Tag: Hollywood insight

The Difference Between Good Guys and Bad Guys: Previews for Star Wars ‘Battlefront’ and ‘Force Awakens’

I have been saying it for quiet a while, its coming—quick. Its more important than the 2016 presidential election, it has more emotional power than a whole childhood of public school. For many it’s more meaningful than the relationship they have with their parents and siblings. It has more sustenance than any goals obtained in a commitment to a career. For many—a lot more than it used to be—the next six years will be some of the best and most emotional years of their life, and the direction of human society will be decided not by the religions of the world, or the billions and billions of dollars of money spent on education. It will be defined and implemented by the new Star Wars movies that are coming out between 2015 and 2020. Star Wars is already one of the most important cultural phenomenons that exist to human beings. But what will occur over the next five years will shake the foundations of our society to their bare essence. This week during the 2015 Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, California the preview to the second trailer for The Force Awakens played to the world, and many grown adults reacted in a similar way as seen in this clever Mathew McConaughey clip shown below.

So why all the excitement?

I was very close to taking my family on vacation to Anaheim this year to attend the Star Wars Celebration. The reason we didn’t go is because we are trying to stay a bit on the fence—we are all fairly invested in the Expanded Universe and want to make sure that the new films are not utterly screwed up continuity wise. If we had known that Jaina Solo would be in the new films, we likely would have dropped $20,000 for a no holds vacation to California. But right now we don’t know much about the future of characters we love as a family, and Disney really didn’t get a huge presence into their theme parks yet—which was the other qualifier. It’s only been three years, but I had hoped that Disney would have had more Star Wars specific attractions by now, especially since they put the Celebration event right next to Disneyland. But they didn’t so given the unknowns, we held onto our money for the time being. However, that didn’t mean we couldn’t see what was going on. The event was live streamed for the entire weekend, which my daughter and I watched religiously trying to see each and every interview shown. We were like many millions around the world scrapping up every bit of Star Wars news coming out of the convention—which from a mythology perspective was quite extraordinary.

The reason for all the fuss is that Star Wars is all about values and the world has in many cases been deliberately starved of them to fulfill various political agendas. Star Wars is really the first global influence which clearly attempts to define good and evil in a way that every culture from every segment of society can relate to. Religion used to be that vehicle, but it no longer works properly for most, and Star Wars is filling that void.

Another massive revelation which came out of the convention the day after the movie preview for The Force Awakens was shown was the new Battlefront video game which features Star Wars scenarios in some of the most intense battlefield action seen to date—themed to the original films. I am currently playing Star Wars: Commander on my iPhone 6 just to fill the time between game platforms. My wife and I just finished playing Star Wars: The Old Republic which we played every day for nearly two years and now we are waiting for Battlefront which can be seen in the following clip. This is a new reality that fans around the world can enjoy playing in real-time against real people at all hours of the day no matter where they reside. When Battlefront comes out, I may retire again and spend most of my days playing that game. Here’s why—I never get enough of this type of activity!

One aspect to Star Wars: Commander that continues to amaze me is how many people chose to play on the side of the Empire. In Star Wars the Empire represents the bad guys and I have been mystified as to why people would or could play the bad guys. There is a segment of the population, and I see this extensively in the table top games from Fantasy Flight, like X-Wing and now Armada that roughly half the human population identifies with the bad guys so much they prefer to use them as representatives to themselves while the other half chooses to play on the side of the good. According to many who prefer the bad guys, the Empire is poorly understood and is on the side of institutional justice. There is a power in the bad guys that is attractive to these people and ironically it does affect their morality in real life—it will affect their decisions at the voting booth in favor of marijuana legalization, immigration strategies and generally the size and scope of government. There is quite a science to the natural appeal of those who love bad guys over those who don’t. In Commander there is never a shortage of bad guys to play against in live combat. No matter what time of day or what part of the week there is an Imperial base to attack because that many people love the bad guys of Star Wars so much that they are willing to invest the massive amount of time it takes to build up to a level 8 base—which is what I have.

A common theme throughout the years 2000 through 2010 among from young men who knew me was that many liked the villains of Star Wars much more than the heroes. I was trying to mentor them, most came from homes where the fathers were terrible. They only identified with the bad guys, whereas young men who had strong fathers that they could look up to tended to agree with me, that the good guys were the ones to cheer for in Star Wars. I would get pretty animated at these young boys who loved Boba Fett and Darth Vader over characters like Han and Luke and tell them that there was harm in liking the bad guys, which I still believe probably more so today than I did even then. Yet I could not convince them otherwise because their foundation thoughts were set in stone from early in their youth. I suspect this is the case for many who love Star Wars from the point of view of the bad guys. Somewhere along the line a mentor of some kind let them down, leaving them to turn toward institutional consensus to behold their values.

Of those young people who argued with me in favor of the bad guys over the good every single one of them has had a rough life a decade later. Often drugs were part of their lives, but also they suffer from relationship issues and generally low self-esteem. I still feel if they had listened to me, they would have been greatly improved as human beings but their desire to identify with the bad guys in Star Wars indicates a much more systemic issue than anything that can be quickly cured with some motivational speaking.   If the wires are crossed during their infancy, there isn’t much anybody can do to fix them later unless they recognize the error of their identification.

As a kid, and still now, I could never play the bad guys—I never felt comfortable flying a TIE fighter against an X-Wing fighter in the video game series X-Wing. I could have never put on a Boba Fett costume—and certainly not a stormtrooper. When the game Force Unleashed came out I did not play it at first because you had to play as an agent of Darth Vader—which I couldn’t do. I literally could not physically show aggression toward what I considered to be the good guys in Star Wars. It actually makes me sick to do so—to play a bad guy. I’ve been like that my whole life—down to my earliest moments. In kids both male and female the love of good guys or bad guys seems to come down to the relationship they have with mentors in their lives. If they are short on proper mentors, they tend to love the Empire. If they have several positive mentors in their lives, they love the good guys. One of my nephews really became angry with me when he tried to justify Darth Maul as a cooler character than Obi-Wan Kenobi. He had a really manipulative father—so no matter how much I tried to inspire him to something better, he always snapped right back into loving Darth Maul over Obi-Wan. After several years of trying I stopped—understanding that the static patterns had already been established and it would take a major crisis in his life to shake him into wanting new heroic archetypes.

But what’s great about Star Wars, even those who love the bad guys, is that the stories from that franchise are about essential values and are some of the most powerful works of philosophy and religion currently being explored anywhere. Star Wars is shaping the tone and values of the 21st century and is defining the next thousand years of humanity. It is becoming our new Bible wither or not people like it or not. In a society that is lacking values—purposely implemented—Star Wars and a few other comic related franchises are all they have. In most cases, parents have failed them, schools have failed them, mentors have failed them, entertainment, religion, economics—etc, have all failed them so they turn to Star Wars for the values uttered in those stories. That is why all the emotion over a simple preview in anticipation for one of the most epic experiences most people will ever have even in relation to the life and death of loved ones—the opening of the next Star Wars movie. It’s much more than a film franchise designed to make money as a capitalist endeavor. It is that—but it’s much, much more. Star Wars is about values, and people weep over just hearing the music because it makes them emotional to have those empty voids filled within their minds where values should be—values that have in some cases deliberately been withdrawn as a means to control the population through political efforts. Star Wars is about recreating those values and the result of that endeavor usually puts people on one side or the other. But whichever side it is, they are at least better off than valueless slugs awaiting the commands of a political class that rules by the void of valueless utterances. Star Wars provides those values, and the world is far better off because of it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Jurassic World: A new step in science and philosophy

I’m not kidding, I am ecstatic about the opening of the new Jurassic Park franchise film Jurassic World. I may actually be more excited than that—but needless to say, I can’t wait. I love those movies deeply because they embody questions very relevant to our times regarding philosophy, science, morality, and economy that are not explored more effectively than in any other venue. It was Jurassic Park that really introduced over twenty years ago the concept of DNA replication to bring to life extinct species. A lot of science has been unraveled since then really demanding this latest edition—where scientists needing a ratings boost in park attendance make a hybrid dinosaur that gets loose and destroys the fully realized Jurassic World—the dreamy creation of the former John Hammond whose dream of a fully realized dinosaur park is finally made into a reality.

I loved the Michael Crichton books when they first came out, Jurassic Park and then The Lost World. When the movie hit in 1993 I made a big deal about it and took my little girls at the time to see it on opening night. They still remember that movie as their first theater experience. For this last Christmas my youngest daughter gave me a Jurassic Park t-shirt as a present because it is something that is specifically our thing. To this day she loves biology, botany, and paleontology because of her childhood spawned from the first Jurassic Park movie. A few years later when The Lost World came out I drug my wife’s side of the family, something like 25 people who had been gathering at a lake house on Nolan Lake to Elizabethtown, Kentucky to see the opening night in the only theater within fifty miles of the remote residence. The family often gathered at that lake for Memorial Day. In that group of people are a lot of science lovers, particularly my father-in-law who held multiple degrees in geology and was a school teacher—so they all wanted to see it. We packed up in several cars and made a pilgrimage into town to watch The Lost World. My kids were older at the time and had an absolute blast with their cousins.   I don’t think they ever forgot the experience.

When Dr. Grant returned to Jurassic Park III my kids were in high school and I let them take a day off to go see the movie on opening day. Dr. Grant was always my favorite character so I was excited and my kids were excited because I was. It was a marvelous experience. The movies declined in quality a bit from the first one, especially as Steven Spielberg moved away from direct involvement with the franchise as the director, but they are still good regardless. Each movie is like the approach to a theme park at the beginning of the day when the sun is out, the air is cool, and eagerness fills the mind. There is nothing quite like the morning approach to a Orlando park whether it be Universal Studios, Disney, Sea World, a day at the local zoo, a thrill park, there is magic in the air that is unique to the human experience emerging from such a creation. Each Jurassic Park film embodies that same type of optimism where act one is filled with that type of energy. Act two in the movies becomes something of a Hitchcock type mystery where problems of clashing philosophies set up act three. In that third act all the optimism from act one gets tossed out the window and the films become a haunted house experience where a new thrill is around every turn that is wrapped up nicely at the end with heroics and fanfare. They are fun in the least, but at their best they ask deep questions very relevant to modern science—and they drive advancements in technology.

In my family we all loved playing Jurassic Park Builder on XBox and later on our cell phones. My kids play those types of simulators often and that love started with seeing the movies and dreaming of what it would really be like to see a fully realized Jurassic Park. So it will be wonderful to see what a Jurassic World will look like in the movie, where the whole island originally conceived in the very first film has finally been built into a fully functioning amusement park. I overlook the obvious attacks on capitalism which always spawn in the second act as a simple plot device to ask “what if.” If not for capitalism there wouldn’t be anything relevant about Jurassic Park so without it, there wouldn’t be any dinosaurs or topic to contemplate. Rather the theme of the movies is what happens when undisciplined use of capitalism leads people astray, which is what happens in Jurassic World.

As cool as all the dinosaurs are, the cost of running such a large theme park is excessive so they need increased attendance just to cover their costs. So they invent a new dinosaur which is wrong in so many different ways. But what is to stop human kind from doing such a thing. Very soon genetic research which was in its infancy in the first Jurassic Park movie, will allow people to alter themselves into whatever they want to be. All you have to do is manipulate your DNA code and we can all be taller, faster, and prettier—whatever we wish. The same topic of conversation is emerging in the discussions of giving birth once again to extinct species of animals. What is to stop zoos from making a wholly mammoth when they can change it into something that has never before existed. What are the limits in playing God?   Religions will say that nobody should play God, but science dictates that we should—so where is the happy medium? Those types of questions are what the Jurassic Park movies explore and leave movie goers talking about those very topics on the way home after the movie. That is why these movies are important, because they put hard science into the spotlight of what we should and should not do as a species with very advanced tools in our possession.

Needless to say, I am excited and will continue to be the closer the movie gets to a release date. There are a lot of great movies lined up for the summer, but none of them are as exciting to me as Jurassic World. Will it be as good as the first one? Probably not. Likely it will be somewhere between the second and third film—it probably won’t make as much money at the box office as Universal hopes it will, but it will still be enjoyable, and relevant. I hope it does well enough to justify another movie in the franchise, because I could watch them forever. It is always fun no matter how many times we go, to pull up to Disney World for a fresh adventure. There is always optimism in the morning before attending an amusement park. And those are the same type of emotions experienced before seeing a Jurassic Park movie. It is one of the few films of its kind that really captures that optimism fully. That is the reason I simply can’t wait for the movie to open. When it does, I will be one of the first in line!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Secrets of the Moon: We are not alone, and never have been

The great danger of having the government in control of so much, particularly education, is that it makes it easy for them to conceal information that they do not wish to emerge. And this has never been more evident than in the issue over mankind’s actual origins or its relationship to the heavens. For instance, NASA recently had a press conference announcing that it would be likely that mankind would discover alien life within the next decade as seen in the video below. This was a remarkable statement by a government organization that has traditionally tried to debunk some of the wild UFO theories that have emerged throughout the years. Yet innately we all seem to understand that there is something not quite right about the stories we were given as children, and we look to the heavens as if yearning for home. We hide those yearnings behind religion and trust in government because the implications are just too terrifying to us in discovering, (or rather re-discovering) the truth. But the truth is headed in our direction quicker than mankind can deal with it and is on a collision course with destiny that none of us are ready for. Government has some idea, although it’s unlikely any one person in government has the whole story. For instance, NASA is planning on getting a manned mission to Mars by 2035 and they already have a pretty good idea what we’ll find once we get there. Just recently it was discovered that there was a vast ocean that covered the Northern Hemisphere of Mars and at a time, the red planet was very earth like. If there was water, it is likely that some form of life was in it. It is even possible that a whole life cycle of intelligent life rose and fell well before humans were even mating with (angels) in the time before the Deluge.

The most suspicious giveaway of this massive cover-up is the fact that mankind has not returned to the moon since the 1970s. Our journeys to the moon came to a sudden stop never to return or even send a probe. When the Apollo missions were over, everything just came to an end. NASA moved into a phase of launching shuttles and building an “International Space Station” content to float above the earth, but never to venture out too far from our home planet. The moon was strangely off limits suddenly.

The moon is pretty easy to see and amateur astronomers have been looking at it for many years. No matter where we are on earth, we all see the same side of it, never seeing anything on the back side as the same face always gazes at us—yet human beings have been more curious than their governments have been comfortable with. They have seen strange events happening on the moon and speculate as to why or how. But the real evidence that gives away the mystery is that nobody has returned, and if they have, it was a secret not disclosed to the public. When mankind does return to these other planets we’ll confirm the long-held suspicion that we are not alone. We were never alone, in fact, our galaxy is teeming with life—most of it very primitive, some of it advanced, but we will share with that advanced life an origin story that will be difficult for all of us. It will shatter our religious convictions and a perceptual understanding of reality—so for now our governments protect our fragile emotions with the thin veil of concealment like children still wanting to believe in Santa Clause. We want to believe in the Leaky theories of evolution, in the hand of God shaping us into our present form. But what we’ll discover very soon is that God was not some deity in the heavens but only part of the story of a race of people who came to earth from someplace else and made the world into the image of their homeland. Likely some of these relics will be found on Mars which will finally put all the speculation to rest. And before Mars was settled, there are other home worlds some of which still host life and have with them the origin stories what will shatter our current perceptual knowledge and leave mankind reeling with panic. The government isn’t all sinister, just filled with human frailty and an understanding that such revelations will shake the very foundations of society to its very core—and they have an innate desire to stay in charge and protect their “flock” from such trauma. But, it’s too late. It’s coming whether or not we want it to.

It is common in government schools for children to ridicule other children for believing in UFOs even though the evidence in support of alien life far surpasses the official press releases provided by government. The government has shown that it will lie collectively about small things, like Benghazi, or the true nature of a deal with Cuba and lifting sanctions with Iran—so it is quite a mystery why anybody would be so willing to believe the government in regard to alien life. But in public schools the government helps shape the consensus of learning. Children are encouraged to keep up with all the latest trends in pop culture and social concerns filling their brains with irrelevant material doomed to revision once government gets caught concealing the truth. That time is coming quick especially with independent private sector companies moving into the space race. Government will have to come clean or put a stop to free will because they can’t prevent the curious from uncovering the origins of mankind any longer. There are just too many tools available to the modern adventurer. Kids still make fun of other kids in school who dare to ask questions that have their answers outside of the latest happenings of a boy band singing the latest greatest hits. Many young minds are happy for a time to turn off their thoughts so they can feel the boobies of some girl during their adolescent years, but eventually their curiosity will catch up to them. And the evidence won’t be concealed any longer.

It wasn’t that long ago scientists—(individuals functioning under government grants) doubted that there was life anywhere but earth and that water was unusual to our planet. Now we know that Mars had an ocean—a big one and given the nature of our personal mythologies and early “pagan” religions, that in our background on earth there is evidence of life that was quite vast and intricate. Before there were governments in the form that we have them today, there were kingdoms and religion was used to control the minds of those within those kingdoms to serving their kings as a link to the heavens. Government has expanded this role, it is no longer just one or two monarchs sitting on a throne, but a whole class of people we are supposed to trust to manage our affairs as we work to pay our taxes to them and pick one of the few religions provided to us to focus our eye toward some version of immortality after the death of our bodies on earth. We are taught in our public schools to cattle prod our classmates into staying in the lines and not believing the strange reports of UFOs that flood in from the curious. But later, when the school days are done and government doesn’t provide answers to the strange things we see around us but to tell us to look somewhere else and keep our minds focused on some religion to answer our questions, all we have to do is look up and see ancient relics looking back at us.  The moon is right there—yet human kind does not see it for what it really is..

The moon itself is an ancient artifact and this will be confirmed once we finally return and stay on its surface. There won’t be concealment of the truth any longer and NASA can see the day within the next few decades when this reality will occur. So they are slowly floating out to the public what is expected to be discovered, so that mankind has a chance to grapple with the implications. And those implications will shatter the religions of the world too stringent to accept the reality that we have never been alone but were only a colony on earth from a vast species that still roams the universe. And from there is the real origin story that will bring with it many new religions and a destiny not rooted in such sure footing. The strongest evidence to the fact is in what NASA or the government in general has avoided doing. The moon is so close, yet so far away. It is right there in the sky and on it is the truth—a truth we ran away from after the Apollo program. But a truth that is catching up to us faster than government can conceal the information.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Art of Playing: Celebrating life and happiness

imageIt was my 47th birthday today and I spent it in an unusual fashion compared to some, but quite the standard within my family. During it I was reminded of a conversation I had recently with some pretty important and powerful people about the nature of living and how I manage to do so many things at several layers of severity and risk,  but still manage to lay my head down on my pillow each night for sleep without wanting to jump off a roof. It’s a secret that I feel compelled to teach the world, just so that I might remove just a bit of their suffering and change the direction of their life’s focus. It’s a method that everyone would benefit from if they embraced it more and would drop the broken stereotypes of the past—because they don’t work. As a brief intro to the concept please understand that my wife could have given me just about anything for my birthday—a new Apple Watch, an expensive vacation, a dinner at Cincinnati’s exclusive restaurants, even a new car—but what she did give me was infinitely more interesting and fun. She gave me a Zoomer Dinosaur. She has been watching my grandson and he knew what she had bought me, and at just over 2 years old, he couldn’t wait to tell me. So he guided me to where she was hiding it and we opened it up. She didn’t care because he was so excited to see it move. After opening it, we put the little dinosaur on the ground and began playing with it—which set the tone for the entire birthday celebration.

My mother taught her kids how to play, even late in life. Growing up we played a lot and had very diverse interests. My grandmother also played at life a lot and made growing up very fun. Every trip to the grocery store was fun because they made it that way, and as a result I carry that into my own life-even in tragic situations. I try to have fun every day of my life—no matter what is going on. That is a pattern started in my childhood by my mom. My brother and sister have a similar love of playing and as a result as grown adults, they don’t have any mental problems or issues with social interaction. They are not drug abusers of even a slight nature and have no real insecurities of any mention. Now with kids of their own, they are bringing that element of play to their own offspring with very positive results. But out of all the members of my family, I learned to play more than the others and I am more obvious in my dedication to it.

One of my best memories as a kid was when I had to go to soccer practice one evening when I really didn’t want to. I always loved sports, but only the games themselves. I didn’t like all the team work crap—ever, or the social infusion with the community. When my team would win the parents were always excited for some mysterious reason and used the word “we” a lot. Yet they never did anything to help win the game except yell like a bunch of idiots on the sideline. It never made sense to me, and as the years moved on, I stepped away from sports because of the heavy emphasis on team building and derision on individual achievement. If I had different teachers and social influences as a young kid I might have moved into professional sports of my choosing, but because the wrong influences were around me focused on the wrong things, I abandon sports at my first opportunity—as a freshman in high school. But of that wonderful memory, I was at soccer practice, miserable because honestly I had a huge set-up in the basement of my home dedicated to Star Wars and I wanted to be there playing with all my toys rather than running around at soccer practice. It was spring time, my dad was out-of-town on business, and I was hoping to be home so I could have some play time before bed. It was the middle of the week and I had school the next day, so my time to play at the things was short. My mom picked me up from practice and we headed home. Only this was different, my brother and sister were in the car dressed like we were going somewhere, and there was the smell of popcorn from the trunk. I didn’t think much about it until we took a different route home and ended up on roads I wasn’t familiar with. Those roads eventually took us to a drive-in theater in Hamilton that was playing the very first Star Wars movie as a re-release. My mom took us all to see it for what I think was the 7th time at that point. It was wonderful and I cherished deeply every frame of film. During the scene where Han Solo and Luke were rescuing the princess, which is the high point of the film for me, I was sitting in a lawn chair with my soccer cloths still on listening to the echo of all the portable speakers around the drive-in playing the sound of the movie with a slight delay during that specific scene—the clouds were high in the sky and slightly blotting out a big bright moon on a spring night—and I thought about how wonderful life was. It really didn’t get any better than that.

But every day I try to make the day better than that day at the drive-in, and most days I come close. I am always looking for a way to have fun with a situation, and most of the time I do. I avoid people who don’t know how to have fun. If they are depressed people trapped in emotions constructed around neurosis, I usually paint them out of my life for my own preservation. If they can’t keep up, I leave them behind without looking back. I like to have fun, I love to play, and I hate people who don’t know how. I’m happy to teach “happiness” to them, but if they don’t show much of an effort, I drop them quickly. I understand and sympathize that they didn’t have a mom like mine who showed them how to play, even as adults, so I take the time to teach them. But I won’t sacrifice myself to their misery. If they want to be miserable, I leave them to it. I might write an article like this to help show them the way, but I won’t take their burden on myself if they wish to be stubborn about it.

I have known many adults who give Rolexes to their spouses and new cars for birthdays—but most of the time those gifts are laced with a desire for social approval more than developing happiness in the recipient. Behind such gifts is the desire to brag to someone else about the value of the gift, and thus, the amount of social pull that person has in the world of mixed economies. So it means quite a lot that my wife out of all the things she could have given me picked the cute little dinosaur which I think is quite a leap in scientific development. The little sensors in it for a kids play toy are very advanced, and the gyroscope system which balances it on two wheels is quite extraordinary. I could play with it all day and night if left to my own devices. It is intriguing, and intellectually stimulating. I love it!

imageBut of course there was a gathering with my family like we usually do later in the day during my birthday. This year we went to Dave and Busters so that we could……………play…………….as a family. Specifically there is a new video game called Star Wars Battle Pod which is a kind of flight simulator for Star Wars. It is the newest, and greatest of what technology has to offer, complete with a breeze simulator to replicate actual environmental conditions. It has a wrap around screen that totally engulfs your vision allowing you to invest your intellect into the experience without distraction. The food was great, as it usually is at Dave and Busters, but playing Battle Pod was for me the best thing I’ve done for a birthday in years. In my family, most of us are intense Star Wars fans so we loved taking time to play it together. It was a stunning game to play, and fly. I had to reflect back to that drive-in surprise where my mom played like she was just picking me up from soccer practice on a school night, but instead took us all to see Star Wars one more time on a big screen, before it was gone forever—or so we thought at the time. Now, because of Battle Pod, people can play in the Star Wars universe in a way that was only a remote fantasy for someone like me years ago.

At Hollywood Studios my favorite restaurant is the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater. It tries to simulate the drive-in movie experience I had in my youth, with my best memory being that Star Wars outing. There are still drive-ins, but they don’t carry the same impact as they did when I was a kid. Now they are viewed as a cheap alternative to the cinema experience as opposed to a first-rate experience. But when I go to Hollywood Studios, I have to stop by the Dine-In Theater and have a hamburger. It reminds me of that Star Wars presentation after the soccer game, and reminds me of the importance of playing at life instead of taking things too serious.

In reference to the important people I was talking about the best of us realize hopefully before they arrive at 60 years of age that career climbing and ass-kissing doesn’t get anybody anywhere. People are most effective and ultimately better when they retrain, or relearn the art of playing—as they did when they were kids. Typically, I don’t get along very well with people in my own age group, because most of them suffer from socially created illnesses. The people I most get along with are kids and old people because generally they aren’t worried about the ridiculous social rules which construct our network of associations. They would do far better for themselves to spend their time playing with other members of their families than in chasing the tail of someone higher in the peaking order hoping to schmooze their way to the top instead of letting their actions speak for themselves. One of the people I was talking to is a guy I enjoy quite a lot. He has a PHD in an advanced field of endeavor, but has not lost his love of playing. He’s is the grandpa of some lucky grandkids and the father to some fortunate children. Yet he solves problems like they don’t even exist, the kind of problems that might hang up regular people in the related field of endeavor. The difference is that this smart guy never forgot how to play at life, and therefore solves problems the way a child does, with resiliency and creativity. We teach our children to stop doing these things, and that is our first mistake. Instead, we should be teaching them to develop it further and to do so through their infantile 20s and 30s. But until everyone else gets on that page and recognizes that this is the way to conduct their lives—with playing at life for their entire lives—then I will continue to recharge myself the way I have. And for that, the little dinosaur my wife gave me along with Star Wars at Dave and Busters was a wonderful experience that gives me more than anything money can buy–a chance to play.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

What Makes Harrison Ford Great: An actor recovering after a crash landing that belongs in a movie

There are a lot of phonies in Hollywood. Most of the time actors will tell you that they are nothing like the people they play in a movie. Some actors even try hard to find roles that are not even close to their real personality. I’ve had a chance to meet some of them, and I always walked away from those projects feeling let down. Even though my adult mind knows and understands show business well enough to comprehend that actors are just actors—when they attempt to portray tough people in the context of a story but are afraid of a bug that crawls across the table during lunch—it’s a let down. But I have high expectations because one of my favorite actors is Harrison Ford, and he has always been at his core—the carpenter that he was when he first started. He’s always been very physical in his roles which obviously goes back to the days that he broke into the business while building a studio for a producer when George Lucas asked him to read some lines for Star Wars as Han Solo. I’m one of those people who think that Star Wars and Indiana Jones would have never been as good as they were without Harrison Ford because of what he does to bring his characters to the screen.

When the 72-year-old crashed shortly after taking off his vintage era World War II single engine craft to the air at the Santa Monica airport due to engine failure I was a little worried for him. I understand he’s old, but he’s been one of my favorite actors for most of my life. I don’t expect him to live forever, but it would be sad to see him lose his life in such a ridiculous fashion—after playing some of the most loved and most action oriented roles of any actor. Ford has played a hot-shot pilot in the Star Wars films and in every Indiana Jones movie; airplanes are a very important part of the story lines. In two films, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the Last Crusade, the feature character had to crash-land airplanes. I raised my kids on those movies so it would have been sad to see Ford die in a plane crash like so many other stars have in years past.

As details emerged from the crash it turned out that Ford was in real life every bit as creative and dynamic as Indiana Jones or the role only he could have played—Han Solo. According to a NTSB report filed after an investigation of the March 5th 2015 crash Ford took off from Santa Monica which is in a heavily residential area–lost power nearly immediately not even getting any altitude to give time to glide away from the city or make a ditch in the ocean. Ford as a very good and experienced pilot made a critical decision to turn left back to the airport instead of right because of some quick thinking of making an emergency landing. He made a call back to the tower to make an emergency landing hoping to glide back in, but realized quickly that he wasn’t going to make it. So he set up an unpowered landing over the golf course spotting a place that would take him away from the people below and hit the ground before he overshot the narrow patch of turf and into the road beyond.

He cut his head badly and broke some bones. It was the second time in a year that Ford had broken bones in his leg; the first was during the filming of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Now it was during a recreational flight he was taking between film projects as he has been lobbying for another Indiana Jones film from Disney. Some would say that Ford should hang it up—that he’s too old to do these kinds of activities and that all these broken bones should tell him to stop for his own safety—but that is why I like the actor—because he’s always been an incredibly physical person and his characters have shined because of him.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark during the filming of the flying wing fight, Ford tore his ACL when the plane ran over his leg during a stunt. Then in the Temple of Doom Ford herniated a few disks in his spine aggravated by riding elephants. The film was brutal for even actors in great shape. There was even more crawling around and tumbles that Ford had to do even with his stuntman Vic Armstrong doing most of the back to camera work. Because of all the injuries on the set of Temple of Doom it is unlikely that a major film will ever feature so many live action stunts again. Liability insurance these days make such a thing prohibitive. Ford was out a month nearly shutting down the picture—ironically just as was the case for the upcoming Force Awakens. Ford spent more time hurt as a younger man in his thirties and forties than he has in his 50s and 60s and it’s good to see him getting back into the kind of roles that made him a household name in the first place.

One of my very first favorite books was The Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark which chronicled the day-to-day efforts of making that classic film. Harrison Ford was every bit as much of an action hero off the screen as he was on it, and in many ways I liked the story of making the film more than the actual film. I loved the stunt guys and the general attitude on the set and I never stopped loving everything about that movie, from the sound editing, the music, to the screenplay—but most of all the dirty, gritty daily life of an action movie set in the desert. I’ve judged movies off the Raiders standard ever since—fair or unfair. I think for Ford it shaped him as an actor as well—it set the bar so high that he had to live up to it, and as a hard worker first, an actor second, Ford never shied away from holding himself to that standard. As good as he was playing Han Solo; it was really Raiders of the Lost Ark that put Ford into another universe as an actor.

For me what makes his roles better is knowing that the real person playing these roles is an authentic, and sincere person—and Ford is. He’s everything an iconic actor should be on and off the screen. When Indiana Jones crash lands a plane in the Last Crusade you want to think that such things are possible so you can believe in it when you see it on the screen. One of my favorite sequences from Temple of Doom is the plane crash in that film where Indiana Jones and the gang jumped out in a life raft which inflated during the decent. It was a real stunt and I’ve never seen it topped in any film since—and it just might work in a life and death situation. So when Ford crash landed his vintage aircraft on a Santa Monica golf course there was more at stake than an old man dying from his injuries. There was the fear that the magic of movies would remain in the realm of fiction, and that real people actually buckled under such pressure and succumbed to fate. Instead Harrison Ford always the good pilot no matter what the conditions had an escape plan already in mind when his engine cut out at the most dangerous period of flight—the take-off. Ford knew the plane was going down so he set up a situation that would do the least amount of damage to himself, his plane, and the property and lives around him. He hit a very narrow window to achieve the best case scenario.

A month later Ford was at home recovering and telling his old-time friend and producer Frank Marshall that he was ready to play some tennis. Marshall was the Nazi pilot in the flying wing sequence, so he has seen the actor hurt on set many times. And as the producer reported, “Harrison is at home and he’s up and about, he’s recovering remarkably. He made an incredible landing, to his credit. He is after all Indiana Jones.” And that is the difference between Harrison Ford and every other actor. If Disney truly wants to make more Indiana Jones films, Harrison Ford will have to be a part of them; otherwise the audience just won’t buy into the change. Indiana Jones is much better than James Bond—the fan base won’t follow a new actor the way they did Harrison Ford because there is always the belief when the actor is seen on the screen that all the things the adventurer is doing is possible in real life. At 72 years old, Harrison Ford is showing that a life lived is more important than a life saved at the expense of safety. When it comes time to make the hard decisions, Ford is as able as any fantasy character created in the mind of a writer—and that is what makes his characters better and his movies timeless—like the man himself.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Glory of Spring in a Capitalist Culture: Loving life and the flowers that emerge from it

I have to take a moment to just step away from the treacherous topics of the day and utter an appreciation for the majestic opulence of spring. I continue to be amazed by American culture within capitalist climates and how resilient they are to positive stimulation. We have invented for ourselves a continuous parade of positive celebration which is fueled throughout the year with a new activity every other week. When I speak to foreign nationals and explain American culture to them my optimism is not a false one. Recently we just had a Super Bowl in the hardest part of winter, then some minor holidays like Valentines Day, St Patrick’s Day and so on, then there was the Final Four, and coming up is the opening day of baseball, the NFL draft, and every weekend there is NASCAR racing. But there is nothing that sets the tone for human activity more than the period around Easter when spring is in the air and a renewal of life begins. Stepping into Wal-Mart the other day the shelves were filled with flowers waiting to be planted and the freshness of a heavy rain was filtering the outside air with an ionized cleanliness that only comes after a spring time storm.   Easter decorations were complete with their vibrant colors and promises of family gatherings, and I knew that life was good.image

Spring is where all the fun starts for a human being in free, capitalist society. It’s about lawn mowers, radio broadcasted baseball games around the grill, and landscaping private property in a way that reflects the pride of ownership. It’s about fresh water and flowers as buds emerge from trees coming alive again after the stifling cold of winter. Spring tells us that we have gotten through it and are ready for the sun, the pool, and amusement parks in the upcoming summer months. I never tire of spring—ever.

I love the upcoming summer movie season where every weekend produces a potential blockbuster of some sign stimuli meaning, and then there are the holidays, first Mother’s Day, then Memorial Day, Father’s Day, then the Fourth of July. I am always a little sad when Labor Day hits in September and the WEBN Fireworks blast away the memories of summer in my downtown of Cincinnati. But the NFL starts the weekend after and every weekend for the rest of the year is a festivity of epic drama as we pick our favorite teams for Sunday clashes. Then there is Halloween and the cool air of October and all the mythology of pagan rituals long forgotten. Then there is Thanksgiving and Black Friday—time with family and all day football games around a raging fireplace. After all that comes Christmas and New Year where the world takes a deep breath and some time off work to appreciate everything and everyone in their lives only to start the whole process all over again—with every two weeks or so producing some new product of some human beings mind.

But I love most of all when stores put out their flowers for spring planting because it means more to the human consciousness than anyone cares to articulate. I love to get the lawn mower started for the first cut of the year as Reds baseball plays in the background, with drawers to my tool boxes opened for the many gadgets and gizmos I’ve picked up over time. The air in Ohio is just cool enough to not wear a jacket, but not hot enough to sweat and the sun begins to direct its rays with more precision into the Northern Hemisphere—and the plants reach out to it like fans at some great concert listening to a symphony that the rest of our solar system cannot conduct—because it lacks human beings to organize all the elements around a centerpiece of culture.

When it comes down to it, I’m not in love with the nature of what the earth provides, the rain, the flowers and the trees which spring forth in this particular time part of the year. I love what human beings do with those elements to enrich their lives—I love the creativity of the human spirit to invent something to always look forward to—to always lean forward as a means to awake each day to face new challenges. I love the way America celebrates the seasons and I wish every culture on earth would take notes from us and do better in their own cultures.

It would be fair to say that I’m rather obsessed with culture building. Most of the contents of this blog are a means to successfully recognize elements in our lives—mostly political—that allow for a successful culture. Management of resources after all is all about building a culture whether the intent is to fuel the lives of individual people with a livelihood or to deliver products to a global marketplace. The best kinds of culture are those which do both things and I never tire of contemplating the best means of achieving those elusive tasks. For me spring represents the best aspects of creation—it’s about creativity and the innate possibility for renewal.

My wife and I use our outside hot tub nearly every day—even on the harshest winter days. It gives us a reason to go outside and stare at the sky. If not for the hot tub, we wouldn’t typically spend an hour a day nearly everyday outside looking up. I love to study the weather patterns across the vast canvas of the sky, to watch the clouds form along cold fronts, or the high thin clouds of a hot day. But equally I like the menacing storms that roll in and dump a lot of rain and are propelled along by gusts of wind. From our hot tub we watch them all and the formlessness of their configurations never gets tiring. But another element that never goes away is the wonder of watching the stars come out at night as a roar of a train blowing out its horn emerges from the valley at the end of my street. I love trains because they are big, powerful, and they haul around the heavy products of mankind to markets a long way from their base of manufacture. When I hear the evening trains travel into the night from my hot tub as I count the stars in the sky on a blackened canvass I think often that out of most of those stars they are all lacking a culture—a simple train that is carrying products to market from the mind of imagination—and I feel sorry for them. I don’t think of the oceans and volcanoes on distant planets—I think about the products of human kind—and the happiness they bring to minds able to appreciate them.

I was at my daughter’s house yesterday and their dog was playing with my grandson. To cool off he lay down in a puddle of freshly placed water which had come from the last torrential downpour of the day. The dog just wanted to be a part of the water and to cool off after playing hard outside. The dog is one who was raised to be nearly human, my daughter talks to him like another person, so he tries with all his ability to be—human. But he doesn’t of course have all the senses and intellect to pull off the task and gets frustrated when he can’t carry on a conversation. I often look into his eyes and feel sorry for him because he cannot be a person—because he obviously wants to be. He would love to put on a pair of pants and hunt Easter eggs with my grandson and trade in his four legs for our two in less than a second. Then later I was taking a shower when a newly hatched bug fell into the bottom of the tub. I scooped him up before he went down the drain and took him outside. The little fella’ just hatched and being sucked down a drain right out of the gate is a rough life to live. Again, I felt sorry for the little bug, because it was just acting out of impulse toward living. But it didn’t have the intellectual facilities to appreciate the culture of spring and even though I saved it from certain death, it still wouldn’t enjoy life the way I do every day. However, that is the beauty of spring in a lot of ways. It happens whether or not we want it to and it comes again and again always offering a chance at renewal. Spring is best appreciated by the human being—and it is there that everyone should consider themselves lucky. The rest of the star laced sky would love to trade with us in our American culture and our continuous parade of celebration created by many minds for the pure service of our intellectual entertainment. When it comes to appreciating a season, I do spring more than any other for all these reasons and many more. Life is good—because through living, we get to experience all the culture of our imaginations—and the products of that enterprise never ceases to amaze me.

We bought some of those flowers at Wal-Mart, and I was glad we did.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Doc Thompson and Skip LeCombe: The Henry Reardens of talk radio

Doc Thompson and Skip LeCombe on their Morning Blaze radio show have been doing daily wrap-ups for the topics they covered during their 6 AM to 9 AM time slot on a video summary. Below is a sample of their show from April 1st 2015 which I picked because at the end Doc shows off his Rearden Steel t-shirt. The two of them have done a great job keeping a lively and informative broadcast that has become for me essential to beginning my day. Breakfast just wouldn’t be breakfast without Doc and Skip on The Blaze Radio Network.

One of the best parts of the Morning Blaze Show is the police blotters that come on at around ten minutes to 7 AM. Doc reads various news stories featuring police arrests in an old-fashioned style that is laced with rhyming comedy. It takes some work everyday, but they put their time in and do it right leaving me openly laughing during the segment much of the time. The segment encapsulates to what extent Doc and Skip do just a little bit extra above everyone else in talk radio to give their audience something fresh.

Most radio hosts show up on the radio and talk for 1 to 3 hours—take a few calls and essentially read the news to listeners, which for me is a valuable service. But Doc and Skip go just a bit further every day consciously mixing comedy with some rather pointed commentary on contemporary events. They know their subjects and relish in breaking down some of the most complicated topics of the news cycle.

In a lot of ways the Doc and Skip Show on the Morning Blaze reminds me of something that would come out of Atlantis in the book Atlas Shrugged. I know Doc enjoys that book—I wasn’t sure how much over the years he had retained his enjoyment, but obviously he enjoys it enough to wear a shirt featuring it. Ayn Rand for many conservatives is tricky stuff, mainly because she was an atheist, and I know that Doc is a Christian. In my own life, I wouldn’t call myself a Christian, and I wouldn’t say I’m a libertarian—I’m certainly not a social liberal. I’m not loosy goosy on topics of conduct. There is a lot I like about Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism just as I like a lot about the Christian faith as a religion, but neither tenant of thought goes far enough for me. The problem with Christianity is that I love the values, but I hate the notion of surrendering life to a deity in a spirit of sacrifice. Ayn Rand is really one of the only writers to emerge to capture the spirit of productivity and to embrace capitalism as a moral premise. But the religions of the world—Christianity included—are at odds with it. Rand dared to ask why sacrifice was necessary for a productive society, as capitalism is the mode of the creative. If people are creative and make things from their minds, why is sacrifice needed in a culture at all? That is the greatest moral dilemma of our age and humanity is facing it for the first time.

Over the years I have become less religious not leaning toward atheism in any fashion, but in developing a thought process that has the values of Christianity, but the empowerment of Objectivism. Current religions don’t go far enough in my opinion to solve the riddles of our age—and instead stay too far anchored into the past. I want to see more responsibility out of individuals instead of just pointing to the heavens and declaring that God wills something to be done in my life, so thus it shall be done—good or bad. That doesn’t work for me and never has.

Henry Rearden from Atlas Shrugged, the head of the company on Doc’s shirt—was a very self-empowered person, and there is a serious lesson to be learned from that book which should be expanded and promoted in a much greater fashion.   Of those in modern media, there aren’t many like Doc who has not run away from an association with Ayn Rand’s philosophy. He may not agree with everything about Rand’s Objectivism—but he understands the message of personal responsibility that pours from it in defining why some people do things that are really important in life, and why some just become parasitic entities for their entire existence. Without that very important distinction, there would be no proper identification in our art to properly explain why capitalism is important to societies.

Much of what Doc does on his show is paint the world from a vantage point as though he were broadcasting from a real life Atlantis featured in Atlas Shrugged. Viewed through the prism of a person who has read and understood the Ayn Rand classic, the news on the Morning Blaze is unquestionably in that spirit—which is why it has become a must in the morning for me. As the world crashes down around us, there are pockets of sanity popping up around the country that are migrating to The Blaze to live our lives independent of the wrecked economies of socialism, including the embrace of American culture of more European style collectivism.

In my own life I feel like every character who was a protagonist in Atlas Shrugged wrapped up into one person—and I’m living that life currently. I have a little Ragnar, a lot of Rearden, but even minor characters like Richard Halley I understand all too well. In my own work I am seeking to step beyond Rand’s musings, which is now over 50 years old and explore topics spawning off her initial concepts. I am less interested in pleasing the masses of society, and have instead come to broadcast them to a much smaller audience in a metaphorical Atlantis for the same reasons that Halley did in Atlas Shrugged. My Curse of Fort Seven Mile is one of those projects that I know going into it that will not be accepted in New York literature circles, and I don’t care. I write those stories for people like Doc Thompson—not for the pop culture icons of progressive definitions of coolness. Since I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead I have wanted more to the story, but there just isn’t many writers out there who can write that kind of material with the authority and definition that Ayn Rand did. First of all they lack the experience, but mostly they lack the personal conviction and couldn’t write such a thing in their wildest fantasies. Just as there are a lot of talk radio hosts, there really aren’t any like Doc Thompson who puts forth just a bit more effort shown proportionally throughout his endeavors, like his police blotters.

Doc Thompson could be a talk show host at the level of Howard Stern if he wanted to be. I remember when he was brought to Cincinnati to take over as the primary man on WLW. But Doc has never really played well with others, not where it had to compromise who he is—even if the opportunity for more money and fame threw themselves at his feet. He has stubbornly been like Henry Rearden from Atlas Shrugged and conducted his radio show his way for his own purposes, and it took someone like Glenn Beck to recognize the benefits and to give him a prime slot on a global network. But even with the reach of The Blaze, the primary audience is an extreme minority—like the members of the fictional Atlantis from Atlas Shrugged. For those people Doc and Skip put on a great daily show. To the rest of the world, they are sadly being left behind. Even though the broadcast is easy and free to them, most of the time they will find themselves the butt of Doc’s jokes, instead of on the side of the typical audience member—and laughing intellectually at the follies of the world.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Iranian Obamanation: A socialist apocalypse in the Middle East

So the deadline came and went between Obama’s administration and Iran yet the result essentially was nothing but to talk more. The Obama people lost their momentum well before Bibi came to speak before congress. They lost it when the administration set the deadline in the first place and let those hostile to America—and capitalism in general—know that there was a light at the end of the tunnel on sanctions if they played their cards close to their vest. Meanwhile, many in the streets of Iran chanted, “death to America” as John Kerry tried to spin the situation into something positive. Yet again, the actions of the Obamanation showed just how stupid the President is, and the people around him—how tactfully ignorant they truly are. It is the second time in the course of a week that I have been too embarrassed by President Obama and his team to even utter a criticism, the first was the Bowe Bergdahl situation. It is simply unbelievable that an American president could be so stupid.

Iran has a long history with communism and socialism, in the 1920s it was the Hizb-e Socialysist Party. Into the 50s, 60s and 70s a variety of Marxist groups penetrated Iran and the rest of the Muslim world ranging in the spectrum between Trotskyist to Moaist recruited largely through universities and inciting the working poor against the capitalism of the West. Several generations of Iranians now have been nurtured into a hatred of capitalism because of the long history that Iran has with socialism. They have destroyed their economy nearly completely because of their commitment to socialism. The people of Iran are so under developed that they cannot ever hope to embrace the gifts of the West in their lifetimes—so hatred has seethed there for decades made worse as time has went on. When the United States launched sanctions against Iran it cut off the only hope that common people in the nation could have had for a good life—since internally the socialism of their country destroyed all potential prosperity. Most Iranians would have loved to have the arrangement that communist China has with the United States—because at least there are jobs given to them, but since Iranians are now two generations of sanctions into years of a dismal economic activity they really have nothing left to lose but to lash out at others like parentless children desperate for attention.

Cut off from capitalism, and some resemblance of an honorable living, the Iranian people are stuck fighting among themselves like dogs over scraps of meat—since their economy is so dismal, due to their choices. As a strategy against the world they have nothing to offer the world but a reprieve from violence—because that is what their adherence to socialism has done for them masked behind Islamic faith. To get the attention of the developed countries they have sponsored terrorism, and created anxiety over nuclear weapons to maintain some relevancy on the world stage.

The Obama administration, leaning toward socialism in their own way, is sympathetic to the collectivism efforts of Iran over the capitalist leanings of Israel—and they despise any trace of the West in the Middle East—not so much due to religious differences, but in the differences between a capitalist economy and a socialist one.   They want to lift the sanctions in a similar way as Obama did for communist Cuba—and Iran knows it. So the power in negotiations goes to Iran. America also wants everyone in the Middle East to have equality without the qualifier of a capitalist country or a socialist one using collectivism to destroy commerce. This again gives power to Iran over America. Yet the worst of all is that America has a deadline whereas Iran has all the time in the world. They have absolutely nothing to lose in negotiations with America—whereas Obama wants to make Iran a part of his legacy as President. Of course Iran has the upper hand in such an exchange giving nothing to Obama’s team in the form of leverage. Like insane fools they have rushed to enter negotiations against an adversary that wants to kill all Americans as a collective society.

Choking on ideology and really poor strategy, Obama lost before he ever went to the table against Iran—and they were at least smart enough to realize it. They should have seen what was clear to everyone from the beginning, but they ignored the evidence and chose to view the world with rose-colored glasses and the pipe dreams of typical liberals taught through academia to trust logic to the gods of speculation and wishful thinking. And in Iran, there is nothing to wish for leaving only desperate foes and scandalous bandits seeking with great desperation to get their hands on a nuclear weapon so that they might bomb their way to a loaf of bread, or a used 1970s American car—because in the beginning—they chose socialism over capitalism, and their world is suffering an apocalypse as a result.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Rich Hoffman on Matt Clark’s WAAM Radio Show: Why Ted Cruz is considered a radical

I was on with Matt Clark’s WAAM radio show over the weekend covering the Ted Cruz presidential candidacy when a topic of some importance came up—the reason why he specifically is considered an extreme and dangerous radical. This was a topic I have personal familiarity with as those types of terms have been thrown in my direction as well—so I have a clear understanding of why members of the left, center and even the political right cast those aspersions in the direction of their foes. Matt and I talked a bit about these issues in the following clip.

Speaking from personal experience, and I imagine Ted Cruz went through this in a much grander fashion, I remember when I first started this blog and why. I had come out openly against a new tax increase in my school district and the union thugs instantly targeted me with name calling and searched deep into my closet looking for skeletons they could use against me—to keep my mouth shut. That made me very angry. I have dealt with much worse in regards to evil people before, but it was clear to me why they were doing what they were doing and I had to imagine how many like me were forced into silence with such terror tactics. I was in a unique position, as a bullwhip handler and long time Wild West enthusiast with a martial art background I am uniquely suited to deal with personal threats to my safety and those of my family. I didn’t have to worry about personal violence against me. I am also not a social climber in a community fashion or in a career—so I don’t worry an ounce in what people think of me. But more than anything I have lived a life consistent with my utterances and I have a long history going back to my earliest childhood memories of standing up to bullies, fighting on the side of a well-defined, “good,” and being uniquely bold in my proclamations. At the time just before this blog I considered that I was likely one of the few people in America who didn’t have skeletons in his past that he was ashamed of—there were no stories of whores from wild weekends in Vegas, no drugs from my past, no personalities who would emerge to call me a hypocrite—I have always been what I am, and was always extremely proud of it. I have been consistent in my beliefs from the time of my first memory to the present. The conclusion was that the battle before us was worth fighting and I was qualified, so it was my responsibility to embark on the journey.

This position is important because much of what the political left does to disarm those who threaten them is apply guilt as a tactical move to shake off their opposition. All of their Saul Alinsky tactics center around using guilt as a weapon of perpetuity constantly moving the bar of righteousness further toward their tactical objectives—which have largely been shaped by a Karl Marx philosophy. The way to beat them, and to do so badly, is to force them to fight people who don’t feel guilt and are immune to their tactics and thus force them to answer questions that they can’t—because their entire premise is one built on emotion. If their opponent does not feel guilt and cannot be moved off their position, the left and center political radicals lose a lot of their tactical advantage.

That has largely been my story and the essence behind Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, the blog I have written for over five years now—every day.   I know from experience that there isn’t a single person on the left, or middle who can match my efforts and I use my ability and position like a sledge-hammer against them day after day gradually pulling the mind of America back to the right—where it has always belonged.

At the start of the above radio show I joked a bit with Matt that I was politically to the right of Ted Cruz—that the new presidential candidate is likely too far to the left for my liking. The joke is that Cruz is clearly one of the most conservative right leaning candidates running for president in 2016. However, in reality, I am likely quite a bit further to the right fiscally and socially than Ted Cruz is—and I don’t consider myself a right-winged extremist by any means. Many on the left have tried to paint people like myself as part of the Nazi wing of fascism—which is simply laughable. Hitler was a socialist—and I am the complete antithesis to people like him. I am probably one of the least fascist people currently on earth. Such a definition doesn’t even meet a unit of measure on my political spectrum because such a position is still way too far to the left for me. I don’t want to control anybody. By default, because I’m a responsible person, I do have a lot of people who look to me for means—but there is never a day where I take joy and contemplate how I might leverage them to my advantage so that I might massage some intellectual desire to rule over others.   So the typical left-winged definition of the extreme right-winger is completely wrong and does not apply to me in any way. And I know that they don’t have an answer for it, which is why there aren’t more comments on my pages—because I can put up millions of words of opinions and thoughts about a great many subjects and they can’t answer to any of them. They can only ignore you and hope you go away.

Ted Cruz likely is a similar personality and he had to make the decision before entering the senate if he wanted to even play this game with the left. He appears to have went through the same process I did and decided that he was a personality that could handle the scrutiny, would not be subject to the bribes and deals from K-Street, and would be poised to stand in the fire like a block of ice and not melt under the heat. The big fear from the left about Cruz, as well as the right, is that they will have a hard time matching up to him. Cruz brings to the field of candidates a difficult match up for which the left does not have—a person who can function without an ounce of guilt and is therefore immune to the Saul Alinsky style attacks.

As an added bonus Ted Cruz was a champion debater at Harvard and may well be one of the most capable minds currently in the world who can go toe to toe with anybody on any rhetorical argument—including the slickest beltway lawyers. Ted Cruz will likely give thousands of interviews over the next two years and will have very few gaffs.  His confidence alone will win voters who either didn’t vote in previous elections or convert those who are on the fence.

In the Matt Clark interview I brought up my experience with the Ross Perot campaign from many years ago—in 1992. I had been deep in that campaign and learned a lot about politics during that time of my life. I was on Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati passing out literature for Perot when most people came up to me and showed an interest but stated that he didn’t have a chance of getting elected—so why vote for him. The problem was that if everyone who wanted to vote for him actually did, Perot would have been president instead of Bill Clinton and the disasters of the next century would have likely been averted. But people didn’t vote for Perot, and they received eight years of the Clintons, another eight years of the moderate Bush family, then eight years of a socialist oriented Barack Obama—and now an America going over a fiscal cliff as a result. All that damage could have been avoided by voting for Ross Perot who wasn’t even as well positioned as Ted Cruz is now.

Perot was a candidate who likely went through the same process I went through and undoubtedly Cruz underwent as well—which is why it took him so long to announce his candidacy which ultimately hurt him down the stretch. Perot was able to tear up Clinton and Bush in the debates because he was functioning without guilt and that made him very dangerous to the established powers. Cruz is a better candidate than Perot in every capacity—so this should be exciting. What will get accomplished are things that must be addressed. There is no option at this point; America needs a presidential race that battles out the philosophy of good and evil once and for all. And for that fight, Ted Cruz is uniquely poised. It will be an exciting two years for sure to watch the left and political moderates scramble to hold their positions without the weapon of guilt at their disposal. My prediction is that like this blog, they won’t be able to do it—leaving Cruz to always be the last man standing in an argument. That is not a way that the establishment can hold onto power. And they know it—and they are genuinely terrified—as they should be.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Obamanation: Just too embarrassing to discuss

I don’t like Obama, I think as a president he’s an idiot, and he’s at best one of the worst things that’s ever happened to America. But today I actually feel sorry for him. It would be terrible to live in his shoes, to have such an intellect that has led to so much destruction—and to be solely responsible for it. What a mess his presidency is—its not even dignified enough to have a closure as Nixon did—with a resignation ahead of impeachment. Obama’s time in the White House is such a miserable failure that it can’t even end with dishonor and an apology. He is so bad that such things wouldn’t even help.

“Was it worth it?”

That’s the first question Fox News host Megan Kelly posed to State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Wednesday night, several hours after the U.S. Army announced they were charging Bowe Bergdahl with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. The Obama administration released five Taliban commanders to free the former Army sergeant from captivity last year.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/25/megyn-kelly-gets-tough-with-state-dept-spokeswoman-on-bergdahl-swap-was-it-worth-it/

I hate to say it, but I reported on all this in 2014 when Obama brought the Bergdahl family to the Rose Garden for a press conference as if his actions in releasing a very controversial figure would give him a chance to wipe his hand across the ass of the deserter’s mother and allow the father to show the radical roots of their son through his speech. Obama stood by and smiled a knowing smile looking fully supportive of the misunderstood terrorist of the Taliban as Bob Bergdahl spoke Pashto–as if the Bergdahl family represented the future fate of all Americans—soon to buckle under the weight of Stockholm syndrome complete with a Taliban beard and worship of Allah from the White House. Obama had just made plans to release 5 terrorists for a deserter and had the parents of the weak-kneed solider thank the god of the terrorists in front of millions of people. Somehow Obama calculated that his Saul Alinsky tricks would wipe the minds of America so that they wouldn’t see what he was doing.

It took the army most of a year to release their findings but finally they had to agree that Bowe Bergdahl was in fact a deserter and had actually caused the death of American soldiers trying to retrieve him from his defection to the Taliban. There was no way for them to spin the situation in the White House but Jen Psaki tried—but to no avail. What was she thinking even going on the Kelly File to try to spin the story? As I watched I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her—as all her words would go down in history and never be forgotten. Even worse was the thought that Obama himself was watching and hoping for a half court miracle shot by Jen to turn the tide against public opinion. But she only dug the Obamanation deeper into the quandary of failure.

It was ugly. So ugly, I can’t even write any more about it. I’ve said all this before, and as usual, I was more right than I wanted to be. But even as much as I despise Barack Obama as an American president, I don’t hate anybody that much—to watch them make such complete idiots of themselves—the failure of the White House is complete. And they have nobody to blame on earth but themselves—and that is the worst punishment for their crimes imaginable, because it will be stuck to all of them for the rest of their lives. This Bergdahl situation is simply that bad. It is embarrassing, insulting, and deeply revealing all in a single action. And it is a story that will have legs for a long time, and go down in history books for centuries.

Even worse look who is defending people like Bob Bergdahl. Here is a quote from the extremely liberal New Yorker.

“Imagine that you have a child, a wanderer by nature, who gets caught up in a war that has persisted aimlessly for many years; his roaming has festered into a chronic pathology for which there is no known cure. Then imagine that the child, who had hoped to help make a change for the better, becomes so disillusioned that he or she decides that there is no choice but to just walk away into unknown territory. If that were your child, what would you do?”

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/bob-bergdahl-good-father

Clearly, Bob and his wife started the process of imbedding in the young Bowe the type of weakness that made him a deserter. For that family, as bad as the embarrassment is for Obama—it will be worse. What a mess!

These are just embarrassing human beings.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.