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“Peter Thiel’s Unguarded Remarks Have Surprised Associates”

August 7, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

According to a new BuzzFeed News article by Ryan Mac, Peter Thiel is now privately concerned that the Trump Administration is inept and may end in disaster. What was your first hint, Dr. IQ?

What’s most worrisome about the Silicon Valley “genius” who staunchly supported both Iraq invasion and the Trump campaign, isn’t that he didn’t notice how incompetent his candidate was, but that he truly believed this President and Bannon and Miller would successfully carry out a deeply bigoted, sociopathic agenda. That says as much about Thiel as it does about Trump.

When, oh when, will Americans stop equating those with wealth with those with wisdom?

Mac’s opening:

Donald Trump’s most prominent Silicon Valley supporter has distanced himself from the president in multiple private conversations, describing at different points this year an “incompetent” administration, and one that may well end in “disaster.”

Peter Thiel’s unguarded remarks have surprised associates, some of whom are still reeling from his full-throated endorsement of Trump at the Republican National Convention. And while the investor stands by the president in public — “I support President Trump in his ongoing fight,” he said in a statement to BuzzFeed News — his private doubts underscore the fragility of the president’s backing from even his most public allies. Thiel’s comments may sting in particular in the White House as they come amid a series of hasty and embarrassed departures from the Trump train, as conservative voices from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page to the floor of the US Senate have begun to distance themselves from the administration.

Thiel’s views remain private — but various disparaging comments were recounted to BuzzFeed News by three separate sources, and others who subsequently confirmed those accounts. These people requested anonymity for fear of damaging personal relationships and possible retribution.

While Thiel told Trump that he is off to a “terrific start” at a White House event in June, his previous statements to friends and associates did not reflect that sentiment. In half a dozen private conversations with friends that were described to BuzzFeed News dating from spring 2016 to as recently as May, Thiel, who served on the Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee, has criticized Trump and his administration and developed increasingly pessimistic feelings about the president.

The sources who talked with BuzzFeed News spent time with Thiel in private group settings before and after the election at his homes in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Hawaii, engaging in candid discussions on the PayPal cofounder’s politics and his backing of Trump. At one event with friends in January 2017, Thiel said of Trump’s presidency that “there is a 50% chance this whole thing ends in disaster,” according to two people who were in attendance. In other conversations, he questioned the president’s ability to be reelected.

Thiel, through a spokesperson, did not deny any of the quotes attributed to him by his friends and associates when approached by BuzzFeed News.•

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“She Was Obviously Onto Something”

August 6, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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I wrote the following in November 2015 as an introduction to a report about Donald Trump’s bizarre attacks on Ben Carson, who was then his closest competitor and now is his HUD Secretary:

Considering the poll numbers of Donald Trump and Ben Carson, we all owe Sarah Palin an apology, don’t you think? 

You remember Sarah Palin, right? She was a bear-meat peddler who briefly governed the petro-socialist state of Alaska. I think she once hired a hit man to kill a rival cheerleader. Okay, I’m not sure about that part. That might have been the plot of a Lifetime movie I watched once in an airport lounge. But it still brings her to mind, doesn’t it?

I can still recall those halcyon days of 2008 when a Sarah Palin took the stage at the Republican National Convention and won the hearts and minds of those Caucasian Americans who were waiting for a spiteful poseur to express their grievances in a pre-Duck Dynasty version of a Maoist “Speak Bitterness” meeting. Scrutiny did not become her, however, and Palin was eventually voted off the island due to her sheer idiocy and meanness, exiled to Elba or Arizona or somewhere. Now she’s merely a hologram of hate, activated occasionally in her camera-filled basement.

Those incredibly unfair standards of basic competency, decency and honesty are no longer with us less than a decade later, so on behalf of everyone, I’ll offer a mea culpa: Sorry, you horrible person, that you aren’t the dangerously unprepared nutbag to capture the imagination of white nationalist half-wits this time around. Take solace in knowing that this year’s models and their overt bigotry have served to redeem you from the absolute worst to almost the absolute worst, the way you once managed to make Dan Quayle seem interchangeable with Thomas Jefferson. You wore your simple mind on your sleeve but at least not on your hat.•

More on the Palin-Trump continuum from Ana Marie Cox’s smart NYT Magazine Q&A with Nicole Wallace:

Question:

What do you think it’s like working at the White House right now? 

Nicole Wallace:

There’s a pretty high level of alarm based on how easy it is to get people to talk about what’s actually happening inside the White House, and you never know the whole story. As chaotic and dysfunctional as it looks from the outside, from my experience with Sarah Palin, I know what’s known and discussed publicly is usually just the tip of the iceberg.

Question:

Do you think we still know only the tip of the iceberg with Palin? 

Nicole Wallace:

Well, what I think was unknown was the degree of her rejection of us asking her to do anything that wasn’t her own idea. We were dealing with someone who was maybe ahead of her time. Her irreverence and disdain for the establishment of her own party and her embrace of the ‘‘isms’’ — nativism, isolationism, you know — she blew the walls out on the political norms before Donald Trump did. She was obviously onto something. She had crowds five times the size of McCain’s. We think it was all about her political skills, but it was also about her message. She railed against the mainstream media, she attacked all of us, her own advisers. That her audiences were so enthusiastic about that was the early signal that the party had changed.•

“The White House Has Become A Grotesque, Excruciating Freak Show”

August 6, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Trump should fear cases being built against him by Robert Mueller and state Attorney Generals, but perhaps what should horrify him most is a case of buyer’s remorse on the part of the Kremlin.

The Putin-Trump bromance was never about any personal respect–at least not on the part of the Russian dictator. Sanctions by America and European nations stemming from the aggression against Ukraine have done serious damage to the country’s banking sector. Strong, often-illicit support for Trump by the Kremlin was supposed to harm the U.S. at the minimum and potentially elect a friendly and compromised figure–which, amazingly, is what happened. The more successful outcome was supposed to result in the removal of all sanctions.

As has happened so often with Trump in his business career, his payments have thus far not yet materialized. Even worse for his budding relationship with the murderous dictator, the President was cowed into signing a fresh sanctions bill that had overwhelming bilateral support. In addition to Dmitry Medvedev lashing out at the Trump’s “total impotence,” Putin’s propaganda outlet RT also struck back.

Here’s RT strongly supporting Trump’s Youngstown yuckfest on July 26, prior to his reluctantly signing a bill enacting new sanctions against Russia.

Today, just after the bill signing, RT published a strikingly critical opinion piece by John Lee that would have been right at home in Mother Jones. 

Whether this essay is a stern warning to Trump or a “Dear John” letter, time will tell, but any revenge on Trump by the Kremlin will be executed in such a way as to most injure America, not just its President.

Two excerpts from Lee’s op-ed:

When Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States we clung to fragile hope. We hoped he could morph from the wild, aggressive and boorish candidate into a moderately good president.

After he vanquished Hillary Clinton, I was one of those who hoped that he might bring a fresh approach to politics in a stagnant, divided and risk-averse Washington. He couldn’t really be that bad, could he?

Millions of American voters and I were wrong. He really is that bad.

It seems an eon ago if we cast our thoughts back to the turn of the year, but there was actually some optimism about the Trump presidency.

When Bill Clinton’s Democratic presidency was engulfed in controversy almost 20 years ago, the Republicans unsuccessfully tried to have him impeached. The savage battles that raged over Clinton – a president who embarrassed the nation – poisoned Washington. DC became rabidly bipartisan and never recovered its moderation. Democrats opposed Republicans and vice versa for the sake of it. And nothing could be done, business ground to a halt. President Barack Obama, though in comparison to Trump a credit to his country, never fulfilled his promise. The Republicans blocked his projects. He failed in his promise to fix broken politics.

Trump capitalized on this paralysis. In the post-crash recovery, the forgotten white working man turned to Trump and voted for him, to expel the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton and her like from Washington. Many minority groups backed Trump too.

Last year Republicans secured majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Trump had everything going for him.

Perhaps he could drain the Washington swamp.

Perhaps he could bring a businessman’s efficiency to getting Washington working again. Most of all he promised to drain the swamp. Perhaps Trump, outsider with no political experience, could finally fix American politics in a way that Obama couldn’t.

This week, barely eight months after Trump’s inauguration, the poll ratings of the reality TV star turned president hit rock bottom. Trump isn’t great on detail, but the former TV personality will understand ratings.

Now 61 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing. The national poll was conducted by the highly regarded Quinnipiac University Polling Institute and is fascinating when you drill down into the numbers. It is an appalling indictment of the US Commander in Chief that 62 percent believe Trump is not honest.

And, most damagingly, 50 percent of white voters with no college degree disapprove of the president. Since seven percent didn’t express an opinion in this section just 43 percent approve of him.

Not only is America as a whole resoundingly turning on Trump, his key support base the blue collar worker of the Rust Belt is turning on him too.

America, that brash nation, is embarrassed. A majority of respondents said they were embarrassed by their president.

Now in the latest round of leaks, it appears he can’t even observe decorum in what are supposed to be routine phone calls with world leaders.

The broken politics of Washington’s near past is now being shattered under Trump.

· · ·

One is tempted to call Sean Spicer Trump’s “long serving” Communications Director such is the impact he has made. Spicer only lasted 183 days. I met him at the White House during the St Patrick’s Day Irish American event, and even then he looked haunted. He got off to a rocky start when he tried to defend Trump’s strange claims about the crowd at his inauguration and didn’t recover. He had become a feature of the Saturday Night Live comedy TV program in that short time. Quite something for a press officer.

Spicer opposed the appointment of Anthony ‘the Mooch’ Scaramucci as another Communications Director.

Scaracmucci, a New York financier who is friends with Trump, opposed Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

Priebus was fired. Former Homeland Security chief John Kelly was brought in to replace Preibus. He demanded Scaramucci be got rid of so the Mooch was fired after ten days.

In those ten days, Scaramucci had brought further shame and dishonor to the White House with an expletive filled interview with a journalist.

As I watch this ludicrous, juvenile farce play out it occurred to me that all these people have become household names.

I asked myself a question. Had any of Barack Obama’s communications directors made any impact on US national consciousness or the global media landscape? Do you recall Obama’s communications directors Ellen Moran, Anita Dunn, Dan Pfeiffer, Jennifer Palmieri or Jen Psaki with any great alacrity? But the world knows Spicer and the Mooch.

Similarly Preibus and John Kelly are now well known. Obama’s three chiefs of staff – Bill Daley, Jack Lew and Denis McDonough were, well, hardly known outside political circles.

It is because the White House has become a grotesque, excruciating freak show that these people and their infighting and tit for tat leaking are receiving any notice. The circus and its clowns are important for two reasons. Firstly, because they represent the president, leak on his behalf and defend his behavior and twitter rants. And secondly, they represent the type of management style he favors.•

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“There May Be Another Reason That Top Republicans Have Not Been More Vocal In Their Condemnation”

August 4, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

The received wisdom so far has been that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and the GOP rank-and-file have refused to turn on Donald Trump, even keeping a wrap as best they could on Russian interference during the election, because they want the incompetent, kleptocratic sociopath to deliver to them steep tax cuts on corporations and the highest earners.

That theory isn’t completely convincing, however. Why couldn’t a President Pence accomplish the same thing? As I suggested two months ago, it’s possible if thus far unproven, that the Kremlin tentacles reached further than just Trump’s inner circle, with money filling the coffers of other Republicans. Perhaps Ryan and McConnell are trying to prevent the entire party from collapse? It wouldn’t surprise me if Trump’s inevitable fall takes down numerous Republicans and maybe some Democrats, too.

In fact, some of this unsavory business doesn’t require a Special Prosecutor to untangle. From Ruth May’s op-ed at the Dallas Morning News:

Party loyalty is often cited as the reason that GOP leaders have not been more outspoken in their criticism of President Donald Trump and his refusal to condemn Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Yet there may be another reason that top Republicans have not been more vocal in their condemnation. Perhaps it’s because they have their own links to the Russian oligarchy that they would prefer go unnoticed.

Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.

During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonid “Len” Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik’s donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik’s holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.

Marco Rubio’s Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik’s two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.

In January, Quartz reported that Blavatnik donated another $1 million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee. Ironically, the shared address of Blavatnik’s companies is directly across the street from Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York.

Len Blavatnik, considered to be one of the richest men in Great Britain, holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and the U.K. He is known for his business savvy and generous philanthropy, but not without controversy.•

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“The Trump Administration Has Started Employing Chekist-Style Disinformation To Protect Itself”

August 3, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

You could ask why the Murdoch family would doing something as crazy as allowing Fox News to become the de facto state-sponsored propaganda outlet for Trump, akin to what RT is for Putin, but this is the same clan that kept Roger Ailes in control of the cable channel as he continually attempted to use its green rooms as his own personal Plato’s Retreat. Much like the President himself, the Murdochs have been operating so dishonestly for so long, the pointer on their moral compass may be permanently broken.

In a legal sense, however, these recent machinations are a step beyond other predations they’ve enabled and lies they’ve aired in the past. If Robert Mueller’s investigation proves that not only did Sean Hannity and others at Fox collaborate with the White House on the ugly Seth Rich fan fiction but the company also coordinated stories with Russian agents to benefit Trump and the Kremlin, there will be hell to pay and no out-of-court settlements will do.

One way or another, the Trump gambit will end ruinously for Robert, James and Lachlan, unless the orange supremacist manages to end U.S. democracy and become the nation’s first authoritarian ruler. Seriously, that’s the best-case scenario for them! 

· · ·

From a John R. Schindler Observer column:

The Trump administration has started employing Chekist-style disinformation to protect itself from the increasingly serious KremlinGate investigation. An unpleasantly illustrative case that has just come to light is that of Seth Rich, a 27-year-old Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered in Washington, D.C. in July 2016. His killing remains unsolved; there has never been any reason to think it was anything more than a tragic, random late-night shooting of the kind that happens in our nation’s capital more often than it should.

Nevertheless, for nearly a year, pro-Trump mouthpieces have parroted a fact-free conspiracy theory that Rich—not Russia’s intelligence services—was the “real” source of the purloined DNC emails that were disseminated in the summer of 2016 by Wikileaks, to Hillary Clinton’s detriment. Julian Assange has repeatedly hinted that Rich was his source and that the young man was assassinated by a vengeful Clintonian hit-team, without offering any evidence.

Which he can’t, because there isn’t any. This is just another absurd lie broadcast by a well-known Kremlin front, albeit a particularly nasty one that has tortured the grieving young man’s family. The story doesn’t end there, however. Fox News, too, gleefully parroted Assange’s lie. Here a preeminent role was played by Sean Hannity, a Fox News star plus a friend of Assange’s, who in mid-May broadcast fact-free assertions about Seth Rich and his alleged role in leaking DNC emails.

Rich’s enraged family denounced Hannity and threatened legal action, leading Fox News to take the rare step of retracting Hannity’s fabricated “bombshell” story. Yet the damage was done, and this became yet another case of Kremlin-backed disinformation transforming into a pro-Trump trope on the right-wing, despite there being zero evidence for its veracity. It should be noted that Moscow played a direct role in creating and spreading this noxious Rich mythology. Sputnik, the Kremlin propaganda website, actually cashiered one of its American reporters when he refused to go along with an obvious lie about the murdered young man.

It now turns out that Fox News, too, was complicit in spreading lies about Seth Rich to aid the White House. As reported by NPR, a lawsuit filed by Rod Wheeler, a former cop and sometime Fox News contributor, against the right-wing media giant, alleges that the network consciously spread lies about Seth Rich to help the president deflect attention from the Russia scandal—and that the White House was directly involved in this conspiracy to deceive the public.•

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“Banning Is A Bad Option”

August 3, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

It makes sense that new tools that have potentially life-extending properties–CRISPR, for instance–will become affordable enough in rapidly so that their gifts can reach the masses. That should hold true for whatever next-level treatments that follow. In a time of radical abundance, there will be enough for all, we’re promised. 

Of course, we already live in a time of relative radical abundance, with adequate wealth to feed, clothe, house, inoculate and educate every last person. Distribution, however, often depends on geography, race, gender, politics, etc. Even when the stars align, a regression into myths and conspiracies can do damage (e.g., unfounded fears about immunizations). What I’m saying is humans are awfully good at mucking up something great, and that may be a permanent part of who we are.

· · ·

In an Aeon essay, ethicist Christopher Wareham wonders how we can prevent a new type of wealth inequality centered on life expectancy without banning breathtaking technologies, which would be a foolhardy step. An excerpt:

Even if life-extending drugs were relatively cheap, it is reasonable to assume that the poor, with less disposable income, are likely to spend money on more immediate and pressing needs. An intervention whose benefits, though substantial, are long-term and preventive is more likely to be marketable to wealthier groups who already have longer, healthier lifespans. The ‘healthspan rich’ would get richer, and the ‘healthspan poor’ would remain poor. This could entrench a two-tier society in which poorer groups suffer not only from poverty, but also from comparatively shorter youth and greater susceptibility to age-related disease.

The bioethicist John Harris at the University of Manchester claims that this unjust outcome is ‘the major ethical problem with life-extending technologies’.

Some bioethicists argue that this justifies a ban on life-prolonging technologies, or at the very least deprioritising research and treatments aimed at substantially extending human healthspans. But this move is too harsh. Besides the practical problems with policing bans and preventing the emergence of unregulated products, banning has some obvious ethical drawbacks.

First, banning longevity medications would be an instance of ethically questionable ‘levelling down’. While other bans, such as the prohibition of drugs, arguably ‘level up’ by reducing the harms of banned substances, a ban on extending healthy lifespans explicitly aims at preventing some people from getting too well-off. As Harris points out, this is like refusing to cure one person’s cancer because it would be unfair on those who are incurable.

A second ethical problem with banning is that life-extending interventions could be used as treatments for a range of health effects. Humans and other primates that show signs of slowed ageing tend to have lower incidences of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. This complicates a ban even further: denying the opportunity to receive treatments because they might result in too much healthspan increase appears deeply objectionable.

Banning is a bad option, but if avoiding radically unequal healthspans is a priority, what type of policies would best achieve it? Is there a way to increase welfare without creating drastic imbalances in healthspan?•

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“It Is A Cultural Problem, An Identity Problem, And—Critically—A Gender Problem”

August 2, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Laurie Penny, who’s written some of my favorite articles this year, has published a piece at Wired in which she wonders about automation devastating traditionally male employment. The three key questions about robotic hands taking control of our work remain the same: 1) How many positions will be automated out of existence, 2) Will said transition, if it occurs, happen quickly or gradually?, and 3) Will many automation-proof positions be created to offset the losses? Numerous studies, including one that author quotes, claim to know how many jobs will disappear over the next several decades, though it seems fairly impossible to predict with any accuracy.

I do feel optimistic about men’s capacity to change from labor to nurture because of a trend I’ve noticed: Many retired police officers and firefighters have kept busy by beginning second careers in nursing and home healthcare. I don’t know how widespread this phenomenon is, but I’ve seen it repeatedly in the last decade while visiting relatives in hospitals and senior centers. Some of this work won’t pay the bills for those who go directly into the sector, but if technology forces us to reinvent masculinity, it would be a very welcome and long overdue turn of events.

An excerpt:

ROBOTS ARE COMING for our jobs—but not all of our jobs. They’re coming, in ever increasing numbers, for a certain kind of work. For farm and factory labor. For construction. For haulage. In other words, blue-collar jobs traditionally done by men.

This is why automation is so much more than an economic problem. It is a cultural problem, an identity problem, and—critically—a gender problem. Millions of men around the world are staring into the lacquered teeth of obsolescence, terrified of losing not only their security but also their source of meaning and dignity in a world that tells them that if they’re not rich, they’d better be doing something quintessentially manly for money. Otherwise they’re about as much use as a wooden coach-and-four on the freeway.

There’s hope for mankind, but it’ll be a hard sell. The way we respond to automation will depend very much on what we decide it means to be a man, or a woman, in the awkward adolescence of the 21st century.

Some political rhetoric blames outsourcing and immigration for the decline in “men’s work,” but automation is a greater threat to these kinds of jobs—and technological progress cannot be stopped at any border. A recent Oxford study predicted that 70 percent of US construction jobs will disappear in the coming decades; 97 percent of those jobs are held by men, and so are 95 percent of the 3.5 million transport and trucking jobs that robots are presently eyeing. That’s scary, and it’s one reason so many men are expressing their anger and anxiety at home, in the streets, and at the polls. 

While all of this is going on, though, there’s a counter­phenomenon playing out. As society panics about bricklaying worker droids and self-driving 18-wheelers, jobs traditionally performed by women—in the so-called pink-collar industries, as well as unpaid labor—are still relatively safe, and some are even on the rise. These include childcare. And service. And nursing, which the US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts will need a million­-plus more workers in the next decade.•

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“It’s Amazing To Me What People Now Consider Deprived”

August 1, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

“A lot of things around us happen almost by magic now,” Death of Expertise author Tom Schindler tells Chauncey DeVega in the initial exchange of a really interesting Salon Q&A, arguing that Americans sometimes cry poverty when they’re really relatively rich. I agree to a point, though the problem may be that the wonder happens around us rather than to us. Everyone has a supercomputer or two in their pockets now, but Main Street is still divorced from the wealth-building of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Many of my friends and relatives went into debt and foreclosure after the financial meltdown in 2008, and they mostly haven’t been able to completely recover. Even the growing U.S. job sectors, like healthcare, know real limitations. From “The Future of Work Is the Low-Wage Health Care Job,” a Vox piece by Soo Oh:

In interviews, home care aides told Vox about the drawbacks of a booming field: aching backs, unstable schedules, second jobs, salaries low enough to qualify for Medicaid, and emotional burnout. Health care jobs might be a beacon of the new economy. But that doesn’t mean they’re good news for the workers who do them.•

The same goes for the new manufacturing jobs, which provide a far-less-stable situation than similar positions from decades past. The fear of falling and wealth inequality are very real.

Nichols does make a good point, however. Social media and Reality TV have created such an unrealistic aura of luxury and lavishness that you couldn’t create a greater unhappiness-making machine if you tried. Even the people supposedly experiencing these charmed lives are often accursed. Many Real Housewives and their ilk actually go into hock to present a lifestyle well beyond their means. Something is being sold, but almost no one can afford it.

An excerpt:

Question:

How did the American people arrive at this moment where an ignoramus such as Donald Trump has become president?

Tom Nichols:

Narcissism. Actually, for all of our talk about how people are “suffering” and these are “tough” economic times, and the so-called economic anxiety of the white working class — which, again, as an old-school conservative I’ll be the first to admit is a nice way of saying “racism” — I think we actually are a very affluent society where a lot of things around us happen almost by magic now.

People look around and they say, “Well, sure, flying an airplane — how hard can that be? How hard can negotiating a nuclear arms treaty be? The world works. We’re at peace. Terrorism is awful, but the U.S. is highly competent.” For most people 9/11 is a distant memory. I think that they just look around and they see that things pretty much work even though their lives don’t seem to. The second thing I would add is how the internet helps to create a sense of relative deprivation.

I didn’t coin this, and I wish I had. One of my friends calls it the “HGTV Effect.” Where you’re living in Ohio in maybe a one-floor or two-bedroom, three-bedroom, one-bath, 1950s kind of house, and you’re watching your 40-inch television and you’re saying, “How come I don’t have granite counter tops? Those mooks do. These are just working people on some TV show, and they’ve got a brand new granite and steel kitchen. I’m deprived, I’m poor.” It’s amazing to me what people now consider deprived.

Donald Trump surfed that. He exploited that feeling. He said, “There are people out there that are screwing you out of having the golden toilets that I have. And I’m going to get even with those people, because I know what they’re up to, and I’m going to screw them over and get yours for you.” People are dumb enough to believe it because they don’t understand how the economy works, they don’t understand how society works, they don’t understand the basics about the relationship between education and jobs, none of it. It’s basically they look up from the television, or their phone, and they say “Where’s my money?” And that’s how we got here.•

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Old Print Article: Vidkun Quisling Faces The Firing Squad (1945)

August 1, 2017 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Politics, Videos | Permalink

When I referred to Donald Trump as a “QVC quisling” the other day, I was making reference to a famous historical traitor, one so bad he joined Benedict Arnold in having his name become the most disgraceful sort of noun. I’m speaking, of course, of Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian fascist who served, beginning in 1940, as Hitler’s pliant Prime Minister in Oslo. During his horrible reign, Quisling spoke in favor of the Final Solution, supported the German war effort in any way he could and tried to force Norway’s families to enroll their children in a Hitler Youth type of organization. These were just a few of the crimes against his country and humanity by the man who was said by some to have had a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 

By the beginning of 1945, however, the Nazis were shit out of luck and could no longer supply Quisling with troops or support, and neither his government nor the turncoat himself would survive the year. A report about the “mini-Hitler” receiving his just deserts in an article in the October 24, 1945 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

“For willfully betraying his country…”

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“The Military Must ‘Unswervingly’ Back The Ruling Communist Party”

July 31, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

It’s not that China doesn’t hold military parades in any given calendar year, but the one that was led over the weekend by the fatigue-clad, pot-bellied President Xi Jinping rattled swords to an eye-popping degree. 

It makes sense the the financial capital and soft power China has amassed over the last few decades would eventually find its way into a more ambitious, state-of-the-art military. That was going to happen, Trump or not. But the vacuum created by the absence of a sane White House and the nativist language of our leadership seems to be causing a greater aggression in verbiage–for now, it’s just talk–in Asia and Europe.

From a Reuters report by Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard:

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping told the military on Sunday to transform itself into an elite force, as he oversaw a parade with flybys of advanced jets and a mass rally of troops to mark 90 years since the founding of the People’s Liberation Army.

China’s armed forces, the world’s largest, are in the midst of an ambitious modernization program, which includes investment in technology and new equipment such as stealth fighters and aircraft carriers, as well as cuts to troop numbers.

Xi presided over the large-scale military parade at the remote Zhurihe training base in China’s northern Inner Mongolia region, where he inspected troops from the back of a jeep, an event carried live on state television.

Traveling down a long strip lined with tanks, missile launchers and other military vehicles, Xi, wearing military fatigues and a field cap, greeted thousands of troops.

Xi, who oversees the PLA in his role as head of the powerful Central Military Commission, repeatedly shouted, “Hello comrades!” and “Comrades, you are working hard!” into four microphones fixed atop his motorcade as martial music blared in the background.

The troops bellowed back: “Serve the people!”, “Follow the Party!”, “Fight to win!” and “Forge exemplary conduct!”.

Tanks, vehicle-mounted nuclear-capable missiles and other equipment rolled by, as military aircraft flew above, including H-6K bombers, which have been patrolling near Taiwan and Japan recently, the J-15 carrier-based fighters and new generation J-20 stealth fighter.

“Today, we are closer to the goal of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation than any other time in history, and we need to build a strong people’s military more than any other time in history,” Xi told the assembled troops in a short speech that did not yield any new policy announcements.

Xi said that the military must “unswervingly” back the ruling Communist Party.

“Always listen to and follow the party’s orders, and march to wherever the party points,” he said.

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“I Believe The Probability Of Him Finishing At Least Four Years Is Very High”

July 28, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Had a bizarre exchange on Twitter with writer Elizabeth Bruenig last night after the fellatio-friendly interview that the perfectly sane and sober White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci gave to Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker in which he went on the record to profanely deride and threaten his colleagues–superiors, even–in the cabinet. I mean, Steve Bannon may be a white nationalist with a particularly pliable neck, but usually these things are kept in-house.

Bruenig’s tweet:

When you assert that a disgraceful person who happens to be Italian-American is the most authentically “Italian-American dude” on the planet, you’ve revealed you embody some truly ugly stereotypes. I don’t think someone is a hardcore bigot just because they make a dumb comment–we’re all flawed–but when I pointed out the wrongness of her statement, Bruenig told me that she was “not going to play my game” and blocked me, as if I was trolling her when she was actually the one trolling an entire ethnicity. Too bad she didn’t pause for a moment and think about what she’d written. It may have helped her become a better and fuller person. As someone who’s heard way too many times from supposedly educated people that they’re surprised I read a lot of books because I’m Italian-American, it would have been greatly appreciated.

· · ·

In the more widely important matters of the day, the clown show in the White House got worse, with much of the nation now feeling like the small children of a mentally ill parent who controls the fortunes of the family though he most definitely should not. The only thing that threatens to turn the GOP on Trump is if he would dare fire the Confederate statue known as Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. That’s the gutter where the party now rests.

I’ve gone on record as saying that Trump and his creepy cabal will gone down in flames, even if democracy may already be a pile of ashes when that occurs. Mike Bloomberg, however, believes the orange supremacist’s chances of lasting eight years in the Oval Office are actually quite good. At least, that’s what he’s saying for public consumption. Perhaps, but Trump has a mausoleum worth of skeletons in his closet.

From a Spiegel interview conducted by Juliane von Mittelstaedt:

Spiegel: 

One main driver for people to vote for Trump was their resentment of the establishment, the elites. Where is that coming from in your opinion?

Michael Bloomberg: 

A lot of the Trump voters thought: “The current stuff has not helped me. I want a change.” Trump got elected partly because he had a message: “Vote for America.” “Make America Great.” “America” is a good word. “Great” is a good word. Hillary never came up with a message other than “Vote for me because I’m a woman.” I make no secret of the fact that I was not a big Hillary Clinton supporter, but I thought in the two-way race between her and Donald Trump, that she should have been the president. But Trump promised a lot of things. And now he’s six months in and hasn’t passed a piece of legislation yet. Now, I personally have said we should help him. I didn’t vote for him. I didn’t think he was the right person. But once we have an election and he gets elected, then we have a responsibility as citizens to help him.

Spiegel: 

To help him? I thought you would have a very different opinion on basically everything?

Michael Bloomberg: 

Absolutely, I still don’t agree with him on most things. I disagree violently with a lot of things, for example regarding the elimination of Obamacare or cutting taxes. We need to have more taxes, not less, and we need the taxes we have, certainly, to provide services — for defense and education and health care. We should not cut money here in order to cut taxes.

Spiegel: 

So why wouldn’t you be happy if he fails with his agenda?

Michael Bloomberg: 

Because in the end, the message will be: Oh, Trump tried to do what he promised. It was the “liberals” who wouldn’t let him. Forget about the fact that it’s in the Republican Party that he can’t get through the votes. And for sure I’d like to change his views — for sure I hate a lot of things he does. But I live here. My kids, my grandkids live here. I don’t want him to fail. That’s sick and not good for my kids. I want Trump to be successful. I don’t think he will be, and when he does things that I believe are harmful, I will certainly try hard to stop that. But I don’t think that we should do what (the Republican Senator) Mitch McConnell said. When Obama was elected, he said: “We’re going to make him a one-term president.”

Spiegel: 

Do you think Trump is going to be elected for another term?

Michael Bloomberg:

First of all, I believe the probability of him finishing at least four years is very high. Impeachment is a political, not a legal process. And even in Nixon’s case, most of the Republicans didn’t vote to impeach him. It was the Democrats who were in power and impeached Nixon. He could have a heart attack, or he could do something that the public really gets up in arms about. If not, he’s likely to finish four years. And then I would say he has a 55 percent chance of getting re-elected. Why? Because incumbents always have an advantage. Plus, in 2020, the economy couldn’t be that bad, and there’s got to be 14 Democrats that have already said they’re going to run for office. So, you can see his opponents being very fractured.•

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“The Battlefield Would Be ‘Everywhere'”

July 27, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Terrorism developed as a way for weak factions to disrupt war, to hack what had been a very centralized activity since the formation of discrete states. The thing is, such ad hoc chicanery hardly ever works, at least ultimately. Eventually the element of surprise is identified, neutralized.

Our new tech tools, however, have begun to level the playing field. Sure, ISIS still can’t hack its way to heaven in 2017, but a fully formed terror state like Russia managed for a very reasonable sum to successfully wage “memetic warfare” against America, a much wealthier and militarily superior nation, albeit, with what would appear to be aid and comfort from a cabal of traitors. As the world grows ever more computerized, perhaps eventually we’ll all have an army to do our bidding and every target, real and virtual, will be made vulnerable.

From John Thornhill of the Financial Times:

Most defense spending in NATO countries still goes on crazily expensive metal boxes that you can drive, steer, or fly. But, as in so many other areas of our digital world, military capability is rapidly shifting from the visible to the invisible, from hardware to software, from atoms to bits. And that shift is drastically changing the equation when it comes to the costs, possibilities and vulnerabilities of deploying force. Compare the expense of a B-2 bomber with the negligible costs of a terrorist hijacker or a state-sponsored hacker, capable of causing periodic havoc to another country’s banks or transport infrastructure — or even democratic elections.

The US has partly recognized this changing reality and in 2014 outlined a third offset strategy, declaring that it must retain supremacy in next-generation technologies, such as robotics and artificial intelligence. The only other country that might rival the US in these fields is China, which has been pouring money into such technologies too.

But the third offset strategy only counters part of the threat in the age of asymmetrical conflict. In the virtual world, there are few rules of the game, little way of assessing your opponent’s intentions and capabilities, and no real clues about whether you are winning or losing. Related article Donald Trump is the odd man out with Putin and Xi China and Russia co-operate in areas posing a challenge to western interests Such murkiness is perfect for those keen to subvert the west’s military strength.

China and Russia appear to understand this new world disorder far better than others — and are adept at turning the west’s own vulnerabilities against it. Chinese strategists were among the first to map out this new terrain. In 1999 two officers in the People’s Liberation Army wrote Unrestricted Warfare in which they argued that the three indispensable “hardware elements of any war” — namely soldiers, weapons and a battlefield — had changed beyond recognition. Soldiers included hackers, financiers and terrorists. Their weapons could range from civilian aeroplanes to net browsers to computer viruses, while the battlefield would be “everywhere.”

Russian strategic thinkers have also widened their conception of force.•

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“All Those Freshly Awake Devices Will Present An Entirely New Way To Interact With The World Around You”

July 26, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

In the future, you will never be alone again. Never.

Prelude to the Internet of Things, when nearly every last object will be a computer and society a machine with no OFF switch, is today’s proliferation of sensors and cameras, making their way into private homes as well as public spaces. You may barely notice them, which is the idea.

I doubt, though, most would care even if aware that the Roomba is doing a constant sweep for information and the TV may also be watching them. So many have willingly surrendered the most intimate details in exchange for a “friend” or a “like.” We essentially gleefully gave away what was always feared would be taken from us. We’ve acquiesced to a “soft” totalitarianism. 

What the Internet Era of Silicon Valley has perhaps done best of all is locating and massaging the psychological weak spots of their customers who crave not only convenience and “free” services but also attention. That they’ve divined unobtrusive ways to simultaneously follow and search us is a big part of the bargain. It’s out of sight, out of mind.

Three excerpts follow.

____________________________

From Maggie Astor at the New York Times:

Your Roomba may be vacuuming up more than you think.

High-end models of Roomba, iRobot’s robotic vacuum, collect data as they clean, identifying the locations of your walls and furniture. This helps them avoid crashing into your couch, but it also creates a map of your home that iRobot is considering selling to Amazon, Apple or Google.

Colin Angle, chief executive of iRobot, told Reuters that a deal could come in the next two years, though iRobot said in a statement on Tuesday: “We have not formed any plans to sell data.”

In the hands of a company like Amazon, Apple or Google, that data could fuel new “smart” home products.

“When we think about ‘what is supposed to happen’ when I enter a room, everything depends on the room at a foundational level knowing what is in it,” an iRobot spokesman said in a written response to questions. “In order to ‘do the right thing’ when you say ‘turn on the lights,’ the room must know what lights it has to turn on. Same thing for music, TV, heat, blinds, the stove, coffee machines, fans, gaming consoles, smart picture frames or robot pets.”

But the data, if sold, could also be a windfall for marketers, and the implications are easy to imagine. No armchair in your living room? You might see ads for armchairs next time you open Facebook. Did your Roomba detect signs of a baby? Advertisers might target you accordingly. …

Albert Gidari, director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, said that if iRobot did sell the data, it would raise a variety of legal questions.

What happens if a Roomba user consents to the data collection and later sells his or her home — especially furnished — and now the buyers of the data have a map of a home that belongs to someone who didn’t consent, Mr. Gidari asked. How long is the data kept? If the house burns down, can the insurance company obtain the data and use it to identify possible causes? Can the police use it after a robbery?•

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From Devin Coldewey at Techcrunch:

As moviemaking becomes as much a science as an art, the moviemakers need to ever-better ways to gauge audience reactions. Did they enjoy it? How much… exactly? At minute 42? A system from Caltech and Disney Research uses a facial expression tracking neural network to learn and predict how members of the audience react, perhaps setting the stage for a new generation of Nielsen ratings.

The research project, just presented at IEEE’s Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Hawaii, demonstrates a new method by which facial expressions in a theater can be reliably and relatively simply tracked in real time.

It uses what’s called a factorized variational autoencoder — the math of it I am not even going to try to explain, but it’s better than existing methods at capturing the essence of complex things like faces in motion. …

Of course, this is just one application of a technology like this — it could be applied in other situations like monitoring crowds, or elsewhere interpreting complex visual data in real time.•

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The opening of David Pierce’s Wired piece “Inside Andy Rubin’s Quest To Create an OS For Everything“:

Here’s some free advice: Don’t try to break into Andy Rubin’s house. As soon as your car turns into the driveway at his sprawling pad in the Silicon Valley hills, a camera will snap a photo of your vehicle, run it through computer-vision software to extract the plate number, and file it into a database. Rubin’s system can be set to text him every time a certain car shows up or to let specific vehicles through the gate. Thirty-odd other cameras survey almost every corner of the property, and Rubin can pull them up in a web browser, watching the real-time grid like Lucius Fox surveying Gotham from the Batcave. If by some miracle you were to make it all the way to the front door, you’d never get past the retinal scanner.

Rubin doesn’t employ human security guards. He doesn’t think he needs them. The 54-year-old tech visionary (who, among other things, coinvented Android) is pretty sure he has the world’s smartest house. The homebrew security net is only the beginning: There’s also a heating and ventilating system that takes excess heat from various rooms and automatically routes it into cooler areas. He has a wireless music system, a Crestron custom-­install home automation system, and an automatic cleaner for his pool.

Getting the whole place up and running took Rubin a decade. And don’t even ask him what it cost. There’s an entire room full of things he bought, tried, and shelved, but the part that really drove him crazy was that it didn’t seem like automating his home ought to be this hard. Take the license-plate camera, for instance: Computer-vision software that can read a tag is readily available. Outdoor cameras are cheap and easy to find, as are infrared illuminators that let those cameras see in the dark. Self-opening gates are everywhere. All the pieces were available, but “they were all by different companies,” Rubin says. “And there was no UI. It’s not turnkey.”

At some point during his renovations, Rubin realized he was experiencing more than just rich-guy gadget problems. He was too far ahead of the curve. If anything, the problem is about to get much worse: The price and size of a Wi-Fi radio and microprocessor are both falling toward zero; wireless bandwidth is more plentiful and reliable; batteries last longer; sensors are more accurate; software is more reliable and more easily updated. As many as 200 billion new internet-connected devices are predicted to be online in just the next few years. Phones and tablets, certainly. But also light bulbs and doorknobs, shoes and sofa cushions, washing machines and showerheads.
 
In many cases, the effects of these connected devices will be invisible: better temperature optimization in warehouses or super-­efficient routes for UPS drivers. But at the same time, all those freshly awake devices will present an entirely new way to interact with the world around you.•

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“They Slice Them And Dice Them With A Knife”

July 26, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Pretty much all credible studies show the crime rate among illegal immigrants in the United States to be lower than that of natural-born citizens, but people tend to fear what they don’t know most, so a QVC quisling like Donald Trump was able to successfully peddle his gutter-level demagoguery as if it were just another crate of mediocre steaks.

The leader of our country threw this same red meat to his base once again in a Youngstown rally a few hours ago, just a day after he managed to turn the Boy Scout Jamboree into something akin to an auto-da-fé. But if you’re a guy who spent the last two years projecting every last creepy desire of your own onto others, from accusing your opponent of rigging the election to calling undocumented immigrants sexual predators to decrying the “swamp” before causing it to overflow, the most unsettling thing you could possibly do would be to specifically detail bizarre child torture and murder scenarios that you believe are overrunning the country. An excerpt:

Donald Trump:

One by one, we are finding the illegal gang members, drug dealers, thieves, robbers, criminals, and killers. And we are sending them the hell back home where they came from. And once they are gone, we will never let them back in, believe me. 

The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people — these beautiful, beautiful, innocent young people — will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. And you’ve seen the stories about some of these animals. They don’t want to use guns, because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough. So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others, and they slice them and dice them with a knife, because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long. Well, they’re not being protected any longer, folks.•

I will never sleep again. 

Any working-class Republican hoping for more from Trump than talk of torches and pitchforks should be prepared to be disappointed. That’s all he has. Should he actually impact healthcare or tax reform in a meaningful way, it will be in a manner devastating to his most devout supporters–those who can least afford it. I’ve joked that I would play the world’s smallest violin for these folks if the GOP hadn’t just slashed the school music program, but this may be the first time in the history of American politics that a major political party has actively tried to kill off its base.

From Dake Kang’s Associated Press piece about struggling Youngstowners:

Judy Martin, 72, of McDonald, Ohio, “tosses and turns” in bed at night, wracked with leg pain and worried about her medical bills. 

Martin, a factory worker for 51 years, said she burned through her $20,000 in life savings on medical expenses a year after her retirement. She now relies on a monthly $1,500 social security check and Medicare subsidies, but still has to pay roughly $400 a month for medication and supplemental insurance.

“It feels like we’re getting punished as we’re getting older,” Martin said. “I earned my time out there. Here we are, stuck.”

Martin, who voted for Trump, “has faith” that Trump will make things more affordable for her, and is excited to hear what Trump has to say about health care when he comes to Youngstown, a 15 minute drive from her home. Though she won’t be there in person, she plans to watch his speech online and hear about it from her son who plans to attend.

“I believe that Trump can do it, and that he will take care of the little people,” Martin said.•

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“It Is A World In Which An Omnipresent, All-Knowing Digital Mechanism Knows More About You Than You Do”

July 25, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

The Arab Spring demonstrated how the new technological tools could help bring down tyranny, but the dictators were also early adopters. If the anarchy could be redirected, it could be a virtual chaos agent–an army of them, in fact–or even a tireless oppressor. It’s a new way to wage war and quell revolution. China, becoming the new center of the world as America abdicates its authority, is leading the way in cyber-oppression, but the playing field knows many states.

Two excerpts follow.

From Bloomberg Technology:

Governments around the world are enlisting “cyber troops” who manipulate Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets to steer public opinion, spread misinformation and undermine critics, according to a new report from the University of Oxford.

Adding to growing evidence of government-sponsored efforts to use online tools to influence politics, researchers found 29 countries using social media to shape opinion domestically or with foreign audiences. The tactics are deployed by authoritarian regimes, but also democratically-elected governments, the authors said. 

“Social media makes propaganda campaigns much stronger and potentially more effective than in the past,” said Samantha Bradshaw, the report’s lead author and a researcher at Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Research Project. “I don’t think people realize how much governments are using these tools to reach them. It’s a lot more hidden.”

Online behavior of the government-backed groups varies widely, from commenting on Facebook and Twitter posts, to targeting people individually. Journalists are harassed by government groups in Mexico and Russia, while cyber troops in Saudi Arabia flood negative Twitter posts about the regime with unrelated content and hashtags to make it harder for people to find the offending post. In the Czech Republic, the government is more likely to post a fact-check response to something they see as inaccurate, said the report.

Governments also use fake accounts to mask where the material is coming from. In Serbia, fake accounts are used to promote the government’s agenda, and bloggers in Vietnam spread favorable information. Meanwhile, government actors in Argentina, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, Turkey, Venezuela and elsewhere use automation software — known as “bots” — to spread social media posts in ways that mimics human users.

“Cyber troops are a pervasive and global phenomenon,” said the report published by the group that is studying how digital tools are being used to manipulate public opinion.•

The opening of “Creating the Honest Man,” Kai Strittmatter’s Süddeutsche Zeitung article:

It is actually very simple, the professor in Beijing says. “There are two kinds of people in the world: good people and bad people. Now imagine a world in which the good ones are rewarded and the bad ones punished”. A world in which those who respect their parents, avoid jaywalking, and pay all their bills on time are rewarded for good behavior. A world where such people enjoy special privileges, where they are allowed to buy “soft sleeper” tickets on a train or get easy access to bank loans. In contrast, the poorly behaved – the ones who cheat on university admissions tests, download films illegally, or have more children than the state allows – are denied this extra comfort. It is a world in which an omnipresent, all-knowing digital mechanism knows more about you than you do. This mechanism can help you improve yourself because it can tell you, in real time, where you failed and what you can do to become a more honest and trustworthy person. And who doesn’t want a world full of fairness and harmony?

Honesty. In Shanghai, there is an app for that: it’s called “Honest Shanghai”. You just download it and register. The app uses facial recognition software to recognize you and gain access to troves of your personal data, which is drawn from different government entities. According to the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, where the data converge, the app can currently access exactly 5,198 pieces of information from a total of 97 public authorities. It knows whether you’ve paid your electricity bill, donated blood, or travelled on the subway without paying for a ticket. The software then processes the information and lets you know whether your recorded behavior is considered “good”, “bad” or “neutral”. Good Shanghaiers are currently allowed, for instance, to borrow books from the public library without paying the mandatory 100-yuan deposit.

While the app appears to be little more than a gimmick that people can sign up to voluntarily, the system behind it has far-reaching implications. Officially, it is called the “Social Credit System”; the Chinese title also translates as “System for Social Trustworthiness”. The digital mechanism it is based on is set to be gathering data on every single person in China by 2020. It already collects data on all residents of Shanghai. Shao Zhiqing of the Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization emphatically points out that his office doesn’t evaluate people. In Shanghai, he says, this job is done by third-party service providers that get access to the government data. It is their algorithms that evaluate the data and rate behavior accordingly. Without doubt though, Shao says, the Social Credit System that collects and provides the data will change China. “First of all, it will allow us to answer the question: are you a trustworthy person?” says Shao. “It’s all about bringing order to the market. And ultimately, it’s also about social order.”

Later, in the city of Rongcheng, a civil servant tells us: “We want to civilize people”. Once again, China is looking to create the new man.

Something big is happening in China. Something that has never happened before in the country, or anywhere else for that matter.•

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“He Seems To Have In Mind A Kleptocratic Authoritarianism”

July 21, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

The 1970s: Watergate, malaise, gas lines, etc. 

Ah, the good old days.

Elizabeth Drew, the great Nixon Era reporter has written also of this moment’s bookend scandal–likely the biggest political misconduct in our nation’s history–arguing that a consensus must slowly be built among both parties before an impeachment possible–or even desirable. 

In a vacuum, that’s right. Except we live in far more fractious times, with the country riven pretty strictly among party lines, apart from some resolute Never Trumpers on the right. The Mueller firing will likely come and so may pardons, with Republicans still unmoved to act, the retention of power more important than even nation. Just consider Newt Gingrich, who once compared Ronald Reagan to Neville Chamberlain for merely meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev but now serves as an enthusiastic apologist for an actual Kremlin stooge. 

That’s why authoritarianism is a real threat. Not due to soft spots in the Constitution or the great power of the office of the President, but because normal governance has already ceased. In one fashion or another, Trump will go down. Will America as well? That depends. This era isn’t the 1970s nor the 1930s despite resembling at moments an unholy amalgam of the two. An X factor is present that represents the response of the populace to a White House run amok.

Two excerpts follow.

From Timothy Snyder’s Guardian piece “Trump Is Ushering In a Dark New Conservatism“:

Thus the nostalgic moment for this White House is not the 1950s, usually recalled warmly by American conservatives, but the dreadful 1930s, when fascists of the new right defeated conservatives of the old right in Europe. Whatever one might think of conservative nostalgia for the 1950s, it is notable for what it includes: American participation in the second world war and the beginnings of the American welfare state. For conservatives, it all went wrong in the 1960s. 

For the Trump administration, it all went wrong rather earlier: in the 1940s, with the fight against fascism and the New Deal. Stephen Bannon, who promises us new policies “as exciting as the 1930s”, seems to want to return to that decade in order to undo those legacies.

He seems to have in mind a kleptocratic authoritarianism (hastened by deregulation and the dismantlement of the welfare state) that generates inequality, which can be channeled into a culture war (prepared for by Muslim bans and immigrant denunciation hotlines). Like fascists, Bannon imagines that history is a cycle in which national virtue must be defended from permanent enemies. He refers to fascist authors in defense of this understanding of the past.•

From “We’re On the Brink Of an Authoritarian Crisis“ by Brian Beutler of the New Republic:

Should Trump fire Mueller, with the tacit assent of Republicans in Congress and the DOJ leadership, there will be little recourse. It is feasible (though difficult) to imagine a GOP House and Senate passing an independent counsel statute to restore Mueller to his job; it is nearly impossible to imagine them doing so by veto-proof margins. And should Trump pardon himself and his inner circle, it is dispiritingly easy to imagine Republicans reprising their familiar refrain: The president’s power to pardon is beyond question.

If this crisis unfolds as depicted here, the country’s final hope for avoiding a terminal slide into authoritarianism would be the midterm election, contesting control of a historically gerrymandered House of Representatives. That election is 16 months away. Between now and then, Trump’s DOJ and his sham election-integrity commission will seek to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as possible, while the president himself beseeches further foreign interference aimed at Democratic candidates. Absent the necessary sweep, everything Trump will have done to degrade our system for his own enrichment and protection will have been ratified, and a point of no return will have been crossed.•

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Old Print Article: The Icarians Settle In America (1853)

July 20, 2017 in Books, Old Print Articles, Politics | Permalink

Was recently reading something about the Icarians, the French Utopian socialist sect based on the teachings of Étienne Cabet, which left small footprints on U.S. soil during the “stammering century.” The members first immigrated to America in 1848, purchasing small parcels in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, California and, very disastrously, in Texas, on which to build their communities based on “technological innovation.”

In a 2016 New Republic article by Chris Jennings about the Lone Star State debacle, he describes the tenets of the group put forth in the Cabet novel Voyage en Icarie:

In Icaria, there is no private property or money. Food, shelter, clothing, and all of life’s comforts are produced and distributed by the state. Men and women are considered equal and receive the same comprehensive public education, although women do not vote. When an Icarian family runs low on food, they place a specially designed container into a specially designed niche outside of their specially designed apartment. When they return home after a day working in collective workshops, they find their bin topped off with healthful victuals. The sources of Icarian abundance are technological innovation and the fact that everyone works for the wealth of the republic. There are no idle rich or landed aristocracy to draw off the wealth of the nation. As a result of these reforms, many old occupations have been rendered obsolete. In Icaria there are no domestic servants, cops, informants, middlemen, soldiers, gunsmiths, or bankers.

Even if the Icarians had be experienced homesteaders rather than urban ideologues, it wasn’t perhaps the most propitious moment to establish an alternative colony in America, with Mormons, for instance, on numerous occasions having their towns razed to the ground. In fact, the first permanent Icarian settlement was founded in Nauvoo, Illinois, on the literal ruins of a Mormon community.

Despite sometimes unwittingly purchasing unfortunate tracts and meeting with withering stares, the Icarians were particularly persistent, with the group often splintering, but surviving in some form, until nearly the fin de siècle era. 

From the July 30, 1853 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Space Travel Proposed A Future World Of Brains Attached To Wires”

July 20, 2017 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

On the 48th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon, here’s a repost of some writing on the topic by Norman Mailer, who viewed the mind-blowing mission in terms of Icarus, believing it doomed, in an elemental way, our species. That belief seems less paranoid in retrospect.

Norman Mailer pursued immortality through subjects as grand as his ego, and it was the Apollo 11 mission that was Moby Dick to his Ahab. He knew the beginning of space voyage was the end, in a sense, of humans, or, at least, of humans believing they were in the driver’s seat. In If The Sun Dies, he addresses the disorienting moment when technology, that barbarian, truly stormed the gates.

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“It Was Not A Despair He Felt, Or Fear–It Was Anesthesia”

When he wrote about the coming computer revolution of the 1970s at the outset of the decade in Of a Fire on the Moon, Norman Mailer couldn’t have known that the dropouts and the rebels would be leading the charge. An excerpt of his somewhat nightmarish view of our technological future, some parts of which came true and some still in the offing:

Now they asked him what he thought of the Seventies. He did not know. He thought of the Seventies and a blank like the windowless walls of the computer city came over his vision. When he conducted interviews with himself on the subject it was not a despair he felt, or fear–it was anesthesia. He had no intimations of what was to come, and that was conceivably worse than any sentiment of dread, for a sense of the future, no matter how melancholy, was preferable to none–it spoke of some sense of the continuation in the projects of one’s life. He was adrift. If he tried to conceive of a likely perspective in the decade before him, he saw not one structure to society but two: if the social world did not break down into revolutions and counterrevolutions, into police and military rules of order with sabotage, guerrilla war and enclaves of resistance, if none of this occurred, then there certainly would be a society of reason, but its reason would be the logic of the computer. In that society, legally accepted drugs would become necessary for accelerated cerebration, there would be inchings toward nuclear installation, a monotony of architectures, a pollution of nature which would arouse technologies of decontamination odious as deodorants, and transplanted hearts monitored like spaceships–the patients might be obliged to live in a compound reminiscent of a Mission Control Center where technicians could monitor on consoles the beatings of a thousand transplanted hearts. But in the society of computer-logic, the atmosphere would obviously be plastic, air-conditioned, sealed in bubble-domes below the smog, a prelude to living on space stations. People would die in such societies like fish expiring on a vinyl floor. So of course there would be another society, an irrational society of dropouts, the saintly, the mad, the militant and the young. There the art of the absurd would reign in defiance against the computer.

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“Doubtless, Everybody Would Be Easier To Monitor”

Some more predictions from Norman Mailer’s 1970 Space Age reportage, Of a Fire on the Moon, which have come to fruition even without the aid of moon crystals:

Thus the perspective of space factories returning the new imperialists of space a profit was now near to the reach of technology. Forget about diamonds! The value of crystals grown in space was incalculable: gravity would not be pulling on the crystal structure as it grew, so the molecule would line up in lattices free of  shift or sheer. Such a perfect latticework would serve to carry messages for a perfect computer. Computers the size of a package of cigarettes would then be able to do the work of present computers the size of a trunk. So the mind could race ahead to see computers programming go-to-school routes in the nose of every kiddie car–the paranoid mind could see crystal transmitters sewn into the rump of ever juvenile delinquent–doubtless, everybody would be easier to monitor. Big Brother could get superseded by Moon Brother–the major monitor of them all might yet be sunk in a shaft on the back face of the lunar sphere.

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“A Robot That Is Designed To Play Chess Might Also Want To Build A Spaceship”

In his 1970 Apollo 11 account, Of a Fire on the Moon, Norman Mailer realized that his rocket wasn’t the biggest after all, that the mission was a passing of the torch, that technology, an expression of the human mind, had diminished its creators. “Space travel proposed a future world of brains attached to wires,” Mailer wrote, his ego having suffered a TKO. And just as the Space Race ended the greater race began, the one between carbon and silicon, and it’s really just a matter of time before the pace grows too brisk for humans.

Supercomputers will ultimately be a threat to us, but we’re certainly doomed without them, so we have to navigate the future the best we can, even if it’s one not of our control. Gary Marcus addresses this and other issues in his latest New Yorker blog piece, “Why We Should Think About the Threat of Artificial Intelligence.” An excerpt:

It’s likely that machines will be smarter than us before the end of the century—not just at chess or trivia questions but at just about everything, from mathematics and engineering to science and medicine. There might be a few jobs left for entertainers, writers, and other creative types, but computers will eventually be able to program themselves, absorb vast quantities of new information, and reason in ways that we carbon-based units can only dimly imagine. And they will be able to do it every second of every day, without sleep or coffee breaks.

For some people, that future is a wonderful thing. [Ray] Kurzweil has written about a rapturous singularity in which we merge with machines and upload our souls for immortality; Peter Diamandis has argued that advances in A.I. will be one key to ushering in a new era of “abundance,” with enough food, water, and consumer gadgets for all. Skeptics like Eric Brynjolfsson and I have worried about the consequences of A.I. and robotics for employment. But even if you put aside the sort of worries about what super-advanced A.I. might do to the labor market, there’s another concern, too: that powerful A.I. might threaten us more directly, by battling us for resources.

Most people see that sort of fear as silly science-fiction drivel—the stuff of The Terminator and The Matrix. To the extent that we plan for our medium-term future, we worry about asteroids, the decline of fossil fuels, and global warming, not robots. But a dark new book by James Barrat, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, lays out a strong case for why we should be at least a little worried.

Barrat’s core argument, which he borrows from the A.I. researcher Steve Omohundro, is that the drive for self-preservation and resource acquisition may be inherent in all goal-driven systems of a certain degree of intelligence. In Omohundro’s words, “if it is smart enough, a robot that is designed to play chess might also want to build a spaceship,” in order to obtain more resources for whatever goals it might have.

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“Hippies Will Be Refused Tourist Cards To Enter Mexico Unless They Take A Bath And Get Haircuts”

While Apollo 11 traveled to the moon and back in 1969, the astronauts were treated each day to a six-minute newscast from Mission Control about the happenings on Earth. Here’s one that was transcribed in Norman Mailer’s Of a Fire on the Moon, which made space travel seem quaint by comparison:

Washington UPI: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew has called for putting a man on Mars by the year 2000, but Democratic leaders replied that priority must go to needs on earth…Immigration officials in Nuevo Laredo announced Wednesday that hippies will be refused tourist cards to enter Mexico unless they take a bath and get haircuts…”The greatest adventure in the history of humanity has started,” declared the French newspaper Le Figaro, which devoted four pages to reports from Cape Kennedy and diagrams of the mission…Hempstead, New York: Joe Namath officially reported to the New York Jets training camp at Hofstra University Wednesday following a closed-door meeting with his teammates over his differences with Pro Football Commissioner Pete Rozelle…London UPI: The House of Lords was assured Wednesday that a major American submarine would not “damage or assault” the Loch Ness monster.

_________________________

“There Was An Uneasy Silence, An Embarrassed Pall At The Unmentioned Word Of Nazi”

Norman Mailer’s book Of a Fire on the Moon, about American space exploration during the 1960s, was originally published as three long and personal articles for Life magazine in 1969: “A Fire on the Moon,” “The Psychology of Astronauts,” and “A Dream of the Future’s Face.” Mailer used space travel to examine America’s conflicted and tattered existence–and his own as well. In one segment, he reports on a banquet in which Wernher von Braun, the former Nazi rocket engineer who became a guiding light at NASA, meets with American businessmen on the eve of the Apollo 11 launch. An excerpt:

Therefore, the audience was not to be at ease during his introduction, for the new speaker, who described himself as a “backup publisher,” went into a little too much historical detail. “During the Thirties he was employed by the Ordinance Department of the German government developing liquid fuel rockets. During World War II he made very significant developments in rocketry for his government.”

A tension spread in this audience of corporation presidents and high executives, of astronauts, a few at any rate, and their families. There was an uneasy silence, an embarrassed pall at the unmentioned word of Nazi–it was the shoe which did not drop to the floor. So no more than a pitter-patter of clapping was aroused when the speaker went quickly on to say: “In 1955 he became an American citizen himself.” It was only when Von Braun stood up at the end that the mood felt secure enough to shift. A particularly hearty and enthusiastic hand of applause swelled into a standing ovation. Nearly everybody stood up. Aquarius, who finally cast his vote by remaining seated, felt pressure not unrelated to refusing to stand up for The Star-Spangled Banner. It was as if the crowd with true American enthusiasm had finally declared, “Ah don’ care if he is some kind of ex-Nazi, he’s a good loyal patriotic American.”

Von Braun was. If patriotism is the ability to improve a nation’s morale, then Von Braun was a patriot. It was plain that some of these corporate executives loved him. In fact, they revered him. He was the high priest of their precise art–manufacture. If many too many an American product was accelerating into shoddy these years since the war, if planned obsolescence had all too often become a euphemism for sloppy workmanship, cynical cost-cutting, swollen advertising budgets, inefficiency and general indifference, then in one place at least, and for certain, America could be proud of a product. It was high as a castle and tooled more finely than the most exquisite watch.

Now the real and true tasty beef of capitalism got up to speak, the grease and guts of it, the veritable brawn, and spoke with fulsome language in his small and well-considered voice. He was with friends on this occasion, and so a savory and gravy of redolence came into his tone, his voice was not unmusical, it had overtones which hinted of angelic super-possibilities one could not otherwise lay on the line. He was when all was said like the head waiter of the largest hofbrau in heaven. “Honored guests, ladies and gentlemen,” Von Braun began, “it is with a great deal of respect tonight that I meet you, the leaders, and the captains in the mainstream of American industry and life. Without your success in building and maintaining the economic foundations of this nation, the resources for mounting tomorrow’s expedition to the moon would never have been committed…. Tomorrow’s historic launch belongs to you and to the men and women who sit behind the desks and administer your companies’ activities, to the men who sweep the floor in your office buildings and to every American who walks the street of this productive land. It is an American triumph. Many times I have thanked God for allowing me to be a part of the history that will be made here today and tomorrow and in the next few days. Tonight I want to offer my gratitude to you and all Americans who have created the most fantastically progressive nation yet conceived and developed,” He went on to talk of space as ‘the key to our future on earth,’ and echoes of his vision drifted through the stale tropical air of a banquet room after coffee–perhaps he was hinting at the discords and nihilism traveling in bands and brigands across the earth. “The key to our future on earth. I think we should see clearly from this statement that the Apollo 11 moon trip even from its inception was not intended as a one-time trip that would rest alone on the merits of a single journey. If our intention had been merely to bring back a handful of soil and rocks from the lunar gravel pit and then forget the whole thing”–he spoke almost with contempt of the meager resources of the moon–“we would certainly be history’s biggest fools. But that is not our intention now–it never will be. What we are seeking in tomorrow’s trip is indeed that key to our future on earth. We are expanding the mind of man. We are extending this God-given brain and these God-given hands to their outermost limits and in so doing all mankind will benefit. All mankind will reap the harvest…. What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man.”•

“Many Of Us Have Tried To Educate Him”

July 20, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

I’m not entirely convinced Elon Musk doesn’t have more in common with Donald Trump in regard to politics than we know. Not saying that he is a raging Libertarian monster like his pal Peter Thiel, but it’s not likely he’s the lovable billionaire that Iron Man cameos would have us believe.

Now that his harebrained attempt to “stage manage” the orange supremacist is happily over, the entrepreneur has fully returned to his normal chores, which are, of course, abnormal. There are two different Musks at work.

Good Elon creates gigafactories and gives people the opportunity to power their homes with solar. As these tools spread, through his efforts and those of his competitors, the Silicon Valley magnate will have made a major contribution to potentially saving our species from the existential threat of climate change. 

Bad Elon is a sort of lower-case Nikola Tesla, whose name he borrowed, of course, for his EV company. And it’s the worst of the Serbian-American inventor that he emulates: grandiose, egotistical, desperate to awe with brilliance even when the logic doesn’t quite cohere. Like Tesla’s final patented invention, the Flivver Plane, which would never have been able to fly even if it was built, Musk often concentrates his attention where it’s not most needed on things that won’t happen.

Much of this baffling overconfidence can be seen in his near-term plan to become a Martian. Some of it is also on view in his deathly fear of killer robots, a stance he developed after going on a Bostrom bender. Intelligent machines are a very-long-term risk for our species (if we’re not first done in by our own dimness or perhaps a solar flare), but they shouldn’t be a primary concern to anyone presently. Not when children even in a wealthy country like America still drink lead-contaminated water, relatively dumb AI can cause employment within industries to collapse and new technological tools are exacerbating wealth inequality.

In a Wired piece, Tom Simonite contextualizes Musk’s foolhardy sci-fi AI fears as well as anyone has. The opening:

IMAGINE YOU HAD a chance to tell 50 of the most powerful politicians in America what urgent problem you think needs prompt government action. Elon Musk had that chance this past weekend at the National Governors Association Summer Meeting in Rhode Island. He chose to recommend the gubernatorial assembly get serious about preventing artificial intelligence from wiping out humanity.

“AI is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization and I don’t think people fully appreciate that,” Musk said. He asked the governors to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a stock-trading program orchestrated the 2014 missile strike that downed a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine—just to boost its portfolio. And he called for the establishment of a new government regulator that would force companies building artificial intelligence technology to slow down. “When the regulator’s convinced it’s safe to proceed then you can go, but otherwise slow down,” he said.

Musk’s remarks made for an enlivening few minutes on a day otherwise concerned with more quotidian matters such as healthcare and education. But Musk’s call to action was something of a missed opportunity. People who spend more time working on artificial intelligence than the car, space, and solar entrepreneur say his eschatological scenarios risk distracting from more pressing concerns as artificial intelligence technology percolates into every industry.

Pedro Domingos, a professor who works on machine learning at the University of Washington, summed up his response to Musk’s talk on Twitter with a single word: Sigh. “Many of us have tried to educate him and others like him about real vs. imaginary dangers of AI, but apparently none of it has made a dent,” Domingos says. America’s governmental chief executives would be better advised to consider the negative effects of today’s limited AI, such as how it is giving disproportionate market power to a few large tech companies, he says. Iyad Rahwan, who works on matters of AI and society at MIT, agrees. Rather than worrying about trading bots eventually becoming smart enough to start wars as an investment strategy, we should consider how humans might today use dumb bots to spread misinformation online, he says.

Rahwan doesn’t deny that Musk’s nightmare scenarios could eventually happen, but says attending to today’s AI challenges is the most pragmatic way to prepare. “By focusing on the short-term questions, we can scaffold a regulatory architecture that might help with the more unpredictable, super-intelligent AI scenarios.”•

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“A Number Of Things Interfere With Americans’ Ability To Think Clearly”

July 19, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’ve never felt nostalgic about “Mean Streets” New York, even if I don’t particularly like what’s replaced it, with runaway gentrification and a tourist-trap Times Square. When I was a child growing up in Queens during a rougher time in NYC history, incinerators spewed “black snow” over us when we played outside. The grade school I went to and apartment building we lived in were coated in asbestos until it was removed at some point. Usually really nice neighbors would stagger down the street completely drunk a couple times of week or get into fights when they were high, when they weren’t busy working or trying to care for their families.

These things come back to me sometimes. Like when I learned that fellow Queens native Stephen Jay Gould suffered from mesothelioma or when the news first broke that Flint children were essentially being raised on lead water or when the opioid crisis took hold. 

In “Too Many Americans Live in a Mental Fog,” a wise Bloomberg View column, Noah Smith wonders about the silent costs of environmental problems, drug use and poverty. It’s a topic that’s discussed infrequently in the public realm since it’s easier (though costlier) to react to effects than causes. Occasionally someone will write an article about the far higher percentage of past traumatic brain injuries among convicts and wonder about causality, but that’s the exception. I’d love to read a study that traces the outcomes of those who play several years of tackle football in childhood and those who don’t. 

Smith looks at the situation mostly from the economic costs of a brain-addled populace in the time when America has become chiefly an information culture, but successfully treating the foundational issues would relieve personal pain as well as better us broadly in a globally competitive business world.

An excerpt:

In the 21st century, rich countries’ economies depend more and more on knowledge industries like technology, finance and business services. Even outside of those industries, almost every worker now has to know how to use office-productivity software, interact with websites or perform other complex tasks. In this new world, humans are being asked to think all the time.

That means U.S. policy makers need to be looking at better ways to upgrade the mental capabilities of the labor force. Unfortunately, a number of things interfere with Americans’ ability to think clearly.

The biggest threat to clear-headedness comes from drugs. The twin epidemics of opioid-painkiller dependence and heroin abuse destroy people’s lives and harm productivity. There is a strong correlation between opioid use and unemployment, and it’s no great stretch to assume that the former helps cause the latter. A recent Goldman Sachs report concluded that drug abuse resulted in large productivity losses throughout the economy. Even when opioid and opiate users stay at their jobs, they probably become less productive.

A second, much-discussed problem is lead pollution. A flood of research is finding that even small amounts of lead exposure in childhood can lead both to worse academic performance later in life, and to more criminal behavior. Furthermore, recent evidence suggests that American children are far more exposed to lead than most people realize. Lead paint contaminates soil, lead pipes contaminate drinking water, and a variety of commercial products from cosmetics to electronics contain bits of lead. The U.S. is allowing its people to be poisoned with heavy metals, and both their intelligence and their self-control is being degraded as a result.

But drugs and lead aren’t the only forces preventing Americans from being able to think clearly. Poverty is another.•

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“My Question Is How Could You Have Possibly Thought That This Would Be A Good Idea?”

July 18, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

If you ever find yourself in a wistful, David Brooks kind of mood, believing America a meritocracy in which the best and brightest strive and thrive just remember that Lou Dobbs attended Harvard, Chris Cillizza is a millionaire and Donald Trump is the President of the United Fucking States.

Perhaps Jesse Ventura put it more aptly when he said, “The scum always rises to the top of the water.” And he should know since he became governor of a fairly significant state despite his busy career of pretending to wrestle, peddling idiotic conspiracy theories and hosting a show for RT, Vladimir Putin’s TV propaganda channel.

On Cillizza: This brainiac was employed by the Washington Post initially during its winter of discontent and somehow survived during a sunny revival fostered by Marty Baron’s editorial chops and Jezz Bezos’ considerable couch-cushion change. The quasi-journalist treats politics as if it were all just a game, which might be useful if he were an astute critic of the rules of engagement. He is not. An upchucker of hot takes and clickbait who seems to not care at all that lives are saved or lost depending on policies chosen, Cillizza is in the media merely to give opinions, regardless of their rightness or wrongness, slobber over Ivanka Trump, and get paid. 

In December 2016, he wrote in the Post that he was puzzled that Trump received so much flak for his cabinet picks since, as he stated, all Presidents appoint a few loyalists. Cillizza conveniently overlooked that Bannon, Flynn and Sessions were extraordinarily atypical when compared to appointees of previous Presidents. It’s not the quantity of the loyalists that was disturbing but their qualities.

It’s amazing it took so long for Jeff Zucker to pluck Cillizza from the stupid tree, but he ultimately made sure the commentator was a jewel in CNN’s jester cap. It’s the finest marriage since the von Bulows, except this time both parties are holding a bulging syringe of insulin and America is Sunny. Even though the network is now considered an EoT (Enemy of Trump), it did as much as any entity to normalize the bigot, ignoramus and traitor during the campaign, all for some free content and a ratings boost; and Cillizza’s type of vapid punditry and dumbing down of the news qualifies him as complicit in the odious rise of Trump.

Cillizza, being three times as dense as the planet Neptune, thought it a good idea to conduct a Reddit AMA, in which he was gleefully excoriated by questioners. Below are a dozen inquiries he didn’t answer.

____________________________________

Question:

Hi, I’m Libby Watson, I’m a staff writer at Fusion. Why do you think so many other journalists think you suck?

____________________________________

Question:

You, Wolf Blitzer and S. E. Cupp play Jeopardy. Do any of you end with a positive amount of money?

____________________________________

Question:

You did an emoji analysis of the Republican health care bill. How can you even justify that?

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Question:

Chris, have you considered the fact that your reporting style of repeated and absurd focus on completely inane subjects, like “an analysis of the Trump-Macron handshake” not only makes us all collectively stupider, but fundamentally devalues the role politics has in shaping our lives in favor of absurd horse race coverage that focuses on inside baseball to the exclusion of real working families?

____________________________________

Question:

I’d like to present to you some of your headlines from last year during the election.

I’m wondering if you think that your relentless hammering of Hillary Clinton over a bunch of supposed “scandals” that went nowhere (along with your obvious Bernie-bias) helped turn people against Clinton, and put Trump in the White House?

Some of your articles:

  • Hillary Clinton’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad answer on whether she’s ever lied
  • Hillary Clinton can’t make you love her if you don’t
  • Hillary Clinton’s week just went from bad to worse Drip, Drip, Drip.
  • Hillary Clinton’s campaign needs a slogan. Here’s your chance to help. It’s time to think up a message for Hillary!
  • Hillary Clinton’s biggest campaign problem may be, well, Hillary Clinton Sometimes the problem is you.
  • Why ignoring Hillary Clinton’s emails might cost Bernie Sanders Iowa An opportunity, missed.
  • Why we shouldn’t give Hillary Clinton a pass for losing New Hampshire
  • Why Hillary Clinton should be worried about Nevada
  • Why Hillary Clinton won’t release transcripts of her paid Goldman Sachs speeches She has her reasons.
  • Hillary Clinton’s email defense just hit a major bump in the road Cue Democratic worry.
  • Note to Bernie Sanders: Negative ads are good. Negative ads work.
  • Hillary Clinton STILL doesn’t have a good answer for questions about her emails
  • Why Bernie Sanders should talk A LOT more about Hillary Clinton and Goldman Sachs
  • What a tuxedo tells you about the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton Authenticity.
  • Hillary Clinton says she’s ‘not nervous at all’ about Bernie Sanders. She should be. Danger, Hillary Clinton. Danger!
  • Here’s exactly how Bernie Sanders can beat Hillary Clinton
  • Why aren’t Hillary Clinton’s exaggerations of her life story bigger news?
  • Bill de Blasio’s ‘Okay fine, I will endorse her’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton
  • Why Joe Biden must destroy Hillary Clinton
  • Just when you thought the e-mail story couldn’t get worse for Hillary Clinton … Drip. Drip. Drip.
  • Hillary Clinton’s e-mail issues have become a massive political problem It’s not getting better.
  • It might be time for Hillary Clinton to start panicking
  • Hillary Clinton finally apologizes for her private e-mail server. What took so long?
  • The reinvention of Hillary Clinton almost certainly won’t work
  • Hillary Clinton’s new approach to her e-mail controversy? It’s complicated.
  • Hillary Clinton’s e-mail problem isn’t going away FBI!
  • Hillary Clinton’s Worst Week in Washington
  • Hillary Clinton’s honesty problem just keeps getting worse
  • Maybe Hillary Clinton just isn’t a very good candidate
  • Hillary Clinton is trying to make the e-mail controversy political. But, really, it isn’t.
  • This isn’t a good trend line for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 prospects The more people see, the less they like.
  • These 9 words prove that Bill Clinton still doesn’t get it on the Clinton Foundation

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Question:

Why does CNN insist on bringing on some partisan stooge who would defend Trump for killing and eating said stooge’s own child? What good does having such a person do, especially when you treat their ludicrous opinion as a valid counterpoint to the truth? I would say, “You wouldn’t run a story about Flat Earthers and treat their opinion as the equal and opposite counterpoint to every available piece of scientific evidence for the past 1000 years,” but you probably would and that’s a real problem.

Is it all about the ratings? Is that why, in 2016, you became the Trump News Network and aired almost every single one of his rallies? Are you afraid of being called biased? Are CNN anchors just incapable of spotting bullshit in real time? I don’t get it.

____________________________________

Question:

You said “My job is to assess not the rightness of each argument but to deal in the real world of campaign politics in which perception often (if not always) trumps reality. I deal in the world as voters believe it is, not as I (or anyone else) thinks it should be.”

Do you seriously believe that neither you nor any other media figure have any impact on the perceptions of voters? Does the observer effect not exist in political media?

____________________________________

Question:

Are you aware that real, actual horse races exist? I ask this because you seem desperate to cover a horse race, to the point that you take life-and-death political struggles that affect a nation of 300 million people and a planet of billions and treat them like they’re a horse race.

Why not just “cut out the middle man”, so to speak, and cover an actual horse race?

____________________________________

Question:

Do you regret your monomaniacal focus on the emails story in 2015-16, a focus with a clickbait orientation that both leaned heavily on emerging stories with insufficient information at hand and arguably gave other stories (ones equally or more important) short shrift?

____________________________________

Question:

Why is it that journalists and pundits who habitually get things wrong are rewarded with higher paying, more prestigious jobs rather than being forced out of the national conversation?

____________________________________

Question:

What is your obsession with Ivanka Trump and do you think it affects your reporting?

____________________________________

Question:

Hi Chris, it’s Ashley Feinberg. My question is how could you have possibly thought that this would be a good idea?•

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“The Subject Is Gathering Increasing Urgency”

July 18, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

James Surowiecki, a very bright guy, asked on Twitter which jobs have been completely automated out of existence in the last 50 years. I think the final tally included just elevator and telephone operators, though you could probably add anyone who worked a dictaphone or in a typing pool. The bowling-alley pin boy just exceeds the time frame he uses. 

The thing is, if we’re talking about automation as a threat to human employment, this question is the wrong one, even if it’s an amusing intellectual exercise. Factories that have been reshored to America in the past decade still employ workers in many of the same positions as when they left, but the numbers needed are far fewer thanks to improved machinery and systems. It’s a thinning of the herd, not it’s utter elimination, that’s most troubling. The argument that a lack of productivity increase proves that automation isn’t killing jobs doesn’t really make sense because manufacturing positions in America certainly have seriously diminished and that’s not all due to globalization.

The right question to ask is this: Will AI and automation cause enough jobs to disappear and rapidly shift to the point that trying to get by becomes too chaotic for most? That’s really all that’s required for things to go haywire. It’s not a an all-or-nothing type of situation. Not every position has to go the way of the pin boy for all of us to wind up toppled.

Two excerpts follow from new Guardian pieces, one about the impact on small American towns of Walmart’s decline in the face of Amazon’s algorithmic might and the second a Paul Mason essay about robots and Brexit that’s interesting if probably too dire.

From “What Happened When Walmart Left,” an Ed Pilkington article:

Much has been written about what happens when the corporate giant opens up in an area, with numerous studies recording how it sucks the energy out of a locality, overpowering the competition through sheer scale and forcing the closure of mom-and-pop stores for up to 20 miles around. A more pressing, and much less-well-understood, question is what are the consequences when Walmart screeches into reverse: when it ups and quits, leaving behind a trail of lost jobs and broken promises.

The subject is gathering increasing urgency as the megacorporation rethinks its business strategy. Rural areas like McDowell County, where Walmart focused its expansion plans in the 1990s, are experiencing accelerating depopulation that is putting a strain on the firm’s boundless ambitions.

Hit hard by the longterm decline in coal mining that is the mainstay of the area, McDowell County has seen a devastating and sustained erosion of its people, from almost 100,000 in 1950 when coal was king, to about 18,000 today. That depleted population is today scattered widely across small towns and in mountain hollows (pronounced “hollers”), accentuating the sense of sparseness and emptiness.

The Walmart supercenter is located about five miles from the county seat, Welch, which still boasts imposing brick buildings as a memory of better times. But the glow of coal’s legacy has cooled, as the boarding up of many of the town’s shops and restaurants attests.

When you combine the county’s economic malaise with Walmart’s increasingly ferocious battle against Amazon for dominance over online retailing, you can see why outsized physical presences could seem surplus to requirements. “There has been a wave of closings across the US, most acutely in small towns and rural communities that have had heavy population loss,” said Michael Hicks, an economics professor at Ball State University who is an authority on Walmart’s local impact.

On 15 January 2016, those winds of change swept across the country with a fury.•

The opening of Mason’s “Brexit Won’t Help Britain Survive the Rise Of the Robots“:

What do a Japanese robot and the world’s first tidal turbine have in common? They are not in Britain. While the British government destroys itself over Brexit, the parts for a third industrial revolution are being assembled elsewhere. This is an industrial revolution where you don’t “catch up” – you catch the economic backwash. This is what would keep ministers awake at night – if they were serious.

In the past 12 months, Japan has started to produce a lot of robots. Its production index for industrial robots stood at 25 in 2009, achieved 175 last year and rocketed to 225 in June this year. Three-quarters of the units made were exported, helping Japan boost its total exports by 11% in the past year. In turn, the industrial surge of robots has stimulated a surge in semiconductor production in Japan and South Korea. This is big and real.

Japan is ahead in robotics not only because it has a decades-old semiconductor industry and an ageing population, but because it has an industrial strategy. Its government demanded a new industrial revolution in 2014. In 2015, its Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry issued a “New Robot Strategy,” stipulating sales targets for robotics in various sectors and urgent measures to train and retain technologists.

In robots for nursing care, for example, the strategy spells out a detailed five-year plan – from supporting manufacturers and changing International Organization for Standardization regulations to new health regulations and the creation of a marketplace between healthcare providers and robotics firms. The policy was not made in a vacuum. Japan’s industrial strategists were worried about big US spending commitments on robot research and development and a €2.8bn (£2.5bn) robotics project, funded by the European commission, called Sparc.

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“Watergate Was Much Bigger Than Just That Invasion Of The DNC Headquarters”

July 17, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

As I’ve stated before, it seems clear how it ends for Trump, his family and his minions–in utter disgrace–but I don’t know how it turns out for America. There are just too many variables at play to prognosticate.

It may depend on how far and wide the sweep of justice extends. I have the same dream scenario that many do: The cynical players in government and outside will be washed away in a wave of justice, returning some semblance of sanity to our society. That’s not likely to be the result, however.

You can’t impeach, indict or arrest away what ails us, even if it’s a necessary start. Nearly 63 million citizens went into a voting booth and chose a bigoted, ignorant, kleptocratic sociopath. We’re deeply divided, armed to the teeth and living in a time where profiteers and ideologues alike are using our new media tools to obliterate truth. We’d better divine some solutions for our moral and political rot because eventually the crooks, trying to steal democracy as well as currency, aren’t going to be so stunningly incompetent.

In an excellent interview Susan B. Glasser of Politico Magazine conducted with Elizabeth Drew, the Watergate chronicler still doing excellent work in this time of Trump, speaks of her prescience when Nixon’s ouster still seemed unthinkable: “I may be a witch. I just had this instinct. I said, ‘I think that we might change vice presidents and presidents within a year.’ Now, this was a wild thought in the fall of 1973. I just smelled it.”

In one exchange, Drew, who asserts that the Nixon and Trump scandals are different despite their similarities, speaks to a common point they share: The lawlessness and abuses of both Administrations go far beyond one break-in or a single meeting with Russians connected to the Kremlin. It was and is a pervasive evil. An excerpt:

I want to explain something. There is one very strong similarity between the two periods. Because this gets down to, “Well, what was Watergate?” And I felt throughout it was a very unfashionable thought. A lot of people just treat it as a detective story and a lot of people still think it was a detective story that these odd people broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. They got caught because of a night watchman, caught the tape on the door. They were indicted. The cover up began. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, they did incredible reporting.

They were just dogged and they kept at it and they broke the case of the cover up, but Watergate was much bigger than just that invasion of the DNC headquarters. To me, the worst thing that the so-called burglars—plumbers, rather. They were called plumbers because they were plumbing leaks. [LAUGHS] But they have the name “Plumbers” on their door in the Executive Office Building. They had an office there. They broke into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers. In some ways, Watergate was as much about the Pentagon Papers as anything else. Now, just think about it: these bums breaking into somebody’s psychiatrist’s office to try to get his files, fortunately, were so incompetent. They messed up everything they did. They were real stumblebums. There were no files in that office although they supposedly cased it.

But that was really more troubling than the break-in to the Watergate, and it was a whole array of abuse of power, where they used the instruments of government against Nixon’s perceived enemies — and he was very good at perceiving enemies. We don’t have that now but Watergate was not a simple detective story. I always thought it was a constitutional crisis. And we still have that element of it. It’s: Can you hold a president accountable for the acts of his subordinates? We’re going to get to that question at some point in this. I don’t know when. I’m getting ahead of the story but the most important article of impeachment against Nixon was Article II, which held that a president could be held accountable for the acts of his subordinates, even if he really didn’t know anything about it.

That they created an atmosphere where these things can happen and if it ever got to impeachment and I don’t know if it will or won’t. People insist it won’t. I don’t know. It could under certain circumstances. This is a very important question. We were scared then in a way that we aren’t now. So it was quite different.•

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“No One Could Ever Truly Feel Safe Again”

July 16, 2017 in Film, Politics | Permalink

Not much of a horror fan but sad to hear of the passing of George A. Romero. A re-post of a short piece I wrote in 2011 about Night of the Living Dead which reads the film as a commentary on the tumultuous era in which it was made.

Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

Released the year after the Summer of Love, when the counterculture lost its warmth, George A. Romero’s low-budget landmark, a genre-definer about the undead feasting on the living, can be read as a parable of a culture run amok, feared by those with no desire to join it.

Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and Johnny (Russell Streiner) are young adult siblings headed to a desolate Pennsylvania graveyard to place flowers on their father’s resting place, the way good middle-class children do. Conservative Barbra has no problem with the pilgrimage, but Johnny grumbles about such customs not being his scene. Suddenly he has an out, but not one he’d hoped for: A boneyard zombie seizes and murders him. Barbra escapes to a nearby house, empty except for a bloody corpse, but how long will she be able to stay in one piece since more and more of the undead surround the home? Misery loves company and the terrified woman gets some when a few other members of the living, including resourceful Ben (Duane Jones), also take shelter from the marauders in the humble abode.

Trying to find out what’s turned the formerly sensible world upside down, Ben gets a radio working and listens for information. Did a recent space probe emit radiation that is making the dead rise? Is it something else? The answer isn’t clear, but one thing is certain: A meat-loving legion is cannibalizing the uninitiated and is still plenty hungry. The radio announcer reports that “frightened people are seeking refuge in churches, schools and government buildings.” But none of these traditional bastions of respectability can provide much comfort in a society gone insane.

In one chilling scene, a small child, possessed by the zombie madness, approaches her cowering, pleading mother with a sharp object in hand and demonstrates precocious butchering skills. The following year this scene would be repeated with scary precision for real by sons and daughters of the middle class answering to a zombie named Manson. The dead would rise and the culture would change forever, and no one could ever truly feel safe again.•

“What Is The Magic Word For This Moment?”

July 15, 2017 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, first published in America in 1945, the expat author returns to his native land to occasionally admire the beauty but to mostly spit on the dirt. You could say that the writer was great at finding ugliness anywhere he roamed in the U.S., much the same way that Joan Didion always recognized looming collapse no matter where she landed–both were good at projecting the disquiet within onto any landscape–except that Miller took deep appreciation in many things, often hidden pieces of culture and art and history that delighted him. The book is largely a success, apart for the author’s boneheaded appreciation for the great things that a slave culture can produce.

Here are three passages of Miller’s darkest, most apocalyptic thoughts about humanity as it moved into a modern, technological age, the first two from the books’ preface and the third from the chapter “With Edgard Varèse in the Gobi Desert”:

As to whether I have been deceived, disillusioned…The answer is yes, I suppose. I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of great Americans–the poets and seers. Some other breed of man has won out. This world which is in the making fills me with dread. I have seen it germinate; I can read it like a blue-print. It is not a world I want to live in. It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress–but a false progress, a progress which stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful. The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles, dreams or hopes, is debarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist as escapist, the man of vision a criminal. …

Disney works fast–like greased lightning. That’s how we’ll all operate soon. What we dream we become. We’ll get the knack of it soon. We’ll learn how to annihilate the whole planet in the wink of an eye–just wait and see. ..

To-morrow all that we take for granted may wear a new face. New York may come to resemble Petra, the cursed city of Arabia. The corn fields may look like a desert. The inhabitants of our cities may be obliged to take to the woods and grub for food on all fours, like animals. It is not impossible. It is even quite probable. No part of this planet is immune once the spirit of self-destruction takes hold. The great organism called Society may break down into molecules and atoms; there may not be a vestige of any social form which could be called a body. What we call “society” may become one interrupted dissonance for which no resolving chord will ever be found. That too is possible.

We know only a small fraction of the history of man on this earth. It is a long, tedious painful record of catastrophic changes involving the disappearance of whole continents sometimes. We tell the story as though man were an innocent victim, a helpless participant in the erratic and unpredictable revolutions of Nature. Perhaps in the past he was. But not any longer. Whatever happens to this earth to-day is of man’s doing. Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything–except of his own nature. If yesterday he was a child of nature, to-day he is a responsible creature. He has reached a point of consciousness which permits him to lie to himself no longer. Destruction is now deliberate, voluntary, self-induced. We are at the node: we can go forward or relapse. We still have the power of choice. To-morrow we may not. It is because we refuse to make the choice that we are ridden with guilt, all of us, those who are making war and those who are not. We are all filled with murder. We loathe one another. We hate what we look like when we look into one another’s eyes. 

What is the magic word for this moment?•

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