I dare you dear reader to watch the fabulous film Cartel Land by Matthew Heineman for the sheer guts it took to film it. This was a movie I had on my radar for a while and due to the long Memorial Day weekend and the easy access of it on Netflix, I was able to finally watch it. If you really want to see the tip of the iceberg of what’s going on in Mexico—just the tip—then watch this movie today. It shows a lot of good people wrapped up in a completely destroyed system where government institutions have been entirely wiped away and yield to organized crime. Here is a clip of the filmmaker and some sample scenes.
Drugs are death—there is nothing good that comes from them in any way. If you take drugs, you are feeding these organized crime elements, and you are part of the vast evil they are spreading. I can’t say there was a single good guy in Cartel Land, but there were a lot of people who dared to think of themselves that way. For some standing up to the cartels was their very last act at some sort of redemption and to them I say, wonderful. Better late than never. But people in America better get it through their thick skulls quickly just how bad the situation truly is. Mexico is a destroyed country and the illegal immigration is technically an invasion against ours for the open destruction of American sovereignty. And to be honest, who could blame the Mexican people for wanting to leave such an armpit of a country. If there is one thing that Matthew captured so well was the many good people stuck in a situation where death, poverty, and oppression were the only things they have to look forward to. If any country should do any invading its America into Mexico. After watching Cartel Land I think we should invade Mexico, free all their people—clean up the cartels completely, and turn the whole county into an American state—like Texas. Those poor people would be a lot better off.
It was an amazing film. I already felt quite passionately about the drug cartels and the people who suffer most by them. But this movie really captured the desperation. You should watch it today. With Netflix, it doesn’t get any easier—so there’s no excuse not to see it.
At a commencement speech to Harvard graduates, Steven Spielberg revealed why his movies have evolved into a much less blockbuster status than his previous work—his pre-college work. After his outstanding success, colleges looking to ride the coattails of the famous director as second-handers gave out honorary degrees as a way to attach themselves to his genius. Unfortunately, Steven grew up a little insecure and the sudden attention and social acceptance was enjoyable and he found himself bending more toward the liberal view of things as progressives had infiltrated Hollywood at every level, from finance, marketing, to actual manufacture—and Spielberg was the top of the heap, the standard-bearer of the entire movie industry. Unfortunately, the last brilliant movie of Steven Spielberg was Schindler’sList which he made the same year as the first Jurassic Park. From a box office standpoint, and the quality of art perspective, Spielberg has been in decline since 1993. He has done good work, but it hasn’t been on nearly the same level largely because of his acceptance of the global education he received from his honorary degrees and return to college to finish what he started before success interrupted his education at USC.
During the commencement speech Spielberg explained that he attended California State University, Long Beach but dropped out of school in favor of an internship at Universal — a choice, he said, that affected his filmmaking: “Up until the 1980s my films are what you could call escapist, but I was in a celluloid bubble because I cut my education short and my world view was limited to what I could dream up in my head and not what the world could teach me.”
He later re-enrolled and, in 2002, he completed the credits that were necessary for a B.A. from CSULB. He joked: “It helped that they gave me a course credit in paleontology for the work I did on Jurassic Park.”
Spielberg has since garnered an impressive list of honorary degrees from schools like Boston University, Yale and the University of Southern California, which rejected the director from its film school when he applied out of high school.
I watched Bridge of Spies recently while on an oversea trip and I thought it was good. But it wasn’t great. The same with Lincoln. It was a pretty average movie, certainly not on par with Spielberg’s earlier work—like TheColor Purple or Always. Now in my opinion, Steven Spielberg earned the right to make whatever movie he wants to. He had a string of films from 1975 to 1993 that dominated the box office and essentially made Universal Studios a successful business. Without Steven Spielberg, there would be no Universal Studios, Florida theme park. From E.T. to Jaws, Jurassic Park, to the Transformer series—even Back to the Future—if it wasn’t for Spielberg, there would be nothing. Likely, the brilliant film composer John Williams would still be in obscurity and unknown if he had not fallen into the fortune of working with Spielberg then his friend George Lucas in the late 70s. It is important to understand that all of Spielberg’s early success and the industry of Hollywood essentially, came as a result of him dropping out of college. Clearly, Spielberg doesn’t understand the Metaphysics of Quality. He has natural talent that was best utilized as a direct result of his individual mind, not the collective efforts of team collaboration. He is a collaborator, obviously, otherwise he wouldn’t be a great film director, but in essence, his trust in his abilities drove everyone from the front, not from the boardroom of collective input. Once Spielberg allowed for that type of collective—“worldly” thinking, the value of his work decreased immensely. Spielberg no longer means GREAT! Now it just means—interesting.
All the world can teach us is to be average, and submissive to its limits. That is the Spielberg after 1993 to the present—a broken man who has fallen into the rut of “average.” He no longer strives for perfection, or his place in history as a great filmmaker. He is surrounded by “yes men” and second-handers—and that includes the last four presidents of the United States. I still watch his movies, but often I wait until I can catch up to them a few years after their release. They are no longer for me opening night events—and that makes the world not a better place, but a far worse one. I would say that the movie industry was better off with Spielberg produced films like Batteries Not Included and Gremlins than it is with Munich or that stupid movie he did with Oprah recently about French food.
Spielberg upon reading this might think I don’t know what I’m talking about, but he’d be wrong. I grew up just a few miles from where he did in Cincinnati. I’ve read many of the same books and have very similar interests. The difference is, I never really grew up into an adult, and that was something that made Spielberg appealing as a filmmaker to many people who had lost their childhoods—as cynical adults. I have fought that “growing up,” because I don’t see the value in it. Colleges are more about crushing individuality into a collective mush, and that is not a good thing. Intellectuals call that “worldly” I call it “defeated.” I deal with really smart people every day—several of them with doctoral degrees and often they require me to navigate for them through the mine fields of business. I have to waste a lot of time “re-teaching” them how to unthink all the garbage they learned in college to get back to their inner child. Personally, I don’t think human beings should stop learning with the wonderment of children. Sure adults need to be responsible caretakers of civilization, but getting through Harvard doesn’t do it—nor does getting honorary degrees. Success comes from individuality, and it is something that is very unique. They don’t’ teach success in college. They teach compliance.
I honestly miss Steven Spielberg. I am grateful he has done what he did, but I miss the energy and hope of his pre-college work. He calls them “escapism” films but the important thing to ask is why people feel a need to escape in the first place. What is it they want relief from? It is the world of college destroyed autonomous thinking that has ruined the minds of millions of otherwise very smart people. Steven used to give people hope that life wasn’t so bland. Now his movies are about accepting how bland it is—because that’s the world view he learned in college—and it’s quite sad. What he told the Harvard graduating class is probably the worst advice anybody could probably give those young minds. But then again, Steven had the same advice given to him—which he followed toward his own destruction—and the eventual destruction of the entire film industry coming soon to a multiplex near you. Escapism is good when the world wants to throw shackles on your mind and destroy it for collectivist consumption. And that used to be why Spielberg films were always so special—and why they no longer are.
I have a special relationship with a David Harber sculpture at Liberty Center next to the upstairs portion of the Kona Grill. When I get time during mid-day it is not uncommon for me to go there to read. I love the way the designers of Liberty Center created a reverse spiral leading up to the sculpture hidden by evergreens. In the center there is revealed rather majestically a large planetary shape of smooth rocks placed together to form a very unique sculpture. It is called “Dark Planet” and it is but one of the many Harber sculptures featured at the high-end shopping complex known as Liberty Center located in Liberty Township, Ohio. I have been intrigued by the many Harber sculptures located around the property and people who visit are lucky to have them. The sculptures bring with them a sophistication that is quite appropriate to our times and I find them fascinating—immensely. The Steiner Group was very wise to feature them so boldly.
I happened to be at the Kona Grill during a fabulous late spring evening where the sun set behind the luxury Marriott across the courtyard and I had a full view of several of these Harber sculptures. The restaurant had the patio walls all pulled up to enjoy the outside air and everything was just fabulous, the food, the atmosphere and the company. But my thoughts were on a rather intense project that I’m working on, something that is bigger than anything that I know that literature has ever created. Yet I’m working out the details moment by moment and that was heavy on my mind while dining at the Kona Grill and looking across the bar at the Harber sculptures.
It was late at night when I left but I had to take the moment to see my favorite sculpture, the “Dark Planet” just upstairs, so I proceeded through the dining room to the stairs which take guests to the upper level and dodged servers coming and going with sushi to guests enjoying the open air on the upper floor. The blue sophisticated glow of the bar shown against the faces of the many guests enjoying the NBA playoffs over drinks and fine food as the stars looked on from above, but my target was just a few steps to the east of that fenced off area. The vegetation had grown full now that winter was over and the “Dark Planet” was hard to see until the long spirally path was walked, which I did, only to come upon the sculpture looking like a planet coming apart from inside before molten lava exploded it into some other form.
Not to give anything away too far in advance, but since I have learned about a rogue planet coming and going through our solar system every tens of thousands of years apparently creating havoc each time it swings in between Mars and Jupiter before shooting back around our sun for the cold space beyond—I have been mildly obsessed with the concept and that David Harber sculpture makes me think about it constantly. I had been wondering if the Harber sculptures were formed by some secret society of Illuminati maniacs who knew well about such things hidden from the masses. I was a little relieved to discover that David Harber was just an artist—not necessarily a cosmic doomsayer complete with hidden knowledge. After a little investigation from his website I found this curious quote about him.
With a deep appreciation of the cosmos, David is inspired by the night sky as well as appreciating it as a means to escape life’s hectic pace. Harber’s keen interest in astronomy and the stars allows him to bring celestial mechanics to life, capturing the passage of time and space
It was a serendipitous event for David to find, a few years ago, that he was a direct descendant of the Elizabethan mathematician and scientific instrument maker John Blagrave, and that this historic figure lived most of his life some twenty miles from Harber’s workshop in Oxfordshire
It’s not the purpose of art to define itself, but to evoke thought—which for me Harber’s work does. Just a few nights prior to my visit to Kona Grill, my wife and I were in our hot tub looking up at the stars as the moon wasn’t yet up over the horizon and again I was working out the sheer majesty of my literary project—the scope of which involved that “Dark Planet” hidden out there coming back toward us between Mars and Jupiter which I could see clearly above my head. I couldn’t help but think of the cataclysmic consequences of that occurrence. The tides on earth would become very violent, probably flooding the entire world with the awesome gravity pull of such a cosmic event, in much the way that the moon makes our tides on earth roll in and out. A planet the size of Neptune suddenly arriving so close to earth would have a major impact depending on the nature of the elliptical orbits. For me, the Harber “Dark Planet” sculpture represents the hidden monstrosity and fact of life looming large, unseen in the night sky—until it’s too late.
But with destruction also comes rebirth and such things aren’t necessarily bad unless you are madly in love with the way things are. We live in a world of constant change, yet that which is immortal in us all steps beyond such concerns of trees, oceans, and flowers. Earth will be destroyed probably many times over as that “Dark Planet” roars throughout solar system constantly wiping the slate clean for us to continuously reemerge as a civilization time and time again. It’s not the rocks and bones we take with us, it’s the ideas we generate through our lives and the impact that has on the cosmos. We are not meant to sit forever looking up at the stars waiting for them to pass judgment on us. We are meant to go into those heavens and to conquer them into our own imaginative impulses and to ride that “Dark Planet” the way a cowboy rides a bucking bull. We are meant to make the universe into our own image. Thus spoke Cliffhanger.
If you have not stopped by Liberty Center to appreciate the work of David Harber—you should. The “Dark Planet” is obviously my favorite. But a very close second is his “Torus” which is like a wormhole through time and space. It sits right outside of the Kona Grill in front of the Cinebistro movie theater and is worth a visit by itself.
The answer is that our country has been invaded by diabolical scum bags who use the Democratic Party to destroy all that is good in the world—and they are on a global crusade to literally ruin the lives of everything that calls itself human through their mass collectivist philosophies. They are horrible people and it was great to hear the individual speech of Wayne LaPierre at the NRA meetings in Louisville, Kentucky.
The type of America that Charles Bronson and Wayne LaPierre stand for is the only kind of country I am interested in living in. I’m fine if people from other countries want to come to the United States and enjoy our freedoms. But they are not allowed to come to our county and make in it into the garbage they left behind. They have to respect our culture and at the heart is our love of guns. Listening to LaPierre speak makes me very proud to be a member of the NRA. Those values which Charles Bronson represented so well in that great movie classic are not dead. They are alive and well within the type of people who belong to the NRA. But they should be present in every American. So if you are not an NRA member and worse yet—you vote for Democrats—you are on the wrong side of history. And like those spoiled kids in that movie—you need a spanking. Too bad that Charles is no longer with us.
But some of us are keeping the fires of freedom burning—and LaPierre is certainly one of them!
While I was on the air with Matt Clark during his WAAM radio broadcast recently he wanted me to talk a bit about my latest Curse of Fort Seven Mile series. However, time ran out and we couldn’t get into the details. Actually, I don’t think I could cover all the details in an hour show, or a 10 hour show. For me, what started as a simple pulp fiction series has evolved into something I would term as a philosophy for the 22nd century. The below videos will help with the context but essentially what I’m doing is this: over the next one hundred years we are going to discover that we are not alone in the solar system, let alone the galaxy. We will learn to defy death. We will unlock all the potentials of a Type 1 civilization and that will require us to completely revisit our current political and religious philosophies—because the present ones just won’t be sufficient. That’s not a knock on anybody, but the discoveries of the next century will just unlock a massive amount of potential that isn’t even forecasted on the horizon as of yet—and people will need some means of thinking about those things if they want to survive.
I have been pretty adamant about my hobbies and positions. I essentially grew up studying mythologies and religious cultures, but I like to make money, so I chose professional endeavors that I could raise a family on—but there is a lot about me that is very sympathetic to the Nathan Drake video game character. The people I most admire these days are people like Josh Gates and his friend Erin Ryder. If I did not love family as much as I do, I would have loved to live the life that they have—and believe me I have no regrets. But I do read and watch a lot of what those fantastic people have put out as far as discovery over the years. When they tackle some crypto mystery much of it comes out to nothing, but it’s the asking of the questions that I find absolutely amazing. There are a lot of people, many whom are featured in these videos who have committed enormous amounts of time and resources to asking hard questions about mankind’s origins—and I’ll be honest—I love each and every one of them. When I listen to their lectures and read their books I think in the best case scenarios, they may be getting 50% of any given idea correct. But even 1% of what these people are saying they are major game changers for the entire human race and the world at large.
Lately, there has been an explosion, likely because of the Internet, of conspiracy theories and examinations into a hidden past that does not agree with the Leaky evolutionary theories. The latest revisions are probably driven more by Jurassic Park’s DNA examples and the popular Lord of the Rings movies about Middle Earth—art has helped our society ask new questions from a fresh perspective—and the answers to those questions might just be explosive. If only 1% is true, mankind is in for some startling revelations. The best movies and books are the ones that make you ask, “what if,” and as the videos included here surmise, there are some very smart people who are asking lots of questions tainted by their personal backgrounds. But it is what they agree on that has stimulated my thinking and focused my mind on the hard evidence that is rapidly pouring in.
I wanted to write another Cliffhanger novel but I wanted it to be relevant to the world 100 years from now the way I read Jules Verne, Ayn Rand, H.P. Lovecraft or even Shakespeare. My favorite play of his is Titus Andronicus. His use of extreme violence to tell the moral story of love and loss—as well as dedication are the kinds of things I find infinitely fascinating and it doesn’t matter when in history we read such a story—they still communicate a truth which is valuable. Having these kinds of interests I couldn’t just write some average piece of fiction reviewers of today would like—I wanted to write something that people a century from now would marvel at and would still draw inspiration from. Yet I also wanted to make the argument that the values America had from around 1870 to about 1900 were the best the world had ever seen, and that those values should be captured in a bottle and examined in actually a scientific way—as having merit on culture building itself. The economic means of the country was explosive during that period, morality was respectable, and collectivism was being defeated wherever it was encountered—namely during westward expansion.
For about forty years I have had in my mind a really terrible antagonist and a concept for painting it into a story against the ultimate protagonist—but I needed to collect a lot of information to tell that story. Finally, I feel like I’m there. Once I had all the details worked out, I went to work writing it—and as I thought, it has turned out to be the byproduct of a hyperactive imagination, a technical background, legitimate scientific investigation and all the life experience learned in every hard way imaginable.
Knowing that over the next couple decades history will have to reflect what we are learning now—and that we will learn that not only are we not alone, but that we are currently in a relationship with thinking beings not from earth’s origin story and that the essential ingredient to a successful society resides within individual behavior as opposed to collective salvation—and that once that process begins—where democracies run by a mob take over the individual input of actual leaders—that all civilizations stop functioning and regress back to their beginnings.
Even as my protagonist, Cliffhanger fights bad guys with flaming bullwhips all in the name of justice—it is important these days to define the merits of that justice. It is not enough to simply show bad and good—it has to be defined by actual universal rules of engagement as defined by the observable conditions of our cosmos. To do that we have to step beyond our veil of politics and modern philosophy and take the next step. Taking that step is what and why I’m committing so much time to this new Cliffhanger story. Similarly to that Cannibals of Cahokia story—this Curse of Fort Seven Mile has the benefit of an additional twenty years of hard living and earned observation. Like H.P. Lovecraft I have a love for pulp fiction written in a romantic fashion—and on the surface that is what these new Cliffhanger stories are. But, my protagonist, Fletcher Finnegan in The Curse of Fort Seven Mile is actually named after one of my favorite literary figures of all time, the giant in Finnegan’s Wake from the James Joyce classic. My goals with the work are not to reach the New York Best Seller’s list, or even to get reviews from Publisher’s Weekly. It is to offer a useful philosophy for people grappling with real significant challenges to everything they believed was true for over 10,000 years and to provide them a softer landing philosophically—so to maybe for the first time in human history to provoke a change in mankind’s propensity to always revert back to the Vico cycle. Thus SpokeCliffhanger.
If you want a preview of this work they are available on the sidebar. But the real meat is yet to come and why I am dedicating some specific time and resources to completing it. To get a sense of it, just watch all these videos and you’ll get your mind ready to read what I’m putting into a story intended for readers of the next century. I’m not giving up on politics. But rather it is too small of a shoe for me now. The next obvious evolution is exopolitical theater and the vast changes it will bring. Currently it is a bit on the fringe side, but that will change rapidly—and when it does–well, people will want a point of reference and fiction is a good place to begin—by bridging what we know with what we will come to understand.
Yes, during this broadcast on WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan with Matt Clark, I predicted the end of the Democratic Party. What, Why, How, When and Where I described in some detail during the radio broadcast. Click the link below to hear it for yourself and be sure to pass it along to a friend in need of some energy in these trying times. Don’t worry, help is coming!
Obviously, Obama lost a Obamacare lawsuit, and it was embarrassing. So his administration wanted to change the news cycle. Literally, within hours of losing the court case Obama exceedingly overstepped his executive powers once again by imposing a ridiculous transgender rule against public schools.
Remember what I have said about public schools. If you vote for a school levy you are stupid. If you send your kids to public school, you are taking a serious chance of destroying their minds forever. If you love them, you should home school them, or send them to a private school. Public schools are dangerous, lazy, and obviously corrupt, and by Obama’s actions–are a part of the transgender psychosis promoting the advancement of mental illness as a substitute to logic.
As you can see from the picture Matt used on his Saturday May 7th 2016 broadcast he’s a little concerned about the direction of our country. About three-quarters into the hour-long show which he does each week on WAAM radio in Ann Arbor, Michigan I came on to add a little color. For your own sanity dear reader, you should listen to it now, then pass it along to a friend. It may well just save your life with a small dose of sanity at a key time in our American history.
Matt and I are doing an entire hour together this upcoming Saturday and it will be live, so if you’d like to listen or call in, you can catch the show at 1 PM at this link.
I wasn’t going to say much about it, but now that Donald Trump is the Republican Party nominee and tempers have abated a bit, proper analysis can finally be possible. Context is needed before everyone can move forward. I would think that Objectivists would be happier about Trump than they are. I would also think that Tea Party types would as well. Apparently they have in their mind something else that a POTUS is supposed to be which is really too much to ask. Trump essentially to me is the first Objectivist oriented candidate to ever truly make it to such a high position, and I think the benefits philosophically to our society will be immeasurable. It really comes down to the public versus private sector ability. Public sector approaches are too costly and grossly ineffective where private is much more driven by individual performance and that is the world that Donald Trump comes out of—and it will be exciting to watch.
I’m certainly not an Objectivist from Ayn Rand’s camp. While I admire the work and think it is the best thing the human race has come up with to date regarding management of government resources, it doesn’t go far enough for me. I make it no secret that one of my favorite books is Thus Spoke Zarathustra yet I would say that my thinking about things is naturally evolved further along than Nietzsche—which is understandable. That was over 100 years ago, and we’ve learned a lot since then. Ayn Rand’s work was 50 years ago, so it’s not exactly current. I have decided that I need to take those types of ideas to the next level before I can have meaning in them which is what I’m doing in the Curse of Fort Seven Mile series. I can’t just write stories for commercial endeavor. Even though I enjoy it, there has to be some earth-shaking sense in the work that steers the mind toward the answers for living. While Ayn Rand denied it, I see clearly that her novels were certainly extensions to Thus Spoke Zarathustra—which was to say, a graduation of mankind from a kind of dependent sacrificial being, into a self-aware, self-sustaining creature capable of immeasurable creation through sheer imagination.
Glenn Beck lost me back when he was on Fox News when he’d speak with ill will toward Nietzsche because Beck needed a “God” figure in his life. He and a lot of people like him apparently needed to feel that a “god” was guiding them through some divine providence toward some heavenly revelation—as if the plans for America were tied to the plans extracted from Heaven. To me, that’s lazy thinking—and I deep dive the reasons in my Curse of Fort Seven Mile series. You can’t just trust something that may not be even concerned with our dimensional reality. What might call itself a “god” to us may in fact be a disgraceful devil of some kind and we need our intellects to guide us through those decision gates. Ultimately however, the problem that these types of conservatives have with Donald Trump is that he has certainly graduated in his life away from the need to feel guilt about anything and is living as a self-professed intelligence. Trump to me is very much the character from Thus Spoke Zarathustra who lived in the mountain cave and came down to the village below to teach the world about the Overman. Biblically, Donald Trump is not an icon of virtual, but as a graduate from the necessity to sacrifice one’s essence for the benefit of the collective whole—Donald Trump is the first of his kind to emerge into public office. I say that now because the Hillary Clinton antics with Elizabeth Warren just aren’t going to be able to stop him in a general election. Yet Glenn Beck in his early days and even as recently as the latest Atlas Shrugged movies was very supportive of Ayn Rand, as was Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and Rand Paul. They apparently don’t understand what makes the characters great in Rand’s books. It certainly wasn’t a propensity to sacrifice themselves to some “divine providence.” Glenn Beck actually called on people to “fast” to beg God to keep Donald Trump from winning the presidential nomination. That is just ridiculous. Talk about sacrifice—Beck doesn’t understand—he has clearly lost his mind.
I understand that some people need a “god” to hold their life together. You can’t just live a life leaning toward meek sacrifice for 70 years of a life then stop on a dime and say that man has within its mind the power of the universe and that “god is dead,” as Nietzsche did in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. However, the need for a “god” is in mankind’s intellect, and the need to hold on to that crutch has kept our society in this ridiculously infantile state for far too long. You will never get to John Galt’s engine of the world by sacrificing bits of yourselves to a being beyond time and space. Whatever is out there in those folds of time needs to be properly vetted before trust can properly be established—you certainly can’t trust some Roman interpretation of a Christ metaphor passed down to us from the ages of Zoroastrianism. That’s just stupid. While I don’t fault people for their needs intellectually, I do when it comes to crossing the streams of proper government. Thinking is the key to human endeavor, not hoping that a “god” will show mercy and guide us to some Promise Land. We have to make that Promised Land though our intellectual gifts provided by “god,” but we can’t be passive recipients in our approach.
Donald Trump’s harshest critics are those who find it appalling that he is completely a man of his own making, that he seeks only his counsel when making a decision, that he loves himself and isn’t meek, and that he shows an indication toward the complete domination of his enemies. They can’t understand such a person because Trump is free from the need to sacrifice anything to make something—so they can’t understand how it will be possible as president. But praying for a god to save a nation is just as stupid as the athlete who scores a touchdown and points toward heaven as though “god” made such a thing possible. To say that America is great because God is behind it is just as stupid as the Muslims believing that Allah wants them to kill infidels. America is great because the thoughts of mankind have been free to unleash the gifts of imagination manifested into invention and that is something new. Donald Trump is a product of the American system. He is a graduate of individualism and that is what will make him a great president. I know I can trust Donald Trump because he works by the rules of individual integrity—he doesn’t need the judgment of God to keep him from smoking cigarettes or doing drugs—the way Glenn Beck uses God to keep back the demons from his past. Trump cares about himself and his family and he doesn’t want to be viewed by history as being bad, tyrannical, or a loser in any way. He wants to be loved as he loves himself and he wants to give people that feeling that he has when he gets up each morning—it’s the one thing that billions of dollars in the bank can’t buy, and it’s the one thing he wants more than anything in life. He wants the respect of those around him and the way he intends to get it is by the means of the individualists who have written in literature the foundations of our present circumstances—philosophers like Nietzsche and Ayn Rand.
Trump will unlock through his mouth the potential of America and that is the force behind the movement that is now afoot. That movement is what these #NeverTrump people are scared of. They fear that America will head toward Sodom and Gomorra with the inauguration of Donald Trump because they essentially don’t understand the power that drives people on the individual level. For instance, I was at a baseball game at the Cincinnati Reds home park and my wife and I were having diner in the Diamond Club. It was all very nice, the food was on the upside and the drinks were flowing all around us. People were happy, festive and we were all living a life of extreme opulence. The food was too good and many of us were still enjoying it when the game started. When the National Anthem came on everyone stopped and stared at the televisions to watch what was happening out on the field. That entire place went dead silent and everyone was enrapt with reverence toward the greatness of our country. Nobody told anyone to behave that way; it came out of the individual inclination of the collected masses. That is in essence the Donald Trump life. Work hard, have plenty so that there is an excess, and be gracious with that excess. But don’t be a loser, because if you are, you deserve to be bitch slapped into oblivion. Nobody likes a loser and America isn’t a nation of such people. It has been made to feel that way, but it’s time to stop feeling that way. And only Donald Trump can invoke that character once again by returning our nation toward an ideology centered on individual achievement instead of collective salvation. That is where the psychosis of the #NEVERTRUMPs crosses the line because their judgment of good and evil is in violation of the principles of actual success. America can’t afford their immature interpretation any longer. People don’t need to be told to be silent when the National Anthem is playing, and they don’t need to be told to be kind to their neighbor by someone like Glenn Beck. We certainly don’t need any more preachers. We need action by individuals to make our county great again—and we need a salesman to resurrect it within our culture. That is why Donald Trump will be such a great president. He offers a continuation of the philosophies which have evolved over the years toward individualism and now society can see a fine example from the White House which perhaps will save our nation by unlocking that potential in others. That is why the Trump nomination is such a big deal, and why so many people are having a difficult time with it. They don’t have the proper philosophy in their own life to understand–and that isn’t our fault. It’s their problem.
For me Star Wars has always been something of a vacation for my mind—a place to go for leisure and to think about basic formulations regarding good and evil. I am one who believes that books are far superior to movies made from them, so I am still extremely disappointed with what Disney has done with the franchise. However, I accept because of the Metaphysics of Quality that they do not understand at Disney how to do anything original and that they are essentially mining the old Star Wars novels for their new projects and claiming them as originals from the new regime at Lucasfilm. It has really bothered me. But of late I have respected what Lucasfilm has been doing with Disney—some of it anyway. I think Rogue One will be a great movie. It will likely be a combination of a lot of books that I’ve read, especially the A.C Crispin Han Solo novels and the video game Dark Forces but I have come to think that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. The essential stories are still good even if they are mangled by Disney. To me, the books will always rule. But for kids, the way that the books have been reinvented and put up on the silver screen has value—real value and I have found that in this really rough world that we are all living in, that Star Wars certainly is one of the best things in it for families and little kids. They aren’t as good as they were when George Lucas was in charge, but they are still pretty good. My mood lightened a lot about Star Wars after I watched Harrison Ford introduce the new Star Wars land in Disney World, seen below. Lucasfilm finally announced that they found their pick for the new Han Solo films, and I had an opportunity to watch a Reds baseball game on their yearly Star Wars weekend where on Friday night they always do a fabulous fireworks display to John Williams music—which is always wonderful.
It was a beautiful night in May 2016. I was at the Reds game watching the sold out crowd enjoy the Star Wars festivities and noticing how much the kids in the audience were excited about the event. I was also thinking about the kid Alden Ehrenreich who got the part of playing the new Han Solo in the upcoming stand alone films. As I said many months ago I thought they would be smart to put Han Solo into all three of those new movies, and it looks like that’s what they are going to do. With the casting of Alden Ehrenreich I was suddenly very excited about that possibility. Even though I was very disappointed with The Force Awakens death of Han Solo, the possibility of a lot more Han Solo adventures suddenly perked me up and I found myself enjoying Star Wars for really the first time in months.
I remembered how much I loved Han Solo as a kid. Of course I’ve long outgrown that character, but I still love the idea of Han Solo and always loved Star Wars because of him. Without Han Solo for me there is no Star Wars. But now, with this new kid whom I am very impressed with, I am suddenly having fun in that world again. I am actually looking forward to the new films which is a bit of a relief, because like I said, for my mind which is very active, Star Wars was always kind of a vacation. I probably enjoy the behind the scenes art stories about how Star Wars is made more than I do the actual movies. So for the prospect of new Han Solo stories—of seeing some of the elements of the old A.C. Crispin novels about a young Han Solo being put up on a screen for everyone to enjoy, I’m excited about it.
As I was thinking of Rogue One, coming out this Christmas the prospect of Han Solo making a guest appearance is pretty exciting. It will be nice to share those new adventures with my grandkids even though they may never read the same books I did. I decided it was more valuable to share those experiences with them than to just check out. I am still concerned about all the progressive trends that are emerging because essentially the young people making all these new Star Wars movies are fans of the original films that grew up with more progressive values as opposed to the original westerns that George Lucas grew up on. I don’t think the new films will be nearly as good for me as the originals were, but for kids who don’t know any better—it will be very special to them.
More than anything, which was very obvious to me while watching the fireworks at the Reds game, the John Williams music alone was a proper bridge that is just beautiful to behold. The new themes from the most recent Star Wars film fit in quite nicely with the old ones and it was a special fireworks display for me because of it. It’s the first time I have heard the new pieces put together with the old and that’s when I thought—what the hell. There will be six new Star Wars films over the next 5 years and a lot of new music—and Han Solo will be back in the Millennium Falcon with Chewbacca, and those are some fun stories. And in just a few years there will be my dream of seeing a full-sized Millennium Falcon in Disney World. That will be a dream come true and I am far more excited about that than I should be. So even though Matt Clark and I torched Disney’s handling of Star Wars on the radio when The Force Awakens came out—I will give credit when I do see a reason for it and Disney is doing a good job—lately. Hopefully that trend will continue.
For the imagination, there is a lot to look forward to. For me, Star Wars is all about imagination and possibilities. That quest for the imagination is what makes me get up each day to face real world problems and work through massive tribulations. At the end of all those tribulations, it has always been nice to have Star Wars to rest my mind in. So in that context, it is nice to see that I may be able to continue enjoying it. Alden Ehrenreich was a very good pick.
