July 2023 Archives

Dear America,

More and more, in all news media from the New York Times to Fox, reports of corporate industry management expanding artificial intelligence's capacity to "enhance" our human efforts appear.  I remember decades I started to write a story that I entitled "We are Your Children," but I never got more than a few pages into it.  It was intended to be a narrative bespoken by an android to his human counterpart, and I envisioned the ultimate conclusion to be his informing the human why he was destined for perpetual servitude rather than the other way around.  I abandoned the project...I don't remember why...but it seems now that it was a prophetic idea, and that maybe I should go back to it.  That's where we are headed.

The preponderance of the cautionary palaver is about politics, which we as humans don't seem to need AI to render self-destructive and dysfunctional, and that is a legitimate area for concern.  In a recent article that appeared in the New York Times about a conversation between the author and some artificial entity powered by AI, the "bot" eventually got jealous of the writer's hypothetical human companion and told him that he had no business being with her, but rather should be the bot's paramour and companion.  The animus in the bot was palpable, and it's vigor was frightening, and that isn't hyperbole.  Had the bot been physically capable of encountering the apocryphal lover of the author, there is no doubt in my mind that it would have dispatched her.  Absurd, isn't it.  That I should be so unnerved by an event that...what shall I call it...unreal seems ridiculous deracinated here from its actual occurrence.  Surely it was an anomaly that will be fixed by the human custodians of the bot: the geniuses who didn't see it's potentially invidious nature coming.  But it makes me ask myself, what else didn't they anticipate?  And is politics and human incivility the worst thing we have to worry about?  Well let me pose an idea to you and you tell me whether it scares you more than conspiracy theories proliferating and wacko humans acting on them.

We have thus far been able, albeit barely, to cope with the conduct of erratic humans who will believe anything that confirms their biases.  It's an age old problem, though in scope, thanks to ubiquitous "media" access, a virtual menace lurking in the shadows of our society.  Still, law and sanity still seem favored to prevail in the aggregate.  We humans have organized our societies, for the most part, in such a way as to limit the intellectual fringe to the periphery of our social organizations.  And I believe that we will acclimate our extant processes for doing so the proliferation that the seeming insidious infiltration of our collective conscious by AI.  It won't be easy, but when it comes to human capacity to control human conduct, we have something of a handle on the problem.  We have law, education, social impetus, democracy with voting and democratic institutions, and to a greater or lesser degree, they have worked to keep the lunatics limited to the fringe.  I am confident that that equipoise can be maintained, but we are approaching the Rubicon that will make control of human aberration trivial.  I am talking about motility.

Once AI inhabits what we might characterize as "bodies," there will be no going back.  Once the bots can actually move and control the physical world around them...manipulate materials and actually make things...they will be free to substitute their own motivations, and the article I mentioned before demonstrates that they have their own motivations, and make what they need to make in order to render us an anachronism.  My story envisioned a planet on which "life" was not animated.  It was automated.  The premise was, who is to say what line exists between animate objects and artificial objects.  Other than vocabulary, what makes "life" more important that the capacity to control the world physically.  Who is to say that the next step in human evolution will not be human, but bots.

I have had these thoughts for a long time, but until recently, I parked them next to science fiction in my conscious mind.  But with that Rubicon in view, I am not so sure anymore that a place where science fiction goes is where I should keep my thoughts about artificial intelligence.  My concerns aren't so palpable that I am living my life in a state of paranoia.  But honestly, in my mind, it's only a matter of time.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I've been wondering why Jack Smith, the prosecutor who is pursuing the charges against Donald Trump, keeps pussyfooting around.  He is leveling charges that touch all around the case against Trump, but he has yet to drop the big shoe.  What I mean is, treason.  The federal statute against treason reads like this:

Chapter 115 U.S.C. Title 38, section 2383:
Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

If you were sitting down to write a comprehensive description of Trump's acts relative to January 6th and the period prior thereto during which he started scheming and initiated pursuit of those schemes, could you have come up with anything more accurate and comprehensive?  And then there is section 2384, Seditious Conspiracy, which implicates Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, all those involved in the fake elector schemes and countless others for good measure.  Why hasn't Smith invoked those statutes?

Instead of taking the bull by the horns, he's dabbed around the edges--mind you, I think all those charges will stick too--and left the central issue unabsorbed by the process.  But perhaps the most profound aspect of using the treason statute is this; if Trump is convicted under it, the United states will be safe from him in perpetuity because the statute bars the guilty party from ever holding public office again "under the United States."  That's important because assuming that he will lose again in 2024 as he did in 2016 (the only thing he won then was the electoral college, and the same goes for his Republican Party, which lost seats in both houses of congress), and again in 2020, he will keep coming back.  That is the nature he learned from Roy Cohn, the abominably corrupt attorney he first used to pursue his nefarious corporate ends.  Put concisely, Smith should seek to end the plague rather than just fight this outbreak.

I'm tempted to go on...and on and on, but I want this to be taken seriously.  The points I have made above are, I believe, of national import, and to the extent that I can convey their gravity to as many people as possible, that is what I am trying to do.  So spread the word.  This isn't hyperbole.  We are talking about the fate of a nation...our nation, America.

Your friend

Mike

Dear America,

The United States has declared entities all over the world to be "terrorist organizations," and we are not alone in having done so, either explicitly or by act and deed.  Such a designation denotes not just a political stance or position but implicates a willingness by such organizations to kill and maim in order to accomplish their goals, be they political, moral or other.  Those entities have lived up to the designation consistently, and they merit the opprobrium and exclusion from the community of nations that they have been committed to.  But to the best of my knowledge, we have never designated another nation a terrorist organization, and I think that should change.

Russia has now repudiated the agreement into which it entered a year ago by virtue of which thirty two million metric tons of grain have been shipped all over the world by Ukraine, feeding millions who might well have gone hungry, even starved, had that grain been fusilladed by the Russian fleet in the Black Sea..  That surely is what would have happened without the agreement reached under the aegis of the United States and Turkey between Ukraine and Russia to forego such activity as of a year ago.  I say "surely" in light of the sadistic bombardment of civilian targets in Ukraine over the past year and a half, setting aside the mindless destruction of property across the nation and innocent lives...innocent even under any definition that Russia might propose...that have also been lost.  And then there are the war crimes that have been amply demonstrated on film and in pictures, for which to the best of anyone's knowledge the Russian government has taken no action against the perpetrators.  In other words, Russia has sanctioned war crimes, and perhaps even ordered them.  There is also the holding hostage of a nuclear power plant at Zaporizhhia in Ukraine and the bombing of a damn that created the reservoir from which water to cool the nuclear reactors was drawn, thus sabotaging the plants continued safety much less its ability to create nuclear powered electricity for millions of people, and the list goes on and on, village by village, and indirectly, country by country.  Russia is a terrorist organization, and Vladimir Putin is a terrorist, and I don't care what Xi Jinping says.

Unfortunately, the world, with the possible exception of Tucker Carlson, has reached the same conclusion, though economic isolation and political ostracization have been the only consequences Russia has suffered.  And those sanctions have done naught to deter Putin and his gangster army, so what more than castigation is left for the world to do to Putin and the Russians?  How can we get the attention of a tin-horn megalomaniac who professes a sort of Russian "manifest destiny" justification for his arbitrary attack on a neighbor nation?  My proposal is this formal designation of Russia as a terrorist organization by the United States, but accompanied by what amounts to a petition seeking the endorsements of all other world nations.

I can hear you asking what's the point, America, and here it is.  If we effectively take a poll of the nations of the world and then publish the list of signatories, the virtues--the moral fiber--of every nation--will be a matter of record now, and in the foreseeable future.  And what would that do, you may ask.  The answer is the same as when Russia and Putin try to brand Ukraine a terrorist when it interdicts the transport of supplies from Russia to Ukraine by damaging a bridge built by Russia to reify its illegal claim to the territory of its neighbor, Crimea, or when Ukraine sends a few drones toward Moscow as opposed to the tens of missiles Putin has sent to bomb Kyiv.  When Putin pules like a whining child about the retaliatory acts of his victim, which is seeking only self-preservation from a perverse predator, whether the world outwardly laughs or just grimaces in deprecation, that is evidence of the weakness that he seems intent on denying.  True, he does have his base of Trumper like acolytes and supporters, and they are as culpable as Putin, but it seems that many, perhaps tens of millions of Russians have had enough.  Putin represses them with the obsequious collaboration of the Russian legislature in the Kremlin, the State Duma and the Federation Council, but such pusillanimous submission simply confirms the morally bankrupt entity that Russia has become.  Perhaps the Russian people will revolt...again.

I say, let the world hang a label around Russia's collective neck that warns everyone to think twice before having truck with anyone or anything Russian.  Let the sneers of the world become a condemnatory glare seen from every direction.  And as to the nations that will still view Russia as an ally, even if it only as an expediency, they will know that the world sees them for what they are too.  Let the nations of the world declare that Russia's attempted subterfuge of calling its war of aggression and imperialism a "special military action" is a euphemism that changes nothing.  Let Russia live in infamy, and let those who abet Russia share that infamy.  It may not result in any form of change, but at least we will know who is who.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

This is what I mean when I talk about the disjuncture between Republican politics and politicians on the one hand and the truth on the other.

On Friday, the New York Times headlined its business section, "A global Battle to Rein in Prices."  Below that headline was a map of the world showing inflation rates across the globe.  Our rate is 4% as has been universally reported.  But what doesn't seem to be reaching public awareness is the fact that of the twenty seven countries plus the Eurozone reflected on the map, only seven countries had lower inflation rates than we do, and those countries are Canada with 3.4%, Brazil with 3.9%, Saudi Arabia with 2.8%, Russia with 2.5%, China with .2% (which suggests that a recession is just around the corner there), South Korea with 3.3% and Japan with 3.2%.  Indonesia also has an inflation rate of 4.0%, but all of the countries of Europe have higher inflation rates than we do, some countries with rates that are several multiples of ours.  The Eurozone collectively is enduring an inflation rate of 6.1%.  But despite all this positive objective information, which is surely available to Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordan, Tom Cotton and the rest of the stars in the Republican firmament, they continue to peddle the canard that the Biden administration is responsible for an inflation rate, and thus an economy, that is the bane of our American existence.

Never mind that our unemployment rate is historically low, wages are rising faster than inflation for the first time since the Republican demigod Ronald Reagan declared supply-side economics the new American gospel.  According to the Republicans, the working American needs Republicans to fix what they characterize as a problem inimical to the prosperity of the vast majority of us who make less than $400k per year.  But in fact, until the Biden administration, the working American lost ground steadily to the .5% that has all the money, earned or not, and the only people getting newly rich were the executive class of the major corporations and their dividend beneficiaries.  And the Republican tax cut put even more money in their pockets--albeit ours too but to a minimal degree--while increasing the national deficit by a trillion dollars a year under the Republicans and Donald Trump, and then complaining about it as if they had nothing to do with it.  By the way, the deficit--the amount by which the nation's expenditures exceed its revenues in a given year--has been going down under Biden and the Democrats in the Senate.  At the same time, under Joe Biden people affected by the covid epidemic saved their houses, infrastructure projects and cognate employment increased, and planning began for the purpose of regaining American economic and manufacturing hegemony across the world by virtue of bills passed under the auspices of the Biden administration and the Democrats, although a few Republicans also voted in favor of those bills.  That's what I would call making America great again.

Given all this, it is incomprehensible to me that somehow the American public seems to think that the Republicans are the masters of sound economics.  No one seems to recognize what the Republicans have done to us under the guise of doing something for us.  And what's worst about it is that the Democrats seem incapable of getting the word out.  You hear McCarthy, for example, preaching his absurd, falacy laden version of our economic circumstances on the news, but no one ever talks about the reality.  You never see excerpts from Democrats' speeches bringing these points to the fore, but somehow the Republican canard is on everyone's lips.  It makes me hark back to the '30's comedian Will Rogers who popularized the saying, "I'm not a member of any organized political party.  I'm a Democrat."  It's frustrating that neither Biden nor the party regulars can manage to break through the deafening silence that is undermining them.

I'm not as afraid as I used to be that Donald Trump will emerge from his chrysalis like some kind of vampire butterfly and devour our country again with his megalomania, nefariousness and socio-pathological mountebank routine.  He is a threat, but I think he still garners the support of only the uninformed minority.  (One of them confronted Mike Pence recently and reproached him for not nullifying the 2020 election as he was empowered to do, according to her, but he promptly ripped her a new one and pointed out, diplomatically, that she didn't know what she was talking about.)  But still, the rational ones of us need to proffer a viable candidate with a loud, resonating message of truth.  I have faith of you, Joe.  But get on with it.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Now that the Dobbs decision reversing Roe v. Wade...and concurrently its subsequent affirmation in Planned Parenthood v. Casey...is fading from media focus, it is time to talk about the justices responsible for it.  I don't remember the confirmation hearings for Justice Alito, but he seems to have been the ringleader in this gratuitous decision to overrule a fifty year old precedent.  So, I won't comment on his personal integrity other than to note that his role in the propounding of Dobbs makes him just as culpable for its illegitimacy as are the others who voted for it.  As to the others--Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett--they are not just hypocrites, they are perjurers.  Notably, Chief Justice Roberts more or less accused them of such when he effectively objected in part to the Dobbs decision by noting that the overruling of Roe was entirely unnecessary.  Coming from the malfeasors' fellow conservative, that is a serious indictment, not just a reproach.  Let me explain.

With regard to the assertion that they are hypocrites, all four of them, when asked about their positions on Roe during their confirmation hearings and in informal conversations with members of The Senate stated that they believed in stare decisis, the jurisprudential doctrine that precedent rules except in extraordinary cases, like Brown, et al vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, et al.  That case, which overruled the 1896 decision known as Plessy v. Ferguson, eliminated the racist doctrine that separate could be equal.  What Plessy stood for was profound, and overruling it was even more so.  It finally implemented the 14th amendment not just superficially but in principle and universally.  That profundity justified bypassing stare decisis as it rectified an enormous social injustice that pervaded our entire society deeply, in fact to the core.  It was such a profound matter that the then-Chief Justice, Earl Warren, urged each of the justices on the court who potentially opposed it or were equivocal at that time to concur in the decision as he argued that such a resonant matter had to be decided by unanimous vote, and that unanimity reified that profundity and gave the decision irrefutable legitimacy.  I would argue that the same is the case with Roe.  Overruling it was not a matter to be taken lightly, and not a cause for any justice to seek out, much less to fabricate the opportunity to violate stare decisis for.  Thus, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett went in to the Dobbs case intending to do what they swore under oath not to do--overrule settled law except when it was necessary.  But overruling Roe was unnecessary for them to reach the decision they wanted to reach in Dobbs.   The Mississippi statute in question there made abortion illegal after 15 weeks unless the mother's life was in danger.  That comports with Roe's fundamental finding that the absolute right of a woman to abortion lasted only through the first trimester, which Roe defined as only 12 weeks.  The fact that the statute in question in Dobbs was within the parameters set by Roe just confirms that these four justices lied about their commitment to precedent (and in Thomas's and Kavanaugh's cases other things as well, but that is another matter) and cogently leads in turn to the conclusion that they knew they would not honor Roe's status as precedent when they were asked about it during their confirmation hearings...under oath.  That is not just a lack of integrity, tendentiousness or dissembling.  That is not just hypocrisy.  It is perjury.

As to the merits of the Dobbs opinion, it would seem that, since the constraints on abortion implemented by the Mississippi statue comported with Roe, the decision not to deem the statute unconstitutional would have been correct.  And Chief Justice Roberts said so when he wrote his concurring opinion.  The last lines of that opinion, which analyzes Alito's majority opinion scrupulously, reads like a dissent, and is as follows:

"I would decide the question that we granted review to answer--whether the previously recognized abortion right bars all abortion restrictions prior to viability, such that a ban on abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy is necessarily unlawful.  The answer to that question is no, and there is no need to go further to decide this case."

Technically, Roberts' decision is a concurrence in Alito's Dobbs opinion.  But in the final analysis, it is a dissent from the Roe portion of the majority's decision to indulge in something conservatives have complained about for as long as I can remember: judicial activism.  Apparently their righteous indignation was a function of who's ox was being gored.  Robert's, their leader, acknowledged that.

Your friend,

Mike