A Needed Circus Tent: ‘Bronco Billy ‘dreams that could resurrect a nation

At an annual dinner conducted by the participants of the Annie Oakley Western Arts Showcase there was much discussion about the new location in 2014 at York Woods in Ansonia, Ohio—just north of Greenville. The reviews of this new site were very favorable, but I wasn’t so sure when we were driving there for the first time. York Woods was founded in the mid 1800s and today is the site of the Greenville Steam Thrashers—a group dedicated to maintaining antique farm equipment. Once we arrived I said to my wife that this country was so much God’s that you felt like you could reach up and scratch his beard. It was amazingly remote and full of character. It was the first location of our annual Western Arts Showcase which has now been going on for well more than a decade that could justify a circus tent for our shows. Here is a video of the event:

We had the idea by seeing what kind of tent the drama group had up and for the first time considered that we should hold our future shows in just such a tent. In previous years our shows were in the Coliseum at the Darke County Fairgrounds about 10 miles to the south. Several times during the day weather threatened to alter our outdoor show, so it put in our minds the need for adjustments in the future if the York Woods site continued to be the destination.

We hoped that it would because there are things we could likely do at York Woods that we would never be allowed to do at the Fairgrounds, such as using firewhips and live ammunition for portions of our shows. I typically don’t perform for the exhibitions due to the many restrictions and my lack of interest in living within too many boundaries. I admire those who do, but I’ve always thought that our shows should incorporate more live fire—as was seen in one of my favorite movies, Bronco Billy. At York Woods the Annie Oakley Committee actually had shooting contests on site which greatly enhanced the event for the crowd. The Fairgrounds was in a fairly dense population area, but out in York Woods, there wasn’t much by way of residential living for at least a mile—maybe two. The farmland was vast and very open giving a truly ideal location for improvements to the Western Showcase.

We could continue to do the shows outside as we have for years, and just work around the weather, but it may well be time to have our own circus tent. Where space was always in short supply at the Fairgrounds, there was no shortage of space at York Woods giving our group for the first time some creative ability not seen before—so a small circus tent is something that we should pursue in the upcoming year.

To do this we are looking for corporate sponsorship that could pay for some of the costs and would be proud to feature all benefactors prominently. There are opportunities here that are unexplored for both parties, the Western Showcase participants and advertisers—so discussion would have to take place to make sure everyone gets what they want.

Interested parties should contact my friend Gery at:

http://geryldeer.com/

As for my the movie Bronco Billy, it has always been a dream of mine to do for kids what the Clint Eastwood character in that film wanted to achieve. In that film Bronco Billy was operating his life upstream of the current in society and was functioning by a traditional set of rules that were grossly outdated even by the 1970s standards. It has always been a dream of mine to step into a circus tent like the one shown at the end of that movie made of American flags.

Americans for too many years have felt guilty for their history, their art, and their success. The tent at the end of Bronco Billy was a kind of statement of honor in preserving all those things. But it wasn’t real. Bronco Billy was just a movie character and the story was fictional. When the shooting was done, the tent was scrapped, and packed away forever forgotten, except on film. Well, 35 years after that film became a favorite of mine, I’m in the strange position of knowing really the only people left in America who have the ability to put on a show like what Bronco Billy did in that film. Gery Deer is the closest thing alive to Clint Eastwood’s fictional character in that movie and is the reason he and I have had a friendship that has went on for over a decade now.

The people in Gery’s shows are some of the most genuinely good people I have ever met and the gifts they have to offer the world extend well beyond the yearly shows at Annie Oakley’s festival each year in Greenville. But you have to start somewhere and it would appear that the York Woods location is the perfect spot for such an audaciously American fantasy. There were enough crowds at York Woods to fill the stands of a small circus tent and resurrect not in Las Vegas, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, or Orlando, Florida the lost arts of the cowboy, but Ansonia, Ohio the literal birthplace of Annie Oakley herself–one of the best trick shooters anywhere and a person all women should think of as a role model. Annie Oakley used to say, “Aim at a high mark and you’ll hit it. No, not the first time, or the second and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect. Finally, you’ll hit the bull’s eye of success.”

I read those words on the back of the brochure the Annie Oakley Committee passed out to visitors of their festival as I watched our group perform their knife throwing exhibitions, and whip tricks and thought of the possibilities if firearms and other—more audacious elements could be added to the show in York Woods in the future. And I couldn’t help but think of that Bronco Billy circus tent which has been bouncing around in my head for more than three decades now. There is no reason to aim high in this case because we have the firepower at many levels of hitting this target—a new target that was presented through a change that could very well be for the better.

These days it doesn’t matter if a show is ten miles outside of a town that is already many, many miles away from the rest of civilization. This is actually a plus, especially when the performers also have the ability of bringing the show to the rest of the world through “media.” Gery is a television producer—and he is also the producer of the only real Wild West Show left in the world. There are a few theme park types of acts out there, but nobody has the ability to pull the most talented people in the industry in for a real honest to goodness Wild West Show like Gery. All he needs to pull off the chance of a lifetime is a circus tent and a few sponsors.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The 2014 Annie Oakley Western Showcase: Bringing Lash LaRue off the silver screen into reality

As usual it was a marvelous weekend at our annual Annie Oakley event. What started as a large group that originally met at Las Vegas each year is now just a handful of whip crackers, knife throwers, trick ropers and magicians intent to put a smile on the faces of young people and wow the adults who graced the grounds of the 2014 Annie Oakley Festival in Darke County. The venue this year was moved from the usual fairgrounds in town to a more remote location just to the north. It felt a long way out and even deeper into “God’s Country” but a very large crowd turned out and what they found there were shooting contests, fast draw contests from the Single Action Shooting Society, theater drama, and the 12^th Annual Annie Oakley Western Arts Showcase accompanied by the many venders selling goods. Most of the venders very unique with little booths set-up mingling among the trees of York Woods. For over ten years now some of the best whip crackers in the country have gathered to meet with their own kind at the event and as usual it was a marvelous enterprise.

I said many times during the day which was absolutely perfect for July weather with mild temperatures and occasional rain bursts erupting just to the north and south painting a menacing sky at times across the vast plains of farmland extending out into Indiana—that my love of this event was yearly maintenance; it restored my faith in humanity. The people who attend are some of the few people left in the entire world who do these kinds of things which used to be common place during Annie Oakley’s time. A few are in long-term marriages which are inspiring, and most have spouses that they bring with them where they enjoy each other in a healthy way and it is just good to associate with people of that character. I’ve said it before, but it is applicable, the people in our group are nearly identical to the characters shown in the Clint Eastwood film Bronco Billy—which is a favorite of mine. They are a small group of people who are all that is keeping a way of life in America alive for the next generation.

There are many in the world who might say good riddance to classic American arts—particularly those residing around large metropolitan areas—which is why attending each year restores my faith in humanity. It is so refreshing to spend time around genuine people who truly love something rooted in classic Americana. But to lose these values, the whip cracking, the gun spinning, roping, and knife throwing—with vaudeville type shows conducted from corn fields in the middle of nowhere—U.S.A would be treacherous. The heart of what it means to be an American is in those shows, I have now known the ring master of the Annie Oakley event—Gery Deer for over ten years and each year he finds new ways to change-up the show to always keep it interesting. At first there were concerns over moving the Annie Oakley Festival to the outskirts of Greenville—but quickly those worries proved pointless. Large crowds attended and the celebration was nothing short of inspiring.

It took me a while to get warmed up but by the time we got to the Speed Switch contest which allows bullwhip artists to strike at ten targets as fast as they could–first with one hand then with the other on the way back up the target row, I had hit my stride. This year it was obvious that everyone was a bit smoother and had been practicing. The times were faster generally for everyone which made for an exciting show for the people watching from the bleachers. I had my fastest time ever on the Speed Switch—just a bit over 11 seconds which is fast for even the Speed and Accuracy contest so well-known to seasoned veterans. I enjoyed the location, the vast open spaces all around the touring bus of the Brother’s and Company set up as a backdrop for the stage as a generator provided all the power needed for the show. The crowd sat in the beginnings of the York Woods where shade gave them shelter from the sun which peaked out often around menacing storm clouds. If anything pushed my speed a bit it was a combination of those elements.

Many of the same people who came last year came this time around again traveling from far away destinations to arrive. Some couldn’t make it, but the beauty of the event is that each year there are opportunities to do it again and recharge their batteries from a punishing year. It is punishing to stand behind these classic American art forms when the current trend is to run away. Often the skeptics will stand on the outskirts of the roped off area and watch with curiosity as most of their thoughts were created by pop culture—but after a few moments, they can’t help but smile at the cheesy jokes and purity of the type of Western Showcase that Gery routinely puts on. There is a playful innocence in it that is unmistakable and it doesn’t take long to reach into the inner child of the typical viewer to touch that part of themselves which has long ago been ignored—and suppressed.

I saw some of that at the end of the day when my wife and I went to the restaurant we normally gather at in Greenville to make reservations for the back half of the dining room. The rest of our group was on the tour bus coming down from the York Woods location so we wanted to have everything set up for when they arrived. As the manager arranged tables I saw some of that modern cynicism in the bar where my wife and I waited. A corner contained a group of young twenty-somethings watching a baseball game and as I stood silhouetted in the doorway between the bar and dining room a young kid with his date looked my way and started texting his friends sitting next to him murmuring—it’s “Crocodile Dundee.” I stared at the kid just to make him feel uncomfortable and to let him know that I could hear him, which he hadn’t expected. He wanted anonymity from the security of his reality among his friends so I made a point to not give it to him. This isn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last. On more than one occasion in that same bar we’ve encountered worse but quickly converted them over into fans. One year Chris Camp took a skeptical woman outside and made her into a whip target stand in the parking lot in front of her husband cracking straws from her outstretched hands. Moments before she had been similar to the kids in the corner, but after about five minutes was gushing all over herself at the coolness of having a weapon break the sound barrier right next to her face. The only references modern people have toward such things outside of the type of events that Gery puts on, is music, movies, and television which has turned dramatically against the American Western, or any form of rugged individualism.

The clash of cultures is one where the values of two groups of people crash in places like that bar. At the Annie Oakley Festival the context is already presented. It is not unusual for members of the Western Arts Showcase to roam around the event in costume. I typically wear my whips with me, and nobody bats an eye—they expect it because of the context of the show. When our members used to attend the Fairlawn restaurant in years prior the strip of road separating it from the Darke County Fairgrounds was filled with people attending the festival. This year there was no late night activity in town, because the Annie Oakley event had moved far to the north—so the Fairlawn was filled with regular people living their regular lives watching baseball games and trying to show how well they fit into the modern world of the big nearby cities like Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati to the south. So for the kids in the bar they had no idea there was an Annie Oakley event in town as it had moved. The boy who made the Crocodile Dundee comment likely hoped that his girl friend would be impressed by his remark and the laughs and giggles among his friends would earn him an honor of some kind, to prove that he was just as much of a douche bag as the next guy. What kids like that don’t know, because it’s not part of their experience, is that the heroes of old, which the Ohio Western Arts group is dedicated to preserving are people like Lash LaRue, Douglas Fairbanks, and of course Annie Oakley—people they have no experience with. If they did, they’d have a much more fulfilled life—their marriages would last longer, their lives would be richer, and they’d be generally happy people. Some of the members of our group travel in trucks and vans that are twenty years old filled with stage props. Often they sleep in a cramped back seat traveling from gig to gig in a hope that their sheer charisma might improve the lives of just one person with the kind of hopes and dreams born from the mind of America. Most of the time they get paid decently, but are drained from the experience only to dust off the feeling and do it again weekend after weekend year after year.

I have never seen a young girl who didn’t melt away into butter when a confident whip handler removed a target from her lips. If the kid wanted to impress his date—and I wanted to tell him this—the best thing he could do for himself is to learn the skills our group brought to the Annie Oakley Festival. As our group arrived and filled the back of the room, the kid stood in the doorway wondering who all those people were sitting with that same guy in the Australian style outback hat. His perplexed look was one of realizing that there was a group of people in the world functioning around him who were different from the patterns he had learned—that certain music was popular, certain modes of dress acceptable, and that there were people out there who considered non-conformity to be far superior to social conformity. It is that trait that the Annual Annie Oakley Festival in Darke County, Ohio appeals to best, and the primary reason that so many make the yearly pilgrimage.

I certainly have a lot of experience with such things measuring public temperament. Unlike the other attendees I have chosen a more controversial roll using my desire to preserve the Western Arts in a way that I think the real Lash LaRue would have done in his day—I have made it part of my political discourse. I have fought higher taxes and known political corruption using the skills nurtured along over the years with the bullwhip to have the same effect the young guy in the bar experienced. When it comes to traditional American art, I feel that the best ground to defend it is outside of the shows where viewers can watch comfortably from behind a roped off area. I take great pleasure in bringing the show to the safety of the herd because it is there that they need to see it most.

At the end of the night there were jokes about how out-of-fashion we were as a group and pride was taken in being so out of style. I remarked that all we needed to do was wait another 50 years and there will be hordes of people desiring deeply the traditional American arts displayed yearly at the Annie Oakley Festival—it will at that time become fashionable again. But right now, especially with the failure of the Lone Ranger at the box office last year, nobody in movies or television is going to produce a film like Zorro or Lash LaRue in the jaded culture we have now. But for those who still desire such things, the way we do who perform them, the yearly event of Annie Oakley is a real treat. It recharges my batteries with meaning after a year of typical cynicism in a way nothing else does. I typically wear my hat year round everywhere from Michigan to Florida and in every possible venue from wealthy to poor—so it is routine to get the kind of reaction I received from the kid in the bar. But what is unique is that a horde of people dressed similarly who share my values don’t often come walking in behind me. And while I might want to take Lash LaRue off the silver screen and plop him down into America in 2014 with my real life antics, it is the one and only time a year that I get more from everyone else than I typically give leaving me feeling uncharacteristically fulfilled. In that regard, I hope that Gery gets the circus tent next year that he’s talking about—because that would be absolutely grand and a good next step to the new venue at York Woods marking of the start of a second decade in a long march toward eternity.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

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The Decline of Hueston Woods: Capitalism versus statism sponsored conservation

It had been a while since I had been to the Oxford area; the last time was to give an on campus speech last year, so it had been some time since I had made my way into Hueston Woods State Park. However, for likely the 60^th to 70^th time in my life red lights were filling my rear view mirror and a patrol officer was at my window telling me I was driving too fast—as determined by some cry baby, wimpy, leather faced, cheating whore of a politician afraid of riding the Merry-Go-Round at a summer fair. I was being pulled over for going 40 in a 25 MPH zone. My answer to the State Officer when asked if I knew how fast I was going was that I had no idea the speed limit was so slow. For me, it was impossibly slow. I can ride a bicycle faster than 25 MPH. That is simply too slow for a long series of roads. What are they protecting at the park with such a slow speed limit, turtles, rabbits and squirrels? Worse yet, where I was pulled over was right at the entrance where fisherman and boaters were pulling in for some early morning access to Action Lake which is currently undergoing a $15 million dollar face lift at the damn. The lake receives roughly 1.8 million visitors per year so Huston Woods still gets a lot of activity after many years but during my recent visit, it was easy to see that there was a lot more that they could do if they only had the right attitude.

I grew up with Hueston Woods so I know its history very well and am in a position to offer some criticisms that are needed if it wants to sustain itself into the future. As a kid I spent many summers at camp there between Boy Scout groups, my church and in my teen years I was actually part of the chain gang that had to walk the entire park and pick up trash around the entire loop. That is a long story but the short of it was that I was loaded onto a van from the Hamilton jail and driven with all the other juvenile convicts to the lake to spend the day performing “community service.” I learned to hate the pompous over-weight delinquency officers who rode behind us in the van playing music as we picked up trash around the lake for everyone to gawk at. I took the point position and walked faster than everyone else on purpose just to drive things along and put pressure on the people behind me. I was yelled at a lot that day, and I noticed that the state employees seemed very comfortable at the park. Our chain gang launched from the left side of the lodge and it didn’t take long to realize that one of the two guys in the van was having an affair with a woman who worked in the gift shop who was married. So I had an opportunity to see the underpinnings of the park at a young age where the seeds of apathy had clearly been placed—which was reflected 30 years later in the visit I had with my family in the middle of a summer week.

I always loved the lodge and wanted to marry my wife there, but her parents talked me out of it in favor of the Becket Ridge Country Club, of which they were members. For most of my youth up until that event with the chain gang I loved the lodge and used it as a base station for many adventures. So it was a good pick for a wedding to my wife. This time returning I was with my grown family and was introducing my grandson to the place—visiting the game room it literally hadn’t changed much since I had been a teenager. In fact, it looks like the Ms. Pac Man machine was still in the same place. Instead of the reunion with the lodge being something of reverence, it saddened me to see the place going downhill quick. It was still nice, but had the tired look of a place uncared for.

Elsewhere in the park the marina looked wore out and the wildlife exhibit was in disrepair. They still had a nice mountain lion on display and some large birds including an eagle, but the passion had obviously left the management of the area. Hueston Woods has plenty of opportunity for revenue not directly related to tax payers; they of course have the lodge traffic year round which attracts many lodging dollars for people taking in-state vacations. There are also cabin rentals, horseback riding opportunities, boat rentals on the lake and other similar activity—so the park should not look like it did—run down and tired.

Granted, since I was a kid my worldly vision had dramatically opened. The lake used to look really big to me and it seemed impossibly large to walk the entire route around it as a member of the chain gang. Now it looked small, I have walked a lot further for a lot less reason, and have seen places much, much nicer than the lodge in far away locations around the world. As I played many video games from that lodge I used to wonder what kind of adventures I’d experience in life, but none of them seemed to have the capability to surpass Hueston Woods. But within a few years of my chain gang experience I quickly learned that just about everywhere was nicer which was sad, because there were opportunities in Hueston Woods that other State Parks simply didn’t have—particularly the proximity of Miami University nearby. Students use the Hueston Woods beach as a natural sun bathing destination and place to play volleyball and study away from their congested dorm rooms.

So you’d think that the State Officer pulling me over would understand that sitting on the side of the road pulling people over for going 40 MPH under the guise of safety would understand how negative his presence was to financial investment into the area—which it badly needed. The guy literally had nothing better to do than to sit in his squad car and pull people over all day so that their speeding cars might not run over some ducks. In fact, elsewhere around the park are the typical greenie weenie messages that come straight out of the Al Gore handbook of progressive political discourse such as having people clean seeds off their shows before walking into a forest to minimize the transference of hostile plants that crowd out the sunlight to more delicate vegetation. I took my grandson and daughter to the fishing pier which was a long walk for his little feet, but was perplexed by the message on the trail signs. If state officials could make such statements about plant life then why couldn’t they make the same judgments about human beings—there are certain groups of human beings who behave just as aggressively as the plants they were talking about at the ODNR advisory board? The same mentality could be declared in neighborhoods where welfare recipients’ crowd out private investment because they tend to present themselves as unkempt and destructive pushing out people who wash their cars, care for their lawns and generally try to improve their surroundings. And as that thought crossed my mind it appeared that those same types of people were at Hueston Woods. The lady in front of us at the nature walk was with a group of kids who looked like they climbed out of the trunk of a car covered in garage sale items. She was a beat up woman who had a cheap shoulder-blade tattoo of some kind of flower and a bleeding heart. It was hard to tell because she was about my age and the ink had smeared over time all running together. As I looked around there were a lot of people like her there and a lot fewer of the type of people I remembered as a kid who had boats at the marina who would come to the park to go sailing on the weekends. It appeared that the parasitic humans were crowding out the contributing humans and the park was suffering. Yet the park rangers could make that distinction with plant life, but not with their human visitors—very interesting and much to their own detriment.

As I waited for the State Officer to return with my driver’s license and insurance card I couldn’t help but think of all the lost opportunities at Hueston Woods compared to a place like Disney World. Both parks are roughly the same age but one looks as new as the day it was built and the other looks like it is a few years away from decaying away into nothing. The difference really is the people, at Disney World the employees look happy to have a job and be working. At Hueston Woods the employees give off the impression that they’d rather be watching afternoon tabloid television or sitting in a patrol car giving tickets so they could save some tree frog that might jump into the road—just because they have nothing better to do. At Disney World there is plenty of wildlife and they reproduce robustly, and there are not unfriendly park rangers running around trying to issue tickets every five feet—because they want visitors in Disney World. But at Hueston Woods the general impression is that humans are intruding on a natural habitat and that they aren’t welcome unless they follow certain parameters of rules.

High quality people look to have left the park or have gotten old and died off leaving behind the dregs. The dregs were part of the Hueston Woods experience of my youth but with them were people who had new cars, boats, and were business professionals in their private life who enjoyed the recreation at the lake. So both types of people were there, but these days, it appears that one type of person is coming far less than the other which is driving down the quality of the park.

Growing up I saw both types of people on a regular basis. The criminals that I had to do community service with likely all grew up to be the dregs of society now. It was easy to see them then, and now they were like that girl with a thirty year old tattoo on her shoulder which had sagged and become distorted with age. And I went to Hueston Woods with my church groups and Boy Scout organizations where suburbanite parents at least attempted to care about the value of things. Clearly one group was missing and the other had multiplied over the years—and Hueston Woods was suffering for it. Making it worse was the patrol car discouraging me from bringing my family to Hueston Woods for the day because they guy had nothing else to do but sit in the grassy area off the side of the road by the mountain bike parking lot and pull people over.

My reaction to the State Officer was that I wanted out of the park as quickly as possible. When we were done with each other I took the nearest road out and left. Our day at Hueston Woods had concluded and it’s likely that I won’t return for another dozen or more years. 25 MPH is simply too slow for a car of any kind, and is not friendly to visitors. The park and its employees gave off the impression that visitors were lucky to be there and that is simply the wrong attitude. In response quality people are not visiting the park in the kind of numbers that can sustain it as the dregs are continuing to come because they have access to a free beach. That problem is one of management where the effort into saving trees from hostile plants failed to take the same measures to preserve their internal economy leaving the place to devolve into a sad state of disrepair only to be devoured by the dregs of society and their parasitic nature.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

A Temple of Hope: The Ghost Ship photographic journey

My family had a good laugh when the lunatic feminists in my home school district addicted to tax money accused me of being sexist. The terminology clearly didn’t fit. I raised two daughters and never gave them the indication of submission to anybody for any reason under any circumstances. They are more technically liberated women than even the most rabid progressive feminist and it is quite a joy to watch them grow up and flower into everything that they feel inclined to develop about themselves. However, it was very rewarding to see how one of them who is a professional photographer viewed a day we recently spent together. She is pictured below on the bow of the Cincinnati Ghost Ship and can read her point of view at the following link.

http://adventuringphotographer.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/the-cincinnati-ghost-ship/

She has been an adult for long enough now to display her skills many times over and I haven’t been disappointed. She is first and foremost an artist that wishes to embody all the elements I introduced to her as a child and it is wonderful to see all those elements come together into the person she is. As I was raising her I never directly tried to shape her personality into something I would approve of, but simply removed the social shackles that often prevent the development of a mind properly. My interest has never been social roles as society defined them, but as an individual does—so my parenting style was always focused on allowing my children to be exactly who they uniquely are—even in spite of my wishes—which I always made sure to contain. When someone decides to become an artist of some type they leave themselves vulnerable to interpretation as their efforts are impossible to disguise. What an artist produces becomes the culmination of their internal philosophy, which in my daughter’s case can be seen in the video below.

The day was not intended to be so monumental. She and I have done that kind of thing many times. As a little girl she trudged through many denser places, caves, trees, lakes and even confronted sometimes hostile inhabitants. The standard equipment has always been a part of our life, satchels, loose clothing for easy climbing, hats to keep spiders and small rodents out of our hair, and my whips for climbing and diverting away hostile encounters. Oddly enough on this trip to the Cincinnati Ghost Ship as an artist her natural focus was on most of those things which I take for granted as just part of everyday life. As a photographer she brought them to the surface in a way that told me much of how she sees me—which is more beneficial to me than her.

Videography is a new skill she is adding to her arsenal. She has been to film festivals with me several times and has met professionals who make movies—and has seen many artistic efforts from behind a lens. So she has seen all the tricks and knows that there isn’t any way to hide her soul. The way a camera operator and video director lights their subject, the focal point, the movement of the camera, and the way a piece is edited together ultimately reveals everything that there is to know about the artist behind the effort. So her shot selection and ability to tell a story with moving pictures was very revealing regarding the kind of young woman she has become, and was a real treasure. I didn’t know that at the beginning of our little adventure that I would come away with more than she did.

As the video was shot, we typically did not stop and pose for pictures. We just did our thing and turned on the camera to capture footage as we were doing it. The adventure always comes first; the attempt to document it is second which makes the job of a filmmaker more difficult. Some things that show up in the video that were actually not filmed was the nice lunch she and I had at McDonald’s just prior to visiting the Ghost Ship. Usually when she and I get together the rest of the family is with us, so she has been deprived of craved personal time with me. Upon hitting the exit that would take us to the Ghost Ship off the highway the fuel light came on indicating that we were about to run out of gas. So I turned around and got some gas down in Lawrenceburg before getting back into the hills of Northern Kentucky on an empty tank. We were in the right area so I felt confident that time was on our side. Getting gas was a little bit of an adventure so we decided to go ahead and grab a bite to eat before getting back into the woods. The two of us had a Sausage McMuffin with Egg each—which the last time she had breakfast at McDonald’s with me was during a trip back from Florida the previous year so that breakfast tasted much better on the cusp of such an adventure.

As we sat and ate, and caught up on all the things we typically talk about, we looked over topographical maps of the area and contemplated strategies for getting there. It turned out to be much easier than I anticipated which was nice considering that we had some really expensive camera equipment. We were dressed to wade into the water and board the vessel if need be. I typically carry with me a 12’ bull whip for those types of occasions. I also typically have my rope bag that has 150’ of rope along with climbing gear, but that wouldn’t be needed for this. The whip will get a person up small climbs most effectively. I always have on my hip a whip holster that my friend Gery Deer designed especially for me. I use it each year in the bull whip fast draw competition and when I walk around the house practicing. It is designed for smaller whips but the 12’ whip can fit in it. So that is what appeared in the video. I didn’t know my daughter focused some of her shots on things like my whip and satchel, but they were nice bits of context from the adventure that surprised me.

When she was old enough to sit still I raised her on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and each night when she went to sleep, she played the Raiders of the Lost Ark soundtrack and let it go on repeat throughout the night. She had a healthy childhood filled with the yearning for adventure, likely due to the kind of material she had from her first conscious moments. Our interest didn’t stop there; we actually expected to live that life to a certain degree and she has so far her entire life. So our outing to the Ghost Ship was simply a reflection of who we were. But watching her video of it, it was clear that there was some Indiana Jones in there—which makes sense. Indiana Jones to me is one of the most wonderful characters ever created for film. He can get dirty with the best of them then turn around and be among the most scholarly. He reads, he’s smart, and he’s fearless—but better yet, he’s tenacious. I knew what I wanted to be as a man when I saw Indiana Jones swing into the Temple of Doom and steal the Shankara Stones from the skull on the sacrificial altar. To a large degree I do live that life as a man. The film was a fun movie filled with comic book antics, but the substance of the story is something that both my daughter and I have carried with us every day of my life and hers.

After we explored the vessel, dripping with sweet, I was pulling bugs off my hat and we decided to go back to McDonald’s for lunch to cool off. We looked at our footage and talked about what we saw and as we were sitting there I thought about the many times that I had shown her the Temple of Doom movie and realized that we were living that life. One moment we were knee-deep in adventure, the next integrating the boon of our discoveries with the civilized world—sitting in the corner with my cut up cloths and sweat soaked shirt, with cobwebs still hanging from my hat. More than a few people looked my way wondering what we had been doing. Most of them had no idea that just across the river was a treasure that had been there for many years right under their noses yet they were blissfully ignorant. The only trace of anything out of the ordinary was my daughter and I who had just stepped out of some story book adventure sitting in the corner eating ice cream. But that was part of the fun for us.

It was those little moments from the adventure that filled her mind which ended up in her cut of the video and framed the way she photographed the day’s events. It made me very happy and confirmed why I raised her the way I did—it was to nurture that spark of hopeful optimism that can always be present—even when the circumstances are quite scary. There is a hope in the way my daughter photographs that is a liberating pleasure unmatched by anything else for me. As an artist, the mind of the creator cannot hide so cynicism shows behind every attempt if it is present. Adventure isn’t always about things “out there” but what’s really inside–the adventure of a Ghost Ship in our back yard, or a simple trip to McDonald’s, or running out of gas at a highway interchange with no stations in sight. Adventure starts in the heart, not in the extraordinary and the best of those events happen when a parent and their child get together for the fun of it—and joy, and lack of pretense just to live life and capture what comes as future memories. A temple is a place of worship and our lives come together driven by mutual interest. It is not the Temple of Doom that we share as a lifelong focus–but a Temple of Hope captured by photos for time to benefit.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The $2,474,520 Home of Lois Lerner: Life as a parasitic government employee

It’s not a problem for a person to have a home valued at $2,474,520 like Lois Lerner does—if they have earned it productively. However, Lerner and her husband have achieved much of their wealth as government parasites—meaning they live off the efforts of government specifically perpetuating the complexity of IRS law so that only they can translate the information to those willing to pay for the service. Both Lerner and her husband are attorneys who haven’t been discussed in great detail after Lerner was forced to step down from her IRS position in the wake of serious scandal for which she has been caught. As a family of attorneys Lerner understands how to manipulate the system because it was her type who helped shape that same system. For those types of government parasites which Lerner and her husband are but a small part—times are good—so good that they can afford a multi million dollar home essentially living as second-handers. But before understanding why they are such prescribed leeches it is important to study a bit of their background.

Lerner is a member of the Massachusetts bar, having earned her juris doctorate degree from Western New England College School of Law, graduating cum laude. She completed her undergraduate studies cum laude at Northeastern University.

Lerner began her career in government as a staff attorney in the Honors Program at the United States Department of Justice. She served as a Special Assistant in the U.S. Attorney’s Office where she was lead counsel handling felony and misdemeanor prosecutions. In 1981, Lerner moved to the Federal Election Commission, serving as the Assistant General Counsel for Enforcement, and ultimately as the Acting General Counsel.^[1]

Lerner is a past president of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) and an active member of the Humane Society of the United States where her efforts in performing pet rescues necessitated by the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes were widely acknowledged.

Lerner began her IRS service in 2001 as Director Rulings and Agreements in the Exempt Organizations function of TEGE. ^[2] In January 2006, she was selected as Director Exempt Organizations. In this capacity, Lerner led an organization of 900 employees responsible for a broad range of compliance activities, including examining the operational and financial activities of exempt organizations, processing applications for tax exemption, providing direction through private letter rulings and technical guidance and providing customer education and outreach to the exempt community.^[3]

On May 23rd, 2013 Lerner was placed on administrative leave. Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel selected Ken Corbin as the acting director of the exempt organizations division. Corbin was the deputy director of the submission processing, wage, and investment division.

In 2014, Lerner was held in Contempt of Congress in connection with the 2013 IRS controversy.^[4][5] The resolution, H.Res. 574, was introduced into the United States House of Representatives on May 7, 2014 by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).^[6] The bill was considered on May 7, 2014, and passed in Roll Call Vote 203 with a vote of 231-187.^[6] All of the Republicans voted in favor of the bill, along with six Democrats.^[7] The resolution holds Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify at a congressional hearing.^[8] Rep. Steve Stockman filed a motion on July 10, 2014 that, if enacted by the House, would direct congressional police to arrest Lois Lerner for contempt of Congress.^[9][10]

Lerner is married to Michael R. Miles, Esq., Partner, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Lerner

Michael Miles provides insurance companies with creative solutions and tax planning strategies for their corporate, insurance, and reinsurance transactions, including cross-border transactions and corporate restructurings. Michael also advises on consolidated return issues, the general taxation of corporations and shareholders, the taxation of regulated investment companies, and the application of withholding rules (including FATCA). He has substantial experience in advising clients on the tax consequences of proposed mergers and other reorganizations, reinsurance transactions, stock and asset acquisitions, and dispositions, distributions, and redemptions.

Before joining Sutherland, Michael served as an attorney in the Office of the Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). He has more than 30 years of experience in handling federal tax controversies, first for the IRS and now for the firm’s corporate and individual clients, as well as substantial experience in obtaining rulings for clients on corporate tax and other matters and in practicing before the IRS.

http://www.sutherland.com/People/Michael-R-Miles

Knowing these things about Lerner and her husband it becomes clear that their combined incomes exist primarily from second-hand sources—living off the efforts of others. They do not build things, or behave in a productive manner—one was an IRS insider while the other provided tax strategies to a complex code. Like many in the Washington D.C. beltway they are a professional couple making vast sums of money as second-handers. They directly benefit from the efforts of others then redistribute those efforts directly into their pockets. This is how they came to own such a nice home in Montgomery County outside of Washington. It wasn’t earned by productive enterprise—but rather parasitic leverage—(insider knowledge gained by political connections.)

Montgomery County Home:

Owner: MICHAEL R MILES & LERNER G LOIS Total land value: $747,870 Total value for property: $2,474,520 Total assessed value for property: $2,474,520 Base area of building: 6,500 square feet

Lerner only became a household name when she was caught in the current IRS scandal and set up to take the fall so that the rest of the IRS could skate away unharmed as her lawyer husband and past legal experience handled things behind the scenes. Politicians on the Hill benefit from the same second-hander strategies so when the cameras are turned off, there is little will to actually throw Lerner in jail or punish her in any way. The essential reason why is that they are all guilty of the same type of behavior. All around Lerner’s $2,474,520 home are similar properties owned and operated by carbon copies of Lois and her husband, Michael—professional parasites that live off the efforts of others. Once they extort all they can from those sources they move on to new clients to extract all they can from them—until that too is gone, and this process continues until they either run out of clients, or find themselves in legal trouble and having to flee behind the curtain of protected BAR associations and their congressional friends who reside there with them.

When it is wondered what is wrong with Washington D.C. all one need to do is look at Lois Lerner and her husband to know what it is. They represent a deep fault in the current American political system overrun by lawyers, con artists and general second-handers avoiding any productive enterprise aside from the theft of other people’s money. Lois Lerner is not unusual—she is common in her neighborhood—there are carbon copies of her on nearly every street. The only reason that anybody knows about her is that she was the one who got caught. Many of the others are still unseen because their efforts are not so easily detected. But they all have nice homes like the one that Lerner has because they achieve the wealth to buy them from other people’s money as service to government has paid them a healthy ransom and allowed them to live a pirate’s life only with a suit and tie to hide their true identities.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

“I WAS ONLY DOING MY JOB”: Why Lois Lerner should be tarred and feathered

When John Adams defended the shooters of the Boston Massacre the essence of the defense was that the soldier, who fell under pressure from a raging mob—largely led by John Adams cousin Sam, accidentally fired into the crowd launching a barrage of shots from the other English troops killing several in the crowd. The defense was that the soldier was simply doing his job as a servant to the Crown and the uniform. Later of course John Adams would take up the patriot cause more and more until he would be an eventual President of The United States. However, the foundations of his argument hastens back to the many evils often perpetrated by individuals in service to a system created by collectivism and uttered by the simple words—“I was only doing my job.”

The term is used daily all across the world when phrased as an explanation for something that goes wrong. The presumption is that the individual is somehow disassociated from an act because of service to a system and the requirements of surrendering thought to collective action. When somebody does something bad against someone else they often look for the escape—“I was only doing my job” to alleviate responsibility for their actions.

For instance, when a cop gives an expensive ticket to a housewife on her way to the grocery store and she declares that the only reason she was getting a ticket is because she’s driving a nice car, lives in a nice area, and has a nice life and can therefore pay the ticket without further trouble for the court—the cop says—“I am only doing my job.” With those simple words the officer shrugs off any personal responsibility for decisions and surrenders his actions to the benefit of the collective whole even though he did target the housewife instead of the Cheech and Chong look-a-likes who might have been in the next car. The housewife was an easy target, low confrontation type who typically pays the fee without any trouble. The other types might not even have the money for the fee creating defaults in court, time in jail, and all kinds of further work for the officer, so he picked the housewife for a ticket and blamed the system he served.

When a White House spokesman lies to the public to defend a president guilty of many crimes—the spokesman claims that “I was only doing my job.” When a lawyer defends a murderer whom he knows is guilty but provides a defense anyway doing whatever may be done to get the client off the punishments for the accused crime the lawyer says—“it is my job.” The term itself refers to the notion that crimes can be committed so long as they are for a collective causes within an institutional system—but if that same act is committed between individuals, then punishment is expected.

This term, “I was only doing my job” is an old archaic notion left over from our primitive past as nomads and hunters and gathers where a village chief pointed the society they led to the higher cause of collective salvation. Modern society is only a few hundred years removed from this type of remnant behavior, so the type of individuality represented by American philosophy has not yet been biologically accepted as a new static pattern socially. People are still socially, mindless creatures trying to figure out where they stand in the grand scheme of things and their personal focus is still centered on service to a system over their own impulses to think. This is what is meant when someone declares, “I am only doing my job.”

Responsibility is not lost to the phrase, just the acknowledgment of an imposition. It is impossible to blame a system blob like presence like the “federal government, or a corporation over the individual behavior of the participants. When the police declare that they are just doing their job to kick in doors and arrest people for charges more politically motivated than attempts at justice—they are allowing the institution and their service to it to guide their thought instead of contemplating the value of an order given by a “superior.” When something goes wrong, they declare—“I was just following orders.” In this fashion the current IRS scandals was thought to be avoided as the participants taken individually are likely good people who shop at the same stores as everyone else, raise kids, see movies and eat at restaurants. But when they were asked by Lois Lerner to perform illegal actions of activism they said to all who questioned them, “I am only doing my job.” In this way many crimes were committed by the IRS because the leader at the time was a political activist using the arm of the IRS for personal conquest of opponents to a big government philosophy.

When Commissioner of Customs John Malcolm was accused of telling on tea smugglers in Boston in 1773 he was stripped, tarred and feathered and paraded around the city as a victory against tyranny. Before the lynching the man attempted to declare—“I’m just doing my job” hoping that it would relieve him of judgment by the angry mob who was sick of taxation without representation and the monopoly power of the tea supply company to levy taxes. The mob, led again by Sam Adams and witnessed by his cousin John held the Commissioner responsible for his individual actions not as a member of the East India Company or a favored member of the Crown in England—but as an individual who made a conscious decision to participate in a system perpetrating tyranny against the colonies. The difference between then and now is that the Sons of Liberty involved in the Boston Tea Party were holding individuals accountable for their evils instead of allowing the responsibility of a “system” to suck blame like a black hole—and this forced change.

By those who resent America the Boston Tea Party is often thought of as a terrorist act comparable to something like the World Trade Center attack, or the Boston Marathon Bombing. But there is a distinct difference that must be brought to light. The radicals of Islam, and other related tribal mentality terrorism is utilized to attack the collective mass through fear to have an impact on the institutions represented. For instance, the World Trade Center attack was designed to strike at the American economy as an institution by attacking a collective symbol—the sky scrapers of economic activity. The essence of the Tea Party attack in 1773 Boston was to remove the mask of individual responsibility to collective evil—by negating the term—“I was only doing my job.”

The crises that John Adams felt—America’s second president—was that he had defended that institutional position when defending the Red Coats during the Boston Massacre. Because of his fair and civil defense of the Crown’s army, Adams was offered into the elite circles of the King’s personal advisors as a reward. Yet Adams turned away from this being appalled by the actions leading up to the Boston Tea Party ultimately he made the decision as a very good lawyer to stand behind individual merit instead of collective sacrifice. By the time he was nominated to attend the First Continental Congress, he had evolved as a person who could argue in defense of men guilty of crime by declaring that “they were only doing their jobs” and begin holding people accountable for their individual actions in spite of their role in the institutional representation.

Much evil is conducted behind the façade of goodness to an institutional cause. But this does not get people off the hook of judgment. They are still required to be good people and to make decisions based on what’s right as an individual–opposed to an entity functioning as a tyranny because of institutional commitment to non-thinking collectivism. The Boston Tea Party was an act of accountability—in not allowing individuals to hide behind institutional evils. The 9/11 terror attacks were collectivist attacks upon an institution thought of as American imperialism. In that circumstance the terrorists were individuals serving a collective desire—whether that desire was world bankers advancing their investments, or crazed lunatics committed to Islam it does not matter. One was an act of aggression for the good and one was for the bad. The difference between good and bad in this case is the commitment to individual value or collective based institutional assessment. America was formed upon individual value and it is there that the great differences reside. It is why John Adams came to realize that his cousin Sam was actually not such a provocateur and was actually standing for something unique on the world stage—a commitment to justice as judged by individuals as opposed to institutional preservation. In this case the term, “doing my job” has roots in the value of the individual instead of institutional concerns and does not allow vile acts to be performed behind a curtain of indecision, such as what has been happening at the IRS which dictates another type of Boston Tea Party where the individuals helping conceal the crimes should be tarred and feathered in pursuit of justice that has value where it is otherwise vacant. And this should be the fate of Lois Lerner so to send the message that institutional preservation is not going to hide behind the evils, lies and deliberate crimes of IRS leaders and their political activism paving the way for attacks against value. She was not “doing her job,” she was allowing tyranny to spread through institutional corruption and that deserves punishment.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Kevin Smith’s Report from the Episode 7 Set: Finding the Peter Pan in all of us

There was a lot of Star Wars news this past week as the world revs up for the most recent reports from that line of mythology originating during the 1970s. As I received news from Lucasfilm about their schedule at Comic Con, San Diego, a fan from Germany did a brilliant YouTube video showing vehicles from the Empire being unloaded at a foreign airport. It was a remarkable short film and showed how easy it is for anybody these days to make wonderful visual effects—putting story telling within reach of the entire world. Even more remarkable was that the creator was not an American, but was German—meaning that the very American Star Wars mythology was important enough to him to create such a video which would have taken a considerable amount of thought and time.

But most remarkable of all was the report from Kevin Smith—the filmmaker from the Clerks movies and Red State who was given permission to visit the Star Wars Episode 7 set by invitation of J.J. Abrams. Smith is personal friends with Ben Affleck and a number of notably progressive Hollywood types, but he is also a very pop culture lover of comic books and heroic endeavor. If he and I had a dinner conversation together it is likely we would agree on nothing related to politics, but everything regarding comic books and Star Wars which is the magic of that particular mythology.

I was not a fan of Smith’s movie Red State—which felt to me like a Hollywood shot at life in the Midwest. Most of the antagonists in the film were perverted versions of the type of characters Hollywood views as “Bible Thumpers” so I nearly ignored the report that Kevin Smith gave after his visit to the Star Wars set. However, under the recommendation from some of the filmmakers from the Atlas Shrugged set I gave it a chance and was glad I did. Smith gave a remarkably honest breakdown not only of what he saw there—but in how it made him feel which reaches to the heart and soul of the entire Star Wars movement.

Star Wars is a movement, philosophical, political, and religious—it is a culture building exercise that extends far beyond simple entertainment. Cultures throughout the world have spent decades now having values removed from them leaving them empty. The causes have been varied—but the results are massive cases of emptiness leaving people desperately hungry to fill themselves with something of value. Star Wars created by George Lucas was intended for children to provide value and this hunger for all things Star Wars is most reflected in the excitement level of grown adults who are rediscovering their inner—long lost child through new movies and products.

I promised my children and wife when we all saw the movie Hook together by Steven Spielberg that I would never become lost like the Robin Williams character and lose my inner Peter Pan. And I have never broken that promise to them—I understand all too well the character of Peter Pan. I live the life of Pan with every breath that I take. With that said, the bedroom of my wife and I looks like a Star Wars toy section at Target. Looming over our bed is a large Millennium Falcon and located around our bedroom are several different versions of that same ship in various sizes. I know what Star Wars means to me because I have never left that part of my life behind—instead I incorporate it seamlessly into my mature life in the way that Peter Pan had to reconcile at the end of Hook.

I’m sure that J.J. Abrams invited Kevin Smith to the Star Wars set to generate positive publicity ahead of Comic Con in San Diego and to put some of the negative rumors about Harrison Ford’s broken leg—which is healing, to rest. Ford is doing what he has always done—he’s fighting back to health so he can complete the film. (Harrison Ford suffered an ACL tear during the making of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and ruptured a disk in his back during the filming of Temple of Doom. In both cases he hit the weight room and recovered and finished his film as the star. He is doing the same thing as a 71-year-old man for Episode 7. That is what makes him great and a man’s man.) Smith came to the set and reported in a video what he saw which was captivating, but what impressed me most was his sense of understanding of what happened to him when he stepped to the top of The Millennium Falcon ramp.

It was an interesting admission that Kevin Smith made when he declared that everything he had been—as an adult—was a corrupt caricature essentially shaped by the times of society’s impression upon him. He was very honest about stating that when he visited the Star Wars set he returned back to his childhood which for him was a treasure—as it is for most people. His intense revelation about crying at the top of The Millennium Falcon ramp says a lot about our culture. It is that lost Peter Pan persona that most of us seek to regain.

So the question must be asked—why do we give up that treasure in our teenage years? Some of the most courageous among us regain that persona later in life once we become grandparents—and too old to care what people think of us. Once we lose our sex appeal, our hair, our nice skin, and the ability to impress others with our appearance there is once again a chance to become childlike with the wisdom of years of learning to support ourselves. Kids don’t care what they look like, they just like to play and have fun, and this is a trait that we should not give up on as adults.

I never have—I promised my family I never would, and I never will under any conditions. Every day in my life is like the end of the Robin Williams version of Peter Pan in Hook. I skipped right over the crises period and just went from childhood to adulthood with the same enthusiasm. What Kevin Smith, Seth McFarlane, and I all have in common is that even though we differ dramatically in our politics—we share emphatically a love of Star Wars for the same reasons—as the mythology is a direct link to the energy of childhood which should never be lost to any adult anywhere.

Kevin Smith obviously would have been a happier person if he didn’t start swearing, doing drugs, and adopting progressive causes. This is why our politics is different essentially. He would have been happier if he had kept that inner child all through his life and dropped the cynicism of adulthood. He shouldn’t have had to cry when he stepped to the top of The Millennium Falcon ramp. But, his friend J.J. Abrams probably did Smith a huge favor on a personal level by bringing him to the set to see the Star Wars shoot in person. It is good that Kevin Smith had that experience and reported it so honestly—because this is part of the healing qualities that I have spoken about so often regarding Star Wars. The culture that will come from all this will leave us all much better off than we are today—because the stories are about values that the inner child in all of us crave so deeply. The cynical adult in us has yielded to the pressures of existence which imposed compromises of those values leaving us shells of ourselves to live as caricatures of our former dreams—which is the essential story of Hook.

Disney will surely give the rest of the world the same opportunity Smith had when they build a full scale Millennium Falcon in Orlando, Florida for visitors to their theme parks. It will be a common sight to see grown adults weeping at the top of the ramp in the same way that Kevin Smith did because the long suppressed magic of childhood will come rushing back to them in that instant. It’s not immature to feel such things–it is actually rational to reacquaint an adult life with the foundations of their belief systems formed during childhood. For many people, Star Wars is the clearest representation of value that they have and is why so many fans go to such elaborate measures to touch that mythology any way they can, even if it is in a short film remarkably done like the one at the German airport. There have been few people who have put their finger on the pulse of the Star Wars movement better than Kevin Smith did when he so honestly reported his visit to the Episode 7 set.

There is no shame in rediscovering the Peter Pan in all of us—the eternal youth forever thoughtful of the hopes and dreams of discovery and imagination. When those things are lost, we are robbed of much—and it is always good to revisit these traits which we are born with. It has only been recently when there was a mythology like Star Wars providing the mechanism through simple sight of a movie prop that could make a grown man cry like a baby at the purity of the emotion—the long lost hopefulness of childhood and the values of the uncompromising dreams of youth.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Producers and the Second-handers: Why people prefer electric shock over thinking

(Reuters) – So you say all you want to do is to take a few minutes to sit down and think without anyone or anything bugging you? Maybe that is true. But you might be in the minority.

A U.S. study published on Thursday showed that most volunteers who were asked to spend no more than 15 minutes alone in a room doing nothing but sitting and thinking found the task onerous.

“Many people find it difficult to use their own minds to entertain themselves, at least when asked to do it on the spot,” said University of Virginia psychology professor Timothy Wilson, who led the study appearing in the journal Science. “In this modern age, with all the gadgets we have, people seem to fill up every moment with some external activity.”

In some experiments, college volunteers were asked to sit alone in a bare laboratory room and spend six to 15 minutes doing nothing but thinking or daydreaming. They were not allowed to have a cellphone, music player, reading material or writing implements and were asked to remain in their seats and stay awake. Most reported they did not enjoy the task and found it hard to concentrate.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/03/us-science-thinking-idUSKBN0F827V20140703

That information may seem extraordinary, but it’s really not—rather it is consistent with general human behavior and is caused by two basic roles that individuals evolve into as they mature into adulthood. People will become either a producer type personality—who makes things from self-initiative and are quite rare in the world or they will become a second-hander, a person who essentially lives through others. An example of second-hander behavior would be the type of person who dates a beautiful woman because of the prestige of being seen with her might provide. An example of a producer would be a person who dates a beautiful woman because they personally enjoy her. The same could of course be applied from women to men, cars, clothing, homes, food—just about every category of human endeavor. The typical “gold digger” personality from women who marry for money would fall into this category versus the woman who marries for “love.”

These behavioral conditions can actually be seen on any playground in the world where children play. Future producers are the kids who are the first to climb to the top of the monkey bars, or help a kid stuck on the slide whose nerve has left them as they descend. Most of the kids will reside in the safety of numerical superiority watching the producers be the first to climb to the top of a slide, or crawl under a strange obstacle, or swing across a crevice. Once they see the safety of the task, they will then follow—gaining assurance from the leader—the producer.

The differences in creating these personalities come directly from the parents. If a parent lets children gain self-sufficiency by doing things on their own at the earliest possible moment—then there are favorable odds that a child will develop into a producer. But most parents coddle children and enjoy caring for them as dependents—as the behavior provides meaning to lives of parents who are otherwise insecure about their roles in existence. So too long parents carry children on their hips, feed them too long, and help them up when a child should learn to climb on their own stunting the growth of the young minds into the role of a second-hander. They learn as children to live through their parents. As older children they live through their peers. As adults they live through the rest of society.

This is why as adults they don’t know what to do with their own thoughts and would rather be electrically shocked than to think on their own for 15 minutes—a second-hander must get their next thinking actions from a producer otherwise they can’t function. It would be the producers who would happily sit for 15 minutes or more thinking quietly. The second-hander needs music made by someone else, television made by someone else, reading material made by someone else, video games made by someone else, etc—in order to have thoughts put into their head. With those things removed—they are terrified at the lack of thought in their minds and would gladly endure great amounts of abuse to have that sense of terror removed from them.

As has been declared on many occasions at this site—except without the direct correlation—public education systems are in the business of making second-hander children who will grow up to become second-hander adults. The entire ordeal of public education is primarily focused on building these types of minds which works well for consumerism—but not so great for capitalism as industry and invention are created by producer type personalities. Producer type children tend to not do so well in public school as the system is not geared to develop their skill sets—so they become frustrated. This is also why homeschooled children do better generally than publicly taught children, because homeschooled children are taught to be producers as opposed to second-handers.

As a test dear reader if you consider how something might make you look, or how others might think before you do something—you are functioning as a second-hander. If you do a task because of the curiosity of doing it when no eyes are upon you and enjoy thinking alone with no input from the outside world—then you are thinking as a producer. But it is very clear on the playground of children who will be who. The future lives of all those young people can be predicted just watching children play. You can see who will have marriage difficulties, who will have nervous breakdowns when their cars won’t start, who will bounce aimlessly from job to job—just by watching children play. You can also see who will be the future inventors, leaders, and wealthy elite—not because they are greedy, or vicious—but because they are often the first to climb to the top of the monkey bars, and will not hesitate to push bigger kids out-of-the-way to be the first to go down a slide.

What the test reported by Reuters above says—which is supposed to be shocking—is that public education systems and parents in general have successfully built a human race of second-handers who are all waiting for someone to tell them what to do next. It therefore should not be a surprise when there is so much apathy in the world. It’s not because people are bad—or stupid—it’s because they have been taught to be second-handers who cannot act until told what to do. It is for society to determine if this is acceptable.

Speaking personally, it isn’t for me. But then I’m the kind of person who could spend weeks alone in a room with everything turned off alone with my thoughts—and be perfectly happy.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Game Changing ‘Diagon Alley’ Is Now Open: The power and meaning of “mythos”

Mythos: The interrelated set of beliefs, attitudes, and values held by a society or cultural group

http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php

That word mythos can be seen a lot at the website link above which will take inquiring minds to the Joseph Campbell Foundation website. Mythos may be one of the most important words ever created because it is unique to human beings. While trees are objects created by nature, mountains—the same, oceans, ice bergs, rain forests, weather patterns, etc—mythos are unique in that it is a creation of man’s mind for purposes specific to the imagination. For those who have lost hope as knowledge of the very diabolical is known, it is an understanding of mythos that can point to cultural aspects that are forming and provide knowledge to the kind of world tomorrow will be. Largely we live in an existence created by a mythos generated by the Dark Ages and the kind of philosophy constructed under those conditions. But that is changing—rapidly—and when the good work of Fantasy Flight Games is mentioned—it is because of the alteration of a complex mythos that I cheer it on. As dim and dire as it sometimes feels, I see a major shift in social mythos that will shatter conventional thinking in the coming years and for all the restrictions feared today—the new mythos that is forming is the key to understanding our future. CLICK HERE to review my previous article on Fantasy Flight Games. Adding to those additions of mythic storytelling contained within those games are other aspects of culture that are exploding upon the scene. I’ve talked a lot about Star Wars, Glenn Beck continues to put out fantastic novels and books that are contributing boldly, movies like The Hunger Games are resonating with young people, and superheroes are dominating at the movie box office. Ayn Rand is still selling like hotcakes in Gatlinburg and the last movie of a three-part trilogy based on that book is about to be released which is challenging old Kantian held beliefs regarding economics, religion, and business. To understand the power of this new mythos I often point to the theme parks in Central Florida as the physical evidence of the changing mythos so evident in the human race. Once a company like Universal Studios or Disney build an attraction at a theme park, they have made a significant contribution to a social mythos as a business investment and have acknowledged the lasting impact. Never has this modern mythos been on display more dramatically than the new Harry Potter exhibit at Universal Studios, Florida with their opening this week of Diagon Alley. It is simply jaw dropping incredible. It can be seen in the video below at the 7:30 mark. I would advise watching the entire video though because the mythos brought to life in Central Florida says a lot about American culture and the direction, and impact it will have on the world for the next century.

I’m not a particularly huge Harry Potter fan. There are aspects to it that I enjoy—there is too much magic in it for me—too much mystic fantasy. There is a tendency to hope that the world is different from what it is—so fantastic creations bridge that gap intellectually. But there are some wonderful values explored in the Harry Potter books and movies that have provided many of the values today’s young people possess. But the new Diagon Alley exhibit is a living mythos—that is the point of the place—to put visitors into that world in a way that has never yet been possible anywhere on earth. But to what end—for simple entertainment? Human beings require myths to hold themselves together and put their values in line with priorities. Harry Potter was born out of this need, and it has been so successful that Universal Studios built a magnificent shrine to that mythos.

Mythos carries over into every aspect of human life. It goes to the voting booth, it becomes the focus of productive enterprise in business, it creates the values a family uses to bond themselves to one another—or to fly apart. It provides a mechanism for people to recognize evil, or good depending on the vantage point—a mythos can be either destructive or beneficial—but so long as human beings exist, there will be the creation of myths. Once those myths are created, a physical manifestation will be attempted, such as what Universal Studios has done with Diagon Alley. Visitors to those parks will attempt to bring the values of Harry Potter—for good or bad—into their daily life. So to me, watching the mythos of our world is the most important things a culture can do.

My excitement over this current mythos period is in the realization that only a few years ago none of this easy access to so much mythos was available. When I was a child, Disney World was brand new and nothing like it is now, Universal Studios was simply a dream, Dungeon and Dragons was very primitive and movies were limited in what they could create due to budget constraints and film executives functioning from the philosophies of Kant and Plato. Tolkien was the premier fantasy writer inspiring a new generation that would magnify his work hundreds of times over, the culmination being stories like Harry Potter. And video games were clunky. The opportunity to step into a mythos the way young people can now simply did not exist. But now things are changing rapidly—much more rapidly than any conniving bankers in Europe, or politicians in America can even fathom—any thoughts of potential tyranny are being crushed under the weight of a dynamically changing mythos.

That doesn’t mean all is well, there are major problems that will play out in the years to come—the bankruptcy of America, the continued attempts to spread collectivism to every corner of the earth at the expense of the individual—but those are the results of the previous mythos built by the pre and post Renaissance periods, religious ignorance, and minds so stifled with daily obligations that they did not have the liberty to think. My greatest joy of late has come from Fantasy Flight Games in that they create a product that generates not only a positive mythos—culturally, but a lot of thinking. When those types of entertainment options are coupled with the physical reality of something like Diagon Alley there are real opportunities for massive human enjoyment.

As I write this I know of several individuals planning their visit to Diagon Alley. They are reading the Harry Potter novels again at Steak and Shake at 3 AM in the morning and going to work when the sun comes up. They are playing Fantasy Flight’s Game of Thrones card game at Starbucks with their friends and are living in the mythos of those fantasy realms for a large portion of their life—and that is wonderful for the psychological well-being of their many otherwise treacherous disappointments in life. The joy of the mythos created artificially by the human minds behind Harry Potter and The Game of Thrones replaces the many areas where deficiency has otherwise occurred.

It is not good to substitute reality for fantasy—but it is not good to be crushed by too much reality—and often a positive mythos can alleviate the impact of such a disappointing force. With minds full of value, the diabolical schemes concocted by maniacal tyrants losses their ability because of the hope given by a mythos which feeds an individual mind as opposed to a soul looking to be filled by some come-lately leader drunk with power and filled with ill intent. But Universal Studios has performed a modern miracle, they have recreated Diagon Alley the way that only imaginations had previously contemplated, and made it real. The impact of this dramatic shift in mythos will resonate for quite some time in a positive way as the future unfolds itself out away from the small minds who previously wished to contain it. Diagon Alley is proof that such attempts have failed and that the human mind is now relishing in triumph over feats that are only now available for the first time on planet earth. When such things become real—they become a new reality in the realm of mythos.

Minds free to think, and contemplate new ideals create the mythos that will become the foundations of future values—but more importantly, such minds cannot be controlled. So long as a mind can contemplate mythos, a physical body will reject the chains placed upon it—literal or metaphorical. What I see in Diagon Alley is a culture in America who has professed that it values imagination and thinking to such an extent that it wanted to make it into a physical reality—which is a beacon to the world that imagination is alive and well and that tyrants have no place in Central Florida. You can feel it at the Orlando airport—as you travel down the people movers from the grand departure gate where hotel guest look down into the giant room of people traveling from everywhere in the world to see the theme parks of Florida first hand. Of those great theme parks, Universal Studios has recaptured the lead of the most spectacular attractions among them with Diagon Alley. There is nothing like it anywhere—except deep in the mind those who generate mythos upon a blank page to share with the world and incite in them the freedom of thought which is the greatest gift to civilization that there is.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

A Strategy Guide For Beating The Political Left: Removing brute force, emotion, and peer-pressure from a debate

The interview Megan Kelly had with Bill Ayers was remarkable because it would have been impossible two years ago. At that time, it was still considered conspiracy to discuss the relationship Barack Obama had with Ayers—who was a domestic terrorist and still holds very extreme positions. This isn’t the only wall coming down—because the foundations of deceit are coming apart and mainstream commentators like Kelly, Bill O’Reilly and even Charles Krauthammmer are now starting to say the same kind of things that people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Doc Thompson, Matt Clark and myself were saying two years ago The evidence is now obvious and has taken them to the proper conclusions about Obama, Ayers, the silent threat of socialism in virtually every public policy and many other difficult topics. So I think it’s time to reveal a little secret so that those reading here today can increase their own personal strategic impact against these forces more rapidly over the next couple years.

I’ve told a portion of this story before but now with context provided, it is time to give a proper answer. When the Enquirer reporter Michael Clark was at my home photographing me for what was surely at some point in time to become a major circus scandal he asked me if I was sure that I wanted my picture taken with my bullwhips while making series claims against one of the largest and wealthiest public schools in Ohio for fear that my message might become lost in the entertaining antics. I have said that it was part of a plan, but without context the words don’t have much meaning to novice readers—so I simply gave the steps without providing the meaning. However, since this blog for many has become a sort of silent strategy guide for how to defeat the left—to understand what I was doing was important because it will help those same minds through this next—difficult phase with much ore assuredness.

It was my idea to do the bullwhip story in the same week that I went on WLW to argue teacher wages at Lakota. Before going on the air I had many friends and family warn me against such a thing. After all, they had seen labor strikes locally from General Motors, AK Steel, and many other union type organizations and it was well-known that teacher unions destroyed private property of those who stood in their way—and I was asking for trouble by going on WLW to call them out. The Enquirer article was done to take away one of the weapons of the labor union—which was hard to explain at the time. People would understand the wage issues I was bringing up, but all too often those stories are suppressed because people are afraid to put their name out there against such a collective force.

So here’s the little secret at beating the political left which can now be obviously confirmed with history—not just my own, but that of others who have also dared push back against the forces trying to reshape us all into something despicable and useless. No group, especially the political left can win if two things are removed from them, their ability to exert force—and thus fear so to manipulate through silence the facts to their favor. Whatever methods are used to create fear—threat of labor strikes, vandalism, personal name calling, physical violence you need to match them blow for blow. When I showed them what I could do with the bullwhip, I was performing a strategy I learned from Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kun Do martial arts school. Lee never worried about conflict with another human being because he had made himself into something that could not be beaten by another human being. He may not have won every confrontation, but he could decide if he would lose. If you pick a variation of a martial art and become so skilled at it that you are the best there is—you have made yourself invincible so to speak to defeat in that particular category. That is a very good thing, it doesn’t matter if it is bullwhips, knife handling, various forms of self-defense—the act at becoming so good at something that nobody can beat you is a sense of assuredness that provides freedom to an individual that is paramount to beating back any aggression committed against you.

After my WLW visit I had every manner of fear creating method thrown at me by the labor unions who had some type of stake in the Lakota levy—every kind. But, because of my use of the bullwhip, opponents learned quickly that I could easily beat the monkey snot out of them without really breaking a sweat. It didn’t matter if they came as individuals or groups—the result would be the same unless they decided to cross the line and elevate their terrorism with guns—which of course I also had an answer and they knew it. Violence and threat of harm is the first desired strategy that labor unions use to get what they want—so I took that away from them. This forced them into territory they were not comfortable with—a logical argument.

Quickly the liberals involved in public education—which is most everyone—tried to play the other strategy of the left—the theory of emotion where they use fear of speculative outcomes such as fear of death, fear of ignorance, fear of losing in competitive comparisons with the rest of the world as their means of advancing their own plot without ever getting into the details. This is that Witch Doctor mentality mentioned on this site before—it’s the speculation of things to come based on raw emotion and justified by feelings, not fact. I forced them—really an entire education industry from the Department of Education in The United States, and Ohio—college professors, tenured teachers, politicians, union presidents to beat the facts I presented to the public and on this site and not a single person could do it—for over four years now. This is the big secret behind their push for violence and why if that weapon is taken from them—they are left naked as the day they were born—intellectually. They cannot win an argument if they are on the wrong side of the facts—which they know they are. They must bring emotion into their arena as an alley because they are seeking to supplant the facts with emotion to win their position. Even the smartest people in the education industry—and you’d think that there would be a lot of smart people in education—could not refute a single claim I made in the public forums such as the Enquirer, all the television stations and over the radio. Many of those radio broadcasts went out to over 100,000 to 500,000 people and not a single soul was able to refute the facts I brought up—which in essence was that teachers were overpaid, their instruction was ineffective to children, and that it wasn’t worth the cost of increased taxes.

When “they” could not win with threats of force, or feelings they resorted back to force—but instead of making it private they went public—which of course was predicted. The Enquirer again played its role and put up all the residual impact of the word war that was going on between my opponents and myself showing how ugly things were getting. But the essence of it was this—the levy supporters attempted to win their side with a combination of force and emotion by making the argument one about sexism—since many of the radicals were women—they hoped to play that old progressive trick, which worked on many of the weaker minded people on my side who actually feared those despots—I’ll get into that with more detail in a bit. When I showed them that I would take a head for an eye in whatever manner they wished to pursue things it got out of control for a bit as the panic set in leaving Lakota as a large progressive organization with little to do but to retreat and regroup. They cut a deal with me lasting for two years and spent that time not trying to incorporate what they had learned from me, but in trying to build on their emotional position. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on public relations to suppress the negativity caused by our fights so that they could come across as benevolent once again. They eventually won their money but in the process had proven everything I claimed against them leaving the process open for all to see stripped away of fear in all its forms. People were able for the first time to see how all these things worked together to impose social elements against the society at large and they were learning how to counter it.

If fear of violence and mystic facts based on emotion are removed from the left—or from anybody—they can be handedly defeated. However there is one last element that must be utilized in such a conflict which the political left uses to prevent a challenge to either of their key strategies—it is the plight of the second hander. The way that the left protects itself from scrutiny is through this mechanism. A second hander desires the approval of others for internal sustenance—for instance, second hander people enjoy being told they look nice, they buy cars that they know other people will admire; they change their aroma hoping to present themselves attractively to other human beings and generally spend a lot of time seeking the approval of others. What protects the political left most from challenges to their two primary attacks–physical violence and mystic emotion is the peer pressure of social judgment. If challenges are presented to their two control mechanisms the default protection is this destruction of public acceptance.

From the time that I was a little kid up until about 15 years ago I used to get a lot of grief about wearing a cowboy hat in public. For me, the hat was a symbol of traditional values which I hold strongly. For the rest of society—it also represented that—which was out-of-step with the progressive direction of the country. People let me know about it. Even as a twenty something young man living campus life at the University of Cincinnati I walked around everywhere with my cowboy hat—and people always looked at me funny for it. Most of the time I was by myself as well—often I would get up in the morning and walk to Coryville to have breakfast and read my books with my hat on. I would get the strangest looks, people actually felt anxious—first they couldn’t understand why I was by myself, and two, why I had on the hat. Who was I trying to impress? The answer was nobody—and this scared people. What they never figured out—and which is a fact that remains to this day—is that I don’t care an iota what anybody thinks about anything. When I do something I do it because I want to. I wear what I want, when I want to and do it for my own reasons. Therefore, I also do the same with thinking—I think what I want, say what I want, and in no way feel hampered by third-party judgment and am thusly immune to peer-pressure.

This is a very liberating attribute because it allows you to challenge the two mechanisms of liberal strategy–brute force, and emotional speculation directly without concern of being cast out of any group or the collective opinions that might be controlled by money, social prestige, or God forbid—consensus. In this way, people have seen slowly what kind of scam has been perpetrated upon them and have taken action on their own to advance the plot. Now that the first bricks of that intellectual damn have been removed the cracks are now crawling everywhere ahead of the break and what will be free finally are all the things hidden behind that damn by the political left for years—things put there through force and emotion. Logic breaks the damn, and freedom from peer pressured allows the bricks to be removed one by one until the whole thing comes crashing down.

There are people who read here every day for their sustenance—because they want to see how the world really is and expect me to present it without fear from violence, or handcuffs by emotional debate, or the concern of being blacklisted from the latest charity dinner by socialites and despots hungry for attention and yearning for approval by their peers. Through that journey they come to the truth and now that they facts are adding up, they are able to act upon those truths. Luckily, I’m not alone in this journey and the culmination of these efforts is beginning to have a major impact. The Bill Ayers interview with Megan Kelly is just the start—the left in the wake of a terrible Obama Presidency have to defend themselves really for the first time–and are now coming out to meet the challenge. They really have no choice; public opinion is beginning to stack against them. But now that other people know how to beat them at their own game—the frequency of these challenges are tearing away at their façade leaving them deeply exposed for the first time in over 100 years, and they don’t like it. The way to fight them is now known and it is the task of the individuals reading here to carry these methods into their personal life to fight these corrosive elements in the proven fashion. The guarantee of success is 100%. So now that you know dear reader how to beat them………………..what’s stopping you?

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

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