Tag: Free Will

The Great Work of Disney Imagineers at Disney Springs: Every zoning board in America should pay attention to the good work there

One of the things I was most curious about, regarding the Disney Springs renovation from what used to be called Downtown Disney, to its present form, was why the Imagineers felt they had to create a fictional back-story about what is essentially a shopping and entertainment destination. I have always loved Downtown Disney and when Disney bought Lucasfilm back in 2012 I had a strong feeling they would do good things with the Indiana Jones property and was excited to see what it might be. I was a little surprised that the creation of Jock Lindsey’s Hanger Bar was one of their first projects so upon landing in Florida during a recent vacation it was the very first place I went. I couldn’t wait to get there as I had been watching the re-construction of Downtown Disney into Disney Springs for much of the last decade and I had to see, smell and touch everything.

My point of reference for these kinds of places is Atlantis from the great book Atlas Shrugged, the kind of world that if human creativity was left alone to do its thing, what kind of great things could we make. The closest I can think of anywhere in the world is the Disney managed properties of Disney World, for which Disney Springs is a part. I don’t care that things are so enormously expensive there, because like the book Atlas Shrugged, the value for money and any other currency is in the product themselves. Disney sells happiness, and if you have enough money, you can buy some. Their Imagineers are happy to give you happiness, so if you can afford it, you can purchase for yourself. But its not free. So using that as my guide, I was delighted to visit the place and compare it to other places around the country that I admire, particularly a shopping complex in my hometown called Liberty Center which I love quite a lot.

But what mystified me, even as a person who understands the importance of mythology in everything, is that Disney created this fake backstory about Disney Springs and even Jock Lindsey’s Hanger Bar and that as guests we were supposed to accept it in the same way we might accept some reality from the theme parks they are so known for. In fact, just about every new hotel and construction experience on the Disney property in Florida these days has some kind of made-up backstory which I found perplexing until I visited the place for myself. Even watching the construction updates from a distance for several years really couldn’t bring context to the effort until you physically visited a place like that.

Upon seeing the creation of the springs at Disney Springs I understood immediately what the Imagineers were going for, its what I would call a “conceptual faculty,” the ability to see an abstract concept in your mind so that you can bring it forth into a reality. By creating all these back stories for stores and restaurants at Disney Springs the designers were able to use mythology to elevate the construction and its psychological impact on the consumers. Normally it would be up to the companies who become tenants at such a place to set the tone of a project, but in this case the backstory of the concept allowed all participants to align the scope of the project to a unified vision, and it was pulled off brilliantly. For me it was quite a magical moment to spend the afternoon in Jock Lindsey’s looking at all the relics from his past in chasing Indiana Jones all over the world and to stroll a few short steps from that front door to the fantastic springs of Disney Springs with all the commercial activity situated around it.

The thing that struck me most about Disney Springs is that in no way in the world would any zoning board trained at today’s colleges approve such a plan and allow an entertainment district like Disney Springs to be built along the many natural springs that are found all over Florida. The political bureaucracy would be mind bending dull and laborious. It just wouldn’t happen. So to sidestep that little problem, Disney Imagineers just created their own lakes and springs so that commercial development could take place around it, and the result would be spectacularly beautiful. The result as I could see it was essentially John Galt’s Atlantis where great creations from great people were on full display without the imprint of local and state governments regulating fun beyond recognition. That is largely because Disney controls what happens on their property to the most extent that any modern company could. I don’t think it would be possible to build something like a Disney Springs off the Disney controlled property due to local regulations picking it apart until there was nothing left.

Even at Galaxy’s Edge, the new Star Wars land which I will be talking about alot, the backstory that was created for it as a project gave the Imagineers something to build to, a way to conceptualize the project and overcome whatever problems came before it. Such a method of approaching a construction project had really improved Disney Springs since my last visit and the overall approach of the entire network of theme parks. This point hit me hard while traveling on the new Skyliner system of gondolas that are now connecting Hollywood Studios with the Epcot Center. Many of the hotel complexes that had been created recently along that gondola path all had similar backstories as were used to create Disney Springs and the elevated mythology had propelled the scope of the projects to a much higher level than would have otherwise been achieved using traditional building methods at the development stage. This ability Disney has been using with its Imagineering department to help guide all their construction departments had yielded results in the final presentation they wouldn’t have achieved any other way.

To that effect I was greatly impressed by the work at Disney Springs. I would say that the complex alone would deserve its own vacation destination, but for me it was only one very small part of my trip experience into enjoying the fantastic work of the Disney Imagineers. Locals obviously were taking the place for granted, but it was clear to me that what was happening there was very unique. It would be great to see other places utilize the same methods to push up their own projects to such bold levels. Like John Galt’s Atlantis the mind of mankind has shown time and time again that it can do better than nature, and if nature is in the way, that we can simply build over it and do a much better job. As a company I’m sure Disney wants to appease the climate activists, but clearly as an organization their ability to put story before sentiment has helped their creative people in the Imagineering department do things they otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. The results are obvious and very exciting. Even if I was a little skeptical, it quickly became clear that this approach was something everyone should be doing, and it was a wave of the future that was not so obvious except in seeing the results firsthand.

Rich Hoffman

The Mandalorian: One great show on Disney+

So the Mandalorian television show for Star Wars showing on Disney+ continues to impress me and make me very happy to have the new streaming service option as part of a massive collection of entertainment options. At this point there have been five episodes and its quite clear that the creators understand what Star Wars is all about, even if critics are still mystified as to the magic. Most people love the show, many of them like it. I have yet to hear from people who hate it. Critics in the industry continue to measure “greatness” by the amount of social justice in any entertainment product, and Star Wars has never been about that. When Disney has tried to make social justice part of the experience, Star Wars fails. And that is not the case with The Mandalorian. I wouldn’t say that Episode 5 was my favorite so far, but I do love the title, “The Gunslinger.”

It was fun to travel back to Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine from the original Star Wars movie and see the cantina, the Dewbacks, and the docking bays that originally started us all on this massive journey. This particular episode reminded me again of many of the great westerns that I grew up loving, specifically in this case, The Unforgiven with the stupid young kid playing off the much more experienced gunfighter. Critics keep providing a disclaimer that this series is Saturday morning cartoon material, and more specifically, Saturday morning matinee material which George Lucas grew up on. OK, so what? That’s what makes this kind of entertainment so special. That’s how Star Wars was born to begin with, so its not surprising that the creators are trying to get back to the roots of what makes the brand so special. Sometimes its good to tell a story without trying to change a public narrative, but one that reflects the one we have. Disney has certainly listened to the fans even if the industry is still trying to scratch their heads at why returning back to Mos Eisley was so much fun for fans.

I think its great that female directors are working on The Mandalorian. I thought Bryce Dallas Howard did a great job with Episode 4, brilliant even. It doesn’t matter to me if the director is a man or a woman, what matters is if the content is good, and with this show, it is. So long as nobody tries to turn the show into something that its not, The Mandalorian will continue to be a hit. I found myself looking forward to this latest episode all week and its been a very long time since I’ve had that experience, especially these days with all the on demand content that you can binge watch. Having a show that is this much fun to look forward to after a long hard work week is a wonderful thing to have, and I must thank Disney+ for giving it to us.

What is unexpected by me at this point in the show’s run is the popularity of Baby Yoda which is all anybody who is anyone is talking about. The little creature from The Mandalorian is taking over the internet and people are falling all over themselves for a chance to get the first merchandise that goes on sale. The Mandalorian is a cool show, so it’s a bit odd that such a cute character that so many people love has come out of it is the surprise. At this point in the season I wouldn’t have guessed that so many people would be talking about it. I would say the character is so popular that if we put Baby Yoda on the ballot for the next presidential election, that he’d win. That is the state of our political life these days, and maybe that’s not a bad thing.

The value of something from a scientific perspective is whether or not its fun. In a society of thinking human beings, we all need a little fun in our lives, and anything that gives that to us is a tremendous benefit. Having fun gives us the ability to set perspective and manage stress, so in that regard, The Mandalorian is better than just a show, it’s a wonderful stress management tool full of big ideas as this gunfighter/bounty hunter travels around a galaxy in a cool starship and interacts with all kinds of challenges without getting too emotional. That makes these shows fun and a great relief from the mundane outside world that is addicted to problems and stagnant thinking. So far, The Mandalorian never seems too far from a solution no matter how great the problem has been. In this Episode 5 The Mandalorian gets into a dogfight in space with someone trying to collect a bounty on him, and his ship is knocked out stranding him. He doesn’t panic and cry to his mom, he just calmly fixes his ship and gets going again. Traditionally, that is what the Saturday morning serials did for young people, show them how to deal with tragedy with a kind of bravado that made all their normal problems seem small, and in that way, solutions were easy to find.

Everyone in entertainment could take a lessen from The Mandalorian. Nobody says that a good show must have a huge budget and a bunch of cry baby characters to be good. Just giving the audience what they are looking for is the most important thing. Nothing about The Mandalorian is trying to be the next critically acclaimed show, it’s just having fun being what it is and its kind of strange to find that so refreshing because when I was growing up, most everything that was produced had that kind of whimsical quality. Most of the time, the best things are the things that critics don’t like, because many of them have some social agenda they are trying to steer creative people to, such as social justice concerns that are here today and gone tomorrow as a political priority. The things that matter most to people are things that last no matter how politics are aligned.

If Disney keeps up this kind of production I will be firmly in their camp. I have been skeptical about them as a company as they have been way to political for me, even as recently as Frozen II. I am very much a lover of traditional Walt Disney productions, and this Mandalorian title and the direction of Star Wars recently gives me hope that we can get back to that kind of story telling and cultural reverence. But I’m bound to like anything that has the title, “The Gunslinger.” Kids need a lot more entertainment like that, the values extend deep into our culture not just into our past, but for our future. But heck with the kids, I need more of this, and apparently so do many other fans of the show. Baby Yoda is cute, and it makes the show better. However, what makes the show good is that its fun, and its not afraid to take some chances which is why I look forward to it all week long, and watch it at my first available moment every Friday.

Rich Hoffman

The Rise of the Resistance is Now Open: What a marvel of techical mythology

I plan to geek out on Star Wars for the next several weeks. I’m sure I’ll cover other current events as my readers expect, but for my own enjoyment, there is a lot to enjoy as a Star Wars fan that I think is very relevant to our modern world and the philosophies that spawn off them. Star Wars if you peel away the stories in space, the black and white view of good and evil, the fairy tale aspect of the mythology is unique in that its essentially about the tyranny of rules and how humans crave the freedom to be whimsical and untethered to the concoctions of authority. As the new ride opened up in Galaxy’s Edge called Rise of the Resistance and I watched the live streams of the opening ceremony, I couldn’t help but think of how wonderfully unifying the whole thing was, as people of all kinds of political backgrounds could at least agree on something showing that we all have more in common than not. I had been looking forward to the opening of this Disney attraction for a very long time writing about it way back in 2012 with great gusto. Well now its here, and I have some opinions about it that are worth talking about.

Even as a little kid I loved the making of Star Wars as much so, if not more than the movies themselves. I see the creative process as an opportunity to break previous rules and to innovate and that has always been at the core of all Star Wars experiences that are good, whether the endeavor is in literature, film, television, amusement attractions, comics, video games—Star Wars is always best when they are breaking the rules of previous assumptions and the hope when Disney bought the franchise from George Lucas back in 2012 was that something like this Rise of the Resistance attraction, and the Galaxy’s Edge land in Disneyland and Disney World would actually happen. And when it did, the rules would be pushed to the creative limit and we’d all get something very special.

On the opening day of this new ride the traffic was backed up at the gates of Hollywood Studios well before 4 AM in the morning. And the rides for the entire day were already booked up before 8 AM. The energy and anticipation for this ride attraction is astonishing and for good reason, the technical achievements that were made to make it were mind bending cool and the best that modern technology could utilize. It’s something that only Disney as a company could do due to their massive cash reserves and collection of very imaginative people within their Imagineering group. It has taken a while for the Disney Company to figure out their role in this new ownership, and to step beyond the temptations to limit the scope to modern political concerns and social justice perspective, but its quite clear to me that with all their efforts at Galaxy’s Edge and the story of Batuu, they have done a great job. Over the past several months I have read all the comics about this exciting new land at Disney World, read the books, The Black Spire and The Resistance Reborn, and I have been excited to see how the media company would be able to tie all these elements together into a grand modern mythology.

For perspective, I am the kind of guy who geeked out in Canterbury, England because I was able to walk the sites of one of my favorite books, The Canterbury Tales. I feel much the same way when it comes to James Joyce and is work in and around Dublin, Ireland. Wherever great acts of thought and imagination have taken place I find reverence there because for me, that is one of the most important things in the entire world, creativity of thought and action. And typically, we only see those kinds of things spring out in the world through some great literary work, or a good movie or musical piece. And we go through our entire lives and see such things only here and there and not too often. But with Star Wars, we see a lot of creativity and we always have. The stories are always about the perils of tyranny and living under the thumb of too many rules where individual rights are smashed to give way to a compliant society. But that’s not it, Star Wars both in front of the camera and behind is about unleashing the imagination so that something bigger and better could be born, and people can feel that even if they can’t articulate what it is they feel.

When people rushed to be the first to ride Rise of the Resistance, which is without question the most technical ride in the history of the world up to this point, they were pushing to touch this aspect of Star Wars that makes it so special. The ability to enjoy something that is specific to human beings, not only to think of a story that communicates to so many people across so many demographic barriers, but to entertain ourselves with its complete immersive environment. As I say that I have been playing a lot of Battlefront II with my oldest grandson lately which is just another layer of this new mythology. Additionally, in November I took a long weekend and shut off the world professionally to just play the new Star Wars game, Fallen Order, which was wonderfully entertaining. To be able to explore these places in a video game environment to me is a jaw dropping experience given that my background was at the start of the video game age. What they can do these days to me is amazing. But to step out of the movies, books and video games and into a real environment like what they have created with Rise of the Resistance at Disney World is nothing short of awe inspiring.

It gives me a lot of hope for the human race whenever these big Star Wars events happen and I can see so many people excited about it. I enjoy conventions and big video game releases because of this very element, but its been a long time, if ever that I’ve seen anything like the energy that came out of the opening of Rise of the Resistance at Disney World. The energy of the participants was amazing as viewed by the videos within this article. To see the level of detail that the Imagineers at Disney World were able to pull off with this attraction is more than impressive, but what’s better is that so many people appreciated it to the extent that some of them were willing to wait for days to ride the ride. Yet Disney deserves the credit for putting their money where their mouth was. They spent a billion dollars on this attraction and it shows, which was a massive investment on their part into their fans. People can complain that Disney is too expensive and that they are a giant media corporation that has a monopoly on talent. But they gained all that prestige through being good at what they do. And its not often that people can get such a return on investment as we are all getting with Rise of the Resistance, the ride.

Rich Hoffman

The Loser Law Professors of Trump Impeachment: Our colleges are more dangerious than guns and these people showed why

With astonishing uniformity, the interpretation of the so-called impeachment witnesses that were called into congress to provide testimony regarding President Trump were telling a story that clearly wasn’t true. Once I was able to get home and watch the hearings for myself it was quite clear that nearly every news outlet was missing the point in live time as law professors Pamela Karlan of Stanford, Noah Feldman of Harvard and Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina made a mean spirited plea for a resumption of the social order they had spent their lives manipulating. A fourth witness, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley was much more accurate when he argued that the Democrats’ impeachment push was being rushed at the expense of fact-gathering and that the House Intelligence Committee’s end of the investigation had not produced clear and convincing evidence of impeachable offenses by Trump. But more to the point, if anybody tried to impeach President Trump for such a silly thing as a phone call then imagine what future presidents from either side would go through. It was dangerous to even be having the discussion.

I have not been a supporter of colleges, and of my family members going. I think you can learn more by doing real things in life than in going to the propaganda chambers of our American colleges. I would go so far to say that I see zero value in most of it. I went and I thought it was the dumbest thing in my life, worse than all the years I went to Sunday school. Studying the Bible was far more valuable than in studying the liberal points of view that colleges were pushing, and for the life of me, I don’t see why anybody would send their kids to colleges for free, let alone spending the fortunes that colleges cost to teach virtually nothing. And the sheer shortsightedness and stupidity of college opinions is mind-blowing when you think that the four people that were put up to testify against the President of these United States were considered some of the best and brightest that are produced, and they sounded like cheap idiots who belong selling blankets out of the back of their car at a flea market instead of the heads of our major education institutions. It’s been clear to me for a very long time, and it was obvious yesterday to many millions of others, our modern college system is not the one that Socrates and Plato would have envisioned. Rather the brain washing that the Nazis did is the only thing close. These people were losers not just in their political opinions, but in the content of their thoughts. Even I was embarrassed for them.

To have such hatred as three of the four college professors uttered and to have it shape their intellect, these people shouldn’t be anywhere near the minds of our children. Parents who send their kids to these losers to learn something would argue that they do so in order to provide their kids with a head-start in life, so they can get a good job. But at what expense? These people shouldn’t be teaching a dog to go outside to use the restroom, let alone anything professionally. And the danger was evident in the reporting of yesterday’s testimony. It’s not just that I support Trump that was the problem. But my take on the hearing was radically different than the recently trained college opinions of the media—many of them just a few years out of whatever college they came out of before getting jobs where they could then start reporting media events. It’s the thought process that they have learned that is the danger that runs against the notions of critical thinking they should be using. Instead of reporting what really happened at this testimony, they simply repeated like some tropical bird what their schools had told them to say with a cult-like voice that matched these liberal law professors. What we were seeing was a very dangerous trend where the minds of young people have been completely destroyed by professors like these, and we should all be angry about it.

The danger isn’t that the law professors have opinions different from the over 60 million people who voted for President Trump in the first place, but it’s in the obvious attempt to use these short-sighted nitwits as the best in the business to convince us that impeachment of a very popular president during an election year is anything but a frustrated gamble because the liberal side of politics doesn’t have any other way to beat the guy in an election. And they are trying to sell us some snake oil version of reality through our education system to tap into those old fears we all grow up with, of standing out of line for the water fountain, or marching down the halls in single file to go to recess, or a poor grade on a test because we didn’t follow instructions that the teacher’s gave us. A fine example of such a thing I can think of from kindergarten where a crazy, nasty bitch of an old woman teacher that I had gave us a class assignment to make a paper cut-out of a little bear and to complete him with some corduroy pants. I put jeans on my bear because it made more sense to me, and I got into a lot of trouble for it. In fact, that kind of thing went on for all 12 grades of my life in public school and I learned to like pissing off the teachers, because I always thought of them as idiots. I was right of course. Usually, those who teach can’t do and that has turned out to be a lot truer than these law professors’ opinions about the qualifications of impeaching Trump. And my thoughts certainly didn’t change at college. I thought of it then and still as a massive rip-off and a scam at best. It was never that I couldn’t do the work or wasn’t smart enough. Quite the opposite. I had a hard time being taught by people who weren’t as smart as me, which protected my mind from losers like these detriments to society that were presented yesterday to congress.

I’ve had those opinions about college all of my life but I don’t push my thoughts onto others unless they ask me. But yesterday’s ceremony was just too much to ignore. I voted for Trump so that the guy could fix the kind of world those idiots have been trying to create. I certainly don’t need them to tell me anything, yet they were paraded around as experts for all of us to listen to, and it honestly angered me quite a lot. It was a reminder of just how bad our education system is from top to bottom, and how destructive to young minds its been. Normally I can ignore the terrible impact education has had on our population, but this was in our face and aggressive politically. And the reporters reporting it were like zombies reporting the way their college professors told them to, to follow the directions, don’t question reality, and protect the status quo. And it was something to be sick about.

Rich Hoffman

Lisa Page, the Latte Sipping Prostitute: Whores come in all types, even in the FBI

I’ve had a lot of them, but one of the best phrases I’ve ever come up with to describe a certain sector of the voting population is that of the infamous Latte Sipping Prostitute. It’s a kind of woman who uses her sexuality to control men toward political measures to satisfy their instinctual needs at motherhood and all the neurosis of a panic driven imbecile and the men go along with these antics because they don’t want to make these women unhappy denying them sex when desired. Where a bar whore or a street walker might sell sex for dope, or even a place to stay for the night, the latte sipping prostitute does much the same for reasons just as malicious, only society doesn’t have a proper measure, so the antics are often overlooked, at least until I came up with that term several years ago to describe school levy supporters. The term could apply to just about any socialite, and certainly tells a proper story about those kinds of women who otherwise are looked at falsely as stewards of good conduct. As a white man, I’m not supposed to have such opinions, yet I do, and they are entirely accurate ways to portray the kind of political element that we encounter often, especially when it comes to the FBI lawyer Lisa Page who was sleeping with the FBI investigator Peter Strzok at the highest levels of the case against Hillary Clinton and would eventually seek through pillow talk and texts the overthrow of an American election. No small matter.

And as Trump mocked the two lovers at a recent rally, he had a right. The two FBI agents abused their power and were driven to crimes and rightly brought to ruin. But not because of some ethical conduct on behalf of the FBI, who tried to cover up the affair and their political activism, but because Strzok’s wife found the text messages and let them out to the public. Page was married, so was Strzok and when the wife approached Page, she behaved mystified that the jealous woman had misunderstood the nature of their affair. After all, what’s a few sleepovers at a local hotel? Just sex, not necessarily an affair. That was after all how Lisa Page reacted before the world knew her name and all the intimate details of her relationship with an FBI lover. And after many months more of embarrassing nightly reminders of that mistake, and surely a husband of her own very jealous, the pressure is getting to her and she wants it to stop.

Yet she never should have played the game. She along with her boyfriend tried to overturn an election, and she used sex to manipulate an FBI agent to act against his better judgment. Sure, its his fault to fall for it, but she was certainly acting as a latte sipping prostitute as I have defined it in previous cases. It may not be a politically correct term, but it is an accurate one. People like her do this kind of thing all the time. Yet when they get caught, they attempt to hide behind society’s lack of definitions for this activity. She may regret what she had done now, it certainly wasn’t a smart career move. However she did play it and now the consequences are hard to deal with which should be expected.

To call these types of people a whore is what is debated, of course by other latte sipping prostitutes who want to look in the mirror and think of themselves as good people and outstanding community members. Just as Lisa Page, according to her own text messages to her lover was perplexed as to why Peter’s wife would think they were having an affair just because they were sleeping with one another is equivalent to a bar whore not thinking of the sex they sell as a relationship but as a product. Most people in their lives are selling something. My measure for the authenticity of it or not can be determined by the fine work of Mihaly Csikszentmilhalyi’s great book Flow. If what you are doing for a living is purely for the exchange of money or some power connected to it, then to some degree or another you are no different than a prostitute selling sex for money, or in doing as Lisa Page was attempting, to use sex to manipulate an FBI agent into overthrowing an American election. All the behavior is the same. Going back to the origins of the latte sipping prostitute title I have given so many, such people use sex and their power of entry to it to sway their spouses into supporting school levies and other tax measures, so the behavior is no different and is just another level of prostituting themselves to gain something not quite authentic.

Even a whore wants to think of their profession as something beneficial even going to such measures of thinking that they help relationships where bed rituals are suffering. Anybody can justify anything, and clearly that was what Lisa Page was in the business of doing at the level of the FBI. The scary thing about it is that she obviously was not alone but was simply one who was caught due to the large visibility at the top of American politics with eyes on the situation where it took a jealous wife to unleash the evidence. Without question, there are many more latte sipping prostitutes functioning in the open within what we call the Beltway swamp, and they are dangerous to our American republic.

What a person chooses to do with their ethical standards is not the business of the American people until they try to use their bodies and female resources to alter laws, taxation, or elections. At that point, they are a detriment to our entire social order and they deserve derogatory terms as a reference to their illicit services. What they don’t deserve is respect even if they wear feathers, furs, or expensive jewelry to disguise their function. A whore is a whore whether they sell their bodies in a bar, on a street, or in bedrooms of loveless marriages for the purposes of manipulating their spouses toward political means. Its all whoring.

Men whore too, they sell themselves for stupid things all the time for much the same reasons that we associate with whores. They can be latte sipping prostitutes as well. I can think of a long list of beta men who fit that category perfectly. And in many ways Lisa Page’s boyfriend in the FBI was a whore of a different kind. He was sucking up to his superiors to play the political assassin for a group of swamp creature radicals who wanted to do anything to stop Trump from becoming president. If he could do it and get a little on the side by a swamp whore sipping lattes instead of drunken ale, that was even better. But if not her, a trip down K-Street would do, and often does for many of those types. That is the truth of the matter and its important that we don’t confuse their actions with the merit of a civilized society. They are all prostitutes, but their vices come in all shapes and sizes but their worth is all the same.

Rich Hoffman

The Coastal Communists of Michael Bloomberg: Understanding what makes America and why we must defend it

I don’t watch normal television much. I still carry cable because I want the option, especially like it was over the Holidays where I had more time than usual to watch television, especially football games. And it was there that I saw Michael Bloomberg advertisements for President, and it had the feel of coming from some other country. If there is one thing, I learned from my hard motorcycle riding days which took up about a decade of my life, its that my measure of political validity is that if it doesn’t pass the smell test of Deadwood, South Dakota, then its not American. Back then I was thinking of doing a documentary about motorcycle riders and why they think the things they do, and why so many people were drawn to places like Sturgis Motorcycle rallies which Deadwood is certainly on the to-do list. That region of the world produced interesting American characters such as Wild Bill Hickock, Seth Bullock and Teddy Roosevelt, and it remains today an accurate measurement of political temperament. Viewed with the lenses of options, the communist attempts of the American left are obvious, and candidates like Michael Bloomberg are easy to understand as opposed to the coastal areas of North America that is easily consumed by unsophisticated concerns so long as they can go to the beach somewhere nearby.

The Bloomberg advertisement was a sharp reminder of just how divided we are as a country, where the coastal communists seek to impose themselves on the Deadwood lovers of the midlands, and their desire to ride free and die hard. The gap couldn’t be more pronounced. It also said a lot about how poorly the political left understands their position. Bloomberg thinks because he’s a billionaire that he will be able to duplicate Trump’s 2016 run, except from the vantagepoint of the communist left. The people who watch the network television stations are typically soft minded types open to other ideas because they have little firm convictions themselves, so he mistakenly measures that his ad time will boost him in the polls which I would think it won’t. Likely, not at all. The fact that he would think so and would pay the best in the business that money can buy to allow him to spend on such an ad says that nobody on the left really has a clue as to what is going on. They are still on point, for their leftist agenda. They don’t see or understand that the 2016 election was a rebellion, not just luck and money.

I agree, my views are hardline options that are scary to moderates. My thoughts were forged from experience, including many hours on motorcycles traveling the country and thinking about these things, and writing books about my opinions and gauging the reaction of the public. I wouldn’t consider myself a bestselling writer by any measure, but over the years I have developed a nice autograph signature that came as a result of book signings. I have sold enough books to develop an autograph signature and that was something I had to explain recently while signing Christmas cards professionally. And when you can say such a thing about yourself where a signature is actually sought, you earn the right to have opinions that are outside the norm as a change agent, which is what I would call my role. The trend is that more people think the way I do than they don’t which is reflected by the recent elections. Its also why you will never see someone like Michael Bloomberg campaigning in Deadwood, South Dakota where Trump would be carried around like a king on a throne. The communists in our country are trying to change opinions and most good people will give them a listen. But once they find out what they have been up to, they get mad. I feel I have a right to be very angry at communists like Michael Bloomberg, who is at the very least a sympathizer to Chinese communism. Or our school systems funded by tax money who wish to convert our children into future Michael Bloombergs. They are attacking our American lifestyle, and that earns the right to anger. So there is nothing wrong with coming out on one side of it, especially if you are like me and have made a point to draw attention to it using whatever platform one might have earned in life.

In the context of those motorcycle riding days where you see and taste this fine country from the back of an unprotected 1500cc beast through raging rain storms, hard snowstorms, and intense heat, when you find out the plans of the political left, you see it as an attack. Michael Bloomberg and his leftist New York friends want the kind of communism that China has for America or the kind of socialism that Scandinavia has presently. Both are born from the mind of Karl Marx which came about toward the end of the Victorian Era and is how that type of thinking entered New York under the name of progressivism, ultimately by the same Teddy Roosevelt I praised from hanging out in Deadwood during his pre-presidential days. It was always an attack on America and the minds that made it great. Roosevelt surrendered to it after his many days in the White House and his roots as an aristocrat in New York got the better of him eventually. Teddy traveled out to Deadwood to spend time with people like Seth Bullock to get his mind right. But at the turn of the century, not even that helped him, and he eventually ended his life thinking more like Michael Bloomberg.

Know that it is our minds and lifestyles that are under attack by these communist infiltrators, we all have a right to be a little pissed off. In fact, we have a right to be a lot pissed off! The kind of communism that runs China is exactly what Michael Bloomberg wants, and it is astonishing to see that the main networks of television have fallen lockstep into that effort, as most of them are based in New York where much of this thought movement entered our country like a Trojan horse ready for battle. As many think I’m too critical, too colorful in my hatred, and too resistant to the works of Marx as a philosophy, I would say otherwise. Based on the foundations of this country, which can still be seen in places like Deadwood, South Dakota, or Liberty Square in Disney World, I don’t think my opinions are too strong at all. And we were not wrong in voting for Trump. And the world that Bloomberg wants to go is one that we have already rejected, that his money won’t be able to buy. So, in a lot of ways, its good that he’s running. He will put a dagger through the heart of communism in America once and for all, without meaning to do it. But never forget what they intended to do, and still do even to this latest hour. Bloomberg doesn’t just want to take away your soda drinks, your straws, your money, and your guns, but the very nature of your American life. What he needs as a result is a good ass kicking at the polls and I think he’ll get it. But what a vision of the world it is to see it firsthand instead of just implied inuendo. That is when you realize just how close we all came in 2016 to the end of our country, because these relics still don’t realize they lost, and are still saying the same things that destroyed them in the first place.

Rich Hoffman

The False Nature of Teams: Reflections on the Ohio State win over Michigan

I saw some of the most bizarre behavior during the Ohio State football game at Michigan in Ann Arbor over the weekend that its worth some observational notes. I don’t watch much college football all though I enjoy the ambiance of all fall football. The details are often too boring. The students are not yet perfected to the level of the pros and I don’t enjoy watching them. I think colleges hold back people; it doesn’t enhance them. They are good for educating people into procedures and to be good employees, but not so good in turning out unusual thinkers willing to push the limits and during the game my concerns were more than confirmed. If the goal is to find one’s place into some pecking order of procedural thinking, colleges do what people spend their money on. But they do not make leaders—I find that colleges openly lie about this objective and they charge way too much money for it, yet they convince people to pay it due to these sports programs.

Watching the Michigan side, complete with Tom Brady providing commentary in favor of the “Blue” of his former school there were these bizarre statements about teamwork, and that the team is greater than any individual, any player, any coach, anything. This was astonishing to me because I hear that come out of the mouths of many people all through my professional life from the statehouses across the country to the intimate business meetings that happen hour by hour. People say these really dumb things and it makes you wonder where they get this information. Well, I know that the colleges have become in America excessive liberal factories trying to program political activism into their students and charging a lot of money for the opportunity. In trade, most companies, especially large ones agree to hire the kids from the colleges because secretly they just want nice employees who won’t rock the boat with new, breaking thoughts. They will just do what they are told and suppress any frustrations that might arise from the arrangement. But here, at the Ohio State game was lies about the arrangement, that no individual is more important than the team and that’s just not how the world works. The snake oil salesmen have obviously been hard at work in the broadcast booths of our nation’s college football games.

In the end the game was a blowout in favor of Ohio State winning 56-27. The point of the whole exercise was to make people who have attended these universities over the years, which is the point of all college sports programs, is to give those who have graduated, a continued value for their money spent. These days its like getting DLC content for a completed video game. It gives the participants a feeling of unity and a kind of family atmosphere in those massive 100,000 people stadiums where these games are played. But right after the game is done and everyone goes home, the specifics are forgotten and its off to the next thing. The whole experience is to unify people into the team concept of college sports and to coax them into continuing to spend money on the perceived results. For the amount of money that we are talking the whole scam is pretty pathetic.

So it went at the start of the game and during all this fluffy commentary about team work being so much greater than any individual, yet the results of the game was all about individuals being better than others, and the rest of the team sat on the sideline cheering them on along with the people in the stands. The terms, “we won” as was the common term used after the game, or “we lost this one,” were ludicrous. Ohio State had better individual players who picked up the team and took them to victory. In this particular game the quarterback and the running back were the two main positions where exceptional play took place, but most of the rest of the game was just a bunch of average people fulfilling their positions. Sure, the quarterback needs someone to throw the ball to, and the running back needs blockers—but in those positions, most anybody can play those roles, which is normal for the college experience. Most any graduate can be hired or replaced, and nobody would notice. But, the exceptional players J.K. Dobbins finding holes to run through or some of those deep, accurate passes from Justin Fields weren’t part of some team other than they needed to follow the instructions of the leaders in running the proper routes and getting open to make a play. The individual efforts were far more important than any collective message about unity.

Tom Brady’s comments in support of Michigan were bizarre as well. Let’s try an experiment, let’s take Tom Brady off the New England Patriots professional football team and see how many games they win. Or let’s take away their now famous coach. The lie that a team is what wins football games is told everywhere in modern culture, people buy it completely due to these kinds of recreation events justifying their comments, but reality is not being observed. The hard work that Tom Brady has always put into the game is why his teams have changed the players but they always continue to win. He is the stabilizing factor; the players come and go but the victories are the results of the many extra hours of hard work that Brady does to stay ahead of the competition. The teams under him get the ability to win a Super Bowl ring by sitting on the bench as opposed to playing for some other team where they might be expected as individuals to do more. But the truth is, they are irrelevant to the winning process, but Tom Brady is the key to a chance—and nobody else.

And it wasn’t Michigan who made Tom Brady who he is. They didn’t give him his natural talents. They gave him a chance to show it off but Brady didn’t come out of his big win over Ohio State a number one draft pick. He had to work his way up and work harder than everyone else, and still to this day he does that. That’s why he’s over 40 and still has a starting job in the NFL. Who else is going to be better than him? In the end, it comes down to the exceptional who carry the masses—always, in sports, in business, in politics—in everything. Everything. The colleges lie to justify their roles, and the masses buy the lie so that they can feel like they are part of a winning formula. But it always comes down to individual effort that leads teams to victory. Not the other way around. Everytime someone says something so stupid as the “team” is bigger than any one person you can always know that the person saying it has no idea how the world really works, and they are faking leadership. Because leadership is not about team victories, its about doing what leaders tell you and riding their coattails to success. And like I said, a good quarterback, running back, or business partner needs someone to throw the ball to. But wins and losses do not happen as a team, they happen as a result of leadership by individuals over those hungry to be led somewhere for an effort they couldn’t get any other way. That is a truth many aren’t prepared to contemplate, yet it’s the true essence of this ever-present reality.

Rich Hoffman

Skycars are Ready: Yet we have to wait for stupid rules and regulations to catch up

If there is one thing that I’ve learned and developed over these many millions of words of contemplation and the questioning of virtually everything we assume in our political and social order, it is that we lose something very valuable in our teenage years for which we work so hard to develop as children, and that is fertile imaginations that take advantage of our very unusual brains and drive for improvement and creation. It would be my offering that developing that over a lifetime is the meaning of life for the human species. We were never meant to replicate nature and to learn to live within its rules. We were meant to question nature and to improve it the way an artist improves a blank canvass with strokes of paint and the thoughts that took a lifetime to build. And that any human invention of philosophy that has been put in place to restrict such an approach to life is evil, even if the intentions were good to start with, as we all know the path to Hell is paved with.

I was asked by several members of the business community about this new book of mine, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business as to why, earlier in 2019 when they learned I was doing it. As they asked, what could possibly be done new in that field that has not been done by thousands of other people already. Well, that has been the difficult aspect of it and is something I’m untangling due to my unusual life and experiences. Its not just about business that I’m concern, such as understanding why Lean Manufacturing is largely rejected by western cultures while eastern cultures thrive with it. Understanding why the original Walt Disney was a genius, or George Lucas was so successful while so many others try to copy but fail. The new film Ford vs. Ferrari is about the same kind of interesting characters who push the limits of social order in passionate ways for good new things to come forth. So was the great film produced by George Lucas about Tucker: A Man and His Dream. Or the Aviator by Leonardo DiCaprio. What makes genius in a culture and how can we protect it so we can get more of it? Then there is the piece of the puzzle that I think is most unique, tying that to the ownership of guns in a society and how that invention has allowed for minds to flourish and step away from tyranny so that imaginations could flourish. It’s not our education system that has produced such people, its in a mind free of fear either by daredevil minds or those growing up in households protected by family and friends with closets full of guns. My investigation has taken me to that precipice and its certainly virgin ground that has gotten deeper the more I probed. But it has been worth it. The quest has been very rewarding, and revolutionary.

It is in this context that I do much of what I do and think the same. Newcomers or occasional readers here might think that I am a mean, vicious person. However, the people who know me best understand that I am a very unencumbered person 24 hours a day. I wouldn’t say childlike. I would say rather I am unrestricted in my imagination which is vast and is the key to much of my problem-solving ability. People associate this way of thinking with a child, but to me children are learning to think like this, they don’t have the developed thoughts yet, the way an Einstein or a Nietzsche may have. Thinking is the thing that humans do, so doing it well is very much part of the puzzle and to people like me, the worst thing you can do to such people is put too many rules on them, to restrict them to people who don’t dare to think so deep or far. That is where destructive social orders come into play, the things we allow into our political discourse regardless of party affiliation. To me, if it restricts imagination, its evil. From the local zoning board that constricts the plans of a creative architect with stupid rules, or the inventor of a new mode of transportation that must wait for a cumbersome FFA to get their minds wrapped around an idea. To that last point is the subject of today’s article, but also the first step into a series of thoughts that I have on this matter that are paving the defined criteria of this new book of mine. But also serve as a contextual representation for the 21st century and the many challenges of this particular point in history.

For much longer than I’ve been writing here, or writing books I have been a big supporter of skycars. At first it was the Paul Moller Skycar M400 that I worked whatever political angles I could to help it along in the 1990s, where everyone laughed at it infuriating me tremendously. I was working for Cincinnati Milacron at the time and they were creating a kind of pre-Amazon parts delivery system to support their products all over the country, which at the time I was part of organizing with a fleet of vans to provide delivery within the day. Essentially a call would come in, we’d pick the part from inventory, carry it down to our vans, and drive to wherever they were in the country having the part to the customer that day, sometimes within a working shift. I tried to convince people that a Skycar could do the job much faster and due to the political response, I understood that it would take probably another 20 years to get the human race to catch up, and to me that was just stupid. Why weren’t people advanced enough to see the potential? That is the reason I used the M400 in my book The Symposium of Justice. I had Hollywood connections at that point in my life and I was hoping they would take the baton and run with it. But they didn’t. It was a very frustrating period for me to observe.

Well, now its that time and skycars are getting ready to hit the market. Dubai is bringing them into the mainstream in the next few years and the new electric concept called BlackFly is ready right now to fly from your driveway to work at the touch of a button. The problem is, and continues to be even in Dubai, that a political class protected by a lot of silly rules and regulations are standing in the way as they have for so many decades and that is what evokes my anger. The imaginations of the human species has done their job, but the weak and timid are holding back what we could all become due to their lackluster view of the world created artificially with restrictive, timid thoughts. While we justify the rules that are in our society as keeping people safe, the true nature of our beings is to be recklessly imaginative and to allow ambition to fuel product creation and implementation. Our regulatory culture is the problem, or obsession with silly rules to restrict imaginative growth is the problem and has been for a very long time. It is not the job of the unrestrictive imaginations to encumber themselves with those who have limited themselves to thoughts that keep them grounded and under control of the local masters who only want to hold their power given to them by the rules of the day. Its for everyone else to rise to the highwater marks set by the great thinkers who have worked their entire lives to become something unique. And the flying cars are the products of such thinking, and finally, they are ready for the market. Yet they wait for the lazy minded to get it. But first they’ll have to await the results of the Ohio State game against Michigan before they have room in their brains for the task, or some other college game where the small minded gather to reassure themselves that institutions are the boons of existence, and not the imaginations of the most daring. The point of my efforts is to give a scientific opinion on this obscurity, so that perhaps we can change it from what it is now in a highly regulatory business environment into something that allows such inventions to materialize in years instead of decades.

Rich Hoffman

The Future of Government: Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s pace setting changes

A friend of mine gave me a nice book by Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum which I’ve had for a few weeks and browsed through with some enjoyment. Given the Thanksgiving break, I was able to set aside another 7 hours to complete the book and found it very enjoyable, especially with his views on government. Now in reading this with an open mind, I had to put his support of Palestine against Israel into perspective and also consider the large amount of drama that has been following one of the world’s richest men and the driver of Dubai’s leap into the future, especially in regard to his daughter, the missing princess. But great energy and intelligence are often criticized, and nobody ever fits into the square holes that society gives us as we are all circles, triangles and rectangles and usually don’t fit unless we beat them into place with a hammer.

I like Dubai very much and I especially like what they are doing in that region of the world with the Hyperloop and the efforts at skycars. It takes a person thinking like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to do big things like that. In the United States we do have a mind thinking like this in the Oval Office in President Trump. There is less democracy in Dubai, so it is far easier for a big personality like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to have his way and get things done. Often very wealthy people like this are hated by the lazy and stupid, so much of the smoke that comes from these types of people is scrutinized with more of a focus on pushing them into one of these square holes instead of understanding their true value to the context of the human story. With that said, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s opinion on government is something worth considering as I share his sentiment.

I make it no debate; I hate government as it has been presented to me over the years. They are slow, unambitious and filled with people afraid of real performance. They get to work too late in the day and they leave way to early. Just a trip to the BMV is a miserable experience, the hours of operation is in the middle of the work day so you have to take time out of your schedule to get silly things like drivers license renewals completed which is an extremely low value add contribution to the day of people who are really doing things in life. Government in the United States especially is too expensive and does not serve customer interests nearly enough, especially for the cost. They are corrupted by liberal labor unions that push back against very basic requests and are generally a huge waste of time. I was happy to read in Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s book that he feels much the same way that I do about government and in the UAE he is pushing reforms with the following sentiments:

• The government of the future is open for service 24/7, all year round. The private sector remains open for business so why not the public sector?” We want our government to be just like an airline—available around the clock.

• The government of the future competes with and surpasses the private sector in service quality. We want our government to welcome customers more professionally than hotels; we want our government to manage processes better than banks.

• The government of the future is connected. Citizens should be able to complete any government transaction at any government service center. Integrated service centers will spare citizens long trips from one entity to another.

• The government of the future is available anywhere. We want to shift government services onto smartphones so that customers can file and follow up on transactions using mobile devices at their convenience.

• The government of the future is innovative and constantly able to generate ideas. In 2012 the UAE government was able to generate over 20,000 fresh ideas to simplify and improve its services. Our goal is to create an environment that encourages people to generate innovative ideas. Implement them and constantly measure their effectiveness. Innovation is the capital of the future.

• The government of the future is a smart government with integrated and efficient technical systems. A smart government is so much faster in completing various kinds of transactions.

Now, all that sounds very logical to me. It makes perfect sense. In the United States when I complain about taxes being too high it is because I have always my business hat on, which requires the kind of thinking that Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has set as targets for his own government in the UAE. And I am quite sure that they are working to make that a reality in the city of Dubai. Its important to realize that this is what the United States is competing with, its not Europe, or China or anyplace other than the very innovative thinking coming out of the UAE. I noticed this first actually while visiting Harrod’s in London and seeing on the top floor all the future plans for cities of the future in the UAE. London was no longer the cultural center of the universe, nor was New York, or Hong Kong, but rather it was Dubai and more specifically this way of thinking from Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The forces at work in the United States that are keeping us from matching the ambitions of Dubai are what I would call domestic enemies because they are standing in the way of the kind of innovation that we need to be utilizing aggressively. Every time I hear some teacher’s union complaining about less kids, less work hours and more pay it makes me literally sick, because the rest of the world is starting to realize that people like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum are shaping the future. And it should be the United States that everyone should be emulating. It also makes me very angry to see that our own government would rather fight to protect the status quo by attacking our own President Trump, who wants to think ahead of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. But instead, they want to impeach him any way possible so that they can resist the need to change their behavior in government.

A healthy hatred of government if it proves to be a detriment to productivity and a happy life is good. We shouldn’t expect something to be bad just because its government and rationalize that we can’t do anything about it. Government works for the people, not the other way around and for too long governments around the world have grown complacent and more intrigued with their aristocratic status than in being known for what they accomplish. That isn’t acceptable to me and it was refreshing to hear that Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum doesn’t find it acceptable either, that some people in the world do get it. That is why it is good to read books, especially from cultures that are not native to your own, so that ideas can be generated, and understandings met. The media certainly wouldn’t report this information, I didn’t know much about Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum until I read his book except that he had family problems with one of his daughters. The media will report that, but not all these thoughts about government. And that is another huge part of this problem that we should all be angry about.

Rich Hoffman

Why Kids Like to Play Shoot with Toy Guns: The Mandalorian is all about cool gun fights

Another reason The Mandalorian is such a great show is because it’s the first that I can think of where gun fights are embraced in a very long time. Watching these episodes, I can’t help but think of all the radio broadcasts I had done at WAAM talking about this very subject with a guy who loved Disney so much that he left radio to work for the company. We were perplexed that Disney had a policy at the parks that did not allow for guns on costumes due to the very progressive stand the company had toward the Second Amendment. All in the name of security. Well, and I’m very happy to see it, but all that is out the window now. The Mandalorian isn’t just a show about the nobility of violence, but its also about gunfights in ways that only classic television westerns were, and this is a good sign of many great things to come.

When I was growing up I play fought all the time. At recess me and the other kids of my class would pretend anything was a gun and we’d shoot at each other religiously. Of course none of us grew up to be mass killers, play fighting is a natural state for young people, especially boys. So the primal necessity of having gunfights in The Mandalorian is an admission of sorts from the Disney Company that they understand that what will follow, as they have Star Wars events at their theme parks and the general nature of the cosplay culture that fans will be dressing up as their favorite Mandalorian and their guns, and there won’t be much that Disney can do about having their name on it. They bought Star Wars and guns are a huge part of the property, so if they want to get the value out of their purchase, they have to embrace that culture and know that little kids have a need to play fight with each other for needs that they will need to understand once they become adults.

What’s even better in The Mandalorian is that the fights are not confused with the nobility of Jedi fighting with lightsabers. Its all about guns. Watching through the first three episodes and noticing the online reaction to them that primal need is alive and well with people. Even though public education has sought to drive the desire for such recreation out of the mind of their students, the play fighting that was always so important to me growing up using combs, rulers and our own hands to pretend to shoot guns, has moved online to the video game world. The people making The Mandalorian obviously have been playing Star Wars: Battlefront II and other shooting games that are much more popular than many people in politics are willing to admit. This whole notion of gun control politically is going against the tide of human desire. Disney has had to come to terms with that, and the rest of the world will soon follow. The Mandalorian is just the product coming about to support a market need. The need was always there, but it was politics that slowed down the fulfillment as social experiments to the contrary were fully in place.

The Mandalorian is so good in fact that I can’t imagine that millions of young people, boys and girls, are going to rush out to buy some version of their favorite gun from the series. And I understand. I have hanging from the mantel of my fireplace in my home, right next to my reading chair, my DL-44 in its official Han Solo holster complete with all the little greebles that only hard-core Star Wars fans would understand. It’s a toy, but I like looking at it so I keep it out so I can see it every day. When I was a kid, the toy Han Solo gun was one of my favorite things to have and over the years that was my first introduction to guns which is still a very healthy hobby of mine. What they have today is much cooler, so young people have so many more options than I did. I can’t imagine how exciting it is for them that they can not only have such weapons, but that they can turn around and play Battlefront II all weekend when they aren’t in school with all their friends in a squad. In so many ways, play fighting has never been easier, or more popular than it is today, which is saying a lot.

Entertainment companies like Disney have had to come to terms with their responsibility in the whole political order. In entertainment, all companies have an obligation to the market needs of the consumers, for which young people want guns to play with for all kinds of very legitimate psychological reasons. The politics against guns is due to an infantile desire for the political class to have power over others and by promoting the disarming of society due to safety concerns, they are in the end seeking to make their jobs easier. The effort has nothing to do with making a better and more peaceful society, its just seeking to suppress human need for freedom so that earlier in their lives, children will learn to behave to a higher authority.

Obedience doesn’t sell very well in a free and open marketplace. There is a reason pop culture music is rebellious by nature and there is a reason kids like to play at violence and fighting. The fantasy in both cases is to break away from the social norms of existence so that something new might be carved out of the effort. In most cases, the children will grow up and become nice little conformists. However, when they are young and full of dreams, they play shoot hoping to be that cowboy, that Mandalorian, or that desperate smuggler from Star Wars looking to break free of the system and to create some heroic adventure in the process for themselves. They aren’t looking to be conformists to the social norm. Play fighting is to become good at overcoming oppression so that they might have the courage to do the same when it really matters later in their life.

Of course, a Disney theme park with all kinds of safety concerns, political parasites trying to extract money from them all the time, and insurance adjusters making everything a potential lawsuit, the easiest thing they can do is eliminate the temptation for something dangerous to happen. So they come up with their no gun policies in regard to cosplay and if there are guns they have to have those stupid orange colors on the barrels or the entire guns so that police don’t confuse them for the real thing. It’s easier on the political class, but terror on the kids who want to play with the guns and learn the basics about shooting through their leisure.

During those referred to radio broadcasts, I thought it was a pointless endeavor for Disney, and that has turned out to be right. If anything the need was only suppressed and now that the cat is out of the bag, I anticipate a steep increase in young people admitting to the world that they want to play shoot guns and they want their guns to look cool and realistic. Even though they are only toys, it is good to be thinking about these things as early as possible because there is honesty and hope in that kind of play that the political class has sought to destroy, and if their feelings get hurt in the process, so be it. They should have never attempted to tamper with the necessities of human development to begin with. They instead should have done their jobs and not sought to make it easier on themselves by altering the way kids play, and why they play it.

Rich Hoffman