Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 402

The Ghost Ship of Cincinnati: John Rogers Maxwell’s spectral remains and lifetime of adventure

I have spent a lifetime climbing in and around human creations that once felt timeless and permanent in a historical context only to erode away into nothing glimpsed one last time by only a few curious eyes.  The process is actually remarkably fast.  I have seen towns die, homes vanish, and entire cultures philosophically collapse on themselves.  I have seen companies come and go, family dynasties raise and fall and the creations of mankind flourish then founder.  I have explored the empty carcasses of many old homes, cars, and cemeteries to study the static patterns of previous societies so to come to conclusions about the direction of our current one.  Many of my opinions about all manners of discussion were formulated in these explorations.  My mild obsessions with a giant race of men who once lived in Ohio, or the supernormal happenings in and around some of the darkest corners of our planet are rooted in observed fact and come from putting my hands and eyes on a flickering light from the past one last time before it leaves our eyes forever.  So before such a thing happened to a unique part of our history residing directly across from Lawrenceburg, Indiana nearly across from the Hollywood Casino, I had to go with my daughter to visit, and chronicle the mysterious “Ghost Ship” which is quickly fading into history.  See the video of our trip here:   

The ship really isn’t a ghost at all, but rather was a luxury yacht named the Celt and has a real life history that is nothing short of remarkable.  It was best known during World War II as The Phenakite, a training vessel designed to detect and destroy submarines.  So the story of how it ended up in a tributary of the Ohio River is a complex one that carries with it the winds of dreams contemplated by the many thousands which graced its decks.  From the bow of that ship enemies were destroyed, ruckus parties were conducted, beasts were tamed, musical careers were launched, and America celebrated the re-lighting of the Statue of Liberty by President Ronald Reagan.  Through all of its owners, the now known “Ghost Ship” all shared a sense of permanence where they believed that their lives, culture, and history were as steady as that ship.  They believed they could change its name but that the thing itself would always be there—but as the evidence of that old relic shows—nothing lasts unless it is maintained.  If things fall into disrepair they end and that goes for all things created by mankind including the culture of the countries they inhabit.

The Phenakite was built 1902 as the yacht Celt by Pusey and Jones, Wilmington, Delaware, for J. Rogers Maxwell, a railroad executive. It was launched on 12 April 1902.

Shortly after the United States entry in to the First World War, it was acquired by the U.S. Navy 3 July 1917. It was placed in service as USS Sachem (SP 192) on 19 August 1917 and used as a Coastal Patrol Yacht.[1] During its Navy service, it was loaned to inventor Thomas Edison who conducted government-funded experiments with it as a submarine killer.

After the end of World War I, the Sachem was returned to her owner, Manton B. Metcalf of New York, 10 February 1919. It was sold to Philadelphia banker Roland L. Taylor. It was resold in 1932 to Jacob “Jake” Martin who converted it into a fishing boat and adventure vessel.  For $2.00 Jake would take anybody anywhere they wanted to go in the Caribbean.

It was reacquired by the Navy on 17 February 1942 for $65,000 and converted for naval service at Robert Jacobs Inc., City Island, New York. It was commissioned as USS Phenakite (PYc-25), 1 July 1942 at Tompkinsville, New York and patrolled the waters off of the Florida Keys as a training vessel for sonar reading. It was decommissioned to undergo modifications and placed back in service 17 November 1944. It was used for testing sonar systems before being placed out of service on 2 October 1945 at Tompkinsville, and transferred to the Maritime Commission for disposal on 5 November 1945.[1]

The vessel was then returned to her previous owner, Mr. J. Martin of Brooklyn, NY and renamed Sachem on 29 December 1945. It was struck from the Naval Register 7 February 1946. It was subsequently resold to the Circle Line of New York City and renamed Sightseer, but was later renamed Circle Line V. It served as a tour boat until 1983. It appeared in Madonna‘s Papa Don’t Preach video in 1986.

It was purchased by Robert Miller in 1986.

The Circle Line V was reportedly scrapped in 1984 but was found abandoned outside of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, where it has been since 1987.[1] It is a popular destination for kayak enthusiasts in the Cincinnati area and is commonly referred to as “The Ghost Ship”[2] [3]

In March 2014 it was the subject of a story on the Internet comedy news podcast Broken News Daily.  CLICK THE LINK to see a condensed visual history of the vessel.

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

It is one thing to read about these kinds of things, it is quite another to put your hands on them.  When you see it with your own eyes, it is quickly determined how something can be lost to the slipping sand of an hourglass into the context of historical documentation.  History is often lost because that same hourglass of time measurement is turned upside down just to keep the sand moving leaving all the patterns of the previous measurement lost forever.  The Phenakite (Ghost Ship) is only 110 years old, but within a few years it will be gone only memorialized by articles like this one and a few fragmented documents.  This erosion of history is happening right in front of our faces and actually right near a resort complex that houses tens of thousands of people and moves millions of dollars of economic activity per year—but is invisible to the rest of the world.

The ironic story of The Phenakite is that it has had one of the most glorious pasts that a man-made creation can have, it has known celebrity, it has known two World Wars, it has been around and done it all and even with all that prestige, it is rotting away in plain sight little known to the rest of the world.  The same could be said of the Malden Island mysteries, my Giants of Ohio and their bones which sit as objects of curious speculation in private collections and museum back rooms not fitting in well with the fossil history of our known past.  The crystal pyramids sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.  The knowledge that North America was actually settled by the Chinese during the Ming Dynasty and that most of what we think of as Native Americas were a result of these voyages which took place well before the Europeans had equal naval ability.  As magnificent as the yacht named Celt was in 1902 built for John Rogers Maxwell, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, and President of the Atlas Portland Cement Company, it was only a flash in the mind of history which had been audaciously neglected by those same sands of time which vanish all too quickly by minds unable to behold the meaning of that history.   The yacht like its original owner who had been a director of many railroads and other companies, and an enthusiastic and widely known yachtsman died suddenly on December 10th 1910 at his home on 78 Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn, of cerebral apoplexy.  Even though the yacht would go on to embark on a century of further adventures it was the heart and will of John Rogers Maxwell that breathed the life of creation into the future “ghost ship,” which began to end the moment that creator died.

And this is the same story no matter what the topic—history is a poor caretaker of itself no matter how proud it may be of its accomplishments.  Without the efforts of a dreamer and producer, all the achievements accomplished in a lifetime vanish in less than an instant.  Without question Robert Miller was a man like Maxwell and had intentions of giving the old yacht new life but those goals fell short on the shores of the Ohio River.  The ship became a ghost of its former owner even during its heyday as the life which was breathed into it vanished just as the history which followed soon will as well.  This is the common thread that can be seen in virtually anything that is created—once that driving force is gone, the history of that object, culture, or living thing begins to end.  Once the drive of a producer leaves the life of anything—decline back into the realm of nothingness begins.  The force which drives history is not museums, academic scholarship, or text books—but the life of producers which advance the story for future generations so long as neglect does not enter into the equation.  For The Phenakite history stopped once it was dropped off in the tributary of the Ohio River by Miller who obviously had a change in his ability to preserve the craft.  But the process of that ghostly decline actually began the moment John Rogers Maxwell died in his home after a life lived well, and fully for The Phenakite and all its service to the nation, Thomas Edison, Madonna and Ronald Reagan’s Statue of Liberty lighting party in 1986 were all second-handers to the creation of a railroad tycoon.  Without him, none of the magnificent history centering on The Phenakite would have happened and because of him, there is at least a history to come to an end quietly and without much notice across from Lawrenceburg, Indiana.

In tomorrow’s article, I will cover in more detail the present owner, Robert Miller and explore what might be done to save this ship from being lost to history forever. 

 For more on this topic see my article on Kerr City.  CLICK HERE. For further reading and discovery about the Cincinnati Ghost Ship see the links below:

http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/1425.htm
http://ohiokayak.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-trip-to-historic-lost-ghost-ship.html
http://www.wcpo.com/entertainment/ship-lends-ghostly-history-to-paddlefest


QueenCityDiscovery.Blogspot.Com.Au written article: “The ‘Ghost Ship’”, by Ronny Salerno, March 18, 2013
Wrecksite.Eu story
weather.com short video story

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com 

Practitioners of Drunkenness: Why ‘Gladiator’ was such a great movie

The aspect of the second-hander is the only one that makes sense when many of the world’s problems are analyzed.  My hatred of the intoxication culture stems from this division between second-handers and producers—which was elaborated upon as a kind of identifiable introduction in a previous article.  One of the primary reasons that I have enjoyed the movie Gladiator so intensely is because it deals squarely with this problem of producers and second-handers—as the Emperor’s son was a second hander, and Maximus was a producer.  When that same son—Commodus inherited the throne through treachery—and attempted to completely destroy Maximus by killing his family, robbing him of all his social connections, and leaving him for dead in a forest the producer lead Maximus rose up through the ranks of the gladiators to challenge the entire Empire not through any other effort but sheer tenacity.  Commodus could not understand how his old rival had managed to regain such respect and stature because as a second hander, he had to be given his value through others.  The new Emperor believed that because he stole away the life of Maximus that he destroyed the man.  But Maximus was a producer and therefore a great leader—it didn’t matter if it was among the best fighters in the world at the time of Roman legionnaires or the dregs of society as gladiators fighting for their life in the arena.  Maximus thrived because he didn’t know how to do anything else but generate success—as a producer which eventually destroyed the emperor.  Gladiator was a great movie primarily for this reason.

Producer types make their own way, and enjoy thinking.  They typically don’t pray to the gods for success, they don’t seek to live off the inheritance of their ancestors, and they don’t gamble or purchase lottery tickets hoping to be filled by chance of a draw so that they can wake up one morning filled by the efforts of others.  Everything they do is geared toward productive enterprise even when they are performing in leisurely endeavors.  That said producers would typically not be comfortable in social settings like bars where intoxication is the objective.  Producers do not wish to lose their mental faculties.  Second handers however do wish to lose their ability to think—as mentioned in the previous article about people who prefer electric shock over thinking.  The practitioners of drunkenness are second handers because they are surrendering thought to chance as relief from the responsibility of action.

Intoxication is one of the vilest activities that could be perpetrated against an active mind.  Yet second handers routinely abuse their thinking because they cannot allow the impulse of their own inner producer developed as children to reemerge to the life of choice competing with their adult decisions to remain a passive second hander waiting for others to fill them with thoughts and action.  When it is said that someone is “drunk with power” this is something to which they speak—taking the example of Commodus once again, the new Emperor killed the old one believing that his actions would settle the issue of who would lead next the Roman Empire after the conquest of the Germanic people of the north.  But Maximus interfered with this equation with a new set of rules—that of a producer who did not care for politics—because he did not need politicians or social connections to give him authority—he simply generated it.  Maximus didn’t need a god to give him authority or validation to be great—because he already knew that he was.  And Maximus didn’t need favors granted by those in a bloodline of leadership because he knew he was a natural leader functioning well as a producer.  So Commodus tried to have Maximus killed to preserve his illusion of power and right by blood to lead an entire region of people as if he had a right to the throne by grace of the gods.

The drunk does the same thing in essence; they drink to lose their minds from the observations of contrary reality which conflicts with their path of parasitic social behavior—that of the second hander who needs the approval of others.  A room full of drunks as a bar is a palace of second handers evading their destiny as thinking producers.  Instead they have surrendered their fates to being filled by others for their sustenance.  Getting drunk helps them not feel the conflict of thought which is always seeking to emerge.

A constant companion of dialogue in these modern times is the term “depression” which is thrown about so flamboyantly by second handers to explain their affliction—much of which is prescribed drugs to alleviate the pain.  The cause of depression is the desire for something which does not come to second handers by luck—such as love, money, respect, or general value.  When those things fail to come to a second hander by the grace of invisible rulers—people find themselves depressed and seek alcohol or other drugs to relieve them of that pain.    As alcohol is a depressant it often makes depression worse—but what is really sought is the numbness of thinking—not the affliction of depression which usually becomes more pronounced.  A producer generally does not feel depression because their thoughts are not out of alignment from their actions.  Producers are not let down because their IRS refund check did not come in the mail, or some perfect job fell upon them by social connections.  They make these things for themselves and are generally a happy lot of people because they are living authentically to their nature—as producers.

If you walk into any environment where large amounts of alcohol are being consumed you are seeing a temple of second handers seeking to suppress thought and responsibility for productivity.  As second handers they try to crush their inner Maximus so that their Commodus can speak to them.  And what Commodus says to them often exacerbates the tendency toward depression they feel, but without thought to measure against—they are free of the pain so long as they drink.  This is why second handers tend to drink to get intoxicated and producers do not.  Producers value their thoughts as second handers are running away.  This means that if anything is ever to be fixed in the world about us, it has to start with this tendency toward second hander behavior.  The world cannot be run and built by second handers—because they are incapable and are not equal in value to the producers of the world.  The issue is not one of race, sex, or even fate—it is one of decisions and mental faculties by way of focus.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  

Kevin Smith’s Report from the Episode 7 Set: Finding the Peter Pan in all of us

There was a lot of Star Wars news this past week as the world revs up for the most recent reports from that line of mythology originating during the 1970s. As I received news from Lucasfilm about their schedule at Comic Con, San Diego, a fan from Germany did a brilliant YouTube video showing vehicles from the Empire being unloaded at a foreign airport. It was a remarkable short film and showed how easy it is for anybody these days to make wonderful visual effects—putting story telling within reach of the entire world. Even more remarkable was that the creator was not an American, but was German—meaning that the very American Star Wars mythology was important enough to him to create such a video which would have taken a considerable amount of thought and time.

But most remarkable of all was the report from Kevin Smith—the filmmaker from the Clerks movies and Red State who was given permission to visit the Star Wars Episode 7 set by invitation of J.J. Abrams. Smith is personal friends with Ben Affleck and a number of notably progressive Hollywood types, but he is also a very pop culture lover of comic books and heroic endeavor. If he and I had a dinner conversation together it is likely we would agree on nothing related to politics, but everything regarding comic books and Star Wars which is the magic of that particular mythology.

I was not a fan of Smith’s movie Red State—which felt to me like a Hollywood shot at life in the Midwest. Most of the antagonists in the film were perverted versions of the type of characters Hollywood views as “Bible Thumpers” so I nearly ignored the report that Kevin Smith gave after his visit to the Star Wars set. However, under the recommendation from some of the filmmakers from the Atlas Shrugged set I gave it a chance and was glad I did. Smith gave a remarkably honest breakdown not only of what he saw there—but in how it made him feel which reaches to the heart and soul of the entire Star Wars movement.

Star Wars is a movement, philosophical, political, and religious—it is a culture building exercise that extends far beyond simple entertainment. Cultures throughout the world have spent decades now having values removed from them leaving them empty. The causes have been varied—but the results are massive cases of emptiness leaving people desperately hungry to fill themselves with something of value. Star Wars created by George Lucas was intended for children to provide value and this hunger for all things Star Wars is most reflected in the excitement level of grown adults who are rediscovering their inner—long lost child through new movies and products.

I promised my children and wife when we all saw the movie Hook together by Steven Spielberg that I would never become lost like the Robin Williams character and lose my inner Peter Pan. And I have never broken that promise to them—I understand all too well the character of Peter Pan. I live the life of Pan with every breath that I take. With that said, the bedroom of my wife and I looks like a Star Wars toy section at Target. Looming over our bed is a large Millennium Falcon and located around our bedroom are several different versions of that same ship in various sizes. I know what Star Wars means to me because I have never left that part of my life behind—instead I incorporate it seamlessly into my mature life in the way that Peter Pan had to reconcile at the end of Hook.

I’m sure that J.J. Abrams invited Kevin Smith to the Star Wars set to generate positive publicity ahead of Comic Con in San Diego and to put some of the negative rumors about Harrison Ford’s broken leg—which is healing, to rest. Ford is doing what he has always done—he’s fighting back to health so he can complete the film. (Harrison Ford suffered an ACL tear during the making of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and ruptured a disk in his back during the filming of Temple of Doom. In both cases he hit the weight room and recovered and finished his film as the star. He is doing the same thing as a 71-year-old man for Episode 7. That is what makes him great and a man’s man.) Smith came to the set and reported in a video what he saw which was captivating, but what impressed me most was his sense of understanding of what happened to him when he stepped to the top of The Millennium Falcon ramp.

It was an interesting admission that Kevin Smith made when he declared that everything he had been—as an adult—was a corrupt caricature essentially shaped by the times of society’s impression upon him. He was very honest about stating that when he visited the Star Wars set he returned back to his childhood which for him was a treasure—as it is for most people. His intense revelation about crying at the top of The Millennium Falcon ramp says a lot about our culture. It is that lost Peter Pan persona that most of us seek to regain.

So the question must be asked—why do we give up that treasure in our teenage years? Some of the most courageous among us regain that persona later in life once we become grandparents—and too old to care what people think of us. Once we lose our sex appeal, our hair, our nice skin, and the ability to impress others with our appearance there is once again a chance to become childlike with the wisdom of years of learning to support ourselves. Kids don’t care what they look like, they just like to play and have fun, and this is a trait that we should not give up on as adults.

I never have—I promised my family I never would, and I never will under any conditions. Every day in my life is like the end of the Robin Williams version of Peter Pan in Hook. I skipped right over the crises period and just went from childhood to adulthood with the same enthusiasm. What Kevin Smith, Seth McFarlane, and I all have in common is that even though we differ dramatically in our politics—we share emphatically a love of Star Wars for the same reasons—as the mythology is a direct link to the energy of childhood which should never be lost to any adult anywhere.

Kevin Smith obviously would have been a happier person if he didn’t start swearing, doing drugs, and adopting progressive causes. This is why our politics is different essentially. He would have been happier if he had kept that inner child all through his life and dropped the cynicism of adulthood. He shouldn’t have had to cry when he stepped to the top of The Millennium Falcon ramp. But, his friend J.J. Abrams probably did Smith a huge favor on a personal level by bringing him to the set to see the Star Wars shoot in person.   It is good that Kevin Smith had that experience and reported it so honestly—because this is part of the healing qualities that I have spoken about so often regarding Star Wars. The culture that will come from all this will leave us all much better off than we are today—because the stories are about values that the inner child in all of us crave so deeply. The cynical adult in us has yielded to the pressures of existence which imposed compromises of those values leaving us shells of ourselves to live as caricatures of our former dreams—which is the essential story of Hook.

Disney will surely give the rest of the world the same opportunity Smith had when they build a full scale Millennium Falcon in Orlando, Florida for visitors to their theme parks. It will be a common sight to see grown adults weeping at the top of the ramp in the same way that Kevin Smith did because the long suppressed magic of childhood will come rushing back to them in that instant. It’s not immature to feel such things–it is actually rational to reacquaint an adult life with the foundations of their belief systems formed during childhood. For many people, Star Wars is the clearest representation of value that they have and is why so many fans go to such elaborate measures to touch that mythology any way they can, even if it is in a short film remarkably done like the one at the German airport. There have been few people who have put their finger on the pulse of the Star Wars movement better than Kevin Smith did when he so honestly reported his visit to the Episode 7 set.

There is no shame in rediscovering the Peter Pan in all of us—the eternal youth forever thoughtful of the hopes and dreams of discovery and imagination. When those things are lost, we are robbed of much—and it is always good to revisit these traits which we are born with. It has only been recently when there was a mythology like Star Wars providing the mechanism through simple sight of a movie prop that could make a grown man cry like a baby at the purity of the emotion—the long lost hopefulness of childhood and the values of the uncompromising dreams of youth.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  

The Pirates of Mason, Ohio: Similarities between the MEA and Blackbeard

MASON, OH (FOX19) -

Parents and teachers in Warren County want more money and better benefits for the Mason City School District.

The Mason Education Association, which represents 650 educators, has been negotiating a new employment contract since April.  Mason teachers say they’re not only concerned about money and benefits but also concerned about cuts to academic programs and facilities.

The union also declared a “no confidence” position in superintendent Gail Kist-Kline.

The district meanwhile says it’s hopeful that negotiations will continue during the summer months, and a contract settlement will be reached before the beginning of the school year.

According to school board members, Dr. Kist-Kline was hired following a levy failure, and asked to lead during a time of economic challenge that required the district to improve efficiency and make difficult decisions.

 http://www.fox19.com/story/25961786/mason-educators-fight-for-more-money-better-benefits

 

The story continued with the MEA (Mason Education Association) threatening to go on strike and late in the afternoon on July 8th 2014, a contract agreement was reached which will then go to a vote by the union members. Teachers all across Ohio rejoiced as one of the wealthiest districts in that state had proven that it was once again ripe for pillaging. The entire story of how the teacher’s union in Mason threatened a hostile action—work stoppage—preventing parents who pay the taxes there from retaining their free baby sitting service at the end of summer, forced the payment of ransom which were pay increases. It was all too reminiscent of an old pirate story about Blackbeard’s blockade of the Charleston harbor in 1718. That old story about pirate action was essentially the same as the modern story of the MEA in Mason, Ohio 2014.

Edward Teach (also Edward Thatch, c.1680—22 November 1718), better known as Blackbeard, was a notorious English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of the American colonies. Although little is known about his early life, he was probably born in Bristol, England. He may have been a sailor on privateer ships during Queen Anne’s War before settling on the Bahamian island of New Providence, a base for Captain Benjamin Hornigold, whose crew Teach joined sometime around 1716. Hornigold placed him in command of a sloop he had captured, and the two engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Their numbers were boosted by the addition to their fleet of two more ships, one of which was commanded by Stede Bonnet, but toward the end of 1717 Hornigold retired from piracy, taking two vessels with him.

Blockade of Charleston

By May 1718 Teach had awarded himself the rank of Commodore and was at the height of his power. Late that month his flotilla blockaded the port of Charleston (then known as Charles Town) in South Carolina. All vessels entering or leaving the port were stopped, and as the town had no guard ship,[40] its pilot boat was the first to be captured. Over the next five or six days about nine vessels were stopped and ransacked as they attempted to sail past Charleston Bar, where Teach’s fleet was anchored. One such ship, headed for London with a group of prominent Charleston citizens which included Samuel Wragg (a member of the Council of the Province of Carolina), was the Crowley. Her passengers were questioned about the vessels still in port and then locked below decks for about half a day. Teach informed the prisoners that his fleet required medical supplies from the colonial government of South Carolina, and that if none were forthcoming, all prisoners would be executed, their heads sent to the Governor and all captured ships burnt.[41]

Wragg agreed to Teach’s demands, and a Mr. Marks and two pirates were given two days to collect the drugs. Teach moved his fleet, and the captured ships, to within about five or six leagues from land. Three days later a messenger, sent by Marks, returned to the fleet; Marks’s boat had capsized and delayed their arrival in Charleston. Teach granted a reprieve of two days, but still the party did not return. He then called a meeting of his fellow sailors and moved eight ships into the harbor, causing panic within the town. When Marks finally returned to the fleet, he explained what had happened. On his arrival he had presented the pirates’ demands to the Governor and the drugs had been quickly gathered, but the two pirates sent to escort him had proved difficult to find; they had been busy drinking with friends and were finally discovered, drunk.[42]

Teach kept to his side of the bargain and released the captured ships and his prisoners—albeit relieved of their valuables, including the fine clothing some had worn.[43]

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

The behavior of the MEA was essentially of the same morality as Blackbeard’s seizer and extortion of Charleston. Blackbeard’s actions were designed to exploit the weaknesses of the governor; the MEA was designed to exploit the weaknesses of the superintendent of Mason schools. Both groups used force and fear to obtain wealth—the Blackbeard pirates used fear of physical violence, the Mason teachers’ used the fear of work stoppage by refusing to perform contracted obligations as employees of the state of Ohio. There is no real difference between the piratical acts of Blackbeard or the MEA.

So why weren’t the Mason teachers arrested for their piratical acts instead of rewarded with more money? Because the pirates run the government in 2014 unlike in 1718. The only difference between the MEA and Blackbeard is that they are now the lawyers, legislators, and union leaders who have infiltrated the law to have easy access to the plunder of the tax payers. Pirates have changed their tactics over the years—instead of violence and blockades, they just gained a government backed service—like education—and threatened to take that service away unless they obtained their desires. The ideal of the blockade of education services through a labor strike and Blackbeard’s extraction of medical supplies from the Governor of Charleston are the same because tax payers have no other option. There are no other schools for their children to attend just as there was no other way out of the harbor of Charleston for the citizens to embark on any kind of trade by sea. So Blackbeard had the city by the throat and used it to his advantage just as the MEA had Mason by the throat regarding education. The intentions were extortion to fulfill the desires of piracy. The only difference is that these modern pirates in the MEA were backed by the law which is an evolution from the days of Blackbeard. But the intentions were the same—fear, power, and plunder at the expense of others.

So if anyone dared wish to see examples of modern piracy, don’t look to the South China Sea or the dangerous waters off of Somalia—just look in Mason, Ohio at the members of the Mason Teacher’s Association and you will see pirates just as vicious and greedy as Blackbeard.

 Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  

Producers and the Second-handers: Why people prefer electric shock over thinking

(Reuters) – So you say all you want to do is to take a few minutes to sit down and think without anyone or anything bugging you? Maybe that is true. But you might be in the minority.

A U.S. study published on Thursday showed that most volunteers who were asked to spend no more than 15 minutes alone in a room doing nothing but sitting and thinking found the task onerous.

“Many people find it difficult to use their own minds to entertain themselves, at least when asked to do it on the spot,” said University of Virginia psychology professor Timothy Wilson, who led the study appearing in the journal Science. “In this modern age, with all the gadgets we have, people seem to fill up every moment with some external activity.”

In some experiments, college volunteers were asked to sit alone in a bare laboratory room and spend six to 15 minutes doing nothing but thinking or daydreaming. They were not allowed to have a cellphone, music player, reading material or writing implements and were asked to remain in their seats and stay awake. Most reported they did not enjoy the task and found it hard to concentrate.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/03/us-science-thinking-idUSKBN0F827V20140703

That information may seem extraordinary, but it’s really not—rather it is consistent with general human behavior and is caused by two basic roles that individuals evolve into as they mature into adulthood. People will become either a producer type personality—who makes things from self-initiative and are quite rare in the world or they will become a second-hander, a person who essentially lives through others. An example of second-hander behavior would be the type of person who dates a beautiful woman because of the prestige of being seen with her might provide. An example of a producer would be a person who dates a beautiful woman because they personally enjoy her. The same could of course be applied from women to men, cars, clothing, homes, food—just about every category of human endeavor. The typical “gold digger” personality from women who marry for money would fall into this category versus the woman who marries for “love.”

These behavioral conditions can actually be seen on any playground in the world where children play. Future producers are the kids who are the first to climb to the top of the monkey bars, or help a kid stuck on the slide whose nerve has left them as they descend. Most of the kids will reside in the safety of numerical superiority watching the producers be the first to climb to the top of a slide, or crawl under a strange obstacle, or swing across a crevice.   Once they see the safety of the task, they will then follow—gaining assurance from the leader—the producer.

The differences in creating these personalities come directly from the parents. If a parent lets children gain self-sufficiency by doing things on their own at the earliest possible moment—then there are favorable odds that a child will develop into a producer. But most parents coddle children and enjoy caring for them as dependents—as the behavior provides meaning to lives of parents who are otherwise insecure about their roles in existence. So too long parents carry children on their hips, feed them too long, and help them up when a child should learn to climb on their own stunting the growth of the young minds into the role of a second-hander. They learn as children to live through their parents. As older children they live through their peers. As adults they live through the rest of society.

This is why as adults they don’t know what to do with their own thoughts and would rather be electrically shocked than to think on their own for 15 minutes—a second-hander must get their next thinking actions from a producer otherwise they can’t function. It would be the producers who would happily sit for 15 minutes or more thinking quietly. The second-hander needs music made by someone else, television made by someone else, reading material made by someone else, video games made by someone else, etc—in order to have thoughts put into their head. With those things removed—they are terrified at the lack of thought in their minds and would gladly endure great amounts of abuse to have that sense of terror removed from them.

As has been declared on many occasions at this site—except without the direct correlation—public education systems are in the business of making second-hander children who will grow up to become second-hander adults. The entire ordeal of public education is primarily focused on building these types of minds which works well for consumerism—but not so great for capitalism as industry and invention are created by producer type personalities. Producer type children tend to not do so well in public school as the system is not geared to develop their skill sets—so they become frustrated. This is also why homeschooled children do better generally than publicly taught children, because homeschooled children are taught to be producers as opposed to second-handers.

As a test dear reader if you consider how something might make you look, or how others might think before you do something—you are functioning as a second-hander. If you do a task because of the curiosity of doing it when no eyes are upon you and enjoy thinking alone with no input from the outside world—then you are thinking as a producer. But it is very clear on the playground of children who will be who. The future lives of all those young people can be predicted just watching children play. You can see who will have marriage difficulties, who will have nervous breakdowns when their cars won’t start, who will bounce aimlessly from job to job—just by watching children play. You can also see who will be the future inventors, leaders, and wealthy elite—not because they are greedy, or vicious—but because they are often the first to climb to the top of the monkey bars, and will not hesitate to push bigger kids out-of-the-way to be the first to go down a slide.

What the test reported by Reuters above says—which is supposed to be shocking—is that public education systems and parents in general have successfully built a human race of second-handers who are all waiting for someone to tell them what to do next. It therefore should not be a surprise when there is so much apathy in the world. It’s not because people are bad—or stupid—it’s because they have been taught to be second-handers who cannot act until told what to do. It is for society to determine if this is acceptable.

Speaking personally, it isn’t for me. But then I’m the kind of person who could spend weeks alone in a room with everything turned off alone with my thoughts—and be perfectly happy.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  

Game Changing ‘Diagon Alley’ Is Now Open: The power and meaning of “mythos”

Mythos: The interrelated set of beliefs, attitudes, and values held by a society or cultural group

http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php

That word mythos can be seen a lot at the website link above which will take inquiring minds to the Joseph Campbell Foundation website.  Mythos may be one of the most important words ever created because it is unique to human beings.  While trees are objects created by nature, mountains—the same, oceans, ice bergs, rain forests, weather patterns, etc—mythos are unique in that it is a creation of man’s mind for purposes specific to the imagination.  For those who have lost hope as knowledge of the very diabolical is known, it is an understanding of mythos that can point to cultural aspects that are forming and provide knowledge to the kind of world tomorrow will be.  Largely we live in an existence created by a mythos generated by the Dark Ages and the kind of philosophy constructed under those conditions.  But that is changing—rapidly—and when the good work of Fantasy Flight Games is mentioned—it is because of the alteration of a complex mythos that I cheer it on.  As dim and dire as it sometimes feels, I see a major shift in social mythos that will shatter conventional thinking in the coming years and for all the restrictions feared today—the new mythos that is forming is the key to understanding our future.  CLICK HERE to review my previous article on Fantasy Flight Games.  Adding to those additions of mythic storytelling contained within those games are other aspects of culture that are exploding upon the scene.  I’ve talked a lot about Star Wars, Glenn Beck continues to put out fantastic novels and books that are contributing boldly, movies like The Hunger Games are resonating with young people, and superheroes are dominating at the movie box office.   Ayn Rand is still selling like hotcakes in Gatlinburg and the last movie of a three-part trilogy based on that book is about to be released which is challenging old Kantian held beliefs regarding economics, religion, and business.  To understand the power of this new mythos I often point to the theme parks in Central Florida as the physical evidence of the changing mythos so evident in the human race.  Once a company like Universal Studios or Disney build an attraction at a theme park, they have made a significant contribution to a social mythos as a business investment and have acknowledged the lasting impact.  Never has this modern mythos been on display more dramatically than the new Harry Potter exhibit at Universal Studios, Florida with their opening this week of Diagon Alley.  It is simply jaw dropping incredible.  It can be seen in the video below at the 7:30 mark.  I would advise watching the entire video though because the mythos brought to life in Central Florida says a lot about American culture and the direction, and impact it will have on the world for the next century.

I’m not a particularly huge Harry Potter fan.  There are aspects to it that I enjoy—there is too much magic in it for me—too much mystic fantasy.  There is a tendency to hope that the world is different from what it is—so fantastic creations bridge that gap intellectually.  But there are some wonderful values explored in the Harry Potter books and movies that have provided many of the values today’s young people possess.  But the new Diagon Alley exhibit is a living mythos—that is the point of the place—to put visitors into that world in a way that has never yet been possible anywhere on earth.  But to what end—for simple entertainment?  Human beings require myths to hold themselves together and put their values in line with priorities.  Harry Potter was born out of this need, and it has been so successful that Universal Studios built a magnificent shrine to that mythos.

Mythos carries over into every aspect of human life.  It goes to the voting booth, it becomes the focus of productive enterprise in business, it creates the values a family uses to bond themselves to one another—or to fly apart.  It provides a mechanism for people to recognize evil, or good depending on the vantage point—a mythos can be either destructive or beneficial—but so long as human beings exist, there will be the creation of myths.  Once those myths are created, a physical manifestation will be attempted, such as what Universal Studios has done with Diagon Alley.  Visitors to those parks will attempt to bring the values of Harry Potter—for good or bad—into their daily life.  So to me, watching the mythos of our world is the most important things a culture can do.

My excitement over this current mythos period is in the realization that only a few years ago none of this easy access to so much mythos was available.  When I was a child, Disney World was brand new and nothing like it is now, Universal Studios was simply a dream, Dungeon and Dragons was very primitive and movies were limited in what they could create due to budget constraints and film executives functioning from the philosophies of Kant and Plato.  Tolkien was the premier fantasy writer inspiring a new generation that would magnify his work hundreds of times over, the culmination being stories like Harry Potter.  And video games were clunky.  The opportunity to step into a mythos the way young people can now simply did not exist.  But now things are changing rapidly—much more rapidly than any conniving bankers in Europe, or politicians in America can even fathom—any thoughts of potential tyranny are being crushed under the weight of a dynamically changing mythos.

That doesn’t mean all is well, there are major problems that will play out in the years to come—the bankruptcy of America, the continued attempts to spread collectivism to every corner of the earth at the expense of the individual—but those are the results of the previous mythos built by the pre and post Renaissance periods, religious ignorance, and minds so stifled with daily obligations that they did not have the liberty to think.  My greatest joy of late has come from Fantasy Flight Games in that they create a product that generates not only a positive mythos—culturally, but a lot of thinking.  When those types of entertainment options are coupled with the physical reality of something like Diagon Alley there are real opportunities for massive human enjoyment.

As I write this I know of several individuals planning their visit to Diagon Alley.  They are reading the Harry Potter novels again at Steak and Shake at 3 AM in the morning and going to work when the sun comes up.  They are playing Fantasy Flight’s Game of Thrones card game at Starbucks with their friends and are living in the mythos of those fantasy realms for a large portion of their life—and that is wonderful for the psychological well-being of their many otherwise treacherous disappointments in life.  The joy of the mythos created artificially by the human minds behind Harry Potter and The Game of Thrones replaces the many areas where deficiency has otherwise occurred.

It is not good to substitute reality for fantasy—but it is not good to be crushed by too much reality—and often a positive mythos can alleviate the impact of such a disappointing force.  With minds full of value, the diabolical schemes concocted by maniacal tyrants losses their ability because of the hope given by a mythos which feeds an individual mind as opposed to a soul looking to be filled by some come-lately leader drunk with power and filled with ill intent.  But Universal Studios has performed a modern miracle, they have recreated Diagon Alley the way that only imaginations had previously contemplated, and made it real.  The impact of this dramatic shift in mythos will resonate for quite some time in a positive way as the future unfolds itself out away from the small minds who previously wished to contain it.  Diagon Alley is proof that such attempts have failed and that the human mind is now relishing in triumph over feats that are only now available for the first time on planet earth.  When such things become real—they become a new reality in the realm of mythos.

Minds free to think, and contemplate new ideals create the mythos that will become the foundations of future values—but more importantly, such minds cannot be controlled.  So long as a mind can contemplate mythos, a physical body will reject the chains placed upon it—literal or metaphorical.   What I see in Diagon Alley is a culture in America who has professed that it values imagination and thinking to such an extent that it wanted to make it into a physical reality—which is a beacon to the world that imagination is alive and well and that tyrants have no place in Central Florida.  You can feel it at the Orlando airport—as you travel down the people movers from the grand departure gate where hotel guest look down into the giant room of people traveling from everywhere in the world to see the theme parks of Florida first hand.  Of those great theme parks, Universal Studios has recaptured the lead of the most spectacular attractions among them with Diagon Alley.   There is nothing like it anywhere—except deep in the mind those who generate mythos upon a blank page to share with the world and incite in them the freedom of thought which is the greatest gift to civilization that there is.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com 

Building The Machine: Why Deming was so wrong for American business

“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world” ― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

That is the kind of nonsense that is being taught in public schools and has been adopted into general business practices.  It is essentially behind the new Common Core methods of teaching which Glenn Beck so elaborately dismantled in his new book Conform.  That book shows why well-meaning politicians and philanthropists are backing Common Core—which is a complete destruction of the American education system—specifically destroying the individuality inherit in American children—and integrating them into a more global view which embodies that basic quote of Miyamoto Musashi shown above.  As traditionalists cling to the notion that Common Core must be eradicated from public education systems so to preserve the uniqueness that is desired in American children a far more sinister threat can be found behind the politics of the movement.

Most large companies in The United States cling blindly to the management teachings of William Deming—which has proven itself to be a tragedy.  Deming is the man responsible for all the ridiculous attempts at Total Quality Management which has tied the hands of American business by putting engineers essentially in charge of the management of company resources so to hamper proper productivity.  This trend exploded in America through the largest manufacturers in a time when it appeared that the Japanese were dominating all fields of productive endeavor threatening to overtake American methods in the 1980s.  The Japanese in a desperate need to get back on their feet after World War II had embraced Deming, an engineer from America to beat their former rivals at their own game.  Deming found among the Japanese people a collective based society that quickly unified behind his management methods which were essentially old Samurai strategy concepts dressed up behind mathematical formulas to justify himself being a paid consultant.  Deming was perpetrating a scam to justify his celebrity status as he propped up the Japanese.

Deming was a ruse because he essentially disliked management and sought later in his classes to ridicule American executives free of their ego and to force them into collaboration with employees and co-workers through his collective based management methods.  American businessmen listened to Deming as it was believed that the Japanese were dominating manufacturing because of him—which wasn’t true.  The Japanese were dominating because of their sense of selfless dedication to collective causes.  They thought differently than Americans and the result of their labor could be seen in their products.

It must be remembered that American businesses and the Japanese were both struggling with the spread of communism in post World War II global economic concerns, so Deming was delivering a way that management could restrict the impact of labor union quota refusals by offering managers up to laborers as sacrificial victims.  This worked well in Japan who had managed to contain the spread of communism in their society through their selfless dedication to Miyamoto Musashi’s strategy guide The Book of Five Rings.  As they were already functioning as a collective society, labor unions had little to offer them, so they were able to resist the push toward communism.  Labor unions in Japan maintained an unusually close relationship to their companies as their identities were less focused on individual achievement and more concerned over the general health of their company.  This gave Deming fertile ground to develop his management methods.

William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Trained initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematical physics, he helped develop the sampling techniques still used by the Department of the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, championed the work of Dr. Walter Shewhart, including Statistical Process Control, Operational Definitions, and what he called The Shewhart Cycle[1] which evolved into “PDSA” (Plan-Do-Study-Act) in his book The New Economics for Industry, Government, and Education,[2] as a response to the growing popularity of PDSA, which he viewed as tampering with the meaning of Dr. Shewhart’s original work. [3] He is best known for his work in Japan after WWII, particularly his work with the leaders of Japanese industry which began in August 1950 at the Hakone Convention Center in Tokyo with a now seminal speech on what he called Statistical Product Quality Administration, which many in Japan credit with being the inspiration for what has become known as the Japanese post-war economic miracle of 1950 to 1960, rising from the ashes of war to become the second most powerful economy in the world in less than a decade, founded on the ideas first taught to them by Dr Deming:

That the problems facing manufacturers can be solved through cooperation, despite differences.
Marketing is not “sales,” but the science of knowing what people who buy your product repeatedly think of that product and whether they will buy it again, and why.
That In the initial stages of design, you must conduct market research, applying statistical techniques for experimental and planning and inspection of samples.
And you must perfect the manufacturing process.[4]

He is best known in the United States for his 14 Points (Out of the Crisis, by Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Preface) and his system of thought he called the System of Profound Knowledge, consisting of four components, or “lenses” through which to view the world simultaneously:

An appreciation of a system,
understanding of variation,
psychology
and Epistemology, or a theory of knowledge.[5]

Deming made a significant contribution to Japan’s later reputation for innovative, high-quality products, and for its economic power. He is regarded as having had more impact upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage. Despite being honored in Japan in 1951 with the establishment of the Deming Prize he was only just beginning to win widespread recognition in the U.S. at the time of his death in 1993.[6] President Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Technology in 1987. The following year, Deming also received the Distinguished Career in Science award from the National Academy of Sciences.

The philosophy of W. Edwards Deming has been summarized as follows:

Dr. W. Edwards Deming taught that by adopting appropriate principles of management, organizations can increase quality and simultaneously reduce costs (by reducing waste, rework, staff attrition and litigation while increasing customer loyalty). The key is to practice continual improvement and think of manufacturing as a system, not as bits and pieces.”[26]

In the 1970s, Deming’s philosophy was summarized by some of his Japanese proponents with the following ‘a’-versus-’b’ comparison:

(a) When people and organizations focus primarily on quality, defined by the following ratio,

quality tends to increase and costs fall over time.

(b) However, when people and organizations focus primarily on costs, costs tend to rise and quality declines over time.

“The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view—a lens—that I call a system of profound knowledge. It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in.

“The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people.

“Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to. “

Deming advocated that all managers need to have what he called a System of Profound Knowledge, consisting of four parts:

Appreciation of a system: understanding the overall processes involving suppliers, producers, and customers (or recipients) of goods and services (explained below);
Knowledge of variation: the range and causes of variation in quality, and use of statistical sampling in measurements;
Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge and the limits of what can be known.
Knowledge of psychology: concepts of human nature.

He explained, “One need not be eminent in any part nor in all four parts in order to understand it and to apply it. The 14 points for management in industry, education, and government follow naturally as application of this outside knowledge, for transformation from the present style of Western management to one of optimization.”

Key principles

Deming offered fourteen key principles to managers for transforming business effectiveness. The points were first presented in his book Out of the Crisis. (p. 23–24)[28] Although Deming does not use the term in his book, it is credited with launching the Total Quality Management movement.[29]

Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive, to stay in business and to provide jobs.
Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place.
End the practice of awarding business on the basis of a price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
Institute training on the job.
Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8 of “Out of the Crisis”). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. (See Ch. 3 of “Out of the Crisis”)
Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, in order to foresee problems of production and usage that may be encountered with the product or service.
Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.

Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute with leadership.
Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers and numerical goals. Instead substitute with leadership.


Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objectives (See Ch. 3 of “Out of the Crisis”).
Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.

“Massive training is required to instill the courage to break with tradition. Every activity and every job is a part of the process.”[30]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

Of course there is one essential ingredient that Deming avoided and if his work, lectures and methods are studied properly it will be discovered that Deming was attempting to use mathematic equations to get his mind around leadership—and he never succeeded.  The Japanese succeeded because as a society they are happy to yield their individualities toward collective goals, but in The United States—which is an individually based society—workers are not.  Goals for American workers have to be made to align with the company’s goals—they cannot be bent to subjugate themselves to a system devised by Eastern manufacturing methods. Deming’s methods worked in Japan, but they never have, and never will work in America.  There were initial increases in profit for companies who applied Deming techniques—simply because they began with so much waste to begin with—but most large companies today have simply outsourced their manufacturing to evade the impact of Deming—because once an American worker is broken down from their individuality they become automatons and resist the impulse to innovate.  Their negativity often turns into a corrosive relationship with their company as they psychologically see their employer as the source of crushing their individual will.

All through the 80s and 90s in America there was grave concern that America was somehow inferior to Japan and everyone else in the world who seemed to find success with Deming’s methods. Yet what those same critics ignored was that America produced Deming, and the machinery that won World War II, and had never had any manufacturing issues prior to Deming—so why did they need him?  American executives had lost their incentive to be innovative, and to push themselves as they had been pushed into a collective goo following Deming methods of Total Quality Management that really sought to alleviate their personal input.  Modern managers were discouraged in using their individual gifts to improve productivity, quality, and work environment because Deming had already provided a system that their companies were forcing them to adhere to—leaving them generally uninterested in the manufacturing process.

What Deming never put his finger on and seemed to struggle with all his life was the source of his “concept of human nature.”   Within that was the realization that some people were born leaders and some people were just born followers and this equation did not fit well into the mathematical formulas of an electrical engineer.  The ability to create a leader is what everyone wanted, but they lacked the ability to detect them—so companies used Deming as a second hander to give them a process that would hide their inability—and deficiency in recruiting, staffing, and mid-level leadership.

Yet, America has produced without any help from any college, or management consultant many leaders who have created companies that amassed huge amounts of wealth—Microsoft comes to mind.  Yet Bill Gates who founded Microsoft as a college dropout is the premier instigator of Common Core leaving him to be thought of as the modern Deming.  Politicians and other business leaders think that because Gates created a company that generated so much wealth that he is somehow qualified to provide an education method that would create a generation of children that can compete with the world.  However, Americans are not like other people—there is a reason that American Excepetionalism exists and it isn’t because they can integrate themselves into a Deming process.  Bill Gates with all his genius has been unable to put into any kind of mathematical formula the reason for his success—so has been unable to create an education system that can make more of him—which American companies and state governors are hoping Common Core will do for the youth.

Common Core like Deming’s Total Quality Management ignores human initiative and thus fails to find the best among human populations to instigate innovation and productive enterprise—and to capitalize off of American Excepetionalism.  Instead they are seeking kill it which is why most people are ready to hang themselves in The United States after they take one of Deming’s four-day seminars.  It’s not the extreme boredom of the classes, or the lack of real relevance to manufacturing—it is the destruction of individual initiative yielding toward collective causes that creates the anxiety.

The failure of Deming, and thus of every company that follows his methods is the destruction of internal leadership that was foolishly studied from the East as if such things could have been born there.  Deming was an American creation and had he never went to Japan, he would have remained an obscure engineer that nobody would have listened to if he had not struck it rich bringing together a battered people in the Japanese to resurrect themselves.  For Japan, Deming was like the feather Dumbo carried around making the elephant believe it could fly—Deming was a crutch to rely upon in a time of need.  He didn’t give the Japanese anything they couldn’t have given themselves—because their culture would have achieved those same heights completely on their own.  Deming in the United States appealed to the second-handers who live through others and looked at Japan and wanted to copy what they were doing—ignoring their own propensity toward leadership, because they failed to see who among them had the capacity to rise.   When second handers are in charge and fear being replaced by those who are truly oozing with leadership and human initiative, Deming systems are adopted to protect their social status—which is why Total Quality Management ultimately fails in America.

Those same second handers are behind Common Core and for the same reasons.  Bill Gates became wealthy building operating systems that could interact with machines to usher in the personal computer revolution.  He doesn’t know why he was so different from everyone else—but he was.  Now he hopes to do the same for education through Common Core.  However, like Deming his problem is a complex one because what his methods are achieving is not self initiated leadership among work forces—but rather destroying individuals into simple machines who can function within a system.  Gates is building a machine with Common Core and like Deming before him—the world is eating out of his hand hoping that Gates knows something about human nature that they don’t.

Deming his whole life struggled with the notion he obviously learned from the Japanese of profound knowledge.  As he said, “once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to. ” But he never figured it out.  He was seeking the basis of leadership which is not produced by any system put in place—it comes from human initiative and creativity and is a by-product of American Excepetionalism—the same Excepetionalism that invented the airplane, the light builb, and built an economy based on capitalism where the exceptional rise to the top and are easy to spot instead of being hidden behind a TQM system obscured from the eyes of the people who could most directly benefit.  Common Core is essentially the same failure applied to American business from Deming—which has all but destroyed manufacturing in the United States, and passed it on to education.  The crime is not that Common Core will destroy the millions of minds who are destined to be simple cogs in a grand machine that will dance willingly to Deming’s processes.  The crime is that Common Core will destroy the few exceptions that will have a vast impact on the development of the human race led by America.  It is for that reason that Common Core must be vanquished.  Deming did enough damage for one lifetime.  The world certainly doesn’t need more of him.

The proper counter to Miyamoto Musashi would be:

“Think greatly of yourself and the world will directly benefit from the fruit that springs forth from a free mind.”

–Rich Hoffman  

 

 

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  

Arkham Horror: Thought invoked through mythmaking genius at Fantasy Flight Games

Taking a break from the usual heavy subjects explored at this site I have to say more about a company I have highlighted often in America who I think is having a major impact on world culture.  This is not a movie company, a video game developer or even a traditional television broadcaster—it is Fantasy Flight Games who again appear to be at the absolute top of their field.  I was at my favorite game store—Nostalgic Ink, in Mason, Ohio buying my son-in-law some expansion ships for our X-Wing Miniatures game which is a Fantasy Flight creation which I have raved about often.  I had my grandson with me so he wanted to walk around the store looking at all the other products, which I of course allowed him to do.  While looking elsewhere in the store I ran across the Fantasy Flight Game Arkham Horror which looked fabulous and further impressed me with what Fantasy Flight has been doing in the realm of gaming.

These types of games are a participatory mythology—meaning they allow players to jump into a scenario and live the values of a mythology.  These games unlike everything else in society are all about recognizing value instead of evading it—so there isn’t any escape from the process of assessment.  I wasn’t a fan of these kinds of things until my nephews and son-in-law brought them back into my life last summer while on vacation.  While I don’t enjoy traditional board games like Monopoly and most of the games on the Target gaming shelf dealing with contemporary matters, I do love these mythology based games in that they are like novels lived in the field of time and space which have uncertain outcomes.

The Arkham Horror game attracted my attention because it deals with the Roaring Twenties and involves horror, monsters, and ancient secrets.  Of course it is this time period I love which featured near perfect capitalism and a wonderful President in Calvin Coolidge, so the time period itself is interesting as a backdrop for such a story.  At Nostalgic Ink we were in a time crunch so I didn’t buy the game as of yet, but I will at the next available moment.  It plays up to eight people in a cooperative play which would do well in my family.  We had a birthday party for that same son-in-law who is very skilled with these games.  It’s impressive to watch him.  At the party several groups broke off and played games, some in the house, some outside set up around the pool, some out under a shade tree.  One of the games was Magic the Gathering which I’ve seen quite a lot, the other was my son-in-law’s new Game of Thrones card game again by Fantasy Flight Games.  I watched a bit of that game and again it was another amazing creation by Fantasy Flight with the usual quality in game pieces and such detailed manuals, card design, and even box artwork.

I had been wondering if Fantasy Flight was just freakishly good at game design with their X-Wing series—because it’s Star Wars and thus sells well.   But after seeing what they did with the Game of Thrones card game I’m convinced that it is just the nature of the company.  Any doubts I had about buying The Arkham Horror game evaporated in that instant.  The gaming that night at our house went well into the night well past the time my wife and I went to bed—so my family would love Arkham Horror.

During a typical day when things sometimes seem overwhelmingly difficult—and impossible—I take a minute and visit the Fantasy Flight Games website to see what’s going on new—which every day appears to be something.  I enjoy reading the game forums for X-Wing and it actually relaxes my mind.  This is distinctively different from the typical escapism, evasion tactics of something like a baseball game, or Fantasy Football—which does similar things for a more mainstream audience.  For me, and my love of mythology, these games are just marvelous.

Walking the aisles at Nostalgic Ink the owner does a great job of displaying all his vast collection of games—most of them are like these Arkham Horror, and Game of Throne games.  These are different from traditional board games like Life, Candyland, or card games like Uno.  They have the added element of plot and story to accentuate the randomness of a dice role—and are quite intriguing.  If I had time, I’d like to play one of each kind of game in Nostalgic Ink.  My grandson not yet two years of age already understands that there is something special about the place, he enjoys the colors on the boxes displaying all the bizarre artwork and wanted to look at everything.  It’s a very stimulating atmosphere much like how book stores used to feel minus the references to popular culture—which is often distracting when you need a break from it.

It cannot be ignored that people who play these types of Fantasy Flight Games enjoy thinking.  My son-in-law certainly embodies that trait—he loves to think and in the realm of those games—is a maestro.  But what’s better is the plot and advancement of intrigue that makes the experience like a shared novel.  In a high-tech age such as what we live in now, it is just wonderful to see such a low tech—creative—and traditional format of storytelling that has emerged as powerfully as Fantasy Flight Games has done over these last few years.  I was already a fan because of their X-Wing Miniatures work, but their efforts don’t end there.  It is unlikely that I would have ever stepped into Nostalgic Ink if not to purchase my first B-Wing fighter in the September of 2013.  Since then, I have been there often and now find myself going there to primarily buy gifts for other people.  But for me X-Wing Miniatures has been a gateway to the rest of the Fantasy Flight Games product line.  It is what they are doing now that will still have meaning many years from now when I want to play the same games with my future grandchildren and other family members who will grow up to love those games.  I remember the kind of things I loved growing up and to a large extent, I still love those things.  Video games and tech related entertainment has a dated feel that cheapens those experiences over time as improvements come out in future years.   But these Fantasy Flight Games products will still have the magic of their appeal hundreds of years from now because the root of their effort is in the great presentation of their material– the invocation of thought as their mechanism into story telling.  And it is in the stories of our society that the truths we all seek reside—whether realistic, or fantasy based, it is the process of thought which the human race most seeks.  And Fantasy Flight Games has their pulse on the importance of thought—and that makes them for my money one of the best companies on earth creating one of the most important needs humans have aside from food and clothing—mythology.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com 

A Strategy Guide For Beating The Political Left: Removing brute force, emotion, and peer-pressure from a debate

The interview Megan Kelly had with Bill Ayers was remarkable because it would have been impossible two years ago.  At that time, it was still considered conspiracy to discuss the relationship Barack Obama had with Ayers—who was a domestic terrorist and still holds very extreme positions.  This isn’t the only wall coming down—because the foundations of deceit are coming apart and mainstream commentators like Kelly, Bill O’Reilly and even Charles Krauthammmer are now starting to say the same kind of things that people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Doc Thompson, Matt Clark and myself were saying two years ago  The evidence is now obvious and has taken them to the proper conclusions about Obama, Ayers, the silent threat of socialism in virtually every public policy and many other difficult topics.  So I think it’s time to reveal a little secret so that those reading here today can increase their own personal strategic impact against these forces more rapidly over the next couple years.

I’ve told a portion of this story before but now with context provided, it is time to give a proper answer.  When the Enquirer reporter Michael Clark was at my home photographing me for what was surely at some point in time to become a major circus scandal he asked me if I was sure that I wanted my picture taken with my bullwhips while making series claims against one of the largest and wealthiest public schools in Ohio for fear that my message might become lost in the entertaining antics.  I have said that it was part of a plan, but without context the words don’t have much meaning to novice readers—so I simply gave the steps without providing the meaning.  However, since this blog for many has become a sort of silent strategy guide for how to defeat the left—to understand what I was doing was important because it will help those same minds through this next—difficult phase with much ore assuredness.

It was my idea to do the bullwhip story in the same week that I went on WLW to argue teacher wages at Lakota.  Before going on the air I had many friends and family warn me against such a thing.  After all, they had seen labor strikes locally from General Motors, AK Steel, and many other union type organizations and it was well-known that teacher unions destroyed private property of those who stood in their way—and I was asking for trouble by going on WLW to call them out.  The Enquirer article was done to take away one of the weapons of the labor union—which was hard to explain at the time.  People would understand the wage issues I was bringing up, but all too often those stories are suppressed because people are afraid to put their name out there against such a collective force.

So here’s the little secret at beating the political left which can now be obviously confirmed with history—not just my own, but that of others who have also dared push back against the forces trying to reshape us all into something despicable and useless.  No group, especially the political left can win if two things are removed from them, their ability to exert force—and thus fear so to manipulate through silence the facts to their favor.  Whatever methods are used to create fear—threat of labor strikes, vandalism, personal name calling, physical violence you need to match them blow for blow.  When I showed them what I could do with the bullwhip, I was performing a strategy I learned from Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kun Do martial arts school.  Lee never worried about conflict with another human being because he had made himself into something that could not be beaten by another human being. He may not have won every confrontation, but he could decide if he would lose.  If you pick a variation of a martial art and become so skilled at it that you are the best there is—you have made yourself invincible so to speak to defeat in that particular category.  That is a very good thing, it doesn’t matter if it is bullwhips, knife handling, various forms of self-defense—the act at becoming so good at something that nobody can beat you is a sense of assuredness that provides freedom to an individual that is paramount to beating back any aggression committed against you.

After my WLW visit I had every manner of fear creating method thrown at me by the labor unions who had some type of stake in the Lakota levy—every kind.  But, because of my use of the bullwhip, opponents learned quickly that I could easily beat the monkey snot out of them without really breaking a sweat.  It didn’t matter if they came as individuals or groups—the result would be the same unless they decided to cross the line and elevate their terrorism with guns—which of course I also had an answer and they knew it.  Violence and threat of harm is the first desired strategy that labor unions use to get what they want—so I took that away from them.  This forced them into territory they were not comfortable with—a logical argument.

Quickly the liberals involved in public education—which is most everyone—tried to play the other strategy of the left—the theory of emotion where they use fear of speculative outcomes such as fear of death, fear of ignorance, fear of losing in competitive comparisons with the rest of the world as their means of advancing their own plot without ever getting into the details.  This is that Witch Doctor mentality mentioned on this site before—it’s the speculation of things to come based on raw emotion and justified by feelings, not fact.  I forced them—really an entire education industry from the Department of Education in The United States, and Ohio—college professors, tenured teachers, politicians, union presidents to beat the facts I presented to the public and on this site and not a single person could do it—for over four years now.  This is the big secret behind their push for violence and why if that weapon is taken from them—they are left naked as the day they were born—intellectually.  They cannot win an argument if they are on the wrong side of the facts—which they know they are.  They must bring emotion into their arena as an alley because they are seeking to supplant the facts with emotion to win their position.  Even the smartest people in the education industry—and you’d think that there would be a lot of smart people in education—could not refute a single claim I made in the public forums such as the Enquirer, all the television stations and over the radio.  Many of those radio broadcasts went out to over 100,000 to 500,000 people and not a single soul was able to refute the facts I brought up—which in essence was that teachers were overpaid, their instruction was ineffective to children, and that it wasn’t worth the cost of increased taxes.

When “they” could not win with threats of force, or feelings they resorted back to force—but instead of making it private they went public—which of course was predicted.  The Enquirer again played its role and put up all the residual impact of the word war that was going on between my opponents and myself showing how ugly things were getting.  But the essence of it was this—the levy supporters attempted to win their side with a combination of force and emotion by making the argument one about sexism—since many of the radicals were women—they hoped to play that old progressive trick, which worked on many of the weaker minded people on my side who actually feared those despots—I’ll get into that with more detail in a bit.  When I showed them that I would take a head for an eye in whatever manner they wished to pursue things it got out of control for a bit as the panic set in leaving Lakota as a large progressive organization with little to do but to retreat and regroup.  They cut a deal with me lasting for two years and spent that time not trying to incorporate what they had learned from me, but in trying to build on their emotional position.  They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on public relations to suppress the negativity caused by our fights so that they could come across as benevolent once again.  They eventually won their money but in the process had proven everything I claimed against them leaving the process open for all to see stripped away of fear in all its forms.  People were able for the first time to see how all these things worked together to impose social elements against the society at large and they were learning how to counter it.

If fear of violence and mystic facts based on emotion are removed from the left—or from anybody—they can be handedly defeated.  However there is one last element that must be utilized in such a conflict which the political left uses to prevent a challenge to either of their key strategies—it is the plight of the second hander.  The way that the left protects itself from scrutiny is through this mechanism.  A second hander desires the approval of others for internal sustenance—for instance, second hander people enjoy being told they look nice, they buy cars that they know other people will admire; they change their aroma hoping to present themselves attractively to other human beings and generally spend a lot of time seeking the approval of others.  What protects the political left most from challenges to their two primary attacks–physical violence and mystic emotion is the peer pressure of social judgment.  If challenges are presented to their two control mechanisms the default protection is this destruction of public acceptance.

From the time that I was a little kid up until about 15 years ago I used to get a lot of grief about wearing a cowboy hat in public.  For me, the hat was a symbol of traditional values which I hold strongly.  For the rest of society—it also represented that—which was out-of-step with the progressive direction of the country. People let me know about it.  Even as a twenty something young man living campus life at the University of Cincinnati I walked around everywhere with my cowboy hat—and people always looked at me funny for it.  Most of the time I was by myself as well—often I would get up in the morning and walk to Coryville to have breakfast and read my books with my hat on.  I would get the strangest looks, people actually felt anxious—first they couldn’t understand why I was by myself, and two, why I had on the hat.  Who was I trying to impress?  The answer was nobody—and this scared people.  What they never figured out—and which is a fact that remains to this day—is that I don’t care an iota what anybody thinks about anything.  When I do something I do it because I want to.  I wear what I want, when I want to and do it for my own reasons.  Therefore, I also do the same with thinking—I think what I want, say what I want, and in no way feel hampered by third-party judgment and am thusly immune to peer-pressure.

This is a very liberating attribute because it allows you to challenge the two mechanisms of liberal strategy–brute force, and emotional speculation directly without concern of being cast out of any group or the collective opinions that might be controlled by money, social prestige, or God forbid—consensus.  In this way, people have seen slowly what kind of scam has been perpetrated upon them and have taken action on their own to advance the plot.  Now that the first bricks of that intellectual damn have been removed the cracks are now crawling everywhere ahead of the break and what will be free finally are all the things hidden behind that damn by the political left for years—things put there through force and emotion.  Logic breaks the damn, and freedom from peer pressured allows the bricks to be removed one by one until the whole thing comes crashing down.

There are people who read here every day for their sustenance—because they want to see how the world really is and expect me to present it without fear from violence, or handcuffs by emotional debate, or the concern of being blacklisted from the latest charity dinner by socialites and despots hungry for attention and yearning for approval by their peers.  Through that journey they come to the truth and now that they facts are adding up, they are able to act upon those truths.  Luckily, I’m not alone in this journey and the culmination of these efforts is beginning to have a major impact.  The Bill Ayers interview with Megan Kelly is just the start—the left in the wake of a terrible Obama Presidency have to defend themselves really for the first time–and are now coming out to meet the challenge.  They really have no choice; public opinion is beginning to stack against them.  But now that other people know how to beat them at their own game—the frequency of these challenges are tearing away at their façade leaving them deeply exposed for the first time in over 100 years, and they don’t like it.  The way to fight them is now known and it is the task of the individuals reading here to carry these methods into their personal life to fight these corrosive elements in the proven fashion.  The guarantee of success is 100%.  So now that you know dear reader how to beat them………………..what’s stopping you?

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com 

American Exceptionalism on the 4th of July: Hidden messages behind the movie ‘ARGO’

Dear reader, I am going to ask a lot of you today—there’s a lot to read here—but read it you must.  The future of America and all your children, grandchildren and even people you have never met yet are at stake and this critical issue requires your full understanding.

There seemed to be a lot more American flags out in 2014 during the 4th of July as paper patriots fearful of the direction of their American country thought simply saying they were patriots—or walking in a parade was enough, than there has been in the past.  It was good to see a little stirring of the American pride and as millions across the nation waited for a fireworks show as dusk crawled across the supposedly freest nation on earth, Megan Kelly on Fox News broadcast an epic debate between the filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and the domestic terrorist Bill Ayers—the same man who launched the political career of Barack Obama.  The theme of the interview, part of which can be seen below, was the concept of American Exceptionalism and a recurring theme represented most by the current American intelligentsia was extrapolated during the debate.  The cure for many of the current problems in America are actually quite easy to fix if only the concept of American Exceptionalism were understood.  The border situation with Mexico would be solved, the economic restrictions seen throughout the world, and basic premise of freedom could save the lives of millions if only the basic understanding of American Exceptionalism could be embraced.  Yet Bill Ayers revealed what many that have learned from him over the years wished to argue regarding American imperialism as opposed to Exceptionalism.  Their position is that American had no right to interfere with other governments throughout the world, or to rob the land of the “Native Americans” or that it was built on slave labor and that all Americans should pay for the guilt of their past sins and chastise themselves before the world.  Behind the waving of American flags this particular year there seemed to be a reconciliation behind the public who many had just realized that their president—Obama had delivered them to the enemies of the world on a plate provided with a bow and apology.  It was Bill Ayers who helped develop the young mind of Barack and Michelle Obama into being a future weapon of the Weather Underground—a radical from within the people’s house.  The flag waving and fireworks were a bit more vigorous as though the American people hoped at this late hour that their complacency could erase the impact of this domestic terrorism in the year of 2014.  But it can’t, only understanding the role America plays in the world will, and supporting that role with a philosophy much different from the one that Bill Ayers believed.

There are a lot on the political left who think the way Ayers does, many of them are those who are part of the education industry.  They aren’t as violent as Ayers, but they hold very similar beliefs which can be seen through their actions.   Recently watching a “Watters’ World” episode Jesse Watters managed to get a red carpet interview with George Clooney—who is a native of the Cincinnati area and a powerful mover and shaker in Hollywood.  He’s a generally talented guy who thinks he’s very smart politically—made worse because he donates a lot of money into liberal candidates—particularly President Obama—so he thinks he has a good political grip on the world stage—but if you strip away his belief system to its root core—it will be discovered that the kind of people who shaped his foundation thoughts were people like Bill Ayers from the 1960s.  In Hollywood right now there are a lot of these young actors who are little cardboard cutouts of Bill Ayers—just as Obama is.  Clooney made sure that Watter’s knew that Obama was our “president” and deserved respect for the title—as though he were the King of America—which is clearly disjointed from reality.  Some of those cutouts are people like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Sean Penn who all have an anti-imperialist slant against America and have communist political leanings.  Their instruction in life has come from the type of beliefs taught by liberal professors like Bill Ayers and this has gone on for a long time.  Many of the current flag wavers who are just now realizing the folly of their ways are looking for answers but their belief system prevents them from seeing them.

As an example of this scenario let us look at Ben Affleck’s very good movie Argo, which won Best Picture for its 2012 release.  This was a great film about the cause of the hostage crises in Iran in 1979 and was generally a patriotic film about the very good work of a CIA agent in bringing out some stranded Americans home from that crisis.  However—Affleck couldn’t help himself.  George Clooney was a co-producer of the film so without question there was bound to be a left leaning political messages emitting from the movie—and there was.  Understanding that very simple element and making a decision on it—has the ability to fix many of our modern problems.  At the end of the film out of all the philosophers that could have been picked for a closing statement by the John Goodman character it was Karl Marx who was quoted.  This after a brief cartoon opening told the back story of Iranian history and essentially placed the blame of the westernization of Iran squarely on the backs of American influence.  Affleck skillfully showed during the opening that once Iran’s oil fields were nationalized—which is a communist concept—that all was well.  However–once Mohammad Rezâ Šâh Pahlavi—the Shah of Iran started westernizing the country it upset the people who overthrew him. The blame for the hostage crises to begin with fell on the shoulders of America who had been caught trying to manipulate the Iranian people with Western influence, then threw gasoline on the fire by giving Pahlavi exile within The United States.  The movie Argo essentially proclaims that the fault of the crises fell on American imperialism—the same basic assertion that Bill Ayers and Barack Obama believe.

But they are all wrong, America and the accusations of imperialism come directly from the Cold War conflict with communism which was taking over the world during the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, and that people like Ayers, Affleck, Damon, and Clooney are all supporters.  The Easter egg is clear as day at the end of Argo and generally none of those political activists are shy about their faith which they hide behind the Democratic Party.  What they fail to mention is that the CIA operations in the Middle East, in Central America, in Cuba, in Vietnam in virtually everywhere that there was conflict was caused by a defense against communism.  The infusion of American culture against the proposed communist cultures was the battle.  It was a fight between the merits of capitalism and communism—a fight over regional control and freedom.  Iran was under the influence of communists in the 1970s and the cost was a reversion back to their nomadic past.  Mohammad Rezâ Šâh Pahlavi had taken steps to modernize Iran but walked the line between becoming a ruthless dictator and a western loving visionary.  Ironically, and this is why I will say that Affleck did a brilliant job directing Argo—there was a wonderful scene showing how this transition was going in Iran—on one hand there were protestors burning American flags in the streets, but on the other they were eating Kentucky Fried Chicken which was a direct export of American capitalism.  So before drawing conclusions on these metaphors let’s study the real history of Mohammad Rezâ Šâh Pahlavi without the slant of communism blowing in the sails of thought.  The following comes from Wikipedia but has been edited down to the relevant portions.  The link to the entire article follows.

Mohammad Rezâ Šâh Pahlavi (Persian: Mohamad Rezā Ŝāhh Pahlawi, [mohæmˈmæd reˈzɒː ˈʃɒːhe pæhlæˈviː]; 25 October 1919 – 27 July 1980) was the ruler of Iran (Shah of Iran) from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979. He took the title Šâhanšâh (“Emperor” or “King of Kings”)[1] on 26 October 1967. He was the second and last monarch of the House of Pahlavi of the Iranian monarchy. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi held several other titles, including that of Aryamehr (Light of the Aryans) and Bozorge Arteštârân (Head of the Warriors, Persian: Bozorg Arteŝdārān).[2]

Mohammad Rezâ Pahlavi came to power during World War II after an Anglo-Soviet invasion forced the abdication of his father Reza Shah. During Mohammad Reza’s reign, the Iranian oil industry was briefly nationalized under the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh before a U.S.-backed coup d’état deposed Mosaddegh and brought back foreign oil firms,[3] and Iran marked the anniversary of 2,500 years of continuous monarchy since the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great. As ruler, he introduced the White Revolution, a series of economic, social and political reforms with the proclaimed intention of transforming Iran into a global power and modernizing the nation by nationalizing certain industries and granting women suffrage.

A secular Muslim, Mohammad Reza gradually lost support from the Shi’a clergy of Iran as well as the working class, particularly due to his strong policy of modernization, secularization, conflict with the traditional class of merchants known as bazaari, recognition of Israel, and corruption issues surrounding himself, his family, and the ruling elite. Various additional controversial policies were enacted, including the banning of the communist Tudeh Party, and a general suppression of political dissent by Iran’s intelligence agency, SAVAK. According to official statistics, Iran had as many as 2,200 political prisoners in 1978, a number which multiplied rapidly as a result of the revolution.[4]

By the early 1950s, the political crisis brewing in Iran commanded the attention of British and American policy leaders. In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was appointed Prime Minister and committed to nationalizing the Iranian petroleum industry controlled by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Under the leadership of Mosaddegh’s democratically elected nationalist movement, the Iranian parliament unanimously voted to nationalize the oil industry – thus shutting out the immensely profitable Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which was a pillar of Britain’s economy and provided it political clout in the region.

Pahlavi with US President Truman in Washington, c. 18 November 1949

At the start of the confrontation, American political sympathy was forthcoming from the Truman Administration. In particular, Mosaddegh was buoyed by the advice and counsel he was receiving from American Ambassador in Tehran, Henry F. Grady. However, eventually American decision-makers lost their patience, and by the time a Republican Administration came to office fears that communists were poised to overthrow the government became an all-consuming concern (these concerns were later dismissed as “paranoid” in retrospective commentary on the coup from U.S. government officials). Shortly prior to the 1952 presidential election in the United States, the British government invited CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., to London to propose collaboration on a secret plan to force Mosaddegh from office.[8] This would be the first of three “regime change” operations led by Allen Dulles (the other two being the successful CIA-instigated 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba).

Under the direction of Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer and grandson of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, the American CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) funded and led a covert operation to depose Mosaddegh with the help of military forces disloyal to the democratically elected government. Referred to as Operation Ajax,[9] the plot hinged on orders signed by Mohammad Reza to dismiss Mosaddegh as prime minister and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi – a choice agreed on by the British and Americans.

Despite the high-level coordination and planning, the coup initially failed, causing the Shah to flee to Baghdad, and then to Rome. After a brief exile in Italy, he returned to Iran, this time through a successful second attempt at a coup. A deposed Mosaddegh was arrested and tried. The king intervened and commuted the sentence to one and a half years. Zahedi was installed to succeed Mosaddegh.[10]

Before the first attempted coup, the American Embassy in Tehran reported that Mosaddegh’s popular support remained robust. The Prime Minister requested direct control of the army from the Majlis. Given the situation, alongside the strong personal support of Conservative leader Anthony Eden and Prime Minister Winston Churchill for covert action, the American government gave the go-ahead to a committee, attended by the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, Kermit Roosevelt, Henderson, and Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson. Kermit Roosevelt returned to Iran on 13 July 1953, and again on 1 August 1953, in his first meeting with the king. A car picked him up at midnight and drove him to the palace. He laid down on the seat and covered himself with a blanket as guards waved his driver through the gates. The Shah got into the car and Roosevelt explained the mission. The CIA bribed him with $1 million in Iranian currency, which Roosevelt had stored in a large safe – a bulky cache, given the exchange rate at the time of 1,000 rial to 15 dollars.[11]

The Communists staged massive demonstrations to hijack Mosaddegh’s initiatives. The United States actively plotted against him. On 16 August 1953, the right-wing of the Army attacked. Armed with an order by the Shah, it appointed General Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister. A coalition of mobs and retired officers close to the Palace executed this coup d’état. They failed dismally and the Shah fled the country in humiliating haste. Even Ettelaat, the nation’s largest daily newspaper, and its pro-Shah publisher, Abbas Masudi, were against him.[12]

During the following two days, the Communists turned against Mosaddegh. Opposition against him grew tremendously. They roamed Tehran, raising red flags and pulling down statues of Reza Shah. This was rejected by conservative clerics like Kashani and National Front leaders like Hossein Makki, who sided with the king. On 18 August 1953, Mosaddegh defended the government against this new attack. Tudeh partisans were clubbed and dispersed.[13]

The Tudeh party had no choice but to accept defeat. In the meantime, according to the CIA plot, Zahedi appealed to the military, and claimed to be the legitimate prime minister and charged Mosaddegh with staging a coup by ignoring the Shah’s decree. Zahedi’s son Ardeshir acted as the contact between the CIA and his father. On 19 August 1953, pro-Shah partisans – bribed with $100,000 in CIA funds – finally appeared and marched out of south Tehran into the city center, where others joined in. Gangs with clubs, knives, and rocks controlled the streets, overturning Tudeh trucks and beating up anti-Shah activists. As Roosevelt was congratulating Zahedi in the basement of his hiding place, the new Prime Minister’s mobs burst in and carried him upstairs on their shoulders. That evening, Henderson suggested to Ardashir that Mosaddegh not be harmed. Roosevelt gave Zahedi US$900,000 left from Operation Ajax funds.

U.S. actions further solidified sentiments that the West was a meddlesome influence in Iranian politics. In the year 2000, reflecting on this notion, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright stated:

“In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”[14]

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi returned to power, but never extended the elite status of the court to the technocrats and intellectuals who emerged from Iranian and Western universities. Indeed, his system irritated the new classes, for they were barred from partaking in real power.[15]

In his “White Revolution” starting in the 1960s, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi made major changes to modernize Iran. He curbed the power of certain ancient elite factions by expropriating large and medium-sized estates for the benefit of more than four million small farmers. He took a number of other major measures, including extending suffrage to women and the participation of workers in factories through shares and other measures. In the 1970s the governmental program of a free of charge nourishment for children at school (“Taghzieh e Rāigān”) was implemented. Under the Shah’s reign, the national Iranian income showed an unprecedented rise for an extended period.

Improvement of the educational system was made through new elementary schools and additionally literacy courses were set up in remote villages by the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces, this initiative being called “Sepāh e Dānesh”, “Army of Knowledge”. The Armed Forces were also engaged in infrastructural and other educational projects throughout the country (“Sepāh-e Tarvij va Âbādāni”) as well as in health education and promotion (“Sepāh-e Behdāsht”). The Shah instituted exams for Islamic theologians to become established clerics. Many Iranian university students were sent to and supported in foreign, especially Western countries and the Indian subcontinent.

In the field of diplomacy, Iran realized and maintained friendly relations with Western and East European countries as well as the state of Israel and China and became, especially through the close friendship with the United States, more and more a hegemonial power in the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East. The suppression of the communist guerilla movement in the region of Dhofar in Oman with the help of the Iranian army after a formal request by Sultan Qaboos was widely regarded in this context.

On 16 January 1979, he made a contract with Farboud and left Iran at the behest of Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar (a long time opposition leader himself), who sought to calm the situation.[71] Spontaneous attacks by members of the public on statues of the Pahlavis followed, and “within hours, almost every sign of the Pahlavi dynasty” was destroyed.[72] Bakhtiar dissolved SAVAK, freed all political prisoners, and allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran after years in exile. He asked Khomeini to create a Vatican-like state in Qom, promised free elections, and called upon the opposition to help preserve the constitution, proposing a “national unity” government including Khomeini’s followers. Khomeini rejected Bakhtiar’s demands and appointed his own interim government, with Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister, stating that “I will appoint a state. I will act against this government. With the nation’s support, I will appoint a state.”[73] In February, pro-Khomeini revolutionary guerrilla and rebel soldiers gained the upper hand in street fighting, and the military announced its neutrality. On the evening of 11 February, the dissolution of the monarchy was complete.

During his second exile, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi traveled from country to country seeking what he hoped would be temporary residence. First he flew to Assuan, Egypt, where he received a warm and gracious welcome from President Anwar El-Sadat. He later lived in Morocco as a guest of King Hassan II, as well as in the Bahamas, and in Cuernavaca, Mexico, near Mexico City, as a guest of José López Portillo. Richard Nixon, the former president, visited the Shah in summer 1979 in Mexico.[74] The Shah suffered from gallstones that would require prompt surgery. He was offered treatment in Switzerland, but insisted on treatment in the United States.

On 22 October 1979, President Jimmy Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah into the United States to undergo surgical treatment at the New York–Weill Cornell Medical Hospital. While in Cornell Medical Center, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi used the name “David D. Newsom” as his temporary code name, without Newsom’s knowledge.

The Shah was taken later by U.S. Air Force jet to Kelly Air Force Base in Texas and from there to Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base.[75] It was anticipated that his stay in the United States would be short; however, surgical complications ensued, which required six weeks of confinement in the hospital before he recovered. His prolonged stay in the United States was extremely unpopular with the revolutionary movement in Iran, which still resented the United States’ overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh and the years of support for the Shah’s rule. The Iranian government demanded his return to Iran, but he stayed in the hospital.[76]

There are claims that this resulted in the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the kidnapping of American diplomats, military personnel, and intelligence officers, which soon became known as the Iran hostage crisis.[77] According to the Shah’s book Answer to History, in the end, the United States never provided him any kind of health care and asked him to leave the country.[78]

He left the United States on 15 December 1979 and lived for a short time in the Isla Contadora in Panama. This caused riots by Panamanians who overwhelminglyobjected to the Shah being in their country. Panamanians viewed it as their country being used as a stooge of the United States. The new government in Iran still demanded his and his wife’s immediate extradition to Tehran. A short time after Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s arrival in Panama, an Iranian ambassador was dispatched to the Central American nation carrying a 450-page extradition request. That official appeal greatlyalarmed both the Shah and his advisors. Whether the Panamanian government would have complied is a matter of speculation among historians.

After that event, the Shah again sought the support of Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat, who renewed his offer of permanent asylum in Egypt to the ailing monarch. He returned to Egypt in March 1980, where he received urgent medical treatment, including a splenectomy performed by Michael DeBakey,[79] but nevertheless died from complications of Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia (a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma) on 27 July 1980, aged 60. Egyptian President Sadat gave the Shah a state funeral.[80]

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is buried in the Al Rifa’i Mosque in Cairo, a mosque of great symbolic importance. The last royal rulers of two monarchies are buried there, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran and King Farouk of Egypt, his former brother-in-law. The tombs lie to the left of the entrance. Years earlier, his father and predecessor, Reza Shah had also initially been buried at the Al Rifa’i Mosque.

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

If it is traced back the accusation of American imperialism being so vile it is the belief that cultures are better off left alone by removing American capitalism from foreign policy.  It wasn’t in the case of Iran a bunch of people who wanted to preserve Islamic faith or the sanctity of their country and its history—it was communists who wanted complete control, just as they did in Vietnam, Cuba, and Central America.  The trouble within America leaving the CIA to be so clandestine—a journey started by his grandfather Teddy Roosevelt with his vengeful commitment toward Progressivism—which would become a more “intellectual” name for communism in the states–Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. was all over the Middle East trying to stop the spread thus making those countries dangerous not just to America but their own people.  Domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers would continue to sputter the belief that America just wanted the oil from Iran to operate cars cheaply so they could drive over all the land stolen from the Indians—but behind such sentiments is communism just as those who hate America abroad are fearful of the kind of freedom that capitalism brings to people wherever it touches.  The communists in Iran didn’t care about justice; they wanted a head to put on a pike as they took over in the same manner that the French Revolution of 1948 attempted and elsewhere that the words of Karl Marx touched.

Yet Ben Afflect gave away his political sentiments in the closing scenes of his movie Argo just as his friend Matt Damon made an argument for communism in the science fiction film Elysum.  Elysium only made $93 million dollars in The United States.   It made most of its money in the foreign market raking in $193 million around the rest of the world.  Americans could tell that there was something wrong with the message—but in countries where communism and socialism are already the standard, Elysium was a ray of hope that their poor political philosophy had merit.

America has a stake in those far-flung markets because when capitalism is not a part of their life—they seek to come to America to live.  So America to protect itself has an obligation to spread capitalism to Iran, to Iraq, to China, Afghanistan, to India, Mexico, and Central America because the restrictive economies of socialist and communist countries has impoverished people and they can’t all come to America for refuge.   It would be nice if everyone could live in America—but they can’t as America is only around 5% of the world’s population.  So America has to bring itself to the world—and not be shy about it.  But first the remnants of communism and a love for Karl Marx must be removed from the debate by confronting it directly.  Affleck put the reference in a movie offered to the American public as a patriotic film and surely George Clooney thought it to be high brow political theater.  Bill Ayers wants to see American capitalism crushed so that the land can return to the Indians—or so he thinks—and America will no longer have the ability to broadcast capitalism messages to the far corners of the world where communism is still the operating foundation of their governments.

It takes more than waving a flag on the 4th of July to keep America as the best hope the world has for freedom—and economic prosperity.  And the CIA shouldn’t have to behave the way Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. did to prevent communism from gaining the looted wealth of oil fields and to use that wealth as weapons against America funneling money straight into the black hole of communist Russia at the time.  The situation was then and still is far more complicated—but the essence is a decision between capitalism and communism.  America has a need to project capitalism to every corner of the world so that immigrants don’t topple its economy with welfare benefits but instead give the potential immigrants the ability to live freely in their own countries with economic vitality as their foundations.  America wasn’t trying to take over Iran, Iraq, Cuba, or any place else—it simply wanted to show those countries how to live in a capitalist society and how to benefit from it as partners throughout the world.  The hatred of America from Bill Ayers, George Clooney, Ben Afflect and others who utter sentiments about imperialism projected from The United States is that they fear capitalism and believe that a version of communism needs to be the ruling philosophy—it has nothing to do with the good of the indigenous people.  The root of the anger always comes back to capitalism versus communism.  These radicals like Ayers do not support communism with a capital “C” but with a little one—and that is a sentiment that is very popular among those who think they know better than everyone else.

The World Cup soccer matches were so terribly boring for The United States because soccer is a socialist game.  As pointed out in previous articles, the off sides rules and lack of ability to use hands during the game is metaphorical of socialist and communists governments.  Soccer is the game most enjoyed in countries mired down with socialism.  This is why there is a huge movement in America for many years to make soccer the dominate activity among young people—but as a sport, Americans, just like their rejection of Matt Damon’s Elysium know that there is something they don’t like about it—which of course is that they are both anti-capitalist in their primary philosophic foundations.  So it’s not enough to wave a flag and clap after some fireworks explode.  If you really love your country you’ll openly support capitalism not just in America—but in Iraq, Honduras, Mexico, China, and Russia—everywhere.  There is no way to support both; a passive attitude toward Karl Marx’s communism cannot be permitted because it cannot compete with capitalism. Communism has to destroy capitalism to survive and if it does that, people will live in oppressed huts, under the control of regional warlords, international bankers, and fanatic religious radicals—and the borders of The United States will continue to be flooded by refuges seeking opportunity where only capitalism can give it.

First however dear reader you have to know your history and understand what is really behind any animosity exhibited by people like Bill Ayers who has corrupted the mind of many people with his hatred of American capitalism.  A whole generation of Ben Affleck types have bought into his anti-imperialism hook, line and sinker and they make movies like Argo to support their thesis.  But now you know rest of the story regarding Mohammad Rezâ Šâh Pahlavi without the slant of Marxist philosophy clouding the matter.  Most Americans watch Argo and don’t quite get the Marx reference or the anti imperialism at the beginning until Barack Obama says something similar in a speech, or a teacher instructs something like-minded in a class room.  Americans have been taught that they must feel “compassion” for those other places and be respectful of their history—even as communism eats away at their foundations.  Americans sense it when they watch soccer or when the message is blatant like it was in Elysium so they vote with their dollars and work out their anxiety with a few more fireworks on the 4th of July and wave their flags a little more vigorously hoping to get back what they lost in philosophy to the dregs of society represented by Bill Ayers—exposed on the Kelly File on July 4, 2014.

You can’t play with America like a cat pawing at a ball of yarn, waving flags at patriotic holidays and putting your hand on your heart at sporting events.  You have to buy into the philosophy of America and support capitalism everywhere it has an opportunity to develop—and you have to do it now.  Because the enemies are deeply entrenched, and are everywhere—at every level of society—and they want their own kind of “regime change” and as Barack Obama has proven—mentored personally by Bill Ayers—capitalism is not the mode of operation.  America is exceptional, but it is not its job to confine that exceptionalism to only 5% of the world population.  It is not America’s task to yield to 95% of the rest of the world, but to teach them to be capitalists so that same 95% doesn’t try to cross over into the Mexican border to flee the communism and socialism of their home countries.  America to defend itself must turn those numbers around so that more people within their own countries can gain the opportunities they would have in only The United States because of capitalism. It isn’t imperialism and control that America has been doing throughout the world—it has simply been the self-defense of capitalism against communism that is as still alive today as it was in 1950—only the names have changed and moved underground only to be revealed behind some of Hollywood’s biggest names at the end of the movies they produce thinking they are the smartest people in the world—and the only ones who notice.

They weren’t……………………….now, watch all these videos, and take note of the  pattern. 

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com