Tag: Bullwhips

The Communist Swing from ‘High Noon’ to Trump: Why what Jerry Nadler is doing is far worse than McCarthyism

I think it goes without saying that I love John Wayne and westerns in general, but I have always disagreed with The Duke on his opinion about the great film High Noon. I have never seen it as an allegory on the blacklisting and the congressional investigations led by Joseph McCarthy, which many think it was. Yes, there were communists in Hollywood and yes it is true that Carl Foreman, the screenwriter of High Noon was one of them. The un-American activities were in full swing in 1952 led by Russia to penetrate Hollywood so essentially, they could get the control they have today during the years of Donald Trump. As I have listened to the American leftists reaction to Trump this past week and watched all the activity about the FBI and current hearings led by Jerry Nadler and the rest of the Democrats trying to impeach President Trump, I think we can look back at this documentary about the making of High Noon with a new eye toward history. Personally, I’m tired of hearing about how bad McCarthyism was on America and what impact blacklisting had on Hollywood. That cry baby stuff is long over. Conservatives are blacklisted much worse than any of the communists in Hollywood were then, so let’s revisit the morality of that time without the tears that the left have been hiding behind for years.

Truth be told, I spent the first twenty years of my adult life working toward a career in entertainment and planned to have a Hollywood film stint, and at several points I made major strides in that direction. But I am a Cincinnati conservative not that much unlike many stars who have made it in Hollywood quite spectacularly, but times have changed. If we were living in the days of High Noon where John Wayne set the standard and had the clout to run communists like Carl Foreman out of the country, as Wayne did before High Noon was even released, then I would likely be working in Hollywood right now. So in many ways I could lay claim to being blacklisted all of my adult life from the things I really enjoy. But unlike those complaining left leaning losers, I was able to do other things in my life and I have been successful in other aspects anyway. So what is there to cry about unless you are a one trick pony like most of Hollywood was and still is. They are probably worse today than they were in the time of High Noon’s release.

However, John Wayne made it very public that he didn’t like High Noon because he considered it un-American, and Lloyd Bridges was in an acting group that had lots of communists in it, which didn’t help. The American left loved High Noon because they thought of it as commentary on the McCarthy hearings, as Gary Cooper’s character Marshal Kane was a target for revenge for an outlaw that he had put in jail years ago, before his anticipated retirement. The train bringing the villain was to arrive at High Noon and the bandit was intent to bring his gang to the Marshal to kill him. The Marshal was planning to retire and marry his bride to be, but he is still the law in Hadleyville so he had an honorable obligation to fulfil his job as the lawman. Even though it may kill him. Knowing that a gang of four other killers are going to accompany the leader Kane tries to get other members of the town to help him, but nobody would.

The Soviet Union did not like High Noon because they felt it glorified the individual. Even though there were communists working on the film and the McCarthyism was in full swing in Washington D.C. it wasn’t enough for them and they made sure that even though the film won 4 Oscars because the American left wanted the film to do well, it wasn’t enough for the U.S.S.R. So, in that context it should be clear that John Wayne saw the big picture of the matter and just didn’t like High Noon viewing it as an un-American activity. Wayne was so adamant about his dislike for High Noon that he went into production for Rio Bravo as a direct pro-American answer. So, these are not new disputes these discussions about Trump’s swing back to the political right and waving the American flag around in reaction to socialist and communist propaganda. In the days of High Noon, it was denied that communism was even happening, but after the recent debates with the Democrats has shown, socialism and communism are very much the platforms of their party and their intention. So, the cat is out of the bag. Nobody is hiding it anymore. They were always trying to infect American culture with collectivist Marxism in some version or another. If it wasn’t John Wayne standing up to it, it is now Donald Trump. But the effort has always been there, and the debate is not new.

What has everyone in a panic now as opposed to the times of High Noon is that the political left felt that the pendulum was swinging in their direction in 1952, and it was. Leftist politics and open socialism were being debated, even if masked with different names and that swing has gone on for well over 50 years. But people are sick of it, and for anybody who saw Trump’s rally in Cincinnati in 2019 could attest to, people are now rejecting the political left. Trump is just the vehicle; the movement is taking a life of its own. For the same reasons that westerns were popular in 1952, conservative ideas are reemerging from the aftermath of failed socialist policies regardless of what political theater would like to believe.

The blacklisting that is going on currently with Facebook, Google, YouTube and many others is far worse for conservatives than it was ever in Hollywood as a direct reaction to McCarthyism. And its not John Wayne anymore trying to keep the pendulum from swinging to the left with more and more pro-American westerns. This time it is the left trying to fight the trend, the media that the communists did get control of. They couldn’t get the anti-American ideas to stick and patriotism is back in style and in spite all their screams of warning, are losing. Regardless of the political tendencies of the movie High Noon, I think it’s a great movie about society failing the individual yet the individual doing what needs to be done against all odds to do the right thing. It is certainly an American film especially in relation to the films of today which are far, far, far more left leaning than High Noon. But it is interesting given today’s political climate to look back at that time when the left was winning and building their case and crying about blacklisting. They have gone far further than anything John Wayne did or any other pro-American advocate during the periods of the Hollywood westerns. I could feel bitter about it, but as I said, I moved on to other industrious efforts. The left can’t and they are choking on their own crap and you know what, I think its funny. I am enjoying the show, because they deserve everything they are getting now. They started it. And its good to see them suffering now.

Rich Hoffman

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Gurpreet Singh is in the Butler County Jail for Murders in West Chester

So what makes a man want to kill his wife and her family, or even think about doing it? Well, only a lowlife functioning from sheer evil would even consider such a thing, and a generally stupid person who didn’t know how to navigate the difficulties that can take place in family politics. But that is precisely what people are wondering after the indictment of Gurpreet Singh that West Chester police say shot and killed his wife, Shalinderjit Kaur and her parents Parmiit Kaur and Hakiakat Singh and his wife’s sister Amarjit Kaur. At the time of the murders in my community of West Chester which is one of the best places to live in the world the behavior was mystifying, and nobody really knew what to think about it. The way normal people deal with family problems in an affluent community is that they go play golf or partake in any of the other wonderful things that there is to do in West Chester that can ease off the steam. But for dumb people encumbered by cultural standards that are not conducive to intelligent discourse, it appears that Singh wanted out of his marriage contract with his wife and her family, so he killed them with 18 bullet holes dispatched in their little apartment not far off RT 747 in the valley beneath Beckett Ridge.

Cold blooded killers are often good liars and con artists who can lie to your face and sound very convincing. In fact, it was Singh who called the police on that dreadful night in April 28th of 2019. When they arrived, they detained him for questioning but did not arrest him as a suspect because he was able to sell himself off as a credible victim who had found the bodies and went into a panic. But Singh seemed fishy from the start, I certainly thought it was him who had committed the murders. Of course the thing to do was to withhold judgment until the investigation fleshed out the details and those details did emerge. Many of us who live and work in West Chester took the murders as a personal offense because those kinds of things should not happen in such a nice community with nice people. But the situation appears to be an assimilation issue where he forgot that in America there are many other ways of solving disputes rather than killing your wife’s family.

But Singh was crafty and sold himself off as innocent which police considered safe the night of the murders. Then when there was a vigil for the slain family Singh was there to essentially continue selling off his innocence by participating. But he moved to Connecticut where he was arrested a month ago once all the arrows of the investigation pointed at him. On Friday of this past week he was extradited back to Ohio and booked into the Butler County Jail on charges of four accounts of murder.

That certainly isn’t the typical case of other members of the Sikh community in Cincinnati. They don’t typically kill each other when there are family disputes, but Singh obviously played this trend to his advantage by being very cooperative with police. However, in many places in the world where marriage means different things to different people, a simple divorce is not always a path out for irreparable disputes so apparently murder is the only way for their small-minded view of the world to deal with the matter. It’s a situation many of us face, even if we’d like things to be different. When you marry a person, you marry their family, otherwise the relationship would just be considered an extended date, or a roommate with benefits. Marriage is the unification of families with all different value systems with their own histories, so it can be very difficult to navigate through troubled parts of a marriage especially when the extended family is involved which in Singh’s case, they were all in his apartment. It is hard to imagine a case where a family argument would ensue that would inspire someone like Singh to grab a gun and kill them all not thinking through the implications. Then throwing that gun in the lake outside of their apartment hoping that nobody would find it. Then call the police and try to sell off his innocence. Really, only an idiot would do something like that. It’s a sad story in every case, and a real insult that the killer has hung that stupidity on our community that really doesn’t deserve it.

Of course, what’s worse is to have the job of the attorney, in this case Charlie Rittgers who had to go out yesterday and declare Singh’s innocence. What a low life job to do, to offer yourself as a voice to such an evil person. If Singh didn’t do the killings, then who did? He left motive and evidence all over the place and his body language was terrible. But in our legal system, we are supposed to give the benefit of doubt and force evidence that proves guilt, well I’m fine with what I’ve heard so far. I thought Singh was guilty that first night, probably the police did too, but needed to gather all the evidence. Now that there is enough evidence for an indictment, what a terrible job to offer yourself as an attorney to try to explain away such an evil. It really is a disgusting endeavor under even the best of circumstances.

When families don’t get along you just can’t kill them or try to hurt them. You must have at least enough mental facilities to work with them otherwise you should never get married to whomever the family is connected to. Most of us have those skills, obviously, Gurpreet Singh didn’t. Instead he used his limited intellect to attempt to pass himself off as an innocent member of the Sikh community. But that is where the real sense of justice is quite evident, because it was other members of the Sikh community who were quite convinced that the killer was Singh because there is still enough honor left in their culture, as opposed to mainstream American culture, to make judgment calls when bad behavior becomes obvious. Singh insulted us all when he tried to pass himself off as an innocent hoping that his broken English would sell him as a husband in mourning over his slain family. But his family and friends knew better and helped the police get to the real story which turns out to be just another sad domestic violence case where resolutions to the problems were out of reach of Singh’s mind.

It wouldn’t be any of our business if the killer didn’t put it in our laps with a murder that should have never occurred. I’m sure it will come out in court, but likely the people Singh killed knew he was a phony which is why he wanted to get rid of them. He came across as a phony in all his public appearances almost shining like a light bulb for a guilty plea. A tough job for Rittgers but if that’s how you decide to make a buck covering for killers, then have fun. For the rest of us, we want to see justice brought to fruition because this idiot put a stain on our community that it clearly didn’t deserve. Singh’s lack of skill and understanding in how to deal with his family should not have given our community the black eye that it did and for that, we all deserve to be more than angry about it.

Rich Hoffman

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Why Nobody Can Beat President Trump: The great rally in Cincinnati

It was strange to watch the Trump rally in Cincinnati because it was the first one I haven’t been to once he has come to my hometown. But honestly, even with a VIP ticket, seeing him is an all-day event and I just couldn’t block out that kind of time. So what does that say about him and his presidency? When did anybody ever wait all day to see a president and fill a 20,000-person arena along the Ohio River an hour before the scheduled speaking time of 7 PM? At 6 PM in fact all the seats all the way up to the luxury suites were full except for a those who had left into the concourse to get food. The floor in front of the speaker’s stage was filled and there were still lines wrapped around the arena outside.

I was at that same rally when Trump last came to US Bank just a few weeks after the infamous Access Hollywood tapes that would have sunk any other candidate. But even then, when the media had wrote him off with a torpedo hit and as we have learned, many other sabotages, some by our own government, Trump still filled that arena even as Hillary Clinton couldn’t fill up a park just a few hundred yards down river. I thought then that Trump was going to win but at that time I was one of the few. Yet he packed that place and people were very happy to be there. It was a great experience that I have never forgotten, and it was amazing to see it duplicated just a few years later under much better circumstances. This time he was the president and suddenly everyone wanted to speak ahead of him. Even one of the best Supreme Court Justices in the country, Sharon Kennedy of Ohio spoke a few hours from Trump’s ostentatious patriotism on full display once he arrived.

So why, what is the reason that Trump can do this while nobody else can? Why are the Democrats still pushing an impeachment narrative even after all the premise for such a thing had legally been tossed out the window? Why? Well, the answer is celebrity and not just the kind that Hollywood produces. What Trump has built over the years is the real kind of celebrity that actually built Hollywood at a distant part of their history, which they have lost. Celebrity is when a person, an actor, or a representative comes to embody the unspoken thoughts and words of a significant number of the population. That is why Trump had crowds in October of 2016 when Hillary Clinton could barely fill a spot 10 times smaller. Hillary Clinton in her final push tried to bring in celebrities to push her over the top yet couldn’t. Trump won the election anyway even though the forces against him were phenomenal. And at this present rally in the summer of 2019 people saw in Trump parts of themselves that they didn’t have a voice in any other way. So, they lined up to see him making an entire day of the event and they were happy to do it. They are an untouched market in America that no professional consultants had spent time trying to understand. They still don’t get it, but US Bank was the measure of their failure. It filled when the media thought there weren’t any supporters left and not only did Trump fill it easily, he did so hours before the show even started.

Think about what people were waiting to see, a 70 something year old man, a politician, talk for an hour or so. There was no music to accompany the show, the whole thing was just Trump talking about current events and world affairs. There is no conventional wisdom that could explain it, so unconventional study is needed to even begin to comprehend it. There isn’t any Democrat in the United States or in the world who could do what Trump did in Cincinnati or anywhere, even telling basically the same speech over and over again over the years. To be a celebrity who can generate that much excitement, who in their right mind thinks that anybody is going to beat him in 2020? I said in in 2016, nobody. And I’ll say it again now, there isn’t anybody who is going to beat Trump for a return to the White House in 2020. It is astonishing that an arena that big could be filled by anybody. Carrie Underwood sold out that arena, but that is for a full concert. What Trump has done is simply incredible.

Celebrity is a vote all its own. Even with the cheating that Democrats are known for throughout history, whether it is stuffing ballots, getting dead people to vote, or trying to qualify illegal aliens and prisoners to tip the scales in their favor, they have nobody like Trump. Not a single celebrity in Hollywood. No athlete, no musical artist. Nobody. People showed up to see Trump speak for over an hour and they spent the day doing it because they wanted to. And in a country where votes still matter, even when cheating does go on, people are speaking with sheer numbers of support even as the media and establishment culture tries to suppress that information from them. When Trump speaks to people directly people reward him with support, because that’s the only voice they really have—the celebrity that they gave to Trump because he represents their true values.

Deservedly, those who work against Trump should be concerned. Those who have taken their shots to end the Trump presidency made the whole story about him as a person, but what they failed to understand was that Trump is the representative of the people who elected him. People don’t follow Trump as some dictator they follow him because he represents who they are and without him they have no other voice. Enemies of Trump don’t want to just stop him because they disagree with him, but they want to silence the voices that back him. They don’t care what those voices really want out of their government, they want to pretend that they are in charge and can lead them toward some progressive objectives.

Those against the Trump presidency are in denial of what really makes Trump tick. In a representative government has there ever really been anybody who really was more authentic and representative than President Trump? Who thinks that people stand all that time to see an old man talk about current events? Its not so much him, but that he is their vehicle to bring forth their own voices, and for that they will wait all day for just a short shot in the spotlight. I have seen those events before, but this latest rally in Cincinnati was different, it was even bigger and more spectacular, and more of a statement about the real state of the nation. It wasn’t a racist event, it wasn’t a dictator, it was just a celebrity who represented the real people of the nation and no representative from the other political side can go toe to toe with him. And for that, it was an event to celebrate and be grateful for.

Rich Hoffman

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What Comes Around Goes Around on the Wild, Wild Frontiers of Thought and Culture

It’s always a good day for me to attend the Annie Oakley Festival in Greenville, Ohio where I rejoin old friends and meet some new ones at that annual event always set during the last weekend of July. In many ways I am happiest during that period because the world is as I’d like it to be and I get to dress the way I’d like for the event. This year was a little different however because its one of those transition periods for me. I’m in the middle of writing my new book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and have been working on several themes that were born right there in Greenville over the last several decades. As a lover of Ohio history and of frontier life in general I find great solace in the small towns up and down Rt 127, from Hamilton, Ohio all the way up Celina on the Grand Lake St. Mary. Lebanon, and Eaton come to mind as well, and of course Greenville itself nestled there in God’s country with the smell of corn dogs and ice-cold Coke offered from the various venders. But more than anything I enjoy competing with those old and new friends and pushing myself in ways that I don’t get to do in regular life, and the results are always rewarding, such as in this very close example shown below of our Bullwhip Fast Draw competition during the finals.

Yes, it’s fast. I have been practicing Cowboy Fast Draw for quite a long time now and have a pretty good feel for how fast is fast. The events shown in our Bullwhip Fast Draw are around .600 of a second down to about .450, almost as fast as the pistol shooters who were also there at the event. I spent quite a lot of time with them as well. Yet it amazes me how fast the Bullwhip Fast Draw competition has become, and how fast we have become in conducting all the various steps literally in the blink of an eye. For a lot of people, the blink of an eye is about .015 of a second. So, we are moving very fast these days in performing a task that really should be nearly impossible. But you never really know until you start pushing yourself with competition which is one of the big themes in my new book.

I am an optimist, really an unshakable one. I’ve seen more than my share of tragedy and heartbreak, but my optimism has always been intact no matter what’s going on. Over the years this Annie Oakley event has been that reset period for me that no matter what has been occurring, it gave me an opportunity to be around people who aren’t losers and activists of malice and just enjoy good people in a good flag waving country. Many years ago, I broke away from the entertainment aspects of my relationship with the western arts and went to apply my skills to real life problems, that were very controversial. It was quite a thing to do before Donald Trump was president, but now isn’t considered so radical, because the country is snapping back into shape, thankfully. The evidence is everywhere. This year at our Western Showcase event a really good Lone Ranger impersonator stopped by and did a show which I enjoyed quite a lot. As I listened to the Lone Ranger creed from him, I couldn’t help but think of myself and some of the decisions I had made along the way leading up to that moment.

In 2004 I released the book The Symposium of Justice which featured a bullwhip cracking vigilante that was at war with the corruption of his hometown. But in the years thereafter I found that many of my themes were quite real and that as an author, I couldn’t just write about them, I wanted to be the real-life character of my stories. So, I turned my skills to the real-life problems of my community and many reading here know the rest of the story. Up until Donald Trump emerged from the Tea Party to become President of the United States, I felt I needed to be the real-life characters I had written about. But that has changed due to the sudden shifting of the winds. The western arts no longer feel like a dying thing as it used to, but something that is reemerging and becoming new again. That makes me very happy. Not only does the world need it, but it confirms many of the things about people that I have long suspected and those are the clear contents of my new book that will likely come out next year.

It has been sad that so many people who still believe in things like the Lone Ranger’s Creed have stayed out of the fight that has needed to be fought. I couldn’t just sit around and think about it. I wanted to do something about it and I am proud that I have. But hearing the Lone Ranger impersonator go through the creed this year in front of our audience was for me very refreshing. Some of my favorite quotes are “That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.” And “in being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for that which is right.” Or, “That God put the firewood there, but that every man must gather it and light it himself. Those are all good quotes and who could argue them? Well, Democrats for one, and many of today’s youth who get their morality from Grand Theft Auto rather than the Masked Man as they used to.

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Another good day in my favorite clothes. #life #family

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That is why I love the Annie Oakley event so much. It is a break from the disappointments of today’s culture and the youth being born from it, from the primitive cravings of body piercings, tattoos and shaky morality. Of loose sexual standards and a proclivity toward drugs and intoxication. From lazy losers who want socialism over capitalism and champions of expanding government who will issue them mailbox paychecks for just sitting around and letting mother government drop food in their mouths without doing anything to deserve it. For one day a year I get a break from all that and I cherish it tremendously. If I could have every day like the days I get in the middle of God’s country every year in Darke County I would take it eagerly. Unfortunately, that is not our reality, but it should be. Most of the people who go and participate in those events there don’t have the same kind of reflections that I do. They just go and enjoy the festivities without giving it much thought. But not me, I see the potential and reflect on what we used to do well and how we could do it again. And perhaps a new day is emerging. Whatever comes I at least feel good about what I’ve done to make the world better, which I will always do. But I get the feeling that the world is getting more favorable to those grand old traditions and that the thugs and losers of life aren’t winning any more, they are being swept away into the garbage heaps of history, where they belong and that makes me the happiest of all. For the first time in many years I think that tomorrow will be better than yesterday, and that is very encouraging.

Rich Hoffman

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You Can’t Hide Bad Behavior Behind Imaginary Racism

One of the changes I’ll be making on this site is the perspective that it speaks from. For instance, most of the time that I have written on this blog site it has been from an underdog perspective, as a member of the real “Resistance” where our country was literally being taken away from us. Normally, on a day to day basis I only associate with really smart people who are plugged in to what is going on in the world. However, and we all go through these things, I have had a family member in the hospital for an extended period and I have been pulled out of my natural state routines. So I have had to speak to people who really don’t care what’s going on in the world or they weren’t part of any “resistance” which is how I think of the Tea Party movement. Even in the entertainment community for which I have several very good friends, the trend is to not talk about politics because nobody wants to be divisive. Yet I continue to spend a lot of my time on what is actually going on and would consider myself well above an elevated state of pop culture knowledge of world events. And from my perspective a truth that everyone can relate to has emerged from the Trump administration and a new kind of politics is emerging. People can say that they don’t like Donald Trump, but history will remember his presidency as a great victory in global politics and the way we do business as a republic. So it is from that perspective that I will have future articles here and elsewhere. I am quite confident that history will catch up.

The biggest element to have fallen in politics recently is this whole notion that everything is racist which has any kind of measure to gauge success against. The Elijah Cummings issue of the 7th District in Maryland is a great example as President Trump has pointed out with his tweets so far this week describing the mess that Baltimore specifically is in. Like most big cities, Baltimore has not seen the benefit of the vast amounts of money that has been poured into its budgets. When a problem like gun violence or homelessness is targeted as an objective to go after, Democrats, all of them, just don’t have a management approach that solves any problems. Their philosophy makes more of the detrimental behavior we see not less of it, and in the case of Elijah Cummings he is a great example of it. While he runs a lot of the investigations that have been going on in Congress for a number of years, he hasn’t been able to solve the hard problems of his district with any amount of money that have been tossed into it. Just like my argument about school levies, anywhere where progressive politics is the theme of management effort, failure is attached.

To hide this obvious evidence from the public progressive politicians have decided that they would use “racism” as a shield against their failed approach. Watching Chris Wallace on Fox Sunday this week was quite a shocking bit of reporting from what I think is one of the best in the business. Wallace couldn’t get it through his thick skull that Trump’s comments about Cummings district were quite valid, just as the situation was for what we call “The Squad,” the four congresswomen who are progressive activists who have also been the target of President Trump’s outrage. Trump is a guy who made his living building elegant buildings and golf courses. To him roads with pot holes make them dumps, so from his measurement, which is the same as most people, places where homicides are up, respect for the police are down, per capita income that does not rid an area of homelessness and drug addiction are dumps, and I think we can all agree. The only thing that progressives have to defend themselves from such a striking judgement is to proclaim that it is racist to have an opinion, which is of course ridiculous.

What was outrageous about what Wallace did as what I think of as a great reporter is that he played straight into the race narrative which I found in my recent interactions with “normal people” (people who are more concerned with the kind of grill they have in their back yard than what is going on in politics) is that race was accepted as a measurement of value, which its clearly not. People have accepted this notion that people of color should not be criticized in any way about anything and if you really get down to it, that is why a lot of these inner cities are failing and people are dying in filth and poor living conditions under addicted circumstances, is because nobody—especially white people—feel they can have an opinion on the matter. Now it has become obvious that Fox News is not a bastion of conservative value. Quite the contrary, Wallace himself is listed as a Democrat and the network as a whole has moved far to the political left now that Rupert Murdoch has taken a back seat to the new CEO Suzanne Scott. One of the big decisions under Scott was in hiring Donna Brazile who was fired from the DNC for rigging the election in favor of Hillary Clinton. So Fox News is not headed in a good direction. They are still more conservative than the rest of the media outlets that are mainstream but that’s not saying much.

As I said, I know a lot of people in entertainment and talk about a double standard. Many of them are afraid to have conservative opinions because they won’t get work, even though most of the audiences for modern media content lean toward a conservative nature. Yet Joss Whedon who is a big time Disney film director, responsible for the Marvel movies and even co-wrote Toy Story thought that he could send out an anti-Trump tweet saying “We have a racist, fascist president who’s using armed thugs in law enforcement & illegal militias to keep us cowed & hopeless & he’ll take the 2020 election by armed force & blatant, treasonous criminality & that’s us now, we’re the country with concentration camps so happy 4th.” For that Whedon wasn’t dropped from any film projects, Disney hasn’t distanced themselves from him, they just let it go. But as conservatives, if any of us said just a fraction of that one time, we’d be raked through the coals and tortured in the court of public opinion.

Of course, it’s ridiculous, but what’s important to understand is that the real anger that is coming from Whedon and Wallace along with many others is that they have come to realize that they do not have their finger on the pulse of America. They have an ideology that has been built on ideas of failure over time and they used the quiet nature of America who live and let live to justify their phony belief system. Meanwhile, bad ideas weren’t challenged which impoverished places like Baltimore in the wake of nobody thinking of criticizing the place wanted to be called names for pointing out the obvious. But that is changing and President Trump knows it. Not only that, but for the first time that I can think of a person running for a second term of office isn’t afraid to point it out because there isn’t any real competition for Trump in the 2020 election and all these Democrats know it. All they have for a defense is to cry racism even though it was they who put women and minorities into these political roles then expected nobody to criticize their bad behavior just because of skin color and sex. The stupid assumption was on their original strategy, not in the reality of the situation. The world is conservative and getting more so. The covers have been ripped away and not even Fox News is safe. And that is a trait that they will all have to get used to because the country and the world is moving away from their sentiments, not toward them.

Rich Hoffman
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Steampunk and the Future of Technology

My readers here might have noticed my new mask which is kind of Steampunkish and likely wondered what the deal with it was. Well, I was shopping with my family in the famous Charleston City Market which has been around since 1804. One of the booths had kind of a Steampunk theme which my kids are into. I haven’t paid much attention to the movement because to me it represented a time that never occurred and was rooted in “what ifs” instead of factual observation and an understanding of history. Steampunk however has turned out to be very aligned with what I want to do with my new book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business so through buying this mask it gave me several good ideas to build off of, so I started using it on my social media platforms because I think its pretty cool.

Death and life have very much been a part of my thinking lately, I’ve had some sick family, my own aging process and all this constant news about artificial intelligence taking over the human race–becoming actually a terminator type of conflict that seems much more possible today than it did when that popular movie first came out—has been on my mind. The mask to me is a clear indication that we can enhance our own flesh now, and the future looks to be even more of a case for it. So even when our flesh dies of natural causes we can continue to live on through various mechanical means, and this new mask of mind makes me think of those potentials and consequences, so I was very excited to get it. And in talking with my kids about Steampunk as an art movement that’s when it became clear that my argument for going back into the Wild West period to look at our value systems, which is key to my own efforts, was the same in bridging those values with the technology of the future.

As kind of a prerequisite to buying that mask my wife and I spent some time in Gatlinburg, Tennessee looking at grandfather clocks, which have always been on my radar. There is a very nice store on the main strip there that we have always gone in and contemplated. Even though these days a digital display clock is often better and far, far cheaper, there has always been a charm for me in the craftsmanship that goes into a grandfather clock that I crave. And at the height of the Victorian era for which the Wild West period was a part of that is why the stylized outfits and fonts looked the way they did. It was a very exciting time where guns became very reliable and could be used to shape a culture as the Victorian designs immigrated from Europe and moved with the expanding train system into the wild frontier of western expansion. These days many of our smartest people, people who enjoy thinking, are finding that they enjoy the values of that period and would like to see a return to those values. But we are all on the technological frontier of so many other positive elements that we must find a way to bridge these values, which is how Steampunk came to be as an art form.

Its not at all a mainstream thing yet, or if it ever will be. But one thing is quite clear, it was mainstream enough to have that mask I bought displayed at the very popular Charleston City Market and people walking by all stopped to look at the crafts displayed at that booth, so there is some very obvious curiosity by most people about this type of art, whether they understand it consciously or not. I suspect that subconsciously most people are thinking the same thing, they don’t want to lose themselves as individuals in the technology of the future, and they very much want to be in command of that relationship. We don’t want to lose our lives to technology, but rather want to see humans continue to set the agenda—but one way or the other, tech is here, and we must find our way with it. So suddenly, I’m quite a fan of Steampunk.

This mask is appropriate for me because honestly, I have no intentions of every dying. Now the nature of life may change, but my essence I suspect will live on in various forms forever, and as I get older, I am quite open into whatever enhancements I need to utilize to continue enjoying life. After all think about it, I have written so much that it will float around in cyberspace or whatever form of that space exists well into the future, that it will likely go on forever as defined by universal life spans. Even if all that is left is a skull, I will get all I can out of life because that is how I approach these kinds of things. While I do advocate for the values of the past, of the Victorian era Wild West values of pure capitalism and frontier justice, I think very much that those values not only work here on earth, but will work as we colonize space whether it is the moon, Mars or the moons of Jupiter. If I could live 20,000 years to see all those advancements happen or to help them along, I’ll do it whether the form is a living entity, legacy memories, or as a variation of that mask, a biological entity more machine than traditional life that exists without losing the basics of humanity.

Coming back from Charleston I had been listening to Rush Limbaugh while staying in the very nice Mt. Pleasant area and looking at all the sites and thinking about how Google was being thought of as evil, and that Facebook was capturing so much of us to build an artificial intelligence that it was forcing tough political and economic decisions for the future. For me the solution was in Steampunk, or at least the first doors to solving those complex problems and that mask gave me a reference point. But when it came time to come back home and I punched in my address to my Google Map app on my phone it stated at 5:30 AM in the morning that I would arrive back at my home in 10 hrs. and 16 minutes. Thinking about Rush Limbaugh’s radio shows and some by Alex Jones that I had been listening to online when everyone else had gone to bed I wanted to try an experiment knowing that Google had a profile of my habits that it had been collecting about me for many years. I decided to leave my phone plugged in so that I wouldn’t reset my destination forcing Google to recalculate my destination time.

On the way home I traveled with one of my daughters, her kids and my wife so there were lots of variables. We didn’t leave at 5:30 but the time really didn’t change from when we actually did so the Google Maps had figured out all our stops, our pace of driving and the traffic conditions from Mt Pleasant to our home address and all the surprises that can happen along the way. Outside of Columbia, South Carolina we stopped at a Cracker Barrel for breakfast. At the North Carolina line we switched around some drivers. Just outside of Ashville we stopped to let the kids use the restroom. In the heart of the mountains near the tunnels just before the Tennessee border we stopped to get some more food. In Knoxville we stopped to get more gas. Ahead of Jellico Mountain we stopped by McDonalds just to stretch and get a snack. On the other side of the mountain from Jellico to London, KY we had lots of single lane traffic and some serious traffic delays. We pulled off the highway to use the restroom yet again and we fiddled around for an additional 15 minutes because we were all tired of driving and didn’t want to rush only to sit in traffic again. We stopped just north of Lexington just to stretch because we were tired and wanted to get home but were getting impatient. Then we hit traffic in Florence that lasted all the way through the city of Cincinnati. By the time we got to our driveway the time on the trip back was 10 hrs. and 17 minutes. One minute longer than Google Maps had predicted originally, which I thought was astonishing.

Technology can be our friends or our enemies, what it becomes will largely be up to the values we bring to it. I for one plan to embrace it with an eye toward longevity and accomplishing more in a lifetime than typical biological existence would otherwise allow. And even the sad stories of family sicknesses prove that technology is on the cusp of solving many of those problems. But then what? Well, that is up to us to figure out, and that is my focus in helping to shape. And for me, that is a very exciting prospect and what I think about when I see that new mask found at the Charleston City Market. To me its not a scary thing, but something that will help us live beyond the terminal existence of yesteryear, but if we hold the values from the past that worked best and combined them with the future, we wouldn’t just get Steampunk art, but perhaps a new reality that matches what Jesus said when he walked the earth, “heaven is all around us, only men do not see it.” Well, maybe its time that we start looking at it.

Rich Hoffman

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The Merits of Dueling

The Merits of Dueling:

As I have said, I have been working on a new book called the Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and I’m about halfway through it.  For my readers of a long time here who have been sending me a lot of emails missing the daily articles, they will return.  But I offer this little sample of this “gunfighter” project to give a taste of what is to come.

The concept of getting “satisfaction” from a personal insult went a long way to establishing honor and proper conduct among business transactions, in the time before modern rules as we know them today. As we have seen often where various religions and their value are not unified, and therefore cannot be expected to hold up in a court of law, there needs to be a mechanism that brings about honor and to hold it into the context of moral conduct where villainy will quickly grow like a weed in a garden of dreams. Dueling in the classic sense, especially in the New World during the time of the American Revolution was an answer to this problem. And if there is an argument against the American Constitution for changes, it was in the original rules of the nation that mechanisms of honor were already established before the courts were needed.

In doing business in the orient, particularly in Japan where honor is still a respected trait, business transactions are accelerated because the interactions mean something with one another. This is obvious at the airports around Tokyo among men and women as respect is a universal language that makes interactions between people start on common ground. In the West we have allowed our own culture of respect to drift away into the more centralized regulation of the state which outlawed the practice of dueling essentially so that lawyers could profit off the instillation of justice. The cost was that individual satisfaction for an insult did not get the respect it deserved while the emphasis was on protecting society from itself by settling matters in a court of law. This has led our culture to adapt into a more passive aggressive society where trust isn’t always easy to find in other people. It could be argued that we were all better off when we tried to openly kill each other to protect a slight against our individual names.

Dueling was so common at the start of America that the governor of South Carolina wrote a book on it to make sure everyone did it right called The Code of Honor: Or Rules for the Government of Principals and Second in the Art of Dueling in 1834 by John Lyde Wilson. Dueling in the time of the Revolutionary War was quite common. While it was slowly going out of style at the start of the invention of a republic form of federal government once George Washington took office, in the South, particularly in Charleston, South Carolina where so many important battles occurred in defining freedom during the start of the new nation, dueling was so common that the governor felt compelled to create some legal means of settling disputes, which sounds barbaric compared to our modern legal system, but in hindsight seemed to generate more responsible people on an individual level. This certainly helped in business commerce, because if a business deal went bad, the parties may find themselves in the streets fighting to the death to obtain their satisfaction.

The important aspect of satisfaction is that the emphasis was on the individual reputations of the participants. It wasn’t some third party “state” that decided justice, it was the people at the heart of the conflict, and in many ways, society was more honorable. People had to treat each other individually better as a result. The more the states intruded on management of the affairs of people the more passive aggressive disputes have become leaving business conduct to suffer greatly. After the Civil War it was particularly immigrants from the South who moved West in search of gold and other opportunities, and they took with them the concept of dueling that had been very much a part of early American life. Dueling with fast draw had with it a way of bringing honor where there wasn’t yet law and it forced people to treat each other better and more honorably which is why there is still reverence for it.

At the state level we can all see today that the concept of taking honor and responsibility for good conduct away from individuals has been a mistake. While dueling was a violent concept the amount of people who died from it were arguably much less frequent than the kind of violence we see in modern times. That is why thinking in the way of the gunfighter is better than in the modern context of leaving disputes to be settled by those not directly responsible for the conduct, such as lawyers and the state as a legal entity. These days instead of getting satisfaction for an honor tainted we say “see you in court” instead of settling the matter right then and there. Then of course those who can pay for the best lawyer become the winners in most cases and the state enjoys the revenue and job opportunities that come from settling disputes. But what is lost is the individual responsibility for the actions taken and the merit of an honorable exchange. Taking the example of the famous duel between General Gladsten and General Howe in 1778, both Generals in the Revolution and were in a dispute over troop possession. They took to the streets of Charleston, South Carolina where many such duels were taking place at the time and when the time came stared each other down waiting for the other to make a move. After taunting each other for a good bit of time finally General Howe fired his pistol and clipped the ear of Gladsten. Gladsten in response, who was thought to be the John Adams of the south and inventor of the famous “Don’t Tread on Me” flag deliberately fired his shot into the ground inviting Howe to try again. Eventually the two men shook hands and that settled their dispute with only a minor injury occurring to Gladsten’s ear. Otherwise, the business between two major Revolutionary War figures was settled respectfully, something that certainly wouldn’t have occurred if the two had fought it out in court with lawyers acting as their pistols and fancy words spoken in legal jargon as bullets.

The point of the matter is not that dueling is a desired trait, or even that we should bring it back in the form that it was. Killing another person isn’t a desirable outcome for any dispute, but the finality of it tended to put in the participant’s minds the seriousness of an issue and this mindset certainly set the West and its expansion ablaze with activity that couldn’t have been regulated by any legal system at the rate that human ambition was expanding at the time. Honor was preserved by the potential for dueling and this threat allowed for proper respect when a nation needed it most. We could learn a lot from this period today where honor among business transactions is desperately lacking, particularly within the American borders. Other countries have their honor driven rituals and it is noticeable during business transactions. In the United States however, we have allowed our laws to be governed by lawyers and judges who take away the responsibility for personal conduct and place it in the hands of the state, and many of our businesses have followed. The impact has been a loss in honor among business interactions that has not been desirable. Yet honor could be restored if only we stepped back into hindsight and dusted off the values that did emerge from dueling and upgraded that sentiment for our modern needs which starts in thinking like a gunfighter.

Rich Hoffman

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Taking a Break to Usher in the Future

I take a lot of pride into being able to produce a lot of work in a 24-hour period. However, presently I have a lot of big projects that I’m working on so for about 60 days I’m going to take a bit of time off this news outlet so that I can contribute that time to a book I’ve been thinking about for several years now called A Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. Even with my very busy schedule I write around 1200 words per day, and to get the book done, I need to give myself that time to put those words into an actual book. The strategy for doing this is obvious from my perspective. When you want to put more chips on the table to sweeten the pot, you have to make sure you have the right hand, and I do. The timing for this project is ideal so its time to make that move.

Don’t worry, I’ll return to this effort after the time indicated. But in the meantime, I need to focus on the themes of the book instead of covering everything all the time. I have always viewed this site more as a talk radio program where freedom of thought can stream over the words without worrying too much about grammar and little structural errors, in the same way that my experience with talk radio taught me. Not to get too hung up on the 8th grade English teacher rules of language and focus more on getting the ideas out of your head and down on paper so that people can share in those sentiments and help build a movement toward a more creative and more free future. The reality of such experiments is that most people think the same things, but what they have to overcome is the alienation that comes from structured politics in isolating people from their biological need for collective sentiment, a parody of our ancient past. The wave of the future of course is the one of the American, independent, wanting to break the rules of conformity which holds us back, and the understanding that we make money in America, we aren’t ruled by it.

I have offered all this work free of charge because I want to help people come to terms with themselves, and to ultimately allow that freedom to be reflected at the voting booth. This new project of mine is for sale, so there are higher expectations for the results. If I want to do my best on it, then I need to give it the time required. Regarding the book and how it gets to market and all those elements, it takes a lot of work and won’t be a fast deal. But nothing happens until you actually write it. Lately as I have come to understand the need for a book like it, my mind has been obsessed over its contents. It took a few years for me to work out the theme and how it would distinguish itself from other business books on strategy. Thankfully, over the last several months I have had all my points sharpened into what has given me a distinct and unusual way to look at the world of business not under previous presidential administrations where some of the concepts I’ll be proposing would be laughed at by previous modes of thinking. But the Trump economy is a very real thing and will have long lasting impacts, and that change in market focus will require a uniquely “American” perspective, which will be the primary theme of the book.

For so many years America has been studying how other people do things and has been concerned about the feelings of other countries to the point of crippling our own economy to appease them. Yet America is the premier market driver of the world and has the strongest economy. So, it should be obvious that they should be studying us, not us them. And we need to understand that what we do is more effective than what others do and to finally be proud of that attribute. There has been an invisible force active and I see it every day when dealing with people no matter where in the world that they are, that highlights the weaknesses of our natures instead of seeking to overcome them, which has a direct impact on overall productivity. I think there is a lot more juice that can be squeezed out of the orange and I am very excited to show others how to do it.

The way the world works is that even if I put these thoughts down for people to read for free, they would not value them. By paying for the work, naturally more value is applied to the subject matter. So for the long term gain, the short term refocus is more than worth it. Ironically all this became very clear to me the other night, while playing poker. There are so many terms that come from poker that are applicable to business and I couldn’t help but think of the early days of pure capitalism as adventurers, pirates and politicians invented what we consider poker today in the saloons of New Orleans, just ahead of westward expansion, which unleased one of the most ambitious periods of world history. The shackles of mankind fell away. Not only was the practice of slavery coming to an end due to the American Constitution and the philosophy of it but also the concept of kings and queens of Europe suddenly not being a concern of average people. Those people could suddenly gain land and wealth if only they had the courage to endure the wild frontier, and it was along those lines that the idea for the gunfighter emerged, not like the samurai of Japan dedicated to protecting the house of their lord, but the gunfighter was out for themselves essentially for the first time in history. Poker was a game that emerged out of this culture and involved playing kings and queens for advantage, not worship.

That is essentially the game of American business. I’ve read many books on the subject and to some degree or another everyone misses the mark. My life is unique in that I have had my foot in lots of different fields and at high levels. Yet I have always stayed very grounded. I recently had a very important meeting with representatives of the Trump administration and an hour later was playing with my grandkids in the yard. In my mind I consider all those things equally important, and it is from that perspective that I have some unique thoughts to offer on the matter of business conduct not just around the world, but from the perspective of the American.

It’s time to stop apologizing, or hiding our thoughts and feelings to appease others, and to get to the concepts of value and how they come about in business, and therefor the conduct of politics on the world stage. Most of the books of this nature that are offered on the local bookstore shelves all in my mind have their value, and I have learned a little bit from all of them. But what is needed is something that unites many fields of thought into a concept that isn’t just a reflection of where we have come from, but where we are going, especially in this new Trump world. To me its very exciting and I think everyone who reads here every day will enjoy the results. So, don’t freak out when you don’t get a daily article from me for a few months. They’ll be back. And once I get this project moving forward, I think you’ll find that the daily articles will be better than ever.

I was originally planning to write this book about ten years from now, however recent events on many different fronts have convinced me that its needed now, (now being loosely affiliated in the publishing world as during the Trump administration years). By the time we arrive at his last day in office in 2024 America will be very much a different place, much better than it was in 2016 when he started office, and American business will be the envy of the world. At that point in time people are going to want a guidebook, so that’s why I’m writing it now. It’s an endeavor that is worth doing, and in these kinds of things, timing is everything.

Rich Hoffman
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The Great Trump Poker Game

In case you haven’t heard, there are even more text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok that show directly that the Clinton campaign was involved in the FBI cover-up of DNC tampering into the 2016 election which Donald Trump won anyway. But now the skin is off the cat and its quite serious. It doesn’t seem that way to the mainstream media outlets because largely they refuse to cover it, but people like James Comey Clapper, Brennan and many, many others involved directly with the Obama White House are in deep trouble, and they deserve to be. It’s getting worse for them week by week and is why they came out against President Trump from day one, because they feared this day, where they no longer controlled the flow of information in government and could be tied to many crimes they knew they had committed to stay in office against the wishes of an official election. Meanwhile the state visit of the Trumps to Buckingham Palace in London was something even the most cynical person against Trump should have been very proud of. For those who have always supported Trump, it just made us prouder of his presidency.

What makes the Trump’s so good at these oversee visits with rulers, kings and queens of the world is that they’ve been there before. Long before Trump became president, he had become the very definition of the rich and famous, so looking comfortable among the most elite of the world is nothing new to him. And Melania is just such a great first lady, always looking and acting like the best that America has to offer. I can’t think of a single Democrat or Republican who could pull off one of these visits with the Queen of England so well, as if it was second nature to Trump. Which of course it is. I mean before the White House he and Melania actually lived in a tower of gold named after him. That lifestyle has certainly put him at ease in events like this one in London and I am personally glad. His approach certainly represents the way I think America should sell itself to others. Not just as an equal partner, but as a respected leader of the world and something others should feel a need to live up to.

But that is also why there was so much opposition against Trump to begin with. For many decades the plan was to diminish America’s role in the world and to cheapen our leadership in every way possible. So when we elected Trump to the Presidency the powers that had been engaged in all this diminished activity were inflamed to protect what they had been destroying. They certainly didn’t want Trump to repair our status around the world, which is precisely what has happened. Do you want to know how you can tell that Trump is unbeatable in 2020? Just look at how he has been playing the game. If his presidency were a poker game, which I’d say it is, he held great cards from the beginning, and now that the River has been revealed he has a 100% chance of winning the hand and the massive pot in the middle. The reason is that the Democrats went all in with what they thought were great cards, even cards they stuffed up their sleeve. But Trump had the aces and during the flop two more aces were revealed along with a King a Queen and a Jack. The King was the Mueller investigation, the Queen was the Strzok and Page FBI text messages, and the Jack was the phony Russian dossier paid for by the Never Trump establishment helped along by the Republican John McCain. And the other two Aces were the tax cuts and the great economic numbers that came from Trump’s policies. The two Aces Trump had all along were his great ability to lead people and generate excitement wherever he went, and his ability to be independent of the stuffy establishment with his own personal wealth.

Trump always had a great hand but once the Mueller Report was finished and the economy was continuing to truck along boldly, there wasn’t much anybody playing the game against Trump could muster. They had nothing and what’s unusual about politics played at this stage is that Trump knew how to play the game all along without all the advisors who whisper in the ears of leaders and usually guide everything in the direction they desire—who are completely controlled by establishment objectives. That made Trump a very unusual political figure, and one who couldn’t be beaten playing the game conventionally. And Democrats don’t have a candidate on the horizon who can match him.

That seemed to be the understanding of the English who finally did this state visit and put forth all the pomp that would be expected by such an occasion. When Trump was first elected, I was in London and saw how the local news had been covering him. I was at Big Ben and saw the massive protests around it trying to steer English politicians away from embracing the new American president. So, no doubt, the Queen waited to see how things went, so no immediate plans for a state visit were entertained. Now, two years later, as all the gas has gone out of the opposition forces, Trump is going to be around for a while, so the English might as well embrace it, so that had even a bit more sauce for this fine meal. Capitalism was making a comeback and any world leaders who didn’t want to be left behind understood that they needed to make friends with this American president, which is why the smartest of us elected him. We were tired of the bowing and apologizing that had been going on and decided to take matters into our own hands, and Trump was a great hire.

Personally, I was very proud of the Trumps at Buckingham Palace and the performance of the whole family on that very important trip. Even while the theater of pomp was in full bloom, the Russians called Trump up to indicate they were withdrawing their support from Venezuela. Mexico was reeling from the proposal of new tariffs, which will cripple their already deficient economy, and China is being bent over backwards from the tariffs that are now in place and is really bringing much needed pain to their economy. Its good to have an American president who understands the Chinese book on strategy, The Art of War. Finally! It’s not hard to beat them at their own game, we just need people in leadership positions who get it, and Trump does. There is just so much to be proud of even the biggest Never Trumpers that there are realizing that their efforts are futile. Trump has all the good cards in this game and he knows how to use them, and the best thing that everyone could do is to fold, before they lose everything. The Queen of England knows the story and she was very gracious in receiving the Trumps. They may not be her cup of tea, literally. But she is a smart woman and she knows how to play the game too, and for her and everyone, that means giving Trump credit for getting this far and still having Aces. Most of the chips on the table are on Trump’s side of it and as an American, that’s what I expect to always see.

Rich Hoffman

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Godzilla: King of the Monsters was a Fun Movie, but had terrible, communist politics from the Wanda Group

We are supposed to function under the assumption that politics and entertainment are separate, and that we shouldn’t talk about politics. Yet, with the last two Legendary Entertainment monster film releases, first Kong: Skull Island and now this 2019 release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters the films are about nothing less than communist propaganda which is to be expected after Legendary was bought up by the Chinese Wanda Group in 2016. In the case of this second Godzilla film, Warner Bros. distributed the film, but the contents were clearly guided by the Wanda Group and that is the way things are now in Hollywood. When it is wondered why the American domestic box office was less excited about this monster movie entry than the 2014 predecessor it is due to the massive amount of subtle collectivist propaganda contained within it. I actually lost count of how many times western culture was body slammed in the new Godzilla film and Eastern cultures propped up. So, it should be expected that the domestic total would be less than the original. I thought the Eastern collectivist rants in Kong were bad, this new Godzilla was much worse.

That’s not to say that Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a bad movie. I enjoyed it immensely. As a conservative who loves movies, I am used to not having representation in Hollywood. I enjoyed the movie for what it was, and there were some great ideas. But the politics of the movie couldn’t be ignored. It was very much the star of the show. The theme of the movie was that Eastern understandings of dragons and monsters are that society is to take their rightful place in a kind of harmony with them. Meanwhile the West always intends to slay them. The message was quite clear, East good, West bad. We are supposed to learn to live in subservience to nature not to master it. And Godzilla was a force of nature that was to be worshipped like a God.

Then again, the villains of the movie were all environmental wackos who wanted to unleash all the monsters of the world to kill off humanity and to restore nature back into balance. The film also made an argument against that type of extremism which was interesting. It reminded me of the current Chinese difficulty of accepting Hong Kong capitalism but still holding on to the premise of communism. This Godzilla film was very much a product of Chinese politics, which is to say, a mess of ideas made under the thumbprint of a very authoritarian government. The ignorance of a blissful coexistence with authoritarian regimes and nature continues to be a problem with China and their movies reflect that problem.

Back in 2014 the Godzilla film then earned around $90 million domestically during its opening weekend. This movie made only $49 million. That is a consistent decline since Kong: Skull Island headed on that downward spiral after the Wanda Group bought up Legendary. Kong was also permeated with this promotion that the hostile indigenous people of Kong’s island were no longer deranged lunatics as they had been portrayed in the past, but now they were more advanced than the science of the Western world who were portrayed as greedy and doomed to failure. Monsters like Kong and Godzilla of course are part of an older than civilization intelligence and they watch over us as if we were all pets being guarded the way we would a hamster in a cage.

With those thoughts aside, some of the best moments for me in the new Godzilla film is the confirmation that more and more, we are accepting that ancient Egypt and the Mesopotamian Valley are not the oldest cultures on earth. Our story tellers are now routinely examining much older possible origins for the human race and that is a good thing, so its not all bad in these movies, so long as you don’t care about any of the people, because they are all pretty stupid. And that held true for the original monster movies from Japan. We didn’t watch those movies for the people, but only for the monsters, and that makes these movies fun. But the politics was very distracting, and I would say that it really hurts the domestic box office in North America.

I’ll have to say that the special effects in these monster movies are so much better than the originals and they are a lot of fun if you don’t take them too seriously. But it was hard for me to turn my brain off and enjoy the monsters because the politics of Godzilla and the communist ways of China were so over-the-top. The story of symbiotic relationships after a half hour was really getting on my nerves and that is exactly the kind of thing that is hurting these films at the box office. Honestly, I want to see the next Godzilla movie about the epic fight with King Kong do well, but the films are performing well under what market predictions would have expected, largely because the films aren’t fun enough due to all the political utterances. This is what happens when we let foreign companies take over American media outlets and start bringing their dumb ideas into our culture. The movies would do great if the monsters just destroyed communist civilization and the world would be much more interested because communism to the minds of all human beings represents tyranny, and a lack of freedom of thought. Not to live in symbiosis with them, which was, and continues to be the subtle message of all these films. The “state” (Godzilla is more powerful than you. Learn to live with that power, not against it).

That is also why the mixed messages of Godzilla seeking to recover from injuries in this most recent movie at an ancient temple at the bottom of the ocean was so compelling, because even as the messages of the movie are submission to nature, Godzilla sought healing and refuge at the temple of an ancient culture that has long since died away, following the Vico Cycle that I’m always talking about. It is actually in human creation that anything happens, even for these monsters, and that is the message that the Wanda Group is continuing to miss, because they aren’t just telling a story, they are trying to propagandize their form of government and using all these cool monsters to do it.

But American audiences can smell a rat, and they weren’t in a hurry to go see a movie about communist propaganda. People like me go see the films to see great monsters battle it out and create mass carnage. But nobody wants to sit through over two hours of a communist lecture about how the world would be so much better if the West would only fall and be eaten by a bunch of 300-foot-tall creatures from the ancient past. Even though such a thing is a fantasy for the East their childish understanding about the ways of the world can’t even be buried behind the visual spectacle of the giant monsters themselves. And ultimately that is the reason Godzilla: King of the Monsters didn’t perform well at the box office. It may do well in China, but American markets see through the veil, and it certainly hurt a film that was otherwise a lot of fun and worth the money.

Rich Hoffman

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