Tag: Western

My New Hat From Jackson, Wyoming: A hidden treasure deep in the mountains

My New Hat from Jackson, Wyoming

About a year ago, one of my daughters was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for a photography assignment in the Teton National Park.  As she waited for all the elements to come together, she stopped by The Beaver Creek Hats and Leather store in the ski town of Jackson to get a new hat, and she found a real treasure trove of a wonderful hat store.  She knew I was looking for some new hats for my collection, so she promptly told me about it.  We made a deal that if we were ever in Jackson, Wyoming together, I would get my next hat there because the variety and quality were unique due to the town’s economic circumstances.  That made it the perfect place for me to get my hat because Jackson is not only the highest per capita income center of the world, but a need for real cowboy hats founded it. It’s a high-altitude kind of place where the sun can do a number on you without some level of protection, making it a great place to buy a cowboy hat that not only looked good but was also functional.  After all, that’s why she had gone there in the first place.  It was quite a pleasant discovery, so at that moment, we started plotting ways to get both of us there at the same time accommodating our busy schedules.  About nine months later, we were in Jackson, Wyoming, with most of our entire immediate family and the first thing we did was buy my new white Stetson that I had been looking for that I needed to purchase for a while now.  My other hats are pretty beat up, and I needed one for some of the formal things I get myself into. 

It’s not that I couldn’t have gotten a hat in Cincinnati or the many other far-flung places I had been this year.  There were opportunities to get hats in other areas, such as Texas and New Mexico.  I saw nice hat stores in Oklahoma and Kansas, but I held out for that Jackson trip with my daughter for one because I had promised her I would.  But for the other, Jackson could afford to serve customers who had more money and therefore could afford to cater to more of the diverse needs of a hat buying public.  That gave me many more options for a very nice Stetson than I would have in other places.  As much as I think they should be, cowboy hats aren’t that popular in other parts of the country, and where they are popular, money isn’t all that easy to come by.  However, I have a particular taste in hats that is difficult to accommodate.  I like wide brims, especially now that I’m older, but I’m not particularly eager to curl them up in ridiculous ways.  I want the benefit of the brim to shield my face and head from the sun and the rain all seasons of the year, and as I did look around in some of those actual cowboy regions for a good hat, most of the styles just didn’t fit my needs for something uniquely me.  Because of that wealth in Jackson, all the correct elements combined, which is why my daughter made a big deal about it in the first place.  Her entire life, I have worn hats.  And well before she ever came along, deep into my childhood, I have always worn hats, specifically cowboy hats or outback hats from Australia. 

I had a lot of thoughts about the Tetons in general and Jackson the town specifically.  The town was wealthy because of Hollywood transplants.  Jackson Hole was the hideout of Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch of western legend.  After the movie with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, many actors made Jackson their home, including Harrison Ford, who has a house right around the corner from the McDonald’s there. That’s how the per capita income became so high because there is a low population density. The people who moved there from Hollywood and other high-paying industries set the benchmark which skewed the numbers from its origins as a cowboy town.  After John D. Rockefeller bought up secretly many of the old ranches of Jackson Hole and turned the Grand Tetons into a National Park, the government stepped in discreetly.   The government of Jackson has a mix of a rugged cowboy town foundation and exterior with the financial wealth of a tiny population that brought with all the California transplants their love of Agenda 21 United Nations policies in zoning which irritated me quite a lot.  But the tourists likely weren’t thinking about those things the way I was.  The Tetons is a paradise on earth where the government has obtained an illusion that they have discovered Utopia.  It is a place isolated from reality as the outside world well beyond the mountains that surrounded it was burning politically and literally.  It reminded me of other places I enjoy a lot, such as Glendale, California, and the Liberty Center area in my hometown.  But to say the least, I liked the way Jackson was, yet I was all too aware of the undercurrent of liberalism that was sapping itself off the fine history of the area. 

But all those elements made for a great cowboy hat buying trip, and I am proud to have found the perfect hat for me.  I am even prouder that I could get that hat with my daughter from that original trip several months prior.  My entire family ended up at that hat store, and it was fun to start a new thing for all of us.  I may make that hat store a regular thing for me.  It used to be for me that I wore the same hat no matter what the occasion and that was fun for me.  A perfect felt hat, after all, can serve such a purpose.  It might be battered a bit from crawling through caves and jumping through broken windows as most of my life has been everyday use for my hats.  But I’m a bit older now, and hats for an occasion are more of a thing than they used to be. I’m not so scrappy and earthy these days, which is a natural evolution.  Sometimes in life, you get where you are going, and you have to figure out what to do when you get there.  Because the mission was to get there, but what comes after is not always so well defined.  If it’s about the adventure, not the destination, then that problem will arise.  But getting there in life has its challenges, and for me, getting a nice hat in Jackson, Wyoming, couldn’t have made me happier.

A distant place on the map that is certainly hard to get to is now much closer.  Jackson by car is not easy.  To make it easy, you pretty much have to fly into it.  To the north is Yellowstone and its vast expanses.  To the south is a long drive up from the deserts of Utah.  To the east are deserts and more mountains and enormous open places.  And to the west was Idaho and a big mountain that must be crossed with 10% grades that take you up and over the range.  So it means something to get to Jackson and buy a hat from there, which enhances my life in positive ways every day in some manner my daughter and I will share for years to come.

Rich Hoffman

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Why Progressives Hate Westerns: Red Dead Redemption against Americans United for Change

I had four choices demanding my time Thursday night; one was a School Choice event at Van Gordon Elementary. That’s an event I wanted to attend more for moral support than anything. I am a believer in it, so there isn’t much I could learn from the meeting. The second was an invite to go see the premier of the new film Priest down at the Rave Movie Theater. I enjoy those kinds of things, but my primary occupation had my mind on overdrive, with many problems to solve over the next 24 hours, so a movie on a Thursday night wasn’t the most responsible thing to do when Excel spreadsheets should be filling my vision. The third thing is homework, for that same occupation. Sometimes you need more than 24 hours in a day, and this is one of them. But a person has to know how to manage their time, so I picked my fourth option, I played Red Dead Redemption.

Why????

Well, I love the game, I love the songs in the game, and I love what it’s about. For those of you that don’t know what Red Dead Redemption is, let me bring you up to speed. It’s a video game for Xbox that is set in the Wild West as the Progressive era is taking over the individuality that settled the country. The game is wonderfully done, and the action is set up wonderfully. Here is the way the game begins. Pay special attention to the characters on the train. They are wonderfully depicted to illustrate progressive era politics. The lone rider of course represents the main character, a loner, one of the last of his kind that is observing all these changes around him as an introduction to the clash of progressivism and American individualism.

Video games like this one have taken over what films used to do, and that is illustrating complicated themes into entertainment. Red Dead Redemption, while intended to be an action packed shooter, is wonderfully insightful, philosophical, and places the player into the context of history. The game is about, a world that is losing its innocence, and freedom.

What brought up my desire to revisit this beloved video game is a website I ran across in my research today. I discovered Americans United For Change, a very progressive group.

http://www.americansunitedforchange.org/

 

And they produce videos like this.


Americans United For Change is everything that’s wrong with our current country. When I read their mission statement, it reminded me of a letter I received last September from a union leader that accused me of wanting to take the country back to the days of the Wild West after I produced this video that was featured on www.TheBlaze.com.

This person reflected many of these progressive types that have worked very hard to pull America into a direction of their design, which I completely disagree with. Listen to the mission statement of AUFC in their words.

AUFC has challenged the far-right conservative voices and ideas that for too long have been mistaken for mainstream American values. In the process, we helped create a groundswell for a return to the traditional progressive values that have defined America—economic fairness, opportunity, national and economic security and democratic leadership.

Today we are building on that success through national campaigns that utilize grassroots organizing, polling and message development, earned and paid media, online organizing, grass-tops outreach and paid and volunteer phones to pass the transformational legislation coming out of the Obama White House.

After reading that, I usually have to take a minute to listen to music like this, which is the standard music on my IPod. The following songs are from Red Dead Redemption, which is heavily inspired by the Spaghetti Westerns of the late 1960’s.
Some sample music.


Progressives love to make things more complex then they need to be, that’s how they pull the con game on people. They are like Las Vegas card dealers that hope the pretty lights, easy alcohol and scantily dressed women will alter your judgment. The reason I like westerns is that they seek to get to the bottom of a situation, not to complicate things needlessly.
If I had a nickel for every time a progressive wrote me or left me a comment that “westerns are a simplistic view of existence,” I’d have vast amounts of wealth. My response to these people is, if something is too complex to understand, it’s because the con is hidden in the confusion. Everything in human existence can be explored into its simplest form. If it is not, then the philosopher, the scientist, the mathematician, the teacher, has not done their job correctly. That’s why the westerns done by Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood and redone by the makers of Red Dead Redemption have a lasting impact in American culture. Those old westerns even to this day are loved by millions, and for good reason. They offer a truth that is hard to get, and progressives are scared to death of the truth. Progressives take great measures to avoid the truth even from themselves. They thrive in chaotic environments. They enjoy drunken splendors where avoiding the responsibility of thinking are honorable activities among their kind. In the western, a drunk is the fool that ends up dead. In the progressive mind, the drunk is the “party animal” that is honored with trophies. Such an example would be the film, The Hangover where four fools have a massive bachelor party in Vegas and end up passed out forgetting what happened. That’s the plot of the movie! That is also the result of progressive ideology. The myth of a culture, the kind of stories it tells, reflects the culture itself. In a progressive culture, such films, like The Black Swan, and The Hangover reflect the values of the culture. It’s quite understandable why people in a progressive culture wouldn’t understand the values displayed in a western. Because the concepts of individuality, and rugged conquest where life and death are only moments apart are far away from the progressive mind, which seeks with every breath in its body, safety. The progressive will trade freedom for safety whenever the two are offered together.

The reason why England has lasted as long as it has is because it has at least held on to its identity. They have their monarchy, and even though I think having a king is an archaic idea, it’s at least something they believe in as a cultural identity. The Japanese are in the same situation, they celebrate their samurai culture. The myths and traditions of the samurai are very sacred to the Japanese. In America, it’s the cowboy. The reality of frontier living isn’t what’s important. But what the cowboy represents to American culture is. Progressives have managed to discredit the myth of the cowboy with the plight of the Native American, just as they have done using the black man against the founding fathers, framing in American minds that the United States began after the Civil War, and not in 1776. Progressives seek to destroy the myths of our culture so they can replace them with new ones created by them.

Mythology is the most important aspect of a culture. Without a societies myths, the culture will fail.

The myths that the progressive propels as honorable is despicable, vile behavior of interdependence. This is why Hollywood is losing money and must resort to all the comic book adoptions to generate fresh revenue. This year it’s Thor, last year it was Iron Man 2. In years past it was Spiderman. Hollywood has tried twice to deal with The Incredible Hulk. The first was a good film by Ang Lee that I enjoyed, but it suffered miserably at the box-office. So Hollywood tired again and did a bit better the second time. But Sylvester Stallone was on to something when he said our action heroes got watered down when Tim Burton’s Batman came out in 1989. Batman fits the progressive model, a hero with some screws loose. So Tim Burton set the pace for future action heroes that didn’t have to have real muscle or strength, but could put on an outfit and become strong through technology. During this mythic journey over the years characters like Superman have become less about the American way, and more of a progressive. Recently Superman renounced his citizenship. I understand that the upcoming Captain America is following a similar path. We’ll see how that turns out.

But where are the fresh, ideas coming out of progressive Hollywood? Is anybody but Pixar, who ironically has the most iconic character in Woody, played by Tom Hanks, who is a cowboy, doing anything memorable? Where are the Davy Crockets, made popular by Walt Disney, or the Daniel Boone’s made popular in novels by Alan Eckert. Who is the modern John Wayne…………….Johnny Depp, who’s most iconic role to date is a drunken fool of a pirate? What about the next Clint Eastwood? Who can do those kinds of myths anymore? Robert Duval? He does a good job with westerns, but he’s also an old timer. Who are the people of the next generation? Gerald Butler?

For that matter, why are all the strongest leading men now in Hollywood these days Australian? Is it because the United States isn’t making men anymore? Why does Hollywood have to look to other countries for “men?” Where are the modern Harrison Fords? Burt Reynolds? Steve MacQueens? Lee Majors?

That’s the heart of the problem, America isn’t making them. Progressives have infected our culture to such an extent that we’ve finally hit a generation of lost children that have forgotten how to be men leaving women hungry in the sheets of their beds for the secret thoughts of a real man to rescue them. Hollywood used to satisfy that market need by putting men up on the silver screen so women would by a ticket. But not any more. Women are going to the movies to watch girly men, as Arnold Swarchenegger calls them. That’s why Arnold dumped his wife recently, to fill that market role as a reemerging action film star as a 60 something year old man. That’s also why Harrison Ford played a 70 year old Indiana Jones for the fourth time, because nobody else can. Spielberg and Lucas tried to put Shia Labeouf in position, practically placing the hero role in his lap with Transformers and Indy 4, but the kid just doesn’t have it in his eyes. He’s a good all American kid, but the problem is; it’s the wrong kind of American kid. He’s a kid from progressive America, and American’s don’t truly like those types of people in their movies.

Young Guns led by all the hot young actors of the day led like Emilio Estevez and music by Bon Jovi tried to resurrect the western with a bit of a progressive spin, but it didn’t hold up in a progressive mythology. People have rejected it after a few years, because westerns must fight the progressive in order for the plot to work. Not the other way around.

People don’t want to honor the weak with the price of their movie ticket. Unless they can justify their own bad behavior with a film like Something About Mary, or The Hangover. As far as the kind of film a family can sit down and watch together, and have the values of the culture ooze into the inquiring minds of the viewers, those kinds of things just aren’t being made anymore.

Except in some video games, where the tradition lives on.

That’s why I played Red Dead Redemption and let everything else fall by the way-side for an evening. It’s nice to roam around in an environment where things make sense, where the progressives are the villains instead of the heroes, and doing good is actually rewarded, and evil is castigated. Red Dead Redemption is just such a place, and I am thankful for it.

Rich Hoffman

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