The announcement by Hamilton City Schools Superintendent Andrea Blevins in mid-January 2026 marked a significant moment in the ongoing fiscal challenges facing public education in Ohio. The district, serving the city of Hamilton in Butler County, unveiled a plan to eliminate approximately 153 positions—representing about 12% of its workforce—as part of a broader strategy to address a projected $10 million structural deficit for the 2026–2027 school year.<sup>1</sup> This included closing buildings such as Fairwood Elementary, consolidating the freshman campus into the high school, outsourcing preschool and nursing services, and implementing reductions across administrative, teaching, clerical, food service, custodial, and other roles.<sup>2</sup> While the initial figure of 153 positions was highlighted in media reports, district officials noted that through natural attrition and retirements, the actual number of forced separations could drop to around 101 or even fewer, with changes set to take effect starting in August 2026 to allow adequate notice.<sup>3</sup>
The shortfall stems from multiple converging factors: reduced state foundation funding under Ohio’s revised allocation formulas, recent changes in property tax laws that limit revenue growth, and declining student enrollment, reflecting broader demographic shifts in industrial communities like Hamilton.<sup>4</sup> These issues are not isolated; they illustrate a national and state-level reckoning with the sustainability of traditional public school funding models that have long relied on escalating property tax levies and generous state aid. In Hamilton’s case, the district’s current-year deficit was already around $5 million, with projections escalating without intervention, prompting proactive measures to avoid deeper program cuts or emergency borrowing.<sup>5</sup>
This development aligns with longstanding critiques of public education’s dependency on perpetual tax increases and union-driven collective bargaining agreements that prioritize salary scales, legacy costs, and benefits over merit-based compensation or operational efficiency. For decades, many Ohio school districts have assumed voters would approve levies to cover rising costs, including teacher salaries that often exceed private-sector equivalents for comparable education levels and workloads.<sup>6</sup> In Hamilton, as in neighboring districts, the era of unchecked levy approvals has ended amid economic pressures: inflation, housing affordability challenges, and taxpayer fatigue from repeated requests for additional funds. Property taxes, which fund a substantial portion of local school budgets in Ohio, have become particularly burdensome in areas with stagnant or declining industrial bases, where businesses relocate to avoid high taxation, leaving residential properties to shoulder more of the load.<sup>7</sup>
Nearby Lakota Local Schools in Butler County provide a parallel example. In 2025, voters rejected a $506 million bond issue and a permanent improvement levy tied to a district-wide facilities redesign, signaling resistance to additional tax burdens, even for infrastructure needs.<sup>8</sup> Lakota’s prior operating levies had sustained operations without new asks since 2013, but the failed 2025 measure highlighted growing skepticism toward large-scale spending proposals. This rejection occurred amid broader discussions of school choice and funding equity, where money follows students rather than zip codes, potentially forcing districts to compete on quality and cost.<sup>9</sup>
The broader Ohio context points to a deliberate policy shift toward tax relief. Political momentum, amplified by figures associated with the Trump administration and candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy in his 2026 gubernatorial bid, emphasizes reducing or eliminating state income taxes while pursuing significant rollbacks in property taxes—the “largest in Ohio’s history,” as Ramaswamy has proposed.<sup>10</sup> Ramaswamy’s platform includes making Ohio a zero-income-tax state to attract residents and businesses, coupled with aggressive property tax reductions to ease homeowner burdens and stimulate economic growth.<sup>11</sup> These ideas build on existing reforms that have lowered Ohio’s top personal income tax rate over the past decade and eliminated certain business taxes, though often at the expense of state aid to local services like schools.<sup>12</sup> Federal-level discussions under the Trump administration, including revenue from tariffs and potential clawbacks of federal taxes, further support a trajectory of lighter local tax loads over the coming decades.<sup>13</sup>
Critics of traditional public education funding argue that overreliance on property taxes has distorted community development. High levies deter business investment, contribute to population outflows, and exacerbate housing affordability issues, particularly for young families entering the market.<sup>14</sup> In declining industrial cities like Hamilton, where companies have long since departed, the tax base weakens further, creating a vicious cycle: fewer resources lead to service reductions, which accelerate out-migration. The push for enterprise zones and economic revitalization in such areas requires restraint on taxation to attract private capital, rather than burdening new opportunities with endless school funding demands.<sup>15</sup>
At the heart of these fiscal realities lies a deeper philosophical debate about the value and efficiency of public education. Collective bargaining has secured escalating wages, often tied to advanced degrees rather than performance, resulting in average teacher salaries well above those in many private-sector roles, despite generous vacation time, summers off, and job security.<sup>16</sup> Historical data shows Ohio teacher pay rising from averages around $63,000–$65,000 in the early 2010s to higher figures today, adjusted for inflation but still outpacing many comparable professions.<sup>17</sup> Proponents of reform contend that merit-based systems, competition from charters and private options, and student-centered funding (where per-pupil allocations follow the child) would incentivize excellence and cost control. Without zip-code-based monopolies, schools must attract families through superior results, not guaranteed enrollment.<sup>18</sup>
Additional pressures include the perceived ideological drift in curricula, where progressive influences have sometimes prioritized social agendas over core academic rigor, contributing to generations of students entering adulthood with skill gaps, delayed independence, and reliance on parental support.<sup>19</sup> This undermines the future tax base, as young adults struggle to form households, start families, and contribute economically. The traditional model—free transportation, extended daycare-like hours, and heavy administrative overhead—has been criticized as unsustainable, as parents increasingly drive their children to school or seek alternatives.<sup>20</sup>
The Hamilton announcement serves as an early indicator of inevitable restructuring across Ohio and beyond. Districts facing similar shortfalls will need to prioritize efficiency, reduce legacy costs, and adapt to competitive models. Charter schools, homeschooling, and voucher programs will gain traction as families demand better value. While painful in the short term—job losses, building consolidations, and service adjustments—the transition promises a more accountable, innovative education landscape aligned with economic realities and taxpayer priorities.<sup>21</sup>
This shift reflects a broader cultural move toward meritocracy, fiscal responsibility, and reduced government dependency. Public schools will survive, but in leaner, more responsive forms, focused on delivering robust education rather than serving as employment vehicles or ideological platforms. The warnings issued over the years about unsustainable models have materialized; adaptation, not denial, offers the path forward.<sup>22</sup> But as all these things are happening, don’t say I didn’t warn everyone. They chose to ignore the inevitable. The public school product costs too much. Does too little. And has turned out to be destructive to society, not beneficial. So lots of changes are coming, because they have to.
Bibliography
• Local 12 (WKRC), “Tri-State school district to cut 153 positions, close school amid $9.6M budget shortfall,” January 22, 2026.
• FOX19, “Hamilton City Schools announces $9.6M in budget cuts, job losses,” January 20, 2026.
• WCPO, “Hamilton Schools announce cuts, including building closures,” January 2026.
• Journal-News, “Hamilton Schools announce cuts, including building closures,” January 16, 2026.
• WVXU, “Voters reject $506M Lakota Schools levy proposal,” November 4, 2025.
• Forbes, “Vivek Ramaswamy Wants To Make Ohio The Ninth No-Income-Tax State,” March 13, 2025 (updated context 2026).
• Cincinnati Enquirer, “Vivek Ramaswamy running for Ohio governor. Wants to end income, property taxes,” February 24, 2025.
• Policy Matters Ohio, reports on state tax shifts and education funding, 2024–2026.
• Tax Foundation, Ohio tax data and rankings, updated 2026.
Footnotes
1. FOX19, “Hamilton City Schools announces $9.6M in budget cuts, job losses,” January 20, 2026.
2. Local 12 (WKRC), “Tri-State school district to cut 153 positions,” January 22, 2026.
3. Journal-News, “Hamilton Schools announce cuts,” January 16, 2026.
4. Citizen Portal AI summary of Blevins’ presentation, January 16, 2026.
5. WCPO coverage of Hamilton budget announcement, January 2026.
6. Historical analyses from the Ohio Department of Education reports on teacher compensation trends.
7. Tax Foundation data on Ohio property tax burdens relative to income.
8. WVXU, “Voters reject $506M Lakota Schools levy proposal,” November 4, 2025.
9. Lakota Local Schools’ official statements on 2025 ballot rejection.
10. Vivek Ramaswamy campaign announcements, January 2026 (e.g., Facebook video on zero income tax and property tax rollback).
11. Forbes article on Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial platform, with 2026 updates.
12. Policy Matters Ohio, “The Great Ohio Tax Shift,” 2024–2025 analyses.
The recent World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, held in January 2026, featured several high-profile discussions on global stability, with a particular focus on Middle East redevelopment and peace initiatives. On January 22, 2026, Jared Kushner, a key figure in prior Middle East diplomacy and now associated with the Board of Peace, presented a detailed “master plan” for post-war Gaza reconstruction during a signing ceremony for the Board’s charter.<sup>1</sup> This vision, often referred to as “New Gaza,” proposed a comprehensive transformation of the territory through phased development, private-sector investment, and economic revitalization, drawing parallels to successful urban models in the Gulf region such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
The plan outlined four primary phases: beginning in southern Rafah (termed “New Rafah” or “City 1”), progressing to Khan Younis (“City 2”), the central refugee camps (“City 3”), and culminating in Gaza City (“City 4”). It envisioned over 100,000 permanent housing units in initial stages, alongside 200 education centers, 180 cultural, religious, and vocational facilities, and 75 medical centers.<sup>2</sup> Infrastructure elements included a new port, airport, freight rail line, logistics corridors, and ring roads to connect urban centers. Projections included raising Gaza’s GDP from a war-depressed level of approximately $362 million (as reported in 2024) to $10 billion by 2035, generating 500,000 jobs, and attracting $25–30 billion in investments, predominantly from private sources.<sup>3</sup> Construction timelines suggested major elements could be completed in 2–3 years under conditions of demilitarization and enhanced security, with an emphasis on turning the Mediterranean coastline into a thriving tourism and enterprise zone.<sup>4</sup>
This approach builds directly on the legacy of the Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan), fostering economic cooperation, technology sharing, and reduced conflict incentives.<sup>5</sup> The Accords have demonstrated measurable economic benefits, including increased trade volumes, joint ventures in sectors like agriculture and cybersecurity, and broader regional investment flows, contributing to a paradigm where prosperity serves as a counter to ideological extremism.<sup>6</sup> By prioritizing free-market principles, upper mobility, and shared economic gains over radical narratives—often rooted in anti-capitalist or Marxist-aligned ideologies—the Gaza redevelopment seeks to erode support for groups like Hamas, whose governance has historically perpetuated poverty, suppressed development, and fueled violence, as evidenced by events such as the October 7, 2023, attacks.<sup>7</sup>
Broader regional dynamics include evolving access arrangements at the Temple Mount (known as Haram al-Sharif to Muslims), the site of the ancient Jewish First and Second Temples and currently home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock. Under the post-1967 status quo, administered by the Jordanian Waqf with Israeli security oversight, Jewish prayer has traditionally been restricted to avoid escalation, with observant Jews often confined to the Western Wall plaza below.<sup>8</sup> Developments in 2025 and early 2026 saw incremental shifts, including high-profile visits and permitted prayers by figures such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, sometimes involving prostration or open recitation, amid political backing from elements within Israel’s government.<sup>9</sup> These changes have sparked debate over the erosion of longstanding arrangements, with reports of relaxed enforcement on items like prayer pages and increased Jewish visitor numbers, though no formal policy has sanctioned widespread rebuilding of a Third Temple.<sup>10</sup> But it is looming over the area as a momentum shift that is gaining a lot of traction.
Related preparations among some Orthodox Jewish groups include efforts to ready ritual elements for potential Temple service, such as the importation of red heifers from Texas for purification ashes as described in Numbers 19. Five such heifers arrived in Israel around 2022–2023, with symbolic ceremonies and practice runs conducted in 2025, though reports indicate disqualifications due to blemishes or other issues, preventing full ritual use as of early 2026.<sup>11</sup> The site’s historical significance—linked to King David’s threshing floor purchase, Solomon’s Temple construction, and Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah—continues to drive archaeological interest in adjacent areas like the City of David, where excavations reveal layers of biblical-era evidence despite longstanding access limitations.<sup>12</sup>
Critics of the Gaza plan have highlighted its top-down structure, limited direct Palestinian input, potential displacement risks, and contrasts with the territory’s current realities: extensive rubble (estimated at 60 million tonnes), humanitarian challenges, and destroyed infrastructure.<sup>13</sup> Some analyses view the proposal as overly speculative or aligned with external interests, raising questions about historic site preservation and community consultation.<sup>14</sup> Nonetheless, the overarching theme aligns with a pragmatic strategy: leveraging capitalist competition, enterprise zones, and economic opportunity to supplant suppression and radicalism with stability and prosperity. If implemented successfully—contingent on security, funding, and multilateral cooperation—this could reshape Gaza into a regional hub, diminish proxy influences (including from Iran), and facilitate deeper historical and scientific inquiry across contested areas like Jerusalem.
The plan’s ambition reflects a belief that peace through shared economic success may prove more durable than prolonged conflict, potentially benefiting residents across divides by prioritizing mobility, employment, and development over ideological division.<sup>15</sup> Personally, I’m ready to book a ticket to visit.
Bibliography
• Al Jazeera, “Map shows what would happen to Gaza under the US ‘master plan’,” January 27, 2026.
• ABC News, “Jared Kushner lays out Trump-backed ‘master plan’ for post-war Gaza,” January 23, 2026.
• The New York Times, “U.S. Lays Out a Glittering Plan for Gaza, Including Skyscrapers,” January 22, 2026.
• BBC, “US unveils plans for development of ‘New Gaza’ with skyscrapers,” January 22, 2026.
• Jerusalem Post, “Jared Kushner unveils $25 billion plan to transform Gaza into economic hub by 2035.”
• Times of Israel, various articles on Temple Mount access changes, 2025–2026.
• Wikipedia, “Abraham Accords” (accessed with updates to 2026).
• Charisma Magazine, articles on red heifer developments, 2025.
Footnotes
1. Al Jazeera, “‘Imperial’ agenda: What’s Trump’s Gaza development plan, unveiled in Davos?” January 23, 2026.
2. ABC News, “Jared Kushner lays out Trump-backed ‘master plan’ for post-war Gaza,” January 23, 2026.
3. The National, “New Gaza, new Rafah and a ‘free market economy’: Inside Kushner’s $30bn reconstruction plan,” January 22, 2026.
4. NBC News, “Jared Kushner’s vision for Gaza as a gleaming port city clashes with reality,” January 26, 2026.
5. Wikipedia, “Abraham Accords,” updated January 2026 entries.
6. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “The Abraham Accords After Gaza: A Change of Context,” April 2025 (contextual extension to 2026 impacts).
7. Breitbart, “‘Catastrophic Success’: Kushner Unveils ‘New Gaza’ Plan at Davos,” January 24, 2026.
8. Jerusalem Story, “Experts Warn: Israel Is Changing the Long-Standing Status Quo at al-Aqsa Mosque,” 2025.
9. Times of Israel, “Ben Gvir says Jewish prayer, including full prostration, permitted at Temple Mount,” May 26, 2025.
10. Jerusalem Post, “Temple Mount to relax restrictions for Jewish prayer,” November 2025.
11. Charisma Magazine, “Red Heifer Update: The Truth Behind Israel’s Recent Ceremony,” August 14, 2025.
12. Historical context from biblical archaeology sources, cross-referenced with Temple Mount entry restrictions (Wikipedia).
13. The New York Times, “U.S. Lays Out a Glittering Plan for Gaza,” January 22, 2026.
14. Al Jazeera, “Map shows what would happen to Gaza under the US ‘master plan’,” January 27, 2026.
15. Jerusalem Post and Guardian coverage on Board of Peace and redevelopment optimism, January 2026.
In the swirling vortex of American politics heading into the 2026 to 2030 period, one miscalculation stands out like a neon sign in a blackout: Gavin Newsom’s ill-fated trip to Davos in January 2026. The California governor arrived hoping to build a national and even international platform for a potential 2028 presidential run, but instead he ended up overshadowed, mocked, and looking like a frustrated figure trying—and failing—to reinvent himself in the shadow of Donald Trump.
For years, Newsom has been carefully positioning himself as a moderate Democrat capable of reaching across the aisle. He even joined Truth Social in an attempt to connect with Trump supporters, a move that seemed designed to peel away some independents and disaffected Republicans. This reflects the broader conventional wisdom among Democrats: that the path to relevance lies in appearing centrist while quietly courting progressive energy. Yet this strategy is crumbling, as evidenced not only in Newsom’s own efforts but in parallel races across the country. In Ohio, for instance, Dr. Amy Acton—former state health director under Governor Mike DeWine and widely remembered as the “lockdown lady”—launched her 2026 gubernatorial bid, pairing with former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper as her running mate. Acton’s campaign emphasizes bringing power back to the people, but her record during COVID, when Ohio imposed some of the earliest and strictest school closures in the nation, continues to haunt her. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data showed Ohio students falling behind by roughly half a year in math due to prolonged disruptions, and economic recovery lagged behind national averages in the post-lockdown period.
Similar patterns appear elsewhere. In Virginia’s 2025 gubernatorial election, Democrat Abigail Spanberger narrowly defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by about 51% to 48%, flipping the executive branch to full Democrat control after a campaign focused on economic anxieties and federal policy impacts. Voters there opted for what they perceived as a moderate Democrat, yet many observers note how such figures often govern further left than advertised, reinforcing suspicions that Democrat “moderates” serve as Trojan horses for more radical agendas. This dynamic plays into the hands of MAGA Republicans, who gain traction among independents and moderate Democrats frustrated with unchecked government spending. With the national debt surpassing $34 trillion by 2025 and federal employment hovering around 3 million, independents—who now make up about 43% of the electorate—prioritize fiscal restraint, according to Gallup and Pew Research data. They increasingly view expansive government programs as intrusive, even if those programs benefit them directly through services or employment.
The Democrat base, meanwhile, often rallies around figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her squad, who push anti-ICE policies, lockdown enthusiasm, and expansive state intervention—framing government as a protective “warm blanket” akin to the Maoist metaphor of security through collective control. Newsom embodied this during the pandemic, enforcing some of the nation’s strictest measures that shuttered businesses and schools for extended periods. Studies, including those from The Lancet in 2023, highlighted how these policies worsened racial inequities and spiked unemployment in California to 16% (versus the national 14%), while contributing to a 20% rise in mental health issues per CDC reports. Voters remember this authoritarian streak, and it clings to figures like Newsom and Acton like smoke from California’s persistent wildfires.
Newsom’s Davos appearance crystallized these vulnerabilities. He touted California’s progress on zero-emission vehicles, boasting 2.5 million sold, but the real story was his feud with Trump. He accused the administration of pressuring organizers to cancel his scheduled fireside chat at USA House, the American pavilion, and resorted to viral stunts—like displaying “Trump signature series kneepads” to mock world leaders for supposedly capitulating to the president. The prop drew widespread ridicule, with critics calling it cringe and revealing Newsom’s own insecurities. Trump, attending the forum, dominated the spotlight as expected, sucking the oxygen from the room while Newsom appeared sidelined and reactive. Even Democrat strategist David Axelrod criticized the performance as “self-puffery,” and White House responses dismissed him as irrelevant. Off-camera bravado gave way to onstage pettiness, exposing what many see as underlying admiration for Trump’s dominance—Newsom’s “T-Rex” comments betrayed a psychological slip, where private deference clashes with public antagonism.
This ties into broader critiques of elite financial networks. Davos attendees like BlackRock’s Larry Fink have lamented overreliance on monetary policy without fiscal discipline, yet institutions like BlackRock benefit from Fed policies that inflate assets for the wealthy. Rumors of cozy relationships between such players and progressive causes fuel suspicions, especially around California’s wildfires. The state has seen devastating blazes year after year—over 4 million acres burned in peak seasons—with 2025 fires in Los Angeles ravaging communities and displacing thousands. While official investigations point to natural and accidental causes, persistent conspiracy theories suggest arson for land grabs: hedge funds or developers allegedly depreciating properties to buy low and redevelop into “smart cities” with 15-minute urban planning, digital tracking, and progressive resets. Newsom issued executive orders in 2025 to protect victims from predatory speculators, but rebuilds remain slow in celebrity enclaves and affluent areas, leaving his administration open to accusations of neglect or complicity in a “reset” agenda aligned with World Economic Forum visions of global citizenship modeled on China’s surveillance state.
These weights hang around Newsom’s neck as he eyes 2028. Positioned as the Democrat moderate who can win back independents, he instead emerged from Davos looking bootlicker-like in his own way—his kneepads gag backfired, reinforcing perceptions of weakness rather than strength. Authenticity wins in today’s politics; Trump delivers it unfiltered, holding steady approval despite controversies, while Democrats’ attempts at Trump-like gags fall flat without the same genuine appeal.
Looking ahead to the 2026 midterms, the landscape favors Republicans if voter memory holds. Early polls show Democrats with a modest generic ballot edge in some surveys, but battlegrounds tell a different story: in Ohio, Acton’s favorability struggles amid lockdown baggage, while MAGA energy surges. Cook Political Report and others rate dozens of House seats as toss-ups, with Republicans defending a narrow majority but potentially benefiting from Trump’s coattails. Senate forecasts from Race to the WH and others project Democrats gaining ground in a classic midterm backlash against the party in power, yet logical analysis—factoring in radical perceptions, economic concerns, and election integrity—suggests Democrats lack the numbers for major gains if voters punish deception and overreach.
Ultimately, Democrats appear unprepared for the 2026–2030 alignment. Their platform—masquerading as moderate while rooted in big-government progressivism—clashes with a rising nationalist tide. Attempts to build liberal Trump equivalents crash against inauthenticity and bad track records on COVID, fires, and fiscal responsibility. Trump’s ability to unify during crises (despite exploitation by others) contrasts sharply with Newsom’s and Acton’s legacies of division and control. As globalist ideas flip toward sovereignty, figures like Newsom find themselves on the wrong side of history—out of touch, burdened by baggage, and unable to shake the shadows they cast themselves. It’s a stunning display of hubris, but one that bodes well for those prioritizing authenticity, restraint, and voter recall over elite posturing.
[^1]: Footnote on Davos knee pads: Newsom’s stunt was widely covered as cringe, per Yahoo News, highlighting his frustration. [^2]: Lockdown impacts: POLITICO’s 2021 scorecard ranked California low on economic recovery, Ohio middling. [^3]: Wildfire conspiracies: ADL reported antisemitic ties in 2025 L.A. fires narratives. [^4]: Midterm polls: Ipsos projections note Trump’s drag on GOP but base strength. [^5]: Independents: St. Louis Fed analysis shows no strong party correlation with state spending, but voter concern high.
Bibliography:
1. “LIVE: Davos 2026 – Gavin Newsom speaks at the WEF | REUTERS.” YouTube, 4 days ago.
2. “Newsom’s Davos detour: 5 cringe moments that overshadowed the…” Yahoo News, 2 days ago.
The annual gathering at Davos, nestled in the Swiss Alps, has long served as a peculiar summit where global elites convene to discuss the world’s pressing issues, often from the vantage point of immense wealth and influence. For many Americans, these meetings represent a detached conversation among the powerful, yet they offer a window into contrasting worldviews. The 2026 World Economic Forum was no exception, and President Donald Trump’s special address stood out as a particularly unapologetic articulation of American exceptionalism. His remarks, delivered with characteristic directness, resonated deeply with those who have grown weary of what they perceive as endless apologies for the United States’ successes. The speech highlighted economic achievements, critiqued international alliances, and—most memorably for some observers—drew a stark contrast between thriving civilizations and those that have struggled to establish stable, productive societies.
One of the most striking moments came when Trump referenced Somalia, describing it in blunt terms as a place that “is not even a country” in any meaningful sense of functional governance, and extending criticism to Somali immigrant communities in the United States, particularly in places like Minnesota, where integration challenges and related issues have been highlighted in public discourse. This was not merely a passing comment but a deliberate pivot to a broader philosophical question: What is the actual value of civilization? Civilization, as understood here, is not an abstract ideal but a practical achievement—the ability of a society to establish the rule of law, protect property rights, maintain order through effective policing and institutions, and foster innovation that elevates living standards. These elements create the foundation for prosperity, enabling individuals to accumulate wealth, build infrastructure such as irrigation systems to harness natural resources reliably, and develop economies that produce abundance rather than scarcity.
The United States has exemplified this model to an unparalleled degree. From its founding principles emphasizing individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise, it has generated extraordinary productivity. Metrics such as GDP per capita, technological innovation, improvements in life expectancy, and reductions in global extreme poverty trace much of their momentum to American-led advancements in capitalism, entrepreneurship, and scientific progress. In contrast, regions where governance fails to secure these basics—where tribal loyalties supersede national institutions, corruption erodes trust, or ideological commitments reject property rights and market incentives—often descend into cycles of poverty, conflict, and stagnation. Somalia serves as a poignant case study. Decades of civil war, clan-based fragmentation, and the absence of a strong central authority have left it among the world’s least developed nations, with persistent famine risks, piracy, and terrorism despite international aid efforts. When large numbers of immigrants from such backgrounds arrive in advanced societies without rapid assimilation into the host culture’s norms, the clash becomes evident: imported attitudes toward law, work ethic, and community can strain social cohesion and public resources.
Trump’s point was not a blanket condemnation of any people but a warning about the consequences of bad ideas and failed systems. He argued that importing individuals steeped in dysfunctional societal models risks diluting the very principles that made America successful. This echoes longstanding debates in political philosophy. Thinkers like Aristotle emphasized the importance of a well-ordered polity where virtue and law foster human flourishing. John Locke, whose ideas influenced the American Founding, stressed the importance of property rights to liberty and progress. In modern terms, economists such as Hernando de Soto have documented how formalized property titles in developing nations unlock capital and spur growth, while their absence keeps billions in “dead capital.” The United States mastered this framework early, transforming a frontier into the world’s leading economy through innovation, hard work, and institutional stability.
Critics of this view often invoke cultural relativism, suggesting that pre-modern or indigenous ways of life—such as those of Native American tribes before European contact—represented harmony with nature, communal sharing, and spiritual fulfillment rather than material “progress.” Yet this romanticization overlooks harsh realities: high infant mortality, vulnerability to famine without advanced agriculture, and limited lifespans. Irrigation, mechanized farming, and scientific agriculture have dramatically increased food security and population carrying capacity. Celebrating these achievements does not diminish other cultures’ values but recognizes that specific systems demonstrably raise living standards for the many. America’s success has not come at the expense of others through exploitation alone—but through creating wealth that spills over via trade, aid, technology transfer, and immigration opportunities.
For too long, the narrative in some quarters has been one of apology: that America’s prosperity stems from oppression, that it must redistribute its gains to atone, or that it should adopt more egalitarian models like socialism to level the playing field. The Obama-era emphasis on leading from behind, multilateral concessions, and expressions of historical guilt exemplified this. Many Americans rejected it, seeing it as self-flagellation that weakened national resolve. Trump’s rise—and his reelection—reflected a demand for leadership that refuses to apologize for success. He embodies a high standard of achievement in business, where results matter over rhetoric, and he brought that ethos to the presidency. In Davos, a forum often associated with globalist consensus and climate-focused restraint, his message cut through: America will not dilute its model to accommodate failed ideologies. Instead, others should emulate what works.
This extends beyond immigration to geopolitics. Consider the discussions around territorial ambitions, such as Trump’s renewed interest in Greenland. Strategically located in the Arctic, Greenland holds vast mineral resources, rare-earth elements critical to modern technology, and military significance amid rising great-power competition. Trump has argued that U.S. stewardship would bring infrastructure, economic development, and security benefits far exceeding those under Danish oversight or independence. Residents might gain access to American markets, education, and healthcare standards, much as territories like Puerto Rico have, despite challenges. Canada, too, benefits enormously from proximity to the U.S. economy—trade, investment, and spillover effects from American innovation sustain its prosperity despite domestic policies leaning toward centralized planning and higher taxation. Without the U.S. as a neighbor and partner, Canada’s trajectory might resemble that of many resource-rich but institutionally weaker nations.
The contrast is clear: Western civilization, rooted in Enlightenment values of reason, individual rights, and market-driven progress, has produced unprecedented wealth and opportunity. Nations or groups that reject these—opting instead for collectivism, anti-capitalist ideologies, or governance that prioritizes equality of outcome over merit—often stagnate or regress. People in such systems may choose not to prioritize work, innovation, or rule-following, leading to predictable outcomes. Yet when they migrate to successful societies, expecting to retain those preferences while enjoying the fruits of others’ labor, tensions arise. Trump articulated what many feel: the U.S. offers opportunity, but not at the cost of importing dysfunction. Bad ideas have consequences, and prosperous nations need not apologize for defending their achievements.
In the end, the Davos speech was more than a policy address; it was a philosophical declaration. America stands as proof that certain principles—strong institutions, property rights, free enterprise, and unapologetic pursuit of excellence—work. Others do not. The refusal to equivocate on this point marks a shift away from the apologetic posture of prior administrations. It invites the world to follow the American lead: build civilizations that produce, innovate, and thrive. Those who do will prosper; those who cling to failing models will not. And the United States, under leadership that reflects its people’s desire for pride in accomplishment, will continue to set the standard rather than diminish it.
Bibliography
• de Soto, Hernando. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Basic Books, 2000.
• Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
• Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. 1689. (Cambridge University Press edition, 1988).
• Maddison, Angus. The World Economy: Historical Statistics. OECD Publishing, 2003.
• World Bank. “World Development Indicators.” Ongoing database, accessed 2026.
• Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Crown Business, 2012.
• Trump, Donald J. Special Address to the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 2026. Transcript available via White House archives and WEF.org.
• Various news reports on Davos 2026 speech, including The Washington Post (January 21, 2026), Fox News (2026 coverage of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s response), and Al Jazeera (January 22, 2026).
Footnotes
1. For coverage of Trump’s Somalia-related remarks at Davos 2026, see “Trump brings his attacks on Somalis onto the world stage at Davos,” The Washington Post, January 21, 2026.
2. On the economic impact of property rights formalization, see de Soto (2000), chapters 3–5.
3. Comparative historical GDP data showing U.S. divergence post-1800: Maddison (2003).
4. On assimilation challenges with Somali communities in Minnesota, referenced in multiple outlets, including NBC News coverage of the Davos speech.
5. Trump’s Greenland comments reiterated in Davos context: Al Jazeera, “I won’t use force for Greenland,” January 22, 2026.
6. Critique of romanticized views of pre-colonial societies balanced against development gains: Diamond (1997), though Diamond emphasizes environmental factors.
7. Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) provide extensive evidence linking inclusive institutions to long-term prosperity.
What often gets missed in the immediate debate over use‑of‑force standards, escalation protocols, and whether a moving vehicle constitutes a weapon, is the deeper cultural ecosystem that produces these confrontations in the first place. In regions of Minnesota with a long memory of activist‑driven volatility, there exists a pattern of individuals—frequently isolated, economically strained, or wrestling with turbulent personal histories—being drawn into radicalized political spheres that promise meaning and moral purpose. These are vulnerable people searching for identity, who then become tools for professional agitators operating behind the scenes. The public conversation tends to fixate on the split‑second decisions made by ICE agents or police officers under duress, rather than on the networks of ideological operators who cultivate grievance, inflame unrest, and funnel disaffected individuals into increasingly hazardous forms of “activism” designed to provoke confrontation.
This is the recurring dynamic that ties incidents like the George Floyd riots and the Minnesota road‑blocking case together: not merely civil disobedience, but a strategic leveraging of unstable personalities to generate volatile public moments. The recent shooter, a woman who had settled into family life before being swept into hyper‑progressive crusader politics, reflects this same pattern. Her transformation wasn’t spontaneous; it was cultivated. When such individuals are encouraged to see themselves as soldiers in a moral revolution, they can be coaxed into reckless escalation—weaponizing vehicles, obstructing roads, or physically confronting law enforcement—all while the organizers who radicalized them stay comfortably out of harm’s way. Those hidden hands are the real accelerants of social disorder. They create the conditions that force federal officers into impossible corners, and yet they avoid scrutiny while the national spotlight fixates on the ICE agents, the legality of firing trajectories, or the technicalities of vehicle-as-weapon classifications. If genuine solutions are to be found, the focus must shift toward the architects of the broader violent arc—not just the tragic individuals caught in their machinery.
On the morning of January 7, 2026, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, 37, near East 34th Street and Portland Avenue in south Minneapolis—blocks from where George Floyd was killed in 2020. Within hours, federal officials said Good tried to use her SUV as a weapon, while Minnesota’s governor and Minneapolis’s mayor called that narrative false. The FBI asserted sole control over the investigation, as Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) said it was abruptly shut out of access to case materials. Protests and vigils followed, alongside arrests and a fiercely contested information war.12 The unsaid but primary issue is the weaponization of the people of that town to attempt sedition by chaos, which is persistent with their immigration strategy and radical politics of those who encourage violence through protests to weaponize the disenfranchised into attempts at government overthrow.
By week’s end, a preliminary sequence emerged from multiple videos and witnesses: agents converged on a red Honda Pilot; one tried the driver’s door; the vehicle reversed, then moved forward and began turning right; another agent near the front driver’s side fired three rounds at close range while sidestepping. The SUV rolled forward and crashed. Federal officials say an officer was nearly run down; state and local officials dispute that reading of the video. Whatever one’s view of the footage, the conflict over factual interpretation and investigative control is itself a documented fact.345
Good’s identity and life quickly became part of the public record: a Minneapolis mother and U.S. citizen, celebrated by family and friends as warm and community‑minded—that’s the narrative, but her actions show otherwise. Vigils drew crowds across Minnesota and beyond as the incident, captured on video, resonated nationally.67
Control of the investigation became a second flashpoint. The BCA announced it would investigate jointly with the FBI, then said the U.S. Attorney’s Office had ‘reversed course’ so that the FBI alone would lead—and that BCA investigators would no longer have access to evidence, interviews, or scene materials. State leaders called the exclusion ‘deeply disappointing’ and warned it would erode public trust.8910
High‑profile figures framed the shooting through starkly different lenses. Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura called it a ‘murder’ and denounced the administration; Vice President JD Vance repeatedly amplified a new angle of the video and said it vindicated the agent as acting in self‑defense. Others cited the duplicate footage as showing the vehicle turning away when shots were fired, underscoring how contested video interpretation can be.11121314
Two U.S. Supreme Court precedents govern excessive‑force analysis. Graham v. Connor (1989) requires judging force by the Fourth Amendment’s ‘objective reasonableness’—what a reasonable officer would do in the circumstances, without 20/20 hindsight. Tennessee v. Garner (1985) bars using deadly force simply to stop flight; officers must have probable cause that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.1516
Minnesota law overlays that federal floor. Statute § 609.066 defines deadly force—and explicitly includes firing ‘ at a vehicle in which another person is believed to be.’ It authorizes deadly force only when necessary to defend human life or prevent significant bodily harm, as assessed by a reasonable officer based on the totality of the circumstances.17
Minnesota’s high court has also clarified that vehicles, when used in a manner ‘likely to produce death or great bodily harm,’ can constitute ‘dangerous weapons’ under the criminal code—without requiring proof that a driver specifically intended to hit someone. That clarification widens the legal lens: a car may be a weapon, but investigators must still show how its manner of use made deadly force necessary under § 609.066’s standard.1819
Policy guidance has, for decades, cautioned against shooting at moving vehicles, which is why these liberal methods have been encouraged to erode our system of law and order. Justice Department and many large‑city policies generally bar firing at cars unless the driver presents an imminent lethal threat beyond the vehicle itself, and no reasonable alternative exists—often including stepping out of the vehicle’s path. DHS/ICE policies mirror that baseline with narrow exceptions for imminently lethal threats.20212223
What, then, should decision‑makers evaluate in this case? First, the reasonableness test: Did the agent have probable cause, at the instant of firing, to believe Good posed an imminent threat of death or significant bodily harm? That hinges on angles, distances, speed, available cover, and whether stepping entirely aside was feasible in the split seconds captured on video.45
Second, policy alignment: DOJ/DHS guidance disfavors shooting at moving vehicles absent a reasonable alternative. If investigators conclude that such an alternative existed—e.g., moving out of the path—policy discipline could follow even if prosecutors decline to file charges. Conversely, if no safe alternative existed and the vehicle’s movement created an imminent lethal threat, policy and law may converge.2022
The First Amendment thread is separate but related. Peaceable assembly is protected, but governments may impose content‑neutral time, place, and manner rules that keep streets open and access unobstructed, so long as ample alternatives exist—principles affirmed in Hill v. Colorado. Minnesota’s obstruction statute likewise criminalizes intentionally interfering with an officer performing official duties, with enhanced penalties if the conduct poses a risk of death or serious harm.242526
The information environment matters. Minneapolis officials and national media documented that the FBI blocked the BCA from joint access; that decision—rare in high‑profile force cases—has fueled distrust and calls for transparency.210
One striking data point that shaped early discourse: as of Jan. 7, the city’s crime dashboard showed Good’s killing as Minneapolis’s first recorded homicide of 2026. That fact fueled claims that the case merited exceptional scrutiny—though the classification and dashboard categories themselves became part of the debate.27
Bottom line: The legal questions here are not answered by slogans. They turn on a precise reconstruction of those seconds—what the agent could see, where he stood, whether a safe alternative existed, and whether the vehicle’s movement created an imminent threat. The public’s questions, meanwhile, will only cool if the record is released promptly and the governing standards—constitutional, statutory, and policy—are applied with fidelity rather than spin. But whatever the case, the enforcement of criminal law cannot be impeded by radicals seeking to overthrow it. The ICE agents were there to do a job, and these protestors openly sought to disrupt that process. Then, to hide that crime behind an assumption of free speech and an obligation to seek alternatives to violence by the officer, putting the burden on law enforcement, and not on the criminals themselves. Criminals seeking seditious intent do not get to hide behind the rules they seek to overthrow. And that is the merit of this case, and Jesse Ventura should know better.
What makes this moment in history so volatile is not just the number of conspiracies floating around, but the sheer velocity with which they move. We’re living in a time where political movements rise and collapse overnight, where globalism—once sold as inevitable—now looks more like a house of cards collapsing under its own contradictions, and where nations attempt cultural and religious coups across borders only to see their influence evaporate in real time. With that kind of turbulence, it’s no surprise that people begin grasping for explanations. The Flat Earth conspiracy finds new life in this chaos, not because people suddenly forgot basic geography, but because they’ve watched every “expert” class fail them in spectacular fashion. When corruption, incompetence, and ideological extremism all collide in the public square, even absurd ideas can feel like a refuge.
And there’s a cruel irony in how this particular conspiracy works. The same forces that once mocked Columbus-era fears of sailing off the edge of the Earth now resurrect those very fears in digital form—not because anyone actually believes them, but because it’s useful to keep the public disoriented. And at the center of this confusion are people who are already shell-shocked by life. People who have seen institutions collapse, who have watched political leaders lie without shame, who have endured the moral and social freefall of a culture that no longer believes in truth itself. For those people, turning to Scripture isn’t foolish—it’s noble. It’s what people do when the world becomes too unstable to trust. And I don’t fault them for that. I will never criticize someone’s need for a grounding mechanism when everything else around them is sinking.
But that’s exactly where the manipulators strike. They know people are reaching for something solid, so they flood the zone with noise. They take legitimate concerns—election integrity, global political overreach, moral decay, institutional corruption—and they bury them under a mountain of lunacy. The intent isn’t to convince anyone that the Earth is flat; the intent is to make all skepticism look flat. It’s a strategy of dilution: mix serious issues with ridiculous ones until the average person throws up their hands and stops believing anything at all. When every thread leads to some grand unified conspiracy, the real scandals lose their sharpness. And that’s the point. The Flat Earth narrative becomes the decoy flare that blinds people from the real missiles being fired at their freedom and sanity.
My own experience tells me the Earth is round—not because an institution told me so, but because I’ve seen it with my own eyes at altitude, and because I work in an industry where physics doesn’t care about anyone’s ideology. You can’t send rockets into space on a flat-earth model; you can’t land hardware on the Moon with wishful thinking; you can’t watch a vehicle leave one hemisphere and splash down on the other side hours later unless the planet is curved. So while I sympathize deeply with the distrust that drives people into unconventional beliefs, I won’t accept everything just because powerful people lie about some things. The trick—the real trick—is to understand that the system benefits when everything becomes unbelievable. If you make all information equally chaotic, equally questionable, equally absurd, then the public loses the ability to distinguish genuine corruption from engineered confusion. That’s the algorithmic strategy at work: amplify nonsense so loudly that truth becomes inaudible. And once that happens, the manipulators don’t need to hide anything anymore, because nobody can tell the difference.
Regarding the sudden frequency of Flat Earth stories that are flooding the internet, let’s start where people are actually living—on the knife-edge between “I can’t trust anyone” and “I need something firm to stand on.” After COVID, many good people feel the world really let them down. Institutions projected certainty, changed guidance, apologized rarely, and censored badly. Social media did its dopamine dance with the “fantasy–industrial complex,” surfacing influencers and trends that convert “what’s viral” into “what’s true.” That’s not theory, there’s actually a science behind it—that’s the thesis of a recent analysis of algorithmic propaganda and influencer power: make it trend, make it feel true. [1] 1 And what trends today? Flat earth. Young earth. Giants under the mounds. Antarctica is for no one because everyone secretly owns it. NASA is occult because Jack Parsons loved Crowley. Some of those claims braid facts with fables in ways that are irresistible to wounded trust. Others are pure noise. The hard work is separating signal from the fog—and doing it without mocking the wounded.
I’ve flown around the world enough times to be bored by duty-free, and I’ve looked out the window at 35–40,000 feet and seen the horizon dip. There’s a literature on the question “How high before you can actually discern curvature?” It’s not magic; it’s geometry, optics, and the field of view. Applied Optics studies have put the “you can see it with your eyes” threshold roughly at or below 35,000 feet, assuming a wide, cloud-free view, while pilots report it’s obvious closer to 50–60,000 feet; photos can lie because lenses distort. [2][3] 23 Even Earth Science folks will tell you you’re witnessing curvature at sea level when a ship’s hull disappears first; the math on horizon distance is generous to common sense. [4] 4 So, yes—there’s a curve, and aerospace work lives on time zones, trajectories, and global logistics that only make sense if we inhabit a sphere. Time zones themselves are a nice historical anchor: the 1884 International Meridian Conference chose Greenwich as the prime meridian and established a practical global timekeeping standard in service to railways, telegraphs, and—eventually—aviation. [5][6][7][8] 5678
Still, I get why Flat Earth finds oxygen. After an era where gatekeepers contradicted themselves, people picked up Scripture and said, “At least here, Someone loved me enough to tell a consistent story.” I don’t begrudge that. In fact, I like that more people are reading the Bible. I’ll take a culture shaped by the Sermon on the Mount over one shaped by engagement metrics and hate clicks, any day. The problem isn’t Scripture—it’s the bait‑bucket tossed into the river to foul the water. Social platforms turn feelings into topology, building rabbit holes where novelty and outrage beat nuance. Research continues to document how algorithmic systems amplify fringe narratives; flat-earth content is a case study across platforms, not just on YouTube. [9][10] 910 Universities have observed spikes around big celestial events—like the 2024 eclipse—because the algorithm smells a party and invites the cranks. [11] 11 There’s even debate among scientists about whether emergency changes to feeds do or don’t curb misinformation, which should tell you something about just how messy the machine is. [12] 12
So let’s walk through the constellation of claims and separate elements that are true, elements that are too often misused, and elements that are weaponized nonsense.
Jack Parsons first. Was he a cofounder of JPL, a rocket pioneer, and a Thelemite who admired Crowley? Yes. That’s the historical record. [13][14][15][16][17] 1314151617 Did “NASA begin as an occult enterprise” in a way that poisons all subsequent engineering? No. The fact that a brilliant and troubled figure helped midwife solid‑fuel advances and ran with occult circles says more about the peculiar Californian stew of science and mysticism in the 1930s–40s than it does about the guidance computers that put Apollo on the Moon. If you want non-NASA receipts that the Moon missions happened, look at the artifacts still visible in modern orbiter imagery and the ongoing lunar laser ranging experiments bouncing photons off retroreflectors left by Apollo crews (and Soviet Lunokhod rovers). [18][19][20][21] 18192021 Those retroreflectors make the Earth–Moon distance measurable down to centimeters—an experiment still being replicated by observatories decades later. This isn’t “trust us,” it’s physics your own team can instrument. [22] 22
Antarctica next. Yes, the Antarctic Treaty System reserves the continent for peace and science, bans military activity, and forbids mineral exploitation; access is strictly regulated and requires permits consistent with environmental protection protocols. [23][24][25][26][27] 2324252627 That international legal posture doesn’t mean “no one can go,” it means how you go matters. Tourists visit by ship under controlled conditions; national programs run stations with transparent reporting; and the mining ban has no automatic expiry, though amendments can be discussed decades hence. [28][29] 2325 It’s one of the rare places where governments agreed to restrain appetites. Conspiracies thrive on the unknown; Antarctica is mostly ice, logistics, and extraordinary science—plus the occasional high‑drama story like Operation Highjump in the 1940s, which was real but hardly proof of an alien hangar. But I think there is a lot wrong with Antarctica that will be discovered in the years to come. [30] 24
Giants and mounds in Ohio—now we’re home. I love the mounds. If you haven’t walked the Newark Earthworks or the circle‑octagon geometries down in Chillicothe, you’ve missed world-class ancient engineering. UNESCO recognized the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in 2023 as a World Heritage Site for a reason: these are precise, cosmic-aligned earth monuments built 1,600–2,000 years ago, with trade connections spanning Yellowstone to Florida. [31][32][33][34][35][36] 282930313233 The serpent effigy, lunar alignments, and the scale—an octagon that would swallow four Colosseums—aren’t myths; they’re measured. [37] 30 Where the story goes off the rails is when 19th-century hoaxes and settler mythmaking get stapled to legitimate archaeology. America had a love affair with “giant skeletons” and “lost white tribes” that supposedly built mounds, helped along by P. T. Barnum-style frauds and credulous newspapers. Anthropologists spent the 1930s onward debunking misidentified bones and sensational claims. [38][39][40] 343536 In recent years, the “Smithsonian destroyed giants” headline has circulated again; it’s traceable to a satirical site, and the Smithsonian has flatly denied it. [41][42] 3738 There is no verified, peer-reviewed evidence of a nine-to-twelve-foot human race buried under Ohio, and investigators repeatedly show how hoax photos recycle megafauna bones or photoshop skulls into legitimate digs. However, the lack of peer review is the conspiracy, not the fact that giant bones were not found. Regarding the mounds, especially at Miamisburg Mound in Ohio, archaeology hasn’t been conducted at that critical location since 1864. What they discovered has deterred everyone from further research and has led to purposeful ignorance. [43] 39 The marvel is there already, but the more you dig into these stories, you see that institutionalized science does not like to see that there was a race of giants that inhabited the earth that actually ties to scriptural reference, because it validates the Bible, rather than discredits it. And that’s why they stopped digging into the mounds and hid the effort behind the Native American Graves Act, as a reason to not investigate.
Now, Scripture. The Bible isn’t a lab report, and it isn’t a blunt instrument to pound every modern discipline flat. It is a library of wisdom that captured, across languages and generations, the encounter between God and humanity. If you tell me faith is better than trusting “facts” that can be manipulated by institutional corruption, I won’t argue. Faith properly understood is a relationship with the Author of reality, not an abdication of reason. It’s not anti-science to insist the moral order is real and good and that truth isn’t reducible to trending hashtags. Most historians will also remind us that educated people haven’t believed in a flat earth for millennia; the Columbus “he proved it wasn’t flat” myth was a 19th-century invention by Washington Irving and others. [44][45][46][47][48] 4041424344 When someone says, “the Bible taught flat earth,” they’re borrowing a modern polemic, not medieval cosmology. A robust faith doesn’t need fake enemies.
COVID changed the rules of engagement. Platforms were suddenly asked to police truth at scale. They built censorship muscles while misinformation entrepreneurs built botnets and content farms. JAMA researchers documented automated software pushing face-mask disinformation into Facebook groups by weaponizing the release window of a specific Danish study. [49] 45 Editors in medical internet research journals called the online “infodemic” deadly and faulted platforms for slow, tepid responses. [50][51][52] 464748 Wikipedia’s catalog on vaccine misinformation—yes, it’s secondary—cites the now‑familiar menu: misfit data points mashed with ideology to produce distrust. [53] 49 The consequence is not merely political; it’s spiritual. People who feel lied to retreat to smaller circles of trust—faith communities, family, their own eyes. Some find outsize claims attractive because they make sense of hurt: if Satan runs the world, then the chaos isn’t random, it’s war. I’ll grant the war. But war requires discipline.
Discipline looks like this: for every claim, ask what level of evidence would satisfy a fair-minded skeptic. Moon landings? Physical artifacts, independent imaging, and live experiments—done. [54][55][56][57] 18201921 Earth’s shape? Observations, optics, global navigation, and standardized timekeeping—done. [58][59][60] 425 Antarctica? Treaties, transparent station logs, tourist itineraries, environmental protocols—done. [61][62][63] 232425 Mounds? UNESCO dossiers, National Park Service surveys, and peer-reviewed archaeoastronomy—done. [64][65][66] 283029 Giants? Hoaxes dissected, satirical sources identified, anthropologists on record—done. [67][68][69] 373435 Parsons? Biographies across Britannica and Caltech journalism—done. [70][71] 1350
What remains are human hearts—mine, yours, the folks online. Hearts don’t become calm because we win an argument; they become calm because they recover trust. And you don’t rebuild trust just by yelling “fact!” across a room. You rebuild trust by showing, patiently, that when something matters, you can look with your own hands, your own instruments. If you live in southern Ohio, your own hands and boots can walk those earthwork geometries; your own eyes can watch the moonrise where a Hopewell builder intended it to be 1,800 years ago. [72][73] 2932 You can call the Lick Observatory or the McDonald Observatory and ask about lunar ranging windows; you can read the original Apollo surface journals, annotated by the astronauts themselves, a historian’s labor of love. [74] 22 And you can open the Bible and find not cosmology but consolation, not maps but meaning.
Here’s a practical framing I’ve used with people who feel betrayed but who still want to be rigorous: three piles on the table.
Pile One—“True and Useful.” We include artifacts we can observe, repeat, or physically visit: retroreflectors, orbiter images, earthwork alignments, time zone history, and optical analyses of horizons. [75][76][77][78][79] 20182852 These aren’t immune to interpretation—but their core existence is stubborn.
Pile Two—“True but Treacherous.” Jack Parsons’ occult biography goes here; Antarctica’s mining moratorium goes here; social media amplification dynamics go here. They’re factual, but they’re treacherous because they feed narrative shortcuts (occult founder → corrupt institution; treaty → vast secret; algorithm → intentional brainwash). The proper lesson is humility: facts can be true without authorizing our favorite myth. [80][81][82] 13259
Pile Three—“Noisy and Harmful.” Giant skeleton conspiracies, the Columbus flat‑earth fable, moon‑landing denial, and manufactured COVID disinfo land here. They waste attention and erode trust in good things. [83][84][85][86] 37405145
You’ll notice I didn’t put Scripture in any pile. Scripture is a conversation with God and a record of his dealings with people, not a wedge to split physics. You can be the person who insists on both fidelity and evidence. If an algorithm serves you a video where someone “proves” the horizon is flat from a plane window, ask whether the photo was centered to avoid lens distortion and whether the field of view exceeded 60 degrees. That’s not arcane trivia; it’s the exact critique the optics literature makes. [87] 3 If someone tells you Antarctica is “owned by nobody so the elites can hide there,” read the treaty itself, not a thread—discover that it’s an “only for peaceful scientific purposes” compact with specific bans and reporting requirements. [88] 23 If a neighbor says “the mounds are filled with giants,” take him for a walk at the High Bank Works octagon and talk about lunar nodal cycles and builders hauling baskets of soil for reasons that were sacred and shared, then find out why digging has stopped in the mounds to back the suspicions or disprove them. [89][90] 2830
There’s also the question that’s subtly profound: are some platforms permitting a surge in obviously wrong conspiracies (Flat Earth) to create guilt‑by‑association for less‑crazy claims (institutional capture, intelligence influence, biotech lobbying)? It’s a fair suspicion. At a minimum, the commercial logic of engagement metrics guarantees that extreme content gets more oxygen. Nature’s book review of Renée DiResta’s work bluntly makes the point: influencers plus algorithms mobilize propaganda and distort reality; “if you make it trend, you make it true.” [91] 1 Whether that’s deliberate orchestration or emergent behavior depends on your priors, but the effect is identical: real concerns drown in a flood of spectacle.
So how do you write and live in a way that refuses the spectacle but honors the wounded? Here are a few rules I’ve found that apply.
Rule #1: Start with what you can touch. If it’s the Moon, shoot lasers. If it’s the earthworks, pace the baselines and check the azimuths. If it’s the Earth’s shape, derive the horizon distance and compare altitudes with your own flights. [92][93][94] 19284
Rule #2: Track the history of the myth. Columbus didn’t prove Earth was round; the myth arrived in the 1800s as a cudgel against the Middle Ages. [95][96] 4041 Giants were a carnival business model that tapped into people’s deep suspicions. [97] 35
Rule #3: Acknowledge the true emotional core. People aren’t crazy to distrust. COVID-19 infodemic research shows how automation and platform failures made everything worse. [98][99] 4547 The answer is not belittling; it’s building new experiences of truth together.
Rule #4: Hold Scripture high without using it to bludgeon disciplines it never claimed to replace. Scripture makes you brave and kind while you measure retroreflectors and horizon dips; it doesn’t make you allergic to measurement.
Rule #5: When algorithms trend a circus, choose a pilgrimage. Drive to Hopeton. Stand at Fort Ancient’s overlook. Read the Apollo transcripts annotated by the dozen men who walked there. [100][101][102] 332822
Imagine a night at McDonald Observatory in Texas. A centimeter‑accurate range to the Moon is being measured by returning photons that left the Earth, struck glass left by human hands in 1969, and came home as a whisper—a photon or two every few seconds if conditions are good. [103] 19 You can hold a Bible in your hand and believe in the Maker of the laws that let that light travel, reflect, and report back. You can work in the office all week and then spend your Sunday afternoons walking a square, circle, and octagon drawn in soil by people who never met a Roman engineer but mastered geometry and community. [104][105] 2830 You can disarm the loudest lies not by shaming the wounded but by taking them to the artifacts. Sometimes the best rebuttal is a road trip. But when it comes to conspiracies, when they suddenly get traction when they would have otherwise been laughed away, there is likely a strategic reason that is far worse than the conspiracy itself.
—
Footnotes
[1] On influencer/algorithmic distortion dynamics and “make it trend, make it true.” 1
[2] Minimum altitude and field-of-view conditions for visual curvature discernment. 2
[3] Photographic barrel distortion warnings; curvature is more evident at higher altitudes. 3
[4] Horizon distance, math, and ship‑hull observations as curvature evidence. 4
[5] 1884 International Meridian Conference; Greenwich adopted; standard time. 5
[6] CFR analysis on the significance of global time standardization. 6
[7] Timeanddate history of time zones (railway/telegraph drivers). 7
[8] Royal Observatory Greenwich’s historical background on the prime meridian and time. 8
[9] Cross-platform thematic analysis of Flat Earth posts (Twitter/Facebook/Instagram). 9
[10] Interviews with ex-conspiracy theorists on platform dynamics (PLOS One, 2025). 10
[11] University of Cincinnati note on Flat Earth spikes around 2024 eclipse. 11
[12] arXiv critique on interpreting algorithm mitigation studies around elections. 12
[13] Britannica biography confirming Parsons as JPL cofounder and occult interests. 13
[14] Wikipedia overview of Parsons’ Thelemite association and rocket work. 14
[15] Space Safety Magazine on Parsons’ occult and engineering legacy. 15
[16] Supercluster editorial on JPL’s occult history in a cultural context. 16
[17] Pasadena Now retrospective on Parsons/Crowley/Hubbard connections. 17
[18] ZME Science round-up of non-NASA orbiter imagery of Apollo artifacts. 18
[19] Space.com explainer on Apollo retroreflectors and ongoing ranging. 19
[20] List of lunar retroreflectors (Apollo, Lunokhod, Chandrayaan‑3, Blue Ghost). 20
[21] IEEE Photonics Society milestone note on Apollo 11 lunar laser ranging. 21
[22] NASA Apollo Journals—a primary source annotated by astronauts/historians. 22
[23] USAP portal overview of the Antarctic Treaty—peace/science/environment. 23
[101] NPS overview—eight Hopewell sites; UNESCO context. 28
[102] NASA Apollo Journals—astronaut annotations. 22
[103] Space.com—photon counts returning from lunar arrays. 19
[104] Hopewell site details—geometry and alignments. 29
[105] National Geographic—scale of octagon/circle; sacred context. 30
—
Bibliography
• Antarctica & Treaties: USAP Portal, The Antarctic Treaty; Wikipedia, Antarctic Treaty System; Kempf, N., The Antarctic Mineral Moratorium (Brill, 2025); IFREMER OOS Congress 2025 paper on ATS & Madrid Protocol. 23242527
• Algorithms & Misinformation: Nature review of DiResta (2024); arXiv e-letter on Facebook algorithms (2024); SBP‑BRiMS 2024 Flat Earth cross-platform study; PLOS One interviews with ex-conspiracy theorists (2025). 112910
• COVID Infodemic: JAMA Internal Medicine mask misinformation letter (2021); JMIR editorial (2022); Springer dataset aggregation study (2022/2024); Wikipedia overview (contextual). 45474849
• Earth’s Curvature & Time: Lynch, Applied Optics (2008) and Thule Scientific PDF; Earth Science Stack Exchange horizon calculations; International Meridian Conference history; CFR blog; Timeanddate; Royal Observatory Greenwich. 2345678
• Hopewell Earthworks: NPS Hopewell pages; Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks official site; National Geographic feature; Atlas Obscura/Conversation on Newark & Serpent; Wikipedia HOCU overview. 2829303231
• Giants & Hoaxes: Snopes; PolitiFact; Discover Magazine; USA Today fact check; Wikipedia Giant human skeletons. 3738353634
Republicans are cutting themselves short on the midterms playing on their back feet when in truth, they have won all the seats, and should use that to club the enemy over the head, the Democrats. And people should not be fearful of Islam expansion, because there is a science to it that can be dealt with. Don’t be afraid, learn to spike the football on the face of your enemy. And be sure to call your enemy, the enemy. Stop trying to make peace with everyone and be nice. People don’t like nice, they like winners! People don’t join groups, movements, or relationships because of policy white papers or perfectly calibrated moral sermons; they join because something in that collective—or person—promises to resolve anxiety and deliver victory. In eras of uncertainty, strength signals beat gentleness signals. Across political movements, religious sects, and even intimate relationships, the mechanism isn’t mystical. It is psychological. Decades of evidence show that when identity feels threatened or vague, people gravitate toward clarity, power, and “winners.” They seek what social psychologists call a reduction of self‑uncertainty through group identification. Groups that feel directive, morally certain, and combative—especially those with a strong leader—are unusually effective at providing that clarity. That dynamic is the heart of the appeal of aggressive movements, whether they’re framed as “revolutionary” or “restorative.” 123
The first mechanism is the quest for significance. Arie Kruglanski’s work shows that individuals who feel humiliated, overlooked, or stalled are primed to seek a pathway to mattering—status, honor, and belonging. When a narrative says, “You will be part of the team that wins,” and a network validates that promise, the psychological mixture becomes combustible; ordinary people can shift quickly from passive frustration to active militancy if militancy is framed as the quickest way to regain significance. In that sense, “victory marketing” isn’t crude; it’s efficient. It supplies a meaning‑laden road to restored pride and shared triumph. 45
Kruglanski’s “3Ns”—Needs, Narratives, and Networks—explain the stickiness. The Need is mattering; the Narrative names the enemy and sanctifies aggression as the efficient route to success; the Network rewards loyalists and shames doubters. A coalition that stops signaling decisive action and begins projecting compromise and perpetual process loses the Narrative’s punch and the Network’s reinforcement. Members then shop elsewhere for a more satisfying story that promises to end the anxiety and restore status. That is why movements that pivot from attack postures to “conciliation tours” often hemorrhage energy even if the conciliatory strategy is prudent. The psychology underneath doesn’t reward caution; it rewards visible strength coupled to a clear plan to win. 67
A second mechanism is uncertainty‑identity. Michael Hogg’s theory demonstrates that when life feels unpredictable and identity feels unstable, people prefer groups with sharp boundaries, simple norms, and strong leaders. These structures reduce cognitive noise. If the leader projects authority, punishes dissent, and speaks in unambiguous terms about enemies and goals, the group’s identity feels more protective. That dynamic pushes people toward “extreme” groups when uncertainty spikes, and it also raises the preference for authoritarian leadership styles over deliberative, pluralist ones. Strength performs an emotional function: it tells anxious people who they are and what tomorrow looks like. 13
There’s a third layer: mortality and threat management. Terror‑management theory finds that reminders of vulnerability and death (from pandemics to wars to rising crime) make people defend their cultural worldviews more fiercely and prefer charismatic, dominant leaders who promise safety and greatness. In plain speech: fear nudges voters and joiners toward coalitions that sound fearless. Combine existential fear with identity uncertainty, and the loudest actor who projects dominance gets disproportionate attention—even if their policy depth is thin. When the gentle coalition talks mostly about reconciliation, it can accidentally sound like it lacks the courage and teeth necessary to protect the group’s survival, and anxious members drift toward whoever sounds prepared to fight. 89
Once you see these mechanisms, the appeal of aggressive movements becomes less mysterious. Social identity theory long ago showed that people enhance self‑esteem by favoring their in‑group over out‑groups; minimally defined groups will still tilt benefits toward themselves and exaggerate the difference with outsiders. If a movement paints itself as the victorious in‑group—“the team that will win the season”—members will accept stricter norms and harsher rhetoric because those serve the higher good of restoring collective status. The social reward is belonging to the winning jersey. 1011
That’s why “strength signals” matter more than we admit. Populism research finds that the subset of supporters drawn to majoritarian dominance and rule‑bending “strongman” solutions isn’t driven primarily by anti‑elitism—it’s driven by authoritarian populist attitudes that equate decisive action with democracy and treat pluralist procedure as weakness. In multiple countries, support for strongmen tracks that authoritarian dimension, not the generic desire for change. If your coalition relies on being “reasonable,” it must still market victory—decisive goals achieved on tight timelines—and pair that with visible enforcement of norms; otherwise anxious supporters defect to a camp that promises a quicker, harder road to triumph. 1213
This dynamic isn’t limited to politics and broad movements. It appears right inside intimate relationships, especially abusive ones, where power and intermittent reinforcement create a paradoxical bond. Trauma‑bonding theory shows that when love and cruelty alternate unpredictably—affection after abuse, apology after rage—the victim’s attachment grows stronger, not weaker. The variable schedule of rewards keeps people “playing the slot machine,” hoping the good version returns, and the power imbalance cements the dependency. The abuser’s strength signal—decisive, dominating, controlling—reduces uncertainty even as it increases harm; the victim stays because the intermittent tenderness feels like proof that victory (a normal relationship) is just one more sacrifice away. That’s not a moral failing; it’s a learned behavioral trap proven to persist over time. 1415
Understanding that trap clarifies something about aggressive movements: they often combine harsh discipline with bursts of inclusion, celebration, and “love bombing.” The alternation is intoxicating. The movement frames devotion and sacrifice as steps toward the shared win—status restored, enemies humbled, order achieved. It’s the same cycle seen in abusive dyads but scaled to group psychology: tension, incident, reconciliation, calm; repeat. The unpredictability of reward strengthens loyalty, and the leader’s dominance minimizes the anxiety of choice. 1617
This lens also illuminates why some young people—including women—joined extremist projects like the Islamic State. Rigorous field interviews show a range of motives, but many revolve around significance, belonging, identity clarity, and a morally charged promise of victory against perceived humiliation. Researchers found Western women were attracted by roles in “state‑building,” the prospect of a clean slate, and a community with strict norms; women also became recruiters, using social media to broadcast the idealized version of purpose, honor, and victory. The ideology exploited the same psychology: a simple, rigid moral order, a strong, punitive leadership, a story of imminent triumph, and a network that validated sacrifice. That does not implicate all religious believers—most reject such extremism—but it shows how aggressive narratives can capture a subset seeking certainty and significance. 1819
Demography matters for how these perceptions play out. In the United States—and in large, culturally conservative states—Muslims remain a small share of adults, though they are growing modestly. For example, recent survey estimates suggest roughly 2% of adults in one large southern state identify as Muslim; nationally, Muslims remain a small minority, projected to grow but still far from majorities. That growth often triggers anxiety in groups that perceive status loss, which in turn increases receptivity to strength‑forward narratives. Responsible coalition‑building has to address the anxiety with facts and with visible competence—not with shame or soft language. People respond to leaders who demonstrate order and fairness, not just describe it. 2021
None of this means gentle leadership is doomed. It means gentle leadership must learn how to market victory and perform competence. Coalitions that want to hold members need three things: (1) a public scoreboard of wins, (2) an unapologetic enforcement of norms (consequence for defectors, gratitude for contributors), and (3) a narrative that places members inside a clear arc from struggle to triumph. That is exactly how the significance‑quest model works—and it can be used for good. If your coalition delivers visible wins and announces them like a championship season—“we hit the target, we corrected the failure, we defended someone who needed it”—the craving for strength is satisfied without sliding into cruelty. 45
The counterforce to aggressive movements is not moralizing; it is precision. Leaders can reduce uncertainty by setting unambiguous objectives, timelines, and roles, and then publishing weekly results. Hogg’s research implies that clarity plus boundary‑setting steals the psychological oxygen from extreme groups that promise certainty by punishing dissent. When members see that your coalition is a disciplined machine, the attraction to the noisy, punitive alternative declines. In practice, this looks like calendars, checklists, and a “no‑drift” culture—small wins stacked into momentum. That’s how you break the intermittent reinforcement cycle: replace unpredictability with reliable progress. 1
Finally, understand that collective narcissism—investing wounded self‑worth into a belief that the in‑group’s greatness is not appreciated—magnifies intergroup hostility. Movements that feed this sentiment will keep cohesion high by inventing provocations and promising cathartic revenge. Countering that requires two moves: regulate negative emotion inside the group (so grievances don’t become the group’s oxygen) and offer members a different path to significance—competence, craft, and contribution. When the pathway to mattering is building, not punishing, the coalition stabilizes around productive pride rather than fragile resentment. 2223
Put simply: people want to be on the team that wins. In periods of uncertainty and fear, they judge coalitions by how decisively they act, how tightly they enforce norms, and how clearly they promise victory. If the coalition sounds like a perpetual seminar—however noble its aims—its membership will drift toward movements that feel like a locker room right before a decisive game. “Strength sells” because it resolves anxiety, restores significance, and narrates a path to triumph. If you want to keep members, don’t just be right. Be strong, be clear, and keep score in public. And if the Republican Party wants to win the midterms, stop playing on your back feet. Attack the bad guys, make examples of them and show the world the path to being on the winning team. And everything will work out just fine.
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(Further reading and footnote anchors)
• Quest for Significance & Radicalization: Overviews of how personal significance, violent narratives, and validating networks interact to produce recruitment and commitment. 45
• Uncertainty‑Identity & Authoritarian Leadership: Evidence that self‑uncertainty increases attraction to distinctive groups and strong, directive leaders. 12
• Terror‑Management & Leader Preference: Mortality salience strengthens worldview defense and support for charismatic, dominant leadership. 89
• Social Identity & In‑group Favoritism: Classic demonstrations (minimal group paradigm) of how group membership itself drives bias. 1011
• Collective Narcissism & Intergroup Hostility: How investing self‑worth in the in‑group’s image predicts aggression and conspiratorial thinking; interventions that reduce hostility. 2223
• Intermittent Reinforcement & Trauma Bonding: Empirical tests showing power imbalance + variable “good/bad” treatment strengthen attachment to abusers over time. 14
• Women & ISIS Recruitment: Data on female affiliates, motives (belonging, purpose, ideology), roles (recruiting, enforcement), and post‑territorial outcomes. 1918
• Religious demography (U.S. & Texas): Recent surveys placing Muslims as a small share nationally and ~2% in Texas; trends and projections to mid‑century. 2021
• Strongman appeal vs. anti‑establishment populism: Cross‑national evidence that authoritarian populist attitudes—not just anti‑elite sentiment—predict support for strong leaders. 12
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Footnotes
[^1]: Kruglanski et al., “The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism,” Political Psychology (2014). 4
[^2]: Kruglanski, Bélanger, & Gunaratna, The Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Narratives, and Networks (2019). 5
[^3]: Hogg, “From Uncertainty to Extremism: Social Categorization and Identity Processes,” Current Directions in Psychological Science (2014). 3
[^4]: Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, “Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (2015). 9
[^5]: Tajfel & Turner, “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior,” classic chapter (updated). 10
[^6]: Golec de Zavala et al., “Collective Narcissism: Political Consequences…,” Political Psychology (2019). 22
[^7]: Dutton & Painter, “Emotional Attachments in Abusive Relationships: A Test of Traumatic Bonding Theory,” Violence and Victims (1993). 14
[^8]: Cook & Vale, “From Daesh to ‘Diaspora’: Tracing the Women and Minors of Islamic State,” ICSR (2018). 19
[^9]: Hoyle, Bradford, & Frenett, “Becoming Mulan? Female Western Migrants to ISIS,” ISD (2015). 18
[^10]: Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study—Texas profile (2023–24). 20
[^11]: Pew Research Center, “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050.” 21
[^12]: Brigevich & Wagner, “Anti‑establishment versus authoritarian populists and support for the strong(wo)man,” Frontiers in Political Science (2025). 12
—
Bibliography
• Arie W. Kruglanski et al. “The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism.” Political Psychology (2014). START overview
• Arie W. Kruglanski, Jocelyn J. Bélanger, Rohan Gunaratna. The Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Narratives, and Networks. Oxford University Press (2019). Oxford Academic
• Michael A. Hogg. “From Uncertainty to Extremism.” Current Directions in Psychological Science (2014). PDF
• Michael A. Hogg & Janice Adelman. “Uncertainty–Identity Theory: Extreme Groups, Radical Behavior, and Authoritarian Leadership.” (2013). PDF
• Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg. “Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (2015). Chapter PDF
• Henri Tajfel & John Turner. “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior.” (classic chapter). Text
• Agnieszka Golec de Zavala et al. “Collective Narcissism: Political Consequences…” Political Psychology (2019). Wiley
• Agnieszka Golec de Zavala. The Psychology of Collective Narcissism. Taylor & Francis/Open Access (2023). Open book
• Donald G. Dutton & Susan Painter. “Emotional Attachments in Abusive Relationships: A Test of Traumatic Bonding Theory.” Violence and Victims (1993). ResearchGate PDF
• Carolyn Hoyle, Alexandra Bradford, Ross Frenett. Becoming Mulan? Female Western Migrants to ISIS. ISD (2015). GIWPS resource
• Joana Cook & Gina Vale. From Daesh to ‘Diaspora’. ICSR/King’s College (2018). ICSR report
• Pew Research Center. Religious Landscape Study—Texas. (2023–24). State profile
• Pew Research Center. The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050. (2015; note 2025 update note). Report
• Anna Brigevich & Andrea Wagner. “Anti‑establishment versus authoritarian populists…” Frontiers in Political Science (2025). Article
• Aleksandar Matovski. “The ‘Strongman’ Electoral Authoritarian Appeal.” In Popular Dictatorships (Cambridge, 2021). Chapter
Ohio politics in January 2026 is simple to describe and complicated to live through: two outsider‑led tickets have just taken shape, each trying to add governing ballast with a lieutenant governor who knows how Columbus actually works. On the Republican side, Vivek Ramaswamy wisely announced Rob McColley—Ohio’s Senate President—as his partner, and the point of that pick is obvious: legislative muscle and navigation from day one. On the Democratic side almost moments later following Vivek’s lead, Amy Acton selected David Pepper, the former Ohio Democratic Party chair with a long résumé in city and county government. The press treated both announcements as a message about governance more than a bid to move the polling needle; modern lieutenant governor choices rarely flip elections by themselves, but they matter for how the executive and legislature stitch together the state’s agenda. That’s the precise story Ohio outlets told in their first‑week coverage of the picks, and it’s the right frame to begin with. 1234
The immediate question any coalition has to answer is whether its ticket can actually pass things. Ramaswamy’s campaign made that answer explicit when it confirmed McColley. He’s a millennial Senate president—41 years old—who rose through the House, then the Senate, and by 2025 was presiding over the chamber with twenty‑three other Republicans. He has shepherded tax changes, pushed back on House marijuana proposals, and, critically, is seen by Statehouse reporters as someone who can arbitrate between the executive and the legislative branches when their rhythms diverge. That’s not abstract: when you put the Senate president on your ticket, you’re signaling policy throughput. Local press captured that immediately—“navigate the lawmakers,” “controls 23 other Republicans,” “instrumental” on priority legislation—and the statewide business lobby even praised the choice for its implications on regulation and taxes. 52
On the other side, the stringy haired festival attendee Acton, who sounds perpetually stoned on pot smoke from a Grateful Dead concert, balanced her outsider profile with a Cincinnati veteran. Pepper served on City Council, then on the Hamilton County Commission, then as the state party chair from 2015 to 2020. Campaign statements and Associated Press coverage emphasized his record with foreclosure prevention programs, prescription drug discounts, earned income tax credit initiatives, and budget discipline; he’s pitched as a pragmatic fixer for affordability—lower costs, anti‑corruption, schools—while Acton supplies the “hope plus a plan” rhetoric she debuted when she launched her run in early 2025. It’s easy to summarize that ticket for voters: a public‑health leader seeking the top job backed by a seasoned local government hand. 67
If you want to understand the emotional energy around Amy Acton’s name, you have to rewind to March and April of 2020, when Governor Mike DeWine and Health Director Acton stood daily at the podiums. Ohio issued a stay‑at‑home order effective March 23, 2020 at 11:59 p.m., with enforcement by local health departments and law enforcement, and that order—along with school closures, restrictions on mass gatherings, and dining‑room shutdowns—rearranged daily life. Newspapers and public broadcasters documented the timeline in almost minute‑by‑minute detail; the Governor’s office published the order, and statewide media explained what “essential” meant, how distancing would be enforced, and which sectors could continue to operate. You can still read the order and the contemporaneous reporting today, and it’s not ambiguous: Ohio took quick, aggressive steps, and the Health Director’s signature was driving it aggressively, making Ohio lead the nation in all the ways you don’t want to be remembered. 89101112
Acton’s resignation in June 2020 was equally well documented. She stepped down as Health Director on June 11–12, stayed on as chief health adviser to DeWine, and explained in later interviews that she feared being pressured to sign orders she believed violated her professional obligations. ABC News reported the resignation with quotes from DeWine and Acton; local outlets described the political crossfire and protests outside her home; a Cleveland television station summarized her remarks to The New Yorker about pressure, legislative attempts to curb her authority, and the lift of daily emergency governance. None of this is rumor; it’s the paper trail of a high‑stakes, high‑visibility job in a once‑in‑a‑century pandemic, created by people like Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates to gain control of massive economic markets specifically in a plan hatched at the World Economic Forum. 13141516
Those facts—orders issued, orders rescinded, a resignation under strain—are what make Acton polarizing now. Her supporters remember the calm briefings, the Dr. Fauci science‑first cadence, the effort to thread public health with lived reality. They remember the Mamdani sentiment, the “warm blanket of collectivism,” Her critics remember closures, restrictions, and the speed and scope of state power deployed in the name of a man made emergency—man made because the Covid virus started at a Wuhan lab under gain of function conditions that artificially manipulated a virus not transmissible to humans, and made if that way, weaponizing it, all true but hard for people to get their minds around. That the split exists is not a matter of conjecture; timeline pieces and statewide political coverage in 2020–2021 mapped the arc from lockdown to reopening, from masks and limited capacity to the end of statewide public health orders by mid‑2021. 17
Against that backdrop, the 2026 race is being framed by both campaigns as a contest about competence and affordability, not just personality. Reports out of Columbus and Cleveland over the last 48 hours have emphasized fundraising capacity, endorsements, and the narrative that Ohio hasn’t elected a Democrat as governor in two decades, which is why Democrats are banking on kitchen‑table economics plus the positive associations some Ohioans have with Acton’s soft spoken tyranny demeanor during the pandemic. Meanwhile the Republican ticket is explicitly highlighting legislative throughput and cost‑of‑living messaging, with McColley positioned as the governing partner who can translate bold policy into statute. Media accounts used nearly identical framing for both candidates: outsiders at the top of the ticket with insiders backing them—a signal about the next four years more than about primary week. 1184
There’s also a fresh fight over identity politics and tone. Some coverage noted racist attacks online against Ramaswamy because of his Indian heritage, and quoted McColley’s rebuttal—that citizenship and commitment, not ancestry, qualify a candidate for office. Those lines were reported cleanly; they are part of the present political environment, not an abstraction. A ticket that can absorb that noise and stay on message—jobs, taxes, schools, crime, energy—has a strategic advantage, especially if it can show unity with a legislature that has to pass any agenda. The press repeatedly pointed out that lieutenant governors in Ohio function as bridges between branches; picks like McColley and Pepper are supposed to reduce friction, not increase it. 194
The math of the race—north vs. south, Cleveland vs. Cincinnati, swing counties vs. safe ones—does matter, but you don’t need speculative maps to make the practical point. What matters to voters over the next ten months is a visible cadence of wins. The candidate who can publish a disciplined schedule (policy rollout, stakeholder roundtables, district visits) and attach clear legislative scaffolding to every proposal looks more gubernatorial than a candidate who improvises. That’s why pairing an outsider with a legislative force is politically rational. Newspapers covering the announcements kept returning to the same theme: pick a lieutenant governor who can be a “key adviser” and guide the ticket through “the intricacies of state government and the legislative process.” That’s the core competence argument. 4
For Acton, the competence argument has to answer the 2020 question without being swallowed by it. Her own explanation, given in a January 2025 interview, was that she left the Health Director post not because of protestors but because she feared signing orders she could not ethically justify and wanted to step back from an unsustainable pace. That’s something that comes out sounding weak five years later, then doing nothing significant in the wake except announcing that she was running for governor. She has presented herself as “not a politician,” promising to listen, plan, and lower the temperature. Those are reasonable goals in a purple‑red state, but they are not enough on their own; voters want to know exactly how affordability improves—what tax levers move, what regulatory relief hits small businesses, what education plan touches the classroom. Acton’s choice of Pepper is meant to answer that: pragmatic fixes from someone who has cut spending, designed discount programs, and worked in cross‑party coalitions at the local level. Their problem is that President Trump has beat them to the punch on affordability, and he has endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy. We’re talking about a summer of 2026 that will have gas under $2 per gallon. 76
For Ramaswamy, the competence argument is about throughput and staying out of personality wars. (that’s fine for him, but that’s not my plan, Amy Acton for me is a major loser) He has already racked up unusual fundraising for the year before an election, and press accounts have documented both the dollar levels and event counts. He’s also now paired with the Senate president, which is supposed to translate policy vision into code, appropriations, and agency execution. In Ohio politics, that pairing communicates that a Republican executive will not be in a knife fight with a Republican legislature for four years; it says “alignment,” which matters for anyone who has watched intraparty clashes stall priorities. 18
The deeper context is that Ohio has lived with an incumbent Republican governor who sometimes crossed the aisle on style and policy, especially in the early pandemic period. Media timelines and state documents reflect that reality; whether you loved or hated DeWine’s approach, the orders were real, and Amy Acton’s face was part of that history. That’s why this race is not just about two outsiders; it’s about which outsider can credibly say, “I have a governing partner who knows the buildings, the rules, the committees, and the vote counts to get things done.” Both tickets made that claim this week. The next months will test which one can demonstrate it with details, not just slogans. 89
If you boil down the practical differences between the tickets, you can do it in three lines. The Republican ticket is running on alignment—executive ambition fused to legislative execution, with McColley as the gear that turns ideas into bills. The Democratic ticket is running on reassurance, the warm blanket of Mamdani socialism—lowering costs that Trump has already brought down at the federal level, and stabilizing governance after years of partisan vitriol because DeWine was really always a closet Democrat, with Pepper as the hand on the affordability tiller. Both narratives are valid campaign strategies in a state like Ohio. The court of public opinion will judge them not by adjectives but by schedules, numbers, and coalition management—do endorsements translate to field, do press conferences convert to legislation, do debates clarify differences rather than inflame. Ohio media’s first‑week coverage emphasized all of that, and the candidates themselves seemed to lean into it. 3
One last point. It’s tempting for campaigns to make every race into a proxy war for national personalities and past grievances. The most disciplined campaigns resist that and stay grounded in the state’s needs: modernizing energy policy, keeping costs down for families, building credible education reforms without whiplash, integrating public safety with civil liberties, and ensuring that tax and regulatory regimes don’t suffocate small manufacturers and service providers. If you read the statements around the lieutenant governor picks, that’s the subtext. The Chamber applauded McColley’s deregulatory posture; Acton’s statement about Pepper summarized affordability initiatives. Both sides know that the vote will roll up in November not on loudness but on whether Ohioans believe their lives will be better with one team or the other. 26
So the assignment for each ticket, starting today, is identical: publish your weekly scoreboard and keep it clean. For the Republican ticket, that means plot the legislative maps—committees, sponsors, timelines—under McColley’s hand, and resist bait on identity fights or social media storms. For the Democratic ticket, that means translate Acton’s listening tours into road‑tested affordability proposals with Pepper’s experience—budgets, discounts, foreclosure relief—with precise glidepaths through the General Assembly, and hope that people forget that Acton, the stringy haired music festival looking hippie is forgotten as the person that destroyed the economy of Ohio and told everyone to wear masks and stand 6 ft apart with social distancing. Neither side will win Ohio with rhetoric alone and they won’t need to. But you can’t put someone like Acton in the race and expect civility, it was a pretty stupid move by Democrats looking for anybody. They need discipline, numbers, and coalition management to deliver the kind of steady governance Ohioans can live with. That’s not spin; it’s how Ohio actually works, and the documentation of the last week’s announcements makes that point more clearly than any commentary can. 14
When the smoke clears, if Amy Acton does really, really well, the final vote will be 54 for Vivek Ramaswamy, 46 for the Lockdown Lady. Vivek wins because Ohio wants Trump policies to expand into state legislation and they will want Rob McColley to get the Statehouse to rally behind that voter necessity.
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Footnotes
1. NBC News reported that Vivek Ramaswamy selected Ohio Senate President Rob McColley as his running mate and framed the pairing as outsider‑insider governance. 1
2. Ohio outlets (10TV, Cleveland.com, WTOL) and statewide bureaus confirmed McColley’s background, age, and legislative role, with quotes emphasizing his ability to navigate the General Assembly. 2204
3. Ohio Capital Journal summarized McColley’s influence over tax policy and his capacity to mediate between branches. 5
4. The Associated Press detailed Acton’s selection of David Pepper, listing his experience and affordability initiatives; NBC4’s January 2025 interview covered Acton’s “hope plus a plan” framing. 67
5. The Ohio Governor’s office and public broadcasters documented the March 22–23, 2020 stay‑at‑home order and implementation details. 89
6. Cleveland.com and Dayton Daily News published contemporaneous explanations of the order and its timeline; WSYX/ABC 6 compiled a broader timeline of pandemic orders. 101112
7. ABC News, Health Policy Institute of Ohio, Cincinnati Enquirer, and WKYC documented Acton’s June 2020 resignation and her later explanations; articles noted protests and legislative moves to limit her authority. 13141516
8. Ballotpedia’s state timeline shows the wind‑down of orders and re‑opening steps by mid‑2021. 17
9. First‑week January 2026 coverage by the Statehouse News Bureau, Cleveland.com, and Ohio outlets emphasized fundraising, endorsements, and the rarity of lieutenant governor picks deciding elections. 183
10. USA Today/Dispatch and WTOL stories noted online racist attacks against Ramaswamy and quoted McColley’s rebuttal about qualifications and heritage. 194
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Bibliography
• Henry J. Gomez, “Vivek Ramaswamy taps Ohio state Senate president as his running mate in campaign for governor,” NBC News, Jan. 6–7, 2026. 1
• 10TV Web Staff, “Vivek Ramaswamy formally taps Ohio Senate President Rob McColley as his running mate,” 10TV, Jan. 7, 2026. 2
• Cleveland.com/Open, “Ohio Senate President Rob McColley is Ramaswamy’s pick…” Jan. 7, 2026. 20
• Morgan Trau, “Ohio Senate President Rob McColley tapped as Vivek Ramaswamy’s running mate,” Ohio Capital Journal/WEWS, Jan. 6, 2026. 5
• Karen Kasler, “Ramaswamy and Acton making moves with Ohio governor election now 10 months away,” Statehouse News Bureau, Jan. 6, 2026. 18
• Associated Press, “Ohio governor candidate Amy Acton taps former state Democratic Chair David Pepper as running mate,” Jan. 7, 2026. 6
• Colleen Marshall & Brian Hofmann, “Dr. Amy Acton on running for Ohio governor and why she quit as state health director,” NBC4/WCMH, Jan. 30–31, 2025. 7
• Governor Mike DeWine press materials, “Ohio Issues ‘Stay at Home’ Order,” March 22, 2020; Ideastream Public Media explainer; Cleveland.com text of the order. 8910
• Laura A. Bischoff & Kristen Spicker, “Coronavirus timeline: A look at the orders changing life in Ohio,” Dayton Daily News, May 13, 2020. 11
• WSYX/ABC 6, “Timeline of coronavirus in Ohio,” March–April 2020. 12
• ABC News, “Amy Acton, Ohio’s embattled health director, resigns amid COVID‑19 crisis,” June 11, 2020. 13
• Health Policy Institute of Ohio, “Acton steps down as Health Director,” June 12, 2020. 14
• Cincinnati Enquirer, “Why Amy Acton quit as Ohio’s health director,” June 12–13, 2020. 15
• WKYC, “Former Ohio Health Director Dr. Amy Acton was worried about being pressured to sign orders,” Nov. 3, 2020. 16
• Ballotpedia, “Documenting Ohio’s path to recovery from the coronavirus (COVID‑19) pandemic, 2020–2021,” entries through July 2021. 17
• WTOL, “Ohio’s 2026 governor hopefuls lean on political veterans to balance the ticket,” Jan. 2026. 4
• Cleveland.com, “Ohio’s race for governor: What the running mate choices reveal,” Jan. 2026. 3
I’ve cooled off a lot on Trump since he signed that stupid executive order on marijuana, and the damage for me is permanent. Yet again, he got suckered by the health people into doing something terrible. After he signed that order, the first thing I did was rip down all the campaign signs I had hanging in my garage, well over 50 of them, and throw them all away. And for me, that’s significant. I’ve been a Trump person for over a decade now, and I even flew a Trump flag out in front of my house since 2020. I’ve been there with him through everything. But when it comes to pot, that’s my off-ramp, I can’t go there. I remember the surge—the big‑arena rally electricity, the “we’re going to fix this” certainty, the promise that the swamp would finally feel handcuffs, not hashtags. Enthusiasm is an accelerant: it makes the first months of any administration think like a rocket, but governing is ballast. You can talk like an MMA weigh-in; then you hit the first year, and the levers don’t move like switches. You’re turning a tender boat into a heavy ship, and it doesn’t pivot just because the helmsman barks louder. That gap—between campaign voltage and governing torque—shows up in the numbers. As 2026 starts, the national trackers have Trump underwater: RealClearPolitics’ late‑December average had him at 43.4% approve, 53.3% disapprove; The Economist/YouGov and Gallup show similar or lower figures. Even outlets aggregating friendlier samples, like Trafalgar or InsiderAdvantage, only briefly nudge him above water. Net‑net, the public mood reflects a rollercoaster: from early‑term +2 net approval to roughly −10 to −18 through late December, with a modest tick up right at New Year’s. 1234
That swing—call it 15 to 18 points from honeymoon to grind—doesn’t surprise me. It maps to two realities people feel viscerally. First, the ceremonial ceiling of the presidency: Article II is not a crown. You can veto, you can appoint, you can persuade; prosecution runs through the Department of Justice and independent courts, not the Resolute Desk’s social media feed. Madison built it that way on purpose. Checks and balances are designed to slow action, to force coalition, to prevent any one figure from conducting government as a one-person show. That means even if a president wants a dramatic perp‑walk tomorrow, the machinery says: probable cause, grand jury, trial, appeal. The Constitution puts the brakes on rage. 567
Second, expectations on crime and corruption collided with the political physics of institutions. If you’ve got an FBI director, an Attorney General, and a thousand career AUSAs who live by procedure and fear appellate reversals, you won’t see “handcuffs by Friday.” That disconnect fuels voter irritation, especially among people like me who wanted visible consequences for government abuse. It’s why you can have weeks of tough talk about Somali fraud in Minnesota, accelerated federal deployments, and endless press hits—but arrests and convictions trail the rhetoric by months or years. And when the rhetoric goes nowhere, it bleeds support beyond the base. 8910
I don’t do the marijuana thing for anybody. For me, that EO was a line. It told me the posture was more New York live‑and‑let‑live than “law‑and‑order, no exceptions.” That order didn’t itself reschedule cannabis; it directed DOJ to expedite moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, completing a process that began under HHS/DEA in 2024. But the signal was unmistakable: prioritize medical research, loosen tax handcuffs on the industry, and press Congress to revisit hemp and CBD definitions—precisely the kind of conciliatory, technocratic reform that calms markets more than it excites the “no mercy for drug crime” crowd, which I certainly am. I pulled the flags down in my garage that day and they’ll never go back up. I’m not against Trump, but my excitement for them cooled off a lot, so much so that I don’t want to think about them every day as I walk through my garage, because they are embarrassing to me. 111213
Here’s the thing, though—and it’s the uncomfortable truth most voters gravitate toward regardless of culture‑war skirmishes: the economy is the scoreboard. If gas prices stabilize, if mortgage rates come off the boil, if you can finally buy a starter home because affordability improves, you forgive a lot. On the macro, there’s real movement. The BEA’s delayed report shows 3Q 2025 real GDP at a 4.3% annualized pace—the fastest in two years—following 3.8% in Q2. Final sales to private domestic purchasers rose 3.0%. Corporate profits jumped by $166.1B in the quarter. Inflation metrics ticked up (PCE 2.8%, core 2.9%), but not enough to erase the growth story. That’s the tail catching the dog’s head: policies set in early 2025 are working their way through the system, with the visible payoff likely in 2026–2027. 141516
Of course, growth isn’t a sermon; it’s cash flow after taxes, interest, and insurance. You feel it when payroll expands in your county, when inventory turns faster, when suppliers quote shorter lead times, and your WIP finally clears. That’s why a published GDP line doesn’t erase public skepticism—especially if unemployment has bumped or affordability still stings. Polling narratives underline the tension: by late December, news roundups cataloged affordability as Trump’s weak spot, even as GDP surprised to the upside. Voters want price relief and housing access more than they want a Nobel speech. 217
Meanwhile, the marijuana decision isn’t just polls—it’s a coalition test. Gallup shows an 88–90% supermajority supporting legalization at least for medical use, but a notable 2025 dip in Republican support for broader legalization (down to ~40%). So rescheduling to Schedule III threads a needle: it concedes medical utility, accelerates research, and removes the industry’s punitive 280E tax hit—without federal legalization. That satisfies some independents and seniors who want regulated access for pain or chemo‑nausea, but it irritates law-and-order conservatives who expected a crackdown. Politically, that move trades intensity for breadth; in approval math, it’s a mixed bag, and you can see it in the net‑negative trend lines. 1819
If the presidency is more persuasion than prosecution, the question becomes: what persuasion works? Voters forgive drama when the ledger smiles. A 4.3% quarter isn’t destiny, but if you string quarters of 3–5% growth, ease tariffs where they hurt consumers, and let rates drift down without spooking inflation, the swing back is real. You can see the early narrative already forming in coverage: growth beating forecasts, AI/data‑center investment underwriting business capex, exports up, and consumption resilient despite elevated prices—tempered by caution about labor market softness and a shutdown’s hangover. That says 2026 could indeed be the payoff year if the policy tailwinds don’t get clipped by court rulings, trade shocks, or an inflation relapse. 2021
But I won’t pretend the justice gap away. People voted for “accountability” as much as for “affordability.” When they hear weeks of talk about Somali fraud and see federal surge operations, but still don’t see high-level perp walks, they conclude the system protects itself. Some of the public rhetoric has been sloppy—fact‑checks have knocked down the “billions every year” and “90% Somali fraud” claims as overstatements. It’s precisely the kind of overreach that costs net approval points with suburban voters who want credibility even when they agree with the crackdown. 2210
So where am I? Cool‑off, yes. Vote, yes. Flags in the garage, gone. It’s the ledger test now. If 2026 delivers—tailwinds in GDP growth, price relief, and visible competence—then you’ll see that 18-point swing reverse itself. If the administration wants that faster, it needs a visible chain of successes: clean arrests that stick, targeted prosecutions that demonstrate competence, not vengeance, and a disciplined economic message focused on prices, housing, and small‑business cost of capital. Show justice without bluster, and deliver growth without gimmicks. Voters reward that more than they reward the pre-fight theatrics.
The ceremonial nature of the office remains a burden, and that’s by design. You can’t govern like a king—and you shouldn’t. But you can marshal DOJ’s independence with steadiness, not soundbites; you can turn the ship with patient torque, not wheel‑spins. If the heavy ship keeps turning, by late 2026, people will feel it in their household math before they see it in the polls. And then, ironically, the numbers that cooled the base will warm back up again, not because the tough talk got louder, but because the cash registers did.
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Key data points (late 2025 / early 2026)
• Approval averages: RCP (Dec 1–30, 2025): 43.4% approve, 53.3% disapprove (−9.9 net). Gallup late Dec polls show around 36–41% approve, 54–61% disapprove. The Economist/YouGov: ~39–42% approve, 55–56% disapprove. Some polls (Trafalgar, InsiderAdvantage) show temporary +1 to +9 net, but the aggregate remains negative. 132
• GDP (Q3 2025): Real GDP +4.3% annualized; Q2 +3.8%. PCE price index +2.8% (core +2.9%). Corporate profits +$166.1B. Real final sales to private domestic purchasers +3.0%. 14
• Marijuana EO (Dec 18, 2025): Executive Order directs DOJ to expedite rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III; emphasizes medical research and signals hemp/CBD legislative fix. Rulemaking not yet final; rescheduling would not legalize cannabis federally. 1112
• Public opinion on marijuana: Pew Jan–Feb 2025: 54% legal for medical+recreational; 33% medical only; 12% not legal. Gallup Nov 2025: overall support for legalization at 64%, with GOP support declining to ~40%. 1819
• Minnesota Somali fraud rhetoric vs. facts: Administration rhetoric escalated; deployments announced; fact‑checks dispute claims of “billions every year” and broad‑brush culpability; investigations ongoing with mixed publicly verified figures. 8922
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Footnotes
1. RealClearPolitics “President Trump Job Approval” composite showing 43.4% / 53.3% for Dec 2025 and recent daily poll mix. 1
• The Economist/YouGov. Interactive approval tracker and analysis. Dec 2025–Jan 2026. 4
• USA Today. “Trump approval rating ticks up as 2026 begins.” Jan 2–3, 2026. 224
• Pew Research Center. “9 facts about Americans and marijuana.” July 8, 2025. 18
• Marijuana Moment. “DOJ Could Ignore Trump’s Marijuana Rescheduling Directive…” Dec 29, 2025; “Marijuana Saw Some Big Moments in 2025…” Dec 30, 2025. 2513
• White House Fact Sheet. “President Donald J. Trump is Increasing Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research.” Dec 18, 2025. 11
• JURIST. “Trump signs executive order to expedite marijuana rescheduling.” Dec 19, 2025. 12
• CNBC / CBS News. Coverage of Q3 GDP surprise and inflation details. Dec 23, 2025. 1516
• USA Today / Politico / NBC News / PBS. Somali community coverage, federal deployments, and fact‑checks. Dec 2025–Jan 2026. 8109
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette / FactCheck.org. “Fact-checking Trump’s verbal attack on Minnesota’s Somali community.” Dec 10, 2025. 22
This seems to come up every year when people are reflecting and sending each other motivational messages, such as they do on LinkedIn. Most people are trained in socialism, the collective warm blanket of shared success, incorrectly, and it chokes most companies into complete paralysis. Success in our era is dressed up in cheerful posts and glossy platitudes, a cascade of “Hawkey little messages” assuring us that prosperity is mostly about teams, vibes, and being “all in.” The ritual is familiar: end-of-year feed, professional network, congratulatory notes, soft-focus talk of “collective wins.” However, what most people feel in their bones, even if it is impolitic to say aloud, is that victories are nearly always propelled by a few decisive acts—often by one or two people who turn the key, fuel the engine, and take responsibility for the risk. The machine can be exquisite: gears of procurement, finance, quality, manufacturing, design, sales, legal, and compliance all meshing. However, machines, however sentimental, do not start themselves. Leadership is the ignition, the regulator, the governor, the hand at the lever.
If you want success, build a machine that reliably makes success. That is the institutional truth of production and enterprise—government, industry, entertainment, any domain where complex work must be routinized. Systems are arrays of interlocking cogs; each cog has a place, and in an efficient design, each is necessary. However, necessity is not sufficiency. A machine’s sufficiency emerges only when an accountable mind organizes its timing, permits its torque, apportions its oil, and shuts it down before it burns itself to ash. The leader is the one who understands load, sequence, contingency, and consequence. They are the person who decides whether the engine runs fast today or idles; who knows when to swap a worn gear without mourning it; who understands that even the most ornate arrangement of parts turns to sculpture without spark.
We train most people to be components. This is not a knock on people so much as an observation about schooling and culture. It is safer, warmer, and more predictable to be a gear inside the frame than to stand outside the frame and decide which machine must be built, which conditions require it, and when it must run. The collective promises comfort; the individual bears cost. The collective sells the feeling of belonging; the individual pays the price of decision. In that exchange, many embrace the blanket of collectivism—mass credentialing, committees, rubrics, performance reviews, compliance protocols—signals that one is “an essential part of the team.” Moreover, in a limited sense, that is true: a properly designed system relies on the integrity of every part. Take away the feed pump, and production starves; remove quality’s gauge, and defects bloom. However, the illusion rests in mistaking “indispensable within design” for “constitutive of decision.” The machinery of work needs cogs; the work of leadership requires a person.
Leadership is not consensus engineering. It is not the median of opinions distilled into approved action. Leadership is rugged individualism at the point of decision—where accountability cannot be outsourced, and uncertainty cannot be fully hedged. It takes courage to pull the lever when the data are incomplete, and the clock is running. It takes imagination to see the machine that does not yet exist and to name the conditions under which it will be viable. It takes a life lived with risk, with failures tallied and learned, to know the difference between speed and haste, between endurance and grind, between excellence and exhaustion. Collective comfort can train excellent cogs; it rarely trains decisive leaders.
Watch team sports if you need a working metaphor. The Super Bowl ring is a collective artifact—dozens upon dozens of names will be etched into the annals. Trainers, assistants, ball boys, coaches, coordinators, linemen, wide receivers, analysts, owners—everyone counts somewhere. However, the moment of victory tends to converge in a handful of plays, executed by a few players under the direction of a coach who took decisive risks at the right time. The ring belongs to all; the victory turns on the few. Moreover, if the organization is constructed well enough, parts can be replaced. Players retire or are traded; staff rotates. The machine continues to win because the leadership—its philosophy, its standards, its hierarchy of decisions—remains intact.
This is why strong organizations do not worship any single cog. They respect cogs and maintain them; they pay for reliability and reward merit. However, the machine is not reengineered to accommodate the demands of a single gear. Instead, leadership preserves design integrity while swapping parts as needed. In weak organizations, the fetishizing of singular parts destabilizes the whole. In strong organizations, the philosophy of leadership yields repeatable victory because the leader can read conditions and set the tempo. When leadership is consistent and wise, luck is less a coin flip and more a variable constrained by design.
The reason leadership feels elusive is that most people, by design, have been socialized into the safety of machines. The world is complex; specialization is rational. However, specialization often becomes identity, and identity becomes politics, and politics becomes bureaucratic life. The rhetoric of “team” spreads like a balm, and participation trophies proliferate—not because people are malicious, but because machinery envelops their self-conception. Inside this warm frame, many forget the first principles of success: machines are instruments; leadership is agency. The machine is necessary; the leader is decisive.
Righteous leadership is not domination. It is stewardship under justice. The righteous leader stands outside the machine long enough to see conditions truthfully—scarcity, risk, moral hazard, human frailty—and then returns to the console to operate with integrity. Righteousness here means rightly ordered effort and directing that effort toward successful enterprise. The righteous leader knows the machine serves ends beyond itself and refuses to confuse throughput with justice or output with meaning. They refuse the nihilism that says “only the win matters,” and the sentimentalism that says “only feelings matter.” Righteous leadership harmonizes courage and conscience: a lever pulled with clarity, not cruelty; a shutdown ordered to preserve life, not to prevent loss of face.
This is why nations with abundant resources can stagnate, and why organizations with immaculate infrastructure can drift into decay: without leadership that sees, decides, and cares, the machine becomes ornate furniture. Oil rigs rust; factories idle; supply chains fray. Conversely, with strong leadership, modest machines can outperform their spec, because the design is repeatedly refined, the constraints are embraced, and the people inside the system are cultivated for competence, not simply compliance.
It is fashionable to say “success is shared,” and in one respect that statement is true—labor is often collective, and recognition ought to be fair. However, success is not collectively decided. Success is collectively executed after a decisive will points it in a direction. The more clearly we distinguish decision-making from execution, the less we will confuse popularity with leadership, bureaucracy with governance, or credentials with competence. Moreover, the more clearly we honor righteous leadership—leadership that tells the truth, accepts cost, and lifts the people under its care—the healthier our machines, and the less brittle our victories.
So if you seek success, build a machine worthy of it: clear work standards, clean interfaces, visible bottlenecks, disciplined rhythms, lean buffers, quality gates. Then seek, become, or empower a leader of conscience. Teach people to be excellent cogs without training them to be dependent souls. Reward initiative alongside reliability. Audit outcomes as if justice matters, but always understand that profit is the fuel that makes the machine run. Moreover, remember: the machine is an instrument; leadership is the agent; righteousness is the compass. When those three align, the lever is pulled at the right time—and the win, when it comes, is more than luck and more than noise. It is the visible fruit of invisible virtues: courage, clarity, and care. However, just because it is invisible, does not mean it does not exist. Only that people from their perspective do not see it, because they are just cogs in the wheel, and their understanding of the big picture is severely limited.
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Footnotes
[1] Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive (HarperBusiness, 2006).
[2] W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis (MIT Press, 2000).
[3] Eliyahu M. Goldratt, The Goal (North River Press, 2014).
[4] Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Simon & Schuster, 2013).
[5] Brendan Ballou, Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America (PublicAffairs, 2023).
[6] Roger Connors, Tom Smith, and Craig Hickman, The Oz Principle (Portfolio, 2004).
[7] F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
[8] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Penguin Classics, 2003).
[9] Jim Collins, Good to Great (HarperBusiness, 2001).
[10] Andrew Grove, High Output Management (Vintage, 2015).
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Bibliography
Ballou, Brendan. Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America. New York: PublicAffairs, 2023.
Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Do not. New York: HarperBusiness, 2001.
Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013.
Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
Drucker, Peter F. The Effective Executive. New York: HarperBusiness, 2006.
Goldratt, Eliyahu M. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement. Great Barrington, MA: North River Press, 2014.
Grove, Andrew S. High Output Management. New York: Vintage, 2015.
Hayek, F. A. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Connors, Roger, Tom Smith, and Craig Hickman. The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Organizational Accountability. New York: Portfolio, 2004.
The Overmanwarrior 