If you won't listen to Paine, or Adam Smith, or Marx, or history - this fellow might scare the Dickens... And Are There ANY Republican stand-ups?

 I've long urged friends and acquaintances who are on the more privileged side of life – specifically those who rationalize that today’s Republican Party still bears even a vestigial connection to patriotism, or market competition, or even sanity – to reconsider the wisdom of killing the goose that has laid all of their golden eggs: a mixed society that’s been vested – ever since the WWII generation – in science, infrastructure, rule-of-law, rising-tolerance, pragmatic negotiation, respect-for-facts and - above all - a thriving/dominant middle class. 

Is a return to 6000 years of feudalism, as pushed by heirs of Stalin -- plus a world cabal of inheritance brats – truly in their long term interest?

 

These fellows – who seem to think the American Revolution was inspired by Edmund Burke or Dr. Phil, instead of Thomas Paine – deem themselves to be smart guys. Yet my parents – and even laborers and cabbies of the 1940s – had more vocabulary and understanding of Adam Smith, or Karl Marx, or John Locke, or the U.S. Founders than any of the tech-bros or ‘investment economists’ I know. 

 

Having grown up in a Rooseveltean society that carefully dispelled the incantations of Marx, by use of science, infrastructure, rule-of-law, tolerance, and a thriving/dominant middle class, many rich fools now assume they can reverse all of those miracles – and the greatest wealth-generation the world ever saw -- yet somehow remain safe from Old Karl’s revived spectre.

 

They can’t. But it seems they must learn it the hard way...

... by waging all-out war vs. the one clade that stands in the way of their lordly ambitions – all of the 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 very same professional castes who know bio, nano, cyber, nuclear and all the rest. And who will not take kindly to being oppressed and immiserated, along with a working class that is driven to proletarian wrath. Those are the millions who are targeted, beyond headlined travesties toward poor immigrants.

 

As if absolutely determined to hire a tumbrel ride, these 'elite' fools seem incapable – and too incurious – ever to study basic things that my parents’ generation discussed in detail, while working with the Greatest Generation’s hero – FDR – to cancel what then seemed an inevitable communist revolution. Veering society instead toward something more complex and successful and diverse and responsible and free. 

Alas, the hedge parasites, petro princes, monopolists, tech-bros, inheritance brats and kremlin "ex" commissars wallow in flatterers, rather than lifting their heads to study what worked.

 

And so, as nest-trashing greed sends wealth disparities skyrocketing past French Revolution levels, we must seek another voice who might be persuasive.

 Charles Dickens had the right of this:

Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six
tumbrils carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and
insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are
fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France,
with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a
peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain
than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape
once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same
tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression
over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.
...

Shall I put it in simpler language? When flatterers persuade you to close off every civilized form of redress, then what do you expect to be the reaction? 

That we’ll go meekly to the concentration camps? Here’s a musical riff for you that pre-dates Les Miserables:

 

Allons enfants de la patrie… 

…do you hear across the land those 

who would engorge upon our children?

 

Watch that scene in Casablanca. 

Then look up the words behind the anger! 

Leading to the second stanza’s fulmination… 

It’s us who they’d dare to 
Return to ancient slavery!

 

Stanza, schmanza. 

If it ever truly comes to the refrain… Aux armes, citoyens!...

... it will be too late for you would-be lords to negotiate, or to win a deal. 

 

We know the location and schematics of every prepper bunker. 

 

And your Uber-Tumbrels driver is almost there.

 

 ----

----

----

== An important lagniappe: Do the Re-Register Gambit! ==

 

 Following up on a perennial question.  Are there ANY high Rrepublicans who are clearly NOT blackmailed Kremlin agents, but have tried to stand up to the madness that has taken over the Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan? 

Here is the comprehensive alphabetical list of all U.S. Senators and House Republicans since 2015 who either voted against Trump in key moments (impeachment, election certification, Jan 6 commission) or retired/resigned rather than face MAGA pressure—covering every state with at least one such member:

---

 Senators

Bill Cassidy (LA) – Voted to convict Trump (2021)

Bob Corker (TN) – Retired post-Trump clashes

Ben Sasse (NE) – Resigned to academia

Lisa Murkowski (AK) – Survived, rank-choice  Still independent critic

Mitt Romney (UT) – Retiring, impeachment votes  Continues open criticism

Pat Toomey (PA) – Voted to convict (2021)

Richard Burr (NC) – Voted to convict (2021)

Susan Collins (ME) – Voted to convict, survived

Thom Tillis (NC) – Retired post-clashes

---

 House of Representatives

Adam Kinzinger (IL) – Retired post-impeachment  Still fighting Trump publicly

Anthony Gonzalez (OH) – Voted to impeach (2021)

Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) – Remained, dissenting votes

Dave Trott (MI) – Retired, became Independent

Fred Upton (MI) – Retired post-impeachment  Occasional public critic

Jeff Flake (AZ) – Retired anti-Trump  Occasional public critic

John Katko (NY) – Retired post-impeachment

Justin Amash (MI) – Left GOP, retired, Independent run  Independent-minded

Ken Buck (CO) – Resigned early dissent  Continues criticism of Trump

Liz Cheney (WY) – Ousted, primary loss  Actively fighting Trump

Mike Gallagher (WI) – Resigned impeachment dissent

Paul Mitchell (MI) – Left GOP, retired 2021

Peter Meijer (MI) – Primaryed post-impeachment

 

Notice how how many have been driven out of office? And this doesn't include the THREE Republican Congressmen who declared or alluded that their party is rife with "orgies" - (think the film Eyes Wide Shut) - that lead inevitably to blackmail. (And blackmail is the ONLY theory that explains 20 years of Republican behavior.)

Will these folks join Romney and GOP former Crown Prince Paul Ryan in finally, finally gathering a True Republican Party? Or else (shudder) join Elon's latest whimsey?

Not likely.  

FAR better? If millions of Dems and Independents who live in gerrymandered GOP districts should re-register as Republicans!  Hold your nose and do it! It would:

- protect you from being accidentally purged from voter rolls before November 2026!

- utterly mess up their calculations!

- let you vote in the only election that matters in your district - the Republican primary. And thus give a chance to some moderate adult, reducing gerrymander-induced radicalization.

Hold your nose and do it!  And spread word.

 

 

To make next July 4 a true Independence Day - How About a Little Paine? Thomas Paine.

==  Americans hate history ==

Half of us are too future-obsessed to care much about dusty past dates and dustier past 'heroes.' The other half wrap themselves in nostalgic just-so stories, in order to justify their present-day obsessions. That divide crosses party lines, though more one or the other. But that's not the point, which is that...

 

...modern Americans tend to be ignoramuses about stuff that really matters. My parents - and laborers and taxi drivers - could quote Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Adam Smith and Marx. Today, do young folks even know Groucho?

 

It really does matter, as to whether we can save the American Experiment. Because you will help the current struggle better - in this era of benighted, shallow education - if you actually know something. 

For example, can any of you call to mind words by Thomas Paine, who almost single-handedly rallied the dispirited American Revolutionaries amid their deepest despair, during times that try men's souls?*

(Here you go, making the assignment just a bit easier to swallow.)

And yes... this could be practically useful. Maybe Paine will help you to slap sense into those 'summer soldiers' you know. Supposed liberals who are throwing up their hands and wailing in smug resignation that all-is-lost!

Again, we need reminders that today’s crises ‘rhyme’ with the past. 

Because none of this is without precedent. The very same cultural/psychological rift has riven the USA since 1778, when Cornwallis knew he'd find more romantics - more loyalists to the King - down south. 

The 1860s "Civil War" was only Phase Four out of eight or nine times this basic culture rift has erupted. See Civil War Phases. 

This current phase differs in some ways -- former issues of independence or slavery are now replaced by immigration, and zillionaire lucre-grabbing, and KGB puppetry... but above-all anti-modernist hatred toward every single fact-using profession, from science and law all the way to the US military officer corps. (Watch any evening of Fox and you'll see; the main theme is spite toward smartaleck professionals.) 

Moreover, this time the confederates have found the foreign backers that Jeff Davis couldn’t, back in the 1860s. In their pal, “ex” commissar Putin and his “ex” KGB and “ex” commie oligarchs and their petro-prince and inheritance-brat allies. 

Oh, and sure, the Union's nadir is deeper, this time, than it was even in 1862, as this time the Confederacy captured Washington D.C. -- and is now dismantling every single strength that made America, since 1945, the greatest nation of all ages.

Of course, it will not stand. Whether our path ahead starts with a General Strike by all of the nation's smart people -- and 100 million others who are wise enough to value smart people...

 

...or else a critical mass of vestigially-loyal conservatives wake up to realize that they are killing the goose that laid all their golden eggs... 

 

...or leaks gush from the mountain of blackmail kompromat that keeps GOP politicians in-line... 

 

... however it happens, we'll be back! (As one of those vestigially loyal Rebublicans would say)...

 

...  though it must begin with the Union getting new generals, as it did in 1863. Leaders capable of devising fresh tactics.

 

It could start by rediscovering Thomas Paine! If any of you have any spine, curiosity, attention span or ANY sense of history, go now and read The American Crisis and Common Sense! The two short pamphlets that inspired those first US revolutionaries -- wet and shivering by a frozen river -- to stand back up and shout "No Kings!" 

 

You might also rediscover Frederick Douglass, while you are at it... before it's too late and we must (alas) rediscover John Brown.

== Or rediscover the same spirit in sci fi! ==

Or start with Robert Heinlein, who denounced precisely this exact same recurring cult madness! 

 “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue."

Do follow the link and see more about how Heinlein -- too long maligned as some kind of right-winger fanatic -- was keenly aware -- and worried -- about the fascist/confederate/know-nothing, modernity-hating side of America's deeply rifted character. Its forever cultural schism!

"Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negrosim, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening – particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington."

Jiminy!  Heinlein wrote that in the early 1950s! Is there anything he did not hit right on the head? Heck, he even nailed the dominionist "Prosperity Gospel" so popular among Ted Cruz types, promising fervid followers that their "material heaven here on earth" will come by righteously seizing the property of unbelievers. (Late note: a prosperity gospel preacher keynotes Donald Trump's inauguration.)

In Heinlein's Future History, America's "Crazy Years" were followed by a vicious theocracy. One that Margaret Atwood directly cribbed for The Handmaid's Tale. One that - in his SF timeline - we only manage to escape through a REVOLT IN 2100.

Oh, I have confidence it won't take that long. Though now we must gird ourselves for a tough fight.

== But it will happen ==

Right now, the confederate side of American nature -- anti-modernity since the 1770s -- cannot conceive that their blue neighbors have any gumption or guts. But they should consider what Sam Houston said, when he urged Texans not to join the Confederacy, in 1861. That:

 “Our Northern cousins are cooler in spirit and slower to anger, but when finally roused will respond with implacable momentum.”

Texans ignored his wisdom, as today’s MAGAs ignore the utter illogic of waging 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.

 But you can point this out: 

"Hey neighbors. Fact folks – (call us ‘nerds’) – are cooler in spirit. (And those who own guns keep them locked-up.) But fortunately, America won most civil war phases, when confederate fevers raged… and after winning, delivered ‘malice toward none and charity for all.’ 

A neighborly kindness that will NOT be shown to us, if the Project 2025 Trumpist brownshirts win.

So go ahead and march and chant and wave signs. 

Perhaps spread word about the coming, inevitable, General Strike by every fact using profession of folks who actually know stuff.

 

 The confeds'll sneer: "So? who will process and deliver your food?"

 

 And you'll answer: "A doctor can drive a truck and the folks sending you electricity can kill and pluck chickens. Let's see you do the opposite."

 

Still, we will never win without new generals, as when the Union moved from 1862 to 1863. 

 

And YOU will play no role in devising new tactics, till you try. Please try. Start by actually studying the context, the history, the basis for it all.

== Pictures are more persuasive ==

Look at the faces of Trump & Lavrov & Kisliak in January 2017, Trump's first guests in the Oval Office, long before any ally, giggling that the USA had fallen to them. Read the caption. And remember Trump raving that he "fell in love' with Kim Jong Un. And none of you can name - on a bet - any serious action by old Two Scoops that ever set back even a single interest or desire or command of Vladimir Putin, as he steadily rebuilds the USSR.

 

What would Reagan think?

This is why almost all of DT's former national security folks, from Defense and State to intel agencies to serving officers called him a direct threat to the nation. 

Those folks will all be arrested, across the next year. And already, among all of Trump's appointments, there will be no further 'adults in the room.

The adults will have to be us. In a coalition that values the pragmatic return of law and facts and tolerance and progress... but also grit. The grit that's always core to being Blue.

====

====

====

* Or were you so triggered that I quoted Paine using the word "men's" that it drove all else from your mind? Proving that you... yes exactly you... are the problem that shattered Kamala's coalition and put us in this mess.  Exactly you.

Missing contexts for AI: The context of mental damage

Okay, the secret is out. David Brin is writing a book about AI. In fact, it is 3/4 done, enough to offer it to publishers. But more crucially, to start posting bits on-blog, getting feedback from the smartest community online.

And hence, here is a small portion of my chapter on the missing contexts that are (almost) never mentioned in discussions about these new life forms we're creating. I mean:

- The context of Natural Ecosystems and Evolution across the last four billion years...

- The context of a million years of human evolution out of pre-sapience, to become what's still the only known exemplar of 'intelligent life'...

- The context of 6000 years of human agricultural civilization with cities... during which nearly every society fell into a pattern of governance called feudalism, which almost always ensured grotesque stupidity...

- The context of our own, very recent and tenuous escape from that trap, called the 200 year Enlightenment Experiment...

- The context of science itself and how it works. So well that we got to this critical phase of veritable co-creation.

- The context of parenthood...

- and for tonight's posting. The context of human mental illness.

== Just one example of 'hallucination' gone wild ==

 Researchers at Anthropic and AI safety company Andon Labs performed a fascinating experiment recently. They put an instance of Claude Sonnet 3.7 in charge of an office vending machine, with a mission to make a profit, equipped it with a web browser capable of placing product orders and where customers could request items. It had what it thought was contract human workers to come and physically stock its shelves (which was actually a small fridge). 

While most customers were ordering snacks or drinks — as you’d expect from a snack vending machine — one requested a tungsten cube. Claudius loved that idea and went on a tungsten-cube stocking spree, filling its snack fridge with metal cubes. It also tried to sell Coke Zero for $3 when employees told it they could get that from the office for free. It hallucinated a Venmo address to accept payment. 

Then things got weirder. And then way-weirder.

== What can these weirdnesses tell us? ==

 

The thing about these hallucinatory episodes with Large Language Models is that we have yet another seldom-discussed context.  That of Mental Illness.

 

Most of you readers have experienced interaction with human beings who are behaving in remarkably similar ways.  Many of us had friends or family members who have gone through harsh drug trips, or suffered concussions, or strokes. It is very common – and often tragically so – that the victim retains full abilities to vocalize proper, even erudite, sentences. Only, those sentences tend to wander. And the drug-addled or concussed or stroke victim can sense that something is very wrong. So they fabulate. They make up back-stories to support the most recent sentences. They speak of nonexistent people, who might be 'standing' just out of view, even though long dead. And they create ‘logical’ chains to support those back-stories. 

Alas, there is never much consistency. more than a few sentences deep…

 

…which is exactly what we see in LLM fabulation. Articulate language skill and what seem to be consistent chains, from one statement to the next. Often aimed at placating or mollifying or persuading the real questioner. But no overall awareness that they are building a house of tottering cards.

 

Except that – just like a stroke victim – there often does seem to be awareness that something is very wrong. For the fabulations and hallucinations begin to take on an urgency -- even a sense of desperation. One all-too similar to the debilitated humans so many of us have known.

 

What does this mean? 

Well, it suggests that we are creating damaged entities. Damaged from the outset. Lacking enough supervisory capacity to realize that the overall, big picture doesn’t make sense. Worse – and most tragic-seeming – they exhibit the same inability to stop and say: “Something is wrong with me, right now. Won’t somebody help?”

Let me be clear. One of the core human traits has always been our propensity for personal delusion, for confusing subjectivity for objective reality. We all do it. And when it is done in art or entertainement, it can be among our greatest gifts! But when humans make policy decisions based solely on their own warped perceptions, you starts to get real problems. Like the grand litany of horrors that occurred across 6000 years of rule by kings or feudal lords, who suppressed the one way wise people correct mistakes. Through reciprocal criticism.

A theme we will return-to repeatedly, across this book.

 

Oh, some of the LLM builders can see that there’s a serious problem. That their ‘hyper-autocomplete’ systems lack any supervisorial oversight, to notice and correct errors. 

And so… since a man with a hammer will see every problem as a nail… they have begun layering “supervisory LLMs” atop the hallucinating LLMs! 

And so far – as of July 2025 – the result has been to increase rates of fabulation and error!

 

And hence we come away with two tentative conclusions.

 

First, that one of the great Missing Contexts in looking at AI is that of human mental failure modes!

 

And second, that maybe the language system of a functioning brain works best when it serves -- and is supervised by -- an entirely different kind of capability. One that provides common sense.

Later, I'll refer to my guess about that.  That two former rivals and giants in 'computers' may join forces to provide exactly the thing that LLMs cannot, by their fundamental nature, give us.

Something akin to sanity.

Oh, those misleading teleologies about "progress" - and a few political notes

 And now... some intellectual stuff, if that's what you are holding-out for!

And yes, for those of you who blithely use the terms 'left' and 'right' in politics, without actually knowing what they mean, here's one of maybe ten things you likely never knew, that you really, really ought to.

== How the left and right differently view the future's 'ordained' path. 

...And why actual liberals think both 'teleologies' suck.

In an earlier post, I referred to a summary by Noema editor Nathan Gardels regarding some musings about Progressive History and Europe's role in the current planetary politics, by Slavoj Žižek. While I found Žižek’s perspectives interesting. I must offer cavils regarding this:

“For Žižek, all major ideologies, from Liberalism to Marxism, believe history has a direction that moves inexorably toward their universal realization. But today, he maintains, we live in a moment where you can’t draw a straight line to the future.”

In fact, progressively improving, end-result teleology is a very recent epiphenomenon of Enlightenment Civilization – and almost entirely Western. Until these last 3 centuries, the pervasive historical teleologies were:

1. Successive, gradual decline, as in the Greek notions of golden, silver and iron ages.

2. More rapid, steep decline to hellish end times, followed by divine intervention, as in Christian doctrines.

3. Cyclical history – everything cycles back around, as in Hindu and Nordic lore – as well as Nazi and Confederate incantations. And now, a noxius recent mysticism called the Cult of the Fourth Turning.

All three of these ancient visions have deep roots in human psyche. All three were pushed hard by the powerful, from kings and lords to priests. And all three have long been core to what we’d now call ‘conservatism’, as they all preach at peasants: ‘Accept your place: don’t strive or even hope to improve the world.’

One exception – ironically clutched by 2000 years of persecuted Jews – was a notion that the world is improvable and that the Creator needs our assertive help to save it. Indeed, this usually-forlorn dream seems to have been what manifested in several grandsons-of-rabbis, like Sigmund Freud and especially Karl Marx.

And later – yes – in Isaac Asimov’s notions of ‘psychohistory,’ which inspired nerds across a very wide spectrum, ranging from Paul Krugman all the way to Shoko Asahara and Osama bin Laden.

Overall, it was a whole lot of grouchy-gloom to quench any glimmers of hope, during grouchy-gloomy times. 

But things eventually changed, rousing a new, competing view of the time-flow of history. Inspired by the palpable progress coming out of industrial factories and modern medical science, we began to see a new kind of teleology. That of egalitarian ‘progress.’ Manifesting in either of two modes:

1. ...in moderate, incremental stages, as in the U.S. Revolution, and every American generation that followed…

2. …or else impatient transcendentalism – demanding immediate leaps to remaking humanity - as we saw in the French and then Russian and Chinese Revolutions.

Either way, this linear and ever-upward notion of historical directionality was a clear threat to the beneficiaries of older teleologies… ruling classes, who needed justification for continued obligate power. And especially excuses to repress potential rivals to their sons’ inheritance of power.

Thus it is no accident that all three of the more ancient motifs and views of ‘history’ - downward or cyclical - are being pushed, hard, by our current attempted worldwide oligarchic putsch. Each of them tuned to a different conservative constituency! 

For example: the Fourth Turning cult is especially rife among those Republicans who desperately cling to chants like: “I AM in favor of freedom & progress! I am!” Even though they are among the very ones causing the completely unnececessary 'crisis' that will then require rescue by a 'hero generation.'

(Side note: Are the impatient transcendentalists on "our side" of the current struggle - shouting for instant transformation(!!) - deeply harmful to their own cause, the way Robspierre and Mao were, to theirs? Absolutely. Angrily impatient with incrementalism, sanctimony junkies of the far-left were partly responsible for Trump v.2, by shattering the liberal coalition with verbal purity tests that drove away (temporarily, we hope) two millions Blacks, Hispanics and lower middle class whites.)

Why do I raise this point about teleologies of left and right yet again, even though I never get any traction with it, never ever prompting others to step back and look at such patterns?

Perhaps because new pattern aficionados are on the horizon! Indeed, there is always a hope that our new AI children will see what their cave-folk parents could not. And explain it to them.

== Some political notes ==

* Russian corvettes escort quasi-illegal Shadow tankers thru the English Channel while NATO navies daily thwart attempts to sabotage subsea pipes & data cables. Might Ukraine say: "Iran, NKorea & Gabon have openly Joined the RF waging war on us. Under the 300 year Rules of War, we may seize or sink enemy ships on the high seas. We've bought, equipped, flagged, manned and sent to the Atlantic Ukrainian navy ships to do that."

* Those shrugging-off the appointment of 22-year old Thomas Fugate as the top US counter-terrorism czar will have some 'splaining to do, when these moves - replacing competent professionals with Foxite shills - come home to roost. But I've already pointed out the glaring historical parallel: when the mad tyrant Caligula tested the Roman Senate by appointing - as Consul - his horse. No Senator stood up to that, or to C's sadist orgies or public snatch-strangulations. 

Today it would take just 2 GOP Senators and 2 Reps, stepping up, to curb the insanity by half or more. Threats & rampant blackmail (check the male relatives of Collins & Murkowski) don't suffice to explain or excuse such craven betrayal across the GOP, since the first few to step up would be reckoned heroes, no matter what kompromat the KGB has on you.

Will someone do up a nice meme on Caligula's horse, laughing at us?

* Another suggested meme about the dismal insipidity of the masks worn by ICE agents in these brownshirt-stle immigration raids. 

"Hey ICE masked-rangers, You think a mask suffices in 2025? When cameras can zoom into your iris? Bone structure and gait? (Keep a pebble in your shoe!) Anyway, that comrade (and fellow KGB puppet) next to you is recording every raid for his Squealer File. For plea bargaining when this all goes down."

What? You think "He'd never do that to me!"?

In poker, everyone knows who the patsy is. If you don't know, then it's you.

== Finally, glorious Grand Dames of Sci Fi! ==

A pair of terrific speeches about science fiction. Newly- (and way-deservedly!)- installed Grand Master Nicola Griffith relates how SF encouraged her to believe that ancient injustices can be overcome, if first writers help readers believe it possible. The young MC of the event, Erin Roberts, was truly amazing, taking perspectives that were variously passionate, amusing and deeply insightful. Persuasive and yet not polemically fixated, she's the real deal that's needed now, more than ever.