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.†

~~~~~

* 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.