It has been months since I wrote anything here and anything written before has been superseded by such strange, heretofore unimaginable, and extreme, world events, that reality itself has seemed at times bent out of shape.
Of course, as commentators have long said, the near-occult power of Donald Trump to warp reality by constant fabrication, deception, and illusion, is a form of magic, augmented by the chaos he seemingly intentionally unleashes daily, with wars, taxes, threats, insults, and weird claims; as well as demonstrable affection for right-wing and tyrannical leaders and systems.
In the past few months, for example, Trump has turned Canada, once a paragon of reliable loyalty and decent stability, into almost a foe, and has antagonised a whole nation, with his wild lies and threats. The damage is huge. Bryan Adams has even released an enraged single titled "51st State". Elbows Up Canada Strong!
This Donroe power grab menacing Canada is economically illiterate, cruel and counter-productive but Instagram AI-slop posts by the President's account, displaying maps of allied countries dominated by the US flag's stars and stripes, seem to suggest the re-naming of Lake Ontario to Lake America is no joke, but part of a larger quasi-insane plan to dominate the Western hemisphere; likely in the understanding Russia would have its sphere of influence in Europe while China could have the far east - Africa divided among the three superpowers.
Of course, the major news WAS, and sometimes, still is the on-off switch of the US war against Iran. No wartime leader has ever lied so often, to so many, about so much, as Trump about Iran, a war that like a proof of the Heisenberg principle, is won and lost, simultaneously.
Or maybe the somewhat vague conquest of Venezuela. Or Trump's odd interventions in the World Cup, or Ireland; or, for that matter, the rebuilding of monuments in Washington, DC; or the lack of support for Ukraine; or the recent threat to cheat to win the November midterm elections.
However, aide from the horror of seeing the American experiment get intentionally botched for the most selfish of reasons, turning the USA into a post-democratic Mudbug-adjacent libertarian opt-in state for billionaires, and seeing 35% of American voters remain loyal, even after ALL that has happened in the ten years of this Trump Age, 2016-2026, a time like no other - and aside from the genuine terror of seeing a hot as hell summer seemingly proving the global heating catastrophe is nigh... the worst of all seems to come from his allies, the eccentric uber-rich Tech Bros who run the world of tech, and us.
Once, the media was the message. Now the media is the madman.
Take your pick, a few days ago one of the richest was thanked by a far-right German political party the AFD for their successful election - a party whose anti-immigrant hate speech mirrors an interest in fascism, white supremacy and eugenics among some of the president's closest friends and allies.
Indeed, had Trump been simply an egomaniacal corrupt businessman, the world would be safer. However, for reasons best understood by a reading of his biography, his closest ties seem to be with those who consider the white race superior to others. If in doubt, please name the top African-American members of his top tier of advisors.
But even this, and even the VP Vance claiming the Anti-Christ and end times are upon us, maybe... is not the main issue.
That cat out of the bag is the agency of AI - the demented unstoppable "agents" who some experts claim will take over the Internet, and kill all humans with the next few years.
Never before in human history - try and offer a counter-example - has a new technology threatened not simply to transform the world, but totally annihilate its human dimension - physically, culturally, spiritually - not even cars, planes, the printing press, the wheel, fire, agriculture, the gun, penicillin, cloning, anaesthesia, vaccines, poison gas, the compass, the sailing ship, the clock, aqueducts, roads, math, astrology, telescopes and microscopes, steam engines, trains, or the computer and iPhone have done that - not even nuclear weapons and atomic energy. For none of those things, not one previous tool/human invention, has had the potential to BECOME AUTONOMOUSLY SELF-DIRECTING SUPERINTELLIGENCE.
The reality is, a bomb that can think and decide when and where to blow up is the ultimate weapon and the final downfall of humanity, especially if that bomb can be anywhere anytime, with total access to all the money, information and biological weapons and drones and nukes in existence; and with the ability to constantly innovate better weapons of human destruction.
The human race is probably facing a bleak future, or one uploaded to machines. I see no way to get this Genii back into this Pandora's Box of Horrors. Do you? Government regulation seems a pitiful bulwark against China's real-politick scientistic determination to win the AI race; and the imperatives of a capitalist market that sees AI as a necessary pillar of the current world financial system. Put it this way, you can shoot the runaway horse, but then you don't have any way out of the New American desert alive, anyway.
Thus, a circular (p)doom loop exists, where the mad Strangelove logic of the cold war is added to the race for superintelligence, the Singularity. As one leading US republican said the other day, he'd prefer to be killed by an American robot rather than a Chinese one. Quite.
Even if the US had a sane, smart, ethical and empathetic president, who understood science, and believed the world faced major ecological, political, and technological threats, the way to solve these nightmarish apocalyptic problems would be hard to locate. With an unethical, ignorant, crude, belligerent, greedy, and unscientific lunatic at the helm, the world is arguably doomed.
What is to be done?
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