Tag: corruption

Understanding what a “shithole” country is: Trump’s brilliant strategy ahead of a scandal much larger than Watergate

 

Nothing is shocking any more as we learn the true nature of our government officials and witness how the game has been working against us for years.  I told you dear reader not to worry about that meeting with Trump and the Democrats on DACA.  That was never going anywhere, but Trump had to bait them into movement so they’d reveal their positions—and that’s what he did.  Trump performed a brilliant strategy, he eased their minds that there might be a deal on live television where Trump allowed the media to have access to the entire meeting—for the record–then the Democrats proposed an outlandish proposal on DACA which blew the deal out of the water.  During a heated exchange in the Oval Office Trump said things which sounded harsh to the Democrats—and the people who were most entrapped, like Dick Durbin, heard what they wanted to hear from the President in their interpretation which lead to a massive controversy.  Durbin and a few other Senators stated that they heard the president say, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

I doubt that Trump said those exact words.  He denies it.  I think he may have said something in the spirit of that “shithole” comment, but it really doesn’t matter. It was astonishing how quickly and with so much merit that the media reported the issue and how the world reacted.  The brilliance of it is that Trump had already provided complete openness on a previous exchange so the contents of the next meeting could afford to be complete hearsay, baiting the Democrats to add lib to the reporting as they saw fit which gave Trump two things, a message he wanted to get out to the world without him actually having to do it—and to show the Democrats as being completely painted into a corner for which they’d have to lie to get out of.  When I heard it I thought it was pretty funny, and accurate.  Who with any kind of right mind doesn’t agree?  We have been told by these globalists who were all too quick to pounce on Trump for something supposedly said in private—which was exclusively reported by a political enemy in Dick Durbin—that we are all equal in the world, so the foundations for the rebuttal among the mainstream insurgents was already in place.

Not to mention that many Democrats and a lot of Deep State officials are in big trouble over this Fusion problem regarding the Russian dossier and the FBI cover-up to help Hillary Clinton stay in the running for president when she was clearly supposed to be going to jail.  The blood is in the water on both of those explosive stories which as I’ve been saying now for years will make Watergate look like a kid’s toy.  If America went through a crises that shaped a generation with Watergate—with films like All the President’s Men, then this conspiracy by the Democrats will shape centuries of behavior, because what has happened and is about to be revealed is far, far—far worse.  It is obvious to me at this point that Hillary Clinton who worked on that Watergate case as a young woman took what she learned about the levers of power and felt invincible that she was immune to prosecution and over many years built a syndicate of power extending from the media into the highest levels of the American surveillance community—and she was confident that anything she wished, she could implement.  This included winning the presidency or having people killed whom she desired to remove from her way.  In that world, Dick Durbin is just someone trying to run a diversion campaign to keep his global friends safe from one more week of scrutiny, which is coming whether they like it or not.

But for this purpose let’s study the potential or actual “shithole” comment.  The world insists that we live in an egalitarian society, where all the first world countries and the third world countries—as well as all the people in them are functioning with equal importance in the world.  That sounds fine to the lazy loser who smokes pot all day, plays video games as their primary motivation in life, and has no ambitions in life that contribute to anything productive.  But to the person next to them who works hard, saves their money to buy braces for their children and tries to stay informed on the events of the world so to navigate a safe passage through it for their family—the pot smoker is not equal—he is an impediment.  So also goes it on the world stage where a country like America pays most of the bills, contributes all the military resources, and all the help every time a hurricane comes and washes away all their huts that the people live in.  But come time for the Olympics, or in the halls of the United Nations we are supposed to view those people as equal just because they exist, no matter what their decisions were that put them into a third world country status.

To go a few steps further, what is a “shithole” for that matter?  Who wants to spend time in a place where people shit in a hole?  If you look at the reason people are looking to immigrate from some third world place to seek work in America—it’s because where they are coming from doesn’t have much to offer.  The wonderful opportunities that come from the capitalism of America are very appealing to people from African nations and Central American regions where it is considered a real luxury to have a clean glass of water.  Metaphorically speaking, the shithole comment is intended in this spirit, where people would leave one place to move to another so that the opportunities of that second place could be enjoyed.  But why aren’t those opportunities available in the home countries?  The reason, is because they are “shitholes,” places that have a lot of mess, and not much to build a productive life with.  All countries are not equal, otherwise everyone would be successful, living in one place would be just as desirable as living in another.

Trump’s supposed comments didn’t faze me in the least and it surprised me how much the media was making out of the story which was completely based on hearsay.  However, everyone I spoke to over the last few days felt the same way I did and that isn’t because I stayed in some conservative bubble where I only associated with like-minded people.  Even those with a liberal mind look at places like Haiti and think of them as “shitholes.”  Go out to dinner in Hyde Park outside of Cincinnati, or in the Rookwood shopping district in the very liberal east Norwood region and ask people what they think about visiting some of the “shithole” countries mentioned in this Trump debate and they’ll use the exact same language. Third world countries are not equal to first world countries—they could be, but because of decisions they made and how they have managed their resources, the people are not all egalitarian. Just as the pot smoker is not equal to the business executive who works 90 hours a week to be successful.  The two types of people are not equal.  They may have been born that way, but because of the destructive decisions of the pot smoker, one person lives a “shithole” life while the other may live in a half million dollar home for which they deserve due to their efforts.

Trump didn’t have to say it, because people already think it, but the president did get his political enemies to leak those sentiments which did just the same thing—it established a further entrenched justification for an “American First” policy that sent the globalists running for cover hoping to gain a little daylight between themselves and this Hillary Clinton case which threatens to destroy so many of them.  Trump likely baited Durbin into saying more than what was actually stated, but the point was made and a majority of Americans had the issue framed in their minds sorting the confusion of the news from the reality of personal feelings in a productive way.  And it was quite a brilliant strategy.

Rich Hoffman

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Jim Renacci is Running for Brown’s Ohio Senate Seat: A good strategic move that will solidify the Trump agenda

I’m a little disappointed that Jim Renacci is now planning to run against Sharrod Brown’s Senate seat instead of becoming governor of Ohio. Jim is the ideal person to be Ohio’s next governor, but I completely understand the White House’s strategy of wanting Jim to take a much-needed Senate seat to support the Trump agenda. I also understand attacking a very progressive senator in Sharrod Brown wherever possible around the country. The fact that the White House is strategizing to this level is very exciting. They aren’t going to just sit around and be hopeless victims for a change, we finally have a White House with a conservative agenda that is taking the fight to the enemy. And let’s face it, the Democrats are the enemy. Here is how it was reported by USA Today hours before Jim Renacci made the announcement official.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci plans to run for U.S. Senate after President Trump’s political team urged the Republican to do so.

That means Renacci will jump out of the Ohio governor’s race, according to Republicans with knowledge of the decision. An announcement is expected Thursday morning.

White House political staff sat down with Renacci on Wednesday and encouraged him to run for the Senate. They cited Renacci’s support for Trump’s initiatives in Congress and their desire to have another GOP vote in the Senate, a person close to the White House told The Cincinnati Enquirer.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/01/10/u-s-rep-jim-renacci-leave-ohio-governors-race-u-s-senate/1023156001/

Even though it defies conventional strategies, where we should support good people at the local level for positions to reform all government, I see the national and international strategies of the Trump administration to be more important. This current White House is the “change agent” type of shift to a more Adam Smith oriented government specifically built on the great work of economic philosophy, The Wealth of Nations, that our nation has needed for over 200 years. In my view being a Ohio governor is kind of a flunky job, so I haven’t been that excited about Jim Renacci running for it. I like to see people like Jim taking those seats, but what’s more important is that there are enough House seats and Senate seats supporting the Trump agenda because those efforts will change the culture at the local level of government with examples of success. With all the problems we have in the world, Jim is needed where he can help most. It doesn’t do much good to solve Ohio’s problems if Democrats don’t support the deregulation that Trump is instituting, and helping with the complicated problems that must be dealt with over the coming 7 years. I have no doubt that Jim would be great for Ohio as governor. But any flunky can sit in that seat, look at John Kasich. The real battle is in Washington these days and that fight must be won so that local seats can bloom under capitalism at the local level.

Here is Jim’s announcement today that he is now running for the Senate seat of Sharrod Brown:

Dear Friends,

As many of you know, after spending most of my career in the business world, a few years ago I chose to run for Congress because I was deeply concerned over the direction of our country and its lack of accountable leadership in Washington.

Having grown up on the cusp of poverty in western Pennsylvania, and later dedicated myself to raising a family and growing businesses across Ohio, entering the political arena was never part of the path that I envisioned for my life. However, it was sense of duty to restoring effective, conservative leadership to government that drove me into national politics in the first place—and it’s that sense of duty that has guided my approach towards public service ever since.

And as many of you also know, several months ago, after witnessing years of dysfunction in Washington, I announced my intention to leave the House of Representatives to run for Governor Ohio. Yet, while I believe as firmly today as I did then that my decades of experience in the business world would deliver needed stewardship to our state, true leadership requires a willingness to always put country first and answer a call to action in service to the nation.

Earlier this week I was asked to attend a meeting at the White House, at which I was asked to help protect the future of President Trump’s agenda by entering Ohio’s 2018 race for the United States Senate. While my strong distaste for Washington and the political establishment is as fervent as ever, so too is my commitment to advancing the President’s agenda for a stronger and more prosperous America. And for that reason I’ve agreed to answer the call to service and enter the race for United States Senate. The drive to change the status quo is stronger than ever and I couldn’t be more grateful for the support I have received from Amy Murray, who served as the Lieutenant Governor candidate on our ticket, and who will now serve as the statewide Chair of my campaign for the United States Senate.

Over the coming weeks and months ahead I look forward to offering Ohioans a clear alternative to far left, career politician Sherrod Brown and earning the support of voters in every corner our state. I thank you sincerely for your support and please keep an eye out for news coming directly from our Senate campaign, which we are launching today. It will be a true honor to serve as your next United States Senator.

-Jim

Sharrod Brown is a major left winged progressive and it would be wonderful to switch his seat from a Democrat to Republican. It shows a lot of savvy for the Trump administration to recognize that Jim Renacci is the kind of Senator who could protect all the great work that the President is doing so I think this is a great move once the information is considered. Besides, there are other very good people who can run for governor of Ohio, who can do a much better job than John Kasich. Heck, I have a dog that can’t stay out of the cat’s litter box that could do a better job than Kasich—as far as having a conservative in the role of Ohio governor. I happen to know of a very good person who plans to run for governor soon, so the good work in Ohio will get done. But in 2018 the real fight is in Washington, that is the battlefield of our concern and the more progressives that are destroyed in that fight—the better. Sharrod Brown is a big one, and he needs a good fight by someone like Jim to knock him off in the northern part of the state. Needless to say, I support Jim Renacci in his objectives. I’d support Jim in anything he does, but I am very happy about this decision strategically to do the harder thing than the easier one. The Senate seat in this case is far more important than a token governor in the state of Ohio.

Rich Hoffman

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Trust Trump: Taking the fight to the enemy to either convert them, or destroy them

A lot of people seem worried about Donald Trump after his talk with Democrats about DACA and the announcement that the president would attend the Davos event in Switzerland. For those who don’t know much about Davos, that is the Socialist International gathering that decides strategies on how to take over the world implementing various degrees of Marxism wherever possible. Those two things happening after the Michael Wolff book about life inside the Trump White House that has caused so much consternation and destroyed the career of Steve Bannon, has people noticeably concerned—on every side of the political spectrum. But I’m not surprised by any of it. It’s all in Trump’s most famous book, The Art of the Deal. I continue to tell people that they should read Trump’s books—they’d understand a lot more about what’s going on.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/why-trump-rsvpd-to-a-globalist-lovefest

We have a lot of problems to solve over the next few decades and all those problems are made worse by a generation of young people raised in the public-school system to function under socialism. That has always been a topic of great importance at past Davos meetings and knowing that George Soros himself will brag quite spectacularly that the damage is already done—America as it was is just a projection of its former self, the standard belief is that it’s too late for America. Soon it will all fall in on itself and socialism will take over as the mode of operation in the last great capitalist country on earth. Literally every corner of the world is functioning from some dysfunctional plot created by these Davos progressives because they usually entail people with huge amounts of money who essentially view themselves as modern aristocrats of European design—the ruling class by merit of their wealth reshaping the world.

Trump knows that there will be no changes to people’s support of capitalism if the fight does not go to the doorsteps of the enemy. Traditionally Republicans move away and avoid the confrontations with an encroaching leftist which is why the Saul Alinsky methods have worked traditionally. For instance, take Glenn Beck for example—with all the challenges he posed to George Soros he lost his Fox News show and then was systematically harassed everywhere he went in public—Broadway plays, shopping excursions with his family, and a noticeable attack that seemed to have really rattled him in a New York park. His response was to retreat his operations down to Texas where he started The Blaze—which has always struggled to get a foothold—essentially because he ran from liberals and sought to moderate his tone to their liking. Another notable Fox News personality, Bill O’Reilly is now on the outside looking in sending pictures of his dog every other day on Twitter when he used to be a person of great command of social dialogue. He’s been reduced to nothing essentially because he chose to run from liberals instead of engaging them. He still writes best selling books, but that is due to the overflow of his audience from when he was on Fox News. Now without that vehicle of delivery, he is a diminishing character of social shaping.

What makes Trump different from virtually everyone else is that he is battle hardened and confident in his own positions. He is not enamored by glitzy billionaires and their cars and women because he is one of them. He doesn’t have to be nice to them hoping to get campaign donations—he can work with them or around them however he sees fit. So he can go to Davos and sputter on about American first melting away the faces of the Socialist International members and walk away intact. He has no problem fighting anyone anywhere, so he can’t be forced to retreat and that makes him very special. That type of engagement is what it takes to beat the left. We are at a point where conservatism must consider not only winning elections but in selling conservative values to those who don’t presently have them, and the only way to do that is through victory. People need to see those ideas competing against those at Davos and come to the decision that they’d rather follow the America first policy rather than the globalist proposals of Socialist International. Conservatives must be willing to go into the Lion’s Den and to fight liberalism on their own homelands. That is the only way.

Fighting doesn’t always have to be contentious either. If a victory can be achieved with pleasant talks and back slapping—that is a preferred way. Take into account the remarkable efforts at talks that just took place between North and South Korea. Amazingly just a few months after the world was fearing nuclear war with the communists of the North on the Korean Peninsula now Kim Jong-un is ready to send people to the Olympics in South Korea. The North Koreans stated that their weapons were not pointed at their brethren in the South, but at the United States—which is fine. Trump understands the nature of playing good cop and bad cop and if playing the antagonist brings peace talks to the table, that is a good thing. The sanctions from China have worked, there is no power play at work to divide South Korea and the United States—there is only getting the North Koreans to participate in the world of markets without threatening to blow everyone up every five seconds—and Trump has achieved that. Without Trump being president, there would be no talks between the two Koreas, and there certainly wouldn’t be any Olympics participation between Kim Jong-un and his former rivals to the south. By giving the kid an “out” in the West to hate, Trump opened up the possibility of uniting Asia under a common need and peace will be the result. It was quite a masterful strategy.

It is ironic, but I certainly feel it. Not even 10 years ago I could go to dinner with some Hollywood people and have enough common ground with them to carry on a conversation. But liberals especially the hard-global progressives, made their bold moves during the Obama years and have made it impossible to have conservatives and liberals speak to each other. As a matter of fact, being conservative is a dirty word—I never yield to it, but if I’m talking to museum people, scientists or anybody in the teaching profession, I feel I have to explain myself as a conservative. Even traveling in Europe where everyone seems to be a little liberal there is the sentiment that there is something wrong with you if you are an American conservative—and that is just appalling. A lot of that occurred because conservatives never sat down with Democrats and forced them to talk or defend their positions—or ever challenged them except from the safety behind a fence of Party ideology. That has empowered progressives, especially the liberals at Davos. Unchallenged, the billionaires there who control most of the world’s media feel they can impose their beliefs on the rest of us making conservatives feel like an inferior and outnumbered party when the truth is far from it.

With Trump going into their places and talking to them he is taking the GOP into a realm it’s never been before, and he’s mixing ideologies in a productive way that forces the collision to produce a new tomorrow. As divisive as a president as people attribute to him—Trump will go down in history as the only one who was able to bring the world together on the bases of philosophical truth that no text book has yet discovered. To do that you can’t be afraid of the other side—you have to go into their homes and meet them where they eat and sleep, and take your position to the places they are most vulnerable—and force them to look at it. And that is precisely what Trump is doing, and I think it’s wonderful.

Rich Hoffman

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Did you read Juanita Broaddrick’s New Book: There is no choice but to prosecute the Clintons and the Deep State that protected them

I heard a lot of backlash over the first week of 2018 regarding the obvious prosecution of Hillary Clinton and the members of the Deep State that participated in her protection.  The logic they asserted was that she lost the election and was now otherwise harmless.  Trump should move on and not prosecute a former political rival.  And on the surface among stupid people, I can understand their mode of thinking.  But we are not talking about just a political contest where Hillary lost and Trump won.  We are talking about the mechanisms of government that were used to prop up a political party which violated many laws for which the foundations of our entire society rested, and were used against the other party.  Hillary and her Democratic party broke a lot of laws, audaciously and unfortunately for her she lost anyway, and the responsibility for prosecution falls on the Trump administration.  Trump has no choice but to use the law to correct the situation, because the Democrats made it that way.  When crimes are committed punishment must follow otherwise there is no respect for the rule of law.  And the immensity of that statement couldn’t be more obvious than in the publication of one simple book just a few days into the 2018 New Year,  Juanita Broaddrick ‘s new book, You’d Better Put Some Ice On That: How I Survived Being Raped by Bill Clinton.  All the talk by the media was on the Michael Wolff book hoping to take down the White House, but Juanita’s book was ignored even though in it the claims of rape against a former United States president were much more atrocious.

https://www.amazon.com/Youd-Better-Put-Some-That/dp/1979834245/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1515255642&sr=1-1&keywords=You%E2%80%99d+Better+Put+Some+Ice+on+That%3A+How+I+Survived+Being+Raped+by+Bill+Clinton.

I read Juanita’s book right away, and for the second consecutive week in a row I managed to read seven books—which I consider a very productive way to start the New Year.  A lot of what was in You’d Better Put Some Ice On That: How I Survived Being Raped by Bill Clinton I already knew but what was astonishing is that we are living in a time where women from four decades ago are now bringing down celebrities for their sexual exploits.  Kevin Spacey who just a few months ago was at the top of the Hollywood A-listers and after allegations of child molestation came out for which he admitted, he has had his career literally destroyed.  He’ll be lucky if he ever works again.  His top show House of Cards wrote him out of the story after halting production and Ridley Scott literally digitally removed him from the movie All the Money in the World.  He’s far from the only one, but is certainly one that illustrates this new standard, that if at any time in our past something was done wrong, then it is fair game to destroy that person in every way imaginable.  So given that definition, it forces us to look at the crimes of the Clintons and pay justice to their doorsteps.  Based just on Juanita Broaddrick’s allegations in this stunning new book about how Bill Clinton raped her in the late 1970s—bad things need to happen to the former president so that others might think twice about performing such crimes in the future.

Yet the crimes didn’t stop with Juanita—Bill’s behavior moved on for several more decades making many more people their victims—and Hillary Clinton acted as a kind of pimp for power as a mediator for her husband’s activity enabling all this evil to take place unchecked.  Instead of correcting Bill’s crimes they instead used their attorney abilities to manipulate circumstances to suit their hunger for power breaking many more laws over the next three decades openly—and quite audaciously.  I read a book in the mid-1990s called Blood Sport by James Stewart which chronicled the crimes of the Clintons on their road to the White House and I thought at that time that these people were the worst in the world.  I thought they’d never make it to a second term because the evidence was so obvious.  I accepted that some of the work by Stewart might have been politically motivated, but certainly not all of it.  There was no way the Clinton’s would survive.  But they did and went on for a second term.  Then Hillary became a Senator, then through the 90s they created the Clinton Foundation which was a pay to play scam.  Hillary went on to run for president losing to Barack Obama.  She became the Secretary of State actually selling access to her office by foreign contributors.  She had an illegal email server to hide all this activity and when she was caught the FBI actually covered for her as they placed their bets that she’d be the next president of the United States.  They did not apply equal justice under the law; instead they bent the law to suit the Clintons for what they considered the “greater good,” a move toward global initiatives where the United States gradually surrendered more sovereignty to United Nations control.  And in the process the Clinton’s became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

Now we are all told that we are supposed to look the other way and let the Clintons live in peace?  Those same forces salivated over Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury putting the tabloid reporter on every news outlet they could while Juanita was ignored.  The accusers of Roy Moore in Alabama were given first class media exposure and we were told that every women was supposed to be heard no matter how outrageous the claims were, yet here was a woman claiming a former president had raped her and her pain was chronicled in a new book and everyone ignored it.  The game is obvious to everyone now—it’s no longer a conspiracy theory to suggest that the levers of government wanted the Clintons to succeed no matter what laws were broken.  Now all those people have been caught because a changing administration with different political priorities has been elected into power to reveal this banality.  On the surface we have what appeared to be an intricate system of law in order, but in practice it resembled a banana republic.  Astonishingly we saw how far our country had fallen at the hands of these Clinton supporters and now the responsibility falls on Trump’s people to fix it.

And why wouldn’t they—we are in an election year—there aren’t any real Democrats who threaten to take over the House and Senate.  Trump needs to hold his majorities in congress to get anything done over the next several years. The Clintons essentially made the Democratic Party all about them for the last thirty years so as they go down, so does the DNC.  The liberal party of progressives is trying to distance themselves from the Clintons for their own survival, but obviously the machine that supports the Clintons runs deep into every crack of the Democratic Party and into the cubicles of almost every newsroom.  The media of today were built by that Clinton machine and they are lost without their leaders. If the Clintons go down so does the Democratic Party.  That is why they are so desperate for this Russian investigation to produce something, and why they put so much hope into that Wolff book, and why they are utterly despondent that Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be fazed by anything they’ve thrown at him.  The evidence is there to put the Clintons away in jail for a long time and it has to happen.  They gave the Republicans no choice in the matter—which is how Trump had to have it.  Now early in 2018 we can see the evidence mounting and understand that it’s inevitable.  The desperation of many years of crimes now coming back to that Clinton family finally is in the air.  All Republicans need to do is pull the trigger and Democrats will be done for many years.  So do it.  And if you have any doubts as to whether it should be done or not—then read Juanita’s book.  You think you know the story until you read the pain she managed to put down on paper for all to see—if only people would have the courage to look.

Rich Hoffman

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Why Trump is Very Mentally Stable: The poor definitions for leadership that robs so many people of success, logic, and victory

Thinking even further about the assumptions made in the anti-Trump Michael Wolff book about life in the new White House the definitions for winning, and victory are not the same from each side. Liberals clearly do not understand what “winning” means because they are not a performance based political party. Trump’s methods of negotiating are foreign to them and the means of achieving wins is as well—which is very apparent by the kinds of things that the people around Trump said about him to the fly-on-the-wall writer. Steven Bannon in particular obviously was looking at the president and thinking, “I can do this, and I should be.” But that is a common mistake made by second-hander people. What they don’t understand is that the master negotiator, and the person who often wins most of their engagements are not the types of people who spike the football in people’s faces. They are the ones who build up those around them and teach other people how to win as the residual effects migrate into the circumstances of the leader whoever they may be—in this case Donald Trump.

Trump said a lot when he said that he makes winning look easy. Winning is a skill as much as it’s a strategic result. Most people don’t know how to win, but there is no question that there are people who always find themselves knocking on the door to victory time and time again while others consider it a mystery and an opportunity given only by luck. Anyone who has read Trump’s books, especially books by Trump University like Trump 101: The Way to Success, understand that there is a lot more going on with Trump than just powering his way into beating his opponents at whatever objective he seeks to accomplish. From day one in the Trump White House—even before, this is how the new president went about his work—learning what all sides on a matter wanted, then learning how to use that knowledge to achieve his objective.

Winning is not about out powering your opponent, or even check-mating them into submission. Often when it comes to negotiations you want the other party to feel good about what they are doing—even if its losing. Winning and crushing your opponent into oblivion is not synonymous with success. Sometimes it is—but often not. Winning is about achieving your objectives while letting everyone else feel that they were a part of the process—and that is why Trump ran, and still does to a large extent, a loose White House. People need to be comfortable, so they can reveal their needs to you, so that you can use that information to help build in their minds the parameters of victory.

From its inception in the modern sense—as in from the Dark Ages to the present, occupational responsibilities in Western cultures tend to be focused on specializations. In oriental cultures it is expected that an individual will become somewhat curious about many fields, but in the West we are projected to learn one thing and to stick to that relying on the next specialization to do their job correctly and if they don’t we throw up our arms and blame that person for failing. People who constantly win however are usually good at many things in life, and are curious about many others. What they have in common is that they tend to not be overly specialized, but have developed within themselves many skills for which to use in improvisational context to solve problems and build support for their viewpoints among other people.

What we have going on regarding Donald Trump in the White House is a fear from the majority in Washington D.C. that function from a specialized trade that a multitalented businessman will forever raise the bar of expectations for them. For those who voted for Donald Trump, that is exactly what we wanted, but for those who believe in a specialized skill conducted through institutional protections, Donald Trump is a nightmare. For Washington D.C. to work the way they learned it does requires that the formula of specialization be maintained. But for Trump to do his thing he needs to be part psychologist, part inspirational speaker, part numbers cruncher, part fashion model, part strategist and to be able to recognize in everyone he speaks with what their specializations are, so he can turn them to his advantage. The way to do this is to let people have a free rein and study their behavior so that it is easy to ascertain their characteristic tendencies. Saying that Donald Trump is stupid, or insane—or anything resembling an unstable personality is more of a wish than a statement. For the institutional addicts who need the structure of specialization to be maintained Trump is “unstable” because their definition of stability is to keep personalities within the specialization of their institutional expectations. Yet Trump is results driven which does not adhere to a structure—because often the structure stands in the way of the needed results—otherwise there wouldn’t be a need to fix anything—which is what the opposition against Trump is really after.

To those who have mastered the art of just about everything they have no need for advice—at least in the traditional sense. Trump has shown that he does listen to people, but not in the way that people hope—where their specializations are respected. Trump listens to what people say then he uses his experience to make gut judgment calls based on his unique leadership skills. This is something that most people in the world do not have the ability to do—including most major presidents throughout history. It’s not that Trump did anything wrong, it’s just that our current society doesn’t understand the nature of leadership very well—and why only a very few people per capita seem inclined to proper leadership. Leadership isn’t about following the rules of an established institution, it’s about getting good results even when the institutions let us down with poor resolutions. Solving those problems isn’t about doing so within the context of institutional boundaries, it’s about discovering the correct solution and then bringing about the conditions to implement those solutions. To be free to make decisions on your own is to be able to more quickly ascertain the needed objectives. If the problem is in the people who are advising, to protect their specialized roles within the institution, then speaking with them about their opinions won’t solve the problem, and this is why Trump has achieved so much in such a short period of time. He is not hindered by the limits of other people who don’t strive so far as he does.

In the traditional sense of presidential roles within the nation of America—it is expected that the Executive Branch be treated like the Monarchy in England—as kind of a figurehead that acts as the face of the nation while the specialized experts do their thing for whatever purpose is identified on their institutional charters. But most Americans during this last election saw that the process just wasn’t working, so we voted against the institutions themselves and put a CEO in charge instead of just another political hack. To a certain extent it is understood that people will have problems with that approach because they don’t have the definitions in their lives which explain why Trump is successful. They only know that Trump does not respect the institutional parameters for which they exist. Stupidity in this regard is a matter of perspective—and as history will chronicle, it is the institutionalists who will be shown as lacking. Trump is a change, a demand in real leadership—not token sentiments meant to protect the Skull and Bones Society, or the charters of the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security. Nor the secret societies, hate groups, or ideologies of long dead philosophers. Trump was hired to solve problems and that is what he’s doing, and history will respect what he did even if it does piss everyone off. The more he does piss off, the better our nation will be in the end.

Rich Hoffman

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Stephen Miller’s Take down of Jake Tapper: Fighting back in the right way

To see the wonderful interview by Stephen Miller on Jake Tapper’s CNN show; here it is.  Enjoy, and share it with a friend.

Rich Hoffman

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

A Review of ‘Fire and Fury’: The profound sadness that emerges at the end of the controversial book

My first thought about the new Michael Wolff book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is sadness.  My second thought is that it is good for the book publishing business and that I think it’s wonderful that people are reading it.  At least they are reading something.  I went down to my Barnes and Noble store at precisely 9 am when they opened to buy it.  They had two copies for promotion and were able to release them once the publisher moved up the publication date, due to Trump’s cease and desist order, so it was one of the more dramatic books to hit the shelves in a long time—and that is a good thing.  But after going through it my opinion of Trump only solidified.  It was obvious to me that Wolff took a calculated risk that will make him forever wealthy—but will always place him in the category of a tabloid writer.  He threw away his reputation to exploit this one unique chance in history and that is what lead me to feel the sadness—not just for him, but the people who said the things about Trump that they did.  It was a grim reminder to me of how small people most of the time think—and that is a real tragedy that I hope diminishes with each year that Trump is in office.

Of course Melania cried when her husband won the presidency.  She’s a young woman still who could walk the streets of New York with her son and go to a store or restaurant and enjoy some anonymity.  With Trump’s successful election she lost all that in a moment for the rest of her life and there is no question that it was a real punch in the gut for her.  What shocked me about Wolff’s book, as a writer, was his complete disregard for those types of little moments and what they really mean.  He simply took a Never Trump vantage point of all the events of the book and interviewed people who were ankle biters.  Ankle biters are those second-hand people, who usually constitute most of our society, who need a leader to show them how to do something once, then they try to associate themselves with the original idea through group think and try to claim jump in some respect for shared ownership.  You can know them by the type of people who stand around the coffee machine in any given morning talking about nothing until the boss walks through.  The boss might say a thing or two about current events for which the ankle biters will laugh and agree with.  Then the moment the boss leaves those people retreat into small-minded topics talking about the boss and how stupid he or she may be—and how they could do a better job if they were in charge.

Trump dealt with ankle biters all his life from his various businesses.  However, given his later celebrity status and the role his children played at the top of his company, Trump had some insulation from them.  In public life the ankle biters are much worse because there is a feeling of entitlement that often comes with their jobs and when Trump took office those second-hand people where literally everywhere.  It took Trump about five months of working in the White House to start to get his stride and figure out who was doing what.  He learned enough to figure out that Comey was a leaker on the intelligence side, but the people closest to him were harder to detect. Trump sincerely tried to show everyone in Washington D.C. that he had no plans of being a tyrant so he went to dinner with Mitt Romney, and put people on his staff that he hoped would bridge the gap between the Never Trumpers and the rest of the GOP—conventional choices that would make passing a legislative agenda a higher probability.  Those people, and Steve Bannon turned out to be one of them, assumed that Trump’s attempt to do this meant that the new president had no idea how to go about his job.  In their minds they fantasized that they could do a better job, so they were not loyal, and they found the ear of another second-hander in Wolff and their gossipy recollections produced the contents of this book.

Trump being the eternal optimist figured he could bounce though anything, so he didn’t mind taking the gamble, and when it began to be clear by May of 2017 that he’d need to get rid of quite of few people from the White House staff and replace them with new hires—he did it. Trump also obviously hoped to convert the Obama holdovers around the country who had been working on the previous administration.  I found myself sympathizing with Trump quite a lot in Wolff’s book because I’ve been in similar situations—where you take over management of other people’s problems and you try to reform them with your much better personal philosophy—but they don’t get it and you eventually have to let them go.  Trump at his core is a really nice guy.  I’ve met him a few times and he truly is an eternal optimist and he and I have that in common.  There are lots of places where we are different, but on that topic, I feel a real connection to this president.  He is always hopeful and that is a unique trait, one that is making America great again.  On the day that this book was released, the Dow exploded up over 25,000 for the first time ever which is astonishing.  That is purely because of Trump, because the investors out there understand what this Trump presidency means.  They are leaders in their fields and not the ankle biter types—so the economy reflects better than any other indicator how good this president is for the world.  That’s where I felt a real sadness for Michael Wolff in this book, and Steve Bannon ironically.  Their vantage point of reporting their opinions—as was the case of most of the quotes, was from that of a defeated state of mind.  Wolff didn’t surprise me because there are a lot of people like him out there.  But Steve Bannon did.

As Wolff stated the essential theme of his book was that everyone concluded Trump was essentially a man child—that he made everything about him all the time.  I’ve heard this one before also, and that is why as I closed the book I felt a profound sadness for a lot of people in it.  We start out lives as children with endless imagination and optimism.  We learn all we can in a short time—usually before the age of 5 and it is a real miracle of the human mind that we do so much in such a limited time.  But most of us—like more than 99.99999%–don’t make it past our teens and into our twenties with the gift of childhood intact.  Slowly over many years we fall into adult habits of steady bed times, we learn what works and what doesn’t so we regulate ourselves to reality and thus find ourselves shaped by the weakest links of our society and their lack of ambition.  Trump as a president still has that energy of a child who wants to build a tent in the living room—only he has spent most of his adult life building actual skyscrapers.  To do something like that requires endless optimism—like children have. The great motivating pastor from New York City, Norman Vincent Peale in his book The Power of Positive Thinking attributed a genius status to those adults who carry that childlike quality of thinking throughout their lives.  It is why Trump can see and do things that most people can’t and it is his best quality.  However, Wolff presents it as a detriment and that is unfortunately what is wrong with most people psychologically these days.  People see in Trump a quality they have long-lost and they feel resentment toward him reminding them of what it was.  That hatred is not just politically ideological, it is visceral.  It’s a mode of self-preservation that is not related to the performance of Trump—but the state of mind for which the readers and interviews of the book were conducted.

That visceral platform is what shines through in the end.  Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House I thought only strengthened the Trump administration because it clearly places on the table the type of people who have been against him.  Trump can now crack down on all his enemies—which happen to be the primary villains of American ideas—and he can say he tried.  This book is the testimony of that effort.  When it comes to people like Steve Bannon there are always people like him who fly too close to the sun and have their wings melt away.  Most humans don’t handle power very well—the Lord of the Rings books can attest to that—power can corrupt the weak minds—and often does.  But for those who do carry power with the mind of young people who just want to do and learn great things in life—power doesn’t corrupt—and Trump is at a place in his life where a hamburger in bed with three televisions on is his idea of a great life.  He’s accomplished all the things most people associate with success and he is now a president who is in the White House incorruptible.  What I learned from Fire and Fury is that Trump is far better than even I thought he was—but the people around him were not nearly equipped as such.  They were mere mortals who have not yet touched the face of eternity—which most children do possess until they learn to stop listening.  And that realization comes with it a profound sadness.

If you’d like to read the book but can’t get your hands on a copy, here it is in full PDF.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bt6BSc-kxJeTUpMEoJkkbEgEZaSmPjA3/view

Rich Hoffman

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The Pussies of the World: Trump is the only reason Kim Jong-un is talking to South Korea

It is astonishing how many modern people are just pussies (people who invite themselves to get fu**ed by bullies) and support political parties to hide their nature behind collective authority. It is as if they assumed that just because there are millions of pussies functioning in the world today, that somehow that changes the nature of what they are. When a bully of any kind presents themselves either on the world stage as North Korea has, just a bunch of punk kids vandalizing neighborhoods—you must stand up to them or else you invite more of the tyrannical behavior. Appeasement never works with a bully, it just gives you more of the behavior—which is how North Korea got so out of control in the first place—the world tried to appease their aggression—and they created a monster. Thankfully, with Trump in the White House, the United States isn’t in that appeasement business any longer and that has driven North Korea to actually sit down with South Korea for the first time in a long time. Trump’s tough talk has worked and so have the sanctions leaving North Korea with little choice.

I’ve said it many times, North Korea does not have the money or resources to conduct a nuclear war. It is amazing that many smart, college educated journalists took literally the empty words of Kim Jong-un when he said on Near Year’s Day that he had a nuclear button on his desk and that he would use it against America. They accepted at face value that it was the truth. Yet when Trump answered that he had a bigger button, and that his worked, the literal faces of the left-winged media in America melted off as if nuclear proliferation were going to happen. No, it was just Trump calling a bluff and playing the bad cop in a complicated international strategy to let Kim Jong-un seek the path of less resistance to peace on the Korean peninsula. It’s a starting point in the peace process and one that is more than justifiable for a stupid kid not yet 30 who thinks the way to communist prosperity is through intimidation. Every rocket he has fired to try to scare the world into giving him more money has only robbed food from his people and there are defectors fleeing across the South Korean border in increasing numbers, so the kid doesn’t have a choice but to come to terms with South Korea. But to save face he had to threaten Trump—which of course Trump playing the bad cop had to answer appropriately. But there aren’t any nuclear weapons—heck, there are hardly rockets to launch for testing. The whole thing on behalf of North Korea has been a ruse and it is shameful that the American media bought into the notion so naively.

Sadly, this incident shows how far our nation has fallen. Not all mind you, but most Americans today are pussies not able to stand up to bullies, or even to recognize them when they present themselves. I would go so far to say that this is a by-product of the feminization of our free market society—where masculinity has been chastised and feminine approaches to problems propped up falsely to provide the illusion that “girl power” is a sustainable strategy in dealing with bullies in the future. It takes more than a sign and a pussy hat at a protest to deal with people like Kim Jong-un. You can’t make movies about 110 pound girls beating the crap out of 240 pound men and expect that to transfer over into reality. No matter how great the fighting techniques of a small woman—in a real fight there wouldn’t be a contest and that is what reality has to say on the matter. The entire premise of “girl power” and the feminization of the human race is a fantasy from the imagination of political radicals who essentially want to stop humanity from advancing—yielding to the efforts of mother nature. This whole thing is a 50-year-phase that will die out and return to the good ol’ days where men were men, and women were women, and both enjoyed their roles in creating families. But currently, it is having an impact on our foreign policy. Trump represents the traditional masculinity that half the nation expects. The other half have lost their minds and want men to sit and cry when losers like Kim Jong-un threaten us. That is after all the typical female reaction, to sit around crying and talking about the problem when the real solution is to kick the shit out of the little fat punk.

Sorry to be so politically incorrect, but any criticism of Trump’s handling of North Korea is completely unwarranted. Kim Jong-un has become accustomed to dealing with a feminized world where even the men sit around cowering in fear because they have been submitted by the “girl power” movement. Talking to some ruthless dictator is like a single mom trying to enforce the rule of law on an unruly male kid—it usually doesn’t work. In some cases, it does, but just look at a typical black neighborhood in America where there are no fathers in the home and the women have children by two, three or four fathers. Those kids become thugs—most of the time—and violence around the neighborhood escalate. If only there were a stable father figure in the lives of the children things would turn out much differently. Kim Jong-un is that figure of a global communist dictator who has been coddled by too many world leaders functioning from a feminized social trend that is destined for failure.

Feminists can say what they want about fair treatment and equality—but if you really dig into their subconscious they still expect men to “figure them out.” As they bitch and complain about their worthless men not taking out the trash, or watching too much football and complain to their girl friends how much better the world would be if women ran the world—they still really want to be chained to a bed blindfolded as a force of masculine power takes over her body. And there’s nothing wrong with that—it’s a purely biological function. But when losers like fat boy Kim Jong-un who can only get laid because he runs a country think that the world will sit around and let him push everyone around because girls are running everything—he’s got another thing coming. Can you imagine that fat kid trying to pick up chicks at an American shopping mall—he’s be laughed at until he couldn’t show himself in public. But as a communist dictator, girls have to do what he says—so he thinks that’s the way it is elsewhere in the world. By launching rockets he tries to use the same fear tactics that work in North Korea to essentially pick up chicks. Feminists have given him that illusion—until Trump became that father figure for the world to fear once again. Now everyone must behave, or they’ll get a spanking. Trump gave Kim Jong-un a spanking which he deserved. And now the North Korean dictator has to come to the table with South Korea or he’s going to bed without his dinner. For a fat kid like the North Korean dictator who likes his food—sanctions are cramping his lifestyle—which is all he really cared about to begin with.

So to the pussies out there, fear not. Men are taking care of the problem—at least the ones who are still left in the world.

Rich Hoffman

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Immersive VR Education’s Apollo 11: A technological achievement that brings a moon landing to your livingroom

I treated myself to some catching up by New Year’s Eve to welcome 2018 with as clean a slate as possible.  I finished reading seven books over the last two weeks, some of them quite difficult reads—and I did it by not turning on the Playstation 4 except for once.  As everyone had parties celebrating the New Year I took a trip to the moon utilizing Immersive’s VR Education LTD fine triumph—their Apollo 11 VR experience.  I’ve talked about this before and have been excited about it—but until recently hadn’t had time to get into it.  The project was a big one, and was mostly funded with private Kick Starter investment that was credited at the end.  It was an educational documentary virtual reality experience that put you in the left seat of the Apollo 11 launch vehicle out of Kennedy Space center and into the command module during the approach to the moon.  Then landing on the moon you are in the left seat of the Lander standing next to Neil Armstrong.  Once there you get to stand on the moon and have a look at the Sea of Tranquility like it’s never been shown in a museum exhibit that I’ve seen.  It was simply amazing.  You also get to witness the return to earth and the perspective of the astronauts as they reentered the atmosphere awaiting splashdown.

I think where the 3D environments of the Playstation VR system really shine is within cockpits, such as cars and aircraft.  I have been amazed by the graphic displays of games like Battlefront VR and Driveclub where every little toggle switch is shown just as it would in a vehicle with such photorealistic display that you feel you can reach out and touch them.  So the same method works brilliantly in the Apollo 11 experience.  Graphics that might otherwise look terrible in 2D are easily forgivable in 3D so the ride up the elevator to the top of the rocket at the Kennedy Space Center was something I thought was also very impressive.  I’ve been there several times and know what things look like and even though a lot of details were missing, the overall feel of the area was certainly captured. Getting the feel of the height and the relationship to the surrounding terrain was what mattered and once inside the Apollo capsule awaiting launch that is where the VR part of the experience really shined.

As the launch occurred you could see out the windows as the rocket blasted through the various cloud layers and watch the earth fall behind.  Out the front window you could also see the sky go from a blue to black as stars gradually came into view—just as it would.  You could look at all the dancing lights on the control panel and look over at the other two astronauts as they answered alarms shaking in their seats from the momentum.  The radio chatter was ever-present and was synced up to the mouths of the pilots.  Occasionally I’d find myself staring at their faces and they’d look you in the eye as if they knew you were there pulling you into the experience.  It was all very thrilling and unexpectedly brilliant.

http://immersivevreducation.com/

Questions I’ve always had like where is the moon in relation to their perspective on the actual trip and how did it look were easily confirmed by me just by looking out the windows like a kid in the car first arriving at Disney World.  I was free to look out any window I could to see the relative positioning of the vessel as it plunged through space toward the moon.  Once on the moon I enjoyed much more than I would have expected at looking up into the earth as it just floated there in the dark of space. I’ve seen many picture of the earth from the moon in good resolution, but the presentation in VR was so much better—because it gave depth to the craters and the mountains surrounding the landing site that pictures just couldn’t capture in any way. I’ve also heard all the recordings of this epic landing seemingly hundreds of times, but being there in a VR world was a much better way to experience them.  First the speech by Kennedy at the beginning sounded like I had heard it for the first time.  It was presented in a very unusual way that sounded fresh to me.  Then the well-known speech of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon for the first time was particularly gripping as I was already out of the vessel watching him do it and looking all around me for perspective.  Shockingly I heard the voice of Nixon as he called from the Oval Office to talk about the experience.  As he spoke I was looking at the earth trying to see if Washington D.C. was pointed at us as he spoke considering the distance in between.  It was very easy to get caught up in the whole thing.  What this VR experience did particularly well was give depth and scale to the world we were exploring, which I think really opens up the way we can educate ourselves in the future.

Education is essentially the strength of this new VR technology.  The ability to go to places from the comfort of your living room and see things on a grand scale and interact with objects of history are the keys to our future.  What Immersive Education is doing I think is one of the most powerful education tools I’ve seen yet ever presented.  I often advocate that there is nothing that teaches better than a good book, because reading requires work and personal investment so that the information tends to stay with you longer as a participant.  Passively watching a television documentary doesn’t have the same effect.  It can still be good, but it’s not as effective.  However, with the kind of work Immersive Education is doing, you have no choice but to participate, because your mind actually thinks you are in those environments.  Even poorly rendered graphics in VR become sellable realities because the way our eyes participate in reality lends strength to the technology.  I can see the future of learning foreign languages within the countries of origin, and interaction with environments that would otherwise be exotic to be the strengths of this exciting new technology.  There is real potential here that is extremely new and creates so many options.

I would have never thought that I’d be able to spend a New Year’s Eve going to the moon then still having time to usher in the New Year in the traditional way.  But that is the world we are living in now.  Technology brings us options that curious minds can indulge in, and I consider that a real privilege.  For as many times as I’ve heard about man’s first trip to the moon, and heard the various speeches, Immersive Education managed to make it a fresh experience which was thrilling for any science buff.  But for the general public it is a real gift that can be easily downloaded into any living room that has a Playstation VR device.  I would go so far to say that I’d buy a Playstation VR just to take this one trip to the moon; it is that good, and revolutionary.  And what thrills me more is that it is just a sign of things yet to come.

Rich Hoffman

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The White House Should Get Behind, ‘The 15:17 to Paris’: What makes Americans so quick to take down terrorists–(the ultimate authority figures)

Just a hint to the Trump administration, after all the good things that happened in 2017, if I were them, I’d get behind this new Clint Eastwood film, The 15:17 to Paris. It’s coming out at the start of February, but I’m sure there will be advanced screenings at the end of January and after all the negative activity regarding the anti-Trump Spielberg movie with Tom Hanks about The Post, putting the seal of administration approval on this film will really launch 2018 in a positive pro-American light. After watching the preview and knowing Eastwood directed films nearly shot-by-shot, I knew enough about this story of three American young people on a train from Amsterdam to Paris that stopped a terrorist attack, to get excited about it. If a normal director handled the material, it might come off as a kind of television movie, but with Eastwood, there is a whole different layer that the master filmmaker taps into with great depth behind what on the surface seems to be very simple. And in this specific instance it answers the question—why do Americans have a tendency to stop terrorists outside of institutional reaction to these matters? Why not three French guys, or three English lads—or Germans? Why don’t we ever hear of those types of stories, why is it always Americans? Well, I know the answer and honestly this blog is about that topic almost daily. But I wanted to read the book of the movie to make sure that Eastwood’s source material contained that type of sentiment, like American Sniper did—and guess what—it does. Even better, it ends on a high note instead of the sad ending of American Sniper. I predict that this movie, The 15:17 to Paris will become the hottest film out of the gate in 2018 and will become many people’s favorite movie. I read the book over the last couple of days and it answered my questions very well and can report that this movie is the perfect companion in pop culture to the Trump presidency. It couldn’t have been slated for release at a better time—after the first full year of the Trump inauguration.

In a lot of ways the three heroes who stopped the terrorist Ayoub El-Khazzani (the ultimate authority figure who literally uses fear to invoke compliance)–Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, and Spencer Stone where social outcasts who had really hard times with authority figures. Their public-school experiences were miserable. Their teachers wanted to put them on attention deficit medicine, which Spencer’s mom became very angry about—to the extent that she pulled her son out of school and put him into a private church oriented school. Alek went with him and the two boys had daily problems with authority finding themselves always in the principal’s office. After a few years of that miserable failure the parents put the two kids back into a public school but one that they thought was better in the suburbs of Sacramento, California. There they met Anthony who taught the two misfits how to dress and think like other cool kids—which worked to a minimum effect and ended up bonding the three boys for life. After school Spencer and Alek bounced around. Spencer wanted to join the special forces but got bumped because essentially, he couldn’t learn to sew. He continued to get bumped down the military ladder as his classic problem with authority figures held him back tremendously. But as life does often, things stabilized and to try to outpace those resentments in their young lives the three boys managed to meet in Europe for a grand vacation while they still could, which is how they found themselves on The 15:17 to Paris.

The book arrived at my house on a nice day during a Christmas vacation as the snow was falling slowly outside. I had been reading several books that day, but I was really excited to get my hands on this one for a specific purpose. One thing that Eastwood knows that the rest of Hollywood has forgotten is what Americans are. In the case of these boys when they were in high school, they were not the popular kids. They did not take orders well. They were very rebellious, but in the essence of their core personalities, they were good kids. They just needed a chance to do something and they were always on the outlook for what that might be. So when it happened on a train to Paris, they were ready to pounce. I would say that the goal of every American is to be one of these types of people, but in our education system and then in our introductions to the outside world of employment we are always looking to put saddles on those wild horses breaking them into normalcy. But deep down inside we love the wild stallions of youth and we cheer that they might make it into adulthood free and happy—even as most of us yield to the pressure and tap out.

America hates authority figures even though all of our institutions are filled with them. We learn very early in public school to find our “peer group” and for kids like these, they never really do because they can’t yield authority to others who control those groups. What the institutions of American life fail to understand, including Hollywood these days, is that even those in the peer groups yearn to be as free as people like Spencer and Alek were. Of course the anxiety that young kids like Spencer, Alek and Anthony felt at not fitting into any particular peer group was enormous, what reality later tells is that all the world fantasizes about being one of those rogues in life who does what they want whenever they want to. I’ve personally never met a person whom I’ve spoken to one on one who doesn’t have at least a little of this individualistic fantasy in them—even in Europe and Asia. But in America we have a system that allows people like Spencer, Alek, and Anthony to have a good shot at success if they can figure out how to outsmart the system, and ironically some of the best and brightest of our culture are these types of people. But it’s not easy and in most cases people do die trying.

So here were three unbroken American stallions unsaddled roaming through the French countryside looking to make their mark in the world any way possible when this dumbass terrorist put the opportunity right in their lap. The fact that they were in their 20s and unbroken says a lot about the nature of American life—because even though it is hard to function in the world as a rugged individualist who hates authority—in America you can do it while still making a living and getting though the education process. Because of that, they were there when the world needed them. There are others like them, and they are a rare breed, but they are specifically an American creation. In other nations they would have been saddled in life one way or another and broken before they were 18 years of age—likely earlier.

Once I was able to get through the book I was able to see how Eastwood would shoot this movie. He understands this unsaddled sentiment, you can see it most in his movies like White Hunter Black Heart, Heartbreak Ridge, even going all the way back to the first western he directed, High Plains Drifter. Eastwood has never been a fan of authority figures, so it was obvious that his decision to put these young guys into the movie playing themelves was because he wanted to get that raw untamed element that is central to their characters on the screen for all to see. He understands the power of this kind of story and it looks to me like he held nothing back. As a person who is just mildly obsessed with this very specific American condition, that is why I am so excited about this project. And as a strategist of a good reputation this is a film that is very Trumpian. It would be wise for those who have the president’s ear….hint, hint……to have a nice screening at the White House with the stars and Eastwood there for a little dinner to launch this film. It is going to break box office records and will be big for Warner Bros—so why not help it strong out of the gate? Let the young men get their picture next to Trump—and more for their benefit, Melania. I think it represents all the reasons Trump was elected in the first place—and Eastwood understands that. Look for this one to be BIG in 2018.

Rich Hoffman

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