Tag: Free Will

As Iran Fired Missiles, I Slept Very Well: Having a very good president in the White House

It was over before it even started as I announced in earlier articles. Trump had destroyed Iran’s “queen” in the great chess game and the war was over even as Fox News broke into its coverage to show missiles in the air headed for American occupied bases in Iraq. Every station had in fact started covering the revenge from Iran on live television and the situation looked ominous. I laughed to myself and went to bed. I was not at all surprised to wake up the next morning with a text from President Trump saying all was well, no American lives were lost. As a matter of fact, as the day evolved, we learned that the Iranians had been telling us that they were firing missiles essentially to appease their political base, but they weren’t aimed at any Americans. And they told us when they were done. They really didn’t want any action from America, that was obvious. They just wanted to show some missiles in the air flying around to show on State television to save some face after the embarrassing end to one of their top military minds. It’s not that I didn’t care about the results, but I can do math. Iran as I have said over and over again cannot fight a war. They do not have the resources for anything beyond regional terrorism. So, they weren’t going to sign their own death warrant. I slept well even as the missiles where in the air flying around in the desert.

The media was caught red handed on this one because the fuel of the entire exercise was their coverage, made up as they went along. Like many of us have been saying for decades, the media has ran many of these wars covering movements, reporting them on air, then forcing presidents and generals to adapt to the broadcasts as if it were a sporting event. This has been going on since television became a common thing. And now that we have a president who understands the game, he doesn’t get played by it, but he certainly plays the players. The drums of war were being beaten by the media for an event that couldn’t even take place if the Iranians even wanted it to. They simply don’t have the resources, which left all the broadcasters reeling to justify their panic driven coverage in the aftermath.

If you are a reporter, or a network executive, you should at least be a little intellectually curious as to the nature of war and strategy, and to know that Iran only has about 200 to 300 Scud missiles and about 100 Shahab-3 medium range ballistic missiles. Their entire strategy is to use terrorism as a leverage point to show power, because they don’t actually have any power. They have an unstable government hanging on to an old communist idea that has eroded away into Islamic ideology leaving them with very little in financial options. And without finances they can’t even buy new weapons or think about building nuclear ones. They have nothing to work with, so no possibility of a war with anybody. The energy and cost to fire off those few missiles they did in revenge of their slain leader cost them a fortune that they didn’t have, and they have no appetite to do it anymore. We aren’t talking about kids firing off Nerf guns in their back yard, it costs a lot to fire off any kind of missile and Iran just doesn’t have the financial resources to conduct a war of any kind. That is why I went to bed, because what the news was broadcasting was pure nonsense. It was a ruse from the start and any news organization should have known that. What they were broadcasting was a fiction, and they likely knew it. If they didn’t know it, they were incompetent and shouldn’t even be on the air.

I slept well because for the first time in my life I knew there was a guy in the White House who could see through the illusions and to not allow a bunch of panicky generals and advisors to poke him into war with an enemy that was about as harmful as a common house fly. Now a house fly can land in some shit and then land on your food and cause trouble, but in all reality, their intent is pretty iniquitous but not very dangerous. And Trump’s speech to the country was along those lines. Be careful with flies landing in shit and crawling on you, but for now, we will leave them alone by keeping the door shut. Trump’s speech addressing the issue was the best that I can remember. He shut down the drums for war quickly and addressed the truly minimalist situation for what it was properly, giving people an honest assessment for what was one of the few in history. Most of these kinds of things are draped in drama meant to add a fearful narrative that has a big government subtext to it, letting people know that government will keep them safe. Not in Trump’s speech. He essentially said, nothing to worry about. Its cool. Go enjoy your families. Only with him, it wasn’t a lie meant to lull people back to sleep, but to get them back to living good productive lives without the worry of some flies landing on their food with feet dripping in shit.

This is what competency looks like, it doesn’t need to fear the actions of losers. Losers do not rule the world, as the media would like you to believe. To properly reflect this new age of living, the media is going to have to adjust, they’ll have to get better. They’ll need to figure out how to cover a 24-hour news cycle without talking about war, impeachment, or some FBI scandal against our president. Eventually they’ll have to come up with fresh content all on their own that doesn’t rely on scaring everyone to death to stay relevant. I would say that time has passed, but there is no time like the present. For myself, it was the first time I went to bed when some national incident was occurring, because I have learned the falseness of it all well and could see the signs from the very first moments. And the next day, most of the country had to admit the same, even CNN. As we all learn to be more competent, and focus our efforts on productive things, the news will have to grow with us and that will be a real challenge for them. The same old tricks will not work in the future as they have since the advent of televisions into our living rooms. They could all learn some lessons from Trump himself who is the Master of Media. He was before he became president, he won because of his knowledge. And now as a president, he only has sharpened that mastery. I trust him more than I trust television executives, so I went to bed until I heard from Trump. I didn’t want to hear from all the lesser people covering things they didn’t know just trying to frighten people into staying tuned. And that not just for me, but for many people, is a very new thing.

Rich Hoffman

George Lang: Donald Trump’s kind of senator in Ohio

Welcome to 2020, a decade that will forever be known for a certain swagger back toward capitalism and where Marxism will continue to erode from the face of the earth as it first arrived over 100 years ago to North America to attempt to beat down the original roaring 20s. Well, Trump and the people who have supported him are no longer outsiders. We may have been in the previous two or three decades, but not anymore. Trump in spite of all the scary stuff those falling out of power want you to think about him is the new norm and that standard will be around for a while. So, thinking about this upcoming election in Butler County for the 4th State Senate Seat in Ohio it was Trump who I was thinking about and how there is only one candidate out of all the wanna bes who can hold the seat. It’s not just because of his competency, but its because we are in the new 20s and it is the decade of Trump and people who are only a few phone calls away from the White House, like George Lang are right for the job.

What matters in a seat like the one in Ohio for senate is not just personal philosophy and accomplishments, but in being on the side of history and showing the kind of resolve that makes him the kind of person who fits in the Trump Republican Party. Out of the other candidates such as the socialist trustee from West Chester posing as a Republican like Lee Wong—when Trump comes to town, which he does often, Lee has shown that he is against President Trump on many issues. And the other Republican running for that same senate seat, Candace Keller is likely to be one of the people waiting in line for Trump holding a sign, but George Lang will be behind the curtain there to greet him. There are people who are wish they weres, and then there are people who are the real deal and that is George Lang. George is the kind of guy who can get in touch with Trump whereas people like Candace wave to him from the side of the road. And that is all the difference anybody needs to consider in this upcoming election.

After the Republican primaries are voted on in March a liberal lady by the name of Kathy Wyenandt, plans to run against George as a Democrat. I often say to her that she should run as a Republican, but she won’t listen. The trouble with her approach is that there are like two Democrats in Butler County. Actually, there are a few more, but that might as well be the number. The 4th District in Ohio is not a liberal one and as I pointed out, between Kathy, Candace, and Lee, only George is a Trump supporter to the level where he can say he’s a part of the Trump White House. The world has turned upside-down a bit, the insiders are now the outsiders and the outsiders are now the insiders. George is an insider and not in a bad way. Bad for those who want to challenge him for an elected seat, but not bad for those who share with Trump the kind of vision for America that we have wanted for many years. And now its time.

Kathy will try to beat George by killing with kindness and winning over what she thinks are moderates. She has befriended lots of flip flop Republicans trying to whittle away at a base that no longer exists, something the Democrats thought was the key to beating Republicans during the Bush administrations. Those Republican friends of hers would like to take George out for their own future shots at an office because they understand that Lang is now the establishment, as if perpetual rebellion was the only course for the future. When Democrats are in office, they are Tea Party people, when Republicans are in office, they pick at the structure hoping to make a name for themselves. And Kathy is happy to ride that wave hoping that the numbers of division will help her poultry Democrat Party of school levy supporters and other tax advocates gain a surprise in turnout in her favor. Even that strategy fails to understand that we elected Donald Trump to take over our government and now from the White House we are filling many new federal, state and local seats with the kind of people who put Trump in power. And Trump doesn’t forget those who supported him early on.

I remember meeting Trump with George Lang early in the primaries in 2016 when Trump was still being laughed at all across the country. Many area Republicans in Butler County were still supporting John Kasich, who at that time was the face of the party. Well, for me, Kasich was entirely too liberal, more like Kathy Wyenandt and Lee Wong. Trump was too much for them, too crazy from their moderate point of view. But Lang was always a pro-business guy who wanted to help businesses and individual people get all they could out of life and he shared with Trump a vision for America. In those early days, I was certainly there with Trump—on day one. And so was George Lang, with his heart and soul. And now, he gets to reap the benefits of that friendship. He’s an insider in the best way possible.

Now I would never say that Trump’s ideas are crazy, because I don’t think they are or ever were. The mainstream as it used to be for me was entirely too soft, and boring. I like this new world of Trump and I can see myself functioning happily within it. There is a difference when you are an outsider who thinks you can do better than the insider which gives that person a bad name easily. But at some point, you most of the time get a chance to be the insider and when you do, you should do the things that you think are better for the world. Most people never feel comfortable being anything but an outsider, so they perpetually complain and bitch and become do nothings. But that’s not George. He fought as an outsider to become an insider, and now he’s part of the Trump America and is the only one who is. The rest of his challengers are just complainers and perpetual outsiders because that’s all they want to know. They want the prestige but not the responsibility and Trump doesn’t respect people like that. And in the future, especially in Butler County, Trump will call on Republicans to help, and George will be one of them. Trump won’t call those other candidates. He may ask Candice for a campaign donation because she might have bought a t-shirt, but nothing else. At some point, we win and we get to pick good people like George Lang to be our representative. And instead of getting a do nothing loser, we can expect in George a real champion for people and their success. And to support businesses and personal freedom. He’s what we’ve always wanted in a powerful position under a Trump White House. And to his very heart, he’s an unapologetic Trump supporter that was there when it wasn’t cool, and that means everything in the world.

Rich Hoffman

A Review on the Fantastic HBO Miniseries Chernobyl: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was never better illustrated

As I watched the fantastic HBO miniseries on Chernobyl I couldn’t help but think of someone I admire quite a lot, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of the great pinnacle work on human psychology called ‘Flow.’ I finally was able to watch the five part series after many people kept recommending it to me and I have to say at every level of that experience, from the writer by Craig Mazin to the direction of Johan Renck—and everyone in between from the great acting to the executives who put the deal together ‘Chernobyl’ was a bold undertaking on an epic scale. These are not the filmmakers of the 80s and 90s where The Hollywood Reporter measured success by the size of their pay checks, and overall box office, but this trend we have now of streaming projects on the scale of Chernobyl are bringing forth creative filmmakers who are functioning from Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Flow’ on several projects that are giving the world so many new entertainment options, from projects like Stranger Things to The Mandalorian. But this Chernobyl effort was on a scale of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, which is one of my all time favorite films. But there won’t be big Academy Awards for this labor of love, or big Hollywood contracts. I don’t know what the makers of Chernobyl made as far as a paycheck, but its obvious they made this series out of pure love of the content, and the hard truths that come from it.

I don’t think Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi meant to reveal why communism doesn’t work in his own studies, but he did and that footprint of human effort was stamped all over Chernobyl. The film series brilliantly walked the line between the heroics of every day “working” people as Karl Marx fantasized to represent and cast a very bright light into every aspect and social level of Soviet society. The apartments were small and dingy, even the offices of the chief coordinators were skanky and shrill. No wonder everyone was so willing to lie about the status of things because nobody wanted to jeopardize a promotion into something improved. Conditions were so terrible for everyday people in Russia during this period of Chernobyl, which for those who don’t know was the site of the worst nuclear accident in the history of the world and continues to be a blight on Ukrainian politics. Even to this day, Ukraine is in the news and is at the center of an impeachment attempt by modern Democrats in America. For everyday people around the world who don’t know history or geography, the kind of corruption that these old Soviet regions bred is unfathomable.

Comparing lifestyles from the same period such as in the film Wall Street it becomes quite clear that the Soviet Union was so terrified of their people learning about the great gifts that the West might inspire into their society that they put all their efforts into publicity of the state for the purposes of the state robbing people of their natural free will so what the entire country ended up with was a massive economy filled with the Parkinson’s Law. Not the disease but the trend in human beings to fill schedule targets with procrastination when loose parameters to fulfillment are allowed and lazy ambitions fill the void. Where Chernobyl told the stories of many brave people it was only when the tragedy of the moment was able to tap into people’s natural Flow as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi often discussed. When left to their own devices into service to the “state” people took their sweet time, did only what they had to in order not to be shot by the KGB, and the result was a society of peeling paint, small apartments, boxy cars that all looked a like and very little retail options to speak of. Because the entire society was only doing what it had to because their Flow and love of life itself was so micromanaged.

The Chernobyl story could be told in any communist or socialist country and it is ironic that the American left is so enchanted with these efforts and want that for our own society. It is an unfathomably stupid idea unless people just don’t understand the concepts behind the work of very serious modern phycologists such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Modern China is suffering through exactly the same trials and tribulations as the Soviet Union was during this period of Chernobyl. It is the perception of power that they have and only that. That is the reason the state must control information flow so vigorously. The same in modern day Iran. Any society where people live in sloppy conditions and there are economic struggles we will find the elements of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s observations, once you take away the flow of ambition from people and force them to serve institutionalism, you get from them a natural Parkinson’s Law. I use that term to abbreviate Csikszentmihalyi’s teachings, which of course does the trick. This was precisely why the test at the Chernobyl plant was done in spite of the need to shut down for 12 hours to meet the output quotas for the end of the month needs. That Soviet society needed to push quotas on people in such a way says everything about their society, people weren’t naturally inclined to produce, or even motivated to “over produce” as we might see in Western cultures, but they had to be coaxed a gunpoint to do so and there is all the problem with Chernobyl or any communist society.

What was remarkable about the HBO miniseries on Chernobyl is it was done by very creative people functioning from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow ideas reporting on why communism was a massive failure because it robbed Russian society of their Flow. Whether or not this was intentional we may never know. It could just be a happy accident as events provided these filmmakers with the opportunity of a lifetime. But one thing is for sure, they seized on it and created one of the most magnificent narratives about a global tragedy that anybody has ever seen. And the work left in their wake is worth serious scientific study. Terms like Parkinson’s Law have not been around until fairly recently, certainly not as long as the peasant ambitions of Karl Marx over a hundred and fifty years ago. There are still a lot of discoveries that we need to make as a society as to what works and what doesn’t. For now we know that Western ideas do better economically, where these notions of collectivism tend to create Parkinson’s Law when Flow is robbed from individual people. We see it in manufacturing all the time no matter where in the world we are conducting it. Tight, micromanaged establishments tend to get a lot of Parkinson’s Law whereas free flowing creative efforts like at Pixar or Apple generate massive intellectual output. The results are unmistakable.

Chernobyl is the kind of program that every human being should watch once. That something like that is available to HBO subscribers or those with Amazon Prime accounts to me is a modern miracle. Such a great history lesson is available from the comfort of our living rooms any time of day in any length of time that you may wish to view it. We live in a modern world that has always craved Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow. He didn’t invent the desire, he simply observed it and noted conditions when Flow was restricted in people. But seldom is there ever a film series that shows not only what caused a tragedy on an epic scale because of Flow problems created by a government that is more relevant today than even when the event occurred. That’s what we have with Chernobyl. A massive undertaking created by wonderful Flow by the filmmakers about a society that had terrible Flow and ultimately why it’s important without being preachy. Chernobyl is ultimately about the gifts that come from a free society, the ability to look at ourselves and improve to get the desired results, something we all take for granted way too often. And we do so because of Parkinson’s Law, because we always fill the work to fill the comforts of a schedule, we see no horizon on, and think we have all the time in the world to fix it. But we don’t.

Rich Hoffman

Trump took out the Queen: Understanding the politics of Iran

For those not familiar with the liberal playbook they can clearly see it now. For all the things many of us said was wrong with Benghazi, where the liberals in control at the time completely handled the situation wrong and emboldened terrorist to attack the embassy, President Trump wasn’t about to allow the same to happen in Bagdad. So, he made the order when hostilities were escalating and the big general from Iran himself Maj. Gen Qassim Suleimani was in a car headed for trouble, Trump made the order to blow the guy to pieces, which is what happened. Immediately, those same people who want our society disarmed, who support the killing of millions of babies with abortion, and have been involved in attempting to use American intelligence agencies to overthrow the 2016 election, and ironically were involved in appeasing Iran, and had their fingers in the Benghazi mistake in Libya many years ago were stating that Trump just invited World War III and that we must all brace for impact.

For those who think there isn’t a plan in this attack by the United States against a very hostile foreign agent, there is, and it’s really quite brilliant. We have yet to hear much about that brilliance because apparently most people just don’t understand the situation well enough. The losers late to the party, the liberals as usual are blaming the attack on the impeachment timing saying that its purely political, which if you think about it, when are they not attacking or blaming Trump for something? When would be a good time? The accusation is laughable. Accusers are also calling it reckless, as if the liberal approach of appeasement has worked for all the past presidents involved in emboldening Iran over the years. Ali Khamenei the supposed “supreme leader” of Iran just a few days ago taunted Trump that he “can’t do anything” in the region letting it be believed that violence and mayhem would continue in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and many other places no matter what. Trump’s response was to target the leader of many of the problems that have been occurring and to stop him from doing it again at the U.S. Embassy in Bagdad.

It was liberal policies all along that have destroyed the Middle East just as they have in American cities. Ali Khamenei is just another gang leader no different than some drug dealing thug in Baltimore or Los Angeles. When the communists took over Iran back in the 70s many in our own government attempted to prop up their government just as they had been doing in Cuba and in China even up to the days before Trump’s trade war has chilled the ambitions of the largest country with the most people on earth by far, yet with very little resources to work with. Even Russia with its multi decade rule by Vladimir Putin was propped up by weak liberal policies over a large span of time. And when we say weak, we are talking about even the Bush presidents. They didn’t understand the game so they have been getting played.

This is yet another reason why we elected Trump in 2016 and will do it again in 2020. Previous presidents embarrassed us when dealing with these big regional gang leaders like Ali Khamenei. The issue really isn’t much different from the Second Amendment issue in the United States, we don’t want to be afraid of our own shadows, as the political left wants us to be. We want to carry weapons so that we don’t have to fear some regional thug that wants to break into our homes. And on the international stage, we don’t want regional thugs like those in Iran to start little fires everywhere that we have to put out. The person most responsible for that activity was Qassim Suleimani. Why not blow him up and make him no longer a threat?

The brilliance of the timing is that Kim Jong-un from North Korea has been beating on the war drums looking for attention, and this action in Iraq should give him an answer that he has been looking for. It’s not Trump’s fault that Qassium Suleimani gave him an easy target heading from the airport in Bagdad to the U.S. Embassy. When the shot comes open, take it. But Trump has needed to send a message to all those lunatics around the world who are looking to make noise as Trump goes into an election year with their allies in our own government trying to impeach him.

If they were going to make a move to get him out of office and embarrass him in front of the American people, this would be the year. So Trump took decisive action the way we hired him to. Its not that anybody is sad that Suleimani was killed and is no longer a threat in the Middle East as he has been for many years, its that now Trump will get the credit for it, which will make him more popular in the upcoming election. Not the reason that Trump did it for sure, but he will benefit from the timing. Again, it’s a liberal problem on both sides of the Atlantic. Iran’s regime are communist crusaders left over from that original revolution and that is why our American left supports them with money and regulatory policy and the only reason they have a leg to stand on.

So lets talk about retaliation, the truth of the matter is that Iran doesn’t have anything to work with. This is not a “war” that will involve troops on the ground as Nancy Pelosi has stated. It is amazing how many people are just stupid about war and strategy in general. Once you take out the king or queen in chess, the game is over. Trump took out Iran’s queen and now only pawns protect the king with no resources to speak of. The United States is now an exporter of oil leaving the Middle East to be a secondary market, taking massive amounts of power away from Iran. And the Iranian people are tired of the socialist and communist rule of their nation and have been revolting. Iran’s biggest threat is to protect itself from its own people, just as there are protestors in China’s Hong Kong wearing Trump masks and clamoring for freedom. Trump is a symbol of freedom throughout the world and he just gave all of them hope by taking out one of their greatest menaces. Even in China the rebels there have hope that if the tyrants crack down too hard to destroy them, that Trump will come to their rescue. So there is a lot more going on than just blowing up one car with one killer in it to stop an attack on the U.S. Embassy. Trump has been playing the chess game well, and after killing Soleimani the game is pretty much over.

Iran doesn’t have the resources to fight a war. Liberals want us to always fear that they must be appeased to keep nuclear weapons out of their hands which is the same strategy they want us to utilize with domestic gang leaders. Just make them happy and tip toe around their anger. Let the government protect you, don’t try to do it yourself. Trump’s message to the world is to allow people to protect themselves. He’ll use the American military to take away the threat to their lives, but its up to them to take back their government. He’s not going to do it for them. And that is the difference between Trump who has been successful in business and all the other political losers who came before him who didn’t have a clue. Changing a culture requires the people of the culture to do the work. You can’t come in and strong-arm people to get them to abide. Iran is poised for a revolution back to the kind of freedom it had before the communists took over. And that is what the political left is worried about with the killing of this Iranian terrorist. Its not cyber warfare or attacks on anything American that we should worry about. But now with their “queen” taken out, the game board is much better for the Iranians wanting change to advance and now its only a matter of time before they overthrow Ali Khamenei. And he and the political left know it.

Rich Hoffman

Keith Kinnunen and Liberals: There are a lot more mentally depraved people in the world which requires us all to be armed to defend ourselves from

Not that it’s a surprise, but we now know that the shooter of the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas was Keith Kinnunen—a loser who had managed his life poorly who targeted that church because they had given him food instead of money. This instance reminds me of many of my personal run-ins with homeless people. Once at the Kenwood Mall a homeless person was on the side of the highway exit looking for food, but what he really wanted was money. My wife and I went to the food court and bought him a bag of Arby’s for which he immediately threw to the ground. I’ve tried to help people like that since, but often with the same result. It doesn’t surprise me when people who find they can’t live in the world due to their lack of mental development (which is almost 100% of the time their own fault) or because they have drug addictions, that this loser Keith Kinnunen was upset that the church only gave him food instead of money, and sought to take his rage out on them due to his own radical ideas of self-indulgence.
When Kinnunen pulled out a 12-gauge shotgun to kill parishioners at that church, he managed to kill a few people before Jack Wilson pulled out his own gun and shot the assailant dead in seconds, as concealed carry holders are supposed to do. Its always sad to see anybody lose their life, but this case had a happy ending, a lot more people were able to return home to their families due to a good guy with a gun shooting a bad guy with a gun. The problem with the case is that liberals put their own two cents into this case by suggesting that instead of focusing on the success of Wilson’s actions that we should be looking at eliminating the need for gun violence in the first place, which is an astonishing statement considering that it is the liberal view of the world that caused the conditions.

Kinnunen was a troubled person his entire 44-year life, as a guy who had been married two times with ex-wives available to tell plenty of stories of his crazed anger and drug abuse, the guy was so irresponsible that he was just another homeless person. Many have pointed out that he wasn’t mentally healthy which is obvious. The burning question in this case and all of them for that matter is what the cause of mental illness is, which I often say the entire Democrat party could be guilty of. Trying to decide what is mental illness and what isn’t is where liberals have a hard time because their entire lives could be said to function out of some mental depravity not that unlike the killer in this Texas church case. They support drug abuse, do not believe in family structure and have a sense of entitlement which suggests that the world owes them something. They are not much different at face value than Kinnunen getting angry with the church because they gave him food instead of money.

This is entirely why most all liberals are opposed to open carrying of firearms because they see themselves in killers like Kinnunen. They want to believe that they are mentally healthy people, but when the facts come out on the kind of people who perform these mass killings in nearly every case, its not just a case of mental illness, but are the products of liberalism in our society—drug abuse, lack of personal responsibility for actions, and a sense of entitlement. Whether that entitlement comes in the form of federal workers demanding higher taxes to cover their inflated pensions, or whether its some loser like this Kinnunen guy who expects people to feel sorry for his bad decisions in life and to give him money for drugs so he can forget about his problems—that he himself created. Liberals sympathize with these killers because they see themselves in the mirrors of their existence—and they certainly wouldn’t want to have an armed society that could protect themselves from liberal incursions, which are frequent if left unchecked.

There are tens of thousands of liberals who are not much healthier than Keith Kinnunen functioning right now in our schools, our BMVs, even at the post office. The only reason they have not become homeless people running around food kitchens looking for free money is because we overpay them to be government leeches. Most of them are about one paycheck away from becoming assassins like Keith Kinnunen. Not that they would go out and shoot someone tomorrow, but they think about it. Believe me they do. It took Keith Kinnunen 44 years to get to that point, so its not like people become killers that fast, but the thought is in their heads and they want desperately to hide it from the rest of us. That is why they are against an armed society. Its not what they fear in people like Jack Wilson, its in a loss of a safety net to catch them if they should fail in life like Kinnunen did. Because they have more in common with the killer than they do a church going do-gooder.

Without question we could have put a suit and tie on Keith Kinnunen and stuck him on MSNBC and called him a political pundit and if he talked about global warming instead of cash from church food giveaways, we’d accept his positions as rational. But its all extremism and rooted in beliefs that need others to fill them for sustenance. Kinnunen was self-righteously religious and likely took Bible verses rooted in socialist sentiment too far and believed that people owed him a living, whereas the global warming crowd requires others to believe in a complete fiction to validate their point of view. Both ideas are rooted in collectivism requiring many sane minds to drop away their logic to accept the premise of lunacy.

We accept logically that liberals can use the IRS to steal our money for their own government theft, and that the power of government can be used to overthrow elections such as the impeachment case against Trump, but that there is some invisible line that separates the actions of Keith Kinnunen from demanding money at a church instead of food, and when a shootout breaks out over the issue liberals want to prosecute the gun owners. When in truth it was a failure of liberalized society that allowed a guy like Keith Kinnunen to live outside of jail, on and off the streets as a drug addict and a violent person to more than one spouse. We all knew Kinnunen was dangerous, but our society failed to recognize that threat because honestly, he was too close in behavior to most Democrats. So, he continued in paralysis until he eventually pulled out a gun to kill people of his own sense of entitlement. His insanity is really the responsibility of a society that did not set him right at an early age and allowed him to become a menace as a grown adult. That is why our future will require more people to carry guns in more places, because this guy isn’t the end by far. There are many just like him ready to snap and they are listening to the liberal dog whistles to fetch them on society as a menace. And it is then that we must defend ourselves.

Rich Hoffman

Dealing with the Leftist Frankenstein Monsters of Evil: The Texas Church shooting and why more guns are needed

If it was the sexual antics toward a government takeover of our 2016 election from Lisa Page that ended our thoughts of 2019 it should be the armed parishioners who took out a domestic terrorist at a Texas church that should launch our ambitions in 2020. Because there were trained participants of a security team armed at the church led by the guy who killed the suspect in the conflict, Jack Wilson—the attacker was subdued in about 6 seconds. Without voluntary armed protectors at the church ready for such action many more people would have been killed. This was a perfect case of what we have been talking about for many years. And this was another high-profile example of how such a system could work thanks to a recently passed state law that permitted concealed firearms inside places of worship. If not for that this tragic case of two people being shot would have been much more egregious, and unnecessary as we must all admit that evil is alive and well in the world, and when it shows bad intentions, it must be dealt with. Of course, the challenge to that assumption is that one person’s evil can be another person’s heaven, so there are additional complications into defining evil. But everyone can agree that when aggression is taken toward others in a life and death matter, that evil is amiss, and it must be eliminated quickly, not a 911 call later.

I always think about these things, but fortunately I live in an area where our local sheriff gets it, he understands the purpose of the Second Amendment. Yet even for me, I was a lot troubled while watching the film Richard Jewell, the day before this shooting, where in a scene where the FBI came to Jewell’s house they confiscated all his guns that had been laid out on his bed. It troubled me to see that just because the FBI accused Jewell of a crime that those agents could come into his house and just confiscate all his property, and given the reaction of the people in my movie theater, they seemed to be OK with it, accustomed to such a tyranny disguised as “safety” for the public at large. That is a very dangerous notion, and one that troubled me tremendously. It was the direct result of a culture that has been sold to us to think of guns as dangerous, or even as part of some counterculture. In that same film Jewell’s lawyer asked if the bombing suspect was a member of any fringe organizations, like the NRA and Jewell had to ask, “is the NRA a ‘fringe’ organization?”

It is that attitude actually that makes our world all that much more dangerous. Guns have always been a part of my life, since I was a very little kid to the present. And I’ve never really had a reason to use a gun on anybody, even though lots of times I could have been more than justified in doing so. It just wasn’t my go-to option when danger was amiss. But its always good to know that the option was there. I think guns should be carried everywhere, to restaurants, shopping complexes, to and from work, everywhere—because you never know when evil will show itself. This is especially true in public schools where everyone knows that they are typically gun free zones—making them obvious soft targets for bad guys looking to invoke terrorism on the innocent. Guns should be in reach of every human being on planet earth. If they were, a lot less evil would be taking place. That is for sure.

When bad guys show themselves, as this one at the Texas church in White Settlement did, the threat should always be eradicated in seconds, not minutes. It is always sad to see anybody die in these kinds of conflicts, especially if they are innocent, but the need to end that threat quickly cannot be understated. And when evil is unleashed, it needs to be quelled as fast as possible. If not faster. This is why also every shooter in America should practice speed and accuracy with their firearms so that when a threat is presented, ending it happens almost second nature with instinct. Taking a kill shot such as Jack Wilson performed is critical, there is no time for talking and pleading. This is why every state should also have a stand your ground law instead of a duty to retreat. When aggression appears, the shooting defender should not think for a second about some silly legal obligation created to retreat when showing a villain a passive attitude could end up getting a lot more people killed. A shooting defender should put a bullet in the head of evil before a countdown of 1 enters the mind. The threat should be over before anybody even realizes it started. That is why having an armed society is the best way to deal with the realities of evil.

There is no reason to contemplate the nature of a villain when they show they are willing to harm innocent people just minding their business. Laws should be clear on the side of gun owners willing to be that stop against threats at a moment’s notice. We want more Jack Wilson’s carrying guns. Whatever we might say about experiments in modern life where we have taught too many people to be parasitic in nature, that stealing, and bad behavior are forms of valor, such as what was suggested in the recent film “Joker’ we shouldn’t be surprised when hopeless losers in life are attracted to the antics of evil and consider using fear as leverage in the games of life. When we make it so that a clear definition of good and evil is blurred with addictions to pornography, drug abuse, and a social state where government takes the place of good parents, we should expect some to go too far and to fall off the edge and become dangerous. And to that warning, we should know that this one shooter at the Texas church is only the tip of the iceberg. That there are many tens of thousands just like him thinking of doing the same, only the next time it may be a school, a shopping mall, or a place of business. And when they make that mistake, someone needs to be there to stop them with a gun and a quick bullet to the head to end the thought and intention of evil that always follows.

It’s time to stop playing patty cake with anti-gun activists who sympathize with evil then want to disarm us to defend ourselves from their Frankenstein monsters. Those on the left who experiment with these false political philosophies build these monsters which we must defend ourselves from and it’s time to stop giving them a seat at the table as equal partners and to call things as they always have been. Guns are part of the solution especially when they are in the hands of skilled users. A person comfortable with a gun is one of the safest people in the world to be around, not the other way. Guns aren’t the danger; it’s trusting a system that is intent to build social monsters that is. And protesting gun use on their creations isn’t “fringe,” it’s actually the most patriotic thing you can do. And we should be doing a lot more of it in 2020.

Rich Hoffman

The Real Lisa Page: What the world looks like outside the bubble

It was sort of lost to the events of the moment, but I think it was the biggest story of 2019 and should be the last thing we think about before we usher in the new year. Impeachment after all is a very tactical decision for a Democrat party that has no other choice really. They are a loser political group looking for supporters as each day they fall further behind the trends of the times. But for all honesty the noise of the year especially from Democrats was to cover the terrible FBI scandal that sought to put an end to the Trump presidency by manipulating the law to their advantage at the expense of the rest of us. So, it isn’t surprising that on December 17th when Lisa Page went on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC to give her first live interview, the story was washed out before it even hit the airwaves. Impeachment was all anybody was talking about, and the new Star Wars movie was hitting theaters giving people a much-needed distraction from the perils of reality. And of course, there was Christmas and the need to get last minute presents. All the big names in the media were going on vacation, so Rachel put on a fellow Democrat to try to clear her name and repair her own brand by “fighting back” as she calls it. The results were fascinating, and worth a last look before we enter 2020.

What Lisa Page showed of herself by opening up a public exchange on Twitter and by doing this interview was a woman lost in a bubble that collapsed right on her face as she got caught not only messing around on her husband, Joe Burrow, the aspiring opera singer and current educator with a power hungry Georgetown University FBI agent married to a woman who has seen better days in the mirror—but they were both caught attempting to stage a coup against a sitting president and overthrowing an election. Now to be fair, they were not alone, but they were certainly attempting to shape history and abuse their access to power, for which Lisa Page obviously regrets. We’ve heard her lover’s response in public in front of Congress when Peter Strzok showed what an out of touch loser he really was as a registered Democrat that thought the rest of the world was the way he and his circle of friends were, institutionalists who could name all the current popular wines, and books that they are talking about at Martha’s Vineyard on a Sunday afternoon, but not a single reason of understanding why anybody would have even wanted to vote for President Trump.

Even on her best behavior on the Maddow show, Lisa Page showed outside the academic halls of a law school, or in a opera hall where her husband might sing away the day, as she and her friends sip wine in the foyer and contemplate the universe from the perspective of Georgetown society she reflected precisely the sentiments of their director of the FBI at the time, James Comey who thought of the presidency as an extension of some “higher order” for which the FBI was protecting. Some relationship with a pagan god and the heathens of a desired monarchy, for which America had rejected long ago, yet the memos never made it to the academia of Washington which lived joyously in that bubble of social construct for which they were the architects. These FBI agents are defending an American way of life that doesn’t exist, but is rather an extension of Europe and all the dirty cobblestone streets that still haven’t been repaired from the Middle Ages.

Yet Lisa Page is tired of being a caricature of the “right” as she stated it, and she is going to start fighting back because she thinks the rest of the world is with her. Apparently her husband understands the affair with Peter Strzok, perhaps he even sang a song about it as she sipped on a vintage wine of immaculate dating and sent text messages to the Strzoks inviting them over for dinner and a book review of a mutual friend recently found on the New York Times Bestseller list, pinky out. Perhaps James Comey was available too as they could all discuss what a disgusting reprobate the American people were for voting for Trump into the White House. Affairs, what are those? What’s wrong with sharing good times with friends, until that friend falls in love with you as Peter Strzok did with Page. But to their minds it was all just a little fun, it didn’t show any bad judgement regarding their character.

And so it went during the Maddow interview that Lisa Page continued to be bewildered as to why people have made a caricature out of her, and she tried to explain her text message statements with a context that presented her case in a more beleaguered way. Watching her speak to what Lisa Page thought of as a friendly audience was a window into how all these people think when they are alone with their own kind. They are wanna’ be royalty trying to impose a standard of living that America rejected long ago, only they never got the memo. And they missed the memo because they hang around the wrong places and learn from those equally tarnished. Affairs in France are normal, and the people in Georgetown and around the greater Washington D.C. area strive to be more like dirty Europe and its topless beaches and free-thinking lack of physical possession marital commitments. What was missing from Page’s interview was any kind of understanding that the whole purpose of throwing off English rule was to get away from the very kind of people she was and desires to be. And to answer the question, Trump was elected to undo their influence over the rest of us, not to strengthen it.

Unfortunately, I know a lot of people like Lisa Page, James Comey and Peter Strzok. I live in Liberty Township, Ohio where it was founded as a direct spawn of the American Revolution but these days these leftists spawn like Gremlins that have eaten after midnight and had water spilled on them breeding like popcorn. They are everywhere, but that doesn’t make them right. It makes them simply as a form of insanity born in a bubble where natural predators have been staved off to allow them to grow. And to see Lisa Page’s face in that interview, it is the face of a young lady who has used her sex to attempt to shape the world in an image she understands instead of trying to live in the world that is. Instead she sought to use her sexuality to control the mind of the investigating FBI agent on the case of Hillary Clinton to free her candidate to control the course of the nation to her whims. Opera is all about just those types of powerplays and from her point of view, it was all very normal, and exciting. But she got caught and now she is on the front page of everything and it bothers her to know that she is not the mainstream. Her version of fighting back is to try to rebrand herself as a victim of abuse, but people see through her to the truth, she is just another slut using sex to control events in the world. And there is no way to spin that rugged truth, even on the very liberal Rachel Maddow Show.

Rich Hoffman

Richard Jewell, the Movie Review: To understand what’s happening now everyone should watch this great film by Clint Eastwood

The movie, Richard Jewell is certainly one of those that every Trump supporter should see, and those considering becoming one. No wonder it has not done well at the box office, the last time I saw such an antagonistic hatred of a movie was the Atlas Shrugged films for many of the same reasons. Critics hated the movie, it essentially comes down to institutionalism against individual rights when movies take the side of individuals, the college trained movie critics become synonymous with anger at those who challenge their understanding of the world, which was forged in such places as Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Princeton, or some of their copy cats teaching those who didn’t do so well on their ACT tests. When people want to know why the media and our government rally to each other’s needs so often, and so quickly, well, they were all taught in the same places to march to whims of the institutions while those who didn’t enjoy the experience become everybody else. But the best products of our modern education systems, our unionized government schools or our best colleges essentially become guys like the featured FBI agent played by Jon Hamm’s Tom Shaw or the newspaper reporter hot to get any story and generally bored with life, Olivia Wilde’s Kathy Scruggs. And it was those two who were playing around with each other sexually who came up with the whole story against Richard Jewell, because they needed somebody to be the face of terrorism, even if the guy was completely innocent.

There is a Kathy Scruggs in every newsroom from all sides of the sexes. There are guy versions, but this one played by Olivia Wilde was fantastic, and very close to many of the people I have known in the media. 89-year-old Clint Eastwood, who directed this picture with the experience of a man who has been around and seen everything is likely the only person who could have directed Olivia Wilde with such realism. She reminded me of a not so disgusting scum bag as Eastwood showed in his Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact, the bar whore who was the central figure behind the rapes of the two leading girls. For these characters wreaking other people’s lives is a kind of game that they love playing. It fills a void in their lives that they work very hard to hide from other people and they are dangerous. But make no mistake about it, there is a Kathy Scruggs in every newsroom to some extent or another. She is not an exceptionally evil person, she is as common as a raindrop in the world of the media, and it takes a director like Clint Eastwood to pull that kind of performance out of an actress who might otherwise not feel comfortable going to such a dark place.

We all know the story, but as I was watching this movie, I was thinking that this is exactly what has been happening to the Trump administration. Kathy Scruggs might as well have been Lisa Page in the middle of the FBI investigation against President Trump. Sexual manipulation is not a new thing for women to play against horny, stupid men, and Peter Strzok was no exception. Not all people are as flamboyant about their behavior as Scruggs was, they hide their actions better. But these kinds of things are happening all the time at every level of our society, and if you get in the way of their actions, another Richard Jewell is born. We only know of Richard Jewell because the profile of the case was a big one. There are Richard Jewell types losing their jobs every day, or being denied promotions for all the same reasons. What Trump captured of the FBI and the media in Richard Jewell was an examination into the kinds of people who are really part of these classes of people, and it wasn’t pretty.

What happened to Richard Jewell, with the attempted entrapments by the FBI was exactly what happened to Roger Stone in the early morning raid of his home at 5 AM with the CNN reporter tipped off and waiting to capture the images of an arrested Trump confidant to splash on the television at the earliest moment. Or what about pinning down Michael Flynn without a lawyer while attempting to get him to give false testimony by pretending to be his friend in the early days of the White House transition? You can’t lie to an FBI agent, it’s against the law—but they sure can lie to you, or control the evidence in such a way to make you look bad if it makes them look good in the process. This movie Richard Jewell showed how those things happen in a very legally valid way. We should all question ourselves in why we have given the government so much power over us. Well, I’d say it’s because there’s a bit of Richard Jewell in all of us, a do gooder who just wants to live a good life and we don’t want to think that people are so dishonest as Tom Shaw or Kathy Scruggs.

The problem with institutionalists like the villains in the movie Richard Jewell is that the villains see value for themselves in supporting the institutions at all cost, even at the price of humanity. And to the rest of us, we can’t even comprehend such evil, yet we face it every day. Occasionally we get fighters who know the system better than the bad guys like the attorney in the film played by Sam Rockwell, Watson Bryant. President Trump comes to mind as a person who has made so much money in life and seen every trick in the book that he can sidestep the institutionalists easily. But those not so experienced around Trump were not so difficult to pluck into the trash bins of trouble. One little misstatement at that level and you are going to jail, while gang members, thugs, and illegal aliens roam our streets unimpeded. If you lie to an FBI agent when they set up the deceit themselves to trap you in it, and you are going to jail to show their power. It’s a bad, nasty game that many fear almost more than death, and it’s sad that we have allowed it to take such a hold of all our lives.

The problem though isn’t that we are stupid, its that we have been short to admit to ourselves that people are as bad as Kathy Scruggs and Tom Shaw. We find it astonishing that they would take it for granted that we’d just naturally believe them and that we’d put up with their evil ways because we all want to believe in the good in people. But some people just don’t have it in them. They adhere so well to the institutions because as people they are broken likely from birth, and there is nothing to hold them together but the rigid rules for which they control. Whether it’s the FBI or the media, the rules are built to serve the institutions and when they need some diversion, they can always pick on the latest Richard Jewell—the good guy who is so well intentioned that he can’t see the evil that is at work right in front of his face. Yet we all see it, and its not just in the Jewell case, but it’s happening right now to our president by that same FBI. Only that story is a much bigger one that many just aren’t ready to admit has been happening. But to see it for all its possibilities, everyone should see Richard Jewell. Its one of those types of movies for our times.

Rich Hoffman

Trump Could Win California: Going for the kill shot when you get it

One thing that we can do on sites like this one, as opposed to establishment television and newspapers is talk about the obscure truths that are out there instead of desired outcomes that are attached to advertising dollars and political affiliations. And to that end they aren’t talking about the truth of this 2020 election year as President Trump wins the White House for the second term. They would have you believe that Trump is unpopular, because he is a threat to the natural order of things, but it was and has always been that order that has caused all our problems and now after a presidential term where they threw everything they had at him, and he’s still going strong, their brand is down big time, while Republicans are up. That means good things going into this election cycle to such an extent that I think Trump could win California if he put forth a little effort there.

The numbers are obvious, between 2008 and 2016 Democrat registration climbed by 1.1 million while the number of Republicans dropped by almost 400,000. In 2016 Hillary Clinton won California with 8,753,789 votes while Donald Trump only received 4,483,810. Yet there are over 25 million voters who are registered and many more out of their population of over 40 million who could be energized to vote. Based on the 2016 election results with everyone accounted for, even the third-party candidates like Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, the total amount of voters who went to the polls to vote was 14,237,884. That means that there were over ten million votes on the table that didn’t even show up, and likely many more who could become voters. The trend from 2016 to 2020 has likely changed as voters have seen what Democrat leadership has brought, wildfires due to forest mismanagement, blackouts due to not reeling in the over zealous courts, and massive amounts of poverty due to attracting homelessness to their featured cities.

This is the reason that Democrats are pushing so hard to make illegal aliens voters because the trends of election wins does not favor them, especially now. If they were able to convert all 22 million illegal aliens in America into registered voters, which is a preposterous concept, then they could win back some of the losses they have incurred over the years by their own bad conduct. The way they have kept themselves from being blown completely off the electoral map is due to their activism in turning Republicans inward toward guilt and not showing up to vote in major elections. Yet, in California, it looks like the opposite will be happening. The tree there is ripe to garner Republican fruit. The Democrats have poisoned their own baskets and the trust level is very low, and could easily be taken by a strong personality like Trump.

When Michael Moore is worried, all Democrats should be also. He sees that the current crop of Democrats is not strong enough to take on Trump. Impeachment attempts have been seen for what they were, a scam by our government to overthrow the election results of 2016, to attempt to take the spin off any potential victories for Republicans in 2020. Not to ease off the gas in Republican camps, but the momentum is certainly in their favor. With the Mueller investigation by the FBI falling flat, the economy roaring in record breaking ways, and a fired-up manufacturing sector with record low unemployment, Democrats have nothing to run on except unexciting below the line victimization. And that doesn’t inspire voters to put on their coat and brave the day to actually cast a ballot.

Republicans however have a lot to vote for, and are energized to protect the wins they have witnessed. And many of them still live in California and would like to be included in the national dialogue instead of having Republicans just surrender the state due to the overwhelming threat of immigration voters who tend to at least vote Democrat the first time they can, because they are still learning how things work in this country and Democrats represent most closely the socialists they most recently fled from wherever in the world they emerged. Its not that immigrants want socialism in America, but in many cases, its all they have previously understood, so until they’ve lived in America for a period of time and learn of the magic of capitalism, they tend to vote Democrat. But their hearts can be won with just a little effort.

California is very much at play yet nobody on the Democrat side of things will dare to speak the thought. Imagine the terrible press when it comes closer to the State of the Union speech that Trump is supposed to give to congress in January of 2020, after all the games that the House of Representatives has just played with impeachment. Nancy Pelosi will have to invite the President to speak, yet her party will not want him there after they have just worked against him in such a public way. Talk about awkward. Its like bad mouthing a family member on Facebook in a passive aggressive way to third parties, then finding out you must have dinner with that person and that you’ll be sitting right next to them. Trump can handle that kind of pressure, but the Democrats won’t be able to. They’ll try to hide under any rock they can find, but there won’t be any, and they’ll be exposed for what they are. Impeachment was the best gift they could have given Trump. Its insulting that they did it, but for energizing the base, I would say that even California could go for Trump after all this, which for Democrats would be truly a final blow.

I often say that you should have courage to go for the kill shot. Well, Democrats certainly have made a profession behaving in such a way and now the shoe is on the other foot. The kill shot for the Democrat Party would be if Trump won California. So why not try for it, put all Democrats for every position in the country, even the regional trustee races permanently on their heels by having to defend the indefensible, California and its many problems caused by Democrat leadership which is embarrassing to them. It would be better to attack than to sit around and be victims of places like Texas that are going more purple as a result of massive investments moving out of California to more conducive states. Even Republicans in California would be considered Democrats in Texas, so there is a real risk of a strong red state turning colors because of it. So why not keep those voters in California by giving them some options and an open door into the Republican Party? What do they have to lose in the process when forest fires, blackouts and extreme poverty are common life for them along with high taxes that are wasted on garbage social programs? California is ripe for the taking so why not in 2020? It would be the ultimate victory for a party that has tried to do everything they can to destroy those of us who call ourselves Republicans. It would be most deserving.

Rich Hoffman

Smuggler’s Run is the Best Ride in the World: Technical innovations in storytelling that are now the definitions of pop culture

This has been a year of “never thought I’d see its,” to say the least, which culminated for me while watching the Disney parade on Christmas morning from the parks. Specifically, when I saw Portugal the Man perform “Feel it Still” in front of the life size Millennium Falcon at Galaxy’s Edge. Star Wars has always been popular, but there has always been a kind of social tension, it wasn’t something that people felt comfortable talking about in public. If you wore a Star Wars shirt to school like I used to all the time, kids would gang up on you for it with massive amounts of unjustified peer pressure. But after a long evolution, particularly with shows like Big Bang Theory making geekdom fun, and “popular” the Disney ownership of Star Wars is showing signs of mind-bending culture changes that were evident that Christmas morning. No longer were kids forced to keep their thoughts to themselves, Disney had made it so that Star Wars was just as popular if not more so in knowing which quarterbacks were coming out of the draft this year from which colleges. It was a shift in sentiment that I never thought would be possible, yet there it was. As I watched I couldn’t help but think that many of the same people who are those invisible Trump supporters loving the optimism of an optimistic tomorrow were the same people that spent thousands of dollars at Disney every year and would put on the mouse ears for a visit on Christmas morning to the parks to participate in their parade.

Thinking of that Millennium Falcon, after a recent trip to Disney World where I was able to ride that ride 8 times, and ride the new Rise of the Resistance and Flight of Passage at the new Pandora land at Animal Kingdom I have proclaimed that I thought Smuggler’s Run, which is essentially a flight simulator for the Millennium Falcon was a better ride for a number of reasons. As Rise of the Resistance has opened in December at Disney World and was a feature of the parade in promoting the ride to a hungry Christmas morning audience, a lot of people don’t know just what a miracle these rides are. Especially in regard to the Millennium Falcon’s Smuggler’s Run. I included a video on this article that goes into the details of just how impressive the engineering is on Smuggler’s Run. And even thought Rise of the Resistance has a lot more technical tricks to help make the magic happen, I think the engineering of Smuggler’s Run is so impressive that it’s in a category all by itself even if most of those miracles happen where nobody will ever see them.

Being a huge fan of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars I know a lot about the ship and how it should be laid out, so while I was riding it I was looking for flaws, which can be seen from my Instagram posts included here. As it is, the many mechanism that make the ride possible are completely hidden from even the most rigorous fan. There were little things that I could point out, such as parts of the cockpit altered to accommodate mass riders, and some of the internal pathways to the cockpit that were stretched to fit the needs of 1800 riders per hour. What is most clever is that the ride creates the illusion of walking into the Millennium Falcon’s interior and boarding the cockpit as a single experience when in reality there are seven cockpits on four giant rotary tables that are timed out to perfection for all the loading and unloading that goes on. Each ride vehicle gets its own wrap around screen and sits on a flight simulation platform that would have made NASA jealous a few decades ago. The technology and timing involved in this ride is incredible and all of it is done to ensure that the riders can not see the strings behind the scenes and can instead believe in the experience as a real one.

My perspective is coming from an older person who grew up on these movies. When I was a kid, my family couldn’t afford to get me the Kenner Millennium Falcon to play with so made my own out of a box. So, it is astonishing to me to read these modern critics of these rides and of the new Star Wars movies knowing how much better things are now than then. Having the ability to even visit a Millennium Falcon in real life let alone fly in it is bizarre and a huge step for science fiction and the art of modern storytelling. That Smuggler’s Run is a reality let alone other options like Rise of the Resistance in the same area is an astonishing achievement in any field of endeavor. But especially in storytelling where a ride goes to so much trouble to create an alternate reality in physical space is a jaw dropping enterprise. But then again, to host a concert by a pop culture group on a Christmas morning broadcast mainstream to the world is something I never would have thought would be possible. Knowing that, the prospects for other surprises in the future are very exciting.

But for my money, and well beyond sentiment, the Millennium Falcon ride Smuggler’s Run is the top ride in the world right now, and it will take years to match it by anybody. Also on Christmas Day my wife and I went to see Rise of Skywalker again and I couldn’t help but notice how full the movie theater was from very normal people wanting to see that movie after the day’s festivities had ended. The Millennium Falcon is one of the feature characters of that movie and it is fun, even though its just a machine. The well-known starship was so well featured in the film knowing that it was a kind of advertisement for the ride in Galaxy’s Edge. People watching the movie with their big drinks and overflowing popcorn could travel to Disney World and actually fly the thing—over and over again—and that is a new thing in the art of storytelling that we haven’t yet dealt with as a species, not only the ability to create a story to hold some abstract concept, but to physically participate in the intellectual inclusion of it into our collective subconscious—and with such swagger that Disney could feature it on a popular television broadcast with a modern rock group as part of the package.

I point it out because all things lead to other things and I can’t help but notice that we are expanding our intellect as human beings because of these kinds of technical innovations. The conflict that we hear about on the news is that the rigid orders of the past have not yet caught up to that notion. But the fans of the Disney experience, and through mythology like Star Wars, a new kind of vacationer is being created. Not a passive cocktail drink by the pools of some exotic destination, but the Disney participant that is looking for an above the line experience and is willing to pay a lot of money to get it. And for those people, Smuggler’s Run gives them a seamless experience of a reality that was only available to the imagination. Now it’s real, leaving it to be pondered what the next generation of entertainment will be. At this point, we can only wonder, because the evidence is quite jaw-dropping in its perspectives.

Rich Hoffman