! now they have a lean on my car because i can not afford to pay them $511.40 that i KNOW I DO NOT OWE! THEY HAVE SENT ME OTHER PEOPLES BILLS AND HAVE CHARGED ME WHEN I WAS HOME AND NEVER WENT ACROSS THE BRIDGE!!!!!! not only that but i find out that you not only get charged when you go across the bridge but if you take exit 0 you are charged TWICE BECAUSE RIVER LINK “SAY’S” THAT IS ANOTHER BRIDGE!!!!!! HOW IS THE HELL IS AND EXIT A BRIDGE????? now i am screwed because i can not get tags on my car because they out a lean on it, and when i called to ask to make payments they said quote “MUST BE PAID IN FULL” then when i called a few months later i was told that i could have been making payment’s and when i asked why the other person said that i could not make payments she said IT IS NOT THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO LET US KNOW THAT! IF WE DON’T ASK THEY DON’T TELL. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS TOLD BY THE SUPERVISOR!!! THIS IS WRONG!!!!! PEOPLE LIKE ME THAT WORK PAY CHECK TO PAY CHECK AND DO EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO PUT FOOD ON THE TABLE PAY THE BILLS TAKE CARE OF THEIR KIDS SHOULD NOT BE DONE THIS WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this bridge was paid off a long time ago and we SHOULD NOT HAVE TO KEEP PAYING TO CROSS IT! AND THEN YOU GET CHARGED NOT ONCE BUT TWICE BECAUSE YOU TAKE EXIT 0????? THIS NEEDS TO BE DEALT WITH AND FAST! NOW I HAVE TO DRIVE ILLEGAL UNTIL I CAN PAY OFF RIVER LINK SO I CAN GET TAGS ON THE CAR I WORKED SO HARD FOR AND IS PAID OFF JUST TO GET TAGS AND INSURANCE!!!!!!!!

THEY NEED TO HELP PEOPLE LIKE ME THAT WAS JUST GOING TO WORK TO FEED THEIR FAMILY AND NOT OVER CHARGE ME SEND ME LATE FEES THEN PUT A LEAN ON MY CAR! AND I TRIED TO PAY THEM IN PAYMENTS AND WAS TOLD “NO” THEN WHEN I CALLED A FEW MONTHS LATER WAS TOLD I COULD HAVE MADE PAYMENTS AND WHEN I ASKED WHY THE PREVIOUS LADY SAID THAT I COULD NOT MAKE PAYMENTS THE “SUPERVISOR” SAID I QUOTE “IT’S NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO TELL YOU, YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I was upset in a similar way over a $19 charge, much less than what she has gone through. It wasn’t the money; it was the silent intrusion into my mailbox that really pissed me off. That some cowardly collection agency just took a picture of my license plate and could bill me from behind some computer somewhere was revolting. It makes me wonder how many Christians are out there going through the same thing for the same reasons. RiverLink will say that they have up signs and that people should know that they are using a toll bridge. But for people unfamiliar with the area just trying to make sure they are on the right road, it would be easy to make the mistake of staying on that road until you cross over into the other side of the river, where it would then be too late. I think it represents the worst of the mismanagement of highway funds and politics in general, and just like Chicago, the tolls will likely continue far into the future as a money racket that is intended for oversized union pensions and other wasted dollars spend on worthless government employees.

It concerned me because I do travel to Louisville a lot and it bothers me that something so corrupt is so close to my home in Cincinnati. But even worse, politicians on both sides of the Ohio River in Cincinnati are looking to do the same thing to pay for the I-75 bridge replacement that is projected there. The corruption is migrating, and politicians are intent to provide the same type of RiverLInk scam in Cincinnati. I remember in the 90s when Cincinnati was building more bridges than they needed just to use up highway funds that were in the bank, yet 30 years later nobody can come up with the money to provide a badly needed bridge replacement on one of the busiest highway arteries in the nation. With the amount of money that we do pay in taxes, the money for a new bridge should be there, we shouldn’t have to fund bridges with these toll roads. If government wants to lower taxes, then maybe we can talk about tolls, but at this level of taxation, its just another tax on us all collected in a different way, behind some cowardly camera by lazy trolls. And the cost of that stupidity isn’t just economic, it hurts people like Christina much more than anybody, and that pain comes straight out of political mismanagement and bad fiscal planning. It certainly isn’t fair to the population in general.

Rich Hoffman

The Tyranny of Safety: Fortune favors the bold and reckless as the foundation of innovation

With all the election coverage that really was needed recently, I didn’t have time to work through some of the concepts that I care about a great deal, which are being flushed out in my new book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, so for the next couple of these I promised myself to make some time. When I write about things here, usually its due to my understanding of a needed change agency impasse. If a concept isn’t introduced that is key to a greater thought, then any potential audience might miss it. So you need to start early on these things, especially if the concept is truly revolutionary and contrary to contemporary thought. One of those things is the false nature that safety is what everyone is looking for, and that compliance to that culture is the only way to function. Quite the opposite, even in business where safety is always being leveraged against, fortune favors the bold and unsafe in ways that are keys to any successful culture. And those who are timid usually attempt to create rules of safety to preserve themselves for that inevitability. Safety is not a state we should all yearn for, its rather the shield that the timid use to hide their own aversion to the rules of the universe.

I’m speaking from experience; I have never done anything in my life that might be considered “safe.” Rather, I have lived an extremely reckless life and always when I start to get too comfortable, I always end up doing something on the deep end of crazy to keep myself honest. And that was not to sabotage psychologically some level of success, but rather an understanding of how the true pulse of the universe really works. I have been talking about words that are normally associated with me such as “respectable.” Well, another is Teflon, many have wondered over the years why I have not ended up in jail to rot away in solitary confinement instead of being something of a respectable character, no matter what sort of path of destruction has ended up running in my wake. The reason that such controversy and reckless abandon has not stuck to me is not due to some magical Teflon help, but rather in the nature of life itself, where fortune favors the bold, and the observers in life who do preserve safety over treasure tend to always cheer on those willing to do what they are not.

It was easy for me to make this observation because I never wanted to be a normal human being, rather I endeavored to be a stunt man or daredevil. That was in fact my very first inkling for a career that went back beyond kindergarten. As a kid I would jump out of any tree, ride a bike through any obstacle and my heroes that I most looked up to were not people associated with my very nice and structured family, they were daredevils like Eval Knieval and escape artists like Harry Houdini. As a child I noticed very early, even when going to the circus that people who did things like stick their head into a lion’s mouth or walked on a tight rope without nets or harnesses below them were the ones that people clapped for. Part of them wanted to see a human being spit in the face of danger. Its not that they rooted for the big crash, or the death by a crazed animal, its that they wanted to see someone overcome the natural fears we all have so that innovation of some kind could come from the result.

This is another reason that a concept like communism and socialism are so reprehensible. They may be attractive to the type of people who fill an audience. People watching dangerous things do want the safety of observation. Yet when a society penalizes a tight rope walker with helmets and support ropes, the magic of the challenge is diminished tremendously. That’s why communist and socialist countries don’t tend to produce the kind of people who jump motorcycles over fountains in Las Vegas or to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. A society that is full of an audience but no show to watch becomes stagnant and boring, and eventually fails as a culture. However, when people are free to think and push the limits of their culture, we find that it flourishes in ways that cause great growth, and this is certainly the case in businesses of all kinds.

People are much more forgiving of a tight rope walker who almost falls and has to catch themselves from hitting the ground with an imperfect show because the attempt itself is what they really want to see. They will forgive Sea World for the occasional Orca attack that kills the whale trainers because the point of the show was to demonstrate mastery over the primal instincts of a wild animal. Without the show, the antics of a whale eating, mating and just swimming around are pretty boring. The audiences of life want to see somebody risking something, because they are too timid to do such things in life. But they do love to see other people doing it.

Whether in the court room, the board room, or even at the stock exchange, fortune favors the bold and playfully reckless. Owners of businesses who can’t afford to lose everything they have worked so hard for truly appreciate those like Harry Houdini who will throw chains upon themselves and be submerged underwater with the lid locked shut and only two minutes to hold their breath to attempt to escape before a massive bomb goes off on stage while the audience watches in horror. In all the books there are on business, and specifically program management they instruct their readers to mitigate risk and to run from it into the audience where everyone else is sitting. But talk to any finance person over lunch as they talk about how they want you to mitigate risk and protect the money they are lending you, they’ll also be the first ones to sit in the first row of a show where a daredevil will challenge death itself to lighten up the content of their boring day. They say they want a safe world, but they are the first to indicate they know daredevils are what make them money. Playing it safe in the back row doesn’t get any endeavor there, somewhere along the line of any investment a daredevil is needed to sign on the dotted line and take the plunge to perform under pressure or else.

Most of the rules of society are built for the timid, so not to hurt their feelings that they are not one of those daredevil types in an attempt to make the world appear more equal. The more we have explored socialism in our own culture, the more willing we have been to put safety helmets on our children as they ride their bicycles and listen to every warning label an insurance company gives us so that they won’t have to pay a costly payout when some kid breaks their arm falling off the roof of their house. But making children overly safe, we have also killed in them the daring percentage who will make it into adulthood fearless of the real performances the human race wants to see, and we end up with a bunch of people sitting in the audience waiting for a good show, but no Harry Houdini strapped in chains upside down in a vault of water. We want to see someone overcome such things and in all things that we consider successful and respectable, we have some nature of a daredevil there to show us that something can be done. This trait is useful in asking a member of the opposite sex out for a date, which for many people is very difficult, or in landing a big business deal against all odds where a lot of time, money, and people’s jobs are at great risk. People want to know that you are so confident in your craft that you will walk the tight rope without fearing falling because you are so good. They want to know that you aren’t afraid, because they are and they like knowing that you don’t wear a helmet because you don’t fear crashing. Those who cleave to safety are those sitting in the audience waiting to see that somebody can overcome death and worse to achieve something. And once they see it for themselves, they can then possibly not be ruled by fear, but can rather live more freely than otherwise would have been possible and to get more out of life than was previously thought.

Rich Hoffman