Pip: The Overmanwarrior is covering election eve in Ohio, the price of gas, ancient skull cults, and the case for owning a good ratchet — which is either a very broad week or a very honest one.
Mara: Rich Hoffman has been busy. This episode moves through Ohio campaign politics and what’s actually at stake on election day, into the economics of refinery capacity and healthcare costs, and then into the deeper question of how fear functions as a tool of social control. Let’s start with the race for Ohio governor.
Ohio on the Eve: Vivek, Turnout, and the Violence Question
Pip: The core tension in the election-eve post isn’t really about Vivek Ramaswamy versus Amy Acton. It’s about a quieter and more unsettling question: why should people who’ve lost faith in the ballot bother voting at all?
Mara: The post opens at Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester after Ramaswamy’s final campaign stop, and the message from the stage was simple. As it’s put directly: “The encouragement from the stage was simple: go vote, and call your friends and neighbors to do the same.”
Pip: And then comes the harder conversation — the one that happened off-stage, with people between the cities who are not deeply interested in politics and whose question was: why go vote?
Mara: Right. The concern isn’t Republican turnout math, though that’s addressed too — the argument is that Republicans far outnumber Democrats in Ohio if they show up. The deeper worry is people who’ve already concluded the system is broken enough that violence feels more logical than voting.
Mara: The healthcare piece connects here — a Ramaswamy administration, it’s argued, could give Republicans a concrete governing story by applying SpaceX-style cost reduction to cancer treatment, making the ballot feel like it produces something tangible rather than just holding the line.
Pip: So the ask is: vote before you feel you have to do something worse. That’s a more honest get-out-the-vote message than most.
Mara: And the closing line lands the stakes plainly — voting is described as the most peaceful way to maintain representative government, and the alternative some people are already contemplating is treated as a real and present danger, not a rhetorical flourish.
Pip: The refinery question has the same structure underneath it — a constraint that policy created, and a cost ordinary people pay every time they fill up.
Herbie at the Pump: Refinery Constraints and the Cost of Protected Systems
Pip: Gas prices stay high even when crude supply isn’t the problem — so what is the actual bottleneck, and who built it?
Mara: The anchor here is Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, applied directly to American fuel markets. The argument is stated plainly: “In American fuel markets right now, refining capacity is Herbie. We have enough crude. We do not have enough slack in the plants that process it, and the policy environment that created that condition has been running for decades.”
Pip: So the constraint isn’t geology — it’s the regulatory and capital environment that made building new refineries a losing bet for fifty years.
Mara: The numbers make that concrete. In 1982 the U.S. had 301 operable refineries. As of January 2026, roughly 130 remain. Capacity barely grew because the industry consolidated into fewer, larger plants. And utilization has been running above 93 percent, hitting over 95 percent for most of the summer of 2026 — the highest sustained rate since 1998. There’s almost no buffer left.
Pip: No slack in the system at all.
Mara: Which is why California illustrates the extreme case. Phillips 66 and Valero have both closed or are closing major West Coast plants — removing several hundred thousand barrels per day of capacity — because the regulatory stack made continued operation less profitable than shutting down. California regular was near $5.89 while the national average sat around $4.27.
Mara: The piece “Don’t Squander the SpaceX Gift” draws the same line into healthcare — hospitals billing $722 for an IV push on a medication billed separately, a cost-plus culture as entrenched in medicine as it once was in aerospace, and the argument that competitive models will eventually force the same reckoning that SpaceX forced on rockets.
Pip: The upshot is that the constraint in both cases was engineered by policy, which means it can be changed by policy — but only if someone’s willing to admit that’s what happened. That’s where the culture question comes in.
Fear as Software: Control, the Haunt, and the Politics of Heaven
Pip: This is the widest segment — it starts with Jason Voorhees at Kings Island and ends somewhere near ancient Canaanite skull cults, which is either a long walk or a very short one depending on your priors.
Mara: The post “The Politics of Fear” frames the whole project explicitly. It describes the argument as: “non-human intelligence — whether framed as demons, interdimensional entities, or residual ‘software’ written into human cognition — operates primarily through fear, peer pressure, and mythic narratives.”
Pip: So fear isn’t just an emotion — it’s a control mechanism, and the haunted house is a laboratory for watching it work in real time.
Mara: That’s the method. Working as Jason Voorhees in the Kings Island Blood Reign maze across roughly 22 operating nights gave a large sample of human behavior under controlled terror. The observation is that guests who knew exactly where Jason was still jumped — and that the bounded certainty of the scare itself provided relief from more diffuse everyday fears.
Pip: And the gendered responses under that pressure are treated as data, not anecdote — mapped onto older patterns of appeasement and status-seeking under conditions of uncertainty.
Mara: The companion piece, “Jason at Kings Island and the Rules of the Haunted House,” draws the political parallel directly: some guests, once they understood the rules protected them absolutely, became rambunctious and tested the boundary. The argument is that the same asymmetry operates when a group uses a host culture’s free-exercise rules as a shield while its own foundational norms don’t reciprocate those protections.
Pip: The rules can be used against the people who wrote them — and naming that asymmetry is treated as the necessary first move.
Mara: Then “The Tool Belt Life” comes at the same problem from the ground up. The administrative state, the argument goes, trains people to manage decline rather than fix things — and the correction starts with people who still know how to put a tool belt on. The happiest periods described are the ones spent in machine shops and gunsmithing bays, where the problem is visible and the feedback is immediate.
Pip: Calloused hands as a counter-narrative to institutional capture. The fear segment and the tool belt piece are making the same point from opposite ends — one about what controls people, one about what frees them.
Mara: And both connect back to the ballot. If you understand the mechanism — whether it’s a refinery bottleneck, a billing regime, or a social control system — you can address the actual constraint instead of yelling at the wrong variable.
Pip: The thread across all of this is the same: find the real bottleneck, name it honestly, and don’t let the rules be used to prevent you from doing that.
Mara: Whether it’s refinery capacity, cancer treatment costs, or the question of who shows up to vote — the argument is that the constraint was built, which means it can be dismantled. Next episode we’ll see what comes after election day.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
Pip: There is a building in Oxford, Ohio, that spent decades feeding college students and then spent a few more years being quietly forgotten — which, honestly, tracks for most institutional food service.
Mara: Rich Hoffman takes us inside that building’s second act, and into the argument underneath it about what government is actually for and who shows up when the work is real.
Pip: Let’s start with the building, the people who were already there, and the aircraft company operating out of Suite 117.
From Nightmare to Innovation: The College@Elm Story
Mara: The central question here is what good government actually looks like in practice — not in a press release, but in a building that almost got torn down.
Pip: The post opens with the framing that sets everything else up: “When you vote people into government, you are not voting them in to manage your life. You are voting them in to manage something you need done at the local, state, and federal levels, and then to get out of the way so good minds can finish the work.”
Mara: That is the operating theory behind the whole College@Elm story. The building at 20 South Elm Street was constructed in 1933, ran as Miami University’s central food service facility for 68 years, then sat vacant. Selling it and tearing it down were both live options.
Pip: Miami University President Gregory Crawford did not take the path of least resistance — a phrase that deserves to be stitched on something. He started walking potential partners through the building around 2017 and 2018, asking whether they could see what it might become.
Mara: By 2020 there was a plan, and by February 2023 the Lee and Rosemary Fisher Innovation College@Elm opened after a renovation costing about 10.7 million dollars, part of a total public-private investment of 17.55 million from the State of Ohio, JobsOhio, Butler County, the City of Oxford, and private donors.
Pip: And here is the part that caught the author off guard: he invited State Senator George Lang to come hear him speak, looked into the audience, and discovered Lang had been part of the building’s origin story for nearly a decade already.
Mara: Lang put it plainly in his own remarks: “It’s the only place, literally the only incubator in Ohio, that I know of in the country, where you can go from concept to production all under one roof and have everything right there.”
Pip: That is the kind of sentence a politician says and usually doesn’t mean. The difference here is that Lang apparently spent real political capital getting state dollars into the project before anyone was sure it would work.
Mara: Auditor Nancy Nix was in that same audience on September 21. She had been invited out when Crawford was still pitching the vacant building, and she came then too. Michael Ryan, who won the Republican primary for Butler County Commissioner in May 2026 with about 72 percent of the vote, stood up and spoke that day as well.
Pip: The pattern the post keeps returning to is simple: you can tell who your friends are by who shows up before the thing becomes important.
Mara: Which brings us to who is actually operating inside the building now. Volynt Aero, the company where the author serves as COO, develops hybrid-electric uncrewed aircraft for cargo logistics, mobile power generation, and forward communications — the work where you cannot always count on a runway or a fuel truck. Their aircraft is called the Vyper, spelled with a Y, because Volynt also uses a Y.
Pip: Suite 117, 20 South Elm Street. A few miles from the Miami University Airport with its 4,011-foot runway. For a company building uncrewed aircraft, that proximity is, as the post notes, not a small thing.
Mara: The closing argument is about the long clock. The things done today are what people are standing inside of nine years from now — and the post holds College@Elm up as evidence that government, used properly, does not dream for people. It keeps the road open so the people who do dream can get the work to market.
Pip: Dreams on Elm Street, not the extended nightmare — and on that note, the ideas here connect forward to something bigger about who builds these roads and why it matters.
Mara: The thread running through all of this is that good things, done over a long period of time, eventually just happen — and the people who make them happen are usually the ones who showed up before it was obvious.
Pip: Worth watching what Suite 117 looks like in nine years. We’ll be back with more from The Overmanwarrior next
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss..
I like doing these kinds of talks. Positive stuff. The benefits of things. The proper role of government. When you vote people into government, you are not voting them in to manage your life. You are voting them in to manage something you need done at the local, state, and federal levels, and then to get out of the way so good minds can finish the work. I talk about that a lot, and I talk about my friend, State Senator George Lang, who I consider one of my very best friends, because he has spent a long time doing the unglamorous part of that job. Good things, done over a long period of time, eventually just happen. He does not always realize, in the moment, how far those things are going to travel. I will talk more about some of that in November. For now, I want to talk about a day in Oxford that caught me off guard in the best way.
We had an event at the College@Elm innovation center on September 21. I was there to talk about what I have been calling the dreams of Elm Street. I discussed the next generation of middle-mile work I am involved with through Volynt, the company I lead as COO, and the hybrid unmanned aircraft they call Vyper (with a Y), since Volynt also uses a Y. Volynt Aero sits at 20 S. Elm Street, Suite 117, Oxford, Ohio, inside that building, and I am very proud of the affiliation and of the people around it.[1] When I do these kinds of things, I invite people I know. I know quite a few political people. I looked into the audience, and there were some very important faces in it. I had invited George to come out and listen. I had no idea he was already part of the roots of the place.
Positive people, positive work
It is nice to be involved in positive things with positive people who mean to do good things. I had no idea when I first got involved with Volynt, and they brought me out to show me the facility and how deep the story of that building went. I was impressed with the building. I didn’t know the story of the Innovation Center on Elm Street. When I gave the talk, I made a play on words. Nightmare on Elm Street used to be the honest description of the building Volynt is in. It was dilapidated. People had considered tearing it down. Miami University President Gregory Crawford brought George Lang out, and Nancy Nix, and a bunch of other people, and said Let us save this building and make it an innovation center for young minds coming through Miami University, a place to get a launch in life. That is exactly what is happening. A partnership moved into the building. I came out there in a COO role with Volynt. We talked a little about the history of how they arrived there, and about the other tenants, in a building that sits right there on the campus square, right there on Elm Street.
I talked about the play on words. A nightmare on Elm Street becoming dreams on Elm Street, because innovation startups are dreams. They are people trying to bring about new thoughts and new ideas. I guess a lot of people knew that story already. I did not. I was talking to George, telling him to come out, and George was already coming. As I was giving the speech, I looked out, and of course Michael Ryan was there, who I believe is going to be the next Butler County commissioner, and he came and gave part of the speech with me. In the audience were people like Nancy Nix. And George was there. I am going to show you. I know George is going to do the work. I had no idea that when I said, “Come on out,” he already knew all about it. He knew about the innovation center. He was there when it was being born. Nancy and I were talking about it, and she had been invited to see it back when President Crawford pitched the idea of taking this building and turning it into an innovation hub for aspiring ideas at Miami University. I had no idea this was where it was going.
The building that almost got torn down
I saw George in the background as we were setting up to give our speech. He was filming a short presentation on the building’s history, which he hadn’t told me about. I had no idea it was happening. I just joined the Volynt role. I admired the building. I thought it was a good use of a structure that might otherwise have been lost. It is very close, in Oxford terms, to the Miami University Airport, the little airport down the road at 7101 Fairfield Road, identifier OXD, a 4,011-foot runway that Miami operates and that sits only a few miles from campus.[2] For a company building uncrewed aircraft, that proximity is not a small thing. It is all very well set up.
Here is the history, for those unfamiliar, because it is a good story and deserves to be talked up.
The building at 20 S. Elm Street was built in 1933. For 68 years it served as Miami University’s central food service facility, the unglamorous engine room that kept the campus fed.[3] After dining services moved to the Demske Culinary Support Center, the Elm Street building became swing space and general storage, then sat vacant. By the time people were seriously arguing about its future, it was a roughly 90-year-old, 39,000-square-foot brick building with a strong foundation and a failing prospect. Miami and the City of Oxford debated what to do with it. Selling it was on the table. Tearing it down was on the table. Leaving it as a forgotten building on South Elm was the path of least resistance.[4]
President Crawford did not take the path of least resistance. He had been in business before higher education. He had founded companies. He knew the difference between a press release and a building that works. Around 2017 and 2018, he began walking potential partners through the place and asking whether they could see what Elm Street might become.[5] By 2020, the university and the city had a plan: turn the vacant structure into a technology, entrepreneurship, and workforce hub. Preparations began in 2021. The renovation cost about $10.7 million, part of a larger public-private investment of $17.55 million from the State of Ohio, JobsOhio, Butler County, the City of Oxford, and private donors.[6] Miami alumni Lee Fisher, class of 1968, and Rosemary Fisher, class of 1969, provided the naming gift. In February 2023, the building opened as the Lee and Rosemary Fisher Innovation College@Elm.[7]
That is the part I did not know when I was admiring the brick.
George Lang, the incubator, and the long clock
George has said publicly that he used whatever political capital he had to get state dollars into the project so it could get started and get up and running. He has called College@Elm something very special and very unique. His line, the one that matches what I half-heard him filming in the background, is that it is the only incubator he knows of where you can go from concept to production under one roof: prototypes, marketing expertise, funding, the whole path an entrepreneur needs to find out whether an idea can succeed.[8] Advanced manufacturing was part of the original pitch. The Fischer Group was an early anchor concept, an “innovation extension” inside the same walls as Miami’s entrepreneurship training.[9] When I watched him in the background and later saw the clip surface on LinkedIn, because the algorithm knows I know him, he was not doing a campaign spot. He was telling the history of a building he had already helped stand up, eight or ten years before Volynt moved into Suite 117.
I have known George for about twenty years: very good times and some very hard times. You learn the character of a person that way. A good person is pretty stable whether the times are good or bad. I am sure things are going on in his life where people look at him from the outside and say, I wish I were him. Then you know the pressure of living. It can be hard. I am sure he would trade some of the blood pressure for an easier job. He has said as much, in the way friends say it. The goldfish feeder at Walmart might be a better life on some days, because you can enjoy things a little more and carry less pressure. He finds himself under a lot of pressure a lot of the time. I say that as a friend, someone I talk to pretty regularly. It is not always better on the other side of the glass. It is hard. But when you care about innovation, and business, and technology, and job growth, this is the work. That is why I am involved in it. Not because the title is comfortable. Because the output is real.
Nancy Nix has the same knack. She was in the audience on September 21. She has a way of seeing a good thing before it becomes important, and she has been that way for a long time, back through nearly sixteen years as Butler County Treasurer and into the Auditor’s office she was sworn into in February 2023.[10] She was invited out when Crawford was still pitching the building. She came. Michael Ryan has supported this kind of work well before the commissioner race, and he stood up and spoke with me that day. He won the Republican primary in May 2026 with about 72 percent of the vote, and he is on the November 3 ballot focused on economic development, job creation, and capital investment.[11] I think he is going to win. More to the point, he showed up.
What Volynt is actually doing there
Volynt Aero was formed in 2024 by people who have been developing uncrewed aircraft and eVTOL machines for years. The spelling is the point—Volynt, with a Y. The aircraft is the Vyper, also with a Y. They are always doing things a little differently, and I like that. The company builds hybrid-electric uncrewed aircraft aimed at cargo logistics, highly mobile power generation, and forward communications for defense and for disaster response- the work where you cannot always count on a runway, a fuel truck, or a pilot who can get there.[1] The address on the capability statement and on the federal registration is the same as the innovation center: 20 S. Elm Street, Suite 117, Oxford, Ohio 45056. They have taken Ohio Third Frontier and TVSF support and partnered with Miami University on powertrain work. That is the right use of a building like this. Not a plaque. A prototype.
I had no idea, the first time I walked the facility, that the roots of the innovation talk went back that far, or that George was part of it, or that Nancy Nix was part of it. A lot of things in government never mature. Maybe only five percent of them ever become anything good. This one has a chance to mature into something really good. It is exactly the kind of thing that all of these people hope their role in government can do: take good minds, imagination, goodwill, and blood, and help them mature into something productive. Government, used properly, does not dream for people. It keeps the road open so the people who do dream can get the work to market.
Dreams, not the extended nightmare
I have always enjoyed my time on college campuses. I have not been happy with the direction academia has taken, captured as so much of it has been by left-wing politics and by the pursuit of intelligence subordinated to social order. I still encourage what I see. Even if everybody on a campus is not pushing the limit the way I think they should, you still see a proportion of people who are. I stop by the little convenience store on the campus, and I get a Mello Yello. People joke about it. The three drinks I drink are Mello Yello, water, and milk. A lot of water, a lot of milk, and a lot of Mello Yello. Sugar is not good for you, but I don’t consume much else with a lot of sugar in it, so I am good with it. And when I am standing there, I see a lot of bright-eyed people walking around with backpacks, dreaming and hoping.
That is what I was talking about in the speech. The dreams of Elm Street, because we were on Elm Street, in the innovation center. You expect a company like Volynt, working there, to have a shot at evolving into a technological powerhouse. It all started with the dreams of people like the president of Miami University, and Senator Lang, and Nancy Nix. You can tell who your friends are. It depends on who shows up for these things. You invite them to come out, you look into the audience, and you see faces that are very familiar to you. Some of the things you are doing may not become important for five years, or ten. They still come.
George said it in his own way. The things you do today are the things that show up eight or nine years from now. A lot of the work he does, and a lot of the work the other people who came out to our event are doing, works on that clock. I appreciate everybody who came. Michael Ryan has been supportive before he was ever on a commissioner ballot. Nancy has always supported things well before they become important. She has a good eye. She was in the audience. She knows a good thing when she sees it.
The innovation center on Elm Street is there for a purpose. It is there to inspire the growth of human intellect, as academia was always meant to do. I was proud to be there, and proud to be a part of it, and proud to look into that audience and see those kinds of people. I appreciate having high-quality people like that in my life. I think all of us, working together, can make dreams come true for a lot of people who don’t even know they are dreaming yet. They are just living their lives and hoping for a dream to dream, instead of living inside an extended nightmare where intellect is no longer in charge of the human condition.
Innovation centers like the one on Elm Street are, I think, among the highest-order things a community can build anywhere in the world, because they are dedicated to aspiring intelligence that makes everybody else’s lives much better. George Lang has always been supportive of that. It was good to hear his story, and to hear it go back those eight or nine years. The things you do today will be the things people are standing inside of nine years from now. That is what good government looks like. A president of a university pushing. A senator putting political capital on a building that is still empty. An auditor who shows up early. A future commissioner who stands up and speaks. They help pave the way for dreams to become a reality instead of a nightmare.
Footnotes
[1] Volynt Aero, Inc. lists its primary address as 20 S. Elm Street, Suite 117, Oxford, Ohio 45056. Founded in 2024, the company develops hybrid-electric uncrewed eVTOL aircraft for cargo logistics, mobile power generation, and forward communications under the Vyper name, and has paired Ohio Third Frontier and TVSF support with Miami University powertrain work. See Volynt Aero capability statement, volynt.aero; federal entity record, CAGE 9X2Y4, UEI ZDFZRXS7EJY2; Volynt Aero LinkedIn company page.
[2] Miami University Airport (OXD), 7101 Fairfield Road, Oxford, Ohio 45056, is a public-use airport operated in connection with the university and has a 4,011-by-70-foot asphalt runway. Miami University, “OXD Airport in Oxford, Ohio,” miamioh.edu/oxd-airport.
[3] Miami University, “From Food Services to Innovation Hub: The Story of College@Elm,” College@Elm Impact Blog, 2025. The building was constructed in 1933 and served as the university’s central food service facility for 68 years before dining operations moved to the Demske Culinary Support Center.
[4] Halie Barger, “Forgotten building on South Elm Street to become space for innovation startups and a focus on the arts,” Oxford Observer, February 14, 2020. Miami and Oxford officials described a vacant former food-service building that had later been used for storage; sale and continued vacancy were both live options before the innovation-hub plan.
[5] Sean Scott reporting in the Oxford Free Press, “College@Elm aims to provide innovation hub for Southwest Ohio businesses,” drawing on Lee Fisher’s account that President Gregory Crawford approached potential partners around 2017–2018 and was “the big driving force” behind the project. Crawford has described walking partners through the building more than two years before the 2023 opening. Miami University News, “The Lee and Rosemary Fisher Innovation College@Elm celebrates grand opening,” February 2023.
[6] Miami University put the renovation at $10.7 million and total invested funding at $17.55 million from the State of Ohio, JobsOhio, Butler County, the City of Oxford, and private donors. Miami University News, February 4, 2021, “Miami and Oxford initiative to transform uptown into an entrepreneurial hub”; Miami University News, February 2023 grand-opening release. The Oxford Free Press separately noted a City of Oxford contribution of about $1.18 million toward renovations, plus parking-lot work. Figures vary by what is counted as renovation versus total public-private investment; both numbers are in the public record.
[7] Lee Fisher ’68 and Rosemary Fisher ’69 provided the naming gift. The Lee and Rosemary Fisher Innovation College@Elm held its grand opening in February 2023 at 20 S. Elm Street. Miami University News, February 2023.
[8] George Lang, quoted in the Oxford Free Press: “I was very proud to use whatever political capital I had to get some dollars at the state level to help get the program started and get it up and running.” And: “It’s the only place, literally the only incubator in Ohio, that I know of in the country, where you can go from concept to production all under one roof and have everything right there.” The Miami Student, March 2023, also noted Lang’s support through the funding process. The September 21, 2026 remarks I saw him filming are his own telling of that same history.
[9] Miami University News, February 4, 2021. The early plan named two anchor uses: Miami’s entrepreneurship training and incubator center, and the Fischer Group’s manufacturing “innovation extension.” Later tenants have included student and alums ventures such as Coarse Culture. The Miami Student, March 2023, reported a five-year hope, attached to the Fischer Group concept, of 52 jobs and just under $3 million in payroll.
[10] Butler County Auditor Nancy Nix was sworn in on February 13, 2023, after nearly 16 years as Butler County Treasurer, and was elected in November 2024 to the unexpired term. She holds a B.S. from Truman State University, an MBA from Miami University (2012), and a CPA license—Butler County Auditor, “Meet Nancy,” auditor.bcohio.gov.
[11] Michael V. Ryan, former Hamilton City Council member and vice-mayor, won the May 5, 2026 Republican primary for Butler County Commissioner with about 72 percent against incumbent Cindy Carpenter, and faces Democrat Mike Miller on the November 3, 2026 ballot. Journal-News, “Butler County commissioners race: Michael Ryan and Mike Miller up for open seat,” September 30, 2026. Ryan has campaigned on economic development, job creation, and capital investment.
Volynt Aero. Capability statement and company site. https://volynt.aero/ — address listed as 20 S. Elm Street, Suite 117, Oxford, Ohio 45056. Aircraft program styled Vyper.
Volynt Aero. LinkedIn company page, Oxford, Ohio. Notes Ohio TVSF grant and Miami University powertrain partnership.
Hoffman, Rich. Overmanwarrior essays and podcast, hoffmanbooks.com — including the September 21, 2026 College@Elm remarks and the George Lang clip referenced here.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
Pip: Welcome to The Overmanwarrior, where the reading list runs from the Book of Exodus to Dead by Daylight and somehow that is a straight line.
Mara: Rich Hoffman is laying out a doctoral thesis argument that connects American horror cinema to ancient Near Eastern religion, and today we are following that argument from the cold open all the way to the cosmological stakes underneath it.
Pip: Let’s start with Jason Voorhees and the gods of Canaan.
Jason Voorhees, Canaan, and the Shape of a Thesis
Mara: The post opens a question that is genuinely unusual for a horror-franchise discussion: why does a figure invented in New Jersey in 1980 for under six hundred thousand dollars still occupy a room in every generation’s imagination, including children who were not alive for the original film?
Pip: That is the setup, and the thesis sentence lands hard once it arrives.
Mara: Here it is directly: “The thesis, as I am presuming to pursue it, is Jason Voorhees: why he is scary, and why Yahweh had to save the world from the gods of Canaan. And why those are not two subjects.”
Pip: Two subjects that the academy would never seat at the same table, which is precisely the point.
Mara: The argument is that the psychological pattern behind Canaanite worship — the pull toward a lesser, more immediate god when the harder claim feels too distant — did not end in the ancient Near East. It shows up in the crowd that kept Jason alive for forty-six years, in the game Dead by Daylight where he is now a weekly opponent for children, and in what the post calls the transmission mechanism across generations.
Pip: And the academic credential is not the goal — it is described explicitly as a tool, a seat at a fight that otherwise dismisses the argument as coming from, and I appreciate the self-awareness here, a blogger with a whip and a podcast.
Mara: The post is direct about that: “A Ph.D. is a tool. It is not a personality. It gives you a seat in a fight that otherwise dismisses you as a blogger with a whip and a podcast.”
Mara: The practical stakes are that the thesis will run alongside the manuscript called The Politics of Heaven, already past two hundred thousand words in draft, rather than waiting for a five-or-six-year academic calendar. The blog carries the argument in real time.
Pip: The golden calf is the control case inside the thesis — Aaron accommodates the crowd’s impatience, the harder claim goes unrepresented, and the visible substitute fills the room. That mechanism is what the post argues keeps recurring, from Canaan to Portland to a hockey mask.
Mara: The post also raises New England stone chambers, Jordan Valley dolmens, and the Noah’s Ark formation in eastern Turkey as examples of questions the guild has professionally closed while other ritual claims remain professionally open — the asymmetry is part of the evidence.
Pip: So the hook before Halloween, as promised in the post, is that America’s thirteenth villain could only have been made here, and what he reveals about why human beings keep drifting back to the lesser worship is the door into everything else.
Mara: And the details from what the post calls the seasonal field observations — watching crowd reaction from both sides of the mask — are being held until November. That is where the operational evidence comes in.
Pip: So the thesis is the door, the blog is the bridge, and the hockey mask is apparently load-bearing architecture.
Mara: The real question underneath all of it is whether the psychological pattern that kept Jason alive across generations is the same one the ancient texts were warning about — and that argument is still being built.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
Every once in a while, life hands you one of those small, perfect weeks with family — the kind that doesn’t need a grand destination or a complicated itinerary to feel meaningful. Recently, we packed up the RV and took a short family trip to The Wilds in central Ohio. It wasn’t far from home, and it wasn’t meant to be anything elaborate. But it turned into exactly the kind of experience that reminds you why family time matters and why stepping away from the noise is sometimes the best thing you can do.
My daughter put together a fantastic video from the trip, capturing the highlights in a way only she can. A few of my grandkids are featured in it, running around, laughing, exploring, and just being kids. Watching them in that setting—surrounded by open sky, quiet water, and the wide, rolling landscape—reminded me how grounding these moments can be. We spend so much of our lives dealing with big issues, heavy conversations, and responsibilities that stack up day after day. But weeks like this show the other side of life, the part that keeps you centered.
If you’ve followed my writing for any length of time, you know I spend a lot of time talking about sovereignty, community, history, politics, and the deeper questions that shape our world. Those topics matter, and they deserve the attention we give them. But it’s just as important to share the lighter moments—the real life that happens between all the big ideas. This trip was a perfect example of that balance. It wasn’t a grand expedition; it was simply a family outing, close to home, filled with the kind of memories that last longer than most of the headlines we chase. As I have said, I have spent most of 2026 on the road like this. Sometimes it’s just my wife and I. Sometimes, like this, it’s family, some of our family. Sometimes it’s all my family. I like RV travel because it lets me take my office with me. I write books, I do consulting, and I can do all that work from anywhere in the world with a TEAMS call. I never know where I’m going to be, so that’s why I do all the videos these days from the kitchen in my RV. It has good power and a comfortable, studio-like setting. Sometimes the internet isn’t great at our campgrounds, but that can be solved with Starlink, which I’ll likely do next year.
The World of Everywhere and Anything
RV camping has a way of slowing everything down. There’s something about being on the road, even for a short distance, that shifts your mindset. You’re not rushing. You’re not checking your phone every five minutes. You’re not thinking about the next meeting or the next project. You’re just present. The video my daughter made captures that feeling beautifully — the simplicity, the quiet, the laughter, the sense of being together without distraction. It’s a glimpse into how we travel, unwind, and stay connected as a family.
The Wilds itself is a unique place. Wide open spaces, wildlife roaming in the distance, and a sense of calm that settles in as soon as you arrive. It’s the kind of environment that encourages reflection without forcing it. You breathe a little deeper. You listen a little more. You notice things you might overlook in the rush of everyday life. And when your kids and grandkids surround you, those moments become even more meaningful.
It was a short trip, but it was packed with fun and full of the kind of small joys that make life feel full. These are the moments that remind us that life isn’t just about the big battles or the big ideas — it’s also about the quiet weekends, the shared meals, the kids running around, and the chance to breathe for a minute. It’s about remembering that the world is bigger than our worries and that the people closest to us are the ones who make the journey worthwhile.
So I’m sharing this little slice of our life not because it’s dramatic or extraordinary, but because it’s real. It’s honest. It’s the kind of thing we all need more of. And I think you’ll enjoy seeing that side of our world — the family side, the simple side, the part that keeps everything else in perspective.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
Pip: The Overmanwarrior has a talent for asking the question that makes a comfortable consensus squirm — and this time the question is about who was actually first.
Mara: Rich Hoffman digs into the Cherokee’s own oral tradition about a people who came before them in the southern Appalachians, and follows that thread into archaeology, rock art, and what the word “indigenous” is actually doing when we deploy it politically.
Pip: Let’s start with the moon-eyed people and the timeline they complicate.
The Moon-Eyed People and the Stolen-Land Clock
Mara: The core tension here is about where we freeze the historical frame — and who benefits when we freeze it at 1492 rather than looking at what the Cherokee themselves say about the mountains before they arrived.
Pip: The post sets it up directly: “when the Cherokee first came into the country they now inhabit, they found it possessed by certain moon-eyed people who could not see in the daytime, and they expelled them.” That is Benjamin Smith Barton in 1797, reporting what he was told by someone connected to the Cherokee.
Mara: What that means in practice is that the Cherokee, by their own account, displaced a prior people — which means the word “indigenous,” applied to the Cherokee in the Smokies, is already doing selective work. Someone else held the ridge first.
Pip: The moon-eyed people as described are small, pale, often bearded, light-sensitive — cave-dwellers who came out at night. Fort Mountain in north Georgia still has a wandering stone wall nobody has definitively attributed, and the park marker names them as possible builders. The Lost Sea in Craighead Caverns, the largest underground lake in the country, has Cherokee artifacts and a Pleistocene jaguar in the same system — a place that was a world before it became a tourist dock.
Mara: The post is careful here. The highly specific portrait — pale, bearded, giant light-sensitive eyes, full-moon battle — is thickest in late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century print, written by Euro-American men. Living Cherokee tradition also has the Yunwi Tsunsdi, the Little People of the rocks and caves, and some cultural workers say the pale-bearded version is not central to tribal history. The honest framing the post offers is that the Cherokee world contains stories of earlier people in the mountains, and the 1797 English sentence is one channel — not a DNA report.
Pip: Right, and the post extends the geography — the Cherokee County Historical Museum in Murphy, North Carolina, has a flat-faced stone figure with oversized crescent eyes that visitors identify with the moon-eyed people, and Three Rivers in New Mexico has more than twenty thousand Jornada Mogollon petroglyphs, many of them goggle-eyed masks. The post does not claim those are portraits of Appalachian cave-dwellers; it refuses to use distance as a veto on the question.
Mara: And the deeper archaeology reinforces the problem with a fixed 1492 clock. The Windover people of Florida buried their dead seven to eight thousand years ago — brain tissue and fiber still readable. The Old Copper Complex around Lake Superior was working native copper as early as the ninth millennium before the present.
Pip: So the political use of “indigenous” to mean the nations of 1500 is, as the post puts it, not doing archaeology — it is choosing a photograph.
Mara: The post is equally direct about the Trail of Tears: it was terrible, the removal was real, the Cherokee have a right to that grief. The argument is not that the later wrong didn’t happen. It is that one removal is allowed to organize a nation’s shame while the earlier one is treated as a campfire story too thin to count — and that asymmetry tracks usefulness, not evidence quality.
Pip: A question that has been sitting in the back of the room, it turns out, while the drums were going.
Mara: The closing test the post applies is worth stating plainly: if “indigenous” means first on the ground, the Cherokee fail their own story in the Smokies. If it means a 1492 diplomatic stamp, it is not deep history. If it means a moral title against the United States, it is a legal brief, not anthropology — and briefs pick their plaintiffs. They do not fund caves.
Pip: The moon-eyed question does not close when you leave the Smokies — it just gets quieter, which is a different thing.
Mara: Who was standing on any ridge before the people we memorialized is a question the dirt keeps answering whether the grant office is listening or not.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
I have watched this movie before. In 2015 and 2016, and again in 2024, the same class of people tried to tell America that Donald Trump’s wealth was a character defect. They said a rich man could not be trusted, that success itself was the indictment, that gold, planes, and golf were proof he was “not like you.” Voters put him in the White House twice anyway, because they understood something the professional scolds never will: independence is an asset. A man who does not need the job is harder to own. That is the lesson Ohio Democrats and a handful of leftover Republican wreckers are now trying to unlearn with Vivek Ramaswamy, and it is why Amy Acton spent Labor Day weekend screaming that you cannot buy Ohio.
She needed a chant. What she got was a gaffe.
The Speech That Sounded Like a Person Running Out of Road
Watch the clip. Acton is at a union picnic with Pete Buttigieg in tow, doing the ritual of the lockdown years: I am a doctor, not a politician, becoming one right in front of your eyes. Then she starts barking that Vivek cannot buy the state, cannot buy Ohio, cannot buy us, cannot buy us, cannot buy us in Ohio, that is the end of this. It is the sort of thing a campaign writes on a whiteboard when the internals look ugly and the only remaining argument is envy. The crowd does not catch fire. She looks like she is trying to start a wave at a funeral.
This is the same Amy Acton Ohio already knows. She ran public health under Mike DeWine when the state was locked down, businesses were smashed, kids were sent home, and “follow the science” became a political religion. She collected awards for it. A lot of Ohioans collected unemployment, missed funerals, and watched their Main Streets die. You can call that public service if you like. I call it the record she has to run on, and it is why the “I’m just like you” routine lands like a lead pipe. She is not just like you. She is the woman who told you to stay home while the people who write the rules kept their salaries.
The wealth attack is even thinner. Vivek flew to watch tennis. He likes tennis. He used to be a ranked junior. He has a court. He went to the U.S. Open and he has been to Paris. Wealthy people do that. Trump never ran from Mar-a-Lago or the golf course; he wore the gold clip and the silk tie and said, yes, I did well, and if you vote for me I will try to make it so you can do well too. That is a producer’s message. Acton’s message is the opposite: he has money, therefore he is illegitimate, therefore hand the keys to the people who want to tax the successful and redistribute the proceeds to the discontented. That is not a governing philosophy. That is a ransom note.
Why Attacking Wealth Is a Loser’s Tell
I have been thinking lately about the Apostle Paul. He was effective in part because he had standing and independence. He was not a ward of the movement. He could travel, argue, and endure because he was not begging the crowd for his next meal. Politics is not the church, but the principle is the same. A candidate who has already won in the private economy does not need Columbus the way a career public-health administrator needs Columbus. Vivek does not need a government job. That is supposed to be a feature. The people yelling “you can’t buy Ohio” are announcing that they cannot raise comparable money and cannot compete on growth, so they will compete on resentment.
David Pepper and the rest of the chorus have been working this line for months: billionaire, private jet, not one of us. Fine. Then explain why Trump’s jets and clubs did not stop two national victories, and why Ohioans who want plants, capital, and jobs might prefer a man who has already built companies to a woman whose signature achievement was closing the state. You can dislike Vivek’s style. You can argue policy. What you cannot do, with a straight face, is pretend that enjoying a tennis match is a civic crime while the alternative is more of the administrative state that already had its turn.
The other half of this farce is intra-Republican sabotage. After a primary, Democrats lock arms around whoever they nominated, even when she sounds like a chalkboard dragged down a stairwell. A slice of the right still wants to pick the scab. Nick Fuentes types, leftover primary rivals, the professional “I told you so” circuit—anyone who would rather be right about a Republican’s flaws than win the state—keep feeding the same clip. They did it to Trump in 2016 and 2024. He won anyway because voters vote their interest when the noise dies down. A good economy and job creators in your state beat a sermon about how the other guy’s plane is too nice.
Then Came the Fair, and the Overnight Conversion of a Shove Into an Assassination Plot
The timing is the tell. After the Labor Day chant made her look unhinged, the campaign needed a new story. Sunday at the Canfield Fair, a 38-year-old local named Patrick Havas pushed through a tent crowd toward Acton with a phone up, as if he were recording or trying to get close enough to be seen. He knocked over older people. Security took him down. After the fact, deputies found two pistols and a Taser-style device on him. He did not draw the guns. He did not fire. He did not brandish. Ohio is a constitutional-carry state. Carrying is not the same thing as attempting murder. The charges reported were disorderly conduct and misdemeanor assault for the people he knocked down. Acton was unhurt. The people who fell were assessed and, according to the sheriff, did not seek further treatment.
That is a bad scene at a fair. It is not a martyrdom. Campaign statements still said an “armed individual lunged” and injured multiple people. National copy followed the verb. By Saturday night into Sunday the lead was written as if Ohio had just watched a political assassination attempt. If there were clean video of a man trying to kill her, it would have been on every screen before supper. What we got instead was language inflation: lunge, attack, armed, threat—while the actual police story is a large man barreling for a better look or a confrontation, knocking seniors like bowling pins, and getting piled on by Highway Patrol.
This attack story is just another Democrat Jussie Smollett story, trying to gain sympathy and voter support through fake news talking points. This is the fullness of the Acton operation: when the speech is a disaster, change the subject to danger. When you cannot raise on growth, raise on fear. When you cannot debate or raise money, accuse the other side of buying the state. Look how many sucker politicians jumped on the bandwagon without knowing all the facts, which again came out looking like Amy Acton is a loser candidate.
What Ohio Actually Chooses When the Cameras Leave
Acton will keep the unions, the people who want the next transfer payment, and the media that still thinks 2020 was her finest hour. She will keep Pepper on the ticket as proof that the old Democratic machinery is still in the room. She will keep calling Vivek rich, which he is, and hoping Ohio has forgotten that successful people are allowed to like tennis, football Saturdays, and a life that is not a permanent campaign stop.
I want a state that recruits producers instead of lecturing them. If a man with a billion dollars in assets spends a few thousand to fly to a match, that is not the scandal. The scandal is a political class that treats his success as the crime and her lockdown résumé as the credential. Trump never apologized for winning. Vivek should not apologize for a court, a jet, or a seat at the Open. The people who need him to grovel are the same people who needed Trump to grovel. They lost that argument twice.
Vote like you want the factories and the payrolls. When things got tough for Amy Acton in 2026 she turned to fake news. Which only made everything worse. She is the lockdown lady and is horrible in every way a politician can be, which we all had a front-row seat to in 2020 when she destroyed Ohio’s economy and told everyone they could be superheroes if only they wore a mask in public. That is the person running for governor in Ohio as a Democrat. A disaster on a good day. On a bad day, she is a fake news agent of destruction and drunkenness.
Notes
1. Acton’s Labor Day-weekend remarks with Buttigieg at the Cincinnati AFL-CIO picnic, including the “you cannot buy this state / you can’t buy us” repetition, circulated widely on September 5–6, 2026. See WLWT coverage of the Hamilton picnic and contemporaneous rally video.
2. Acton served as Ohio Department of Health director under Gov. Mike DeWine beginning in 2019 and became the public face of the state’s COVID restrictions.
3. Criticism of Ramaswamy’s travel and tennis included Acton’s own Labor Day-weekend post attacking a U.S. Open appearance and earlier opinion pieces on a July 4 Paris trip.
4. Ramaswamy’s tennis background (junior player, Cincinnati Open ball boy, regular Open attendee) is part of his public biography and prior campaign videos.
5. Canfield Fair incident, September 6, 2026: Patrick Havas, 38, of Canfield, pushed through the Mahoning County Democratic Party tent, knocked down older attendees, was detained by Ohio State Highway Patrol executive protection; weapons recovered after detention; no brandishing reported; charges reported as disorderly conduct and two counts of misdemeanor assault. Acton uninjured.
6. Constitutional carry in Ohio means possession of a concealed firearm, without more, is not itself an assassination attempt.
7. Public polling through late summer 2026 generally showed a toss-up to slight-Ramaswamy edge depending on the house, which is consistent with a campaign hunting for a reset narrative.
8. Intra-GOP sniping after contested primaries is a recurring feature of the Trump era; Democrats have typically consolidated faster around flawed nominees.
Bibliography
Acton for Governor. Campaign statements and Labor Day / Canfield Fair remarks, September 2026.
Ballotpedia. “Amy Acton.” Candidate biography and office history.
CNN. “Armed man arrested after pushing through crowd toward Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee.” September 6, 2026.
Columbus Dispatch. “Armed man arrested after lunging at Amy Acton at Canfield Fair.” September 6, 2026.
Cincinnati Enquirer. Nick Anderson, “Ramaswamy’s Paris trip an example of his disconnect with Ohioans.” July 8, 2026.
HuffPost. “Vivek Ramaswamy Slammed For Leaving Ohio And Attending The U.S. Open.” September 6, 2026.
Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office / Ohio State Highway Patrol statements on the Canfield Fair detention of Patrick Havas, September 6, 2026.
New York Times. “Armed Man Arrested After Charging Toward Democratic Candidate for Ohio Governor.” September 6, 2026.
The Nerd Stash. “‘You Can’t Buy Us’: Ohio Dem Amy Acton Sparks Backlash After Awkward Rally Chant Aimed at Vivek Ramaswamy.” September 6, 2026.
Washington Post. “Armed individual ‘lunged’ at Democrat nominee for Ohio governor, campaign says.” September 6, 2026.
Wikipedia. “2026 Ohio gubernatorial election.” Polling averages and race ratings as of early September 2026.
WLWT. “Pete Buttigieg campaigns for Amy Acton, Greg Landsman at Cincinnati AFL-CIO picnic.” September 6, 2026.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
Pip: The Overmanwarrior is a show that refuses the easy road — no local gossip, no algorithm-friendly takes, just a man and a copper pit older than the pyramids’ reputation, asking whether the whole story of this continent needs to be rewritten.
Mara: Rich Hoffman’s recent work covers a lot of ground — Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario, the deep prehistory of the Great Lakes, the Copper Scroll, and what the word “indigenous” is actually doing in a political argument. Let’s start with the lake, the copper, and why the naming fight is really about something much older.
Lake America and the Copper That Built the Ancient World
Pip: The segment opens with a provocation: Trump signed an executive order on August 27th renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America, and the argument here is that the outrage that followed is actually the point — that names are how institutions teach a public what to value and what to be ashamed of.
Mara: The post frames the whole project this way: “I am trying to encourage people to come down the rabbit hole and take whatever treasure they can carry back out.” That’s the method — not a seminar, not a grievance catalog, but a sustained question about what the naming fight is actually downstream of.
Pip: And what it’s downstream of, the argument goes, is an institutional habit of treating the founding of the United States as the continent’s original sin — where every pre-Columbian name becomes untouchable and every American assertion becomes an act of erasure.
Mara: Canada’s prime minister said the lake is called Ontario “today and forever.” New York’s governor said the state wouldn’t use the new name. The legal reality is narrow — Washington can rename what Washington prints, it cannot rename what Toronto says — but that gap is exactly why a name becomes a weapon.
Pip: The copper is where this gets genuinely interesting. The Old Copper Complex of the Upper Great Lakes — Isle Royale, the Keweenaw Peninsula — shows prehistoric pits worked by hunter-gatherers dating into the ninth millennium before the present. More than a thousand pits on Isle Royale alone. That is not a weekend hobby.
Mara: The post is careful here. Two things it calls firm: Archaic people of the Upper Great Lakes worked native copper very early, with some dates rivaling the oldest copper work in the Old World, and the metal is so pure it can be hammered without smelting. The leap — walking that copper across the Atlantic to Solomon’s Temple — is flagged as a leap that still needs isotope evidence.
Pip: Then there’s the Windover site in Florida — a pond cemetery near Titusville where a backhoe in 1982 pulled up human bone dating seven to eight thousand years before the present. Brain tissue. Woven fiber. A readable last meal. A civilization of burial custom standing on this peninsula while the Near East was still becoming Egypt.
Mara: The Moon-eyed people tradition rounds out the prehistory argument. Cherokee oral memory, as recorded by early settlers, described finding and displacing a pale, light-shy people already living in the southern Appalachians. The point isn’t to convict a ghost — it’s that if the Cherokee displaced someone, they were the latest people of that ridge, not the first.
Pip: Which is exactly the human story from the Levant to the Andes — and exactly what the political use of “indigenous” tries to freeze out of the frame. The Copper Scroll enters as a related question: not where did the Temple treasure go, but where did the metal economy that made such a list thinkable come from in the first place.
Mara: The post asks whether the ancient Near East’s enormous copper hunger has been fully inventoried. Timna and the Arabah are on the map; recent radiocarbon work has restored a tenth-century industrial peak there. Lake Superior is the name the textbooks treat as a category error. The argument is that asking the question is scholarship — treating the crossing as proven is not.
Pip: So “Lake America” is doing a lot of work for four syllables. It’s not cartography — it’s a forced discussion about whether the United States is allowed to name its own waters without first clearing the claim through a political story that starts in 1492 and ignores every copper pit that came before.
Mara: The post puts it plainly: the copper miners of Superior, the burial people of Windover, the builders on the dry bay floor — those are indigenous facts. The political slogan that uses “indigenous” to unmake the United States is, the argument goes, not a fact. It is a maneuver.
Pip: And if the question of who names a lake connects to who gets to name the country itself, then the next question is what other forces — beyond the political — might have an interest in keeping that shame in place.
Mara: The thread running through all of this is the same question applied at different scales — are we getting what we want from the story we’ve been handed, whether that story is about a lake, a copper pit, or a national identity?
Pip: Follow the copper. Follow the names. That’s the assignment — and something tells me the rabbit hole goes considerably deeper than the bottom of Lake Superior.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
Pip: The Overmanwarrior has a long memory and a short tolerance for school boards that treat a paid-off debt like a personal tragedy.
Mara: Rich Hoffman has one subject this episode: Lakota Local School District is back on the November ballot, and the case against it runs from enrollment projections to property-tax philosophy to who actually pays when apartments fill up.
Pip: Let’s start with the ballot itself and what the district is calling a non-increase.
No New Taxes, No Relief: Lakota Is Back on the Ballot
Mara: The core tension here is definitional — the district says this bond is not a tax increase, and the post argues that framing erases something real: the relief homeowners were about to receive.
Pip: The setup is precise. The Lakota Board voted on June 9, 2026, to place a bond before voters, and here is the sentence that does the most work: “You have been making a mortgage payment to the school district. The mortgage is almost paid off. Instead of celebrating the payoff, they want you to sign a new note for thirty-seven more years and call the signing a favor.”
Mara: The upshot is that a $223 million bond at 2.20 mills, timed to replace an expiring bond, keeps the bill identical — which means the cut you were owed never arrives. Collections begin in 2028, first due in 2029, right as the old debt dies.
Pip: And the $77-per-$100,000 headline is doing a lot of costume work. Liberty Township median sales run in the low-to-mid-500s. At $530,000, that’s roughly $408 a year — closer to a television than a rounding error, to borrow the post’s own framing.
Mara: The post also goes after the enrollment story the campaign depends on. District slides from September 2025 projected 19,074 students by 2033. But FutureThink, the consultants the district itself hired, delivered a March 2026 study showing 2025-26 enrollment at 16,913 and a ten-year path drifting toward the mid-sixteen thousands — not racing toward nineteen thousand.
Pip: So the spike that justifies a thirty-seven-year note may not be arriving on schedule.
Mara: There’s also the 2025 context. Last November’s package failed 60.81 percent to 39.19 percent — a $506.4 million bond plus a permanent-improvement levy. The post calls Phase One the same philosophy in a smaller first bite, and notes that Lakota’s general-fund operation already runs near $226 million annually for one suburban district.
Pip: The apartment argument ties it together: renters use the schools, one landlord sits on the tax duplicate, and the longtime homeowner gets the invoice. The post credits Liberty Township trustee Todd Minniear for understanding that math — his vote against adding apartments near Liberty Center is why Ford’s Garage exists instead of another stack of balconies.
Mara: The recommendation is direct: vote no on November 3. A failed bond means the old millage still expires, which is a tax cut in 2029. The post frames that outcome not as deprivation but as the reward the community already earned.
Pip: Which raises the question of what comes next — because the post is clear that a no vote is not the end of the conversation, just the beginning of a harder one about living inside $226 million.
Mara: The through-line is straightforward: a community that has been paying for decades is being asked to keep paying, and the argument for doing so depends on projections that the district’s own consultants don’t fully support.
Pip: November 3 is the answer, and then — if history holds — there will be another question in 2027. The ballot is apparently a perennial.
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
