Tag: Doc Thompson

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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Yes, North Korea Still Wants to Meet with Trump: The art of emptiness and fullness

I continue to be astounded how stupid some people are about the ways of the world. The so-called “experts” actually thought that what President Trump did on Thursday of this past week was reckless and even irrational. While those same people thought that all the ways we got there was just as reckless and irrational, but once there were willing to make their careers around riding the coattails of history and suddenly Trump was ruining it for them. Hey, like I told everyone, the North Korea deal was never in jeopardy. That’s why I felt I could take a few days and enjoy the new Han Solo movie, because the summit on June 12th was never in danger. The events of Donald Trump’s negotiations do not surprise me—I expect these kinds of things to go on, and honestly, I think everyone at every level of government should do the same. When a school board is negotiating with a hostile teacher’s union, this is how it should look. I was at a Sam’s Club the other day looking at their book section, and guess what? They had a copy of The Art of War that anybody could purchase—right next to the macaroni and cheese, and hot dogs. Anybody who reads that book would know exactly what was going on this past week between Kim Jong Un and President Trump. It certainly isn’t rocket science. Yet few people did understand and that is pretty sad.

Our experts taught all that institutional nonsense over the years have turned out to be pretty worthless. I mean, I understood from the beginning how dumb they were, but it is still shocking to see how poorly they are performing under the pressure of President Trump. All these top jobs in government from the experts on foreign policy to the bumbling idiots at the highest level of our intelligence agencies are just as comically stupid as any cartoon caricature could imagine. For people who are paid all these six figure salaries it would appear that most of them are completely worthless. I think I have heard more stupidity over the last week than I’ve ever heard in my life in regard to bad analysis. At first pundits were upset that Trump had been so reckless with Kim Jong Un, but after the Trump administration had brought North Korea to the table suddenly everyone thought Trump was an idiot in how he handled every juncture of the situation. They mistakenly thought that Trump was going into the negotiations ready to cave so he could get a Nobel Peace Prize. Everyone’s world seemed to fall apart on Thursday of this past week when Trump said he was withdrawing the United States from the deal with North Korea. I wasn’t surprised, and I had no fears that North Korea wouldn’t be coming to the negotiating table. So why did everyone else?

Here is how you can know the winner and loser in every situation. The book, The Art of War is a strategy guide from the East, but it follows some very basic common sense about human beings and understanding those basics you can usually tell who will win and lose just about every situation. Everything is about emptiness and fullness. Those who are empty are always going to lose to those who are full. Troops not fed well, who are on the low ground will not be able to beat troops not hungry who loom over them on the high ground if all other things are equal—numbers of troops, cultural heritage, and intelligence levels. Winning in the arts of war mean that those skilled in such battles know how to empty others and fill themselves.

Communism and socialism have not worked, the philosophies of Karl Marx are complete failures in every corner of the world. I was not surprised that the Venezuelan government let go of Joshua Holt yesterday. The young kid only 26 years of age went to that impoverished country in the summer of 2016 to marry a woman there and was thrown in jail under false pretenses hoping to use the American as leverage against the Obama administration. Now that the bus driver Maduro has won re-election through serious voter tampering, he’s looking to cut a similar deal as Kim Jong Un is getting ready to make with Trump—financial assistance, American investment into the economy of their regimes—they are desperate for money in Venezuela so they let go of Holt hoping to open negotiations because they are at wit’s end in that country due to the socialism that has ruined their country there. The economies of North Korea and Venezuela are poor because of their commitment to Karl Marx, so when dealing with the real world, they have nothing to barter with except threats. When threats are made against a much stronger adversary, physical violence has no effect, so these tyrants running these countries have no place to go but to the negotiating table to ask forgiveness to those more powerful than them. Power as it is defined in human culture is not in the weapons one has, but in the amount of money. Those without money are always going to lose against those who have it.

The goal of the Obama administration was to loot the wealth of America and give it away to socialist countries so that the world would be equalized. Finally, socialism was going to work in the world once all the super powers had been destroyed. Only what they neglected to consider as “experts” were the philosophic premise of a place like North America which has been and continues to function from the foundation of capitalism. The American people would see all this going on and change it. As we were being robbed by our government we made a change in our elections and started voting for people who would stand up for the kind of economy that was the backbone of our nation. We didn’t look for a “moral character” the way that experts thought the game of elections in America worked, we voted for someone who understood the power of emptiness and fullness so that they’d represent us on the world stage with those basic skills to protect our nation from ruthless overlords around the world who were all empty but trying to appear frighteningly full. It’s been a few years now and the word is out in every country, America is no longer being led by a ruling class of college professors and socialist sympathizers disguising their intentions of spreading Marxism by weakening America, but is instead being run by a business guy who understands how to play the game of emptiness and fullness.

Because America is essentially the only nation left on earth that is a capitalist country beating these other countries is easy—because none of them have anything of any value due to their commitments to socialism and communism—and I include China in that assessment. China is not the powerhouse that they’ve been made out to be, they are largely an economy dependent on American purchases. Without the strength of the American dollar and the markets from that capitalist land, the Chinese are in trouble financially. Don’t let anybody fool you dear reader. While they have been helpful in bringing North Korea to the table, it wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts. Trump knows how to play the emptiness and fullness game, which is why we hired him in the last election to go out into the world and play to win for America for a change. Everyone should understand at least the basics of the game, and none of what is happening now should come as a surprise. Yet it does, which is astonishing. Either those “experts” are really pretty stupid, or, they are playing dumb because they really always wanted America to fail to these hostile agents—and if that is the case, then there is some ass kicking that is coming deservedly to them for what they’ve tried to do to harm us all. Hopefully for their sakes, they were just stupid.

Rich Hoffman
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“Chicken in the Pot”: A brilliant ‘Solo’ soundtrack by John Powell

I saw Solo: A Star Wars Story two times in the first 24 hours of its release–it was a day that I’ve long looked forward to. (SEE MY REVIEW HERE)  As I’ve established many times Star Wars for me is an intellectual vacation destination. Some people like to go to the beach and lay out on the sand under a powerful sun to relax, others like to visit other countries and sip mixed drinks from their hotel bar. Personally, I enjoy visiting that galaxy far far away in the movies, music and video games that have sprung from the mythology of Star Wars. There is so much imagination in that vast entertainment option that I find my mind can rest there and enjoy the world they have created. Real life has plenty of challenges and as readers know who read here often, I have a grip on reality that is far more intense than what the average person cares to endure, so I don’t mind sharing some of my little secrets for dealing with excessive amounts of stress, and Star Wars does it for me, especially on the creative side of things. When a new movie comes out on Blu-Ray I enjoy the making of the movies far more than the actual stories because that’s what I most enjoy in Star Wars is the vast creativity those projects generate. And among all the elements that are positive from Star Wars movies is the music, so when a new film hits that I like a lot I usually get the soundtrack at the very first opportunity. It is my favorite part of any good movie I enjoy is listing to the soundtrack of the film, and that is certainly no exception with Solo: A Star Wars Story. John Powell did a great job with it and I have found myself particularly obsessed with one particular part of that musical track, a song called “Chicken in the Pot.” It is the weirdest bit of music that I’ve heard in many years and I just love it.

I loved Solo: A Star Wars Story the first time, but I found the second time even more enjoyable. On that second time I was listening to the soundtrack in the car on the way to the theater and that track 8 song came on and it reminded me of the original cantina song from the original A New Hope soundtrack that has been used so many times over the years for everything that exhibits weirdness in these films. But this was different even for a Star Wars movie, the sound is clearly classic almost Frank Sinatraish only with an eerie female chorus of varying pitches singing in an alien language. Further, in the actual movie when that scene is up our heroes are about to meet the gangster Dryden Vos at his luxury barge and there are lots of exotic people at the bar where these singers are performing. One is a woman of some alien species singing with this strange little guy providing base in a jar of liquid. It was a really unique scene I thought that was spectacularly environmental. It was so weird that it took me a couple of viewings to register it, and I was so happy it ended up on the soundtrack. That is just the kind of music that a place like the new Disney World Galaxy’s Edge is going to need for the fans who participate in their new Star Wars experience next year. John Powell pulled that one out of somewhere to create a new level of creative brilliance.

What makes music like that work is the context, its rooted in our classic Hollywood musicals, but it is certainly distinctly alien. It also nearly sounds like the music is being played backwards which is a hint into the character of the main villain Dryden Vos who appears quite pleasant when he first meets people but if you peel back just a few layers of his behavior he is absolutely brutal—in the calmest fashion possible—a strange mix of contrasts. What’s bold about this new Solo: A Star Wars story is that they are exploring how all these crime syndicates function in the great mythology of the greater Star Wars galaxy, such as the Crimson Dawn and the Pike Syndicate. Its like stepping away from the politics of a film like All the President’s Men and getting to know the details of The Godfather, or even Scarface, which gets into the details of the boots on the ground thugs that are often used for the greater advantages of the top-level politics. The plots are compelling because they are rooted in reality. In the case of Star Wars Dryden Vos is kind of regional player. Everyone is afraid of him, but he’s very quick to suggest that he’s just another small fish in a very big pond. In that scene where we meet Dryden for the first time it’s that music that introduces him. Nothing is as it seems, but yet it’s all right there in front of you.

This is now the second Star Wars film that does not have John Williams scoring it, although he did play a part of the John Powell soundtrack, which is obvious. I was worried about this part of the Solo film experience, but now that I’ve had a chance to listen to the soundtrack a few hundred times over the last 48 hours I am quite happy with it. Music is what sells these stories to our subconscious and we are truly in new territory here with these movies. Very few people really think about what it takes to make a film but it’s always on my mind with regard to projects like this. Hollywood as a whole is a dying culture yet there are people working in it that are brilliant in what they do, like the people who work at Industrial Light and Magic, all the musicians that score all these big movies—people like John Powell out there who are bringing the classics of tomorrow alive today within the context of the film industry. I admire filmmakers in how they employ thousands of people who on something like a Star Wars movie are the best in the business, from the unsung producers who set up everything on these complicated shoots to the people like Powell who get to put their name on a major part of the creative process. I look at each one of these as a small miracle of capitalism that they even happen. If they are financially successful, then more people get to work on a new movie, and I really hope Solo: A Star Wars Story is successful financially so that our culture can get more of these movies. If we get more movies than I get more soundtracks that make daring music like John Powell did in Solo: A Star Wars Story, specifically the track “Chicken in the Pot.” I could listen to that all day long, and if there are many more of these Star Wars movies, there will be quite a collection of unusual music that will emerge from them.

I think we all benefit from these explosions of creativity. As I was watching this latest Star Wars movie on the two occasions within 24 hours of each other on opening day, I saw a lot of happy people buying Star Wars merchandise and enjoying themselves with their families. If that is all that came out of Star Wars, I think that would be enough. But there is more, a lot more and the platform of Star Wars gives some of our most creative people a place to experiment and sometimes those results produce something so unique, like “Chicken in the Pot.” That takes life and elevates its potential by expanding our imaginations in positive ways which advance our species in ways that are so far, immeasurable.

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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Join the NRA and Defend your Country: Looks like Oliver North will be a good president

It’s always a good day when I open my mail box and in it is a new magazine from the NRA’s American Rifleman. There are a lot of publications out there hostile to the Second Amendment and the kind of traditional life in America that I respect and cherish, ownership of private property, strong families, a capitalist economy with upward mobility for anyone willing to work for it—but there are few like the American Rifleman which represent my values so honestly. With each new addition, I cherish it and usually I read Wayne LaPierre’s commentary in the opening pages as I walk down my driveway and back into my house. The one he wrote for June is just another fine example of why the NRA is so important to our culture with all the incursions against America that have been lining up for years, LaPierre’s article expressed quite well why the Second Amendment is so important by featuring the efforts by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to encourage progressives to repeal the Second Amendment all together.

I haven’t been a big Oliver North fan over the years—to me he is too moderate, and military-minded for my liking, but I thought he did an excellent job on Chris Wallace’s Fox News Sunday show defending the NRA. That’s good because he’s set to become the new president of the NRA so I watched the interview carefully, knowing that Wallace would put the screws to North at every chance, and much to my surprise the upcoming NRA president was nicely aggressive and was pushing for even more members to join the organization. That was a very refreshing thing to see in a media environment that has assumed their trajectory of attack would put an end to the NRA forever. Considering that it wasn’t that long ago that Charlton Heston was the president of the NRA and that people like Clint Eastwood were open supporters, Hollywood has pushed all those types of actors out of their ranks leaving a tremendous void of charismatic personalities to advance the cause of the NRA to the next generation. I mean who would promote the NRA for the generation of millennials—Snoop Dog? He’s doing commercials on Fox News these days after all.

Governments are dangerous, probably the most dangerous aspects of any society. When they go bad, lots of people die and many more are left in conditions of existence that are less than respectable. Take a look at Venezuela for instance—a bus driver took over the government there and used socialism to enrich himself at the expense of the entire country, and now they have big problems. For certain kinds of aristocratic bureaucrats, it is their greatest fantasy to rule over other people from the power of government. They yearn for the kingdoms of Europe where gaining favor in the king’s courts would give power over the peasants and satisfy the egos of the corrupt. In those realms the rules were fairly easy to master—just learn whose ass you had to kiss and get to it. But America has rejected that entire premise and instead looked to self-rule to replace such a system where merit mattered more than the bloodline of your family. And that type of system unleashed the most powerful economies in the world by essentially cutting out the middleman of government.

But government is always a threat. It’s needed to some extent to organize the affairs of mankind, but they must always be watched over for impropriety which is all too tempting, and that is why we have the Second Amendment in America—as a protection against an out-of-control government as they typically evolve into threats against their own people. It doesn’t matter how educated the people of government become, the natural temptation to rule over other people and to abuse that relationship is all too powerful to resist for the types of people who are drawn to serve others. For instance, I’m the type of person who doesn’t care to know what my neighbors are doing, or even to know much about them. But people who tend to seek jobs in government are those types that are always looking out their windows and into what is going on with their neighbors, and they want to know every little bit of gossip that they can get to use in some fashion they can’t yet manage to their advantage to control the people around them. We call them “busy bodies” but the more technical term would be government bureaucrat and they come in all shapes, ages, sizes—and sexes.

We can now see quite clearly right under our noses that James Clapper, John Brennen and James Comey of the most top jobs of American intelligence were activists trying to tilt the nature of our 2016 election and when they were caught, tried to blame the Russians. They attempted to create the same kind of coup in America that the CIA might be blamed for in some third world country by deposing dictators or protecting them depending on the circumstances. They tampered with an American election and would have done much more if the lights of justice had not been shown on them after Donald Trump won the presidency. If not for that election it’s quite clear that America was on a path toward European progressivism for which we may never have been able to return from. Our American government obviously with the president of the United States looking over everything was trying to take over our nation away from the type of people who are current NRA members. While all that was going on Obama’s administration was sneaking money into Iran to prop up terrorist groups trying to advance Marxism across the world and was lying to the American people about all of it.

It is that very type of government that is now stating that the Second Amendment should be abolished, and that we should put our complete trust into them. No thanks. Right after the Chris Wallace interview on Fox News Sunday with Oliver North, Mark Kelley was up to provide a retort and it was he who shockingly stated that he was a gun owner but that he believed there should be legislation that directed all people owning guns to keep them in a safe locked up in their house. He called it common sense legislation, but it was obviously one step in the direction of complete Second Amendment repeal, because what he was proposing was that government further direct the behavior of its citizens within the four walls of their private property residence and keep their guns locked away or…………..else. The assumption is that if people violated the law their guns would be confiscated which is just another step in the direction of gun grabbers everywhere, to remove guns from society so that government can rule without concern of insurrections against it. That is the real issue behind all this talk of repeal.

Government is the problem, and ironically the public-school shootings are their fault as well for what they teach children and for keeping those areas gun free zones because of the government’s position on removing the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights. If they did the right thing and arm teachers in these schools so that someone could shoot back when a student snaps and tries to kill all their class mates, the Second Amendment would be strengthened, which is not the goal of government. So they’d rather exploit the deaths of innocent children rather than try to save them because of government’s arrogant desire to rule all human beings from a position of strength. To do that they must remove guns from existence—which isn’t going to happen, but it’s what governs their behavior.

It is in these times that I am so grateful that there is an NRA because it’s very existence is preventing so much destruction. The legal battles we are currently involved in through the election process are much better than actual armed insurrection. But should they fail and all there is between us and complete tyrannical rule by corrupt governments, such as what we were experiencing under the extreme progressive activism of John Brennen and many others—is the gun. And we’ll need those guns if such a day comes. So long as we have those guns, it keeps those tyrants in their offices scheming. But it keeps them somewhere that we can watch them. Our memberships in the NRA provides that extra barrier between bullets flying and actual spilled blood—and I’m very glad it’s there for the safety of all.

Rich Hoffman

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The Trump Campaign Spy Stefan Halper: America’s biggest scandal, so why is Jimmy Kimmel talking about gun control?

Jimmy Kimmel is in the minority in our American republic and he’s frustrated by it. There are more NRA members in America than Kimmel and his other late night comedy hosts have together for their television shows and they can’t understand why they can’t move the bar on gun control with truly disgusting emotional influences such as Kimmel displayed after the latest school shooting in Santa Fe. Look people, I have explained to everyone what creates school shootings, I’ve outlined the issue explicitly, and others have as well. I think my offering, not because its my own, but because it goes further than other people have, is the best and should be looked at by everyone concerned about school shootings. The solution is rather easy, but it will require people like Jimmy Kimmel to give up their liberal approaches to the problem so that the real complications can be addressed. I don’t think Kimmel really cares about the school shooting issue—I think he’s just a liberal man who says what he has to so he can impress liberal girls and Hollywood types who live in their ridiculous coastal bubble of intellectual stagnation. But if he really cares about stopping school shootings, then he needs to listen to what I’m saying. CLICK HERE for the real answer to school shootings. However, giving up our guns, or weakening the Second Amendment is not going to happen—and here’s why.

https://nypost.com/2018/05/19/cambridge-professor-outed-as-fbi-informant-inside-trump-campaign/’

The biggest scandal in American history just occurred over the last two years and people like Jimmy Kimmel are a part of it—because they have used their hatred of President Trump to justify the necessity of what happened which goes far beyond any rationalizations that were ever made about Watergate. This scandal is so big that all people no matter what party they came from should be worried about it. No matter what people think about Donald Trump, they will have to admit that if he didn’t run his presidential campaign the way he did—essentially as a one-man road show with his own airplane and money to fuel it, we would have never discovered just out deep the “Deep State” truly was. The FBI and the DOJ under President Obama put a spy into the campaign of a political rival for the purpose of undermining it. The name of the spy was Stefan Halper from Cambridge and was working on behalf of traditional institutionalism to subvert the efforts of change that were taking place under a presidential candidate whom had survived all the proper primaries and delegate acquisitions to eventually win the presidency fair and square.

The FBI on many levels was conducting illegal activities to support the reigning president, Obama at the time, and attempting to hand the election to the representative of a rival political party. Traditional conservatives for which Halper was were attempting to subvert the efforts at reform for the protection of Washington D.C. institutionalism as defined by the type of politics that has gotten America into so much trouble, ultimately creating the kind of climate that produced that Santa Fe shooter culturally. The FBI and the DOJ was using the powers of government to serve a sitting president for the benefit of a candidate that was running against Trump and the whole thing would have worked if Trump had been a traditional candidate that needed advisors, money, and media resources. Because Trump could give himself all those things there wasn’t anything that the institutionalists in the FBI could do—and Trump won anyway despite all those efforts.

All this didn’t happen overnight, it’s been going on for decades likely, going all the way back to World War II. We cannot trust our government and we sure as hell can’t trust the press. So under what line of insanity does anybody think that we should be giving up our guns and our Second Amendment? That would be insanely stupid. The Second Amendment does not exist so we can hunt rabbits or go target shooting—its there to keep our government in check from just these types of problems. Liberals like Jimmy Kimmel are so intellectually lazy that they want to believe that there are countries who are performing better than the United States in the realm of governing, and that their gun control laws should be followed as a guiding light to the school shooting problem, and that’s just ridiculously stupid. Nobody is doing things better than the United States in general, more layers of government are not a solution. Making the mess that we know of in current abuses of the FBI and DOJ more exacerbated with more rules, regulations and government personnel would be insane. The world Jimmy Kimmel and his fellow liberal gun grabbers wants does not exist and it never will because logic does not accompany reality.

Even with all the evidence right there in front of our faces our nation is locked in indecision as to what to do next. How do we prosecute this case, who goes to jail? Just about everyone in Washington D.C. is guilty, and several former presidents are guilty of the cover-up as well, because this has all been going on far longer than just the Trump campaign. It probably happened to John McCain and Mitt Romney while they were going around the nation telling the rest of us to be civil—because advisors like Halper advised them to run their campaigns based on the needs of the institutions, not the real needs of our republic. Remember when Romney changed his tune after that fierce debate where he tore up Obama and was rising in the polls? Who told him to change-up his game, who told him not to go on the night-time shows—Obama certainly did. This kind of internal campaign manipulation has probably been going on since before Bob Dole’s campaign. Remember when George Bush said “no new taxes,” then he raised taxes. Who told him to do that? Probably someone working from the Shadow Government like Halper who was working both sides of the political landscape for objectives that were wanted at the FBI thinking they were a fourth branch of government and not direct employees of the Executive Branch. This entire situation is as messy as anything our country has witnessed since the War of 1812.

There are no conditions that Americans should ever give up their guns. I would say that we should make public education illegal before there are ever any considerations against the Second Amendment. There is no evidence that we can trust the FBI. They are our employees, but they think they rule as elected representatives and have become drunk on the power we gave them to act on our behalf. Instead, they have acted on interests that don’t appear to be American in any way, but rather some other source not focused on domestic affairs, but more global ones. When celebrities like Jimmy Kimmel are more than willing to use children as hostages in the gun debate but fully support abortion, criminals like Hillary Clinton, and a trust in the Deep State when the evidence shows us clearly that we should never fully trust them under any circumstances, you must ask lots of questions. This spy in the Trump campaign story is the biggest scandal in American history and should be the lead in every newspaper, and on every late-night show. We know what causes school violence and we could fix everything tomorrow just by putting guns on teachers in schools stopping them from being gun free zones. But for Kimmel to use the sadness of the school shooting to mask the much bigger problem of corruption at the highest levels of our Republic indicates how much trouble we really are in. And if not for Trump and our guns, the situation would already be far out of our grasp and irredeemable without a violent revolution. Thankfully, because of guns, we can still have an election that takes power away from people who shouldn’t have it, and if not for Trump, we wouldn’t know any of this.

Rich Hoffman
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Glenn Beck Is Supporting Donald Trump: The nature of gangs and animals in America

It says a lot that Glenn Beck wore a “Make America Great Again” hat during his show on Friday, May 20th, 2018. He then went on to list the great accomplishments of Donald Trump shown below thus far in his presidency, which is really just getting started. If Donald Trump has won over Glenn Beck—which is probably more out of economic necessity than out of sentiment—then there are a lot more like him that are also coming over to the right side of things. Apparently for Beck it was the media reaction to the MS-13 issues where the president called the gang leaders in many American cities animals, that pushed him over the edge and into the Trump camp. Honestly after all that Beck has said about Donald Trump from the time of the primaries to the present, it caused me to no longer listen to Beck, let alone watch any of his programs. Prior to his hatred of Trump, and being one of the first Never Trumpers, I promoted Beck any way I could—especially his radio station, The Blaze. It was always on somewhere in my life, but I turned it off over two years ago now and dropped Beck in every way possible. So it was a little shocking to see him throw his support behind Donald Trump so honestly.

Welcome to the twisted world of liberalism where its like an Alice in Wonderland parody on everything. For instance, the May 17th 2018 Robin Hood event in New York City that tried to raise awareness for ways of fighting poverty, but in doing so it was largely liberals and progressives who were hosting the thing—which is to say that their solution to poverty is to use socialism to solve the problem. But logic says that socialism causes the problem. Socialism is what has put people on the streets and in need of homeless shelters. Some of those idiots who are poor were taught through socialism that somebody would always be there to give them something—and they were never taught that the path to success means you must work more than 40 hours a week at something—your whole life. Living in the lower middle class which we now call the working poor—according to the advocates for the Robin Hood charity in New York, the richest city in the world has it has 1.8 million people living in poverty. Yet if you talk to those people to discover why they are poor, it is because somewhere in their life they were taught they wouldn’t have to work more than 40 hours a week, or even less, to live—that someone would feed them, so thus, they are homeless or at the poverty level due to their beliefs. They could easily get out of poverty if they did as Oprah does—who is a big supporter of this Robin Hood group, and that is to work70 to 90 hours a week, like most successful people do.

The designation that members of MS-13 are not animals by the political left is just as perplexing. One thing that is hard for many people to admit is that left leaning monsters like the nice people at that Robin Hood event in New York dressed up with great opulence to convince people to donate money to the poor are really just another form of MS-13, a gang designed to muscle individuals towards the aims of a collective minority. Gangs and mobs are part of the liberal lifestyle and they are taught in school. That kid in Texas who shot up kids he didn’t like in his high school just a few weeks before graduation was a creation of the liberal left, where peer groups are formed to cast people into gangs—by design. MS-13 are made up of the leaders of the El Salvador revolution during the 1980s as they fled their country and hit the streets of Los Angeles as a bunch of marijuana users—literally. Over the years they spread to other American cities and began taking over as drug distributers and today they are into just about everything that crime syndicates are into. It doesn’t take much to learn that the liberal left wants these gangs terrorizing people in the poor communities they reside in, because it gives them an excuse to come up with more gangs to deal with the aftermath of the efforts.

The teacher’s unions are gangs who join together to extort the tax payers into giving them more money for doing a job that requires less than 40 hours a week of commitment if you average out their yearly investment into their professions. By massing together as a gang the government school teachers gain power and influence much the way MS-13 does and are the methods that the political left uses to stay in power over people. They use fear and anxiety to move people toward their needs, so it was a very personal thing to have Donald Trump call MS-13 gang members, animals—because people on the political left from the Robin Hood charity donors to school teachers all across America identify with those MS-13 animals intellectually. They all use the same methods of coercion to advance their liberal positions. So when a school shooting occurs like it did in Texas this past week at a small high school in Santa Fe the problem is the gun’s fault, not the person doing the shooting. In poverty, it is the fault of the United States for not giving more money to the poor, not the people who are too lazy to work more than 40 hours a week to pick themselves up and over the poverty line. And when it comes to gangs, they call them immigrants looking for opportunity in America when all they really are is considered dangerous terrorists who are killed on site in their native country of El Salvador, because they know the truth, that MS-13 members are dangerous animals who will kill innocent people as easily as most of us drink a glass of water. The political left wants all these gangs to spread fear through the weak and lazy so that they can have voters in fall elections—so that their gang can rule in Washington, as it has for so many years.

It was to leave that game in Washington D.C. that caused me to support Donald Trump from the beginning, and to turn off Glenn Beck. Beck was talking peace, and love when what was needed was to confront all these gangs directly and end the practice of mob rule in America in favor of America first policies that unite all people under the flag of the United States. Beck clearly didn’t see the potential behind Donald Trump, but now he does and like the rest of us has joined the correct fight. Many on Beck’s sentimental side of politics were willing to give the benefit of the doubt toward the realms of evil that we all deal with which breeds itself on the progressive side of politics. They didn’t understand that the key to beating all these gangs that have set up shop in the United States, from MS-13 to the teacher’s unions was to put a self-made billionaire in the Executive Branch who had lived the life of luxury for so long that he couldn’t be enamored by the power of gangs into making decisions which favored them in some way. Instead he calls them animals, which they are, and with that designation he is calling most on the political left the same, and they know it. So they distorted the truth to their favor and finally Glenn Beck had enough. The situation became clear as it is for so many others in America who had been willing to turn the other cheek so much that their heads were about to fall off from being slapped so many times. Enough is enough. It is good to see the good among us joining back together to fight the tyranny of group think—it has taken over out country for far too long and its about time to fight back to remove their influence from our lives—starting with the obvious, MS-13 and their animal behavior that is not conducive to a good life for anybody. From teacher unions to MS-13 all these gangs must go, and its about time for us all to admit that to ourselves.

Rich Hoffman
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How to Stop Gun Violance in American Schools: The answer is in the roots of our basic philosophy

It was never a mystery as to why all these school shootings are occurring. It’s two things really, one is that they are government places which are gun free zones, and the second is that they are essentially liberal places filled with liberal people who think liberal things. The shooter in this case was Dimitrios Pagourtzis who killed 10 and wounded at least 10 more at Santa Fe High School who admittingly shot up people he didn’t like, based on his own statements. The kid wore a trench coat with leftist Soviet era propaganda on it and apparently, he wore it often, even when it was 90 degrees outside. It’s not a mystery that these kids are snapping as reality outside of these government schools are clashing with the leftist learning they get in those places. Dimitrios intended to kill himself after he used a shotgun and a revolver he stole from his dad and attacked people he didn’t like in an art class at that small high school around 7 AM Friday morning of May 18th, 2018.

https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/school-shooter-anti-trump-icon/

Yet it was perplexing as many news reporters covered the story and continued to ask—why are these school shootings happening and what can we do about it. Well, first you must arm the teachers and make those schools gun zones to discourage the kind of carnage that kids like this Dimitrios Pagourtzis was—troubled youth that have had their minds filled with leftist ideology that is not conducive to the world outside of their schools. If those kids don’t have strong peer groups, girlfriends, or goals in life that might otherwise keep their thoughts in check, then they will be prone to violence and will have to be destroyed once they initiate an attack. I would guess that there are hundreds of thousands of kids out there in America just like this Dimitrios kid and they aren’t going to go away soon. Even if we put together again all the broken homes, started teaching kids the correct things in those government schools, and managed to convince the entertainment industry to stop publishing such angry music, movies, television shows, and video games—it would take 50 years to begin to solve the problem. Gun violence and murderous kids are going to be a part of American schools for the foreseeable future. Why you might ask—well, it’s because those schools made those kids the way they are. Its their own fault, a fault of liberal sentiment aligned with improper philosophy that is collapsing against the merits of reality. It’s pretty simple.

Of course the political left is going to blame guns, because they can’t blame themselves. They can’t admit it is their failed policies and beliefs that are causing all these kids to become mass murderers. This actually is a global problem and is rooted in philosophy itself, the epistemological beliefs of society itself. Most places in the world are to the political left of even the liberals in America. While its true that we don’t hear much about mass murder violence in schools in France, or in China, the kind of trouble that Dimitrios Pagoutizis exhibited manifests in other ways, either in sexual depravity, body piercings and tattoos, and generally a somber existence that is quite typical of most Europeans and members of the Asian corridor. But because in the United States there is a Constitution that is rooted in a very independent philosophy of self-governance, the emphasis has always been on the individual with expectations that each would do their part to conduct themselves properly in context with the greater society. The right to own and use guns for self-defense were always intended to protect that individual sanctity from the kind of group think that is so persistent elsewhere in the world and has been failing for many centuries.

Yet the political left in the America which would be considered the far right in almost every other country in the world has brought these clashing ideas into North America and made them the basic platform of the tax payer funded schools that kids are learning in. Yet those ideas are not conducive to the capitalist society that those same kids find themselves in once their school days have concluded, leaving many to face a very fearful future filled with anxieties that their parents are becoming increasingly ill prepared to help them with. That is largely also the fault of the government schools which actively has sought to replace parents in the home with a parental authority figure within the school. That is an experiment that has not worked. It hasn’t worked in Europe, it certainly hasn’t worked in Mexico and all through South America and Canada—it doesn’t work in Australia, and New Zealand—it doesn’t work anywhere. It appears to work in communist countries like China because they hide all their domestic statistics from the world—the misery factor is obscured with state-controlled polling data that is not representative of the individualized lives of their citizens—because communist countries in Asia do not care about individuals. They are concerned with the affairs of the state as a whole—so analysis from those places cannot be trusted. Obviously, the American model should be studied by all people of the world since it is within North America that the most successful economies anywhere are found, and the quality of living for each person are extremely high. Even our poorest of the poor in America would be considered to live a great life if compared to the average villager in Africa or India. So in the context of who should learn from whom, it’s quite clear that America does enough things correctly to merit a philosophy shift that is conducive for success in other countries. Yet American schools do not respect or teach those values, so it’s really not practical to expect other countries to do what’s right for their people and make the necessary changes. Instead the political left has declared a civil war against the American right and they purposely have used our own youth against us as weapons. It is the American leftists who built the mind of Dimitrios Pagourtzis. You don’t see kids with strong mothers and fathers in the home that take their kids fishing every Saturday running around in black trench coats covered in Soviet propaganda trying to kill other kids. You certainly don’t see kids growing up in homes of NRA members entering adulthood with lots of crazy anxieties that prove to be self-destructive—where other people get hurt as a result. There is a reason that families that put God and guns at the front of their epistemological beliefs do better than families who turn to mother government for their basic necessities. Those two groups can’t be put together and expect everything to just work out.

The answer is easy in how we can stop this violence in our government schools—stop letting those places be run by liberals who teach liberal ideas to kids who don’t know any better and make them gun zones. Put guns on the teachers so they can do more than pull fire alarms and can engage a threat at the point of attack and end the misery quickly, before 10 people are slaughtered for no reason. This is not a problem that can be solved by politics or any legislation. Politics is born of philosophy, so if a philosophy is wrong, obviously the politics will fail as well. Gun ownership is not a political problem, it is part of a philosophy of self-reliance—and education comes out of that branch of thought. So to solve the problem you have to fix the philosophy that feeds the politics, and in this case left leaning philosophies are proven failures everywhere in the world they are utilized. That means that if we really want to fix these government schools, we must use American ideas to solve them, not the same old European failures and until that happens, there are many more Dimitrios Pagourtizis types waiting to snap and make a name for themselves at the expense of others before they kill themselves.  And those are facts we all must deal with.

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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John McCain is a Bitter, Dying Man: Getting captured, and tortured can’t erase the fact that he was and still is an idiot

So what did White House communications aide Kelly Sadler say that wasn’t true? John McCain is dying, How else to explain McCain’s attitude toward Donald Trump as the former presidential candidate dies of a brain abnormality. There’s obviously something wrong with the guy, because even after turning around the economy, bringing peace to North Korea and solving a long list of problems that have plagued White Houses for many years, McCain’s hatred for Trump goes even deeper than sanity would dictate. It was just a week ago that John McCain let it be known that he didn’t want President Trump to attend his funeral. What is the Trump administration supposed to apologize for, Kelly Sadler was telling the truth, and trying in the nicest way possible to explain away the actions of an obviously bitter man in McCain?

Yet of course there is always more going on isn’t there? The calls for the Trump administration to apologize isn’t out of respect, but control. The intentions of the Trump-hating politicians like John McCain was never to solve regional problems, they always intended to use them for more military deployment, larger military budgets and more reasons to conduct legislative monstrosities on Capital Hill. The North Korean problems were always solvable—the kid Kim Jong Un just wanted NBA basketball tickets. He’s been in love with the West for years, he just didn’t know how to get there—after all he had a role to play which he inherited from his own family. Everyone knew that the kid was willing to turn—but nobody acted on it until Trump was elected and now that the little secret is out of the bag, people like John McCain are spiteful that Trump is actually solving problems instead of using those same problems to further the power of the legislative branch by using chaos to gain public opinions. The Never Trumper types out there are angry at Trump for taking away their excuses—they aren’t outraged by porn stars, or Trump’s weekend golf games, they hate him because he does the job he was elected to do and people like McCain never wanted to solve the problems to begin with. People like McCain use problems to stay in power but believe that if they ever solve anything that the public will turn on them and expect results in the future—which incompetent people always fear—results.

This method of control which is being attempted to keep Americans always in a state of guilt to hide the solutions to problems goes back a long time. Even to the point in world history where holes were being dug in the earth to mine gold or coal, lunatics trying to maintain the old order of politics would try to scare away prospectors by proclaiming that nobody should do such things because they might dig their way into the devil’s bedroom and awaken the wrath of Hell for disturbing God’s fallen protégé. Of course, we all know that now to be nonsense, but such arguments have been made in the past to keep mankind clinging to the old so that those who held power could keep it based on the fears of the population. Even men on their dying beds hold such power to be their primary sustenance and they cling to those fears like a hungry person clutches a marinated chicken wing fresh off the grill.

What makes a person a hero is not that they were a prisoner of war, or that they suffered at the hands of an enemy. When Trump made his original comment during the 2016 campaign when he said he liked people who weren’t captured, he was simply stating that in the private sector results matter. Yet in politics there are all these emotional rules we are supposed to follow no matter how bad politicians have been. John McCain the way that the political order of things has established for us, is supposed to be a hero just because he was a POW during the Vietnam War. With that criteria the three guys who were just released from North Korea will be heroes for the rest of their lives, no matter what they do in the world. McCain lost the 2008 election because he had the wrong strategy and he cost Republicans a lot of trouble during the years of Obama. Most recently he voted against the repeal of Obamacare and he has even participated in the leaked dossier which found its way into the FBI hands against Trump. McCain went after the jugular of the Trump presidency many more times than once and we are supposed to overlook them all just because John McCain was captured at one point in his life?

Politicians like John McCain use military service to highlight a larger, more corrosive element of human existence which actually imprisons us all to the aristocracy of ancient times, when modern life has made it quite clear that those old politicians are worthless to our advancements. By highlighting military service as the highest honor an individual can obtain they define self-sacrifice to the “greater good” as being the focus of human existence, which is as wrong as wrong can be. But that’s how they have sold the kind of trouble that politicians have gotten America into over the years, for which ultimately Donald Trump was elected to fix. I have known that this game was a farce for a long time, and I dreamed of having someone like Trump in the White House to fix the philosophical problems presented by statist societies. Because he was a Republican I voted for John McCain in 2008 but he was so embarrassing—always apologizing for things, always insisting that we play nice with all our opponents—and he wonders why he lost. An apology is an admission that something is wrong or that someone committed an improper act. Would John McCain apologize to the United States for holding a personal grudge against President Trump by voting down the Obamacare reform, or in trying to keep the Russian conspiracy alive with fake documents just because he is spiteful that an American businessman was elected president while a POW from the Vietnam War didn’t get elected just because people didn’t feel guilty enough about his service in the military so long ago?

In the logic of the political order we are supposed to ignore everything John McCain says because he is dying, even to the point that we aren’t supposed to talk about it. We are supposed to ignore everything he says because he was a war hero, even though John McCain’s intentions have been quite malicious and personal. What he has done hasn’t been for the good of the country, it has been to satisfy his own yearnings for power by using guilt of service and hardship to cruise his way through frozen opinion that put his actions beyond social judgment—and that is just ridiculous. It is exactly that which caused people to vote for Trump in the first place, and if McCain really loved America, he’d see that. But John McCain doesn’t love America or its role in the world as a beacon of freedom. He loves to use guilt to drive opinion because he’s been doing it most of his life now—using his personal failures such as being captured as a POW to elevate himself beyond opinion so that the political order that he does love could continue to rule mankind through guilt instead of logic—and that is a crime all of itself.

Rich Hoffman

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