Category: Archeology

Unrestricted Warfare: The Front Line Moved Into the Paycheck:  How a 1999 Chinese Military Doctrine Helps Explain Cultural, Corporate, and Cognitive Conflict, if you are against Data Centers and AI, you are helping China win against America

A state can be defeated without a single soldier crossing a border and without a single missile leaving a rail. That sentence used to sound like science fiction. It is now closer to a working description of how power is actually contested. The old picture of war—troops, tanks, flags, and a declared beginning—still exists. It is no longer the whole picture. The more important contest often happens in finance, law, media, software, supply chains, classrooms, and the human-resources office that decides which attitudes are allowed at work.

I have talked about this for years, including when War Room and other outlets treated the subject as strategy rather than slogan. I still own a promotional shirt from the Atlas Shrugged film cycle that advertised in October 2012. The story in those pictures was about producers versus the people who live by controlling producers. This essay’s argument is related, but colder. It is not only about bad policy. It is about a style of conflict designed to make a free country less competitive without looking like an invasion.

What follows is part brief, part review, and part field note. The brief is the 1999 book Unrestricted Warfare, written by two People’s Liberation Army officers. The review is how that book’s logic shows up in gray-zone operations, cyber incidents, sanctions fights, and what NATO now calls cognitive warfare. The field note is personal. After decades in one workplace, I’ve talked to different people, in different rooms, under different rules. The rules often arrive as kindness, inclusion, and “compliance.” The effect is something else: a society trained to police its own energy.

  • What Clausewitz Said, and What the Colonels Rewrote

Carl von Clausewitz gave the West its most famous definition: war is an act of force to compel the enemy to do our will.[1] That definition assumes you can see the force. It assumes a distinction between peace and war, soldier and civilian, battlefield and marketplace. Those distinctions were never perfect. In 1999, two PLA Air Force senior colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published Chao Xian Zhan—warfare beyond limits—arguing that the distinctions were collapsing on purpose.[2][3]

They were writing after the Gulf War, which had advertised American conventional superiority in brutal high definition. If you cannot beat a superpower on its preferred field, you do not accept the field. You change the game. You use economic pressure, legal process, media, networks, finance, culture, and technology as weapons in combination. You aim at political results, not at a parade of wrecked tanks. In a June 1999 interview, Qiao put the doctrine in one line: the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, and nothing is forbidden.[4]

Using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.

That is still Clausewitz’s object—compulsion of will—with the means blown wide open. The authors were not shy about the catalog. They discussed psychological warfare, media warfare, cultural warfare, financial warfare, trade warfare, network warfare, legal warfare, smuggling, resources, and more.[5] They also insisted on combination. One tool is a dispute. A dozen tools timed together are a campaign. If you hit a currency, seed social discord, and probe a power grid in the same season, the target spends its energy arguing about which event “counts” as war. Meanwhile, the damage accumulates.

The most important sentence in the book is not the slogan about rules. It is the claim that the battlefield is everywhere. Ground, sea, air, and space remain battlefields. So do politics, economics, culture, and the psyche.[6] Once you accept that sentence, a lot of modern life stops looking like “politics as usual” and starts looking like low-intensity conflict that never has to declare itself.

Combination Warfare and the Vanishing Front Line

Traditional strategy likes a map with a front. Unrestricted warfare looks like a web. The authors talk about “addition”—stacking methods until the opponent cannot find the line of contact. Later PLA political work formalized a related toolkit as the “Three Warfares”: public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare, written into regulations in 2003.[7] Those three are not a substitute for the 1999 book. They are one way the same instinct was institutionalized: shape what people believe, shake what they are willing to endure, and use law as a weapon rather than a fence.

This is why “hybrid warfare” and “gray zone” became fashionable terms in the West. Russia’s campaign against Ukraine before and after 2014 mixed information operations, energy leverage, proxies, and cyber operations. On December 23, 2015, attackers attributed to the Sandworm group shut off power to roughly 230,000 customers in Ukraine. It was the first widely acknowledged successful cyberattack on a power grid.[8] No tank had to roll for the lights to go out. Plausible deniability did part of the work. If activists, criminals, or “unknown actors” can be blamed, a conventional military reply becomes politically and legally expensive.

International law was built for visible armies. The Geneva tradition assumes you can tell a combatant from a civilian. A server room, a social platform, a ratings agency, or a human-resources policy shop does not wear a uniform. The Tallinn Manuals—first in 2013, then 2.0 in 2017—tried to apply existing law to cyber operations. Most of what unrestricted warfare describes happens below the threshold of an “armed attack.” States like the ambiguity. Clear rules would bind them too.[9]

Economic tools sit in the same gap. Sanctions can wreck a financial system and still fail the legal test of armed attack.[10] That is a feature if your doctrine says the point is political collapse or capitulation, not a formal declaration. The violence, when it comes, may be late. The conference room and the data center get there first.

Cognitive Warfare: The Target Is the Decision Itself

NATO and allied research communities now talk openly about cognitive warfare: operations aimed not only at what people know, but at how groups perceive, trust, and decide.[11] Artificial intelligence lowers the cost of volume. You do not need a master propagandist in every town. You need models that can generate tailored narratives, test what spreads, and keep the target public arguing with itself.

This is the frightening part of the 1999 thesis updated for 2026. The original colonels talked about media and psychology. They could not fully describe algorithmic amplification, deepfakes, or automated social engineering. The logic did not need those tools to be valid. The tools made the logic cheaper. If you can degrade collective cognition—attention, memory, trust, and the willingness to pay a cost—you do not have to occupy the capital. You occupy the argument.

Hardware races in the same direction. Autonomy reduces the political cost of using force because fewer of “your” people come home in boxes. That drops the barrier to kinetic conflict even as non-kinetic conflict is already permanent. The two trends reinforce each other. A society that is internally confused is easier to pressure. A society that is internally confident is harder to push around with either drones or narratives.

Cultural Warfare Does Not Arrive Waving a Foreign Flag

Here is where the argument gets personal, and where a serious reader should keep two ideas in the same hand.

First idea: Unrestricted Warfare names cultural warfare as a method. Weaken an adversary from the inside. Make the opponent less cohesive, less fertile, less industrious, less willing to defend its own standards. You do not need every Western fashion to be a Beijing plot for that method to be real. You only need the method to exist, and you need American institutions to be available as terrain.[12]

Second idea: over the last decade, much of American corporate culture has trained people to treat productivity, punctuality, sex differences, and plain speech as moral problems. The memos did not say “this is how you lose a contest with a mercantilist authoritarian state.” They said “values,” “belonging,” and “compliance.” The question worth asking is not whether every diversity officer reports to the PLA. The question is whether a rival who studies cultural warfare would look at the results and smile.

I think the rival would smile. I did not come to that as a theory first. I came to it after watching people obey rules they could not defend. During COVID, I watched institutions in Ohio treat CDC language as liturgy. Court challenges were slow. Social punishment was fast. I put a phone on speaker and called people who were supposed to know the law. That is how I got through it. Plenty of workplaces did not have anyone willing to do that. They complied because compliance had become the local religion. An enemy watching from outside would have learned something useful: large parts of the American professional class will enforce a rule before they will examine it.

That is the footprint. Not tanks on the lawn. A workforce taught that the highest civic virtue is not causing trouble.

The HR office as terrain

Human resources is where abstract ideology becomes a condition of employment. I have had HR people report to me. When I asked where an idea came from, the face-to-face answer was often some version of “we will do better.” The inbox told a different story. Newsletters and vendor templates arrived with the new values. The people sending them were frequently the age of my children, not villains in a movie. They were following a script that had already been professionalized.

Onboarding at many firms now spends a remarkable share of time on identity rules and sensitivity machinery. Time spent teaching a new hire to be useful—show up, learn the work, look your coworkers in the eye, carry weight—gets crowded out by time spent teaching the new hire which sentences are dangerous. If you are an older man who talks like work is a duty, you can be framed as a climate problem. If you ride a bicycle twenty miles to a job because the car is dead, that used to be called character. In some offices it now reads as “intensity,” which is a polite word for unwanted masculinity.

I am not romantic about every man over fifty. Some of them are tired and rude. I am romantic about the old expectation: if you are sick enough to stay home, stay home; if you are not, go. If it snows, go to work anyway; your co-workers are counting on you.  Make yourself useful. That ethic built payrolls. The substitute ethic—work from the living room, treat output as optional, treat feelings as infrastructure—does not build payrolls. It manages them downward.

Masculinity, entertainment, and the cheapening of standards

Culture is not a side show in this doctrine. It is named terrain. When a commercial sport that sells collision and spectacle starts treating the halftime eye-candy as a seminar in preferences, that is not the end of the republic. It is a tell. Men who paid for front-row seats to watch a game and see women dance are not required to pretend they paid for a lecture. If saying so sends you to an HR office, the office is no longer just administering benefits. It is administering taste.

The same pattern showed up in film. The hard, unsmooth male lead became a problem to be managed. You can call that progress. You can also notice that a civilization in a long contest with a high-discipline mercantilist rival might not want to train its young men to be ashamed of drive. Beards and tattoos on men in their thirties are not a military doctrine. They are sometimes a leftover male signal in a workplace that punished the older signals. The strategic point is simpler: if you flatten the people who like to compete, you flatten the economy that depends on them.

Sexual identity fights belong in the same file. A free country can leave adults alone. A strategic culture that turns every workplace into a referendum on private life is doing something else. It burns attention. It splits coalitions. It makes ordinary competence look like aggression. Unrestricted warfare does not need to invent the fight. It only needs the fight to continue.

COVID as a rehearsal

I keep returning to COVID because it was the week the mask slipped on the machinery. Policy moved faster than evidence in too many rooms. Dissent was treated as dirtiness. The people who said “just follow the rules” were often the same people who could not name who wrote the rules. “We are a culture of compliance” is not a boast in a republic. It is a vulnerability report.

A rival does not have to love the virus to love the data. How quickly did professionals accept workplace punishments for speech? How quickly did schools take over children’s moral education while parents were isolated? How quickly did “expert” language replace judgment? Those are cultural measurements. They tell you how much friction an influence campaign would meet.

Corporations, LinkedIn, and the Myth of Neutral Policy

American business is not the Chinese Communist Party. Conflating the two is sloppy. What is not sloppy is noticing that global firms optimize for access, risk reduction, and reputational peace. If the cheapest way to keep markets, banks, campuses, and NGOs quiet is to import a values language that flattens conflict inside the firm, many firms will import it. They will call it best practice. Vendors will sell the templates. LinkedIn will reward the slogans. Smaller companies will copy larger ones because lenders, insurers, and talent pipelines punish deviation.

That is how you get a one-way ratchet without a conspiracy chalkboard. Beijing does not have to draft the memo if the memo already weakens the only large open society that still out-innovates it. United Front work, elite capture, research partnerships, and capital access are the documented channels. Cultural mimicry is the force multiplier—retired Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding and others have argued that if you watch Chinese behavior since 1999 through the lens of the book, the picture snaps into focus.[13] You do not have to accept every page of that popularization to accept the narrower point: connectivity is a weapon as well as a market.

Cashless systems, monitored transactions, and centralized payment rails belong to the same family of tools. They can be convenient. They can also be turned. A society that cannot complete a private exchange without a third-party ledger is a society that can be throttled. Again: not every debit card is an invasion. The doctrine says look at the combination, not the single instrument.

The Defense Paradox: How You Lose by Winning the Wrong Way

Qiao and Wang understood something Western liberals are late to admit. A society that lives by open rules can be made to trip over those rules. Lawfare ties up the opponent in his own courts. Media warfare uses the opponent’s platforms. Cultural warfare uses the opponent’s guilt. If the target responds by building a surveillance state to stop the influence, the target has paid in the coin the influence campaign wanted: less freedom. If the target refuses to notice the campaign, the target stays open and stays cut.

That is the lose-lose proposition. Defend badly, and you become the thing you were defending against. Decline to defend, and you are disarmed in the only war that is already underway. Critics of the 1999 doctrine are right that it treats human rights and international law as just another front. That is not a misunderstanding of the text. That is the text.

The Western answer cannot be “no rules, nothing forbidden.” That is how you cease to be the West. The answer is narrower and harder: name the methods, refuse the scripts that make you weaker, keep due process, and rebuild the habits that make a high-trust, high-output society possible. Resilience matters more than the fantasy of blocking every lie. Recovery speed and social trust are the actual defenses. A country that still believes its own people can work, argue, worship, raise children, and laugh at bad art is a hard country to hollow out.

What This Means on the Ground

If the battlefield is the paycheck, then the first duty is not a new missile. It is a refusal to treat the workplace as a reeducation camp. Hire for output. Measure output. Stop confusing moral fashion with risk management. Parents who want children should not have to apologize to a values slide deck. Men and women are not a paperwork error. Speech about all of that should not be a firing offense.

Political leadership matters because only the state can answer state-backed capital, theft of intellectual property, and platform manipulation at scale. Business leadership matters because most Americans meet the new rules at work, not at a Senate hearing. Voters who want people who have signed payrolls are not being crude. They are asking for officials who recognize a negotiation that smiles in public and competes in private.

I have watched firms that still recruit hungry people—SpaceX is the example everyone uses because it is obvious—outperform firms that recruit for the seminar. That gap will widen as the space economy and other fast industries punish delay. A culture that cannot tell a worker to come in when it snows will not beat a culture that can. This is not poetry. It is arithmetic.

Education is the long front. If the schoolhouse becomes the delivery system for political fashion, the family loses the first chance to form character. You do not need foreign infantry in the hallway after that. You need time. Time is what unrestricted warfare buys when it stays below the threshold of open war.

Conclusion: The Winner Integrates the Board

The authors of Unrestricted Warfare said the winner would be the side that can play on a board that keeps expanding, while the loser keeps staring at the old squares. Missiles still matter. So do grids, ports, chips, and ships. So do birth rates, work rates, attention spans, and whether a man can say he prefers female cheerleaders without being marched into a conference room. The last item sounds small until you notice the method: make the confident people tired, then call the tiredness progress.

I was insulated from a lot of this for a long time: same place, same people, same expectations. Coming back into a wider set of rooms felt like being thawed out of ice. The tools were new. The weakness was not new. It was the old American temptation to believe that because we mean well, the contest must be a seminar. It is not a seminar. It is a continuous campaign against cohesion.

Sun Tzu wanted victory without battle.[14] The 1999 colonels wrote a modern manual for that instinct and published it openly. They could afford to. A book is not dangerous to the side that is already inside the institutions of the other side. The dangerous thing is a public that still thinks war only looks like a landing craft.

Understand the doctrine. Keep the distinction between evidence and suspicion. Then look at your own shop, your own school, your own screen, and ask the only operational question that matters: does this rule make us harder to beat, or easier? If the honest answer is easier, it is not “best practice.” You have donated terrain to someone who is not confused about whether this is a contest.

Selected Bibliography

Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. 1832. Book I, Chapter 1.

Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. Unrestricted Warfare (Chao Xian Zhan). Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999. English selections via FBIS.

Schmitt, Michael N., ed. Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Schmitt, Michael N., ed. Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Spalding, Robert. War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for Global Domination. New York: Sentinel, 2022.

Sun Tzu. The Art of War.

Jamestown Foundation. “The PLA’s Latest Strategic Thinking on the Three Warfares.” China Brief, 2016.

NATO Science and Technology Organization. Materials from HFM-361, Mitigating and Responding to Cognitive Warfare (Madrid, November 2023), and related Chief Scientist reporting on cognitive warfare.

MITRE ATT&CK. “2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack (Campaign C0028).”

Wikipedia and contemporaneous technical reporting on the December 23, 2015 Ukraine power-grid cyberattack attributed to Sandworm.

U.S. Marine Corps University. “To Win without Fighting” and related essays on PRC political warfare and unrestricted warfare.

RSIS Commentary. Nan Li, “Unrestricted Warfare and Chinese Military Strategy,” 2002.

Author’s Note

This essay is written in the first person on purpose. The strategic literature can be cited. The workplace scenes cannot be footnoted like a statute. They are offered as testimony from one American who spent decades in a single shop, then walked into the new rules and recognized the old doctrine. Readers who want only the book should stop at the bibliography. Readers living under the new rules already know why the paycheck is the front line.

Notes

[1] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, Chapter 1: “War therefore is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.”

[2] Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999). English selections circulated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).

[3] The original Chinese title is Chao Xian Zhan (超限战), literally “warfare beyond limits” or “warfare beyond bounds.”

[4] Zhongguo Qingnian Bao interview with Qiao Liang, June 28, 1999; FBIS translation OW2807114599. Qiao: “The first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.”

[5] Qiao and Wang, Unrestricted Warfare. The authors list methods including psychological, media, cultural, financial, trade, network, legal, smuggling, drug, resource, and ecological warfare.

[6] Qiao and Wang write that “spaces in nature including the ground, the seas, the air, and outer space are battlefields, but social spaces such as the military, politics, economics, culture, and the psyche are also battlefields.”

[7] The “Three Warfares”—public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare—were written into PLA Political Work Regulations in 2003 and elaborated in subsequent PLA teaching texts.

[8] On December 23, 2015, attacks attributed to the Russian group Sandworm disrupted electricity for roughly 230,000 customers in western Ukraine. It is widely cited as the first publicly acknowledged successful cyberattack on a power grid.

[9] Michael N. Schmitt, ed., Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Tallinn Manual 2.0 (2017). Legal literature has discussed work toward a third edition through 2025–2026.

[10] U.S. and allied legal analyses generally hold that ordinary economic sanctions, however severe, do not by themselves constitute an “armed attack” under Article 51 of the UN Charter. That legal line is precisely why economic and regulatory pressure is attractive in unrestricted-warfare thinking.

[11] NATO Science and Technology Organization materials from the HFM-361 symposium (Madrid, November 2023) and subsequent Chief Scientist reporting treat cognitive warfare as influence operations aimed at human decision-making, accelerated by AI and digital platforms.

[12] This section states the author’s interpretive thesis. It is not a claim that a single CCP memo authored every Western HR policy. It is a claim about effects, incentives, and the kind of battlefield the 1999 doctrine described.

[13] Robert Spalding, War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for Global Domination (Sentinel, 2022), popularizes the 1999 text as a standing playbook rather than a one-off essay.

[14] Sun Tzu, The Art of War: the highest excellence is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Qiao and Wang explicitly place their argument in that lineage.

Rich Hoffman

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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.

DON’T PLAY LIKE YOU’RE LOSING:  Football Weather, a Bible in the Hand, and the Two-Point Swing That Can Still Hold the House

This is free advice. Nobody sent a twenty-five-hundred-dollar-an-hour invoice. I have been talking to people who live close to the pointed end of Republican strategy—the White House orbit, the Hill, the donor class that still thinks a memo is a movement—and I am putting the same thing on paper that I have been saying out loud. I do not know their internals. I know the look of a team that has started managing a loss before the fourth quarter. I have a long track record of calling the weather before the radar does. Take it or leave it.

Two months is a long time in American politics and a short time in a football season. The generic ballot is ugly. The president’s numbers are not what they were on the night the balloons fell. A lot of very serious people have decided the House is already gone and the Senate is a grind. Fine. Serious people have been wrong before.[1] The map is still a map of close races. Close races move on turnout, weather, and whether your own side can stand to look at itself in the mirror. That last item is the one Speaker Johnson keeps failing.[2]

Mike Johnson Is Talking Like a Man Preparing the Concession Speech

Mike Johnson has not done a really good job of projecting the one thing a thin majority cannot live without: the appearance of wanting the ball. He says the right sentences. He told NOTUS he would not even think about minority leader because “we’re going to win.” He told Dallas this is a pivotal moment and that the next fifty-odd days decide the republic.[3] Then the body language arrives. The schedule shrinks. The House books a quick September exit. The speaker warns audiences what Democrats will do if they take the gavel—impeachment is “not even the big concern,” he says; they will go after the family, the donors, the cabinet. That is not a two-minute drill. That is a man describing the visitor’s locker room.[4]

I am not asking Johnson to lie about the polls, which I don’t think are that bad; the election of 2026 will be all about engagement. I am asking him to stop sounding like a chaplain at a wake. The country can smell managed decline. Voters who already lean your way will stay home if they think the people with the gavel have already donated the furniture. Democrats do not need a wave if Republicans supply the shrug.

Johnson is a devout man. That is supposed to be an asset. Lately it reads as apology. He has spent too many years on the hook, line, and sinker of the progressive contamination that treats public Christianity as a zoning violation. Separation of church and state, as the slogan is now used, is not Madison. It is a muzzle. If you want to know how stupid the muzzle is, skip the seminar and walk three blocks in Southwest Washington.

Remember the Stretch Between the Election and January 20

Everybody who was paying attention remembers that little corridor of time after the 2024 election and before the inauguration. People were happy. Trump went to the fights. He brought people around. He made the transition look like a court and a carnival at the same time—which, if you understand American energy, is the correct mixture. He brought Speaker Johnson into that weather. He brought Elon Musk into that weather. The country got to watch alignment instead of autopsy.[5]

That is the template. Not a new platform. Not another reconciliation draft that dies in a five-vote conference. Presence. Trump should pull Johnson into the open air again and keep him there until the speaker’s shoulders come down. Bring the candidates. Put an arm around the people he picked and let the picture do the work the talking points cannot. Ken Paxton is one. There are others. The point is not a photo-op for the already converted. The point is to tell a tight district that the president still thinks the race is live.

Elon Does Not Need to Pray on Camera. He Needs to Be in the Room.

I say Elon Musk should be around this because I have a significant position in SpaceX stock and I feel better about where the thing is headed than I did when I first said I was in for the IPO. I was enthusiastic then. I am more enthusiastic now. That is not a ticker-tape prayer. That is a judgment about build-out, launch cadence, orbital compute, and the simple fact that the country that cedes the high ground will not remain the country that writes the rules.[6]

Elon does not need to hang around Trump and do the praying circuit. Leave the altar to the people who mean it. What he needs to do is refuse the role the press has written for him: court jester, wrecking ball, or exile. The midterms will be run, in part, as a referendum on whether American industry is allowed to remain impolite. SpaceX is impolite. Good. Bring that heat into the same frame as the speaker and the president and let the contrast with the Democratic freeze-and-regulate coalition explain itself.

Fox Already Has Your People. Football Season Has Everybody Else.

Doing another hit on Fox & Friends is not a strategy. Those viewers are already in the boat. They will vote if the weather is decent and the church van shows up. What you do not have, automatically, is the man who works first shift, drinks a beer on Saturday, and thinks politics is a smell he would rather not bring into the house. That man still goes to football games.

It is football season. You may not have a string of UFC cards to tour, but you have stadiums. You have tailgates. You have jumbotrons and mayors who will still pose for a picture if the president of the United States walks the sideline. Arena speeches work because they look like a country that is still alive. Mega rallies work for the same reason. Take Johnson. Take the candidates. Shake hands. Kiss the babies. Let the vice president hang around and do the work vice presidents are for. Do it in October, when the leaves turn and people remember they have neighbors.

The professional class will call this optics. Optics is what you call it when you have forgotten that human beings decide with their eyes first and their position papers later. A president in a stadium on a Saturday afternoon is a statement that the administration is not hiding in the Residence reading tracking memos. A speaker who looks like he wants to be there is a statement that the majority is not a rental.

The McDonald’s Test, or What DC Actually Sounds Like Before 10 a.m.

If you want to know where America is, skip the think-tank breakfast and go to the McDonald’s on the corner just down from the federal cluster in Southwest. Everybody who films in this town knows the neighborhood I mean. You are close to the Air and Space Museum. The American Indian museum is in the same walk. Congressional offices, the old Health and Human Services pile, the Department of Education’s gravity well—the whole faded government face of the city sits in a few blocks. Two blocks south of that McDonald’s is the Museum of the Bible.[7]

My wife and I have a ritual when we are in Washington. We park in a garage there, at a spot next to the elevator shaft at the bottom where the car fits as if the architect had us in mind. Ten feet to the elevator. The elevator dumps into a lobby that looks like a financial office. Two rights and you are in that McDonald’s. It is awkward in the way elevators are awkward, so somebody always talks. I like your hat. Thank you. Where are you headed?

I have stood in those elevators and at those tables and listened. “I work at Education.” “I am heading to one of the Smithsonian buildings.” “Congressional office.” The voice is flat. It is a job voice. Then, in a car of seven people, somebody says they are going to the Museum of the Bible, and the register changes. There is a little pop. You can see it. Not piety as performance. Pleasure. Anticipation. The same city that teaches its workforce to speak in acronyms still produces a human sound when the subject is Scripture.

I could have gone anywhere I wanted for my birthday in April. I told my wife I wanted a full day at the Museum of the Bible. We did the other DC things. I kept one day just for that museum. Sausage muffin, egg, orange juice or a Coke, about nine o’clock. The museum opens around ten. Then six or seven hours inside a building that does not apologize for the book that made the country possible. That joy is not a private hobby. It is a political fact. I sat there and watched people the way I watch shop floors and precincts. The ones walking toward the Bible were the ones who still had a pulse. The ones walking toward another government building looked like they were reporting for a sentence.

If You Cannot Unite Them on a Bill, Unite Them on a Book

I have been carrying a new Jonathan Edwards Study Bible and I am extremely pleased with it. I have been going through it like a man who has been waiting for a tool. Edwards understood something the modern party consultant has forgotten: joy is not the opposite of seriousness. Joy is the fuel. “The enjoyment of God,” he wrote, is the only happiness with which the soul can be satisfied. You do not have to sign the Westminster Confession to feel the political implication. A movement that cannot speak with pleasure about the source of its own moral language will lose to a movement that at least knows how to yell.[8] [9]

Republicans in the professional class are reluctant to do this because they swallowed, whole, the idea that the Constitution requires the public square to be a chapel with the crosses pried off. That is lunacy. The system was built Christian in the only sense that matters for a republic: it assumed a created order, a fallen citizen, a law above the state, and a people who could be trusted with liberty because they feared something higher than a committee.[10]

I love the Bible as a historical narrative. Those are not two different objects. There is an entry point at every degree of scholarship. Some people will come for the archaeology. Some will come for the cadence of the King James that still sits in the American ear whether they attend or not. Some will come because their grandmother did. You do not need a uniformity of dogma to get a uniformity of attention. Attention is the scarce commodity of a midterm.

So carry the book. Do not only produce it for a swearing-in and then lock it in a drawer. Talk about it. Do a short press availability that is not a culture-war trap and not a sermon. “This is the family Bible. This is a wonderful place. The country still knows what this is.” That is enough. The people you need do not require a systematic theology from the podium. They require permission to stop being embarrassed.

A Quiet Hour at the Museum Before the Ropes Open

I would go further. President Trump should walk across town—it is not far—and take a private tour of the Museum of the Bible before it opens to the public. Eight o’clock. They would open the building for him. Secret Service can lock a place like that down so it would be very safe. The access points are manageable. He can be through the history floors and the room with the Bibles laid out, pictures taken, and gone by nine-thirty, with the public none the wiser until the photos land. Visit the history-of-the-book exhibit while he is there. Stand in the room where the book is treated as an object of civilization rather than a punch line.

Then say the simple sentence: I love this museum. People who visit Washington often tell you it is their favorite stop, and they say it with that same pop in the voice I hear in the elevator. Put the president’s name next to that feeling. It is not phony if he means even half of it. Reminding people where he stands costs an hour and a motorcade. The return is not a sudden forty-state revival. The return is permission, again, for the people who already suspected they were allowed to believe this to act like it on a Tuesday in November.

Do Not Play Not to Lose

I have been saying this all along. Republicans who would not get behind the hard instruments—the same-day rules, the full use of a trifecta, the refusal to pre-negotiate the next Democratic revenge tour—did it because they believed Democrats always take power back, and that the smart play is to stay presentable so the other side will not pack the courts or torch the furniture. That is how you lose on purpose and call it statesmanship.

Democrats do not play that game. They play to take the referee. When they are out of power they yell, they play the victim, and they hope Republicans do not show up. When the rules of mail and curing and late counting favor them, they use the rules. I am not writing a brief for lawlessness. I am writing a brief against the peculiar Republican talent for bringing a rulebook to a street fight and then congratulating themselves for the bruises.

Go out there and win. If you cannot find a tax provision everyone will bleed for, you can still find a book almost everyone in your coalition will recognize. That is not a substitute for wages and borders and energy. It is the thing that makes people bother to vote for the wages and the borders and the energy in the first place.

The AI Debate Is a Strategy, Not a Concern

While we are talking about midterms, look at what is being built on the other side of the board. Democrats are trying to play the whole AI game. A lot of the people who run the large AI shops spent years working against President Trump. They are also busy playing games with each other over who owns the future. The issue is hot inside the Republican coalition for a reason: it is designed to be hot. Steve Bannon is set to appear at the same Washington “pro-human” AI gathering as Bernie Sanders. Populist right and socialist left, holding the same fear by different handles.[11]

For them the unifying note is jobs, dignity, the machine that will replace the man. Those are real human questions. I am not sneering at a machinist who wonders what a model trained on his craft will do to his shop. I am saying the political use of that fear is older than the transformer architecture.

They Ran This Play on Nuclear. They Will Run It on Compute.

Nuclear was always good for a healthy industrial society. Dense energy is how a free people stay warm without kneeling to a cartel or a planning board. Democrats of the anti-human strain used Three Mile Island—and every movie and textbook that turned a contained accident into a morality play—to discourage the independence that comes with the atom. They crippled an industry to suppress the growth of a capitalist nation and called it safety.[12]

Ohioans of a certain age do not need the lecture. We watched the same shot fired at FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants. Regulation and politics helped run a generation business onto the rocks. The subsidiary goes looking for a way to stay alive. Suddenly the company is corrupt, the Republicans who touched the file are dirty, and the moral of the story is that atoms were the original sin. The plants were a balance-sheet problem wrapped in a morality play. The morality play won the news cycle. The electrons still had to come from somewhere.[13]

AI is the new reactor. The doomsday register is the same. Pause. Ban superintelligence. Global coordination. Keep the models on a leash held by the people who already lost the last three arguments about growth. Trace a good portion of that propaganda and you will not end in a Vermont lecture hall. You will end in a strategic environment where China does not want America to embrace the thing that multiplies American labor. Beijing does not need to invent our anxiety. It only needs us to treat our own dynamism as a war crime.[14]

Barack Obama’s network does not have to send a memo titled “Split the GOP with AI” for the effect to be the effect. Put Republicans on their heels. Make the party of builders argue with the party of builders about whether building is allowed. In a midterm year, when turnout is already soft, that argument is not a seminar. It is a suppression tactic.

Low-turnout midterms reward whoever gets their people to the room. The AI fight, framed as apocalypse, keeps the Republican coalition in a family argument while the other side votes. That is why the biblical narrative is not a side quest. It is the offset. The communist register around AI—man as raw material, the future as a planning problem, the soul as an outdated user interface—cannot survive contact with a public that still thinks a human being is a creature and not a dataset. You do not beat a materialist panic with a better white paper. You beat it by reminding people what they are.[15]

The Tight Races Are Tight for a Reason

I look at the board and I do not see a wipeout that has already happened. I see a House that is still a handful of seats and a Senate that can hold even if a chair or two gets wobbly. Texas is the advertisement. Ken Paxton and James Talarico have been inside the margin of error for months. Some surveys now have Talarico a couple of points up. That is not destiny. That is a couple of points.[16]

A couple of points is a stadium visit. A couple of points is a president who looks like he is having a good time standing next to the man he wants in the seat. A couple of points is church-going women who decided the race was about more than a generic ballot average. A couple of points is the difference between Johnson keeping a gavel and Johnson becoming a trivia question about the last Republican speaker before the investigations.[17]

Fox will cover the rallies. That is not the point. The point is the pictures that leak into the places Fox does not run the morning show: the parking lot, the Sunday potluck, the group chat of the parents who have not voted since 2024 because they assumed the grown-ups had it. High engagement is not a mystery cult. It is a function of whether people think their side is alive.

Two Months. Not a Miracle. A Decision.

I think the House is winnable. I think the Senate can hold. I think some of these close races are close enough that a little public relations in football weather would move them. I think you can swing two or three points of engagement—not by converting the faculty lounge, but by giving your own people a reason to stand in a line. Democrats cannot pull this particular lever. They can lecture. They can threaten. They can mail. They cannot make the Museum of the Bible crowd feel seen, because they have spent a generation telling that crowd to sit down.

Do not act like you are losing. Act like you have fifty days and a country that still knows a hymn when it hears one. Bring Johnson into the light until he stops narrating the minority. Bring Musk into the frame as the man who builds. Bring Paxton and the rest into the presidential weather. Carry the book. Walk the museum. Go to the games. Talk like the majority is a thing you intend to keep.

If you ever read The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, you already know the rule I am applying. You do not win a gunfight by announcing your readiness to lose the street. You win it by being the man who came to keep the street. In the age of disclosure you must understand the politics of heaven. The earthly contest is downstream of what a people think a human being is for. The Bible is not a prop in that argument. It is the argument, bound in leather, still doing what it has always done when somebody is willing to carry it into the weather.[18]

That is the advice. I would like to see Republicans win. From my map, and from the neighborhood I actually walk when I am in that city, it is very winnable—if they will stop rehearsing the loss and go collect the joy that is already standing in line for a sausage muffin and a museum ticket. 

Notes:

Scripture, Theology, and American Religion

The Holy Bible. New King James Version. The Jonathan Edwards Study Bible. Edited by Matthew Everhard. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2026.

Edwards, Jonathan. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Enfield, Connecticut, July 8, 1741.

Edwards, Jonathan. A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. 1746.

Edwards, Jonathan. The Works of Jonathan Edwards. New Haven: Yale University Press, various volumes.

Noll, Mark A. America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Kidd, Thomas S. The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural World of the Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015.

Jefferson, Thomas. Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. January 1, 1802.

Dreisbach, Daniel L. Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State. New York: NYU Press, 2002.

Museum of the Bible. “Plan Your Visit” and “Frequently Asked Questions for Press.” museumofthebible.org.

Politics, Congress, and the 2026 Midterms

RealClearPolling. “Latest Polls 2026, 2028.” Accessed September 14, 2026.

USPollingData. “US Polling Data 2026 — Midterms, Generic Ballot & Trump Approval.” Updated September 14, 2026.

Cornell, Fred. “US Senate Forecast September 2026.” fredcornell.com. Model run September 14, 2026.

Newsweek. “Democrats’ chances of flipping the Senate with 50 days to midterms—Polls.” September 14, 2026.

New York Times. “Senate Polls 2026: See the Latest Midterm Polls.” Updated September 10, 2026.

New York Times. “Promising Much to Many, Johnson Loses His Grip on the House.” July 1, 2026.

NOTUS. “Johnson’s Political Future May Hinge on Republicans Exceeding Midterm Expectations.” August 24, 2026.

Newsweek. “Mike Johnson Warns Impeachment Not ‘The Big Concern’ if Dems Win Midterms.” June 26, 2026.

CNN. “Johnson gambles on ambitious summer agenda as GOP anxiety rises ahead of midterms.” July 13, 2026.

Just the News. “Mike Johnson says 2026 marks a ‘pivotal moment’ in American history.” September 10, 2026.

Roll Call. “House plans quick September exit.” September 3, 2026.

Denver Gazette. “The 21 seats Mike Johnson says will decide the House majority.” September 2026.

NBC News / Meet the Press. Interview with Speaker Mike Johnson. September 13, 2026.

USA Today. “Talarico ahead of Paxton in Texas Senate race as older voters shift lead.” September 14, 2026.

The Hill. “James Talarico, Ken Paxton tied at 47 percent in Texas Senate race: Poll.” June 30, 2026.

Texas Politics Project / University of Texas. Statewide survey releases, spring–summer 2026.

NPR. “With 99 days until midterm elections, here’s where things stand.” July 27, 2026.

Campbell, Angus. “Surge and Decline: A Study of Electoral Change.” Public Opinion Quarterly 24, no. 3 (1960).

Artificial Intelligence, Energy, and Industrial Policy

New York Times. “From Bernie Sanders to Steve Bannon, Political Figures Sound Alarms on A.I.” September 14, 2026.

Axios. “Scoop: Coxon, Bernie and Bannon unite for ‘pro-human’ AI.” September 14, 2026.

Reuters. “US Senator Sanders and podcaster Bannon, longtime foes, to urge AI restrictions.” September 14, 2026.

The Hill. “Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon join forces to advocate for AI regulation.” September 14, 2026.

Washington Examiner. “Sanders, Bannon, and former Anthropic staffer join forces in AI regulation push.” September 14, 2026.

Future of Life Institute. “The Pro-Human AI Declaration” and “Pro-Human Assembly” program notes. September 2026.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Historical accounts of the Three Mile Island Unit 2 accident, March 28, 1979.

Federal Register. Materials related to the Crane Clean Energy Center / former Three Mile Island Unit 1 restart docket. 2026.

Ferrise, Adam. “Ex-regulator: FirstEnergy nearly tanked credit as nuke plants drained finances.” Cleveland.com, February 4, 2026.

Utility Dive. “Ohio PUC orders FirstEnergy utilities to pay $250.7M over HB 6 bribery scandal.” November 20, 2025.

U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio. Civil filings summarizing FirstEnergy, House Bill 6, and the nuclear-plant bailout structure.

Reuters. “Musk’s SpaceX prices record $75 billion IPO at $135 a share.” June 11, 2026.

New York Times. “SpaceX Stock Rises in Largest IPO Ever.” June 12, 2026.

Wikipedia. “Initial public offering of SpaceX.” Accessed September 2026.

The Author’s Shelf and Related Works

Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business: A Skeleton Key to Western Civilization. Liberty Hill Publishing, 2021.

Hoffman, Rich. The Symposium of Justice. iUniverse, 2004.

Hoffman, Rich. Tail of the Dragon.

Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven. Forthcoming.

Hoffman, Rich. The Overmanwarrior (blog). overmanwarrior.wordpress.com and richhoffmanbooks.com.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 1883–1885. For the Overman frame the author has long adapted, not baptized.

Farah, Dan, dir. The Age of Disclosure. Documentary, 2026.

Author’s note.

This essay is strategic commentary offered in a private and public voice I have used for years. It is not a paid consulting product, not an official statement of any campaign, and not investment advice. SpaceX is a publicly traded company as of June 2026; readers should treat every market sentence here as the opinion of a shareholder who has already shown his cards. 

Footnotes

[1] Generic congressional ballot averages in mid-September 2026 have generally shown Democrats ahead by roughly five to eight points depending on the pollster. Rasmussen Reports, September 14, 2026, found Democrats 47 percent and Republicans 42 percent. CBS News, September 13, 2026, found Democrats 54 percent and Republicans 46 percent. Aggregators such as USPollingData placed the generic ballot near D+6.9 as of September 14, 2026.

[2] House and Senate seat counts as commonly reported in September 2026 put Republicans near 222–213 in the House and 53–47 in the Senate, meaning Democrats needed a modest net pickup for the House gavel and a larger four-seat swing for Senate control. See USPollingData, “US Polling Data 2026,” updated September 14, 2026; Newsweek, “Democrats’ chances of flipping the Senate with 50 days to midterms,” September 14, 2026.

[3] Speaker Mike Johnson has publicly insisted Republicans will keep the House. See NOTUS, “Johnson’s Political Future May Hinge on Republicans Exceeding Midterm Expectations,” August 24, 2026. The same coverage notes that Johnson’s future as speaker is widely understood to be tied to the majority. Separate reporting described caucus frustration and a sense of a thinning grip. New York Times, “Promising Much to Many, Johnson Loses His Grip on the House,” July 1, 2026.

[4] Johnson told a Dallas audience that the next fifty-three days would “determine the fate of the republic.” Just the News, September 10, 2026. He has also spoken of twenty-one toss-up seats as decisive. Denver Gazette / Colorado Politics, September 2026.

[5] On the transition period after the 2024 election and before the January 20, 2025 inauguration, the public record is thick with high-visibility events, cabinet theater, and the brief alignment of Trump, congressional Republicans, and Elon Musk around a governing project. The point here is political memory, not a claim that every meeting was a prayer circle.

[6] SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share on June 11, 2026, raising on the order of $75 billion and valuing the company near $1.77 trillion at pricing, with a first-day close that pushed the market capitalization higher. Reuters, “Musk’s SpaceX prices record $75 billion IPO at $135 a share,” June 11–12, 2026; New York Times, June 12, 2026. Subsequent trading was volatile. This essay’s enthusiasm is the author’s investment thesis and political judgment, not investment advice.

[7] Museum of the Bible, 400 Fourth Street SW, Washington, D.C., opened November 17, 2017, three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Museum of the Bible, “Frequently Asked Questions for Press.” A McDonald’s sits a short walk from the museum—Yelp lists one about 0.08 miles away—on the southwest federal corridor near Federal Center SW Metro, the National Air and Space Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian.

[8] The Jonathan Edwards Study Bible (NKJV), edited by Matthew Everhard and published by Thomas Nelson, was released in 2026. Thomas Nelson Bibles product page; Christianbook.com listing for NKJV The Jonathan Edwards Study Bible.

[9] Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741) and the broader First Great Awakening are the American precedent for treating religious revival as a public, not merely private, event. Edwards’s own emphasis on joy in God is the stated editorial theme of the 2026 study Bible.

[10] On church and state, the relevant constitutional text is the First Amendment’s prohibition on an establishment of religion and its protection of the free exercise of religion. The modern slogan of a “wall of separation” is a later political gloss, most famously associated with Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, not a phrase in the Constitution itself.

[11] The Future of Life Institute’s “Pro-Human Assembly” in Washington, announced for September 15, 2026, listed Senator Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon among speakers, along with labor leaders and members of both parties. They were not scheduled to share a single stage. New York Times, September 14, 2026; Axios, September 14, 2026; Reuters, September 14, 2026.

[12] Three Mile Island Unit 2 suffered a partial meltdown on March 28, 1979. The accident produced no immediate deaths but became the central public symbol of anti-nuclear politics in the United States and helped freeze a generation of reactor construction. See NRC historical summaries of TMI-2.

[13] FirstEnergy’s Ohio nuclear plants, Davis-Besse and Perry, became the center of a financial and political crisis that included the bankruptcy of the generation subsidiary, House Bill 6, and later criminal and regulatory proceedings. Cleveland.com, February 4, 2026; Utility Dive, November 20, 2025; related federal court filings summarizing the HB 6 bailout structure.

[14] On AI industrial policy and Chinese competition, see the public record of export controls, semiconductor policy, and repeated U.S. government warnings that Beijing treats frontier compute as a strategic resource. The causal claim that every domestic “pause AI” campaign is a Chinese information operation is the author’s inference, not a documented indictment.

[15] Midterm electorates are typically older, more partisan, and lower-turnout than presidential electorates. The “surge and decline” literature from Angus Campbell onward remains the basic framework. Small shifts in evangelical and conservative Protestant turnout have been decisive in multiple close cycles since 2004.

[16] Recent Texas Senate polling has been tight. An AARP survey conducted August 30–September 1, 2026, and reported September 14, showed James Talarico at 48 percent and Ken Paxton at 44 percent among likely voters. Earlier NYT/Siena work in late June had them tied at 47 percent. USA Today, September 14, 2026; The Hill, June 30, 2026.

[17] President Trump’s job approval in mid-September 2026 varied by pollster, with several national surveys clustering in the high thirties to mid-forties approve and a clear plurality disapprove. Rasmussen, September 14, 2026: 45 approve / 54 disapprove. Morning Consult, same window: 42 / 56. CBS News, September 13: 39 / 61.

[18] Rich Hoffman, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business: A Skeleton Key to Western Civilization (Liberty Hill Publishing, 2021). The forthcoming Politics of Heaven develops the same author’s argument that earthly power contests are unintelligible without the older grammar of heaven, will, and moral order.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

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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 Empire of Mediocrity and the Call for American Exceptionalism

I sat at that lunch last week with human resources leaders from several large corporations in the Cincinnati area, the kind of gathering where the check routinely clears a hundred dollars a person, and the conversation circles the same drain it has circled for years. They were perplexed, as they always are when the numbers refuse to lie. Staffing shortages that will not resolve, artificial intelligence that has automated the kiosk and the order screen but still leaves tables to be wiped and registers to be tended by flesh-and-blood people, an economy that refuses to roar back to the promised heights, and a persistent inability to locate and keep the kind of talent that actually moves the needle. They wanted to know how to acquire an intelligent workforce. I told them what I have told anyone who will sit still long enough to hear it: you do not acquire exceptional results by staffing your organization with people selected for their ability to tolerate mediocrity. You find exceptional people, you recognize them when they appear in unconventional packages, and you protect them from the machinery that exists to grind them down.

I have cast aside the noisy, circular arguments over group averages in human capability—not because the psychometric data lack interest from a scientific standpoint, but because my concern has always been the human species as a whole, a young and still-fragile lineage trying to find its footing in a galaxy that is already crowded with other forms of intelligence. The question that matters is not which population cluster sits where on a distribution curve. The question is how any society, any company, any civilization identifies and elevates the outliers who can see around corners the rest of us cannot yet perceive.

Decades of personnel psychology research, distilled in landmark meta-analyses, have shown that general mental ability remains one of the strongest single predictors of job performance across occupations, with particularly high validity for complex, high-stakes roles.  That finding aligns with what I have observed across more than fifty years in business and executive life. Raw cognitive horsepower matters. It is not everything, and it is certainly not a guarantee of worldly success. I have known men and women with genius-level IQs who could not hold a marriage together, could not navigate an ordinary bank teller without frustration boiling over, could not endure the slow, stupid, political churn of ordinary corporate or governmental life without eventually self-destructing or walking away. Intelligence without gumption, without an intuitive compass, without some connection to a wider field of knowing, often becomes a curse rather than a blessing. The person who is “too smart for the room” learns to despise the room, and the room learns to despise him back.

That is the story I told the HR table, because it is the story I have lived and watched others live. In our twenties, a friend and I bought a small company. We were clearing out the accumulated junk of previous owners when we found, in a back closet, one of those enormous old projection bulbs—the kind that once threw motion pictures onto screens the size of a wall. It was a beautiful, ridiculous object, heavy glass and filament, a relic of an analog age already slipping into memory. We decided we had to have it. We loaded it into the hatchback of his car, unsecured, and drove across what was then the University of Cincinnati campus with the rear door open and that giant bulb rolling gently with every turn. The police pulled us over. My friend did not do deference. He despised unearned authority, especially when it could not match the scale of his own mind. Words were exchanged. A citation was issued. No arrest that evening, but the system had taken notice.

Later, when the matter escalated, he represented himself. No lawyer. In the deposition room, they brought in the heavy artillery—prominent litigators from New York and Los Angeles, flown in at considerable expense because a local prosecutor wanted a notable scalp. My friend sat across from them with that calm, encyclopedic brain of his. He had read the entire encyclopedia set by fifth grade and comprehended what he read; he could retrieve and deploy information like a living search engine. He dismantled their lines of questioning one by one. They could not corner him on facts, on law, on logic, or on the precise sequence of events. I watched it happen. During breaks, I heard the hallway mutters from the expensive suits: “He’s too fast.” “We can’t pin him.” These were men whose hourly rates in the early 1990s would have stunned most working people, and they were being outmaneuvered by someone who had never attended their law schools and did not play their credentialed games. The case collapsed. Not because the facts magically changed, but because the egos of the system could not tolerate being shown up by someone operating on an entirely different level of processing speed and intuitive grasp.

The empire does not forget such insults. Over the following years, the full weight of bureaucratic harassment came down—legal troubles, jail time, the slow, grinding destruction that mediocre institutions reserve for those who make them feel small. I have seen the pattern repeat across decades and across industries. Exceptional people do not fit the templates. They ask the questions that expose the fragility of the templates. They produce results that make the people above them look ordinary by comparison. And so the machinery—whether it calls itself corporate human resources, public education, or administrative government—develops antibodies. It promotes compliance. It measures inputs (degrees, time served, adherence to process) rather than outputs (actual value created under uncertainty). It pays a premium, often millions in aggregate payroll, for the comfort of predictability, even when that predictability delivers only mediocre results.

Robert Pirsig understood something essential about this in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Quality is not the product of following the manual to the letter. It is a living relationship with the work itself, sustained by what he called gumption—the psychic gasoline that keeps a person engaged when things go wrong, when parts are missing, when the official procedure proves inadequate. Gumption traps are everywhere: external setbacks, yes, but more insidiously, the internal ones—ego that refuses to admit ignorance, value rigidity that cannot see a better way because it would require admitting the old way was flawed. Mediocre systems are gumption traps by design. They reward the appearance of order over the reality of excellence. They punish the person who cares too much about the actual motorcycle running well. 

That is why our schools, constructed largely by people of average ability to produce more people of average ability, tend to replicate mediocrity. That is why corporations that claim to want “innovation” and “disruption” simultaneously install layer upon layer of review, compliance, and diversity, equity, and inclusion machinery whose primary effect is to filter out people who will not make anyone above them feel intellectually or morally inferior. The result is expensive. You pay two or three million dollars more in payroll than you needed to, and you still cannot outrun competitors who have learned to locate and protect their own exceptional outliers. You cannot plug in interchangeable parts and expect exceptional output. The math does not work.

Abraham Lincoln understood the same principle in a different key. When the credentialed, politically connected generals of the eastern theater kept failing, he looked west to a man with a reputation for hard drinking and rough edges. Ulysses S. Grant had delivered results—Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Chattanooga—while others delivered excuses and body counts. Lincoln promoted him anyway, over the objections of those who preferred a more presentable mediocrity. Grant took responsibility, moved, and won. The American experiment has always contained this tension: on one side, the impulse to flatten outcomes and protect the feelings of the competent-but-not-brilliant; on the other, the older, riskier impulse to let the exceptional rise because the alternative is national stagnation or defeat. 

I have spent a lifetime recruiting and protecting such people—diamonds still in the rough, often overlooked by systems that prize polish over fire. That is why I keep getting invited to these lunches. The people across the table sense that the usual playbooks are failing, but they cannot yet say out loud what the failure actually is. The failure is the empire of mediocrity itself: the set of incentives, credentialing rituals, and cultural taboos that treat exceptional performance as a threat rather than the only thing that justifies an organization’s continued existence.

There is a deeper layer to this that I have only grown more convinced of with time. The intuition that separates the merely bright from the truly exceptional often looks, from the outside, like luck or inexplicable insight. The right decision is made quickly under pressure. The technical problem that yields to an approach no one else had considered. The “voice” that says, “Do not walk down that street tonight,” or, “Here is the battery configuration that actually works at scale.” I have come to understand these moments as instances of interface—imperfect, flickering, but real—between individual human consciousness and a wider field of intelligence that does not require a body. Call it universal mind, call it Providence, call it the spirit world, call it non-human intelligence. The label matters less than the observable pattern: the people who consistently produce outsized results often behave as if they have access to information and pattern recognition that ordinary channels cannot explain.

Ancient cultures knew this terrain better than we admit. The shamanic traditions, the prophetic lineages, the ritual architectures aligned to celestial events—all of them represent attempts to establish reliable contact with that wider field. Some did so through disciplined inner practice. Others, tragically, through blood sacrifice, as if the entities on the other side of the interface could be fed or bargained with. The archaeological record at places like Cahokia shows clear evidence of ritual violence and retainer sacrifice on a significant scale; power in those societies included the capacity to command the deaths of dozens in service of whatever cosmological or political order the elite claimed to mediate.  The Book of Enoch preserves an even older memory: the Watchers, a class of non-human intelligences, descending to impart forbidden knowledge—metallurgy, sorcery, weaponry, cosmetics—and producing hybrid offspring whose existence destabilized the world.  Whether one reads these accounts as literal history, as spiritual allegory, or as garbled cultural memory of real contact events, the through-line is the same: humanity has always lived in relationship with intelligences that do not share our biology, and the quality of that relationship has shaped what we become.

Jesus of Nazareth, in my reading, represents the decisive intervention in that long, bloody negotiation. He offered himself as the final sacrifice, ending the cycle of literal human and animal offerings that had sustained certain interfaces for millennia. In its place, he instituted a symbolic communion—bread and wine rather than flesh and blood—and pointed toward an internal, direct relationship with the source of that wider intelligence. The temple system, which had grown wealthy and powerful managing the sacrificial economy, could not tolerate the threat. They killed him for it, as systems of managed mediocrity have always killed or neutralized those who offer a cleaner, more direct path.

The men who designed the American republic carried some of the same intuition. Many were steeped in Enlightenment rationalism and biblical literacy simultaneously. Some, through Masonic networks, incorporated geometric and symbolic alignments into the new capital city, suggesting they were attempting to establish their own interface with providential or higher-order intelligence. They were not content to let the new nation drift on the currents of ordinary human politics. They wanted it oriented toward something larger. The experiment has been imperfect, repeatedly captured by mediocrity, yet it has also repeatedly produced the conditions under which exceptional individuals could do exceptional things—flight, computing, rocketry, the defeat of fascism and communism in their 20th-century forms.

That is why I have written what I have written and why I continue to speak plainly when the expensive lunches are served. In The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I worked to distill the practical discipline of intuitive action under pressure—the same quality that lets a person fix a broken motorcycle on the side of the road or make a high-stakes decision without waiting for committee approval. In The Politics of Heaven, the book I am completing now, I am attempting the larger map: how non-human intelligence has interacted with human history, why certain systems crush the exceptional while others (however imperfectly) give them room, and what it will take for this species to mature rather than stagnate or destroy itself.

Melania Trump is, in my estimation, one of the clearer contemporary examples of the type I am describing. She possessed the looks and presence that the modeling world rewards, but she also possessed an intuitive intelligence that recognized the limits of that world. She made a strategic alliance with a man whose wealth and later political power gave her insulation from the treadmill of mediocrity she had been navigating since her twenties. She has never courted the spotlight for its own sake. She has stayed largely off-grid, raising her son and preserving her own interior life. That choice is widely misunderstood by people who cannot imagine wanting autonomy more than attention. It is the choice of someone who has seen enough of the empire to know she does not want to live inside its walls.

The practical counsel I gave the human resources leaders and the counsel I give to anyone serious about results rather than appearances are straightforward. Stop measuring people primarily by the hoops they have jumped through—degrees, years of service, approved ideological language, willingness to sit through two-hour Friday lunches where nothing of consequence is decided. Measure them by what they actually produce when the plan goes sideways, when resources are constrained, when the problem has not been solved by anyone else. Go looking for the diamonds in the rough. They rarely wear the system’s uniform. They often make the people above them uncomfortable. They will save you far more in payroll than they will ever cost you in management overhead, because one exceptional person routinely does the work of three or four merely competent ones—and does it in a way that creates new possibilities rather than merely maintaining the existing machine.

The empire of mediocrity is expensive, brittle, and ultimately self-defeating. It can maintain control for a long time, especially when it controls education, credentialing, and the administrative state. But it cannot generate the breakthroughs a civilization needs to survive its own success—energy abundance, space settlement, genuine advances in human health and longevity, the wisdom to navigate contact with non-human intelligences that may already be observing us. Those breakthroughs require people who have retained or recovered the capacity to interface with the wider field. They require cultures that do not punish that capacity as a threat.

I have lived most of my life off the grid of that empire, not as an aesthetic choice but as a practical necessity. The view from out here is clearer. The exceptional are not the problem. They are the only remaining margin of safety this species possesses. The question before every organization, every school board, every nation is the same one I answered at that lunch table: do you want predictable mediocrity at premium prices, or do you want results that justify the entire enterprise? The two are not compatible and do not get along naturally.  They will always be at odds.  It took Robert Pirsig a long time to figure all this out and I’m not sure he ever did during his lifetime.  But, it is the question of our times, and the responsibility to action falls on all of us.

Footnotes

1.  Schmidt, Frank L., and John E. Hunter. “The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings.” Psychological Bulletin 124, no. 2 (1998): 262–74. Subsequent meta-analyses have produced somewhat lower but still positive corrected validity estimates; the core finding that cognitive ability predicts performance across jobs, with higher validity for complex work, has held.

2.  Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. New York: William Morrow, 1974. See especially the sections on gumption, gumption traps, and the distinction between static and dynamic quality.

3.  On Lincoln’s decision to elevate Grant: “Lincoln promotes Grant as top Civil War general, March 10, 1864,” Politico, March 10, 2017; and Grant’s own Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (1885–86). Lincoln’s reported comment—“I can’t spare this man; he fights”—captures the priority of results over presentability.

4.  Archaeological evidence from Cahokia’s Mound 72 includes mass burials with indications of ritual violence, retainer sacrifice, and both local and non-local individuals among the victims. See summaries of strontium isotope and osteological studies in reports such as those covered in Western Digs and subsequent analyses of Mississippian period power structures.

5.  The Book of Enoch, particularly the Book of the Watchers (chapters 6–36). Standard scholarly translations include R. H. Charles (1917) and more recent critical editions. The text describes non-human Watchers imparting forbidden knowledge to humanity and producing the Nephilim, with lasting consequences for human history and spiritual conditions.

6.  Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. [Self-published or independent, drawing on decades of executive and entrepreneurial experience]. The work emphasizes intuitive decision-making under pressure as a learnable discipline.

7.  Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven. Forthcoming, targeted for 2027 publication. A sustained exploration of biblical and historical patterns of interaction between human societies and non-human intelligence, including themes of giants, spiritual warfare, and the political implications of exceptional versus mediocratic orders.

Bibliography (selected; full working bibliography for The Politics of Heaven exceeds one hundred entries)

•  Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. New York: William Morrow, 1974.

•  Schmidt, Frank L., and John E. Hunter. “The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology…” Psychological Bulletin 124, no. 2 (1998): 262–74.

•  The Book of Enoch. Translated by R. H. Charles. London: SPCK, 1917.

•  Pauketat, Timothy R. Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi. New York: Viking, 2009.

•  Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. 2 vols. New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885–86.

•  Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business.

•  Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven (forthcoming).

•  Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Various translations (Overman/Warrior philosophical lineage).

•  McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

•  Nickelsburg, George W. E. 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36; 81–108. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.

•  Ambrose, Stanley H., et al. Studies on Cahokia Mound 72 diet and health (various peer-reviewed articles in American Antiquity and related journals).

•  Vermes, Geza. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. London: Penguin, 2004 (for context on Second Temple Jewish literature including Enochic traditions).

•  Additional archaeological and historical sources on Mississippian and pre-Columbian ritual practice; biblical archaeology references from Biblical Archaeology Review; and primary accounts of American founding-era symbolism and Masonic geometry in the design of Washington, D.C.

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.

I Told You So: The Slow March of Communism in America and Why Warnings Went Unheeded

I’ve spent a good portion of my life studying the patterns of human behavior, the currents of history, and the undercurrents of power that most people never bother to examine deeply. It’s not because I’m some oracle with a crystal ball, but because I’ve immersed myself in the totality of human endeavor—ancient texts, biblical archaeology, philosophy from Nietzsche to the gunfighter ethos of self-reliance, and the hard lessons from real-world politics and business. That perspective has given me an edge in seeing where things are headed long before the crowd catches up. And right now, as we sit here in 2026 watching outright communists and their fellow travelers gain traction in elections across the country, including right here in Ohio, I can’t help but chuckle and say what I’ve said so many times before: I told you so. 

It’s astonishing, really, how quickly people forget—or choose to ignore—the warnings. Just the other day, I was flipping through Fox News and saw Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham, and even Greg Gutfeld on Gutfeld! Looking somewhat bewildered by the state of things. They’re grappling with the radical left’s influence, the populism that Bernie Sanders tapped into and figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represent, all while trying to navigate corporate media structures that prefer softball topics over hard truths. It’s the same crowd that, more than a decade ago, was all too eager to sideline voices like mine when I dared to call out the creeping socialism in public sector unions, education, and the broader culture. Back then, during the Tea Party era and around 2012, the orthodox establishment thought they could stuff the genie back in the bottle and return to the comfortable George W. Bush days of controlled opposition. They were wrong, and history has proven it. 

Let me take you back to those days, because the personal stories provide the color and context that make this more than just abstract political theory. Over a decade ago, I was a frequent guest on radio shows, including weekday slots from 9 to 12 and weekend mornings on platforms like the Darryl Park show, reaching millions. Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) had higher-ups who would pull me aside or call after my segments. “Rich,” they’d say, “you’re talking about socialism and communism in the public schools and unions—that’s too extreme. Communism is a bad word. You’re upsetting people.” They didn’t see the harm in the rising costs of labor in public education or in the influence of teachers’ unions funded by taxpayer money. I was in the extreme minority pushing back. 

The Cincinnati Enquirer even came out to my house for an exposé. They thought my approach to political campaigning was crazy—cracking bullwhips with targets, demonstrating precision, discipline, and the willingness to stand apart from the crowd. My family history with whips as tools of mastery in rural Kentucky informed that symbolism: it’s about imposing will on chaos, not violence. But to them, it was a spectacle. I knew better. Human nature responds to symbols of strength and self-mastery. People sense authenticity. That’s why my message resonated even as the gatekeepers tried to shut it down. 

I remember one particular push around public sector unions. John Kasich’s administration in Ohio dealt with reforms, but the backlash was fierce. I argued then, as I do now, that public unions should not be funded with taxpayer dollars in ways that entrench political power at the expense of the very people paying the bills. Unions affiliated with progressive causes, pushing agendas that bleed into classrooms—confiscatory property taxes funding Marxist-influenced education. It wasn’t popular. People told me I was making enemies, that “a lot of people make money off that chaos.” In 2012, things didn’t go well for those reforms in some places, and suddenly I was being pushed aside as an advisor or voice worth listening to. New forces were taking over, they thought. But I’ve seen this cycle many times in my life. 

Fast forward, and here we are. Trump’s movement exposed the rot; MAGA became the populist force on the right, while the left’s version coalesced around Sanders and then more radical figures. They tried to gloss it over with Schumer and Pelosi types, promoting AOC as the face of left-wing populism. In Ohio, we see echoes in candidates like Amy Acton, the former health director now running as a Democrat for governor against Vivek Ramaswamy. People are asking, “Is this who we are?” Yes, it is the natural evolution when you let structures rot from within. 

Around that time of trouble with Clear Channel, I didn’t care much about staying in the corporate fold. They offered me slots on stations like in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but I wanted freedom. Private ownership was already being gobbled up, a pattern tied to larger centralizing forces. Instead, I joined Matt Clark on his radio show in Michigan—around 2013-2014—and we read the planks of the Communist Manifesto on air. I hadn’t even heard of The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen at first, but once I dug in, it was revelatory. Skousen’s 1958 book distills communist strategy: infiltrating institutions, undermining culture, using education as a weapon. We laid it out on air, and it hit hard because it mirrored what was happening. 

The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels outlines transitional measures that sound eerily familiar: abolition of private property in land, heavy progressive income taxes, centralization of credit, free public education (with a specific ideological bent), and more. Skousen expanded on how these were being advanced not through overt revolution but gradual infiltration—especially post-WWII, through the New Deal era, the 1960s counterculture, and into public schools via the Department of Education created in the late 1970s. I’ve been railing against this for decades: property taxes as confiscation of wealth to fund socialist indoctrination. Drop your kids off for “babysitting” while they absorb attitudes hostile to capitalism, family, and individual liberty. 

Look at the evidence. Public sector unions grew massively, wielding power through collective bargaining that influences policy far beyond wages. In Ohio, the 2011 battles over Senate Bill 5 highlighted the tensions. Critics called reforms anti-worker; supporters saw them as protecting taxpayers. The long-term effect? Generations raised on these ideas are voting for policies that expand government control. We see it in New York and Portland, and in attempts here in Ohio. Soccer, as I’ve joked, is a socialist game—low scores, penalizing individual excellence, team dependency. Contrast that with American football: capitalism, specialization, big plays rewarding talent and strategy. Little cultural elements seep in, shaping mindsets. 

Fox News and corporate media during the Trump exile period played a role, too. When they thought he was done, they pivoted to DeSantis and conventional Republicans, hoping to normalize. Many in the media wanted less politics, more sports, grilling hot dogs—anything to avoid offending advertisers. Truth-telling took a backseat to revenue. I warned them. The corporate structure favors controlled narratives. But voters rejected it. Two terms of Trump, ongoing cultural shifts, and now the chickens coming home to roost. 

My own journey informs this. I’ve worked since age 12, from manual labor to aerospace executive. I’ve seen power operate in the shadows—from Cincinnati’s riverfront politics in the 1990s and interactions with figures across the aisle to insights from organized networks where coded signals and plausible deniability ruled. Ethics kept me straight: sober, honest, observant. That front-row seat to how establishments maintain control taught me not to let others define my value. I don’t give people power over me through consensus or popularity contests. That’s partly the Overman ethos—imposing will on circumstances—resilience over victimhood. 

People ridiculed me for talking about communism in schools or cultural Marxism. “Conspiracy theory!” they said. Yet here we are, with Marxist ideas normalized in curricula, DEI initiatives, attacks on private property, and big government solutions. The Naked Communist warned of this infiltration decades ago. Skousen detailed 45 goals, many of which involved media, education, and the weakening of moral foundations. We’ve seen music shift from 1950s-80s family themes to hedonism and occult influences, eroding values. Public schools, funded by confiscated wealth, became transmission belts for these ideas. 

I’ve always offered help sincerely—free advice from decades of study—out of a desire to strengthen families and communities. But many prefer scapegoats and the blame game. They sidelined voices like mine, thinking they could manage the narrative. When lives or policies fall apart, I don’t gloat maliciously, but there is satisfaction in the “I told you so.” It’s not personal profit; it’s validation of studying reality over wishful thinking. In business, politics, family—I’ve seen patterns repeat. Warnings about the socialist/Marxist wave, public unions, and education weren’t new; roots trace to the 1930s Red Decade, FDR’s expansions, and post-war shifts.

Now, with elections looming, including Ohio’s gubernatorial race, the question is whether people will learn. Vivek Ramaswamy represents pro-capitalist, America First energy—make money, innovate, don’t apologize. Opponents tap proletarian resentment: hate the rich, use government to redistribute. This is the apocalypse of learned helplessness versus the gunfighter spirit of self-mastery. 

My upcoming book, The Politics of Heaven, delves deeper into these spiritual and historical dimensions—biblical conspiracies, giants, divine rebellion, spiritual warfare manifesting in earthly power struggles. It’s a treasure hunt through history showing how anti-human forces operate. Sharing the manuscript with serious readers has been encouraging. It ties ancient insights to modern battles, urging resilience rooted in faith and truth.

As we recently celebrated the Fourth of July—fireworks, patriotism, soccer matches rallying some—it’s a reminder of what’s at stake. American exceptionalism isn’t compatible with the collectivist mindset. I’ve withdrawn from chasing those who won’t listen; it’s their choice to run into the wall. But for those paying attention, the lessons are clear. Study the sources, question the structures, reject the slow poison.

In the end, my reputation has held because I base decisions on evidence and human nature, not fleeting trends. Whether it’s aliens and UAP disclosure (topics I’ve discussed for years, tying into ancient histories) or the communist undercurrents, time vindicates. People may owe apologies in 20 years, but I won’t hold my breath. The age of “I told you so” is here, not for ego, but as a hard-earned lesson: listen to those who’ve studied the long game, or choke on the consequences. Family, faith, self-reliance—these endure. Everything else is noise.

Footnotes

1.  Observations on current Ohio politics and candidates.

2.  Personal radio experiences and Clear Channel interactions.

3.  W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (1958).

4.  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848).

5.  Coverage of Ohio public sector union debates, e.g., 2011 reforms. 

Bibliography

•  Skousen, W. Cleon. The Naked Communist. Ensign Publishing, 1958.

•  Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1848.

•  Various news sources on Ohio elections 2026 and historical union battles.

•  Personal archives and observations from radio, politics, and aerospace career.

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.

No, I don’t have a uterous: Amy Acton is the abortion queen of Ohio

I was just in one of those back-and-forths online the other day, the kind that pops up when people start talking about this governor’s race we’ve got coming in Ohio, and somebody came at me with the usual line after I pointed out a few things about Amy Acton. You know the one: “You don’t have a uterus, so you don’t get to have an opinion on this.” I’ve heard it before, from the same crowd that wants to shut down any man who dares speak on the moral weight of ending a life before it ever draws breath. It always lands flat with me. I’ve been married for nearly forty years. I raised daughters. I’ve had bones broken and sticking out through the skin more than once in my life, and I can say with an extensive reputation that if I had been wired to carry a child, I would have taken every contraction, every hour of labor, every bit of that pain away from the women in my life without a second thought. I’ve got the capacity for suffering. I’ve proved it on myself. That old dodge about “you can’t understand because you’re a man” is just a way to dodge the real question, which is whether we’re going to keep pretending that the deliberate ending of innocent human life is some private medical choice that only one sex gets a vote on.

Let me back up and lay this out the way I see it, because a lot of folks have let the COVID years paper over who Amy Acton really is and always has been. Back in February of 2019, Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican who had built a record as pro-life, made his final cabinet appointment, bringing Dr. Amy Acton in as Director of the Ohio Department of Health. She was the first woman physician to hold the post. DeWine talked about wanting fresh thinking in the department. What he got was a public-health official whose record and instincts ran hard the other way on the question of unborn life. Even then, I said it out loud: this was the abortion person being installed in a Republican administration. DeWine was willing to reach across the aisle to show he could work with someone whose views on that fundamental issue differed from his own. He paid for it later when the lockdowns came, and she became the face of the Ohio response, the one issuing the stay-at-home orders, the one whose name was attached to the restrictions that kept families apart, businesses closed, churches limited, and elderly folks isolated in ways that still haunt a lot of us who watched it happen.

I don’t need to rehash every day of 2020. What I do want to keep front and center is that the woman now running as the Democratic nominee for governor of Ohio was not some neutral technocrat who suddenly discovered progressive politics during a crisis. She came in with a worldview that treated the unborn as negotiable and, once the pandemic arrived, treated the rest of us as subjects to be managed. The nursing-home decisions, the orders that kept healthy people from moving around and building natural immunity, the whole apparatus of control that turned the state into something that felt more like a laboratory experiment than a free society, all of that happened on her watch. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: she became Ohio’s version of Dr. Fauci, only with more direct power over our daily lives. And the same circles that produced gain-of-function research in places like Wuhan were not unknown to the public health establishment she moved in with. I’ve followed the money and the papers long enough to know that certain people in those rooms understood exactly what kind of pathogen could be engineered and what the risks were if it escaped the lab or was released under whatever conditions. She knew the environment she was operating in. That’s my firm belief after watching it all unfold.

Now she’s out there reminding everybody that it’s been a few years since Roe v. Wade was overturned and that Ohio voters, in their wisdom or in their distraction, passed Issue 1 in November 2023 and wrote a right to abortion into the state constitution. She frames it as protecting women’s decisions, as trusting women and their doctors. What she leaves out, and what I keep reminding people of, is how that vote actually happened. It came after an August 2023 special election that was itself a battle over whether to make it harder to amend the constitution. Progressive money, millions upon millions from out-of-state donors and dark-money groups, poured into Ohio during an off-year, low-attention cycle. They knew exactly what they were doing. They treated this red-leaning state like low-hanging fruit because they had a Republican governor who had already shown he was willing to put an abortion-rights advocate in charge of public health. The campaign wasn’t some spontaneous uprising of Ohio mothers speaking their hearts. It was a well-funded, professionally run operation that counted on people not paying close attention in the heat of summer. And it worked. Now the same people who bankrolled that effort are backing her, and she’s happy to remind voters that she stands with the “will of the people” on this issue.

Here’s the part that really sticks in my craw. When I pointed all this out in that online exchange, somebody fired back that I, as a man, had no standing to talk about it. I’ve heard the same thing aimed at other men who speak plainly about the moral status of the unborn. It’s a rhetorical trick meant to make the argument about anatomy instead of about right and wrong. I told them I’ve lived with women my whole adult life. I’ve watched my wife go through what women go through. I’ve raised daughters, and I’ve seen the culture shift from the music of the seventies and eighties, when songs were still mostly about love and family and sticking together, to the stuff that came later, the rage and the hedonism and the open celebration of using people and discarding consequences. I’ve seen what permissive sexual culture does to young women especially. It sells them the lie that they can live exactly like the most reckless men and that abortion will always be there as the cleanup crew when biology doesn’t cooperate. That’s not liberation. That’s a trap dressed up as empowerment.

I said it plain: men are on offense in the sexual marketplace, always looking for the opening. Women are on defense. They have to be the careful ones, the ones who say no when every signal from the culture is telling them to say yes. When they don’t, when the apps and the hook-up culture and the “you do you” philosophy win out, it’s almost always the woman who carries the permanent consequence, whether that’s a child she wasn’t ready for or an abortion she’ll live with for the rest of her life. And the men? Too many of them walk away. That’s why I’ve always said the answer isn’t more abortion. The answer is a culture that expects men to marry the women they get pregnant and to stay married, to raise their children, to provide and protect until their dying day. That used to be the norm. It built this country. We walked away from it at our peril.

Somebody in that same thread tried the “but what about bad parents?” line. I know bad parents exist. I’ve seen them. I’ve watched kids get dealt a lousy hand biologically and then get stuck with adults who never should have been allowed near a child in the first place. Some of those kids grow up carrying scars that never fully heal. I’ve said more than once that in a fallen world there are situations where bringing a child into a truly horrific home might be worse than the alternative, at least from the narrow perspective of that child’s immediate suffering. But that doesn’t make abortion right. It makes the culture that produces those homes the real villain. We don’t fix a bad society by giving it a license to kill its inconvenient young. We fix it by rebuilding the expectation that sex belongs inside marriage, that marriage is for life, that fathers don’t get to opt out, and that communities and churches and extended families step up when parents fall short. Adoption, mentorship, the kind of intergenerational transfer of skills and values I try to practice with my own grandson, those are the answers that affirm life instead of ending it.

I’ve got no patience for the pity-party version of pregnancy either. I’ve heard women talk about it like it’s some special suffering contest where the rest of us are supposed to send gifts and lower our expectations. Pregnancy is hard. Labor is hard. Raising children is the hardest thing most people will ever do. But it’s also the most important. And the notion that only the person with the uterus gets a say in whether that life continues is a moral absurdity. The child is not an extension of the mother’s body in the same way an appendix is. It’s a separate human being with its own DNA from the moment of conception. Ending that life is ending a life. I call it what it is: murder. And I say it as a man who would have gladly taken every bit of the physical burden if the biology had allowed it, because that’s what men are supposed to do. We bear the weight so the people we love don’t have to carry it maliciously.

Amy Acton has made her choice clear. She wants to be the governor who protects and expands what Issue 1 started. She wants Ohio to remain a place where abortion is treated as healthcare rather than what it actually is. She’s counting on the same coalition of progressive money, media framing, and cultural exhaustion that got Issue 1 passed to carry her into the governor’s office. I’ve seen the internals. I’ve watched how these races move. She’s not in as strong a position as some of her backers, including the usual suspects like David Pepper and the Mark Elias types who specialize in lawfare and election mechanics, would like you to believe. There’s still time for Ohio voters to remember who she was in 2019 and 2020, not just the lockdown orders but the deeper consistency on the question of life itself. She was the abortion advocate then. She’s the abortion candidate now. The COVID chapter didn’t create that part of her; it just revealed how far a Republican governor was willing to go to accommodate it.

I keep coming back to the same truth that has guided me through decades of watching this state and this country. We don’t build a decent society by making it easier to kill inconvenient children or by pretending that men have no stake in the moral health of the next generation. We build it by expecting responsibility from both sexes, by telling the truth about what sex is for, and by refusing to let the language of “reproductive freedom” paper over the reality of dead babies and wounded mothers. I’ve said it in longer form in other places, and I’ll keep saying it here: abortion is murder, and the culture that treats it as minor surgery is a culture in active rebellion against the way human beings are meant to live. Amy Acton has chosen her side in that rebellion. The rest of us still get to choose whether we’re going to keep pretending we don’t notice.

When that person told me I couldn’t speak because I don’t have a uterus, I thought about my wife and my daughters and my grandsons and every young woman I’ve ever watched get sold the bill of goods that casual sex plus abortion equals freedom. I thought about the boys who never learn that real manhood means working hard when life gets difficult. I thought about the children who never get the chance to draw breath because somebody decided their life would be too inconvenient. And I answered the only way I know how. I told them the truth as plainly as I could. I don’t need a uterus to know that ending a human life is wrong. I need eyes to see and a conscience that hasn’t been trained to look away. Ohio still has both, if we’re willing to use them before the next election decides how much more of this we’re going to tolerate.

Footnotes

1.  Amy Acton was appointed Director of the Ohio Department of Health by Governor Mike DeWine in February 2019, the first woman physician to hold the position. See contemporaneous reporting from Governing magazine (February 28, 2019) and official announcements from the Governor’s office.

2.  Acton served in that role from February 2019 through June 2020 and was the primary public face of Ohio’s early COVID-19 response, including stay-at-home orders and guidance affecting nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

3.  Ohio Issue 1, the constitutional amendment establishing a right to make reproductive decisions including abortion, appeared on the November 7, 2023 ballot and passed. Significant funding for the supporting campaign came from out-of-state progressive donors and organizations; supporting committees raised roughly $53.8 million, according to campaign finance records compiled by Ballotpedia and Ohio Capital Journal reporting.

4.  An August 8, 2023, special election on a separate Issue 1 (raising thresholds for future constitutional amendments) was widely understood as an attempt to make passage of the November abortion-rights measure more difficult. That August measure failed.

5.  As the 2026 Democratic nominee for Governor of Ohio, Amy Acton’s campaign platform explicitly commits to protecting and expanding access to abortion, contraception, and related services, and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio have endorsed her as a “longtime champion of sexual and reproductive health.”

6.  General social-science data consistently show elevated risks for children raised in single-parent or unstable households, including higher rates of poverty, lower educational attainment, and increased involvement with the criminal justice system. Sources include U.S. Census Bureau reports and analyses from the Department of Health and Human Services over multiple decades.

7.  The author’s personal observations on pain tolerance, family responsibility, and cultural shifts in sexual mores from the 1970s–1980s to the present draw from lived experience in Ohio and are offered as individual testimony rather than clinical data.

Bibliography for Further Reading

•  Klusendorf, Scott. The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture. Crossway, 2009. (Clear philosophical and scientific defense of the pro-life position.)

•  Beckwith, Francis J. Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

•  Blankenhorn, David. Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem. Basic Books, 1995. (On the societal costs of father absence.)

•  McCorvey, Norma (with Gary Thomas). Won by Love. Thomas Nelson, 1998. (Personal account of the Roe plaintiff’s change of heart.)

•  Reardon, David C. Aborted Women, Silent No More. Loyola University Press, 1987. (Early study of post-abortion emotional and psychological effects.)

•  CDC. Abortion Surveillance — United States (annual reports). Latest available data on reported abortions by state and demographics.

•  U.S. Census Bureau and HHS reports on family structure and child outcomes (various years). Searchable at census.gov and hhs.gov.

•  Ohio Secretary of State and Ballotpedia archives on Issue 1 (2023) campaign finance and election results.

•  Bhattacharya, Jay, et al. Writings and testimony on lockdown harms and focused protection strategies (in the context of the Great Barrington Declaration and subsequent analyses).

•  Selected articles from Biblical Archaeology Review and primary ancient texts (Book of Enoch, Dead Sea Scrolls material) for the deeper civilizational and spiritual framing of questions of life and human dignity.

•  Campaign materials and public statements from actonforgovernor.com (2026) and contemporaneous news coverage of the 2026 Ohio gubernatorial race.

•  Historical Ohio political coverage from the Columbus Dispatch, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Ohio Capital Journal on the DeWine administration’s cabinet appointments and COVID policy implementation.

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.

I Didn’t Want To Be That Guy: The Influence of Non-Human Intelligence on the Ohio, Newark Holy Stones

I had waited years for this…………………………………….

In January 2020, a UFO was filmed directly over the Newark Earthworks. L.A. Marzulli posted about the video, calling it no coincidence. He sees the site as tied to the Nephilim and fallen angels, pointing to the advanced 18.6-year lunar cycle built into the Octagon as evidence that the knowledge couldn’t have come from the local people alone. To him, the sighting proved a direct link between these ancient mound complexes worldwide and the modern UFO phenomenon.  And this story points to a deeper issue: that people like Marzulli have lost any trust in any institutional contributor, and what that means for the continuation of civilization itself.  After all, I did have a UFO experience myself, which I attribute more to occult practice than physical contact, which makes the Holy Stones of that region much more interesting and important than they otherwise would be.  Because of this and many similar controversies, I am slightly obsessed with how non-human intelligence, whether it be overt demons or aliens from outside of Earth’s gravity imprint, has shaped human civilization in ways that institutional archaeology cannot deal with, because they don’t have the current means, which is exactly why I sat down to write The Politics of Heaven.  I was always inspired by Frazer’s Golden Bough and how it created the field of anthropology, and for my own work, I want to contribute to the continued evolution of the vast dialogue of that subject matter: how much non-human intelligence has shaped human society from the very beginning, not with just conspiracy theory consideration, but with hard, observable science. 

I’ve been thinking along similar lines, though I come at it from a different angle. The Newark Earthworks aren’t just ceremonial or astronomical in the usual sense. I propose that they function like a giant horizontal clock laid flat on the ground, precisely tracking the moon’s complex 18.6-year nodal cycle. That’s not casual observation — it’s sophisticated long-term record-keeping.

Here’s where it gets interesting to me: if you have entities traveling from outside our normal frame of reference, experiencing time dilation, these massive, visible-from-the-air geometric earthworks would make perfect navigational markers not just for where you are, but for when you are. The stars and moon shift over centuries. A culture that can leave and return after what feels like a short trip to them might need reliable ground references to calibrate exactly which phase of earthly time they’ve arrived in. The Newark complex, with its perfect lunar alignments, would serve that purpose beautifully — like tying ribbons on trees in a forest before GPS existed to keep from getting lost, except on a monumental, landscape scale.

My own Middletown UFO sighting, where I essentially challenged it to show up, and it did a couple of days later, fits the pattern too. These appearances often feel responsive, almost ritualistic. Whether you call them non-human intelligence, watchers, or something else, the connection between these ancient precision sites and modern UAP activity keeps showing up.

It’s one more piece suggesting the story of these earthworks — and the Holy Stones found nearby — is far from settled. The more we learn about UAPs, the more the old archaeological assumptions look incomplete.

For decades, I had known about the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum up in Coshocton, the small but remarkable place that holds the Newark Holy Stones—the Decalogue Stone with its figure and Hebrew inscriptions, the Keystone, the associated pieces. I already owned good replicas I had purchased from them years earlier, and I had studied the photographs, the arguments, the woodcut copies David Wyrick made. But I had never stood in front of the actual stones in their case. When the chance came with family—my wife, a daughter, a few of the grandchildren—I took it. We drove out on a day when the museum opened at noon. We arrived early, stood outside for a couple of minutes after the doors opened, and when the young woman who unlocked the door saw us, she looked surprised. They do not get many visitors on an average weekday. I told her I had come a long way to see the Holy Stones. She let us in.

The museum sits in a quiet stretch of central Ohio, not far from the great Newark Earthworks complex that spreads across what is now the city of Newark and the surrounding countryside. Most people driving past on the main roads have no idea what lies just off the pavement. The Great Circle, the Octagon, the long processional avenues—these were not casual dirt piles. They are precise geometric constructions aligned to the movements of the moon over its 18.6-year nodal cycle. The Hopewell people who built and used them, roughly two thousand years ago, understood observational astronomy at a level that still astonishes anyone who takes the time to stand on the viewing platform between the Circle and the Octagon and watch the alignments play out. Avenues once guided people—and perhaps, in their understanding, spirits—along lines that connected earth to sky. Much of it is gone now. Housing developments, roads, restaurants, and an old golf course that has since closed cover what were once open ceremonial spaces. The main highway cuts through what was once part of the complex. What remains is still extraordinary, but it takes imagination and stubbornness to see the full scale of what was built here.

Inside the museum, I wandered through the gift shop first, as I always do in places like this. I was not expecting to find anything new. I already had the Holy Stones replicas at home. Then I saw three flat sandstone pieces sitting among other small items. No price tag stood out. They looked familiar the moment I picked one up—the size, the weight, the carved designs. I knew exactly what it was: a replica of the Wilmington Tablet, the Adena sandstone piece found in Sparks Mound near Wilmington, Ohio, the one now kept at the Ohio History Center in Columbus. The young woman at the counter thought they were coasters. She had to call someone to find a price. Five dollars. I bought one without hesitation. I had been looking for a good replica of that tablet for a long time. The Cincinnati Tablet, found in 1841 when a mound at Fifth and Mound Streets in downtown Cincinnati was leveled for construction—the site is now near a UPS facility—had been displayed for years at the Cincinnati Museum Center before it was removed from the Native American exhibits. It did not fit the prevailing story comfortably. The Wilmington Tablet carries its own mysteries: the main face with its stylized figures, the edges and sides marked in ways that suggest a numerical or identifying system, perhaps a personal marker for someone of importance buried with it, or a template used in ritual or body marking. Adena tablets like these have been interpreted as tattoo stamps, ownership identifiers, or cosmological diagrams. Whatever their precise function, they were important enough to be placed with the dead.

I carried the new replica with me into the exhibit area and sat down in front of the Decalogue Stone. The case holds the stone itself along with its sandstone box. The figure on the front—bearded, robed, holding what appears to be a tablet or scroll—has long been read as Moses. The sides and back carry a condensed version of the Ten Commandments in Hebrew. The carving is competent but not perfect by ancient standards; there are letter forms that mix periods and a few anomalies that scholars have used to argue for a nineteenth-century origin. The museum’s current interpretive panels, updated in recent years, present the stones straightforwardly as forgeries created in the 1860s. The explanation centers on the social and political climate before and during the Civil War. Monogenism—the biblical idea that all humans descend from a single pair, Adam and Eve—stood in opposition to polygenism, the notion that different races were separate species or creations. Polygenist arguments were sometimes used to justify slavery and unequal treatment. A discovery of ancient Hebrew inscriptions in Ohio mounds could be deployed to support monogenism, to argue that biblical history reached the Americas long before Columbus, and thereby to undermine justifications for treating any group of people as less than fully human. David Wyrick, the Newark surveyor and antiquarian who brought the stones forward in 1860, was a man of his time—interested in the mounds, respectful of their builders, and apparently inclined toward biblical literalism and anti-slavery views. His reputation suffered after the findings. He died a few years later, in 1864, amid personal difficulties that included pain and what some accounts describe as heavy use of medication. Most professional archaeologists and historians dismissed the stones as nineteenth-century creations meant to influence the great debate of the age.

David Wyrick died on April 16, 1864, at the age of 57. Contemporary newspaper accounts reported that he died suddenly from an overdose of laudanum, a common opium-based painkiller he had been taking regularly for a long-term painful illness, most likely severe rheumatoid arthritis.

Local records and the original reporting did not list his death as suicide. The official cause was listed as “rheumatism” in some documents, and the newspaper noted the overdose without claiming it was intentional. However, the intense controversy surrounding the Holy Stones, combined with his financial troubles, led later writers to describe it as suicide. That narrative stuck in many books and articles for decades, even though the primary sources from 1864 do not support it.

The stress from the backlash clearly took a heavy toll on him physically and mentally. Still, the evidence shows he was managing chronic pain with medication that ultimately proved fatal. I would propose that it granted non-human intelligence access to his mind under duress, a move that proved catastrophic. 

The image in the visitor center is David Wyrick’s 1860 survey map of the Newark Earthworks. It’s a detailed, hand-drawn overhead plan showing the full layout of the Great Circle, the Octagon, the parallel walls connecting them, and the surrounding landscape as it existed at the time. It includes roads, the Ohio and Erie Canal, railroad lines, and even the Great Circle, which was used as the Licking County Fairgrounds.

It’s widely considered one of the most accurate early maps of the site, which is why Ohio History Connection still displays and references it. It’s not an artistic painting; it’s a surveyor’s technical drawing — clean, precise lines with measurements and labels.

I sat there longer than I expected. The grandchildren moved around the room, patient, as children are when grandpa gets quiet in front of old things. My daughter kept the camera ready because she knows the look I get when something lands hard. I felt a familiar weight settle in. I have spent most of my life being the person who says the thing that makes a room go quiet. I do not enjoy it. I would rather study, walk the sites, read the reports, and keep my thoughts to myself. But the pattern forming in my mind as I looked at the Holy Stones and read the museum’s careful, institutionally approved explanation would not stay quiet. The stones may indeed be nineteenth-century work. The letter forms, the timing with Lincoln’s election, the social circles Wyrick moved in—all of that can be documented. Yet the question “why would someone go to this much trouble?” still sits there. The mainstream answer is political and religious motivation in a divided country. That answer is not wrong on its face. It is incomplete.

What struck me, sitting in that chair, was how little room the current framing leaves for the possibility that Wyrick himself was not the originator of the content, or that, even if he carved or commissioned the stones, the impulse and the specific knowledge came from elsewhere. Pain medications of the mid-nineteenth century were not inert. Some had properties that alter consciousness. Wyrick was a man under strain, already deeply engaged with the mounds and their meanings, moving through a landscape where indigenous knowledge and biblical imagination were colliding in real time. Across human history, people in altered states—whether through plants, fasting, ritual, or substances—have reported contact with intelligences that are not their own. They have returned with precise information about astronomy, geometry, architecture, and moral order. The Newark Earthworks themselves demonstrate exactly that kind of precise knowledge: alignments that track the moon’s complex cycle, geometry that rivals anything built in the Old World at the same period. The Hopewell culture that maintained and expanded these sites was part of a vast interaction sphere that moved copper from the Great Lakes, mica from the Appalachians, and ideas across hundreds of miles. They were not isolated. They were connected.

The possibility that non-human intelligences have interacted with human beings across deep time is no longer the fringe claim it once was. Government releases on UAPs in recent years have normalized the conversation in ways that would have been impossible even a decade ago. Films like Disclosure Day and public discussions now explore themes of possession, mind influence, and non-human entities operating through human agents. Some of these portrayals treat the phenomenon as technological or biological. Others, including certain narratives that reached wide audiences, frame it in explicitly spiritual terms—entities that seek to override human sovereignty, countered by faith, symbol, and will. I watched one such portrayal not long before this visit and recognized the pattern immediately. The same dynamic appears in ancient accounts worldwide: shamanic traditions in which practitioners enter altered states to receive knowledge from “the gods” or spirits; biblical descriptions of encounters at burning bushes, on mountaintops, or in temples complete with high place drug use, to a modern eye familiar with high-speed travel and gravitational effects, like interactions with non-local intelligences; the global recurrence of similar architectural and astronomical knowledge appearing in places separated by oceans and centuries.

If non-human intelligences have been present and active, they would not need wooden ships or land bridges to move knowledge. They would need markers. The Newark Earthworks, with their lunar clock and visible geometry, serve perfectly as reference points that can be read from above or used by people on the ground to synchronize time over long intervals. Time dilation is not science fiction; it is a measured fact. Travelers moving at relativistic speeds or operating near significant gravitational gradients experience time differently from observers on Earth’s surface. A short subjective journey for them could correspond to centuries or more here. Upon return, they would need fixed, durable references—alignments to stars and moon, geometric figures visible from altitude, places where the calendar could be read without ambiguity. The Hopewell and Adena landscapes contain exactly those features. So do other ancient sites that display sudden leaps in mathematical and observational sophistication. The question is not whether the knowledge appears; it is where it came from and why it appears in the patterns it does.

The Wilmington Tablet I now own a replica of fits into this larger question. It was buried with someone important enough that their personal marker was placed in the mound. The edge markings that catch the eye when you turn the piece over suggest a system—numbers, ownership, affiliation, or ritual status. Similar tablets from the Adena sphere have been found with red ochre residue consistent with use as printing or stamping devices, possibly for body art that identified lineage, achievement, or spiritual standing. If these were “ID cards” for the dead, they imply a society that tracked individual identity and status with precision across generations. That level of organization recurs in mound-building cultures of the Ohio Valley and beyond. It does not require external input to exist, but the sudden appearance of specific symbolic and mathematical systems in multiple places at roughly the same horizon of development invites the question of common inspiration.

I do not claim the Holy Stones are ancient. The evidence the museum presents for a nineteenth-century creation is substantial and has been reinforced by careful recent work. What I am willing to say, after sitting with the stones and walking the remnants of the earthworks, is that the story we are told about why they exist is too tidy. It reduces a complex man and a complex moment to a simple political hoax. It leaves no room for the possibility that Wyrick, already immersed in the mounds and carrying his own burdens, encountered something—an idea, an image, a compulsion—that felt as if it came from outside himself. That experience would not make the stones ancient. It would make them artifacts of contact, whether the contact was spiritual, psychological, or something we do not yet have language for. The same pattern appears in other times and places where precise knowledge falls into the hands of people under stress or in altered states: the biblical prophets, the builders of megalithic monuments, the medicine people who maintained alignments and oral calendars over centuries.

The destruction of the physical evidence compounds the problem. Newark itself was built over and through one of the most significant ceremonial landscapes in North America. Miamisburg Mound sits in a town that grew around it. Countless smaller mounds were plowed flat or bulldozed for roads and foundations before anyone could record what they contained. The Windover Pond site in Florida, with its 8,000-year-old burials preserving brain tissue and some of the oldest textiles in the Americas, revealed people whose material culture and genetic signals do not fit neatly into later narratives of isolation and simplicity. Bones and artifacts continue to be reburied under policies that prioritize contemporary tribal affiliation over scientific study, even when the genetic and cultural distance is vast. Every time we pave or rebury without full documentation, we remove data that might clarify whether the knowledge visible in these sites was generated locally, transmitted through ordinary human networks, or introduced through less conventional channels.

Archaeologists do the hard, necessary work of excavation, mapping, and dating. I respect that labor. What I question is the institutional reluctance to entertain hypotheses that fall outside the current consensus, especially when the consensus itself rests partly on the absence of evidence that has been destroyed or never collected. The same scholars who correctly note that the Holy Stones’ Hebrew shows characteristics of nineteenth-century Bibles are often the first to dismiss any suggestion that pre-Columbian contact or non-local inspiration could explain other anomalies. The stones become a cautionary tale about forgeries rather than a prompt to ask why a surveyor in 1860 would risk everything to place Hebrew commandments inside a Hopewell-era mound. The answer “politics” is available. The answer “something spoke to him in a way that felt authoritative” is not, because it opens territory that academic archaeology has largely ceded to other disciplines or to popular writers.

My own work, particularly the book I have been completing, looks to hold both the documented record and the larger pattern in view. The Politics of Heaven is not an attack on archaeology. It is a dedicated effort to reconnect what we can see on the ground—earthworks, tablets, alignments, sudden appearances of sophisticated knowledge—with the possibility that non-human intelligences have been active participants in human affairs for a very long time. That possibility does not require rejecting indigenous achievement. It expands it. The people who built and used the Newark complex were sophisticated observers and engineers. They also lived in a world where altered states, visionary experience, and communication with non-ordinary intelligences were part of the cultural toolkit. The same toolkit appears in the ancient Near East, in Britain, in Mesoamerica, and in the shamanic traditions that persist today. The content of what comes through those channels varies, but the mechanism is recurrent.

Sitting in the museum that afternoon, I realized again why I have to write what I am writing. The stones are on display. The earthworks are still there in fragments. The UAP files are coming out. The cultural conversation has shifted enough that a person can say, without immediate professional ruin, that the old categories—isolated continents, purely local invention, no external intelligences—are no longer sufficient to explain the full record. David Wyrick may have been a forger, a dupe, a sincere man who encountered something he could not fully explain, or all three at different moments. He was an abolitionist, like Lincoln, opposed to slavery, and I think he was a pretty good person.  The stones he brought forward remain touchstones. They force us to ask what counts as evidence and whose stories get to shape the past. The Wilmington Tablet replica now sits on a shelf in my house. It is not ancient. It is a modern copy of an ancient object that, in turn, raises questions we have not yet answered. When I look at it, I think about the person it once identified or accompanied, the culture that made it important enough to bury, and the long chain of curiosity that brought a replica into my hands on an ordinary afternoon in Coshocton.

The grandchildren eventually pulled me toward the door. We stopped at a small tavern down the road for fish and chips. I set the tablet on the table for a moment and joked that it needed to eat too. The absurdity made them laugh, which was the point. Later, driving home through the Ohio countryside, I kept returning to the image of the Decalogue Stone in its case and the museum’s careful panels explaining its modern origin. They are not wrong about the carving. They are incomplete about the context. The full story of these places and these objects will require more than one discipline and more than one kind of evidence. It will require the willingness to sit with anomalies instead of explaining them away, to walk the remaining earthworks at moonrise, to hold a tablet in your hands and ask what it was for, and to consider that the intelligences our ancestors called gods, spirits, or watchers may have been something we are only now beginning to name again.

I did not want to be the person who has to say these things out loud in public. I still do not. But the pattern is there, the sites are there, the disclosures are happening, and the stones continue to ask their questions. The Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum did its job. It preserved the objects, updated the interpretation, and let a visitor sit quietly in front of them long enough for the next layer of the story to become visible. That is what good museums do. The rest is up to those of us who walk out the door still carrying the questions.

The mainstream interpretation encountered at the museum and the broader synthesis regarding non-human intelligence, time dilation, archaeoastronomy, spiritual influence, and the need to re-evaluate assumptions in light of emerging data. Personal observations and opinions are rendered in the first person throughout. Background on the Newark Earthworks, Hopewell/Adena contexts, Wyrick controversy, specific tablets, and institutional shifts is woven into the narrative rather than presented as separate sections. A bibliography of key sources for further reading follows.)

Selected Sources and Further Reading.  But in essence, this is why I wrote The Politics of Heaven, to explore some of these out-of-the-box issues and put them in a useful, modern context.

•  Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, Coshocton, Ohio. Exhibit materials and presentations on the Newark Holy Stones (updated circa 2020–2022), including work by museum staff and archaeologist Brad Lepper. The museum website and related publications detail the stones’ history and current interpretation as nineteenth-century artifacts that reflect monogenist/polygenist debates.

•  Wikipedia and scholarly summaries on the Newark Holy Stones (cross-referenced with primary accounts): consensus view as likely a hoax or planted artifacts from 1860, with discussion of Wyrick’s role, letter-form anomalies, and social context pre-Civil War.

•  Ohio History Connection / Ohio History Center resources on the Wilmington Tablet (Sparks Mound, Clinton County) and Cincinnati Tablet (Fifth & Mound Streets discovery, 1841). Adena culture context for engraved sandstone tablets.

•  Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks (UNESCO World Heritage Site documentation) and Newark Earthworks visitor resources: lunar alignments, 18.6-year cycle, geometric precision, Hopewell interaction sphere.

•  Ross Hamilton, The Mystery of the Serpent Mound (and related works on Ohio earthworks geometry and astronomy).

•  Graham Hancock’s publications on ancient civilizations, consciousness, and alternative historical frameworks (for engagement with entheogen and non-local influence hypotheses; contrasted in the essay with sovereignty concerns).

•  Biblical Archaeology Review (long-term reference for comparative ancient Near Eastern and American contexts).

•  Primary historical accounts of David Wyrick’s discoveries (1860–1861 pamphlets and contemporary reports) and later analyses (e.g., Whittlesey, Lepper, and others on authenticity debates).

•  UAP-related government releases and congressional records (post-2017 onward) for the shifting public and official conversation on non-human intelligence.

•  Additional context on Adena/Hopewell tablets, Windover Pond site (Florida), time dilation in relativity, and global parallels in archaeoastronomy and altered-state traditions can be found in standard archaeological syntheses and peer-reviewed journals on those topics.

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 Treasure of Ownership: Personal Music, Vinyl Resurgence, and the Human Hunger for Things That Are Truly Ours

A few years ago, the World Economic Forum floated this vision of the future captured in the phrase “you’ll own nothing and be happy.”¹ It sounded like one of those slick marketing pitches that ignores human nature entirely. People don’t like it. They push back in quiet, stubborn ways that reveal something deep about who we are as human beings wired for possession, autonomy, and legacy. I saw it clearly the other day when I was taking someone in their twenties to lunch in my car. They glanced at the dashboard and asked what that strange slot was. It was the CD player. My car isn’t ancient—I tend to drive vehicles for a decade or more—and yet to this young person, it was an artifact from another era.²

I explained that compact discs were once revolutionary. Developed through a collaboration between Philips and Sony starting in the late 1970s, with key demonstrations in 1979 and a commercial launch in 1982, CDs promised perfect digital sound without the pops, scratches, or degradation of vinyl records or the hiss of cassettes.³ By the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, they dominated the market. I remember the excitement vividly. You could pop one in, skip tracks instantly, and take your music anywhere without worrying about needles or tape wear. I had built plenty of playlists on cassettes by recording songs off vinyl albums in the order I wanted, but CDs made sequencing seamless. You owned it outright. You could drive down the road at highway speeds—through Ohio’s potholes, storms, or whatever the Great Miami River valley threw at you—and the music played reliably. No internet required. No monthly subscription draining your account. No dependency on someone else’s servers.⁴

That young person couldn’t wrap their mind around it. Subscription services like Apple Music and Spotify have shaped their entire adult life. They rent access to a vast library that lives on someone else’s servers. Lose the subscription, the connection, or the company’s goodwill, and it vanishes. I told them that Walmart still carries CDs, though in smaller sections now, and that Cracker Barrel gift shops across the country have racks of vinyl albums selling briskly. People are buying physical music again. They want to own it—put it on the shelf, hold it in their hands, play it whenever they want without begging permission from a corporation. My grandkids notice the library of CDs on our entertainment center. They see the difference between something solid and tangible versus rented pixels in the cloud.⁵

The vinyl resurgence is one of the most astonishing cultural shifts I’ve witnessed. I grew up with LPs. They seemed archaic once CDs arrived with their superior convenience and durability for travel, but now younger generations are embracing records again. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), vinyl has grown for 19 consecutive years. In 2025, U.S. vinyl sales surpassed $1 billion for the first time in decades, selling about 46.8 million units and generating nearly three times the revenue of CDs (which sold around 29.5 million units).⁶ Artists like Taylor Swift have driven special editions, but the trend runs deeper. Gen Z and millennials seek that tactile connection in a digital world. I’ve seen it at Target, Walmart, and Cracker Barrel during RV stops. People are hungry for ownership.⁷

This isn’t mere nostalgia. It’s a rejection of the rental economy pushed by globalist visions. The WEF’s 2016 essay by Ida Auken envisioned a 2030 where everything—housing, transportation, entertainment—is rented as a service, delivered conveniently, with no personal clutter of ownership.⁸ Critics rightly called it an attack on human dignity. We are not wired to be perpetual renters. We want our own refrigerator stocked with food we chose, our own yard to tend, our own spouse and children to raise as ours, our own books on the shelf that we can touch and mark. In my family, that physical library of CDs represents more than music—it represents independence.⁹

I remember the full arc of these formats. Vinyl offered warmth and ritual—the act of placing the needle, flipping sides, experiencing the album as intended. But it had drawbacks: bulk, susceptibility to warping, scratches, and the need for careful handling. Cassettes enabled homemade mixtapes and portability in cars, but their quality degraded. CDs felt like liberation when they emerged. Philips and Sony standardized the 12 cm disc to fit Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony entirely, about 74 minutes. The technology used laser reading for error correction, making it robust for travel. You could carry dozens in a slim case. I loved loading them into the car player and having on-demand music without internet or subscriptions.¹⁰

Then the market shifted dramatically. Streaming services offered convenience and unlimited access, but at the cost of true ownership. Apple Music has an enormous catalog—I appreciate the discovery aspect—but I despise the model. You pay monthly forever. Stop paying, and your library disappears. The same happened with movies. Remember rushing to buy the new release on DVD or Blu-ray and building a collection? Now it’s Netflix, HBO Max, or whichever service holds rights that month. Physical sales plummeted as streaming cannibalized them. Yet when content rotates off platforms, demand for ownership spikes again.¹¹

The push toward renting everything ties into deeper political desires for control. Centralized powers—global forums, big tech, financial interests—prefer recurring revenue and dependency. If you own it, you have sovereignty. If you rent, they can change terms, censor content, raise prices, or cut you off. This mirrors broader patterns I’ve seen in politics, aerospace, and culture. In The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I discuss self-reliance and imposing your will on circumstances rather than leasing your life from others.¹² The same principle applies here. Look at the excitement around SpaceX’s IPO. People want to own a piece of something real, not just subscribe to access.¹³

During RV travels with my wife across the country—to the Space Coast, Gettysburg, or anywhere the road takes us—I’m reminded why ownership matters. There’s nothing like having your own bed, your own refrigerator with cold drinks and snacks, your own clean bathroom instead of relying on gas station facilities. You rent the campsite, but your stuff is yours. It provides a sense of autonomy even while moving. The same goes for books. I own physical copies. I like touching them, flipping pages, keeping them in my personal library. Downloading or using Audible has its convenience, but it lacks permanence. I’m not a fan of leasing intellectual or cultural space.¹⁴

Power outages here in Ohio—whether from big storms rolling up from the Gulf, tornadoes, or winter events—highlight another advantage. With a generator, you could still play a DVD, Blu-ray, or CD. Streaming dies without connectivity. Personal libraries provide resilience. Vinyl’s comeback, despite being larger and more fragile than CDs, shows the depth of this desire. Records take up space, can warp or scratch, and require more care, yet people buy them enthusiastically.¹⁵

The speed of change amazes me. My car still has a working CD player, yet new vehicles rarely include them. Manufacturers followed the connectivity and subscription trend. But the backlash is real. Who still makes CDs? Companies like Disc Makers and Bison Disc continue short-run and replication services for artists and collectors. Demand persists for reissues, independent releases, and audiophile formats. Given vinyl’s proof of concept, a modest CD revival is plausible—especially for durability, portability, and offline use. Collectors value the format’s sound quality and convenience over vinyl’s ritual.¹⁶

This hunger extends beyond music to the core of human nature. Americans especially cherish property rights. We want our homes, cars, guns, private spaces, and cultural artifacts that reflect our identity. Progressive globalist ideas of shared everything clash with that reality. Socialism’s communal experiments fail because they ignore our drive to build legacies. Music is deeply personal. The songs that shaped your youth, the albums discovered on your own—they become part of you. Renting them feels like renting your memories.¹⁷

I explained all this to that young person over lunch. They had recently bought a vinyl album at Target and were intrigued by the concept of true ownership. CDs seemed novel again. It’s not about rejecting technology—streaming has its place for discovery and variety. But the default shouldn’t be perpetual rental. Ownership provides resilience, no algorithmic control over your playlist, and the satisfaction of pointing to a shelf and saying, “That’s mine.” During family trips, we play our own music without signal drops or interruptions from navigation or texts.¹⁸

The WEF vision assumes adaptation to renting. Evidence suggests otherwise. Vinyl’s 19-year growth streak, physical media’s persistence, and resistance to woke content in Hollywood all signal a market shift. Big tech and entertainment pushed subscription models and certain narratives, alienating audiences. People retreat to what they can control.¹⁹

In my own life, this philosophy runs deep—from early experiences in Cincinnati to aerospace program management. Consultants and rented expertise come and go, but teams that own the mission endure—the same with culture. We want music, books, and stories that belong to us. In The Politics of Heaven, I explore these threads of spiritual, cultural, and economic sovereignty. Ownership isn’t greed; it’s dignity and agency.²⁰

There’s room for balance. Physical formats like vinyl and CDs offer tangible connection. Digital provides access. But forcing everything into rental models driven by political control rather than pure market demand has backfired. The serpent of ownership uncoils in the face of forced renting. People choose it every time they buy a record, a CD, a book, or build their own space. That’s the real future—not a 2030 rented utopia, but timeless human nature asserting itself.

I still pop in a CD when I drive. It works perfectly. And it’s mine. That feeling matters more than any subscription pitch. As I dictate this overlooking the Great Miami River or from the RV, I’m reminded how personal autonomy anchors everything. The market is speaking loudly. Vinyl proves it. CDs could follow. And humans will keep choosing what they can truly call their own—making tomorrow a better day through ownership, not rental.²¹

Footnotes

¹ World Economic Forum / Ida Auken essay “Welcome to 2030” (2016).

² Personal observation from recent interaction.

³ Philips/Sony CD development history, 1979–1982 standardization.

⁴ CD advantages for portability and reliability.

⁵ Retail observations at Walmart, Cracker Barrel, and Target.

⁶ RIAA 2025 Year-End Report: Vinyl $1B+, 46.8M units vs. CDs 29.5M.

⁷ Gen Z/millennial trends in tactile media.

⁸ WEF ownership predictions and criticism.

⁹ Family library of CDs.

¹⁰ Technical history of CD format.

¹¹ Streaming impact on physical media sales.

¹² The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business Principles.

¹³ SpaceX IPO and ownership desire.

¹⁴ RV travel and book ownership reflections.

¹⁵ Vinyl drawbacks vs. appeal.

¹⁶ Current CD manufacturing (Disc Makers, etc.) and revival potential.

¹⁷ Human nature and property rights.

¹⁸ Conversation with a young person.

¹⁹ Cultural and market backlash.

²⁰ Ties to The Politics of Heaven.

²¹ Closing personal philosophy.

Bibliography

•  Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). 2025 Year-End Recorded Music Revenue Report.

•  World Economic Forum. Ida Auken, “Welcome to 2030” (2016).

•  Philips/Sony historical documentation on CD development.

•  Rich Hoffman, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and The Politics of Heaven.

•  Industry reports on physical media trends (Disc Makers, retail observations).

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 Way to Win for Republicans: Voters like people who fight back, not people who play nice

There is a growing controversy surrounding Amy Acton’s campaign as it attempts to distance itself from the COVID-era lockdown decisions that defined her tenure as Ohio’s health director. That strategy faces a fundamental problem: the record is well known, and voters remember. Governor Mike DeWine may have held executive authority, but Acton was not a passive figure—she was the central public voice and policy driver behind the state’s pandemic response. Day after day, she appeared before Ohioans, advocating aggressive mitigation measures, including shutdowns, mask requirements, and restrictions on gatherings. Those policies were not abstract recommendations; they were implemented in real time under the administration she helped guide.

Attempts to shift responsibility now—whether onto the governor or broader circumstances—risk undermining credibility. Acton was appointed to provide expert guidance, and by all observable accounts, DeWine relied heavily on that guidance. In that sense, the administration’s decisions were inseparable from her influence. The argument that these policies were solely political or that they emerged independently of her leadership is difficult to reconcile with the public record of her daily briefings, national media presence, and close alignment with federal health leadership at the time.

Politically, the sensitivity of this issue suggests vulnerability. The campaign’s effort to reframe or soften Acton’s role indicates awareness that the lockdown period remains deeply polarizing, particularly among voters who experienced economic disruption, job loss, or prolonged social restrictions. Efforts to draw comparisons between Acton and her opponents, including Vivek Ramaswamy, may reflect a broader defensive strategy—one intended to diffuse criticism rather than directly confront it. But such comparisons also risk backfiring if voters perceive them as evasive.

Another point of criticism centers on Acton’s departure from her role in 2020. She resigned amid mounting public pressure and protests, at a time when tensions around lockdown policies were intensifying. For critics, this moment reinforces a narrative of incomplete accountability—that she helped shape sweeping policies and then exited before the long-term consequences fully unfolded. Supporters may interpret her resignation differently, but politically, the timing continues to factor into how her leadership is judged in retrospect.  She is very vulnerable to the lockdown issue.  She dragged Jon Husted into her mess, as well as DeWine.  They were too nice to say no to her. David Pepper and the national Democrats think Republicans won’t expose her because of complicity.  Jon Husted will not take friendly fire if Republicans destroy Amy Acton with her lockdowns.  It’s easy to defend.  Her stupid policies were some of the dumbest things ever to be done in politics. And she completely owns it.

I was out in the driveway the other day, swapping tires on the RV after blowing a couple on our recent trip, sockets in hand, going back and forth to the garage. The rain was coming down, so I had WLW on for some background noise 12 to 3 on Saturday afternoon, right before the Cardinals game. I didn’t catch every word. I was in and out, focused on the work, but I heard enough. It was Kim Brew hosting, with Jim Renacci as a guest, discussing Ohio politics, John Husted, Vivek Ramaswamy, and the path forward for Republicans. 

What I heard didn’t surprise me, but it reinforced exactly why I’ve distanced myself from that station over the years. They used to have more Tea Party energy, real conservative voices in the programming and talent. But as Clear Channel evolved into the corporate middle-road sports-and-news machine, the anti-Trump corporate types gained the upper hand. Cunningham hasn’t been outright hostile, but Scott Sloan and others have leaned that way for a long time. Even Tucker Carlson types shifted toward stronger support for Trump over the years, but the station’s overall direction felt like it was cracking down on anything too disruptive to the ad-revenue model. I usually keep a radio on in the garage while I’m working on projects around the house—cars, the RV, whatever needs fixing. I catch snippets, but I don’t live by them. That Saturday was no different. 

They were discussing campaigns, and the guest was pushing the idea that candidates like Vivek and Jon need to distance themselves from Trump because he’s “baggage.” That was one of the dumbest pieces of advice I’ve heard in years. I’ve seen this game up close. I came out in favor of Jim Renacci in his races. I told him, straight after a Miami University event where he debated Sherrod Brown, that you left too much on the table. You were too nice. You didn’t hit hard enough on the things that matter—attack, attack, attack. That’s how you give voters something to show up for on Election Day. Not nice-guy politics. Voters don’t reward playing defense or hoping for fair coverage. They reward fighters. 

I remember sitting down for lunch with Bernie Moreno during his campaign. Smart young guy, full of energy. First question out of his mouth: “What do you think about Sherrod Brown?” I told him the truth. Bernie listened better than some. Trump endorsed him even from political exile at one point, and Bernie won. That’s the model. Trump showed the country you don’t win by playing the corporate media game, spending millions on traditional ad slots, and hoping the gatekeepers treat you fairly. He built his own platform, dominated podcasts, went directly to the people on YouTube, Rumble, X—free or low-cost reach that bypasses the old gatekeepers. 

That’s exactly what I heard critiqued on WLW that day. The narrative was that Republicans are in trouble in the polls, so they better spend more on ad revenue with stations like this one to close the gap. It’s the same old revenue-driven thinking. I know how radio works from the inside—I bought ads, I even hired Bill Cunningham back in the 90s as a spokesman for a project. They’ve got the big sales floor, the WLW 55KRC on the desk, and cubicles full of people chasing revenue. The belief is that if you don’t outspend Democrats on their airwaves, you won’t get fair play. But that’s nonsense. Trump broke the mold. He won without playing their game. He attacked relentlessly, defined the opposition, and created his own media reality. Elon Musk’s changes to X further eroded the old suppression model. Corporate media wants you scared into buying their slots. 

Look at the current Ohio landscape as we head toward November 2026. Vivek Ramaswamy crushed the Republican primary for governor with over 82% of the vote. Amy Acton, the former Health Director under DeWine during COVID, won the Democratic side unopposed. Polls have been tight—some showing Acton with a slight edge or dead heat, others giving Ramaswamy the advantage. But the fundamentals favor aggressive conservatism. 

Acton’s record is vulnerable. She was central to the lockdowns—closing schools and businesses, restricting gatherings, and even pushing to postpone the primary. Protesters showed up at her house. Republicans remember the economic pain, the overreach, the mutiny against the restrictions. She left the position in mid-2020 amid backlash. There’s plenty to attack there: the human cost of those policies, the constitutional questions, the long-term damage to kids’ education and small businesses. Playing nice or treating her as some neutral public servant won’t cut it. Voters respond to reminders of why these approaches failed. 

Jon Husted (often referenced in these discussions) has his own path, whether in the Senate or in other roles, but the principle is the same. Distancing from Trump is terrible advice. Trump remains enormously popular with the base. People still love him for what he represents—fighting the establishment, delivering results, refusing to bow. Running away from that energy is how you lose enthusiasm. Embrace it. Remind voters why the alternatives are worse. 

My friend Senator George Lang is a perfect example of what works. He’s won repeatedly in his district by being aggressive when challenged. He’s a nice guy personally, but he doesn’t hesitate to go after opponents metaphorically—hard. That’s how you deter challenges and win decisively. I’ve watched him rise because he understands the arena. Same with Trump: attacked from every direction, impeachments, lawfare, assassination attempts, and he keeps fighting back. That resilience resonates. Jim Renacci, for all his strengths, played too nice against Sherrod Brown, and it showed. I told him as much in the parking lot after that debate. You can’t leave domestic issues, policy failures, or character questions on the table. 

Corporate radio personalities like the ones I heard that day know how to stay employed. They tow a line that keeps the ad dollars flowing and the golf invitations coming from the “titans of industry” crowd. Many in corporate media have migrated toward softer, more socialist-friendly positions because control through authority and supply chains appeals to the management mindset. They want to be like Fox or MSNBC in their own way—mouthpieces that don’t rock the boat too much. Podcasts and independent platforms threaten that. That’s why you hear the suppression polls and the fear-mongering about Republican chances unless they buy more airtime. 

I’ve lived this for decades in Butler County and the Cincinnati area. From my time as a young man handling logistics in some rough circles—Newport and Sharonville—learning coded signals, plausible deniability, and how power really operates, to my days deeply involved in downtown Cincinnati politics and infrastructure projects. I’ve seen the game from multiple angles. The lesson is consistent: nice guys finish last when the other side plays for keeps. Democrats attack relentlessly. They use lawfare, media allies, every tool—Republicans who mirror that energy and define the contrast win.

The data backs the fighter approach. Trump’s 2024 victory, Bernie Moreno’s success against Brown, the enthusiasm in grassroots circles—these come from unapologetic messaging. In Ohio, with its mix of suburban, rural, and working-class voters, reminding people of the failures of lockdown policies, high taxes, and education issues in places like Lakota, as well as the broader cultural drift, works. Vivek brings energy, business success, and a willingness to challenge the status quo. Pair that with relentless attacks on the opposition’s record, and the path is clear. 

This is bigger than one radio segment. It’s about the shift in media and politics. Traditional outlets are losing ground because people see through the bias. Podcasts like mine, independent voices, direct communication—these are where real conversations happen. I dictate these essays as first-person narratives because that’s authentic. No scripts, no corporate filters. Just truth as I’ve lived it, backed by history, personal experience, and observation.

My book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business lays out similar principles: impose your will on circumstances, prepare relentlessly, strike decisively. The same ethos applies to politics. The whip I carry as a symbol—discipline, precision, deterrence—fits here too. You don’t win by being soft. You win by being ready.

As we move through 2026, I’ll keep helping where I can—locally in Butler County, supporting strong candidates who understand the fight. Republicans don’t need to defend or chase poll-driven ad spend endlessly. They need to attack the vulnerabilities: Acton’s COVID record, the broader Democrat policy failures, the corruption and two-tier systems we’ve seen. Democrats haven’t been “too smart to get caught”; they’ve benefited from institutional protection and media cover. Expose it.

Don’t listen to the Saturday afternoon analysis that tells you to run from Trump or play nice. Attack. Destroy the arguments. Give voters a reason to show up. That’s how Vivek Ramaswamy wins the governorship, how Jon Husted and others secure their seats, and how Ohio stays on the right track. Trump proved it nationally. George Lang proves it locally. History proves it repeatedly.

I’ve shared these thoughts before in various forms—on the podcast, in writings, in conversations with candidates. The response from people who get it is strong. The Overmanwarrior approach isn’t about blind aggression; it’s about moral clarity, preparation, and the will to impose order on chaos. Whether it’s troubleshooting a rocket launch with my grandson in bad weather or navigating political storms, the mindset is the same: adapt, strike, prevail.

Corporate media will keep pushing the narrative that fits their business model. Ignore it. The future belongs to those who build their own platforms and fight without apology. That’s the lesson from that rainy Saturday in the driveway, and it’s the one Ohio Republicans should heed as they head into November.

Further Reading / Bibliography (partial, expandable):

•  Ohio Secretary of State election results and polls.

•  Coverage from Ohio Capital Journal, AP, Wikipedia summaries on candidates.

•  Trump campaign analyses, Moreno Senate race reporting.

•  Personal works: The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, Tail of the Dragon.

•  Broader: Books on political strategy, corporate media influence, COVID policy impacts.

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 aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.

He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.

Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events

The Safety Marxists and The Right Stuff: Don’t let the New Glenn Explosion Slow Down Space Development

The explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket on the evening of May 28, 2026, at Launch Complex 36 in Cape Canaveral Space Force Station sent a massive fireball into the Florida night sky, visible for miles across the Space Coast. The incident occurred during a static-fire test of the vehicle’s seven BE-4 methane engines as preparations advanced for the planned launch of Amazon Project Kuiper satellites. No injuries were reported, and the payload satellites had not yet been integrated, yet the blast destroyed the first stage, damaged the second stage, and inflicted significant harm on the launch infrastructure, including collapsed lightning towers and compromised ground systems. 

This event, while dramatic and costly in the short term, fits into a long pattern of challenges that have defined human spaceflight from its earliest days. The Space Coast, with its rich history of ambition and setback, absorbed another chapter in that story. Observers familiar with the area—its restaurants, beaches, and the electric atmosphere that builds before night launches—could imagine the shock felt by those gathered on Cocoa Beach with lawn chairs, expecting a spectacular light show but witnessing an uncontrolled conflagration instead. The infrastructure at Cape Canaveral has always accounted for such possibilities by deliberately spacing the pads, allowing continued operations even amid localized damage. Indeed, within hours, SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 from a nearby complex, underscoring the resilience built into modern commercial space operations. 

The development of heavy-lift rockets has never been without risk. Blue Origin’s New Glenn, standing roughly 320 feet tall and designed as a reusable two-stage vehicle powered by innovative BE-4 engines, represents a serious contender in the emerging space economy. Its setback comes as the company works to close the gap with established players while contributing to NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the Moon and establish a sustained presence there. Historical parallels abound. In the 1960s, the Apollo program endured multiple failures, including the tragic Apollo 1 fire that claimed three astronauts’ lives during a ground test. Engineers learned from those events, iterating rapidly under intense pressure. Similarly, the Space Shuttle era saw the 1986 Challenger disaster and Columbia’s loss in 2003, both rooted in technical vulnerabilities exposed under operational stress. These tragedies slowed momentum temporarily but ultimately reinforced the necessity of pushing boundaries rather than retreating into excessive caution. 

The phrase “The Right Stuff,” popularized by Tom Wolfe’s account of the Mercury Seven astronauts, captures the blend of courage, technical skill, and calculated risk that propelled early space exploration. Yet that era also demonstrated that safety in its purest form—zero tolerance for any anomaly—would have halted progress entirely. Test pilots and engineers accepted that prototypes and new systems carried inherent dangers. Leaks in propellant lines, valve failures, and unexpected combustion events were common during the frantic pace of the Space Race. Today’s commercial sector echoes this reality. SpaceX itself experienced numerous Falcon 1 failures before achieving orbital success and endured Starship test explosions that became public spectacles before rapid iterations led to operational reliability. These events highlight a core truth: progress in extreme engineering environments demands tolerance for learning through failure, especially when no crew is aboard.

In the case of the New Glenn incident, the anomaly likely stemmed from complexities in the fueling and pressurization systems—long runs of piping that transfer cryogenic propellants under high pressure. Such setups involve numerous seams, valves, and sensors where even minor imperfections can cascade. Static fire tests exist precisely to uncover these issues on the ground, far preferable to in-flight catastrophes. Blue Origin had achieved prior successes with earlier New Glenn vehicles, demonstrating the maturity of much of the architecture. The company’s track record before this event showed methodical advancement, free of major public mishaps. The response from leadership emphasized thorough investigation and a commitment to recovery, a stance aligned with the industry’s need to maintain cadence. 

Broader implications extend far beyond a single launchpad. The space economy promises transformative growth. Estimates suggest that extracting rare minerals from the Moon, asteroids, and Mars could unlock trillions in new value. Zero-gravity manufacturing offers advantages in producing flawless crystals, advanced alloys, and pharmaceuticals that are impossible to replicate efficiently on Earth. Orbital facilities, potentially spanning hundreds of thousands of square feet and serviced by autonomous systems, could host heavy industry where massive components are maneuvered with minimal force. Power generation from solar arrays in continuous sunlight, combined with vacuum conditions ideal for certain processes, positions space as the next frontier for economic expansion. Blue Origin, SpaceX, and others are laying infrastructure for this vision, with New Glenn intended to complement smaller vehicles in delivering heavy cargo for lunar bases and satellite constellations.

Critics who view such explosions as reasons to slow or more strictly regulate the sector often overlook historical precedent and economic logic. Overly restrictive safety regimes, sometimes influenced by broader societal trends favoring precaution over innovation, risk stifling the very dynamism required for breakthroughs. During the COVID-19 period, widespread shutdowns illustrated how prioritizing absolute safety can contract economic activity. Similar dynamics appear in debates over infrastructure projects, energy development, and now space. Proponents of rapid iteration argue that autonomous systems and robotic precursors should shoulder initial risks, allowing humans to follow once reliability improves. This approach mirrors early aviation and automotive industries, where rapid prototyping and field failures drove safety improvements over time.

The competition between Blue Origin and SpaceX exemplifies healthy market forces. New Glenn’s development has been watched closely as a potential counterbalance, encouraging faster innovation across the board. Setbacks for one player do not equate to industry-wide failure; rather, they test organizational resilience. SpaceX’s ability to launch the day after the New Glenn event demonstrated asset isolation and a rapid operational tempo. Blue Origin possesses additional vehicles in various stages of assembly. Activating parallel production lines, implementing extended shifts where feasible, and focusing engineering resources on root cause analysis could help compress recovery timelines. Historical examples support this: After Virgin Galactic’s 2014 SpaceShipTwo accident, the company rebuilt, iterated, and advanced toward commercial operations. Similar recoveries followed other high-profile incidents.

Calls to maintain schedules for Artemis-related missions reflect urgency around lunar return timelines targeted for the late 2020s. Delaying hardware availability could cascade into broader program slips. Sustained public and investor enthusiasm requires visible progress—regular news of launches, landings, and new capabilities. Filing necessary regulatory documentation with the FAA promptly, conducting transparent reviews, and returning to test campaigns signal commitment. The Space Coast community, long accustomed to the rhythms of launch windows, benefits from this continuity. Local economies tied to tourism, engineering talent, and supply chains thrive when activity remains high.

Robotics and artificial intelligence will play central roles in mitigating human risk during expansion. Tesla Optimus-style systems and advanced autonomy can handle hazardous assembly, refueling, and initial exploration tasks. Concerns about job displacement on Earth—exacerbated by wage policies that reduce hiring incentives—find partial resolution in new high-skill opportunities created by space infrastructure. Staffing orbital manufacturing would require oversight roles, maintenance expertise, and creative problem-solving that complement rather than replace human labor. The vision of floating facilities between Earth and Moon, processing lunar regolith into construction materials or extracting platinum-group metals, represents a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity that rewards those who move decisively.

Critics sometimes celebrate such explosions as brakes on capitalism in space, preferring centralized control or slower pacing aligned with terrestrial priorities. Yet the data suggests otherwise. Reusable architectures have already driven launch costs down dramatically, enabling constellations like Starlink that deliver global connectivity. Further reductions through heavy-lift vehicles will accelerate science, communications, Earth observation, and eventual off-world settlement. Mining asteroids could supply resources without the terrestrial environmental trade-offs associated with some mining operations. The long-term payoff justifies accepting manageable risks during development phases.

Learning from past programs remains essential. NASA’s early days involved accepting higher failure probabilities to achieve national goals. Private industry now carries much of that mantle, operating under market accountability that incentivizes efficiency. Blue Origin’s facility near the Space Coast showcases impressive engineering infrastructure. Leveraging that base, combined with lessons from the recent anomaly, positions the team for a rebound. Recommendations include prioritizing redundant systems in propellant handling, enhancing sensor density for early leak detection, and maintaining aggressive parallel development of follow-on vehicles.

The cultural dimension cannot be ignored. Narratives framing innovation as inherently dangerous sometimes serve to justify regulatory expansion rather than technical solutions. Balancing legitimate safety with progress requires distinguishing between reckless disregard and the informed risk inherent to frontier work. Test pilots of the 1950s and 1960s embodied the latter; modern rocket engineers continue that tradition. Public fascination with space endures because of visible achievement, not perfect safety records. Night launches lighting up the sky over Cocoa Beach remind onlookers of humanity’s reach beyond the planet.

In reflecting on the New Glenn event, several practical steps emerge for stakeholders. First, conduct a swift yet comprehensive investigation and share non-proprietary findings to benefit the industry. Second, repair and upgrade the launch complex while constructing contingency capabilities. Third, accelerate manufacturing of replacement hardware through multi-shift operations where workforce conditions allow. Fourth, engage regulators constructively to resume testing promptly. Fifth, communicate progress transparently to maintain confidence among partners like NASA and Amazon. These actions align with best practices observed in successful recovery cases.

The space economy’s trajectory points toward exponential growth. Initial billions in revenue from launches and services will expand into trillions as resource utilization scales. Manufacturing in microgravity could revolutionize materials science, producing superior semiconductors, fiber optics, and medical isotopes. Robotic precursors will establish outposts, followed by human crews supported by advanced life-support and propulsion systems. Starship-class vehicles are expected to serve as foundational transport, with complementary systems like New Glenn providing specialized heavy-lift capacity. Competition drives down costs and spurs ingenuity.

Skeptics who hoped the explosion would dampen momentum underestimate the sector’s adaptability. The isolation of launch infrastructure, proven redundancies, and private capital’s risk tolerance all favor continuation. For those invested in humanity’s multi-planetary future, the message is clear: analyze, adapt, and advance. The fireworks of May 28, 2026, while startling, illuminated both the challenges and the enduring allure of reaching for the stars.

Expanding on historical context, one must consider the Soviet N1 rocket program during the Moon race. Multiple catastrophic explosions on the pad during static tests delayed ambitions but provided data that informed later designs, even if political factors ultimately curtailed the effort. American Saturn V development faced engine instabilities and structural issues, which were resolved through iterative ground testing. Each failure refined understanding of combustion dynamics, materials under extreme loads, and control systems. Modern simulations and sensors offer greater insight, yet physical testing remains irreplaceable for uncovering subtle integration problems.

Economically, the multiplier effects of space activity extend deep into supply chains. Florida’s Space Coast employs thousands directly and indirectly. Tourism spikes around launches, while high-tech manufacturing attracts talent. A slowdown would ripple through these ecosystems. Maintaining tempo supports broader goals like climate monitoring satellites, disaster response, and technological spin-offs that improve daily life on Earth.

Philosophically, the tension between safety absolutism and exploratory daring echoes debates in other domains. Aviation advanced despite early crashes. Nuclear power improved safety records through experience despite accidents. Space demands similar maturity. Overemphasis on “safety tyrants”—those prioritizing zero incidents above all—can paralyze organizations, leading to bureaucratic bloat and opportunity costs. Instead, layered risk management, in which ground tests absorb early failures, allows for safe progression toward crewed missions.

Blue Origin’s path forward involves embodying that balanced approach. With vehicles in production, experienced teams, and strong backing, recovery is feasible within compressed timelines. Targeting return-to-flight before year’s end, while supporting Artemis milestones, would demonstrate resolve. The industry watches not just for technical fixes but for cultural signals: whether setbacks become excuses for delay or catalysts for acceleration.

In the end, the New Glenn explosion of late May 2026 joins a distinguished lineage of events that test character and capability. Those who treat it as temporary, learn its lessons, and press onward will shape the coming era of space industrialization. The fireball may have lit the sky briefly, but sustained effort will illuminate a future of expanded human presence beyond Earth. The Space Coast, with its resilient vibe and storied past, stands ready for the next chapter.

1.  Details drawn from contemporary reporting on the May 28, 2026, static fire anomaly.

2.  Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (1979), for cultural framing of risk in aerospace.

3.  NASA historical records on Apollo and Shuttle programs.

4.  Industry analyses of reusable rocket economics, including SpaceX flight cadence data.

5.  Projections on space resource utilization from various economic studies (e.g., asteroid mining valuations).

Bibliography

•  Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979.

•  NASA. “Apollo Program Summary.” Historical archives.

•  Spaceflight Now and Reuters coverage of the 2026 New Glenn event.

•  Economic reports on space mining potential (various sources, 2020s).

•  Virgin Galactic post-accident recovery documentation.

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 aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.

He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.

Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.

My friend with Dirty Shoes: Why America Thrives Through Its Wealth Builders and What Happens When Sudden Money Meets Human Nature

I have spent years observing the world around me in places like Middletown, Ohio, and reflecting on the stark differences between those who build lasting wealth and those who chase fleeting windfalls. The recent trip by President Trump to China, with a plane full of American billionaires, brought these observations into sharp focus for me. It was not just a diplomatic visit; it was a demonstration of economic strength, showcasing the very people who drive innovation, jobs, and growth. Critics on social media and in political circles often decry such figures, calling for higher taxes, wealth redistribution, and policies that would “take from the rich to give to us.” Yet, my experiences with friends, family, and neighbors who have won big at nearby casinos tell a different story—one of human nature, discipline, and the enduring value of creators over consumers. 

Trump’s journey to Beijing included leaders like Elon Musk of Tesla, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Tim Cook of Apple, and others whose combined influence represents trillions in market value and countless jobs. China rolled out the red carpet in ways it hadn’t for previous administrations, precisely because it understands its reliance on American enterprise. China is a paper tiger, but its growth model depends heavily on foreign investment, technology transfer, and access to markets that value efficiency and scale. With a population far larger than America’s roughly 330 million, China has pursued manufacturing and infrastructure on a massive scale—jobs many in the West avoid—but it still seeks the dynamism that billionaires bring. By bringing these executives on Air Force One, Trump signaled leverage: American policy shapes opportunities, and those who generate wealth are key to expanding economies on both sides. 

This isn’t abstract theory. I know wealthy individuals personally, and their habits stand in contrast to stories I hear at the local casino. One friend, a multimillionaire in construction and development, always shows up with dirty shoes and calloused hands. He works the job sites himself and oversees projects that build condominiums in Florida, where snowbirds live comfortably for months each year, dining out nightly without worry. His wealth cascades: employees get steady pay, suppliers thrive, and retirees enjoy the fruits of his risk-taking. He doesn’t chase flashy displays; he reinvests to create more. This pattern repeats among true wealth creators. They treat money as a tool for expansion, not a ticket to indulgence. 

Contrast this with lottery and casino winners I have known. Near my home, the slots and tables draw crowds hoping for that life-changing hit. Some walk away with $15,000, $25,000, or even $100,000 checks. The stories that follow are depressingly familiar. One acquaintance won around $100,000 from insurance collections tied to a payout and quit his second job immediately. Overtime vanished. Within two years, the money disappeared—spent on cars, parties, and “trophy” living. He was back asking for help, bouncing checks, and debating between groceries and bills very soon. Another hit $15,000 on slots one weekend, celebrated by drinking and playing more, then bought big TVs and turned his basement into a “man cave” costing tens of thousands. Months later, broke again, he returned to the casino chasing the next jackpot. These aren’t isolated cases. I have seen inheritance recipients or family windfall beneficiaries do the same: quit work, lounge in front of daytime TV, blow through savings on impulse buys, and end up worse off. 

Statistics bear this out, adding sobering color. While the often-cited “70% of lottery winners go broke” figure has been debunked as originating from unverified claims at a 2001 symposium (the National Endowment for Financial Education later clarified it lacked research backing), more reliable data from the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards indicates that nearly one-third of lottery winners eventually declare bankruptcy—higher than the general population. Many face this within 3-5 years. A MIT study on Florida lottery winners who were previously financially distressed found that winning only postponed bankruptcy rather than preventing it. Stories abound: Bud Post won $16.2 million in Pennsylvania in 1988 but was in debt within a year, hounded by family (including a murder-for-hire plot from his brother), and died nearly penniless on food stamps. Suzanne Mullins won $4.2 million in Virginia, yet lost it to loans and medical bills. Callie Rogers in the UK squandered her winnings on parties and surgery. The pattern is consumption without creation. 

Why does this happen so frequently? Psychology offers insights. Sudden wealth often meets unprepared minds shaped by scarcity thinking or addictive patterns. Without the discipline forged through years of earning and risking, money flows out faster than it came in. Social pressures mount—friends and relatives appear with hands out. Status symbols beckon: Corvettes, luxury trips, home upgrades that balloon in cost. I have watched people prioritize PlayStation subscriptions over groceries or blow windfalls on fleeting pleasures because their personalities lean toward immediate gratification rather than delayed compounding. Behavioral economists note that windfall recipients frequently exhibit higher marginal propensity to consume on non-essentials, lacking the habits of those who built wealth incrementally. 

Wealth creators operate differently. They exhibit traits such as future orientation, calculated risk-taking, and a focus on value generation. Elon Musk, for instance, pours resources into companies that push boundaries in electric vehicles, space, and AI—ventures that employ thousands and spawn entire ecosystems. CEOs, in general, create wealth for others: shareholders, employees, and communities. Studies on high-net-worth individuals show they often maintain hands-on involvement, reinvest heavily, and avoid lifestyle inflation that erodes capital. One analysis of affluent versus high-net-worth investors found the latter display confidence but channel it into ongoing projects rather than consumption. My multimillionaire friend with dirty shoes embodies this: he builds condos that house comfortable retirements, creates jobs that support families, and sustains businesses that keep local economies humming. Billionaires scale this principle globally. 

This distinction matters profoundly for policy. Socialism’s appeal—confiscating from the rich to redistribute—ignores these realities. Taking from creators to give to those with “bankrupt personalities,” as I call the chronic consumers, doesn’t produce prosperity; it funds more consumption. Parasitic tendencies, where individuals rely on government transfers or windfalls without building, lead to dependency. Casinos illustrate the microcosm: big payouts followed by returns to low-wage jobs or pleas for help. Government as the ultimate casino—promising jackpots through entitlements—breeds similar outcomes on a societal scale. Democrats and figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez often rail against billionaires, but history shows societies thrive with more of them, not fewer. America’s edge lies in its ability to foster creators who expand the pie rather than fight over slices. 

China’s economic story reinforces this. Since reforms in 1979, it has averaged nearly 10% annual GDP growth for decades, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty through exports, investment, and manufacturing. Yet it remains hungry for American capital and know-how. Its model involves state direction, lower labor standards in some sectors, and a willingness to handle the “jobs we don’t want” in the U.S.—polluting industries, assembly lines, and resource extraction. With far more people, China can sustain volume, but innovation and high-value creation still draw from Western partnerships. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been crucial; inflows reached highs amid global shifts. Trump’s delegation signaled that U.S. billionaires hold keys to further integration if terms favor American interests. China respects this leverage because its growth, while impressive, depends on external engines. U.S. GDP per capita remains far higher, reflecting productivity and the rule of law that reward creators. 

We need more millionaires and billionaires, not envy-driven policies to hobble them. More CEOs mean more opportunities cascading downward. Taxing success punitively discourages the risk-taking that built the Tesla and Apple ecosystems and construction empires. Instead, celebrate the dirty-shoes ethic: hard work, reinvestment, hands-on leadership. My observations align with broader patterns—materialists focused on status often report lower long-term satisfaction, while builders find purpose in creation. 

Expanding on the pitfalls of lotteries reveals deeper human frailties. Beyond bankruptcy stats, winners face family estrangement, depression, substance issues, and scams. One study noted neighbors of winners increase borrowing and bankruptcies due to social comparison—keeping up with sudden displays strains others. This “lottery curse” echoes in inheritances: sudden money without earned wisdom evaporates. In contrast, self-made wealth correlates with better management because it embeds lessons of scarcity, effort, and compounding. 

Consider Florida’s snowbirds again. Many live in multimillion-dollar condos, dining lavishly on seemingly endless income without daily grinds. Who enables this? Developers like my friend, whose projects multiply value. Scaled up, billionaires do the same nationally and internationally. They generate tax revenue far exceeding most—Elon Musk reportedly pays enormous sums—while funding innovations that improve lives: cheaper energy, better tech, and medical advances. Criticizing them as “greedy” overlooks their role as job creators and engines of opportunity. 

Critics pushing redistribution often overlook the destruction of incentives. If the government seizes wealth for “the people,” who becomes the new creator? Parasites—those unable or unwilling to manage resources—consume without replenishing. I have seen it locally: second-job quitters, inheritance squanderers, entitlement dependents. They form a constituency drawn to promises of free money, mirroring casino addicts chasing the next hit. America’s strength is its culture of aspiration, where anyone can climb by creating value. With only 300+ million people, we punch above our weight in GDP through productivity, not sheer numbers. Encouraging more creators expands this. 

Trump’s visit to China highlighted mutual dependence. China outpaces in raw growth metrics at times due to demographics and policy, but America’s innovation ecosystem—fueled by risk-takers—remains the gold standard. Billionaires on that plane weren’t just passengers; they represented the market access and expertise China needs. Respect shown to Trump reflected recognition of this dynamic. Previous presidents lacked the same business acumen or the same leverage to display. 

Personal reflection deepens my conviction. Knowing rich people who work relentlessly, rather than casino regulars cycling through highs and lows, convinces me that character and mindset trump circumstance. Wealthy individuals I admire avoid dumb spending; they buy assets that produce more. Consumers chase experiences or goods that depreciate instantly. This gap explains societal outcomes. Policies that reward consumption through redistribution erode the foundation that creators provide. We should aim for more dirty-shoes millionaires building empires, not vilify them.  Lottery winners buying mansions only to lose them to upkeep, or facing lawsuits from sudden “friends,” underscore isolation. One winner built a bowling alley that drained funds. Another’s family demanded shares, leading to rifts. Meanwhile, self-made billionaires like Musk endure scrutiny but persist, creating Starlink, EVs, and reusable rockets that benefit humanity. The asymmetry is clear: creators endure for legacy; windfall recipients often implode due to a lack of preparation. 

The Trump China trip with billionaires celebrated American dynamism. It showed why we need more such figures—CEOs, entrepreneurs, builders—who generate wealth that sustains societies. Lottery lessons warn against easy-money illusions. Human nature favors discipline and creation over consumption. Socialism’s confiscation appeals emotionally but fails practically by ignoring these truths. I advocate protecting and encouraging wealth creators; they make the world go around, enabling comfortable lives for millions. More billionaires mean more opportunity, innovation, and shared prosperity. America’s secret sauce is its producers. Cherish them, emulate their habits, and watch economies flourish. 

Footnotes

1.  Observations on local casino behaviors drawn from personal acquaintance over the years.

2.  Data on bankruptcy rates from CFP Board and related studies.

3.  Details on Trump’s delegation from public reports.

4.  China’s economic reliance on FDI from the World Bank and trade analyses.

5.  Psychological insights from consumer behavior research.

Bibliography

•  Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards reports on lottery winners.

•  MIT study on Florida lottery bankruptcy postponement.

•  NEFE clarification on 70% statistic.

•  CRS Report on China’s Economic Rise.

•  Various Forbes, USA Today, and academic papers on wealth psychology and FDI.

•  Public news on Trump’s China visit (PBS, Fox, etc.).

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 aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.

He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.

Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.