NOTE: The following post is largely adapted from last year’s November 7 post on the same subject.

Since 2007, I have advocated designating May 1 as an international Victims of Communism Day. The May 1 date was not my original idea. But I have probably devoted more time and effort to it than any other commentator. In my view, May 1 is the best possible date for this purpose because it is the day that communists themselves used to celebrate their ideology, and because it is associated with communism as a global phenomenon, not with any particular communist regime. However, I have also long recognized that it might make sense to adapt another date for Victims of Communism Day, if it turns out that some other date can attract a broader consensus behind it. The best should not be the enemy of the good.

As detailed in my May 1 post from 2019, November 7 is probably the best such alternative, and over time it has begun to attract considerable support. Unlike May 1, this choice is unlikely to be contested by trade unionists and other devotees of the pre-Communist May 1 holiday. While I remain unpersuaded by their objections on substantive grounds, pragmatic considerations suggest that an alternative date is worth considering, if it can avoi such objections, and thereby attract broader support.

The November 7 option is not without its own downsides. From an American standpoint, one obvious one is that it will sometimes fall close to election day, as is the case this year. On such occasions, a November 7 Victims of Communism Day might not attract as much attention as it deserves, because many will – understandably – be focused on electoral politics instead. Nonetheless, November 7 remains the best available alternative to May 1; or at least the best I am aware of.

For that reason, I am – once again – doing a Victims of Communism Day post on November 7, in addition to the one I do on May 1. If November 7 continues to attract more support, I may eventually switch to that date exclusively. But, for now, I reserve the options of returning to an exclusive focus on May 1, doing annual posts on both days, or switching to some third option should a good one arise.

In addition to its growing popularity, November 7 is a worthy alternative because it is the anniversary of the day that the very first communist regime was established in Russia. All subsequent communist regimes were at least in large part inspired by it, and based many of their institutions and policies on the Soviet model.

The Soviet Union did not have the highest death toll of any communist regime. That dubious distinction belongs to the People’s Republic of China. North Korea has probably surpassed the USSR in the sheer extent of totalitarian control over everyday life. Pol Pot’s Cambodia may have surpassed it in terms of the degree of sadistic cruelty and torture practiced by the regime, though this is admittedly very difficult to measure. But all of these tyrannies – and more – were at least to a large extent variations on the Soviet original.

Having explained why November 7 is worthy of consideration as an alternative date, it only remains to remind readers of the more general case for having a Victims of Communism Day. The following is adopted from this year’s May 1 Victims of Communism Day post, and some of its predecessors:

The Black Book of Communism estimates the total number of victims of communist regimes at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny.

Our comparative neglect of communist crimes has serious costs. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events promote awareness of the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of left-wing forms of totalitarianism, and government domination of the economy and civil society.

While communism is most closely associated with Russia, where the first communist regime was established, it had equally horrendous effects in other nations around the world. The highest death toll for a communist regime was not in Russia, but in China. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward was likely the biggest episode of mass murder in the entire history of the world.

November 7, 2017 was the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, which led to the establishment of the first-ever communist regime. On that day, I put up a post outlining some of the lessons to be learned from a century of experience with communism.  The post explains why most of the horrors perpetrated by communist regimes were intrinsic elements of the system. For the most part, they cannot be ascribed to circumstantial factors, such as flawed individual leaders, peculiarities of Russian and Chinese culture, or the absence of democracy. The latter probably did make the situation worse than it might have been otherwise. But, for reasons I explained in the same post, some form of dictatorship or oligarchy is probably inevitable in a socialist economic system in which the government controls all or nearly all of the economy.

While the influence of communist ideology has declined greatly since its mid-twentieth century peak, it is far from dead. Largely unreformed communist regimes remain in power in Cuba and North Korea. In Venezuela, the Marxist government’s socialist policies have resulted in severe repression, the starvation of children, and a massive refugee crisis—the biggest in the history of the Western hemisphere. Recent events in Venezuela also highlight the dangers of “democratic socialism.” While most communist regimes have taken power by force, ignorance about the history of communism and socialism could enable such movements to take power by democratic means and then eventually shut down democracy, as has actually happened in Venezuela. “Democratic socialism” – which has many of the same flaws as the authoritarian version is gaining in popularity on the political left in the US, as shown by the recent election of a prominent member of the movement as mayor of New York.  Most of his supporters likely have little understanding of the  dangers of his ideology. Victims of Communism Day can help combat such ignorance.

In Russia, the authoritarian regime of former KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin has embarked on a wholesale whitewashing of communism’s historical record. Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine is primarily based on Russian nationalist ideology, rather than that of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the failure of post-Soviet Russia to fully reckon with its oppressive Soviet past is likely one of the reasons why Putin’s regime came to power, and engaged in its own atrocities.

In China, the Communist Party remains in power (albeit after having abandoned many of its previous socialist economic policies), and has become less and less tolerant of criticism of the mass murders of the Mao era (part of a more general turn towards greater repression). The government’s brutal repression of the Uighur minority, and escalating suppression of dissent, even among Han Chinese, are just two aspects in which it seems bent on repeating some of its previous atrocities. Under the rule of Xi Jinping, the government has also increasingly reinstated socialist state control of the economy.

Here in the West, some socialists and others have attempted to whitewash the history of communism, and a few even attribute major accomplishments to the Soviet regime. Cathy Young had an excellent critique of such Soviet “nostalgia” in a 2021 Reason article.

Victims of Communism Day is also a good time to remember our duty to help those victims, or at least avoid impeding their escape from oppression.  Among other things, it is unjust to deport migrants fleeing oppressive Marxist dictatorships, like those Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, as the Trump Administration seeks to do to hundreds of thousands who entered the US legally under the CHNV program. If some on the left tend to ignore the evils of socialism, many on the  nationalist right have been exacerbating the plight of its victims.

In sum, we need Victims of Communism Day because we have never given sufficient recognition to the victims of the modern world’s most murderous ideology or come close to fully appreciating the lessons of this awful era in world history. In addition, that ideology, and variants thereof, still have a substantial number of adherents in many parts of the world, and still retains considerable intellectual respectability even among many who do not actually endorse it. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day serves as a bulwark against the reemergence of fascism, so this day of observance can help guard against the return to favor of the only ideology with an even greater number of victims.

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President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance came into the White House promising to take more of a backstage role in the Middle East. In a May 2025 speech, Trump railed against military interventionism and praised Arabs “developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions, and charting your own destinies in your own way.” A few months before, Vance had argued that U.S. support would help “Israel, with the Sunni nations,” to “actually police their region of the world. That allows us to spend less time and less resources in the Middle East.”

Nearly a year into the second Trump administration, it looks like Americans will be doing a lot of that policing themselves. The administration is pushing the United Nations to pass a two-year mandate for international peacekeepers in Gaza, to be overseen by a Board of Peace chaired by Trump himself. U.S. forces are already in Israel to monitor the ceasefire with Hamas, and the U.S. military seems to be getting a lot more directly involved in guarding the borders between Syria and Israel. Reuters reports that Americans have made several visits to an air base outside Damascus, the Syrian capital, in preparation “to use the base to help monitor a potential Israel-Syria agreement.”

There are already around 1,500 American troops in Syria supporting Kurdish forces and other militias against the Islamic State group. But the U.S. government has always insisted that these forces were a temporary counterterrorism measure. In June 2025, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Barrack, the special envoy to Syria, announced that the U.S. military would consolidate its forces in Syria from eight bases to only one. Setting up a permanent peacekeeping force right outside Syria’s capital would be a reversal of that policy.

Asked about the potential U.S. base, the U.S. State Department referred Reason to the Pentagon, which did not respond to a request for comment. The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency denied that the Reuters report was true without getting into specifics. Although Reuters complied with a U.S. government request not to name the base for security reasons, independent Syrian media has named Al-Seen Military Airport as a likely candidate.

In May 2025, Al-Seen was taken over by the 70th Division, a former Syrian rebel unit based out of the U.S. special operations base in Al Tanf. (That month, Syrian Information Minister Hamza al-Mustafa told Reason that the U.S. was not demanding a permanent military presence in the country.) U.S. Adm. Brad Cooper discussed the possibility of taking over the air base during a September 2025 meeting with Syrian officials in Damascus, according to Reuters. A delegation from the U.S.-led military coalition then visited Al-Seen in October 2025 “to assess its readiness,” reports the Kurdish news site Xeber24.

Syria and Israel have had territorial disputes dating back decades. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six Day War of 1967. During the Syrian revolution of 2024, the Israeli army seized an additional buffer zone in southern Syria. After forces loyal to the new Syrian government committed atrocities against the Druze minority, Israel demanded that the Syrian army stay out of the Druze homeland and began funding Druze militias.

The Trump administration has been urging the new government of Syria and Israel to make peace, starting with a security pact over the border and possibly moving on to full diplomatic relations. The two countries reportedly came close to a security agreement in September 2025—a U.S. official told The Times of Israel that they were “99% of the way there”—but the talks fell apart after Syria refused to let Israel open a “humanitarian corridor” to the Druze homeland. According to Reuters, the U.S. base outside Damascus would be used for “logistics, surveillance, refueling and humanitarian operations” in support of the truce.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has already set up a similar surveillance base in the Israeli city of Kiryat Gat, which also hosts troops from nine other nations. American drones have been monitoring Gaza since the beginning of the war in October 2023. Although U.S. officials insisted that they were not involved in gathering targeting intelligence, and were only trying to locate hostages, former President Joe Biden later admitted that the U.S. military was directly involved in hunting Hamas leaders. Now, rather than choosing targets, U.S. forces are ostensibly watching for ceasefire violations.

Last week, the U.S. military published drone footage of “suspected Hamas operatives” robbing an aid truck. (Hamas claims that the looters were actually Palestinian gangs backed by Israel.) The United Nations says that aid looting has fallen from 80 percent of trucks over the summer to 5 percent of trucks after the ceasefire.

In theory, all sides have agreed that Hamas must disarm and hand over power to a new Palestinian ruling authority. Egypt has been hosting talks between Palestinian parties to form that government. Israel’s Channel 12 reports that Israeli officials are unhappy with the U.S. plan to take parts of Gaza out of Israeli control and put them in the hands of foreign peacekeepers. The Times of Israel reports that Arab countries, on the other hand, are unhappy with a U.S. proposal to begin rebuilding only the half of Gaza currently under Israeli control.

The Trump administration has ensured that, no matter how these questions shake out, the U.S. will have a central role. Last month, Vance visited the U.S. base in Kiryat Gat and laid out his vision for the future peacekeeping force. It was a far cry from his earlier promise to let Israel and Sunni Muslim nations “police” the region themselves.

“The only real mediators are the United States of America and so that’s the role that we’re going to play. I think the American people should be proud, but they should know that they’re not going to be no American boots on the ground in Gaza,” the vice president told reporters, in an American base that did not exist a month before.

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Environmental law did not begin with enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1969. Nor did it begin when Massachusetts adopted the first state wetland protection statute in 1963 or California adopted the first controls on air pollution from automobiles. It did not begin when the federal government established Yellowstone National Park in 1872 either.

Environmental law may have begun in 1610, when a landowner brought legal action against a neighboring pig sty, objecting to the fumes and odors it produced. The sty owner objected that the landowner’s sensitivities should not take precedence over his productive activity, but the court was not convinced, recognizing that each landowner only has the right to make use of their property in such a way as not to infringe upon the right of others to do the same, and that this meant nuisance claims against polluting activity could proceed. This decision was not the first articulation of this principle, but it appears to have been the first reported case in which it was enforced.

What we think of environmental law today–sprawling statutes authorizing expansive regulation of economic activity–is a relatively new phenomenon. The first environmental statutes were efforts to reinforce and supplement nuisance law, as well as to provide greater clarity and predictability as to what sorts of activities would be allowed where (e.g. whether coal-burning could occur in densely populated areas). It was not until much later that policymakers concluded environmental protection required the erection of an administrative state and prescriptive regulations supplanted tort law as the front line of environmental defense.

I recount this history in my latest Civitas Outlook column as a way of putting contemporary climate litigation in context. Some such litigation, such as suits against administrative agencies for regulating too much or too little, are products of modern administrative law. Others, including the wave of suits filed by state and local governments over climate change, are efforts to rely upon the longer history of tort law as a protection against environmental harm. This does not mean that such cases can or should succeed, but it does highlight ways in which these cases are meaningfully different from much contemporary environmental litigation, including the outlandish constitutional claims made in the various kids climate suits.

Tort law claims remain a viable path for environmental regulation save where such claims have been preempted by state or federal law. But such preemption requires legislative action, which is a problem for those who oppose climate tort suits because Congress has not done much of anything to occupy the field of climate policy, let alone to preempt such claims. I address this point in my Civitas column, as I have in prior blog posts and my scholarship (and will be discussing this question later today on a panel at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers’ Convention).

The bottom-line point is relatively simple:

As a policy matter, it may make little sense to address climate change through myriad tort suits across varied jurisdictions. However, such policy arguments cannot compensate for the lack of legislation. Congress has never passed a statute that preempts state-law climate litigation or policy-making. State environmental regulation of some products (such as automobiles) is preempted. There may be constitutional constraints on the extent to which state courts can offer redress for harms caused by out-of-state actions. Still, there is no constitutional basis to claim, as fossil fuel companies, the Trump Administration, and some state attorneys general have alleged, that these suits cannot even be filed. This does not mean that state law tort claims should succeed; it only means that federal law has relatively little to say about it.

[Note: I’ll update this post with a link to the FedSoc panel when video is available.]

 

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California has recently enacted a sweeping package of AI laws, positioning itself as a leader in state-level AI regulation.

The focus is on safety, transparency, and specific use-cases like deep fakes and employment. The most significant piece of legislation is the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act (TFAIA), or Senate Bill 53.

That law aims to impose transparency and safety requirements rather than broad bans—focusing on “trust but verify” oversight: requiring disclosure of governance frameworks, safety protocols, and incident-reporting. However, the requirement to publish detailed transparency reports could expose trade secrets or vulnerabilities, and impose heavy compliance burdens. Some argue the law penalizes “paperwork” and formalities rather than actual harmful outcomes.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, the first two paragraphs were largely produced using ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence generator. Other than a few style foibles, I can’t take issue with its summary. Frankly, its explanation is better written and more accurate than similar reports I’ve read in daily newspapers. The stunning advance in AI sophistication is raising some obvious questions. The most pressing: What should the government do to regulate it?

Not surprisingly, my answer is “as little as possible.” Government is a clunky, bureaucratic machine driven by special-interest groups and politicians. It’s always behind the curve. If state and federal regulators had the skill of the entrepreneurs who developed these cutting-edge technologies, they would most likely work at such firms, where they’d score a higher pay package. The government B-team can’t keep up with the A-team, so regulations lag behind corporate innovations.

Typically, as the AI robot explained, they focus on paperwork errors. These rules stifle meaningful advancements, benefit firms with high-powered lobbyists, and provide an advantage to companies that operate in less-regulated environments. When states pass their own rules, they create a mish-mash of hurdles for an industry that is not confined within any state boundary. Given its size, California’s typically heavy-handed approach often becomes the national standard.

In fact, California lawmakers relish their role as national trend-setters, as they push for every progressive priority (from ICE vehicle bans to single-payer healthcare) in the hopes that it pushes the national conversation in their direction. Other Blue States are doing the same thing. Often, they base their regulations on the European Union’s model—one that’s based on fear of the unseen. States have thus far introduced 1,000 different AI-related bills.

As my R Street Institute colleague and AI expert Adam Thierer explained in testimony last month before the U.S. House of Representatives, “America’s AI innovators are currently facing the prospect of many state governments importing European-style technocratic regulatory policies to America and, even worse, applying them in a way that could end up being even more costly and confusing than what the European Union has done. Euro-style tech regulation is heavy-handed with highly detailed rules that are both preemptive and precautionary in character.…Europe’s tech policy model is ‘regulate-first’ while America’s philosophy is ‘try-first.'”

In the now-concluded California legislative session, lawmakers introduced at least 31 AI bills, with several, including SB 53, garnering Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature. Most are manageable for the industry, but new laws and regulations often suffocate ideas a little at a time. On the good-news front, Newsom—ever mindful of a potential presidential run, and sensible enough to not want to crush one of the state’s economic powerhouses—vetoed the worst of them.

He rejected Assembly Bill 1064, which would have forbade any company or agency from making AI chatbots “available to a child unless the companion chatbot is not foreseeably capable of doing certain things that could harm a child.” That broad language—how can anything be “foreseeably capable”?—caused much consternation. “AB 1064 effectively bans access of anyone under 18 to general-purpose AI or other covered products, putting California students at a disadvantage,” as a prominent tech association argued in opposition.

In his veto, Newsom echoed that point and added that, “AI already is shaping the world, and it is imperative that adolescents learn how to safely interact with AI systems.” He championed his signing of Senate Bill 243, which tech companies accepted as a better alternative. It mainly requires operators to disclose that children are interacting with a chatbot. That’s fine, but the governor also promised to support other messages in the next session.

How exactly can an industry thrive under a never-ending threat of more legislation, especially given that some of the proposals are quite intrusive? I’m a big advocate for federalism and the idea that states are the laboratories of democracy, but in this case, a federal approach is better given, again, the national nature of the internet world.

I’ll finish with words of wisdom from ChatGPT: Strict or poorly designed rules could slow beneficial uses of AI in healthcare, education, infrastructure, and public safety. Fear of liability or red tape might discourage experimentation that could improve lives.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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Congress has the power to check the president’s war making: but they don’t seem interested in using it.

Last night, the Senate voted against legislation that would have required congressional approval of President Donald Trump’s further strikes against Venezuela.

The vote was 49–51, with two Republicans—Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska)—breaking ranks to vote with Democrats to block the president from exercising this power. It was the “second failed bid in a month to rein in the U.S. military campaign against suspected drug-trafficking vessels in Latin America that has led to the deaths of nearly 70 people,” reports Politico. Sen. John Fetterman (D–Pa.), who was the sole Democrat to oppose last month’s measure (voting with the Republicans choosing not to check Trump’s power), confusingly flipped and voted with his party this time.

It looks very much like Trump is going for more than just sinking a few more suspected cocaine boats in the Caribbean. So far, the death toll amounts to 69 people from 17 strikes, but with military repositioning near Venezuela—both buildups in the sea and flying missions out of El Salvador—it really does look like Trump wants to unseat Nicolás Maduro and destabilize his regime.

“It’s really an open secret that this is much more about potential regime change,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.) told the Associated Press. “If that’s where the administration is headed, if that’s what we’re risking—involvement in a war—then Congress needs to be heard on this.”

No more bespoke gender on passports: “Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,” wrote the justices of the Supreme Court in a brief, unsigned order that allows the Trump administration to continue its passport gender policy. “In both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”

“The decision is Trump’s latest win on the court’s emergency docket, and allows the administration to enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out,” reports the Associated Press. “It halts a lower-court order requiring the government to keep letting people choose male, female or X on their passport to correspond with their gender identity on new or renewed passports. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.”

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Scenes from New York: Zohran Mamdani “has committed to abolishing the city’s gang database, the subject of pending legislation the city council will likely pass next year,” writes Rafael Mangual for the New York Post. “He has promised to strip the [New York Police Department’s] commissioner of her authority over police officer discipline and hand it to the anti-cop Civilian Complaint Review Board. And he has vowed not to add to the already understaffed NYPD’s quickly dwindling ranks.”

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QUICK HITS

• “At least three U.S. military aircraft, including a heavily armed attack plane, have begun flying missions out of El Salvador’s main international airport in an expansion of the extraordinary U.S. troop buildup in the Caribbean, according to an analysis of satellite images, air traffic control communications and flight tracking data,” reports The New York Times. “The attack plane, an AC-130J Ghostrider, is designed to destroy targets on the ground or at sea using missiles or barrages from its cannons and machine guns. It is operated by the Air Force Special Operations Command, a unit that carries out sensitive missions for the military. The New York Times also identified a Navy reconnaissance plane and a rarely seen, unmarked Air Force jet at the airport.” The missions started in August and appear to be related to the increasing pressure the U.S. is exerting on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
• “Business people, smart business people, going into [New York’s new era] are thinking, ‘Watch your ass, you’re in combat,'” John Catsimatidis, a billionaire oil executive, told Politico. “I talked to [Zohran Mamdani] once. He’s a young kid….He never ran anything. If he came in with a job application I wouldn’t hire him to run a supermarket.…What I’m going to do is reduce my exposure to New York. I have a lot of businesses in New York, I have a lot of assets in New York.”
• “A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to release full funding for November’s food assistance benefits by Friday,” reports The Washington Post. “It comes after the partial funding disbursed by the Agriculture Department earlier this week had yet to reach those who qualify for the benefits.”
• Yesterday, President Donald Trump announced deals with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk that will cut the prices of certain obesity drugs. “The agreements will cut prices of so-called GLP-1 drugs for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries in 2026 and offer the treatments directly to consumers at a discount on a website the Trump administration is launching in January called TrumpRx.gov,” reports CNBC.
• “One out of every three deliveries happens in an operating room, a figure that far exceeds public health recommendations,” writes Sarah Kliff for The New York Times. “The surgery can prolong a woman’s recovery, complicate future births and sometimes risk her life. The top justification for C-sections in healthy pregnancies is fetal distress, a diagnosis made by the [continuous fetal heartrate] monitor.” Should hospitals shift away from using this tool? Is risk aversion/fear of liability causing an inappropriately high C-section rate, and doctors using surgery to deliver babies that are actually totally fine? Kliff investigates.
• Solid free speech victory:

VICTORY! Federal district court dismisses class-action suit against pollster J. Ann Selzer

A federal district court today dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit against renowned Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer, holding that the First Amendment bars the claims against her related to her… pic.twitter.com/80shwIhlQV

— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) November 6, 2025

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Long before the phrase toxic masculinity first stomped its way into our lexicon, there was a great movie about the idea it represents. That movie was Predator, a movie about a band of absolutely gigantic, utterly badass dudes stalking an even bigger, even more badass alien hunter in the jungle. The dudes included steroidal man-mountains such as Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Sonny Landham, and Jesse Ventura, who somehow wasn’t even the most notable of the movie’s future governors. 

That would be their leader, a cigar-chomping, quip-dispensing Arnold Schwarzenegger, in as fine a form as he’s ever been. Predator was one of best Arnold Schwarzenegger Movies (ASM) back when ASMs were a genre unto themselves. Directed by John McTiernan in 1987, the year before he’d  make Die Hard, it was essentially a science fiction reimagining of “The Most Dangerous Game,” in which a group of elite hunters become the hunted. 

But at heart, it was a movie about masculine strength. Even more specifically, it was about biceps. Predator is the movie that gave us the image that would become the Epic Handshake meme, drawn from a crucial early scene in which Schwarzenegger and Weathers, playing old friends, greet each other by locking arms (and eyes) in a contest of brute upper body strength. Schwarzenegger, obviously, wins, instantly confirming his pack dominance. 

In a gang of big, tough dudes, there was a clear hierarchy, a top-down order, defined by raw physical strength. Schwarzenegger was what they all vied to be: the biggest and the toughest. The only remaining competition was the predator itself. The movie was organized around settling that dispute, because men must know. 

Predator, you see, was a movie about toxic masculinity—and how it was awesome. 

The latest installment, Predator: Badlands, takes a different tack.

This time, the protagonist is a young predator—a Yautja, in the series’ current lore—named Dek. He too comes from a masculine honor culture that prioritizes physical dominance. Yautja prove themselves through their hunts, and their culture has little room for weakness, mercy, or mushy feelings of any kind beyond anger.

Dek is small for a Yautja, and thus inherently weak. But when his larger older brother shows up to cull him, at the bequest of their brutish father, the brother shows mercy, out of gratitude for a time when Dek protected him. The older brother helps Dek escape to a planet full of killer wildlife, including the Kalisk, a monster no Yautja has ever slain. Dek sets out to hunt the Kalisk, and thus prove himself as a man, or at least the predatorial equivalent. 

Along the way, he meets Thia (Elle Fanning), a chirpy, good-hearted robot, or synth, from the Weyland-Yutani corporation, a legacy of the Alien series that the Predator franchise has interacted with on and off through the years. When the two first pair up, Thia is missing her lower legs, so after deciding that he’ll still be hunting alone (a Yautja must) if he treats her as a mere tool, he straps her to his back, and they wander the planet in search of big game. Along the way, they encounter more Weyland Yutani synths, including a sister unit, Tessa, also played by Fanning, who may pose a bigger threat than the Kalisk. 

The result is nothing like any Predator movie before. Fundamentally, it’s an odd-couple buddy comedy, part outdoorsy hiking trip film, part coming-of-age story about a sensitive young man learning to make his way in the world while fighting for justice. Unlike the brutal original and the various R-rated sequels, it’s reasonably kid-friendly, and shot in a high-CGI style that makes it look a lot like The Mandalorian. There’s even a cuddly, giant-eyed, alien pet pal named Bud who tags along, echoing the Star Wars spinoff’s plushy-friendly Grogu. 

Yes, this is a Predator movie about a sensitive young alien hunter who ends up in a sort of found family—synth mom, Yautja dad, cute alien monster kid—and learns to process his feelings. Men will literally hunt unkillable alien monsters on a murder planet instead of going to therapy. The hiking, the talking, the adoption of the cuddly little monster buddy; it’s all in the service of learning how to grow up, process his feelings, reckon with his toxic culture, and rethink his difficult relationship with his brutish and overbearing dad. Hashtag #NotAllPredators, right? 

I’m not quite sure how to process my own feelings about this movie, which both thematically and literally defangs the creature that gave Schwarzenegger a run for his money in the 1980s, transforming the franchise into something more like a goofy Saturday morning cartoon. (At least one person has already dubbed it Predator Muppet Babies.) On its own terms, it works quite well, and Fanning in particular is a bubbly comic delight. Yet I don’t think I was fully prepared for a kiddie Predator film that is soft, friendly, cuddly, even cute. But maybe that’s just my toxic masculinity talking.

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11/7/1922: Oregon enacts the Compulsory Education Act.

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After this week’s election, many Americans cling to the hope that the victories of a couple of moderate-ish Democrats in blue states signal a future for that party different than the one heralded by the rock-star rise of Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who captures the imaginations of a lot of donkey-party voters.

I wouldn’t count on it. Yes, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill offer a modicum of consolation to those desiring a centrist direction for Democrats, but the energy is behind the radical new mayor of Gotham who joins a rising tide of his comrades in dragging that party to the left. The future of American politics looks more fringe-y than ever.

“We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about,” Mamdani shouted in an aggressive speech that surprised even Democratic commentators such as David Axelrod and Van Jones. It was a message that young voters, in particular, seem to embrace.

Socialism Wins the Youth Vote

“Mamdani won about 62% of the vote among New Yorkers under 30, and more than half among those aged 30 to 44,” Spain’s El Pais noted in an analysis of the election, which was followed around the world. “By contrast, among voters over 65, he drew just 29%.”

If the taste for a candidate who has called for “seizing the means of production” could be dismissed as a New York City fetish, we might mourn the plight of a great city and go about our business. But socialism has a strong following among young people, despite its history of generating poverty and terror. Blame it on a mismatch between expectations and results in the tumultuous economy (largely from government intervention) of the last decade-plus or blame it on public education that valorizes top-down collectivized economics over the individualism and free exchange of capitalism, but socialism has a growing constituency among people who will shape the future.

In March, Gallup found that “since 2010, young adults’ overall opinion of capitalism has deteriorated to the point that capitalism and socialism are tied in popularity among this age group.” Among millennials and Gen Z, support for both stood at about 50 percent. But among the youngest in that cohort, socialism is winning out over its freedom-friendly rival.

Last week, polling by Axios/Generation Lab revealed that “34% of surveyed two- and four-year college students say they have a somewhat or very positive view of socialism, compared with 17% who say the same for capitalism. Negative views of capitalism outweigh negative views of socialism by an even greater difference: 53% v. 23%.”

The rising generation is dragging the Democratic Party to the left. While pollster YouGov this week reports “moderates and conservatives strongly prefer capitalism to socialism,” it found that “a majority of those who identify as very liberal prefer socialism (59%)” and liberals slightly prefer socialism to capitalism, 29 percent to 27 percent. While not really accurate terms for what’s going on in U.S. politics now, “liberal” and “very liberal” are common descriptors for dominant factions in the Democratic Party.

And while Gallup in September found Americans’ views of socialism generally unchanged in recent years, it added, “stability in U.S. adults’ opinions of socialism obscures Democrats’ more positive views of it over time, from 50% rating it positively in the initial 2010 reading to roughly two-thirds in three readings since 2019. Those increases have been mostly offset by declines in positive ratings of socialism among Republicans.” Polarized in all things, American politics grow more divided over economic systems.

Speaking of polarization, it’s worth mentioning what’s happening on the right as the left pines for the promised land of free stuff and class warfare promised by Mamdani; his fellow New Yorker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and the rest of the Democratic hard left. Radicalization is a game anybody can play.

Conservatives Wrangle With Groypers

Right now, Heritage Foundation president and embarrassment Kevin Roberts is in hot water for defending Tucker Carlson’s cozy chat with racist Hitler/Stalin fan Nick Fuentes, whose influence is growing. (We should regret Charlie Kirk’s assassination as much for his lost opposition to Fuentes as for all else.) Understandably, some staffers at the conservative think tank resigned in protest, and many others want Roberts out.

A conservative movement insider with insight into ongoing developments who spoke to me on background said young people on the right are a particular concern when it comes to radicalization. He worries about antisemitism among the younger cohort currently entering politics, many of whom he fears are groypers—racist Fuentes fans whom Roberts may have sought to court. We saw an example of that in last month’s furor over racist chat messages among Young Republicans. My acquaintance attributes the problem to educations steeped in trendy Critical Race Theory. That education guided some students to the intersectional left, where they became enamored of socialism and identity politics. Others bought the collectivist focus on group identity but flipped the script on who makes up the good guys and the bad guys.

Antisemitism and a Rush to the Fringes

As seems to be common among collectivists of all breeds, both groups are antisemites.

Antisemitism is certainly a problem with Mamdani and company. Before he entered politics, Mamdani tried his hand as a rapper. His musical output included the song “Salaam,” which, as The Independent put it, “praised the ‘Holy Land Five’—five men convicted in 2008 of donating over $12 million to Hamas” which is dedicated to killing Jews and staged the October 7 attack on Israel. He has since palled around with Siraj Wahhaj, who was named as a co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

That’s in case you didn’t worry enough about the direction of politics.

And whatever consolation is to be found in the seeming moderation of some of this week’s winning Democrats, that has to be tempered by the fact that taking office alongside newly minted Gov. Spanberger in Virginia is fellow Democrat Jay Jones—who, as a candidate for attorney general, fantasized about shooting a Republican political rival in the head and watching that rival’s children die in their mother’s arms. Spanberger criticized Jones’s comments but never called on him to drop out.

The future of American politics looks increasingly like one where the worst ideas, including socialism, racism, and political violence are embraced by American voters. We’re not far from the day when Americans face a contest between the likes of Paul Ingrassia, the Republican who withdrew from consideration as head of the Office of Special Counsel after the revelation of racist text messages and his self-description as having a “Nazi streak,” and Graham Platner, the Democratic Maine Senate candidate who calls himself a communist and had a Nazi tattoo which he only covered up after it became a campaign liability.

The Democratic Party is becoming more socialist. That might not be the worst of our concerns.

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KPop Demon Hunters, a Netflix original movie released worldwide on June 20, quickly became the most-watched movie on the platform, amassing over 314 million views by mid-September. It also earned much popular praise and critical acclaim.

The conceit: Demon hunters use the gift of song to unite the world in (literal) harmony by creating the “Golden Honmoon,” an impregnable barrier against demons. The latest generation of demon hunters make up the wildly popular girl group Huntr/x. They are opposed by the Saja Boys, a heartthrob demon boy band led by Jinu, a self-loathing demon who acquired a life of luxury by abandoning his mother and little sister to poverty.

The Saja Boys erode the Honmoon by winning the adoration of Huntr/x’s fans and nearly destroy it by exposing Rumi as part demon—a fact she’d hidden at her mentor’s well-intentioned but ill-considered behest.

The movie’s moral: Harmony thwarts evil while discord abets it. Given Rumi’s background, there is also the pleasingly cosmopolitan side point that ancestry does not define one’s essence or role. Peace can only be attained by those who accept their complex natures instead of pretending they are without “faults and fears.”

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The best antidote for politicized nostalgia that hails an imagined idyllic yesteryear full of abundant blue-collar jobs? Taking a good, hard look at how those workers actually lived.

“Power & Light,” a temporary exhibit at the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C., displays dozens of pictures taken in 1946, when the federal government dispatched photographer Russell Lee to document living conditions in coal mining towns across Appalachia. What he captured is not glamorous or desirable. One family documented by Lee’s photos paid $7 per month ($124 in today’s money) for a home with no running water. They shared an outhouse with “four or five” other families.

They weren’t unique. Electricity and indoor plumbing are rare sights in the photos. Only half the mines even had washhouses for the workers at the end of their shifts.

Nowadays, even after recent declines, America produces more coal than it did in 1946 while employing about a third as many miners. Those who still earn their living this way have far safer, cleaner conditions. Mechanization may have eliminated some jobs, but it also lifted families out of a squalor that seems almost unbelievable today.

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