Taking a break from the usual heavy subjects explored at this site I have to say more about a company I have highlighted often in America who I think is having a major impact on world culture. This is not a movie company, a video game developer or even a traditional television broadcaster—it is Fantasy Flight Games who again appear to be at the absolute top of their field. I was at my favorite game store—Nostalgic Ink, in Mason, Ohio buying my son-in-law some expansion ships for our X-Wing Miniatures game which is a Fantasy Flight creation which I have raved about often. I had my grandson with me so he wanted to walk around the store looking at all the other products, which I of course allowed him to do. While looking elsewhere in the store I ran across the Fantasy Flight Game Arkham Horror which looked fabulous and further impressed me with what Fantasy Flight has been doing in the realm of gaming.
These types of games are a participatory mythology—meaning they allow players to jump into a scenario and live the values of a mythology. These games unlike everything else in society are all about recognizing value instead of evading it—so there isn’t any escape from the process of assessment. I wasn’t a fan of these kinds of things until my nephews and son-in-law brought them back into my life last summer while on vacation. While I don’t enjoy traditional board games like Monopoly and most of the games on the Target gaming shelf dealing with contemporary matters, I do love these mythology based games in that they are like novels lived in the field of time and space which have uncertain outcomes.
The Arkham Horror game attracted my attention because it deals with the Roaring Twenties and involves horror, monsters, and ancient secrets. Of course it is this time period I love which featured near perfect capitalism and a wonderful President in Calvin Coolidge, so the time period itself is interesting as a backdrop for such a story. At Nostalgic Ink we were in a time crunch so I didn’t buy the game as of yet, but I will at the next available moment. It plays up to eight people in a cooperative play which would do well in my family. We had a birthday party for that same son-in-law who is very skilled with these games. It’s impressive to watch him. At the party several groups broke off and played games, some in the house, some outside set up around the pool, some out under a shade tree. One of the games was Magic the Gathering which I’ve seen quite a lot, the other was my son-in-law’s new Game of Thrones card game again by Fantasy Flight Games. I watched a bit of that game and again it was another amazing creation by Fantasy Flight with the usual quality in game pieces and such detailed manuals, card design, and even box artwork.
I had been wondering if Fantasy Flight was just freakishly good at game design with their X-Wing series—because it’s Star Wars and thus sells well. But after seeing what they did with the Game of Thrones card game I’m convinced that it is just the nature of the company. Any doubts I had about buying The Arkham Horror game evaporated in that instant. The gaming that night at our house went well into the night well past the time my wife and I went to bed—so my family would love Arkham Horror.
During a typical day when things sometimes seem overwhelmingly difficult—and impossible—I take a minute and visit the Fantasy Flight Games website to see what’s going on new—which every day appears to be something. I enjoy reading the game forums for X-Wing and it actually relaxes my mind. This is distinctively different from the typical escapism, evasion tactics of something like a baseball game, or Fantasy Football—which does similar things for a more mainstream audience. For me, and my love of mythology, these games are just marvelous.
Walking the aisles at Nostalgic Ink the owner does a great job of displaying all his vast collection of games—most of them are like these Arkham Horror, and Game of Throne games. These are different from traditional board games like Life, Candyland, or card games like Uno. They have the added element of plot and story to accentuate the randomness of a dice role—and are quite intriguing. If I had time, I’d like to play one of each kind of game in Nostalgic Ink. My grandson not yet two years of age already understands that there is something special about the place, he enjoys the colors on the boxes displaying all the bizarre artwork and wanted to look at everything. It’s a very stimulating atmosphere much like how book stores used to feel minus the references to popular culture—which is often distracting when you need a break from it.
It cannot be ignored that people who play these types of Fantasy Flight Games enjoy thinking. My son-in-law certainly embodies that trait—he loves to think and in the realm of those games—is a maestro. But what’s better is the plot and advancement of intrigue that makes the experience like a shared novel. In a high-tech age such as what we live in now, it is just wonderful to see such a low tech—creative—and traditional format of storytelling that has emerged as powerfully as Fantasy Flight Games has done over these last few years. I was already a fan because of their X-Wing Miniatures work, but their efforts don’t end there. It is unlikely that I would have ever stepped into Nostalgic Ink if not to purchase my first B-Wing fighter in the September of 2013. Since then, I have been there often and now find myself going there to primarily buy gifts for other people. But for me X-Wing Miniatures has been a gateway to the rest of the Fantasy Flight Games product line. It is what they are doing now that will still have meaning many years from now when I want to play the same games with my future grandchildren and other family members who will grow up to love those games. I remember the kind of things I loved growing up and to a large extent, I still love those things. Video games and tech related entertainment has a dated feel that cheapens those experiences over time as improvements come out in future years. But these Fantasy Flight Games products will still have the magic of their appeal hundreds of years from now because the root of their effort is in the great presentation of their material– the invocation of thought as their mechanism into story telling. And it is in the stories of our society that the truths we all seek reside—whether realistic, or fantasy based, it is the process of thought which the human race most seeks. And Fantasy Flight Games has their pulse on the importance of thought—and that makes them for my money one of the best companies on earth creating one of the most important needs humans have aside from food and clothing—mythology.
I’ve told a portion of this story before but now with context provided, it is time to give a proper answer. When the Enquirer reporter Michael Clark was at my home photographing me for what was surely at some point in time to become a major circus scandal he asked me if I was sure that I wanted my picture taken with my bullwhips while making series claims against one of the largest and wealthiest public schools in Ohio for fear that my message might become lost in the entertaining antics. I have said that it was part of a plan, but without context the words don’t have much meaning to novice readers—so I simply gave the steps without providing the meaning. However, since this blog for many has become a sort of silent strategy guide for how to defeat the left—to understand what I was doing was important because it will help those same minds through this next—difficult phase with much ore assuredness.
It was my idea to do the bullwhip story in the same week that I went on WLW to argue teacher wages at Lakota. Before going on the air I had many friends and family warn me against such a thing. After all, they had seen labor strikes locally from General Motors, AK Steel, and many other union type organizations and it was well-known that teacher unions destroyed private property of those who stood in their way—and I was asking for trouble by going on WLW to call them out. The Enquirer article was done to take away one of the weapons of the labor union—which was hard to explain at the time. People would understand the wage issues I was bringing up, but all too often those stories are suppressed because people are afraid to put their name out there against such a collective force.
So here’s the little secret at beating the political left which can now be obviously confirmed with history—not just my own, but that of others who have also dared push back against the forces trying to reshape us all into something despicable and useless. No group, especially the political left can win if two things are removed from them, their ability to exert force—and thus fear so to manipulate through silence the facts to their favor. Whatever methods are used to create fear—threat of labor strikes, vandalism, personal name calling, physical violence you need to match them blow for blow. When I showed them what I could do with the bullwhip, I was performing a strategy I learned from Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kun Do martial arts school. Lee never worried about conflict with another human being because he had made himself into something that could not be beaten by another human being. He may not have won every confrontation, but he could decide if he would lose. If you pick a variation of a martial art and become so skilled at it that you are the best there is—you have made yourself invincible so to speak to defeat in that particular category. That is a very good thing, it doesn’t matter if it is bullwhips, knife handling, various forms of self-defense—the act at becoming so good at something that nobody can beat you is a sense of assuredness that provides freedom to an individual that is paramount to beating back any aggression committed against you.
After my WLW visit I had every manner of fear creating method thrown at me by the labor unions who had some type of stake in the Lakota levy—every kind. But, because of my use of the bullwhip, opponents learned quickly that I could easily beat the monkey snot out of them without really breaking a sweat. It didn’t matter if they came as individuals or groups—the result would be the same unless they decided to cross the line and elevate their terrorism with guns—which of course I also had an answer and they knew it. Violence and threat of harm is the first desired strategy that labor unions use to get what they want—so I took that away from them. This forced them into territory they were not comfortable with—a logical argument.
Quickly the liberals involved in public education—which is most everyone—tried to play the other strategy of the left—the theory of emotion where they use fear of speculative outcomes such as fear of death, fear of ignorance, fear of losing in competitive comparisons with the rest of the world as their means of advancing their own plot without ever getting into the details. This is that Witch Doctor mentality mentioned on this site before—it’s the speculation of things to come based on raw emotion and justified by feelings, not fact. I forced them—really an entire education industry from the Department of Education in The United States, and Ohio—college professors, tenured teachers, politicians, union presidents to beat the facts I presented to the public and on this site and not a single person could do it—for over four years now. This is the big secret behind their push for violence and why if that weapon is taken from them—they are left naked as the day they were born—intellectually. They cannot win an argument if they are on the wrong side of the facts—which they know they are. They must bring emotion into their arena as an alley because they are seeking to supplant the facts with emotion to win their position. Even the smartest people in the education industry—and you’d think that there would be a lot of smart people in education—could not refute a single claim I made in the public forums such as the Enquirer, all the television stations and over the radio. Many of those radio broadcasts went out to over 100,000 to 500,000 people and not a single soul was able to refute the facts I brought up—which in essence was that teachers were overpaid, their instruction was ineffective to children, and that it wasn’t worth the cost of increased taxes.
When “they” could not win with threats of force, or feelings they resorted back to force—but instead of making it private they went public—which of course was predicted. The Enquirer again played its role and put up all the residual impact of the word war that was going on between my opponents and myself showing how ugly things were getting. But the essence of it was this—the levy supporters attempted to win their side with a combination of force and emotion by making the argument one about sexism—since many of the radicals were women—they hoped to play that old progressive trick, which worked on many of the weaker minded people on my side who actually feared those despots—I’ll get into that with more detail in a bit. When I showed them that I would take a head for an eye in whatever manner they wished to pursue things it got out of control for a bit as the panic set in leaving Lakota as a large progressive organization with little to do but to retreat and regroup. They cut a deal with me lasting for two years and spent that time not trying to incorporate what they had learned from me, but in trying to build on their emotional position. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on public relations to suppress the negativity caused by our fights so that they could come across as benevolent once again. They eventually won their money but in the process had proven everything I claimed against them leaving the process open for all to see stripped away of fear in all its forms. People were able for the first time to see how all these things worked together to impose social elements against the society at large and they were learning how to counter it.
If fear of violence and mystic facts based on emotion are removed from the left—or from anybody—they can be handedly defeated. However there is one last element that must be utilized in such a conflict which the political left uses to prevent a challenge to either of their key strategies—it is the plight of the second hander. The way that the left protects itself from scrutiny is through this mechanism. A second hander desires the approval of others for internal sustenance—for instance, second hander people enjoy being told they look nice, they buy cars that they know other people will admire; they change their aroma hoping to present themselves attractively to other human beings and generally spend a lot of time seeking the approval of others. What protects the political left most from challenges to their two primary attacks–physical violence and mystic emotion is the peer pressure of social judgment. If challenges are presented to their two control mechanisms the default protection is this destruction of public acceptance.
From the time that I was a little kid up until about 15 years ago I used to get a lot of grief about wearing a cowboy hat in public. For me, the hat was a symbol of traditional values which I hold strongly. For the rest of society—it also represented that—which was out-of-step with the progressive direction of the country. People let me know about it. Even as a twenty something young man living campus life at the University of Cincinnati I walked around everywhere with my cowboy hat—and people always looked at me funny for it. Most of the time I was by myself as well—often I would get up in the morning and walk to Coryville to have breakfast and read my books with my hat on. I would get the strangest looks, people actually felt anxious—first they couldn’t understand why I was by myself, and two, why I had on the hat. Who was I trying to impress? The answer was nobody—and this scared people. What they never figured out—and which is a fact that remains to this day—is that I don’t care an iota what anybody thinks about anything. When I do something I do it because I want to. I wear what I want, when I want to and do it for my own reasons. Therefore, I also do the same with thinking—I think what I want, say what I want, and in no way feel hampered by third-party judgment and am thusly immune to peer-pressure.
This is a very liberating attribute because it allows you to challenge the two mechanisms of liberal strategy–brute force, and emotional speculation directly without concern of being cast out of any group or the collective opinions that might be controlled by money, social prestige, or God forbid—consensus. In this way, people have seen slowly what kind of scam has been perpetrated upon them and have taken action on their own to advance the plot. Now that the first bricks of that intellectual damn have been removed the cracks are now crawling everywhere ahead of the break and what will be free finally are all the things hidden behind that damn by the political left for years—things put there through force and emotion. Logic breaks the damn, and freedom from peer pressured allows the bricks to be removed one by one until the whole thing comes crashing down.
There are people who read here every day for their sustenance—because they want to see how the world really is and expect me to present it without fear from violence, or handcuffs by emotional debate, or the concern of being blacklisted from the latest charity dinner by socialites and despots hungry for attention and yearning for approval by their peers. Through that journey they come to the truth and now that they facts are adding up, they are able to act upon those truths. Luckily, I’m not alone in this journey and the culmination of these efforts is beginning to have a major impact. The Bill Ayers interview with Megan Kelly is just the start—the left in the wake of a terrible Obama Presidency have to defend themselves really for the first time–and are now coming out to meet the challenge. They really have no choice; public opinion is beginning to stack against them. But now that other people know how to beat them at their own game—the frequency of these challenges are tearing away at their façade leaving them deeply exposed for the first time in over 100 years, and they don’t like it. The way to fight them is now known and it is the task of the individuals reading here to carry these methods into their personal life to fight these corrosive elements in the proven fashion. The guarantee of success is 100%. So now that you know dear reader how to beat them………………..what’s stopping you?
Dear reader, I am going to ask a lot of you today—there’s a lot to read here—but read it you must. The future of America and all your children, grandchildren and even people you have never met yet are at stake and this critical issue requires your full understanding.
There seemed to be a lot more American flags out in 2014 during the 4th of July as paper patriots fearful of the direction of their American country thought simply saying they were patriots—or walking in a parade was enough, than there has been in the past. It was good to see a little stirring of the American pride and as millions across the nation waited for a fireworks show as dusk crawled across the supposedly freest nation on earth, Megan Kelly on Fox News broadcast an epic debate between the filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and the domestic terrorist Bill Ayers—the same man who launched the political career of Barack Obama. The theme of the interview, part of which can be seen below, was the concept of American Exceptionalism and a recurring theme represented most by the current American intelligentsia was extrapolated during the debate. The cure for many of the current problems in America are actually quite easy to fix if only the concept of American Exceptionalism were understood. The border situation with Mexico would be solved, the economic restrictions seen throughout the world, and basic premise of freedom could save the lives of millions if only the basic understanding of American Exceptionalism could be embraced. Yet Bill Ayers revealed what many that have learned from him over the years wished to argue regarding American imperialism as opposed to Exceptionalism. Their position is that American had no right to interfere with other governments throughout the world, or to rob the land of the “Native Americans” or that it was built on slave labor and that all Americans should pay for the guilt of their past sins and chastise themselves before the world. Behind the waving of American flags this particular year there seemed to be a reconciliation behind the public who many had just realized that their president—Obama had delivered them to the enemies of the world on a plate provided with a bow and apology. It was Bill Ayers who helped develop the young mind of Barack and Michelle Obama into being a future weapon of the Weather Underground—a radical from within the people’s house. The flag waving and fireworks were a bit more vigorous as though the American people hoped at this late hour that their complacency could erase the impact of this domestic terrorism in the year of 2014. But it can’t, only understanding the role America plays in the world will, and supporting that role with a philosophy much different from the one that Bill Ayers believed.
There are a lot on the political left who think the way Ayers does, many of them are those who are part of the education industry. They aren’t as violent as Ayers, but they hold very similar beliefs which can be seen through their actions. Recently watching a “Watters’ World” episode Jesse Watters managed to get a red carpet interview with George Clooney—who is a native of the Cincinnati area and a powerful mover and shaker in Hollywood. He’s a generally talented guy who thinks he’s very smart politically—made worse because he donates a lot of money into liberal candidates—particularly President Obama—so he thinks he has a good political grip on the world stage—but if you strip away his belief system to its root core—it will be discovered that the kind of people who shaped his foundation thoughts were people like Bill Ayers from the 1960s. In Hollywood right now there are a lot of these young actors who are little cardboard cutouts of Bill Ayers—just as Obama is. Clooney made sure that Watter’s knew that Obama was our “president” and deserved respect for the title—as though he were the King of America—which is clearly disjointed from reality. Some of those cutouts are people like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Sean Penn who all have an anti-imperialist slant against America and have communist political leanings. Their instruction in life has come from the type of beliefs taught by liberal professors like Bill Ayers and this has gone on for a long time. Many of the current flag wavers who are just now realizing the folly of their ways are looking for answers but their belief system prevents them from seeing them.
As an example of this scenario let us look at Ben Affleck’s very good movie Argo, which won Best Picture for its 2012 release. This was a great film about the cause of the hostage crises in Iran in 1979 and was generally a patriotic film about the very good work of a CIA agent in bringing out some stranded Americans home from that crisis. However—Affleck couldn’t help himself. George Clooney was a co-producer of the film so without question there was bound to be a left leaning political messages emitting from the movie—and there was. Understanding that very simple element and making a decision on it—has the ability to fix many of our modern problems. At the end of the film out of all the philosophers that could have been picked for a closing statement by the John Goodman character it was Karl Marx who was quoted. This after a brief cartoon opening told the back story of Iranian history and essentially placed the blame of the westernization of Iran squarely on the backs of American influence. Affleck skillfully showed during the opening that once Iran’s oil fields were nationalized—which is a communist concept—that all was well. However–once Mohammad Rezâ Šâh Pahlavi—the Shah of Iran started westernizing the country it upset the people who overthrew him. The blame for the hostage crises to begin with fell on the shoulders of America who had been caught trying to manipulate the Iranian people with Western influence, then threw gasoline on the fire by giving Pahlavi exile within The United States. The movie Argo essentially proclaims that the fault of the crises fell on American imperialism—the same basic assertion that Bill Ayers and Barack Obama believe.
But they are all wrong, America and the accusations of imperialism come directly from the Cold War conflict with communism which was taking over the world during the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, and that people like Ayers, Affleck, Damon, and Clooney are all supporters. The Easter egg is clear as day at the end of Argo and generally none of those political activists are shy about their faith which they hide behind the Democratic Party. What they fail to mention is that the CIA operations in the Middle East, in Central America, in Cuba, in Vietnam in virtually everywhere that there was conflict was caused by a defense against communism. The infusion of American culture against the proposed communist cultures was the battle. It was a fight between the merits of capitalism and communism—a fight over regional control and freedom. Iran was under the influence of communists in the 1970s and the cost was a reversion back to their nomadic past. Mohammad Rezâ Šâh Pahlavi had taken steps to modernize Iran but walked the line between becoming a ruthless dictator and a western loving visionary. Ironically, and this is why I will say that Affleck did a brilliant job directing Argo—there was a wonderful scene showing how this transition was going in Iran—on one hand there were protestors burning American flags in the streets, but on the other they were eating Kentucky Fried Chicken which was a direct export of American capitalism. So before drawing conclusions on these metaphors let’s study the real history of Mohammad Rezâ Šâh Pahlavi without the slant of communism blowing in the sails of thought. The following comes from Wikipedia but has been edited down to the relevant portions. The link to the entire article follows.
Mohammad Rezâ Šâh Pahlavi (Persian: Mohamad Rezā Ŝāhh Pahlawi, [mohæmˈmæd reˈzɒː ˈʃɒːhe pæhlæˈviː]; 25 October 1919 – 27 July 1980) was the ruler of Iran (Shah of Iran) from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979. He took the title Šâhanšâh (“Emperor” or “King of Kings”)[1] on 26 October 1967. He was the second and last monarch of the House of Pahlavi of the Iranian monarchy. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi held several other titles, including that of Aryamehr (Light of the Aryans) and Bozorge Arteštârân (Head of the Warriors, Persian: Bozorg Arteŝdārān).[2]
Mohammad Rezâ Pahlavi came to power during World War II after an Anglo-Soviet invasion forced the abdication of his father Reza Shah. During Mohammad Reza’s reign, the Iranian oil industry was briefly nationalized under the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh before a U.S.-backed coup d’état deposed Mosaddegh and brought back foreign oil firms,[3] and Iran marked the anniversary of 2,500 years of continuous monarchy since the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great. As ruler, he introduced the White Revolution, a series of economic, social and political reforms with the proclaimed intention of transforming Iran into a global power and modernizing the nation by nationalizing certain industries and granting women suffrage.
A secular Muslim, Mohammad Reza gradually lost support from the Shi’a clergy of Iran as well as the working class, particularly due to his strong policy of modernization, secularization, conflict with the traditional class of merchants known as bazaari, recognition of Israel, and corruption issues surrounding himself, his family, and the ruling elite. Various additional controversial policies were enacted, including the banning of the communist Tudeh Party, and a general suppression of political dissent by Iran’s intelligence agency, SAVAK. According to official statistics, Iran had as many as 2,200 political prisoners in 1978, a number which multiplied rapidly as a result of the revolution.[4]
By the early 1950s, the political crisis brewing in Iran commanded the attention of British and American policy leaders. In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was appointed Prime Minister and committed to nationalizing the Iranian petroleum industry controlled by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Under the leadership of Mosaddegh’s democratically elected nationalist movement, the Iranian parliament unanimously voted to nationalize the oil industry – thus shutting out the immensely profitable Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which was a pillar of Britain’s economy and provided it political clout in the region.
Pahlavi with US President Truman in Washington, c. 18 November 1949
At the start of the confrontation, American political sympathy was forthcoming from the Truman Administration. In particular, Mosaddegh was buoyed by the advice and counsel he was receiving from American Ambassador in Tehran, Henry F. Grady. However, eventually American decision-makers lost their patience, and by the time a Republican Administration came to office fears that communists were poised to overthrow the government became an all-consuming concern (these concerns were later dismissed as “paranoid” in retrospective commentary on the coup from U.S. government officials). Shortly prior to the 1952 presidential election in the United States, the British government invited CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., to London to propose collaboration on a secret plan to force Mosaddegh from office.[8] This would be the first of three “regime change” operations led by Allen Dulles (the other two being the successful CIA-instigated 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba).
Under the direction of Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer and grandson of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, the American CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) funded and led a covert operation to depose Mosaddegh with the help of military forces disloyal to the democratically elected government. Referred to as Operation Ajax,[9] the plot hinged on orders signed by Mohammad Reza to dismiss Mosaddegh as prime minister and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi – a choice agreed on by the British and Americans.
Despite the high-level coordination and planning, the coup initially failed, causing the Shah to flee to Baghdad, and then to Rome. After a brief exile in Italy, he returned to Iran, this time through a successful second attempt at a coup. A deposed Mosaddegh was arrested and tried. The king intervened and commuted the sentence to one and a half years. Zahedi was installed to succeed Mosaddegh.[10]
Before the first attempted coup, the American Embassy in Tehran reported that Mosaddegh’s popular support remained robust. The Prime Minister requested direct control of the army from the Majlis. Given the situation, alongside the strong personal support of Conservative leader Anthony Eden and Prime Minister Winston Churchill for covert action, the American government gave the go-ahead to a committee, attended by the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Director of Central IntelligenceAllen Dulles, Kermit Roosevelt, Henderson, and Secretary of DefenseCharles Erwin Wilson. Kermit Roosevelt returned to Iran on 13 July 1953, and again on 1 August 1953, in his first meeting with the king. A car picked him up at midnight and drove him to the palace. He laid down on the seat and covered himself with a blanket as guards waved his driver through the gates. The Shah got into the car and Roosevelt explained the mission. The CIA bribed him with $1 million in Iranian currency, which Roosevelt had stored in a large safe – a bulky cache, given the exchange rate at the time of 1,000 rial to 15 dollars.[11]
The Communists staged massive demonstrations to hijack Mosaddegh’s initiatives. The United States actively plotted against him. On 16 August 1953, the right-wing of the Army attacked. Armed with an order by the Shah, it appointed General Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister. A coalition of mobs and retired officers close to the Palace executed this coup d’état. They failed dismally and the Shah fled the country in humiliating haste. Even Ettelaat, the nation’s largest daily newspaper, and its pro-Shah publisher, Abbas Masudi, were against him.[12]
During the following two days, the Communists turned against Mosaddegh. Opposition against him grew tremendously. They roamed Tehran, raising red flags and pulling down statues of Reza Shah. This was rejected by conservative clerics like Kashani and National Front leaders like Hossein Makki, who sided with the king. On 18 August 1953, Mosaddegh defended the government against this new attack. Tudeh partisans were clubbed and dispersed.[13]
The Tudeh party had no choice but to accept defeat. In the meantime, according to the CIA plot, Zahedi appealed to the military, and claimed to be the legitimate prime minister and charged Mosaddegh with staging a coup by ignoring the Shah’s decree. Zahedi’s son Ardeshir acted as the contact between the CIA and his father. On 19 August 1953, pro-Shah partisans – bribed with $100,000 in CIA funds – finally appeared and marched out of south Tehran into the city center, where others joined in. Gangs with clubs, knives, and rocks controlled the streets, overturning Tudeh trucks and beating up anti-Shah activists. As Roosevelt was congratulating Zahedi in the basement of his hiding place, the new Prime Minister’s mobs burst in and carried him upstairs on their shoulders. That evening, Henderson suggested to Ardashir that Mosaddegh not be harmed. Roosevelt gave Zahedi US$900,000 left from Operation Ajax funds.
U.S. actions further solidified sentiments that the West was a meddlesome influence in Iranian politics. In the year 2000, reflecting on this notion, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright stated:
“In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”[14]
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi returned to power, but never extended the elite status of the court to the technocrats and intellectuals who emerged from Iranian and Western universities. Indeed, his system irritated the new classes, for they were barred from partaking in real power.[15]
In his “White Revolution” starting in the 1960s, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi made major changes to modernize Iran. He curbed the power of certain ancient elite factions by expropriating large and medium-sized estates for the benefit of more than four million small farmers. He took a number of other major measures, including extending suffrage to women and the participation of workers in factories through shares and other measures. In the 1970s the governmental program of a free of charge nourishment for children at school (“Taghzieh e Rāigān”) was implemented. Under the Shah’s reign, the national Iranian income showed an unprecedented rise for an extended period.
Improvement of the educational system was made through new elementary schools and additionally literacy courses were set up in remote villages by the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces, this initiative being called “Sepāh e Dānesh”, “Army of Knowledge”. The Armed Forces were also engaged in infrastructural and other educational projects throughout the country (“Sepāh-e Tarvij va Âbādāni”) as well as in health education and promotion (“Sepāh-e Behdāsht”). The Shah instituted exams for Islamic theologians to become established clerics. Many Iranian university students were sent to and supported in foreign, especially Western countries and the Indian subcontinent.
In the field of diplomacy, Iran realized and maintained friendly relations with Western and East European countries as well as the state of Israel and China and became, especially through the close friendship with the United States, more and more a hegemonial power in the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East. The suppression of the communist guerilla movement in the region of Dhofar in Oman with the help of the Iranian army after a formal request by Sultan Qaboos was widely regarded in this context.
On 16 January 1979, he made a contract with Farboud and left Iran at the behest of Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar (a long time opposition leader himself), who sought to calm the situation.[71] Spontaneous attacks by members of the public on statues of the Pahlavis followed, and “within hours, almost every sign of the Pahlavi dynasty” was destroyed.[72] Bakhtiar dissolved SAVAK, freed all political prisoners, and allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran after years in exile. He asked Khomeini to create a Vatican-like state in Qom, promised free elections, and called upon the opposition to help preserve the constitution, proposing a “national unity” government including Khomeini’s followers. Khomeini rejected Bakhtiar’s demands and appointed his own interim government, with Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister, stating that “I will appoint a state. I will act against this government. With the nation’s support, I will appoint a state.”[73] In February, pro-Khomeini revolutionary guerrilla and rebel soldiers gained the upper hand in street fighting, and the military announced its neutrality. On the evening of 11 February, the dissolution of the monarchy was complete.
During his second exile, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi traveled from country to country seeking what he hoped would be temporary residence. First he flew to Assuan, Egypt, where he received a warm and gracious welcome from President Anwar El-Sadat. He later lived in Morocco as a guest of King Hassan II, as well as in the Bahamas, and in Cuernavaca, Mexico, near Mexico City, as a guest of José López Portillo. Richard Nixon, the former president, visited the Shah in summer 1979 in Mexico.[74] The Shah suffered from gallstones that would require prompt surgery. He was offered treatment in Switzerland, but insisted on treatment in the United States.
On 22 October 1979, President Jimmy Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah into the United States to undergo surgical treatment at the New York–Weill Cornell Medical Hospital. While in Cornell Medical Center, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi used the name “David D. Newsom” as his temporary code name, without Newsom’s knowledge.
The Shah was taken later by U.S. Air Force jet to Kelly Air Force Base in Texas and from there to Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base.[75] It was anticipated that his stay in the United States would be short; however, surgical complications ensued, which required six weeks of confinement in the hospital before he recovered. His prolonged stay in the United States was extremely unpopular with the revolutionary movement in Iran, which still resented the United States’ overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh and the years of support for the Shah’s rule. The Iranian government demanded his return to Iran, but he stayed in the hospital.[76]
There are claims that this resulted in the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the kidnapping of American diplomats, military personnel, and intelligence officers, which soon became known as the Iran hostage crisis.[77] According to the Shah’s book Answer to History, in the end, the United States never provided him any kind of health care and asked him to leave the country.[78]
He left the United States on 15 December 1979 and lived for a short time in the Isla Contadora in Panama. This caused riots by Panamanians who overwhelminglyobjected to the Shah being in their country. Panamanians viewed it as their country being used as a stooge of the United States. The new government in Iran still demanded his and his wife’s immediate extradition to Tehran. A short time after Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s arrival in Panama, an Iranian ambassador was dispatched to the Central American nation carrying a 450-page extradition request. That official appeal greatlyalarmed both the Shah and his advisors. Whether the Panamanian government would have complied is a matter of speculation among historians.
After that event, the Shah again sought the support of Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat, who renewed his offer of permanent asylum in Egypt to the ailing monarch. He returned to Egypt in March 1980, where he received urgent medical treatment, including a splenectomy performed by Michael DeBakey,[79] but nevertheless died from complications of Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia (a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma) on 27 July 1980, aged 60. Egyptian President Sadat gave the Shah a state funeral.[80]
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is buried in the Al Rifa’i Mosque in Cairo, a mosque of great symbolic importance. The last royal rulers of two monarchies are buried there, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran and King Farouk of Egypt, his former brother-in-law. The tombs lie to the left of the entrance. Years earlier, his father and predecessor, Reza Shah had also initially been buried at the Al Rifa’i Mosque.
If it is traced back the accusation of American imperialism being so vile it is the belief that cultures are better off left alone by removing American capitalism from foreign policy. It wasn’t in the case of Iran a bunch of people who wanted to preserve Islamic faith or the sanctity of their country and its history—it was communists who wanted complete control, just as they did in Vietnam, Cuba, and Central America. The trouble within America leaving the CIA to be so clandestine—a journey started by his grandfather Teddy Roosevelt with his vengeful commitment toward Progressivism—which would become a more “intellectual” name for communism in the states–Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. was all over the Middle East trying to stop the spread thus making those countries dangerous not just to America but their own people. Domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers would continue to sputter the belief that America just wanted the oil from Iran to operate cars cheaply so they could drive over all the land stolen from the Indians—but behind such sentiments is communism just as those who hate America abroad are fearful of the kind of freedom that capitalism brings to people wherever it touches. The communists in Iran didn’t care about justice; they wanted a head to put on a pike as they took over in the same manner that the French Revolution of 1948 attempted and elsewhere that the words of Karl Marx touched.
Yet Ben Afflect gave away his political sentiments in the closing scenes of his movie Argo just as his friend Matt Damon made an argument for communism in the science fiction film Elysum. Elysium only made $93 million dollars in The United States. It made most of its money in the foreign market raking in $193 million around the rest of the world. Americans could tell that there was something wrong with the message—but in countries where communism and socialism are already the standard, Elysium was a ray of hope that their poor political philosophy had merit.
America has a stake in those far-flung markets because when capitalism is not a part of their life—they seek to come to America to live. So America to protect itself has an obligation to spread capitalism to Iran, to Iraq, to China, Afghanistan, to India, Mexico, and Central America because the restrictive economies of socialist and communist countries has impoverished people and they can’t all come to America for refuge. It would be nice if everyone could live in America—but they can’t as America is only around 5% of the world’s population. So America has to bring itself to the world—and not be shy about it. But first the remnants of communism and a love for Karl Marx must be removed from the debate by confronting it directly. Affleck put the reference in a movie offered to the American public as a patriotic film and surely George Clooney thought it to be high brow political theater. Bill Ayers wants to see American capitalism crushed so that the land can return to the Indians—or so he thinks—and America will no longer have the ability to broadcast capitalism messages to the far corners of the world where communism is still the operating foundation of their governments.
It takes more than waving a flag on the 4th of July to keep America as the best hope the world has for freedom—and economic prosperity. And the CIA shouldn’t have to behave the way Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. did to prevent communism from gaining the looted wealth of oil fields and to use that wealth as weapons against America funneling money straight into the black hole of communist Russia at the time. The situation was then and still is far more complicated—but the essence is a decision between capitalism and communism. America has a need to project capitalism to every corner of the world so that immigrants don’t topple its economy with welfare benefits but instead give the potential immigrants the ability to live freely in their own countries with economic vitality as their foundations. America wasn’t trying to take over Iran, Iraq, Cuba, or any place else—it simply wanted to show those countries how to live in a capitalist society and how to benefit from it as partners throughout the world. The hatred of America from Bill Ayers, George Clooney, Ben Afflect and others who utter sentiments about imperialism projected from The United States is that they fear capitalism and believe that a version of communism needs to be the ruling philosophy—it has nothing to do with the good of the indigenous people. The root of the anger always comes back to capitalism versus communism. These radicals like Ayers do not support communism with a capital “C” but with a little one—and that is a sentiment that is very popular among those who think they know better than everyone else.
The World Cup soccer matches were so terribly boring for The United States because soccer is a socialist game. As pointed out in previous articles, the off sides rules and lack of ability to use hands during the game is metaphorical of socialist and communists governments. Soccer is the game most enjoyed in countries mired down with socialism. This is why there is a huge movement in America for many years to make soccer the dominate activity among young people—but as a sport, Americans, just like their rejection of Matt Damon’s Elysium know that there is something they don’t like about it—which of course is that they are both anti-capitalist in their primary philosophic foundations. So it’s not enough to wave a flag and clap after some fireworks explode. If you really love your country you’ll openly support capitalism not just in America—but in Iraq, Honduras, Mexico, China, and Russia—everywhere. There is no way to support both; a passive attitude toward Karl Marx’s communism cannot be permitted because it cannot compete with capitalism. Communism has to destroy capitalism to survive and if it does that, people will live in oppressed huts, under the control of regional warlords, international bankers, and fanatic religious radicals—and the borders of The United States will continue to be flooded by refuges seeking opportunity where only capitalism can give it.
First however dear reader you have to know your history and understand what is really behind any animosity exhibited by people like Bill Ayers who has corrupted the mind of many people with his hatred of American capitalism. A whole generation of Ben Affleck types have bought into his anti-imperialism hook, line and sinker and they make movies like Argo to support their thesis. But now you know rest of the story regarding Mohammad Rezâ Šâh Pahlavi without the slant of Marxist philosophy clouding the matter. Most Americans watch Argo and don’t quite get the Marx reference or the anti imperialism at the beginning until Barack Obama says something similar in a speech, or a teacher instructs something like-minded in a class room. Americans have been taught that they must feel “compassion” for those other places and be respectful of their history—even as communism eats away at their foundations. Americans sense it when they watch soccer or when the message is blatant like it was in Elysium so they vote with their dollars and work out their anxiety with a few more fireworks on the 4th of July and wave their flags a little more vigorously hoping to get back what they lost in philosophy to the dregs of society represented by Bill Ayers—exposed on the Kelly File on July 4, 2014.
You can’t play with America like a cat pawing at a ball of yarn, waving flags at patriotic holidays and putting your hand on your heart at sporting events. You have to buy into the philosophy of America and support capitalism everywhere it has an opportunity to develop—and you have to do it now. Because the enemies are deeply entrenched, and are everywhere—at every level of society—and they want their own kind of “regime change” and as Barack Obama has proven—mentored personally by Bill Ayers—capitalism is not the mode of operation. America is exceptional, but it is not its job to confine that exceptionalism to only 5% of the world population. It is not America’s task to yield to 95% of the rest of the world, but to teach them to be capitalists so that same 95% doesn’t try to cross over into the Mexican border to flee the communism and socialism of their home countries. America to defend itself must turn those numbers around so that more people within their own countries can gain the opportunities they would have in only The United States because of capitalism. It isn’t imperialism and control that America has been doing throughout the world—it has simply been the self-defense of capitalism against communism that is as still alive today as it was in 1950—only the names have changed and moved underground only to be revealed behind some of Hollywood’s biggest names at the end of the movies they produce thinking they are the smartest people in the world—and the only ones who notice.
They weren’t……………………….now, watch all these videos, and take note of the pattern.
The cries of anger from the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby by feminist groups is so reminiscent of my complaints of school levy supporters who are typically feminists looking to cover their parenting deficiencies with tax payer funded baby sitting services, that I had to go back to an article that caused a lot of controversy toward me as a kind of time capsule confirmation of my thoughts—to validate its merit. An article I wrote after a very contentious first quarter—politically in 2012 became cherry picked for negative comments to use against me, so I put it on password protection to stop the bleeding. Of course it was the Cincinnati Enquirer who was doing the cherry picking on behalf of the type of feminists who are now howling in rage against the recent high court decision. In the wake of that political turbulence I had not revisited that article to take the password off—which I should have done earlier—because if people could have seen the context of the article—they would have seen what the Enquirer had done. But I never got around to it until I wanted to see how true many of my statements were in the winter of 2012 compared to the radical position of the feminists against Hobby Lobby. At the link below, my comments from that time can be revisited.
The trouble with these feminists—the ones against Hobby Lobby and the typical school levy supporters which I described with my open opinion is that they cross the line in expecting other people to fund their beliefs. People are free to believe what they want to—those feminists are free to conduct their lives in their families and be man hating despots all they want—until they ask me for something. In the case of the school levy supporters they demanded that I support their politics with my tax money. Their reasons for a school levy and their demands of the public education system put the burden on me as a tax payer to support. When they did not respect the vote from Lakota residents in the fall of 2011, I saw that they were just going to keep coming until they got what they wanted, and I let my thoughts about their actions be known. What is the point of playing the same stupid game with them when they have only one objective in mind—higher taxes to support their progressive world outlook—which I do not support? The essence of their argument was take something from me that I didn’t want to give—and to get it they were more than willing to assassinate my character and anyone attached to me through brute force.
The same is going on over the Hobby Lobby case, the feminists are very concerned that the progressive gains they have made against American tradition—which I support—are slipping away so they feel they must become aggressive to defend their position. But their position is essentially the expectation that a corporation fund the sexual exploits of women without those women taking responsibility for their actions. In a lot of ways, this is far worse than the school levy supporters who really just want free babysitting and the guilt of their career building removed from them as the government takes responsibility for their children’s educations. In this case the feminists are demanding that Hobby Lobby fund sexual activity—which is the decision of women whether or not they wish to participate in such an activity or not. Sex doesn’t just happen—it is a decision and Hobby Lobby has no obligation as a corporation or a family business to contribute to those kinds of personal activities. If women want to work for a company that does endorse that kind of activity—then they can apply for a job at such a place, or start their own company where they can provide those benefits to employees–that way feminists could work together and not muddy the water of women who actually enjoy working for a company that respects religious beliefs and traditional value.
Yet the feminists expect “others” to fund their recklessness—and their personal philosophy of complete independence of males in their life. At the foundation of their proposal is to actually enslave everyone—whether they believe in the same things as the feminists or not—into contributing to their lifestyles. So the feminists are far from independent—but rather they are more dependent than ever. The only difference is that the feminist demands that society care for her instead of a single husband which might expect something in return—such as traditional housewife roles within a home, caring for children, preparing a majority of the meals, taking care of most domestic obligations—etc. The feminists want to be free of all those obligations, yet they still want the support of big government to care for them the way a typical “man-of-the-house” traditionally did, bringing home the money, taking care of fixing things and providing non emotional advice regarding priorities for the family’s direction—the “father knows best role.” In that role a housewife might have told children—“don’t do this or that or I’ll tell your father.” The children fearing such an overpowering figure might then correct their behavior. The modern feminist instead tells her children—“do what the government tells you, do what your teachers tell you, and mind the police.” The feminist has simply replaced the traditional head of household man with government. The trade-off was that government doesn’t expect anything from the feminists in return leaving them free to do anything they want, believe anything they want, and to espouse values regardless of their destructive tendencies without feeling the impact of direct consequence. Instead—those consequences are distributed to many people—people like me who do not support the feminist cause.
It’s not that women should be pushed down into a passive role in society. The only real difference between men and women are purely physical. The mind of people is where value really is—so in that context men and women are equal—if the mind is the root of judgment. But the feminists do not have the right personal philosophy—they are wrong about most of their assertions—at least compared to my traditional American values. They are free to believe or be as wrong as they wish—but they are not free to impose those values on other people who disagree with them. In essence, that is what the feminists against Hobby Lobby are attempting to do. It is that same attack gay rights advocates have against Chick-fil-A, or that race baiters have across the entire economy—the goal of all these parasitic groups is to gain something from other people who do not necessarily support those viewpoints—making those parties contribute in the acts by default.
This strategy puts the blame of bad, reckless behavior on the entire society as a result making correction of such behavior irredeemably impossible. For instance, a cost of feminism is the destruction of parenting ability provided to children. The divorce rate has increased, men have become feminized, and role models have been removed from the home as the state through teachers, and through court appointed liaisons became the central figures in a child’s life. Judges decide where a child sleeps in divorce hearings as opposed to the parents. The parents lose their rights to instruct their children once lawyers and government in general becomes part of the process. The adverse effect is that a whole generation of children are coming to age who look to government for decisions—which government is incapable of making—causing major problems currently. Feminism can be traced as the cause. It is of course more complicated than that—not all men are capable of being a good head-of-house; women not so attractive then don’t have access to the same type of good men as attractive women do—most feminists are not very attractive—which is the deep insecurity that they have and foundation for their commitment to feminism. Yet their commitment to that particular cause then has a chain reaction effect that could be blamed on destroying society—the effects are just now being recorded—socially. But all that is hidden because feminists through legal victories in the past have pulled everyone into contributing to their faults.
Feminist are fearful of the Hobby Lobby case because they see the trend turning against them and it is scary. If they cannot hide their stupidity behind all of society—behind large corporations like Hobby Lobby and others—they will be left vulnerable to take responsibility for the cost of their beliefs against society. For them, that is a terrifying prospect. Just as my comments from over two years ago have proven, the feminists are extreme radicals and when I made sure that I wasn’t going to go along with their plan—they did everything they could to come after me publicly which still angers me. They had no right, which led to my comments in the article linked above. And when I called them on things, they cherry picked my words and attempted to manipulate the situation into their favor just as they are doing now against Hobby Lobby and the Supreme Court. But history will prove what I’m saying correct. Just as I was able to resurrect the article above from two years ago, ten years from now this article will be reviewed similarly. And the facts will be known, the cost of feminism will be well documented, and the truth will be obvious. It is that truth which the feminists are terrified of in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby. The tide is finally turning against them—and there isn’t anywhere or anybody to hide behind. Hobby Lobby is one less place in a field of vanishing confinements that a decade from now will be an empty plain leaving the feminists and other such progressive groups bare and completely exposed for what they have always been.
Wonderful American women are people like Dana Loesch, Ayn Rand, and Annie Oakley. There are many others, those are just a few examples. So it isn’t women hating to declare that feminists are destructive, and on the wrong path. Just factual. And thank God for women like the Tampa Bay Buccaneer cheerleaders–symbols of American exceptionalism.
If I could claim to have had a teacher which had a great influence on my life as many contemporaries feel is so pertinent, it would be Joseph Campbell—which I’ve talked about before. Campbell was in the time of his life at the center of many intersecting ideals and he acquired that center through a grand adventure that could only have been found pursuing an extremely individual course through his life. One of those adventures found him to be one of the characters in the John Steinbeck novel Cannery Row as the great American novelist chronicled those years in that literary work. Steinbeck and Campbell were friends until Campbell fell in love with Carol Henning, Steinbeck’s wife. The group lived a pre-hippie existence in California as communism was becoming all the rage in America and all these intense experiences became the subject matter of Steinbeck’s novels. In a speech given by Steinbeck over Radio Free Europe in 1954 to the repressed people of Eastern Europe Steinbeck revealed some of his more mature political ideals refined over the years through his art and experiences. It is an eloquent defense of free expression and the power of the individual that represented the culmination of Steinbeck’s life work which is very pertinent to this very day. Instead speaking to the censorship behind the Iron Curtin, as Steinbeck had in the following speech, in the present day, the same censorship is occurring behind the veil of intelligentsia. The goal is the same—just the method of execution has changed. So before elaborating on the life of Steinbeck, Campbell, and our modern times—read that pertinent speech.
“To my friends,
There was a time when I could visit you and you were free to visit me. My books were in your stores and you were free to write to me on any subject. Now your borders are closed with barbed wire and guarded by armed men and fierce dogs, not to keep me out but to keep you in. And now your minds are also imprisoned. You are told that I am a bad writer but you are not permitted to judge for yourselves. You are told we are bad people but you are forbidden to see and to compare. You are treated like untrustworthy animals, subjected to conditioning as cold and ruthless as though you were rats in a laboratory. You cannot travel, you cannot read freely and you cannot work at the profession of your choice. Your writers are the conditioned servants of a regime. All of this is designed to destroy your ability to think.
I beg you to keep alive the integrity of the individual in his ability to judge and compare and create. May your writers write secretly and hold their writing for the time when this grey anesthetic has passed as pass it must. The free world outside your prison still lives. You will join it again and it will welcome you. Everything around you is cynically designed to destroy you as individuals. You must remember and teach your children that they are precious, not as dull cogs in the wheel of party existence, but as units complete and shining in themselves.”
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception”.
Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and went from there to study English Literature at Stanford University in Palo Alto, leaving, without a degree, in 1925. He traveled to New York City where he took odd jobs while trying to write. When he failed to have his work published, he returned to California and worked in 1928 as a tour guide and caretaker[7] at Lake Tahoe, where he met Carol Henning, his first wife.[3][7][8] The two were married in January 1930 in Los Angeles, where, with friends, he attempted to make money manufacturing plaster mannequins.[7]
When their money ran out six months later, Steinbeck and Carol moved back to Pacific Grove, California, to a cottage owned by his father, on the Monterey Peninsula a few blocks from the border of the city of Monterey, California. The elder Steinbecks gave John free housing, paper for his manuscripts, and from 1928, loans that allowed him to write without looking for work. During this period of the Great Depression, Steinbeck bought a small boat, and later claimed that he was able to live on the fish and crab that he gathered from the sea, as well as fresh vegetables from his garden and local farms. When that didn’t work, he was not above getting welfare, or rarely even stealing food from the local produce market.[7] Whatever food they had, they would share with their friends.[7] Carol became the model for Mary Talbot in Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row.[7]
Many of Steinbeck’s works are on required reading lists in American high schools. In the United Kingdom, Of Mice and Men is one of the key texts used by the examining body AQA for its English LiteratureGCSE. A study by the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature in the United States found that Of Mice and Men was one of the ten most frequently read books in public high schools.[28]
At the same time, The Grapes of Wrath has been banned by school boards: in August 1939, Kern CountyBoard of Supervisors banned the book from the county’s publicly funded schools and libraries.[14] It was burned in Salinas on two different occasions.[29][30] In 2003, a school board in Mississippi banned it on the grounds of profanity.[31] According to the American Library Association Steinbeck was one of the ten most frequently banned authors from 1990 to 2004, with Of Mice and Men ranking sixth out of 100 such books in the United States.[32][33]
Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: “Follow your bliss.”[1]
Campbell traveled to California for a year (1931–32), continuing his independent studies and becoming close friends with the budding writer John Steinbeck and his wife Carol. On the Monterey Peninsula, Campbell, like Steinbeck, fell under the spell of marine biologistEd Ricketts (the model for “Doc” in Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row as well as central characters in several other novels).[8] Campbell lived for a while next door to Ricketts, participated in professional and social activities at his neighbor’s, and accompanied him, along with Xenia and Sasha Kashevaroff, on a 1932 journey to Juneau, Alaska on the Grampus.[9] Like Steinbeck, Campbell began writing a novel centered on Ricketts as hero, but, unlike Steinbeck, he did not complete his book.[10]
Bruce Robison writes that “Campbell would refer to those days as a time when everything in his life was taking shape…. Campbell, the great chronicler of the ‘hero’s journey’ in mythology, recognized patterns that paralleled his own thinking in one of Ricketts’s unpublished philosophical essays. Echoes of Carl Jung, Robinson Jeffers and James Joyce can be found in the work of Steinbeck and Ricketts as well as Campbell.”[11]
To this day many of the people who infect the literary world are the same Marxists, socialist and political Democrats/communists who hung around circles like the one Campbell and Steinbeck had experimented with creating the same kind of stunted philosophic exploration witnessed in Eastern Europe during 1954. Nowhere else in the world were these concepts challenging convention than they were in places like the Monterey Peninsula during the time of Campbell and Steinbeck who would both move on to become some of the most prolific American writers of the 20th Century. Both men later in their life would be described as conservatives or libertarians depending on the source even though they were surrounded by the typical coastal communists so prevalent in artistic and scholastic circles. In the battlefield of ideals—both men would reject collectivism ultimately. Steinbeck’s thoughts on the matter were easy to see in his speech to Radio Free Europe. Campbell would ultimately develop the simple line, “Follow your bliss,” which is an extremely individual proclamation. Campbell would bounce back and forth for the rest of his life between the cause of that “bliss”–the origin of what makes a unique life part of some programmed destination—be it a god, or some unforeseen force—but his declaration was one that supported vehemently the value of an individual in pursuit of their own life.
I see the work of John Steinbeck as some of the pinnacle moments of observation and discovery ever recorded in human history–because of the impact they had on culture thereafter. His novel, and thus the performance by James Dean in the movie version of East of Eden are some of the most haunting and realistic portrayals of complex human problems ever seen in print. What is vastly important about all these literary works—those of Steinbeck and of Campbell was their sincere dedication to the lives of the individual as the rest of the creative world plunged down the drain of collectivist thought most adequately reflected in the communist push to take over the Democratic Party. Even though modern times has slid treacherously toward socialism—the kind of America that was a product of uniquely individual thinking can be found specifically in Steinbeck’s writing. Those who hated it—those college professors and critics who declared negativity toward Steinbeck were the same type of people spoken to in Eastern Europe—those who desire to destroy the individual in favor of collective salvation. These were aspects of John Steinbeck that were formed during that critical year of 1931 when he and Joseph Campbell were penniless and far from famous—where they worked out a complicated web of the human struggle between collectivism and individualism even when it threatened to destroy things they held precious—namely women. America’s literary future took a drastic turn for the good in these adventures between those two men which would be one of the few pillars left between the America we hope to preserve and the vile intentions of the European collectivists and their desire to spread the dark ignorance of philosophy that John Steinbeck tried to shine through across Eastern Europe in 1954.
This adventure was told in lurid detail in the great book, A Fire in the Mind. Click the link below to read it for yourself. I like the authors—even if they lean too far to the left for me. They are—following their bliss and captured in time the great work of these two men John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell in their struggle to behold the strength of the individual.
MYTHOLOGY / BIOGRAPHY
“A marvelous account of the life of a man who fell in love with stories and became our greatest teller of timeless myths. A feast for the mind, the imagination, and the heart.”
–Sam Keen, author of Fire in the Belly
“Joseph Campbell was an amazing, abundant, humane man. This book, by incorporating his journals, letters, and a massive offering of his intellectual sources, helps us understand how, in this half-dead world, such a character comes to be.”
–Robert Bly, poet and author of Iron John: A Book About Men
“Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind ignites the soul of the reader with immortal longings. To read it is to swim in a river of old with Joseph Campbell, whose capacity for knowledge was as vast as his passion for living. [It is a] potent telling of the quest of one who brought life to myth and myth to life.”
–Jean Houston, author of The Search for the Beloved
Joseph Campbell forged an approach to the study of myth and legend that made ancient traditions and beliefs immediate, relevant, and universal. His teachings and literary works, including The Masks of God, have shown that beneath the apparent themes of world mythology lie patterns that reveal the ways in which we all may encounter the great mysteries of existence: birth, growth, soul development, and death. Biographers Stephen and Robin Larsen were students and friends of Campbell for more than twenty years. With exclusive access to his personal papers and journals, they weave a rich tapestry of stories and insights that catalogue both his personal and public triumphs.
The authors, STEPHEN LARSEN, Ph.D., is the author of The Shaman’s Doorway and The Mythic Imagination. He is a practicing psychotherapist and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at SUNY (Ulster). Robin Larsen, Ph.D., is an exhibiting artist and art historian. She is editor-in-chief of the tricentennial biography and anthology Emanuel Swedenborg: A Continuing Vision. The Larsens co-direct the Center for Symbolic Studies in New Paltz, New York.
(Yeah, I know that guy, really well). I was in Hollywood once where an unnamed actress wanted to pay me a handsome amount of money to treat her in this fashion and I tried to explain to her why she wanted to have it done and that she needed to correct that desire. Of course it angered her and she never spoke to me again—but let me be clear—I have a lot of experience in the how and why people desire BDSM, and I have always been against the practice. Unfortunately, a majority of the people in the world these days desire BDSM in some capacity and this is extremely unhealthy. The cause I will reveal at the end of this article, but first we need to understand why people do it—or want to have it done to them. The best example of course is Larry Wachowski who started messing around in the Dungeon in Los Angeles and his experiences there ruined his marriage and made him realize that he desired submissive sex—and that he was really a woman. No—that is not the reality—he just took it too far and misread his desires. So below are quotes from an article on the topic by dominatrixs who are paid professionals whose task it is to turn people into sexual submissives—particularly men—and their observations on why their clients came to them. Larry Wachowski’s story is actually one that too many people have, men and women and there is no way to solve the many riddles in American culture when these silly fantasies occupy the minds of a society the way that it currently does—so some attention must be given to it. The part where my opinions on it will enrage people is that it is clearly a mental neurosis built on poorly constructed values which causes it and is the direct result of a failed personal philosophy. If you dear reader are a man and have submissive fantasies—you are fu**ed up and need to be fixed. Here is why.
Many men who turn to submissive fantasies do so for precisely the sort of vacation from responsibility that Roiphe suggests women are seeking. Olivia Severine, a transsexual dominatrix living in San Francisco, says most of her clients were “very high-powered” men weighed down by responsibility. “They came to see me as a brief escape when no one was looking at them for direction or leadership,” she says. “The time with me is when they were told what to do, what to feel and how to act … and all the weight of their careers, families, lives, is lifted from them for a cherished few hours.”
Mistress Shae Flanigan, a Los Angeles dominatrix, says her clients are “CEOs, high-ranking managers, lawyers and wonderfully brilliant men from all over the business spectrum.” What they have in common is “that they come to me to create an environment where they don’t need to think,” she says. “Where they can trust me to keep them safe while I weave together an enticing, thrilling, euphoric and painful world where it is literally impossible to think.”
It isn’t that these guys wish they had less real-world power — it’s just, power is stressful, and submission provides a release. “BDSM is a hell of a lot more affordable of a vacation than the Bahamas, I promise you,” says Flanigan.
Melissa Febos, author of “Whip Smart,” a book about her time as a pro-domme, tells me, “As someone who spent nearly four years catering to the submissive fantasies of men, and who eventually had to acknowledge her own submissive fantasies, I can say with some certainty that I think all people experience anxiety about power,” she says. “Aren’t our objects of eroticization often the things we feel unreconciled about?”
Most of Febos’ clients “experienced an imbalance of power in their lives,” she says. For some it was “extreme disempowerment,” like child abuse, racism or poverty; for others, it was “an overwhelming burden of power,” related to everything from wealth to politics. (“During the Republican convention, business at the dungeon boomed,” she says.) All of that is to say that “eroticization stemming from anxiety is not gender-specific,” Febos explains — nor is it specific to the relative power one has in the real world.
“Everyone, regardless of career choice or level of importance, is saddled with the burden of making important decisions about their own lives and the lives of the people around them,” Domina Nyx of New York City points out.
While Natasha Strange, who has worked as a domme for almost 20 years, has had plenty of “men who are powerful and want to give up control for a bit,” she’s also had tons of “musicians, cab drivers, pharmacy reps, teachers and your basic blue-collar workers who are just kinky and want to feel desired for an hour or three.” Interestingly enough, she says, “The very first female client I had was a housewife and a mother of two.”
All of my creative written works up until this point have been focused on human sacrifice. It is a topic I have long been obsessed over. When I realized that becoming an archaeologist would not answer the questions I was asking I turned to comparative religion and philosophy to understand. In my 1997 screenplay The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia I directly explored the horror of this topic and the work bounced around Hollywood for a number of years. When I showed apprehension in joining the Writers Guild when directed by a Wilshire Blvd agent—the story died because with the promise of developing the script was a reworking of the sacrifice plotline and a refocus on the horror aspects. Well, the point of the story for me was to understand why human beings felt they needed to sacrifice themselves to other people. So I continue to retain the rights, but development died on the vine. My 2004 novel The Symposium of Justice was essentially about a vigilante who protects people from the desire of an “evil system” to sacrifice the good for the many at the expense of the individual. My 2012 novel Tail of the Dragon was essentially about a man who refused to allow himself to be sacrificed in any manner at all socially. His refusal caused the greatest car chase in American history—it became a kind of Vanishing Point type story except much more intense. But the central thesis was on sacrifice. I have had many publishers, agents, actors, financiers and the like convey their appreciation of my works, but there is always something left out of our dialogue which goes unsaid and prevents further interaction and development.
From 2006 to 2009 I conducted a number of onsite visits to areas known for their human sacrifice to understand better the cause. I visited the site of Cahokia outside of St. Louis and the subject of my 1997 screenplay. Based on some new information from that visit The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia screenplay won an award at the Indie Gathering Film Festival in the horror category. Shortly after my wife and I visited the Chichen Itza archaeological site in the Yucatan Peninsula to study the actual location of many human sacrifice examples. I had thought that the Mel Gibson film Apocalypto was actually one of the best Anthropological/Archaeological films done on the Mayan culture and on human sacrifice. So out of all the world’s sacrificial sites—Chichen Itza held the best example of the practice that was the most fully preserved. I had my thesis which was put into my books and screenplays and ironically, Mel Gibson was destroyed as a filmmaker after that film which came out during this period. There was something about the subject matter of sacrifice which made people feel uncomfortable. On one level they agreed—the Mayan practice of human sacrifice was terrible, and barbaric. On the other, human sacrifice still occurs; it is just much slower and doesn’t necessarily mean that a person must be killed—literally. Just metaphorically—the cause of most BDSM is to reconcile that metaphorical death within an individual life.
While helping Doc Thompson promote the first Atlas Shrugged film over AM radio, I discovered Ayn Rand and read all her books and found that she had already been down the road I was going in regard to human sacrifice. She had approached the problem philosophically where mine was archaeological, but the conclusions were similar. This helped me refine the argument from a big general thesis against sacrifice to a more pointed one backed by her previous work in Objectivism. So this lead me to establish the proper background in declaring that I have spent a lot of time on this notion of sacrifice and explored its nature as a corrosive social element and am fully capable to speak on the matter with authority.
The reason that men desire to “not think” and to surrender themselves to a dominatrix is because they have been taught that not everyone is a superman—that not everyone can support the world—and that weaknesses are virtuous. It is inconceivable to me that a “powerful” man responsible for the jobs of many people and the fiscal merits of a company he works for—or owns, would desire to have his pants pulled down like a child and be spanked—harassed, and dominated by another human being because they want a vacation from making hard decisions. The cause is a failed philosophy at the heart of their very minds. But the cause of the belief that not everyone can be a superman is that the notion of self-sacrifice has been embedded into such men from the time that they were children. If a man is too successful, he feels guilt about it and seeks to reconcile that guilt by being dominated—the way he dominates others. It’s a silly belief that a social balance must be maintained and that it can only be found through masochistic pain. That is the start, and like Larry Wachowski who went from zero to a 1000 after the success of his Matrix film—he did not have the mental capacity to deal with the success other than his instruction of self-sacrifice by a society still functioning like the now extinct Mayans.
When the actress asked me to beat her with one of my whips, I understood what she wanted. She sat with me at the catering truck talking about how tough it was to get roles in Hollywood, how relationships were tough to maintain, that everyone expected you to be one way or another and that if you didn’t fit those molds—you didn’t get parts. She went on and on about her father’s expectations, her mother’s feminist declarations—her agents typecasting—I don’t think I said a word during the entire lunch hour on set. It was like nobody had listened to this girl for a decade and for whatever reason she felt she could talk to me. At the end she put a stack of ten $100 dollar bills on the table and asked me to hit her with my whip the way I had been doing on set—only privately. She talked about the culture of Los Angeles and how much money I could make providing such a service to the frustrated actresses in Beverley Hills, the confused house wives of the studio executives up in the hills around Burbank and the cultural immigrants of Glendale looking for the kind of abuse they received in the countries they came from in the safety of a person they could trust would not hurt them permanently. She told me about places like the Dungeon where Larry Wachowski lost his mind and manhood. Apparently this nice clean-cut girl who was married to one of the producers with several of her children on the set spent a lot of time in those kinds of places. I told her I didn’t do that kind of thing—that my interest in bullwhips was inspired by Douglas Fairbanks and the old serials of the 30s, 40s and 50s. I hoped that by mentioning old Hollywood, we would find common ground—but instead she went cold and got up embarrassed from feeling so vulnerable in what she revealed to someone who wouldn’t jump to the dark side with her. “Fu** Douglas Fairbanks” she said as she took her tray back to the truck. She left the bills on the table, angrily dispensed her tray, then came back to retrieve the money and sat down next to her husband who had been doing his best to avoid my gaze—until his wife sat back down next to him.
These broken thoughts—these desires to be abused don’t just regulate themselves to the bedroom. They come out in voting booths where voters secretly desire to be dominated by a Barack Obama, or commanded around by a Harry Reid, or lied to by Nancy Pelosi. Men and women want to be seduced by Bill Clinton—they know he is a scum bag liar, but they have this notion of wanting to be abused by him to satisfy the internal need they have for insult—pain, and suffering. The more comfortable their lives are, the more they feel they must pay someone or something back to the universe to balance out existence. And non-thinking pain and abuse accomplishes two things, it does give them a retreat from responsibility, but also it equalizes the guilt they feel from being successful and having the ability to get their nails done, or play a round of golf at 1 PM in the afternoon until 5 PM while most people in the world are working.
Chances are dear reader you have these same thoughts and feelings and they were given to you by a failed society and its ridiculous philosophies built upon crumbled civilizations from the past. If you desire to be spanked, slapped around, have your hair pulled—to be called disgraceful names, to be handcuffed, raped, or have things clipped to your skin by someone else until it hurts—you are messed up. You are broken and need to be fixed. What you are feeling are ancient thoughts that should be eradicated. They are not healthy thoughts given to you outside of your control by some deity living in the hereafter. They are screwed up philosophies given to mankind by the past which always lead to failed societies. In the case of Larry Wachowski he destroyed his life and is seeking justification in the form of being a woman to excuse his mistakes. It is only because he is a progressive that the studio bosses keep him employed hoping that one of his films will be the next Matrix—which was a fluke—a one shot wonder. But the entire nation of America is seeking a similar punishment through self-sacrifice and under such a belief system nothing can endure.
Consider the absolutely stupid notion that we are supposed to thank our troops for their service to their country. The popular phrase—“some gave all” implies that giving one’s life to the freedom of everyone in the country is the noblest thing anyone can do—and that is just stupid. The sudden appreciation of our troops over the last decade of treacherous debt (nearly $18 trillion and counting) only confirms to individuals everywhere that the state is the highest authority and its continued preservation must be endured at any cost—even if it means death. Therefore, with that basic premise intact success is believed to be reconciled through pain and suffering. And because sex is a major part of every adult life, punishment has entered the bedroom to align the minds of warped individuals with the insanity they are being forced to contend with due to massive mismanagement and poor philosophical choices of the world’s governments—particularly America. It is worse in America not because it is a bad nation, but because there is a pretense of freedom which is assumed, but the old diabolical need for abuse still persists in the human mind forcing the behavior underground on a massive level. This duality causes many of the problems we are seeing.
In Asian countries where the governments are communist and abusive, the old desires to be abused by an authority figure satisfy their innate impulses so the sexual deviancy does not go underground the way the cultures of Los Angeles or New York conduct their affairs—living one way in the open, another when nobody is looking. But the causes are all the same—mankind has not grown up and away from the self-sacrificial nature of their ancestors and are still just as primitive. Until a mind grows up and away from such a desire of sacrifice—the evils of personal destruction through masochistic abuse and internal hatred will continue. And that will cause more movies like Cloud Atlas to be made instead of films about people who have overcome self-sacrifice—like in Atlas Shrugged.
The IRS is guilty of several crimes and they are stuffing the information behind a veil of social masks designed to conceal their actions. During our talk it hit me that the only way to explain this IRS situation is through the proper context of the history of Attila which was actually a concept Nathaniel Branden provided to Ayn Rand. Those two archetypes, Attila and the Witch Doctor were constructed during a period of American history where near pure capitalism was seen being snuffed out by regulation and the events which would create The Great Society were being implemented. The book discussing Branden’s archetypes was For The New Intellectual published by Ayn Rand in 1961 well before any of the current troubles occurred—but the signs were clearly present. The temperament of talk radio which requires a lot of back and forth as a fluid discussion would not allow for the introduction of the Attila concept without all the back story—so it wouldn’t fit during our one hour talk radio show. But as Matt played several clips from the IRS hearings—things I had heard, but not in the condensed order that he played them—it was obvious where America was going wrong and how it had to be fixed.
The IRS clearly has become the modern Attila—an entity which rules by force and is controlled by the Witch Doctors in the White House and Supreme Court. They were hiding their obvious crimes against the American Constitution which was created specifically to protect citizens from future Attila types so that the protection of the Constitution would be eroded away before America realized a crime had taken place. All of America had been trained to support either Attila or the Witch Doctor through their education systems—provided of course by the government and their metaphorical Witch Doctor lawyers. That is a mouthful to say on live radio but it was dashing through my mind as Matt and I spoke. This leaves Americans defenseless to deal with a corrupt IRS because most citizens have either already submitted to Attila the ultimate dominatrix or a committed alliance to a Witch Doctor following the philosophy of Immanuel Kant essentially declaring that reality is anything that the mass collection of people in a democratic government believe it to be. So if the masses believe that the IRS is innocent of a crime—then this is to be the projected fact in the news media and legal briefs for all time. When the IRS commissioner revealed to Trey Gowdy—which Matt and I spoke of—that the commissioner did not believe the IRS did anything wrong he was playing the Witch Doctor role. His assertion was that the government was spending considerable time and money convincing the masses through public relation tricks that a crime at the IRS had not been committed, that evidence had not been destroyed and that there was nothing to see for the inquisitive eye. The arrogance found on the face of the commissioner was the knowledge that if the government through the Witch Doctor antics of Obama could sway enough American support to believe in their innocence—that the reality of their innocence would follow—therefore leaving the IRS free of conviction.
This obviously was not the case; The IRS is guilty of using its power to harass citizens into a particularly desired political direction—good for the Attila regime represented by the IRS. The IRS is not serving the needs of the people, and government certainly isn’t serving the tax payers of The United States—they were falsely believing that they were part of an exclusive culture of aristocrats and that the IRS were their personal minions to force compliance protecting that aristocracy. I blame much of this trouble on the philosophers of the past, people such as Kant, Marx, Descartes, Hume, Hegel—basically the Rationalists, and the Empiricists—or put more simply those who abandoned reality and those who clung to it by abandoning their mind. Those philosophers shaped the modern world to fit the mold of old world Europe. Marx was so backward he had no answer for capitalism which he sought to destroy after watching the two primary revolutions in France, particularly the Revolution of 1848. The workers of the world unite slogan was built up against the Attila aristocracy so affiliated with Europe at the time. Capitalism freed the minds of man—especially in America. But for anyone who has seen the play Les Misérables it is clear that it was the Attila of aristocracy that was suppressing the people of France. Capitalism would have freed them, but Marx had arrived first to their radical minds in the form of the Witch Doctor who wanted to rule over Attila—so the young communists used Attila tactics to overthrow the aristocracy thus catapulting them all not toward freedom, but to continued oppression because they didn’t understand what they were doing—philosophically. That is why there is a red flag in the play—and the movie—it represents the blank red flag of socialism as proposed by Karl Marx—a fellow Witch Doctor from the philosophic school of Kant.
In America roughly 50 year later the IRS formalized itself in 1918 after first being created during the Civil War in 1862 to raise funds for the effort. Once the government received a taste of the revenue collection system they became addicted and continued to collect taxes long after the war was over passing law after law not because they needed to—but because they could—the Witch Doctors had the power of Attila and they intended to use it—and did. As that same European socialism came to America through its universities by way of Marx and Kant the IRS gained more and more Attila like tendencies becoming essentially Javert from Les Misérables the mindless functioning Attila with a terminator like persistence to recapture Valjean at any cost—in spite of him becoming a successful factory owner and caretaker of Cosette. This was a classic case of cutting off one’s nose to spite its face—but being a non thinking servant of the Witch Doctor aristocracy Javert mindlessly served that order and in the end when he had failed could only commit suicide in self sacrificial obedience to the Witch Doctor oriented “law” which he enforced with brute force and conviction. The IRS as a government organization became this “Valjean”—the Attila by default and would spend the next hundred years destroying capitalism in America until as Matt and I pointed out during the broadcast America only had a -2.9% GDP in the first quarter of 2014—which apparently shocked everyone—except me. I’ve only been saying it for four years now. That drop is a direct result of too many Attila types in American government imposing force upon job makers instead of freeing them up to create jobs and products. (Why is this so damn hard for people to understand, the hero in Les Misérables was a factory owner. Fantine suffered because she lost her job at the factory–had to sell her hair, teeth and her body to care for her child—but why—because not enough people built factories for god’s sake. She was poor because there weren’t enough jobs. There needed to be more people like Valjean, not less and only capitalism provides such things) The IRS has spent a century destroying capitalism and now they have been caught as law breakers—and the government instead entrenched itself to protect its Witch Doctors. Obama got on a plane and flew to the Midwest to rally support seeking protection from a congress that wants to sue him over Executive Order malpractice. Again, the philosophy Obama exhibits is the one of Immanuel Kant—that if enough people believe something—the reality is subjugated toward that majority belief. So the facts of the IRS case are ignored in preservation of Attila and the Witch Doctors in Washington.
Matt Clark and I had a great talk as usual—and it was very productive. Many people who avoid reading, thinking, or taking responsibility for the state of the world were not aware of the Branden/Rand metaphor developed in 1961 because universities are teaching Kant and Marx, not the new philosophies born in America by minds defending capitalism. Instead, the goal has been to return America back into the European fold of Attila and the Witch Doctor through art, like Les Misérables and the persistence of the IRS who is the metaphorical Javert protecting the aristocratic system of government with mindless commitment. Too much to discuss on AM radio, but it was the essence of the problems covered on Matt’s show. It is because of Attila and the Witch Doctor that the IRS has been committing so many crimes in the light of day and getting away with it—and why the government itself is powerless to do anything about it—even though justice is crying out for attention—and revenge.
Yikes, I watched recently what may be the worst movie I have ever seen—which is very embarrassing for the movie. I mean, Jesus Christ—it was absolutely terrible. Diabolically ridiculous, lampoonist, flawed, disjointed—it was a wrecked concoction of poor philosophy, disastrously stupid politics, and a sheer waste of the three hours I spent watching it. Tragically, I hoped it would be good, Tom Hanks was in it, Halle Berry was as well, the Wachowski family was involved who did films like the Matrix and Speed Racer—so even though I thought I would dislike the politics—which were noticeably progressive—I hoped the movie would have its moments. It didn’t. It was just terrible and the only reason I am reviewing it is so that I can show readers here that not every movie review is good. Some people have accused me of working for Warner Brothers because of my glowing reviews of the Batman films, and Eastwood projects—but this—this Cloud Atlas—it was just wretched. It was like looking at something a dog puked up after eating feces in the yard mixed with freshly cut grass and garbage out of the hamper. It is unbelievable that anybody ever gave a green light for that movie because if that is what people in Hollywood think is a good movie, we are in big trouble.
I gave the film a chance because Roger Ebert loved it—he said he thought it was one of the most ambitious films ever made and was a complicated riddle that deserved multiple viewings. And parts of it were very ambitious, the budget was large, the visionary attempt was epic, and it had stars. Susan Sarandon’s inclusion almost made me not even watch it because of her active progressivism—but I recorded it on my DVR in March and finally got around to watching it in June out of obligation really. I felt because of what Ebert said that the film deserved attention, but I knew it was a progressive film—so I treated it like a trip to the dentist—something you don’t really enjoy, but is needed from time to time for basic maintenance. My conclusion was that Roger Ebert lost his mind. Cloud Atlas was that terrible.
The foundation of Cloud Atlas is deeply flawed making all the interesting interconnected storylines worthless. The film is about gay love, slavery, feminism, and is clearly against big oil. It is also about the worthless nature of individual lives and only concerned about how they fit into the larger tapestry of existence. Considering Ebert died shortly after Cloud Atlas I’ll give him a pass—maybe the idea of resurrection through a future life was something appealing to him in those last moments and he saw in the Cloud Atlas insanity a ray of hope for himself. The film was released around the same time that Atlas Shrugged Part II hit theaters and I remember well having to defend that film from people who loved Cloud Atlas. So I made a point to see the film at the first available moment which is why I recorded it. Being an open supporter of the filmmakers producing the Atlas Shrugged films, I wanted to understand how the other side could make such comparisons, and what I learned was that Cloud Atlas is the exact opposite philosophy of Atlas Shrugged. The two couldn’t be further apart in values—they have nothing in common other than the word “Atlas” in their titles.
And before anybody says that I didn’t understand the film………………….please, don’t waste the time. I understood all the metaphors in the film and I get the interaction of the characters and the various time periods. But to what point—so that the sick guy on the ship trying to get home to his wife who was really the future goddess of civilization could tell her bigoted father that she was running off with her husband? That was the closing scene and the climax of the picture?????????????????????????????? No, there was another climax, the one with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry married and living happily on another planet well into the future telling the story of Cloud Atlas to his grandchildren who wanted to look up at the stars and know which one was earth. Really???????????????????? I wasted three hours to come to that stupid revelation? You can refund money but you can’t refund time—and I am resentful that I lost three hours of my life to Cloud Atlas.
However, one thing that I did learn is that everything I say about progressives is absolutely 100% correct. Their world vision was on full display in Cloud Atlas and philosophically, they are like children right out of the womb—yet they believe they are at the height of human knowledge. Cloud Atlas was presented as an exclamation point and epic triumph toward progressive thought. Tom Hanks is a smart guy and a great actor—so he consciously took on multiple roles in the film. It was obviously for him a labor of love—he believed in the project intensely—and that concerns me greatly for his very mental health. There was nothing profound about Cloud Atlas. It was like watching the news with a progressive slant. It was ridiculously simple and anti-climatic. I mean crap…………..it was just terrible.
I understand that I hate progressive and liberal philosophy. Those idiots can call me a right-winger all they want—because if Cloud Atlas is what they think merits thought—they are thoughtless. They do not even have the ability to make a compelling argument if that is the best they can do. Cloud Atlas is the culmination of that kind of crappy Hollywood politics where screenplays are written by boot lickers at parties where drugs flow freely and everyone thinks they are brilliant from the vantage point of the little flat of land nudged up between the Pacific Ocean and the Nevada desert mountains. The Wachowski family is not the second coming. They likely ripped off the concept of the Matrix from another writer and have struggled to make a good film since—even though studios have thrown massive budgets at them. Larry Wachowski wrecked his life in the Hollywood Dungeon when he started hanging around with Iisa Strix and Buck Angel the transsexual known as “The Dude With a Pussy.” Worse yet, one of the directors of Cloud Atlas was Lana—who used to be Larry after he went through a sex change operation—so he is one of those LGBT people and that wrecked identity became Cloud Atlas.
It’s not that the many incidences in Cloud Atlas where male characters play females, and females play males was artistically wrong—it was just too simple. Anyone who bases their identity purely on sexual function is a lost cause—and in essence, this is what was going on in Cloud Atlas. The premise of the characters is from the vantage point of the kind of person who desires to engage in bondage in the Dungeon which is a huge part of that transsexual community in Los Angeles. But for the rest of the nation—it’s considered stupid. So while Cloud Atlas had a 10 minute standing ovation at Sundance and progressives raved about the film—it is only hard-core progressives who enjoyed it. For everyone else—it is ridiculously simple—and tragically limited in its philosophical outlook. What makes a person is not the holes they have in their bodies which allow for sexual penetration—it is the content of their minds—and in Cloud Atlas, the minds are disasters who made a film seething with liberal talking points ridiculously displayed as a work of art that belong nowhere else but in a litter box.
Ironically, I didn’t even know that Larry had turned himself into Lana before I watched Cloud Atlas. I discovered that trying to figure out why the movie was so fu**ed up. I was trying to understand how and why Warner Brothers distributed the film and discover who put up the money for the project and learn what on earth the directors were thinking. That’s when I learned that Larry never recovered from his divorce after being caught with the dominatrix Strix in the Dungeon—and had poured way too much mental energy into becoming a woman. He then directed a film about the quality of a soul regardless of gender roles over a long-span of time to justify his/her terrible decisions in life.
Wow……………………………
Do yourself a favor———never watch Cloud Atlas. Something’s are better left alone—and that movie is one of them.
If it wasn’t such an astonishing film with some truly remarkable points to make—I would likely have just enjoyed Jersey Boys as a pleasant movie. It’s not the normal kind of film that I would go to the theater to see. I’m not really crazy about pop music, and I could care less about another mobster movie—which Jersey Boys is at its heart. But this was different—I have been a Clint Eastwood fan all of my life and continue to admire his work late in life when most people would have cashed in and checked out a long time ago. I remember well when George Burns was still living well in his 80s which defied logic—but even he looked like a burnt up old man. Eastwood still has his swagger—and his mind at 84 without any sign of slowing down. I knew during the filming of Jersey Boys Clint’s wife wanted to run off with an old friend—a much younger man, then when Eastwood was ready to give her a divorce, she decided she didn’t want it. I also knew that Eastwood’s oldest son Kyle was in the film as a musical coordinator, and that one of his newest daughters Francesca was supposed to be in the cast. I also knew that he was in pre-production for American Sniper—and there was a lot of other subplots not even related to the difficult production of Jersey Boys which is very well documented. Heck, the main character Frankie Valli is still alive and performing, and would see everything that Eastwood put on film—which can be intimidating to get right. There were at least 1000 reasons Jersey Boys should have been a bad movie and there would be every excuse available for it—so I went to see the film to support Clint Eastwood and his tireless efforts as a brilliant film director. What I saw wasn’t just good, or even great—it was magnificent.
Jersey Boys is a movie filled with very subtle scenes of radiance. The strength of Clint Eastwood not only as an actor, but a director is in his ability to put many emotions in a scene from moment to moment. This was never clearer than when Frankie Valli rescued his daughter who was a run-away from a vile scum bag with a mobster hit man. The moment brought laughs from the audience and was reminiscent of one of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films but within a moment in the same scene was a level of drama seen in Mystic River. Valli had rescued his daughter then tried to tell her he was going to save her by making her dreams come true—helping her develop a singing career. As Valli spoke the words, it was clear he was making a mistake—the girl only wanted her father’s attention and her rebelliousness was clearly a response to an emptiness left in her life by a father who was always on the road. The scene was like Eastwood himself, a person who works at many levels all at the same time. The actor clearly had to know how Eastwood wanted to shoot the scene, yet the real Frankie Valli is one of the producers of the film and the decisions he had made eventually would lead to the death of that daughter and had to be painful for him. Eastwood handled all these elements like a symphony—effortlessly. Most directors would have wanted to show off how brilliant they were in such a scene—but Eastwood doesn’t even feel he needs to put a light on it. It just is—and he moves on to the next scene which is just as brilliant for the rest of the movie. It is amazing not only on how Eastwood handles things in front of the camera, but the elements behind the camera which affect what’s in front like an untouched maestro that only extreme maturity and philosophic understanding could provide. I had the feeling that the scene would cause the real Frankie Valli a lot of pain, but Eastwood didn’t care. I thought of his character from High Plains Drifter from many years prior—“people are only scared of what they know about themselves inside.” Eastwood had seen through the emotion written on the page of a screenplay to the heart of the problem and he did not hesitate to cast his opinion through film—which was gut wrenching. Moments later, Eastwood had the audience laughing again and enjoying music. It was quite phenomenal to see.
An example of such brilliance was the way the main characters provided narration throughout the film looking directly into the camera like it was a live stage play. Typically, it is a big error for an actor to look directly into the camera and speak to an audience—yet Eastwood pulls it off without being distracting. I can’t ever recall seeing such a narrative that does not interrupt the flow of the film and it wasn’t just one character—but several. It is a difficult concept to conceive, and even harder to pull off—yet Clint Eastwood effortlessly pulled it off knowing very well that he was shooting a period piece that most of the audience was alive to confirm—and playing music that many in the audience knew by heart. For any other film director—the task would be daunting—but for 84-year-old Clint Eastwood who is a master of his craft and at the top of his game—it was just the result of a life fully lived by a man who had seen and done everything and lived to tell the stories.
Jersey Boys could have been a PG film—there was no sex in it, or nudity. It was done very stylishly—except that the F-bomb was used extensively. But it was never distracting—it felt natural—like part of the culture we were witnessing. Warner Brothers would have reigned in any director except Clint Eastwood. They would have cut the language to get the PG rating for ticket sales, but because of whom the director was—they left Jersey Boys alone which tremendously elevated the authenticity of the subject matter.
Jersey Boys is a musical, but it didn’t go out of its way to be elaborately flowery in that category—the way Chicago, or even Walk The Line did—it again was an effortless exchange between a master filmmaker who happens to be old and uniquely able to convey wisdom that only elderly people can achieve—without being stuffy. Jersey Boys is really amazingly efficient in its delivery of complicated subject matter, well-known songs, and the telling of a story backed by actual history. In one scene the music is interrupted while one of the band members turns to the camera and speaks directly to the audience. It was a strangely satisfying way to tell the story that might only make sense on a printed page as a dream sequence. Most filmmakers would struggle to tell the crew in a meeting what their vision for such a scene would be—yet again Eastwood pulls it off as if everyone does it in every film ever made.
I found myself identifying with the young Frankie Valli and his unique relationship to a mob boss in Christopher Walken. I had a similar background—and understand how complex those types of relationships can be—how the morality between right and wrong can easily be colored gray. Eastwood in telling this kind of story never loses sight of right and wrong while at the same time covering every shade of gray that there is with humor, horror, pity, and honor. There hasn’t been a mob film done this well since The Godfather or Goodfellas. Christopher Walken played his part with all the confidence one would expect—and entered the storyline reminiscent of Pulp Fiction. Again there is typically a tendency to overplay the Walken type of mob boss in films because his performance was so incredibly strong. Yet Eastwood backs off the thrusters just enough to hit the right speed with the entire mob portion of the story seemingly taking a back seat to the music—which of course it was actually the support structure without naming it.
Yet my favorite character in the story was Bob Gaudio who at the end of the film proudly proclaimed to the camera—that without him, none of the events of the story would have happened—and he’s right. Gaudio wrote the songs that made Frankie Valli famous and carried the Four Seasons to heights they wouldn’t otherwise achieve. It wasn’t a teamwork exercise—it was because of Bob Gaudio that the Four Seasons produced so many hits. Frankie Valli had the unique voice, and everyone in the band did the hard work on the road—but it was because of Gaudio that there was anything to sing. I think only Clint Eastwood could have had a character deliver a line like that without sounding pretentious. It was a uniquely Clint Eastwood line delivered authentically.
If you go back to Eastwood films like Play Misty for Me the fabulous cinematography seen in Jersey Boys is not there. But the substance of subject matter was. Eastwood films are always intelligent, even in his comedies like Every Which Way But Loose. But Eastwood never let technical limits stop him from making a film. He doesn’t seem to worry about making something that will be criticized by someone who might think they can do it better. He just makes things—and really doesn’t seem to care how it’s judged. In this fashion he has made a lot of movies over a very long career. But starting with the movies he has made since his late 60s, the subject matter and quality of the films has become much better culminating in Jersey Boys. If this isn’t the Best Picture at the 2014 Academy Awards—I don’t know what would be. It is filmmaking at its best by a director who is the best. It was a pleasure to watch, and a real treasure to come from Clint Eastwood who once again has not disappointed me at the movie theater. I got more out of Jersey Boys than I thought I would—and that is always a good thing. And for me to feel that way about a film—it has to have some unique texture that speaks at many levels—and Jersey Boys does—just like the guy who made it.
I first ran into the music of Frankie Valli when I saw Grease as a kid, the movie with John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. Even back then, Valli was already considered an elderly music legend. At that same time, Clint Eastwood was an aging actor playing parts in films that were nearing retirement. It is then ironic that these two entertainment professionals are still around and kicking in 2014 and that they united to make the film Jersey Boys. For me the most haunting portion of the film was the first time the daughter who would die later in the story sat at the top of the steps of their home angry at her daddy, Frankie Valli for not being home more. For both Eastwood and Valli this had to be a hard scene to film, because their entertainment lives had taken a toll on their personal lives. For Eastwood it was happening again and again, and during the filming of Jersey Boys his wife wanted to run off with a another man. But who could blame her Eastwood hadn’t been a saint. Eastwood has had so many girlfriends and children by them over his long life that he had to have many similar discussions with them as shown in Jersey Boys. The pain is that Valli did not listen to his daughter even though it was obvious that he loved her. There has been several times where I have had the same talk with my daughters and I chose to stay home—and to this day my kids appreciate it. I never had to deal with the kind of things Valli or Eastwood did—but these are the kinds of decisions that must be made by people who want to play the entertainment game at that level. Eastwood handled the scene with haunting coolness given the fact that several of his own children were on the set of Jersey Boys and undoubtedly the real Frankie Valli had to watch the dailies and it had to hurt him. There was real pain in those scenes—and they were handled with care without being too mushy.
If you dear reader were thinking of seeing Jersey Boys, you should take a moment over the upcoming weekend to see it at the theater. The end of the film transposes into a large musical number that is reminiscent of the stage play. It was just another example of the expert care Eastwood’s direction of the film exhibited. It was stylish without being campy—and unusually potent for a bookend to the entire film. Jersey Boys is one of those unique films, and it is a treat for everyone who sees it. It embodied all the elements of living life the way only an 84-year-old man who has always pushed the limit can tall it—making it a real American treasure that will never be forgotten. It is quite simply an amazing film.
The Blaze as a news source has really excelled during the recent IRS scandal. Doc Thompson particularly had a wonderful broadcast on the timeline of the IRS cover-up during an obvious attempt to destroy evidence once they were caught targeting specific groups filling for tax exempt status. That broadcast can be heard through the video below. What is clear while listening is that the IRS hoped to contain their actions by slowly releasing the story to the public under controlled circumstances—and when it blew up, they destroyed the evidence.
The same day that Doc recorded that broadcast Trey Gowdy had his turn with Commissioner Koskinen and as a former prosecutor—he deservedly dismantled the smug government employee representing the IRS. Gowdy during his examination asked the commissioner—what criminal statutes were looked at to determine that the IRS conducted no wrong doing.
“I have not looked at any,” Koskinen replied.
“Well then how can you possibly tell our fellow citizens that there’s not criminal wrong doing if you don’t even know what statutes to look at?” Gowdy shot back. “How would you know what elements of the crime existed? You don’t even know what statutes are in play.”
Koskinen said he believes he can rely on common sense, but Gowdy blasted that answer out of the water before Koskinen could finish his thought.
“Common sense? Instead of the criminal code, you want to rely on common sense?” Gowdy said as Koskinen shook his head at the table.
“You can shake your head all you want to, Commissioner. You have said today that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and I’m asking you what criminal statutes you have reviewed to reach that conclusion.” Gowdy concluded that Koskinen had “no idea” whether any crimes have been committed.
Koskinen then tried to close out his argument saying enough evidence is in to dismiss the idea that the IRS scandal was a coverup directed from the White House. But Gowdy rejected that idea, and said it’s Democrats who are trying to say the GOP is “obsessed” with the White House when it was the White House that first intervened.
“It was Jay Carney that perpetuated the myth that it was two rogue agents in Ohio, it wasn’t any of us. Was that accurate?” Gowdy asked.
“Not that I know of,” Koskinen replied.
“So that was inaccurate and that came from the White House. Who said there’s not a smidgen of corruption?”
“My understanding is that was the president,” the commissioner answered.
The IRS for many years has maintained an edifice of competence. It has been feared to even contemplate an IRS agent coming to demand an audit of a suspected tax evader. The IRS has the power to totally destroy the lives of virtually any individual—and this has made them something to fear—and they maintained that fear through sheer intimidation. Behind that intimidation was the façade of a government bureaucracy that had excellent record keeping. That is still likely the case—but the minimum damage that the IRS has inflicted upon themselves with this scandal is that they have either shown themselves as completely incompetent—where they don’t know a head from a rear end—or they are criminally negligent and corrupt at their highest levels. There is no middle ground that will come out of this scandal.
In the recent history of America the lies which came from politicians have proven to do them in—most notably, when Clinton claimed he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky. But George Bush the senior raised taxes after he declared, “read my lips, no new taxes,” and Bush the younger when he declared war with Iraq without there being weapons of mass destruction. Americans don’t forget these things—and what the IRS has been caught doing is far worse than all those collection of lies put together. There is no way to explain the conduct or the manipulation by the IRS—especially regarding the destruction of evidence. They have lost their authority to impose themselves on an American public as a governing authority. If they will lie about silly little things like 501C3 targeting of political rivals—they will lie about anything.
But there is something worse about the IRS than their propensity to lie—it is their arrogant assertion that they are above the law. When the current IRS commissioner declared that he didn’t believe that the IRS had anything to apologize for, he was declaring that essentially the IRS was beyond the law and that his ignorance of the law or behavior of the IRS in general was not his burden so long as he didn’t have knowledge of the offenses. The commissioner actually proposed to Gowdey that his ignorance of the law was testimony to his innocence and the innocence of the IRS in general.
It is unlikely that the IRS will ever recover its reputation. It has been compromised, and forever tarnished—and will never again resume its previous status as infallible—and an authority of utmost integrity. Like the police scam of traffic citation writing, the IRS as been exposed as a politically partisan attack agency designed to confiscate wealth with the law at its back. But that law only works one way—against the American people. When it is supposed to be applied to the IRS, the law is to be manipulated with countless excuses and re-written to serve the needs of the government against the people they are supposed to serve. The IRS is corrupt beyond repair and has proven to be everything but competent—and no matter how much they try to evade their treacherous actions—are now in league with the criminal class of America more reminiscent of the mob. The IRS like the various mafias throughout the world is simply an organized crime syndicate that uses force to steal wealth. It is nothing more than a gang of thugs who don’t even have the courage to project to the world who they are—which are thieves sanctioned by the government to commit piracy against the enemies of progressive enterprise. Instead they tried to play innocent and ignorant of the very laws they were supposed to be masters of—as they clearly destroyed evidence hoping nobody would notice.
The IRS doesn’t belong in our communities enforcing any type of revenue collection—they belong in jail.
