The Necrotic Toddler claims he cut drug prices 600 percent — in other words, if the drug cost $100, it would now earn us a $500 rebate. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick tries and fails to make it make sense.
The Toddler is a bullshit artist. As Paul Campos puts it at the link above, he’ll say whatever he thinks will get him the sale or the vote or shut up those mean people who think he’s not the bestest little baby who’s ever been president. Like declaring unemployment is only up because of all the government employees he fired. It isn’t.
As Paul Krugman points out, it’s also that he has no other cards to play. He has no solutions that work. “Faced with adversity, he’s unable to propose policies to improve the situation. All he can do is continue to gaslight the public and claim that everything is great, while smearing his opponents.” So we get ideas like “instead of giving money to insurers, I’ll give it to people to give to insurers! See how different that is!”
While this is good news for Dem prospects, it’s horrible news for lots of people, like those whose insurance is spiking way, way up next year (I know a couple). For all the things government does wrong, it does a lot right, and we need competent people to make it work properly. We do not have that now.
While we’re on the subject of lies, JD Vance has announced that “We don’t treat anybody different because of their race or their sex” so it’s good Republicans are rejecting DEI. “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.”
JD Vance lives in a fantasy world where criticizing white power or patriarchy means white people and men are being told to apologize for the accident of their condition. No, people have to apologize if they’ve been racist/sexist dicks. And he’s made no secret about treating women differently: he talks a lot about childless cat ladies but I don’t hear him judging childless men the same way. And shall we mention that the Felon administration is hating on Somali-Americans simply for their ethnicity?
There’s an anecdote many writers have, myself included. Someone tells us they have an amazing idea for a fantasy story/movie/high-octane thriller; how’s about I write the story based on their idea and we’ll split the profits (which will be huge, of course. Their idea’s that good).
I can’t help thinking this explains, in part, the belief that if someone gives AI a prompt and tells them to write a story, therefore the prompter has written the story themselves. Isn’t coming up with the idea the hard part? AI just makes it easier to build on your concept, by saving you from having to think about character arcs, plot or writing well. Lots of people say “Someday I’ll write a novel,” but never have the discipline to sit down and do it (I’ve known a couple of talented people like that). Now they don’t have to sit
Case in point, Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist who believes AI may never be able to do what he does, is quite confident it can master comparatively trivial skills such as art and filmmaking.
(I got this off BlueSky. My apologies for losing track of the source post).
That is an interesting definition of “future creatives.” No cameras, no set, no filmmaking skills, but they’ve got an idea! Thanks to AI, they can become Spielberg!
It’s true that improvements in tech have made it easier to shoot a low-budget movie than ever before. However that does not guarantee you can make a good or even marginally competent low-budget movie. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, shooting a movie well is a skill. Or as I put it some years ago, “Photojournalism is a skill, not just a matter of pointing a camera because something interesting is happening.” Even less is it a matter of telling AI to point the camera for you.
A less charitable interpretation than my opening remark would be that the AI-is-art boom is a bunch of techbros who do not get art, can’t make art (but remember, Andreessen’s investment skills are much more of an art than art!) and resent the accolades flowing to artistic people. Well, now they’re going to annex art. Their tech will make it and real artists will soon be nothing special!
Plus there’s the money. As comics artist Jamie McKelvie put it, “the main achievement of the tech industry has been increasing the flow of money from people who make or do things to people who already have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes” Case in point, Spotify; great for tech, ruinous for musicians (“It has become entirely unsustainable for a band like us to come and tour anywhere except the coasts.”).
I read a dubious argument recently that using copyright against AI tech companies to protect them from learning on our work for free is wrong: copyright is supposed to promote innovation and this will work against innovation by stifling all the awesome creative work that will come out of AI. I’m less optimistic. As Charlie Warzel puts it in The Atlantic, “This is how it feels to live in the golden age of slop, a catchall word used to describe the spammy quality of easy-to-generate AI material. I’ve begun to think of it as the digital equivalent of an invasive species. Just as the introduction and replication of a novel plant or animal usually results in some form of ecological harm and threatens native organisms, the arrival of chatbots pumping out lorem ipsum–flavored text has polluted Google search results and added hallucinations to scientific archives.”
Warzel also has an answer to claims that AI will liberate creatives: “The idea is that Sora 2, like all AI tools, removes an enormous amount of friction between conception and completion in the creative process. Ideas and imagination are universal to the human experience, but execution is learned, the result of energy and time spent to develop the skills necessary to bring an idea into the world. Altman’s definition of creativity seems to elide this second element altogether—so much so that it appears to be an animating principle behind most of OpenAI’s tools.
‘ “The fact that you will be able to have an entire piece of software created just by explaining your idea is going to be incredible for humans getting great new stuff,” Altman said on the comedian Theo Von’s podcast this summer. “Because right now, I think there’s a lot more good ideas than people who know how to make them. And if AI can do that for us, we’re really good at coming up with creative ideas.”’
An account of conservatives taking over a library board and what followed.
I wouldn’t say House Speaker Mike Johnson is a square (as we used to call them) just because he suggests replacing Bad Bunny as Superbowl entertainment with MAGA-approved Lee Greenwood. Okay, yes I would say it.
Is Spotify using ghost artists (not AI, though I’m sure that’s coming) to replace legit musicians entitled to royalties?
As a concept for storytelling, Choose Your Own Adventure goes back further than I thought.
Daniel Kibblesmith on AI art: “People who don’t know how to invent anything except fundraising are using computers to create a world where they can insert themselves as middlemen and pretend they invented everything we already had.”
“Popular music may not be satanic, but MAGA is right to see it as mostly liberal. That’s why they fear it. Far from avoiding transcendent artistic experiences, the left can lay claim to most of them. Most everything from Taylor Swift to the grittiest punk music is made by people on the left. That’s why evangelicals want their kids to avoid it. They rightly believe that it’s hard to go back to mediocrity after you’ve tasted excellence.”
“Asian Americans, especially Asian American women, are NOT some test case for seeing what you can get away with, Patriarchy.com. We know you THINK we are, because we’re the model-adjacent-minority or WHATEVER, but we are not that football.“
“A former Wyoming library director who was fired amid an uproar over books with sexual content and LGBTQ+ themes that some people complained were inappropriate for youngsters and who sought their removal from youth shelves will be paid $700,000 after settling a lawsuit.”
Covers top to bottom by Gervasio Gallardo, Earle Bergey, Ed Emshwiller, Richard Powers. All rights to images remain with current holders.
That insight came from entrepreneur and business guru Harvey Mackay back in the 1990s (I browed his books when I worked at Waldenbooks). I think there’s a definite truth to it. For a lot of rich people “enough” doesn’t exist.
Take Robert Murdoch. He’s a centibillionaire so even if he wasn’t an old man, his money is never going to run out; his kids, grandkids, great-grandkids will never have to do a day’s work if he gives them the option. But when he discovered Fox — following the standard science regarding covid and vaccines — was losing ground to Newsmax, he immediately ordered an anti-vax stance, while requiring all employees get vaccinated.
Or consider the medbed, a non-existent miracle technology that supposedly cures as well as Wolverine’s healing factor. Unsurprisingly some tech companies have tried to milk the myth while maintaining plausible deniability: “Tesla BioHealing sells a “MedBed Generator,” which is a metal canister that patients place under their actual bed, for $11,000. Speaking to The Daily Beast in 2022, Tesla BioHealing CEO James Liu insisted that the company did not want to be associated with the medbed hoax, but promised its products would deliver “life force energy” to sick people.” This is, of course, a form of fraud that’s been around forever, but that’s no excuse.
College sports are hooked on the money too. I wrote in a previous post (but I can’t find it) about how colleges are partnering with online betting rings to encourage students to bet on games. Bad for students’ bottom lines, great for the college. Because even when the college has a multi-million dollar endowment, they hoard it like Smaug.
Or consider the endless string of sports events and now a comedy festival willing to set up in Saudi Arabia. Comedian David Cross on the festival and the comics who signed up: “I don’t understand how being rich can make someone such a whore. Poor people desperate to improve their (or their families lives), sure. Still not acceptable but I can understand the desperation to put food on the table. But this? I mean, it’s not like this is some commercial for a wireless service or a betting app. This is truly the definition of “blood money”. You might as well do commercials for Lockheed Martin or Zyklon B.”
At least some of the participants, such as Louis CK, are millionaires. It puts me in mind of Rod Serling’s observation in Requiem for a Heavyweight: first you get a thousand a week (we’re talking 1950s money — today that’s over ten grand a week) and it’s unbelievable! Nobody can spend that much! A year later, you’re spending that much. A year after that, you need it to live. Or feel like you do.
Paul Campos: “One thing I’ve watched pretty much totally collapse over the past generation, and the past decade in particular, has been what could be called the I’ll do a lot of things but I won’t do that ethos. The notion that you shouldn’t sell certain things no matter what you’re offered because that would be wrong is becoming almost literally incomprehensible, in a frank plutocracy in which money is essentially God.”
For instance, the Necrotic Toddler of the United States, who claims Mamdani’s proposals will fail miserably — the Toddler will cut off all federal funds to NYC to ensure it! Plus it’s good for Republicans.
The “centrist” Democrats are saying the same thing: Mamdani’s policies are bad because Democrats should focus on economic concerns. Which he is, but he’s doing it wrong! Except he isn’t: “He has found a framing that has resonance far beyond New York City: The cost of living is killing ordinary people.”
For too many Democrats, it seems that’s one step away from Mao’s cultural revolution in the 1960s. Worse, Mamdani might redefine what it means to be a Democrat, which would hurt the party with moderates — a New York radical will be a party killer in other areas of the country!
As one Democrat points out in one of those articles, he’s not running in those areas, and nobody is being forced to run on the same policies. Sure, Republicans will try to hang him around every Dem neck but if a candidate were fiscal conservative, watch-the-budget type, Republicans would still call them a tax-and-spend liberal, so what’s the diff? And I don’t recall the same worries about conservative Sen. Joe Manchin hurting the party, not even when he tanked lots of legislation.
And I don’t think grocery stores in food deserts, free childcare and free mass transit would, in fact, be unpopular elsewhere. Mamdani may not be able to accomplish his goals but at least he has good targets. Yet we still have Sen. Charles Schumer withholding an endorsement.
Part of this is undoubtedly that he’s a Muslim and sympathetic to the Palestinians hit with Israel’s genocidal attacks. Which may be why the Jewish Anti-Defamation League falsely claims Mamdani has made no attempt at outreach to the Jewish community. Republicans, of course, are eager to hit Mamdani with every classic anti-Muslim smear.
As for Mamdani’s plans being insane budget busters — well, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has declared open-ended support to propping up Argentina’s economy. The Argentinian president has Republican-style right-wing economic policies that have tanked the country’s finances, so naturally we’ll spend billions to save his butt. Plus it helps Bessent’s friend Rob Citrone, who’s invested heavily in Argentina. What they’re going to spend on Argentina, what they’ve already committed to spending on ICE — Mamdani’s plans ain’t nothing by comparison. It’s not about the national wallet but the national will.
I was going to end there but we have this interesting tidbit from the WaPo’s current op-ed editor explaining they’re not going to be biased: they’ll credit Republicans for valid criticism of Democrats and they’ll credit Democrats for criticism of Mamdani. So long as everyone criticizes Dems, it’s all good.
Even in this collapsing modern world, you might think people who aren’t (at least outwardly) Nazis wouldn’t want to quote Nazis favorably. But what do we know? Moms for Liberty have quoted Hitler more than once on the importance of controlling the nation’s youth. Even if they agree with the principle, “Hitler had some good ideas” doesn’t scream “group that cares about morality,” it screams “we’re okay with Nazis.” In one case at the link they quote Hitler on schools alongside Abraham Lincoln. If you want to cite an authority, Lincoln’s enough; the dude making the presentation wanted to quote Hitler.
Now J.K. Rowling in one of her anti-trans rants is quoting Hitler on the purpose of propaganda: it’s not to support the truth, it’s to make the case for your side. Which is true, but it’s pretty much the definition of propaganda — it’s not some stunning insight. As I put it in the comments thread, it’s not like there aren’t quote books and websites where she or Moms for Fascism could look for a better source that makes the same point. Hell, Rowling’s a writer, why not use her own words?
Her claijm is that trans activists say exactly the same thing, paraphrased, so they’re the real Nazis, not her! It is not a convincing argument when quoting Hitler.
2)Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said Charlie Kirk’s killer appeared to be a right-winger. Possibly this is false — most of what I read about his politics is pretty blurry — but it’s not an attack on Kirk. Nevertheless, when the Felon’s administration demanded Kimmel go off the air, Disney axed Kimmel’s show. Scott Lemieux, at the link, thinks they’re caving because they like the Felon’s policies. Possibly … but then again Nexstar, which owns a huge block of ABC stations, said they’d yank it. By a strange coincidence, Nexstar needs the administration’s support for a merger … As Lemieux says, mergers aren’t life-or-death for major corporations but they do mean more money and power, and some people can’t get enough.
As noted at the link, Disney already paid the Felon $16 million to settle one lawsuit. I’m curious if they think “this will be it, the last demand” or they figure paying protection money is affordable. Either way, they’re collaborating (more thoughts here). Another suggestion on why in the following image.
3)Speaking of collaborating … for a long time “abortion!” was the rallying cry for the religious right. Kenneth Copeland declared last year that voting for the Felon was the only Christian choice because of abortion.
But there’s no need for them to keep supporting the necrotic toddler. Roe v. Wade is dead, they’re making steady progress ensuring women can’t have sex without the risk of pregnancy and there’s no Republican capable of winning the primary who won’t support forced-birth policies. They have the option to pick another Republican, one who isn’t incompetent and whose vice-president doesn’t threaten to have the military kill fishermen because they might possibly could be drug dealers.
They don’t. The leaders of the religious right are enthusiastic collaborators and resent this being pointed out. Cry me a river.
A number of pundits and Democratic activists have suggested we need to put money behind a “Joe Rogan of the left,” somebody who can attract male listeners who’ve been swinging to the right (yes, it’s that issue again). This is not a new thought; 30 years ago I remember discussions about finding the Rush Limbaugh of the left. I agree with the Intercept it’s not a great idea.
First off, right-wing talking heads have the advantage that they’re feeding an audience that wants a constant diet of rageahol. If that requires bullshit and lies, cool. Liberals, mad though we may be right now, aren’t looking for lies (not that we need to, given reality is outrageous enough). As someone told the Intercept it’s hard to get something big going that doesn’t feel like it’s exploitative, exaggerated or preachy (whereas right-wing talking heads are somehow not seen as preachy).
There’s also the simple fact that becoming successful is hard. There are lots of talking heads out there but even on the right, most of them do not become Joe Rogan or Limbaugh; loathsome as Limbaugh was, he was very skilled in his propagandist role.
Rather than thinking of a silver bullet for the right-wing media dominance, possibly the solution (this is not an idea that originated with me) is to shoot lots of little bullets. Lots of communities suffer from being news deserts with no local news; why not start underwriting nonprofits like The Local Reporter, the hyperlocal website I freelance for?
Papers like ours may seem small — we are — but letting people know what’s going on with their government and community is important. And even in an age when city councils routinely stream their meetings to YouTube, having someone condense them down and share the key takeaways is a good thing. Even if all it does is build engagement at the local level, I think it’s healthy. Here’s some discussion on Bluesky (I agree including high-school sports is going to grab attention). A genuine newspaper would help counteract the fake newspapers right-wingers have set up to spread propaganda.
Also, as the Intercept suggests, look for podcasters, YouTubers and others who are already doing the sort of things the “Joe Rogan of the Left” would do. Lots of them. Eventually one of them may grow into a Joe Rogan naturally. Even if not, more voices on the left for people to listen to might make a difference. I doubt there’s anything that can smash the right wing media ecosystem but we can chip away at it, bit by bit. That may not get us out of our current battles with fascism but the fascists won’t be going away, even if we turn things around. Long-term tactics are important too.
Meanwhile our nominally neutral/centrist big media are doing a shitty job. As I blogged about yesterday, their crusading zeal has been more the exception than the rule. Part of that is the will of their owners; as Lawyers Guns and Money says of the WaPo “Bezos doesn’t care about the money so reducing the Post to a zombie shell is pretty clearly the end, not the means.“
For instance we have President Snowflake demanding red states gerrymander to give him more seats in the house, Texas complying, Ron deStalinist saying hold my beer, and Democrat-run states saying “Okay, if you do this, we do it too.” But according to the WaPo, the message is both sides do it. A recent headline described the Felon’s military occupation of DC as “well, he’s always had a fantasy of being a big-city mayor.”
The NYT is particularly odious, painting the Felon’s deportation policies as a way to provide more housing for Americans. Asking if it isn’t sensible for colleges to concede to some of the Felon’s demands, an idea parodied here. And rather than say RFK Junior is risking a catastrophe with public health, it’s described as “alienating allies who fear a public health crisis.” Then there’s headlines —
“Maximalist” sounds so much better than “fascist” or “dictatorial.” Or consider this bit on the Felon extorting money from colleges:
Meanwhile CNN announces the Epstein scandal is over, done, nobody cares, because Google searches on Epstein are down. And besides, the Felon is a political genius! As one Bluesky thread says, if the media don’t talk about Epstein or the Felon’s dementia, for lots of Americans it hasn’t happened.
Under Republican rule, multiple feed-the-poor programs have been gutted. Nevertheless The Atlantic is still willing to gush about RFK Jr. having a vague sort of possible plan for mailing veggies to the poor.
I’m not sure what the solution is, other than accepting they’re not going to stand up to fascism. And they’ll keep lowering standards to get clicks and attention, like Jim Acosta interviewing an AI avatar of a Parkland shooting victim.
David Halberstam’s THE POWERS THAT BE is a doorstop of a book but it’s a fascinating doorstop. Published in 1979, it looks at four players in the news media: Time magazine, CBS news, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times (Halberstam touches on the New York Times but in less depth, reportedly because he used to work for them), chronicles their growth and change over the 20th century (sometimes going back further) and the ways in which their tremendous influence has become a tremendous trap.
(This was the most convenient newspaper-related photo I have in my images library)
The book starts in the 1930s when William Paley moved into CBS, a tiny fringe company (NBC was far stronger) in the dubious new business of radio. He saw potential and radio coverage of WW II confirmed radio was going to be a big deal. Time and its sibling publication Life were the product of visionary Henry Luce and reflected his anti-communist politics (I remember flipping through old 1960s issues of Time and marveling that we were always, constantly on the brink of defeating North Vietnam); the Washington Post was for years just the local paper covering small-town Washington DC; and the Los Angeles Times existed to give its owners, the Chandlers a voice for Republican politics and their personal economic interests (which they assumed coincided with Republicans winning elections).
Politics changed. Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from London in the early days of WW II made millions of Americans more sympathetic to the Allies. Halberstam credits Luce as a major influence on America’s insistence Taiwan was the rightful government of all China (we didn’t recognize “Red” China as a legit government until the Nixon administration). When Eisenhower ran against Adlai Stevenson for president, Eisenhower, while disliking TV appearances, learned to make them; Stevenson never did. The Chandlers helped Republicans by covering them and simply not covering Democrats.
As James Fallows notes in the post that got me to read this, none of these companies are the forces they once were, but this book is still more relevant than, say, Season Finale (chronicling the battles between the UPN and WB networks). It shows that in many ways, the weaknesses we’re seeing now from the media in the face of the Felon Administration are nothing new. Yes, CBS took on Joe McCarthy but they were so nervous about it Murrow had to pay to advertise the special out of their own pocket. The Chandlers show biased coverage to suit a publisher’s personal agenda is nothing new. Many editors trusted White House assurances we were winning in Vietnam more than accounts from reporters who were over there.
The bigger and more profitable they got the worse it got. In the 1960s, one CBS executive apologized to a stockholders meeting for how occasionally pre-empting nightly TV shows for news had lowered their revenue, otherwise stockholders would have seen an extra 6 cents dividend per share. Kowtowing to Wall Street became essential — don’t do anything that would lower the stock price! The need for access led news organizations to mute their criticism of the government, otherwise they’d offend their sources. By the time of Halberstam’s books, the vulnerabilities are apparent.
That’s not to say we should just shrug and assume this is just the way things are. As the book shows, all these newspapers (and TV) changed a lot over the decades — they can change again and be better. We should hold them responsible when they’re not.
Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum argues in an Atlantic column that Donald Trump is “making socialism great again.” From 1983 to 2007, Frum says, America knew that capitalism was the way to go. We were an era of moderation with unemployment never above 8 percent, a growing economy, only a couple of recessions (I presume he cherry-picks his time frame to avoid including the recession of the early Reagan era), and a memory of how bad the socialist, centralized planning of the USSR, China and their satellites had been. Now, not only is the Felon actively intervening to manipulate trade with all his tariffs and deals but his blatant corruption makes it look like capitalism itself is corrupt.
The result? We have dudes like Zohran Mamdani proposing affordable housing, government-run grocery stores and free transit, all of which clearly leads to the total nationalization of American industry. Okay, technically Frum doesn’t say that but he strongly implies Mamdani wouldn’t advocate for one set of things if he wasn’t wanting to end capitalism. And frustration with capitalism made Bernie Sanders a star, which weakened Clinton enough in 2016 to put the Felon in the White House! (There were lots of other factors in play but the FBI’s bogus investigation and the press hyping Clinton’s email non-scandal don’t prove socialism is bad).
For starters, Frum’s history is a mess. The economy may have grown but along with that we had decreasing economic mobility — the poor stayed poor, the working class stayed working class, etc. And the poor wound up worse off in Reagan’s first term — I was poor, so I should know. That included increases in Social Security taxes to shore up the system; little did we know that a couple of decades later, Republicans would be wanting to kill the program.
Reagan slashed taxes on the upper earners, claiming this would lead to massive increases in tax revenue as the economy boomed. It didn’t (his economic adviser David Stockman later admitted “supply side economics” had always been bullshit). We wound up with record red ink at the end of Reagan’s eight years and the rich began pulling away from the rest of us in money and power (here’s some discussion as to why).
As for moderation, give me a break. Reagan’s eight years saw his administration refuse to put money into AIDS treatment while lying that there was no need. The Religious Right formed out of outrage that segregated schools such as Liberty College and Bob Jones University could no longer qualify as non-profit organizations (which had made donations to them tax-deductible). They were never moderate and spent every year between 1980 and now pushing back against women’s right and civil rights (as did Reagan).
In those seven good years of the W administration the government sent hundreds of people to Guantanamo Bay as terrorists without due process or habeas corpus, claiming they were the worst of the worst. Almost all of them were innocent. The W government authorized torture and, again, some of the victims were innocent. There is nothing moderate about torture.
Fingering FOTUS as the reason people are losing faith in capitalism is also a distortion. What about the massive savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s? The mortgage fraud cases of 2008 (and the fact only one banker went to jail) and the countless other cases that fed the Great Recession? The way AI keeps steamrolling ahead despite being so wrong (here’s a recent example of an AI encouraging self-mutilation to serve Moloch. And Grok is sometimes a literal Nazi) because the techbros can shape our economy the way they choose?
It’s also worth remembering that Frum’s enthusiasm for capitalism isn’t purely a belief that it uses goods and resources most effectively. He also believes it’s important because risk and fear keep us submissive: “Everyone is at constant risk of the loss of his job, or of the destruction of his business by a competitor, or of the crash of his investment portfolio. Risk makes people circumspect. It disciplines them and teaches them self-control. Without a safety net, people won’t try to vault across the big top. Social security, student loans, and other government programs make it far less catastrophic than it used to be for middle-class people to dissolve their families. Without welfare and food stamps, poor people would cling harder to working-class respectability than they do.”
As noted at the link, you can be as circumspect as you like and your boss may still cut your pay, axe your jobs, your company may replace you with AI that does a worse job or outsource your job to another country … but the point is not that submitting to the yoke will keep you afloat, it’s that you submit to the yoke. Frum is taking the worst criticisms of capitalism — it’ll reduce people to soulless wage slaves and drones! — and treating them as a good thing. And as I said a few years ago, this kind of thinking never applies to the rich — billionaires aren’t at constant risk because they have so much of a cushion. I suppose Frum could use people like Elon Musk as proof of what happens when you have a safety net, but I doubt he will.
If Mamdani proposes turning all the grocery chains in NYC into government outlets, that would be bad. But he’s talking about setting up stores in food deserts where capitalism hasn’t provided them. That seems like a great idea. Apparently Frum can’t think of anything wrong with it other than a debatable slippery slope leading us to five-year-plans and liquidating the kulaks.
Here’s an Orwell quote I’ve always loved: “The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” Or a pandemic taking down those who refuse to believe in medicine. Or the impact of global warming on people who don’t believe in it (and unfortunately on those who do).
What brought it to mind recently was this meme on Bluesky:
The rich are, in other worlds, insulated from bumping against solid reality.
Remember the 2008 financial crash and housing bubble collapse? Lots of financial fraud, lots of bad decisions but almost nobody went to jail or even got prosecuted. Multiple firms got bailed out because they were too big to fail. When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, businesses that had put way, way more in their accounts than federal insurance covers were still reimbursed (for fear their employees and others would lose out). One tech investor — who’d previous argued that wiping out school debt only encouraged people to take on more debt they can’t afford — suddenly discovered it was vitally important to reimburse everyone because how could they have known having more in the bank than the government insures means the rest wasn’t insured? Yes, literally, he said that.
Or consider that meme I posted recently about AI
AI is crap. It provides bad answers to searches, makes up shit, doesn’t work well in multiple situations. Normally the result of putting out a crap product would be everyone losing their money. Because the techbros absolutely can’t stand that possibility — not only would they lose money but their genius visionary tech would be known to be crap — so they’re pushing and promoting and trying to turn it into the revolutionary tech they think it should be (for example Google paying money to a science website that depends on volunteer contributions to incorporate AI). They’re doing their best to pull strings and manipulate events to stave off the consequences of their bad judgment.
In short it’s Wilhoit’s Law: the system is supposed to protect the in-group and bind the out-group. And society has evolved to back that up. I’ve read multiple accounts of how corporate boards will sometimes give their CEO a spectacular bonus even if the company’s tanking — it’s not his fault! The market was bad, the economy was bad, we need to pay him more to turn things around! If they’re harassers or bullies, the glass floor protects them if they fail. The corrupt officials in the Felon’s corrupt administration deserve to be completely discredited; there’s a good chance they’ll have successful careers in politics or as university presidents or TV talking heads, no matter what crimes they’ve committed.
Step away from the rich and the same is true of white men. For all the endless whining from the right about how society doesn’t give white men a chance, church is too girly, college is too feminized, everything about society, until very recently, was built for men. The educational system was for boys, business was a world of men, churches were mostly male dominated … yet for some men, it still isn’t enough. Pete Hegseth has no qualms identifying women and POC medal of honor winners as DEI recipients; I’m sure he’d scream if anyone suggested a white man benefited from bias.
The idea that straight WASP men are entitled to all the good stuff — power, good jobs, a woman to clean for them, provide sex and care for their kids (as Anna Kendrick observed, men can say “I’d like kids someday” because they can imagine someone else will do most of the childcare) — is an intoxicating one. Part of the anger some men and whites are feeling now is that the idea is crashing up against reality: POC, gays, transpeople, women, they’re all equal. White men being on top is a choice, the cumulative result of multiple decisions, not some inevitable force of nature. Being the king is not something they automatically deserve.
For a lot of people that’s hard to take. How we get them to emerge from “inside of that machine” is one of the challenges we have to face in fixing the country. Otherwise when they crash into reality, they’re going to take all of us with them.
