Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 399

Hercules was a Murderer and Homosexual: The fault of mythic heroes rooted in sacrifice

I have not yet seen the new film about Hercules by Dwayne Johnson but its release does bring up an interesting issue which needs to be addressed. Hercules was a failed hero—in spite of the world believing that he was the highest human beings had to offer. Hercules was a murderer and in the end sacrificed himself much the way Christ would many years later paving the way for a culture the world over obsessed with the notion of sacrifice as opposed to creation. The basic premise of Hercules if looked at beyond his extraordinary Paul Bunyan type of mythic folklore feats was that he was a troubled man easily manipulated by hidden spirits—in this case his jealous step mother Hera. Hercules killed and destroyed others and no matter how strong he was—his only way to divine settlement was through sacrifice. The constant resurrection of the Hercules myth as a superhero of human civilization is faulty and built on a terrible weakness imposed on history—the notion that sacrifice is the highest strength that even Hercules would eventually discover and that the moral to his story is that all who follow him may someday reach the same destination. The Hercules story is simply a prequel to Christ—both have a similar ending and the adventures leading up to that ultimate decision were extraordinary and laced with miracles. But it is the motive of Hercules to begin with which should bring great trepidation to all listeners of the old Greek tale of a half man-half god—created by a love affair through his father Zeus, the early prototype for Yahweh.

After killing his music tutor Linus with a lyre, Hercules was sent to tend cattle on a mountain by his foster father Amphitryon. Here, according to an allegorical parable, “The Choice of Heracles”, invented by the sophist Prodicus (c. 400 BCE) and reported in Xenophon‘s Memorabilia 2.1.21–34, he was visited by two nymphs—Pleasure and Virtue—who offered him a choice between a pleasant and easy life or a severe but glorious life: he chose the latter. This was part of a pattern of “ethicizing” Heracles over the 5th century BCE.[15]

Later in Thebes, Hercules married King Creon‘s daughter, Megara. In a fit of madness, induced by Hera—Zeus’ jealous wife, Heracles killed his children by Megara. After his madness had been cured with hellebore by Antikyreus, the founder of Antikyra,[16] he realized what he had done and fled to the Oracle of Delphi. The story at this point differs somewhat depending on various translations, in some stories Hercules also killed Megara bathing in the blood of his family. In others Heracles gave his wife, Megara, at the age of thirty three, to his nephew Iolaus, then only sixteen years old[4] – ostensibly because the sight of her reminded him of his murder of their three children. In either version, Hercules was a haunted man prone to murder and far from being a pillar of strength. Even with all his great strength, he failed to secure his family from the forces of the gods—which clearly promotes the ideal that no man can stand against the unseen forces of Mt Olympus.

Unbeknownst to him, the Oracle was guided by Hera. He was directed to serve King Eurystheus for ten years and perform any task Eurystheus required of him. Eurystheus decided to give Heracles ten labours, but after completing them, Heracles was cheated by Eurystheus when he added two more, resulting in the Twelve Labors of Heracles.

Hercules was the Roman name for the Greek divine hero Heracles. The Romans adapted the Greek hero’s iconography and myths for their literature and art under the name Hercules. In later Western art and literature and in popular culture, Hercules is more commonly used than Heracles as the name of the hero. Hercules was a multifaceted figure with contradictory characteristics, which enabled later artists and writers to pick and choose how to represent him.[1] This article provides an introduction to representations of Hercules in the later tradition.

Hercules is known for his many adventures, which took him to the far reaches of the Greco-Roman world. One cycle of these adventures became canonical as the “Twelve Labours,” but the list has variations. Driven mad by Hera, Heracles slew his own family. To expiate the crime, Heracles was required to carry out ten labors set by his archenemy, Eurystheus, who had become king in Heracles’ place. If he succeeded, he would be purified of his sin and, as myth says, he would be granted immortality. Heracles accomplished these tasks, but Eurystheus did not accept the cleansing of the Augean stables because Heracles was going to accept pay for the labor. Neither did he accept the killing of the Lernaean Hydra as Heracles’ nephew, Iolaus, had helped him burn the stumps of the heads. Eurysteus set two more tasks (fetching the Golden Apples of Hesperides and capturing Cerberus), which Heracles performed successfully, bringing the total number of tasks up to twelve.

One traditional order of the labours is found in the Bibliotheca as follows:[2]

Slay the Nemean Lion.
Slay the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra.
Capture the Golden Hind of Artemis.
Capture the Erymanthian Boar.
Clean the Augean stables in a single day.
Slay the Stymphalian Birds.
Capture the Cretan Bull.
Steal the Mares of Diomedes.
Obtain the girdle of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.
Obtain the cattle of the monster Geryon.
Steal the apples of the Hesperides.
Capture and bring back Cerberus.

This is described in Ovid‘s Metamorphoses Book IX. Having wrestled and defeated Achelous, god of the Acheloos river, Heracles takes Deianira as his wife. Travelling to Tiryns, a centaur, Nessus, offers to help Deianira across a fast flowing river while Heracles swims it. However, Nessus is true to the archetype of the mischievous centaur and tries to steal Deianira away while Heracles is still in the water. Angry, Heracles shoots him with his arrows dipped in the poisonous blood of the Lernaean Hydra. Thinking of revenge, Nessus gives Deianira his blood-soaked tunic before he dies, telling her it will “excite the love of her husband”.[54]

Several years later, rumor tells Deianira that she has a rival for the love of Heracles. Deianira, remembering Nessus’ words, gives Heracles the bloodstained shirt. Lichas, the herald, delivers the shirt to Heracles. However, it is still covered in the Hydra’s blood from Heracles’ arrows, and this poisons him, tearing his skin and exposing his bones. Before he dies, Heracles throws Lichas into the sea, thinking he was the one who poisoned him (according to several versions, Lichas turns to stone, becoming a rock standing in the sea, named for him). Heracles then uproots several trees and builds a funeral pyre, which Poeas, father of Philoctetes, lights. As his body burns, only his immortal side is left. Through Zeus’ apotheosis, Heracles rises to Olympus as he dies.

In addition to the life of Hercules he was not only a womanizing adulterer but a homosexual. Heracles had a number of male lovers. Plutarch, in his Eroticos, maintains that Heracles’ male lovers were beyond counting. Of these, the one most closely linked to Heracles is the Theban Iolaus. According to a myth thought to be of ancient origins, Iolaus was Heracles’ charioteer and squire. Heracles in the end helped Iolaus find a wife. Plutarch reports that down to his own time, male couples would go to Iolaus’s tomb in Thebes to swear an oath of loyalty to the hero and to each other.[20][21]

One of Heracles’ male lovers, and one represented in ancient as well as modern art, is Hylas. Though it is of more recent vintage (dated to the 3rd century) than that with Iolaus, it had themes of mentoring in the ways of a warrior and help finding a wife in the end. However it should be noted that there is nothing whatever in Apollonius’s account that suggests that Hylas was a sexual lover as opposed to a companion and servant.[22]

Another reputed male lover of Heracles is Elacatas, who was honored in Sparta with a sanctuary and yearly games, Elacatea. The myth of their love is an ancient one.[23]

Abdera‘s eponymous hero, Abderus, was another of Heracles’ lovers. He was said to have been entrusted with—and slain by—the carnivorous mares of Thracian Diomedes. Heracles founded the city of Abdera in Thrace in his memory, where he was honored with athletic games.[24]

Another myth is that of Iphitus.[25]

Another story is the one of his love for Nireus, who was “the most beautiful man who came beneath Ilion” (Iliad, 673). But Ptolemy adds that certain authors made Nireus out to be a son of Heracles.[26]

Pausanias makes mention of Sostratus, a youth of Dyme, Achaea, as a lover of Heracles. Sostratus was said to have died young and to have been buried by Heracles outside the city. The tomb was still there in historical times, and the inhabitants of Dyme honored Sostratus as a hero.[27] The youth seems to have also been referred to as Polystratus.

There is also a series of lovers who are either later inventions or purely literary conceits. Among these are Admetus, who assisted in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar;[28] Adonis;[29] Corythus;[29] and Nestor, who was said to have been loved for his wisdom. His role as lover was perhaps to explain why he was the only son of Neleus to be spared by the hero.[30]

A scholiast on Argonautica lists the following male lovers of Heracles: “Hylas, Philoctetes, Diomus, Perithoas, and Phrix, after whom a city in Libya was named”.[31] Diomus is also mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium as the eponym of the deme Diomeia of the Attic phyle Aegeis: Heracles is said to have fallen in love with Diomus when he was received as guest by Diomus’ father Collytus.[32] Perithoas and Phrix are otherwise unknown, and so is the version that suggests a sexual relationship between Heracles and Philoctetes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracles

Clearly the continued attempt to perpetuate the Hercules myth by contemporary society—frustrated by the pacifism of Christianity is to point them into the direction of the very flawed personality of Hercules. It should be no wonder then that men to this very day are confused as to how to act—as the heroes that history has pointed them to are men such as Hercules—men of strength who could create the rocks of Gibraltar, bed thousands of women and men, and still be considered a hero even though they killed their entire family.

The power of myth is far stronger than the rule of law—it is what people believe deep inside and what types of religions that they will seek to support that belief system which shapes society. Myth is what creates that belief system—it is the epistemology of philosophy. When Hercules is held as the highest form of man, then these are the parameters that mankind sets for themselves. If the Hercules story did not evolve into the Christ story which has then become the largest religion on planet earth and shaped the minds of most every human being that has ever breathed—then the faults of the story could be dismissed. But even after thousands of years, there is still a desire to resurrect such a flawed character as Hercules as the finest example of what a human being can be—which is pretty pathetic.

Hercules was nothing more than a sexually obsessed murderer easily manipulated by the forces of Mt Olympus—the spirit world—who ultimately killed himself to be free of its grip. And to this very day, human beings still believe wrongly that sacrifice is the way to heaven instead of higher virtues associated with production, enterprise, and genuine goodness.

When a guy in a bar on a business trip far from home is encountered by a woman also on a business trip far from home with a few drinks in her decide they want to play with each other sexually, the man might go through his list of heroes in his mind who helped shape his thoughts and think of Hercules. Even Disney has made a hero of the old Greek protagonist—so the modern references are there as most superheroes can point back to the old Greek myths for their origins. The man about to bed the woman might think of his wife back home and justify that Hercules did it, and so can he. After all, isn’t death awaiting all of us at some point—so all we must do is do some little appeasement to the gods and all will be forgiven—so why not bed the drunk woman in the bar?” And so the saga goes, and thus one more case of adultery, and the path to yet another destroyed family ensues where little kids lose hope that the men of their life can provide role models and that the state is all anyone can depend on. And those who run the state reside on Mt Olympus and live like gods and must be appeased with sacrifice. So long as those things happen, life is a free for all ending in death and resurrection—no matter how great the sins are. After all, Hercules killed his family and to atone for it he did many heroic deeds which serviced ultimately all of society and in the end sacrificed himself so that he could become a member of Olympus with the other gods and live happily ever after.

Our society needs new heroes to fill the void of mythic storytelling. Hercules was a loser, and not the type of character that should set the standard of behavior for our entire society. But as of now—he is—and Hollywood yet again is resurrecting him as a way to keep the old beliefs intact for a new generation. And what that generation will find if they follow Hercules is a pyre of wood at the end of their life and nothing else. Sacrificial redemption is the only value of such a society and the ultimate failure of the ancient past that is relevant to our modern times through art and myth. Hercules was a fallen hero who should be rejected, not honored, and points to the deep need that the human race has for better characters far more powerful than Hercules–and far more dependable.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Collegiate Deception: A grim reality regarding the lies of higher education

The great fear that those who support the collegiate system of education most have is the revelation to their minds that all the money they spent and mental energy expended—that it was for nothing. Their fear—which is quite extensive and the root of much anxiety is the discovery by the world what they know themselves—that they were unable to purchase skill and prestige in society with a college degree—and that their path to success was paved with deception. There are many people who pursue degrees at colleges largely due to the marketing efforts of the last forty or so years by collegiate institutions and governments that education could be purchased by attendance—and on the back side of such endeavors good jobs and social respect awaited them. But that has not been the case. People who succeed in college do so because they tend to succeed in everything they do, and would in most cases succeed whether or not they ever attended a collegiate school at all. As for the rest—the masses—those most ardent supporters of higher education—and education in general—college has proven to be a scam that has not been able to buy respect from society in general just with the presence of a framed piece of paper.

College cannot make a poor mind into a good one. It cannot make a lazy person into a successful bastion of productivity. College cannot make the stupid into the smart—and this is in violation of the promise that has been made to those who have attended. The great crises of our day is when a highly educated bastion of collegiate endeavor sits down across the table with a person who is a truly hard worker, and has gained all their knowledge in life by doing, and applying skills directly to a task—that the collegiate supporter is out-witted in nearly every instance. The reason is that skill, and aptitude cannot be cheated with the purchase of an institutional endorsement. Experience cannot be bought with a yearly tuition and a life of ease not obtained by simply graduating college. This is what has been sold to America—and it was a lie.

It was a grand plan concocted by the same types of people who thought that communism was a good ideal in the 1930s, and to this day believe that global warming is caused by man, that equality in every human being is the highest form of endeavor, and that stylish diversity in hiring practices constitute quality. While those are noble features of an advanced civilization, the lack of understanding of what makes some people better than others and what truly drives innovation, productivity and ultimately national GDP the failures are self-evident. Rooted in the college system is the old socialism of lower case “communism” where all people are equal if given equal access to education. Like the atrocious experiment with public education called “Common Core” colleges have found that they must penalize the good so to prop up their bad and sell the whole package to the public through their sports programs to divert inquiring eyes away from the failures and ultimate castigation that will ensue once fault has nowhere else to go but to the perpetrator. That castigation is upon us due to the continued failure of the college system in America to do as it promised—but has instead delivered massive debt to families who spent money on the system and students heavily liberalized into a progressive mentally who are more dependent on government instead of less. The success that college graduates are finding is not the promise of a life of ease in the private sector unless they can secure a government job—because in private enterprise where nearly all innovation and productivity occurs—it is experience that counts most.

There is behind the collegiate system an old superstition that comes from the dawn of civilization—that kings were descendents of gods and that bloodlines deserved to be persevered.   Those who believe in modern college are most apt to be concerned over a company’s organizational chart so that they can see on a map of progression who is above them and who is below them. Particularly in males is the concern over what males are superior to them and which are inferior. Males are and have always been most concerned about their place in the peeking order of other males—and for the collegiate supporter is the fantasy that they can gain superiority over others by obtaining a magic fleece called a college degree, which gives them some advantage. So long as the world functions from that old falsehood of bloodlines, and that social ordainment can be obtained through organizational charts—then the illusion of merit can be sustained. The crisis comes when they come face to face with a man or woman forged from the pressures of endeavor and has succeeded legitimately. When paired off with such a person—the collegiate supporter is unarmed and easily destroyed in every category—and this is the real terror of their present condition.

Social position does not equate to a quality position and this is the tremendous difference between the capitalist system of The United States and every other country in the world—particularly Europe—which still endorses the ridiculous notion that blood and social position dictate who the movers and shakers are in the world. In America—traditionally the decision makers are those who prove most able through entrepreneurial endeavor—Walt Disney and Bill Gates come to mind. A quick glance through the most successful people in human history, CLICK HERE TO SEE WHO THEY ARE, will prove that success and college are not tied together. All that can be obtained through college which can sustain profitable lifestyles is the adhesion to the old mantra of the “power of pull” the ability to network and relate to others not based on merit—but on social order reflective of bloodlines and organizational charts.

Not all things learned in college are a waste of time. Often students enter the work force knowing how to give PowerPoint presentations and to conduct conference calls. They learn how to interact professionally with the outside world—but they do not learn to think with a mind toward quality. They think with a mind toward deception—which they learned through their institutional instruction. They don’t learn to solve problems, but how to mask them with dialogue that would make Saul Alinsky proud. The are so good at it they deceive themselves and continue to until they come face to face with someone who does not play by their rules and can easily sidestep their authority.

The best path to success is not to think that it can be purchased, but to live every day honestly and with a curiosity toward solving problems. Experience has been and will always be the sure ticket to a good life—and the more experience one obtains, the greater their success in life. If a person wants success, they should not let organization charts stop them from learning, or doing the correct things in life. Success will not be obtained allowing some scholastic peasant stuck in the old European ways to bottleneck innovation so to protect their status in the peeking order of corporate politics. The most terrifying thing in the world for such people is for a person they believe is beneath them to shut their office door and instruct them on how little they really know about the world around them and to destroy their perception of peaking order reality. Large displays of embarrassment are not needed—only the knowledge that there are people functioning that are beyond the reach of a chart of hierarchy which was supposed to protect them from the knowledge that they aren’t all that smart and that their purchased status did not magically make them into quality people—but buffoons on parade using excuses as masks for their incompetency.

College is not a ticket to success—but only a stepping stone. For those able, it is best to leap over the stepping-stones all together and proceed through life with bold action that leads to the most experience. But for those not so strong, and not so able, college can help obtain experience—but success cannot be purchased. Anyone who has said such things is lying and is either a proponent of communist beliefs, or a victim of them. The frame-work for our modern tendency toward collegiate autocracy is rooted in a time in American society where communism was entering a capitalist culture with a promise that anybody who paid the money could enter the gates of the able and productive. But that is not, and never has been the case. Still, the only way to real success is through experience and hard work. To truly obtain such things, they cannot be cheated. They simply must be acquired with adventure and curiosity followed by a strong desire to persevere.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Welcome To The Wasteland: I told you people……………..

I’m not surprised and neither should you dear reader. For around a decade now I’ve been warning about the world we’re living in. People have avoided direct knowledge of this crisis by removing the evidence—which has resulted in many firings from jobs, editorial censorship, and social castigation. They have also sought to inebriate themselves with intoxicants, or hide behind those mind altering substances with social orthodox. But they cannot hide from the terrible reality that under their watch—they have destroyed the world and the United States for the next generation out of their sheer stupidity, arrogance, and pretension. The impact of this debacle was covered on a recent O’Reilly Factor Talking Points Memo which released the most recent poll numbers from Americans who normally lean left. The situation is not good at all, and the people who have avoided knowing about the severity of this problem are to blame. You get the world you deserve—due to the contents of what you put into your minds. This is what you get.

In a lot of ways I’ve already moved on beyond this crisis. I know longer feel a need to report daily on the kind of issues warning like Paul Revere what threats are on the horizon. The threats are now here and people either used the knowledge or they are suffering as a result. But there is no debate as to the validity of my warnings—or those others out there who have spent considerable time trying to save fools from the plight of their own stupidity.

Sadly most of my articles most read on a daily basis are those I wrote years ago—as people are just now arriving at the conclusion that they need to learn more about those particular issues. While it is nice to see that they are interested, they are about 3 to 4 years too late now to avert the impact. It’s too late. It is as if a light suddenly came on and the masses turned off E Television, or the afternoon tabloids and realized that they screwed everything up and want to suddenly fix it—but can’t. It takes a long time to arrive at this point, and it requires so much apathy—and it’s simply too late. It will take generations to repair the damage now—the inevitable debacle of mismanagement is unavoidable.

My daily emphasis naturally will change from warnings to repair. There is no longer time to save who we can—it is now time to write off those who have failed, or will fail and concentrate on those who can fix things. So my tone and content will naturally change. I have to help those who can be helped. Just like I spent the last dozen years writing about how to avoid this current America, I will now put the needs of the world a dozen years out from now so that those people will have the tools to solve the riddles presented then. But there is no time for regret at the sense of loss in seeing the first generation of America leave the world less than it found it drifting out to sea lost to time and sympathy. They did it to themselves with sheer apathy and neglect.

On Adult Swim recently I watched the premier of Black Jesus—a comedy show about a modern Black Jesus who smokes pot and tries to save members of the “hood” with compassion. It was a ridiculously stupid show and was terrifying ignorant. But—it represents modern culture and there is no way the people those actors are portraying which have real life counterparts in urban areas—are equipped intellectually to deal with modern problems. After Black Jesus sat with a group of guys smoking dope I turned the show off and found on VH1 a show where a couple were swimming together naked, then showered next to the pool. It was a dating show, and the ritual of romance had been cheapened to such an extent that their public nudity wasn’t a big deal in the least. There was nothing taboo in the presentation—and that’s the problem. There is no way the couple presented will ever be equipped to solve any problems in their lives let alone their country. They represent a generation lost to sheer animal action between promiscuity and bodily pleasure. There is nothing intellectual about their life—so they have no capacity to solve intellectual problems—only physical ones. Out of 60+ channels on television at 11:00 PM there was really nothing on and society is feeding off that content. The by-product is the collapse of politics, philosophy, art, entertainment, economic power, and every endeavor of productive enterprise. Welcome to the wasteland of T.S. Eliot—a creation directly brought to America by Europe.

I warned you people………………….

People thought they could neglect the topics of the day and not pay attention to what was being written in the newspapers. They thought they could have government employees teach their children without impact, and adhere to ideals that are corrupt to logic. But they couldn’t. And now there is Hell to pay, and we have only seen the first payment. It will get much, much worse from here. The old school ways still function in the world to a small extent. In a few years, there will be no common sense left. Our society the world over will be filled with the kind of people who think that Black Jesus is a funny show, and have filled their minds with tripe from VH1 reality television shows—and lived nearly exclusively existences in social media.

My focus will change to the next decade, to the people who are not yet lost—to their hopes and ambition. Everyone else had their time and chance, and they blew it.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Why There is Trouble in the Middle East: The whole issue explained–“one side wants the other side dead”

Many find the situation in the Middle East confusing, and have little ideal why there is any trouble there. The political left wishes to deny there is anything wrong at all, and sides with the Palestinian/Muslim factions, the political right with Israel along the typical Christian conservatives. Each side points to the other and says there is no evidence to support their theories of aggression and this is largely due to the fact that tyrants, thieves and cut throats in our modern age have destroyed evidence so that proper arguments against them can never be rooted. Common sense explanations about the Middle East seldom occur like they have in the video below—because few people are left in the world who can make value judgments based on observation—due to the evidence that is so cryptic as to who is the villains really are.

 

The video featured nationally syndicated radio talk show host Dennis Prager, who is known for his strong conservative views, the pro-Israel YouTube video aims to explain the Middle East conflict in under six minutes.

“The Middle East conflict is framed as one of the most complex problems in the world,” the video claims. “But, in reality, it’s very simple.”

“It may be the hardest to solve, but it is the easiest to explain,” Prager says. “In a nutshell, it’s this: one side wants the other side dead.”

According to Prager, the “simple” problem is difficult to solve because most Palestinians and Arabs “do not recognize the right of the Jewish state of Israel to exist.”

To support his thesis, Prager briefly overviews several decades of history, contending Israel has always sought peace with its neighbors. The conservative talk show host concludes the video leaving viewers with one final thought.

“If tomorrow, Israel laid down its arms and announced, ‘We will fight no more,’ what would happen? And if the Arab countries around Israel laid down their arms and announced, ‘We will fight no more,’ what would happen?” Prager asks. “In the first case, there would be an immediate destruction of the state of Israel and mass murder of its Jewish population. In the second case, there would be peace the next day.”

The video, officially titled “The Middle East Problem,” has amassed more than 3 million views since it was uploaded in late April. According to YouTube statistics, most of the views have poured in over the past couple weeks.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/08/04/some-are-calling-this-the-most-important-video-about-israel-ever-made-and-its-taking-the-internet-by-storm/

While that may seem simplistic, it is in fact the case, there is nothing that Palestinians will ever do to accept the 1947 creation of a Jewish state—erected out of the violence of World War II to attempt to bring peace to the Biblically driven people. Likely some of that decision by the members of the United Nations at the time believed that it was their earthly obligation to restore the nation of Israel to God’s chosen people.

Revelation 12:12-17 speaks of how the devil will make war against Israel, trying to destroy her (Satan knows his time is short– Revelation 20:1-3, 10). It also reveals that God will protect Israel in the wilderness. Revelation 12:14 says Israel will be protected from the devil for “a time, times, and half a time (“a time” = 1 year; “times” = 2 years; “half a time” = one-half year; in other words, 3 1/2 years). So if the root cause of the establishment of the Jewish state were analyzed, it is likely that religious superstition was at the heart of it more than compassion for a tortured people.

Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/Revelation-chapter-12.html#ixzz39XFilWoN

On 2 April 1947, the United Kingdom delegation addressed a letter to the Acting Secretary-General of the United Nations requesting that the question of Palestine be placed on the agenda of the next regular session of the General Assembly.[88] On 15 May the General Assembly resolved (Resolution 106) that a committee, United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), be created “to prepare for consideration at the next regular session of the Assembly a report on the question of Palestine”.[89] In July 1947 the UNSCOP visited Palestine and met with Jewish and Zionist delegations. The Arab Higher Committee boycotted the meetings. At this time, there was further controversy when the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin ordered an illegal immigrant ship, the Exodus 1947, to be sent back to Europe. The migrants on the ship were forcibly removed by British troops at Hamburg after a long period in prison ships.

The principal non-Zionist Orthodox Jewish (or Haredi) party, Agudat Israel, recommended to UNSCOP that a Jewish state be set up after reaching a religious status quo agreement with Ben-Gurion regarding the future Jewish state. The agreement would grant exemption to a quota of yeshiva (religious seminary) students and to all orthodox women from military service, would make the Sabbath the national weekend, promised Kosher food in government institutions and would allow them to maintain a separate education system.[90]

In the Report of the Committee dated September 3, 1947 to the UN General Assembly,[91] the majority of the Committee in Chapter VI proposed a plan to replace the British Mandate with “an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem” …, the last to be under “an International Trusteeship System”.[92] On November 29, 1947, in Resolution 181 (II), the General Assembly recommended to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations, the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union set out in the resolution.[93] The Plan was to replace the British Mandate with “Independent Arab and Jewish States” and a “Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem administered by the United Nations”. The Plan of Partition in Part 1 A. Clause 2 provided that Britain “should use its best endeavors to ensure than an area situated in the territory of the Jewish State, including a seaport and hinterland adequate to provide facilities for a substantial immigration, shall be evacuated at the earliest possible date and in any event not later than 1 February 1948″. Clause 3. provided that “Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem … shall come into existence in Palestine two months after the evacuation of the armed forces of the mandatory Power has been completed but in any case not later than 1 October 1948.”

Neither Britain nor the UN Security Council took any action to implement the resolution and Britain continued detaining Jews attempting to enter Palestine. Concerned that partition would severely damage Anglo-Arab relations, Britain denied UN representatives access to Palestine during the period between the adoption of Resolution 181 (II) and the termination of the British Mandate.[94] The British withdrawal was finally completed in May 1948. However, Britain continued to hold Jews of “fighting age” and their families on Cyprus until March 1949.[95]

In the immediate aftermath of the General Assembly’s vote on the Partition plan, the explosions of joy among the Jewish community were counterbalanced by the expression of discontent among the Arab community. Soon after, violence broke out and became more and more prevalent. Murders, reprisals, and counter-reprisals came fast on each other’s heels, resulting in dozens of victims killed on both sides in the process. The impasse persisted as no force intervened to put a stop to the escalating cycles of violence.[96][97][98][99] By the end of March, there was a total of 2,000 dead and 4,000 wounded.[100] These figures correspond to an average of more than 100 deaths and 200 casualties per week in a population of 2,000,000.

Shielded Jewish convoy during the blockade of Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road

From January onwards, operations became increasingly militarized, with the intervention of a number of Arab Liberation Army regiments inside Palestine, each active in a variety of distinct sectors around the different coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in Galilee and Samaria.[101] Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni came from Egypt with several hundred men of the Army of the Holy War. Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, he organized the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem.[102] To counter this, the Yishuv authorities tried to supply the city with convoys of up to 100 armored vehicles, but the operation became more and more impractical as the number of casualties in the relief convoys surged. By March, Al-Hussayni’s tactic had paid off. Almost all of Haganah‘s armored vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and hundreds of Haganah members who had tried to bring supplies into the city were killed.[103]

While the Jewish population had received strict orders requiring them to hold their ground everywhere at all costs,[104] the Arab population was more affected by the general conditions of insecurity to which the country was exposed. Up to 100,000 Arabs, from the urban upper and middle classes in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, or Jewish-dominated areas, evacuated abroad or to Arab centers eastwards.[105] This situation caused the US to withdraw their support for the Partition plan, thus encouraging the Arab League to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could put an end to the plan for partition. The British, on the other hand, decided on February 7, 1948, to support the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine by Transjordan.[106]

Supply convoy on its way to besieged Jerusalem, April 1948 Although a certain level of doubt took hold among Yishuv supporters, their apparent defeats were due more to their wait-and-see policy than to weakness. David Ben-Gurion reorganized Haganah and made conscription obligatory. Every Jewish man and woman in the country had to receive military training. Thanks to funds raised by Golda Meir from sympathizers in the United States, and Stalin’s decision to support the Zionist cause, the Jewish representatives of Palestine were able to sign very important armament contracts in the East. Other Haganah agents recuperated stockpiles from the Second World War, which helped improve the army’s equipment and logistics. Operation Balak allowed arms and other equipment to be transported for the first time by the end of March.

Ben-Gurion invested Yigael Yadin with the responsibility to come up with a plan in preparation for the announced intervention of the Arab states. The result of his analysis was Plan Dalet, which was put in place from the start of April onwards. The adoption of Plan Dalet marked the second stage of the war, in which Haganah passed from the defensive to the offensive. Within the framework of the establishment of Jewish territorial continuity foreseen by Plan Dalet, the forces of Haganah, Palmach and Irgun intended to conquer mixed zones. Palestinian Arab society was shaken. Tiberias, Haifa, Safed, Beisan, Jaffa and Acre fell, resulting in the flight of more than 250,000 Palestinian Arabs.[107]

The British had, at that time, essentially withdrawn their troops. The situation pushed the leaders of the neighboring Arab states to intervene, but their preparation was not finalized, and they could not assemble sufficient forces to turn the tide of the war. Most Palestinian Arab hopes lay with the Arab Legion of Transjordan’s monarch, King Abdullah I, but he had no intention of creating a Palestinian Arab-run state since he hoped to annex as much of the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine as he could. He was playing a double game and was just as much in contact with the Jewish authorities as with the Arab League.

On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British Mandate over Palestine expired, the Jewish People’s Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and approved a proclamation declaring the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.[108] The 1948 Palestine war entered its second phase with the intervention of the Arab state armies and the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

The Arab League members Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq refused to accept the UN partition plan and proclaimed the right of self-determination for the Arabs across the whole of Palestine. The Arab states marched their forces into what had, until the previous day, been the British Mandate for Palestine. The new state of Israel had an organized and efficient army, the Haganah, under the command of Israel Galili. The Arab forces were of varying quality, but Arab states had heavy military equipment at their disposal. The invading Arab armies were initially on the offensive but the Israelis soon recovered from the initial shock of being invaded on all sides. On May 29, 1948, the British initiated United Nations Security Council Resolution 50 and declared an arms embargo on the region. Czechoslovakia violated the resolution supplying the Jewish state with critical military hardware to match the (mainly British) heavy equipment and planes already owned by the invading Arab states. On June 11, a month-long UN truce was put into effect.

Following the announcement of independence, the Haganah became the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The Palmach, Etzel and Lehi were required to cease independent operations and join the IDF. During the ceasefire, Etzel attempted to bring in a private arms shipment aboard a ship called “Altalena“. When they refused to hand the arms to the government, Ben-Gurion ordered that the ship be sunk. Several Etzel members were killed in the fighting. Large numbers of Jewish immigrants, many of them World War II veterans and Holocaust survivors, now began arriving in the new state of Israel, and many joined the IDF.[110]

After an initial loss of territory by the Jewish state and occupation of Arab Palestine by the Arab armies, from July the tide gradually turned in the Israelis favor and they pushed the Arab armies out and conquered some of the territory which had been included in the proposed Arab state. At the end of November, tenuous local cease fires were arranged between the Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese. On December 1, King Abdullah announced the union of Transjordan with Arab Palestine west of the Jordan, the new state name being the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He adopted the title “King of Arab Palestine”; only Britain recognized the annexation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel

Many, including Christians have an untrustworthy eye toward Jews for a lot of reasons, the first of which was the assassination of their savor Jesus Christ by the Pharisees. The Pharisees didn’t want Jesus cutting in on their religious action in Jerusalem so they conspired to kill him. This has left a strange discombobulating effect between the Biblical New Testament and the Old—the two books are essentially different books of religion with the land of the Jews serving as the essential bridge. In the Old Testament, God is all about revenge, fire and brimstone, and conquest over oppressors, as the New Testament is about churchless religion which Jesus preached from hill tops—a religion of peace, pacifism, and love of life—except when Jesus got into that argument with the fig tree because it didn’t have any fruit.

What the Jews and Muslims have in common is that they both revere the same essential Biblical text—the Old Testament as their sacred document of religion.   The problem is that the Islamic states call their text the Koran, but the characters are essentially the same—only the viewpoint are changed. So there is no rectifying peace even between Christians and Jews where real trust takes place—let along two religions fighting over a version of the same characters from the same book, one called the Old Testament, the other called the Koran. Of course when faced with all this “evidence” and opinion—ideologues who wish to protect their point of view from reality—and facts—will declare that what has been presented here is too simplistic and that nobody understands their problems. But in essence, the Jews just want to live life and visit the temple of their King David. Muslims want to kill Jews. It really is that simple—and has been that way for many thousands of years—because both religions share the same Biblical stories, but one is a peaceful religion and the other is one of violence and conquest. So long as Jews live, Muslims will seek to destroy them and that is the essence of the trouble in the Middle East.

As a lesson to the United Nations, they never accomplished the micromanagement of the State of Israel correctly, so they should expect the same trouble everywhere they wish to tamper, whether it is the United States in pitting progressives from the coasts against the conservatives of the Heartland, or communists against capitalists, or dogs against cats. The United Nations has no ability to bring people together without antagonizing tensions. The only way for life to flourish and people to solve any problems is to change their foundation thoughts—and that cannot be done with silly laws or lines on a map. People have to change the way they think—and in that absence violence will dominate always.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Loop Rawlins ON FIRE: Why there are more little kids today wearing cowboy hats

There are more little children wearing cowboy hats today after watching Loop Rawlins on America’s Got Talent than there was a week ago. Loop and his wife were invited to the quarter finals at Radio City Studio in New York to perform the next phase of his AGT journey. Prior acts for AGT by Loop were flaming lassos with some acrobatic stunt work and gun spinning. But airing for millions of Americans on Tuesday August 5, 2014 Loop Rawlins lit the stage on fire and performed with firewhips in what turned out to be a spectacular event that captured the imagination of America. It was quite an exhibition of imagination and talent.  

As I was watching I couldn’t help but think of Chris Camp’s 2010 run which was as great as his stage show usually is. But Chris didn’t make it as far along as Loop has, and that is largely due to the fact that Rawlins has managed to perfect a number of western arts and mix up his act from one night to the next—and he has modernized the performance in a way that isn’t a reoccurrence of the old vaudeville acts that look stuffy on a national stage. Loop’s act is a perfect blend of tradition, mixed with modern innovation. Loop’s firewhips were notably from Riz, they are the same ones that I have used many times, but the new element was in lighting the stage on fire—it was very dramatic and infinitely cool. In one evening Loop won more fans for the western arts than several decades of similar work by many other performers just because the size of the stage was so large, and Loop had the ability to make it so far along with possessing so much variety in his skill sets.

A few weeks ago I didn’t pay much attention to Loop because I know more than a few western art performers who have done big shows like AGT. But, their performances have often been out of politeness—out of a show business respect for the acts of old. As good as Chris Camp and his wife are, they weren’t invited to go nearly as far as Loop has. Loop has managed to play his cards just right using social media to maximum effect during his run, being complimentary to the production of AGT while really putting on a variety of acts on stage when it counted most. Leading up to the Tuesday show, I watched with curiosity as Loop and his wife handled their life in the big city with style and grace for a couple of young people looming on fate. Loop presented himself in a traditional way without being exclusionary to the trends of the present with a sincerity that everyone could admire.

I enjoy hearing stories about young people who marry young and dream hard—and I love it even more when they actually scratch at success from such an early age. It was refreshing to see that Loop’s wife supports his endeavors with vigor and that the two of them are working at this whole thing as a nice team. They represent the hope I have of subsequent generations and the kind of people who the western arts produce. Just the practice of those arts help bring out character traits that are beneficial, and respectful to America in general. They should be presented without apology—and Loop does this without coming across as arrogant.

Increasingly, after my own experiences with entertainment, politics, and the innocent joy of the Western Arts, Loop Rawlins has the ability to reach more people with genuine patriotism than all the current talk radio hosts put together. Because of that, I would think the hill of success at AGT for Loop to climb would have been much steeper—due to the resistance there is out there to promote westerns or cowboys in a positive way by modern entertainment producers. Part of Loop’s skill has been to overcome that opposition with genuine wonder even by the most skeptical. Watching some of Loop’s work it is his gun act that he has left up his sleeve and can be exploited for most dramatic effect—but overcoming a New York culture that is rabidly anti-gun may be detrimental to his quest. It is a tough line to walk and so far Loop has walked it well. It will be hard to overcome his Tuesday performance with anything short of a live horse on stage—so I will be eager to see what he comes up with. But the fun is that he actually has a shot to take—and it is his skills off stage that give him that ability as much as what he does on stage.

There is a chance to reach many more people in a positive way with venues like America’s Got Talent than hundreds of hours of talk radio and meetings of restoration in American spirit. Loop speaks to the heart of all Americans no matter what their political backgrounds and embodies all the things that little kids hope to grow up to become. That is why there are more kids today wearing cowboy hats because they saw Loop on AGT and they fantasize about doing something similar in their own life.

I said the other day that I was proud of Loop Rawlins—he is the next progression of an art form that means something very dear to me—and its exciting to see it develop in a world that has become so cynical of goodness—and clean fun. Loop’s act is everything that Mark Allen hoped for when he founded the Wild West Arts Club several decades ago and he is the brightest current star in that endeavor. It is in him that I see a hope that has been vacant for such a long time and it was a real privilege to see him ignite those firewhips on such a large stage and show metaphorically the plight of a western arts performer standing in the middle of all the fire society can launch and handle it with the grace and valor that destiny often imposes

Eight years ago I performed the below firewhip act at a film festival during a stunt demonstration for the World Stunt Association.   From that one performance it led producers to make a number of attempts to put firewhips into movies like the Immortals, the recent Hercules, and films in development by A list stars.  Review it now and consider the implications of Loop’s firewhip act on a much larger stage–then it will become evident why I am excited.  Back then nobody had ever seen a firewhip–but now, millions of people have and the evolution of such an art can take place with vigor.

Oh, and Loop, you should come to the last WWAC convention left in America.  You’d enjoy the company.  CLICK HERE to see this most recent year.  We have it each year during the last weekend of July.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Bullwhips For Self-Defense: The techniques of Anthony De Longis

One thing that is different from my view of bullwhip work and many of my friends who spend a lot of time working on technique with an emphasis on dance like choreography is that I find the whip most useful as a melee weapon in martial arts. In my novel The Symposium of Justice, the main character Cliffhanger uses bullwhips exclusively as his primary weapon to fight the forces of evil. Even when firearms and modern technology present options that might otherwise be considered more attractive—Cliffhanger uses two bullwhips to slice up and dominate his rivals with blistering effectiveness. My friend Gery Deer runs the only bullwhip instructional studio in the world, and his emphasis has always been non-combative instruction. So when the two of us get together we politely avoid the subject. Most bullwhip artists feel the same way that Gery does—and for good reason. There is a stigma that bullwhips are naturally violent weapons, so to promote the sport, they put emphasis on the non combative aspects of it. But, bullwhips by their nature are very violent, and are among the most flexible and versatile weapons ever created by a human being. And a guy who has made quite an extensive living teaching bullwhip combat techniques is Anthony De Longis.

Anthony has a long history with bullwhips and has done a good job of promoting them within Hollywood. Once while I was doing a short picture in Glendale, California which is Anthony’s hometown his name came up often by the stunt people and stunt coordinators. He is well-known within the Hollywood community as the go-to guy for bullwhips in film and he has worked with great passion to create interest in his spare time.

As a published writer, De Longis has contributed articles on the sword and the bullwhip to both martial arts and stage combat publications. These include articles on the Spanish Mysterious Circle, published in Fight Master, Inside Karate and Martial Arts Insider, and on sabre in Black Belt. Articles on the bullwhip have appeared in Inside Karate, Black Belt and Inside Stunts.

Off-camera, De Longis was Fight Director for the Los Angeles Music Center Opera from 1985 to 2003. He was Swordmaster / Stunt Coordinator for episodes 1-6 of The Queen Of Swords, and Swordmaster for Secondhand Lions.

He is also a professional stage movement and combat instructor, teaching in academic (UCLA Theatre Arts Dept. 1974-1993), small group and private settings seminars. He was inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame as 2008 Weapons Instructor of the Year and into the International Knife Throwers Hall of Fame in 2009,

http://www.delongis.com/Biography.html

He shares with many of the people I most associate with a love of these kinds of skills—these western arts–and his impact to the industry deserves respect. He and I share specifically a love for Terry Jacka made bullwhips from Australia as most of the rest of the industry leans toward Joe Strain. There are others, but those two names are among the highest in the business. Samples of both their work can be found at Western Stage Props. However, both whip makers can found at their individual sites.

http://www.westernstageprops.com/

But when it comes to combat and the bullwhip, I can think of no better weapon in the world to deal with an armed thug in melee combat. There isn’t a martial artist that I’ve met, or a weapon used in those arts which surpasses the ability of a bullwhip. They can be coiled up for easy transportation and stuffed into a bag for concealment, but can become a projector of danger as lethal as knives from a safe distance of 8’ to 10’. They can disarm a foe, or tie up their feet if they are trying to run away from a treacherous act, or bullwhips can choke an assailant to within inches of their life with the leverage needed to cut off the oxygen and blood to their brain with much more effectiveness than bare hands even among the strongest man.

Years ago I sold cars and spent a lot of time on the car lot waiting for customers to visit so I could sell them something. To kill time, I often practiced with my bullwhip in the back lot, which attracted the attention of the various lot techs and mechanics. On one particular occasion a couple of strong guys who thought they were particularly tough wanted to spar with me, their knives and baseball bats from the trunk of their car against my whip. Three of them against me and my bullwhip. It wasn’t even close. I was able to get the 12’ whip around me so quick that they couldn’t attack without getting hit. When they tried to come all at the same time I was easily able to go after the head of one of them to break their line and step out behind it keeping them from trapping me. If they elected to take the hit, it would have hurt them catastrophically—which was the intention because we were playing that kind of game. One of them finally got smart and stepped on the end my whip as it was so long, it took a lot longer to move around than some of the smaller 6’ whips. Once he had the end of the whip trapped, he thought he and his friends had me defenseless. But what they didn’t know was that I could then close ranks and wrap the whip around their necks and use the handle as a club—very similar to a blackjack.

My grandfather used to carry a police style blackjack in his pocket and considered this adequate to knock away most foes he met around town in times of crises. I used it a few times, but retired it quickly realizing that it was best to get distance away from your opponents as opposed to being close enough to use a small club. I replaced the blackjack with a bullwhip and have never since stopped. If an opponent has control of the end of the whip it essentially takes their hands out of the fight. This gives the bullwhip wielder the advantage in a conflict because they can then use the handle as a club against an unarmed victim.

My use of bullwhips has always been combat related as opposed to showmanship. Recently a reader of my daughter’s website wondered why I had a bullwhip with me on our trip to the Ghost Ship of Cincinnati. Well, there were reports that some of the locals might be hostile and often take shots at people who visit the Ghost Ship. That turned out not to be the case—the people I met were quite nice—but you never know when you might run across some drug dealer’s marijuana patch, or someone burying a body deep in the woods—and in times like that you don’t want to be unarmed. So I bring my bullwhip as I always have. When people think of such things, they think of Indiana Jones—but the truth of the matter is, Indiana Jones is a practical adventurer—he knew how to dress for occasions and what to bring. Ironically, my daughter and I used my bullwhip to climb up the side of the ship. Of course I didn’t use one of my Jacka whips for that task—I used one of my long rawhide whips which are very tough. With those whips you can swing across things and climb trees—or disassemble someone who means to do you harm.

I could tell many stories about bullwhips, and when it comes to combat work with bullwhips, Anthony De Longis is the current spokesman at the entertainment level. What he has been preaching is real, and really just begins to touch on the possibilities. But those possibilities are infinitely exciting when it comes to weapons and their effectiveness.  In my opinion learning any other skill for any other weapon is pointless and a waste of time. There is nothing that I’d choose to use for self-defense than a bullwhip and that includes a firearm. Most firearms are shot at a close range and often miss their mark the first time—just because of the implication of what it means to shoot another person—death—long jail times, that kind of thing. The bullwhip will put an end to such threats within 1.5 seconds which is often the time it takes to decide to pull a trigger. The legal impact to such a self-defense measure is far less, and much more beneficial to staying out of court in the aftermath. Anybody who has been thinking of learning such a skill might want to visit Anthony out at his ranch to learn a thing or two about combat bullwhip techniques. That skill will likely save the life of you and those who mean you harm with the most effective way to remove threats under circumstances of coercion.   His site can be reached by the link above.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Great Loop Rawlins: Doing for a living what’s driven by passion

I remember well when a bunch of us as young men—Gery Deer, Chris Camp, and of course myself were watching the work of Mark Allen and Alex Green out in Las Vegas and trying to improve on the western arts that they were putting on for America.  And we became faster, more accurate and more exciting as a result.  Gery Deer and Chris Camp have in fact really elevated the western arts act to new levels throughout the last two decades and I have done some work in Hollywood and literature that we all hoped would ignite the next generation.  And while we are far from done, the seeds of all that hard work are finally paying off.  Last year I spoke about the “Rise of Adam Winrich” who came out of the Ohio WWAC class of 2005, CLICK HERE TO REVIEW, and even as the national WWAC (Wild West Arts Club) ran by Mark Allen which I was a member of for many years finally died out in the late 2000s, it looks like the legacy is living on in the young man named Loop Rawlins.  Loop is just a few years older than my oldest son-in-law and is of around the same age as Adam—and like those vigorous, hungry youth who want to surpass the efforts of their elders—in this case—us, Loop has taken the various western arts, gun spinning, whip work, and particularly the lasso and really moved them to a new level as a recent member of America’s Got Talent during the month of July 2014.

Loop did a fabulous job on America’s Got Talent and even though he is very good with bullwhips, he chose to do an act with the lasso.  His musical selection was wonderful and his on stage presence was energetic proving that there is quite a dramatic hunger for this art form that is uniquely American.  Gery has appeared on that show and so has Chris, but Loop has taken the energy to a new level.  Loop had in fact met at an early age many of the same people I call friends, he was at the 2002 Wild West Arts Convention conducted by Mark Allen and it is there that he won five international awards as a young burgeoning talent.  He has since worked for Cirque Du Soleil and shot some commercials for McDonald’s, MTV and an award-winning Western film.

For people who still look at western arts performers and wonder why they do it, there is a purity to them that simply isn’t found anywhere else in any other professional venue.  Loop represents the best of what America has to offer the world and it is for people like him that programs like America’s Got Talent are designed.  It should be noticed that many of the young men performing regularly in Wild West Arts today have beautiful young women on their arms—particularly Adam and Loop.  They are today’s “rock stars.”  When I was their age, heavy metal band members attracted the type of women that are now flocking to see Adam and Loop perform.  But what’s different about these young Wild West Performers is that they are straight-laced and dedicated.  With the same energy they put into the thousands of hours of practice it takes to become good at these art forms, they are able to maintain long-standing relationships with attractive women.

For women with limited options these days, where 9 ½ out of 10 men in the world from the ages 16 to 60 are just absolute douches—low ambition slugs who struggle to wake up every morning with a positive thought—they know that people like Loop Rawlins is a wonderful catch.  Even with all his success so far, it is hard to make a living with the Western Arts—it is hard to do what you love to do, because there aren’t many people willing to pay for it.  The reason is that there just aren’t very many people in show business who know how to write about the Western Arts in an exciting way that modern audiences find attractive.  In many ways, I have dedicated my efforts at resolving that end of the business—by writing content that producers might want to hire people like Loop and Adam for.  My friend Gery Deer was brought in as a whip consultant for the movie The Rundown.  His whip holstering system worked great, and we still use them to this day primarily because of his experience working on films like that.  But the amount of motion pictures produced that calls for those skills is just dismal.  Television is even worse—ironically.  As I’ve reported, this is largely due to the perseverance of progressive politics which has entered show business.  One of the founders of the Wild West Arts Club, Alex Green appeared in thousands of television shows and movies because in his day, Hollywood produced them and needed a Western Arts performer.  These days, Anthony DeLongis is the only whip coach in Hollywood—primarily—because there just isn’t enough production going on to justify more.  But in spite of the cool reception among popular culture, the new rebellion for attractive young women hoping to land a real man who thinks, loves, and lives life with traditional passion—Western Arts performers are their ticket to a good husband—feminism has left most women with few options that their biological clocks can be set by—and for them, they know Loop is the catch of a century.

When my own son-in-law was young and was attending the Ohio WWAC conventions, he had the ambition to do all the things that Loop is doing now.  He wanted to learn roping, knife throwing, gun spinning, but he managed to get pretty good with a bullwhip.  He even managed to win for several years the bullwhip fast draw.  But he had to make a living and it is hard to get really good at what you love and still make a living that doesn’t involve that passion. I’ve managed in unique ways.  I wear my whip holster with me everywhere I go, the one that Gery made for me after his experiences at The Rundown set—to remind me of what’s important.  Everyone who deals with me knows about my real passion and it’s not unusual for me to pull my whips out in a parking lot of an expensive restaurant dressed in a suit and tie and crack targets out of the mouth of the curious.  Like Loop, I have a family and the choices I made during my child raising years was to not take the hard life of a performer and enter business so I could make the kind of money needed to care for them.  Recently I was with Chris Camp as he was unloading his “show” from the back of his van. Chris Camp is one of the best Western Acts around—he is the current high mark—but even after all his years and passion, he works hard to make ends meet.  It’s not easy to say the least and he has traveled all over the world to do shows—much the way Loop is currently.  Chris’s van likely has over 200,000 miles on it and it’s hardly new.  But he approaches every show with enthusiasm and love no matter if the audience is several thousand to just twenty-five.  When Loop said at the beginning of his America’s Got Talent presentation that he wanted to make a living for his family doing what he loved, it hit even Howard Stern hard—because like anybody who has been around knows—that is the real trick.  The real dream we all have in life is to do what we love—not just work to make money.  It is best to have those values aligned.

So it was nice to see Loop pushing the limits of those set before him and taking Western Arts to new levels.  I wish America was filled with millions of young men just like Loop, and if I have it my way, they will be.  The best thing that could happen in America is that the ratio of good men might evolve from 9 ½ out of 10 bad ones to something like 6 out of 10.  Women who want good husbands deserve that opportunity if they want it, and right now—even those that want it can’t have one–because they don’t exist.    But Loop is one of the good ones and it is good to see that he is pushing to break through barriers which are quite thick, and that he is determined, hopeful, and resolute to keep trying, to keep practicing, and to find that secret treasure in life defined by aligning what we do as a living with our passions.  Loop’s energy at America’s Got Talent is derived from that hope and the promise that people might see the need for his art in the quest we all share toward creating a productive society built by values rooted in American culture.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

A “Kick-Ass” Satire of Rich Hoffman: Living authentically–against the current.

I have a lot of readers and obviously the kids who made the video below were satirically bringing their perspective to my content and life as viewed from their California neighborhood culture.  Their comedy skit against bullwhip superheroes also looks to be shaped by the movie Kick-Ass 2 which wasn’t nearly as good as the first one—but did make some good points.  My novel The Symposium of Justice was a work of philosophy written at a fairly young age molded after my personal experiences with politics and bullwhips during the 1990s.  In those years I was in my twenties and knew what I thought about things, but couldn’t yet understand why just because there wasn’t enough contextual information.  About a year ago I wrote an article titled Taking the Mask off Once Again, (CLICK HERE TO REVIEW,) which put a kind of end cap on that period from my twenties to current—which essentially came to a similar conclusion as the ending of Kick-Ass 2—superhereos aren’t needed on movie screens and behind crazy costumes and masks as much as they are in real life.  Fictional characters are fun for telling stories but the world is in desperate need of real life people who are willing to do heroic things without a mask of any kind—whether the mask is literature, an entertainment personality, or a literal costumed avenger.

From the culture of young people taught to not have any values or a code of ethics I’m sure a lot of the things I do seem to them the way they were presented in that video—they cited a Midwestern lifestyle, a grandfather’s bullwhip, and the desire to save America by using it in their plot.  They are products of public school peer pressure shaped by the politics of our day—which is crumbling in virtually every social category.  Of course they hold the belief that America doesn’t need a bullwhip wielding superhero from the Midwest—because they don’t yet see the crises before them.

After I wrote The Symposium of Justice I didn’t feel comfortable performing the normal role of author.  Scholarly pursuits centered on philosophy were a pretty new concept for me and wasn’t exactly the direction I thought my life should go.  I was used to performing actual physical feats, and doing things that were actually very dangerous.  So it felt strange to write about things as opposed to doing things.  In my neighborhood—bad things were happening—and the lag period between books was just too great to solve problems in real-time.  When presented with those kinds of problems a person should use every skill they have to solve problems.  The results often mean the revelation at the ending of Kick-Ass 2—that the world needs real people to do extraordinary things and to do it without the concealment of a mask.

As an author of a couple of books now and using this blog site to tackle problems in real-time instead of the long publication periods it takes to move a novel through the normal process of going to print most of what I have written can be confirmed by some real life experience.  I have never been satisfied telling stories or providing content without experience lending perspective to my work.  And to get experience you have to do things—as a person.  Watching that satirical video I can’t help but feel sorry for those kids—like most young people they are finishing a long career of public school education shaped by a statist government and they believe they have the tools of assessment needed to enter the world.  But they don’t—instead they will travel through the normal cycle that most people go through, they will start their lives voting for people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (if they vote at all).  They will then support all the liberal causes, “Global Warming,” economic socialism, gay rights over traditional marriage, and collective value over individual merit.  By the time they hit their late 20s and early 30s they’ll discover that to have children of their own—they’ll become more conservative.  At that time they will often support a presidential candidate like Mitt Romney (soft Republican), they’ll start becoming frustrated with larger government once they see their taxes increase once they purchase a home, and they’ll start thinking like a Republican after cutting grass in their own yards each week.  They’ll spend their lives trying to make their bosses happy, will stare at their high school senior yearbooks wondering where all their friends went and will discover that they now have resentful teenagers who do not show respect for them during their 40s and 50s.  The kids of course will be angry at their parents for not providing a good role model as their parents will spend most of their lives as social boot-lickers instead of admirable parents, and homeowners.  During their late fifties their children will reconcile with them as those young people then realize that their liberal educations and salty outlook on life has not prepared them for the needs of their individual lives—and the parent and child will likely sit in a restaurant embracing each other on how mysterious life is and how screwed up their preparation for it was.  In their 60s the parent will likely then become a real conservative who will want to see the world they are leaving behind restored in some fashion to what it was when they were children because they see how detrimental everything has become during their lifespan—and they will at that point regret it—hoping to improve that life while they still live.  During their 70s and 80s those parents will find themselves abandoned by their children, overlooked by their grandchildren, and completely despondent to their great-grandchildren.  They’ll watch in frustration as the world of politics spirals out of control in spite of all their efforts and the last days of their lives will shrivel away into oblivion.  Not long after, nobody will visit their grave sites and history will forget them.

That cycle is a standard one for anybody who follows the shaped life of a statist government where the service and attention of that entity takes precedence over individuality.  There is no other ending for most of the people in our society—who follow that path.  My hope has been to maybe change the lives of a few so that such a miserable existence could be avoided and I use the skills I have in all their capacity to perform that task.  The kids who made that video have no other path in their life but the one described above they will live it nearly word for word and there is nothing I or anybody else can do to help them.  They are simply too far gone.  Even in comedy, much about reality is revealed.  Nothing is just a joke—everything has a cost associated with it—and you can’t cheat life without cheating yourself in some fashion.

Recently I told a bit of the story of the movie Bronco Billy by Clint Eastwood and for me, it taught me early on that people only get one chance to live their unique life the way they see fit.  That choice may run counter to the culture of society—but the goal is to be authentic to your individuality—and to not yield to the social pressure of conformity.  I made my choice long ago to live an authentically personal life in spite of the social pressures to serve a bind system led by sightless bureaucrats.  I have lent my support to many causes of the day in real life, a spokesman against taxes, Tea Party groups, talk radio, business,   and countless other endeavors—but I have never stopped being who I uniquely am even as those movements have ebbed and flowed.  And it always comes back around to the term “Justice Comes from the Crack of a Whip” from The Symposium of Justice.  In that novel the justice that most of us seek does not come from the laws of politicians, it comes from our own personal authenticity and those destinations can only be found by living life honestly even when the currents of civilization seem opposed to the task.  To be the last living things left on a receding beach, you have to stand against the current because then and only then—will you discover what was always hidden from view.  I communicated what I saw in my novel but felt I needed to dig deeper and to do that—it required real physical action instead of just observation to discover the concealment that holds many of life’s real answers.   And a tool for getting at those answers can be obtained with a bullwhip if you know how to use them.  A mask isn’t required.

Even though those kids thought they were making a satire of Kick-Ass at my expense, they obviously missed the point of the movie.  But that doesn’t surprise me.  It won’t hit them for another 25 years but eventually they will look at how they saw the world now and regret it.  They’ll also learn that they were woefully wrong—America does need such a hero and that even though they changed the title to avoid direct slander “The Crack of Justice” the proper way to always frame the situation is that “JUSTICE COMES WITH THE CRACK OF A WHIP”—because it does.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Bernie Sanders the Socialist: A strategic plan involving immigration, economics, and the Vikings

Because of his work over the Veterans Affairs scandal and trying to rectify the errors of management directly on the doorstep of Washington politics, Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont has been receiving a lot of press—even being featured on the O’Reilly Factor.  Noticeably he is listed as one of the rare “Independents” in the Senate as he doesn’t recognize himself as neither a Republican nor a Democrat.  Many who do not know the real story might think that Sanders is an Independent in the way that a Tea Party candidate might be—but they would be woefully mistaken.  Instead, Sanders is the exact opposite, he is so radically to the left that he doesn’t even call himself a Democrat, or a Progressive to hide his real intentions.  Instead, he is a devoted Socialist, but lists his party affiliation as an “I” instead of an “S.”  His interest in the VA issue is one to defend the role that government can play in managing social needs—to protect the brand of socialism he supports most, Scandinavian socialism—which unknown to most of America—is all the rage in the Beltway of Washington.

Scandinavian socialism is a mix of high taxes to support cradle to grave welfare mixed with lower regulations against business to churn growth.  These types of socialists have learned that to generate tax money for government to loot off of, they must have businesses that can generate things to tax.  So they lowered barriers for businesses to start so that they could tax them to support their welfare state.  Their primary focus is to eliminate the gap between the “rich and the poor” so to provide an equalitarian society under the managed care of government.  But what Sanders and his fellow socialists in the Democratic Party and Progressive caucuses refuse to learn is that the success of such societies are far from being equalitarian, but have more to do with their Viking past and low immigrant population—which will be explored at the end of this article.  But first let us learn more about Bernie Sanders and the tremendous push from the progressive invasion that is intent on insurgency in the United States starting in such bastions of liberalism like Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York. The following information is from none other than the New York Times in 2007.  After the election of Sanders they were very happy and produced a very long and glowing story on Sanders as they felt their kind of candidate had just been elected into the Senate—an open and honest Socialist who refused to run from the designation—unlike Chuck Schumer and at the time Barney Frank.

Sanders has always been an easier fit in Vermont than in Washington. Being a Socialist in the seat of two-party orthodoxy will do that. While he has generally championed liberal Democratic positions over the years — and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsed his Senate campaign — Sanders has strenuously resisted calling himself a Democrat. And he has clung to a mantle — socialism — that brings considerable stigma, in large part for its association with authoritarian communist regimes (which Sanders is quick to disavow).

But he does little to airbrush the red “S” from his political profile. On the wall of his Congressional office hangs a portrait of Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate of the early 20th century. A poster in a conference room marks Burlington’s sister-city relationship with Puerto Cabeza, Nicaragua — one of a few such alliances he forged with cities in Marxist states during his 10-year stint as mayor of Vermont’s biggest city in the 1980s.

Socialism brings Sanders instant novelty in Washington and, in many circles, instant dismissal as a freak. But Sanders’s outcast status in Washington probably owes as much to his jackhammer style as to any stubborn ideology. It is a town filled with student body president types — and Sanders, for his part, finished a distant third when he ran to be president of his class at James Madison High School in Brooklyn.

“I’m not afraid of being called a troublemaker,” Sanders says, something he’s been called many times, in many different ways, many of them unprintable. “But you have to be smart. And being smart means not creating needless enemies for yourself.”

In this regard, Sanders has not always been smart, especially when he was first elected to the House in 1990. He called Congress “impotent” and dismissed the two major parties as indistinguishable tools of the wealthy. He said it wouldn’t bother him if 80 percent of his colleagues lost re-election — not the best way to win friends in a new workplace.

“Bernie alienates his natural allies,” Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, said at the time. “His holier-than-thou attitude — saying in a very loud voice he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else — really undercuts his effectiveness.” The late Joe Moakley, another Massachusetts Democrat, waxed almost poetic in his derision for Sanders. “He is out there wailing on his own,” Moakley said. “He screams and hollers, but he is all alone.”

Frank says he came to like and work well with Sanders, with whom he served on the House Financial Services Committee. His early objections were over Sanders’s railing against both parties as if they were the same. “I think when he first got here, Bernie underestimated the degree that Republicans had moved to the right,” Frank told me. “I get sick of people saying ‘a curse on both your houses.’ When you point out to them that you agree with them on most things, they’ll say, ‘Yeah, well, I hold my friends up to a higher standard.’ Well, O.K., but remember that we’re your friends.”

Among his House colleagues, “Bernie’s not a bad guy,” is something I heard a lot of. “You appreciate Bernie the more you see him in action,” says Senator Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who served with him for several years in the House. A fellow Brooklynite who is nine years younger, Schumer attended the same elementary school as Sanders (P.S. 197) and the same high school (James Madison, which also graduated a third United States senator, Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota). “Bernie does tend to grow on people, whether it’s in the House or in Vermont,” Schumer says.

But again: Could Sanders be elected to the Senate anywhere else?

No, not as a Socialist, Schumer says. “Even in New York State it would be hard.”

Massachusetts? “Maybe this year he could,” Frank says, meaning 2006. “But if he were running in any other state, he probably would have to comb his hair.”

Leahy says that just any Socialist probably couldn’t get elected in Vermont, either. But Sanders has made himself known in a state small enough — physically and in terms of population — for someone, particularly a tireless someone, to insinuate himself into neighborly dialogues and build a following that skirts ideological pigeonholes. Indeed, there are no shortages of war veterans or struggling farmers in Vermont who would seemingly have no use for a humorless aging hippie peacenik Socialist from Brooklyn, except that Sanders has dealt with many of them personally, and it’s a good bet his office has helped them procure some government benefit.

“People have gotten to know him as Bernie,” Leahy says. “Not as the Socialist.”

Sanders calls himself as a “democratic Socialist.” When I asked him what this meant, as a practical matter, in capitalist America circa 2007, he did what he often does: he donned his rhetorical Viking’s helmet and waxed lovingly about the Socialist governments of Scandinavia. He mentioned that Scandinavian countries have nearly wiped out poverty in children — as opposed to the United States, where 18 to 20 percent of kids live in poverty. The Finnish government provides free day care to all children; Norwegian workers get 42 weeks of maternity leave at full pay.

But would Americans ever accept the kinds of taxes that finance the Scandinavian welfare state? And would Sanders himself trade in the United States government for the Finnish one? He is curiously, frustratingly non-responsive to questions like this. “I think there is a great deal we can learn from Scandinavia,” he said after a long pause. And then he returns to railing about economic justice and the rising gap between rich and poor, things he speaks of with a sense of outrage that always seems freshly summoned.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/magazine/21Sanders.t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Economic inequality is caused because some people don’t wish to do things productively that others do.  The ratio of those who have versus those who have not is not manageable by comparing their social or economic output which is typical of socialism.  The value of initiative is always ignored—but it is because of initiative that some have wealth and others don’t in a capitalist society.  Some show up to invent, create, and do productive work while others wait for the products of that enterprise to enhance their lives.  But in their quest for equality—they hope to be labeled with sameness with the productive through socialism.

In Scandinavian socialism the big secret of their success is that they are a series of small countries that have not had massive quantities of immigration—due to their regional location largely.  They also benefit from their heritage of a hardy people who descended from the enterprising—and war like Vikings.  Scandinavians are not lazy, but are used to tribal rule, which is why their collective socialism works somewhat for them.  They aren’t producing massive new inventions carrying mankind into space, or developing new medical breakthroughs, but they are producing enough economic activity to support their welfare culture—to some extent that can be viewed as not catastrophic.  They get this from their heritage as Vikings who served kings and other nobles in spite of their independence—and they did it willingly.  Their culture has not changed demographically a great deal because of their lack of an immigrant population.  To a large degree, the people of Scandinavia are the same hard-working Vikings they were in the past.  For more proof of this the following captions from Frontpage Magazine will further illustrate the point:

Because the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany are large countries, the absolute numbers of their immigrants are also very high, not just in percentages.

So is poverty low in Scandinavian countries because their “socialism” works, or because they have relatively few poor immigrants entering?  And if poverty is low because Scandinavian “socialism” works, should it not be working for migrants in those countries as well?

Separate poverty data for the migrant populations in Scandinavian countries are available and there are numerous indications that these are quite high. According to one study, “While first and second generation immigrants constituted 44% of the poor children in 1997, they were 65% of all poor children in Sweden in 2008.  Only 5% of native Swedish children live in poverty. For immigrant children with both parents born outside of the Sweden, the child poverty rate is 39%.”  Poverty rates have also been shown to be high for immigrants in Denmark.  According to a recent study of poverty rates among immigrants in all Scandinavian countries, “While native children face yearly poverty risks of less than 10 percent in all three countries and for all years investigated the increasing proportion of immigrant children with an origin in middle and low-income countries have poverty risks that varies from 38 and up to as much as 58 percent.”

So Scandinavian “socialism” is doing a remarkably poor job in eliminating poverty among non-Scandinavians living in those Scandinavian utopias.

The conclusion can only be one thing.  The low poverty rate among Scandinavians in Scandinavian countries is thanks to the fact that Scandinavians work.  It is NOT because socialism works!

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/steven-plaut/does-scandinavian-socialism-work/

For a guy who has a portrait of the extreme socialist Eugene V. Debs and maintained a relationship with Puerto Cabeza, Nicaragua during his stint as a mayor, the intentions of Bernie Sanders political affiliation is evident.  The difference between him and Chuck Schumer or those like him in the Democratic Party is that Sanders is honest about his intentions while the others feel they must deceive and change the names of things to avoid the backlash of an American society built by capitalism.  Sanders and the Democrats who work with him through progressive caucuses desire socialism—specifically Scandinavian socialism—and they know what they are doing.

In America, the people are not like Scandinavia—the people who have settled North America are uniquely from every corner of the world.  Their heritage is not built by a Viking past but by pasts that caused them to flee wherever they came from in favor of the opportunity to work and produce without government intrusion.  The secret behind the open boarder policy that many Democrats support is they hope to create a more equalitarian world by bringing immigrants in from Marxist countries, like Nicaragua and Honduras—and integrating them into American society to water down the immigrants who have come to North America with a hard-driving work ethic.  Democrats achieve two things with this method, they destroy the work ethic that is making most immigrants desirable hires for a society built by capitalism, but they also bring with them the conditioned socialism which has impoverished their native lands.  Slowly over time, these new immigrants from socialist sources will change America from a capitalist country into a socialist one paving the way for people like Bernie Sanders to initiate his version of Scandinavian socialism.

Not even Fox News will put the “S” next to Bernie’s name and call him what he really is, or talk about what he truly stands for.  They allow the charade of politics to continue because as part of the New York culture, they see this push for Scandinavian socialism coming from virtually every politician, from Mitt Romney to Chuck Schumer—so they ignore the stereotypes against socialism that persists all across the flyover states.  Bernie hopes to repair the relationship that the government has with the VA so that other government programs will not receive scandalous appraisal in the future as the Democratic immigration assault performs their strategic effect.  But now, for those who didn’t know it, you know dear reader what Bernie Sanders really is.  He’s not an “Independent.”  He’s a socialist, and the media does not put an “S” next to his name because they hope to deceive viewers from the real intentions of the Democratic Party.  Since Bernie is so unapologetically “socialist” the media helps him by changing the “S” to an “I” so not to scare voters.  And the deception is so great that it was even perpetrated on the O’Reilly Factor—which shows just how deep socialism has already penetrated American culture for a destination of full-fledged Marxism which is supported so fervently by the New York Times and every other political figure in entertainment or public office that calls themselves “progressives.”  The crime in this case is that a willing deception has taken place and virtually everyone is playing along—even Bill O’Reilly.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  

Why People Like Lois Lerner Fear Conservatives: The McDonald’s matrix

People’s political opinions largely are formed by the kind of work they do, so it is not unusual within the Beltway of Washington to find people who think the way Lois Lerner does about “radical right-wingers.” For them, anybody who is not willing to throw endless amounts of money at government jobs and altruistic causes progressives support—is a “dangerous right-winger.” The same mentality caught by the Lois Lerner emails can be found in virtually any public school, or where government workers have unrealistic expectations about wage rates and quality of living under the umbrella of government. The desire for government to always expand is to bring in more employees who will thus protect it from insurgency. It is that concern of rejection that people like Lois Lerner fear—a rejection of their lifestyle and beliefs which is frightening to them.

One of the reasons I have spent the last week talking about the Annie Oakley Festival that I recently attended was because the entire region around Darke County, Ohio where it’s held is so wonderfully free of the type of people who work for government. There are of course police who sit like parasites on the side of the road looking to give out tickets to meet their revenue quotas—there are school teachers, and Post Office workers around town, but a vast majority of the people were farmers or people who have fled the urban life for the rural countryside to get away from government in some form or another. Nobody I met during my visit were radicals, but there were a lot of people who were to the political right of my position who have Don’t Tread on Me flags hanging from their porches, and gun racks in the windows of their trucks and they didn’t vote for Obama—that is for sure. They are the mainstream of rural America which makes up most of the country—and in those lands, they are filed with the kind of people who Lois Lerner fears most—those scary people who call in to talk radio shows and express anti-government opinions.

Lois Lerner and Barack Obama gladly put on blinders to the outside world of the Beltway. Their entire life and culture of their occupations centers around government employment which is not performance based, but measured by kiss-ass ability. Schmoozing, brown-nosing, and boot licking to gain promotions are particularly prevalent in government occupations if they want to accelerate faster than their annual merit increases. The fear that those government employees have of the “radical right” are essentially of those who have value, who likely attend church on Sundays, who are engaged in long marriages to the same spouse, who prefer straight sex over anal sex—in essence people who care about things over those who don’t.

I tend to judge cultures based on the McDonald’s matrix. Since McDonald’s restaurants essentially are the same everywhere—the food is the same, costs are the same and is of the same quality, the only differences from one to another is in the people who generally attend. For instance, if a McDonald’s is attended in Finneytown, Ohio it is common to see women wearing hoochy mama heels looking like they are Vegas prostitutes because the welfare culture in and around the area produces those types of people. I actually had this experience last week during a lunch rush. The people were discombobulated and behaved as if they were perpetually intoxicated. The people in front and behind the counter were fragmented—the static patterns of their lives had major holes that were filled by chaos. The best way to attribute their behavior was that they were the result of government employment—in one way or another they were victims of government employment. They either worked for the government in some way, or they were welfare families mooching off the tax payer for their sustenance. Just days later my wife and I stopped at a very nice McDonald’s in downtown Eaton, Ohio—in the middle of a very rural community. Sitting in the seats were old men reading newspapers and talking to their neighbors, groups of women planning yard sales, and families bringing their kids to play on the vast indoor playground they have there. Behind the counter the young women were very nice, and seemed engaged with life. It looked like the town McDonald’s was a major employer in that remote country town, so people treated the job with care—like it was something to cherish. A truck drove by me outside with a Confederate Flag in the back window and had a sticker of the church they attended on the bumper. This was the land that people like Lois Lerner fears most from the vantage point of the Beltway.

Using the McDonald’s matrix it is easy to determine the quality of people from region to region. Most of the time the root cause of degradation of a population can be determined by properly measuring the amount of government influence there is on a community. In places where welfare checks are more frequent than privately employed citizens, the quality of people goes down dramatically by way of personal values and taste. In places where getting a job at McDonald’s is a coveted occupation the value for the type of clothing one wears, the way they speak, the kind of things they put in their heads goes up dramatically. My trip to the Eaton McDonald’s was in itself a vacation because it was nice to be around people who had value. Beltway types and big government employees would say that such places are racist or “extreme” in their political views simply because they themselves fear such places the way that a demon might fear Holy Water. They ridicule the people in such towns because they don’t have control of them. They don’t fear the people who live in Finnytown.

Lois Lerner is reflective of a Beltway culture from both Republicans and Democrats who live in a bubble of their own making constructed by their social mooching and rampant looting of those who do have value. Since they are fleeing from judgment for their social crimes they have no other recourse but to hate and slander. The very existence of some people is too much for typical government workers to handle. During my entire trip to the Annie Oakley Festival from the time I left my driveway to the show itself, the interaction with the people was wonderfully American in that they were self-motivated and lacking that haze over their eyes that you often get when dealing with government employees—where the light is on, but nobody is home upstairs.

It is this culture of having somebody home who can think with their minds that Lois Lerner and her type of government worker fears so emphatically. They slander it, they tax it, they try with everything they have to destroy it—but when they can’t they hide from it in their Beltway offices and their expensive homes hoping to change the world into their image by other means. And when they can’t, they complain about it. I’ve been to D.C. and have traveled all around the area. I covered enough ground on my trip to the Annie Oakley Festival to eat the land mass of Washington D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles put together. The people who live in that vast summation of land won’t be opening their doors to the type of government interference that has corrupted Finneytown, and the other suburbs of Cincinnati where former glorious homes now rot under the care of the lazy, the addicted, and the minds with nobody home.

To illustrate the point let’s look at some census data between the two regions, Finnytown then Eaton.

In Finnytown the population was 12,741 at the U.S. 2010 census, in 5,294 housing units.[2] However, as of the 2000 census,[3] formerly there had been 13,492 people, 5,194 households, and 3,807 families residing in the CDP. The population density had been 3,382.8 people per square mile (1,305.6/km²). There had been 5,336 housing units in 2000. The racial makeup of the CDP in 2010 was 61.7% White, 33.7% Black, 1.9% Hispanic, with others 1% or less. However, the racial makeup in 2000 had been 72.95% White, 23.83% African American, 0.16% Native American, 1.10% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.45% from other races, and 1.48% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race had been 0.80% of the population in 2000.

There had been 5,194 households, out of which 34.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.7% were married couples living together, 14.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.7% were non-families. 23.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.57 and the average family size was 3.04.

In the CDP in 2000, the population was spread out, with 27.6% under the age of 18, 6.1% from 18 to 24, 26.3% from 25 to 44, 22.9% from 45 to 64, and 17.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 87.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 80.3 males.

The median income for a household in the CDP in 2000 had been $52,219, and the median income for a family had been $58,393. Males had a median income of $41,932 versus $31,250 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $25,355. About 4.3% of families and 5.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7.5% of those under age 18 and 4.1% of those age 65 or over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finneytown%2C_Ohio

In Eaton as of the census[2] of 2010, there were 8,407 people, 3,486 households, and 2,181 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,358.2 inhabitants per square mile (524.4 /km2). There were 3,903 housing units at an average density of 630.5 per square mile (243.4 /km2). The racial makeup of the city was 96.3% White, 0.6% African-American, 0.2% Native American, 1.0% Asian, 0.5% from other races, and 1.5% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.8% of the population.

There were 3,486 households of which 30.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.2% were married couples living together, 13.7% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.6% had a male householder with no wife present, and 37.4% were non-families. 32.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 15.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and the average family size was 2.90.

The median age in the city was 40.4 years. 23.3% of residents were under the age of 18; 8% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 23.7% were from 25 to 44; 25.7% were from 45 to 64; and 19.1% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 47.2% male and 52.8% female.

There were 3,274 households out of which 30.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.3% were married couples living together, 11.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.3% were non-families. 29.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.37 and the average family size was 2.89.

In the city the population was spread out with 24.0% under the age of 18, 8.7% from 18 to 24, 27.5% from 25 to 44, 21.6% from 45 to 64, and 18.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 89.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.6 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $37,231, and the median income for a family was $42,241. Males had a median income of $32,404 versus $24,006 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,771. About 5.8% of families and 8.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 10.0% of those under age 18 and 9.5% of those age 65 or over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaton,_Ohio

Statically, they look very similar they have similar numbers of family size, similar numbers of female lead homes with no husband present and median incomes that are close. The big difference is that Eaton has nearly 9 more males per 100 females than Finnytown. The other statistic that doesn’t show up in this a case like this is the number of those married homes that are from first marriages. Obviously Eaton has a much higher success rate of first marriages than Finnytown leading to fewer fragmented homes and less dependency on government subsidy. One town has a greater welfare culture than the other and produces a mentality in one group that is vastly different from the other.

It is this nasty little secret that Lois Lerner’s type hope to hide from public knowledge and the reason she campaigned against those same groups using the power of the IRS to alter elections and suppress the opinions of those people outside of the Beltway which she felt so comfortable protecting. Just because they are scared doesn’t make government worker reality valid, it just means they have a frame of mind that is weaker due to their dependency on government than the hardier types who live outside the reach of Lois Lerner and her government employees contributing to the daily erosion that takes place with a government issued check in whatever form.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com