My long-awaited Rebel Transport came to my home at the conclusion of the new international Holiday, May 4th. I was ecstatic to put my hands on that new creation from Fantasy Flight Games and without a doubt; it will load my spare time with countless adventures. The sheer joy of the new game X-Wing Miniatures is wonderfully articulated in the picture below. This is literally what its like at my house. And it will get worse—I promise. Over the weekend while playing a game of X-Wing, to celebrate May 4th, the official Star Wars day which happens every year with great fanfare, my one and a half-year old grandson wanted desperately to play the game with me. So I let him roll my dice and he loved it.
For the first time that I can think of the official Star Wars weekend launched a spectacular amount of news over the first weekend of May. First the new cast was announced for the new films—which had their first script read together last week. At midnight the new Rebels television show released their new preview which can be seen below. Guess who was watching it at 12:01 AM in the morning of May 4th? Me! On top of all that even the Cincinnati Reds dedicated a whole weekend against their first place division rivals the Milwaukee Brewers. It was Star Wars weekend at Great American Ballpark in Downtown Cincinnati. My family went on Friday night when after the game there was a spectacular fireworks display to the music of the famed musical conductor John Williams that ignited the sky. From the premium seats in Great American Ballpark it was the best fireworks display I had ever seen. Just a bit behind home plate, most of the people who normally sit in that section had got up and left leaving us nearly alone in the coveted section and completely untouched by other human beings. However most of the 30,000+ crowd stuck around with their children and they loved the show with much emotion. During the entire game Friday night, Star Wars characters were all over the field and the music was piped in through the stadium and it was genuinely inspiring to see the two entertainment franchises coming together like that.
Leading up to that baseball game many of the die-hard Reds fans on talk radio and elsewhere were perplexed as to why the baseball team even attempted to cater to a new “geeky” demographic group. I wanted to tell them, but they lacked the language to understand. Just like they would never understand why I kept checking my UPS tracking number on my Rebel Transport during the game hoping it would arrive for a vicious game of X-Wing the following Saturday. I’m 46 years old and to their minds should be interested in a lot of other things—but I am part of that demographic that the Reds were reaching out to—and among young people there are a lot more like me coming to age.
Two weeks from now Hollywood Studios, Florida has their Star Wars Weekends which are always fun. The first weekend is the popular dance off which I always love displayed in the center stage of that fabulous park. Those weekends are typically so busy that the parking lot spills over into the Epcot Center. The parade is one of the most spectacular displays of Star Wars fandom anywhere in the world. The question from the un-initiated is…………..why?
During the Reds game I had to explain to my daughter how when I was younger I had to make a difficult cultural decision. I was spectacular in sports and every teacher who coached a sport wanted me to be on their team. I was the fastest kid in my school especially during my grade school years. Athletically, I could have done anything I wanted to. But, culturally back then, it was taboo to enjoy Star Wars because that made a person categorically a geek. And I loved Star Wars. I was friends with one of the most popular girls in my school and her younger brother was one of my best friends. Through her I could have had access to the upper echelons of public school popularity. But I hated it and wanted nothing to do with any of that politicking. Instead her brother would come to my house on a Friday night and bring all his Star Wars toys and he, my brother, my brother’s friends and I would play with all those toys until late into the night. I never got sick of it even when I was older and my girl friend was interested in boys and all the kids my age were going to dances and hanging out at football games. She thought I was weird because I had no interest in the life she lived. I had picked Star Wars over sports because the culture dictated that you had to choose.
I thought it astonishing that the Reds actually had a Star Wars weekend because finally after 30 years of human evolution the marketing department for the Cincinnati Reds understood that if they want to survive into the future, that they better find a way to appeal to the “Star Wars Geeks.” The game of baseball with all its traditions is struggling to appeal to younger audiences, so they are getting creative even though in an interview with Brandon Philips on 700 WLW, he clearly didn’t understand.
In a lot of ways the new X-Wing Miniatures game is closely associated with those late night sessions playing Star Wars as a kid, and even as a grown adult I’d still rather do that than hang out in some other venue doing something I’d consider utterly useless. Many people confuse Star Wars and Star Trek as being of the same thing, but they are radically different. Star Wars is not about just exploring new frontiers in space and the interactions of characters with different backgrounds and species types. Star Wars is a deep, and rich mythology that works in ways that religion struggles with and is a creation of our times exploring all the primary concerns of our day. Star Wars for me is a western in that it is primarily concerned with the same type of honorable values. It is also about technological innovation and has its roots in drag racing where a young George Lucas loved cars and carried that love over into the space ships of Star Wars. Many of the beat up ships of the new Star Wars games are like galactic hot rods and have a similar appeal as Hot Wheel cars, only these can be used strategically to beat an opponent in a game of thought. I have never seen anything like the new Rebel Transport created for a simple game. By itself, it is an amazing work of art.
Ultimately the wars of Star Wars are about value and the popularity of those films in all the venues extending beyond the silver screen are essentially about preserving or destroying values. For me, the stories of those values carried far more weight than just athletic prowess in sports, or the ability to kiss a girl at a dance. Watching the Cincinnati Reds embrace those values gave me tremendous hope for the future transcending a human leap of evolution many were not aware of. But I saw it during the Reds post game fireworks display and the many tens of thousands who were at Great American Ballpark to enjoy the relatively private show. With all the news that came out about Star Wars during the May 4th Weekend I understood with renewed vigor why the first film was titled A New Hope. The movie was not just about a galaxy far, far away a long time ago but about our human race in the here and now. For many, myself included, Star Wars is about a new hope. My infant grandson knows it, the people at the Reds game knew it, and the thousands who like me were watching the Rebels preview at 12:01 AM knew it. And I wasn’t the only one waiting for my Rebel Transport to arrive over the weekend. Most fans of Star Wars find in it a hope that is otherwise vacant. Hope is why I picked Star Wars over sports as a kid, and space ships over girls. I’m still that way, only my wife actually plays that stuff with me, which is why we’ve been married so long.
The new Rebel Transport is one of the most dramatic things I have ever looked at for a whole lot of reason—most of them centered on hope. In the films the Rebel Transport was the rebels last hope of punching through imperial blockades and fleeing for freedom to live another day in a fight between tyranny and goodness. The X-Wing Miniatures model is really just a lot of plastic and paint, but it is in the organization of those things into a coherent interactive story about hope that makes it something I was checking its arrival time every hour on the hour over the entire weekend. And now that I have it, all is right with the world. The reason is that it represents to me hope, and that is the core of what the term, “May the 4th be with you” really means.
My regular readers usually don’t give articles like this one much notice—but often I gain new ones who aren’t specifically interested in philosophy or politics. However, I would recommend for everybody to consider this topic because of the vast reach and scope of it which will conclude with an article tomorrow about gambling. There is a changing paradigm of social behavior which is unmistakable and positive and deserves some attention. We spend a lot of time complaining about the effects of long-established social causes, but seldom identify new causes before they take hold and the effects they bring with them.
I have written as reference more than once my intense love of the new tabletop game Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures. To my view Fantasy Flight Games who produces that game is simply one of the best companies of its kind anywhere in the world. Over this past week the new rules for their Epic Play formats was released and a good indication of the direction of the game was provided. The much talked about Rebel Transport expansion shipped early from Barnes and Noble and within a week people like me who have had pre-orders out there for a while will receive their ships. I can genuinely say that I am very excited about it.
Also a Wave 4 set of expansion ships is hitting at the start of June and Fantasy Flight Games is sponsoring a tournament as a chance to win first dibs on the lucrative new ships. So I signed up to participate and realized quickly how vast this new game is across the world as I looked up the list of participating stores near my home. It was actually quite astonishing to me because it allowed me to see just how popular this game is not just in The United States, but throughout the world. You can see for yourself at the link below and preview some of the ships from Wave 4. The participating countries are Belgium, Canada, France, Ireland, Romania, Slovakia, The United Kingdom, and The United States. And we’re not talking about just a few stores; each country has dozens if not hundreds of participating stores. Just in Cincinnati for instance, there are two not counting additional stores in Dayton and Columbus. So getting into the tournament called Assault on Imdaar Alpha is not difficult.
I had a particularly rough series of days this past week and to calm down I found myself shuffling through the game cards that I have for X-Wing Miniatures thinking about the squad that I wanted to enter into the upcoming tournament. I found in the cards a soothing quality which made sense to me. The pilot rating cards clearly establish the value of that particular character and the overall mythology of Star Wars plays largely in the context of how each ship is used under different circumstances. But the operative word was value—it was refreshing to look at a card from Fantasy Flight Games and establish the value of a game character with the stats presented.
I pretty much picked my squad for the tournament, but the experience of doing it was actually relieving because of the exercise of value associated with the task. Others across the world are doing the same thing for the same reasons. The reason this is important is because of the modern trend pushed in public schools throughout the world has attempted to present this ideal that all people are equal no matter what their effort is, their skill, and all associated characteristics. We know now in hindsight that this desire for equality is a task perpetuated by communists for years and this is how such a thing came to our public schools. Yet society is rejecting such notions through their art—their movies, their reading material, and especially in the games they play.
The X-Wing Miniatures game is not just an American game, although it is an American invention. It is growing in popularity enormously since I first started writing about it, and is about to explode. For years I have watched with a level of suspicion how gamers played Magic the Gathering and other types of games with great intensity. I knew that the reason they did such a thing was because the fantasy of the game was something that was more appealing than the options presented in real life. I never enjoyed card games and board games much—especially games like Poker because of their association with gambling—which I personally despise. But I do love stories and mythology and I see these new games which were just being invented when I was a kid with Dungeons and Dragons, quickly taking over the old games—which is good.
I have often listened for hours the broadcasts of the Cincinnati Reds and wondered how many grown adults found the stats of the baseball players so endlessly fascinating yet turned around and supported socialism in their workplaces, their education institutions, and even their families. Each game in baseball is pretty meaningless in the context of plot—yet broadcasters have found ways to make every game sound compelling. I have also watched for years gamblers obsessed with horse racing, dog racing, NASCAR racing and willing to spend their entire paychecks on a gamble as to who will win and how. I now see that changing among the new generations—starting with my age group on down.
This new form of gaming is centered on mythology. Each game of X-Wing Miniatures forces players to embark in a kind of story during their play. The value of the cards drive the dialogue—for instance a typical squad build for me is one called within the gaming community as a “Han Shoots First.” It is because Han Solo has such a high pilot rating and typically gets to shoot first during the combat phase of game play. This build involves the Millennium Falcon and one or two ships of lesser pilot value to provide wingman support. Just the construction of that build creates a storyline which must be played out, whereas in Poker or Blackjack there is only the value on the card which a player then uses to their advantage or not depending on circumstances. In these new games the same thing is happening, but there is much more to it—mythology is a part of the experience and that driver of the drama in these stories is brought about because of values that must be attributed.
It is for this reason that I am absolutely salivating over the arrival of my huge Rebel Transport. Just this past week Fantasy Flight Games published the new rules for using the “Huge Ships” in game play and after reading them I was immensely impressed. X-Wing Miniatures is very interesting to play and it is ever evolving. It literally changes every three months and this seems to be the appeal of these new games over the old ones. Check out some of those rules for yourself at the following link:
The reason that Baseball is declining in America is because the new generations cannot relate to it. The game is too slow and the plots of the game do not provide an entertainment value that can compete with games like Magic the Gathering and now X-Wing Miniatures. While baseball a few years ago looked the other way to allow Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa to fight it out with a season long steroid driven home run derby, the passion for the game really didn’t exceed beyond the borders of The United States. Japan took to the drama, but really, nobody else could relate. However in just a year, Fantasy Flight Games has published a game that has people lining up for weekend long tournaments all over the world—and it isn’t just because a movie which is three decades old is so popular, but because players can immerse themselves in a storyline that reflects their values. The very act of playing such a game is an exercise of identifying value—and this translates directly to the real world.
Most of the people who play X-Wing Miniatures are smart. They love to think. The whole premise of such a game is to think. It’s not based on random luck, or the hope that a passive third-party will be successful and garner victory for the bet placer, X-Wing Miniatures is all about participating in a mythology that is very similar to reading—but exists in a kind of in-between world where the storyline is the responsibility of the players. Players are responsible for making their own drama, their own stories—and the stories are value driven. In order to be successful, players must learn to ascertain values. This is a tremendous new element to recreational gaming. The participants aren’t passive, but are in fact very active in that process which is why these games are so vastly popular.
It is why I sought those cards after a rough week; it is why people all over the world are looking forward to tournament play for the Wave 4 ships, and why people like me everywhere are watching their mailboxes for the new Rebel Transport. Many of our modern problems are due to the fact that the games the previous generations played often put the burden of decision-making on randomness and passive participation—such as guessing the outcome of a gambling scenario be it horse racing or a roulette wheel. Players of those types of games have also voted in their republics in the same manner—they have passively participated then grumbled when the results did not go in their favor. These new gamers, the X-Wing players are “active.” By watching how this new Fantasy Flight Games invention has taken off—literally, the people who play that game will have a much different role in their future decision-making endeavors—such as how they vote, and who they vote for in democratic elections. And it gives me assurance to know that the mistakes of the past will not proceed into the future which makes X-Wing players some of my favorite people anywhere. Their numbers are likely already greater than those in any Tea Party activity and is expanding by the day. They represent a new demographic that will approach the future with a new sophistication that simply wasn’t present at any point in the past prior to the 1970s.
In 1974 Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson first published Dungeons and Dragons and have since grown into over a billion dollars in sales. It was the first tabletop strategic game of its kind. Star Wars: X-Wing is the natural evolution of this gaming type and evidence that human beings in all their vast capacity to think and imagine—can actually create recreation to heal themselves—as a species. Because that is what these games represent to me—healing—they bring to the human mind what it most desires, to think, to assess value, and to create their own storylines. And I can’t think of anything more valuable than that—and I love to see that America is exporting to the rest of the world something that does such things in a positive and creative way. I am really looking forward to the Assault on Imdaar Alpha.
That is typical in these gaming environments, there is such a love of creativity and boundless imagination which I find refreshing. Comic book stores are great places to recharge after all the dread of reality has done its best to erode away logic. Some of the best people I have known over the years find solace in those kinds of places, so it was nice to celebrate my birthday there with my kids.
I can’t say enough about the X-Wing Miniatures game. As often as I reference it, it continues to impress me. Nostagic Ink had on hand an impressive array of Y-Wings, and X-Wings. The Y-Wings have been mostly sold out on Amazon because players buy them up for their durability during combat and Ion Turret ability. My son-in-laws’ had their Imperial Aces on the table for the first time which was a sight to behold. Those new Imperial ships have a curving barrel roll effect that is really valuable and is yet another wrinkle in an otherwise highly imaginative and innovative game that is ever-changing forcing constant adoption.
Way back when I was 13 to 14 I was involved in military war simulations which were tabletop games that I found very stimulating, intellectually. Back then, West End Games was producing some great stuff and eventually the realistic simulations of actual World War II battles, and Civil War engagements gave way to a game called Assault on Hoth, which was a Star Wars strategy game done in the spirit of those battle simulations. It contained a map with the traditional game hex-and-counter mechanic and played well. Imperial Walkers attacked the Rebel base on Hoth and Rebel Snowspeeders had to meet them to prevent the shield generator from being destroyed. During the early days of our marriage my wife and I played it three to four times a week and it set a pace for our relationship that would last for decades.
When I learned war gaming as a young man I quickly learned that much of what was being studied were battle tactics no different from what military generals had been taught at West Point for generations—only without all the politics of the position. By role-playing battle field formations set against values players had to make the same kind of decisions that military generals had to make in wars from the past. In this modern age of gaming—for the first time in the history of the world, war gaming wasn’t regulated to the military elite—but to hobbyists and history enthusiasts. Of course the emotion of the battlefield is not present, and the threat of death not a factor, but the same types of decision-making that George Washington had to make during Revolutionary War battles, or General Lee had to make during the Civil War were available to anybody curious enough to play a game. Most modern war games are very sophisticated and take into account the many factors which are required for such strategic thinking.
Nostalgic Ink has in the middle of their store an entire section of these military war simulations that are much better than the ones I played as a kid. They are fascinating and players routinely set up in the back of that store to play them. But for me, Fantasy Flight Games has changed the entire field of miniature war gaming with Star Wars X-Wing. It has all the battlefield tactics of many of those traditional war games, but it has the added element of flight. I find myself thinking about that game all the time these days.
This is a good thing because real life often requires the same kinds of hard decisions that X-Wing forces players to realize. American society has the Second Amendment to protect themselves from an overzealous government. But it also has freedom of thought, and this has given rise to a culture emerging in these comic book stores where tactical decisions are available to regular people outside of any orthodox political class. For instance, this year’s FFG world champion is Paul Heaver a software engineer from Northern Virginia who is married with two kids. He plays online CCGs and computer games, but X-Wing Miniatures is the first game of its type that he’s gotten really serious about. Before going to the World’s competition—where literally people from many countries all over the world came to battle it out in Minnesota during February of 2014, Heaver paid close attention to the battle reports on the game forums and saw that Tie Swarms were dominating tournaments so he calculated a strategy of using two low pilot value X-Wing fighters and two moderate pilot rating B-Wings to slowly whittle away at the low pilot rating Tie Swarm strategy. The effectiveness of this approach can be seen below in the video of his championship game. If you watch the video it has the visual quality of a golf game. People cheer when ships are destroyed the same way an expert golfer sinks a long birdie. The same skills that Heaver used to win the Worlds championship at FFG are the same skills it takes to manage large companies, run military maneuvers, and run countries. I would put Paul Heaver against Vladimir Putin any day and I’d put my bets on Paul. But in this emerging X-Wing popularity there is Paul Heaver types popping up everywhere and this is a very good thing. There are a lot of very smart people coming up in these gaming circles.
The tactic that Paul used to win his championship will be destroyed with all the new ships and rules coming out quickly, like the new rules involving the Imperial Aces ships. They can now barrel roll out of a firing arc and right into the side of a targeted ship taking away their shot, while performing theirs with deadly effectiveness. So what works today may not work tomorrow, which is why I love X-Wing. It is why I spent my early birthday with my kids at Nostalgic Ink eating chicken nuggets and playing tactical table top warfare. Back when I was introduced to these miniature war simulations I learned from a Green Beret who was so obsessed with military tactics that these war games were the only way he could experience battlefield excitement, that the only real difference is that you don’t hear the bullets whizzing by your ears and possess the obvious knowledge that every breath might be your last. Otherwise, this is what it is like. Fantasy Flight has done with X-Wing Miniatures something that is new—it has turned up the heat considerably and no longer is reliant on the Star Wars brand to sell the game. It’s great by itself as its own thing. Tactically it is complex, and is a wonderful way to pass the time for those obsessed with strategy. And that would be me. It is my ideal of a fun time and how I prefer to spend my leisure because all too often real life calls on those skills—and because usually what we do in our recreational time directly contributes to how we conduct ourselves professionally. And because of Star Wars: X-Wing, the future looks very bright to me.
I love technology as much as anybody, but when I want to relax, technology is often not part of the experience. I will always love a real book in my hands because I don’t like looking at a lit up screen to read, and I will always prefer physical activity to computer play. But with the NSA concern in reading every email, watching all online traffic, and all the privacy concerns involved, I love Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures more and more—because of the low tech, yet complex game play. I play the game as much as I can because it has all the multifaceted strategy of a video game, the intellectual muscle flexing of chess, and the unlimited creative potential of miniature model building incorporated into a non-technical exercise that is a true vacation from the many prying eyes of our modern world. The video shown below is from a couple recent games that I played displaying the creative potential behind the game. The models are very detailed, and provide creative stimulation for boundless imaginations, and the terrain such as asteroids and star field backgrounds surprisingly pull the mind into the game world effectively.
The depth of the game is something to truly behold, but for me it is the lack of technical involvement that is most attractive. When playing, the technical outside world is turned off. However, perhaps even better the creative potential of the game is limitless, and the company Fantasy Flight Games has really overachieved as an organization. Prior to 2013, they already had a championship caliber game that would live on for many years as a crowd favorite. But they didn’t stop there. Instead, they worked on making 2014 one of the most exciting in the short life of the game with a whole range of new additions. Every game addition mentioned below is something that I am very eager to experience and will hit the marketplace within a few months of this writing. These will make the video shown above that much more exciting, and complex, and will fill many evenings with great joy. Fantasy Flight Games is one of the most innovative and forward thinking companies in existence. I wish they were not applying these great skills to just entertainment, but in the field of aerospace, manufacturing science, and research and development. But in the world of gaming, they are simply the best there is at this point in time. Here are just a few of their releases over the next couple of months that I am most excited about.
The GR-75 Medium Transport
First unveiled as a prototype at Gen Con Indy 2013, the iconic GR-75 Rebel transport is most famous for its critical role in the Rebellion’s evacuation from Hoth. However, the GR-75’s role in the Rebellion’s efforts extended far beyond that pivotal conflict.
GR-75 transports were used mainly to transport supplies, equipment, or troops, but some were modified to serve as fuel tankers for long-range starfighter missions. Relatively inexpensive, the GR-75‘s hulls couldn’t be penetrated by Imperial sensors, and the Rebel Alliance often enhanced this feature by outfitting the starship with sensor jammers. Indeed, the Rebel Alliance made such common use of the GR-75 that it was often called the Rebel medium transport.
Rebel Aces features one A-wing and one B-wing miniature, both of which come with alternate paint schemes. You’ll also find four highly skilled unique, new pilots; thirteen upgrade cards; maneuver dials; and all the tokens necessary to launch these starfighters into the thickest action of your space battles against the evil Galactic Empire. It also includes a new mission, which thrusts some of the Rebellion’s finest pilots into a desperate rescue effort that highlights the B-wing’s durability and the A-wing’s agility.
Heroic New Paint Schemes
Fly with the best! The alternate paint schemes on the starfighter miniatures from the Rebel Aces Expansion Pack allow you to battle for the Rebellion’s cause while representing the heroic efforts of the pilots who first flew its A-wings and B-wings as experimental prototypes.
Only ace pilots were granted the right to fly prototypes for the Rebel fleet. Piloting the agile A-wing required tremendous focus and lightning fast reflexes. Still, by helping the Rebel Alliance develop and improve upon its original designs, their efforts benefitted everyone dedicated to the cause of galactic freedom, and the A-wing ultimately proved its worth during the Battle of Endor by helping to cripple Star Destroyers.
To honor those prototype pilots who first flew the ship, the A-wing in Rebel Aces features the paint scheme depicted on the Prototype Pilot ship card, with a bold blue central stripe and red and yellow highlights.
Manufactured by Incom Corporation, the Z-95 Headhunter was the primary inspiration for the later design of the T-65 X-wing. Even though the X-wing eventually outclassed it in nearly every respect, the Z-95 was cheap, durable, and reliable enough that it continued to see use throughout the Galactic Civil War, most commonly in close air support roles.
Entering X-Wing as the Rebel starship with the lowest squad point value, the Z-95 Headhunter is perfectly suited to play the role within the game that it played within the Star Wars galaxy. It’s a durable and reliable starfighter that comes with the ability to carry and fire missiles, making it capable of playing a strong support role.
While the Tantive IV is easily the most iconic CR90 corvette in the Star Wars galaxy, it is by no means the only one of import. Manufactured by the Corellian Engineering Corporation, the CR90 was a swift, multipurpose ship that saw widespread use among governments and private parties.
The CR90 corvette’s modular design made it easy for users to reconfigure it to best suit the purpose they wanted it to serve, and the CR90 was often employed as a cargo transport, troop carrier, passenger vessel, or light escort. Additionally, the CR90 could be outfitted with enough weaponry to make it a formidable gunship; it could equip as many as eight turbolasers, six laser cannons, and four ion cannons.
The Tantive IV Expansion Pack presents a similarly adaptable starship for use in your games of X-Wing. Between its two ship cards, for fore and aft sections, the CR90 can equip up to ten upgrades of four different types.
It is always a pleasure to experience a company that is doing everything right. With Fantasy Flight the only real issue they have is in delivery of new product line. They are currently late on the CR90 and CR-75, but for what they provide as far as product, they are worth the wait. There are few things that bring me so much pure joy as Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing Miniatures. For those new to the game I have provided samples of tournament play from Team Covenant who is a committed group of table top gamers who wish to advance the hobby to for the uninitiated. The game is different from gambling games like Poker and Black Jack because it is essentially a war simulation. The added ability to actually pilot vessels makes X-Wing Miniatures even fun to watch because the entire game play area is up for grabs. Every conceivable mathematical surface of a play area is an option. The game is not limited to spaces, or a game board—but to the unlimited options of a game player and how they chose to utilize that battlefield. That freedom is both within the game and from external electronic control, surveillance, and other limitations that make X-Wing one of my favorite current past times—a trend that is not likely to subside any time soon.
What does Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, and Seth McFarlane all have in common even though they are all political commentators and satirists from polar opposites—a rather intense love of Star Wars that often comes out in their work. Star Wars as I have said many times has the ability to reach beyond the rhetoric of modern politics and perspective and speak to the heart of very complicated matters. I have never known of anything like it and have enjoyed the constant DAILY musings about the new film, Episode 7 coming out in 2015. Every single day there is a new story on the internet speculating about the making of that film and I have really enjoyed the debates about whether or not the Expanded Universe will be included into the new films. There is much wonderment about how much Disney and J.J. Abrams will want to make their imprint on the new saga. The belief as of now is that these new creative interests would pick and chose from the many comics, novels, and other material created before them constituting the “expanded universe” and would change names and places to suit their own input. Well, I think people who believe those kinds of things are intensely wrong as there is a cool dude who is the current protector of the intellectual Star Wars universe named Pablo Hidalgo working with Abrams and Disney as he has for years with dozens of writers and game designers to keep the story continuity of the massive Star Wars saga consistent.
My intent with this article is not to give away spoilers for the next film, or to give away details of the massive volume of books from the last thirty Star Wars novels, many of which were New York Times Best Sellers. We are not talking about a silly bit of escapist fantasy, but many of these novels are very series explorations into political science, philosophy, and psychology. For instance in the book Ascension written by Christie Golden an ancient being 100,000 years old named Abeloth seeks to make a power play against the entire galaxy while a group of political strategist look to resurrect the Empire of old by provoking a slavery revolt to create a crises for the Republic overwhelming their resources allowing the Empire to make a move. Meanwhile a group of ancient Sith are teaming up with the Abeloth to return their dominance against the long hated Jedi. The story reads like something out of a Saul Alinsky manual, but what’s different is that there is context in a story to apply the meanings too, which makes the concept of such betrayal digestible. When Ascension was released a few years ago it was #7 on the New York Times Best Seller list.
When the novel Lockdown, which came out this past week hit the shelves at our local book store my wife rushed out to snag up her copy. The book was not nestled in the distant corner hidden shamefully where nobody would see it—it was right out in front next to the front door so it was the first thing customers would see when they arrived. Stacks of them were there right next to Glenn Beck’s newest book Miracles and Massacres. My wife consumes these Star Wars books in about 3 to 4 days on average devouring them with great intensity—and she’s certainly not alone. In our house, we have well over 200 Star Wars novels, some of them junior readers, but at least 160 of them were written for adult audiences and feature a very complicated and intricate history from the Star Wars universe.
I feel extremely confident that Disney and Abrams with all their prudence would be foolish to ruin what Lucasfilm has spent decades building—but rather would tap into this vast mythology from the business side preserving the creative input by hundreds of individual minds guided to the same spot by George Lucas. Lucas provided the canvas for which many, many people painted a very elaborate picture of a vast story that explores the nature of politics, life after death, and the fundamentals of human interaction. I do not believe for a second that Disney would be so foolish as to disrupt this process. Rather, I believe with the same deductive reasoning that I have predicted many actual truths in the world here at this site of Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, that it is the many speculations of established thought that are wrong. The new Star Wars films will pick up shortly after the novel Crucible just over 45 years after the original Star Wars film A New Hope. I believe that the villains will not be a resurrection of Darth Vader, or even the Emperor this time, but will center on instead on the story of Abeloth, the void in the galaxy left by the destruction of a place called Center Point Station, and events that took nearly 70 years prior when Anakin Skywalker refused to play his role in becoming a Keeper of the Balance upon solicitation by the Ones.
Disney has an opportunity through the intense work of Lucasfilm to create perhaps the most potent mythology ever fashioned by human minds dwarfing all the Greek myths, the symposiums of oriental culture, Hindu legacies, and Andes folktales. If Disney taps into fully the work done by the Expanded Universe there will be a tremendous wave of culture that will hit the current empty vessels of civilization with the force of a tsunami, only it won’t be a destructive force—but a positive, creative one. There will be nothing like it in the works of mankind. I’m as sure of it as the sun shines during the day and the stars can be seen at night. It is a certainty. The story of Abeloth is one that has the potential to eclipse the threat of the Emperor from the previous films and ties all these Star Wars stories into a giant complex tapestry of interwoven stories that make bold attempts to dig at the heart of evil and will sufficiently wrap up the entire point into a unifying principle worthy of all the hard work done for so many years by so many people. Only a villain of such an epic—timeless scope has the ability to justify more Star Wars films. Disney will then be free to make television adaption’s of all the novels bringing all the story lines leading into Episode 7 providing content for decades further that will plaster itself to the minds of millions. Disney will obtain a very needed revenue stream from the Expanded Universe—thousands of additional Star Wars figures instead of just hundreds, and merchandising that will eclipse the sales of all their current efforts. This will make Star Wars the most massive, and valuable cultural phenomena ever known. Finally, the Jedi and the Sith will have to decide how to unite after many thousands of years of war bringing the force into sharp focus for the first time in anyone’s memory fulfilling the attempt by the Ones to have that balance restored by Luke’s father Anakin.
I have not been shy, I am a raving lunatic when it comes to the latest Star Wars X-Wing Minatures game and the announcement of the Rebel Transport. CLICK HERE TO SEE THIS THING! Keith Ryan Kappel is a writer and employee at Fantasy Flight Games who makes X-Wing Miniatures and he recently had a posting at the official Star Wars website telling the complicated history of Centerpoint Station which was destroyed by Jacen Solo. That act by Jacen caused the rise of the Abeloth which I believe will be the focus of the new Star Wars films as the premier villain. Keith from his perspective is in a position to know things—and this article on Centerpoint Station and the Abeloth has some importance that should put things to rest and ease the minds of millions of Star Wars fans. Episode 7 and beyond won’t be about Darth Vader, the Emperor, or even a bunch of Stormtroopers. It will be about transcendence beyond pairs of opposites and will be extremely powerful philosophically. It will accomplish what no religion in the world has ever thought possible, it will unite the minds of mankind on planet earth in a way nothing else has ever been able to—and it will be very important, as well as entertaining. So enjoy Keith’s insight and history shown below and use the link at the end to visit the original article.
Throughout galactic history, Centerpoint Station has been many things to many beings. For the Killik hives, it was a religious duty. To cosmic threats, it was a prison. Colonists called it home, while criminals called it good for business. Governments have viewed it as a doomsday device, while Jedi thought it as a threat to galactic peace. For the Corellians, its power represented true independence. Centerpoint has been all of these things and more.
Centerpoint Station, the most powerful force in the galaxy, second only to the power of the Force itself, was created in February 1995 by legendary science fiction author Roger Macbride Allen for his Corellian trilogy series of novels for Bantam Spectra. The station’s power dwarfed that of previous superweapons and left an impression on fans, paving the way for the station’s return as both a setting and superweapon in future novels and role-playing games. This is its story.
(Note, there are SPOILERS ahead if you have not yet read theFate of the Jedibook series.)
Centerpoint Station is a massive 100 kilometer sphere with a pair of thick 125 kilometer poles at either end. The station is situated in the Corellian System, and sits at the exact barycenter between the planets Talus and Tralus. Xenoarcheologists have dated parts of the station at over 100,000 years old, making it four times older than the earliest known incarnation of the Galactic Republic. The purpose and mystery behind its construction has only recently been uncovered.
The Killik hives that constructed Centerpoint Station called it Qolaraloq, or The World Puller. However, the Killiks did not design the station, they were working on behalf of two Celestial architects known as the Son and Daughter of Mortis. The purpose of the station was to create a tractor beam analogue powerful enough to move planets, stars, and even black holes from across the galaxy. To accomplish this feat, the Killiks first constructed Centerpoint Station in orbit around Corel, a star with only two outlier planets.
At the same time, other Killik hives built planetary repulsors on habitable worlds. When construction was complete, Centerpoint dragged these worlds through hyperspace with its advanced tractor beam to create the Corellian System. Centerpoint itself, amplified by the additional planetary repulsors, had enough raw power enough to move black holes throughout the galaxy.
The architects had a stepmother of sorts named Abeloth, a being similar, but not quite as powerful as the Celestials. Unfortunately, Abeloth had been driven mad in a bid for power, and for the good of the galaxy, would have to be imprisoned. Since no known prison could hold beings of the architects’ power, the Son and Daughter were forced to construct one. Centerpoint Station was to be the tool that built the prison.
Centerpoint dragged dozens of black holes into a precise formation known today as the Maw Cluster near Kessel. The black holes blockaded Abeloth in exile, where she remained imprisoned for tens of thousands of years as the Architects faded from power and civilizations rose and fell.
Over millennia, the function and importance of Centerpoint Station became lost to history. By the time of the Clone Wars, any information regarding the station’s origins or function were unknown, except that the station itself was approximately 100,000 years old. While many researchers and locals had theories, most of the galaxy gave Centerpoint no thought at all. During the fledgling Republic, Centerpoint became a staging area for colonists boarding generation ships. Later, those supporting the colonization industry simply stayed.
Centerpoint itself is a part of the Federation of Double Worlds of Talus and Tralus, and is subject to their laws and taxes. The station gets by largely on trade and tourism, with additional funds generated from scientific research. Due to the station’s immense size, only a fraction is mapped or even explored, and countless orphans, homeless, and undocumented beings eke out a meager existence on Centerpoint.
The biggest area on Centerpoint Station is Hollowtown, a massive, 60-kilometer-wide spherical void at the center of the station. Hollowtown contains tourist attractions, lavish estates, and countless farms and ranches to feed the station. It is also home to two artificial mountain ranges known as the Northern and Southern Conical Mountains. Between the two mountain ranges lies the mysterious Glowpoint, a small artificial sun that lights Hollowtown at all times.
The remaining decks in the spherical portion of the station are known as the Shells, because of the way each layer outward from Hollowtown encases the next like an eggshell. These decks contain a number of living quarters, but are largely unexplored. The space where the spherical center joins either pole contains massive docking bays where most trade occurs. The northern pole contains most administrative offices and a number of university and private led research projects, while the southern pole is believed abandoned, but occupied by a growing criminal element.
The power of Centerpoint Station was rediscovered in 18 ABY by a distant cousin of Han Solo, Thrackan Sal-Solo, who was working with the Sacorrian Triad. In a scheme known as the Starbuster Plot, the Triad, after a test-firing in a vacant system to ensure the station worked, held the galaxy ransom. An unfortunate side effect of the test-firing was the unexpected consequences to Hollowtown. When the weapon switched on, the Glowpoint swelled in size, incinerating all Hollowtown’s inhabitants instantly. The entire void was actually a combustion chamber to power the hyperspace tractor beam. Centerpoint Security immediately evacuated the rest of the station, leaving the station under the control of the Triad.
The Starbuster Plot was eventually foiled by Han Solo and Princess Leia’s children, particularly Anakin Solo, who bonded with Centerpoint Station’s command center, and locked everyone else out of the system. The station was firmly under the control of the new Corellian government, which was allied with the New Republic. During the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, it was proposed that Centerpoint be used as a weapon against the invaders. Thrackan Sal-Solo was brought in by the Corellian government to get the weapon operational. Eventually, after enlisting the help of Anakin Solo’s help, he did just that. However, firing the weapon during the Battle of Fondor ensured the young Jedi would never help him again, as the shot destroyed as many Hapan ships as it did Vong.
Following Anakin Solo’s death a short time later, Sal-Solo set himself to the task of rearming the station’s hyperspace tractor beam by creating an advanced droid using Anakin’s genetic material. Over a decade of work paid off, and Sal-Solo once again held the trigger to the galaxy’s most lethal weapon. With Centerpoint Station firmly within its control, the Corellian System declared its independence.”
Reactivating the most dangerous artifact in the known galaxy sparked a new galactic civil war, as the Republic sought to once again remove Centerpoint Station from being the ultimate power in the universe. The Jedi decided enough was enough, and sent a strike team, who were able to sabotage the targeting computer so Centerpoint would always target itself if fired. The slicing subroutines worked, and moments later, while trying to destroy Coruscant, the station imploded in on itself, ending the threat posed by Celestial power in mortal hands forever.
Abeloth was a being created as a servant by the three Celestials: the Father, the Daughter, and the Son. In time, Abeloth won the Father’s heart, and became known as the Mother. Nowhere near as powerful as the other members of her new family, and destined to die in what would be an eyeblink for them, Abeloth drank from the Font of Power and bathed in the Pool of Knowledge — both forbidden acts — in hopes it would make her a Celestial.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
While Abeloth did become a long-lived creature of immense power, it also corrupted her, changing her into something dark and covetous. When she was found out, the Celestials contracted the Killiks of Alderaan to construct a specialized prison of their own design for Abeloth. This prison, known as the Maw, was built by Centerpoint Station. For 100,000 years she languished in her prison, angry, terrified, and worst of all, alone.
When Centerpoint Station was destroyed in 40 ABY, it created a fissure in the Maw that allowed Abeloth to reach out into the galaxy through the Force. This led to her escape and subsequent rise to control the Galactic Federation of Free Worlds. Abeloth encountered Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker a number of times during her escape and rise to power, and she bested him handily each time. Finally, they fought on Sinkhole Station on a mental plane of the Force, where she was ultimately defeated. However, with no way to truly kill or imprison her, it is only a matter of time before she returns.
A distant cousin to famous smuggler Han Solo, Thrackan Sal-Solo was born on Tralus, and raised believing he was of an ancient royal Corellian bloodline. The two lived together a short time, cultivating a murderous hatred of each other before Thrackan betrayed Han, selling him back into slavery with pirates. Thrackan believed he was better than Han, or anyone, thanks to his privileged upbringing. This sense of entitlement would time and time again prove his undoing.
Two years after the Battle of Yavin, Sal-Solo achieved the position of Deputy to the Diktat as an Imperial administrator, but still felt he walked in the shadow of his now infamous cousin. Thrackan disappeared after the Empire was dealt a crippling blow at Endor, and formed a terrorist organization allied with criminal syndicates. By 18 ABY Thrackan gained control of Centerpoint Station, with full knowledge of its potential destructive power. Thrackan saw his chance and declared himself Diktat, but was foiled by Han Solo and his children. Thrackan was arrested, tried, and incarcerated.
After eight years in prison, Sal-Solo was released and put in charge of Centerpoint Station to use it against the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. When he used the station against the Vong, despite the massive friendly casualties, he became an overnight hero, which led to his election as Governor-General of the Corellian System a year later. Thrackan finally had everything he had ever wanted, but he didn’t get to enjoy it long. He was tried for treason after the war, but after winning his freedom, he manipulated his way into being Corellia’s Head of State.
It wasn’t long before Sal-Solo’s double-dealing and obsession with a free and powerful Corellia under the protection of an active Centerpoint Station drove the galaxy to civil war. Just after allying himself with Dark Lady of the Sith Lumiya, Thrackan was assassinated by bounty hunters Mirta Gev, Boba Fett, and Han Solo.
Special thanks to Ed Erdelac, Ryan Brooks, and Sam Stewart.
Want more Centerpoint Station? Pick upFantasy Flight Games’Star Wars: Edge of the Empire: Suns of Fortune, with contributing author Keith Ryan Kappel. Available now at yourfriendly local game store!
Sources
The Corellian Trilogy: Ambush at Corellia\
The Corellian Trilogy: Assault at Selonia
The Corellian Trilogy: Showdown at Centerpoint
Star Wars: The Old Republic Codex Entry
New Jedi Order: Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse
Legacy of the Force: Betrayal
Legacy of the Force: Exile
Legacy of the Force: Fury
Cracken’s Threat Dossier
The New Jedi Order Sourcebook
The Official Star Wars Fact File 37
The New Essential Chronology
Rebellion Era Campaign Guide
The Essential Atlas
Star Wars Saga Edition: Galaxy at War
Star Wars Saga Edition: The Unknown Regions
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire: Suns of Fortune
AUTHOR BIO
Keith Ryan Kappel is a freelance writer working for Fantasy Flight Games’Star Warsline of role playing games, and was a credited playtester on the Wizards of the CoastStar WarsRPG line. As aStar Warsfan, Keith co-founded, wrote, and edited forFandomComics.comfrom 2005-2012, where he has written hundreds of pages ofStar Warsfan comic and RPG material. A long time ago, Keith was also an intelligence specialist at Naval Space Command for the United States Navy. Keith can be found at KRKappel.com,Facebook, andTwitter.
I make a point to identify things to you dear Reader that is way out ahead of the curve. In four years you will read this and wonder how I knew all these things. Even though they may seem to be irrelevant trivia from fantasy, this article is far from that. The people who are shaping our society currently love Star Wars. It doesn’t matter if it’s Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart or the creator of the Family Guy cartoon on Fox—Star Wars has power and that power will shape the political and economic landscape of tomorrow. Trust me………..it will. Dear Reader, take this information and prepare yourself for that point in time, and be ready. Most of the speculation from modern-day commentators who work for entertainment are not aware of what is about to happen. They cannot see the big picture that has been taking place at Skywalker Ranch in California since the early 1980s. There is a power here that can shatter the way everything is viewed today—especially politically—and when that happens, good minds will need to be available to provide guidance to the millions upon millions who find themselves discombobulated and disenfranchised in need to rebuild their minds properly. The key is not so much how things were done in the past, but in how those events point to the future and come together in a grand fortissimo. And when that fortissimo reaches our senses, we must conduct ourselves accordingly—and without hesitation.
How do I know all this……………..I have read all the books, but more than that, I have intensely studied Joseph Campbell, who also taught George Lucas. I know exactly where this is going. And I am excited about getting there! Disney will make a lot of money, and they will do good things with that money. But more than that, society will receive insight where before there was only confusion and darkness—except for those who have taken the time to read all those fantastic Star Wars novels. They already know, and soon—so will everyone else.
I’m Han Solo—at least that’s what the new Star Wars personality test told me when I took it. A friend of mine told me that The Blaze did a story on a new Star Wars personality test by www.Zimbio.com which was actually more sophisticated than I thought it would be. The questions are involved and pretty good about bringing to the surface the raw nature of a person’s personality as related to the Star Wars film series. For instance, while taking the test I thought I’d come out as Obi-Wan Kenobi—whom I personally admire for his love of wisdom and the philosophic chess matches he tends to play on a galactic scale. But Han Solo has always been my favorite character and that trait emerged during the test even though I was consciously aware of avoiding it. So it was a pretty neat test. At the end of The Blaze article linked below it was revealed that most of the staff at The Blaze including Glenn Beck, Doc Thompson and Skip LeCombe had taken the test and were enthusiastic about their results which they promised to cover on air. I thought this remarkable because it provides insight to all that I have been saying lately about the cultural impact of Star Wars and the future of our society. There are few things which can unite minds quicker than Star Wars does in discussions with other people and it’s not just nerds anymore—but mainstream acceptance. NFL football used to be that topic item breaker that anybody could discuss with any other person in business or other affairs, but quickly Star Wars is overtaking it. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t know about Star Wars who is under 55 years old and doesn’t have an opinion about the film series.
I took the test while on the road at my sister-in-law’s house with many family members present so we all took the test and had a good time with the results. I was surprised how many of them came back as Yoda, and the young men who took it mostly came back as Boba Fett—which was remarkably accurate. There were no Darth Vader’s in our group which says a lot about the quality of our family. That much didn’t surprise me—but the number of Yodas did—my wife included. It could not be ignored how many of our family members instantly understood what the test was and the intent which reflected the response of The Blaze staff. Star Wars is something that touches just about everyone as good memories of their childhoods flood back to them upon the mention of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia.
I remember what it was like to be a kid in the late 70s and early 80s. Star Wars was everywhere—it was on the radio, it was at the stores, it was on television, it was in comics, magazines—it defined popular culture from about 1977 to 1985 when it began to subside just a bit. Even popular films like Back to the Future and ET the Extra Terrestrial made frequent Star Wars references—so it was a huge part of that 8 year period and anybody who was a child during that period knows what I’m talking about. That doesn’t mean that everyone was an open Star Wars fan. Many of the kids in my school made fun of kids who openly loved Star Wars—kids like me who had Star Wars notebooks, wore Star Wars t-shirts, and drew pictures on my homework papers of Star Wars space ships. I didn’t care what other kids said, once I got past the 7th grade, I was never picked on for Star Wars again because I had so many fights at school that kids stopped trying. The more they made fun of me the more I rubbed it in their face. I had a Star Wars shirt for every day of the week—my favorite was a Han Solo shirt that I never got tired of wearing. I wore it so much that it fell apart. I developed a rivalry with another kid in Junior High school at Lakota who was a Star Trek fan and hated Star Wars. We actually had fist fights over Star Wars and which movie was better. It got so bad that I shoved the kid right into the principles office as he was trying to escape me after I was waiting outside his bus in the morning to catch him with a confrontation before class started. He had previously declared during lunch period that Captain Kirk would beat Han Solo any day of the week—so I was going to teach him otherwise. I’d give him some real life Han Solo through me—and as he was running away from he thought he’d get safety inside the principles office—which he didn’t. I took the fight straight there shocking all the other kids in the hallway and the adults alike when I grabbed hold of the Star Trek lover by the back of his shirt and threw him right into the front door with the principle and secretary standing right there. Nobody had been so audacious before—and nobody knew what to make of it. Nobody understood that I loved Han Solo that much because the character represented everything I wanted to become when I grew up—and calling him names was the same as calling me names—and I wasn’t going to stand for it.
My brother and I had so many Star Wars figures that we set up our basement with elaborate hand-made models featuring Star Wars toys. Every Christmas and birthday was an opportunity to increase our holdings for these gigantic Star Wars set-ups. On Friday and Saturday nights our friends would come over and we’d build new Star Wars buildings and ships late into the night staying up until 3 and 4 AM in a world of our own making inspired by Star Wars. My parents couldn’t afford to give me a Millennium Falcon like many of my friends had, so I built my own out of a cardboard box. That creation was destroyed during my late teens—and I never got over it. During the Christmas of 1995 my wife finally bought me a Millennium Falcon when Kenner re-released the old toys with minor updates in anticipation of the Special Editions to the films which occurred in 1997. The world we created in that basement had so much reverence for me that I wanted to do little else but create my own world in the context of that one. We had entire areas around our set-ups in the basement sectioned off with black felt to simulate the darkness of space and on the ceiling was white felt to simulate clouds. We had our own power supply, there were floating asteroids, and epic worlds re-created to model scale. It was the happiest place for me on earth.
I was never shy about my admissions. Star Wars represented limitless possibilities and an escape from oppression and Han Solo was the kind of guy who was full of confidence and a never say die attitude. He was the model of a man who I would grow up and become. Many other kids one-on-one loved my enthusiasm, but would never admit it in the light of day. But privately most of them felt as strongly as I did, they just didn’t show it publicly. I carried this love into my adulthood and it never really subsided. With my children I raised them on Star Wars, and now with the Disney acquisition of Star Wars, my grand children will benefit—and with everything I just described, the cultural impact under Disney’s guidance will far eclipse my experience. There will be more toys, more clothing, more music, video games, posters, magazine articles-virtually everything in our society will be touched by Star Wars and a whole new generation will find solace within the story lines. Unlike me—who had good parents who really cared and behaved in a traditional sense–kids today have broken families, step parents and lack structure as a result of progressive social engineering policies. The strongest thing to a real family a lot of modern kids will have is the characters of Star Wars—which as sad as that may sound—is absolutely true.
The character of Han Solo was never intended to be a hero in the way he turned out. Fans of the films were supposed to yearn for Luke Skywalker, not Han Solo, but I could never relate to Luke’s naïveté. I wanted to grow up and become the space pirate Solo who is more like a character out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged than any other creation ever put on-screen. A lot of people thought this was destructive, but it has made me into an interesting adult—one who thought I’d be more like Obi-Wan Kenobi than Han Solo as more mature years are now upon me. But upon seeing the test results I was actually relieved to see that many of my core values are still intact after all these years and I can honestly say that I’ve lived my own Han Solo type of life and behaved in a very similar way when pressed. The difference between being a young person and an old person is the experience. People are drawn to certain types of things based on their core personality—something this Star Wars test is attempting to uncover. When I was a kid I hoped that when faced with perilous situations that I would behave with the same valor and skill that Han Solo did in Star Wars. Now as an adult, I no longer have any doubt. With a string of car chases, crashes, narrow escapes, and perilous follies of virtually every type now behind me, I can rest easily now knowing I measure up to the highest hopes I had as a child.
It is for that reason that this Star Wars test is flooding office buildings and places of business with a fury. Most of the adult population had similar hopes for themselves, and they want to know how they measure up after all these years. Now with some of the social stigma of fandom removed, people want to know how far they have fallen from their childhood dreams. For me—not far at all. I would have considered Obi-Wan Kenobi to be a concession—an honorable one—but a concession. Han Solo, out of all the characters in Star Wars was my target, and now as a grown man who has grandchildren of his own—I have hit the bull’s-eye, and for that I am very, very proud. Setting those high standards actually made me a better grown-up than Han Solo—considerably. But under pressure—and when it really counts—it is good to know I’m still more like Han Solo than Obi-Wan Kenobi.
And I was there……………….Han shot first!
Take the Star Wars Test for yourself and see who you are most like. CLICK THE LINK BELOW.
Yes John Kasich will be challenged for the Ohio governor seat, yes Obamacare will face many challenges in 2014, yes the Senate is up for grabs, yes there are major rifts in the Republican Party, and yes public education is guilty of training the mass of society into collectivism. However those are things that were set in motion many years ago—and were covered here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom pointing to this grand fortissimo of cultural events—but these are just the beginning notes of that movement and the next portion of that symphony will not come from politics but art. Politics does not drive culture it reacts to it. Art however does drive culture and when I cover artistic efforts with superior footing to political ones, this is the reason why. Personally it is for this reason that I am so excited about the new Disney program coming up in the fall on their XD channel called Star Wars: Rebels. Listen to the executive producer Simeon Kinsberg discuss his motivations for the show intended for children—but extremely relevant to adults.
As stated previously, mythology in the rock, paper, scissors game of world culture beats politics or popular fashion because it is the foundation of those beliefs. In not just America, but throughout the world are an entire generation of disgruntled young people who have watched previous generations of adults rob them of their future with massive debt, wrecked health care, educational opportunities that have not manifested into profit, and a lifestyle less vigorous than that of their parents. For them, and their children, the new Star Wars dynasty beginning with Rebels will permeate deep into their consciousness and my point of bringing it up is so that the kind of people who read here regularly can take note and act upon it.
There are two better than rumored female characters in the upcoming Rebels which will resound powerfully through the myths of our society which will carry well beyond common cartoon shows. Ahsoka Tano will be back after her departure from the Clone Wars and perform her duties as a Rebel Pilot in the fledgling young Rebellion. And more notable will be Mara Jade who will be a young girl serving as the Emperor’s Hand as the Empire rises to power.
Mara in the future of the Star Wars saga was the wife of Luke Skywalker, was killed by Han and Leia Solo’s son Jacen, and gave birth to a son named Ben who will reportedly be in the new films by Disney in 2015. It was also Mara who trained Jaina Solo to be a Jedi Knight who and will be the star of the new film series as the Sword of the Jedi. Mara plays a significant roll in the overall mythology and will be present in the upcoming Rebels which will cover her origin story.
Lucasfilm is not a political company. Most of their employees probably voted for Obama over Romney—but they are deeply philosophical. They have at their disposal at Skywalker Ranch a treasure trove of books from around the world to expand the Star Wars mythology which centers on the struggle of individuals over statist control from dictators. That premise to a story makes Star Wars important in that the story helps people see how those tyrannical forces come into their lives in various forms. I have no doubt that Rebels will do this for millions of young people and millions of people who are over 30—and will grudgingly admit that they will be watching the new television show. Once human beings learn to identify where troubles begin in their lives through mythology they will desire to take actions against those troubles. For many, my friend Doc Thompson at The Blaze will offer an alternative to the statist offerings they currently have in the media. I often refer to The Blaze as “Rebel” radio. Glenn Beck is preaching in the real world much what Mon Mothma and Bail Organa will preach in the upcoming Disney show, Rebels. The producer has said that one of his primary inspirations is the American Revolution and this will take minds to that real life rebellion as they learn to see the same signs. Rebels as a work of art and fiction will provide a palette of context to the real life struggles we are all dealing with from all political fronts.
As I look through the history of such endeavors I can think of no time in entertainment history where this kind of high-profile television show offered this kind of content. What comes to mind are the old Disney shows like Johnny Tremain and Davy Crockett. But those were shows dealing with the past, Star Wars is both the past and the future and has more power because of it. Star Wars has the power to communicate values to several generations as very high quality family entertainment that will get discussions started. If our present society is lacking value because the art we live by has focused on exposed female breasts, silly adolescent jokes, and other forms of didactic pornography, our culture mirrors those aspects presently. Lucasfilm owned by Disney is about to present a show to the world through a simple cartoon which will be beaming with value—value that people will gobble up like parched desert travelers deprived three days of water.
I speak to people at all levels in the gaming community, and I speak to people at all levels of politics—and I’m declaring that the former is more powerful than the later. There is a pent-up energy looking for release. Companies like Disney can take that pent-up energy and convert it to dollars through merchandise sales—which helps expand the overall mythology. But what is more interesting is why the merchandise sells—why there is an excitement for the new Star Wars: Rebels action figures that will be sold at Target and Wal-Mart. The reason why grown adults are already saving their money to add these little trinkets to their already vast Star Wars collection is because the overall story speaks to them about things that are otherwise beyond their control. These people typically don’t vote, or might otherwise call themselves political independents. But they can be motivated to do so if the message taps in to their already curious minds.
Rand Paul………….are you listening? Ted Stevenot, President of the Ohio Liberty Coalition and challenger to John Kasich, are you seeing the wave that I’m pointing at? There is a wave deep at sea that nobody sees coming ashore yet, but when it arrives a skilled surfer can ride that wave with careful timing. I’m pointing to that timing. Culture drives that timing—entertainment drives culture. Lucasfilm is providing a valuable entertainment that will not only provide values to a new generation—politically neutral values—but resolutely values against statism. With those values voters will be looking for someone in politics who beholds similar values. Take note, and act upon them—and good things will happen. It doesn’t mean that candidates need to start quoting Star Wars lines on the campaign trail, but that they need to take note of why Star Wars is so popular, why people want to spend so much money on it, and to utilize those methods in reality as politicians. They should strive to be politicians like Mon Mothma and Bail Organa and not like Governor Tarkin, and Emperor Palpatine. The reason Star Wars is so popular is because such characters do not exist in real life—and people wish they did.
A failure to be heroic, bold, or project the values of a political rebel will lead to more of the kind of dysfunction that we’ve had—and nobody wants that. Don’t look at what politicians have been doing for centuries—look at what entertainment is doing and tap into the same reasons that people a year in advance are willing to plop down $10 bucks on a new Rebels Star Wars action figure. Once those two things are aligned, our society will benefit greatly in a new direction that will be a lot different from our current system.
Meanwhile, I am very much looking forward to watching the back story of Mara Jade in the new Star Wars: Rebels television program on Disney XD. And I’m even more looking forward to Ted Stevenot challenging Governor Kasich in the upcoming primary for Ohio governor. Both are rebels, one is fictional, one is from the actual world, but both speak to the heart of an ideal that is deep in the human consciousness—bold changes are necessary when tyranny is afoot—and when those times occur, it is time for “rebels” to throw off the old and make way for the new.
Obamacare will never, ever, in a million years be a successful enterprise. Unlike when Progressives ran through Social Security, and Medicare against the American public, The United States does not have the financial resources to support such a terrible—socialist oriented concept without wrecking the entire economy. It would seem that since most government jobs require college degrees, that the architects of Obamacare—otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act—would understand why their revision of American health care would be a miserable failure. Unfortunately the issue points to a deeper problem. American colleges are teaching the incorrect fundamentals about virtually everything—and this has led entire regiments of government workers to incorrectly handle problems their educations should have prepared them for. Obamacare will be a failure because of the modern trend of mismanagement indicative of not properly understanding what quality is, or how it’s created and now that it has sunk in Americans are turning against Obama and his health care reforms.
In a telephone poll, taken between December 13-19, it asked 1035 adults — 950 of whom were registered voters — the following question: “As you may know, a bill that makes major changes to the country’s health care system became law in 2010. Based on what you have read or heard about that legislation, do you generally favor or generally oppose it?”
62% of those polled said they oppose the Affordable Care Act (ACA), while support for the law hit an all-time low of just 35%.
The common belief among all government bureaucracies, even those with major contracts with such agencies—mismanagement is rampant. Perhaps it is the heavy instruction of Keynesian economics—socialist indoctrination, left leaning politics, and irresponsible social behavior driving those failures. Virtually nobody is coming out of modern colleges with a basic understanding of management. The belief so common these days is that if jobs are created and a human body is carrying a nameplate on their desk indicating that they are in charge of something—that the job of management is getting done. However, this is not what’s been happening.
Management is more than just showing up for a job—it requires somebody to actually provide leadership and carry productivity toward benchmarks. In modern government nobody carries anything. A roomful of people show up at a meeting and brainstorm on an idea—but nobody ever takes any of the ideas to the next step—because they have been taught that individual achievement is bad, and that collective enterprise is a virtue of the highest order. The net result is that nobody makes decisions, nobody drives productivity, nobody leads anybody anywhere which is why all government projects are perpetually over budget, late, and ultimate failures.
Obamacare was certainly created under these precise circumstances. The intention conceived during brainstorming sessions during 2008 to 2009 sounded good—give poor people health care coverage using socialism to deliver the product to them. However, departments because they lacked basic management skills and did not have skilled people driving their efforts simply threw money at the problems hoping that everything would mysteriously be solved. Even top management officials in the government with Doctorates and Master’s degrees lacked the fundamental skills to manage even basic leadership skills. They were functioning with the belief that all they had to do was show up—and this was the beginning of the end for them. The result is massive overspending on a health care product that hasn’t been able to deliver even a computer interface that is user friendly—even when the best minds in the world are working on the project. The reason is because leadership at the very top is an utter failure—and no matter what happens below those “leaders” the efforts will be negated by the collective hive of incompetence. This is the direct cause of the severe cost overruns of Obamacare.
Americans have now seen all this happening in real-time, and now that its 2014 when the law begins to take effect the urgency of the situation is now on people’s minds. They see failures and the mismanagement, and they aren’t happy—and the poll numbers reflect it. Like a typical clueless bureaucrat Obama and his fellow government workers threw together budget deals in the last-minute, and tied up what they considered loose ends and went on their vacations for the Holiday without a care in the world. Obama is so out-of-touch he appears to not even realize the implications of his failure even as every news station is broadcasting his folly with wall-to-wall coverage all over the world. He’s busy doing “selfies” with celebrities and going to college basketball games like a normal every day guy—because that’s what he is. There is nothing special about Barack Obama other than the ability to con people with lies spoken before large crowds. He can do such things because he is disconnected from reality by his training—like every other government worker who survives that type of work for more than five years.
No amount of money can fix Obamacare because it was conceived in a leadership vacuum—by nobodies without thought. The merit of Obamacare is no different from the five-year old girl who wishes upon a star and expects a wish to come true. Even the child who tells their parents that they wish for the moon, and then they cry when nobody can take it out of the sky and give it to them—Obama is just as unrealistic about his health care reform—and his personal insanity is now costing people money, health, and happiness.
The Tea Party said all this would happen and nobody wanted to listen. Instead they were called names by government workers and hunted down by the IRS, but the reality did not change. Obamacare still failed even when the critics were stuffed away to the fringes of society. It failed because the people who conceived it were failures and lacked management skill—something that money cannot overcome. Great managers can be purchased with money, but money cannot replace good managers—which is a premise that colleges have been teaching for more than 6 decades. Education institutions have been functioning from a belief that all human beings are like Lego blocks, and can be interchanged with one another depending on a desired outcome. They have been selling that colleges make those Lego blocks and once a degree in management, or administration is achieved, then those employees are equipped to show up at a desk and take on that role immediately. But it doesn’t work that way. Quality is more important than knowledge, and colleges do not teach quality—only mimicked behavior of successful people—not what made them successful to begin with.
So welcome mainstream thinkers to the world view that the real leaders of the world have had from the very beginning—those who called Obamacare three years ago a dismal failure that would be a detriment to American society. Welcome to reality—where Obamacare will harm people needlessly, and wreck the best health care system in the world with a socialism that has already crippled Europe. Welcome to the world of failure by government where employees run everything with a rudderless commitment to nothing but ideas concocted by the mind of intellectual infants and overly trained fools. One of those fools is on a beach in Hawaii playing with his kids completely oblivious to the folly of his ways because he doesn’t even have a mind to assess failure from success—other than the wishes of a child who wants the moon—and screams when they can’t have it.
To begin to understand how much extra Obamacare will cost average Americans click the link below:
It is such a pleasure in a world that has seemingly gone mad politically, philosophically, and economically to see the glorious gumption of Chris Lee and his entourage of dedicated Millennium Falcon builders. I have covered the exploits of Full Scale Falcon.com before—but that was upon the original announcement that Chris and company had dedicated themselves to building a full sized Millennium Falcon on an 80 acre lot outside of Nashville, Tennessee. CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW. For me and millions of other Star Wars fans the Millennium Falcon represents rebellion, freedom, and hope. It is impossible to step into my home and not see something relevant to Star Wars—but in my bedroom there are Millennium Falcons everywhere. For me it represents more than just a nice plot point from a cool movie—the roots of the Falcon represent far more—and those roots are obviously driving Chris and many others to spend their own time, money, and effort on making a real Falcon that people can see and touch—and walk through. The Millennium Falcon is about more than just escapist fantasy—I would argue it is the direct result of laissez-faire capitalism, and people deep down inside know it—which is why they love the iconic space ship. It was because of laissez-faire capitalism that The Millennium Falcon was able to nearly single-handedly beat a galactic empire with speedy modifications, powerful weapons and raw guts born out of a Star Wars invention called the Corporate Sector.
When I was in the fifth grade my mother used to put together a gift bag of goodies to play with and read while taking long vacations that required many hours in the car. That year my family went to Myrtle Beach and inside my gift bag was a novel just published by Del Rey called Han Solo at Star’s End. It was the first book published after the 1977 release of the first Star Wars film and it featured my favorite character and I couldn’t wait to read it. My mom purposely kept the book on top of the refrigerator out of my reach but positioned it so that I could see it. I was salivating for weeks to read it. I was looking forward to our family vacation not for the opportunity to go to the beach, but to read that book.
Finally on a hot summer morning after a devastating thunderstorm that nearly delayed our trip, we left. The moment we were on I-75 south, my mother gave me the carefully constructed gift bag with all the goodies in it to keep me occupied for the long drive. There were lots of neat things in the bag, but only one thing I wanted and the moment I put my fingers on it, I was in love for life. I devoured Han Solo at Star’s End. I read the book all the way to Myrtle Beach, at every restaurant we stopped at, on the beach, at the hotel room, everywhere that I could hold a book. When I finished I read it again, then again, then again. I lost count of how many times I read that book. I was in love with the Millennium Falcon not because of the movie—which was great, but for deeper reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was the Corporate Sector and specifically a guy named Doc Vandangante who could have only been employed by such an experiment of laissez-faire capitalism that had sent my mind ablaze for some unknown reason.
On my family’s Myrtle Beach vacation I read in Han Solo at Star’s End that while in the Corporate Sector, the Falcon was damaged after Solo and Chewbacca attempted smuggling weapons to insurgents on Duroon. They did collect payment from the insurgents and went to pay off Ploovo Two-For-One, but in a rather creative manner. Given the prickly relationship and even outright disgust they had for each other, Han bought a foul, irritable, putrid dinko, attached the payment to it, and unleashed it on the unfortunate employer. Although Corporate Sector Security arrived at the establishment where they were, Han and Chewbacca escaped their grasp relatively unscathed. Payment completed, they went off to find the outlaw tech “Doc” Vandangante‘s hideout, only to discover he had been taken to the Corporate Sector Authority prison at Stars’ End. Doc’s daughter Jessa offered upgrades and repairs to Han’s ship, and a Corporate Sector waiver, in exchange for Han helping rescue Doc and the other prisoners. Before Han could take off, the outlaw techs were attacked by IRD-A Fighters. Piloting a Z-95 Headhunter, Han led the other techs and Jessa in defense of the base. Despite heavy losses, they were successful. To complete their rescue mission for Jessa, Solo and Chewbacca were given two droids, Bollux and Blue Max, and went to the agriworldOrron III to meet up with a group led by Rekkon planning the prison rescue. Though Solo was initially only interested in getting the repairs for his ship, his motives became personal when Chewbacca was captured. After dealing with a traitor in the group, Solo and the others arrived at Stars’ End. In order to gain entry, Han, Atuarre, Pakka, Bollux and Blue Max posed as a troupe of entertainers. The rescue proved successful; freeing Chewbacca, Doc, and the other prisoners and destroying the Stars’ End in the process. After the Falcon was repaired, Solo and Chewbacca left the Corporate Sector for a time, taking Bollux and Blue Max with them in future books…….all of which I read with the same enthusiasm.[18]
The Corporate Sector was formed in 490 BBY[9] to free the Republic lawmakers and the Corporate moneymakers from their differences, after being exiled from the Inner Rim to the Tingel Arm. The Corporate Sector originally had a few hundred systems all devoid of intelligent life. Its creation came in the aftermath of the disastrous experiment with corporate control in the Outer Expansion Zone. The new experiment was tried under more careful supervision, the Republic sent the equivalent of a full subsector’s worth of ships to protect the rights of the workers in the sector and to ensure the companies preserved the basic integrity of the environment on the planets in the sector. The corporations were allowed to operate in the sector and could purchase entire regions of space, but were supervised by the Galactic Republic. A general tax was paid directly to the Republic government which enabled the companies to avoid the morass of sector, system, planetary and local taxes found on most worlds in the Republic. The Corporate Sector thrived because of deregulation and low taxes.
Doc was born on Coruscant to Carmilla Vandangante, a corporate viceprex and widow who doted on her only son. He rebelled against his life of luxury and privilege at the age of seven, reprogramming his droid nanny to discard such unpalatable foods as kibla greens, flangth, and stewed gwouch into a living room vase. This demonstrated his technical gifts to his tutors, who soon tailored their lessons to these skills.[1]
Upon graduation, Doc accepted a position at Alkherrodyne Propulsions as design systems team leader. He soon became disenchanted with the corporation’s shoddy workmanship covered with flashy marketing, but swallowed his pride and remained with the company. However, when the Azaria 66 began exploding in minor accidents, Alkherrodyne’s slicers framed Doc. The countless lawsuits wiped out the multi-billion credit Vandangante fortune, and left the name slandered.[1]
Doc became a drifter, eventually making his way into the Corporate Sector, where he met an outlaw tech by the name of Shardra. They immediately fell in love, and when introduced to her profession, Doc found his calling, repairing smuggling ships and souping them up to be some of the fastest in the Corporate Sector. Shardra bore the couple a daughter, Jessa Vandangante, but soon died in an unfortunate fuel dump explosion. Doc found raising a daughter to be a difficult task, especially as the free-spirited woman grew older and started catching the eye of younger smugglers like Han Solo.[1]
The Millennium Falcon was a direct result of very creative free enterprise by a number of previous owners but culminating in the exploits of Han Solo who ran into Doc Vandagante. In a very large galaxy of ideals, some parts of it ruled by peace-loving pacifists, some ruled by ruthless crime lords, some ruled by sinister agents of tyranny, some just trying to preserve their heritage among the intermingling of many races and species—it was the Corporate Sector that made The Millennium Falcon such a special starship. Much like today’s world in real life, government and business could not get along—so government gave business free rein on the outer edge of the galaxy away from their control in exchange for the benefits. The equivalent in the real world might be the Caribbean, Las Vegas, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Hong Kong, or even Disney World where politics leaves the areas alone with their overly intrusive rules and regulations. The direct benefit is the vibrant economic activity of creative minds such as the fictional Doc Vandagante. My question as a young fifth grader on Myrtle Beach was why wasn’t the rest of the galaxy the way the Corporate Sector was? Why would the government within the core worlds want the benefits of the Corporate Sector not on the outer rim of the galaxy, but within the core near the capital planets? Well, the sad answer was power.
Star Wars is of course a fictional story, but it has so many references to our current life that the mythology accurately reflects many competing ideals that are in actual conflict. The concepts introduced through the story are familiar to us all. The Imperials love statism, the Rebels love freedom, and then there are those who might otherwise find sanction in the Corporate Sector with all the good and bad that comes with it. Some of the planets in the Corporate Sector are ravaged with pollution, and corrupt board of directors just out trying to make money at the expense of others. It’s not all good in the Corporate Sector—it’s not safe—fair, or even remotely nice. But, the Corporate Sector was responsible for much of the technological innovation that the rest of the galaxy enjoyed and there is a philosophical argument there worth noting.
The Millennium Falcon is a direct product of the laissez-faire capitalism of the Star Wars universe. When I returned back to the real world after reading Han Solo at Star’s End it was clear that my public school was intent to teach the politics of the core worlds, what we might call in the real world—socialism. The public schools were intent to preach the merits of statism—rules and regulations, federal control of everything. Not me. I wanted a Millennium Falcon—I wanted something like it in my lifetime, and it quickly became clear to me that the kind of education that the public schools were offering would not take the world where I wanted to go. When John F Kennedy dared America to go to the moon, he tossed at NASA a bit of laissez-faire capitalism to make it happen—and beat the Russians to space. Stanley Kubrick watched this progress and built is movie 2001: A Space Odyssey around that type of progress. But once the Berlin Wall came crashing down in 1989, America took its foot off the gas and started over regulating everything once again to give politicians something to do—and that space race progress came to a halt. Now there has been over 20 years of blatant and gradually increasing socialism coming out of WashingtonD.C. because that’s what everyone was taught in their public schools, and there are no real plans for space under the Obama administration going forward. They are instead focused on solar panels, street cars, public transit, and a communist care health system.
NASA if turned loose with laissez-faire capitalism could likely build a real functional Millennium Falcon within a decade. The technology is close enough that at least a vessel that could take off and fly into space with artificial gravity, ion propulsion, life support and other forms of sustainability could be achieved quickly if the real life Doc Vandagantes were turned loose of government regulation. I know a few of them, I know people who have invented flying cars that could take off from one driveway and land in another half a world away, but has no real interest from large aerospace companies facing gigantic liability concerns, and mountains of paperwork in compliance to purchase—and advance. I know of people who have cured most cancers, but the FDA has tried to throw them in jail to keep the technology off the market so pharmaceutical companies can continue keeping people sick and addicted to their products. I know of scientists who have started the process of regenerative growth—who can re-grow fingers lost, or legs amputated. They are solving the problem of aging and whether or not human beings actually have to die. They are a threat to the companies who make prosthetic limbs, and ADA legislation that wants more ramps for wheel chairs, elevators for the disabled, and generally more handicapped people to use for political advancement in the here and now. Those types of people will gladly sacrifice the opportunities of tomorrow for power today.
Statists inside the beltway of Washington D.C. are the first to say that if people never got sick, never died, and had unlimited freedom of transportation, then the world would become over polluted, over populated, and a menace to itself. They are still thinking small, because they obviously never read anything like Han Solo at Star’s End as kids—an act I’m sure Chris Lee shares with me. People like Chris and I ask ourselves why can’t I have my own Millennium Falcon to take off and go to work in orbit around earth where all the pollution and byproduct of production could be dumped into space preserving planet earth forever. When work was completed at the end of the day, we would just fly home and land in our back yards with our Millennium Falcons. Why can’t we have it–because we live on earth with restrictive governments that hate laissez-faire capitalism?
I’ve read many of the European classics and compared to Star Wars, they are boring. I love Shakespeare, but I would take any Star Wars book over William Shakespeare any day of the week. Shakespeare was a better writer than Brian Daley who wrote Han Solo at Star’s End without question. But Daley is much more positive as a thinker than Shakespeare, and that optimism about what’s possible is what Star Wars is all about. Yet much of the modern statism that is infecting the world is because of European culture, Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, Dante’s Inferno, or the master himself James Joyce of Finnegan’s Wake fame, which I have read and understand. Give me Star Wars over Finnegan’s Wake and give me the Millennium Falcon over a fu**ing street car. Give me a manufacturing plant floating around earth dumping its garbage into space or on the surface of the moon as opposed to the socialism of Brazil where everyone lives in a card board hut. Give me a Corporate Sector that can build a Millennium Falcon in America so that I can have one as opposed to the dying towns of Detroit choking on socialism and feel-good progressivism.
What Chris Lee is attempting to do is no different from what Doc Vandagantes did in the book Han Solo at Star’s End for TheMillennium Falcon. Chris isn’t working for NASA, or some other group building Falcons for the general population. Government will not get behind such an effort, so Chris is doing it on his own. I was a bit skeptical at first even though I wanted to see the results. But after Chris showed off the latest cockpit construction after many months of meticulous effort, I can see clearly that he will be successful so long as he can continue to fund the project. It is for that reason that I am starting an icon on my side bar here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom encouraging my readers here to help Chris with his project. I think it’s important. Is it as important as sex trafficking in the world, or the sad state of current politics———-no, but yes. Yes because Chris’s Millennium Falcon project is about the most important ingredient to human society—imagination—and the gumption to make things happen. Chris wants like I do to walk inside a real life Millennium Falcon—and he’s making it happen on his dime, with his time, and his effort. And now that I’ve seen it, I can’t help but wonder what our world would be like if government simply got behind people like Chris and allowed them to function in a Corporate Sector of America where inventions like the Falcon could flourish, instead of trying to heard people into cities through progressive politics and force them onto government sponsored mass transit. The Millennium Falcon is a larger symbol than that—it is the result of laissez-faire capitalism and a hope for mankind that resides in the spirit of ideals and innovation—and a lot of perspiration.
That old Han Solo at Star’s End novel still sits near my reading chair. It’s now torn, and very worn out from years of handling—but it still evokes in me boundless imagination opportunities and optimism. Many people look at what Chris is doing in Nashville and read what I have said here and think that we are grown up kids who love the escapism of cinema, or fantasy which has a grain of truth to it. But what do we want to escape from—and to what. Speaking for myself, I wish to escape from the clutches of those with undeveloped imaginations—people who avoid thinking rather than thriving from it. For me, a personal Millennium Falcon would allow me to leave those sluggish minds behind in a flight for the stars and the endless possibilities available outside of the laws comb-over politicians have constructed just to increase their power base. My wife has read Han Solo at Star’s End—in fact she’s read every Star Wars book ever written up to this point which is in the hundreds—and she understands why there are Millennium Falcon’s all over our bedroom. Many don’t because they failed to let novels like Han Solo at Star’s End capture their imaginations at a young age, or failed to enjoy a film like Star Wars for whatever reason. They lack the mechanism to enjoy those kinds of things and it is they who are weights on minds like mine. I want to escape from their limitations, their restrictions, and their lives stuck in quicksand of self-construction. The Millennium Falcon to me is freedom from all that, and a symbol against restriction because TheFalcon is a pirate vessel built by illegal components that’s faster than anything regulations in the Republic or Empire would allow. And that’s why I love it, and why people like Chris are dedicating their lives to see a real life Millennium Falcon—even if they have to build the damn thing themselves. I sleep better at night knowing that there are people like Chris and his friends out there—beyond the reaches of those who use rules and regulations to mask the lack of imagination that plagues their thoughts like a cancer—and the democracies of tyranny that they create with good intentions imposed from faulty thinking. The Millennium Falcon is an escape from those who don’t understand and a celebration by those who do.
It doesn’t happen very often but sometimes I run across something that I don’t think I could say better. One such thing is a bit of commentary Wayne Allyn Root wrote about Obamacare that I thought was simply fantastic. After reading it, I concluded that I wouldn’t change or add a word. In it Root states clearly what Obamacare is all about as a progressive creation and it is something that every American should read. From my readers here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom I get dozens of these types of articles every day by email, and unfortunately I can’t often use them because the script is usually not up to my standards of analysis. The submissions are often interesting but are either too extreme or constructed off pure frustration. Other times they are laced with incomplete thoughts reporting only the results of things, and not the cause. With the Wayne Allyn Root article, seen below, he digs down to the heart of Obamacare in a way that I agree 100% with, and he managed to do it at around 1200 words, which is quite a feat.
Barack Obama is a doomsday president—meaning I believe he is deliberately seeking to wreck America from the kind of country I grew up in—and trying to make it into the kind of country he thinks it should be based on his childhood in Jakarta, Indonesia. He thinks he is doing the righteous thing, in a similar way that terrorists believe that they are doing the right thing based on Allah, or the Devil—or whatever demon haunts their thoughts. Bad guys always think in their minds that they are doing what’s right—they seldom ever want to hurt others for the simple joy of hurting. Barack Obama is a domestic enemy—there is no other way to understand his actions. While it may not be popular to say such things, the facts point to the noted reality—Obama and his clan of progressive scum bags wish to destroy America starting with the medical industry through its entanglements with the economy. Obama’s America is not the John Wayne America—it is an anti-imperialistic one that seeks to bring down the great “evil” beast from the inside out. Obama is not loyal to the American working at the local McDonald’s unless they wish to join a communist labor union. He is not loyal to the gun shooters of Kentucky, or the hot rodders cruising the streets of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. He is not loyal to the suburbanite conservative living in Butler County, Ohio . Obama is loyal to dismantling The United States to fulfill the work of his childhood mentors, and he only partners up with people who will help him with his intended goal of destruction of the earth’s last superpower in favor of global equality—particularly for places like Jakarta.
Last week Obama declared over the cries against his Obamacare program, that America should commit more resources to the country’s roads and infrastructure. He declared that Europe was building roads, China was building roads, and Brazil was building roads. But what he didn’t say was that all the countries he mentioned were either politically run by socialism, or out-right communism. Obama is a communist—he’s not even a soft tempered socialist—he’s a hard core—KGB rotten, scum bag communist—the kind that was warned about in the 1940s and 1950s. It does not matter if he is a card-carrying communist the way his mentors were during his childhood. What matters is what he believes—and how his actions give it away. Lawyers typically lie, cheat, and do whatever they have to in order to win their case. Obama is a lawyer—he will deny, deny, and deny until the end of existence. The truth will never come out of his mouth—because it’s not in him—at least not toward the American people. I have to believe he is probably good to his family—he’s probably honest with his children, and someday I’m sure they’ll spill the beans to what their dad believed deep in his heart. The evidence points to that conclusion now, and it’s a heart that doesn’t bleed red, white and blue—cowboy westerns, self-reliance, and American ingenuity. Rather Obama’s heart only bleeds red—the red of places like the former USSR and the global universities who believe to this very day that communism is the way all governments should function. These were the beliefs that gave young Obama his thoughts which were given from fathers who were communists, radical socialists, and revolutionaries too busy with their life to teach the little boy anything useful. Obama, the man—lost of any fatherly influence can only be considered great in his own mind if he fulfills the dreams of this fathers—his childhood role models—who were in some cases card-carrying communists’ intent to destroy America. Obama by his actions has shown that he wishes to fulfill their intentions. This makes him a domestic enemy from the perspective of traditional America and he would be prosecuted by the law—if he wasn’t at the head of the highest office in the land and had the Department of Justice eating out of his hand like a farm-yard cow chewing straw through an electric fence.
There are 2 major political parties in America. I am a member of the naïve, stupid, and cowardly one. I’m a Republican. How stupid is the GOP? They still don’t get it. I told them 5 years ago, 2 books ago, a national bestseller ago (The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide), and in hundreds of articles and commentaries, that Obamacare was never meant to help America, or heal the sick, or lower healthcare costs, or lower the debt, or expand the economy.
The GOP needs to stop calling Obamacare a train wreck. That means it was a mistake, or accident. That means it’s a gigantic flop, or failure. It is NOT. This is a brilliant, cynical, and purposeful attempt to damage the U.S. economy, kill jobs, and bring down capitalism. It is not a failure; it is Obama’s grand success. It’s not a train wreck. Obamacare is a suicide attack. He wants to hurt us, to bring us to our knees, to capitulate, so we agree under duress to accept big government.
Obama’s hero and mentor was Saul Alinsky, a radical Marxist intent on destroying capitalism. Alinsky’s stated advice was to call the other guy a terrorist to hide your own intentions. To scream that the other guy is ruining America, while you are the one actually plotting the destruction of America. To claim again and again. in every sentence of every speech that you are saving the middle class, while you are busy wiping out the middle class.
The GOP is so stupid they can’t see it. There are no mistakes here. This is a planned purposeful attack. The tell-tale sign isn’t the disastrous start to Obamacare. Or the devastating effect the new taxes are having on the economy. Or the death of full-time jobs. Or the overwhelming debt. Or the dramatic increases in health insurance rates. Or the 70% of doctors now thinking of retiring- bringing on a healthcare crisis of unimaginable proportions. Forget all that.
The real sign that this is a purposeful attack upon capitalism is how many Obama administration members and Democratic Congressmen are openly calling Tea Party Republicans and anyone who wants to stop Obamacare terrorists. There’s the clue. Even the clueless GOP should be able to see that. They are calling the reasonable people, the patriots, the people who believe in the Constitution, the people who believe exactly what the Founding Fathers believed, the people who want to take power away from corrupt politicians who have put America $17 trillion in debt, terrorists?
That’s because they are Saul Alinsky-ing the GOP. The people trying to purposely hurt America, capitalism and the middle class, are calling the patriots by a terrible name to fool, confuse and distract the public.
Obamacare is a raving, rollicking, fantastic success. Stop calling it a failure. Here is what it was created to do. It is succeeding on all counts.
#1) Obamacare was intended to bring about the Marxist dream- redistribution of wealth. Rich people, small business owners, and the middle class are being robbed, so that the money can be redistributed to poor people (who vote Democrat). Think about it. If you’re rich or middle class, you now have to pay for your own healthcare costs (at much higher rates) AND 40 million other people’s costs too (through massive tax increases). So you’re stuck paying for both bills. You are left broke. Brilliant.
#2) Obamacare was intended to wipe out the middle class and make them dependent on government. Think about it. Even Obama’s IRS predicts that health insurance for a typical American family by 2016 will be $20,000 per year. But how would middle class Americans pay that bill and have anything left for food or housing or living? People that make $40K, or $50K, or $60K can’t possibly hope to spend $20K on health insurance without becoming homeless. Bingo. That’s how you make middle class people dependent on government. That’s how you make everyone addicted to government checks. Brilliant.
#3) As a bonus, Obamacare is intended to kill every decent paying job in the economy, creating only crummy, crappy part-time jobs. Why? Just to make sure the middle class is trapped, with no way out. Just to make sure no one has the $20,000 per year to pay for health insurance, thereby guaranteeing they become wards of the state. Brilliant.
#4) Obamacare is intended to bankrupt small business, and therefore starve donations to the GOP. Think about it. Do you know a small business owner? I know hundreds of them. Their rates are being doubled, tripled and quadrupled by Obamacare. Guess who writes 75% of the checks to Republican candidates and conservative causes? Small business. Even if a small business owner manages to survive, he or she certainly can’t write a big check to the GOP anymore. Money is the mother’s milk of politics. Without donations, a political party ceases to exist. Bingo. That’s the point of Obamacare. Obama is bankrupting his political opposition and drying up donations to the GOP. Brilliant.
#5) Obamacare is intended to make the IRS all-powerful. It adds thousands of new IRS agents. It puts the IRS in charge of overseeing 15% of the U.S. economy. The IRS has the right because of Obamacare to snoop into every aspect of your life, to go into your bank accounts, to fine you, to frighten you, to intimidate you. And Obama and his socialist cabal have access to your deepest medical secrets. By law your doctor has to ask your sexual history. That information is now in the hands of Obama and the IRS to blackmail GOP candidates into either not running, or supporting bigger government, or leaking the info and ruining your campaign. Or have you forgotten the IRS harassed, intimidated and persecuted critics of Obama and conservative groups? Now Obama hands the IRS even more power. Big Brother rules our lives. Brilliant.
#6) Obamacare is intended to unionize 15 million healthcare workers. That produces $15 billion in new union dues. That money goes to fund Democratic candidates and socialist causes- thereby guaranteeing Obama’s friends never lose another election, and Obama’s policies keep ruining capitalism and bankrupting business owners long after he’s out of office. Message to the GOP: This isn’t a game. This isn’t tiddly-winks. This is a serious, purposeful attempt to highjack America and destroy capitalism. This isn’t a trainwreck. It is purposeful suicide. It is not failing, it is working exactly according to plan. Obama knows what he’s doing. Stop apologizing and start fighting.
Oh and one more thing, Conservatives aren’t terrorists. We are patriots and saviors. We represent the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. We are the heroes and good guys.
The Overmanwarrior 
