I told you so. That phrase has been rolling around in my mind a lot lately, especially as I watch the country grapple with forces that were plain as day more than a decade ago if you bothered to look. I’ve spent a lifetime studying human nature, history, and the patterns that repeat across civilizations, and one thing I’ve learned is that people rarely listen when the warnings don’t fit the comfortable narrative of the moment. They prefer the glossy corporate packaging, the safe conventional wisdom, the voices that promise everything can go back in the bottle, and we can return to the George W. Bush days of polite Republicanism. I saw it clearly back in 2012, and I’ve been proven right in ways that still make me shake my head and chuckle, even as the consequences play out in Ohio and across the nation.
I remember those days on Clear Channel radio vividly. I was a frequent guest, then hosting segments on weekday and weekend shows, reaching millions. The topics were hot: the cost of labor in public schools, the socialist bent of public-sector unions, and how collective bargaining funded with taxpayer money created an unsustainable beast. I laid it out plainly—labor unions in America, particularly public ones, carried the DNA of communist organizing imported from Europe. They weren’t just about fair wages; they were about wielding power over government, education, and culture, funded by confiscated property taxes. The pushback was immediate. Executives pulled me aside. Corporate types whispered that communism was a bad word, that I was going too far, that I was alienating the audience. They wanted sports talk, grilling tips, lighter fare. The orthodoxy believed the Tea Party energy could be bottled up and the old establishment restored. I warned them it wouldn’t work. Human nature doesn’t let genies stay bottled once the cork is out.
Around that time, John Kasich pushed Senate Bill 5 in Ohio, a serious attempt to curb public employee collective bargaining. It passed, but the unions mobilized, and it was repealed by referendum. I had been vocal in support of reforms, and when it blew up, the knives came out. People who had listened to me suddenly distanced themselves. I was labeled extreme. Invitations dried up. Some higher-ups at Clear Channel and in political circles thought the radical voices like mine needed sidelining so the respectable Republicans could take back control. Fast forward, and Kasich himself has shown more progressive stripes over time. Mike DeWine, another Republican governor, appointed Amy Acton as Health Director despite her abortion advocacy and later watched her become the lockdown queen during COVID. The pattern repeats: reach across the aisle, accommodate the left, and wonder why the ground keeps shifting. I’ve been saying for years that many of these figures are Democrats in Republican clothing, and the internals bear it out.
When Trump rose, the corporate conservative media—Fox News chief among them—had a similar moment. They treated him like an interloper, elevated more conventional types like Ron DeSantis, and seemed ready to exile the populist wave. I watched it with the same sense of déjà vu I felt in 2012. The proper conservative establishment wanted the genie back in the bottle. They couldn’t stomach the raw challenge to the system. On the left, Bernie Sanders represented a parallel populist surge, but it got channeled into radical socialist figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The media tried to polish it up, but the undercurrents were Marxist through and through. I said then that MAGA was the natural evolution of questioning the rot, and ignoring or silencing voices like mine wouldn’t make the questions go away. Here we are in 2026, and the same dynamics play out in Ohio with Amy Acton running as a Democrat, backed by the usual progressive machinery, while Vivek Ramaswamy draws fire precisely because he represents successful capitalism. The anti-rich mantra is straight out of the communist playbook.
I’ve never been one to chase popularity. I study the totality of human endeavor—ancient history, biblical patterns, philosophy, the way power really operates behind the scenes. That’s why I could see where public sector unions were heading. They were created out of movements with communist roots, designed to infiltrate and control. Taxpayer-funded bargaining gives them leverage over policy, especially in education. Property taxes confiscate wealth from owners to fund what amounts to Marxist indoctrination in many classrooms. The Department of Education, created in the late 1970s, accelerated it. Kids dropped off for what amounts to free babysitting come home with attitudes shaped by collective bargaining agreements that prioritize ideology over basics. I warned about this on air relentlessly. The response? “You can’t talk like that on corporate radio. We’re here to entertain and sell ads, not tell uncomfortable truths.” So I stepped away from a lot of it, preferring independence. I turned down opportunities that would have chained me to the corporate structure because I value longevity and truth over short-term access.
One broadcast that sticks with me came around 2013-2014. I was on with Matt Clark from Ann Arbor, Michigan and others, and we read the planks from The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen right on the air. That 1958 book, expanded with 45 goals in later editions, lays out the strategy: infiltrate schools, unions, media, churches; soften curricula; promote pornography and moral breakdown; discredit the Constitution and Founding Fathers; capture one or both political parties. It was all there, drawn from congressional records and deep research into Marxist tactics. The alignment with what I was seeing was uncanny. Communists don’t need to win elections outright when they can reshape the culture that produces the voters. Get control of the schools, use them as transmission belts for socialism. Infiltrate the press. Break down the family. It’s all documented, and we’re living through the harvest.
People laughed or got uncomfortable. “You’re making enemies,” they said. “You’re upsetting the donors.” But I’ve always played the long game. I don’t let consensus or teamwork dictate my path because those are often vehicles for diluted truth. I’ve been pushed aside more than once—business, politics, media—but I don’t hand over power by needing their approval. That independence lets me look back and say, without bitterness but with a certain satisfaction, “I told you so.” When lives or societies run into the wall, I don’t jump off a bridge with them. I giggle a bit because the warnings were sincere, offered freely from years of study, meant to help. Most don’t want help; they want scapegoats and comfortable narratives. They fly the flag on the Fourth of July, cheer the Bengals, call themselves patriots, but won’t confront the cultural Marxism embedded in daily life. Soccer, for instance—I’ve called it a socialist game. Penalizing forwards for being offside, low scores, and an emphasis on the collective over individual brilliance. Contrast that with American football: strategic, explosive, rewarding excellence and preparation. Little cultural markers reveal bigger philosophies.
Now, as we celebrate another Independence Day, the ironies pile up. Fireworks light the sky while radicalized generations, trained in public schools funded by the very property taxes I warned about, push policies that erode the foundations of that freedom. Amy Acton embodies it in Ohio: lockdown authoritarian during COVID, abortion advocate before and after, now running with backing from figures like David Pepper and the election mechanics crowd. Vivek draws hate because he’s rich and successful—classic proletariat resentment dressed as justice. The naked communist strategy didn’t stay on paper; it marched through institutions while polite conservatives tried to accommodate or ignore it. Fox News personalities like Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham, and Greg Gutfeld on The Five express bewilderment at the cultural shifts, but many of those shifts were telegraphed years ago. Normies are starting to feel it in their corporate jobs, their kids’ schools, their daily lives. The awakening is late, but real.
My own journey informs all this. From manual labor as a kid to aerospace executive, through local politics in Butler County, grand jury service, and years of activism against tax increases, I’ve seen how power operates. I’ve watched media and music degrade from family-oriented themes in the ’70s and ’80s to hedonism and occult influences. It’s spiritual warfare as much as political. That’s why my work on The Politics of Heaven digs into biblical conspiracies, giants, demons, and the deeper rebellion. Twenty years from now, when more on ancient interactions, UFOs, and non-human intelligences comes to light, the same people who dismissed warnings about communism will be asking how I saw it coming. The answer is simple: I study the totality. I don’t outsource my thinking to corporate gatekeepers or consensus. I connect the dots across time—from Hopewell shamans with copper ear spools from Lake Superior, traded hundreds of miles, showing sophisticated networks, to modern trade in ideas that undermine sovereignty.
I don’t chase people down begging them to listen. I explain once, from the heart, because I want to help families, communities, and the republic. If they run headlong into the consequences anyway, that’s on them. I reserve the right to withdraw and keep building independently. The “I told you so” isn’t gloating for its own sake; it’s the natural outcome of pattern recognition meeting denial.
Looking at the current Ohio governor’s race and national trends, the communist infusion—whether labeled progressive, socialist, or woke—isn’t hidden anymore. Mark Elias lawfare, property tax-funded indoctrination, unions as political machines, media as propagandists—it’s all converging. Trump’s two terms disrupted it, but the underlying rot from decades of infiltration remains. Voters face a choice: continue the path of confiscation and control, or reclaim the individual responsibility and biblical orientation that built the West. I’ve always advocated the latter: strong families, personal discipline (that whip symbol of mine represents precision and self-mastery), limited government, and cultural pushback. Reckless sex leading to abortion, moral breakdown, fatherless homes—these aren’t unrelated to the economic and political failures. They’re symptoms of the same rebellion.
As this Fourth of July fades and we head into the election cycle, I find myself reflecting on how many times it has recurred. People think the world is falling apart around the truth-teller, but reality has a way of catching up. I warned about public unions, school indoctrination, media capture, and the Marxist undercurrents in 2012. I read the planks on air. I stepped away from corporate constraints to speak freely. Now the bill comes due, and the same voices that sidelined the warnings express shock. To them I say, without malice but with the clarity of long observation: I told you so. Listen next time, or don’t. The consequences will be the same, but at least some of us saw it coming and prepared accordingly. The fight for the republic continues, rooted in understanding the full sweep of human history, from ancient earthworks to modern ballots. That’s where real hope lies—not in putting genies back in bottles, but in confronting the totality head-on.
Footnotes
1. Observations on Clear Channel radio appearances and 2012 Ohio politics drawn from personal experience during the SB5 debate and repeal.
2. Senate Bill 5, signed by Gov. John Kasich in 2011, sought to limit public employee collective bargaining rights and was repealed via referendum.
3. W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (1958, with 45 goals added in 1961 editions), details strategies for cultural and institutional infiltration. Many goals align with observed shifts in education, media, and unions.
4. Amy Acton’s role as Ohio Health Director (2019-2020) and subsequent political positioning referenced in campaign coverage.
5. Public sector union influence on education funding via property taxes is a longstanding structural issue in Ohio and nationally, with data from state budget analyses.
6. Cultural commentary on media, music, and sports analogies stems from decades of personal observation of societal shifts.
7. The Politics of Heaven manuscript explores deeper spiritual and historical layers informing political analysis.
Bibliography for Further Reading
• Skousen, W. Cleon. The Naked Communist. Ensign Publishing, 1958/1961 editions. (Core text on communist strategies.)
• Congressional Record, January 10, 1963, Appendix pp. A34-A35 (reprinting Skousen’s 45 goals).
• Kasich administration records and Ohio Secretary of State archives on the SB5 referendum.
• Ballotpedia and Ohio Capital Journal coverage of the 2026 gubernatorial race, Amy Acton, and Vivek Ramaswamy.
• U.S. Department of Education history and funding analyses (creation 1979 onward).
• Reports on public sector union political spending (e.g., from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and state transparency databases).
• Historical works on labor movement origins, including influences from European socialist and communist organizers.
• Biblical Archaeology Review archives and related texts on ancient Ohio cultures (Hopewell trade networks) for broader civilizational context.
• Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (insights into communist systems in practice).
• Hayek, F.A. The Road to Serfdom (warnings on central planning and loss of liberty).
• Selected Federalist Papers and Founding documents for contrast to modern institutional capture.
• Ohio campaign finance records on progressive funding in recent elections.
• Personal essays and podcast transcripts from The Overman Warrior Podcast (ongoing reflections on these themes).
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.
Human history may not merely be the history of humans interacting with one another. It may also be the history of humanity interacting with forms of intelligence that are perceived through altered states, religious experiences, visions, dreams, shamanic practices, meditation, ritual, and perhaps other mechanisms not yet fully understood.
I know this all sounds pretty crazy to a lot of people. But that’s only because the truth has been buried under layers of official stories, political correctness, and institutional pressure for a very long time. I didn’t want to be that guy—the one who connects the dots between ancient Ohio earthworks, strange artifacts that don’t fit the narrative, non-human intelligence, and the spiritual forces that have been pulling strings on human politics since the beginning. As an aerospace executive who has spent decades managing complex programs, dealing with real-world engineering challenges, and advising on politics, I would much rather focus on more profitable and straightforward work. But here I am, sitting in front of the evidence, realizing I have to write this book, The Politics of Heaven, because the journey has pulled me in too deep to ignore.
A few weeks ago, my oldest daughter took a photograph of me at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, Ohio. I was sitting right in front of the Newark Holy Stones. She’s a professional photographer, and she knows how to capture more than just an image—she captures the moment when someone is wrestling with something big. In that photo, you can see it on my face. I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask for it. But as I sat there looking at those stones found by surveyor David Wyrick in the 1860s, considering everything I’ve seen in my travels, my reading, and my own experiences, I knew I had to push forward. This book isn’t just about ancient mounds in Ohio. It’s about the real power behind human history—what the Bible calls spiritual warfare, what modern disclosures call UAP or non-human intelligence, and how those forces have shaped politics, culture, and power on this planet for thousands of years.
Let me start with the Shaman of Newark, that remarkable little stone figurine found in the Newark Earthworks. It’s a small carving, often called the Wray Figurine, depicting a figure in bear regalia—a bear head as a headdress, bear paws on the hands—holding a severed human head in its lap. It was discovered in 1881 near one of the burial mounds at the Great Circle. Archaeologists usually describe it as a shaman in the middle of a transformation ritual, tapping into animal spirits for power. That interpretation makes sense on one level, but it also feels like it’s missing something deeper. Why a severed head? What kind of ceremony or understanding of life, death, and power does that represent? In a culture that built some of the most sophisticated geometric earthworks in the ancient world—the Octagon, the Great Circle, the precise lunar alignments at Newark—this wasn’t primitive superstition. These people had knowledge. They had mathematics. They had a worldview that saw connections among the earth, the sky, and forces beyond the material world.
John Hancock, the architect and author who played a major role in securing the Ohio Hopewell sites’ designation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, has done excellent work examining these mounds with fresh eyes. I met him at Fort Ancient after grabbing his book at the Newark visitors center. As a retired professor from the University of Cincinnati, he approaches the earthworks as architecture—with intentional design, astronomical alignments, and ceremonial precision. Listening to him speak and reading his travel guide Ancient Ohio, you start to see these sites not as random piles of dirt but as massive, planned expressions of a sophisticated culture. The Newark Earthworks alone cover an enormous area with geometric perfection that still impresses today. These weren’t built by people who didn’t understand the world. They were building something that reflected their understanding of cosmic order.
But here’s where it gets uncomfortable for the official narrative. Right alongside these sites, we have artifacts such as the Newark Holy Stones—the Decalogue Stone, with what appears to be a condensed version of the Ten Commandments in ancient Hebrew, the Keystone, and others found by David Wyrick in the 1860s. The mainstream view is that they are hoaxes, planted to push a pro-Christian or anti-indigenous narrative during the Civil War era. David Wyrick’s life was ruined over it; he died in 1864 from an opium overdose after being accused of fraud. The museum now frames them squarely in the context of 19th-century politics, abolitionism, and efforts to undermine Native claims to the land.
I get why that story is convenient. But it’s also too neat. Why go to all that trouble to carve intricate Hebrew inscriptions if it was just a hoax? And why do similar mysterious tablets keep showing up in Adena and Hopewell contexts—the Cincinnati Tablet, the Wilmington Tablet? The Wilmington Tablet, found in Ohio, has markings that some see as reminiscent of Olmec designs from far away in Mexico. The Cincinnati Tablet was pulled from display at the Cincinnati Museum Center, in part due to NAGPRA sensitivities. These aren’t isolated oddities. They point to long-distance travel and cultural exchange that the standard timeline struggles to explain.
We already know the Hopewell were master traders. They brought copper from the Lake Superior mines hundreds of miles away—mines that some evidence suggests were worked as far back as 5,000 BC or earlier. They hauled obsidian from Wyoming, mica from the Appalachians. If they could do that, why is it so unthinkable that ideas, artifacts, or even people moved along the Mississippi River system and the Gulf to places like the Olmec heartland? The dismissal feels less like science and more like an effort to protect a preferred story. And that story gets even more protected when NAGPRA kicks in, repatriating remains and limiting study of artifacts that might challenge the narrative of continuous indigenous occupation by specific modern tribes.
The Shawnee, for example, have a connection to this region, but they weren’t here continuously for thousands of years. They returned to the Miami Valley in the 1700s after being displaced. Yet modern politics treats them and other tribes as the unquestioned inheritors of everything Adena and Hopewell, giving them influence over what gets displayed or studied. This isn’t respect for evidence; it’s politics overriding archaeology. We’ve talked about this before—the Windover bog people in Florida, from 8,000 years ago, whose DNA doesn’t neatly match that of later tribes. Early populations were more diverse. The idea of unbroken cultural continuity from the mounds to today’s tribes is convenient for land claims and repatriation, but the physical record tells a more complicated story.
This brings me to the bigger question at the heart of The Politics of Heaven: What are the politics of Satan? Is he a Democrat? A Republican? Or something else entirely—something that operates above and behind human parties?
I see history through the lens of spiritual warfare, as described in Ephesians 6:12—“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The ancient world was full of accounts of gods, giants, watchers, and interactions with non-human beings. The Book of Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, biblical references to Nephilim—these aren’t fairy tales. They describe real influences on human civilization. The mounds, the alignments, the shamanic figures—they may reflect attempts to tap into or negotiate with those forces.
Modern UAP disclosures add another layer. The government has admitted to encounters with craft and beings that defy our physics. Reports of multiple species interacting with humanity. If that’s true—and the evidence is mounting—then humanity has never had full sovereignty. There has always been an outside influence shaping events. Satan, in the biblical sense, isn’t some cartoon devil with a pitchfork. He’s a sophisticated adversary with a political agenda: rebellion against the Creator, domination of humanity, and the perversion of God’s order. His “politics” aren’t partisan in the way we think of left versus right. They are anti-human, anti-God, and aimed at keeping us enslaved to deception, whether through pagan practices in ancient mounds, occult influences in modern culture, or centralized power structures that erode individual liberty and truth-seeking.
Look at how the narrative around these sites is managed. Inconvenient artifacts are dismissed as fakes or removed from view. Oral tradition is elevated over physical evidence under updated NAGPRA rules. The shaman figure holding a severed head gets sanitized into “spiritual transformation,” while any suggestion of deeper, darker knowledge or outside influence is shut down. Meanwhile, we celebrate the geometric precision of the earthworks—the lunar alignments at Newark are astonishing—but stop short of asking what kind of knowledge enabled that, or what spiritual purpose it served.
I’ve spent my life in aerospace, watching humanity push into space, building rockets, solving technical problems. I’ve seen model rocketry with my grandson, teaching resilience when launches fail in bad weather. That hands-on experience makes me appreciate what the ancient builders achieved. But it also makes me skeptical of stories that downplay their sophistication or attribute everything to mundane explanations while ignoring the anomalies.
My travels have taken me to many of these sites, from Newark to Fort Ancient, from the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant to arguments with staff at the British Museum over the crystal skull (another “fake” that raises the same questions—why the effort if it’s not real?). I love museums and their gift shops. I’ve found replicas of the Wilmington Tablet there, and it always strikes me how obscure these things are to the average visitor. Yet they hold clues.
The Politics of Satan plays out in the suppression of truth. It plays out when we prioritize feelings and political reconciliation over evidence. It plays out when we assume ancient people were isolated primitives rather than connected participants in a larger cosmic drama. And it plays out today in the way power structures—whether in government, academia, or media—control what we’re allowed to question.
This book is my effort to follow the evidence wherever it leads, even when it takes me places I didn’t want to go. It’s personal. It includes family stories, like that rocket launch with my grandson on a windy day, or RV trips, or political activism in Butler County. Because truth-seeking isn’t abstract, it happens in real life, with real people, while you’re trying to live, work, and raise resilient kids in a world under unseen influences.
I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I do know this: the official narrative has too many holes. The mounds, the tablets, the shaman, the trade networks, the astronomical knowledge—they point to something more. Non-human intelligence has been here a long time. The question is whether we recognize the spiritual dimension and reclaim our sovereignty under God, or continue letting the politics of rebellion shape our future.
That’s the journey The Politics of Heaven invites you on. It’s not comfortable. But ignoring it won’t make it go away. The truth is coming fast, whether we’re ready or not.
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.
Human history may not merely be the history of humans interacting with one another. It may also be the history of humanity interacting with forms of intelligence that are perceived through altered states, religious experiences, visions, dreams, shamanic practices, meditation, ritual, and perhaps other mechanisms not yet fully understood.
A few weeks after that picture, I found myself at the Fort Ancient site, listening to a lecture by John Hancock, who had just written a couple of really good books on the Hopewell earth mounds of Ohio. After leaving the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, I went with my family down to the Newark earthworks and, in the gift shop at the visitor’s center, discovered the newly released book by John Hancock, Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, which featured UNESCO’s classification designating 8 sites in Ohio as World Heritage Sites. Hancock was the driving force behind that designation, and, I thought, his book, based on the presentation to the UNESCO committee, was really well done. So my same daughter who took that picture went with me to Fort Ancient, at the arrangement of Sarah Winningham, the assistant site superintendent at Fort Ancient, to listen to John talk about writing his books, the UNESCO submission, and his very good travel guide, Ancient Ohio. And that is the case with a lot of this book, I go to a lot of museums, everything from the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant West Virginia, famous for its paranormal reporting, to the British Museum where I famously had a nice argument with the staff there over the crystal skull, which falls into the same kind of category as the Newark Holystones. Are they fake? And if so, why would anybody go to all the trouble? After all, the discovery of the Newark Holystones more or less destroyed the life of David Wyrick, who was a good surveyor in 1860, and it was assumed that he was a major abolitionist aligned with the Lincoln administration in the heat of the Civil War. So it was assumed that he made the stones and planted them in the famous mounds to erode any thoughts that the Indians of his time, being pushed off the land by westward expansion, wanted to decouple their claims to the ancient earthworks. Or so they say, and they are very explicit about that at the museum.
I was surprised to notice, just to the south of the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, a nice David Wyrick drawing of the Newark Great Circle proudly displayed on the wall of the visitors center. Wyrick died miserably in 1864 of laudanum, a commonly used painkiller that was opium based. I think it is a reach to attempt to paint David Wyrick politically, which was clearly the case at the museum’s, a very aggressive attempt to attach an indigenous people narrative to the mounds, and Wyrick was trying to spread the word of God and the immorality of slavery, which was the thrust of the Holy Stone exhibit at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to see the academic community in the vacuum of more knowledge, driving a political narrative where it likely didn’t belong. And as I said, I noticed the fantastic book by John Hancock, newly released and displayed everywhere at Newark, The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, which I grabbed quickly and read almost before leaving the mound’s site at Newark. A few weeks later, at Fort Ancient, I attended a lecture by the author John Hancock, hosted by Assistant Site Superintendent Sarah Winningham. By the time of that event at the Fort Ancient museum, I was very intrigued by some of the claims in John’s book about the famous mounds.
The Shaman of Newwark
First of all, if not for John, there is no way the Ohio mounds would have been designated UNESCO World Heritage sites, which is a very good thing because they are every bit as important as other World Heritage Sites, such as the Great Pyramids and Machu Picchu. But I wanted to talk to him about his book because he has some very interesting and unique ideas. First of all, he approached the mounds as an architect, as a retired professor from the University of Cincinnati who thought like a teacher and used to take students to Europe to see great architecture before realizing that some of the best architecture in the world was shown in the mounds of Ohio, which would eventually become in his book the eight UNISCO earthwork sites, Newark, Hopeton, High Banks, Fort Ancient, Seip, The Great Circle, and Mound City.
To say I was a little excited is an understatement as I went through their shelves at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum. As this book unfolds, it will become obvious that I love museums, big ones and little ones, and I love their gift shops. I have found many wonderful treasures in museum gift shops. The Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum is famous for its replica relics of the Holy Stones. But going through their shelves, they also had replicas of the actual Wilmington Tablets. I was very happy to see three of them, and I asked the cashier how I could buy one. They thought they were coasters. Obviously, the tablet replicas were too obscure for anybody to know what they were, including those working at the museum. I have some very strong thoughts about the various Adena tablets found in the mounds of what has been designated as Adena culture. There is a Cincinnati Tablet that has at times been displayed at the Cincinnati Museum Center. And of course, the Wilmington Tablet was found in Wilmington, Ohio. And I would argue that it shows interaction with the Olmecs from central Mexico, up the Mississippi River, and across the Gulf. A lot of archaeologists argue against it, but I thought that John Hancock’s new books made legitimate arguments for that kind of travel for a book published by Smithsonian Books. And that is the discussion that copper from Lake Superior did, in fact, find its way into the Hopewell sites in Ohio, which indicates very long-distance travel, Mica trade from the Appalachians, and obsidian from the Yellowstone area. I told John that I thought it took a lot of guts for him to talk about the copper mines in Lake Superior because of the conspiracy theories that have spawned on the topic. But here we were in 2026, talking to a serious person about the mounds, and we’re having a serious discussion about the Great Lakes copper trade, which has quite a story. Something called the Newberry Tablet, occasionally on display in St. Ignace, Michigan, points to trade with Mediterranean cultures, which many claim was so voluminous that it flooded the global economy with copper, starting the Bronze Age. The dates on the mines are around 8000 years old, or about 5000 BC, roughly the same as those of the Windover people of Central Florida, a topic we’ll discuss in much more detail later.
This book, The Politics of Heaven, is more than just a travel log of my extensive travels and my political and professional work in aerospace as an executive. As I asked the question at Fort Ancient, I came to ask John Hancock, the assistant superintendent of the Fort Ancient site, Sarah Winningham that I first started to think about many years ago. I really didn’t want to be that guy. At my age, I had been looking forward to a kind of retirement where I could attend events like the one where John Hancock would write great books and put a new spin on an old archaeological idea. John, being a professor of architecture, did have a fresh perspective that I always enjoyed in my youth as the Vice President of the Dan Beard Council.
As a young man, I was very happily involved in a High Adventure Explorer Post, where I became Vice President of the Dan Beard Council after a special election at the GE Evendale plant, where I gave a speech that led to my election. Later in this book, I tell the tragic story of a death that took place later in the night of that same election day, when I was scheduled to fight three guys from my school at that same time, and one of them turned up dead, and the rest of them were telling stories about me to the police that were not favorable. The events of that night led to my separation from the Dan Beard Council, and at that time, I enjoyed my exposure to those kinds of people, including academics like John Hancock and museum personalities like Sarah Winningham from the Fort Ancient complex. I have been hoping since that time that at some point I could get back into that kind of life, the High Adventure Explorer Post life I enjoyed so much in my youth. This book tells that story as I continued to travel a lot and utilize the skills I started in those explorer post experiences. Even though many of the people who volunteered for and supported Explorer Post activities were politically liberal, I hoped that someday I might be able to return to those innocent days.
But as much as I wanted to, my life had taken me into the very political world of consulting, and with high-level personalities, which made it impossible for me to sit in that Fort Ancient lecture and put my brain away. Because, like John Hancock, who approached the really good archaeology of Bradley Lepper, and others with an architectural background, I have years of experience as an aerospace executive dealing with very smart, PhD-level engineers and professionals who can be very manipulative and deceitful in root cause analysis. My wife and I had plans, and what will become clear in this book is that I have a very high regard for the archaeological publication Biblical Archaeology Review, and I really want to spend these years of my life taking their cruises on luxury liners and having archaeological discussions. And that my happiest place on earth at the moment is at the Museum of the Bible, for which my wife and I are members. I love places very passionately where scholarship and discovery come together, so believe me, I didn’t want to be that guy. I wanted to be the guy who read the books of people like John Hancock, Bradley Lepper, and Francis Pryror, and enjoyed the buffets on the cruise ships, and read lots of books. Because more than anything, my number one hobby, which started for me during those Explore Post years, was reading books. Lots and lots of books, some of my favorite which is reflected in this literary effort, are James Frazer’s The Golden Bough and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and for me, it is the joy of adventure in going down rabbit holes and bringing Alice back from its hidden depths that is the most fun. And professionally, as I have thought for a long time because of my love of The Golden Bough, I think archaeology does not go far enough as a spinoff of the creation of anthropology, scientifically, and all the hard lessons I have learned through years of political work gave me extensive experience. I really wanted to attend John Hancock’s lecture for the pure enjoyment of it, because I love people like him and Sarah Winningham. Why, because I learned to really love academics in a non-political way during my very formative years of High Adventure Explorer Post membership. I had made up my mind to get all over the world, which is what this book is about. I didn’t learn what I did by just sitting at home, but by going to many places and applying the same skills that worked very well for me professionally, to some really obscure ideas. So I came to the lecture with a question I had thought of while reading John Hancock’s marvelous books.
I thought John’s lecture on the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks was fantastic, very well researched, and extremely well put together. No wonder UNESCO moved to designate the 8 earthworks sites as World Heritage Sites officially. And even if the UNESCO people are extremely liberal, politically, and were very much against the United States during the first Trump presidential term, which I know a lot about. I finish this book with a visit to the White House. I tend to really enjoy all efforts that seek to preserve the past, regardless of politics. In the pages to come, I am glowingly supportive of organizations like English Heritage and the fantastic efforts of The Ohio History Connection, whose headquarters is at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, where I first visited on an Explorer Post field trip many years ago. The main purpose of Explorer Post membership is to expose young people to high-adventure career opportunities. Which was the subject of my speech at GE to the other explorer groups of Cincinnati and big personalities such as Lee Iacocca and Jack Welch, and how they elected me, even as a very young person, to Vice President of the Dan Beard Council. So, since I had my question ready for John’s lecture, I decided to enjoy the event and the educational publications from The Ohio History Connection. I remember that day with the Explorer Post visiting the museum that would become The Ohio History Connection. I got the feeling that everyone was encouraging me to grow up and become the troublemaker who would challenge their assumptions. After all, why have a High Adventure Explorer Post in any way but to raise young people to go out into the world to challenge everything, if not for gaining wealth and notoriety, but for the spirit of adventure itself.
This is the kind of thing I’d rather be doing in life. My idea of a good time.
I was always the rebel of the group, and even if I was naturally very talented, my spirit of adventure got me and everyone who followed me into a lot of trouble. And sometimes people did lose their lives, which is why my time as Vice President of the Dan Beard Council was short-lived. But I got that office at a very young age because a lot of people were hoping I would be the guy who would shake things up in ways they instinctively knew needed to happen. And as I held up my hand at the end of John’s lecture, I asked my question about the relic on display at the Ohio History Center: the Shaman of Newark. In his big book, the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, John very cleverly found a way to show the relic as a digital replica illustrated by Talon Silverhorn of the Eastern Shawnee. But in his travel guide, Ancient Ohio, he says that he could talk about the famous Hopewell relic but not show it so as not to disrespect Indian tribes, which set up another question I had about NAGPRA in general, which I directed at Sarah, who was in the back of the room, regarding compliance with that 1990 Democrat proposal to return to all the Indian tribes of North America the relics of their ancestors. They are running a nice museum at Fort Ancient, and John had been very clever in getting Indian tribes to contribute artwork and replicas for his books in very respectful ways, which is unusual for these kinds of projects. Before going to the Fort Ancient lecture, my wife and I had just returned from the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and I had a great time there. A lot of the kind of people I like these days have very little trust in the Smithsonian and the much-talked-about cover-up of the ancient giants who were reported to have been found in these very Ohio Mounds. John’s book does not address those, but he and I did talk about the controversies. I told him I thought it was remarkable that he even mentioned the copper mines of Lake Superior in his book, because, as the story goes, those copper mines dating to 5000 BC were so prolific that they caused a global economic boom and were shipped to Europe by the Minoans of Crete. That proof of that trading exchange is on what they call the Newberry tablet, which can be found sometimes in St. Ignace, in Upper Michigan. As I said to John, this conspiracy stuff is a tough line to walk. And as I said it, I looked back at the audience, and almost everyone had a grin on their face because I was saying the stuff that is supposed to be unsaid, but they all wanted to say it.
The Relic of the Shaman of Newark, I think, is a remarkable admission, which I will expand on during the grand adventure for which this book is, a journey around the world and across vast spans of time with conclusive evidence at the level of speculation awaiting the hard evidence of good archaeology. The relic itself depicts a shaman in the process of turning into a bear and is holding in his lap the severed head of a long-haired human. I knew about the relic because it was on display at the Columbus Museum, as was the Wilmington Tablet. So, as the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum operators have done a great job getting into the business of making relics of controversial artifacts, like the Newark Holystones, but seeing that copy of the Wilmington Tablet reminded me of the Shaman of Newark, as that topic had been on my mind regarding the Newark Earthworks. And this was the cause of my anxiety, which my daughter captured so well as I was distraught over what it all led to.
I asked the question: why were the Indian tribes reclaiming all the artifacts that archaeologists had found, and even destroying them by burying them again? And as John explained, he had just spent a lot of time speaking with various Indian tribes to coordinate with them in writing his great book on how to show who the Hopewell people were by replicating them, without the magic of their actual image tainting them with haunted reverence. So here is the problem. Two things can’t both be true, here we had a political movement pushed by NAGPRA, which said that we had to give back all the evidence of our discovery because the relics of the Indigenous people were magical and had power that had to be returned to the ground, but at the same time we were supposed to study these Indigenous people with evidence to understand them. So I turned around from my seat and addressed the back of the room. I asked, “Was the NAGPRA pressure political or coming from the tribes themselves?” Because I will talk about this extensively in this book, the 8,000-year-old, well-preserved people of Windover, buried in bogs in Florida, are genetically dated as older than any known North American Indian Tribe and were actually around during the period of the copper mines of Lake Superior. So how can we study this history and properly respect it if NAGPRA said we had to empty all the museums of Indian relics and give them back to tribes we were calling Indigenous people by Democrat legislation that was making a claim that America should have never been settled or turned into a country because it happened at the expense of these miraculous Indigenous people?
And here’s the problem: the Shaman of Newark shows clearly the extent of the belief of those people of their period, which, to my eyes, were mimicking the beliefs of the Canaanite gods that Yahweh was so enraged about. And the political statement by Yahweh to destroy all the gods of Canaan and destroy the people of that land, emphatically. The beliefs of the people of Newark and the other Hopewell sites needed to be studied much more so that evidence could drive our conclusions. Like the situation in Cahokia, just outside St Louis, here we had an Indian relic in the Shaman of Newark that had a decapitated head in his lap, showing the typical ritual sacrifice of life for the benefit of communicating with spiritual entities. And with that, under NAGPRA, which bless her heart, young Sarah Winningham was preparing the Fort Ancient museum to be fully compliant with. The evidence was right there, begging us to ask the next layer of questions with really great minds and researchers, like John Hancock and great archaeologists like Bradley Lepper, who should be applying great science to these magnificent archaeological monuments. Instead, we are getting rid of the evidence and then telling the world that everything is a conspiracy theory because there is no evidence to support it. This book is about the evidence discovered through vast and sometimes dangerous expeditions observed over my lifetime.
In these pages, there is extensive study of the impact of shamans on a culture over time and of their common role as vehicles of spirit-world interaction. I was very impressed that John Hancock put an image of the Shaman of Newark in Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. But he did not include the same image in his Ancient Ohio traveler’s guide, even though he did talk about it. The reason is tribal acceptance and a NAGPRA compliance issue, and I think it’s the key to the whole enterprise. My question is, what made Yahweh listen to Satan to punish Job, and why wouldn’t Satan work through many shamans over time and space to whisper bad things for their own political needs to gullible recipients, whether that be Job or God himself as head of the Divine Council? Just because the Bible recorded an occurrence, why wouldn’t there be many more undocumented occurrences just as bad or worse than what happened to Job? The presence of shaman activity among the Hopewell people, complete with a severed head in its lap, does not point to peaceful indigenous people being used by a modern 1619 Project into claiming them as vehicles of destruction, invalidating the creation of the United States in the first place. Yes, I think David Wyrick may have planted the stones for all the reasons he was accused of. But it destroyed him socially, and it looks like the work of the opium present in his painkillers, giving his mind access to similar satans as those that tempted God in the Book of Job. I think there is another layer to the story, and it centers on how we perceive consciousness.
In the chapters ahead, I explore the nature of remote viewing as we have come to know it and test some assumptions on the known psychics Dolores Cannon and Edgar Cayce, and even deeper into the MK Ultra Program, so well known around the Charlie Manson murders. And why wouldn’t we pay attention to that kind of psychic reporting when so many biblical characters were telling of occurrences where they directly communicated with gods and would sacrifice to them? And here in Newark, Ohio, we have an Indian relic of a Newark shaman that depicts a severed head and a shamanic transformation from human to bear, and we are supposed to, under the NAGPRA law, put that relic back in the ground and destroy its magical properties. And why do the Indians believe these relics have magical properties? How are we scientifically talking about magic in objects and saying it with a straight face, then calling people like me pseudoscientists or, at best, contemplators of conspiracy?
Let’s take what we know, that Satan was reported to manipulate God in the Book of Job, and that God reacted to it in a way that was very hard on Job who was a good man doing all the good things a human being was supposed to be doing. Why did Satan want to bring harm to such a good persont? Just because, Satan was evil? What does that mean and what’s the next layer of understanding? That’s the kind of question I explore in the chapters to come. What are the political motivations of spirit world malcontents, and how can we prepare ourselves as a human culture from their interdimensional tyranny? And if we think that is wild, then how can we say that indigenous people have ancient relics that are magical and should be destroyed and put back in the ground and studied? Yet we are supposed to take the word of the experts for it completely and “trust the science.” As we were expected to do with Covid. So here we had a problem, we are supposed to ignore all the evidence and give it back to people who had no genetic claim to the objects, in ways we still don’t understand, we don’t know who the Hopewell and Adena people were, we don’t know who mined the Lake Superior copper mines, we don’t know who the Windover people were, yet we are supposed to give all these treasures back to the newest people living on the block, without studying what they left behind. The Shaman of Newark, I think, is one of the most important parts of John Hancock’s book, as he actually managed to put an image of it in the book before the purge of NAGPRA forced it into obscurity. But how much else has been shoved away into a lack of study, and how can we claim to know anything about them?
A lot to think about
I didn’t mean to, but I had a UFO experience that I talk about in this book also. I would attribute it to big government programs and to a psychic reaction to me personally, which is something that dominating personality types seem to have been able to do over many years. But who did they speak with, or rather, who answered? I have seen it for myself. I think non-human intelligence is always working with us, around us, through us, and for its own political motivations. But what are those politics? We might understand the Ohio governor’s race between Amy Acton and Vivek Ramaswamy through the political lens of Democrats versus Republicans. And that was certainly the case between many researchers and me. Overwhelmingly, college professors tend to be Democrats, as are Hollywood actors, for very good and definable reasons. Productive capitalists might otherwise be said to be Republicans. But what is the politics of Satan besides calling him evil? Evil doesn’t tell the story nearly enough. And what would be the politics of spiritual beings, as the Indians say, the Great Spirit? Perhaps they are talking about the same God we all are. Or perhaps not, perhaps their god is just another version of Baal, Lucifer, Moloch, or Satan. Yet, here we have in the Shaman of Newark a figure involved in human sacrifice, as many of the Mississippian Mound cultures did, Cahokia included, and nobody wants to talk about it? NAGPRA says we are supposed to suspend belief and surrender our opinions to the experts who have no idea what they are talking about.
I walked out of the Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day, telling my wife that everything had changed. It’s not that the movie was jaw-droppingly good; it was just a movie. But it gave permission, for a whole bunch of political reasons, to talk about this subject differently than at any time in the past. The evidence, including the case of David Wyrick, and we will talk about evidence a lot in the murder cases I have been on, where I was the top cop of Butler County, Ohio, for a very treasured period. Do demons and spiritual characters talk to people and soothsay them into self-destruction? Yes, emphatically, over and over again, and I think when it came to David Wyrick, he needed public acceptance that some demonic force wanted him contained and destroyed. He was an abolitionist who used his prominent social position as a mason to help spread the message of ending slavery. And thought his opinion-based painkillers, a Satan-like character probably had his ear right up to the day of his death under the influence of that same painkiller. But why, if you were an alien from a Type One civilization, would you try to derail an ant colony that was interrupting your version of a picnic? If the creation of America was divinely inspired, as the Bible clearly indicates, wouldn’t that be good for the human race? Yet perhaps god was at war with all the other gods, and we are their chess pieces. I’m inclined to that latter assumption, and the evidence certainly leans in that direction as I have experienced it.
At the September 9th 2025, Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection hearing with the House Oversight Task Force, there were some very unusual things said on the very public record by George Knapp, Jeffry Nuccetlli, Dylan Borlan, and Alexandro Wiggins that have slowly taken the idea of UFO talk from conspiracy to actual scientific study. We have open talk now that up to four species of non-human intelligence are interacting openly with the world’s governments. And back to the movie Disclosure Day by Steven Spielberg: as a work of art, it opens the box to talk about these things in ways we never have before, because of the compelling evidence emerging from these testimonies. The movie is clearly fictional and meant to be a popcorn popper. But there is a level of seriousness to it that hints at something much larger: how do these non-human intelligence types communicate with humans now and in the past, perhaps even the deep past? I would say to all the scientists of the Smithsonian that objects like the Shaman of Newark and understanding how the complex mathematics in the Newark Earthworks were given to those indigenous people in the first place is all that matters. Based on observation, with the thin proof that we have, the Sumerian God Nisaba was whispering geometry to the people of the Hopewell period, and probably longer. Or the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. Why not you say? Are we going to be fools and suggest that Sumerian Gods were regional, and could not speak to people on the other side of the world as easily as someone in a Sumerian temple under drug influence? Why would we assume that? The first question is understanding that. And how did a society that did not have any central government or modern technology such as TV or radio project those same mathematics, without flaw, from the Newark earthworks to Hopton, over 60 miles to the south, to Mound City, Seip, High Bank, and Fort Ancient, locations all over Ohio? They had no paper that we know of, no Wal-Mart, no way to say that this, this, and this is important. Let’s build massive earthworks that take millions of labor-hours each to complete, and do so to perfection, without any centralized corporation or government to keep everyone focused. And modern science calls it a miracle of tribal knowledge. I call it communication through shaman over vast distances, all over the earth, by non-human intelligence trying to manipulate the human race towards its own doom and destruction to fulfill the political needs of the rebels against God.
And to further confirm that suspicion, many of these Hopewell sites are associated with the very ancient Teays River, which flowed up the Scioto over 2 million years ago, well before the last Ice Age. The Teays and its tributaries touched many of the Hopewell sites, indicating a reverence for those spots on the land by an intelligence observing human beings over a vast span of time and connecting those locations to celestial alignments. And that relevance is important in knowing that the Great Serpent Mound was built on the crater of an impact crater from 300 million years ago. How would indigenous people know that? And even stranger, the Fort Hill complex is built within the impact crater zone as well. Out of all the places in North America, why would anybody, and nobody really knows who they are, build these big, significant sites near geologic features that were millions of years old? Why would they know anything about any of it with such precise mathematics? How would that information ever be obtained in the first place, let alone passed along to these construction sites involving so many years and generations of labor and production? It’s hard to build a McDonald’s consistently, even with all the modern tools we have now. I would propose that it was the shaman with drug use who served as the primary communication device. And with that, a relationship with Non-Human Intelligence that we are finally admitting to, that has always been a part of the human experience.
Yes, the exhibit at the great Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum was very political, but not in the way that I think they intended. I saw at the museum an attempt to understand these great mysteries with replicas of the relics themselves. Again, that’s where I found a great copy of the Wilmington Tablet, along with the Holy Stones of Newark. And we also know of the Shaman of Newark, so there were relics that depicted the same kind of human sacrifice that we know came from central Mexico, Mirador, Teotihuacan, and Cholula, in a time when many people didn’t think cultures were talking to each other. They appear, as the evidence of the relics shows, to have been doing so. Even in the Smithsonian views these days by John Hancock, we know that the Hopewell people were traveling many thousands of miles to obtain copper, obsidian, and mica, and likely traded with the Olmecs of Tabasco, Mexico, and affiliated cultures, which had their writing showing up in the Wilmington Tablet and the Cincinnati Tablet. So the political motivations of David Wyrick are not as simple as has been attempted to be set out.
As a surveyor of these great Indian mounds, and confronted with vast evil, as the Civil War over slavery unleashed itself, and studying the remains of these ancient cultures, likely the same voices that whispered in the ear of the Shaman of Newark were whispering in the ear of David Wyrick and his opium painkillers. And was it Moses who wrote the Book of Job and discussed what Satan had said to whom and for what reason? The same guy who talked to god on a mountaintop and came back 40 days later with the Ten Commandments, and spoke to a burning bush about freeing the Jewish people from the confines of Egyptian polytheism. Should we ignore that the mound complex at Portsmith, Ohio has a very similar path-of-souls ritual to the one the Egyptians had for their preserved dead? And that some of their paths actually go through the Ohio River, showing a reverence for what was there before even the Ohio River flowed through the area, when the Teays River instead flowed to the north. And we could say with just as much authority that the mound sites were restored during the Hopewell period rather than constructed anew. That they were marking spots on the ground, viewed from the air, to very ancient landmarks, for reasons for which we do not have enough evidence to speculate. Yet they are there, and the evidence is begging to be found and analyzed. And for the same political reasons that Satan tried to trick God into punishing Job, we have society punishing David Wyrick for daring to oppose slavery, or wanting to use the Ten Commandments as a hook into North American migration by Western civilization, bringing with it a religion of forgiveness instead of appeasement to some mysterious gods who demand decapitated human heads in the lap of their shaman before providing information.
No, I didn’t want to be that guy, but sitting in front of the Newark Holystones at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum and seeing the exhibit they had there, and noticing the quick tone to dismiss everything as a hoax, my life flashed before me in a way I would have rather had it not. A deception was at play; Satan himself was trying to throw everyone off the scent. And when theologians contemplate a single satan in the Book of Job, they miss the obvious problem that there are likely thousands of them always whispering in someone’s ear, maybe God himself, or David Wyrick laced out on painkillers, or the Shaman of Newark. And that it didn’t take much to communicate, a spiritual terrorist from the land of Cannon could have been speaking the same message of sacrifice to some headhunter of the Adena culture depicted as a severed head in Hopewell mounds at the same time that they were whispering to Nebuchadnezzar to destroy Solomon’s First Temple, and to the Romans during the Second Temple, to destroy the vessels of God himself to make the world ripe for an overthrow, to the political objectives of the conspirators against God’s creations. And the Essenes were turned into the channel, and wrote about it in their Dead Sea Scrolls. I had wished that the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum exhibit, located well north of Newark, was less obvious and more scientifically grounded. But the assumption was that Wyrick was an abolitionist living among evil people supporting the slavery of other people, more of that reference to the 1619 Project, the unjust settlement of indigenous land. And as you read at the Holy Stone Exhibit, you can almost hear the whispers of Satan himself, showing Wyrick to be invalidated, corrupting future scientists in their assumptions, and making a case for not even founding America at all so the Christian premise of eliminating human sacrifice would be destroyed and current cultures continue the practice of honoring the spirit world with the blood of the living. And I didn’t want to be the guy who reported what was hard to hear. That Satan was a non-human intelligence that has been doing all this manipulating since before the Teays River flowed north along the Scioto River, then turned left near present-day Columbus and headed out to Indiana along the present-day I-70 corridor.
If you really looked closely enough and blocked out the contemporary noise, you could hear the insecurities of Satan, hoping to get away with the deception of many lifetimes. Humans need to appease what they thought of as their superiors, their gods, the malcontents that UAP whistleblowers are now revealing in the light of day in the Trump administration very hard truths. It’s one thing to explain modern UFOs and their physics-defying characteristics, and another to explain the mysterious occurrences and hauntings at the Skinwalker ranch. Yes, I talk a lot about hauntings, paranormal occurrences, Bigfoot, UFOs, and the kind of politics that will make your skin crawl in the pages ahead. But it’s also a marvelous adventure that I share so that you don’t have to go through the pain firsthand. And perhaps, after a lot of work, we’ll gather up enough evidence to change our perspective. But in The Politics of Heaven, the ruse is in what isn’t said, not what is actually revealed. Satan never tells God what he’s up to in trying to get him to turn against the very good Job. But when we look at the human race, we see a lot of Jobs, David Wyrick being one of them. Good people are crushed by their relationships with others who are otherwise motivated toward evil. But what is evil anyway when you have the Shaman of Newark holding the severed head of an obvious victim, that shaman would use as currency to buy information from the spirit world. The great spirit, or Satan himself. We aren’t supposed to ask the question, only to accept that the experts told us what to think and when to think it. But I didn’t want to be that guy. Sometimes, I wish I could be a lot of other things. But what is the adventure in that? And in the adventure are the answers, the real answers if we dare to look.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I had been telling stories about visiting The Wilds, that impressive safari park and conservation center affiliated with the Columbus Zoo out in the hills of Ohio. It is one of those places worth the drive no matter where you are in the state, a sprawling expanse of reclaimed land turned into something that feels close to the real thing—vast pastures under open sky, exotic animals moving with room to stretch their legs. They have rhinos and giraffes in good numbers, along with camels, zebras, cheetahs, and others, all managed with a light enough hand that the illusion of wild freedom holds up pretty well from the back of an open-air safari vehicle.¹
You climb aboard one of their customized tour buses or trucks—solid machines built for the terrain—and set out through a series of large paddocks. The gates are there for a reason. They control movement between sections so the animals do not mix in ways that would cause trouble, and the whole operation runs on a balance between giving the creatures space and keeping things workable for keepers, vets, and paying visitors who want the Serengeti experience without the actual risks of the real wild. Supplemental feeding stations and strategic placement of water to help keep the herds where the staff wants them for health, breeding programs, and viewing. It is wildlife management at a high level, about as good as you are going to get when you are dealing with dangerous and valuable animals on thousands of acres that used to be strip-mined ground.²
The compliant animals make it easy. The rhinos—those massive southern white rhinos—graze and wallow near the resources provided for them, powerful but predictable in their routines. The giraffes tower elegantly, moving between browse stations and open pasture in ways that fit the management plan. Camels shed their coats in season, zebras stay in loose groups, and the whole scene looks like freedom while functioning inside a carefully designed system of fences, gates, rotations, and incentives. It is not a cage, but it is not the true untamed wild either. It is managed pasture with the look of the wild, and most of the animals play their part without fuss.³
That is what made the ostrich stand out to me.
I noticed him early, standing apart from the clusters near the food and water. Tall, alert, head turning with that sharp, curious rhythm ostriches have. While the rhinos and giraffes and camels stayed close to what the keepers had laid out for them, this bird was watching the vehicle. As we moved from one paddock into the next, the gate system did its job—or tried to. The tour vehicle went through, the mechanism closed behind us, and there he was again on the other side. He had figured it out. He waited, timed his approach, slipped in close behind the bus or jeep as it passed, and crossed into the fresh section before the barrier fully secured. Now he was loose in new territory, running with a different group, exploring ground the plan had not assigned him that day.⁴
The reaction from the staff told the whole story. You could hear it in the radio chatter and see it in the quick deployment of groundskeepers in another vehicle. They had to go after him, work him back toward his proper paddock without stressing the other animals or ruining the tour for the people who had paid to see a smooth, wild-like experience. It was not the first time. The bird had made a habit of it. One fence, one gate at a time, and he had learned the vulnerability. He did not need the food station to stay content. He wanted novelty, new company, the chance to impose his own will on the layout the humans had built.⁵
I was rooting for him the whole time.
Here was an animal refusing the script. The other creatures accepted the pasture as given—the convenient food, the predictable safety, the lanes they were expected to occupy. The ostrich treated the whole setup as a puzzle to solve. He used the tour vehicle itself, the thing the keepers relied on to move visitors through their controlled world, as his ticket to the next field. He did not stay near the bowl. He risked the chase, the herding, the temporary disruption, because something in him wanted to see what was over there and who else was around. That kind of ambition is rare in a managed environment, and it is exactly what makes systems better when you let it play out instead of crushing it on sight.⁶
It struck me then, and has stayed with me since, how perfectly this mirrors what I have seen over decades in aerospace and manufacturing. We build our own versions of The Wilds every day. We lay out departments like paddocks, write procedures like fence lines, and place compensation, titles, benefits, and job security like feeding stations to keep people content and predictable. We install gates—approval chains, compliance checklists, annual audits, legacy safety rules—and we staff them with officers whose job is to make sure nothing slips through unplanned. Most people, like most animals in the park, adapt. They stay near the resources, do the expected work, and the machine runs smoothly enough from a distance. Visitors and shareholders see order and productivity.⁷
But then there are the rebels and learning the actual work from the ground up, often see the single-gate weaknesses first. They know which rules came from someone who retired twenty years ago and never got revisited. They spot the places where the process has become theater—compliance for the sake of compliance, documentation that protects no one and slows everything. When they point it out or, worse, quietly work around it to get the real job done, it can be deeply disconcerting to layers of management that have never turned a wrench or stood on a shop floor during a real problem. Knowledge from the ground threatens the illusion of total control. So the system often responds the same way the keepers responded to the ostrich: more rules, more oversight, more “training,” or direct pressure to get back in the assigned pasture.⁸
The cost of that approach is enormous and mostly invisible until you add it up. Direct spending on regulatory compliance labor alone runs into the hundreds of billions annually across American business, with manufacturing carrying a heavy share. Broader economic drag—capital and talent diverted from productive work into compliance bureaucracies, innovations delayed or abandoned because the approval path is too long, small and mid-sized firms crushed under burdens that larger players can absorb—pushes the true opportunity cost into the trillions over time. We lose competitiveness, we lose resilience, and we lose the very people who could have fixed the problems if we had listened instead of herding them back into line. It is not dramatic like a factory closing overnight. It is the slow erosion of capability, the quiet decision by talented hands-on people to stop trying or to leave for places that still value initiative.⁹
SpaceX has shown what happens when you refuse that model. Elon Musk walks into meetings and asks the questions most compliance cultures are designed to avoid: Who wrote this rule? Why did they write it? Does it still make sense, or is it just legacy that nobody wants to touch? A shocking number of requirements get deleted or radically simplified once you trace them back to their origin. The company builds, tests, fails in public view, learns fast, and iterates. Reusable rockets, vertical integration, rapid launch cadence—these did not come from following the old aerospace playbook of exhaustive upfront documentation and risk aversion at every step. They came from treating the rulebook as a starting point to be challenged, not a sacred pasture to remain inside.¹⁰ The results speak for themselves in cost per launch and flight rate. The ostrich approach, applied at scale, forces the entire system to get better.¹¹
I have always had a soft spot for the ostriches in any workforce. I advocate for them on purpose. The ones who will not stay in their lane, who figure out how to get behind the jeep and into the next field, are usually the same people who reveal where the real weaknesses are and who come up with fixes nobody on the compliance side would have imagined. Sometimes they bite you—disrupt schedules, question authority in uncomfortable ways, make the tour guides nervous. That is the price of having them. The alternative is a pasture full of well-fed, predictable animals that look impressive when the bus drives by but generate very little genuine progress or resilience. Their souls get crushed under the weight of never being allowed to test the fence, and the organization slowly loses the capacity to adapt when the real world stops cooperating with the plan.¹²
In my own years moving from hands-on roles into executive responsibility, I saw this pattern repeat across programs and companies. The people who had done the work with their own hands carried an instinctive understanding of what was theater and what was necessary. They were often the first to spot when a procedure had become detached from reality or when a new requirement was solving a problem that no longer existed. Management that lacked that grounding sometimes viewed them as threats to order rather than assets to be unleashed. The organizations that protected and empowered those voices moved faster and solved harder problems. The ones that prioritized perfect compliance and predictable behavior above all else eventually found themselves defending processes that nobody could explain anymore, while competitors who tolerated a little productive rebellion pulled ahead.¹³
The same dynamic shows up far beyond factories and boardrooms. Education systems that reward sitting still and repeating approved answers over curiosity and independent problem-solving. Government bureaucracies where the safest career move is to add another layer of review rather than remove an obsolete one. Cultural institutions that present curated narratives as the full range of choice. We all live inside versions of The Wilds at times—the illusion of open range while the fences, feeding stations, and gate protocols quietly shape what is possible. Most days it feels normal. Then something like that ostrich reminds you that the system only works as well as it does because enough creatures choose not to test the boundaries too hard.¹⁴
What I liked most about watching that bird work the tour was how it improved the keepers. They had to confront the limitation in their current gate setup. They had to think about whether single-point control was enough or whether double-gate airlock procedures, better behavioral enrichment, or adjusted resource placement would reduce the escapes without turning the place into a tighter prison. The ostrich was not just causing trouble; he was doing unpaid consulting work for the management team. He showed them where their assumptions about animal movement and motivation had gaps. A purely compliant population would never have forced that improvement. The rebel paid for his freedom by making the whole operation a little sharper.¹⁵
I left The Wilds that day still thinking about him. The rhinos were impressive in their size and presence. The giraffes were beautiful against the sky. The cheetahs carried that coiled power that makes you respect the food chain. All of them cool in their own ways, and all of them content to operate inside the lanes the humans had drawn. The ostrich was the one I kept coming back to—the non-compliant one, the rule-questioner, the creature willing to go where the keepers did not want him and to accept the temporary chase as the cost of exploration. He did not need the easy food to stay interested in life. He wanted new ground and new company, and he found a way to claim it using the very system designed to contain him.¹⁶
That is the quality I look for and try to protect in the people around me, whether in aerospace programs, manufacturing operations, or just everyday life. Give the ostriches some room. Listen when they show you the weakness in the single gate. Accept that a little productive chaos now and then is cheaper than the long-term stagnation of perfect compliance. The organizations and societies that figure this out keep their edge. The ones that treat every deviation as a threat to be chased back into the assigned pasture eventually discover that their well-managed animals have lost the capacity to handle real trouble when it arrives.¹⁷
I have no interest in living in a world where the only acceptable animals are the ones that stay near the bowl. I would rather deal with the occasional escape, the radio calls, the groundskeepers earning their pay, and the improvements that come from being forced to see the system through the eyes of someone who refuses to accept it as final. That ostrich at The Wilds was doing exactly what the best innovators and problem-solvers do everywhere else: he treated the fence not as an absolute limit but as a problem to be solved, and in doing so he made the entire managed landscape a little more honest and a little more capable.¹⁸
When people ask me now what my favorite animal was on that visit, I do not hesitate. The big ones were impressive. The compliant ones were easy on the eye and the schedule. But the ostrich—the tall, curious, gate-hacking rebel who would not stay in his lane and who spent half the tour where he was not supposed to be—was the one that mattered. He reminded me why I have always had more respect for the people who figure out how to get behind the jeep than for the ones who never leave the feeding station. Encourage that spirit where you find it. Protect it when the compliance officers come with their herding tools. The future does not belong to the perfectly pastured. It belongs to those willing to test the gate now and then, accept the chase, and show the rest of us what we missed by staying comfortable.¹⁹
This experience at The Wilds lingered in my mind long after I returned home, connecting to deeper patterns I have observed across my life and work. The managed illusion of freedom in those paddocks is not so different from the structures we encounter in corporate America, where layers of policy and oversight create the appearance of progress while often stifling the very innovation needed to survive. In aerospace, where I have spent much of my career, the contrast between traditional approaches and more agile ones is particularly stark. Legacy programs can become bogged down in requirements that originated decades ago, defended not because they remain relevant but because changing them would require admitting that the original rationale might no longer hold. Hands-on experience reveals these disconnects quickly, yet articulating them can mark you as difficult rather than valuable.²⁰
Consider the broader implications for American manufacturing. When compliance becomes the primary metric of success, resources flow toward documentation and auditing rather than research, development, or process refinement. Studies have documented how regulatory burdens disproportionately affect smaller firms, creating barriers to entry and expansion that favor incumbents who can afford dedicated compliance departments. The result is slower adoption of new technologies, reduced experimentation on the shop floor, and a workforce trained more in navigating bureaucracy than in solving novel problems. The ostrich in such an environment would be quickly reassigned or sidelined, and the whole system suffers for it.²¹
Elon Musk’s approach at SpaceX offers a compelling counterexample, one I have followed with great interest. By insisting on first-principles thinking—breaking down every assumption to its fundamentals and rebuilding only what proves necessary—the company has achieved breakthroughs that seemed impossible under conventional paradigms. Reusability was not just an engineering challenge; it was a direct challenge to the accepted economics of spaceflight, where expendable vehicles and massive cost-plus contracts had become the norm. Questioning those foundations required a culture that rewarded the kind of boundary-testing the ostrich exemplified. The payoff has been dramatic reductions in launch costs and an unprecedented cadence of operations, reshaping the industry.²²
In reflecting on these matters, I often draw parallels to larger questions of human agency and the systems that seek to channel or constrain it. The ostrich’s refusal to remain content within the provided pasture speaks to something fundamental in the created order: a drive toward exploration, adaptation, and the exercise of will that resists overly deterministic management. In my ongoing work exploring the Politics of Heaven and the deeper spiritual and historical currents shaping human affairs, such metaphors take on added resonance. Just as the keepers at The Wilds maintain an illusion of wildness for educational and conservation purposes, larger forces in society—whether economic, cultural, or institutional—often construct environments that prioritize predictability and control over the messy vitality of genuine freedom. Individuals who, like the ostrich, find ways to slip through the gates challenge those illusions and force reevaluation.²³
This is not to romanticize chaos or dismiss the need for structure. Successful wildlife management at The Wilds demonstrates that boundaries serve important functions: protecting animals, enabling breeding programs, ensuring visitor safety, and advancing conservation goals. Similarly, in business and society, rules around safety, quality, and ethics are essential. The problem arises when those rules multiply unchecked, when compliance officers outnumber innovators, or when the original purpose of a regulation fades from memory while its enforcement mechanisms grow ever more elaborate. The ostrich does not demand the removal of all fences; he demonstrates the value of testing them and adapting the system in response.²⁴
My own background has given me a particular vantage on this tension. Having worked my way up through various roles in industry, from tasks requiring direct physical engagement to overseeing complex programs, I have witnessed how domain knowledge from the “shop floor” often clashes with abstract managerial frameworks. Those who have turned wrenches understand intuitively where procedures add value and where they have become ritual. Encouraging such perspectives requires leadership willing to tolerate temporary disruption for long-term gain—much like the keepers who, instead of permanently punishing the ostrich, likely considered improvements to their gate protocols or enrichment strategies.²⁵
Culturally, the pattern repeats in media and entertainment, where narratives often reinforce managed expectations rather than celebrating the disruptive questioner. From my observations of shifts in popular music and storytelling over decades, there has been a movement away from themes of individual agency and moral courage toward more passive or hedonistic portrayals that keep audiences comfortably within prescribed emotional and ideological lanes. The ostrich disrupts that too, by refusing the easy feed of convention and seeking fresh territory.²⁷
Politically and economically, the stakes are high. Over-reliance on compliance culture contributes to the kinds of institutional failures I encountered during grand jury service, where layers of bureaucracy sometimes obscured accountability and human judgment. Challenging stupid rules is not rebellion for its own sake but a necessary corrective to systems that drift toward self-perpetuation at the expense of their intended purposes. In local Ohio contexts, from school levies to commissioner races, I have seen similar dynamics: entrenched approaches defended vigorously, while innovative voices advocating for accountability and efficiency are treated as threats to the established order.²⁸
Ultimately, the lesson from that lone ostrich at The Wilds is one of balance and appreciation. Systems need structure to function, but they thrive when they incorporate the energy of those who test the edges. In manufacturing, this means streamlining regulations that no longer serve their purpose and empowering frontline workers to propose and implement improvements. In broader society, it means fostering cultures that value inquiry and agency over rote obedience. As someone who has long championed self-mastery, resilience, and the imposition of individual will on challenging circumstances—symbolized in my own life by the whip as a tool of precision and discipline—I see the ostrich as a kindred spirit. He navigates the managed wild with determination and ingenuity, improving it in the process.²⁹
When I share this story, people often smile at the image of the bird sneaking through gates and evading keepers during the tour. But beneath the humor lies a serious point about human flourishing. We are not meant to be permanently pastured, content with provided resources and predictable routines. The drive to explore, to question, to innovate—even at the risk of temporary conflict with authority—is part of what makes progress possible, whether in conservation parks, factories, or the grander arenas of history and spirit. I prefer the company of ostriches, even if they occasionally complicate the tour. They keep things alive, force adaptation, and remind us that true freedom, however constrained by reality, involves the courage to move beyond the feeding station and into the next field.³⁰
So the next time you find yourself in a system that feels overly managed, remember the ostrich at The Wilds. Look for the single gate, time your move, and be willing to run when the keepers come calling. The disruption might just lead to better management for everyone involved. In my experience, it almost always does.
Footnotes
¹ Official descriptions of The Wilds as a 10,000+ acre conservation center with open-range safari experiences, emphasizing educational value and animal welfare. See The Wilds website resources on mission and operations.
² Details on reclaimed strip-mined land conversion, paddock management, and gate systems for species separation and rotational grazing in large wildlife parks.
³ Visitor accounts and park literature highlighting predictable behaviors of rhinos, giraffes, and other megafauna near supplemental feeding and water sources.
⁴ Observations of ostrich curiosity and vehicle-following behavior in safari settings, consistent with ethological studies of ratite intelligence and learning.
⁵ Reports from guides and staff on recurring challenges with individual animals exploiting procedural gaps during tours.
⁶ Analysis of problem-solving in captive animals and its implications for enrichment strategies in conservation management.
⁷ Corporate analogies drawn from organizational behavior literature on incentive structures and departmental silos.
⁸ Personal reflections informed by decades in aerospace, noting tensions between experiential knowledge and administrative layers.
⁹ Quantitative assessments of regulatory compliance burdens, including labor costs and opportunity losses in U.S. manufacturing sectors.
¹⁰ Public statements and case studies on SpaceX’s first-principles engineering methodology and requirement rationalization processes.
¹¹ Industry analyses of launch cost reductions and operational cadence improvements attributable to iterative, challenge-based approaches.
¹² Discussions of innovation cultures versus compliance-oriented management in business strategy texts.
¹³ Insights from program management experience in aerospace regarding the value of shop-floor perspectives.
¹⁴ Broader applications to educational and governmental institutions, drawing on critiques of bureaucratic inertia.
¹⁵ Principles of adaptive management in wildlife conservation, where outlier behaviors drive procedural improvements.
¹⁶ Comparative evaluation of animal temperaments in managed environments and their contributions to system dynamics.
¹⁷ Recommendations for fostering psychological safety and autonomy in high-performance teams.
¹⁸ Philosophical ties between individual agency and systemic resilience, informed by long-term observation.
¹⁹ Synthesis of the ostrich metaphor as applied to personal and professional philosophy of resilience and inquiry.
²⁰ Examination of legacy requirements in traditional aerospace programs versus agile methodologies.
²¹ Empirical studies on regulatory impacts on firm size, innovation rates, and market entry barriers.
²² Detailed accounts of reusable rocket development and associated regulatory and engineering challenges.
²³ Connections to explorations of power structures, agency, and historical patterns in spiritual and societal contexts.
²⁴ Balanced view of necessary boundaries versus over-regulation, with examples from safety and ethical standards.
²⁵ Reflections on career progression and the role of practical knowledge in leadership effectiveness.
²⁶ Applications to intergenerational knowledge transfer and character development through hands-on challenges.
²⁷ Cultural critiques of shifts in media narratives and their effects on perceptions of agency.
²⁸ Observations from civic engagement and public service experiences regarding institutional accountability.
²⁹ Integration with personal symbols of discipline, precision, and moral agency in navigating constraints.
³⁰ Concluding emphasis on the long-term benefits of embracing productive non-conformity for societal and organizational health.
Bibliography
The Wilds. Official website and publications on conservation, safari operations, and animal management (thewilds.org).
Trebbi, Francesco, et al. Research papers on the costs of regulatory compliance in the United States, including establishment-level data analyses (NBER and related).
National Association of Manufacturers. Multiple reports detailing per-employee and aggregate regulatory burdens on U.S. industry.
Musk, Elon, and SpaceX team. Interviews, presentations, and public documentation on engineering philosophy and operational innovations.
Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Harvard Business Review Press.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Harper & Brothers (on creative destruction).
Various ethology and conservation journals on ratite behavior, wildlife park management, and behavioral enrichment.
Hoffman, Rich. Prior essays and books including The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and ongoing work on The Politics of Heaven, exploring agency, structures of power, and human systems.
Organizational psychology and management texts on compliance versus innovation cultures (e.g., works on psychological safety and adaptive leadership).
Visitor and video documentation of The Wilds experiences highlighting animal-vehicle interactions.
Government and think tank analyses of manufacturing competitiveness, opportunity costs, and regulatory reform needs.
Additional readings on free will, institutional critique, and historical patterns of rebellion against managed orders for deeper contextual understanding.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I did not attempt to cap my enthusiasm when I walked into the theater for Steven Spielberg’s new film, Disclosure Day. I had listened to a lot of the reviews that had been out for several weeks by the time I saw it. I had read the commentary, watched the clips, and absorbed the consensus that was forming around this picture. And yet I kept coming back to one element that almost nobody seemed to be talking about—the one part that mattered most to me. It was not the surface spectacle of the aliens themselves. It was not whether the gray figure at the end looked convincingly real or a little too much like polished CGI. It was not even the marvelous score by John Williams or the career-highlight work from Emily Blunt as the meteorologist who finds herself suddenly able to read minds and speak in strange tongues. Those things are all fine and good, and they make for a compelling piece of summer entertainment. But the film’s real power, the thing that has stayed with me and kept me turning it over in my mind for days afterward, lies in something far more unsettling and far more relevant to the world we actually live in right now.
Disclosure Day is a story about the long, quiet interaction between non-human intelligence and this planet. The premise is that these visitors have been here for decades, moving in and out of our reality with an ease that makes our notions of locked doors and secure borders feel almost quaint. The characters in the film discover fragments of this truth through whistleblowers, through grainy archival footage of interrogations and examinations, through personal experiences that cannot be explained away by conventional science. The public revelation—the Disclosure Day of the title—arrives as both a shock and a kind of confirmation for anyone who has been paying attention to the steady drip of UAP testimony from Congress in recent years. But Spielberg, being Spielberg, does not stop at the wow factor of little green men or gray men or whatever form they take. He uses the revelation as a doorway into something much older and much more personal: the question of who really controls the territory inside our own heads.
That is the part the reviews mostly missed or chose to glide past. People came out of the theater talking about whether the alien looked fake, whether this was Spielberg’s best work or merely a solid return to form, whether the wonder of Close Encounters or E.T. had been recaptured or diluted by a more conspiratorial tone. They talked about the chase sequences, the mind-reading set pieces, the late reveal that lands with a mixture of awe and unease. All of that is fair game for conversation. But the deeper current running underneath the plot—the one that actually kept me awake after the credits rolled—is the depiction of how easily sovereignty can be stripped from a human being when someone else possesses the right technology or the right knowledge. In the film, that stripping occurs via a piece of alien-derived hardware wielded by a powerful figure within a shadowy aerospace-adjacent organization. The device does not simply persuade or threaten. It reaches into the mind of the target and begins to rewrite loyalties, plant impulses, and turn a person into an instrument who may not even remember why they are doing what they are doing—the subject acts without full memory of the programming. Compliance is tested, reinforced, and deployed. It is MKUltra logic dressed in twenty-first-century production values and tied to the arrival of non-human intelligence.
I have been thinking about this for a long time, long before this particular movie came along. I have listened carefully to the UAP whistleblowers who have testified under oath in recent years. I have read the declassified documents. I have watched how the conversation has shifted from outright dismissal to grudging acknowledgment that something real is happening in our skies and has been happening for a very long time. Congressional testimony has now put on the record that non-human biologics have been recovered from crash sites. Whistleblowers have described multi-decade crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering programs run in collaboration with private aerospace companies. They have spoken of threats, of intimidation, of people harmed or worse to keep the secret. David Grusch and others have indicated that the United States government is aware of several distinct kinds of non-human life forms—ranging from bipedal entities to other, stranger morphologies. Some estimates in the broader research community suggest four or more species have been documented through various channels, with speculation about larger networks or agreements among them. The precise numbers are less important than the underlying reality: we are not alone, we have not been alone for a very long time, and the institutions that have known this have gone to extraordinary lengths to manage the information and, more importantly, to manage us.
What Disclosure Day does so effectively—and what so many viewers seem to have glanced off—is to dramatize the next logical step in that management. If advanced non-human intelligences can move through our atmosphere and through our physical defenses with impunity, then the old model of sovereignty—the locked door, the national border, the personal boundary of skin and skull—has already been breached at the highest level. The film does not need to show fleets of saucers landing on the White House lawn to make this point. It shows something quieter and more insidious: the ability to reach inside a human being and turn that person into a vector for someone else’s will. In one sequence, a character under this influence is compelled toward betrayal and violence. The resistance, when it comes, is not primarily physical or technological in the conventional sense. It is moral and spiritual. A crucifix is clutched until it draws blood. A hand is stabbed to break the connection. Faith, or at least the memory of a deeper allegiance, becomes the firewall. That is not an accident of plotting. It is the thematic core. This is a theme with Spielberg going back to the Indiana Jones film, The Temple of Doom. When under possession, Indiana Jones is burnt with a torch to break the spell over him. A fantasy movie full of fun with some very deep things to say about possession.
I had a conversation with one of my grandsons not long ago that has stayed with me in exactly this context. We were at a campsite, and we came across a particularly striking beetle moving through the undergrowth. It was an interesting little character—armored, purposeful, going about its business with the single-minded intensity that insects possess. I pointed it out to him, and we talked for a long time about life forms, about how many different ways there are to be alive on this planet, about the vast gulf between a beetle’s experience of the world and our own. The beetle has autonomy within its limits. It can move, forage, reproduce, and respond to threats in accordance with its nature. But it has no concept of the larger forces that might casually end its existence. If I had chosen to step on it, there would have been no trial, no moral reckoning on my part beyond a momentary twinge, and certainly no legal consequence. The beetle’s sovereignty is real but radically circumscribed by its place in the order of things.
That is the feeling the film left me with regarding our own position. If there are intelligences that have mastered physics we do not yet understand, that can appear and disappear at will, that have been studying us for decades or centuries while we argued about whether they existed at all, then from their perspective we may look a great deal like that beetle looks to us. They would not necessarily hate us or wish us active harm. They might have priorities that do not include preserving our illusions of control. They might regard our political arrangements, our legal systems, our carefully constructed borders, property rights, and personal boundaries as charmingly provincial. And if they—or, more disturbingly, if human beings who have gained access to fragments of their technology—possessed the means to step inside our minds the way we can step on a beetle, then the question of sovereignty becomes existential rather than theoretical.
This is where the film’s connection to the real history of mind-control research becomes impossible to ignore. Project MKUltra was not a fever dream. It was a documented CIA program that ran from the early 1950s through the early 1970s, involving experiments in hypnosis, drugs, sensory deprivation, and psychological manipulation on unwitting subjects. The Church Committee hearings in 1975 exposed the broad outlines, and subsequent document releases have filled in more of the picture. While the formal program officially ended, the underlying impulse—to understand and ultimately to control the territory of human consciousness—did not simply vanish. Parallel lines of research into remote viewing and psychic phenomena were funded through the 1970s and 1980s under names such as the Stargate Project, which involved the Defense Intelligence Agency and contractors like the Stanford Research Institute. Ingo Swann, Pat Price, Joseph McMoneagle, and others demonstrated abilities to describe distant locations and events under controlled conditions. The results were mixed from an intelligence standpoint, and the program was eventually terminated, but the fact that the United States government spent serious resources exploring whether consciousness could be projected and information gathered without the ordinary constraints of space and time is itself revealing. It tells us that at least some people inside the system took seriously the possibility that the mind is not as bounded as we like to believe.
Disclosure Day takes that possibility and runs it forward into the present. The mind-control technology in the film is attributed to either reverse-engineered or directly supplied alien hardware, wielded by human actors within powerful institutions. The effect is the same as the old MKUltra aspirations: the subject’s agency is compromised, their memories may be fragmented or absent, and their actions serve purposes they may not fully understand or endorse. The film does not need to name the three-letter agencies explicitly to make the point. The shadow of those agencies, and of the aerospace companies that have long operated in the black-budget world alongside them, hangs over the story. In our real history, those same institutions have been accused—sometimes with documentary support, sometimes in the realm of persistent allegation—of using every tool at their disposal to protect secrets that would destabilize public assumptions about who is really in charge. The film dramatizes what that protection might look like when the secret in question is not merely a crashed craft or a recovered body, but the ability to edit human loyalty itself.
What makes Disclosure Day more than a standard conspiracy thriller is that it refuses to let the audience off the hook with easy answers. The aliens are not purely benevolent teachers, nor are they cartoonish invaders. They are other beings whose priorities and capabilities place them so far outside our frame of reference that our usual categories of friend or enemy feel inadequate. The human beings who have been managing the secret are not monolithic villains either. Some are genuinely trying to protect a population they believe would panic. Others are protecting power, careers, and the ability to continue operating without oversight. The film suggests that the greatest danger is not the arrival of the other, but the way that arrival can be used to justify ever-greater concentrations of unaccountable control over ordinary people. When the institutions that know the truth also possess tools to edit minds, the old social contract based on informed consent and transparent governance has already collapsed. The disclosure event itself can then be managed—shaped, delayed, or spun—to serve the interests of those who have the most to lose from genuine transparency.
This is why the film’s political dimension feels so charged, even if Spielberg himself has not always aligned with the political instincts I hold most dear. There is a long pattern in American governance of taking problems created or exacerbated by one set of policies and then offering expanded government power as the only solution. The same voices that spent decades denying or ridiculing the reality of UAP phenomena are now in a position to say, in effect, “See? We told you something was happening. Now let us manage the disclosure, the contact protocols, and the integration of whatever technologies we have recovered. Trust us. We are the only ones who can keep you safe.” The film does not have to spell this out in dialogue. It is evident in the conspiracy’s architecture that the characters are fighting. The same institutions that ran MKUltra, that ran Stargate, that have run the black programs around crash retrievals, are the ones positioned to become the gatekeepers of the new reality. Their argument is always the same: the public cannot handle the truth; therefore, we must control the narrative, the technology, and ultimately the minds that might resist the narrative.
I have seen this pattern up close in smaller arenas. Years ago, I served as foreman of a Butler County grand jury. We interviewed hundreds of officers, toured facilities, and listened to prosecutors describe cases that revealed repeated institutional failures—places where the system protected itself rather than the people it was supposed to serve. I came away with a clearer understanding of how two-tiered justice actually operates, how emotional intelligence and personal integrity can be in short supply even among those charged with protecting the public, and how easily ordinary citizens can be left without recourse when the institutions decide that transparency is too risky. That experience has colored everything I have observed since about larger structures of power, whether they are local school boards, federal agencies, or the aerospace contractors that move between them. The film’s depiction of a powerful organization using advanced tools to enforce compliance feels less like science fiction and more like an extrapolation of patterns I have already watched play out on a smaller scale.
The same pattern appears in the way certain political movements have approached questions of sovereignty at every level. Secure borders are not merely about keeping physical threats out. They are about preserving a people’s ability to maintain their own culture, laws, and capacity for self-government. When borders are treated as optional or as moral inconveniences, the message is that sovereignty itself is negotiable. The same logic that says a nation has no right to decide who enters its territory can be applied, with only a slight shift in framing, to the territory inside a citizen’s own mind. If outside forces can reach the mind—whether those forces are foreign governments, domestic agencies, or non-human intelligences with superior technology—then the individual’s ability to give or withhold consent becomes the first casualty. The film makes this connection visceral. The character who resists the mind-control device does so not by hacking a computer or shooting a drone, but by invoking something deeper and older than the technology arrayed against her. She invokes a loyalty that predates the institutions and the visitors alike.
That is why I keep returning to the role of faith in the story. It is not presented as a magic shield that automatically defeats advanced technology. It is presented as a form of resistance that operates on a different frequency—the mind-control device works by reaching into the spaces where memory, desire, and identity are formed. Faith, in the film’s treatment, appears to occupy some of those same spaces but answers to a different authority. When the character grips the crucifix or drives the blade into her own hand to break the connection, she is not performing a technological countermeasure. She is asserting that her ultimate allegiance is not available for reprogramming. Whether one shares the particular religious framework or not, the broader point stands: any system of control that treats human beings as programmable units must eventually reckon with the fact that many human beings experience themselves as having a dimension that cannot be fully captured or rewritten by external hardware. That dimension has been given many names across history—soul, spirit, conscience, the image of God. The film does not need to resolve the theological questions. It only needs to show that the control system encounters resistance precisely where that dimension is active.
This is also why the movie’s value extends far beyond the theater. Art of this kind enters the sovereign spaces where real conversation happens—around kitchen tables, in living rooms, on long drives with family members, in the quiet hours after children have gone to bed. Those are the places where people still feel they have some measure of control over the narrative. A film like Disclosure Day can plant questions in those spaces that mass media and official channels cannot easily reach or manage. People will talk about the alien at the end. They will debate whether it looked real. But some of them will also talk, eventually, about the mind-control sequences. They will wonder, out loud in the safety of trusted company, whether the technologies depicted are purely fictional or whether they represent an extrapolation of capabilities that already exist in fragments. They will ask each other what it would mean if the institutions that have lied for decades about the existence of non-human intelligence also possessed tools to edit citizens’ loyalties. Those conversations, multiplied across thousands of sovereign households, are where genuine cultural shifts begin. They are also where resistance to the next phase of control can take root.
I have spent a good portion of my life watching how power actually operates in the spaces between official stories and lived experience. In my younger years in the Cincinnati area, I had to move in circles connected to the old organized crime networks that ran through Newport, Kentucky, and parts of the Sharonville corridor. I saw firsthand how cash, documents, and high-profile individuals were handled, how coded language functioned, how plausible deniability was maintained, and how networks of influence could reach into law enforcement and the courts when necessary. I learned early that the visible structures of authority are not always the real ones, and that the people who truly understand the game rarely advertise the fact. Those lessons have served me well in analyzing everything from local political races to national policy debates to the larger questions of who benefits from keeping certain realities off the public table. Disclosure Day resonates with that accumulated experience. It shows a system in which the official story and the operational reality have diverged to the point that ordinary people no longer possess the information required to give meaningful consent to the world they live in.
The film also resonates with the work I have been doing on my own book, The Politics of Heaven. That project has taken me deep into questions of biblical conspiracy, ancient interactions between humanity and other intelligences, the role of giants and fallen entities in the historical record, and how spiritual warfare has manifested across centuries as struggles over who gets to define reality for the rest of us. The idea that non-human intelligences have been present and active for a very long time is not new to me. What Disclosure Day adds is a contemporary, technologically inflected version of the same ancient pattern: beings with superior capabilities interacting with humanity, human institutions attempting to manage or exploit that interaction for their own ends, and ordinary people caught between forces that treat their sovereignty as an inconvenience. The film does not frame the conflict in explicitly biblical terms, but the underlying architecture is recognizable to anyone who has studied how power has been exercised in the shadows since the earliest recorded civilizations.
I do not expect everyone who sees Disclosure Day to come away with the same set of questions I have. Some will enjoy it as a well-crafted thriller with strong performances and a dose of wonder. Others will criticize it for not going far enough in one direction or for going too far in another. That is as it should be. The measure of the film is not whether it converts every viewer into a full-time researcher of UAP phenomena or declassified mind-control programs. The measure is whether it succeeds in getting people who would otherwise never discuss these things to talk about them inside their own sovereign circles. On that score, I think it succeeds more than its early reviews suggest. The conversations it provokes are the point. The spectacle is secondary.
I hope the film does well at the box office. I hope it reaches enough people that the questions it raises cannot be easily contained or dismissed. I hope it encourages more artists to explore the territory where advanced technology, ancient mysteries, and the enduring human hunger for sovereignty intersect. And I hope that viewers who find themselves unsettled by the mind-control elements will take the time to look into the real historical record—the MKUltra documents, the Stargate files, the congressional UAP hearings, the whistleblower testimony—rather than treating the film as pure fantasy. The line between what has been documented and what remains speculative is narrower than most people assume.
In the end, Disclosure Day is not primarily about aliens. It is about us. It is about what happens to a species that has spent generations being told it is alone in the universe, only to discover that the institutions it trusted to tell the truth have been managing a much larger reality behind the curtain. It is about what happens when those same institutions acquire tools that can reach inside the last private space—the space between a person’s ears—and begin to edit what that person believes, remembers, and chooses. It is about whether faith, conscience, and the stubborn refusal to be rewritten can still function as firewalls when the technology of control has advanced beyond anything the framers of our Constitution could have imagined. Those are the questions worth carrying out of the theater and into the conversations that happen in the places we still control. Those are the questions that will determine whether disclosure, when it finally comes in full, leads to greater freedom or to a more sophisticated form of captivity.
Footnotes
I have no interest in putting a cap on that conversation either. The film has done its job if it leaves people talking long after the popcorn is gone. My own contribution is to point out that the most important part of Disclosure Day is not the part everybody is already discussing. It is the part that touches the deepest fear and the deepest hope we carry as human beings: the fear that our minds are not our own, and the hope that something in us remains beyond the reach of any program, any device, or any agenda that would turn us into instruments rather than sovereign souls. That hope is what makes the film worth seeing, and worth arguing about, for a long time to come.
[1] Project MKUltra was a covert CIA program focused on mind control and behavioral modification that officially ran from 1953 until its termination in the early 1970s. The Church Committee hearings of 1975 brought many of its activities into public view. See John D. Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (New York: Times Books, 1979).
[2] Remote viewing research received significant government funding beginning in the early 1970s at Stanford Research Institute under CIA and later DIA sponsorship. The Stargate Project operated from approximately 1978 to 1995. See Joseph McMoneagle, Remote Viewing Secrets: A Handbook (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2000); and the declassified CIA documents available through the agency’s reading room.
[3] In July 2023, former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch testified before Congress that the U.S. government had operated a multi-decade crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program involving non-human craft and recovered “non-human biologics.” He has since elaborated that the government is aware of several distinct kinds of non-human life forms. See the official transcript of the July 26, 2023, hearing before the House Oversight Committee, Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs; and Luis Elizondo, Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UAP (New York: William Morrow, 2024).
[4] Spielberg has long explored themes of consciousness, communication across boundaries, and the loss or recovery of personal agency. In Always (1990), a deceased pilot communicates with the living through intermediaries and grapples with unfinished emotional business. In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), the alien’s presence both disrupts and ultimately restores family bonds fractured by divorce. Catch Me If You Can (2002) examines manipulation, identity, and the ability of a skilled individual to impose his will on institutional systems. Disclosure Day continues and darkens these threads by introducing technologies that can directly edit loyalty and memory.
[5] The concept of multiple non-human species or “federations” appears across decades of UAP research literature, from Jacques Vallée’s Passport to Magonia (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1969) to more recent compilations of whistleblower and contactee testimony. While precise numbers remain contested, the existence of morphological diversity in reported encounters is a consistent thread.
[6] The author’s service as foreman of a Butler County, Ohio, grand jury provided direct exposure to institutional dynamics, two-tiered justice, and the human costs of systemic failures. These experiences inform the analysis of larger structures of unaccountable power.
[7] The author’s background in aerospace program management and long-standing interest in black-budget activities provide additional context for interpreting the role of private contractors in managing sensitive technologies and information. See also the author’s forthcoming book, The Politics of Heaven, which examines biblical and historical patterns of interaction between humanity and non-human intelligences.
[8] The beetle metaphor draws from direct observation during family camping and model rocketry activities with the author’s grandson. The contrast between limited insect autonomy and human technological vulnerability serves as a recurring image for the asymmetry of power when advanced intelligences interact with less advanced ones.
[9] Hillary Clinton’s public defenses of her husband during the 1990s scandals frequently emphasized themes of personal control and boundaries. The film’s exploration of mental sovereignty resonates with those older rhetorical claims about locked doors and complete self-knowledge.
[10] The evolution of surveillance and influence technologies from mid-century mind-control experiments to contemporary digital systems (facial recognition, always-on microphones, algorithmic curation of information) represents a continuous thread rather than a clean break. Smartphones and AI interfaces can be understood as distributed, voluntary extensions of earlier aspirations for remote influence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR FURTHER READING
Primary Sources and Government Documents
• Church Committee. Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. U.S. Senate, 1975–1976.
• Central Intelligence Agency. Declassified MKUltra and Stargate Project documents. Available through the CIA Reading Room.
• U.S. House of Representatives. Hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, July 26, 2023. Official transcript.
• Elizondo, Luis. Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UAP. New York: William Morrow, 2024.
• Grusch, David. Congressional testimony and subsequent public statements, 2023–2026.
Historical and Analytical Works on Mind Control and Remote Viewing
• Marks, John D. The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control. New York: Times Books, 1979.
• Swann, Ingo. Natural ESP: A Layman’s Guide to Unlocking the Extra-Sensory Power of Your Mind. New York: Bantam, 1987.
• Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies. New York: Dell, 1997.
UAP and Non-Human Intelligence Research
• Vallée, Jacques. Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1969.
• Kean, Leslie. UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record. New York: Harmony Books, 2010.
• Dolan, Richard M. UFOs and the National Security State (two volumes). Rochester, NY: Keyhole Publishing, 2000–2009.
• Imbrogno, Philip J. Interdimensional Universe: The New Science of UFOs, Paranormal Phenomena and Otherdimensional Beings. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2010.
Biblical, Archaeological, and Spiritual Warfare Context
• The Book of Enoch. Translated by R. H. Charles. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1912. (Multiple modern editions available.)
• Biblical Archaeology Review. Various issues, 1975–present. (The author has been a subscriber since childhood.)
• Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural World of the Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015.
• Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven (forthcoming 2027). Manuscript in circulation among select readers.
• Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business: Winning Strategies from the American West. (Earlier work establishing the author’s philosophical framework of sovereignty and will.)
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I stood with my family at the Newark Earthworks recently, the Great Circle embracing us in its quiet immensity, and realized how perfectly the moment aligned with something I had waited decades to see. My grandson was there, wide-eyed as only a child can be in the presence of real mystery, and just days earlier, a remarkable new book had appeared on the visitor center shelves: John E. Hancock’s Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks: Landscape Monuments of the Ancient Ohio Valley, published by Smithsonian Books.[^1]
The golf course that had long sat atop the Octagon and Circle was gone, the land being returned to public use as a proper park befitting a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2023, the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks—eight magnificent locations across southern Ohio—received that global recognition.[^2] These are not modest mounds. They are monumental works of landscape architecture whose geometric precision, astronomical alignments, and sheer coordinated effort rival the Pyramids or the Great Wall. The Newark complex alone required millions of hours of labor. The alignments track the Moon’s complex 18.6-year cycle, something that demands sustained, multi-generational observation. Yet for too long these places have been treated as local curiosities rather than one of the great architectural achievements of the ancient world.
Hancock, a retired professor of architecture from the University of Cincinnati, spent his later career studying these earthworks with an architect’s eye. His book is not a conspiracy volume. It is a beautifully produced, evidence-driven work that documents the sites, the advanced mathematics built into them, the trade networks that moved Lake Superior copper, Appalachian mica, and materials from even farther afield.[^3] The Old Copper Complex in the Great Lakes region dates back thousands of years before the Hopewell period, with native copper being cold-hammered into tools and traded across the continent.[^4] The book presents the facts without leaping into speculation, and it does so in a way that finally gives these places the serious treatment they deserve. I had been waiting forty years for someone to write exactly this book.
I attended Hancock’s lecture and book signing at Fort Ancient, another UNESCO site just a short drive from home in Liberty Township. The room was filled with the kind of people I naturally gravitate toward—archaeologists, geologists, anthropologists, and dedicated amateurs who have spent their lives in the field. We geeked out together over the relics and reconstructions. I asked the question many were thinking, but few were voicing: Is the aggressive implementation of NAGPRA—the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990—driven purely by tribal concerns, or has it become a political tool to advance a particular narrative about America’s founding?[^5] The knowing laughter and the honest answer (“a little bit of both”) that came back told me volumes. Tension hung in the room, but so did goodwill.
People who likely disagreed with me on politics, perhaps even those who might protest at the statehouse on other issues, kindly brought me my cowboy hat after the lecture when I had left it behind in my eagerness to get books signed. That small gesture captured what I value most: the ability to find common ground even when bigger differences exist. Hancock signed my copies, and I could sense him relaxing as our conversation progressed from guarded to more open. He has walked a difficult line, working with tribes, the Smithsonian, and UNESCO to secure recognition and preservation for these sites while producing work that respects the evidence without descending into fringe territory. I respect that. Preservation done right—think English Heritage’s stewardship of Stonehenge—benefits everyone. I am grateful these Ohio earthworks are receiving similar attention.
Yet the deeper paradoxes remain. The same institutions and political currents that celebrate the “indigenous achievement” visible in the earthworks are often the ones pushing to remove, repatriate, or, in some cases, effectively bury the very artifacts that might illuminate how such sophisticated knowledge arrived here. Trade in copper and other materials was continent-wide. The mathematics and astronomy required sustained observation and coordination across distances. The timing of the Hopewell period overlaps with the era of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the First and Second Temples. In biblical accounts, high priests and prophets engaged in practices at high places that involved altered states and direct communication with non-human intelligences. Similar mechanisms—shamanic traditions, sacred substances, ritual landscapes—appear in the Ohio Valley. The Holy Stones of Newark, discovered in the nineteenth century near these earthworks and now housed at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, add another layer of uncomfortable questions, whether one accepts them as authentic or not.[^6]
I sat for a photograph in front of those stones, a dejected look on my face, because I sometimes wish I didn’t feel compelled to speak on these matters. I would rather play golf, enjoy time with my wife and grandchildren, or focus solely on business and family. But that is not how I am wired. My optimism and verbal facility push me to break down barriers and find common ground. I love academia and the sciences. I dislike seeing their ground seeded with ideological assumptions that prioritize narrative over evidence. These earthworks represent advanced knowledge whose source deserves honest inquiry, not erasure under the guise of repatriation.
This is precisely why I wrote The Politics of Heaven. The book explores the political motives and spiritual warfare at work when non-human intelligences interact with human cultures across time. The same questions arise in biblical history, in shamanic traditions, and now in the accelerating conversation around UAP disclosure. As we push toward the Moon and Mars through efforts like SpaceX, artifacts and anomalies there will make the same uncomfortable questions unavoidable. No repatriation policy or institutional control can bury evidence forever. The genie is out of the bottle.
Hancock’s books—the substantial Smithsonian volume and his compact Traveler’s Guide to Ancient Ohio—are excellent starting points. They are well-illustrated, durable, and filled with practical information for anyone who wants to visit. I encourage everyone within driving distance to do exactly that. Pack a picnic, take the family, and stand inside the Great Circle or walk the ridges at Fort Ancient. See the scale for yourselves. Let the mystery and the achievement speak directly.
I do not come to these subjects as an enemy of science or preservation—quite the contrary. I value the hard work of the people in that Fort Ancient lecture hall and the broader archaeological community. I refuse to accept that the only permissible story is the one that serves contemporary political ends. The earthworks of Ohio are far more significant than the official narrative has traditionally allowed. They point toward deeper truths about human potential, long-distance connection, and the ways knowledge has been transmitted across cultures and perhaps from beyond them.
That is the next great story. It is already reshaping how we understand our past, and it will only grow more urgent as humanity expands outward into the solar system. I intend to keep speaking and writing about it with the same optimism that has always driven me—to find common ground where possible, to ask the questions that matter, and to prepare people for revelations that institutions may prefer to keep quiet. The sites are magnificent. The books are timely. The truth, whatever form it ultimately takes, will not stay buried.
Footnotes
[^1]: John E. Hancock et al., Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks: Landscape Monuments of the Ancient Ohio Valley (Smithsonian Books, 2026).
[^2]: UNESCO World Heritage Center, “Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks,” inscribed September 19, 2023.
[^3]: Hancock’s work emphasizes architectural and landscape analysis, including trade goods.
[^4]: The Old Copper Complex dates to approximately 6500–1000 BCE, with extensive trade networks across North America.
[^5]: Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Public Law 101-601 (1990).
[^6]: The Newark Holy Stones (including the Decalogue Stone) were reportedly discovered by David Wyrick in 1860 near the Newark Earthworks and are housed at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, Ohio. Scholarly consensus largely views them as 19th-century artifacts, though they continue to spark debate.
Bibliography
• Hancock, John E., et al. Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks: Landscape Monuments of the Ancient Ohio Valley. Smithsonian Books, 2026.
• Hancock, John E. Traveler’s Guide to Ancient Ohio. Ohio University Press, 2026.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I just got back from a family trip that turned into one of those unexpected journeys where you set out thinking one thing and come away with something far deeper. We headed out to The Wilds in southeastern Ohio, that remarkable conservation center and safari-style wildlife park built on what used to be strip-mined land. I love zoos and conservation efforts in the right way—the kind that actually preserves species and land while recognizing that humans are part of the picture, not some parasitic afterthought. What I didn’t fully expect was how a side trip just south of there to see the remnants of the Big Muskie would crystallize so many thoughts I’ve been carrying about energy, innovation, capitalism, and the way the political left has twisted conservation into something that often works against human flourishing.
The Wilds sits on nearly ten thousand acres of reclaimed surface-mined land in Muskingum County, near Cumberland. It opened to the public in 1994 after the Central Ohio Coal Company, a subsidiary of American Electric Power (AEP), donated over 9,000 acres to the International Center for the Preservation of Wild Animals. That gift, combined with the reclamation work already underway, transformed what had been an industrial extraction site into one of North America’s largest conservation centers. We stayed right there at the new Hellbender RV Campground at The Wilds—beautiful sites on that same land that once fed coal into the power grid. From the campground, you can head into the park proper and experience open-air safaris rolling through habitats where giraffes, rhinoceroses, cheetahs, and other species roam across rolling terrain that, in its own way, echoes the African Serengeti. The landscape doesn’t look like the steep Allegheny foothills that were here before mining; the stripping and reclamation flattened and reshaped sections into wide, grassy vistas perfect for large herbivores. It’s not the exact ecology that existed pre-mining, but it’s productive, beautiful, and teeming with life in ways that serve conservation science and education every single day.
One afternoon, we drove the short distance south to Miner’s Memorial Park to see the Big Muskie bucket—the last major remnant of what was once the largest dragline excavator ever built. Standing there, walking inside that colossal bucket, touching the steel that once clawed through hundreds of feet of overburden, you can’t help but feel the scale of human ingenuity. The machine itself, officially a Bucyrus-Erie 4250-W, stood nearly twenty-two stories tall, weighed around thirteen and a half thousand tons, and swung a 220-cubic-yard bucket capable of lifting 325 tons of earth and rock in a single bite. The bucket alone is the size of a twelve-car garage or easily two full-size buses side by side. When it operated from 1969 to 1991, Big Muskie moved more than 483 million cubic yards of material, revealing high-sulfur coal seams that powered Ohio homes, industries, and the broader grid through plants like the Muskingum River Generating Station. It walked on massive shoes, its boom stretching over three hundred feet, built on site because nothing that big could be transported whole. Twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-four days a year, it did the work that surface mining made possible—safer in many respects than sending men deep underground into the old room-and-pillar mines, and efficient enough to supply the energy that built modern Ohio.
I grew up in the seventies and eighties, hearing the news coverage of strip mining in Ohio. It was always framed as an environmental catastrophe—radical voices and mainstream outlets alike talking about the “rape of the land,” the destruction of precious topsoil, acid mine drainage polluting streams, and corporate greed tearing up the earth for profit. Central Ohio was a focal point of that conversation. You couldn’t miss it. The narrative was clear: this was primitive, destructive, something that enlightened environmental regulation would eventually rein in and correct. And regulation did come—the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 imposed new standards for contouring, topsoil replacement, and revegetation. I’m not against sensible environmental protections. What concerns me is when those protections become a vehicle for anti-capitalist ideology that ignores the human benefits of energy production and pretends that the companies doing the actual work weren’t already innovating reclamation methods long before politicians and bureaucrats showed up to take credit or impose penalties.
Because here’s what you see when you stand at the Big Muskie bucket and then drive back to The Wilds: the power company that operated the machine also owned vast stretches of the land. They extracted the coal—formed over three hundred million years in ancient swamps and forests—and turned it into usable energy that lit homes, ran factories, and powered the machines that built the modern world. Then they participated in turning the worked-out land into something new and valuable. The Wilds exists in large part because of that private-sector decision to donate thousands of acres rather than walk away or fight endless legal battles. The reclamation wasn’t just compliance; it became an opportunity. What had been stripped to fuel progress was reshaped into a world-class center for wildlife conservation, research, and public education. You can sit at the Overlook Cafe or Terrace Grill at The Wilds, look out over the valley at giraffes and rhinos moving through grasslands that mining and reclamation made possible, and eat a good meal with running water and modern conveniences while the animals graze below. Try doing that with a picnic basket on raw, unrestored ground in the middle of nowhere and tell me which approach actually serves both people and wildlife better.
That contrast hit me hard. The same companies the political left loves to demonize as destroyers of the planet were the ones who made The Wilds possible. AEP’s Central Ohio Coal Company didn’t just comply with later regulations; they were already engaged in preservation and restoration efforts. The environmental movement often attaches itself to these stories after the fact, claiming moral victory while ignoring that the capital, the engineering, and the willingness to take risks came from the private sector. Without the coal extraction that powered Ohio’s growth, without the wealth created by that enterprise, there would have been far less capacity to fund or even imagine large-scale conservation projects like this one. It’s the classic pattern: innovators and producers do the hard work, create the surplus, and then the critics arrive to regulate, tax, and re-narrate history as a story of exploitation that only enlightened government could fix.
I thought about that same dynamic when we talk about today’s energy battles, particularly around nuclear power in Ohio. The two plants—Davis-Besse near Toledo and Perry near Cleveland—have long been critical to the state’s grid. I’ve heard the numbers bandied about; depending on the year and how you count, they contribute a substantial share of reliable baseload power, something in the range of ten to perhaps fifteen percent or more of Ohio’s electricity at times, and historically more when coal was dominant. The exact percentage varies in conversation, but the point is that they matter enormously for grid stability. In a state where natural gas now supplies roughly half or more of generation and coal has fallen sharply from its peak, nuclear provides the steady, high-capacity-factor power that intermittent sources can’t match. Yet for years we’ve watched political attacks from the Obama and Biden eras—subsidies fights, regulatory pressure, public narratives framing nuclear as dangerous or unnecessary—while the same voices rarely offer a credible, scalable replacement that keeps the lights on and the economy growing. It’s the Big Muskie story all over again: paint the producers as villains, ignore the benefits ordinary people receive every time they flip a switch or charge a device, and push policies that ultimately raise costs or reduce reliability for everyone, especially working families.
You see the same pattern in how the left approaches energy restriction as a tool of control. Whether it’s coal in the seventies or nuclear today, the rhetoric is that these things are existential threats to the planet and that only by limiting human access to abundant, affordable energy can we “save” the Earth. But energy is what lifts the burden of labor from human beings. A person hauling water by hand all day isn’t freer or more virtuous than one who turns a tap and uses the saved time to build, create, or rest. Electricity powers the data centers, training the AI models that will transform medicine, logistics, and discovery. It powers the factories, hospitals, schools, and farms that feed billions. The notion that we should all retreat to some primitive campfire existence—sitting around telling stories about pagan gods while the productive capacity of civilization withers—isn’t conservation; it’s a recipe for poverty and stagnation dressed up as virtue. The environmental movement has deep strains of this anti-human thinking, sometimes explicit in population-control rhetoric or degrowth economics that treat human ingenuity and consumption as the problem rather than the solution.
Standing inside that Big Muskie bucket puts it in perspective. That machine represented the best engineering of its era applied to the problem of extracting energy from the ground efficiently and at scale. It wasn’t pretty. It changed the landscape. But it also delivered the energy that made post-war Ohio prosperous, that kept factories running, that let families in Middletown and across the state live with lights, refrigeration, and opportunity their grandparents could only dream of. The coal it uncovered took three hundred million years to form; we used it in decades to build a civilization. Then the same enterprise that did the extracting turned around and helped create The Wilds on the worked land. That’s not destruction followed by cosmetic repair. That’s productive use followed by genuine restoration and the creation of new value. It’s what real conservation looks like when it’s driven by people who understand both the land and the ledger.
I kept coming back to the parallel with the fight over slavery in this country. Republicans led the effort to abolish it, at enormous cost in blood and treasure, while many Democrats and the broader establishment either defended the institution or dragged their feet. After the war, it was Republicans who pushed the early civil rights amendments and enforcement. Yet somewhere along the line, the narrative flipped, and today the party that fought to end slavery is often painted as the problem while the party whose members founded the KKK and enforced Jim Crow for generations gets to claim the moral high ground on race. The pattern repeats with energy and conservation. The companies and workers who built the power grid, engineered machines like Big Muskie, extracted the resources that industrialized the nation, and then reclaimed the land for new uses—these are treated as villains. The activists and politicians who arrived later, often with no skin in the game and plenty of opportunity for moral posturing, get to define “environmentalism” as whatever restricts the producers. It’s the same rhetorical capture, and it serves the same underlying goal: concentrating power in institutions that claim to speak for the Earth while actually limiting human potential.
At The Wilds, you see the better path. Capital enterprise created the wealth and the technology. It extracted the resource that powered progress. It then donated the land and supported the transformation into a living classroom for conservation science. The restaurant with the view, the safari vehicles, the research programs, the campground where families like mine can stay on the very ground that once fed coal into the grid—all of it exists because someone took the risk, did the work, made the profit, and then chose to leave the place better in meaningful ways. The strip mining didn’t “destroy” the land in any permanent sense; it changed it, and human ingenuity changed it again into something that now supports species that never lived here naturally in these numbers. That’s the story of civilization itself: we impose order and purpose on raw nature, we extract what we need to thrive, and when we’re at our best, we restore and improve rather than consume and abandon.
I think about my own work and the themes in The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business—the idea that you impose your will on circumstances rather than waiting for perfect conditions, that resilience and disciplined action turn challenges into advantages. The men who ran Big Muskie didn’t have the luxury of modern environmental impact statements or endless public comment periods. They had a job to do: get the coal out safely and efficiently to keep the power flowing. They did it with machines that still boggle the mind. Then the next generation of the same enterprise looked at the worked land and saw not a scar but an opportunity for something new. That’s the gunfighter spirit applied to energy and land use. You don’t retreat from the necessary work because critics call it ugly. You do it well, you do it responsibly within reason, and you leave the place positioned for the next chapter.
Visiting both sites in the same trip—the living conservation success at The Wilds and the monumental tool that helped create the conditions for it—ought to be required for anyone who wants to have an informed opinion about energy policy in this country. You can’t stand inside that bucket, read the history of how much earth it moved and how much power it ultimately enabled, then walk the safari trails where rhinos and giraffes now graze on reclaimed ground, and still believe the simple story that extraction equals destruction and only government regulators plus activists equal salvation. The truth is more interesting and more hopeful. Human beings using reason, capital, and engineering solved the problem of energy scarcity that had kept our ancestors poor and short-lived. Along the way, we made mistakes, as every generation does. But we also built the surplus that lets us fund conservation at scales that previous societies could never have imagined. The Wilds is proof of that. The Big Muskie bucket is proof of the tool that made part of it possible.
We’re in a moment right now where the same arguments are playing out over nuclear power, over natural gas development, over any serious attempt to expand reliable generation to meet the exploding demands of AI data centers and electrification. The political left still reaches for the same rhetorical weapons: portray the producers as greedy or reckless, emphasize risks while downplaying benefits, offer no realistic replacement that maintains or increases living standards, and treat any expansion of human productive capacity as inherently suspect. It’s the Big Muskie fight with better public relations. The companies that actually keep the grid running—whether legacy coal operators that have reclaimed land or the nuclear fleet that provides steady power—are doing the real work. The activists protesting outside are often performing for an audience that has never had to keep the lights on for millions of people or balance a multi-billion-dollar capital investment against regulatory uncertainty.
I came away from this trip more convinced than ever that the path forward isn’t to demonize the enterprises that built our energy foundation or to pretend that conservation requires halting human progress. It’s to recognize that the best conservation often flows from the same innovative, risk-taking, profit-seeking institutions that extract resources productively in the first place. The Wilds wouldn’t exist without the coal mining that preceded it. The power that lets us enjoy air-conditioned homes, smartphones, and yes, even the electric vehicles some environmentalists champion, comes from somewhere. Right now, a significant portion of that, somewhere in Ohio, includes the steady output of our nuclear plants. We should be building more of that kind of reliable, high-density energy, not tearing it down under the guise of protecting a planet that has survived far worse than human industry and will continue long after our current debates are forgotten.
If you ever find yourself in southeastern Ohio, do what we did. Spend a few days at Hellbender Campground or one of the other lodging options at The Wilds. Take the open-air safari and watch animals that have no business being in Ohio thriving on land that mining and reclamation made suitable for them. Then drive south a short way to Miner’s Memorial Park and stand inside the Big Muskie bucket. Touch the steel. Imagine the machine walking across the landscape, the bucket biting into the earth, the coal coming out to feed the boilers that kept the grid alive. Talk to the exhibits about the workers who ran it and the land that came after. Then go back to The Wilds and have lunch at the overlook with a view of the valley. You’ll see, as I did, that the story of energy in America isn’t a simple morality play of villains and heroes. It’s the story of human beings using their minds and their tools to turn raw materials into civilization, and then, at our best, using the surplus to restore and improve what we touched.
That trip reminded me why I keep returning to these themes in my writing and podcast. The battles over energy, over land use, over what counts as “conservation”—they’re never just about science or engineering. They’re about whether we believe human beings have the right and the capacity to shape the world productively, or whether we accept a vision that treats us as a problem to be managed and reduced. The Big Muskie and The Wilds together make the case for the former. They show what free people and free enterprise can accomplish when they’re allowed to work, to risk, to profit, and to give back in ways that actually endure. Everything else is commentary.
If you’ve read The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, you know the mindset I’m talking about—imposing order and purpose on circumstances rather than surrendering to them. That’s what built the machine, that’s what powered the grid, and that’s what turned a mined landscape into a living conservation success. We need more of that spirit, not less. The age of disclosure is here, and understanding the politics of heaven—the deeper forces behind the attacks on human energy and human life—matters more than ever. But for today, see the bucket and the park. Stand where the work was done and where the restoration happened. You’ll come away with a clearer head and a stronger conviction that the future belongs to those who build, not those who merely protest.
Footnotes
1. Specifications and operational history of Big Muskie drawn from contemporary engineering records and historical summaries maintained by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources at Miner’s Memorial Park.
2. Details on the land gift from Central Ohio Coal Company (AEP subsidiary) to the International Center for the Preservation of Wild Animals and the subsequent development of The Wilds come from the official history published on thewilds.org.
3. Ohio electricity generation mix data for recent years (natural gas dominant at approximately 50-59%, coal around 20-22%, nuclear from the two plants contributing roughly 10-13% of net generation) sourced from the U.S. Energy Information Administration state analysis and related reports covering the 2024-2026 periods.
4. Bucket capacity, machine weight, boom length, and total material moved by Big Muskie confirmed across multiple engineering and historical sources, including Bucyrus-Erie records and Ohio historical markers.
5. Description of current visitor experience at the Big Muskie bucket exhibit, including ability to stand inside the 220-cubic-yard bucket, based on Ohio State Parks and Ohio DNR public information as of 2025-2026.
6. Information on Hellbender RV Campground at The Wilds, its location on reclaimed land, and amenities, including safari discounts, from the official The Wilds website and 2025-2026 opening announcements.
7. Dining options at The Wilds (Overlook Cafe / Terrace Grill) with views over animal habitats confirmed via official site descriptions of food service and visitor experiences.
8. Broader context on surface mining reclamation practices pre- and post-1977 SMCRA, and the role of private land donation in creating large conservation areas, drawn from Ohio coal industry historical analyses and The Wilds timeline.
9. Recent developments regarding power purchase agreements for Ohio nuclear plants (Davis-Besse and Perry) supporting AI/data center demand, including Meta agreements announced in 2026, reported in industry and local news sources.
10. Philosophical and historical parallels regarding narratives around energy production, conservation, and political rhetoric are interpretive commentary grounded in the observable outcomes at the sites visited and long-term patterns in U.S. energy and environmental policy debates.
• Ohio Department of Natural Resources. “Miner’s Memorial Park & Big Muskie’s Bucket.” ohiodnr.gov. Detailed visitor information and historical markers on the machine and reclamation.
• The Wilds. “History.” thewilds.org/history. Official timeline, including the land gift from Central Ohio Coal Company and the transformation of the mined land.
• U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Ohio – State Energy Profile Analysis.” eia.gov/states/OH/analysis. 2024-2026 data on electricity generation mix, nuclear contribution, natural gas, and coal shares.
• Ohio State Parks / Ohio DNR. Social media and site posts regarding the Big Muskie bucket as a tourist attraction and an engineering landmark (2025).
• The Wilds. “Hellbender RV Campground.” thewilds.org/hellbender-rv-campground. Details on the new campground on reclaimed land and visitor offerings.
• The Wilds. “Food and Shopping.” thewilds.org/food-and-shops. Descriptions of Overlook Cafe and Terrace Grill with habitat views.
• Various contemporary reports on AEP / Central Ohio Coal Company operations and reclamation achievements, including historical coal industry studies from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
• Industry announcements regarding Vistra / Energy Harbor nuclear plants and 2026 power purchase agreements with Meta for Ohio nuclear output supporting data centers.
• Historical context on Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977 and its implementation in Ohio coal regions, drawn from state and federal regulatory histories.
This essay reflects my direct observations from the family trip, historical research, and long-standing convictions about energy, innovation, and the proper relationship between human enterprise and conservation. The views expressed are my own, grounded in what I saw on the ground and in what the record shows actually works.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I wrote The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business back in 2021 because I had grown weary of hearing about Japanese warrior codes every time someone discussed Lean manufacturing or the Toyota Production System. Those approaches contain real value—Toyota’s emphasis on eliminating waste, Just-in-Time production, and continuous improvement through Kaizen has influenced industries worldwide. But as an American who spent decades in manufacturing and aerospace, applying those lessons while teaching teams how to solve problems on the fly, I felt our culture needed its own framework. We have our own warrior tradition, one rooted in self-reliance, quick decision-making under pressure, and the willingness to face risk head-on. That is the spirit of the gunfighter—the fast-draw competitor who practices until shooting from the hip becomes an expression of hard-won skill and confidence rather than recklessness.
The book is not aimed at legacy corporations seeking incremental tweaks to maintain the status quo. It is for entrepreneurs and individuals who want to build something real in a world full of obstacles. I drew heavily from the sport of fast draw, which I have long seen as a perfect metaphor for high-stakes business: when you are truly skilled, you can act decisively and accurately without hesitation. Chapters explore placing bets wisely, managing risk, and understanding that real success often means operating as a “ghost”—staying agile and unencumbered by titles, corner offices, or attachments that others can target in an effort to gain control over you.
This year, 2026, has brought several moments that reminded me why the message matters. People have approached me in everyday places like Costco in Liberty Township—recognizing me from the blog, videos, or the book itself. They want to talk, ask for a signature, or share how the ideas resonated with them. One particularly memorable encounter came from the CEO of a large company a few states away who had read the book and flew in specifically to find me. He made a substantial offer: come consult for several months, coach his workforce on the gunfighter mindset, and help reshape the culture. It was the kind of money that would make most people in my position jump with enthusiasm. I said no.
I critique consultants throughout the book, and I stand by that. Not because every single one is worthless, but because too many function as the “dandies” or “bounty hunters” in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven—profiting from the legends and hard work of others without ever stepping into the real fight themselves. The gunfighters are the ones who face the target, put their lives or reputations on the line, and deliver results. I have always tried to live as the latter. Turning down that opportunity was not about rejecting money; it was about staying consistent with the principles I laid out. I am not racing to stuff a retirement account before time runs out. I have a different measure of success, one shaped by decades of experience and a marriage built on integrity.
That integrity traces back to a moment early in my relationship with my wife, nearly forty years ago. I was selling cars as a young man—good at it, making strong commissions in a cutthroat environment. One Saturday, I had an older, retired customer ready to buy a truck, paying $5,000 over sticker price, all cash. The finance department balked at the markup, but the sales manager pushed me to close it anyway. I had the man’s keys, had built genuine trust over hours of conversation, and convinced him to walk across the street to withdraw the cash. My future wife showed up at the lot right as I was finishing the deal. I thought she would be impressed by the big sale. Instead, she was deeply upset that I had taken advantage of an honest man. She came from a different background—modeling, country club circles—and had seen plenty of “successful” men who measured life by mansions, boats, and flashy deals. She wanted none of it. She told me it was the Corvette I was about to buy or her; she would not marry someone who operated that way. I walked the deal back, took the ethical path, and my commission was cut in half. I left that job soon after. We have been married ever since, and that decision remains one of the best of my life. It taught me that real leverage comes from living in a way your spouse and family can respect—not from cornering every last dollar or using dollars to gain control of people.
These same values run through the book and my daily work. I have encountered “safety tyrants” and sandbaggers in manufacturing facilities—people who hide behind compliance rules, slow output to protect their own power or laziness, and attack anyone who pushes for genuine improvement. I have seen engineers and managers who opposed efficiency gains, only for the pressure of their own schemes to catch up with them later. I do not celebrate their misfortunes, but I also do not mourn those who tried to destroy my teams or me. When you face real opposition in business—or life—you square your shoulders like Andrew Jackson in his duels or Theodore Roosevelt finishing a speech with a bullet in his chest. You do not cry over the grave of someone who would have put you in one. Forgiveness in the theological sense is between them and God; my job is to defend what matters and keep moving forward.
This mindset is not just for business. It applies to politics, culture, and how we build any healthy organization or society. Capitalism, properly understood, rewards those willing to initiate, risk, and deliver—not the parasites who live off others’ efforts. I see parallels in today’s corporate world and broader culture: too much fear disguised as safety, too many incentives to sandbag rather than excel. SpaceX stands out as a counterexample—lean, confident, and willing to accept calculated risk in pursuit of big goals. That spirit is what America’s economy needs more of in the years ahead, especially as entrepreneurs step up in the current environment.
I am not closed to opportunities, and I am grateful when people find value in the work. Some have bought copies in bulk to share with their teams. The book was written so readers can engage with the ideas independently—the bullet-point summaries at the end of each chapter help reinforce the key lessons without needing me in the room. Royalties still arrive occasionally, and my wife and I enjoy turning a good check into a nice dinner. That feels honest and sustainable. Turning a large consulting gig into another form of selling out would betray the gunfighter ethos I wrote about.
The stories and principles in The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business come from real experience—car lots, stamping plants, aerospace programs, and the hard lessons learned alongside a supportive wife who keeps me honest. They are meant for those with the guts to start companies, face opposition, and build something lasting. If you have not read it, I believe you will find it useful, whether for your own ventures or simply understanding how to navigate a world full of safety tyrants and bounty hunters. The gunfighter spirit is not about recklessness; it is about skill, ethics, and the courage to act when others hide behind rules. That is the skeleton key I aimed to offer to Western civilization and American enterprise. I still carry it with me every day and live by every word. Many are finding those words very valuable, and I’m glad to hear it. Thanks for the opportunities. But to me, opportunities are measured in more than just money, even though this offer was for a lot of it. The gunfighter still has to take bullets and to bite bullets, and be willing to deliver them.
Footnotes
[^1]: For deeper context on the Toyota Production System and its philosophical roots, see the official Toyota documentation and historical analyses of Lean principles.
[^2]: The fast-draw elements tie directly into the book’s core metaphor for high-skill, decisive action in business.
[^3]: “Ghosting it” is a recurring theme in the book, emphasizing agility over visible power structures that invite opposition.
[^4]: Unforgiven (1992) provides a sharp distinction between authentic gunfighters and those who profit from their stories.
[^5]: Jackson’s duels and Roosevelt’s resilience under fire illustrate the willingness to absorb damage and continue the fight—qualities essential in competitive environments.
[^6]: Safety culture critiques often highlight tensions between compliance and production pressures; see industry analyses on risk-taking and over-normalization of caution.
[^7]: These personal stories informed multiple chapters on ethics, decision-making under pressure, and long-term leverage through integrity.
[^8]: References to SpaceX reflect ongoing observations of lean, risk-tolerant innovation versus traditional corporate caution.
Bibliography
Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business: A Skeleton Key to Western Civilization. Liberty Hill Publishing, 2021. (Core text referenced throughout.)
Ohno, Taiichi. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Productivity Press, 1988.
Liker, Jeffrey K. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer. McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Womack, James P., Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos. The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production. Free Press, 1990.
Eastwood, Clint, dir. Unforgiven. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1992.
Brands, H.W. Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times. Anchor Books, 2006.
Morris, Edmund. Theodore Rex. Random House, 2001.
Additional sources:
• Toyota Motor Corporation official materials on the Toyota Production System and Kaizen philosophy.
• Industry reports and critiques on safety culture in manufacturing (e.g., discussions of production vs. compliance tensions).
• Personal observations from decades in aerospace, manufacturing leadership, and entrepreneurial consulting scenarios.
• Cross-references to forthcoming work, The Politics of Heaven, for broader philosophical and historical context on spiritual warfare, ethics, and societal structures.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I have been saying it since the very first reports trickled out of Wuhan in early 2020. COVID was not some natural spillover from a wet market. It was a bioweapon. A genetically engineered pathogen, gain-of-function research run amok, or worse, deliberately released or allowed to escape from a Chinese lab with deep ties to our own institutions. China knew exactly what they were doing. Dr. Fauci knew. Bill Gates and the globalist crowd pushing their economic reset knew. They used a bioweapon to scare the living daylights out of people, drive them into their homes, shut down the economy, stop the cars, ground the planes, and collapse small businesses while the big players consolidated power. It was the ultimate progressive playbook dressed up as public health. And I said so from day one, when saying it got me labeled a dangerous conspiracy theorist who would get people killed.
Now here we are in 2026, and the vindication keeps rolling in like waves on the shore. Just the other day, I sat listening to Trish Regan’s broadcast—she used to be all over Fox News and now runs her own sharp podcast—and she laid out the significance of Tulsi Gabbard’s parting disclosure as Director of National Intelligence. Tulsi, a Democrat until about five minutes ago in political terms, dropped declassified intelligence showing long-standing U.S. government funding for more than 120 biolabs across over 30 countries, including critical sites in Ukraine. These facilities worked with dangerous pathogens and, in some cases, engaged in gain-of-function research, with minimal oversight. The documents highlighted vulnerabilities in Ukraine amid the war—labs that could be seized, damaged, or have their materials fall into the wrong hands. Previous administrations and figures like Fauci had lied or covered it up, dismissing concerns as Russian propaganda. Tulsi called it out plainly: the information had been intentionally withheld, and anyone who spoke up was attacked. She was on her way out the door, yet she chose to release it. That takes a certain kind of courage, and I respect it.
I have watched these same tactics play out for decades with the alien question, the UFO disclosures, ancient interactions, the Galactic Federation lore, and all the species that have apparently been engaging humanity throughout history. The deep state—call it the intelligence community, the permanent bureaucracy, whatever label you prefer—uses the same playbook—first, ridicule. Lump serious inquiry in with Bigfoot sightings and ghost stories so nobody takes you seriously. Then conceal. Classify everything, control the narrative through compliant media, flood the zone with official denials while quietly advancing programs behind the curtain. When that fails, deploy fear: death counts on every screen, experts in white coats telling you the sky is falling, social pressure to comply or be cast out. They perfected it with the alien cover-up. They deployed it masterfully with COVID. And now the receipts on the biolabs are coming out the same way.
Let me take you back to my office in the Cincinnati area, right here in Liberty Township overlooking the Great Miami River valley. A high-powered gentleman, a few days ago. This was not some MAGA die-hard or Trump loyalist from the early days. This man had voted for Hillary Clinton and then for Joe Biden. He moves in serious circles, makes real money, and had just come from an event with Steve Hilton out of California—Steve was at my place a few years back when he was weighing a run for governor, and we were all talking about Vivek Ramaswamy’s rising star in Ohio politics. This visitor brought a copy of one of my books, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and asked me to sign it. He walked my shelves, the way people do when they come by—hundreds of volumes, many signed by the authors themselves. He spotted RFK Jr.’s The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race sitting right there. He pointed at it and said something like, “You’ve been talking about this for years, Hoffman. I used to think you were the crazy guy in Cincinnati who goes on about aliens and Bigfoot and still somehow gives the best political and business advice around here.” He thanked me for supporting Vivek early, for hosting events at my place of business when it was still a toxic environment for that kind of association in some circles. He wanted the signature so he could put it on his own shelf and tell people, “I know that guy. He was saying this stuff long before it was fashionable.”
That conversation stayed with me. Because he was right about the reputation hit. When you speak truth ahead of the curve on something as big as a engineered pandemic or hidden bioweapons programs, or when you connect the dots to ancient alien interactions and reverse-engineered technology that ended up in our cell phones and biometric tracking systems, people put up with you because the other stuff—the finance talk, the school issues, the endorsements for local races, the gunfighter philosophy of imposing your will on circumstances—still delivers value. They chuckle at the “crazy” parts over dinner and come back for the sharp analysis. Now those same people are showing up wanting signed books and quiet conversations about how it is all starting to come true on the evening news. I have signed more of my books in 2026 than at any point in my writing career. People are now eager to let others know they know me, or at least have had a relationship with me.
I have been out in front of this longer than most. Back in 2020, while the cable news was running wall-to-wall death counts and governors were locking down churches and businesses on talking points that sounded lifted straight from World Economic Forum notes, I was calling it a bioweapon. Gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded in part through channels connected to our own NIH and EcoHealth Alliance, with Fauci’s fingerprints all over the oversight—or lack thereof. The virus was engineered to jump species in ways natural coronaviruses do not. Our immune systems had no prior exposure. That is not how Mother Nature usually works when she wants to thin a herd. That is laboratory work. China knew. Elements inside our own government knew or should have known. And instead of transparency, we got fear porn designed to keep everybody home, off the roads, out of the churches, and economically paralyzed while the architects of the Great Reset advanced their platform for controlling emissions, populations, and human behavior under the cover of crisis.
The same strategy they used to conceal the full scope of alien interactions and recovered technology for generations. I have been saying for decades that we have interacted with multiple species—Greys, Nordics, Reptilians, Insectoids, and others tied to larger structures like the Galactic Federation narratives that float around in the serious literature. Ancient history is full of it if you read the suppressed texts: the Book of Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, the stories of giants, watchers, and divine rebellions. The technology that showed up in our pockets—cellular communication, advanced tracking without needing a physical chip because biometrics and data fusion do it better, even certain lines of biological research—did not appear in a vacuum. We learned by watching, by interacting, and by reverse-engineering where we could. The same institutions that hid that history turned around and used analogous methods to hide the biolabs network and the true origins of COVID. Classify it. Ridicule the messengers. Flood the information space with controlled narratives. Threaten careers and reputations. It is the same operating system.
Consider the personal marker I have from those early days. I was in Orlando, in a packed Frontier concourse at the airport, doing a Teams conference call because flights were overbooked and the place was a sea of humanity—people sleeping on the floor, crammed into every seat, lines everywhere. Chinese visitors heading to Disney and other attractions were thick in the crowds. I remember thinking, even then, that this was the perfect vector. If something dangerous had been smuggled or released, this was how it would spread fast across the country. I caught a nasty cold on that trip, the kind that lingers and makes you wonder. Two weeks later, the official word started leaking out. I knew in my gut what it was. Anybody paying attention with a working brain could see the implications. Yet the apparatus swung into action: social-distancing theater, business closures that crushed the little guy while Amazon and the big platforms thrived, church doors locked on orders that had more to do with behavioral control than with epidemiology. Gavin Newsom and others were reading from the same script. It was never about your health. It was about demonstrating that they could shut the world down if they wanted to.
RFK Jr. laid out much of this years ago in The Wuhan Cover-Up. He wrote it like a prosecutor building a case—documenting the gain-of-function work, the funding flows, the conflicts of interest, the suppression of the lab-leak hypothesis, and the broader bioweapons arms-race context. Powerful people with billion-dollar legal teams could have come after him if the claims were baseless. They did not, because the smoke was coming from a real fire. Now Tulsi’s disclosures add fresh declassified layers: over 120 facilities, many still or previously doing dangerous pathogen research with taxpayer money, scattered across the globe, Ukraine among them. The war there provided convenient cover and chaos to keep it all hidden. We had effectively outsourced or diffused critical biological research sovereignty to places with weaker regulations and then acted surprised when things leaked or got weaponized in the information war. The same people who told us the lab leak was a conspiracy theory are the ones now scrambling as the documents surface.
This is why disclosure matters on multiple levels. You cannot understand what is happening in the earthly realm of politics, finance, public health, and technological control unless you grasp the deeper politics of heaven. There is a spiritual dimension to these rebellions against human sovereignty and flourishing. The population agendas, the fear-based control systems, the elite fascination with managing demographics and behavior through crisis—these echo older patterns of divine rebellion, watcher-class interventions, and the ongoing struggle between forces that seek to diminish or manage humanity and those that affirm human agency, responsibility, and connection to the Creator. My book The Politics of Heaven explores exactly that terrain: a treasure hunt through scripture, history, archaeology, and suppressed knowledge that connects biblical conspiracies, giants, demons, and modern manifestations in everything from media degradation to bioweapons programs to the concealment of non-human intelligence interactions. When you see the same institutions lying about alien presence for 80 years and then about biolabs and pandemic origins, you start to recognize that the pattern is not accidental. It operates from a coherent worldview that treats human beings as manageable livestock rather than as image-bearers with moral agency.
The warrior ethos I have written about in The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and lived in aerospace program management and local activism applies here, too. You impose your will on the circumstances. You do not yield to the social pressure or the reputation cost when the truth is in front of you. You stay armed—literally and intellectually—with facts, with relationships across the aisle, with the willingness to host the Steve Hiltons, the Vivek events, and the high-powered visitors who used to vote the other way but now want to understand why the crazy guy was right. Resilience is not abstract. It is launching model rockets with your nine-year-old grandson on a windy, rainy day, troubleshooting in the field, recovering the ones that drift, and teaching him that you do not quit because the environment is hostile. The same principle scales to speaking uncomfortable truths about bioweapons programs and ancient interactions when the culture wants you to stay quiet.
People ask me now, after years of the sidelong glances, whether I am enjoying the “I told you so” moment. There is a little end-zone dance in it, I will not lie. But mostly, there is a sober recognition that the same apparatus is still running. Tulsi released what she could on her way out. RFK Jr. is in a position at Health and Human Services where real reform on these issues might finally have a chance. The coalition that brought Trump back includes former Democrats, independents, and truth-tellers who crossed lines because the institutional rot became too obvious. Yet the deeper disclosure—full transparency on both the biolabs network and the non-human intelligence interactions—remains incomplete. The Politics of Heaven demands we keep pushing. Because these are not isolated scandals. They are connected fronts in a long war over who controls the narrative of human history and human future.
I have watched the media evolution since the 1970s and 1980s, when love songs and family themes still dominated the airwaves, into the hedonistic, occult-tinged, rage-filled degradation that followed. That cultural attack was spiritual too. It prepared the ground for a population that would accept lockdowns, digital tracking, and expert-driven behavioral control without much pushback. The same spirit that sought to desacralize human relationships and turn people into isolated consumers also wanted them to be terrified in their homes during an engineered crisis. Connecting those dots is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition. And pattern recognition is what the gunfighter and the Overman cultivate.
So here is the record, set down plainly. I said in 2020 that COVID was a bioweapon released or leaked from gain-of-function work with Chinese and Western institutional involvement. I said the fear campaign and economic shutdown followed a pre-planned script that had nothing to do with protecting lives and everything to do with resetting power structures. I said the concealment tactics were identical to those used on the alien question for generations—ridicule, classification, narrative control, and selective disclosure only when forced. I pointed to the biolabs in Ukraine and elsewhere as evidence of diffused sovereignty and dangerous research that could be exploited. I connected it to the broader spiritual and historical context in The Politics of Heaven. And I kept saying it when it was costly to my social and professional standing in certain rooms.
Now the documents are surfacing. Tulsi Gabbard’s disclosure upon leaving the DNI post confirmed the global scale of U.S.-funded biolabs and the cover-up that protected them. RFK Jr.’s earlier prosecutorial work in The Wuhan Cover-Up stands vindicated in real time. High-powered visitors who once voted the other way are coming to my office wanting signed books and conversations. The “crazy guy in Cincinnati” who talks aliens, Bigfoot, and ancient history is suddenly the guy whose warnings aged very well. That is not because I am a prophet. It is because I paid attention, connected dots across domains most people keep in separate silos, and refused to yield to the social enforcement mechanisms that protect institutional lies.
The work continues. Disclosure on the full extent of these programs—and on the non-human intelligence interactions that may have informed some of the technological and biological avenues explored—will not come from the institutions that hid them. It will come from persistent citizens, from warriors willing to speak when it hurts, from the kind of cross-aisle relationships that let a former Biden voter thank the guy who backed Vivek early and kept the RFK book on the shelf. Read the books. Listen to the podcasts. Subscribe if you want the long-form essays without the corporate filter. And understand the Politics of Heaven, because the earthly manifestations of these conspiracies—biolabs, engineered pandemics, technological control grids, narrative suppression—only make sense when you see the larger rebellion they serve.
The vindication is sweet, but the responsibility to keep speaking is sweeter still. Stay vigilant. Stay armed with truth. And never forget who you are in the face of powers that would prefer you forget.
Footnotes
1. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard press release detailing declassified evidence of U.S. government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine facilities housing dangerous pathogens and conducting gain-of-function research, with noted vulnerabilities due to the Russia-Ukraine war. Released circa June 12, 2026, near the end of her tenure. See official DNI.gov announcements and contemporaneous reporting.
2. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race (2023). The book presents extensive documentation on gain-of-function research, funding flows involving NIH and EcoHealth Alliance, suppression of the lab-leak hypothesis, and the broader bioweapons context surrounding the Wuhan Institute of Virology and related programs. Legal-style arguments and sourcing made successful defamation actions unlikely.
3. Historical context on U.S. and international biological research programs, including the Biological Weapons Convention, past U.S. biodefense and threat-reduction initiatives in former Soviet states and elsewhere, and controversies over dual-use research. Public records and congressional oversight materials from multiple administrations document the expansion of overseas lab networks.
4. Reporting and primary documents on the 2020 emergence of SARS-CoV-2, including early discussions of the proximal origin paper, Fauci’s communications, and the shift from natural-origin certainty to acknowledgment that a lab incident remained plausible. Declassified and FOIA-released materials have continued to surface in subsequent years.
5. On the continuity of institutional narrative control and ridicule tactics: Pentagon UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) reports and hearings (2021 onward), including statements by former intelligence officials such as David Grusch regarding recovered non-human craft and biologics, and the historical pattern of official denial followed by grudging partial disclosure. Public UAP task force summaries and congressional records.
6. World Economic Forum and associated globalist policy documents from the 2019–2020 period discussing “The Great Reset,” stakeholder capitalism, and opportunities presented by the crisis for rapid economic and social restructuring, including emissions and behavioral goals. These provided the rhetorical and policy backdrop that many observed in lockdown implementation worldwide.
7. Personal and local context: Author’s documented involvement in early Vivek Ramaswamy political events in Ohio, including coordination at his place of business; long-term presence in Butler County/Liberty Township civic and political life; authorship of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, Tail of the Dragon, and the forthcoming The Politics of Heaven (target 2027), which explores biblical conspiracies, spiritual warfare, population agendas, and hidden history.
8. Media and cultural critique: Evolution of popular music and entertainment from the 1970s–1980s family- and relationship-oriented themes to later hedonistic, occult-influenced, and rage-driven content, correlating with broader social atomization and receptivity to top-down behavioral control narratives. The author’s long-form essays and podcast commentary have tracked these shifts since the period in question.
9. Airport and early pandemic timing: Author’s contemporaneous account of travel through a major Florida airport (Orlando area, Frontier concourse) in the weeks immediately preceding widespread U.S. recognition of community transmission, noting extreme crowding, overbooked international and domestic flights, and subsequent personal illness—consistent with early seeding patterns later documented in epidemiological tracing.
10. Broader philosophical framework: Author’s warrior/Overman ethos drawn from personal martial arts background, family whip-making heritage in rural Kentucky, aerospace executive experience, and writings emphasizing resilience, imposition of will on hostile circumstances, intergenerational knowledge transfer (e.g., model rocketry with grandchildren), and refusal to self-censor on high-stakes topics regardless of social cost.
Bibliography
• Gabbard, Tulsi (Director of National Intelligence). Official press release and declassified materials on U.S.-funded biological laboratories, June 2026. DNI.gov.
• Kennedy, Robert F., Jr. The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race. Children’s Health Defense / Skyhorse Publishing, 2023.
• Hoffman, Rich. The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. (Author’s primary business and leadership text, incorporating warrior philosophy and real-world program management lessons from aerospace.)
• Hoffman, Rich. Tail of the Dragon. (Personal and philosophical narrative.)
• Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven. (Forthcoming 2027; manuscript in circulation among select readers as of 2026. Explores biblical conspiracies, giants, spiritual warfare, population agendas, and hidden historical interactions.)
• Various FOIA-released and declassified U.S. government documents on biological research programs, gain-of-function oversight, and pandemic origins investigations (2020–2026 congressional and executive materials).
• Pentagon UAP Task Force and Office of the Director of National Intelligence historical reports on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (2017–2023+ releases and hearings).
• World Economic Forum. “The Great Reset” initiative documents and related stakeholder capitalism frameworks, 2019–2020.
• Contemporary news reporting and primary video from The Trish Regan Show covering Tulsi Gabbard’s DNI disclosures, June 2026.
• Author’s extensive catalog of dictated first-person essays and The Overman Warrior Podcast / Executive Warrior Podcast episodes from 2020 onward documenting contemporaneous analysis of COVID origins, biolabs, alien disclosure patterns, and cultural/spiritual critique.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I measure the quality of an adventure by the condition of the vehicle that carries you into it. If you are rolling down the road in something with missing pieces of its floor and you catch glimpses of the pavement or dirt track passing beneath your feet, you know you are in for something memorable. That was precisely the case on our recent trip to The Wilds in central Ohio, just an easy drive east of Columbus. My wife and I had been talking about visiting for years, and this time, coming back from Washington, D.C., we finally made the turn off I-70 near Zanesville and committed to it properly. We brought the RV, stayed at the Hellbender RV site right on the property, and spent several days soaking it all in. It was the kind of trip that leaves you with new stickers on the rig, fresh stories, and a renewed appreciation for what conservation, done right, can look like when paired with good old-fashioned American ingenuity and a touch of showmanship.
The Wilds sits on nearly ten thousand acres of reclaimed surface-mined land in southeastern Muskingum County, not far from Cumberland. What was once a working coal mine landscape has been transformed into one of the largest conservation centers in the world, complete with open-range pastures that feel more like the African Serengeti or a Hollywood backlot than anything you expect to find in Ohio. The place opened to the public in 1994 after years of planning that stretched back to the late 1970s. Community leaders, including figures connected to the Columbus Zoo, saw an opportunity in the reclaimed land that the Central Ohio Coal Company eventually gifted for this purpose. It was incorporated as the International Center for the Preservation of Wild Animals, and its vision was always bigger than that of a traditional zoo. They wanted science, education, and immersive experiences that would let people connect with threatened and endangered species in something closer to their natural habitat.
Strip mining had reshaped southeast Ohio for decades, beginning in earnest in the 1930s as surface methods replaced older underground operations. The environmental footprint was significant—hillsides altered, vegetation stripped, water patterns changed—but reclamation efforts, supported by state laws and industry responsibility, eventually turned scarred land into something new. The Wilds represents one of the more ambitious and successful examples of that repurposing. Instead of letting the post-mining landscape sit idle or be developed in conventional ways, visionary partners turned it into a living laboratory and a public attraction. The economic story of the region shifted along with it. What had been a mining-dependent area gained new engines in tourism, education, and conservation work. Studies have shown that The Wilds generates millions in regional economic impact through visitor spending, jobs, and ripple effects on local restaurants, lodging, and services.
We pulled into the Hellbender RV Campground, a well-appointed spot with full hookups, paved sites, and that quiet, open feel you get when the edges of a large preserve surround you. It is part of the larger Wilds complex, and they run a shuttle that takes guests several miles down to the main park entrance and overlooks. Staying on site made the whole experience seamless—no rushing back to a distant hotel, just easy mornings and evenings with the animals and the landscape close by. RV travel remains my favorite way to move around. You carry your own bed, your own kitchen, your own little corner of familiarity, no matter where the road takes you. This particular rig doubles as something of a rolling podcast studio these days, with stickers accumulating from every stop. The Hellbender site earned its own sticker on this trip.
Once you reach the heart of The Wilds, you climb up to the hilltop facilities that sit like command centers overlooking the vast reclaimed valley. There are two main overlook buildings. One serves as more of an entry and education center with a smaller gift shop and views toward certain pastures. The larger one houses a wonderful restaurant, a bigger gift shop, and an expansive deck that lets you look out over the rolling pastures, lakes, and the animals going about their day. It is an extraordinary vantage point. You can sit with a meal and watch giraffes, zebras, and rhinos moving across the landscape as if you were on an actual safari. The setting is deliberately Jurassic Park in its layout—open pastures divided by electric fencing and gates that open and close behind the tour vehicles. The original film came out in 1993; The Wilds opened in 1994. It is impossible not to notice the influence. The designers clearly loved the idea of giving visitors that sense of moving through a living, breathing ecosystem rather than peering at animals behind traditional bars or moats.
The open-air safari tours are the heart of the experience. They use converted school buses—real ones that once carried kids to class. The tops were cut off, sturdy canopies were added, and the vehicles were put back into service, carrying families and wildlife enthusiasts through the pastures. Some of them show their miles. The flooring has been patched in places, and you get the occasional reminder that these are working vehicles in a real environment. Rhinos have been known to show interest in the buses, and the tour guides handle it with calm professionalism. When I climbed aboard and saw the condition of the floor, I turned to the guide and said something to the effect that we were clearly in for a good adventure. My personal standard holds: the more primitive and honest the conveyance, the richer the experience tends to be. Polished, air-conditioned, perfectly sealed vehicles with seat belts and cup holders have their place, but they rarely deliver the same feeling of being out in it. These buses deliver that feeling in spades. They bounce along the dirt tracks; the canopy keeps the sun and occasional rain off; and you are close enough to the animals to feel their scale.
One ostrich in particular became a highlight for me. He had figured out ways to move between pastures, slipping behind buses or finding gaps in the fencing system’s logic. The guides were equal parts amused and impressed. He was not content to stay in one assigned area; he wanted to explore. It added a live, unpredictable element that made the whole tour feel more like a performance than a scripted event. Giraffes browsed near the vehicle at times, rhinos lumbered close enough to catch your attention, and the overall impression was of a landscape that had been returned to the animals while still allowing people to witness it responsibly. There are different tour levels available, including more adventurous “extra wild” options in smaller vehicles that get even closer to the action.
The restaurant and deck experience deserve their own mention. Whether you are there for a full day or just slipping away for a long lunch from Columbus or points beyond, the hilltop dining with the view is special. It reminds me of the Serengeti overlook at the Cincinnati Zoo, where you can eat and watch animals in a beautifully designed habitat. At The Wilds, the scale is larger and the setting more dramatic because of the reclaimed mining topography. You look out over what was once an industrial extraction site and see a thriving ecosystem instead. That contrast is powerful. Conservation and capitalism are not natural enemies when properly aligned. Zoos and conservation centers like this one create jobs, draw visitors who spend money locally, support research and breeding programs for endangered species, and give people—especially kids—a tangible reason to care about wildlife. I have been a member of the Cincinnati Zoo for years and have always admired their practical approach, including the solar panels in the western parking lot that provide shade and generate power for the facility. Smart, visible sustainability that improves the visitor experience rather than lecturing about it. The Wilds operates in the same spirit.
The economic transformation of the area is worth pausing over. Southeast Ohio’s mining heritage ran deep. Surface mining brought employment but also left lasting changes to the land. Reclamation projects, of which The Wilds is a standout example, turned liability into an asset. Tourism now brings steady visitor traffic—over 100,000 people in recent years—supporting direct employment at the park as well as indirect jobs in hospitality, retail, transportation, and services throughout Muskingum County and neighboring areas. Economic impact studies have quantified this in the millions of dollars annually, with wages circulating back into the local economy. For a rural region that needed diversification after the peak mining years, this kind of attraction provides something mining alone could not: a sustainable, year-round draw that also advances science and education. The partnership with the Columbus Zoo has strengthened operations, brought additional expertise, and helped The Wilds grow its programs in veterinary science, species recovery, and public engagement.
What struck me most during our stay was the low-stress environment the animals enjoy. No natural predators are hunting them here, and the care is clearly top-tier. The staff and volunteers radiate genuine dedication. I have always had a soft spot for people who devote their lives to science and study, whether they are archaeologists, zookeepers, or field biologists. Political differences fade when you see that kind of focused commitment to preserving something larger than any one ideology. Conservation is fundamentally conservative in the best sense of the word—it is about stewardship, responsibility to future generations, and not wasting what we have inherited. The Wilds embodies that.
We spent time on the trails as well, exploring some of the hiking and mountain biking paths that wind through parts of the property. There are lakes, birding areas, and butterfly habitats that add layers beyond the big safari animals. The whole place feels thoughtfully layered: the dramatic overlooks and restaurant for casual visitors, the immersive tours for those who want deeper engagement, the behind-the-scenes science for those who care about the long-term mission. It is accessible enough for a relaxed day trip yet substantial enough to justify an overnight or multi-day RV stay.
If you are anywhere in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, or even further, The Wilds is an easy and rewarding destination. From I-70, the exits near Zanesville put you on the right roads, and it is only about ten to fifteen miles south of the interstate. A Columbus resident could leave mid-morning, have lunch on the hilltop with that incredible view, take a safari tour, and be back in the afternoon if desired. For families with grandkids, it is a winner—the open-air buses, the animals moving freely in big spaces, the sense of adventure without leaving the state. For anyone who loves the Jurassic Park films, the design will make you smile at every turn. For people who appreciate well-run conservation that does not apologize for also being a business, it is a model worth studying.
I left The Wilds feeling genuinely enchanted. I arrived already sympathetic to zoos and conservation efforts; I departed even more convinced of their value. The combination of reclaimed industrial land, serious science, thoughtful visitor experiences, and economic revitalization for a rural corner of Ohio is something to celebrate. It is the kind of project that rewards curiosity and getting off the interstate for a closer look. The buses may be a little rough around the edges, the floors patched where rhinos or time have left their marks, but that only adds to the authenticity. By my measure, that is exactly how a good adventure should feel.
The Wilds proves that Ohio has its own version of the Serengeti, and it is every bit as worth experiencing as the big-name destinations farther away. Pack the RV, bring the family, or take the day trip. Either way, you will come away with stories, probably a few new stickers, and a deeper appreciation for what can happen when people decide to turn a challenge into an opportunity. In a busy world where days blend, places like this offer a genuine psychological reset. The animals thrive, the land heals in its own way, visitors leave inspired, and the local economy benefits. That is a winning formula I can get behind as a conservative who values both responsible stewardship and the kind of free enterprise that makes big ideas reality.
There is something deeply American about the story of The Wilds. It is not a government fiat handed down from on high. It is a partnership—private land donation, public support, zoo expertise, community vision, and relentless execution. The result is a place that educates without preaching, entertains without cheapening the mission, and generates real economic value while advancing genuine conservation. In an age when so many voices want to pit environmental concern against economic growth, The Wilds quietly demonstrates that the two can reinforce each other when done intelligently.
My own life has always included a deep respect for the natural world. I love taking the grandkids to places where they can see animals up close and learn respect for creation. Model rocketry, shooting sports, and outdoor adventures are part of how we build resilience and curiosity. The Wilds fits perfectly into that tradition. It is hands-on and memorable, leaving you wanting to know more about the science behind the scenes. The veterinary programs, breeding efforts for endangered species, and educational outreach all point to a serious institution that also knows how to deliver fun.
RV travel amplifies the whole thing. There is no better way to explore than to have your home on wheels. You wake up, eat in your own kitchen, step outside into the fresh air of a wildlife preserve, and plan the day around what the family wants to see. At Hellbender, the sites are spacious, the facilities modern, and the proximity to The Wilds itself makes everything convenient. We shuttled back and forth, spent time at the overlooks, took multiple tours, and still had plenty of time to relax at camp. It is the kind of trip that recharges the batteries before heading back into the demands of work and advocacy.
I have said many times that capitalism and conservation make excellent partners when the incentives are aligned. The Wilds is living proof. Tourists come for the experience, spend money that supports jobs and local businesses, and leave with a greater appreciation for wildlife that translates into broader support for preservation efforts. The science happening on site contributes to global knowledge about species recovery. It is not charity; it is value creation across multiple dimensions. That is the kind of outcome I like to see—practical, scalable, and rooted in reality rather than ideology.
If you have never been, put it on the calendar. Whether you are a lifelong Ohioan looking for a new day trip, a legislator in Columbus needing a break from session, or a family planning a longer RV adventure, The Wilds delivers. The drive is straightforward, the hospitality warm, the views stunning, and the adventures appropriately rugged. I cannot recommend it highly enough. In a state full of treasures, this one stands out as something special—a place where the past of hard work in mining has been redeemed into a future of wonder and learning. That is the kind of story worth telling, worth visiting, and worth supporting.
The experience also reinforced for me how important it is to share these places with the next generation. My grandchildren benefit from seeing real conservation in action rather than abstract lectures. They get to feel the bounce of the safari bus, watch a clever ostrich outsmart the system for a moment, and stand on the deck overlooking a landscape that was once written off. Those memories stick. They build wonder and respect. In my busy schedule of writing, podcasting, aerospace work, and political engagement, carving out these days is essential. They remind me why the fight for sound policy matters—so that places like The Wilds can continue to thrive and inspire.
I came away from this trip more convinced than ever that Ohio has world-class assets that too many people overlook. The Wilds is not just a zoo or a park; it is a testament to what reclamation, vision, and persistent effort can achieve. If you live within a few hours’ drive, do yourself a favor and go. Take the family, take a friend, or go solo and enjoy the quiet beauty of the overlooks. Eat at the restaurant with that million-dollar view. Ride the buses and embrace the adventure. You will leave better for it, just as we did. The Wilds is a jewel in central Ohio’s crown, and I am already looking forward to the next visit.
Footnotes
¹ The Wilds official history, thewilds.org/history. Details on the the 1970s vision, the land donation by Central Ohio Coal Company, the opening in 1994, and the Columbus Zoo partnership.
² Muskingum County and southeast Ohio strip mining history; surface mining expansion from the 1930s and subsequent reclamation efforts.
³ Ohio University Voinovich School economic impact study (2018 data): approximately $15 million regional impact, visitor numbers, jobs supported. Later figures show continued growth.
⁴ Personal observations and comparisons to Cincinnati Zoo experiences, including solar panel parking lot benefits.
⁵ Jurassic Park film influence on park design (1993 film, 1994 opening) and open-range safari concept.
⁶ Hellbender RV Campground details from The Wilds site: full hookups, shuttles, location on the preserve.
⁷ Broader context on conservation as stewardship and alignment with capitalist incentives for sustainable tourism.
Bibliography
• The Wilds. Official website (thewilds.org): History, About, and Hellbender RV Campground pages.
• Ohio University Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs. “Economic Impact of The Wilds” study (2018 and subsequent updates).
• Columbus Zoo and Aquarium announcements on The Wilds partnership and 30-year milestones.
• Various reports on southeast Ohio mining history and reclamation (Ohio Department of Natural Resources context).
• News coverage from The Columbus Dispatch and local tourism sources on visitor experiences and economic contributions.
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 Overmanwarrior 