Wednesday, November 4, 2026

The Ascendency of Idiocy

 The midterm elections have come and gone, and in some ways they were historic.  From a purely factual point of view, that's accurate.  From a practical point of view, it's beyond accurate.

Yes, the country elected many firsts.  The first Native American governor, the first black governor of Florida, the first Muslim senator.  But in many ways, the electorate made huge mistakes.

More often than not, when being interviewed, the potential voters cited talking points without being able to enunciate why those talking points were the only areas of review they were making.  A case in point is the newly minted senator from Michigan, Abdul El Sayed.

Yes, he's articulate, a Rhodes scholar, a doctor (if only by degree and not by license).  He preaches no foreign wars, money in our pockets, corporate money out of politics and Medicare for all, the usual platitudinous palaver.  He appeals to the young, the brainwashed and the liberal.  Those groups are either unaware of the warning signs, unconcerned about them or unable to perceive the danger.

First, Sayed has ties to radical Muslim terrorist groups.  His mother and his sister have been connected to groups tagged by the government as terrorist groups.  He claims not to have any connection to them.  His supporters yawned.

Second, he aligned himself with a firebrand radical activist named Hasan Piker, whose rhetoric, were it coming out of the mouth of a white man, would provoke universal condemnation.  His antisemitic, chauvanistic and unpatriotic comments are vile and caustic, yet Sayed was able to dismiss him as a Tik Tok streamer from California even after campaigning with him in the primary election.  His supporters let this slide as well.

He claims to want corporate money out of politics yet takes money from groups that have acted as siphons for foreign corporations, especially corporations from Muslim countries.  His supporters turned a blind eye.

His endless sidestepping of uncomfortable questions, especially regarding Israel and the horrendous October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, brings only additional condemnation from his supporters for the alleged genocide by Israel in Gaza.

Although his allegiance to Sharia law is often mentioned by himself and his critics, no one ever mentions the concept of taqiyya, which allows Muslims to deceive infidels like myself if it furthers the cause of Islam.  As a sitting U.S. senator, how will we infidels ever know when he's speaking the truth?  Along those same lines, do we want someone with ties to terrorist groups having access to intelligence briefings, knowing he could easily disseminate that intelligence to his Muslim brothers in the Middle East and then lie to us infidels about his actions?

I said many times before the election that his candidacy was not the typical Democrat versus Republican match, that it was far more grievous than that.  James Talarico, the newly elected senator from Texas and a grade A freak, is one thing.  Having someone with Sayed's background is quite another.

Perhaps we'll survive the next six years with Sayed in the Senate.  Perhaps people will finally understand what the risks are and vote him out.  But in the meantime, other radical Islamists like him will be emboldened to run.  Worse yet, the useful idiots among us -- or as Jonathan Gruber labeled called them the stupid useful idiots -- will fall for their suave lines and feel bad about a minority who is obviously being discriminated against by that part of the electorate that is merely being discriminating and vote him or her in.  A Trojan horse dressed up in a burka.

God help us.  

God help the United States of America.

(c) 2026 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Saturday, July 4, 2026

July 4, 2026

 July 4, 1976.  Fifty years ago.  

I was fifteen-years-old.  We lived in a subdivision west of town called Lake Charlotte.  That night, we watched the fireworks being shot off in town at the top of Lake Charlotte Court.  We sat on the street with our bikes over by the side of the road, impressed that we were witnessing the Bicentennial, the two hundreth birthday of our great nation.

Had we been asked if we'd be around for our semiquincentennial, we would have stared distantly, wondering what a semiquincentennial was.  Had we been told that it would be the two hundred and fiftieth birthday, we would have haughtily said yes, but we'd have wondered privately if we'd be around then.

Yet here we are, in 2026, celebrating the semiquincentennial.  It's July 4, 2026, and I'm sixty-five-years old, eligible for retirement.  In my six and a half decades of life, I've lived through many good and many bad times.  We buried our mother thirty years ago; had she lived to see the semiquincentennial, she'd have been approaching her ninety-fifth birthday.  Sadly, she didn't make it to sixty-five.  Fortunately, our country did, and then some.

Ours is the greatest country in the world.  That's both prideful and objective.  Our country has had glorious triumphs.  But it has also saved the world on several occasions from the scourge of fascism, communism and authoritarianism.  It has saved countless people from famine, disaster and plague.  It welcomes the world and shows it what true liberty is.  

No, it's not perfect.  Being the greatest does not equal perfection.  We, as a republic, have a long way to go in that department, but the important thing is that we never stop striving for perfection.  Every improvement we make short of that goal is still a benefit to humanity.

So I'll watch fireworks virtually (it's raining and ungodly hot tonight) and toast my country, thankful for God's grace to have allowed me to be born here.  I'll thank the men and women who have protected us and our republic and pray that we have the sense to keep it, as Benjamin Franklin warned us to do.

I've written a book about my time in Spain.  One of the best lines I've ever written is the last one of the book:  As a man loves his mother but is in love with his wife, I love my country but am in love with Spain.

I am and forever will love my country.  May God continue to bless the United States of America, the greatest country in the world.

(c) 2026 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Thursday, June 18, 2026

Black Fatigue

 Growing up, if any of us had the temerity -- or more likely stupidity -- to use terms like nigger, kike or spic, we'd get our mouths washed out with fels naptha soap, which wasn't pleasant in the slightest.  Perhaps as a result of this, we were more accepting of other cultures.  I don't remember being scared of other races, or threatened or anything negative about them growing up.  They were just different than us, the same that Lutherans or Jews were different from us Catholics.  Not worse, just different.

As I matured into an adult, I started noticing differences that had nothing to do with color.  Again, these weren't negative differences, just differences.  

But then I went to college.  Admittedly, in high school the interactions with minorities were far more limited.  In college, the commingling of races, whether it was in classes or dorms, was far greater.  The differences that I'd started noticing as a young adult became more pronounced and, in some instances, more aggravating.  The biggest one had to do with sports, specifically basketball.  Sure, black kids tended to dominate.  It was just a fact of life.  I didn't like it much, but then again there were white kids who dominated me as well.  I just chalked it up to my poor genetics.

But as we got deeper into the decade of the 80s, the differences started to veer into unpleasant areas.  Not only were blacks  dominating in basketball, but they were making what was once a fun pastime very tiresome.  It seemed that every basketball game was a virility contest.  Respect was a word thrown around, but it was merely code for something deeper, more visceral.  Asserting one's manhood took precedence now.  Merit took a backseat.

Given my congenitally weak ankles and a burgeoning career as an attorney, I saw little reason to continue to subject myself to open gyms where it would have been much easier to just unzip, lay 'em out on the table and grab a ruler.  I didn't need to risk injury while not having any fun doing it.  Sure, losing wasn't any fun, but even worse was putting myself in an ad hoc gladiator match just to prove my manhood.  So I stopped playing basketball.

As a practicing attorney, I've had many interactions with black attorneys.  Almost all of them were pleasant.  In fact, of the more unpleasant interactions I have had, the majority of them were with white attorneys.  So the open gym experience didn't leave me jaded at all.

But when I'd go home and turn on the television, I'd see behavior within the black communities that was downright despicable.  Gangs of blacks beating the pulp out of a helpless white person.  Riots involving the destruction of property of innocent people.  Assertions that branded me and my country as racist, despite the obvious holes in the argument.

Lately, the phrase black fatigue has been bandied about, and not just by white folk.  Anytime there's a trial in a high profile case, the strident black voices sound loudest.  Reason goes out the window.   Black politicians feast on any perceived slight to yell about Jim Crow, lynching or slavery.  Talk of reparations will not go away.

I'm tired of this.  I don't deserve to be subjected to these insults.  I could list the number of things that would suggest that I'm not racist -- the black friends I have, the black women I've dated, the books I've read on African-American history -- but it's almost cliche to do so.  I have nothing to defend myself about.  

At the same time, I don't feel the need to subject myself to this abuse.  I step away from situations where such discussions could be had.  It's sad.  I don't mind engaging in debate, but the argument usually devolves into illogical assumptions and loud voices.  I'm too old to do this anymore.

I have black fatigue.

I am not a racist.  I respect people based on their conduct, not their skin color.

But I will also judge people based on their conduct as well.  Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn't have it any other way.

(c) 2026 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Sunday, March 22, 2026

Things I Don't Understand

 I'd like to consider myself a reasonably aware and somewhat intelligent person.  Even so, there are some things I just don't understand.

For example, when a Christian marries a Jew and converts to Judaism, how is it that a Christian who, for most of his or her life, has believed the Jesus is the Son of God, now demotes him to a mere prophet?  I can understand how a Jew converting to Christianity now believes the Jesus is God, but a Christian relegating Jesus to a mere prophet confuses me.

When I worked on street crews for our village during summers to earn money for college, we sometimes worked with concrete trucks that brought concrete to the sites.  The truck would have a chute in the back that the revolving drum would then use to deliver the concrete.  After I'd graduated law school, I saw that the chute now delivered from the front of the trucks.  Why?  How is that better?

Volleyball when I played it in gym class had a rotation system.  It also had a scoring system that only allowed the team serving could score a point.  Now it has a libero and points are scored regardless of which team is serving.  When did this change?

I love music.  I will never understand how songwriters come up with the beautiful melodies they do.  James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, Hans Zimmer and others like them just mystify me.  What a wonderful gift they've been given.  

When we call a business and get an answering service that gives us multiple options for connecting to certain departments, there's usually a very saccharine, treacly woman's voice that is so sickeningly sweet I fear that I'll fall into a diabetic coma.  Where do these women learn to talk like this?  And do they turn it off when they go home?

(c) 2026 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

 

Wednesday, January 21, 2026

65

 Over the weekend I turned sixty-five.  I never pondered the age, but here we are.  I am officially eligible for social security and retirement, although I probably could have retired three years ago.  Funny thing is, I don't feel old at all.  I am the living embodiment of the adage that one can only be young once, but one can always be immature.  I am an eternal twelve-year-old.

But I got to thinking:  Even though the Greatest Generation gets the laurels -- rightly so -- in my humble existence I've seen a few things.  Here's a list of the things I've seen during my six decades on earth:

--  The Kennedy assassination (technically I was too young, but I was alive)

-- The Vietnam War

-- The MLK assassination

-- The RFK assassination

-- Man walking on the moon

-- The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

-- Two Arab invasions of Israel

-- The Munich Olympic massacre

-- Test tube babies

-- Personal computers

-- Cellphones

-- The Gulf War

-- 9/11

-- First female presidential candidates

-- Death of Elvis

-- Compact discs

-- 8 tracks, cassettes, Blu rays, streaming 

-- Cubs won a World Series

--  Non-politician POTUS

-- First female, African American and Latino SCOTUS justices

-- Creation of the European Union

-- Downfall of the Soviet Union

The list is not exhaustive, obviously.  But in my short time on earth, I've seen some things.

What makes this list even more poignant is that today I found out today that a fifty-eight-year-old colleague died.

QDEP Brian...

(c) 2026 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles 

Sunday, December 14, 2025

The Muslim Menace

 Another day, another atrocity committed by Muslims.  This time, a shooting on Bondi Beach killing innocent Jews.  When will it stop?

The answer is never.  Despite what its adherents claim, Islam is not a religion of peace.  It is a religion of conquest.  I don't know whether it's the religion itself, or the twisted application that Muslims put to it, but no matter how peaceful some Muslims may be, a very troubling minority sees no problem with killing those of us it views as kafirs, or infidels, as part of their religious obligation.

The problem for us in the United States is that we can't limit immigration from Muslim countries because it would clearly be discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.  The other side of that coin is that Muslims antagonistic to this country are using those laws to infiltrate our country to destroy us from within.  They don't even try to hide it.  Just look at what's happening in Dearborn, Michigan.  It's already happened in the UK.

Personally, I'm intrigued by the Arab world and Arabic as a language.  Were this not so dangerous I would study Arabic and its culture.  But now, it's a question of whether it would be worth it.  In order to learn a language, one needs to immerse himself in it.  There is no way I could do that now.  

What's really hard to swallow are the useful idiots who politic on behalf of Muslims and Islam.  Any criticism of either immediately brings charges of Islamophobia.  I think that's mistaken.  It's gone way beyond fear to hatred for many people.

(c) 2025 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Sunday, November 30, 2025

Pendulum Swings

Right now, I'm mostly satisfied about the direction of the country.  President Trump has kept many if not all of his promises.  But it's not the political shift that I like the most.

Culturally, we're getting away from Wokeness, a scourge on this country unlike any other we've ever faced.  Trans people mass illegal immigration being accepted, criminal acts excused by sociology and the suppression of free speech are things that should never have existed.  The acceptance of these things, even to society's detriment, was unthinkable when I was growing up, but the Left, operating on what Karen calls the "feels," has perverted society almost to the point that this country was unrecognizable.

So while I support the return to more normal values, I do worry.

Much of the angst from the Left uses certain words:  Fascism, oligarchy, patriarchy, Nazi.  These terms are wildly misused, often to the point of being projection, but the drumbeat from the Left almost never excludes the terms or uses them correctly.

Still, I worry.  

The charge of fascism from the Left is wrong, as is the term Nazi.  But for anyone who has an iota of understanding of history, it's not impossible to see a future where the current trend in our society devolves into either.  Sure, the situation in 1933 Germany isn't exactly the same as what we have here.  The Versailles Treaty had brought Germany to its knees.  We aren't in the same situation by any means.

But if the young turks on the Right insist on expanding their power, it could happen that fascism could breed Nazis.  I could see it happening, unfortunately, although I don't think I'd see it in my lifetime.  And if it did happen, it would be every bit as bad, if not worse, as Antifa is now.

President Trump is more of a populist than he is a Republican.  I'm not sure where JD Vance is on the spectrum.  But President Trump is only in office for three more years.  Right now, no one seems interested in expanding MAGA beyond what it is.

But if history teaches us anything, the more we ignore history the likelier we are to repeat it.

(c) 2025 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles