A Force For Change: The deep power of mythology to unleash human imagination and potential

My friends at Nostalgic Ink in Mason, Ohio promised that they would have a Tantive IV Blockade Runner for my upcoming game with X-Wing Miniatures—the popular new tabletop game featuring Star Wars dog fighting tactical strategy. I checked around lunch on Thursday the 22nd and the store sorrowfully told me that their truck had not yet arrived with their deliveries. But they informed me a few hours later that it had arrived, and I promptly drove my motorcycle back there to pick it up. They had it waiting for me behind the counter and for a $100 dollars, it might have been one of the most glorious things I can remember beholding my eyes upon. My next thought was how I was going to get that package home on my motorcycle—because it was so big. You can see it in the picture below.image

As much as I dislike progressive politics, a failed teaching system world-wide, socialism and all forms of statism my first love is not politics or even conservativism—but mythology. I am not a huge supporter of group behavior and love my independence, but there are a few groups I support, and one of the organizations I have the most reverence for is the Joseph Campbell Foundation. My love of mythology is my number one enjoyment without there being a close second. My love of the Star Wars Miniatures game, X-Wing has a deep history in the old X-Wing computer games I used to play with my nephews all hours of the day for entire weekends. Many times we had to run missions against those Corellian Corvettes and they were at times, very difficult—which is why I still remember them 15 years later. The wonderful people at Fantasy Flight Games have found a modern—low tech way of re-inventing the great mythological storytelling of that old video game with new gorgeously detailed models that really make modern mythology come alive in that game. That’s why I love Nostalgic Ink and many of the people who frequent those places. Likely they wouldn’t agree with me on my views on modern education, politics, drugs, and even traditional values—but they love the mythology evoked in many of the tabletop games sold in that palace of thought—giving us common ground.image

But Star Wars isn’t just about spaceships and fantasy as I have elaborated often. It is about modern mythology and the perpetuation of goodness and as I have stated—the filmmakers of the series and the people at Disney now behind it—wish very much to use mythology to be a force for good in the entire world. I have said it many times, there isn’t anything happening in the world right now that will eclipse the good work that will come from the Star Wars partnership with Disney. The first traces of this attempt at goodness through mythology can be seen in the J.J.Abrams message below while on the new Star Wars set for the seventh film. The video was posted on May 21st and by the time I picked up the Tantive IV at Nostalgic Ink it had seen nearly 2 million views within that 24 hour span on YouTube. There isn’t a government on earth or organization anywhere that has the kind of ability to reach so many people. Star Wars advocates itself to be a force for good by advocating a force for change. The change they are talking about in the video is not silly progressive politics for the sake of social alliances—but real, genuine change born from human innovation to benefit all of humanity with the gifts of creativity.

 

Star Wars: Force for Change wants to create a brighter tomorrow for thousands of kids and families around the world. With your help and creativity we can develop innovative solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. By acting as a Force for Change, your contribution to support UNICEF’s Innovation Labs and other innovative work for children will fund dozens of life-changing projects like these in communities across the globe: • Portable, solar-powered learning kits being built-in China, Uganda, and Burundi to ensure underprivileged children in these countries have access to relevant, high-quality educational materials. • Mobile phone application developed in South Sudan and Uganda, and used in the Philippines, that helps reunite children with their families after an emergency. • A text messaging solution in Zambia that helps families receive infant medical test results from clinics, in half the time, through mobile phones. Join us! Help create a brighter tomorrow for thousands of kids and families. Be a force for change.

http://www.omaze.com/experiences/starwars-episode-viiimage

Immediately following that message Lucasfilm sent me this press release which did not surprise me at all. As much as I have raved about Gareth Edwards after his spectacular work directing the new Godzilla movie he was named as the new director of the first Star Wars standalone film—staring either Han Solo or Yoda—likely the later. This to me was tremendous news as I had been saying that Disney was positioning Star Wars to be more than just a huge money-maker for their company—but again, a force for good by using mythology to reach behind political ideologies to get the human race pointed in the right direction. The hiring of Edwards and his response to the alignment I think will have a major impact on the mythmaking experience and the results on a worldwide audience.

Gareth Edwards and Gary Whitta Onboard for Star Wars Stand-Alone Film

May 22, 2014

 

In addition to the episodes of a new Star Wars trilogy, Lucasfilm and Disney have begun development on multiple stand-alone movies that will offer new stories beyond the core Saga. Gareth Edwards will direct the first stand-alone film, with a screenplay by Gary Whitta. The film is due out December 16, 2016.

Gareth Edwards blazed into the filmmaking forefront with his acclaimed work on Monsters, a film he wrote, directed and served on as cinematographer and visual effects artist. The skill and vision readily apparent in Monsters earned him the high-profile spot directing this year’s smash hit Godzilla.

“Ever since I saw Star Wars I knew exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life — join the Rebel Alliance! I could not be more excited and honored to go on this mission with Lucasfilm,” said Edwards.

Gary Whitta’s screenwriting credits include 2010’s The Book of Eli starring Denzel Washington. He is also well-known as a journalist and editor in the video game industry, as well as part of the BAFTA award-winning team on Telltale Games adaptation of The Walking Dead.

Whitta states, “From the moment I first saw the original movie as a wide-eyed kid, Star Wars has been the single most profound inspiration to my imagination and to my career as a writer. It is deeply special to me, so to be given the opportunity to contribute to its ongoing legacy, especially in collaboration with a film-maker as talented as Gareth, is literally a dream come true. I’m still pinching myself.”

http://starwars.com/news/gareth-edwards-and-gary-whitta-onboard-for-star-wars-stand-alone-film.html

image

So there was a lot to be excited about this week, and especially over the last 24 hours. Through all the years that I have been a member of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, George Lucas—the creator of Star Wars—has been on the advisory board so that he could help guide teaching mythology to a new generation. People like me and Edwards are the obvious benefactors. Edwards makes a living from his education in mythology, where I use mine in real world application—both I would consider equally important. If there was ever a man who deeply cared about the direction of society in a positive way—in a way that Walt Disney did—it is George Lucas. Through his deep commitment to mythology he not only produced films like Star Wars which take story telling to powerful new places—but inspired through the Joseph Campbell Foundation to teach a new generation of filmmakers like Gareth Edwards and J.J. Abrams to take movies to places that Lucas and Steven Spielberg could only dream of. Even small little companies like Fantasy Flight Games in Minnesota are helping advance a mythology that literally touches every corner of the world with messages advocating goodness through their table top game X-Wing Miniatures. As for the Force for Change campaign mentioned by Abrams, that is something I can certainly support. I could care less about being in the new movie, but I do care deeply about the advancement of goodness throughout the world, and there isn’t any vehicle anywhere but Star Wars with Disney at its back that has the power to pull it off. It is for those reasons that the new Tantive IV by Fantasy Flight Games is one of the neatest things I have ever seen for the price of $100.

The Tantive is just a model, but it’s what it represents that matters. It is a force for change that leads to good—and that makes it wonderful and worth pursuing on the cusp of a wave that is hitting the world in very positive ways.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Help the Children of the World SEE GODZILLA: What box office totals really measure

For me, movies have always been a measurement about the temperament of a society in general. The kinds of films that make money, and those that don’t speak largely about the values of earthly civilizations. I enjoy most films, small art pictures like Atlas Shrugged sometimes because they don’t make much money and speak to a very focused and intelligent audience. I also like films like the new Godzilla movie which speaks directly to the masses with enthusiastic hope. What is different now as opposed to even a decade ago is that occasionally, huge blockbuster films like Godzilla are released simultaneously around the world and provide a very clear picture of what those worldly economic conditions are relative to the United States which can be directly measured by ticket sales.

Godzilla earned an estimated $103 million from 64 overseas markets this past weekend—during its opening. Warner Bros. reported that 51 percent of those sales were from 3D showings.

The movie’s biggest markets were the U.K. ($10.4 million) and Russia ($9.1 million), and it had the top opening of the year in Australia ($6.1 million). Other major territories included Mexico ($8.9 million), France ($6.5 million), Korea ($4.5 million), Brazil ($4.2 million), Italy ($3.6 million) and Spain ($1.6 million).

Godzilla
 opens in China in June, and then Japan in July. If it lives up to its potential in those two markets, it should wind up with over $400 million from overseas sales.

Produced by Legendary Pictures and released by Warner Bros., the monster movie reboot earned an impressive $93.2 million at the domestic box office.

Godzilla
‘s domestic debut ranks second in 2014: it wound up in between Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($95 million) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($91.6 million). It also opened significantly higher than last summer’s World War Z ($66.4 million), and more-than-doubled Pacific Rim‘s $37.3 million.

It’s also worth noting that Godzilla earned more in its first three days than Star Trek Into Darkness earned in its first four ($83.7 million) on the same weekend last year. It was also above 2011’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($90.2 million).

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3845&p=.htm

To sum all this up properly just in the North American continent Godzilla made $93 million dollars. Over the entire rest of the world the film made $103 million without China and Japan being factored. Those countries will see the film over the next couple of months. With all politics removed from public relations jargon promoting all these other countries as equal to the United States, and the demand for Godzilla being universally equal all over the world—it could be observed that dollar for dollar—The United States—a capitalist country has the buying power of the rest of the world combined.

For instance, Brazil is a large country, but because they lean in the direction of socialism, they have a per capita income that is far below that of The United States. $4.2 million is about how much most states made in America displaying vividly that in Brazil there are not nearly enough movie theaters available to show the film. In America, I have around seven different theaters to choose from to see Godzilla while in Brazil, there may only be a few theater in each major city. The rural areas of Brazil are lucky to have power let alone have a theater down the road from their house making it impossible to even think of seeing Godzilla. So as a country, their demand to see the movie was high, but their people because they are poor did not have much opportunity to attend a theater. Even more pressing to the whole problem is that there is not enough per capita income to dictate that an investor could even open and operate a movie theater in the country. Italy and Spain are both socialist countries and put out a pathetic number in response to the Godzilla box office. Again, it is not that people did not want to see the movie. Those that could did. But in those countries, there just aren’t enough theater owners who want to embark on the entrepreneurial activity of theater ownership.

France put up a respectable number as they have several major cities that have movie theaters. In the future however because of the socialist policies of the current government penalizing the rich, there will likely be far less real-estate investment into movie theaters leading the country back into something like what Spain, Italy and Brazil are putting out as far as economic activity.

Economic activity is of course the access of investment into theater ownership and access to money to attend a movie by the general population through disposable income. If taxation consumes much of that income, then movie attendance will of course decrease. After China loosened up a bit toward western films and actually allowed their citizens to watch movies like Godzilla, they are usually good for around $40 million in opening weekend box office totals out of a population matrix of over a billion people. Much of this market base is around the capitalist region of Hong Kong, but the communist portions of the country are still deeply deprived of business investment and disposable income to even purchase a movie ticket. There are likely millions of children within China who would love to see Godzilla, but they can’t because no movie theater owners want to deal with the communist government to operate such things with all the restrictions involved. After all, China only allows ten films a year from America. The rest of the year there aren’t many opportunities to see movies that are good. China isn’t making many movies, and neither is the rest of the world. Only America makes movies like Godzilla and only a select few are allowed to be seen within a communist country. Godzilla will be one of them—thank goodness.

Here is a sad statistic; the entire country of Australia which is a large landmass, only produced $6.1 million in Godzilla sales—mostly on the east coast of the country.   Australia has also functioned under socialism for a number of years which has killed their economic growth and the results can easily be seen in the terribly deficient movie theaters available. Obviously people in Australia would love to see Godzilla, but they do not have enough movie theaters to allow such a thing. They have not been friendly enough toward entrepreneurial activity to allow their people such a positive leisure time activity like seeing Godzilla.

Is it fair to judge the world against such standards—well, yes it is. Godzilla is the kind of movie that boys, girls, young, old, virtually every market demographic in the world would like to at least see, but those opportunities do not exist in countries struggling with socialism, communism, and over restrictive governments. Countries like Russia have at least stepped up to the plate and allowed for western films to be shown in their city multiplexes and they produced a respectable $9.1 million, just shy of England which boosts a much smaller landmass and total population. Such comparisons speak very accurately about the economic strength of the cultures viewing the film Godzilla.

Godzilla is s global phenomena built with Japanese branding for many years, so it is a stable platform to make such comparisons. And the economic status of the world is easy to measure against such a globally unified reference point. If you want to measure the strength of a nation, just look at how many people attend movie blockbusters and determine if they have access to a movie theater, have expendable income, or live in a country that allows the kind of free speech needed to see such a thing. Then ask why they can’t, and you will have the answer as to which political systems work best for the people they are supposed to serve, and which ones simply use people as a platform for their own self-importance.

I bet dear reader—that you had no idea that the new Godzilla movie told so many stories on so many levels—but now you do.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

“May The 4th Be With You”: A long weekend of “HOPE”

My long-awaited Rebel Transport came to my home at the conclusion of the new international Holiday, May 4th. I was ecstatic to put my hands on that new creation from Fantasy Flight Games and without a doubt; it will load my spare time with countless adventures. The sheer joy of the new game X-Wing Miniatures is wonderfully articulated in the picture below. This is literally what its like at my house. And it will get worse—I promise. Over the weekend while playing a game of X-Wing, to celebrate May 4th, the official Star Wars day which happens every year with great fanfare, my one and a half-year old grandson wanted desperately to play the game with me. So I let him roll my dice and he loved it.

 Xwing

For the first time that I can think of the official Star Wars weekend launched a spectacular amount of news over the first weekend of May. First the new cast was announced for the new films—which had their first script read together last week. At midnight the new Rebels television show released their new preview which can be seen below. Guess who was watching it at 12:01 AM in the morning of May 4th? Me! On top of all that even the Cincinnati Reds dedicated a whole weekend against their first place division rivals the Milwaukee Brewers. It was Star Wars weekend at Great American Ballpark in Downtown Cincinnati. My family went on Friday night when after the game there was a spectacular fireworks display to the music of the famed musical conductor John Williams that ignited the sky. From the premium seats in Great American Ballpark it was the best fireworks display I had ever seen. Just a bit behind home plate, most of the people who normally sit in that section had got up and left leaving us nearly alone in the coveted section and completely untouched by other human beings. However most of the 30,000+ crowd stuck around with their children and they loved the show with much emotion. During the entire game Friday night, Star Wars characters were all over the field and the music was piped in through the stadium and it was genuinely inspiring to see the two entertainment franchises coming together like that.

Leading up to that baseball game many of the die-hard Reds fans on talk radio and elsewhere were perplexed as to why the baseball team even attempted to cater to a new “geeky” demographic group. I wanted to tell them, but they lacked the language to understand. Just like they would never understand why I kept checking my UPS tracking number on my Rebel Transport during the game hoping it would arrive for a vicious game of X-Wing the following Saturday. I’m 46 years old and to their minds should be interested in a lot of other things—but I am part of that demographic that the Reds were reaching out to—and among young people there are a lot more like me coming to age.

Two weeks from now Hollywood Studios, Florida has their Star Wars Weekends which are always fun. The first weekend is the popular dance off which I always love displayed in the center stage of that fabulous park. Those weekends are typically so busy that the parking lot spills over into the Epcot Center. The parade is one of the most spectacular displays of Star Wars fandom anywhere in the world. The question from the un-initiated is…………..why?

During the Reds game I had to explain to my daughter how when I was younger I had to make a difficult cultural decision. I was spectacular in sports and every teacher who coached a sport wanted me to be on their team. I was the fastest kid in my school especially during my grade school years. Athletically, I could have done anything I wanted to. But, culturally back then, it was taboo to enjoy Star Wars because that made a person categorically a geek. And I loved Star Wars. I was friends with one of the most popular girls in my school and her younger brother was one of my best friends. Through her I could have had access to the upper echelons of public school popularity. But I hated it and wanted nothing to do with any of that politicking. Instead her brother would come to my house on a Friday night and bring all his Star Wars toys and he, my brother, my brother’s friends and I would play with all those toys until late into the night. I never got sick of it even when I was older and my girl friend was interested in boys and all the kids my age were going to dances and hanging out at football games. She thought I was weird because I had no interest in the life she lived. I had picked Star Wars over sports because the culture dictated that you had to choose.

I thought it astonishing that the Reds actually had a Star Wars weekend because finally after 30 years of human evolution the marketing department for the Cincinnati Reds understood that if they want to survive into the future, that they better find a way to appeal to the “Star Wars Geeks.” The game of baseball with all its traditions is struggling to appeal to younger audiences, so they are getting creative even though in an interview with Brandon Philips on 700 WLW, he clearly didn’t understand.

In a lot of ways the new X-Wing Miniatures game is closely associated with those late night sessions playing Star Wars as a kid, and even as a grown adult I’d still rather do that than hang out in some other venue doing something I’d consider utterly useless. Many people confuse Star Wars and Star Trek as being of the same thing, but they are radically different. Star Wars is not about just exploring new frontiers in space and the interactions of characters with different backgrounds and species types. Star Wars is a deep, and rich mythology that works in ways that religion struggles with and is a creation of our times exploring all the primary concerns of our day. Star Wars for me is a western in that it is primarily concerned with the same type of honorable values. It is also about technological innovation and has its roots in drag racing where a young George Lucas loved cars and carried that love over into the space ships of Star Wars. Many of the beat up ships of the new Star Wars games are like galactic hot rods and have a similar appeal as Hot Wheel cars, only these can be used strategically to beat an opponent in a game of thought. I have never seen anything like the new Rebel Transport created for a simple game. By itself, it is an amazing work of art.

Ultimately the wars of Star Wars are about value and the popularity of those films in all the venues extending beyond the silver screen are essentially about preserving or destroying values. For me, the stories of those values carried far more weight than just athletic prowess in sports, or the ability to kiss a girl at a dance. Watching the Cincinnati Reds embrace those values gave me tremendous hope for the future transcending a human leap of evolution many were not aware of. But I saw it during the Reds post game fireworks display and the many tens of thousands who were at Great American Ballpark to enjoy the relatively private show. With all the news that came out about Star Wars during the May 4th Weekend I understood with renewed vigor why the first film was titled A New Hope. The movie was not just about a galaxy far, far away a long time ago but about our human race in the here and now. For many, myself included, Star Wars is about a new hope. My infant grandson knows it, the people at the Reds game knew it, and the thousands who like me were watching the Rebels preview at 12:01 AM knew it. And I wasn’t the only one waiting for my Rebel Transport to arrive over the weekend. Most fans of Star Wars find in it a hope that is otherwise vacant. Hope is why I picked Star Wars over sports as a kid, and space ships over girls. I’m still that way, only my wife actually plays that stuff with me, which is why we’ve been married so long.

The new Rebel Transport is one of the most dramatic things I have ever looked at for a whole lot of reason—most of them centered on hope. In the films the Rebel Transport was the rebels last hope of punching through imperial blockades and fleeing for freedom to live another day in a fight between tyranny and goodness. The X-Wing Miniatures model is really just a lot of plastic and paint, but it is in the organization of those things into a coherent interactive story about hope that makes it something I was checking its arrival time every hour on the hour over the entire weekend. And now that I have it, all is right with the world. The reason is that it represents to me hope, and that is the core of what the term, “May the 4th be with you” really means.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Whip Artistry Studio: A tribute to the beginning of cinema and the Wild West

I wrote yesterday about Richard Best and his Black Lightning Wild West Show.  But the location where we shot the video displayed in that article deserves its own mention, The Whip Artistry Studio of Gery Deer in Jamestown, Ohio is a one of the kind temple dedicated to the art and preservation of the bullwhip.  Gery is currently a freelance television producer and writer in Dayton, but his heart centers on the preservation of Western Arts—particularly the bullwhip.  Like me, he has worked with whips most of his life, and traveled the world providing shows.  Gery and his wife Barb have been on major television shows and have been personally endorsed by “A” list celebrities and stuntmen.  Gery’s Whip Artistry Studio is a museum of old westerns, autographs from Halle Berry, Antonio Banderas and many others, and a tribute to the golden age of cinema.  Gery’s whip holstering systems were used in a film done by The Rock called The Rundown and it was because of that film that Gery specially designed my Cliffhanger quick drawl holster which I wear every day.  My bullwhip holster is the only one of its kind and was made by Gery specifically for my use.

It is sometimes impossible when you know such people to revere them properly for what they are.  I have known Gery for a long time, and we have so many things in common that I don’t often consider how unusual his life and his studio are.  But in a world obsessed with preserving every species of animal that is on the brink of extinction, Gery is fighting to keep alive something that many more progressive modernists hope to force into distant memory, the American cowboy.

As unlikely as it is, Gery’s Jamestown, Ohio studio is all that stands between extinction and advancement of the kind of America that was so beloved by viewers of old Republic Saturday morning matinees, and wonderful silent films like Don Q, Son of Zorro.  As many Hollywood producers these days bulk at such things, it was George Lucas who adopted these very Republic serials and made Star Wars, and Indiana Jones.  Students at Gery’s studios want to learn to crack a whip like Indiana Jones, because those films inspired them.

Gery and I share a great reverence for Douglas Fairbanks, particularly the old film Son of Zorro.  Of course we’ve always loved Indiana Jones, but that character never went to the whip handlers of old, like Douglas Fairbanks, Lash LaRue, and all the Republic Serials—especially another favorite of mine, Zorro’s Fighting Legion.  When I wrote my book The Symposium of Justice I dedicated it to that old Republic serial including naming the restaurant Fletcher Finnegan worked at, “Republics.”

My current love of Star Wars is because Lucas shot those films in the way of those old serials—and that just isn’t done by any other film studio.  And all that harkens back to Douglas Fairbanks and his whip tricks from Don Q, Son of Zorro.  Gery Deer’s whip studio in Jamestown, Ohio is really the last gasp of air holding on to that past attempting to preserve it.  Gery and I both came into our love of bullwhips the same way but he choose to actually move into show business.  At age 46 I have lived my life much the way Don Diego did in Zorro’s Fighting Legion, only I haven’t pretended to be foppish to save my family and reputation from villains.  Gery has taken a non-violent approach to the art, where I’m all about the violence.  Even when I was writing The Symposium of Justice, I didn’t feel comfortable writing about the bullwhip heavy action scenes if I had not done all the stunts in real life to confirm their viability.  And with stories like that, I have never felt comfortable writing about characters like Fletcher Finnegan (Cliffhanger) from behind an author’s stories.  I always felt a responsibility to actually be those characters in real life, otherwise the task was hypocritical.  In that regard, I am a lot more political than Gery.  Gery has made his living often with a whip, as I have not.  But I have used mine to confirm the stunts of Don Q, so that I could write about them knowing what was possible and what wasn’t and what really went on in the life of Zorro in a quest to fight evil.

But in a confusing world where every other influence is competing for attention, that old past ushered in by Douglas Fairbanks is most alive in Jamestown, Ohio, and I love it every time I get to visit.  It is like a farmer returning to his land after plowing a field and smelling the fresh soil, or an artist during a late night epiphany—Gery Deer’s The Whip Artistry Studio is grounding to the roots of cinema, justice, and the genuine pursuit of goodness triumphing over evil.   I never get tired of visiting, and I suspect that I never will.

Rich Hoffman  

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

F**k the Earth: Save man’s mind

I enjoy a nice babbling brook running through the mountains surrounded by trees and fresh air illuminated by sunrise firelight. Often I have slept on the ocean front to the sound of waves beating on a beach as a steady breeze pours in from offshore thunderstorms lighting up the distant night clouds like cannon fire from a distant battle. I have pondered often the forces of a cliff face as I rappelled down it and marveled at the magnanimity of nature. I have equally stared deep into the heavens and contemplated the countless galaxies of space and considered the perplexing reality of a multiverse. But what most impresses me is the mind of man and the ability of that species to overcome obstacles, invent tools of creation, and extend beyond the limits of nature to something new. What is marveled at when large mountains are observed, or the beauty of a forest, or the running water of a stream is the creation of nature into activity of which our short-term lives will only witness a fraction of. However, it is still destruction that is observed, mountains were caused by tectonic plates being forced together by earth forces, and trees grow, die, fall down and decompose, just like human beings. Water falls from the sky in the form of rain, runs across the earth, is consumed sometimes by creatures like humans, disposed of as waste and evaporates back into the sky to begin the process again. The work of man’s mind is the only life form in known existence to take all the raw materials of the planet and organize them creatively against the tide of chaos that exists in nature. A skyscraper is a deliberate construction of mankind that is organized and useful as opposed to the mountain that is simply the result of opposing forces colliding.

The current green movement which is simply the next generation of communism is attempting to take mankind back to worship of the earth the way tribal groups have in the mystic past. Their sole intention is to turn worship of the earth into a religion that has political consequences and their method is one of regression—of angst against the creation of mankind. They look at the creations of man, the space ships, the cars, the buildings and they hate them like natives screaming at lightning streaking across the sky. Their answer is to conduct a rain dance to appease the gods creating the lighting. Meanwhile, inventors like Tesla actually took the mind of man toward creating their own lightning. Inventors created irrigation as a way to take charge of their own destinies and stop wasting time doing a rain dance to appease some stupid god. Forget about rubbing a couple of sticks together to make fire, or waiting for lightning to strike and ignite a small blaze, mankind made ovens, and furnaces, and air conditioning units to control their environment so that they could be comfortable and invent even more things instead of running around looking for sticks to catch fire just to cook food.

Nature is the construction of Mother Earth, and the galaxies the inventions of the universe. But are those constructs superior to the equations E=MC2 or the nanotechnology of cell sized bots that can repair human flesh? When was the last time the earth invented anything new, or Jupiter, or Neptune? What have those natural products done except float in space and be bombarded by asteroids—their fates tied to their proximity to a dying sun at the center of a solar system? Where will the creeks, animals, and mountain ranges be during the next meteor collision, or the eventual explosion of energy at Old Faithful in Yosemite? They’ll all be destroyed, and what will there be left of anything on earth if the mind of mankind is extinguished as a retreat to the primordial worship of Mother Nature?

I would argue that the mind of man is more important than the saving of Mother Earth. The earth is inferior to man’s mind—the inventions, the potential, and the ability to shape its own destiny in spite of natural elements, such as planetary restrictions, life spans, and proximity in space to heating sources like planetary balls of fire we call suns. There was never a turtle that built an economy as sophisticated as humans, or an otter that built a train station. No bird ever invented a light bulb. And ants don’t write books, make movies, or create sophisticated music. We are amazed that dolphins and whales show signs of intelligent life, but even they are about as intellectually wise as an average 4-year old human—and what is so special about that? The reason we respect these creatures so much is that they are at least close to human intelligence—so why would human beings yield to them?

The real issue is one of creation and the value of those creations. Are the creations of nature more valuable than the creation of mankind? My answer is that mankind’s inventions are more valuable. Both, man’s and nature’s acts of creation are destructive in nature. Mountain ranges are the results of terrible destructive forces, and trees are daily fighting it out in a battle for sunlight. They don’t whip out stones to throw at each other, or fire guns, but trees are constantly at war with one another. One tree will spread its branches out over another one that is smaller to try to choke off its light so that the roots aren’t fighting for the same water supply. Don’t environmentalists know that? Are they so stupid but to look at trees and not see life forms at war with one another? Trees are not sitting in a forest singing campfire songs to each other living in harmony. They are fighting—and some of their battles go on for 50 or more years. The only reason humans don’t see them is because the battles occur without human reference and time frames. Every day spiders are catching other insects to devour for their personal consumption, mice are being eaten by snakes, fish are being eaten by bigger fish, and Great White Sharks are eating dolphins.

At some point the modern worshipers of Mother Earth decided that the way to deal with these tragedies is to revert to the past worship of earth as a deity and to appeal to its sensibilities hoping that human life would be spared some of this tragedy. But only mankind has even attempted to solve any of these destructive problems. At least humans know to replant a forest, to re-grow the food they consume, and to not poison the water they drink with sophisticated filtration systems. Only a human being has sought to mimic the abilities of a bird, the hunting agility of a lion, the communication aptitude of a dolphin, and actually offer alternatives to the stupidity of nature—the inevitable destruction that is always just around the corner with the next black hole consumption, or planetary impact.

Every global environmentalist on earth is wrong in its worship of earth. Earth is dying as we speak—it may take a few billion more years, but if left alone—it is dead. It will not live forever—it is not a god. It is not worthy of worship. Earth is a tool for man’s mind. It is meant to be a lunching point for human consciousness and nothing more. It can only be hoped that 4 billion years from now to 10 billion years that the minds of man will still live in the universe and will punch beyond the confines of that barrier to whatever is beyond it. Earth will have long been gone by then, every turtle, every bird, every fish, every drop of water in the ocean ripped off the planet to become water molecules in the vacuum of space by expansion of the sun. Every idiot who professes worship of nature at the expense of man’s mind is preaching doom for both. The earth has its best chance because of mankind, not in spite of it. Of the two, man’s mind is more valuable and if one has to be saved, it must be the imagination of human beings.

Every advocate of communism, socialism, social justice, and environmental conservation is ignoring the basic rules of our universe and stand in defiance of nature when they profess to preserve earth because they think it’s pretty. They ignore the violence; the very foundations of all life—that they are built on violence and destruction. Only the human being stands in rebellion to this trend by advancing toward an unknown intelligence only it can create—because it is not yet present among all known life forms. It is time to abandon the fools who do not believe that man does not have dominion over all the earth—because they do—and that is the will of nature as a species that is vastly superior to every other life form on earth. Its time to stop feeling guilty about it for the good of everyone, and everything involved.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

War Gaming Tactical Entertainment: Birthday joy at Nostalgic Ink

It’s not quite my birthday, but usually my family makes a big deal about it always leaving me something to look forward to.  This year, because of my interest in the game Star Wars X-Wings Miniatures we all gathered at Nostalgic Ink in Mason to play a series of games.  My daughters brought their husbands and a tray of Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets and we had a blast.  The highlight of the evening was when the owner of the popular comic book store came back to watch our game overhearing a South Park reference that we had been talking about and performed a perfect reenactment of it.  It sounded just like this!

That is typical in these gaming environments, there is such a love of creativity and boundless imagination which I find refreshing.  Comic book stores are great places to recharge after all the dread of reality has done its best to erode away logic.  Some of the best people I have known over the years find solace in those kinds of places, so it was nice to celebrate my birthday there with my kids.image

I can’t say enough about the X-Wing Miniatures game.  As often as I reference it, it continues to impress me.  Nostagic Ink had on hand an impressive array of Y-Wings, and X-Wings.  The Y-Wings have been mostly sold out on Amazon because players buy them up for their durability during combat and Ion Turret ability.  My son-in-laws’ had their Imperial Aces on the table for the first time which was a sight to behold.  Those new Imperial ships have a curving barrel roll effect that is really valuable and is yet another wrinkle in an otherwise highly imaginative and innovative game that is ever-changing forcing constant adoption.image

Way back when I was 13 to 14 I was involved in military war simulations which were tabletop games that I found very stimulating, intellectually.  Back then, West End Games was producing some great stuff and eventually the realistic simulations of actual World War II battles, and Civil War engagements gave way to a game called Assault on Hoth, which was a Star Wars strategy game done in the spirit of those battle simulations.  It contained a map with the traditional game hex-and-counter mechanic and played well.  Imperial Walkers attacked the Rebel base on Hoth and Rebel Snowspeeders had to meet them to prevent the shield generator from being destroyed.  During the early days of our marriage my wife and I played it three to four times a week and it set a pace for our relationship that would last for decades.image

When I learned war gaming as a young man I quickly learned that much of what was being studied were battle tactics no different from what military generals had been taught at West Point for generations—only without all the politics of the position.  By role-playing battle field formations set against values players had to make the same kind of decisions that military generals had to make in wars from the past.  In this modern age of gaming—for the first time in the history of the world, war gaming wasn’t regulated to the military elite—but to hobbyists and history enthusiasts.  Of course the emotion of the battlefield is not present, and the threat of death not a factor, but the same types of decision-making that George Washington had to make during Revolutionary War battles, or General Lee had to make during the Civil War were available to anybody curious enough to play a game.  Most modern war games are very sophisticated and take into account the many factors which are required for such strategic thinking.image

Nostalgic Ink has in the middle of their store an entire section of these military war simulations that are much better than the ones I played as a kid.  They are fascinating and players routinely set up in the back of that store to play them.  But for me, Fantasy Flight Games has changed the entire field of miniature war gaming with Star Wars X-Wing.  It has all the battlefield tactics of many of those traditional war games, but it has the added element of flight.  I find myself thinking about that game all the time these days.image

This is a good thing because real life often requires the same kinds of hard decisions that X-Wing forces players to realize.  American society has the Second Amendment to protect themselves from an overzealous government.  But it also has freedom of thought, and this has given rise to a culture emerging in these comic book stores where tactical decisions are available to regular people outside of any orthodox political class.  For instance, this year’s FFG world champion is Paul Heaver a software engineer from Northern Virginia who is married with two kids.  He plays online CCGs and computer games, but X-Wing Miniatures is the first game of its type that he’s gotten really serious about.  Before going to the World’s competition—where literally people from many countries all over the world came to battle it out in Minnesota during February of 2014, Heaver paid close attention to the battle reports on the game forums and saw that Tie Swarms were dominating tournaments so he calculated a strategy of using two low pilot value X-Wing fighters and two moderate pilot rating B-Wings to slowly whittle away at the low pilot rating Tie Swarm strategy.  The effectiveness of this approach can be seen below in the video of his championship game.   If you watch the video it has the visual quality of a golf game.  People cheer when ships are destroyed the same way an expert golfer sinks a long birdie.  The same skills that Heaver used to win the Worlds championship at FFG are the same skills it takes to manage large companies, run military maneuvers, and run countries.  I would put Paul Heaver against Vladimir Putin any day and I’d put my bets on Paul.  But in this emerging X-Wing popularity there is Paul Heaver types popping up everywhere and this is a very good thing.  There are a lot of very smart people coming up in these gaming circles.

The tactic that Paul used to win his championship will be destroyed with all the new ships and rules coming out quickly, like the new rules involving the Imperial Aces ships.   They can now barrel roll out of a firing arc and right into the side of a targeted ship taking away their shot, while performing theirs with deadly effectiveness.  So what works today may not work tomorrow, which is why I love X-Wing.  It is why I spent my early birthday with my kids at Nostalgic Ink eating chicken nuggets and playing tactical table top warfare.  Back when I was introduced to these miniature war simulations I learned from a Green Beret who was so obsessed with military tactics that these war games were the only way he could experience battlefield excitement, that the only real difference is that you don’t hear the bullets whizzing by your ears and possess the obvious knowledge that every breath might be your last.  Otherwise, this is what it is like.   Fantasy Flight has done with X-Wing Miniatures something that is new—it has turned up the heat considerably and no longer is reliant on the Star Wars brand to sell the game.  It’s great by itself as its own thing.  Tactically it is complex, and is a wonderful way to pass the time for those obsessed with strategy.  And that would be me.  It is my ideal of a fun time and how I prefer to spend my leisure because all too often real life calls on those skills—and because usually what we do in our recreational time directly contributes to how we conduct ourselves professionally.  And because of Star Wars: X-Wing, the future looks very bright to me.image

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Endless Imagination of Fantasy Flight Games: New releases of X-Wing Miniatures

I love technology as much as anybody, but when I want to relax, technology is often not part of the experience.  I will always love a real book in my hands because I don’t like looking at a lit up screen to read, and I will always prefer physical activity to computer play.  But with the NSA concern in reading every email, watching all online traffic, and all the privacy concerns involved,  I love Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures more and more—because of the low tech, yet complex game play.  I play the game as much as I can because it has all the multifaceted strategy of a video game, the intellectual muscle flexing of chess, and the unlimited creative potential of miniature model building incorporated into a non-technical exercise that is a true vacation from the many prying eyes of our modern world.  The video shown below is from a couple recent games that I played displaying the creative potential behind the game.  The models are very detailed, and provide creative stimulation for boundless imaginations, and the terrain such as asteroids and star field backgrounds surprisingly pull the mind into the game world effectively.

The depth of the game is something to truly behold, but for me it is the lack of technical involvement that is most attractive.  When playing, the technical outside world is turned off.  However, perhaps even better the creative potential of the game is limitless, and the company Fantasy Flight Games has really overachieved as an organization.  Prior to 2013, they already had a championship caliber game that would live on for many years as a crowd favorite.  But they didn’t stop there.  Instead, they worked on making 2014 one of the most exciting in the short life of the game with a whole range of new additions.  Every game addition mentioned below is something that I am very eager to experience and will hit the marketplace within a few months of this writing.  These will make the video shown above that much more exciting, and complex, and will fill many evenings with great joy.  Fantasy Flight Games is one of the most innovative and forward thinking companies in existence.  I wish they were not applying these great skills to just entertainment, but in the field of aerospace, manufacturing science, and research and development.  But in the world of gaming, they are simply the best there is at this point in time.  Here are just a few of their releases over the next couple of months that I am most excited about.

The GR-75 Medium Transport

First unveiled as a prototype at Gen Con Indy 2013, the iconic GR-75 Rebel transport is most famous for its critical role in the Rebellion’s evacuation from Hoth. However, the GR-75’s role in the Rebellion’s efforts extended far beyond that pivotal conflict.

GR-75 transports were used mainly to transport supplies, equipment, or troops, but some were modified to serve as fuel tankers for long-range starfighter missions. Relatively inexpensive, the GR-75‘s hulls couldn’t be penetrated by Imperial sensors, and the Rebel Alliance often enhanced this feature by outfitting the starship with sensor jammers. Indeed, the Rebel Alliance made such common use of the GR-75 that it was often called the Rebel medium transport.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4628

Rebel Aces features one A-wing and one B-wing miniature, both of which come with alternate paint schemes. You’ll also find four highly skilled unique, new pilots; thirteen upgrade cards; maneuver dials; and all the tokens necessary to launch these starfighters into the thickest action of your space battles against the evil Galactic Empire. It also includes a new mission, which thrusts some of the Rebellion’s finest pilots into a desperate rescue effort that highlights the B-wing’s durability and the A-wing’s agility.

Heroic New Paint Schemes

Fly with the best! The alternate paint schemes on the starfighter miniatures from the Rebel Aces Expansion Pack allow you to battle for the Rebellion’s cause while representing the heroic efforts of the pilots who first flew its A-wings and B-wings as experimental prototypes.

Only ace pilots were granted the right to fly prototypes for the Rebel fleet. Piloting the agile A-wing required tremendous focus and lightning fast reflexes. Still, by helping the Rebel Alliance develop and improve upon its original designs, their efforts benefitted everyone dedicated to the cause of galactic freedom, and the A-wing ultimately proved its worth during the Battle of Endor by helping to cripple Star Destroyers.

To honor those prototype pilots who first flew the ship, the A-wing in Rebel Aces features the paint scheme depicted on the Prototype Pilot ship card, with a bold blue central stripe and red and yellow highlights.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4705

Close Air Support

Manufactured by Incom Corporation, the Z-95 Headhunter was the primary inspiration for the later design of the T-65 X-wing. Even though the X-wing eventually outclassed it in nearly every respect, the Z-95 was cheap, durable, and reliable enough that it continued to see use throughout the Galactic Civil War, most commonly in close air support roles.

Entering X-Wing as the Rebel starship with the lowest squad point value, the Z-95 Headhunter is perfectly suited to play the role within the game that it played within the Star Wars galaxy. It’s a durable and reliable starfighter that comes with the ability to carry and fire missiles, making it capable of playing a strong support role.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4663

The CR90 Corvette

While the Tantive IV is easily the most iconic CR90 corvette in the Star Wars galaxy, it is by no means the only one of import. Manufactured by the Corellian Engineering Corporation, the CR90 was a swift, multipurpose ship that saw widespread use among governments and private parties.

The CR90 corvette’s modular design made it easy for users to reconfigure it to best suit the purpose they wanted it to serve, and the CR90 was often employed as a cargo transport, troop carrier, passenger vessel, or light escort. Additionally, the CR90 could be outfitted with enough weaponry to make it a formidable gunship; it could equip as many as eight turbolasers, six laser cannons, and four ion cannons.

The Tantive IV Expansion Pack presents a similarly adaptable starship for use in your games of X-Wing. Between its two ship cards, for fore and aft sections, the CR90 can equip up to ten upgrades of four different types.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4663

Every time X-Wing Miniature players think they have this game figured out, Fantasy Flight comes up with new ships with entirely new variables making the game ever evolving unlike most table top games.  As players provide Fantasy Flight Games with feedback on their website chat forum, the game designers have proven adapt to filling voids discovered in strategy. For instance, Imperial players were dominating tournament play with Tie swarm tactics which allowed cheap Tie Fighters to overwhelm the more expensive point values of the Rebel players by sheer numbers.  Fantasy Flight saw this trend and is now releasing the Headhunter which will be nearly the same point value giving Rebel players the option of putting swarms of Headhunters against Imperial players.   The CR90 and CR-75 will be the first of a series of big ships to hit the game which will bring entirely new strategies to the game not even yet explored.  In this way the strategies that players used last year in 2013 will be useless in 2014 with all these new variables being introduced.  In this way, X-Wing Miniatures is very dynamic and is likely the reason the game is exploding in popularity.  I know I spend considerable amounts of time reading cards and planning strategy even when I’m not playing the game.  It fills my mind with enjoyment for the sheer mechanism of focused thought.

It is always a pleasure to experience a company that is doing everything right.  With Fantasy Flight the only real issue they have is in delivery of new product line.  They are currently late on the CR90 and CR-75, but for what they provide as far as product, they are worth the wait.  There are few things that bring me so much pure joy as Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing Miniatures.  For those new to the game I have provided samples of tournament play from Team Covenant who is a committed group of table top gamers who wish to advance the hobby to for the uninitiated.  The game is different from gambling games like Poker and Black Jack because it is essentially a war simulation.  The added ability to actually pilot vessels makes X-Wing Miniatures even fun to watch because the entire game play area is up for grabs.  Every conceivable mathematical surface of a play area is an option.  The game is not limited to spaces, or a game board—but to the unlimited options of a game player and how they chose to utilize that battlefield.  That freedom is both within the game and from external electronic control, surveillance, and other limitations that make X-Wing one of my favorite current past times—a trend that is not likely to subside any time soon.

Rich Hoffman

http://www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

D’Souza’s ‘America’: Taking on Noam Chomsky and the progressive assertion of theft

The central premise of the progressive argument which has been the undercurrent of communism for all of the 20th Century, emerging in popular culture during the 1960s—is that The United States was built on theft.  The argument by progressives like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Noam Chomsky is that America stole their land from the “Native Americans,” that it stole its labor from the African slaves, and that it stole its wealth from Middle Eastern oil.  But the real attack is an old one that was most spectacularly on display during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was conducted much more subtly in The United States—it is a frontal assault against capitalism hoping to destroy the economic engine of prosperity which progressives stood vehemently against.  Progressivism shaped the mind of Barack Obama and others like him; it was not them who shaped progressivism.  Like termites they believe that their view of the world is the right one and their collective efforts were larger than their individual will—and their aim from day one of their acceptance of progressivism has been to burrow out America into a hollow shell to give back to the world what was stolen from them by capitalism.  This is the premise of the new film by Dinesh D’Souza called America, which will be released on July 4th 2014, and promises to do something that has not yet been done before—take on directly the premise of progressivism in a film by high-profile Hollywood talent—most specifically the great Gerald R. Molen.  Molen has turned from producing Steven Spielberg films to dedicating his talents by producing films which question the basis behind progressivism the way only Hollywood can—and is one of the first obvious defectors from the movie machine in California.

I’m not going to lie, I knew five years ago after attending a film festival that things needed to change.  I had written a few very conservative novels.  My Symposium of Justice opened with a serial rapist being bullwhipped to near death for the deliberate staging of a sexual assault by the city police in order to win more support from the public.  Not exactly the kind of material a 2004 reading public was ready to deal with.  My 2012 novel Tail of the Dragon was about an open civil war against statism done against the backdrop of the great car chase films of the past like Vanishing Point and Smokey and the Bandit.  Readers of my blog loved the novel, but the general public wasn’t sure how to feel about it—as it went against everything most people were trained to consider acceptable.  After a film I worked on in 2008 and understanding the Hollywood culture up-close and personal I changed direction in my life not to fit the times, but to the times I knew that were coming.  Creative people where emerging from their hiding places, people like Glenn Beck, Hollywood defectors like Gerald R. Molen, and Harmon Kaslow.  John Aglialoro went into production on the Ayn Rand classic Atlas Shrugged, and of course Dinesh D’Souza started making movies leading up to 2012: Obama’s America.  The Batman films by Christopher Nolan were certainly making arguments against progressivism on a huge scale.  I saw in Hollywood that progressivism was about to go to court, California had spent itself into oblivion, several American cities were on the edge of bankruptcy, and a radical progressive president had just been elected.  Times were changing and as the people in position to usher in those changes, the masses would need more details to explain to them what went wrong and how they could come out of it.  This has led to the blog site you are now reading which has over 2 million words worth of my opinions, history, and strategy on how to defeat progressivism.  I knew as people like Molen, D’Souza, and Kaslow produced films that would wake up people to the slow cannibalizing of their country by progressivism, that people would need support for their personal journey while coming out of that deep sleep.  So I started Overmanwarror’s Wisdom to help them with the difficult journey of waking up from the terrible sleep imposed upon them for years by respected progressives such as Noam Chomsky.

Noam Chomsky had already written several bestselling books over many years which have been pushed like intoxicants into American students through universities thoroughly corrupting the minds of millions for several decades toward progressivism—really to the doom of American capitalism.  Chomsky’s essential philosophical premise of Universalism is that “we are choosing to live in a world of comforting illusion,” alluding that the truth of American imperialism is theft of other people’s resources exploited by the evil West.  He has sold progressivism with the argument that America should “apply the same ethical principles that we apply to other governments to our own.”  In this way, he and others in intelligentsia have paralyzed conservative America into a defensive posture when attack was the needed strategy.  That paralysis has lasted for at least four decades, but in 2008, the cracks were forming and a collapse was about to occur.  So I determined to help with the transition.

Many wonder why I don’t try to sell my work done here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.  The reason is that I am fighting to preserve America so that the intellect of the buying public is not lost to progressivism forever.  It won’t do any good to sell my work to a bunch of mindless drones and I’m not interested in writing for a drone driven public.  A Wilshire Blvd talent scout told me about 15 years ago, “Mr. Hoffman, your work is too hard-edged, too political, too violent, and too judgmental.  Loosen up a bit, and put some occasional tits in your stories, everybody likes boobies.”  This was a female agent from one of the big firms.  She was telling me how to sell my work so that it would be marketable to the masses.  But that just wasn’t interesting.  What good was a condo in Florida, and a Lamborghini, if America failed?  So I stopped writing for other people and started writing what I wanted to.  And on this blog site, I write what I damn well please at whatever cost.  Because the casualties are strategic objectives that will help pave the way for the other media to gain more of an audience—such as D’Souza’s new film, or the Atlas films by Kaslow and Aglialoro.

In the upcoming film by D’Souza, called America, he will take on directly the premise of Noam Chomsky’s arguments, which for the left is like attacking Jesus Christ.  Chomsky is forbidden territory that has been beyond refuting, and question.  D’Souza will attack the basic foundations of Chomsky and his roots into Immanuel Kant going all the way back to 1785 when the roots of progressivism were forming in Europe.  While Immanuel Kant was publishing his works Critique of Pure Reason, (1781) the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of Judgment (1790) America was working through the difficulties of becoming the first nation on earth to have a free people driven by capitalism protected by a Constitution rooted in Aristotelian logic.   Over the next three centuries countries who followed the lead of America succeeded wonderfully, while those who followed after Kant have suffered under the terrible weight of poverty.  This is where Noam Chomsky gets his foundation arguments about progressivism which have done so much damage.

On July 4th, the progressive left, and right will be very outraged by Dinesh D’Souza’s latest film, but the time has come, and I knew it would for a long time.  My goal was to have thousands of articles available to viewers of these new movies to combat directly the swarms of progressive propaganda that currently exists.  Even with my millions of words produced in defense of free markets and capitalism, there are literally trillions and trillions of words in favor of progressivism.  But the big difference is that there are severe holes in their theory and it has always been the progressives who have conducted the theft—like Robin Hood, where they intend openly to steal from the rich and give to the poor.  The grim reality that Chomsky refuses to see with his Kantian mindset is that the Middle East sat on their giant oil fields for generations, and did nothing with it.  It was capitalism that found a use for it, and made the families of Saudi Arabia wealthy beyond measure.  Without the West buying their oil, the wealth that pours into the Middle East would dry up like a torrential downpour in the desert.  It would evaporate as quickly as it came.   It was America who taught the Japanese how to have one of the world’s most powerful economies, and it is America who buys most of what China produces.  It is America who keeps dictators from overrunning the entire world and it is still NASA technology that makes space travel in Russia possible as our astronauts have been forced by the progressive Obama into hitching a ride with a contentious enemy all in the name of “progressive peace.”  The American Indian, the so-called “Native American” lived life as nomads for centuries regulating themselves to begging the gods for rain so that crops would grow.  The American had science which could help them produce more food under adverse conditions than anyplace on earth.  America has produced so much food that going hungry in America is a choice instead of a random option.   Within two centuries of the mystic Native American dances around campfires asking the gods to bring food to their tribe, McDonald’s restaurants sprung up every 50 miles across America and NEVER run out of food.  It is inconceivable to stop by a McDonald’s and find that they don’t have meat for a hamburger.  Noam Chomsky and other progressives think that the Native Americans had the right approach to life and that McDonald’s is a vile construct of capitalism creating a consumer based culture, and the premise of progressivism is to destroy it forever—preserving the earth with a foolish notion of tribal tribute to ancient gods and human reason being troubled by questions it cannot dismiss, but also cannot answer.  The American seeks to answer all questions and overcome all obstacles as progressives see such behavior as theft—theft of resources that are finite and not renewable by human ingenuity—in the same way that Indians believed Buffalo kills were spiritual gifts, and rain was given because of a stupid dance.

As the rest of the world learns of these falsehoods they have been taught all their lives, it is my intention to give them a safe place to find the answers with a simple Google search.  There are so many articles now on the World Wide Web from me that people all over the world are reading for the first time and having their epiphany moments.  Most of the articles are long, and if I charged money for them, people would skip reading in favor of some pornographic material.  So I offer them for free so that people will be encouraged to study them.  And when people see films like D’Souza’s America, or Aglialoro’s Atlas, or Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, people enlightened will do their Google search and get the details here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.  They’ll learn how they have been scammed by people like Noam Chomsky, and Barack Obama—for a very, very long time.  A new rebellion of intellectual thought is emerging, and it is the opposite of the one that Nom Chomsky has been a part of for so many years.  The time has come, and not a moment too soon.  But the next step will be the hardest.  It is one thing to have filmmakers like D’Souza make wonderful films; it is another to understand what to do with that information.  For that, I have dedicated myself, and my fortune.  I have been on strike so to speak for several years now, and it has been expensive.  But well worth it, because the fight is not just for wealth, but the quality of minds needed to have commerce with.  Without quality people in America to conduct business with, the quality of the capitalist experience is greatly diminished, which has been the ultimate reason for the progressive attempt to dumb down America through public education.  For them, it was always about attacking capitalism—at any cost—even people’s minds.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Socialists are Lazy: Meet the new German Progressive Alliance

It has become obvious that most Americans do not understand the politics of the rest of planet earth.  They believe that countries like Germany, England, Australia and Brazil are functioning on an economically equal playing field as America.  But this would be a false assumption.  The situation in the Ukraine where those people wish to break away from the so-called conservative statism of Russia and join the European Union displays the confusion epically.  Ukraine is essentially seeking to leave a country run on one hand by the old hard-line communists who are currently in the minority in Russia and the United Russia party of Putin who is a former KGB agent from the days of the U.S.S.R.  Many members of the European Union are openly socialist and are members of Socialist International, which has been covered here extensively.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW, (check out the map there.)  Many of the countries being governed by Socialist International, which is essentially the entire European Union resent American freedom and the wealth generated under capitalism and they feel entitled by their corrupt Kantian philosophy to steal that wealth so that all people everywhere are equal.  In short, socialists and their supporters are by their very nature on average, lazy and seek use the argument of equality to justify stealing from the productive and calling the process “fairness.” This argument was presented to the world during the 20th Century and every nation but America accepted it—as seen in the animated short below.  Because America said no to socialism and communism, is why The United States is a wealthy nation. 

 

Out of the European Union Germany is currently one of the strongest countries economically, but they are hardly bastions of capitalism.  They have had a very strong presence in Socialist International but in that country a new socialist movement began starting in May of 2013 which considers itself a rival group–a group called the Progressive Alliance.  This group intends to take the hard name of socialism away from debate so that members around the world are not so turned off by the old connections to communism.  The Progressive Alliance is a global organization intent to spread socialism to every world government.  They are not supporters of capitalism—in fact they are not even close to supporting such a thing.  But if a careful analysis to their internal works were examined what they all have in common is that the members are essentially lazy people who look to the ambitious to carry them through life—just as the European Union, the United Nations, NATO and even the International Space station look toward American ingenuity, American money, American productivity to carry them from one day to the next.  If America were removed from their alliances, they would perish quickly as their members are unproductive and looking to be carried through life on the backs of those willing to support them.  So far, America has done so without complaint. 

 

The Progressive Alliance is a political international founded on 22 May 2013 by political parties, the majority of whom are current or former members of the Socialist International. The organisation states the aim of becoming the global network of “the progressive“, democratic, social-democratic, socialist and labour movement”.[1][2]

The first step towards the movement’s creation was the cancellation of the £100,000 yearly membership fee payment by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) to the Socialist International in January 2012 by SPD Chairman Sigmar Gabriel. Gabriel had been critical of the Socialist International’s admittance and continuing inclusion of undemocratic “despotic” political movements into the organisation.[3][4]

At the initial Conference of the Progressive Alliance was held in Rome, Italy on 14–15 December 2012 with 42 political parties attending.[5][6] Attending the founding meeting was Democratic Party of Italy leader Pier Luigi Bersani, French Socialist Party chairman Harlem Désir, Argentinean Socialist Party chairman Hermes Binner, Governor of Vermont Peter Shumlin of the US Democratic Party, and Mustapha Ben Jafar, secretary-general of the Tunisian Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties.[7] Also present were representatives of the Indian National Congress, Brazilian Workers Party and Greek PASOK.[8][9] The Dutch Labour Party also supports the formation of the organisation,[10] as does the Swiss Socialist Party[11] and the Social Democratic Party of Austria.[12]

During the 4–5 February 2013 spring Council of the Socialist International in Cascais, Portugal, 50 political parties discussed on the sidelines the formation of the Progressive Alliance, including the Movement for Democratic Change of Zimbabwe.[13]

The official foundation of the organization was held on the 22 May 2013 in Leipzig, Germany, on the 150th anniversary of the formation of the General German Workers’ Association (ADAV), the predecessor of the modern-day SPD.[14][15][16][17][18] It was reported that approximately 70 social-democratic political parties from across the world attended the event.[19][20][21][22] The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats European parliamentary group joined the organization upon its official foundation.[23] In September 2013, the Democratic Party (DIKO) of Cyprus announced that they were negotiating to join the Progressive Alliance, and were scheduled to attend a seminar of the international in Stockholm on 24 October.[24]

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Alliance_(political_international)

If the land mass of Europe all the way to the east across Russia, China spinning around through the South China sea to Australia is considered, there is a vast swath of population that is in open support of either socialism or communism and they are all looking toward the wealth of The United States and want it redistributed to them.  What they really want is the theft of the productive in America to their lazy, hands.  In the case of the East, they are not lazy, but they lack imagination and ingenuity, and need American thought to carry them through their technical innovations.  China can build an iPhone, but they cannot “conceive” of an iPhone from scratch.  Only a free people, functioning under a capitalist country can do such a thing. This leaves a massive section of the world under the lazy influence of socialism, statism, or open communism.  South America and Canada are not much better.  Most countries in South America are left-leaning socialists and Canada is under the influence of European socialism.  Only America and Japan economically stand on the side of productivity. 

 

So why do any of the people function under Socialist International, or the Progressive Alliance have an equal seat at the table with America if they are not equally productive?  The answer is that they shouldn’t, because they are essentially lazy next to the productive and are not equal by any measure.  And that is a hard truth that the socialists of the world do not wish to consider because it forces a hard truth about themselves which they are not willing to consider. And the truth hurts.  There are some of these progressive groups in America, groups like Progress Ohio and the Texas Progressive Alliance, (CLICK THE LINK BELOW), who seek to destroy capitalism to fulfill the intentions of global socialists.  They are the cause of the current ideological civil war currently underway in America as they have captured the sympathies of the media and are in virtually every public school and labor union.  It is the lazy against the productive and the productive are in the minority—extremely.  And they still carry the economies of the world on their back in spite of the ingratitude of the socialist and progressive groups—which is testimony which confirms the truth in all its glory. 

 

http://www.texasvox.org/tag/texas-progressive-alliance/

If you watched the videos above, you will have noticed that the American Howard Dean was at the Progressive Alliance event.  In case you forgot who he was, here’s a reminder. 

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Ann Becker in the Wall Street Journal: Southern Ohio is the heart of the new civil war

“’What got everyone re-energized was the debt ceiling,’ said Ann Becker, president of the Cincinnati Tea Party, who attended a meeting in Mr. Boehner’s district of more than 200 people Saturday to discuss a long-shot challenge to him for the GOP nomination.”  That was a quote out of the Wall Street Journal where Cincinnati Tea Party President and personal friend Ann Becker made nationwide news following the straw poll results in Eaton, Ohio trying to determine who will run against John Boehner in the upcoming primary.  Traditional big government oriented Republicans like John Boehner, John Kasich, Mitch McConnell and many others specifically in the Ohio and Kentucky region are facing major challenges—which is how things are supposed to be.  The Wall Street Journal is one of the last of the respectable papers in America, so it was wonderful to see Ann make the news.

 

Click the link below to read the article:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304834704579401480582653814?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304834704579401480582653814.html

 

A lot of people throughout the country do not know that Southern Ohio is ground zero for the heart and soul of the country.  The primary resistance to public education solidified in this region, it is the front yard of major GOP Republicans and is the heart of a current civil war within the Republic Party situated specifically in Butler County, Ohio where old school cronyism is meeting up head on against the new rebels of the party who are insisting on Constitutional purity.  At the heart of many of those activities in many different capacities has been Ann Becker.   So it was good to see her mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. 

Many traditional Republicans like John Boehner and the money machine that funds him primarily coming from the Carlos Todd Republicans, are bewildered as to what people like Ann have been yearning for.  They thought that all they had to do was come out against abortion, stand for lower taxes with lip service, and present a resistance to same-sex marriage that the religious base of the Republican Party would fall in behind.  The well-known business method which people like Carlos Todd of Butler County—a developer who has used political involvement to ensure the stability of his investments—is that you pay to play ball and if someone wanted to work hard, got to know all the right people, that anybody could make it in America. 

But that’s not how things were supposed to be, and people like Ann have stood against it—and behind her legions of much more radicalized advocates for Constitutional purity are calling for the heads of Carlos Todd’s Republicans. Ann was always level-headed and understood all sides of an argument.  She even ran against me in 2005 in support of the Lakota levy.  By 2010 she joined me in opposition, but we did not always stand together on those battle lines just as now there are many who wish she’d take a sword to the head of the GOP when other methods are already well under way that don’t make such a mess.  But the underlying current to the politics of Southern Ohio whether it is the efforts of the West Clermont School District to stand against organized labor control of the school board, The Liberty Township Tea Party fight against the IRS and being in the middle of the civil war in Butler Country where John Boehner/Todd Republicans are fighting against Tea Party activists, or Ann Becker’s efforts to dethrone the Speaker of the House in Washington D.C., and my overarching attempts to throw a light on all forms of collectivism spanning through all those fields.  There are few places in America where the war wages more vigorously than Southern Ohio, and Northern Kentucky.  Not to be taken lightly, Rand Paul is from the area, and is taking the political message of people like Ann Becker to the front lines of a presidential race.  Paul is too liberal for me, but he does represent the future and I’m rooting for him. 

 

Few people know it, but the Doc Thompson Radio Show on The Blaze is broadcast from Southern Ohio across the entire nation and they have directly taken on virtually every House and Senate seat up for grabs in the 2014 election.  They broadcast from a secret location and often not in the same place day-to-day.  Other popular personalities from Southern Ohio are Libertarian Girl who is also personal friends with Ann Becker and is bringing a youthful following to the libertarian movement pulling votes from traditional Republicans and activating young people who might otherwise be inclined to vote for a Democrat.   

 

The landscape is changing rapidly, and the end result will be something different.  It is hard to tell at this time exactly how, but one thing is for sure, the Grand Ol’ Party will not be a bunch of old men protecting their real estate investments in the future, and they will either adopt, or they will become extinct.  They will either get on the train, or they will be run over by it—because going back to the old ways won’t happen.  Too many people are awakened now to return back to those complacent times. 

 

People are still apathetic, but as Ann gave me a series of very important news reports of which the Wall Street Journal article was only one, this new upcoming generation is different and is not tolerant of stuffy old Republicans like John Boehner.  There are still plenty of people who will vote for Boehner, probably enough to keep him in office, but that is changing quickly.  Two years from now, Boehner may lose his base completely at the rate of change that we are seeing.  Even if he hangs on to win the primary in 2014, the next time won’t be nearly so easy. 

 

Just four years ago when the Ohio Education Association put out a press release, every newspaper, television station, and news report followed their statements without question.  Now, those same outlets are taking OEA reports far less seriously because there is a lot of scrutiny thrown in the direction of that government based labor union that wasn’t there before.  Southern Ohio has been a place where much-needed gasoline has been thrown on a fire that was already started by Glenn Beck, John Stossel, and many other high-profile commentators who began questioning the status quo.  Like Ann said in the Wall Street Journal, “What got everyone re-energized was the debt ceiling.” It did, and everything mentioned was an offshoot of that issue.   My opposition to public education is driven off the extraordinarily high cost of public education forcing taxes higher on people who may not support the liberal viewpoints of the government schools.  Boehner has done nothing to stop the national debt but use his majority in the House of Representatives to lay down for the President to run him over.  The Republicans have been complicit in the crime of looting the nation, and people like Ann have stood strong against very strong forces who demand the status quo.  But that status is no longer relevant, and the cracks in the system are growing into crumbling supports of a structure that will come crashing down very soon—because there’s no money, intellectual will, or credible aptitude to continue the charade.

I am proud to know Ann Becker.  She has done some great work, and she will always be near and dear to me—because her fight for liberty, justice, and honor started a chain reaction that cannot be stopped now—and she will always be known as one of the first.  It’s a pleasure to know her.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

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