The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 160,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 7 days for that many people to see it.
When it is wondered why homeschooling is proving more successful than public school, or why Common Core education is so dangerous to the minds of young people, or even in determining the amount of money teachers should be paid, and how often—it must be understood how children learn and achieve. The science of learning must be dealt with, and an assumption that the traditional top down learning system must be abandoned so that an open-minded analysis can be explored beyond cynical protection of the public education government sponsored empire building which has been enslaving children presently and entire societies globally. For that analysis, let me provide a bit of evidence as provided by Delancey place.com regarding a 1999 study in India where Sugata Mitra conducted an experiment that should change the world if only government involvement in education would step out-of-the-way. Governments create the kind of slums talked about in the article below, governments create ignorance, and governments create most of the roadblocks that stand in the way of innovation. If left alone, society would advance much faster toward much more prosperous educational opportunities and social innovation as the proof below will display. Please keep in mind upon reading this that the study was conducted well over 15 years ago as of this writing and that is simply appalling. Sadly it has not been officially endorsed by any serious advocates of education. The reason is that teacher unions do not want innovation, they do not want competition, and they don’t want any model of education that abandons their top down approach because it does not fit their long-term strategy of advocating dependence on government. The purpose of education in public schools is not to teach independence among its students, but dependency—more specifically “interdependency.” Thus, it is an educational system that deliberately works against the way human beings think, feel, and learn—it is in defiance of nature—and is the primary reason that it is a global failure not just in America—be everywhere in the world relative to the kind of educational methods described below.
Continuing Delanceyplace.com’s End of Year Encore Week: This year a full week on creativity.
In today’s encore selection — from Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think
by Peter H. Diamandia and Steven Kotler. A creative approach to education:
“In 1999 the Indian physicist Sugata Mitra got interested in education. He knew there were places in the world without schools and places in the world where good teachers didn’t want to teach. What could be done for kids living in those spots was his question. Self-directed learning was one possible solution, but were kids living in slums capable of all that much self-direction?
“At the time, Mitra was head of research and development for NIIT Technologies, a top computer software and development company in New Delhi, India. His posh twenty-first-century office abutted an urban slum but was kept separate by a tall brick wall. So Mitra designed a simple experiment. He cut a hole in the wall and installed a computer and a track pad, with the screen and the pad facing into the slum. He did it in such a way that theft was not a problem, then connected the computer to the Internet, added a web browser, and walked away.
“The kids who lived in the slums could not speak English, did not know how to use a computer, and had no knowledge of the Internet, but they were curious. Within minutes, they’d figured out how to point and click. By the end of the first day, they were surfing the web and-even more importantly-teaching one another how to surf the web. These results raised more questions than they answered. Were they real? Did these kids really teach themselves how to use this computer, or did someone, perhaps out of sight of Mitra’s hidden video camera, explain the technology to them?
“So Mitra moved the experiment to the slums of Shivpuri, where, as he says, ‘I’d been assured no one had ever taught anybody anything.’ He got similar results. Then he moved it to a rural village and found the same thing. Since then, this experiment has been replicated all over India, and all over the world, and always with the same outcome: kids, working in small, unsupervised groups, and without any formal training, could learn to use computers very quickly and with a great degree of proficiency.
“This led Mitra to an ever-expanding series of experiments about what else kids could learn on their own. One of the more ambitious of these was conducted in the small village of Kalikkuppam in southern India. This time Mitra decided to see if a bunch of impoverished Tamil-speaking, twelve-year-olds could learn to use the Internet, which they’d never seen before; to teach themselves biotechnology, a subject they’d never heard of; in English, a language none of them spoke. ‘All I did was tell them that there was some very difficult information on this computer, they probably wouldn’t understand any of it, and I’ll be back to test them on it in a few months.’
“Two months later, he returned and asked the students if they’d understood the material. A young girl raised her hand. ‘Other than the fact that improper replication of the DNA molecule causes genetic disease,’ she said, ‘we’ve understood nothing.’ In fact, this was not quite the case. When Mitra tested them, scores averaged around 30 percent. From 0 percent to 30 percent in two months with no formal instruction was a fairly remarkable result, but still not good enough to pass a standard exam. So Mitra brought in help. He recruited a slightly older girl from the village to serve as a tutor. She didn’t know any biotechnology, but was told to use the ‘grandmother method’: just stand behind the kids and provide encouragement. ‘Wow, that’s cool, that’s fantastic, show me something else!’ Two months later, Mitra came back. This time, when tested, average scores had jumped to 50 percent, which was the same average as high-school kids studying bio-tech at the best schools in New Delhi.
“Next Mitra started refining the method. He began installing computer terminals in schools. Rather than giving students a broad subject to learn-for example, biotechnology-he started asking directed questions such as ‘Was World War II good or bad?’ The students could use every available resource to answer the question, but schools were asked to restrict the number of Internet portals to one per every four students because, as Matt Ridley wrote in the Wall Street Journal, ‘one child in front of a computer learns little; four discussing and debating learn a lot.’ When they were tested on the subject matter afterward (without use of the computer), the mean score was 76 percent. That’s pretty impressive on its own, but the question arose as to the real depth of learning. So Mitra came back two months later, retested the students, and got the exact same results. This wasn’t just deep learning, this was an unprecedented retention of information. …
“Taken together, this work reverses a bevy of educational practices. Instead of top-down instruction, [these ‘self-organized learning environments’] are bottom up. Instead of making students learn on their own, this work is collaborative. Instead of a formal in-school setting for instruction, the Hole-in-the-Wall method relies on a playground-like environment. Most importantly, minimally invasive education doesn’t require teachers. Currently there’s a projected global shortage of 18 million teachers over the next decade.”
Author: Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Title: Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think
Publisher: Free Press
Date: Copyright 2012 by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Pages: 174-176
Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think
by Peter H. Diamand is by Free Press
So long as education methods stay as they are, human society will suffer, there will be continued poverty, continued subjugation to authority, and a level of ignorance that flat lines across the vast spectrum of society from the highest to lowest levels of archaic pecking order hierarchy. That hierarchy is what public school is all about, and it is what holds back mankind the most from achieving a level of greatness that is on the tip of everyone’s tongue with a free mind able to comprehend that something is terribly wrong. Public education does not work as well as the ‘grandmother method’: just standing behind kids and providing encouragement. ‘Wow, that’s cool, that’s fantastic, show me something else!’ Kids, because of the tendency toward personal profit will work hard to get that personal encouragement from a figure of respect. They do it for the same reason that a business owner tries to make money, or a video game player tries to score more points, or a man takes a woman to dinner hoping to have sex with her—it is the prospect of profit that drives the world, and for kids, all they usually need are the tools with limits removed and an encouraging voice to push them along—and “POOF” success is nearly 100% guaranteed.
Government schools are not about success, they are about combating this essential truth about human beings—they are at war with profit of every kind—the wish to socially engineer such desires from human minds and in so doing, they are destroying what it means to be human. This is why they are detriments to society, and villains where they think of themselves as heroes. They are in denial of the role they play in the destruction of mankind—and all those politicians who help them do it are as complicit to the act as a witness to a murder keeps their mouth shut, and provides a get-away-car for the bandits who committed the crime.
Rich Hoffman
As some may be mystified when I make a lot to do about certain types of movies and I rate them exquisitely high, and then seemingly trail off into a different more contemporary direction for the next series of writings, there is a good reason for it. My wife and I have a number of hobbies we share together, she does a lot of personal crafts–and reads a lot, I read, write, and practice bullwhips—but one thing that we share intensely is a study of evil and the various forms it takes in society. We have intense discussions about parallel universes, and the numbers for infinity contemplating how evil manifests between dimensional planes and grabs lives into this little four-dimensional space we all share on earth. We make a point to see how evil burrows its way between the lines of reality like the roots of weeds and finds its way around a sidewalk brick and goes around solid objects rather than through them. I have often compared our waking world to a 24 frame per second movie—what we view we accept as our reality—however we are really witnessing 24 independent pictures per second which our mind paints together into a functioning comprehension. What exists between frames 18 to 19 or 20 and 21 is a black empty bar separating the pictures from one another which our minds ignore so that we can accept the reality presented in the framed pictures. Often evil lives and comes into our lives in those black spaces, it comes into our minds because we cannot behold two separate realities presented on the same metaphorical film strip at the same time—so we often accept the pleasant pictures of existence rather than try to understand what isn’t so pleasant. It is in that understanding that my wife and I share an intense passion and also gives insight into a world that is acting upon us—but is otherwise invisible.
Religion for me limits this exploration. I enjoy the magnitude of Biblical study and other religious examination into the roots of evil—primarily through mythology, folklore, and philosophy. But mankind’s explorations into evil did not stop in the Dark Ages when many of the religious texts of the world were surmised. They continue—even more so today than ever before in the realm of fiction. It is highly likely that in the distant future once the dust settles on the ages a bit that literary classics like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion will become religions onto themselves—perhaps 2000 to 3000 years in the future. It should be noted that Tolkien considered himself a Christian, but had a deep need to understand the nature of evil as he witnessed it during two World Wars—so he invented a mythology that could explore evil in a way that the old mythology of Satan from The Bible did not go far enough. The desire of any modern society to focus the minds of mankind on ancient traditions and mythologies is so that emotional distance can be maintained between one age now gone and harmless and the new one where much is at stake and power is to be had. So long as the functioning myths of a society are on events 2000 years ago people generally do not see what is happening to them in the world of today as their focus is adrift. But in modern stories like the contemporary Hobbit, writers like Tolkien have tackled that problem directly with the type of story that can be directly applied from Middle-earth, to modern existence.
In the film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Gandalf discovers Black Speech graffiti imprinted on an old ruin, coinciding with a telepathic message from Galadriel imploring him to investigate the tombs of the Nazgul. When Peter Jackson went off on this subplot as the film’s director it has drawn a critical response from Tolkien purists who don’t feel that the work of The Simarillion should be included in the film adaption of The Hobbit. But Jackson did it anyway and I’m very happy that he did because it turned out for me to be one of the most intensely enjoyable parts of the film. Once the three Hobbit films are complete Jackson will have correctly connected the Lord of the Rings trilogy together with The Hobbit in a way that Tolkien didn’t live long enough to do, and that will bring the work to a new audience, which is of utmost importance. Once at the tomb Gandalf discovers that the Nazgûl have been revived by their one true master. This prompts Gandalf to visit the ruins of Dol Guldur which he discovers appears to be dilapidated beyond refute. But this is only an illusion as a spell has been cast over the place to keep its true form from being noticed by the outside world as a mounting army led by the ancient evil form of Sauron—who in this film is a Necromancer—a disembodied spirit organizing events in the world for his triumphant return as the one world ruler. The spell is meant to disguise these efforts so that they cannot be stopped while the rising evil is still vulnerable. The Necromancer confronts the solitary Gandalf and tells him that there is no light in the world that can stop darkness, which then provokes an epic battle of which Gandalf is not quite prepared to deal with.
The cosmological myth prefixed to The Silmarillion explains how the supreme being Eru initiated his creation by bringing into being innumerable spirits, “the offspring of his thought,” who were with him before anything else had been made. The being later known as Sauron thus originated as an “immortal (angelic) spirit.”[5] In his origin, Sauron therefore perceived the Creator directly. As Tolkien noted: “Sauron could not, of course, be a ‘sincere’ atheist. Though one of the minor spirits created before the world, he knew Eru, according to his measure.”[6]
In the terminology of Tolkien’s invented language of Quenya, these angelic spirits were called Ainur. Those who entered the physical world were called Valar, especially the most powerful ones. The lesser beings who entered the world, of whom Sauron was one, were called Maiar. In Tolkien’s letters, the author noted that Sauron “was of course a ‘divine‘ person (in the terms of this mythology; a lesser member of the race of Valar).”[7] Though less mighty than the chief Valar, he was more powerful than many of his fellow Maiar; Tolkien noted that he was of a “far higher order” than the Maiar who later came to Middle-earth as the Wizards Gandalf and Saruman.[8] As created by Eru, the Ainur were all good and uncorrupt, as Elrond stated in The Lord of the Rings: “Nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so.”[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauron
The Nazgûl (from Black Speech nazg, “ring”, and gûl, “wraith, spirit” (presumably related togul, “sorcery”); also called Ringwraiths, Ring-wraiths, Black Riders, Dark Riders, theNine Riders, or simply the Nine are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien‘s Middle-earthlegendarium. They were nine Men who succumbed to Sauron‘s power and attained near-immortality as wraiths, servants bound to the power of the One Ring. They are first mentioned in The Lord of the Rings, originally published in 1954–1955. The book calls the Nazgûl Sauron’s “most terrible servants”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazg%C3%BBl
After the success of The Hobbit, and prior to the publication of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s publisher requested a sequel to The Hobbit, and Tolkien sent them an early draft of The Silmarillion. But through a misunderstanding, the publisher rejected the draft without fully reading it, with the result that Tolkien began work on “A Long Expected Party”, the first chapter of what he described at the time as “a new story about Hobbits“, which became The Lord of the Rings.[2]
The Silmarillion comprises five parts. The first part, Ainulindalë, tells of the creation of Eä, the “world that is“. Valaquenta, the second part, gives a description of the Valar and Maiar, the supernatural powers in Eä. The next section, Quenta Silmarillion, which forms the bulk of the collection, chronicles the history of the events before and during the First Age, including the wars over the Silmarils which gave the book its title. The fourth part, Akallabêth, relates the history of the Downfall of Númenor and its people, which takes place in the Second Age. The final part, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, is a brief account of the circumstances which led to and were presented in The Lord of the Rings.
According to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the Nazgûl arose as Sauron’s most powerful servants in the Second Age of Middle-earth. They were once mortal Men, three being “great lords” of Númenor. Sauron gave each of them one of nine Rings of Power. Ultimately, however, they were bound to the One Ring, and succumbed completely to its power and its seduction:
Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their undoing. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thraldom of the ring that they bore and of the domination of the One which was Sauron’s. And they became forever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows. The Nazgûl were they, the Ringwraiths, the Úlairi, the Enemy’s most terrible servants; darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death. — The Silmarillion, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age”, 346
The corrupting effect of the rings extended the bearers’ earthly lives far beyond their normal lifespans. Some passages in the novel suggest that the Nazgûl wore their rings, while others suggest that Sauron actually held them.
In a letter from circa 1963 Tolkien says explicitly that Sauron held the rings:
They would have obeyed . . . any minor command of his that did not interfere with their errand — laid upon them by Sauron, who still through their nine rings (which he held) had primary control of their wills . . . — The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 246
They were by far the most powerful of his servants, and the most suitable for such a mission, since they were entirely enslaved to their Nine Rings, which he now himself held . . . — Unfinished Tales, p. 338
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazg%C3%BBl
Tolkien’s world as it was portrayed in these massive volumes of work refers to a time on earth that has either long passed, or is in the distant future. It is hard to know in geologic time when these events have transpired. Robert Jordan in his Wheel of Time series took the work that Tolkien did several steps further and wrote 14 massive books, most of them the size of Lord of the Rings. In those books he actually wrote about a period of human history where man were once again regulated to horses and magic—but this was thousands of years after skyscrapers and flying cars, a society hundreds of years ahead of our present time. Society had risen and fallen and went through a rebirth phase—and this appears to be a possibility with the Tolkien work.
In our contemporary time we consider ourselves so sophisticated with our history, our educations, our iPhones, the internet, and modern weaponry, but we are infants looking at just a few frames of film and reality is much more than that. It isn’t hard to see contemporary evidence of the events discussed above happening in the real world around us every single day. However, in order to see them we need a kind of translation of what is happening between those frames of film in our lives—a way to understand them. Tolkien has offered that, and Peter Jackson has provided a proper interpretation in a visual medium that is very powerful, and reaches a lot of people. But evil is very real. We see it and deal with it every day, and it is not enough to pray for help to an interpretation of a God understood thousands of years ago and shaped by centuries of power-hungry churches and empires demanding compliant citizens broken easily by force and faith. Evil must be confronted directly, and we must piss in its eye and eradicate it from our lives the best we can—and before we do that—we must be able to see it, feel it, and touch it. Like Sauron’s stronghold Dol Guldur, the “Hill of Sorcery” the real nature of evil is hidden from our eyes. Study the reason for any public relations firm, and the practical function of them. They are primarily designed to deceive our eyes and minds away from the facts and to direct our attention away from the vile tasks that often accompany their clients. Study how this effect works in public schools and it will be easy to identify that there is a Dol Guldur in each of our communities spreading evil right under our noses, blinding our eyes to a truth that we cannot completely see. CLICK HERE FOR REAL WORLD PROOF OF THIS PHENOMENON.
As I left the movie with my family after the second Hobbit film ended I listened to the people leaving and later read some of the reviews. The assumption was that Peter Jackson was working purely for profit as Warner Brother execs wanted three billion dollar films out of the relatively small novel, The Hobbit—and Jackson was stretching things. Without question that was Warner Brother’s hope, and who could blame them. But Jackson saw a chance to make The Hobbit into what Tolkien likely would have wanted to do in 1937, but had not flushed it all out yet. Jackson simply combined the life work of Tolkien’s study on the nature of evil and put it into three massive three-hour films, two of which are completed at this time. Evil is more studied today than at any point in human history—the book stores are filled with the confrontation between good and evil—it is the central theme of our age. Yet, we are told by modern society that value judgments against evil should not be made—that we should accept those different from us—and when I hear such things—I see the shroud which protected Dol Guldur from the prying eyes of the outside world. And like Gandalf I poke and pry at those barriers because I suspect that evil is hiding behind such facades—and 9.999999999 times out of 10, I am right. It is not because of magic that I’m often right about these things, it is because my wife and I have a habit hobby of defining evil and spotting it from afar the way some people watch birds, or weather patterns. We enjoy it, and are always looking for where it conceals itself. And part of the way we fulfill that enterprise is by studying the various forms that fiction writers of modern myth have used to discover the metaphorical Dol Guldur’s of our lives—those frames around the film that we cannot register, but know are there.
When I witness an honest attempt to confront these problems I tend to get very excited not because what is seen, but what is not. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug taken by itself as an action/fantasy film is decent fun. The effects are sometimes over-the-top, and silly, but the story is not about those things. The ultimate theme of the stories of Tolkien was an exploration of evil and the proper way to meet it with a happy productive life untouched by such forces. It is in this achievement that The Desolation of Smaug is an epic masterpiece that is heads and shoulders above everything else done like it—and the reason it will endure not just for years—but millenniums.
Unlike the fantasy world of Tolkien and his modern version of The Devil in Sauron, it is highly unlikely that only one such creature would evolve into such a state of evil over such a vast span of time, but many. For the context of a story only one such evil can exist otherwise there would be no real narrative flow. As my wife and I believe, there are thousands of Sauron’s in the real world every one of them just as bad as all the others. They may not have magic and sorcery in their arsenal of tools the way these fictional characters do, but they have other tools, and they use them. It is against those that we have a continued and enduring fight, and like Gandalf’s fight against the Necromancer at Dol Guldur it often feels like a tiny light surrounded by constant darkness. Gandalf’s response and valiant fight is why someone like he should be President of the United States and take such thrones of power away from the many who function from evil and desire with every sign of life in the smallest cells of their bodies to touch the One Power of Sauron. They desire such power for all the reasons that evil has ever spread over the lives of man—to be admired, and to shape one’s own destiny. Evil often hides itself behind illusions the same as the one that shrouded Dol Guldur—and only films like The Desolation of Smaug attempt to portray such a thing. So when a film does such a thing successfully, I give it an ambitious review not so much for the content and quality of the film, but for looking evil in the eye and giving it a form that people can relate to—so that they can confront it, and defeat it. And before evil can even be confronted, a firm understanding or right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark and the vileness of evil must be understood clearly. The living world is all about pairs of opposites, death is about unification. In the living world choices must be made—light or darkness—good or evil—one team against the other. There is no other way.
Rich Hoffman
Until I saw the new Hobbit film The Desolation of Smaug my favorite dragon film was the old 1981 flick, Dragonslayer. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. I have been waiting for this Part II of The Hobbit series for a long time—so much so that I have avoided talking about it to keep my excitement level in check. The reason is that the attribute of human society that I most value is mythology, and there is no better exhibition of modern mythology than the Star Wars films and the Tolkien films by the great unpretentious filmmaker Peter Jackson. Mythology in films and novels can communicate complicated aspects of human culture that cannot be communicated any other way and are the hinge pins of modern philosophy—which is directly created by a society’s mythology. I don’t see The Desolation of Smaug as just another fantasy movie—I see it as a functioning mythology that says a lot about the state of our modern existence. A great storyteller like Jackson can pour so much value into a film like this that years of a similar education under an orthodox system of instruction will fail after many years of trying.
There are two basic kinds of dragons in classic mythology, the oriental dragon which is largely a symbol of rebirth, and the European dragon. I spoke about the oriental one the other day when discussing the upcoming film Godzilla. Godzilla is very much an oriental dragon in a modern context. Then there is the European version of dragon, the classic villain of so many movies from Sleeping Beauty to Fantasia, dragons in a European context represent human greed, arrogance, and corruption. If one wanted to understand the major differences between Eastern and Western cultures, their basic interpretations of dragons in mythology would be the place to begin. In the classic 1937 novel, The Hobbit, the dragon villain Smaug is a classic European dragon, and in this updated movie version, he is the king of all dragons ever filmed and put on a screen.
I would say that seeing The Desolation of Smaug is the most important commentary on modern politics that is available to anybody on planet earth presently. A student of politics, philosophy, and social organization could watch MSNBC, Fox News, Politically Incorrect on HBO and achieve a doctorate in psychology, history, and political science—read all the books by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Charles Krauthammer—listen to talk radio for the next 10 years, and there would not be a more accurate summation of the state of our world than in this Hobbit film. The simple line of dialogue between two of the elf characters in the film upon deciding if they should fight on behalf of light or let the world fall to darkness was uttered by, “when did we let evil become stronger than us.” That is what almost every human being is facing on the very day that you are reading this—what are the consequences of living our lives away from the light? How does evil spread? And what do we do about it when we are confronted with it?
The Desolation of Smaug is not just a simple morality tale speaking in generalizations about an ideal existence wrapped in fantasy. It is a commentary—a mythology of the problems experienced in our modern times. The setting has been changed to provide context in a similar way that Star Wars removed time and history with the opening, A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away. The Hobbit is dealing with the very nature of evil, greed, and faulty living that is at the heart of every human being. It is literature on film, and is marvelous to behold.
Smaug as the centerpiece of this latest story is the embodiment of the kind of individual who has taken the world’s wealth by force and sits upon it guarding it religiously. He is the kind of bourgeois that added fuel to the fire of the communist movement where the common man wished to wrestle power back away from such dragons so that they could have their riches away from such greedy bastards. That is why Smaug is a European dragon that sits in this movie upon a pile of gold taken from the Dwarves and their mines. He loves it so much that he has buried himself within it so that he can worship it like a rodent burrows itself into the ground. Many real life wealthy people like Bill Gates, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Warren Buffet give so much money to philanthropy advancing progressive causes because they feel guilt over their wealth. They wish to prove to the world that they are not dragons like Smaug even though in their wealth building years they behaved just like Smaug—rolling their bodies into their confiscated wealth. In the case of Gates, he made his money the correct way with a superior product—but discovered that the world saw him as a Smaug, just as the Dwarves in The Hobbit saw Smaug as a villain who took their wealth. Gates wished to prove that he was not such a Smaug so he began to give mast amounts of money to the public education system in America feeding the teacher unions. In many ways Gates became like the treacherous politicians in Laketown—living in constant fear of Smaug—scheming around the beast to carve their own way to power and wealth. For Gates and his idealism, he became a major supporter of Common Core which seeks to centralize the education process for society. A good intention with a sinister reality which allows corrupt teacher unions to control the kind of curriculum being taught to children—which opens the door for despots to shape the minds of society for the worst. In the film, once the dragon was no longer a threat, the kingdoms of the world now without the fear of Smaug immediately launched themselves into a power play for control of Middle-earth. Smaug as cruel as he was made out to be when confronted by Bilbo in The Lonely Mountain was caught between his own genius and ability to inflict cruelty, and his ability to keep the vast evil that the occupants of Middle-earth possess in check. Only a proper and effective mythology could communicate such a complicated concept.
Peter Jackson is such a great filmmaker. He knows instinctively much of what I write about here because his understanding of mythology allows him to think of things in the large view. He can make a film like the Hobbit movies with an ease that is unfathomable to most Hollywood directors—especially on the scale that this Desolation of Smaug is. Jackson gets it—and people sense that something important is going on in the movie which is why it has made over $500 million world-wide dollars in just two weeks at this point. When he completes the trilogy, of The Hobbit, along with the Lord of the Rings films, Jackson will have completed one of the greatest explorations into the nature of evil ever done by anybody anywhere. Of course Tolkien started the process with his great books, but Jackson has taken the baton and ran with it in a way that few people could ever hope to do, and he does it with a lack of pretension that is simply wonderful.
People who love fantasy stories like this generally are aware that the real world does not have much to offer them. Most of the time, they see too much, and can’t lie to themselves about the nature of reality. So they bury themselves in fantasy where they can relate to the characters that stand for justice, righteousness, and a fight against evil. Doing such things in the real world is considered unrealistic, naive, and foolhardy. So they turn to fantasy and lose themselves to the efforts of gaming, movies, books, and any other attribute a story can bring to a mind hungry for understanding. We all know a Smaug in our life—whether it is a rich uncle, an employer, or even a political power. Most of us think that such dragons must be killed and slayed so that the wealth of the world can return to us. But often—which is an ideal that the writer Ayn Rand was exploring around the same time that Tolkien was exploring Middle-earth—there is a need for such dragons as they prove to be more capable than the greed of the Dwarves, or residents of Laketown. The masses may not like the dragon, but often the dragon is more capable than the masses in dealing with the overwhelming pressure of greed—thus the line at the end of this film by Bilbo—“What have we done?” Bilbo means, we killed the dragon, but we seem to have slayed ourselves in the process.
The Desolation of Smaug is such an important film as it deals with a massive social commentary that is pertinent to our present time in such critical ways. Smaug is one of Ayn Rand’s characters who have failed at life. He is not an overman able to support the world without corruption who creates wealth with creative effort. Smaug took the created wealth of the dwarves with force, not creative effort—and spent the rest of his life guarding that gold because he was unable to create more of it. To Smaug, the wealth was finite, created by others and if he wanted to keep it, he had to hold it greedily with terror which of course everyone in Middle-earth resented. But without Smaug, the people of Middle-earth would be at war with one another constantly. Smaug focused their hate into a direction that only a fire-breathing massive dragon could carry. Bilbo because of his ability as a thief was able to spot a weakness in Smaug and let the people of Laketown know about it. Once that weakness was exploited, and Smaug was removed as a threat, the real work of Sauron, originally known as Malron the Admirable, could begin. Mariron was turned to evil by the Dark Lord Morgoth in the early days of the world, and ever after remained a foe of the Valar and the Free peoples of Middle Earth. We all know people like Sauron too. In fantasy fun is made of combating such figures with magic and battles with fantastic monsters, but the content of such people can be found on a local school board, or machine politics at any level and on both sides. The reason people flock to see these films is not an escape from reality, but to actually see reality as it is masked to us in the light of day.
The second Hobbit film, The Desolation of Smaug is a movie that everyone should see; its great cinema, wonderful story telling, and a visual art of the highest order. Nobody makes films better than these films, except for possibly the upcoming Star Wars films which deal with the same basic content, only in a future/past kind of way. On a scale of 1-5 I give this Hobbit film a 100. It is that good—but only if viewers enjoy exploring the hidden aspects of a society that is not so far away in Middle-earth, but right in front of us all—only not seen because of our educations, and prejudices–a world that can only be revealed to us through mythology.
To understand more fully how powerful mythologies are to all societies, CLICK HERE.
To read more about what I’ve said about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, CLICK HERE.
Rich Hoffman
Obamacare will never, ever, in a million years be a successful enterprise. Unlike when Progressives ran through Social Security, and Medicare against the American public, The United States does not have the financial resources to support such a terrible—socialist oriented concept without wrecking the entire economy. It would seem that since most government jobs require college degrees, that the architects of Obamacare—otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act—would understand why their revision of American health care would be a miserable failure. Unfortunately the issue points to a deeper problem. American colleges are teaching the incorrect fundamentals about virtually everything—and this has led entire regiments of government workers to incorrectly handle problems their educations should have prepared them for. Obamacare will be a failure because of the modern trend of mismanagement indicative of not properly understanding what quality is, or how it’s created and now that it has sunk in Americans are turning against Obama and his health care reforms.
In a telephone poll, taken between December 13-19, it asked 1035 adults — 950 of whom were registered voters — the following question: “As you may know, a bill that makes major changes to the country’s health care system became law in 2010. Based on what you have read or heard about that legislation, do you generally favor or generally oppose it?”
62% of those polled said they oppose the Affordable Care Act (ACA), while support for the law hit an all-time low of just 35%.
The common belief among all government bureaucracies, even those with major contracts with such agencies—mismanagement is rampant. Perhaps it is the heavy instruction of Keynesian economics—socialist indoctrination, left leaning politics, and irresponsible social behavior driving those failures. Virtually nobody is coming out of modern colleges with a basic understanding of management. The belief so common these days is that if jobs are created and a human body is carrying a nameplate on their desk indicating that they are in charge of something—that the job of management is getting done. However, this is not what’s been happening.
Management is more than just showing up for a job—it requires somebody to actually provide leadership and carry productivity toward benchmarks. In modern government nobody carries anything. A roomful of people show up at a meeting and brainstorm on an idea—but nobody ever takes any of the ideas to the next step—because they have been taught that individual achievement is bad, and that collective enterprise is a virtue of the highest order. The net result is that nobody makes decisions, nobody drives productivity, nobody leads anybody anywhere which is why all government projects are perpetually over budget, late, and ultimate failures.
Obamacare was certainly created under these precise circumstances. The intention conceived during brainstorming sessions during 2008 to 2009 sounded good—give poor people health care coverage using socialism to deliver the product to them. However, departments because they lacked basic management skills and did not have skilled people driving their efforts simply threw money at the problems hoping that everything would mysteriously be solved. Even top management officials in the government with Doctorates and Master’s degrees lacked the fundamental skills to manage even basic leadership skills. They were functioning with the belief that all they had to do was show up—and this was the beginning of the end for them. The result is massive overspending on a health care product that hasn’t been able to deliver even a computer interface that is user friendly—even when the best minds in the world are working on the project. The reason is because leadership at the very top is an utter failure—and no matter what happens below those “leaders” the efforts will be negated by the collective hive of incompetence. This is the direct cause of the severe cost overruns of Obamacare.
Americans have now seen all this happening in real-time, and now that its 2014 when the law begins to take effect the urgency of the situation is now on people’s minds. They see failures and the mismanagement, and they aren’t happy—and the poll numbers reflect it. Like a typical clueless bureaucrat Obama and his fellow government workers threw together budget deals in the last-minute, and tied up what they considered loose ends and went on their vacations for the Holiday without a care in the world. Obama is so out-of-touch he appears to not even realize the implications of his failure even as every news station is broadcasting his folly with wall-to-wall coverage all over the world. He’s busy doing “selfies” with celebrities and going to college basketball games like a normal every day guy—because that’s what he is. There is nothing special about Barack Obama other than the ability to con people with lies spoken before large crowds. He can do such things because he is disconnected from reality by his training—like every other government worker who survives that type of work for more than five years.
No amount of money can fix Obamacare because it was conceived in a leadership vacuum—by nobodies without thought. The merit of Obamacare is no different from the five-year old girl who wishes upon a star and expects a wish to come true. Even the child who tells their parents that they wish for the moon, and then they cry when nobody can take it out of the sky and give it to them—Obama is just as unrealistic about his health care reform—and his personal insanity is now costing people money, health, and happiness.
The Tea Party said all this would happen and nobody wanted to listen. Instead they were called names by government workers and hunted down by the IRS, but the reality did not change. Obamacare still failed even when the critics were stuffed away to the fringes of society. It failed because the people who conceived it were failures and lacked management skill—something that money cannot overcome. Great managers can be purchased with money, but money cannot replace good managers—which is a premise that colleges have been teaching for more than 6 decades. Education institutions have been functioning from a belief that all human beings are like Lego blocks, and can be interchanged with one another depending on a desired outcome. They have been selling that colleges make those Lego blocks and once a degree in management, or administration is achieved, then those employees are equipped to show up at a desk and take on that role immediately. But it doesn’t work that way. Quality is more important than knowledge, and colleges do not teach quality—only mimicked behavior of successful people—not what made them successful to begin with.
So welcome mainstream thinkers to the world view that the real leaders of the world have had from the very beginning—those who called Obamacare three years ago a dismal failure that would be a detriment to American society. Welcome to reality—where Obamacare will harm people needlessly, and wreck the best health care system in the world with a socialism that has already crippled Europe. Welcome to the world of failure by government where employees run everything with a rudderless commitment to nothing but ideas concocted by the mind of intellectual infants and overly trained fools. One of those fools is on a beach in Hawaii playing with his kids completely oblivious to the folly of his ways because he doesn’t even have a mind to assess failure from success—other than the wishes of a child who wants the moon—and screams when they can’t have it.
To begin to understand how much extra Obamacare will cost average Americans click the link below:
Rich Hoffman
Christmas gifts always mean more than the actual material value of an item. They often represent how people see you and whether or not they value you or not. I was proud to see that so many different people went well out of their way to give me gifts that held tremendous symbolic meaning. The effort placed into each of them goes recognized by me—unfortunately it would be nearly impossible to include them all here one by one in a way that would not bore everyone reading. However, two gifts jumped out at me as being exceptionally good and deserve some recognition.
The first gift was not given by any particular person, but was just a gift of life itself. My wife and I were in our outside hot tub on Christmas Eve, the temperature was right around 15 degrees Fahrenheit with a bit of a chill to the air. The clouds were moving quickly in the noon day sky and the sun was brilliantly bright. We had a particularly quiet morning, which was a gift in itself and had no place particularly special to go that entire day—so I was very relaxed. The mist was coming up off the water with an intense fog because the water inside the hot tub was 102 degrees Fahrenheit. The zone of air about two feet from the surface of the water was well below freezing while a small bubble of warm air mixed around our heads like a miniature climate indicative of the Earth’s atmosphere. I popped open a Mello Yello for breakfast which had been refrigerated at approximately 32 degrees Fahrenheit and a spew of cloud-like moisture erupted from the can. It was a neat geyser effect that would have only occurred in those specific climatic conditions and was something to marvel at. Watching the mist dance in the air I could only conclude that “life was good.”
The other thing was that my parents gave me an iPad Mini for Christmas. That was a very nice gift but was not the climax of the entire ceremony. My mom wanting to build up the anticipation for the gift had wrapped it with incrementally larger boxes so that the origin box was a rather large thing, kind of a matryoshka doll concept. It was this first box that actually turned out to be the best gift. When I was a kid in the 6th grade that box had a special Star Wars gift in it that was particularly significant. It was just a normal box, but my mom had wrapped it in a special Star Wars wrapping paper that was common in 1979-1980. After I had opened that gift my mom had kept the box. She had wrapped it in a way that the paper was attached to the box. Way back then she made a comment that someday when you’re old I’ll give you another gift in it. When I was at such an age a time like that seemed so remote and beyond thought that I forgot about it. Well, this Christmas my mom had done just that using that old box with the 40-year-old wrapping paper still on it looking like it did when it was new. The paper itself would be the envy of anyone who goes to events like Comic Con, or Gen Con. It was a rare item that was like a piece of archeology from another time and place—and it was. After seeing the box again after so many years I really didn’t want to open all the incrementally smaller presents inside—I was fixated on the box. However, after some time, I did finally unwrap my way to the iPad after about six boxes of barrier
I immediately downloaded Star Wars Pinball onto the iPad with Star Wars Angry Birds and had the time of my life the rest of Christmas playing those games. During the age of the original date of the Star Wars wrapping paper the biggest gifts under a Christmas Tree during those years were small little hand-held football games that were basically little digital sticks that could move across the screen with the rapid push of a button. Now games much more graphically interesting and complicated can be downloaded like nothing for .99 cents onto an iPad and played with almost no moving parts to fail after so many button depressions like those old games were subjected to often. Star Wars Pinball is phenomenally fun, and would be worth $2000 dollars to me just for the sheer delight. It seems unfathomable that such a thing could be downloaded onto an iPad for almost nothing. I knew that in 40 more years some future children would look at my iPad and wonder how on earth I could ever enjoy such a thing—but that box with the Star Wars wrapping paper would still be around to bring a smile to someone’s face—I’d make sure of it. The iPad as cool as it was would have long-lost its value, but the box would be priceless to people who appreciate such things well into the future.
For me it’s those kinds of extra efforts put into gifts that I appreciate. Readers here sent me CDs with special songs on them to remind me that they thought of me during the Christmas Season, and other people went well out of their way to throw me similar curve balls of thought picking out presents for me. And of course my mom fulfilled a promise she made nearly 40 years ago and gave me the box with the Star Wars wrapping paper once again. Getting an iPad is a wonderful gift, and cost a lot of money. But the real value comes when such ceremonies are placed on the ritual to give it the added meaning—and that extra thought is what makes Christmas such a delight.
For those reasons and more I watched another Christmas drift off into the cold January tundra of snow, cold, and gray skies with short days and sidewalks covered in ice with a bit of reminiscent contemplation about a Mello Yello can that spews forth magical mist and a box from my distant past that has brought forth yet again a tool of value for my present age.
Christmas is a wonderful time—and this one of 2013 was one of the best for me.
Rich Hoffman
Young men have two particular modern-day problems—they are always on the lookout for who is “top male.” They do this through games that prove who is smarter, faster, wiser, stronger, or have the ability to win the most females. The other problem they have is embarking on some sort of male ritual proving they have evolved from children to adults. In our modern society they do this through sexual conquest. These days, if a young boy can have sex with a female at 13 to 14 years old—he is considered a stud and will be considered among his peers as a top male. Most young men by the time they reach 23 to 24 years old—if not sooner negotiate with themselves where they fall on this pecking order mentality. Most will live their entire lives comfortable in knowing that they are not at the bottom of the social pecking order among men, but that they are far from the top as well.
Females in spite of all the feminist attempts to make them equal to men are still functioning from their “goddess” power. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. If women are placed in a fox hole with a man, or a group of men in the military—she will be having sex with somebody if not all of them. She will never be considered one of the guys so long as she has breasts, differently shaped hips and other seductive female features opposite biologically from males that want to stick parts of their bodies in those strange shapes. For Christmas I attended several end of the year parties—for the first few rounds of drinks anyway—and if females were present that were over a rating of 5 or more—somebody was trying to have sex with her—no matter if the woman was married, divorced with 20 kids, or whatever color she was. It does not matter to a guy—if the woman has the female parts, she will be pursued as a release for the male’s desires in the same way that the man will look for a restroom when he needs to use it or a restaurant when he is hungry. No rules or blending of the genders through legal intimidation has proven successful—only forced layers of repression. If the woman is over an 8 or more, or is the wife of an important man, she will be pursued for sex by the males who are fighting for a top of the male pecking order food chain. If such a woman is “bagged and tagged” the male will earn respect from his peers. The husband of such a wife will typically lose his status as a top male and will find himself divorced and begging for custody of the children on weekends. If he is a successful person he will then likely seek sex with a woman half his age thinking he is paying back his ex-wife, but really he is simply returning to a compatible mate that is intellectually equal to him. Because he has lost his top male status he seeks to return to the time of selection and be reassessed by the other males using his money and power to steal away from all the young bucks a potential sex partner that would deliver him to a higher pecking order rank once again.
The insult that many have today is that public schools are sold as palaces exempt from this kind of behavior. In these schools this kind of primal conduct is supposed to be replaced by intellectual pursuits—at least that was the intention. Instead, sex, sex and more sex is the dominate activity occurring in public schools—and this mentality is going with the students and teachers back into the mainstream world with great emphasis on personal pleasure. Because of the great equality push to hire women in teaching positions there is no shortage of sex stories between the sexes in public school between student and teacher. The male teachers want to have sex with the hot young girls—the girls who could elevate their pecking order status among the other males—and females want to deliver all the potential “bad boys”—young men needing the love and nurturing of the females “goddess” power to her sexual tools. The more government-run institutions have attempted to assimilate males and females together by stripping value judgments from human activity the worse they have made the sexual interaction problem between the parties—because value judgments often instruct a mind not to engage in destructive behavior. This is obviously the issue with Lauren Harrington-Cooper (you always have to watch women with hyphenated last names) a teacher who found herself having sex multiple times with one of her students. For the boy, he was elevated among his peers for having sex with their teacher—the symbol of authority in their classroom. The teacher is more desirable over the other girls his own age because having sex with the teacher is equal to mastering an authority figure—so this elevates the male in the mind of other males as being closer to a top male. Here is the story as reported by the WND.com
A Pennsylvania English teacher is charged institutional sexual assault for allegedly having sex five times in the past week with an 18-year-old male student.
Lauren Harrington-Cooper, 31, from Plymouth, Pa., is an instructor at Wyoming Valley West High School.
She’s accused of performing oral sex on the senior three times and having intercourse with him twice.
A probable-cause affidavit indicates the sister of the alleged victim told her brother that Harrington-Cooper said he was “hot” on Dec. 13. The sister subsequently gave him the teacher’s phone number.
Harrington-Cooper and the student began texting each other later that day and agreed to “hang out.” She began to pick him up in front of his house or around the corner.
The parents of the alleged victim discovered their son had a “sexually explicit conversation” with a teacher after he borrowed his mother’s laptop and used the free texting website Pinger.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/woman-has-sex-with-student-5-times-in-week/#YsZgO7ELpWfdWkOS.99
In my Spanish class at Lakota many years ago we had a teacher nicknamed Senorita Slut by her students. On my scale she was about a 5 or a 6, but many of the males in my class thought she was hot because she was 26 and weighed about 110 pounds. I didn’t care for her because she always smelled like coffee and had too many freckles. But she would often call young males up to her desk to ask if they needed help understanding her Spanish class. On such days prior to these private conferences she would visit the rest room and come back looking perky and sit down at her desk with her bra missing. Most of the time you could see the bra straps under her cloths from the back, but after returning from the bathroom, those straps were gone. And she’d casually unbutton two buttons and sit forward in her chair as though she were being attentive to the words the students were saying. Going to her desk and speaking with her, it was impossible not to notice her nipples exposed as she’d lean forward letting her shirt drop forward giving a clear view of her breasts. She’d not make eye contact so not to discourage anybody from looking, but would measure the reaction of your face once she leaned back—all the time pretending the whole ordeal was about teaching Spanish. I suspected then, and in hindsight am sure of it, that she was looking for some male to take her up on her offer—earning her the reputation as Senorita Slut.
Public schools are cease pools of this activity. If you have a mildly attractive daughter she is running a constant gauntlet of sexual advances by not only other students but by teachers as well. If you have a confident, ambitious young male son—he is being pursued by females age 18 to 50—because women want to have sex with males who still are trying to work at being “top male.” They don’t enjoy sex with males who are happy to roam in the middle of the pack in the male pecking order. They want to use their goddess power on males who are at the top of their game—which is why hot chicks always fall for rock stars. The rock and rollers may be physically disgusting, but they are confident because it takes a lot of courage to go out in front of 30,000 people and sing—thus women routinely take off their panties and throw them on the stage advertising themselves for sexual fulfillment. Women want males who still work at being the “top male” and men want women who will elevate their peeking order standing with other males. Public schools are wasting billions of dollars in education funding trying to dance around this fundamental problem sending adults into the world more poorly prepared for real life than ever.
When it came to Senorita Slut I went to church all the time and had a value system that told me that it was wrong to sleep with the teacher—or even flirt with her to advance the cause. Not to mention that I have always worked to be top male, and such a woman wouldn’t take me where I wanted to go. She would have been a concession, and that wasn’t appealing. But other males who didn’t want to do all the work of being a “top male” were happy to stare at the breasts of Senorita Slut and take her up on a bit of sexual initiation into manhood. For Senorita Slut—an average girl who couldn’t find any men in her age group still working to be a “top male” the young high school kids still had hope of being “great.” They did not yet have that defeated look on their faces when she’d go out to dinner with them. The high schoolers still had hope, and that made them “hot” to her.
There is absolutely no question in my mind why Lauren Harrington-Cooper found the young 18-year-old student so “hot.” The men in her age group were already well into buying homes, establishing themselves in a career, and having children—and once men arrive at this age they know where they are in the pecking order chain of command with other males. Likely, Harrington-Cooper didn’t like where those males saw themselves and she wanted a male not yet defeated for sexual gratification. Public schools employing such women and men are not equipped to deal with this problem in any way—since the “state” has taken away all value judgment from education—and only value judgment tells a young man to stay away from the horny teacher hungry for love that she can’t find among men her own age. For that reason alone, public schools are some of the most dangerous places on planet earth. Sex is not a harmless enterprise. It may seem like only physical pleasure is the byproduct, but human beings have an added dimension to their sexual experiences—they have memories and feelings—and such actions have consequences whether or not they get caught, lose their jobs or even go to jail. Human beings establish their entire lives off these basic foundations and the young man who lets the teachers in their lives limit their pecking order potential with an easy “bag and tag” are harmed intellectually just as the male destroys a female by swooping in as a man twice her age and branding her his own among other young males who might otherwise be interested in her. The older man is living a destroyed life, the other young men, not so much—and she loses opportunity because of the older male teacher. And public schools have no measure of dealing with these problems because they are in denial of their very existence. It is in this denial that all their problems spring forth—and why they are a menace to society instead of the saviors of it.
Rich Hoffman
I always thought it was strange when I gave an interview once to Michael Clark at the Cincinnati Enquirer how the reporter asked me so many questions about Joan Powell—and what I thought she should do differently to help repair the image at Lakota schools. He came across as having a “man crush” on her, which didn’t seem possible—but to each their own. Later it became obvious that Clark and Powell where intellectual adulterers—cut from the same cloth philosophically. So it should come as no surprise that Clark was salivating over Powell upon her exit from Lakota schools at the end of fiscal year 2013. CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO SEE CLARK’S PARTING TRIBUTE TO POWELL.
http://westchesterbuzz.com/2013/12/17/powell-leaves-lakota-board-leaves-legacy-of-leadership/
For everyone else, Powell was a menace—a power hungry despot that played a lot of political games and used her position at the school to assist her real estate career. I summed up Powell’s career more appropriately than Clark on 700 WLW where Doc Thompson and I poked fun at the kind of things that the Lakota school board wanted to cover up—like the infighting that was going on. Watch the video below to reminisce over those events.
For the collective good of Lakota Linda and Powell put their differences aside and pulled everyone together for another levy attempt at the end of 2011 going into 2012. Powell being an old veteran on school boards run by radical left wingers like Jamie Green and Sandra Wheatley clearly sided with the labor union advocate groups against tax payers, and instead of listing to the voters in the previous three elections decided to go on a public relations campaign against me specifically working very hard behind the scenes to eliminate opposition to her will and unite the community in the same way that she pulled the board together. The situation backfired leaving Lakota to not attempt another levy for 2 more years in spite of having the media, politics, and many latté sipping prostitutes in her back pocket for support. Instead Powell would sanction the spending of many, many thousands of dollars carrying over into the deep six figures hiring specialists that would improve Lakota’s public relations and hopefully win a levy not based on merit, but on pity.
Lakota simply threw looted money at their problems, and then asked for a tax increase to cover the costs. It was a situation of pro public education radicalism at its worst. Powell never portrayed herself as a radical, but her behavior certainly represented such views. This is the legacy of Joan Powell at Lakota—a big spender who used the school to sell homes to panicky young parents who needed a day time babysitter for their children—and Lakota schools through taxation was cheaper than their other options.
Reporters at all the major television stations and of course the papers never felt comfortable covering these follies because of the perception of public education as being the centerpiece of a community. To admit such things as being faulty would be to admit that there are serious social issues afoot that are contextually destructive. So rather than analyze the pro tax radicalism of Joan Powell and past Lakota school boards—they only measured the success rate of levy passage as an indicator of a successful school district. For instance, this is how Clark from the Cincinnati Enquirer framed one of the successful hurdles overcome by Joan Powell during her reign, “The longest operating tax levy losing streak in Lakota history. From 2004 to this fall, voters rejected six of seven school tax hikes. But in November voters narrowly approved a new school operating tax.” The assumption in that comment is that it is taxes that make a successful school, and if every few years taxes are passed—then the school will be considered productive. There is never the question asked as to how long such taxes could be extorted from the public before the whole house of cards comes crashing down—or how many homeowners were forced to leave their homes because of the high taxes. Or, how many businesses folded because of taxes, or how many didn’t sign a lease because the tax rates were too high. The opportunity cost assessment of tax increases were never analyzed by the mainstream media. The only measure of success was whether or not taxes were obtained so that school boards like the one that Powell was president over could throw money at labor union collective bargaining contracts and buy a few more years of peace from that radical progressive element.
For all those reasons the best Christmas present the Lakota school district could have received is the retirement of Joan Powell from the school board. The remaining board members have issues—and lean way too far to the political left—but are not relics from the old corrupt days at Lakota the way Powell was. The challenges to the board from No Lakota Levy have made them function better as a leadership body. People like Powell and the current superintendent Karen Mantia resist that improvement—but the tide is slowly sweeping their type out to sea. That is not to say that all is well at Lakota—but the old guard progressive types like Powell are fading off into nightmarish memory. She is the last of the heavy radicals who occupied the board at Lakota and paved the way for the ridiculously high teacher salaries, the misspending, and the many cover-ups.
The way Powell did it was reporters like Clark ate from her hand like a tamed dog sitting by her side waiting for table scraps of information carefully arranged by Lakota’s public relations people. Without that cooperation Lakota might have actually lived within its means, not dumbed down so many children, and ruined the lives of so many people caught in cover-ups. The path to hell is always paved with good intentions—and I believe that Powell was full of good intentions. The remaining question is—good for who? The answer will come in time. With Powell gone from the board one of the most divisive and manipulative public figures in Butler County is no longer able to do such corrosive damage directly. For me, the best Christmas present I received in 2013 came from the ending of her time as school board member and president. A Lakota without Joan Powell is one that has hope—unless your perspective is a giant state-run school teaching progressive instruction taking society into a Brave New World. In that case, Joan was a Madonna and symbol of radical advancement of left-leaning policies designed to shape the entire world. In that regard, Joan was successful—for those kinds of people.
I will always enjoy knowing that Joan spent several hundred thousand tax payer dollars and two years worth of effort to move voters 4% points only to extort more money from the local residents. Now that is a legacy!
Rich Hoffman
As I was doing research for the Duck Dynasty story, (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW) I ran across an extremely well done video remake of the “Legs” video, by ZZ Top. I thought the video remarkable not for the pornographic nature of it but the content. In it a young man enters a lair of beautiful women situated in various provocative poses. Scattered throughout are other young men who appear to have coupled with some of the women, but the young man does not stop and linger on any of the girls. Instead, he proceeds on until he finds the ultimate beauty which is the apparent object of his quest. For me the video represents the best I have seen on YouTube during the year of 2013. Upon watching it I was immediately reminded of the story the King of Erin and the Lady of Tubber Tintye.
I have told the story of the Lady of Tubber Tintye to my entire family, particularly the women. It is the classic goddess motif summed up within a story of a typical hero adventure. Yet it is so precisely told as to the psychological problem that young men all share and how all societies fundamentally function that I think it has tremendous merit. I ran into the story through my studies of Joseph Campbell, and over the years have argued with several feminists—who went on to write their doctorial thesis on this story as evidence that feminism rules the universe. Only most of them missed the point of the story. Feminists tend to cherry pick the academic observations of people like Campbell who translated generations of mythological tales into the lens of progressive interpretation—which destroys the nature of the story—which was the point of the doctorial thesis interpretations. So what I’d like to do is present to you Dear Reader the story of Tubber Tintye and the King of Erin, then at the end I’ll explain what’s going on and how it applies to that ZZ Top video. The sum of that explanation has the power to restore our society and is not to be taken lightly, or brushed off carelessly as didactic pornography. I will highlight in bold below the passage of the story as it most applies to the aforementioned video. Then I will break down how this metaphor has a direct impact on our current society. Please take the time to read this carefully. It’s very important.
The King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome Island
THERE was a king in Erin long ago, and this king went out hunting one day, but saw nothing till near sunset, when what should come across him but a black pig.
“Since I’ve seen nothing all day but this black pig, I’II be at her now,” said the king; so he put spurs to his horse and raced after the pig.
When the pig was on a hill he was in the valley behind her; when he was on a hill, the pig was in the valley before him. At last they came to the sea-side, and the pig rushed out into the deep water straight from the shore. The king spurred on his horse and followed the black pig through the sea till his horse failed under him and was drowned.
Then the king swam on himself till he was growing weak, and said: “It was for the death of me that the black pig came in my way.”
But he swam on some distance yet, till at last he saw land. The pig went up on an island; the king too went on shore, and said to himself: “Oh! it is for no good that I came here; there is neither house nor shelter to be seen.” But he cheered up after a while, walked around, and said: “I’m a useless man if I can’t find shelter in some place.”
After going on a short space he saw a great castle in a valley before him. When he came to the front of the castle he saw that it had a low door with a broad threshold all covered with sharp-edged razors, and a low lintel of long-pointed needles. The path to the castle was covered with gravel of gold. The king came up, and went in with a jump over the razors and under the needles. When inside he saw a great fire on a broad hearth, and said to himself, ” I’ll sit down here, dry my clothes, and warm my body at this fire.”
As he sat and warmed himself, a table came out before him with every sort of food and drink, without his seeing any one bring it.
“Upon my honor and power,” said the king of Erin, “there is nothing bad in this! I’ll eat and drink my fill.”
Then he fell to, and ate and drank his fill. When he had grown tired, he looked behind him, and if he did he saw a fine room, and in it a bed covered with gold. ” Well,” said he, ” I’ll go back and sleep in that bed a while, I ‘m so tired.”
He stretched himself on the bed and fell asleep. In the night he woke up, and felt the presence of a woman in the room. He reached out his hand towards her and spoke, but got no answer; she was silent.
When morning came, and he made his way out of the castle, she spread a beautiful garden with her Druidic spells over the island, – so great that though he travelled through it all day he could not escape from it. At sunset he was back at the door of the castle; and in he went over the razors and under the needles, sat at the fire, and the table came out before him as on the previous evening. He ate, drank, and slept on the bed; and when he woke in the night, there was the woman in the room but she was silent and unseen as before.
When he went out on the second morning the king of Erin saw a garden three times more beautiful than the one of the day before. He travelled all day, but could not escape, – could not get out of the garden. At sunset he was back at the door of the castle; in he went over the razors and under the needles, ate, drank, and slept, as before.
In the middle of the night he woke tip, and felt the presence of the woman in the room. “Well,” said he, “it is a wonderful thing for me to pass three nights in a room with a woman, and not see her nor know who she is!”
“You won’t have that to say again, king of Erin,” answered a voice. And that moment the room was filled with a bright light, and the king looked upon the finest woman he had ever seen.
Well, king of Erin, you are on LonesomeIsland. I am the black pig that enticed you over the land and through the sea to this place, and I am queen of LonesomeIsland. My two sisters and I are under a Druidic spell, and we cannot escape from this spell till your son and mine shall free us. Now, king of Erin, I will give you a boat to-morrow morning, and do you sail away to your own kingdom.”
In the morning she went with him to the sea-shore to the boat. The king gave the prow of the boat to the sea, and its stern to the land; then he raised the sails, and went his way. The music he had was the roaring of the wind with the whistling of eels, and he broke neither oar nor mast till he landed under his own castle in Erin.
Three quarters of a year after, the queen of Lonesome Island gave birth to a son. She reared him with care from day-to-day and year to year till he was a splendid youth. She taught him the learning of wise men one half of the day, and warlike exercises with Druidic spells the other half.
One time the young man, the prince of Lonesome Island, came in from hunting, and found his mother sobbing and crying.
“Oh! what has happened to you, mother? ” he asked.
“My son, great grief has come on me. A friend of mine is going to be killed to-morrow.”
“Who is he?
“The king of Erin. The king of Spain has come against him with a great army. He wishes to sweep him and his men from the face of the earth, and take the kingdom himself.”
“Well, what can we do? If I were there, I’d help the king of Erin.”
Since you say that, my son, I’ll send you this very evening. With the power of my Druidic spells, you’ll be in Erin in the morning.”
The prince of Lonesome Island went away that night, and next morning at the rising of the sun he drew up his boat under the king’s castle in Erin. He went ashore, and saw the whole land black with the forces of the king of Spain, who was getting ready to attack the king of Erin and sweep him and his men from the face of the earth.
The prince went straight to the king of Spain, and said, ” I ask one day’s truce.”
“You shall have it, my champion,” answered the king of Spain.
The prince then went to the castle of the king of Erin, and stayed there that day as a guest. Next morning early he dressed himself in his champion’s array, and, taking his nine-edged sword, he went down alone to the king of Spain, and, standing before him, bade him guard himself.
They closed in conflict, the king of Spain with all his forces on one side, and the prince of Lonesome Island on the other, They fought an awful battle that day from sunrise till sunset. They made soft places hard, and hard places soft; they made high places low, and low places high; they brought water out of the centre of hard gray rocks, and made dry rushes soft in the most distant parts of Erin till sunset; and when the sun went down, the king of Spain and his last man were dead on the field.
Neither the king of Erin nor his forces took part in the battle. They had no need, and they had no chance.
Now the king of Erin had two sons, who were such cowards that they hid themselves from fright during the battle; but their mother told the king of Erin that her elder son was the man who had destroyed the king of Spain and all his men.
There was great rejoicing and a feast at the castle of the king of Erin. At the end of the feast the queen said: ” I wish to give the last cup to this stranger who is here as a guest; ” and taking him to an adjoining chamber which had a window right over the sea, she seated him in the open window and gave him a cup of drowsiness to drink. When he had emptied the cup and closed his eyes, she pushed him out into the darkness.
The prince of Lonesome Island swam on the water for four days and nights, till he came to a rock in the ocean, and there he lived for three months, eating the seaweeds of the rock, till one foggy day a vessel came near and the captain cried out: ” We shall be wrecked on this rock! ” Then he said, “There is some one on the rock; go and see who it is.”
They landed, and found the prince, his clothes all gone, his body black from the seaweed, which was growing all over it.
“Who are you? ” asked the captain.
“Give me first to eat and drink, and then I’ll talk,” said he.
They brought him food and drink; and when he had eaten and drunk, the prince said to the captain: “What part of the world have you come from?
“I have just sailed from Lonesome Island,” said the captain. “I was obliged to sail away, for fire was coming from every side to burn my ship.”
“Would you like to go back?”
“I should indeed.”
“Well, turn around; you’ll have no trouble if I am with you.”
The captain returned. The queen of Lone-some Island was standing on the shore as the ship came in.
“Oh, my child!” cried she, ” why have you been away so long?”
The queen of Erin threw me into the sea after I had kept the head of the king of Erin on him, and saved her life too.
“Well, my son, that will come up against the queen of Erin on another day.”
Now, the prince lived on Lonesome Island three years longer, till one time he came home from hunting, and found his mother wringing her hands and shedding bitter tears.
“Oh! what has happened?” asked he.
“I am weeping because the king of Spain has gone to take vengeance on the king of Erin for the death of his father, whom you killed.”
“Well, mother, I’ll go to help the king of Erin, if you give me leave.”
“Since you have said it, you shall go this very night.”
He went to the shore. Putting the prow of his bark to the sea and her stern to land, he raised high the sails, and heard no sound as he went but the pleasant wind and the whistling of eels, till he pulled up his boat next morning under the castle of the king of Erin and went on shore.
The whole country was black with the troops of the king of Spain, who was just ready to attack, when the prince stood before him, and asked a truce till next morning.
“That you shall have, my champion,” answered the king. So there was peace for that day.
Next morning at sunrise, the prince faced the king of Spain and his army, and there followed a struggle more terrible than that with his father; but at sunset neither the king of Spain nor one of his men was left alive.
The two sons of the king of Erin were frightened almost to death, and hid during the battle, so that no one saw them or knew where they were. But when the king of Spain and his army were destroyed, the queen said to the king: ” My elder son has saved us.” Then she went to bed, and taking the blood of a chicken in her mouth, spat it out, saying: “This is my heart’s blood; and nothing can cure me now but three bottles of water from Tubber Tintye, the flaming well.”
When the prince was told of the sickness of the queen of Erin, he came to her and said: ” I’ll go for the water if your two sons will go with me.”
“They shall go,” said the queen; and away went the three young men towards the East, in search of the flaming well.
In the morning they came to a house on the roadside; and going in, they saw a woman who had washed herself in a golden basin which stood before her. She was then wetting her head with the water in the basin, and combing her hair with a golden comb. She threw back her hair, and looking at the prince, said: ” You are welcome, sister’s son. What is on you? Is it the misfortune of the world that has brought you here?”
“It is not; I am going to Tubber Tintye for three bottles of water.”
“That is what you’ll never do; no man can cross the fiery river or go through the enchantments around Tubber Tintye. Stay here with me, and I’ll give you all I have.”
“No, I cannot stay, I must go on.”
“Well, you’ll be in your other aunt’s house tomorrow night, and she will tell you all.”
Next morning, when they were getting ready to take the road, the elder son of the queen of Erin was frightened at what he had heard, and said:
“I am sick; I cannot go farther.”
“Stop here where you are till I come back,” said the prince. Then he went on with the younger brother, till at sunset they came to a house where they saw a woman wetting her head from a golden basin, and combing her hair with a golden comb. She threw back her hair, looked at the prince, and said: “You are welcome, sister’s son! What brought you to this place? Was it the misfortune of the world that brought you to live under Druidic spells like me and my sisters?” This was the elder sister of the queen of the Lonesome Island.
“No,” said the prince; “I am going to Tubber Tintye for three bottles of water from the flaming well.”
“Oh, sister’s son, it’s a hard journey you ‘re on! But stay here to-night; to-morrow morning I’ll tell you all.”
In the morning the prince’s aunt said: “The queen of the Island of Tubber Tintye has an enormous castle, in which she lives. She has a countless army of giants, beasts, and monsters to guard the castle and the flaming well. There are thousands upon thousands of them, of every form and size. When they get drowsy, and sleep comes on them, they sleep for seven years without waking. The queen has twelve attendant maidens, who live in twelve chambers. She is in the thirteenth and innermost chamber herself. The queen and the maidens sleep during the same seven years as the giants and beasts. When the seven years are over, they all wake up, and none of them sleep again for seven other years. If any man could enter the castle during the seven years of sleep, he could do what he liked. But the island on which the castle stands is girt by a river of fire and surrounded by a belt of poison-trees.”
The aunt now blew on a horn, and all the birds of the air gathered around her from every place under the heavens, and she asked each in turn where it dwelt, and each told her; but none knew of the flaming well, till an old eagle said: ” I left Tubber Tintye to-day.”
“How are all the people there? ” asked the aunt.
“They are all asleep since yesterday morning,” answered the old eagle.
The aunt dismissed the birds; and turning to the prince, said, ” Here is a bridle for you. Go to the stables, shake the bridle, and put it on whatever horse runs out to meet you.”
Now the second son of the queen of Erin said:
“I am too sick to go farther.”
“Well, stay here till I come back,” said the prince, who took the bridle and went out.
The prince of the Lonesome Island stood in front of his aunt’s stables, shook the bridle, and out came a dirty, lean little shaggy horse.
“Sit on my back, son of the king of Erin and the queen of Lonesome Island,” said the little shaggy horse.
This was the first the prince had heard of his father. He had often wondered who he might be, but had never heard who he was before.
He mounted the horse, which said: ” Keep a firm grip now, for I shall clear the river of fire at a single bound, and pass the poison-trees; but if you touch any part of the trees, even with a thread of the clothing that’s on you, you’ll never eat another bite; and as I rush by the end of the castle of Tubber Tintye with the speed of the wind, you must spring from my back through an open window that is there; and if you don’t get in at the window, you ‘re done for. I’ll wait for you outside till you are ready to go back to Erin.”
The prince did as the little horse told him. They crossed the river of fire, escaped the touch of the poison-trees, and as the horse shot past the castle, the prince sprang through the open window, and came down safe and sound inside.
The whole place, enormous in extent, was filled with sleeping giants and monsters of sea and land, – great whales, long slippery eels, bears, and beasts of every form and kind. The prince passed through them and over them till he came to a great stairway. At the head of the stairway he went into a chamber, where he found the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, stretched on a couch asleep. ” I’II have nothing to say to you,” thought he, and went on to the next; and so he looked into twelve chambers. In each was a woman more beautiful than the one before. But when he reached the thirteenth chamber and opened the door, the flash of gold took the sight from his eyes. He stood a while till the sight came back, and then entered. In the great bright chamber was a golden couch, resting on wheels of gold. The wheels turned continually; the couch went round and round, never stopping night or day. On the couch lay the queen of Tubber Tintye; and if her twelve maidens were beautiful, they would not be beautiful if seen near her. At the foot of the couch was Tubber Tintye itself, – the well of fire. There was a golden cover upon the well, and it went around continually with the couch of the queen.
“Upon my word,” said the prince, “I’ll rest here a while.” And he went up on the couch, and never left it for six days and nights.
On the seventh morning he said, ” It is time for me now to leave this place.” So he came down and filled the three bottles with water from the flaming well. In the golden chamber was a table of gold, and on the table a leg of mutton with a loaf of bread; and if all the men in Erin were to eat for a twelvemonth from the table, the mutton and the bread would be in the same form after the eating as before.
The prince sat down, ate his fill of the loaf and the leg of mutton, and left them as he had found them. Then he rose up, took his three bottles, put them in his wallet, and was leaving the chamber, when he said to himself: “It would be a shame to go away without leaving something by which the queen may know who was here while she slept.” So he wrote a letter, saying that the son of the king of Erin and the queen of the Lonesome Island had spent six days and nights in the golden chamber of Tubber Tintye, had taken away three bottles of water from the flaming well, and had eaten from the table of gold. Putting this letter under the pillow of the queen, he went out, stood in the open window, sprang on the back of the lean and shaggy little horse, and passed the trees and the river unharmed.
When they were near his aunt’s house, the horse stopped, and said: ” Put your hand into my ear, and draw out of it a Druidic rod; then cut me into four quarters, and strike each quarter with the rod. Each one of them will become the son of a king, for four princes were enchanted and turned into the lean little shaggy horse that carried you to Tubber Tintye. When you have freed the four princes from this form you can free your two aunts from the spell that is on them, and take them with you to Lonesome Island.”
The prince did as the horse desired; and straightway four princes stood before him, and thanking him for what he had done, they departed at once, each to his own kingdom.
The prince removed the spell from his aunts, and, travelling with them and the two sons of the queen of Erin, all soon appeared at the castle of the king.
When they were near the door of their mother’s chamber, the elder of the two sons of the queen of Erin stepped up to the prince of Lonesome Island, snatched the three bottles from the wallet that he had at his side, and running up to his mother’s bed, said:
“Here, mother, are the three bottles of water which I brought you from Tubber Tintye.”
“Thank you, my son; you have saved my life,” said she.
The prince went on his bark and sailed away with his aunts to Lonesome Island, where he lived with his mother seven years.
When seven years were over, the queen of Tubber Tintye awoke from her sleep in the golden chamber; and with her the twelve maidens and all the giants, beasts, and monsters that slept in the great castle.
When the queen opened her eyes, she saw a boy about six years old playing by himself on the floor. He was very beautiful and bright, and he had gold on his forehead and silver on his poll. When she saw the child, she began to cry and wring her hands, and said: ” Some man has been here while I slept.”
Straightway she sent for her Seandallglic (old blind sage), told him about the child, and asked:
“What am I to do now?”
The old blind sage thought a while, and then said: “Whoever was here must be a hero; for the child has gold on his forehead and silver on his poll, and he never went from this place without leaving his name behind him. Let search be made, and we shall know who he was.”
Search was made, and at last they found the letter of the prince under the pillow of the couch. The queen was now glad, and proud of the child.
Next day she assembled all her forces, her giants and guards; and when she had them drawn up in line, the army was seven miles long from van to rear. The queen opened through the river of fire a safe way for the host, and led it on till she came to the castle of the king of Erin. She held all the land near the castle, so the king had the sea on one side, and the army of the queen of Tubber Tintye on the other, ready to destroy him and all that he had. The queen sent a herald for the king to come down.
“What are you going to do?” asked the king when he came to her tent. “I have had trouble enough in my life already, without having more of it now.”
“Find for me,” said the queen, “the man who came to my castle and entered the golden chamber of Tubber Tintye while I slept, or I’ll sweep you and all you have from the face of the earth.
The king of Erin called down his elder son, and asked: ” Did you enter the chamber of the queen of Tubber Tintye?”
“I did.”
“Go, then, and tell her so, and save us.”
He went; and when he told the queen, she said:
“If you entered my chamber, then mount my gray steed.”
He mounted the steed; and if he did, the steed rose in the air with a bound, hurled him off his back, in a moment, threw him on a rock, and dashed the brains out of his head.
The king called down his second son, who said that he had been in the golden chamber. Then he mounted the gray steed, which killed him as it had his brother.
Now the queen called the king again, and said:
“Unless you bring the man who entered my golden chamber while I slept, I ‘II not leave a sign of you or anything you have upon the face of the earth.”
Straightway the king sent a message to the queen of Lonesome Island, saying: ” Come to me with your son and your two sisters!”
The queen set out next morning, and at sunset she drew up her boat under the castle of the king of Erin. Glad were they to see her at the castle, for great dread was on all.
Next morning the king went down to the queen of Tubber Tintye, who said: “Bring me the man who entered my castle, or I’ll destroy you and all you have in Erin this day.”
The king went up to the castle; immediately the prince of Lonesome Island went to the queen.
“Are you the man who entered my castle?” asked she.
“I don’t know,” said the prince.
“Go up now on my gray steed! ” said the queen.
He sat on the gray steed, which rose under him into the sky. The prince stood on the back of the horse, and cut three times with his sword as he went up under the sun. When he came to the earth again, the queen of Tubber Tintye ran over to him, put his head on her bosom, and said:
“You are the man.”
Now she called the queen of Erin to her tent, and drawing from her own pocket a belt of silk, slender as a cord, she said: ” Put this on.”
The queen of Erin put it on, and then the queen of Tubber Tintye said: ” Tighten, belt! ” The belt tightened till the queen of Erin screamed with pain. “Now tell me,” said the queen of Tubber Tintye, “who was the father of your elder son.”
“The gardener,” said the queen of Erin.
Again the queen of Tubber Tintye said:
“Tighten, belt! ” The queen of Erin screamed worse than before; and she had good reason, for she was cut nearly in two. ” Now tell me who was the father of your second son.”
“The big brewer,” said the queen of Erin.
Said the queen of Tubber Tintye to the king of Erin: ” Get this woman dead.”
The king put down a big fire then, and when it was blazing high, he threw the wife in, and she was destroyed at once.
Now do you marry the queen of Lonesome Island, and my child will be grandchild to you and to her,” said the queen of Tubber Tintye.
This was done, and the queen of Lonesome Island became queen of Erin and lived in the castle by the sea. And the queen of Tubber Tintye married the prince of Lonesome Island, the champion who entered the golden chamber while she slept.
Now the king of Erin sent ten ships with messages to all the kings of the world, inviting them to come to the wedding of the queen of Tubber Tintye and his son, and to his own wedding with the queen of Lonesome Island.
The queen removed the Druidic spells from her giants, beasts, and monsters; then went home, and made the prince of Lonesome Island king of Tubber
What is missing from our modern age is that the Lady of Tubber Tintye types, the goddesses of our society have been destroyed by feminism. The goal of such goddesses in tales such as this is to provoke in young men the ultimate prize. To apply this story to the ZZ Top video above, the hero protagonist could have stopped and engaged in sexual delight with any of the previous women of the Lady’s chamber, but he held out until he discovered the ultimate prize. However, along the way he witnessed many men had fallen for the women in the first few rooms—and those men were of lower quality. They had failed in their quest—and settled.
The modern progressive approach to this problem because not all women can be of a quality like the Lady of Tubber Tintye is to make them equal to the guys in the first few rooms—the failed ones who settled too easily and quickly for sexual gratification. If one were to break down the fundamental mentality of all progressive philosophy and how it directly applies to Common Core education, feminism, gay rights, and government statism—at the core of their approach is the destruction of such goddess symbols in our society.
The reason is that such women become matriarchs of their families and the destruction of family units are what progressives are after—so that the collective state will replace the matriarch and patriarch of the modern family. By removing the Tubber Tintye type women from culture, statists take away the incentive for strong-willed men to proceed along looking for the perfect sexual experience. By destroying the image of the goddess which most men yearn for—like the guy in the ZZ Top video—they force all men to settle with common women in the first few rooms with a kind of intellectual orgy arranged by progressives for their benefit.
I married a Lady of Tubber Tintye. She made me work hard for the bliss of her spinning couch. And because she did, I valued our relationship. And because I valued that relationship, the products of that union, the children, the nieces, the nephews, the in-laws, all the aspects of it have increased value because of my raised awareness of their importance—again brought forth by the struggle to resist the temptation to pick women from the first couple of rooms—the common girls who were only booby traps to hold intellectual pursuits suppressed with a sexual ecstasy that is conciliatory—not ecstatic. The tragedy is that not all women are qualified to be Lady’s of Tubber Tintye, just as all men are not qualified to be The Prince of Lonesome Island. But all men and all women should strive to be—even if they fall short. Because such struggles are what bring forth quality, higher quality people, higher quality relationships, and higher quality intellects. Through the struggle of existence—in this case of the Prince of Lonesome Island to seeking three bottles of water from a sacred well at Tubber Tintye, we solve the problems of living life.
Stories like this Tubber Tintye story have a level of sophistication that is not present in our current society. With all the tools available to the 21st Century human being—we are more asleep than ever, primarily because of the imposition that global politics has played through the progressive movement to redefine the roles that rest at the heart of social psychology. The political and social progressive is attempting to recreate the human mind and they are failing. The intention is to destroy the motive of individual achievement in favor of statism. Young men are discouraged from attempting to win their Lady of Tubber Tintyes by removing through feminism women who are capable of raising the level of society through their goddess power.
A woman does not have to be beautiful in the classic sense to be a Lady of Tubber Tintye. They may not have physical beauty. However, what is in their heart must compensate, and many women fall into this category. They may lack sexual prowess, but harness motherly care that husbands and children both yearn for. They may not be as beautiful as the women in the ZZ Top video, but are beautiful in other ways that cannot be photographed. For the sake of story, physical beauty is the proper metaphor for the kind of beauty that comes from such women.
I have yet to see an academic from any of the mainstream colleges, the Yale types, the Harvards, the Oxfords who can pass through a college professor gatekeeper an interpretation of that Tubber Tintye story without slanting it toward the modern interpretation of feminism as advanced through progressive theory. Just as progressives have done with the gay rights dialogue, they have attempted to capture the message by redefining the words. In the case of the Tubber Tintye story the definition of “goddess” has been changed by modern academia not to hold sexual superiority to men, and a boon to the world through phallic power achieved because of the desire to win a woman, but to make the woman the equalizer of all society—by making them equal to men. The men as they enter the various chambers of the Lady of Tubber Tintye mostly fall victim to the women of the first twelve rooms. They did not have the power in themselves to hold out until the last room where the golden lady resided. Most of the time they are like the Queen of Erin’s sons—cowards conceived out of adulterous lust and shameless value. This initiation process brought forth the trial and tribulations which allowed the young prince to solve the problems of his kingdom. Under modern progressive interpretation, the message to all women is to be one of the girls in the first rooms so there is no ultimate goal at the end on a golden couch. Make it easy for the men so they are all equal, and make it easy for all the other girls, since they are not goddesses, but only gate keepers to the ultimate prize.
Out of my hundreds of daily readers I am aware that only two or three will read this entire story—and understand what the purpose is. But for those two or three, I do the work because it is extremely important to understand. Without a firm understanding of these basic concepts, society will be destroyed and redefined by inferior minds built by the lazy good for nothings in the first few rooms of that ZZ Top video. The video itself was clearly done by filmmakers aware of this Tubber Tintye story. For commercial reasons it was done in a sexy way to entice viewers. However, the reason the visuals work on a primal level for males, and females is that they understand the story of Tubber Tintye from an innate appreciation of such stories. Most every young boy dreams of growing up and slaying dragons, and winning a woman like the one in the Tubber Tintye story. From the ages of 1 to 12 they all have a chance of hitting it big time with such a woman. However, once they begin to use sex as proof of their manhood they tend to make concessions and end up often with the kind of women in the first few rooms—airheads that look nice, but have little really going on behind the eyes. The men who jump at such women might find them in real society in brothels, escort services, strip joints, or ladder climbers at their places of business. If they take on those kinds of girls they’ll never reach their own version of the Lady of Tubber Tintye at the end of the long hall in the 13th room.
The job of all women is to attempt to become a Lady of Tubber Tintye, and not to settle in their lives into being one of the try-out girls on the way snagging up all the weak-minded men. The progressive movement is entirely about destroying the Lady of Tubber Tintye types so that no man has the option of one. In such an absence, personal kingdoms collapse to the will of statism and government can rule every individual mind as the sex obsessed must cohabitate with all the would be Prince of Lonesome Island. This story is my Christmas present to my readers—even though I know most people will not understand it. I have to try. Understanding this story is the key to the freedom movement and the proper restoration of the American family. Understanding this story will destroy progressivism and restore health to all world cultures—if only people would accept the root definitions of the role women have to a man’s mind, and how important that role is to the preservation of mankind. I’m not talking about a throwback to the times of the cowboy, or the 1950s, but the primal underpinnings of mythology that reside as far back as the first flicker of fire from an emerging Neanderthal.
If you are a woman, be the Lady of Tubber Tintye to your family. If you are a man, be the Prince of Lonesome Island. In the ZZ Top video, the protagonist is a modern Prince. Be that guy—and you will not only save yourself, your future family, but all of humanity by avoiding the easy girls in the first rooms of temptation. Save your energy for the Lady on the Golden Couch in the 13th room, because only she is worth the effort and that effort will save the world and everyone in it. The Lady of Tubber Tintye is Ariel from the film The Litter Mermaid, she is Princess Leia from Star Wars, she is Christine from Phantom of the Opera—she is every major character in every major story in the history of all stories. The Lady of Tubber Tintye is even Mia Wallace from the film Pulp Fiction—it doesn’t matter that she was a drug addict—she as the goddess who had the power to pull Vincent Vega into a place he had never considered going before. She is the Virgin Mary who brought Jesus into the world, or depending on religious conviction, she is Mary Magdallen who served as inspiration to stand up to the Pharisees in the darkest of times prior to his conviction and execution. Every major successful story has a Lady of Tubber Tintye—even in The Lord of the Rings where the female goddess image has been replaced metaphorically as The Shire, which is an actual place. Galadriel, Arwen, and Éowyn, serve as the typical goddess figures, Galadriel pulls the Hobbits together for the bravery needed for their quest, Arwen does the same for Aragorn and Eowyn performs this task for her entire kingdom ultimately saving her father from the treachery of Worm Tongue and the forces behind him. But the female goddess of Tubber Tintye is the actual Shire for the purposes of plot. All good stories have a Tubber Tintye character just as all good families do, and marriages. Without some goddess figures in the lives of the men, everything perishes—plot, motivation—even the willpower to get out of bed in the morning. Is it any wonder that so many young men cannot find the ambition to get up in the morning………..when sex is placed so easily before them in the first few rooms of their life—what is their to work for? The answer is nothing.
Men and women are not equal. They are different. Men need women to provide intended focus. Those who do not have women in their lives tend to drift through life unfocused and full of folly. On the other hand, women will look for many years and wait patiently for their own version of the Prince of the Lonely Island. Some go their entire lives continuing to look for him—even after they have long married and had children. Social pressure often pushes them into the arms of men they marry to please their parents, but their hearts are seldom in it. That was the story of Francesca Johnson from the novel The Bridges of Madison County which mysteriously sold over 50 million copies. The story featured a four-day affair with the noble character Robert Kincaid after years of marriage to a good man—but a common farmer not worthy of her healing power on the golden couch—not willing to take water out of a flaming well for anybody so long as the crops were ready for the state fair. More contemporarily, she is Anastasia “Ana” Steele the 21-year-old college senior attending Washington State University in Vancouver, Washington taming through sexual bondage the billionaire 27-year-old Christian Grey. All those stories feature a goddess figure that heals the world through her love and power. If that element is removed, the story falls flat nearly 100% of the time. And the results are absolutely no different in real life—when a strong female is not driving quality in her relationships, the world falls apart. She is different from men who do not have this power. Men have the power to slay dragons and wage war with each other—but women provide the context for the value in it. If the woman is corrupt, then the endeavor becomes corrupt. If the woman is righteous, such as in the Lady of Tubber Tintye—there is goodness for all as a direct byproduct of her effort.
These things cannot be escaped from—they are the rules of life. They cannot be willed from existence such as progressives hope to do with homosexual endorsements. Men and women cannot be made equal with hope and prayers. Such equality cannot be given through legislation. The desire for the Ladies of Tubber Tintye is deep in the heart of all people everywhere. It comes out in our oldest and newest stories and are legends for a reason. Stories that do a good job at capturing the latest Tubber Tintye version make millions of dollars not because of some trick, but because these are the stories that people crave to see—as there is a truth in those stories that cannot be reached any other way. The lesson, which is captured so eloquently in the ZZ Top “Legs” video, is that the message that still has the most power in our culture whether it be a movie, a song, or an ad for sunglasses—is the woman is the vehicle to reach some higher place. Get a better job get a better woman. Drive a better car, get a better woman. Dress nicely, get approval from better women. Put on cologne, and gain the attraction of better women. Goddess figure women are the dominate drivers of culture from selling jeans to automobiles. Advertisers who have experimented with more gender neutral images find that their sales plummet, because the world is driven by the image and promise of the Lady of Tubber Tintye. Women do not function from the same mentality. They know innately that they are trying to appeal to be that woman from the golden couch. They get their nails done hoping their men will work to appeal to them, their hair, their ear rings, their perfume, their diets—all in a hope of finding a Prince of the Lonesome Island who will seek their well of flaming water. If they are lucky women, they marry such Princes, but most don’t. They instead become bitter hags, school levy supporters, progressive bitches and detriments to all humanity. They spend billions of dollars a year to try to pretend they are Ladies of Tubber Tintye, but because of their poor decisions, are simply women of that first room—taken by the most impatient and weak men lacking the willpower to hold out for the best of the best—the woman on the Golden Couch spinning at the center of the world and the power that drives everything.
I could write a book about this topic and make a lot of money from it. If I wanted to, I could probably take this act on the road and do speaking engagements on the topic. But I offer it to those here with the gumption to read it for free. It is my hope that you Dear Reader will take the time to read and study all this and learn from it. If you do, the world can begin to solve some of its problems, and in the end—that’s all I want.
Rich Hoffman
A good friend of mine who sometimes opines here grew a long beard like the Duck Dynasty guys during an age when it was really unpopular. He was only 25 years old at the time so he looked oddly out-of-place everywhere he went—which was fine with me. I enjoyed his brand of rebellion, so the odd looks suited my entertainment. We’d go out to eat at a Wendy’s or McDonald’s, I’d have my hat on, he’d have his long flowing beard and people thought we stepped out of the Appalachian mountains while other people our age were dressing in the latest campus fashions. During the 90s nobody who lived near a city grew beards like that—only motorcycle riders, and mountain men. That guy was a genius level personality who wanted desperately to be a mountain man—but too many social entanglements prevented it at the time. So he grew a beard that would have made ZZ Top jealous. But after a while, he moved through that phase and decided to shave it off and go clean shaven—so he cut the thing off and hung it on a wall in his bathroom, fully intact. It was all woven together like someone had knitted it, and hung it in a mask like form on the wall next to his sink. My daughters were scared of using the restroom at his home because of that beard. They didn’t want to be in the same room with it.
So I have a little history with the type of people who are in the Duck Dynasty show. There are quite a few of them who live from Appalachia to Utah. They are quite common around Bristol, Tennessee, and can often be seen living in trailers in the middle of Idaho—living debt free and seeking no human entanglements. If a person were to go to the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota, a lot of those beards would be seen. They are as common as air in a place like that. But in New York and Los Angeles they are an anomaly. In those progressive cities, the European sensibilities have taken root from across both ponds, and people just don’t do those kinds of things. Rugged individualism is a concept of wonder that they cannot grasp, which is why a progressive cable channel like A&E put the Robertson family on television to begin with—as a kind of eccentric fascination that the folks on Brand, and Wilshire Blvd could gawk at and feel good about themselves. They had no idea they were tapping into a reservoir of unrepresented frustration experienced throughout the rest of the country. So I can see how they would be upset when A&E had to run up against the comments of Phil Robertson’s GQ interview about homosexual behavior—which represents most of the country’s opinion. The LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transvestites) community represents around 3% of the total American population, but as a lobby force—since they have made themselves the squeaky wheels—they have captured the interests of major corporations terrified of activism lawsuits, if discrimination is shown toward gay oriented people. So to prove corporations are open to all forms of living—so to avoid parasitic social shaping lawsuits, most corporations have come out in open acceptance of gay behavior—which was the reason for the aggressive action by the LGBT community regarding Phi Robertson.
Most corporate types lack any personal convictions—so they see no problem yielding to the LGBT community. It is good business to show acceptance to all lifestyles. Unfortunately for them, they are not very good at predicting content that the American people want—so they often happen across success by accident—which clearly was the case with the Duck Dynasty people. They are used to celebrities who have found fame and fortune bending to their will to keep the money train humming along—and that includes yielding to special interest advocates like the LGBT community. They are not used to celebrities like Phil Robertson who are functioning from an authenticity that is not for sale. People like Phil Robertson are who they are whether or not they are being paid millions of dollars for it—and at the heart of the recent controversy where Phil Robertson made his feelings about gay sex quite clear—is the collision of progressive politics, and authenticity—the kind of honesty that has made the popular A&E television show so fashionable among a very hungry public.
I know a bit about what Phil is going through. I know what’s it’s like to come across a progressive perception of things, and when told by the establishment to “apologize” and you don’t—but stick by your guns—which I will sum up at the end of this article. The reason Robertson is in trouble is because of the kind of beliefs he has expressed below. All of these issues are common observations from people in the flyover states, on the farms, the factories, and barber shops all across Middle America. It is for that reason that they tune in to watch Duck Dynasty, because to them somebody finally put on a show that speaks to them—instead of some coastal crap about hippie free love, reckless religious conviction, and overly emotional despots. The progressive establishment has worked hard to change the beliefs of people with an opposite message, which Phil Robertson exposed on episodes of their television show well before the recent gay remarks.
The below comments are excerpts from one of those insulted progressive types. Check them out:
Robertson thinks black Americans were treated just fine in the Jim Crow-era South, and that they were happy there. “I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”
- Robertson thinks the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor because they didn’t believe in Jesus. “All you have to do is look at any society where there is no Jesus. I’ll give you four: Nazis, no Jesus. Look at their record. Uh, Shintos? They started this thing in Pearl Harbor. Any Jesus among them? None. Communists? None. Islamists? Zero. That’s eighty years of ideologies that have popped up where no Jesus was allowed among those four groups. Just look at the records as far as murder goes among those four groups.”
Robertson hates gay people. Robertson in 2010: “Women with women, men with men, they committed indecent acts with one another, and they received in themselves the due penalty for their perversions. They’re full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God-haters. They are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless. They invent ways of doing evil.” Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/when-you-defend-phil-robertson-heres-what-youre-really-defending-2013-12#ixzz2oCcXh1Rk
But more specifically, based on the GQ article, Phil said:
“It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus,” he said. “That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying?
http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/12/duck-dynasty-gay-gq-phil-robertson-homophobe-homosexual/
What’s wrong with that? It’s an opinion based on years of experience? Yet the LGBT community believes this kind of opinion should be attacked because it goes against their social agenda which is the erosion of traditional values. However, for a guy like me—that is an insult—when they attack traditional relationships with traditional sexual practices they are attacking me. Yet I don’t protest Madonna who was a major advocate of the LGBT community, or Hillary Clinton who does the same—even though they only represent a very small portion of the population. When Phil Robertson speaks, he’s stating what a guy like me is already thinking.
When the film Broke Back Mountain came out and those two mainstream actors had anal sex in a tent far away from their wives, then fell in love with each other, I tried to watch and accept the story because it was so critically appraised. But the unrealistic nature of the whole thing was inescapable. I’ve been on many camping trips and on those kinds of endeavors with other guys—those kinds of activities are not desirable. My wife and I never pass gas in front of each other, there is no belching at the Hoffman dinner table, and there are never, and I mean never, “toot jokes” in my home, or around me. Human gas is a part of the digestion process, but it is also disgusting. It belongs with the rest of human feces, somewhere out of site so that intellectual pursuits can be established. The sex engaged in during Broke Back Mountain is unrealistic. That would have made such a mess that the filth afterwards would have made their back country trip unbearably uncomfortable. Without a shower immediately afterwards the smell would be disgusting. When Phil Robertson was talking about a vagina over an anus he’s talking about this kind of thing. With a woman, you can make love on a beach, in the woods, on top of your house, and when you’re done you don’t have to take a shower or even change the sheets. You can just go to sleep. With anal sex, absolutely no way—somebody will be taking a shower as feces would be everywhere. For a gay couple to do such a thing then go to sleep afterwards it would be like having a dog that rolled in feces out in the yard jump in your bed in the middle of the night and leave behind all the yard waste into the sheets of slumber. It would not be a good thing. Human beings have perverted the sex act and used such an orifice with the assistance of modern lubricants that are very unnatural. Without access to such things, anal sex would be impossible unlike with a woman where once the engine is running, it takes care of itself.
I don’t even like to use the restroom on camping trips because it makes me feel dirty. Fecal matter is not an attractive attribute of human existence. The appeal of it is contrived, not natural—and for more people to experiment with it, the LGBT community needs people to participate in such sex out of rebellion against the establishment. What Phil Robertson did was expose what everyone else is already thinking—and when they heard it; it got them off the hook of guilt that the gay community tries to invoke in order to promote their life style. Many years ago I worked with a sexual deviant who shared a story with the same friend whom I referred to who grew the beard. We were salesman at a dealership and between sales there was a lot of time to talk. This guy and his wife were very adventurous sexually, and he’d tell us all about his latest escapades. (My friend will remember the guy—his name was Perry.) One thing he had done the previous night was have is wife defecate onto a sheet of glass that he put over his face so he could watch it drop out and plop against the barrier between him and his wife. I told him he was insanely disgusting and he’d laugh and say, “To each, his own.” He had a twisted sense of erotic behavior. For me the smell alone would have been it, let alone watching such a thing. For a gay couple, they would have to accept that kind of odor, and the byproducts of engagement. A small percentage of the population likely has their wires crossed like that guy and his wife—where like dogs, they like fecal matter. They have a right to like what they want, but I don’t want to know about it. It is their dysfunctional behavior, not mine—and that is my general feeling about the whole LGBT population.
The gay pride people are afraid of people coming to these logical conclusions because it will end their spread of the social relationships between a man and a woman in a traditional family which they seek to destroy. They have the same level of deceit that public schools have over their funding issues, or government has over its spending. Being typical Kant trained Keynesian economic theorists they believe that as long as they do not speak of evil, hear any evil, or participate in any evil through their own lack of recognition of any value judgment, that there is no evil. The LGBT community has the same approach, they want vagina sex to be equal to anal sex—and they aren’t, one stinks, and one doesn’t. But in order to propel that belief, they need society to remain suppressed, and stupid acting out of rebellion, instead of logic. Logic says that the dudes in Broke Back Mountain would have had to clean off their dip sticks somewhere after the act. They wouldn’t just be able to get on their horses and do a day’s worth of hard riding. Only a gay writer from Santa Monica could even think this was possible as he has countless gels and lotions next to his bed to disguise the odor. But in Broke Back Mountain, such things were not around, only human spittle—nothing else—and that is just gross.
The reason for the beard and the popularity of the Duck Dynasty is that the characters are speaking the language of a part of society that has been suppressed deeply. The explosion of popularity seen by the A&E show is the untapped potential that Hollywood has been trying to avoid so to propel a progressive agenda. Duck Dynasty is about authenticity, and little else. And that traditional authentic behavior is something that America is very hungry for. What happened after Phil Robertson made his comments was that the LGBT community saw a sleeping giant come to Phil’s defense, and that scares them. A&E thought a token suspension until everything cooled off would suffice, but it didn’t. The LGBT community tried to force the issue, Phil Robertson didn’t back down, and lines in the sand were drawn. Forty years of public relations work likely went out the window in the period of one week as a majority of America found themselves supporting Robertson, and rejecting the arguments of the LGBT community. What will be one of the most common Christmas presents in 2013? Likely, Duck Dynasty material. What will be the number one topic around Christmas dinner tables—likely the stand Phil Robertson took against the LGBT community. Without question, many people who try that whole back-door approach with their spouses find the whole thing a lot less appealing than the vagina. The LGBT community has sold the whole thing in such a way that it makes people want to try it—but the reality is disgusting. Phil Robertson just gave people who feel that way a pass to not try it—and that is what the LGBT community is terrified of. Their peer pressure has folded because the Duck Dynasty guys refused to back off their position against anal sex. Like the act itself, the concept has more appeal than the reality. In the end, everything comes out smelling bad—just like the movement by the LGBT community. And Americans don’t like things that stink.
Rich Hoffman
