Tag: education funding

What they are Doing at Ross will soon come to Lakota: A promise I’ll make if you’ll vote correctly

In case you haven’t heard dear reader, the future of Lakota is actually happening in the Ross Township school system where they just passed a levy a short while ago and now the teacher’s union there is begging for a raise based on the extra revenue. And as reported by the soft taco education writer for the Journal-News, Michael D. Clark, the Ross teachers just rejected the latest offer by the school board even after a federal mediator came in to help resolve the matter. We also have seen nationally that the Chicago teacher’s union have been striking yet again to demand pay increases leaving thousands of parents scrambling to find somewhere to put their kids during their busy workdays. In my world, I would say to fire every single one of them and replace them with brand new employees who are not part of the union. But these are all government schools. We hire a school board through the election process to represent us at the table, but honestly, and they all know it, there is only one eventual resolution, they will have to agree to the pay increases one way or another because all other options to manage the situation is illegal. The government has ensured its employees of that much, and they use it against taxpayers all the time, and to hell with the children. The Ross teachers don’t give a damn about the kids otherwise they’d take the money the school board was willing to give them, and they’d shut the hell up and like it.

And that is precisely why the Lakota teacher’s union is eager to elect Ray Murray and Julie Shaffer to the school board so that when it comes time to have this same negotiation next year with the union, that Ray and Julie will lay down and give them all that they want without a lot of fuss. Because after all, the deck is stacked against management and they don’t want a lot of bloody news in the newspaper hurting their union brand. Ross Township in relation to other schools in Butler County is out across the river in no man’s land. Not really along any big commercial paths. It’s kind of the wild west version of a community in the very Republican county. So its easy to ignore and overlook in the paper. But it has all the same problems that a big school like Lakota has just to the east by ten miles or so. And what is happening there is a mirror reflection of what is coming to Lakota where a lot of people will be very upset when the same conditions are presented to them as voters.

Michael Clark and reporters like him are part of the problem. They are just going through the motions in life, and don’t want to disrupt their contacts on these school boards. So his reporting is soft shelled when it comes to the education beat because his newspaper employer relies on the old system to work, they need the sports pages, the advertising connected to that system and the ankle deep reporting that never gets to the heart of the kind of topics that are really floating around in the depths of all education. When he writes a story, it doesn’t put pressure on the union representatives like Robin Plowman at Ross to get her members in line to the school board demands. It only puts pressure on the school board because all the powers of nature are aligned by the rules and regulations to destroy their position, made worse by the reporters who are clearly aligned politically with the teacher’s union. For school boards its like being trapped in a house surrounded by armed forces and they’ve cut off your power and water and food supply. Eventually you’ll have to come out into a hail of gun fire. And as a school board member, you are expected to like it.

What we need desperately, especially at Lakota are school board members like Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn to hold the line during next year’s contract negotiations and when the teacher’s threaten to strike, which they will, to be willing to tell them to take a hike. But that is only one part of the puzzle. To fight their out of school antics, there need to be people like me willing to fight them with their games. I’m not saying it has to be me, it would be nice if it was a bunch of people like me, but someone has to engage them radical antic to radical position because that’s the way they fight and it’s the only path to beat them. The community has to back its school board and take the fight to the lap of the teacher’s unions knowing that you can’t trust the newspapers or the television reporters to stand behind the community representatives. I am certainly willing to do that and I have under considerable fire which I enjoy. That has been the point of this continued fight over the last decade. What’s different now is that there is a chance to get a real school board in place instead of a lot of those soft-shell tacos that Michael Clark likes so much so he can write those easy stories and not ruffle any feathers with his editors. He has enough ruffled feathers living in that beard of his especially this time of year as birds too lazy to fly south for warmer weather just reside in his beard.

What voters have to come to terms with, and we all have to accept is that teacher’s unions do not put children ahead of their paychecks. They use them as extortion pieces, but they don’t love them at all, and will abandon them in the classroom to put leverage on their contract negotiations without a second thought. There are lots of teachers that I have talked to who will say to me that union membership is a requirement and that they have no choice but to hide within membership and do what the leadership tells them. The union understands that too, they don’t give their membership a choice in the matter, they expect their members to follow their lead and use their numbers as leverage in negotiations. If the teachers go along with it but silently send messages out that they really just want to teach the kids, they are still acting against the children by allowing the union to have all that power. They are contributing to evil every time and its their fault that these negotiations go so poorly. If they are honest with themselves, they just want the pay increase. They aren’t doing the work for the pleasure of teaching children—even if the district can’t afford them. They just want the money and the union gets it through collective bargaining which is stacked against the school boards in every circumstance.

At Lakota things are a bit different. I am personally willing to fight the union if the school board will stick up to them. But first we must have a school board that will do so. The next time there is a strike at Lakota I will take that fight to them building a coalition of our own and to hell with that federal moderator and Michael Clark’s reporting. Put real school board members on the board and I will promise that I will defend that board with whatever it takes to beat that union. But first you will have to vote for James Hahn and Lynda O’Connor on Tuesday November 5, 2019. Do that much and we’ll take care of the rest. Unlike reporters such as Michael Clark I will get the dirt on every member of the teacher’s union, who they are sleeping with, who they didn’t tip well at a local restaurant, even what kind of underwear they are wearing and we will paint the world with their antics. And they won’t like it one bit. That’s what will happen the next time teachers at Lakota try what they are doing now at Ross and ultimately Chicago. It’s a game I’m sick of seeing and I’m not a soft taco kind of guy. I like a lot of hot sauce and there is plenty of it there to consume. Now get out there and VOTE!

Rich Hoffman

Its all about Guns in Lakota Schools: Remember to vote for Lynda O’Connor and Jim Hahn for School Board on November 5th

From the beginning it was always about guns for me regarding the school board candidates at the Lakota school district which we are voting for on November 5th, 2019. Not so much as we use guns to shoot people, but that they sustain ourselves from people who would like to shoot us. The political philosophy being embraced or not really, points to the essential differences of the management system that is up for debate. Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray represent anti-guns on teacher’s points of view, exactly the same position as the teacher’s union and Democrats nationally. The roots of their belief system is that we should all depend on each other, flaws and all for the betterment of a utopian society lacking individual identity and trusting in the system we have invented to sustain us. As opposed to Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn who believe guns should be worn by teachers as first responders in the moment of a hostile crises and that individuals, not systems, are the keys to solving many of the social ills starting with the ownership of firearms in general.

To further break down this parody Julie and Ray want voters to trust their very flawed personalities with the lives of our children, and that also is the position of the progressive teacher’s union politically. Once anybody admits to themselves that guns are in American society, and should be in all American schools, to protect the acquisition of individual possession then the formula for all public education to teach contrary realizations is exposed and ruined forever. So of course, Julie and Ray don’t want guns on teachers, they want everyone to trust the system they represent, and to their specific roles, are terribly underqualified. However, qualification is an individual assessment, so for them, so long as they can blend into the background, their personal faults ethically, financially, and morally can be ignored.

This interpretation of guns is a heady matter that is not conducive to the lazy thinkers and mass collectivists that have transcended from the deserts of the Middle East and migrated along the coasts of the Indian Ocean during the evolution of the many oriental religions of sacrifice and collective salvation. The gun has no place in those cultures because the aim of life is not to acquire individual traits, but to get rid of them. If you study the modern liberal, that is the roots that you will find dear reader, and that is the foundation of all teacher unions and government schools. Every single one of them. And when it comes to managing those school boards with like minded people, Julie and Ray are just the kind of people they want running things, easy to beat, flawed personalities, and not very smart.

In fact, at the core of education as we all assume is the individual attainment of intelligence, after all that is the purpose of education, to acquire knowledge. But that is not the goal of government schools led by these sinister, oriental style forces. They want a breakdown of individualism and an advocacy of social collectivism where the institution is worshipped itself, not the participants. You can see that at any Friday Night Football game at Lakota. The parents in the audience watching their kids play games under the lights of an October sky will say, “we won,” or “we lost.” By attending the game, they feel they are part of the game and therefor, the institution represented on the scoreboard. Individual touchdowns by heroics are lost to the next day news so long as the school gets the credit for individual behavior. And that is the way it is with these people, and it always has been.

So to come to such thoughts is a very individualized process, and for that people arriving at such a state need guns to protect themselves from the advocates of institutionalism, whether the attackers are crazed pot smoking lunatics or Manchurian candidates seeking actual assassination to preserve the status quo. You would be surprised to what extent lazy, dull; people will fight to avoid more work and real thinking. They would truly rather kill you than to step up to the level of thought you might introduce them to with a little effort. To that proof I would offer Socrates as an example, who was poisoned for corrupting the youth of Greek society. Today instead of killing Socrates as a middle-aged man they just kill them before they ever hatch out of kindergarten. The public schools don’t want the next great philosophers, and great thinkers and innovators. They want boring people that they can control easily, and they certainly don’t want them to have guns to defend themselves with.

Ultimately that is why teachers in school must have guns and why we need school board members who support education curriculums that advocate individualized learning and will push back against the tide of state and federal mandates to the contrary. We want kids to learn in school and we want guns to protect what they have learned from villains of old oriental philosophies from eradicating that possession from their minds with the threat of death. Guns protect all individualized possessions, even knowledge. Anyone who knows history well could think quickly of five or six situations where governments, kings, or anarchists have shown up on the doorsteps of a great thinker and killed them so that society would not advance beyond the intellectual reach of the worst and most wicked. For that is the true intention of evil and the reason it is bad.

Guns are about preserving what we teach to individual students so that they can live and carry out the products of their understanding. Not in just saving their lives for the sake of one more statistic sitting in the stands of a football game cheering for the institution when they could be at home reading a book and getting smarter. The goal of a school should not be to accept the perverted sexual understanding of the most obsessed mind with the basic functions of reproduction, but to teach them to think beyond such primitive cravings, to the point where we don’t even think about being transgender, but what is the state of life outside of the universe, or multiverse. It is up to the education system to teach to think beyond limits, not to hold everyone under them.

And that is the subtle message of this election, Lynda O’Conner and James Hahn stand for guns and the protection of individual possession of knowledge, Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray aren’t even smart enough to ask such a question, so they don’t want to be left behind by smarter people than they are, rather they want to keep guns out of the schools, and instead keep the topics of conversation on transgender bathrooms and how to blow $100 million by paying teachers countless amounts of money then asking taxpayers to subsidize their failure at some future time. By voting against guns in schools and in society, anti-gun personalities like Ray and Julie stand with the original masses in disregarding individual behavior in favor of collectivism. And when you see how Ray and Julie have led their lives, you can understand why they are so eager for such a position.

Rich Hoffman

The Timid Lakota School Board Candidates, Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray: Being a cop doesn’t automatically make a person an expert on courage

With a big school board candidate election coming up this year at Lakota in southwest Ohio the differences are quite obvious between them. Of the topics most talked about at a recent Meet the Candidates evening at the VOA Miami University Lecture Hall on October 22nd 2018 the topic of arming the teachers to prevent another mass shooting, especially at a large, affluent school like Lakota, and the various ways of looking at that problem was very well defined. Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn had the obvious conservative approach to things, self-reliance, and solution-based results at the point of danger whereas Ray Murray and Julie Shaffer were obvious liberals who believe in big government, passivity, and some kind of prayer to avert danger. Of them Ray had the most ridiculous answer to the question of arming teachers in the classroom, although Julie Shaffer wasn’t far behind with her 22% of shooters hit their targets under duress. Well, that’s 22% better than not having a gun. What a lunatic. But her thinking was very much captured in Ray’s statement which can be seen below, and it took everything I had to sit there and listen respectfully.

I get tired of people like Ray, people who are obviously timid peaceful people lecture the rest of us how society should be constructed to their sensibilities, then selling it as if being a police officer at some point in time gives him the right to say such a thing. As he told his story about wanting to dig into the concrete to get away from a firefight when he was a cop in Chicago all I could think of was the word “wimp.” Now that’s not a politically correct term, but lets face it, that’s what we all thought of it and if we didn’t, we would call ourselves liberals, people who count on some institutional system to avert our fears about the things in life that scare us. Just because Ray was a cop doesn’t make him some magical man of authority on the subject. Lots of people become cops for all the right reasons, and when they get shot at, they learn perhaps that the job is not for them. It can be scary, but for some people, being shot at is exhilarating and they are the best that they can be when danger is presented. I’m sure we have those types of people working at Lakota and it is they who should be carrying a gun. If Ray is too scared, well that’s fine. We don’t want him digging into the hallways of Lakota if there is a firefight. We want someone to engage the target, so I get it, Ray and Julie are not the people we want armed. But when a bad guy shows up, somebody needs to meet them while we wait for the police to arrive, because the body count will be measured in seconds of engagement, not minutes.

Speaking for myself I am an adrenaline junkie. I have been shot at and had guns pointed at me, many, many times. I am a little too crazy for the structure of the military or the police force but unlike the institutional perspective of Ray Murray and Julie Shaffer there are other ways that people get shot at in life. For a time, I was a repo man during the years that a lot of people go to the military repossessing cars from deadbeat owners who often become violent when they learned you were there to take their property away. I volunteered for every assignment I could because I thought it was exciting and when gunfire did break out, I thought it was pure heaven. Being that close to a dangerous situation was fun to me and I couldn’t get enough of it. I was also a bouncer at a night spot I worked at around the same period of my life. I wasn’t yet 21 years of age, yet I was throwing out drunks, breaking up fights, and taking fights to safe places with people much older and bigger than me. And in those fights guns came out all the time and I never thought twice about crying about it or digging into the pavement while bullets flew around. I’ve seen people get shot, and I’ve seen people die. And all that occurred in the private sector. I once knew a judge of very high rank in the city of Sharonville and when I got into trouble, he helped me out. It was a good arrangement and I learned a lot from it. But why did he help me, well, people who love danger as much as I did, and still do are hard to find. And he appreciated that trait and thought it valuable enough to cut me some slack when things did go wrong. Let’s just say that.

I tell that little bit of the story to say that some people love danger and they want to help others get away from it. And we need to empower those people to stop crimes before they happen. It’s better to have someone smashed up and in the hospital sometimes than to play everything safe and leave the problem to the institutions where some pot smoking loser kid who knows they are going nowhere in life decides to go shoot up a school. By the time Ray and Julie’s police arrive, 5 to 20 kids could be killed, because that is the kind of world we are living in. And you’d be surprised at the kind of people who hear a gun shot and will run straight through the bullets to stop the carnage because they have a natural inclination to do well while in danger.

I thought hard about becoming a cop, or joining the special forces in the military, but honestly, I was never a yes sir no sir kind of guy. I don’t like the structure of those organizations, so I didn’t join, even for the ability to carry a gun and shoot down bad guys. It was tempting, but it wasn’t worth enduring all the silly rules. But don’t assume that being a cop makes someone an expert on gunfights. Personally, I’d love to be in a gun fight, every day if I could. So, Ray is speaking from an experience of a guy naturally timid, and that’s OK. But don’t assume you speak for everyone.

Just a rough bet, but I would say that at least 5% of the employees at Lakota have some bit of the adrenaline addiction that I described about myself. When danger happens, they only think of one thing, engaging it and stopping it. They don’t pay attention to the sounds of the gun fire; they are instead inspired like a fine symphony to conduct their lives to the beat of danger. And if not for those types of people, we would have a much more dangerous type of world in America. I would argue that suppressing those types of people with institutional constrictions has led to far more death than in allowing adrenaline junkies who love justice for all to carry open firearms to engage any potential targets in fractions of seconds than the time it takes to make a 911 call. And that again is proof of how ridiculous Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray have been as school board members. They make decisions based on their timid perspectives while the real solutions are handcuffed behind institutional virtue. To assume that everyone in the world is just as timid as they are is more dangerous than arming teachers. And that is what nobody is putting into perspective, that is, perhaps until now.

Rich Hoffman

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

Vote for O’Connor and Hahn to Lakota School Board: It isn’t about being nice, its about being effective

The value to a person like me of the Lakota school system is in how little they take from the community to offer their free baby-sitting service. I think we are in a time where the college myth is no longer relevant, that we understand the cost of a liberalized education is very detrimental to young minds. But a lot of parents could care less, they just need somewhere to park their kids for the day while they do whatever they do. And if there are sports programs, they can play the lottery with their children by hoping that they may get a scholarship to a college and save them some money. That’s my opinion of the public education system which might be bleak to many, but its my observation that, that is the essence of it, so in my view, it needs to cost the least possible. The real figures that make up a good community are the businesses that create the desire to move into an area. The school that happens to be there benefits from the quality of people who are drawn to the businesses of a region. It’s a really broken system that measures all the wrong values, so while we all figure out the future of public education, we need a bridge from here to there that has smart people managing the resources so we don’t end up with the kind of mess that we have had at Lakota during the last decade.

At the recent VOA Miami University Meet the Candidate night which took place on October 22nd, 2019 I attended to provide coverage for those who couldn’t be there, and video of the event is provided here. I see this work as a kind of public service. Feel free to watch the videos and make your decisions on the candidates. For me the unquestionable choice for school board in this upcoming election is James Hahn and Lynda O’Connor. Lynda has been around for a while and knows how to manage the board and keep Lakota in a win column so that they don’t scare off potential investors into real estate as a deal breaker. I don’t think Lakota is a lure, not in the way public school used to be. Other factors certainly are a greater part of the decision-making process. And that’s where James Hahn comes into play. He’s a business guy and would provide Lynda and the current board member Todd Parnell with that critical third vote to keep the district running well with the massive amount of money that we do give them.

Much of the talk from that debate night was what to do with the massive $100 million surplus that Lakota is operating under. I filmed many of the questions and answers but was out of the room away from the camera when Ray Murray proclaimed that it would take Lakota 37 years to spend all that money, which was astonishing. I’m sure somebody in the room filmed that comment. But the gist of the night was that Ray and Julie Shaffer were nice people who just didn’t have a clue how to operate in this tightly controlled Lakota district where business owners have actually stood up for themselves against the extortion tactics that public schools often use to get more money in their pockets so they can throw it at the teacher’s union. Looming in the room around that event were many of them from Liberty Township and West Chester. Sure, everyone shakes hands at the end of those things and gets along, professionally. But the resentment of the game is a clear dividing line and since much has been said over the last decade about the negative ways Lakota has interacted with that part of the community, it is clear that the skills needed are well beyond Ray and Julie.

What’s different now as opposed to even a few years ago is that “just pay more money for the kids” isn’t enough any more for public schools, and at Lakota that is especially true. There are lots of psychological problems that make people do what they do, and as I often refer to strong supporters of government schools as rapid animals with their minds soaked into delusion as to what the school can actually do for their children, what everything eventually comes down to is money. Lakota has plenty of money that they are taking in. The question is, what happens to it? Without a pro-business school board who knows how to read a balance sheet, that $100 million surplus will be wasted on everything and the board will come back to the community asking for more money in a few short years.

Nobody wanted to talk about a school levy, obviously I was there for everyone to see, and many members of the old No Lakota Levy campaign were in the audience also very visible. Without question that changed the course of the dialogue a lot from pro levy discussions which of course the teachers and administrators always want to hear and centered on more fiscal responsibility which seemed like an oblivious concept to Ray. I am still astonished about some of the things he said during the debate. He may be a nice guy that is very likable but being likable isn’t a qualification unless the job is a Wal-Mart greeter. When we are talking about budgets ranging in the millions and millions of dollars, many times you want someone managing it who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about being liked. Quite the opposite.

Lynda O’Connor has come a long way in her years on the school board. I’ve always liked her but, in the beginning, I thought of her as another idealist who was pro education and would work the Republican ranks because of the regional consequences. But she has certainly proven to me that she is sincerely conservative. She also has a lot of hope in what can be done with public education and so long as we have that as the means of educating kids, she is the right kind of person for a job like the school board. James Hahn is new to all this, and that is great too. So long as he can learn from Lynda, his business experience will be a big help in keeping the business community close and part of solutions. The other two, experienced board members and part of what was the problem originally would be a disastrous pick.

Let’s face it, without opposition Lakota would not have that $100 million surplus. It wasn’t some miracle trick in accounting. Lakota has a good treasurer, much better than who was there before her. And I think the new superintendent is a good one. I’m sure he’d like more freedom to promote the brand of Lakota as more the center of the community than what it is. I don’t think its bad at all to be part of that anger. I see it as healthy. Nobody wants to read one more boring newspaper article about these topics from boring, fossilized reporters. They enjoy my work for sure, and I think giving it to them with an animated zeal is good for the decision-making process. Public school is a boring topic for those who have their kids all grown up and have moved away. They certainly don’t want their taxes to go up. They just want to enjoy their community, their jobs and a nice place to shop and go out to dinner on a Friday night. They don’t want to hear that Lakota has blown their $100 million surplus and is asking for more money because the school board mismanaged it. To avoid that fate, vote for O’Connor and Hahn. And make sure Lakota knows you are watching them. Because the moment you don’t, that money and much more will be spent, and we’ll have another levy. You can bet on that.

Rich Hoffman

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

Ray Murray Thinks it will take 38 Years to Spend Lakota’s $100 Million Surplus: Why people like he and Julie Shaffer should never be in charge of a budget

$100 million is a lot of money to liberals who only see future pay increases for subpar work leading to easy labor union contract negotiations. And clearly one school board member, Julie Shaffer displayed at a recent meet the candidate’s night at the VOA Miami University Campus Lecture Hall how little she knows about money. Her partner in such a perspective was Ray Murray, the former school board member coming back for more and local pastor pontificated that we wouldn’t—couldn’t spend that much money of a surplus for 38 years, so to his utterances why not give it all away. Now you can see dear reader why it’s dangerous to elect these kinds of people into a management of our tax money. Instead of respecting that money and understanding that the surplus wasn’t really one at all, but a debt leverage problem that needed attention, they tried to paint the fiscal conservative on the board, Lynda O’Connor as a Chicken Little for pointing out that deficit spending is not a healthy condition. No wonder the teacher’s union is licking its chops to get Ray and Julie back on the board and managing their contracts a few years out. They already have that money spent whereas Lynda and the newcomer James Hahn understand that $100 million is not that much money, especially when you look at the overall budget needs.

I did get to talk to Matt Miller the Lakota superintendent and the very good treasurer Jenni Logan, recognized throughout the state of Ohio as the very best in her field, and they assured me that they were going to tackle the deficit spending problem. Sure, it’s fun to spend money like there’s no tomorrow, but smart people like Jenni, and Lynda understand that $100 million as a surplus isn’t much when the operating budget is around $160 million per year, where the only product is educating students, (or babysitting them) and they aren’t doing a very good job at that either, getting a recent poor report card from the state that shows money does not improve results. The teachers need to work harder and worry less about transgender bathroom policies.

I was encouraged to see many friends from the business community not sitting this election out, they are not impressed with the $100 million surplus either. They are wondering why Lakota can’t lower their tax burden if they are operating at such a surplus and not considering spending pauses so that they could continue to build up elements of our community that really matter, jobs and recreation that make a community what it really is, and not just a cesspool of employment for a liberalized labor union trying to program our children into future Democrats. Had they not been there this election might have a different tone, but even the spending addict Julie Shaffer had to watch her mouth so not to sound “too” Democrat in such a conservative district even with pro spending liberals showing out in full force to support future contract negotiations. The smart people want to see James Hahn elected instead of Ray or Julie because that would put a third conservative on the board and would help manage that surplus responsibly. But if left to Ray and Julie, to Lynda’s point, the money will all be gone in around 5 years. Jenni gets it. But Matt didn’t look so happy to see me, and not so excited about focusing on the deficit spending aspect. Elections have consequences and a lot of people are waiting to see how this one turns out.

The best thing to do with the money would be to lessen the burden on future taxpayers to inspire more investment and continued growth. What is lost on Ray and Julie as to the role of the school board in the community is that they not only have to manage the quality of the school, but the cost and to understand the balance between the two. The way it has been, which has sickened me to my core, is that school districts leverage their power to tax against future investment. If you want to play in their school district then they expect you to pay, which is something I will be covering much more in subsequent articles. I can understand the tension in the room at that candidate’s forum. I understand idealistic people with a bloodthirsty zeal to support their school system without understanding how the cheese is made behind the scenes. It’s much easier to just focus on kids and transgender bathrooms, whether or not busing is available and the quality of the sports program. But the question remains, what makes a school district good, is the businesses that attract jobs and good quality applicants who need housing, places to eat, and shop. Or is it the schools that we pour millions and millions of dollars into that just go to overpriced teachers teaching our children radical leftist political activism only to have those kids grow up and to move away. I would say it’s the businesses that come first then the schools that reflect the quality of a well-managed community. And that is something no school system wants to admit to, because it would destroy their extortion racket that they have politically on a community, and financially.

There is a reason so many real estate people are involved with pro levy endeavors, or government labor union types. It’s because behind the scenes schools leverage themselves into the business community with subtle threats directly attached to their ability to tax. Pay or be destroyed, or don’t do business altogether. Being in pro education anything groups like I was last night the people are not the risk takers who go out and obtain financing for some next new great thing, they are just average people who want to feel what they are doing by investing in Lakota will make their kids like them when they grow up. They want to think that the education system will fix all their deficiencies as people. That is certainly the case of Julie Shaffer and her past protégé Joan Powell who were part of those upside-down deficit spending habits that almost destroyed Lakota and the community it sits in. The reason there is a $100 million surplus now is because so many kids grew up and away and new kids did not replace them, so Lakota has declining enrollment that will continue into the future, and that took the pressure off our budget tremendously, but the deficit spending has continued and will so long as there is a three vote majority against proper budget management.

As Julie said trying to defer blame from herself, school boards don’t pass levies, they don’t demand further tax increases. They leave it up to the voters. But what school boards do however is mismanage the money we give them. They cave into labor union demands for ever increasing rates of pay that is not connected to any performance standards. And when Julie won’t take her part of the blame for the deficit spending and when Ray, who was there all along thinks it is party time at Lakota, that they have 38 years to spend that $100 million surplus, well there is the problem. We have a chance to fix it with this election, but people are going to have to show up to vote. If they don’t then the same deficit spenders will be in place, the labor unions will love it because Julie and Ray would gladly approve a contract negotiation because they don’t have the guts to deal with a strike or bad press for standing up for the taxpayers. And they will lead the charge against the business community to twist their arms into silent approval or else boycotts from the radical union members will come after their brand with a fury. And none of those questions were asked at the candidate forum because as we all know, it’s something that people just don’t talk about. But it is every bit the core of the problem.

Rich Hoffman

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

Creating Crises for Change Agency: Why so many are so angry about Syria

It is truly scary to think how close we came to having Mitt Romney as president in 2012, Mr. Pierre Delecto. If you add him to John Kasich who was governor of Ohio during that election, its no wonder the GOP lost all the time. Those guys just suck. Horrible representatives of conservative values and in the scheme of things, before there was a Donald Trump in politics, they were the good guys. We all suspected how deep the deep state was, and why we had troops all over the world supporting make work wars just for the benefit of having something to do and always a crisis to manage. You would think that more Democrats would be happy that Trump is pulling our troops out of Syria and asking other countries to pay their own way in matters of conflict, but nobody in government is happy about it, because essentially it exposes them for not really having anything better to do. They create the crises, then they send resources to manage the crises, all the while enriching themselves in the process. And now that we have a president that is exposing that scheme people like Romney are apocalyptic. If there is anything good coming of it, it is that conservative radio and talk shows are finally starting to see how the game has been played all along. Rush Limbaugh had a particularly good show about it, seen below, as did Laura Ingraham on Fox.

One of the first rules of change agency is to create a false crisis, a situation where people in a panic will make decisions, they otherwise wouldn’t make to usher in a change state to their daily lives. And nothing provokes change more than a war without end. I would think that the Hollywood anti-war protestors would be supporters of President Trump due to his desire to turn away from that chaos of global war machine politics. Instead they have turned toward the next crises, an invented diatribes like “climate change.” They are hoping to see the President impeached before the swamp is drained and all their tricks for creating crises are exposed. Wars used in this modern era, as we have clearly witnessed by the evidence, are make work programs for the lazy, and institutionalized thinkers, such as the Harvard educated Mitt Romney. Trump’s election has turned the world he thought he understood on its head leaving us all thankful that the common sense of the American people made an important change in electing Trump before it was too late, which in 2012 was at the precipice. Many in the Tea Party movement were seeing the writing on the wall, much earlier even than 2009 when things really started to get heated. But the panic now, for losers like “Pierre Delecto,” is that their make work wars have been exposed and that the world will forever be changed, and that they don’t understand their place in it.

Rush was correct, these political class players used our love of military, patriotism, and country to create a military complex that we would cheerfully send over seas to manage other people’s problems all in the name of crises management. Yet the crises were created by hidden agents operating behind the curtain, infusing a little anger here in some socialist cell in the Middle East, or making it so that America couldn’t fly into space but through Russian agents due to cutbacks at NASA. And we were all supposed to accept these ridiculous limits and provocations and like it. Then when we elected a different kind of politician that would turn the GOP into a true Republican Party, politicians like Mitt Romney and John Kasich fell into an all-out panic. They had spent their lives learning the rules and now the rules were all thrown out the window. If we had elected Romney, the Republican Party would essentially slide more to the left and become what the Democrats would like to be about now.

You can see the weakness of these arrogant institutionalists when pressed, Mr. Pierre Delecto uttered “C’est moi,” just to show everyone how educated and “New English” he is while confirming his clandestine Twitter account so critical of President Trump. He was so eager for some reporter at Slate to sniff at his breadcrumbs and tell the world that Romney wasn’t such a boring guy after all, and that he really hated the president desperately, because essentially, he had lost at his chance. He’d rather have someone in the White House that he understands even if they are from the other party. Sounds a lot like James Comey as he talked about drinking wine while leaving Washington after being fired from his job by Trump as another worthless beltway bureaucrat. These people, who we used to call conservatives are simply coastal liberals who have no idea what makes the rest of the country tick, and they have no desire to learn because they are representatives of institutionalism, and that behavior seeks to justify themselves through chaos and crises. They never did want any solutions to any problems, they just wanted problems so they could appear to do things about it, while making themselves wealthy off the process. A quick look at how much incoming senators make as opposed to what they make leaving office tells the whole story. It is insulting that these types of people were upset with Trump for wanting to host the G7 at Doral. I still think he should.

If not for the Trump election none of this would have been exposed, but it is now. Better yet, conservative outlets are no longer treating the subject as a vast conspiracy, but as real news, as it always was. The best thing that could happen is that people like Mitt Romney and John Kasich be flushed from conservative thinking and that the GOP form under the small government tendencies of the Trump administration. The hypocrisy couldn’t be more obvious, even from a giant media company like Disney who should love the Trump administration for its anti-war stance, its solution-based trade wars, and economic sanctions which hit villains in the pocketbook, not in innocent collateral damage. If it’s not obvious by now, our military is not exactly a bastion of conservatism. They are by nature big government bureaucrats which Trump learned while trying to put them in his administration. Troops might vote for Republicans, but generals are very liberal in their thinking, and they love to have perpetual wars with no solutions in sight because it keeps everyone fed with make work programs and reasons to celebrate with dinner parties for the heroes of the movement. You would think that more people would support pulling back the troops but now that someone in the Executive Branch is actually planning to do it, without asking for permission, the outrage is rather explosive, and for our benefit, very revealing. There is nothing new about it, but we do now see a truth that has always been there. And it’s a good thing that we finally did, and that news types, such as Rush Limbaugh are finally addressing it for what it is. We had to admit that our GOP was not fully conservative and that our former politicians were just as corrupt as the Democrats. To me, Trump’s anti-war stance is a liberal one, and he is not what I would call a strong conservative. But next to Mitt Romney and John Kasich, and many others, Trump is the most conservative politician to ever sit in the White House, or anywhere for that matter.

Rich Hoffman

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

Should we be Sad about Elijah Cummings: The death of an impeachment leader

It was a little weird that one of the leaders of the Trump impeachment push, Elijah Cummings died suddenly at the age of 68 just a few hours after signing subpoenas for the effort, and that it wasn’t the lead story for every news outlet. Not to suggest a conspiracy of any kind other than the story was seriously underreported. Cummings sat on just about every panel against Republicans for a very long time, and suddenly he was gone and nobody was really talking about it. It was nice that Trump made a nice statement about Cummings showing that he was clearly taking the high road. I can’t say I would have done the same. Regardless, I would have thought it would have been more of a breaking story than it was. Likely, he was one of the leaders of the Trump impeachment and now with is passing, a lot of wind went out of the sails of the Democrats, and nobody was all that happy about it.

I’m not one to spit on the grave of anyone, but I’m not at all an Elijah Cummings fan, not in life or death. Just because he died doesn’t suddenly make him a martyr for justice, he was a loser and a big government advocate that was attacking the way of life that America offered, and a real problem. The political left lost an important part of the chess board with the Cummings death and it should be understood that way. After all, we aren’t playing pattycake here, Cummings was trying to impeach our elected President, and I’m not happy about it. I don’t really care what his intentions were, it was the results that we should have always been concerned about and the sudden loss of him will be a serious blow to Democrats and their impeachment efforts.

Honestly It wouldn’t bother me at all if all the Elijah Cummings types, the impeachment provocateurs and general liberal protestors of victimization over productivity would go away in a similar way. I don’t like the way they view the world and I really don’t want to share my country with them. It has nothing to do with color, but of values. People like Cummings are in the way of an otherwise great country and all they contribute to a national dialogue is a lot of complaints. And rather than compete in the marketplace of ideas, when they can see they cannot win, they instead seek to impeach our President and attempt to take the rest of over a cliff to our own demise. So you won’t find me losing any sleep over his sudden death. I thought President Trump’s words were nice, too nice.

It’s not that Democrats ever really had a case for impeachment that causes some mild relief that one of their biggest advocates has now died, its that I just get tired of listening to their version of the world—perpetual victims helpless to think and do things on their own, leading people into worse lives than they might otherwise have just to prove a political point from their long standing points of view. A politician like Cummings was on television all the time saying the worst things, so its not unsavory to be a bit happy for the relief. Listening to Democrats is a real chore, their outlook on life is so bleak and painful. Like Cummings most of us only put up with it because we feel sorry for them, but to me, that’s not enough of a reason. If they are so unhappy, then they can just leave.

I don’t care what Cummings did for civil rights, or what he put his name on during his long run as a politician, he was a loser by all definitions of that measure. His thoughts and actions imprisoned countless people to the politics of his advocacy which ruined countless lives instead of helping them as he suggested. And in the end all he had to show for it was to try to create a case for impeachment that just stood in the way of doing good things for America. If his ideas were so good, then why was he trying to impeach the President during an election year? Well, because he and the other Democrats leading the effort had no offering that could compete with President Trump on the world stage. They were all small thinkers being overshadowed by the big think of the president and for that they had no answer other than to try to undo him, ruthlessly. How are we supposed to feel about his death? Relieved is the only word that comes to my mind.

It is possible to imprison people with a mode of thinking, and Elijah Cummings certain did that. The people who followed him were doomed due to his small thinking. Then to prevent that thinking from being challenged by competitive ideas, they sought to destroy that competition so that their loser mentality could permeate our society with lackluster effort and victimization. If another country tried something like that with us we’d call it a provocation of war. That definition doesn’t change just because Cummings was a person of color from the Baltimore congressional district representing the poor. What he was trying to do to the rest of us was pretty unforgivable. And the media knew it upon his death. Once the realization set in that he did in fact die, there were a few articles here and there, but it certainly wasn’t the kind of coverage that we’d typically expect. The world ticked on rather quickly on the Republican side and the Democrats were licking their wounds knowing that one of their champion impeachment advocates was no longer on that chessboard, and they didn’t want to think about that prospect.

Because other than complaining, the Democrats have no plan or ideas. They have no candidates to offer in this 2020 election to the point where none of the networks can offer them up in the horse race as a viable contender. All they have as they look at their options is embarrassment. That is why they turned to Cummings and his friends to impeach President Trump—because they know they can’t beat him in an election. And the rest of us are supposed to be OK with it all and just go about our business? No, I don’t think so. Cummings was a hostile agent intent to overthrow our nation into becoming something that looks more like Baltimore today, and that was never a potential acceptable likelihood, so people outside the Beltway didn’t want to hear from him. And now we don’t anymore. I don’t wish damnation of his soul or any ill will toward his family. But I won’t miss him, not one bit. It won’t hurt my feelings to turn on the television and to no longer see his face on it yacking on and on about his victimized status. He didn’t bring anything to the table that we as Americans should be considering. His arguments were bad, his views terrible, and with his low thinking he held down many more people than he ever could have helped from his office. And with his sudden death, maybe now they can be just a little bit freer.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Secret to Toyota: Guns’n’Stories in VR and the benefit of play

I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations with people this week wondering about me and they seem surprised that I know so much about Toyota manufacturing systems at a holistic level and that I play so many video games. And as I explained, I see the two as the same, not separate endeavors. To understand why the Toyota company did so well culturally in the realm of business is not in reading and understanding some magic book, or a three day course given in Tokyo where someone stands over you with a cane to beat you with it if you get the incorrect answer to a question, as many believe is necessary. You won’t get it from an MBA program from any college, its one of those things you either get or you don’t. In Toyota outsiders call it the Toyota Kata, which is doing something over and over again until the task is second nature. In their organization managers were successful in establishing a “kata” of success as defined by the target conditions management sets to achieve superiority in the marketplace. Simple. Yet the world struggles with this concept so it is my hope to help it out a bit with this little article.

Playing video games is an excellent way to develop an internal “kata” to use the Japanese word, for training yourself to get used to winning. To identifying what the target conditions for victory are, then learning the rules for getting there. Every video game may be different just as every workplace can have its challenges, but the idea is the same for everything. Once you learn and expect to win, by nature of instinct you’ll get used to identifying what target conditions need to be found to support victory. Once you can do that in a video game, you will train your mind through a kind of kata to finding it everywhere, in relationships, in business, with your children, in society—everywhere. So, it should not be such a surprise that I play many hours of video games per week. The byproduct of that behavior pattern is to constantly push myself to complete those games and to win whatever the parameters of victory are. Knowing what victory looks like is half the battle and so many people just haven’t trained their minds to measure reality in that way, especially adults.

I have a new VR game for my PlayStation called Guns’n’Stories: Bulletproof which was an absolute delight to me. It is an amazing virtual reality shooting gallery type of game where animated villains attack you from all directions while you stand in the middle of various wild west towns gunning them down with a multitude of very fun weapons. I completed the story mode of the game over this past week and found it wonderfully enchanting, a nice vacation from the rigors of daily life. And I was replaying several of the levels last night while I had the television on listening to Fox News and the reports that the Democrats stormed out of the President’s office over the troop pullout in Syria. I took a moment to think about how much information was pouring into my brain, between the VR headset and furious action from the game as hundreds and hundreds of bad guys came at me to shoot down as fast as I could, then the news broadcast going on in the background as my wife was telling me about all the events of her day, it was a lot. But I’ve trained my mind to deal with all that, and that isn’t that much more unique than a typical day at the office.

The difference between Toyota, or most Japanese companies, is that they have not forgotten how to play with ideas as a culture whereas we have in the West, from Europe to North America. We look at work as, well, work, and the Japanese don’t, its just another part of their life. They enjoy the work most of the time and that is one of the key ingredients to Toyota’s success as a company. Playing a lot of video games over the years allowed me to do much the same with my own life, there isn’t always time to play a football game with a bunch of people, or to go shooting somewhere that you can actually shoot targets by the hundreds of thousands, or fly around in some vessel engaging in dogfights. All of that is play, but more seriously all those games have objectives toward winning the game and in playing them the target conditions for victory are always occurring. You as the player must discover them through playing the game. And the benefits continue long after the game is over because the process has wired into your brain the ability to discover target conditions in everything, even when you aren’t playing video games.

I watch so many adults struggle in life over this very basic misconception. They wonder why their wives don’t love them or find them attractive anymore as they complain that their car is in the shop again, their house isn’t big enough, and that they are overlooked in their jobs for the next big promotion. They ponder why their kids seem indifferent to them as they grow up because they have sacrificed so much as the parent to give them a good life and they feel unappreciated, and of course all those behaviors show up in their work. At 5 PM on the nose they are leaving for that long drive home where they are met in the kitchen by an indifferent spouse with their own version of the same problems. Then when talking to me, they say, “video games are for kids. I’m busy making a living and living in reality.” Of course, to that I say, “reality is defined by your interpretation of it.” If you don’t have the tools intellectually to make reality work for you, but rather against you, then its no wonder you are miserable.” In truth, by playing games, video games or some sport for fun, you are actually helping train your mind to identify target conditions for success, which is what Toyota as an organization does for all the employees that work for it. They know how to define success and getting there becomes a kind of game instead of feeling like just more pointless work. Give people that autonomy, you give them more than a good job, but a good life.

It is always a treat to me to play a cool game like Guns’n’Stories: Bulletproof in a virtual reality environment. After all, to me for that time that the headset is on, that is reality. And to take a break in that kind of world is a real treat. Whether its actual reality or virtual reality the objective is the same, to define target conditions and endeavor for a win. By achieving victory, the mind gets used to seeing and striving for the parameters of victory, and if truth be told, that is the key to the Toyota Kata. Knowing how to win and learning to strive for the ways to do so. Empowering people to win and share in the ownership are the keys to any success. So, from that vantagepoint, video games aren’t so silly, but a good tool for training the mind in how to learn to win.

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

Hunter Biden is a Loser: Giving the “Rich” a bad name as a typical government looter

My favorite part of the Batman movies is the wealth and justice aspect of the hero and how he uses his resources to do good in the world. A world that would otherwise be bleak if not for his efforts. That is the story of Bruce Wayne, a kind of modern Zorro, who did the same during the American expansion period in film. And so it was in the most recent story telling exercise of the Batman movies where the villain Joker was emphasized that my favorite character by far in that film was Bruce’s father Thomas, presented in the blockbuster film ‘Joker’ as the rich mean villain. Thomas was the kind of rich person that I understand, as most of the people I know best in the world are all rich and millionaires by status. They are not the villains that Karl Marx and his followers would make them out to be, they are examples of what people should strive to be. They are only villains to those too lazy to do the work of becoming one themselves.

Just like in real life, all rich people are not equal. Some make their money by working hard, smart, and better than their rivals. Some loot off those efforts and become wealthy by providing access to other people. So not all people making over $200K a year are equally part of the 1% that movies like the Joker seek to attack. There is no place in America where a room full of wealthy people dressed in formal attire watch movies together while the poor protest outside. That thought might exist on college campuses and liberal bastions of panic and anxiety, but they do not happen in America where everyone, no matter how educated, how poor, what their family name may have been, has a shot at success based on the merits of their life. Yet the very kind of people who are most demonized for their improper allocation of money are those like Hunter Biden who was the son of a powerful Vice President who was paid for access to the American government as opposed to Don Jr and Eric Trump. The Trump kids were put to work by their father to earn what they made where-as Hunter Biden was just a nameplate and leverage for the clueless Joe Biden and his power given to him by the most villainous means possible, political leverage of a fictional aristocratic brokering firm called the United States Government.

You can almost feel sorry for Hunter Biden who appeared on Good Morning America this week in an attempt to answer Trump’s criticisms of his family. Looking at his face and general non-verbal impressions, I couldn’t help but think “drug abuser” with his sunken eyes, and his timid personality. Not exactly the kind of guy a woman would want to marry if they wanted a reliable husband to cut the grass and bring home a steady paycheck to keep the refrigerator stocked. Hunter Biden is a player and now at this stage in his life he is looking over his back more than he’s looking forward, because everything he has done in life has been given to him, so he fears that someone will take it away.

But what would anybody expect from a father who looted from people his whole life and gained power because of the threats of his regulatory burdens that he could otherwise place. For Hunter Biden to sit on so many boards and be paid so well for them is an obvious payoff to allow those companies to function without the threat of a senator to leverage them for some loot like a pirate on the choppy seas of capitalism. People like Joe Biden don’t make things and do things to make their money, they are simply government pirates who steal from those who do, and that’s where their power comes from, in the regulatory power we give them as a government. Companies looking to mitigate their risks with intrusive governments solve that problem by putting the kids of powerful people on their boards to keep that regulatory burden from happening. John Kerry’s kid comes to mind as well, it’s a common practice in what we call “the swamp.”

The type of wealth that the Trump kids come from is earned and built. It doesn’t come from stealing from those who do things in life, but it is the type that comes from hard work and efforts at expanding the economy. When President Trump built his wealth, he used to put cash in the pockets of people like Biden to keep government away from his businesses, just like everyone else feels they need to do. But that type of wealth is far different than being paid 50K per month to sit on a board of directors and sniff cocaine all day with loose women to appease a senator who loots for a living. That’s a far different thing, you don’t see the Trump children just getting jobs on boards because their dad is the president. They made all their money before he became president. Him sitting in the Oval Office actually costs them a lot of money in opportunity cost. But they have decided that the long-term vision of the Trump name is more important than a few million more dollars from a foreign hotel deal.

Yet the question of wealth value is to demonize it all and to prop up the losers who perpetually come up short in life due to their low ambitions. In the movie the “Joker’ it wasn’t an accident that Thomas Wayne was confronted by a person who thought he was the illegitimate child of the billionaire while he was taking a piss in the bathroom. They could have framed the scene anywhere, but the filmmakers chose to do it in the bathroom in a vulnerable position for Wayne. Wayne was disgusted at the future Joker for all the reasons many people who work hard to overcome obstacles are when confronted with those who give in to anxiety, weakness, and laziness. The kind of people that Thomas Wayne represented in that Joker story do work hard and use their ambition to overcome obstacles, so they are naturally offended when some loser comes up to them begging for money and trying to use victimhood to extort resources from them through guilt or a threat of violence. They know that the way to appease those types is to put their kids on a board of one of their companies to placate the politics. In the case of Thomas, he was just planning to run for office and solve the problem himself, like the real-life Donald Trump did.

Trump was famous for saying that he would fire his own kids like a dog if he thought they were lazy, so he instilled in them a work ethic that is obvious to this day. They would be somebodies with or without their father being in the White House. But Hunter Biden would be a big time nobody if his father was not a senator for his entire adult life. That is the difference between a winner and a loser, and the value of the wealthy and the wealth acquired by a looter. They might both have money, but not all of them contribute to the betterment of civilization. But all are demonized by the Karl Marx anarchists and big government socialists who want everyone under their thumb for threat of reprisal. And for Hunter, that is why he is a loser. It’s not because he was unfortunate enough to be born into the Biden family, but because he was too lazy to build his own way, and instead rode on his dad’s coattails. He is rich, but he’s still a loser and everyone can see it.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Meaning of Life: It is to grow as an individual, not to hide behind collectivism–the real cause of both World Wars

It is coming up more and more, largely due to the kind of president that we have in the White House these days, but the understanding of individualism as opposed to collectivism is quite the topic. As I have been saying, much of the consternation about President Trump is that he acts on his own, without a bunch of consultants and his own political party guiding him on the decision-making process. This is not at all unusual in the private sector where a CEO may answer to a board of directors and the shareholders, but as far as running a company, they tend to be front of the train decision makers by default and very secure in their personal considerations. Its particularly an aspect of American business to produce those types of people to lead companies. This of course stands as a stark contrast to the way our political system operates, especially under the umbrella of government employment. And is a topic of considerable importance.

Not to provoke a lot of unnecessary conspiracy theories, and the research will come clean with time, but I have a nagging feeling that it was Thus Spoke Zarathustra from Frederick Nietzsche that provoked both World War 1 and World War II—the second world war being caused by the sanctions of the first. But the first being driven by a European hatred of the kind of individually based thinking that was coming out of Germany by way of the anti-institutionalist Nietzsche. It’s essentially the same kind of hatred that is being leveled from the same type of people toward President Trump. That does not mean to conclude that Trump is a Nazi, far from it. At that time of that very powerful book by Nietzsche the works of Karl Marx was also coming out of Germany and the governments of Europe loved the idea. It gave them a chance to level the playing field where a political class ran by the traditional power brokers could issue out fairness. But Nietzsche was saying something else that went against all that, and the concept was not welcomed. They wanted socialism in Europe not individualism. That left Hitler to rot in jail stewing on all these complexities only to mix the various German philosophies into madness resulting in a dark period of history.

However, going back to the ideas of Thus Spoke Zarathustra there is something very revolutionary going on, which can be seen for the first time in the presidency of Donald Trump. It’s the idea that the fully developed individual has great power over the masses, and that the attempts to teach those masses the benefits is a fruitless exercise, usually. And that those best equipped to rule themselves and others are those best able to think on their own, far away from the kind of group think that is so common today. President Trump is showing that the concepts of self-rule, self-thought, and self-action are very much alive and were not destroyed by the wars of Europe which pulled the entire world into their rebellion against the basic premise that it is individuals who hold the meaning of life, not self-sacrifice to the void of existence.

My happiest state is when I’m alone free to think what I want as long as I want to. It is hard to see just how much I am in love with that state because I seldom get that kind of time to myself. I do believe that I could spend decades completely alone with just my thoughts, but that is me speaking from a vantage point of only a few hours a week. There is always someone who needs something of my time and that comes from being a good, competent person. People need you and I am the type of person who will always try to help, much like Zarathustra did at the beginning of that famous book. Only I don’t get frustrated and go back to my cave like he did, but I have the energy to try and try again even if it looks to be fruitless. But truth be told, I am happiest when I am alone, and this is not the condition of most people. Most people are terrified to be alone and they will go way out of their way to find companionship and to talk to people about something, anything. For them contacts with other human beings fills them with energy they wouldn’t otherwise have. For me, it robs me of sustenance. I never feel good after speaking with a large group of people. Its always work. But for most, it’s the goal of their existence.

In that way, I would say that the meaning of life is to overcome this shackle to needing others. We were never meant to be born, learn over our lifetimes only to die into some primordial goo back to the dirt we came from. We were meant to start off as a blank slate driven by DNA programming, then to take that and to construct a self-thinking individual, because it is from there that all creation springs forth, and thus the furtherance of existence. Nietzsche figured this out leading to madness at an early age and the concept was so terrifying that the governments of the world declared war on Germany to suppress such thoughts, and what came forth was the spread of Marxism which benefited the governments. What was pushed deep down into our culture with the stigma of being affiliated with the racist Nazi’s was Nietzsche’s ideas on individualism, much distorted by Nietzsche’s sister after his death.

And now that we have President Trump who has emerged essentially straight out of the pages of Zarathustra, we have the deep fear and hatred emerging that has always been there and had killed millions and millions of people in the hopes of surpassing the concept. Ayn Rand, the American author would go much further than Nietzsche and write better books about individualism and how it fuels the world of creation taking mankind away from the primitive notion of sacrifice, yielding to the forces of the universe, and essentially surrendering everything we were meant to become at the moment of death to the forces of nature, instead of using it to make something new. And that hatred has remained and will until the human race makes a decision on the matter. In any democracy, where most of society is of the type who needs the companionship of others, and the pursuits of individualists are demonized, it is clear that the conflict will ensue in spite of the odds of success not being favorable. Just because most of the world is populated by group thinkers it doesn’t mean they are the best or brightest, only the most numerous. Take the situation with every mass shooter where their three proper names are given to better illustrate their individual nature, and their tendency to be loners. The attempt by the masses to deal with the carnage is to seek affiliation with the evils of self-rule. Standing on your own leads to madness “they” will say, when actually it is the other way around. Going crazy is to follow the masses back into their deaths of dust and sand erasing from the earth everything they made to brand. And that is not a new story, but one that has different endings and is culminating in our present time in ways that nobody ever thought possible.

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