February 18, 2026

NO ONE HATES JUST MUSLIMS:

February 18, 2026

NatCon Chief’s Muddled Brief: Yoram Hazony’s confused attempt to sort out the problem of right-wing antisemitism. (Gabriel Schoenfeld, Feb 18, 2026, The Bulwark)

As Hazony acknowledges, the Republican party is itself at risk for becoming infected by “relentless anti-Jewish messaging.” What he has in mind is not merely arguments about Israeli policy toward Gaza, but “the explicit and savage targeting” by rightwing podcasters “of Jews, Judaism, and Zionism.” Is this the future, he asks, of the Republican party?

The party, in Hazony’s description, is today divided into three distinct factions. A “liberal wing” led by figures such as Lindsey Graham, Mike Pompeo, and Ted Cruz was once dominant, but in the Trump era, it has been in decline and probably represents no more than “25 percent of the party’s primary voters today.”

Then there is a nationalist wing, represented by Trump himself, as well as JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth. Hazony estimates that it makes up about 65 percent of the party and is distinguished “by its support for an industrial policy to restore America’s manufacturing capabilities, its outspoken rejection of compromise on immigration issues, and its skepticism of long foreign wars.”

Finally, there’s the alt-right, “which was mostly a fringe phenomenon until 2023, when big-name media figures Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens moved into this space.” Today, Hazony says, its voters comprise perhaps 10 percent of the Republican party.

But of course, the distinction Hazony is drawing between liberal and nationalist Republicans is completely contrived and even nonsensical. In what ways, fundamental or otherwise, do such “liberal” Republicans as Graham, Pompeo, and Cruz—all of them Trump sycophants—differ from Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth—all of them also Trump sycophants?

Once you unleash the Identitarian monster, you can’t get it to hate just one “Identity”

Environment

FEEDING THE FERAL GODS:

February 18, 2026

When Grief Came for the Gravedigger: In pursuit of an interesting life, he came face to face with death. (Will Bahr, d Feb. 11, 2026, NY Times Magazine)

Under Alison, it became commonplace at the sanctuary to invite the bereaved to dig graves and bury their dead themselves. We would still assist, of course, and ensure that no one showed up to dig wearing Crocs. But oftentimes the sanctuary staff was very much in the background. People leaped at the opportunity to take agency in this, their last act of service. Anyone who has borne grief’s leaden weight knows how physical a process it is — that phantom anvil perched on the shoulders, the chest; that lump unswallowable in the throat. Digging a grave yourself is an exceedingly rare opportunity for catharsis. Filling one in is closure, literalized. And so I found myself digging and filling graves beside mothers, sons, dear bereft friends. I came to know the dead through their people, who thanked us for the opportunity nearly to a name.

I wondered sometimes what kind of toll the work was taking on me. Physically, it was clear enough. My shoulders ached, my hands grew calloused and dirt-caked and torn by blackberry thorns (though I mostly loved this part). Mentally, the ledger was more vague. I was well acquainted with personal grief coming into the job, but here I felt like a tourist. I watched as a widow howled in animal anguish, kneeling in black by her lover’s graveside. I watched as a whole dynasty stiffly buried its matriarch, hands jammed in pockets, words unsaid hanging humidity-thick overhead. Most days, it felt like any other job — rote, obligatory. Others, I wept for total strangers.

One evening in late September 2024, it started raining. Then it started raining hard. News of a coming storm crept into our news feeds. We had a burial scheduled for the midst of the squall; Alison and I texted “As I Lay Dying” references back and forth.

“I’ll bring the covered wagon,” I said, “you bring Anse’s teeth.”

“I haven’t read it since high school,” she admitted, “but I’ll take your word for it.”

This sense of ha-ha doomsdayism permeated Asheville. How bad, in western North Carolina, could a hurricane possibly get?

Brothers Judd

A Cloudspotters’ Guide to Climate Change: On a lost-in-time island off the coast of England, a group called the Cloud Appreciation Society gathers to look skyward and bask in the delights of nature. But halfway around the world, scientists have modeled a scenario in which Stratocumulus actually disappear under extreme climate conditions. What’s a cloud lover to do in the Age of the Anthropocene? (MARI SAITO on LUNDY ISLAND, ENGLAND, Photographs by PHIL NOBLE, July 25, 2019, Reuters)

Apath of trampled grass leads up the hill to St. Helen’s, the only church on Lundy Island. Near its doors, a stray lamb nibbles on tufts of tall weeds. From a Gothic tower topped with the English flag, the coastline of Devon is faintly visible to the east, while the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean stretches west, the seas uninterrupted all the way to North America.

Inside, a handful of visitors in windproof jackets lean forward on wooden benches to catch the Rev. Jane Skinner’s words.

“Majestic or wispy, solid yet ephemeral. Who could conceive of clouds?” Skinner asks, sturdy Teva sandals peeking out from underneath her white robes. “God has the whole spectrum in view, from the heavenly sphere to the atom, the clouds delivering dramatic forces of nature, shielding and obscuring light.”

As she speaks, workmen bustle about the nave setting up equipment for the days to come. It’s no easy task, hosting a group on an off-grid island powered by a generator that switches off at midnight, and where the internet signal goes down in overloaded circuits whenever someone uses electricity to make tea.

Cirrus and contrails compete in the sky above Lundy Island, with a lighthouse in view in the distance on this spit of land off England’s southwest coast.

“Clouds remind us to be joyful,” Skinner starts again. “To pause and glory in nature, which is beautiful and good.”

NO ONE HATES JUST MUSLIMS:

FEEDING THE FERAL GODS:

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF JOY:

You Missed

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:

IT IS THE UNIVERSALISM INHERENT IN LIBERTY…:

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST: