Most young people are not paying attention to the current events in the Ukraine, or the unrest in Venezuela, or the posturing of China against Japan. They don’t know that President Obama’s administration is attempting to use the FCC to control news content, or that the IRS has been involved in corrupt activity. The sum of all these events are clashing with the teachings that young people are getting from government schools leaving them unsure who to trust or what to believe. So they aren’t participating, and are focused on the events of pop culture. They are not reading books, going to Tea Party rallies, or even searching for a way to save the world. They just want to get by and enjoy their life to some small degree. This has opened up the entertainment market to an explosion of comic book sales, movies, and fantasy driven entertainment. The world of fantasy is far better, and easier to understand than the deceitful world of the present—so it is there where many of the contemporary minds of youth reside.
When I was a kid the very first cartoon I enjoyed watching was Popeye the Sailor, followed closely by Speed Racer. Over the years, I enjoyed Starblazers,Spiderman, Looney Toons, and Godzilla as some of my favorites and I took the messages of those simple stories into my adult life unfiltered. To this day the thing I enjoy doing most is the “right thing.” I learned this from Popeye at age 3 and still remember vividly those early cartoon moments. Those cartoons had tremendous influence and many people my age and younger share this enthusiasm with me. Not everyone has preserved their love of those early cartoons to the extent that I have, but most people hold reverence for the cartoons of their youth. These cartoons have the power to either build up a mind or destroy it. For instance, Bevis and Butthead on MTV did a great deal to destroy culture while the same animator tried to redeem himself with the Fox cartoon King of the Hill. Currently Family Guy, the Simpsons, and American Dad—all laced with deep progressive philosophy–are the current trend which is writing upon the minds of countless young people the thought processes they will carry throughout their life. Teachers want to believe that they are what shape a child’s mind, and politicians caress themselves hoping that Common Core will unite the nation’s children to a government-run message of productivity. But in reality, cartoons are shaping young people and giving them the foundation thoughts which take them into adulthood.
This is why I am currently ecstatic over the new Disney production of the Star Wars: Rebels animated series coming to the Disney XD channel this fall. Shown within the videos on these pages are the main characters and the content. I think the show will be unlike anything ever done on television since Disney produced Zorro, and Davy Crockett for a generation who now attends Tea Party rallies. When I talk to Tea Party types and really get down to the nitty-gritty with them what they want is justice as defined for them by the temperament created by those old shows from the 50s and 60s. It’s more complicated than that of course, but the foundations of their thoughts are rooted in the values of those old Disney productions–having a mom and a dad at the dinner table with them, and church on Sundays. They find the behavior of the current political trend reprehensible, and this leads to a desire for rebellion. This is the primary cause of most discontent discourse throughout the world—specifically in the Ukraine, in Syria, even on college campuses.
Star Wars: Rebels has the ability to explore the nature of rebellion without it being explicitly investigated by earthly reference. The creators at Lucasfilm have the ability to explore the deep anxieties of the individual spirit to crave freedom without being political. They don’t have to deal with race relations, political parties, economic philosophy, or any polarizing trait—they can simply tell the story of how a rebellion formed to overthrow an empire. It’s a deep human craving that transcends party politics and because of that, I think this is the most important story that will be told in my life time. I’m sure it will be fun, and entertaining, but more than that—it is giving to a new generation of young people a sense of value—a value that is not presently available to them.
I think often about Popeye the Sailor and some of his messages which were “I am what I am and that’s all that I am,” and Wimpy’s statements about, “I’ll pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” These basic values I have taken with me throughout my life. Wimpy’s comments taught me a great deal about debt, while Popeye was always very proud of who he was—flaws and all. I know how much those simple stories meant to me, and I can only imagine how much impact the new Star Wars: Rebels will have on a new generation of young people. The previous Star Wars cartoon; The Clone Wars on The Cartoon Network after five seasons is just now starting to have an impact on a very skeptical viewing audience. I watched every single episode many times. My wife and I watch them together on Saturday mornings and love them dearly. But in many ways, Rebels will be a lot better. Clone Wars for me always felt like a modern commentary on our current situation. I’m sure the film makers had no intention of doing such a thing—these things have happened over human history many times and aren’t specific to our time. But there is always a little sadness in knowing that all the heroics performed in Clone Wars will result in the creation of the Empire. In Rebels, the Empire is already in control. Now it is up to heroes to save their society from the control of tyrants and that is an important distinction.
Millions of young people are going to watch Star Wars: Rebels and it will become their favorite television show. They will grow up and take those messages, and values with them into their adult lives just as modern-day older people revere the good ol’ days of Disney shows like Davey Crockett and Zorro. As simple as that sounds, it really is the foundation principles behind most thought processes. Just as people from my generation think differently because of the static patterns given to them from their entertainment culture—particularly cartoons, new cartoons like Star Wars: Rebels will have a far greater impact. I would say that it is the most important contemporary work of art currently being done anywhere in the world because it brings with it through story value.
For many, they will dismiss Star Wars: Rebels as just another cartoon designed to sell action figures at Target and Wal-Mart. But it’s more than that, and will show the real impact on television this fall. Needless to say I’m excited about it because there will be dramatic change ushered in behind this simple cartoon. With the distribution power of Disney, they are uniquely positioned to do great good in the world and Rebels is just the start. When George Lucas sat down to close the Star Wars deal at the Brown Derby at Hollywood Studios in Florida he knew what he was doing. His Skywalker Ranch had been set up specifically for the purpose of creating such wonderful shows like Star Wars: Rebels. Lucas knows that education is the most important thing you can give young people, and he knows that public education is failing. That’s why he has spent a considerable amount of his fortune on education. Much of that money has been wasted on the current education system, like tossing a cup of water into the ocean and expecting to see the waters rise in proportion. Real education comes from foundation patterns, and in our society, cartoons are the origin. This is why millions of people flock to Disney World to retouch the stories of their youth and bring renewed appreciation to lives otherwise plagued by cynicism. Star Wars: Rebels will mean a great deal to a large number of young and old minds, and the sum of that value will be a benefit to us all.
As critics have stated recently that I “hate education, because I had a bad experience as a kid,” essentially, they are right, I do hate education as I experienced it—but they’re wrong about the whole education experience. Quite the contrary, I am a huge education guy—I love learning, I find adventure in education, and for me it is an everyday experience. I hate the current education system sponsored by governments because it is limiting—and is not advancing our society, but regressing it. However, when I see major shifts of potential that are pent-up realizations of human desire that will lead to education revolutions—I make a note of it, and that is what I’m about to reiterate. Socially, we are on a collision course with reality, our personal debts are too high, we have a militarization of our local police that is making us all very weary, we have broken families, propaganda driven education toward left-leaning politics, and a new generation that will have a lower standard of living than the generation before them for the first time in American history. The culmination of all those events are about to explode under the Disney handling of the Star Wars franchise. The company Disney undoubtedly does not have political desires to change the world—they just want to make money for their shareholders and tell stories that families enjoy. However, the property of Star Wars has always had a very subtle message of education and an understanding of history. George Lucas wanted explicitly to show how republics die and give way to empires and he used the influences of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Castro to shape the fictional empire of the Star Wars universe. The new animated feature coming up on Disney XD will explore deeply this conversion from freedom to tyranny through the promise of social “safety” in a way that was previously unmatched. These are the concerns of the 21st Century world in a tremendous way especially with the evidence of police brutality that is emerging, and the rise of the TSA in America. The new Star Wars: Rebels will explore those very influences filling an educational void that will combine artistic fiction with an actual grim history in a way that will be greatly beneficial.
This past week Lucasfilm, the makers of the Star Wars properties put out promotional material announcing their plans for the 2014 releases of their upcoming Star Wars: Rebels television show. The art they chose to use could have been taken from any point in history in virtually any country that found themselves losing freedom to tyranny. The new television show will explore in a way that is very specific to Star Wars how freedom dies and how empires are created so that education can take place far surpassing the static learning of history from a complacent classroom teacher who has lost touch with the magic and adventure of study. Have a look at some of the art released by Lucasfilm and read the press release which accompanied them:
The Empire’s propaganda machine is in full effect.
Six pieces of Star Wars Rebels “patriotic art” were sent to 2,500 people around the globe and select media outlets, promoting the noble intentions and work of the Empire. These bold, graphic-style cards, urging galactic citizens to accept and even join the Empire, reflect the political landscape of the upcoming animated series.
When Supreme Chancellor Palpatine first declared himself Emperor, many people in the former Republic welcomed the change after the chaos of Clone Wars. As this campaign shows, the Empire continues to build upon that goodwill with glorified images of the stability and security that were ushered in by its might. It’s easy for worlds newly welcomed into the expanding Empire to be swept up with such ideas, though those citizens who have witnessed the ruthlessness of the Empire firsthand know the real story.
Thus far, the cards have appeared online at IGN.com, ETonline.com, Empire.com, Mashable.com, TheForce.net, and UOL.com. They were designed by Amy Beth Christenson, a member of the Lucasfilm Animation art department working on the series, and can be viewed in the accompanying slideshow. (But don’t be too swayed by their message.)
Star Wars Rebels is scheduled to premiere in fall 2014 as a one-hour special telecast on Disney Channel and will be followed by a series on Disney XD channels around the world.
I have said it many times; Star Wars is not just for kids. Adults can learn a lot from it—as well as all of our current politicians anywhere in the world. The wars fueled by the science fiction fantasy epic are generated exclusively by the corruption of human spirit in service of “systems” over individual initiative. Star Wars: Rebels will explore this concept from many different angles in a way that is visually entertaining, but intellectually stimulating. There is power here that will have a major impact on virtually everything we have come to understand about the world we all live in.
Education is not about a teacher standing in front of a class teaching about global warming, union solidarity rights, or progressive philosophy framed by Immanuel Kant. Education is about asking questions, and seeking answers. In the case of Star Wars the sights, sounds, and story are designed to provoke questions and encourage viewers to seek the answers thus engaging in education. I can speak first-hand how well it has worked for me, and I am absolutely delighted that a whole new generation will experience it on a much grander scale.
Just a few years from now we will all be talking the same language—as indicated by the art above. And when that happens—changes for the better will occur.
I suppose my political beliefs were framed within the context of three men over a four-month period long ago. Prior to the presidential election of 1992 I was in Dallas, Texas spending time with Ross Perot and his family. I learned a lot from these experiences. I had always had a fascination with the Revolutionary War and Ross Perot had a style that brought that sentiment into focus. Then just a few months later I spent a considerable amount of time with Rob Portman as he began to run for the Second Congressional seat that was coming up during a special election. I liked Rob and my opinion leaned in his direction. At a special on-air debate on 700 WLW hosted by Mike McConnell during a Sunday night in Mt Adams, Portman’s challengers attended and I was there to witness the whole extravaganza. That was when I met Bob McEwen whom I initially disliked because of a House banking scandal that hovered over him like an ominous cloud. But for three crucial hours in my life I watched McEwen and Portman have it out with skill and debate that I admired spectacularly. Portman would go on to win, and would be the kind of prominent debater that Mitt Romney would use to prepare for his prime time debates against President Obama. Ross Perot would go down in history as one of the founders of the current Tea Party as his Reform Party essentially began during that Dallas event mentioned—where he would lose his run for president against Billy Clinton. And Bob McEwen hit the lecture circuit being paid $10,000 per speech because of his vast knowledge of history, economics and insider politics. Some of these speeches can be seen below and should be watched entirely. They are real treasures—he is a very good public speaker. In spite of the check bouncing scandal he was a staunch anti-communist, a religious supporter, and an economic scholar with a deep knowledge of history. Out of the three mentioned men, I learned more from Bob McEwen once I forgave him for the congressional scandal and realized why he was targeted—because Washington D.C. wanted him out-of-town. Political insiders wanted Bob McEwen out of their “beltway.” Watch all these videos carefully—preferably many times. And send them to a friend.
McEwen was caught up in the House banking scandal, which had been seized upon by Newt Gingrich, a like-minded conservative House Republican, as an example of the corruption of Congress; members of the House had been allowed to write checks on their accounts, which were paid despite insufficient funds and without penalty. Martin Gottlieb of the Dayton Daily News said “McEwen was collateral damage” to Gingrich’s crusade.[25] McEwen initially denied bouncing any checks. Later, he admitted he had bounced a few. Then when the full totals were released by Ethics Committee investigators, the number was revealed to have been 166 over thirty-nine months. McEwen said that he always had funds available to cover the alleged overdrafts, pointing to the policy of the House sergeant-at-arms, who ran the House bank, paying checks on an overdrawn account if it would not exceed the sum of the Representative’s next paycheck.[26] In 1991, McEwen had also been criticized for his use of the franking privilege and his frequent trips overseas at taxpayer expense, but McEwen defended the trips as part of his work on the Intelligence Committee and in building relationships with legislatures overseas.[27]
Robert D. “Bob” McEwen (born January 12, 1950) is a lobbyist and American politician of the Republican Party, who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from southern Ohio‘s Sixth District, from January 3, 1981 to January 3, 1993. Tom Deimer of Cleveland‘s Plain Dealer described him as a “textbook Republican” who is “opposed to abortion, gun control, high taxes, and costly government programs.” In the House, he criticized government incompetence and charged corruption by the Democratic majority that ran the House in the 1980s. McEwen, who had easily won three terms in the Ohio House, was elected to Congress at the age of thirty to replace a retiring representative in 1980 and easily won re-election five times.
After a bruising primary battle with another incumbent whose district was combined with his, in which McEwen faced charges of bouncing checks on the House bank, he narrowly lost the 1992 general election to Democrat Ted Strickland. Following an unsuccessful run in the adjacent Second District in 1993, McEwen was largely absent from the Ohio political scene for a decade, until in 2005 he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Congress in the Second District special election to replace Rob Portman, who beat him in 1993, and finished second to the winner in the general election, Jean Schmidt. McEwen’s 2005 platform was familiar from his past campaigns, advocating a pro-life stance, defending Second Amendment rights, and promising to limit taxes and government spending. In 2006, he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the Second District.
In Congress, McEwen, who “had a reputation as a man who thinks about politics every waking moment,” claimed Congressional Quarterly, was a staunch conservative, advocating a strong military.[2] In addition, he was a strong advocate for government works in his district — dams, roads, locks and the like much as Harsha had been — as McEwen was on the House’s Public Works and Transportation Committee.[3]The Chillicothe Gazette would salute him for his work on funding for U.S. Route 35, a limited access highway linking Chillicothe to Dayton.[4] In general, however, McEwen advocated reduced government spending.
A vehement anti-Communist, he visited Tbilisi in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia in 1991 to help tear down the hammer-and-sickle iconography of the Communist regime.[5] That year he also called for the House to establish a select committee to investigate the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue – whether any soldiers declared “missing in action” in the Vietnam War and other American wars were still alive – by sponsoring H. Res. 207.[6]
McEwen was not a man to mince words. In the heated debate in 1985 over a Congressional seat in Indiana between Republican Richard D. McIntyre, whom the Indiana Secretary of State had certified as winning a seat in the 99th Congress, and Democrat Frank McCloskey, in which the House declined to seat McIntyre, McEwen declared on the House floor, “Mr. Speaker, you know how to win votes the old-fashioned way — you steal them.”[11] When McEwen was late in 1990 to the House because of a massive traffic jam on the I-495 beltway around Washington, D.C., he said on the House floor on February 21 that the District of Columbia’s government should be replaced:
The total incompetence of the D.C. government in Washington, DC, has become an embarrassment to our entire Nation. This experiment in home rule is a disaster. All of us who serve in this Chamber, well over 95% of us, have held other positions in government. We have been mayors. We have been township trustees, State legislators, and the rest. I am convinced, Mr. Speaker, that there are well over 2,000 township trustees in my congressional district who with one arm tied behind their backs, could blindfolded do a better job of directing this city than the city council of D.C. It is high time that this experiment in home rule that has proven to be a disaster for our nation be terminated, that we return to some sort of logical government whereby the rest of us can function in this city.[12]
After McEwen was criticized for his remarks, he delivered a thirty-minute speech in the House on March 1, 1990, on “The Worst City Government in America”.[13] Because of the crime problem in the District, McEwen also attempted to pass legislation overturning the District council’s ban on mace, saying people in the District should be able to defend themselves.[14] During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, McEwen introduced legislation to end President Gerald Ford‘s ban on U.S. government employees assassinating foreign leaders (Executive Order 12333) in order to clear the way for Saddam Hussein‘s removal, McEwen objecting to the “cocoon of protection that is placed around him because he holds the position that he holds as leader of his country.”[15]
For people who believe that Cincinnati, Ohio is just a flyover city, they are sadly mistaken. The region of my home town produces very interesting people, life changing ideas, and I am proud of it. Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Nick Clooney, Ted Turner, Annie Oakley, Nick Longworth who married Teddy Roosevelt’s cherished daughter Alice, William Taft, the Voice of America, the Crosely brothers, Kings Island, Rob Portman and of course Bob McEwen along with many others. Not all of those names are good ones, but Cincinnati throughout history has been at the center of the heartbeat of the nation. McEwen is still out there fighting for freedom as a political outsider—pushed out of the beltway by those who didn’t like his message. And behind him is the next generation of freedom fighters. The Cincinnati Tea Party is one of the strongest in the nation and is directly challenging current House Speaker John Boehner and the fraudulent Ohio governor John Kasich who launched and won his campaign against Ted Strickland because of the Cincinnati Tea Party. Cincinnati is where the fight is at. It is the modern version of Trenton, New Jersey in the new Revolution for independence.
Bob McEwen is a product of Cincinnati, a man deeply committed to undoing the kind of progressive underpinnings brought to the city at the turn of the 20th Century by Nick Longworth and his father-in-law Teddy Roosevelt along with William Howard Taft. Before these characters, Cincinnati was where the great Simeon Kenton settled with his sheer will and a hatchet well before any “White Man” braved the wild frontier of Cincinnati. Tecumseh and his Shawnee warriors were from Cincinnati. Tecumseh was born where modern day Xenia is today and fought directly with Simeon Kenton for this holy ground of the Ohio River valley—particularly Cincinnati. Kenton was in the Ohio River Valley because he was running from the “White Men” European decedents for much the same reasons that the Indians did. Tecumseh couldn’t hold off the “White Settlers” as more and more people fled European tyranny in much the same way that Cubans risked life and limb to swim to Miami, Florida to escape communism. The Shawnee would grudgingly flee the Cincinnati area as President Washington had a fort built in his name to defend the region. Another fort to the north along the Great Miami River named Fort Hamilton was built in dedication to Washington’s right hand man—Alexander Hamilton, and just down the road was a town named after James Monroe. In between those places was a township called “Liberty” which was established in direct honor of the Revolutionary War.
I grew up next to the grave of the Revolutionary War veteran John Ayers and his wife Sarah. He fought in Elizabethtown, Van Nest Mill, Piscataway, and Monmouth. Their graves can still be visited; they are in the back yard of the homes off the Butler County Regional Highway at the 747 exit if traveling toward the east. As a kid I discovered this cemetery overrun by dirt and trampled by cows deep in the woods in the middle of nowhere. I brought home Sarah’s tombstone to my mother to prove that the place existed and she was extremely furious. I put the head stone back, and often wondered if the ghost of John Ayers plagued me with images of war, fighting for freedom, and settling an area braving the elements just to run away from European collectivism because I disturbed his wife’s grave. In all reality, it is likely that Cincinnati itself and the region of land projecting out for 75 miles in every direction has a soul that rises up to meet oppression—and the bad guys of the world know it. For decades the Soviet Union had nuclear missiles pointed at the GE plant in Evendale and Hitler wanted desperately to destroy the Voice of America in Mason, Ohio. And the Washington establishment wanted to destroy the man from Cincinnati, Bob McEwen and his crusade against communism, fiscal irresponsibility, and the preservation of Christian values.
I learned a little from everyone mentioned—some of those names were good, some were sinister—but all came from Cincinnati and had something for me to learn from—and I did—including the ghost of John Ayers and his family who I often felt patrolled the haunted woods outside my bedroom window where a highway and many homes now exist. For as long as I can remember I had an affinity for the Revolutionary War and it is likely that John Ayers had something to do with it as I spent most of my time as a kid outside hunting for old cemeteries, and the bodies buried by local politics which I despised for as long as I have memory. Bob McEwen is another of these Cincinnati products, and now that you have heard some of his speeches dear reader, you might understand why I was so taken with him as he debated Rob Portman during a special election at 700 WLW on a spring like Sunday evening. Out of Portman, Perot and McEwen, it is the later that is still as deeply committed to liberty and freedom. The rest of them either sold out, or ran out of gas—but McEwen never really gave up. He has been chipping away at the barriers for freedom for decades and really never let the ominous clouds of politics push him aside—which is why I admire him so much. I am happy to report that like the ghost of John Ayers, the Revolutionary War vet that I grew up with as a ghostly friend, Bob McEwen has been a tremendous influence on how I see the world—and perhaps you will enjoy his work as well.
I’m Han Solo—at least that’s what the new Star Wars personality test told me when I took it. A friend of mine told me that The Blaze did a story on a new Star Wars personality test by www.Zimbio.com which was actually more sophisticated than I thought it would be. The questions are involved and pretty good about bringing to the surface the raw nature of a person’s personality as related to the Star Wars film series. For instance, while taking the test I thought I’d come out as Obi-Wan Kenobi—whom I personally admire for his love of wisdom and the philosophic chess matches he tends to play on a galactic scale. But Han Solo has always been my favorite character and that trait emerged during the test even though I was consciously aware of avoiding it. So it was a pretty neat test. At the end of The Blaze article linked below it was revealed that most of the staff at The Blaze including Glenn Beck, Doc Thompson and Skip LeCombe had taken the test and were enthusiastic about their results which they promised to cover on air. I thought this remarkable because it provides insight to all that I have been saying lately about the cultural impact of Star Wars and the future of our society. There are few things which can unite minds quicker than Star Wars does in discussions with other people and it’s not just nerds anymore—but mainstream acceptance. NFL football used to be that topic item breaker that anybody could discuss with any other person in business or other affairs, but quickly Star Wars is overtaking it. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t know about Star Wars who is under 55 years old and doesn’t have an opinion about the film series.
I took the test while on the road at my sister-in-law’s house with many family members present so we all took the test and had a good time with the results. I was surprised how many of them came back as Yoda, and the young men who took it mostly came back as Boba Fett—which was remarkably accurate. There were no Darth Vader’s in our group which says a lot about the quality of our family. That much didn’t surprise me—but the number of Yodas did—my wife included. It could not be ignored how many of our family members instantly understood what the test was and the intent which reflected the response of The Blaze staff. Star Wars is something that touches just about everyone as good memories of their childhoods flood back to them upon the mention of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia.
I remember what it was like to be a kid in the late 70s and early 80s. Star Wars was everywhere—it was on the radio, it was at the stores, it was on television, it was in comics, magazines—it defined popular culture from about 1977 to 1985 when it began to subside just a bit. Even popular films like Back to the Future and ET the Extra Terrestrial made frequent Star Wars references—so it was a huge part of that 8 year period and anybody who was a child during that period knows what I’m talking about. That doesn’t mean that everyone was an open Star Wars fan. Many of the kids in my school made fun of kids who openly loved Star Wars—kids like me who had Star Wars notebooks, wore Star Wars t-shirts, and drew pictures on my homework papers of Star Wars space ships. I didn’t care what other kids said, once I got past the 7th grade, I was never picked on for Star Wars again because I had so many fights at school that kids stopped trying. The more they made fun of me the more I rubbed it in their face. I had a Star Wars shirt for every day of the week—my favorite was a Han Solo shirt that I never got tired of wearing. I wore it so much that it fell apart. I developed a rivalry with another kid in Junior High school at Lakota who was a Star Trek fan and hated Star Wars. We actually had fist fights over Star Wars and which movie was better. It got so bad that I shoved the kid right into the principles office as he was trying to escape me after I was waiting outside his bus in the morning to catch him with a confrontation before class started. He had previously declared during lunch period that Captain Kirk would beat Han Solo any day of the week—so I was going to teach him otherwise. I’d give him some real life Han Solo through me—and as he was running away from he thought he’d get safety inside the principles office—which he didn’t. I took the fight straight there shocking all the other kids in the hallway and the adults alike when I grabbed hold of the Star Trek lover by the back of his shirt and threw him right into the front door with the principle and secretary standing right there. Nobody had been so audacious before—and nobody knew what to make of it. Nobody understood that I loved Han Solo that much because the character represented everything I wanted to become when I grew up—and calling him names was the same as calling me names—and I wasn’t going to stand for it.
My brother and I had so many Star Wars figures that we set up our basement with elaborate hand-made models featuring Star Wars toys. Every Christmas and birthday was an opportunity to increase our holdings for these gigantic Star Wars set-ups. On Friday and Saturday nights our friends would come over and we’d build new Star Wars buildings and ships late into the night staying up until 3 and 4 AM in a world of our own making inspired by Star Wars. My parents couldn’t afford to give me a Millennium Falcon like many of my friends had, so I built my own out of a cardboard box. That creation was destroyed during my late teens—and I never got over it. During the Christmas of 1995 my wife finally bought me a Millennium Falcon when Kenner re-released the old toys with minor updates in anticipation of the Special Editions to the films which occurred in 1997. The world we created in that basement had so much reverence for me that I wanted to do little else but create my own world in the context of that one. We had entire areas around our set-ups in the basement sectioned off with black felt to simulate the darkness of space and on the ceiling was white felt to simulate clouds. We had our own power supply, there were floating asteroids, and epic worlds re-created to model scale. It was the happiest place for me on earth.
I was never shy about my admissions. Star Wars represented limitless possibilities and an escape from oppression and Han Solo was the kind of guy who was full of confidence and a never say die attitude. He was the model of a man who I would grow up and become. Many other kids one-on-one loved my enthusiasm, but would never admit it in the light of day. But privately most of them felt as strongly as I did, they just didn’t show it publicly. I carried this love into my adulthood and it never really subsided. With my children I raised them on Star Wars, and now with the Disney acquisition of Star Wars, my grand children will benefit—and with everything I just described, the cultural impact under Disney’s guidance will far eclipse my experience. There will be more toys, more clothing, more music, video games, posters, magazine articles-virtually everything in our society will be touched by Star Wars and a whole new generation will find solace within the story lines. Unlike me—who had good parents who really cared and behaved in a traditional sense–kids today have broken families, step parents and lack structure as a result of progressive social engineering policies. The strongest thing to a real family a lot of modern kids will have is the characters of Star Wars—which as sad as that may sound—is absolutely true.
The character of Han Solo was never intended to be a hero in the way he turned out. Fans of the films were supposed to yearn for Luke Skywalker, not Han Solo, but I could never relate to Luke’s naïveté. I wanted to grow up and become the space pirate Solo who is more like a character out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged than any other creation ever put on-screen. A lot of people thought this was destructive, but it has made me into an interesting adult—one who thought I’d be more like Obi-Wan Kenobi than Han Solo as more mature years are now upon me. But upon seeing the test results I was actually relieved to see that many of my core values are still intact after all these years and I can honestly say that I’ve lived my own Han Solo type of life and behaved in a very similar way when pressed. The difference between being a young person and an old person is the experience. People are drawn to certain types of things based on their core personality—something this Star Wars test is attempting to uncover. When I was a kid I hoped that when faced with perilous situations that I would behave with the same valor and skill that Han Solo did in Star Wars. Now as an adult, I no longer have any doubt. With a string of car chases, crashes, narrow escapes, and perilous follies of virtually every type now behind me, I can rest easily now knowing I measure up to the highest hopes I had as a child.
It is for that reason that this Star Wars test is flooding office buildings and places of business with a fury. Most of the adult population had similar hopes for themselves, and they want to know how they measure up after all these years. Now with some of the social stigma of fandom removed, people want to know how far they have fallen from their childhood dreams. For me—not far at all. I would have considered Obi-Wan Kenobi to be a concession—an honorable one—but a concession. Han Solo, out of all the characters in Star Wars was my target, and now as a grown man who has grandchildren of his own—I have hit the bull’s-eye, and for that I am very, very proud. Setting those high standards actually made me a better grown-up than Han Solo—considerably. But under pressure—and when it really counts—it is good to know I’m still more like Han Solo than Obi-Wan Kenobi.
And I was there……………….Han shot first!
Take the Star Wars Test for yourself and see who you are most like. CLICK THE LINK BELOW.
Matt Clark had spent the last week in Disney World running in a yearly marathon event he has made a ritual of embarking on. During his trip he sent me a nice picture taken under the Liberty Tree which permeated the glum of the winter blues with reminders of the southern family haven of Disney’s vast empire I love so much. Matt shares this love with me and he wanted to pay tribute with a visit to the Liberty Tree at Liberty Square, a place that Walt Disney wanted to ensure that America would never forget. Once Matt arrived home, he did a radio show on WAAM with his Disney trip still fresh on his mind and opened up the phone lines. He asked a simple question, would Walt Disney be able to amass such a large media empire in modern America—with only a high school education, and a federal government that wants to be in the pocket of every business in America. Matt opened up the phone lines, and this is what happened. Have a listen.
My answer to Matt’s question is that Disney could not exist today. In fact he is currently under attack as Meryl Streep displayed just last week. In a previous time of common sense, Disney made comments about women stating, “women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that task is performed entirely by young men.” That was the quote Streep uttered which was then backed a few days later by Disney’s grand niece Abigail Disney—who is the granddaughter of Walt’s brother Roy. Uncle Walt could not exist today as he would be picked apart by progressive ideology which would have encumbered his imagination needlessly, and prevented him from doing what he did in bringing to the world a ray of light with the Disney media empire which we all enjoy from ESPN to the Disney Channel.
Abigail’s comments would be similar to the daughter of one of my nieces criticizing the things I wrote here on Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom 70 years from now—the context would be evaporated by a watered down family member who is the kid of a kid of a brother who lacked Walt’s abilities and secretly has resented it their entire life. Abigail said on the heels of Meryl Streep’s comments:
“And if you are going to have mixed feelings about a family member (and we all do) take it from me, you really need to be as honest as possible about those feelings, or else you are going to lead yourself into many a blind alley in life!! … Anti-Semite? Check. Misogynist? OF COURSE!! Racist? C’mon he made a film (Jungle Book) about how you should stay ‘with your own kind’ at the height of the fight over segregation! As if the ‘King of the Jungle’ number wasn’t proof enough!! How much more information do you need? But damn, he was hella good at making films and his work has made billions of people happy. There’s no denying it. So there ya go. Mixed feelings up the wazoo.”
Abigail posted again 10 hours later: “I feel I have to clarify. I LOVED what Meryl Streep said. I know he was a man of his times and I can forgive him, but Saving Mr Banks was a brazen attempt by the company to make a saint out of the man. A devil he was not. Nor an angel.
To defend Walt Disney if I had the chance to speak with him back then when he made those statements about women in his animation department in the context of his times I would say that he was concerned about bringing women into a room full of animators who were expected to draw pictures all day. When men and women are brought together in the same time and same place—they tend to attempt to engage in sexual relationships which distract from the work a person like Disney was performing. Considering that nobody has come along like Disney then or since, his formula should be studied not rejected.
Progressives do not have a way to deal with this intermixing problem of men and women working together. Their solution is to advocate gay rights so that they can bring the same tensions to male to male relationships and take the light off the fact that women still tend to sleep their way to the top, and provide temptations to slack jawed men—and Disney wanted to avoid that kind of thing. Of course men and women have learned to work things out over time, companies like Lucasfilm, Weta, and Pixar come to mind as similar companies that do the same kind of work that Disney did which still gets done when men and women work together in close proximity. But at the time, in the 1940s when labor unions were trying to destroy Walt Disney, and women were demanding “equal” rights which threatened to bring sexual drama to his skilled animators—the emergence of all these progressive concepts were threatening to destroy what he spent his life building.
Now many years later man haters like Meryl Streep and Abigail Disney corrupted by progressive propaganda wish to paint Walt in the light of the modern progressive times—which is actually quite screwed up. Disney wouldn’t get media, Disney wouldn’t get financing, and Disney would find himself always in court defending himself—and he wouldn’t have the time or energy to conduct the kind of projects he embarked on. He barely was able to do what he did in the context of his times……………he would surely be destroyed before he ever got started today………….so the answer to Matt’s question is that no, Disney could not do today what he did during his time. There would be no Disney World, there would have been no Zorro television show, no Davey Crockett, no Disney Channel there’d be nothing but a film maker who made a few cartoons that would be immediately panned by critics and disposed directly to Red Box to die a quick death on the rental market in direct competition with pornography.
But here is the real reason for the increase in attacks against Walt Disney, especially lately after the release of Saving Mr. Banks. You see, nothing is by accident and rival studios run by liberal labor unions see the writing on the wall—and everyone knows how Walt felt about labor unions—he didn’t like them. But you won’t hear those quotes from Meryl and Abigail—only the things that can be distorted to suit the modern progressive agenda. Disney in the next four years is poised to explode with their mythic relevancy. With the acquisition of Star Wars that alone will drive the company toward economic growth that will exceed all the other production companies in Hollywood combined. Yet in addition to that, they also have Marvel comics as well as Pixar leaving the Disney Company in prime shape to bring in new revenue streams combating the escalating production costs of making motion pictures—which is destroying the other studios and drying up work on Wilshire Blvd. I have said it many times; Star Wars is going to ignite a revolution of creative thought across the entire world. I remember what it was like in the 70s under the independent hand of George Lucas—who designed his companies after Walt Disney. The Disney Company has even more power and ability to expand that mythology to a society that is lacking social and intellectual value and are hungry for it. In just a few short years it will be impossible to go anywhere and not see something of Star Wars from action figures to party napkins. The merchandising alone will rock the coffers at the Disney Company to levels never seen before with an entertainment company. Disney will of course do what they always do, they’ll take that money and produce good family films like Frozen, The Little Mermaid,The Lone Ranger, and Saving Mr Banks—good traditional family productions that will drive progressives out of their minds with anxiety—because they desire to crush traditional America. Disney was committed to preserving it, and Star Wars will give the company the financial leverage to do more of it.
Family members would say the same things about me as Abigail did of Uncle Walt for much the same reasons—because their frame of reference is skewed by the progressive times by progressive concepts that have infected their belief systems. The value of the statements about Walt come from the faulty beliefs of the advocates. Meryl Streep would be nothing if she did not brown nose producers in the early days of her career to get film roles. She is entirely dependent on other people to give her work. When those people line up the financing, direct the make-up people, lighting and camera guys, and hire writers to make a movie they hire Meryl to stand in front of the camera and do what they tell her to do. As much of a liberated woman as she wishes to pretend she is, she still does what people tell her to do. If they tell her to kiss somebody, she does. She learns the lines that other people write for her, acts the way other people tell her to. If they say to take off her top off she does or pose seductively with another actress, she does. Check out this for the proof where Meryl did a lesbian love scene with Penelope Cruz for Harper’s Bazaar. How is Meryl Streep a free—independent woman?
Who would pay any attention to what Abigail Disney put on her Facebook account if her last name wasn’t “Disney.” And who gave her that value……….Uncle Walt who built something in America that Meryl and all her other Hollywood friends couldn’t even conceive of. They have attempted to copy off Walt, but when they failed, they have slandered his name. Without Walt Disney her grandfather Roy and everyone that came after—including her—would have just been average man-hating progressives spiteful about the world and everything in it.
There may come a time in the future where a persona like Walt Disney could once again do what he did to make the Disney Company one of the best organizations in the world. But not in this time and this place—not in the days where Barack Obama is president and a criminal like Hillary Clinton is a front runner for the office in 2016. These are dark times—far removed from the hopeful days of Walt Disney and the kind of stories he wanted to tell hoping to save mankind from itself all in the glory of entertainment with some value added. They don’t teach the kind of genius that Walt Disney had in school, and that drives progressives even crazier—because they don’t understand how someone like Disney could have ever been so brilliant. So they do the only thing they know how to do—they tear the guy down behind his back using bra burning feminists to advocate the smear hoping that they can destroy the Disney Company before the next wave of box office profits threatens to put them all out of business. And that is what is behind Meryl Streep’s comments which led to Abigail’s slander of her treasured family member.
The ultimate answer to Matt’s question, could Walt Disney exist today…………….the answer is NO! Walt Disney is attacked for the same reason that Chick-fil-A is, because he made a quality product with values and set a bar too high for everyone else to compete with. These days, what matters to most everyone is to set the bar of competition so low that anybody can win—and Disney simply made that bar too high, and he did it partially by recognizing that his animators needed to concentrate on their jobs instead of looking for a lunch date.
Generally when I offer myself as a front man my policy is that I don’t do committees, I don’t solicit opinions, and I expect people to do what I say without question. If people, political organizations, or companies want success they can hook a chain to my star and I’ll take them where they want to go—and presently there are a lot of chains hooked to my star from those agreeing to those terms and expecting me to take them to their desired destination. At 46 years of age, naturally now that the word has gotten out about some of my abilities, 2014 is shaping up to be the most pressure oriented year I’ve ever had. I’ve never before dragged along so much hooked to me as I presently am, yet I fully expect such weights to not hinder my star’s trajectory. One way I do that is to give my mind frequent rests to balance out the intense weight it otherwise would be encumbered with. I thought it curious during this latest Holiday Season that two films, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and the Disney film Saving Mr. Banks both feature authors who were very much in love with the characters they created because it provided them with a secondary world which they created to reason things out. I understand Tolkien’s apprehension to allow his work to be commercially shared, and even more drastic was the story of P.L. Travers who authored Mary Poppins. Both authors confessed somewhat to using their stories as personal playgrounds of thought and were very protective over those worlds. I can relate, my characters in my books, Fletcher Finnegan and Rick Stevens are very much creations of the same design for me—which is a work currently unfolding as my life shoots through the sky with the lives of many chained to it. Disney did much the same with his Mickey Mouse, and of course there is George Lucas who guarded his Star Wars franchise more resoundly than anybody mentioned above. Money is not the motive for any of the people mentioned—that comes later—it’s about the preservation of that secondary world—a world where the mind can vacation and relax where things make much more sense. Personally for me, when the pressure is as intense as it is right now the way I deal with the real world most effectively is to spend as much time as possible in a secondary world to give my mind the needed downtime allowing it to be more efficient. Vacations to Disney World, the creation of Uncle Walt is one of the ways I most enjoy a secondary world created by someone else. Another is Star Wars, not just the movies, books, comics and any other little media tidbit—but the games, the new Galactic Starfighter, and the object of much obsession, X-Wing Miniatures. Both of these games are discussed by the guys at Mos Eisley Radio’s Even Lewis and Leo Andrie—and to learn about both, listen to this broadcast. They cover a lot of ground, but I think Leo’s opinions about X-Wing Miniatures most reflect my own—I simply love the game—I love that secondary world because it makes sense to me more than anything else presently can.
Leo and Even did that broadcast prior to the release of Galactic Starfighter, so I can add to the report that as much as I love X-Wing Miniatures, Galactic Starfighter does the same thing for me, only the delight is much more immediate. The computer combat flight simulator like PVP forum on Star Wars: The Old Republic is simply obsessive fun for me. My wife and I have now played hundreds, perhaps even over a thousand matches over the last three weeks, and it is an absolute blast. It takes all the action and strategy of X-Wing Miniatures and plays it out in real-time. My wife oddly enough is topping the leaderboards nearly every match with her gunship. I am less consistent—depending on who is playing. When average players are against us, I typically join her at the top of the leaderboards with 5 to 10 kills per match in my Flashfire scout ship—which is like flying a kite that is very underpowered. It doesn’t hit very hard and can’t take much abuse, but I use it because of the tremendous speed it has. However, when elite players are on the other side, my job is to harass them and keep them uncomfortable—(kind of like real life) and my kill ratio goes down considerably. The reason is to keep them busy while the other members of our team capture the satellite points. I can’t say enough about the game. It is truly an amazing time we live in. My wife flies her ship on a computer right next to me. We speak to each other like two pilots in a fire fight only the information going back and forth from the BioWare servers from her computer to the host and back to mine, and vice versa—then to all the other players 12 on our team, 12 on the opposing side is just an amazing feat. A lot of people who play online games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are used to these forums, which is a few years old, but at my age I remember a time when all this was just a distant fantasy. I remember a day when I worked all summer cutting grass so that I could purchase a $79 film role of Star Wars for a projector that I didn’t have and the reel didn’t even have sound. So modern DVDs and Blue Rays are amazing to me even after a decade of use—but the online gaming experience of Galactic Starfighter is simply stunning. I can’t get enough of it.
However, the computer game is something my wife and I can share with a few other people on our team, but when it comes to a tabletop game that an entire family can experience—or something that can be shared at conventions, comic book stores, and other very creative formats of existing secondary worlds X-Wing Miniatures is infinitely intriguing to me. If you did not listen to the above video broadcast from Even and Leo please do so if any of this is remotely interesting. Leo is a huge gaming nerd in all the wonderful ways that those people are full of imagination and hope—and his thoughts about X-Wing Miniatures reflects my own. He has played many of the big games from the past, The Magic The Gathering and those types of things—and is presently obsessed with X-Wing Miniatures attending tournaments all over America. And I totally get it.
By looking at the pictures here of a match my family had during Boxing Day (the day after Christmas at my kid’s house) it is easy to see how we took a dining room table and made a battlefield out of it. The strategies are very similar to Galactic Starfighter—the video game, but I find the slower pace and deeper strategies of X-Wing Miniatures to be infinitely more rewarding. There is a freedom of movement that is simply amazing—every inch of the 3’X3’ game mat is up for grabs strategically—and that is very attractive to me. But more so is the way the game allows you to visit this secondary world of Star Wars with the shared experience of family and friends on a group level. In the game showed in the pictures it was a very tight match which went on for over an hour and it came down to a final dice roll of two evasion dice—which was highly unlikely—but occurred. It was a literal cliffhanger, and all our hearts were beating furiously at the end—both the winning and losing side—and I can’t think of too many activities that can be done around a kitchen table which provokes that kind of reaction. It is blistering fun!
I have several hundred dollars invested in the game from what is seen in the pictures. That investment will easily excel into the thousands during 2014 and 2015. As Leo mentioned in the Mos Eisley Radio broadcast the big excitement of 2014 will be the expansion packs of the Imperial Aces featuring two specially painted TIE Advanced ships, the massive Tantive IV CR90 corvette which looks spectacularly stunning, and the Rebel GR-75 medium transport. Fantasy Flight Games who publishes X-Wing Miniatures hasalready produced something special even without these 2014 announcements. If all they created were what has been seen through the first three waves of release, the Millennium Falcon from Wave 2 and now a ship I use all the time, the HWK-290, (CLICK HERE TO READ SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THIS SHIP)I’d be content. But Fantasy Flight Games is only getting stronger as time moves on—making the game constantly more complex and dynamic. They are introducing a whole new play formatted called Cinematic Play which will specifically involve these larger ships on a much greater table top. And in tournaments, they are introducing the Epic tournament format which will allow players to field ships of all sizes in massive battles that will echo thought the Star Wars universe. In the game’s Epic format the Rebel transport can support the efforts of a squad with its frequency jammer, and the Tantive IV can fire its powerful lasers against opponent’s TIEs. These mentioned items are not part of Wave 4 which hasn’t even been announced yet. One can only speculate about what those ships will entail and new playing options that will come with them. 2014 will be a very exciting year for X-Wing Miniatures.
I wish sometimes that I didn’t have such a complicated life with so many hooked to my star. There are many days that I would love to be able to travel around and have the kind of free time that Leo does attending tournaments for X-Wing Miniatures. I would be a very happy person with a table full of X-Wing ships and a pizza from LaRosa’s sitting on a nearby counter playing all day every day for the rest of my life. That secondary world of Star Wars as it is specifically translated in that particular game is such an effective living mythology that it exceeds my personal creations. I understand how P.L. Travers felt about Mary Poppins, and how Tolkien felt about Middle-earth, because I feel the same way about my own creations. But when it comes to these Star Wars games, that secondary world smartly has been expanded in a unique way that Walt Disney—the new owners of Star Wars and the former owner, George Lucas have nurtured for decades. P.L. Travers had a nervous breakdown at the premier of Mary Poppins because of the dancing penguins, and the portrayal of Mr. Banks who was essentially her father. Lucas has allowed other independent minds to help shape his secondary world in a way that has held back Tolkien and Travers work in the past. If The Old Republic had to get George Lucas to approve every addition to that world, it would have been stunted. Even more so with X-Wing Miniatures, that game is great because as Leo and Even stated the game makes great use of the Expanded Universe—aspects of the Star Wars mythology that was created by the novels, comics and television shows by people only remotely guided by George Lucas with a thumbs up or thumbs down—and that is what makes this secondary world of gaming such an incredibly rich experience. It takes an individual to drive the visions forward, but it also takes knowing when to let things go so the creations can take off on their own and flourish—kind of like raising children. X-Wing Miniatures is the product of a successful metaphorical child of Star Wars and an offering into a secondary world that can hold a lot of excess pressure. It does for me.
I know my readers here want to see more fire and brimstone from me, and they will get it. I feel the tug of those chains upon my star and I don’t complain. I offer the free ride to see how much I can pull without it destroying me—because I want to know where my limits are—and I have not yet found them in my life. But I do feel the pressure, and the way I cope with it is to become involved in these kinds of secondary world activities as the primary world is full of burden. I play at real life like I’m playing a game—it takes the edge of the bitter realization that life is not a game, decisions are final, but chances must be taken to advance ideals. By playing games for recreation, one can sort of work out what is a successful strategy and what isn’t. Starting off a New Year, I enjoy thinking about these kinds of things, so I do it for myself more than anything—but I share it in case anybody wants to learn a thing or two about stress management. At times like this I often would not mind having a simple nondescript job at some fast-food restaurant where I could live the life of Leo attending X-Wing tournaments all the time free of those chains dragging behind. But I am grateful to have the release of these types of games in a time when I need them for my own sanity. I have found that the more I utilize these things in my life, the more I can carry as my star shoots across the sky, and the many that are dragging behind hooked to it by my invitation will succeed.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) is a labor union which represents workers in the electrical industry in the United States, Canada, Panama and several Caribbean island nations; particularly electricians, or Inside Wiremen, in the construction industry and linemen and other employees of public utilities. The union also represents some workers in the computer,telecommunications, broadcasting, and other fields related to electrical work. It was founded in 1891 shortly after homes and businesses in the United States began receiving electricity. Its international president is Ed Hill. The IBEW is affiliated with the AFL-CIO.
The beginnings of the IBEW were in the Electrical Wiremen and Linemen’s Union No. 5221, founded in St. Louis, Missouri in 1890. By 1891, after sufficient interest was shown in a national union, a convention was held on November 21, 1891 in St. Louis. At the convention, the IBEW, then known as the National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (NBEW), was officially formed. The American Federation of Labor gave the NBEW a charter as an AFL affiliate on December 7, 1891. The union’s official journal, The Electrical Worker, was first published on January 15, 1893, and has been published ever since. At the 1899 convention in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania, the union’s name was officially changed to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
The fear over Smart Meters is that the un-holy alliance that these labor unions have with government will allow federal snoopers to study the patterns of a family’s behavior inside a home predicated off their use of energy on the power grid. That power grid is regulated by government for the benefit of government. When a storm comes through an area, thousands of customers getting their energy off that power grid must wait for the IBEW workers to hit the streets and get all the downed power lines operational again. The power grid system was solidified around 1900, with $150,000 (more than $3 million today; 51% from J. Pierpont Morgan) into a project that had a chance then to change the world for the better. Tesla began planning a spectacular tower called the Wardenclyffe a facility which was designed to beat Marconi to be the first to broadcast a radio signal across the Atlantic.[116]
To Morgan’s discomfort, the Wardenclyffe Tower was designed to not only beat Marconi, but to carry energy to every corner of the world which was the real aim of Tesla on the project. When Morgan realized that this was Tesla’s plan, he turned against Tesla as Morgan already had deals with Edison to use power in a grid system that was easy to make money off of. So long as energy could be brokered for sale, there would be a need to rent that energy from someone who provided it, someone like J.P. Morgan and his investors. Tesla later approached Morgan to ask for more funds to build a more powerful transmitter. When asked where all the money had gone, Tesla responded by saying that he was affected by the Panic of 1901, which Morgan had caused. Morgan was shocked by the reminder of his part in the stock market crash and by Tesla’s breach of contract by asking for more funds and the desire of the brilliant scientist to offer “free energy” to the world, so Morgan denied Tesla the request. Tesla wrote another plea to Morgan, but it was also fruitless. Morgan still owed Tesla money on the original agreement, and Tesla had been facing foreclosure even before construction of the tower began.[113]
In December 1901, Marconi successfully transmitted the letter “S” from England to Newfoundland, terminating Tesla’s relationship with Morgan. Over the next 5 years, Tesla wrote over 50 letters to Morgan, pleading for and demanding additional funding to complete the construction of Wardenclyffe. Tesla continued his project for another nine months. The tower was raised to its full 187 feet.[113] In July 1903, Tesla wrote to Morgan that in addition to wireless communication, Wardenclyffe would be capable of wireless transmission of electric power, which of course Morgan was against.[116] On 14 October 1904, Morgan finally replied through his secretary, stating, “It will be impossible for [me/ Morgan] to do anything in the matter.” The way power would be sold to the public had been established, and Tesla’s business format of free energy was not financially viable in proportion to the investment. That is how America—the inventor of electricity, formulated a relationship with every citizen in America to buy power in the form of rent as opposed to owning a share of it for their own use. The labor union of the IBEW formed along with the new technology to ensure that radical changes to the business structure, and their wage levels would never be put into jeopardy.
The way to think about Zero-point energy is to consider it as a closed system of power within the body of a household, like blood in a human body. A battery that never ran down would run all the power needs of a home with a closed system that never depleted. The washer, dryer, dishwasher, televisions, heating system, refrigeration, everything would run off this battery in a circulatory system that would keep the power in a perpetual state of usefulness. The same basic ideal would be used for cars, trains, and anything else which needed power to operate. This was the basic ideal that Ayn Rand utilized as her primary plot point in the popular novel Atlas Shrugged—John Galt’s engine was essentially inspired off of Tesla’s inventions. Instead of the power being consumed by energy it would simply draw from the Zero-point which appears to reside within dimensional space within the quantum level—and simply never runs out because it is always present. Much the way water is a stable force in the world there is never more or less of it, but it can be used and recycled many times over in various forms, energy is much the same. The properties which energy is carried upon can change as the vehicle to deliver the power, but the energy itself is a stable force that can always be tapped in to.
Zero-point energy, also called quantum vacuum zero-point energy, is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanicalphysical system may have; it is the energy of its ground state. All quantum mechanical systems undergo fluctuations even in their ground state and have an associated zero-point energy, a consequence of their wave-like nature. The uncertainty principle requires every physical system to have a zero-point energy greater than the minimum of its classical potential well. This results in motion even at absolute zero. For example, liquid helium does not freeze under atmospheric pressure at any temperature because of its zero-point energy. Now you know why government schools want to keep people in a state of ignorance.
The concept of zero-point energy was developed in Germany by Albert Einstein and Otto Stern in 1913, as a corrective term added to a zero-grounded formula developed by Max Planck in 1900.[1][2] The term zero-point energyoriginates from the German Nullpunktsenergie.[1][2] An alternative form of the German term is Nullpunktenergie (without the “s”).
In quantum theory, zero-point energy is a minimum energy below which a thermodynamic system can never go.[12] Thus, none of this energy can be withdrawn without altering the system to a different form in which the system has a lower zero-point energy. One of the hypotheses that claims that zero-point energy is infinite is stochastic electrodynamics. In it, the zero-point field is viewed as simply a classical background isotropic noise wave field which excites all systems present in the vacuum and thus is responsible for their minimum-energy or “ground” states. The requirement of Lorentz invariance at a statistical level then implies that the energy density spectrum must increase with the third power of frequency, implying infinite energy density when integrated over all frequencies.[29]
According to a NASA contractor report, “the concept of accessing a significant amount of useful energy from the ZPE gained much credibility when a major article on this topic was published in Aviation Week & Space Technology (March 1st, 2004), a leading aerospace industry magazine”.[30]
The calculation that underlies the Casimir experiment, a calculation based on the formula predicting infinite vacuum energy, shows the zero-point energy of a system consisting of a vacuum between two plates will decrease at a finite rate as the two plates are drawn together. The vacuum energies are predicted to be infinite, but the changes are predicted to be finite. Casimir combined the projected rate of change in zero-point energy with the principle of conservation of energy to predict a force on the plates. The predicted force, which is very small and was experimentally measured to be within 5% of its predicted value, is finite.[31] Even though the zero-point energy is theoretically infinite, there is as yet no evidence to suggest that infinite amounts of zero-point energy are available for use, that zero-point energy can be withdrawn for free, or that zero-point energy can be used in violation of conservation of energy.[32] That is, until one looks at the work of John Hutchinson.
In the contrary of energy generation, a field of study where there is a somewhat realistic potential for the utilization of zero-point energy might be in the design of extremely small-scale devices like MEMS and NEMS or in distant futuristic propulsion technology of extremely long-distance space-travel.[12]
A document released by the NGIC shows there is ongoing worldwide research into zero-point energy, particular in China, Germany, Russia and Brazil. Some analyst of the DIA has indicated that research into successfully harnessing zero-point energy for energy generation purposes is a serious concern inside the intelligence community.[12]
The implication of Zero-point energy is that cars never need combustible gas, which would wreck the oil industry, homes would never need to be taped into a power grid, which would wreck the IBEW union and all its affiliates in government, every home in every corner of the world—even the most backwater spot on the planet could have a power supply equivalent to what is offered in big cities, and it would never run out, and would cost nothing to use. Energy could be broadcast across the globe to every point possible through towers like Wardenclyffe and would be as easy to use as cell phones receiving a signal in remote areas now. The power lines that litter roadways would go away, and power grid infrastructure would no longer be a concern. And politicians would no longer have poor people to exploit because the quality of life virtually everywhere would improve and the cost of renting energy from government controlled sources would be eliminated.
This is one of the premier reasons that John Hutchinson is a hated man at the center of conspiracy theories. Governments cannot control the kind of technology that Hutchinson is perfecting any more than they can control the Internet. They can monitor the information, but they can’t stop it as it is a free-flowing existence that now works inside of a new dimensional space called Cyberspace. To kill that space now would be to kill the communication network that it is attached to, and every device which carries that network. However, Hutchinson’s zero-point energy batteries will do for the power industry what the Internet has done to the telephone industry—who has a land line these days? Who pays for long distance calls when they can now Skype? Who needs a telephone line? The energy breakthroughs will be much more dramatic than these inventions once they take, and the only reason they haven’t yet is that nobody can figure out how they can make money off something that exists in the air and is as common as water—which is technically free to everyone. Government has learned to sell water to customers by offering a cleaning service, but every home could have its own well to draw from—if they wanted.
Zero-point energy is even more reliable than all these technologies because energy is literally all around us in virtually everything. Hutchinson built his zero-point batteries out of rocks he found around his home. But the reason we don’t have these things yet is because it has been accepted that energy delivery must come from the “power company” and that entity is usually publicly traded and tied directly to government—and labor unions, and neither want anything to change, because neither wants to give up any of the power they have currently over people in general.
One of the downsides to yesteryear which helped propel the destructive feminist movement in America was that men sometimes did not let their wives learn to drive a car. They did this because the men feared that the women would get jobs, get new boyfriends, and abandon their families. The men were afraid of giving their wives freedom for fear that they would lose them to the temptations of the world. Modern government is doing the same thing to people like Hutchinson. They are purposely black-balling Hutchinson through orthodox scientific institutional channels to keep his technology away from a public that they know wants to be free of a power grid and the enormous expense of renting energy from a government controlled entity.
Critics will say that John Hutchinson is crazy—that batteries do not have the ability to store such energy for a lifetime. They will say that everything pointing away from the current controlled system is wrong, dangerous and unstable—and they will do it for the same reason that Edison was terrified of Tesla—because they know they have an inferior product that can only maintain its monopoly on the public so long as people don’t know that there are any options. Well, now dear reader you know there are options, and it won’t take much to bring them about—and it all starts by reading articles like this one and taking the next step. For that next step, it begins with John Hutchinson and his experiments into zero-point energy. The step after that will be for a country to get behind his technology and begin introducing it to the world. It might be Japan, it might be China, and it might even be Germany. But because of the IBEW it won’t be The United States of America.
It is such a pleasure in a world that has seemingly gone mad politically, philosophically, and economically to see the glorious gumption of Chris Lee and his entourage of dedicated Millennium Falcon builders. I have covered the exploits of Full Scale Falcon.com before—but that was upon the original announcement that Chris and company had dedicated themselves to building a full sized Millennium Falcon on an 80 acre lot outside of Nashville, Tennessee. CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW. For me and millions of other Star Wars fans the Millennium Falcon represents rebellion, freedom, and hope. It is impossible to step into my home and not see something relevant to Star Wars—but in my bedroom there are Millennium Falcons everywhere. For me it represents more than just a nice plot point from a cool movie—the roots of the Falcon represent far more—and those roots are obviously driving Chris and many others to spend their own time, money, and effort on making a real Falcon that people can see and touch—and walk through. The Millennium Falcon is about more than just escapist fantasy—I would argue it is the direct result of laissez-faire capitalism, and people deep down inside know it—which is why they love the iconic space ship. It was because of laissez-faire capitalism that The Millennium Falcon was able to nearly single-handedly beat a galactic empire with speedy modifications, powerful weapons and raw guts born out of a Star Wars invention called the Corporate Sector.
When I was in the fifth grade my mother used to put together a gift bag of goodies to play with and read while taking long vacations that required many hours in the car. That year my family went to Myrtle Beach and inside my gift bag was a novel just published by Del Rey called Han Solo at Star’s End. It was the first book published after the 1977 release of the first Star Wars film and it featured my favorite character and I couldn’t wait to read it. My mom purposely kept the book on top of the refrigerator out of my reach but positioned it so that I could see it. I was salivating for weeks to read it. I was looking forward to our family vacation not for the opportunity to go to the beach, but to read that book.
Finally on a hot summer morning after a devastating thunderstorm that nearly delayed our trip, we left. The moment we were on I-75 south, my mother gave me the carefully constructed gift bag with all the goodies in it to keep me occupied for the long drive. There were lots of neat things in the bag, but only one thing I wanted and the moment I put my fingers on it, I was in love for life. I devoured Han Solo at Star’s End. I read the book all the way to Myrtle Beach, at every restaurant we stopped at, on the beach, at the hotel room, everywhere that I could hold a book. When I finished I read it again, then again, then again. I lost count of how many times I read that book. I was in love with the Millennium Falcon not because of the movie—which was great, but for deeper reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was the Corporate Sector and specifically a guy named Doc Vandangante who could have only been employed by such an experiment of laissez-faire capitalism that had sent my mind ablaze for some unknown reason.
On my family’s Myrtle Beach vacation I read in Han Solo at Star’s End that while in the Corporate Sector, the Falcon was damaged after Solo and Chewbacca attempted smuggling weapons to insurgents on Duroon. They did collect payment from the insurgents and went to pay off Ploovo Two-For-One, but in a rather creative manner. Given the prickly relationship and even outright disgust they had for each other, Han bought a foul, irritable, putrid dinko, attached the payment to it, and unleashed it on the unfortunate employer. Although Corporate Sector Security arrived at the establishment where they were, Han and Chewbacca escaped their grasp relatively unscathed. Payment completed, they went off to find the outlaw tech “Doc” Vandangante‘s hideout, only to discover he had been taken to the Corporate Sector Authority prison at Stars’ End. Doc’s daughter Jessa offered upgrades and repairs to Han’s ship, and a Corporate Sector waiver, in exchange for Han helping rescue Doc and the other prisoners. Before Han could take off, the outlaw techs were attacked by IRD-A Fighters. Piloting a Z-95 Headhunter, Han led the other techs and Jessa in defense of the base. Despite heavy losses, they were successful. To complete their rescue mission for Jessa, Solo and Chewbacca were given two droids, Bollux and Blue Max, and went to the agriworldOrron III to meet up with a group led by Rekkon planning the prison rescue. Though Solo was initially only interested in getting the repairs for his ship, his motives became personal when Chewbacca was captured. After dealing with a traitor in the group, Solo and the others arrived at Stars’ End. In order to gain entry, Han, Atuarre, Pakka, Bollux and Blue Max posed as a troupe of entertainers. The rescue proved successful; freeing Chewbacca, Doc, and the other prisoners and destroying the Stars’ End in the process. After the Falcon was repaired, Solo and Chewbacca left the Corporate Sector for a time, taking Bollux and Blue Max with them in future books…….all of which I read with the same enthusiasm.[18]
The Corporate Sector was formed in 490 BBY[9] to free the Republic lawmakers and the Corporate moneymakers from their differences, after being exiled from the Inner Rim to the Tingel Arm. The Corporate Sector originally had a few hundred systems all devoid of intelligent life. Its creation came in the aftermath of the disastrous experiment with corporate control in the Outer Expansion Zone. The new experiment was tried under more careful supervision, the Republic sent the equivalent of a full subsector’s worth of ships to protect the rights of the workers in the sector and to ensure the companies preserved the basic integrity of the environment on the planets in the sector. The corporations were allowed to operate in the sector and could purchase entire regions of space, but were supervised by the Galactic Republic. A general tax was paid directly to the Republic government which enabled the companies to avoid the morass of sector, system, planetary and local taxes found on most worlds in the Republic. The Corporate Sector thrived because of deregulation and low taxes.
Doc was born on Coruscant to Carmilla Vandangante, a corporate viceprex and widow who doted on her only son. He rebelled against his life of luxury and privilege at the age of seven, reprogramming his droid nanny to discard such unpalatable foods as kibla greens, flangth, and stewed gwouch into a living room vase. This demonstrated his technical gifts to his tutors, who soon tailored their lessons to these skills.[1]
Upon graduation, Doc accepted a position at Alkherrodyne Propulsions as design systems team leader. He soon became disenchanted with the corporation’s shoddy workmanship covered with flashy marketing, but swallowed his pride and remained with the company. However, when the Azaria 66 began exploding in minor accidents, Alkherrodyne’s slicers framed Doc. The countless lawsuits wiped out the multi-billion credit Vandangante fortune, and left the name slandered.[1]
Doc became a drifter, eventually making his way into the Corporate Sector, where he met an outlaw tech by the name of Shardra. They immediately fell in love, and when introduced to her profession, Doc found his calling, repairing smuggling ships and souping them up to be some of the fastest in the Corporate Sector. Shardra bore the couple a daughter, Jessa Vandangante, but soon died in an unfortunate fuel dump explosion. Doc found raising a daughter to be a difficult task, especially as the free-spirited woman grew older and started catching the eye of younger smugglers like Han Solo.[1]
The Millennium Falcon was a direct result of very creative free enterprise by a number of previous owners but culminating in the exploits of Han Solo who ran into Doc Vandagante. In a very large galaxy of ideals, some parts of it ruled by peace-loving pacifists, some ruled by ruthless crime lords, some ruled by sinister agents of tyranny, some just trying to preserve their heritage among the intermingling of many races and species—it was the Corporate Sector that made The Millennium Falcon such a special starship. Much like today’s world in real life, government and business could not get along—so government gave business free rein on the outer edge of the galaxy away from their control in exchange for the benefits. The equivalent in the real world might be the Caribbean, Las Vegas, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Hong Kong, or even Disney World where politics leaves the areas alone with their overly intrusive rules and regulations. The direct benefit is the vibrant economic activity of creative minds such as the fictional Doc Vandagante. My question as a young fifth grader on Myrtle Beach was why wasn’t the rest of the galaxy the way the Corporate Sector was? Why would the government within the core worlds want the benefits of the Corporate Sector not on the outer rim of the galaxy, but within the core near the capital planets? Well, the sad answer was power.
Star Wars is of course a fictional story, but it has so many references to our current life that the mythology accurately reflects many competing ideals that are in actual conflict. The concepts introduced through the story are familiar to us all. The Imperials love statism, the Rebels love freedom, and then there are those who might otherwise find sanction in the Corporate Sector with all the good and bad that comes with it. Some of the planets in the Corporate Sector are ravaged with pollution, and corrupt board of directors just out trying to make money at the expense of others. It’s not all good in the Corporate Sector—it’s not safe—fair, or even remotely nice. But, the Corporate Sector was responsible for much of the technological innovation that the rest of the galaxy enjoyed and there is a philosophical argument there worth noting.
The Millennium Falcon is a direct product of the laissez-faire capitalism of the Star Wars universe. When I returned back to the real world after reading Han Solo at Star’s End it was clear that my public school was intent to teach the politics of the core worlds, what we might call in the real world—socialism. The public schools were intent to preach the merits of statism—rules and regulations, federal control of everything. Not me. I wanted a Millennium Falcon—I wanted something like it in my lifetime, and it quickly became clear to me that the kind of education that the public schools were offering would not take the world where I wanted to go. When John F Kennedy dared America to go to the moon, he tossed at NASA a bit of laissez-faire capitalism to make it happen—and beat the Russians to space. Stanley Kubrick watched this progress and built is movie 2001: A Space Odyssey around that type of progress. But once the Berlin Wall came crashing down in 1989, America took its foot off the gas and started over regulating everything once again to give politicians something to do—and that space race progress came to a halt. Now there has been over 20 years of blatant and gradually increasing socialism coming out of WashingtonD.C. because that’s what everyone was taught in their public schools, and there are no real plans for space under the Obama administration going forward. They are instead focused on solar panels, street cars, public transit, and a communist care health system.
NASA if turned loose with laissez-faire capitalism could likely build a real functional Millennium Falcon within a decade. The technology is close enough that at least a vessel that could take off and fly into space with artificial gravity, ion propulsion, life support and other forms of sustainability could be achieved quickly if the real life Doc Vandagantes were turned loose of government regulation. I know a few of them, I know people who have invented flying cars that could take off from one driveway and land in another half a world away, but has no real interest from large aerospace companies facing gigantic liability concerns, and mountains of paperwork in compliance to purchase—and advance. I know of people who have cured most cancers, but the FDA has tried to throw them in jail to keep the technology off the market so pharmaceutical companies can continue keeping people sick and addicted to their products. I know of scientists who have started the process of regenerative growth—who can re-grow fingers lost, or legs amputated. They are solving the problem of aging and whether or not human beings actually have to die. They are a threat to the companies who make prosthetic limbs, and ADA legislation that wants more ramps for wheel chairs, elevators for the disabled, and generally more handicapped people to use for political advancement in the here and now. Those types of people will gladly sacrifice the opportunities of tomorrow for power today.
Statists inside the beltway of Washington D.C. are the first to say that if people never got sick, never died, and had unlimited freedom of transportation, then the world would become over polluted, over populated, and a menace to itself. They are still thinking small, because they obviously never read anything like Han Solo at Star’s End as kids—an act I’m sure Chris Lee shares with me. People like Chris and I ask ourselves why can’t I have my own Millennium Falcon to take off and go to work in orbit around earth where all the pollution and byproduct of production could be dumped into space preserving planet earth forever. When work was completed at the end of the day, we would just fly home and land in our back yards with our Millennium Falcons. Why can’t we have it–because we live on earth with restrictive governments that hate laissez-faire capitalism?
I’ve read many of the European classics and compared to Star Wars, they are boring. I love Shakespeare, but I would take any Star Wars book over William Shakespeare any day of the week. Shakespeare was a better writer than Brian Daley who wrote Han Solo at Star’s End without question. But Daley is much more positive as a thinker than Shakespeare, and that optimism about what’s possible is what Star Wars is all about. Yet much of the modern statism that is infecting the world is because of European culture, Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, Dante’s Inferno, or the master himself James Joyce of Finnegan’s Wake fame, which I have read and understand. Give me Star Wars over Finnegan’s Wake and give me the Millennium Falcon over a fu**ing street car. Give me a manufacturing plant floating around earth dumping its garbage into space or on the surface of the moon as opposed to the socialism of Brazil where everyone lives in a card board hut. Give me a Corporate Sector that can build a Millennium Falcon in America so that I can have one as opposed to the dying towns of Detroit choking on socialism and feel-good progressivism.
What Chris Lee is attempting to do is no different from what Doc Vandagantes did in the book Han Solo at Star’s End for TheMillennium Falcon. Chris isn’t working for NASA, or some other group building Falcons for the general population. Government will not get behind such an effort, so Chris is doing it on his own. I was a bit skeptical at first even though I wanted to see the results. But after Chris showed off the latest cockpit construction after many months of meticulous effort, I can see clearly that he will be successful so long as he can continue to fund the project. It is for that reason that I am starting an icon on my side bar here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom encouraging my readers here to help Chris with his project. I think it’s important. Is it as important as sex trafficking in the world, or the sad state of current politics———-no, but yes. Yes because Chris’s Millennium Falcon project is about the most important ingredient to human society—imagination—and the gumption to make things happen. Chris wants like I do to walk inside a real life Millennium Falcon—and he’s making it happen on his dime, with his time, and his effort. And now that I’ve seen it, I can’t help but wonder what our world would be like if government simply got behind people like Chris and allowed them to function in a Corporate Sector of America where inventions like the Falcon could flourish, instead of trying to heard people into cities through progressive politics and force them onto government sponsored mass transit. The Millennium Falcon is a larger symbol than that—it is the result of laissez-faire capitalism and a hope for mankind that resides in the spirit of ideals and innovation—and a lot of perspiration.
That old Han Solo at Star’s End novel still sits near my reading chair. It’s now torn, and very worn out from years of handling—but it still evokes in me boundless imagination opportunities and optimism. Many people look at what Chris is doing in Nashville and read what I have said here and think that we are grown up kids who love the escapism of cinema, or fantasy which has a grain of truth to it. But what do we want to escape from—and to what. Speaking for myself, I wish to escape from the clutches of those with undeveloped imaginations—people who avoid thinking rather than thriving from it. For me, a personal Millennium Falcon would allow me to leave those sluggish minds behind in a flight for the stars and the endless possibilities available outside of the laws comb-over politicians have constructed just to increase their power base. My wife has read Han Solo at Star’s End—in fact she’s read every Star Wars book ever written up to this point which is in the hundreds—and she understands why there are Millennium Falcon’s all over our bedroom. Many don’t because they failed to let novels like Han Solo at Star’s End capture their imaginations at a young age, or failed to enjoy a film like Star Wars for whatever reason. They lack the mechanism to enjoy those kinds of things and it is they who are weights on minds like mine. I want to escape from their limitations, their restrictions, and their lives stuck in quicksand of self-construction. The Millennium Falcon to me is freedom from all that, and a symbol against restriction because TheFalcon is a pirate vessel built by illegal components that’s faster than anything regulations in the Republic or Empire would allow. And that’s why I love it, and why people like Chris are dedicating their lives to see a real life Millennium Falcon—even if they have to build the damn thing themselves. I sleep better at night knowing that there are people like Chris and his friends out there—beyond the reaches of those who use rules and regulations to mask the lack of imagination that plagues their thoughts like a cancer—and the democracies of tyranny that they create with good intentions imposed from faulty thinking. The Millennium Falcon is an escape from those who don’t understand and a celebration by those who do.
It looks like I’ll get to see the next Star WarsEpisode 7 with my family at the new Liberty Center movie theater as the release date is now December 18th 2015. This is exciting news for me as my family loves Star Wars. Philosophically, Star Wars if very healthy stuff full of optimism for human potential. George Lucas has done something quite marvelous with it, he has combined the raw selfish energy of Han Solo—who is unquestionably Randian, and merged his usefulness with all the comparative religions of the world embodied in The Force. I have said many things about Star Wars and the impact it has on our society upon these pages because I see it as a cultural phenomena that has the potential to produce a seismic shift in human consciousness, and I’m going to say things here that I think will give people a lot of hope. I’ve been holding off until after the election to address some of these exciting developments, but I know you dear reader need a shot in the arm—so I intend to give it to you.
As I’ve discussed on several occasions I would say the most formal schooling I had which I didn’t consider a waste of time was the ten years I spent studying comparative religion and world mythology. The most important person in my life and primary motivator of my ideals has been and will always be Joseph Campbell. My parents did a good job of giving me value, but my intellectual development came from Campbell. What he did in the middle of the progressive era was quite astonishing. He was a conservative who had a following of radical hippies in search of meaning, and Campbell was able to transcend all those ideologies with an intellectual pursuit that has shaped our modern world. One of those nutty hippies was George Lucas—who wasn’t like the rest of the drug induced film makers studying under Francis Ford Coppola in San Francisco. He was a race car driver who had nearly died in a car wreck and had his life flash before his eyes with an intellectual hunger that was moving at a million miles an hour. It was in this period that Lucas discovered Campbell’s epically important book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the most important book in my personal library. I spent ten years reading Campbell and was for a time a member of The Joseph Campbell Foundation while George Lucas sat on as a board of director. Campbell had died in 1987 but ten years later we had a big meeting in Washington D.C. which for me was a personal odyssey similar to The Wizard of Oz. Upon arriving at “OZ” I discovered that everyone was far from epic in their intellectual standards and had become mere cult-like followers of Campbell, which left me feeling as if I pulled back the curtain of an entire intellectual industry and discovered a decrepit old man attempting to appear greater than he really was.
I always took my kids to these kinds of things, which pissed off everyone as Campbell’s wife Jean had never had a child. There were no kids at the big meeting of the minds and they resented me for bringing them. But as a father, I always delivered to my kids the opportunity to live their own life of adventure without restriction of intellectual limits, and I wanted them to meet the kind of people who molded public sentiment. After the meeting, my family broke off to do our own thing and we didn’t socialize further with the Campbell followers. It was Halloween in Washington D.C. and my plan was to take my kids Trick or Treating. We went to a neighborhood in Chevy Chase, but my kids refused to go up to a single door because they didn’t trust the neighborhood and felt out of their element. So we went back to our hotel and I improvised. Using lessons learned from Joseph Campbell I decided to give my children a mythic experience, since that was what Trick or Treating was supposed to entail. While the Joseph Campbell Foundation members were down the hall trying to resurrect his dead spirit with chants and hand-holding, my kids went trick or treating at our hotel door. They were only 6 and 7 years old at the time and my wife was worried that we were ruining one of their precious Halloweens of their youth by being on the road. So I dressed up as a different character that opened the door each time my kids visited. I’d give them candy then they’d run down the hall of the hotel giving me time to change into a different costume, then they’d come back. I used everything I could find inside that hotel room to try to appear as a different person, or (creature) each time they arrived at the door proclaiming, “trick or treat!”
To this day, as recently as this latest Halloween where they are now girls in their twenties, they still talk about that Halloween in Washington as being their favorite—and it was a one man show put on by me exclusively. My wife did help a couple of times as I struggled to find new costumes with what was inside our room. The reason my children loved that Halloween so much was because I gave them a mythic experience, something that was representative of reality but spoke of higher ideals beyond temporal existence—which is what most everyone in one form or another yearns for. Some people look for it in sex, love, career, drunkenness, financial power, or in eating—but everyone is looking for meaning to each breath they take.
Star Wars is the best embodiment in the modern world of human meaning. It is mythology that goes well beyond a simple blockbuster film intended to make money for the Disney Company. It has an importance that is unfathomable to contemporary thinking, and is a gift from George Lucas that only he could have come up with after surviving his devastating car wreck. He lived a life of extremes; he was a race car driver, and an avid reader who wanted to be an anthropologist. Those two radically opposite ideals are what make Star Wars so important to the human race. The reason is that Star Wars is about values, and conveying those values through a story, which is the heart of all mythologies. Star Wars because it was set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away is able to transcend religious temperament here on earth and explore the meaning of value with conflict removed. Such an example would be of whose version of religion is correct Muslims or Christians. Star Wars explores the same values without violating people’s religious beliefs which is all too often the greatest hindrance to understanding. So it is far more than just another movie, it has the power through its story to transform culture—and I predict that these new films will do just that.
When the first Star Wars film came out in 1977 America was in the middle of the Carter administration, Nixon had just been impeached, and gas prices were too high causing long lines at the pumps. Iran was moving aggressively against America on multiple fronts and the USSR was trying to inject communism into America through every open sore. A New Hope followed quickly by 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back changed Hollywood and by their own merit kick started the 1980’s and the Reagan presidency. The way those movies captured the imagination of the world was a form that only mythology could generate. Star Wars is bigger than Star Trek which explores ideals in an interesting way. Star Wars is purely about mythology and the power of it to convey complicated messages. For the same reasons that my daughters loved that particular Trick or Treat event in Washington D.C. as little girls, Star Wars for many people no matter how jaded, is their “mythic experience,” and they can’t get enough of it. Star Wars is about values.
When George Lucas wrote the character of Han Solo played by Harrison Ford, he thought of all the motor heads he knew from his racing days. Lucas unquestionably had read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and Han Solo was his answer to a Randian archetype. He meant for Han Solo to be won over by altruism conveyed through Luke Skywalker during the course of the movies and learn how to think of others first—it is the classic sacrifice and the bliss stuff so crucial to Joseph Campbell’s writings. That was before Lawrence Kasden got a hold of Lucas’ script and made Han Solo one of the most compelling characters in the history of film—unintentionally becoming the ultimate hero of the entire saga. In fact, what is missing from Return of the Jedi and the prequal films is a Han Solo type of character. Lucas attempted to humble Solo a bit by the third film, and it came out a bit flat. Even though Lucas intended to make an altruistic film out of Star Wars, the values of the characters took on a life of their own and became their own mythic experience. Lucas being enough of a lover of capitalism wisely let the story take on the form that THE FORCE intended and let things develop along their market value. Harrison Ford went on to become an international sensation while Mark Hamill even though he was the star of the films, got lost in the shadows.
The new films are being written again by Kasden, and the implications of this are quite extraordinary. Kasden is a very, talented story-teller who clearly understands mythology in ways that are different from George Lucas and very complimentary. Harrison Ford, Hamill, Fisher and many of the original cast will be back for the new films, and Ford appears to have a multi picture deal with Disney, so the Millennium Falcon will survive well into the future of the Star Wars franchise it would seem. The Falcon is the most important space ship ever created, even more so than the Space Shuttle. It is a modern-day pirate ship and symbol of freedom and rebellion in the Star Wars universe, and is one of the most recognizable objects on planet earth. If I had to take a bet, I would say more people know more about the Falcon than who their local congressman is. They probably know more about the Millennium Falcon than most of their own family members. Disney wisely is beginning to flex their mythological muscle already announcing that they are building a full-scale replica of the Millennium Falcon at their Anaheim Park in California prompting this guy below to declare:
Well, I reflect his sentiment. I’m right there with him and the hundreds if not thousands of others who share his opinion. I have not been shy about my love for the Millennium Falcon. My current favorite place in the whole world physical and virtual is aboard the ship I have on the game The Old Republic which is very similar to the Millennium Falcon. I understand why people are so excited about a full-scale Millennium Falcon at Disneyland, it is for them a mythic experience. I will love taking my grandchildren aboard a Millennium Falcon looking up at it from the foot of the loading ramp. That will be magnificent.
After eight years of Obama no matter what their political affiliation, people are tired. People don’t like communism and socialism, and for nearly 16 years, the United States government has forced heavy doses of socialism upon America growing government in ways that modern mythology has failed to capture. Television shows reflect too often statism, music is too political, and our court system is loaded with greedy lawyers trying to make mountains out of mole hills taking advantage of ACLU cases. Millions of online gamers have retreated from the real world to the virtual one to escape the tyranny of statism—because no place else is dealing with the mythic experience they require to comprehend the forces at play in their lives—except Star Wars.
When the next wave of Star Wars hits in 2014 with the Disney XD television show titled Rebels, it will have all the familiar signs of the past, the positive social impact, the economic stimulation, the cultural desire for goodness and fighting evil on behalf of justice. But this time a Disney financial machine in need of a new wave of revenue will use its considerable power for good because for the first time in decades the market need for goodness will line up with the needed greed of corporate interests and will benefit society in countless ways. It won’t be just a movie that comes out, but a mythological experience that will engulf most levels of human existence, and will be one of the greatest vehicles of capitalism displayed in a number of years.
Hollywood as a whole is in trouble. Labor agreements with the various entertainment unions will paralyze the industry in the coming years—within four years to be specific. Several studios will go out of business like the many steel and auto manufacturers of the past—collapsed by the labor unions and their collective bargaining agreements. Money men won’t risk their money if they have to share too much wealth and will move on to other forms of revenue streams—likely oversea investments. The reason Star Wars moved to December 18th, aside from gaining an extra 6 months to do post production work, was to avoid soaking up the money that can be made off the next Avengers film, and other big movies like Jurassic Park 4, and the Superman VS.Batman. Once Warner Brothers and Disney have played out the superhero films, and the stars demand larger fees under union rules, there won’t be many other large projects that can carry the type of box office numbers these big action films produce. The union wages being so high forces great box office turnout, and people aren’t going to line up to see the newest Oprah film, or romantic comedy getting box office numbers that justify the investment. This is going to crush Hollywood, because the revenue stream won’t keep going. Disney however has Star Wars, and they can hedge their labor costs with theme park revenue. Without those theme parks, Disney would be victim to the same kind forces that the other studios are going to face—parasitic labor union practices. Because of the vacuum of power that the Hollywood left will have in this period, they will be forced to compete with Star Wars, which is a force for good—or they will be financially crushed. The string of progressive films that have been projected upon the silver screen for two decades now will abate, because capitalism will force their hand to abandon their liberal ideals the same way that Lucas had to re-think Han Solo as a character—because the market drove the character’s importance.
Behind all this is a rather solid formula that Joseph Campbell outlined in his life’s work on comparative mythology. That work directly shapes the kind of stories that are told in the various Star Wars formats, whether it be film, television, books, gaming, or comics—the need for the stories are what matter most, and the reason for the need. Once those things are understood, they can be explored in the story telling process. That is precisely what is going to happen when the first Star Wars film hits in 2015. A market need is going to be fulfilled in a big way, and that need was created by anxiety driven through lack of mythological coordination. Statist governments have attempted to suppress that mythological need and reshape it in their own image—and they have foolishly attempted to force it down society’s throat without listening to the market needs. In the Star Wars equivalent, if government had been in George Lucas’ shoes, they would have forced the Luke Skywalker angle and suppressed the Han Solo one—and what they would have ended up with would be something along the lines of the prequels—entertaining, nice to look at, but lacking the kind of meaning that makes grown men want to walk through a full-scale Millennium Falcon as their life goal. It says a lot that a fictional space ship that is over 30 years old has more mythological meaning than any other creation proposed over that same span of time. The Falcon represents rebellion, defiance, speed, and freedom—that is why people love it. And as long as those symbols exist in our society, statist government will not succeed. So when Star Wars hits the new theater at Liberty Center, and a wave of excitement emits in a way that few people have seen in their lifetimes, more than a movie will be presented. A mythology will be offered, and that is more powerful than all the weapons of the world—because weapons are built to destroy the will of an enemy with fear. Mythology is designed to build a mind up to withstand the fears they are presented with, and in a perpetual game of tug and war between those two forces one that is generally regulated to only religions and some mild forms of entertainment, the other is supported by large governments with the endless ability to steal the money of their tax payers to support their grip on power. Star Wars does what only mythology without the congestion of focus on the afterlife can achieve, and that is to bring the mind to what it truly craves which is freedom, innovation, and rebellion against those who seek to suppress it.
For me the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars is a symbol of freedom. It was the pirate vessel of the smuggler Han Solo and became the premier deterrent against tyranny in the plight against the evil Empire. I love the ship in the fictional context for which it is presented. When I ride the Star Tours Ride at the Disney Parks I always hope for the beginning shown below, where the Falcon is sitting in a hanger surrounded by Imperial troops before suddenly leaping off the deck to launch itself into a firefight in space before escaping. There is no presidential address in human history which moves me more than seeing the Falcon sitting there at the opening of the Star Tours ride. The video below does not capture the mood completely, only in reference. On the actual ride, it is quite spectacular because visually it is captivating, but metaphorically, it is multi-dimensional—and important. There is no level of sign stimuli more appealing, no sporting event more dramatic, and no political event more powerful to me than watching the Millennium Falcon in flight.
I became hooked on the new Star Wars game called X-Wing Miniatures because of the fantastic model they had made of the Millennium Falcon. There has never been another more meticulous model of such a thing ever produced to my knowledge for the simple task of playing a game. But that game has deep combinations of options that are much more dynamic and interesting than any game of chess known to intellectual circles. The 3’X3’ game surface of a typical X-Wing game holds seemingly infinite strategies to use against an opponent which is refreshingly wonderful for strategy prone war gamers—such as myself. It has been many years since I have loved something so much as I love Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures.
I look for reasons to play with the Millennium Falcon at every opportunity, but because it is such a powerful ship I have found that I can’t use it the way I want as I have been teaching players new to the game to play using simpler rules instead of my Falcon build which involves many complex options. I have been looking for a great support ship for my Falcon that points-out right at 65 points. I shudder to consider spending so much on one ship in the game, but if my reason to play the game is to play the Millennium Falcon, then I owe it to the game to find a way to justify the experience. Most 100 point games in X-Wing come out to three ships, sometimes four or five. So tying up 65 points on my Falcon build is a steep price indeed. That means the Falcon will be continuously outnumbered and will have to take a lot of abuse to survive—which is ironically the actual role it had in the Star Wars mythology. Winning is not guaranteed under such conditions, but it’s the way I like to play the game. It requires excellent piloting instead of attacking opponents with mass, which is usually the best strategy for everything.
The ship I found to support my Falcon is the HWK-290, which just came out on Wave 3 from Fantasy Flight Games. Manufactured by the Corellian Engineering Corporation in the decades preceding the Battle of Naboo, the HWK-290 was a concentrated effort by talented shipwrights at breaking into a new market. Focusing on making the new design appeal to the wealthy of high society, the HWK-290 was an attempt at capturing business outside of its normal audiences.
Major marketing research was conducted on the demographic segment CEC sought to capitalize upon. As such, they designed the ship to appeal to entrepreneurs and wealthy merchants. One concern of the individuals questioned during the research phase was that the current designs of the time were often delayed at checkpoints and customs stations because they were armed; it was thought that the time it took goods to be delivered could possibly be reduced by removing the armaments of the ships. Additionally the majority of those interviewed said that the ideal ship would not only be fast but aesthetically pleasing as well, unlike most freighters, which are bulky in appearance.
The research provoked a design totally independent of the iconic YT-series freighters, which tended to be associated with the less savoury elements of society. The HWK-290 prototype had the appearance of a large bird of prey and when displayed at trade shows and conventions brought about many questions as to the availability of the ship. Designers also listened to initial feedback regarding the ship and made minor modifications to the interior until it was determined that the right balance of aesthetics and functionality were achieved. At that point, production began in earnest.
When the HWK-290 rolled off the production line, it was an unarmed, extremely fast, agile ship that could outmaneuver and outrun most fighters and had largest weight capacity for carrying cargo of any freighter up to 30 meters long. It also contained an impressive state of the art sensor array for a ship of its size and class, the purpose of which was to detect trouble before falling victim to it. Additionally, it was a lot more luxurious inside than normal freighters, boasting large passenger and sleeping areas, entertainment consoles and a cockpit that was designed with the comfort of the pilot and co-pilot in mind.
While only seeing relatively moderate success in contrast to that of the YT series, production of the HWK-290 was discontinued during the Clone Wars in favor of military production. Despite no longer being manufactured, the HWK-290 has found popularity in the inventories of smugglers and pirate groups, a far cry from the original clientele for whom it was initially designed.
I ordered the HWK-290 well in advance of its release date, and it shipped to me from American Hobby Supply in a box coming from Fantasy Flight Games. As I was helping my daughters get set up for their big party over the weekend, knowing that at least one of my nephews from out-of-town was coming, I was hoping my HWK-290 would arrive in time for the party so I could fly it while teaching him about the game. Sure enough the tracking information showed that my HWK-290 was coming and it arrived right on time on my front porch. Receiving that package was one of the most thrilling things I have put my hands on in years. That statement is not in reference to a lack of options in my life—quite contrary. But in my life mythology is extremely important, and the X-Wing game is a perfect symbiotic relationship of hobby model building and strategy mixed with deep metaphorical mythology. In that context the HWK-290 is the perfect complement to my Millennium Falcon and it was exciting to put my hands on it after thinking about it so much.
The reason I love that ship so much even though it is comparatively slow as opposed to the A-Wings and Tie Fighters is that both my Falcon and HWK-290 feature a 360 degree shooting radius. The strategy I plan to use with these two ships is not for everyone as the key to winning with them will be in maneuvering strategy. When the package arrived the day was a picture perfect sunny day in Southern Ohio, the sky was cloudless and the temperature was in the lower 70s. It was a weekend day with little pressure other than the upcoming party at my kid’s house for my first grandson. Opening the package from Fantasy Flight Games with the HWK-290 so carefully packaged within the box revealed the climax of such sentiments. At that moment it was a perfect day in every respect.
Of course I played with it that night as I showed my nephew how the game worked. It was challenging to fly, but I got used to it quickly and can see how it will play out in many future strategies to my liking. But seeing the HWK-290 parked next to my Millennium Falcon brings back to my mind that wonderful opening on the Star Tours Ride at Hollywood Studios, where the Falcon begins in captivity, frees itself, nearly collides with a cruiser in space during an intense battle only to escape in a nick of time into the safety of hyperspace. The HWK-290 and the Millennium Falcon go together well and I am excited for the many wonderful adventures that await those two during epic battles yet to be fought.
The Overmanwarrior 
