Don’t fear the reapers

 Ah, fall. The days start getting shorter, the nights get cool and crisp, the leaves explode into vibrant colors, and if it’s an election year, we get word that migrant caravans are streaming towards the southern border.

In all seriousness, I don’t recall any caravans in 2024, but pretty much every election year in recent memory before that, Fox News and other Republican outlets had wall-to-wall coverage of the ragtag bands of migrants walking through Latin America. I’m pretty sure I even remember countdowns to their estimated arrival at the border that stayed in the corner of the screen.

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There has been a lot of angst about whether polling is accurate or not as an apparent blue wave builds, but a lot of Republicans believe it. You can tell because the migrant caravan fearmongering has returned. Over the past few days, I’ve started seeing more breathless posts about a new caravan headed north and warnings that American democracy is doomed if it isn’t stopped.

Those who don’t have the memory of a goldfish may recall these same warnings in years past. I remember folks online being whipped into a frenzy with dire warnings of what would happen. I remember commenters saying that the caravan should be bombed before it reached the US, never minding that a) the caravan members hadn’t broken any laws, at least none in the US, b) they were unarmed migrants, including women and children, and c) they weren’t even in the United States, so bombing them would be crossing the red line of an act of war on a neighboring country.

In 2026, we’ve crossed several red lines already, I guess. Unarmed migrants are now deemed a national security threat, and the list of countries that we (and by “we” I mean Trump) have bombed gets longer all the time.

Folks, these people are not an invading army, no matter how much the MAGA talking heads like to call them invaders. (Legally, illegal immigration does not fit the definition of an invasion.) They are laborers, women, and children looking for a better life. They’re coming to pick our crops, mow our lawns, build our houses, and clean our hotel rooms.

Thinking back to recent years, what happened when the migrant caravans arrived at the US border? Did they dig up weapons and mount raids on US settlements like Pancho Villa in 1916? Did they swarm across the border and cut all the lawns within a 50-mile radius? Did they proceed directly to the nearest welfare office without passing “Go” to collect $200?

No. IF they reach the US border, they mostly set up camp in Mexico and ask for asylum in the US. Often, the result is a humanitarian crisis on the Mexican side of the border, because the US-Mexico border runs through some pretty inhospitable territory. There isn’t much as far as living off the land, and these people didn’t have a lot when they started their walk.

If there was little welcome for the refugees under Joe Biden, there will be none whatsoever in the current Administration of Ming the Merciless. Donald Trump has lost heavily at the Supreme Court, but one area where the Court has deferred greatly to presidential authority is on illegal immigration and deportations. A recent small victory on the emergency docket was last week’s temporary reversal of a lower court’s injunction against deporting immigrants to pretty much any random country that will take them.

I say all that to say this: Why are MAGAs afraid? They claim that Trump has solved the illegal immigration problem, and the courts have unlocked new tools to use against those who would have the audacity to come pick our crops. If they really believe that Trump is not asleep at the border, why bother fearing the crop pickers coming to ask for asylum?

Don’t fear the reapers.

They’re not even here, and they’ll soon be gone.

The obvious answer is that the Republicans believe that their base needs to be frightened to the polls, and the boys who cry “communism” aren’t doing the trick. They have to ramp things up a bit with some racism.

I try not to toss the R-word around lightly, but at times it applies. It applied to Bo French, and it applies to the caravan fearmongering. It’s race-based fear of people different from us. It’s fear that they will eat our pets or spread leprosy or bring a crime wave with them. Never mind that none of these things are true.

If we stopped to think about it, we might realize that, while immigrants do commit some crimes, they commit them at a lower rate than Americans, because immigrants don’t want to attract the attention of law enforcement. They don’t want to get deported. The statistics bear out the theory that immigrants, legal or illegal, commit few crimes and are more likely to be victimized than to be predators. Again, they want to be Americans, and sometimes that comes with a cost.

The fearmongering is about keeping people frightened enough that they are afraid not to vote Republican. It’s the strategy of a party that is out of good ideas.

There are those who tell the truth. In 2018, Shepard Smith, one of my favorite anchors, tried to put his viewers at ease, saying, “There is no invasion. No one is coming to get you. There is nothing at all to worry about.” It wasn’t long after that when he was forced out of Fox News.

This year, it’s none other than Marjorie Taylor Greene. Thankfully, Greene is no longer in Congress, but she does seem to have grown up at least a bit since her break with Trump. Greene posted to the platform formerly known as Twitter, “We have not seen a caravan headed to the US southern border in several years; why now? Oh yeah, there is an election coming, and the GOP needs to scare you into voting because nothing else is working.”

I get a little frightened when I agree with MTG.

And to those of you panicking about the caravan who are Christians, you should be better than this. Realize that these warnings have been made before, and the sky did not fall. People who repeatedly make false predictions should not continue to be trusted. Remember that Christ told us not to be afraid, and don’t immerse yourselves in the lies of those who would enslave you with fear.

The Bible tells us to love foreigners, including our enemies. Jesus would have us helping the poor, not fearing them.

At the very least, we shouldn’t be clamoring to bomb them.

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From time to time, I have to play a bit with the AI for the illustrations, and sometimes it just doesn’t work out. When I tried to include a reference to Blue Oyster Cult in the graphic, this is what I got. It’s a no-go for the thumbnail, but it’s good for a giggle.

Rejected Meta AI image

PLAGUE INC A medical worker in Siberia has reportedly died of pneumonic plague, apparently after a lab accident. Hundreds of people are isolated and under observation, and five hospitals are reportedly under quarantine. Pneumonic plague can spread from person to person, but experts say the risk of a widespread outbreak is small because transmission is insufficient and the disease is too lethal.

FLYDUBAI UPDATES The FO reportedly used the cockpit crash axe to attack the captain. He reportedly planned to use the airplane to attack Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport and planned the attack before taking the job at FlyDubai.

A NEW LIE Accounts on the MAGA right are claiming that “activist judges” are overturning laws that criminalize noncitizen voting. In reality, the Florida ruling affects one person who was prosecuted by the DOJ. The judge held that he needed to be prosecuted by the state because the Constitution grants states, rather than the federal government, the power to regulate elections.

BOOK NOTES Thanks to those of you who recommended books in my last post. I’m going to look into them. I just started the “Lost City of Z” after spontaneously checking it out based on author recognition. David Grann also wrote “Killers of the Flower Moon.” I’d recommend that in both book and movie form. My daughter also just passed me her copy of “Project Hail Mary.” I’m looking forward to that one as well.

From the Racket News 

120 seconds over Tabuk

 This was a nightmare scenario.

A heavily loaded airliner is in cruise flight when the first officer attacks the captain with a knife and points the airplane towards the ground. The airplane hurtles towards the ground with hundreds of people on board and a madman at the controls.

In the case of FlyDubai 1073, the nightmare has a happy ending. Several of the 174 passengers, most of them Israelis, rushed the cockpit and subdued the mutinous first officer, an Omani national. A passenger regained control of the airplane, and another pilot, traveling as a passenger, ultimately took over the flight, landing safely at Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

It was a close thing. Radar data shows that the Boeing 737 MAX 8 lost almost 20,000 feet in a matter of minutes. Such a massive loss of altitude would come with an increase in airspeed that likely exceeded the airplane’s structural limits. Just pulling out of the dive without ripping the wings off would be a challenge, especially for a nonpilot. In fact, the airplane seems to have lost its rudder, a movable piece of the vertical tail used in lateral steering.

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The Israeli man credited with pulling the airplane out of its dive said that he knew what to do from watching “Air Crash Investigation,” which the show should put on its commercials. This is an important point because airplane flight controls are somewhat reversed from the video game controls that many are used to. In a video game, you typically push the control up to go higher, but in an airplane, you pull back on the controls to raise the nose and climb.

In our flight simulator training, we regularly practice recovering from an extremely nose-low unusual attitude. Beyond pulling the nose up, typical steps include reducing power and deploying speed brakes or flight spoilers to reduce the airspeed. Simultaneously, the pilot rolls the wings level and pulls back on the controls to bring the nose up, but this must be done carefully, especially if the speed has exceeded the red line limits. Pulling up too quickly, especially if the airplane is in a turn, could overstress the airframe and cause structural failure.

Miraculously, no one was killed, and only the two crew members seem to have been seriously injured. Even the captain, an Indian national, and the first officer are both alive and recovering.

The obvious question here is motive, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has said the first officer “underwent Islamic radical indoctrination.” That’s definitely a possibility, but there are other explanations as well.

This story is very reminiscent of the September 11 attacks, specifically the heroic actions of the passengers and crew on United Flight 93, but what happened here is even more insidious, as well as more common. Rather than a hijacking by passengers, this was a mutiny by a crew member, which is even more difficult to guard against.

The phrase “suicide by cop” has long been used to describe people who intentionally goad police officers into killing them, but suicide by airliner, while not common, is also not unheard of in the aviation industry.

Other than the September 11 attacks, there have been several infamous examples of airline crewmembers committing suicide with their planes. One of the best-known was Germanwings 9525 back in 2015. Since then, we’ve had a Horizon Airlines maintenance worker who stole and crashed a Dash 8 turboprop in 2018 and China Eastern 5735 in 2022. Malaysia Airlines 370 and Air India 171 were also likely the result of intentional pilot action.

An additional incident occurred in 2023 when an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot riding in the cockpit jumpseat tried to shut off both engines in flight. The pilot was restrained by the crew, who maintained control of the aircraft, and a spot opened up on the Alaska Airlines seniority list.

Reaching deeper into the past, a FedEx crew in 1994 was also attacked by a jumpseating crewmember, this one a flight engineer who boarded with a guitar case filled with hammers, knives, and a spear gun. The flight engineer attacked the crew with the hammers, intent on killing himself for a life insurance payout for his family, and then the flight devolved into a free-for-all that included aerobatic maneuvers in a DC-10. The crew was severely injured but was ultimately able to land the plane safely.

As a cultural reference, I’ll also add a relatively forgettable 1996 John Travolta film called “Broken Arrow.” I won’t spoil it, but the movie involves an attack on the crew of a stealth bomber.

A big question many are asking is how this could happen. Since September 11, most airliners have been built with hardened cockpit doors, but in these cases the threat came from inside the cockpit. Apparently, the door was either open or unlocked, which allowed the passengers to wrestle the first officer away from the controls.

In the US, flight crews go through the same TSA screenings that passengers endure. As an airline pilot, I was not allowed to carry a pocketknife, even when I carried my government-issued firearm as a Federal Flight Deck Officer. I could give you a list of things TSA has taken from me that include an Allen wrench that came with my suitcase that I didn’t even know was there.

That isn’t necessarily the case in other parts of the world, however. Not all countries are as security-conscious as the US, nor as fastidious about following security rules. For example, in the US and Europe, the flight deck door would probably have been locked from the inside, but in this case, a locked door would have spelled disaster.

Malicious acts by flight crews present a real and difficult security problem. Pilots have to have access to the flight deck, and when the flight deck is secured against outside attack, it can also protect a suicidal pilot from intervention.

Better security screenings of flight crews are a possible answer, but there is already a weapon in the cockpit. Federal aviation regulations require airliners to be equipped with a crash axe that is “accessible to the crew but inaccessible to passengers.” Jack Torrance would approve.

Better mental health screenings and professional help for pilots, as I mentioned in another post recently, would help, as would paying attention to what crewmembers do in their off time. The FlyDubai FO had allegedly posted about killing Jews, but at least in this country, examination of social media posts for radical beliefs and behavior probably wouldn’t fly (pun definitely intended). Still, other employees and fellow pilots should be encouraged to look out for the red flags of both murderous and suicidal behavior. In fact, these days, we should all familiarize ourselves with these warning signs.

Even though suicide-by-airplane is more common than you think, it’s still rare, and aviation is a very safe way to travel. Safe is not the same as risk-free, however, so keep your seatbelts fastened.

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FAIRFORD UPDATE The bomb scare at RAF Fairford had a big plot twist when it was revealed that the vans did not contain explosives. As a result, the five suspects were released on bail. It’s possible that the incident was part of a dry run preceding an attack. The investigation is continuing, and there has been a new arrest involving a British-Iranian man.

SHAMELESS PLUG Our friend, Stan Mitchell, is once again cranking out podcasts. We encourage you to check him out here: https://linktr.ee/stanrmitchell

Stan is a Marine, a centrist, a Christian, and a pretty smart guy (for a Marine) as well as a nice one. His podcast covers politics and military affairs. If you like our stuff, you’ll probably like him.

WHAT I’M READING I went on a Stephen King binge this summer, broken mainly by a detailed history of Guadalcanal by Richard B. Frank. When I checked out “It” and “Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle” at the same time because I had them both on holds that arrived together, it was about seven inches of books to read with the clock ticking. Both were good reads, but I can’t really recommend “It” because it is so deeply weird.

From there, I went to “Shining,” which was also pretty intense. Stephen King novels often make more sense than the movie versions, and that was the case here. The final moments of the movie are almost incomprehensible, but the book explains what the movie expects you to know.

As it turns out, there is also a sequel to “Shining” called “Dr. Sleep.” The sequel follows Danny Torrance as he grows up. Again, it’s intense, but a good read.

After that, I went in a different direction. I’ve always wanted to read Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers,” but it’s hard to find copies. I located an internet copy and then found a library copy, so I was off to the races.

Let me just say that the movies are only very loosely based on the book (like a Stephen King movie). The book is good, but the action is almost an afterthought. I’d almost call it a sci-fi military version of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” There’s a lot of detail about Basic Training for the Mobile Infantry as well as Officer Candidate School. These set the stage for political and philosophical discussions about the morals and structure of the Terran Federation with a lot of criticism of late 20th-century society.

I’m enjoying the book, but it’s definitely not what I expected.

Additionally, I do a lot of studies on the YouVersion Bible app, but the Sermon on the Mount study that I’m doing now has been really good. It’s a 19-day study that almost seemed a little too juvenile at first, but as I got deeper, it got deeper with excellent insights. The Sermon on the Mount is radical today, let alone for its time. Maybe that’s why so many people scroll back to the “thou shalt nots.”

From the Racket News 

Let the fur fly

 Just when you thought politics couldn’t get any more ridiculous, Tommy Tuberville launches himself into the fray with an issue that is not only a bizarre misinterpretation of reality, but one that has no bearing at all on safety or anything else. I’m speaking, of course, about the Alabama senator’s expose’ of an alleged infestation of “furries” in the airline industry.

In a 20-minute floor speech followed by a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter, Tuberville breathlessly opined, “I know the deranged Democrats don’t like the fact that I called out the insane FURRY CULTURE this week. But the truth is, there is an ALARMING number of these DERANGED people working in our airline industry.” [All emphasis is his.]

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If you’re wondering just what in Sam Hill the former Auburn coach is talking about, he provides a clue, adding, “Don’t believe me? Just a few months ago, PILOTS were MEOWING and BARKING at each other over the radio at DCA.”

The incident at DCA, better known to the nonflying public as Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, was real, but it doesn’t necessarily mean what Tuberville thinks it does. Back in April, there was an incident where someone was making animal noises on an air traffic frequency at the airport. If Tuberville is really concerned about this dire emergency, it isn’t clear why he waited five months to sound the alarm.

Here’s the backstory on the meowing. For quite some time now, there has been an epidemic of meowing on an emergency frequency known as “Guard.” Guard is supposed to be a frequency that is reserved for emergencies only, and good practice is to maintain a listening watch on a standby radio while workloads are low during cruise flight. Several years ago, it became a game for some pilots to meow on the Guard frequency when they get bored. I blame millennials and the 2001 movie, “Super Troopers,” which featured a scene in which state troopers meowed at a motorist they had pulled over.

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At any rate, meowing has been a thing for years now, but it doesn’t follow that meowing on the radio means the perpetrators are furries. For one thing, if a pilot was really a furry, he’d probably want to keep a low profile rather than risk outing himself by meowing over the radio.

For those who don’t know, furries are people who enjoy dressing up in animal fursuits. Forbes notes that, for some, this is “part of a sexual fetish and incorporate the furry identity into a broader lifestyle, but for many it is a hobby not of a sexualized nature,” and I’m going to take their word for it without googling further.

Tuberville defended his alarmism in another post in which he claims that a recent furry convention in Minneapolis included an “Aviation Furs Meet-up,” and asked, “Would you be comfortable with a MENTALLY ILL FURRY being your pilot?”

But the senator fails to make the case either that there are a significant number of furries in the airlines or aviation in general, or that, if there are, they are a safety risk. There has never been an incident or accident that was related to furry behavior, and the vast majority of pilots have private licenses and do not fly commercially. The aviation furry meet didn’t necessarily include any commercial pilots.

Further, the evidence that furries are mentally ill is lacking. Psychology Today says furries “represent what you would expect to find in a typical geek or nerd subculture: Above-average school performance (nearly half are college students), an interest in computers and science, and a passion for video games, science fiction, fantasy, and anime,” also noting they are “seven times more likely than the general population to identify as transgender and about five times more likely to identify as non-heterosexual.”

In particular, however, the article declines to call furries mentally ill, but characterizes them as fans of animals and animal characters who enjoy engaging in fantasy. In other words, furries are akin to other fandoms that engage in dressing up as make-believe characters from genres like Star Wars or superhero franchises. They don’t believe that they are actually animals any more than Star Wars fans believe they are actually stormtroopers.

I will acknowledge Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin, had apparent ties to the furry community. A lot still isn’t known about Robinson’s motive, and correlation is not causation, but this one horrific crime is not an indictment of all furries. There are no official statistics on violence by or against furries, but such crimes seem to be rare.

Tuberville’s alarmism over furries reminds me a lot of Charlie Kirk talking about DEI at the airlines. Back in 2024, Kirk alleged that black airline pilots might not be safe, musing, “If I see a black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's qualified.’”

Kirk’s fears were unfounded, just like Tuberville’s, and I’ll explain why. Any pilot hired by the airlines has already been certified multiple times by FAA-designated check airmen before they get near an airline cockpit. These examiners are governed by specific guidelines. They are not allowed to make subjective rulings based on factors like gender or race.

The federal prescreening of prospective pilots also includes a periodic medical exam that includes questions about mental health. Certain mental health issues are disqualifying, but as we have discussed, furry fandom is not considered a mental illness.

Once the pilot is hired, they go through an airline training program for their specific aircraft. Even if they’ve flown the airplane previously, they go through the entire course and take another flight test in the simulator. The instructors and check airmen are airline employees, but they answer to the FAA and must follow the same defined standards. Race and gender considerations might get an applicant to the top of the hiring list, but it won’t get them past the checkride.

When training and checking new and recurrent pilots, check airmen also ask themselves the question, “Would I want to entrust my family to this pilot?” This is not a rhetorical question given the flight benefits that families of airline employees enjoy. The checkers want safe pilots flying for their company.

Tommy Tuberville doesn’t seem to understand either aviation or furries, but that should be no surprise. He has never been assumed to be the sharpest tool in the shed, rising to political power amid a string of bigoted attacks on blacks, Muslims, and immigrants, among others. That may be enough to put him in the Alabama governor’s mansion as well.

Do I think furries are a bit weird? Yes, I do, but I also think that any adult who likes to play dress-up is a bit weird. I don’t make distinctions between those who dress up as animals, sci-fi characters, historical figures, or superheroes. I think furries are probably less harmful to the nation than Patriot Front members who cosplay as fascist brownshirts (although I don’t think that’s cosplay).

Having said that, I also don’t think that dressing up like an animal (or a stormtrooper or whatever) has any effect on a person’s ability to fly an airplane safely. If they can pass the tests, including recurrent training, and hold a medical certificate without raising red flags from examiners or coworkers, then they are most likely safe to fly passengers around the world. Based on the Psychology Today statistics and my own time at the airlines, I’d venture a guess that furries are more likely to be flight attendants than pilots, but I have never known any aviation worker to be a furry.

Tuberville’s rant is yet another attempt to distract from MAGA’s problems by stoking fear at misunderstood subcultures. The fear of flying furries fits with Trump’s claim that immigrants were eating pets, claims that schools were deploying litter boxes for students who identified as cats, or the perennial claims that migrant caravans are about to swarm across the southern border (a claim that I saw again today). These claims have all been debunked, but they are used by the internet pundits to create an atmosphere of chaos in an attempt to induce people to vote Republican.

If Tuberville really wants to help make aviation safer, he could push the FAA to take a more enlightened stance on mental health treatments. Because of the adversarial relationship between the FAA and pilots who need to keep their medical certificates active to keep their jobs, many pilots forgo mental health treatments for actual problems because of the fear of losing their livelihood. Mental health problems exist in the flying community, but they have been driven underground. Maybe Senator Tuberville could advocate for the reform bill backed by the Air Line Pilots Association that would help to address this problem.

Don’t worry about the furries. And also don’t be distracted from the real issues that we, as a country, face in the upcoming elections. I’m talking about political officials who partied with and protected Jeffrey Epstein, a slowing economy with rising prices (better known as “stagflation” in the 1970s), and a president who has indicated that he plans to resume bombing Iran after the midterms, as well as potentially starting yet another new forever war in Cuba.

Yes, the furries are deeply weird, but they aren’t the deranged ones.

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FAIRFIELD FUROR On Sunday, major news broke about an attempted bombing at RAF Fairford in the UK. Per news reports, locals tipped off police to the presence of strange men and three vans, which turned out to contain explosives. The base was reportedly already on high alert due to intelligence about a possible attack. Iran is my prime suspect in the incident.

RAF Fairfield is one of the US bases in the UK that was used to stage bombing missions on Iran. The video below from March shows B-1 bombers launching on attack missions from the base.

Because American standoff weapons and interceptor missiles have made it difficult for Iran to strike back with conventional weapons, it should come as no suprise that that they are attempting to use asymmetric warfare. I’m just surprised that it was car bombs and possibly suicide vests as opposed to a swarm of drones.

From the Racket News 

The center cannot hold

 For a while now, I’ve been predicting that undecided voters would start to break against Republicans. It looks like it’s happening in earnest. 

There are many who are skeptical of the polling world, and we should all be a bit skeptical here, but there is not much good news for Republicans. Donald Trump’s approval rating is collapsing, and independent voters are swinging towards the Democrats. The president hit an all-time low in his approval rating at a net -22 points in Nate Silver’s polling average. This is lower than his approval just after January 6. 

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Meanwhile, Republicans are trailing Democrats by about nine points on the generic ballot. Among independents, it is far worse. Republicans trail with these unaffiliated voters by a whopping 25 points. This is a shift of 37 points since 2022, when Republicans led by 12. 

Both Larry Sabato and Cook Political are moving races in the direction of the Democrats. I couldn’t tell you how long it has been since I saw a race shift to favor a Republican.

If you doubt the polling, consider that Republicans seem to believe it. Republican insider Steve Deace reported that Iowa State House Republicans were told, “If you are in a +15 district you’re within the margin for error, if you’re in a +10 district, you’re underwater, and that this might end being an even worse midterm environment than 2006,” when Democrats gained 5 Senate seats and 31 House seats with an eight-point popular vote advantage. There are rumors that Republicans will cut funding from their Senate candidates in Georgia and North Carolina, writing off those seats. 

There are a multitude of reasons why the sky is falling for the GOP, but a big one is the alienation of Hispanic voters with aggressive and oppressive (and racist) immigration enforcement policies. Polling shows Hispanics abandoning the Republicans by double-digit margins, even in the red firewall states of Florida and Texas. 

Byron Donalds evidently believes the polling. The Republican candidate for Florida governor just saw his race shifted to tossup status. Donalds’ response was to scrub all mentions of the other Donald from his campaign websites. Donalds isn’t the only Republican running away from Trump, but it will be hard to undo years of MAGA cheerleading in the less-than-six-weeks before the election, even less in states with early voting. 

The midterm is shaping up to be a perfect storm of the Republicans own making. Call it Hurricane Donald. The current polling is a culmination of a long list of abuses of authority, incompetence, corruption, and downright insanity. 

The only thing that’s surprising about the massive shifts in polling is that it took this long to register. Then again, maybe it didn’t.

There were signs of growing discontent all along. The cracks started showing with the economic chaos of the “Liberation Day” tariffs just a few months into Trump’s second term and grew into the massive No Kings demonstrations in which almost three percent of the US population took part. 

So, it wasn’t really just high gas prices that sunk Trump Part II. It was the chaos, the shameless grifting, the unnecessary wars, and not least of all, the total unwillingness of Republicans to tell Donald Trump no.

There’s a lesson here about hubris that Democrats would do well to learn. Even personality cults won’t follow blindly forever, and even if 73 percent of Republicans still favor Trump, precious few other Americans do. Not nearly enough swing voters to stave off disaster.

Rhetoric and attacking the other side will only get you so far. Sooner or later, you have to perform. This was a problem for Trump in his first term, but he got a break when COVID-19 overshadowed his economic mistakes. This time around, not only have Trump’s mistakes been larger and more impactful, but they’ve taken center stage.

The idiocracy is on full display, and if the partisan base isn’t happy, the rest of the country is livid. And they’re about to show it. 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

-Yeats

From The Racket News ™

The Spanish civil war election

 There are 42 days to the midterm elections. Six weeks. Get your voting shoes ready. 

Both sides have described the election as a Flight 93 election at times, but I think there’s a better analogy. To find it, we have to look back a bit further than September 11. 

At this point, it seems as though the big Republican closing argument is going to be that, sure, gas prices are high, but the Democrats are communists. 

Admittedly, there is some truth to this. Graham Platner was a self-described communist, and in one of the rarest of all things, he was a communist with a Nazi tattoo. (Nick Fuentes might be another.) On the other hand, Graham Platner was shown the door a few months ago in one of the smartest moves the Democratic Party has made in recent years. 

There are a few Democratic candidates who claim to be socialist, as well as some others, like Abdul El-Sayed, who don’t adopt the label but share many of the policies. It’s true that socialists are not communists, but it’s also true that the dividing line is pretty gray and blurred. “Socialism” can represent anything from the democratic socialism of the wealthy Nordic countries to the hardcore leninism of the Soviet Union (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and the Cubanand North Korean regimes. 

There’s a lot of ground in between those two extremes, and Democrats who take the socialist label tend to skew toward the Scandinavian end. As I pointed out with Platner, however, there are exceptions. 

On the other side of the political aisle, Democrats have accused Republicans of being fascists. That’s not a totally new thing, but as I pointed out a while back, Trumpism fits the generally-accepted definition of fascism that includes characteristics such as extreme nationalism, a (would-be) dictator with a cult-like following, and no firm principles other than whatever is best for the tribe. Fascism, of course, was also called national socialism. 

An interesting quirk of politics and history is that national socialism isn’t really socialism. The word “socialism” in Hitler’s National Socialist party was a bait and switch, intended to capitalize on socialism’s popularity in 1920’s Germany in an attempt to appeal to the working class as well as middle-class Germans. The two ideologies overlapped in many ways, such as being anti-capitalist and authoritarian, but the Nazis were anti-socialist and anti-liberal. 

In the wake of last week’s hullabaloo about Bo French’s racist tweet about college football crowds, Erick Erickson posted an expose’ about the white supremacist infiltration of Republican and Christian Nationalist groups, which traced the ideology of some prominent right-wing activists to Carl Schmitt, a veritable WWII German Nazi. The replies to Erick’s posts on the subject are revealing. 

In a way, this year’s election is a matchup of Democratic Socialism versus National Socialism. You know what else had that sort of ideological faceoff? The Spanish Civil War. 

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The Spanish Civil War gets short shrift in the American version of world history, but if you’re a World War II buff, you’ve probably at least heard of it. The conflict began in 1936 with a military revolt against Spain’s Republican government. The causes of the war aren’t as relevant to the story here as its conduct. The Nationalists, led by Francisco Franco (if you’re a Saturday Night Live buff, you may remember the old Weekend Update joke, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead”), fought the Republicans, and each side had its surrogates. (If you want an more backstory on the conflict, I recommend episodes 109 and 110 of the “WWII: Both Sides of the Wire” podcast.)

Once the war started, Nazi Germany used the conflict as a field test for the weapons and tactics that it would use in Europe a few years later. German soldiers and pilots, the Condor Legion, served tours in Spain to get combat experience and “advise” Nationalist troops. On the Republican side, the Soviet Union counterbalanced the fascist aid to the Nationalists. 

In many ways, the Spanish Civil War was a cause celebre of the 1930s in much the same way that the Russo-Ukraine War has rallied the world’s support in our own time. Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece, “Guernica,” memorialized the loss of life on the Spanish town of Guernica by a German air raid, and Ernest Hemingway, a war correspondent who covered the conflict, detailed his experiences in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” The United States was officially neutral, but American volunteers formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight against the Nationalists. Some of these volunteers were communists or socialists, while others just hated fascism.

As Hemingway wrote:

"Are you a communist?"
"No I am an anti-fascist"
"For a long time?"
"Since I have understood fascism."

It may be hard for those who know me know to believe it, but I was once an avid reader of “Soldier of Fortune” magazine (“the journal of professional adventurers”). In addition to covering the conficts of the 1980s, SOF also ran articles about military history and I distinctly remember one letter to the editor about about an article on Spanish Civil War. I can quote the closing lines from memory that succinctly described the war: “The Spanish Civil war was communism versus fascism. Both suck.”

Indeed. 

The point here is that when faced with two unpleasant choices, sometimes you still have to choose. The lesser evil is also the greater good to an optimist. (Thanks to Micheal Medved for that insight.) Let’s not bother talking about third parties that have no chance. Sometimes being an adult means making difficult choices.

In 2026, we have a Spanish Civil War sort of choice. I’m not very excited about some of the people on the Democratic side, and I’m not excited about a lot of the Democratic platform. 

However, I do understand that the greater danger is the wanna-be dictator and the personality cult who are actually in power and already doing tremendous damage. MAGA fascism is also a greater threat than Democratic socialism because the Republican Party is far more infected with radicalism than the Democrats are. Polling shows that Republicans are still79 percent MAGA while 55 percent of Democrats viewed socialism favorably in recent polling. Neither stat is anything to brag about. 

Like Ernest Hemingway, being an anti-fascist in 2026 may put us temporarily on the same side as some socialists and even some communists. That doesn’t make us communists or socialists; it just means that we see fascism as a more imminent and dangerous threat. 

Sinclair Lewis did not say, “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” but the sentiment has proven correct and here we are. It’s up to the American people to correct the course of the country. Like the Spanish Civil War, it can be difficult and unpleasant choice, but there is definitely a right choice. 

I’ll close with another Hemingway quote that seems eerily on target these days: “There are many who do not know they are fascists, but will find it out when the time comes.”

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From the Racket News

The GOP’s white supremacy problem

 There are 48 days until the midterm elections, and not a lot is going well for Republicans. Aside from rising oil and gas prices, the worst news over the weekend was from a Texas statewide candidate who made the mistake of saying the quiet part out loud. 

Bo French, candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner (despite the name, the office is a powerful one that regulates the oil industry), posted an angry rant on the platform formerly known as Twitter about University of Texas students who had the temerity to not look enough like Heritage Texans. (You can see the picture on the original tweet here.) Most people saw ecstatic football fans celebrating UT’s win over Ohio State. Bo French saw an outrage. 

This picture is a Rorschach test. What do you see? Screenshot from Bo French.

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In his words, French lamented, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

The apparent problem was that the students in the picture were too brown, because there was no other obvious issue. The happy Longhorn fans in the photo look to be mostly of Indian or South Asian descent. To French, that’s a problem.

Lest you give French the benefit of the doubt, he explained further in a subsequent tweet, “Like body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners. It’s everywhere and far worse than any of us could imagine.” 

So here’s the problem with French’s take in case you haven’t figured it out yet. We live in a multicultural nation, the proverbial melting pot of cultures. It’s impossible to tell if someone is an American or a foreigner by looking at them. A great many native-born Americans have skin colors of varying shades of brown. They don’t look like Bo French, but they are still Americans. 

There are no degrees of citizenship. A new citizen who was naturalized yesterday is just as American as a native-born American whose parents came over on the Mayflower. That’s the American way.

Further, under Texas law, Texas students in the top five percent of their classes are guaranteed admission to UT. The odds are good that, not only are the students in the picture Americans and Texans, but they were probably among the top students from Texas schools. That is called a meritocracy, and it’s something Republicans used to favor.

French is rightfully getting dragged online for his comments, and it seems that these tweets were only the tip of the iceberg. Other problematic- let’s just say the word: “racist” - tweets have also emerged, including one from last monththat says, “Muslims shouldn’t be allowed....in the United States Period.”

Tweets like these show the fallacy in the claim that Republicans only oppose illegal immigration. There is no evidence that any of the UT students were here illegally. French attacked them fore merely looking “foreign.” He would disallow all Muslim immigration based on religion, First Amendment be damned. 

The interesting thing is the silence from Republicans. Quite a few online accounts are defending and agreeing with French, but most Republicans are staying silent. Ken Paxton denounced generic racism in a tweet that attacked James Talarico rather than addressing the elephant in the room.

Credit where credit is due, Erick Erickson is one of the few voices on the right that I’ve heard denouncing French and his defenders, calling out the talk of “Heritage Texans,” i.e. white Texans,as racist, and even calling French a “racist dumbass” in a memorable tweet. I’d be surprised if French and his ilk aren’t just as unhappy about Hispanic Texans as they are Indian ones, even though Texas’ Hispanic heritage is older than its Anglo one.

And that brings me to my next point. Ironically, Erickson was calling out the propensity of Republican staffers to be Nazi sympathizers just before Frenchgate broke. 

The most recent such story involves the political director for Ohio Republican Senator John Husted, who used a picture of Waffen SS soldiers as his Facebook profile picture. This was not the only recent case of Republicans with a thing for Nazis. Just a few days ago, a staffer for Rep. Eric Pratt (R-Minn.) was fired after posting pro-Hitler and antisemitic content on social media. In Georgia, Rep. Mike Collins had an intern and PAC staffer who posted Nazi and KKK images and content, as well as a son-in-law who made white nationalist posts. 

Going back further, there is even more. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have posted Nazi slogans and references. American flags with swastikas were found in several Republican congressional offices. A leaked group chat of Young Republican leaders was filled with racist and antisemitic comments. Going back to Trump’s first term, the Unite The Right rally that led to rioting in Charlottesville was filled with alt right and neo-Nazi figures like Nick Fuentes and Steve Bannon, yet the broader Republican movement accepted these people as conservatives.

And speaking of Charlottesville, as I was finishing this piece, I saw that Marshall Rawson, a Republican candidate for the Florida House, had been identified as having marched with a pro-secession, neo-confederate group at Unite the Right. 

Partisans will dismiss these red flags as isolated occurrences, but there’s a lot of smoke here. I recall an aphorism from military history that, “Once is a coincidence, twice is happenstance, and three times is enemy action.” 

The Republican Party has a serious problem with racism.

Honestly, I’m surprised at how blatantly racist the party has become. A few years ago, when I was a Republican, the talk was about equality without favoritism. There seems to be none of that talk anymore.

I grew up in the South, and have lived most of my life here. I’ve seen a lot of change, most of it for the better. There are fewer racial differences than when I was young. Friend groups cross the color barrier. Multiethnic children are common and accepted. I can remember when all this wasn’t the case.

But there was latent racism hiding beneath the surface. Hatred and suspicion of people who are different is still common, although I doubt most people who hold these views consider themselves racist. I think that the Republican stoking of fears about immigrants has played a major role in bringing such attitudes back to the surface.

Republicans had a chance with their inroads into minority groups in 2024, but they are blowing it. If the mass deportations, restrictions on legal immigration to near zero, and the suspicion of anyone who looks “foreign” weren’t enough to sour minority voters on Republican candidates, overt hostility and racism likely will be. 

The damage being done now to the Republican brand is going to be a longterm problem for the party. The GOP is an increasingly white party in a country that is increasingly nonwhite. That demographic change is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just change. 

Republicans should be aware that the white electorate is not getting any bigger. They can’t successfully run on racist subtexts forever. At some point, the scales will tip and the GOP will become a permanent minority party representing a demographic minority. Even in Texas, non-Hispanic whites are already only 39 percent of the population. 

The growth of America’s nonwhite population is not something that Republicans can deport their way out of. 

From the Racket News