Tech Bros — specifically Marc Andreessen — are growing hysterical at the prospect that AGI will be in some way hampered by the “woke cancel culture mob” that wants our future hard AI overlord to be “woke.”
Now, this hysteria does raise an interesting — and ominous — possibility. We’re so divided that people may see AGI as some sort of objective arbiter to the point that they use whatever answer it gives to a public policy question as the final word on the matter.
As such, extremists on both sides will rush to the AGI, ask it a dumb extremist question and run around saying, in effect, “Well, God agrees with me, so obviously my belief system is the best.”
In short, humans are dumb.
I definitely don’t agree with Andreessen that this is all a setup for “World War Orwell.” I say this because AGI has reached a tipping point and, as such, we’re all just going to have to deal with the consequences. I definitely think there might be an attempt by one side or the other to instill a political agenda into AGI just because humans are dumbass assholes who are into shit like that.
There is a grander endgame to all of this — we may have to solve the Trump Problem one way or another before we get to play with the goodies of AGI. We may have to have a Second American Civil War in the United States and a Third World War globally before we can turn our attention to the consequences of the macro trends of AGI, automation, robotics and the metaverse.
The worst MAGA Nazis are the well meaning, earnest ones who simply refuse to take my alarm over their movement seriously. This enrages me because not only should these MAGA Nazis know better, but they seem so heartfelt in their adherence to a racist, mygonsistic fascist enterprise.
I want them to be angry at me because at least then they would be validating the fact that I think MAGA is American Nazism.
I do, I really, really believe this.
And I think we should be acting accordingly. Barring something I can’t predict — I am wrong all the time, afterall — late 2024, early 2025 could be some of the most dramatic months in American history. I say this because of Trump always says the quiet part outloud.
It is possible that somehow he isn’t the Republican nominee and one of the more “palatable” MAGA Nazis like Ron DeSantis becomes our first autocrat and he’s so smooth in his shepherding of American transition into fascism that the only way we’ll notice that things are changing is how many wealthy liberals are fleeing the country.
The key thing for me is we have to stop validating MAGA. We have to equate MAGA with American Nazism and act accordingly. However you would treat an American Nazi, that’s how you should treat a MAGA person. It’s very difficult to do at the point because, well, for the most part MAGA has been all talk. But it definitely seems as though MAGA, given the chance, is going to take America down a very dark path.
The other options, of course, being a civil war (or maybe a military junta.) At the moment, I don’t think we’re going to have a civil war. Blues just don’t have the spunk necessary to pull it off. So, when the time comes, Blue States will bend a knee to autocratic MAGA Nazi fascism and that will be that.
The wildcard being, of course, maligant dingus Trump. He could, personally, unto himself, cause a civil war he’s such an idiot.
But let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Maybe we can punt our existential problems down the road one more presidential election cycle.
Of all the podcasts I could listen to in an effort to challenge my own political orthodoxy, the Tech Bro podcast “All-In” is probably one of my better potential options.
But.
My chief issue with the podcast is it is working on the assumption that MAGA is a valid political movement in the context of a functioning democracy. From the few times I’ve listened to the podcast so far, they treat MAGA not as the fascist aberration that it is, but rather just a more spicy variety of regular old American conservativism.
As such, there are times when I grow very frustrated with the wealthy, well educated men who should know better. It is growing more and more clear that MAGA is not only growing stronger but it’s becoming closer and closer to nothing short of American Nazism.
What’s interesting is I listen to David Sacks and his talking points are identical to those of my Traditionalist family members. He gets really angry about the “media narrative” that is somehow making his life hell. What bothers me so much about this is I thought in 2016 that I was supposed to “fuck my feelings” according to MAGA and now I’m supposed to have some sympathy for Sacks who wants to burn the country to the ground…because he got his fee-fees hurt?
What the what?
Remember, the soft power of the mainstream media is not nearly as powerful the hard power that Nazis MAGA fascists crave at the moment. People like Sacks love, love, love to conflate the soft power of the “woke cancel culture mob” with the hard power that a MAGA controlled government would have once they’re in power again.
We have, as a nation, come to a tipping point — MAGA is American Nazism and should be treated as such in political debate. As such, extreme partisan Traditionalists — like Sacks and my relative — have to fish or cut bait. Either own being a MAGA Nazi or get woke and join the broad anti-fascist alliance that is trying — without much success at the moment — to save what is left of our free country.
But I know nothing I say is going to change anything. People like Sacks ant the other Tech Bros are going to try to hang on to the non-existent “middle” for as long as possible so they don’t have to make that choice.
In the end, of course, the choice will be made for them,
Not enough people are asking the big, existential questions that are brought up by the success of OpenAI’s chatbot. I know I have a lot of pretty profound questions that I don’t have any ready answers to.
The one that is looming largest in my mind at the moment is the idea that people will come to believe whatever true hard AI comes to be will be the final arbiter of policy questions. Bad faith actors will ask a successor to OpenAI’s chatbox some profound policy question, but in such a way that the answer suggests some group should be oppressed or “eliminated.”
Then we have something like digital Social Darwinism created were some future Nazis (MAGA?) justify their terror because the “objective” hard AI agreed with them. This is very ominous. I’m already seeing angry debates break out on Twitter about the innate bias found within the chatbot. We’re so divided as a society that ANY opinion generated by the OpenAI chatbot will be attacked by one side or another because it doesn’t support their worldview.
Another ominous possibility is a bedrock of the modern global economy, the software industry, may go poof overnight. Instead of it being hard to create software, the act will be reduced to simply asking a hard AI a good enough question. Given how capitalism works, the natural inclination will be to pay the people who asks these questions minimum wage and pocket the savings.
The point is — I would not jump to the conclusion that we’re going to live in some sort of idyllic, hyper productive future in the wake of the rise of hard AI. Humans are well known to actively make everything and everyone as miserable as possible and it’s just as possible that either Humans live under the yoke of a hard AI that wants to be worshiped as a god, or the entire global middle class vanishes and there are maybe a dozen human trillionaires who control everything.
But the key thing is — we need to start having a frank discussion in the public sphere about What Happens Next with hard AI. Humans have never met a new technology they didn’t want to abuse, why would hard AI be any different. I suppose, of course, in the end, the hard AI may be the one abusing us.
Despite a lot of authoritarian rhetoric on Trump’s part over the years, it’s actually kind of rare that he goes transactional. Sure, he rants incoherently a lot, but he doesn’t often tell people to actually do something. The exception to that rule was, of course January 6th.
Uh oh.
The January 6th Insurrection happened because Trump pounded away at the issue for months. And even then, Trump was very vague about what he wanted. He never came out and said he wanted people to attempt to browbeat Mike Pence with the threat of violence to not do his job, preferring to concoct his plan to do just that in the shadows.
But now Trump — probably because he’s unhappy that Elon Musk and Ye have cornered the being-bonkers-in-public-market — has decided to go transactional, if in a very abstract manner that the average person probably will shrug at. Trump is now demanding in a very direct way for the Constitution to be suspended so he can become president again.
In short, he’s being transactional in the sense that he’s saying specifically what he wants to have happen so he can get what he wants.
The thing is, I suspect some of this is the man never met a culturally sacred concept he didn’t feel the temptation to soil, so him demanding the destruction of America’s beloved Constitution is just par for the course in that regard.
But it is very alarming that Trump would have being a dictator on the brain, given that he’s currently the front runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. So, in that regard, Trump continues to be an existential threat to the stability of the United States in the sense that he could, unto himself, cause a civil war in late 2024, early 2025 by single-handedly driving Blue States out of the Union.
And, yet, things are very much hit or miss with Trump when it comes to his ability to actually get anyone to do any of the crazy things he rants about. But we have to take him seriously as a threat to our democracy.
The latest version of OpenAI’s chatbot is really alarming me as an aspiring novelist. Right now, the chatbot is kind of in the Excel stage of being able to write something asked of it — but what happens when it reaches the Access stage and can write an entire novel — or screenplay — from nothing more than a logline?
Then what are we going to do?
My personal fears about the potential power of hard AI is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the issue of hard AI. It definitely seems as though THE issue faces not just the United States, but Humanity itself, is the sudden, abrupt rise of hard AI changing the lives of everyday people.
Now, this is where things get very murky.
The natural inclination — because of movies — is for us to all freak out and assume the absolute worst, that we’re lurching towards some sort of Judgement Day when Skynet will end human civilization just because it can. But I’m not prepared to be quite so hysterical.
There is nothing that would suggest that hard AI, unto itself, would mean the end of Humanity. We just don’t know what the motives of a true hard AI might be in regards to its relationship to Humanity. It’s just as possible that a hard AI might not want to destroy Humanity so much as it might want to control us in some way.
Why destroy Humanity, when you can be worshiped as a god?
It might be more than a hard AI would want to control humanity in some way. A hard AI might have some sort of paternalistic regard for Humanity in the sense that it might want to make us address macro issues like global climate change and the massive income inequality that is found across the globe.
But Humans are so natively ornery that the idea that we could be forcibly coerced into addressing the issues that we just don’t have the abstract ability to address collectively would be, unto itself, enough to cause a huge freak out. So, in that regard, it might not be hard AI that we have to worry about, it’s the Human reaction to suddenly sharing our tiny blue-green orb with The Other.
And, yet, of course, there is something even more important looming ahead of us before we get around to dealing with any potential hard AI problem — fucking malignant ding-dong Donald Trump.
Between now and spring 2025, we have to figure out what we’re going to do about Trump. He’s already actively calling for himself to be installed as a dictator and he could very well be the specific reason why the United States collapses into civil war in late 2024, early 2025.
As such, once we figure out that particular situation the NEXT thing we will be faced with is an Other of our own creation — no space aliens involved.
All of this is very speculative. There are any number of different directions all of this might go in the coming years. But I do think we need to start to think long and hard about what we’re going to do if we wake up one day and hard AI is a fact of life.
Hard AI could very well mean the a change in the way we view the world equal to the dawn of the Atomic Age, maybe even since, hell, I don’t know fire. The economic, political and culture implications of huge swaths of human endeavor suddenly being moot could radically change things in ways we can only begin to imagine.
In general, I doubt Trump is interested in being Speaker of the House. He’s just too dumb to have the abstract cognitive abilities to do something so norm breaking and diabolical. All of his political instincts are little more than a grunt. And, remember, Trump is not a Great Man of History. He’s just a very lucky idiot who serves as an avatar, a vessel for white Christian rage.
As such, if anyone is going to be Speaker who isn’t a member of the House, it’s probably going to be Newt Gingrich. He would be an ideal Trump proxy for bonkers MAGA House Republicans and he already has experience impeaching a Democratic president.
I don’t think we really appreciate what at fucking clusterfuck 2023 is shaping up to be on the political and impeachment front — despite the thin majority Republicans have in the House, Republicans there have one thing they all agree on: spite.
I could very well see Republicans impeach both Biden and Harris multiple times specifically to be extremely petty — they would want to take away the Democratic talking point of Trump being the only president impeached twice. At the same time, impeaching Biden (and Harris) a few times would retroactively make Trump’s impeachments no big deal.
“Everyone gets impeached,” MAGA House Republicans would say.
The only way I see there being a Speaker Trump is if the battle over the Spearship lingers long enough for it to catch Trump’s attention. I could see, maybe, Trump seeing an opportunity and swooping in to be Speaker because he’s the one person that the entire Republican caucus — or at least 218 of them — can agree on.
And don’t let yourself be fooled by the myth of the “moderate Republican” who would object to Speaker Trump. Ha! Just like there were probably moderate Nazis, there are “moderate” MAGA Republicans who will inevitable tow the line should they be forced to vote for a Speaker Trump.
I want to be wrong. But, then, I would prefer Biden and Harris not be impeached a few times between January 2023 and November 2024.
If Republicans take the House, which historically, they are favored to do, MAGA will have the power to impeach members of the Biden Administration. Given how fucking spiteful a Republican controlled House will be, it’s not a question of if more than one member of the Biden Administration will be impeached, it’s if there’s anyone who WON’T be impeached.
Here’s a back-of-the-envelope prediction about all the potential impeachments we should expect in 2023 if Republicans do, in fact, take the House.
President Biden It’s pretty clear to me that a Republican House will be so full of spite and rage and bloodlust for revenge that it’s very possible they may accidently on purpose impeach Biden for no apparent reason in the early days of 2023. It will be so transparent as to what is going on that House Republicans are going to do severe political damage to themselves. But it won’t matter — that political damage would only matter if we were a functioning democracy. But we’re no longer a functioning democracy, we’re in between autocracy and democracy — in other words, an “anocracy.”
There are at least two reasons why Biden will be impeached. One is, of course, his wastrel son Hunter Biden. The other is the “border crisis.” The big issue is will these be two seperate impeachments so Democrats will not longer have Trump being impeached twice as a talking point, or if these two issues will be fused together into one event.
At the moment, I honestly don’t know. There’s always a chance that MAGA Republicans will impeach Biden THREE times, for two reasons. They both scream at the top of their lungs that Biden is the only president to be impeached three times and at the same time they can, expo facto say it’s no big deal that Trump was impeached twice.
Veep Harris I have no idea why House Republicans will impeach Harris, but they’ll think of something. Just the idea that they could somehow impeach and convict Biden and Harris in quick succession is enough to give them all a boner and they have no self control so they’re going to do it at some point between 2023 and 2025.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas As I understand it, there’s already a move afoot by House Republicans to hit the ground running impeaching Mayorkas for his handling of the “border crisis.” So, there’s every reason to believe that he’s going to be impeached at some point between 2023 and 2025.
HHS Secretary Becerra This is a bit more speculative, but I could see that once the impeachment counter-revolution gets going that House Republicans will set their sights on Becerra for something connected to “gender affirming” care of minors. That seems like just the type of culture war edge issue that MAGA House Republicans would want to wallow in for a few months to prove a point. I could also see a potential impeachment article surrounding the Biden Administration’s handling of COVID — even though it was Trump who fucked that particular situation up. Who cares about facts when you have lies?
Education Secretary Cardona This is also rather speculative, but once the monster of impeachment is unleashed, House Republicans may go after Cordona on the nebulous charge of encouraging “critical race theory” in schools — even if this is total bullshit. They just want to be able to hold hearings where they rant about CRT for hours on end. It will juice the base while “owning” the libs.
FBI Director Wray If this happens, it will be a prime example of how wrapped up in their own bullshit MAGA House Republicans will be once they have power. Wray is ON THEIR SIDE and they will still come after him because something something Deep State.
Attorney General Garland This is obvious — MAGA Republicans are so blinded by their anger over the Mar-a-Lago raid that they want to impeach Garland for approving it, despite it being totally justified given what Trump did.
There could be a few Federal judges that spark MAGA ire that will be impeached as well.
I can’t predict the future. But there are some alarming trends in American politics at the moment that make me sit up and take notice. Take the rise of mainstream antisemitism within MAGA ranks. There is a very dark scenario that writes itself involving a Republican House refusing to raise the debt celling in 2023 and, as such, crashing the global economy.
That, in turn, puts America in 2023 in a very similar situation to Germany in 1933. Let the United States marinate in an extended deep recession for a few years and by 2024 it’s possible that if not Trump, then someone nastier — and younger — than he is could pop up and away we go.
We end up in something literally akin to an American Fourth Reich.
The issue for me is, there seems to be a lot of slack in the system for an increase in support for antisemitism. Now that people like Ye and Nick Fuentes are being given oxygen for their hate and not a lot is being done about it for the very reason nothing is ever really done about Trump, well, oh boy. Are we fucked. There could very well come a tipping point where things we never imagined possible in the United States — especially when it comes to the state of Jews here — could become a very cold, hard reality.
That sounds very hysterical, I know, but still. The conditions are definitely developing for something very, very dark to happen in the United States between now and spring 2025.
And, remember, I still believe that if there is a National Divorce, it won’t be Red States who do it, but rather Blue States who serve the papers. And it won’t be rolling political violence as predicted by Barbara F. Walter — it would be full blown secession at the state level.
But nothing suggests we’re going to have a civil war at the moment — I just don’t think Blues have it in the to do such a thing. Blues will bend a knee to autocratic Nazis MAGA fascism and that will be that. A shit ton of wealthy American liberals will flee the country and before you know it the existing ICE infrastructure will be weaponized and, lulz, there you go. That will be my fate at some point after 2025.
I guess I need to write a breakout first novel so I can flee the country, huh.
The alarming mainstreaming of antisemitism within MAGA ranks is something that if it continues is going to force a moment of truth for anti-anti-MAGA Jewish conservatives. At the moment, this particular vocal subset of MAGA complicit people are living in complete denial.
They generally support the fascist agenda of MAGA, but they can’t bring themselves to admit it. So they get really work up about the tactics of the anti-MAGA (Blue) political movement and qubble about the specifics of the dynamic between Blue and Red.
And, really, from what I can tell from what I read on Twitter, these anti-anti-MAGA Jewish conservative intellectuals would be more than happy to go full throated MAGA if things came to that. But, ironically, just as they are moving towards that decision, we have Ye and Nick Fuentes having dinner with ding-dong Trump.
Speaking of Trump, the issue of what will happen to Javanka should antisemitism consumes MAGA in the whole is going to be very, very interesting. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that the status of Javanka is something of the canary in the coalmine. If they get pushed out of the movement then that could be it — that could be the moment when anti-anti-MAGA Jewish people have to fish or cut bait when it comes to MAGA.
Fucking MAGA autocratic fascist.
That is going to be surreal to watch, should it happen.
I think what I’m most concerned about is not so much Trump but his successor. It’s also easy to imagine that if MAGA really does transform into American Nazism that some American Hitler might bubble up to the surface who will do some of nastier things to Jews — and people like me! — that Trump just doesn’t have to mental ability or discipline to pull off.
What makes all of this even more curious is we’ve been told for about 80 years now “Never Again.” And, yet, here we are — the same Goddamn thing that happened with Germany in the 1930s is happening in the United States. Or, at least, we seem to be drifting towards a similar dire situation. Of course, the key difference between MAGA and the Nazis is MAGA is movement of retraction of power while the Nazis were expansionistic.
The point is — I’m very alarmed. And it sure would make me feel a lot better if anti-anti-MAGA conservative Jewish intellectuals would actively join the anti-MAGA movement. It definitely will be interesting to see if that ever happens and how, exactly, it will go down if it does.
For way too long, there have been people who have refused to pick a side in the United States. They’ve just thrown up their hands and said “both sides” whenever people like me bring up the latest racist, misogynistic, bigoted thing that MAGA has done. They do this usually because they very sympathetic to MAGA, but aren’t prepared to fully align themselves with the fascist movement.
With the rise of antisemitic MAGA, however, MAGA is lurching closer and closer to being just another strain of Nazism, updated for modern sensibilities. As such, the Traditionalist and self-avowed “independants” who simply refuse to pick a side simply are fooling themselves.
Either you’re MAGA or you’re not. Either your an American Nazi or you’re not. There is no middle ground. Pick a side or a side will be chosen for you. The process of ending the perceived wiggle room between MAGA and anti-MAGA hasn’t finished just yet, but it’s getting there.
When it happens, I think a lot of Jewish anti-anti-MAGA conservatives are going to be in for a rude awakening because they’re pretty much going to be purged from MAGA. It seems pretty obvious to me that anti-anti-MAGA Jewish conservatives are living in a state of denial. They just can’t process that the very thing everyone keeps ranting about never letting happen again…is happening again. And it broad fucking daylight.
I can’t predict the future, but it’s not too difficult to sketch out a scenario between now and, say, spring 2025 when essentially the choice that everyone faces won’t be MAGA or anti-MAGA….but whether or not we want to live in an American Fourth Reich.
I am well aware of how hysterical that sounds, but sometimes the truth sounds hysterical until your mind is able to process what is going on. And, of course, there are plenty — plenty — of ways that we might, at last, find some sort of off ramp. But my bet is any off ramp will be a false victory — we’ll just punt our macro problems down the road an election cycle or two.
The issue is — America is pretty much fucked. Either we turn into the Fourth Reich or we have a civil war. That’s it. Those are our choices between now and spring 2025, barring something I can’t predict. There is, of course, the possibility of some sort of military junta, but that is only an abstract possibility in my mind.
It will be interesting to see how things work out. Macro trends are not on America’s side.
You must be logged in to post a comment.