Political issues – Page 5

The consequences of truth-telling

Terry Moran interviews Trump, April 29, 2025. Official White House photo.

The Washington Post has reported that Terry Moran will not be returning to ABC. Moran was suspended after a post on “X” that was critical of Trump and Stephen Miller.

As a retired newspaperman, I well understand why news organizations (other than, of course, right-wing propaganda organs such as Fox News) must defend their reputation for objectivity. Those are the rules, and according to those rules Moran went too far.

But we have rules, and we have truth. One of the reasons we are where we are today is that the responsible media, for years (ever since Fox News came on line in 1996), have been unable to tell the truth because of their rules about bias and objectivity. The lords of right-wing propaganda strangled the responsible media with its own principles. Thus the fascist movement could lie constantly and laugh all the way to the bank, and to the White House. The responsible media could not bring themselves to plainly call a lie a lie and then explain the purpose of the lie (which they understood perfectly well but wouldn’t say). The right wing has to lie. To them their lies are beautiful. Ethically they couldn’t care less. The responsible media avoid it at all costs.

The pathetic irony is that Terry Moran told the truth, a truth that is so perfectly obvious to rational, morally sane people that it hardly needs to be said.

There’s another thing. In reporting on Moran’s post on “X,” the responsible media were squeamish about even reporting what Moran said. They’d quote some of the post, but the context was never clear, and it was never clear whether they were reporting the complete post.

I’ve included a screen shot of the complete post.

I am terrified about what is going on in Los Angeles. I’m also terrified that things could be even worse on Saturday, because of Trump’s military parade (which Gavin Newsome rightly called “vulgar”) and the protests. Over the next few days we stand to learn a lot about the intentions of the Trump White House and the current appetite of the American people for putting up with it.

A glimpse of the post-Trump future?

Source: Wikimedia Commons

As Karis Nemick in the television series Andor reminded us, authoritarianism is always brittle. Though Trump is surrounded by some of the most eager and rabid — but also the most incompetent, the most deranged, and the most corrupt — lackeys in American history, the future of authoritarianism in America is tied to the fate of one and only one person — Donald Trump. Authoritarianism in America has a single point of failure.

Trump is 78 years old. For his last year or so in office he will be a lame duck. In 42 months he will be gone (if he doesn’t die first from too many cheeseburgers and milkshakes).

There will be (there already is, actually) a fierce competition to become the next Trump and to keep the movement going. J.D. Vance, of course, wants to be the new Trump. I’m skeptical that Vance has got what that would take. Trump, it seems to me, wants a dynasty, not a functional movement. Don Jr. would like to be the next Trump, and it’s hard to imagine Trump supporting anyone else. I’m also skeptical that Junior has what it would take.

One of the things we learned from this week’s grotesque warfare between Trump and Elon Musk is how much Trump is hated by elites. Only Musk, at this point, has the power to turn on Trump. But, inevitably, that’s going to change. In three years or so, Trump’s power is going to be gone. Either his term will end, he will die in office, he will be assassinated, or unexpected and unpredictable events will somehow bring him down. Either MAGA creates and anoints another charismatic leader, or MAGA fragments from schism and goes into decline.

Whatever happens, once Trump is perceived as weak and vulnerable, an ugly tide will turn against him. A thousand savage wolves will come for Trump, both to hasten him off the stage and to extract revenge. Trump will be torn to pieces unless a MAGA successor loyal to Trump can be found. Historically, the picture is rarely pretty when authoritarians leave office or lose their power.

A great weakness of the Trump regime is that it is dangerously deficient in cold, pragmatic competence. The Nazis, without their cold, pragmatic competence, would never have gotten as far as they did. The Trump regime, on the other hand, is a pig circus of incompetent narcissists trying to generate video for Fox News. Without the pig circus that feeds the media, there’d not be much left of the Trump regime — not much that could get anything done, anyway.

Here I must add that my predictions about Trump have always been too optimistic. I just could not imagine that he could outlast all the many things that should have destroyed him politically and put him in prison. And even though I have a low, low opinion of at least half of the American population, my opinion was not low enough.

As the commentariat have pointed out, in the Trump-Musk pig circus we are seeing a struggle between MAGA, which wants to control us and dominate us, and the tech oligarchs, who want to own us, control us, and dominate us. Working together, their power is horrifying. But they have shown that their alliance is brittle. We must hope that they continue to try to dominate each other rather than work together.

Character in a time of fascism

Karis Nemik and Maarva Andor

Last week I finished watching the second season of “Andor” on Disney Plus. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. What sticks with me, though, is not so much the story. It’s the characters — and the character of the characters.

In a time of fascism, people sort pretty much into three groups: one, the eager fascists; two, the members of the rebellion; and three, those who can’t be bothered to care one way or the other. “Andor” is a brilliant character study of the first two types.

In this MAGA era, we all know some of the eager fascists. We also know people whose little lives are more important to them than anything happening in the larger world. What’s sad is that most of us who identify with the rebellion are so isolated. We’re frustrated that there is no meaningful role for us. This is a miserable vacuum in which stories can help us manage our isolation and frustration.

My guess is that those who created “Andor” know exactly whom they are speaking to — to those of us who would join a rebellion if there was a way to do it. There are times when the script of “Andor” breaks into a monologue and speaks to us directly.

Maarva Andor:

“There is a wound that won’t heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it’s here. It’s here and it’s not visiting anymore. It wants to stay.

“The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness. It is never more alive than when we are asleep. It’s easy for the dead to tell you to fight, and maybe it’s true, maybe fighting is useless. Perhaps it’s too late. But I’ll tell you this, if I could do it again, I’d wake up early and be fighting those bastards from the start!”

Karis Nemik:

“Remember this, freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.

“Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

“And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

“Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.”

Mon Mothma:

“I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss.

“Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.

“This Chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza. What took place yesterday … what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide. Yes! Genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this chamber! And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we’ve helped create? The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!”

Luthen Rael:

“Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion. I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.

“What is my sacrifice?

“I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude.

“So what do I sacrifice?

“Everything!”

Outlasting them is the best revenge

Jefferson Griffin, vile fascist pig

Today, at last, a ruling by a federal court put an end to a six-months-long attempt by a swamp-scum Republican, Jefferson Griffin, to steal a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. It’s important to understand the absurdity of Griffin’s claims to be able to invoke the appropriate level of disgust for this man. I won’t rehearse the details here — the mainstream media coverage has been good. But adding to the disgust is the fact that Republicans on the North Carolina Supreme Court kept Griffin’s claims alive for months when it was so obvious that Griffin had no legitimate claims and was only trying to subvert yet another election for Republicans.

North Carolina is a purple state. My expectation is that North Carolina will become bluer and bluer between now and the 2028 election, as Republicans show the world that what they are now is fascists. One of North Carolina’s senators, Thom Tillis, is up for re-election in 2026. He seems to understand that he cannot win a statewide election now, so he is one of the few senators market-testing flaccid Republican attempts to stand up to Trump.

My track record on Trump predictions is not good, because I have always been too optimistic that someone would stop him. Again and again, for years and years, the courts have let him skate, and Republicans in Congress blocked impeachments twice. For what it’s worth, I expect the next three and a half years to be a horror. But I still cannot imagine that fascism in America can survive the end of Trump. The fools who voted for Trump deserve all the misery that they are likely to get. Hatred for Trump already has reversed two elections in two other countries, Canada and Australia. Americans are far more stupid and more gullible than the people of Canada and Australia, but I don’t think Americans like fascism any more than Canadians or Australians, once Trump teaches them what fascism and corrupt government are, and they slowly perceive that it was not what they were promised.

Actually, the media have been negligent on one angle of Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to steal an election. I’ve tried to find out who paid for that six months of appeals, which must have cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. I still don’t know. We need to know who is paying for these Republican attempts to subvert the law, the Constitution, and some of the most important principles of democracy.

2001 Honda Rancher TRX-350, 4-wheel drive, electric shift

I did not need an ATV

For several years I have fantasized about buying an ATV. Everybody has one here in the sticks, whether they can afford it or not. It’s considered essential equipment. I can by no means justify spending much money on an ATV, but I came across a 2001 Honda Rancher 350, well maintained with low mileage. I bought it from the shop that had maintained it. It had been parked for a year. It has new tires and got a thorough servicing including a rebuilt carburetor. It runs perfectly, and, like my 2001 Jeep, I expect it to still be running when I kick the bucket at age 104. It’s a classic.

I like the design of the older Honda ATV’s. The body has soft, curving lines, as opposed to the sharp lines of newer ATV’s. My 2001 model also has a kind — if slightly goofy — face, unlike the aggressive faces of newer ATV’s. I have plenty of woodland trails here to ride it on. I may get a little yard work out of it. And when I’m too lazy to walk the half mile to the mailbox and the half mile back, the ATV will get me there. It will get me outside more. Plus driving it is more of a workout than I would have thought. Steering it is far from effortless, and riding it in hilly woodlands requires a constant shifting of body weight according to the terrain. Maybe it will help keep me young, the better to outlast the fascists.

New glasses

At my age, part of outlasting the fascists is to take care of the brain. We now know how important good vision and good hearing are for keeping the brain healthy and active. It had been almost three years since I got new glasses. I have glasses for reading and glasses for driving, but I particularly notice the improvement with my new reading glasses (which I also use for the computer).

The book is Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity, by Diarmaid MacCulloch, an Oxford historian. I’ll have more to say about the book when I’ve finished reading it. It’s already pretty familiar terrain to me, though. When I claim that there is nothing on earth more cracker-fed delusional than the church, and when I further claim that there is no subject on which the church is more horsewash whacked than sex, I’m entirely serious. Anyone who doubts it either doesn’t know much about the history of the church or will believe pretty much any old thing as long as they’re told that it came out of the mouth of God.

My eye doctor is in King. That’s where the The Dalton bar and restaurant is, which I’ve written about before. (A Bistro and Bar in Trumptown). As usual, I had the grilled salmon with garlic mashed potatoes and grilled green beans.

I tried to talk the bartender into selling me a half shot of Oban 14, just so I could taste it. But he wouldn’t do it.

Mountain Laurel

Mountain laurel is very common all over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Here in the foothills it is less common, but it is very abundant on the ridges and creek valleys around my house. The ATV gets me to places where I’m more able to appreciate it. Just now the mountain laurel is approaching the end of its blooming season. If I had ever seen mountain laurel bloom before, I don’t recall it.

Scottish pie from the high street bakery in Dunbar. One of these is a meat pie, and the other is a fruit pie.

Scotland calling

Travel is another thing that helps me outlast the fascists. I’ve booked a trip to Scotland in late September — a lovely time of year in Scotland. I’ll be hanging out with Ken, of course, near Edinburgh. But also an old friend from California is making his first visit to Scotland, so I’ll meet up with him and tag along for a few days in Aberdeen and Inverness. I have been to Inverness, but not to Aberdeen.

Scottish pie from the high street bakery in Dunbar

Is revolt taking root in the zeitgeist?

“People will suffer,” says Mon Mothma. “That’s the plan,” says Luthen. “You’re not angry at me. I’m just saying out loud what you already know. There will be no rules going forward. If you’re not willing to risk your conscience, then surrender and be done with it.”

Last night I finished re-watching “Andor” season 1 (for the third time). Tonight I will start watching season 2. I have avoided reading reviews, but I’ve seen some of the headlines. It seems season 2 is going to have a lot to say about American fascism, or, as NBC News mildly puts it, “the plot’s relevance to current events.”

The Trump White House will start walking things back when rich people and CEO’s complain about the pain they themselves feel from Trumpian recklessness. But, toward everyone else, as many have pointed out, the cruelty is the point. It was reported that the CEO’s of Walmart, Target, and Home Depot met with Trump this week to warn him that, given the course Trump is on, there will be empty shelves by summer. Trump, of course, doesn’t care a fig for what empty shelves would mean for ordinary people. He would only be able to understand what empty shelves would mean for corporate profits.

The Trump White House can be counted on to double down on cruelty when ordinary people are concerned. As I said to a friend in email this morning, it is as though their fascist sadism gives them so much joy that they are blind to the political calculus of blowback. Or maybe they just assume that they have enough force at their disposal to put down revolt.

You don’t get to work for the Trump administration unless you are corrupt, completely uncaring, sadistic, and willing to do any vile thing that the emperor wants done. Thus they are all blind to the motivations of anyone who isn’t like them. There isn’t any wiring in their brains for that.

I have high hopes that, while the Trump administration merrily and triumphantly provides the motivations for revolt, “Andor 2” will help provide some inspiration.

Riley Moore, a congressman from West Virginia, is one of the Republicans eager to do photo-ops at Trump’s concentration camp in El Salvador. It seems obvious that he can’t comprehend, or just doesn’t care, what a public display of sadism like this means to decent people, or how history will view images like this. He imagines, in his triumphalism, that he will always be on top. But he is just one elite fascist up against the global many, and he can’t comprehend just how precarious his position is. I’m reminded of another quote from a story — Tyrion Lannister’s lines to Cersei after her acts of cruelty: “I will hurt you for this. I don’t know how yet, but give me time. A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you’ll know the debt is paid.”

The fate of quislings after fascists are defeated

Vidkun Quisling, sentenced to death by firing squad for betraying Norway to the Nazis, 1945.

The American people are stunningly stupid and easy to deceive. But even Donald Trump and his machinery of deceit cannot fool all of the people all of the time. The Trump resistance is starting to form. The conservative columnist David Brooks wrote yesterday in the New York Times:

“It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.”

We can only guess what percentage of the American people would happily follow Trump into full-on fascism. My guess would be 20 percent. The rest of us will do whatever it takes to get our democracy back. And we won’t forget who the fascists are and what they did.

In their gloating and triumphalism and sadism, Trumpists haven’t started to imagine what might happen to them once Trump is put down. Since they don’t know much history, maybe we should start reminding them.

I asked ChatGPT’s “deep research” AI for a summary of what has happened to “collaborators” in the past — both as a legal process, after fascists are deposed, and as a grassroots resistance as people rise up against fascist treatment.

Here are two AI reports. They will open as PDF files in your browser:

The historical record shows totalitarian regimes almost universally establish networks of camps, prisons, and forced-labor colonies. 982 words.

Meanwhile, the stories of resistance and eventual justice (from the Nuremberg gallows to the lustration files) serve as enduring reminders that even in the darkest times, there were those who defended freedom and, when light returned, insisted on accountability. 5,282 words.

Open-source surveillance using AI

Keeping an eye on the fascists. Image by ChatGPT 4o. Click here for larger version.

Safety and survival

There would be no thriving, and no survival, without surveillance. When deer in my backyard see me watching them through a window and retreat into the woods, they’re doing surveillance (and I’m surveilling them!). Today we have many types of machine surveillance to help protect us. Our smoke detectors are a form of surveillance. Automatic braking systems on vehicles use radar for surveillance. Governments, obviously, have many ways of doing surveillance. Corporations, too, do surveillance, including snooping on our privacy.

But what about us ordinary people? Forty years ago, I heard a brilliant managing editor of a Pulitzer-prize newspaper say that newspapers are intelligence agencies for the common man. That was very true then. It’s less true now, because of professional timidity and corporate capture.

Low-information types — the type of people who voted for Trump — are upside down about the need for surveillance. They are gullible to propaganda, easily manipulated, easily persuaded against their own vital interests, pumped full of appealing and easy-to-understand deceptions that serve the purposes of a predatory elite.

We high-information types have been living through terrible times. New technologies such as social media have been optimized for mass deception. The sources of trustable information not only have been weakened, they are under attack. One of the reasons we “doom scroll” is that, perceiving danger, we are desperate for information.

Beyond doom scrolling

Corporations and governments have covert ways of doing surveillance. We ordinary people have no covert sources. Open-source intelligence has been a thing for a long time. It’s more important now than ever, and we instinctively feel that. When we doom scroll, we are doing — or trying to do — open-source intelligence.

Open-source intelligence is not always free. I still subscribe to newspapers, weakened and compromised though they are. I’ve written here before about how Substack has become an important source of information. The first two things I read each morning, before I spend the next hour making my daily rounds though a series of reasonably trustable web sites, are the daily Substack posts of Heather Cox Richardson and Paul Krugman.

I have so many subscriptions these days that it has become a considerable expense. One of those subscriptions is ChatGPT Plus, from OpenAI, at $20 a month.

ChatGPT’s ‘Deep Research’

A couple of months ago, ChatGPT introduced a feature called “Deep Research.” So far it seems remarkably reliable and less prone to hallucination. It cites its sources. If asked a question that it perceives as unfocused or ambiguous, it will ask for clarification before it begins. It takes time and resources. Those at the $20-a-month level get 10 queries per month. A $200-a-month subscription gets 120 queries per month.

Paul Krugman’s Substack post this morning was an interview with Claudia Sahm, an economist who developed “the Sahm rule” for the early detection of recessions. The interview wasn’t exactly clear on what the Sahm rule says at present about whether the United States (probably) is in a recession or not. So I made a deep-research query to ChatGPT 4o.

After about five minutes, ChatGPT responded with a longish discussion, followed by this summary:

Overall, current employment data do not meet the Sahm rule’s recession criterion. The unemployment rate’s modest uptick (on the order of only a few tenths of a percent from its cyclical low) suggests that, by this real-time measure, the economy has not entered a recession. This assessment aligns with other economic evidence: job growth, while slower, remains positive, and GDP has continued to expand in recent quarters. In conclusion, the Sahm rule presently does not flash a recession warning – a sign that the U.S. economy, while perhaps past the very tightest labor market conditions, is not yet in a recessionary decline according to this indicator.

This led me to some questions about the safest instruments for parking money in the current economic conditions. Again, ChatGPT spent about five minutes doing whatever it does and told me that the Schwab money market fund (SWVXX) that I am at present invested in is highly liquid, with low risks. I asked what economic developments might suggest higher risks in the money market, and what instrument I might move to for greater safety. ChatGPT responded at some length, with this summary:

You’re wise to stay in SWVXX while liquidity remains high and credit markets are calm, but be alert to:

• Widening credit spreads
• Repo market dysfunction
• Rising systemic banking stress
• Sharp risk-off sentiment
• Redemption gates in peer funds

If any of these flash red, Treasury-only MMFs and short T-Bills offer the highest liquidity and lowest risk, with yields only modestly lower.

Would you like me to monitor these indicators for you and give you alerts if conditions shift?

It happens that Schwab has a money-market fund invested only in treasury bonds — SNSXX. I will indeed watch for the conditions ChatGPT listed and move money into SNSXX if that seems wise. ChatGPT offered to monitor those indicators, but I’m not yet sure how monitoring works.

I could not detect any errors in ChatGPT’s response. Some of the information was easy to verify on the Schwab web site. ChatGPT’s numbers were both accurate and up to date.

Keeping an eye on the fascists

My next deep-research query to ChatGPT was this: I would like information on current and very recent activities of right-wing grass roots organizations such as militias, as well as intel from social media where this type of people congregate. Under Trump, are they emboldened? Or, do they feel safer and thus less motivated to cause trouble?

ChatGPT asked for clarification:

To help guide the research effectively, could you please clarify a few points:

1. Are you interested in U.S.-based right-wing grassroots organizations only, or would you like international examples as well?
2. Do you want the research to focus solely on militia-style groups, or also include broader grassroots movements (e.g., anti-government, Second Amendment, anti-immigration, etc.)?
3. Is there a specific timeframe you’re interested in (e.g., only post-2024 election developments, or the past year)?
4. Would you like examples from specific platforms (e.g., Telegram, Gab, Truth Social), or a general overview of social media trends and chatter?

This will help narrow the scope and tailor the findings to your goals.

I replied with: Only U.S., please, only post-2024 election, and chatter from any relevant platform.

After almost ten minutes, ChatGPT came back with a response of several thousand words, too long to include here. I asked for a bulleted executive summary:

Executive Summary: U.S. Right-Wing Militias and Grassroots Movements Post-2024 Election

• Mass Pardons Embolden Militias: President Trump’s extensive pardons of January 6 participants—including key leaders of groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys—have revitalized far-right militias, restoring their leadership structures and morale.
• High-Visibility Demonstrations: Far-right organizations, notably Proud Boys and Patriot Front, have staged highly visible, coordinated marches and rallies across multiple U.S. cities since January 2025, signaling renewed confidence and willingness to publicly assert their presence.
• Integration into Mainstream Conservative Events: Extremists are increasingly blending into broader conservative movements, such as anti-abortion rallies, positioning themselves as accepted, even celebrated, participants rather than fringe outsiders.
• Targeted Harassment and Intimidation: Militias continue aggressive actions aimed at perceived enemies—particularly LGBTQ+ communities, left-wing activists, and immigrants—under a perception of impunity due to a sympathetic administration.
• Militant and Strategic Online Chatter: Social media chatter on platforms like Telegram reveals a tone of victory coupled with strategic planning. Extremists advocate using Trump’s presidency as a window for recruitment, infiltration of institutions, and normalization of radical ideologies.
• Shift from Anti-Government to Pro-Trump Alignment: Militias have transitioned from opposing the federal government to aligning themselves with Trump’s administration, viewing themselves as enforcers or supporters of official policies rather than insurgent actors.
• Cautious Strategic Pause: Despite an emboldened stance, some extremist groups indicate they are currently in a phase of organization and preparation, viewing Trump’s second term as a secure period to rebuild and expand their influence without immediate risk of repression.
• Potential for Future Mobilization: Experts warn that Trump’s open alignment and legitimization of far-right militias create conditions where these groups may readily mobilize or escalate violence if politically encouraged or directed.

Where I am at the moment

Every day, the news is horrifying. For the past week, we have all been mesmerized by the Trumpian drama over tariffs and the turmoil in the stock markets and (much worse) bond markets. Though I haven’t posted in 12 days, I am by no means tuned out. It’s just that there has been little that I can add, and I don’t want to be one of those people who can’t add anything to our understanding of what’s happening other than snark, or merely repeating what so many of us are already thinking and saying.

Just now, it’s all about self-care while keeping an eye on the world — good eats, a slosh of Scotch, a glass of wine, watching a beautiful spring unfold, trying to figure out why I’m seeing more crows nearby and where they’re nesting, reading, re-watching the first five seasons of Game of Thrones, staying in touch with friends, and planning a visit to Scotland in September.

I’m thinking about making a project of befriending crows. There are many articles and YouTube videos on how to do it.

Disclaimer: Nothing here should be taken as investment advice. We’re all in different circumstances and can tolerate different levels of risk. As a retired person, my first priority is protecting what I have.

Ayn Rand’s world

AI image by GPT-4o. When I asked GPT-4o for an image of a burning Tesla, it said: “I can’t generate or provide images of real-world accidents, injuries, or disasters, including depictions of vehicles like Teslas crashing or catching fire. However, if you’re looking for a fictional or stylized representation for artistic or storytelling purposes — like a sci-fi scene involving a futuristic electric vehicle damaged in some event — I can help with that. Just let me know the context or tone you’re going for!” I replied, “OK, then. Make it fictionalized.” This was the result. It sure looks like a Tesla to me.

The Atlantic has a chilling (though overly long) piece about the legal war over Ayn Rand’s estate: “The curse of Ayn Rand’s heir.” It refers to Rand as “the queen of selfishness.”

Here are a couple of examples of the vile things she said: “If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.” Also: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”

It’s Ayn Rand whom Elon Musk was parroting when he said (on a Joe Rogan podcast), “We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on” … “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

I have not read Ayn Rand’s books, and I never will. But we know that she spent her life developing this primitive, dog-eat-dog philosophy. It became a religion. I wouldn’t hesitate to call it satanic. A cult formed around her. It is easy enough to see what kind of people Rand’s philosophy appeals to: the sociopaths, the narcissists, the brats on the lower end who have nothing but who fantasize about how much they can take, and the predators like Elon Musk on the upper end who use their money and power not only to get more, more, more, but also to try to turn the world into the jungle empire that Ayn Rand and her cult imagine.

True-believing members of this cult, now installed in Washington, are doing everything they can to break the parts of the American government that don’t serve the rich and to use American power to beat the empathy out of American institutions and Western civilization. Even by 2016, they had all too easily succeeded at beating the empathy out of the American “evangelical” church. If you consider everything that Trump and MAGA have done so far and are trying to do, you’ll find that it’s all consistent with Rand’s philosophy.

Who is going to stop them? Some people are optimistic. Their case is that the courts will stand in Trump’s way, and that we will have a free and fair election in 2026 in which Republicans lose control of Congress. I hope they are right.

Maybe, ultimately, American democracy can be saved. But are we prepared for the damage and calamity that are inevitable before we can stop these people from doing what they obviously intend to do?

Our first image of a Trump concentration camp. In the photo, Kristi Noem is wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch. The Trump White House actually staged this photo, as propaganda, and is proud of what it shows. MAGA types cheered. This is what Ayn Rand’s world looks like. To them, it’s beautiful.

First, let’s talk about a sonnet

⬆︎ The newly discovered version of Sonnet 116. I asked Open AI’s 4o engine to modify it for modern spellings. I have typed the text with an IBM Wheelwriter typewriter. Click here for high-resolution version.

The most thrilling news I came across today is that a somewhat different version of Shakepeare’s Sonnet 116 has been discovered in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. The New York Times wrote about it here, and an academic paper about the discovery is here.

This is one of Shakespeare’s best-known sonnets. As the New York Times points out, the new version has an almost scolding tone aimed at those who deceive. The words “heretic” and “mountebank” are used, words that do not appear in the version with which we are familiar.

Sonnets were meant to be read aloud. Note that the word “fixèd” is two syllables.

Contempt for lying mountebanks! Now there’s a thought for the day.

⬆︎ The newly discovered version of Sonnet 116, with the text from the copy in the Bodleian Library.

⬆︎ Sonnet 116 as we have long known it. This page was scanned from the A.L. Rowse edition of the sonnets published in 1964.

⬆︎ I made a trip to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s this morning. I wasn’t in the market for eggs, because a neighbor has given me some nice big double-yolk eggs. At Whole Foods the egg shelves were pretty much empty.

⬆︎ Even Whole Foods’ most expensive eggs — $13.99 a dozen — were sold out.

⬆︎ I’m guessing that this truck probably cost at least $60,000. It’s also very likely that parts of it were made in Canada and Mexico. When these fools get what they deserve there will be a great feast of gourmet Schadenfreude. But what’s sad is that things will be much worse for people who don’t drive around rolling coal in $60,000 trucks.

An exercise in moral reasoning

Luigi Mangione

After a powerful, inhumane, and heartless health care CEO was shot and killed in New York City (presumably by Luigi Mangione), the pundit class flooded the zone with sanctimonious pieces scolding the masses for making a hero out of Mangione. I tried to work up some sympathy for the CEO. I failed, because I think there are millions of people — powerless people — more deserving of our sympathy. Does that make me a bad person?

First I should mention that Mangione’s lawyers have released a statement from Mangione thanking people for their support. Obviously he has become a hero for a great many people. Mangione’s legal team also have started a web site so that people can follow the case.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I thought that Jonathan Haidt, with his “moral foundations” theory, held a monopoly on studying how the moral values of liberals differ from the moral values of conservatives. Now I know that Haidt has a competitor. That’s Kurt Gray, at the University of North Carolina. As Gray writes on his web site, “If you want to understand the morals of the ‘other side,’ ask yourself a simple question — what harms do they see?”

I learned of Gray’s existence after a friend in Washington (who knows that I think Haidt is a schmuck who claims to be objective while implicitly flattering the moral crudeness of conservatives) sent me a link to a YouTube video. In the video, Gray is interviewed by Michael Shermer, who founded Skeptic magazine. I have seen Skeptic magazine from time to time over the years, and I always found it to be smug and snarky. Thus I was not surprised to find, in the video, that Shermer comes across like a used-car salesman. If you watch the video, I’d recommend discounting and skipping over Shermer’s jabbering. Only what Gray says matters.

In the video, Gray mentions the Mangione case. Liberals see a great deal of harm in people dying, or being bankrupted by, the greed of a health-care CEO. But liberals (I can testify to the truth of it) aren’t as alarmed by harm to a CEO who is responsible for those deaths and bankruptcies. What can be said about that kind of ethics?

Most people would agree that, if one of the 40 plots to assassinate Hitler had succeeded, then something like 50 million lives would have been saved, not to mention that Hitler was just plain evil. It is no great leap of moral reasoning to hold that the world would have been much better off if Hitler had died sooner rather than later. I think it reasonably follows that there are plenty of other people whom the world would be better off without.

Whether assassination is justified is a separate, and much more difficult, question. Reasonable people would always hope that there are humane and legal ways of preventing bad people from doing harm. Bad people have lately been very successful in finding new ways of preventing us from using humane and legal ways of stopping them from doing harm. Reasonable people also will disagree on when humane and legal solutions have failed, and when, if ever, the harm someone does in the world is so great that that person should be dispatched. Those who support capital punishment have already taken a stand on this question, which, as I see it, puts them on a slippery slope toward hypocrisy, especially if they demand the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, as many of them will.

It all boils down to what Kurt Gray is arguing: Different people assess harm in very different ways. It’s hard for me, as a liberal, to believe, but many people worry much more about harm to the harmful and powerful than they worry about harm to the harmless and powerless. Luigi Mangione has become a hero because he took the opposite — and, I would argue, the less morally crude — position.

Anyway, my intention here is only to bring up different ways of looking at these things. I am not arguing that Luigi Mangione was right to kill Brian Thompson. Certainly I would not have done that. But I also refuse to be scolded by the morally crude people who today are strutting and gloating over having the upper hand and new power to do harm in the world, with impunity. After all, remember who it was who said this and whom he was talking about: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”

The right-wing propaganda campaign against “wokeness” and diversity, equity, and inclusion is all about the glorification of moral crudeness, because everything they want to do is morally crude. It’s no wonder that they had a fit over Luigi Mangione. Someone actually struck back, and a great many people found it inspiring.

Consider skipping to around 39:00 for what Kurt Gray says about Jonathan Haidt.