As bad as the racist Truth Social and other spewings (electronic or otherwise) of our President have been, I am still more concerned about Everyday America and how so many closet racists are now wide open with their own prejudices, on social media or otherwise. Anyone who uses Facebook and, I assume, other such platforms knows this by now. If you see a news organization or other source post a link to a diversity-based news story or otherwise invite commentary, they cannot wait to show the rest of the world how much they resent or even hate Blacks, Hispanics, women, and other historically marginalized groups, and how proud they are of their ability not just to express it, but also to try to get a few laughs about it through inane jokes and stereotypes. There is no subtlety to it anymore. It is directly in front of us, with no filter and no sense of regret or remorse if you call them out for it. In fact they want the fight. They are begging for it.
We rightly call out the President for creating a permission structure for these lowlives who, it appears, do not belong anywhere outside of a caged environment. But the ugly truth is they always have been there, hiding in plain site, making jokes among "their kind" about "those kinds" and waiting for someone to give them a green light to, um, come out, about their own behaviors and mindsets. It's always been there. And it isn't going away. We were so wrong in thinking that electing a Black man to our nation's highest office meant that we had turned a corner. And we thought we were good enough to elect a woman as President. Obviously not, at least not a liberal one. We are not better for having that knowledge. We just carry a still greater burden.
I do not know what the solution is. Some character flaws simply are too ingrained and too hard to correct among the far too many incorrigibles -- yes, let's call them Deplorables -- among us. But it isn't asking too much to have a leader who does not tolerate it and actively works to suppress it, and followers who do the same because it is the right thing to do. The symbiotic nature of the Haters and the leaders of the Haters has become too pervasive to overcome when there is no sense of guilt or shame about it anymore. It seems quaint now to think that there is a John McCain remaining on the political right to speak truth to prejudice. As long as so many people refuse to step up and do the right thing, for the right reasons, there is no healing our land, rather just trying to cover up the cracks enough that we remain a somewhat functional society. Which isn't good enough in the rest of the world that doesn't settle for merely good enough to get ahead and to the top. As a nation we work with one hand tied behind our backs, for the oldest and most unnecessary of reasons. As long as we collectively are willing to do that, we deserve the scorn and lack of respect that we are getting from others. Shame on us. It isn't hard to be better, or even Be Best, if we truly care enough to try.
The new Trump "freedoms" now include the freedom to be openly racist, the freedom to be violently racist ( almost bringing back lynchings), the freedom to infect other people with COVID, measles, or any other disease for which you could be vaccinated, the freedom to be corrupt, to exploit, to disregard laws, to be a fraudulent crypto dealer, to import drugs to America, decide you don't want to pay contractors, to lie, to attack people who prove that you are lying, and of course, to rape young girls and not be held responsible. These freedoms may cost you a few million dollars to buy the freedom, the pardon, or the exception to a tariff, but it's well worth the price.
And also, as we read today, the freedom for ICE to dump a blind man, on a cold New York night, at a location 5 miles from his home after they determined they had no reason to hold him. The man didn't speak English, needed a cane to navigate the streets (which he didn't have), used no electronic devices so couldn't contact his family. I speak in the past tense because the man died trying to find his way home. THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!!!!! Congress should pass a law TODAY, forcing ICE to drive people to their homes when they are released from custody, or provide a taxi or something so they GET HOME SAFELY!! Another innocent, dead immigrant. I would add "on their conscience," but they don't have any. I am furious. Again! Another human being, needlessly, brutally, permanently taken away from their loved ones. It makes me scream to imagine this man's fear and sense of helplessness as he died alone. I hate Trump, I hate ICE, and I hate a portion of our country that will not care because this man was not white.
ICE murdered Nurul Amin Saw Alam. He spoke Rohingya and no English. He was nearly blind. He was disabled and elderly. They took him out in below freezing weather, which they say is where he told them to take him. Really, they speak Rohingya? They left him there to die. I am sure they are still laughing. Who will murder more U.S. residents? Nutty Noem with ICE? ReallyFfingKrazy jr with his insane fraudulent medical treatments and policies or Pete Hagueseth if he gets to use Anthropic AI to both spy on Americans and make AI decisions to kill them?
I would say that is horrible beyond belief, except that I have absolutely no trouble believing it.
Clearly every place that had one of these God-awful detention centers needs volunteers to be there 24/7 to help people like that unfortunate man. It should NOT be necessary to do this, but it IS necessary (at least until we manage to overturn the current government, which is fine with murdering both immigrants and non-white people).
OAITW, these freedoms are relevant if they're being done by to against someone else you don't like/know. They do not apply if they're being done to you by someone you don't like/know.
Im concerned by all the posts on Bluesky that are saying the Democrats are worthless cowards and just like Republicans and we should all vote for a real left wing candidate. I can only assume they are Republican stooges trying to discourage young Democrats from voting.
I find this comment enlightening because it raises the following question.
Why would they ever go back to a John McCain or Mitt Romney type figure? We can't expect this party to reform. It must either splinter or die.
You can't feed a kid cake and then expect them to want vegetables for dessert. You can't expect someone high off cocaine to be enthusiastic about Prozac. You can't shuffled the audience of aTransformers movie into a Ken Burns documentary and expect them to be entertained. They will not go back.
And, like all zombies, they are hard to kill. Time for the Dems to find a superpower that will put them, as a party, out of their misery. Save the world!
Totally. I often say that Trump lifted a giant rock and all sorts of evils crawled out from under it. Not only crawled out, but were legitimized, amplified and rewarded.
In one sense, why keep people from saying all the obnoxious crap that they really believe. At least then we would know who they are. And we can spit in their faces if we dont like it. And they can't begrudge us for expressing how we feel.
We all should be taking down names and getting screen shots of particularly egregious comments, as surely those people will deny their words and actions someday when their current permission structure finally dries up.
Yes, it has always been there, but societal pressure forced people to keep it mostly to themselves. Enter the internet and social media sites that allow people to anonymously post whatever they like. What a boon for racists and all haters. Until Congress has the will to regulate it and ban anonymity, because of the damage it is doing to our country, there is no answer. John Roberts was very, very wrong when he determined race was no longer a factor in determining which lawful protections are necessary in this country.
D-m? Do you hate women? It doesn’t seem like you do, but at 76, in 2026, I’m confused. In my whole life, and I raised a boy child to manhood, I’ve never met a man who hated women as a whole.
You know, every man I've met thinks the women he knows - his wife, his sisters, his friends, his coworkers - are just as intelligent as men. It's all the OTHER women out there they can't trust. Just like all the immigrants they know are hard working and devoted to their families - it's all the OTHER immigrants out there ruining things.
Gosh. That’s pretty damn scary! Have we come to that! Back to the original question and the answer, “an Ancient Greek play, first preformed in 411 BCE, where women led by the Athenian LYSISTRATA withhold sex from their spouses to force an end to the Peloponnesain War between Athens and Sparta” goes back a long way to answering the burning question. Maybe it’s all about, you know, S.E.X.?
Huh. I just think most other people (minus The Bulwark crowd, of course!) are not serious people. I don't distinguish between gender, race, or any of that other stuff....
If people are just "not serious," it should make them neutral on those topics. If they weren't serious, they would not spend their time spewing relentless hatred on line about the very things you mention - gender, race, etc.
No, not at all. Why would you think that? My argument is against the people who do so, and toward other groups that were and are marginalized inappropriately. I'm trying to stand up for them when so many others now lack the courage or the moral fiber to do so. I'm not sure how that isn't clear. Kindly enlighten me.
Whoa! I DIDN’T accuse you of hating anyone, most especially women. I’m asking you, why are there groups of men who do hate women? I just don’t get it. Though I am not a lesbian, I know and like lots of lesbians and they don’t hate men? What have women, on the whole, done to deserve a lot of hate from a lot of men? You’re a man, please explain.
I'll throw a couple of thoughts out there for you.
There are some men who hate women just straight up because they can't get laid. And these men don't examine what they might be doing wrong, rather, they are convinced women are the problem, not themselves. There was a mass killing at Virginia Tech like ten or more years ago, and if I'm not mistaken, the killer was motivated by that very reason.
There are other men who hate women for the same reason they hate minorities: loss of status they used to have without ever having to do anything to earn that status. Right now, women are kicking men's asses in college admissions and graduation rates. They're on a path to overtake them in the job market. This idea of the man being THE MAN of the household, the breadwinner, etc., these sources of pride and unquestioned authority are being torn down by the exceptional talents of women who never were given a chance in previous eras. Now that women have the benefit of a more even playing field, they're outplaying the men in general, and it's creating resentment. And again, instead of looking within as to how they might improve, mediocre men are lashing out.
Yeah, which means it's a large part of what's driving the political divide between the sexes among twenty year olds, which is driving women to become even more independent and men to become even more resentful. It's a terrible dynamic, but it's really up to the men to fix it, because they're the problem. The media they're voluntarily consuming is toxic.
The 2nd-largest mass-killing in all of Canada’s history, was a misogynistic attack, targeting killing “only the female students”, in a class at the École Polytechnique, Montréal, Dec. 1989. The shooter’s exact motivation is unclear, but possibly affronted that the school accepted all those women into a technical program, ahead of him??
I don't understand it either, so I lack the ability to explain it other than to believe that old ways of the mind and the mouth die hard. Women certainly do not deserve the hatred or the resentment, and we all don't deserve a President who regards them as second-class citizens in private when his public utterances barely conceal a disdain for them -- unless they are of personal use to him in some way. I suspect that some men feel threatened, that women who are achievers and have the same (or better) base of knowledge and skill sets will embarrass and/or outpace them in things that they didn't particularly have to earn or achieve in the past, at least relative to about half of the nation's population. I suppose that's my best off-the-cuff, non-expert theory on it, based on what I've seen and heard over the years and connecting the dots. Many men are a lot more fragile emotionally and psychologically than they are willing to admit. The pressure to be a tough guy who doesn't cry or admit failure or show weakness can be intense, especially in the guy who currently leads our nation, and not for better.
They don't hate women per se, but they do fully believe that women are lesser than men in all areas, and they point to their patriarchal documents like the Bible and such to inform and reinforce their beliefs.
Think about all the religious teachings on this, and it begins to make sense.
So, they hate the women's movement because it works toward equality. They don't realize that not wanting women to be equal is harmful to the women they claim to care for. Men who think this way are ignorant, selfish clods (with our current president being their role model).
Most men who hate women also hate people of color, gay people, and anybody else they can "otherize." My theory is they hate themselves, lack confidence, and only feel good about themselves when they can make other people feel small. So sad. But there will always be people like this, it's in their genes.
My theory is that men both hate and fear women at a visceral level because women can do one thing that men cannot...produce a baby. There is something about that ability that unnerves men. They are driven to try to control it and the women who do it by any method they can think of.
I heard Gloria Steinem say something very much like this on a college campus in 1980-something. I've never known of a man to say this before (and I assume by your name that you are a man).
There was a recent Gallup-poll in the USA which found something astounding: that of the U.S. women aged 19-45 that they surveyed, near 40% said they’d wish they could leave the country & live elsewhere (compared to just over 20% of same-age men). Hmm, could the growth of overt misogyny in the U.S. have anything to do with this? Likely! And 18-45 y.o.women are your Reproductive workforce. Combined with the mass-deportations, the lack of increase in any legal-immigration? …forthcoming slide into a shrinking-population for the USA could not be more obvious.
I think its because our primitive human ancestors were weak, barely out of the trees, animals. For million of years being stronger meant survival. But also meant that to survive you had to protect your offspring and having more was better than too few. Unfortunately, women had to also be protected in order to bear and nurture those offspring . Maybe that's where the resentment came from.
Well then the men didn't want to be protecting someone else's offspring. They don't trust the woman because who knows who the she slept with that produced that baby.
You're giving Stephen Miller too much credit when comparing him to a T-800. A T-800, with a little effort, can pass for a human being. Stephen Miller not so much.
Hey now! Don't be insulting the T-800 like that. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking! Plus it learned to value human life, which is something that Stephen Miller hasn't done yet. ;)
The idea that ANY type of robot would be able to kill people without a human person being involved in the decision is OBSCENE. We ordinary humans already have to struggle with all sorts of automated systems (e.g., calls to so-called “help” desks) in order to speak to a real human being who may actually give a damn about serving the company’s customers in a pleasant and humane manner. Daily we struggle to make sense out of the workstations that control our working lives. As a retired physician, I used to believe that electronic medical records would make my life easier. By the time I retired, wrestling with our EMR regularly took time away that would have been better used talking to and examining patients. And most of us have had experiences when AI systems have made stupid or criminal errors in basic business and academic transactions. These things are just not ready for prime time—haven’t we learned anything from the problems we are having with social media?
Who is going to be responsible when one of these killer robots wipes out an entire family of ordinary people when it got the address wrong that it was supposed to go to? What is going to happen when some ordinary gun-owning citizen returns fire—will the gunfight escalate until half the neighborhood citizens are dead or dying? Do we really want a racist bigot like Stephen Miller to have the power to program these metal Death Commandos to kill everyone with a brown skin? Of all the stupid, thoughtless ideas that the clowns in this administration have come up with, this is one of the worst!
Amen my friend! At least Anthropic seems to be trying to stop a catastrophe! How does anyone think allowing a “killer robot” to do it's thing with no human oversight is a good thing.
The regimes approach to AI is one of the scariest things going on right now. Unfortunately, there are so many hair on fire inducing things happening, this is slipping under t he radar.
The people at Anthropic have inside knowledge and KNOW that the LLMs already self direct towards the destruction of humanity. It's not out of good will that they're doing this, it's their OWN self preservation.
I fear Trump and Hegseth want to use robots to strike such fear into people that there will be no resistance. I remember watching Robocop and being scared to death of that robot who took out the guy in the boardroom. The fact that the man controlling it had no power to stop it was the most frightening thing of all. AI must be regulated. Hegseth is insane.
And ask themselves: What if a robot had been on duty that night? What would our world look like right now?
The idea should scare the hell out of everyone. I don't care if you are (D) or (R) or something else. Robots/AI should not be making autonomous killing decisions.
There are not enough people in the world with Mr. Petrov's courage and intelligence. I applaud his valor, yet still look upon this tale as evidence that AI will one day destroy the world. Amongst the class of people developing AI, there are too many intent on developing it for their own ego or pocketbook. Morality, ethics, safety and such do not play into their decisions. And that is the problem.
I’m Canadian, and my Gr-father’s Cousin was one of the first Joint-Chiefs of NORAD, the anti-Soviet Arctic defense, Canada /USA. Air Marshal Roy Slemon. There was in Oct.1960, a false-alarm generated by the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Sys., Thule Air Base Greenland. Apparently, 100’s of missiles were en-route. But, thought Slemon, the Russian leader was in New York, so “How unlikely?”, plus the number of missiles was unreasonable. The written algorithm, required counter-firing. He did not.
—Later, the false alarm turned out to be triggered by the rising Moon.
—So, we did not have a Nuclear War in 1960, because my grandpa’s cousin applied “human insight”.
"The confrontation has spooked the AI-policy world, which has until now viewed the Trump administration as highly AI-friendly."
It continues to astound me that anyone still has the cognitive dissonance required to think the Trump administration is "friendly" to anyone or anything.
These are malign, unreliable, and irrational actors. Many people are going to lose a LOT of capital pretending otherwise.
America can’t get over the delusion that wealth and prestige mean competency because we’ve never collectively experienced the wrath of madmen with control of a country.
Casey Means is obviously an anti-science kook who has no business being the surgeon general, but praying to your ancestors and doing full moon ceremonies is not in any way weirder than having ashes smeared on your forehead or kissing the Torah. I say this with love, but some of y'all really need to check yourselves on your religious bigotry.
I don’t think weirdness of religious ceremony is the issue— I think that the problem is Casey Means apparently suggesting that her full moon ceremonies indicate a medical qualification.
Except that's not what this piece says, and it's not what the linked piece says. In both cases, they're ragging on the unacceptability of her self-described spiritual practices. If those practices included, say, abusing people or animals, I think they'd be fair game. But citing meditation and moon ceremonies and other stuff you can label neopagan as reasons to reject her is just prejudice. The earlier piece does have a witch weigh in on the distinction between Means' harmless spiritual practices and her dangerous rejection of science, and that's great, but both pieces seem pretty determined to ridicule the former, and that's not cool at all.
Totally agree, Maria. I chimed in to raise awareness about the inappropriate treatment of Means' spiritual practices in the earlier piece the first time around, and ... it seems those at the Bulwark did not hark to my comment. Because here it is again, same exact treatment!! As a neopagan myself, those kinds of practices are simply part of our spirituality. Rituals that connect strongly with nature and seasonal cycles just make more sense to me. And yeah, I take issue with the prejudice. Say all you want about her qualifications from a medical perspective (which I agree are extremely lacking), but leave her spiritual practices out of it. They are not "kooky." They are just a variant of the same kinds of metaphorical or ritualistic ceremonies that other religions employ, like say, eating a dry wafer to take in the "body" of Christ? I am not dissing this Christian practice, only underscoring that all religions have certain practices that might seem odd to an outsider eye... That is why we need respect for and freedom of all religions, provided there is no overt intent to do harm. One of the main tenets of my faith is "Do no harm."
Me too. What's interesting about the MAHA movement is that it represents an attempt by Trump to drive a wedge in a voting bloc that traditionally has tilted toward the Democrats. Which raises the question: How well is it working?
Perhaps swimmingly in redder and less-educated parts of the country, but in my relatively blue college town most of the alternative-modality practitioners appear to be appalled by the rise of anti-science and anti-vaccine sentiment -- and RFK Jr.
Well, it's JZ Knight pretending to be a 30,000 year old warrior or something like that...she/he/they came to prominence during the heyday of 80's New Age Spiritualism.
I've lived on the West Coast most of my life, and it has always been a fertile breeding ground for cults such as Ramtha and Rajneeshpuram.
I live close to Yelm but never paid much attention to Ramtha. The founder's ostentatious mansion suggested to me that the primary goal of the enterprise was to get rich. I knew a few people who got involved with the cult, and they struck me as really struggling to find a sense of meaning.
So, yes, there is a dark side to the individualization and commodification of spiritual practices. What I find particularly problematic about the MAHA movement is that it basically applies Trump's deeply cynical grifter mentality to the legitimate goal of living a healthier life.
I've driven past Ramtha's place many a time as I grew up just up the road. I think it's always been obvious that JZK was in it for the money and found willing servants in those that were just as you describe, "struggling to find a sense of meaning". Which makes her all that much worse. She's a grifter in the same way that Trump and his hangers on are.
Agreed. What The Bulwark refers to as "crunchy and kooky content" sounds to me like fairly typical rituals practiced by what has been referred to as the New Age movement. It has often drawn from Native American and eastern traditions, such as Zen Buddhism.
If The Bulwark seeks to build a broad, bipartisan pro-democracy coalition, why not be respectful of religious differences?
I also wonder if this is another indication that The Bulwark isn't very comfortable with West Coast culture in general.
In fairness, I also think it's pretty shitty when the anti-religion cohort disses any respectful or positive mention of Christianity, which happens all the time here and elsewhere online. But just as Paula White and Doug Wilson do not discredit an entire faith, wackos like Casey Means are no excuse for belittling all of earth-centered spirituality.
Yup -- tribalism seems to be pretty popular these days. That makes it harder to "talk across differences" in a civil and nuanced way.
The thing that most bothered me about the post was the "crunchy and kooky content" phrasing. That aligns with narratives that national Republicans have been using for years to "otherize" the West Coast (particularly California).
The Bulwark was created by disaffected Republicans, so it would make sense if it reproduced at least some of the party's traditional cultural biases. In addition, my impression is that none of the regular contributors live on the West Coast. Perhaps it is time to change that.
Agreed. And all I care about is Bill Cassidy and enough others NOT voting for her! Not because of her rituals, but because of her anti-vaccine, anti-science approach.
"John Hurley, head of the U.S. Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, told associates he would resign from the role after his objections to federal surveillance of transactions involving the local Somali community in Minnesota went unheeded...."
I wish these would not resign. If they could under cover as resisters. He could surveil the Somalis badly and inefficiently and report that they are doing nothing.
Wait a minute, Dr Means did full moon ceremonies with powerful grounded women? This sounds like woke language to me. How did they let this get through and are we sure she won’t be a back door to DEI which we so famously got rid of. I guess asking guidance from your ancestors and the dead, doesn’t sound like a worse decision making process than what the administration already does. It’s really a hard choice: do I go with the dead ancestors or just let Claude decide.
That’s part of RFK Jr.’s hook. The anti-vax, nor artificial colorings or preservatives group used to be far left, and he brought a whole bunch of them over to the dark side with him.
I know such a person, who just the other day posted some 5-D chess thing on Facebook about how Trump's move to increase glyphosate was really a way to ultimately reduce it. Can't remember the exact tortured argument. She also went from atheist/new age to born-again Christian (having rejected that from her upbringing). It's been the weirdest thing to watch. The only reason I haven't blocked her is that it is such an interesting (if disturbing) case study.
I think there is a tribal aspect to the MAHA moms I know. Many of them are married to famous dudes, so this is a pretty specific sample. Like the MAGAface ladies in DC, these women have commonality that might not make sense to women outside their circle. They usually vote D, but they are science skeptics, NIMBY’s, and very law & order when it comes to threats to their gilded cages. They want the BEST for their children! Most are not college educated.
As a happily childless, middle aged gay man, that is clearly not my circle. But I have smart well educated friends whose children went to some small Christian bible college, and I always think they could have done so much better.
I think the current idea is look for migrants to deport. But it could expand in various other directions. Authoritarian governments love mass surveillance.
For me, the biggest menaces of AI isn't AI itself but the people running it. They're megalomaniacal psychopaths with grandiose and delusional visions that see humans as either expendable or pawns.
Paraphrasing a line from Full Metal Jacket: "it isn't the instrument but the hard heart that kills."
Well, we're giving hard hearts in excess of a trillion dollars, control over the Internet, letting them strain the electrical grids and public water supply, and evidently the near future could include the military, constant surveillance, and half of our jobs. What could go wrong?
They are all busy with the incredible urgency of preventing ICE funding. I don't want them to do anything but that. The Democrats may be forced by Republicans to do a talking filibuster.
Thats of the utmost importance. They are building concentration camps and the current ICE budget is more than all the DHS. These concentration camps are for real people. We cant pretend we dont know they exist
I have no idea why Hegseth thinks "Skynet" is a good thing. On one hand, you have AI software developing the capability to improve its own capabilities. On the other, you're giving it the option to develop its own targets and use lethal force as it deems appropriate. Sooner or later it would eliminate its human oversight - um, that would include you, Pete. Is there a sci-fi movie of the last 50 years that did NOT have that as its plot?
There’s a joke in Willy Wonka where a supercomputer developed to find the Golden Tickets decides not to help its human counterpart (“that would be cheating”) and proves resistant to coaxing (“what would a computer do with a lifetime supply of chocolate?”).
If we’re developing technology with the ability to think on its own and handing over to it a grandiose amount of power, it could very well decide not to help us using its own logical reasoning. That’s fine if it’s something trivial like Golden Tickets but it could have dire consequences if it has control over something fundamentally important or dangerous.
That would be my first warning to the Altmans, Zuckerbergs, and Hegseths of the world: don’t assume that you’ll have control over this. It may not act like a subservient human would.
Andrew Egger's reasonable closing question: "Have we got a legislature, or what?"
Answer: "No, we no longer have a legislature. What we have are two Republican-majority chambers whose only role is to aid the president in becoming a dictator."
That is complete bullshit. The Democrats are holding out to prevent more funding to ICE which is the important thing. ICE is building concentration camps.
Headline NYT today
Senate Democrats Again Block D.H.S. Funding, Demanding Enforcement Curbs.
Write or call your representatives. If they are Democrats they will get back to you with what they are doing. If they are Republucan demand they rein in ICE
Thank you for the source showing ICE taking photos of a protester and telling them how nice it is that the protester is now part of their database of domestic terrorists. How soon before Hegseth and Trump order the robots to go out and eliminate all the "domestic terrorists" in the country? That would include, I assume, all of us Bulwarkers. Who is developing the hardware that can take out the AI robots? I don't find any of this amusing. It makes me want to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed all day.
As bad as the racist Truth Social and other spewings (electronic or otherwise) of our President have been, I am still more concerned about Everyday America and how so many closet racists are now wide open with their own prejudices, on social media or otherwise. Anyone who uses Facebook and, I assume, other such platforms knows this by now. If you see a news organization or other source post a link to a diversity-based news story or otherwise invite commentary, they cannot wait to show the rest of the world how much they resent or even hate Blacks, Hispanics, women, and other historically marginalized groups, and how proud they are of their ability not just to express it, but also to try to get a few laughs about it through inane jokes and stereotypes. There is no subtlety to it anymore. It is directly in front of us, with no filter and no sense of regret or remorse if you call them out for it. In fact they want the fight. They are begging for it.
We rightly call out the President for creating a permission structure for these lowlives who, it appears, do not belong anywhere outside of a caged environment. But the ugly truth is they always have been there, hiding in plain site, making jokes among "their kind" about "those kinds" and waiting for someone to give them a green light to, um, come out, about their own behaviors and mindsets. It's always been there. And it isn't going away. We were so wrong in thinking that electing a Black man to our nation's highest office meant that we had turned a corner. And we thought we were good enough to elect a woman as President. Obviously not, at least not a liberal one. We are not better for having that knowledge. We just carry a still greater burden.
I do not know what the solution is. Some character flaws simply are too ingrained and too hard to correct among the far too many incorrigibles -- yes, let's call them Deplorables -- among us. But it isn't asking too much to have a leader who does not tolerate it and actively works to suppress it, and followers who do the same because it is the right thing to do. The symbiotic nature of the Haters and the leaders of the Haters has become too pervasive to overcome when there is no sense of guilt or shame about it anymore. It seems quaint now to think that there is a John McCain remaining on the political right to speak truth to prejudice. As long as so many people refuse to step up and do the right thing, for the right reasons, there is no healing our land, rather just trying to cover up the cracks enough that we remain a somewhat functional society. Which isn't good enough in the rest of the world that doesn't settle for merely good enough to get ahead and to the top. As a nation we work with one hand tied behind our backs, for the oldest and most unnecessary of reasons. As long as we collectively are willing to do that, we deserve the scorn and lack of respect that we are getting from others. Shame on us. It isn't hard to be better, or even Be Best, if we truly care enough to try.
The new Trump "freedoms" now include the freedom to be openly racist, the freedom to be violently racist ( almost bringing back lynchings), the freedom to infect other people with COVID, measles, or any other disease for which you could be vaccinated, the freedom to be corrupt, to exploit, to disregard laws, to be a fraudulent crypto dealer, to import drugs to America, decide you don't want to pay contractors, to lie, to attack people who prove that you are lying, and of course, to rape young girls and not be held responsible. These freedoms may cost you a few million dollars to buy the freedom, the pardon, or the exception to a tariff, but it's well worth the price.
And also, as we read today, the freedom for ICE to dump a blind man, on a cold New York night, at a location 5 miles from his home after they determined they had no reason to hold him. The man didn't speak English, needed a cane to navigate the streets (which he didn't have), used no electronic devices so couldn't contact his family. I speak in the past tense because the man died trying to find his way home. THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!!!!! Congress should pass a law TODAY, forcing ICE to drive people to their homes when they are released from custody, or provide a taxi or something so they GET HOME SAFELY!! Another innocent, dead immigrant. I would add "on their conscience," but they don't have any. I am furious. Again! Another human being, needlessly, brutally, permanently taken away from their loved ones. It makes me scream to imagine this man's fear and sense of helplessness as he died alone. I hate Trump, I hate ICE, and I hate a portion of our country that will not care because this man was not white.
ICE murdered Nurul Amin Saw Alam. He spoke Rohingya and no English. He was nearly blind. He was disabled and elderly. They took him out in below freezing weather, which they say is where he told them to take him. Really, they speak Rohingya? They left him there to die. I am sure they are still laughing. Who will murder more U.S. residents? Nutty Noem with ICE? ReallyFfingKrazy jr with his insane fraudulent medical treatments and policies or Pete Hagueseth if he gets to use Anthropic AI to both spy on Americans and make AI decisions to kill them?
This is appalling! 😡😡😡
I would say that is horrible beyond belief, except that I have absolutely no trouble believing it.
Clearly every place that had one of these God-awful detention centers needs volunteers to be there 24/7 to help people like that unfortunate man. It should NOT be necessary to do this, but it IS necessary (at least until we manage to overturn the current government, which is fine with murdering both immigrants and non-white people).
The man's name was Nurul Amin Shah Alam, if anyone wants to look him up. Here is an article for more info: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-blind-man-dies-buffalo-border-patrol-release-investigation/
OAITW, these freedoms are relevant if they're being done by to against someone else you don't like/know. They do not apply if they're being done to you by someone you don't like/know.
Of course. That’s against the law.
I believe the first woman president will be a Republican. When I see the females Trump surrounds himself with, I get nauseous.
Im concerned by all the posts on Bluesky that are saying the Democrats are worthless cowards and just like Republicans and we should all vote for a real left wing candidate. I can only assume they are Republican stooges trying to discourage young Democrats from voting.
Yes. A permission structure. And it's way worse if the POTUS grants that.
I find this comment enlightening because it raises the following question.
Why would they ever go back to a John McCain or Mitt Romney type figure? We can't expect this party to reform. It must either splinter or die.
You can't feed a kid cake and then expect them to want vegetables for dessert. You can't expect someone high off cocaine to be enthusiastic about Prozac. You can't shuffled the audience of aTransformers movie into a Ken Burns documentary and expect them to be entertained. They will not go back.
They won't go back. The Republican party is now a walking dead entity, hell bent on either eating or infecting anything in it's path.
And, like all zombies, they are hard to kill. Time for the Dems to find a superpower that will put them, as a party, out of their misery. Save the world!
America's second original sin
You only get one Original Sin. All the rest are pure choice.
Or third
Totally. I often say that Trump lifted a giant rock and all sorts of evils crawled out from under it. Not only crawled out, but were legitimized, amplified and rewarded.
In one sense, why keep people from saying all the obnoxious crap that they really believe. At least then we would know who they are. And we can spit in their faces if we dont like it. And they can't begrudge us for expressing how we feel.
We all should be taking down names and getting screen shots of particularly egregious comments, as surely those people will deny their words and actions someday when their current permission structure finally dries up.
And they’ll bury their MAGA hats, and other scummy kitsch in the backyard. I hope for a future where that won’t help them avoid what they have coming.
Yes, it has always been there, but societal pressure forced people to keep it mostly to themselves. Enter the internet and social media sites that allow people to anonymously post whatever they like. What a boon for racists and all haters. Until Congress has the will to regulate it and ban anonymity, because of the damage it is doing to our country, there is no answer. John Roberts was very, very wrong when he determined race was no longer a factor in determining which lawful protections are necessary in this country.
D-m? Do you hate women? It doesn’t seem like you do, but at 76, in 2026, I’m confused. In my whole life, and I raised a boy child to manhood, I’ve never met a man who hated women as a whole.
You know, every man I've met thinks the women he knows - his wife, his sisters, his friends, his coworkers - are just as intelligent as men. It's all the OTHER women out there they can't trust. Just like all the immigrants they know are hard working and devoted to their families - it's all the OTHER immigrants out there ruining things.
Like, everyone has his own special Jew? YIKES!
Yes, it is exactly like that
Gosh. That’s pretty damn scary! Have we come to that! Back to the original question and the answer, “an Ancient Greek play, first preformed in 411 BCE, where women led by the Athenian LYSISTRATA withhold sex from their spouses to force an end to the Peloponnesain War between Athens and Sparta” goes back a long way to answering the burning question. Maybe it’s all about, you know, S.E.X.?
Ultimately, it is about P.O.W.E.R.
Notionally, if you have power, you get laid.
And "I have a friend who is black. He's a good guy."
Huh. I just think most other people (minus The Bulwark crowd, of course!) are not serious people. I don't distinguish between gender, race, or any of that other stuff....
If people are just "not serious," it should make them neutral on those topics. If they weren't serious, they would not spend their time spewing relentless hatred on line about the very things you mention - gender, race, etc.
What I originally wrote was "...are stupid"; however, I thought I would attempt to be my better self.
I applaud you for the attempt!
No, not at all. Why would you think that? My argument is against the people who do so, and toward other groups that were and are marginalized inappropriately. I'm trying to stand up for them when so many others now lack the courage or the moral fiber to do so. I'm not sure how that isn't clear. Kindly enlighten me.
Whoa! I DIDN’T accuse you of hating anyone, most especially women. I’m asking you, why are there groups of men who do hate women? I just don’t get it. Though I am not a lesbian, I know and like lots of lesbians and they don’t hate men? What have women, on the whole, done to deserve a lot of hate from a lot of men? You’re a man, please explain.
I'll throw a couple of thoughts out there for you.
There are some men who hate women just straight up because they can't get laid. And these men don't examine what they might be doing wrong, rather, they are convinced women are the problem, not themselves. There was a mass killing at Virginia Tech like ten or more years ago, and if I'm not mistaken, the killer was motivated by that very reason.
There are other men who hate women for the same reason they hate minorities: loss of status they used to have without ever having to do anything to earn that status. Right now, women are kicking men's asses in college admissions and graduation rates. They're on a path to overtake them in the job market. This idea of the man being THE MAN of the household, the breadwinner, etc., these sources of pride and unquestioned authority are being torn down by the exceptional talents of women who never were given a chance in previous eras. Now that women have the benefit of a more even playing field, they're outplaying the men in general, and it's creating resentment. And again, instead of looking within as to how they might improve, mediocre men are lashing out.
Isn't this entirely Fuentes' argument? Which means, isn't this mentality infecting gobs of male minds?
Yeah, which means it's a large part of what's driving the political divide between the sexes among twenty year olds, which is driving women to become even more independent and men to become even more resentful. It's a terrible dynamic, but it's really up to the men to fix it, because they're the problem. The media they're voluntarily consuming is toxic.
The 2nd-largest mass-killing in all of Canada’s history, was a misogynistic attack, targeting killing “only the female students”, in a class at the École Polytechnique, Montréal, Dec. 1989. The shooter’s exact motivation is unclear, but possibly affronted that the school accepted all those women into a technical program, ahead of him??
It's absolutely terrifying! Wtf? I don't feel that hatred towards other people. I just don't get it. I don't get the allure of hating on.
I don't understand it either, so I lack the ability to explain it other than to believe that old ways of the mind and the mouth die hard. Women certainly do not deserve the hatred or the resentment, and we all don't deserve a President who regards them as second-class citizens in private when his public utterances barely conceal a disdain for them -- unless they are of personal use to him in some way. I suspect that some men feel threatened, that women who are achievers and have the same (or better) base of knowledge and skill sets will embarrass and/or outpace them in things that they didn't particularly have to earn or achieve in the past, at least relative to about half of the nation's population. I suppose that's my best off-the-cuff, non-expert theory on it, based on what I've seen and heard over the years and connecting the dots. Many men are a lot more fragile emotionally and psychologically than they are willing to admit. The pressure to be a tough guy who doesn't cry or admit failure or show weakness can be intense, especially in the guy who currently leads our nation, and not for better.
They don't hate women per se, but they do fully believe that women are lesser than men in all areas, and they point to their patriarchal documents like the Bible and such to inform and reinforce their beliefs.
Think about all the religious teachings on this, and it begins to make sense.
So, they hate the women's movement because it works toward equality. They don't realize that not wanting women to be equal is harmful to the women they claim to care for. Men who think this way are ignorant, selfish clods (with our current president being their role model).
Most men who hate women also hate people of color, gay people, and anybody else they can "otherize." My theory is they hate themselves, lack confidence, and only feel good about themselves when they can make other people feel small. So sad. But there will always be people like this, it's in their genes.
My theory is that men both hate and fear women at a visceral level because women can do one thing that men cannot...produce a baby. There is something about that ability that unnerves men. They are driven to try to control it and the women who do it by any method they can think of.
I heard Gloria Steinem say something very much like this on a college campus in 1980-something. I've never known of a man to say this before (and I assume by your name that you are a man).
There was a recent Gallup-poll in the USA which found something astounding: that of the U.S. women aged 19-45 that they surveyed, near 40% said they’d wish they could leave the country & live elsewhere (compared to just over 20% of same-age men). Hmm, could the growth of overt misogyny in the U.S. have anything to do with this? Likely! And 18-45 y.o.women are your Reproductive workforce. Combined with the mass-deportations, the lack of increase in any legal-immigration? …forthcoming slide into a shrinking-population for the USA could not be more obvious.
They have to make sure their woman only has their kids. So you get regressive places like Saudi Arabia where woman have to be completely covered.
Men are lazy. They're happy to let someone else (women) do that work.
I think its because our primitive human ancestors were weak, barely out of the trees, animals. For million of years being stronger meant survival. But also meant that to survive you had to protect your offspring and having more was better than too few. Unfortunately, women had to also be protected in order to bear and nurture those offspring . Maybe that's where the resentment came from.
Biology, its complicated.
Well then the men didn't want to be protecting someone else's offspring. They don't trust the woman because who knows who the she slept with that produced that baby.
So true. Some of the great apes if they steal a female from another male, will kill her baby if she was one.
Regarding the header pic, why is Pete Hegseth wagging his finger at Stephen Miller?
Let's get real: Sarah Connor would snap Miller in half like a twig.
You're giving Stephen Miller too much credit when comparing him to a T-800. A T-800, with a little effort, can pass for a human being. Stephen Miller not so much.
Hey now! Don't be insulting the T-800 like that. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking! Plus it learned to value human life, which is something that Stephen Miller hasn't done yet. ;)
Stephen is looking rather stiff now a days!
But shiney!
And I thought the business world had no choice but to embrace fascism because Lena Khan wouldn’t let JetBlue and Spirit Airlines merge.
A Pakistani woman!
The idea that ANY type of robot would be able to kill people without a human person being involved in the decision is OBSCENE. We ordinary humans already have to struggle with all sorts of automated systems (e.g., calls to so-called “help” desks) in order to speak to a real human being who may actually give a damn about serving the company’s customers in a pleasant and humane manner. Daily we struggle to make sense out of the workstations that control our working lives. As a retired physician, I used to believe that electronic medical records would make my life easier. By the time I retired, wrestling with our EMR regularly took time away that would have been better used talking to and examining patients. And most of us have had experiences when AI systems have made stupid or criminal errors in basic business and academic transactions. These things are just not ready for prime time—haven’t we learned anything from the problems we are having with social media?
Who is going to be responsible when one of these killer robots wipes out an entire family of ordinary people when it got the address wrong that it was supposed to go to? What is going to happen when some ordinary gun-owning citizen returns fire—will the gunfight escalate until half the neighborhood citizens are dead or dying? Do we really want a racist bigot like Stephen Miller to have the power to program these metal Death Commandos to kill everyone with a brown skin? Of all the stupid, thoughtless ideas that the clowns in this administration have come up with, this is one of the worst!
Amen my friend! At least Anthropic seems to be trying to stop a catastrophe! How does anyone think allowing a “killer robot” to do it's thing with no human oversight is a good thing.
The regimes approach to AI is one of the scariest things going on right now. Unfortunately, there are so many hair on fire inducing things happening, this is slipping under t he radar.
The people at Anthropic have inside knowledge and KNOW that the LLMs already self direct towards the destruction of humanity. It's not out of good will that they're doing this, it's their OWN self preservation.
I fear Trump and Hegseth want to use robots to strike such fear into people that there will be no resistance. I remember watching Robocop and being scared to death of that robot who took out the guy in the boardroom. The fact that the man controlling it had no power to stop it was the most frightening thing of all. AI must be regulated. Hegseth is insane.
I, myself, would love a personal robot. Not just Alexa, but one that moved around the house and could carry stuff and pick up after me.
Sometimes I called myself my wife's carry monkey. Then the "no tail" thing dawned on me, so I became a carry ape.
Anyone even considering the possibility that it is OK for a robot/AI to make killing decisions on its own should read this story:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831
And ask themselves: What if a robot had been on duty that night? What would our world look like right now?
The idea should scare the hell out of everyone. I don't care if you are (D) or (R) or something else. Robots/AI should not be making autonomous killing decisions.
Mr. Petrov even visited the US in 2007: https://www.nps.gov/people/stanislav_petrov.htm
There are not enough people in the world with Mr. Petrov's courage and intelligence. I applaud his valor, yet still look upon this tale as evidence that AI will one day destroy the world. Amongst the class of people developing AI, there are too many intent on developing it for their own ego or pocketbook. Morality, ethics, safety and such do not play into their decisions. And that is the problem.
I’m Canadian, and my Gr-father’s Cousin was one of the first Joint-Chiefs of NORAD, the anti-Soviet Arctic defense, Canada /USA. Air Marshal Roy Slemon. There was in Oct.1960, a false-alarm generated by the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Sys., Thule Air Base Greenland. Apparently, 100’s of missiles were en-route. But, thought Slemon, the Russian leader was in New York, so “How unlikely?”, plus the number of missiles was unreasonable. The written algorithm, required counter-firing. He did not.
—Later, the false alarm turned out to be triggered by the rising Moon.
—So, we did not have a Nuclear War in 1960, because my grandpa’s cousin applied “human insight”.
—Imagine if Autonomous AI had been at the helm??
"The confrontation has spooked the AI-policy world, which has until now viewed the Trump administration as highly AI-friendly."
It continues to astound me that anyone still has the cognitive dissonance required to think the Trump administration is "friendly" to anyone or anything.
These are malign, unreliable, and irrational actors. Many people are going to lose a LOT of capital pretending otherwise.
America can’t get over the delusion that wealth and prestige mean competency because we’ve never collectively experienced the wrath of madmen with control of a country.
Best comment I have read in years!
Many have still not realized that with Trump it is not a two way street. And any support you get comes with a high price.
The AI people are very short sighted. Thinking in terms of deregulation and tax cuts.
Casey Means is obviously an anti-science kook who has no business being the surgeon general, but praying to your ancestors and doing full moon ceremonies is not in any way weirder than having ashes smeared on your forehead or kissing the Torah. I say this with love, but some of y'all really need to check yourselves on your religious bigotry.
I don’t think weirdness of religious ceremony is the issue— I think that the problem is Casey Means apparently suggesting that her full moon ceremonies indicate a medical qualification.
Except that's not what this piece says, and it's not what the linked piece says. In both cases, they're ragging on the unacceptability of her self-described spiritual practices. If those practices included, say, abusing people or animals, I think they'd be fair game. But citing meditation and moon ceremonies and other stuff you can label neopagan as reasons to reject her is just prejudice. The earlier piece does have a witch weigh in on the distinction between Means' harmless spiritual practices and her dangerous rejection of science, and that's great, but both pieces seem pretty determined to ridicule the former, and that's not cool at all.
Totally agree, Maria. I chimed in to raise awareness about the inappropriate treatment of Means' spiritual practices in the earlier piece the first time around, and ... it seems those at the Bulwark did not hark to my comment. Because here it is again, same exact treatment!! As a neopagan myself, those kinds of practices are simply part of our spirituality. Rituals that connect strongly with nature and seasonal cycles just make more sense to me. And yeah, I take issue with the prejudice. Say all you want about her qualifications from a medical perspective (which I agree are extremely lacking), but leave her spiritual practices out of it. They are not "kooky." They are just a variant of the same kinds of metaphorical or ritualistic ceremonies that other religions employ, like say, eating a dry wafer to take in the "body" of Christ? I am not dissing this Christian practice, only underscoring that all religions have certain practices that might seem odd to an outsider eye... That is why we need respect for and freedom of all religions, provided there is no overt intent to do harm. One of the main tenets of my faith is "Do no harm."
I know atheists who consider any and all religions completely irrational. That’s goes for traditional AND newer variants.
Yeah, I'm less put off by the ceremony than the clear anti-science stance she projects.
Me too. What's interesting about the MAHA movement is that it represents an attempt by Trump to drive a wedge in a voting bloc that traditionally has tilted toward the Democrats. Which raises the question: How well is it working?
Perhaps swimmingly in redder and less-educated parts of the country, but in my relatively blue college town most of the alternative-modality practitioners appear to be appalled by the rise of anti-science and anti-vaccine sentiment -- and RFK Jr.
How well is it working? Too well! Turns out Ramtha is a racist. Who knew!? (Well, just about everyone in Yelm, let me tell ya!)
Who’s Ramatha?
Well, it's JZ Knight pretending to be a 30,000 year old warrior or something like that...she/he/they came to prominence during the heyday of 80's New Age Spiritualism.
Just realized I had a typo...Ramtha!
Thanks
I've lived on the West Coast most of my life, and it has always been a fertile breeding ground for cults such as Ramtha and Rajneeshpuram.
I live close to Yelm but never paid much attention to Ramtha. The founder's ostentatious mansion suggested to me that the primary goal of the enterprise was to get rich. I knew a few people who got involved with the cult, and they struck me as really struggling to find a sense of meaning.
So, yes, there is a dark side to the individualization and commodification of spiritual practices. What I find particularly problematic about the MAHA movement is that it basically applies Trump's deeply cynical grifter mentality to the legitimate goal of living a healthier life.
I've driven past Ramtha's place many a time as I grew up just up the road. I think it's always been obvious that JZK was in it for the money and found willing servants in those that were just as you describe, "struggling to find a sense of meaning". Which makes her all that much worse. She's a grifter in the same way that Trump and his hangers on are.
The anti-science stuff is the big problem. Dodgy on vaccines, etc.
Agreed. What The Bulwark refers to as "crunchy and kooky content" sounds to me like fairly typical rituals practiced by what has been referred to as the New Age movement. It has often drawn from Native American and eastern traditions, such as Zen Buddhism.
If The Bulwark seeks to build a broad, bipartisan pro-democracy coalition, why not be respectful of religious differences?
I also wonder if this is another indication that The Bulwark isn't very comfortable with West Coast culture in general.
In fairness, I also think it's pretty shitty when the anti-religion cohort disses any respectful or positive mention of Christianity, which happens all the time here and elsewhere online. But just as Paula White and Doug Wilson do not discredit an entire faith, wackos like Casey Means are no excuse for belittling all of earth-centered spirituality.
Yup -- tribalism seems to be pretty popular these days. That makes it harder to "talk across differences" in a civil and nuanced way.
The thing that most bothered me about the post was the "crunchy and kooky content" phrasing. That aligns with narratives that national Republicans have been using for years to "otherize" the West Coast (particularly California).
The Bulwark was created by disaffected Republicans, so it would make sense if it reproduced at least some of the party's traditional cultural biases. In addition, my impression is that none of the regular contributors live on the West Coast. Perhaps it is time to change that.
Good comment.
Agreed. And all I care about is Bill Cassidy and enough others NOT voting for her! Not because of her rituals, but because of her anti-vaccine, anti-science approach.
Attention Anthropic!
Please hold the line!
Low IQ is the favorite putdown expression of DJT. Just remember, with Trumpster to is all projection.
He only uses it for people of color. It's his N word.
He has two N words; the other one is "nasty," which he only uses to describe women.
Don't forget "Piggy"!
I can’t stress how important this is..and the story about surveillance by Treasury.
What was the Treasury story? Thanks!
"John Hurley, head of the U.S. Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, told associates he would resign from the role after his objections to federal surveillance of transactions involving the local Somali community in Minnesota went unheeded...."
https://www.acams.org/en/news/breaking-news-us-sanctions-chief-resigns
I wish these would not resign. If they could under cover as resisters. He could surveil the Somalis badly and inefficiently and report that they are doing nothing.
Thank you… and <sigh>
Wait a minute, Dr Means did full moon ceremonies with powerful grounded women? This sounds like woke language to me. How did they let this get through and are we sure she won’t be a back door to DEI which we so famously got rid of. I guess asking guidance from your ancestors and the dead, doesn’t sound like a worse decision making process than what the administration already does. It’s really a hard choice: do I go with the dead ancestors or just let Claude decide.
I mean, I've done ceremonies with powerful grounded (wiccan) women...
There’s the objection to her: she sounds like an Esalen, California, granola-eating, woke leftie!
At the very least she’s giving me 60’s hippy vibes, but those people have drifted to the Trumpy side.
That’s part of RFK Jr.’s hook. The anti-vax, nor artificial colorings or preservatives group used to be far left, and he brought a whole bunch of them over to the dark side with him.
I know such a person, who just the other day posted some 5-D chess thing on Facebook about how Trump's move to increase glyphosate was really a way to ultimately reduce it. Can't remember the exact tortured argument. She also went from atheist/new age to born-again Christian (having rejected that from her upbringing). It's been the weirdest thing to watch. The only reason I haven't blocked her is that it is such an interesting (if disturbing) case study.
I think there is a tribal aspect to the MAHA moms I know. Many of them are married to famous dudes, so this is a pretty specific sample. Like the MAGAface ladies in DC, these women have commonality that might not make sense to women outside their circle. They usually vote D, but they are science skeptics, NIMBY’s, and very law & order when it comes to threats to their gilded cages. They want the BEST for their children! Most are not college educated.
As a happily childless, middle aged gay man, that is clearly not my circle. But I have smart well educated friends whose children went to some small Christian bible college, and I always think they could have done so much better.
I’m so confused!
If the dead ancestors wrote stuff that Claude has somehow soaked up, maybe they are speaking through him, in a certain sense?
The LLMs might have picked this stuff from somewhere. Why not? I’m sure it’s online.
I hope they’re not reading the False Flag newsletter!
You want heads or tails?
Me thinks the dead may have more life experience to share than Claude.
Did anyone else catch this:
"One, Anthropic won’t let its AI be used to conduct mass surveillance of Americans."
Why exactly does DOD need to do mass surveillance of Americans?
How can they do battle with ANTIFA if they can't identify ANTIFA members? /s
It's easy: Anyone who does something they don't like is "antifa". Kurt Vonnegut used the term "Saboteurs" in Player Piano. Same idea.
We are all Antifa. ha ha!. : )
Not me. I am Spartacus.
Good enough.!
Obviously, to go after everyone else. Definitely not me! /s
So they know who to label as domestic terrorists for subsequent elimination by the AI robots.
I think the current idea is look for migrants to deport. But it could expand in various other directions. Authoritarian governments love mass surveillance.
Because of this very conversation we are currently having.
For me, the biggest menaces of AI isn't AI itself but the people running it. They're megalomaniacal psychopaths with grandiose and delusional visions that see humans as either expendable or pawns.
Paraphrasing a line from Full Metal Jacket: "it isn't the instrument but the hard heart that kills."
Well, we're giving hard hearts in excess of a trillion dollars, control over the Internet, letting them strain the electrical grids and public water supply, and evidently the near future could include the military, constant surveillance, and half of our jobs. What could go wrong?
For such important policy to get to this point; "Have we got a legislature or what?" seems to answer itself.
Gosh, I wish someone in Congress seemed to mind. They're all busy podcasting.
They are all busy with the incredible urgency of preventing ICE funding. I don't want them to do anything but that. The Democrats may be forced by Republicans to do a talking filibuster.
Thats of the utmost importance. They are building concentration camps and the current ICE budget is more than all the DHS. These concentration camps are for real people. We cant pretend we dont know they exist
I have no idea why Hegseth thinks "Skynet" is a good thing. On one hand, you have AI software developing the capability to improve its own capabilities. On the other, you're giving it the option to develop its own targets and use lethal force as it deems appropriate. Sooner or later it would eliminate its human oversight - um, that would include you, Pete. Is there a sci-fi movie of the last 50 years that did NOT have that as its plot?
There’s a joke in Willy Wonka where a supercomputer developed to find the Golden Tickets decides not to help its human counterpart (“that would be cheating”) and proves resistant to coaxing (“what would a computer do with a lifetime supply of chocolate?”).
If we’re developing technology with the ability to think on its own and handing over to it a grandiose amount of power, it could very well decide not to help us using its own logical reasoning. That’s fine if it’s something trivial like Golden Tickets but it could have dire consequences if it has control over something fundamentally important or dangerous.
That would be my first warning to the Altmans, Zuckerbergs, and Hegseths of the world: don’t assume that you’ll have control over this. It may not act like a subservient human would.
Frankly, because he is a moron. The argument doesn't need to go further than that
He is so stupid its incredible.
He must have really enjoyed "Colossus: the Forbin Project." 😀
That was a great movie!
It was very much a 70s movie. I love how they tried to trick Colossus by convincing it how important sex was to humans. 😀
Right?! Hegseth may not be a film connoisseur but surely he at least saw the second Avengers movie.
Andrew Egger's reasonable closing question: "Have we got a legislature, or what?"
Answer: "No, we no longer have a legislature. What we have are two Republican-majority chambers whose only role is to aid the president in becoming a dictator."
That is complete bullshit. The Democrats are holding out to prevent more funding to ICE which is the important thing. ICE is building concentration camps.
Headline NYT today
Senate Democrats Again Block D.H.S. Funding, Demanding Enforcement Curbs.
Write or call your representatives. If they are Democrats they will get back to you with what they are doing. If they are Republucan demand they rein in ICE
I’m surprised Palantir wasn’t given the contract, even if they don’t have their own AI/LLM. After all, vaporware never stopped President Man.
Palantir is actually the connective tissue in this deal--they build the government platforms on which DoD uses Anthropic's AI models.
They are; Anthropic’s AI (Claude) is integrated into Palantir’s complex data platform and analyzes the information in real-time…:)
Wow. Talk about strange bedfellows.
Exactly…:)
They’re Taking Your Picture
Part 1 of 6: The Surveillance Apparatus | An investigation into the technologies tracking you and countermeasures that work.
https://criticalresistance.substack.com/p/theyre-taking-your-picture?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=53ncx2&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
My god. I had no idea. This is terrifying. And once something like this gets started, it never goes entirely away regardless of administration.
Thank you for the source showing ICE taking photos of a protester and telling them how nice it is that the protester is now part of their database of domestic terrorists. How soon before Hegseth and Trump order the robots to go out and eliminate all the "domestic terrorists" in the country? That would include, I assume, all of us Bulwarkers. Who is developing the hardware that can take out the AI robots? I don't find any of this amusing. It makes me want to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed all day.
Of course.
Or Elon’s less-than-best-AI Grok.
The least we can do is read it, and share and not just online.