Tag: Hollywood insight

The Great Loop Rawlins: Doing for a living what’s driven by passion

I remember well when a bunch of us as young men—Gery Deer, Chris Camp, and of course myself were watching the work of Mark Allen and Alex Green out in Las Vegas and trying to improve on the western arts that they were putting on for America.  And we became faster, more accurate and more exciting as a result.  Gery Deer and Chris Camp have in fact really elevated the western arts act to new levels throughout the last two decades and I have done some work in Hollywood and literature that we all hoped would ignite the next generation.  And while we are far from done, the seeds of all that hard work are finally paying off.  Last year I spoke about the “Rise of Adam Winrich” who came out of the Ohio WWAC class of 2005, CLICK HERE TO REVIEW, and even as the national WWAC (Wild West Arts Club) ran by Mark Allen which I was a member of for many years finally died out in the late 2000s, it looks like the legacy is living on in the young man named Loop Rawlins.  Loop is just a few years older than my oldest son-in-law and is of around the same age as Adam—and like those vigorous, hungry youth who want to surpass the efforts of their elders—in this case—us, Loop has taken the various western arts, gun spinning, whip work, and particularly the lasso and really moved them to a new level as a recent member of America’s Got Talent during the month of July 2014.

Loop did a fabulous job on America’s Got Talent and even though he is very good with bullwhips, he chose to do an act with the lasso.  His musical selection was wonderful and his on stage presence was energetic proving that there is quite a dramatic hunger for this art form that is uniquely American.  Gery has appeared on that show and so has Chris, but Loop has taken the energy to a new level.  Loop had in fact met at an early age many of the same people I call friends, he was at the 2002 Wild West Arts Convention conducted by Mark Allen and it is there that he won five international awards as a young burgeoning talent.  He has since worked for Cirque Du Soleil and shot some commercials for McDonald’s, MTV and an award-winning Western film.

For people who still look at western arts performers and wonder why they do it, there is a purity to them that simply isn’t found anywhere else in any other professional venue.  Loop represents the best of what America has to offer the world and it is for people like him that programs like America’s Got Talent are designed.  It should be noticed that many of the young men performing regularly in Wild West Arts today have beautiful young women on their arms—particularly Adam and Loop.  They are today’s “rock stars.”  When I was their age, heavy metal band members attracted the type of women that are now flocking to see Adam and Loop perform.  But what’s different about these young Wild West Performers is that they are straight-laced and dedicated.  With the same energy they put into the thousands of hours of practice it takes to become good at these art forms, they are able to maintain long-standing relationships with attractive women.

For women with limited options these days, where 9 ½ out of 10 men in the world from the ages 16 to 60 are just absolute douches—low ambition slugs who struggle to wake up every morning with a positive thought—they know that people like Loop Rawlins is a wonderful catch.  Even with all his success so far, it is hard to make a living with the Western Arts—it is hard to do what you love to do, because there aren’t many people willing to pay for it.  The reason is that there just aren’t very many people in show business who know how to write about the Western Arts in an exciting way that modern audiences find attractive.  In many ways, I have dedicated my efforts at resolving that end of the business—by writing content that producers might want to hire people like Loop and Adam for.  My friend Gery Deer was brought in as a whip consultant for the movie The Rundown.  His whip holstering system worked great, and we still use them to this day primarily because of his experience working on films like that.  But the amount of motion pictures produced that calls for those skills is just dismal.  Television is even worse—ironically.  As I’ve reported, this is largely due to the perseverance of progressive politics which has entered show business.  One of the founders of the Wild West Arts Club, Alex Green appeared in thousands of television shows and movies because in his day, Hollywood produced them and needed a Western Arts performer.  These days, Anthony DeLongis is the only whip coach in Hollywood—primarily—because there just isn’t enough production going on to justify more.  But in spite of the cool reception among popular culture, the new rebellion for attractive young women hoping to land a real man who thinks, loves, and lives life with traditional passion—Western Arts performers are their ticket to a good husband—feminism has left most women with few options that their biological clocks can be set by—and for them, they know Loop is the catch of a century.

When my own son-in-law was young and was attending the Ohio WWAC conventions, he had the ambition to do all the things that Loop is doing now.  He wanted to learn roping, knife throwing, gun spinning, but he managed to get pretty good with a bullwhip.  He even managed to win for several years the bullwhip fast draw.  But he had to make a living and it is hard to get really good at what you love and still make a living that doesn’t involve that passion. I’ve managed in unique ways.  I wear my whip holster with me everywhere I go, the one that Gery made for me after his experiences at The Rundown set—to remind me of what’s important.  Everyone who deals with me knows about my real passion and it’s not unusual for me to pull my whips out in a parking lot of an expensive restaurant dressed in a suit and tie and crack targets out of the mouth of the curious.  Like Loop, I have a family and the choices I made during my child raising years was to not take the hard life of a performer and enter business so I could make the kind of money needed to care for them.  Recently I was with Chris Camp as he was unloading his “show” from the back of his van. Chris Camp is one of the best Western Acts around—he is the current high mark—but even after all his years and passion, he works hard to make ends meet.  It’s not easy to say the least and he has traveled all over the world to do shows—much the way Loop is currently.  Chris’s van likely has over 200,000 miles on it and it’s hardly new.  But he approaches every show with enthusiasm and love no matter if the audience is several thousand to just twenty-five.  When Loop said at the beginning of his America’s Got Talent presentation that he wanted to make a living for his family doing what he loved, it hit even Howard Stern hard—because like anybody who has been around knows—that is the real trick.  The real dream we all have in life is to do what we love—not just work to make money.  It is best to have those values aligned.

So it was nice to see Loop pushing the limits of those set before him and taking Western Arts to new levels.  I wish America was filled with millions of young men just like Loop, and if I have it my way, they will be.  The best thing that could happen in America is that the ratio of good men might evolve from 9 ½ out of 10 bad ones to something like 6 out of 10.  Women who want good husbands deserve that opportunity if they want it, and right now—even those that want it can’t have one–because they don’t exist.    But Loop is one of the good ones and it is good to see that he is pushing to break through barriers which are quite thick, and that he is determined, hopeful, and resolute to keep trying, to keep practicing, and to find that secret treasure in life defined by aligning what we do as a living with our passions.  Loop’s energy at America’s Got Talent is derived from that hope and the promise that people might see the need for his art in the quest we all share toward creating a productive society built by values rooted in American culture.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

A “Kick-Ass” Satire of Rich Hoffman: Living authentically–against the current.

I have a lot of readers and obviously the kids who made the video below were satirically bringing their perspective to my content and life as viewed from their California neighborhood culture.  Their comedy skit against bullwhip superheroes also looks to be shaped by the movie Kick-Ass 2 which wasn’t nearly as good as the first one—but did make some good points.  My novel The Symposium of Justice was a work of philosophy written at a fairly young age molded after my personal experiences with politics and bullwhips during the 1990s.  In those years I was in my twenties and knew what I thought about things, but couldn’t yet understand why just because there wasn’t enough contextual information.  About a year ago I wrote an article titled Taking the Mask off Once Again, (CLICK HERE TO REVIEW,) which put a kind of end cap on that period from my twenties to current—which essentially came to a similar conclusion as the ending of Kick-Ass 2—superhereos aren’t needed on movie screens and behind crazy costumes and masks as much as they are in real life.  Fictional characters are fun for telling stories but the world is in desperate need of real life people who are willing to do heroic things without a mask of any kind—whether the mask is literature, an entertainment personality, or a literal costumed avenger.

From the culture of young people taught to not have any values or a code of ethics I’m sure a lot of the things I do seem to them the way they were presented in that video—they cited a Midwestern lifestyle, a grandfather’s bullwhip, and the desire to save America by using it in their plot.  They are products of public school peer pressure shaped by the politics of our day—which is crumbling in virtually every social category.  Of course they hold the belief that America doesn’t need a bullwhip wielding superhero from the Midwest—because they don’t yet see the crises before them.

After I wrote The Symposium of Justice I didn’t feel comfortable performing the normal role of author.  Scholarly pursuits centered on philosophy were a pretty new concept for me and wasn’t exactly the direction I thought my life should go.  I was used to performing actual physical feats, and doing things that were actually very dangerous.  So it felt strange to write about things as opposed to doing things.  In my neighborhood—bad things were happening—and the lag period between books was just too great to solve problems in real-time.  When presented with those kinds of problems a person should use every skill they have to solve problems.  The results often mean the revelation at the ending of Kick-Ass 2—that the world needs real people to do extraordinary things and to do it without the concealment of a mask.

As an author of a couple of books now and using this blog site to tackle problems in real-time instead of the long publication periods it takes to move a novel through the normal process of going to print most of what I have written can be confirmed by some real life experience.  I have never been satisfied telling stories or providing content without experience lending perspective to my work.  And to get experience you have to do things—as a person.  Watching that satirical video I can’t help but feel sorry for those kids—like most young people they are finishing a long career of public school education shaped by a statist government and they believe they have the tools of assessment needed to enter the world.  But they don’t—instead they will travel through the normal cycle that most people go through, they will start their lives voting for people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (if they vote at all).  They will then support all the liberal causes, “Global Warming,” economic socialism, gay rights over traditional marriage, and collective value over individual merit.  By the time they hit their late 20s and early 30s they’ll discover that to have children of their own—they’ll become more conservative.  At that time they will often support a presidential candidate like Mitt Romney (soft Republican), they’ll start becoming frustrated with larger government once they see their taxes increase once they purchase a home, and they’ll start thinking like a Republican after cutting grass in their own yards each week.  They’ll spend their lives trying to make their bosses happy, will stare at their high school senior yearbooks wondering where all their friends went and will discover that they now have resentful teenagers who do not show respect for them during their 40s and 50s.  The kids of course will be angry at their parents for not providing a good role model as their parents will spend most of their lives as social boot-lickers instead of admirable parents, and homeowners.  During their late fifties their children will reconcile with them as those young people then realize that their liberal educations and salty outlook on life has not prepared them for the needs of their individual lives—and the parent and child will likely sit in a restaurant embracing each other on how mysterious life is and how screwed up their preparation for it was.  In their 60s the parent will likely then become a real conservative who will want to see the world they are leaving behind restored in some fashion to what it was when they were children because they see how detrimental everything has become during their lifespan—and they will at that point regret it—hoping to improve that life while they still live.  During their 70s and 80s those parents will find themselves abandoned by their children, overlooked by their grandchildren, and completely despondent to their great-grandchildren.  They’ll watch in frustration as the world of politics spirals out of control in spite of all their efforts and the last days of their lives will shrivel away into oblivion.  Not long after, nobody will visit their grave sites and history will forget them.

That cycle is a standard one for anybody who follows the shaped life of a statist government where the service and attention of that entity takes precedence over individuality.  There is no other ending for most of the people in our society—who follow that path.  My hope has been to maybe change the lives of a few so that such a miserable existence could be avoided and I use the skills I have in all their capacity to perform that task.  The kids who made that video have no other path in their life but the one described above they will live it nearly word for word and there is nothing I or anybody else can do to help them.  They are simply too far gone.  Even in comedy, much about reality is revealed.  Nothing is just a joke—everything has a cost associated with it—and you can’t cheat life without cheating yourself in some fashion.

Recently I told a bit of the story of the movie Bronco Billy by Clint Eastwood and for me, it taught me early on that people only get one chance to live their unique life the way they see fit.  That choice may run counter to the culture of society—but the goal is to be authentic to your individuality—and to not yield to the social pressure of conformity.  I made my choice long ago to live an authentically personal life in spite of the social pressures to serve a bind system led by sightless bureaucrats.  I have lent my support to many causes of the day in real life, a spokesman against taxes, Tea Party groups, talk radio, business,   and countless other endeavors—but I have never stopped being who I uniquely am even as those movements have ebbed and flowed.  And it always comes back around to the term “Justice Comes from the Crack of a Whip” from The Symposium of Justice.  In that novel the justice that most of us seek does not come from the laws of politicians, it comes from our own personal authenticity and those destinations can only be found by living life honestly even when the currents of civilization seem opposed to the task.  To be the last living things left on a receding beach, you have to stand against the current because then and only then—will you discover what was always hidden from view.  I communicated what I saw in my novel but felt I needed to dig deeper and to do that—it required real physical action instead of just observation to discover the concealment that holds many of life’s real answers.   And a tool for getting at those answers can be obtained with a bullwhip if you know how to use them.  A mask isn’t required.

Even though those kids thought they were making a satire of Kick-Ass at my expense, they obviously missed the point of the movie.  But that doesn’t surprise me.  It won’t hit them for another 25 years but eventually they will look at how they saw the world now and regret it.  They’ll also learn that they were woefully wrong—America does need such a hero and that even though they changed the title to avoid direct slander “The Crack of Justice” the proper way to always frame the situation is that “JUSTICE COMES WITH THE CRACK OF A WHIP”—because it does.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Bernie Sanders the Socialist: A strategic plan involving immigration, economics, and the Vikings

Because of his work over the Veterans Affairs scandal and trying to rectify the errors of management directly on the doorstep of Washington politics, Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont has been receiving a lot of press—even being featured on the O’Reilly Factor.  Noticeably he is listed as one of the rare “Independents” in the Senate as he doesn’t recognize himself as neither a Republican nor a Democrat.  Many who do not know the real story might think that Sanders is an Independent in the way that a Tea Party candidate might be—but they would be woefully mistaken.  Instead, Sanders is the exact opposite, he is so radically to the left that he doesn’t even call himself a Democrat, or a Progressive to hide his real intentions.  Instead, he is a devoted Socialist, but lists his party affiliation as an “I” instead of an “S.”  His interest in the VA issue is one to defend the role that government can play in managing social needs—to protect the brand of socialism he supports most, Scandinavian socialism—which unknown to most of America—is all the rage in the Beltway of Washington.

Scandinavian socialism is a mix of high taxes to support cradle to grave welfare mixed with lower regulations against business to churn growth.  These types of socialists have learned that to generate tax money for government to loot off of, they must have businesses that can generate things to tax.  So they lowered barriers for businesses to start so that they could tax them to support their welfare state.  Their primary focus is to eliminate the gap between the “rich and the poor” so to provide an equalitarian society under the managed care of government.  But what Sanders and his fellow socialists in the Democratic Party and Progressive caucuses refuse to learn is that the success of such societies are far from being equalitarian, but have more to do with their Viking past and low immigrant population—which will be explored at the end of this article.  But first let us learn more about Bernie Sanders and the tremendous push from the progressive invasion that is intent on insurgency in the United States starting in such bastions of liberalism like Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York. The following information is from none other than the New York Times in 2007.  After the election of Sanders they were very happy and produced a very long and glowing story on Sanders as they felt their kind of candidate had just been elected into the Senate—an open and honest Socialist who refused to run from the designation—unlike Chuck Schumer and at the time Barney Frank.

Sanders has always been an easier fit in Vermont than in Washington. Being a Socialist in the seat of two-party orthodoxy will do that. While he has generally championed liberal Democratic positions over the years — and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsed his Senate campaign — Sanders has strenuously resisted calling himself a Democrat. And he has clung to a mantle — socialism — that brings considerable stigma, in large part for its association with authoritarian communist regimes (which Sanders is quick to disavow).

But he does little to airbrush the red “S” from his political profile. On the wall of his Congressional office hangs a portrait of Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate of the early 20th century. A poster in a conference room marks Burlington’s sister-city relationship with Puerto Cabeza, Nicaragua — one of a few such alliances he forged with cities in Marxist states during his 10-year stint as mayor of Vermont’s biggest city in the 1980s.

Socialism brings Sanders instant novelty in Washington and, in many circles, instant dismissal as a freak. But Sanders’s outcast status in Washington probably owes as much to his jackhammer style as to any stubborn ideology. It is a town filled with student body president types — and Sanders, for his part, finished a distant third when he ran to be president of his class at James Madison High School in Brooklyn.

“I’m not afraid of being called a troublemaker,” Sanders says, something he’s been called many times, in many different ways, many of them unprintable. “But you have to be smart. And being smart means not creating needless enemies for yourself.”

In this regard, Sanders has not always been smart, especially when he was first elected to the House in 1990. He called Congress “impotent” and dismissed the two major parties as indistinguishable tools of the wealthy. He said it wouldn’t bother him if 80 percent of his colleagues lost re-election — not the best way to win friends in a new workplace.

“Bernie alienates his natural allies,” Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, said at the time. “His holier-than-thou attitude — saying in a very loud voice he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else — really undercuts his effectiveness.” The late Joe Moakley, another Massachusetts Democrat, waxed almost poetic in his derision for Sanders. “He is out there wailing on his own,” Moakley said. “He screams and hollers, but he is all alone.”

Frank says he came to like and work well with Sanders, with whom he served on the House Financial Services Committee. His early objections were over Sanders’s railing against both parties as if they were the same. “I think when he first got here, Bernie underestimated the degree that Republicans had moved to the right,” Frank told me. “I get sick of people saying ‘a curse on both your houses.’ When you point out to them that you agree with them on most things, they’ll say, ‘Yeah, well, I hold my friends up to a higher standard.’ Well, O.K., but remember that we’re your friends.”

Among his House colleagues, “Bernie’s not a bad guy,” is something I heard a lot of. “You appreciate Bernie the more you see him in action,” says Senator Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who served with him for several years in the House. A fellow Brooklynite who is nine years younger, Schumer attended the same elementary school as Sanders (P.S. 197) and the same high school (James Madison, which also graduated a third United States senator, Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota). “Bernie does tend to grow on people, whether it’s in the House or in Vermont,” Schumer says.

But again: Could Sanders be elected to the Senate anywhere else?

No, not as a Socialist, Schumer says. “Even in New York State it would be hard.”

Massachusetts? “Maybe this year he could,” Frank says, meaning 2006. “But if he were running in any other state, he probably would have to comb his hair.”

Leahy says that just any Socialist probably couldn’t get elected in Vermont, either. But Sanders has made himself known in a state small enough — physically and in terms of population — for someone, particularly a tireless someone, to insinuate himself into neighborly dialogues and build a following that skirts ideological pigeonholes. Indeed, there are no shortages of war veterans or struggling farmers in Vermont who would seemingly have no use for a humorless aging hippie peacenik Socialist from Brooklyn, except that Sanders has dealt with many of them personally, and it’s a good bet his office has helped them procure some government benefit.

“People have gotten to know him as Bernie,” Leahy says. “Not as the Socialist.”

Sanders calls himself as a “democratic Socialist.” When I asked him what this meant, as a practical matter, in capitalist America circa 2007, he did what he often does: he donned his rhetorical Viking’s helmet and waxed lovingly about the Socialist governments of Scandinavia. He mentioned that Scandinavian countries have nearly wiped out poverty in children — as opposed to the United States, where 18 to 20 percent of kids live in poverty. The Finnish government provides free day care to all children; Norwegian workers get 42 weeks of maternity leave at full pay.

But would Americans ever accept the kinds of taxes that finance the Scandinavian welfare state? And would Sanders himself trade in the United States government for the Finnish one? He is curiously, frustratingly non-responsive to questions like this. “I think there is a great deal we can learn from Scandinavia,” he said after a long pause. And then he returns to railing about economic justice and the rising gap between rich and poor, things he speaks of with a sense of outrage that always seems freshly summoned.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/magazine/21Sanders.t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Economic inequality is caused because some people don’t wish to do things productively that others do.  The ratio of those who have versus those who have not is not manageable by comparing their social or economic output which is typical of socialism.  The value of initiative is always ignored—but it is because of initiative that some have wealth and others don’t in a capitalist society.  Some show up to invent, create, and do productive work while others wait for the products of that enterprise to enhance their lives.  But in their quest for equality—they hope to be labeled with sameness with the productive through socialism.

In Scandinavian socialism the big secret of their success is that they are a series of small countries that have not had massive quantities of immigration—due to their regional location largely.  They also benefit from their heritage of a hardy people who descended from the enterprising—and war like Vikings.  Scandinavians are not lazy, but are used to tribal rule, which is why their collective socialism works somewhat for them.  They aren’t producing massive new inventions carrying mankind into space, or developing new medical breakthroughs, but they are producing enough economic activity to support their welfare culture—to some extent that can be viewed as not catastrophic.  They get this from their heritage as Vikings who served kings and other nobles in spite of their independence—and they did it willingly.  Their culture has not changed demographically a great deal because of their lack of an immigrant population.  To a large degree, the people of Scandinavia are the same hard-working Vikings they were in the past.  For more proof of this the following captions from Frontpage Magazine will further illustrate the point:

Because the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany are large countries, the absolute numbers of their immigrants are also very high, not just in percentages.

So is poverty low in Scandinavian countries because their “socialism” works, or because they have relatively few poor immigrants entering?  And if poverty is low because Scandinavian “socialism” works, should it not be working for migrants in those countries as well?

Separate poverty data for the migrant populations in Scandinavian countries are available and there are numerous indications that these are quite high. According to one study, “While first and second generation immigrants constituted 44% of the poor children in 1997, they were 65% of all poor children in Sweden in 2008.  Only 5% of native Swedish children live in poverty. For immigrant children with both parents born outside of the Sweden, the child poverty rate is 39%.”  Poverty rates have also been shown to be high for immigrants in Denmark.  According to a recent study of poverty rates among immigrants in all Scandinavian countries, “While native children face yearly poverty risks of less than 10 percent in all three countries and for all years investigated the increasing proportion of immigrant children with an origin in middle and low-income countries have poverty risks that varies from 38 and up to as much as 58 percent.”

So Scandinavian “socialism” is doing a remarkably poor job in eliminating poverty among non-Scandinavians living in those Scandinavian utopias.

The conclusion can only be one thing.  The low poverty rate among Scandinavians in Scandinavian countries is thanks to the fact that Scandinavians work.  It is NOT because socialism works!

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/steven-plaut/does-scandinavian-socialism-work/

For a guy who has a portrait of the extreme socialist Eugene V. Debs and maintained a relationship with Puerto Cabeza, Nicaragua during his stint as a mayor, the intentions of Bernie Sanders political affiliation is evident.  The difference between him and Chuck Schumer or those like him in the Democratic Party is that Sanders is honest about his intentions while the others feel they must deceive and change the names of things to avoid the backlash of an American society built by capitalism.  Sanders and the Democrats who work with him through progressive caucuses desire socialism—specifically Scandinavian socialism—and they know what they are doing.

In America, the people are not like Scandinavia—the people who have settled North America are uniquely from every corner of the world.  Their heritage is not built by a Viking past but by pasts that caused them to flee wherever they came from in favor of the opportunity to work and produce without government intrusion.  The secret behind the open boarder policy that many Democrats support is they hope to create a more equalitarian world by bringing immigrants in from Marxist countries, like Nicaragua and Honduras—and integrating them into American society to water down the immigrants who have come to North America with a hard-driving work ethic.  Democrats achieve two things with this method, they destroy the work ethic that is making most immigrants desirable hires for a society built by capitalism, but they also bring with them the conditioned socialism which has impoverished their native lands.  Slowly over time, these new immigrants from socialist sources will change America from a capitalist country into a socialist one paving the way for people like Bernie Sanders to initiate his version of Scandinavian socialism.

Not even Fox News will put the “S” next to Bernie’s name and call him what he really is, or talk about what he truly stands for.  They allow the charade of politics to continue because as part of the New York culture, they see this push for Scandinavian socialism coming from virtually every politician, from Mitt Romney to Chuck Schumer—so they ignore the stereotypes against socialism that persists all across the flyover states.  Bernie hopes to repair the relationship that the government has with the VA so that other government programs will not receive scandalous appraisal in the future as the Democratic immigration assault performs their strategic effect.  But now, for those who didn’t know it, you know dear reader what Bernie Sanders really is.  He’s not an “Independent.”  He’s a socialist, and the media does not put an “S” next to his name because they hope to deceive viewers from the real intentions of the Democratic Party.  Since Bernie is so unapologetically “socialist” the media helps him by changing the “S” to an “I” so not to scare voters.  And the deception is so great that it was even perpetrated on the O’Reilly Factor—which shows just how deep socialism has already penetrated American culture for a destination of full-fledged Marxism which is supported so fervently by the New York Times and every other political figure in entertainment or public office that calls themselves “progressives.”  The crime in this case is that a willing deception has taken place and virtually everyone is playing along—even Bill O’Reilly.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

‘Tail of the Dragon’s’ Parent: Mad Max’s ‘Fury Road ‘unleashes itself at LAST!

One of the great treats for me that came out of this year’s Comic Con in San Diego was the interview with the great George Miller and the preview of the new Mad Max movie, Fury Road. I can admit without shame of any kind that George Miller’s Mad Max films were deep on my mind while I was writing Tail of the Dragon. I have watched the development of the new Mad Max film for over a decade now and remember well when it was first proposed back in 2002. Back then Mel Gibson with all his box office horsepower was behind the project with Miller, but the project still didn’t get off the ground. Then Gibson fell from grace and nobody in Hollywood wanted to touch the project and there were film delays and all types of issues. But Miller—finally—has managed to make the film with Tom Hardy now playing Max and I am ecstatically excited for the project.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/07/27/george-miller-mad-max-interview-comic-con/

I was a bit shocked that the review of the San Diego Comic Con thought that preview of Fury Road was the most interesting thing they had witnessed. I couldn’t help but think of my own car chase story Tail of the Dragon which surpasses car crash wise anything seen in that preview or any of the Fast and Furious movies. The biggest difference was that I set my car chase story in the present as opposed to the future. My character is trying to save society from the kind of collapse that Max is reacting to. But I agree with Miller, car chases stories are essentially westerns on wheels. Hearing his articulation and the general audience reaction to his new Mad Max film gave me encouragement that Tail of the Dragon might someday find the right elements to end up on film. But it would take a really good director to pull off—and people like Miller are not exactly falling from the trees like apples.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about somebody besides Mel Gibson playing Mad Max. I grew up with Max and brought those experiences to my Tail of the Dragon novel mixed with plenty of Smokey and the Bandit. Star Wars is often compared to a western in space, and car chase films are like Miller described, westerns on wheels. Whenever a film has something to say about morality they are usually termed as “westerns.” Growing up with Mad Max I learned a lot about the depravity of the human spirit which was remarkably insightful. The opening of the first Mad Max film with the Nightrider on a rage across the desert with his crazed girlfriend was classic cinema that climbed into the mind of insanity at its finest and took viewers into the essence of a mind gone mad. I watched that movie almost every day from age 12 to 16. Not because of the movie influence but because of what it revealed about human nature, I became Mad Max at age 16 and I have the car chases, races and crashes to provide the testimony. Those experiences then became my own story, Tail of the Dragon—the horse of the western had been replaced by a car and I used mine as a kind of weapon against depravity. And when I couldn’t defeat depravity I out ran it with sheer speed.

I will forever be grateful to George Miller—his films are art with a value into the human mind that goes well beyond what people are comfortable revealing about themselves. The stunts in the Road Warrior, the second Mad Max film were unbelievably intense and I never forgot them. Even after all these years they still hold up as some of the best stunt work done in any picture. The cinematography has never been surpassed even after thirty years by anybody in the business. The dust, the smoke, the blood and violence of the car crashes are both beautiful yet horrific to look at and nobody does it like George Miller.

Miller’s vision of the future is not far off—if the engines of the world are turned off—the minds that drive society forward–people certainly do revert back into a tribal abyss. It is not hard to conceive that they would devolve into the kind of villains seen in Miller’s Mad Max films. Max was a good man during the days of civilization; he had a child, a nice wife and wanted to give up life as a cop to get away from the madness of the people he was holding back from taking over. Miller understood the strange mix of great charisma and madness that Mel Gibson was able to bring to the screen when he was in a 100 MPH stand-off with the Toe Cutter at the beginning of the first Mad Max. Mel Gibson would show throughout his career that his real life was more like Max than anybody would have guessed, and that brought some humor to the 2014 Comic Con that Miller addressed correctly. I share with Gibson some of those traits and as a young man I would discover the real genius of Miller’s Max character when I too had to face off against an opponent traveling at me at over 100 MPH in a game of chicken. Like Max, I didn’t budge even though I had far more to lose than the other guy.

I know what it feels like to be that close to the edge and to push beyond it to a place of fearlessness. Whether or not there had ever been a Mad Max film, my fate would have put me in the same circumstance. But as those circumstances occurred, I always thought of how much insight into the human condition George Miller had in his Mad Max films—a brutal reality not beheld by any other artist in any other art form—and I could confirm its authenticity.

Max couldn’t escape madness and it finally caught up to him and killed his family leaving Max a very sane man bent with rage in an insane world that only devolved from there. Fury Road takes place between the first Mad Max film and the Road Warrior, so there is some rich material there to delve into for Miller as society devolves from a rich industrious culture into tribal nomads desperate for value of any kind fleeing constantly from chaos. In the Road Warrior there was always sadness to Max—an awareness of how far down the drain the world had devolved, but a resolute charisma that refused to join it. It was as if he alone stood against the insanity of the world and was aware that the only way to meet it was by going “mad” himself when pressed by danger. As a result, those still sane in the world gravitated to Max to be saved, which he did in the Road Warrior, then on a more epic scale in Beyond Thunder Dome.

Beyond Thunder Dome was a bit too light for a Mad Max film but was still enjoyable. Mel Gibson was moving into a mainstream actor and George Miller was being lured in to doing more commercial work. It was the weakest film of the series but was still a work of art visually and in concept. I went to see it in 1985 all by myself at a summer matinée. I had some time to kill before work so I went to see it alone, just me and Max and I loved it. It was a wonderful way to watch George Miller’s version of a “western”—like Max himself.   All alone.

As much as I am rooting for Fury Road—and I will see it on opening day—it won’t surpass the violence and sheer magnitude of car crash carnage I wrote about in Tail of the Dragon. I am a product in some ways of Miller and I took that into real life then wrote about it with a new perspective. But it is encouraging to see such positive audience reaction from Comic Con as they had toward Fury Road. There may be hope for my own project yet due to the forecasted success of Miller’s resurrection of the Mad Max franchise. Apparently Miller has a sequel to Fury Road already written and is ready to head into production. For that film, yet unnamed, I will be the first to that one as well, and for every film that comes after—because George Miller is a master of the car chase western, and I am grateful to him in ways that are beyond description.

As for Tail of the Dragon, it is a shame it takes a positive reaction from audiences at Comic Con to tell studios that movie goers want car chase movies. I didn’t see anything in the Fury Road preview that eclipses what was done in Tail of the Dragon. So I was a bit impressed that audiences thought Fury Road was the most intense preview coming out of the event which showcased the latest and greatest that Hollywood was churning up. That certainly puts Tail of the Dragon in a class of its own but like Miller’s journey to bring Fury Road to the screen; the trip for Tail of the Dragon will likely be longer and will take just the right personalities—which has not yet been assembled.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Decline of Hueston Woods: Capitalism versus statism sponsored conservation

It had been a while since I had been to the Oxford area; the last time was to give an on campus speech last year, so it had been some time since I had made my way into Hueston Woods State Park.  However, for likely the 60th to 70th time in my life red lights were filling my rear view mirror and a patrol officer  was at my window telling me I was driving too fast—as determined by some cry baby, wimpy, leather faced, cheating whore of a politician afraid of riding the Merry-Go-Round at a summer fair.  I was being pulled over for going 40 in a 25 MPH zone.  My answer to the State Officer when asked if I knew how fast I was going was that I had no idea the speed limit was so slow.  For me, it was impossibly slow.  I can ride a bicycle faster than 25 MPH.  That is simply too slow for a long series of roads.  What are they protecting at the park with such a slow speed limit, turtles, rabbits and squirrels?  Worse yet, where I was pulled over was right at the entrance where fisherman and boaters were pulling in for some early morning access to Action Lake which is currently undergoing a $15 million dollar face lift at the damn.  The lake receives roughly 1.8 million visitors per year so Huston Woods still gets a lot of activity after many years but during my recent visit, it was easy to see that there was a lot more that they could do if they only had the right attitude.

I grew up with Hueston Woods so I know its history very well and am in a position to offer some criticisms that are needed if it wants to sustain itself into the future.  As a kid I spent many summers at camp there between Boy Scout groups, my church and in my teen years I was actually part of the chain gang that had to walk the entire park and pick up trash around the entire loop.  That is a long story but the short of it was that I was loaded onto a van from the Hamilton jail and driven with all the other juvenile convicts to the lake to spend the day performing “community service.”  I learned to hate the pompous over-weight delinquency officers who rode behind us in the van playing music as we picked up trash around the lake for everyone to gawk at.  I took the point position and walked faster than everyone else on purpose just to drive things along and put pressure on the people behind me.  I was yelled at a lot that day, and I noticed that the state employees seemed very comfortable at the park.  Our chain gang launched from the left side of the lodge and it didn’t take long to realize that one of the two guys in the van was having an affair with a woman who worked in the gift shop who was married.  So I had an opportunity to see the underpinnings of the park at a young age where the seeds of apathy had clearly been placed—which was reflected 30 years later in the visit I had with my family in the middle of a summer week.

I always loved the lodge and wanted to marry my wife there, but her parents talked me out of it in favor of the Becket Ridge Country Club, of which they were members.  For most of my youth up until that event with the chain gang I loved the lodge and used it as a base station for many adventures.  So it was a good pick for a wedding to my wife.  This time returning I was with my grown family and was introducing my grandson to the place—visiting the game room it literally hadn’t changed much since I had been a teenager.  In fact, it looks like the Ms. Pac Man machine was still in the same place.  Instead of the reunion with the lodge being something of reverence, it saddened me to see the place going downhill quick.  It was still nice, but had the tired look of a place uncared for.

Elsewhere in the park the marina looked wore out and the wildlife exhibit was in disrepair.  They still had a nice mountain lion on display and some large birds including an eagle, but the passion had obviously left the management of the area.  Hueston Woods has plenty of opportunity for revenue not directly related to tax payers; they of course have the lodge traffic year round which attracts many lodging dollars for people taking in-state vacations.  There are also cabin rentals, horseback riding opportunities, boat rentals on the lake and other similar activity—so the park should not look like it did—run down and tired.

Granted, since I was a kid my worldly vision had dramatically opened.  The lake used to look really big to me and it seemed impossibly large to walk the entire route around it as a member of the chain gang.  Now it looked small, I have walked a lot further for a lot less reason, and have seen places much, much nicer than the lodge in far away locations around the world.  As I played many video games from that lodge I used to wonder what kind of adventures I’d experience in life, but none of them seemed to have the capability to surpass Hueston Woods. But within a few years of my chain gang experience I quickly learned that just about everywhere was nicer which was sad, because there were opportunities in Hueston Woods that other State Parks simply didn’t have—particularly the proximity of Miami University nearby.  Students use the Hueston Woods beach as a natural sun bathing destination and place to play volleyball and study away from their congested dorm rooms.

So you’d think that the State Officer pulling me over would understand that sitting on the side of the road pulling people over for going 40 MPH under the guise of safety would understand how negative his presence was to financial investment into the area—which it badly needed.  The guy literally had nothing better to do than to sit in his squad car and pull people over all day so that their speeding cars might not run over some ducks.  In fact, elsewhere around the park are the typical greenie weenie messages that come straight out of the Al Gore handbook of progressive political discourse such as having people clean seeds off their shows before walking into a forest to minimize the transference of hostile plants that crowd out the sunlight to more delicate vegetation.  I took my grandson and daughter to the fishing pier which was a long walk for his little feet, but was perplexed by the message on the trail signs.  If state officials could make such statements about plant life then why couldn’t they make the same judgments about human beings—there are certain groups of human beings who behave just as aggressively as the plants they were talking about at the ODNR advisory board?  The same mentality could be declared in neighborhoods where welfare recipients’ crowd out private investment because they tend to present themselves as unkempt and destructive pushing out people who wash their cars, care for their lawns and generally try to improve their surroundings.  And as that thought crossed my mind it appeared that those same types of people were at Hueston Woods.  The lady in front of us at the nature walk was with a group of kids who looked like they climbed out of the trunk of a car covered in garage sale items.  She was a beat up woman who had a cheap shoulder-blade tattoo of some kind of flower and a bleeding heart.  It was hard to tell because she was about my age and the ink had smeared over time all running together.  As I looked around there were a lot of people like her there and a lot fewer of the type of people I remembered as a kid who had boats at the marina who would come to the park to go sailing on the weekends.  It appeared that the parasitic humans were crowding out the contributing humans and the park was suffering.  Yet the park rangers could make that distinction with plant life, but not with their human visitors—very interesting and much to their own detriment.

As I waited for the State Officer to return with my driver’s license and insurance card I couldn’t help but think of all the lost opportunities at Hueston Woods compared to a place like Disney World.  Both parks are roughly the same age but one looks as new as the day it was built and the other looks like it is a few years away from decaying away into nothing.  The difference really is the people, at Disney World the employees look happy to have a job and be working.  At Hueston Woods the employees give off the impression that they’d rather be watching afternoon tabloid television or sitting in a patrol car giving tickets so they could save some tree frog that might jump into the road—just because they have nothing better to do.  At Disney World there is plenty of wildlife and they reproduce robustly, and there are not unfriendly park rangers running around trying to issue tickets every five feet—because they want visitors in Disney World.  But at Hueston Woods the general impression is that humans are intruding on a natural habitat and that they aren’t welcome unless they follow certain parameters of rules.

High quality people look to have left the park or have gotten old and died off leaving behind the dregs.  The dregs were part of the Hueston Woods experience of my youth but with them were people who had new cars, boats, and were business professionals in their private life who enjoyed the recreation at the lake.  So both types of people were there, but these days, it appears that one type of person is coming far less than the other which is driving down the quality of the park.

Growing up I saw both types of people on a regular basis.  The criminals that I had to do community service with likely all grew up to be the dregs of society now.  It was easy to see them then, and now they were like that girl with a thirty year old tattoo on her shoulder which had sagged and become distorted with age.  And I went to Hueston Woods with my church groups and Boy Scout organizations where suburbanite parents at least attempted to care about the value of things.  Clearly one group was missing and the other had multiplied over the years—and Hueston Woods was suffering for it.  Making it worse was the patrol car discouraging me from bringing my family to Hueston Woods for the day because they guy had nothing else to do but sit in the grassy area off the side of the road by the mountain bike parking lot and pull people over.

My reaction to the State Officer was that I wanted out of the park as quickly as possible.  When we were done with each other I took the nearest road out and left.  Our day at Hueston Woods had concluded and it’s likely that I won’t return for another dozen or more years.  25 MPH is simply too slow for a car of any kind, and is not friendly to visitors.  The park and its employees gave off the impression that visitors were lucky to be there and that is simply the wrong attitude.  In response quality people are not visiting the park in the kind of numbers that can sustain it as the dregs are continuing to come because they have access to a free beach.  That problem is one of management where the effort into saving trees from hostile plants failed to take the same measures to preserve their internal economy leaving the place to devolve into a sad state of disrepair only to be devoured by the dregs of society and their parasitic nature.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

A New X-Wing: Capitalism helps a ‘Force for Change’ benefit the world

Charity is only a bad thing when the altruism involved masks other behavior designed to win social favor instead of genuinely using productive excess to help those suffering from stifled freedom.  The Star Wars: Force for Change initiative, linked below, is one of the good ones.  The intent is to bring the benefits of capitalism to the far reaches of planet earth, and that is wonderful.  There are many children suffering under countries with poor political philosophies or economic systems that do not capture the natural innovation of their inhabitants—but instead stifles them needlessly.  Force for Change is intended to use the excess of capitalism created by the mythology of Star Wars into actually making people’s lives better which is something everyone should emphatically support.  And as usual, J.J. Abrams has provided a teaser of the new movie, Episode VII in a final week push to drive up the numbers.

 

http://forceforchange.starwars.com/

The new ship looks like a classic Z-95 Headhunter from the pre-years of the X-Wing fighter seen in the original trilogy.  But the claims are that it is a new kind of updated X-Wing—whatever the case it looks fantastic and is proof that the crew working on the new Star Wars film is going to extraordinary measures to produce something wonderful.   The clever presentation of the Force for Change material during the production of Star Wars hints at the level of creativity emerging from the endeavor and is truly something to be excited about.

It will be hard to avoid this new Star Wars movie once it is released—so news from it is important to everyone, even those who are not dedicated fans of the series.  Star Wars is a direct creation of capitalism and without it there would not be a Force for Change initiative and a number of other charities which trickle off the mythology that takes place “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”  Certainly under no socialist government could Star Wars have been made, and it is particularly under socialist style governments that many of the children the Force for Change is attempting to help.  England is hardly a bastion of capitalism, but they are also directly benefiting from the production of Star Wars being shot in their country—in England over a billion pounds of wealth was created by production companies filming in and around London—Star Wars among the most notable and Abu Dhabi has seen an increase by 19% in hotel reservations from fans all over the world traveling to the left behind film sites to visit the location of the Episode VII props.  Without a story nothing would be shot in London or Abu Dhabi and without that story meaning anything to anybody, there would be no desire to pay money to buy plane tickets to fly to such places just to take pictures of what was left behind during the creation process.

And that is what J.J. Abrams is doing in his Force for Change videos; he is using the props created for the film—which will be seen by hundreds of millions of people the world over.  The film may generate $1 billion in global revenue just in the first two weeks—which is astonishing.  It will likely go on to make several billion more dollars dwarfing anything previously done by any film anywhere, because the buildup is so intense.  But on top of that Walmart, Target, and anywhere Star Wars toys are sold will see sharp increases in profit.  Fast-food tie-ins will dramatically increase their sales with promotional campaigns.  And the Disney Parks will also see spikes in attendance and interest in their new property from t-shirts to DVD sales.  J.J. Abrams knowing all this is using the props from the film already used to tell the story as a way to help some kids suffering from the lack of creativity their economies have imprisoned them to—and that is a wonderful thing.

Star Wars is capitalism at its best and is something worthy of support not just of the product itself—but the spillover it has which helps feed and clothe many millions who otherwise would not have the opportunity.  Because of Star Wars, there is a Force for Change—and the nature of that change is one of depravity to fulfillment through investment driven by passion for the subject matter.  And in that regard it is very exciting to see a new ship from a future Star Wars film.  I’m sure Fantasy Flight Games is already making plans to have it in their miniatures game which is so much fun.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Declaration of Independance: Poor minds not qualified to care for such a wonderful document

I do not believe that there is a single lawyer, politician or lobbyist who could write the Declaration of Independence today in 2014. When modern progressives, socialists, and domestic terrorists declare that they believe the founding documents of America are “living documents” they are wrong—because the quality of the minds that could contribute in the ways they propose would only diminish the meaning. It is possible that John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were among the greatest collected minds in human history when they gathered to write the Declaration. They were as proficient philosophically as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle only all existing at the same time and without the murder of one by a society protecting itself from their intellectual advancement. When those three gathered and Jefferson wrote the founding document, a new era of philosophic endeavor had begun in the wake of war. A unique window had opened and the three of them stepped in bringing the rest of the new country with them. The results were the Declaration of Independence that was presented and edited by the Continental Congress in the following days leading up to July 4th 1776.

Congress ordered that the draft “lie on the table“.[66] For two days Congress methodically edited Jefferson’s primary document, shortening it by a fourth, removing unnecessary wording, and improving sentence structure.[67] Congress removed Jefferson’s assertion that Britain had forced slavery on the colonies, in order to moderate the document and appease persons in Britain who supported the Revolution. Although Jefferson wrote that Congress had “mangled” his draft version, the Declaration that was finally produced, according to his biographer John Ferling, was “the majestic document that inspired both contemporaries and posterity.”[67]

On Monday, July 1, having tabled the draft of the declaration, Congress resolved itself into a committee of the whole, with Benjamin Harrison of Virginia presiding, and resumed debate on Lee’s resolution of independence.[68] John Dickinson made one last effort to delay the decision, arguing that Congress should not declare independence without first securing a foreign alliance and finalizing the Articles of Confederation.[69] John Adams gave a speech in reply to Dickinson, restating the case for an immediate declaration.

After a long day of speeches, a vote was taken. As always, each colony cast a single vote; the delegation for each colony—numbering two to seven members—voted amongst themselves to determine the colony’s vote. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against declaring independence. The New York delegation, lacking permission to vote for independence, abstained. Delaware cast no vote because the delegation was split between Thomas McKean (who voted yes) and George Read (who voted no). The remaining nine delegations voted in favor of independence, which meant that the resolution had been approved by the committee of the whole. The next step was for the resolution to be voted upon by the Congress itself. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, who was opposed to Lee’s resolution but desirous of unanimity, moved that the vote be postponed until the following day.[70]

Here is the text as it appeared after those edits:

Introduction Asserts as a matter of Natural Law the ability of a people to assume political independence; acknowledges that the grounds for such independence must be reasonable, and therefore explicable, and ought to be explained. In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America,When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Preamble Outlines a general philosophy of government that justifies revolution when government harms natural rights.[77] We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Indictment A bill of particulars documenting the king’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” of the Americans’ rights and liberties.[77] Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these states

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.Denunciation This section essentially finished the case for independence. The conditions that justified revolution have been shown.[77]Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.Conclusion The signers assert that there exist conditions under which people must change their government, that the British have produced such conditions, and by necessity the colonies must throw off political ties with the British Crown and become independent states. The conclusion contains, at its core, the Lee Resolution that had been passed on July 2.We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.Signatures The first and most famous signature on the engrossed copy was that of John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress. Two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and a father and great-grandfather of two other presidents, Benjamin Harrison, were among the signatories. Edward Rutledge (age 26), was the youngest signer, and Benjamin Franklin (age 70) was the oldest signer. The fifty-six signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows (from north to south):[78]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

It is unlikely that there is a single mind in all of Washington D.C. who could write those sentences presently let alone put them into a contextual sentence.   Clearly those same minds are not capable of participating in a “living document” which evolves over time to accommodate changing circumstances. This is the actual sad part of our history is that the intention was that each generation would produce men and women like Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson, but this has not been the case. Instead, American society has regressed into the worship of stupidity and patted themselves on the back for passing gas in the form of a “fart.”

It would be my wish that I could associate with people like these Founding Fathers, instead of the weakened people of the modern age—people unable to understand the above document let alone produce another one of equal value. What is to be respected from this period in America is that intelligence was honored and valor was a part of daily existence and it is these traits that carried America to become the greatest country on earth. It was not the “come lately” types who spent years of their academic lives getting drunk, pursuing sex, and passing gas yet expecting to build their minds into understanding the need for the Declaration of Independence. Worse yet, to even entertain the belief that they were equal to men like the authors.

The sad state of our modern times is that intelligence is attacked and stupidity is worshipped, and it is for this reason alone that no modern man should even conceive of changing a single word of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution—because they simply are not qualified—intellectually. No modern Supreme Court Justice, no lawyer—anywhere, and no current resident of the White House are able to meet the task of intellectual aptitude required to care for the founding documents let alone amend them. They are only capable of winning elections and moving money from one pocket to another—but they are not stewards of America equal to the founders—and authors of The Declaration of Independence.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Pirates of Mason, Ohio: Similarities between the MEA and Blackbeard

MASON, OH (FOX19) –

Parents and teachers in Warren County want more money and better benefits for the Mason City School District.

The Mason Education Association, which represents 650 educators, has been negotiating a new employment contract since April.  Mason teachers say they’re not only concerned about money and benefits but also concerned about cuts to academic programs and facilities.

The union also declared a “no confidence” position in superintendent Gail Kist-Kline.

The district meanwhile says it’s hopeful that negotiations will continue during the summer months, and a contract settlement will be reached before the beginning of the school year.

According to school board members, Dr. Kist-Kline was hired following a levy failure, and asked to lead during a time of economic challenge that required the district to improve efficiency and make difficult decisions.

 http://www.fox19.com/story/25961786/mason-educators-fight-for-more-money-better-benefits

 

The story continued with the MEA (Mason Education Association) threatening to go on strike and late in the afternoon on July 8th 2014, a contract agreement was reached which will then go to a vote by the union members. Teachers all across Ohio rejoiced as one of the wealthiest districts in that state had proven that it was once again ripe for pillaging. The entire story of how the teacher’s union in Mason threatened a hostile action—work stoppage—preventing parents who pay the taxes there from retaining their free baby sitting service at the end of summer, forced the payment of ransom which were pay increases. It was all too reminiscent of an old pirate story about Blackbeard’s blockade of the Charleston harbor in 1718. That old story about pirate action was essentially the same as the modern story of the MEA in Mason, Ohio 2014.

Edward Teach (also Edward Thatch, c.1680—22 November 1718), better known as Blackbeard, was a notorious English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of the American colonies. Although little is known about his early life, he was probably born in Bristol, England. He may have been a sailor on privateer ships during Queen Anne’s War before settling on the Bahamian island of New Providence, a base for Captain Benjamin Hornigold, whose crew Teach joined sometime around 1716. Hornigold placed him in command of a sloop he had captured, and the two engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Their numbers were boosted by the addition to their fleet of two more ships, one of which was commanded by Stede Bonnet, but toward the end of 1717 Hornigold retired from piracy, taking two vessels with him.

Blockade of Charleston

By May 1718 Teach had awarded himself the rank of Commodore and was at the height of his power. Late that month his flotilla blockaded the port of Charleston (then known as Charles Town) in South Carolina. All vessels entering or leaving the port were stopped, and as the town had no guard ship,[40] its pilot boat was the first to be captured. Over the next five or six days about nine vessels were stopped and ransacked as they attempted to sail past Charleston Bar, where Teach’s fleet was anchored. One such ship, headed for London with a group of prominent Charleston citizens which included Samuel Wragg (a member of the Council of the Province of Carolina), was the Crowley. Her passengers were questioned about the vessels still in port and then locked below decks for about half a day. Teach informed the prisoners that his fleet required medical supplies from the colonial government of South Carolina, and that if none were forthcoming, all prisoners would be executed, their heads sent to the Governor and all captured ships burnt.[41]

Wragg agreed to Teach’s demands, and a Mr. Marks and two pirates were given two days to collect the drugs. Teach moved his fleet, and the captured ships, to within about five or six leagues from land. Three days later a messenger, sent by Marks, returned to the fleet; Marks’s boat had capsized and delayed their arrival in Charleston. Teach granted a reprieve of two days, but still the party did not return. He then called a meeting of his fellow sailors and moved eight ships into the harbor, causing panic within the town. When Marks finally returned to the fleet, he explained what had happened. On his arrival he had presented the pirates’ demands to the Governor and the drugs had been quickly gathered, but the two pirates sent to escort him had proved difficult to find; they had been busy drinking with friends and were finally discovered, drunk.[42]

Teach kept to his side of the bargain and released the captured ships and his prisoners—albeit relieved of their valuables, including the fine clothing some had worn.[43]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbeard

The behavior of the MEA was essentially of the same morality as Blackbeard’s seizer and extortion of Charleston. Blackbeard’s actions were designed to exploit the weaknesses of the governor; the MEA was designed to exploit the weaknesses of the superintendent of Mason schools. Both groups used force and fear to obtain wealth—the Blackbeard pirates used fear of physical violence, the Mason teachers’ used the fear of work stoppage by refusing to perform contracted obligations as employees of the state of Ohio. There is no real difference between the piratical acts of Blackbeard or the MEA.

So why weren’t the Mason teachers arrested for their piratical acts instead of rewarded with more money? Because the pirates run the government in 2014 unlike in 1718. The only difference between the MEA and Blackbeard is that they are now the lawyers, legislators, and union leaders who have infiltrated the law to have easy access to the plunder of the tax payers. Pirates have changed their tactics over the years—instead of violence and blockades, they just gained a government backed service—like education—and threatened to take that service away unless they obtained their desires. The ideal of the blockade of education services through a labor strike and Blackbeard’s extraction of medical supplies from the Governor of Charleston are the same because tax payers have no other option. There are no other schools for their children to attend just as there was no other way out of the harbor of Charleston for the citizens to embark on any kind of trade by sea. So Blackbeard had the city by the throat and used it to his advantage just as the MEA had Mason by the throat regarding education. The intentions were extortion to fulfill the desires of piracy. The only difference is that these modern pirates in the MEA were backed by the law which is an evolution from the days of Blackbeard. But the intentions were the same—fear, power, and plunder at the expense of others.

So if anyone dared wish to see examples of modern piracy, don’t look to the South China Sea or the dangerous waters off of Somalia—just look in Mason, Ohio at the members of the Mason Teacher’s Association and you will see pirates just as vicious and greedy as Blackbeard.

 Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

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Game Changing ‘Diagon Alley’ Is Now Open: The power and meaning of “mythos”

Mythos: The interrelated set of beliefs, attitudes, and values held by a society or cultural group

http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php

That word mythos can be seen a lot at the website link above which will take inquiring minds to the Joseph Campbell Foundation website.  Mythos may be one of the most important words ever created because it is unique to human beings.  While trees are objects created by nature, mountains—the same, oceans, ice bergs, rain forests, weather patterns, etc—mythos are unique in that it is a creation of man’s mind for purposes specific to the imagination.  For those who have lost hope as knowledge of the very diabolical is known, it is an understanding of mythos that can point to cultural aspects that are forming and provide knowledge to the kind of world tomorrow will be.  Largely we live in an existence created by a mythos generated by the Dark Ages and the kind of philosophy constructed under those conditions.  But that is changing—rapidly—and when the good work of Fantasy Flight Games is mentioned—it is because of the alteration of a complex mythos that I cheer it on.  As dim and dire as it sometimes feels, I see a major shift in social mythos that will shatter conventional thinking in the coming years and for all the restrictions feared today—the new mythos that is forming is the key to understanding our future.  CLICK HERE to review my previous article on Fantasy Flight Games.  Adding to those additions of mythic storytelling contained within those games are other aspects of culture that are exploding upon the scene.  I’ve talked a lot about Star Wars, Glenn Beck continues to put out fantastic novels and books that are contributing boldly, movies like The Hunger Games are resonating with young people, and superheroes are dominating at the movie box office.   Ayn Rand is still selling like hotcakes in Gatlinburg and the last movie of a three-part trilogy based on that book is about to be released which is challenging old Kantian held beliefs regarding economics, religion, and business.  To understand the power of this new mythos I often point to the theme parks in Central Florida as the physical evidence of the changing mythos so evident in the human race.  Once a company like Universal Studios or Disney build an attraction at a theme park, they have made a significant contribution to a social mythos as a business investment and have acknowledged the lasting impact.  Never has this modern mythos been on display more dramatically than the new Harry Potter exhibit at Universal Studios, Florida with their opening this week of Diagon Alley.  It is simply jaw dropping incredible.  It can be seen in the video below at the 7:30 mark.  I would advise watching the entire video though because the mythos brought to life in Central Florida says a lot about American culture and the direction, and impact it will have on the world for the next century.

I’m not a particularly huge Harry Potter fan.  There are aspects to it that I enjoy—there is too much magic in it for me—too much mystic fantasy.  There is a tendency to hope that the world is different from what it is—so fantastic creations bridge that gap intellectually.  But there are some wonderful values explored in the Harry Potter books and movies that have provided many of the values today’s young people possess.  But the new Diagon Alley exhibit is a living mythos—that is the point of the place—to put visitors into that world in a way that has never yet been possible anywhere on earth.  But to what end—for simple entertainment?  Human beings require myths to hold themselves together and put their values in line with priorities.  Harry Potter was born out of this need, and it has been so successful that Universal Studios built a magnificent shrine to that mythos.

Mythos carries over into every aspect of human life.  It goes to the voting booth, it becomes the focus of productive enterprise in business, it creates the values a family uses to bond themselves to one another—or to fly apart.  It provides a mechanism for people to recognize evil, or good depending on the vantage point—a mythos can be either destructive or beneficial—but so long as human beings exist, there will be the creation of myths.  Once those myths are created, a physical manifestation will be attempted, such as what Universal Studios has done with Diagon Alley.  Visitors to those parks will attempt to bring the values of Harry Potter—for good or bad—into their daily life.  So to me, watching the mythos of our world is the most important things a culture can do.

My excitement over this current mythos period is in the realization that only a few years ago none of this easy access to so much mythos was available.  When I was a child, Disney World was brand new and nothing like it is now, Universal Studios was simply a dream, Dungeon and Dragons was very primitive and movies were limited in what they could create due to budget constraints and film executives functioning from the philosophies of Kant and Plato.  Tolkien was the premier fantasy writer inspiring a new generation that would magnify his work hundreds of times over, the culmination being stories like Harry Potter.  And video games were clunky.  The opportunity to step into a mythos the way young people can now simply did not exist.  But now things are changing rapidly—much more rapidly than any conniving bankers in Europe, or politicians in America can even fathom—any thoughts of potential tyranny are being crushed under the weight of a dynamically changing mythos.

That doesn’t mean all is well, there are major problems that will play out in the years to come—the bankruptcy of America, the continued attempts to spread collectivism to every corner of the earth at the expense of the individual—but those are the results of the previous mythos built by the pre and post Renaissance periods, religious ignorance, and minds so stifled with daily obligations that they did not have the liberty to think.  My greatest joy of late has come from Fantasy Flight Games in that they create a product that generates not only a positive mythos—culturally, but a lot of thinking.  When those types of entertainment options are coupled with the physical reality of something like Diagon Alley there are real opportunities for massive human enjoyment.

As I write this I know of several individuals planning their visit to Diagon Alley.  They are reading the Harry Potter novels again at Steak and Shake at 3 AM in the morning and going to work when the sun comes up.  They are playing Fantasy Flight’s Game of Thrones card game at Starbucks with their friends and are living in the mythos of those fantasy realms for a large portion of their life—and that is wonderful for the psychological well-being of their many otherwise treacherous disappointments in life.  The joy of the mythos created artificially by the human minds behind Harry Potter and The Game of Thrones replaces the many areas where deficiency has otherwise occurred.

It is not good to substitute reality for fantasy—but it is not good to be crushed by too much reality—and often a positive mythos can alleviate the impact of such a disappointing force.  With minds full of value, the diabolical schemes concocted by maniacal tyrants losses their ability because of the hope given by a mythos which feeds an individual mind as opposed to a soul looking to be filled by some come-lately leader drunk with power and filled with ill intent.  But Universal Studios has performed a modern miracle, they have recreated Diagon Alley the way that only imaginations had previously contemplated, and made it real.  The impact of this dramatic shift in mythos will resonate for quite some time in a positive way as the future unfolds itself out away from the small minds who previously wished to contain it.  Diagon Alley is proof that such attempts have failed and that the human mind is now relishing in triumph over feats that are only now available for the first time on planet earth.  When such things become real—they become a new reality in the realm of mythos.

Minds free to think, and contemplate new ideals create the mythos that will become the foundations of future values—but more importantly, such minds cannot be controlled.  So long as a mind can contemplate mythos, a physical body will reject the chains placed upon it—literal or metaphorical.   What I see in Diagon Alley is a culture in America who has professed that it values imagination and thinking to such an extent that it wanted to make it into a physical reality—which is a beacon to the world that imagination is alive and well and that tyrants have no place in Central Florida.  You can feel it at the Orlando airport—as you travel down the people movers from the grand departure gate where hotel guest look down into the giant room of people traveling from everywhere in the world to see the theme parks of Florida first hand.  Of those great theme parks, Universal Studios has recaptured the lead of the most spectacular attractions among them with Diagon Alley.   There is nothing like it anywhere—except deep in the mind those who generate mythos upon a blank page to share with the world and incite in them the freedom of thought which is the greatest gift to civilization that there is.


Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

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Arkham Horror: Thought invoked through mythmaking genius at Fantasy Flight Games

Taking a break from the usual heavy subjects explored at this site I have to say more about a company I have highlighted often in America who I think is having a major impact on world culture.  This is not a movie company, a video game developer or even a traditional television broadcaster—it is Fantasy Flight Games who again appear to be at the absolute top of their field.  I was at my favorite game store—Nostalgic Ink, in Mason, Ohio buying my son-in-law some expansion ships for our X-Wing Miniatures game which is a Fantasy Flight creation which I have raved about often.  I had my grandson with me so he wanted to walk around the store looking at all the other products, which I of course allowed him to do.  While looking elsewhere in the store I ran across the Fantasy Flight Game Arkham Horror which looked fabulous and further impressed me with what Fantasy Flight has been doing in the realm of gaming.

These types of games are a participatory mythology—meaning they allow players to jump into a scenario and live the values of a mythology.  These games unlike everything else in society are all about recognizing value instead of evading it—so there isn’t any escape from the process of assessment.  I wasn’t a fan of these kinds of things until my nephews and son-in-law brought them back into my life last summer while on vacation.  While I don’t enjoy traditional board games like Monopoly and most of the games on the Target gaming shelf dealing with contemporary matters, I do love these mythology based games in that they are like novels lived in the field of time and space which have uncertain outcomes.

The Arkham Horror game attracted my attention because it deals with the Roaring Twenties and involves horror, monsters, and ancient secrets.  Of course it is this time period I love which featured near perfect capitalism and a wonderful President in Calvin Coolidge, so the time period itself is interesting as a backdrop for such a story.  At Nostalgic Ink we were in a time crunch so I didn’t buy the game as of yet, but I will at the next available moment.  It plays up to eight people in a cooperative play which would do well in my family.  We had a birthday party for that same son-in-law who is very skilled with these games.  It’s impressive to watch him.  At the party several groups broke off and played games, some in the house, some outside set up around the pool, some out under a shade tree.  One of the games was Magic the Gathering which I’ve seen quite a lot, the other was my son-in-law’s new Game of Thrones card game again by Fantasy Flight Games.  I watched a bit of that game and again it was another amazing creation by Fantasy Flight with the usual quality in game pieces and such detailed manuals, card design, and even box artwork.

I had been wondering if Fantasy Flight was just freakishly good at game design with their X-Wing series—because it’s Star Wars and thus sells well.   But after seeing what they did with the Game of Thrones card game I’m convinced that it is just the nature of the company.  Any doubts I had about buying The Arkham Horror game evaporated in that instant.  The gaming that night at our house went well into the night well past the time my wife and I went to bed—so my family would love Arkham Horror.

During a typical day when things sometimes seem overwhelmingly difficult—and impossible—I take a minute and visit the Fantasy Flight Games website to see what’s going on new—which every day appears to be something.  I enjoy reading the game forums for X-Wing and it actually relaxes my mind.  This is distinctively different from the typical escapism, evasion tactics of something like a baseball game, or Fantasy Football—which does similar things for a more mainstream audience.  For me, and my love of mythology, these games are just marvelous.

Walking the aisles at Nostalgic Ink the owner does a great job of displaying all his vast collection of games—most of them are like these Arkham Horror, and Game of Throne games.  These are different from traditional board games like Life, Candyland, or card games like Uno.  They have the added element of plot and story to accentuate the randomness of a dice role—and are quite intriguing.  If I had time, I’d like to play one of each kind of game in Nostalgic Ink.  My grandson not yet two years of age already understands that there is something special about the place, he enjoys the colors on the boxes displaying all the bizarre artwork and wanted to look at everything.  It’s a very stimulating atmosphere much like how book stores used to feel minus the references to popular culture—which is often distracting when you need a break from it.

It cannot be ignored that people who play these types of Fantasy Flight Games enjoy thinking.  My son-in-law certainly embodies that trait—he loves to think and in the realm of those games—is a maestro.  But what’s better is the plot and advancement of intrigue that makes the experience like a shared novel.  In a high-tech age such as what we live in now, it is just wonderful to see such a low tech—creative—and traditional format of storytelling that has emerged as powerfully as Fantasy Flight Games has done over these last few years.  I was already a fan because of their X-Wing Miniatures work, but their efforts don’t end there.  It is unlikely that I would have ever stepped into Nostalgic Ink if not to purchase my first B-Wing fighter in the September of 2013.  Since then, I have been there often and now find myself going there to primarily buy gifts for other people.  But for me X-Wing Miniatures has been a gateway to the rest of the Fantasy Flight Games product line.  It is what they are doing now that will still have meaning many years from now when I want to play the same games with my future grandchildren and other family members who will grow up to love those games.  I remember the kind of things I loved growing up and to a large extent, I still love those things.  Video games and tech related entertainment has a dated feel that cheapens those experiences over time as improvements come out in future years.   But these Fantasy Flight Games products will still have the magic of their appeal hundreds of years from now because the root of their effort is in the great presentation of their material– the invocation of thought as their mechanism into story telling.  And it is in the stories of our society that the truths we all seek reside—whether realistic, or fantasy based, it is the process of thought which the human race most seeks.  And Fantasy Flight Games has their pulse on the importance of thought—and that makes them for my money one of the best companies on earth creating one of the most important needs humans have aside from food and clothing—mythology.


Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com