The Communist Cult of Valerie Jarrett: China’s move to unite the world under a “progressive” flag

I suppose I hadn’t thought much of Valerie Jarrett until this recent controversy from Roseanne Barr where the television sit com star got into a lot of trouble for calling the former Obama advisor some names. I didn’t think the names were that bad considering how the other side treats conservatives—that’s the kind of world we are living in these days, so I didn’t think much of it until I saw how strangely swift the condemnation against Barr was from every corner of the media industry. It was almost strangely coordinated. Bob Iger from Disney was most stunning making a decision to cancel Barr’s number one hit show off ABC television in just a few hours coming to Jarrett’s defense in an alarming fashion. Then I heard how Jarrett referred to the whole incident as a “teaching moment,” during an interview and something was very fishy about the whole thing.

I didn’t pay much attention to Jarrett during the Obama years because her boss was much worst, and an obvious socialist sympathizer who was trying to spread Marxism anywhere and everywhere he could. Like Jarrett’s mysterious defense from so many media sectors for something that isn’t nearly as bad as other things that have been said about our current president by some of the same people condemning Roseanne Barr presently. But here we were a few years out of the Obama administration and Jarrett seems to turn up in the news quite often. As I was thinking this a friend of mine pointed me to Jarrett’s past and sure enough she has deep ties into the communist movement of Iran. A lot of people forget that the motivation of the terrorism behind the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t any real attempt to advance the Muslim religion or even a fairness between the races, it’s the spread of Marxism across the Middle East and down into Africa. Several family members of Valarie Jarrett were big participants into the spread of the communist movement especially her grandfather and her father-in-law Vernon Jarrett. After doing a little research into that claim this is what I came up with. More details are available at the links:

http://www.worldtribune.com/flashback-who-is-valerie-jarrett-top-obama-aide-is-daughter-daughter-in-law-of-communists/

According to the FBI documents, Vernon Jarrett’s job was to “write propaganda for a Communist Party front group in Chicago that would ‘disseminate the Communist Party line among … the middle class.”

“Faithful to her roots, [Valerie Jarrett] still has connections to many Communist and extremist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Judicial Watch. “Jarrett and her family also had strong ties to Frank Marshall Davis, a big Obama mentor and Communist Party member with an extensive FBI file.”

Judicial Watch also reported that it obtained public records in 2014 that show Valerie Jarrett “was a key player in the effort to cover up that Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress about the Fast and Furious, a disastrous experiment in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed guns from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/03/all_in_the_family_valerie_jarrett_and_the_chicago_communists.html

Now of course just because a bunch of family members are flaming communists from Iran that doesn’t mean Valarie followed in their footsteps. However, just a little research into her activities during her entire adult life point in that direction and all that gives a lot of insight into why the Obama administration was trying to make deals with Iran to give them money to support their terrorist activity even turning their eyes of justice away from the illegal drug trade in South America by Hezbollah an Iranian backed Shi’s terrorist organization that was getting its financing off illegally sold drugs destined for North America. I mean can we agree that it’s not a conspiracy to assume at this point that an American president was assisting in the poisoning of Americans by a terrorist organization intent to spread Marxism by destroying the minds of the youth with poison so that they couldn’t fight back? The evidence all points in that direction. And Valarie Jarrett was there to hold Obama’s hand on all these things, and it was a little creepy to have her almost lecture us on television after Roseanne Barr’s comments that all that had happened was a “teaching moment.”

Additionally, I have noticed, especially lately as I was watching the box office numbers of the new Star Wars film and compared them to what went on with The Black Panther in China, and the current Marvel movie Infinity War that the communists were still very hostile toward American business brands such as the GAP, Marriott, even American Express. Those companies are changing policy to bow to the rulers of China so that they can do business there assuming that the region was the next superpower. That’s not true of course, China has been a propped-up country on the world stage given power only because too many in the United States were willing to regulate American businesses to the point that they’d move to China—it was always part of the plan for which President Trump is now reversing, thankfully. The American left obviously has an intense desire to see China succeed on the world stage as an economic superpower because it fulfils their fantasy of a communist world. I thought recently it was very odd how the new Star Wars movies were being slammed by the American press for underperforming in China which is a major sore spot for Bob Iger at Disney because he has worked hard to cultivate a relationship with the communist party in that country for distribution opportunities. It doesn’t make much sense taken at face value because we’re only talking about an extra $50 to a $100 million in movie ticket sales per picture in the Chinese market. The domestic take is much more powerful. I mean its nice if you can get it, but China and the United States are totally different places ideologically, so Hollywood should never expect to mesh the two together seamlessly, unless of course they wish to destroy the American market and make them more like the Chinese, which apparently is the objective.

So what does all this have to do with Valarie Jarrett, well, China and Iran are part of the modern movement of spreading communism. They have all changed the name of the attempt to “progressivism” meaning they intend to “progress” beyond the economic philosophy of capitalism and the effort is quite audacious. I was stunned recently while visiting the very good Children’s Museum of Indianapolis to find there an entire exhibit dedicated to China. Other countries weren’t represented, there wasn’t an exhibit for Russia, or Brazil, just China. As I worked my way through it they were promoting China as the new ruling country in the world and emphasizing that if anybody wanted to be anything in this world, they needed to get used to China being the ruling country. This was simply astonishing, people needed to understand their history. While I love China, I really like Chinese food and I love some of their literature, philosophy, and history—China does not have it together. In World War II if not for America China would now be part of Japan because without us China would have been conquered into a Japanese territory easily. Oddly FDR seemed to use the American defense of China not to stop the Japanese, but to allow the communists coming out of the North to gain in power while the regime in power and friendly to the West weakened. Students of history know that FDR in America had a soft spot for socialism and communism as he had good relations with Hitler and Stalin prior to the start of World War II and looks to have been friendly in policy toward Mao Zedong’s communist takeover of China immediately after the war concluded. America had saved China from the Japanese and delivered it straight into the hands of the communists, which then spread in influence into Korea and Vietnam dragging America into two more wars. Only recently under Donald Trump is the one in Korea looking to be finally won. North Korea finally looks to be turning toward capitalism which China isn’t happy about, and neither is Russia. But long story short, China is on the decline, not the rise and the exhibit at Indianapolis designed to instruct school children that China will be their new overlords in the world already looks dated because of its lack of relevancy. Without question educators a few years ago thought that to be the case, but under the Trump White House China’s fortunes are turning. But don’t tell Hollywood that, or the rest of the American left, they are in denial about this change in tune and are fighting with everything they have to keep the train of the world on the tracks of Marxism, or else.

And that looks to be why Bob Iger was so quick to come to Valarie Jarrett’s defense while Donald Trump gets called much worse on Disney’s networks daily. It’s not racism and fairness that the political leftists want, they simply use that as a guilt trick to sustain their real objective, in spreading Marxist ideas of fairness and equality to prep the minds of our youth for the new name of communism–progressivism. But none of it is about “fairness,” it’s about obedience and following the dictates of the communist overlords—getting used to calling someone else master. That master the political left hopes and dreams of is their political class where they will serve as society’s educated elite much the way China rules over their people and many American businesses to this very day. China should consider themselves lucky to have American businesses in their country, and American films like Solo: A Star Wars Story. But they have been artificially propped up by the global progressives to believe that “China” would be the next superpower and they would achieve that because Marxism would become the global standard once America collapsed on itself. The footprints were already in the sand, you could see that at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis and at just about any school board meeting in America. China was going to be the new standard we’d all have to live up to, and we had better start behaving ourselves, even if we tell an off-color joke that the “party” doesn’t like. It would be a teaching moment for everyone else to watch the life of the person telling the joke to be destroyed. That is what Valarie Jarrett meant as Bob Iger came to her defense so quickly. It’s not about fairness, it’s about learning to obey to the communist overlords. That is the role Iran plays on the world stage. China now plays the good cop, while Iran is the bad cop, but they all want the same thing—the spread of Marxism that destroys America and brings it to the knees of China, which will then unify the world from Africa to South America with one big happy government-run at Beijing instead of New York and London.

After looking at the situation more carefully, it looks like Roseanne was going too easy on Jarrett. We’re not talking about the thoughts and feelings of an individual, we are talking about a grand fight between ideologies that are in conflict to rule the world. I wouldn’t say that the Trump supporters want to rule the world in the way that the political left does. But a failure to make a clear decision about which side we are all on yields to the side that has made that decision. And the political left wants old school communism as it is being run in China, and they want it everywhere in the world. They have been teaching it to our kids in public education, they have taken over all of America’s media industries and they want to take over the minds of every last American individual. All Bob Iger needed was a way to explain to the stockholders why he had to dump a top-rated television show on ABC. He had to support it because it was making money for Disney’s shareholders—but ideologically Roseanne was dangerous because it was feeding Trump’s election base in a way that was perilous to the cause of global progressivism, (the new name for communism). And Valarie Jarrett is still very much at the center of all hope that the progressivism movement has of a global conquest.

Rich Hoffman

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‘The Black Panther’ Was Racist, Toward White People: Roseanne’s cancellation to fullfil Disney’s political objectives

https://twitter.com/overmanwarrior/status/1001959361470754816

So what was wrong with Roseanne Barr saying about the Obama administration activist Valerie Jarrett if “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj?” For that Tweet ABC owned by the Disney Company cancelled the top-rated show. I’m not seeing the problem with the hard-hitting comedian saying such a thing, Valerie Jarrett isn’t a black woman or anything—she’s fair game in the public realm, she was born after all in Shiraz, Iran. Many other comedians, even those employed by Disney in some way or another have said much worse about President Trump and white men in general. So why isn’t there allowed a banter back and forth—because in the context of things, that’s all Roseanne was doing.

I watched The Black Panther the other day not knowing much about the character or the movie other than it did very good business and I was shocked at some of the lines by the characters which were obvious put downs toward the white actors. Was that supposed to be funny? What if the white characters said something like, “you black people are all alike,” or something to that effect, how would that have gone over? Likely there would have been riots in the streets and massive protests at the box office. Even though I am pulling for Disney to do well with the new Solo Star Wars movie I couldn’t help but notice the political activism in the film, the very deliberate white guy kissing a black girl, or Han Solo arguing with an Imperial officer that they were attacking the home world of their enemy and that they were in the wrong. Does every movie these days have to have some kind of social commentary?

https://twitter.com/overmanwarrior/status/1001620657233387520

Can’t people just tell a story? Largely the film is good fun and avoids some of the political pitfalls that have contaminated the other three Star Wars films from the Disney era, but when you do see it the radicalism is quite jarring. At the end of the Black Panther the heroes go to the United Nations and agree to share their awesome technology with the rest of the world. That’s fine for a fantasy story, but there is nothing politically factual about the story of the Kingdom of Wakanda having all this technical power. And the United Nations is not a governing body of any influence, so much of the premise of The Black Panther is purely political, in that they are trying to create a philosophic reality by tossing out the facts of the matter.

I enjoyed The Black Panther mostly, and I root for Disney to do well most of the time. I like Star Wars, I enjoy their theme parks, I’m even looking forward to the new Incredibles 2 coming up. But they are just entertainment options at best these days, and nothing to take too seriously, until they make themselves political. And Disney is certainly guilty of that. I understand they are a company with globalist aims because that’s where the new markets are, but in doing so they are spitting in the eye of Walt Disney himself who was a very stout American patriot. If Disney were alive today he’d be a Trump supporter and likely a leader in the Tea Party movement. Bob Iger on the other hand thinks serious of being a Democratic nominee for President of the United States—is not the same type of person. Iger is pushing liberal politics into the Disney brand, and that has worked for a while so long as they didn’t cross the line. But over the last four or five years the line is being crossed constantly and the only way they’ve managed to get away with it is because there are no other media platforms out there who can really compete with them.

Obviously, the Disney Company was looking for the first opportunity to get Roseanne’s show off the air. While it was making a lot of money for the company the profits from Infinity War alone nearly erase the losses from cancelling Roseanne’s show, and for Bob Iger, feeding the political platform of the other side was something he couldn’t let happen on his watch. The message couldn’t be clearer, it is alright if liberals make fun of conservatives even crossing the lines of racism calling Trump a monkey and all types of terrible names. But if someone calls a liberal a name—especially if she’s female, then all hell will break loose. That is if people care about the Hell that is breaking loose. Honestly for me, I can take it or leave it. I watched one episode of the new Roseanne Barr show and couldn’t handle it. It was just too slow and stuck for me. It certainly wasn’t a conservative show as it was being sold. I couldn’t relate to any of the characters, so I didn’t watch another episode. They were all too negative to me, so it’s no skin off my back for the show to be cancelled. I’ll cheer for Star Wars to do well, and I like the efforts of the Marvel movies, but more and more Disney is losing people like me to their radicalism—and in the long-term, they are making a mistake because its people like me who will support them in the future. Not Valarie Jarrett, who is a well-known progressive radical who invited some rebuke from someone with enough guts to do it—because that’s the nature of the world we are living in today.

What is really going on with Disney and liberals in general with this whole two-faced duality they have going on is that as liberals they want to believe that there is a Wakanda out there, which is an obvious rip off from Ayn Rand’s classic novel Atlas Shrugged. But also as liberals, they have no way of knowing how to get there. They just say that it exists and expect audiences to accept that reality without understanding the foundation of the philosophy. They associate liberalism with skin color and advanced technology and everyone is just supposed to go along with it until someone like Roseanne comes along and makes them look at the world of Donald Trump that they are so desperate to ignore.

https://twitter.com/overmanwarrior/status/1001597600548687879

Back to the Han Solo reference from Solo: A Star Wars Story, Donald Trump is probably the least war hungry President America has ever had. By the end of his term many of the wars around the world will be coming to an end and that should make Disney and the liberals behind the company very happy. Donald Trump literally is like Han Solo in the new film asking why America is in all these foreign wars. He wants out. But liberals can’t handle that reality, so they choose to ignore it, and when someone like Roseanne gives them an excuse to turn away from the truth, they are more than willing to do it—even if it cuts off their own noses to spite their face.

I wouldn’t have called Valarie Jarrett an ape from the Muslim brotherhood because I have a lot more descriptive terminology to use because I have an extensive vocabulary to draw from, but many people I know of all shapes sizes, sexes and races think the same way about Valerie Jarrett, they just don’t have the intellectual means to express it beyond frustrated terminology, which is why Roseanne had a number one show. Disney can turn their eyes away from that reality, but they can’t outrun the truth. While they are doing well as a company presently, that won’t last forever. There are only so many Infinity War movies out there that they can make as they are quickly turning off conservatives in America with their radicalism. I’ve been one of their biggest fans over the years and they are turning me off, especially after watching The Black Panther. The political activism couldn’t be more obvious. And not having Roseanne on the air won’t have any impact on how people feel. It just means that they go deeper into hiding making them a phantom menace toward future political endeavors. Democrats can’t win by ignoring the facts—they have to come to terms with reality and that is obviously something they aren’t willing to do.

The situation is so bad that I had to send Ron Howard a Tweet today reminding him to keep his liberal mouth shut so that he didn’t further hurt Solo: A Star Wars Story in a very critical week where the film can make some money. I’m not interested in helping Ron Howard, Kathy Kennedy or Bob Iger and their political ideologies, I’m trying to help Star Wars. The American domestic market is still half of all box office totals and it’s not smart to only try to appeal to half the American nation. Like it or not, half the nation voted for Donald Trump and his approval ratings show it. Wasn’t it Michael Jordon who famously said, “Republicans buy tennis shoes too.” The old Star Wars movies didn’t have roots in current politics, so they were films that spoke to higher concepts. They were obviously anti-Nazi, but that was about it. The big problem with liberals is that they are participating this activism in an attempt to erase their own history with radicalism, because it was liberals who were the racists supporting slavery, and it was liberals who took over the German political machine and invented the Nazi. It wasn’t conservatives. So they hope that by overreacting to every little thing, like Roseanne Barr Tweeting about Valarie Jarrett in the same way that other comedians from the political left do toward Republicans like Trump—that they can erase history. But guess what, they can’t. Most of America knows the truth and pandering to demographic groups like Disney has been doing cannot justify liberalism as it is. Because what it always was have been the source of racism and terror. Just like the secret city of Wakanda in The Black Panther Disney can’t just say something is good without showing how, what, why, when and where, and when they attempt to history is always there with a grim reminder that it’s not on their side. Valerie Jarrett is not one of the good people, she’s at best a villain—she will never be a Disney princess. And cancelling Roseanne won’t erase that factual reality.

Rich Hoffman

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Solo: A Star Wars Story Box office discussion–what it means to everyone–and nobody cares about China

Box office numbers are often a good thermometer into what the world is thinking, and I pay attention to them closely, and sadly the new Star Wars movie Solo: A Star Wars Story is falling well short of the kind of numbers its going to need to make. I found it interesting to see how many news outlets were already writing stories on Friday about how dismal the box office numbers were for the new Star Wars movie, like The Hollywood Reporter for instance. Their story was that Solo was bombing big time in China. Well, since when was China the market decider for films, they are communists, more aligned with the villains in these stories? Solo: A Star Wars Story is all about freedom and I’m sure the “state” wasn’t all that happy with the film, and that whether or not people saw the film or even advertised it so that their billion people had access to it is probably a big factor. Asians especially in China are not big on the Star Wars films, but that’s OK, they haven’t been a big part of the box office numbers all this time—who really needs them now? Solo isn’t any different, yet The Hollywood Reporter was almost as happy as a kid on Christmas Day to learn that China was not supporting the new Star Wars picture. There’s a lot going on with this one which justifies a good long discussion.  (CLICK HERE FOR MY REVIEW OF THE FILM)

First of all, I don’t think the poor box office numbers so far reflect that Solo: A Star Wars Story is a bad movie. If you took the box office numbers of Infinity War and Deadpool 2 and released Solo: A Star Wars Story on a light release month, such as April I think this Star Wars movie would be on track easily to achieve a billion dollars at the box office, but with some competition out there, it would appear there is only so much money on the table to divide up between all the movies, and that’s not a bad thing for theater owners. I often say that Hollywood has let down all the personal investments that theater owners have to shoulder with less than stout productions that drive their concessions. That certainly isn’t the problem currently, there are a lot of movies released right now, and coming up as the summer unfolds which should help theater owners sell lots of popcorn. Hollywood owes them for always being available to display the Hollywood product to the public. That same public has a lot to do on Memorial Day weekend, that’s when the pools open in the states and people typically have things to do outside. In America Memorial Day weekend was pretty nice except for some flash flooding in the eastern part of the country. Everywhere else it was sunny and hot—and people spent time outside. May 25th may have been a traditional release date for Star Wars, but it’s no longer a great weekend for opening a movie because it’s the gateway to summer and people are often doing a lot of things that involve going outside.

Additionally, there are problems for Star Wars to overcome, the entertainment media is trying to do with Lucasfilm and Disney what the general media is trying to do with President Trump, and that is torpedo anything that they do that’s good, because everyone else is struggling to compete. Disney is going to make a lot of money this summer between the Marvel films and Pixar’s Incredibles 2—many in the entertainment business are very happy to see a Star Wars movie get bad press, because it’s a shot at Disney as a media company they are competing with. It’s like how the rest of the NFL teams around the country enjoy it when the New England Patriots lose a game, or Tom Brady throws an occasional interception. The trade media rushes out to talk about how Tom Brady is too old and is losing it. But the very next week Brady will throw for 400 yards and have a quarterback rating over 100 and the Patriots will win by 24 points over whoever they are playing. Disney and its tent pole of Star Wars is a big presence in the marketplace and the second handers love to see trouble happening in the Star Wars universe.

But then there is the very legitimate problem that I have talked about before and that is the mistake that Kathleen Kennedy and her story group at Lucasfilm has made in throwing out the extended universe of Star Wars and pushing very progressive themes in these new Star Wars movies cramming PC culture down the throats of the fans who clearly don’t want those elements in these movies. To me the Lucasfilm efforts with Solo: A Star Wars Story went a long way to fixing those problems with the fan base where some still want to enjoy new instalments, while others want to boycott the films in hopes that Disney will fire Kathleen Kennedy for messing with the elements that made Star Wars great to begin with. Nobody cared that Princess Leia was a bit of a feminist in the original A New Hope. George Lucas tried to make people happy by putting a black guy in the stories with the character of Lando. But in general, the heroes were white people, especially men and Kennedy has been very active to change that. But while doing so she literally destroyed two of the most popular female characters that fans loved, Jaina Solo, Han’s very strong daughter, and the wife of Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade. Fans who read the books went on a lot of journeys with those characters over two decades and suddenly fans were told that those people didn’t exist in Star Wars anymore, and that has caused a lot of consternation. When The Last Jedi failed to reveal who the parents of Rey were—many people were hoping that she was actually Jaina which would at least explain why she is flying around in Han Solo’s precious Millennium Falcon—a lot of fans stepped away from Star Wars at that point and now this second film in only a year has hit theaters and people are ambivalent about it. The Last Jedi was a very progressive movie that really split the fanbase, from not revealing the parentage of Rey, to the killing of Luke and the obvious progressive messages of feminism and sacrifice where everyone was blowing themselves up instead of taking the fight to the enemy, it’s that which made it so the fans stepped away from Solo: A Star Wars Story.

I have been enjoying the new Star Wars stuff the best I could. I have not been a fan of what Lucasfilm has done. I was a big fan of the Star Wars EU and I think Lucasfilm could have easily have just picked up these stories where the books left off and would have done something really special. However, I think the value of the movies and all the merchandise that is coming from the franchise does far more good than bad. I think Lucasfilm and Disney made a major mistake with Star Wars and that they are trying to remedy that now. For me Solo: A Star Wars Story was a huge step in that direction—of making things right with the fans. But its obvious that the fans are going to make Disney and ultimately Lucasfilm earn back that respect which is where things are today. There was a boycott of this latest Han Solo movie and it had an impact on the final ticket sales. As the word is getting out, because Solo: A Star Wars Story is pretty good—I think its one of the best and is certainly on par with the original films somewhere in quality of story telling between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. But the film is more fun like A New Hope was. I like the prequel films but can admit that Solo: A Star Wars Story is better than those films and it is certainly better than The Force Awakens. But these new young actors are making a name for themselves, the young Alden Ehrenreich is earning his respect from the fans little by little. Many fans have been sitting on the fence with Solo: A Star Wars Story because they weren’t sure how to feel about a new actor taking over for the legendary Harrison Ford. If this latest Star Wars film does anything it shows fans that its possible to have a younger actor playing an old favorite, and because of that I think Solo: A Star Wars Story will have good legs into the future of the franchise, and people will come back to the films and forgive Lucasfilm and Disney for their mistakes with the first three films made since the acquisition in 2012.

Alden Ehrenreich is a smart young actor with a good head on his shoulders, and he likes playing Han Solo in Star Wars. He’s good for the franchise and understands that taking less money for the opportunity to do more films like this makes good business sense because it could place him in Hollywood as the next big demand actor—like Harrison Ford was. With all that under consideration I think Disney certainly put the cards down on the table with this one holding nothing back promotionally. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they spent $500 million on the movie and are worried at this point of making that money back, which I think they will. But they spent the money expecting a billion in return and that could cool them on launching the other projects that are in the pipeline. Hopefully they let Lucasfilm go forward with the budgets on those new films, the Kenobi film, the Boba Fett film, the Rian series, and of course at least two more movies about the young Han Solo—as well as a whole bunch of other films not yet released. It’s not too late to make these films into the kind of successes that were experienced with Marvel—but getting the fan base back on board is the key.

To win back the audience, and this is just my advice, do with it whatever you want Lucasfilm, you have to get Mara Jade and Jaina Solo into Episode Nine as its being directed now with J.J. Abrams. Everyone gets what they want if that happens, Kennedy gets her strong female leads, Luke has a reason for being so distressed in The Last Jedi, and Rey gets a name and a reason for having the Falcon with Chewie as her co-pilot. A new trilogy featuring Jaina could even take things further 30 years after Episode Nine—the possibilities are endless. It took Marvel ten films to build up the kind of anticipation that was seen in Infinity War, Star Wars could do something very similar, but they’ll have to earn back the fans, and Solo: A Star Wars Story was a big first step. Hopefully Disney doesn’t get cold feet after they study these box office results and consider whether fans will support two Star Wars movies in the same year. They will, and they will support three or four a year if Disney will make them and be very profitable with $200 million budgets. But it will take more movies like Solo: A Star Wars Story to earn back that fan trust, not more movies like The Last Jedi or even The Force Awakens. The nostalgia wore off and now reality is there for Star Wars films, going forward, people want to see new ground that pays respect to what they know from the original EU—and fans don’t want to be preached to with gay characters, or black characters, or women. They just want to see a story set in a galaxy far, far away that will endure for centuries—and not fall out of favor with whatever new political movements come in the next few decades. Star Wars fans want their traditions, and they want the long view—and its their money that Disney wants, so it’s up to the giant entertainment company to give it to them.

I think I’ve listened to the new Han Solo theme from the John Powell soundtrack back to back for a solid four days now and I love it, it’s so full of optimism. It reminds me of how it was when Christopher Nolan’s Dark Night series started back in 2008, with a movie that many people didn’t think was needed because at that point Batman had been done so many times. The Nolan trilogy built up a nice audience and earned a reputation by the fans that they trusted and supported. Those films each went on to make over a billion dollars each. Iron Man the first Avenger film also came out that year with a fantastic performance by Robert Downey Jr. The film only grossed around $500 million globally much like I think this new Han Solo movie will make, but it became the glue that built up those next nine Marvel films. Disney purchased Marvel shortly after that film’s release and the rest is now history, and has been very successful. It has allowed Disney to make obscure films like The Black Panther, which I thought was pretty good—which would have never been made unless there was a need for the ever-expanding universe. Star Wars could do better, but the fan base will have to be built and listening to that soundtrack of Solo: A Star Wars Story that new Han Solo theme could serve as a nice light in the darkness for all the Disney executives timid about the next stage of the adventure. The best thing to do would be to support the effort and not panic, there is a lot of good that came out of Solo, and it hints at how things truly could be now that it looks like Lucasfilm is starting to figure out how to make these Star Wars movies without the guidance of George Lucas. The John Williams contribution is absolutely brilliant and I hope that everyone involved can use it to launch something really special, because the opportunity is certainly there.

Rich Hoffman
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‘Solo’: Making ‘Star Wars’ Great Again

A lot of my readers are millionaires and are people used to having net assets due to long time investment portfolios, so they are rather perplexed why I am making so much over this new Han Solo movie titled Solo: A Star Wars Story. I think it’s one of the most important things going on today in the world, not just because I love Star Wars, and the character of Han Solo—but because culturally it says a lot about our society in general. I think there are many things that are very important about this upcoming movie that are epic not just in the film itself but in the reaction to it that so many sectors of society have invested. With that said, the film is for children. It’s intended to inspire kids from the ages of 5 to 12 and make it so that their families can go see the movie with them. It’s a family film that expands generations, adults who loved these movies as kids can now take their own kids to see a movie that they can all relate to, and that is the miracle of Star Wars in its purest form. As of this writing I haven’t yet seen the picture, but I know what I’m getting in to. I am delighted that Kathy Kennedy and Bob Iger at Disney greenlit this movie and that all those San Francisco progressives that work at Lucasfilm went against their modern political instincts to make a movie about a white guy who is a strong alpha male who shoots guns, has no reverence for the law and likes to fly starships insanely fast. Han Solo is everything that progressive society is trying to eliminate culturally, so I think it says a lot that Lucasfilm and Disney decided to make this particular movie because it’s what the fans have always wanted—its what the story of Star Wars demands and they went with it, and it took a lot of guts. The fact that these filmmakers made this movie about this kind of character goes a long way to fixing problems I had with both Lucasfilm and Disney—and I admire them for extending that branch. I could easily think that based on what I know about the movie that they made it just for me. But that would be a bridge too far—they made it for kids—a new generation of fans that they want to appeal to the Star Wars brand, and they fully intend to make a lot of money while they do it—which is the name of the game. Personally, I am delighted about this movie in every way possible from the money it will make to the product it delivers.

But I warned about this a long time ago on a radio show I did for 1600 WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan when after The Force Awakens came out where I was concerned that Bob Iger and Kathy Kennedy were going to divide the Star Wars fan base by eliminating the extended universe, the many books and comics that had been made to continue the storyline over the last thirty years. Then there was the incident where Kathy Kennedy said she didn’t care about the male fans of the Star Wars fan base to a New York Times reporter, which didn’t go over well. Additionally, she allowed The Last Jedi to be a very progressive film that was bordering on Cloud Atlas in sentiment which was only saved by the score of John Williams and the great visual effects of Industrial Light and Magic. The fans were mad at Kathy Kennedy after The Last Jedi because she had betrayed them and now they are on a mission to destroy her at Lucasfilm, wanting to boycott this new Star Wars film, Solo: A Star Wars Story to force Disney to fire her.

I am rather shocked at the vitriol over this film—the activists are really the same type of people who make up the Antifa protestors in politics, they have hit the Rotten Tomatoes site trying very hard to put up bad scores to hurt the film financially at the box office. Right before the release of the film the “want to see it” score was hovering at around 40% which is really low for any film, especially a Star Wars movie. That says there are enough activists out there mad that their ideas for Star Wars have been destroyed and they are throwing a fit about it. They think if they hurt the Solo film financially that it will force Disney to listen and they will get the kind of movies they want. But of course, most of these people are idiots and they have no idea how business actually works. They forget that these movies are not made to make them happy intellectually or to provide them with the voids for religion that they are seeking. In some cases Star Wars does all those things, but only on an infantile level. Most of the complaints I have been hearing about not just for The Last Jedi but Solo: A Star Wars Story is that its fans want new material to carry them deeper into the mythology. However, that’s not what Disney needs, they require a new fan base to take this whole franchise into the future and if they piss off the long-time fans, they rationalize that they are willing to do that because they need to reach the children. If the adults don’t come along for the ride, then so be it.

You can tell that most of these protestors are of the millennial age because they say all those dumb things they learned in public schools—that money, or making money is some kind of evil enterprise and that Disney should be making these movies out of the kindness of their hearts—sacrificing profit for the greater good. No, that’s not how things work in the real-world people, Star Wars movies are and have always been about making money—lots of money. They sell ideas and images in exchange for profit which they then use to expand the reach of those things. If people want to see an art film, as many critics think they do, then go to Sundance and watch all those art movies. But Star Wars is a huge commercial enterprise designed to drive many other commercial enterprises and that’s part of the fun of it. Let me explain this to everyone, even though Disney leans to the political left these days, they are not evil. They are a company designed to make money and from what I have witnessed with them, they listen to what fans want and they try to give it to them—because they want to make money. They aren’t trying to make a bunch of 30-year-olds who still live with their parents happy because their mothers over coddled them all their lives and the people they talk to at GameStop agree with them. Money and the making of it is not “evil,” as they taught you in public school. Let’s get that straight right now.

As to the industry news, many of the critics out there and newspapers they work for are all into the kind of fake news that has led a campaign against the Donald Trump presidency. In many ways if Solo: A Star Wars Story breaks the $300 million mark globally over this Memorial Day weekend in spite of all the efforts the protestors have attempted to stop it, it will truly be a moment where the Star Wars franchise will be made great again, just as Donald Trump has made it his effort to “Make America Great Again.” On election night in 2016 people elected a person that all the industry analysts projected would lose terribly to Hillary Clinton. The labor unions in the entertainment industry have their hands in everything which is why movies these days have moved in such a progressive direction. If the fans are mad at Kathy Kennedy for screwing around politically with Star Wars, the labor unions are mad at her as an executive at Lucasfilm who fired the original two directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. There is a very interesting article in Indiewire linked below that goes into more detail, but the gist is this, labor unions don’t like to see people getting fired, and when Ron Howard was brought in to fix Solo, so that it would be a profitable film, and not some comic art piece, the battle lines were drawn and Kennedy couldn’t make anybody happy. But I give her credit for putting the effort into making a profitable film that would be loved for years instead of a film critics enjoy.

http://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/solo-a-star-wars-story-phil-lord-chris-miller-original-film-1201967484/

With hindsight being 20/20 it would have been smart for Kathy Kennedy to keep the fans to her back. I think the power of her position and her feminist nature got Star Wars off to a rough start through the first three films under her control, The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi. But I’ll give her credit, she put her finger to the wind and made adjustments and this movie Solo: A Star Wars Story is the result, and I think its going to be great. Like I said, I feel like she made the movie just for me. But I know better than that—she made it for lots of kids around the world that want to see and live through this character a very exciting life. And I think it will be so good that it will overcome all the protests and negative press that is highly politically motivated. I remember what it was like to see movies like this back in the late 70s and early 80s. There is a good reason that nobody makes movies like this anymore—because there are parasitic fan bases that want movies to mean more to them then they really do—and they are always disappointed. It’s hard for filmmakers to sit down in a concept meeting and quiet all that noise and to make a movie like Solo: A Star Wars Story—a fun movie that doesn’t deal with changing character arcs and relish in a bunch of progressive themes such as whether or not Lando is pansexual. This movie and all movies are about the joys of capitalism and the fun that can be found in a good character that takes everyone for a nice ride for a couple of hours—and that’s what Solo is. And that excitement sells toys, amusement park experiences, and an expansion into more mythology such as books, comics and even more movies. When people ask why anybody needed a movie about Han Solo the answer is because at the heart of all Star Wars movies is Han Solo. He’s the only character who ever really had his head on straight and if Lucasfilm wanted in their wildest fantasies to make Star Wars great again—they needed to turn to Han Solo—in his pure, overly optimistic form, even if it meant pissing off everyone so that it could win everyone’s hearts all over again much to their eventual benefit.

Rich Hoffman
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Why I’m So Excited for Han Solo’s Movie: A brief history of cinema and the progressive attempts to control the messaging of American values


If you study any ancient society—or any society at all for that matter, scientists and historians always find a way to rationalize their successes or failures on a few key elements. They will proclaim a civilization may have been successful because of their proximity to water, or key trade routes. Or fertile soil, access to natural resources, abundance of food—those types of things. The truly great societies are often judged by the artists they produced and the literature they performed. In a lot of ways entire societies are judged based on the written works produced by their cultures, such as in England with William Shakespeare, or Ireland’s James Joyce. But we don’t really have enough history yet to properly understand how our modern age of great art and entertainment will recoil through the ages, because most of it is so new. American movies for instance are underplayed in their importance to how they shape world culture—because they essentially have only been around for a century, so the effects on people as a whole are still being determined. But I have a pretty good idea how those results will be determined as judged by time and it is for that reason that I am so excited when a new film comes out that I know will be a game changer in the way that art shapes society. That is why I am so excited for this new Solo: A Star Wars Story as it is being produced by Disney. Something very different is going on with this one and if it turns out the way I’m thinking, there will be shock waves percolating through the industry as a whole that will favor the political trajectory of the modern Donald Trump age—and that’s a really good thing.  To get a good idea of what I’m talking about read this fine movie review about Solo: A Star Wars Story in Forbes.  I don’t think I could have written a better one.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2018/05/18/review-solo-a-star-wars-story/#48a5365b7dd8

Over that same century that movies came to be as a form of new art and entertainment liberals under the umbrella of progressivism made their move to spread tyrannical socialism to every corner of the world. Movies didn’t always reflect this socialism because the cultures they were speaking to had emerged before the progressive move to take over the world essentially. Westerns specifically were a group of movies that told stories of Americans yearning for freedom at any cost and the values that could be inflicted on large tracts of unpopulated land with the barrel of a gun pointed at a bad guy, and on the backs of that concept, Hollywood was essentially born. It was westerns that propelled the film industry into being such an important artistic endeavor that became the envy of the world. Not only had America created this interesting artistic machine known as Hollywood that mass-produced art and entertainment in such an excessive capitalist fashion. But it could do so in seemingly infinite quantities quickly spreading the culture of a free North America to every part of the world that had electricity.

Progressives saw this power and sought to take it over starting before World War II but really beginning to succeed in the late 1960s. But some of the best films of that time still came from filmmakers who made movies in the traditional way of Hollywood before the liberal invasion and it was those films that carried Hollywood into the modern age financially. Star Wars is a great example of the type of America that used to show up in the movies of its culture—B movies made quickly and cheaply for Saturday Morning Matinee entertainment. George Lucas was often derided by his peers in the film industry for wanting to make such old-fashioned throwbacks to the old westerns and science fiction films of his own youth—yet the Hollywood liberals built and industry around the commercial success of those movies and the history of all that is well-known.

Fast forward to my excitement in 2012 when I found out that there were going to be more Star Wars movies because Disney had bought the franchise from George Lucas for $4 billion dollars and I had high hopes. I also had my concerns which I expressed to everyone who would listen, including the key people at Lucasfilm. I did not like The Force Awakens not just because they had killed the character of Han Solo, but because they had cheapened that very popular fan favorite into a much weaker progressive character as was reflective of the attempt by Hollywood to follow a more progressive political agenda for which they sought to take over the entertainment industry in the first place. But I kept my mind open because I knew they were planning to make a Han Solo movie in the future so I stayed on the ship awaiting the results of that to figure out if I would continue to support the artistic efforts of Star Wars in the future—or relegate that it had died with the Disney acquisition. Thankfully I am quite happy to say, the financial viability of Star Wars as a business has won out and the filmmakers at Lucasfilm and Disney have come to terms with what works and what doesn’t in that particular universe of storytelling—which is essentially the values of the traditional westerns in America, and they have unleashed all that into this new Han Solo movie.

That’s important because Solo: A Star Wars Story is not about social justice, or the mysticism of religions—its not about altruism and all that garbage—its much more of an Ayn Rand type of story which is what I have always said was the core value system of Star Wars. Han Solo has always been and will always be best when he reflects more a character that would be written by Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged than from Les Misérables. Star Wars fails when it tries to be reflective of European literature more than American bravado and that lesson has been reluctantly unleashed in Solo: A Star Wars Story, which is all about guns, getting rich and taking care of the character’s self-interests.

Of course, the liberal aspects of Hollywood are hoping that this Solo: A Star Wars Story will fail at the box office, and for that to happen the industry will pounce on any numbers that don’t reach a billion dollars globally, or under $600 million domestically. Anything short of that and this Solo movie will be destroyed in the press much the way Donald Trump’s presidency is under constant attack because it threatens the status quo. But as I have been saying for many, many years—Star Wars is best when it is about all the things I described this upcoming movie to be as opposed to the self-sacrifice and general altruism of the Jedi and the Skywalker portions of the saga. Without Han Solo, I’d say there is no Star Wars. So to their credit, they listened at Lucasfilm and Disney has not been shy with the money and has thrown their full weight behind this movie knowing that it goes against the general strategies of the progressive community. And they had to do it because economic necessity dictated that they protect the property of Star Wars from the politics of the modern age. The last time I saw Disney market this hard for something like a western was The Lone Ranger in 2013, which was financially successful, but was considered a big bomb at the box office. If I had to bet, I’d say that is why Bob Iger has been nowhere near the early previews of Solo: A Star Wars Story. He is keeping one foot in the world of deniability. But I don’t think he’ll have to throw anybody under the bus. I think this new Star Wars movie will make everyone happy at Disney, even if it does give them a political paradox to deal with.

Progressives would love to assume that they can shape culture—which is why they wanted to take over the movie business. Films were to reflect the cultures they came from and the values expressed which is what other nations wanted to see in American movies. People get excited to see things they can’t get at home or yearn to become themselves, so they enjoyed the lofty characters of the American westerns who shot first and asked questions later, who did whatever they had to do to get rich so they could live free of the rest of the tyrannical world. Thinking of the great Sergio Leone movies from the late 1960s, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, and For A Few Dollars More, the filmmakers were from Italy making westerns as they interpreted them, as a way out of the fascism that their country had just emerged from and the character emphasis wasn’t on saving the world or even a damsel in distress, it was in using a gun to get rich and live happily ever after alone and disconnected from the rules of society. That was always the allure of the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean movies, that is why the Fast and Furious movies make so much money, and that is the commitment behind Solo: A Star Wars Story.

With this being the fourth Star Wars story produced by Kathy Kennedy as the new head of Lucasfilm economic necessity has dictated a more traditional approach to their films. That is a great thing because it informs what the true values of our culture are which addresses at the most epistemological level values that are conducive to a successful modern culture reflective in movies, and not where Hollywood shapes culture. The values of people are inherit and they need to form their lives around those values—that is self-interest, acceptance of capitalism as the primary driver for success and improved lives. What could be a better message in Star Wars than a black character called Lando Calrissian who loves wealth and the fine things in life and became an extraordinarily successful businessman? Solo: A Star Wars Story may be the first movie in several decades that doesn’t demonize the acquisition of wealth. I doubt the movie will do well in China for that very reason, but that’s OK. Lucasfilm made this movie and hopefully people support it the way I’ve always said they would. I can say this, I am excited for it—for all these reasons and more. I think it’s a game changer that could very well alter the way Hollywood produces films, and that is not good for the progressive elements which have taken over. Like the presidency of Donald Trump, Star Wars is rooted in old-fashioned values, and that was something that Hollywood has wanted to destroy but find that they must reconcile with if they want to live into the future. I never honestly thought I’d ever see a Hollywood product like this movie, where guns are as much of the plot as the pursuit of personal wealth and freedom. But here it is, and my hope is that people show up and support it, because it took a lot of guts to make it—and for Lucasfilm and Disney—it’s a tremendous gamble that could pay off big for them—and the rest of us.

Rich Hoffman
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‘Solo’ Gets a Standing Ovation at Cannes: Mythology and culture are on expanding in a very positive way

I can’t emphasize enough what Star Wars means to our current society—and specifically how important this next film, Solo: A Star Wars Story is to the continuation of the great mythology that is now set to take on a life well beyond anything planet earth has ever seen. As I say often the most important topic to me out of all the things that I discuss is the realm of mythology and how it captures the minds of mankind and propels it forward at each juncture of history. I am specifically thinking right now about the great legends of King Arthur, or the early works of the Iliad where Odysseus propelled modern society to its current form to the point where our civilization has outgrown those great stories. Our modern society is very complex, and we know so much about so many things that were not known at the time that the great classics were written, and we are and have been in desperate need for stories that can take us all into the future—because that’s how human beings work. They need conceptual devices in story form to put into context their observed reality—and even though Star Wars is intended for kids, it works on so many levels to get the imaginations of the human race moving that I think it’s currently the most important thing in the world happening right now, and I understand very well what is happening from North Korea to the taxation of Amazon in Seattle—to the teacher union strikes, to the corruption of our own FBI becoming weaponized against us all. Even in that context I think this new Star Wars movie is a tremendous opportunity for mythmaking to expand dramatically into the lives of all thinking beings on planet earth for the better, and it would all come down to the presentation of the film at the Cannes Film Festival in France. It’s not just because I love the character of Han Solo, but it’s why the movie was made in the first place that I think it’s so important and I was very happy to see a standing ovation for the film after its screening. This is going to be a big one.

I read the critics opinions of the film and most of them were positive, many very positive with about 23% less than enthusiastic. What those lukewarm reviews had in common was that they missed the epic scale of life and death situations that have been present in Star Wars up to this point—the save the whole galaxy or else type of storylines. If Star Wars is going to work in future, they need to become much more individualized, personal stories which we all know culminate into the three trilogies of nine films we have mostly been familiar with. And once Lucasfilm accomplished that, mythology by way of the vehicle of Star Wars will be unleased in a very dramatic way and I don’t think those people trained into their institutional professions, and are making good livings in those comfortable places, are open to these big changes. Their comments about nobody asking for a movie about Han Solo and that the movie is just capitalizing off the Star Wars name and is an entirely different kind of film altogether are missing the point. This movie was always intended to expand the Star Wars mythology in ways that I would argue it always needed to go—since the Empire Strikes Back way back in 1980 and I think everyone watching this movie is going to be in for a surprise.

I know enough about this movie to be happy with the decisions that Kathy Kennedy has made over the last two years. A lot of people do not understand how hard it is to make a movie, and to negotiate contracts with expensive actors and to hold those contacts over many films. I continue to be amazed how the Marvel team does it with all their big-name actors now and how they can put them all in a film like Infinity War. That would be an astonishing payroll to put all those stars into one movie, but Marvel has figured it out and that Disney polish is now coming to Star Wars with these Han Solo movies serving as a test bed of creative entanglement. I will be the first to say I was not happy with the Lucasfilm abandonment of the original books which they now call legends, and I was not at all happy with The Force Awakens when they killed Han Solo in that movie. Long time readers here know very well how angry I was at the way they dealt with Han Solo’s character in that film and I did several radio shows discussing the issue in detail. However, and I know I wasn’t the only one, I think Lucasfilm to a reasonable extent has listened to the fans—and they have made some adjustments with this Solo movie which is why it needed to stay on schedule even after the previous directors were fired and Ron Howard was brought on to fix things. It’s also why I believe that the last movie of the modern trilogy, Episode 9 now directed by J.J. Abrams was pushed out into 2019—because Lucasflim needed to see how audiences reacted to new story elements in this new Solo movie.

I don’t think Kathy Kennedy or Bob Iger are all that happy with the direction of Solo: A Star Wars Story, I think they’d love to have a much more progressive film with less male characters acting so strongly. That’s a very educated guess on my part, but business is business. If you are running a movie company that makes Star Wars movies and you intend for them to transcend modern politics, then they need to be timeless stories, and this new Han Solo movie needed to be more of a classic western than a modern progressive version of Guardians of the Galaxy. I watched Kathy Kennedy at the Cannes press events and I think she is breathing a bit better now—she really needs to pull in at least a billion dollars off this Han Solo movie to justify everything they’ve done with Star Wars since Disney bought it in 2012. She made serious mistakes putting top-heavy female characters into Star Wars and making really stupid comments like she did to the New York Times where she said she didn’t care about male Stars Wars fans—which traditionally have been the primary support of the franchise for over four decades now. There was always room for women in Star Wars, but they couldn’t just take everything over and get away with it. The backlash against Kathy Kennedy in general has been harsh. And Bob Iger is an anti-gun liberal, so it’s probably tough for him to see all these posters of Han Solo pointing a gun out into the horizon, but that’s the character and that’s what people want to see in movies, and putting politics aside, Lucasfilm and Disney have given fans what they want—which is a very good thing.

I will likely give a very long and detailed review on the 24th of May which will articulate many, many things that I think are superb about this new kid’s movie which I think will capture the hearts of so many people in a very positive way. It’s not just the movie that I’m happy about, but what will come out of it creatively. Mythology has always been the center of any advanced culture and when a story works—it advances everything from arts and sciences, to politics and philosophy. And after watching that standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, I am quite sure that we are all about to see something very special.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

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North and South Korea Hug at the 38th Parallel: What educations should be and why the NKU Millennium Falcon Expereince was the most important thing

I had a lot of thoughts while waiting in line at the BB&T Arena at NKU University just across the river from downtown Cincinnati to witness the promotional exhibit for Solo: A Star Wars Story which comes out on May 25th. Among those thoughts were how nice and well-educated all the fans were who showed up early to get a ticket to essentially sit in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, which was in so many ways very, very cool. From my perspective as a super fan of not only Star Wars, but of the functions of world mythology in the greater sense I noticed some very special things going on that were worth a deeper analysis. Because of my conservative political positions, my stance against large salary requirements for teachers and college professors, it is often asked of me what I want in public education offerings that are reasonable, and to be quite honest, I want our education system to produce the type of people who were in line for that Solo exhibit—and the type of people who have used the Star Wars mythology to bring meaning to their lives where the regular social offerings have failed our entire civilization.

What made this NKU exhibit from Lucasfilm and Disney unique was that it was free, and there was no merchandising on hand to clutter up the motivations of people. All they wanted to do was see the props of the Millennium Falcon from the movies up close and satisfy some longing for that reality to become their reality. Because reality as we have all come to know it is something very disappointing. Star Wars for many people offers an alternative to that boring reality and that was quite clear to the thousands who showed up to see the Millennium Falcon Experience at NKU over the first weekend of a four-city tour which will take place all through the rest of May 2018. I’ve traveled the world, eaten in the very best restaurants in places like Japan and London, I associate with people at the very top of the food chain both politically and economically. If I’m not a mover and shaker in the world, I don’t know who would be—so I’m hardly a couch potato geek who is hiding from reality behind the fantasy characters of a space movie. Yet I’ll say that one of the most thrilling things that I have ever done in my half of a century of life was to sit in that cockpit of the Millennium Falcon with my grandson, wife, and granddaughter and play with the buttons, handle the flight yoke and just sit there for many minutes in private to consider how everything could work in real life—how to make that delicate transition from fantasy into reality—which is where everything is headed.

Even better than all that though was the people in line with me, who from what I could tell were some of the smartest people I’ve seen in one place in many years. If I had been waiting in line for tickets to a Miley Cyrus concert, the collection of intellect presented would have been much less. Most of the children present were reading books while in line, mostly Star Wars books. Most of the adults had already read them and were certainly higher than the average intelligence that is functioning in the world and I would attribute that to the fact that Star Wars has given people something positive to think about, so even though what they were thinking about was a fantasy entertainment offering, the process of thinking about something had better prepared them for functioning in the world than the average person experienced, who didn’t have such advantages. The exhibit itself took a long time to get through because of all the thousands of people in line, only five people at a time could go through that Falcon cockpit, so people were very motivated to wait their turn which I thought was astonishing. Nobody in line was angry with the people ahead of them making them wait, it was one of the most remarkable things I had witnessed in a long time from a large collection of people. Given that the campus of NKU was in the background I couldn’t help but think that every college in America should aim to have this type of experience for everything they try to instill in an educational format to the participants of their classrooms. The goal of all education should be to turn on minds, not to turn them off, and often that is what we are doing at all levels of our education. The people who have become Star Wars fans over the years have rejected that premise. When their schools have told them to turn off their minds and to stop daydreaming, to put their hyperactive kids on Ritalin, the people at the Millennium Falcon Experience who were there with me on that first day, the people who Channel 19 called “super fans” with just a bit of contempt to make sure the viewer didn’t associate her with them—the Star Wars fans rebelled and turned inward rejecting social norms and invested their intellects to the fantasy world of a galaxy of a long time ago far, far way.

While all this was going on I was checking on the latest NFL picks from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, watching Kenya West get criticized by the liberal entertainment guild for defending President Trump, and North Korea and South Korea were hugging at the 38th parallel, an astonishing feat all by itself, and contemporary society mistakenly thought that those events were more important than this Millennium Falcon Experience—but I don’t think so. In many ways it is those events that are the fiction and it is the mythology of Star Wars that has more truth in it than anything else going on outside of that NKU campus that day. Specifically, the Kenya West situation where just because he’s a black rapper married to Kim Kardashian he’s supposed to fit some liberal presentation of what a “black person thinks”—which was taught to all of us in our public-school experience. Those same public-school personalities don’t teach kids that Republicans ended slavery, and that Fredrick Douglas the great black crusader was a Republican. The emphasis on what we learn in our K-12 educations is not to read and perform math, its to fit into a segment of society for which our political philosophies at the administrative level can deal with when everyone grows up. The purpose of public education is to create demographic groups, not individualized thought and Kenya West was pushing back against that system which had all the proponents of that reality very upset. Many of the Star Wars fans at NKU to see the Millennium Falcon Experience had gone through the same type of rigor and had made very conscious decisions to reject those offered demographic categories created by the politically driven public-school systems, and they were looking for things to think about elsewhere.

Education is supposed to ignite the thinking process, not to turn it off, and for most of our civilization that is exactly what is happening in our government sponsored schools. They destroy minds, not meaning to, but that is what ends up happening. Later that day after the Millennium Falcon Experience I watched the coverage of the NFL Draft on Fox and I’ll have to say that it wasn’t nearly as rooted in reality as Star Wars was. The people drinking too much beer and spending most of their free time thinking about the statistics of the various players offered were participating in a fantasy much less real than seeing the Millennium Falcon up close. Star Wars fans have evolved as a rebellious rejection of that static public education offerings. The NFL draft was just a big reality television show that promoted the schools the athletes came from advertising those universities for millions of young people who might be inspired to spend $100K on an education to get a decent job at the places that produced these gladiators of the NFL. But honestly, the Millennium Falcon as presented at NKU to promote a new movie coming out soon was a lot more real, and much more positive for the intellects of the participants—and that should say a lot about the world we are living in.

We’ve made a tremendous mistake as a human civilization in establishing to people through their educations that they should give up the ideas of youth and to accept the limited offerings established by our governments through their education systems. We have tried it so many different ways and they all end in failures—in most cases middle class earners who makes six figures in household income who drink too much on NFL draft night over a grill cooking hamburgers in the back yard and think that is the definition of success. Star Wars and other pop culture entertainments have simply done a better job in creating foundation mythologies that the human intellect truly craves for the unending yearning for adventure and exploration. Those adventurous desires are what fuel all invention and take it from me, I just received a patent that I had led a team to realize just last week, so I understand what I’m saying in scope of human endeavor. It all starts with imagination and adventure which is specific to human minds and it is in our fantasies that we do a better job than our official educations in harnessing those powers. But it shouldn’t be that way. I bought three things over the past two weeks that made me very happy, one was a new gun that cost well over $2000. Then I bought a little Hot Wheels Millennium Falcon and a new Han Solo landspeeder for about $5 each—and they equally made me very happy. One is notably a very “adult” thing to buy, the other two are associated with the desires of children. But I can say that I enjoyed those purchases equally, and I think that is an essential need that any active intellect has—it wants to be fed stimuli—not junk food, or alcohol, but intellectual stimulation that provokes thought. Regarding education moving into the rest of this century and into the next, all over the world, we need to end this nonsense about “growing up.” What public education means when they encourage people to “grow up,” is that they intend to turn off minds, not to turn them on. And until that happens, I will be against our government endorsed education systems, both K-12 and the college experience, because they are not adequate in their objectives into preparing human beings for the kind of world we all want. Fortunately, and unfortunately, the Millennium Falcon Experience did a much better job.

Rich Hoffman
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The Millennium Falcon at NKU in Cincinnati: A look into penetrating the frontier of space

A17A55B5-5A01-4ECC-9F65-FC439E915ADFThe first thought I had while touring The Millennium Falcon Experience at the Northern Kentucky University campus was that this fictional ship from the Star Wars stories would be the best way to travel from Earth to Mars, or the moon and some more distant destination within our solar system. I thought of Jules Verne’s great book From the Earth to the Moon where he conceived of the rocket design that would be used 100 years later when NASA would eventually launch people into space and land on the moon. Star Wars was much more than just geek fandom. While I had personally thought about sitting in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon from the movies most of my life, and never thought I’d ever get a chance to actually do so, when the time did come I couldn’t help but think of real space travel using the actual design of the Millennium Falcon to serve as a foundation for a fleet of ships that would take commercial space travel to the next level.

I have been enjoying all this Han Solo media ahead of the new movie coming out on May 25th. Han Solo and his Millennium Falcon are some of my favorite fictional things in entertainment so I have been looking forward to a movie dedicated just to him and his famous starship. When I was a kid and was watching these movies for the first time I’d spend a lot of hours thinking of how to build the Millennium Falcon and trying to figure out the engineering of it. Obviously, I wasn’t alone, millions of people have been so enamored. It is a wonderful thing to see imaginations sparked to life by what they see in a movie. Over the years there have been attempts to build elements of the Millennium Falcon by the legions of fans that follow the Star Wars movies and I have enjoyed their attempts. Most notably I have been very excited to learn that a full-sized Millennium Falcon will appear at the new Disney Parks called Galaxy’s Edge. I can’t help but think that the human race is on a similar trajectory as it was with the Jules Verne novels and how NASA emerged.FAF7429F-2F17-4AA5-A1D5-0F18BE3AAEDC

I was one of the first in line to see the exhibit at NKU on Friday at 11 AM. I’m a very busy person but not too busy to see the interior of the actual Millennium Falcon as it goes on a five-city tour promoting the new Solo: A Star Wars Story all through the month of May. The Millennium Falcon is after all my favorite ship in science fiction and this whole tour started in my home town, so I had to take a moment to go see it, and it was quite impressive. It was really cool to visit the cockpit that was only seen in the movies from a few points of view, which have become iconic over the years. But it didn’t take long for the nostalgia to wear off for me and to look at the display put on by Lucasfilm as a film promotion to begin to take it all very seriously.22A06ED2-4BFA-4A6E-8D7B-95B09621330C

What’s really unique about this new film set before the events of the original movies is that the Millennium Falcon is presented not as a hunk of junk, but as the best and most exquisite of ships from its era. The Millennium Falcon becomes a junkie star ship because of the rough lifestyle of Han Solo, but this new movie goes to the start of all that, before a time when the popular Star Wars character owned the ship. As presented the Millennium Falcon was well made and bright white looking like an icon of luxury. It looked like the ship I remembered from my childhood only it looked much better. When I think of the Millennium Falcon I think of a dirty interior of a couple of friends living without women flying from one end of the galaxy to the other and not carrying to clean up after themselves. But presented the way it was for this promotional tour, the Millennium Falcon looked like a realistic offering for our own modern space travel.1C6066F4-14CD-4858-A108-532E87172C9A

It is a little ironic to me that it was the year of 2018 that Disney’s acquisition of the Star Wars franchise seems to start paying off. I think this new Solo movie will be one of the most popular and will ignite a fresh start for the popular films. It’s the first time that there have ever been two Star Wars films within one year of each other and the impact that has had on merchandising has been remarkable. It’s hard to go to Wal-Mart or Target these days without seeing something regarding Star Wars. And all this is happening as commercial space endeavors are literally starting to take off. Later this year Virgin Galactic will begin their commercial flights for space tourism and Space X is preparing to send people around the moon. All this is happening while a Trump presidency has thrown its weight behind a reinvigorated NASA space program and a hot economy that is redefining employment statistics. The iWatch has essentially turned us all into Dick Tracy speaking on the phone to others from our wrists, things are moving very quickly these days.

I find it all very exciting. It won’t be long before Elon Musk has a colony on Mars and commercial industry begins to move into space. The next 50 years will explode along the frontier of space much like it did in America once humans began westward expansion free of European kings for the first time in known history. Space will bring much of the same ambition for adventure and profit. But people won’t want to fly in the kind of cramped quarters that we see with ship designs so far offered. Likely we’ll resort to what we know from films and literature, and the Millennium Falcon looks to me to have solved many of those long-distance space traveling problems.

You can make a starship in really any design you want, what you’ll need for long distance space travel is something that humans are comfortable in, that can use its external surfaces to generate power and have lots of surface area for controllable thrust. The design of the Millennium Falcon presents a lot of options for hauling freight to and from places like Mars over 18-month visits one way. Sitting in the cockpit and forgetting about the hyperspace jumps we see in the movies it wasn’t hard for me to consider spinning the Falcon to produce gravity until it arrives at its destination around Mars. Hooking up to whatever cargo it needs to bring back to earth then resuming that spinning effect all the way back with the crew living in relative luxury inside the whole time. Because of Star Wars we have a whole generation of people who are intellectually ready to accept such a deep space reality.

The Millennium Falcon’s interior as it was presented at NKU was certainly something I could live in for the long back and forth journeys to Mars that are about to become quite a reality. The Millennium Falcon already has practical docking clamps as part of its design. Solar panels could easily be incorporated into the outer shell to provide power and the interior is large enough to not go crazy in over such a long voyage. It’s round and interesting taking away the boxy designs that are offered in the International Space Station which is not conducive for long periods in space where people want to gather in a common room, but also want to be able to have their personal space as well. People need to get away from each other as well as communicate in common ways. The Falcon’s interior design goes a long way to solving lots of deep space traveling problems for a functional freighter.

Looking at that exhibit at NKU I could easily see some eccentric future billionaire building a fleet of Millennium Falcon style ships to essentially become like tractor trailers hauling rare minerals from the moon and Mars to enrich life on earth then use that wealth creation to catapult mankind even deeper into space. I could live on the Millennium Falcon with the amenities that were presented in the exhibit for many months, even years on end. Normally when we see designs for space, the environment has a military look to everything which makes it so that only the most disciplined space travelers could endure the experience. But that will have to change, and it is in our science fiction designs. 22DE3546-0899-498D-BBEB-53258B13B08CTo me the most impressive thing about the Millennium Falcon Experience was that after only 50 years of film history fans of the movies have finally figured out how to make the ships that were shown in Star Wars, and now artists and craftsmen are able to actually recreate what we see in the movies in real life. The next steps become rather obvious at that point and that is truly exciting. The Millennium Falcon Experience at NKU advertising a new Han Solo movie was something I personally never thought I’d see. But after seeing it, and touching it, and soaking it all in—I have a feeling that we will all be seeing a lot more of it in the years to come. As I left that exhibit I had the strange feeling that I may just own my own Millennium Falcon in a few years that can fly to Mars and back many times over as routinely as we can now drive to Florida now in a car. And I think I would like that world very much!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

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