The Ohio Connection Is Too Big to Ignore
There’s a meme. Maybe you’ve seen it. An astronaut looking at Earth discovers the truth. “Wait, it’s all Ohio?” the astronaut asks. A second astronaut – who has an Ohio flag patch – is the guardian of a great secret. A gun is raised. “Always has been.”
It’s absurd and, if you’re from Ohio, perfect. Ohio is this square-ish state in the middle of the country. It’s not New York. Or California. Or Texas. But it can feel like EVERY news story, and every cultural moment, every person, has an Ohio connection. Like we have an outsized influence, for better and for worse.
We Ohioans are not the only ones who think so.
The astronaut meme wasn’t always about Ohio.
It went through two iterations.
1. “wtf it’s flat” - “sry fam”
2. “Wait, it’s all America” - “Always has been”
The meme didn’t get popular until someone made it about Ohio.
A popular meme is a form of cultural agreement.
That makes it a phenomenon that emerged from a vast national subconscious.
There are more Ohio memes, most commonly in the theme of Ohio vs. The World.
Ohio is not only a subject of fascination for online culture. Cleveland has long been a go-to punchline for late-night hosts and comedians. Ohio is where Hollywood producers and book authors place stories and characters to ground them in Everytown, USA. Musicians make the state an object of their lyrical poetry.
Why?
I believe, perhaps, it is finally worth entertaining the idea that the repeated manner in which our society and culture center Ohio (Skibidy Ohio Rizz, anyone?) with reality, ubiquity and sometimes danger means … something.
Something none of us have yet to comprehend – something important.
Too many coincidences
When any amount of coincidences present themselves in our modern world, it can only mean that something we want to believe must be true, and the more entertaining the belief, the more true.
All I see everywhere are Ohio coincidences piling into truth.
Have you wondered why so many presidents are from Ohio? Why has no other state outside the original 13 generated so many commanders in chief? Why does California have one native-born president yet Ohio produces them at an alarming rate? Including, according to betting markets, our next one. Since 1960, no Republican has won the presidency without Ohio. Have you ever asked why? They don’t talk about THAT, do they? They who? You know who. They. Don’t know who They are? Of course not. That’s how They like it.
Another why – why are so many astronauts from Ohio? When Ohioans are not leading earth, they’re defying its grip. Ohioans soar to the heavens and cast their gaze on Pennsylvania like gods. The Wright brothers invented flight, which shrank distance. John Glenn orbited the Earth. Neil Armstrong walked the moon.
Ohioans have been bending time and space for over a century.
What has Pennsylvania done?
Cheesesteaks?
Time moves differently in Ohio. Seasons operate of their own accord. Fall is 2 weeks long or 19 weeks long. Spring arrives in February. Winter returns in April. Summer? It comes when it feels like it. You can experience all four seasons in the span of 24 hours. We know our meteorologists better than we know ourselves.
In Ohio, every year is both 2006 and 1971. The economy is either in a shambles or booming. The music playing on the radio never changes. “The Boys Are Back in Town.” The boys are always back in town. The boys are back. People still talk about that one high school sports championship from 1984 like it happened yesterday. Every county fair is like a mimeographed copy of the last county fair, which felt like a copy of the one before it. You can still find Radio Shacks, while miles away we’re building microchip plants. Malls survive in places malls should not exist. Meanwhile, we’re building astronaut training centers. The most popular restaurant in town is Bob Evans.
We seem to age both faster and slower than our counterparts in other states. You might meet a 48-year-old who looks 25, or a 25-year-old who carries the thousand-yard-stare of a man who didn’t think it would be like this. The babies, always wise.
This great nation’s political trends, cultural treasures, and economic innovations trace back to Ohio. Your music was discovered here. Flight was conceived here. The energy sector was born here. Now, your goods are made here. Your health care – it is perfected here. Your food is grown here, which is why all your food is corn.
I can now hear some of you – many great things are made by Californians. Are they? Look at Hollywood – Spielberg, the Russo brothers, Halle Berry, Paul Newman, Dave Chappelle (who wisely came back). California is simply an annex of Ohio. A place where people think they’ve escaped but are still in the system. Did LeBron – a grown man who calls himself a “kid from Akron” – really ever leave? The Bay Area tech boom was just Ohioans realizing they could build their own universe, and in doing so they created technologies that revealed they never left.
It’s all too much to ignore.
The question must be asked.
What if Ohio isn’t just shaping America … but testing it? A proving ground for cultural movements, businesses and presidents before they are unleashed on the rest of the country and beyond.
What if Ohio is the stabilizing force holding this all together?
What if Ohio is less of a place that exists on a map and more of a simulation checkpoint, where reality itself gets debugged before rolling out to the wider world?
Balance.
Order.
Harmony.
Toledo.
You’re starting to see it.
The Bengals and Browns suffer for our sins. They can never succeed. It is necessary. The Cleveland sports curse was lifted in 2016 (when the LeBron and the Cavaliers won), and reality glitched – Trump was elected to the horror of half the country, Europe got Brexit, and we all felt life going off the rails. Ohioans knew that Cleveland sports success was was a sign of end times. We warned you. No one listened.
An ancient life force that flows through the ages – we feel it, but we seldom discuss it in Ohio.
Yet it’s the unspoken in every conversation.
It’s the weight that presses down on every decision.
All those astronauts?
What if they left Earth not to explore space, but to escape the Atlas-like burden of … Ohio?
If Ohio falls
Every great empire, every stabilizing force in history, eventually meets its reckoning. Rome fell. Constantinople was sacked. The British Empire shrank. If Ohio truly is the invisible fulcrum holding everything in place, the question that should wake us all in terror is – what if Ohio crumbles?
If Ohio is a simulation checkpoint, a debugging zone, a cosmic failsafe … what happens when the system crashes? Do we start getting more glitches – Mandela effects, historical inconsistencies, an increase in déjà vu? Do people start waking up in Cleveland with no memory of how they got there? (I mean, more so than they already do now?)
What if Ohio, sensing its own impending fall, takes drastic action? A wounded Ohio may not go quietly. It might consolidate power. It might act preemptively. Ohio could decide that if it cannot lead, then no one can. Is the horrible truth hiding in plain sight in the Ohio vs. The World memes?
The last time Ohio truly fell – during the 1970s industrial collapse – the nation fell with it, giving birth to all-time regrettable music and fashion, serial killers, and a decrease in the quality of life. Once, Cleveland’s river burned, and the nation became mired in Vietnam, we suffered Watergate, disco, hijackings, bombings, cocaine, hostages and malaise.
Never forget the sequence.
There can be no other conclusion
You may be wondering why I am the one who reveals. Why am I your second astronaut? And why now?
These are fair questions, and they are the right ones to ask.
To answer the first question, it is because I am from Ohio, and more importantly, I am OF Ohio. Only an Ohioan who has spent a lifetime connecting the dots and just asking questions can see around corners to bring you THE REAL TRUTH.
As for the second question – why now?
At no point in this nation’s history have the people been willing and eager to believe literally anything anyone says. This moment in time had to be earned – a time when hard lies are accepted as the truth, when impossibilities are imagined as possibilities, and facts are disregarded as fiction. Only NOW can the truly impossible and verifiably false be accepted as real.
Why now?
Because you are ready, America.
It is all Ohio.
Always has been.
Until Ohio decides otherwise.
If your mind is now blown, and you need a reset, here are some other things to read:
Round on the edges and HI in the middle. An immutable truth wrapped up in a dad joke.
I do hope that y’all realize that OH is nowhere NEAR the center of the US.