Category: George Lang

Don’t Sour the Wine: Why Public Lectures from a County GOP Chair Push Officeholders Away, make Democrats happy, and Shrink the Tent We Want to Grow

It is hard to be in a leadership position. I know that. I wanted to wish the new chair of the Butler County Republican Party well. Art Sauerwein stepped into a job that is mostly thankless, always public, and never as simple as it sounds when you are talking to yourself in the bathroom mirror.¹ I have worked with people in this orbit. We have agreed on more than we have fought about. I was not looking to pick a fight with a brand-new chairman. Bloodsport politics is already crowded with people who think volume is a substitute for skill.

But people are already getting sour on his wine. This is not the pleasant kind. This is the vintage you spit out when you realize the bottle lacks what it takes. Sauerwein literally means sour wine.² I did not invent the metaphor. The paper did him the courtesy of putting the raw vintage on the table.

I want the Republican Party in this county to succeed. I do not want the political disease that has been cultivated in parts of West Chester to migrate township by township until the rest of Butler County starts talking like a faculty lounge. I want more unification, not less. I want a bigger tent, not a Sunday-school classroom with a padlock on the door. That is why I am saying something now, at the start of September 2026, while the article is still warm and the Democrats are still salivating.

What Sounded Fine in the Shower Did Not Survive the Newspaper

Some lines sound terrific when you are singing in the shower. They still sound pretty good at a Sunday meeting among people who already agree with you. They do not survive contact with newsprint. Once they are in the Journal-News, they belong to every Democrat, every fence-sitter, every officeholder you still need next cycle, and every volunteer who is privately deciding whether this job is worth the abuse.

The chairman’s public message, as it landed, ran something like this: take back the schools and make them more conservative; put more Christian values in the community; and, most of all, the Republicans already in office need to learn to cut spending and cut taxes, eliminate waste and fraud, and get in alignment with conservative values. Then the kicker: he has not been seeing that happen, and it displeases him.

I agree with a large percentage of the substance. Cutting spending, cutting taxes, reducing waste, and stopping fraud are not radical demands in a Republican county. I have been in the tax fight in this county for a long time, going back through names people still remember and some they would rather forget. I want conservative schools. I am not embarrassed by Christian values in a community that was built on them. That is not the argument.

The argument is tone, timing, venue, and target. You do not build a governing party by taking out the people you just spent years getting elected. You especially do not do it two months before a midterm when Democrats are hunting local gains and the only story they need is “Republicans are already eating their own.”

The Fast-Food Manager Problem in Bloodsport Politics

I have heard this voice before. It usually comes from people who have a hard time making a legitimate argument that requires sitting down, listening, and converting someone who does not already attend their Bible study to their way of thinking. Instead of doing that work, they reach for the lecture. I have seen it in entry-level managers at places that sell fast food. They get handed a shift. They have run something with five employees. They discover that barking feels like leadership.

You can talk that way to teenagers folding boxes. You cannot talk that way to people you are asking to put their name on a ballot, raise money, take votes, absorb the hate mail, and then run again in two years. Public office is already a faithless job. If word gets out that the chairman treats officeholders like children who missed curfew, the short list of people willing to do the work gets shorter. Then you will complain that nobody good will run, and you will be right, and you will have helped cause it.

The grandfather tone does not work on people who already moved out of their father’s house.  Younger Republicans, the ones you claim you want to recruit so the party is not a retirement home, can smell a lecture from across the parking lot. Trump did not build a coalition by scolding his own team in the local paper. He built one by pointing the fire outward.

Good Old Boys, Street Vendors, and the Nicodemus Problem

I have heard the comments on Facebook. People send me this stuff all day. “Good old boys club.” It is always the boys club when you are not in it. When you are outside, you throw a rock and call it prophecy. You say you are Jesus turning over the tables of the money changers. You say you are honest and pure. Meanwhile the people you need are quietly updating their résumés for a private-sector job that pays better and does not include a chairman who inspects their homework in the newspaper.

You have to remember Nicodemus. He loved Jesus. He wanted the message to advance. He also had to remain a functioning member of the priesthood. He walked a fine line on purpose.³ That is the nature of serious politics. It should not be a purity cult. I have heard the purity speech for years: we should be clean, we should be absolute, we should never sit at a table with anyone who is only 80 percent of the way home. Meanwhile you bleed support. You try to build a big party and then you shove people toward the door with absolutism and call the ones who leave compromised.

Cheerleaders are useful. Rock throwers are useful too, in the right hour. Leadership is deciding which tool you are holding before you swing it at your own team.

David Kern Knew How to Throw a Rock and Still Keep the Township

I have known the Kern family since I was very little. I was friends with his son. I knew Katy. I remember David Kern as a man who could throw a rock with the best of them and still serve as a respected Liberty Township trustee for decades. He chaired this county party. He also discovered, the hard way, that herding quarreling Republicans is a different sport than fighting Democrats.⁴ He said as much when he walked away from the chairmanship. That history is sitting right there for anyone who wants to read it instead of repeating it.

You need people who will volunteer for the ugly jobs. The short list of adults willing to be lectured in public like children is very short. You do not want your officeholders saying, “I will take the private job. It pays. I do not have to run every two years. I do not have to take a sermon from a chairman who just discovered the budget.” Once they leave, you do not get them back by posting harder.

West Chester Is Not a Metaphor. It Is a Beachhead.

I know Kathy Wyenandt. I have watched her work. She is out there trying to hitch a truck and a horse to the same socialist push that is running through school boards, township halls, and every other local institution that used to be too boring for ideology. Call it progressivism if the word socialism makes the room cough. The destination is the same: more government, more cultural renovation, more migration of West Chester habits into townships that did not ask for them.⁵

She does not need a majority tomorrow. She needs Republicans to do her turnout work for her. A county party that announces, in the paper, that its own officeholders have disappointed the chairman is a gift. Democrats do not have to beat Republicans if Republicans will brand their own people as failures eight weeks before Election Day. I do not want a bunch of Democrats in offices that took a generation to flip. That is not a purity position. That is arithmetic.

The people pushing the chairman to talk like this represent a slice of the party, not the whole vineyard. I would put that slice well under 40 percent of Republicans in this county, with the rest on the fence, tired, transactional, or capable of being seduced by a smiling Democrat who promises to be less exhausting. If you lecture the 60 percent as if they were the problem, you will meet them later on the other side of the aisle, or at home on the couch.

You Cannot Shut Off a County Budget Like a Spigot

“The Republicans that are in office need to learn to cut spending and cut taxes, and I have not been seeing that happen, and it displeases me.” That sentence is the whole problem in one pour. You cannot just turn the spigot off on a dime. I have been in these tax fights my whole adult life. There were plenty of pizzas eaten over tables with Mike Fox and the old Liberty Township crowd. There were plenty of arguments. You still had to build a team.⁶

County government is not a lemonade stand. It is labor contracts, state mandates, jails, boards of developmental disabilities, roads, courts, and a sales-tax stream that moves with the economy. Butler County has rolled back millage, sat on windfalls, and still gets accused of betrayal because the cut was not theatrical enough for people who do their budgeting in comment threads. Results matter. Theater is cheaper. Voters, after two years of Republicans in power, vote results. If the chairman’s public line is “our people have not done a very good job,” do not be shocked when the other team puts that quote on a mailer.

This is the midterm problem in miniature. The buzzwords that pulled people to the polls the first time do not work the same way once you own the desks. Insurgents always arrive to take advantage of disappointment. Some of them only know how to throw rocks. They want Jesus in the temple every Tuesday. If you are not flipping tables, you are not holy enough. That energy can win a primary. It does not automatically win a county, and it does not automatically govern one.

Todd Hall, Thomas Hall, and the Unfashionable Work of Building a Team

Todd Hall was good at building a team. Thomas Hall has done the unglamorous work in the Statehouse. I have had disagreements with people in that circle. There were disputes. We worked them out over time. Nobody has to be attached at the hip. Leadership is the art of bringing people to your way of thinking without setting their chairs on fire.⁷

People who lack that skill often lecture because lecture is what you do when you cannot close. They talk themselves into a lather in the bathroom. It sounds like Churchill. Then they get into a meeting with actual officeholders, actual budgets, and actual voters, and the words come out like a substitute teacher on the last day of school. “It displeases me” is not a governing strategy. It is a report card written by someone who is not taking the test.

Sometimes a chairman will sound like the star quarterback at a pep rally. In the bleachers you will have a row of people who never liked football and came for the argument. The quarterback will look like a cardboard cutout of the good old boys club. Fine. People still like winning the game. They like being around a team that wins. They will tolerate a certain amount of jock energy if the scoreboard gives them what they want. They will not tolerate a coach who spends the pregame interview explaining that his own starters are a disappointment.

Unity Is Not Compromise. Isolation Is Not Courage.

I do not want a compromised party. I also do not want a minority party that congratulates itself for being pure while Kathy’s people take another township seat. Those are not the only two options, no matter how many Facebook theologians insist they are. Learning to communicate with people who are not as conservative as a Sunday-morning Sunday-school teacher is not the same thing as becoming one of them. It means you can share a sandbox without eating the sand.

People who cannot do that work are often insecure about their ability to win a conversation. So they push the other person away. Then they never have to experience the small death of losing the argument. They say, “We did our best. We stood on principle. We were outnumbered.” Being outnumbered is not a sacrament. I do not want the minority party in Butler County. I want the party that keeps winning and then governs like it intended to keep the job.

Compromise has a cost. Losing has a cost. Leadership is weighing those two costs in public without pretending one of them is free. Thanksgiving dinner is the annual clinic: you do not have to agree on the football game to keep the same people at the table. A smart network puts more than one game on. That is not cowardice. That is how you still have a family next year.

A Friendly Note to the New Chairman

I want Art Sauerwein to be a successful chairman. I want people to support him. I want the party to grow. I agree with him on most of the policy nouns in that article. Cut spending. Cut taxes. Watch the schools. Say the quiet part about values out loud. Do it in a room with the officeholders first. Bring the concerns to a meeting. Make the case. Count votes. Help them find the money, the language, and the coalition. Then go to the paper together.

If you push them away in August, you will not have them in November, and you will not have them when you need a candidate in 2028. Chairmen who listen only to the people who want them to tear the party down do not last. The job looks important from the outside. From the inside it is volunteer hours, bruised egos, and a phone that rings with problems nobody else wanted. You will not keep good people if the public posture is “Father Knows Best and the children have disappointed the table.”

Help them get elected. Help them get money. Help them get on the slate card. Show up for them when the Journal-News calls. Save the lecture for the closed session, and even then, make it a conversation. The people who are whispering that the only moral posture is table-flipping are not the ones who will still be in the room when the chairs are empty.

Tomorrow Can Still Be a Better Day

It is hard to be in leadership in all phases. It is hard when people will not come over to your way of seeing the field. You still have to try. You have to bring together people who would never choose the same dinner table if football were not on. You have to give people latitude without becoming a wet rag. That is the whole craft.

So here is the friendly advice, based on what I am seeing in the first weeks of this chairmanship: do not sour the wine. Do not sour the voters. Do not sour the big tent. Do not push away the people who are not as conservative as you wish they were on a Sunday morning. Sit down. Work it out. Inspect the team in private. Cheer the team in public. I want this chairman to prosper. I want this party to keep the county. Lecturing your own officeholders in the newspaper is how you do the Democrats’ work for them.

Notes

1.  Art Sauerwein quoted in late-August 2026 Journal-News coverage of Butler County politics heading into the November 2026 midterms. The phrasing matches public circulation of the piece under titles such as “Republicans defend Butler County Ohio stronghold as Democrats seek local gains this fall.”

2.  Sauerwein is a German occupational/descriptive surname meaning “sour wine,” historically attached to makers or sellers of tart wine. The pun writes itself; I did not invent the vintage.

3.  John 3:1–21. Nicodemus, a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, came to Jesus by night. He later spoke for due process (John 7:50–51) and helped bury Jesus (John 19:39–40). He never became a street-corner prophet. That is the point.

4.  David Kern served 32 years as a Liberty Township trustee, briefly chaired the Butler County Republican Party, and died in 2021. See Journal-News obituary coverage and the Congressional Record tribute by Rep. Warren Davidson, April 22, 2021.

5.  Kathy D. Wyenandt of Liberty/Fairfield Township has been central committee chair and a visible public face of the Butler County Democratic Party, a Board of Elections member, and a candidate for Ohio House and Senate. She has written openly urging voters to consider Democrats in local cycles.

6.  Butler County commissioners have repeatedly used inside-millage rollbacks and related tools in recent budget cycles; sales-tax receipts have also risen. Whether that pace satisfies every activist is a separate question from whether the county is “not cutting.” See Journal-News budget coverage 2024–2026.

7.  Todd Hall served as Butler County GOP executive chairman through the 2024–2026 cycle and was frequently quoted on endorsements, including the 2026 commissioner primary. State Rep. Thomas Hall represents Ohio House District 46.

8.  Richard K. Jones, Butler County sheriff, published They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America (2026). The book is a leadership memoir, not a novel about cartels; the shower version of the pitch always sounds punchier than the jacket copy.

Bibliography for Further Reading

A working shelf, not a complete library. I have included the books that actually change how you think about parties, persuasion, local government, and the temptation to confuse purity with power.

Local and Ohio Politics

Butler County Republican Party. Candidate and leadership materials, butlercountygop.org, 2024–2026.

Callahan, Denise G., and Journal-News staff. Budget, millage, sales-tax, and commissioner coverage, Hamilton Journal-News, 2018–2026.

Clark, Michael D. “Beloved Butler County icon, political leader David Kern dies after illness.” Journal-News, April 16, 2021.

Davidson, Warren. “Honoring the Life and Memory of David Kern.” Congressional Record, April 22, 2021.

Ohio Republican Party. County chair directory and State Central Committee materials, ohiogop.org.

Wyenandt, Kathy. “You may want to vote Democrat this election cycle.” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 15, 2022.

Journal-News. “Republicans defend Butler County Ohio stronghold as Democrats seek local gains this fall.” Late August 2026. (Article circulating with the Sauerwein quotations discussed here.)

Parties, Coalitions, and the Big Tent

Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. 1790. Still the best warning against people who love principles more than the society those principles have to live in.

Downs, Anthony. An Economic Theory of Democracy. Harper, 1957.

Fiorina, Morris P. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. Yale University Press, 1981.

Galston, William A., and Elaine C. Kamarck. “The Politics of Polarization.” Third Way / Brookings essays, various years.

Hazlitt, Henry. Economics in One Lesson. Harper, 1946.

Kirk, Russell. The Conservative Mind. Regnery, 1953.

Laver, Michael, and Norman Schofield. Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in Europe. Oxford University Press, 1990. Useful even for a two-party county: coalition is a skill.

Riker, William H. The Theory of Political Coalitions. Yale University Press, 1962.

Skocpol, Theda, and Vanessa Williamson. The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Truman, David B. The Governmental Process. Knopf, 1951.

Leadership, Management, and Why Lectures Fail

Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Simon & Schuster, 1936. Mock it after you can do it.

Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. 1832. Politics is the continuation of coalition by other means.

Collins, Jim. Good to Great. HarperBusiness, 2001.

Drucker, Peter F. The Effective Executive. Harper & Row, 1967.

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

Hoffman, Rich. The Symposium of Justice. Overman Warrior Publications.

Jones, Richard K. They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America. 2026.

Lencioni, Patrick. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Jossey-Bass, 2002.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. 1532. Read it as a warning about what happens when your own captains stop trusting you.

Musashi, Miyamoto. The Book of Five Rings. c. 1645.

Ohno, Taiichi. Toyota Production System. Productivity Press, 1988. You cannot lecture a production system into existence.

Sun Tzu. The Art of War. Do not announce your disappointment with your own left flank.

Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. The leader who needs to be seen lecturing is already losing.

Rhetoric, Media, and the Local Paper Problem

Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda. Knopf, 1965.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. McGraw-Hill, 1964.

Orwell, George. “Politics and the English Language.” Horizon, 1946.

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. Viking, 1985.

Weaver, Richard M. The Ethics of Rhetoric. Henry Regnery, 1953.

Scripture and the Fine Line

The Gospel of John, chapters 3, 7, and 19. Nicodemus.

Matthew 21:12–13 and parallels. The temple tables. Note the target: a corrupt marketplace inside the holy precinct, not your own disciples on the night before a fight.

Augustine. City of God. The two cities argument is older than any county central committee.

Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society. Scribner, 1932.

Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. 1942. Especially the parts about factions inside the church.

American Party History and Populism

Gerring, John. Party Ideologies in America, 1828–1996. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform. Knopf, 1955.

Hofstadter, Richard. The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Knopf, 1965.

Phillips, Kevin. The Emerging Republican Majority. Arlington House, 1969.

Rauch, Jonathan. Political Realism. Brookings, 2015. Parties exist to tame factions. When the faction tames the party, you get what you are watching.

Schattschneider, E. E. The Semisovereign People. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960.

Sundquist, James L. Dynamics of the Party System. Brookings, 1983.

Local Government, Taxes, and the Spigot That Will Not Shut

Fisher, Ronald C. State and Local Public Finance. Various editions.

Oates, Wallace E. Fiscal Federalism. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.

Tiebout, Charles M. “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures.” Journal of Political Economy 64 (1956).

Ohio Auditor of State and Butler County Auditor annual financial reports, 2022–2026.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

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About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

Why Big-Tent Team Building Beats Purity Factions and Revenge Politics: Why I love Nancy Nix so much in Butler County, Ohio

Traveling, Independent Media, and Coming Home to Butler County Politics

I’ve been traveling most of the summer, so I’ve been doing a lot of catching up.  You can’t help but notice the difference when you step away and then come back. I’ve been a little behind on the local politics, and I want to refer to some changes in the Butler County Republican Party at the chair level.[1] When you’re in a leadership position, there’s always somebody who thinks they could do it better than you. There’s always a critic. I tell people that’s part of leadership. You’re always going to have armchair quarterbacks. They’re going to criticize and say stuff. Sitting down and talking to people who don’t agree with you is hard. Winning them over to your side is hard.

In Butler County we’ve had strong Republican support for a long time. When you’re the weak party—as Democrats are in Ohio and in Butler County—the only realistic path to power is splitting the majority party. Some Republicans, once they lose the eye of the tiger, start looking for ways to lose so they can feel relevant again. That’s Rocky III territory. The champion takes the top for granted and gets knocked down by someone hungrier. Strong leadership holds the party together so the majority stays a majority.

Todd Hall, Armchair Quarterbacks, and the Reality of Party Leadership

I always liked Todd Hall. I remember when people would complain about him. When you’re the chairman, you’re the lightning rod. Todd managed to keep things moving by focusing on something everybody could rally behind: electing Republicans and keeping the county on a conservative track.[2] You need a big tent to win. Pure factions feel righteous and then lose. I’ve said it for years—I’ll take people who will come to the table, grab a pizza, and argue philosophy all day long. We have more in common than not. The alternative is handing Democrats the only hope they have: a fractured Republican Party.

Big Tent Republicans vs. Purity Factions: Why Winning Requires Team Building

Trump himself was not a lifelong Republican in the traditional sense. Elon Musk came into the MAGA orbit from a different background. I take people who show up and want to win. The opposite impulse—the desire to purge and purify until only the purest remain—is how majorities become minorities. Democrats understand this. Their only realistic path in Butler County is to encourage Republicans to fight each other, thereby opening up the general-election map.[3]

I’ve watched it. People who could not win through the front door start working the back door—undermining officeholders who did win their primaries, feeding narratives to the Journal-News, and treating every establishment Republican as the enemy. That is not strategy. That is revenge dressed up as principle. And it is exactly what hands seats to Democrats.

Nancy Nix: Fiscal Discipline, Quiet Influence, and Why I Stand Behind Her

I love Nancy Nix, and I mean that genuinely. I can tell you that in their household, back when the Trump question was still unsettled for some people, her husband and I were already on the same page. Nancy came around eventually because she is logical and watches results; not everyone always agrees with everything all the time. As a fiscally responsible officeholder, she reduced staff sizes when she was Treasurer and again when she was Auditor. She has run things in the black for a long time. That is top-level conservative performance.[4]

A lot of the people you see in the White House and in state-level Republican success came through networks that include Nancy Nix. I know some of the behind-the-scenes. Nancy has been part of important scaffolding on all levels.  When I was last at the White House, her fingerprints are on so many important things. She won’t claim credit, but I will give it. If Vivek is a few points up in the averages, a meaningful share of the organizational credit in this region runs through people like her.[5]

George Lang: Friendship, Door-Knocking, and the Night He Took Down a Protester

I’ve always been affiliated with George Lang. We’ve developed a real friendship. I’ve seen him, Debbie, and the girls work events, knock doors, and hold the party together behind the scenes for decades. I like his family. I like the way he carries himself under pressure.[6]

Here’s a story for context. At the Savannah Center Trump event in the primary season, I had a VIP pass. Todd Hall did not want to be seen sitting in the front row with Trump at that stage—he was still in the John Kasich lane as the Ohio guy. Fair enough. George was there as a state representative. A protester started coming down the aisle toward Trump. George had told me earlier he would handle it if it came to that. When the moment arrived, George grabbed the guy, put him on the ground, and bought the security detail the second and a half they needed. That is not armchair commentary. That is a man who showed up when it was not yet popular and did the physical work.[7]

I was with George during the difficult period around John Boehner. We did not always agree on every personnel fight, but I have seen him under real pressure, and I trust the man. When purity voices treat George as the problem, they are discarding decades of actual organizational labor.

Michael Ryan, Don Dixon, and the Commissioners Who Actually Govern

I really like Michael Ryan. I spoke with him just this morning about something positive on the Republican side. He is a good conservative and a good man. The party endorsement and the primary result were decisive.[8] Don Dixon and I go back a long way—I used to race soapbox with his son Brent. Don has been a solid commissioner. These are not theoretical conservatives. These are people who show up, manage budgets, and keep the county functioning.

Sheriff Richard Jones and the Mayberry Standard

I like Sheriff Jones. I want the Butler County Sheriff’s Office to carry a bit of Mayberry and a bit of Walnut Grove—competent, present, and rooted in the community. His book is worth reading. It makes me proud of the department. When personal and political conflicts involving Roger Reynolds spilled into court and public narrative, it became another example of how intra-party score-settling distracts from the actual work of public safety.[9][10]

Revenge Politics, Back-Door Insurrection, and the Journal-News Narrative

Here is the pattern I keep seeing. People who could not win their primaries, or who lost influence, start working to tear down those who did win. They feed stories. They call solid conservatives RINOs. They treat every successful officeholder as the establishment enemy. The recent Journal-News framing of the November races and the tone around party leadership fits the pattern: soft language toward Democratic opportunities, little enthusiasm for defending the Republican incumbents and nominees who actually earned their spots.[11]

That is not leadership. Leadership is hard. Leadership is sitting across the table from people you do not fully agree with and still building a winning team. Leadership is defending the people the voters already chose in the primary so the general election is about Republicans versus Democrats, not Republicans versus Republicans. When party leadership sounds happier to give Democrats a seat at the table than to fight for the Republican majority, the voters notice.

The West Chester Lesson and What Happens When You Play Nice with the Wrong Strategy

We already lived through a version of this in the West Chester trustee and school board fights. People who thought the pure strategy would deliver instead watched Democrats and soft candidates benefit from Republican disarray. Mark Welch and others paid the price of a fractured effort. The same dynamic is available at the county level if the new posture continues.[12]

A Longer View: From Ross Perot to Trump to the Present

I’ve been doing this a long time. Election night 1992, I was at Ross Perot’s place with his daughters after helping with the big Dallas rally. We drove hard back to Ohio so I could vote. I learned then what happens when the majority party fractures or when outsiders and insiders refuse to build anything durable.[13] Through the Tea Party years and the early Trump years, I watched the same purity-versus-majority argument play out. The people who told me Trump was going nowhere were often the same voices now calling Nancy Nix, Michael Ryan, or George Lang the problem. They were wrong then. They are wrong now.

What Butler County Actually Needs from Republican Leadership

Butler County is still a Republican stronghold if the party acts like one.[14] That requires leadership that understands the difference between primary competition and general-election self-sabotage. It requires people who will defend Nancy Nix, Michael Ryan, George Lang, Sheriff Jones, and the other officeholders who have earned their places. It requires the discipline to sit down with people you do not fully agree with and still leave the room as a team.

I have stood by people when it was unpopular—Darbi Boddy when others told me to stay away, Roger Reynolds in earlier seasons, and the current slate of solid conservatives even when the purity voices are loud. I will continue to do so. The alternative is a party that defines itself only by what it is against, hands Democrats open seats, and then wonders why the majority slipped.

I love Nancy Nix. I respect George Lang, Michael Ryan, and Sheriff Jones. I want a big-tent Republican Party that wins. The people trying to burn it down to feel important again are not helping Butler County. They are helping the only people who benefit from Republican disunity: Democrats.

If you are mad at me over this, check back in a decade. I’ll still be right, and I won’t let you forget it. Have a good day.

Footnotes

[1] Journal-News (Butler County / Cox First Media), “Republicans defend Butler County stronghold as Democrats seek local gains this fall,” late August 2026. The piece surveys November 2026 county and judicial races and the competitive posture of both parties.

[2] Butler County Republican Party materials and contemporaneous reporting identify Todd Hall as long-serving Executive Chairman through at least the May 2026 primary cycle.

[3] The “big tent” versus purity debate is a long-standing tension within the Republican Party, both nationally and locally.

[4] Nancy Nix has served Butler County in fiscal offices (Treasurer and Auditor) with a consistent record of staff reductions, budget discipline, and low-tax philosophy.

[5] Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2026 Ohio gubernatorial campaign has drawn significant support from Butler County and statewide Republicans; local organizers, including Nancy Nix, have been credited with early and sustained organizational assistance.

[6] George Lang, Ohio State Senator, has been a consistent conservative voice and organizational workhorse in Butler County Republican politics for decades.

[7] The 2015 Trump campaign event at the Savannah Center took place during the Republican presidential primary, when many establishment figures remained cautious or opposed.

[8] Michael Ryan won the May 2026 Republican primary for Butler County Commissioner with approximately 72 percent of the vote over long-time incumbent Cindy Carpenter after receiving a strong party endorsement.

[9] Richard K. Jones has served as Butler County Sheriff for multiple terms and has published a memoir detailing the department’s culture and operational philosophy.

[10] Roger Reynolds previously served as Butler County Auditor. His later political and legal conflicts became a public episode in local Republican politics.

[11] Journal-News, “Republicans defend Butler County stronghold as Democrats seek local gains this fall,” late August 2026.

[12] West Chester Township trustee and school-board contests in recent cycles illustrated the cost of intra-party warfare.

[13] Ross Perot’s 1992 independent presidential campaign and the subsequent Reform Party activity formed an early training ground for many later organizers.

[14] Butler County has maintained a structural Republican registration and performance advantage for decades, making internal cohesion the primary variable between comfortable majorities and avoidable losses.

Bibliography (full version is in the Word document and text files)

The complete formatted version with all footnotes properly placed is in the three files listed at the top. Download the .txt file, and you can copy the entire essay in one click.

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.

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal – Ayn Rand’s Moral Defense of the Only System Consistent with Human Nature, and Why It Still Matters in Ohio in 2026

I have been running a series on Ayn Rand because too many people who once understood her through the Tea Party years have let her slip out of memory, or worse, accepted the lazy smear that she was merely an atheist with nothing useful to say. That is a mistake. The radical left still hates her for the same reason they hate successful producers today. They understand, even if they will not admit it, that her arguments cut the moral legs out from under every scheme of redistribution, regulation, and class resentment.

I was reminded of this again after lunch with one of my favorite senators, George Lang. We talked about The Fountainhead, about the gold standard, and about how few people who claim to like Rand have actually read the full range of her nonfiction. That conversation pushed me to pick up the 1966 collection Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal again. It remains one of the clearest statements ever written of why pure capitalism is not just an economic preference but a moral necessity.

The book is not a dry economics text. Rand called it a nonfiction footnote to Atlas Shrugged. With contributions from Nathaniel Branden, a young Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen, it argues that the system we call capitalism today is a bastardized version of the real thing—an unknown ideal because it has never been allowed to exist in pure form. What we have instead is a mixed economy of freedom mixed with controls, and the controls always expand. 

Capitalism as the Only Moral Social System

Rand’s central claim is simple and radical. Man is a rational being who must use his own mind to survive. Any social system that initiates force against that process is not merely inefficient; it is immoral. Capitalism, properly understood, is the only system that bans the initiation of physical force from human relationships and leaves individuals free to produce, trade, and keep what they create.

She defines it precisely: a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. The government’s sole legitimate function is to protect those rights by retaliating against those who initiate force. Everything else—regulation of production, redistribution of wealth, “industrial policy,” licensing of speech—is a violation. 

This is why she rejected the conservative approach of her time. Conservatives often tried to defend capitalism on practical grounds or by appeal to tradition while accepting the moral premise of altruism—that the individual has a duty to live for others. Rand called that a fatal compromise. In “The Anatomy of Compromise,” she shows that when you try to mix a rational principle with an irrational one, the irrational always wins. You cannot have a little bit of socialism without eventually losing the foundation of freedom. 

America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business

One of the most powerful essays in the collection is “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business.” Rand flips the usual narrative on its head. The productive genius is not the exploiter; he is the one being hamstrung by the looters and moochers who use the power of the state to seize what they did not create. Business people are treated as a scapegoat class in the same way other minorities have been treated under collectivist regimes. In Soviet Russia it was the bourgeoisie. In Nazi Germany it was the Jews. In America it is the successful businessman. 

I see this hatred every day in the attacks on Trump, on Vivek Ramaswamy, on any rich person who made money by creating value rather than extracting it through politics. The radical left’s outrage is not about fairness. It is pure Marxist class warfare dressed up in modern language. Rand saw it clearly because she lived it. Her father lost his pharmacy when the Bolsheviks nationalized private businesses. She never forgot.

Solving World Hunger: Production, Not Politics

People still talk about solving world hunger as if it were a distribution problem that requires more government. That is backward. Pigs, chickens, and rabbits reproduce rapidly. There is no physical shortage of the capacity to produce food. Shortages are created by politics—by governments that micromanage, confiscate, and regulate the very people who would otherwise raise the animals and grow the crops.

If you want to end hunger, get as close as possible to pure capitalism. Remove the artificial constraints. Let people own property, keep their profits, and trade freely. The poor in the United States, even under our imperfect capitalism, are rich compared to most of the world. A few American dollars can still be a fortune to someone living under the policies that Rand warned against. The guilt that drives redistribution often comes from people who helped create the barriers to opportunity and then want to ease their conscience by confiscating more from the productive.

Greenspan on Gold and the Hard Reality of Theory

One of the most quoted essays in the book is Alan Greenspan’s “Gold and Economic Freedom,” written years before he became Federal Reserve chairman. He argued that gold and economic freedom are inseparable. The gold standard protects property rights by limiting the government’s ability to inflate away wealth through deficit spending. Without it, the welfare state can confiscate savings silently. 

Greenspan later operated in a system far from that ideal. Theory is cleaner than practice when you face political realities, activist judges, and entrenched interests. That does not make the original argument wrong. It shows how hard it is to implement principle once the mixed economy has taken hold. We are still living with the consequences of easy money, quantitative easing, and the revolving door between the Fed and large asset managers. The warnings in that 1966 essay hold up.

True Monopolies, Railroads, and the Industrial Revolution

The collection also dismantles the usual antitrust myths. Free-market monopolies can only be maintained by superior efficiency and better service. Coercive monopolies require government intervention—subsidies, franchises, or legal barriers to entry. The history of American railroads is a clear example. Most of the transcontinental lines were built with government land grants and ended in financial chaos. James J. Hill’s Great Northern was built without federal subsidies and remained the only one that did not go bankrupt. 

Robert Hessen’s essay on the effects of the Industrial Revolution on women and children is equally important. Child labor was not created by capitalism; it was inherited from a world of grinding poverty. Factories gave children a way to earn a living and survive to adulthood. Rising wealth created by capitalism eventually made child labor unnecessary. The laws usually get the credit; the production gets the blame. 

Airwaves, Speech, and the Nature of Government

Rand’s essay on the property status of the airwaves is still relevant. The early chaos in radio was not a failure of free enterprise but a failure of government to recognize and protect property rights in frequencies. Instead of allowing private ownership and trade, the government declared the airwaves public property and nationalized them through licensing. That opened the door to political control of speech—the same impulse we still see whenever independent voices become inconvenient. 

Ohio’s Choice and the Fight Ahead

All of this is not abstract philosophy. It is the framework for understanding the hatred directed at successful people in our own state. Vivek Ramaswamy is a rich man who built companies. That alone is enough for the radical left and their media allies to paint him as untrustworthy. The same pattern appears in the attacks on Trump. They do not hate wealth. They hate the independence that wealth can buy when it is earned rather than granted.

I have watched this for decades. The people who want a governor who has never had to make a payroll or risk his own capital are the same people who will expand the very controls that create shortages and dependency. Michael Ryan understands these issues at the county level. Senators like George Lang still talk about gold-backed approaches and business-friendly policy. We need more of them.

Rand was not interested in being practical in the usual sense. She was interested in being right on principle. She knew that a culture that accepts altruism as its moral code will eventually sacrifice the producers. She also believed that the potential for human progress under pure capitalism is limitless. The nineteenth century, when America came closest to the ideal, proved it.

I have read her books many times, along with the work of those who analyzed her. I agree with her on the essentials of capitalism even while I am more of a man of faith than she was. The philosophy can be taken further. But the fight is now. The books are still on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. You can get them quickly. Read Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Then look at the news with clearer eyes.

If you want to solve poverty and hunger, expand opportunity. More capitalism, not less. More people who understand how wealth is actually created. That is the only path that treats individuals as ends in themselves rather than means to someone else’s political vision.

Don’t give up the ship.

Footnotes

1.  Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: New American Library, 1966; expanded 1967). Rand described the book as a nonfiction footnote to Atlas Shrugged.

2.  Ayn Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

3.  Ayn Rand, “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

4.  Ayn Rand, “The Anatomy of Compromise,” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

5.  Alan Greenspan, “Gold and Economic Freedom,” originally published in The Objectivist (1966) and reprinted in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

6.  Robert Hessen, “The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on Women and Children,” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

7.  Ayn Rand, “The Property Status of Airwaves,” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

8.  On James J. Hill and the Great Northern Railway, see Burton W. Folsom Jr. and related free-market historical accounts; the railroad is frequently cited in Objectivist literature as the counter-example to subsidized lines.

Bibliography

Rand, Ayn. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. With additional articles by Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen. New York: New American Library, 1966 (hardcover); expanded Signet paperback, 1967.

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

Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943.

Greenspan, Alan. “Gold and Economic Freedom.” The Objectivist, 1966.

Folsom, Burton W., Jr. Works on the “robber barons” myth and James J. Hill.

Additional recommended reading: Ayn Rand Lexicon entries on capitalism, business people, and the gold standard (aynrandlexicon.com); Ayn Rand Institute materials on laissez-faire.

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 Lake Superior Copper Mines, Transatlantic Trade Before Columbus, and Why Orthodoxy Fears the Evidence

Never forget what’s possible

I have been thinking about group behavior again. There is a reason people are afraid of conspiracies, or more accurately, afraid of going against the grain. They fear being ostracized from the group. It is not abstract philosophy. It is survival. In academic, professional, and corporate fields, the pattern is the same. When a narrative hardens, stepping outside it carries real costs. Jobs disappear. Funding dries up. Colleagues suddenly see a friend across the room and need to talk to them. The conversation ends. I have watched it happen more times than I can count, and not only in archaeology.

This is why the copper of Lake Superior remains such a charged subject. It should not be. The evidence is physical, measurable, and increasingly hard to dismiss. Yet the moment the discussion turns toward possible contact between the Near East and North America in the Bronze Age or earlier, the temperature changes. People get skittish. They change the subject. I do not believe the copper trade from Lake Superior is a conspiracy theory. I believe it is an under-examined historical reality, and the resistance to it reveals more about institutional incentives than about the data.

Roger L. Jewell’s Ancient Mines of Kitchi-Gummi: Cypriot / Minoan Traders in North America remains one of the more level-headed treatments of the subject. Jewell does not rant. He lays out the scale of prehistoric mining on Isle Royale and the Keweenaw Peninsula, the volume of pure native copper removed, and the awkward fact that so much of it seems to have vanished from North America’s archaeological record. Estimates vary, but the lower end runs to tens of millions of pounds extracted over centuries beginning roughly 3000 BCE or earlier. The upper estimates are higher still. Native copper of that purity, occurring in large masses that could be worked cold, is geologically unusual. Lake Superior is the standout source. 

I have been up there myself. The Upper Peninsula leaves an impression. The landscape, the isolation, the sheer number of ancient pits still visible in places, all of it sits in the mind differently once you have walked the ground. Mainstream accounts, such as Susan R. Martin’s Wonderful Power, document the Native mining and the extensive trade of copper artifacts across the Midwest and beyond. That part is not in dispute. The Hopewell and Adena cultures moved copper hundreds of miles. They moved Yellowstone obsidian even farther. Orthodoxy accepts long-distance foot and canoe trade within the continent. It balks at the idea that the same copper, or knowledge of the same source, could have reached the Mediterranean by sea. 

I attended a lecture by John E. Hancock when his Smithsonian Books volume on the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks came out. The book is careful, well-illustrated, and frames the sites within the indigenous narrative that has become the required language for World Heritage and institutional publication. Hancock has done serious work on the geometry and lunar alignments of the Ohio earthworks. The conversation before and after the talk was civil. Then the subject of copper trade came up, and the tone shifted. Once it became clear I was not content to stop at the indigenous-only explanation, the interest cooled. That is the pattern. UNESCO recognition is valuable. The political framing that accompanies it is not optional if you want the institutional platform. I understand the pressure. I do not accept that it settles the historical question. 

The Blue Pill Pays Well, but the Truth is in the Red Pill, Not a Popular Decision:

The same dynamic appears across fields. During COVID, expert consensus hardened rapidly around certain data interpretations from the CDC and related bodies. Dissent carried professional risk. Careers were damaged. People who had built comfortable lives inside the consensus had every incentive to stay inside it. The sociological pattern is not unique to public health. It operates in archaeology, history, and the soft sciences whenever a preferred narrative about origins, land, or cultural purity is at stake. A professor at Marquette or any similar institution who begins teaching that Mediterranean traders may have been active on Lake Superior risks the quiet professional death that follows from being labeled unreliable or politically tone-deaf. No one has to fire you formally. The invitations stop. The grants dry up. The department stops protecting you. Group behavior does the rest.

I do not romanticize the red-pill posture. It is often lonely, and it does not pay well. But the alternative is to pretend that evidence stops mattering once it threatens the story. Behind my interest in the copper is a long-standing rebellion against that academic etiquette. Truth is not a popularity contest.

Here are the primary reasons I find the case for significant transatlantic movement of Lake Superior copper, and associated cultural contact, between roughly 3000 BCE and 10000 BCE persuasive. The list is not exhaustive, and not every item is equally strong. Taken together, they form a pattern that orthodoxy has not adequately answered.

First, the sheer volume and purity of the copper. Prehistoric miners removed enormous quantities of nearly pure native copper from the Lake Superior region. Much of it is not accounted for in the surviving North American archaeological inventory. Bronze Age Mediterranean societies consumed copper at industrial scale. A source of cold-workable, high-purity copper would have been economically transformative. The Uluburun shipwreck, dated to around 1320 BCE, off the coast of Turkey, carried approximately 10 tons of copper ingots, along with tin and other luxury goods. The vessel was a substantial, sophisticated craft. If such ships were operating in the eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age, then the technological capacity for longer voyages in the northern Atlantic existed earlier. 

Second, long-distance trade is already conceded inside North America. Hopewell people obtained copper from the Superior region and obsidian from the Yellowstone area. Distances of 900 miles or more, traveled on foot or by water, are accepted without controversy. Once that capacity is granted, the additional claim that no one ever continued the northern route via Hudson Bay, Greenland, Iceland, and the British Isles becomes an assumption rather than a demonstrated barrier. Sea levels were lower for long stretches of the relevant period. Coastal and island-hopping routes would have been more forgiving than they are today.

The Lesson of Captain Bligh:

Third, human capability for open-boat ocean travel is not theoretical. After the mutiny on the Bounty, Captain William Bligh and a small loyal crew covered roughly 3,618 nautical miles in a 23-foot open launch, navigating by memory, dead reckoning, and the stars, reaching Timor in about 45 to 47 days. They avoided hostile landings and stretched meager provisions across the Pacific. If a determined 18th-century British officer could do that without charts under survival conditions, then Bronze Age or earlier sailors, with purpose, better vessels, and knowledge of prevailing winds and currents, could have managed the northern Atlantic circuit. The Phoenicians and earlier Mediterranean seafarers were not less capable. 

Fourth, certain artifacts refuse to fit neatly. The Newberry Tablet, recovered in 1896 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula after a storm toppled a tree and exposed objects entangled in the roots, carried inscriptions in 140 squares. Photographs survive; the original deteriorated after poor storage. Some researchers have argued the signs resemble Cypro-Minoan or related scripts. The discovery predates modern knowledge of Linear A and related systems. A tree of that size does not grow overnight over a planted modern fraud. The Michigan Relics as a broader category include clear forgeries, but the Newberry find has peculiarities that keep it from being dismissed with a wave of the hand. Similar problems attach to other contested pieces such as the Wilmington Tablet from the Adena context in Ohio. Orthodoxy prefers to label them all frauds aimed at dispossessing indigenous claims. That explanation is politically convenient. It is not always archaeologically decisive. 

Cocaine in Egyptian Mummies:

Fifth, the botanical evidence from Egyptian mummies. In 1992, toxicologist Svetlana Balabanova and colleagues reported traces of nicotine and cocaine in tissues and hair of Egyptian mummies spanning a wide date range. Cocaine is derived from a New World plant. Nicotine is more complicated because other Old World plants contain it, yet the concentrations and the presence of cocaine raised the contact question immediately. Subsequent work has been contested, with contamination from modern handling or insecticides offered as explanations. Forensic-style testing, as used in criminal courts, produced the original results. The debate continues, but the data did not vanish simply because it was inconvenient. 

Sixth, architectural and astronomical parallels. The lunar standstill alignments at Stonehenge have counterparts in the Hopewell earthworks of Ohio, particularly the Newark complex. Dolmens and related megalithic forms appear in the Jordan Valley, the British Isles, New England, and the Upper Great Lakes region. Mainstream geology attributes many of the American examples to glacial deposition. The formal similarities and the association of some of these landscapes with skull cults, beer brewing, and ritual architecture at sites like Göbekli Tepe (and related early Holocene complexes) invite comparison rather than automatic dismissal. A submerged stone alignment in Grand Traverse Bay, located in 2007 at a depth of roughly 40 feet by Mark Holley, dates to a period when lake levels were lower, and the area was dry land. Media called it a “Stonehenge.” Holley himself has been more cautious, describing a long linear arrangement rather than a classic henge. The date range, however, places human activity on that landscape thousands of years before the classical Hopewell. 

Seventh, cultural and religious correspondences. Skull veneration, psychedelic or beer-based ritual, and communication with non-ordinary intelligences appear in early Near Eastern contexts, in Greek mystery practices that laced wine, and in ethnographic accounts of North American shamanism. The same pattern of entities contacted through altered states recurs. I do not treat this as proof of direct migration of priests. I treat it as evidence that the same spiritual technology and the same class of non-human intelligences were being engaged on both sides of the ocean. The Canaanite and broader Levantine world that produced the biblical accounts of Rephaim and related giant clans occupied the same landscape of dolmens and high places. Early newspaper reports of large skeletal remains in Ohio mounds were later suppressed or explained away, partly because they complicated the emerging political narrative that all significant pre-Columbian culture was indigenous and that European presence began with Columbus. The political utility of that narrative does not make it complete history.

Eighth, the northern route is geographically coherent. From the copper districts one can move by water and portage toward Hudson Bay, then by sea past Greenland and Iceland to the British Isles and down the Atlantic coast into the Mediterranean. The Odyssey, though a literary work, preserves descriptions of long days that fit higher latitudes better than the confined Mediterranean. Most classical literature of the period did not survive. What remains is a thin sample. Treating Homer’s poem as pure fantasy while ignoring the possibility that it encodes remembered routes is a choice, not a necessity. Troy was real. The ships of the period were real. The copper cargoes were real.

It’s All About the Bog People

Ninth, recent discoveries continue to complicate the closed story. Windover in Florida yielded remarkably well-preserved brains and evidence of a caring, structured society thousands of years ago, whose genetic profile does not map neatly onto later-known tribes. Poverty Point, the Adena and Hopewell sequences, and Cahokia (whose Monk’s Mound remains one of the largest earthen pyramids in the Americas) show complex, interconnected societies that moved materials and ideas across vast distances. Each new site that surfaces, whether under construction or by sonar, forces another quiet revision. The institutional response is usually to absorb the data into the existing indigenous-only model and move on. The model is stretched thinner with every decade.

I could continue. The point is not that every anomalous tablet is genuine or that every newspaper giant story from the 19th century is accurate. The point is that the cumulative weight of mining scale, missing metal, admitted intra-continental trade, demonstrated seafaring capacity, contested but persistent artifacts, botanical anomalies, architectural parallels, and ritual correspondences is more than noise. It is a signal. Orthodoxy’s refusal to engage it seriously is itself evidence of the group behavior problem I began with.

Jewell’s Book is a Good Start

I finished Jewell’s book and found it useful precisely because it stays relatively measured. I go further than he does in terms of chronological depth and the frequency of contact. Lower sea levels, better boats than we sometimes assume, and powerful economic and spiritual incentives make repeated voyages plausible across millennia. The same human ingenuity that built the pyramids and the Sphinx, that organized the copper trade of the eastern Mediterranean, and that produced the precise lunar geometry of the Ohio earthworks is not suddenly incompetent when the Atlantic intervenes.

The blue-pill life is comfortable. It comes with pensions, conference invitations, and the warm feeling of belonging. The red-pill alternative does not. I have watched capable people choose the paycheck. I understand the choice. I do not respect it when it requires pretending that inconvenient evidence does not exist. Whether the subject is COVID data, election integrity, or the copper of Lake Superior, the pattern is the same. Group survival is prioritized over truth-seeking. That is why the conversation keeps getting shut down. That is also why it will not stay shut down. Physical evidence has a longer half-life than institutional consensus.

The copper mines of Lake Superior are one of the largest archaeological stories still sitting in plain sight. They should be mainstream. Serious, multi-disciplinary work that follows the metal, the isotopes, the boat technology, and the ritual parallels wherever they lead is overdue. I will continue to say so. Popularity is not the measure. Evidence is.

I base my opinions about Lake Superior Copper Trade again on these factors:  

  • My trip to the Upper Peninsula
  • The Newberry tablet.
  • The Dolmans of the Near East. 
  • The admission that copper was traded by the Hopewell culture, 900 miles away.  
  • That Captain Bligh traveled from Tonga to Timor — Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia)  3,600 nautical miles over 36 days with only 1 week of food and water.  It was a death sentence.  
  • Cocaine and tobacco in Egypt, 1992: the material is in the hair shafts, not contamination. 
  • The Uluburun shipwreck (1300 BCE) shows Egypt, Canaan, Cyprus, and the Aegean were part of a massive trade network. George Bass.
  • Stonehenge off Traverse City, 9000 years ago.  Validates Newberry. It was first discovered in 2007 by sonar.
  • Of course, Windover. 
  • Communication might have occurred through shamans rather than through evolutionary contact.  
  • LiDAR in South America
  • Cahokia
  • The Odyssey path. 
  • Poverty Point and Olmecs, my Wilmington Tablet

Notes

1.  Roger L. Jewell, Ancient Mines of Kitchi-Gummi: Cypriot / Minoan Traders in North America (Jewell Histories, various editions). Summarizes the scale of prehistoric extraction and the Mediterranean trader hypothesis.

2.  Susan R. Martin, Wonderful Power: The Story of Ancient Copper Working in the Lake Superior Basin (Wayne State University Press, 1999). Mainstream archaeological synthesis of Native mining and trade.

3.  On the Uluburun wreck and its copper cargo, see the Institute of Nautical Archaeology summaries and Cemal Pulak’s publications; roughly ten tons of copper ingots, late 14th century BCE.

4.  Captain Bligh’s open-boat voyage: standard historical accounts place the distance at approximately 3,618 nautical miles in 45–47 days.

5.  Newberry Tablet: contemporary newspaper reports from 1896; later discussions in epigraphic and alternative archaeology literature; original largely destroyed by poor storage.

6.  Balabanova et al., early 1990s toxicological studies on Egyptian mummies; subsequent controversy over contamination versus genuine presence of New World alkaloids.

7.  Grand Traverse Bay stone alignment: Mark Holley, 2007 discovery; media “Stonehenge” framing versus Holley’s more restrained description of a linear feature on a former shoreline.

8.  John E. Hancock, Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks: Landscape Monuments of the Ancient Ohio Valley (Smithsonian Books). Documents the UNESCO sites and indigenous framing.

9.  On Hopewell long-distance trade networks, standard archaeological literature accepts Superior copper and Rocky Mountain obsidian among other materials.

Selected Bibliography

Bass, George F., et al. Publications on the Uluburun shipwreck (Institute of Nautical Archaeology).

Hancock, John E. Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks: Landscape Monuments of the Ancient Ohio Valley. Smithsonian Books.

Jewell, Roger L. Ancient Mines of Kitchi-Gummi: Cypriot / Minoan Traders in North America. Jewell Histories.

Martin, Susan R. Wonderful Power: The Story of Ancient Copper Working in the Lake Superior Basin. Wayne State University Press, 1999.

Pulak, Cemal. Various papers on the Uluburun cargo and Late Bronze Age maritime trade.

Additional primary reports on the Newberry find (1896 local Michigan newspapers), Balabanova toxicology papers (1992 onward), and Holley’s Grand Traverse Bay survey notes. Classical sources include Homer’s Odyssey (any standard translation) for the literary reflection of long-distance seafaring memory.

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.

Psychedelics, Skull Cults, and the Politics of Heaven: Why Christianity Broke the Cycle of Appeasement to Non-Human Intelligence

I have been carrying these questions in the background of my thinking for decades. The frequency with which they demand attention has risen sharply since the recent UAP disclosures. When the best technology the Air Force possesses cannot keep pace with something that behaves more like a ghost than a craft, the old categories collapse. It is not enough to say a flying saucer is real. It is not enough to say a religious claim is real. I want to know what causes people to believe what they believe, what political order forms around those beliefs, and what self-interest drives the entire system. Once you understand the political motivation behind belief, you understand the kind of society people are actually building—and whether you should support it.

That is why the conversation around Brian Muraresku’s The Immortality Key landed with such force. The book is not merely another academic argument about ancient wine. It is a direct challenge to the sanitized version of early Christianity most of us inherited. And it raises a harder question: if the original Eucharist carried a pharmacological charge, what does that tell us about the entities people were trying to contact, and why did Christianity’s later institutional form deliberately move away from that charge?

The Immortality Key and the Pagan Continuity Hypothesis

Muraresku’s central claim is straightforward and explosive. The original Christian communion was not a symbolic sip of ordinary wine. It was a potent psychedelic sacrament inherited from the Greek mysteries, specifically the cult of Dionysus and the rites at Eleusis. 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.

The chemistry focuses on ergot, the fungus that grows on barley and rye—the same fungus from which Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD in 1938. The theory is not new. It was proposed in 1978 by R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck in The Road to Eleusis. Hofmann and Ruck’s academic careers suffered for it. The idea that the foundations of Western philosophy and early Christianity rested on controlled visionary pharmacology was too much for the scholarly stomach of the time.  And when you think about that very obvious claim, and the way those names were ostracized, you can see the root cause of a much larger problem.  

Muraresku spends years in the Vatican archives and archaeological sites looking for the transition. He notes that ancient wine was rarely plain fermented grape juice. It was routinely an infusion of herbs, roots, and potentially fungi—a pharmakon. The Gospel of John, the most Greek of the Gospels, uses language for the wine that suggests something more complex than table drink. Jesus’ miracle at Cana occurs in a cultural zone saturated with Dionysian imagery. In early Jesus centuries, Dionysus and Jesus were sometimes treated as interchangeable figures of death, rebirth, and ecstatic immortality.

The book’s most compelling social argument concerns women. For millennia, the preparation of these visionary beverages was women’s work. As Christianity became institutionalized and more patriarchal, particularly from the fourth century onward, those women and their spiked drinks became a threat to the emerging clerical monopoly on the divine. Muraresku reads the Inquisition’s language of pharmaka and sorcery not merely as superstition but as the systematic eradication of a competing technology of direct encounter with the sacred. The shift, in his framing, is from pharmacological Christianity to placebo Christianity.

I want Christianity to succeed. I do not read Muraresku as an enemy of the faith. He identifies as a Catholic who is trying to recover rather than destroy the Eucharist. Yet the implications cut in two directions at once. If the earliest layers of the tradition carried a visionary intensity later deliberately muted, then the institutional Church both preserved and constrained something powerful. And if that intensity was chemically mediated, we must ask what, exactly, the initiates were encountering.

Beer, Skulls, and the Long Continuity of Death Cults

The problem is larger than Greece. When I go back further—ten thousand years further—the pattern sharpens.

At Göbekli Tepe (the site that Muraresku and others still sometimes refer to by earlier or variant names in popular discussion), the evidence is no longer subtle. T-shaped pillars, snakes carved everywhere, a clear skull cult, and chemical traces consistent with beer brewing. People were not merely gathering to eat. They were preparing fermented beverages, removing soft tissue from human heads, drilling holes, and displaying the skulls in ritual contexts under carefully oriented architecture. The same complex appears, in different local forms, along the Jordan Valley in the dolmen fields that stretch from the Golan south toward the Dead Sea, and again in the megalithic “Wheel of Giants” (Rujm el-Hiri / Gilgal Refa’im) east of the Sea of Galilee—roughly 160 meters across, built of more than 40,000 tons of basalt, aligned with solar and stellar markers.

I have scoured the archaeological literature for a serious treatment of these Jordan Valley dolmens from roughly 10,000 to 3,000 BC. The silence is telling, just like any discussion dealing with the use of wine in Greek culture outside of mainstream opinion. Mainstream discussion prefers the safer Bronze Age and later. Yet the structures are there. The alignments are there. The continuity of ritual astronomy with later Hopewell earthworks in the Ohio Valley is difficult to ignore once you stop treating the Atlantic as an absolute barrier.

Pure native copper from the Lake Superior region was extracted for thousands of years. Isotopic and purity studies continue to raise questions about whether some of that copper moved farther than orthodoxy allows. The Windover bog people of central Florida preserve soft tissue and brain matter from the same deep time window. The Newberry Tablet and other Michigan finds remain controversial, but the pattern of megalithic and copper-working activity across the Great Lakes and the Upper Peninsula does not vanish because it is inconvenient.

Everywhere you look in this pre-biblical window, you find cultures oriented toward death, severed heads, fermented or psychoactive drink, and communication with something beyond the ordinary dead—the politics of that communication matter. Human beings do not casually cut off a neighbor’s head, scrape the flesh, hang the skull, and pour blood on an altar for sport. They do it because they believe the act buys favor, knowledge, rain, fertility, or protection from harm.

The Mouse and the Snake

I use a simple allegory. Watch a pet snake being fed. Drop a mouse into the glass enclosure. For the first few minutes, the mouse runs, freezes, and tests every corner. Eventually it realizes there is no exit. Then the behavior changes. It becomes still. It positions itself near the water dish or the food bowl as if stillness and proximity to ordinary life might persuade the snake to look elsewhere. The snake, of course, is not persuaded. It simply waits and then eats.

Humanity has lived for a very long time with the anxiety of that mouse. Non-human intelligences—call them Watchers, old gods, ultraterrestrials, or whatever the current UAP language prefers—appear in the record as entities that demand appeasement. Psychedelics, ritual sex, blood, and skull display are technologies of that appeasement. The mouse tries to make itself useful or invisible so the snake will not strike.

Christianity, in its mature form, broke that cycle. It did not deny the existence of the hostile powers. It declared them defeated in principle and offered a different posture: moral agency, individual responsibility, and direct relationship with a God who does not require the constant feeding of death. The result, imperfect as every human institution is, was the rise of a civilization that valued the living more than the skulls of the dead. Strip the Christian premise from a mass of people, and the older pattern reasserts itself with remarkable speed. I have watched it at a Jason Aldean concert from the VIP area—twenty thousand people, many drunk since morning, public sexual display, the old fertility and abandon patterns returning the moment the moral frame loosens. The same retreat appears wherever the teachings of Jesus are actively removed from a culture.

That is why I am not enthusiastic about the modern psychedelic renaissance framing itself as the recovery of a lost “religion with no name.” The experiences reported at Johns Hopkins and NYU—ego death, loss of fear of mortality—are real. The question is whether the entities contacted in those states are friends of the human project. My reading of the long archaeological record is that they are not. They have been competing for control of human attention and behavior for a very long time. Christianity was never their preferred outcome.

The Four Pillars That Still Need Digging

The gap between roughly 10,000 BC and the world of Abraham remains the least examined and most consequential stretch of the human story. Four clusters of evidence deserve far more serious, well-funded attention than they currently receive.  I am committing myself to putting money and attention to these ideas:

1.  The skull cult, beer residues, and snake iconography at Göbekli Tepe and related Anatolian sites.

2.  The dolmen fields and the Wheel of Giants along the Jordan Valley and Golan.

3.  The pure copper extraction systems of the Lake Superior region and their possible long-distance movement.

4.  The Windover and related Archaic Florida populations with their extraordinary preservation of soft tissue and ritual practice.

These are not isolated curiosities. They form the deep background against which both the biblical narrative and the later Greek mysteries emerge. More excavation, more isotopic analysis, more open discussion of possible transoceanic contact, and less reflexive dismissal of “fringe” data would change the conversation. I am writing The Politics of Heaven in part to force that conversation into the open. The secular publishing world prefers books that treat Christianity as the problem rather than as a partial solution to an older and darker problem. That preference itself looks, from where I sit, like another form of the mouse’s stillness—keeping the larger questions safely inside the glass.

Conclusion: Do Not Be the Mouse

The original Eucharist may well have carried a pharmacological dimension inherited from older Mediterranean practice. The women who prepared the drinks may have been the last keepers of a technology the institutional Church found threatening. None of that requires us to return to the skull cults and the blood altars. The miracle of Christianity was not that it invented the sacred. It redirected the human drive for transcendence away from appeasement of predatory powers and toward a moral and spiritual posture that could build a durable civilization.

I want more money poured into the archaeology of the deep past—not the archaeology that already knows what it is allowed to find, but the kind willing to follow the copper, the alignments, the beer residues, and the severed heads wherever they lead. I want the conversation about non-human intelligence to stop treating the entities as either cartoon aliens or harmless spirit guides. They have a politics. Humanity needs a politics equal to theirs.

The Politics of Heaven is my effort to map that battlefield. The four pillars above are the places where the next decade of serious digging should concentrate. The rest is commentary, color, and the long memory of a man who has watched the same patterns repeat across continents and millennia.

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.  That is the answer to our many questions.  And in the UAP disclosures, we are getting a hint of that world.  

Footnotes

1.  Brian C. Muraresku, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (St. Martin’s Press, 2020).

2.  R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck, The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978; later editions).

3.  On the ergot detoxification experiments and the University of Athens work referenced by Muraresku, see the discussion and citations in The Immortality Key, chapters on Eleusis and the chemistry of the kykeon.

4.  Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (Princeton University Press, 2003) and subsequent biomolecular archaeology papers on mixed fermented beverages.

5.  For Göbekli Tepe skull cult and brewing evidence: Klaus Schmidt and subsequent publications of the German Archaeological Institute; recent chemical analyses of residues in stone vessels.

6.  Rujm el-Hiri (Gilgal Refa’im / Wheel of Giants): surveys and interpretations in Israeli archaeology literature; see also popular and specialist treatments of its astronomical alignments.

7.  Old Copper Culture / Lake Superior copper: standard Midwestern archaeology; purity and sourcing debates continue in archaeometallurgy literature.

8.  Windover site, Florida: Glen H. Doran et al., publications on the Archaic wet-site cemetery and preserved soft tissue.

9.  Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers (Henry Regnery, 1969) and later works on the continuity of non-human encounter narratives.

10.  Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Viking, 2009).

11.  Biblical Archaeology Review, ongoing coverage of Jordan Valley and related megalithic sites; earlier issues treating dolmens remain limited relative to the density of the remains.

12.  On Hopewell copper and ceremonial complexes: standard Ohio Valley archaeology; Newark Earthworks and related lunar alignments.

13.  Dolores Cannon’s reported communications with Essene figures appear in her Conversations with Nostradamus series and related remote-viewing / past-life material; treated here as phenomenological data rather than conventional historiography.

14.  Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods (1995) and later works on Göbekli Tepe and catastrophic prehistory; useful for raising questions even where orthodoxy disagrees with conclusions.

Selected Bibliography

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

•  Wasson, R. Gordon, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck. The Road to Eleusis. 1978 and later editions.

•  MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Viking, 2009.

•  Vallée, Jacques. Passport to Magonia. 1969.

•  McGovern, Patrick E. Ancient Wine. Princeton University Press, 2003.

•  Schmidt, Klaus. Publications on Göbekli Tepe (German Archaeological Institute).

•  Doran, Glen H., et al. Windover site monographs and papers.

•  Hancock, Graham. Fingerprints of the Gods and subsequent titles.

•  Biblical Archaeology Society. Biblical Archaeology Review (ongoing).

•  Standard references on Rujm el-Hiri, Old Copper Culture, Hopewell, and Jordan Valley dolmens in regional archaeological journals.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A message to Senator George Lang: Making deals with the dead for earthly power

Yes, George, you need to watch this video. I had to finish our discussion from lunch. I had a good lunch with Senator George Lang the other day. Nothing formal, nothing staged for the cameras, just two guys who have known each other a long time sitting outside at a place we both like, talking the way we always end up talking when the politics finally take a back seat. People assume that every time I sit down with a senator or a sheriff or a treasurer around here, it is some closed-door strategy session. It is not. George and I share a long-standing interest in ancient history, the kind of deep, layered history that most people in public life never get the chance to dig into. He likes that I run into the stranger corners of it. I like that he actually reads the books I recommend and asks the kind of questions that keep the conversation alive long after the plates are cleared.

We ran out of time that day. Rain started coming down hard while we were still outside, and I had only gotten started on the things I wanted to walk him through. So I am continuing the conversation here the same way I would if he were still sitting across from me and the rest of you were at the next table over. Nothing confidential. Nothing I would not say in front of anyone. Just the thoughts that were already in motion when we had to pack it up.

I updated him on where The Politics of Heaven stands, my next book. The manuscript is finished. The first full draft has been through enough eyes that the early feedback keeps coming back in the same surprising way. More than one reader, including people who know the publishing world, has said the same thing: this book reminds them of The Immortality Key. That 2020 book from St. Martin’s Press by Brian Muraresku, the one Graham Hancock helped put on the map. I told George that I had already decided to go back through The Immortality Key carefully, not because I think I borrowed from it, but because the comparison keeps arriving uninvited and I want to be precise about where the overlap ends and where my own line of inquiry begins. Publication is a relationship, like any other. You do not jump straight into sharing an apartment. You get dinner. You talk. You figure out whether the trust is real. That process takes time, and patience is part of the work.

What pushed me back into The Immortality Key was the same impulse that had me reading Sharon and Derek Gilbert’s Veneration in the early hours before that lunch. Timothy Alberino had been discussing related material on Joe Rogan, and the conversation turned to the older Near Eastern material that most people never hear about. The Gilberts work from a biblical frame, and they do it with real attention to the primary texts. I respect that. Their book digs into the cult of the Rephaim, those dead aristocratic warrior kings whose spirits the living kings of the Late Bronze Age still summoned by name. The Ugaritic tablet known as KTU 1.161 records the liturgy. The dead are called up. Food and drink are set for them. The living king anchors his own right to rule in a line that stretches back into a mythic age of heroes. The meal is not polite remembrance. It is consultation. It is power.

That is the system the biblical writers were confronting. When the scouts came back from Canaan and said they felt like grasshoppers beside the people living there, they were describing more than physical size. They were describing a culture that still fed and consulted the spirits of the giants who had once ruled. Og of Bashan, the last of the remnant of the Rephaim, still had an iron bedstead measured in cubits that made the point for anyone who needed numbers. The physical and spiritual threats were the same. The command to wipe the system out was not simple land hunger. It was an attempt to close the door that the cult of the dead kept trying to hold open.

Mount Hermon sits at the center of that geography. In the Book of Enoch it is the place where the Watchers came down. In the older Canaanite material it is the mountain of assembly, the seat of the divine council that opposed Yahweh. When Jesus took his disciples to the region of Caesarea Philippi at the foot of that mountain and said the gates of hell would not prevail, he was standing on the front porch of the old cult and issuing a direct challenge. The Gilberts make that geography impossible to ignore once you have seen it.

I have been reading this material with one eye on the Near East and the other on the ground under my own feet. The Wheel of the Giants, Gilgal Refaim, sits up in the Golan Heights, a massive set of concentric stone circles that some call the Stonehenge of the East. It belongs to the same broad horizon of ritual architecture that appears along the Jordan and then, in different forms, moves westward. At the same time, over here in the Ohio Valley, the Hopewell people were raising enormous ceremonial centers with the same intensity of purpose. The Milford Works, the great earthworks near the confluence of the Little Miami and the East Fork, the alignments at Newark, the mounds that once stood all through what is now Butler County and Warren County and on up the Scioto. These were not random piles of dirt. They were places where the living gathered to deal with the dead and whatever else they believed could be reached through the right rituals and alignments.

I keep coming back to the Windover site just west of Titusville, a few miles from the Kennedy Space Center. Seven to eight thousand years old. Bodies preserved in peat with brain tissue still intact. Textiles more sophisticated than anything the standard story allows for at that early stage. Directional burial practices. A people who do not fit neatly into the later tribal identities we project backward. Some of the individuals were tall by the standards of the time. The site sits in a region that later becomes part of the same trade networks that moved copper out of the Lake Superior mines and into the wider world just as the Bronze Age was taking shape. The usual explanations for exotic materials found in these contexts grow more strained the longer you look at them. Bananas and turmeric proteins in elite Near Eastern burials. Advanced textiles and possible African or Mediterranean contacts at Windover. The copper that left the Upper Peninsula in quantities that still have not been fully accounted for. At some point, the assumption that the oceans were closed until Columbus made his journey starts to look like a real leap of faith.

The Loveland Frogmen sightings sit right in the middle of this local landscape. 1955, then 1972, later reports still in the same general corridor. Small, grayish, bipedal figures near the water, not far from the old Hopewell ceremonial centers. I am not claiming they are the same entities the Ugaritic kings were feeding under the palace benches. I am saying that when you map the places where people once worked hard to open contact with the dead, and then you look at the places where anomalous encounters keep showing up in the modern record, the overlap is hard to ignore. Point Pleasant and the Mothman. The poltergeist activity that still gets reported in houses built over older burial grounds. The same pattern appears in other parts of the world whenever the old ritual centers are disturbed or left alone long enough for whatever was once invited to keep answering.

I told George that the deeper I go into this material, the clearer it becomes that the biblical story is not a late invention dropped into an empty landscape. It is a record of conflict in a world already thick with competing claims about who had the right to rule and whose spirits still held authority. The non-human intelligences that show up in the older texts, the ones that later get called demons or Watchers or the shades of the Rephaim, did not disappear when the last physical giant was killed. The cult changed its methods. Psychedelics appear to have been one of the technologies that kept the door open. Muraresku’s work on the ritual use of those substances in the ancient Mediterranean and their possible survival into early Christian practice is part of the same larger picture. If you want to understand why a culture builds a certain kind of religion, you have to understand what it was taking and what it thought it was talking to while it was under the influence.

My own book takes the next step. It treats the entire span from the deep pre-biblical period to the present as a single continuous political and spiritual struggle. The copper, the earthworks, the burial practices, the later attempts to rebury or reclassify the evidence, the modern fascination with ascended masters and ancient aliens and celebrity necromancy, all of it belongs to the same long contest. The entities that once sat at the banquet tables under the palace floors in Ugarit are still trying to claim a seat at the table. The question is whether we keep setting places for them.

I am not interested in scaring people. I am interested in making the pattern visible so that the next time someone tries to sell a new version of the old system we recognize it for what it is. The Gilberts do that work from one angle. Muraresku does it from another. Alberino keeps pushing the conversation into the open. I am simply adding the North American material and the long view that comes from living in a place where the mounds are still under the subdivisions, and the river valleys still remember older traffic.

Notes:

¹ Brian C. Muraresku, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020). Foreword by Graham Hancock.

² Sharon K. Gilbert and Derek P. Gilbert, Veneration: Unveiling the Ancient Realms of Demonic Kings and Satan’s Battle Plan for Armageddon (Crane, MO: Defender, 2020).

³ KTU 1.161 (Ugaritic funerary liturgy), standard edition in Manfried Dietrich, Oswald Loretz, and Joaquín Sanmartín, The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2013). See also Baruch A. Levine and Jean-Michel de Tarragon, “Dead Kings and Rephaim: The Patrons of the Ugaritic Dynasty,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 104 (1984): 649–659.

⁴ On Gilgal Refaim / Rujm el-Hiri see Yonathan Mizrachi et al., recent satellite survey work published in PLOS ONE (2026) documenting additional circular structures in the Golan; earlier discussions in Yonathan Paz and others on Early Bronze Age ritual landscapes.

⁵ Glen H. Doran, ed., Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002). See also subsequent DNA and textile studies confirming the site’s uniqueness within the Archaic Southeast.

⁶ On Hopewell ceremonial centers, alignments, and ritual feasting, see Bradley T. Lepper, Ohio Archaeology (Wilmington, OH: Orange Frazer Press, various editions) and the UNESCO World Heritage documentation for the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. For the Milford Works specifically, nineteenth-century surveys by Squier and Davis remain foundational.

⁷ Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) 6–16 on the descent of the Watchers at Mount Hermon; standard translation by R. H. Charles or George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam.

⁸ Timothy Alberino’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience #2530 (July 2026) discusses the Rephaim, the kispum rites, and the continued occult utility of giant remains in modern contexts.

Bibliography for further reading

Alberino, Timothy. Various lectures and the special edition of The Book of Enoch with commentary (2026).

Byers, A. Martin. Sacred Games, Death, and Renewal in the Ancient Eastern Woodlands. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011.

Charles, R. H., trans. The Book of Enoch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912 (and later editions).

Doran, Glen H., ed. Windover. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.

Gilbert, Derek P., and Sharon K. Gilbert. Veneration. Crane, MO: Defender, 2020.

———. Giants, Gods & Dragons. Crane, MO: Defender, 2020.

———. The Great Inception. Crane, MO: Defender, 2017.

Hancock, Graham. America Before. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019.

Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015.

Lepper, Bradley T. Ohio Archaeology. Wilmington, OH: Orange Frazer Press.

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

Nickelsburg, George W. E., and James C. VanderKam. 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012.

Pardee, Dennis. Ritual and Cult at Ugarit. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002.

Squier, Ephraim G., and Edwin H. Davis. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1848 (reprint editions widely available).

Vallée, Jacques. Passport to Magonia. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1969 (and later editions).

Additional primary Near Eastern texts are available in The Context of Scripture, ed—William W. Hallo (Leiden: Brill), and in the standard Ugaritic editions cited above.

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 American Novelist Ayn Rand: Understanding the rise of socialism in America


I have been saying this for years: ten years ago, twenty years ago, back when I was doing radio shows and walking people through Cleon Skousen’s The Naked Communist and the larger body of work that showed how the communist movement as a philosophy had already impregnated itself into American society. Most people did not want to talk about it then. They treated the subject like an embarrassment or a relic of the Cold War that had been safely buried. I wrote books of my own, put them out there, and kept advocating for capitalism because that is the actual economic engine of the United States. When we talk about America being so great, so wonderful, and we almost seem to have an insecure need to remind ourselves of it all the time, it is because we have been under sustained assault by forces that prefer a corporate form of socialism, and that assault has been aggressive for a very long time. It is a real problem, and the evidence is now sitting in plain sight.

What surprises me is how many people in the Fox News orbit, and in broader conservative media, act as if the sudden visibility of socialism and communism is some brand-new development. The same people who shrugged when I raised the issue years ago now look startled. Bernie Sanders was never an outlier; he was a representative of a current that had been moving on the left for decades. When Democrats start losing ground, you see figures like that gain oxygen, and you see cities and states that have voted blue for generations produce the logical results. New England has been practicing a softer version of this for a long time. New York is not an aberration. The kids running around calling themselves socialists did not invent the ideology in a vacuum. They were taught it. Public schools have been delivering pieces of that curriculum for years, and the culture has rewarded the language of grievance and redistribution. I warned about it. A lot of us did. Now the bill is coming due, and the people who once treated the warning as overheated are suddenly discovering that the problem did not simply disappear.

I like a lot of people in the broader movement. I like Steve Bannon a great deal. The way he has been treated, the jail time, the selective enforcement, the institutional effort to sideline him, has been corrupt and ugly. He has done important work with War Room and with the larger project of forcing attention onto the administrative state and the global arrangements that treat national sovereignty as an inconvenience. He made films, including serving as an executive producer on Julie Taymor’s Titus with Anthony Hopkins, a brutal and faithful take on Shakespeare’s bloodiest play, which is my favorite. That alone tells you something about the range of the man. He has operated inside the Hollywood sandbox for stretches of his career, raised money, dealt with the people who control distribution and narrative, and still tried to produce work that cut against the grain. The question I keep asking is whether you can play in that sandbox for years and come out entirely your own person. I have my doubts. The incentives are powerful. High-level politics and high-level media are environments where you sit around tables with people who do not share the same level of conviction about the productive core of the American experiment. You learn to speak in codes, to manage coalitions, to keep certain doors open. That is the nature of the work. It does not make the man worthless. It does mean the purity of the original impulse gets tested every single day.

What I cannot square is the apparent distaste for Ayn Rand. I have heard him talk about her work in ways that treat it as naïve, or as a kind of Wall Street cartoon of capitalism that turns people into commodities. He has distinguished that vision and what he calls the enlightened capitalism of the Judeo-Christian West. Fair enough as a philosophical difference. Rand was an atheist. She had a complicated personal life. She was more of a pure libertarian than a conservative in the traditional sense, and I am not a big libertarian myself. Yet the core of what she put on the page remains one of the clearest fictional diagnoses of the looter mentality that I have ever read, and it is bizarre to me that someone who understands the value of money, who has operated in finance, who drives people toward serious books, and who has spent years criticizing the Federal Reserve and the soft corruption of the system would keep her at arm’s length. Atlas Shrugged ranked as the second most frequently cited book after the Bible in a Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club survey of works that shaped American lives. That is not a small data point. The novel is a sustained argument about what happens when the people who actually create value decide they will no longer carry the people who only know how to take it.

Rand fled the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks confiscated her father’s pharmacy. She watched a functioning commercial order get smashed in the name of the collective, and she never got over it. That hatred of the communist method runs through everything she wrote. The Fountainhead came first, in 1943, and it is my favorite of her novels. Howard Roark is the architect who will not let his designs be diluted by committees and second-rate talents who want to ride his talent without earning it. There is a scene where he is invited to join an advisory board for a kind of world’s fair project, and he refuses. He will not lend his name and his mind so that lesser people can loot the prestige. Some readers find that extreme. In ordinary politics it is often impractical. George Lang and I have talked about this more than once. In a majority party you have to work with people whose instincts are not identical to yours if you want votes to move in a productive direction. Absolute purity can become a form of vanity. At the same time, Rand is right that there is a difference between tactical compromise with imperfect allies and the slow acceptance of actively evil principles. You cannot split the difference with people whose operating premise is that your productivity exists to be harvested. Roark’s refusal is a dramatic statement of that boundary. I see versions of it in the best of Trump’s refusal to play the expected game. I see versions of it in anyone who has built something real and then watched the administrative class try to regulate, tax, or shame it into submission.

Atlas Shrugged is the larger canvas. John Galt and the producers withdraw. They stop supplying the energy, the invention, the organizational talent that keeps the lights on. The looters are left with the machinery and no one who knows how to run it. The book is long, sometimes didactic, and unapologetic about the creator’s moral superiority over the expropriator. It is not a happy story. It is a warning written by someone who had witnessed the real thing in Russia and recognized the same intellectual currents moving through American universities and policy circles in the middle of the twentieth century. When the Tea Party erupted in 2009 and 2010, the novel found a new audience. “Who is John Galt?” showed up on signs. Sales spiked. People who had never read a word of Objectivist philosophy suddenly recognized the emotional truth of the strike. Hollywood had no interest in touching the material with any seriousness. The independent film trilogy that eventually appeared was made outside the studio system, with rotating casts, limited budgets, and the predictable critical hostility. Unions and the usual cultural gatekeepers treated the project as radioactive. Clint Eastwood and others circled The Fountainhead for years without ever getting a serious production off the ground. The resistance was not mysterious. The books argue that the people who make things have a moral right to the value they create, and that the people who only know how to consume or commandeer that value are not victims but predators. That message does not sit well with an industry and an academic class that has spent decades teaching the opposite.

I do not swallow every piece of Rand’s personal philosophy. She was extreme. The childhood wound of watching her father’s standing and property taken never fully healed, and it shows in the absolute tone of the later work. I am a Christian. I believe in family obligations that go beyond the pure calculation of self-interest. I do not think every social coordination is looting. But the central distinction she draws between producers and looters is still the cleanest language I have found for what is happening in large parts of American institutional life. Pirates board a ship, kill or maroon the people who built and sailed it, and then congratulate themselves on the redistribution of the cargo. Corporate raiders in the political sense do a slower version of the same thing. They capture the regulatory apparatus, the tax code, the university, the HR department, the foundation, and they extract. They call it equity, sustainability, or the common good. The result is the same: the people who know how to build eventually decide the game is no longer worth playing on those terms.

That is why the party culture matters more than most people want to admit. I watched the new Spider-Man film, No Way Home, and there is a scene where Peter Parker walks into an apartment full of people in their twenties. Beers are being handed around without ceremony. There is no real threshold, no sense that anyone is required to bring anything other than their presence and willingness to dissolve into the group. It is presented as normal, even warm. I have never liked that atmosphere. I married young and stepped out of it early. I do not romanticize the college or post-college party as some necessary rite of passage. Rand saw the same pattern in the Soviet and post-Soviet cultural residue and in the Western imitation of it: the deliberate lowering of standards, the free-love rhetoric that treats self-possession as bourgeois repression, the pressure to surrender individual judgment to the warmth of the crowd. The 1960s did not invent the impulse, but they industrialized it in the West. Once you train a generation to find identity in collective release rather than in the disciplined creation of value, you have prepared the ground for the political language of socialism. The kid who learns that adulthood begins by getting drunk and losing himself in a game or at a party is not being prepared to be a producer. He is being prepared for management.

I am not Howard Roark. I am not prepared to dynamite the building rather than see it compromised. Politics requires more patience and more willingness to persuade than pure fiction allows. But I have learned to recognize the looter pattern early, and when I see it taking over an enterprise I tend to check out. Not with terrorism, not by vanishing into a Colorado valley, but by refusing to keep pouring effort into a structure that has already decided my contribution is collective property. My own book Tail of the Dragon was, among other things, an effort to work through the same themes of self-initiation and refusal to be pulled under by people who only know how to take. Readers who have lived the problem recognized it.

If I were twenty-five again, or just out of college, or interning for some member of Congress on the Hill with more time than obligations, I know exactly how I would spend it. I would get a Library of Congress reader card, which is free and available across the hall from the main reading room, and I would go into that magnificent space every day, with its gold ceiling and its quiet gravity. I would take Atlas Shrugged or, better, start with The Fountainhead, and I would read for an hour or two. The tunnels that run under the street connect the Capitol complex, the Court, and the Library, so the people who work there never have to step outside into the city’s ordinary weather. It is a physical expression of the idea that the serious business of the republic is intellectual before it is anything else. Steve Bannon lives essentially next door to that world. The proximity is not accidental. The same few blocks contain the Supreme Court, the Library, and the offices where the daily compromises of legislation are hammered out. It is the most concentrated expression of American institutional ambition I know. I would use it. I would also walk over to the Supreme Court cafeteria when I needed a break. The building itself is a statement that law is supposed to be something higher than the temporary majority. Spending months in that environment with Rand’s novels would do more for a young person’s understanding of the current crisis than any number of seminars on equity.

I did my own version of that education later at night, after second-shift work, at Perkins, Denny’s, and Waffle House between midnight and four in the morning, reading until it was time to go back on the clock—hundreds of books. The habit of sitting alone with a serious text and refusing the easy company of the moment is how you build the internal resources that later let you recognize a looter when he smiles and calls himself your partner. The same impulse took my family to Put-in-Bay just a few weeks ago. Sometimes you need an island, a stretch of water, a temporary removal from the people who treat your energy as an open account. It is not Atlantis. It is just a necessary interval of clarity.

The novels are fiction. They are also more accurate in their portrayal of the moral psychology of redistribution than most of the nonfiction assigned in schools. Socialism is not a discovery. It is the oldest temptation in political life: the belief that the people who did not build the thing have a superior claim on it because there are more of them, or because they feel more strongly, or because history is said to be moving in their direction. Rand had watched that claim enforced with guns in Russia. She wrote the American version of the warning. You do not have to accept her atheism or her more extreme personal conclusions to see that the warning still applies. The engine of the world is not the committee. It is not the hashtag. It is not the person who has learned to speak the language of the oppressed while living off the productivity of others. The engine is the individual mind that looks at raw material and sees a railroad, a new alloy, a better way to generate power, a story worth telling, and then does the long, unglamorous work of making it real.

That is what is under assault. That is why the old books keep finding new readers whenever the political temperature rises. And that is why I keep returning to them even when people I otherwise respect prefer to keep their distance. The argument is not finished. The strike is not over. The only question is how many people still remember what it means to refuse to be looted.

Notes

1.  W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Ensign Publishing, 1958; multiple later editions). Skousen, a former FBI agent, distilled Marxist theory and operational history into a widely circulated Cold War text that sold nearly two million copies.

2.  On the 1991 Library of Congress / Book-of-the-Month Club survey ranking Atlas Shrugged second only to the Bible among books that most influenced respondents’ lives, see Los Angeles Times, “Bible Ranks 1 of Books That Changed Lives,” December 2, 1991; and subsequent discussions in libertarian and Objectivist literature.

3.  Steve Bannon’s critical distinction between Randian capitalism and “enlightened capitalism of the Judeo-Christian West” appears in reporting from his 2014 remarks and later analyses, including Ralph Benko, “Ayn Rand’s Ghost Does Not Haunt The Trump Administration,” Forbes, December 18, 2016, and Wikipedia’s summary of Bannon’s economic nationalism.

4.  Bannon’s role as executive producer on Titus (1999, dir. Julie Taymor) is documented in contemporary Variety coverage and later profiles, including The Paris Review, “Steve Bannon’s Obsession with Shakespeare’s Goriest Play,” November 29, 2016.

5.  Ayn Rand’s family background and the confiscation of her father’s business after the Bolshevik Revolution are standard biographical facts; see Anne C. Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2009), and Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand (New York: Doubleday, 1986).

6.  Sales surge and cultural visibility of Atlas Shrugged during the Tea Party period (2009–2010) are recorded in contemporary publishing data and reporting; “Who is John Galt?” signage became a common visual marker at rallies.

7.  The independent Atlas Shrugged film trilogy (2011, 2012, 2014) was produced outside the major studio system after decades of unsuccessful Hollywood development efforts. Critical and commercial reception was poor; the producers widely noted union and cultural resistance.

8.  Rand’s major fiction: Anthem (1938), The Fountainhead (1943), Atlas Shrugged (1957). Nonfiction collections include For the New Intellectual (1961) and The Virtue of Selfishness (1964).

9.  Parallel readings of Atlas Shrugged and the original Star Wars (1977) as narratives of resistance to oppressive systems are interpretive; George Lucas has not affirmed direct influence, though readers of both frequently observe the thematic overlap with individual agency versus bureaucratic or imperial control.

10.  Personal observations on party culture, the Spider-Man: No Way Home apartment scene, and the Put-in-Bay interval are drawn from direct experience and recent family travel.

Bibliography

Branden, Barbara. The Passion of Ayn Rand. New York: Doubleday, 1986.

Burns, Jennifer. Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Heller, Anne C. Ayn Rand and the World She Made. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2009.

Hoffman, Rich. Tail of the Dragon. [Publisher details per author’s edition].

Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. [Publisher details per author’s edition].

Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven. Manuscript in final preparation, targeted 2027.

Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1991.

Rand, Ayn. Anthem. London: Cassell, 1938; various later editions.

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

Rand, Ayn. For the New Intellectual. New York: Random House, 1961.

Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943.

Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: New American Library, 1964.

Skousen, W. Cleon. The Naked Communist. Salt Lake City: Ensign Publishing, 1958; subsequent editions.

Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus. Multiple scholarly editions; film adaptation Titus (1999), dir: Julie Taymor, executive produced in part by Stephen K. Bannon.

Additional context on the Tea Party’s reception of Rand, Hollywood’s development history of the novels, and Bannon’s public economic commentary may be found in contemporary reporting from Forbes, The New York Times, Variety, and Objectivist periodicals such as The Objective Standard and New Ideal. For the Library of Congress survey, see the 1991 Book-of-the-Month Club / Center for the Book results as reported in the Los Angeles Times and subsequent secondary literature. Primary Marxist and progressive texts that form the intellectual background against which Rand wrote remain essential contrasting reading: Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto; and selected works of the American progressive and New Left traditions.

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 Loveland Frogmen: Giants in Malta and Timothy Alberino on the Joe Rogan Podcast talking about the Kandahar Giant at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

I never set out one morning to rewrite history. History is already written, mostly by people who stop digging the moment the official story feels comfortable enough to protect careers and funding streams. The deeper problem is that the accepted version of the past is often assembled by those who never ask the next layer of “why.” In my professional life, I have spent decades sitting across tables from PhD-level experts who sandbag information to protect their own positions. You learn quickly that the only way to get at truth is to keep asking the next question after the comfortable answer has been delivered. I applied that same method to biblical studies, and the formation of American culture, and the rabbit hole opened wider than I expected.

What began as an effort to explain why the Constitution is a moral document rooted in biblical principles—work I first sketched in The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business—grew into something larger. The Bible is not merely a religious text for Christians and Jews; it is a civilizational blueprint. Its commandments and narratives shape cultures that produce durable wealth, ordered liberty, and the capacity for self-government. Once you accept that premise, the next question becomes unavoidable: what was the actual historical environment in which those commandments were given, and what older currents were already flowing when Abraham stepped onto the stage? That question forced me to travel, read, and dig. Over several years, I spent roughly half a million dollars of my own money on research travel—museums, remote sites, late nights in hotels far from home, books read on airplanes and beside campfires. The resulting manuscript is The Politics of Heaven. It is not a polite academic summary. It is an attempt to connect dots that mainstream archaeology and history have preferred to leave disconnected.

In the middle of July 2026, Timothy Alberino sat with Joe Rogan for nearly three hours. I watched the episode while camped on South Bass Island in Lake Erie with family, RV parked among several campsites we had claimed for a week. My daughters were cooking breakfast. The ordinary noise of daily life—hardware-store conversations, Costco recognition, local political pressure—had been left behind on the mainland. That distance mattered. The conversation Alberino and Rogan had would have been confined to late-night AM radio or Coast to Coast a decade earlier. Now it was mainstream, carried by the largest podcast in the English-speaking world. Alberino spoke of giants, of the Book of Enoch, of non-human intelligences that have interacted with humanity across millennia. He recounted the long-circulating story of a Kandahar giant—an enormous humanoid encountered by American troops in a cave in Afghanistan, killed after it attacked, its body placed on a pallet and flown out. The remains, according to the account, were taken to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. I live a short drive from that base. I have spoken over the years with men who held clearances there. They smile, lower their voices, and say that reverse-engineering of foreign technology has always been the cover story. Whether the technology is Russian, Chinese, or something that violates our airspace from farther afield is left for the listener to decide.

That interview did not surprise me so much as it confirmed a trajectory I had already been following. Alberino’s work and mine are not identical, but they occupy overlapping ground. He has spent more than a decade knocking on the door of the giant question and the Watcher tradition. I have been following the same scent through Ohio’s earthworks, Florida’s bogs, Malta’s temples, and the copper pits of Lake Superior. The difference is emphasis. I approach these matters as a political animal. Wealth creation, nation-building, and the commandments that make ordered liberty possible are never far from my mind. When non-human intelligences appear in the historical record—whether as the “sons of God” of Genesis 6, the entities contacted by shamans, or the craft recovered at crash sites—the political question is immediate: who holds sovereignty over the human race?

Consider the copper. Between roughly 5000 and 1200 BC, miners removed hundreds of thousands of tons of nearly pure native copper from the Lake Superior region—Isle Royale, the Keweenaw Peninsula, and surrounding shores. Thousands of ancient pit mines still scar the landscape. The purity of that copper exceeds 99 percent, a grade rarely achieved by Old World smelting of sulfide ores. Yet the archaeological inventory of North America accounts for only a tiny fraction of the extracted metal. The rest vanished. Mainstream accounts insist the copper stayed local, used by indigenous peoples for tools and ornaments. The volumes do not add up. Alternative researchers have long argued that the missing copper fueled the Bronze Age in the Near East and Europe. Timeline, purity, and scale align too neatly to dismiss out of hand. I have walked those Upper Peninsula sites. I have stood on Mackinac Island and looked across the water toward the old mining grounds. The place itself argues for industrial-scale extraction long before Columbus.

If copper moved from the Great Lakes to the Mediterranean, then knowledge and people moved as well. The megalithic temples of Malta—Ġgantija, Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra, Tarxien—were raised between 3600 and 2500 BC. Local folklore has always claimed giants built them; the very name Ġgantija means “Giant’s Tower.” These structures predate the pyramids and Stonehenge. Their alignments, their scale, and the ritual deposits inside them point to a sophisticated religious system concerned with ancestors, fertility, and entities larger than ordinary men. At the same period, Hopewell culture in the Ohio Valley was constructing earthworks of staggering geometric precision. The Newark Earthworks, now a UNESCO site, are aligned to the 18.6-year lunar standstill cycle with an accuracy that matches or exceeds Stonehenge. The same lunar mathematics appear at High Bank Works near Chillicothe and at Serpent Mound. Either distant cultures independently arrived at identical astronomical solutions, or they shared information. Boats can cross oceans when sea levels are lower, as they were before the final melt of the ice sheets. Dreams, trance states, and psychedelic plants can also transmit knowledge. Shamans in Ohio and priests on Malta may have been speaking to the same non-human interlocutors.

This is a video from my son in law taken during a recent family trip. For context.

I do not romanticize the indigenous cultures of North America. The 1619 Project and its political descendants treat pre-Columbian peoples as perpetual victims whose every tragedy must be laid at the feet of European settlement. That framing is propaganda, not history. Tribes displaced other tribes. The Cherokee themselves carry traditions of the “Moon-Eyed People”—pale, nocturnal, possibly albino inhabitants they drove from the mountains before European contact. Cahokia, the great Mississippian city near modern St. Louis, practiced large-scale human sacrifice. At Mound 72, archaeologists found mass graves of young women, some still alive when buried, arranged in ritual order. These were not peaceful gardeners living in harmony with nature. They were complex societies with elites, enslaved people, and blood rituals aimed at contacting powers beyond the visible world.

The same pattern appears in the Windover Bog site near Titusville, Florida. Roughly eight thousand years ago, a community buried its dead in a peat pond. The anaerobic conditions preserved soft tissues, including brains, in nearly 100 individuals. Early reports described unusually large skeletal remains. DNA work suggested an Asian origin that does not match living Native American tribes. Then NAGPRA intervened. The remains were reburied. Further study became politically toxic. We are left with photographs, fragmentary reports, and the knowledge that a population of large-boned people lived on a coastline that is now underwater, their shoreline having retreated miles eastward as seas rose after the Younger Dryas. The same story repeats along the Gulf Coast and the drowned continental shelves of the world: previous human worlds now lie beneath forty or more feet of water.

In my own backyard, the Loveland Frogmen still appear in local memory. Three well-documented sightings in 1955 and 1972 occurred along the Little Miami River, precisely where Hopewell ritual sites once stood before neighborhoods and schools covered them. Police officers described bipedal, leathery, four-foot-tall creatures that stood upright and then fled toward the water. I have walked those banks. I do not claim the Frogmen are biological animals in the ordinary sense. I suggest they are the same class of non-human intelligence that shamans once summoned at the earthworks—entities that move through dimensions where time does not behave as we experience it. A call issued two thousand years ago can be answered in 1972. The beings arrive, see streetlights and police cars, panic, and retreat to the familiar river corridor. Crop circles, mound alignments, and stone circles may function as temporal markers—breadcrumbs left so travelers from outside linear time can locate themselves.

Graham Hancock’s Supernatural opened this door for many readers by documenting the global use of psychedelics in the birth of religion. The next step is obvious. If the visions are consistent across continents and millennia—serpents, flying craft, shape-shifting beings, instructions for building, planting, and navigating—then the source is not merely the human subconscious. It is an external intelligence that has been seeding, guiding, and sometimes exploiting humanity for thousands of years. Eric von Däniken saw the same pattern and attributed it to ancient astronauts. I think the reality is closer and older. These entities have never left. They operate in the background of history the way certain political factions operate in the background of governments—rarely seen, always present, shaping outcomes.

Wright-Patterson has studied recovered materials and biological remains for decades. The Kandahar giant, if the accounts are true, is only one more specimen on the shelf. Trump-era disclosures and subsequent War Department releases have edged the conversation into daylight. We are being told, carefully and incompletely, that non-human intelligence has violated our airspace and our sovereignty for a very long time. Immigration debates that ignore this dimension are incomplete. Sovereignty that stops at the water’s edge or the edge of the atmosphere is not sovereignty at all.

The Politics of Heaven gathers these threads. It argues that the biblical tradition represents a successful civilizational path precisely because it names the competing powers and places humanity under a single transcendent authority rather than under the shifting demands of local spirits and giants. Pagan and occult systems—whether Hopewell shamanism, Maltese temple cults, or the Crowleyite rituals that still echo in certain California circles—produce different outcomes. They open doors. What walks through those doors is rarely benevolent. The copper trade that may have ignited the Bronze Age, the lunar mathematics shared across an ocean, the giant bones reported in mounds from Ohio to Florida to the Near East, the frog-men that still surface along rivers once lined with ritual earthworks—all of it points to a single, continuous story. Non-human intelligence has been a political actor longer than any human empire.

I finished the manuscript after that week on the island. The noise of ordinary life had been far enough away that the pattern could finally lock into place. Alberino’s conversation with Rogan was not the beginning of the revelation; it was a public confirmation that the conversation itself had moved from the fringe to the center. The next five or ten years will force a reckoning with these older layers of history. Archaeologists must keep digging. The rest of us must be willing to read what they find without the ideological filters that have already buried too much evidence. The politics of heaven are not abstract theology. They are the oldest and most consequential politics of all.

Notes

1.  The Joe Rogan Experience episode featuring Timothy Alberino aired in mid-July 2026 and discussed the Kandahar giant narrative at length in its opening segment. The story has circulated in military and conspiracy circles since the mid-2000s; the Department of Defense has not released any official confirmation or physical evidence.

2.  On the scale of ancient copper extraction in the Lake Superior basin, see Susan R. Martin, Wonderful Power: The Story of Ancient Copper Working in the Lake Superior Basin (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999). Estimates of total copper removed range from hundreds of thousands to over a million tons; mainstream archaeology maintains local use, while alternative researchers point to the absence of corresponding artifacts as evidence of export.

3.  For the lunar alignments of the Newark Earthworks, see Ray Hively and Robert Horn, “Geometry and Astronomy in Prehistoric Ohio,” Archaeoastronomy 4 (1982), and subsequent work by the same authors. The Octagon Earthworks track the 18.6-year major lunar standstill with high precision.

4.  Maltese temple chronology and folklore: David H. Trump, Malta: Prehistory and Temples (Malta: Midsea Books, 2002); UNESCO documentation on the Megalithic Temples of Malta. The name Ġgantija derives directly from the Maltese word for giant.

5.  Windover site: Glen H. Doran, ed., Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002). DNA and morphological studies indicated that the population was not closely related to later Native American groups; NAGPRA repatriation limited further analysis.

6.  Cahokia Mound 72 sacrifices: Timothy R. Pauketat, Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi (New York: Viking, 2009); Melvin L. Fowler et al., The Mound 72 Area: Dedicated and Sacred Space in Early Cahokia (Illinois State Museum, 1999).

7.  The Ohio History Connection holds the Wray Figurine (Hopewell Shaman of Newark). It depicts a figure in bear regalia holding a severed human head and is widely interpreted as a transforming shaman.

8.  Cherokee traditions of the Moon-Eyed People appear in James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1900) and later ethnographic collections.

9.  Loveland Frogman primary accounts: police reports filed by Officers Ray Shockey and Mark Matthews, March 1972; earlier 1955 sighting reported in local newspapers and summarized in various cryptozoological compilations.

10.  Graham Hancock, Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind (New York: Disinformation, 2006) remains the most accessible survey of the global psychedelic-shamanic complex.

Select Bibliography

Alberino, Timothy. Birthright: The Coming Posthuman Apocalypse and the Usurpation of Adam’s Dominion on Planet Earth. Independently published, 2020.

Doran, Glen H., ed. Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.

Hancock, Graham. Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind. New York: Disinformation, 2006.

Hively, Ray, and Robert Horn. “Geometry and Astronomy in Prehistoric Ohio.” Archaeoastronomy 4 (1982): S1–S20.

Martin, Susan R. Wonderful Power: The Story of Ancient Copper Working in the Lake Superior Basin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999.

Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1900.

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

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.