A Simple Mistake

Can't we all get along?

Current Affairs congratulates itself on its farsightedness in predicting the downfall of Graham Platner.  I don't want to name names* (because I detect a bit of anniversary related filler in the motivation to print it), but I do want to quote:

What my suspicions of him were built on, fundamentally, were my many years of experience in organizing and in academia. I know this dude. I know the fucking left dudes. I know left dudes. I know how pathetic leftist men are about masculinity. The left is not a wellspring of virile masculinity, and that's fine. This is why we love the left, because you don't have to be this poseur; you don't have to be this army guy. But that being said, a lot of leftist men and academic men have a real sense of inadequacy around their masculinity, and what I saw very clearly was, first of all: I've met so many Graham Platners. I may or may not have slept with a couple of Graham Platners. I'm not sure. My record goes back too many decades for me to remember. But I have met them. I know what they're about; I know the swagger, I know the lies, and I know what lies beneath, as it were.

We're all entitled to the opinions we hold, but do you see the problem?  At the base of this perceptive cleverness is a mistake.  A well-placed distrust of masculinity on the part of the speaker is mistaken as perception of a flaw in the 70-plus % of Maine primary voters who handed Graham Platner the win in the race for a Democrat to challenge Susan Collins.  There is a false assumption that Platner's base of support was being offered and responding to masculinity in the person of a deep voiced tattooed 4-timer marine, of late an oyster farmer from out of nowhere.  At best, there is an unspoken supposition that the choice that Graham Platner best represented was manhood over softness.  In this light, the exposure of a campaign ending transgression surfacing from Platner's past was a victory for those perspicaciously presciently suspicious of Platner's schtick and critical to the point of chiding of his support.

This is a blindness that is driving me crazy about certain members of the leftist literati.  Graham Platner's exposure was not a victory; it was a tragedy.  Maine voters do not need to vote for compensatory masculinity--- for one thing, it's in the water up there.  What was missing that Graham Platner out of fucking nowhere suddenly supplied for the working men and women of Maine was a new direction-- a good direction-- the direction of government for the people for a fucking change.  Read his platform if you don't believe me.  Listen to his rallies.  Listen to the army of supporters his campaign materialized (that made possible the impetus and force to suitably replace him with the epitome of authentic working Mainer, Troy Jackson).  To miss this-- to insist that the downfall of Platner was justice and cause for the celebration of skepticism is frankly a failure of imagination and understanding.  It's insulting on one level-- a gross underestimation of the motivation of Platner's voters, and of the opportunity that political possibility presents in order to engage the mass of voters whose participation, if present at all, has been tepid for decades simply because for generations there has been so little to vote for.  For all of his flaws, credit belongs to Platner (and to those who saw in him an articulate vehicle) for an out of left field attempt to effect a sea change in electoral politics.

You would do well to ask yourself what on earth prompts me to return yet again to the topic of Platner's appeal as opposed to his flawed humanity.  The injustice of it inspires me-- what can I say?  The eagerness with which comrades of the left taketh away without a thought to givething back, infuriates me.  Where was the better alternative to Platner for Maine voters up to and including primary day?  To me, anti-Platnerism is of a piece with anti-Kamala-ism.  It's the betrayal of a fundamental misunderstanding of what engagement in electoral politics is for.  To be blunt, it's for power.  It's against political impotence.  The American political system is a model of how elites keep everyone else down, and for this reason it must go.  But in the meantime, winning elections-- not self-congratulatory vanity voting-- is the only electoral means at our disposal for fighting against our powerlessness.    It's not enough to curse the choice. This was the flaw of the anti-Kamala contingent.  But when the candidate is alone in offering real choice, as Graham Platner was until his inevitable downfall,  like him or hate him-- and I'll admit until the revelation of his crime against the victim of his assault I found him to be an annoyingly hyper-masculine yet uncannily gifted articulator of the kind of politics missing since the neoliberal turn-- to miss the opportunity for leftist power that his campaign represented is a betrayal of a clouded notion of political priorities.  Are we so happy with our habitual oppression by our elected leaders that we can pride ourselves in our choosiness of candidates to represent us? 

Do not misunderstand me:  when the story that Platner was gambling would remain hidden surfaced, it was clear that he needed to go.  But as those who hold and want to promote insurgent beliefs ought to know better than anybody, Reality is not pretty.  Until the downfall, if you did not understand the clarity of the choice that Platner represented to those who came out in droves to vote for him, you do not understand what engagement is for. 

~~~~~

*Having re-read the whole piece, it's even more odious than I orginally thought.

Silent but Deadly

"L-Għira, oħt il-ġenn! (Envy, the sister of madness!)" - Maltese proverb

"You can't spell Envy without NV" - unspeakable (as heck) motto

What makes a character flaw or weakness a sin?  What's more, what makes a sin deadly?  Pride and Greed aren't a problem for me. Gluttony I could do without.  But Sloth, Lust and Ire?  Where do I sign up?  I can't shut up about my affinity for any of them.   What I don't talk about is the one that embarrasses me the most: the green monster.  It's unbecoming to me to envy possessors.  But while it's never the person doing the possessing that seems worth it to me to squander virtue points on, it's the coveting of the possession that breaks down my resistance.  I don't cook at all, so why do I ache at the relentlessly unacquireable beauty of the pricey niche implements procured by Williams Sonoma?  The high end kitchen store's catalogue is something I consult for gift purchases for the wives and mothers in my life, but my spirit is rapidly depleted by the futility of desire in this economy.     Is it not the very unattainability of the copper salmon poacher, the horse hair mushroom brush, the fully automatic espresso machine that is the point of the beauty? I broil at the ostentatiousness of the lifestyles of the rich and the famous but I fantasize about having the discernment and the bottomless resources to accumulate every beautiful piece of merchandise that artisans construct to tempt me with, a warehouse sized mansion that I could store them in and a staff to organize them for me in a way that accentuates my having of them.  What's that about?  It's unseemly.

Fortunately there's a whole big world full of other things to secretly envy, covet and feel jealous about.

Empty Studios - As much as I envy the curators of museum worthy implements of everyday beauty, do I envy them more than those with no possessions and no thought of possessing?  Not by a long shot.  Far more than I envy aesthetic accumulation, I covet the beauty of emptiness.  Not far from where I live tucked behind an ivied fence stands a studio slash event space that someone converted from  a non-descript industrial warehouse.  The grey brutalist concrete was painted black; multi-story glass was added to the façade.  Before the iron fence was constructed, a view of the interior revealed white painted walls and sparseness.  From photos of the interior on the internet, it's clear that emptiness has been maintained.  My own house, after 30 years of residence including the inheritance of furniture and effects from relatives and friends shows signs of the beginnings of becoming a hoarder's den by comparison. How fulfilling it would be to have a space like the studio slash event space to retreat to when the crampedness of my life gets to me.

People who thought to make music their career - As a younger person, I never had the best luck with record purchases.  In my youth, in my family at least, I somehow got the message that a person's album collection was their identity but I never had the instinct that my brothers did for the killer album.  How did they do it?   For me it was possibly a song I heard on the radio, or a fantasy about how a band name or an album cover  would translate into juice for myself.  More often than not though, I would discover when I got my record store purchase home, the reality of songs so rank that even a clueless tween from the backwaters could smell it betrayed the fantasy.  For this reason, although I never learned to acquire better methods of discernment until deep into adulthood and music purchases remained hit or miss throughout my young life, and I always somehow managed to make my own lame music the whole while, my relationship to music was tentative.  YouTube is probably what tutored me because it added an element of chosen experience to the equation.  The net result is that the older I get the more important music seems to me-- and not just because it consumes so much more of my time, but because it feels like art that universally matters.  A collaborative project that is rewarding in itself to say nothing of the omnipresent potential it presents for fostering communal joy.  Revisiting only the best songs of my youth along with exploring new sounds, I'm able to recognize that I've had the key all along.  If only it had seemed more important to me sooner to find a way to have music making a primary preoccupation, like the lucky bastards who figured that out in time.

The Maltese - One morning before work in 2021 I saw a YouTube recommendation for a cover of Bittersweet Melody, one of my favorites, by "The Palace String Orchestra" featuring "Gaia".  Clicking on the thumbnail, I was transported to an elegant courtyard of some kind where men and women in  tuxes and evening gowns were seated at tables covered in white linen, being served an evening meal and refreshments by uniformed waiters while being entertained by a masked orchestra accompanying a rock trio led by a dapper gentleman playing bass while a beautiful young woman in a sparkling feather-fringed gown belted the Verve's storied hit.  According to the description, the performance took place just days before in Valletta, Malta.  As I mustered the wherewithal to tear myself away from my morning internet wanderings to relocate myself to the work computer, I found myself fantasizing about life on a Mediterranean Island-- your only neighbors Cabrino and Gozo-- not so much in the beam of contemporary events as steeped in history, having thoughts in a language spoken by no one but those in your day to day life.  A life that would surely be composed of unhurried sunlit days of straightforward survival followed by elegant starlit nights of music wafting over the waves in every direction. 

Non-humans - Do I really need to elaborate?

People of the past - I am drawn to kitschy movies-- the worse the better.  Not long ago I learned of one that I had missed in my childhood, a teen confection called Winter-a-Go-Go.  Was it as bad as its title promised?  I had to see for myself. Suddenly 1965 was evoked for me-- and a silly 1965 at that. A time when global warming was a dim blip on only the nerdiest scientist's radar; neoliberalism had not delayed history; I had not yet made whatever wrong turn it was that got me here instead of making music in a Palace orchestra in Malta.

The Dead - It's never just another day when you learn at work, via mass email that a co-worker has died.  My time in the workforce has been long enough that I'm familiar with the feeling.  Usually it's a former colleague whose death notice informs me of a final struggle with illness.  But sometimes, the colleague was current and their death was a sudden surprise for all.  I always feel a little sadness.  And a little envy.  The struggle for my comrade is over.  The hurdle has been cleared. It's all void now. All meetings have been canceled. No more self-evaluations, no more reviews, no more reinventing the wheel for the thousandth time.  No more business lunches or pieces of birthday cake in the break room. No more potlucks. 

And yet, no more snow days either, or holidays or vacation or early dismissals.  No more Miller Time.  

And then there's the matter of paying for your deadly sins...

More or Less is a Choice

Digging through correspondence with a recalcitrant Green, I have found drafts of emails never sent that nevertheless seem as close I ever get to expressing my feelings about third party voting in general elections.  The subject is the exact nature of what sucks about Democrats, and the reason they should be voted for in general elections anyway (and implicitly, a case for participating in Democratic primaries).

%%%%%

In my view, the GOP fundamentally suck.  They are malformed humans—they are broken in very similar ways which is why they are now acting as one in spite of their fetish about the individual.   The demoncraps in question—the culprits—an actual pointable toable finite collection of miscreants have deep character flaws.  So it’s deficient humans on the GOP side “versus” “democrats” of poor character.  In the world they both agree on—the neoliberal hellscape of individual responsibility, entitlement on the GOP side, meritocracy on the dem side, “free” market supremacy—the GOP are the alphas.  They have the courage of their convictions.  They are true believers.   The dems are betas.  They see the GOP’s success since Nixon and they want it for themselves.  They were not born malformed so their GOP-Light version is experienced by them as a cool “smart”-fad.  A fad of smartness because it cops from the Alpha playbook.  The notion they are pushing is, Hey the GOP may be onto something but they’re the GOP.  We’re now onto the same thing but we are the Democrats!  Don’t drink Coke!  Drink Pepsi!  And the novelty of it and their ersatz entitlement born of their merit imbuing their zeal with an irresistible (in the moment) confidence took over the party.  And because they’re meritocrats and “liberals” (though be careful not to say that out loud because daddy Bush turned it into a dirty word) it gives their brand of neoliberal a hep, savvy in the moment made for TV “sex” appeal (but not more than the FCC will allow).  

In short I think in reality these character flawed people had a bad idea that created a fad that had actual consequences in the world.  And one of those consequences is that people started to hate them.  Yet they never learned--- the fiction that they were offering a cool, improved brand of the juice that the GOP had in their bones that people would choose because it was cool and improved—I mean everyone who is everyone was on board with it.  Every elite person who looks down through their ray bans at the tacky GOP version, was a Democrat now.  Corporate C-Suites, Hollywood boardrooms, Cultural figures, Journalists.  The small thin "mainstream" that employs us, that we are allowed to see on tv, was democrat.   Meanwhile, the GOP became masters of the conversation that was only allowed on Fox pointing out the obvious.  Do you want to schedule an intercourse session with the cheap plastic  perfectly made and more expensive ersatz version that the democrats are offering, or do you want to fuck the real thing?  The people want to fuck the real thing.  The democrats are fucking annoying.  But to get back to my point, the people responsible for this, who are stuck in 1992, trying to put on their ray bans and play sax on Arsenio as though anyone is still interested in that—they are aging out.  Many of them will be pushed out by attrition.  The young ambitious meritocrats trying to take over the party will be outnumbered by people whose eyes have opened.  I am sort of afraid that we’re too late in a way to fix things the easy way. I think I’m grieving a bit for the dream of socialism by consensus, but Zohran and the new genuine breed of Dems do give some hope that the contrast between the lizard people of the GOP and the actual small d democrats is going to cause seismic cognitive dissonance.  

I’ve gone a little out of scope with my reply—I keep wanting to say that my feelings about the political system we have are 1) it’s got to go; 2) until the momentum for that builds, we are stuck with a winner take all duopoly and one of those 2 parties is less harmful than the other—it even sometimes does the right thing though we like to focus on all the wrong that it does.  (the wrong I think is mostly attributable to the finite group of bourgeois professional managerial Beta absconders with character flaws-- stuck in their behavior loop a la Ezra Klein who thinks we need to run anti-choice candidates-- who we must work to see relegated to the dustbin of history) 3) Given the winner take all nature of elections, it matters very much who the winners are.  4)  3rd parties are not winners.  They are where votes go to die.

Only people who vote in elections materially impact the outcome.  Most people who vote in general elections understand the choice: More fascism or Less fascism.  Those are the people it is the job of the Less Fascist party to win over. To the extent that not enough people who understood the choice voted for More Fascism over Less Fascism, that is on the Less Fascist party/candidate. This should not be controversial.

There is another group of general election voters however.   These are voters who do not understand the choice.  They believe the choice is between voting that makes you feel bad and voting that makes you feel good.  If voting for either More Fascism or Less Fascism does not make them feel good enough, they have to find someone else to vote for.  Far too often these are people who self-identify as ideologues of the left or right.  It's the ones on the left that I have the most issue with, even if their assorted blocs turn out to be too small to impact the outcome of the election.  These are leftists who are generally reacting to punish or teach the Less Fascist actual choice a lesson-- their desire to oppose Less Fascism is why they vote at all.  The really twisted ones will vote for More Fascism to spite Less Fascism.  But the bulk are ballot spoilers who vote merely to register their unhappiness with the Less Fascist choice.  In effect, when the Less Fascist candidate/party loses, these voters share in the victory of the More Fascist party.  And the beauty of their victory is that while they would love to take credit for the Least Fascist party's loss, they do not feel they have to own the More Fascist victory.  No wonder they vote like they do.  When they win they feel wonderful about themselves.  And even though their victory is the equivalent of More Fascism, they can feel themselves absolved from voting for More Fascism.  

The feel good nature of their vote will persist, even in the face of More Fascism due to this neat trick.  It's why I obsess about them so much.  Why do most voters understand the choice, but the often otherwise very intelligent self-pleasuring ideologues do not?  What are they missing?  For one thing they are missing that the general election is not and can never be the sum of dissident politics.  The general election is one day, a day on which only 2 choices-- two flavors of fascism: more or less-- are on the ballot.  It's too late to do anything about the choice, and most of these folks missed their chance in the primary anyway, preferring to reserve their Unlike for the general election.  Their duty if they are serious about anti fascism is to do merely the bare minimum that is their part in forestalling More Fascism.  They are shirkers because shirking pleasures them.  Moreover they have a self-righteous disdain for voters who understand the choice and behave responsibly, regardless of the lack of pleasure in that task.  This is why I find the choice-missers so odious.

You Know You Know

Why does nothing work like it should?  Why when groceries and fuel and fertilizer cost so much is the conversation about throwing the people who harvest our food for us out of the country?  Why do we all know the cause of the alarming climate change we are now witnessing daily but are not allowed to talk about, or about what to do about it?  Why do the rich-- so small a percentage of the human population-- keep getting richer while the rest of us are having to do more and more with less and less?  Why do we only seem capable of electing doddering idiots who do not do what we want them to do as our leaders?  Why is there an electoral college that steals elections from those with the most votes, a Senate that can condemn protesters on college campuses and increase military spending at will and cut taxes of corporations and billionaires but can't seem to find enough of what we pay in taxes to fund education or implement universal health insurance or keep Social Security solvent, and a Supreme Court that seems to protect the "rights" and "speech" of corporations while every day whittling away what is left of ours?  Why do we know like the back of our hands that enslaving captives from Africa for 400 years was an evil fucking thing to do and yet the descendants of those who practiced it continue to thrive from the ill-gotten wealth of their ancestors while the descendents of the enslaved continue to be deprived, impoverished, imprisoned, scorned and blamed for behaving like they're deprived, impoverished, imprisoned, scorned and blamed for everything?   Why are we being forced to work deep into our senescence when our children and grandchildren can't seem to get a job?   Why must I work from a closet when the lavishly appointed corner suites of the owners are almost always empty?  Why are so many billionaires trying to get to outer space?

We know the answer to these and to so many other related questions including certainly many important and brilliant ones that occured to you but not to me in the time I allotted for myself to write the above.  Many of us have been trained that it's impolite to say what the answer is.  This is why it is so important that we recognize that a book with the answers has just been published and it has the key to everything in its title. The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate our Democracy by Jeffrey Winters is so named for the tendency of society to overlook the sociopathy and egregious wealth of the owner class.  In particular, Winters focuses on the handsomely compensated Wealth Defense Industry that services the rich, that helps them hide their income, wealth and assets from the collective treasury of the masses by storing untold hordes of it in secret offshore banks and corporations-- often by taking advantage of perfectly "legal" loopholes designed for this purpose by a purposely indulgent tax code.  Meanwhile, those civil servants of the IRS who would in a healthy society pursue the equitable share of the wealthy's income that could solve so many of society's problems if it could be unearthed are hamstrung by the politically appointed heads of their agencies.  

As Winters' book details, none of this is accidental.   The founding fathers designed our democracy to be this way.  Winters asks us to consider why there was a Second Continental Congress when a Constitution had already been ratified in the first.  It was to correct the errors of the first which had not had the participation of all of the slave states and which threatened to institutionalize too much democracy. As Broadway Hero Alexander Hamilton put it .".. our real Disease ... is Democracy, the poison of which by a subdivision will only be the more concentrated in each part, and consequently the more virulent."  The system by which a popularly elected, large and quarrelsome House of Representatives whose size would reflect the population was checked by an aristocratically appointed Senate reflecting the acreage of the landed elite as well as by a supreme court whose members, selected by the Senate for their understanding of the mission and for their class loyalty would be granted terms for life.   The net effect would be the semblance of a noisy contentious democracy among the portion of the masses permitted to vote, kept in temper by a system of "checks and balances" populated by and servicing the elite.  Just enough elasticity was built in so that the balance could teeter ever so minutely in the direction of the working masses, but never so far that it could not be clawed back.  The success of the American system in doing what has been emulated world wide, spreading the disease of American style democracy to every corner of the earth, making this planet that they are so eager to destroy and escape from their own no matter where they go.  All over the world, thanks to the Blind Spot, oligarchs  who contribute as little as they can get away with to society enjoy every fruit and benefit of the surplus of what we are forced to put into the collective pot to make up for their shirking, making them the only beneficiaries of the socialism that they so covetously deprive us of.

As for American democracy, out of the ambitious overreach of the Neoliberal era, the powerlessness of the people and the extinction of the commons has become nearly complete while the balls of the Oligarchy have swollen right along with the number and size of their bank accounts.  This is both a curse and a blessing in disguise because it makes the hideous egregiousness of their free ride much less easy to hide behind any façade of deservedness.  Winters' book is highly recommended for its discussion of fixes, large and small, that could ultimately lead to the demise of oligarchic sway, including abolishment of the Senate, term limits and expansion of the Supreme Court, the elimination of the electoral college and simplification of the tax code to remove loopholes and enforce a progressive rate to make it prohibitive for the wealthy not to pay their fair share.  Most importantly and excitingly, Winters makes a clear and unmissable case for using scientifically representative sortition-- we at unspeakable (as heck)'s favorite system-- to select our leaders.

If despising the Oligarchy for its role in fucking everything up is a crime, lock me up.  Guilty as charged.  But before the fix is in, do not neglect the fix.

Artificial Human Intelligence (Such as it is)

Companies and organizations using automated systems, seeking a way to avoid taking responsibility for their decisions, may attempt to displace accountability to the systems themselves. The more opaque the system is and the more it is presented as an anthropomorphized “intelligence”, the easier it will be to pull off this trick

-from The AI Con, Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna

Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna are both veterans of Silicon Valley who are now, respectively, a professor at the University of Washington and a researcher at the Timnit Gebru's Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research (or DAIR) Institute.  Bender, a linguist and expert in computational language, and Gebru, a pioneer in the field of AI Ethics whose work on Algorithmic Bias rattled the field,  co-authored the paper in which they  coined the term "stochastic parrot" to describe the nature of AI's "intelligence" capturing the flavor of a system adept at structuring language that is semantically correct by pattern analysis and emulation--essentially, imitation-- without the capacity to comprehend or intend meaning (shortchanging the parrot perhaps, but you get the point.).  It was this essay which it is entirely reasonable to assume cost Gebru her position at Google, which provided the opportunity that she took to start the non-profit DAIR Institute. and Hanna to leave her position at Google to re-join her former boss.  Bender and Hanna co-host the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 podcast in which they use humor and their insider perspectives to mock the frenzy surrounding AI, and have now co-authored the book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want-- on the short list for unspeakable (as heck) Notable book of 2026. 

The AI Hype is real.  Companies and firms such as the one I work for aggressively push employees to incorporate AI into their work with no justification.  My superiors, perhaps on their own initiative but perhaps with the incentive of pleasing the hand that feeds them, have been embracing generative AI as a tool, though I am finding myself and my colleagues bogged down with creating the interfaces that make a lot of my colleagues' AI "creations" go (and to be honest I have yet to see a finished product that actually works).  The tail is wagging the dog.

Joseph Weizenbaum, a pioneer of AI who developed the ELIZA program, one of the functions of which was a psychoanalytical algorithm programmed to respond to anything confessed to it by a human with a  response designed to be reasonably indistinguishable from a human psychoanalyst, nevertheless broke with fellow AI pioneers such as Marvin Minsky on the question of whether AI would ever achieve anything equivalent to human intelligence.  Weizenbaum's words on the topic from his 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason expresses his viewpoint elegantly:

Computers can make judicial decisions, computers can make psychiatric judgments. They can flip coins in much more sophisticated ways than can the most patient human being. The point is that they ought not be given such tasks. They may even be able to arrive at “correct” decisions in some cases—but always and necessarily on bases no human being should be willing to accept.  There have been many debates on “Computers and Mind.” What I conclude here is that the relevant issues are neither technological nor even mathematical; they are ethical. They cannot be settled by asking questions beginning with “can.” The limits of the applicability of computers are ultimately statable only in terms of oughts. What emerges as the most elementary insight is that, since we do not now have any ways of making computers wise, we ought not now to give computers tasks that demand wisdom.

The same, it occurs to me, could be said of ourselves.   Where is the evidence of our wisdom?  Certainly not in the millions of simple little things-- things like mutual respect; avoidance of war; distribution of wealth, shelter and healthcare; stewardship of the planet that gave us life; selection of our leaders; disposition and predilections and proclivities of our leaders; invention of tools that assist us and do not instead threaten our existence-- that demand but demonstrably do not get wisdom from us.

A Jacobin article by Leif Weatherby from January 25, 2024 illustrates the point -- which should not be controversial to anyone in the world of Trump's America in 2026-- that when it comes to intelligence, creativity and wisdom, humanity leaves a lot to be desired.

What stands between Plato and Orwell is culture, and with the rise of generative AI, we have a culture problem. The general intellectual bafflement of 2023 isn’t just a Chomsky problem. It’s a tendency that we have to underestimate culture even when it’s the very thing giving us fits. We may want to believe that “human creativity” — a constant refrain in Chomsky’s writing — isn’t susceptible to statistical techniques. But while it makes sense to reserve judgment on the avant-garde, I think it’s clear that Taylor Swift really could be an AI, partly because hyperproduced media products like her music or Marvel films find a kind of statistical center in the vastness of culture — which is exactly what generative AI does. There’s an unfathomably huge scale of human language production that comes between any formal linguistics and the types of danger that Chomsky and Kissinger both diagnose. GPT systems simply reveal that scale, and we do not like the results. But we cannot afford to ignore them.

The thing in the article that was titillating me is in another quote from the same piece: “The propaganda machines that Chomsky thinks manufacture consent are now close to one-hundred-percent AI-driven.”  I don’t know if that’s true exactly but if it is it’s a little blood chilling.  What makes it plausible to me is this haunting thought I have had that if AI could generate bad fiction let’s say that you could not detect from bad human generated fiction (of which there are plenty of examples), then what does that say about fiction?  A machine could do it. Big deal you might say but what really haunts me is among the forces that shape our economics, our politics, our media— what part of that is not basically shit that a machine couldn’t do?

We don’t need machines to get politics that a machine could do.  We do the crappy politics ourselves.  So what does it matter if a machine is doing the crappy politics instead?

Rather than hand over the reins of civilization to the "intelligence" that we created, we would do well to acquire some actual intelligence ourselves.

Now is Now

We re-interrupt this writer's block for some brief commentary on the news.  

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no Graham Platner problem.  Graham Platner's story does not confirm or disprove anything.  Graham Platner's fall is not proof of his supporters' gullibility or his detractors' perspicacious genius. Get his name out of your mouth and out of your head.  What's done is done.  It is not a lesson.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime meteor that dazzled the sky long enough to illuminate the decrepit state of things on earth.*  It has already crashed into a lifeless heap an hour southeast of Bangor.  It is beyond time to move on. 

The problem is not how do you prevent something that had a one in a quintillion chance of happening from happening again, it is how do we sustain the unheralded moment it engendered now that it has passed? 

In short, how do you now give Maine voters what they voted for?  This should be (should always have been) the topic on everyone's mind.  Do not distract yourself with gossip, division and rancor.  Pay attention.  Put the car in Drive.

Until the next better candidate comes along, this highlander says:  Troy Jackson for Senate.

~~~~~

* One has to wonder will we be too busy drawing lessons and pointing fingers and cautioning ourselves and others, gauging the precise punishment we deserve for allowing Platner to continue his candidacy in light of his flaws as a human being (or grubbing for honors for seeing through it), to recognize that had Platner voluntarily exited the race before the primary, Janet Mills, currently losing to Susan Collins in polls matching the Republican with those contending to replace Platner on the ticket, would already be the candidate?

Time to Reflect

We interrupt this writer's block with a special bulletin.  Politico reports that a 41 year old woman in Maine alleges that Graham Platner, recent winner of the Maine Democratic Primary for Senate, sexually assaulted her in 2021. (For some context since his wife has become a figure in some of this, Platner and his wife-- not the woman named in the article-- married in 2023).  Platner has admitted to PTSD from combat experienced in four stints as a Marine serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- wars he describes now as unjust-- and his candidacy has been beset by controversy and surfacings from one corner or another of troubling details of his past from online intemperance to troubling markings on his person in the form of what we have all-- Platner as well if he is to be believed-- just learned is a tattoo of a skull and crossbones of Nazi origin, and most recently in a problematic piece of journalism in the New York Times alleging "unsettling" (if underwhelmingly presented in the story) behavior with women strategically timed just before the primary.  In response to the relentless onslaught of exposure of what to this point could be described as at worst the past very human mistakes of a man in active and by all appearances successful recovery from darkness and trauma,  Maine voters responded with a doubling down of their support of the genuinely populist Platner who garnered 72% of the Maine primary vote in an unusually heavy turnout in early June.  And yet, sources familiar at the time of the alleged incident with both Platner and with the woman named in the Politico article describe these latest allegations as "credible".   For his part Platner, who denies the allegations, is as of this writing, taking time off to reflect on his campaign.

Regular Unspeakable (as heck) readers may be aware that owing to his outstandingly uncompromising platform, I have been an outspoken supporter of Platner beginning in response to the first allegations in October of last year.  (Disclosure: I am a former Mainer who is ineligible to vote in Maine). I also commented on the New York Times article in the wake of Platner's victory.  I feel it is important in light of "credible" allegations of sexual assault that I comment again.  It would be easy to say "I'm done" with Platner.   Those with an audience larger than mine appear to have now found their out.  I on the other hand would like to imagine a different response so come along if you dare.

I must first state that if the allegations are true, I condemn the act.  Sexual assault is in a category of its own as a violation of another person.  A line has been crossed when an act has a victim.  If true, this is a hugely disappointing and disillusioning turn.  It feels like a betrayal.  He said there would be nothing else to surface.  Was he lying?*  It is also a particularly egregious injustice. As such, I must reiterate my position on injustice.  As one who has studied and thought about the topic a great deal  in recent years, and has had an awakening on it, I reaffirm that I do not consider responses to injustice that do not restore justice-- that in fact spread and re-perpetrate injustice "in the name of justice" beyond the confines of the incident that calls for it-- to be justice.  What I would like to see is not retribution and punishment as self-justifying reflexes to wrongs, but rather true undoing of the imbalance introduced by the violation of a person by another.  Not an eye for an eye, but healing of the wound  to include a mending to be provided by or taken from the offender (which could take the form of banishment from the life of the victim and mandatory egoless penitence performed-- say, money or time given or other public service say as an above average Senator-- to the cause of ending sexual assault)  and redemption appropriately sought by the transgressor and to whatever extent possible willingly granted by the transgressed.  All of this a private restitution mediated as necessary by a third party or parties.  And then movement on with the lives of all concerned with only the diminishment that entropy could not restore to the situation due to what remains in the memory of the act.  We have few precedents for it, but it is what I have come to always seek.  To my way of thinking, until we live in a society in which restorative justice is possible, we are neglecting the important society rebuilding work of getting there.

The point I want to make from the above is not that I choose to imagine justice restored as I describe in this particular alleged incident.  That would be a fairy tale of wishful thinking.  Rather, I  would like to stress that I feel such a violation in a more perfect world to be a private matter of the woman and her family and circle of support, her going public with it notwithstanding.  As for Platner, I would like to think that if this is true he would have already taken steps or made plans to selflessly and privately make amends for his act.  And if he is innocent, and can be in contact with her, his seeking a rapprochement or coming to an agreement with her would be a lovely thing. My only wish would be for restorative justice to be made good on in a way that would undo the harm that this betrayal (if true) has done to the woman and yes will have done to Maine voters and to others who have placed hope in and support behind Platner's highly unusual and to this point thirstily welcomed campaign.  But it would be foolish to expect it.

Until we know the outcome, I do grieve for the people of Maine, and for the piece of the National consciousness that had awakened in hope from the real substance for working people that Platner's campaign platform had aroused.  The sad truth about politics is that too much of it is a spectator sport.  The online leftists who were eager to be done with Platner in October (and who surely are enjoying a good if premature last laugh at this turn of events) inspired me to support Platner openly for the first time because while content to destroy a worker's campaign willy nilly they were not efficacious enough to provide a better alternative.  Their smug inaction is partly responsible for the disaster that will transpire should Platner not find the wherewithal or redemption to continue.  That disaster is the void left in opposition to Susan Collins (and the end of a rare and beautiful dream of a vastly superior alternative for the working Mainer and an example for the country) leading inevitably to her re-election at the worst moment in history for it.†

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* In my estimation, it is much too soon to rule out further shenanigans from a political establishment that does not want the change that Platner and other insurgent Democrats represent.

† For what it's worth, I still don't care what you think about Graham Platner.