Tag: Politics

Democrats are Desperate, and Losing Power: Remember Aaron Burr and what globalists will do to protect their investments

Never Underestimate What Power Hungry People Will Do For Power

To understand Biden’s speech of January 19th, 2022, and the desperation of it, you have to look at the pressure that was created for the beleaguered President due to President Trump’s weekend speech in mid-January 2022 in Arizona. A year out of office, Trump attracted many thousands of people in the desert, and there they talked about the 2022 strategy of retaking both houses of congress and the capture of the White House in 2024. Trump spoke for over an hour showing great resolve and strength, so the Biden people felt they needed to answer the call. With voter rights legislation designed to give Democrats more of an ability to cheat in the upcoming election to maintain their power in jeopardy, everything was going wrong for Biden, and the administration couldn’t ignore how powerful Trump still was and how much momentum the anti-Biden surge was. So they propped the old man up and threw a hail-Mary hoping for a last-minute touchdown. But the threat of the whole enterprise came alive by accident about an hour and a half into the speech, where the most critical revelation came clear. That’s when a struggling Biden forcing himself to continue standing in front of the press like Trump always did, kept rolling over himself and finally said the most important thing of our times. Biden confessed that his “counterpart” in China, Xi Jinping, had been critical of “western democracy,” and we were being challenged to show its ability to make decisions, as opposed to the communist one-party government of China, who didn’t put things to a vote. They just told everyone what to do, or they killed them. It’s straightforward in China, and Biden used that example as an implied threat. Biden essentially said, under great exhaustion, we are challenged in America to show that our “democracy” can do the people’s work, or else we would fall to the rules of a changing world, the take over of it by the communist Chinese. 

Now that might not seem so bad to the masses, those who have trouble baking cookies even with the extensive instructions that come on the box for oven baking these days. But for those who are students of history, they might remember when Aaron Burr tried to stir up the chaos of the Mexican territories away from the Spanish to rise up against Thomas Jefferson’s administration shortly after the Louisiana Purchase. Burr, on the run from prosecutors in New York who wanted to try him for the murder of Alexander Hamilton during a perfectly justified duel, knew his political future was destroyed. The Federalists wanted his head, and the Republicans behind Jefferson thought of him as a liability to the party and wanted nothing to do with the talented young strategist, Burr. So Burr did what he thought was his only option, to stir up an insurrection on the western frontier and try to become the leader of his own country. Of course, this would occur a half-century before Jefferson Davis would attempt to cut America in half to maintain the European aristocracy of Europe in the South to preserve the institution of slavery, which came from years of the previous occupation. Turmoil and scandal are always on the horizon, including today’s Biden speech. So to assume all is well in the voting world and the maintenance of our republic would be extremely naive. We have an obligation to root out these insurrections as they emerge, as we did with Burr, as we did with Davis, and as we must now with the globalists who are trying to undo the Constitution of America in favor of replacing it with something they come up with so we can chase after the mythical threat of China, which like Covid, was a creation of our own government to acquire more power. 

I’ve said it for years, and I say it more emphatically now than ever. China would be nowhere without the United States. Without a healthy American economy, China dies on the vine very quickly. But, there are old European powers in the United Nations who, like Aaron Burr, know that they want in on the action that the United States has naturally. So they devise schemes to create war and disturbances to advance their own cause. Their latest attempt is the Biden administration. They have found some old fool made rich to purchase his name to promote their schemes. And the latest trick is to point to the Chinese and say, “there is the threat. We have to be more like them to compete with them.” Even though the Chinese were made by those same forces and propped up to get us to look that way instead of toward the United Nations where the World Economic Forum Davos guys are plotting just as Aaron Burr did to take over the world so they could be at the front of the leadership when it happens, this conflict is more significant in scale than the one that Burr planned. Still, it is all done for the same reasons. Those who think they are more intelligent and should be in charge of people by the rules of some imaginary aristocracy want their companies, nations, and billionaire footprints to live on in history, being remembered for something great. So they impose themselves on the rest of us for their devices. And that was what was significant about Biden’s speech; he revealed it without meaning to.

Things are looking very good for the MAGA movement, the carryover of the Tea Party. Trump and many Trump-supporting Republicans are poised to demolish the globalist intentions of this current Democrat Party. The election is only around nine months away, where many House and Senate seats are up for grabs, and the Democrats, as acknowledged by Biden by his long speech, are grasping at the air to attempt to hang on to power. Like Aaron Burr, they are being driven to insanity because they are losing their seat at the table. And that doesn’t mean that we have any obligation to give them a seat. They have lost their political power fair and square. They have shown Americans who they are through fake elections and Covid, and people, real people, don’t like it, which is why Biden is polling in the low thirties just one year into his term. The media can’t cover for these idiots as they have in the past. Now, unlike in the past, people can see just how bad their communist ideas are, and to justify their transgressions, they simply pointed to China and said in desperation, “we need to be more like them or else.” But too many Americans know better now. They voted for Trump, and with no ability to cheat in future elections, Democrats know they can’t keep the charade going any longer, and they are now desperate and caught in their treason and sedition. And their fate will be much the way it was for Aaron Burr, remembered for being a power-hungry insurrectionist instead of a freedom-fighting leader. When Democrats look in the mirror, they see the leader. But because of their stupidity and bad decisions shown to the world, more and more see them as the insurrectionists they have always been. And no amount of media, public relations tricks, or re-branding of their collectivist philosophy can save them now. So, beware of what they will do in these dying days because they are desperate. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Republicans Need to Get Behind Renacci for Governor: President Jackson and President Trump’s constitutional success

Vote for Jim Renacci

Andrew Jackson was a Democrat, but to my mind, except for him and President Trump, they were the only two real Constitutional Presidents. Ronald Reagan was an actor who played a conservative well. Teddy Roosevelt was well-intentioned but became a leader of the Progressive Party. Abraham Lincoln was an enforcer of the Constitution, and it created a war. He held firm and did a great job, but he was cut down too short of making the country work the way it’s supposed to. In all of American history, there are only a few short years where constitutionally things worked how Ben Franklin’s Republic intended. Most of the rest of the time, it has been squabbles, character assassinations, and fiscal sell-outs at the international level that has driven most of our political activity, which then cascades itself into our lives with every new rule and regulation designed to make pin-heads into kings, and the hard-working into slaves. Our form of government is messy, and it should be. It’s a lot better than Chinese communism and our quality of life for all people, and our national GDP prove out the results. Saying all that, for the governor race in Ohio, the cowboy hat-wearing Joe Blystone is probably most aligned to my way of thinking. Other conservatives see the blood in the water and want to knock off Mike DeWine’s disaster in a primary where he is very vulnerable. Candace Keller is seeking signatures to run with Ron Hood. I like Candace even though she seems not to care for me so much. To her, I work with establishment politicians too often. I’d say that when you fight to get good candidates, you eventually become the establishment. Success can be tough to manage, but you will have to deal with it if you do your job. And it is in that spirit; I have absolutely no reservations in endorsing Jim Renacci for governor in Ohio. Once the smoke clears in the primary race, it will take a team effort to defeat the DeWine machine, so everyone needs to start thinking that way. Otherwise, they will be hiding their “purity” for political theater behind a mask that endorses more corruption and malice by re-electing Governor DeWine and allowing the bad guys to win again. 

I get the speeches, the search for the perfect candidate. The excellent specimen of political sentiment. The next “honest Abe.” I think all that is fine and healthy to have a robust debate. But before the primary election, around the April time frame, everyone needs to get behind Jim Renacci and make their platforms a part of his platform under one Republican umbrella because it will take that to beat the DeWine Machine. Out of all the candidates and their backing, only one person can beat DeWine in May of 2022, and that is Jim Renacci. The reason, well, he’s the only one with a chance to get a Trump endorsement before the primary, rather than after. If all the primary challengers support Trump, he can’t possibly pick one who might lose; it would have to be a unified sure thing before he would ever put his name behind a primary candidate for governor. If the effort came up short, the media would never let Trump live it down. Instead, Trump would be more likely to wait until the primary winner is announced to put his name behind the Republican governor for the fall election, but it would be too late by then. So keep all that in mind when giving speeches about political purity and seeking to elect some biblical figure into elected office. The first step in all that process is winning because without the win; you have nothing; it’s all talk. That’s why there were only a few times in American history where the Constitution somewhat was supported by the political class, and the nation ran well, Trump and Andrew Jackson. 

I don’t see these kinds of rationalizations as a compromise. I may be one of the most uncompromising people on planet earth. But in a group setting, I am one of the most compromising because everyone lets me down. I have no hope of finding the perfect person who represents me specifically. Instead, I work to find ways to align everyone’s best interests despite their personality traits. I never expect people to do the right thing just because they should. I always hope, but they seldom ever do, because that’s my experience with people. So when it comes to a public endeavor, I never expect purity, and dealing with anybody will require some compromise because none of the interests are ever aligned. Instead, I also look through force of will to align people to whatever is in their interest by whatever means. Presidents and governors of the past who were most effective in this kind of approach, like Jackson and Trump, approached the problem in this same way, and it was successful. I would say that such a mentality is the key to any prosperous republic, which is what we are in the United States, not some rat-infested “democracy” of mob rule and popular opinion. A contentious atmosphere where nobody is ever thrilled is how politics should look because honesty is forged in contention. It is better to get in there and fight than sit on the sidelines and chuck rocks to maintain a pure view of the world. The fight is what is needed, and you need to pick a side and fight there for what’s right. 

Even with DeWine wounded and very vulnerable, many people in both parties want chaos and mayhem to rule the day because there is great profit in it for them. That is one of the reasons that Ohio is the most corrupt state in America presently. DeWine has a machine, and it knows how to keep the right people in power to maintain this chaos, which they profit from. Now I can say I know Jim Renacci. Even though I said I understand Joe Blystone the best out of all the candidates, I know there is room for a Joe under the Renacci tent. But there isn’t room for the Renacci types or even DeWine fence-sitters the other way around. I certainly know where Candace Keller sits on the matter; she’s a no-compromise under any conditions kind of person. I admire that as a trait in people, but she won’t be effective when you must work with other people to make things happen. But there is room for a Candace under Renacci. Renacci doesn’t care if everyone agrees with everything he does. He wants to do a good job, and as a business guy, he understands how to align interests. That’s why he and President Trump are personal friends and why Trump would be most likely to throw his name into the race to help push the effort over the DeWine machine. The Trump children are also a part of the Renacci campaign, so there are many opportunities ripe for a significant political upheaval. But, it won’t happen unless all the conservatives align and work together. If the vote gets split, nobody will win, and all the forces that worked against each other will empower sheer evil to get a second term in Ohio. That is how people like Mike DeWine have stayed in power for so long; they know how to play this game, while all the other uncompromising characters out there fight each other over theories of right and wrong, evil then always prevails. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Old Yeller: The fight between Thomas Hall and Sheriff Jones

Why Is Sheriff Jones Going After Thomas Hall

Sheriff Jones decided to go on 700 WLW and speak disparagingly about Thomas Hall, the current House Representative of the 53rd District. I like Sheriff Jones, I hope he runs and wins a few more terms, but nobody in their right mind could support the way he attacked Thomas Hall on those radio waves to hundreds of thousands of people. Long-time readers here know that I used to be a frequent contributor on WLW, like Jones. Over time, many of my people who used to work there moved away, were fired, or otherwise changed their point of view. We separated like some kind of divorce, and I have not had much of an idea of reconciliation. I have more freedom in media with this site, so I have not returned in several years. But Jones does go on WLW quite a lot, so because I don’t pay much attention to what goes on there these days, I did not hear the original airing where Sheriff Jones disparaged Thomas Hall in many negative ways calling him a 12-year old “goof,” not just once, but many times. Still, I have often heard from many Republicans who want to defend Hall but are scared of retaliation from Jones, and I think that’s a shame. Hall certainly isn’t 12-years old. I said in the video that he was in his early thirties, but actually, he’s in his mid-twenties and is the youngest member of the current Ohio House. However, the young man is an overachiever by all measures, and his age certainly isn’t a hindrance. He has had two terms as a Madison Trustee, and now he’s in his first term as a congressman seeking a second term. 

Sheriff Jones Goes After Thomas Hall over H.B. 99

Another thing I said about Thomas is a couple of times in the video, I referred to him as Thomas More, because for a lot of reasons, I think of the writer of Utopia whenever I think of Thomas Hall. It’s been that way for a while just because of my own reading habits. There are a lot of Thomas’ in English literature; another is the character of Thomas Becket from The Canterbury Tales, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by his friend Henry the II. It’s one of my favorite books, and this story keeps coming to my mind when I think of Thomas Hall and his friend and mentor, Sheriff Jones. Jones had endorsed Thomas and was mentoring him until a few things happened. Apparently, Jones didn’t like Hall’s voting record. The Sheriff had a confirmed case of heartburn over H.B. 99, Hall’s bill in congress, which set definitions for minimal teacher training to carry firearms in public schools. Jones uncharacteristically turned on Thomas Hall and made quite an exhibition about it on WLW right before Thanksgiving in 2021. I hadn’t heard it until I did an endorsement video for Thomas Hall, and he mentioned it. I had heard from several very prominent Republicans, some very close to the Sheriff, that something had gone on really bad. As I said in the video, one of them was not Senator Lang. I never put people in positions where they get caught in crossfires with each other and given the mean streak that many fear in crossing Jones, many don’t want to be a part of it. Yet many more than ten contacted me to let me know what was going on between Hall and Jones, and they weren’t happy about it.

Thomas Hall Responds to Sheriff Jones

I listened to the Jones interview with Willie, included here; then I listened to the response from Thomas Hall the next day. I played them for my wife, who loves Sheriff Jones. We talked about the interviews and thought Thomas Hall did a fantastic job. He certainly won the argument. But Jones came across as petty and even childish. My wife offered that maybe he was hurting about something else, totally unrelated. Perhaps that’s true. Whatever it is, I would suggest a few thoughts regarding the excellent Sheriff. I’ve been sideways with him a few times over things, particularly school things and union business. I still blame him for the Lakota levy passing in 2013. He has a liberal streak in him that I can’t stand, but we have buried the hatchet since then. What he did for Butler County during the Trump years has been great. A person’s body of work can’t be defined by just a few years here and there or by the grumpy old dog that starts biting people who step on a porch to sell Girl Scout cookies. I hope that Jones runs and wins more terms for as long as possible. But perhaps my wife was right about him, that something else is bothering him. 

In my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I deal with this very issue of an older generation coping with the young people biting their heels. The chapter is called “The Skill of Developed Intuition” on pg. 181. You spend your whole life getting somewhere, making yourself into the person people put on T.V. Getting invited to the White House. Where you can’t go into public without people wanting to get a picture taken with you. And suddenly, here is some 25-year-old whiz kid who suddenly does more in one year than most state reps do in a lifetime. And he’s confident and won’t kiss the ring. Deep down inside, nobody would want to see such a young person broken, but consciously, the older person wants respect because he gave it when he was younger. The aging process isn’t fair. When you can start to see the end of the tunnel, and you know it’s going to be over soon, it is painful to see intelligent young people with their whole lives in front of them getting the attention it took you a lifetime to build. Sometimes, you might be tempted to crush the young competition, show them all they don’t know yet and teach them obedience. But I would caution you not to do that. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is encourage the young people, not tear them down, but build them up. 

Old Yeller

Listening to Thomas talk about the WLW incident, I was amazed he wasn’t more upset. I would be. I carry grudges for a long time, for decades. I would not have been able to say all the nice things that Thomas said about Sheriff Jones when I did my endorsement video with him. I would have been plotting revenge and embarrassment. But obviously, Thomas Hall has had a lot of good mentors in his life, his father being one. But several other politicians for another, including Sheriff Jones. So, there are a lot of lessons here that should be observed. I would hope that Sheriff Jones wouldn’t spend all the years of his excellent branding on petty nonsense that will overshadow all the good things he has done. There are people concerned about just that very thing by many of the calls I received. But Thomas isn’t that way; he understands that politics is a blood sport, and he plays to win without getting hung up on stupid stuff. And in his mind, he already defended himself on WLW the next day. But people were confused as to why the Sheriff went after Thomas, and I would suggest that it shouldn’t ruin the reputation of the Sheriff. I don’t think we are dealing with an Old Yeller situation here. Maybe just an old dog that would love to run around like the youth do but can’t anymore. There is still good to do, and from the point of view of Thomas, he’s willing to do good wherever possible.    

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The CDC is Guilty of Murder, and Economic Suicide: Japan solves Covid with Ivermectin

The Solution is in Ivermectin

Another thing I have no more tolerance for is Covid. We know how to manage it. We know how we got it. We know what to do about it. And now, we are simply going through the pain of a corrupt political system trying to cover up their missteps and deliberate crimes, which is why we continue to hear all the nonsense about Covid and a CDC that is as effective as a wet paper towel these days. Out of a seven-day workweek, I speak to brilliant people in Japan about four of those days, all hours of the day due to the time zone differences, so I know firsthand how they have dealt with Covid. When they had the Olympics, because the world’s eyes were on them, they played along with the stupid World Health Organization methods of shutdowns and social distancing methods, to significant economic cost to them.   The Olympics were supposed to be good for them, but Covid wrecked their plans, and they weren’t happy about it. They are a solution-based society, so it wouldn’t take long for them to get their arms around this problem, and I knew it was coming in real-time. Once the world took their eyes off them after the Olympics were over, on August 13th, Ivermectin was granted permission for use in Japan. Fourteen days later, case counts started to plunge to near zero. Japan stayed on a health emergency status until the end of September just to make sure they were safe in their control of the virus. Then by October, they were back to full business and not shutting down again. They needed to make up lost ground and impact on their economy, and they needed all their people healthy and back to work. So they treated the virus instead of running from it like Europe, and the rest of the world have been doing. 

In my situation, I speak with people worldwide in most of the time zones, so Covid has been a continued conversation over the last few years now, and what different people were doing about it to manage their lives. Knowing what I do because of that perspective, I don’t care how big the government is, how wealthy the billionaires are, or how powerful the tech companies may be. Everyone who has participated in the Covid game should be punished in ways that would discourage the behavior in the future. Every entity that openly has lied to us about Covid, the vaccines, and the use of therapeutics such as Ivermectin has committed crimes on many levels. What they did was purposeful. Censorship from them is just another form of admission. With Twitter and Facebook taking down therapeutic mentions, they act as the Ray Epps of tech media. They are guilty of all the damage that continues with Covid crises outbreaks, from the psychological side more than the physical. The pain of Covid has been selected, by our government, specifically by the CDC, for purely political reasons. All the lost money and lives resulting from it are their responsibility. 

To prove what I’m saying, I present here in this article, while it lasts a YouTuber doctor, a very good one, Dr. John Campbell. He studies medical statistics for fun; he’s not a Trump supporter or really even political. He just likes to look at data and talk about it medically. His report verified what I had heard from Japan on the ground, that Ivermectin was a solution that the country had embraced to deal with the Delta variant. Obviously, the Omicron variant wasn’t yet on the horizon in October when the case counts went to near zero in Japan, but what we know of Omicron is that it’s even milder and is more like a cold than anything dangerous. It certainly isn’t the message that Democrats want and need to deflect the public away from their terrible performance, their lack of new ideas and their desires to turn the United States into the model for the Great Reset with the United Nations. Japan couldn’t afford more lockdowns, just as most countries clearly know by now, so they took action, and the results are apparent. The pressure from countries like Japan will kill this Covid nonsense in the future, who have just decided to create solutions for themselves instead of following the same government science into perpetual economic depravity.

And for Twitter and Facebook to deprive people of these known solutions, it’s malicious at best. Our government has access to this same information. It’s not like Dr. Campbell is a crazy conspiracy theorist. Ivermectin worked for Japan and everywhere else in the world where they have used it. But Covid was never about solving the problem, which was created by the government purely for the purposes of government. Covid was about telling people what to do. As of the start of the new year of 2022, the CDC has issued new recommendations for isolation and quarantine for the general population.   Regardless of vaccination status, they are, what’s the point, to stay home for five days. If you have no symptoms after five days, you can leave your house. Then you should continue to wear a mask around others for an additional five days. How about that? That is the science of this ridiculous government that only wants to stay in charge as an authority in people’s lives and ignore a proactive solution that could make Covid disappear forever. And to perpetuate this bad, made-up science which has absolutely zero functional reality to it, the Big Tech companies are trying to scrub any information that might make people question the government science. Crimes on top of crimes, on top of crimes. After what we have learned by the CDC, particularly in ignoring Ivermectin and other treatments that could eradicate Covid, they are actively looking to eliminate any competing information from other sources, such as Dr. Campbell here, and to act like the Wizard of Oz and keep you from looking behind the curtain.

But when we come out of our cultural bubbles, as I often do, we can see the truth that is out there beyond our horizon. American science should have led the world toward a Covid solution with innovation and bravery. Instead, too many Americans chose to listen to the authority addicts at the CDC and surrender their lives to government authority out of sheer laziness in not wanting to think for themselves. And now that the government and Big Tech have tasted that power of manipulation, it will be harder than ever to convince them to surrender that power without a significant conflict. Yet there is no question now, as opposed to when Covid was first introduced, there are ways to treat it, to stop the spread. To contain it. But the government wants nothing to do with that kind of talk. Because they want us all to be submissive to them and to bastardize science for the sake of power. And the result has been one of the most destructive things ever done to the human race. For what they’ve all done, they must pay and spend heavily. We can’t let what they did with Covid ever happen again, and so far, there has been no action taken against them to keep them from trying in the future or even to change their behavior in the present. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Don’t Forget to Watch, ‘Don’t Look Up’: In it, Hollywood shows why they are terrified of you

Watch ‘Don’t Look Up’

It was about a year ago when I sat down on my Rumble account and read off to the audience the 45 Planks of communist goals from the excellent book The Naked Communist. Many people at that time and for decades before were confused about the nature of our government and what they were really up to, going all the way back to the Department of Education during the Reagan years. I’ve been talking about these things for years, there was a time when I was a frequent contributor on radio stations and television, but like many of the modern Fox News personalities who now find themselves on alternative networks, like Newsmax, Real America’s Voice, and One America News, I was one of the first to be shadowbanned and ostracized because I saw too much and knew the truth long before anybody was really ready to admit to it. I even did some work in Hollywood during those years and quickly learned that my Cincinnati politics was not something any of them were willing to deal with. They all thought that if they controlled all those planks of communism listed in that book from 1957 as global objectives, they truly would rule the world. And in many ways, what I have been warning them out of kindness is coming true now that we are in 2022 and the midterms are coming up. I even noticed it while watching the U.C. v Alabama Cotton Bowl game on New Year’s Eve; the world that all these corporate types who took over our branches of government thought they were going to get is far from where real Americans are. Even though communists have taken over so many of our American institutions, they have not convinced Americans to accept communism. That was most notably obvious in the new Netflix film with some real powerhouse actors, Don’t Look Up. 

Don’t Look Up is something worth watching if you have a Netflix account. Anymore, I tend not to like Netflix. It’s primarily progressive material that does not represent what I’m interested in watching.   But I keep it so I can see what the other side is always thinking about, and Don’t Look Up is an obvious mirror to Hollywood and their obvious frustration that the 45 Planks of communism from The Naked Communist have not worked out the way they thought they would. The continued failure, which I have observed up close and personal among these media cultures, is the belief that culture is formed through art, not that art reflects life. When art is produced, for instance, out of the political or business realm, it is never effective. But when art comes from the realm of myth, well, then you can have life-changing circumstances that occur. Progressivism, socialism, communism are all products of the realm of politics. The MAGA movement and now the America First Policy Institute approach come from the realm of mythology, the core of American belief. There isn’t anything that any political class, business glass, or subcultural bubble can do to stop it. They don’t understand it, they have no desire to understand it, and their only reaction to these mysterious forces is to shut out people who challenge them, so they don’t have to face the music of their dismal failures.  

That is essentially what Don’t Look Up is, with its powerful all-star cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, and many others is a mirror to Hollywood culture and its failure to wake people up to what they consider the impending doom of a Trump America. Meryl Streep essentially plays the President of the United States as Trump was but as a female version. It was almost a Saturday Night Live kind of hatred for Trump and his supporters that was an obvious mystery to Hollywood culture in general. In the movie, a giant planet-killing comet is headed for earth, and two astronomers work hard to let everyone know about it before the earth ends. They go to the President and get no significant reaction. So they hit the media culture and find that nobody in the world wants to hear about a comet that will end life on earth as the extinction event nears. The movie is essentially Hollywood perplexed about Trump voters and a culture that produced Trump as a candidate. Their blatant hatred of that culture seeps into every frame of the movie. I was perplexed why a major Hollywood project like this film, which was well funded and well-directed by Adam McKay, was going straight to Netflix. The reason was timing. Hollywood still believes that they could defend the Biden administration and the Climate Change objectives of the United Nations if they can get this message to Americans before it’s too late. For the director, and the actors involved, Don’t Look Up was a satire on reality, kind of like a modern version of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks. But to the Netflix executives and the producers of Don’t Look Up, they have political hopes that they can rock the world with their silly little movie and change the nature of human beings in general. 

I say that last part out of personal experience, in talking with these types of people where they live and eat. I know what books they have read, what they learned in college, and how they speak at their parties. It’s communism that they have wanted because they are insecure by nature.   They lack identity, so they are actors because they need other people to give them identity. I thought all the actors in Don’t Look Up were fantastic in their roles. After the first act, I thought the movie was very well directed. The last part of the film went off the rails too much, almost like a desperate basketball team down 11 points with 1 minute to play and trying to full-court press and foul their opponent hoping to catch up while there was still time. But I was OK with it because essentially, the haters of America were showing their hearts in this movie. It was extremely revealing in just how scared they are of the rest of us, the majority of America who has not been seduced by communism even after all they have thrown at us. In so many ways, Don’t Look Up was an admission of failure and a desperate plea for another chance to convince us that communism is the way to go. People who wanted Trump and still want him as President are just stupid and can’t see the science of climate change, Covid, or the need for a global communist community run by China. Don’t Look Up pretty much says that very thing when the characters are frustrated over nobody in the world wanting to listen to them about the impending comet even when they could look up in the sky and see it for themselves. The entire movie was written and produced from that famous Santa Monica, California view of the world, a phony caricature of progressivism that has looted off the hard work of those who founded the area and are now inhabited by spoiled brats who have the philosophic grounding of a sliced potato in a garden of weeds. I would highly recommend the movie not for the reasons they want you to see it, but for all the reasons they don’t because it shows the cards of the political left going into 2022 and shows just how scared they are of the upcoming elections. And that is a wonderful thing to watch.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Mythic Realm: Understanding Elon Musk, Bob Iger shortcomings at Disney, the Build Back Better disaster, and why communism always fails

The Mythic Realm

I could actually write a book just about this topic of the Mythic Realm. Still, recently, an opportunity came up professionally where I had to talk to many political people and business people in the same Christmas setting.  I was near a whiteboard so I could tell the story of what I put on the video here contained.  The subject was a bunch of things that flow together to my eyes.  But to the groups of people, they understood some of it, but not all of it, because of the bubble concept that I explained in the video.  Most people all their lives never leave their bubbles of understanding, and I don’t look down on them for it.  I see it as a natural condition of the human race.  But when the topic of Elon Musk came up and all that he was up to, and understanding why Build Back Better is such a bad idea, or the vaccine mandates for Covid are so destructive, the answers to all those questions are often outside of the bubbles that people live in.  So I put together this little video to explain it to people who want to begin understanding some of these kinds of things, such as where economic power comes from.  It’s not the Political Realm or even the Business Realm.  All economic activity comes from the Mythic Realm, and it is there that we should always focus on creating more!

I also put in this article the WSJ interview with Elon Musk in its entirety where he said that the Build Back Better concept should be “deleated.” As I explained, Elon Musk is more shaman than industrialist, even living in a state of depravity to stay authentic to himself.  To my mind, our American society should be producing hundreds of Elon Musk types instead of a few here and there.  When I think of Elon Musk, aside from his tamperings with the political and business realm, I think of people like Thomas Edison, Tesla, the actual man, and Albert Einstein.  What people call genius, they say such things because, from their point of view in one of their social bubbles, the ideas from the realm of myth seem so extraordinary.  But really, it’s all point of view.  What always matters is the Mythic Realm because it is there where all ideas that generate all economic activity are created, which then cascades into all the organized elements of society.

I provided in the video an example about the aviation industry.  Where Prometheus came from stories about building fire or Indian legends about Thunderbirds who could fly, the idea for flight came from the human imagination in thinking what could be.  Then along came the Wright Brothers, who converted their bicycle profession into the first functioning plane.  From there, the political realm instantly saw the benefits, decided to utilize the airplane during World War I, and created rules and regulations for constructing airports, parts suppliers, and general aviation functions.  Then, of course, the Business Realm figures out what companies need to form to meet the world’s growing political need for airplanes.  And from there comes the Cultural Bubbles of all the individual companies that started making airplane parts and the workers who inhabit those cultures.  The exact trajectory of thought could be said to emerge from the auto industry, smartphones, everything that we consider economic value.  When I talk about intellectual currency, this is what I’m talking about.  Financial currency is needed to flow in the political, business, and cultural realms.  But intellectual currency is required to feed the Mythic Realm, and without that position, nothing new in economic energy is produced.  Therefore, the goal of our society or any society should always be to make more Elon Musk types, or even George Lucas, who created Star Wars.

I always talk about Star Wars because, as a kids product, it does a great job of creating ideas in the Mythic Realm among people in our society.  There was an excellent interview with Bob Iger from Disney, who is stepping down now as CEO.  I think he did a pretty good job stabilizing Disney as a company, but his problem was that he spent his entire time as CEO in the border between the Political Realm and the Business Realm, where most CEOs and CFOs think all the real value is.  But when it came time to make more Star Wars movies, he was lost, and what he made was a bunch of corporate woke garbage.  The fans became angry at Disney because the new films and books were made by a guy who was obsessed with the titles he held.  He made a mistake almost all corporate people make, putting their imprint on something that flows out of the Mythic Realm, but that they never understand the ideas. They end up smashing them into the bubbles of business culture, assuming that everything will just work out.  But it never does.  That is why Elon Musk tends to disparage titles in these companies and offices.  In the Mythic Realm, he likes to have all the executives close to where the action is.  As a modern company, Disney does OK if it sells the fantastic work created by people like Walt Disney.  But because they live in their corporate bubble, people like Bob Iger are paralyzed to do anything new, much like the Chinese suffer from their centralized communism. 

This is essentially why socialism and communism never work because they insist on an old aristocratic European view of the world that never figured out these things.  I feel I can talk about it because, really, for the first time in mass culture, we have a time where we can look at all these elements as an entire whole.  I read so much and from so many different sources that it is evident to me.  I don’t know that such an understanding of social constructs would have been possible 100 years ago.  But with the benefit of hindsight and great modern examples of success in the Mythic Realm, we can see these things clearly now.  When I shared these insights with that large group, they all seemed to have an “oh my gosh” moment, so it seemed like a practical thing to discuss.  When we want to understand the world around us, whether it’s Build Back Better, Star Wars success under Disney, Elon Musk and his quest for Mars colonization, or the intricacies of why capitalism works better than communism at managing society, understanding the Mythic Realm is the key. I’ve said for years that despite all my interests, I appreciate nothing more than mythology because what humans do better than any other known form of life is generate imagination, and therefore a change in circumstances directly derived from the mind.  No matter what someone thinks about God, it cannot be questioned that the purpose of human existence is to use the imagination to continue expanding what goes on in the universe.  We are not so insignificant as a species to assume that nature rules over the minds of humankind.  But that humankind is part of nature and the ever-evolving process of creation which the universe craves.  And once you understand that, everything else makes a lot more sense.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Importance of Family Gatherings: Don’t surrender the youth to chaos, destruction, and progressive attack

Its All About the Youth

I’ve been to several family events this year and have noticed maybe more than usual that nerves are frayed.  The stress of the news, or more specifically, the summation of political beliefs played out on the world stage of the present, is a bit too much for people, and they want to talk about anything but the conditions of our times.  The small talk at family gatherings that might only happen once or twice a year has been, “Hi, how’s little Billy. How’s he doing in school?  Is he playing in sports?” That kind of thing.  These days there is a lot more to it.  It might go something like this, “Hi, how’s little Billy?  Oh, Billy is now Beth because he identifies as a woman.  Well, how’s school?  Oh, you had to pull Beth out of school because of the mask and vaccine mandates and homeschool he/she.  Oh, he’s a girl now, so he can compete in female events in sports, and he’s winning everywhere.  Well, I guess that’s nice.  Pass the gravy.” Small talk obviously isn’t enough for the trouble of our times and the old rules of engagement, in not talking about religion or politics just isn’t enough anymore.  And I don’t think it should be. Instead, what is needed in these family gatherings isn’t more passive acceptance of the world around you but leadership.  If there is one thing that young people need more of now than ever, it’s leadership from their elder statesman.  That doesn’t mean they’ll be excited to hear it or that they’ll hug you for the advice.  But someday, they might thank you for it.  Whatever the case, we have a republic, not a damn democracy, and the success of that republic depends on the intelligence of our society.  And that intelligence cannot have a chance to grow if the older people do not show leadership to the younger generation.

I do not go to family events looking for trouble.  I don’t impose myself on anybody, anywhere, really.  But, I think I’ve wanted all my life to be the age I am now, someone who has lived a lot of life and has some experience to share with people who need more experience in life.  And I think it is disingenuous not to be the most authentic person you can be as a role model for those young people.  After all, isn’t that the meaning of life, to come into the world, experience life in all its variables, and get something of a guide of how to go about it from the previous generation?  I think if we are being honest that we can say that one of the most detrimental introductions of progressive thought over the last century has been this ridiculous notion the youth is all that matters as we turn our elders out to sea to be processed and erased into the soil that grows the next batch of crops.  This approach ignores the wisdom that older family members can provide to the youth, leaving them to seek their direction in life from government figures and worthless celebrities and ultimately their own personal downfalls.  Life and its condition are all about the decisions that young people make for themselves given all the countless options they have, and they do need help to see what decisions are good or bad. 

It always pains me to see young people making the same bad decisions that have been made since the beginning of time.  The young flower of a girl, for instance, who is fully in bloom.  All the little bees out there want to pollinate her.  She shows up with a new bee every year during this period, each time with a new tattoo, another year of smoking cigarettes out of sheer rebellion to how she was raised, and body piercings reflecting the Earth First primitivism that they are taught in public schools these days. They expect you just to sit there and not say anything because nobody is supposed to be judgmental, especially older people who have already lived their lives.  When I see this kind of thing, I feel a need to say something about it and do it.  Yes, it causes trouble, but I keep getting invited to these family things despite it.  The kids need guidance and told that they are going through a temporary thing.  Once some bee pollinates you, and you start popping out kids, and age starts wrinkling up your skin, nobody will want to be around you for those reasons anymore, and if you don’t have a developed intellect, you will be in deep trouble.  Alone and thrown away in the world, nobody who loves one of these young people wants to see that.  A life ruined by bad decisions early in their life.  So I would propose that the rules about talking about religion and politics at family gatherings during the holidays were made up by the same idiots who made up the rules for Covid and put Joe Biden in office.   They didn’t know what they were doing, or maybe they did, and wanted the opportunity to ruin the lives of the youth to destroy our nation from the inside out.  Either way, leadership is always needed to be our authentic selves.  To give those kids an opportunity to make better choices in life by imitating you.  So the worst thing you can do as a leader in your family is to follow the rules of some social tyrants who want the destruction of America, starting with the family.  Part of the maintenance of a republic isn’t just in voting and picking good candidates as representation.  Often, it begins at the family dinner table during holidays. 

It is OK to have the youth mad at you, especially if you have given them contrary information to the flow of the political universe that is coming at them through popular culture.  Many of the rules we all follow over family gatherings have proven to be much more destructive than the Biden administration, and it’s time to stop following those rules and give young people something better to follow, even if it causes great conflict in them during the process.  The purpose of family is to grow people into productive lives of fulfillment, and dancing away from conflict is a sure way to give them the wrong impression that government or popular culture is more powerful and influential than that wiry uncle at the dinner table or bombastic grandparents. They always seem to have a new story to tell.  Character is more important than following some social rules that have been imposed on us by people who want what’s worst for us and that if we’re going to see a resurrection of what’s good in our country, it starts in our families, not at the next Trump rally.  It would be my advice to all, even more now than ever, to not shy away from telling kids not to drink.  Not to do drugs.  To not get stupid-looking tattoos that will make you look like an idiot when you are older, which is most of their lives from 30 to 80.  To pay attention to politics and to have an opinion.  And that if they have a penis, not to compete in women’s sports.   Let the girls have the trophy, compete with other men; otherwise, the victory doesn’t mean anything.  They can roll their eyes and be upset.  They can hide from your judgment.  But you know what, they’ll thank you later.  Your advice may be the only good advice they will ever hear, so don’t hold back on it.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Gavin Newsom is Wrong In California: Guns are Constitutionally protected, abortion is not

Abortion is Murder, Gun Rights is about Protecting LIfe

The best thing about the last few years in America has been that people have read and understood the Constitution more than ever.  I remember well that our local Tea Party used to have Saturday classes to teach the Constitution.  My son-in-law also took a lengthy class at Liberty University as an immigrant from the United Kingdom that he valued quite a lot.  Many in the world have understood the Constitution for a long time, the law of the land, and our country.  Without those laws, we don’t have a country.  Otherwise, there is merely a mob of power-hungry bureaucrats who live to tell other people what to do, like Dr. Fauci.  Little people like him gain a lot of power if there is no constitutional law, so there are apparent forces at play to erode our laws so that a bureaucratic expert class can take over.  For instance, if people had just followed the law from the outset of Covid, there wouldn’t be many of the problems we have now.  We don’t change our laws to solve emergencies, even government-made ones like Covid-19 and manufactured variants.  We use science to solve those kinds of problems, and while that occurs, we stay on target with a law-and-order society.  Those are the rules, and more people than ever understand those rules.  So, it didn’t take much for people to see through the problem quickly of California’s Gavin Newsom’s attempt to turn the world upside down to rally progressives to their increasingly losing cause.

Newsom and other progressives were upset about the trajectory of the Supreme Court, specifically a Texas law that allows for legal procedures against abortion clinics that enable abortions after six weeks.  They attempted to flip the script and apply the same methods to firearms in California.  The effort gained a lot of press from the communists, socialists, and soothsayers of public education who work in the media, but nobody seemed to understand the differences.  Many media types referred to the abortion law of Texas as an attack on a constitutionally protected right, whereas removing gun rights in any form was somehow validated.  This is where a decent understanding of the Constitution comes in handy.  Every American should understand it.  It should be taught in public schools when we are all little. It’s the essential thing you can learn, yet obviously, that has not been the case with most people in politics.  The Supreme Court made a mistake with Roe v. Wade that will be rectified after a few decades of analysis.  The trajectory of the law is that it will be revisited, and that decision that allowed for abortion will be reversed because it was never a constitutional right.

Meanwhile, gun rights are in the same mold in that their effectiveness has been eroded unjustly because they are a constitutionally protected right.  Thugs and losers posing as a mob threatening to destroy the lives of members of the court were how Roe v. Wade came about in the first place.  And if guns had played a more central role in the protests, preventing acts of violence from being threatened, then a more logical court decision would have transpired, and we wouldn’t be talking about all this now. 

The trajectory meanwhile of gun rights, despite the progressive controls we see all around us from the government, is that restoration of legal purity is underway.  In Ohio and many other places, we aren’t just talking about Concealed Carry; we are moving toward Constitutional Carry, where you don’t even have to let the police know you are armed if you get pulled over for a traffic stop.  Carrying a gun should be as common as carrying a wallet, and that’s where many of the mistakes progressives have made are taking our nation to a more pure appreciation for the Constitution in the first place.  I say it often; I have copies of The Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers next to my reading chair, which I look at several times a week for pleasure.  I see them as works of philosophy emerging from western civilization resulting from centuries of trial and error.  They are incredible human achievement works, and I often remind myself of them by sifting through their pages during football games and other television programs.

Additionally, I have a copy of the Ohio Constitution that I do the same with.  These are law and order components of our society which has worked well for all people.  And I stand by them.  On the other hand, I don’t have tolerance or understanding among law enforcement or politicians who do not follow the rules.  What happened to General Flynn, Roger Stone, even Brad Parscall won’t happen at my house.  I will defend it the way the Constitution specifies.  The legal system doesn’t get to suspend my constitutional rights while they figure things out as a slow, dim-witted, bureaucratic society.  In their world, people like Dr. Fauci are king.  But in the world of the constitutionally protected, kings are rejected, and their powers are limited to some useless office position behind a desk somewhere.  They are not allowed to bring their nonsense into our lives. 

Now, regarding that California proposal, which is just air coming out of the mouth of Gavin Newsom, looking for revenge and intimidation meant to hurl at the Supreme Court if Roe v. Wade is overturned in the summer of 2022.  Gun rights are legal and constitutionally protected.  They are intended to protect us from overreaching authority figures like Gavin Newsom and Dr. Fauci.  And yes, that means that gunfights are expected and patriotic if a government goes bad and comes to spread their “badness” to constitutionally protected people.  Not desired, but neither is government abuse.  Gun rights are the last right of defense against an out-of-control government, and over the previous several years, we have seen just how bad it can get.  It’s one thing to warn about these things before people know for themselves how dangerous government can be and what we saw from the government over Covid should be enough to rattle the foundations of anybody.

Nobody wants to shoot people in self-defense.  But living under tyranny is worse.  So that is why there is a trend in states toward even fewer gun restrictions instead of more.   And this has all happened as the government is trying to bankrupt the NRA financially.  Like Trump, through the NRA, the government thought those were the forces behind gun rights, so they attacked them in ways to destroy them.  No, the NRA was just a collection of over 5 million people who supported gun rights.  They would continue to support gun rights whether or not there was an NRA.  One did not create the other.   There are no rights to apply to anti-gun advocates seeking to use the Texas abortion law to gun sales in California.  Guns are constitutionally protected.  Abortion is not and never was.  Only threats of intimidation allowed for abortion, and that portion of the law will soon be restored to constitutional observations of life.  Guns are meant to protect life, liberty, and happiness.  And abortion is about killing life.  Now that more people appreciate the Constitution, we see a restoration of its legal value.  And from my observation, that is a wonderful, new trait that I welcome tremendously. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

What Freedom Means to Me: ‘The Notorious Life of Ned Buntline’

What Freedom Means

Another treasure that has come out of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West is yet another wonderful book called The Notorious Life of Ned Buntline. I would say that my visit to that excellent museum in Cody, Wyoming was equivalent to discovering a massive chunk of gold and igniting a gold rush in California or South Dakota. It was a rich experience that has produced treasures that kept on giving. I saw many very wonderful things in America during 2021, but so far, my visit to that Center of the West and the books I found there have been life-changing, given the state of the world we are all experiencing. I went there looking for answers, and I found plenty. And within that book about Ned Buntline, which was an alias for the real person E. Z. C. Judson, was a passage that I thought was particularly potent. You see, Ned Buntline was at his time one of the most prolific writers in America, in the world for that matter. He influenced people like Mark Twain and later would give birth to the Republic serials, the movie career of John Wayne, create Buffalo Bill, and essentially launch modern entertainment as we know it now. But I found a passage particularly relevant to me which said by Judson, “I found that to make a living I must write trash for the masses, for he endeavors to write for the critical few, and do his genius justice, will go hungry if he has no other means of support.” I have never read a more accurate statement. 

Obviously, I write a tremendous amount of material. I always have, and it is the most frequent question I get asked. “Why do you do it,” they say. Well, I would say I do it because I love it. And also cherish my freedom to such an extent that I do not want other people involved in my doing it. When you sell writing, you bring others into the process, and I have found that I hate giving up those freedoms. In my early years, I wrote in newspapers and online periodicals, such as American Thinker and such things. I had frequent contact with Wilshire Blvd. agents in Hollywood as I was in the mode to sell screenplays to get into the movie business. I didn’t think that I was very attached to those bodies of work, but I discovered that I wouldn’t say I liked to work within the confines of editors who all had a liberal slant compared to my positions. I remember sitting in an office with an agent who wanted to represent me and listening to them tell me that I needed to tone down the violence of an award-winning screenplay that I had called The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia because it would turn people off. I thought that was nonsense, and later that year, Kill Bill came out, which was along the same lines as what I was writing, and it was very successful. It wasn’t the violence that the agent had a problem with. Instead, it was just their way of sticking their nose into my work and shaping it into something they could relate to, which happens all the time.

I’ve written books, short stories and been in contact with just about every publishing house that exists, and they all left the same bad taste in my mouth. I learned over time that the only way to write for a living was to do as Ned Buntline did, to listen to the editorial critics and focus on the masses. But to me, that felt cheap, and it made me not love the writing process. So I decided to make a living in different ways; I had many other talents, after all. Did I really need to sell my writing? Of course not, life is what you make it, and if you love what you do and don’t really care who sees it, then there is a certain freedom to it that has much more value. In these modern times where newspapers are irrelevant, there are plenty of options for the self-publisher who can write for themselves, and if a critical few enjoy the work, good for them. So that is how I came to write so much in the way that I do. That is also why there aren’t more writers out there unveiling the truth about things, because they always have editors who reel them in from the touchy stuff, like talking about Covid, election fraud, or whatever company policy the publisher has. To be free in life, you have to function without the restrictions of other people’s opinions.   They may not like what you are doing; you may find that you write for only that critical, vital few. But it’s better work, it’s more important because of its authenticity, and it feels better as a person to produce it. 

I thought this was all particularly important, at least to me, in defining freedom. We talk about it all the time. But when we say it, what do we want freedom from? In a free market system, we should all be free within reason to pursue our own way in life without some centralized government pointing us in the direction of their deficiencies. And just because you are free, there is no promise that people will like what you do. But with Ned Buntline, would he have traded authenticity for all his fame and fortune? In life, he was a crazy person with all kinds of deficiencies, many of which I would attribute to a genius that had to be snuffed out to write material for those masses to make a living. The contrast in that life was too much for him, and he lived a reckless and uninhibited, sometimes lawless life. We often see it in such people who know better than to live the confines of a life controlled by others. They turn to the bottle or reckless relationships with other people and find themselves damaged as people as a result all too often. That is the cost of a lack of freedom in people’s lives. Everyone has to figure out what freedom means to them. For me, it’s being able to do what I love without other people sticking their noses into the process. Writing is not a collaborative process where movie making is. I prefer to write what I want, let people think what they want, and do whatever happens as a result.

Meanwhile, I’m on to the next dozen topics, which is how it is with me. And I love it that way. Freedom for me is not being stuck in the mud of other people’s lives, especially the government. And I love it so much that I prefer not to sell my work to the masses but to produce it for myself and share it with whomever. But never to be stuck or shaped by the opinions of others. And in that way, I am one of the freest people on earth, and I will continue that way. So when we talk about freedom, we have to define what that is for ourselves. When I am asked why I write so much, that passage in The Notorious Life of Ned Buntline says it all. And it says much more about the freedoms we all expect as Americans when we point at a government and call it tyranny. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Failures of Institutionalism: Disney’s New Star Wars Hotel Rejected by the Fans

Corporate Failure

To understand why and how liberalism is failing currently and will continue to fail, a great example of what’s to come was displayed when Disney released a preview video for their new Star Wars Hotel experience.  Fans had been waiting for over eight years for the opening of this more than a billion-dollar investment, and what Disney showed the public instantly went from ambitious hope to fandom scorn for the immense wokeness contained in the project.  I certainly wanted to give the project a chance. I would have liked to take my grandchildren and children to this hotel if it looked any good.   After all, I raised my family on Star Wars and the various stories of good and evil in such a modern storybook fashion.  But what Disney did with Star Wars and the hotel experience was full of contemporary liberalism in every way that we can see it failing, from the Biden administration to the global greenie weenies at the United Nations.  These people at Disney, who had infinite resources to spend on this hotel experience and Star Wars itself, didn’t understand what they had bought from George Lucas. They presented the ultimate failure of liberalism, which I found very interesting and relevant to our modern observations.  After a very long wait, the hotel is supposed to open in a few months, March of 2022.  The video itself looks like a child made it, and for what Star Wars means to people, everyone expected from Disney a lot more. 

Part of that billion-dollar investment went into making the Galaxy’s Edge experience at the two Disney parks in Florida and California.  My wife and I went to the one in Florida once it opened, and I thought it was magnificent for the price of a $100 admission ticket.  To see some full-scale props from the movies was worth the money.  I enjoyed myself and thought it was a great experience.  But this hotel experience was poised to be something like a “West World” experience, or Fantasy Island from the old television show where you came to Disney to realize a fantasy of living in Star Wars for a two-day affair.  And for that experience, it would cost around $6,000 to $10,000.  So naturally, what they were selling was very ambitious, and people were excited about it.  The point of releasing a preview video, which they did in mid-December 2021, was to book reservations for the rest of 2022 and into 2023.  But the video turned out to be so bad that the opposite happened.  People started canceling their reservations as soon as they saw the video because it looked and felt nothing like Star Wars.  I covered this problem years ago on a radio show with a guy who is now a Disney employee.  Way back in 2013, when this Disney Hotel was just announced, we contemplated the problem Disney would have with its anti-gun politics when Star Wars was all about guns.  How do you have fun with Star Wars without promoting “war?” When fans attended the hotel experience but couldn’t wear around their blasters, it wouldn’t feel like Star Wars, and that is precisely what the first problem was with the video promo. 

It looked like the people who developed the concept for the hotel were more in love with the movie, The Fifth Element rather than Star Wars.  The cantina singer as the feature in the video was a clear sign that the Disney creators thought Star Wars was all about funny colored aliens, space, and orchestral music.  They didn’t understand the heart and soul of what made the films so beloved in the first place. It’s the kind of corporate failure I see all the time and talk about extensively in my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business.  I wasn’t upset by the video, but it certainly solidified my plans for 2022.  There was no way I would spend $20-30,000 in 2022 to take my family to this Star Wars experience.  To understand their target audience at this hotel, the Disney planners would have done well to study the current video games, Battlefront, Call of Duty, and Fortnite.  With the amount of money Disney wants for the hotel, they should know that, at a minimum, they should be offering some kind of competitive laser tag experience, something that simulates pulse-pounding action with real consequences to the story.  People were not going to spend that kind of money to watch people sing and eat food.  But to be fair, the Disney philosophy had no chance out of the gate; as a woke company going after what they think is the emerging middle class of China, they are not prepared to tell Star Wars stories.  They believe that as a media company, they set society’s values instead of offering the products that society wants. It’s a fine line that they have lost, but it’s more a condition of modern liberalism in general and institutional failure on a massive scale.  Institutions are not powerful if they don’t embody what the public wants as a consumer class.  And Disney has lost its way the more corporate they have become and moved away from the foundations of Uncle Walt Disney himself.  That is the same thing that has happened to Star Wars the more they have moved away from George Lucas, who created the franchise. 

The mistake was that the modern corporate Star Wars approach had all the tools for success right in their breadbasket, but they approached it all with the wrong philosophy, which carries over to the more significant message here.  If all the values of institutionalism were as they assumed, the Star Wars Hotel would have been a slam dunk for Disney.  They had the money.  They had the best and brightest of modern college graduates.  They had a proven brand that spanned decades as a money maker.  What could go wrong?  Well, wokeism, for one.  But deeper than that, it’s the corporate approach that fails in all companies to some degree or another, whether it’s McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, or Nike.  Once a product becomes affiliated with a political movement, such as globalism, it loses its use as art. It becomes simply a tool of a detached class of people stuck in their own versions of quicksand in life.  Star Wars was always about rebellion against tyranny.

Here were the Disney people all too happy to be a compliance culture trying to make a Star Wars experience for people, complete with masks indoors in a state-run by Ron DeSantis, who has been the best against such idiocy.  Because of their political intentions toward liberalism, Disney masks their employees and guests on purpose.  They didn’t have to, but they wanted to be part of that “woke” culture they think the world will be driven by.  In the video, they put out there were no signs of masculinity, which is essential because Star Wars was always designed for boys 8-12 years of age.  Trying to create an “expanded market” with outreach to girls and people of color has only destroyed the original base of the franchise.  So now Disney has made something that nobody wants.  Their target audience for this hotel experience would have been the Comic-Con types who would spend thousands of dollars on a Star Wars experience.  But now, they have all those types of people against them as they are insulted by Disney’s approach.  And after watching all this, it looked like our nightly news and the perplexity that many global institutionalists are having when they wonder why people don’t want Build Back Better, the CDC, or to be controlled by the United Nations.  When institutionalism and the necessities of individuals are not aligned, we can see these kinds of failures everywhere.  But what’s essential about the Disney case is that it proves that no amount of money can solve the problem and make people think something they don’t.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business