Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 281

The ‘Star Wars’ Backlash: Disney’s choice to make progressive films has hurt their product sustainability for the future

Disney could have avoided the whole issue.  They will make their money regardless, but all the controversy surrounding their new Star Wars film The Last Jedi was completely unnecessary.  The movie will do good business in spite of a sharp drop off in the weeks after its release—but like The Force Awakens that came before it; it could have done much better.   Many will argue that these movies didn’t need to do anything—they are making more money than any other film in the history of planet earth.  But there are problems with sustainability here that are clear—especially in The Last Jedi.  These filmmakers decided to make a noticeably progressive film complete with an emphasis on girl power, the fair treatment of animals, interracial romance, and even trying to throw a bone toward the gay community by hiring Laura Dern—the girl who helped Ellen come out of the closet.  The white guys are the bad guys and everyone else is trying to climb out from under their wrath—which is the essential part of the story—so of course the critics loved it.  But the audience score is noticeably hovering at only 50% which was a stunner for many analysts in the week leading up to Christmas.  It really shouldn’t be—my thoughts about the film nearly reflect the review by Ben Shapiro below—which is sometimes very funny—because it’s true.

The original movies were conservative movies whether or not George Lucas intended them that way or not.  They were warnings of big government imposing its will on people. They were also warnings about how a group of leftists such as the Nazis could emerge in a society with “thunderous applause.”  So conservatives like myself and young Ben Shapiro tend to be drawn to Star Wars and the core message.  And yes, the Nazis were socialist radicals of a left leaning philosophy which they borrowed from the Democrats in America. That is all historically accurate, yet the modern progressive left is trying to suppress that history and attribute them all to the political right.  That mess of thought is what ends up in a movie like The Last Jedi—where all the major plot points only work because of nostalgia but all the actions of the characters seem goofy and foreign—which is forgivable in a kids film.  But these are not the kinds of stories that will be beloved for decades like the originals were.  The modern political left doesn’t know what it is or what it believes because everything they love is built on lies.  That trait is quite clear in most Hollywood productions now because the entire industry is functioning from the same neurosis.

As I said with The Force Awakens, Disney could have avoided all this by just sticking to the stories of George Lucas and the canon established by the Extended Universe.  It was all there for them—hard core fans would have embraced a new trilogy set 40 years after Return of the Jedi with Jaina Solo leading the way as the new protagonist—but Disney and Lucasfilm wanted to tell a more progressive story.  In the EU Luke had built a wonderful Jedi school that was defending the galaxy against threats even from outside the galaxy.  Han Solo was the every reliable dad who always knew best—and was a respectable grandfather.  And Princess Leia was learning to be a Jedi master.  Hard core fans would have been satisfied, and casual fans would have still enjoyed the stories for the reasons they like these new ones.  Instead Lucasfilm led by Kathy Kennedy and Bob Iger decided that gender was more important, that showing common people from anywhere could do anything was more important and that progressive concerns were the driving force of these new movies where traditionalists were the villains.  In the Kathy Kennedy movies Han Solo was a deadbeat dad who failed his son and ran away from his wife. Luke is a loser who tried to kill his student and when he failed he retreated to an island to hide from the responsibilities of the galaxy making everything that happened in the original trilogy pointless—in every regard.  So of course only half the audience coming out of the theaters like the new movie.  Critics only like the progressive elements, but the people who have been fans and kept the film franchise at the top for so long were certainly ignored—and they aren’t happy about it.

I gave up on loving these movies.  I enjoy them because my grandkids like them, and they aren’t so bad that they don’t do what good mythology is supposed to do, and that is inform young people about right and wrong.  For me just getting a new John Williams soundtrack is enough.  The music from The Last Jedi is absolutely stunning.  But I can’t help but think that The Last Jedi was the last real Star Wars movie because the modern filmmakers just don’t have it in the tank to know what made Star Wars great to begin with.  They are too liberal and really don’t understand history the way that George Lucas did and it shows in the writing.  The entire plot of Rose and Finn in The Last Jedi was a liberal diatribe on the evils of capitalism and the correct treatment of animals.  The climax of the whole exchange was to show that a chubby Asian girl could kiss a black guy after saving him from a pointless suicide mission.  All that might be fine for some show on Netflix but in Star Wars—don’t expect everyone to love the movie when that kind of obvious political garbage is being shoved down the audiences’ throat.  Sure it did what Disney wanted, and pulled great reviews out of the critics—but that only front loaded the anticipation.  When audiences got into the theater and saw all that crap, they were obviously let down—and that isn’t good for the future of Star Wars.

I won’t lose any sleep over any of it.  I’m an EU guy.  I’m trying to give these new movies a chance mainly because they are the movies of my grandchildren’s generation and I want to share these stories with them.  But they are really screwing it up for the future at Lucasfilm—and it was all so unnecessary.  I still think that Rey in the movie is the daughter of Han and Leia Solo—and at this point it’s the only thing that can really save the franchise.  I think that will be the big reveal in Episode 9.  If not that, Han and Leia Solo were the worst parents in the galaxy and all the events of the original trilogy were meaningless.  Disney could have had all the good stuff right out of the gate and gone much further if they had just stayed away from doing their own thing and ignoring the EU.  They chose to make some upfront money while sacrificing the whole thing down the road—they destroyed the sustainability of it.  And that is why there is a very real Star Wars backlash showing up in the audience scoring.  Those scores mean many millions of lost dollars and that is trouble down the road for everyone connected to these movies. They should have listened up front and not been so audacious to think they could change things and still get away with a beloved series.

Rich Hoffman

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Trump Makes Idiots out of the United Nations: Gold always rules, not bureaucrats

Boy we’ve come a long way in such a short time. You know dear reader what I’ve said for many years—that the purpose of public education is for people to assimilate into their peer groups and for the pressure of those groups to enforce behavior patterns for which centralized societies can more easily control. Public education was never intended to teach children how to read, and conduct math. There are other ways to achieve those same objectives. But schools use those necessities as a cover story for their real intention—to teach people to follow the direction of their peer groups. That is the entire purpose, and is the primary cause of most modern forms of neurosis. But it was only five years ago where smart meters and other Agenda 21 United Nations initiatives were causing so much consternation among sovereign Americans. Now under Trump the United Nations has received a death-blow of its own by a President Trump who shrugged them off as worthless one day after revolutionary tax cuts cleared a House vote. The U.N. foolishly tried to apply peer pressure on the Trump administration with a 128-9 vote against the American measure to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/sns-bc-un–united-nations-us-jerusalem-20171221-story.html

The United Nations budget is around $7.8 billion dollars and the United States contributes around 28% of that—or $2.8 billion. I learned a long time ago from a business deal I had with the head of Servatii Bakery in Cincinnati that “he who has the gold rules.” It was a hard lesson for me, I was only 25 years old and my proposal which involved the head of the popular Cincinnati bakery involved many millions of potential dollars and a lot of private upfront investment. Essentially, I was working with no cash but a lot of effort I had done in partnership with a small team of people the leg work in showing this business leader how to get a change of use plan approved through the Cincinnati Building Commission. Once he had that information he changed the deal on me—which cost me a lot. When he flew back in from Las Vegas to a have sit down meeting with me for what I thought would be good news—he dropped the bomb that for him it made more sense to take what he learned from me and apply that knowledge to a partner who had deep pockets on another deal which had much less personal risk for him. Of course, I felt betrayed and that’s when he told me that line—which I’ve never forgotten. The same applies to the United Nations—they don’t have any gold, they have a lot of utopian ideas, but no cash to work with—so they are at the mercy of those who do have the gold—and that is the facts of life. Like it or not, that’s the way the ball bounces in life.

If you want to lead and make decisions for yourself and others who may want to follow you, you have to get your hands on some gold. You have to be willing to do the work, to have the proper philosophy in your life to allow you to have gold, you have to compete with the world to get it. In the case of the United Nations, they are running most of their countries on socialist economies, so they have very little gold. America is a fabulous capitalist economy—so it has a lot of wealth to work with. Yet it makes no sense at all to fund 28% of the United nations budget—for what? What do we get out of it? Agenda 21 threats—smart meters, washing machines that spy on how much water we use? The United Nations can mind their own business—and I don’t want to give those idiots any of my money—I can tell you that. However, for years no politician listened to us—instead they caved into the pressure of the United Nations as if it were an equal partnership. It was never equal. If it wasn’t for the United States there wouldn’t even be a United Nations. So why would any of our past presidents bow to anyone within the United Nations?

It took me nearly a decade to recover from that deal with the head of Servatii, but I eventually did. For many years I hated that guy and if I had caught him in the street after that initial shock wore off, there would have been trouble. But he was at the top of the pyramid and had cash to burn. He came to America as a German immigrant and worked his way to the top. I had a few opportunities to go to lunch with him and a few other multimillionaires and learned how those people thought—which ultimately was much more valuable to me than if the business deal had actually concluded. They certainly weren’t what the political left thinks of them—people like the Scrooge, or the Grinch—interpretations of wealth by socialist minded artists. They were smart guys who liked to compete and make money, and they were good people. That’s why it was so shocking to me to feel that sting of betrayal. At one dinner I was at with these guys I saw that the check came back at $13,000 which was all the money in the world to me at the time. When they saw my reaction, the laughed and told me that was a normal lunch cost—they did that everyday. And they were serious. I never forgot that either. So many people depended on those guys to spend their money on things–they had gold, they were the ones who ruled what happened and what didn’t. After my deal went sour it took me ten years and many jobs, sometimes three at a time to make ends meet and recover. For a long time, my wife and I only had one car which I left for her in case the kids needed to get somewhere. I rode a bicycle everywhere—all over the city of Cincinnati to whatever job I was doing, and I did that for many years. For a solid four-year period, I held two full-time jobs—both of them demanding overtime minimums at times of at least 10 hours each—a lot of times demanding Saturdays as well. All that time I read books on my break times and always strived to get back on my feet. I worked harder than anybody I ever met, and eventually I pulled back out on top and those expensive meals are something I experience again. This is what the United Nations is about to go through, they have now been cut off from the gold and they don’t have a means on their own of obtaining it. Will they work hard to solve their problem like I did on the microcosm? Probably not—and the result is that they will be destroyed.

The United Nations assumption that they had some ruling power over the United States was simply preposterous. They learned a hard lesson with Trump that gold truly does rule the world, not bureaucrats—the aristocratic societies of the past are officially dead—and it was Trump that killed them all with just a simple strategy of letting them defund themselves. You see, Trump always meant to defund the United Nations—that is after all why people like me voted for him as president. If he did it on his own he would have been a villain, just like that Servatii bakery guy needed me to figure out how to solve his permit problem so that his real objective could be fulfilled. Trump knew the United Nations would scrutinize his decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem. So when they made idiots of themselves by voting against the measure at the U.N. they gave Trump a free pass to withdraw the huge amounts of money that the United States pours into it. And who will win in the end—who do you think? He who has the gold always rules—and it is they who define fairness in the morality of value exchange. And that’s life.

http://www.politifact.com/global-news/statements/2017/feb/01/rob-portman/us-contribution-un-22-percent/

Rich Hoffman

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Finally, I’m Proud of my Government: And Trump University was never a fraud

For the first time in my life when I look at the White House, I’m proud. That actually goes back to the days of Ronald Reagan—everything in Washington D.C. seemed dirty and corrupt to me, but now—now everything is different. The Trump White House has given me faith in an American government not as some ominous thing to be feared, but a partner in the great American experiment yearning for a better tomorrow. After passing the tax cuts through the House and Senate by midweek 2017 in a December looking toward Christmas, I witnessed something I thought would never be possible. I hoped it would honestly, but I had doubts it could—and that is to see business objectives applied to politics for the sake of changing the way the whole game will be played forever more. Donald Trump has brought an honesty to the White House and therefore all of Washington D.C. culture that has altered the course of the human race I think forever. This little evolutionary step we’ve seen in the year of 2017 will always be viewed as a special time that the world will reflect on and be thankful for.

I have to think back to the very dishonorable thing Mit Romney did when he came out against Trump in the primaries as the establishment GOP threw everything including the kitchen sink at Trump to stop his nomination process. Probably the hardest hitting criticism Romney leveled at Trump was about Trump University being a fraud. As I’ve said before, I’ve read all of Trump’s books over the years—as everyone should. If you really want to know who Donald Trump is, read the books he’s written—he is a very open person. Well before he was president of the United States he had a deep concern to help motivate people to greatness. Basically, he’s a high energy guy who loves to work, so he gets involved in lots of things in his life, and he loves to talk about them. He sets high standards for himself and always seeks to meet those standards. For instance, when he plays golf with other professional golfers, he doesn’t see himself as inferior to them. Instead he plays with them to get better himself, but he doesn’t consider himself an inferior talent, the way most people would. Whatever Trump has ever done he justifies that if he puts the time and effort into being good at it, that he can be as good if not better than everyone else.

Trump’s pursuit of greatness has given him a good life, and he’s been very open to sharing that good life always. Like a lot of us he looked around once his Celebrity Apprentice show took off at NBC and figured that lots of people wanted to learn from him—so he started Trump University. There are a lot of schools out there that are actual frauds, such as Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton and many others—because what they sell is not what you are getting. In the established schools their intent isn’t to teach you about the world and how to live in it—they are there to program children into becoming liberals and adjusting student’s lives to socialism. They sell their services as helping people get good jobs, but what they are really after is programing children into liberalism. There are other schools like Liberty University that try to teach conservative studies, but they are typically looked at by the political left as institutions of fraudulent activity—because they aren’t part of the orthodox. That’s when Trump entered the fray with a university of his own located in one of his developments along the Hudson—and his intention was basically to share his experience with hungry minds wherever they came from.

As Mit Romney did his public comments against Trump criticizing Trump University specifically I was holding in my hand my copy of a book called Trump 101: The Way to Success—which was published by Trump University. How could Mit Romney say that Trump University was a fraud as I was holding one of the books produced by that endeavor that was clearly written to improve the lives of people in business—and in life? The answer was that he couldn’t. Trump University may not have taken off the way Trump wanted—but he certainly tried. Once Obama was elected in office and it was obvious to the rest of us that we had a real criminal enterprise moving into Washington D.C. Trump moved his efforts more to the Tea Party movement—like many of us right thinking people did—in 2009. After Obama personally called out Trump at the correspondent’s dinner in 2012 Trump had decided that he’d try for a presidential run and give the Tea Party movement the thrust it had been lacking. I think for him based on the books he had written, it was the ultimate challenge to some of his lifelong philosophies—and if he pulled it off, he would have a chance to actually save the nation.

I knew Trump was never a fraud and I was a supporter of his essentially from the time he announced he was running. I based my support on his books because I knew that if a guy who thought the way he did were ever to become president, then he’d be the greatest that we had ever had—that includes Lincoln, and George Washington himself. Trump has never been a bad guy who functioned from his flaws—he’s always sought to be better each day that he woke up. He was a little crazy with women for a while as he lived a genuine playboy life—which in his day was the way success was defined. But he obviously outgrew that over time and has arrived into his modern age better prepared than anybody to do the hard job of being President of the United States.

His first-year successes are straight off the pages of his books and I’m happy to say he hasn’t disappointed me in any way this entire time. Most people don’t think of him as an author, but he’s quite expressive and very inspiring—naturally, and I think his written works are some of his best attributes. I really look forward to reading the books about his presidency in the future—because there are some really wonderful things happening every day in his administration. For people who clearly wanted America to fail—of course they hate him. They hate all of us and have decided that they don’t want to live in a country with our values—they made that decision, not us. But until Trump came along to flip the tables, they had control of the narrative within the media. They don’t have it any longer, and it only took a year. Because of Trump and his successes, they are forced to reveal themselves—really for the first time, and people can see the maliciousness of their actions in the light of day. Trump has brought honor to the White House that will have a lasting effect—and I’m very proud of what his administration has been able to do in such a short time. Based on his books, I know this is all just the tip of the iceberg, there will be many more great things to come and soon people will forget about all the ugly stuff. And that will be the greatest thing of all—something that we will all carry deep into the future for all time.

Rich Hoffman

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The GOP Passes Tax Cuts: How this causes the Democratic Party to end

I’m not going to say who I said it to, but I can say that it was quite a few very influential people. I’m not a big tea and cookie socialite who works the circles of power to advance thoughts on a matter, but I do deal with people who do—and they do good work of advancing conservative philosophy. So I’ll say here what I’ve been saying to them—get this tax bill done and we have a real possibility of 6% growth by this upcoming summer of 2018. Go ahead and mark it on your calendars and we’ll talk about it when the time comes. Unfortunately, most people—especially politicians with backgrounds in the legal profession do not understand economics. Unless a person does enormous amounts of personal research and self-education our school systems both public and private do not teach proper understanding of basic economic concepts. The political establishment has adopted socialism for well over 100 years with only periods of market fluctuation due to tax reductions—and that has hindered the American economy enormously. With that in mind these tax cuts passed under the Trump administration have enormous implications for our future in a positive way—so what happened today is not just a victory for Republicans—it’s a cultural revolution at the most fundamental level of conservative philosophy.

What all the doomsayers don’t want the American public to know is that yes, trickle down economics works—it really is the only method. The fantasy of a wealth redistribution utopia that liberals have fantasized about since Sir Thomas Moore’s publication of Utopia is purely science fiction with no basis in reality. It is a made-up sentiment that is built on hope, not facts and liberals have distorted that hope into some very ugly moments in world history—the rise of the Nazi, the rise of Mussolini, the rise of the Castros in Cuba, the communization of China, Vietnam and North Korea. The destruction of Central America and South America—particularly Venezuela and the cannibalization of all Europe. Africa is a continent of warring tribes fueled by communist sentiments as is Iran in the Middle East. It was Marxists who took over Iran back in the 70s which make that country such a danger today. What they all have in common is a destructive sentiment toward liberalism—because people were all trained at the same liberal colleges and were raised by the same basic liberal elementary education. And for nearly 32 years, since Ronald Reagan left office essentially, America has tried to be a team player to go along with all these leftist ideas regarding economics and technological development—which has nearly destroyed us. That changes today.

The passage of the GOP Tax Cut and Reform Bill is a bold step away from the global trend toward tax and spend communism, which was always the intention of the wealth redistribution strategies which has hand cuffed our economy for years. Once the dust clears and people don’t die, and bank accounts fill up, while America starts filling some of those empty store fronts in strip malls again with viable businesses the truth will be there for all to see. The pent-up wealth that has been hiding in the world has now been given a safe harbor to dock in, and America will explode with renewed enthusiasm. Isn’t it nice to have a business guy as president, who understands money? I love it for a change. Ohio would be smart to hire Jim Renaicci as the next governor to bring that same kind of understanding to a state that needs it. This GOP would not have passed the bill if Trump had not framed the argument and set a time table—like all good managers do. Everyone knows that presidents are not supposed to create legislation, congress does, but from the Executive Branch and as the head of the Republican Party they do set the table—and Trump did. Without this, nothing would have happened.

It pained me to watch Savannah Guthrie on NBC interview Paul Ryan about economic matters because all her assumptions were incorrect. She cited Michael Bloomberg as an authority on business without mentioning that he is a major tax and spend liberal. He lists himself as independent because he’s actually a socialist like Bernie Sanders—a major contributor to the progressive caucus. It doesn’t matter that he’s a billionaire—look at George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg—Warren Buffett, there are a lot of wealthy people who either don’t want more competition among their peers or they fell into their wealth by good luck—because they really aren’t very smart. That doesn’t make them business tycoons just because they are rich—yet people like Guthrie use them as ways to bridge their socialist theories to reality. What they all have in common on the political left is an inherent mistrust of human beings to do the right things—so they assume that the heavy hand of government should always be ready to enforce the laws of our nation and the basic assumption of fairness for which most of us all agree on. Liberals go wrong because they assume that people can’t be trusted—they as a political party have trust problems and that is a sickness of their own making. What Bloomberg really reveals in his tax answer is just what Soros would—they know that inside themselves to their very core they tend to lean toward evil intentions, so they assume that is the way everyone is. But that is not the case of reality. Hating corporations is not a viable strategy for economic growth. I am a job provider, and it is my experience that every car in the parking lot of my endeavor depends on me to fuel their economic lives. Their car payments, their mortgage, their entertainment—the children they raise—everything they do depends on good decisions made by their employer—in this case me. They need to be able to trust me and I need to be able to trust them. Since I am a person who does not have trust issues, I find the exchange is a very healthy one most of the time. And as I look around my community at all the businesses large and small that have to have that same relationship with their employees for the same reasons it is there that you can see “our economy.” Its not some magical thing that government controls, it exists on a microcosm of individual relationships successfully exchanged. Government is like introducing a third wife to a marriage—it doesn’t work—it introduces mistrust and more emotional liabilities rooted in the sum of their intellectual neurosis—the tendency to mistrust people. That mistrust contaminates everything involved in an employer/employee relationship. Guthrie and the people like her obviously don’t understand that basic premise—and why would they think otherwise since they’ve been taught socialist ideas from their infancy by the world at large.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/savannah-guthrie-to-paul-ryan-%E2are-you-living-in-a-fantasy-world%E2/ar-BBH3D4q?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

The boldness of the GOP plan goes against that insecurity that has been implicit during the entire progressive era—since Teddy Roosevelt switched from the Republican party to become the first presidential progressive candidate. Two decades later his nephew FDR, would become the second fascist to sit in the White House. The first was Woodrow Wilson. These people had emotional problems yet from the political left they shaped our education institutions with a false premise of basic mistrust in the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith’s ground-breaking examinations on capitalism. What we can always trust in humanity is that people generally act on behalf of their own self-interest. So when dealing with them, so long as self-interest is part of a calculation, you can trust the result—which is what is the key behind this tax cut plan of the GOP. Self-interest means employees leave companies if there is somewhere to go. Self-interest means corporations will pay more to retain their talent from a competitor. Self-interest means a company will locate to America so they can be near their families if the tax rates are equitable. Self interest keeps a person from jumping off a bridge where the railings are only hip level. If someone wanted to, they could jump over—and most people live within those guidelines except for the occasional idiot who has painted their lives into a corner with lots of bad decisions, then seek to committee suicide. This GOP tax cut puts trust back into people and that is truly terrifying for liberals, but what they will discover like the child who is terrified of the monster they think lives under their bed, is that there isn’t anything to be afraid of. And learning that scares them even more—because that is the foundation of their liberalism.

Rich Hoffman

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‘The 15:17 to Paris’: A Clint Eastwood movie coming at just the right time

Since the heroics of Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos on that fateful train to Paris where they stopped a terrorist attack, I have to admit that I have been hoping to have the same encounter whenever I travel.  It must have been a very gratifying experience to be able to beat the shit out of a terrorist.  That’s why I think the movie version of that famous event will do extraordinary business, because in America I think my feelings are quite common when it comes to terrorism, whether it was the neighbor to a church in Texas who stopped the shooter that unleashed a barrage of bullets into the innocent with a gun of his own, or the countless episodes in just the last few months where law enforcement and private citizens have done the same the moment they heard that, crack, pop, crack of .223 bullets splitting the air toward dreadful intentions.  Leave it to Clint Eastwood to capture that American gusto in his newest film The 15:17 to Paris, which is set to release on February 8th 2018.

I’ve ridden on trains through France, just as that trailer set up the story, and I experienced very much the same emotions—especially in regard to the European baby Cokes.  Eastwood is a master of the movie making craft at his mid-80s maturation and nobody does the little things better these days than him.  I said it at the time that when Eastwood decided to make a movie of the book written by the three heroes that he’d do great things with the project—and he did by casting the three guys to play themselves in the movie.  That took extraordinary confidence on his part and I think the result that ends up on-screen will be incredible.  America needs a story like this right now and especially under a Trump White House, the cultural phenomena that it has a chance to become are ripe for the exemplary.

It’s obvious that Eastwood is going to explore the how and why these three ordinary kids become the heroes they did—and I’m quite certain that the answer will reside in the philosophy of Americanism.  I remember when the guys were being praised after the event around the world for their heroism and thinking—why them?  There were over 500 people on that train that day, and why was it three Americans who stopped the terrorist?  Well, I know the answer, but the world has been banging its head against the rails trying to come to grips with it.  The reason of course is that we make Americans from the time they are little kids into their adulthoods with a sense of self-purpose—with an assumption that they can do and be whatever they want in life.  In Europe they are raised quite differently, because they have a history of bloodlines and aristocracy that keeps them from assuming that their destinies are largely in their own hands.

The idea that an individual can make a difference and do anything is an American concept.  Not everyone in America gets it obviously, but the concept is there for anyone to answer and in the case of Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos, they certainly did and Eastwood’s direction for the film will no doubt explore that.  People inclined to fate might otherwise just sit there and let the events of terrorism do what they will do—and people will live or die accordingly.  But changing that fate is something that you can see in the eyes of Spencer Stone in that preview—which is what Eastwood was obviously after when he decided to cast them in a movie about themselves.  He wanted to show audiences what that looks like—to believe to their very core that if they wanted to change the fate of something, then individual action was the key to doing so.  Some wimpy actor can try to mimic that behavior, which is how Eastwood pulled off the great work he did for American Sniper.  But with something like this, in the age of terrorism—how best to combat terrorism but to teach people not to be so damn afraid of every little thing.  So bullets are coming at you.  Maybe some hit you.  So what?  But for a chance to beat the crap out of a terrorist and stop the death of hundreds of people who might otherwise have international consequences—who wouldn’t want the opportunity to do what these three guys did?  I’d love the chance.

Clint Eastwood as I’ve said before is my favorite movie director—he has been for a while and he’s only become better over time.  So I’d go see this movie regardless of what it was about and who was in it.  Every film he does could be his last, so he appears to be putting a lot of love into each one of them while he still can—which is very admirable.  But even for him the timing of this movie and the way it will be presented I don’t think could come under better circumstances.  America has had a year of Trump.  The economy is booming, tax cuts are coming, the Deep State is being exposed and cleansed of its activists—the world is respecting us again and terrorists are on their heels.  All that has largely happened because normal every day Americans have had the courage to do their part in Making America Great Again and Clint Eastwood has captured that in this film.

Warner Bros. will have a massive hit on their hands when they release this, because we are all feeling it, and we want this story.  Once we see this story it will only accelerate the process which explores what makes Americans different in a positive way—what makes them run toward danger when others cower and pray for mercy?  That’s what The 15:17 to Paris is all about.  As I said, I’ve been on a train across the French countryside, so I can relate to those opening shots.  And in Paris which many consider to be one of the greatest cities in the world—I can say that Americans are very easy to spot.  We think different, and not in a bad way.  We like our Cokes bigger, we enjoy more food—we tend to be bigger and stronger as a result—but more than anything we like what we like when we want it, because we come from a culture that feeds that nature in us.  We don’t like long lines—we don’t like public transportation—because we want to be in charge of our own destinies whenever possible—and we don’t like to be pushed around.  When someone points a gun in our face, we have more than a few of us who will charge that attacker for the glory and pride of doing so no matter what might happen afterwards because we were born free and recognize quickly around the world where tyrants look to oppress—and we naturally don’t like it.

I will be one of the first in line to see The 15:17 to Paris.  I can’t wait!

Rich Hoffman

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Equal Justice Under the Law: Why we should kick down the doors to the FBI and arrest Peter Strzok

If you didn’t catch Judge Jeanine’s segment on the FBI investigation led by Robert Mueller then you can see it below—or if you did you can see it again.  She does a really nice job of laying out the case of just how bad the FBI treated the incoming Trump presidency from the outset.  The reluctance that people who depend on these federal institutions is understandable do to their belief that FBI integrity keeps us safe from the bad guys out there in the world.  But once it is understood how serious all this is, and the depth of the crimes that were committed by the FBI, consciously—it becomes clear that the only recourse is to destroy that institution so that we can rebuild it better.  Trump said what we are all thinking, the FBI has lost its fine reputation and the ground agents allowed it to happen.  The people at the top were dreadfully corrupt, and the bootlickers below them did nothing about it because nobody wanted to jeopardize their opportunity for a promotion.  So we have a mess that needs to be fixed and we won’t do that playing patty cake with these guys.

As I write this I have full faith in the Trump White House to continue exposing this issue and shaming Capitol Hill into correcting the action.  But I have not forgotten how bad Eric Holder was during his years with the Obama administration.  I have not forgotten Loretta Lynch, or Lois Lehrer at the IRS.  I haven’t forgotten any of those things—and much more.  The only difference between now and then is that my kind of guy is in the White House and I’m hoping the situation can be corrected non violently and under the blind eyes of justice.  But for the record should I ever be deposed for some future actions—lets this little declarative statement cast light on my thoughts.  I’m not OK with Peter Strzok interviewing General Flynn and using that information to prosecute the guy ruining his life just because he was associated with the Trump campaign.  That same guy did not apply equal justice under the law to Hillary Clinton and her various associates.  It was he who gave them all a pass when serious crimes were committed.  And his activism was chronicled in text exchanges with his girlfriend who was working at the FBI as well.  When he stated to her that he intended to provide an insurance policy against the Trump election that was all any of us needed to hear.  He should not be working in human resources within the FBI until the smoke clears.  He needs to be at a minimum fired and likely put in jail—and everyone associated with him should be terminated as well.  Anything less would be criminal.

I’m not going to forget.  There won’t be some magical day ten years from now when all this will blow over and life at the FBI will return to normal.  No, it only gets worse from here.  The FBI, an unelected group of law enforcement officers, doesn’t get to decide who our president is or isn’t.  They are there to enforce the laws that congress creates-and that’s it.  They don’t get to go off and do their own thing and use the massive power we’ve given them to undercut the process.  People like me put up with Obama, Clinton, and many years of a government that certainly didn’t represent me.  We didn’t assassinate anyone or go into the streets with our guns to demand a better government.  We let the process run its course and we sought to fix the problems the correct and legal way—and it took a lot of time and who knows how many countless trillions of dollars of potential.  I could have easily have looked at the situation and said as Strzok did, that it was up to me to solve these problems for the good of the nation, because I knew better.  Only I don’t have a FBI at my disposal to manipulate things to my liking.  I have other things, but not control of a tax payer funded institution.  So under Strzok’s reasoning, it would be perfectly OK if I used violence and physical domination to turn the country back to the ideas that I think are appropriate—right?  That is the problem of Strzok, he opened up this mess and now we have to fix it.  Because if action is not taken against him, then there is no justice or trust in those institutions to correct themselves sending a clear message to the rest of us that if we really want to solve the problem, then we will have to do it with violence.

If that’s how the FBI wants it, I have no problem with that—violence.  Don’t think for a moment that anybody is going to come into my home kicking in doors and harassing my family in the middle of the night the way they treated Paul Manafort and that they’ll walk away alive that day.  It’s not going to happen, let me just say that.  I have no respect for a law enforcement agency that is guilty of crime themselves but don’t have that same treatment applied to them.  In my way of viewing the world Strzok should be arrested immediately, all his assets confiscated and he should be drug into the street naked and beaten into a bloody lump of flesh, until his jaw bone was dangling from his face with just a few pieces of skin—still alive, but a beating he would never forget.  That’s the only kind of justice I would respect after what he did.

Imagine you’re Paul Manafort—forget about any potential crime for a moment.  Paul is an insider who knew how the game was played and he was playing it.  The Clintons were playing the same game and so were the Podestas—so I don’t want to hear about any potential crimes that Manafort might have been engaged in.  If it was good for everyone else in the Beltway, it was good for Paul.  If it’s not good for Manafort, then I expect to see the same treatment for everyone else.  So let’s use that as a clarifying statement.  So there he was in bed with his wife and the FBI barges in with great urgency damaging property and wielding guns into their faces—in their private residence—as if the needs of the FBI were greater than the needs of Paul Manafort.  They call this a “no-knock” raid and in this case FBI agents picked the lock at 4:30 AM and barged into the residence to obtain documents that special investigator Mueller thought he needed for his case against a sitting president. I’m just saying, if I hear a sound at the door at 4:30 AM, there will be trouble.  And If I wake up to guns in my face, there will be even more trouble.  These types of raids are not permissible in the spirit of the United States idea.  The legal whizzes out there may have found a way to establish case-law precedent, but that doesn’t make them right.  The just thing would have been to gun down all the intruders on the spot because they were invading the sacred space of an American and his private property, which is the cornerstone to everything America represents.

https://michaelsavage.com/2017/10/30/manafort-charges-grew-out-of-records-seized-in-no-knock-raid/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/08/10/no-knock-raids-like-the-one-against-paul-manafort-are-more-common-than-you-think/?utm_term=.f79fc24a85a5

That’s where things get murky.  Manafort cooperated as the FBI thugs molested his wife and he turned over the documents—and Mueller spent another five months going over things before indicting Manafort costing him millions of dollars in losses.  If I were Manafort I would view the whole incident as something that ruined my life—I couldn’t live with that kind of imposition.  I’d have to get revenge on somebody and I’d require the skin off somebody’s back before I let the issue drift away.  If anybody points a gun in my wife’s face while she’s in bed, I’d have to do something—I don’t give a rat’s ass what the law says.  Just because guns are pointed at you that doesn’t mean you die.  Just because you get shot it doesn’t mean you die.  Pointed guns are not enough to stop violence.  Nothing out there in the world is more important than my castle, no social cause, not government, no “inclusive” concept about the “greater good.”  Nothing is better or more sacred than what goes on within the walls of my private kingdom–my personal residence.  To my way of thinking if you don’t have that there isn’t anything to live for to fight on another day—so why not give it everything you have right then and there?  What’s Manafort supposed to do now; he knows that the arrest was purely a political hit job.  His family has been abused in the process by the might of our government and he has had personal wealth stolen from him to feed an inefficient court system.  I feel a lot of passion about this, I actually wrote a book called The Tail of the Dragon which is about this very type of morality situation and with me it’s quite clear—we don’t protect ourselves enough from enemies within the state—and we damn well should.

Now though this case is well beyond the crimes against Manafort and Flynn, they are assaults to all of us who voted for Donald Trump.  I view the election of Donald Trump as the most important thing that’s happened politically in my lifetime.  True, it’s my point of view, but my point of view was in the majority this time—as the rules of the Electoral College mandate.  We played by the rules, we did the right things, and the FBI crossed the line—they broke the law and someone has to pay.  So is it appropriate under equal justice under the law to kick in the doors to the FBI guns wielding in the faces of these insurgents so that we can rip Peter Strzok out of his human resources job and ruin his life the way he has attempted to ruin the lives of others?  I say yes.  I’m willing to let the law do its thing, and I have hope that the process will work—I’d say it’s working right now.  But we won’t be going back to some good ol’ days within the bureau where these types of things got pushed under the rug.  We know too much, and we also know that because there isn’t equal justice that if we see FBI agents coming into our homes—then we have to defend ourselves.  After all if their agents are like Peter Strzok—what separates them from criminals breaking into our homes and stealing the fruits of our hard labor?  Nothing.

Rich Hoffman

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Trump the Destroyer and Beyond Pairs of Opposites: ‘The Last Jedi’s’ message to the 21st Century

There is nothing I enjoy more than a good discussion about very heady topics.  It really is the only thing that interests me so my mind is often open to these elements when I see them.  And before everyone complains that I’m writing another Star Wars article, it would be worth the time to follow through on this one, because we’re going to talk about some important stuff.  After the dust settled on The Last Jedi—once I had seen it and considered what Disney’s role in the whole thing was, and compared all that to these really massive investigations into the FBI and Donald Trump’s institution cleansing presidency—I have a few thoughts to share to those with a mind to listen.  So here it goes.

Taken up close, there is a lot to be angry about.  There’s a lot to fix, and most of us do not understand our role in the grand scheme of things.  We can call that grand scheme God if you’d like, but I’d prefer the term Grand Fortissimo—A term I acquired after reading the Joseph Campbell masterpieces The Masks of God many years ago for which that term was applied to the steady march and consideration  of the human race—from its inception to the present.  Art after all is the yearnings and toils of the mind and the imagination which fosters it—and Star Wars was always a work of modern art presented as myth to a hungry public needing more than what other forms of entertainment typically give us.  I’m not particularly happy with the direction Disney has taken the Star Wars stories—because taken at the ground level—these new films are very progressive in their values which makes them political in a negative way.  But………what separates Star Wars from the pack is that they are rooted in very ancient mythologies which have been always trying to answer the big meaning of life questions we all seek and to get there it is the orchestral music of John Williams which takes what might otherwise be average television plot lines and elevates them into the realm of modern myth.

As I was thinking about all this I listened to the new Last Jedi soundtrack by 85-year-old John Williams and if there was ever a person on earth that has the powers of God working through him, it is that guy.  Listening to the music with no images attached, just a good symphonic score pulled from the movie is just amazing.  What he put down on paper is something that would rival Mozart or Bach or Tchaikovsky any day.  That Ahch-To them from The Last Jedi which was introduced at the end of The Force Awakens I think represents the direction of the human race in the 21st century and John Williams is quite well aware of it.  It’s fully majestic and deeply philosophical and touches on all the classic myths of our imaginations and shines a light to where we are going.  For Williams to capture all that in just a few notes is nothing short of genius.  As I was listening to that little piece in my car with the windows up and the sound turned up as loud as I could get it to go I received a notification from my oldest daughter that NASA was sending up a copy of The Last Jedi for everyone to watch up on the International Space Station.  On another notification I received the Friday box office results which was tracking The Last Jedi to break over 200 million domestically by Sunday night—which is extraordinary.  Even though I thought the surface plot of The Last Jedi was pretty mediocre—almost descending into the plot of the latest stupid Star Trek movie, Into Darkness—the deeper elements of it are actually quite sophisticated, which is a serious nod of the hat to Rian Johnson, the director.  He chose to essentially make this Episode 8 movie a modern rendition of the classic Twin War Gods Navaho legend and it is quite effective.

Meanwhile Donald Trump is shaking up the entire world of the establishment.  Liberals might see Trump as Snoke from The Last Jedi and they are guarding themselves from the First Order of his creation.  Conservatives see Trump as the Rebellion fighting against an evil faceless Empire where the Deep State has all the power and might we see in the Star Wars movies as being something worth fighting.  The main them of The Last Jedi is the motif of most mythologies that we know of, and that is to move beyond the pairs of opposites—the yen and yang life.  The cultures of our past which built pyramids understood this all too well, you pick your side and work your way intellectually up to the point where you will have to meld with all the other sides of the pyramid.  Life forces you to pick sides, but once the roles we play in the conflict of living are concluded, all sides blend at the point.  At the end of The Last Jedi what Rian Johnson has done was essentially kill all the villains to merge the characters into this concept which was pretty bold stuff.  I am pretty sure that Donald Trump is a Star Wars fan, and I’d dare say he understands what I’m talking about and he knows his role in all this is a Shiva role—a destroyer of evil and a transformer upon our culture.  I remember when the Rogue One Blue-ray came out in April of this year Trump was playing it on Air Force One while reporters where talking to him.  Trump gets it—I’m quite sure of it.  His job is to clear away all the institutional hesitation for which Star Wars is conceptually introducing to the human race a tomorrow for which we presently aren’t prepared for.  That is clearly the intention of The Last Jedi—to bring mankind to the top of the pyramids and to now move beyond—which no culture in the history of the world has done so far—that we know of.  If they have in the past, they left earth long ago.

It was just this week that Trump announced the next steps for NASA which are going to once again use the space race to spur our economy along into uncharted waters.  Within a few decades we will all have to make a conscious decision as to whether or not we want to die—because we’ll be able to download ourselves into some form of A.I.  We’ll also be able to biologically heal ourselves—so there’s that as well. We are moving toward a time where dying for the honor of our flags, or our loved ones is really going to be robbed of its merit—and what are we going to do then?  How do we live beyond the pairs of opposites—once we’ve had reconciliation with the “father” whether it’s the God of the Christian Bible or the Sun from the Navaho legend?  We must have Shiva destroy the old world and to clear away all the smoke so that we can see the top of the pyramid, then we will complete that climb and move into that next age.  Star Wars is providing a road map of thought to help us through art and subconsciously we seem to understand. Donald Trump for the world right now is Shiva—and I say that in the most positive manner.  He is working beyond the villains of Star Wars for that moment on Ahch-To when Luke vanished at the end of The Last Jedi to join Yoda in the realm of the dead—which aren’t so dead—but willing participants in the theater of life.  Very interesting.

Donald Trump and Disney without really planning it in any way are serving as the two greatest influences that are shaping our culture of tomorrow in ways that many of us today still can’t fathom.  I saw a lot of people at my screening of The Last Jedi who are full-grown adults dressed up for the movie.  This stuff is a religion to them now, and that is taking us all to places that are uncharted in the human experience.  While our political assumptions are being destroyed—rightfully so, our art is providing us with a road map to renewed self-discovery.  Star Wars is not just a movie experience; it is amid all the sex scandals and the obvious destruction of Hollywood the best and only safe place that we can still trust.  It’s all around us at Target, Wal-Mart and even in our cars.  It’s fueling the imagination of NASA which has been given wings again under Trump and where we are all heading for is that grand fortissimo I was talking about.  It may take thirty or forty more years, but we’re going to be going somewhere we’ve never been before and I think that is absolutely wonderful.

Rich Hoffman

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Why Trump Should Never Stop Using Twitter: If we really want to fix the problems, we have to talk about them

I keep hearing this ridiculous notion that President Trump should stop Tweeting.  Everyone says it, even his supporters—yet they miss that Twitter is the key, and the essence of the American President.  Without it, he would have never been elected to begin with, and because of it, the Deep State is being exposed in ways that no court system would even dare.  Even with the mountains of evidence witnessed about FBI corruption, Jeff Sessions is reluctant to do anything that might draw fire from the establishment and he’s a handpicked Trump guy.  Imagine how bad things really were when Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch were in those activist seats at the head of the Department of Justice. An honest, talkative president is exactly what this country needed, and a platform to speak from because the rest of the institutional elements of our modern society from the press down to the most ardent government employee function in ways that prevent analysis of their purposeless existence.

The President should never stop Tweeting!  The reason so many people are upset about it, and about the times of day that Trump does it is that it shows the establishment that they do not have control of this president—and control is what they were used to.  I remember specifically about George W. Bush, when he was first in office he stated that he hoped to bring the Norman Rockwell paintings that reflected American life back to the forefront of consideration.  Yet within a few months of getting into office he became just another mouthpiece of mundane representation and drifted quickly into the background.  The heads of each department of our government quickly took over and the media filtered the results to us leaving the importance of the presidential role in our country to be largely ceremonial—such as giving pardon to the Turkey during times of Thanksgiving and occasionally signing a bill once congress presented one.  It didn’t matter if the president was a Republican or a Democrat; they were all molded by the establishment into kind of the same neutered presence.  They were to do what they were told and the media would tell the story.  In that way the press was given the impression that they were running things because elected officials accepted that they had to appease the journalists if they wanted to show a track record of success.

Trump as a negotiator is clearly using his skills to push and pull positions which are unique in any elected office.  Trump is a salesman first and the only way he can really discover the position of the opposition is to put out probing ideas and to see how people react to it.  I knew what I was voting for when I cast my ballot for Trump.  I expect him to be malleable on specifics, but resolute on core philosophy and when it comes to him—the thing he cares about most is winning his engagements.  Business people often engage in contentious debate but then settle things over a game of golf or a nice dinner.  That is not how politicians do things—they often present a contentious front to satisfy their donor base, but like big time wrestlers they are all talk and now shows regarding philosophy.  They have no expectation of victory, only to show through the media a track record that keeps them in office with each new election.  They are like assembly line workers who never quite accomplish a task who are leveraging for overtime by saying that if I had just one more hour, they could complete the task.  Yet they never quite get there so they keep asking for more and more and more, then blame the system for why they can never achieve their objective.  Voters are typically too busy to pay close attention to the details and that’s how we end up with the mess we see now—a corrupt government used to doing nothing, running up debt, and ruining the lives of us all with their inside the Beltway priorities.

Most politicians seek to build off a perceived victory but Trump knows that the name of the game is stagnation, so when he does accomplish something big—like enacting deregulation, or rolling back Net Neutrality—or even recommitting America back to the space race—he’ll drop a Tweet picking a fight with someone so that the resources of the “system” fixate on his subject which diverts legislative terrorists from sending in suicide squads to destroy his agenda items—and it works well.  Trump has managed to do a remarkable number of things in his first year and he protects them by keeping antagonists talking about the “small stuff.”  It would be nice if we lived in a world where achievement was respected, and even sought after—but we’re not.  Too many people have a stake in stagnation—it’s actually their livelihood so reform is not in their thoughts.

The sum of all this is of course is that change is happening because for the first time I think in our nation’s history we are talking about things.  Without Trump’s Tweets, the FBI would not be exposed as they are now.  That’s why Chuck Schumer is so upset with Trump’s “Tweets.”  Remember in the beginning of the Trump presidency when Chuck Schumer threatened that the newcomer to politics mind his mouth otherwise the American intelligence agencies would take notice?  That was a threat, and one that has been used on many presidents in the past and other civilians—because don’t forget a president is not a king—they are simply elected civilians who are put in charge of one branch of government—and given the keys to the military so to appease the public with the fantasy that they are the ones in control of that awesome power. In reality the Deep State works for the politicians and the donors and everyone was getting their marching orders from K-Street behind the glitzy prostitutes who show up after the sun goes down.  All the little know-nothing attorneys who become lobbyists and sit in the bars along that stretch of road just outside the reach of the White House have always thought that they were contributing little unelected tid-bits to the realities of our Republic, but not anymore.  Now there is a guy from the civilian sector willing to call them out on Twitter and that scares them literally.

The Deep State assumed that they’d play their game and that Trump would have been destroyed by last summer—because for most people that’s what would have happened.  But when Trump defended himself and fought back—the way anybody should have—the methods which have controlled so many presidents of the past for the entire history of our nation, stopped working. And the house of cards for which they had built their temples of governmental worship fell down quickly as if a child had built the whole thing in a play room before their mother pressed them to dinner.  The entire institution for which our nation was built on the backs of corruption and malice was exposed as just a flimsy plaything for the old aristocrats of Europe who came to America to keep us all tied to the motherland of history.  However, that was never Trump’s mission. His task was to win, not only the seat in the White House, but to win the whole game and give it back to the American people, which is exactly what he’s doing.  And if it wasn’t for Twitter, nothing would be happening.  Trump should never quit using Twitter—and saying the things he says.  We can’t allow the establishment to hide malice behind politeness and rules of engagement that they control.  If we really want to fix the problems of our nation we have to attack them where they truly reside and for Trump—Twitter has been the means of delivery.  The goal of an American president should never be to get along with the media, congress, the FBI, K-Street or even the nations of the world.  The only goal should be to keep America a great nation the best way they can during their time in office.  A lot of them step into the White House with each new election and assume that they are going to change the world for the better—but they soon learn what limited powers they really have.  Within a few months of office they become just placeholders for history and they finish their terms in that role.  Trump is the first president perhaps in the history of the world who is changing that notion on behalf of the people who elected him.  And Twitter is the key to his success in this day and time of 2018.  In the future it will probably be something else but for now, Twitter is the means of restoring America to the greatness that was always there—which likely really pisses off the people who run Twitter because they are hardly a bastion of conservatism.

Rich Hoffman

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Embodiments of Good Culture: ‘The Last Jedi’ review as seen at the Liberty Township Cinebistro

Regarding the new Star Wars film, The Last Jedi[image error]—I enjoyed it. It is the best movie of its kind made these days. To me it’s a long way off from George Lucas’ original vision and is much more progressive. When I say that I’m not knocking it for its various species and races working together for a common cause—its just the value system is very collective based—much more than it used to be and that makes the film step on itself often. But for kids 15 and under, Star Wars is magical stuff, and for everyone else—it’s the best pop culture eye candy that you can get anywhere with a stirring new John Williams score to go with it. So there is a lot to love and I did. Disney did a good job as far as movies made by committee go—and I thought Rian Johnson did a good job navigating all the needs of those committees quite well to even pull off something that did sometimes reflect the classic Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back. Honestly, I wish there were more films like The Last Jedi because when it comes to the movie going experience my sentiments go to the theater owners who often get screwed by Hollywood for putting out a bunch of liberal crap that nobody wants to see. At least films like The Last Jedi give theater owners a chance to make some money—which they desperately need these days in the age of changing entertainment options.

Since I’m a Star Wars guy I was going to see it at the soonest opportunity and that came on a Thursday night before the film’s official release. Thursdays are rough for me because I usually have an oversea call with people on the opposite side of the world, so their 8 AM on a Friday is for me 6 PM Thursday. And of course my first responsibility was to the call. So at the conclusion my wife and I had plans to meet at the Cinebistro in Liberty Township to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi at 8 PM. It was on these kinds of evenings that excited me originally when I learned a Cinebistro was coming to my hometown—and since its arrival it’s really been the only movie theater we’ve gone to. I love every visit to that theater. But Star Wars is a special event and everything is elevated during those kinds of movie releases—so I was very grateful to leave my call meeting and arrive at the bar in Cinebistro with a nice overlook down into the square at the Liberty Center shopping complex and have a Ohio brewed Star Wars beer with my wife while we waited for our assigned seats to be called.[image error]

I was hungry, as we hadn’t eaten anything that day so it was quite a delight to be seated with all the politeness you expect at a nice restaurant by the staff at Cinebistro. Our waitress was a veteran who had been working at the Cinebistro since it opened and she was sharp as a tack which to my tired presence was very welcome. My wife and I ordered our food and within a few minutes our order started coming back at us and it was one of the best burgers I’ve had in a while made more so by how hungry I was. The movie hadn’t even started and it was already one of the best nights out to a movie that I could remember having in several years. Then the lights went down and The Last Jedi started and it was just a fun movie to sit there dead tired after 14 straight hours of working and enjoy.

My honest impression of the film was that it painted itself in a corner. There isn’t much reason to have an Episode 9 as most of the big climaxes that you would expect in a Star Wars film happened in The Last Jedi. There was a big standoff with Luke at the end as he faced down the might of the First Order stoically that was particularly powerful and made the worth of the entire movie valid in that one moment. But there were a lot of good moments that made this an above average film about science fiction. There were many times that I felt the filmmakers were secretly trying to make an anti-Trump film where they turned the Rebellion symbol into a calling sign to liberalism—and that bothered me. Hey guys, I was a Rebel before anyone else was who are making these movies now. Just for the record, and I’m certainly not a liberal. I have no sympathy for Kylo Ren or Darth Vader. I have never liked the bad guys in these films so I’m not sure the filmmakers really understand their modern audiences the way that George Lucas did. Instead, Lucasfilm and Disney are happy to just pick every demographic that’s out there and plop them into the plot and make all the white males the villains and hope that nobody gets pissed off and refuses to see their movie. I tried not to notice, but it was very distracting.[image error]

Way back in the first Star Wars movie Han Solo says to Princess Leia—“now if we can avoid any female advice, we might be able to get outta here,” or something to that effect. Well, the members of the Resistance would have been wise to listen to that—because in this new film there is no Han Solo to keep all these crazy overly emotional women in check—and they’ve pretty much ruined the Resistance. The Poe Dameron character tries to fill in the shows of Han Solo’s pragmatism, but the women end up shooting him and incapacitating him into a feeble position several times demoting him and harassing him as if he were an imbecile—when really, he’s the best that they have. Han Solo always was the older guy and had a father knows best quality in regard to Luke and Leia. Now they are the ones in charge and Leia has ruined the Resistance and Luke is hiding on an island ready to die—to quit the world. Without thinking about things too much, the movie is still fun—but with a little analysis it doesn’t take much to sympathize with Ben Solo who essentially rebelled against all this stupidity and became seduced by Snoke to essentially run the First Order.

The First Order seems to have unlimited money and resources when the Resistance is supposed to be fighting for the Republic which is the current governing power. So the question I had for the whole movie is that if the First Order were so bad, how did they get such great wealth? There was an attempt to explain that a casino planet where many of the galaxies rich and famous resided was how the First Order obtained all its power—but honestly the point failed to be made. All I heard was some chubby Asian chick yack on about how evil money and wealth was while she and Finn tried to figure out how to save the Resistance for which her sister had given her life. I wanted to pull her aside and say—“hey little lady—try making a little money so that you can fund your rebellion and stop resting on ideas of hope and sympathy to get your point across. You might have more luck.”

That’s what makes these movies made by liberal San Francisco young people different from George Lucas who came from a small business background and made the Star Wars movies with great personal risk and cost to himself. Even though George was a political liberal he was a fiscal conservative when it came to making movies and the industry was better for it—and so were his characters. That is missing from the prequel films and these made by the next generation. These filmmakers have all the budgets and resources they need whereas Lucas didn’t and that certainly shows up in the final product. The special effects company Industrial Light & Magic got it reputation from the first Star Wars movies. Now everyone expects excellence, so there’s that element as well. It’s a lot harder to WOW an audience now than it used to be so the emphasis is obviously spent on doing that for fans. I see that it hurts the story, but that is an older guy speaking. Kids will love these movies and they should—they are the best morality tales available to young people, so the benefits are obvious.

The Last Jedi ended in a way that I thought probably should end all Star Wars movies, because there will never be a way to top that last scene with Luke. It was pretty magnificent. And I left the theater thinking about big lofty ideas about whether or not the dead and vanished would even care what goes on in the world of the living. In Star Wars they do, and it’s a fascinating concept that more than made up for some of the obvious liberalism. But even better than the movie was the experience of seeing it at the Cinebistro. They certainly did a good job there, and around the theater with all the Christmas decorations. For me that night was probably the climax of the entire Holiday season and I couldn’t have expected more. A good movie to watch in a top-class movie theater at a top-class entertainment district within my home town. It’s the way these kinds of experiences are supposed to be, and thankfully for one night everything was perfect and I’m very thankful for that.

Rich Hoffman

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Jim Renacci and ‘The Last Jedi’: Liberals and their Resistance are more alike than they know

One thing that I really like about Jim Renacci’s run for the governorship within the state of Ohio is that he is very light on his feet. As he had a press conference early in the week for which the new Star Wars movie The Last Jedi was released I thought it was cleaver that he was active on Twitter tying the needs of his campaign to the pop culture monstrosity. It was a hip move that was reminiscent to the light on his feet nature of Donald Trump. The big news of course was that Renacci was partnering up with Cincinnati councilwoman Amy Murray which was another smart move—and for most politicians that would have been their news highlight of the week. But what is noticeable about Jim Renacci is that he’s very competitive, and determined to win whatever he does which is why I’m supporting him for his run for governor—to replace the docile, and much maligned closet liberal—John Kasich.

In honor of the #TheLastJedi premiere this weekend, did you know Mike DeWine has been a career politician longer than the #StarWars franchise? #OHGov pic.twitter.com/LRpu8rVTB3

— Jim Renacci (@JimRenacci) December 12, 2017

The candidacy of Renacci is actually very much in line with the pop culture for which Star Wars represents to our society at large. I’ve seen The Last Jedi, the most recent Star Wars film at an early screening and it was good of course in its own way. I understand now that I’m a traditional Star Wars guy and that these new movies, books and televisions shows will never touch my heart the way they once did—which is fine. They are fun movies that are dealing with a lot of very contemporary mythology, but nobody did it better than George Lucas. Disney should have followed the Lucas stories and stayed away from these much more progressive adoptions created by the San Francisco kids at Lucasfilm. I’ll give a little review of course once the dust settles—because there is a lot to think about. But one take away that is directly connected to the politics of our real world is that the Resistance in the movie is very much reflective of today’s political left.

I’m a Rebellion guy from the first Star Wars led by Han Solo. When Solo was a general the Rebellion won and destroyed the Empire and it was a very Ayn Rand type of embodiment. In these new movies it’s not the Rebellion any more it’s the Resistance and the new Han Solo type of character is Poe Dameron. Led completely by women now, the Resistance is very progressive and as a result they are losing. In fact, they are not only losing, but they are dreadfully inefficient and nobody in the galaxy seems to be rallying to their cause. That is a far different thing from the first movies where hot-shot pilots like Biggs and Wedge were defecting from the Empire to fight for the Rebels. In The Last Jedi, the defectors are from the Resistance. Given how politically charged our current entertainment culture is I thought it was very telling that Carrie Fisher and Laura Dern berated Poe for being too reckless and not following orders—which is ironically how people who win a lot do so—by not following orders. Then when he wasn’t in the room they commented on the fact that they only kept Poe around because he was a good-looking guy. So that’s how these progressive women like Kathy Kennedy who is running all these Star Wars movies these days see the way the world of tomorrow will be? Sexual harassment will now be dished out by the women because they are now empowered? Not that I care really, but it is a very interesting thing to watch—the hypocrisy is hilarious.

Leading up to this Star Wars movie many people who are anti-Trump including many of the production staff and actors in The Last Jedi made it clear that the Resistance was reflective of their political ideology. Without question given the number of scenes where members of the Resistance made really desperate sacrifices we are seeing essentially what the political left believes is their plight in life. They think like that FBI agent Peter Strzok who felt it was their plight in life to do whatever needed to be done to keep Donald Trump out of office—as if they knew better than the rest of us what was right. I’m a person who hates bad guys in movies, but there were a lot of moments whether it was intentional or not, that Kylo Ren was the star of the film. He was the one who had it all together and was able to achieve objectives—and to get things done. Even to the point where nice girl Rey was tempted by his power. I felt that the makers of this Star Wars movie wonderfully directed by Rian Johnson meant to say one thing about the state of politics in our current world, but ended up saying something completely unintentional—like we know we’re losers and understand why.

In the original stories by George Lucas it was the pirate Han Solo who shook off the rules and helped the Rebellion start winning again that served as the guiding light of the entire franchise. He made the Empire look like a bunch of bumbling fools outwitting them time and time again in a classic good guys against bad guy fashion. Yet in these new Star Wars movies it is the First Order now led by Kylo Ren who makes the Resistance look pathetic and weak. I know the metaphor for these modern Hollywood artists is that the First Order is the modern equivalent of Hitler or President Trump—but its not the Resistance they really adore as artists—it’s the power of Kylo Ren. It’s like a woman who says she hates men with long hair who play in rock bands doing drugs day and night then turn around and leave their nice husbands and children for just such reckless characters. There is a unique scene in The Last Jedi where it’s a kind of upside down world from the Stranger Things television show. The schizophrenia that I’m talking about is on full display here and I think they think they’ve concealed their insecurities, but at the end of the movie when there is literally nobody left in the Resistance I couldn’t help but feel that the inner fear that all members of the Progressive caucus are experiencing now can be summed up at the end of the movie. They know that the demands of the story will pull the natural order of things toward Kylo Ren in the end with Rey helping to tame him toward the needs of existence. But the story is not Rey’s, it is clearly about Kylo Ren—Han Solo’s son that was seduced to evil off the superstitions of a Luke Skywalker who thought about killing the young lad in his sleep—and then propelled him to the Dark Side out of self-preservation.

You might ask what any of this has to do with Jim Renacci and his run for governorship. Other than the fact that he used a cleaver Star Wars ad to show how he was different from his competition the candidacy is enough to stir the concerns of the real Resistance that exists in our very tangible political world. The progressives and establishment types who now look at these days of Trump and think of themselves as the Resistance in Star Wars are more correct than they know. They may get little moments of victory—like in the case of the Alabama senate race—but like the events of The Last Jedi, their numbers are dwindling down into nothing while all the resources of a vast galaxy are going to the other side. The insecurity they all face is the same as the one in that movie where Kylo Ren is supposed to be the villain—but is he really in the ways of the Force? Maybe it’s the idiots in the Resistance who are so prone to kill themselves for stupid reasons who are the real villains and that is a thought that I couldn’t help but conclude as the lights came on and the movie was over. Good guys and bad guys are really a matter of perspective definition. But………….only one side is right and one side is wrong and when nobody is left on the other side—the answer becomes obvious. What I learned from The Last Jedi is that the Force hates the Resistance. And that appears to be what’s going on in real life politics too.

Rich Hoffman

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