My regular reader (Hi Jeff!) might well expect this day’s column to reflect on a recent story that appeared in the Gazette, regarding the ongoing slow motion implosion of the El Paso County Republican Party. It is really amazing what is going on down here with the local GOP. After performing far below expectations in this uber-red region in recent elections, we are seeing a bizarre and ongoing brand of infighting normally reserved for banana republics.

Most recently, the state GOP has decided it needs to appoint a “neutral group of outsiders to supervise the El Paso County GOP’s upcoming  leadership elections in response to complaints from local Republicans who said they don’t trust incumbent county chair Vickie Tonkins to run a fair election.” I’m reminded of back when I was a military advisor at the State Department, and the time a few of my colleagues in the office flew off to Belarus to act as election observers. The hope was that the government in Minsk would hold free and fair elections.

Spoiler: not so much.

Not surprisingly, the current El Paso GOP leadership – specifically the long-time chair Vickie Tonkins – is not viewed as willing and able to run free and fair elections to pick local party leaders in the upcoming Feb. 11 county party meeting. This is remarkable. The state party’s central committee voted 139 to 123.8 (yes, they have partial votes somehow) to appoint overseers and the Tonkins crowd is fighting back. Stay tuned…

Having been the chair of the Democratic Party here in El Paso County, I can certainly understand some level of infighting. During my time, we have a few folks whom I believe were more interested in starting fights than winning elections. But those folks were mostly just irritants, and never threatened to blow up the local party. This GOP mess is both fascinating and instructive.

But I’m not going to talk about any of that…

Instead, I’d like to talk about an issue wherein I find myself disagreeing with my old boss, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m still huge on Team Bennet, and when President Joe Biden decides not to run for a second term (that day is coming, he said provocatively), I hope Bennet will launch another and more effective campaign for the White House. He is a remarkable combination of brilliant mind, compassionate heart and deeply caring soul. He will, I hope, be an excellent president; after all, he’s been a great senator and still has much to give.

But I must respectfully disagree with him on a recent letter he sent, as noted on his Senate website. In that letter, Bennet “called on Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to remove TikTok from their app stores immediately given its unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.”

He stated: “Like most social media platforms, TikTok collects vast and sophisticated data from its users, including faceprints and voiceprints. Unlike most social media platforms, TikTok poses a unique concern because Chinese law obligates ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent company, to ‘support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.'”

Now let’s be clear, Bennet is spot on in terms of the risks that TikTok poses, given the increasing importance of China. That nation continues to grow in influence and is increasingly aggressive, provocative and dangerous. As a retired military officer who once held a high security clearance, I fully agree with the Biden policy announcements that government officials cannot have TikTok on their phones – a very reasonable precaution.

The problem, of course, is that the Chinese government owns TikTok (don’t be fooled by the “company” that they say owns it) and has the ability to pull information from the billions of users and their uploads. So it makes total sense to prohibit government folks from having the app on their phones. It makes perfect sense to have reasonable safeguards. Heck, if there suddenly was an app named “Putin’s shirtless horse rides” I’m betting that lots of GOPers would be downloading that likely spyware in droves, and that would be bad.

TikTok has more than a billion monthly users. There are billions of people using the app. There are people of all ages and backgrounds clicking away and uploading and watching videos. But it is important to note that roughly 62% of U.S. users are aged 10 to 29, unlikely targets of Chinese espionage.

For those over, what, 40 or so, let me explain: TikTok is a way for people, mostly young folks (who walk on my lawn playing their loud music), to share short videos of, well, everything they do in life. And there have certainly been abuses of TikTok in ways that embarrassed people or hurt feelings, but those are not reason enough for a ban on “regular” folks having access to TikTok. Thus, to ban TikTok downloads by everyone in the country is an overreach.

I admit, I don’t get the appeal of TikTok, but I’m also the guy who just got his first Medicare card. I am on Facebook, but I don’t tweet, nor do I “tok” (is that right?), nor do I engage in any other social media. That said, if people want to post videos of them playing with their cats, or filming failed skateboard tricks, they should be able to do it.

Asking the big social media stores to entirely ban the downloading of the app because of a risk of Chinese espionage is too much, at least for now. And I admit, I pity the poor Chinese government minion who is tasked with looking through billions of uploads for any useful intelligence.

And so, Senator Bennet, on this issue, I respectfully disagree.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.