Tag: George Lucas

Solo: A Star Wars Story Review—What a GREAT movie!

Well, that was a lot of fun—a whole lot of fun. I need to see it again, but I think the new Star Wars movie Solo: A Star Wars Story is my favorite film from the franchise and is in my top ten of all time. It reminded me a lot of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In many ways it also reminded me of a kid’s version of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. And it reminded me a lot of Pirates of the Caribbean and likely that was what Disney was thinking by going with this part of the Star Wars franchise. Solo: A Star Wars Story was just pure fun technically executed to perfection. If this was the most expensive Star Wars film ever made requiring something like nine months of shooting to get right—it showed on the screen. I enjoyed the movie as an adult, but really it’s the kids who see this that are in for the biggest treat. In so many ways I thought the film was brilliant. It started with a car chase on Han Solo’s home planet of Corellia and ended with a card game where Han wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando—but what happened in between was pretty magnificent on the scale of adventurous fun and special effects achievement. Solo: A Star Wars Story is one of those movies that you come out of the theater feeling good about seeing, and it’s certainly one that will be the most fun to watch over and over again once it hits the home theater market. This for me personally is the Star Wars film that I’ve always wanted to see and it actually went a few steps further—which was refreshing.

There are movies over the years that were defined by just a few scenes, such as in Jurassic Park in 1993 where we first saw a T-Rex eat its way through the fence of its holding cell during a thick downpour of rain. Or in 1981 in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones climbs under the truck that is trying to run over him—Solo: A Star Wars Story has several moments like that in it. The two that most come to my mind is when the Millennium Falcon was caught in the gravity well of the Maul during the Kessel Run and a giant monster was trying to eat them in space. The effects and story elements were just jaw dropping beautiful. Then the second is the stand-off between Han Solo and Tobias Beckett near the end where it is recorded for all time, “Han Shot First,” without question. Put that controversy to rest forever, and I thought it was a very powerful moment in these very political times where PC seems to ruin everything. With Han Solo being such a practical, no-nonsense guy, shooting first is a logical thing to do, and it was very satisfying to see him unflinchingly do so. I think it was on par with the time that Indiana Jones shot the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark, also written by this Solo screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan.

When George Lucas decided to re-edit the Han Solo scene shooting Greedo in A New Hope he was giving in to political pressure that was coming from the anti-gun crowd. Lucas wanted to make sure that Han Solo wasn’t considered a blood thirsty murderer which can sometimes be a very fine line between a sparkling hero who just shoots a villain. If everyone can’t agree that a villain is a villain one person’s hero is another person’s murderer, so George Lucas made sure that Greedo shot first in the 1997 Special Editions of his original Star Wars Trilogy. Making the decision to have Han shoot first in this film to end the life of a main character was quite a statement and now an issue that as been bouncing around among Star Wars fans for many years is settled. Han Solo will have forever be known to have shot first—which is consistent with his character. As a person who has seen hundreds of westerns over the years, I thought it was an extremely well-done scene that felt oddly good. I would go see this movie another 20 times at the theater just to watch that one scene. I put it on my scale of fantastic cinematic events in the top ten—perhaps the top five. This movie would have been good if that’s all that happened in it.

But that was only one small scene. For me the best of the Star Wars movies were sections of A New Hope and the first two-thirds of The Empire Strikes Back. I think I would put this Solo: A Star Wars Story just ahead of those two films because it gives audiences all the fun things without the emotional weight that happened at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, or even The Force Awakens. With Han Solo being one of the best characters it’s no fun to have him frozen like what happened in Empire, or to be killed like he was in Force Awakens. I understand those artistic needs in a film but what makes a prequel like Solo: A Star Wars Story fun is that you know Han is going to live and come out on top, so you can just enjoy the ride. In that way I think this is the best Star Wars film made to date because it is lacking the emotional weight of any heavy subject matter—just like the Pirate of the Caribbean movies. Star Wars has certainly contributed to heavy story telling with difficult subject matter, but the roots of the franchise were always well-set in B-movies and Saturday Morning Matinees where viewers knew the hero would live from one cliffhanger to another, but the thing they wanted to really know was how.

In that way this Solo: A Star Wars Story was more like an Indiana Jones film where we knew the hero would find some way out of whatever mess they found themselves in but learning how they’d escape was the real fun. It’s like a fun amusement park ride where it all looks dangerous and you know that when the ride ends, you’ll safely put your feet back on the ground. But during the experience, you are experiencing thrills and chills that you couldn’t get anywhere else. In a lot of ways if we as the audience didn’t know that Han Solo would survive this movie we’d not be able to deal with the suspense of going through so much in such a short period of time. The young life of Han Solo was pretty intense and for lots of emotional reasons, is best viewed in hindsight—as a prequel film. Pretty stunning stuff.

Another movie I kept thinking about during Solo: A Star Wars Story was James Cameron’s Titanic from 1997. Like Solo, it had a troubled production, cost overruns and all types of controversy, but Cameron kept his nose down and plowed through the production to what became one of the biggest box office sensations in the history of cinema. On the day of its release which I took a day off work back then to see with advanced tickets that my wife was bewildered that I wanted to see so bad, the critics were all over the picture slamming it for every little thing they could think of. When the film opened, and the word of mouth got out about it, the business exploded for the next six months which was unheard of for films even back then. People wanted that type of optimistic story set against a tragic backdrop and the big downer of course was that Jack had died. The critical appraisal and industry backlash against Lucasfilm for inserting Ron Howard into a movie that was almost done and reshooting 80% of the film with an additional 4 month schedule has all those naysayers smelling blood in the water and the real sharks out there love to take bites out of careers and torpedo films that find themselves in such a situation. But I was just a little stunned at how good Solo was even down to the musical score by John Powell in using vuvuzelas to provide emphasis and some heightened emotion. Vevuzelas are those insect sounding horns that you hear in European soccer stadiums that are constantly buzzing—those horns were used in this movie to a very stunning effect in the background that I thought was very gutsy. The entire production takes those kinds of unique risks that will go down in film history as some of the boldest by a supposedly big commercial company like Lucasfilm and distributer Disney.

One thing that really benefits Solo is the presence of some big names in the business of acting, such as Donald Glover who is presently nearly like Michael Jackson in his popularity. The kid has the number one song in the country and here he is playing Lando Calrissian in the latest Star Wars movie—and he’s having fun with it. Glover isn’t the star, Alden Ehrenreich is. Without question, this is Alden Ehrenreich’s movie and that’s big shoes to fill considering that Emilia Clark is starring in the last season of Game of Thrones filming presently and she is the star of that series which is also filled with fantastic actors—the best of the best. Talk about a tough job not just to overcome the Hollywood legend of Harrison Ford which Ehrenreich did I think quite spectacularly, but in holding his own against some really big stars sharing the screen with him. As much as people want to make this movie about Lando, as it turned out, Lando as played by Glover was the same Lando from The Empire Strikes Back, a swindler, a con artist, and a person of questionable moral authority who is on the check list of revenge for a raging Han Solo at the end of this film. It says a lot about a movie that for a change doesn’t end with a big action sequence that saves the universe from immaculate destruction, but with a card game that in its own subtle ways does save the galaxy. What if Han had not run down Lando at the end of the film to play one last time that game of sabacc. The first Death Star would have killed all the rebels in A New Hope. Princess Leia would have never have gotten away from her raging father in The Empire Strikes Back. The second Death Star from The Return of the Jedi wouldn’t have been destroyed by Lando Calrissian many years after these events in Solo. Rey would have died on Star Killer Base in The Force Awakens and she never would have found Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi. In so many ways this sabacc game at the end of Solo: A Star Wars Story was a huge climax, but for a film like this in this day and age where bigger and bigger explosions leave audiences gasping just prior to exiting the theater, this movie slowed down long enough to get to the real heart of the movie, the treasure that Han Solo wanted more than anything else in life—his own starship so that he could earn his freedom finally to live life on the terms he always wanted to live it.

The tragedy of the film is that Han Solo doesn’t get to live happily ever after with his childhood love who turns out to be an agent of evil—sort of. But this isn’t the kind of heart wrenching let down that we see in Titanic and it remains to be seen if a film like Solo can drive big billion-dollar numbers without essentially being a tragedy. I think the answer is a big yes, but producers are following formulas of what has worked in the past basically starting with films like Casablanca and Citizen Kane. To end a movie on a high note is what film schools are teaching their students who then work in the industry as “paying fan service.” Well, yeah, duh. Aren’t these movies made for the fans? Who says that Han Solo has to become a mess because he has lost his girlfriend in this movie to the ambitious revenge plans of Darth Maul? Hey, Han won the ship of his dreams—who needs a woman? And that is pretty much the attitude which is very refreshing in these kinds of movies where Anakin Skywalker was drawn to become Darth Vader because of his love for his secret wife. The ability to shrug off trouble is exactly what makes Han Solo a great character and why these types of Star Wars movies are needed for the franchise. The emotions over the last three films have been too heavy-handed, Luke has died, Han Solo as an elderly figure has died, and all the members of Rogue One died. It’s nice to see a film mostly without heartache for a change that is full of fun and adventure—because most of us have enough of all that in our lives, who wants to pay money to see more of it?

As I said the best parts of Solo: A Star Wars Story are the scenes it recreates from the best parts of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back—the scenes in the cantina in the very first film, the heroics on Hoth in Empire and into the asteroid field which has never been recreated in any film since—in forty years of trying. The price of the entire movie would be worth just watching the Kessel Run, a desperate journey into the Maw of Star Wars legend where a black hole makes passage very dangerous—impossible really. To watch a bold young Han Solo cut off from an exit into the Maw by an Imperial Star Destroyer turn the Millennium Falcon around within a gravity well and to fly back into the worst part of it in order to escape is something that no modern movie can duplicate. It’s not just that there has been a 40 year build up into creating an elaborate mythology about what constitutes a “Kessel Run” but the execution of it on a movie screen is something that has just recently become technically possible—its quite something to see. Why would anybody wait to see a big firework display on the Fourth of July? Because its cool. That’s also why everyone should see Solo: A Star Wars Story at least once, because this one scene of the Kessel Run is just that cool. Luckily, that’s not the only thing worth watching but if you had to pick one thing, that would be it.

The character of Han Solo is something that is very unique, and precious to human creation, there really has never been another character in film or literature like him. You won’t find a comparable character in any Shakespeare literature or within the music of Mozart. The Greeks and Romans never came close in any of their work in creating a foundation for the kind of fearless character that Han Solo is—the boldness and self-confidence that made the character something so many people have loved now for half a century. The only literary reference out of all creative efforts by mankind over our entire history has been the work of Wofram Von Eschenbach’s Parzival in the Middle Ages with a little bit of Lancelot sprinkled in for good measure. George Lucas literally created the character of Han Solo during his racing days where souped-up cars and cruise music filled his mind. After nearly dying in a car crash and deciding to get serious with his life he ran into the work of Joseph Campbell and these stories by Eschenbach and Han Solo was born. The spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone were popular during this period so Lucas put all those strong images of maleness into the character of Han Solo from A New Hope and something really new was born which certainly does deserve its own movie—or series of movies. The character of Han Solo is beyond review for most studied people, because there is no reference for which to place context in the traditional way. Han Solo really isn’t afraid of anything. He is like Parzival in Eschenbach’s epic Arthurian legends in that he knows how to get to the Grail Castle with his hands limp against his horse trusting fate and his raw talent to take him anywhere he needs to go. Getting “there” is never the goal for Han Solo, which is why he always finds himself exactly where he needs to be where heroics are needed. Solo always trusts that he can get out of whatever trouble he finds himself in which makes seeing a movie starring a character like that extremely unusual. Usually what drives a dramatic narrative is the hopes and fears of the protagonists—but in the case of Han Solo he’s really not afraid of anything and he believes anything is possible and it is on that boundless optimism that we as viewers are transported to possibilities that are best experienced in a great movie. That puts Han Solo into a category all his own and makes a movie like this so much more special.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is a movie that is special. You don’t have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy it, but if you are, then we are seeing the start of something really positive emerging creatively from the Lucasfilm group. I would place Solo as one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s up there with Raiders of the Lost Ark and even Scarface. It’s a reflection into the way movies used to be made with themes that simply have not been part of the modern theatrical experience. It’s a movie you will want to watch in the future on a home system just to feel good about something. When you are having a bad day, this is the movie you will want to put in and watch for a few hours—its fun, its optimistic and is full of adventure. Additionally, it takes the mythology of Star Wars and really begins the expansion of it in ways that build the brand under the Disney tent like nothing else could. We go places in this film that unlocks thousands of potential stories for the future. If everything we know about Star Wars came out of the first three films done forty years back in the eighties, then this film takes a step into that world to unlock more potential on a scale of 100 times what we’ve known. Simply put, there is a creative impulse to this movie that is so bold and audacious that it is formulative into everything that comes after it, even if those creative endeavors are not Star Wars related. Solo: A Star Wars Story is in a place of its own and shows theatrical leadership in ways that are not only necessary, but excessively refreshing. It is the movie to see if you are going to see one, not just once, but as many times as possible. It’s that good.

Rich Hoffman

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‘Solo’ Gets a Standing Ovation at Cannes: Mythology and culture are on expanding in a very positive way

I can’t emphasize enough what Star Wars means to our current society—and specifically how important this next film, Solo: A Star Wars Story is to the continuation of the great mythology that is now set to take on a life well beyond anything planet earth has ever seen. As I say often the most important topic to me out of all the things that I discuss is the realm of mythology and how it captures the minds of mankind and propels it forward at each juncture of history. I am specifically thinking right now about the great legends of King Arthur, or the early works of the Iliad where Odysseus propelled modern society to its current form to the point where our civilization has outgrown those great stories. Our modern society is very complex, and we know so much about so many things that were not known at the time that the great classics were written, and we are and have been in desperate need for stories that can take us all into the future—because that’s how human beings work. They need conceptual devices in story form to put into context their observed reality—and even though Star Wars is intended for kids, it works on so many levels to get the imaginations of the human race moving that I think it’s currently the most important thing in the world happening right now, and I understand very well what is happening from North Korea to the taxation of Amazon in Seattle—to the teacher union strikes, to the corruption of our own FBI becoming weaponized against us all. Even in that context I think this new Star Wars movie is a tremendous opportunity for mythmaking to expand dramatically into the lives of all thinking beings on planet earth for the better, and it would all come down to the presentation of the film at the Cannes Film Festival in France. It’s not just because I love the character of Han Solo, but it’s why the movie was made in the first place that I think it’s so important and I was very happy to see a standing ovation for the film after its screening. This is going to be a big one.

I read the critics opinions of the film and most of them were positive, many very positive with about 23% less than enthusiastic. What those lukewarm reviews had in common was that they missed the epic scale of life and death situations that have been present in Star Wars up to this point—the save the whole galaxy or else type of storylines. If Star Wars is going to work in future, they need to become much more individualized, personal stories which we all know culminate into the three trilogies of nine films we have mostly been familiar with. And once Lucasfilm accomplished that, mythology by way of the vehicle of Star Wars will be unleased in a very dramatic way and I don’t think those people trained into their institutional professions, and are making good livings in those comfortable places, are open to these big changes. Their comments about nobody asking for a movie about Han Solo and that the movie is just capitalizing off the Star Wars name and is an entirely different kind of film altogether are missing the point. This movie was always intended to expand the Star Wars mythology in ways that I would argue it always needed to go—since the Empire Strikes Back way back in 1980 and I think everyone watching this movie is going to be in for a surprise.

I know enough about this movie to be happy with the decisions that Kathy Kennedy has made over the last two years. A lot of people do not understand how hard it is to make a movie, and to negotiate contracts with expensive actors and to hold those contacts over many films. I continue to be amazed how the Marvel team does it with all their big-name actors now and how they can put them all in a film like Infinity War. That would be an astonishing payroll to put all those stars into one movie, but Marvel has figured it out and that Disney polish is now coming to Star Wars with these Han Solo movies serving as a test bed of creative entanglement. I will be the first to say I was not happy with the Lucasfilm abandonment of the original books which they now call legends, and I was not at all happy with The Force Awakens when they killed Han Solo in that movie. Long time readers here know very well how angry I was at the way they dealt with Han Solo’s character in that film and I did several radio shows discussing the issue in detail. However, and I know I wasn’t the only one, I think Lucasfilm to a reasonable extent has listened to the fans—and they have made some adjustments with this Solo movie which is why it needed to stay on schedule even after the previous directors were fired and Ron Howard was brought on to fix things. It’s also why I believe that the last movie of the modern trilogy, Episode 9 now directed by J.J. Abrams was pushed out into 2019—because Lucasflim needed to see how audiences reacted to new story elements in this new Solo movie.

I don’t think Kathy Kennedy or Bob Iger are all that happy with the direction of Solo: A Star Wars Story, I think they’d love to have a much more progressive film with less male characters acting so strongly. That’s a very educated guess on my part, but business is business. If you are running a movie company that makes Star Wars movies and you intend for them to transcend modern politics, then they need to be timeless stories, and this new Han Solo movie needed to be more of a classic western than a modern progressive version of Guardians of the Galaxy. I watched Kathy Kennedy at the Cannes press events and I think she is breathing a bit better now—she really needs to pull in at least a billion dollars off this Han Solo movie to justify everything they’ve done with Star Wars since Disney bought it in 2012. She made serious mistakes putting top-heavy female characters into Star Wars and making really stupid comments like she did to the New York Times where she said she didn’t care about male Stars Wars fans—which traditionally have been the primary support of the franchise for over four decades now. There was always room for women in Star Wars, but they couldn’t just take everything over and get away with it. The backlash against Kathy Kennedy in general has been harsh. And Bob Iger is an anti-gun liberal, so it’s probably tough for him to see all these posters of Han Solo pointing a gun out into the horizon, but that’s the character and that’s what people want to see in movies, and putting politics aside, Lucasfilm and Disney have given fans what they want—which is a very good thing.

I will likely give a very long and detailed review on the 24th of May which will articulate many, many things that I think are superb about this new kid’s movie which I think will capture the hearts of so many people in a very positive way. It’s not just the movie that I’m happy about, but what will come out of it creatively. Mythology has always been the center of any advanced culture and when a story works—it advances everything from arts and sciences, to politics and philosophy. And after watching that standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, I am quite sure that we are all about to see something very special.

Rich Hoffman
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Uber Elevate in West Chester, Ohio: Getting ready for the future, because its on our doorstep–all we have to do is open the door

Sign me up, Uber doesn’t even have to sell me on it. I have been all about skycars for over two decades now and understand that this form of transportation was always the key to our future as human beings—everywhere in the world. It is time for that great technical leap and I am prepared to do whatever needs to be done to bring a skyport to my town of West Chester, Ohio. Let me provide a situational necessity for why Uber Elevate is needed not just in my home city of Cincinnati, but in every city. Here is a problem I run in to several times a year, I have business guests from out-of-town. At the conclusion of our business day they go back to their hotel, usually a few miles down the road in the heart of West Chester, Ohio. Before they leave, I offer to take them to a Reds game, which they almost always accept, especially in the Diamond seats for the full Mercedes-Benz sponsored luxury experience. The game starts at 7:10 PM, but to take advantage of the dinner option, we need to arrive an hour early. Our business day ended at 5:30 PM but the relatively short drive from West Chester to downtown Cincinnati just to the south takes an hour due to the traffic congestion. That doesn’t leave my guests any time to change cloths and get ready, and still have time to get to the game without missing something. What I need in those situations is to go to a Uber Skyport over by the Top Golf complex with my three guests and fly down to the stadium landing at the Uber Skyport at the Banks. From there we would simply walk into the stadium and enjoy our game without any delays or traffic anxiety. And a successful day of business would be concluded in the most optimal way possible. After the game I would dial-up a Uber Elevate vehicle from my phone app which would be waiting on us at the skyport pad to take us all home. The reality of that experience is about five years away with a realistic projection date of 2023.

I watched the Uber Elevate presentation that they did this past week with great enthusiasm. When I saw that NASA was affiliated with their project I was even more impressed, finally after many years there was a viable plan to take transportation into the air where it belonged with a viable business model. Most of the technical problems have been worked out ironically with the toy drones that we can all get at Target or Wal-Mart. But these drones are just bigger and can hold passengers. The variable speed engines to provide the lift and computer-controlled adjustments that had to be made to deal with wind shears and other weather anomalies were present and it was now time to finally have an intelligent discussion about personal transportation by way of sky transport.

The Uber Elevate concept would need to be in high population areas to work well and my town of West Chester is just the perfect location for one of the opening cities. Already Uber Elevate is set to start operations in 2023 in the Dallas area and in Los Angeles. But quickly they will spread to other cities once public trust can be built with the new technology. With most of the current skycar designs there really isn’t any way that the vehicles will fall out of the sky. There are too many propellers on them to allow a vehicle to fall, the resistance of the air passing through the blades would have a kind of paper airplane effect in case of irreparable power failure. But that is a worse case scenario. In so many ways the Uber Elevate vehicles would be many times safer than a conventional car because it has upward mobility to keep it out of the trajectory of other vehicles. Riding in a Uber Elevate vehicle would be very comfortable and not violent in any way. It would be smooth and transitional from takeoff to destination landing. It would be no scarier than riding an elevator in a sky scrapper and looking out the windows once at the top levels.

Like it or not this is where transportation is going—its where it must go. There will always be a need for cars and large trucks will always be in demand to deliver goods and services. But for personal transportation from city to city or even across a large metropolis, the Uber Elevate is the best option there is. Getting from one end of Manhattan to the other is best achieved by flying over everything, not with an expensive taxi ride stuck in traffic every block of that big city. With Uber Elevate you would just walk to a building near Central Park and take the elevator up to the top floor where a Uber Elevate Skyport would be located and grab a transport to the financial district with a short five-minute flight over blocks and blocks of traffic. There is no infrastructure investment either at the ground level or underneath the city, everything would be vertical, which is the whole purpose of cities.

Even though part of the Uber Elevate presentation makes the assumption that cities will continue to grow vertically, such as in Mexico City, I can say that I don’t think people will be moving into cities—cities tend to expand outward as the tax problems of urban development pushes away wealth into the suburbs. That means that for people who work in the cities but live out in the suburbs the highway system just can’t deal with all the commerce, which is why it takes in Cincinnati an hour to drive down I-75 a mere 12 miles during rush hour. Getting to a Cincinnati Reds game from where I live is very difficult and in West Chester that is where so much business is done these days in the Cincinnati area. It’s not done downtown because it’s too difficult to get in and out of the city. But with Uber Elevate, much of that problem is solved. I can think of at least one downtown Cincinnati parking garage near City Hall just south of the Convention Center that would make a perfect Uber Elevate Skyport—and it would do big business in that location.

That means what is left to do to make all this happen is we need to get some money people together for the initial investment and we need to solve the political problems and all the regulations that currently stand in the way of making such a thing happen. The prototypes are already there and will be ready for flight by 2020. That only gives us three years to build the skyports and work out the navigational routes—for instance in the example I provided, buying the land and building skyports in both West Chester, Ohio and on the Banks in Cincinnati. Eventually of course within the subsequent years there would be hubs of skyports all around the I-275 loop, just as there would be in every big city that could transport people in and out of their cities easily and to all points around their metropolitan areas. Once that network was established then there would be city to city travel, such as from Cincinnati to Indianapolis, or Chicago to Detroit, Los Angeles to Las Vegas and so on. That is the way of the future and I am happy that we are now on the doorstep to it. Now all we have to do is open the door. I’m ready—are you?

Rich Hoffman

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The Republicans of Star Wars: Expanding the base with new voters inspired to action by fantasy meeting reality

It was good to see that two Republican politicians that are notable in Ohio politics took a moment on May 4th 2018 to honor the now official Star Wars holiday which takes place every year on that date. Jim Renacci who is running for the Senate seat in Ohio to challenge Sharrod Brown put out the press release displayed below, and Sheriff Jones put out a Tweet that was well received by Star Wars fans. It would be easy for either politician to ignore the Star Wars holiday as both men are over 60 and could plead ignorance to the cultural changes that are taking place artistically by the Disney franchise but they wisely embraced the holiday which was very smart–politically.

Good afternoon,

Today is Friday, May 4th a normal day for many, but die-hard fans of the Rebel Alliance will tell you: it’s Star Wars Day.

The first Star Wars movie to hit theaters (eventually subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope) was released in 1977, 41 years ago. Though this blockbuster franchise has existed for over four decades, career politician Sherrod Brown has worked in politics even longer, first being sworn into office in 1975.

“While Brown has lived in a political bubble for the last 44 years—never bothering to develop real-world experience—Jim Renacci has worked as an entrepreneur for the last three decades, creating more than 1,500 jobs and employing over 3,000 Ohioans.”

— Brittany Martinez, Renacci for Senate Communications Director

I’ve been writing a lot about Star Wars lately for a lot of reasons. Not only am I excited for the new Han Solo movie that is about to come out, but I can’t help but notice a number of things that are happening where politics and entertainment are coalescing together in new and unusual ways. I personally think that the new film Solo: A Star Wars Story will be one of those special movies similar to what happened when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in 1981 and was one of those movies that everyone went to see and was a kind of unifying factor in our society culturally. Most movies that come out don’t have the potential to touch just about everyone who watches them the way that I think this Solo Star Wars film will. When Raiders came out it was a year and a half into the Reagan White House and looking back at how politics and entertainment came together to create a positive decade for America, I can’t help but notice the similarities happening now in 2018. Only I think the potential now is much greater than it was back then. So that prospect has given me great excitement. We are facing a new decade that will not only see mankind visit Mars, but there will be economic expansion that will touch literally every country in the world and their point of entry into those new opportunities will come ironically from Star Wars. People in China and India don’t watch Fox News but they will see Star Wars and be touched by it likely in some way and that will shape their politics in ways that aren’t explored under normal circumstances. But these are not normal days of political development.

I recently wrote of the nature of the Star Wars stories as being best when they are anti-authoritarian, because that was the original vision George Lucas brought to the film series. When Star Wars works best, they are anti-authoritarian art. When Star Wars fails, they are saturated with progressive politics reflective of the creative people who work in the film business. The new people running Lucasfilm and Disney these days are starting to understand that relationship through trial and error, and I think we will see those results in the new Solo: A Star Wars Story movie. Star Wars is not a form of liberal art, it’s a conservative endeavor by its very nature. Even though George Lucas meant it as a reflective form of art from the counter-culture, it was his love of old westerns and 1950s science fiction that set Star Wars apart from everything else that was being produced by Hollywood.

It is hard for liberals to look at themselves and admit that it is the Democratic Party that is all about tyranny and attempting to control people’s lives. They sold the Democratic Party to themselves as the part of civil rights and empowerment, but it was always the Republicans who truly stood for all the things that gave power to individuals and philosophically relied on smaller government to advance a country’s needs. That is why Republicans tend to love Star Wars. Even though the creative people behind Star Wars self-identify as Democrats they philosophically have been making Republican movies because the stories have always been rooted in the traditions of mid-20th Century America. The rejection by fans of elements of Star Wars since the Disney acquisition have been those Democratic elements that just don’t fit with the traditions of the old Saturday morning matinees that inspired George Lucas. Just as Disney would never have been such a massive company if it started out as a liberal enterprise, the origins of both film franchises was rooted in traditional America which Republicans represent.

This is important because if you look at the pod cast shown below where a big show was recorded in a Denny’s to celebrate the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story which the restaurant chain is promoting, there is a represented fan base there which I would bet are all potential Republicans, yet they don’t currently vote. If you listen to them speak, they sound like Republicans, they are certainly not collectivists, but the political party structure as it currently is does not inspire them to participate. Getting to know elements about the Star Wars movies are much more interesting to them. And I can say that there are many millions of these people out there, they are politically disconnected from the real world, but the politics of Star Wars as a functional mythology philosophically grounded in the traditions of America and being shown all over the world culturally are aligned with them. It would not take much to convince these people to vote Republican, because in so many ways they are already there.

Until Donald Trump came along Republicans allowed themselves to have their messaging controlled by the Democrats who tend to be better at marketing themselves even if they steal all the good stuff from Republicans—like civil rights, women’s rights, and small government ideas. What I see happening is now with a year and a half of Donald Trump and Star Wars really dominating the entertainment landscape, those two things are coming together in a way that should expand party affiliations in favor of the Republicans. Smart Republicans like Jim Renacci and Sheriff Jones already understand that the way to expand their party base is to reach out to Star Wars fans and get them out voting for Republicans in elections.

Even through Bob Iger at Disney is a Democrat, and Ron Howard who directed Solo: A Star Wars Story is not a Donald Trump lover, they have both done a really good job for their responsibilities in the movie business. If they behaved like liberals in their jobs, they obviously would not have done such a good job so it doesn’t take much to win them over too. The new Republican Party under the Donald Trump White House is actually something that social liberals but business conservatives could sign up to be a part of and that would truly be a unifying factor nationally. I think that’s where everything is headed in 2018 so it would be wise to make strategic alignments that would allow for some really special things to happen at this year’s midterms. There are a lot of new voters out there, and in many cases people who have never even thought about voting who could be recruited once they had the doors opened to them by a party who understands them. Republicans are the party for Star Wars fans and any candidate who wants to expand their base should do so with that understanding. While Star Wars is for kids, it has an epistemology that is rooted in American tradition for which the Republican Party best articulates, and that means that special things can happen politically if everything were aligned properly. So it made me very proud to see that Sheriff Jones and Jim Renacci are some of the first party heads to understand that real potential that exists just beyond our fingertips. We are truly in a new age and those who survive best use all the tools in the tool box, not just the ones that used to be cool—but the ones that are cool now.

Rich Hoffman

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It’s all about Resisting Authoritarianism: Star Wars, George Lucas, Donald Trump and what we all see in the mirrior each day

Of course, it’s an official Star Wars Holiday, May the 4th, 2018 and at the precise moment that tickets went up for sale on Fandango I bought mine for Solo: A Star Wars Story. I am more excited for this movie than any one that I have thought about for over two decades now, so it made me very happy to get my tickets. Financial projections for the movie were released yesterday and they are predicting that Solo: A Star Wars Story will make in the $150 million-dollar range on its opening weekend. I honestly think it will be higher and will surprise a lot of people and here’s the reason why. Within this interview shown below that George Lucas and James Cameron did together for an AMC series is everything that is needed to be known as to why I love Star Wars so much and why it’s so successful. I know quite a lot about George Lucas and share with him some very basic foundation ideas about life. But ironically, both he and Cameron have evolved into Hollywood liberals over time and it is there where they depart from the rest of American society and have lost touch. All that is revealed in this short 3-minute clip, it is quite fascinating to watch.

Like George Lucas for me Star Wars is the most anti-authoritarian art that I can think of displayed on a mass scale—and that is what I love about it. That’s why even as a grown man, I still get excited about new Star Wars stories. Star Wars at its best is a warning against authoritarianism. And within Star Wars there’s no character more anti-authoritarian than Han Solo—he’s a free spirit to an almost extreme and most represents that young George Lucas who used to race cars and fight movie studios to make his movies. Deep in their hearts, most people yearn to be like Han Solo—even though they won’t always admit it, they don’t like authority figures, especially now in the United States with all the trouble we are discovering with our FBI and Deep State revelations. This new Han Solo movie comes at a particularly powerful time for movie audiences and I think its going to do some big business and may set Star Wars right again after starting off the new generation in a rough way under Kathy Kennedy. All the progressive messages that Disney and Lucasfilm stationed in San Francisco have not resonated with movie fans because it steps away from the formula of what makes Star Wars so great, something that I think George Lucas himself began to forget as he got older. So did James Cameron, I don’t think his new Avatar films will do quite so well as they did back in 2009 because he is a much less anti-authoritarian director than he used to be.

Where liberals like Cameron and Lucas go wrong is in their assumption that Democrats are the anti-authoritarians and that progressive society is the vessel to hold their message into the future. It actually is quite the opposite and I find it astonishing that being smart people, that they don’t see it. I would attribute their blindness to the fact that by working in the entertainment industry they are regionally surrounded by liberal types of people so they have lost touch with the origins of their anti-authoritarian roots and mistakenly associate all Republican ideas on the Nixon administration, which was the era for which they came of age. As creative people, they can see the need for anti-authoritarian ideas, but they can’t apply them to the world around them which is why neither filmmaker has made a hit in around a decade now.

Lucas made in Han Solo that young 1950s rebel that we know from race car tracks all across the country, the main character in Grease that John Travolta played, and the character from Happy Days that was played by Henry Winkler, the Fonz. When Ron Howard was brought in to direct this Solo: A Star Wars Story I knew immediately what was happening, and I am very excited to see those results not just because it goes back to a time in cinema that I grew up watching, but because all these very unique elements were coming together to give audiences something they just weren’t getting anywhere else in any other media format. There is a tremendous need for anti-authoritarian drama, maybe more now than ever, and while many of the modern filmmakers have forgotten what it was that made them great in the first place, Ron Howard is one of those pure directors who has liberal sentiments, but at his core he understands all this anti-authoritarian stuff better than anybody.

Like George Lucas Star Wars for me was always about pushing back against authoritarian influences and hod rod space ships. I enjoy greatly the imagination that comes from Star Wars productions, but nothing more than in their various vehicle designs. I’m a huge fan of their Incredible Cross Section books published for the Star Wars movies by DK and have spent many hours looking at them and thinking about how those vehicles could be made in real life. Hot rods and anti-authority sentiments go hand in hand in American society and are very much part of our own love of car culture. We love our cars, our ability to go where we want, when we want to, and still maintain our personal space. In the 1950s up to the 1970s cruising in our fixed-up cars was very important to Americans, especially young people. I would attribute this deep love to the success of the Fast and Furious movies, which also make a lot of money even though the plots aren’t that good. They touch on that deep love of cars and how they give individuals space against the authority figures in their lives.

However, as political reality would have it, there isn’t a more authoritarian political party than what the Democrats have turned out to be. Their authority has become the influence of mob rule where they shout down anybody who doesn’t fall in line and that is where the George Lucas and James Cameron political ideology falls apart and why they struggle with films in the modern age because the world has moved in a very different direction. All these filmmakers are anti-Trump when in reality it is the new president who like the Fonz has stepped onto the world stage and spit in the face of all authority figures. Donald Trump has a lot more in common with Han Solo than George Lucas or Stephen Colbert, yet at some deep level they understand it enough to put it down on paper in script form, but they can’t apply it to the political world around them due to their regional influences. It’s quite fascinating to watch.

But I couldn’t be happier with the result—I think for this movie Solo: A Star Wars Story that all the right creative pieces came together to really make something special that audiences are deeply craving. I think this movie is going to take a lot of people by surprise and is going to really reignite what Star Wars movies mean to people, and what sets these off from other forms of science fiction. Especially in the age of Trump where all the authority which has been built by political progressives—people who used to think they were part of the counter-culture, the old hippies from the youth of George Lucas and James Cameron, the new flower children, the environmental radicalism and the green is the new red movement people who gave birth to people like James Comey, Clapper and Mueller, I think Solo: A Star Wars Story will be best served as a mirror for us all to look at and realize how far many have drifted from the original idea of what we all truly desire to be—free people able to do what we want when we want to do it and that the real tyrants in our lives sometimes are those people who look back at us in the mirror every day.

Rich Hoffman

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Thoughts on the Nature and Value of Geeks: The last hope of a rare few who have not given up on intellect

There are plenty of negative news stories out there but what they all have in common is that most of the participants of those stories, both on the end of generation, and on the receipt, all share crippled minds created for them by institutional restrictions socially mandated on previous historical context. Most of the problems of our society can be traced back to this essential problem. With that in mind I have been exploring over these last couple of weeks the incidents of society where positives are emerging, and I identified the Star Wars franchise as one of those things that create new, imaginative context to a new way at looking at old problems. While I agree that most of our human species is mired in dank, miserable thinking, I would say that roughly 5% are not. I meet a few here and there who are operating outside of the modern limits, who don’t care about baseball statistics and the NBA playoffs, or what’s going on in modern politics. They are seeking to fill their active minds any way possible. Most of the time their net results are that of social misfits whom nobody will ever listen to, and they will have no impact on the social circumstances around them, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any merit in trying, which they appear to be doing.

I was at the Barnes & Noble in West Chester at 9 AM sharp the day that James Comey’s tell nothing book came out. Actually, it told a lot—it said that in the Comey household James does what his wife tells him to do, and she was a Hillary Clinton supporter. So he broke the law to make her happy—its pretty much as simple as that. But I was there to get another book as well, the new Star Wars book Last Shot that was all about Han Solo, which I had been very eager to read. While I was in line at the checkout there were three other people there with me and they all had the Last Shot book in their hands—but none of them had the James Comey book. That told me a lot about the state of the world. I’m sure Comey’s book will sell, but the real interest was in fantasy alternatives to the present reality, and for people daring enough to ask, Star Wars was offering something to think about. All the people holding that book looked to be under 35, two of them were male, one was a female and they reminded me that there are people out there in the cracks of life who haven’t given up on a potential future—and I found that encouraging.

For my birthday last week my kids gave me a little Millennium Falcon Lego set to build with my grandson. While he was over during the weekend we took the time to build it and once we completed it he was very impressed with our work. He wanted to display it prominently on a book cabinet that I have which has a lot of models and trophies on top of it, because to him it meant a lot. As I’ve said before, the Lego Company has been doing some great work for years—both in video games and in toys. Every time I do a model kit of theirs I am always impressed with they way they engineer their products. This particular Millennium Falcon is a simple ten-dollar toy kit that you can get at Target, but I found it remarkably sophisticated in how it went together. After seeing my grandson’s reaction, I immediately considered getting the new Ultimate Collector Series Millennium Falcon set. It has 7500 pieces and costs about $1,200. He probably needs a few years before working on that one, but it did spark my imagination on how productive such an experience could be. That’s when I found this video from the Tested guys, who are part of the Myth Busters television series.

All of the adults in that Tested group reminded me of the kind of people who were with me at Barnes & Nobel at 9 AM sharp to buy the latest Han Solo book. Society from the outside looks at people like these people and thinks they are wasting their time on fantasy, but what I see and have experienced with them is that they are in acts of rebellion against the status quo—they are standing against the tide of lackluster thinking that is so prevalent in modern society. Yes they are geeks, but that is to say that they are people who have not yet surrendered their minds to the apathy of modern society. They can’t find what they need in society to fill their minds, so they have turned to fantasy to satisfy their hungry intellects. It makes me very happy to see all those grown adults sit down and tackle that Millennium Falcon Lego build with such unbridled enthusiasm. I would say that there are more people like that in the world now than there were 30 years ago, or even 60, which is important to note.

People don’t spend $1,200 on a Millennium Falcon 1500-piece puzzle essentially because they don’t like to think. As I mentioned earlier this week about the opioid crises, the main cause of drug abuse is an intellect in conflict with their environment. I would dare say that those people in the Tested group probably don’t go out and get drunk very much, and they probably don’t do drugs because their minds are in harmony with their existence. It’s a shame that they had to turn to fantasy to get that harmony, but at least it’s a mechanism they have discovered which allows for such a positive relationship with themselves. And when you visit the toy aisle at Wal-Mart and Target, they have entire sections dedicated to Lego and puzzle games because they obviously are selling. Just as people don’t show up at 9 AM to buy the latest Han Solo book because they want to go out and smoke crack—to turn off their minds. Reading, no matter what it is turns on a mind and is a very positive experience.

Most of what drives our world to evil is the vacancy left when people have surrendered thought to the lazy whims of groupthink. Sports in many ways is a groupthink activity and is very popular with modern civilization. But more and more I am seeing the influence of fantasy elements like Star Wars creating in people a desire to sit down and build Millennium Falcon models and read books about that ship in stories that mean something to those who participate in the task of discovery. I saw in those three-other people in the bookstore line with me that day hope in their eyes. The world around them was letting them down in many ways and they were thoughtful enough to contemplate the issues. But their minds were hungry, and society wasn’t feeding them, so they turned out with me at 9 AM to buy a book they couldn’t wait to get their hands on. And I’m noticing more of these people year by year, and that gives me a lot of hope for tomorrow. They are still in the extreme minority, but maybe, just maybe, they will become the majority in a few hundred years—and that would be a great thing for the human race!

Last Shot was the first Star Wars book that I have read since 2013/14 and I admit I only did it because it featured Han Solo as the primary character. I wanted to see how they were going to deal with Solo ahead of the movie coming out on May 25th. I have said many nice things over the past years about how important I think Star Wars books are to the next generation for all the reasons outlined in this article. But I have been very skeptical about the direction the Disney ownership has taken their acquired Star Wars franchise from a person I greatly admire in George Lucas. I am not happy about the more progressive direction that Star Wars has taken, but I am very happy that it is fueling the imaginations of people like those great Tested guys. I can say that after reading Last Shot I enjoyed it enormously and I will probably go and read the long list of new books that have been published since 2012. There is plenty of good value in those stories that justify the investment and all the fun that a grandpa can have with his grandkids for the next thirty years. And that all by itself is a wonderful attribute. It was a good book, and it made me very happy to have the opportunity to read it—which I did voraciously!

Rich Hoffman

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A Trip to Denny’s For Han Solo Merchendise: Why all the fuss?

It wasn’t just this that we did for my 50th birthday this past week, my family did a lot of things for me to show how much they appreciate me. But when they asked me what I wanted to do, I said that I wanted to find a Denny’s near our home so I could get a Millennium Falcon cup from the new movie Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the new Topps collecting cards that you can only get at the promotional event that they are doing at most Denny’s restaurants. And I wasn’t kidding about it. If we were planning to do a dinner for my birthday and go out somewhere anyway, I wanted to do something fun that I’d like, and could share with my kids and grandkids. After all, we all like Star Wars. I always used it in the way it was intended, as a modern mythology that had embedded in those kid’s films an essential epistemology in regard to philosophy that is needed in this fast-moving world, so one of my daughters found a nice one about an hour and a half outside of downtown Cincinnati, just outside the city limits of Indianapolis, Indiana. Han Solo was always my favorite character from the Star Wars movies so it was fun to make the Denny’s promotion a fun birthday event that everyone could enjoy. As an added benefit Disney had released the last trailer before the new movie opens on May 25th, just over a month from this writing so it made for an interesting birthday dinner at Denny’s. We didn’t hold back on the Solo merchandise!

I think Alden Ehrenreich will do a great job playing Han Solo as a younger man, a tough job to take over from one of the most iconic film roles Harrison Ford brought to life. It’s a tough job that everyone has in their head differently, so no matter what Ehrenreich does, someone isn’t going to like it. But, from what I’ve seen, the kid gets it—and that’s all that matters. It works for me and I hope it leads to a lot more Han Solo in movies that take place before the events of episode 4. I like the new pointy nose on the Millennium Falcon, I like the idea of new Star Wars music about to be released. I love the DLCs that will be downloaded on Star Wars: Battlefront 2. I love all the toys being released for the movie, its more generational stuff to share with my grandchildren for which all this is new to them so they are having fun with it for the first time. I see it all as very positive and it generally puts a smile on my face to have a new Han Solo movie because that character represents everything I love about Star Wars.

Of course, part of what makes 50th birthday celebrations what they are is in the reflection that you have about your life up to that moment and what might be ahead. For many it’s a time when they look at their life and consider that their best days are behind them. But not me. I have had a lot of very good days and I am sure there are a lot more ahead of me, and the Denny’s meal day was surprisingly fulfilling, not just from the Han Solo gear, but I enjoyed eating Denny’s food again after not having it for over 25 years. Denny’s was one of those places I used to go because they were open all night where I’d go to read after I’d get off work from my second shift jobs. When I was young and worked two fulltime jobs to make ends meet and our house was too small to leave a light on otherwise it would wake up the whole house at night, I’d read my books at all night restaurants like Waffle House, Perkins and Denny’s to make myself tired enough to wind down for bed. After a good meal and about 10 refills of a Coke at 2 am I’d go home and sleep for three or four hours and do it all again at the crack of dawn. Somewhere over that 25-year span Denny’s left the Cincinnati area so it was fun to have it again on my birthday. It was even more fun to have a Star Wars inspired menu with the new Han Solo on the cover. I had the “Two Moons Skillet” which was Heaven on earth for me.

All this of course led me to consider how much Star Wars had evolved over time and what role it plays in a modern sense. I’ve written many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of words as to what Star Wars means culturally, but I think I’ve been leaving out the epistemological definition in referring to it. After all, I write about some pretty serious subjects most of the time, so when I switch gears and do these Star Wars articles, to some it seems out of character, but to me it all runs together. It’s relevant to the missile attacks of Syria this past weekend, the teacher strikes in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Arizona, the opioid epidemic—just about every topic one might consider can be traced back to the epistemological failures of modern society—and Star Wars was created, and does a good job of maintaining it for children a basic epistemology of values that are designed for modern life. The world is otherwise very confused, their religious values are all over the map, politically we have factions that want to take mankind back to a theology while others are wanting to plant flags into anarchy, democracy and those who presently have power want to keep everything in an aristocracy. We are moving to space as a species while the political powers in office want to cling to mother earth and environmental concerns because that is how their power bases were established—on earth with earthly rules. The truly wonderful thing about Star Wars is that it takes all the value of the world’s mythology and applies it into a modern context, which is why kids, and kids at heart love it so much. It’s a much different thing than other pop culture rituals. This one is actually very healthy for modern human beings. It’s meant for kids, but it works for adults too in very meaningful ways.

When I was in grade school showing a love for Star Wars was extremely taboo. I make no attempt to hide my contempt for the way public school operates—I often say that public school is like using a public restroom or a drinking fountain. Yeah, it does the basics, but not very well. In public school, too many people establish their basic epistemological essence in those public institutions because they don’t have reliable families at home to help them, or other positive influences. The school becomes the basic foundation for that while it was quite clear that George Lucas was intent to provide a competing epistemology for young people, so the pubic school system rejected the competition instead of embracing it, the way they should have. However, I was never one who backed down from a fight—never one day in my life. The more kids made fun of me for wearing my favorite Han Solo t-shirts to school, the more I did it, and my love for Star Wars actually got me into a lot of trouble. It’s not like that today, kids can show their enjoyment of such things without getting into fights over it, and that is actually some real progress. Concerning education, I see that Star Wars has given many people who missing epistemology that they should have been getting from school, or their families and the stories are keeping pace with the concerns of our modern age that is coming at us much faster than ever. It’s really the only thing that is—which to me makes it extremely important culturally.

One of my many hobbies is the study of world cultures and religions. It doesn’t pay much money otherwise I’d do that task fulltime because as I say here often, mythology is my favorite topic. I could talk about world culture all day long and what the pros and cons are. You can often read in hindsight why cultures failed if you know the details and why that’s important is so that you can prevent it in your own culture. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about the American Indian or Roman and Greek societies, you can see through the gifts of historical hindsight why they all failed, and I apply those lessons daily with the millions and millions of words I have provided for free to my readers—because I don’t want to see people fail. Professionally, I don’t have to read in a Denny’s at 2 AM anymore because the lights in the house keep everyone awake. I’m doing well at age 50, as is expected given my role in our family, and my community. So I don’t mind sharing things I love in writing and mythology if it might improve the life of one person—let alone helping many people. The human race in spite of all the faults we could list off for hours on end is actually plotting into positive uncharted territories for the first time in history and it is really only the epistemological values of Star Wars that are successfully preparing the minds of our modern age with the intellectual means to deal with everything in a positive way.

This morning I was at the Target department store near my house shopping for Han Solo toys and I couldn’t help but notice that The Last Jedi just hit the shelves from its Blue-Ray release, and here we are talking about another Star Wars movie being released in a month. The cultural values of the last Star Wars movie are still simmering, Lego hasn’t even put out their video game yet for The Last Jedi. And there are lots of beach towels and clothing out for consumers to enjoy and all this is happening as Space X and Virgin Galactic are taking over the civilian colonization of space and Amazon is delivering packages within hours of ordering from virtually anywhere in the world. Artificial intelligence is taking over as the new rudimentary task supplier in a rapidly expanding economy where there simply aren’t enough workers in the world to do all the jobs coming available. I’m not kidding when I say Alexia could take over the teaching profession. With a second Star Wars moving coming out and all that comes with it culturally, it will be interesting to see what happens. And that’s not all, there are at least eight more Star Wars movies in development right now, along with Star Wars television, video games, books, music and so many other items. What impact that has on the human race I think is a fascinating topic on the epistemological level of consciousness.

As I was paying the check at Denny’s it was a big one, and many of the Indiana farmers looked at me a little side-eyed. My oldest grandson and I were very openly showing our excitement at getting the Han Solo card in the stack I bought. I of course was hoping to get that particular entry. Those are the same kind of people who used to make fun of my Han Solo shirts on the school bus—they didn’t understand what all the fuss was about and thought I should be thinking about something more—real. But little did they know, or little did they know that day in Denny’s that what I was excited about was more real than just about anything they were considering and Han Solo has always best exemplified my excitement for it—the optimism of what is always potentially just around the corner. Han Solo is a very positive character who believes he can get out of anything he gets into under any circumstances and in so many ways, he represents the current position of mankind on planet earth in the early parts of the 21st century. That makes these movies more important than just an entertainment option. Even more than that, it made for me a really fun birthday!

Rich Hoffman

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There is No Society without the Second Amendment: Weeds in the garden and why we must remove them

Like we always knew it was, ANY form of gun control is a goal to eventually repeal the Second Amendment as former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens indicated on his New York Times op-ed piece after the March for Our Lives rallies the previous weekend. The same people who support murdering babies before they are born, the same people who support drug abuse, open boarders and have no respect for private property are the people who want to ban the Second Amendment. That is because the rights to possess firearms is to protect ourselves from those types of people as they emerge in any society—which they always do. Only in America we are meant to have a defense against them. Liberals are like weeds in a nice garden. If you don’t remove them from a well-cared for garden, they will eventually overwhelm all the nice flowers and bushes that are carefully placed there and in no time at all, a wonderful outdoor display ends up looking like a tattered mess. Guns are our means of maintaining our ability to clean out our garden should too many weeds arise to take over our healthy plants. Valueless weeds do not have the right to destroy what we put in our gardens that we value. Be it a shovel or a gun, we are talking about tools which allow us to retake what’s ours to begin with, and without the gun, there is no chance of that ever happening if society swings radically out of control.

The 93-year-old Stevens said a lot in his liberal New York Times piece—he basically stated what was behind all gun control measures. The implication is that government should be trusted therefore we have evolved as a society beyond the need to have a well-regulated militia. We have in the United States a wonderful military, the most powerful in the world—so we no longer need a militia to defend ourselves from foreign invasion, so its time to abandon the Second Amendment—and while we’re at it, probably the 4th, 5th, 6th the 10th, the 14th—and eventually the 1st. Heck, why not just re-write the entire Constitution with all these modern smart people like old man Stevens? That’s their assumption. To the liberal, the weeds of our society—they want to live just like any other plant in the garden and if there are more of them than the well cared for flowers of spring, so be it. Of course, as valueless weeds, they don’t have a problem with that.

But those of us who are really smart, who have worked hard to keep this Republic a nice garden full of wonderful diversity and esthetics understand that we can’t just let any willing nilly weed grow in our garden. We must have a set of rules to live by, which is our Constitution which says how the garden should be cared for—and anybody who wants to change it would be the weeds looking to overtake all the other plants for their own objectives. The difference in thinking couldn’t be clearer, travel to some place in the world that doesn’t have a gun culture and you will immediately see on the faces of their people the effect of growing up in a society of weeds. Their intellectual growth is stunted, the beauty of their culture hidden, and chaos is certainly ruling their lives. Even in downtown London such a thought is unavoidable. On the streets of Paris where the highest concepts of civilization realized through art danced on the imaginations of mankind, in their gun less society of today the weeds of liberalism have completely taken over. In Mexico they long ago had their own versions of John Paul Stevens and they have destroyed the lives of the people for any kind of prosperity—unless you are part of a criminal syndicate.

I will never accept a society that repeals the Second Amendment. I will go to war with any political insurgency that seeks to change one word of meaning in our current Constitution. The primary reason is that I do not see any evidence which states that we are a more sophisticated society today than we were in 1776. I have read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations for which America was founded, and it is far more intelligent than the work of Karl Marx or any professor of economics seen in Harvard, Princeton or Oxford presently. In fact, I don’t think the university system has done a good job at all in the last 100 years of advancing society in any way. By my observation we have regressed, and that is because we have let the weeds take over the garden of human knowledge and they’ve brought with them lots of terrible ideas which is killing all the healthy plants of our society. The great minds that would otherwise be flourishing are being drowned out by the noise of the liberal left starting by thinkers like John Paul Stevens and drooling out of the side of the mouths of modern zombies like Sean Penn and Miley Cyrus.

As I watched Ariana Grande singing and dancing on stage at the March for Our Lives event in Washington D.C. I saw a weed sucking the lives away from the beautiful roses, and tulips of a spring time blossom. In the crowd were many potential great minds locked by the youthful sexuality of a pop star icon limiting their scope in life to her political ideology of collectivism and gun grabbing only to find themselves heading to a stunted existence for the rest of their lives. That’s not a good thing. We all know how the birds and the bees work in the procreation of the human race. Young women present themselves as blossoming flowers trying to attract the pollination process of potential males ready to discharge the ingredient B into the womb of ingredient A. When they are young bodies like Ariana Grande at the height of their sexual powers they attract a great many incumbents to their lairs of destruction. And too late many unsuspecting visitors find out that the tulip was really a Venus Flytrap—and their lives are sucked from them ensnared for eternity by the lures of sexuality—even weeds can look appealing at first glance. Twenty years from now nobody will care about Ariana Grande, she will just be another plant in the garden that will be plucked and replaced with something that will bloom in the spring with beauty as by that time she will have withered away into old age. That’s what the political left hates about capitalism and why they like weeds so much. In a competitive society, people have to always reinvent themselves and work to stay relevant beyond their sexual nature—their primal attributes. Intelligence is the real beauty of a capitalist society. Where weeds just want to grow and take what they can while they can. Liberals hate guns because they don’t want to live in a competitive world—because they require the looting of others just to survive the basics in life. They need to take value from others just to function.

Yet it’s the competitive world that generates all the greatness of society. It’s what caused the creation of iPhones and sent us into space. It’s the difference between an untended garden of weeds and a well-managed landscape. The value of that managed landscape is protected by the gun, as all things of life must have a way to protect themselves from the lazy parasites of existence. All life after all is not valuable. Some life yearns to advance, some life yearns to be parasitic in nature and to live off other lives—thus destroying what’s good in the other. Our value systems give us the ability to make that judgment call—to decide who are weeds and who are the plants in our garden that contribute to the aesthetic beauty of our landscape.

Of course, the eye of beauty is in the beholder and we are all left to our own versions of what type of gardens we wish to grow. We aren’t talking about social eugenics here, but personal preference based on our ownership of private property. If we don’t want a bunch of pot smokers in our garden, we can tell them to go away. If we don’t like a bunch of devil worshipping losers near us, we can tell them to go elsewhere. But we can’t do that if we can’t protect the value of our individual landscapes. We don’t have a right to tell them how to live, but we can certainly determine our own fates and that is why the gun is essential to American society. Without it the weeds of life will certainly seek to take over everything of value. So without the Second Amendment we don’t have an America. We would be no better than all the other dumps around the globe who have allowed the weeds to take over and the good that is within their cultures to be sucked dry of their value just as a withering flower fades away once youth has left it—only to be remembered by pictures, literature and a few passing spectators.

Rich Hoffman
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The New Han Solo Book Covers Look Great: But isn’t Disney against guns?

To say I’m looking forward to the new Solo: A Star Wars story would be a mild understatement. I am enjoying each new piece of information that is coming out now rapidly for the upcoming May release of the highly anticipated movie. Just yesterday the new books for the movie were teased which largely come out in May and on most of the covers were images of Han Solo holding his famous blaster in what I think are very traditional cowboy artwork reminiscent of the 1940s to 1950s0—the “golden age of Hollywood.” They are the kind of thing that many of us older than 50 grew up on as kids and I find it refreshing to see. But the mother company of Disney who is benefiting greatly from all this Star Wars merchandising, everything from Star Wars figures sold at Target and Walmart to the films themselves has positioned themselves in this new #onelessgun movement prominently and most disgustingly where another one of their companies, ABC showed a lady cutting up her gun in a workshop so that nobody could use it again. The anti-gun stance of Disney is extremely hypocritical and is worth a bit of analysis.

As I’ve said, I’m a fan of the Disney product and I like Disney as a company—especially in the traditional sense. But what is disgusting is that the head of the company doesn’t seem to understand what the tail is doing, they don’t connect cause and effect at all. Concerning the new Han Solo publication art, what if they didn’t have characters holding guns in their promotional material—do they think they could sell the movie? If kids couldn’t buy action figures to shoot at each other would they even want to play with them? Of course, Disney knows that young boys aren’t going to by Star Wars toys unless there are cool guns to play with. Kids aren’t buying Star Wars toys to simulate cooking, or domestic needs in playing house. Guns are as much of what makes Star Wars popular as anything is, and without guns, the story would be pretty boring.
This brings us to the broader issue of Hollywood taking a stance against guns yet producing in nearly every blockbuster they make a story that prominently features guns. It’s kind of like a porn actress preaching celibacy before marriage. You can’t play this issue both ways. The stories we like as human beings are typically about the drama of life and death situations for which the gun plays a key narrative. To the young boy who looks at covers of Han Solo brandishing a powerful looking gun, the fantasy is to use that gun to fight for the kind of personal independence that everyone wants. The gun is the means to personal protection and asserting oneself in a dangerous world. This is typically what is at play when children play with guns to shoot at each other, they are creating the roots for their primary foundations of independence which will go with them for the rest of their lives. Disney understands this basic concept in marketing strategy which is meant to reach into people’s subconscious and inspire them to go see the new movie that has a cool gun on the poster.

Yet out of the other side of their mouth they support these gun control measures which run counter to everything that the human race stands for. From their elevated progressive vantage point that isn’t based on any kind of reality, but only in hope and personal desire from their timid vantage points, Disney hopes to use their media position to change human behavior—which is where they go wrong. This is also why the mainstream media and entertainment companies that have moved so radically left of center are struggling to figure out why they can’t move the needle on Donald Trump or the gun issue in the slightest. Not with all the protests, or all the programming they commit to the matter, people love guns wherever they are in the world. Guns sell movies, books, comics—just about anything they are put on because what the gun represents is personal freedom which every human being craves in some form or another. Therefore, we can conclude that companies such as Disney are not culture shapers so much as they are cultural reflections. They can make money and benefit off the art they produce so long as it is aligned with human need, and guns are. But if they think they can change the human need from their art, they don’t appear to be able to.
Disney as a company has not had much success with original material, often they have made most of their money off pre-created ideas—fairy tales that had already made their mark in our human mythologies. What they’ve done best is to take those stories to the next step of marketing and consumer reach—which is what they are doing with Star Wars. True, the new Star Wars films and television shows are not as good as they were original creations from George Lucas, but they still offer people something in the realm of entertainment and mythology. Disney isn’t powerful enough to change people’s minds about guns, violence, or political desires, but they can feed the needs that are already there.

That’s of course is not always the case, sometimes a truly great artist can change the minds of people and they often try, such as in the case of the musical group, The Beatles. They were obviously advocating for a left of center political world, and they did pull people in that direction. What seems to be happening in entertainment is that artists judge each other based on their social impact in the art they create. For instance, people might look down their nose at Dwayne Johnson because he makes so many blockbuster action movies and is getting very wealthy off them, but he doesn’t seem to be trying to change human culture for the better, and until he announced that he wanted to run for president against Trump in 2020 he was not considered much of an “artist” in Hollywood. In the entertainment community being an “artist” means being a “change agent.” It is the ultimate power of their ability to manipulate mass audiences—to actually change the behavior of the human race, and it appears to be a grand fantasy that most in entertainment have. Even with all their wealth, they still judge each other based on their “change agent” appeal.

This obviously seems to be the case with ABC News, they want to think they can move the needle on gun control by featuring some overly emotional woman who cuts up her gun in a workshop and wants to be featured prominently as a hero for it. That might be fine if ABC and their parent company Disney were consistent, but they aren’t. On the very same day that ABC featured the crazy anti-gun lady, Disney put out the art work for the new Han Solo movie which featured the hero on all the book covers holding a gun. You can’t have it both ways Disney. Unfortunately, you have to pick. Do you want to give the public what they want and hope they continue coming to your theme parks, which I enjoy doing? Or do you want to be a “change agent” using your media platform to change the human race? In doing so you will likely lose most of your core audience, because they will reject your philosophic premise. I will go see the new Han Solo movie enthusiastically, because he is a hero who uses a gun to instill a brand of justice that I can agree with, and its good entertainment. But if Han Solo were to become a bleeding-heart liberal and anti-gun zealot—you can bet that I’d be the first person off the ship. Because that’s not entertainment to me, its political propaganda from a bunch of spoiled brat artists. And I don’t want anything to do with them—or their beliefs.

Rich Hoffman
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The FBI Wasted $10 Million on the Russian Probe: Begging for a second, third, forth even a fifth chance

The FBI special investigation into the Trump campaign, a political witch hunt from the very beginning cost around 6.7 million dollars as of the end of 2017. Add another few million dollars to the antics so far explored in 2018 along with what remains of an investigation into “obstruction of justice” as to why Trump fired James Comey in the first place and we can easily say that the whole exercise cost 10 million dollars to essentially conduct a hatchet job against a sitting president. while everyone seemed content with the 13 Russians that were indicted for injecting themselves into the 2016 election process there is obviously much more to the story. Rush Limbaugh was on the air when the FBI dumped the story on a Friday afternoon in the middle of the shooting story from Florida leaving many to wonder why. The primary speculation was that it was embarrassing that this was all the FBI had after spending so much time and money, but I’d like to go one step further, and also to remind everyone that this entire investigation was a hit job from the beginning and that it cost a small fortune intent to overthrow an American presidency. Just because the Trump administration has been vindicated in the process it does not take way from the gross abuse of power and money that transpired to arrive at this juncture.

We obviously will never know the details but I’ve seen enough to connect the dots reliably. The FBI has been, and is at the mercy of President Trump and this closure to this part of the special prosecution investigation is a peace-offering. The massive corruption that we have witnessed between James Comey and the Hillary Clinton campaign is enough to put many participants in that corruption into jail, and with the evidence of the two officers conducting a sexual affair revealing all the juicy details there isn’t much defense that the FBI can hide behind. It’s as bad of a corruption story, and abuse of power that has ever occurred among an institution conceived by a human mind. They know that under the Trump Justice Department, the FBI is at the mercy of the president so given the level of their guilt, this has instigated a behavioral change, especially in regard to the special investigation probe that was always meant to distract the president of the United States into slipping and falling in the process, because the field agents and top management wanted Hillary Clinton to win the election. They abused their authority to have an impact on the election results to a much more dangerous level than any Russian did, so let’s not forget that.

Meanwhile this stupid kid in Florida, Nikolas Cruz who shot up a school killing many people had been tipped off to the FBI as a person of interest on January 5th 2018, just over a month ago. Obviously, the FBI was too busy trying to put an end to the Trump presidency to act on the information. We all know how much time Lisa Page and Peter Strzok spent texting each other while on company time, and about the types of things they were thinking about. Just consider how many FBI agents there are out there doing the exact same thing right now—bored out of their minds and clearly more interested in trivial matters—no wonder they didn’t act on the violent indications from Nikolas Cruz. And this isn’t the first time either. The FBI was tipped off about the 9/11 attackers almost 20 years ago and they failed to act then too. I’m sure the FBI would be happy to say that they save us all daily from many thousands of potential threats and that sometimes they miss it. I think that’s a line of crap. I think the agents are lazy, entitled, and spend their time-wasting it, as opposed to actually do their jobs. And that’s how this kid fell through the cracks inspiring governor Rick Scott from Florida yesterday to call for the resignation of the current FBI director Christopher Wray.

Wray has been a bit of a pain in the ass, as a Trump nominee he has sought quickly to put the FBI back on top of things publicly after the Russian investigation has divided support for and against the famed FBI’s reputation. Surely Trump seeing the lackluster behavior of Wray has every right to want to take back the pick, so the school shooting puts a termination of employment on the table for the president to consider without driving forward more speculation of obstruction of justice. The FBI bungled badly the Florida shooting case and somebody needs to pay the price. I mean we aren’t looking for an overactive FBI that is running around arresting everyone who might be a threat, but Nikolas Cruz had all the signs leading up to an act of mass murder that anyone could understand. Yet the FBI was more interested in the politics of their overall positions instead of doing what we hired them to do in the first place. As more and more people looking for some sort of social safety blanket want more gun laws, they look to the FBI to enforce those laws. What good are laws if nobody wants to enforce them, and we don’t have some place to put people in jail because they are overcrowded and run by labor unions and regulations which prevent doing what often needs to be done to criminals to keep them in line? Cruz was left alone, and he did the unthinkable and the FBI is looking very bad for it.

The revelation that no Americans colluded with the Russians, that is was the Russians themselves action alone to help elect Donald Trump to the presidency was a peace-offering given in the middle of a news hurricane on a Friday dump day hoping to inspire the president to not act on the information he has to fire not only Wray, but many, many others as well. The conduct of the FBI has been disgustingly inefficient and expensive and the heart of their intentions on blaming a bunch of foreigners who aren’t even in America is the only way they could step out of the corner they painted themselves into leaving minimal footprints in the wet paint showing their escape. They have a lot to be ashamed of, not only in the premise of their Russia investigation, their assistance of crimes from the Hillary Clinton campaign—and many other things—but in their complete ineptness in the field not catching obvious losers like Nikolas Cruz before he shot up that school in South Florida.

The FBI might say they couldn’t have done anything about Cruz, but if they were doing their jobs, they could have. The kid was on a watch list, so who was doing the watching? Instead of playing on their phones all day, the FBI should have been monitoring the comings and goings of Cruz and been there when he made his move. The technology is there to know that what Nikolas Cruz had in his back pack as he took a Uber car to the school that day to shoot it up wasn’t books and spray paint. The kid made a very conscious decision to go to that school to kill and he wasn’t hiding anything about it. The moment he made his move, the FBI should have been there to stop it, or at least prevent some of the carnage. Instead Nikolas Cruz had time to go into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and murder 17 people and hurt many others—then left to get a snack at Wal-Mart, and McDonald’s. Only a local officer acting on instinct managed to identify Cruz over an hour later making the arrest. Where was the FBI? They weren’t even close enough to monitor the kid once shots started. If I had to guess, the people who should have been watching the gunman were probably playing on the internet thinking about things they shouldn’t have.

The news therefor on a Friday afternoon in February, 2018 about Russian indictments wasn’t about the special investigation probe in any way, it was about a peace-offering to keep the presidential wrath away from a FBI that was soaked with stupidity and ineptness. Not only have they been embarrassed on the national stage by becoming political hacks against the Republican Party, but they missed an act of domestic terrorism that was obvious with more than hindsight armchair quarterbacking. If the FBI couldn’t do something about Cruz given all the information they had, then they have presented themselves as worthless—not worth the tax money we spend on them. And that is what the FBI is after in essentially shutting down the Russia probe investigation, they want to keep their jobs and beg the president to give them a second chance—or in this case a third, fourth and fifth chance. They have been caught wasting a lot of money and blood is on their hands as they allowed themselves to get pulled into the corrosive politics of our times. And Trump holds the cards to their future. Isn’t that an interesting change of fate?

Rich Hoffman
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