Tag: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, Family, and the Weight of Choices: Why Generations Rise or Fall Together

Thanksgiving is one of those rare moments in American life where everything slows down just enough for us to notice what really matters. The smell of turkey fills the house, football hums in the background, and for a few hours, the world’s chaos takes a back seat to mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. I love this time of year. I love the family gatherings, the laughter, the jokes that only make sense to people who share your last name. But, Thanksgiving is also a fascinating study in human nature. You sit around that table and, without saying a word, you can see the weight of another year on everyone’s face—the triumphs, the mistakes, the quiet regrets.

What is family, really? People say it’s blood, but I think it’s more complicated than that. Family is biology, sure, but it’s also choices—every choice we make and every choice our kids make. And those choices stack up like bricks over time, building the life we live. Some people build palaces; others build prisons. Thanksgiving is where you see the architecture of those choices on full display.

When you’re born, you don’t get to pick your family. You’re handed a set of people and told, “These are yours.” But as life goes on, family becomes less about biology and more about decisions. Who you marry, how you raise your kids, what values you teach them—those choices ripple through generations. I’ve raised kids and now grandkids, and I can tell you this: the quality of a family gathering isn’t determined by the turkey on the table; it’s determined by the choices everyone made to get there.

I’ve seen families where bitterness hangs in the air like smoke because bad decisions piled up—wrong marriages, financial disasters, grudges that never healed. And I’ve seen families where people genuinely enjoy each other’s company because they made better choices. It’s not luck. It’s not fate. It’s choices.

I’ve always said this—and sometimes people look at me funny when I do—but I treat kids differently than I treat adults. Why? Because kids still have options. They haven’t stacked up a lifetime of mistakes yet. They’re like a blank canvas with endless possibilities. Adults, on the other hand, well… by the time you hit your 40s or 50s, the mistakes start showing. You can see it in their faces, in their posture, in the way they talk about life. Every bad decision leaves a mark.

I’ve sat at Thanksgiving tables and watched this play out. You see the cousin who married the wrong person, and now every conversation is about how hard life is. You see the uncle who spent his 20s chasing quick thrills and now looks like a relic of his former self. And then you look at the kids—bright-eyed, full of energy, thinking they’re invincible. They don’t know yet that life is a marathon, not a sprint.

That’s why I invest in kids. I talk to them differently. I try to steer them away from the mistakes that everyone else seems determined to make. Because if you can help a kid avoid even half the bad choices their peers make, you’ve given them a head start that will pay off for decades.

Life is like a marathon. At the starting line, everyone looks the same—bunched up, full of energy, ready to run. But five miles in, the pack starts to spread out. Some people are way ahead, others are falling behind, and the gap keeps growing. That’s what choices do.

And the stats prove it. By middle age, the spread is enormous:

• 41% of first marriages end in divorce, and the odds get worse with each attempt.

• The average U.S. household carries $105,056 in debt, with mortgage debt alone averaging $268,060.

• Over 40% of adults are obese, and the highest rates are among people in their 40s and 50s.

These aren’t random outcomes. They’re the result of choices stacked up over decades. The people who finish strong aren’t the ones who sprint early—they’re the ones who pace themselves, make smart decisions, and stay disciplined when everyone else is falling apart.

Here’s something I’ve noticed over the years: misery loves company. People who make bad choices don’t just suffer quietly—they want everyone else to make the same mistakes. Why? Because it makes them feel less alone. If you’ve wrecked your finances, married the wrong person, and let your health go, it’s comforting to see the next generation do the same. It’s almost like a twisted form of validation: “See? It’s not just me. This is how life works.”

But let’s be honest—it’s not “how life works.” It’s how bad decisions impact outcomes. And the numbers back this up. Divorce, debt, obesity—they’re all connected. Stress from debt leads to overeating. Relationship breakdowns lead to depression. Depression leads to bad health habits. It’s a cycle, and once you’re in it, climbing out feels impossible.

I’ve seen this at family gatherings. You hear the stories—another year of bills piling up, another kid in trouble, another health scare. And everyone nods like it’s normal. But it’s not normal. It’s the result of choices. And the sad part? People cling to the idea that something magical will fix it—a lottery win, a miracle from God, a quick fix that wipes the slate clean. But most of the time, that fix never comes.

Here’s the good news: the cycle can be broken. It’s not easy, but it’s possible—and it starts with the next generation. The key isn’t to make kids perfect. The key is to help them avoid the big mistakes—the ones that derail lives. Teach them that life isn’t about following the crowd. Because the crowd? The crowd is headed straight for debt, divorce, and diabolical outcomes.

So what do you do? You teach kids to think long-term. You teach them that every choice is a brick in the house they’re building. Pick the wrong bricks, and the house collapses. Pick the right ones, and you’ve got a fortress.

I tell my grandkids, “Don’t chase what everyone else is chasing. Most people are running toward misery and calling it fun.” I remind them that life is a marathon, and the people who finish strong aren’t the ones who sprint early—they’re the ones who pace themselves, make smart decisions, and stay disciplined when everyone else is falling apart.

And here’s the beautiful part: when you do this, you don’t just change one life. You change a family. You change a legacy. Because good choices ripple forward just like bad ones do. Imagine a Thanksgiving table where everyone is healthy, happy, and financially secure—not because they got lucky, but because they made choices that built that reality. That’s possible. I’ve seen glimpses of it in my own family, and it’s worth every ounce of effort.

Thanksgiving is more than turkey and football—it’s a mirror. Every year, when the family gathers, you can see the story of choices written on people’s faces. Some look vibrant, full of life, laughing easily. Others look worn down, carrying the weight of years of bad decisions. And it’s not just physical—it’s in the conversations. You hear who’s struggling with debt, who’s on their third marriage, who’s battling health problems.

But here’s the thing: Thanksgiving also gives us hope. It’s a chance to reset, to remind ourselves what matters. For a few hours, the bills and the stress fade away, and we just enjoy being together. And if we use that time wisely—not just to eat, but to inspire—we can plant seeds that change the next generation.

Family is a gift, but it’s also a responsibility. It’s not just about biology—it’s about choices. Every choice we make ripples through generations, shaping the lives of people who haven’t even been born yet. That’s heavy, but it’s also empowering. Because if bad choices can create misery, good choices can create joy.

So this Thanksgiving, as you sit around the table, look at the faces you care about and ask yourself: What legacy are we building? Are we passing down wisdom, or just repeating the same mistakes? Because the truth is, the cycle doesn’t have to continue. We can break it. We can teach our kids to run the marathon wisely, to pace themselves, to make decisions that lead to health, happiness, and freedom.

And if we do that—if we choose better and inspire better—then maybe, just maybe, the next Thanksgiving will feel different. The laughter will be louder, the smiles will be brighter, and the weight of bad choices will be replaced by the joy of good ones. That’s something worth being thankful for.

Rich Hoffman

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What the 2023 Macy’s Parade Tells us About the Economy: It’s Back to the 80s

I watch the Macy’s Parade from New York on Thanksgiving Day as a measuring device for our public health every year.  I usually comment on the kind of balloons they have on the parade route and what type of music they feature creatively.  And also, what is the tone of the broadcasts, and the commercials?  There is usually a lot going on to report that provides a good indicator of other economic factors that say a lot about us as a culture.  And sure enough, the 2023 Macy’s Day Parade had a lot to say.  If I had to pick a theme that was decidedly a major part of the decision-making process in putting the parade on this year, it was “Remember the 80s.”  Because most of the musical acts and creative selections were attempting to rub off the magic and music of the 80s to bring happiness back to the consumer culture, in the past, it was always common to exhibit very progressive themes, like “gays teaching class,” “drag queens make a cake,” or some similar social intrusion.  But I’m telling you, and Disney is a great example of this; going woke has made a lot of corporations go broke.  And that’s more than a catchy tagline.  You can see in the behavior of most corporations that they are reeling from terrible advice from Larry Fink and the gang at BlackRock and, ultimately, the intruders at the World Economic Forum.  By this point in the global insurrection process, we were supposed to be on another currency controlled by the centralized banks, digitally, China was to have surpassed America as the dominant economy, and President Trump was supposed to be in jail, and have all his political capital removed.  So there is a lot of soul-searching going on that many people who thought they controlled the world are embarking on, and it’s not a pleasant experience for them.  And all that shows in the creative decisions at this year’s Macy’s Day Parade. 

I’ll go even further than that, this Taylor Swift lunacy with the NFL and the Kansas City Chiefs is part of the story.  It’s a constructed monstrosity from a corporate brand that needs something to spark interest in the product, and predictably, because Taylor Swift is suddenly at NFL games dating a famous player, women are watching football.  European soccer has been appealing to this younger generation, and the NFL had to do something, so there is nothing better than a romance between the most popular “anti-Trump” pop star on the planet now, where they play her music during NFL games abundantly, and one of the premier players in Travis Kelce.  I noticed that this romance didn’t start until shortly after Taylor Swift played her concert series in Cincinnati, which is a kind of melting pot of heartland sentiment.  It just so happens that Travis used to be a Cincinnati Bearcat football player, so there is something of a connection with Cincinnati that they both have, in some ways, they are wholesome products of one of America’s most wholesome cities.  Some people measure such things as obsessions.  I believe the matchmakers who put these two together, such as Erin Andrews, played a role in understanding corporate politics through such imaging.  “Hey, you guys should date, it would be great for the game and for your careers.”  Taylor Swift and Kelce go on a few dates, talk about how great Cincinnati is, and pretty soon, they are swapping spit in the shower and sharing a towel.  A new corporate romance is born, meant to carry public sentiment positively.

The musical selections at the Macy’s Parade were along the same lines.  They had Cher, references to Back to the Future, and many Broadway plays with people in cowboy hats, as if they were trying to appeal hard to mainstream America but weren’t sure they knew what it was.  What they didn’t talk a lot about was progressive politics, to the point where it was avoided by everyone involved in the presentation.  At the beginning of the parade, a bunch of Palestinian protestors were blocking the route, and they were disposed of quickly so as not to impact the show, which I thought was great.  The show must always go on.  And if you were watching it on television, you never would have known.  It was interesting to watch Cher perform because she is one of the biggest Never Trumpers out there and would generally be one who would throw support to Palestinian supporters, but here was a 70-year-old all dressed up singing sexy songs from the 80s.  Later that day, I might add, Dolly Parton dressed up like a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader in her 70s, trying to show that age and sexiness were not lost during the Thanksgiving Day tradition of the Cowboys playing football during a halftime show.  The NFL could have picked thousands of other people.  Entertainment had millions of different options, but they decided on Cher, Dolly, and the safe music of Taylor Swift to sell their corporate image.  There were no Black Lives Matter references, no bending the knee at the National Anthem.  There was almost a desperate hope that these corporate images might politely be invited into the public trust again by giving audiences everything they sought and more. 

As I have been saying for a long time now, the BlackRock stakeholder capitalism idea was never going to work, all that goofy stuff they have been yacking about at Davos was never going to be accepted by the American public, and it is there that world cultures trend.  European rock bands and entertainment must export their art to America to make money.  Not China, as the entertainment industry used to think it was possible to sell to the public.  Not Africa, Russia, or Europe.  If you can’t tap into the greatest economy in the world, the one that every economist everywhere should be studying instead of trying to change into a socialist utopia, then there is no market.  And the ultimate feature of that art is the Mainstreet options seen in features like the Macy’s Day Parade.  This year, it was all about an olive branch to the MAGA voters.  Over the last three years of Biden, it’s evident that the public wasn’t seduced into the World Economic Forum monstrosities cooked up under their economic view.  And people wanted optimism in their art again, in their music, movies, and Broadway plays.  It wasn’t that long ago when Broadway was utterly shut down due to COVID-19.  Well, people moved on to other interests, and getting a ticket to a Broadway play isn’t so hard now, just like Disney Parks, where attendance is low.  People didn’t need the corporations.  They don’t need NFL football; all the progressive activism has hurt their brand.  They are turning to Taylor Swift to help them recapture the magic, but it looks like there is permanent damage to the NFL because of their anti-Trump activism that will never come back.  The Macy’s Parade of 2023 clearly states that significant changes were on the horizon, not the kind they politically support.  Yet that is the world of tomorrow, and they are trying to embrace it today.  Their actions are an admission of good things to come that they aren’t all that happy about, but if they want to be in business, they had better embrace it.

Rich Hoffman

Thanksgiving Wishes: One of America’s Best Holidays

Thanksgiving is a day to celebrate what we value most. So at this time, I offer this wish I put onto social media.

And to that effect, the Bible is a place to reflect on what we value most. Enjoy the turkey. Tomorrow we go hunting for the bad guys! And the payment for their sins and scandal will be owed to our yearning hearts.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

AFPI is Something to be Thankful For: Trump and the Pilgrims of Robert Cushman

Never forget Robert Cushman

What am I most thankful for on this Thanksgiving of 2021?  Well, it’s something I said last year would be happening when I said not to fret, not to despair over lying hiding, Joe Biden.  That Trump was still the president as far as I was concerned and that he didn’t need to be in the White House to act in that fashion.  Instead, he could run the country from his Winter White House down in Mar-a-Lago, which is what he has spent the last year doing.  And the result has been the creation of the America First Policy Institute, a collection of like-minded people intent to make an America First agenda the policy of the United States for many years to come.  This is, of course, something that you probably didn’t hear about in the media, so I have included a few videos from them in this article for context.  Needless to say, I am very thankful to see them emerge as a political powerhouse that will shape all future elections and build on the more than 75 million voters who voted for President Trump in the last election who have been ignored, scandalized, and tormented ruthlessly since President Biden was put in place to protect the swamp and all the deals made there from draining the filth the way we have wanted to do for a long time.

I’ve been talking about shadow banning more lately because I have been thinking a lot about the AFPI.  I came to know about them because I joined in Big Tech’s Trump lawsuit, which I essentially view as criminal conduct.  Google doesn’t own the internet, nor does Facebook or Twitter.  Yet, they have acted like it.  The internet is essentially a public utility that our government developed for our use.  Google doesn’t own it, yet I have become one of the most shadow-banned people on the internet.  Considering how much content I have provided over the last decade, I should be getting millions of hits per week on my work. Instead, it’s just hundreds, or thousands, depending on what’s going on.  The only real people who see my content are subscribers, as search engines deliberately shut me off from the world.  It’s pretty ostentatious, to be honest. I’m not one to cry about it, but when I had to fill out my paperwork for the lawsuit, it brought it all to my mind just how mad I have been about it.  If it were simply a competition issue, I wouldn’t care.  But this is a free speech issue over a public utility, and these companies that I didn’t elect have chosen to disrupt the operation of our republic toward political positions they favor, and that isn’t acceptable.

I can see where all this is headed by getting to know the AFPI people a bit, and it will only grow.  I have been thinking of them much like the original pilgrim colonies of Plymouth Rock.  I was reminded recently of my trip to Westgate in Canterbury, England, with my wife, where we went to see the cell of Robert Cushman.  Cushman was the original commissioner of the Mayflower on behalf of the Pilgrims. They were fleeing Europe due to the tremendous religious persecution from the Church, the state, the royalty, and their continuous power struggles.  The protestants wanted to be free of that persecution.  Robert Cushman, after all, just wanted to run a little grocery in Canterbury, but the Church insisted that he believe in their style of religion, so they shut him down and threw him in jail.  Essentially, it’s what we are seeing today, where the state insists that we believe in the gods of Covid, in climate change, and that we do what they say needs to be done, or nothing else.  Its tyranny to consider Covid vaccine mandates or to be put out of business.  But that was how it was in the times of Robert Cushman, around the 1620s, before and after. 

That hunger for freedom from tyrants has always been part of the human race.  America was founded on it, first from the pilgrims, then again during the Revolutionary War.  I would say today, with the election of Trump, the creation of the American First Policy Institute, and the political upheavals of our times, we are going through all that once again.  There is nothing new about tyrants wanting to capture people to make them think and do what they want them to do.  We see an example of this tyranny every day with the shadow banning.  It’s one thing for me to say it’s happening to me.  But one of the strongest examples is that of Jonathan Karl from the Disney-owned ABC News regarding his latest book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.  That book has been quoted by most mainstream media outlets as if everything in the book was a fact.  It is the narrative of the captured press, but they are still a minority opinion, and to maintain that illusion, they have to shadow ban other views.  In this case, it’s the Peter Navarro book In Trump Time, written by an actual Trump insider in the White House.  Jonathan Karl was just a reporter.  Peter Navarro is the real deal.  His book is selling great, underground.  Just as my material gets out, underground, black market style, but the attempts at shadow banning couldn’t be more apparent.  The New York Times took Navarro off their Best Seller list not because it wasn’t selling but purely over political ideology.  The belief of the political left is just as the kings and popes of Europe thought about the protestant movement, that by ignoring why people wanted something, that something would go away. 

Just as the pilgrims came to America under great hardship and settled a new country founded on Christian sentiments, the America First Policy Institute was formed by a need to correct what happened to Trump and his voters during the 2020 election.   The government that pushed Trump out of office was not going to get away with just shutting down the thoughts and speech of those they disagreed with.  They were not going to be able to intimidate compliance.  Just as it always is with humans, the consequences would be harsh for those seeking to control them.  No matter what period in history we look at, we see people fighting tyranny.  If they can flee to get away from it, they will.  But in a world like what we live in now, where every corner of the world is occupied somehow, leaving no place to flee to, the only alternative left is to fight those who want to control us.  In reaction to that, the America First Policy Institute was formed to do just that, starting at the ballot box.  It won’t take long for the AFPI to grow into a much larger and influential organization, especially with the kind of people who are in the leadership. It’s a natural reaction to a very long story, and if I’m thankful for anything, it’s in the human response to the last couple of years, which is the birth of the AFPI.  Whether it’s the pilgrims or the front-line policymakers at Mar-a-Lago, it’s the human need for freedom that continues to endure and is what the real meaning of Thanksgiving truly is.  And this year especially, there is a lot to be thankful for because of the AFPI. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Robert Cushman in the Westgate Tower: Where America was born–and the reason for separation of church and state

img_4159For my wife and I it was a bit of an overwhelming moment, only because we both love history and have a strong reverence for the Holiday of Thanksgiving in the United States. I had known that Robert Cushman who originally commissioned the Mayflower for the famous voyage to North America which of course unleashed the famous Thanksgiving Holiday that we celebrate each year unlocking the Christmas Season, but I didn’t think I’d ever get close to sitting in the cell where he was held imprisoned by the Church for spreading protestant pamphlets.  Yet, while touring the city streets of the ancient city of Canterbury, England at the Westgate Towers I found myself in a room exhibiting the shackles that were used for holding prisoners there and sure enough on the wall was the information talking about Cushman’s ordeal that led to the start of the Mayflower voyage in that very room.

img_4175A lot of people these days don’t really understand the necessity, and context of the argument between American separation of church and state because they have been free all their lives and have a shallow knowledge of history. But for Cushman who’s only ambition in life was to be a grocer on the streets of his childhood home in Kent he was a very passionate religious person who found himself in the crosshairs of the Church and their desire to be the primary vehicle through sacrament to Heaven.  Cushman naturally resented that control and wanted a more passionate relationship with God directly.  So the Church had him thrown in jail and as he sat in the cell at Westgate his young mind set him on a life course that would usher in the first pilgrims into the New World and start the concept of America.img_4161

In a lot of ways, the birth of the United States happened right in that spot in Westgate so it was a little overwhelming. The role that Canterbury played was phenomenal—it was a town that featured at least two major earthwork mounds that are credited to the pre-Roman period, but I personally think are even thousands of years older—likely the same type of people who inhabited the Stonehenge area over 100 miles to the west.  Both St Augustine’s Abby and a gigantic mound the size of the Miamisburg Mound in Ohio sit among the ruins of the great Roman city that set Canterbury on its start.  But then the Romans pulled out a few 400 years later and in came the Anglo Saxons from Germany and elsewhere.  But William the Conqueror from the lineage of the Viking Rollo invaded from France and dominated the countryside. When he came to Canterbury the people surrendered without a fight and thus the great Cathedrals began, first at St Augustine’s Abby, then the great Canterbury Cathedral and the region quickly became known as the Church of all England.  Fast forward another 500 years or so and Robert Cushman was wanting to apprentice as a grocer but as a young passionate man critical of the Church’s role in the issuing of the sacrament found himself locked away in that old Roman tower.img_4169

As many historians understand, the Church of England was always in a perilous relationship with the kings of England and some, especially Henry II and Henry VIII had especially contentious relationships with the power the Church held and pushed up against it. This often put the people of England in the crosshairs of politics whether they wanted to be or not just by their association with needing religion in their lives.   The church and the state were always at war with each other leaving people like Martin Luther and eventually Robert Cushman to make extreme personal sacrifices to be free of the mess.  As he sat cold in the Westgate Tower Robert Cushman made a decision that if and when he was released that he’d escape to someplace friendlier to his religious views.  When he was released, he fled to Holland to live for 9 years but had to leave again because a treaty with Spain was due to expire in 1619 which meant the Spanish Inquisition would soon legislate that little country—so Cushman had to flee again back to his homeland to find some other means of escaping the tyranny of the church and its battles with the state.  So he commissioned the Mayflower in Canterbury to take his small group of protestant followers to a New World where they’d be free to follow their passions which took them to the famous Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.img_4215

When Satanists and radical Islamic lunatics want to claim that separation of church and state allows them to do whatever they want to whomever they like—they have an inaccurate view of the context of the statement. The separation of church and state was to prevent the situation that Robert Cushman and his pilgrim followers experienced on the ancient streets of Canterbury, England—where they couldn’t be thrown in the Westgate Tower just for having a different view of how the sacraments should be administered to the public.  The Church in its insecure position with the kings of England felt that Rome should continue to stand at the gateway to Heaven, and not those heredity selected masses of human flesh called kings—and if they lost that authority for just a decade of their existence, then the kings would push against the church for power over the people—so the poor people of England were caught in that vice between the state and the church.  People in America didn’t want to find themselves in that situation and they certainly didn’t want to be thrown in jail for having a different belief, as Cushman was.img_4160

For my wife and I it’s one thing to know these stories, it was quite another to stand in those spots and walk down the same corridors as Cushman did and to see what he did under similar conditions. If I had been Cushman, I would have been beyond pissed off and I don’t blame him a bit for organizing his pilgrimage to America to escape such nonsense.  It’s also important for those of us in America to honor the spirit of that first journey.   In many ways, this is the big debate surrounding the immigration debate to this day.  Refugees around the world are fleeing broken regions for the hope that America can shield them with freedom of persecution and economic mobility.  However, there are some who flee to America to destroy it from within from that same jealous Europe and all the fallen empires of the past for that first sinful act of defiance which Cushman fled from to begin with.  They do so not with military might, but with that paradox of squeezing society between the church and the state once again—such as what the radical Islamic terrorists have been advocating in their terrorist’s attempts.  The imposing religious beliefs of these modern terrorists are just a modern version of the medieval inquisitions being imposed on the here and now.  Yet the argument between church and state is the same as it was in Cushman’s time, only now we’ve run out of places to run.  So now we have to stay and fight because America is the last place on earth that is free of that type of tyranny.  And that is why we really celebrate Thanksgiving, and why for my family, it’s a very special Holiday.img_4174

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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