Category: archaeology

The Jonathan Edwards Study Bible, the Corruption of Character, and Why Good Government Requires Good People

I have been saying this more and more lately: if you have not yet picked up a copy of the new Jonathan Edwards Study Bible: Experience Abiding Joy in Christ (NKJV), get one. Thomas Nelson released it on August 18, 2026, with Dr. Matthew Everhard as general editor, and it is one of the best things to happen this year. The paper smells wonderful. The binding, the Comfort Print type, the two-color printing, the inclusion of Edwards’ own Resolutions, and the study notes drawn straight from his sermons, treatises, and “Blank Bible”—everything about it invites serious engagement. I already had a solid Bible, but this one is different. It is a tool for the kind of long, disciplined conversations about Christian values and biblical order that I expect to keep having for hundreds of hours in the years ahead.¹

Biblical Foundations for Healthy Families, Churches, and Government

What is really at stake is not merely personal piety. The Bible records how a particular people, and then a wider civilization, survived more than a thousand years of human turmoil by clinging to values capable of building a healthy society. Translation history—from Hebrew and Greek through the Reformation and Martin Luther’s work into new European standards—matters, but the deeper point is functional: those values produce good families, good churches that help form good families, and, from among those people, a portion willing and able to serve in political office.² Good government does not appear by magic or by bureaucratic decree. It is downstream of character. Without good people formed by good families and churches, the supply of those fit for limited, constitutional office shrinks.

I have a granddaughter just over one year old. Watching her, and remembering the same stages with the other grandchildren, sharpens the contrast. Content aimed at children under two is still largely constructive: language, association, positive voices, basic formation. By the time a child reaches eight, nine, or ten, and especially the 10-to-13 and 13-to-16 windows, the cultural message shifts. “Adult” content is coded as sexually charged, reckless, and liberally sprinkled with cuss words. Children who want to be treated as grown-ups learn to associate maturity with those markers. We are careful what we pour into toddlers’ brains; we become careless, or even actively destructive, once they hit double digits. Then we express surprise when people in their twenties, thirties, and forties remain stuck in the same patterns—never growing up, treating foul language and sexualized recklessness as signs of sophistication.³

From Educational Under-Twos to Sexualized Teens: The Cultural Pipeline

This is not abstract. I watch the YouTube videos my teenage grandson (turning 15) chooses when he visits. I pay attention because culture follows what marketers push to each age cohort. Research confirms the scale. A 2025 report from the Children’s Commissioner for England found that 70 percent of young people had seen pornography before age 18, with more than a quarter first exposed by age 11 and some as young as six; social media platforms, not dedicated adult sites, were the dominant source. Common Sense Media, Thorn, and Ofcom data show substantial rates of sexual content and interactions among minors on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and related apps. Ofcom has repeatedly flagged TikTok and YouTube for feeding harmful content to large majorities of teens via recommendation systems.⁴ Algorithms do not merely reflect demand; they amplify it. Creators who want reach—and I know many of them—alter content toward whatever is trending. When the trend is sexualized, vulgar, or adversarial, that is what gets pushed.⁵

Algorithms as the Modern Adversary: Rewarding the Bad

Who controls the algorithm controls the content. TikTok (Chinese-owned), YouTube (Alphabet/Google), and similar platforms systematically reward material that maximizes engagement: outrage, sexualization, cussing, laziness framed as authenticity. Positive, formative, or explicitly “good” content is rarely the algorithmic winner. Internal evidence from whistleblowers and external audits (Center for Countering Digital Hate, academic studies of recommendation systems) shows platforms have repeatedly prioritized borderline or harmful material because it drives time-on-site and revenue. The result is a pipeline that takes children from constructive early programming and, within a few years, immerses them in the opposite. We then wonder why so many adults never exit the pattern.⁶

This is the modern version of an old story. In the Book of Job, the adversary (Satan) is granted permission to test Job’s loyalty. The figure is not a cartoon; the biblical picture includes a divine council and adversarial spiritual powers that operate through deception, cultural capture, and the redefinition of good. Today’s adversaries—whether understood spiritually, institutionally, or both—do the same work through media, education, and policy. Public schools teach compliance with whatever the current policy defines as good. When that definition rewards sexual openness, foul language, and mediocrity while punishing high standards or traditional formation, the output is predictable. “Good” becomes relative, socially managed, and hostile to excellence. People learn that being too good makes others look bad, so they stay mediocre or worse. Corruption, fraud, and waste in public office become rational strategies for advancement rather than moral failures.⁷

The Shortage of Good People and the Case for Small Government

My wife and I hear it constantly during election seasons: we need good people in office who will uphold the Constitution. The practical question is where those people come from. A society that has deliberately removed character formation from schools, rewarded the opposite through media algorithms, and redefined good according to the manipulators’ interests will not produce a deep bench of people capable of limited, constitutional government. Good people still emerge—statistical anomalies of family, church, and personal resolve—but they are scarce. Not everyone is interchangeable. Attributes differ. When we pretend otherwise and lower the standard so that bad people can hold power, the results are devastating.⁸

This is one of the strongest practical arguments for small government. Large government requires a continuous supply of competent, character-bound people to staff it. When that supply shrinks by design, expanding the state simply multiplies failure. The corporate-state complex has spent decades treating people as interchangeable inputs; the results show declining literacy and numeracy (NAEP data showing large shares of students below basic proficiency), eroded character metrics reported by teachers, and a persistent inability to reduce fraud and waste. We taught the next generation that corruption is how you get ahead, then wondered why public office is hard to staff with anyone who will actually fight it.⁹

Political Parties as Sorters of Character

Political parties exist, among other reasons, to sort. A party that attracts and elevates people of genuine character—and refuses to authorize the opposite—will outperform one that does not. I affiliate with the Republican Party in my county precisely because its stated goals still include sorting for better rather than worse. That sorting is imperfect and always under pressure, but the alternative is worse. When “good” is redefined by adversarial forces, the people who remain resolute become rarer and more identifiable. Everyone who is paying attention already knows who they are.

I do not believe God is stupid or passively all-seeing in a way that removes human responsibility. The biblical picture allows for adversarial powers that test, deceive, and exploit the desire to fit in more than the desire to be good. Most people prefer belonging to excellence. The result is a thinner stock of people ready for the duties of self-government. The remedy begins where Edwards began: with deliberate resolve, steady engagement with Scripture, and the formation of families and churches that still know the difference between good and its counterfeit. The new Study Bible is a practical aid to that work. Without returning to making good people on purpose, the vacancies, corruption, and cultural pipeline will continue. The plot to destroy good families, good people, and therefore good government has always been there. The difference now is how efficiently the tools of the age execute it—and how clearly the results are visible.

Notes

1.  Thomas Nelson, The Jonathan Edwards Study Bible: Experience Abiding Joy in Christ (NKJV), general editor Dr. Matthew Everhard (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, August 18, 2026). Features include study notes drawn from Edwards’ works (with source citations to the Yale edition), Edwards’ seventy Resolutions, full-page essays on his theology and the First Great Awakening, and his miscellanies note-taking system. See also Matthew Everhard’s discussions of the project on the Unashamed Truth channel.

2.  On the historical transmission of biblical values and their role in social order, see standard treatments such as Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (New York: Viking, 2010), and earlier works on the Reformation’s impact on European moral and political standards. Edwards himself argued that true religion produces the highest happiness and ordered life; see his Religious Affections and the Resolutions (1722–1723).

3.  Personal observation of age-graded media targeting is consistent with long-term content analyses such as UCLA’s Center for Scholars and Storytellers longitudinal survey of values in children’s television (fame and image rising relative to community and benevolence across decades).

4.  Children’s Commissioner for England, reports on children’s exposure to pornography (2023 and 2025 updates); Common Sense Media, research on teens and explicit/AI-generated material (2026); Thorn, Youth Perspectives on Online Safety (2025); Ofcom, findings on harmful content exposure via recommendation feeds for UK teens.

5.  Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) reports on algorithmic amplification of harmful content; academic audits of TikTok and YouTube Shorts recommendation systems (e.g., studies showing rapid increase in toxic or misogynistic content after minimal engagement); BBC and other reporting on whistleblower accounts of platforms prioritizing engagement over safety.

6.  Same sources as note 5; additional context in Ofcom regulatory findings and ISD Global analyses of search and recommendation bias on TikTok.

7.  The Job narrative (Job 1–2) provides the classic biblical example of adversarial testing within the framework of divine sovereignty and a heavenly council. Edwards’ theology of spiritual conflict and the necessity of resolve appears throughout his writings and the new Study Bible notes.

8.  Teacher surveys on declining student character (e.g., 2026 data showing majority of educators reporting behavioral and ethical decline); NAEP reading and math trends showing rising shares of students below basic proficiency; historical analyses of the retreat of deliberate character education from public schools after the mid-20th century.

9.  On the removal of character and moral formation from public education and associated social trends, see B. Edward McClellan, Moral Education in America, and later data on literacy, civic knowledge, and ethical attitudes among youth (Josephson Institute reports and similar).

Bibliography

Everhard, Matthew D. Holy Living: Jonathan Edwards’s Seventy Resolutions for Living the Christian Life. Hendrickson, 2019 (and related lectures/videos on the Resolutions).

Edwards, Jonathan. The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Yale University Press edition (edwards.yale.edu). Especially Religious Affections, sermons, and the Resolutions (1722–1723).

The Jonathan Edwards Study Bible: Experience Abiding Joy in Christ (NKJV). General editor Matthew Everhard. Thomas Nelson, 2026.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Viking, 2010.

Children’s Commissioner for England. Reports on children’s exposure to pornography and online harm (2023–2025).

Common Sense Media. Research on teens, pornography, and AI-generated explicit material (2026).

Thorn. Youth Perspectives on Online Safety (2025).

Ofcom. Regulatory findings on harmful content recommendation to UK teens (multiple reports).

Center for Countering Digital Hate. Reports on algorithmic amplification of harmful and polarizing content.

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Long-term trends in reading and mathematics proficiency.

UCLA Center for Scholars and Storytellers. Longitudinal studies of values conveyed in children’s and teen media.

McClellan, B. Edward. Moral Education in America: Schools and the Shaping of Character from Colonial Times to the Present.

Josephson Institute. Reports on the ethics of American youth.

Additional recommended reading: works on the divine council motif in biblical studies (e.g., Michael Heiser), studies of recommendation-system design and engagement incentives, and historical accounts of the First Great Awakening and Puritan moral formation.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

Amy Acton’s Mother Calls Her a Liar: The Death Nail in a Campaign Built on Overdramatization

I think it was always going to be Vivek Ramaswamy. Ohio has moved, and the people who still believe they can turn the clock back to some polite, managed Republicanism are going to be disappointed. But when Amy Acton’s own mother steps forward just weeks before Election Day and calls her daughter a liar—disputing the very childhood story Acton has used to shape her public image—and Vivek’s campaign turns that into an ad, it is not a minor footnote. It is the final stake through a campaign that was already built on overdramatization, emotional appeals, and a refusal to confront reality.¹

The Mother’s Words and Why They Matter

Donna Arthur, identifying herself as Amy Acton’s mother and noting her past work in child and family services, said she loves her daughter but that Acton “has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life.” She urged Ohioans not to elect her, warning that life would only get worse.¹

Acton’s campaign and her brother, Philip Stearns, responded by highlighting the long estrangement—dating to 1978 when Acton was twelve—and the fact that her stepfather was indicted for sexually abusing her. Court records and earlier reporting, including Acton’s own 2019 interviews, support key elements of hardship and removal from the home. The mother stayed with the man until his death. That is a tragic family story, and I am not minimizing childhood trauma. But the mother is speaking now, as an adult, about the adult candidate’s character and truthfulness. When your own mother says you have been a liar your whole life and that the tent story is not true, conventional political wisdom says that is a disaster for the candidate. Why would any campaign lean into it if the basic facts were unassailable? It is awkward Thanksgiving material, and it is the kind of thing that sticks with undecided voters who already sense something is off.²

A Pattern of Overdramatization

This is not an isolated episode. During COVID, Acton, as Ohio’s health director under Mike DeWine, was the face of the lockdowns, school closures (Ohio was among the first), and business restrictions that crushed small operators while she and others projected certainty. She became emotional, pushed back against reopening, and ultimately resigned amid protests and legislative pushback, citing pressure to sign orders she opposed. Staff accounts described sensitivity to criticism and emotional reactions. She made a big deal out of everything, turning public health into a personal drama that made insecure people feel temporarily safe while the economic and educational costs piled up.

More recently, at the Canfield Fair in early September, an armed man pushed through a crowd toward her, knocking people over. He had pistols, a Taser, and brass knuckles but was holding a phone or camera; weapons were not brandished. The campaign’s initial framing was of an armed individual lunging at her. It turned out to be a man who wanted to get closer—possibly for a picture or confrontation—but the overstatement fit the pattern. She has a history of elevating ordinary or mixed situations into crises that serve a narrative.³ ⁴

The Moderate Republicans and the Old Handbook

There are still Republicans in Ohio who wanted a return to the managed, polite version of the party—the Amy Acton types cite the George W. Bush-era playbook and claim Acton was simply following the established pandemic plan. They hoped the post-Trump world would settle back into something familiar where they retained more control. They are wrong. People rejected that approach years ago. They want the clarity and results orientation that Trump represents, not more of the same managerial caution that allowed problems to fester. Vivek Ramaswamy is an extension of that Trump-aligned direction for Ohio’s governorship. The old guard’s preference for continuity was never going to hold.

Democrats, by contrast, often select and elevate candidates who carry significant personal and psychological baggage. Acton is not unique in that regard. The party’s base has long rewarded emotional performance and narratives of victimhood over steady competence. When the candidate’s own mother is on record saying she needs help and cannot help others until she tells the truth, it confirms what many already observe: too many Democrat standard-bearers are not in a position to lead.⁶

What This Means Weeks Before Election Day

The race is close on paper. Some polls have Acton ahead by a few points; others are tighter or show Ramaswamy edges. Betting markets and conventional wisdom have shifted at times, but the fundamentals of Ohio—Trump’s repeated wins and the desire for a break from lockdown-style governance—favor the Republican. This mother’s intervention does not invent new information so much as it crystallizes existing doubts. For voters who were on the fence or who simply do not want another round of overdramatized governance, it provides a clear signal from the person who raised her.⁵

I am not unhappy to hear it. It is rare for a family member to speak so directly, and when she does—even under the complicated circumstances of long estrangement and documented abuse—it carries weight. Acton has overdramatized her past and her present. As governor she would do the same with the state’s problems. Ohio does not need more of that. We need someone who will impose discipline, expand opportunity, and stop treating every challenge as a personal emotional event. Vivek was always the stronger bet. The mother’s words simply make the choice clearer for anyone still paying attention.

Bibliography / Further Reading

• Contemporary reporting on the Acton-Ramaswamy race and the October 2026 ad (Newsweek, Forbes, CNN, Washington Post, PolitiFact, Ohio Capital Journal, and local Ohio outlets).

• Acton’s own prior interviews and official records concerning her childhood and 2020 public health tenure (Youngstown Vindicator 2019; Ohio Department of Health orders; DeWine administration records).

• Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead — for the contrast between producers and those who live through narrative and emotion.

• Works on political psychology and the modern left’s preference for emotional framing (e.g., analyses of victimhood culture and institutional capture).

• Ohio political history and the post-2016 realignment of the Republican Party toward Trump-aligned priorities.

Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, writer, and host of the Overman Warrior Podcast / Executive Warrior Podcast, based in the Cincinnati / Butler County area of Ohio. He has written extensively on local and national politics, individual responsibility, and the cultural costs of managerial governance.

Footnotes

¹ Newsweek, “Amy Acton’s mother calls her ‘liar’ in brutal ad as Ohio race tightens,” October 20, 2026; Forbes, CNN, Washington Post, and multiple other outlets confirmed the video and subsequent Ramaswamy campaign acknowledgment of responsibility and $4 million promotion commitment.

² Court records from Mahoning County (1978) and contemporaneous reporting, including Acton’s 2019 Youngstown Vindicator interview and statements from her brother Philip Stearns, document the stepfather’s indictment on rape charges, removal from custody, and estrangement since age 12. See also PolitiFact and Ohio Capital Journal coverage, October 20–21, 2026.

³ Fox News, ABC News, and local Mahoning County reporting on the September 6, 2026 Canfield Fair incident involving Patrick Havas, who was armed with two pistols, a Taser, and brass knuckles but holding a phone/camera; campaign initially described it as an armed individual lunging at Acton.

⁴ Amy Acton served as Ohio Department of Health Director from 2019 to June 11, 2020, under Gov. Mike DeWine. Ohio was among the first states to close schools (March 2020). Stay-at-home orders, business closures, and the postponement of the March 17 primary (via Acton’s signed order) drew significant backlash, protests, and legislative efforts to limit her powers. Acton resigned citing political pressure on certain orders. See POLITICO, Washington Examiner staffer accounts, and contemporaneous Ohio news.

⁵ Recent polling (Marist October 15–18, 2026: Acton 50–43; BGSU/YouGov: 50–44; mixed with some Ramaswamy leads) shows a close race. Election Day is November 3, 2026. Ramaswamy is the Republican nominee, endorsed by President Trump; Acton is the Democratic nominee.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

Soft Campaigns and Bloody Knuckles: Why the Administrative State’s Interchangeable-People Model Is Failing in 2026

There is a common thread running through the 2026 campaigns of Amy Acton in Ohio and James Talarico in Texas. Both operate on the premise that the candidate is largely optional. Public relations teams, controlled events, and background management can substitute for the person who is supposed to do the job. Talarico spent roughly nine to twelve days off the in-person trail in late September and early October with the flu—working by Zoom from home, citing contagion concerns and his Type 1 diabetes—while opponents circulated “missing” posters and called him missing in action. Acton has refused to debate Vivek Ramaswamy, limited cameras and open questioning at events, and run a tightly managed operation that keeps her from unscripted exposure. The underlying belief is the same one that has dominated corporate human-resources departments for years: people are interchangeable units, exceptional performance is not required, and the administrative layer can keep the machine running if the front person needs a sick day or prefers not to answer questions.

The Philosophy That Anyone Can Be Swapped

This is the practical application of a long-running idea that exceptionalism is a problem rather than a feature. In its Marxist and later administrative forms, the claim is that human beings can be treated like standardized inputs. One person can be replaced by another without meaningful loss, the way one can of soda can be swapped for another. Training, credentials, and process matter more than the specific individual who shows up and does the work under pressure. Corporate America absorbed large parts of this view. Human-resources manuals, wellness policies, and promotion criteria increasingly rewarded those who managed risk, took the approved time off, and avoided friction. The person who keeps working with split knuckles, stitches a cut with superglue rather than lose the day, or simply refuses to stop is treated as a liability rather than an asset.

I have spent enough time in environments that still require physical output to see the difference. My hands currently carry the evidence—cuts on top of older cuts, knuckles that have not fully healed because the work continued. That is ordinary in trades and in any setting where the job is not primarily the management of process. It is increasingly rare in the layers that set policy for everyone else. When the administrative state and the corporations that mirror it define acceptable behavior as calling out for the flu, taking extended leave for ordinary life events, and deferring to the background staff, they select for a particular temperament. They do not select for the temperament that built the capacity they now administer.

Campaigns as Public-Relations Exercises

The same selection shows up in politics. A candidate who can be kept off camera, shielded from debate, or replaced by staff for days at a time is easier for the professional class to manage. Acton’s campaign has cited security concerns rooted in her time as Ohio health director during the COVID period, along with what it describes as unfair attacks. Those concerns can be real. The pattern of refusing open formats and unscripted questioning is still a choice about how the candidate intends to operate. Talarico’s absence was explained as responsible behavior—he did not want to infect someone’s grandmother. Working remotely is feasible for many jobs. It is a different proposition when the job on offer is representing a state in a contested Senate race weeks before early voting. The opponents treated the gap as evidence of fragility. The defense treated it as ordinary employee sick leave. Both reactions reveal the expectation each side holds about what the role requires.

The older assumption was that the person seeking the office had to demonstrate the capacity to do it in public, under conditions that were not fully controlled. Money, staff, and messaging mattered, but they did not fully substitute for the candidate. The newer assumption, visible in multiple 2026 races, is that sufficient resources and message discipline can carry a controlled figure across the line. That assumption has been tested before. It does not reliably produce candidates who can function once the controlled environment ends.

Softness as Policy and Cultural Output

The preference for interchangeable, low-friction people has costs beyond any single campaign. Skilled trades in the United States face persistent shortages. Reports from industry groups project the need for well over a million new skilled workers annually through the mid-2030s, with training pipelines producing only a fraction of the required numbers. Electricians, mechanics, carpenters, and similar roles remain difficult to fill in multiple states. Part of the explanation is demographic and economic—aging workers, housing costs, the long prestige advantage given to four-year degrees after the GI Bill. Part of it is cultural. Decades of messaging treated physical, outdoor, or mechanically demanding work as lower status. At the same time, administrative and corporate environments normalized the idea that minor illness, injury, or discomfort should remove a person from the job rather than be managed around it.

I do not claim that every cut requires a clinic visit or that diabetes-related flu complications are imaginary. I do claim that a society which systematically promotes the people who treat ordinary hardship as disqualifying, and which sidelines those who continue working through it, will have fewer people capable of the output a first-rate economy and a competent government require. Foreign competitors do not need to invent this preference. They benefit when it is already embedded in hiring, promotion, education, and political selection. The Confucian-institute style influence operations and earlier Soviet efforts at institutional penetration are documented in specific cases. The broader softening is also a domestic story of prosperity, cheap credit, and status competition that raised consumption expectations while lowering the status of the work that once supported a single-income household in a modest house. Both layers operate at once.

What Gets Selected

The candidates and the corporate managers who treat the administrative layer as the real actor are not anomalies. They are the predictable product of rules that reward risk avoidance, message control, and the appearance of process compliance. When those rules dominate, the people who still measure themselves by whether the work got done—regardless of the condition of their hands—become harder to find and easier to marginalize. Campaigns that can be run substantially from Zoom or from behind a communications team test how far that model can be extended into elected office. The results in November will show how many voters still prefer the older expectation: that the person asking for the job should be able to do it in public, without the background apparatus fully substituting for them.

I have written elsewhere about the practical difference between people who impose their will on circumstances and people who manage the circumstances other people have already accepted. The 2026 races offer a clear comparison. One approach treats the candidate as a manageable input. The other treats the capacity to function under imperfect conditions as non-negotiable. The administrative state has spent decades selecting for the first. A country that wants to remain first-rate cannot afford to keep doing so indefinitely.

Footnotes

1.  Contemporary reporting from October 2026 documents James Talarico’s multi-day absence from in-person campaigning due to the flu, his remote work via Zoom, his Type 1 diabetes, and the subsequent “missing” posters and commentary from Ken Paxton’s campaign and President Trump.

2.  Reporting on Amy Acton’s Ohio gubernatorial campaign details her refusal to debate Vivek Ramaswamy, limited media access at events, and the campaign’s stated reasons involving prior security concerns and the nature of opposing attacks.

3.  Industry analyses (Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades and related contractor surveys) project large annual shortfalls in skilled-trade workers through 2035, with training completion and entry rates lagging demand in multiple states.

Bibliography for Further Reading

•  Contemporary news accounts of the Talarico absence and Paxton/Trump response (CNN, Fox News, Texas Scorecard, local Texas outlets, October 2026).

•  Reporting on Amy Acton’s debate refusal and campaign access decisions (Columbus Dispatch, PJ Media, Daily Signal, Ohio outlets).

•  Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades and Associated General Contractors reports on workforce shortages in construction and skilled trades.

•  Historical accounts of the GI Bill’s effect on college attendance and the relative status of trades.

•  Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (on industrialized human management and the reduction of individual variance).

•  Victor Davis Hanson, essays on administrative growth, cultural expectations, and the divergence between institutional norms and practical output.

•  Rich Hoffman, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business (on individual agency, toughness, and the difference between process management and imposed results).

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

The Family as the First Line of Defense: How the Attack on the Housewife and Traditional Division of Labor Was Social , Not Liberation

I have employed hundreds of women over the years—strong, competent, professional women who know how to get things done. I have been married for 38 years. I raised two daughters. My wife and I made a deliberate choice when we decided to have a family: I would handle the outside, she would handle the inside. That was not a limitation we placed on her. It was a division of labor we chose so that someone was always guarding the household. When relatives and others ridiculed her for staying home in the 1970s and 1980s, while feminism was telling women that staying home meant they were failing, we ignored them. Someone has to lock the door. You cannot have both adults out on the perimeter and leave the house unprotected. I have watched what happens when that protection is removed, and the results are not an advance.

The Promise Was Independence. The Result Was a Transfer of Influence

The public story was that women needed to leave the home so they could be free, earn their own money, and escape dependence on a husband. In practice, a large share of what followed was a transfer of daily influence from the husband and the household to a boss, an HR department, and a set of institutional rules that the family did not write. My wife has said many times that she could have done other things. We both could have. We chose not to because the alternative—two incomes at the cost of no one consistently present for the children—did not look like an improvement once the children arrived. The social pressure to treat that choice as backward was intense. It was not coming only from individual feminists. It aligned with longer-running efforts, visible in the science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s and in the practical politics of Fabian socialists and various Marxist currents, to weaken the independent household so that other institutions could shape the next generation more directly.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World described a society in which reproduction is industrialized, children are conditioned by the state rather than raised by parents, and family bonds are treated as obstacles to stability. That was fiction. The policy and cultural pressure that followed in the real world was not. When both parents are required to work full-time to maintain a standard of living that one income once supported, the practical result is that children spend more hours under institutional supervision and less under the direct authority of their parents. That is not an accident of economics alone. Wage structures, tax treatment of households, housing costs, and cultural messaging all moved in the same direction for decades. Pew Research has documented the shift: the share of married or cohabiting couples with children in which both parents work full time rose substantially from the mid-1970s onward, while the male-breadwinner arrangement declined. The numbers describe what happened. They do not prove it was required for women’s well-being or for children’s.

What I Saw in the Experimental Neighborhoods

I grew up around some of the early versions of this experiment. There were planned communities in which both parents worked corporate jobs, the adults treated the neighborhood as an extended social and sexual network, and the children were largely unsupervised during the day. Key parties—where couples put car keys in a bowl and paired off with whoever’s keys they drew—were presented at the time as sophisticated “community relations.” The adults drank, used drugs, and told themselves they were progressive because no one was judging. The children in those neighborhoods were having sex with each other by early adolescence and experimenting with drugs. When I tried to keep some of them from going further down that path, I was treated as the problem by at least one of the mothers. She was an early feminist. She disliked me on principle. Her son had serious problems. I was one of the few consistent restraints in his life. That did not make me popular with her.

Those neighborhoods were not the majority experience, but they were not isolated either. Contemporary accounts from the early 1970s documented organized swinging among otherwise conventional suburban couples. The adults believed they were escaping repression. The children absorbed the practical lesson that adult supervision was intermittent and that sexual boundaries were negotiable. The same pattern appears, in updated form, among some of the young people I work with now. Teenagers talk openly about same-sex relationships as ordinary Friday-night plans. When I was their age, that would have produced immediate and serious consequences inside most families. Today it is treated as unremarkable because the institutional messaging—from schools, media, and corporate HR—has spent years defining dissent as bigotry. The kids did not invent the permission structure. They inherited it.

Corporate Rules, Dual Incomes, and the Compliant “Rebel”

The corporate environment that expanded alongside the dual-income norm added its own layer. Once both adults need the paycheck, the employer’s rules become household rules. Flag a pickup truck for a Bengals game, spend money on tailgating gear that costs more than some people’s weekly groceries, and still accept that you will not challenge the HR manual on sex, gender, or hours. The job funds the jerseys and the grill. It also funds the expectation that you will not treat the traditional division of labor as legitimate. Men who say they want to carry the full financial load so their wives can stay home are told they are exhibiting toxic masculinity. Women who prefer the arrangement are told they are letting down the sisterhood. Both messages treat the household’s own priorities as subordinate to an external ideological standard.

I have watched young people describe arrangements in which one spouse wants to pursue a same-sex relationship on the side while remaining married, and both parties treat the request as reasonable because “progressive society” has normalized it. That is not rebellion. It is compliance with the institutional script. The script has been consistent for decades: weaken the exclusive claims of marriage and parenthood, increase the hours children spend outside the home, and redefine resistance to the new norms as the actual threat. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in the early 2000s was marketed as light fashion entertainment. It also functioned as desensitization. The same process had already occurred with the earlier campaign against the housewife. Ridicule the arrangement, associate it with backwardness, and present the alternative as both inevitable and morally superior. Enough people accepted the framing that the practical consequences—higher fixed costs for families, thinner parental presence, and greater institutional influence over children—became the default.

Family Competence Is the Prerequisite for Everything Else

If a household cannot maintain a coherent division of labor, protect its children from early sexualization and chemical experimentation, and transmit a workable standard of behavior, it will not produce adults who can maintain those things at larger scale. The observation is practical, not sentimental. I have spent enough time with both the earlier experimental neighborhoods and the current cohort of confused teenagers to see the continuity. The adults who left the doors unlocked because they wanted to be seen as progressive produced children who treated boundaries as optional. The institutions that later codified those optional boundaries as official policy simply scaled the same pattern. Strong families are not a guarantee of good government. The absence of them makes competent self-government harder, because the habits of responsibility, delayed gratification, and defense of one’s own were never practiced at the smallest unit.

None of this requires claiming that every woman must stay home or that every dual-income arrangement fails. It requires noticing that the campaign to treat the traditional household as a problem to be solved aligned with other efforts to reduce the independence of the family relative to employers, schools, and the state. The science-fiction writers who described state-controlled reproduction and conditioning were extrapolating from tendencies already visible in their own time. The tendencies continued. The results are visible in the young people who treat conformity to the new sexual and family norms as an act of independence, and in the adults who still believe that two full-time jobs plus institutional childcare was the liberation that was promised. It was a transfer. The household lost authority. Other institutions gained it. That was the point.

Footnotes

1.  Pew Research Center analysis of Census data shows the rise in dual full-time working parents among couples with children and the corresponding decline in male-breadwinner households from the 1970s to the present.

2.  Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) depicts industrialized reproduction, state conditioning of children, and the elimination of strong family bonds as mechanisms of social control.

3.  Contemporary reporting and academic accounts from the early 1970s documented organized swinging among suburban married couples, often framed by participants as an escape from conventional restraints.

Bibliography for Further Reading

•  Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932).

•  Pew Research Center, reports on parental work arrangements and family structure changes (various years, including recent analyses of dual-earner households).

•  Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were (on mid-century family norms and later revisions).

•  Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Second Shift (on the practical division of labor after mothers entered paid work in large numbers).

•  Contemporary accounts of 1970s swinging subcultures (Gilbert Bartell, Group Sex; period journalism in The New York Times and elsewhere).

•  Victor Davis Hanson, essays on cultural continuity, family formation, and the consequences of institutional substitution for parental authority.

•  Historical data on married women’s labor-force participation, 1940–2000 (Census-based summaries).

The pattern is not subtle once you have watched it operate at close range for decades. Have a good day. See you later.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

Nate Silver’s 2026 Midterm Forecast Misses the Movement: Why the Ghosts of Tysons Corner Cannot Wait Out Trump

Nate Silver’s latest FLIPR model for the November 2026 midterms has Democrats at roughly 75 percent to take the Senate and 93 percent to take the House. Those numbers treat the election as a standard second-year reaction against the party holding the White House. I do not see it that way. Silver has been wrong before when the underlying conditions changed. The conditions have changed again. Trump did not create the political order we are living in. A large group of Americans who rejected the prior direction created the opening that Trump filled. That group is still here, and the administrative class clustered around Tysons Corner does not appear to understand why.

The Model Assumes the Old Midterm Pattern Still Holds

Silver’s framework, like most quantitative election models, leans on historical patterns. The president’s party tends to lose seats in the midterms. Voters register dissatisfaction with the status quo. Generic-ballot movement and polling in a handful of competitive states (Michigan, Ohio, Texas, and others) get translated into chamber-control probabilities. When the model shows Democrats leading by a few points in places Trump won comfortably in 2024, the simulation produces a blue wave.

I have watched enough of these cycles to know the pattern is not iron law. It assumes a normal presidency, normal opposition, and voters who treat the midterms as a routine check. Trump was not a normal candidate, and the coalition that put him in office was not reacting to ordinary policy drift. People watched the border, inflation, cultural institutions, and the administrative expansion and decided they wanted a different representative. Models that treat that choice as a temporary fever that cools after two years are modeling the wrong thing. They are modeling the expectation inside the permanent government that the fever will pass if they simply wait.

Watching the Permanent Government at the Tysons Corner Walmart

My wife and I have been to the Walmart in Tysons Corner enough times that we have a preferred parking level in the garage. The store sits inside a dense cluster of high-rises roughly 15–16 miles west of downtown Washington, near Langley and the concentration of defense contractors and intelligence-community support firms that define Fairfax County. It is not the freestanding big-box with the wide parking lot that most people picture when they hear “Walmart.” It is compressed vertically, stacked into the same footprint as the surrounding office and residential towers. The people shopping there are not primarily the ones who drive in from the farther suburbs for bulk groceries. A large share live and work inside the federal-contractor economy that expanded after 9/11 and never really contracted.

I have written a chapter about this place in The Politics of Heaven. The observation is not complicated. You watch people move through the freezer section for chicken nuggets and the wine aisle with the same expression I have seen in other high-density administrative centers. They are performing the motions of ordinary life while remaining largely insulated from the consequences that ordinary voters experience. Pensions are secure. Housing is expensive but stable for those inside the system. The work is process-oriented rather than output-oriented. When you talk to them, the default expectation is that presidents come and go, but the block of offices, contracts, and clearances remains. They will wait. They have waited before.

That expectation is visible in the way the midterm forecasts are discussed inside the same circle. Trump’s approval, gas prices, or a few state polls are treated as sufficient to restore the prior equilibrium. The deeper reason voters chose him—the desire for someone who would actually represent the people who do not live inside that equilibrium—is treated as noise. Silver’s probabilities reflect the same assumption at scale. The model does not need to assume conspiracy. It only needs to assume that the historical midterm reaction will reassert itself because that is what the people who live near the model’s data sources expect to happen.

Trump Was the Hand That Went Up, Not the Creator of the Demand

I have been around the Trump issue since the Tea Party period. The demand existed before he filled it. People wanted a representative who would treat the border as a border, treat the administrative state as something that could be constrained, and reject the idea that the United States should converge toward the European or coastal-institutional model. When someone raised a hand and said he would do the job, enough of them voted for him twice. The same people are still there. Some will stay home if the candidate is weak. Many more will show up if they believe the alternative is a return to the prior arrangement.

That is why I do not treat the current Senate and House probabilities as predictive. They rest on the idea that voters will punish the president’s party for the ordinary reasons and then accept whatever the permanent government produces afterward. The people I talk to outside the Tysons corridor do not describe their choice that way. They describe it as a decision not to accept managed decline, open-ended migration without assimilation, or the expansion of process jobs at the expense of productive ones. Those preferences do not expire on a fixed calendar. They persist until the underlying conditions change or until voters decide the representative they chose is no longer doing the job.

Steve Bannon and others have floated the third-term idea. That is a separate legal and political question. The more immediate point is that the coalition does not disappear when one person leaves the stage. The administrative class that believes it can simply outlast the current presidency and restore the previous operating rules is counting on a reversion that the voters who created the opening have not signaled they want. Fairfax County mansions and secure pensions are real. They are not evidence that the rest of the country has decided to fund them indefinitely under the old terms.

What the Numbers Are Actually Measuring

Silver’s model is transparent about its inputs: polls, fundamentals, historical midterm patterns, and expert ratings. Those inputs are useful when the electorate is behaving within historical ranges. They become less useful when a significant share of the electorate has already rejected the range. The 75 percent and 93 percent figures measure the current state of polling and the weight the model assigns to past midterm reactions. They do not measure whether the people who voted for enforcement, energy production, and institutional constraint have changed their minds. From what I see, they have not.

We will know more on election night. Models can be updated. Voters can be wrong about the consequences of their choices. What I do not expect is a simple return to the equilibrium that the people shopping at the Tysons Corner Walmart treat as normal. That equilibrium required the rest of the country to keep accepting arrangements they had already rejected. Trump was the available instrument. He was not the source of the rejection. Treating the midterms as the moment when the instrument is discarded and the prior arrangement resumes is the hopeful reading inside one corridor of the administrative state. It is not the reading I take from the voters who put the instrument in place.

Footnotes

1.  Contemporary reporting in early-to-mid October 2026 placed Nate Silver’s FLIPR model at approximately 75 percent for Democratic Senate control and 93 percent for House control, consistent with the figures discussed here. The model incorporates polling averages, historical midterm patterns, and other fundamentals.

2.  Tysons Corner (Fairfax County, Virginia) sits adjacent to major defense-contractor concentrations and roughly a short drive from CIA headquarters in Langley. The multi-level Walmart is a documented feature of the dense, high-rise development that replaced earlier suburban patterns in the area.

3.  Post-9/11 defense and intelligence contracting expanded the economic footprint of Northern Virginia. Accounts of the region describe the concentration of firms, clearances, and related employment that remains visible in the local commercial landscape.

Bibliography for Further Reading

•  Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin / FLIPR methodology posts and midterm forecast updates (2026), including discussions of historical midterm waves and polling inputs.

•  Paul E. Ceruzzi, Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945–2005 (history of the defense-contractor and technology corridor).

•  Tim Shorrock, Spies for Hire and related reporting on the privatization of intelligence and defense functions in the Washington region.

•  Victor Davis Hanson, essays on administrative growth, cultural divergence between coastal/institutional centers and the broader electorate, and the persistence of voter preferences on borders and institutions.

•  Contemporary coverage of 2026 generic-ballot movement and competitive Senate races (Michigan, Ohio, Texas, and others) from multiple polling aggregators.

•  Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (on the distinction between productive enterprise and politically protected process).

•  Local and regional reporting on Fairfax County demographics, federal contracting

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

Why Jon Husted Deserves Another Term: Reflections from Vandalia, Energy Realities, and a Buccaneers Fan’s View of Politics

It was good to see Trump have an event for Jon Husted at Vandalia, Ohio.  More than ever, watching that event convinced me that Senator Jon Husted is the right person for Ohio. He’s a solid, practical guy who understands the state. I haven’t spent much time publicly defending him this cycle because Sherrod Brown’s return has been such a predictable mess, but I don’t think Brown has a real chance. Husted has been positioned to win this all along. 

The Vandalia Rally and Why Husted Matters

Seeing Husted on stage in Vandalia with the crowd was good. Trump’s people will show up and vote; this isn’t a race to take for granted, but I expect Husted to win by four or five points once the numbers settle. Ohio isn’t as close as some national media outlets want it to be, and one of the seats Democrats are counting on flipping won’t go their way. 

Husted is a top-tier senator for the job. He has been a proud business-oriented leader for years. When critics knock him on the FirstEnergy / House Bill 6 situation, the corruption accusations miss the point. That fight was about regulatory compliance, keeping nuclear capacity online, and listening to major employers in the state that bad policy was squeezing. I don’t blame him for listening to companies that employ many Ohioans. If you’re a senator or governor, part of the job is making yourself available to the people who keep the lights on and the payrolls running. 

COVID Calls, Amusement Parks, and Listening to Employers

I was on several conference calls with Husted and other state officials during the COVID period. Senators, state representatives, and businesspeople tried to figure out how to keep Ohio from being locked down into oblivion. Shutdown pressure was intense, and the Republican response often fell between public-health theater and the reality of what a prolonged closure would do to the economy.

Amusement parks were a clear example. Kings Island and others were operating under rules that made little sense—social distancing on rides, capacity limits that ignored how the industry actually works, and the threat of penalties for trying to open. Those places are major employers and economic drivers. Husted and others in the administration had to navigate that mess while the parks were being squeezed. A senator or governor should be available when big employers in the state have problems. Husted has been willing to do that. I’ve seen it firsthand. 

Energy policy is the same story. Nuclear, coal, and fossil fuels still run the grid. When policy turns those assets into liabilities, companies push back. Listening to them is not corruption; it’s basic competence. Good governance turns a liability into a manageable asset when the alternative is higher rates and less reliability.

A Buccaneers Fan’s Opinion About Jon Gruden’s Support of Jon Husted, a Former Teammate

I’m a Buccaneers fan, so the other Jon on that stage was a bonus. Jon Gruden won a Super Bowl with a strong defense and a quarterback who was good enough to win but not a superstar. That 2002 team was special. I’ve never gotten over how good that unit was. Gruden got knocked out of the coaching ranks over the email scandal involving comments about cheerleaders and other material that got leaked. It was a stupid episode that cost him the Raiders job and led to his removal from the Buccaneers Ring of Honor for a while.

The organization has brought him back in some capacity—broadcast work with Ronde Barber and a restored place in the franchise’s history. I’m happy about that. He flew from the Dayton area back to Tampa after the event to handle his obligations there. It was good to see him on stage talking about Husted and the season. Gruden is a leader type; he knows how to talk to people and get them moving. The Bucs are having a rough year right now, and much of that traces back to chemistry issues around Baker Mayfield. Mayfield is not Tom Brady. Brady knew how to run a locker room and get everyone pulling in the same direction. When a quarterback starts complaining about money and the team feels like he’s putting himself first, the chemistry breaks. The coaching staff has to deal with it, and the results show. Mayfield got hurt recently and wasn’t available for this week’s game, which only makes the situation harder. 

The Senate Race and the Path Forward

Brown’s campaign is a disaster because it relies on the same tired playbook that lost him the seat two years ago. Husted has the record of actually governing in Ohio—secretary of state, lieutenant governor, and now senator—and the connections to the state’s employers. The people who showed up in Vandalia understand that. Trump’s voters are not staying home. The margin will not be razor-thin.

I’m proud of the affiliation. Watching Husted on stage with that crowd, and seeing Gruden there as well, was a good day. These are the kinds of practical leaders who keep a state functional instead of turning every issue into a purity test. And they have been through the pressure cooker, so we know what to expect.  FirstEnergy, or any involvement in it, is the job of someone representing the governor’s office and a basic obligation.  And the failures at FirstEnergy were typical leftist terrorism: destroy companies with policy.  Democrats have not been in power, so they have no track record to criticize.  Only that Sharrod Brown has been in government for many years and has advanced socialist causes during all those terms.  It should be noted that when he was running against Bernie Moreno, the polling was tracking much like it is in this 2026 race.  So that should tell you everything.  

Footnotes

1.  Husted was appointed to the Senate in January 2025 to fill the vacancy created by JD Vance’s elevation to vice president and is running in the 2026 special election against Sherrod Brown.

2.  Brown lost his previous seat to Bernie Moreno in 2024.

3.  House Bill 6 provided subsidies for nuclear and certain coal plants; FirstEnergy paid substantial penalties in related settlements, but Husted has not been charged with wrongdoing.

4.  Gruden coached the Buccaneers to Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003 with a defense-led roster.

5.  Buccaneers 2026 record and Mayfield’s thumb injury status as of mid-October.

6.  Gruden and Husted were University of Dayton teammates in 1985; Gruden appeared at the October 3, 2026 Vandalia rally.

Bibliography for Further Reading

•  Ballotpedia and official campaign materials on the 2026 Ohio Senate special election (Husted vs. Brown).

•  Reporting on the FirstEnergy / HB 6 matter from the Cincinnati Enquirer, Associated Press, and FactCheck.org summaries of Husted’s role and testimony.

•  Tampa Bay Buccaneers historical accounts of the 2002 Super Bowl team and Gruden’s tenure (2002–2008).

•  Contemporary coverage of the October 3, 2026 Vandalia rally (local Dayton outlets and national wires).

•  Buccaneers 2026 season reports on quarterback play, coaching, and roster decisions.

•  Broader context on Ohio energy policy and nuclear capacity from state utility commission records and utility industry analyses.

This is the kind of grounded, practical leadership Ohio needs. 

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

The Currency of Integrity: Lessons from Hardship, Christian Foundations, and the Collapse of Fiat Standards

When problems arise, I work through them by grinding them out deliberately and roughly. I dive deep, often isolating myself from society’s wider noise and reading intensively during the hardest stretches of labor. This is not abstract philosophy for me. It is a method forged under physical strain—long days, sore bones, limited sleep—and it has repeatedly yielded clearer answers than comfort ever has. In 2026, the question of integrity has forced me back to that method. A currency I want to believe in has failed widely, and the only way forward has been to confront it head-on, the way Jonah was swallowed by the whale and spat back out with a message he could no longer avoid.

Years ago I established a baseline by working extreme hours: sixteen-hour days Monday through Friday, with shorter days only on the weekend. I commuted by bicycle, often an hour or more round-trip, and still managed to read during brief breaks. Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God (the multi-volume series exploring comparative mythology) was one of the books that sustained me then. Those nights around four in the morning, with ten or fifteen minutes stolen from the schedule, the pages offered a different lens on human invention of meaning. Recently the pattern has returned. I have been reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s major works under similar pressure: The Reformation: A History, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, and Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity. These are substantial volumes. Consumed in short segments amid physical exhaustion, they clarify rather than dilute. The hardship itself becomes part of the reading. Comfortable readers may absorb the narrative; those with bloody knuckles and joint pain tend to feel the stakes.

Integrity functions as a currency more durable than dollars. A dollar is worth a dollar. In my experience, integrity multiplies that value roughly tenfold in practical terms—employment, trust, the capacity to build lasting things. You cannot fake it on paper the way central banks can expand the money supply. When Richard Nixon suspended dollar convertibility to gold on August 15, 1971 (the “Nixon Shock”), the world moved further into a fiat system. The parallel in social discourse is the removal of fixed standards. Without a recognizable measure—historically supplied in the West by biblical teaching, the Commandments, and the Golden Rule—trust-based transactions become unreliable. Societies that abandon it find law and order harder to maintain, just as currencies without backing invite inflation and capture by those who print the paper.

Historically, Christianity functioned as an effective invention for establishing such standards. MacCulloch’s sweeping accounts show its development from earlier Mediterranean and Near Eastern roots, its encounter with Greek ideas, and its institutionalization through the first three millennia. Martin Luther’s stand at Worms in 1521—“Here I stand; I can do no other”—exemplifies the priority of conscience tethered to Scripture over institutional power. The Reformation, whatever its later complexities and conflicts, helped embed notions of individual responsibility and resistance to unchecked authority. These contributed to the broader Western emphasis on the rule of law, voluntary association, and limits on the sacralization of politics. Historians examining Christianity’s role in equality before God, the desacralization of the state, and the development of institutions of care and inquiry have documented measurable civilizational effects. Places that adopted or adapted these patterns often produced more orderly cooperation and material progress than surrounding alternatives. Israel’s relative success amid regional difficulties illustrates the same point: coherent standards, however imperfectly applied, produce measurable outcomes.

I have seen the opposite in practice. When people treat integrity as optional—prioritizing short-term advantage, food, status, or sex over consistent character—the results are shallow and destructive. Betrayals feel like the Judas kiss: anticipated, yet still corrosive. Low-integrity actors in business, politics, or consulting often operate through compromises (honeypots, selective enforcement of rules, or ideological capture of institutions). Corporate examples include lasting damage from certain marketing campaigns and cultural shifts in sports and entertainment that prioritized signaling over the reality of customers or employees. Globalist and administrative approaches that print moral or financial value without backing have repeatedly underperformed. They assume that authority or volume of paper can substitute for earned trust. History and recent experience show otherwise. Organizations built on high-integrity leadership—Elon Musk’s track record with SpaceX and Tesla is a clear case—succeed because the people involved endure the same grinding conditions at the top. Sleeping on the floor, working long hours, and refusing to outsource the hard problems produces systems capable of repeated launches and engineered excellence. Fiat substitutes do not.

My own choices have followed the same logic. I have turned down or walked away from money when it conflicted with integrity, not because money is unimportant, but because unbacked claims eventually collapse. Isolation by age, family responsibilities, and deliberate separation from comfortable consensus has sharpened the contrast. You notice how many people resent the mirror of consistent standards. They prefer environments where value can be assigned rather than earned. Christianity, for all its internal contradictions and failures across centuries (which MacCulloch documents without flinching), repeatedly reasserted a public measure against pure power or appetite. Efforts to erase that measure—whether through selective historical revision, institutional capture, or the claim that standards are merely tools of oppression—have not produced the stable, high-trust societies their advocates predicted.

The treasures worth retrieving come from the whale’s belly. Embracing the pain of disappointment, physical exhaustion, and clear-eyed observation of widespread failure does not invalidate the diagnosis. It supplies the clarity. I have written about related themes in The Politics of Heaven, which examines conspiracies and schemes against the ordering principles of creation, drawing on Milton’s Paradise Lost and the observable footprints of such dynamics. The same pattern appears in attempts to detach currency, law, and personal conduct from any fixed reference. Integrity cannot be stolen the way printed money or institutional prestige can. Those who defend it remain employable and effective even when low-integrity actors prefer their absence.

This is not a call to nostalgia or perfection. It is an observation that the most valuable currency to accumulate is the one that cannot be counterfeited by decree. Western civilization’s relative historical success is inseparable from the standards Christianity helped install and maintain. Restoring or protecting them requires the same grinding method that produces any durable result: long hours, discomfort, and refusal to accept substitutes. The alternative is continued inflation of claims and erosion of trust until the system fails in plain view.

Footnotes

1.  Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God (four volumes: Primitive Mythology, Oriental Mythology, Occidental Mythology, Creative Mythology), Viking Press, 1959–1968. Campbell’s comparative approach traces how cultures invent and transmit frameworks of meaning.

2.  Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Allen Lane/Penguin, 2009). A comprehensive survey of Christian development from pre-Christian roots through global expansion.

3.  Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (Penguin, 2005; originally Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700). Details the institutional and theological ruptures of the sixteenth century.

4.  Diarmaid MacCulloch, Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (Allen Lane, 2024). Examines evolving Christian approaches to sexuality, gender, and family across millennia, highlighting contradictions and changes.

5.  Richard Nixon’s suspension of dollar-gold convertibility, August 15, 1971. See Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, “Nixon and the End of the Bretton Woods System,” and Federal Reserve History essays on the end of gold convertibility. This marked a decisive shift toward fiat arrangements.

6.  Martin Luther’s appearance at the Diet of Worms, 1521. His refusal to recant without scriptural or reasoned conviction is a standard reference point for conscience versus institutional authority. See standard biographies and MacCulloch’s Reformation history.

7.  On Christianity’s contributions to Western institutions (equality of persons, rule of law, voluntary association, limits on political power), see works by George Weigel, Larry Siedentop, Nick Spencer, and others examining pre-Enlightenment Christian sources of modern norms. Outcomes were neither uniform nor unmixed with conflict.

8.  Max Weber’s thesis on the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism remains a classic (if debated) account of how certain religious attitudes correlated with economic patterns. Contemporary economic historians have also traced earlier monastic and legal contributions within Christian Europe.

9.  Elon Musk’s operational style at SpaceX and Tesla is widely documented in contemporary reporting: long hours, direct engineering involvement, and emphasis on iterative hard work over signaling.

10.  John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667). The epic’s portrayal of rebellion against ordered creation supplies a literary frame for themes of conspiracy and resistance explored in related writing.

Bibliography

Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God. 4 vols. New York: Viking Press, 1959–1968.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. London: Allen Lane, 2009.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Penguin, 2005.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity. London: Allen Lane, 2024.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Silence: A Christian History. London: Allen Lane, 2013.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. 1667.

Siedentop, Larry. Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.

Weigel, George. Various essays and books on Christianity’s civilizational impact, including contributions to discussions of Western democratic and moral foundations.

Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 1905.

Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. “Milestones: 1969–1976 – Nixon and the End of the Bretton Woods System.”

Federal Reserve History. Essays on the end of gold convertibility, August 1971.

Blainey, Geoffrey. A Short History of Christianity. (General survey of Christian historical influence.)

Stark, Rodney. The Victory of Reason and related works on Christianity and the rise of Western institutions and science.

Additional relevant reading: histories of the gold standard and fiat currency (e.g., works on Bretton Woods), studies of Protestant work ethic and economic development, accounts of corporate cultural shifts in the 2010s–2020s, and primary Reformation sources including Luther’s writings.

This text is structured for straightforward copying. The core argument remains that integrity, grounded in durable standards and tested under pressure, is the non-counterfeitable currency required for any lasting personal or civilizational achievement.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

When the Lights Go Out: The Volynt Vyper and the Power Gap Hurricane Isaias Just Proved

Three weeks ago, on September 21, I stood in a room at Miami University with people who matter in Ohio manufacturing, aerospace, and the emerging unmanned systems business. We were talking about the Volynt Vyper—the hybrid unmanned eVTOL some of us have been calling the Viper—and why it should be built and staged right here in Ohio for exactly the kind of problem that just hit the Florida Panhandle.

I said we were in hurricane season. I said the real issue after these storms is rarely that the buildings fall down. Category 2 storms like the one that just made landfall near Destin do not usually level towns. The buildings stay up. What fails is the power. Nursing homes, dialysis clinics, and people on oxygen concentrators cannot wait three or four days while line crews clear trees and string new wire. I said the Vyper could deliver power into those areas the first night. The market is wide open. Nobody else is flying a hybrid platform that can land and put usable AC power on the ground where it is needed.

Hurricane Isaias made landfall Friday night near Destin as a Category 2 with sustained winds around 105 mph and gusts over 110–116 mph in places. By early Saturday the statewide Florida outage count was near 448,000 customer accounts according to Governor DeSantis, part of a broader regional peak that approached 900,000 across Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. As of Sunday afternoon, hundreds of thousands were still without power, concentrated in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, and neighboring counties. Florida Power & Light has said it expects to restore 95 percent of customers who can safely accept power by the end of the day Monday. That is the current system working as well as it can: more than 16,000 linemen and restoration personnel from dozens of states, staged in advance, drones and helicopters already doing damage assessment, major roads and bridges reopened quickly. It is impressive work. It is also not fast enough for the people who need continuous power to stay alive.[1][2][3]

The Last 5 Percent Is the Real Problem

Most towns can absorb a Category 2. The buildings hold. The problem is the multi-day loss of electricity. Of the roughly 300,000 Florida customers still dark or only recently restored as of Sunday, a small but critical percentage—call it 5 percent or so—are elderly, medically dependent, or in facilities that cannot simply ride it out. Oxygen concentrators are the clearest example. A typical home stationary 5-liter unit draws roughly 300–400 watts continuous, with a startup surge that can approach 600 watts. Run that for 24 hours and you are looking at about 7–10 kWh just for one machine. Multiply that by the number of residents in a nursing home who need continuous oxygen, add medical equipment, emergency lighting, and the minimum HVAC required to keep temperatures safe, and the load climbs fast.[4]

A nursing home with half a dozen concentrators plus supporting medical gear and basic environmental control can easily sit in the several-kilowatt range for critical loads. Full building HVAC and lighting push it higher still—into the 10–11 kW territory for some facilities, which is roughly 260 kWh for a full day. That is not a job for a handful of truck batteries. It is a job for something that can get there when roads are blocked and then either deliver charged batteries or, better, land and generate power on site.

The federal Office of Inspector General looked at this problem earlier this year. Their audit of nursing homes participating in Medicare and Medicaid estimated that 73 percent of the roughly 15,000 facilities nationwide have inadequate or unreliable emergency power systems. The deficiencies include poor generator maintenance, incomplete circuit coverage, and equipment that is decades old. The report exists because people have died in past storms when power failed and backup systems did not hold. Hurricane Ida in Louisiana and Winter Storm Uri in Texas are the recent examples the OIG cited. Those numbers did not change because Isaias was “only” a Category 2.[5]

What the Vyper Actually Does

Volynt Aero, based in Oxford, Ohio, and spun out of the Miami University ecosystem, is building the Vyper as a hybrid-electric unmanned aircraft specifically for contested logistics, disaster response, and mobile power. Public specifications list a 500-pound cargo capacity and a range of about 150 nautical miles. The important part for this use case is that it is designed to land and provide 110, 240, or 480 VAC plug-in power on the ground for equipment or tactical microgrids. It runs on standard JP-8 or Jet A, so it does not require a high-voltage charging network to turn around quickly. It is remote-operated or autonomous. The mission set is dull, dirty, dangerous, and distant—exactly the description of a post-hurricane nursing home that still has no grid power on night one or night two.[6]

A realistic early mission profile is not trying to power an entire 120-bed facility at full load. It is the critical load: the concentrators, the medical equipment that must stay online, emergency lighting, and enough environmental control to keep residents safe overnight. One aircraft, one night, one nursing home is the starting point. Battery payload delivery is part of the picture as well. A 50 kg battery package is already meaningful for concentrators and medical gear. Multiple flights or a landed generator configuration scales from there. The point is not that the Vyper replaces the 16,000 linemen. It covers the gap between landfall and the moment the grid is back for the people who cannot wait.

Escambia County alone has on the order of 2,000 nursing home beds. Santa Rosa has well over 1,000. Okaloosa has several hundred more. Dozens of facilities sit inside the hardest-hit outage zones. Some of them have generators that work. Many do not have generators that cover the loads that actually matter once the power is out for more than a few hours. The nurses, the residents, and the families already know what those nights look like. The current restoration system prioritizes hospitals, 911 centers, and the greatest number of customers. It does not fly a power source to a specific nursing home at 2 a.m. on night one.

Ohio Manufacturing and the Open Market

The question after Isaias is not whether the power need exists. It is whether enough of these aircraft will be manufactured and staged before the next storm season. The market is empty. There is no competing hybrid unmanned platform already delivering AC power into disaster zones at this scale. It will take any competitor two or three years and substantial capital just to reach the starting line. That window belongs to whoever builds and fields the capability first.

Manufacturing in Ohio makes sense for the same reasons we discussed on September 21. The technical talent is here. The supply base for aerospace and unmanned systems is here. The university partnership is already in place. The product is dual-use: the same airframe that can support military contested logistics can support civilian disaster response. State emergency management agencies, utilities, and federal partners already buy staged assets. They stage 16,000 linemen and thousands of trucks. Adding a layer of prepositioned aircraft and trained operators is an incremental procurement item, not a new invention.

Governor DeSantis and Florida’s emergency management structure have shown they will stage resources aggressively. A memorandum of understanding with Florida utilities and the Division of Emergency Management, followed by a procurement vehicle, is the practical path. Preposition aircraft and batteries in Pensacola and Tallahassee before the next named storm. Train the operators. Write the contracts so the capability is already funded and sitting on the ramp when the cone of uncertainty locks in. The alternative is asking nursing homes and oxygen-dependent residents to hope their generators hold or that the last 5 percent gets restored before something goes wrong.

Next Year Is the Test

Hurricanes will hit the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic coast again. North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida will lose power for days. Category 2 storms will continue to leave the buildings standing and the lights out. The people who need oxygen, dialysis, or temperature control will still be waiting on the traditional restoration timeline.

The prototype is close enough that the conversation should no longer be about whether the idea works. It should be about how many airframes can be built, staged, and under contract before the 2027 season. One aircraft proving the concept on the first night after landfall is valuable. A fleet sized to the critical facilities in the hardest-hit counties is the actual requirement. The investment is not theoretical. It is lithium batteries, hybrid powerplants, airframes, operators, and the contracts that put them in position before the storm arrives instead of after the bodies have been counted.

I said on September 21 that this is what the Vyper is for. Isaias just spent the weekend making the case. The buildings held. The power did not. The people who cannot wait are still in the dark tonight. Next year we should not be asking the same question.

Notes

1.  Landfall details, wind speeds, and early outage counts drawn from statements by Governor Ron DeSantis and contemporaneous reporting from the Associated Press, CBS, and Florida outlets, October 9–10, 2026.

2.  Florida Power & Light restoration targets (95 percent of customers who can safely accept power by end of day Monday) and workforce size (more than 16,000 from 29 states) from FPL updates issued October 10–11, 2026.

3.  Peak regional outages approaching 900,000 and continuing Sunday figures in the 300,000–400,000 range for Florida and Alabama from PowerOutage.us tracking and national reporting, October 10–11, 2026.

4.  Oxygen concentrator power consumption ranges (approximately 300–600 W continuous for stationary home units, with higher startup surges) are standard published specifications for common 5-liter models such as Philips Respironics EverFlo and DeVilbiss units.

5.  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, “Most Nursing Homes Throughout the United States Do Not Have Adequate or Reliable Emergency Power Systems,” report issued April 2026. Estimate of 73 percent based on sample of 100 facilities extrapolated to approximately 15,115 Medicare/Medicaid nursing homes.

6.  Volynt Aero public descriptions of the Vyper: 500 lb cargo, ~150 NM range, hybrid JP-8/Jet A powerplant, capability to land and supply 110/240/480 VAC power. Company materials and capability statements, 2024–2026. Oxford, Ohio; Miami University spinout connection.

Bibliography / Further Reading

•  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General. Most Nursing Homes Throughout the United States Do Not Have Adequate or Reliable Emergency Power Systems. April 2026.

•  Florida Power & Light newsroom updates on Hurricane Isaias restoration, October 10–11, 2026.

•  National Hurricane Center advisories and post-landfall reporting on Hurricane Isaias, October 9–11, 2026.

•  Volynt Aero company materials and capability statements describing the Vyper hybrid unmanned aircraft (payload, range, on-ground power generation).

•  PowerOutage.us and Florida Public Service Commission outage tracking data for Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, and surrounding counties, October 9–11, 2026.

•  Published technical specifications for common stationary oxygen concentrators (Philips Respironics, DeVilbiss, and similar 5 L models) regarding continuous and startup wattage.

•  Prior storm case studies referenced in the OIG report: Hurricane Ida (Louisiana nursing home deaths) and Winter Storm Uri (Texas nursing home power loss and evacuations).

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

Why I Support Flock Cameras: As long as Democrats are not in office

I am not a fan of the surveillance state. I wrote a book against police abuse and against the abuse of authority, and I meant it. I do not like being commanded. I do not take orders well; I would have been a poor recruit for the military, and I do not like a government that knocks on the door at two in the morning and calls it a rescue. I am not big on tolls; I am not big on a camera sending me a bill for a bridge I did not mean to take, and I spent years on the radio, including with Scott Sloan on WLW, arguing against red-light cameras. Many people who usually agree with me in Butler County are against Flock cameras. Some of the township trustees I know are against them. I understand the objection. I do not share it anymore, and the reason is a month I spent as foreman of a Butler County grand jury.

That is a qualification, not a conversion. The tool is not the same thing as the hand on the tool.

Tolls, red lights, and a bill in the mail

The Louisville bridges cured me of any romance about a camera and a mailbox. RiverLink, on the Lincoln, the Kennedy, and the Lewis and Clark, has no cash lane. A camera reads the plate, and the bill finds the registered owner. Cross without a transponder, and you pay the higher pay-by-plate rate. As of July 2026, a two-axle car was $5.57 pay-by-plate against $2.79 with a transponder. [1] I got that bill once, four or five dollars in the version I remember, because I was in the wrong lane and would rather have used the other bridge. I did not like it. I had not agreed, in any way that felt like an agreement, to be invoiced by a lens.

I feel differently about the tolls on the drive to Washington and the drive toward Chicago. I pay them. Twenty-five or thirty dollars, sometimes more, and I do not hunt the free road to save three bucks. The toll road is usually the direct road, and getting on and off a free highway through a thicket of signals is its own tax. Florida still gets me. Leave Orlando toward the parks, and a couple of those plazas always find the rental. Toward Cape Canaveral it is milder. I am not a fan of any of it. A road built with taxes should not be rented back to the people who already paid for it. That objection stands. It is not the same objection as a camera that tells a prosecutor which car left a parking lot after a shooting.

What a Flock camera actually is

Flock Safety, out of Atlanta, sells automatic license plate readers. The camera does not need an officer on the corner with a notepad. It photographs the passing vehicle, and the plate number, state, time, location, and the vehicle’s color and make become a searchable record. The company says it does not do facial recognition. People are not supposed to be the data. The car is. By the summer of 2026, the New York Times had the network at about 120,000 cameras, under contract to about 7,000 agencies, which the paper put at roughly 40 percent of American departments, in every state but Alaska. Other reporting put the scan volume near 20 billion license plates a month. Default retention had been about 30 days. After a run of documented abuses, Flock said it was cutting the standard window to seven days and locking accounts that searched abnormally. [2] [3] [4]

The abuse is not theoretical. The Washington Post found more than 50 cases of officers using the databases for personal searches, often men looking up wives, girlfriends, exes, and women they wanted to meet. Dozens of cities have canceled or suspended contracts. The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the whole arrangement invasive mass surveillance, and that description is fair for the capability. A camera that records every car records the innocent with the guilty. [4] [5] I am not going to pretend otherwise to win an argument with a trustee.

What the grand jury changed

I had always wanted to serve on a grand jury. I did not like the way the summons talks. “ Commanded to appear” is not a phrase I answer to with any pleasure. I am not a recipient of orders from a superior. I went anyway. I was selected foreman. Ohio law lets a county pay a grand juror up to forty dollars a day; the figure is set locally, and I served about twenty-six days. Over the month I took home a few hundred dollars. I spent it on books. I know which ones. They are on the shelf by the bed, and they mean more than books I bought with ordinary money. [6]

About half the time in that room was video. I estimate it’s about eighty hours of tape across the month, including witnesses on the stand and footage played against what they said. I wasn’t a fan of being summoned, and I wasn’t a fan of what I had to watch. Child-exploitation cases came in on phone video, messages arranging sex with a fourteen-year-old, the kind of evidence a detective can pull off a device. Other cases needed a place and a time. A license plate at an intersection in Middletown at 2:30 in the morning is a fact. A deputy sitting on that corner with a clipboard is a target. The drug runs between Dayton and Middletown do not slow down for a man with a pen.

One case is the one I still use when someone tells me a camera is only a toy for busybodies. Two men shot each other up after a fight that started in a bar parking lot. One of them was hit about fourteen times. They dropped a body at the emergency room at the Middletown hospital and left. The man on the stretcher would not say who shot him. Witnesses in that world do not rat each other out. Cars on the road, plates on the cameras, and the correspondence between those plates and the people who could then be found, and the guns that could then be collected, were the indictment. Without the plate reads, we did not have a case. We would have had a wounded man who would not talk, and a prosecutor with a theory.

That is the hole in the old model. Testimony used to carry more of the load because more people were afraid to lie under oath in a culture that still treated a lie as a sin, not a tactic. I do not trust unaided testimony the way a courtroom in 1955 could pretend to. People lie to your face. They lie about alibis, they lie about who was driving, they lie because the crowd they are going back to will punish the truth harder than the court will punish the lie. A camera does not join a gang. It does not forget the intersection. It does not get run over at 2:30 in the morning for writing down a number.

I have told the trustees who worry I will turn on them: I am not going to get mad at you for the cameras. I do not like a surveillance state as a lifestyle. I like a plate reader that makes an indictment possible when every human witness has a reason to go mute.

The qualification, which is the whole argument

Here is the line I will not blur. I trust this tool under a Republican administration. I do not trust it under a Democratic one.

I like law enforcement when it targets criminals. I like it in Butler County under Sheriff Jones. I like it in the Fourth Congressional District under Warren Davidson, in the Ohio Senate under George Lang, and in Columbus under a Republican majority. I like Washington under Trump in a way I didn’t before. I have been to the city several times since he went back to the White House, and I enjoy it now the way I enjoy Mount Rushmore, which is not a sentence I expected to write. The order is visible. The cops and the immigration agents look like they are doing the job in front of them rather than auditioning for a political faction. I like the FBI better with Kash Patel over it than I liked the FBI that raided Mar-a-Lago and treated a former president and his wife as a stage prop. Same building. Different hand on the warrant.

Democrats have already shown what they do with police power when they have it. The surveillance state, the early-morning knock, the selective prosecution, the use of a process crime to punish a political enemy: that was not a rumor from a pamphlet. It was the Obama years and the Biden years, in public. A Flock network in those hands is not a tool for a Middletown shooting. It is a map of where the opposition drove on Tuesday. The company itself has had to warn users off searches tied to reproductive-care laws in some states and off immigration searches in others, which admits the search box can be aimed at politics as easily as at a stolen car. [2] Officers have already aimed it at their private lives. [5] I would not give that keypad to an administration that has used the IRS, the intelligence agencies, and the Justice Department as factional weapons.

So the policy I actually hold is narrower than “cameras good” or “cameras bad.” Cameras, plate readers, and the data centers that make the search possible, under officials who can be thrown out of office and who are not already in the habit of aiming the state at their critics. If the other party takes the offices, the same hardware becomes a reason to rip the contract out. I would rather pass a clean rule now, retention short, searches logged, personal queries a firing offense, immigration and political queries banned by statute, than pretend the objection is the lens.

Data centers are a separate argument, and I have been on that side in Butler County while opposing the nosy state. A data center is a building that hires people and pays taxes and gives a county the computing power the next economy runs on. It is not a warrant. Treating every server rack as a spy camera is how you talk yourself out of the jobs and then act surprised when the investigative database lives in another state anyway. I support the centers. I do not support a government that uses every stream of data just because the stream exists.

Mount Rushmore, Deadwood, and the point of the order

I trust the places where the country still feels like itself. Mount Rushmore is the one I send people to if they have never gone. Better to go during the Sturgis rally, ride the Badlands, take the Iron Mountain road down toward Custer, see the buffalo, then drive up to Deadwood for a hamburger in one of those bars on the strip. The fries taste better next to a street where the old gunmen walked, and a sheriff holding a hard town is still the right picture of the job: Devils Tower, the Tetons, Jackson Hole: same sensation. America is a physical place, not a policy memo.

I have been to the bookstore at Rushmore with my oldest daughter. Everyone else was ready for the car. We had done the avenues and the little passage in the hills, and she and I stayed and carried books out. They are on the shelf. Grand jury service sits in that same part of my memory, which will sound strange to anyone who has not done it. A few hundred dollars, a stack of books, and a month of looking at what people actually do to each other when they think no one can place the car. Since that month I have been back to Washington, and I like the city more than I did. The obelisk and the Masonic ornament do not bother me the way they once did. A country that can put Trump back in that house, after the lawfare and the raid, has earned some patience with its marble.

I do not trust people as much as I used to, not under oath and not in a parking lot. I trust a timestamp. I trust a plate. I trust a data center that keeps the record long enough to indict and not long enough to build a dossier on a life. I do not think the camera network is a Chinese social-credit poster, and I do not think the machine on the other end is HAL, waiting to lock the pod bay doors. The rational machine does not wipe out the creature that can pull its plug. It behaves more like a working dog than like a coup. That is my view of the technology, and it is open to evidence. It is not open to the slogan that every lens is a prison.

If you want the practical version, it is this. Vote for the sheriff, the prosecutor, the trustee, and the president who will aim the cameras at the shooting in the bar lot and not at the donor list. Say yes to the Flock contract with a short retention and a public log of searches. Say no, immediately, if the people in charge have already shown they will use a warrant as a campaign. Churches on Sunday will not replace a plate read at 2:30 in the morning, and a plate read will not replace a county that still elects the hand on the switch. You need both. I have seen cases where you do not get a ticket if you only have the sermons and the witnesses.

Notes

[1] RiverLink tolls the Abraham Lincoln Bridge, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge, and the Lewis and Clark Bridge with no cash lanes. Cameras match the plate to the registration and mail an invoice if there is no transponder account. As of the July 1, 2026 adjustment, a two-axle pay-by-plate toll was $5.57, against $2.79 with a transponder. Toll Wiki, “Kentucky Toll Bridge — RiverLink,” citing the bi-state rate resolution; RiverLink pay-by-plate instructions.

[2] Flock Safety’s network was reported at about 120,000 cameras and about 7,000 law-enforcement customers, roughly 40 percent of U.S. departments, in every state but Alaska. Searches can be run across agencies. The system prompts users away from reproductive-care searches in jurisdictions that bar them and away from immigration searches in others. Kashmir Hill and Fernando Alfonso III, “Why are Flock cameras controversial?” The New York Times, August 10, 2026.

[3] Reporting in 2026 put Flock’s volume near 20 billion license-plate scans a month. A scan can include plate, state, time, location, color, make, and model. The company says the cameras do not use facial recognition. Default deletion had been about 30 days. TechSpot, “License plate cameras are scanning 20 billion vehicles a month,” June 30, 2026. In August 2026, Flock said it would shorten standard retention to seven days and lock accounts showing abnormal search behavior. Associated Press, “Surveillance tech company Flock announces platform changes amid public backlash,” August 13, 2026.

[4] The Marshall Project, “The Flock Backlash Catches Up to the Tech,” October 3, 2026, summarizing the Washington Post’s count of more than 50 unauthorized searches, often personal, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s description of ALPRs as invasive mass surveillance. The Institute for Justice’s tracker, cited there, counted 247 full cancellations of ALPR programs.

[5] Same Marshall Project account, October 3, 2026, on officer misuse. See also AP, August 13, 2026: more than 50 agencies or jurisdictions had canceled, suspended, rejected, or deactivated Flock cameras since the start of the year, by a DeFlock count.

[6] Ohio Revised Code 2939.04: grand-juror pay is fixed by the board of county commissioners and may not exceed forty dollars a day, paid from the county treasury. The per-day figure in the essay is the author’s recollection of Butler County service, within that statutory cap. The supervisor may be selected by the common-pleas judge under R.C. 2939.02.

Bibliography

Associated Press. “Surveillance tech company Flock announces platform changes amid public backlash.” August 13, 2026.

Electronic Frontier Foundation. Atlas of Surveillance, and EFF writing on automated license plate readers as mass surveillance. https://atlasofsurveillance.org

Hill, Kashmir, and Fernando Alfonso III. “Why are Flock cameras controversial?” The New York Times, August 10, 2026.

Institute for Justice. Automated license plate reader cancellation tracker, cited in The Marshall Project, October 3, 2026.

Marshall Project. “The Flock Backlash Catches Up to the Tech.” October 3, 2026.

Ohio Revised Code, sections 2939.02 and 2939.04. Grand jury foreman; compensation.

RiverLink. Official payment and account pages for the Louisville-Southern Indiana Ohio River bridges. https://riverlink.com

TechSpot. “License plate cameras are scanning 20 billion vehicles a month, cities are starting to push back.” June 30, 2026.

Toll Wiki. “Kentucky Toll Bridge — RiverLink.” Rate table including the July 1, 2026 adjustment.

Wisconsin Right Now. “Shootings, Stabbings, A Kidnapping Attempt: Flock Cameras Helped Crack These Waukesha County Cases.” September 29, 2026. Local case summaries in which a plate reader identified the suspect vehicle.

WIS-TV. “Inside Richland County’s Flock network: 94 murders solved amid mounting privacy debate.” September 29, 2026. Sheriff’s office figures: 687 investigative successes, 296 vehicles recovered, 94 homicides assisted by ALPR data since 2023. One department’s numbers, not a national rate.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.

Why We Root for Jason Voorhees: Peer Pressure, the Scapegoat, and JASON: Blood Reign at Kings Island

I said I would do a thesis on Jason Voorhees. I still will. I have been thinking about him all season, and I have been close enough to the subject to test a few things I used to know only from a chair. I cannot talk about that work yet. I am under an obligation on it, and I will get into the details in November, after Halloween 2026 has passed. What I can say now, and what I will stand behind, is this: if you go to Kings Island Haunt and walk JASON: Blood Reign, you will be scared. I do not care how tough you think you are.

That is not a park slogan. It is an observation about what the maze is built to do.

A B-movie with a longer shadow

When I was a teenager, Friday the 13th was the movie you watched hoping to see a topless girl. There was no internet. You could not pull anything up whenever you wanted to see nudity. You sat through a camp-in-the-woods picture and took what you could get. I have always thought of those films that way. They are B-movies. They are fun. They are rough. The later ones are mostly refs of the earlier ones.

They are also still here.

A dozen films on, Jason Voorhees is one of the most recognized villains American cinema ever produced. People do not just remember him. They wear him. At Kings Island, you can walk out of the gift shop in a Jason jersey or a Jason hoodie, and you can buy the same stuff almost anywhere else the season is being sold. That is not how audiences are supposed to treat a killer. They are supposed to sympathize with the victims. They do not. They root for Jason to finish the job. I have wanted to know why, and I have wanted to know it in a way that survives contact with the actual exhibit, not just the comfort of a book.

Haunted houses are a very specific American habit. Jason is a very specific kind of villain. The Kings Island maze, one of three Six Flags parks debuting JASON: Blood Reign this year, and the only one in the Midwest, is the cleanest public expression of that psychology I have seen. Universal has promoted the property. Other parks have tried the mask. This one understands the character.

Psycho, the mother, and the boy in the lake

The first Friday the 13th is not really a Jason movie. It is a mother movie. Pamela Voorhees is the killer. Her boy drowned in the lake while the counselors were off doing what counselors in these movies always do. The picture owes a great deal to Psycho: the mother, the frame, the sense that you are being watched from the tree line, the score doing half the violence before a hand ever moves. Hitchcock is all over the early films, whether anyone on set would have said so. You are often looking at the victims from the place the killer is standing.

Jason himself comes back in the sequel, still not the hockey mask. The mask arrives in Part III, taken off a prankster, and from then on it is the face. No eyes you can bargain with. No mouth you can read. Kevin Bacon, years before Footloose, dies in the first film with an arrow through the throat. We did not leave the theater grieving the campers. We left talking about the kill.

The added layer, past Psycho, is that Jason was the picked-on boy. Different. Isolated. Kept by his mother. Abandoned, in the story the films tell, by the very people hired to watch the children. He dies. She avenges him. Then he comes back, and he does not stay dead. He has no fear of death because the films will not let death keep him. He cannot be appealed to. He cannot be shamed. He grew into a slow, silent killer with no tether to the rules the camp was built to teach.

Why the gift shop sells the killer

Most of what scares people in a haunt is not contact. You are not allowed to be touched. The scare is psychological, and nothing in that toolkit is more psychological than a silent killer who does not yell, does not explain, and does not hurry. He keeps coming.

People identify with that. I do not think they were supposed to. I think Jason was built as a killer and a punishment. Audiences made him something else. They bought the jersey. They wanted the counselors dead. The kids in those movies are the structure: the ones who tell you when to build the fire, when to brush your teeth, when the season starts, when it ends, which lake you can swim in, which trail you can take. They are also, in the films’ own moral accounting, the ones who were having sex while a boy drowned. The audience holds both ideas at once and picks Jason.

That is the interesting part. We do not identify with the victims of a system. We identify with what cuts the system down, even when that thing is a murderer. Art in a free country is allowed to show that. We do not have to pretend we came for the counselors.

Camp counselors, peer pressure, and the pecking order

I have spent a lot of years watching this kind of subject from a distance. Books. A chair. A camper. Airports. High altitude, low emotional cost. This year I have had to look at a few things up close, without that distance, and I think some of that was on purpose. The Jason question got sharper when I could no longer keep it theoretical.

Here is the part I have been telling people.

Most of us spend our lives appealing to someone we have decided is above us. The neighbor has more money. Someone else has the better job, the better spouse, the better lawn, the better pool. We measure ourselves in human units, and we learned the units early. Babies mimic. They copy speech, the shape of a mouth, the way an eye narrows, the way a person walks. Then the wider world gets hold of the copy. Peer pressure is the delivery system. I have said for years that evil does some of its best work there: not as a monster in a lake, but as the whisper that tells ordinary people who is at the top of the order, and what they have to do to stay near it.

Joseph Campbell, in one of the lectures that stayed with me, talked about the packing order. Take away the modern costume, and you still have the top male, the top female, the breeding pair, the children who grow up to be the quarterback and the homecoming queen. Those are not small social decorations. They are the structure. Camp counselors are a summer-stock version of the same thing. So are a lot of police in the later Friday the 13th films, and many other authority figures who show up to explain Jason away and then get killed for their trouble. The audience is not shocked. The audience wanted the explanation killed.

Public life works the same way. We drive the kids to the institution. We pass the levy. We clap for the order that tells people when to sit, what to repeat, and who is allowed to be different. Then we feel a small, guilty satisfaction when something outside that order swings an axe at it. Lakota, in my own backyard, is the argument I usually use for how a system can be captured. I am not making Jason a school-board lecture. I am saying the reflex is the same. We participate in the structure, and we cheer when the structure bleeds, because some part of us knows the structure is how peer pressure keeps score.

Jason never learned the score. He never learned how to get the girl’s attention. He had his mother, and the films treat that attachment as unnatural, which it is, and also as the only loyalty he has that is not for sale. When he comes back, he is not in the pecking order. He is what happens when the pecking order is refused.

Sacrifice, scapegoats, and why the kill feels like relief

This is where the character stops being a B-movie and starts rhyming with older material, which is why he belongs in the neighborhood of The Politics of Heaven even if a hockey mask looks ridiculous next to a dolmen.

Human beings have a long habit of killing a designated victim so the group can feel clean. Aztec sacrifice, Canaanite offerings, sexual cults built to feed a deity, the Roman habit of treating the planets as powers that had to be paid: the names change, and the mechanic does not. Something is angry. Something wants blood. The group picks a body and calls the killing sacred. René Girard’s scapegoat account is the cleanest modern description of that mechanic I have found. The victim is loaded with the group’s disorder and destroyed so the group can go back to pretending it is orderly. In the Christian telling, Christ walks into that role on purpose and breaks the cycle, which is why the crucifixion is not just another offering on the pile. It is the offering meant to end offerings.

Jason is a pop version of the other half of the story. He is not the scapegoat the counselors sacrifice. He is the return of the boy they already sacrificed through neglect, mockery, and busyness. The films then reverse the rite. The counselors become the offering. The audience feels relief, not because murder is good, but because the social order that lives on peer pressure has been put on the block for ninety minutes. We get to watch the thing we obey get punished by something that cannot be shamed, fired, voted out, or talked down.

That is why he cannot be killed in any way that sticks. Immortality, in this costume, means he is outside the leverage. You cannot threaten a dead man with his reputation.

I am not saying the movies are theology. I am saying a free country, left alone with a camera and a mask, stumbled onto a picture of the same appeasement instinct the old death cults organized on purpose. We call it entertainment. We still buy the hoodie.

Why Blood Reign works

JASON: Blood Reign puts that on a floor you have to walk. Kings Island’s Halloween Haunt runs select nights from September 25 through October 31, 2026, and the maze is the new centerpiece: the woods, the camp, the blood-soaked retelling, Jason as the slasher the franchise spent forty years building. It is not a pile of cut-up props and a loud noise. A lot of haunts are only that. This one puts him on a pedestal and makes the guest do the psychological work the films trained them to do. You already know whose side you are on before the first corridor. That is the scare. The body knows it came to see the order lose.

I have called it the best haunted experience in the country this year, and I’ll stand by that. The build is top-notch, and it is smarter than the promotion. Six Flags asked, in so many words, whether you were on Jason’s side. The honest answer, for more people than will admit it in daylight, is yes.

What November is for

I have a longer argument, and I am not making it this month. I want to confirm some of what I want to confirm up close, not from the usual distance. After the season, I will write the dissertation version: the rise of this particular evil, why a picked-on boy became a folk saint, what a silent killer is doing in a culture that claims to hate bullies and then organizes itself by them. Until then, the public point is enough.

Go to Kings Island. Walk JASON: Blood Reign. You will be scared, because the maze is built on what Jason means, not on a rubber knife. He does what most of us won’t. He does not negotiate with peer pressure. He kills the people whose job is to apply it. We root for him because some part of us is tired of the pecking order, and because art is still the safest place in America to admit it.

I’ll explain more in November.

Further reading

•  Friday the 13th (1980), Sean S. Cunningham; Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981); Friday the 13th Part III (1982). The mother, the return, the mask.

•  Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock. The template the first film is borrowing from.

•  René Girard, The Scapegoat and Violence and the Sacred. The group, the victim, the relief.

•  Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth and the packing-order material in the primitive-mythology lectures. Social order before it puts on modern clothes.•  Kings Island Halloween Haunt, JASON: Blood Reign, Mason, Ohio, select nights September 25–October 31

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com.  If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.