Month: February 2017

Donald Trump and Saint Augustine: Becoming a missionary of justice to fight off the pagan insurgents

It was intensely bizarre for me personally to be standing at the grave of St. Augustine in his demolished Abby while watching the media reaction to Donald Trump’s CPAC speech on my iPhone because in a lot of ways, what Trump and Steve Bannon are doing presently reflects accurately what St. Augustine did in 597 AD under the assignment of Pope Gregory. Rome had to withdraw its troops from Britain to protect its crumbling empire and Anglo Saxons had moved into south England bringing with them their pagan religions to corrupt the countryside away from Christianity, which had been brought to England by the Romans.  Augustine set up a mission in Canterbury and formed a friendship with the pagan king Æthelberht of Kent and within a few years the Roman Catholic Church was converting pagans to Christianity serving as the first of its kind anywhere in the world. What happened in Canterbury would be done to the far corners of the world in favor of the Catholic Church following the manner for which Augustine had conducted the enterprise.  Eventually during the reformation in England King Henry VIII would destroy the Abby and loot it of its wealth which left the place in ruins at Canterbury.  But the body of St. Augustine remained for me to observe as I finished watching the speech fall out by Donald Trump who was given a similar task, this time not by a Pope, but by the people of the United States to spread the message of Americanism to a world hell-bent on anti-capitalist objectives.

Trump’s message to the media during CPAC was firm, that they were no longer relevant and that the White House would not be moved off its objective of returning Americanism to the land of the free as opposed to the pagan chaos of the parasites that had moved in and taken refuge in the shadows of the weak leaders that have emerged over the last century due to a more global focus on philosophy and economics. Stunningly the whole speech was carried live in England from the start of it to the end and endless commentary spewed forth after.  Donald Trump like St. Augustine before him was a vessel for undoing the damage caused by poor thinking and the lack of structure adhered to by an advanced culture.  For instance, the moment the Romans moved out of England, the society reverted back to the tribalism of the Germanic people following perfectly the Vico cycle—where democracy turns to anarchy, then back to theology—and thus under St Augustine, then by the influence of the Nomads, the spreading of Christianity spread again and gave birth to a new age which lasted for over a thousand years.

Trump is engaged in the same kind of effort. The emphasis of his presidency is one with a long goal in mind, to change the culture of America back toward patriotism and to vanquish those who speak against it, which has been the entire world.  And the world cannot turn away because Trump is such a great topic to cover, they can’t help but put him on television.  Even as Jodi Foster held a rally against Trump and the attendees of the Oscars were winding up for a celebration of the black, gay film Moonlight—Trump was planning his own celebrations which would divide up the media coverage of what is often a monopoly held by Hollywood on Oscar night.  For the first time ever a sitting president wasn’t licking the heels of the Hollywood community, but was standing in defiance of them during Oscar night.  Even as Hollywood and their Academy members bent over backwards to put a film like Moonlight into the limelight—to show they aren’t racist elites in Santa Monica, Trump was beating a different drum and the world was listening—a national patriotism that was intent to convert people back to what built the country.

img_3820Our politicians in America and the media culture that followed it were a lot like the Germanic people who invaded England once the Roman Empire withdrew. That is always what happens when a powerful force from a superior culture takes away its influence.  The masses collapse on themselves and chaos ushers itself in.  This was the subject of the great Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged, where the producers of society withdrew their talents and society quickly crumbled away.  What has been told to American culture was that we should embrace all these “Moonlight” values and establish our society on those foundations, which of course lead to a degradation of the human condition—as we see presently in Paris.  Even as all this news was spewing forth about the Oscars and Trump’s CPAC speech across Europe, President Hollande was complaining about how disrespectful Trump had been toward the city of Paris—and the news cycle did almost nothing but talk about it.

In the past lesser people would feel the burden of not being accepted by the actors of Hollywood, or the press, or even global socialists like Hollande, but Trump doesn’t care, because he is on a mission and his drive is not created from other people, it is generated from within. And that’s what the world doesn’t understand.  I could see it clearly watching the news while I toured the St. Augustine Abby and paid respect to the tomb of the Saint himself.  Trump was that modern voice who had to step into a pagan land of lawless behemoths and establish order among them.  Trump gets all his strength from within himself, in his faith in his ability.  Augustine put his faith in God so he was able to step into a hostile environment and establish the first Church of England.  Trump is doing something as we speak that will be talked about for thousands of years and that history is happening in the present—and it’s quite something to see.

It is during events like this which is why I love history so much, because understanding these types of things explain contemporary occurrences with context. Because once you understand the Vico cycle and the patterns of the human race, you can know the outcome of something that is happening which of course happened before.  Only instead of the topic being Christianity as it was in Augustine’s time, it is now the concept of Americanism, which to my eyes the world desperately needs.  The pagan losers in Hollywood like Jodi Foster, Casey Affleck and many others never understood the meaning of America, and are completely unable to define it.  And the kids in the media, all those entertainment writers and beat reporters who are under 30 years old and have a lifetime of lessons to learn before really being able to inform a public of a viewpoint beyond the facts of a matter—they are lost and rootless and will quickly convert to the Americanism that Trump and Steve Bannon are proposing.  Just as the skeptical Æthelberht listened to Augustine for his first years of missionary action then converted to Christianity from his pagan roots—the world too will do the same with Trump.  And Trump knows it.

The real fear that isn’t being said at the Oscars, in France, in the media and in the CNN newsrooms, the New York Times boardroom, and all the others who are finding themselves on the outside of Trump’s White House. They are aware of it too, that they are about to be extinct.  Trump is converting pagans to Americanism and his White House has more global influence than all of Hollywood and the modern press put together and it is driving them crazy to realize how irrelevant they are.   And that was the purpose of the old cathedrals, they were to impress upon the residents the power and majestic triumph of the Catholic Church which strengthened their faith into God and the Church’s role in statehood.  Trump is now doing that with the White House, using that majestic platform to spread the benefits of Americanism.  And the pagans know they are losing their grip on the American public because Trump doesn’t need anything from them leaving them completely powerless.   And that is a great thing!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Socialism is Destroying The Louvre: Capitalism is the best way to preserve art and history

For a museum that opened in 1793 and had been used as a personal residence of King Francis I and many others after him serving around 10 million visitors a year and is one of the most celebrated of its kind in the world, I had high expectations for The Louvre in Paris. I love museums, I absolutely adore the one in Cincinnati which I visit several times a year called The Museum Center.  However, I have always assumed that places like The Louvre were far superior—after all, when one thinks of Paris they think of two things, the Eiffel Tower and The Louvre so my pilgrimage to that historic museum was something I had thought about for decades.  Perhaps it was because I had been spoiled by the various Heritage sites across the English Channel in England.  My wife and I are members of English Heritage which gives us free access to important historic sites all over England from Stonehenge to Dover Castle and everything in between.  Even relatively small sites like St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury have wonderful museums that go along with their preservation sites.  I had spent a week leading up to my visit to The Louvre visiting Heritage sites and spending a lot of time at the British Museum in London—and I have to say, I was in heaven.  They were so wonderfully organized and put together and the literature they offered was immense and provided me with years of reading.

Yet when I arrived at The Louvre I was greeted with chaos and socialist mayhem. Let me begin by saying that if The Louvre had been in the United States, it would be the greatest attraction in the world, including Disney World.  The building itself was immaculate, stunning even.  And the museum collection acquired under Napoleon rivaled anything else in the world.  It was remarkable.  The combination of contemporary design with the ancient was everything I hoped it would be.  But the main problem with The Louvre was that it is being operated by socialists who have no idea what they are doing.  They have this wonderful museum with all these people coming to it—but they literally have screwed up every aspect of the enterprise starting at the front gate.

My family arrived surprised to see an hour-long line outside the pyramid. We naturally assumed that this was the line to purchase tickets. So we stood in the cold needing to use the restroom for just a little over an hour only to find out that the line we were in was just for security.  The Louvre had enough visitors on a Wednesday afternoon at lunch time to populate a football stadium in the United States, yet the security forced everyone to go through two lines of airport like security which took forever.  Everyone understands that The Louvre is a target for terrorist attacks, but they should have at least had 7 to 8 security lines to properly handle all the museum visitors.  By the time we all got through security we all had to use the restroom—badly.  One of the worst things in France is that they don’t know how to give people places to use the restroom.  They have these ridiculous public restrooms on the sidewalks that hardly work.  Every time I tried to use one it malfunctioned and the seat would come up and the door would come up to the outside letting everyone in the world see you.  So we didn’t use those.  I thought we were in luck by the major tourist attraction of Notre Dame.  We followed the signs to the “toilets” only to go down a series of steps to find a group of east Europeans sitting in a group behind a steel cage charging 1 Euro to go through turnstile just to use the restroom.  So guess what, we turned around and decided to wait until we got to The Louvre thinking it would be like the Museum Center in Cincinnati—and would have like rows of places to use the restroom.  By the time we arrived in that hour long line, we had to go badly and it was almost unbearable by the time we got through security.  There certainly wasn’t any place to go in the courtyard around the pyramid.  Now that we were through security we rushed to the restrooms before buying tickets and found a line there too—especially for the women.

I told my family that I’d step into the men’s room, use the restroom, then I’d get our tickets. By the time I got through that line I thought the girls would have a chance to get through that massive women’s line.  Now keep in mind that this was a Wednesday afternoon in February.  It wasn’t Saturday in the middle of the summer.  For a museum of this size, there was no way there should be lines like what we saw at The Louvre.  Going into the restroom it was pandemonium, and there were as many women in there as men.  It was sheer chaos.  And there were only four urinals.  I managed to use one and did as I said and went to stand in another line to get admission tickets.  After standing in lines for over two hours we had our tickets and were ready to see the museum.  My wife and daughter gave up on the women’s restroom not moving at all for over twenty minutes and used the men’s room under the guidance of my son-in-law.  That solved one problem, now we had another one, we needed to eat.

The plan was always to eat at The Louvre so we didn’t stop at any of the many little restaurants on our way. We figured we grab a bite to eat, spend about 10 minutes eating it, then we’d get into the museum and get to work.  But no, they had only like three restaurants and all of them had half hour lines.  My wife and I managed to get some food as my daughter and her husband waited for an additional 15 minutes to get the same type of food.  The food itself was pretty good, but the means to get it was horrendous.  The employees were slow and unmotivated.  They didn’t care how big the crowds were, they weren’t getting into any kind of hurry.  Service in France is just unfathomably terrible.  Nobody cares about anything and everyone just exists.  And at The Louvre, customer service was not a priority.

Once we got through all that we enjoyed the museum, but the way the experience started put a bad taste in our mouth. If The Louvre had been in America there would have been about 10 restaurants all around the grand room and plenty of seating and bathrooms. Getting tickets for a museum, using the restroom and obtaining food should be easy things for such a large tourist attraction so that visitors could spend their time learning and doing things.  But under the socialist country of France, they even managed to screw up a slam dunk of a great tourist attraction, and turn it into sheer misery.

The whole thing told the story of why socialism is so terrible and how capitalism services society so much better.  Even in England they get it, the Heritage people understand how they make their money to offer services to a public which funds the preservation of art and history.  But The Louvre, they are missing millions of dollars of opportunities and are just living off their reputation—which won’t last forever.  They need approximately ten times the bathroom capacity and that much equally in restaurant availability.  They certainly have the room for it, but obviously not the business sense.  If I were running The Louvre I’d seek out a partnership with McDonald’s—someone who knows how to serve massive amounts of customers quickly.  I’d also bring in other American fast-food chains who are just as good—obviously, the French don’t know how to do that on their own and I’d set them all up on some of those blank walls in the main area under the pyramid outside of the ticketing area.

It isn’t cool to provide bad service, and it certainly doesn’t place people above the bourgeoisie of society to drag ass everything.   Bad service is just disrespectful and it says to visitors of The Louvre that the management doesn’t give a rat’s ass if anyone visits or not.  And from what I saw, The Louvre really doesn’t care if anyone comes.  They think they are entitled to the business and they think that because there really isn’t much else to do in Paris except visit museums that they’ll get by with this kind of thing for the foreseeable future.  But I’m sure I’m not the only visitor to The Louvre to come away feeling disenchanted by their terrible service.   They have a lot of lessons to learn, and for their own sake, they better start learning them.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Paris is a Disaster: Stepping beyond progressivism and the metaphor of Sainte Chapelle

I’ve listened to people rattle on about how wonderful Paris is, the “great city of lights” for years now, and I really thought I was missing something. Not allowing for a lack of being there to shape my opinions I felt I needed to give the place a chance to win me over even though I knew going in that France was a socialist country and that I’d likely be disappointed.  My family is of the type that we can make something good out of anything, so a little video of our trip can be seen below as we hit the major tourist sites, Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, the Louvre, the bridge of locks, and the Eiffel Tower and everything in between as we walked the entire length from the Eurostar train station all the way down to the tower.  We didn’t do the tourist thing of riding in a taxi or a bus to get through the “quaint” neighborhoods with all their “great” personality to arrive at our destinations.  We came to know the city through hard work—and boy did we get to see it up close.  We did hire a bicycle cart to take us from the Eiffel Tower back up to Notre Dame because my wife had developed a massive blister on her foot and we wanted to get her back up to the Boulevard de Strasbourg for the heaviest part of the walk so not to risk being late for our train at the Gare du Nord.  Given that little explanation, this is what our trip looked like getting to and leaving Paris.

But let me say this—Paris is a disaster. A city living off its past that has been destroyed by the chaos of kingdoms, religion, and now open border socialism.  What I saw along just the Boulevard de Strasbourg was enough to convince me to shut down the city and start over, because they have a mess.  It was more of a third world country than one of the premier capitals of the world—and their undisciplined immigration and loose lifestyles have eradicated the city of any nobility of character.  The first sign of trouble came just a block from the train station where two men were arguing, one of them looked homeless.  He had a large concrete block over his head threatening to throw it through a window while the other man cussed at him in French with great passion to put it down.  We had to walk between them to get down the sidewalk and apparently, this goes on all the time because the other people with us on the crowded sidewalk were just going about their business.  If that guy were doing something like that in the United States, somebody would have shot him, it’s that simple.  The whole ordeal was just a hot mess representation of what a country with open borders and progressive socialism produces—anger, frustration, extreme poverty and dirty filth everywhere.  But they do have diversity.  There were immigrants from as far away as Sri Lanka to mass gatherings of Muslim Central Africans and associated cultures.  Only an idiot would think that so many people without common beliefs packed on top of each other and prostitutes thrown into the mix was a good idea and evidence of a successful country.  Prior to coming I had only heard about how wonderful the walk down the Boulevard de Strasbourg was.  Well, those people must have been smoking crack, because it was among the worst that I’ve seen in any slum area in the United States—a defeated community failing by the day.  And if it was that bad in the tourist area just think how terrible it would be just a few blocks in on both sides where the tourists don’t go.  My thoughts were to give those people guns, let them fight it out and whoever wins, they would decide the nature of the community because as it is now, pickpockets, prostitutes and con artists are defining the nature of the city and that’s not a good thing.

After about six blocks of this things did improve as we came closer to the river Seine and armed police stood around everywhere with assault weapons ready to gun down any terrorist insurgents. Just two weeks’ prior an Islamic terrorist had assaulted people at the Lourve, which is one of the biggest tourist areas of Paris, so they weren’t taking any chances along the river which is the breadbasket of tourism for Paris.  As long as we were near the river, I could see a glimpse of the Paris that people have been talking about.  But it was like visiting a relative in the hospital whom you know is about to die.  They are there talking to you and you reflect on their life while they are still speaking.  But you can see the specter of death over their shoulders beckoning them to come hither.  Paris was already dead, but the body of tourism just hadn’t yet cooled to show the menace to the drunken westerners looking to fill their illusions of the famous Moulin Rouge and the Hugo epic Les Misérables.   It was a depressing situation far from the kind of optimism I’m used to in America.

As I said, we did get to visit our key sites and I couldn’t help but ponder the layers of mistakes. As beautiful as the old cathedrals like Notre Dame were, everything I could see was just piled up forms of socialism with the churches of the Middle Ages being the first to usher in the kind of collectivism that set Paris up for failure over a thousand years ago, I have read more about this stuff than most people would care to do in a lifetime and I was explaining a bit of it to my kids when were at the Sainte Chapelle because that is a perfect example of what’s wrong with Paris.  In the lower chamber of Sainte Chapelle is a mini cathedral which represents our time on earth.  On both sides of this room are tight spiral staircases which take you up and into the grand room above with large vaulted ceilings and stained glass enclosures 25 feet high.  The spiral staircase represents death—or the birth canal into re-birth into heaven and this was the point of emphasis for the entire Middle Ages for which Paris was founded and the historic foundation visitors relish to this very day.  I was happy to see it but I felt sad for all the suckers over the last thousand years who came to Sainte Chapelle after throwing their piss and shit out their windows into the streets below to worship in this truly magnificent place when the Greek and Romans had lived better 1000 and 2000 years earlier—and to think that what they were doing was cutting edge wonder—is just stupid.  Paris was a city built on the back of the Vico cycle reverting back to the beginning to make the same mistakes all over again which were showing up just a short time later in 2017 where the culture had broken down to this scribbled mess of ancient religions which no longer spoke to the world due to their failure to update themselves to modern science.

Naturally a society so collectively based, and willing to throw away the here and now for the promise of everlasting life shown in the great cathedrals socialism became their new standard and that has led to the present despicable situation. On the way into Gare du Nord by train my wife and I marveled at the beautiful French countryside, but not in the way you might think.  It looked much the way it had for many centuries, and hadn’t changed much.  There were a lot of empty fields and very little industry.  Then suddenly we were in Paris and then the frustrations of poverty were clear with all the defacing graffiti and long looks on the faces of the residents who have been poor all their lives and like the mythology of the Sainte Chapelle have retreated to religion to show them a light at the end of the tunnel. France had chosen poverty for its people and used environmental worship as just the latest religion to control the thoughts of their people into keeping their lives easily confined to the lower room metaphorically of the Sainte Chapelle where the average European has been for over 2000 years.

If France had adopted capitalism that countryside would have shown signs of more factories, nicer homes, and more commercial options like would be found in the United States—like an occasional Crackler Barrel for god’s sake. France and its socialist residents might come to the United States and balk at our unrepentant splendor of capitalism, of our big houses, cars and lifestyles where every few miles across the country are just about anything you could want and eat.  And just like their past in Paris in forcing people into the Catholic religion and the cathedrals there to provide a state sponsored view of the everlasting, they haven’t improved.  Sure they have a separation of church and state now, but not really.  Instead of their religion being a Catholic one inherited from the Roman Empire that conquered them just a few years after the crucifixion of Christ they now have a progressive view of the world where any religion from any place can come and interact freely and without State regulations—which essentially allows every ethnic community to impose their version of Sainte Chapelle on everyone else.  That terrorist who was shot recently at the Louvre threatening tourists with a knife is the same loser who for millennia before was beheading people for not following the rules of the cathedrals and adhering to the state sponsorship of the everlasting.  Now the new religion is environmentalism and it is purposely keeping people poor so that they must look to the “State” for guidance which has created the deplorable situation along the Boulevard de Strasbourg. Sure women are “free” to walk around topless and earn as much money as a man.  The men have been subverted into little shrimps of human flesh walking around in their cosmopolitan “skinny jeans” which obviously have shoved their genitals back up into them squeezing off their masculinity.  And this has left nobody to challenge the failures of their vast socialism and the carcass of Paris which is cooling by the minute as rigor mortis is fast setting in.

Anyone who thinks Paris is a stunning city of “lights” is stuck in the distant past remembering the life that might have been from the vantage point of ignorance. It’s like remembering that abusive parent while they are on their death bed and the one time they bought you a nice snack somewhere, then beat you to a pulp because you used all their money in the act.  Paris has committed suicide many years ago and has slowly been bleeding out all this time leaving us with a fine example of what not to do.  Like all cities of socialism, it was a dirty place filled with crime leaving people desperate to make any money at all begging for it at every opportunity.  Graffiti and crime are only the most obvious signs, but sex workers are the next layer.  When people start selling sex in exchange for opportunity, that’s when you know you have a failing society and need to pass on some of those open green fields and build a few factories.  Paris never had it right, not when they were conquered by the Romans, or settled by the Celts, or spent years at war with Spain and England pawning off their daughters for the promise of peace with a rival kingdom.  Paris has always been a city of suppression even as women celebrate their nudity and their unshaved armpits as Madonna did for Playboy in the eighties to sell America on this garbage—like a big sister trying to get their innocent sibling to smoke cigarettes for the first time.  The socialism of France was sold to us all through rebellion, with sex, violence, and red flagged upheavals—and their net result has been garbage and decay.

I was so glad to get out of Paris that the Coke I had on the way out on the fast train back to England never tasted better. The city lights faded quickly because there was nothing going on in the French countryside past 9 PM, nothing productive.  Nobody was up late working third shift to make bowls for a thriving export, nobody was inventing the newest revelation of science and technology—the French people were just sleeping and paying respect to their latest religion hoping to climb those circular stairs upon their deaths to arrive in the grand room of heaven.  And I was happy to speed right on by for the English Channel.  As we went under the water and came up on the other side, and the time changed I felt relief to have been out of that dreadful place.  England has its problems with socialism too, but at least they are intellectually curious people rooted in the capitalism of language.   It was like that feeling you have after a funeral where the sad stuff is out of the way and you could get back to what you would normally do—you can take off the stuffy suit and put on some shorts and relax with your thoughts. Paris was a disaster and it will take anyone who follows it with it into the oblivion of death—which is the primary driver behind Brexit.  Thank goodness, we are waking up in America because Paris was not an example anybody should follow, and I can say that now with firsthand experience.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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The Literature of Canterbury: Why America needs to embrace being smarter

I have to be critical of the United States in an unusual way, because my trip to Europe lately was not so much for leisure or extravagance, which has certainly been a part of it. It was to tie up loose ends started many decades ago in many facets of my life. If I didn’t enjoy making money, spending time with my family, and shooting guns—I would have been very happy to be a PHD scholar who spends all his time reading and going over old maps musing about the world and where it’s been and where it’s going.  To a smaller extent, I do that with this blog, which many people think is extensive and tenacious—but it is far from where I’d like to be if I could just commit all my time to literature which I would enjoy immensely.  Unfortunately, I can’t—you have to make decisions in life and time is not infinite—as much as it should be.  Literature for me is a hobby, a foundation for my soul and has always been my secret little joy that I do when everyone goes to bed, or runs out to a dance club.  It’s always been like that for me, and it always will.  So when I had a chance to go to Europe, eat at a three Michelan Star Chef Ramsey restaurant in Chelsea, England and live for a while on the streets of Canterbury, England where much of my favorite literature was born—I did it.canterbury13

Before getting too far ahead however, I have to say that if Donald Trump had not been elected president—I would not have taken the trip. This visit to Canterbury is because of Donald Trump.  I see clearly that America avoided a very narrow precipice toward destruction and now there is a significant opportunity for a major cultural shift in America that will lead the world toward better things.  In all actuality, it reminds me of the Roman conquest of Briton and the pagan tribes which attempted to hold them back.  But it was no use, Rome was a superior culture and it moved into the area that would become Canterbury bringing with it a culture that would mold the future of England forever.  Once the Empire united the kingdom with Christianity Rome fell from power and by 500 AD leaving the area ripe for conquest and that’s when the Indo-Europeans (Celts) moved in and took over the culture.  Then the Vikings knocked on the door and by the time St Augustine was writing his City of God and setting up the first religious center in England just outside the city walls of Canterbury in AD 598 Canterbury has emerged as a hotbed of the foundations of what it met to be human.  It inherited an oriental religion from the Romans which destroyed the empire from the inside out—much the way communism has destroyed modern Europe—all collectivist based societies follow the same trend.  You see the Indo-European came from the region of the Black Sea and had exposure for years to the orient which had worked its way around the south of the Mediterranean Sea for a time.  Jesus Christ had picked up on some of this in the desert during his years of formulation developed through wondering until the events which led to his execution for disrupting the political order of the day.  So it was Catholicism that was inserted upon a culture in Briton which collided with the old pagan stories and gave rise to the Arthurian legends, then The Canterbury Tales, and eventually the work of Charles Dickens and a cast of characters in literature that exceeds description.  Many of the most powerful and persuasive literary figures of our modern times—from 500 AD to the present—worked within a 100 miles of Canterbury.  With that in mind dear reader, you might understand the context of this pilgrimage and why it was so important to me.canterbury15

Here I was walking the same streets that Geoffery Chaucer and Charles Dickens had along with the playwright Marlow and I was witnessing something remarkable. The people of England at least from London to the east coast may be a lot of things—but they were at least very literate.  They read books and they enjoyed the English language.  Now to be honest, part of that is that their roads are too small, so they can’t drive anywhere quick, and their television is terrible.  Their art and culture is certainly built on their reputations, not on their present actions but at least they read.  I was in several book stores in Canterbury during my time in living within the city recently and I saw titles that I had never seen displayed simply because people actually buy them in England.  Back home, the Barnes & Noble in West Chester which is quite large, or the same store on Newport on the Levee carry a lot of books, but they are more geared toward the trends of today—the things that sell in America—50 Shades of Grey, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones.  In England, people still read for fun and they do it often—which shows directly in their language.

Even the stupid people in England are smarter than most people in the United States and you can tell that by the way people speak and how their minds frame ideas. In England people naturally treat their language with great emphasis on the intelligence from which it pours forth and they take the time to guard it—where in America we have adopted every slang term imposed on us by every trend that has emerged.  For example, one criticism that many have about me is that I use too many big words when speaking to them.  They think I’m purposely trying to make them feel stupid because they don’t have the same vocabulary range that I do.  But that’s not necessarily the case.  I have read so many books over the years that I speak that way naturally all the time—it is a function of being literate.  Just like a body builder might have big muscles, a person who reads a lot will have a well-defined intellect.  And in England they do.  I heard a homeless person just yesterday uttering rhetoric of insanity about the stars in the sky and he was using words in such a way that the average suburbanite in America never does—because it’s not part of their experience.  The American has given up on literature and actually embraces stupidity to make “others” feel better about their lackluster existence where in England they tend to look at such people as “rubbish” and treat them as such.  They figure if someone isn’t going to learn the proper words for things—then they probably don’t have much value for things and should be discarded.

As I provided this little history lesson to set up this idea, the English language of Canterbury and all the literature that followed was not indigenous to the area. Many cultures rose and fell before Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his masterpiece Canterbury Tales so it’s not like they are preserving some deep history.  It is just the nature of those people to embrace thinking even if the root cause of their economic depravity and lack of scientific invention is rooted in their incursion of an oriental religion—Christianity.  Their foundations into literature at least have elevated their culture to have a solid foundation to build from, and America would do well to adopt those same methods.canterbury14

I went to many museums around London, Paris, and Canterbury and I can report that the children are different from they are in America. Parents still teach their kids things in England and form strong bonds that last their lifetimes whereas in America too much Paris has migrated into our culture there and people are too rootless to teach children much of anything—and that is a mistake.  Intelligence should be celebrated and nurtured, not avoided and pissed upon—and in America we take it for granted.  We celebrate stupidity and it shows in our values for books and the process for learning.

The election of Donald Trump I know is going to make a lot of people unhappy, because like the cultures in Europe conquered by so many superior cultures, this new president is a game changer. He may be viewed in history the way William the Conqueror was in England, or even Napoleon in France.  As much as history baulks at such aggressive characters it is in their wake that great works of art have furthered the human race and the same will now happen in America—the “Trumpian age.”  So part of that new Trumpian age needs to embrace literature.  Trump himself may not be the most literate person in the world, but he doesn’t need to be.  The values that come out of his presidency however could—and that starts with embracing values that are positive and throwing away those that aren’t.  As I said at the beginning of this, if Hillary Clinton were still president, I would not have taken this trip to Europe.  I wouldn’t want to see what the progressives wanted to do to America.  But now I can visit and observe the mistakes and the successes, and bring home the summation of both to apply to American culture.  And the most obvious thing to me is the protection of the written word and elevating its value in our North American culture.   That alone would go a long way to solving many of our national problems—teaching people to read again and to enjoy the process would go a long way to enriching our American life to be the leader of the free world and all those wanting to become free.   It all starts with what you accept in your mind—which therefor comes out in your mouth.  And in Canterbury, England, they still love their literature and for me it was a relief to see.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Next Generation of Mass Transit: America’s version of Europe’s train system

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I’ve never had much of a passionate thought about train travel because in the United States—we just don’t do it. We have cars and massive highways, and we love our independence. My main experience with trains is in the novel Atlas Shrugged, the monorail at Disney World, and the train ride at Kings Island, the amusement park near my home in Cincinnati, Ohio.  So during a recent trip to Europe and being without a car, I had to learn quickly how to use trains, because honestly, they are the most efficient way to get around.  European cities are just so densely packed as they frustrate suburban development forcing most of their residents into their metropolises.  So having a car in London, or Paris, just as it is in New York in the U.S. just doesn’t make much sense—because parking is nearly impossible and traveling down the roads is ridiculously slow.  With that in mind, getting around London, Paris or between them into the countryside requires trains which I’ve used heavily lately and to a great effect.  The trains in England are quite nice and I have enjoyed using them covering ground from as far south as Brighton, to Canterbury and using the Eurostar from London to Paris under the English Channel.  It was the combination of those experiences which launched my mind on the new train technology being developed in the United States called the Hyperloop—which is an Elon Musk initiation that is being extensively tested this summer outside of Las Vegas.  In fact it looks like the UAB will be among the first cities of the world to buy into the concept which will make the Eurostar look like an archaic dinosaur regarding train travel.  The Hyperloop will take passengers at near the speed of sound and faster which will significantly change the world.

I love that America is built around individualized transportation, but I personally have a need to get around the country quickly—so these high-speed trains are appealing to me. I would love to take a train to Orlando, Florida from Cincinnati to justify a season pass to Disney World so I could take my grandkids there many times throughout the year.  Flying is just a bit too expensive leaving an alternative form in need to fill the market demand.  Since America doesn’t yet have a complex train system like they do in Europe this leaves the United States prime to develop one of their own using the new hyperloop technology as the centerpiece.

This whole train thing really came to life for me at the St. Pancras station in London which shares space across the street from Kings Cross. My wife and I were eating some sushi from the dining area and I was watching all the people coming and going as we awaited our train into the countryside to visit Canterbury.  It was like a mini airport that was carrying a tremendous amount of people to and from.  I was able to visit many more thereafter at Ashford International and as far south as Gare Du Nord in Paris and I have to say it was an impressive system that allowed me to get around an enormous part of Northern Europe quickly and without insulting my time.  While on the trains I was able to read and rest which I appreciated and I found myself hundreds of miles away within an hour and that was something that would greatly benefit the American economy because of the vast spaces we enjoy in North America.

Trains are best in relieving traffic. I experienced this of course in London and Paris, but over the last year have seen it most effectively used in Kobe, Japan where dinner guests came up from the south quicker than they ever could have by car, simply because dense cities don’t have anywhere to park leaving the roads stagnant messes.  To solve the problem of America’s dying cities, wealth needs to be imported back into them by a means that allows people to utilize what they offer.  For instance, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Detroit should be part of a shared market—people should be able to conduct business between those places easily and within the same day—such as a lunch meeting in Atlanta for an hour or two then jumping back up to Detroit by the end of the business day.

When Ayn Rand wrote, Atlas Shrugged she believed that America would have a series of train systems like the Eurostar all over the country, and that they would be privately owned—which would be optimal.  One of the weaknesses of the publicly owned ones in Europe that has solicited private investment and is doing a better job in turning a profit, but the ghosts of their government owned days is evident–they are not always on time.  And at this point, I would love to have a Eurostar type of system in America.  Since we don’t I would think that the Hyperloop would be the technology that would demand the investment priorities.  In the video included from Twitter I was thinking about how fast we were really going while my wife was buying us some snacks in the dining car.  It was easy to walk around and the drinks didn’t slide around on our tables never threatening to tip over.  The ride was very smooth and comfortable which has been the promise of the Hyperloop.  At the time I took the video the Eurostar was going about 150 MPH, and sometimes it was going faster.  The distance between Paris and London which was the length we were traveling is 459 miles and we did it in just under 2 hours.  It would have taken three times longer by car.  This allowed my family to go to Paris for the day and still be back in London in time for dinner.  Without the Eurostar we would have never been able to do such a thing.  Flying would have been too expense and too complicated and driving would have taken way too long.  And regarding security and passport verifications, everything was done for us before we even got on the train.  Once we were in Paris, we simply got out of the train and headed to our destinations with the immigration issues already don’t at the front of the line—quickly.  Having something similar in America would certainly lead to economic expansion for the cities and would even have an impact on the voting patterns—because currently only liberals live in cities making it impossible for Republicans to get elected.  The best way to change a city’s culture is to allow people of value from other places to come in and have an impact—but you don’t want to trap them otherwise they’ll keep their money and input into the suburbs.

I can see Hyperloop terminals all over the United States much like Europe has train stations. They could be vibrant places that move people across vast distances quickly, and cheaply expanding our economic output.  And it could be a uniquely American thing, just as Europe has established itself on trains.  Trains are too slow for me, but Hyperloop could be the best answer for a nation that hasn’t yet invested in mass transit.  I would love to have something like St. Pancras station in West Chester, Ohio—or Monroe.  There was something exciting about sitting at that station and knowing that I could buy an affordable ticket to Italy and be there in a few hours while eating sushi.  It was strange to send a text to my daughter who was in Canterbury from London and saying to her that we’d be there within an hour.   It’s only 61 miles, but with the tiny roads that they have in England, it would be more than a two-hour drive.  That allowed us to step onto a train and be at her doorstep before she could get ready for dinner and that was an efficient use of time.  Something that America could use and the Hyperloop is just the right technological advance.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Mystery of the British Museum’s Crystal Skull: Why its not a fake, but many wish it were

It was one of the things I most wanted to see in London—the famous crystal skull at the British Museum. The idea that an ancient civilization was able to carve such a fine sculpture out of quartz without obvious machining marks in the 14th century, or even before, is quite remarkable so I wanted to see it for myself.   The artifact is famous because it is one of the few of its kind in the world and it was acquired by the British Museum at that magical time of early archaeology when the British empire still held sway and was able to gather important items around the world before a new generation of politics and war would further destroy the art and relics of the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas—especially in Mexico where their Mexican Revolution at the start of the 20th Century has all but destroyed their economy leaving the people there impoverished.  If any crystal skulls were found today in those regions they would without question be in private collections sold off by locals who needed to feed themselves.  It was remarkable that the crystal skull featured here even made it to the British Museum as it was acquired from the Tiffany and Co. from New York in 1897 after being owned originally by Eughen Boban who was an early fortune hunter able to gather up objects from digs before the Smithsonian, and the British Museum were able to lay claim to the historic record.  For something that old, it certainly couldn’t have seen modern methods of cutting a quartz structure so for anybody to go to such trouble to make a crystal skull there had to be a good reason for it.crystal-skull

The skull is in the “living and dying” wing of the museum stuck away in the corner much the way that the Cincinnati Tablet is at the Museum Center in my home town of Cincinnati—they really don’t know what to do with it because it doesn’t fit their narrative of a primitive people. In Cincinnati the tablet doesn’t fit the profile of the Adena Indians and at the British Museum which many contributes have already laid claim to their version of history and feel they possess the narrative of history by being the first to report it—the crystal skull is sort of a mystery—so they put it in the corner of the room leaving it in limbo.  In fact it was so unobtrusive I had to ask where it was.  I found a museum worker who pointed it out to me then felt the need to let me know that the skull was a “fake” which irritated me greatly.  There was no need for the additional commentary, but the guy felt he needed to make sure I knew his opinion of the crystal skull which revealed a lot about what I had long suspected about this particular museum.

The collection at the British Museum is one of the finest in the world and it could be argued that their imperialism which acquired all the artifacts there robbed the home countries of their “birth rights” to those cultures. But as we’ve seen in Cairo, Baghdad and other places around the world, especially in Mexico City where the ruins of an Aztec civilization were literally buried underneath—new cultures usually destroy old cultures and the British Museum was able to save those artifacts in time because of their audacity to take them from their domestic lands—which were unstable to the historical record.  The museum has an extensive membership list that is very active, and they depend on their donations to keep everything on the upside—and they are very successful.  However, to preserve that funding model they need to lay claim to the historical narrative created by the British Museum, so to preserve the integrity of their members and donors.  That concern was reflected in the museum worker’s proclamation to me that the crystal skull was a fake—because he didn’t want me to be one of those guys to further perpetuate the many theories that the skull may belong to an undiscovered culture not yet in the museum—which is highly likely—and was the source of my interest.crystal-skull-2

The failure of the premise that the British Museum established, for which the worker represented was that it was inconceivable that the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521 was interacting with a superior culture at the time since it has been established that European culture was the dominate one and that everyone they interacted with was inferior. We see this with the discovery of America by Columbus—even though the Chinese were obviously already in America and trading around the world—and that the Vikings were likely already in America several centuries earlier.  Even more perplexing, which is obvious to me, the mound builders of England, Ireland and likely Scandinavia likely were trading with the Phoenicians from the south, maybe even Egypt and were in the New World building mounds like those at Nework in Ohio well before Christ was born.  The British Museum ignores all these issues and sticks to their story that Europe conquered the world and thus making them the authors of history.  Relics like the crystal skull challenge that.crystal-skull-3

After looking at the skull closely with an electron microscope scan, there is evidence that some of the features were carved using a rotary cutting wheel of some kind.   Note the word, “some.”  There are many parts of the crystal skull that defy even modern methods of manufacture so there is still great mystery as to how the thing was even made by today’s standards, let along done at a time before the telephone existed.  And there is evidence that what Spain conquered in Mexico was far advanced in many ways to the Europeans, especially in canal building and astronomy.  So there is guilt in the statement—the “crystal skull is fake.”  Guilt that the very things the British Museum is supposed to guard against—the loss of information advanced by the many cultures of the world—the evidence says that a lot of the world’s cultures have been lost and the Europeans are very guilty of building their Catholic religion on top of conquests to erase the memory of what came before—which I think the crystal skull represents most.brisish-museum2

The science of history is in its infancy, even in the Room of Enlightenment—which was my favorite room in the museum—it is obvious that our grasp of history is rather shallow, and all we know is from the private collections of kings, or the little bits of junk acquired from dealers who looted tombs and cultures to sell on the black market. The best stuff is still out there locked away in private collections and museum basements lacking a proper explanation that fits with the story of history that has been told to us from our infancies.  History is much more complicated and to know it is to understand the crystal skull culture and other mysteries that are out there which have not been given a proper introduction to the world because too many people—especially of European decent—call things fake—when they are obviously not.  The crystal skull of the British Museum is more than just an artifact, it is a glimpse into the human race who had an obsession with death and wanted to face it literally—and an old habit of doing what should be impossible for the benefit of doing it and perplexing those from the future with the valor of their endeavors.britsh-museum

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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What’s Behind the Trump Protests in London: Socialists fighting for the right to be lazy

What the media is not telling you dear reader about all these “spontaneous” riots of “concerned” people protesting Donald Trump around the world, and his immigration policies, is that they are organized by dirty, rotten scum bag socialists that draw like flies on shit the stink of the most lazy and uninformed of our human species. They are not “people” as reported by the media concerned over the direction of the world led by Donald Trump trying to challenge him wherever he may show up to cast an influence—but they are insurgents of the group Socialist International still attempting to cast the world into the doom of global communism, just like they had in the Soviet Union and as they do now in China.  The media which is advancing this plot that they learned in their public institutions as silly, drunken pre-adult losers mean to destroy Donald Trump because he is not only now the leader of the free world, but an unapologetic capitalist who is rebuilding the wealth of America at a rate that is terrifying to them.  Because capitalists and communists in any form cannot work together toward a common goal.  One side must lose to the other because their fundamental philosophies are just too different and the war we are witnessing can be summed up that simply.

Of course you’ll want proof dear reader of my bombastic statements, especially in regard to these so-called “Not My President” rallies which “sprang up” across the world, particularly in the progressive cities of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. I happened to be in London for a number of reasons, and was down by Parliament to see Theresa May defend Brexit from the House of Lords attempting to waver back in the direction of Tony Blair and the avocation of a “European Union” which again is a Socialist International plot to spread global socialism then communism to every corner of the world.  It was in fact in London where Karl Marx did most of his work toward that collective based monstrosity that leads directly to economic depravity. So I happened to be right next to the “spontaneous” group that gathered in the park across from parliament in the shadow of Big Ben which was made to look so much bigger on television than it really was.  And I gathered up the pictures you need as proof to understand what I’m saying and have been now for many years.  Socialist advocates are behind all these global protests, even the Black Lives Matter endeavors.  They do not want peace with anything in a capitalist country and cannot be reasoned with.  So as a civilization we must drag them kicking and screaming to a bitter bloody ending across the finish line of prosperity and ignore their utterings—because in the scheme of things they are completely worthless.trump-protests4

You will notice from the pictures I took at the London rally all the red tents—well those were there to pass out socialist literature—and there were a lot of them. In many ways, it broke my heart to see so many red flag waving socialists and their tents of Marxism set up at the feet of Winston Churchill’s statue.  He would be literally rolling over in his grave if he knew that—because it goes against everything we fought in World War II and many other wars.  The Marxist types who formed this destructive philosophy started in the mid-19th Century and everywhere they proposed themselves destruction and war has been in their wake.  Today their influence is everywhere, from the union strike of British Airways by their cabin crew looking for a “living wage” to the nearly complete conquest of the Asian countries by communism as it flowed down out of Russia into those villages of China, Korea, and Vietnam.  In fact that whole mess in China and Vietnam started just a few miles to the south of these London protests in Paris where the future Vietnamese leader wanted a voice at the Treaty Versailles convention.  He didn’t get it, so he went to the rickety little building across the street that was spreading communism in Paris and they did listen to him—so be became philosophically aligned and the rest is history.  The protests of the Vietnam War by the press wasn’t so much about the many deaths that the United States and other countries suffered among their young people fighting communism there—it was that those armies fighting Ho Chi Minh were trying to stop communism which the political left were trying to advance in the same manner that these protests in London against Donald Trump were being presented.trump-protests5

What was even stranger about the London protests is that the people participating were not people who voted for Donald Trump. In the United States, at least they could claim to be concerned about a president they didn’t vote for.  Heck, I never accepted Barack Obama as my president—and it had nothing to do with his color.  He was an idiot advocating global socialism which was why I rejected him.  So I can understand people who didn’t vote for Donald Trump being upset—because I have been for the last 24 years in not having a good president in the White House whom I could respect.   But in London, these people were so concerned about Donald Trump that they felt they had to protest as if he were already the president of the world—which actually tells you quite a lot about the role America plays in global matters.  The socialist know that Donald Trump could destroy all the progressive gains they’ve made against capitalism for the last 100 years, and it is that which they are fighting against.trump-protests2

The people at the rally in London were not just concerned moms afraid that they wouldn’t be able to kill a baby if they engaged in reckless sex with some libitard at a late night bar covered in cologne from Harrod’s on a wild night in London, or gay rights advocates hoping to water down the sexes so that expectations of behavior would be bent to the most lazy of our society allowing unclean losers to have a shot at more potential “partners” than they do now—or complacent idiots who want to play video games all day could with a “living wage” so they would not have to worry about working a real job and paying all their bills—their rent, their cars, and their online fees. They were pawns in a giant game of chess intent to weaken the human race.  As I looked at their faces close up their stories were obvious.  Most of the men were the type who had moms who did pay all their fees for online gaming because the women felt guilty at not providing strong role models for the young lads who were now stringy haired losers barely able to function in society.  The loudest voices at that rally were the type of young men who had watched many lovers enter their mother’s lives and dirty her up leaving them without the prospect of a good clean family life into their adulthoods—so they turned to collectivist philosophies as a way to normalize their personal tragedies—and now Donald Trump was a severe threat to their choices made so far in life.  But even the conditions which made those young protestors are the result of liberal policies—the young women their mom’s used to be were taught they could have the world and everything in it if only they asked for it.  If they wanted to sleep with lots of men, they had the pill.  If they acquired AIDS through reckless sex, they’d have Hollywood stars show up at their bedside and sing songs to the media.  They were taught that lives were conducted without consequence and that big daddy government would be the new husband while Hollywood helped cultivate the image that the great men of the world would now be versions of Homer Simpson.  Now the people who bought that view of the world most were forced to deal with an alpha male Donald Trump who had a gorgeous supermodel wife who was an immigrant herself which diffuses all their arguments toward socialism, and they are genuinely terrified.  This wasn’t the world they were promised as budding young socialists.  The capitalists were coming back in style and no matter what tricks they played, people weren’t listening.trump-protests3

So these protestors of Donald Trump are not normal people, they are rejects from a failed society who haven’t yet figured out that the greatest threat to the future of our species isn’t global warming, immigration, or even racism—its stupidity.  And stupidity flourishes under communism and socialism because it takes competition out of the equation which allows the half-baked stringy haired losers to have an equal opinion to the well-read orator who has spent their life perfecting ideas and concepts.  It just doesn’t work and that was the real summation of what was behind the London Trump protests.  The leaders weren’t well-intentioned citizens of the world, they were radicals fighting to keep the bar of human achievement low so that they could stay relevant.  And the media is in the bag for those insurgents because they are looking for the same assurances—and under a Trump presidency, they won’t get it.  And that is why they protest—and the only reason why.trump-protests

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Plugging up America’s Intelligence Leaks with Julian Assange: What Donald Trump could do to help “really” drain the swamp

While my wife was shopping at Harrod’s in London I couldn’t resist but to walk just a few feet to the east and take a glance at the Ecuadorian Embassy where what I think is the most honest journalistic organization presently in the world is hiding the notorious Julian Assange behind the dainty curtains of the balcony I have watched so many historic press conferences. Assange cannot leave the embassy and due to a current Ecuadorian presidential race that may jeopardize his continued asylum there, I couldn’t help but think of ways where he could be more useful to a Trump administration being attacked from every corner—including its own intelligence community.  So I had my daughter take a rare tourist picture of me standing next to the window of the famous spot as I pondered ruthlessly the many ways that strategically this situation could be rectified better for the world at large.  Even with all the controversy surrounding Julian Assange—to me he is a similar character to American appeal that Wernher Von Braun was who converted as a Nazi rocket builder into one of the heads of NASA. Was America still the same country that could pull off something similar here—perhaps.  But it wouldn’t be easy.   As I listened to the world’s reaction to the Trump rally in Florida which went on just a few hours later that I watched live on my iPhone while my family continued to shop at Harrod’s—I couldn’t help but think Trump’s solution was just a few feet away from me hidden behind the windows of that Ecuadorian Embassy.assange

The media had already been aghast by Donald Trump’s fourth week in office before he had a rally in Melbourne. Florida where Melania Trump really stuck her thumb in the eye of the secular world by starting off a speech with the “Lord’s Prayer.” In the great classic book on military strategy The Art of War, it is important to unite people behind flags of commonality toward the great strategic objective of the enterprise, and clearly that was the purpose of Trump’s rally.   The media didn’t know what to do with it because their goal had been to chip away at him until there was nothing left causing a fissure between Trump supporters and the new president.  You see, the media sees itself as a fourth branch of government and they had decided long before Trump that they were going to carry America off a precipice of destruction for progressive goals.  After all, most of the media were somewhere between the ages of 40 for the really old people to about age 27, still just kids learning about how the world worked.  In their universities, they learned about progressive values and they were now expressing those values in their media occupations, and presently that meant they needed to destroy Donald Trump to preserve their century long task at maintaining their fourth branch of power.  Those checks and balances of course would be fine if their end goal was to preserve free speech and root out tyranny.  But that’s not what the American press was up to.  They were hell bent on shaping the world into a progressive philosophy formed many years ago toward globalism desires.  For instance, in England as I contemplated these things, a prime example of how a government looks to “nudge” people into the direction of their intentions is to alter behavior through inconvenience.  Such as—at Harrod’s, one of the most popular shopping areas in the world, it is very difficult to find a garbage can to throw away trash.  There is a reason for that—because the government wants its people to make decisions not to overly consume disposables so they make it hard to get rid of things.  Not to the point where people just throw things down in the street—but just enough to stave off careless purchases.  Also, when you go to an English restaurant of any kind, they don’t do refills like they do in America.  Obviously, that is to also stave off excess consumption.  Rather than create a rule like Michael Bloomberg attempted a few years ago in New York City with a soda tax to regulate consumption, progressives utilize inconvenience in their government processes to control human behavior and market conditions as they see the need.  The media, particularly in America, but also around the world is a bridge between government’s desires to control people and the people who change their behavior to accommodate the desired change.  People watch the news to hear the latest about Beyoncé’s pregnancy, or who won the latest award’s show of their favorite media artist, but then they stick around to hear news stories from a media trained by liberal institutions to sell progressivism in the byline stories.  It is that force which is presently attacking Donald Trump viciously—and why he had his Florida rally to step around a media quickly trying to box him in at the White House—ground they have up until this point controlled.assange-2

Trump has learned to spend his weekends at Mar-a-Lago in Florida to a property he has controlled for years, as opposed to the media haven at the White House where the press firmly has roots planted to over analyze everything Trump does. John McCain the so-called Republican senator has spent much of his recent life fighting everything Donald Trump does and the intelligence community has been doing much the same to preserve the swamp Trump wants to drain.  So with all these enemies, many which come from within the Republican Party, something needs to be done to reveal the ways that the intelligence community is hacking the White House to listen in on everything that is said—which then gets leaked to the press to use against Trump.  That whole process has to be stopped—which Trump has stated he intends to do.

Of course people like John McCain and the political left look at Julian Assange and see a villain, because Wikileaks threatens their very existence. The entire media empires of the world rely on this “nudging” that they do to shape people’s opinions in subtle ways, and they can’t compete with a news organization which seeks to put a blind eye toward reporting—the way things are actually supposed to be done.  Yes, I don’t like the secrets that were revealed by that Manning character—whatever “it” is, man or woman.  But I am more concerned about the behavior of my government revealed through the Wikileaks.  And to watch this latest election in America and the audacity that the media has attempted to put all the blame on the “Russians” even if it causes World War III says a lot about how much the media is terrified of Julian Assange.  So what I’d do if I were Trump is I’d find a way to legally grant Assange asylum and put him to work in solving the many leaks coming out of the intelligence community to root out the real villains operating under the cloak of media activism.  After watching the behavior of the media toward Michael Flynn who was forced to step down and the persistence to attack any member of the Trump team, from the little 10-year-old Barron Trump to Kellyanne Conway, something has to be done to strike back and if I were Trump, that alliance of aggression would be the Wikileaks founder.

If I were Trump I’d get Assange out of his situation and use his natural skills to “nudge” the media back to honest reporting which would favor Trump’s “sentimental honesty.” That type of honesty was what people showed up in Melbourne to hear and was the driving force behind the Trump White House, and was the target of the current media.  So Trump needs to attack that aggression directly, and Assange would make a wonderful ally.  For me, standing in front of that window of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, the solution was as clear as it could be.  Give Wikileaks a real voice and free it from the confines it finds itself in, and use that ability to help root out the villains working against this current White House from within the NSA and other government organizations who are doing what we all feared years ago would be happening—that they’d use private information about us to “nudge” us all into a desired political behavior—just as you can’t get refills on drinks or have easy access to trash cans in England—US intelligence gathering does not favor freedom, it is to control our population toward the desires of liberalized senators like John McCain and many others who think they are smarter and better than all of us in a free market economy.

Clearly the markets are hoping that Trump is for real as the stock market is currently pushing new highs each and every week so far since he was elected. That money, that value is a pent-up desire to be free because the wealth created in a free market society requires a free press to keep everything honest, and right now Wikileaks is the only organization in the world that I know of which is attempting to provide that freedom to intellectual honesty.  Literally trillions of dollars which had been hidden away during the Obama years have suddenly flooded the marketplace and we are starting to see those effects around the world quite fast.  But before we can have the full effect and use that new-found wealth to pay down our national debt and infuse real economic growth into the American way of life—which the entire world depends on—the media has to be “nudged” back into honestly and for Trump, Assange is sitting right there poised to help in ways that are currently unimaginable.harrods

Yes there would be blowback, John McCain would be screaming about treason and every liberal in the world would be looking to get Donald Trump impeached by such a move toward Assange. But, they will do that anyway.  What Trump needs is a real offensive weapon against a corrupt media and the politicians that count on it to sustain their life in the swamp.  The leaks at the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA have to be plugged up and the media outlets themselves need to be exposed for their back-door tactics of progressive salesmanship.  And if not for Julian Assange and his Wikileaks organization, we wouldn’t know about CNN giving questions to Hillary Clinton for the debates, and we wouldn’t know about the Podesta “spirt cooking,” or even know how the heads of the major media companies gave money to the DNC and how bad things really were beyond our suspicions.  Without all that, we probably wouldn’t have a Donald Trump at all in the White House.  So why not go all the way and get Assange out of that Ecuadorian Embassy and let him do his thing honestly and openly—and apply his skills to really solving the problem of the many leaks coming out of the American government toward Trump?  What would we have to lose, really?

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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The White Cliffs of Dover: Embracing adventure even when its not convenient

It was something that I had always wanted to see so when the opportunity came up to hike the White Cliffs of Dover at the point where France was closest to the United Kingdom I seized it. I knew when I was doing it that it was a unique opportunity not so much for the event in itself, but because my great photographer daughter was with me and was primed for a little adventure that she was feeling deprived of simply due to the realities of adult life.  As a little girl we did this kind of thing all the time, but now we don’t get to see each other in this way very much because we are all busy adults.  We get time together during a typical week to grab a bite to eat or go somewhere into town—but for adventures where we get to chase dreams, ideas, and the specter of “big thinking” there just aren’t many opportunities that allow for such things as grown-ups living different lives and raising families of their own.  When my kids were little I was able to set the pace because I was the parent, now they are parents of their own and have spouses who have things they want to do and see so things get pretty complicated sometimes just to do simple things together.  But, here my oldest daughter and I were in England together and everyone but us were tired from our previous visit to Dover Castle where the February temperature had dropped and a bank of cloudy fog had moved in choking off the rays of the sun into a dreary canopy that was freezing the other members of our group.  But my daughter—the professional photographer that she is couldn’t resist to get some shots for her portfolio that included the nearby cliffs, but also the light of the deep fog bank.  So we left our other members at the car and went for what we thought would be a 30 minute walk. We didn’t return until two and a half hours later.  Here is a shortened video version of our hike down to the beach of the White Cliffs of Dover.

We were able to see our destination before the heavy fog rolled in so we had an idea where we were going before we really committed to the area. What surprised me was how vast everything was, because in England most things especially in the cities were so small.  But they had built a nice park that reminded me of the kind in America where you could literally walk all day doing major hiking.  In that regard we were unprepared as we started off and discovered the ferry link to France far below our feet which was transporting enormous amounts of cargo and large trucks over to the European mainland.  Next to that was the English Channel looking very sinister in the cold of the day with the fog licking its surface and building up against the cliffs like a crowd waiting to get into a rock concert—anxious and frustrated—and thick.   My daughter and I wanted to get down to the beach which was around 350 feet below to 300 feet and part of the trail system had a means of getting down there with a series of steps and ladders.  So we were headed in that direction when the fog rolled in and took away all our visual reference points of the vast land.

It was easy to see why it was hard to invade England at this point, which was closest to the European mainland. For eight miles these cliffs faced their rivals over the centuries and fog like the one we were experiencing further frustrated such efforts.  The advantage was certainly in favor of the English under any armed attack—which is why one of the biggest castles in all of Europe was there at Dover.  What should have been a 30 minute walk turned out to be several hours because once you get atop of those cliffs and start walking east, they just go on and on.  The trail system was good, but there weren’t signs to say exactly where you were, you had to follow a map, and again, the fog took away our visual references.  So after a lot of walking and passing up the narrow corridor down to the beach a few times, we eventually found it.  At one point in the video I held my camera over the edge to record how far down it was to the beach and the jagged rocks below.  I am particularly proud of that shot not just because it showed the obvious danger of the cliffs.  We were able to walk right to the edge of them and look over, which was dangerous because everything was slippery from the constant dew that was on everything all the time.  But honestly, my new iPhone 7 Plus has a steadycam feature that made that shot possible.  Just a few years ago an over the edge shot like that would have been too jittery to really see what was going on as such a small camera would shake all over the place—even your heartbeat would move the camera looking over such a vast crevasse.  But with the new iPhone, the shot was easy which made recording such a thing so much more achievable spontaneously, which is what this little hike was all about.

Once we found the way down, we worked our way through to find eventually that the entire path had been washed out and destroyed by the erosion from above. A large rock had fallen and taken out the bridge that led over to the ladder which dropped everyone the additional forty feet down to the beach.  So we stopped there and took our pictures and soaked up the moment. We had been walking around for an hour and a half just to get to that point and knew it would take a while to get back, and that the rest of our family was waiting for us with a newborn baby.  But for that moment we didn’t worry about it.  We were just a dad and daughter relishing an adventure that comes so seldom.   We  embraced the moment without regret.  As we were looking at the ocean a little seal came up to the beach then retreated to the deep water again.  It was a nice moment.

We returned to the car an hour later to find our family patiently waiting. We were covered in sweat and chalk from the cliffs as we had to climb back up and out.  We had walked five miles and we felt it, especially the nearly vertical climb back up from the beach. And that moment became one for the record books.  We won’t ever forget it because it was a fine example of the benefit of spontaneity.  I have a reputation in my family of getting the most out of unplanned circumstances.  I’m not one that likes to plan things out with too much detail because I don’t want to miss the hidden opportunities that might come up while exploring something.  So I typically have a rough idea of what I want to do then improvise as I’m doing it adjusting to the situation as it presents itself.  But adulthood is all about schedules and deadlines, so it can be tricky business to live the way I do and most adults don’t enjoy it.  However, I raised my daughters with that kind of thinking so they crave it all the time—and most of the time are disappointed by the realities of life that does require plans and forethought.  Personally, it would have been easier to stay in the car and do something more conventionally, especially after exploring the castle at Dover.  But the opportunity was there so it’s good to take it when you can.  Many times, the best things in life come when we don’t see them or plan for them.  And that little moment in time with my oldest daughter was very special and a natural outgrowth of the spirit of adventure.  By the time we returned to the car, we had both grown a little from the experience and the exhaustion that often comes with doing things outside of one’s comfort zones carried us to a new level that defies explanation—but it sure makes you sleep well at night.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Review of the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, London: A culinary journey that starts at the door

img_2418Seldom does something ever exceed the way it is envisioned in one’s mind, but when it does, the circumstances of its uniqueness, and quality, often haunt you with eternal wanting, hoping to duplicate the experiences which never does happen again. That’s what happened to my wife and I along with my oldest daughter and my son-in-law after celebrating my wife’s birthday at the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, London.  It was an experience well beyond celebrity that deserves quite a discussion so please do sit down dear reader and take a bit of a literary journey, because it will be worth it.  I promise.

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It was a few weeks before Thanksgiving 2016 in the United States and my wife and I were watching several recorded Chef Ramsay shows on our DVR, which we had to catch up on due to the recent election which took a higher priority—and we were feeling good about things for the first time in a long time. So we were in a celebratory mood and started talking about her upcoming birthday—still many months off at that point—but the discussion arose and she revealed that if she could do anything in the world, she wanted to go to a Chef Ramsay restaurant.  Of course we discussed going to one of them in Las Vegas, or New York but neither of those options sounded good to her.  She wanted to go back to where his whole media empire started and taste the food from what is considered to be the best of his best restaurants—the tiny little thing he started in first which has maintained his three star Michelan-rating for almost two decades now.  After all, there are only three such restaurants in all of London making the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay one of the best restaurant’s in all of Europe—which is saying a lot considering how much emphasis food and wine are to the birthplace of western culture.  That was after all why my wife and I watch Chef Ramsay together  I like his management style—she likes his playful domestic manner and creativity in the kitchen—so his many television shows are something we enjoy as a couple.  img_2417So not surprising when I posed the question—where would you like to go on your birthday—no matter where in the world—what would it be, and she flatly stated she would like to go to the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.  From there I found ways and reasons to make it happen and now that much is history.  We made reservations exactly 90 days in advance and booked our travel arrangements immediately.  The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay is the kind of place that penalizes you if you cancel so we understood that we were making a commitment to something half a world away that demanded we be there at a certain specific time and in a manner of dress—a “smart dress code.”   Once we made that reservation for us, there was no going back.img_2384

Fast forward to a bumpy plane ride across the Atlantic, a train ride from Canterbury where it is my daughter’s second home and a long walk from Charing Cross station way up in Westminster, London. We intended to walk to Chelsea and see the sites along the way dressed formally.  We knew the walk would be long so we gave ourselves an hour and a half to get to the restaurant and as it turned out, we barely made it by our 1 PM reservation.  My wife had brought walking shoes for the hike, and had to literally change into her high heeled boots once we arrived with three minutes to spare in front of the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay with three minutes to spare and sweat running down our faces from an unusually warm February afternoon.  It was from there that we were launched on a culinary journey which started down a long narrow hall that to me was quite purposeful, the entrance was very artistic in that it kept visitors from seeing the dining room until one entered the heart of the restaurant almost like the journey down a birth canal into a resurrection at the reception area.img_2387

My curiosity about the place which persisted well into our meal was that for Chef Ramsay, who is a major star on the Fox television network in the United States—this restaurant in Chelsea for all its reputation is very, very small. It was all he could afford as a young 33-year-old entrepreneur trying to make it big in London for the first time after being taught in the high-pressure wringer of French society and the delicacies of being a top tier chef and among the best of the best.  You would think there would be large neon signs pointing to this little treasure—or that they’d move the location to someplace more spectacular.  Yet the little restaurant was situated along Royal Hospital Road just a few blocks up from the River Themes.  It was in a residential neighborhood hidden literally from the world with only a little autographed sign by the door to reveal what was hidden to the world inside.  Yet this little place that could barely hold 50 people was filled to the brim on a Friday afternoon and it stayed that way for our entire 3-hour culinary journey which never stopped trying to impress us even at the very end when we were given a tour of the kitchen by the maître d’hôtel which I thought was highly unusual. Yes, it was extraordinarily expensive as should be expected but it’s the kind of place that you don’t go unless you are prepared for that kind of thing, where a bill can easily run up over $1000 dollars US for a table of four. Most people dining with us at lunch looked to average about 375 GBD ($465 US) per person at a table especially those who ordered off the Prestige menu or took advantage of the A la carte menu which allowed visitors to really dive down deep into the culinary experience.  By the time you added a few bottles of wine such as the Chateau d’ Esclans ‘Garrus’ Cotes de Provence, the costs of the meal naturally escalated into the figures mentioned.  But you really don’t go to a restaurant like this thinking about the money.  You come to these places with disposable income and you don’t think about the bill otherwise you’ve defeated the experience.img_2389

With that in mind we ordered off the lunch menu which was more than sophisticated enough for us. I ordered a three-course meal which started with a Dexter beef tartare complete with nasturtiums and Manni olive oil, a Jerusalem artichoke, a Roast venison with Jerusalem artichoke, alliums, and elderberry ketchup followed finally by a Custard tart with blood orange, mint, and mascarpone sorbet.  That last bit of dessert was simply jaw dropping delicious.  It all was, but the desert really impressed me.  My family picked other items from the lunch menu and the diversity was too much for me to keep track of—and the chef was nice enough to throw in extra surprises as they called them—almost a whole new meal worth—and my wife was treated with a small chocolate dessert with a simple candle on it for her birthday that looked like it was art on a plate.  As we were asked how our meal had been I had told them that it was to die for—which the maître d’hôtel responded, “but don’t die yet—for we have more for you.”  That is when the staff would bring out little extra bits for us to try to swoon over until we realized that we had been eating for over three hours—which was the longest dinning experience I had ever had.img_2381

So how do they keep that valuable three-Michelan star rating—well, they were not short on staff. Even though the dining room was extremely small—as I said—it would be lucky to hold 50 people, they had literally enough staff to nearly fill that restaurant if you combined all the behind the line staff with the front of house.  My son-in-law went to the restroom at one point and his napkin fell on the floor.  My daughter picked it up to put it back in his chair thinking that it hadn’t violated the “5 second rule.”  But one of the dining room workers had swept in to gather it up and replace it with a clean one, and we didn’t even know anybody was watching us.  There was always someone there to pull out one of our chairs to let us up, or tuck us back in after returning to our table, to keep our tables free of used dishes or even to pluck up bread crumbs that had fallen away while eating bread samples.  One thing for sure, Chef Ramsay might have been in Hollywood most of the time now working on his television shows after getting this little restaurant in Chelsea off the ground with three intense years of hard work personally put forth by him as the foundation—but he wasn’t taking any chances with this place.img_2382

I watched the way they seated the dining room, which is why they were so strict on their reservations. To their benefit the Restaurant Chef Ramsay had built their business around guaranteed customers that would come in at specific times allowing the kitchen to work each table to maximum effect.  They knew each day how many tables they would have and how to provide their works of culinary art to the specifics of each table.  If the restaurant had been any bigger that would have been much more difficult—and this kept the kitchen from being overwhelmed by unpredictable walk-ins.  Ramsay had taken his reputation and marketed it in a way of extreme quality so that uniquely the kitchen paced the flow of work—not the spontaneity of the visiting public.  It was very smart and truly was one of the best restaurants in Europe—and it knew it. It had a swagger about it that was undeniable.img_2393

At the end the maître d’hôtel of course asked how everything was, and I replied that now we could all die happy.  He was an Italian who knew how to work the room, but over the last three hours we had come to some understandings about each other and he seemed to really enjoy our company, and our naiveté about the diversity of food they served there.  After all we had come so far to have dinner and had anticipated it for such a long time—and we were already fans of Chef Ramsay and wanted to like everything.  We had walked many miles in formal attire to get there through the streets of London on a tight deadline—so we were very open to a good experience and his staff obviously recognized that and enjoyed serving us—because of the positive feedback when they came to our table.  So he said to me, “Well, don’t die, but simply come back and do it again.”   Then he invited us into the kitchen for a look behind the scenes which for me was what I really wanted to do.  I had watched Gordon Ramsay in that very same kitchen on television trying to earn his first Michelin Star so I was very curious.  The kitchen was spotless.  The workers, very industries and attentive and it was quite impressive to see so much staff all working diligently toward a quest for perfection in the purest version of the word.  It was a perfect example of the Metaphysis of Quality which I talk about often.  Gordon Ramsay from a half a world away in Hollywood now is able to preserve his very first restaurant even from such a distance because he had established a very front of the train standard that now carries over into the culture of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay everyday by his staff who clearly understand the expectations.img_2421

So if you are ever in London and really want to eat in one of the finest restaurants on planet earth, then you must make the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay part of that quest. I’ve been to very nice restaurants in America and they weren’t like this—the people, the place, and the food were simply dedicated to the same objective as all the stained-glass windows served in Medieval Europe—to awe the public into grasping an everlasting divinity.  The food at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay was meant to awaken in the people eating it a majestic achievement and to defy the laws of mundane compliance to the basic essence of dietary sustenance. The place itself was a rebellion against normalcy and a yearning to be more than just human.  And yes, it was worth traveling over 4000 miles to visit.  It was worth all expectation and everything it took to get there—and I would do it again—and likely will have a bigger group of family members with me the next time.  It was an experience I’d want everyone to have if they could, and something that should be done at least once in a lifetime.   It was simply that good.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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