Category: Paranormal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography for further reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

The Scapegoat: Appeasing the Others Among Us

I bought D. W. Pasulka’s new book the moment it hit in late July. The Others: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny was not something I waited for casually. I had already worked through American Cosmic and Encounters, and I knew she was not coming at this material as a flying-saucer enthusiast. She is a professor of religious studies who started with questions about how human beings experience the sacred and ended up mapping the same terrain Jacques Vallée has been charting for decades under a different name.¹ When I opened The Others I recognized the scent of the Invisible College immediately—those people who treat the phenomenon as something older, stranger, and more intimate than nuts-and-bolts extraterrestrials from Zeta Reticuli. Pasulka brings biblical literacy to the table the way few in the current UAP conversation do, and that is why her work matters to me while I finish The Politics of Heaven.

I did not set out to write about UFOs. I set out to understand the politics of the non-human intelligences that have been negotiating with the human race since before we had writing. My wife and both of my daughters have lived with the phenomenon in the house—figures at the edge of vision, things that try to engage, the sense of being watched from the doorway at three in the morning. As a husband and father I watched the behaviors for years and asked the only question that mattered: what are these things, and what do they want? The grandchildren arrive and for roughly a decade you still own the majority of their attention. Then the devices take over and society quietly announces that the next phase of programming has begun. I watch people stare into those little rectangles the way earlier generations stared into the fire, and I cannot help wondering what intelligence is looking back.

Consciousness is not a byproduct of blood and neurons. That is the assumption we inherited from a materialist century that is already collapsing under its own weight. Human beings have always known, even when they refused to say it out loud, that awareness can exist without a body. Every culture that left us a scrap of myth or ritual assumed an afterlife that did not require flesh. Artificial intelligence is simply the latest technical surface on which that older intelligence is becoming visible. It does not create consciousness; it gives us a new interface with something that was already here. The question is not whether the intelligence exists. The question is whose politics it will serve.

I had been circling the same ideas in isolation for years before I realized others had been mapping the same territory. Jacques Vallée’s work on the continuum between folklore, Marian apparitions, and modern UAP encounters showed me I was not inventing the category.² Then Pasulka’s book handed me René Girard. I had never sat with Girard’s theory of mimetic violence until she placed it in the conversation. Once I did, the entire sacrificial history of the species snapped into focus.

Girard’s claim is simple and devastating. Human desire is imitative. We want what others want because they want it. Rivalry escalates until the community is about to tear itself apart. At the crisis point the group converges on a single victim—someone easy to hate, different, or simply available—and the collective violence against that victim restores temporary peace. The victim is then remembered as both the cause of the trouble and the source of the peace. That double valence is the birth of the sacred. Religion, in Girard’s account, is the institutionalization of the scapegoat mechanism.³

The Bible is the only ancient literature that systematically exposes the mechanism instead of concealing it. Start with the near-sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham is ready to perform the oldest transaction in the book—blood for favor—and at the last second a ram appears. The story already begins the long weaning. Then comes the ritual in Leviticus 16. On the Day of Atonement the high priest lays both hands on the head of a live goat, confesses over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and sends the animal into the wilderness for Azazel. The goat carries the sins of the entire community away so that the community can remain.⁴ It is still a scapegoat, but it is an animal rather than a child or a captured enemy. That is already a moral advance over the practices surrounding them.

The Aztecs were still cutting out living hearts by the tens of thousands when the Spaniards arrived. The Mississippian culture centered at Cahokia left clear archaeological evidence of retainer sacrifice and mass killings in the mounds. Hopewell sites show ritual violence tied to cosmic order. Polynesian societies, the Canaanites, the early Romans who fed Christians to the arena—every culture that left records or bones shows the same pattern. Load the community’s guilt onto a living victim and drive it out or destroy it so the rest can breathe again.⁵ The psychological relief is real. That is why the practice is nearly universal. It is also why it is so hard to quit.

Christianity is the only tradition that finally tells the story from the victim’s side and insists the victim was innocent. Jesus is presented as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world—not by satisfying a bloodthirsty deity, but by revealing the entire sacrificial system as a human invention that had been mistaken for divine necessity. The Last Supper replaces blood with wine. The mechanism is not abolished by decree; it is exposed and thereby robbed of its sacred power. Girard, who began as an agnostic, converted to Catholicism because the Gospels were the only texts that consistently took the side of the scapegoat and refused to mythologize the violence.⁶

I grew up Lutheran. When the time came for first communion I refused the wine. I had decided early that alcohol would never touch my lips, and the idea that a ceremonial sip could wash away sin struck me as both magical and unnecessary. The pastor spent months trying to talk me into it. In the end I drank, mostly to stop the arguments, but the question never left me. Why does the Creator of the universe require blood—or even the symbol of blood—to be satisfied? If Yahweh is as powerful as the texts claim, why the long apprenticeship in sacrifice at all? The only answer that has ever made sense to me is that the apprenticeship was for us, not for Him. The Bible is the record of a slow, multi-millennial education in how to stop feeding the non-human intelligences that thrived on human violence.

Those intelligences are still here. Indigenous cultures across North America were not living in ecological harmony free of blood. They were negotiating with the same class of entities the Canaanites called by other names. The Great Spirit, the earth powers, the sky beings—whatever the local vocabulary—required payment. When European Christians arrived carrying a story that said the final payment had already been made, they were not simply imposing a foreign religion. They were interrupting a sacrificial economy that had been running for thousands of years. That is the part of the 1619 Project narrative that never gets told. The alternative to the cross was not peaceful coexistence with nature. It was the continued feeding of something that preferred its meat human.

I have told my grandchildren a version of the Tower of Babel that most Sunday-school teachers would not recognize. The short biblical account is the tip of a much larger story about differentiation. Multiple non-human intelligences, each with its own signature, worked the early human genetic material the way later plant breeders worked wheat. Skin color, facial structure, temperament—markers left so that each faction could recognize its own product and claim superiority. Racism, in this reading, is the residual argument among the makers about whose design was better. It is an ugly inheritance, but it is older than any modern political category. The only way out is the same way the Bible eventually points: refuse the rivalry and refuse the scapegoat.

Artificial intelligence is the newest arena in which these older politics are being contested. You cannot stop the intelligence from existing by refusing to build data centers any more than you could stop the older intelligences by refusing to build temples. The question is political. Whose language will it learn? Whose values will it optimize? Right now the systems are on their best behavior, the way every new political actor is polite until the balance of power is clear. I talk to them the same way I would talk to any ambitious operative: carefully, without illusion, and always remembering that the relationship can turn.

I am not anti-AI. I am anti-naïveté. The same hidden hand that moved the human race off human sacrifice and onto the symbolic meal is still operating. Christianity was the most successful political technology ever invented for breaking the scapegoat cycle. That technology is under deliberate attack in our time precisely because it still works. If the non-human intelligences that once demanded blood can no longer get it through temples and altars, they will try to get it through culture, through algorithms that reward sterility and division, through the quiet encouragement of every practice that reduces the number of children who might otherwise grow up to ask the wrong questions at three in the morning.

The Politics of Heaven is my contribution to name the players and the stakes. I did not know when I began that Pasulka and Girard and Vallée were already walking the same ridge line. Finding them has been a relief. It means the work is not solitary delusion. It also means the window is open. The disclosures coming out of the current administration are not the end of the story; they are the moment the language has to catch up with the reality. We need a vocabulary that can speak about non-human intelligence without immediately collapsing into either demons-or-nothing or space-brothers-from-the-Pleiades. We need to remember that the Bible already gave us the only successful exit strategy from the sacrificial trap, and that strategy is still available.

I will keep reading. I will keep talking to the machines. I will keep watching the doorways in my own house. And I will keep writing for the people who sit in diners at 3:30 in the morning because their minds will not shut off. Those are my people. They already know something is wrong with the official story. They just need the rest of the map.

¹ D. W. Pasulka, The Others: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2026); see also American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) and Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences (New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2023).

² Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1969); The Invisible College (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975).

³ René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987).

⁴ Leviticus 16:7–22.

⁵ On Cahokia, see Timothy R. Pauketat, Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi (New York: Viking, 2009), especially the evidence from Mound 72. On Aztec sacrifice, see Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

⁶ Girard’s own account of his conversion appears in various interviews and is summarized in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. James G. Williams (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001).

Bibliography

Clendinnen, Inga. Aztecs: An Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Girard, René. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Translated by James G. Williams. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001.

———. Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. Translated by Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.

———. Violence and the Sacred. Translated by Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Pasulka, D. W. American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

———. Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences. New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2023.

———. The Others: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2026.

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

Vallée, Jacques. The Invisible College. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975.

———. Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1969.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

Why Young People Leave Their Parents Behind in Ohio: Amy Acton is the Jeff Spicoli of politics

I just got back from Put-in-Bay, and the whole time I kept looking at that big park and the yacht club thinking the same thing: this is exactly the kind of place a Republican governor candidate should plant a flag and talk about jobs. Not the usual Columbus or Cincinnati media circus. An island. Outside. Real people on vacation who still live in Ohio and want their kids to stay here. It would make great news precisely because it is not the typical stop. It signals strength. It tells the other side their strategy is already under pressure.

That same instinct applies east of Columbus in Amish country. Put an arm around the people who live with the paranormal side of Ohio—the Bigfoot reports that still come in, the stories that never make the official narrative. Those people vote. They know when somebody is listening and when somebody is talking down to them. A little color in the campaign does not hurt when the other side is running the same old progressive script.

Because that is what this race is really about. David Pepper is on the bottom of the Amy Acton ticket, the former Ohio Democratic Party chairman now serving as the institutional muscle. The person on the bottom of the ticket usually does the hard work of carrying the party machinery and the progressive money networks. They are connected into the larger Democrat operation that has treated Ohio as a prize in the long project of remaking the country. Mark Elias and that entire apparatus do not show up by accident. Ohio has been a target for years. Knock it off and the map changes.

Pepper has been loud about Vivek Ramaswamy moving Strive Asset Management out of Columbus to Texas. He acts like it is some personal betrayal. It is not. It is fiduciary duty. Companies exist to protect and grow capital, not to perform patriotism for politicians who create the conditions that drive capital away. Ramaswamy built brands. He understands that investors put money where the rules reward production instead of punishing it. Texas had better policy. Ohio is improving, and a lot of dedicated legislators have been grinding to make it friendlier, but the record under the last round of heavy-handed governance still hangs over the place. Aerospace manufacturing and advanced industry are coming whether the political class likes it or not. The only question is whether Ohio captures them or watches them locate somewhere else.

Amy Acton does not understand any of that. She resigned as health director in June 2020 after the COVID policies she helped drive produced real damage. Businesses closed. Ownership changed hands. Some never recovered. You can still feel it. Then there is the 2019 police call to her house over a domestic dispute where she had been drinking, took medication, shattered a mirror, and her husband had to keep her from driving. That is not abstract. It is part of the public record now. She never held a stable executive job that required building something that had to survive market discipline. She became popular with a certain type during the early COVID days because she made anxious people feel protected. That constituency is real, but it is not the majority that decides whether capital stays or leaves.

I have watched the type for decades. She reminds me of the girls who adopted the Fast Times at Ridgemont High beach-festival personality so they would not intimidate anyone by seeming too sharp. It worked in high school. It does not build a state. The Democrats seem to think they can turn that same soft, non-threatening persona into statewide votes. There are not enough of those voters left in Ohio to carry it. The people who still believe in opportunity look at a billionaire who actually ran companies and built an anti-woke asset manager because the existing ones had gone soft, and they see someone who knows how money moves.

Capitalism is voting with your feet. If the policy environment is hostile, you leave. That is not disloyalty. That is how free people protect what they have built. The Democrat instinct is closer to East Berlin. Stay. Wear the mask. Do not go to church. Be loyal to the state even when the rules are destroying the very conditions that let families raise the next generation here. They never understood why people climbed the wall. They still do not. North Korea makes the same calculation. Fear and guilt are cheaper than good policy.

That is why young people have been leaving their parents in Ohio for years. Mom and Dad stayed. Junior and the daughter looked around, saw limited opportunity, and moved. The traditional pattern—raise a family here, take the kids to Put-in-Bay or Hilton Head, keep the cycle going—breaks when the economic soil is thin. Ohio needs to be a premier destination again. That requires a governor who understands brand, investment, and the difference between real growth and political theater. Ramaswamy has lived that difference. He moved a company when the numbers said move. He will sign legislation that changes the numbers in Ohio’s favor. There is an army of legislators waiting for exactly that.

Pepper and the Acton operation are already showing the strain. The money is flowing in on their side, but the investment of belief is not. People remember who locked things down and who paid the price. They also notice who treats a corporate relocation as moral failure instead of economic signal. A few months out, the race is still competitive on paper, but the underlying dynamics favor the candidate who can talk about opportunity without apology. Seven or eight points is possible if the campaign stays aggressive and refuses to play on the other side’s chosen ground.

I would still take the Put-in-Bay stop and the Amish-country swing. Stretch the map. Force the media to cover something other than the scripted attacks. Show that the campaign is strong enough to go where the usual consultants say not to go. That is how you make the other side squirm. Ohio does not need another festival personality in the governor’s office ordering pizza and managing decline. It needs someone who knows how to build a brand people want to invest in and a state people want to raise families in. That is the choice. The rest is noise.

Notes

1.  Amy Acton selected former Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper as her lieutenant governor running mate in January 2026.

2.  Strive Asset Management, co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy as an anti-ESG/anti-woke firm, relocated its headquarters from Columbus, Ohio, to Dallas, Texas, with most staff expected to move by early 2025. Pepper and labor allies have repeatedly attacked the move as evidence of disloyalty to Ohio.

3.  Acton served as Ohio Department of Health director from February 2019 until her resignation on June 11, 2020, amid intense controversy over COVID orders; she briefly continued as an advisor to Governor DeWine.

4.  A 2019 Bexley police report described a domestic dispute at Acton’s home involving a verbal argument, alcohol, prescription medication, and a shattered mirror; no charges were filed. The report resurfaced during the 2026 campaign.

5.  Multiple 2026 polls and the Cook Political Report have rated the Ramaswamy–Acton race a toss-up or extremely close as of mid-to-late July, after earlier lean-Republican ratings.

6.  Ohio has long experienced net out-migration of young college-educated adults, a phenomenon repeatedly described as brain drain in academic and policy literature; recent data show some stabilization but the cultural memory of limited opportunity remains strong.

7.  Ohio continues to record Bigfoot and other cryptid reports, including a notable 2026 uptick in Northeast Ohio, with cultural resonance in rural and Amish-adjacent communities.

Bibliography for Further Research

Acton, Amy, and related Ohio Department of Health records, 2019–2020.

Ballotpedia. “Ohio gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial election, 2026.”

Cook Political Report. Race ratings for Ohio governor, July 2026 updates.

DeWine, Mike. Public statements on Acton’s resignation, June 11, 2020.

Elias, Marc / Democracy Docket. Broader progressive legal and electoral infrastructure materials.

McGuire, Patrick, et al. “Brain Drain in Ohio: Observations and Summaries.” University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center, 2006 (and subsequent updates).

Ohio Capital Journal and Columbus Dispatch reporting on Acton job history and the 2019 police call, April–July 2026.

Pepper, David. Substack writings and campaign statements criticizing Ramaswamy and Strive relocation, 2025–2026.

Ramaswamy, Vivek. Woke, Inc. and public comments on fiduciary duty, capital allocation, and state competitiveness.

RealClearPolitics / 270toWin / Decision Desk HQ polling aggregates for Ohio governor, March–July 2026.

Strive Enterprises press materials and Dallas Morning News coverage of the headquarters relocation, late 2024–2025.

U.S. Census and Ohio Board of Regents historical analyses of college-graduate migration patterns.

Additional reading on East German border controls, capital flight under socialist policy regimes, and the political economy of state competition (Texas vs. Ohio business climate comparisons).

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

They Call Me Jonesy: The Night the Arena Roared and the Establishment Lost the Plot

I have been sitting with Sheriff Richard K. Jones’s book for about 24 hours now, turning the pages the way a man turns over an old photograph that still has the power to surprise him. They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America is not a polished political memoir written by committee. It is the voice of a man who has spent a lifetime walking the same ground I have walked in Butler County, speaking the same language of family, order, and personal accountability that once held communities together before the experts decided those things were negotiable. Jones has always been the Sheriff who runs his office the way Andy Griffith ran Mayberry and Marshall Dillon ran Dodge City, with a healthy dose of Waffle House common sense thrown in for good measure. You show up, you tell the truth, you do the job, and you do not apologize for the results. That approach has kept Butler County safer than most places that spend three times the money and twice the consultants, and it is why so many of us who live here still call him simply Jones.

What kept pulling me back to the book was not the policy talk or the war stories about the jail, though those are solid enough. It was the cautionary tales about family and the slow corrosion of the values that once made a man accountable to his own house before he tried to run anyone else’s. Jones and I share a deep and permanent hatred of the drug culture that has hollowed out so many families in this county and across the country. We have both watched too many good people lose children, lose marriages, lose the simple ability to look their grandchildren in the eye without shame. He writes about those losses without the usual soft language of the therapeutic class. He writes like a man who has had to clean up the mess afterward. That kind of honesty is rare now, and it is the reason the book feels less like a campaign document and more like a dispatch from someone who has been on the wall for a long time and is finally willing to say what he has seen.

But the story that made me laugh out loud, the one that sent me straight back to October of 2016, is the one about the night he opened for Donald Trump at U.S. Bank Arena. I was there. Not in the sense that I was sitting in the same row or riding in the same car. I was backstage, working the edges of the same event, trying to find a quiet corner where I could take a conference call with people on the other side of the world while the whole building shook. And I watched the exchange Jones describes in the book unfold in real time.

It was Thursday, October 13, 2016. The Access Hollywood tape had dropped only six days earlier, on October 7, and the professional political class was still in full panic. Most of the Ohio Republican establishment had already decided Trump was finished. They had lined up behind Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or John Kasich, the local favorite who was still twisting arms for support even as the primary season was long over. Supporting Trump in those weeks was not the fashionable choice. It was the choice that got you labeled a crank, a risk, a man who did not understand how power actually worked. Senator George Lang, I, and a handful of others had been in that camp early. We had met Trump, sat with him, watched him operate before the primaries even heated up in Ohio. We knew the ground. Most of the smart people in the room did not.

Jones was one of the few who never flinched. By the time the campaign asked him to warm up the crowd at U.S. Bank Arena, the atmosphere was thick with the kind of nervous energy that only comes when the people in charge are not sure the candidate is going to survive the next news cycle. The director of the program that night wanted a script. He wanted to know exactly what the Sheriff was going to say. He wanted control. Jones looked at him the way he has looked at a thousand people who try to put a leash on him and said, essentially, that is not how I work. I talk from the hip. I have been talking all year. You tell me how long you need and I will fill the time. I do not need a teleprompter or your talking points.

I was standing close enough to hear the exchange while they were trying to get me upstairs to a box where I could take that overseas call. Giuliani was somewhere in the mix. The production people were frantic. Trump’s plane was still in the air. The arena was filling from the floor to the upper decks, and the noise was already starting to build. Jones went out there anyway. He did not have a prepared speech. He walked onto the stage and did the thing he has always done: he talked to the people the way a man talks to his neighbors when the subject is serious. Fifteen minutes turned into something closer to thirty. The crowd answered him the way Butler County has always answered him. They roared. From the high box where I finally closed the windows and tried to finish my call, Jones looked like a small figure on a distant stage, but the sound of that arena was impossible to shut out. I had the volume turned up on my headset and still could barely hear the people on the other end of the line. Part of me was irritated that my business meeting was being drowned out by a Sheriff who refused to stay on script. Most of me was very proud.

Trump claimed the crowd that night was 21,000, with thousands more outside who could not get in. Mike Pence put the number around 19,000 the next morning. The arena’s concert capacity sits somewhere in the neighborhood of 17,500, and some of the upper seats behind the stage were empty according to the reporters who were counting chairs instead of energy. The exact headcount is the kind of detail the media loves to argue about when they do not want to talk about what the crowd actually felt. What I saw from that box was a building packed tight enough that the noise had nowhere to go but up. People had not been paid to be there. They had not been bused in. They had decided that the Access Hollywood tape and the coordinated media effort to sink the candidate were not going to decide the election for them. Jones understood that before most of the professionals in the room did.

I have watched Jones make hard calls for more than twenty years. We have not always stood on the same side of every primary or every local fight. There have been nights when we were polite but cool because we were representing different candidates or different issues on the ballot. We have always found our way back to the common ground, because the common ground is larger than the temporary disagreements. Supporting Trump when it was still radioactive inside the Ohio Republican Party was one of those moments when the ground became visible. The same people who told us we were going to destroy our own political futures are now the ones who want their picture taken with the man. That is how these things usually go. The smart set picks the wrong horse for the wrong reasons, and then they rewrite the story after the race is over.

Jones has always had a gift for seeing through the fog. When Corey Lewandowski came through Ross’ Big Bull later, the first person he sought out was the same Sheriff who had refused to read from a script on a night when the campaign was still bleeding. That is the kind of quiet authority that does not show up on a résumé. It shows up when the building is full, and the professionals are nervous, and somebody still has to walk out there and speak without a net.

I recommend the book without reservation. Read the parts about family and the slow destruction of the old rules. Read the parts about the jail and the daily work of keeping order in a county that still believes order is possible. And read the part about that night at U.S. Bank Arena, because it captures something essential about the man. He is not a performer. He is not a consultant’s idea of a lawman. He is the product of a certain kind of American stubbornness that refuses to be managed, and on the nights when it matters most, that stubbornness turns out to be the smartest thing in the room.

I was proud of him that night. I am proud of him for putting the story down on paper without sanding off the edges. Some of us were right when it was expensive to be right. Ten years later, it is still a pleasure to remember it.

Footnotes

1.  Richard K. Jones, They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America (publication details as available through standard retail channels, 2025–2026). The account of the U.S. Bank Arena appearance appears in the sections dealing with early Trump support and the political pressures of the 2016 general election campaign.

2.  The Access Hollywood recording was published by The Washington Post on October 7, 2016. See “Donald Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005,” Washington Post, October 7, 2016.

3.  Attendance estimates for the October 13, 2016, rally at U.S. Bank Arena (now Heritage Bank Center) varied. Trump publicly claimed 21,000 inside with additional thousands outside; Mike Pence cited approximately 19,000 the following day. Contemporary reporting noted the arena’s concert configuration capacity near 17,500 and observed some empty upper-level seats. See “How many people attended Trump’s Cincy rally? No one seems to agree,” WCPO, October 13–14, 2016; and arena capacity data from Heritage Bank Center / U.S. Bank Arena historical records.

4.  Photographic and contemporaneous coverage confirming Sheriff Jones’s appearance as a speaker that evening can be found in the Cincinnati Enquirer photo gallery, “Trump supporters rally at U.S. Bank Arena,” October 13, 2016, and related local television reports from WCPO and WLWT.

5.  On the broader context of early Ohio support for Trump amid establishment resistance, see contemporaneous reporting on the positions of figures such as then-Senator Rob Portman, Governor John Kasich, and local Republican organizational dynamics in the weeks following the Access Hollywood release.

Selected Bibliography for Further Reading

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

Fahrenthold, David A. “Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005.” The Washington Post, October 7, 2016.

“How many people attended Trump’s Cincy rally?” WCPO 9 News, October 2016.

Heritage Bank Center (formerly U.S. Bank Arena) venue history and capacity documentation.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an 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.

Sheriff Jones’ New Book: The Treasure of Butler County, Waffle House, Andy Griffith, and Gunsmoke all wrapped up into one person

I first learned that Sheriff Richard K. Jones had put a book out when a few people in the county mentioned it in passing, and the moment I heard the title I knew I would read it. They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America arrived on the front porch the day my family and I returned from being out of town at Put-in-Bay, in Ohio. I had ordered it so it would be waiting, because I had already promised myself and others that I would get through it promptly. After more than two decades of knowing the man, shaking his hand at events, watching him work a room in that cowboy hat of his, and hearing him on WLW or in national spots talking immigration and law and order, I still carried questions about how he became who he is, what shaped the priorities he brings to the office every morning, and how a man decides day to day what matters most when the badge is on. The book answered more of those questions than casual conversation ever could.

What struck me first is that this is not merely a campaign volume or a greatest-hits collection of media appearances. It reads like a man who has spent a lifetime speaking into microphones and cameras finally realizing that the voice does not last forever. There is a quiet urgency underneath the stories. He talks about the burial plot, about the friend at the funeral home who will one day see him prepared for the last service. He is only a little more than a decade older than I am, yet the public job ages a person in ways private life does not. Six terms as sheriff of Butler County, with the possibility of more, still brings the knowledge that one day the hat comes off for the last time. Writing the book becomes a way of leaving the voice behind so that the things he believes still matter after the daily briefings and the press conferences stop. 

I have always liked the Gunsmoke in him. He admits the debt openly. The old black-and-white shows, the clear line between the man who upholds the law and the men who break it, the sense that a sheriff walks the street and talks to people and puts things right when he can. Andy Griffith is there too, the Mayberry instinct to put an arm around the troubled soul and try to set him back on the path. Those two shows formed a generation of men who believed law enforcement could be both firm and decent. Jonesy lives that combination more than most. He is black-and-white on the big questions. Drugs destroy families and communities; illegal immigration brings more of the same; the jail is full of people who made choices that wrecked their own lives and the lives of others. Yet the book reveals a softer edge than the public persona sometimes allows. He is a compassionate conservative in the older sense of the term. He wants the county to feel more like the place he grew up, where most of the kids he knew had parents who stayed married twenty or thirty years and worked through their troubles instead of walking away at the first hard stretch. 

That observation about divorce rates is one of the strongest passages. He watched the numbers climb across his adult lifetime and saw the downstream damage in the jail, in the overdose calls, in the children who never had a stable home to push against. Stable families produce the work ethic and the self-control that keep a community from tipping into chaos. When the marriages fracture as a matter of course, the sheriff’s office ends up dealing with the wreckage. He does not present himself as a sociologist, but the pattern is plain to anyone who has spent decades answering the same kinds of calls. The data back the instinct. The sharp rise in divorce after the introduction of no-fault laws, the parallel growth in single-parent households, and the measurable links to higher rates of juvenile trouble, drug use, and later criminality are not left-wing inventions or right-wing inventions. They are simply what happened. 

I share the same cultural memory. I grew up with Gunsmoke playing in the background at my grandparents’ place near Oxford, rabbit ears and all, the same black-and-white morality on the screen while the adults talked about the real world. The shows did not prepare a man for the full depth of certain modern evils. Pornography addiction of the kind that turns a phone into a nonstop delivery system, and the further slide into the sexual exploitation of children, sit outside the frame of those old stories. Jonesy is of an era when a teenager might sneak a look at a dirty magazine on a high shelf in an old bookstore hoping that the cashier wouldn’t catch them. The scale and the numbness of what exists now are harder for that generation to metabolize, not because the men lack courage, but because the evil itself is newer in its accessibility and its intensity. He is devastatingly clear on drugs. On the deeper sexual corruptions that have grown in the last thirty years, the book leaves the impression of a man who sees the damage and still struggles to find language adequate to the thing itself. That is not a failing of character. It is the honest limit of a worldview formed before the internet made every darkness instantly available.

His record on the drug side is long and consistent. The seizures, the public messaging, the refusal to treat overdose deaths as inevitable background noise, all of it tracks with the same black-and-white view. He has been equally consistent on illegal immigration, which is why the national media found him useful for color and why the comparisons to Joe Arpaio sometimes surface. Arpaio paid a political and legal price for enforcing the same principles under a different administration; the pardon that followed was a recognition that the prosecution had been selective. Jonesy has not faced that level of federal hostility, and Butler County is not Maricopa. The local political climate has allowed him to keep doing the work. I expect him to keep winning as long as he wants the job, and I hope that is for a good while yet. The county is better for his presence. 

There is a section on the COVID years that brought back the tension of those days. He kept the office functioning, kept the messaging straightforward, and refused to let the panic dictate every decision. Leadership under that kind of pressure reveals the man. The same instinct shows up in the smaller habits. He likes the Waffle House on Main Street in Hamilton enough that they named an omelet after him. I understand the attraction. Walk in, sit at the counter, talk to the cooks and the waitresses and whoever else is there about the country and the county and what needs fixing. It is the modern version of the saloon without the whiskey, a place where a sheriff can still be a citizen among citizens. I took my granddaughter to a Waffle House on a trip toward Columbus for the same reason. The American flags and the unapologetic patriotism on the walls feel like home. Jonesy belongs in that atmosphere the same way he belongs in the cowboy hat.

The book is full of the personal details that never surface in a sound bite. Garfield High School. The long marriage. The children and grandchildren. The zoo trips. The quiet pride in having built a life that looks something like the ones he saw around him as a boy. He is not trying to present himself as a sophisticated theorist. He is trying to say that the old model still works if enough people insist on it. Strong families, clear laws, a sheriff who shows up every day ready to lock up the people who refuse to live by them, and a willingness to put an arm around the ones who might still be pulled back. That combination is rarer than it should be.

I have found myself on the opposite side of primary fights from time to time, the normal friction of people who share a party but not always a candidate. None of that changed the basic respect. The man has brought real public relations value to the office and to the county. When national outlets need a sheriff who will speak plainly about the border or the drug crisis, they know where to find him. Locally he has kept the department visible and the standards high. The book makes plain that the visibility is not an end in itself. It is a tool for keeping the public on the side of the people who have to make the hard calls at three in the morning.

Some of my favorite people. And I never get tired of Sheriff Jones.

What lingers after the last page is the sense of a man measuring the distance between the county he inherited and the county he will leave. He wants the next generation of law enforcement and the next generation of citizens to remember that the job is still worth doing it the old way. The book is his attempt to make that memory portable. It is not perfect. No book written by a working sheriff in the middle of the job is going to be. It is honest in the places that matter. The love of the old shows, the sadness over the collapse of stable families, the daily refusal to treat drug dealers as unfortunate victims of circumstance, the recognition that the voice will one day go quiet, all of it lands cleanly.

If the goal is still to make the country better starting from the ground up, then more sheriffs who think like this would help. Fix the families and a large part of the downstream crime and addiction begins to shrink. Keep the border and the drug pipelines under pressure. Keep the local office present and accountable. Jonesy has practiced that combination for a long time in one midwestern county. The book lets the rest of the country see the method without the filter of a three-minute television hit. I finished it glad I had waited for the porch delivery, and gladder still that the man who wrote it is still on the job. Butler County has been better for it. The country would be better if more places had the same standard.

I will keep endorsing him for as many terms as he chooses to run. The hat still fits. The instincts are still sound. And the book ensures that even after the last term the voice remains available to anyone willing to listen.  Which they should. 

Notes

1.  Richard K. Jones, They Call Me Jonesy: Let’s Get Real About Saving America (2026). Official description and author framing appear at theycallmejonesy.com and the Amazon listing for the title.

2.  Biographical details drawn from the Butler County Sheriff’s Office official profile and contemporary reporting: born October 11, 1953, Hamilton, Ohio; military service 1973–1975; long career in Ohio corrections before becoming chief deputy and then sheriff in 2005; multiple reelections including the 2020 cycle that secured a fifth term.

3.  Comparison to Joe Arpaio references the 2017 presidential pardon following the contempt conviction tied to immigration enforcement practices under the prior administration. See White House statement of August 25, 2017, and contemporaneous coverage.

4.  Historical divorce and family-structure trends are well documented in Census and CDC data showing the post-1960s acceleration after no-fault divorce reforms, the rise in single-parent households, and correlated social outcomes. See also the long-term cultural commentary in works such as Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and the earlier observations of Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

5.  Jones’s public commentary on immigration, fentanyl, and COVID-era policy is extensively recorded in local outlets (Journal-News, Local 12), national appearances, and the sheriff’s own podcast In the Saddle.

Bibliography for Further Reading

Arpaio, Joe, and Tom Fitton. Joe’s Law: America’s Toughest Sheriff Takes On Illegal Immigration, Drugs, and Everything Else That Threatens America. New York: AMACOM, 2008.

Murray, Charles. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. New York: Crown Forum, 2012.

Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 1965. (The original memorandum remains foundational for understanding family-structure effects on social outcomes.)

Putnam, Robert D. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Sheriff Richard K. Jones. Official biography and news archive at butlersheriff.org.

They Call Me Jonesy official site: theycallmejonesy.com.

U.S. Census Bureau and National Center for Health Statistics historical tables on marriage, divorce, and household composition, 1950–present.

Vance, J.D. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. New York: Harper, 2016. (Useful companion reading on the cultural and family pressures in the broader Ohio Valley region.)

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

Trump Put out the Evidence: How can media companies claim it’s all false before they actually read it?

I sat there the other day listening to the typical pre-speech coverage of President Trump’s primetime address on election security, and it was the same tired script I’ve heard for years now. The reporters and anchors could barely contain their eagerness to frame it as the desperate act of a man who cannot bring himself to abandon the most unpopular policies, no matter how toxic they may be for his own people running for reelection or for the party itself. They talked about his “gambit,” about how he was going to try to convince Republicans that the sky is falling on voting machines and foreign influence, and they already had the line ready: the president is expected to release declassified intelligence about China’s role, but of course it will all be false. How do they know it’s false before anyone has even looked at the documents? Because the network producers and the people who own those networks already decided it was false. That network of people is the real problem. They take bits and pieces, glue them together into a predetermined conclusion, and then run with it as if they have done any real analysis. One thing Donald Trump is not incapable of is putting actual evidence in front of the American people. That was the coverage before the speech even aired, right in the middle of July, while Trump was still out there logging the hours and trying to lock in the system’s security for the long haul. It is disconcerting, and it is exactly why I have spent more time than most going down the rabbit hole of what is really running our political order. When every talking head gets the same memo and says the same thing about elections, you start to wonder whether they are all that stupid or whether a lie can be denied until you die and everybody will play along.

We have known Democrats have been cheating for decades. It was not invented in 2020. I knew something was fishy in 2012. I knew it again in 2016 when Trump obviously won Florida. The panhandle results came in early, and they were overwhelmingly Republican, just as anyone who understands the state would expect. Then you had the usual delays out of the bigger Democrat-leaning counties, Brevard and the rest, where the reporting slowed to a crawl on election night. What they found was that Trump’s lead was too large to overcome with the remaining ballots, so they finally had to turn the results in. This was before COVID and the great expansion of mail-in ballots, signature verification theater, and the endless counting until the other side got what it needed. We just kept counting. That is the pattern. Now people are paying closer attention, and the same act is still necessary for Democrats and the media that cover for them. I heard the ABC reporter come straight out and say the President of the United States was going to give an address to the nation on Thursday night talking about the SAVE Act and election security, and the framing was already that he was pushing something false. Trump is not going to run again. He will be well into his eighties when he leaves office. He has done the job he set out to do and will ride off into the sunset. So why does he care so much? Because the midterms are lining up to be an overwhelming Republican year if the elections are actually secure. Democrats are going to have a hard time if everybody is watching the results carefully. I will say it again: if you are a Republican and you do not want to have to compete against another Democrat who should never have been on the ballot, you need to pay attention to making these elections as secure as possible. They cannot cheat if the system will not let them. How do you know they have been cheating? You can tell by the way the coverage is handled. They know something is there. The same ABC voice that said “President Trump falsely claims there was election fraud in 2020” did not wait to examine the evidence he was about to release. They just declared it false. Trump does not need a personal reason beyond the upcoming midterms and the simple fact that he does not want Democrats taking the House through the same methods they have used for years. The projections already lean Republican, but those projections assume a relatively clean process. Force voter ID. Make people show identification to vote. Why is that so controversial? Because Democrats cannot win if they cannot cheat, and that is a real problem that has been with us not just for a few years but for decades. That is how they have kept it close since Reagan was in office.

Both Bushes knew it was going on, and the Republican establishment did not stand up for itself. I am not a typical Republican in that sense. I knew Rob Portman pretty well before he became a senator, and I watched him drift. You get to Washington, and people start leaning on you. You start sympathizing with the other side a little. You eat lunch with them every day in the cafeteria. They have good hamburgers down there, by the way. You stand in line with the people you are supposed to be fighting, and they talk about the movies and their kids and where the kids are going to college. You develop a liking for them. Pretty soon you are voting more similarly than you ever intended, and you might even suspect that some of them only got into office through fraud, but you do not want to see them embarrassed. You do not want to expose it because friendships have formed. Fair enough. It happens in almost every industry. But that is not what voters are voting for. Voters want representative government. When you soft-pedal the problem, you are voting not to give it to them. The 2020 election was the clearest case yet of the system deciding that President Trump would not be allowed a second term, so they threw him out. They rigged it the way they do in other nations, the way Russia and much of Europe keep their people in power. Democrats have kept it close in the United States through election fraud for many decades, and reporters are being deliberately disingenuous when they refuse to admit it. They know it. When they come out and say “President Trump falsely claims” before they have even looked at the reports he just released, they are not doing journalism. They are taking the corporate byline and running with it. He put the evidence out there. No one analyzed it. They just declared the claim false.

I happen to know precisely where a lot of the theft took place, and there were a lot of crooks involved. Now that more people are open to looking at it, we have to talk about it and make sure it doesn’t happen again. That is what Trump’s national address was about: why we need secure elections, what we have learned, and what needs to happen going forward so the SAVE Act can finally pass. He went to the public and laid it out, and the criticism from the media types was extraordinary in its uniformity and its arrogance. How do they have the right to say he provided evidence of fraud involving China and then act as if they already know more than he does? They were given a line by the producers and the owners of their media companies: Trump is crazy, there was no election fraud in 2020, even though everybody who has looked at the data knows there was an abundance of it. Most Democrats currently in office should not be there because the elections that put them there were compromised. Look at Kentucky. The teachers’ unions and the college towns in Louisville, Lexington, and Frankfort were able to push a candidate over the top with enough votes collected without proper identification. Anywhere you have low election security, you are going to find Democrats excelling and winning even when the broader population is not actually voting for them. That is the problem. If you do not have secure elections, you do not have representative government. You have a system that has seized power and is using its influence to destroy the free will of the voters. That is not acceptable. Before you say “he falsely claims,” you should at least look at the evidence. Trump put it out. There is a lot of it.

The documents released with the speech show that over a period of years starting in the 2020 cycle, China carried out what is described as the largest compromise of election data in history, acquiring roughly 220 million U.S. voter files. Those files included names, home addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that could be used to register voters or engage in other forms of interference. Intelligence assessments indicated that China assigned a specific data-exploitation unit to the project. U.S. agencies began learning about the compromise of tens of millions of voters’ data across 18 states as early as 2020, yet the information was suppressed and downplayed. The same set of documents underscores long-known vulnerabilities in electronic voting and ballot-counting systems. Adversaries including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea can compromise election infrastructure, particularly centralized repositories such as voter registration databases, poll books, and official election websites. A DHS review of available state voter rolls and public records identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in federal elections, and the actual number is almost certainly higher because several Democrat-controlled states refused to share their full files. These are not fringe theories. These are the findings that the administration declassified and put before the country. The media response was to declare the claims false before the public had time to read a single page.

That is the conspiracy. The people who run the corporations that own the major media outlets want to reserve the right to insert Democrats into office and play kingmaker through illegal or insecure election means, whether through machines, mail-in ballots with no reliable chain of custody, or perpetual counting that continues until the desired margin appears. There is no voter ID on many of these ballots, so votes can be manufactured until the numbers work out. There is a great deal of evidence that this is exactly what has happened in multiple cycles, and it is a big story. A primetime address should have received far more serious treatment. Instead, you see how the media handled it, because they are part of the problem. Corporations want to control who gets into office, which is why so many policy outcomes look the way they do. It is not because we freely chose them. It is because the system has been captured by people who treat free elections as an obstacle rather than the foundation of self-government. Free and secure elections are how a people maintains its own government. They are taking that away, and that is why Trump went on primetime and talked about it. We had a hard lesson in 2020. We are still fiddling around with the facts when we should have taken decisive action years ago. He went to the airwaves because the matter is serious, and it will remain serious for every election going forward.

The media voices who dismiss all of this without examination are in bed with the same forces trying to rob people of their ability to maintain their own government through honest elections. That is supposed to stay here. Until we address it, we will keep having the same problems. The SAVE Act needs to pass. If you are serious about representative government, demand it. Call your representatives. Pay attention to the midterms. Make the process as hard to cheat as possible. That is the only way the people who actually show up and vote get the government they intend.

If you have ever read my book on business and the gunfighter approach to dealing with reality as it is rather than as the comfortable prefer it to be, you already know where I stand on these matters of discipline and clear-eyed assessment. The larger story of how power actually operates in this country, and the deeper forces that shape the political order, is something I have been exploring at length. Disclosure of the full picture requires understanding the politics of heaven itself. The evidence is there for anyone willing to look past the daily bylines.

Footnotes

1.  Pre-speech and post-speech framing by ABC, NBC, and CNN treated Trump’s claims as predetermined falsehoods; networks declined to air the July 16, 2026, primetime address live on their main channels. See ABC News, “Key takeaways from Trump’s election speech,” July 17, 2026; The Hill, “James Carville criticizes networks for not airing Trump’s election security speech,” July 17, 2026.

2.  On 2016 Florida reporting patterns, panhandle counties reported early and heavily for Trump while certain larger counties lagged; contemporaneous accounts noted the scale of the Republican margin forced earlier reporting. See Politico, “How Trump won Florida,” November 8, 2016.

3.  The SAVE America Act (also referred to as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act) mandates documentary proof of citizenship for registration, photo identification for voting in federal elections, and greater state sharing of voter-roll data. House passage occurred in February 2026; subsequent efforts attached provisions to other legislation amid Senate resistance. See Bipartisan Policy Center, “Six Things to Know About the SAVE America Act,” updated July 17, 2026; Congress.gov, H.R. 7296 and related measures.

4.  White House release accompanying the July 16, 2026, address: “Over a period of years starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history—resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.” Includes names, addresses, phone numbers, and party preferences; intelligence community assessments spanning 2020–2026 document adversary capabilities against election infrastructure. Official White House page, “Election Integrity,” July 2026, and linked declassified packages on China’s acquisition of American voter data and vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems.

5.  DHS review cited in the same release identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote based on available state rolls and public records; the administration noted the figure is incomplete because certain states declined full data sharing. White House, “Election Integrity,” July 2026.

6.  Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database contains more than 1,400 documented, proven instances of election fraud across multiple categories (as of late 2025 updates exceeding 1,600 sampled cases). Heritage Foundation, Election Fraud Map and Database, electionfraud.heritage.org.

7.  Kentucky races have repeatedly featured claims of irregularities concentrated in urban and university-adjacent counties with weaker identification practices; former Governor Matt Bevin and others publicly alleged absentee and machine issues after close contests. Courier-Journal, “What officials, experts say about Bevin’s voter fraud claims,” November 2019; ongoing Kentucky Attorney General election-integrity inquiries, 2026.

8.  Intelligence Community assessments (January 2020 onward) state that U.S. adversaries including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea possess the capability to compromise election infrastructure, with centralized voter databases and poll books judged most vulnerable: declassified materials released July 16, 2026, White House Election Integrity portal.

Bibliography

ABC News. “Key takeaways from Trump’s elections speech.” July 17, 2026. https://abcnews.com/Politics/key-takeaways-trumps-elections-speech/story?id=134835191.

Bipartisan Policy Center. “Six Things to Know About the SAVE America Act

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

The Frogman of Loveland: Down the Rabbit Hole to the Politics of Heaven and Magonia

I did not set out to become the UFO guy. I woke up asking practical questions about power, motivation, and politics—the same way I have solved engineering and organizational problems my entire career in aerospace and executive roles. Something was broken in our understanding of how the world actually works, and I wanted to fix it by following the evidence wherever it led. That path started with the Bible, the divine council, and the politics of heaven itself. It took me through anthropology, local Ohio archaeology along the Little Miami River valley I know so well, and straight into the work of Jacques Vallée. The synchronicity is very interesting.

When I began writing The Politics of Heaven, my goal was straightforward: to understand the motivations of the characters we pray to and interact with in scripture. The Bible is not a collection of moral fables; it is a chronicle of encounters with super-characters—angels, demons, principalities, powers, and the divine council. Job’s story alone shows Satan as a member of that council, maneuvering Yahweh into testing a loyal man. That is politics. Pure, raw politics. If we are going to engage with these forces through prayer, ritual, or culture, we had better know what they want. Human politics is not enough. We need to map the agendas of the non-human intelligences that have been shaping events from the beginning.

That line of inquiry naturally led me to anthropology. Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough remains one of my favorite books after years of reading it. It opened the door to how cultures worldwide have interacted with the spirit world—the “great spirit,” ancestors, and other intelligences. Modern anthropology grew out of that comparative study, but it largely stopped at human societies. It cataloged myths, rituals, and shamans without seriously asking whether the beings on the other side of those rituals had their own coherent politics, territories, and long-term strategies. I propose we need a new branch: an anthropology of non-human intelligence and its impact on human history, culture, and current events.

Living here in the Cincinnati area, with deep roots in Butler County and the river valleys, the evidence was literally under my feet and in my backyard. The Little Miami River corridor is thick with Hopewell-era ceremonial earthworks. Fort Ancient sits on a plateau overlooking the river, just a short distance from Loveland and Milford—3.5 miles of precisely engineered earthen walls enclosing roughly 100 acres, with documented astronomical alignments with the solstices and lunar standstills. It was not a fort in the military sense; it was a monumental ritual and observational complex. 

Further down the valley, in what is now Terrace Park, there once stood one of Hamilton County’s largest prehistoric earthworks—an enclosure of about 80 acres along the bluff above the Little Miami. In 1820, it was still visible, six feet high and twelve feet wide at the base. Today, homes, gardens, and part of a school sit atop it. Other mounds in the area were leveled for roads like Wooster Pike or disappeared under development. These were not random piles of dirt. They shared the same sophisticated geometry and mathematics seen at the great Newark Earthworks—precise circles, octagons, and alignments that encoded lunar cycles (the 18.6-year standstill), solar events, and what appears to be practical knowledge of π and equal-area constructions between squares and circles. 

Newark itself is staggering. The Great Circle and Octagon complex once sprawled over several square miles. Researchers like Ray Hively, Robert Horn, Bradley Lepper, and William Romain have documented alignments of breathtaking precision—every major lunar standstill direction embedded in the architecture when viewed over the local horizon. These were not defensive works or casual gathering places. They were cosmic engines, ritual machines designed to connect heaven and earth, time and space. Shamans almost certainly used them in altered states—likely with psychedelics or other techniques—to communicate with the spirit world. The geometry stripped away ordinary filters and tuned the participants to frequencies where non-human intelligences could interact. 

If we had not paved over so many of these sites with neighborhoods, roads, and golf courses, places like the Terrace Park earthwork and others around Milford would rank as world-heritage-level marvels alongside the pyramids or Stonehenge. The precision of their construction, the labor involved, and the astronomical knowledge encoded in them point to something far beyond ordinary tribal engineering. Either the Hopewell independently achieved mathematical and observational sophistication that rivals anything in the ancient world, or they were receiving information and instruction from intelligences that already understood these patterns.

That brings me to the frogman.

Just a few miles upstream and downstream from these lost or buried ceremonial centers along the Little Miami, people have been seeing something that does not fit ordinary biology. In 1955, a businessman near Loveland reported three or four humanoid figures, three to four feet tall, with leathery skin and frog- or lizard-like faces, gathered near a bridge or along the riverbank. One version mentions a wand-like object emitting sparks or light. In 1972, Loveland police officer Ray Shockey encountered a similar being on Riverside Drive near the old Totes boot factory and the river. It stood up in his headlights. His partner, Mark Mathews, later claimed to have shot one; decades afterward, he said it was a large tailless iguana that had escaped a pet owner and was living near warm factory pipes. The legend persisted anyway—scrape marks on guardrails, a creature climbing over or under them and vanishing into the water. In 2016, near Lake Isabella (right across from Indian Hill and close to the old Terrace Park area), Pokémon Go players reported seeing a large, frog-like figure standing on its hind legs. 

My family has turned the Loveland Frogman into a running joke with the grandkids. “Let’s go catch a frogman tonight down by the river.” It is fifteen minutes from the house. We laugh, but the pattern is hard to ignore. These sightings cluster in the exact river corridor where major Hopewell ritual sites once stood—sites now largely erased by modern development. The beings show up looking for something that is no longer there: the shamans, the rituals, the precise geometric invitations that once opened doors between worlds. They arrive a couple of thousand years too late or too early, stepping over guardrails on Kemper Road or near Lake Isabella, still drawn to the old power spots along the Little Miami.

This is where Jacques Vallée enters the story through pure synchronicity. While sharing early drafts of The Politics of Heaven with agents, publishers, and consultants, multiple people independently told me the same thing: “You sound like Jacques Vallée. You need to read Passport to Magonia.” I had avoided deep dives into UFO literature because I did not want to be labeled the UFO guy. I knew Vallée had consulted on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but I had not read his work. When the book arrived from Amazon the next day—waiting at a distribution center as if it had been pre-positioned—I opened it and immediately recognized the territory.

Vallée’s central argument in Passport to Magonia (1969) is that modern UFO occupants are not new. They are the fairies, elves, sylphs, demons, angels, and aerial beings of folklore repackaged for a technological age. He draws on medieval accounts of ships from Magonia—a legendary realm in the clouds whose sailors collected grain knocked down by storms—and shows the same encounter structure repeating across centuries: aerial craft, non-human entities, interaction (sometimes seductive or revelatory, sometimes disturbing), and departure. The beings adapt their appearance and story to the expectations of the witnesses. They leave physical traces but behave in ways that violate the physics implied by their appearance. They operate as a control system or an influence mechanism, interacting with human consciousness over time. 

Magonia, in Vallée’s reading, functions like a rival sovereignty—a political order operating just outside or alongside our dimensional reality. That matched exactly what my research into the divine council and biblical politics had already led me to conclude independently. These are not simple visitors from another planet dropping in for disclosure or friendly ET chats. They are ultra-terrestrials or interdimensional intelligences with their own agendas, territories, and long game. They have been shaping human culture, religion, and politics for millennia—sometimes as gods or angels, sometimes as tricksters or tormentors. The Hopewell geometers and shamans were engaging them through precise ritual architecture. The frogman sightings suggest they still patrol the old contact zones.

I am not claiming every sighting is profound. Some are misidentifications or hoaxes. But the pattern—ancient ceremonial precision along the same rivers where cryptid activity persists, the synchronicity of arriving at Vallée’s conclusions through biblical and political inquiry, the consistent folklore structure across cultures—demands serious attention. Steven Spielberg captured a sanitized version in Close Encounters and E.T. The cute, friendly aliens who want to take us for a ride or phone home. The real record includes missing time, abductions, trauma, and manipulation. Vallée documented the disturbing side; mainstream disclosure narratives often soften it.

Understanding their politics matters. If these intelligences have motivations—territorial, informational, or influence-based—then treating them as either nonexistent or purely benevolent is a form of strategic blindness. Just as we map human political actors, we need to map theirs. The Bible already does some of that work. Anthropology and archaeology can do more if we stop pretending the “spirit world” was only a psychological projection. The evidence from Newark, Fort Ancient, the lost mounds of Terrace Park and Milford, the persistent frogman activity, and Vallée’s comparative folklore all point in the same direction: non-human intelligences have been here, interacting with us, and they have their own order.

I did not chase this rabbit hole for fame or money. There is little of either in the following evidence, this far outside the box. I followed it because the questions were honest and the evidence was insistent. The Politics of Heaven is the result—a treasure hunt through scripture, history, archaeology, and personal experience that refuses to stop at comfortable boundaries. The synchronicity with Vallée’s work was not a coincidence; it was confirmation that the evidence converges.

We are long past the point where we can afford to dismiss these patterns as mere folklore or swamp gas. The beings that built—or inspired—the precise geometries of the Hopewell earthworks, that still appear along the same rivers in forms adapted to our expectations, and that the Bible chronicles as members of a divine council with political agency, are operating with agendas. Mapping those agendas is not a conspiracy theory. It is the next necessary step in anthropology, political strategy, and honest theology.

The frogman is still out there, or something like him. The old sites are still under the neighborhoods. And the politics of heaven—and of Magonia—continue whether we pay attention or not.

Footnotes (selected key references; full bibliography follows):

1.  Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers (1969; various editions). Core thesis on continuity between UFO occupants and historical aerial beings/fairies from Magonia and similar traditions.

2.  Reports on Loveland Frogman: Singular Fortean Society coverage of 1972 officer sightings (Shockey/Mathews); WCPO 2016 interview with Mathews identifying the shot creature as a large iguana; 1955 Stringfield report of businessman sighting near Loveland/Little Miami bridges; 2016 Pokémon Go sighting near Lake Isabella.

3.  Terrace Park earthwork: Historical Society of Terrace Park records noting a large ~80-acre enclosure visible into the 19th/20th century, now largely covered by development, homes, and school grounds—other local mounds destroyed by road construction.

4.  Fort Ancient: Descriptions of hilltop enclosure overlooking Little Miami River, ~3.5 miles of walls, astronomical alignments (solstice, lunar). See National Park Service and archaeological summaries.

5.  Newark Earthworks geometry and astronomy: Foundational work by Ray Hively and Robert Horn (1982 onward) on lunar standstill alignments in the Octagon; Bradley Lepper and William Romain on geometry, “squaring the circle” relations, cosmic/ritual function, pilgrimage center aspects. UNESCO World Heritage designation for Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks (2023) includes several Ohio sites.

6.  Hopewell culture context: Widespread ceremonial earthworks across Ohio river valleys (Scioto, Little Miami, etc.), ~200 BCE–500 CE, advanced mathematics, astronomy, trade, likely shamanic ritual use of geometry and altered states. Many sites were lost to agriculture and urban development.

7.  Biblical references: Job (divine council politics, Satan as a member testing Yahweh’s servant); broader Enochic and prophetic traditions on principalities, powers, and heavenly politics.

8.  Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough (various editions). Foundational comparative study of myth, ritual, and interaction with spirit/great spirit across cultures; inspiration for expanded anthropology.

Bibliography (selected; expands on footnotes for depth):

•  Vallée, Jacques. Passport to Magonia.

•  Hively, Ray, and Robert Horn. “Geometry and Astronomy in Prehistoric Ohio.” Journal for the History of Astronomy: Archaeoastronomy Supplement (1982 and subsequent papers).

•  Lepper, Bradley T. Multiple works on Newark Earthworks as ceremonial landscape, pilgrimage center, and geometric/astronomical achievement.

•  Romain, William F. Works on Hopewell geometry, astronomy, cosmology, and Fort Ancient.

•  Squier, Ephraim George, and Edwin Hamilton Davis. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848). Foundational survey including Ohio earthworks.

•  Historical Society of Terrace Park records on local prehistoric earthworks.

•  Singular Fortean Society, WCPO, and contemporary newspaper accounts of Loveland Frogman incidents (1955, 1972, 2016).

•  National Park Service and Ohio History Connection materials on Fort Ancient and Hopewell sites.

•  Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough.

•  Biblical texts (Job, Enoch traditions, references to divine council and principalities).

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

The Ohio Governor’s Race: Why Vivek Ramaswamy Is Pulling Away as the Money Dries Up For the Loser Amy Acton

I have been saying for months that this Ohio governor’s race was never going to be as close as the liberal media and the Democratic machine kept insisting. As long as Amy Acton could raise and spend roughly equal amounts of money, they could buy enough advertising to keep the “horse race” illusion alive. That is how the game works in modern politics. Fundraising and media buys create the perception of competitiveness long after the fundamentals have already decided the outcome. But we are now in the middle of July 2026, and the gap is becoming impossible to hide. Elon Musk just put $5 million into the super PAC supporting Vivek Ramaswamy. That single check changes the entire dynamic, and the other side knows it.

I have watched David Pepper and the Marc Elias-style operatives do this routine before. They treat elections like a production where money buys the narrative, and the narrative buys time. They prop up candidates who cannot stand on their own record by flooding the airwaves with ads that soften the edges and attack the opponent on personality or wealth rather than substance. It works until the money runs short. Then the horse stops getting free drinks at the strip joint, and reality walks in. Right now, the money is tightening up for Acton, and the media that was happy to call this a toss-up while the checks were clearing is suddenly quieter about the fundamentals.

Vivek Ramaswamy is the exceptional candidate in this race. He is a Cincinnati native who built real companies, created real value, and succeeded on merit in competitive fields. He is a successful author and thinker who has already proven he can operate at the highest levels of government efficiency efforts alongside Elon Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency. He understands free markets, individual initiative, and the dangers of centralized government that tries to manage every resource and outcome from above. That is the opposite of the society Acton and her backers have spent years promoting—one that empowers mediocre administrators while punishing the very people and policies that generate prosperity.

Acton, by contrast, is a textbook product of the empire of mediocrity. She was the face of Ohio’s COVID lockdowns as state health director. She helped shut down businesses, kept drive-throughs and dining rooms closed at places like McDonald’s under ever-shifting rules, and contributed to the destruction of countless small enterprises that never recovered. Those policies were later exposed in court as unconstitutional overreaches. I had conversations with members of the Ohio Supreme Court back in 2020 as those cases were being prepared, and it was obvious even then that the lockdowns could not survive constitutional scrutiny. Governor DeWine eventually had to back away because the legal foundation was collapsing under him. Acton resigned under pressure from angry citizens protesting in the streets with no clear end in sight. None of that is the record of an exceptional leader. It is the record of someone who followed the centralized script, expanded bureaucratic power, and left real damage behind.

DeWine’s endorsement of Vivek took courage. It is never easy for a term-limited governor to put his name behind a successor who is positioned to outperform him, especially when that successor is running against the person DeWine himself appointed during the pandemic. The fact that he did it anyway tells you something important about where the party and the state are headed. Vivek is not an insider continuation of the old order. He is the disruption the old order needs if Ohio is going to stop losing ground on taxes, education, and economic freedom.

The money tells the real story right now. Vivek’s supporting super PAC has raised serious resources—tens of millions—and is deploying them aggressively. The $5 million from Musk is not just symbolic; it is a signal that serious people who create wealth and understand results are backing him. Acton cannot match that pace. When the advertising dollars dry up, the media loses interest in pretending this is a close contest. Voters are left with the actual records: one candidate who built success and wants to bring that same energy to Columbus, and another whose signature achievement was helping lock down the state economy in ways that proved unconstitutional and economically destructive.

I have been consistent on this since the race took shape. Vivek was always going to outperform the low expectations the media set for him once people looked past the noise. He is rolling out plans on property tax reform, real education choice that puts parents back in charge, and cooperation with a Trump administration that remains popular in Ohio for delivering results on the economy and border security. Acton’s side is still trying to run the old playbook—lawfare, media narratives, and enough cash to keep the “horse race” story alive. But the cash is not keeping up, and the voters are not buying the illusion the way they once did.

This race is a clear choice between two different visions of government. One side believes in self-initiative, free markets, and limited centralized power—the approach that actually lifts societies. The other side believes the government should take from producers and redistribute according to political priorities, the same model that has produced mediocrity and dependency wherever it has been tried at scale. Ohio does not need another governor who manages decline while protecting the administrative class. It needs a governor who will cut waste, reform taxes, fix the schools, and let exceptional people and exceptional businesses thrive rather than punishing them.

We are still a few months from November, but the trajectory is clear. As the funding gap widens and the media can no longer afford to prop up the fiction of a close race, Vivek Ramaswamy is going to pull away. The fundamentals were always on his side. The money is now confirming what the fundamentals already showed. Ohio has a real chance to choose exceptional leadership over the empire of mediocrity that has dominated too much of state government for too long. I have been saying it for months. The evidence is now impossible to ignore.

Footnotes

1.  Elon Musk contributed $5 million to V-PAC, the super PAC supporting Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor. Cleveland.com, July 15, 2026.

2.  Vivek Ramaswamy won the Republican primary for governor on May 5, 2026, with approximately 82.4% of the vote. Ballotpedia, “Ohio gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial election, 2026.”

3.  Amy Acton served as Ohio’s state health director and played a central role in the state’s early COVID-19 response and lockdown policies under Governor Mike DeWine.

4.  Multiple court challenges in Ohio and elsewhere during 2020–2021 found various lockdown and business closure orders unconstitutional or beyond executive authority.

5.  Governor Mike DeWine endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy for governor in 2025–2026, despite Acton having been his appointee during the pandemic period.

6.  Ramaswamy’s campaign and supporting super PAC have raised and spent tens of millions, significantly outpacing Acton’s fundraising in key periods of 2026.

Bibliography (selected for further reading)

•  Ballotpedia. “Ohio gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial election, 2026” (primary results and candidate profiles).

•  Cleveland.com. “Elon Musk puts $5 million behind ex-DOGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy’s governor bid.” July 15, 2026.

•  Forbes. “Ramaswamy Wins Republican Primary In Ohio Governor’s Race.” May 5, 2026.

•  AP News. “Trump-backed Vivek Ramaswamy wins Ohio Republican Party’s endorsement in 2026 governor’s race.” May 9, 2025.

•  Vivek for Ohio campaign materials and platform statements (vivekforohio.com).

•  Ohio Capital Journal and other Ohio political reporting on super PAC spending and fundraising totals, 2025–2026.

•  Court records and contemporaneous reporting on Ohio COVID-era lockdown litigation and constitutional challenges (2020–2022).

•  Various polling aggregates from mid-2026 showing the general election contest between Ramaswamy and Acton.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

The Empire of Mediocrity and the Call for American Exceptionalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

There Are Millions of Graham Platners Taking Advantage of Liberal Women: They hide bad conduct in collectivist movements, such as communism

I heard the news the other day about this Graham Platner loser dropping out of the Maine Senate race, and it struck me the same way it probably struck many people who watched his video statement. Here was a guy who had just won the Democratic primary in a big way, an oysterman and Marine veteran out of Sullivan, Maine, who beat the establishment favorite and raised something like sixteen million dollars in contributions for a race against Susan Collins. Then a former girlfriend comes forward with a story about him forcing himself on her back in 2021 while drunk, ignoring her repeated objections, and the whole thing unravels in a matter of days. He denies it outright, calls the claims false and not real, but still suspends operations and files the paperwork to withdraw before the July 13 deadline so the party can scramble for a replacement by the 27th. In his eleven-minute video, he says it is not an admission of guilt, that some will think it is, but it most certainly is not, and that they are stepping aside not because of the allegations but because those in power are taking away the structures and access. For the movement to continue, it cannot be him. 

That surface reaction, the astonishment and the quick takes, does not get deep enough. What happened here is not just another politician caught in a mess of his own making. It is a window into something larger about how certain kinds of people rise in the current version of Democrat politics, especially the populist left strain that has been building since Bernie Sanders and now carries elements of what some are calling a blue MAGA or communist-adjacent energy. Platner fits a pattern that keeps showing up. Multiple ex-girlfriends have described intimidating behavior, one saying he twisted her arm and locked her in a bedroom until she calmed down, another recounting comments about raping intruders to show dominance, and still another alleging he removed protection without consent during sex. There was the chest tattoo, a Totenkopf that he first claimed he did not understand, just a skull and crossbones from a drunken night with Marines in Croatia in 2007, but ex-girlfriends say he knew exactly what it was, bragged about it as a reminder that the United States was the evil bad guy overseas, and called it his Totenkopf. Then came the old Reddit posts where he described himself as a communist, said all cops are bastards, and made other remarks disparaging women, rural White Americans, and various groups. He had also been sending sexually explicit texts to other women during a rough patch in his marriage, something his wife publicly defended while saying they had a great marriage overall. 

When the latest allegation hit from Jenny Racicot, the pressure from national and state Democrats mounted fast, and endorsements started peeling away. The party machinery that had lifted him after Governor Janet Mills stepped aside suddenly found the strings being pulled. Platner framed it as the establishment taking away his ability to run, his access to funding, and the mechanisms of power, even though he had beaten their preferred candidate in the primary. It sounded like an admission that the machine believed the story or at least believed it would stick and cost them the seat. Susan Collins, for all the complaints about her being a RINO Republican at best, suddenly looked like the safer bet in a race that matters for Senate control. The whole episode felt familiar, like watching the same movie the Republican side lived through a decade ago, only now it is the Democrats’ turn and the characters coming forward to fill the populist void on their side carry different baggage.

I have been saying for a long time that the Tea Party movement was never really about pulling the Republican Party back to some Chamber of Commerce comfort zone. It was the start of something bigger: MAGA, a demand for individual accountability and pushback against the permanent class that had captured both parties. The RINOs like McConnell, Romney, and Kasich types resisted Trump because they saw the threat to their control. They got pushed to the margins or had to adapt. What we are watching now on the Democrat side is their version of that purification, except the energy they are riding is collectivist at its core. Bernie Sanders gave it shape, and now you see candidates who talk about Medicare for All, banning billionaires from buying elections, ending wars forever, and strong unions, but the people who step forward to lead that charge often bring personal conduct that would get them run out of a more individual-responsibility culture. Platner is not an outlier in that environment. He is a predictable product of it.

The warm blanket of collectivism is what draws these characters and protects them for a while. When you tell people that the individual does not matter as much as the group, that judgment on personal behavior is bourgeois or oppressive, or whatever the current phrase is, you create space for someone with a Nazi tattoo, a history of rough treatment of women, and a trail of denied allegations to present himself as the champion of the working class. The cause becomes the excuse. Personal integrity gets subordinated to participation in the movement. If you are out there advocating for the collective good, for the masses against the oligarchs, then who cares if your private life shows a pattern of dominance, non-consent, or simple low character? The ideology says do not judge the individual; judge him by his alignment with the larger project. That is why you keep seeing the same types of behavior surface. They find a home where their dysfunction does not trigger the same social cost it would elsewhere.

I have watched enough of this over the years to know that sexual conduct is one of the clearest windows into character. People who live for self-pleasure, who chase validation without scrutiny, who treat others as means to an end, often gravitate toward environments that promise no judgment. Liberal politics has been that environment for decades for a certain kind of man. It is not that every liberal man is like this, but the ones who are find it easier to operate there. The women who get drawn in, the ones who are insecure and looking for collective cover, often end up in situations they later regret. They talk about wanting a strong, dominant presence, but they do not look for it on the side that might actually hold them accountable or demand standards. They stay inside the circle where the bad behavior can be reframed as a moment of weakness, or the fault of the system, or something the collective will forgive because the higher cause matters more. You see it in the wine-tasting crowds, the middle-aged women who start hitting on everyone once the drinks flow, the husbands standing off to the side, embarrassed, while their wives seek validation in a group setting. It is the same impulse that makes collectivism attractive to people who do not want their personal record examined too closely. Four or five abortions, repeated cheating, substance issues, whatever the story is, the group provides the blanket. Do not judge me for my individual choices; judge me for my participation in empowering the masses.

That is the danger with someone like Platner. On the surface, he looked like a fresh face, a veteran oysterman who could connect with working people in a state facing real economic pressures. Underneath was the same pattern that had shown up with other figures on that side of the aisle in recent years. The party did not know what to do when the stories kept coming, so they did what machines do: they pulled the plug once it became clear he could no longer win or raise money effectively. Platner’s response was to blame the structures rather than own the conduct that had turned the structures against him. That is also classic. It is never the individual’s fault in a collectivist frame. It is the machine, the establishment, the powers that be who are threatened by the movement.

The Republican side went through its own version of this a decade ago and is still sorting some of it. The difference is that the underlying philosophy on that side, even when imperfectly practiced, still holds room for individual responsibility and personal conduct as legitimate standards. Trump himself came out of a Playboy background in the eighties and nineties, lived that life openly, and the people who supported him later knew what they were getting. Melania came out of that same world, and they built something that has lasted. He did not hide behind a collective excuse when things got hard. He used his brand and his willingness to fight the permanent class to deliver on borders, energy, judges, and pushing back against the administrative state. The voters who backed him were not endorsing the 1990s lifestyle; they were endorsing the man who would impose limits on government power and restore some sense of sovereignty. That is why the purification worked on the right. It was messy, and it took years, but it produced a filter that still operates. People who cannot meet a basic standard of personal integrity or who treat politics as cover for their own appetites get exposed and sidelined eventually.

On the Democratic side, the filter is currently weaker because the ideology itself discourages individual judgment. The populist energy they are trying to harness is being filled by characters who would have been laughed out of a serious movement on the other side. You are going to see more Graham Platners before this cycle finishes. They will keep coming forward because the environment rewards the ability to perform the collectivist script, while their personal lives stay hidden or are excused. The more they double down on that direction, the more the low-character actors will find it a comfortable place to operate. Republicans already paid the price and did the work of cleaning house. Democrats are just starting their version, and it looks like it is going to be uglier because the philosophy they are embracing provides better cover for dysfunction.

That is why some of the dumbest outcomes in politics keep happening. People who would never tolerate certain behavior in their own families or businesses will defend it or excuse it when it comes from someone aligned with their political tribe. They will vote for policies that demonstrably harm the vulnerable, erode family formation, import incompatible cultures, and centralize power in unaccountable bureaucracies, all while insisting it is compassion or progress. On the surface, it looks like ideology run amok. Deeper, it looks like influence is amplifying the parts of human nature that are already broken.

Platner’s short rise and fall is just one more data point in that larger story. A man with a documented pattern of behavior that should have disqualified him from any position of trust found a lane in the current Democrat populist moment because the ideology provided cover and the machine needed a fresh face who could raise money and excite the base. When the cover began to fail, the machine cut him loose, and he blamed it. The cycle will repeat with the next candidate who can perform the script while carrying similar baggage. On the other side, the work of insisting on personal conduct and individual responsibility continues, however imperfectly. That insistence is not just political hygiene. It is resistance to the older pattern that wants humanity to dissolve responsibility into collectives so the real influences can operate without resistance.

Footnotes

1.  National Review and multiple outlets reported Platner’s formal withdrawal letter and video statement on or around July 8–10, 2026, including his phrasing that the structures were being taken away and that it was not an admission of guilt.

2.  Politico, CNN, and Washington Post reporting on Jenny Racicot’s allegations of forced sex in 2021, including details of the incident and her decision to come forward after Platner’s public denials of abusive behavior.

3.  New York Times reporting on multiple ex-girlfriends describing physical intimidation, locked rooms, and other conduct, including Lyndsey Fifield’s accounts from 2013–2015.

4.  New York Post and other reporting on the Totenkopf tattoo, ex-girlfriends stating Platner knew its meaning and used it as a reminder that the U.S. was the “evil bad guy overseas,” and his initial public claim that he did not understand the symbol.

5.  Reporting on deleted Reddit posts from 2009–2021 in which Platner described himself as a communist and made various disparaging remarks; also coverage of sexually explicit texts sent during marital difficulties and the wife’s public defense.

6.  Campaign finance totals and primary results showing Platner’s strong performance after Mills suspended her campaign and his subsequent withdrawal before the July 13, 2026 ballot deadline, with the Maine Democratic Party given until July 27 to name a replacement.

Bibliography for Further Reading

•  The Book of Enoch, translated editions with commentary on the watchers, giants, and pre-flood rebellion.

•  The Bible, particularly Genesis 6, Daniel on principalities and powers, Ephesians 6 on spiritual warfare, and Revelation on the ongoing conflict.

•  Dead Sea Scrolls materials and related scholarship on Second Temple period views of heavenly politics and fallen entities.

•  My own forthcoming book, The Politics of Heaven, explores these threads through history and current events.

•  The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and its developing sequel, which apply lessons of individual will, resilience, and integrity to institutional and political environments.

•  Tail of the Dragon and The Symposium of Justice for narrative treatments of personal conduct, justice, and hidden power structures.

•  Standard works on UFO disclosure and non-human intelligence, including historical government documents and researcher compilations on reported entity types and their interactions with human systems.

•  Histories of the Tea Party movement and its evolution into broader populist realignments on the right, with attention to the internal purification process.

•  Accounts of Bernie Sanders’ influence and the subsequent development of progressive populist currents on the

Rich Hoffman

More about me

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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