The Case of Jack Ma: China would never put up with a person like Elon Musk

I have been thinking a lot lately about what it actually takes to push a civilization forward, and the more I dig into the mechanics of power, the clearer it becomes that the decisive factor is rarely the collective. It is the rare individual who refuses to accept the current ceiling. Rainer Zitelmann’s New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars is one of those books that lands at exactly the right moment because it forces the conversation back onto that hard truth. The foreword by Newt Gingrich sets the tone, but the real value is in how Zitelmann lays out the entrepreneurial path to the stars without the usual romantic fog. He understands that the technical pieces are largely in place; the missing ingredient has always been the institutional and cultural permission for individuals to own the risk and the reward.

I have read a lot of books on strategy over the years. Robert Greene’s Power series is solid, particularly when you need to see the patterns that keep repeating across centuries. But the concepts only become useful when you translate them into the actual arena you are operating in—whether that is a small business, a national culture, or the emerging space economy. That is why I wrote The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business the way I did. I wanted to strip the abstraction away and show how leadership actually works when the consequences are real—the same principles scale. At every level, the decisive question is the same: does the system protect and amplify the person who is willing to impose a higher standard, or does it systematically cut that person down to the level of the committee?

That is the danger I keep returning to when I look at the post-colonial messaging that has saturated our universities and media over the last generation. The surface story is that colonialism was uniquely evil and must be endlessly atoned for. The stronger effect is to pathologize the very traits that built the most productive societies in history—individual agency, technological dominance, the willingness to claim and develop resources. A lot of money flows into that messaging, and not all of it is organic. Anyone who has watched the funding streams into American higher education over the last fifteen years knows that Chinese influence, both direct and through corporate intermediaries that depend on the Chinese market, has been substantial. The same pattern showed up in Hollywood a decade ago. The first weekend China box-office number became the make-or-break figure for big studio releases because a hundred-million-dollar Chinese gross was realistic for a major title. Studios adjusted content, softened political edges, and chased that market until the politics shifted and the arrangement began to sour.

China does not need to kick the door in. The preferred method has always been to work the cultural and regulatory back doors until the target society starts policing its own exceptional people. That is the real war, and it is fought at the level of incentives and narrative long before any kinetic phase.

Zitelmann devotes time to the Chinese model and is careful not to caricature it. Roughly 60% of China’s economic activity is in the private sector. The catch, and it is the entire ballgame, is that private ownership does not equal private control. You may hold the equity, but the Party retains the right to manage the owners. The individuals who generate the wealth remain on a short leash. That arrangement can produce impressive aggregate numbers for a while. It cannot produce, and will not tolerate, an Elon Musk.

The clearest demonstration of the difference is the story of Jack Ma. In 2020, at the height of the COVID lockdowns in the West, Ma was still the richest man in China, with a fortune north of $50 billion. He had built Alibaba and Ant Group into engines that actually moved the Chinese economy. Then he made the mistake of publicly criticizing the financial regulators. Within days, the Ant Group IPO—the largest in history at the time—was suspended. Ma disappeared from public view for months. When he resurfaced, he was a chastened figure operating under much tighter constraints. The message was unambiguous: you can get rich, but you will not be allowed to become independently powerful. The state will let you own the assets only as long as you accept that the state ultimately owns you.

That is the model. And it is the model that certain elements within the United States have been trying to import for years through regulatory pressure, board governance norms, and a cultural campaign that treats exceptional individuals as threats to the collective. Look at the pattern. Steve Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985 by a board that preferred managerial predictability over the difficult personality who actually created the products. The company nearly died until they brought him back. Sam Altman was removed from OpenAI by the board in 2023 because he was insufficiently candid with them; employees and the market forced a reversal within days because everyone understood that the board lacked the vision Altman did. Travis Kalanick was forced out of Uber in 2017 after investors decided the founder’s edge had become a liability. Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos at various pressure points, Elon Musk himself more than once—every one of these people has faced the same institutional reflex. The committee always prefers the safer average over the dangerous high performer.

I call the people who staff those boards Normies. They are not evil in the cartoon sense. They value belonging more than they value results. Their deepest instinct is to reduce variance, and high-agency individuals are the ultimate source of variance. When that instinct captures the governing institutions of a society, the society begins to select against the very people who generate its outsized economic output. Less than one percent of any population produces the breakthroughs that the other ninety-nine percent live off of. If you systematically attack that one percent—through regulation, through cultural stigma, through the soft coercion of “stakeholder” governance—you do not get a more equitable society. You get stagnation, then decline.

China understands this dynamic perfectly and has weaponized it. The goal is not to out-innovate the United States in a head-to-head contest of free individuals. The goal is to change the cultural and regulatory climate in the United States so that the next generation of American Elons Musks never has the room to operate. That is why the post-colonial curriculum, the DEI machinery, the reflexive hostility to “tech bros,” and the expanding regulatory state all point in the same direction. They are different instruments playing the same tune: exceptionalism is the problem, collective management is the solution.

SpaceX is the living counter-example, and that is why the recent IPO matters so much. Elon waited until the Starship factory was producing vehicles at a cadence that actually changes the economics of access to orbit. Only then did he open the capital floodgates. The risk of going public is real—once the ownership base expands, the pressure to behave as a normal public company intensifies. But the dual-class structure and the sheer scale of the opportunity give him a window. The capital will accelerate the cadence from monthly launches to weekly, and eventually to daily. That is how you open a multi-trillion-dollar space economy. It is also why the same forces that neutralized Jack Ma have been trying for years to neutralize Musk through every available regulatory and cultural lever.

I supported Trump for the same reason Musk did. Both of them saw the pattern clearly. Another four years of the prior trajectory would have continued the slow strangulation of the independent centers of production. The Chinese model does not need to conquer America by force. It only needs America to adopt the habit of cutting its own high performers down to size. Once that habit is locked in, the GDP gap closes on its own.

The real debate almost nobody is willing to state plainly is this: China wants to destroy people like Elon Musk. America, at its best, wants to create the conditions that produce more of them and then get out of their way. Everything else—trade policy, university curricula, board governance norms, the cultural treatment of ambition—is downstream of that single civilizational choice. Zitelmann’s book is valuable because it keeps the focus where it belongs. The stars will not be reached by committees optimizing for consensus. They will be reached by the rare individuals who refuse to accept the current limits, and by the societies that still know how to protect them.

Footnotes

1. Rainer Zitelmann, New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars (Skyhorse Publishing, 2026), with foreword by Newt Gingrich.

2. On the sixty-percent private-sector contribution figures and the limits of private control in China, see Zitelmann’s earlier analysis in “State Capitalism? No, The Private Sector Was And Is The Main Driver Of China’s Economic Growth,” Forbes, September 30, 2019, and the discussion of Chinese commercial space companies in his 2026 work.

3. Jack Ma’s October 2020 speech criticizing Chinese financial regulators, the subsequent suspension of the Ant Group IPO, and his months-long disappearance from public view are documented in Bloomberg, “Jack Ma’s Empire in Crisis After China Halts Ant Group IPO,” December 22, 2020, and contemporaneous reporting from The Guardian and Wired.

4. Steve Jobs’s 1985 ouster from Apple and 1997 return are standard corporate history; see, among many sources, the accounts in Walter Isaacson’s biography and contemporary board accounts.

5. Sam Altman’s removal by the OpenAI board on November 17, 2023, and rapid reinstatement are detailed in OpenAI’s official announcement and subsequent reporting by The New York Times and CNBC.

6. Travis Kalanick’s forced resignation as Uber CEO in June 2017 under pressure from major investors is covered in The New York Times, June 21, 2017.

7. SpaceX’s June 12, 2026 IPO, the $135 share price, approximately $75 billion raised, and roughly $1.75 trillion valuation are confirmed in the company’s S-1 filings and contemporaneous Reuters and CNBC reporting.

8. On Hollywood’s dependence on the Chinese box office in the 2010s and the resulting content adjustments, see the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report “Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China” (2015) and later analyses of the market’s decline after 2019.

Bibliography

Davenport, Christian. Various reporting on commercial space.

Greene, Robert. The 48 Laws of Power and related works.

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

Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs.

Zitelmann, Rainer. New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars. Skyhorse Publishing, 2026.

Zitelmann, Rainer. “State Capitalism? No, The Private Sector Was And Is The Main Driver Of China’s Economic Growth.” Forbes, September 30, 2019.

U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China.” 2015.

Contemporary reporting from Bloomberg, Reuters, CNBC, The New York Times, and The Guardian on Jack Ma (2020), Sam Altman (2023), Travis Kalanick (2017), and the SpaceX IPO (2026).

Rich Hoffman

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About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

Podcast Episode: Psychedelics, Skull Cults, and the Politics of Heaven: Why Christianity Broke the Politics of Demon Appeasement

Pip: The Overmanwarrior has always operated at the intersection of ancient skulls and modern politics, which is either a very niche Venn diagram or the only one that matters.

Mara: Rich Hoffman is asking a question that runs from Göbekli Tepe to the UAP disclosures: what if the entire history of human religion is really a history of political negotiation with non-human intelligence — and what broke that cycle?

Pip: Let’s start with the skull cults, the spiked wine, and why Christianity might be the most radical political act in human history.

Psychedelics, Skull Cults, and the Long Politics of Appeasement

Mara: The frame here is a big one: for most of human prehistory, people weren’t worshipping gods out of love — they were appeasing predatory non-human powers through blood, psychedelics, and severed heads. The question is whether Christianity actually ended that arrangement.

Pip: The anchor text is Brian Muraresku’s The Immortality Key, and the argument it sparks is not gentle. The setup is that the original Eucharist may have been chemically active — inherited from Greek mystery rites at Eleusis, where initiates drank the kykeon. Here’s the line that drives the whole piece: “For nearly two thousand years, the greatest minds of antiquity — Cicero among them — traveled to the sanctuary at Eleusis to drink the kykeon. They claimed the experience removed the fear of death. The recipe was a state secret punishable by death.”

Mara: So the upshot is that the pharmacological dimension of early Christianity wasn’t incidental — it was the technology through which people made contact with something. And the institutional Church, as it became more patriarchal from the fourth century onward, systematically dismantled that technology. Muraresku calls the shift moving from pharmacological Christianity to placebo Christianity.

Pip: That’s a phrase that will haunt a few seminaries.

Mara: The argument doesn’t stop with Greece. The post traces the same pattern back ten thousand years to Göbekli Tepe — skull cults, snake iconography, beer residues in stone vessels, and architecture aligned to solar and stellar markers. The same complex appears in the Jordan Valley dolmen fields and at Rujm el-Hiri, the Wheel of Giants east of the Sea of Galilee, built from more than 40,000 tons of basalt.

Pip: And then the argument jumps the Atlantic — pure copper from Lake Superior, the Windover bog people of Florida preserving brain matter from the same deep time window, Hopewell earthworks in the Ohio Valley. The silence in mainstream archaeology about these connections is treated as data, not absence.

Mara: All of it feeds the central allegory: a mouse dropped into a glass enclosure with a snake. The mouse eventually stops fleeing and goes still near the water dish, as if ordinary proximity to life might persuade the predator to look elsewhere. The post is direct — “The snake, of course, is not persuaded. It simply waits and then eats.”

Ritualistic Sex Practices to Appease Hungry Demons

Pip: Humanity as the mouse. Skull cults, ritual sex, psychedelic sacraments — all forms of mouse-stillness.

Mara: Christianity, in this reading, broke the cycle not by denying the hostile powers but by declaring them defeated and offering a different posture: moral agency, individual responsibility, direct relationship with a God who does not require constant feeding of death. The concern about the modern psychedelic renaissance follows from this — the experiences at Johns Hopkins and NYU are real, but the entities contacted in those states may not be friends of the human project.

Pip: Four archaeological clusters get flagged for serious future funding: Göbekli Tepe, the Jordan Valley dolmens, the Lake Superior copper systems, and the Windover populations. The book The Politics of Heaven is framed as the effort to force that conversation open — because the secular publishing world, the post argues, prefers to treat Christianity as the problem rather than as a partial solution to an older and darker one.

Mara: Which is itself, in the post’s framing, another form of the mouse going still inside the glass.

Pip: The closing line lands hard: “Do not be the mouse. Learn the snake’s methods. The enemy is the one who puts the mouse in the cage with the snake.” And the UAP disclosures are offered as the moment the glass is becoming visible.

Mara: The thread running through all of this is political — who controls the technology of transcendence, and whose interests does that control serve.

Pip: Ten thousand years of appeasement is a long policy to reverse. But apparently someone tried, and built a civilization on it.

Mara: More on where that civilization goes next — we’ll be watching.

Rich Hoffman

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Podcast Episode: Why the 2026 Midterm Polls Are Still Misleading: Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin, and the

Pip: Welcome to The Overmanwarrior, where the polls say it’s a toss-up and Rich Hoffman says the polls are lying to you — again.

Mara: Rich Hoffman has been tracking the 2026 midterm landscape closely, and the central argument running through his recent work is that the published numbers in Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin are systematically understating Republican support.

Pip: Let’s start with why those poll averages keep getting it wrong, and what Wisconsin just proved about the problem.

Why the 2026 Midterm Polls Are Still Misleading

Mara: The core tension here is between what the published averages show and what the underlying partisan lean of these states actually suggests. Ohio went Republican by eleven points in 2024. Texas by fourteen. Yet the polling has both states looking like toss-ups.

Pip: And then Wisconsin handed everyone a very loud data point. The Democratic primary had Francesca Hong leading David Crowley by double digits — sometimes twenty points — right up until election night.

Mara: The post is direct about what happened: “One late survey had her at 44 percent to Crowley’s 22 percent.” Crowley won by less than half a percentage point. Hong received roughly what the final polls projected for her. The entire error was on Crowley’s side.

Pip: So the polls captured the progressive candidate’s floor perfectly and missed everyone else entirely. That’s not a rounding error.

Mara: The explanation offered is non-response bias. Conservative, rural, and Trump-aligned voters are less likely to answer a survey. The people who do respond skew toward Democrats and toward the more engaged, activist end of the electorate. Pollsters try to correct for this with demographic weighting, but the corrections are imperfect when the harder-to-reach population is systematically absent from the sample.

Pip: There’s also a commercial layer worth naming — close races sell advertising, and campaigns keep spending when the horse race looks competitive.

Mara: Right. The argument is that a seven- or eight-point underlying Republican advantage, published as a two-point race, generates more television and digital spending than a blowout narrative would. The incentive structure rewards the appearance of competitiveness.

Mara: In Ohio, the governor’s race between Vivek Ramaswamy and Amy Acton sits near a statistical tie in the aggregates, with Ramaswamy at 47.0 and Acton at 46.2 in one weighted average. The Senate special between Jon Husted and Sherrod Brown shows a similarly compressed margin, with individual polls bouncing between a small Husted lead and a small Brown lead. In Texas, the Emerson College survey from August ninth and tenth had Ken Paxton at 47 and James Talarico at 46 among likely voters.

Pip: Three states, same pattern. The post’s read is that if the election were held today, Republicans would win these races by closer to seven or eight points — not by a fraction.

Mara: And the Wisconsin primary is the evidence that the measurement problem hasn’t been solved. Late-deciding and previously undecided voters broke hard against the more radical option, and the models missed it entirely because those voters weren’t in the sample.

Pip: Election night geography in Ohio compounds the illusion — early returns from Columbus and urban centers can show a temporary Democratic lead before the suburban and rural counties report.

Mara: The post flags that directly: if rural voters don’t respond to the poll, they won’t be counted in the averages either. The same population that’s hard to reach by phone is the one that shows up late on election night and moves the final margin.

Pip: Which brings us to what actually happens when November arrives and those voters show up.

Mara: The through-line is a gap between measurement and reality — and the argument that Wisconsin made that gap visible in a way that’s hard to dismiss.

Pip: Watch what the hard-to-reach voters actually do when the ballots are counted. Not what the people who answer the phone say in August.

Rich Hoffman

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Why the 2026 Midterm Polls Are Still Misleading: Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin, and the Persistent Republican Non-Response Bias

I have been watching the midterm landscape closely in mid-August 2026. Three months out from Election Day, the polling averages in several key races look tighter than the underlying partisan lean of these states would suggest. Ohio’s governor’s race between Vivek Ramaswamy and Amy Acton sits near a toss-up. The special Senate election between Jon Husted and Sherrod Brown is competitive. In Texas, Ken Paxton and James Talarico are essentially deadlocked in recent surveys. Then came the Wisconsin Democratic primary, where the polls were off by roughly 20 points in the direction favoring the more progressive candidate.

I have said for a long time that a meaningful portion of the modern polling industry carries systematic bias against Republicans. Conservatives and Trump voters are less likely to pick up the phone or complete a survey. Pollsters still lean on models and samples that over-weight the people who do answer—disproportionately Democrats and people more inclined to engage with survey-takers. On top of that sits a commercial incentive: close races generate more advertising dollars. Campaigns with money to spend feel pressure to keep spending when the horse race looks competitive. Wisconsin just provided another public demonstration of how badly these models can fail when late undecideds and turnout dynamics break in one direction.

I do not think the actual underlying margins in Ohio or Texas are as tight as the published averages. I think several points in these surveys understate Republicans, and if the election were held today, the Republican candidates would win more comfortably than the current numbers imply. That is not complacency. It is pattern recognition from 2016 forward, reinforced by the Wisconsin result and by what I see on the ground and on platforms where people actually speak freely.

Wisconsin Democratic Primary 2026: The 20-Point Polling Collapse of Francesca Hong

The clearest recent data point is Wisconsin. Polls consistently showed Democratic Socialist State Representative Francesca Hong leading Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley by double digits—sometimes by around 20 points. One late survey had her at 44 percent to Crowley’s 22 percent. Another earlier reading put her near 38 percent with Crowley in single digits and a large undecided bloc.

On primary night Crowley won by less than half a percentage point. Hong received roughly the share the final polls had projected for her—around 39 percent. The entire error was on Crowley’s side. Late-deciding and previously undecided voters broke hard against the more radical option. Primaries are harder to model than generals because turnout is lower and more volatile, and Wisconsin’s open primary added another layer of uncertainty. Still, the scale of the miss is striking. The models captured the progressive candidate’s floor but completely missed the late surge to the more traditional Democrat.

I was not surprised. There is a recurring temptation inside media and polling circles to treat energized progressive or socialist factions as larger than they are. College campuses, activist networks, and highly engaged online progressive voters are easy to reach and happy to talk to pollsters. The broader primary electorate is less so. When the actual voters showed up, the socialist ceiling was exposed. The same pattern has appeared in other recent cycles, in which early surveys elevate a hard-left candidate and then the candidate underperforms once undecideds and lower-propensity voters enter the picture.

Current Ohio Governor Polls: Vivek Ramaswamy vs Amy Acton in Mid-August 2026

In Ohio, the governor’s race is officially an open seat. Aggregates in mid-August put Vivek Ramaswamy and former state health director Amy Acton essentially even, or with Ramaswamy ahead by less than a point. One recent weighted average had Ramaswamy at 47.0 percent and Acton at 46.2 percent. Individual surveys have bounced: some Democratic-leaning pollsters have shown Acton up two or three points; others have shown a tie or a small Republican edge.

Ohio is not a pure 50-50 state. Donald Trump carried it by roughly eleven points in 2024. The underlying Republican structural advantage has been visible for several cycles. A race this close in the averages, this far out, is therefore anomalous on its face. Acton’s association with COVID-era restrictions remains a live liability with a large share of the electorate that still remembers the lockdowns and school closures. Ramaswamy’s profile is national and polarizing, which creates some friction among independents and moderates, but the state’s recent presidential and statewide results do not suggest a natural environment for a Democratic win.

Ohio Senate Race Polling: Jon Husted vs Sherrod Brown

The special Senate election is similarly compressed. Jon Husted, appointed after JD Vance’s elevation, faces former Senator Sherrod Brown. Aggregates in early August showed Husted ahead by roughly two to three points in some trackers, while other windows had Brown with a small edge or a statistical tie. A New York Times/Siena survey had Husted at 50–47. An AARP-sponsored poll earlier in the summer had Brown up three. The race is competitive on paper.

Brown is a known quantity with residual personal brand strength among some working-class and older voters. Yet Ohio has continued moving right relative to the national environment. A race that looks this tight three months out again sits uncomfortably against the state’s recent performance. If nonresponse systematically suppresses Republican numbers, the published margins understate Husted’s true position.

Texas US Senate Polls 2026: Ken Paxton vs James Talarico Dead Heat

In Texas, the pattern repeats. The latest Emerson College survey (August 9–10) had Attorney General Ken Paxton at 47 percent and state Representative James Talarico at 46 percent among likely voters. Other recent polls have shown similar dead heats or small leads for either side.

Texas is not a purple state. Trump won it by roughly fourteen points in 2024. Paxton is a polarizing figure with a long history of legal and political battles, which creates openings for a skilled Democratic challenger. Talarico has run a disciplined campaign and benefits from the same non-response dynamics that compress Republican leads elsewhere. Still, a race this close in a state with Texas’s underlying Republican baseline is another data point that looks softer for the GOP than the fundamentals imply.

The Persistent Problem of Republican Non-Response Bias in Modern Polling

The common thread is non-response. I am on every list. Campaigns and pollsters call and text constantly. I rarely answer. I vote in every primary and every general election, but I do not have time for a fifteen-minute questionnaire from someone I do not know. Many people in my circle operate the same way. Conservatives, older voters, rural voters, and Trump-aligned voters have lower cooperation rates with traditional survey methods. Cell-phone-only households, caller-ID screening, and general distrust of institutions make the problem worse than it was in the landline era.

Democrats and more progressive voters, by contrast, remain relatively easy to reach and willing to engage. The result is a sample that is tilted before any weighting is applied. Pollsters attempt to correct with demographic targets, education weights, and recalled vote, but the corrections are imperfect. When the underlying population of interest—likely Republican voters—has systematically lower response rates, the adjusted numbers still lag. This is not a new observation. It has been discussed after 2016, 2020, and 2022. Wisconsin’s primary is simply the latest high-profile reminder that the models can still break when late movement occurs among the harder-to-reach.

Media and Pollster Incentives to Keep Races Looking Close

There is also a commercial layer. Close races sell. Media companies and the consultants who live off campaign advertising benefit when the horse race stays competitive. Republican candidates and committees have raised substantial sums. Those dollars flow more readily when the published polls suggest the outcome is in doubt. A seven- or eight-point underlying Republican advantage, when published as a two-point race, generates more television, digital, and direct-mail spending than a blowout narrative would. I am not claiming a grand conspiracy in every survey. I am saying the incentive structure rewards the appearance of competitiveness, and the sampling problems make that appearance easier to produce.

Why Platforms Like X Offer a Clearer Picture Than Traditional Surveys

This is where platforms that still allow relatively unfiltered speech become useful. People say things online under their own names or consistent pseudonyms that they will not say to a stranger on the phone. Sentiment on X, when read carefully and at scale, has often been a better leading indicator of Republican energy than the published telephone and online panel averages. AI systems that can process large volumes of public posts provide another check on the traditional samples. They are not perfect—online populations are not identical to the electorate—but they are less constrained by the cooperation-rate problem that plagues live interviewers and many opt-in panels.

What a Real Election Day Would Show Right Now in These States

If the election were held in the middle of August 2026, I believe the Republican candidates in these races would win by larger margins than the current averages indicate—closer to the seven- or eight-point range in Ohio and a clearer, more comfortable win for Paxton in Texas. That is not a prediction locked in stone for November. Turnout, national mood, candidate performance, and late events still matter. Campaigns cannot rest on structural advantages. But the idea that these races are true toss-ups or that Texas is on the verge of flipping requires accepting that the polling error has suddenly vanished. Wisconsin suggests it has not.

Election Night Dynamics in Ohio: Urban Early Returns vs Rural Reality

Ohio’s geography still shapes how results appear on election night. Early returns from the Columbus area and other urban centers can create a temporary Democratic lead. As the suburban and rural counties between the cities report, the numbers swing back. That pattern has been consistent. Watching the first 15 or 30 minutes of returns without understanding the sequence can cause unnecessary panic. The same logic applies to interpreting summer polls that over-sample the easier-to-reach urban and college populations. And if surveys do not account for this real estate trend, their outlook will not be accurate. If rural people don’t respond to the poll, they won’t be counted.

I have been around these fights long enough to recognize the difference between a genuine shift in the electorate and a measurement problem. The Wisconsin primary was a measurement problem with real consequences for the models. The compressed margins in Ohio and Texas look like the same problem applied to general-election contests in states that have been moving toward Republicans. Non-response among the very voters who decide these races remains the central issue. Until the industry solves the cooperation-rate gap, or until alternative signals from freer platforms are weighted more heavily, the published numbers will continue to understate the Republican side. Plan accordingly.

Footnotes

1. Aggregated Ohio governor polling as of mid-August 2026 from Pollsmax and concurrent trackers showing Ramaswamy 47.0 / Acton 46.2 and recent individual surveys (NYT/Siena, Tulchin, AARP/Fabrizio, etc.).

2. Wisconsin primary result: David Crowley approximately 39.8 percent, Francesca Hong approximately 39.3 percent; pre-election surveys consistently showed Hong leads of 15–20+ points.

3. Ohio Senate aggregates and individual polls (Pollsmax, NYT/Siena, AARP, Beacon/Shaw) place the race within a few points either way.

4. Emerson College/Nexstar Texas Senate poll, August 9–10, 2026: Paxton 47, Talarico 46.

5. Discussion of non-response bias and primary modeling difficulties drawn from post-election analyses of the Wisconsin results and longer-standing literature on declining survey cooperation rates among conservatives.

6. 2024 presidential margins: Ohio approximately R+11, Texas approximately R+14, Wisconsin narrow Republican win.

Bibliography for Further Reading

• Pollsmax, RealClearPolitics, 270toWin, and Decision Desk HQ aggregate pages for 2026 Ohio governor, Ohio Senate special, and Texas Senate.

• Emerson College Polling releases on Texas, August 2026.

• Contemporary reporting and post-mortems on the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary (Axios, New York Times, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Marquette Law School Poll commentary).

• Historical analyses of non-response bias in U.S. political polling after the 2016, 2020, and 2022 cycles.

• Public statements and data releases from the campaigns of Vivek Ramaswamy, Jon Husted, Ken Paxton, Amy Acton, Sherrod Brown, and James Talarico.

• Academic and industry papers on declining telephone survey response rates and the challenges of weighting for partisan non-response.

The numbers will keep coming. Watch what the hard-to-reach voters actually do when the ballots are counted, not onlywhat the people who answer the phone say in August.

Rich Hoffman

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The Mutiny on the Bounty: A real life Atlas Shrugged story

It’s just the collision happening right now—philosophical ideas slamming into each other in politics and industry the same way they always have when cultures decide whether they’re going to run on individual output or collective excuse-making. I’ve been talking about it a lot lately because you have to. You can’t watch what’s going on in business or in the economy in general without seeing the same old fight play out again: the people who still believe in bold individual initiative versus the ones who think a collective consciousness can hide them in the background while somebody else does the hard work of actually making things function.

That’s the real difference. Administration works when it is driven by men and women who still believe that self-determination and heroic personal output are the only engines that ever moved anything forward. The reason America was created in the first place was to unleash that kind of individual force. The emerging culture of socialism and soft communism is the opposite—it sells collective boldness through the power of the mob. It doesn’t sound so bad when you’re collecting a comfortable paycheck and just fitting in. But the danger is real, and I think that’s exactly what we’re exploring in this transition we’re living through.

I still think one of the best fictional expressions of why individual boldness and heroic leadership drive economic activity is Atlas Shrugged.¹ A lot of people in the popular culture don’t care for Ayn Rand. That never made sense to me. Most people want to hide in the background of a mass culture where no one expects them to stand up as an individual. That impulse is a solid destroyer of human cultures—whether you’re talking about sexual promiscuity, low moral content, or the slow surrender of personal agency. Look at the biblical narratives. They keep telling the same story: rise up as an individual to a higher idea, serve God as an individual, do not dissolve your individuality into collectivism. Sacrifice of that kind produces bad culture, not good things.² The real historic narrative that expresses this better than almost anything else is the story of the Bounty.

I first saw the Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins version when I was young, and it remains one of my favorite films from the 1980s. I don’t even know if that movie could be made these days with the politics around indigenous cultures the way they are. Hopkins’s Captain Bligh is still the best portrayal I’ve seen—strict, unsympathetic to comfort, and absolutely determined. The 1984 film is more accurate than the earlier Hollywood versions that turned Bligh into a cartoon villain. The real history is more complicated than any film can capture, but that version gets the core right.³

Those early Royal Navy voyages were far from the standards of home. You were out there on a long, hard passage with nothing holding the crew together except the will of the commander. On the Bounty, Bligh pushed hard. The men under Fletcher Christian got tired of the rigor. They were far from England, the rules felt distant, and when they reached Tahiti they found a place full of willing women after months at sea. They decided they preferred that life to the discipline required to finish the mission. So they took the ship, put Bligh and the loyalists in a small open boat with almost no provisions, almost no charts, and essentially told them to die. Basic decency was giving them a chance to survive. Realistically, almost no one expected them to.⁴

What happened next is one of the great true stories of individual leadership under impossible conditions. Bligh coaxed and drove those men across roughly 3,600 nautical miles of open Pacific Ocean to the Dutch settlement at Timor. No proper charts for most of the way. Minimal food and water. Harsh conditions that would have broken most crews. He used the same hard persuasion that had gotten him into trouble with the mutineers, and they survived. The men who stayed with him lived because one man refused to let the situation collapse into collective despair.⁵

Meanwhile the mutineers hid from British justice on Pitcairn Island, far off the normal lanes. They had the women, the easy life, and no hard commander pushing them. Within a few years it fell apart. Internal fighting, murders, the collapse of any functioning order. Most of the mutineers were dead—killed by each other or by the Polynesians they had brought with them. The culture they tried to build on collective desire and the rejection of rigorous leadership did not last. That is not some modern political talking point about indigenous cultures. The South Pacific, like parts of the Americas, had its share of hard and often brutal societies. The mutineers’ experiment simply proved what happens when you throw off the individual who is willing to enforce standards and then try to live on ease and numbers.⁶

I can’t think of a cleaner real-world demonstration of the point Atlas Shrugged makes in fiction. Stayed on the ship under hard leadership and the voyage would have succeeded. They sent the leader adrift because they were tired of being pushed past their comfort, tired of the rigorous style that demanded more from them than they wanted to give. They chose the easy path with the women and the big boat. A few years later civilization among them had collapsed. That is how it works. If you put good leadership adrift—or separate yourself from it in a business, a ship, a country, or a political party—don’t be surprised when the culture fails.

Strong leadership does not come from mass groups. It comes from individuals with the persuasion and the will to push people past their limits. Crews on those long voyages often hated it. Businesses hate it. Political parties hate it when someone refuses to let them coast. But without that individual force, the subculture falls apart. Collectivism does not get you there. The true story of the Bounty is one of the best historical illustrations we have of why organizations succeed or fail, where leadership actually comes from, and what happens when people decide they would rather dissolve into the crowd than rise as individuals.

If you’ve ever read my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, you’ll recognize the same argument. Individual initiative under pressure is not optional. It is the only thing that has ever kept the machinery running. The Politics of Heaven starts with the same understanding: men and women are called as individuals, not as a collective that gets to hide from responsibility. Watch the Hopkins and Gibson version again if you haven’t seen it in a while. Then look around at the institutions that are failing right now and ask yourself who they put in the boat, and who they left on the ship with the easy life. The pattern has not changed.

Footnotes

1. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Random House, 1957). The novel’s central theme—the withdrawal of the productive individual from a society that demands sacrifice without competence—remains one of the clearest fictional treatments of the producer-versus-looter dynamic.

2. See, for example, the repeated biblical emphasis on individual accountability before God rather than collective identity (Ezekiel 18; Romans 14:12; the calls to “rise up” and “stand” throughout the historical and prophetic books). The contrast with modern collectivist frameworks is deliberate and sustained.

3. The Bounty, directed by Roger Donaldson (1984). Contemporary assessments and later historical reviews generally regard this film as the most accurate cinematic treatment of the mutiny, particularly in its more balanced portrayal of William Bligh. See the film’s Wikipedia entry and associated critical commentary for the consensus on its relative fidelity to the primary sources.

4. The mutiny occurred on 28 April 1789. Bligh and eighteen loyalists were set adrift in the ship’s 23-foot launch with limited provisions. Standard accounts appear in William Bligh’s own narrative and in the major secondary histories.

5. Bligh’s open-boat voyage covered approximately 3,618 nautical miles from the vicinity of Tofua to Timor, lasting 48 days. It remains one of the most remarkable feats of navigation and leadership under extreme deprivation in maritime history. See the National Maritime Museum Cornwall summary and the detailed reconstructions in the secondary literature.

6. On Pitcairn the mutineer community rapidly descended into violence. By the mid-1790s most of the original mutineers were dead from internal conflict or clashes with the Polynesian men they had brought with them. John Adams was the sole adult male survivor when the island was rediscovered in 1808. Primary and secondary accounts are consistent on the pattern of collapse once coherent individual authority was removed.

Bibliography

Bligh, William. A Narrative of the Mutiny on Board His Majesty’s Ship Bounty. London, 1790. (Bligh’s own account of the mutiny and the open-boat voyage.)

Donaldson, Roger, dir. The Bounty. 1984. (The most historically responsible major film treatment.)

Hough, Richard. Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian: The Men and the Mutiny. London: Hutchinson, 1972. (Still one of the better balanced modern narratives.)

National Maritime Museum Cornwall. “Captain Bligh: Myth, Man and Mutiny.” nmmc.co.uk.

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House, 1957.

Wikipedia contributors. “Mutiny on the Bounty.” Wikipedia. (Useful for the chronological outline and the standard distances and casualty figures; cross-checked against primary and secondary sources.)

Wikipedia contributors. “The Bounty (1984 film).” Wikipedia. (For critical reception and assessments of historical accuracy.)

Additional reading on the Pitcairn aftermath and the cultural dynamics of the mutineer settlement can be found in the official Pitcairn Islands historical summaries and in specialized maritime histories of the period.

Rich Hoffman

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Podcast Episode: Ohio Needs More Republicans: The State is operating in the black, which is Great

Pip: Ohio is ranked 42nd in the country, and somehow that is also proof it is doing great — welcome to The Overmanwarrior.

Mara: Rich Hoffman digs into exactly that tension this week, looking at competing state rankings, what they actually measure, and what the 2026 Ohio gubernatorial race has to do with all of it. Let’s start with the rankings fight itself.

Two Scorecards, One State

Pip: The central question here is which ranking tells you something real about Ohio — because two major outlets looked at the same state in the same year and reached opposite conclusions.

Mara: The U.S. News number lands first in the piece, and the setup is direct: “Ohio ranked first in infrastructure and first in cost of doing business” — that is CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business, released in July, putting Ohio at number one overall for the first time.

Pip: So the same state that CNBC ranks first for business climate, U.S. News ranks 42nd overall — a drop from 38th the year before and 36th the year before that. The upshot is that methodology determines the verdict before a single data point is entered.

Mara: That is exactly the argument. U.S. News weights education at roughly 15.8 percent and healthcare at 15.5 percent — the two heaviest categories. Ohio’s weakest scores were natural environment at 43rd and economy at 38th, with healthcare at 36th. Its strongest were opportunity at 18th and fiscal stability at 28th.

Pip: Fiscal stability in the top third, opportunity in the top fifth — those are not the numbers of a state in collapse. They are the numbers of a state that refuses to optimize for the scorecard.

Mara: And the piece makes the case that the scorecard itself is the issue. The U.S. News methodology rewards pre-K enrollment rates, higher-education access, and public-health indicators — inputs rather than outcomes. Ohio is running nearly 1.8 billion dollars above revenue projections for fiscal year 2026 and is actively working on property-tax relief. That surplus does not show up as a gold star in the U.S. News model.

Pip: Meanwhile, Amy Acton is the Democratic nominee for governor, and her record as health director in 2020 — Ohio was the first state to close schools statewide — is now squarely part of the campaign conversation. Rankings that surface now are not arriving in a vacuum.

Mara: The piece is clear that the political timing matters. Democrats need a story that Republican stewardship has failed. A ranking that penalizes limited-government priorities and drops Ohio four spots in two years is a useful data point — if you do not look at what the ranking actually measures.

Pip: Utah has sat at number one in U.S. News for four straight years, which tells you something about whose model wins that particular game. The question for Ohio voters is which game they think they are playing.

Mara: And that hands directly to the broader stakes — what fiscal discipline actually looks like when the ledgers are in the black, and who gets credit for it.

Mara: The core tension here is real: two credible outlets, opposite conclusions, and an election coming. Which metrics you trust says a lot about what you think a state is for.

Pip: Ohio’s books are balanced. The argument is about whether that counts. Worth watching how that plays out as the gubernatorial race heats up.

Rich Hoffman

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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 him 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 President 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.

Ohio Needs more Republicans: Currently, the State is operating in the black–less Democrats means a better state

I saw the U.S. News & World Report rankings circulating on X this week, and they put Ohio at 42nd overall for 2026, which puts us in the bottom ten and marks a drop from 38th last year and 36th the year before.¹ The categories they measure are education, healthcare, economy, infrastructure, opportunity, fiscal stability, natural environment, and crime and corrections. Ohio’s weakest spots were natural environment at 43rd and economy at 38th, with healthcare at 36th, crime and corrections at 37th, infrastructure at 31st, and education at 29th. The brighter spots were opportunity at 18th and fiscal stability at 28th.² Utah sat at number one for the fourth straight year.

The timing is not lost on me. We are months out from a midterm cycle and a gubernatorial race, with Democrats trying to claw back ground in a state they have not controlled for a long time. Amy Acton is the Democratic nominee, and the narrative machine is looking for any data point that can be spun into evidence that Republican stewardship has failed. Ohio has had Republican governors and legislative majorities for the better part of two decades. When the ledgers are in the black, and the business climate is competitive, the opposition looks for rankings that penalize issues Republicans tend not to prioritize as much as progressive outlets do.

That is exactly what this ranking does. Education and healthcare carry the heaviest weights in the U.S. News methodology—roughly 15.8 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively—while natural environment and crime and corrections carry less weight.³ The metrics lean toward things like pre-K enrollment rates, higher-education access, college debt levels, and certain public-health indicators. States that invest more in expanding the existing system and in measuring inputs rather than outcomes tend to score higher on those axes. Ohio spends in the mid-to-high teens of thousands per pupil, right around or slightly below the national average depending on the data set, and we are not pretending that simply increasing the size of the bureaucracy automatically produces better results.⁴ The ranking rewards the model that has produced years of mediocre performance and cultural experimentation in many places, and it docked Ohio for not matching that model closely enough.

A new U.S. News & World Report ranking places Ohio among the lowest-ranked in multiple categories, including education and economy, for 2026. https://t.co/wYOJixiOTu pic.twitter.com/7RV1E6o5rE
— NBC4 Columbus (@nbc4i) August 11, 2026

Meanwhile, two months earlier, CNBC released its America’s Top States for Business ranking and put Ohio at number one for the first time.⁵ That study uses a different set of 138 metrics weighted toward infrastructure, cost of doing business, workforce, economy, and access to capital—the things companies actually look at when they decide where to put plants, headquarters, and capital. Ohio ranked first in infrastructure and first in cost of doing business. We have no corporate income tax, a competitive commercial activity tax structure, shovel-ready sites, abundant power capacity, and more than 140 million people within a day’s drive. Governor DeWine correctly called that ranking proof that Ohio is a strong place for jobs and opportunity. The contrast is instructive. One ranking measures outcomes that matter to employers and taxpayers who have to meet payroll. The other measures a set of progressive priorities and then acts surprised when a state that has refused to adopt the full progressive playbook scores lower.

I prefer the CNBC approach. Rankings are never gospel, and methodology is everything. Mortimer Zuckerman owns U.S. News and has long reflected the worldview of coastal media institutions that view Republican governance as inherently suspect.⁶ When a ranking heavily weights healthcare access metrics and education-system expansion while Ohio is running consistent budget surpluses—nearly $1.8 billion above projections in fiscal year 2026—and is actively working on property-tax relief, the political incentive is obvious.⁷ Democrats cannot move the ball in Ohio the way they want, so the media environment supplies stories about how the state is “falling behind.” Ohio is operating in the black. We dug out of the deficits of earlier Democratic administrations and have maintained strong credit ratings and a healthy rainy-day fund. That is not failure. That is competence.

Amy Acton’s record is part of the same conversation. As Ohio’s health director in early 2020, she became the public face of some of the strictest early lockdowns in the country. Ohio was the first to close schools statewide and to impose broad business and gathering restrictions when case numbers were still low.⁸ The economic and educational damage from those months is still visible in workforce participation, learning loss, and small-business attrition. DeWine has said the ultimate responsibility was his, but Acton signed the orders and was the visible advocate. That history is fair game in a gubernatorial campaign. Voters who lived through the shutdowns remember who was on television telling them their livelihoods and their children’s schooling had to stop. Ramaswamy’s campaign has made that point repeatedly, and for good reason.

I met with Senator George Lang a few hours before looking at these rankings. We talk about a lot of things that are not pure politics—economy, history, the practical realities of running a state that has to stay competitive. Ohio’s fiscal position is one of the shared points of agreement among people who actually have to balance books. Democrats prefer that the state spend more aggressively on programs that score well in rankings like U.S. News. When the state declines to do that and still delivers opportunity rankings in the top 20 and a number-one business climate ranking from a major national outlet, the response is to declare the state a failure. That tells you more about the scorers than about Ohio.

I have watched this pattern for years. Rankings that punish limited-government outcomes and reward expansion of public systems are not neutral measuring sticks. They are arguments dressed up as data. Ohio under sustained Republican leadership has produced a competitive business environment, budget surpluses, and a refusal to treat every progressive education or healthcare priority as mandatory. CNBC noticed. U.S. News did not. That gap is not a problem for Ohio. It is a problem for the people who keep insisting the only acceptable path is the one that produces higher scores on their preferred scorecard.

If the goal is to elect candidates who will reverse the fiscal discipline and reopen the spending spigots that progressive media outlets reward, then yes, this ranking is useful propaganda. If the goal is a state that can attract capital, keep taxes competitive, and avoid the deficits that once plagued it, then the CNBC ranking is the more relevant document.

Subscribe if you want more of this. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business is still out there if you have not read it. Have a good day.

Footnotes

1. U.S. News & World Report, “Best States Rankings 2026,” released late July 2026; NBC4 Columbus coverage, August 10–11, 2026.

2. Official U.S. News Ohio profile and category rankings for 2026.

3. U.S. News Best States methodology page: Education 15.79%, Healthcare 15.51%, Economy 12.88%, Infrastructure 12.74%, Opportunity 12.20%, Fiscal Stability 12.19%, Natural Environment 9.69%, Crime & Corrections 9.01%. Weights derived from multi-year national surveys of what residents prioritize.

4. Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Ohio Education by the Numbers 2026; U.S. Census and NCES per-pupil expenditure data placing Ohio near the national average (approximately $16,300–$17,300 depending on exact definition and year).

5. CNBC, “America’s Top States for Business 2026,” July 9, 2026; Ohio ranked No. 1 overall, No. 1 infrastructure, No. 1 cost of doing business.

6. Ownership history: Mortimer Zuckerman acquired U.S. News & World Report in 1984; company remains privately held under his control.

7. Ohio Office of Budget and Management preliminary FY 2026 revenue report: General Revenue Fund tax receipts approximately $1.8 billion above estimates; multiple contemporaneous reports confirming surplus and ongoing property-tax relief measures.

8. Contemporary 2020 reporting and later campaign coverage of Acton’s tenure as Ohio Department of Health director, including school and business closure orders signed in her name.

Bibliography / Further Reading

• U.S. News & World Report Best States 2026 full rankings, methodology, and state profiles (usnews.com/news/best-states).

• CNBC America’s Top States for Business 2026 complete rankings and category scores.

• Ohio Office of Budget and Management FY 2026 revenue and budget documents.

• Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Ohio Education by the Numbers (2026 edition).

• Contemporary reporting on Amy Acton’s 2020 health orders and 2026 campaign (Associated Press, Columbus Dispatch, Ohio Capital Journal, and others).

• Historical ownership and editorial background of U.S. News & World Report (Wikipedia and company histories).

• Polling aggregates for the 2026 Ohio gubernatorial race (270toWin, Emerson, AARP, Fox, Siena, etc.).

Rich Hoffman

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Podcast Episode: The Loveland Frogmen: Giants in Malta and Timothy Alberino on the Joe Rogan Podcast

Pip: The Overmanwarrior is a site where you go to learn about Ohio politics and leave three hours later having reconsidered the Bronze Age.

Mara: Rich Hoffman has been doing exactly that kind of cross-disciplinary digging — connecting ancient earthworks, non-human intelligence, and the question of who actually holds sovereignty over the human race. That’s the territory today.

Pip: Let’s start with giants, frogmen, and what Wright-Patterson Air Force Base may or may not have in storage.

Loveland Frogmen, Giants, and the Politics of Ancient Intelligence

Mara: The central question here is whether the official story of human prehistory has been deliberately kept shallow — and what surfaces when you keep asking the next question after the comfortable answer.

Pip: The post opens with a direct statement of method: “History is already written, mostly by people who stop digging the moment the official story feels comfortable enough to protect careers and funding streams.”

Mara: That framing drives everything that follows. The argument is that mainstream archaeology and ancient history leave certain dots deliberately unconnected — and that connecting them changes the political stakes of the present, not just the academic record.

Pip: So what happens when someone actually connects them? The post lands on a convergence: Timothy Alberino on the Joe Rogan Experience, mid-July 2026, discussing the Kandahar giant — a massive humanoid reportedly killed by American troops in Afghanistan, its body flown out on a pallet and taken to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Mara: And the post notes that Wright-Patterson is a short drive from the author’s home — that proximity to the base, and to people who held clearances there, gives the claim a specific texture. The men he’s spoken with, he writes, smile, lower their voices, and say reverse-engineering of foreign technology has always been the cover story.

Pip: The Alberino interview is treated less as a revelation than as confirmation of a trajectory already underway — one that runs through Ohio’s Hopewell earthworks, Florida’s Windover Bog, the megalithic temples of Malta, and the copper mines of Lake Superior.

Mara: The copper argument is striking. Between roughly 5000 and 1200 BC, miners removed hundreds of thousands of tons of nearly pure native copper from the Lake Superior basin. The post argues the volumes don’t account for local use — and that the missing metal may have fueled the Bronze Age in the Near East and Europe.

Pip: And if copper moved, so did people and knowledge. The Maltese temples at Ġgantija — whose name literally means Giant’s Tower — predate the pyramids, and the Newark Earthworks in Ohio track the 18.6-year lunar standstill with precision that matches Stonehenge. The post asks whether distant cultures independently solved identical astronomical problems, or shared a source.

Mara: That source, the post suggests, is non-human intelligence — the same class of entity that appears in Genesis 6, in shamanic traditions globally, and, closer to home, along the Little Miami River, where the Loveland Frogmen were sighted in 1955 and 1972, precisely where Hopewell ritual sites once stood.

Pip: The political question the post keeps returning to is blunt: if non-human intelligences have been shaping human history for millennia, sovereignty that stops at the water’s edge or the atmosphere is not sovereignty at all.

Mara: All of it feeds into the forthcoming book, The Politics of Heaven, which the post frames as an attempt to gather these threads — the copper trade, the lunar mathematics, the giant remains, the frogmen — into a single, continuous argument about who has actually been governing the human story.

Pip: Which makes the Alberino-Rogan conversation less a podcast episode and more a signal that this argument has moved from late-night AM radio to the center of public discourse.

Mara: The closing line of the post captures that shift — the week on South Bass Island, daughters cooking breakfast, the manuscript finished, the pattern finally locked into place.

Pip: The thread running through all of this is sovereignty — who holds it, who has always contested it, and how deep you have to dig before the question gets genuinely uncomfortable.

Mara: That reckoning with older layers of history, as the post puts it, is coming. Next episode, we’ll see what else surfaces.

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 him 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 President 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.

Podcast Episode: Beer at Göbekli Tepe and the Skull Cult of Doom: Fortune and glory drive all arc

Pip: Welcome to The Overmanwarrior — where today’s episode involves beer, skulls, a Florida swamp, and a manuscript that wants to rewrite the prehistory of human consciousness. Just a regular Monday.

Mara: Rich Hoffman is shopping a manuscript called The Politics of Heaven, and the post that anchors this episode pulls together Göbekli Tepe, the Windover burial pond, the Old Copper Culture, and the psychedelic sacrament thread that Brian Muraresku traced through the ancient world.

Pip: That is a genuinely wide table to set. Let’s start with what Göbekli Tepe was actually doing eleven thousand years ago — and why the answer is darker than the tourism brochure suggests.

Beer at Göbekli Tepe and the Skull Cult of Doom

Mara: The central question here is what kind of place Göbekli Tepe actually was — because the cheerful “calendar temple where people watched the stars” version turns out to be incomplete.

Pip: The post puts it plainly: “The parties and the skulls belong to the same world.” Six large limestone troughs, some holding up to a hundred and sixty liters, carry calcium oxalate residues consistent with fermenting grain. Thousands of grinding stones. Massive bone piles from communal feasts. Industrial-scale liquid preparation at a site with almost no domestic architecture.

Mara: So the upshot is that people were gathering in large enough numbers to need brewery-scale infrastructure eleven to twelve thousand years ago — before the standard story of agriculture and beer arriving together in a tidy package.

Pip: And then the skulls show up and the vibe shifts considerably.

Mara: Three human skulls from the site show deliberate post-mortem modification never previously documented in that form. Deep, straight grooves cut with flint tools along the sagittal axis, one drilled perforation consistent with suspension by cord, traces of red ochre, and roughly ten percent of all skull fragments from the site carry cut marks consistent with defleshing. Published in Science Advances in 2017.

Pip: Ancestor veneration, trophy display, or both — carried out in the same enclosures where the troughs once stood. That is a complete ritual world, not a side note.

Mara: The post connects this to Brian Muraresku’s work in The Immortality Key — the argument that a long, hidden thread of psychedelic sacrament runs from the Greek Mysteries through early Christian centuries, a tradition too threatening for the institutional church to leave alone. The Göbekli skull cult fits the same pattern of altered-state ceremony and death-rebirth symbolism.

Pip: Windover, in central Florida, sits in that same deep time. Bodies staked into a peat pond in fetal positions facing west, wrapped in the oldest surviving textiles we have, brains still intact in ninety-one skulls — more than a thousand years of continuous mortuary practice implying a sustained belief about the dead.

Mara: And the Old Copper Culture around Lake Superior — people hammering pure native copper into tools as early as ninety-five hundred years ago — extends the geography. The post is careful: claims of Near Eastern inscriptions on Michigan stones are outside mainstream acceptance, and the more dramatic nineteenth-century relics have problems. But lower sea levels and coastal routes mean the absence of accepted evidence is not the same as proof nothing moved.

Pip: The Troy parallel is the engine of the argument. Frank Calvert identified Hisarlik, dug methodical trenches, published his case. Heinrich Schliemann arrived with money and obsession and no formal training, carved a trench straight through the mound, destroyed strata — and found the city. Rough methods, real result.

Mara: The manuscript is framed as a map for the next generation of independent investigators — people willing to dig without waiting for the next grant cycle. As the post puts it: “We need more Calverts.”

Pip: Which means the book is less a conclusion than a set of coordinates for whoever goes out and digs the next Troy.

Mara: The four threads — psychedelic continuity, Windover, the copper and dolmen landscapes, and the full ritual reality of Göbekli Tepe — are meant to sit together in one readable architecture so the trail is clear and the questions are hard to ignore.

Pip: Beer, skulls, bog bodies, and copper hammered before the pyramids were a thought. The foundation keeps turning out to be older and stranger than the official timeline admits.

Mara: And the argument is that understanding what people practiced before the familiar kingdoms matters — because every later assumption sits on that ground. More on where these threads lead next time.

Rich Hoffman

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Beer at Göbekli Tepe and the Skull Cult of Doom: Fortune and glory drive all archaeology

I am sitting in a portable office far from home, looking out at a landscape that is not Butler County, and the books stacked around me keep circling the same problem. I have been shopping The Politics of Heaven to publishers and agents, and the recurring question is the simplest one: why another book? Why not keep writing the daily pieces and posting the videos? The answer is speed and depth simultaneously. The blog and the videos let me move fast. A book lets me put the full architecture on the table so the people who actually dig—the modern Calverts—have something coherent to work from.

Four threads run through the manuscript. The first is the continuation of what Brian Muraresku laid out in The Immortality Key: a long, hidden thread of psychedelic sacrament that runs from the Greek Mysteries through the early Christian centuries, a religion with no name that was too powerful, or too threatening, for the emerging institutional church to leave alone. The second is the Windover people in central Florida, one of the most important archaeological sites in the Americas, where bodies were carefully placed in a pond between roughly eight and seven thousand years ago, wrapped in the oldest surviving textiles we have, oriented toward the setting sun, with brains still intact in dozens of skulls. The third is the dolmen landscapes—hundreds of them in the Jordan Valley and the broader Near East from the Early Bronze Age —and the parallel stone structures and copper-working culture around Lake Superior, which began as early as 9,500 years ago. The fourth is the chemical and osteological evidence from Göbekli Tepe itself, which has grown darker, not lighter, the more we learn.

Start with the troughs. At Göbekli Tepe, six large limestone vessels, some holding up to one hundred sixty liters, carry residues of calcium oxalate—the same marker that forms during the steeping, mashing, and fermenting of grain. The site sits in the heartland of wild cereals. There are thousands of grinding stones. There are massive bone piles from animals slaughtered for communal feasts. The 2012 analysis by Dietrich and colleagues was careful: the oxalate results were preliminary and not fully reproducible with the tests available at the time. Later integrated studies still treat the vessels as tools for processing large quantities of cereal liquids—porridges, gruels, and very possibly early beer. The point is not that every trough was a pure brewery. The point is that people were gathering in numbers large enough to require industrial-scale liquid preparation eleven to twelve thousand years ago, right at the edge of the Younger Dryas, in a place with almost no domestic architecture and every sign of ritual focus. https://gobekli-tepe.com/blog/beer-brewing-feasting-gobekli-tepe/

That is already enough to rewrite the old story that beer and agriculture arrived together in a neat package much later. But Göbekli Tepe is not a cheerful calendar temple where people held hands and watched the stars. Three human skulls recovered from the site show deliberate post-mortem modification never before documented in that form. Deep, straight grooves were cut with flint tools along the sagittal axis from forehead over the crown and, in one case, continuing onto the back of the skull and mandible. One skull has a drilled perforation near the top, consistent with suspension by cord. Traces of red ochre remain. The grooves appear to have been made after the soft tissue was removed. Roughly ten percent of all skull fragments from the site carry cut marks consistent with defleshing. Iconography on the pillars and sculptures—headless figures, a kneeling form holding a severed head—reinforces the emphasis. Selected skulls were cleaned, marked, and displayed. This is ancestor veneration, trophy display, or both, carried out in the same ceremonial enclosures where the large troughs once stood. The parties and the skulls belong to the same world. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/6/e1700564.full

I have walked the Upper Peninsula. I know the copper country around Lake Superior. The Old Copper Culture is real and impressive: people were hammering pure native copper into tools as early as ninety-five hundred years ago, earlier than many expected, with a peak later in the Archaic. That technology is indigenous and sophisticated. Claims that particular stones bear Baal marks or that certain megalithic features are exact architectural twins of Jordan Valley dolmens remain outside mainstream acceptance; many of the more dramatic inscribed relics unearthed in the nineteenth century have tool marks or other problems that render them unreliable. Yet the absence of accepted evidence is not proof that nothing crossed the ocean. Sea levels at the end of the last glacial period were substantially lower—on the order of two hundred feet or more around ten thousand years ago. Coastlines looked different. Island-hopping and coastal routes were easier. The Mediterranean is not an ocean, but skilled seafarers who already moved copper and ideas around the Near East and the Aegean would not have found the Atlantic an absolute barrier. We do not yet have the artifacts that would settle the question. Most of the coastal evidence from that era is underwater or has eroded. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.371.6536.1299

Windover sits in the middle of that same deep time. A peat pond in Florida served as a site for more than 1,000 years of continuous use. Bodies were wrapped in plant-fiber textiles, staked into the peat in fetal positions facing west, sometimes accompanied by tools and ornaments. Brains survived in ninety-one skulls because interment happened quickly. This is not a simple hunter-gatherer disposal ground. It is a sustained mortuary tradition that implies belief about the afterlife and the proper treatment of the dead. When I set that beside the Göbekli skull cult and the later Hopewell practices that also elevated heads and skulls in ritual contexts, the pattern is hard to ignore. Head veneration and altered-state ceremonies appear early and recur. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/windover-bog-bodies

Muraresku’s book did the useful work of dragging the psychedelic thread into public view and tying it to real archaeology and classical texts. The Eleusinian kykeon, the possibility of ergot or other additives in fermented drinks, the continuity into early Christian circles—these are not wild inventions. They are arguments built on existing scholarship that still make many academics uncomfortable. The same discomfort appears when the conversation turns to beer at Göbekli Tepe or to the possibility that copper from the Great Lakes moved farther than the conventional maps allow. The academic system is designed to protect itself from rapid disruption. Rules of evidence, peer review, funding cycles, and political overlays around indigenous remains all slow the rate at which new data can force a rewrite of the narrative. That is not always malice. It is institutional inertia. But inertia has a cost when the underlying record is already fragmentary.

Troy is the classic counter-example. Frank Calvert, a British consular official and amateur with skin in the game, identified Hisarlik, bought part of the mound, dug methodical trenches, and published his reasons for believing it was the real city. Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy German businessman with no formal archaeological training, obtained the permit, excavated on a dramatic scale, and made the discovery famous. Schliemann’s methods were rough; he destroyed strata he should have recorded. Yet without the outsider who was willing to dig where the consensus said there was nothing, the city might have remained a literary ghost for another generation. Academia needed the passion and the risk-taking. The same pattern repeats. The people who move the ball are often not waiting for the next grant cycle or the next committee vote.

That is why I am writing the book. I am not trying to replace careful excavation with speculation. I am trying to put the four threads—psychedelic continuity, Windover, the dolmen and copper landscapes, and the full ritual reality of Göbekli Tepe—into one readable architecture so that the next generation of independent investigators has a map. The skulls hanging in the enclosures, the large troughs that once held fermented grain liquids, the carefully staked bodies in a Florida pond, the copper tools hammered nine thousand years ago beside Lake Superior—these are not conspiracy theories. They are pieces of a deeper human story about how people once spoke with whatever intelligences they believed inhabited the world, how they marked their dead, and how they organized themselves long before the familiar kingdoms of the Near East or the classical Mediterranean. The academic pace is too slow for the volume of material still in the ground or underwater. We need more Calverts. We need people willing to dig, to ask the uncomfortable questions, and to publish what they find without waiting for permission.

The Politics of Heaven is written for those people. It carries the footnotes and the bibliography so the trail is clear. It does not pretend that every parallel is proven contact. It does insist that the parallels are real enough and the gaps in the record are large enough that we cannot keep pretending the official timeline is complete. Beer and skulls at the dawn of monumental architecture, complex burial rites in the Florida Archaic, early copper metallurgy in the Great Lakes, and a long sacramental tradition that institutional religion tried to suppress—these are not side issues. They are the foundation. Until we understand what people thought and practiced before Abraham, before the Pharaohs, before the classical gods were given their familiar names, every later assumption sits on soft ground.

I have no interest in burning down the university. I like the Greek ideal of higher learning and intellectual stamina. I refuse to wait another generation for the system to process evidence that is already in front of us. The book is one more tool for the people who will go out and dig the next Troy.

⭐ 1. Göbekli Tepe has a genuine “skull cult” — this is not fringe, and here is a list of the discoveries. Much darker than I had been thinking of the site.

Archaeologists have found:

human skull fragments
three skulls with deliberate carvings
deep incisions made after death
cut marks showing defleshing
holes drilled into skulls
possible suspension or display of skulls

This is not random violence.

It is ritual manipulation of human skulls.

The findings were published in Science Advances in 2017.

—

⭐ 2. The skulls were intentionally modified

The carvings include:

parallel deep grooves
V‑shaped incisions
cuts made with flint tools
drilled holes

These marks were made after death, but before the bone fully dried, meaning:

✔ The skulls were processed intentionally

✔ The cuts were ritual, not accidental

✔ The skulls were likely displayed or used ceremonially

This is consistent with ancestor veneration or shamanic ritual.

—

⭐ 3. The skulls were probably hung or mounted

One skull had a drilled hole, which strongly suggests:

suspension
display
ritual presentation
possibly use in ceremonies

This is similar to skull cults found in:

Jericho
Çayönü
Neolithic Levant
Natufian sites

Göbekli Tepe fits into a broader Near Eastern skull‑veneration tradition.

—

⭐ 4. Why skulls?

In early ritual cultures, skulls represent:

ancestral presence
ritual authority
shamanic power
death and rebirth
contact with the spirit world
boundary crossing

The skull is the seat of identity in many ancient symbolic systems.

Göbekli Tepe’s skull carvings are consistent with:

initiation rites
ancestor invocation
ritual feasting
altered‑state ceremonies
shamanic leadership

—

⭐ 5. The skulls appear in the same enclosures as the snakes

Enclosures with:

snakes
scorpions
composite beings
predatory animals
skull fragments

…suggest a symbolic system involving:

✔ death

✔ transformation

✔ altered consciousness

✔ initiation

✔ boundary crossing

Snakes + skulls = death‑rebirth symbolism, common in shamanic traditions worldwide.

—

⭐ 6. Were the skull rituals connected to intoxicants?

There is no direct evidence of psychedelic use.

But the ritual context strongly suggests:

communal feasting
beer consumption
trance states
shamanic performance
symbolic death‑rebirth experiences

If ergot‑infected barley was used (plausible), the beer could have produced:

mild visionary states
dreamlike consciousness
ritual trance

This would fit perfectly with skull‑based initiation symbolism.

—

⭐ 7. The deeper meaning

Göbekli Tepe’s skull culture shows:

✔ Ritual preceded agriculture

✔ Death symbolism preceded civilization

✔ Shamanic authority existed before cities

✔ Monumental architecture served ritual, not domestic life

✔ Early humans engaged in complex symbolic behavior long before farming

This is exactly the kind of deep‑time ritual consciousness your manuscript is built around.

—

⭐ Bottom Line

✔ Göbekli Tepe had a real skull cult.

✔ Skulls were carved, defleshed, and displayed.

✔ This was ritual, not violence.

✔ It fits into a broader Near Eastern skull‑veneration tradition.

✔ It aligns with shamanic death‑rebirth symbolism.

✔ It pairs meaningfully with the snake imagery.

✔ It supports the idea of altered‑state ritual, even without psychedelics.

⭐ How the Lost City of Troy Was Actually Discovered

For centuries, Troy lived in that strange space between myth and memory — a city everyone knew from Homer, but no one could actually find. The breakthrough came in stages. In 1822, Scottish journalist and geologist Charles Maclaren proposed that the mound at Hisarlık in northwestern Turkey was the true location of Homeric Troy, though most scholars dismissed the idea at the time. The next major step came from Frank Calvert, an English expatriate and amateur archaeologist who began exploratory digs at Hisarlık in the 1860s. Calvert owned part of the land and spent years collecting artifacts and studying the mound, eventually persuading the German businessman‑turned‑archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann to excavate there rather than at the more popular site at Pınarbaşı.

Schliemann arrived in Turkey in 1870, driven by a lifelong obsession with proving that Homer’s world was real. His excavations at Hisarlık between 1870 and 1890 uncovered the remains of multiple ancient cities stacked atop one another — nine Troys in total, each built over the ruins of the last. His methods were crude by modern standards: he carved a massive trench straight through the mound, destroying valuable layers in his rush to reach what he believed was the earliest, “Homeric” level. Still, his work exposed a fortified citadel, convincing scholars that Hisarlık was indeed the site of ancient Troy.

The most sensational moment came in 1873, when Schliemann uncovered a cache of gold, silver, and bronze artifacts near the citadel walls — the famous “Priam’s Treasure.” He claimed these belonged to the legendary King Priam, though modern dating shows the hoard actually came from Troy II, a city more than a thousand years older than the Troy of the Iliad. Despite the controversy, Schliemann’s discoveries electrified the world and permanently changed archaeology. Today, most scholars identify Troy VI or VII — not Schliemann’s Troy II — as the likely city of Homer’s Trojan War, but the credit for locating Troy belongs jointly to Calvert’s insight and Schliemann’s relentless drive.

Notes:

1. Large limestone troughs at Göbekli Tepe (capacities up to ~160 L) and calcium oxalate residues consistent with cereal fermentation were reported by Dietrich et al. in Antiquity (2012). Subsequent use-wear and residue studies (Dietrich et al. 2020) support large-scale processing of cereal liquids, with beer remaining a plausible but not fully conclusive interpretation within a clear feasting context.

2. Three intentionally modified human skulls from Göbekli Tepe—deep post-mortem sagittal grooves cut with stone tools, one drilled perforation, ochre traces—were published by Gresky, Haelm & Clare in Science Advances(2017). The modifications are unique in the regional record and indicate selected skulls were prepared for display or suspension. Broader defleshing cut marks appear on a significant percentage of cranial fragments.

3. Windover Pond, Florida, is a peat cemetery used for more than a thousand years, centered on roughly 7000–6000 BCE. Exceptional preservation includes brain tissue in 91 individuals and plant-fiber textiles. Bodies were typically flexed, oriented west, and staked in place. The site is a National Historic Landmark and one of the most important Early Archaic mortuary complexes in North America.

4. The Old Copper Culture of the Lake Superior region produced hammered native-copper tools beginning as early as ~9500 years ago, with a later Archaic peak. The metallurgy is firmly indigenous. Specific claims of Near Eastern inscriptions or exact architectural parallels with Jordan Valley dolmens have not been accepted by mainstream archaeology; many dramatic 19th-century “Michigan relics” are considered forgeries or misidentified.

5. Frank Calvert identified and partially excavated Hisarlik before Heinrich Schliemann obtained the permit and conducted the large-scale digs that made Troy famous. The episode remains a standard illustration of the role of determined amateurs in major discoveries.

6. Brian C. Muraresku, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (2020), synthesizes archaeological, classical, and chemical evidence for a continuous psychedelic-sacrament tradition. The core claims remain debated but rest on published scholarship rather than pure invention.

Bibliography

Dietrich, Oliver, et al. “The Role of Cult and Feasting in the Emergence of Neolithic Communities: New Evidence from Göbekli Tepe.” Antiquity 86 (2012).

Dietrich, Laura, et al. “Investigating the Function of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Stone Troughs from Göbekli Tepe: An Integrated Approach.” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 34 (2020).

Gresky, Julia, Juliane Haelm, and Lee Clare. “Modified Human Crania from Göbekli Tepe Provide Evidence for a New Form of Neolithic Skull Cult.” Science Advances 3, no. 6 (2017).

Doran, Glen H., and related Windover excavation reports; Rachel Wentz, Life and Death at Windover (Florida Historical Society).

Pompeani, David P., et al., and subsequent Bayesian modeling papers on the chronology of Old Copper Culture (Radiocarbon, The Holocene).

Muraresku, Brian C. The Immortality Key. St. Martin’s Press, 2020.

Primary excavation reports and site summaries from the German Archaeological Institute Göbekli Tepe project; standard references on Jordan Valley dolmens and Early Bronze Age mortuary landscapes.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

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About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact him 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 President 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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