Tag: Tides Foundation story of stuff Rich Hoffmn overmanwarrior.com communist education policy

As Iran Fired Missiles, I Slept Very Well: Having a very good president in the White House

It was over before it even started as I announced in earlier articles. Trump had destroyed Iran’s “queen” in the great chess game and the war was over even as Fox News broke into its coverage to show missiles in the air headed for American occupied bases in Iraq. Every station had in fact started covering the revenge from Iran on live television and the situation looked ominous. I laughed to myself and went to bed. I was not at all surprised to wake up the next morning with a text from President Trump saying all was well, no American lives were lost. As a matter of fact, as the day evolved, we learned that the Iranians had been telling us that they were firing missiles essentially to appease their political base, but they weren’t aimed at any Americans. And they told us when they were done. They really didn’t want any action from America, that was obvious. They just wanted to show some missiles in the air flying around to show on State television to save some face after the embarrassing end to one of their top military minds. It’s not that I didn’t care about the results, but I can do math. Iran as I have said over and over again cannot fight a war. They do not have the resources for anything beyond regional terrorism. So, they weren’t going to sign their own death warrant. I slept well even as the missiles where in the air flying around in the desert.

The media was caught red handed on this one because the fuel of the entire exercise was their coverage, made up as they went along. Like many of us have been saying for decades, the media has ran many of these wars covering movements, reporting them on air, then forcing presidents and generals to adapt to the broadcasts as if it were a sporting event. This has been going on since television became a common thing. And now that we have a president who understands the game, he doesn’t get played by it, but he certainly plays the players. The drums of war were being beaten by the media for an event that couldn’t even take place if the Iranians even wanted it to. They simply don’t have the resources, which left all the broadcasters reeling to justify their panic driven coverage in the aftermath.

If you are a reporter, or a network executive, you should at least be a little intellectually curious as to the nature of war and strategy, and to know that Iran only has about 200 to 300 Scud missiles and about 100 Shahab-3 medium range ballistic missiles. Their entire strategy is to use terrorism as a leverage point to show power, because they don’t actually have any power. They have an unstable government hanging on to an old communist idea that has eroded away into Islamic ideology leaving them with very little in financial options. And without finances they can’t even buy new weapons or think about building nuclear ones. They have nothing to work with, so no possibility of a war with anybody. The energy and cost to fire off those few missiles they did in revenge of their slain leader cost them a fortune that they didn’t have, and they have no appetite to do it anymore. We aren’t talking about kids firing off Nerf guns in their back yard, it costs a lot to fire off any kind of missile and Iran just doesn’t have the financial resources to conduct a war of any kind. That is why I went to bed, because what the news was broadcasting was pure nonsense. It was a ruse from the start and any news organization should have known that. What they were broadcasting was a fiction, and they likely knew it. If they didn’t know it, they were incompetent and shouldn’t even be on the air.

I slept well because for the first time in my life I knew there was a guy in the White House who could see through the illusions and to not allow a bunch of panicky generals and advisors to poke him into war with an enemy that was about as harmful as a common house fly. Now a house fly can land in some shit and then land on your food and cause trouble, but in all reality, their intent is pretty iniquitous but not very dangerous. And Trump’s speech to the country was along those lines. Be careful with flies landing in shit and crawling on you, but for now, we will leave them alone by keeping the door shut. Trump’s speech addressing the issue was the best that I can remember. He shut down the drums for war quickly and addressed the truly minimalist situation for what it was properly, giving people an honest assessment for what was one of the few in history. Most of these kinds of things are draped in drama meant to add a fearful narrative that has a big government subtext to it, letting people know that government will keep them safe. Not in Trump’s speech. He essentially said, nothing to worry about. Its cool. Go enjoy your families. Only with him, it wasn’t a lie meant to lull people back to sleep, but to get them back to living good productive lives without the worry of some flies landing on their food with feet dripping in shit.

This is what competency looks like, it doesn’t need to fear the actions of losers. Losers do not rule the world, as the media would like you to believe. To properly reflect this new age of living, the media is going to have to adjust, they’ll have to get better. They’ll need to figure out how to cover a 24-hour news cycle without talking about war, impeachment, or some FBI scandal against our president. Eventually they’ll have to come up with fresh content all on their own that doesn’t rely on scaring everyone to death to stay relevant. I would say that time has passed, but there is no time like the present. For myself, it was the first time I went to bed when some national incident was occurring, because I have learned the falseness of it all well and could see the signs from the very first moments. And the next day, most of the country had to admit the same, even CNN. As we all learn to be more competent, and focus our efforts on productive things, the news will have to grow with us and that will be a real challenge for them. The same old tricks will not work in the future as they have since the advent of televisions into our living rooms. They could all learn some lessons from Trump himself who is the Master of Media. He was before he became president, he won because of his knowledge. And now as a president, he only has sharpened that mastery. I trust him more than I trust television executives, so I went to bed until I heard from Trump. I didn’t want to hear from all the lesser people covering things they didn’t know just trying to frighten people into staying tuned. And that not just for me, but for many people, is a very new thing.

Rich Hoffman

Not Giving Domestic Enemies in the American Press a Free Pass: Making a hard decision that is required of our times

It’s time that we have a conversation about domestic enemies and their use of the First Amendment to attempt to bring tyrannical revolution to America through the guise of freedom. It’s an old trick that has now worn away into obviousness especially in light of the recent killing of Iran’s top general. The domestic enemies of America have shown themselves under the banner of free speech by proposing that America and President Trump in general was wrong in the act of defending itself from a leftist aggressor. So much was made of the stampede that occurred at the funeral of that general which left 30 dead because there were over a million people attending. But that’s not so impressive, what else were those people going to do? It’s not like Iran has a thriving economy that is keeping everyone entertained with plenty to do. In most cases the people in Iran are left with only pictures of the supreme commander to look at as they count dust blowing across their roads. So a funeral is a welcomed distraction for them, yet to many in America’s media, they sought to make more of it than was true, for all the reasons that a domestic enemy might endeavor.

When we talk about the Second Amendment many people think that all sorts of restrictions can be placed on that one. They seek to limit where we can carry guns, how many we can buy, they try to tax ammunition to discourage buying more and they look for all sorts of ways to take that right away from us. But when it comes to the First Amendment, if you are on the wrong side of the political spectrum, they seek to ban you from Google searches, YouTube and even Twitter. But for them, they can say anything about everyone anytime they wish. They call it free speech to criticize Trump’s actions against Iran, or China or even want to impeach him over a Ukrainian conversation, yet they see no problem in siding with known tyrannical regimes to weaken the United States domestically so that power players all over the globe can be emboldened. That is a real problem and they have really shown themselves in the wake of the latest Iran incident picking sides with anybody standing opposed to President Trump.

Well, we all take an oath to the American Constitution to protect it from foreign and domestic enemies and these abusers of the First Amendment are clearly acting as agents of destruction toward American ideals and we should take action against them. There is nothing wrong with it, we aren’t violating any of their Constitutional rights. They do not have a right to be a voice against American policy if their intent is not to make a vantage point stronger, but to weaken it into collapse. And if they are cheerleading an enemy against America, then we need to deal with that in the fashion it deserves.

I wouldn’t say I’m suggesting that we round these people up in the middle of the night and throw them in jail for speaking out against American ideas by supporting Iranian positions. They certainly want to do that to Second Amendment supporters, and just ask Roger Stone about illegal searches and violations against his Constitutional rights when he was arrested and thrown in jail just for knowing the President. But I am saying that we need to slap these people down and knock them off their platforms without our endorsement of subscriptions and ratings. We simply can’t let domestic enemies’ function in the open within our society and get away with it with a smug smile on their faces. We need to knock that smugness off right now.

Iran isn’t dangerous, all they have as a weapon is fear of some terrorist act. When our own media is the sheath that carries that weapon, we have a problem. Take that away, and Iran has nothing. They have no money to fight a war. They have no complicated political position, just a few tyrants who run everything as is common in any authoritarian regime. They are all paper tigers only propped up by the worlds media who desire to bring down the governments of capitalism from the preponderance of fear that any terrorist soaked in ideology might dream of. And we should not allow it to continue unchecked. Its one thing to be critical of a management style of a governing body. Its quite another to encourage enemies to appear stronger than they are so that our government makes bad decisions. This has been going on for a long time and until President Trump came along, we had entire presidential administrations who listened to these unelected domestic enemies and set policy to their opinions, and that has only made the world more dangerous, not less so. It has allowed Iran and North Korea, and many other places to believe that America is an easy target, and that has propped them up to bring harm where it otherwise wouldn’t have. That is worthy of prosecution all by itself.

Free speech isn’t free, there are consequences. Just as we have the right to bear arms, yet we can’t just carry around guns anywhere we want, we have decided as a society that there are limits. Now if we want to say there are no limits to these things, then let me know and I’ll carry a gun everywhere I want to, churches, government buildings, sporting events—everywhere. But don’t tell me that there are restrictions to one amendment, but unrestricted interpretation to all the other so long as it serves the needs of domestic enemies. We must admit to ourselves that America does have domestic enemies, and they teach our schools, they work in our government, and they run many of our networks. We are not all equal and we don’t all like being American. We are crazy if we allow domestic enemies hide behind American law while they work every opportunity to chop down our system in favor of tyrants around the world, which is precisely what has happened in the wake of the killing of Iran’s top general.

I would say that Iran is not a threat, but our domestic enemies are, they are cheering for some terrorist act to embarrass our president for purely political purposes and they are doing it to the point where they are opening the door hoping to let the insurgents in undetected. The most dangerous occurrence to come from this latest Iranian crisis is that our media reports might embolden some terrorist loser to act so that they might at least get positive press coverage upon their sacrifice. Its not that the government of Iran would organize it, because they can’t, they are incompetent. But some rogue cell of bandits and outlaws might by the encouragement of our own American press. And it wouldn’t be by accident, but on purpose. And they think they can get by with it because they are protected by the First Amendment and think they are untouchable as domestic enemies. Which is a disgrace to us all, knowing that they feel the way they do about our country and the ideas of freedom that it has always represented. This crisis demands that we take a position of making a decision between domestic enemies and Americans as a unified whole. Because they are not the same thing.

 

Rich Hoffman

A Review on the Fantastic HBO Miniseries Chernobyl: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was never better illustrated

As I watched the fantastic HBO miniseries on Chernobyl I couldn’t help but think of someone I admire quite a lot, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of the great pinnacle work on human psychology called ‘Flow.’ I finally was able to watch the five part series after many people kept recommending it to me and I have to say at every level of that experience, from the writer by Craig Mazin to the direction of Johan Renck—and everyone in between from the great acting to the executives who put the deal together ‘Chernobyl’ was a bold undertaking on an epic scale. These are not the filmmakers of the 80s and 90s where The Hollywood Reporter measured success by the size of their pay checks, and overall box office, but this trend we have now of streaming projects on the scale of Chernobyl are bringing forth creative filmmakers who are functioning from Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Flow’ on several projects that are giving the world so many new entertainment options, from projects like Stranger Things to The Mandalorian. But this Chernobyl effort was on a scale of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, which is one of my all time favorite films. But there won’t be big Academy Awards for this labor of love, or big Hollywood contracts. I don’t know what the makers of Chernobyl made as far as a paycheck, but its obvious they made this series out of pure love of the content, and the hard truths that come from it.

I don’t think Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi meant to reveal why communism doesn’t work in his own studies, but he did and that footprint of human effort was stamped all over Chernobyl. The film series brilliantly walked the line between the heroics of every day “working” people as Karl Marx fantasized to represent and cast a very bright light into every aspect and social level of Soviet society. The apartments were small and dingy, even the offices of the chief coordinators were skanky and shrill. No wonder everyone was so willing to lie about the status of things because nobody wanted to jeopardize a promotion into something improved. Conditions were so terrible for everyday people in Russia during this period of Chernobyl, which for those who don’t know was the site of the worst nuclear accident in the history of the world and continues to be a blight on Ukrainian politics. Even to this day, Ukraine is in the news and is at the center of an impeachment attempt by modern Democrats in America. For everyday people around the world who don’t know history or geography, the kind of corruption that these old Soviet regions bred is unfathomable.

Comparing lifestyles from the same period such as in the film Wall Street it becomes quite clear that the Soviet Union was so terrified of their people learning about the great gifts that the West might inspire into their society that they put all their efforts into publicity of the state for the purposes of the state robbing people of their natural free will so what the entire country ended up with was a massive economy filled with the Parkinson’s Law. Not the disease but the trend in human beings to fill schedule targets with procrastination when loose parameters to fulfillment are allowed and lazy ambitions fill the void. Where Chernobyl told the stories of many brave people it was only when the tragedy of the moment was able to tap into people’s natural Flow as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi often discussed. When left to their own devices into service to the “state” people took their sweet time, did only what they had to in order not to be shot by the KGB, and the result was a society of peeling paint, small apartments, boxy cars that all looked a like and very little retail options to speak of. Because the entire society was only doing what it had to because their Flow and love of life itself was so micromanaged.

The Chernobyl story could be told in any communist or socialist country and it is ironic that the American left is so enchanted with these efforts and want that for our own society. It is an unfathomably stupid idea unless people just don’t understand the concepts behind the work of very serious modern phycologists such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Modern China is suffering through exactly the same trials and tribulations as the Soviet Union was during this period of Chernobyl. It is the perception of power that they have and only that. That is the reason the state must control information flow so vigorously. The same in modern day Iran. Any society where people live in sloppy conditions and there are economic struggles we will find the elements of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s observations, once you take away the flow of ambition from people and force them to serve institutionalism, you get from them a natural Parkinson’s Law. I use that term to abbreviate Csikszentmihalyi’s teachings, which of course does the trick. This was precisely why the test at the Chernobyl plant was done in spite of the need to shut down for 12 hours to meet the output quotas for the end of the month needs. That Soviet society needed to push quotas on people in such a way says everything about their society, people weren’t naturally inclined to produce, or even motivated to “over produce” as we might see in Western cultures, but they had to be coaxed a gunpoint to do so and there is all the problem with Chernobyl or any communist society.

What was remarkable about the HBO miniseries on Chernobyl is it was done by very creative people functioning from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow ideas reporting on why communism was a massive failure because it robbed Russian society of their Flow. Whether or not this was intentional we may never know. It could just be a happy accident as events provided these filmmakers with the opportunity of a lifetime. But one thing is for sure, they seized on it and created one of the most magnificent narratives about a global tragedy that anybody has ever seen. And the work left in their wake is worth serious scientific study. Terms like Parkinson’s Law have not been around until fairly recently, certainly not as long as the peasant ambitions of Karl Marx over a hundred and fifty years ago. There are still a lot of discoveries that we need to make as a society as to what works and what doesn’t. For now we know that Western ideas do better economically, where these notions of collectivism tend to create Parkinson’s Law when Flow is robbed from individual people. We see it in manufacturing all the time no matter where in the world we are conducting it. Tight, micromanaged establishments tend to get a lot of Parkinson’s Law whereas free flowing creative efforts like at Pixar or Apple generate massive intellectual output. The results are unmistakable.

Chernobyl is the kind of program that every human being should watch once. That something like that is available to HBO subscribers or those with Amazon Prime accounts to me is a modern miracle. Such a great history lesson is available from the comfort of our living rooms any time of day in any length of time that you may wish to view it. We live in a modern world that has always craved Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow. He didn’t invent the desire, he simply observed it and noted conditions when Flow was restricted in people. But seldom is there ever a film series that shows not only what caused a tragedy on an epic scale because of Flow problems created by a government that is more relevant today than even when the event occurred. That’s what we have with Chernobyl. A massive undertaking created by wonderful Flow by the filmmakers about a society that had terrible Flow and ultimately why it’s important without being preachy. Chernobyl is ultimately about the gifts that come from a free society, the ability to look at ourselves and improve to get the desired results, something we all take for granted way too often. And we do so because of Parkinson’s Law, because we always fill the work to fill the comforts of a schedule, we see no horizon on, and think we have all the time in the world to fix it. But we don’t.

Rich Hoffman

Trump took out the Queen: Understanding the politics of Iran

For those not familiar with the liberal playbook they can clearly see it now. For all the things many of us said was wrong with Benghazi, where the liberals in control at the time completely handled the situation wrong and emboldened terrorist to attack the embassy, President Trump wasn’t about to allow the same to happen in Bagdad. So, he made the order when hostilities were escalating and the big general from Iran himself Maj. Gen Qassim Suleimani was in a car headed for trouble, Trump made the order to blow the guy to pieces, which is what happened. Immediately, those same people who want our society disarmed, who support the killing of millions of babies with abortion, and have been involved in attempting to use American intelligence agencies to overthrow the 2016 election, and ironically were involved in appeasing Iran, and had their fingers in the Benghazi mistake in Libya many years ago were stating that Trump just invited World War III and that we must all brace for impact.

For those who think there isn’t a plan in this attack by the United States against a very hostile foreign agent, there is, and it’s really quite brilliant. We have yet to hear much about that brilliance because apparently most people just don’t understand the situation well enough. The losers late to the party, the liberals as usual are blaming the attack on the impeachment timing saying that its purely political, which if you think about it, when are they not attacking or blaming Trump for something? When would be a good time? The accusation is laughable. Accusers are also calling it reckless, as if the liberal approach of appeasement has worked for all the past presidents involved in emboldening Iran over the years. Ali Khamenei the supposed “supreme leader” of Iran just a few days ago taunted Trump that he “can’t do anything” in the region letting it be believed that violence and mayhem would continue in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and many other places no matter what. Trump’s response was to target the leader of many of the problems that have been occurring and to stop him from doing it again at the U.S. Embassy in Bagdad.

It was liberal policies all along that have destroyed the Middle East just as they have in American cities. Ali Khamenei is just another gang leader no different than some drug dealing thug in Baltimore or Los Angeles. When the communists took over Iran back in the 70s many in our own government attempted to prop up their government just as they had been doing in Cuba and in China even up to the days before Trump’s trade war has chilled the ambitions of the largest country with the most people on earth by far, yet with very little resources to work with. Even Russia with its multi decade rule by Vladimir Putin was propped up by weak liberal policies over a large span of time. And when we say weak, we are talking about even the Bush presidents. They didn’t understand the game so they have been getting played.

This is yet another reason why we elected Trump in 2016 and will do it again in 2020. Previous presidents embarrassed us when dealing with these big regional gang leaders like Ali Khamenei. The issue really isn’t much different from the Second Amendment issue in the United States, we don’t want to be afraid of our own shadows, as the political left wants us to be. We want to carry weapons so that we don’t have to fear some regional thug that wants to break into our homes. And on the international stage, we don’t want regional thugs like those in Iran to start little fires everywhere that we have to put out. The person most responsible for that activity was Qassim Suleimani. Why not blow him up and make him no longer a threat?

The brilliance of the timing is that Kim Jong-un from North Korea has been beating on the war drums looking for attention, and this action in Iraq should give him an answer that he has been looking for. It’s not Trump’s fault that Qassium Suleimani gave him an easy target heading from the airport in Bagdad to the U.S. Embassy. When the shot comes open, take it. But Trump has needed to send a message to all those lunatics around the world who are looking to make noise as Trump goes into an election year with their allies in our own government trying to impeach him.

If they were going to make a move to get him out of office and embarrass him in front of the American people, this would be the year. So Trump took decisive action the way we hired him to. Its not that anybody is sad that Suleimani was killed and is no longer a threat in the Middle East as he has been for many years, its that now Trump will get the credit for it, which will make him more popular in the upcoming election. Not the reason that Trump did it for sure, but he will benefit from the timing. Again, it’s a liberal problem on both sides of the Atlantic. Iran’s regime are communist crusaders left over from that original revolution and that is why our American left supports them with money and regulatory policy and the only reason they have a leg to stand on.

So lets talk about retaliation, the truth of the matter is that Iran doesn’t have anything to work with. This is not a “war” that will involve troops on the ground as Nancy Pelosi has stated. It is amazing how many people are just stupid about war and strategy in general. Once you take out the king or queen in chess, the game is over. Trump took out Iran’s queen and now only pawns protect the king with no resources to speak of. The United States is now an exporter of oil leaving the Middle East to be a secondary market, taking massive amounts of power away from Iran. And the Iranian people are tired of the socialist and communist rule of their nation and have been revolting. Iran’s biggest threat is to protect itself from its own people, just as there are protestors in China’s Hong Kong wearing Trump masks and clamoring for freedom. Trump is a symbol of freedom throughout the world and he just gave all of them hope by taking out one of their greatest menaces. Even in China the rebels there have hope that if the tyrants crack down too hard to destroy them, that Trump will come to their rescue. So there is a lot more going on than just blowing up one car with one killer in it to stop an attack on the U.S. Embassy. Trump has been playing the chess game well, and after killing Soleimani the game is pretty much over.

Iran doesn’t have the resources to fight a war. Liberals want us to always fear that they must be appeased to keep nuclear weapons out of their hands which is the same strategy they want us to utilize with domestic gang leaders. Just make them happy and tip toe around their anger. Let the government protect you, don’t try to do it yourself. Trump’s message to the world is to allow people to protect themselves. He’ll use the American military to take away the threat to their lives, but its up to them to take back their government. He’s not going to do it for them. And that is the difference between Trump who has been successful in business and all the other political losers who came before him who didn’t have a clue. Changing a culture requires the people of the culture to do the work. You can’t come in and strong-arm people to get them to abide. Iran is poised for a revolution back to the kind of freedom it had before the communists took over. And that is what the political left is worried about with the killing of this Iranian terrorist. Its not cyber warfare or attacks on anything American that we should worry about. But now with their “queen” taken out, the game board is much better for the Iranians wanting change to advance and now its only a matter of time before they overthrow Ali Khamenei. And he and the political left know it.

Rich Hoffman

Dealing with the Leftist Frankenstein Monsters of Evil: The Texas Church shooting and why more guns are needed

If it was the sexual antics toward a government takeover of our 2016 election from Lisa Page that ended our thoughts of 2019 it should be the armed parishioners who took out a domestic terrorist at a Texas church that should launch our ambitions in 2020. Because there were trained participants of a security team armed at the church led by the guy who killed the suspect in the conflict, Jack Wilson—the attacker was subdued in about 6 seconds. Without voluntary armed protectors at the church ready for such action many more people would have been killed. This was a perfect case of what we have been talking about for many years. And this was another high-profile example of how such a system could work thanks to a recently passed state law that permitted concealed firearms inside places of worship. If not for that this tragic case of two people being shot would have been much more egregious, and unnecessary as we must all admit that evil is alive and well in the world, and when it shows bad intentions, it must be dealt with. Of course, the challenge to that assumption is that one person’s evil can be another person’s heaven, so there are additional complications into defining evil. But everyone can agree that when aggression is taken toward others in a life and death matter, that evil is amiss, and it must be eliminated quickly, not a 911 call later.

I always think about these things, but fortunately I live in an area where our local sheriff gets it, he understands the purpose of the Second Amendment. Yet even for me, I was a lot troubled while watching the film Richard Jewell, the day before this shooting, where in a scene where the FBI came to Jewell’s house they confiscated all his guns that had been laid out on his bed. It troubled me to see that just because the FBI accused Jewell of a crime that those agents could come into his house and just confiscate all his property, and given the reaction of the people in my movie theater, they seemed to be OK with it, accustomed to such a tyranny disguised as “safety” for the public at large. That is a very dangerous notion, and one that troubled me tremendously. It was the direct result of a culture that has been sold to us to think of guns as dangerous, or even as part of some counterculture. In that same film Jewell’s lawyer asked if the bombing suspect was a member of any fringe organizations, like the NRA and Jewell had to ask, “is the NRA a ‘fringe’ organization?”

It is that attitude actually that makes our world all that much more dangerous. Guns have always been a part of my life, since I was a very little kid to the present. And I’ve never really had a reason to use a gun on anybody, even though lots of times I could have been more than justified in doing so. It just wasn’t my go-to option when danger was amiss. But its always good to know that the option was there. I think guns should be carried everywhere, to restaurants, shopping complexes, to and from work, everywhere—because you never know when evil will show itself. This is especially true in public schools where everyone knows that they are typically gun free zones—making them obvious soft targets for bad guys looking to invoke terrorism on the innocent. Guns should be in reach of every human being on planet earth. If they were, a lot less evil would be taking place. That is for sure.

When bad guys show themselves, as this one at the Texas church in White Settlement did, the threat should always be eradicated in seconds, not minutes. It is always sad to see anybody die in these kinds of conflicts, especially if they are innocent, but the need to end that threat quickly cannot be understated. And when evil is unleashed, it needs to be quelled as fast as possible. If not faster. This is why also every shooter in America should practice speed and accuracy with their firearms so that when a threat is presented, ending it happens almost second nature with instinct. Taking a kill shot such as Jack Wilson performed is critical, there is no time for talking and pleading. This is why every state should also have a stand your ground law instead of a duty to retreat. When aggression appears, the shooting defender should not think for a second about some silly legal obligation created to retreat when showing a villain a passive attitude could end up getting a lot more people killed. A shooting defender should put a bullet in the head of evil before a countdown of 1 enters the mind. The threat should be over before anybody even realizes it started. That is why having an armed society is the best way to deal with the realities of evil.

There is no reason to contemplate the nature of a villain when they show they are willing to harm innocent people just minding their business. Laws should be clear on the side of gun owners willing to be that stop against threats at a moment’s notice. We want more Jack Wilson’s carrying guns. Whatever we might say about experiments in modern life where we have taught too many people to be parasitic in nature, that stealing, and bad behavior are forms of valor, such as what was suggested in the recent film “Joker’ we shouldn’t be surprised when hopeless losers in life are attracted to the antics of evil and consider using fear as leverage in the games of life. When we make it so that a clear definition of good and evil is blurred with addictions to pornography, drug abuse, and a social state where government takes the place of good parents, we should expect some to go too far and to fall off the edge and become dangerous. And to that warning, we should know that this one shooter at the Texas church is only the tip of the iceberg. That there are many tens of thousands just like him thinking of doing the same, only the next time it may be a school, a shopping mall, or a place of business. And when they make that mistake, someone needs to be there to stop them with a gun and a quick bullet to the head to end the thought and intention of evil that always follows.

It’s time to stop playing patty cake with anti-gun activists who sympathize with evil then want to disarm us to defend ourselves from their Frankenstein monsters. Those on the left who experiment with these false political philosophies build these monsters which we must defend ourselves from and it’s time to stop giving them a seat at the table as equal partners and to call things as they always have been. Guns are part of the solution especially when they are in the hands of skilled users. A person comfortable with a gun is one of the safest people in the world to be around, not the other way. Guns aren’t the danger; it’s trusting a system that is intent to build social monsters that is. And protesting gun use on their creations isn’t “fringe,” it’s actually the most patriotic thing you can do. And we should be doing a lot more of it in 2020.

Rich Hoffman

The Real Lisa Page: What the world looks like outside the bubble

It was sort of lost to the events of the moment, but I think it was the biggest story of 2019 and should be the last thing we think about before we usher in the new year. Impeachment after all is a very tactical decision for a Democrat party that has no other choice really. They are a loser political group looking for supporters as each day they fall further behind the trends of the times. But for all honesty the noise of the year especially from Democrats was to cover the terrible FBI scandal that sought to put an end to the Trump presidency by manipulating the law to their advantage at the expense of the rest of us. So, it isn’t surprising that on December 17th when Lisa Page went on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC to give her first live interview, the story was washed out before it even hit the airwaves. Impeachment was all anybody was talking about, and the new Star Wars movie was hitting theaters giving people a much-needed distraction from the perils of reality. And of course, there was Christmas and the need to get last minute presents. All the big names in the media were going on vacation, so Rachel put on a fellow Democrat to try to clear her name and repair her own brand by “fighting back” as she calls it. The results were fascinating, and worth a last look before we enter 2020.

What Lisa Page showed of herself by opening up a public exchange on Twitter and by doing this interview was a woman lost in a bubble that collapsed right on her face as she got caught not only messing around on her husband, Joe Burrow, the aspiring opera singer and current educator with a power hungry Georgetown University FBI agent married to a woman who has seen better days in the mirror—but they were both caught attempting to stage a coup against a sitting president and overthrowing an election. Now to be fair, they were not alone, but they were certainly attempting to shape history and abuse their access to power, for which Lisa Page obviously regrets. We’ve heard her lover’s response in public in front of Congress when Peter Strzok showed what an out of touch loser he really was as a registered Democrat that thought the rest of the world was the way he and his circle of friends were, institutionalists who could name all the current popular wines, and books that they are talking about at Martha’s Vineyard on a Sunday afternoon, but not a single reason of understanding why anybody would have even wanted to vote for President Trump.

Even on her best behavior on the Maddow show, Lisa Page showed outside the academic halls of a law school, or in a opera hall where her husband might sing away the day, as she and her friends sip wine in the foyer and contemplate the universe from the perspective of Georgetown society she reflected precisely the sentiments of their director of the FBI at the time, James Comey who thought of the presidency as an extension of some “higher order” for which the FBI was protecting. Some relationship with a pagan god and the heathens of a desired monarchy, for which America had rejected long ago, yet the memos never made it to the academia of Washington which lived joyously in that bubble of social construct for which they were the architects. These FBI agents are defending an American way of life that doesn’t exist, but is rather an extension of Europe and all the dirty cobblestone streets that still haven’t been repaired from the Middle Ages.

Yet Lisa Page is tired of being a caricature of the “right” as she stated it, and she is going to start fighting back because she thinks the rest of the world is with her. Apparently her husband understands the affair with Peter Strzok, perhaps he even sang a song about it as she sipped on a vintage wine of immaculate dating and sent text messages to the Strzoks inviting them over for dinner and a book review of a mutual friend recently found on the New York Times Bestseller list, pinky out. Perhaps James Comey was available too as they could all discuss what a disgusting reprobate the American people were for voting for Trump into the White House. Affairs, what are those? What’s wrong with sharing good times with friends, until that friend falls in love with you as Peter Strzok did with Page. But to their minds it was all just a little fun, it didn’t show any bad judgement regarding their character.

And so it went during the Maddow interview that Lisa Page continued to be bewildered as to why people have made a caricature out of her, and she tried to explain her text message statements with a context that presented her case in a more beleaguered way. Watching her speak to what Lisa Page thought of as a friendly audience was a window into how all these people think when they are alone with their own kind. They are wanna’ be royalty trying to impose a standard of living that America rejected long ago, only they never got the memo. And they missed the memo because they hang around the wrong places and learn from those equally tarnished. Affairs in France are normal, and the people in Georgetown and around the greater Washington D.C. area strive to be more like dirty Europe and its topless beaches and free-thinking lack of physical possession marital commitments. What was missing from Page’s interview was any kind of understanding that the whole purpose of throwing off English rule was to get away from the very kind of people she was and desires to be. And to answer the question, Trump was elected to undo their influence over the rest of us, not to strengthen it.

Unfortunately, I know a lot of people like Lisa Page, James Comey and Peter Strzok. I live in Liberty Township, Ohio where it was founded as a direct spawn of the American Revolution but these days these leftists spawn like Gremlins that have eaten after midnight and had water spilled on them breeding like popcorn. They are everywhere, but that doesn’t make them right. It makes them simply as a form of insanity born in a bubble where natural predators have been staved off to allow them to grow. And to see Lisa Page’s face in that interview, it is the face of a young lady who has used her sex to attempt to shape the world in an image she understands instead of trying to live in the world that is. Instead she sought to use her sexuality to control the mind of the investigating FBI agent on the case of Hillary Clinton to free her candidate to control the course of the nation to her whims. Opera is all about just those types of powerplays and from her point of view, it was all very normal, and exciting. But she got caught and now she is on the front page of everything and it bothers her to know that she is not the mainstream. Her version of fighting back is to try to rebrand herself as a victim of abuse, but people see through her to the truth, she is just another slut using sex to control events in the world. And there is no way to spin that rugged truth, even on the very liberal Rachel Maddow Show.

Rich Hoffman

Why ‘Richard Jewell’ was a Great Movie and ‘Joker’ Wasn’t: With awards season upon us, getting the best that be obtained

As I said in my review of Richard Jewell, the movie—it was an important film that every Trump supporter should see. For that matter, everyone should see the new Clint Eastwood film as it tackles an obscure truth that we live with every day, the nature of power to corrupt those worst to rise to the top of institutionalism. In a society that values perpetual bootlickers and places them in the highest ranks of institutionalism, it should never be questioned why things go wrong yet they do, and that is the precise point of the film. I think its important to mention that it was distributed by Warner Bros. which is the same company that produced Joker, which I thought was the most destructive film I have seen in a long time. In many ways this is the answer to the questions brought up in the Joker and its nice to see our 1st Amendment hard at work. These are the types of choices that we should have as a free society.

I have serious doubts however that Richard Jewell will win any Academy Awards which obviously the studio is hoping to get nominated for. The real-life performances provided in Richard Jewell were certainly worthy of awards, but the politics of the matter is the problem. This film was certainly a direct offering to the 60 million and more Trump voters who have been wanting for a long-time options from the kind of world that went after Richard Jewell cruelly, and unjustly. Even with all we know about our modern FBI and its connections to the Department of Justice, what we have read through the direct text messages of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok which could have easily have been the plot line of Richard Jewell, we are still reluctant to name the beast and call a spade a spade. The point of the movie was a good one, and worthy of best picture of the year for Warner Bros. but the question is one that no institutionalist wants to ask. Rather, they will prefer the Joker’s anarchy to the legitimate questioning of power through constitutional means offered by Richard Jewell.

I generally only have time to talk to really smart people professionally, so it amazes me during the holidays every time, when I get a chance to talk to normal people—people who care more about Ohio State football than the trivial complexities of Freudian legalizations wrapped with the bows of institutionalism which ultimately had a love affair with Karl Marx a long time ago and are still spawning children of thought to this very day. I don’t enjoy talking to those kinds of people with small talk because they don’t care about the big things in life, and for me, those are the only important things. Big things. It was simply stunning to hear so many normal people not understand why Nancy Pelosi is holding back on sending her impeachment votes to the senate, or how people don’t understand the relevance of what Peter Strzok did in the FBI, or the nature of James Comey the former FBI Director who was drunk with power, conspired with anti-Trumper John McCain to attempt a coup right in front of our faces, and expect not to get caught. For many, they just don’t have the mental horsepower to think about such things so they don’t even try and it never ceases to baffle me to their lack of curiosity.

But then someone like Clint Eastwood comes along and nails it with great simplicity pulled into focus in a way only a master storyteller could. Richard Jewell is a far better film not just politically, but ethically than Joker even without the fancy soundtrack and dynamic cinematography. The ultimate question is asked, and the protagonists provide the answer through the direction of the story, which in this case is even more difficult because a lot of the players in the story are still alive and it was true. Can we trust our media, can we trust our government, and the answer is no. Should we move toward anarchy and throw the baby out with the bathwater as they did in the Joker—of course not. That is what made the Joker a cheap shot where Richard Jewell was a true examination to a very modern problem within our functioning republic.

There were several very powerful moments in the film including at the beginning when the attorney friend of Richard Jewell gives him a hundred-dollar bill and says it’s a quid pro quo which everyone should know by now what it means. Jewell says he understands the meaning of the term and its then that Watson Bryant says that he expects in exchange for the Benjamin that Jewell will not become corrupt with power as he fulfills his dream of becoming a police officer. And in several scenes behind Bryant is a sign that says, “I fear my government more than I fear terrorists.” Bryant’s girlfriend and assistant is from Russia and is always there to remind him that likely the government is lying to protect itself as she is the first to believe the story of Richard Jewell’s innocence. And of course, at the end of the film when Jewell finally sticks up for himself, when he leaves the FBI interrogation with Bryant behind him smiling the door to the glass room closes with a the camera fixated on the reverse image of the FBI logo. This was a film that openly questions our government and for that, the Academy should be applauding. Unfortunately, most members of the media culture are precisely like Olivia Wilde’s character of Kathy Scruggs.

It’s movies like this that ultimately educate those who don’t read many books and are not intellectually curious about the world around them. They just want their chicken wings and their Bowl game football to distract them from moment to moment without the impediments of questioning the validity of it all. Trump supporters have been questioning things for a long time and that 60 million number is growing. Hollywood doesn’t necessarily want people questioning things, but I did find it extremely interesting that Leonardo DiCaprio was one of the producers of Richard Jewell. I always watch the credits of a new movie at the theater to the very last one, because there is a lot to learn from doing so, and what I see happening in Hollywood is a change in focus. Even when a terribly irresponsible movie like the Joker is made and the executives at Warner Bros. are betting chips on several potential winners that may be politically opposed—they all make money for the studio which is the name of the game, a trend can be seen emerging. I don’t think Richard Jewell would have been made before the Trump election. Nobody would have understood how to play the parts because our assumption of behavior would not compute the evil it takes to behave the way the FBI and the media did.

There was a scene where Bobi Jewell watched on television the terrible things that Tom Brokaw said about her son and in many ways that was a very powerful scene because that was all of us watching television every day. A few years ago we looked at figures in the media and we liked them until we have witnessed them turning on us over the 2016 election and it has been shocking, even very painful. People who don’t pay much attention to these things do so for the same reason that the Jewell family did, even if they were desperately naive. Bobi Jewell told her son to work hard at defending justice and he believed it whole heartedly, like most of us do and when faced with the terrible evil that those working in the media and the FBI are just as flawed as the worst of us, it is a grim reality that hits home painfully. And that is the essence of this great movie Richard Jewell. It tackles a great pain with a youthful buoyancy found only among very high intellects, but it doesn’t talk down to anybody. Its just a story that has a hard truth attached to it, and for that, it deserves the best awards that it can get. But to ol’ Clint Eastwood, I would think that the best reward he could receive is that people watch the movie and learn something from it. If not at the theater, then when it streams soon from our home televisions. And that is something that every single American should do at least once.

Rich Hoffman

Trump Could Win California: Going for the kill shot when you get it

One thing that we can do on sites like this one, as opposed to establishment television and newspapers is talk about the obscure truths that are out there instead of desired outcomes that are attached to advertising dollars and political affiliations. And to that end they aren’t talking about the truth of this 2020 election year as President Trump wins the White House for the second term. They would have you believe that Trump is unpopular, because he is a threat to the natural order of things, but it was and has always been that order that has caused all our problems and now after a presidential term where they threw everything they had at him, and he’s still going strong, their brand is down big time, while Republicans are up. That means good things going into this election cycle to such an extent that I think Trump could win California if he put forth a little effort there.

The numbers are obvious, between 2008 and 2016 Democrat registration climbed by 1.1 million while the number of Republicans dropped by almost 400,000. In 2016 Hillary Clinton won California with 8,753,789 votes while Donald Trump only received 4,483,810. Yet there are over 25 million voters who are registered and many more out of their population of over 40 million who could be energized to vote. Based on the 2016 election results with everyone accounted for, even the third-party candidates like Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, the total amount of voters who went to the polls to vote was 14,237,884. That means that there were over ten million votes on the table that didn’t even show up, and likely many more who could become voters. The trend from 2016 to 2020 has likely changed as voters have seen what Democrat leadership has brought, wildfires due to forest mismanagement, blackouts due to not reeling in the over zealous courts, and massive amounts of poverty due to attracting homelessness to their featured cities.

This is the reason that Democrats are pushing so hard to make illegal aliens voters because the trends of election wins does not favor them, especially now. If they were able to convert all 22 million illegal aliens in America into registered voters, which is a preposterous concept, then they could win back some of the losses they have incurred over the years by their own bad conduct. The way they have kept themselves from being blown completely off the electoral map is due to their activism in turning Republicans inward toward guilt and not showing up to vote in major elections. Yet, in California, it looks like the opposite will be happening. The tree there is ripe to garner Republican fruit. The Democrats have poisoned their own baskets and the trust level is very low, and could easily be taken by a strong personality like Trump.

When Michael Moore is worried, all Democrats should be also. He sees that the current crop of Democrats is not strong enough to take on Trump. Impeachment attempts have been seen for what they were, a scam by our government to overthrow the election results of 2016, to attempt to take the spin off any potential victories for Republicans in 2020. Not to ease off the gas in Republican camps, but the momentum is certainly in their favor. With the Mueller investigation by the FBI falling flat, the economy roaring in record breaking ways, and a fired-up manufacturing sector with record low unemployment, Democrats have nothing to run on except unexciting below the line victimization. And that doesn’t inspire voters to put on their coat and brave the day to actually cast a ballot.

Republicans however have a lot to vote for, and are energized to protect the wins they have witnessed. And many of them still live in California and would like to be included in the national dialogue instead of having Republicans just surrender the state due to the overwhelming threat of immigration voters who tend to at least vote Democrat the first time they can, because they are still learning how things work in this country and Democrats represent most closely the socialists they most recently fled from wherever in the world they emerged. Its not that immigrants want socialism in America, but in many cases, its all they have previously understood, so until they’ve lived in America for a period of time and learn of the magic of capitalism, they tend to vote Democrat. But their hearts can be won with just a little effort.

California is very much at play yet nobody on the Democrat side of things will dare to speak the thought. Imagine the terrible press when it comes closer to the State of the Union speech that Trump is supposed to give to congress in January of 2020, after all the games that the House of Representatives has just played with impeachment. Nancy Pelosi will have to invite the President to speak, yet her party will not want him there after they have just worked against him in such a public way. Talk about awkward. Its like bad mouthing a family member on Facebook in a passive aggressive way to third parties, then finding out you must have dinner with that person and that you’ll be sitting right next to them. Trump can handle that kind of pressure, but the Democrats won’t be able to. They’ll try to hide under any rock they can find, but there won’t be any, and they’ll be exposed for what they are. Impeachment was the best gift they could have given Trump. Its insulting that they did it, but for energizing the base, I would say that even California could go for Trump after all this, which for Democrats would be truly a final blow.

I often say that you should have courage to go for the kill shot. Well, Democrats certainly have made a profession behaving in such a way and now the shoe is on the other foot. The kill shot for the Democrat Party would be if Trump won California. So why not try for it, put all Democrats for every position in the country, even the regional trustee races permanently on their heels by having to defend the indefensible, California and its many problems caused by Democrat leadership which is embarrassing to them. It would be better to attack than to sit around and be victims of places like Texas that are going more purple as a result of massive investments moving out of California to more conducive states. Even Republicans in California would be considered Democrats in Texas, so there is a real risk of a strong red state turning colors because of it. So why not keep those voters in California by giving them some options and an open door into the Republican Party? What do they have to lose in the process when forest fires, blackouts and extreme poverty are common life for them along with high taxes that are wasted on garbage social programs? California is ripe for the taking so why not in 2020? It would be the ultimate victory for a party that has tried to do everything they can to destroy those of us who call ourselves Republicans. It would be most deserving.

Rich Hoffman

The Purple Headed Loser: Anti-gun activists attack the Kentucky Academy of Sports

In general, I’m a live and let die kind of guy. If you want to be a loser, I leave that decision to you to make unless you’ve injected yourself into my life in some way. People are free to do and think what they want, until they try to impose themselves on me. And that is exactly what Sydney Cooper has done with her purple hair and a body that is taking up way too much real estate is doing by protesting the Kentucky Academy of Sports for a raffle they had for the Holidays distributing guns to participants. The entire event was voluntary and the business of the people active with the raffle yet this anti-gun activist decided that it was within her right to impose her views on the rest of us with an anti-Second Amendment message, and she presented herself in a way that I consider insulting. I don’t like people who alter themselves especially with changing the color of their hair to purple. I think she looks disgusting and she is in all of our faces showing her desire to protest conformity with her appearance, yet thinks she has the right to lecture the rest of us. Not a smart thing to do young lady.

This purple haired kid apparently is the state director for Kentucky March for our Lives, which is one of these student groups moved to activism against our society of guns by the teacher’s unions and their progressive platform. The notion as she stated in her Channel 5 interview is that somehow, she believes that the raffle for guns is “tone deaf” to the sentiments of modern life. What’s tone deaf is that leftists like this girl think we care what she thinks, especially when she presents herself as such a disgusting reprobate. If she was going to do television, you’d think she might have at least worn something nice and respectable instead of presenting herself like a slob. I was embarrassed for her parents that the kid put herself on television looking like she should be marching for a gay pride parade. What’s tone deaf is that these leftist activist fail to understand that the gun culture we do have is essential to our freedoms. And their tone deafness is a choice because they want to attack us, and change it.

I personally didn’t ask to see her cake inflated face on my television lecturing us on gun violence aimed at children when the raffle itself was designed to raise money for children when it is well known that one of the best things you can do for a child is teach them to shoot and to be respectful of guns. It’s a great tool for teaching responsibility to children and a wonderful bonding agent from generation to generation. Perhaps if her parents had taught her to shoot guns and were active NRA members, maybe she wouldn’t have that ridiculous purple hair and be such a lost leftist sucking up to her teachers and their union talking points. As I’ve pointed out countless times these mass shootings are not caused by NRA members who hate losers like this girl, they are often affiliated by marijuana users who have a diabolical psychedelic reaction to the ingredients of pot smoking and the use of other depressants and anti-depressants. Why does anybody think that pot legalization has taken such a back seat this year—because the studies show that likely all the mass shooters over the last few years were active pot heads, and came from broken families.

The people of the Kentucky Academy of Sports are likely not much different than the typical NRA member, or the members of clubs I belong to such as the Cowboy Fast Draw Association where good hearted American values are promoted through teaching the next generation about responsible gun use, and the need to maintain the constitutions of the United States, at the federal and state levels, with guns. Even as I write this, diabolical politicians in Virginia are using their newfound Democrat majorities to contemplate a mandatory confiscation of firearms using the National Guard to do it. It’s all the talk at dinner parties in Democrat holiday gatherings. That’s where activist like this loser purple haired girl want to take our nation and to attack us like that during the sentiments of Christmas is insulting, and preposterous. I’m sure Channel 5 knew it would get such a reaction; it certainly got my attention. But the effort was insulting to say the least.

The most disrespectful aspect of this news report was the realization that we have lots of evidence to show just how bad and corrupt our present government is, and why they are very eager to disarm a public that might very well take up arms against them in a pursuit of much needed justice. Manipulating things the way that the establishment does—such as these teacher’s unions using kids to advocate for their progressive plot points—and the teacher’s unions are connected to politicians—and activist donors such as the George Soros types—they send out people like this purple headed freak to implore us to give up our guns and our essential love of freedom in exchange for what? This is the best spokesperson they could find, a gay rights looking advocate that certainly doesn’t look like the nice girl next door that we might want to protect a future for. She is what we don’t want, a society of tattooed freaks and dyed hair losers complaining about capitalism and advocating socialism. No thanks.

We’ll keep our guns, but Sydney Cooper and all her crazy haired friends from the March for our Lives movement are free to leave the country if they don’t like guns or the people who own them. They don’t have a right to change our America into their nightmare of drag queens, gay sex addicts, and drug users who are the real cause of gun violence in schools. Its not the guns that are the problems, it’s the kind of thinking that our schools are producing that is, those same anonymous figures that prop up the purple haired girl that are putting all these dumb ideas into these innocent little kids away from their parents. We know that our government is dangerous, that’s why we have the guns. And we know that the corruption of our government is so deep that it flows into every one of our public schools through the unions that the teacher’s bow to, and many of them are the voices behind this purple headed anti-gun activist. They are happy to use our young people as soldiers for the cause, and they don’t care who they hurt to achieve their objective.

Those who are “tone deaf” are those behind this girl, who want to do to this Kentucky Academy of Sports group just as they have with the Boy Scouts and many other traditional organizations. They attack and do not expect retaliation. They expect people to put down their guns for a complete government takeover of our way of life, which has been revealed in the attacks against the Trump administration, and they think we are so stupid that we’ll fall for the pleas from this purple headed loser who obviously doesn’t know much about life, and doesn’t respect our opinions enough to even dress up a bit for a big opportunity for television. Like most of the people in her age group she just showed up, said what people told her to, and expected success. When all she really did was piss off all the wrong people.

Rich Hoffman

Nobody Should Care About China’s Box Office: Reaching a market of over a billion people can’t justify surrendering to communism

What I have always loved about Star Wars, aside from the obvious creativity that it takes to make the movies, is that they are in and of themselves positive stories that don’t get hung up on negativity. Yet the theme of our day is negativity, because if people are in a state of discontent they may be open to the offerings of some political class. It was probably always this way to some extent, but its really bad now, where negativity is insisted upon by certain sectors of the world, as a culture. Yet, its not always easy to see, but when something like a new Star Wars film comes out, the pop culture reaction to it is an obvious measure that we can all see and touch. And it was never clearer as to what the intentions for our society is than in reporting on the new Star Wars film, which was probably the most positive film I’ve seen by anybody in a long time, and one that certainly stands for goodness. Clearly the intent of the characters in the movie were to make clear choices about good and bad behavior. So of course the focus on the reviews was that this latest movie, The Rise of Skywalker is that it is the most poorly reviewed film since The Phantom Menace, and that it has bombed in China at that box office, see the Variety article below:

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-flops-debut-china-1203449672/’

This is why I write so much about Star Wars, the movies are very positive and defined about what good and evil should be—as any kid’s fairy tale would. That makes them as a work of art a wonderful measure about social values and the motivations of our cultural forces. Further, I would offer that communism has been the functioning plan for many years, especially those college trained as all media people are to some extent, certainly in the case of writers of these types of articles like Patrick Frater a defense of China and its communism is baked into their view of the world, and by attacking films that are distinctly American points of view, China continues on with the mission they’ve had all along and is constantly assisted by universities and their products to advocate for and against certain types of cultures. The effort becomes grossly obvious when entertainment trades make it so obvious such as trying to slam a movie as successful as The Rise of Skywalker which made over $177 million domestically over its opening weekend and will continue to do well at the box office over the long Christmas week. Especially when the news around the world that in just a few days it made $376 million globally. That is hardly anything to sneeze at, or to ignore, culturally.

The problem is one that I have pointed out often, especially coming out of Hollywood for more than a couple decades now, where Chinese companies have been buying up interests in film studios and even trade magazines. They have been trying to do to American markets what they do internally in China as communists, and that is to control everything at every level. I mean give me a break, Star Wars was beat at the box office in China by Ip Man 4: The Finale, and that is very fishy. Instead of making the story about the Chinese box office being a failure of Star Wars to reach an audience, the story is really about how China as a government controls such box office numbers so that they can protest against western ideas influencing their country, especially when the protests in Hong Kong are fueled by those same western ideas. The box office numbers themselves do not tell the story, but our media which has been heavily influenced by the Chinese even from such a far reach uses the known measurements that China controls to attempt to shape the kind of stories that are told in our culture—which the rest of the world obviously loves as they were.

I admired Disney, which is a big global company that wants to please everyone, because they allowed the filmmakers of Star Wars to get back to what made the films popular with fans and The Rise of Skywalker is a love letter back to them full of very positive storylines that don’t get hung up on negativity. The previous installment The Last Jedi was taking a turn to the dark side in all aspects and critics loved it. But the fans didn’t. As I said at the start of this article, one way to control people is to take away from them hope, disconnect them from options so that they will be forced to embrace a way of life that the controller wishes to impose. When Star Wars looked to be taking a negative “realistic” tone with this modern trilogy, critics loved the film, but when the box office diminishing returns started showing that fans were leaving, Disney had to make some decisions and listen to the fans, and return to the kind of storytelling that Star Wars has always been for people—which is not the trend of the world full of communists in China that still have global plans.

I doubt that Patrick Frater from Variety is an open communist, but I would bet that he’s likely an anti-Trump political personality and that the whispers of his college days speak to him in copious amounts, and that the roots of those whispers were sympathetic to the type of society that China has been trying to export for decades. Star Wars obviously stands against that sentiment. While in the states, Variety has been very supportive of Star Wars so long as they could view the Resistance as being anti-Trump and liberal. However, the reality is that Star Wars has always been a small government love letter and few stories in the history of storytelling has ever shown how a government can be great one day, and on the next turn into a mass manufacturer of dystopia and scandal. The enemies of American ideas I would offer are those who have also been giving bad reviews to The Rise of Skywalker. While Disney has tried to make everyone happy, especially with the ridiculous lesbian kiss at the end of the movie as if to throw a bone to the dogs, ultimately there is no way to shut out the negativity that comes from the press because the goal is to attempt to keep people from being enchanted by the positive messages of Star Wars, since it is control over mankind that is at stake.

This movie is just one more example of why China is ultimately irrelevant. Nobody can make movies culturally that China and America will enjoy together. If a film studio tries to make movies that China will like, American audiences will push it away. And if the story is too “western” then China will shut it down in their markets. This is the nature of this entire battle yet I don’t see any evidence from the trades in dealing with the issue properly. That is because they are part of the problem and when they can, such as in this Variety article, they must take down any challenges to China as a communist culture. To save Star Wars, Disney had to choose, and they went with traditional western storytelling as they should. Nobody cares about China’s stupid contributions. Its worth dropping a $100 million at the box office, which is likely what it cost. But that money will be made up many times over in the other markets before its all said and done, and Disney will be rewarded for their choice, even if the trades like Variety are rooting against it for all the reasons stated.

Rich Hoffman