Bullwhips For Self-Defense: The techniques of Anthony De Longis

One thing that is different from my view of bullwhip work and many of my friends who spend a lot of time working on technique with an emphasis on dance like choreography is that I find the whip most useful as a melee weapon in martial arts. In my novel The Symposium of Justice, the main character Cliffhanger uses bullwhips exclusively as his primary weapon to fight the forces of evil. Even when firearms and modern technology present options that might otherwise be considered more attractive—Cliffhanger uses two bullwhips to slice up and dominate his rivals with blistering effectiveness. My friend Gery Deer runs the only bullwhip instructional studio in the world, and his emphasis has always been non-combative instruction. So when the two of us get together we politely avoid the subject. Most bullwhip artists feel the same way that Gery does—and for good reason. There is a stigma that bullwhips are naturally violent weapons, so to promote the sport, they put emphasis on the non combative aspects of it. But, bullwhips by their nature are very violent, and are among the most flexible and versatile weapons ever created by a human being. And a guy who has made quite an extensive living teaching bullwhip combat techniques is Anthony De Longis.

Anthony has a long history with bullwhips and has done a good job of promoting them within Hollywood. Once while I was doing a short picture in Glendale, California which is Anthony’s hometown his name came up often by the stunt people and stunt coordinators. He is well-known within the Hollywood community as the go-to guy for bullwhips in film and he has worked with great passion to create interest in his spare time.

As a published writer, De Longis has contributed articles on the sword and the bullwhip to both martial arts and stage combat publications. These include articles on the Spanish Mysterious Circle, published in Fight Master, Inside Karate and Martial Arts Insider, and on sabre in Black Belt. Articles on the bullwhip have appeared in Inside Karate, Black Belt and Inside Stunts.

Off-camera, De Longis was Fight Director for the Los Angeles Music Center Opera from 1985 to 2003. He was Swordmaster / Stunt Coordinator for episodes 1-6 of The Queen Of Swords, and Swordmaster for Secondhand Lions.

He is also a professional stage movement and combat instructor, teaching in academic (UCLA Theatre Arts Dept. 1974-1993), small group and private settings seminars. He was inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame as 2008 Weapons Instructor of the Year and into the International Knife Throwers Hall of Fame in 2009,

http://www.delongis.com/Biography.html

He shares with many of the people I most associate with a love of these kinds of skills—these western arts–and his impact to the industry deserves respect. He and I share specifically a love for Terry Jacka made bullwhips from Australia as most of the rest of the industry leans toward Joe Strain. There are others, but those two names are among the highest in the business. Samples of both their work can be found at Western Stage Props. However, both whip makers can be found at their individual sites.

http://www.westernstageprops.com/

But when it comes to combat and the bullwhip, I can think of no better weapon in the world to deal with an armed thug in melee combat. There isn’t a martial artist that I’ve met, or a weapon used in those arts which surpasses the ability of a bullwhip. They can be coiled up for easy transportation and stuffed into a bag for concealment, but can become a projector of danger as lethal as knives from a safe distance of 8’ to 10’. They can disarm a foe, or tie up their feet if they are trying to run away from a treacherous act, or bullwhips can choke an assailant to within inches of their life with the leverage needed to cut off the oxygen and blood to their brain with much more effectiveness than bare hands even among the strongest man.

Years ago I sold cars and spent a lot of time on the car lot waiting for customers to visit so I could sell them something. To kill time, I often practiced with my bullwhip in the back lot, which attracted the attention of the various lot techs and mechanics. On one particular occasion a couple of strong guys who thought they were particularly tough wanted to spar with me, their knives and baseball bats from the trunk of their car against my whip. Three of them against me and my bullwhip. It wasn’t even close. I was able to get the 12’ whip around me so quick that they couldn’t attack without getting hit. When they tried to come all at the same time I was easily able to go after the head of one of them to break their line and step out behind it keeping them from trapping me. If they elected to take the hit, it would have hurt them catastrophically—which was the intention because we were playing that kind of game. One of them finally got smart and stepped on the end my whip as it was so long, it took a lot longer to move around than some of the smaller 6’ whips. Once he had the end of the whip trapped, he thought he and his friends had me defenseless. But what they didn’t know was that I could then close ranks and wrap the whip around their necks and use the handle as a club—very similar to a blackjack.

My grandfather used to carry a police style blackjack in his pocket and considered this adequate to knock away most foes he met around town in times of crises. I used it a few times, but retired it quickly realizing that it was best to get distance away from your opponents as opposed to being close enough to use a small club. I replaced the blackjack with a bullwhip and have never since stopped. If an opponent has control of the end of the whip it essentially takes their hands out of the fight. This gives the bullwhip wielder the advantage in a conflict because they can then use the handle as a club against an unarmed victim.

My use of bullwhips has always been combat related as opposed to showmanship. Recently a reader of my daughter’s website wondered why I had a bullwhip with me on our trip to the Ghost Ship of Cincinnati. Well, there were reports that some of the locals might be hostile and often take shots at people who visit the Ghost Ship. That turned out not to be the case—the people I met were quite nice—but you never know when you might run across some drug dealer’s marijuana patch, or someone burying a body deep in the woods—and in times like that you don’t want to be unarmed. So I bring my bullwhip as I always have. When people think of such things, they think of Indiana Jones—but the truth of the matter is, Indiana Jones is a practical adventurer—he knew how to dress for occasions and what to bring. Ironically, my daughter and I used my bullwhip to climb up the side of the ship. Of course I didn’t use one of my Jacka whips for that task—I used one of my long rawhide whips which are very tough. With those whips you can swing across things and climb trees—or disassemble someone who means to do you harm.

I could tell many stories about bullwhips, and when it comes to combat work with bullwhips, Anthony De Longis is the current spokesman at the entertainment level. What he has been preaching is real, and really just begins to touch on the possibilities. But those possibilities are infinitely exciting when it comes to weapons and their effectiveness. In my opinion learning any other skill for any other weapon is pointless and a waste of time. There is nothing that I’d choose to use for self-defense than a bullwhip and that includes a firearm. Most firearms are shot at a close range and often miss their mark the first time—just because of the implication of what it means to shoot another person—death—long jail times, that kind of thing. The bullwhip will put an end to such threats within 1.5 seconds which is often the time it takes to decide to pull a trigger. The legal impact to such a self-defense measure is far less, and much more beneficial to staying out of court in the aftermath. Anybody who has been thinking of learning such a skill might want to visit Anthony out at his ranch to learn a thing or two about combat bullwhip techniques. That skill will likely save the life of you and those who mean you harm with the most effective way to remove threats under circumstances of coercion. His site can be reached by the link above.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

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

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

Why People Like Lois Lerner Fear Conservatives: The McDonald’s matrix

People’s political opinions largely are formed by the kind of work they do, so it is not unusual within the Beltway of Washington to find people who think the way Lois Lerner does about “radical right-wingers.” For them, anybody who is not willing to throw endless amounts of money at government jobs and altruistic causes progressives support—is a “dangerous right-winger.” The same mentality caught by the Lois Lerner emails can be found in virtually any public school, or where government workers have unrealistic expectations about wage rates and quality of living under the umbrella of government. The desire for government to always expand is to bring in more employees who will thus protect it from insurgency. It is that concern of rejection that people like Lois Lerner fear—a rejection of their lifestyle and beliefs which is frightening to them.

One of the reasons I have spent the last week talking about the Annie Oakley Festival that I recently attended was because the entire region around Darke County, Ohio where it’s held is so wonderfully free of the type of people who work for government. There are of course police who sit like parasites on the side of the road looking to give out tickets to meet their revenue quotas—there are school teachers, and Post Office workers around town, but a vast majority of the people were farmers or people who have fled the urban life for the rural countryside to get away from government in some form or another. Nobody I met during my visit were radicals, but there were a lot of people who were to the political right of my position who have Don’t Tread on Me flags hanging from their porches, and gun racks in the windows of their trucks and they didn’t vote for Obama—that is for sure. They are the mainstream of rural America which makes up most of the country—and in those lands, they are filed with the kind of people who Lois Lerner fears most—those scary people who call in to talk radio shows and express anti-government opinions.

Lois Lerner and Barack Obama gladly put on blinders to the outside world of the Beltway. Their entire life and culture of their occupations centers around government employment which is not performance based, but measured by kiss-ass ability. Schmoozing, brown-nosing, and boot licking to gain promotions are particularly prevalent in government occupations if they want to accelerate faster than their annual merit increases. The fear that those government employees have of the “radical right” are essentially of those who have value, who likely attend church on Sundays, who are engaged in long marriages to the same spouse, who prefer straight sex over anal sex—in essence people who care about things over those who don’t.

I tend to judge cultures based on the McDonald’s matrix. Since McDonald’s restaurants essentially are the same everywhere—the food is the same, costs are the same and is of the same quality, the only differences from one to another is in the people who generally attend. For instance, if a McDonald’s is attended in Finneytown, Ohio it is common to see women wearing hoochy mama heels looking like they are Vegas prostitutes because the welfare culture in and around the area produces those types of people. I actually had this experience last week during a lunch rush. The people were discombobulated and behaved as if they were perpetually intoxicated. The people in front and behind the counter were fragmented—the static patterns of their lives had major holes that were filled by chaos. The best way to attribute their behavior was that they were the result of government employment—in one way or another they were victims of government employment. They either worked for the government in some way, or they were welfare families mooching off the tax payer for their sustenance. Just days later my wife and I stopped at a very nice McDonald’s in downtown Eaton, Ohio—in the middle of a very rural community. Sitting in the seats were old men reading newspapers and talking to their neighbors, groups of women planning yard sales, and families bringing their kids to play on the vast indoor playground they have there. Behind the counter the young women were very nice, and seemed engaged with life. It looked like the town McDonald’s was a major employer in that remote country town, so people treated the job with care—like it was something to cherish. A truck drove by me outside with a Confederate Flag in the back window and had a sticker of the church they attended on the bumper. This was the land that people like Lois Lerner fears most from the vantage point of the Beltway.

Using the McDonald’s matrix it is easy to determine the quality of people from region to region. Most of the time the root cause of degradation of a population can be determined by properly measuring the amount of government influence there is on a community. In places where welfare checks are more frequent than privately employed citizens, the quality of people goes down dramatically by way of personal values and taste. In places where getting a job at McDonald’s is a coveted occupation the value for the type of clothing one wears, the way they speak, the kind of things they put in their heads goes up dramatically. My trip to the Eaton McDonald’s was in itself a vacation because it was nice to be around people who had value. Beltway types and big government employees would say that such places are racist or “extreme” in their political views simply because they themselves fear such places the way that a demon might fear Holy Water. They ridicule the people in such towns because they don’t have control of them. They don’t fear the people who live in Finnytown.

Lois Lerner is reflective of a Beltway culture from both Republicans and Democrats who live in a bubble of their own making constructed by their social mooching and rampant looting of those who do have value. Since they are fleeing from judgment for their social crimes they have no other recourse but to hate and slander. The very existence of some people is too much for typical government workers to handle. During my entire trip to the Annie Oakley Festival from the time I left my driveway to the show itself, the interaction with the people was wonderfully American in that they were self-motivated and lacking that haze over their eyes that you often get when dealing with government employees—where the light is on, but nobody is home upstairs.

It is this culture of having somebody home who can think with their minds that Lois Lerner and her type of government worker fears so emphatically. They slander it, they tax it, they try with everything they have to destroy it—but when they can’t they hide from it in their Beltway offices and their expensive homes hoping to change the world into their image by other means. And when they can’t, they complain about it. I’ve been to D.C. and have traveled all around the area. I covered enough ground on my trip to the Annie Oakley Festival to eat the land mass of Washington D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles put together. The people who live in that vast summation of land won’t be opening their doors to the type of government interference that has corrupted Finneytown, and the other suburbs of Cincinnati where former glorious homes now rot under the care of the lazy, the addicted, and the minds with nobody home.

To illustrate the point let’s look at some census data between the two regions, Finnytown then Eaton.

In Finnytown the population was 12,741 at the U.S. 2010 census, in 5,294 housing units.^[2] However, as of the 2000 census,^[3] formerly there had been 13,492 people, 5,194 households, and 3,807 families residing in the CDP. The population density had been 3,382.8 people per square mile (1,305.6/km²). There had been 5,336 housing units in 2000. The racial makeup of the CDP in 2010 was 61.7% White, 33.7% Black, 1.9% Hispanic, with others 1% or less. However, the racial makeup in 2000 had been 72.95% White, 23.83% African American, 0.16% Native American, 1.10% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.45% from other races, and 1.48% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race had been 0.80% of the population in 2000.

There had been 5,194 households, out of which 34.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.7% were married couples living together, 14.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.7% were non-families. 23.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.57 and the average family size was 3.04.

In the CDP in 2000, the population was spread out, with 27.6% under the age of 18, 6.1% from 18 to 24, 26.3% from 25 to 44, 22.9% from 45 to 64, and 17.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 87.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 80.3 males.

The median income for a household in the CDP in 2000 had been $52,219, and the median income for a family had been $58,393. Males had a median income of $41,932 versus $31,250 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $25,355. About 4.3% of families and 5.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7.5% of those under age 18 and 4.1% of those age 65 or over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finneytown%2C_Ohio

In Eaton as of the census^[2] of 2010, there were 8,407 people, 3,486 households, and 2,181 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,358.2 inhabitants per square mile (524.4 /km²). There were 3,903 housing units at an average density of 630.5 per square mile (243.4 /km²). The racial makeup of the city was 96.3% White, 0.6% African-American, 0.2% Native American, 1.0% Asian, 0.5% from other races, and 1.5% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.8% of the population.

There were 3,486 households of which 30.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.2% were married couples living together, 13.7% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.6% had a male householder with no wife present, and 37.4% were non-families. 32.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 15.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and the average family size was 2.90.

The median age in the city was 40.4 years. 23.3% of residents were under the age of 18; 8% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 23.7% were from 25 to 44; 25.7% were from 45 to 64; and 19.1% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 47.2% male and 52.8% female.

There were 3,274 households out of which 30.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.3% were married couples living together, 11.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.3% were non-families. 29.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.37 and the average family size was 2.89.

In the city the population was spread out with 24.0% under the age of 18, 8.7% from 18 to 24, 27.5% from 25 to 44, 21.6% from 45 to 64, and 18.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 89.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.6 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $37,231, and the median income for a family was $42,241. Males had a median income of $32,404 versus $24,006 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,771. About 5.8% of families and 8.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 10.0% of those under age 18 and 9.5% of those age 65 or over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaton,_Ohio

Statically, they look very similar they have similar numbers of family size, similar numbers of female lead homes with no husband present and median incomes that are close. The big difference is that Eaton has nearly 9 more males per 100 females than Finnytown. The other statistic that doesn’t show up in this a case like this is the number of those married homes that are from first marriages. Obviously Eaton has a much higher success rate of first marriages than Finnytown leading to fewer fragmented homes and less dependency on government subsidy. One town has a greater welfare culture than the other and produces a mentality in one group that is vastly different from the other.

It is this nasty little secret that Lois Lerner’s type hope to hide from public knowledge and the reason she campaigned against those same groups using the power of the IRS to alter elections and suppress the opinions of those people outside of the Beltway which she felt so comfortable protecting. Just because they are scared doesn’t make government worker reality valid, it just means they have a frame of mind that is weaker due to their dependency on government than the hardier types who live outside the reach of Lois Lerner and her government employees contributing to the daily erosion that takes place with a government issued check in whatever form.

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

Why to Buy a David Crain Whip: The ‘Ohio Bullwhip Fast Draw’ in slow motion

I have won the Ohio Bullwhip Fast Draw competition for several years during its decade of existence. I don’t win it every year, but most of the time I either win it, or I’m climbing around the top contenders and if I lose it is because of a miss. I can’t ever recall being beat to a target. In 2014 the whip maker David Crain told me before we paired off against each other that he had built a whip just for the annual event and showed it to me. As I looked it over it was built of nylon, which is his style, and was very springy. It had nice movement and was well balanced—but it felt light. I’m used to my whips built by Terry Jacka in Australia which are a nice balance between heavy and the weight of the nylon whips so I had my doubts that his whip would be fast to the target in spite of his efforts. But when we paired off, and the judge called “draw” it looked to me that our whips both reached the target at the same time. It was too close to call, but the judge gave him the win as seen below.

I was impressed by how his whip sprang into action from about the 11:00 position over his head and jumped toward the target like a rubber band. It moved differently than my whip which could be seen in the slow motion breakdown. Crain’s nylon whip launched toward the target and got there quick. The effect was impressive and demonstrated that the “roo” hide whips from Australia were not the only ones capable of winning at the Ohio Bullwhip Fast Draw.

I have used Crain’s whips often and can testify to their quickness, my grandson has three of them. They are great for two-handed vollies and general technique. But after seeing them perform at this year’s Annie Oakley event in Greenville I am convinced that they perform excellently in competitions as well. David Crain’s whips are well made and unique featuring finely finished wooden handles making them easy to manipulate and excellent to look at. But in the hands of an expert, they are proving to be as quick as whips like the ones I use which cost $600 to $800 dollars. Crain’s whips typically cost a third of that but are every bit as accurate and many times are faster cutting through the air.

For me the elation of life is in the moments of time when a judge announces “draw” and when the whip hits the target. I find bullwhips more fascinating than firearms because all of the movement of the whip is done by a human being transferring the power of momentum through several strips of leather brought together by a whip maker to provide a focused force at the point of impact. By watching the coil of my whip strike its target in slow motion it is easy to see the world the way I do—first in the fast form, then slowed down the way it works in my mind. I live for those fractions of moments in time—those moments between seconds where decisions and momentum come together to define an objective. The same skills are used when driving a car, or making decisions that might affect millions of dollars in profitability—often we are only given a fraction of a second to make a decision and to act. The beauty of the bullwhip quick draw is all the decisions that have to be made in far less than a second, the uncoiling of the whip, the calculation of where the end is in space and time, the rotation of the handle to get the lay of the whip pointed in the right direction on the upswing from the coiled position—because if you go against it, the whip will push-off its mark during the strike, then finally the projection of the target cut with the whip in the air and pointed in the right direction, the flip of the wrist to get the coil started and finally the pop of the whip hitting the target squarely.

It was easy to see how I pulled off my side of the target cut, but David’s shot was a bit different. I looks like in slow motion that he was able to skip a few steps in the process. His whip being made of nylon didn’t have to be rotated in his hand to prevent working against the natural direction of the belly inside the whip that is formed to the coiled direction of a leather whip. From the extended position above his head it looks that he was able to launch the whip toward the target with a sling shot type of effect which can be seen the way the end of the whip turns into waves after it meets the target. What is easy to see in the very slow motion of the bullwhip fast draw above is that the nylon whip and kangaroo whip behaved very differently during the bullwhip fast draw but the goal is to reach the target first. In slow motion it looks like there is great advantage in using a nylon whip in the bullwhip fast draw.

For those who want to win the bullwhip fast draw in the future, a David Crain whip might be very wise. As it can easily be seen in the video, a lot happens in the span of time that two whip experts attack a target in the moments fragmented by such occasions. And like regular life that often feels slow and mundane it is those fragments of time that dictate the direction of success or failure—so the bullwhip fast draw is an excellent way to train the mind into the types of decisions that accompany such moments.

When people wonder how I do some of the things that I do in regular life whether it is under the guise of a suit and tie, or torn cloths hunting ghost ships in the back woods of river tributaries, the secret is not in a book, or a college, or any institutional influence. It is in the lessons learned in the fragments of time seen in the Ohio Bullwhip Fast Draw and how those lessons can be applied to problems others might find overwhelming and impossible. Even with all my years of experience I still see new things and learn from them as I did from David Crain this year—lessons that I will carry with me that will prove very valuable. But for others contemplating such a thing in the future consider that last year David didn’t think he had the experience or skill to perform such a feat—but only one year later, he has proven himself to be a contender of great repute. And part of his journey in getting there was in building a whip that would do supernatural things under great pressure and as it can be seen by the video, he was successful.

David Crain can be found at the following link:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Heartbeat-Artistry/169569816413486

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Secrets of Competition: The fountain of youth discovered in Ohio’s ‘Speed Switch’

Every year I look forward to the whip contests at the Annie Oakley Festival because for me it is a measurement that I take to determine my personal efficiencies. Whip work and what it takes to strike 10 targets in 12 seconds or less possesses the same skills that make forward leaning philosophy so cutting edge or management strategies fluidly clear. When you step up to the line to begin those contests, all the same emotions rush through your mind, push too hard or fast and you will miss targets. Take things too casually, and your stopwatch time will be bad, and physical timing is everything—maintaining a nice even pace that accomplishes the task is of utmost importance. Many might think that it is the desire to beat the other competitors that drives a person like me in these competitions—but its not. I happen to think the world of all the people who participate in the Annie Oakley events and I rejoice when they do well—even if it is at my expense. The real challenge as it is in most competitions—it is always yourself that you must compete against. The optimal thing is to show up, do your best measured against your values, and relish the results for the sake of them happening. I had a rough start in the competitions this year; I had a couple of penalties which added 10 seconds to my time on the Speed and Accuracy. It bothered me that things didn’t go as well as they should, so on the next competition I performed much better on the Speed Switch, seen below.

On that one, the speed was perfect, the rhythm was there, and the strikes were wonderful even with both hands. Upon completing that run, it felt good to strike that final crack because I felt I had my mind and body centered from the task which is exactly the feeling I was looking for. I really didn’t care what the time was, and I would have been happy to see someone come up with a better time. What mattered to me was the feeling of having everything working in perfect harmony controlled by me and my effort for a positive conclusion. It is primarily because of that exercise that I have worked with whips for well over three decades now.

When you have to compete against others it is different from setting up the same course in your backyard, which I do have. Other people push you to be better, so when I discovered that my Speed Switch time was just over 11 seconds, I was proud. If I were doing the same exercise alone in my back yard, the time would have likely been a second or two slower, but because of the competition it pushes you to do better. So it was a better time because of the competitive environment.

In the scheme of things the time doesn’t matter much. Next year it will be forgotten just like last year’s Superbowl champions are often lost in time. But the thrill of the moment is in pushing yourself to achieve something you might not otherwise strive to do—and it makes you sharper, stronger, and generally better. After pushing your mind and body in these kinds of events, hot dogs taste better, soft drinks at a concession stand are sweeter, and the sun is always more brilliant. If the level of competition is of a better quality, it makes a win even better—not because the other guy lost but because you know they are good and the meaning has proportional value based on the strength of their talents.

Politically, when rules created through legislation, take away competition from any process, they help destroy it. When labor unions prevent such competition to the process of making a job better, they are destroying those jobs. Without competition, minds rot away and the thrill of becoming better is robbed from an otherwise curious mind. For me, a guy closer to age 50 than 40 there aren’t many chances to challenge myself. At this age, you are at the top of your game. If you have done things well in your life, you should be the father who knows best, you should be the top performer in your career, you should be a shining citizen in your community, your lawn should be beautiful, you should make good decisions because you have learned how to be the best possible person that you can be through years of trial and tribulation. But if the competition is taken away from you, then your mind starts to go and with it comes the edge that your maturity brings to the table of innovation and success.

Organizations where competition is removed from their processes are filled with corruption and apathy. When trophies are given for victory without a competition taking place the way collective bargaining agreements provide for union workers, sluggish behavior permeates the endeavor with a less than satisfactory resolution. In my life, I still look for ways to compete the way I did when I was young and still test myself not for my competitors but to keep myself in shape, and sharp and to feel that thrill of life of a task well done on a Saturday afternoon. It’s not about the other competitors only in that they tend to push you to be better just by their presence. Without that competition in our lives, human beings decay and wither away into complacency.

It is also important for those who are currently the best to help others become better by giving them a target to pursue. This is essentially the secret to parenting, but it is more broadly termed as “mentoring.” It is good for young people to chase after old people to become better than they are, because through competition, everyone becomes better. One generation should surpass the older one so innovation occurs. Young people always want to feel they did better than those who came before them, but for them to do that, it is the responsibility of the old to make it hard for the young.

During the Bullwhip Fast Draw contest this year David Crain won against me and when he did I couldn’t help but be happy for him. He was fast and when he discovered that he had hit the target first, he rejoiced not so much for the win, but because he thought it would be hard to beat me. So for him, a hot dog tasted better on Saturday because he won a hard-fought battle. It is my task to make it hard for other competitors, but it is also my job to be happy for those who win because innovation has taken place, and everything has become better.

If competition is not present, innovation stops and minds die. Anywhere that competition is lacking, this is the result—poor performance occurs. And when you get to an older age where opportunities for competition are no longer constantly on your radar—there is a tendency to decay. This is why I look forward to the bullwhip competitions each year at Annie Oakley. Bullwhips mean more to me than other things in my life, so there is something at risk when I compete lending gravity to the situation that might otherwise not be present.

In that regard I was very happy to get such a good time on the Speed Switch. It is hard, and when everything comes together like that, pride is the only emotion. I could have been down on myself for not doing very well on the Speed and Accuracy event, but instead I was able to get it together and come back like I do most things in my life. But the reason I learned to overcome things in other parts of my life are because I know I can—because through competition I have learned how and applied those same skills to solving sometimes ridiculously difficult problems. Before you can do that consistently it helps tremendously to push yourself on ground that you are familiar with—whether it is baking a pie, shooting a rifle, or cracking a whip—competition makes you a better person in virtually every category. You may not always win, but you will always become better—especially if you learn from those who do win often. There is a reason they do—and the way to achieve that same boon is to surpass them through innovation and technique.

After a few days of rest I am already looking forward to next year. It is one of those events that never fail to restore in me a hope for humanity because of the people involved and the nature of the competition and what everyone gets from it. I remember what the bullwhip competitions were like when they were done in Las Vegas with the Wild West Arts Club, but Gery Deer, who runs the Annie Oakley event wanted to improve on those, and he has. The Bullwhip Fast Draw was born out of that desire and new to this year was the Indiana Jones Quick Draw which was a lot of fun and very entertaining. The need to always get better is at the heart of innovation and those needs cannot be measured until competition draws them to the surface. I am happy with my performance in 2014 but already have my eye on 2015 and will change some of my approach to get better. And during that process everything else in my life will improve just as a by-product. It is for that reason that I am so happy for the Annie Oakley bullwhip competitions and all the wonderful experiences that have come from them over the years. There is contained within their simplicity a secret to youth which often dies in grown adults not because of age—but a lack of competition and a laziness to push themselves once they have mastered their own fates.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The 2014 Annie Oakley Western Showcase: Bringing Lash LaRue off the silver screen into reality

As usual it was a marvelous weekend at our annual Annie Oakley event. What started as a large group that originally met at Las Vegas each year is now just a handful of whip crackers, knife throwers, trick ropers and magicians intent to put a smile on the faces of young people and wow the adults who graced the grounds of the 2014 Annie Oakley Festival in Darke County. The venue this year was moved from the usual fairgrounds in town to a more remote location just to the north. It felt a long way out and even deeper into “God’s Country” but a very large crowd turned out and what they found there were shooting contests, fast draw contests from the Single Action Shooting Society, theater drama, and the 12^th Annual Annie Oakley Western Arts Showcase accompanied by the many venders selling goods. Most of the venders very unique with little booths set-up mingling among the trees of York Woods. For over ten years now some of the best whip crackers in the country have gathered to meet with their own kind at the event and as usual it was a marvelous enterprise.

I said many times during the day which was absolutely perfect for July weather with mild temperatures and occasional rain bursts erupting just to the north and south painting a menacing sky at times across the vast plains of farmland extending out into Indiana—that my love of this event was yearly maintenance; it restored my faith in humanity. The people who attend are some of the few people left in the entire world who do these kinds of things which used to be common place during Annie Oakley’s time. A few are in long-term marriages which are inspiring, and most have spouses that they bring with them where they enjoy each other in a healthy way and it is just good to associate with people of that character. I’ve said it before, but it is applicable, the people in our group are nearly identical to the characters shown in the Clint Eastwood film Bronco Billy—which is a favorite of mine. They are a small group of people who are all that is keeping a way of life in America alive for the next generation.

There are many in the world who might say good riddance to classic American arts—particularly those residing around large metropolitan areas—which is why attending each year restores my faith in humanity. It is so refreshing to spend time around genuine people who truly love something rooted in classic Americana. But to lose these values, the whip cracking, the gun spinning, roping, and knife throwing—with vaudeville type shows conducted from corn fields in the middle of nowhere—U.S.A would be treacherous. The heart of what it means to be an American is in those shows, I have now known the ring master of the Annie Oakley event—Gery Deer for over ten years and each year he finds new ways to change-up the show to always keep it interesting. At first there were concerns over moving the Annie Oakley Festival to the outskirts of Greenville—but quickly those worries proved pointless. Large crowds attended and the celebration was nothing short of inspiring.

It took me a while to get warmed up but by the time we got to the Speed Switch contest which allows bullwhip artists to strike at ten targets as fast as they could–first with one hand then with the other on the way back up the target row, I had hit my stride. This year it was obvious that everyone was a bit smoother and had been practicing. The times were faster generally for everyone which made for an exciting show for the people watching from the bleachers. I had my fastest time ever on the Speed Switch—just a bit over 11 seconds which is fast for even the Speed and Accuracy contest so well-known to seasoned veterans. I enjoyed the location, the vast open spaces all around the touring bus of the Brother’s and Company set up as a backdrop for the stage as a generator provided all the power needed for the show. The crowd sat in the beginnings of the York Woods where shade gave them shelter from the sun which peaked out often around menacing storm clouds. If anything pushed my speed a bit it was a combination of those elements.

Many of the same people who came last year came this time around again traveling from far away destinations to arrive. Some couldn’t make it, but the beauty of the event is that each year there are opportunities to do it again and recharge their batteries from a punishing year. It is punishing to stand behind these classic American art forms when the current trend is to run away. Often the skeptics will stand on the outskirts of the roped off area and watch with curiosity as most of their thoughts were created by pop culture—but after a few moments, they can’t help but smile at the cheesy jokes and purity of the type of Western Showcase that Gery routinely puts on. There is a playful innocence in it that is unmistakable and it doesn’t take long to reach into the inner child of the typical viewer to touch that part of themselves which has long ago been ignored—and suppressed.

I saw some of that at the end of the day when my wife and I went to the restaurant we normally gather at in Greenville to make reservations for the back half of the dining room. The rest of our group was on the tour bus coming down from the York Woods location so we wanted to have everything set up for when they arrived. As the manager arranged tables I saw some of that modern cynicism in the bar where my wife and I waited. A corner contained a group of young twenty-somethings watching a baseball game and as I stood silhouetted in the doorway between the bar and dining room a young kid with his date looked my way and started texting his friends sitting next to him murmuring—it’s “Crocodile Dundee.” I stared at the kid just to make him feel uncomfortable and to let him know that I could hear him, which he hadn’t expected. He wanted anonymity from the security of his reality among his friends so I made a point to not give it to him. This isn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last. On more than one occasion in that same bar we’ve encountered worse but quickly converted them over into fans. One year Chris Camp took a skeptical woman outside and made her into a whip target stand in the parking lot in front of her husband cracking straws from her outstretched hands. Moments before she had been similar to the kids in the corner, but after about five minutes was gushing all over herself at the coolness of having a weapon break the sound barrier right next to her face. The only references modern people have toward such things outside of the type of events that Gery puts on, is music, movies, and television which has turned dramatically against the American Western, or any form of rugged individualism.

The clash of cultures is one where the values of two groups of people crash in places like that bar. At the Annie Oakley Festival the context is already presented. It is not unusual for members of the Western Arts Showcase to roam around the event in costume. I typically wear my whips with me, and nobody bats an eye—they expect it because of the context of the show. When our members used to attend the Fairlawn restaurant in years prior the strip of road separating it from the Darke County Fairgrounds was filled with people attending the festival. This year there was no late night activity in town, because the Annie Oakley event had moved far to the north—so the Fairlawn was filled with regular people living their regular lives watching baseball games and trying to show how well they fit into the modern world of the big nearby cities like Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati to the south. So for the kids in the bar they had no idea there was an Annie Oakley event in town as it had moved. The boy who made the Crocodile Dundee comment likely hoped that his girl friend would be impressed by his remark and the laughs and giggles among his friends would earn him an honor of some kind, to prove that he was just as much of a douche bag as the next guy. What kids like that don’t know, because it’s not part of their experience, is that the heroes of old, which the Ohio Western Arts group is dedicated to preserving are people like Lash LaRue, Douglas Fairbanks, and of course Annie Oakley—people they have no experience with. If they did, they’d have a much more fulfilled life—their marriages would last longer, their lives would be richer, and they’d be generally happy people. Some of the members of our group travel in trucks and vans that are twenty years old filled with stage props. Often they sleep in a cramped back seat traveling from gig to gig in a hope that their sheer charisma might improve the lives of just one person with the kind of hopes and dreams born from the mind of America. Most of the time they get paid decently, but are drained from the experience only to dust off the feeling and do it again weekend after weekend year after year.

I have never seen a young girl who didn’t melt away into butter when a confident whip handler removed a target from her lips. If the kid wanted to impress his date—and I wanted to tell him this—the best thing he could do for himself is to learn the skills our group brought to the Annie Oakley Festival. As our group arrived and filled the back of the room, the kid stood in the doorway wondering who all those people were sitting with that same guy in the Australian style outback hat. His perplexed look was one of realizing that there was a group of people in the world functioning around him who were different from the patterns he had learned—that certain music was popular, certain modes of dress acceptable, and that there were people out there who considered non-conformity to be far superior to social conformity. It is that trait that the Annual Annie Oakley Festival in Darke County, Ohio appeals to best, and the primary reason that so many make the yearly pilgrimage.

I certainly have a lot of experience with such things measuring public temperament. Unlike the other attendees I have chosen a more controversial roll using my desire to preserve the Western Arts in a way that I think the real Lash LaRue would have done in his day—I have made it part of my political discourse. I have fought higher taxes and known political corruption using the skills nurtured along over the years with the bullwhip to have the same effect the young guy in the bar experienced. When it comes to traditional American art, I feel that the best ground to defend it is outside of the shows where viewers can watch comfortably from behind a roped off area. I take great pleasure in bringing the show to the safety of the herd because it is there that they need to see it most.

At the end of the night there were jokes about how out-of-fashion we were as a group and pride was taken in being so out of style. I remarked that all we needed to do was wait another 50 years and there will be hordes of people desiring deeply the traditional American arts displayed yearly at the Annie Oakley Festival—it will at that time become fashionable again. But right now, especially with the failure of the Lone Ranger at the box office last year, nobody in movies or television is going to produce a film like Zorro or Lash LaRue in the jaded culture we have now. But for those who still desire such things, the way we do who perform them, the yearly event of Annie Oakley is a real treat. It recharges my batteries with meaning after a year of typical cynicism in a way nothing else does. I typically wear my hat year round everywhere from Michigan to Florida and in every possible venue from wealthy to poor—so it is routine to get the kind of reaction I received from the kid in the bar. But what is unique is that a horde of people dressed similarly who share my values don’t often come walking in behind me. And while I might want to take Lash LaRue off the silver screen and plop him down into America in 2014 with my real life antics, it is the one and only time a year that I get more from everyone else than I typically give leaving me feeling uncharacteristically fulfilled. In that regard, I hope that Gery gets the circus tent next year that he’s talking about—because that would be absolutely grand and a good next step to the new venue at York Woods marking of the start of a second decade in a long march toward eternity.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

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The Nature of Productivity: Lessons learned from the 20th Century Motor Company

The following three videos should be listened to completely—for they contain the secrets to manufacturing success within them. To understand the effects of positive GDP forecasts, or the growth of a manufacturing sector in a country—the following clips read from the pages of Atlas Shrugged contain the hidden knowledge that is required to comprehend the cause and reasons for any kind of productive growth or decline. In the fictional 20^th Century Motor Company as described in the classic 50+ year novel—an entire company is driven to ruin for some mysterious reason. That reason would later be confirmed cryptically by the entire real-life city of Detroit, General Motors, and hundreds of thousands of smaller companies who like the factory in the novel that were once thriving places of industry but soon found their doors closed and overtaken by plant life from abandonment, followed the same path. The philosophy of productivity for good or bad is contained within these three videos. Once understood all the books written about modern finance, management, or lean manufacturing techniques will become obsolete as the truth contained is undeniable. No matter what one’s opinion of Ayn Rand might be—whether or not they agree or disagree with her politics of small government, pure capitalism, and value based society represented by money—her understanding of economics and business in general is among the greatest minds over the last three hundred years. Let me explain why.

As a young man I saw on a much smaller scale the same type of things talked about in the 20^th Century Motor Company as narrated by a former employee in the presented videos. One place that I worked at nearly right out of high school while attending college night school was a metal stamping factory full of tough guys born and raised nearly exclusively in unionized households where their parents worked for General Motors or large local paper companies which had gone out of business. They had deep in their internal workings the same beliefs as the narrator describing the 20^th Century Motors situation and I immediately came into direct conflict with them. Lucky for me, my background included hard-working parents, two sets of grandparents who owned professional farms and my first work experiences where around members of the Chicago Chinese mob. So I had the opportunity from a very young age without reading Atlas Shrugged to learn about what values money represented about people and learned about the nature of good and evil as related. My job at the stamping factory was a clash of two worlds, one where a majority of the people thought just like the narrator in the Atlas Shrugged excerpts, and I. At this factory there was a piece per hour rate that was established by management of 400 parts on average. The presses had lines of workers who each operated a part of the process in making compressor housings for air conditioners, the first press would press out a rough shape from a sheet of metal, the second would trim the excess away, the third usually involved several workers who had to do a number of punch operations to make connection holes. Each had a unique challenge to physical labor that had to be done quickly to even think of getting close to 400 parts per hour.

I learned without much time expiring to do well over that 400 part per hour rate and soon found that management put me on the lead at the start of the line to set the pace for everyone else. Employees downstream on the line when they realized I was pushing to do more than 400 per hour would slow down and let the parts build up on the conveyors leading to their presses. But having parts backed up would often stress them out forcing them to do more than they wanted anyway so productivity increased and the management was happy. This of course led to many conflicts and parking lot fights. However, with my background–some rough characters from my youthful enterprises, and my natural hobby with bullwhips as my primary exercise item, I never had to worry about handling myself against rough-neck employees and their labor union backgrounds. Through conflict I earned their respect and even though they resented being pushed, came to like me well enough to not resist my wishes.

I never bought into the line of thought that believed workers should only produce 400 parts per hour if they could do more because it seemed wrong to regulate productive enterprise. I learned quickly that no matter how hard I worked, a majority of the workers would gladly ride my coat tails without putting forth any effort, and if I wanted to produce excess—which to me felt natural, I had to learn to fix the line myself when maintenance issues arose, or other problems presented themselves. Often I felt that I carried the manufacturing capacity of the place on my back alone by pushing the culture toward productivity. Eventually I would leave that job and they immediately went through a period of struggle. The next company I went to had very similar manufacturing challenges but instead of metal, it was injection plastic. Again, it was the same story, a part per hour rate, my desire to exceed it, and a company full of employees who wanted to fight me over it to protect their “rights” against “management.” In this place I talked the management into letting me work double shifts every day of the week—(16) hours a day, and on the weekends I’d back off only working (8) hour days. I worked (7) days a week averaging around 96 hours of work per week. Many in management thought I would keel over but they wanted my efforts which essentially was outpacing around (7) of their hourly workers and I was doing it on 2^nd and 3^rd shifts which were hard to staff. This was a big place and my average output alone outpaced much of the totals from their entire first shift because of the amount of time I spent in their building working.

I knew people were mooching off me both in my private life and professional by the droves and my response was to see how much I could carry. I performed like that for nearly 2 years straight then left there to work at Cincinnati Milacron. There I ran into extreme levels of the kind of behavior talked about in the 20^th Century Motor Company. There, I was doing a very individually based job which prevented my direct impact on the productive culture. The jobs perished as a result—not just mine, but everyone’s. The site where I used to work is now a shopping center. The large campus of manufacturing at “The Mill” is now gone, and my job with it. My next place of business to work was a unionized shop doing manufacture for Amazon.com distribution centers. There I had many conflicts with the employees some of which have been discussed in detail, but I routinely produced 150% efficiencies over the manufacturing rate per day, as opposed to the normal rate of 40% to 60% that the union employees fresh off a strike were producing. That company like Milacron soon was sold off from a company that was drowning in losses—so I lost that job too along with many others employed there. The way that the employees were throttling the piece rate was that many of the manufactured units had a 4 to 5 hour time, and most of the union workers would milk out that time to produce one unit per day on an eight-hour shift. I was routinely producing two which pushed my rate well over 100% on average. In that shop a forklift had to bring supplies to build with, so I learned that when I was out of material not to trust the forklift operator sitting on his unionized butt to help me achieve my goals, I would grab a forklift on my own and get my own stuff. Of course this enraged people—but I did it anyway the entire time I worked there.

The long story made short is that there is excessive truth contained in the video clips presented. The evil talked about is an evil that I have fought without really knowing the definition for years. I only knew at the time that I wanted to fight that evil, I didn’t understand why until much later. When I had figured it out, I then read Atlas Shrugged to have that confirmation thought, but that has been within the last decade. I figured out what made the 20 Century Motor Company fail by experience instead of being told by a book. I am proud to look back on my life now never yielding to the pressures of the masses to restrict my outputs and thus prevented becoming myself a contributor to that evil described. I never produced at such levels to get a pat on the back from management, or even to make more money—even though those things did come to me, I did them because there was something inherently right about it. The culture I grew up with aside from my family, the mob, and the money laundering from a job I had before the metal stamping place (not conducted by me, but discovered), had signed up for the same evil that destroyed the fictional 20^th Century Motor Company. I luckily had learned the value of money from people who naturally possessed great value, and even learned a lot from a criminal class who clearly understood the benefits of capitalism. Their crimes were against politics, not the morality of money—and this is something I learned very early in my life which was a real gift. By the time my wife begged me to take up honest hard-working jobs that were clean of criminals, hit men, and money laundering, I had already met the worst that any factory thug could present, and I knew how to deal with them. In this way I was never beaten down for doing too much, and never stopped from being productive. And I was able to confirm the validity of Ayn Rand’s work through more than theory. I saw it firsthand. The difference between myself and Ayn Rand is that she developed her philosophy around removing her input through a strike—her John Galt quit the world and took the productive with him. I on the other hand felt the challenge to carry everything on my back the way Hank Reardon did, but without ever breaking. My life would have been easier if I had done things the way Ayn Rand suggested, but I chose to fight it instead, and I’m glad to this day that I did. But whatever the position, she was right and the narrator who is speaking her words is spot on. The thing that is killing our world of productivity is the evil described in these videos. It is not a fiction; the evil is as real as the sun, stars and moon and cannot be trivialized no matter how much a collective mass of people wishes. Productivity is good when boundaries are pushed beyond their expectations because it is there that creativity resides. And it is specifically in creativity that production springs forth. If creativity is embraced, a company flourishes. If it is stifled even in small ways, the way of the 20^th Century Motor Company will spring forth and slowly destroy everything that the company stood for. Profit isn’t evil; it is the natural by-product of excess achieved through effort, creativity, and honor. I didn’t work those two years of straight 96 hour work weeks to arrive at any other conclusion—and I didn’t do it for the graces of management. I did it because it was the right thing to do at the right time because the creativity which put the product before me to make needed that effort to deliver it to a market in need. And because it was delivered, the owners were paid, and in turn I was rewarded for my efforts—and that is how it is supposed to be.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

‘Adams’ the HBO Miniseries: “Lustrously ostentatious intellectually and overflowing with a visual history”

I’ve been to a lot of Tea Party events and know quite a few people on the inside of the movement and never did anyone bring up the magnificent miniseries done by HBO on John Adams as essential material for studying one of the greatest founding fathers in American history. I assumed that the HBO produced event would be a typical progressive revisionist history that focused all too much on the hypocrisy of slavery and the general presentation as weak average men riding the coat-tails of history. I assumed that since Tom Hanks produced the show that it would be laced with progressive references. But……Laura Linney was in and was playing Abigail Adams—John Adams wife—so I put the series on a “to do” list for later. I liked Linney in the Mothman Prophesies so thought I’d give the show a shot at some future time when I got around to it. That time came six years later in 2014 when I saw that HBO was showing all seven parts of their mini-series on July 4^th, so I set the DVR to record it which I eventually viewed a few weeks later when time allowed. It was nothing short of lustrously ostentatious intellectually and overflowing with a visual history into the period which took great pains to be authentic. Without question some will attempt to question the accuracy of the work which is based on the David McCullough books, Adams and 1776 but to compress so much history and character into a relatively short period of time art had to bridge the gaps for the viewer which the series was marvelously successful at. The set direction was monstrously good, the actors outstanding, but it was the writing that really overflowed with radiance. The series covered in a scope I had never seen in a film or series of any kind the lifestyles and politics of France, England and the budding United States very accurately with costume design and makeup that I can’t imagine a more truthful attempt ever attempted.

John Adams is a 2008 American television miniseries chronicling most of U.S. President John Adams‘ political life and his role in the founding of the United States. Paul Giamatti portrays John Adams. The miniseries was directed by Tom Hooper. Kirk Ellis wrote the screenplay based on the book John Adams by David McCullough. The biopic of John Adams and the story of the first fifty years of the United States was broadcast in seven parts by HBO between March 16 and April 20, 2008. John Adams received widespread critical acclaim, and many prestigious awards. The show won four Golden Globe awards and thirteen Emmy awards, more than any other miniseries in history.

Part I: Join or Die (1770 A.D. – 1774 A.D.)

The first episode opens with a cold winter in Boston on the night of the Boston Massacre. It portrays John Adams arriving at the scene following the gunshots from British soldiers firing upon a mob of Boston citizens. Adams, a respected lawyer in his mid-30s known for his belief in law and justice, is therefore summoned by the accused Redcoats. Their commander, Captain Thomas Preston asks him to defend them in court. Reluctant at first, he agrees despite knowing this will antagonize his neighbors and friends. Adams is depicted to have taken the case because he believed everyone deserves a fair trial and he wanted to uphold the standard of justice. Adams’ cousin Samuel Adams is one of the main colonists opposed to the actions of the British government. He is one of the executive members of the Sons of Liberty, an anti-British group of agitators. Adams is depicted as a studious man doing his best to defend his clients. The show also illustrates Adams’ appreciation and respect for his wife, Abigail. In one scene, Adams is shown having his wife proofread his summation as he takes her suggestions. After many sessions of court, the jury returns verdicts of not guilty of murder for each defendant. The episode also illustrates the growing tensions over the Coercive Acts (“Intolerable Acts”), and Adams’ election to the First Continental Congress.

Part II: Independence (1774 A.D. – 1776 A.D.)

The second episode covers the disputes among the members of the Second Continental Congress towards declaring independence from Great Britain as well as the final drafting of the Declaration of Independence. At the continental congresses Adams is depicted as the lead advocate for independence. He is in the vanguard in establishing that there is no other option than to break off and declare independence. He is also instrumental in the selection of then-Colonel George Washington as the new head of the Continental Army.

However, in his zeal for immediate action, he manages to alienate many of the other founding fathers, going so far as to insult a peace-loving Quaker member of the Continental Congress, implying that the man suffers from a religiously based moral cowardice, making him a “snake on his belly”. Later, Benjamin Franklin quietly chastens Adams, saying, “It is perfectly acceptable to insult a man in private and he may even thank you for it afterwards but when you do so publicly, it tends to make them think you are serious.” This points out Adams’ primary flaw: his bluntness and lack of gentility toward his political opponents, one that would make him many enemies and which would eventually plague his political career. It would also, eventually, contribute to historians’ disregard for his many achievements. The episode also shows how Abigail innovatively copes with issues at home as her husband was away much of the time participating in the Continental Congress. She employs the use of then pioneer efforts in the field of preventative medicine and vaccination against smallpox for herself and the children.

Part III: Don’t Tread on Me (1777 A.D. – 1781 A.D.)

In Episode 3, Adams travels to Europe with his young son John Quincy during the war seeking alliances with foreign nations, during which the ship transporting them battles a British frigate. It first shows Adams’ embassy with Benjamin Franklin in the court of Louis XVI of France. The old French nobility, who are in the last decade before being consumed by the French Revolution, are portrayed as effete and decadent. They meet cheerfully with Franklin, seeing him as a romantic figure, little noting the democratic infection he brings with him. Adams, on the other hand, is a plain spoken and faithful man, who finds himself out of his depth surrounded by an entertainment- and sex-driven culture among the French elite. Adams finds himself at sharp odds with Benjamin Franklin, who has adapted himself to the French, seeking to obtain by seduction what Adams would gain through histrionics. Franklin sharply rebukes Adams for his lack of diplomatic acumen, describing it as a “direct insult followed by a petulant whine”. Franklin soon has Adams removed from any position of diplomatic authority in Paris. His approach is ultimately successful and was to result in the conclusive Franco-American victory at Yorktown.

Adams, chastened and dismayed but learning from his mistakes, then travels to the Dutch Republic to obtain monetary support for the Revolution. Although the Dutch agree with the American cause, they do not consider the new union a reliable and trustworthy client. Adams ends his time in the Netherlands in a state of progressive illness, having sent his son away as a diplomatic secretary to the Russian Empire.

Part IV: Reunion (1781 A.D. – 1789 A.D.)

The fourth episode shows John Adams being notified of the end of the Revolutionary War and the defeat of the British. He is then sent to Paris to negotiate theTreaty of Paris in 1783. While overseas, he spends time with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Abigail visits him. Franklin informs John Adams that he was appointed as the first United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom and thus has to relocate to the British Court of St. James’s. John Adams is poorly received by the British during this time—he is the representative for a recently hostile power, and represents in his person what many British at the time regarded as a disastrous end to its early Empire. He meets with his former sovereign, King George III, and while the meeting is not a disaster, he is excoriated in British newspapers. In 1789, he returns to Massachusetts for the first Presidential Election and he and Abigail are reunited with their children, now grown. George Washington is elected the first President of the United States and John Adams as the first Vice President.

Initially, Adams is disappointed and wishes to reject the post of Vice President because he feels there is a disproportionate number of electoral votes in favor of George Washington (Adams number of votes pales in comparison to those garnered by Washington). In addition, John feels the position of Vice President is not a proper reflection of all the years of service he has dedicated to his nation. However, Abigail successfully influences him to accept the nomination.

Part V: Unite or Die (1788 A.D. – 1797 A.D.)

The fifth episode begins with John Adams presiding over the Senate and the debate over what to call the new President. It depicts Adams as frustrated in this role: His opinions are ignored and he has no actual power, except in the case of a tied vote. He’s excluded from George Washington’s inner circle of cabinet members, and his relationships with Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton are strained. Even Washington himself gently rebukes him for his efforts to “royalize” the office of the Presidency. A key event shown is the struggle to enact the Jay Treaty with Britain, which Adams himself must ratify before a deadlocked Senate (although historically his vote was not required). The episode concludes with his inauguration as the second president—and his subsequent arrival in a plundered executive mansion.

Part VI: Unnecessary War (1798 A.D. – 1802 A.D.)

The sixth episode covers Adams’s term as president and the rift between the Hamilton-led Federalists and Jefferson-led Republicans. Adams’s neutrality pleases neither side and often angers both. His shaky relationship with his vice president, Thomas Jefferson, is intensified after taking defensive actions against the French because of failed diplomatic attempts and the signing of the Alien and Sedition Acts. However, Adams also alienates himself from the anti-French Alexander Hamilton after taking all actions possible to prevent a war with France. Adams disowns his son Charles, who soon dies as an alcoholic vagrant. Late in his Presidency, Adams sees success with his campaign of preventing a war with France, but his success is clouded after losing the presidential election of 1800. After receiving so much bad publicity while in office, Adams lost the election against his Vice-President, Thomas Jefferson, and runner-up Aaron Burr (both from the same party). This election is now known as the Revolution of 1800. Adams leaves the Presidential Palace (now known as The White House), retiring to his personal life in Massachusetts, in March 1801.

Part VII: Peacefield (1803 A.D. – 1826 A.D.)

The final episode covers Adams’s retirement years. His home life is full of pain and sorrow as his daughter, Nabby, dies of breast cancer and Abigail succumbs to typhoid fever. Adams does live to see the election of his son, John Quincy, as president, but is too ill to attend the inauguration. Adams and Jefferson are reconciled through correspondence in their last years, and both die mere hours apart on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (July 4th); Jefferson was 83, Adams was 90.

Cast

Paul Giamatti as John Adams
Laura Linney as Abigail Adams
Stephen Dillane as Thomas Jefferson
David Morse as George Washington
Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin
Rufus Sewell as Alexander Hamilton
Justin Theroux as John Hancock
Danny Huston as Samuel Adams
Clancy O’Connor as Edward Rutledge
Željko Ivanek as John Dickinson
Ebon Moss-Bachrach as John Quincy Adams
Sarah Polley as Abigail Adams Smith
Andrew Scott as William S. Smith
John Dossett as Benjamin Rush
Mamie Gummer as Sally Smith Adams
Caroline Corrie as Louisa Adams
Samuel Barnett as Thomas Adams
Kevin Trainor as Charles Adams
Tom Hollander as King George III
Damien Jouillerot as King Louis XVI
Guy Henry as Jonathan Sewall
Brennan Brown as Robert Treat Paine
Paul Fitzgerald as Richard Henry Lee
Tom Beckett as Elbridge Gerry
Del Pentecost as Henry Knox
Tim Parati as Caesar Rodney
John O’Creagh as Stephen Hopkins
John Keating as Timothy Pickering
Hugh O’Gorman as Thomas Pinckney
Timmy Sherrill as Charles Lee
Judith Magre as Madame Helvetius
Jean-Hugues Anglade as comte de Vergennes
Jean Brassard as Admiral d’Estaing
Pip Carter as Francis Dana
Sean McKenzie as Edward Bancroft
Derek Milman as Lieutenant James Barron
Patrice Valota as Jean-Antoine Houdon
Nicolas Vaude as Chevalier de la Luzerne
Bertie Carvel as Lord Carmarthen
Alex Draper as Robert Livingston
Julian Firth as Duke of Dorset
Cyril Descours as Edmund Charles Genet
Alan Cox as William Maclay
Sean Mahan as Gen. Joseph Warren
Eric Zuckerman as Thomas McKean
Ed Jewett as James Duane
Vincent Renart as Andrew Holmes
Ritchie Coster as Captain Thomas Preston
Lizan Mitchell as Sally Hemmings
Pamela Stewart as Patsy Jefferson
Buzz Bovshow as John Trumbull

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams_(miniseries)

Stephen Dillane as Thomas Jefferson role was particularly well cast. I have seen many attempts at Jefferson by actors, particularly the Sam Neil portrayal and this one had to be the best of all. The writers could have focused more on the slavery issues and been all caught up in the temperament of our modern times the way the current employees at Monticello do—focusing on the Sally Hemmings aspect of Jefferson’s life as though the man was a raging sexual lunatic. But these interpretations of Jefferson are assumptions based on the faults of modern man. Jefferson was an aristocrat—America’s first—but not in the traditional sense where it was handed to him by his ancestors. Jefferson was just intellectually superior and individually motivated and became an aristocrat by his own choice to be so which is an important distinction. The John Adams miniseries covers this in great detail. I thought the scene of Adams, his wife, and Thomas Jefferson in France witnessing one of the first hot air balloons was particularly captivating. Without the foursome, Adams, Abigail, Jefferson and Franklin there would not be an America today. Even with all the other characters involved, Washington, Sam Adams, Thomas Paine and all the other heroes of the Revolution—it was in essence the polar opposites John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who philosophically molded America with Franklin and Abigail gently directing the two men with warranted criticism and reality. If those four people were not a part of the process so profoundly slavery would still be practiced on earth as a common occurrence in developed countries, and America would have never gotten off the ground beyond the musings of an angry mob in Boston.

Even more so, Jefferson and Adams loved their wives. This I always knew but the HBO series delves into this love in a very mature way that is completely missing from most television dramas. I have now enormous respect for the way Adams loved his wife and wish with every bit of my own essence that such love and respect could return to our society—as I believe it is a fundamental building block of marital sanity. Without Abigail, John Adams would have spun into a haughty lawyer too smart for his own good, and without Adams, Abigail might have closed in on herself from introversion. The two complimented and built a life from friendship that was particularly respectful and free of controversy. Adams in all his time in France never yielded to their flamboyant sexuality—his intellectual position prevented it—which eventually won them over into supporting America in the war with much needed supplies.

But what was most striking was the love of intelligence which both Jefferson and Adams had their entire lives. It was their intellectual capacity and love of learning which launched the nation—not so much the acts of laws and men in times of war. It was the strength of their minds which was evident right up until the time of their deaths that carried America on its back and into the future. The HBO series never wavered from this and displayed it as honestly as possible without being disrespectful in the least. One particular scene in the series was when Adams traveled to England to meet with King George III as the first Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Of course the King was insulted and hostile toward the new nation—it was the first strike against his empire which would eventually crumble away. But when he heard Adams speak, he understood why America had formed and realized that the foundations of intellectual superiority had sprung in the New World and it was because of that—that he lost the Revolutionary War—and he was actually honored. He clearly expected some barbaric heathen which Adams clearly was not. It was a beautiful scene.

Adams was a Federalist while Jefferson was clearly not—he formed the first of the Republican Party of extremely small government minded politics. Adams shared with Hamilton and Washington the notion of much larger government controls which ran contrary to everything they founded the Revolution upon, and the HBO series handles these philosophic conflicts honorably—and honestly. Many of the same arguments permeate politics today, but the HBO series never picks sides—it just presented the information to the best of their ability—which again was quite good.

My opinion about public education—my anger at much of what we see in the world today is the failure of our governments and institutions to give people a proper understanding of history. We have failed as a society to study history properly so that we might have more enriched futures. We have allowed for the eradication and complete revisionism of history in many cases to protect religious belief, and political desire—so work like Adams on HBO are extremely rare, and important. All I have ever wanted in any debate over public education or politics in general is to have the kind of intelligent discussions that Adams and Jefferson had in their lives for the betterment of our times. The ignorance so worshipped these days simply retreats to mechanisms of control and manipulation to win an argument and get laws put in place that essentially steal from producers and give to the lazy—which is something both men would be appalled at. Tom Hanks has done a lot of good work over his many years as an entertainer some of it I enjoy, some I haven’t. He often takes up progressive causes—such as his work in Philadelphia and most recently Cloud Atlas—but in the end he might best be known as the producer of the HBO series Adams. Previously, it might have been Saving Private Ryan, or his role in Forrest Gump or for me his portrayal of Jim Lovell in Apollo 13. The HBO miniseries on Sam Adams will likely be the greatest chapter in the long history of Tom Hanks. I can’t imagine something so good being done by anybody in Hollywood unless someone of his caliber put a lot of love into the project as a producer securing the $100 million dollar budget to pull it off for a cable station—and then pulling in such great actors that had to live up to the high bar he had already set. I don’t think there is another producer out there capable of pulling off something like this any other way. It takes extremely good talent on all sides of the camera to achieve, and Hanks has set the high water mark clearly with this series.

If there is an opportunity to see the HBO series Adams on Netflix or by purchasing it on Amazon—you’d be well suited to do so upon conclusion of this reading. It is an essential part of our history and how America was formed and why. Historians can argue the details but really it is picking fly shit out of pepper when such an epic performance is put on display for public consumption with all the love of people who really poured their heart and souls into a project that would have otherwise never happened. I would go so far to say that not only should every American—child to senior citizen–see this series of movies, but every single member of the world—so that they can see the benefits of minds on fire that wish to only be quenched with freedom from tyranny and all the perils associated with it.

Here, I’ll make it easy for you:

http://www.amazon.com/John-Adams-Paul-Giamatti/dp/B000WGWQG8

http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/John-Adams/70087091?trkid=163822

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

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Part I: Join or Die (1770 A.D. – 1774 A.D.)

Part II: Independence (1774 A.D. – 1776 A.D.)

Part III: Don’t Tread on Me (1777 A.D. – 1781 A.D.)

Part IV: Reunion (1781 A.D. – 1789 A.D.)

Part V: Unite or Die (1788 A.D. – 1797 A.D.)

Part VI: Unnecessary War (1798 A.D. – 1802 A.D.)

Part VII: Peacefield (1803 A.D. – 1826 A.D.)

Cast

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