Tag: Doc Thompson

We Need More Guns: What the Las Vegas mass shooting has taught us about the failures of progressive society

The only way to stop the mass shooting that took place in Las Vegas by the 64-year-old Stephen Paddock was to have other armed people nearby who could have shot him dead. Ideally, personally armed people could have killed him from the balcony from which he rained down terror well before he took the lives of over 50 innocent people and more than 500 concert goers. There is no law or any centralized planning that could have stopped this crime. And if it hadn’t been a gun a person like Stephen Paddock could have used a vehicle. There is always danger when people are so tightly packed together anywhere under any circumstances. The best safety for all involved is to have other people there with weapons to stop the crime before the authorities arrived. As it stands Paddock was able to shoot unmolested for over 20 minutes—and that is simply too long to take action.

LAS VEGAS, Oct 2 (Reuters) – A 64-year-old man armed with more than 10 rifles rained down gunfire on a Las Vegas country music festival on Sunday, slaughtering at least 50 people in the largest mass shooting in U.S. history before killing himself.

The barrage from a 32nd-floor window in the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of 22,000 people lasted several minutes, causing panic. Some fleeing fans trampled each other as police scrambled to find the gunman. More than 400 people were injured.

Police identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock, who lived in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, and said they had no sense of what prompted his attack. The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the massacre, but U.S. officials expressed skepticism of that claim.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/breakingnews/gunman-mows-down-at-least-50-people-in-las-vegas-concert-attack/ar-AAsLPFk?ocid=spartanntp

What we know now is that this guy, Paddock was a mild-mannered fellow prior to this event and I’m sure there will be a lot of talk about his background and speculation into why he would do such a thing. Could it be some kind of false flag deal to harass the Trump administration with just one more thing? Conspiracies are relevant to the fact-finding of an issue no matter how far fetched they might seem. Given what we know about our own government, who knows what they might do to turn public sentiment onto a topic of their design. What matters is that somehow this guy managed to get a lot of automatic weapons and a lot of very expensive ammunition to commit this heinous act which is very suspicious. Trump said it best when he said that it was an evil act—because no matter how you slice it—it was evil.

And that places this issue at a very philosophical place—can we trust centralized authority to protect us or do we fully utilize the Second Amendment to make every citizen a first responder in a violent world where people like Paddock could bring death to us in any moment? Can authorities stop the Paddocks of the world? I would say no. The only solution would be to have everyone in that concert armed, to have people in that hotel armed and to have people always ready to stop evil when it appears. There isn’t any other solution. Progressives have an ultimate failure that they are specifically responsible for, they have tried to centralize our society to the point where people don’t think for themselves anymore and the solution to a mass murder like this Vegas shooting is to decentralize the means to stop it.

Progressives like to talk about the kind of laissez-faire gun control that I propose as living in the Wild West—as if that were a bad thing. What they fail to understand is that there is a natural morality associated with personal firearm protection that actually elevates our society into mutual respect. There is nothing in the world that makes people more equal than a gun. A weak woman is as strong as the stoutest man if she has a gun. Guns make the races, and people of age all on equal footing and it forces people to be respectful of one another. In a society where guns are on every hip, Stephen Paddock would have been killed within a minute instead of many more—and many fewer people would be dead and hurt. Progressives are the ones who regulated everything and centralized the safety of our world, and when it fails, the blood is on their hands. In Las Vegas the failures of progressive society failed miserably.

At gun events I never worry about anybody shooting guns at other people because a mutual respect is established between everyone else since everyone is equally armed. Guns are only scary when other people have them and you don’t. Because of the progressive educations we have all experienced where guns were demonized people of our time have been made to fear guns when instead they should look to them as equalizers in a dangerous world—that by having them guarantees respect from those who might have evil intentions. Guns make the world safer, not more dangerous. It is only when guns are in the hands of bad guys, or people who lose their mind for whatever reason that the balance of equality shifts toward evil and the innocent become the bottom of the food chain. One more law or 200,000 cannot stop evil from committing crime when respect is vacant from our society. Guns create respect where it isn’t naturally applicable.

In a free society the best way to achieve equality and respect is with a gun. The more guns the better and in as many places as possible. A centralized state may have good intentions but they were powerless to stop someone like Paddock. And there are no metal detectors and security checkpoints in the world that can stop evil when it decides to act. God forbid we turn Vegas into another airport terminal of neurotic security to overreact to this tragedy when the real answer is to arm more people, not less of them. I’m not a big fan of Las Vegas but it is one of the most laissez-faire places in the world and it would be a shame to allow clueless government bureaucrats to overact by instituting more security when all they really need to do is to make it easier for good people to carry guns openly so that people like Paddock couldn’t kill so many so easily.

One of the most attractive aspects of the Wild Wild West for me is that it was a time before progressives came to existence to latch to our governments and ruin our world with overly centralized planning. The period of westward expansion was a time of great human enterprise and philosophic contemplation. Slavery was ended and most of America’s wealth was created in those years and much of who we are was established in that period. Progressives wanted to “progress” beyond that thinking, and they have the ruin of lives in their wake to demonstrate their lack of virtue. And that has never been more obvious than in the debate over guns, where in Vegas they got what they wanted—a society of people standing around listening to a concert generally unarmed and enjoying an evening in “Sin City.” But all it took was one person to shoot guns into a packed crowd to change their lives forever. And Paddock didn’t have a right to do that. If it hadn’t been for progressive influence, there would have been someone there to shoot that old man. And if they had, many more people would have lived.

Rich Hoffman

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The Pittsburg Steelers Suck: How “group think” is destroying the NFL

I will forever now hate the Pittsburg Steelers for the way they handled the National Anthem and their individual player Alejandro Villanueva who was the only person who came out of the player’s tunnel to pay respect to the flag during last Sunday’s game.  In the past I’ve been supportive of the head coach Mike Tomlin but now under this national crisis he’s shown himself to be one of the villains, and I have no place in my life for a person like that.  I’m not going to watch any more Steelers games in the NFL, I can tell you that.  To watch how excited people were that Villanueva was the only one to stand for the anthem, then to take that away with a weak apology to the “team” the way events occurred the next day displayed everything that is wrong with football.  Obviously Tomlin and the Steelers teammates had gotten to Villanueva forcing the guy to wipe everything good he had done away completely for the good of the “group think” concept of team sports, and I think it’s disgusting.

As much positive that I’ve written about American football, and how it is a game of capitalism, there has always been that one little thing that has bothered me about “the game.”  And that is and was for me the culture of the locker room.  Now to that effect the best comments I have heard on this subject came from Chris Carter shown below in a video.  But for all the passion Chris showed toward the locker room culture that is precisely what always turned me off to team sports.  If I could have just played the game and embarked in the heroics of what happened on the field—I would have loved to play football and other team sports.  When I was in school I was heavily recruited by many coaches and my parents really pushed me to participate.  I was a very fast kid, a strong kid and a naturally gifted athlete.  I healed quickly, my body responded well in the weight room by putting on muscle when needed in a few days—everything about my physical body was what coaches wanted except for one thing, I thought the whole experience of the team concept was stupid.

When I was in the fifth grade I had a physical education teacher who really was encouraging me to be a multiple sport athlete because it was obvious to him that I was the fastest and strongest for my size of anybody in school.  But in sixth grade the next gym teacher was an arrogant prick who was all about group think, and I was opposed to everything that guy stood for.  I can say I hated that person before we ever spoke to each other because his value system was so diametrically opposed to mine.  However, let’s back up before going on—because this is important to the situation we are seeing now.  Even more than physical ability I was gifted with clarity of thought that extended beyond any parental teaching that anybody could give me.  Some might say that God walked with me very closely and guided me—which I think takes away from the actual value of my own decision making—but I always had very clear thoughts about how things should be, and had the courage to act on them—so when I was being groomed for being the next hot athlete in grade school, I resisted because I was opposed to all forms of “group think” that were presented to me—and public education was all about “group think” and “peer pressure.”  Ultimately what changed Alejandro Villanueva from a solitary figure pledging allegiance in the player’s tunnel and capturing America’s pride for about 24 hours but then reducing him to s slobbering apologist surrendering his big body to the rights of the “team” was that peer pressure instruction which had molded him into a professional football player in the NFL.  All those players at that level are governed by the same rules and those rules greatly restrict them as human beings which is why I never developed into an athlete outside of gym class.  I always fought peer pressure from day one in public school and that made the experience miserable for me.  I am thankful to this very day that I was aware of it from such a young age.  Group think is the worst aspect of human nature and I was always immune to it which then allowed me to see things without the emotion of worrying about what other people thought about it.  You can’t be a truly free person in life until you have made that personal decision not to worry about the opinions of other people.

I had a long talk with my gym teacher in the fifth grade when the subject of showers came up.  It was a purely voluntary thing to strip down and shower with the other kids after gym class but I wasn’t about to take off my cloths and share my naked body in the presence of my classmates.  I didn’t like those kids and I surely wasn’t going to reveal myself in a naked form to assimilate with them.  My parents then got involved and they all spoke to me that once we started doing sports in the seventh and eighth grades, that showering would be mandatory.  The more they pushed, the more I dug in.  I always saw the shower thing as a way to strip away the natural defenses of clothing and to symbolize removing our individuality into the naked truth of kinship where everyone was equally naked and sharing that experience together.  I wasn’t going to do it and that was all there was to it.  A lot of people were disappointed in me and they let me know it through peer pressure.  Yet the more they pushed, the more I dug in and the only place I found relief was in books, video games, and adventures outside of the school environment.  Since I didn’t waste an ounce of my time on satisfying other people’s peer pressure, I was free to do many other things leading me to a very colorful life full of unique experiences.  It all started by refusing to shower with other kids in school.

As a lot of these professional athletes grew into the specimens of perfection that they must be to play in the NFL at some point in the past they had to assimilate to that group think mentality which is what quickly controlled the behavior of Alejandro Villanueva.  These players are bigger, stronger, faster and tougher than the average person, but they are weak in the mind and can easily be controlled by little people like Mike Tomlin because of their preponderance to “group think.”  Groups are never more powerful than individuals and that is essentially the opposite message that the concept of team sports tries to convey.  Parents push their kids into team sports always hoping that their kid will win the lottery and become one of these professional athletes and live a good life under the protection of “group think” but you know what, I would never curse anybody I loved with such a limited vision for life.  I would never tell a kid I loved to take that first step in a locker room to become equal and bonded through nudity surrendering their individuality to a group called a “team.”  Not that the showering situation is about being gay, which I think is somewhat of a problem.  Athletes often have a “bros before hoes” clause in their psychological pacts with each other which I am adamantly against—and that mentality starts in the locker room culture—the all for one and one for all mentality of group think.

That’s why this whole NFL protest concept is so dangerous, because here you have millionaire athletes who are public celebrities behaving so quickly to the peer pressure of group think that they are easily used to sell social justice radicalism to their fans without understanding really what they are doing.  Trump is right about what he said about NFL owners being afraid of their players.  And coaches like Mike Tomlin was trying to get in front of that fear by uniting his team through group think, even though what Alejandro Villanueva did was good for the country.  But it wasn’t good for his team so guess what he did—he put Villanueva on the spot to protect the reputation of the team.  Obviously he tried to back track his vitriol once there were reports that Steelers fans were burning their jerseys and Terrible Towels.  Because here’s the secret to the whole thing, fans of the NFL love to watch team sports and root for the collective efforts of the team they have picked in an artificial war on the field of play.  But if you listen to them talk at tail gating parties before the games you hear the recitation of individual stats.  Those individuals are picked for Fantasy Football teams based on their individual performance.  So to the fans, it’s all about individualism and Alejandro Villanueva embodied that spirit gloriously before the game which caused all this trouble.  Once people were reminded that Alejandro Villanueva was just another “team player” yielding to the peer pressures of the world he became no better than anybody else—certainly not someone to celebrate.  And that is why the NFL is dying before our eyes.

When Aaron Rogers tried to get the Green Bay Packers fans to lock arms at Lambeau Field during a Thursday Night Football game on a national stage he was embarrassed to find that almost nobody did it.  As a jock trained to think in group assimilation he assumed the fans would follow him like all the other idiots he knew from his locker room.  People do not like to share themselves with people who do not possess the same value systems.  This is why team sports is such a big part of public education, because the goal is to create a class structure where athletes are considered elite people who then impose peer pressure on the rest of the world to satisfy the objectives of the government institution.  That might work conceptually, but it doesn’t work intellectually—and the effort failed.  But the attempt to even try it reveals the ugly side of the NFL which makes it easy for fans to turn away from the moment that it doesn’t give them what they want—which is relief from politics and the anxieties of our days.  When athletes show themselves to be simple automatons subject to group think instead of dynamic individuals that might be on the next insurance commercial, then the magic of football leaves and something else will replace it.  And the Pittsburg Steelers have really shot themselves in the foot assuming that people would be with them no matter what.  Now they have to live with their bad decision, which won’t be easy for them to do.  Speaking for myself, I will never watch another football game where the Steelers are playing.  I have better things to do than to waste my time on them.

Rich Hoffman

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Everything We Need to Know about the NFL’s Inevitable Death: The Global Citizen movement is attacking America through entertainment unions

Many aren’t aware of it, but there is a lot more to the NFL controversy about players taking a knee during the National Anthem. Many think that Trump shouldn’t be dealing with the issue, but then again, they clearly don’t understand the strategies of the anti-American forces invading our sovereignty. For those who don’t know the story visit the website linked below to the Global Citizen movement. That is the latest Socialist International effort to spread global communism to every reach of the globe. They simply changed the name to make it more inviting and stuck it to a bunch of stupid NFL players who think they are civil rights heroes. The NFL players are just uneducated participants easily pulled into the global events of our times as unsuspecting fools selling poison to an audience the NFL has come to take for granted. Trump was right to highlight the issue as a top priority. It may very well be the biggest issue of our day, more so than war with North Korea, our $20 trillion-dollar debt, or the three major hurricanes that have destroyed American cities over the last few weeks.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/

After what I saw this past weekend from the NFL, with many players taking a knee during the Nation Anthem, then watching Jerry Jones cave to the player’s movement by kneeling in the center of the field of the Monday Night game in Arizona locked arm and arm—I’m done. As many know, I have been a fan of the NFL during the whole duration of this blog site—but not anymore. What I see happening is a poplar game being exploited by a greedy socialist trade union that is working in conjunction with the other entertainment unions, SAG, DGA and many others to spread this Global Citizen movement and expecting unaware NFL lovers to go along with it because they love the game so much. Well, I think the NFL assumes too much. Fans are willing to put up with players who beat their wives, do drugs, and even kill people—but they won’t stand for a lack of patriotism. The National Anthem is part of the NFL experience and it allows people to feel good about the event—and without it, the game is a weakened exchange.

My wife and I were planning a trip to Tampa Bay on the weekend of November 12th for a long weekend, as we have in the past—to visit Raymond James Stadium, enjoy the beach, and have a great time at the Buccaneers football game against the Jets. After I saw Mike Evens take a knee at the Vikings game Sunday I cancelled all our plans in that moment. That was before they lost to the Vikings by the way. I don’t care how good Mike Evens is as a football player, he’s not so good he can’t stand for the National Anthem. If he’s not going to do that, I’m not spending my money on the team he plays on, and people who read here often know how much I love the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But I don’t love them that much, not enough to put up with spoiled brat kids who are more willing to be cheer leaders of the Global Citizen movement than of the country for which the game of football is a spokesman. Without that game to play people like Mike Evens wouldn’t be a multimillion-dollar player to begin with—he’d be doing some regular job like everyone else, so the kid needs to learn his place in the world, and my money won’t contribute to his ignorance.

We budgeted around $5000 dollars for our trip and that would have covered the plane tickets, the hotel—a nice hotel suite, the game tickets, food for the weekend, a little shopping at the International Mall which we like to visit when we travel to that region, and of course spending money at the stadium—around a $1000 just for that. Some people might not think that’s much money, but I think it’s a tremendous amount of money just for a weekend football game. Now I don’t think I’ll even watch the game on television. Forget about the NFL pass on cable, I’m not going to pay that either. I’m not going to spend any money on the NFL this year because of all this. Normally through the year I might spend several thousand dollars. In years like this one where we plan out of state trips to watch the Buccaneers play, it might be $7000 per year spent during the whole season—including merchandise. Not this year, and maybe never again. I love football, but I don’t love it enough to put up with this kind of crap. If I can’t feel good about the money I’m spending, I’m not going to spend it. After all, Battlefront II comes out just a few days later and I’m very excited for that new video game release. Who needs football for entertainment when you have a Playstation? One is a passive experience, the other is an active one.

This is where the NFL has sided with the wrong groups. Obviously, they are backing their players union support of this Global Citizen movement because they want to expand the NFL market. A “flag first” policy does not help the strategic objectives of their global reach, and in order to get that, the NFL needs to accept more socialism—because let’s face it, the rest of the world is a very socialist place. All this solidarity crap is socialist speak to the leftists of the world whom the NFL is trying to reach. NFL executives figured they already had saturated the American market so there isn’t much left to acquire. To keep up with escalating payrolls for which the players union demands—especially with all the concussion protocols–the NFL must seek oversea markets so that is why they are supporting this anti flag movement.

The Global Citizen movement aims to remove sovereignty from all countries, especially the United States so that their objectives of a one world government can be met. Trump knows this better than anybody right now because he gets to talk to these people every day—which is why I’m sure he unleased this debate right after his United Nations speech. Global Citizenship is a buzz word right now in all progressive communities and if the president is trying to instill an American first message, then he has to attack the global movement where they are festering utterly undetected—behind America’s game of football.

This is where the NFL is going wrong—their American base of fan support isn’t as strong as it used to be. The new generation of young people won’t spend money on the games like my generation did, or the people of the generation that came before me. They won’t buy season tickets and commit to eight games per season, and they certainly won’t waste $5000 per game like I have from time to time to have a fun weekend out of town for a favorite football team in another city’s market. I’m 50 years old and honestly, I’d rather spend my Sundays playing Battlefront II where I get to be at the center of the action instead of watching millionaire players have all the fun. People younger than I am most certainly feel that way. There are far more things to do on a Sunday than watch NFL football. You can binge watch shows on Netflix or Amazon Prime, you can lose yourself in video games playing with people all over the world which is a lot more exciting than watching a football game. What the NFL doesn’t seem to realize through arrogance entirely of their own, is that once they lose their fans—they won’t be back. Once people turn off to football, they are gone forever. My generation will care some, but they’ll find something else to do. The next generations, they’re playing video games—by the millions. They don’t need the NFL.

I almost feel sorry for the NFL players for getting themselves wrapped up in this mess. They are cutting their own throats and they don’t even know it. They are destroying the game for future generations, and utterly cutting off their own revenue stream. Their NFL owners won’t be able to pay their gigantic payrolls soon, because the money simply won’t be there. To sustain what they currently are accustom to, the beer needs to flow, and be very overpriced, people need to buy lots of jerseys, and they need to fill those stadium seats. TV ratings have to be great, not good—but GREAT! That’s the only way advertisers will pay premium to market their products. If people turn off the game and revert to Playstation—which they were already doing before this controversy—then the NFL as a business dies. It won’t take long for it to happen—just a few years from now. Even under optimal conditions the NFL was going to have to adjust, but now they may lose their game forever to a public that has their entertainment appetites stimulated by other things. Nobody wants to watch flag football—and they certainly won’t plop down 5K for it not with all the other things out there to entertain us.

The players and the media should have listened to Trump. They are the ones who politicized the game and once the president called them out on it, they dug down deeper—and damaged themselves to a far greater magnitude. I am surprised that more smart people have not yet drawn these conclusions and connected these complicated dots, but perhaps that is because there is too much emotion associated with the NFL which has been with us for a long time. But to be honest, it’s a pretty young game in the scheme of things—something that has essentially lived and died during my generation. And when its gone forever, nobody will miss it—few will ever remember that it ever was.

Rich Hoffman

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New Rules to the Game of Power: From Henry the VIII to the NFL–the world is changed forever

If you know anything about European history, or actually the history of anything human—you will find extensive evidence of people worshipping other people as their rulers.  It is something that is wired into our DNA—we seek masters to rule over us.  Even in America virtually every place of business has some semblance to their own version of the Game of Thrones—Which George R.R. Martin actually based on the War of the Roses in Europe.  People will do almost anything to gain a title that they can then use to acquire power over others and typically that is the name of the game.  When people acquire those titles and that power they have a right to rule over the minds of mankind in whatever capacity the title gives them as defined by our human history.  Such as, a village chief makes all the executive decisions that concern the culture of the people connected to that collection of people.  A CEO at a company performs the same type of function, and of course there are underlings who are always plotting and scheming to nock that person out of their seat so they can then acquire control of a company.   If people cannot become the CEO then they will usually do anything to acquire some seat of power under the CEO—in whatever capacity they can get—because the behavior is toward power acquisition and naturally assumes that the structure of that particular society will obey mindlessly the unspoken conformance to the rules of conduct that has been with us since the beginning of time.  In that pecking order politicians have always assumed that they were greater than say a CEO and thus ruled over all others because they controlled the rules in society that the CEO had to live by, and often this forces the businessman to contribute donations to the cause of the politician to gain assistance with the law giving the impression to all that in the rock, paper, scissor game of life, the politician was superior to the businessman, and that all people under those titles were to mindlessly follow their “betters” without question.

America, or the concept of it anyway, decided to revolt against this trend and provide people with the freedom to choose for themselves to rule themselves and this introduced a very confusing dynamic to the scheme of human endeavor.  It’s only been a few hundred years since this idea was created and compared to the many thousands of years of history within the human race, it shouldn’t be surprising that we are just now getting used to the idea.   Donald Trump is essentially the first president to ever be elected to a position of power based purely on the merit of his life—a free man living by his own inclinations and not given some seat of power by boot licking and heredity.  His political enemies have tried to frame his rise to power in that fashion, but it doesn’t stick because Trump is a man of his own making.  That makes him the most unique world leader in all of human history—which is the source of the anguish against him.

There is a lot of fear leveled at Donald Trump by those who have been playing their own version of Game of Thrones for years and have always thought that if they did this, or that—they’d acquire a seat of power and would then be given some authority over their peers—which they seek desperately.  There are a lot of psychological reasons for the insecurity that drives people to seek these seats of power, but for the context of this article, we must focus strictly on the desire to acquire power.   Donald Trump has changed the rules to the overall game of politics—and that has every establishment person upset because all the rules are changing to the “game” and they don’t want to adapt to it.

There is a secret to those who seek the most power through the acquisition of titles—most of them are notably lazy people.   They want to gain some title for which they can sit and boss other people around without being the smartest, fastest, strongest or most qualified person—and they count on fear to force everyone into compliance.  If merit becomes the dominating factor in acquiring power—as it should always have been—then new rules for acquiring power become mainstream and the lazy people of our species are at a loss.  That is why the establishment is and has always been against Donald Trump.  It is also why people will stick next to Trump no matter what he says or does, because Trump has a track record of success and he acquired his power based on it.

In the past people were so easy to destroy who had these positions of power because they always acquired their power through some sentiment—or some connection to others.  This gave the groupthink people leverage over the title seeker in case they ever stepped out of line.  If a politician slept with some woman while on the campaign trail and later they got out of control with their donors, or they voted incorrectly on something the violator could quickly be dispelled by scandal because what was given by emotional invisible rules could be easily destroyed by the same.  In the days of Henry the VIII if he wanted to overthrow the Roman Catholic Church from controlling his kingdom through the Pope he would marry a protestant rebel and use her to give rise to the movement against the church.  Then after the king had England’s politics wrestled away from the Pope and he was tired of his queen and wanted to change her to another he simply dreamed up chargers of infidelity against her so that he could cut off her head and marry a new woman.  What was given by sentiment and emotion was easily taken away—you see dear reader.

In politics the media has played their own version of kingdom building, they build people up, they tear them down and they use that leverage to control who has power and who doesn’t.  But that doesn’t work on Trump because the former Apprentice star has been through the fires of merit and has earned everything he became.   The media came to Trump to boost their ratings but to their dismay they never gained control of him because what was given was done so to acquire power from the natural aptitude of Trump.  The Apprentice went on to become a big success and introduced reality TV to an unsuspecting audience and would change entertainment forever.  Trump wasn’t cast to the top of the heap because of a bunch of executive producers.  He was already there.  NBC snuggled up to Trump always thinking that they’d gain control of him in some way like they did everyone else in history but it never happened.  Trump went on to become president because of his natural inclinations and is completely free of lobbyists, media influence, or peer groups which is the most terrifying aspect of his presidency to those who have spent their lives playing the games of power only to find out now all the rules have changed.

All the things Trump has said this previous week, from the Rocketman comment regarding North Korea to the blasting of the NFL for not requiring their players to stand during the National Anthem the president has done as a free person—and that is new to the stage of human achievement.  We like that Trump says those things because we feel those things ourselves, but have not had a seat at the table of power to communicate to others.  But in America we elect a president to represent us to the world, we don’t elect a king or a noble overlord—we elect a representative, and Trump represents all those who strive to have a merit based system of power acquisition so that we can actually solve problems in our government, not just to have a class of aristocrats to admire from afar who enchant us with entertainment as our “betters.”  I recognize no person on earth as my “better.”  And the people supporting Trump through thick and thin are of the same mind.  On the stage of history this is the first time this has happened, and it’s scaring the crap out of the world that has never had to deal with this elected phenomena.  Democracies have always paid lip service to this idea of a freely elected person to represent the masses, but always that person was easily controlled by traditional methods.   Now with Trump those rules are changed forever.  Our society will never be able to go back to the way it was—because the way it is, is so much better.  That is the pain you hear on the news from those who have always thought that if they did this or that they would be rewarded with seats of power.  Now those seats are meaningless making their lives meaningless because they have put so much of their lazy selves into that game that now they are left empty and staring into an abyss of future values that are beyond them.  Which is a very good thing.

Rich Hoffman

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Donald Trump’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Moment: Venezuela’s epic failure due to their commitment to socialism

 

I know, I write about Donald Trump a lot these days.  Yes there are many other things going on in the world—especially local issues,  but as I see it we are witnessing the greatest political trend change that the history of the world has ever seen—and I can’t think of anything more important.  It dosen’t do any good to chase the tail of something as long and elusive as our current social trends which are like a very long snake.  What Trump does today will have a tremendous effect on tomorrow, so it is important to capture those little moments as they occur.  Specifically it was the great United Nations speech that Donald Trump gave which illustrated so many positive things for American culture, but none as great as when the topic of Venezuelan socialism was brought forth and put on the world stage for all to see.

I was surprised years ago when so many people were upset that the great American novel Atlas Shrugged was being made into a movie.  I knew the filmmakers, and was a friend of the crew throughout the production and for them it was a love project.  They had a small budget in order to tell a gigantic story—an epic on the scale of Game of Thrones.  Yet Hollywood wouldn’t touch the project through a legitimate studio with A-list actors essentially because the media companies were so deeply contaminated with socialist and communist supporters that such a pro-capitalist story like Atlas Shrugged was never going to get “green-lit.”

Hollywood has always been a little left but it has only been recently that they were so overtly advocated out-right socialist—as a general philosophy.  Their A-list actors, even people like Harrison Ford, have stepped out of reality and onto the socialist band wagon because it is the social trend of Santa Monica valley these days.  If you go into a bar there by the pier talking about the merits of capitalism those weak-kneed she-males and braless bitches will be ready for a fight—they believe in socialism that much.  So when the independent filmmakers of the new Atlas Distribution Company wanted to make a movie out of one of the great American novels for which Atlas Shrugged is and has always been, all the studios laughed at them.  Many years before the studios laughed at Star Wars too, but that’s another story.  I only say that because “group think” does not understand how to make good movies, or how to detect social trends.  Individuals do.  Remember that.

I thought the movie attempt at Atlas Shrugged was ambitious and they managed to do a pretty good job getting the high points down in a visual form.  I would like to see a big budget Netflix series done for Atlas Shrugged that spans for 10 one hour episodes, because I think that’s what it would take to properly tell the story—but it was a bold attempt even as the entertainment unions pushed back hard on anybody associated with the project.  The production could not keep actors from one film to the next as the movies were divided out into three parts.  The actors were beat on so much by the rest of the Hollywood community that all three movies had a different cast and the only ones who signed up were actors looking for something to do.  It was a real challenge and showed me how bad Hollywood really had become.  All the friendly meetings I had with various people over the years flew right out the window as their true intentions were revealed during the production of Atlas Shrugged.

For those who have read the book you know what I’m talking about.  The modern situation in Venezuela is essentially the plot of the book.  A successful country (the United States in the story) is pushed into socialism by their government and the world plunges into darkness.  Once the government establishes things like price controls and root themselves into a severe crony capitalist market, the world falls apart and it is the point of Atlas Shrugged to identify why.  Essentially the “engines” of the world go on strike and that leaves everyone else starving—literally.  The beauty of Atlas Shrugged is that it does something that Karl Marx never achieved—it identified why some people make everything happen while others destroy the world around them—so if the makers of the world fail to participate, economies fail and countries wither away into dust.   The political Left has never come to grips with this phenomenon and this is the aspect of our civilization that is most important to our continuation into the future.  Marxism and all the fruits that fell from it like socialism, communism and fascism all turned out to be rotten short-lived fantasies first breathed by Sir Thomas More in his classic book Utopia—that were destroyed during westward expansion in the United States.   While Marx and his followers were pushing for labor unions to take over the world by controlling the means of production the railroads, the gold rush and the promise of private property in America used capitalism to fill the sky lines of the worlds next great cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles which until that period was just a border town–until the gold rush then the movie industry gave people a reason to live there.

Venezuela had been a pretty good place to live; it was a thriving country living off its oil reserves until Hugo Chavez brought socialism to their economy.   Once Chavez died a member of his inner circle Nicolás Maduro, a former bus driver (seriously) rose to power as a union leader and became the next president.  If you want to see what happens when labor unions get their way by controlling the “means” of production, just look what happened to Venezuela in just a few short years. As the state took over more and more of its industry, they became much less productive and their economy essentially died right in front of the world.  Now the people of Venezuela are starving—literally, and nobody seems to understand why, at least those who have advocated for socialism. Yet it is the nearly seventy year old book Atlas Shrugged that provided an almost page by page analysis for all to read—but the world watched and let it happen to Venezuela anyway.

What was remarkable about Donald Trump’s speech was that most of the people in that general assembly at the United Nations have emotional connections to socialism.  They are either members of Socialist International or they have been thinking about it.  Only the United States has maintained a defense of capitalism and our economy shows it.  The way for more countries around the world to prevent more people from being poor or from having terrible GDP numbers is to unleash capitalism and reject communism.  China’s communism only works if it attaches itself to a capitalist country and can keep the other nations around them poor so that they can maintain some form of price controls.  But if a country to the south like Vietnam were to adopt capitalism, or Cambodia, India or even North Korea—Russia and those types of places—China’s economy would sink because of their communist system.  What happened to Venezuela was that the price of oil went down and they couldn’t compete. That is all the unsaid story before, and no American president would strongly defend capitalism allowing everyone to shrug their shoulders as if they had nothing to do with anything happening to countries like Venezuela.  But when Donald Trump said what he did it put the issue on the front burner in a way nobody was prepared for, and it properly articulated the problem—boldly, people had to listen.  And that was a significant moment in the history of the world that will be remembered for many centuries.  I thought it was tremendous and it will prove to be bigger than anything that happens on the local level because that culture change will flow into the rest of the country rather rapidly.  And I love it!

Rich Hoffman

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“Rocket Man”: Ghost writing and the hidden value of being a voice in the dark

It was 2010 and I was meeting with my congressman John Boehner with a Power Point presentation I had put together about the United Nations and how much America put into it compared to other nations, and I was urging my representative to get out of that body of government because it was intrusive, out-of-touch, and seeking to end American sovereignty.   Of course the reaction I received from my proposal was a sneer and an attitude toward me of ignorance which pissed me off greatly—as if my little mind couldn’t grapple with the realities of the world.  It pissed me off so much that I immediately resolved to create this blog.  I was smarter than any of the people I met with, yet because I suggested ending the American participation into the United Nations I was treated with contempt and ignorance as if those things applied to me.  Well I’m still at it while Congressman Boehner is now a lobbyists in Washington D.C., as he essentially always was, and finally there is a new president of the United States who does understand as I always have what the United Nations really has been, and he gave a speech which properly represented my view points—and I enjoyed it greatly.  The best part of the speech was where Trump called the war mongering North Korean despot, “Rocket Man” for his constant threat of nuclear war.  The stunned chamber listened mostly in silence as a new kind of American bravado finally launched itself on the world stage and it gave me tremendous pride.

Critics of President Trump will say that he doesn’t read off the teleprompter very well, and that the magnanimity of that UN speech was written for him, and that he’s not sophisticated enough to come up with those line of sentences on his own.  But I’d say that it takes a lot of guts for someone like Trump to even read words written for him in front of such an audience because once he does they will forever be associated with him, and that is something different we haven’t seen before—a person in a major leadership position who will own that kind of dialogue on the world stage.  John Boehner certainly wouldn’t do it way back in 2010 and he was the closest person who I thought might.  Certainly John McCain who had just run for president in 2008 wouldn’t because he lectured our local radio celebrity Bill Cunningham on using too harsh of language against Barack Obama during a Cincinnati GOP rally—so even during elections where much was either gained or lost, the GOP leadership would not commit to the kind of terms that were needed to stand against a global tide seeking to end American sovereignty on its way to world domination of thought and deed—while we as Americans paid the bill.

A few years later when I needed them most, many local GOP people left me hanging on a vine as I had committed myself to harsh language at our political enemies and they wouldn’t stand with me.  They cowered in fear because they were not in politics to accomplish anything seriously; they simply wanted the titles and the money that came from crony capitalism and stirring the pot the way I wanted to, in order to fix the situation didn’t give them what they were looking for in politics, so villainy continued and they would look toward me and say behind my back, “he just doesn’t understand.”  Like hell if I never understood—I knew far better than they did what was happening because I could look at the situation objectively.  My career wasn’t tied to the stars of the senate or the House of Representatives.  I had no plans to be Washington lobbyist the way that Boehner did, so I had no fear of pissing anybody off.  I always thought that was the purpose of government—to represent the people who are really out there—not to become some party caricature for bridging business with money and hiding the whole escapade behind rules and procedural conduct.

I can say starting this blog has been one of the best things I’ve ever done.  Personally I’m quite a successful person, so there isn’t anything anybody can “give me” by being a nice, polite person who plays nice with others in the realm of politics.  Writing comes easy for me because I’ve spent a lifetime reading and thinking about things to a level most people just aren’t comfortable with.  So if I’m not looking to be the next George R.R. Martin or Steven King in the writing world, I have a substantial talent to apply to the hard work of intellectual reform that needs to take place regarding the role of government in our lives—and that work can then get done.  I write lots of articles—daily—and people voyeuristically read them.  Often times its speech writers and people in positions of power who get from what I write an affirmation of their own thoughts—but it helps them to hear it from someone else, and this gives them the license they need to act accordingly in their lives.  I don’t mind at all if something I say ends up in a speech somewhere spoken by some important person—I consider the exchange an act of ghost writing.  I don’t expect to be compensated just as I didn’t expect John Boehner all those years ago to credit me with ending the United Nations.  It became obvious to me that people like that guy needed to have everything spelled out for him so that actions could be taken, and if I waited for the publishing world to publish my books on the subject, the work just wouldn’t get done.  The liberalized attorneys and editors at the big New York firms who publish books these days would never give me a chance unless I had a cable news show that could push the product—and I had no plans of doing something like that—even though I probably could have.  From that time of meeting with Boehner to the present I’ve had a chance to host my own radio shows on major stations, but I didn’t take the jobs because honestly I make more money on my own than any of those studios were paying so I endeavored to put my thoughts out to the public and to keep the money out of it to keep the exchange as clean as possible.  I’d let the people who did have to write speeches, and give them on important matters take whatever inspiration I could give them to the next step—and it has been working—slowly and surely.

What went into that United Nations speech took a lot of people who spent time writing it and drawing inspiration from a number or sources to even string together the thoughts.  It wouldn’t surprise me if some of my own words were drawn from these very pages to help create the framework of that speech—because it’s those people who are behind the scenes for whom I write for most.   We live in a confusing world and it’s not easy to see things clearly when you have to bang champagne glasses together to keep fundraising going, or you are at a cigar gathering with other powerful people but still need the clarity to stay on point.  I offer to those people a flashlight in the dark by way of ghost writing that I hope moves the ball in the right direction—a direction that John Boehner clearly was afraid to advance himself.  All that behind the scenes stuff means nothing if we don’t have a spokesman willing to take the words and apply them to life and that is what makes Trump so magnificent.  There are many hundreds if not thousands of minds behind that speech, who have written as I have here, and many other places which culminated into the actual formulation of that speech.  But before such a thing could be read to a hesitant audience at the United Nations we needed someone who would take ownership of those words and to unleash them in a dramatic way.   Watching Trump deliver that speech was very satisfying to me, because it took a long time to get someone in an elected position who would actually say what needed to be said.  Ghost writing may help nurture an idea forward, and that’s always what I hope to do.  I whisper to people after they’ve read something I’ve written in the middle of the night when their minds quiet down, and it usually assists their own thoughts—but those thoughts go nowhere until that person acts and takes responsibility for advancing the cause.  Speaking personally, it was more satisfying to watch Trump give that speech to the United Nations than it would have been if a major publisher had given me several million dollars in royalties for all my writing on these matters.  It means more to me to hear Trump say these words than to have a public who enjoys reading these kinds of things, but spends no time in the world acting on them, throwing credit in my direction.  My millions came to me when Trump said “Rocket Man” to that U.N. assembly on September 19th, 2017.

Rich Hoffman

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The Reality of ‘Game of Thrones’: How Hillary Clinton is all too similar to Cersei Lannister

It has taken several years but my youngest daughter has finally talked my wife and I into watching the Game of Thrones, the popular HBO series based on the books by George R.R. Martin.  My first impression was forged when my daughter was watching an episode from Season Two many years ago where two women were essentially involved in pornography and each time I looked up from my work while she watched these episodes someone was naked.  So I didn’t have a very high impression of the show but for an excuse to get people naked and make it a medieval setting.  I thought it was just another tacky enterprise and I wasn’t impressed.   But it has done well over the years and people obviously like it for some reason, so my wife and I gave it another chance recently and started watching it from the beginning, and much to our surprise, we both actually like it.  For me, I find myself living in the Game of Thrones literally as I have those experiences in most of the people I know in politics, business, and family quite literally.  I find the characters created by George R.R. Martin to be very realistic in their motivations and how they apply those needs to the world around them.

I can’t help but draw parallels to the Game of Thrones and real life, specifically in the case of Hillary Clinton.  The character of Cersei Lannister comes to mind—the queen who will literally do anything to stay in power and close proximity to the throne for which her son sat for most of the first seasons once her husband had died.  House of Cards involves much of the same kind of power grabbing soap opera style narrative and when I was watching that series drew unmistakable parallels to the Clinton White House.  Now that Hillary Clinton has been caught and the DNC exposed the United States is having its moment or discovery where we learn how vile all these characters in this real story actually have been.   When we voted for Donald Trump many of us only suspected it, but now in the aftermath, we understand all too clearly what Hillary and her minions have been up to and the plots are not unlike the Game of Thrones stories, and for the same reasons that exist in the realms of that fiction.

My mom and my grandmother used to get very involved in their day time soap operas.  When I was a kid and went to the store with them on their daughter mother days I’d often make fun of how they’d cackle after the various narratives of whom was sleeping with whom and for what reason.  I never understood their fascination with such boring stories of love, lust, betrayal and scandal—it seemed small-minded to me even at a very young age.   However I do like fantasy stories, such as Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings, and clearly these are very similar styles of stories with a soap opera quality to them when you start getting into the private motivations of the human condition.  A fantasy backdrop seems to work well for our society in observing things that might otherwise be all too real for us.  And this appears to be the big secret of Game of Thrones.

I think this is why the actions of Hillary Clinton and many politicians just like her go by people generally unknown.  People may suspect many of these things but their only real acceptance to these motivations are best presented through fantasy stories which seem removed so far from our reality that the villains often get away with hiding from us in plain sight, and once we discover their villainy, we don’t know what to do with them because our only experience with understanding these types of characters is from the voyeuristic comfort of our television screens.

It wasn’t ironic to me that as I was watching Game of Thrones for the first time seriously and I heard the dialogue by the character Cersei Lannister that Hillary Clinton was doing media for her new book, What Happened.  What was revealed was a character right off the pages of George R.R. Martin.   Hillary was so insulted by the Donald Trump election that she couldn’t stop herself from showing the world just how arrogantly she believed she had a right to the throne of the American White House.  For her it was a rightful claim passed down to her from some progressive assumption that American politics was the same as European politics, or those throughout the world functioning from the same kind of social illness as we see on display in fantasy stories like Game of Thrones.  We rebelled in America to get away from this kind of thing, not to advance it.  We don’t look, for kings to worship in America, at least we aren’t supposed to.  Literally, the American White House is not supposed to be just another episode of the Game of Thrones or House of Cards.

In many ways I think this is the problem people have with Donald Trump—he is truly something different.  I know that’s why I voted for him.  Trump has virtually the perfect wife, he has perfect kids—Trump himself is a pretty perfect person—he’s not sick, he never sleeps; he doesn’t have little insecurities that he’s trying to hide behind public office.  He’s just a guy who loves to solve problems and be in the heat of the kitchen—and this doesn’t fit the narrative of the typical American politician that we have come to think of as corrupt.  Hillary Clinton does, but Trump requires us to accept all new motivations which have not yet been explored in a contextual way articulated through our fantasy stories.  I would go so far to say that only a novel by Ayn Rand begins to cover the Donald Trump presidency while most of us experience the range of human emotions driving modern politics through fantasy works like Game of Thrones, or even Harry Potter.

Deep inside us all is still that European fascination with names and titles—the very things we rebelled against as Americans.  We may not like people like Hillary Clinton, but we trust that dysfunction because it’s what we understand at a primal level.  In Game of Thrones I haven’t yet found a character I can relate to except for some of the Stark kids—but even then the idea of duty to a family name and the promise of a reign on some Iron Throne doesn’t make much sense to me.  But most people watching can find something they can relate to in the characters of the very sprawling epic that has become Game of Thrones.  And to my experience it works because it’s not so much fantasy, but is actually quite real.  The fantasy settings of dragon stories and magic allow us to create some emotional distance to the subject, but honestly the psychological explorations of the characters themselves is all too real.  What is shocking about Hillary Clinton is that she is every bit as vile as the most dastardly villain from Game of Thrones, but we have been exposed to her without the trappings of a fantasy story set a long time ago in a time long forgotten—but she’s standing right in front of us on full display.  Our modern society may not be as simplified as a medieval setting so to examine all the plotting and scheming that goes on in the human mind for the advancement of infantile ideas about control and human achievement, but the essence of those motivations are all too real—and not so much a fantasy.

Rich Hoffman

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The Piracy of St. Louis Protesters: It’s a behavior problem, not one of law and order

It’s important to understand what is going on at the St. Louis riots over the weekend of 9/15 2017.  We’re not talking about a free speech case where protesters were just upset over the ruling from a court case where a police officer shot a man of color during an attempted arrest—we are dealing with communist trained radicals who fundamentally want to change the nature of American life.  After the acquittal of the police officer due to a lack of evidence, the Black Lives Matter people along with ANTIFA took to the streets to vandalize the mayor’s home and commit violence against police officers and journalists hiding the action behind free speech—when in fact all it truly was could only be considered open insurrection.  It’s time that we properly define things so that we can deal with them.  People who are working against the American way of life don’t get to tear down the institutional judgment of protections under the 1st Amendment and even the 2nd Amendment, then hide behind them to commit violence, loot stores, break people’s bones and generally become a menace against society.  We don’t have a system of law and order which allows for mob justice-such as what these communist oriented protestors are advocating—that if you don’t like a court ruling, you get to destroy things built by a capitalist society.  That behavior just isn’t acceptable and deserves to be met with violence of its own.

The suspected drug dealer who was shot in this case by a panicky police officer is an old story and it won’t be the last time.  If you are a thug who shows no respect for the law you are giving an open invitation to the police to shoot you.  If I acted the way that guy did when the officers tried to arrest him, using a car as a possible projectile to run the officers over, they’d shoot at me also.  It has nothing to do with being black—but everything to do with having law and order on the side of the police who are commissioned to walk a fine line between justice and anarchy.  Without police, people like these protestors would turn our society into some rotten destination of human degradation—and when they get the police on their heels paralyzing them from action, which is precisely what happens they change the nature of our society into a much greater negative.  Of course that is part of the strategy behind the anti-capitalist groups that sponsor these race riots such as what we saw in St. Louis and many other places recently.  But it’s important to remember that it isn’t a race situation at all, it’s a behavior problem.  The police will shoot at a white person under the same conditions as they will a black person.  The difference is that the black person has been taught from their youth in many cases to function in a victimized state and that the law doesn’t apply to them whereas the typical white criminal shows much more restraint when dealing with the police—so they get shot a lot less often.

Additionally, it’s the location of these shootings, usually in inner city dwellings and city streets where crimes are statistically higher because of the demographic circumstances.  The Democratic failures of applying people of low value into concentrated dwellings has produced a society of crime where the only way to advance their lives is through criminal conduct.  If you take young black men and give them mentors, and raise them in the suburbs where there are good neighbors, things to do, and reading isn’t considered a negative—they tend to grow up somewhat successful and they don’t get shot by cops because they aren’t in trouble to find themselves in that situation.  It’s not a color problem it’s a behavior problem.   The way to fix it is to change the way that people live in cities and under what conditions.  Throwing money at them isn’t enough; you have to change their behavior from the ground up.  The people participating in the St. Louis riots this past weekend are not interested in law and order; they are conducting themselves as communist insurgents looking to rule society through mob influence.  If they don’t get what they want they are looking to the violence of a mob to change the conditions of the world around them—and that is an essentially anti-American activity.  We can define that by characterizing the nature of the rule of law toward individual behavior as opposed to mob justice-which is a distinctly different thing.  Mob practices are associated with communist and socialist countries, not American culture, so to apply it to this case complete with flag burning voids the warranty so to speak of constitutional protection.

As a society we cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed by people who have no intention on living within the parameters of a capitalist nation.  You can’t have a nation of communists within a nation of capitalists and expect everything to work out OK.  That’s just not possible.  Just like you can’t have a bunch of people protesting the values of the United States flag by not standing for the National Anthem or burning the American Flag then claiming that the activity is protected by that same flag under the Bill of Rights.  It’s just preposterous.  When we stand for the flag or put it up our flag pole, we are saying to one another that we adhere to the values for which that flag represents.  You can’t protest those values then when trouble breaks out run to the protection of that flag, even as you burn it in the city streets of St. Louis.  You also don’t have a right to protest that flag if you are currently taking money from the government for which that flag has been instituted—and most everyone participating in those St. Louis riots have their hand in the government cookie jar—so we need to look at this situation with the correct lenses.

Vile groups who hate America are using these protestors and the issue of race to fundamentally change the nature of American culture.   Back in the glory days of the pirates off American coasts where looting nations were hauling gold back to Europe from the conquered Central and South American regions, it was customary to fly the flag of whatever ship you wanted to raid.  As you got closer, as a pirate and earned their trust so they would not fire on you prematurely, pirates would then run up the Jolly Roger flag to let the victim know that they were about to be attacked and by then it was too late to flee or prepare the cannons.  That’s how pirates took over vessels to loot them of their worth without being blown from the water.  Communist groups are doing the same thing in St. Louis; they are using black people, poor people, stupid people and out-right criminals to get close enough to the law of our times to take over institutions under a condition of social paralysis.  It’s not a case of free speech; it’s an act of piracy.  The only way to quell that violence is with violence because reason has left the battlefield.  It’s a behavior problem which causes these situations, but its insurgent activity which fuels the violence afterwards with an aim of changing our nation from a capitalist society to a communist one.  That is what these rioters are really after, so we should treat them accordingly—and stop treating these insurgents as if they have a right to do what they are doing.

Rich Hoffman

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Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s ‘The Goal’: Kathy Kennedy is doing a great job with ‘Star Wars’, and how we can prove it with proper business measurements

Before anyone says, “Oh no, he’s writing another Star Wars article,” stay with me for a bit here. What I’m about to say has some very important things in it that are very “holistic.”  They span very much into our greater lives as a human species, so put on your thinking caps and follow along.  Specifically Star Wars and in general Lucasfilm under the leadership of Kathleen Kennedy have come under great attack lately for firing four directors and twelve writers as she looks for just the right combination of people to make the new Star Wars movies just right.  The most recent news was that J.J. Abrams was coming back to direct Episode 9 which caused quite a stir and finally unleashed a major backlash from the entertainment community that was surprising, because it has revealed some extremely Marxist elements that we all know are there, but these Star Wars firings are exposing it in a measurable way.   So as a guide post to keep us all from getting lost I’d like to introduce to everyone the very good, and very popular book on business, The Goal, written in 1984.  The Goal is such a powerful book that Amazon makes its executives read it and apply the basic philosophy to their industry, which obviously works.  I also happen to know that Boeing has had their industry flow professionals read the book to improve their business climate as well, so we aren’t talking about some fringe infusion of ideas here.  The Goal is very mainstream in American business—extremely well known.   In short The Goal is to make money and to use that as the identifier of all business measurements.  If you are in business the only thing you should be concerned about is making money, it’s not to provide jobs, it’s not to just make products, and it’s certainly not to fuel a political philosophy that is not aligned with the realities of the world.   Now let’s introduce the great director John Landis whom I am a tremendous fan of but has obviously lost his mind late in life.  Read the linked article for the details, but in essence Landis has forgotten that the reason for a movie studio to exist is to make money.  Disney exists to make money.  The director’s specific job is to make money for the studio, not to sacrifice themselves for some social cause, or to have artistic, and creative freedom to let their “inner voice” speak to a mass audience. The director in the case of a movie or most anything else is there to make a product that the studio can make money off of.  It’s the only thing that matters.

http://movieweb.com/john-landis-criticizes-star-wars-lucasfilm-directors/

Now obviously to do that the product needs to be desired by the public and in the case of Star Wars it brings a lot of joy to people who go to the movies, buy the toys and video games and in general it is those movies that keep the theater experience going so that directors can work on movies that are not Star Wars and may only appeal to 5% of the population.  Movie theater owners need to make money too just to have a place to show Hollywood products.  The industry is there for them to work because enough money was made with something like Star Wars to allow for other viewpoints in other films to be presented to mass audiences around the world.   If I had to value stream map this situation for studio executives I’d of course designate the consumer at the movie theater as the customer that the value of the product design must appeal to in order to successfully implement the strategic objectives.  These people fired from the various Star Wars projects, like Colin Trevorrow and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, just over the last couple of months were obviously not getting the holistic reason for the Star Wars films getting made.  And what people like John Landis are now criticizing Kathy Kennedy for doing is essentially the labor union point of view from the various entertainment guilds—and that is putting money before art.

I can tell you that growing up all I wanted to be in life was a film maker and an adventurer, something between a Josh Gates and Steven Spielberg.  But when I had the opportunity to work on a few movie sets and talk to people behind the scenes I realized that most of them were Marxists openly pushing for socialism in American society.  So I had to turn away from that industry—sadly.  In the old days these liberals, like John Landis, and Ron Howard had to put up with their stars such as Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis and Clint Eastwood who were all conservative A-listers and Hollywood at least had a nice balance of product to present to the public.  However over the last few decades Hollywood producers looking to appeal to the Clintons and the Obamas in office tried to create a new generation of Marxists to replace the conservative leading men.  They tried to bring progressive ideas to their stories and they figured that if producers gave big explosions and loud music to a movie feature to help the Marxism go down easier, that audiences would stay with them, but that hasn’t happened.   People have just found other things to do.  It should say a lot that Netfllx productions like Stranger Things which is an obvious throwback to the 1980s and the HBO show Game of Thrones which is all about politics set in a kind of Medieval time where all the primal human instincts are explored, lust for power, sex, dominion over others are presented without a lot of subtle global warming messages, and the plight of the poor–the trend toward a customer experience is well-known..  The labor unions in the entertainment industry are looking at their situation and they are blaming Disney for not sticking to their Marxist goals of social reform but instead keeping their focus on “making money.”  Disney currently makes a lot of money off Star Wars and their Marvel projects.  They are giving audiences what they want and in return we give them money.  That’s the name of the game.

Disney to appease the creative labor unions does take up social causes-but it doesn’t help them at all toward The Goal.  They have nearly destroyed the ESPN network with progressive garbage nobody wants to hear tied to sports.  And Kathy Kennedy has messed with Star Wars in ways that could easily destroy it, by putting more of an emphasis on female characters. I don’t have a problem with it, but its a gamble to try to expand the market reach of Star Wars with females at the possible expense of the males. So far so good, but it is a risk worth noting.  Kathy Kennedy is not a Midwestern conservative, she is a social progressive and it shows in her projects.  But at least she understands The Goal which was written by Eliyahu M. Goldratt—and that is to make money.  To make money with Star Wars you must have merchandising—the experience must continue long after customers have left the movie theater.  That means that filmmakers have precisely two hours to create a product that will unleash countless books, comics, toys, t-shirts, bed sheets—you name it.  There isn’t room for some director to “put their own take on things,” they must follow The Goal—and that is to make money for Disney and its shareholders.  That is a very capitalist concept which pisses off the Marxists—but tough luck.  The product does not exist to make a point—it exists to make money because with that money many good things happen.

I went out on Force Friday a few weeks ago to buy a few items.  One of the things I had to get was a Rathtar from The Force Awakens movie, which was released on Force Friday specifically this year ahead of all the new The Last Jedi toys.  Even though I was very hard on The Force Awakens when it came out largely because Kathy Kennedy allowed the franchise to movie away from the line of stories I had been reading for thirty years in the novels and allowed J.J. Abrams to have the creative freedom to write a completely fresh Star Wars story changing the direction of the original novels dramatically, I have respect for the good work done on that movie.  My favorite scene from any movie in recent memory and certainly one of my top ten moments of all time is that scene from The Force Awakens when the Rathtars are introduced.  That was a lot of fun and whenever it’s on television when my grandkids are watching it, I usually stop what I’m doing to see it again.  At Force Friday there were a lot of happy people spending countless thousands of dollars on new merchandise because The Goal of the product which is Star Wars was aligned with their consumer needs.  Disney received a lot of money, which was The Goal, and the consumer got a quality product that spoke to them mythologically in ways they needed—for whatever reason.  The end result was good for all parties in that transaction.  It is not up to some Marxist Hollywood type to question The Goal.  The Goal is market driven, it is up to those in the entertainment business to figure out what the consumer wants—not to change the consumer into something the artists wants—do you get what I’m saying—because this relates to virtually everything in our culture.

I have been extremely excited about the new Han Solo movie now directed by Ron Howard.  I think he’s exactly the right guy to make that movie which he had to take over from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.  Obviously Larry Kasden who has made some of my favorite movies in the past understands The Goal of Star Wars as a screenwriter.  He may not philosophically like The Goal, but he’s hired to do the job of achieving it—and that’s the difference between professionalism and being a Marxist douche bag.  He’s the writer on this new Han Solo movie along with his son so when the young directors known for The Lego Movie were fired because they didn’t get what Larry was trying to put up on the screen, Ron Howard was brought in to fix things.  I was happy about it because it told me that Lucasfilm understood what The Goal was, and they were committed to it.  I have no doubt that the professionalism of Ron Howard will keep The Goal of the new Han Solo movie in focus and deliver a product that Lucasfilm needs and Disney can continue to use to make a lot of money—which is a wonderful thing.  But I did have to send Ron Howard a Tweet the other day reminding him that all his Donald Trump bashing he has been doing may very well draw a line between him and his audience—half of which like the job Donald Trump is doing.  By politicizing Star Wars, you risk deviating from The Goal, and that is dangerous to everyone involved.  Howard is a smart guy and a fabulous director, but it’s not his job to define The Goal. It’s his job to implement it as the director, and that’s what he was hired for.  All the below Tweets shown below are on Ron Howard’s main page.

The new Star Wars movies may be corporate productions that lack the heart of the solitary vision of George Lucas—but they do understand The Goal and that’s why they are special.  The three measurements in The Goal are throughput, inventory, and operational expense—everything for a successful implementation of a flourishing business model is contained within those three measurements.   Throughput in the case of Star Wars is the delivery of a movie on time from conception to the release date.  Inventory is the resources it takes to make the movie, like directors, writers, studio rentals, building props—all that stuff.  And of course operational expenses are the overall costs of keeping the movie franchise alive as a social mythology, the new theme park attractions, the marketing of merchandise and all the other big picture items.  There is a lot more to a movie than just paying honor to the creative instincts of the film’s directors or the writers.  There is much more to The Goal than just the vision of an artist.  Star Wars is successful because traditionally Lucasfilm understood The Goal.  The Marxist friends of George Lucas may have given him grief over it, but if George had listened, we wouldn’t have Star Wars.  And in that respect, what has John Landis done lately except complain.  He made that famous “Thriller” video like a million years ago.  And The Blues Brothers was made in the 70s.  I would say that Landis like his friend Spielberg has forgotten what The Goal was and instead have adopted that radical Marxism that they all share through their director’s guild.  And lucky for us, who are Star Wars fans, Kathy Kennedy has kept her eye on The Goal and not the socialist sentiments of her entertainment industry friends.   Sure she made the lead actors in most of these new movies a “girl” and she made a black stormtrooper, and put a Hispanic guy in as the lead hot-shot new pilot, which I’m sure made her liberal friends give her less grief over heading a giant capitalist movie studio—but at least she hasn’t forgotten The Goal.  And for that I must commend her.  If she has to fire 200 Star Wars directors she should, because it tells me she is committed to my customer satisfaction and not the social ranting of just another Hollywood Marxist, like John Landis.

Rich Hoffman

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Now Lynda O’Conner wants to be a West Chester Trustee: Old Lakota tax and spenders ride the cape of Mark Welsh

 

Unfortunately none of the smart people who I know are running for the various school board seats at Lakota this fall as the old board members are now in a race to become the next West Chester trustees.  Since Lee Wong failed to get enough support to move into another seat he’ll likely be back in West Chester as a trustee just because of his name recognition as an incumbent.  Mark Welsh is defending his seat from an onslaught of unionized radicals—like the former Lakota school board president—Joan” the Hutt” Powell.  And now that George Lang is moving into a congressional seat in Ohio, more people have decided to run for West Chester trustee, specifically Lynda O’Conner.  There are also other candidates, but Lynda jumped out to me because she has been by far the most conservative school board member at Lakota—which leaves open that spot for more unionized representatives.  This situation is maturing into a not very good scenario.

I know Lynda pretty well and to be honest her being on the school board at Lakota has helped me take my own fangs out of it.  She has made it a better place—a functioning body of government, especially after Joan Powell left. However she has supported tax increases at Lakota which makes her a bad fit for the West Chester trustee positions.  I consider those trustee seats to be much more important than the Lakota school system positions.  All public schools are liberal institutions, so having a tax and spender there that even pays a little bit of lip service to an actual budget is pretty remarkable.  But that doesn’t mean they translate well over into the general business community that makes all the money for which a region functions.  Lynda in her role at Lakota has been caught many times playing all sides.   As a trustee of West Chester, she might as well be as liberal as Joan Powell and Lee Wong.

This won’t be the first or last fight we’ll have with those types of tag along politicians—who come into a seat thinking that they’ll be as good as their predecessors.  But it is unfortunate, the two guys running West Chester for the last four years have done a very good job and it would have been great to see that continue. But the odds of Mark Welsh becoming a minority vote are looming now into a much more hostile government body toward the merits of logic.  To people like Lynda and Joan Powell the hard work of managing West Chester are in place and they think it will be easy.  But since the only experiences they have are running big liberal government schools, they’ll only have those experiences to stand on while essentially running a city of 100,000 people.  The difference between running a large industrious township and a silly school is that it’s not the radical neurotic moms who you have to please who feel guilt over how little time they spend with their children—it’s the business community who view the school as just another unnecessary expense hooking into their pockets that they have to appease with a tribute otherwise they’ll find themselves splashed on the cover of a newspaper by Joan Powell’s reporter friends and Chamber Alliance stooges.  There’s a big difference between being pleasant to people for the sake of friendly tolerance and having a true relationship with them—and that’s what those former school board members will learn should they get one of these trustee seats.  There is a lot of hostility toward them deservedly so for their support of higher taxes in the past, then bringing that to a currently well-managed West Chester Township that has staved off the temptation to expand government while staying small and nimble to attract business to the area will nurture resentment quickly.

A lot of people forget that Joan Powell was an advocate of committing West Chester into a city status—which of course would have added a city council, a mayor and many other big government expansion  positions that go along with the liberal philosophy her type of people have.  West Chester currently functions very well with just three trustees—actually only two—Lee Wong doesn’t count.  Union contracts have been worked out, taxes are low, zoning is fluid and functional—things have been going well and it shows.  I had guests this past week flying in from overseas to see me.  It was a late trip by necessity—not one planned out months in advance—so when they tried to book a place to stay overnight, they could not get a room in West Chester.  Every room was filled in the middle of a week in September with nothing really special going on.  Over the past few years West Chester has added a lot of nice hotels to the community—at least 10 that I can think of off the top of my head.  My out-of-town guys couldn’t find a single room in any of them—they had to stay in Blue Ash to find a room two weeks ahead of their impromptu flight.  Now why were all those hotels booked?  It certainly wasn’t for IKEA—not in the middle of the week.  And it wasn’t for Top Golf—although some of it was.  It was because there are literally thousands and thousands of people doing business and West Chester has become the hub of Cincinnati for business conduct.  Low taxes, lots of things to do, highway access, and a small government that isn’t sticking its nose into the complex world of commerce with a sidewalk every five minutes so some homeless person can feed some ducks like you find in a lot of other places.  Or a sidewalk so Lee Wong can sneak in the back door of Sushi Monk from his house and beg for free food.  Out of all the names announcing themselves as an option for West Chester trustee it looks like now Mark will be the only conservative.  The rest are all tax and spend liberals as proven by their track record, certainly Lee Wong, ostentatiously, Joan Powell, and of course Lynda O’Conner who has always supported the tax increases at Lakota.   West Chester is headed for trouble.

The question begs to be answered why more conservative names don’t rise to the top and run for some of these seats.  Well, it’s because most of the smart people out there make a lot more money for their productive week and they don’t have the time unless they are retired to waste on these government seats.  But that’s a shame, because a failure to put the right people in the school board seats and trustee seats ends up costing a lot of us a lot of money.  While these liberals play house managing these school boards and trustee positions they always cave into the demands of other government departments seeking perpetual pay increases.  Until George Lang and Mark Welsh brought their business experience to the West Chester trustee seats and started saying no to the hand outs and government expansion that Lee Wong and Cathy Stoker wanted to implement, such management from a government position was unheard of.  It was a good ride and an example that proper management of government resources could take place.  But there just aren’t enough people like those guys out there to keep it rolling—and that’s too bad.  I know I don’t have the time to give to it at this point in my life and I know many other people in the business community are in the same boat.  That leaves those who don’t have anything else to do to run for those office seats and they’ll likely get that second critical vote over Mark because of it.  That means for everyone doing business with West Chester the potential for higher taxes is on the horizon–because they did it at Lakota.  And they’ll do it again on a larger platform for sure—because it’s the easiest thing to do, and when pressed, they’ll give in within a New York minute.

Rich Hoffman

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