Tag: Doc Thompson

Matt Clark HAS HAD IT: Slowing the demise of the Republic one broadcast at a time.

 

As you can see from the picture Matt used on his Saturday May 7th 2016 broadcast he’s a little concerned about the direction of our country.  About three-quarters into the hour-long show which he does each week on WAAM radio in Ann Arbor, Michigan I came on to add a little color.  For your own sanity dear reader, you should listen to it now, then pass it along to a friend.  It may well just save your life with a small dose of sanity at a key time in our American history.

https://soundcloud.com/clarkcast/can-we-still-save-the-republic-5-7-16-podcast

Matt and I are doing an entire hour together this upcoming Saturday and it will be live, so if you’d like to listen or call in, you can catch the show at 1 PM at this link.

http://www.waamradio.com/

Just click on the live link and listen.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Why Donald Trump will be Great as President: Mankind is growing but the #NEVERTRUMPs are missing a few screws

I wasn’t going to say much about it, but now that Donald Trump is the Republican Party nominee and tempers have abated a bit, proper analysis can finally be possible.  Context is needed before everyone can move forward.  I would think that Objectivists would be happier about Trump than they are.  I would also think that Tea Party types would as well.  Apparently they have in their mind something else that a POTUS is supposed to be which is really too much to ask.  Trump essentially to me is the first Objectivist oriented candidate to ever truly make it to such a high position, and I think the benefits philosophically to our society will be immeasurable.  It really comes down to the public versus private sector ability.  Public sector approaches are too costly and grossly ineffective where private is much more driven by individual performance and that is the world that Donald Trump comes out of—and it will be exciting to watch.

I’m certainly not an Objectivist from Ayn Rand’s camp.  While I admire the work and think it is the best thing the human race has come up with to date regarding management of government resources, it doesn’t go far enough for me.  I make it no secret that one of my favorite books is Thus Spoke Zarathustra yet I would say that my thinking about things is naturally evolved further along than Nietzsche—which is understandable.  That was over 100 years ago, and we’ve learned a lot since then.  Ayn Rand’s work was 50 years ago, so it’s not exactly current.  I have decided that I need to take those types of ideas to the next level before I can have meaning in them which is what I’m doing in the Curse of Fort Seven Mile series.  I can’t just write stories for commercial endeavor.  Even though I enjoy it, there has to be some earth-shaking sense in the work that steers the mind toward the answers for living.  While Ayn Rand denied it, I see clearly that her novels were certainly extensions to Thus Spoke Zarathustra—which was to say, a graduation of mankind from a kind of dependent sacrificial being, into a self-aware, self-sustaining creature capable of immeasurable creation through sheer imagination.

Glenn Beck lost me back when he was on Fox News when he’d speak with ill will toward Nietzsche because Beck needed a “God” figure in his life.  He and a lot of people like him apparently needed to feel that a “god” was guiding them through some divine providence toward some heavenly revelation—as if the plans for America were tied to the plans extracted from Heaven.  To me, that’s lazy thinking—and I deep dive the reasons in my Curse of Fort Seven Mile series.  You can’t just trust something that may not be even concerned with our dimensional reality.  What might call itself a “god” to us may in fact be a disgraceful devil of some kind and we need our intellects to guide us through those decision gates.  Ultimately however, the problem that these types of conservatives have with Donald Trump is that he has certainly graduated in his life away from the need to feel guilt about anything and is living as a self-professed intelligence.  Trump to me is very much the character from Thus Spoke Zarathustra who lived in the mountain cave and came down to the village below to teach the world about the Overman.  Biblically, Donald Trump is not an icon of virtual, but as a graduate from the necessity to sacrifice one’s essence for the benefit of the collective whole—Donald Trump is the first of his kind to emerge into public office.  I say that now because the Hillary Clinton antics with Elizabeth Warren just aren’t going to be able to stop him in a general election.  Yet Glenn Beck in his early days and even as recently as the latest Atlas Shrugged movies was very supportive of Ayn Rand, as was Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and Rand Paul.  They apparently don’t understand what makes the characters great in Rand’s books.  It certainly wasn’t a propensity to sacrifice themselves to some “divine providence.”  Glenn Beck actually called on people to “fast” to beg God to keep Donald Trump from winning the presidential nomination.  That is just ridiculous.  Talk about sacrifice—Beck doesn’t understand—he has clearly lost his mind.

I understand that some people need a “god” to hold their life together. You can’t just live a life leaning toward meek sacrifice for 70 years of a life then stop on a dime and say that man has within its mind the power of the universe and that “god is dead,” as Nietzsche did in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  However, the need for a “god” is in mankind’s intellect, and the need to hold on to that crutch has kept our society in this ridiculously infantile state for far too long.  You will never get to John Galt’s engine of the world by sacrificing bits of yourselves to a being beyond time and space.  Whatever is out there in those folds of time needs to be properly vetted before trust can properly be established—you certainly can’t trust some Roman interpretation of a Christ metaphor passed down to us from the ages of Zoroastrianism.  That’s just stupid.  While I don’t fault people for their needs intellectually, I do when it comes to crossing the streams of proper government.  Thinking is the key to human endeavor, not hoping that a “god” will show mercy and guide us to some Promise Land.  We have to make that Promised Land though our intellectual gifts provided by “god,” but we can’t be passive recipients in our approach.

Donald Trump’s harshest critics are those who find it appalling that he is completely a man of his own making, that he seeks only his counsel when making a decision, that he loves himself and isn’t meek, and that he shows an indication toward the complete domination of his enemies.  They can’t understand such a person because Trump is free from the need to sacrifice anything to make something—so they can’t understand how it will be possible as president.  But praying for a god to save a nation is just as stupid as the athlete who scores a touchdown and points toward heaven as though “god” made such a thing possible.  To say that America is great because God is behind it is just as stupid as the Muslims believing that Allah wants them to kill infidels.  America is great because the thoughts of mankind have been free to unleash the gifts of imagination manifested into invention and that is something new.  Donald Trump is a product of the American system.  He is a graduate of individualism and that is what will make him a great president.  I know I can trust Donald Trump because he works by the rules of individual integrity—he doesn’t need the judgment of God to keep him from smoking cigarettes or doing drugs—the way Glenn Beck uses God to keep back the demons from his past.  Trump cares about himself and his family and he doesn’t want to be viewed by history as being bad, tyrannical, or a loser in any way.  He wants to be loved as he loves himself and he wants to give people that feeling that he has when he gets up each morning—it’s the one thing that billions of dollars in the bank can’t buy, and it’s the one thing he wants more than anything in life.  He wants the respect of those around him and the way he intends to get it is by the means of the individualists who have written in literature the foundations of our present circumstances—philosophers like Nietzsche and Ayn Rand.

Trump will unlock through his mouth the potential of America and that is the force behind the movement that is now afoot.  That movement is what these #NeverTrump people are scared of.  They fear that America will head toward Sodom and Gomorra with the inauguration of Donald Trump because they essentially don’t understand the power that drives people on the individual level.  For instance, I was at a baseball game at the Cincinnati Reds home park and my wife and I were having diner in the Diamond Club.  It was all very nice, the food was on the upside and the drinks were flowing all around us.  People were happy, festive and we were all living a life of extreme opulence.  The food was too good and many of us were still enjoying it when the game started.  When the National Anthem came on everyone stopped and stared at the televisions to watch what was happening out on the field. That entire place went dead silent and everyone was enrapt with reverence toward the greatness of our country.  Nobody told anyone to behave that way; it came out of the individual inclination of the collected masses.  That is in essence the Donald Trump life.  Work hard, have plenty so that there is an excess, and be gracious with that excess.  But don’t be a loser, because if you are, you deserve to be bitch slapped into oblivion.  Nobody likes a loser and America isn’t a nation of such people.  It has been made to feel that way, but it’s time to stop feeling that way.  And only Donald Trump can invoke that character once again by returning our nation toward an ideology centered on individual achievement instead of collective salvation.  That is where the psychosis of the #NEVERTRUMPs crosses the line because their judgment of good and evil is in violation of the principles of actual success.  America can’t afford their immature interpretation any longer.  People don’t need to be told to be silent when the National Anthem is playing, and they don’t need to be told to be kind to their neighbor by someone like Glenn Beck.  We certainly don’t need any more preachers.  We need action by individuals to make our county great again—and we need a salesman to resurrect it within our culture.  That is why Donald Trump will be such a great president.  He offers a continuation of the philosophies which have evolved over the years toward individualism and now society can see a fine example from the White House which perhaps will save our nation by unlocking that potential in others.  That is why the Trump nomination is such a big deal, and why so many people are having a difficult time with it.  They don’t have the proper philosophy in their own life to understand–and that isn’t our fault.  It’s their problem.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Alden Ehrenreich will be a Great Han Solo: ‘Star Wars’ is making a nice comeback

Star Wars3For me Star Wars has always been something of a vacation for my mind—a place to go for leisure and to think about basic formulations regarding good and evil.  I am one who believes that books are far superior to movies made from them, so I am still extremely disappointed with what Disney has done with the franchise.  However, I accept because of the Metaphysics of Quality that they do not understand at Disney how to do anything original and that they are essentially mining the old Star Wars novels for their new projects and claiming them as originals from the new regime at Lucasfilm.  It has really bothered me.  But of late I have respected what Lucasfilm has been doing with Disney—some of it anyway.  I think Rogue One will be a great movie.  It will likely be a combination of a lot of books that I’ve read, especially the A.C Crispin Han Solo novels and the video game Dark Forces but I have come to think that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.  The essential stories are still good even if they are mangled by Disney.  To me, the books will always rule.  But for kids, the way that the books have been reinvented and put up on the silver screen has value—real value and I have found that in this really rough world that we are all living in, that Star Wars certainly is one of the best things in it for families and little kids.  They aren’t as good as they were when George Lucas was in charge, but they are still pretty good.  My mood lightened a lot about Star Wars after I watched Harrison Ford introduce the new Star Wars land in Disney World, seen below.  Lucasfilm finally announced that they found their pick for the new Han Solo films, and I had an opportunity to watch a Reds baseball game on their yearly Star Wars weekend where on Friday night they always do a fabulous fireworks display to John Williams music—which is always wonderful.

It was a beautiful night in May 2016.  I was at the Reds game watching the sold out crowd enjoy the Star Wars festivities and noticing how much the kids in the audience were excited about the event. I was also thinking about the kid Alden Ehrenreich who got the part of playing the new Han Solo in the upcoming stand alone films.  As I said many months ago I thought they would be smart to put Han Solo into all three of those new movies, and it looks like that’s what they are going to do.  With the casting of Alden Ehrenreich I was suddenly very excited about that possibility.  Even though I was very disappointed with The Force Awakens death of Han Solo, the possibility of a lot more Han Solo adventures suddenly perked me up and I found myself enjoying Star Wars for really the first time in months.

I remembered how much I loved Han Solo as a kid.  Of course I’ve long outgrown that character, but I still love the idea of Han Solo and always loved Star Wars because of him.  Without Han Solo for me there is no Star Wars.  But now, with this new kid whom I am very impressed with, I am suddenly having fun in that world again.  I am actually looking forward to the new films which is a bit of a relief, because like I said, for my mind which is very active, Star Wars was always kind of a vacation.  star wars1I probably enjoy the behind the scenes art stories about how Star Wars is made more than I do the actual movies.  So for the prospect of new Han Solo stories—of seeing some of the elements of the old A.C. Crispin novels about a young Han Solo being put up on a screen for everyone to enjoy, I’m excited about it.

As I was thinking of Rogue One, coming out this Christmas the prospect of Han Solo making a guest appearance is pretty exciting.  It will be nice to share those new adventures with my grandkids even though they may never read the same books I did.  I decided it was more valuable to share those experiences with them than to just check out.  I am still concerned about all the progressive trends that are emerging because essentially the young people making all these new Star Wars movies are fans of the original films that grew up with more progressive values as opposed to the original westerns that George Lucas grew up on.  I don’t think the new films will be nearly as good for me as the originals were, but for kids who don’t know any better—it will be very special to them.

More than anything, which was very obvious to me while watching the fireworks at the Reds game, the John Williams music alone was a proper bridge that is just beautiful to behold.  The new themes from the most recent Star Wars film fit in quite nicely with the old ones and it was a special fireworks display for me because of it.  It’s the first time I have heard the new pieces put together with the old and that’s when I thought—what the hell.  There will be six new Star Wars films over the next 5 years and a lot of new music—and Han Solo will be back in the Millennium Falcon with Chewbacca, and those are some fun stories.  And in just a few years there will be my dream of seeing a full-sized Millennium Falcon in Disney World.  That will be a dream come true and I am far more excited about that than I should be.  So even though Matt Clark and I torched Disney’s handling of Star Wars on the radio when The Force Awakens came out—I will give credit when I do see a reason for it and Disney is doing a good job—lately. Hopefully that trend will continue.

For the imagination, there is a lot to look forward to.  For me, Star Wars is all about imagination and possibilities.  That quest for the imagination is what makes me get up each day to face real world problems and work through massive tribulations.  At the end of all those tribulations, it has always been nice to have Star Wars to rest my mind in.  So in that context, it is nice to see that I may be able to continue enjoying it.  Alden Ehrenreich was a very good pick.Star Wars2

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Leftist Protesters in California: John Wayne, Donald Trump and taking back what’s good about America

This is what democracy looks like when you have to take your constitutional republic back from communist insurgents bred through our public education system and nurtured through left leaning popular culture to destroy America.  Watch the whole thing and send it to a friend.

And guess what; it will get far worse before it ever gets better.  As a society we let this get out of hand.  Now it will be very violent to get our country back.  So be ready for it.

We’d be a whole lot better off if more people had the values of John Wayne.  But unfortunately we live in a time when people actually think the Hollywood legend was a racist because our interpretation of those definitions have been defined by these radical left winged insurgents.   They won’t give up their position without violence, so let’s give it to them and be ready for what follows. They took it from us, we are only taking it back.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

The End of a Beginning: A great American novel emerging

I think it was way back in August of 2015 that I said I’d considered not contributing articles everyday like I do presently if Donald Trump were elected president—mainly because his presence in the race for the White House, or from the White House does much of what I have been doing with all this work.  Well, after tonight’s performance in the East and the strong showing once again in five more states with clear indications of a strong finish in the biggest of all, California—it is clear that Donald Trump should be the Republican nominee for POTUS in 2016.  Even with the silly little Kasich/Cruz alliance, the only hope they have is to get to a floor fight at the convention to be president—which won’t go over well as it goes against the popular vote.  A lot of people never got over the Bush/Gore tie in 2000 where technically Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the electoral votes.  This Trump situation is much more flammable than even that, so I don’t see anybody but Trump running as a Republican against Hillary Clinton.  And as for Hillary, she barely beat Bernie Sanders.  She won’t be able to withstand a focused attack by Donald Trump every day.  He will simply outwork her, and she won’t win a general election.  So for all practical purposes, Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States.

I am an excellent judge of character and it may take five or six years for others within the Republican ranks to see what I do in Trump, but history will agree with me.  Conservatives are not going to win major elections trying to shift the country radically back to the political right after 100 years of liberal erosion—so you have to pick your battles.  Trump is all about the economy, border security, and trade negotiations—which is an excellent place to begin.  Real conservatives need to keep their eye on 2024 for all the social issues.  You have to fix the economy first and sustain the integrity of our sovereignty before we worry about guys wanting to use the restrooms of girls.  These are all big issues but moral depravity escalates when people don’t have money in their pockets.  Morality is a lot easier to sell when people have something of value that they appreciate—and right now—we just don’t have that type of society.

Trump from the White House will utilize the power of positive thinking to unlock America’s potential.  It won’t be Trump’s policies that do it—it will be his mouth and charisma, and I see a path where he can do a lot more from the White House than the slow trickle that I perform with all my articles trying to teach people to do the same thing in their private lives.  The next four to eight years will be a whirlwind and situations will change—and a chapter of our lives will close as a new one begins. That means I need to shift my personal role as well.

I have talked prior about a rather epic novel that I’m working on and I have been flushing out the ideas for quite some time.  The articles on this site have played a part of that.  But now it’s time to put pen to paper and to pound out the manuscripts.  Rather than write the 1200 to 1500 words each day that I do here, my efforts need to go into that commercial work.  It’s not the writing itself that is the challenge, it’s the editing and working out the details that takes all the time and that is where I’m going to put my focus at this point   That’s not to say that I won’t make any more contributions—I certainly will.  But as for the daily articles, it is time to let the chain reaction that many of us in this marketplace have set forth to do their thing and to move to the next phase as we see it.

My path is clear and it will take everything I have to get there.  It’s certainly time for me to make this decision.  I’ve delayed my indulgence for about a year because of all the volatility at the presidential level.  It is hard for people to imagine that one guy like Donald Trump might have such a large impact on our culture but I’d ask those who can remember to recollect the difference between 1979 and 1980.  I think the switch from 2016 to 2017 will be much greater and there will be so much news flashing by in such a whirlwind that nobody will be able to keep up.  Meanwhile, I have quite an encyclopedia of articles here to help people through that phase and to guide them into making the correct decisions.  My next role will be context through art—not in the definition of interpretation—which is what I’ve been doing.  Now we need the artistic effort to expand culture and that will be my new focus.   For me the work will be similar, I will write everyday toward a known objective—only people won’t see it as they do now.  They’ll see it in bulk when the projects are released.  For me it is the work of the Great American Novel, something I have been thinking about for quite a long time.  How that novel gets published I’m not sure at this time—because that industry has changed so much.  But first, you just have to write it then measure how best to distribute it.

As for Donald Trump, I know his people have read here and I hope this site continues to be a source of inspiration.  But it’s time for the student to leave the classroom and to utilize what they’ve learned—and I expect that to be the case for everybody—even those silent lurkers who depend heavily on my written words.  I’m not going away—I’m just turning inward so that I can build up to the next great phase which we will see a few years from now.  When we get there—we all need to be ready and I need to focus on getting it right.  I am proud to have played my part in all the multiple fissures that are emerging along the front of establishment debacles.  I consider all this a major mission concluded even if people aren’t aware of the explosions and dawn has not yet revealed all the damage.

Trump winning against the establishment—and I consider Cruz part of the establishment—the church wielding branch—I see an open window for a reiteration of the American idea in much the way that Henry Morgan led the pirates of the Caribbean toward the first free establishment of a constitutional republic without the influence of a king.  I’m not saying that it will be a moral quest, but it will get us where we want to go as a country among the world.  The situation is complicated beyond measure, but ultimately the power of positive thinking will go a long way to getting us there.  So enjoy the victory for those riding the Trump train.  For those not yet there, see you when you arrive. It might take a while but I trust that you’ll arrive in your own way in your own time.  And as for this site, this won’t be the last article.  But they won’t come as often as my focus will be on more commercial material—because that’s what’s needed at this point in time. When the smoke clears—all this will make a lot more sense.

Here is just a sample:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/26/us-unions-donald-trump-us-election-2016

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

The Sexless Exsistence of Reincarnation: Maybe there is hope for ‘Star Wars’ yet

One of the issues that most angered me about the obvious deviation from the Expanded Universe in Star Wars regarding the new movies was the betrayal of some really good science fiction written particularly about the nature of the Force as it was pressed in the gravitational anomalies within the region of space known as the Maw.  It’s not perfect, but there were some high concepts concerning life and death in those novels that were what I’d consider significantly important.  The Force Awakens avoided all that and went in a new direction which as presented was a much more watered down entry.  Jaina Solo was in the books one of the greatest heroines of the saga, and Rey obviously wasn’t her and it just made no sense to me that she was excluded.  I still think it was a huge mistake not to utilize those very good stories as canon.  But, obviously Lucasfilm under Kathy Kennedy with the input of George Lucas felt the stories were getting away from the core Skywalker family lineage so they wanted to make a change in the new movies—and that didn’t seem justified—unless this recent rumor of Rey’s origin turns out to be true, which I am inclined to believe.   The answer is in the link below.  Click on it only if you want to know.  Having the answer isn’t really necessary for what I have to say about it.

http://myinforms.com/en-au/a/31266981-star-wars-episode-8-plot-and-scene-description-leak-online-reys-back-story-and-parents-revealed/

Most religions believe in some form of reincarnation around the world—where the spirit of an entity returns to the world of the living in some other form, whether it’s a dog, cat, or another human being—it is something that is heavily revered around the world.  Even George Patton believed that he was an ancient warrior from days long gone and that he had been on earth before.  One of the things I have always liked most about Star Wars is that they took kid’s topics and wrapped them very carefully into modern religion.  The nature of the “Force” is an unusual concept that combines many world religions into an updated moral grounding that I have always thought was healthy.

Star Wars for me was the gateway to Joseph Campbell’s teachings which I discovered during my college age days.  I was so affected by Joseph Campbell that traditional college lost its meaning and it sent me into a five-year deep dive from about 19 to 24 years of age reading all his books, particularly The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Masks of God series from his work in Transformations of Myth Through Time.  When I wasn’t reading Joseph Campbell I was listening to him.  I had about twenty hours of lectures by Campbell on tape which I listened to at my various jobs for several years to the point where I knew the material backwards and forward.  For another five years I spent reading all the supplement books which inspired Campbell—books like Finnegan’s Wake and Thus Spoke Zarathustra and studying great artists like James Joyce and Thomas Mann so that I could understand Campbell much better.  I did all this essentially because Star Wars had inspired in me a desire to deep dive the material of myth and how it informed the human mind about the world we live in and the world that exists beyond four-dimensional living.

I probably could have become something of a museum curator or some world traveler doing work in this field of mythic interpretation—but instead I wanted to turn even further inward and read more and think more.  I took jobs that would give me time to read and write yet still take care of my growing family.  For me—for about twenty years—from age 20 to 40 years of age I was in my own version of Luke’s Dagobah—working hard, but intellectually developing myself rather intensely and I loved it.  My mother told me that when I was one and two years old that I said strange things about the world around me as I was learning—as if I had always known certain things.  I don’t think it had anything to do with reincarnation but instead being able to understand what pours forth from the eternal spring of life essence which is at the heart of everything—call it God, call it the “Force” it is beyond human definition.  I’ve described my teenage years as being extremely fearless—because I felt I understood that the universe wanted me to live and I pushed my limits to the extreme to see how forgiving it was—and I turned out to be right—it wanted me to live.  This evoked in me a strong sense about individualism because it takes such people to tap that well.  So this life spent over the subsequent twenty years was designed to figure out the essence of that well the best I could—mostly through literature and artists from the previous 2000 years and a study through Joseph Campbell of comparative religions around the world.  I felt that the Star Wars novels were some of the greatest explorations into the nature of life beyond life that I had come across and they were great contributions to the tapestry of mythology.  The plot lines in some cases could have been better but the explorations into the “Force” were important in my view—and it was a shame to eject all that for some Disney commercial tripe.

However, in my view this revelation about Rey is something I think advances Star Wars properly—let me just say that.  It’s a fairly high concept that will conceivably provoke in many young people hopefully a similar journey as I have been on over most of my life.  I will say that if it turns out to be the case, that I will be impressed—which is likely why the information was leaked in the first place.  I have been very down on Star Wars since The Force Awakens.  Like I said, I haven’t played any video games, or even watched the television show Rebels since seeing The Force Awakens on December 17th 2015.

The mind bender which is pretty important and contrary to our lives is that a soul in whatever configuration that it entails isn’t necessarily the sex it was while it resided in a body during what we might call “life.”  When first thinking about the possible direction of the next Star Wars movie, Episode 8, I thought it was a Disney attempt to appease gay rights advocates.  But, it is deeper than that—and that’s important.  I think it’s so important that I’d consider giving Star Wars another chance because it just might advance the human race—not into the sexual rolls that we play as human beings but into the essence of what we are all made of in the eternal aspect.

However, the roles we play as a culture is important too.  Men are men, and women are women—nobody would think to walk into a Navajo tribe and start telling them to make sand paintings different or to rearrange their culture in some disrespectful way—and nobody should attack traditional American culture in a disrespectful fashion the way that progressives do.  I would argue that only American culture could produce something like Star Wars in this modern age—because it requires freedom and financial resources to extrapolate from the depths of imagination and to put it in front of the masses in such a spectacular fashion where literally the Internet was buzzing around the globe at the leak about Rey’s parentage.  So forcing gay subject matter down the throats of Disney fans is not what I’m talking about.  But a sexless existence that is eternal is something I can get excited about.  If Star Wars is knocking on the door to heavy mythic representations—then I will go in the door behind it.  If not, I’ll be done with it forever.  This news about Rey is encouraging to me.  I could get on board with that.  There may be hope for Star Wars yet.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Rich Hoffman Hosting WAAM Radio: Most of our problems summed up in an hour

Matt Clark needed to head out-of-town so he asked me to host his WAAM radio show at 1 PM on Saturday, which I accepted.  For just such occasions I now have a home studio to broadcast from since with my busy schedule, it is nearly impossible for me to actually do so from a fixed location.  It had been a very busy Saturday morning—so busy that there wasn’t even time to eat breakfast, so as I was doing show prep about a half hour before going on the air my wife brought me some Chick-fil-A to eat.  While I ate I was watching the news on a studio monitor.  This is what I saw:

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Once I got on the air I unloaded all the connecting events that had happened just during that particular news week and finished off with the conclusion that America was at the end of its rope.  We needed to take action right now to correct our treacherous conditions otherwise we wouldn’t get a second chance.  This is what it sounded like.  Click the link, sit back and listen—then share it with a friend.https://soundcloud.com/clarkcast/april-16-2016-guest-hosted-by-rich-hoffman-4-16-16-podcast

First I spoke about the Russian jets buzzing American ships in the Baltic.  Putin has been openly challenging American interests around the globe.  He calculated that under the Obama presidency that the military would not fire on his pilots and that he could flex his muscle in the Baltic region.  He was right much to all of our embarrassments.  America should have shot down those Russian jets.  It is hard to take the life of other people, but the Russians shouldn’t have provoked our military.

Donald Trump is about to win New York big, which shouldn’t be a surprise.  Running a populist campaign Trump is at a severe disadvantage to other political candidates who know the system better than him, because they helped create the rules.  Trump needs a very dominating victory in New York otherwise this whole election process will linger on needlessly.  Kasich is going nowhere, and neither is Cruz.  For the sake of the Republican Party, it needs to get behind Trump.  Otherwise Trump will need to start his own party so that the focus can shift to a general election victory instead of all the party oriented politics.

Hillary Clinton is running for president even though she’s under investigation by the FBI.  Think about how amazing that is—we actually have the first woman running for president with a barrage of scandals on her coat tails—and she’s the expected front-runner.  This would have been the story of the decade in the 80s or 90s, but with all the topics of our day, it’s just one element that is almost background noise.

We have over 19 trillion dollars in national debt which to me is the biggest story of all.  We are actually talking about 21 trillion dollars within a few years of now, and that is unfathomable.  On the radio show I proceeded to talk about all the regions of the country planning to file for bankruptcy to get out from under all this massive debt—but there is nowhere to run.  At the current 19 trillion-dollar deficit it exceeds our national GDP and is big trouble for having any hope at actually paying it off in our lifetimes.  This is the clear exhibition of incompetent management of our government and it demands immediate action to avoid default.  The only way out is massive economic expansion of 7% to 10%–to have a chance at surviving with our national sovereignty.

The NFL player Will Smith was shot in New Orleans and his coach Sean Payton used the tragedy to call out for gun control.  This infuriated me greatly, CLICK TO REVIEW.  Payton ran his Saints organization under a bounty system the year they won a Super Bowl in 2010 and Will Smith was one of his star players doing his part.  Smith obviously thought that he was above the law as he was dining out with members of law enforcement then had a small wreck on his way home.  Instead of stopping to exchange insurance information, Smith ran off and the victim hunted him down a few blocks down the road and shot him dead.  I put the blame on the kind of system that Sean Payton has created with his football players which spilled over onto the streets of New Orleans.  So it was disgusting that Payton sought to deflect blame away from himself and blame guns taking a very progressive position against them.  It was pathetic to use the murder of his friend to advance a political cause that deflected away from his own bad behavior.

Socialists around the country are demanding $15 dollars an hour for minimum wage which is insane.  Money is a measurement of value—if money is just handed out indiscriminately, it loses its value and inflation is invoked.  It is truly pathetic that more people do not understand basic economic concepts.  Fast-food workers are not worth $15 dollars an hour by market measurement.  The government backed increase will only cost jobs because it will force companies to automate their processes to cover their margins.  To the socialists that are causing all these problems globally, they just don’t understand that money is a measurement of values which they don’t see or understand because their emphasis is on equality—which essentially is a unit of measure that throws out all judgment.  You can’t have any kind of functional society without human judgment.  One thing I do on this site is write abundant articles on archaeology, as I am pretty obsessed with the causes of demise regarding ancient cultures.  I would attribute this tendency of demise to the Vico cycle which is a recurring theme given to human inclination hard-wired into our brains.  It is up to us to rewire ourselves to think differently and to make a conscious decision to step away from that destructive cycle.  The $15 dollar an hour minimum wage proposal is a promise to destroy our economy—which has always been the goal of socialists.

John Kasich is an unmitigated, delusional idiot totally out of touch from reality.  Watching him run for president makes you wonder if that guy has actually retained his sanity.  I think he has lost it somewhere over the last few years—he is certainly not the same person I knew back in 2010.  He sounds like a babbling fool and he’s just embarrassing.  He has no moral platform to even consider being nominated for president and he’s functioning under the assessment that he does.  I get messages from his campaign every day talking about how he’s the only guy who can beat Hillary in a head to head election.  Give me a break.  I don’t think he could win at anything against anybody.  He’s a buffoon obviously surrounded by complete idiots.  His type of politician is exactly what has screwed up our government in the first place.  It’s hard to believe that people like him are out there until you hear him talk and realize that he has so much support from the establishment.  No wonder we are in so much trouble.

Bernie Sanders is actually beating Hillary head to head as a socialist—and that points to a radical shift in our country.  Young people like Sanders, they are ready to embrace socialism because we’ve allowed the concept to be taught in our public schools and colleges, and now they are voters.  As of now there is a strong chance that he could be the Democratic nominee and he has half the country at his back.  Remember when Mitt Romney received all types of flack, which probably alone destroyed his 2012 campaign for president when he made the 47% comment?  What he said was true and now just four years later those 47% are looking at an open socialist like Bernie Sanders and thinking hard about voting for him just so they can get free stuff.  That is a serious problem—economically, and ethically.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg asked his employees this week if they should publicly denounce Donald Trump. I see Zuckerberg as just a stupid kid—a little midget boy who is about the same age as my kids who got lucky with some code that he wrote.  His politics are consistent with other Millennials taught progressive ideology in public schools and George Soros activism from publications like MoveOn.org and Think Progress.  Those publications then inspire more mainstream outlets like Rolling Stone and The Huffington Post.  Zuckerberg even though he’s a billionaire is an open border socialist and he is the next great threat to our American Republican after George Soros finally dies off.   The problem with Zuckerberg is that he has name recognition and a product that most everyone in America is using and loves.  He is the Lex Luther of our real world—and he has to be stopped.  For that reason, I am not on Facebook.  As I explained on the radio, the people helping me with my book projects created Facebook accounts for those novels, but I personally don’t have anything to do with them because I reject Mark Zuckerberg in every way shape and form.  He is an American villain.

The Ohio legislature is ready to throw in the towel to pro marijuana activists early in the fight to legalize medical pot before there is a vote in November.  Again, as I explained on the radio, I am against pot in every way shape and form.  I don’t take drugs, not even aspirin, so I’m dead-set against more drug legalization—especially medical marijuana.  In Ohio, the legislators want to get their hands on the tax money that pot could bring to the state, because they are so miserably hungry for another revenue stream which will allow them to redistribute more tax payer money to people who don’t deserve it—that they’ll do and say anything—even create a marijuana bill avoiding tax payers at the ballot box in November.  They are all villains as well, and they are selling out their state because they are lazy fools guilty of mismanaging our government.

And finally Puerto Rico wants to file for bankruptcy, it is $70 billion in debt and there is no hope of coming out of it.  Democrats are against the proposed bill which is in front of Paul Ryan because it prevents a raise of the minimum wage in that territory as they push for socialist increases across America.  If Puerto Rico is granted bankruptcy protection then following will be states like California and cities like Chicago who are all on unsustainable economic paths.  So house Republicans have a major problem on their hands far worse than whether or not Donald Trump is their nominee.  We have major, major, major problems and nobody is talking about it—because the consideration is so unpleasant.

So it was a busy one hour broadcast that rivals anything that you can hear on talk radio.  Since Matt gave me an open opportunity on WAAM’s airwaves and I already had the hour blocked off, I took the time to make the case in a way that connects the dots for everyone listening not only to the live broadcast, but the podcast later.  It’s valuable information that nobody in the mainstream news is able to provide to their supporters, because the complex nature prevents a correct understanding.  But I have a unique background and an ability to tie it all together so I did.  Hopefully you will enjoy the broadcast and will take the time to share it with someone you care about.  Because we all have some hard decisions to make and we need good information to help us make them.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Holding out for a Hero: America’s final seconds–they need Donald Trump

I spent an entire hour talking about it on Matt Clark’s radio show over the weekend highlighting the necessity—but America is in a situation where it needs one last bit of hope at the last second.  Just like the heroics we sometimes see in sports where a three-point shot is drained at the buzzer, or a champion quarterback throws a ball from midfield into the end zone hoping that his guy catches it with no time left on the clock—or a batter steps off the bench to hit a home run with two outs in the ninth to win the game—we are there as a nation.  We aren’t talking about a sustainable nation anymore—we’ve mismanaged the entire last few decades and now we’re at the end.  Now all we can do is hope with one last shot by some miraculous hero who doesn’t know the word “quit” that we can sneak away with a victory as the years run out of the second decade of the 21st century.  Donald Trump is that big dreamer and flamboyant, reckless showman who might just have what it takes for a hail Mary victory before our  nation gets to 2020 and discovers that we lost 24 trillion in debt are being pushed around the world by deadly “wanna bes” and communist dictators.  The most extraordinary example of Donald Trump’s last second efforts was the Wollman Rink in New York—which I’ve written about before—but somebody unearthed this wonderful footage from the 80s just ahead of the Tuesday primary vote and is providing us some game film showing the possibilities.  

It takes a special kind of optimist to win consistently and it takes an even more unique personality to pull out victories when everyone else is ready to throw in the towel.  I’m a sports fan for only this reason—I’m always on the search for the miraculous—because it sometimes shows itself in our games.  But in real life, it is far harder to see—because we often do not have units of measure to capture such things since the ending of a clock and the parameters of success and failure are not so easily interpreted by rules everyone agrees on.  That is why the Wollman Rink lingered in disrepair for so long in New York City until the big dreamer Donald Trump stepped up and provided the much-needed private sector miracle that everyone needed—and as the video shows, it restored a bit of happiness to those who didn’t have it three months earlier.

The mayor of New York at the time was Ed Koch—seen in the video speaking.  He was a big time Democrat who didn’t like Donald Trump.  Trump had no choice but to work with the mayor for his various building projects, so the two had a contentious relationship.  It was with great reluctance that Ed let Donald Trump even touch the beloved rink—and to throw in the towel to allow the private sector to take a swing of the bat.  Donald Trump being the big thinker that he was immediately went to work thinking outside the box and talking to the right people so that he could make the right decisions.  If Trump was asked how he was going to do all the things needed before he did it, Trump couldn’t have told anybody because he didn’t know, just like a star athlete can’t put last-minute heroics down on a sheet of paper to show pin-headed bureaucrats how they can duplicate his success.  That is because the success starts with a state of mind and optimism derived from past accomplishments.  Then the execution of that optimism has to be communicated to others so that they can do the right things at the right time through unrestrained leadership.

Trump had no “plan” as politicians and other idiots at the back of the train regarding the “Metaphysics of Quality” CLICK TO REVIEW often require—he only had a trust in himself to do the right things at the right time—and that’s what he did the moment that Mayor Koch gave him the green light.  The first thing Trump did was talk to an ice maker who was in the business of making it for a Canadian hockey team instead of the current outfit that was located in Miami, Florida.  In hindsight it should have been obvious to the politicians involved that they should have had someone with great experience advising them on how to build the rink in the temperate outside climate of New York—but after seven years, they hadn’t yet figured it out collectivity.  They make the same mistakes in the military all the time, overpaying for things because nobody is competitively bidding and sources are usually generated behind political donations.  The same thing essentially happens to everything the government touches at any level—decisions are not made to work with the best and brightest because government is too focused on “equality” and opportunity to make decisions based on merit.  So they are weak to identify elements of success when they need to.

It is that system of government that Donald Trump has had to contribute to for so many years, and in the very liberal New York area—a Republican like Trump has had no choice but to pad the pockets of politicians to fund them away from tampering with his projects.  As Ted Cruz says, “Trump funded Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer—along with many other Democrats” he’s speaking from extreme ignorance.  Well, that’s simply not true—Trump paid them to go away because that’s how politics work—they are second-handers always looking to take from those that have.  The best way to get them off your back is to pay them off and if you give them enough money they’ll help you no matter what political party you’re from.  In the field of battle there is no room for such ideological nonsense as Cruz utters.  Here is a guy who has never built anything—never created a single job who only understands political theory applied in the vacuum of conservative thought and he thinks he actually has the right to judge someone like Trump—who has been doing things on a big scale for three decades and knows just how to work the system to get what he wants out of it.  When Cruz speaks about this topic of political funding, it is disgusting because he has no experience for which to utter the words.

I don’t see any way out and I am an eternal optimist.  I am that guy who wakes up every morning and always believes he can win no matter what the odds.   I am all that and then some—and I’m saying America is at its end—we get this one election and that’s it.  We are losing in the world and our enemies are sensing it.  If we want the Republic of America to survive to 2020 we have to act now and hope that someone like Donald Trump can do for America what he did for the Wollman Rink.  To him it is simple; it just requires more advisors to speak with which he loves doing.  It will involve a whirlwind approach that has never been seen before in the White House.  Trump will work day and night and he won’t take vacations—and our many problems will get fixed quickly—relatively—just as the Wollman Rink was.  And if I’m the head coach trying to figure out who needs to be on the field in these last seconds—I want my best guy doing the job—not some political hacks who are responsible for us losing the game in the first place at this late stage.  I want the private sector guy who has a track record of doing the impossible—and Trump is that guy.  We just have to give him the opportunity and to get out of his way and hope for a miracle—because that’s where we are as a nation.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Why I’d Give Billions of Dollars to Archaeologists: The undocumented ancient civilizations under San Francisco and the Cloud People

One of the reasons I feel the way I do about civilizations and the politics of them is that I have a long time interest in history.  When I was in the 7th grade and had to take an aptitude test designed to point students in a career direction, my three results were archaeologist, test pilot, and stunt man.  It was an unusual result and my teacher back then was quite animated about the findings—after all this was a year before there was ever an Indiana Jones movie and nobody in their right mind would want to be an archaeologist.  My teacher thought I should have more sustainable career options and that my interests were………not aligned to reality.  For one, there wasn’t much money in the archaeology occupation, and it’s not very good for families.  It requires one to travel all over the world often in hostile territories rife with political limitations.  Even when you do get a dig permit the limits on them don’t allow you to find much beyond a few pots and pans leaving speculation into the greater civilization behind the artifacts to be highly speculative.   From the time I could first read my mother bought me great books about the world’s great mysteries—likely the same ones that inspired George Lucas to make the Indiana Jones films, and that is how I learned to read.  I fell in love with history early and it was always something that I found as my foundation passion.  If I had it my way, we would spend billions of dollars per year in America learning about our past so that we could prevent the same mistakes in the future.  We know next to nothing about where we came from and what the people were like who founded our lineage.  My study of the ancient cultures we know about has shaped much of my view about politics and philosophy—and it is my belief that the primary reason that more isn’t studied, is because that knowledge is intended to remain suppressed—for the preservation of the static society we have inherited.  Knowledge otherwise might provoke too radical of a change and many just aren’t prepared for those changes—yet.

With all that said, I don’t think we are even close to understanding our “native” past in North America—or even South America.  There were apparently very complex societies in the high Andes region before there was ever an Incan Empire, and the Bay Area of San Francisco has ancient walled boundary lines which predate any known society and is a lot more sophisticated than the nomad Indian tribes that were found there during westward expansion.  In fact, it looks like most of Northern California was host to this ancient civilization for which we know nothing about.  The relics of their vast enterprise are covered by modern development—which is usually the case—those are the two enemies of archaeological understanding—war and development.  Whether it is the covered up ruins around San Francisco featured below or the “Cloud People” of Northern Peru—there is a lot we need to learn.  The history books have not been closed on our ancient past—rather, we haven’t even made it through chapter one yet—much to the dismay of the many museums depending on federal grants to stay open and who want to end the story now to preserve the integrity of their exhibits.  There are two reports that I found uniquely connected even though they are very far apart geographically presented as follows:

All over northern California specifically in the region of San Francisco are mysterious 6’ walls.  The walls of the East Bay traverse some 50 miles in a straight line from the Carquinez Strait to San Jose, and in some places another 20 miles inland to Mt. Diablo.  They are generally six feet high and so far have defied explanation, hence the title “mysterious.”  For nigh on 100 years they have been explored, thought about but today have been largely abandoned.  Theories on their origins range from Zheng Hue’s exploration fleet, giants, Native Americans, even farmers but so far little or no archaeological research has been done on them outside of the trying to document their history which apparently pre-dates western/Spanish activity in the area.

Rough estimates by a geologist put their age older than 400 years or circa late 1500’s which puts this anomaly in new territory and forces the dismissal of many common theories about European / Spanish farms.  Especially since in greater San Francisco region the Spaniards did not settle  until 1769 when an expedition lead by Don Gaspar de Portola and Fr. Juan Crespi began to settle what is now San Francisco.  There was the odd seafarer such as Sir Francis Drake, who was believed to have sailed through the area in 1579, but seeing as he was a privateer the notion that he and his men attempted to settle the region is highly suspect.

http://www.anomalies.net/east-bay-walls-enigmatic-feature-or-part-of-the-remnants-of-a-lost-civilization-in-northern-california/

Then many thousands of miles to the south high in the Andes region is a fortress apparently belonging to the “Cloud People” who had predated the Inca civilization and had joined the Spanish in conflict against their South American rivals.  When you hear reports from environmental activists that nothing good comes from deforestation tell them this story.  If not for deforestation, the ruins of these long forgotten “Cloud People” would have never been found. Trees grow back and the species of animals that live in rain forests can migrate and return, but the treasures lost under the overgrowth from past civilizations are lost until they are uncovered and this most recent discovery is evidence that points to the possibility of a lot more.

Remains have been found before but scientists have high hopes of the latest find, made by an expedition to the Jamalca district in Peru’s Utcubamba province, about 500 miles north-east of the capital, Lima.

Until recently, much of what was known about the lost civilization was from Inca legends.

Even the name they called themselves is unknown. The term Chachapoyas, or ‘Cloud People’, was given to them by the Incas.

Their culture is best known for the Kuellap fortress on the top of a mountain in Utcubamba, which can only be compared in scale to the Incas’ Machu Picchu retreat, built hundreds of years later

Radiocarbon dating samples show that construction of the structures started in the 6th century AD and the complex was occupied until the Early Colonial period (1532-1570). Through the pre-Columbian, conquest and colonial periods, there are only four brief written references to Kuelap. It was rediscovered in 1843.

That year Juan Crisóstomo Nieto, a judge in Chachapoyas, made a survey of the area and took note of Kuelap’s great size; he was guided by villagers who had known of the site for generations. Subsequently, Kuelap gained the attention of explorers, historians and archaeologists. Notable observers who helped publicize the site included Frenchman Louis Langlois (who wrote a description of Kuelap in the 1930s), Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier, Ernst Middendorf, Charles Wiener and Antonio Raimondi.

The fortress of Kuelap or Cuélap (Chachapoyas, Amazonas, Perú), associated with the Chachapoyas culture, consists of a walled city, with massive exterior stone walls surrounding more than four hundred buildings. The complex, situated on a ridge overlooking the Utcubamba Valley in northern Peru, is roughly 600 meters in length and 110 meters in width. It could have been built to defend against the Huari or other hostile peoples. However, evidence of these hostile groups at the site is minimal.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1091550/Ancient-city-discovered-deep-Amazonian-rainforest-linked-legendary-white-skinned-Cloud-People-Peru.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuelap

I would propose that these two stories of recent discoveries and contemplations of an ancient past are only the tip of the iceberg.  As I said, if it were up to me, archaeologists would be well-funded in America—by private donations of course–to expose this lost past so we could better understand the circumstances of our present.  If I had the extra money of several billion dollars—I’d give them a check today.  I am inclined to think that these two aforementioned cultures, whoever they are, were not the first of their kind—that before them was likely another lost race of people.  Related to the Cloud People of South America it should be of great concern that they were known to be as “white” and fair-haired as typical Scandinavians or even Germans.  How did they get there so long ago?  That is a question that demands an answer.  But before we can have that answer we have to see the value in seeking it.  We have a long way to go before understanding our own history—and it should be a much greater priority.  Because within that answer is the key to understanding much of our modern world and the psychosis which seems attached to it. Before you can fix the future you have to understand the past and we are a long way from that.  Obviously we need to strive to do better.  The evidence is all around us.  All we need to do is be willing to look at it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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I Hated ‘The Hateful 8’: A terrible movie by a failing Hollywood industry

There was a lot not to like about Quentin Tarantino’s latest film The Hateful Eight. I personally didn’t see it when it came out in theaters around Christmas of 2015 because of Tarantino’s political activism against police, but I put it on the checklist.  It was sold as a western shot in 70mm traditional wide—just as Ben Hur was many years ago—so I figured it would be worth watching.  My chance came once it was released to the home theater market and I was a little excited about it. But after two hours of movie realizing that the whole thing was going nowhere, I was very concerned that if Tarantino was the best that Hollywood had to offer—that they consider him a “modern” Shakespeare–that there is no wonder their movie industry was in trouble.  At that point there was still about 45 minutes of movie left to show and I was ready to turn it off—but didn’t because I already had too much time invested.

This is what happens when someone becomes so full of themselves—and have been told by hundreds of aspiring actors and progressive movie producers that they are the greatest thing to arrive since fire.  They forget that people actually will see their movies and that those people think very differently about the world than those tucked up against the mountains of California and the Pacific Ocean. The only good characters in The Hateful Eight was the Kurt Russell character.  Samuel Jackson wasn’t the greatest and once he revealed an oral sex scene with another guy—I decided I didn’t like him and didn’t want to invest any more time into learning about him.  Most of the movie took place inside a cabin getting to know all these characters who were telegraphed very early to being all completely killed off.  There was no point to their stories or the interaction between them because it all led to one place—death.

The Hateful Eight is like a person being walked to an execution getting to know all the people spitting on him along the way.  It just doesn’t make any sense because that person was going to be dead soon—so why waste the time?  It was just horrendously stupid.  Beautifully photographed, good soundtrack—most of the time—but just a stupid story—I can’t believe anybody read that script and thought it the work of a genius—and I can’t believe anybody gave Tarantino money to make that movie.

Coming from a guy who shares with me a love for the great movie, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Tarantino obviously isn’t at the same level of Sergio Leone, and I went into The Hateful Eight hoping sincerely that he was.  Not even close—not even close to the sincerity of a spaghetti western, which I thought was the point of The Hateful Eight. It ended up being just another sign of a broken and declining culture that doesn’t make anything original anymore—even though all the tools were provided.  To suggest that The Hateful Eight is anything close to the masterpiece Hamlet, just because everyone ended up dead in the end is ridiculous.  There weren’t any sympathetic characters for which to hang a morality on in Tarantino’s movie.  All the characters were villains and none of them were people I’d want to get to know if they sat down next to me at a bar.

Even using the barroom metaphor with The Hateful Eight seems underwhelming.  Typically when a man wants to pick up a girl in a bar he engages in small talk to get her to reveal bits about herself.  Once she decides to talk about herself the conversation evolves into more personal matters.  Then as a climax and some trust won, the girl decides whether or not she wants to sleep with the guy.  It’s a little mating game that our species plays to make the experience not seem so cheap.  The Hateful Eight is like walking up to that girl and just flatly saying, “Let’s have sex.”  Then spending three hours talking about all the things you should have talked about before blurting out the obvious.  It was just despicable as a story—pathetic at every level.

I have liked other Tarantino movies—I thought Pulp Fiction was clever, and I enjoyed his work in other things—but I wouldn’t say he’s a master of anything.  He’s only smart compared to the very stupid people who now make up the Hollywood industry which these days are just a few rungs above raw porn in its creative impulse. I am really glad that I did not go to see this Tarantino western at the theater because I would have been angry at wasting the money. The Hateful Eight wasn’t a western; it was a monstrosity of undeveloped ideas from a director who obviously has personal problems holding back his artistic ability.

As an example of how all westerns should be presented these days, The Revenant is still the featured example.  If you are going to make a western, at least put in the work.  So what if someone stole the script to The Hateful Eight and that’s why Tarantino made it into a feature film.  The material wasn’t so good that an eight year old child couldn’t have written it—so whatever provoked big money donors to give Tarantino money for that piece of crap sadly overrated the ability of the troubled, progressive filmmaker.  The movie wasn’t just bad enough to write a poor review about, it was bad enough that I personally feel like I was robbed just by watching it, because I can’t get back my time.  It would have been a much better movie if Samuel Jackson hadn’t forced a naked man to perform oral sex on him, because in the last dying moments he was the only one left and I couldn’t help but think that he was the last person I wanted to see on the screen in the end.  Given that, he was the best character in the movie after Kurt Russell’s character died of poisoning.  The Hateful Eight was horrendous filmmaking and storytelling at its absolute lowest.  Sadly, it represents a new generation that thinks it’s the work of genius—because people are now so stupid and have such a low opinion of themselves that they don’t know any better.  People now can actually relate to these despicable characters.  And that’s the real problem with The Hateful Eight and the filmmakers who put that trash on the screen.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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