Sunday, September 15, 2024

Are we making new kinds of 'ecosystems'? Are AIs top predators? And what about ART?

Let's take a step back and look at the context for life on EARTH™ and where Artificial Intelligences may fit in it all.

What will we see as we develop ever more complex societies of interacting cyber-entities?

(Some of the images that follow are from keynotes that I delivered to the Beneficial AGI Conference in Panama City (see pod-followup) and to the big RSA Conference in May.)


== The truly big picture on cyber-entities ==

For starters, for well-or-ill, we are creating a New Ecosystem on Earth, one that's equivalent to the current living system on our planet. 


The older one is a 4 billion year-old process that passes energy along a gradient. A slope of degrading free energy that starts with SUNLIGHT feeding PLANTS which are then consumed by HERBIVORES, which in turn give up distilled and concentrated resources to CARNIVORES, who in turn feed PARASITES. And all of the above feed the fungi and other thanatotrophs, when they die, restoring nutrients to the soil. 


All of that is familiar to you, of course. But what we often neglect to note is how this is not a closed system. All of that consuming generates entropy which cannot be allowed to accumulate! Fortunately, the biosphere is flushed free of most entropy, which escapes into space as thermal radiation, or infrared, allowing the planet to cool enough for fresh, high quality sunlight to do its work.



Okay, much or most, or all of that you already knew. So, what does that 4 billion year natural ecosystem have to do with AI?

I posit a new ecosystem: one that's based - instead of directly on sunlight - upon  ELECTRICITY - MEMORY SPACE - CLOCK CYCLES - DATA.   


We have already seen parts of the new ecosystem emulating the old one's key component - living organisms. For a decade there have been free-floating algorithms, wandering and replicating all over the Internet. (A topic for another time.) These appear to share many traits with the unicellular micro-organisms that filled Earth's seas during the first 3 billion years or so.


See how many parallels the new ecosystem of voltages and bits parallels the old one, again, relying on steep slopes of usable free-energy.




Note that this will include 'parasites'. It can be argued these are already preying on us via memes. And there's the same - and growing - problem of expelling entropy (waste heat) into space before we broil.

Speak up, in comments, if you see a flaw in this parallelism. Or if you are offended to see human game-players and tic-tockers portrayed as the equivalent of fungi and thanatotrophs, supping off the excretions of sophisticated artificial entities and contributing little, other than waste heat that must go somewhere!



== Following this reasoning... where do productive, sapient humans fit in all this? ==


Well, for one thing, we should recall that right now, organic human beings (orgs) still have huge power over this new ecosystem, controlling the creation and distribution of electricity flows, chips, and memory space... 


...though though we appear to have less and less ability to control flows of the other basic food source... data


If we were united and open, we as a civilization could use this control to guide outcomes. We could allocate these resources to cyber entities by choice and by regulation, doling them out by fiat, as the EU folks seem to want to do. 


But alas, that kind to top-controlled allocation of resources will work about as well as it did under 6000 years of feudalism... in other words, very poorly.


Or else, we could try the enlightenment approach!  The tools and tricks and abilities that we developed across the last two centuries, with gradually rising sophisication. Those methods start with making things relatively transparent and then using incentives to get cyber entities competing against one-another, in ways that benefit us. 


Those incentives could be rewarding pr-social AIs with clock cycles, energy or memory space... all of which such entities need, in order to reproduce!  And that is the grist of evolution. In other words, we control the sun. For a while. So let's choose to shine it upon those AIs who choose to side with us.


One thing we could do. Just like we do with humans who seek our trust, or who seek to do commerce with us. We can refuse to do business with those who don't show verifiable ID.


More on that later.



== So how will this affect art? ==


Okay, here's an interview I gave a reporter for Vanity Fair:


Do you believe AI may help to "democratize" certain artistic and creative endeavors, particularly those that have traditionally been available only to a handful of aspirants due either to prohibitive resource requirements an/or intentional gatekeeping (e.g filmmaking, music production, animation)?


There will always be expert castes, whose abilities - in the arts or practical skills - allow them to rise in the esteem of neighbors and society. The path of merit and accomplishment was always one option, even when a vast majority of nations were dominated by 'noble' families and lines of inheritance brats. 


But which abilities? At any metro or subway stop there's often a musician busker playing an instrument for tossed change, with skill that would have garnered acclaim, back in eras when music was rare. Will the kids who now proclaim "I'll be a YouTuber or TikTok star!" achieve their dreams, when AI simulants can take hilarious pratfalls that no actual human could survive?


If so, do you believe AI's democratization of such artistic endeavors would result in a net positive or a net negative for how we consume and appreciate art?


Authors like me flatter ourselves that we can team up with software agents that will ease the laborious torment of writing while leaving us in charge of creating characters and deeply-moving prose.  But humans may be the ones demoted to mere helper status... unless we can make arrangements for what Reid Hoffman calls "augmented combinations" of organic and inorganic minds, greater than the sum of the parts 


Similarly, do you believe the democratization of art via AI would result in a net positive or a net negative for those who create art?


Many professions are 'middle class.' For example, a skilled engineer or teacher is unlikely to ever be very poor or very rich, but will in all probability have some kind of mid-level comfort and security. The arts are more like primitive feudal societies, a steep pyramid with a teensy elite, a few more who make a decent living... and masses who yearn for artistic recognition. Modern self-publishing tools have enabled far more aspiring writers to 'get published.' But thriving at it is still the same old mix of skill, hard work, contacts and luck (See my "Advice to Rising Writers")


So far, in many realms, from Radiology to chess, we see teams of human and AI doing better than either does, alone. Supposing that continues, an aspiring artist or creator will want to be very choosy which model of AI to partner with!  Be aware that the AIs may be picky, too!


Who stands to lose and who stands to gain as AI technologies are increasingly incorporated into creative industries such as the movie-making industry or the music industry?


For a decade I've predicted that the 'animated storyboard' will become an art form in its own right. Take an excellent script, a skilled photographer, a musician and charismatic voice actors, and you should be able to do a full-length, action- (or emotion-) packed feature or TV episode with all the right beats, even if the animated figures onscreen clearly 'aren't real.' Directors would view such a system as a director's tool. Producers would view such a system as a producer's tool. But the one who'll be truly empowered, I believe, would be the writer, whose script is being reified by the small team using the program. And will we need voice actors? That could very likely be a legal matter!  


Well, that's what I thought, and it's still a crucial idea. But then, will the AIs do the writing, too? Never!


Does the best art require a human touch, or could artificial intelligence theoretically create art that is just as entertaining and evocative as any that humans have made?


So far? Absolutely!  The so-called artificial 'intelligences' are (as-yet) nothing of the sort. They are very intensive, probabilistic-iterative auto-complete programs. There is no way there even can be anything sapient, under the hood. But they will seem so to millions, easily passing the old 'Turing Tests' and fooling us, especially when we aren't very wary.  


Eventually, there will be actual AI! The question is: will we even be able to tell the difference when it happens?  I talk about that in my WIRED article that breaks free of the three standard 'AI-formats' that can only lead to disaster, suggesting instead a 4th. That AI entities can only be held accountable if they have individuality... even 'soul'... 


Do you believe there is anything ethically profane about the replacement of artists such as actors, writers, directors, and editors with artificial intelligence, more so than the similar replacement of any non-creative job by AI (e.g accounting, law work, data analysis)?


Our top responsibility is to the world and to our descendants. Frankly, I am unbothered by the prospect that some of those heirs will be made largely of metal and silicon, even breathing hard vacuum as they explore planets and stars on our... on my... behalf. What do I care about is doing my job - teaching them (and our regular/organic-style children, too) how to be decent people, with expansively curious and inclusive attitudes. 


If that happens, then they will care about us old-style farts.... as we care for older generations who helped bring us to this era of marvels, when we had our own brief turn at creating wonders.  



== Will our descendants be decent folks? == 


If my heirs - organic and inorganic - are better and smarter than me, fine!  So long as they are decent folks, who enjoy beauty and fairness and puzzles to solve and diversity to appreciate... and an occasional corny joke.


In which case, they may use all those super brains to act in ways that make us proud. That is the one desirable 'soft landing,' as far as I'm concerned.


Sunday, September 08, 2024

Science Fiction updates & news

Leading off: my brilliant colleague Ted Chiang has a featured article in the New Yorker about whether A.I. will ever be able to creatively do art. He starts by referring to a 1953 Roald Dahl story - The Great Automatic Grammatizator - about a story-writing automaton. (See below for references to other tales from that era... and even the 1890s... that were far more plausibly prophetic.)

"Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium. But the creators of traditional novels, paintings, and films are drawn to those art forms because they see the unique expressive potential that each medium affords. It is their eagerness to take full advantage of those potentialities that makes their work satisfying, whether as entertainment or as art."

Hmm... inspiring and even moving. Though on a practical level, in fact, I agree with only a few of Ted's confident assertions.  Still, he is always worth a read.


== Sci fi news for youse ==

And now a few Brin-nouncemnts. The show "The Science in the Fiction” interviewed me a week after they had on Avi Loeb. So, you can bet that first contact scenarios, Fermi Paradox stuff and plausible types of Alien Probes in the Solar System all came up.  

And also yeah, sure, also those dang UFOs and the folks who have dredged up that tiresome mythology twice per decade, since I was ten. (See my own much more plausible notion about those "tic-tacs." Someone tell Stephen Colbert?)

One thing I'm sure that some of you will takeaway: “Brin sure can talk! Take a breath for some air, David!”  Well, all of those topics fascinate me... pretty much my one common trait with Avi.

You can find this episode of The Science in the Fiction: "David Brin on First Contact in Existence" on Apple Podcasts - or on Spotify.


Moving on to all you gamers out there. Uh, maybe this will impress you?  ;-) “The Postman by David Brin influenced the unique landscape and settlements in Fallout , and its themes can be seen throughout the game.”


A far more important announcement? Phantasia Press is about to issue the very first ever hardcover of Sundiver - the book that launched the Uplift Universe. 


Great cover art and interiors by Jim Burns! He and I had to scribble a fair number of signature pages... oh, and Rob Sawyer, who wrote an introduction! Beautiful edition. Watch for the publication announcement in a couple of months.



== And a little bit of prescient sci fi? ==


Want better old stories than the Roald Dahl cited by Ted Chiang?


Truly ancient Sci Fi is sometimes uncannily predictive! Take Fritz Leiber's "The Creature from Cleveland Depths" which was prescient about AI smartphones and their effects. Almost as much so as Murray Leinster’s "A Logic Named Joe." The latter, also appearing in the 1940s, was prophetic about PCs and especially today's learning systems who hallucinate reasons to help the user fabricate or fabulate... or even commit crimes!


And here’s a link about Isaac's clever story “Strikebreaker,” which now is redolent with this particular news item about a small town that abuses its civil servant and comes to regret it: “Clerk Denied Time Off Quits - Entire Town Shuts Down.”


But if you truly want undiscovered gems of sci fi prescience...  this is way cool! A podcast interview with two terrific academics concerning one of the ‘lost’ founders of modern science fiction – 1880s San Francisco 'hard SF' author Robert Duncan Milne – who they are in-effect resurrecting from obscurity in a soon published book. Co-authored by University of Dundee scholar Keith Williams - and Ari Brin! Listen on the daringly named ‘cast “Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever.”  



 == Erudition about Science Fiction ==


If you want to become comprehensively erudite about the 200+ year history of the literary genre of thought and possibilities… try The Evolution of Science Fiction Webinar Series, by Tom Lombardo (based on his multi-volume History of Science Fiction books). With over thirty individual videos, providing a comprehensive history of science fiction from ancient to contemporary times. Covering science fiction literature, cinema/TV, art, comics, and the evolving science fiction community, along with numerous important writers and their works. The webinars also examine the power and value of science fiction, its influence on the modern world, and the impact of intellectual and cultural trends on the evolution of science fiction. 

On Big Think, Guy Harrison offers 31 sci-fi quotes that offer real-world wisdom, excerpted from his recently published collection, Damn You, Entropy! 1,001 of the Greatest Science Fiction Quotes, including one of mine from Existence: “For all its beauty, honesty, and effectiveness at improving the human condition, science demands a terrible price—that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not.”  


Oh, I donated/contributed a story to a benefit anthology of SFF stories and art, to benefit Ukraine. To Ukraine, With Love, is now available for purchase!



== Minor Brin Notes ==


LOCUS reports a small matter about me and my alma mater, Caltech - which has  awarded me this year's Distinguished Alumni Award, to be presented on campus in October. And I must say it came as a complete surprise, given the astounding folks who were just in my own class, there!


Ah, but give this Audible release a listen: The River of Time… my first collection of short stories, narrated wonderfully by my friend, the charismatic Stephen Mendel! And yes, one of the stories is a Hugo winner and a couple others were nominees. And nothing would go better with your commute! Tempted, but not quite sure? Take a look at the YouTube book trailer for The River of Time!


Oh, a friend just made a cute connection. Remember Foundation's Triumph? The final canonical book in the marvelous SF universe created by Isaac Asimov? (Wherein I tied all of Isaac’s loose ends, much to the pleasure of Janet Asimov.)  It was the final, stand-alone novel in the “Second Foundation Trilogy.” Greg Benford’s tale portrayed Hari Seldon as a young man, Greg Bear’s showed him in middle age and mine – well...


... Foundation's Triumph dealt with the final two weeks of Hari Seldon's life, after the Foundation departs for Terminus... and his greatest adventure of all.   


No more sequels. But a prequel? What of the cute (groaner) connection to… Young Seldon?  Oooog.


Tuesday, September 03, 2024

Reagan would spit in these "republicans'" eyes!

I'm fatigued with modern Democrats' incompetence at the art of polemics. While the Lincoln Project lands some zingers - and I have modest hopes for the earthy wit of Tim Walz - there appears to be no one on that side who's able to do what Sherman did in an earlier phase of this ongoing U.S. Civil War... which is corner the confederacy, so that saner members might look around, smack their foreheads and snap out of the trance!

I offer such tactics, elsewhere. But here's a doozy!  I found it while sorting through old papers my brother stored for me. One memento of the last century stood out. A political flyer from Ronald Reagan's 1970 campaign to be re-elected governor of California.

This special, midweek posting reprints pages from that 1970 flyer!  And first thing you'll notice is a lot more text - words and information - than modern politicians trust their audiences to actually read, nowadays.  How sad for us.

(Then again, the few of you who come by here are readers, so...)

Oh, I want you all to read these excerpts! Because while Reagan's positions were conservative, in the context of that time - (you liberals will find much to disagree with!*) - you will also be shocked (shocked!) by how mainstream and well... progressive... were so many of RR's other talking points.

What it shows... especially to any conservatives who are scanning here... is that the consensus stances of the right wing of the Republican Party were hugely different back then, than those of today's MAGA-ism. In many cases diametrically opposite!

If you are too lazy to read the detailed lists of Reagan's bragged accomplishments that sound... well... liberal, at least scan the TITLES to each page! Back then it was consensus among even right wing republicans that the state should protect the helpless, improve the environment and reduce pollution, develop new cleaner energy supplies, invest more in education and universities and public transport/rail, reduce drug costs, protect the consumer, and so on!


And that's just Reagan as Governor in 1970. How about the President who later confronted an aggressive Soviet Kremlin? Do you think he would have any truck with today's KGB-loving GOP, its adoration of Kim Jong Un and Vlad Putin's cadre of 5000 "ex" commissars, now spreading a new Evil Empire? 

Or today's MAGA all-out war vs all fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror?  Ronnie would be outraged!


TO BE CLEAR: I still have many grudges toward Reagan, especially his betrayal of America during the Iranian Hostage Crisis. And ignoring the AIDS crisis, making it far worse. Union-busting. And his goddam-insane Drug War! And sending us down the road of never-ever-correct Supply-Side voodoo 'economics.'

Still, show these pages to others! Read passages aloud to your MAGA aunts. (Your uncles are hopeless, of course.) LOOK at what Ronald Reagan bragged about achieving in his first term as California governor!  And remember that California was far more conservative then. And RR was from the party's 'far-right.' 

You may need to copy these jpegs onto your desktop, to read them. But read them!


Liberals today may snort at some 'conservative' positions, like school choice. Fine, there were then - and remain - legit arguments. (And forced school busing was not a wise position, either!)  Again, I never claimed Reagan wasn't Reagan!

Still, on balance the campaign brags from this 1970 campaign flyer show a Reagan who would hate Trumpism! It is today's MAGAs and Kremlin-lovers who are the RINOs!  Republicans in Name Only.


 

* All right, I admit it. I did not scan-in and include here every page of the campaign flyer. The page Crisis on Campus, for example, was totally law-n-orderly hostile toward the youth rebels who were then raging at universities. (Remember 1970 at all? Nixon? Cambodia? Vietnam? The then-recent, wretched horrors of 1968? OMG it's a wonder we survived.) It shows that campus protests and even occasional mini riots are nothing new - sometimes with righteous cause and sometimes driven by sanctimony-fetishism. RR's reflexive hostility - when campus protest truly was righteous - showed his dark side.

So? Again, I don't claim Reagan wasn't Reagan!  

What I do claim is that he wouldn't have anything to do with the monstrous, undead, vampire were-elephant that has taken over the Party of Lincoln, on behalf of the same Kremlin-led evil empire Reagan despised, masked only by a few altered symbols and Czarist lapel pins. Reagan would recognize Putin's obvious KGB scheme for what it is, and he'd denouce fools who fall for it. 

He'd also recognize Trump as a painted carnival barker and traitor-monster.

Hey, I don't like Liz Cheney either!  But I admit... she's an American.

Okay now, this next one is unbelievable! Efficient mass transit and rail service to augment highways! Safe cars and roads! "A well-balanced transportation system." And more...


What's to be made of all this? Just a silly old guy (me), rummaging mementos and yattering about old-timey, wordy political flyers that bear no relevance to our republic's current fight for its life?

Bah and posh and fiffle-faffle! Dig it, Ronald Reagan still has redolence with many of our neighbors!  THIS is what he stood for, before he went senile. And maybe 2/3 of it was moderate-consensus... American

Consensus that today's gone-mad GOP now undermines at all levels and in all ways, attacking all the ways that America actually became -- and continues becoming -- great.

You - yes, you - could use this!

Go and do so.


Saturday, August 31, 2024

Announcing TASAT is a go! ... and curing the Anti-Modernity Cult.

First an announcement:

TASAT is here!  Are you a sci fi nerd who remembers lots of old stories, plot twists and such? Ever wish you could apply all that expertise to something useful?

How about a project that leverages your memory bank of old stories, toward a slim but real chance of saving the world?  

We're spinning out (at last!) a beta of TASAT or There's A Story About That, a community where scifi plot-geeks like you -- (or maybe (one day) some desperate government agency!) -- get to ask: 

"What if this particular strange thing ever happens? (Maybe something like it is happening now!) Has anyone ever thought it through, in a story, across the last century of science fiction tales?"

We've designed TASAT with that question in mind. Want to see how it works? Visit TASAT.org... and maybe sign on to be one of the beta members. (We've designed it to be a minimal use of time!) And maybe - just maybe - your recollection of that obscure Andre Norton or Pohl or Vance twist might someday save the world!


== Can we defeat the defeatist cult against modernity? == 

Okay let's get back to our politically-fraught year, starting first with something fundamental.

Ensure your basic rights! Check your voter registration, especially if you live in a red state, where lots of suppression and cheat-schemes to purge voter rolls are already going on. Check several times!

And yes, in Polemical Judo I have a further recommendation: Because the Grand Cheat of gerrymandering has rendered the General Election moot in many congressional districts, the smart move is to re-register into whichever party rules the district you live in! That lets you vote in the primary, the only election that matters anymore, when it comes to Congress or the Statehouse. 

Even if it means holding your nose and accepting a label that you loathe, you'll reclaim at least a part of what was robbed from you. Moreover it will protect your registration from being purged! Word to the wise?


== Seriously? This flies with... anybody? ==

Former U.S. President Donald Trump blasted the scale of U.S. support for Ukraine and said that if he is reelected in November he would immediately "have that settled."


Sure, big boy. Pretty much everyone by now can see: there are zero differences on overall agenda between today’s Foxite/MAGAs and Vladimir Putin -- who, along with his Kremlin staffed by 5000 “ex” commissars -- grew up reciting Leninist catechisms, five times a day.  Only then they swapped their hammer-sickle pins for czarist symbols -- and suddenly the U.S. right fell in love with them! (Like Don and Kim.)


Dig it. Putin called the fall of the USSR ‘history’s worst tragedy.’ He openly swore revenge  vs. all US fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service …

…to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror… the heroes who are now raged against by Kremlin stooges in the USA.  Putin’s quisling Fifth Column in America.  Today’s commies.


Again. Today's 'conservatives' rail against... the FBI?  The Intel agencies and military? Now, who would want this situation more than giggling Putin? Tell me how the MAGA enemies list differs, even slightly from that of the slightly relabeled KGB?


Today's GOP is Vlad's dream come true.  And we know who the real commies are.



== Immature speculation? ==


Though one wonders about competence when the recent Trump rally shooter climbed to a roof in plain sight of shouting onlookers. Never mind that. From initial appearances (“he was bullied every day”) the fellow is most likely just another white weasel with a gun and desperation to be somebody. 


Which is one more argument for my longtime suggestion: that dopey, attention seeking monsters should be punished in the best way, by name-erasure. See my "Erastratos Effect" proposal.


Bill Maher also riffed on this, less informatively but with wider circulation. 


(In comments I will cite a scenario for the barely-touching 'graze' wound suffered by Donald Trump. Physically this alternative is vastly more plausible than such a grazing bullet wound would be. But is it more plausible as a real-life theory? No, I think not. Still, a close examination of the wound...?)



== A Sunflower for Ukraine! == 


Oh, but here’s my response to DT’s proposed – Putin-ordered – betrayal of Ukraine. See the sunflower I grew? Close to 6 meters (20 feet) tall. Slava Ukraine! Long live the brave and free Ukrainian people. 

And may peace and freedom and light come to all Russians, as well. 

Which may happen, if WE choose sanity, first.



== What’s fundamental about the treason alliance against the Enlightenment Experiment… and hence America ==


The confederate coalition against everything the Enlightenment West stands for has two components. The oligarchs who own the movement … and the masses of what we now call 'MAGAs' and who Robert Heinlein described as ‘know nothings.’


The first component consists of the elites who control – or who think they control - today’s undead monster that’s taken over the Party of Lincoln. These elites are a mélange of inheritance brats, casino mafiosi, hedge lords, incest CEOs, "ex" commissars and openly avowed commissars (differing only in their lapel pins) and murder sheiks. All of them are united in one goal: restoring 6000 years of dismal feudalism. They’ve had a lot of victories along this path. For example, the chief outcome of “Supply Side” never-ever-once-correct “voodoo economics” has been skyrocketing wealth disparities around the globe. Now surging past French Revolution levels. (Learn the word 'tumbrels,' guys.)


Despite their many victories, these elites know that world citizens could wake up, at any moment. They must complete their conversion of the globe back to inheritance status before all the world’s young people fully acculturate with rambunctious individualism. Moreover, the oligarchs know there is one major obstacle blocking their full takeover. 


Rule of law, enforced equally and governed by facts. Hence, in order to achieve their goal, they must suppress the defenders of fact-based rule-of-law. The nerd castes. 


They must stir all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on Terror. (All the western strengths who Vlad Putin openly blames for the fall of the USSR.)


Which brings up the second component of the anti-modernity cult. This one is vastly larger… the MAGA /confederate ground troops in their millions. They share the same agenda, only in the opposite order. Their top wish (as Robert Heinlein explains) is suppression of nerds, not out of self-interested rivalry, like the oligarch masters, but out of basic, cultural hate. (Not all of it unjustified!  As I describe elsewhere.) 

The want to humiliate the university, fact-wielding smartypants! And in order to get that, they’ll gladly help the oligarchy achieve restored feudal rule by inheritance brats.  

Same goals, in slightly different order.


I just explained for you the devil’s bargain between our would-be lords and their vassals. It is exactly the same as in 1778 when Cornwallis went South to find more tories who supported the King… or in the 1860s when a million poor whites marched off to fight and die for their plantation lord class oppressors. Or when Appalachians - who owe FDR and the Democrats absolutely freaking everything - now spit in the eyes of those who helped them out of Deliverance hell.

As Heinlein describes, it's a cultural thing. And yes, you nerds out there simply cannot grasp why – using facts and logic and appeals to common decency and progress – you can accomplish nothing against this devil’s alliance.



== Notes from Civil War Phase 8 ==


Miscellaneous addendum to the first part of this missive... another of my wager challenges. This one demanding MAGA support their incessant jeremiads against universities.  And wow, on social media that campaign is at full throttle!


Sean T. Smith's novel Tears of Abraham is a terrific and scary novel about a US civil war, far better than the recent movie Civil War, by Alex Garland. I touted it before and will again. 


In the wake of Donald Trump's ear-clipping, if anyone, anyone, tries to accuse Dems of “inflammatory language” – read to them aloud from this volcanically horrific call by Alex Jones for this own leader’s violent demise. Then demand a wager with your MAGA, whether his side only spews violent yowlings ten times as much, as opposed to (actually) 100x, than democrats or even ANTIFA. 

And bet over compared death rates wrought by their cult vs those few (any?) actually caused by US leftists.

Or by vaccines.


== Want even deeper fundamentals? ==


 My general political essay in four parts is about - among many things -- the insipid/lobotomizing left-right “axis”- how history betrayed competitive creativity...


...and what libertarianism might look like, if it ever grew up.


Political Totemism and the Danger of Metaphors

Part 1 followed by....

Part 2.  and Part 3.  and Part 4.



== A script for a killer advert ==


Hey Lincoln Project!  Want a script for a potentially powerful ad vs. Mafia Don?

 

   2014 – He promised proof – “Next week!” - that Obama was born in Kenya. Week after week, for years. Then stopped. Did any of you ever ask… “Well?” 


   2016 – He promised “great financials!” and tax returns “as soon as the audit is done!” There was no audit. And it’s been 8 years. 


   2017 – He vowed to end terrible Obamacare and replace it with “wonderful, perfect healthcare!” A plan that he promised to reveal “in a couple of weeks.” He repeated that promise every month for years… then went silent when Obamacare proved popular and worked! Have YOU ever seen Trump’s Great New Healthcare Plan? Has anyone? Maybe ask for it now?


   2017 - He promised to “Build the Wall!” Republicans controlled Congress, the Supreme Court, the Executive Branch… every lever of power! They could have built the wall. They didn’t. Did you ever ask why?


   2018 – He ‘fell in love!’ with murder commie tyrant Kim Jong Un. (We want those love letters; they’re public documents!) All the remaining communist despots on Earth support him, along with all the “ex” commissars and “ex” KGB agents in today’s Kremlin, who grew up reciting Lenin and working for America’s downfall… who then changed a few lapel pins and took over the Republican Party.


   2020 – He pooh-poohed Covid 19, predicting it would not come to America… and later that it would ‘pass naturally in a little bit’ … then bragged when scientists and civil servants delivered vaccines! … then swerved to anti-vax and back and forth amid calls for swallowing bleach and lasers… while the economy tanked and a million Americans died.


2021 – “I wuz robbed!!” Oh, the whining about losing by 8 million votes! Especially in six Red States that had Republican governors and officials running the election.  Always promising ‘evidence’ of a ‘steal’ but never ever delivering any. No real evidence at all!  Not to a single judge, jury or grand jury across the nation… while refusing to cooperate with independent investigation panels. 


The biggest single tantrum in the history of our Republic… until 2024, that is.


2016-to-now – A firehose, a tsunami, a supernova of lies! Over 100,000 of them, according to one ongoing list. Naturally, he won’t revisit or explain even one of them.  And his followers are fine with that, fleeing or distracting, when you bring up any of the lies. 


(Let’s pick a dozen from that list and bet $$$ on them! Got guts?)


And now… - almost without exception, Republicans wage all-out war vs all fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. 


Now who (*cough-Vladimir*) would want Americans to do that?


We could go on with more examples, you know we could. 


Only here’s the deal. If any one of these are true, then many of our neighbors are in a mad cult. 


And gently - with malice toward none - we need to wrest power from what Heinlein called the worst, dark streak in American nature.