Why the Lakota Levy Passed: Property Taxes, Free Services, and the Psychology of the Renewal

People constantly complain that property taxes are too high. They see the bill, feel the squeeze, and then, when they are handed a clear chance to lower it, a critical number still votes to keep paying. The Lakota bond was the textbook case. An existing set of bonds totaling roughly 2.23 mills was set to expire at the end of 2028. The replacement on the ballot was framed at 2.20 mills, with collection delayed until 2029 so that, on paper, the bond portion of the school tax rate would not rise. District materials and officials repeated “no anticipated increase in the bond tax rate.” That language is true in a narrow sense and misleading in the practical one. A “no” vote would have allowed the old millage to roll off. Homeowners would have seen a reduction once the prior debt was paid. Enough voters could not get their minds around the idea of giving themselves that money back. They had been paying it. They assumed they would keep paying it. The renewal looked safer than the unknown of a lower bill. That is the calculated risk school boards have run for decades. Offer a large prior ask, come back with a “reasonable” number, call it a renewal or replacement, and count on the confusion.

Across southwest Ohio, the pattern held elsewhere. Fairfield’s 1.25 percent earned income tax failed, roughly 52–48 against. Other operating and income-tax measures went down. Only three of twelve school funding questions in the broader region passed. Lakota’s was one of them, and it was the one that could be sold as not raising the current bond rate. The board knew the psychology. A larger request had already failed in 2025. They adjusted the ask, timed the collection after the old bonds expired, secured state construction money that required local approval, and ran the classic public-education play. Statistically, renewals of existing taxes pass more often than brand-new ones for exactly this reason. People treat the status quo as the default. They do not sit down and calculate what happens when the revenue is about to disappear.

Free Babysitting, Public Education, and the Vote for the Status Quo

Many voters want the free service. They want a free place to drop the kids off so they don’t have to pay for it themselves. They want the public education system to keep operating at the scale they have grown used to, even while many of the same people say they resist the ideological content that has crept into it. That tension is real. Plenty of parents do not want their children taught to be losers or to absorb every progressive fashion, yet they still treat the buildings, the bus routes, and the daily childcare as a non-negotiable entitlement. When the choice is presented as “keep paying what you already pay and keep the system running” versus “vote no and the system has to adjust,” enough of them choose the first option. The Lakota resistance made a strong argument for tax reduction. That wasn’t enough to counter the free-stuff instinct and the confusion about how renewals actually work. The liberal-leaning elements that run many of these boards understand the math. They put a number on the ballot that looks more reasonable than the last one, they emphasize that it is a replacement, and they let the statistical confusion do the rest. It is not an accident. It is the mechanism that keeps property-tax revenue flowing so the school system and the related government services continue.

Amy Acton as Governor and the Broader Free-Stuff Message

That local pattern sat inside a larger statewide result. Amy Acton is now the governor-elect. She is the former Ohio Department of Health director who led the early COVID lockdowns. Many people still associate her with those restrictions. Some successfully painted her as the lockdown lady. At the same time, she and the Democratic ticket ran on the language of free stuff, affordability relief, and government services. Plenty of voters, including some who had supported Trump in prior cycles, wanted the free babysitting, the free or reduced costs, and the sense that someone else would absorb the expense. They did not want to hear the detailed argument about what public education actually costs or how a different administration might have constrained those costs. Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign was associated with Trump and with wealth. Democrats successfully painted him as a rich guy who did not care about the cost of bread. The oil-refinery capacity issues, the price effects of the Iranian conflict that began in late February 2026, and the failure to put sustained public pressure on energy companies never became the dominant message. Gas prices stayed high. People felt it. The media complex that wanted to preserve a hostile Islamic regime in Iran for its own reasons, and that had no interest in a quick resolution that would have undercut the narrative, did not cover the story the way it needed to be covered. Trump’s administration had the war; the war did not resolve as quickly as some hoped because the Iranian people, facing a regime that arrives at night and removes dissidents, did not take the final step of overthrow. The costs lingered. Republicans at the state level did not get a simple, repeated message across that they would preserve services while reducing the burden. Acton slid in on the free-stuff and affordability language while the more complicated defense of results never landed.

Liberty Township, Coastal Habits, and the Tax-as-Default Mindset

Look at the precinct patterns, and you see the same psychology in concentrated form. Liberty Township comes in early in the reporting, and it is not the hard-core Republican stronghold some expect. Coastal transplants, apartment complexes, and people who moved from places where high taxes and big-government services are simply the way of life. They support tax increases or renewals because that is what they know. The idea that they can vote to give themselves savings on an expiring tax does not compute for many of them. They assume the government will take the money and they will live under it. That is the impression of a tyrannical, or at least inevitable, state they carry with them. They stick themselves with the cost even when the logic of the ballot says they can choose otherwise. The same voters who complain about property taxes or the cost of living still vote to keep free services and a free place to drop the kids. They have been trained that way. When Acton put the broader version of that bargain on the ballot, enough of them took it.

Statewide Tax Measures and the Limits of the Anti-Tax Argument

Across the state, the same dynamic appeared in other forms. Property-tax and income-tax proposals faced resistance in some places and still passed where they could be framed as renewals or as necessary to preserve services. Government types who want the services, and the voters who want the free stuff, outnumber or out-motivate the people who want to confiscate less from those who produce. That is why the socialist-populist platform was on the ballot in 2026 and why it benefited from the confusion and the desire for someone else to pay. Republicans talked about reducing property taxes. When the concrete chance arrived in places like Lakota, the message did not break through the habit of renewal. People who don’t want to give out the free stuff often stay home or vote less intensely because they have lost faith in the larger system. The people who want the free stuff show up. That is why local resistance can make a strong case and still lose by a couple of points. It is also why the school-board calculated risk works year after year.

What the Iranian Conflict and Media Coverage Had to Do With It

None of this local tax psychology exists in isolation from the larger economic pressure. The Iranian war drove energy prices higher. National averages rose substantially after the late-February 2026 actions and the Strait of Hormuz disruptions. Ohio saw large increases as well. Households felt it at the pump and in the cost of goods. The administration had tools—refinery capacity explanations, public pressure on oil companies, a clear defense of why the action against a terrorist, Marxist, Muslim-fundamentalist regime was necessary—but those points did not dominate the conversation. Media that preferred stability under the prior Iranian order, or that opposed Trump, did not amplify the counter-narrative. People blamed the war for price gouging and supply constraints, and they blamed the administration for the war. Voters who were already broke did not reward the side that had failed to deliver lower prices, even when the alternative was the lockdown figure offering free stuff. The same voters who could not figure out how to give themselves a property-tax reduction on a local bond also could not figure out, or did not want to hear, the more complicated story about energy. They wanted the immediate relief of someone else paying.

Conclusion: People Get What They Vote For

The Lakota bond passed because enough people could not or would not treat the expiring tax as money they could reclaim. They voted to keep free babysitting and free public education. Amy Acton’s statewide victory reflected the same preference for free stuff and the opposing side’s failure to make the cost-and-results argument stick. Liberty Township and similar pockets voted like coastal transplants who treat high taxes as normal. The school board ran a calculated risk with a renewal number and won by a narrow margin. Across the state, many other levies failed, but the ones that could be sold as “already paying this” had a built-in advantage. It is a shame in the sense that voters had a clear chance to lower their own burden, and a critical number of them did not take it. It is also the ordinary result of the incentives. People who want free stuff vote for it. People who do not want to fund it often stay home or split their tickets when they have lost faith. The public-education system and the related government services know how to present the renewal so that the confusion works in their favor. That mechanism is not going to disappear. The 2026 results, locally and statewide, confirmed that the psychology still holds.

Footnotes

1. Unofficial Butler County results and Journal-News reporting (Nov. 3–4, 2026): Lakota Local Schools Issue 2, 37-year 2.20-mill replacement bond for approximately $223 million, passed 51% to 49%. Collection begins in 2029 after existing bonds (roughly 2.23 mills) expire at the end of 2028. The district said it doesn’t anticipate increasing the bond tax rate. Opponents noted a “no” vote would reduce taxes once prior debt rolled off.

2. FOX19 and local reporting: Only three of twelve school funding measures in southwest Ohio passed. Fairfield’s 1.25% earned income tax failed, with 52–48% of voters. Lakota’s bond was one of the three that passed.

3. Lakota enrollment figures reported in the 17,000–17,300 range with projected growth; state construction funding of about $77 million contingent on local approval. A prior larger request failed in 2025.

4. Butler County MHARS mental-health levy (1-mill renewal, 10 years) passed 61–39 according to Journal-News and related tallies.

5. Statewide Ohio results (Secretary of State and major outlets as of Nov. 4, 2026): Amy Acton (D) defeated Vivek Ramaswamy (R) for governor, approximately 52% to 44%. Acton is the former Ohio Department of Health director associated with early COVID restrictions.

6. Energy and affordability context: Post-late-February 2026 Iran-related conflict and Strait of Hormuz disruptions drove national gas-price increases of roughly 40% or more; Ohio increases reported in the 35–48% range in various analyses. CPI inflation near 3.7% year-over-year in recent data. Multiple outlets linked pocketbook pressure to midterm outcomes.

7. Precinct and demographic notes drawn from local reporting patterns and consistent voter-behavior observations in Liberty Township and similar areas.

Selected Bibliography / Further Reading

• Journal-News coverage of Lakota Schools bond results and related Butler County election reporting (November 3–4, 2026).

• Butler County Board of Elections unofficial results and Ohio Secretary of State feeds.

• FOX19, Cincinnati Enquirer, and local12 summaries of southwest Ohio school levy outcomes.

• Statewide election summaries (AP, Dispatch, WKRC, Ballotpedia) on the Acton–Ramaswamy race and other Ohio contests.

• Energy-price and inflation reporting from AAA/EIA data, NBC, Fox, Reuters, and related analyses of 2026 midterm affordability issues.

• District materials and treasurer explanations on bond versus operating-levy distinctions and the timing of collection relative to expiring debt.

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 by 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.

Mixed Bag in Butler County: Michael Ryan’s Solid Win, Tighter Races Than Expected, and the National Price of Soft Politics

The 2026 midterms delivered a mixed bag across Butler County, the state of Ohio, and the nation. Local officeholders who were on the ballot largely held or won, and I was never truly worried about my good friend Michael Ryan’s commissioner race once the early numbers started coming in. Republicans had reason for concern as the night progressed in other races, and the tighter margins reflect new voter groups, split-ticket voting, and a failure at higher levels to deliver the results people can feel in their wallets. What I said for years about Pauline, gerrymandering, jury-mandering, and the need to treat Democrats as the opponent they are proved true. Socialism was on the ballot. Democrats ran on free stuff and big government without clearly defining the costs, and a lot of insecure or younger voters bought it because Republicans did not smash-mouth them hard enough or show decisive victories on the things that matter most: gas prices, the cost of goods, and a quality of life people can actually live with.

Election Night at the Michael Ryan Watch Party and the Precinct Math

I was at Michael Ryan’s watch party with a table set up to break down precincts, the numbers behind the numbers, state races, and national races. Warren Davidson was there; he was fine locally but the early tightness everywhere put people on edge. We called Ryan’s race around 9:30 or so once enough precincts reported that his opponent could not catch him mathematically. Ryan ran a great campaign over a couple of years with strong endorsement support—this is exactly why voters need to believe in their party in Ohio instead of treating every race as an independent free-for-all. He defeated longtime incumbent Cindy Carpenter in the May primary by 72% to 28%, a historic margin according to local GOP leaders, then carried the general with roughly 57.2–57.3% (around 78,000–82,000 votes) over Democrat Mike Miller’s 42.7–42.8%. Miller, a Fairfield Township resident and first-time candidate, ran as a community volunteer focused on “bad news and controversies.” Ryan, a former Hamilton City Council member and vice mayor who works as a life insurance underwriter, emphasized economic development, lower taxes, and bringing technology and innovation to the county. Nancy Nix held the auditor’s seat with about 59% over Amy Hines. Turnout in Butler County sat near 60%. These were real wins for people who showed up and worked the ground game.

Butler County Still Leans Republican—But the Margins Tell a Story

Ramaswamy carried Butler County in the governor’s race by roughly 52.4% to Amy Acton’s 44.5%, and Warren Davidson held Ohio’s 8th District (which includes much of Butler) with about 52.1% to Vanessa Enoch’s 47.9%. That is far closer than Davidson’s previous margins of 25–38 points. Redistricting added more Democratic-leaning areas from Hamilton County, but the broader pattern is clear: even reliable Republican territory is seeing tighter races. Younger voters under 40 who have been taught that big government will give them free stuff, plus demographic shifts from people who recognize big-government tactics from places they left, are changing the math. I talked to plenty of folks beforehand who said they were not voting or would go for their guns if Democrats won big; some split tickets or stayed home because they had lost faith in the system after years of feeling the pocketbook smash. My own kids in their 30s are still conservative enough, but they did not feel passionate enough about the national tickets to put yard signs out. They blamed high gas prices on Trump and the administration. That is the real-world performance review.

Statewide Ohio: Affordability Wins the Night for Democrats

Amy Acton (D) defeated Vivek Ramaswamy (R) for governor, taking roughly 52% (about 2.4 million votes) to his 44% (about 2.04 million). She becomes the first Democrat elected governor of Ohio in 20 years and the first woman elected to the office. Sherrod Brown (D) beat incumbent Jon Husted (R) for the U.S. Senate by about 50% to 45%. Other statewide races were mixed and often close—Attorney General, Auditor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Supreme Court seats all saw competitive results with some Democratic gains or near-misses. Ramaswamy had Trump’s endorsement, strong name recognition from the 2024 primary and DOGE work, and a chance to look strong on the trail. Independents and some conservatives peeled off; he was painted as rich and out of touch, and a late attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother backfired hard with many Republicans. Acton, the former Ohio Department of Health director during the early COVID response, ran on affordability, ending corruption, and tax cuts for working families. Socialism’s populist platform—free stuff, nanny state, big taxes—won the argument where Republicans did not counter it decisively. I said all along that Vivek needed to come down to the trail and connect on results; the national and state numbers show why.

National Results: Democrats Seize the House and Senate

Got to talk to Willie today about many things, especially the elections. Have a listen!!https://t.co/s6oncS293h
— Richard K. Jones (@butlersheriff) November 5, 2026

Democrats took control of both the U.S. House and Senate in a historic blue wave. They flipped Senate seats in places like Kansas (first Democratic senator since 1932), Texas, Iowa, South Carolina, Ohio (Brown), and others, ending up with a clear majority (projections around 54 seats). In the House they flipped more than two dozen seats, many in Trump-won districts, and are projected well above the 218 needed. Mike Johnson was reelected in his Louisiana district but the majority is gone; his future as the top House Republican is uncertain as others position for minority leader. This is what happens when you do not protect the turf. Johnson and the leadership did not treat voter problems—especially gerrymandering fights and the need to fight hard on redistricting and election integrity—seriously enough. They played softball while Democrats played smash-mouth war-room politics. You cannot let the enemy stick around and then complain when they smash your mouth. People wanted action: Fauci still free, no real accountability on past COVID and election issues, and no decisive delivery on costs. Trump’s rallies and tough talk are not big-time wrestling. When you are in the White House, voters hold you to results. Gas prices stayed high years into the administration; people blamed the Iranian conflict (the U.S.-Israel actions beginning in late February 2026 that disrupted oil through the Strait of Hormuz and sent prices soaring), refinery capacity issues, and what looked like price-gouging. Promising money or blaming others does not substitute for lower costs of living. Democrats sabotaged where they could, then ran a campaign blaming Republicans—just as they once managed to pin slavery on the party created to end it. The midterms became a performance review, and Republicans did not get the grade they needed.

Gas Prices, the Iranian War, and Why Pocketbooks Overrode Everything Else

National average gas prices rose roughly 40% or more after the Iran conflict began, with Ohio seeing increases in the 35–48% range in key reporting. Average prices sat well above $4 a gallon in many places heading into Election Day; diesel spiked even harder in some periods. Inflation ran around 3.7% year-over-year in recent reports, with energy, groceries, and housing all elevated. Ohio households faced hundreds of dollars in extra gas costs alone from the war-related surge, on top of broader cost pressures. Trump’s administration had mechanisms—refinery capacity explanations, pressure on oil companies, clear defense of why the Iranian actions were necessary against a terrorist, Marxist, Muslim-fundamentalist regime that suppresses its own people—but they did not hammer those points hard enough or long enough for average voters. Bill Riley and others had been warning about this forever. People understand that Brent crude and gasoline are too high; complex geopolitics is harder. They ran on bringing prices down. Two years later the sabotaging by Democrats was coming to fruition, and Republicans cried foul instead of delivering smash-mouth victories people could point to. Victims look weak. Winners who lower the cost of filling the tank and putting food on the table keep their majorities.

Demographic Shifts, New Faces, and the Socialism Taught in Schools

Butler County still delivered for local Republicans, but the closer-than-usual margins at the start of the night were a scare for people used to double-digit wins. New faces less invested in long-time county politics, younger voters steeped in public-school socialism (“big government will give you stuff”), and people from places where they already lived under heavy government recognize the Democratic playbook and vote accordingly—even if their English is limited. Split-ticket voting was real. Many traditional Trump supporters showed up but without the enthusiasm of past cycles because they had not seen the results they were promised. Democrats ran a base campaign focused on affordability grievances without owning the sabotage that helped create them. Christianity and traditional measures are under pressure from a strategy that tries to hijack the language while embracing far worse ideologies; I have been covering the value of Christianity against this for a reason. We are told to abandon strong resolutions against evil while embracing something far more dangerous. That ridiculousness was on the ballot, and voters looking for a strong government that lowers costs chose the option that promised free stuff.

Party Unity, Smash-Mouth Politics, and the Path Forward

Republicans need to pull together, put differences aside, and build a party people invest in and feel good about. Do not primary your own candidates two or three days before an election. Get behind the people on the ballot for statewide races. Defend the turf on issues like FirstEnergy-style deals or redistricting instead of playing defense after the fact. Deliver real victories—low gas prices, controlled costs, accountability—that people can watch and believe. Crying foul and drawing offside penalties does not move the ball. When you lose the big seats, the punching comes too late. Locally we had wins worth being proud of: Michael Ryan’s campaign and victory, Nix’s hold, Davidson’s narrow retention. Statewide and nationally the lesson is clear—socialism’s populist platform (the one Bernie Sanders showed could work) is now mainstream Democratic strategy, and it advances when Republicans fail to give people something better to invest in. Elections are always interesting; they show you what your society has become. We have learned that the high costs in the background will hurt for a long time if Democrats now put the screws to everything. The people who wanted results and strength did not get enough of them from the national ticket. That is why the midterms of 2026 went the way they did.

Footnotes

1. Unofficial Butler County Board of Elections and Journal-News reporting: Michael Ryan 57.2% over Mike Miller 42.8%; primary win over Cindy Carpenter 72–28. Commissioner oversees ~$563 million budget and nearly 1,900 employees. Salary ~$112,502 in 2027.

2. Nancy Nix (R) ~59% over Amy Hines (D) ~41% for auditor.

3. Butler County turnout reported just under 60%.

4. Ohio Secretary of State / local results: Ramaswamy carried Butler County ~52.4% to Acton’s ~44.5%. Statewide Acton ~52% (≈2.4M) to Ramaswamy ~44% (≈2.04M); first Democratic governor in 20 years and first woman elected.

5. Warren Davidson (OH-8) ≈52.1% to Vanessa Enoch ≈47.9% (unofficial). Previous margins far larger; redistricting noted as a factor.

6. Sherrod Brown (D) ≈50% over Jon Husted (R) ≈45% for U.S. Senate.

7. National projections (AP, CNN, Axios, Politico, Ballotpedia summaries as of Nov. 4, 2026): Democrats control House (projections 220+ to well above 218) and Senate (≈54 seats after multiple flips including Kansas, Texas, Iowa, South Carolina, Ohio). Mike Johnson reelected in LA-4 but loses majority.

8. Gas price and inflation context: National averages rose ~40%+ post-late-February 2026 Iran-related conflict (Strait of Hormuz disruptions); Ohio increases in the 35–48% range reported; prices commonly above $4/gallon. CPI ~3.7% year-over-year in recent data. Multiple outlets (Fox, NBC, Reuters, Washington Post, Joint Economic Committee analyses) linked affordability/gas to midterm voter anger.

9. Acton background and campaign: Former Ohio Department of Health director; campaign focused on affordability and working-family relief. Controversial Ramaswamy ad featuring estranged mother widely reported as backfiring.

10. Local Butler County results page and Journal-News confirm Ryan, Nix, and related county outcomes. Statewide numbers consistent across WKRC, Dispatch, Ballotpedia, and Secretary of State feeds as of early Nov. 4.

Selected Bibliography / Further Reading

• Butler County Board of Elections unofficial results and Journal-News coverage of commissioner and auditor races (Nov. 3–4, 2026).

• Ohio Secretary of State election night results and county-level feeds.

• National reporting: Associated Press, CNN, Axios, Politico, Ballotpedia midterm summaries (Nov. 3–4, 2026).

• Economic context: AAA/EIA gas price data, CPI reports, and analyses from NBC News, Fox News, Reuters, and congressional Joint Economic Committee materials on Ohio household costs.

• Campaign and candidate background pieces from Journal-News (primary and general), Cincinnati Enquirer, and statewide outlets on Ramaswamy-Acton and Brown-Husted.

• Historical comparisons on Ohio gubernatorial and Senate control (last Democratic governor 2006; prior Senate patterns).

Rich Hoffman

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About the Author: Rich Hoffman

The Math Problem Democrats Couldn’t Solve on Election Day 2026: Why Same-Day Voting Exposed the Illusion of a Larger Coalition

On Election Day 2026, the numbers told a clearer story than the early-vote headlines or the media’s pre-election framing. I told people on election eve that I would rather be a Republican than a Democrat going into the final hours. The reason was simple arithmetic, not spin. Democrats had front-loaded what they had. They borrowed from their own limited voter bank to create early-vote optics, and when the same-day tallies began to roll in, the tank was emptier than their strategy required.

Early Voting as a Borrowed-Time Strategy

Democrats and their allies treated early and mail voting as a way to bank votes, publish encouraging numbers, and energize what remained of their base. Nationally, early ballots set a midterm record—more than 50 million cast before November 3, according to University of Florida Election Lab tracking and contemporaneous reports. In states that report party affiliation of early voters, registered Democrats often led the early returns. In Ohio, more than 1.7 million people voted early, another record. Roughly 48 percent of registered Democrats had already cast ballots versus about 32 percent of registered Republicans, with unaffiliated voters forming the largest single group.

That looks decisive until you examine what it actually represents. Early voting pulled forward the voters Democrats already possessed. It did not create new ones at scale. The strategy assumed that publishing strong early numbers would produce a surge of additional Democrat turnout on Election Day. Instead, many of the people who vote early are the high-propensity partisans who would have voted anyway. Once those ballots were banked, the remaining pool was thinner. I have watched enough cycles to know that public-relations firms and campaign consultants understand this trade-off; the media often does not.

There Simply Are Not Enough Democrats

In the states that track party registration, Democrats still hold a numerical edge on the rolls—roughly 45 million registered Democrats to about 39 million registered Republicans, with a large independent or unaffiliated bloc in between, per compilations of state data. That edge is real on paper and concentrated in a handful of large states. It is not the same as a governing majority across the map. Most of the country remains red or red-leaning once you move past the dense urban cores and coastal corridors. People who acquire houses, raise children, and accumulate assets tend to shift toward the party that prioritizes protecting those things. Public-school indoctrination produced a temporary cohort of younger voters who identified as Democrats; life and economic responsibility have eroded that edge for years.

The Democratic Party’s core problem is demographic and ideological. Its activist wing operates as a minority coalition of radical progressives—socialists and cultural revolutionaries under a different label—trying to govern a country that does not share its priorities. They compensate with early-vote concentration, mail-ballot volume, and media amplification. When same-day voting arrives, the math reasserts itself. Republicans do not need every one of their voters to show up in perfect formation. There are simply more of them in the places that decide most races, and they still prefer Election Day.

Ohio, Ramaswamy, and the Local Test

In Ohio the pattern was visible in real time. The state has trended Republican for more than a decade. Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for governor faced a well-funded challenge from Amy Acton, and early-vote numbers gave Democrats their expected edge among affiliated voters. Talking with people around the Ramaswamy operation on election eve, the internals confirmed what the public data suggested: Acton’s side had performed relatively better in the early window because they had drawn down their available pool. The remaining Election Day electorate was expected to be substantially more Republican.

Locally, the same dynamic appeared at events in West Chester. At Lori’s Roadhouse—the large country venue that regularly hosts Republican gatherings—I spoke with Greg and Lori and others who run and support the place. These are business owners and ordinary residents who vote Republican primarily because they do not want government expanding into every corner of their lives. They are not ideological hardliners. They show up because the alternative is worse. Darby Boddy was able to attend a Republican event without the previous protection-order complications that had limited her participation. Roger Reynolds was there as well. Wins make coalition management harder, not easier. A big-tent party that includes both producers who simply want to be left alone and more committed conservatives will argue about priorities. That friction is the price of actually having enough people to win.

The Football Analogy and the Final Quarter

Think of it as a football game. Democrats entered the fourth quarter having already used their best plays to stay close on the scoreboard. They were down, with limited time and a thinner roster of remaining voters. Republicans, sitting on a larger overall pool, could afford to wait for the same-day rush. Some races would be closer than preferred; some local outcomes would disappoint. Those were the expected variance in a big-tent coalition. They were not evidence that the underlying math had changed. Media outlets that spent the preceding weeks projecting Democratic momentum suddenly discovered, once the Election Day reports began arriving, that the projected wave was smaller than advertised. I had been saying the same thing for weeks because the registration numbers, the historical turnout patterns, and the strategic incentives were already visible.

What the Win Does Not Solve

A Republican-leaning night does not eliminate the internal arguments. Different people join the coalition for different reasons. Some want aggressive cultural pushback. Others want lower taxes, fewer regulations, and the ability to run a business or raise a family without constant interference. Managing that after victories is harder than managing it while losing, because the losers have fewer people to fight among. Democrats would prefer to have that problem. They do not, which is why their strategy relies on concentrating their existing voters, amplifying them through media, and hoping the early numbers create the appearance of a larger force than actually exists.

The 2026 results, as they came in, confirmed the structural reality I described on election eve. There are more Americans who affiliate with, or default to, the Republican side once they have something to protect. Early voting is a useful tool. It is not a substitute for a larger coalition. When the same-day votes were counted, the math reasserted itself.

Bibliography and Further Reading

• University of Florida Election Lab early-vote tracking and state-level party affiliation reports for the 2026 cycle.

• Ohio Secretary of State absentee and early-vote files (daily updates through early November 2026), showing partisan affiliation of returned ballots.

• Ballotpedia and state election-office compilations of registered voters by party in the 31 states that report affiliation.

• Contemporary reporting from the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, and national outlets on Ohio early-vote totals and the Ramaswamy–Acton contest.

• Historical midterm turnout analyses comparing 2018, 2022, and 2026 early versus Election Day shares.

• County-level early-vote data from Butler County and surrounding areas relevant to West Chester and local Republican events.

Footnotes

1. National early-vote totals exceeding 50 million and state-level party splits drawn from University of Florida Election Lab and contemporaneous aggregators as of November 3, 2026.

2. Ohio early-vote figures of more than 1.7 million, with higher Democratic share among affiliated voters, from Ohio Secretary of State data reported in the Columbus Dispatch and related coverage.

3. National party-registration estimates (approximately 45 million Democrats, 39 million Republicans in reporting states) compiled from state election offices and secondary aggregations.

4. Local observations from West Chester events at Lori’s Roadhouse and conversations with Ramaswamy campaign affiliates on election eve, consistent with public early-vote patterns in Ohio.

5. Standard midterm pattern in which Election Day electorates are more Republican than early/mail electorates, documented across multiple cycles in states that report mode of voting by party.

Rich Hoffman

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Vote Like Your Life Depends on It: Reflections from Vivek Ramaswamy’s Final Campaign Stop on the Eve of the 2026 Election

https://rumble.com/v7hscum-just-vite.html

I just returned from Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester, Ohio, after Vivek Ramaswamy’s last campaign stop before the election. A number of Ohio officeholders came out to speak alongside him. The speech was long—longer than ideal for people already heading out to vote—so I will condense the essence of what I heard and what I discussed with people there and afterward.[1]

Lori’s Roadhouse continues to do great things for these kinds of events. The place was packed with signs and energy in a way Amy Acton could never have matched. You will not see that kind of coverage on the news or on Fox, but the basics are clear. The encouragement from the stage was simple: go vote, and call your friends and neighbors to do the same. That is the message I am giving my readers and viewers right now.

I have watched Vivek grow into this role over the years. He was right when he noted in his speech that the campaign launched just a few miles from Lori’s Roadhouse—at the business I ran. I was proud he chose that location, and it was bittersweet to see the campaign season come full circle there. The owners are good people, and every event held there has been excellent. The crowd was energetic, and Vivek appeared in a way many people had not seen before.

The Numbers Game and Republican Advantage in Ohio

This election is a numbers game. If Republicans show up even moderately, they far outnumber Democrats in Ohio. That is why Democrats know they have to stretch every process. Amy Acton is a disaster; I have said so from the beginning. She is the lockdown lady, a horrible candidate who simply does not have the goods down the stretch.[2]

In the numbers, Vivek is well ahead in the places that matter. Acton is not performing well in the counties she needs to overcome him, and those counties will not deliver the numbers required on Election Day. From conversations with people who know the internals the media does not report, the race is well in hand for Republicans if turnout materializes. That also means strength for other races on the ticket.

It is much scarier for Democrats heading into this election than for Republicans. There are simply more Republicans. But if people sit on their hands, representation can still be lost. Do not take anything for granted.

Conversations That Reveal a Dangerous Frustration

The part that concerns me most is what I heard today from people who are not deeply interested in politics—people who live between the cities, who do not know many Democrats, do not want to work with them, and have no desire to break bread with them. Their question to me was: why go vote?

Voting is the most peaceful way to maintain representative government. Their illusion is that nothing will improve until people grab guns, take violence into the streets, and reclaim the country from radicals. George Soros and others have funded efforts that damage Western civilization; evil is at work.[3] But on this election eve in 2026, I believe the best way to maintain self-government is still to vote—not to turn to violence.

Most of the people I spoke with, especially those between the cities, think it has to come to violence before they get their country back. If Democrats thought January 6 was terrible, that was mild compared with what some of these people are thinking. I try to tell them that violence can be avoided by voting. Their response is often that it will be cheated anyway, so who cares.

What’s at Stake: Civility Over Violence

What is at stake is civility itself. If you want a civil society, go vote before you feel you have to grab the guns and take it back with bloodshed the way the Revolution once required. It is yours to hold; you simply have to get up and go. You have to do it at presidential-level turnout.

After the event at Lori’s Roadhouse and the conversations I had, the picture looks strong for Republicans in Ohio if people show up. Republicans way outnumber Democrats, but if you stay home, the other side will represent you because they are the ones voting. Voting is easy. Maintaining self-government through legislative means is far better than the alternatives.

I talked to more than one person today who alluded to having a shell full of ammunition ready to “take care of” the Marxists and communists. That is not a good sign. Giving up on self-rule through the ballot is not a good thing. The other side wants people of Western civilization to abandon peaceful means. Do not give that to them.

A Personal Call to Action

I am telling everyone who watches me, reads me, or listens to me: to maintain civility and protect Western civilization, just get up and go vote. Vote for Republicans, not Democrats. Vote down tax increases. Vote for Vivek Ramaswamy. Things will be much better in Ohio with him as governor, and better in the wider world.

I remember when I first saw the campaign signs—very techie—when he was putting up the art at my business for the rally that opened his governor’s race. I am happy to see it come full circle, and I will be happy to see him as governor of Ohio.

A few months ago I saw Vivek walk into a little restaurant with almost no security. We had a nice personal conversation, and few people reacted. At Lori’s Roadhouse it was governor-level security, a Secret Service-style entourage, and a posse that made it hard to get close. It was strange, but it is exciting. I think he is going to win—but only if people show up.

Do not leave it to other people to decide for you. Vote like your life depends on it, because in a lot of ways it does. We do not want a society that turns to violence in order to maintain self-government. Go vote for the 2026 election.

Footnotes

[1] The event was held at Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester Township, Butler County, Ohio. Local coverage and posts confirmed the rally timing on the final day of campaigning.

[2] Public polling averages in late October and early November 2026 generally showed Amy Acton with a narrow lead (roughly 2–7 points depending on the pollster), though some surveys were tighter or showed Ramaswamy ahead. Ohio does not have formal party registration; affiliation is determined by primary ballot choice. Early-voting data showed Democrats returning a higher share of ballots than Republicans through late October, with unaffiliated voters forming a large bloc. The author’s assessment relies on claimed internal numbers and county-level expectations not reflected in the public averages.

[3] References to funding of progressive causes and election-related efforts by George Soros and associated networks appear widely in conservative commentary and investigative reporting on philanthropy and political spending.

Bibliography for Further Reading

Ramaswamy, Vivek. Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. Center Street, 2021.

Ramaswamy, Vivek. Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence. Center Street, 2022.

Ramaswamy, Vivek. Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street Is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn’t Vote For. HarperCollins, 2023.

Ramaswamy, Vivek. Truths: The Future of America First. Simon & Schuster, 2024.

Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. (Author’s work on leadership, individual responsibility, and practical strategy.)

Green, Donald P., and Alan S. Gerber. Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout. 4th ed. Brookings Institution Press, 2019.

Hill, David. American Voter Turnout: An Institutional Perspective. Westview Press, 2006.

Rolfe, Meredith. Voter Turnout: A Social Theory of Political Participation. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Derber, Charles, et al. Turnout!: Mobilizing Voters in an Emergency. Routledge, 2020.

Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. Crown, 2018.

Mayer, Jane. Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, 2016.

Caplan, Bryan. The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. Princeton University Press, 2007.

Achen, Christopher H., and Larry M. Bartels. Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton University Press, 2016.

Brennan, Jason. Against Democracy. Princeton University Press, 2016.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. (Multiple editions; foundational on American civic habits and self-government.)

Madison, James, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers. (Especially essays on factions, republican government, and the dangers of majority tyranny.)

Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. (On consent, property, and the right to alter or abolish government.)

Federalist Society publications and reports on election integrity and originalism, 2020–2026.

Heritage Foundation Election Integrity Project reports, 2024–2026.

Ohio Secretary of State voter registration and early-voting dashboards (2026 cycle data).

RealClearPolitics, Ballotpedia, and multi-state election trackers for the 2026 Ohio gubernatorial race (polling averages, candidate profiles, and historical context).

Local Ohio reporting from the Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch, and Butler County sources on campaign events and county-level dynamics.

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.

How a Ramaswamy Administration Could Make Ohio the Leader in Affordable Cancer Treatments — and Give Republicans a Winning Healthcare Story for 2028

I picked up one of my favorite shirts at the White House. I love that place, and I love what the Trump administration has done and continues to do. It makes me think about continuity, about practical people who get results, and about the kind of energy we need in the states. I’m excited about Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio. The race is competitive—recent polls have shown leads within the margin of error and prediction markets have favored his opponent more strongly—but I look at the internals, the trajectory, and the opportunity, and I believe he can win. Assuming that path, Ohio has a unique chance to lead the country on something that matters more to ordinary families than almost anything else: the crushing cost of healthcare, starting with cancer treatments.

I’ve been thinking about this for years. Friends have faced cancer. I’ve watched the bills, the delays, the sense that the system is designed more to manage disease than to fix people. The way for Republicans to win on healthcare in 2028 is not another tax credit or block grant that sounds like accounting. It is a concrete story: we cut the price of the most expensive treatments by attacking the cost-plus culture that has defined medicine the same way it once defined aerospace. We make advanced care available faster and cheaper. We fix people.

SpaceX is the right frame. Elon Musk and his team did not invent rockets. They applied vertical integration, rapid iteration, and a ruthless attack on cost-plus assumptions that had been baked into the industry for decades. NASA’s Shuttle delivered payload to low Earth orbit at something like $54,500 per kilogram. Falcon 9 brought that down toward $2,720 per kilogram—an order-of-magnitude improvement driven by reusability, in-house manufacturing of critical components, and a culture that squeezed suppliers and eliminated layers of markup. Roughly 80 percent of Falcon hardware was built in-house at Hawthorne. The “idiot index”—raw materials representing only a tiny fraction of final cost—forced first-principles thinking. That is the model. Cancer care is stuck in the opposite posture: academic timelines, slow FDA pathways, venture capital that demands multi-year runways before it moves, and pricing that treats every new therapy as a custom, high-margin product.

Ohio already has the raw material. Two weeks ago the James Cancer Center at Ohio State published a Phase 1 trial in Blood Cancer Discovery. Researchers tested a point-of-care manufactured trispecific CAR-T product targeting CD19, CD20, and CD22, enhanced with an OX40 costimulatory domain. Sixteen patients (median age 64) who had already burned through a median of three prior therapies received the cells. In the B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma subset, the complete response rate was 83 percent. There was no severe cytokine release syndrome and no neurotoxicity. Median vein-to-vein time was about seven days. That is not incremental. That is the kind of result that can rewrite parts of the treatment algorithm when it scales.

Around the same time, Ohio State licensed next-generation dual-payload antibody-drug conjugate technology to BiFormyx BioPharma. The company is moving its headquarters to Columbus and is targeting an Investigational New Drug filing in early 2028 for programs aimed at aggressive solid tumors such as triple-negative breast cancer. The entrepreneurs are not hypothetical. They are already in the state, building on James Center infrastructure that no pure startup can match.

A Ramaswamy administration would not need to invent cancer research. It would need to do three practical things. First, treat the James Center and Cincinnati Children’s as anchor tenants the way SpaceX treated Hawthorne—build the surrounding ecosystem of suppliers, manufacturers, and trial capacity around them instead of scattering small grants. Second, compress the state’s role in clinical trial siting and IRB approvals so Ohio becomes the fastest place in America to run a first-in-human study. A state-level regulatory sandbox that allows expanded access for therapies that have cleared Phase 1 while the national FDA process continues would put desperate patients on a plane to Columbus instead of Europe or Mexico. That builds both the clinical data and the political testimony at the same time. Third, use the governor’s office and the congressional delegation to push FDA pathway reform specifically for cell and gene therapies, while launching a manufacturing initiative so advanced therapies are built here. That sounds like jobs. It is jobs. It also happens to cure people.

The honest political caveat is that a pure “cure for cancer” message carries risk. Joe Biden’s moonshot language ran into the reality that many trials exist but the system is slow and expensive. Pharma has incentives to protect high-margin models. The safer, stronger 2028 pitch is not “we cured cancer.” It is “we cut the price by a large fraction and made advanced care available in county hospitals.” Direct medical costs of cancer care were already estimated above $200 billion annually and are projected to climb further; oncology drug spending alone is on a path toward hundreds of billions more by 2030. Families feel the $200 syringe and the six-figure episode. A SpaceX-style attack on the manufacturing and process costs of CAR-T and next-generation ADCs—point-of-care production, standardized platforms, elimination of custom-build markups—turns that into a diner-table number a voter in Dayton can understand.

Day one is not a task force. It is one connector with no ego and a mandate: get the founder, the family office, the hospital executive, and one skeptical journalist in a room every month. I know people who would make powerful patient testimony—friends who have lived the system. Put one of them on camera early. The three-month runway is to assemble the core group, file the sandbox concept, and open conversations with the Trump administration for continuity on FDA reform. The durability beyond any single administration is the real prize. Healthcare is the issue that does not care about team colors. Every cycle Republicans are asked what they will do, and the answer has usually been accounting. “We fix the thing that costs you more than your mortgage” is a different animal. It turns a defensive issue into an offensive one and gives the party a story about results rather than a man.

I have said for years that the person who can talk to anyone, get the money people and the operators in a room, and handle the public relations against the entrenched interests is more valuable than another PhD on staff. That is the SpaceX culture applied to medicine. Ohio can lead it. The technology is further along than most people realize. The politics have been the bottleneck. A friendly administration that treats this like a campaign—speed, visibility, manufacturing, and patient stories—can change the cost structure of healthcare by making advanced treatments practical instead of perpetually expensive.

If you are interested in the kind of first-principles thinking that produced The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, this is the same mindset applied to the largest cost problem in American life. Ohio has the anchors. A Ramaswamy administration can put the right people in the rooms. The rest is execution.

Footnotes

1. Ohio governor race polling and prediction markets as of late October 2026 (Cleveland.com, State of the Odds / Kalshi-Polymarket data).

2. Vasu S, et al. Safety and Clinical Outcomes of a First-in-Human Trial of Point-of-Care Manufactured Trispecific CAR T Cells Targeting CD19, CD20, and CD22. Blood Cancer Discovery. 2026;7(5). DOI: 10.1158/2643-3230.BCD-26-0186. OSUCCC–James lead.

3. CancerNetwork summary of the same trial: 83% complete responses in the B-NHL subset; no severe CRS or neurotoxicity.

4. Ohio State licensing of next-generation dual-payload ADC technology to BiFormyx BioPharma (October 2026 announcement); IND target early 2028.

5. AACR Cancer Progress Report 2026 and related estimates of direct cancer care costs exceeding $200 billion (2020 baseline figures, ongoing growth).

6. Milliman analysis of oncology drug spending trajectory toward $400 billion by 2030.

7. NASA Shuttle ~$54,500/kg vs. Falcon 9 ~$2,720/kg (various aerospace analyses, including Harry Jones / NASA Ames references); SpaceX vertical integration figures from company and independent reporting.

8. JAMA Oncology viewpoint on rising median monthly launch prices for systemic therapies (2023–2025 data).

Selected Bibliography

• Vasu S, Denlinger N, Song NJ, et al. “Safety and Clinical Outcomes of a First-in-Human Trial of Point-of-Care Manufactured Trispecific CAR T Cells Targeting CD19, CD20, and CD22.” Blood Cancer Discovery 7, no. 5 (2026).

• American Association for Cancer Research. Cancer Progress Report 2026.

• Milliman. “The oncology drug landscape: Spend trends, market dynamics, and the road to 2030” (2026).

• Shah C. “Rethinking Value in Cancer Care in the US.” JAMA Oncology (October 2026).

• Ohio State University Office of Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge. Licensing announcements for BiFormyx BioPharma dual-payload ADC platform (2025–2026).

• SpaceX and independent analyses of Falcon 9 reusability and vertical integration (Hawthorne manufacturing, cost-per-kilogram comparisons versus Shuttle).

• Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker and related national health expenditure data.

• American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institute studies on cancer-attributable medical costs by phase of care.

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

The Politics of Fear: Non-Human Intelligence, Cultural Programming, and Embodied Terror as Mechanisms of Social Control

An Academic Reflection from Put-in-Bay and the Kings Island Haunt, 2026

This paper examines how fear functions as a primary mechanism of cultural programming and social control, drawing on personal fieldwork conducted in 2025–2026. It integrates archaeological, anthropological, and psychological perspectives with experiential data from a period of deliberate privation (finishing The Politics of Heaven at Put-in-Bay, Ohio) and embodied performance (portraying Jason Voorhees in the “Blood Reigns” attraction at Kings Island’s Haunt). The argument posits that non-human intelligence—whether framed as demons, interdimensional entities, or residual “software” written into human cognition—operates primarily through fear, peer pressure, and mythic narratives. Observations of gendered responses to terror, connections to ancient shamanic and Canaanite practices, and the broader “Truman Show” constraints of modern society are developed. The work is offered as a foundational paper toward a larger doctoral-scale thesis.

Introduction: Writing Under Privation and the Search for Root Causes

I have long maintained that the written word remains the most durable vehicle for knowledge transfer, even as video and podcast media dominate contemporary communication. My books are intended not merely for commercial circulation but as time capsules—relevant to readers centuries hence. The Politics of Heaven, completed in draft at Put-in-Bay, Ohio, in 2026, addresses the political order of conspirators against God (or Yahweh), using history, archaeology, and anthropology to map the software that programs human intellect and society.¹

Influences include James Frazer’s comparative mythology, the psychology of Jung and Freud, the poetry of T. S. Eliot, and the science fiction of Frank Herbert (Dune), whose Bene Gesserit and later revelations about programmed human destiny illuminate how mythologies function as code.² We live in a constrained existence often analogized to The Truman Show or The Matrix: perceptions are filtered, free will is debated, and destinies are described as “meant to be.” Who writes the program? My working hypothesis, refined through decades of study and travel, is that non-human intelligence—lingering outside or adjacent to dimensional reality—has shaped human software for millennia. JD Vance and others have used the language of demons; Timothy Alberino’s work on the Book of Enoch and related texts has brought these questions into wider circulation.³ I align with much, though not all, of that framing.

Archaeology and anthropology remain central. Periodicals on human settlement, migration, skull cults at Göbekli Tepe (c. 10,000 BCE), copper cultures of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Windover people of Central Florida (c. 7,000–8,000 years ago), dolmens and shaman caves in the Jordan Valley and near the Sea of Galilee (dating to 14,000–15,000 years ago), and the unresolved questions surrounding the First Temple period in Jerusalem all indicate advanced activity long before conventional biblical timelines.⁴ Graham Hancock’s The Sign and the Seal modeled an adventure-correspondence approach I adapted, though my expenditure of roughly half a million dollars in travel and research produced a more systematic chronology of museums and sites.⁵ The goal was never light entertainment but a serious attempt to order the politics of spiritual adversaries.

Method: Privation, Shamanic Parallel, and the Truman Show

Shamans historically depleted themselves—through fasting, stress, sleep deprivation, or plant medicines such as ayahuasca—to heighten interaction with the spirit world. Jesus’s fasting in the wilderness and Pablo Amaringo’s visionary work (emerging from Hancock’s circles) illustrate the pattern.⁶ I employ a parallel method when finishing major works: deliberate hardship to push perception beyond ordinary constraints.

I finished The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business in Roswell, New Mexico, during a snowstorm after racing from Kansas City through untreated roads. The setting let me research the 1947 incidents, John Chisum’s economic impact, and the Lincoln County War. Similarly, Put-in-Bay provided isolation. Hostile actors—corporate pirates, political adversaries, and those who label dissent “crazy” to enforce social ostracism—create constant vigilance. I have maintained a zero-violence policy while carrying defensive arms and varying routes, informed by early exposure to organized-crime environments in the Cincinnati area (hitmen who preferred chaotic public sites such as stoplights to minimize witnesses).⁷ Put-in-Bay’s limited geography and reduced chaos allowed genuine relaxation for several days, revealing the extent of chronic self-preservation stress. Jacques Vallée’s books, read there, confirmed that readers of my manuscript already recognized the parallel to his hypotheses on non-human intelligence and control systems.⁸

The “Truman Show” is not metaphor alone. Peer pressure, institutional relief valves, and mythic programming keep populations within acceptable bounds. Politics is software input. Questions of free will, destiny, and “God’s plan” require root-cause analysis rather than repetition of received narratives.

Archaeological Foundations and Pre-Biblical Complexity

Göbekli Tepe’s skull cult, beer production, and monumental architecture predate conventional agricultural narratives. Michigan copper sources potentially fueled early Bronze Age metallurgy. Windover bog burials demonstrate sophisticated indigenous cultures in Florida long before 1619-project framings. Near-Eastern shaman caves show continuous use of psychoactive means to contact non-human intelligence. Jerusalem’s stratigraphy—layers of soil obscuring First Temple remains, the Dome of the Rock’s contested holiness, debates over the Ark of the Covenant—illustrates selective historical emphasis.⁹

I contend that when humans return to the Moon and Mars in the 2030s, archaeology will expand into space. Evidence of prior habitation—structures, temples, or genetic serial numbers distinguishing populations—may confirm that modern humanity is either a continuation or an edited product of earlier intelligences. Giants in biblical and extra-biblical texts may reflect lower-gravity origins as readily as Nephilim mating. Erich von Däniken and Zechariah Sitchin, though contested, raised questions that academic orthodoxy often dismisses too quickly.¹⁰ The 1619 Project and related efforts to reframe American founding as purely extractive ignore the long Western-civilizational arc emerging from the Near East through political and religious turmoil into constitutional self-government.¹¹

Fear as the Core Control Mechanism

Fear constructs society. Loss of employment, social ostracism, political realignment, parental authority, spectral threats—all function as relief valves or enforcement tools. Communism and modern institutional capture operate similarly. Haunted attractions, by contrast, offer bounded terror: participants pay to confront fear while guaranteed physical safety.

In September–October 2026, I auditioned for Kings Island’s Haunt. My walk—shaped by decades of executive work, proximity to power without subservience, and early familiarity with violent environments—led casting directors to select me as Jason Voorhees for the “Blood Rains” house, which drew heavily on the first four Friday the 13th films. Six Flags invested substantially in authentic sets, pine scent, rain effects, and practical lighting/sound. I worked Thursday–Sunday nights from mid-September through Halloween, typically 5 p.m. to after midnight, among a cast largely in their teens and twenties. The Saturday before Halloween saw multi-hour lines extending into the mall area; tens of thousands of guests passed through.¹²

Jason does not speak. Presence, posture, and eye contact project threat. I employed every available non-verbal means—strobe activation, machete motion, wall strikes when audio failed—to maximize effect. Physical cost was real: cut hands from repeated machete handling, bloodied knuckles, observed injuries among other performers. The experience supplied a large statistical sample of human response under controlled terror.

Gendered and Developmental Responses to Terror

Males (boys and men) predominantly sought engagement: “Hi Jason,” fist-bump requests, verbal acknowledgment that affirmed survival and status. Females, especially adolescents (roughly 15–18), frequently defaulted to sexual display or verbal seduction—“I love you, Jason,” blown kisses, tongue gestures, exposure—under hive conditions in groups of six or more. This was not universal but patterned and striking. I remained fully in character and found the behavior revealing rather than gratifying.

These responses map onto older fertility and goddess-cult practices. Academic literature sometimes underplays the sexual dimensions of Canaanite religion—temple prostitution, fertility rites offered to deities. Under uncertainty (future, status, survival), young females appear to test sexual capital as appeasement. Parallel questions arise regarding high-school relationships with older authority figures: the same calculus of power and fear can and do operate. Once reproductive and household realities set in, the pattern typically attenuates.¹³

Haunted-house guests emerge smiling, having survived bounded terror. The certainty of the scare itself provides relief from the more diffuse fears of ordinary life. People want to locate the monsters and the pecking order.

Canaanite Cults, Shamanism, and Western Counter-Narratives

Why did populations worship Canaanite deities with sexual and sacrificial rites? Fear and the desire for fertility or protection. Shamanic caves throughout the region, continuous with Göbekli Tepe traditions, indicate long interaction with non-human intelligence. The Protestant Reformation’s debates over the Apocrypha (Luther et al.) and the Bible’s selective time-capsule nature leave room for pre-Adamite or edited human populations.¹⁴ Western civilization, emerging through Christian and classical synthesis, largely rejected the more destructive cultic practices even while retaining fear as a social tool.

My observations in the Haunt supplied modern ethnographic data: under acute fear, sexual appeasement and status-seeking appear as default strategies. This does not require endorsement of any particular theology; it requires acknowledging that non-human intelligence (or residual programming attributed to it) continues to exploit fear. In The Politics of Heaven, Yahweh faces ongoing conspirators; human beings are both targets and potential representatives.

Implications for Programming, Free Will, and Future Archaeology

Stories and folklore write software. Families, companies, political parties, and nations transmit it. Elon Musk’s enterprises (SpaceX, Tesla, Starlink) illustrate an engineer bringing science-fiction templates into hardware; the same logic applies to cultural templates. Disclosure discussions around non-human intelligence remain constrained by institutional incentives.

When archaeological work reaches Mars and the Moon, prior human or human-intelligence presence will force timeline revisions. Genetic distinctions among populations may be re-read as creator “serial numbers.” Fear will remain the primary enforcement mechanism unless deliberately countered by clearer understanding of the program and its authors. Bounded experiences of terror (haunts, controlled shamanic methods) can illuminate the mechanism without surrendering to it.

Conclusion

The 2026 season—completing The Politics of Heaven under conditions of hostility, reading Vallée at Put-in-Bay, and embodying Jason Voorhees for tens of thousands of guests—functioned as an extended field experiment. Fear governs more of human society than is commonly admitted. Gendered responses, ancient cultic parallels, and the architecture of the Truman Show all converge on the same point: non-human intelligence, or the residual code it left, continues to shape outcomes. Academic archaeology, anthropology, and psychology supply tools; personal privation and embodied performance supply data. Further work will expand this foundation into a fuller thesis. The Haunt was excellent service; the learning exceeded any wage.

Jason: Blood Reign and the Quiet Proof of Leadership

I went into the 2026 Halloween Haunt at Kings Island deliberately choosing the hard, less-visible work. For a long time the projects I’ve been around have tended to succeed, and it can become difficult to know how much of that success you actually carry with you versus how much simply arrives because you’re standing next to it. So I picked something outside my usual wheelhouse—seasonal work as Jason Voorhees inside the new licensed Friday the 13th maze, Jason: Blood Reign—and treated it as a personal experiment. Could I still move the needle when the assignment was physically demanding, the hours long, the setting unfamiliar, and the success of the night depended on people I had to help form into a team under real pressure?

It was hard. Very hard on the body and on the schedule. But the result was clearer than I expected. Blood Reign became one of the headlining mazes of the season. Kings Island ran seven haunted mazes in 2026 (Blood Reign and Metal Massacre new; Order of the Dragon, Alien Abyss, Killmart, Slaughter House, and the separate add-on Conjuring experience). Blood Reign was the line people planned around. Early in the run it regularly posted 60-minute medians on Fridays and Saturdays and hit 180 minutes on at least one Saturday. Guests who waited still came out talking about it. Reviews from park regulars and content creators repeatedly called the production a step up for the park—strong sets that moved between woods and camp scenes drawn from the franchise, effective scares, and actors who kept the tension alive rather than just jumping out. Multiple people described it as “S-tier,” “some of the best production I’ve seen at Kings Island,” and worth the extra Haunted Attractions Pass. The same maze ran at two other Six Flags parks this year (SCarowinds and Great Adventure’s Fright Fest); at Kings Island the long lines and the volume of positive guest reactions after they exited were the clearest local verdict.

What I take from it is not the mask or the machete. It is the confirmation that my strongest lever is still team-building and culture. When you can get the people around you to raise their game, stay consistent under fatigue, and care about the experience the guest is having, the maze performs. There were the usual background conversations about what actually makes a good haunt—staffing, pacing, the difference between a cheap jump and a sustained sense that something is hunting you—and the group that formed around the maze worked through those. Six Flags supplied a budget and the licensed concept; the actors and the people supporting them turned it into something guests wanted to stand in line for and then recommended to others. Tens of thousands of people moved through that experience across the roughly 22 operating nights. The ones I saw leaving were generally happy with what they had just paid for.

That outcome matters to me for 2027. It was not my normal environment. It was physical, seasonal, and outside the usual executive or advisory frame. Yet the same pattern held: get the culture right, elevate the people doing the work, and the thing tends to succeed. That is the blank check I was looking for. Whatever projects I put my name next to next year—whether they look familiar or deliberately difficult—I now have another clear data point that the method travels. The lines, the reviews, and the team that held together through the hard nights are the evidence. I’m proud of the contribution. More than that, I’m satisfied that the experiment worked.

My daughters and one of my grandsons while I was working as Jason

I was especially happy to hear the guys at Tower Topics—Don Helbig and Ryan Suhr—talk about Jason: Blood Reign on their podcast. Around the four-minute mark of the episode where Ryan reviewed this year’s Haunt (“Ryan Went to Haunt So Don Didn’t Have To”), he specifically described what he ran into at the curtain. That’s where they put me most nights—about 80% of the time. I’m fast, and I developed a way of timing the button that triggers the sound effect and the light visuals so the jump lines up exactly when I rip the curtain open.

I call it the Jack-in-the-Box effect. You know the jump is coming. You can see me twisting the knot and the handle just a little, building the anticipation, but you still don’t know the exact second. Ryan came through multiple times—I recognized him once I saw him on the podcast—and he kept coming back through the maze the way a lot of people do once they’ve been scared. Across the hall from the curtain there’s a little graphic animation of Jason killing someone in shadow. Guests lock onto that. While they’re looking at it, I come out behind them. Even when people have already been through several times and know I’m standing there, the timing still gets them. A lot of them fall down. Some crawl out of the room on their hands and knees. Others jump so hard they pull the people in front of them down with them. It happens often enough that I’m sure there will be reviews mentioning the safety side of it, but the reaction is real.

Groups of thirty or so would come through. I’d get the first couple, then people four or five back would see me and still get hit when I timed the jump. They’d say “I knew you were behind that curtain—I just went through here” and then admit I still scared them. I never broke character. They’d try to get you to talk or react, but I stayed locked in. The goal every night was simple: they paid good money, so give them everything you’ve got. Don’t hold back. Don’t phone it in.

We had a strong group—mostly younger people—and we built a positive, high-energy culture. I challenged myself by stepping into something outside my normal element, injecting energy and creativity day after day, and treating every guest like they deserved the full scare. It was a tough, physical job with long hours, but being part of making it succeed felt good. Hearing Ryan Suhr, who has been through a lot of haunts and isn’t easy to impress, talk about Jason: Blood Reign as one of the best in the country made me proud of the part I played in it. These guys do a half-hour to hour-long show and still came away with a genuinely positive take. That meant something.

I’m happy they had a good experience, and I’m glad Ryan recognized the work we put in at the curtain. It was a successful season, and I was glad to contribute to it.Notes

Rich Hoffman, The Politics of Heaven (manuscript, 2026).
Frank Herbert, Dune series (1965–1985); James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890–1915); C. G. Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1959).
Timothy Alberino, Birthright and related lectures on Enochic literature; public statements by JD Vance on demonic language.
Klaus Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe: A Stone Age Sanctuary in South-Eastern Anatolia (2012); reports on Windover archaeological site (Florida); copper provenance studies linking Lake Superior to Near Eastern Bronze Age.
Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal (1992).
Pablo Amaringo and Luis Eduardo Luna, Ayahuasca Visions (1991); biblical accounts of Jesus’s wilderness fasting (Matthew 4; Luke 4).
Personal observational data from Cincinnati-area environments, 1980s–1990s; general criminological literature on witness behavior in chaotic public spaces.
Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia (1969) and Dimensions (1988).
Standard stratigraphic reports on the City of David and Temple Mount; debates summarized in Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed (2001), read critically.
Erich von Däniken, Chariots of the Gods? (1968); Zechariah Sitchin, The 12th Planet (1976).
Critical responses to the 1619 Project, including those emphasizing continuity of Western legal and philosophical traditions.
Kings Island Haunt operational data and personal field notes, September–October 2026.
Comparative material on Canaanite religion in William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? (2005); ethnographic parallels in fear and fertility rites.
Martin Luther’s prefaces to the Apocrypha; standard introductions to biblical canon formation.

Selected Bibliography for Further Reading
Alberino, Timothy. Works on Enoch and related pseudepigrapha.
Amaringo, Pablo, and Luis Eduardo Luna. Ayahuasca Visions.
Dever, William G. Did God Have a Wife?
Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed.
Frazer, James G. The Golden Bough.
Hancock, Graham. The Sign and the Seal; Fingerprints of the Gods.
Herbert, Frank. Dune series.
Jung, C. G. Collected works on archetypes and the unconscious.
Schmidt, Klaus. Göbekli Tepe.
Sitchin, Zechariah. Earth Chronicles series.
Vallée, Jacques. Passport to Magonia; Dimensions; Confrontations.
von Däniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods?
Additional primary archaeological reports on Göbekli Tepe, Windover, Michigan copper, and Levantine dolmens and caves; criminological studies of public violence and witness behavior; psychological literature on fear conditioning and gender differences under stress (e.g., works descending from Freud, Jung, and modern terror-management theory).

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 Tool Belt Life: Why a Superior Existence Still Starts with Tools, Calloused Hands, and the Refusal of the Administrative State

In the age of disclosure, you must understand the Politics of Heaven. The administrative state has failed. It produces bureaucrats, form-fillers, and people trained to manage decline rather than fix anything. Meanwhile, the people who still know how to put a tool belt on and make something work again are the ones quietly holding the real economy together. I have learned this the hard way, across decades of executive work, competitive shooting, gunsmithing, and long hours in machine shops. The happiest version of my life has always involved tools.

A Tool Belt Full of Useful Things

I was at O’Reilly’s recently, talking with the counter guy, and he showed me a small 3/8-inch drive universal joint with a spring in it. Most of those joints flop around the moment you get them into a tight spot. This one has a spring that lets it stand up and stay put until you apply force. Titan Tools. Simple, clever, and exactly the kind of thing that makes a working day better. It went straight into the belt.

That belt already carries a telescopic magnet for fishing dropped fasteners out of engine bays and dashboards, a selection of screwdrivers, O-ring picks that actually work, a half-inch drive ratchet, and a pair of DeWalt pliers I genuinely like. The grips on the pliers are supposed to be bright yellow. They are now dark with oil and use, which is how I prefer them. There is nothing ornamental about any of it. Every item has been chosen because it solves a recurring problem.

When I strap that belt on to work on a car in the driveway, or when I used to carry one every day, the day feels correctly ordered. You have the tools you need. You can see the problem, isolate it, and correct it. That is a form of competence the administrative world almost never delivers.

Machine Shop Days and the Double-Stack Toolbox

In my late teens and early twenties I worked in a machine shop attached to a metal-stamping operation. It was a rough place. People got hurt. The work was loud, dirty, and unforgiving. They called it a “sitter” in the older language of the trade—an operation that chewed through equipment and required constant attention. I learned to set dies, make dies, troubleshoot production lines, and keep machines running. I also learned how to work alongside people who had no interest in office politics or motivational posters. They cared whether the part was good and whether the press kept cycling.

Later I refurbished old machinery for a living. We would bring in worn-out equipment, tear it down to the last nut and bolt, and rebuild it. I kept a double-stacked toolbox in the shop. In the 1990s that box held roughly a thousand dollars’ worth of tools, many of them custom or modified for specific jobs. I looked forward to work because the tools were there and the problems were concrete. When I moved into more executive roles, that daily contact with tools largely disappeared. The satisfaction did not transfer automatically to meetings and spreadsheets.

Gunsmithing, Competitive Shooting, and the Real Pleasure

Early in my marriage I set up a gunsmithing shop behind the house. I studied the craft because I wanted to work for myself and because the tools are specialized and satisfying: spring compressors, sear jigs, headspace gauges, bolt-face tools, and the particular screwdrivers and punches required for Ruger, Browning, and other actions. The guns themselves were interesting, but the tools and the process of diagnosing and correcting problems were what I enjoyed most.

Competitive fast shooting later gave me an outlet on weekends. From roughly 2018 through 2025 I shot a lot, won a lot of first-place trophies, and filled part of the office with them. The shooting itself was enjoyable—drawing, presenting, and hitting plates in a quarter or half second is a pure skill. What I came to realize, though, was that the part I looked forward to most was the workbench. Before one of the last events, in Cleveland, a gun had developed a tick. The mechanism was catching on the frame. We took the gun apart, identified the interference, and dressed it. I intended to replace the part properly once I got home. Standing there with the gun disassembled, the right tools laid out, and a clear mechanical problem in front of me, I recognized the pattern again. The shooting was the excuse. The tools and the troubleshooting were the pleasure.

Every serious competitor ends up with a small collection of specialized items: the correct bit for the screw that loosens under recoil, the fixture that holds a slide while you stone a surface, the gauge that tells you whether the timing is still correct. Building that kit, and using it under time pressure before a match, felt like the same work I had done in the machine shop decades earlier. It was crew-chief work, not spectator work.

Public Education, the Administrative Class, and What Young People Actually Need

Public education has spent decades training people to become members of the administrative bureaucracy. It has done this systematically and with considerable success. The result is a surplus of people who can navigate forms, attend meetings, and manage processes, and a shortage of people who can diagnose a hydraulic leak, set a die, pull a wiring harness, or rebuild a transmission. We talk about college as the default path while the skilled trades remain under-taught and, in many places, socially discouraged.

I have no interest in romanticizing hard physical work for its own sake. The point is narrower and more practical: a society that cannot produce and retain people who know how to fix things will not remain productive. The administrative state can write regulations. It cannot keep the machines running. When the machines stop, the regulations become irrelevant.

Young men in particular have been steered away from this path for a generation. Many of them now reach their mid-twenties without basic mechanical competence. Women notice. A man who cannot change a tire, change the oil, or diagnose a simple electrical problem is less useful as a partner and less useful as a citizen. This is not a complicated observation, and it does not require hostility toward anyone. It is simply a description of what has happened when schools stopped teaching shop, when parents stopped requiring basic mechanical literacy, and when culture began treating hands-on work as a fallback rather than a respectable primary path.

Home-improvement television and the tool aisles at places like O’Reilly’s exist for a reason. People still want to solve physical problems. The gadgets keep improving—better ratchets, magnetic trays, spring-loaded universals, compact torque wrenches, inspection cameras—because the underlying need has not gone away.

The Economic Case for the Tool Belt

The next wave of American productivity will not be led exclusively by people who write code or manage brand narratives. Space launch, electric vehicles, robotics, data-center construction, and advanced manufacturing all require large numbers of technicians who can work with tools, read drawings, troubleshoot in real time, and keep complex systems operating. Tesla-style manufacturing, reusable rocketry, and the supporting industrial base will need people who treat a tool belt as normal daily equipment rather than a costume.

Companies such as Carvana have tried to reorganize automotive retail around logistics and software. Some of those experiments will succeed in pieces; others will discover that physical goods still require physical maintenance. The firms that scale will be the ones that can recruit and retain people who already know how to use tools and who take satisfaction in the work. Those people are currently in short supply.

I am not arguing that everyone should abandon white-collar work. I am arguing that the cultural hierarchy which treats skilled trades as inferior has been a mistake, and that the economic consequences of that mistake are becoming visible. A person who can make a living with a tool belt, who owns the tools, and who looks forward to using them is in a stronger position than many people with higher formal credentials and less practical capability. The work is measurable. The customer either gets a running machine or does not. There is less room for the kind of ambiguity that administrative roles often reward.

Personal Conclusion

Across machine-shop work in my twenties, gunsmithing in the early years of marriage, competitive shooting on weekends, and the ordinary maintenance of cars and equipment at home, the pattern has been consistent. The periods in which I used tools every day were the periods I looked forward to most. Executive work has its own satisfactions and its own necessities, but it has never replaced the direct feedback of diagnosing a problem, selecting the right tool, and correcting the fault.

If a young person can learn a trade, acquire good tools, and make a living while wearing a tool belt, that person has a realistic chance at a high-quality life. The marriage, the family stability, and the personal satisfaction tend to follow the competence rather than the other way around. Public education has spent too many years teaching the opposite lesson. The correction will not come from another round of administrative reforms. It will come from people who simply decide to learn how to fix things and who refuse to treat that skill as second-class.

The future economy will reward them. In the meantime, a well-stocked tool belt remains one of the more reliable sources of ordinary happiness available.

Footnotes

1. The spring-loaded 3/8-inch universal joint is a small but representative example of incremental tool improvement. Older flex-joint designs required constant manual positioning; the spring returns the joint to a usable attitude, reducing frustration in confined spaces.

2. “Sitter” was shop-floor language for certain stamping or forming operations that demanded continuous operator or maintenance attention because of wear rates, material variability, or tooling sensitivity. Injury rates in older metal-stamping environments were high by modern standards.

3. The double-stacked toolbox from the 1990s refurbishing work contained both standard and job-specific tooling. Custom ground punches, modified wrenches, and dedicated fixtures were common because production machinery of that era was not designed for rapid field service.

4. Competitive practical shooting requires ongoing gunsmith-level maintenance. Recoil, fouling, and high round counts loosen fasteners, alter timing, and reveal small dimensional problems that range guns rarely expose. Most serious competitors maintain a traveling tool kit for exactly this reason.

5. Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft (2009) remains one of the clearer modern arguments that manual competence produces a distinct form of cognitive and moral satisfaction largely absent from many administrative and symbolic-analytic jobs.

6. Public high-school shop programs declined sharply after the 1970s–1980s in most U.S. districts. The shift coincided with rising college-enrollment targets and a cultural redefinition of “good” jobs as those requiring bachelor’s degrees. Skilled-trade shortages in construction, manufacturing maintenance, and automotive repair have been widely documented since the mid-2010s.

7. Basic mechanical literacy (tire changes, oil changes, simple electrical diagnosis, plumbing and electrical fundamentals) functions as a practical filter in household and community life. Its absence is frequently noted in discussions of partner selection and household stability, independent of broader ideological framing.

8. Advanced manufacturing, commercial space, electric-vehicle production, and data-center build-out all increase demand for technicians who combine traditional mechanical skills with newer diagnostic tools (thermal imaging, borescopes, precision torque, digital multimeters, and basic programmable-logic troubleshooting). The tool belt evolves; it does not disappear.

Bibliography & Further Reading

• Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. (Personal framework connecting competitive shooting, tool use, executive decision-making, and individual agency.)

• Crawford, Matthew B. Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. Penguin, 2009.

• Rowe, Mike. Profoundly Disconnected (various essays and talks on skilled trades and cultural attitudes toward manual work).

• Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (Classic exploration of quality, tools, and the relationship between mechanic and machine.)

• Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. Yale University Press, 2008.

• Industry reporting on skilled-trade shortages: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational outlooks for industrial machinery mechanics, automotive technicians, electricians, and millwrights (ongoing).

• Historical context on the decline of vocational education: various state and federal reports from the 1980s–2000s documenting the reduction of shop programs in public secondary schools.

The tools remain available. The work remains necessary. The satisfaction, for those willing to acquire the skill, has not been repealed by any administrative decree.

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.

Don’t Squander the SpaceX Gift: Why Good Government, Hard People, and Real Competition Must Arrive Before the Medical Industrial Complex Collapses

Elon Musk has said he will give every child in America one share of SpaceX stock next year, routed through the Trump Accounts program. At recent prices, that is roughly a $10.5 billion transfer to about 72–73 million kids, drawn from a company now valued near $2 trillion after its June 2026 IPO. The gift is real enough to matter. It is not large enough, by itself, to paper over decades of reckless public spending, structural medical overcharging, or the permanent administrative class that treats other people’s money as an infinite resource. Politics is management. The managers we choose will decide whether this windfall is invested or squandered.

The SpaceX Share and the Limits of Private Generosity

Musk posted the pledge on X on October 19, 2026: one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America, “the first of many.” The shares were trading near $146–148. SpaceX had just reported third-quarter revenue of $14.6 billion, up 161 percent year-over-year, and the company carries a market capitalization around $2 trillion. The transfer is large by ordinary standards and small relative to Musk’s holdings. It is also downstream of policy. SpaceX’s explosive growth came after regulatory barriers fell. Private capital and engineering solved problems that public aerospace processes had treated as permanent. The same sequence will have to occur in medicine if the cost structure is ever to break.

Gifting stock to children does not repeal the obligation of fiscal discipline at every level of government. Butler County has maintained that discipline for years. Nancy Nix, first as treasurer and now as auditor, and Mike McNamara as treasurer have kept the books in the black. I have disagreed with Nancy on restaurants, cars, sweaters, and larger political questions including Trump and Vance. None of that changes the observable fact that she understands money. When we talk about county finances, I get clear answers. That is what an auditor is for. Preference arguments can wait until after the numbers are settled.

Local People, Hard Times, and the Test of Character

I have known George Lang for a long time. He is one of Ohio’s stronger state senators and has been through serious political and legal pressure. Years ago, when I was in the middle of one of the more public controversies that have followed me, I held a strategy lunch at LaRosa’s in Liberty Township. Fifteen to twenty people showed up. George came. At the time he was a West Chester trustee, not yet a state representative or senator, and he had every conventional reason to stay away. Conventional wisdom said a rising figure should not sit down with the local radical. He came anyway, ate pizza, and talked. I have not forgotten it. In adult life, I have found that the people willing to show up when the cost is real are the ones you can trust later. Most others reveal themselves under pressure.

The same pattern appears with other local figures. I have had hard conversations with Ann Becker and with Darbi Boddy. Their positions have moved; mine have stayed more constant. I still speak with both when the subject is county or party direction. Art Sauerwein, the new Butler County Republican chair, is navigating a party that is shifting toward clearer Trump alignment after twenty years of more mixed leadership. That shift will be permanent or it will not. The practical question is whether the party represents the voters who show up or protects an internal preference for moderation those voters have already rejected. Sheriff Jones and I differ on operational style; I still recognize competence where it exists. Roger Reynolds, Thomas Hall, Jennifer Gross, and Michael Ryan each bring different vantage points. Good government requires finding the overlapping work that must be done even when the people involved are not identical in every preference.

My own operating rule has been consistent. People who threaten me, send letters, or try to force me into their preferred lane discover that the cost is not free. I cannot think of a case in my adult life where someone who moved against me didn’t eventually pay a price. That reputation is not an accident. It is the same discipline I applied while working the Jason Voorhees role at the Kings Island haunt: guests are protected by the attraction’s rules, yet the job is still to function within those constraints and produce the intended effect. Public life has similar constraints. I defend the position. The threats continue from people who treat disagreement as license for antagonism. The work continues anyway.

The Medical Cost Structure and the Coming Reckoning

The medical industry in its current form is not sustainable. Hospitals routinely bill hundreds of dollars to push a syringe that can be purchased for a few dollars at a retail pharmacy. One documented case involved $722 charges for each IV push; the medication itself was billed separately. Facility fees, chargemaster markups, and billing the same service at hospital rates when performed in an office setting have produced multiples of Medicare reference prices. Large health systems have built entire hillsides of facilities—visible near Bridgewater Falls looking toward the Cincinnati airport—on the assumption that the current reimbursement model continues indefinitely.

I have turned down high-paying offers inside that system because continued public criticism of it was worth more to me than the salary. Many people take the money. The salary structure rests on the post-2010 Affordable Care Act architecture and the expectation of perpetual third-party payment. X-ray technicians and other roles routinely clear six figures. The economic incentive is to keep patients in treatment pathways rather than to eliminate the underlying condition. Shopping malls once looked permanent too. When the cost structure became indefensible, and alternatives appeared, the physical footprint emptied. The same sequence is available in medicine once competitive models are allowed to scale.

Cures for major cancers are closer than the current billing regime admits. Recent work at UCLA and elsewhere has shown methods for producing renewable, off-the-shelf engineered immune cells that can attack solid tumors, reprogram stem cells to generate ongoing T-cell responses, and reduce the cost and customization barriers that have limited CAR-T approaches. These are not yet standard of care. They are evidence that the technical path exists. The political and reimbursement path does not. Radiation and chemotherapy remain the default for many late-stage patients because the payment system rewards ongoing intervention. Friends of mine who are in stage-three and stage-four treatment have been told to hold on. The practical advice is the same: stay alive long enough for the competitive models to clear the regulatory and payment obstacles. That clearance requires elected officials who will not protect the existing revenue streams.

Good People, Hard Conditions, and the Management of Growth

Easy money has corrupted incentives across multiple sectors. People who know a three-dollar item is billed at two hundred dollars and still collect a paycheck participate in a system that delays better outcomes. The same pattern appears in any protected administrative layer: the work becomes the protection of the process rather than the production of the result. SpaceX grew because it lowered barriers and enforced engineering standards. Medicine will require an equivalent reduction in barriers and an equivalent insistence on measurable outcomes.

Good government comes from good people who have already survived hard conditions. The LaRosa’s lunch, the haunt work, the machine-shop years, and the periods of public controversy all tested the same question: who shows up when the cost is real and who disappears. Butler County has a concentration of people who have demonstrated fiscal competence and willingness to absorb political heat. Nancy Nix’s record on the numbers is one example. George Lang’s decision to attend an unpopular meeting is another. Those traits are not universal in politics. They are also not optional if the SpaceX-era wealth is to become lasting productive capacity rather than get absorbed by the next round of administrative expansion.

Trump will not be in office indefinitely. The question of continuity—whether through Vance or another figure—will be settled by whether the underlying incentives have been altered. A county party that aligns more closely with the voters who delivered the recent results is better positioned to defend those changes than one that treats them as temporary. The medical cost collapse will arrive whether local officials prepare for it or not. The difference will be whether replacement models are allowed to form here or whether revenue protection continues until the facilities empty, as the malls did.

The private gift of SpaceX shares is a useful transfer. It does not replace the requirement for managers who can keep public books in the black, tolerate disagreement without treating it as grounds for destruction, and clear the path for competitive innovation in sectors that have been protected too long. You can identify those managers by their behavior under pressure. The rest is preference. The numbers are not.

Footnotes

1. Musk’s October 19, 2026 statement on X committed one SpaceX share per American child, to be delivered via Trump Accounts. Census estimates place the under-18 population near 72–73 million. At contemporaneous share prices of approximately $146–148, the notional value was roughly $10.5 billion. SpaceX’s post-IPO market capitalization has fluctuated near $2 trillion.

2. SpaceX’s third-quarter 2026 revenue was reported at $14.58 billion, a 161 percent year-over-year increase. Analyst targets vary widely; Bernstein raised its target to $268, while the stock traded near $149 in late October.

3. Documented hospital billing examples include $722 charges solely for the act of an IV push (medication billed separately) and systematic multiples of Medicare rates through facility fees and chargemaster pricing. Hospitals have also billed office-based services at hospital outpatient rates, producing large differentials on identical procedures.

4. UCLA and related groups have published methods for generating renewable engineered immune cells from stem cells, off-the-shelf CAR-NKT and similar platforms capable of attacking solid tumors, and approaches that reduce per-patient customization costs. These remain largely preclinical or early-stage; they illustrate technical feasibility rather than immediate clinical availability.

5. Butler County’s multi-year record of operating in the black under Nix (treasurer then auditor) and McNamara (treasurer) is a matter of public financial reporting. Preference disagreements on non-fiscal questions do not alter the observable management of county resources.

6. The LaRosa’s Liberty Township lunch occurred during a period of elevated local controversy. Attendance by a then-township trustee who later became a state senator is cited as an instance of behavior under conditions where conventional incentives favored absence.

Bibliography & Further Reading

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

• Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Axios coverage of the October 19, 2026 Musk SpaceX share pledge and Trump Accounts mechanism.

• SpaceX public financial reporting and analyst notes on Q3 2026 results (revenue, market capitalization).

• NPR and KFF Health News reporting on hospital chargemaster practices, IV-push fees, and facility-fee differentials.

• Patient Rights Advocate and related analyses of medical billing error rates and markups relative to Medicare reference prices.

• UCLA Health and OncLive summaries of stem-cell-derived and off-the-shelf engineered immune-cell platforms for solid tumors (2025–2026 publications).

• Ohio Auditor of State and Butler County financial reports on multi-year operating balances.

The private capital is arriving. Public managers will decide whether to use or consume it. In the age of disclosure, the distinction remains measurable.

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.

Jason at Kings Island and the Rules of the Haunted House: Why Darbi Boddy Is Right About Islam Using American Freedoms to Undo Christian Culture in West Chester

The Window Needs Moving, and Someone Has to Pull It

I have known Ann Becker for a long time. She knows what it takes to stand in a public meeting, take the heat, and keep talking when the institutional machinery wants to shut down the conversation. That is why I listen when Darbi Boddy speaks. She has spent years crossing the state, appearing at school board meetings, and putting uncomfortable realities on the record about how certain Islamic communities in Western countries treat the American premises of free speech, free exercise of religion, and separation of church and state. A Christian people built those premises for a Christian culture. They were never designed as a one-way shield for a competing civilizational order whose own foundational texts and majority opinion in many of its societies reject the same liberties when the roles reverse.

West Chester needs people willing to say this out loud. Mark Welch is no longer a township trustee. The current board is Ann Becker as chair, Lee Wong, and Amanda Ortiz. The board needs clear-eyed leadership that doesn’t treat every demand for religious accommodation as automatically benign. Darbi has done the preparatory public-comment work candidates used to do before seeking office. She earned a seat once. The lawyers and the process found a way to remove her from the Lakota board after a civil protection order kept her from meetings for ninety days. I do not see that removal as a victory for order. I see it as a successful effort to silence the person who kept forcing the discussion the rest of the board preferred not to have.

Darbi Boddy’s Record and the Price of Speaking Plainly

Darbi was elected to the Lakota Local Schools Board of Education in 2021 on a platform of teaching the greatness of America and opposing critical race theory and related ideological imports. Lakota serves West Chester and Liberty Townships and is one of the largest suburban districts in southwest Ohio. Her tenure was contentious. She criticized suicide-prevention mandates she believed separated parents from children, questioned curriculum, and clashed repeatedly with colleagues. A civil stalking protection order fellow board member Isaac Adi obtained in 2023 prevented her from attending meetings with him present. After 90 days of absences, the remaining members declared them insufficient and voted her off in March 2024. She has continued speaking at other boards, including Xenia, and has faced lawsuits and counterclaims over public comment and First Amendment issues. She now leads Access Ohio, focused on parent rights and traditional American values.

People call her a bull in a China shop. Aggressive clarity is often required when institutions have already accepted the progressive framing that any scrutiny of Islamic political theology is bigotry. The same institutions treat Christian residual culture as the problem to be managed. Darbi keeps pointing at the asymmetry. Islamic leadership in many Western settings has stated, in plain language or through institutional practice, the goal of replacing Christian cultural dominance with Islamic norms. She refuses to let local politicians, including those in West Chester, pretend the observation is out of bounds.

The Legal Gambit: Freedom of Religion as a One-Way Shield

Lawyers are skilled at reinterpreting English and case law to fit the argument of the moment. The modern reading of “separation of church and state” is a prime example. The Founders intended to prevent the federal government from establishing a national church or interfering with the free exercise of existing Christian denominations. They did not intend a neutrality so absolute that a competing theocratic system could use the First Amendment as cover while its own doctrines prescribe death for apostasy, second-class status for non-believers, and legal supremacy for sharia.

Pew Research Center’s 2013 survey of Muslims in thirty-nine countries found overwhelming majorities in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Southeast Asia, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa favoring sharia as the official law of the land, at least for Muslims. In Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Jordan, large shares of those who favored sharia also favored the death penalty for leaving Islam. Later Pew work has shown Islam as the world’s fastest-growing major religion between 2010 and 2020, driven primarily by higher fertility and a younger median age rather than mass conversion. In Europe, the Muslim share reached roughly 6 percent by 2020; projections with continued migration put it near 10 percent by mid-century. In the United States, the absolute numbers remain smaller, but the growth rate is among the highest of any region. West Chester is home to the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati, a large campus with a prominent golden dome visible from I-75, which has grown to serve tens of thousands of families since it opened in the mid-1990s.

None of this is a conspiracy theory. It is demography plus doctrine. When a community whose median opinion in many source countries rejects the equal status of other religions uses the American guarantee of free exercise to expand its institutional footprint, while simultaneously pressing for speech restrictions on “Islamophobia,” the constitutional premise is being used against the culture that created it. Lawyers can draft the accommodation language. Politicians can call the resulting pressure “tolerance.” The practical result is the gradual displacement of the prior order.

My Experiment at Kings Island’s Jason: Blood Reign

I spent the 2026 Halloween season working as Jason Voorhees in the new “Jason: Blood Reign” maze at Kings Island’s Halloween Haunt. Before guests enter, they are told the rule: the monsters will not touch you. You have complete safety. Do not touch the monsters. Thousands of people waited, sometimes for hours, for the thrill of being scared while knowing they were protected.

The parallel to the political debate is direct. In the haunted house, guests know the rules protect them. Some guests, once they understand the protection is absolute, become rambunctious. They test the boundary. A few try to punch or kick the actor. They know the performer is forbidden from retaliating. The same dynamic appears when a radical religious order treats American free-speech and free-exercise rules as a shield while advancing practices and political goals incompatible with those rules. The aggressor is told he cannot be touched. He then lashes out, confident the defender is constrained.

Out of the tens of thousands of people I scared during the season, I turned every negative or hostile encounter into a positive, and that is consistent with most things that I get involved with. It was fun and rewarding to do it on a large scale; I tested what I wanted to challenge myself with.

I read body language—shoulders, facial expressions, the way a group clustered—before they reached my position. I used the strobe, the sound, the timing of the jump. People who knew exactly where I was still jumped. Some laughed afterward and admitted they had been gotten anyway. The aggressive ones still got the scare because the common purpose of the attraction was shared: they came to be frightened. The rules constrained my physical response, but they did not constrain psychological effectiveness.

That is the practical lesson. You do not have to break the Fourteenth Amendment or the First Amendment to defend the culture. You do have to understand the strategy of the other side and refuse to pretend the asymmetry does not exist. Darbi is doing that work in public meetings. The institutional response has been to use process and protection orders to remove her from the conversation. The lawyers did their job of reinterpreting the rules. The result is that the discussion she forced is harder to have.

The Psychology of the Protected Aggressor and What the Numbers Show

The people who waited in the long line outside Blood Reign wanted the experience. They did not want to be harmed. Some still behaved poorly once they believed the rules gave them impunity. That is ordinary human behavior under asymmetric constraint. Scale it to civilizational level and the pattern is recognizable. Groups that retain high in-group preference, higher fertility, and doctrinal rejection of equal religious liberty can expand under a host culture’s free-exercise rules while the host culture is told that reciprocal scrutiny violates its own principles.

The data do not require exotic interpretation. Pew’s global religious landscape work shows Muslim population growth outpacing every other major group from 2010 to 2020. Fertility differentials, not adult conversion, drive most of the increase. In many Muslim-majority societies, majorities continue to favor legal systems in which sharia has official status. Western polling of Muslim populations shows greater moderation on average, particularly among those born in the West, yet the institutional organizations and the source-country norms travel with the migration. Local officials who treat every request for accommodation as self-evidently compatible with American order are choosing not to examine the long-term trajectory.

Ann Becker has been on the other side of contentious meetings. She knows the difference between an ideology held in a living room and the same ideology defended under public scrutiny and procedural attack. Darbi’s style is more confrontational. That style is sometimes necessary to move the Overton window back toward the place where Christian cultural continuity is treated as the default rather than the problem. The progressive platform

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.and the legal class have made adherence to the rules nearly impossible for a civil society that wishes to remain itself. The rules were written by people who assumed a shared civilizational premise. When that premise is rejected by one of the parties using the rules, the defender must name the rejection.

Moving the Window Without Breaking the Rules

I am proud of the season I spent as Jason. The work was physically demanding. It required reading people under pressure and finding a way to deliver the intended experience even when some guests tried to weaponize the safety rules. The political parallel is not perfect, but it is close enough to be useful. The guests who behaved worst still left having been scared, because the shared purpose of the attraction overrode the temporary abuse of the rules. A society that still possesses a shared purpose—constitutional loyalty, individual responsibility, and the cultural inheritance that produced those things—can do the same. It requires people willing to speak the obvious asymmetries in public, to accept the personal cost, and to keep the discussion alive after the lawyers and the process have done their best to end it.

Darbi Boddy has been doing that. West Chester has the institutional space for it now that the prior trustee arrangement has changed. The argument matters more than the personalities. Voters ultimately decide whether the community remains American in more than name or whether it continues to treat every use of its own freedoms as equally legitimate even when the user does not reciprocate. I have seen the dynamic up close, under the mask, with a large sample of ordinary people. The rules can be used against you. You can still win the encounter if you refuse to pretend the rules were written for a different game.

Bibliography

Bat Ye’or. Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005.

Hirsi Ali, Ayaan. Infidel. Free Press, 2007.

Hirsi Ali, Ayaan. Nomad: From Islam to America. Free Press, 2010.

Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. (and related works on individual responsibility and cultural continuity).

Ibrahim, Raymond. Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. Da Capo, 2018.

Lewis, Bernard. What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. Oxford University Press, 2002.

Lewis, Bernard. The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. Modern Library, 2003.

Pew Research Center. “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society.” April 30, 2013.

Pew Research Center. “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050.” April 2, 2015.

Pew Research Center. “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020.” June 9, 2025.

Spencer, Robert. The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS. Bombardier Books, 2018.

Spencer, Robert. The Critical Qur’an: Explained from Key Islamic Commentaries and Contemporary Historical Research. Bombardier Books, 2022.

Warraq, Ibn. Why I Am Not a Muslim. Prometheus Books, 1995.

Local reporting on Lakota Local Schools Board actions regarding Darbi Boddy (Cincinnati Enquirer, Dayton Daily News, FOX19, WXIX, 2021–2025).

West Chester Township Board of Trustees meeting records and official site, 2025–2026.

Kings Island Halloween Haunt 2026 materials on “Jason: Blood Reign.”

Footnotes

1. Darbi Boddy elected 2021; removed March 2024 after protection order produced ninety-day absence under Ohio Revised Code provisions allowing removal when absences are declared insufficient by two-thirds of the remaining board. See Cincinnati Enquirer, March–April 2024 coverage.

2. Pew Research Center, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” 2013. Regional medians for support of sharia as official law: South Asia 84 %, Middle East-North Africa 74 %, Southeast Asia 77 %, sub-Saharan Africa 64 %. Support for death penalty for apostasy among those favoring sharia reached 78 % in Afghanistan and was high in Egypt and Pakistan.

3. Pew Research Center, “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020,” June 2025. Muslims increased by 347 million; share of world population rose to 25.6 %. Growth driven primarily by fertility and age structure.

4. Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati, West Chester Township, opened mid-1990s; large campus visible from I-75. Contemporary reporting describes service to tens of thousands of families.

5. Kings Island Halloween Haunt 2026 featured the licensed “Jason: Blood Reign” maze. Guest instructions explicitly prohibit contact with actors; actors are constrained from physical retaliation.

6. West Chester Township Board of Trustees as of 2026: Ann Becker (Chair), Lee Wong, Amanda Ortiz. Mark Welch, longtime trustee, did not continue after the 2025 election cycle.supplies the footnotes

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 Simba Is Coming Back: The Lion King Metaphor for Leadership, Loyalty, and Leaving the Pride Lands

I received another round of texts and calls this week from people at the place where I spent twenty-five years. One of them came from a man I hired years ago, a man from Ghana who later introduced me to his children and, in time, began to treat me as a father figure in America. He is not the only one who has reached out. Several people have asked when I am coming back, whether I can fix what has become a nightmare, and whether there is any path for a return to the way things used to be. I appreciate the respect and the loyalty. It is an honor when someone from another continent decides you are the person he trusts that way. At the same time, the honest answer I need to give him—and everyone else who has written—is straightforward: go back and watch The Lion King. That is the clearest picture of what is happening, and it explains why I have no plans to return.

Twenty-Five Years and the Obligation to Set Everyone Up

I spent years trying to put people in a position where the paychecks would keep coming. That was the practical obligation. Mortgage payments, car notes, and ordinary life do not pause while leadership changes. I did what I could to arrange sustainable arrangements so that people who stayed would continue to receive regular pay for a year, two years, three years, or longer. From my side of the transaction, that was the success criterion. I left because the situation had become miserable for me personally, not because I wanted to abandon anyone. There are many ways to make money in the world; staying in a place that drains you is not required once the basic obligations have been met. I feel that I fulfilled those obligations as thoroughly as the circumstances allowed.

The man who considers me his American father was a leader on the machines and someone with whom the professional relationship grew into something more personal over time. When he told me years ago that God had directed him to come see me, I took that seriously. People of genuine faith do not say such things lightly. The same respect he showed then is present in the way he has reached out now. I value that. I also know that affection and loyalty do not change the structural facts of the place I left.

Scar’s Conspiracy and the Ruined Pride Lands

The Lion King (1994) remains one of the clearest popular stories about what happens when someone schemes for a title he cannot actually carry. Scar, Mufasa’s brother, conspires with the hyenas, engineers a stampede, and kills the king so he can seize the throne. Once he has the position, the Pride Lands deteriorate. The grass dies, the herds leave, and the remaining lions live under scarcity and fear. Scar’s rule is not an improvement; it is a slow collapse. The film makes the point without subtlety: taking the title does not confer the competence, the loyalty, or the capacity to sustain the kingdom. Ambition organized around grievance produces depletion rather than abundance.

That pattern appears in real organizations more often than people like to admit. Someone decides he can do the job better, works in the background to undermine the person currently holding it, and eventually obtains the role. The immediate result is often not improved performance but declining morale, reduced trust, and a workplace that feels worse for the people still inside it. Research on leadership transitions consistently shows measurable drops in engagement, trust, and retention after a change at the top. One global study found that after a reorganization, 88 percent of senior leaders believed the new structure would succeed while only 36 percent of employees agreed; only 22 percent of employees said they received adequate support to adapt. Other data indicate that poorly managed transitions can reduce employee performance by roughly 15 percent and that a substantial share of executive transitions are later judged failures. Communication often falls by about 20 percent in the first months after a CEO change as uncertainty rises. None of this is abstract when the people living it are calling and texting.

The Reality of Leadership Transitions

I have told people who reached out that I did my part. I arranged what I could so that paychecks would continue. Beyond that, I have no capacity or intention to re-enter the situation. I am busy. I am also taking time to recover from years of long hours and physical demand—time that was unavailable while I was responsible for keeping everyone paid. The desire for the former leader to return is understandable. Employees who trusted the previous arrangement naturally hope the person who made the place function will come back and restore it. In the film, Nala and others eventually find Simba and urge him to return. The difference is that Simba does return, confronts Scar, and restores the land. I am not that figure, and I have not left any door open for that role.

There is no Simba waiting to take the kingdom back. The place will continue in its current direction or it will not; that is now outside my control. People who need a regular paycheck can stay and work under the existing conditions. Those who find the conditions intolerable have the same option I exercised: they can leave and find another arrangement. I do not say that lightly. Changing jobs is disruptive. It is also sometimes necessary when the alternative is remaining in a declining environment run by people whose primary qualification was the desire for the title.

Why There Is No Simba Coming Back

I have no plans to return and save the pride from Scar. The years spent trying to set people up were already costly in personal terms. I did that work out of loyalty and a sense of obligation. Repeating it would not be healthy, and I have no desire to reopen that chapter. Greatness, for me, is now located elsewhere. Scar-type figures exist in many organizations; they scheme, obtain the position, and then discover that competence and care for the people under them are not automatically transferred with the title. The remaining employees have to navigate that reality themselves.

I appreciate every message that expresses affection or asks me to come back. It is good to be missed. It is also important to be clear. I fulfilled the practical duty of arranging sustainable pay where I could. I am not available to re-enter the role, and I do not expect that to change. For the man who calls me father in America, and for everyone else who wrote, the clearest reply remains the same: watch The Lion King again. Scar takes the throne through conspiracy. The Pride Lands decline under his rule. Simba eventually returns in the story. In this particular case, that return is not available. The circle of life continues either way, but it continues without me in that particular pride.

Notes

1. The Lion King, directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff (Walt Disney Pictures, 1994). The film’s plot centers on Scar’s conspiracy to murder Mufasa, seize the throne, and the subsequent ecological and social collapse of the Pride Lands under his rule.

2. Standard plot summaries of The Lion King (1994) detail Scar’s alliance with the hyenas, the engineered stampede, the betrayal of Mufasa, and the later return of Simba. See also analyses of Scar as an archetype of toxic or subtractive leadership that obtains power through deception but cannot sustain the conditions that made the kingdom viable.

3. Bain & Company research (reported 2026) on organizational restructuring found large gaps between leader confidence and employee experience; only 22 percent of employees reported receiving sufficient support. Related findings appear in Gallup data on engagement declines after disruptive change and in studies of communication volume after CEO transitions (roughly 20 percent drop in the initial months). McKinsey and other sources have estimated that successful transitions reduce attrition while failed ones can reduce performance by double-digit percentages; estimates of transition failure rates commonly range into the 40 percent range within two years.

4. Leadership literature on succession and toxic leadership frequently uses narrative examples such as Scar to illustrate the difference between obtaining a title and possessing the capacity to lead. See also research on Leader-Member Exchange and engagement drops following top-level change.

Bibliography

Allers, Roger, and Rob Minkoff, dirs. The Lion King. Walt Disney Pictures, 1994.

Bain & Company. Research on organizational restructuring and employee adaptation (reported 2026).

Gallup. State of the Global Workplace reports and related analyses of engagement, change, and leadership levels.

Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. Studies on communication volume and uncertainty following CEO transitions.

McKinsey & Company. Research on executive transitions, retention, and performance outcomes.

Analyses of toxic leadership and narrative archetypes in The Lion King (various academic and popular treatments of Scar as manipulator versus competent steward).

Additional recommended reading: works on succession planning, employee trust after leadership change, and the practical limits of personal loyalty in organizational settings.

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.

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Free Babysitting, Public Education, and the Vote for the Status Quo

Amy Acton as Governor and the Broader Free-Stuff Message

Liberty Township, Coastal Habits, and the Tax-as-Default Mindset

Statewide Tax Measures and the Limits of the Anti-Tax Argument

What the Iranian Conflict and Media Coverage Had to Do With It

Conclusion: People Get What They Vote For

Footnotes

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Election Night at the Michael Ryan Watch Party and the Precinct Math

Butler County Still Leans Republican—But the Margins Tell a Story

Statewide Ohio: Affordability Wins the Night for Democrats

National Results: Democrats Seize the House and Senate

Gas Prices, the Iranian War, and Why Pocketbooks Overrode Everything Else

Demographic Shifts, New Faces, and the Socialism Taught in Schools

Party Unity, Smash-Mouth Politics, and the Path Forward

Footnotes

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Early Voting as a Borrowed-Time Strategy

There Simply Are Not Enough Democrats

Ohio, Ramaswamy, and the Local Test

The Football Analogy and the Final Quarter

What the Win Does Not Solve

Bibliography and Further Reading

Footnotes

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The Numbers Game and Republican Advantage in Ohio

Conversations That Reveal a Dangerous Frustration

What’s at Stake: Civility Over Violence

A Personal Call to Action

Footnotes

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Footnotes

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An Academic Reflection from Put-in-Bay and the Kings Island Haunt, 2026

Introduction: Writing Under Privation and the Search for Root Causes

Method: Privation, Shamanic Parallel, and the Truman Show

Archaeological Foundations and Pre-Biblical Complexity

Fear as the Core Control Mechanism

Gendered and Developmental Responses to Terror

Canaanite Cults, Shamanism, and Western Counter-Narratives

Implications for Programming, Free Will, and Future Archaeology

Conclusion

Jason: Blood Reign and the Quiet Proof of Leadership

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A Tool Belt Full of Useful Things

Machine Shop Days and the Double-Stack Toolbox

Gunsmithing, Competitive Shooting, and the Real Pleasure

Public Education, the Administrative Class, and What Young People Actually Need

The Economic Case for the Tool Belt

Personal Conclusion

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The SpaceX Share and the Limits of Private Generosity

Local People, Hard Times, and the Test of Character

The Medical Cost Structure and the Coming Reckoning

Good People, Hard Conditions, and the Management of Growth

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The Window Needs Moving, and Someone Has to Pull It

Darbi Boddy’s Record and the Price of Speaking Plainly

The Legal Gambit: Freedom of Religion as a One-Way Shield

My Experiment at Kings Island’s Jason: Blood Reign

The Psychology of the Protected Aggressor and What the Numbers Show

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Twenty-Five Years and the Obligation to Set Everyone Up

Scar’s Conspiracy and the Ruined Pride Lands

The Reality of Leadership Transitions

Why There Is No Simba Coming Back

Notes

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