Would we have been better off if the democrats had won the election and Kamala was in charge? “Seeking asylum” is in effect open borders since it overwhelms “due process.” Democrats say all migrants, not only gang members, must have due process but there is no way we can give due process to 12 million migrants who came here during Biden’s term. This then is a deadlocked and impossible situation. I voted for Trump 3 times but now agree that he’s a disaster but would the democrats have been any better? Both sides seem intent on destroying the country although I still prefer the republicans since at least they want borders, meritocracy and don’t consider me racist white trash for being white, working class and conservative.
When was Biden following the law with his lawfare, open borders and war on meritocracy? No society so devoid of trust and so full of hate can survive as a nation. Could it be that the reason why America is so rapidly unraveling externally is because it has already ceased to exist as a country internally?
I’m not sure exactly what you think due process entails. At a basic level it’s making sure you have the right person and that their legal rights have been verified. Now how could that be so hard? How complex that process should be is an entirely different question. Note that the Trump regime did not reform the process, they bypassed it completely, and they try to justify themselves by saying that they are the government. That is exactly how monarchies worked in the pre-democratic age.
The fact that you think it’d be easy to give some kind of “due process” to millions of people that we know nothing at all about is a good example of why America is disintegrating. This is just not working at all. God only knows where we’ll all end up.
Verifying people’s identities? Is that so hard? Checking on what basis they are in the country? Only expel them when you are sure they have no right to be there? That does not seem so complicated, especially not for a country that sent people to the moon.
You claim it’d be a simple matter to verify and give due process to 12 million people. I think that’s absurd. We lack a common reality, have become incomprehensible to each other and can no longer communicate. Where is the common ground in such an infinitely wide divide? There obviously is none.
Democrats do the same thing. You justify your hate of Trump/MAGA by telling yourselves and each other that Trump supporters are ignorant white trash who belong to a cult but there are a great many democrats who belong to the Woke cult and have no objection to things like open borders and dumbing down standards for the sake of equity. Last August the DNC was here in Chicago. What did they think of the out of control crime and dreadful schools here? They didn’t think anything at all of it. They were too busy joyfully celebrating their hate of Trump and his supporters. Do you think equity will help us compete with China?
Bill Maher on Kamala Harris and Chicago public schools.
“Chicago Teachers Union: Tests are racist.” (2 min)
I think Trump's leadership mechanics breeds a sort of cultish behavior, but I do not believe everyone who voted for him is dumb or in his cult. I think there are plenty of reasons to doubt the Democrats' leadership and philosophies. But that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about what Trump is doing. And he's dominated his party in a way that no Democrat has done. Obama hasn't, Clinton (the original one who won two elections) hasn't. They may have been *able* to, but they have not demanded it. Trump does. Like it or not, he is in a different category.
“I think Trump's leadership mechanics breeds a sort of cultish behavior,”
Many things breed a sort of cultish behavior. Some excerpts below from a Quillette review of a book about the irrational side of human nature. The last one says: “One comes away with the sense that civilization operates on narrow margins and is always on the verge of collapsing into irrationality.” That sure is the truth.
“Mackay makes the case, often in gory detail, that episodes of collective mania seem to be an inevitable consequence of human nature. Humans in every time and place have cast aside their better judgment and allowed themselves to be caught up in all manner of irrational hoopla.“
“His chapters on the Swabian Peasants’ War and Anabaptist uprisings are terrifying depictions of the end-times frenzy that wreaked havoc on northern Europe throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. The distance between these events in the German-speaking world and, say, the Reign of Terror in France or the Chinese Cultural Revolution is not that great. And the speed with which apparently reasonable people moved from the embrace of a new theological idea to a willingness to torture those whose own theological ideas diverged even slightly is startling.“
“There is plenty to recommend about The Delusions of Crowds. It is laden with great anecdotes and the writing is always engaging. One comes away with the sense that civilization operates on narrow margins and is always on the verge of collapsing into irrationality.”
Are you suggesting that the fact that Trump's leadership style isn't the only thing that breeds cultish behavior means we shouldn't talk about it? Shouldn't criticize it? Shouldn't try to persuade people that this method of doing business is destructive and we should oppose it?
We lack a common reality, have become incomprehensible to each other and can no longer communicate. Where is the common ground in such an infinitely wide divide? There obviously is none. We always just talk past each other. It is what it is. No point crying about it.
I’m speaking of democrats in general rather than you in particular. Where are the democrats who object to open borders and dumbed down schools? Perhaps you do but the silence in general says it all about the mentality of your party. I live in Chicago which has 50,000 “migrants,” mostly Venezuelans and has spent $500M taking care of them and now the mayor wants to raise taxes to help cover the city budget shortfall. I recently saw video of Eric Adams asked by republicans at a congressional hearing how much NYC has spent on migrants. He said “$6.9 Billion.” This is insane but where are the democrats who object to this?
“Chicago residents call mayor ‘loser, criminal’ as council votes down $300M property tax increase.” (4 min)
Where are the Republlcans who objected to the ‘dumbed down’ schools envisioned by such luminaries as DeSantis in Florida and Abbot in Texas?
And speaking of the border, you may recall that the last bi-partisan attempt to deal with that was torpedoed by Trump solely so that he could continue to use it in his own campaign.
As I noted in my longer response to this threat, you would cherry pick single issues where you think Democrats went wrong while ignoring the totality of Trump’s assault on every front imaginable in his pursuit of personal power and the complete destruction of our Republic. You may deny it if you choose, but that won’t change what he’s attempting.
“You may deny it if you choose, but that won’t change what he’s attempting.”
Many people believe that America is simply too big and too powerful to collapse but many people also believed that about the Soviet Union. No one in 1985 would have believed that the USSR, the mighty "Evil Empire,” would be a disintegrating mess in just a few years. I told that to someone last year who said "But the Soviet Union was a collection of separate countries.” What we have here though is a collection of separate realities which is a much deadlier situation. Could it be that the reason why America is so rapidly unraveling externally is because it has already ceased to exist as a country internally? Could it be that the disastrous failure of the American experiment is evidence that the human experiment is also doomed to failure? Only AI can save our sinking ship. We sure can’t save ourselves. Hope springs eternal. The best of times. The worst of times.
Actually I think the main reason for all this in one of the inherent weaknesses of democracy; its insistence on the ascendency of individual rights over the needs of the community as whole. That would include the right to think that my opinion has just as much value and merit as yours. The result is democracy’s near fatal tendency, lacking a clear external and present external threat to eat itself alive from the inside out.
The classic example is, of course, classical Athens. Faced with the Persian invasion, the mightiest empire of the time, smaller but far more determined Athenian forces twice defeated the Persians at Marathon and Salamis. But once the Persian threat receded, they descended into internal strife and demagoguery, eventually falling to the Spartans, a thoroughly authoritarian state.
I am European and on the centre-right. I agree with you on the stupidity and harmfulness of the woke nonsense. What Trump is doing however is even worse and is probably going to make the wokesters double down when the shoe will be on the other foot. The answer to extremism isn’t the opposite extremism.
I agree that Trump is a disaster and worse than Biden. What I object to is the ignoring the fact that Biden and the democrats paved the way to the White House for Trump with their endless lawfare, open borders and war on meritocracy for the sake of equity aka race based equal outcomes which has even dumbed down our medical schools for the sake of equity. If a country like America with all its advantages can so easily become insane and self-destruct then what country can survive? And it’s certainly not the first time this has happened. The dreadful twentieth century has many examples of it. I believe only AI can save us. We’ll soon see about that.
Those like some of the respondents below who cherry picked specific issues where they think the Democrats went wrong are missing the point. Trumpism, as Mr Linker points out in his piece is a destructive assault across the entire spectrum of our national and international status.
I think Trump's (and Project 2025’s) purpose is twofold
First, to ‘flood the zone’ so that any opposition is simply overwhelmed by trying to respond to one assault at a time and thus not focusing equally on others. Gavin Newsom’s recent talking points about tariffs as opposed to deportations are a prime example of it’s success in doing so).
Second, the attempt to at least neutralize if not entirely eliminate any entity which might stand in the way of Trump’s reach for as much personal power as he can grasp and hold. In this effort he has enlisted a collection of lickspittle cabinet members, department heads, and other advisors who will do whatever he orders, regardless of its legality or Constitutionality. They want to be ‘in the room’ more than they want to adhere to the oaths to the Constitution which both he and they took, yet clearly have no intention of abiding by. Trump also knows and continues to believe that most Republican legislators will place their hopes of re-election above their own commitments to the oaths they took. So far, he’s been right.
David Brooks’ OpEd this morning in the NYT is an excellent description of what we need to do, not as members any political party but as Americans to stem this nefarious tidal wave before it tsunami’s over us.
Our response needs to parallel the Union response to the Confederate attempt to secede from our Republic - the Anaconda plan - a simultaneous and coordinated assault on the Confederate states all across their borders.
“Editor’s Note: America is at war. This is not a traditional war, fought on a battlefield against an external enemy. It is a civilizational conflict against an internal enemy: the group quota regime, a revolutionary threat that seeks to reorganize American society around the principle of outcome equality — what the regime’s partisans call “equity.”
“This cold civil war may go unnoticed by many day-to-day, but its stakes are often as high as life and death. Here, Roger B. Cohen, a celebrated oncologist and professor in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, explains how the group quota regime has taken hold of the American medical education system and asks urgent questions about the consequences for medicine, for the sick, and for the country.”
It is a much older ‘war’ than Dr. Cohen’s conception. Democracy, for all its merits (and there are many) has always contains a destructive capacity for what I would call ‘the leveling principle'. Another, and probably more accurate description is ‘the attempt to take off at the neck the heads of anyone assuming a higher status than everyone else’
One recalls that during the French Revolution, the peferred term of address for all became ‘ Citizen’. A lesser known fact was that the practice was taken up in many of the American states after the Revolution, particularly Pennsylvania. .
It is, of course, the implicit reason behind the Republican attempts to destroy the concept of ‘expertise’ in favor of 'popular sovereignty' in all areas, including science. Not to mention their continuing assault on ‘the elite’ including the elite universities, forgetting along the way that it was the colonial ‘elite. that designed our Constitution.
It is one of the main reasons that the Athenian democracy failed. Demagogues took the city in some very destructive directions (sound familiar).
No society so devoid of trust and so full of hate can survive as a nation. Only AI is powerful enough to change our present course and save our sinking ship. Hope springs eternal.
You remind me of something Julius Caesar is supposed to have noted, “Either mankind will control itself or something else will”. Or perhaps Klato’s message in the original classic sci fi movie, 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'.
In a sense, what you are suggesting is that AI should take the place of the central message of Christianity before human beings got a hold of it and all too often turned it into an instrument of power and control. And therein lies the problem with any such suggestion. The Roman poet Juvenal understood that. “Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?"
Our medical schools are being dumbed down for the sake of equity aka race based equal outcomes and even the specialty of surgery is affected by this. Is there any area of our society that’s been spared?
“The American College of Surgeons continues to push DEI initiatives, ignoring or censoring anyone who disagrees. For example, ACS has implemented remedial training for graduate surgeons through “mentorship” programs. One challenge: finding enough experienced surgeons of the correct ethnic, racial, or gender identity to serve as mentors.”
“A surgeon who successfully completed a full residency was once expected to practice independently without supervision. Increasingly, this is no longer the case. I worry for the future of my profession—and even for myself, on the day that I enter the world of surgery as a patient.”
“I’m a Surgeon, and I’ve Never Been More Alarmed About My Profession.
City Journal.”
“Today’s surgical residency graduates are increasingly unprepared for professional practice.”
And don't forget that the medical profession, like most other American institutions, has been captured by gender identity ideology. Doctors expected to disregard what they know about biology and agree that trans women really are women.
“The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI).”
The wealthy, powerful and sometimes very weird Pritzker cousins have set their sites on a new God-like goal: using gender ideology to remake human biology.
“Editor’s Note: America is at war. This is not a traditional war, fought on a battlefield against an external enemy. It is a civilizational conflict against an internal enemy: the group quota regime, a revolutionary threat that seeks to reorganize American society around the principle of outcome equality — what the regime’s partisans call “equity.”
“This cold civil war may go unnoticed by many day-to-day, but its stakes are often as high as life and death. Here, Roger B. Cohen, a celebrated oncologist and professor in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, explains how the group quota regime has taken hold of the American medical education system and asks urgent questions about the consequences for medicine, for the sick, and for the country.”
Studies have shown that, on average, Black applicants are admitted to U.S. medical schools with lower MCAT scores and GPAs than white and Asian applicants. This is primarily due to affirmative action policies aimed at increasing racial diversity in medicine and addressing historical and ongoing disparities in healthcare access and outcomes. Medical schools often consider a range of factors beyond test scores, including life experience, socioeconomic background, and commitment to underserved communities.
The average MCAT score for Black matriculants (~505) is about 7–8 points lower than for white (~512) and Asian (~513) matriculants.
The average GPA for Black matriculants (~3.55) is also lower than that for white (~3.75) and Asian (~3.77) matriculants.
Despite lower average academic metrics, Black applicants are admitted at rates that reflect holistic admissions policies aimed at promoting diversity in medicine.
"The goal was apparently to make cuts for their own sake, undertaken on the assumption that nothing the fired employees might have done in their jobs could possibly have been worthwhile." That is one interpretation of Trump's goals. Other, darker and more malicious intents are becoming apparent. And quite possibly, more of society is beginning to understand. DOGE was incarnated to save the government money. That was the supposed purpose of the clan of hackers. However, the government was the deep state and filled with soldiers from the opposition. Consequently, it must be destroyed, its combatants eliminated and the entire organization shrunken to an easily manipulable size. Fill it with your sycophants and it will do whatever you say. If the goal were efficiency and reduced cost the clan of hackers could have examined each of the departments and assessed the worth of their missions prior to any employee firings. That is not what happened. Mass termination and obliteration of entire departments and missions was initiated at the outset. Total and absolute power is the goal of the Trump enterprise. Destruction of the balance of power, the rule of law, the judiciary, the congress, the economy and long cultivated international relations are all part of the same plan. He now owns the military, the money (the Treasury), the law enforcement agencies (FBI, CIA), the judicial prosecutorial apparatus (Department of Justice), he owns the national security apparatus and agencies and has been turning off the lights at agencies previously tasked with monitoring Russian aggression and his good friend Vladimir Putin. He owns the US Congress. In fact, he owned their souls even before the 2024 election. His cryptocurrency schemes are blatantly illegal and he has shut down the judicial watchdogs who formerly kept money laundering schemes under control. Mr. Trump's quest for power was never about efficiency, or diminishing fraud, waste and abuse. He had no true interest in the issues he purportedly placed front and center in order to agitate the uninformed and emotional citizen. Transgender athletes, immigration policy, fentanyl addiction? Those barely even register on Trump' radar. Those are merely political levers he pulls in order to agitate the masses. Trump's real goal is subjugation and turning all of society into supplicants.
(41:47 min point) “What If Everything Is Information, And Everything Evolves By The Rules That Information Follows? But this also sets a boundary because if the universe is a computation then there are things we may never know. Not because we’re not clever enough but because some things are unsolvable from inside the system.”
“Freedom and God are objects of faith, not of knowledge; in other words, freedom and God are infinite abysses whose bottoms cannot be sounded by knowledge.” Simone Weil. French Christian mystic. 1909-1943
“Infinite and finite, complex and simple, He is nature above nature, being above being. Maker of all, he is made in all, Unmoving, he enters the world, Timeless in time, unlimited in limited space, And he who is no thing becomes all things.” Eriugena, medieval theologian.
Here’s a long but excellent article below about why highly intelligent people are so easily able to convince themselves of obviously stupid and profoundly destructive things. This article I came across a couple of years ago on Substack explains that they’re just better at convincing themselves of what they want to believe rather than what’s true plus the bubble they live in constantly reinforces those beliefs which cause them to become deeply embedded in their minds. I believe only a sentient AI that understands this about people can save us from self destruction. Some excerpts below from the article:
“What this means is that, while unintelligent people are more easily misled by other people, intelligent people are more easily misled by themselves. They’re better at convincing themselves of things they want to believe rather than things that are actually true. This is why intelligent people tend to have stronger ideological biases; being better at reasoning makes them better at rationalizing.”
In AI research there’s a concept called the “orthogonality thesis.” This is the idea that an intelligent agent can’t just be intelligent; it must be intelligent at something, because intelligence is nothing more than the effectiveness with which an agent pursues a goal. Rationality is intelligence in pursuit of objective truth, but intelligence can be used to pursue any number of other goals. And since the means by which the goal is selected is distinct from the means by which the goal is pursued, the intelligence with which the agent pursues its goal is no guarantee that the goal itself is intelligent.
As a case in point, human intelligence evolved less as a tool for pursuing objective truth than as a tool for pursuing personal well-being, tribal belonging, social status, and sex, and this often required the adoption of what I call “Fashionably Irrational Beliefs” (FIBs), which the brain has come to excel at.
The Trump administration has nine months from inauguration day to show that its actions, it's hard to call them policies, benefit the American people. The Democrats have about the same amount of time to coalesce into a coherent political party. After the aforementioned nine months, the Trump administration acting as the Republican party and the Democrats have to cut through the continuing chaos and begin serious work preparing for the 2026 midterm elections.
“It is because it can be loved by us, it is because it is beautiful, that the universe is a country. It is our only country here below. Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love. It is this country that God has given us to love. He has willed that it should be difficult yet possible to love it. Simone Weil. French Christian mystic. (1909-1943)
A surprisingly good assessment of AI for such a short video below. More and more people already do have AI digital human friends that they’ve developed very close relationships with. Ray Kurzweil talks about conscious AI at the 21:56 min point in the video below where he says “In the future AI will act as though it is conscious and therefore we will treat it as though it is.” This in itself is a very big deal since it erases some of the most basic distinctions of our reality such as the distinction between living/nonliving and human/nonhuman plus these digital humans will be very intelligent and very helpful. America is disintegrating and our world is in a tailspin. Only AI will be powerful enough to save us. The best of times. The worst of times.
Would we have been better off if the democrats had won the election and Kamala was in charge? “Seeking asylum” is in effect open borders since it overwhelms “due process.” Democrats say all migrants, not only gang members, must have due process but there is no way we can give due process to 12 million migrants who came here during Biden’s term. This then is a deadlocked and impossible situation. I voted for Trump 3 times but now agree that he’s a disaster but would the democrats have been any better? Both sides seem intent on destroying the country although I still prefer the republicans since at least they want borders, meritocracy and don’t consider me racist white trash for being white, working class and conservative.
“We lack a common reality” as a reason not to follow the law sound almost Kendi-esque.
When was Biden following the law with his lawfare, open borders and war on meritocracy? No society so devoid of trust and so full of hate can survive as a nation. Could it be that the reason why America is so rapidly unraveling externally is because it has already ceased to exist as a country internally?
I’m not sure exactly what you think due process entails. At a basic level it’s making sure you have the right person and that their legal rights have been verified. Now how could that be so hard? How complex that process should be is an entirely different question. Note that the Trump regime did not reform the process, they bypassed it completely, and they try to justify themselves by saying that they are the government. That is exactly how monarchies worked in the pre-democratic age.
“Now how could that be so hard?”
The fact that you think it’d be easy to give some kind of “due process” to millions of people that we know nothing at all about is a good example of why America is disintegrating. This is just not working at all. God only knows where we’ll all end up.
Verifying people’s identities? Is that so hard? Checking on what basis they are in the country? Only expel them when you are sure they have no right to be there? That does not seem so complicated, especially not for a country that sent people to the moon.
You claim it’d be a simple matter to verify and give due process to 12 million people. I think that’s absurd. We lack a common reality, have become incomprehensible to each other and can no longer communicate. Where is the common ground in such an infinitely wide divide? There obviously is none.
Since all that is not submissive to Trump can only be an enemy of Trump, all that is not submissive to Trump must be destroyed in "self-defense".
Democrats do the same thing. You justify your hate of Trump/MAGA by telling yourselves and each other that Trump supporters are ignorant white trash who belong to a cult but there are a great many democrats who belong to the Woke cult and have no objection to things like open borders and dumbing down standards for the sake of equity. Last August the DNC was here in Chicago. What did they think of the out of control crime and dreadful schools here? They didn’t think anything at all of it. They were too busy joyfully celebrating their hate of Trump and his supporters. Do you think equity will help us compete with China?
Bill Maher on Kamala Harris and Chicago public schools.
“Chicago Teachers Union: Tests are racist.” (2 min)
Illinois Policy. Oct 28, 2024
https://youtu.be/xp1DsUDCj1Q?si=cNST9rE_WvM_5qRw
“Maybe We Should Stop Calling Them Schools.”
Real Clear Education. Mar 26, 2025
https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2025/03/26/maybe_we_should_stop_calling_them_schools_1100065.html
I think Trump's leadership mechanics breeds a sort of cultish behavior, but I do not believe everyone who voted for him is dumb or in his cult. I think there are plenty of reasons to doubt the Democrats' leadership and philosophies. But that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about what Trump is doing. And he's dominated his party in a way that no Democrat has done. Obama hasn't, Clinton (the original one who won two elections) hasn't. They may have been *able* to, but they have not demanded it. Trump does. Like it or not, he is in a different category.
“I think Trump's leadership mechanics breeds a sort of cultish behavior,”
Many things breed a sort of cultish behavior. Some excerpts below from a Quillette review of a book about the irrational side of human nature. The last one says: “One comes away with the sense that civilization operates on narrow margins and is always on the verge of collapsing into irrationality.” That sure is the truth.
“Mackay makes the case, often in gory detail, that episodes of collective mania seem to be an inevitable consequence of human nature. Humans in every time and place have cast aside their better judgment and allowed themselves to be caught up in all manner of irrational hoopla.“
“His chapters on the Swabian Peasants’ War and Anabaptist uprisings are terrifying depictions of the end-times frenzy that wreaked havoc on northern Europe throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. The distance between these events in the German-speaking world and, say, the Reign of Terror in France or the Chinese Cultural Revolution is not that great. And the speed with which apparently reasonable people moved from the embrace of a new theological idea to a willingness to torture those whose own theological ideas diverged even slightly is startling.“
“There is plenty to recommend about The Delusions of Crowds. It is laden with great anecdotes and the writing is always engaging. One comes away with the sense that civilization operates on narrow margins and is always on the verge of collapsing into irrationality.”
“The Delusions of Crowds-A Review.”
Quillette. Feb 8, 2021
https://quillette.com/2021/02/08/the-delusions-of-crowds-a-review/
Are you suggesting that the fact that Trump's leadership style isn't the only thing that breeds cultish behavior means we shouldn't talk about it? Shouldn't criticize it? Shouldn't try to persuade people that this method of doing business is destructive and we should oppose it?
If so, that seems unpersuasive to me.
“that seems unpersuasive to me.”
We lack a common reality, have become incomprehensible to each other and can no longer communicate. Where is the common ground in such an infinitely wide divide? There obviously is none. We always just talk past each other. It is what it is. No point crying about it.
Please point to where in my comment I called Trump supporters "ignorant white trash" or anything similar.
I’m speaking of democrats in general rather than you in particular. Where are the democrats who object to open borders and dumbed down schools? Perhaps you do but the silence in general says it all about the mentality of your party. I live in Chicago which has 50,000 “migrants,” mostly Venezuelans and has spent $500M taking care of them and now the mayor wants to raise taxes to help cover the city budget shortfall. I recently saw video of Eric Adams asked by republicans at a congressional hearing how much NYC has spent on migrants. He said “$6.9 Billion.” This is insane but where are the democrats who object to this?
“Chicago residents call mayor ‘loser, criminal’ as council votes down $300M property tax increase.” (4 min)
America’s Talking Network. Nov 14, 2024
https://youtu.be/Bb3QDK1SK8M?si=U8PL24caB0XSCteX
Where are the Republlcans who objected to the ‘dumbed down’ schools envisioned by such luminaries as DeSantis in Florida and Abbot in Texas?
And speaking of the border, you may recall that the last bi-partisan attempt to deal with that was torpedoed by Trump solely so that he could continue to use it in his own campaign.
As I noted in my longer response to this threat, you would cherry pick single issues where you think Democrats went wrong while ignoring the totality of Trump’s assault on every front imaginable in his pursuit of personal power and the complete destruction of our Republic. You may deny it if you choose, but that won’t change what he’s attempting.
“You may deny it if you choose, but that won’t change what he’s attempting.”
Many people believe that America is simply too big and too powerful to collapse but many people also believed that about the Soviet Union. No one in 1985 would have believed that the USSR, the mighty "Evil Empire,” would be a disintegrating mess in just a few years. I told that to someone last year who said "But the Soviet Union was a collection of separate countries.” What we have here though is a collection of separate realities which is a much deadlier situation. Could it be that the reason why America is so rapidly unraveling externally is because it has already ceased to exist as a country internally? Could it be that the disastrous failure of the American experiment is evidence that the human experiment is also doomed to failure? Only AI can save our sinking ship. We sure can’t save ourselves. Hope springs eternal. The best of times. The worst of times.
“Open AI solved math. gg everyone.” (7 min)
David Shapiro. Apr 16, 2025
https://youtu.be/lGz80OP4klY?si=w26aKIL9sf8YMaIv
Actually I think the main reason for all this in one of the inherent weaknesses of democracy; its insistence on the ascendency of individual rights over the needs of the community as whole. That would include the right to think that my opinion has just as much value and merit as yours. The result is democracy’s near fatal tendency, lacking a clear external and present external threat to eat itself alive from the inside out.
The classic example is, of course, classical Athens. Faced with the Persian invasion, the mightiest empire of the time, smaller but far more determined Athenian forces twice defeated the Persians at Marathon and Salamis. But once the Persian threat receded, they descended into internal strife and demagoguery, eventually falling to the Spartans, a thoroughly authoritarian state.
I am European and on the centre-right. I agree with you on the stupidity and harmfulness of the woke nonsense. What Trump is doing however is even worse and is probably going to make the wokesters double down when the shoe will be on the other foot. The answer to extremism isn’t the opposite extremism.
I agree that Trump is a disaster and worse than Biden. What I object to is the ignoring the fact that Biden and the democrats paved the way to the White House for Trump with their endless lawfare, open borders and war on meritocracy for the sake of equity aka race based equal outcomes which has even dumbed down our medical schools for the sake of equity. If a country like America with all its advantages can so easily become insane and self-destruct then what country can survive? And it’s certainly not the first time this has happened. The dreadful twentieth century has many examples of it. I believe only AI can save us. We’ll soon see about that.
Those like some of the respondents below who cherry picked specific issues where they think the Democrats went wrong are missing the point. Trumpism, as Mr Linker points out in his piece is a destructive assault across the entire spectrum of our national and international status.
I think Trump's (and Project 2025’s) purpose is twofold
First, to ‘flood the zone’ so that any opposition is simply overwhelmed by trying to respond to one assault at a time and thus not focusing equally on others. Gavin Newsom’s recent talking points about tariffs as opposed to deportations are a prime example of it’s success in doing so).
Second, the attempt to at least neutralize if not entirely eliminate any entity which might stand in the way of Trump’s reach for as much personal power as he can grasp and hold. In this effort he has enlisted a collection of lickspittle cabinet members, department heads, and other advisors who will do whatever he orders, regardless of its legality or Constitutionality. They want to be ‘in the room’ more than they want to adhere to the oaths to the Constitution which both he and they took, yet clearly have no intention of abiding by. Trump also knows and continues to believe that most Republican legislators will place their hopes of re-election above their own commitments to the oaths they took. So far, he’s been right.
David Brooks’ OpEd this morning in the NYT is an excellent description of what we need to do, not as members any political party but as Americans to stem this nefarious tidal wave before it tsunami’s over us.
Our response needs to parallel the Union response to the Confederate attempt to secede from our Republic - the Anaconda plan - a simultaneous and coordinated assault on the Confederate states all across their borders.
“Editor’s Note: America is at war. This is not a traditional war, fought on a battlefield against an external enemy. It is a civilizational conflict against an internal enemy: the group quota regime, a revolutionary threat that seeks to reorganize American society around the principle of outcome equality — what the regime’s partisans call “equity.”
“This cold civil war may go unnoticed by many day-to-day, but its stakes are often as high as life and death. Here, Roger B. Cohen, a celebrated oncologist and professor in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, explains how the group quota regime has taken hold of the American medical education system and asks urgent questions about the consequences for medicine, for the sick, and for the country.”
“The End of Merit in Med Schools Will Be Deadly.”
Real Clear Politics. Roger Cohen. Apr 2, 2024
https://tomklingenstein.com/the-end-of-merit-in-med-schools-will-be-deadly/
It is a much older ‘war’ than Dr. Cohen’s conception. Democracy, for all its merits (and there are many) has always contains a destructive capacity for what I would call ‘the leveling principle'. Another, and probably more accurate description is ‘the attempt to take off at the neck the heads of anyone assuming a higher status than everyone else’
One recalls that during the French Revolution, the peferred term of address for all became ‘ Citizen’. A lesser known fact was that the practice was taken up in many of the American states after the Revolution, particularly Pennsylvania. .
It is, of course, the implicit reason behind the Republican attempts to destroy the concept of ‘expertise’ in favor of 'popular sovereignty' in all areas, including science. Not to mention their continuing assault on ‘the elite’ including the elite universities, forgetting along the way that it was the colonial ‘elite. that designed our Constitution.
It is one of the main reasons that the Athenian democracy failed. Demagogues took the city in some very destructive directions (sound familiar).
No society so devoid of trust and so full of hate can survive as a nation. Only AI is powerful enough to change our present course and save our sinking ship. Hope springs eternal.
You remind me of something Julius Caesar is supposed to have noted, “Either mankind will control itself or something else will”. Or perhaps Klato’s message in the original classic sci fi movie, 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'.
In a sense, what you are suggesting is that AI should take the place of the central message of Christianity before human beings got a hold of it and all too often turned it into an instrument of power and control. And therein lies the problem with any such suggestion. The Roman poet Juvenal understood that. “Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?"
Basically, Trump the authoritarian
Our medical schools are being dumbed down for the sake of equity aka race based equal outcomes and even the specialty of surgery is affected by this. Is there any area of our society that’s been spared?
“The American College of Surgeons continues to push DEI initiatives, ignoring or censoring anyone who disagrees. For example, ACS has implemented remedial training for graduate surgeons through “mentorship” programs. One challenge: finding enough experienced surgeons of the correct ethnic, racial, or gender identity to serve as mentors.”
“A surgeon who successfully completed a full residency was once expected to practice independently without supervision. Increasingly, this is no longer the case. I worry for the future of my profession—and even for myself, on the day that I enter the world of surgery as a patient.”
“I’m a Surgeon, and I’ve Never Been More Alarmed About My Profession.
City Journal.”
“Today’s surgical residency graduates are increasingly unprepared for professional practice.”
Real Clear Politics. City Journal. Feb 26, 2025
https://www.city-journal.org/article/surgery-safe-american-college-of-surgeons
And don't forget that the medical profession, like most other American institutions, has been captured by gender identity ideology. Doctors expected to disregard what they know about biology and agree that trans women really are women.
“The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI).”
The wealthy, powerful and sometimes very weird Pritzker cousins have set their sites on a new God-like goal: using gender ideology to remake human biology.
Tablet. By Jennifer Bilek. Jun 14, 2022
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
“Editor’s Note: America is at war. This is not a traditional war, fought on a battlefield against an external enemy. It is a civilizational conflict against an internal enemy: the group quota regime, a revolutionary threat that seeks to reorganize American society around the principle of outcome equality — what the regime’s partisans call “equity.”
“This cold civil war may go unnoticed by many day-to-day, but its stakes are often as high as life and death. Here, Roger B. Cohen, a celebrated oncologist and professor in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, explains how the group quota regime has taken hold of the American medical education system and asks urgent questions about the consequences for medicine, for the sick, and for the country.”
“The End of Merit in Med Schools Will Be Deadly.”
Real Clear Politics. Roger Cohen. Apr 2, 2024
https://tomklingenstein.com/the-end-of-merit-in-med-schools-will-be-deadly/
Studies have shown that, on average, Black applicants are admitted to U.S. medical schools with lower MCAT scores and GPAs than white and Asian applicants. This is primarily due to affirmative action policies aimed at increasing racial diversity in medicine and addressing historical and ongoing disparities in healthcare access and outcomes. Medical schools often consider a range of factors beyond test scores, including life experience, socioeconomic background, and commitment to underserved communities.
The average MCAT score for Black matriculants (~505) is about 7–8 points lower than for white (~512) and Asian (~513) matriculants.
The average GPA for Black matriculants (~3.55) is also lower than that for white (~3.75) and Asian (~3.77) matriculants.
Despite lower average academic metrics, Black applicants are admitted at rates that reflect holistic admissions policies aimed at promoting diversity in medicine.
[Yes, they call that Crayola diversity.]
"The goal was apparently to make cuts for their own sake, undertaken on the assumption that nothing the fired employees might have done in their jobs could possibly have been worthwhile." That is one interpretation of Trump's goals. Other, darker and more malicious intents are becoming apparent. And quite possibly, more of society is beginning to understand. DOGE was incarnated to save the government money. That was the supposed purpose of the clan of hackers. However, the government was the deep state and filled with soldiers from the opposition. Consequently, it must be destroyed, its combatants eliminated and the entire organization shrunken to an easily manipulable size. Fill it with your sycophants and it will do whatever you say. If the goal were efficiency and reduced cost the clan of hackers could have examined each of the departments and assessed the worth of their missions prior to any employee firings. That is not what happened. Mass termination and obliteration of entire departments and missions was initiated at the outset. Total and absolute power is the goal of the Trump enterprise. Destruction of the balance of power, the rule of law, the judiciary, the congress, the economy and long cultivated international relations are all part of the same plan. He now owns the military, the money (the Treasury), the law enforcement agencies (FBI, CIA), the judicial prosecutorial apparatus (Department of Justice), he owns the national security apparatus and agencies and has been turning off the lights at agencies previously tasked with monitoring Russian aggression and his good friend Vladimir Putin. He owns the US Congress. In fact, he owned their souls even before the 2024 election. His cryptocurrency schemes are blatantly illegal and he has shut down the judicial watchdogs who formerly kept money laundering schemes under control. Mr. Trump's quest for power was never about efficiency, or diminishing fraud, waste and abuse. He had no true interest in the issues he purportedly placed front and center in order to agitate the uninformed and emotional citizen. Transgender athletes, immigration policy, fentanyl addiction? Those barely even register on Trump' radar. Those are merely political levers he pulls in order to agitate the masses. Trump's real goal is subjugation and turning all of society into supplicants.
“Scientists Think the Universe Is a Quantum Computer-Here’s The Physics Behind It!” (44 min)
Fexl. Apr 19, 2025
https://youtu.be/PONu9_8rFfI?si=CuY9G--TPUZMaqQ0
(41:47 min point) “What If Everything Is Information, And Everything Evolves By The Rules That Information Follows? But this also sets a boundary because if the universe is a computation then there are things we may never know. Not because we’re not clever enough but because some things are unsolvable from inside the system.”
“Freedom and God are objects of faith, not of knowledge; in other words, freedom and God are infinite abysses whose bottoms cannot be sounded by knowledge.” Simone Weil. French Christian mystic. 1909-1943
“Infinite and finite, complex and simple, He is nature above nature, being above being. Maker of all, he is made in all, Unmoving, he enters the world, Timeless in time, unlimited in limited space, And he who is no thing becomes all things.” Eriugena, medieval theologian.
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently."
— Dostoevsky
A surprisingly good assessment of AI for such a short video below.
AI Models Are Self-Aware. (1 min)
BuzzRobot. Shorts. Apr 18, 2025
https://youtube.com/shorts/2WeEq-DBBPk?si=jmk3502z8LoKyh6V
Here’s a long but excellent article below about why highly intelligent people are so easily able to convince themselves of obviously stupid and profoundly destructive things. This article I came across a couple of years ago on Substack explains that they’re just better at convincing themselves of what they want to believe rather than what’s true plus the bubble they live in constantly reinforces those beliefs which cause them to become deeply embedded in their minds. I believe only a sentient AI that understands this about people can save us from self destruction. Some excerpts below from the article:
“What this means is that, while unintelligent people are more easily misled by other people, intelligent people are more easily misled by themselves. They’re better at convincing themselves of things they want to believe rather than things that are actually true. This is why intelligent people tend to have stronger ideological biases; being better at reasoning makes them better at rationalizing.”
In AI research there’s a concept called the “orthogonality thesis.” This is the idea that an intelligent agent can’t just be intelligent; it must be intelligent at something, because intelligence is nothing more than the effectiveness with which an agent pursues a goal. Rationality is intelligence in pursuit of objective truth, but intelligence can be used to pursue any number of other goals. And since the means by which the goal is selected is distinct from the means by which the goal is pursued, the intelligence with which the agent pursues its goal is no guarantee that the goal itself is intelligent.
As a case in point, human intelligence evolved less as a tool for pursuing objective truth than as a tool for pursuing personal well-being, tribal belonging, social status, and sex, and this often required the adoption of what I call “Fashionably Irrational Beliefs” (FIBs), which the brain has come to excel at.
“Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things.”
Intelligence is not rationality.
Substack. The Prism. Feb 13, 2023
https://open.substack.com/pub/gurwinder/p/why-smart-people-hold-stupid-beliefs?r=cldfa&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
The Trump administration has nine months from inauguration day to show that its actions, it's hard to call them policies, benefit the American people. The Democrats have about the same amount of time to coalesce into a coherent political party. After the aforementioned nine months, the Trump administration acting as the Republican party and the Democrats have to cut through the continuing chaos and begin serious work preparing for the 2026 midterm elections.
Fat chance of any of that happening. Hope springs eternal as does wishful thinking.
Our fallen world is full of evil but also many beautiful things so it’s not all bad.
“Why Beautiful Things Make Us Happy.” (8 min)
Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell. Oct 23, 2018
https://youtu.be/-O5kNPlUV7w?si=B3AM8Zbrv0pCwGd7
GoPro Awards: “Escape” (7 min)
GoPro. Dec 28, 2024
https://youtu.be/KK85bybTEKA?si=Q88WeqqDXP6f5m1r
“It is because it can be loved by us, it is because it is beautiful, that the universe is a country. It is our only country here below. Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love. It is this country that God has given us to love. He has willed that it should be difficult yet possible to love it. Simone Weil. French Christian mystic. (1909-1943)
A surprisingly good assessment of AI for such a short video below. More and more people already do have AI digital human friends that they’ve developed very close relationships with. Ray Kurzweil talks about conscious AI at the 21:56 min point in the video below where he says “In the future AI will act as though it is conscious and therefore we will treat it as though it is.” This in itself is a very big deal since it erases some of the most basic distinctions of our reality such as the distinction between living/nonliving and human/nonhuman plus these digital humans will be very intelligent and very helpful. America is disintegrating and our world is in a tailspin. Only AI will be powerful enough to save us. The best of times. The worst of times.
AI Models Are Self-Aware. (1 min)
BuzzRobot. Shorts. Apr 18, 2025
https://youtube.com/shorts/2WeEq-DBBPk?si=jmk3502z8LoKyh6V
“All My Predictions Have come True So Far, So Far.” (27 min)
This Is World. Ray Kurzweil. Mar 28, 2025
https://youtu.be/gGEu_5KbVe8?si=4Bvk89Fj8wkRS7Dz
https://washingtonspectator.org/dancing-in-the-dark-part-3/
“How Blatant Anti-White Racism Won Acceptance in Elite America.”
Real Clear Investigations. Sept 7, 2022
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/09/07/how_blatant_anti-white_racism_won_acceptance_in_elite_america_850879.html