Does AI Enhance or Replace Civilization

 

Does AI Enhance or Replace Civilization?

The above magazine cover, from the beginning of Trump’s presidency in 2017, was beyond prescient, mild if you will. His latest term shows that Mr Trump is neither stable nor a genius. There are strong signs of mental and physical deterioration, a mysterious MRI (that was obviously not routine despite statements to the contrary), a hand that never heals, excessive (even for Trump) name-calling, falling asleep at multiple high-level meetings, at home and abroad… side-by-side comparisons with Joe Biden’s mental fall from grace suggest that Trump is in far worse shape. And while Republicans are slowly separating from “all Trump, all the time,” his dark shadow and his failed appointments are increasingly clear. But Trump the destroyer makes it hard to believe he was once a builder. Look at his unilateral destruction (above) of the White House.

His obsession with artificial intelligence, combined with a belief that if there are any rules that might apply to this devastating technology, we will lose the AI race with China (even as we have approved the sale of high-level AI chips to them)… and his billionaire “who cares what AI does to the little people” tech bros… hell-bent to a wild west uncontrolled AI, such that on December 11th, Trump signed an executive order banning any states from containing AI in any way (see above). Is that order even legal? Writing for the December 12th Associated Press, Jonathan Cooper explains what those state efforts have been and where they were heading:

“Four states — Colorado, California, Utah and Texas — have passed laws that set some rules for AI across the private sector, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals… Those laws include limiting the collection of certain personal information and requiring more transparency from companies… The laws are in response to AI that already pervades everyday life... The technology helps make consequential decisions for Americans, including who gets a job interview, an apartment lease, a home loan and even certain medical care. But research has shown that it can make mistakes in those decisions, including by prioritizing a particular gender or race.

“States’ more ambitious AI regulation proposals require private companies to provide transparency and assess the possible risks of discrimination from their AI programs… Beyond those more sweeping rules, many states have regulated parts of AI: barring the use of deepfakes in elections and to create nonconsensual porn, for example, or putting rules in place around the government’s own use of AI.” But I’m watching Gen Z grads finding fewer job opportunities, fewer people leaving old jobs, and vast swaths of clerical workers finding their expected jobs filled with AI alternatives. In the legal profession, legal research, drafting briefs and filing documents, reviewing vast pages of documents looking for facts, suggestions for legal strategies, evaluating whether cases are worth taking, etc. have changed law school values across the land. And that’s just one example. Simply, whole categories of jobs are disappearing, never to return.

China already infuses most of their digital consumer goods with AI in a big way. The US seems only interested in the home run, breakthrough without the slightest concern about what happens to people. But then, Trump has never shown any empathy. Writing for the December 13th FastCompany.com, Anna-Louise Jackson, a freelance writer and editor with more than 15 years of experience covering financial markets, the economy, personal finance, and business trends, asks the big question with this headline: Is humanity on a collision course with AI? Why the downsides need to be reckoned with soon.

“Researchers on the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and leaders of many of the major platforms—from Geoffrey Hinton to Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk—have voiced concerns that AI could lead to the destruction of humanity itself.

“Even the stated odds from some of these AI experts, with an end-days scenario as high as 25%, are still ‘wildly optimistic,’ according to Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and coauthor of the recent best-selling book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies… That’s because, as he argues in the book, the track we’re on with AI is headed for disaster—unless something radically changes. The book, cowritten with researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, explores potential threats posed by “superintelligence,” or theoretical AI systems that are smarter than humans.

“‘We’re sort of growing these AIs that act in ways nobody asked for, that have these drives and emergent behaviors nobody intended,’ Soares said at last month’s World Changing Ideas Summit, cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C… ‘If we get superhumanly intelligent AIs that are pursuing ends nobody wanted, I think the default outcome is that literally everybody on earth dies,’ he added… Likening the work of some AI leaders to building an airplane while flying with no landing gear, Soares said that not enough attention is being paid to the technology’s potentially negative outcomes.

“The amount of global investment being poured into AI shows that people are betting it won’t be a ‘total dud,’ he said, but there are two other ‘crazy’ options: AI radically automates all human labor, so the economy is captured by a very small group, or it becomes super intelligent and kills everyone.” But it is patently clear, no one really understands the ramifications of AI, not even its engineer-creators. And when politicians speak to the public about AI, they can be naïve Dems with pablum on their tongues or AI hucksters looking to make money for themselves or their cronies.

They don’t really know what they are talking about, but a good lie might get them elected somewhere cool. Writing for the December 9th Puck.com, Peter Hamby, notes this stylistic contrast: “Do Democrats even know how to talk about A.I., let alone muster the will to rein it in? Like anything tech-related, some politicians do, some don’t, and others earnestly admit they still have a lot to learn. I got a glimpse of the learning curve at last weekend’s Democratic Governors Association meeting in Phoenix, where dozens of sitting governors and candidates descended on the palm-lined Arizona Biltmore Resort. Amy Acton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor in Ohio, told me she’d arrived at the hotel in an A.I.-powered Waymo—her first time riding in an autonomous vehicle. ‘My partner, who often drives me, was sitting in the back seat, and he said, ‘I just lost my job on the way over!’

“Acton was among those who admitted she has much to learn about A.I. policy, and said her team was ‘digging deep’ into it. ‘It is going to be disruptive,’ she said, ‘but we have to figure out how to harness it for good.’ The good? She cited workforce training in education. The bad? Energy prices. There are almost 200 data centers in Ohio, including several run by hyperscalers Google, Meta, and Amazon. When Acton talks about skyrocketing energy bills, she sounds like Mikie Sherrill, New Jersey’s new governor-elect, who made much of her campaign about exactly that issue.

“But Acton is running against Vivek Ramaswamy who, despite his blabbermouth tendencies, hails from the private sector and talks about the issue with far more expertise than his rival. ‘How do you avoid social unrest? How do you have an entire generation that could be, in some sectors, … displaced by A.I.?’ Ramaswamy said on a recent Fox News segment devoted entirely to such technological disruption, as well as his plans to protect Gen Z from white-collar job displacement. His solution was convoluted—replacing federal entitlements with stock market accounts so that young people can build wealth on the back of A.I. growth—but he at least sounded A.I. fluent.” The stock market suggestion is a full-on “stupid”…. But without a whole lot more in the way of meaningful guidelines in place, what’s the worst that can happen? Exactly!!!

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps we are all playing with matches in a dynamite factory… and letting a man with clean signs of mental decay tells why we must.

Is Gerrymandering Fair Game or the End of the United States

 

      Boston Gazette, March 26, 1812

Is Gerrymandering Fair Game or the End of the United States?

The last time the White House faced this level of destruction was during the War of 1812, when the British burned it down. Indeed, America’s addiction to unfairness – where those with power and drafting skills – designed a system that assumed that our highest elected officials would be men (sorry, no women yet) of moral character always putting the people ahead of personal gains and ambitions. George Washington set the tone by refusing to be treated like the monarch from which our nation broke away, would not accept more than two terms and by serving as a mediator between federalists and those seeking more power to the states. The nation was 95% farmers, fishermen and hunters-for-food back then. But then… er… now…

Under the Constitution, the Senate is based on two Senators from each state, regardless of population, and charged with limited powers (e.g., confirming high-level presidential appointments, ratifying treaties, etc.) and given stability of a 6-year term. The House is based on populations in state-determined “districts” – of roughly 600,000 people (minimum of one per state) – with equally defined powers (e.g., the right to initiate all appropriations bills), but given a highly volatile 2-year term. Bills have to pass both of these legislative bodies to be sent to the president for signature or veto. A 2/3 vote of all of Congress can override a veto.

But there was a huge and vile fly in this political ointment. You can draw of those House districts to be representative of the people who live in those states, or you can warp out serpentine shaped districts to disenfranchise identifiable constituencies of voters. By race. Political persuasion. Or whim. That serpent was called a Gerry Mander in 1812, but after the Civil War, reconstruction, even after constitutional amendments to give former slave the vote were enacted, gerrymanders and voter intimidation kept former slaves far from fair representation. It was a policy that was so bad, that in 1965, Lyndon Johnson helped push through the Voting Rights Act. It placed particularly abusive states under federal control and created special provisions targeting racial bias.

But in 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court gutted those provisions of the Voting Rights Act, and oncethose federal controls were lifted, the racially inspired gerrymandering in those states resumed almost instantly. Today, the racial discrimination provision of the act, Section 2, appears that it will be so narrowly construed by the Court so as to be meaningless. Starting with a pliable Texas governor and legislature, President Donald Trump has urged Republican-held states nationwide to revise their congressional maps to ensure GOP control of the House, even if that reconfiguration disenfranchised millions of voters. California retaliated to counter the Texas redistricting, and Indiana refused to play ball with Trump, extracting Trump’s wrath in the upcoming primaries.

So where are we. Writing for the December 15th Los Angeles Times, David Lieb writes: “What changed? The definition of fair.’… As states undertake mid-decade redistricting instigated by President Trump, Republicans and Democrats are using a tit-for-tat definition of fairness to justify districts that split communities in an attempt to send politically lopsided delegations to Congress. It is fair, they argue, because other states have done the same. And it is necessary, they say, to maintain a partisan balance in the House of Representatives that resembles the national political divide.

“This new vision for drawing congressional maps is creating a winner-take-all scenario that treats the House, traditionally a more diverse patchwork of politicians, like the Senate, where members reflect a state’s majority party. The result could be reduced power for minority communities, less attention to certain issues and fewer distinct voices heard in Washington.

“Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky fears that unconstrained gerrymandering would put the United States on a perilous path, if Democrats in states such as Texas and Republicans in states such as California feel shut out of electoral politics. ‘I think that it’s going to lead to more civil tension and possibly more violence in our country,’ he said Sunday on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’

“Although Indiana state senators rejected a new map backed by Trump and [Indiana Gov. Mike] Braun that could have helped Republicans win all nine of the state’s congressional seats, districts have already been redrawn in Texas, California, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Other states could consider changes before the 2026 midterms that will determine control of Congress… ‘It’s a fundamental undermining of a key democratic condition, said Wayne Fields, a retired English professor from Washington University in St. Louis who is an expert on political rhetoric… ‘The House is supposed to represent the people,’ Fields said. ‘We gain an awful lot by having particular parts of the population heard.’” An unabashedly pro-Trump 6-3 Supreme Court majority is both weak and determined to move the United State into an authoritarian presidency.

The feared result of all this, expected in June, is most crass and fundamental cronyism, where loyalty and, for the mega-rich, well-placed donations, dictate policy… where those without money are simply squeezed out. Trump’s track record on this speaks, yells, for itself. But the Supreme Court seems determined to redefine our government, from top to bottom. And voters and any traditional definition of constitutional fairness be damned.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I agree that partisan gerrymandering could easily turn the country into an illiberal nation where the rich and powerful get it all.

America has Never Been Less Safe

   

America has Never Been Less Safe

And Those Provoking Danger are Seeking Advance Pardons and Release from International Prosecutions

Donald Trump has mentioned that he may have to issue pardons before his term expires to cabinet members, senior government officials and even his foot soldiers, be they military or federal “police” agents. An admission guilt? Pardons for what? We can expect violent retaliation, now MAGA normalized, as gerrymanders deprive pockets of voters who are losing representatives in Congress – be they Democrats in Texas or Republicans in California. Guns are ubiquitous with fewer restrictions than ever. Even states with as many gun restrictions as the law will allow have no way of stopping guns bought legally elsewhere and brought into their state.

We’ve pulled FBI, DEA and ATF agents off serious and highly complex criminal investigations either to redact Epstein papers (of Trump’s name?) or to join ICE agents in immigration sweeps (above), most of which are detainees who have no criminal records. Officially, the only recognized serious domestic threat announced by the FBI during recent House Committee meetings as “Antifa,” although no evidence of even the existence of such an organization, its size and membership was produced. Meanwhile, as much of our foreign policy fails, in addition to a breakdown of the ill-conceived Gaza truce, Trump seems to be supporting Vladimir Putin’s demands, unchanged in the years of the Ukrainian war, for Kyiv to cede territory to Russia (including the most valuable sections of Ukraine where industrial infrastructure is centered) to Europe’s shock and dismay.

Europe sees Russia as an existential threat, as Moscow’s threats against Europe escalate, Russian drones/jets make cross-border “mistakes”… as official statements from the Trump administration suggest that American support for NATO is fading fast. The voices of European leaders sounding a rising distrust of Trump, accused of becoming Putin’s champion now, have grown into a roar. After the latest suggestion from the President that even visitors from visa-free countries will be required to share social media activities, telephone numbers and email addresses of family members as a condition of entry, cancellations for the FIFA World Cup games in the US are rising fast; could the Olympics be far behind? Trump seems to enjoy alienating the world.

They see federal troops, masked and embracing warrantless arrests, in US cities committing brutalities against citizen-protestors, helpless innocent immigrants, nasty videos from Dept of Homeland Security starring Sec. Kristi Noem, unlivable detention facilities (like Alligator Alcatraz), deportation to foreign concentration camps (like the massive Cecot Prison in El Salvador where US deportees were initially sent)… all as the President tears apart the White House to build a king’s garish grand ballroom that dwarfs the rest of that residence… and non-stop gun violence across the land, tens of millions of assault weapons killing innocents, including many American children by the thousands.

The world watches as the United States, flexing its military might, provokes a war against Latin American nations, threatening “cartel” territories in Colombia, Venezuela and even Mexico… without congressional or judicial approval. We could find ourselves in a shooting war by the unsanctioned actions of one man. War crimes? Murder? Whatever else and said and done, we are now perceived as a lawless and brutal international bully, untrustworthy from top to bottom.

But while miniscule drips and drabs of illicit drugs are subject to US missile attacks in international waters, in boats which may not even be heading the US shores, Trump pardons a convicted felon, responsible for hundreds of tons of cocaine and other drugs sold in the US, who ran his drug empire as President of Honduras… and shortly after ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández was released, extradition orders from Honduras were served on this felon. He’s still a wanted criminal.

But are we the ones suborning criminality? As the Team Coffman Chronicle (December 14th) tells us: “The Trump administration is reportedly pressing the International Criminal Court (ICC) to guarantee that Donald Trump and other top U.S. officials won’t be prosecuted for alleged war crimes, a move that could escalate tensions with international legal institutions. According to Reuters, Washington has threatened new sanctions on the ICC if it does not agree to amend its founding treaty to shield current and former American leaders from future prosecution.

“Administration officials are said to be worried that after Trump’s term ends in 2029, the ICC might pursue investigations against the president, vice president and senior defense figures, creating a high-stakes conflict between the U.S. and the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal. The same anonymous U.S. source told Reuters that Washington has communicated similar demands to ICC member countries and publicly signaled its position to the court.

“In addition to the immunity concerns, the U.S. wants the ICC to drop ongoing probes into Israeli leaders over alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict and to formally end a long-running investigation into U.S. military actions in Afghanistan. Amending the Rome Statute would require approval from two-thirds of ICC member states, a major diplomatic and legal hurdle that the court’s critics say is unlikely to succeed…

“Legal experts and international rights advocates warn that using sanctions to influence a court’s prosecutorial independence could undermine the rule of law and damage global efforts to hold leaders accountable. What happens next hinges on whether the ICC formally responds to the U.S. threats and on diplomatic pressure from other member states.”

As Donald Trump orders that states cannot have the power to set guardrails against the unbridled growth of artificial intelligence, a technology with profoundly dangerous risks run by some of the greediest tech bros imaginable, money talks… common sense walks. Add to that the Trump billionaire tax cut and the even bigger social benefits cuts among the neediest working Americans. Medical costs are set to explode to eliminate millions of Americans from any healthcare… and explode the cost of healthcare for the rest of us as well. Indeed, as measles, flu and a virulent strain of COVID are on the rise, a clown car of HHS/CDC medical quacks, rejected by virtually all mainstream doctors and healthcare professionals, is cutting back support for vaccines at virtually every level, but particularly among school children. Not only are those should be getting those vaccines (but do not) truly unsafe, but the risk of epidemic, and even pandemic, disaster rises for everybody else. And to think, Donald Trump’s recent poll numbers have inched up slightly.

I’m Peter Dekom, and notwithstanding millions of fact averse conspiracy theorists still very much behind Trump, step by toxic step, millions of Americans are less safe than any of us have been since the Civil War… because of Trump’s unilateral dictates and missteps.

Trump’s Seething Anger at Americans

 

Trump’s Seething Anger at Americans

A Matter of Tone or Tone Deafness

"The latest CPI numbers are encouraging for the Federal Reserve, but Fed Chair Jerome Powell has already warned against reading too much into the latest data due to distortions from the shutdown. The central bank will remain most vigilant about the labor market, as a continuation of real wage growth will allow households to fully recover from the hit to their purchasing power since the pandemic." 

Bernard Yaros, lead economist at Oxford Economics, in the December 18th Newsweek

"We're going to get data, but we're going to have to look at it carefully and with a somewhat skeptical eye by the time of the January meeting, notwithstanding that we will have a lot of the December data by the time of the January. So, we expect to see a lot more, but I'm just saying that the—what we get for, for example, CPI or for the, you know, household survey, we're gonna look—we're going to look at that really carefully and understand that it may be distorted by very technical factors." 

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in mid-December

“Many of the people who claim to follow Jesus are instruments of a merciless leader and a merciless movement. They have chosen their political loyalties over their faith, even while using the latter to validate the former. There is something morally twisted and discrediting in this…. One of the most elevating features of Christianity is the concept—and it is not only a Christian concept—of imago Dei. It is the belief that human beings are created in the image of God and valued because we are loved by God. Every person has inherent dignity and worth. Out of that conviction should arise compassion and empathy, including a solidarity with the poor and weak and wounded. It is the way of Jesus—and the way of Jesus, and the person of Jesus, has won our hearts.” 

Peter Wehner in The Atlantic, December 16th.

Donald Trump had a genuine chance towards partial redemption in his 20-minute speech on Wednesday. The inflation rate was down from 3% to 2.7%, pretty much where it was when he took office in Trump 2.0. The expected price increases from his tariffs are only beginning to kick in, but Americans are spending 42% less this holiday season than they spent last year. Clearly, the price at the pump was less, but with a global glut in oil, that was not the result of Trump policies… just overproduction in a world rapidly transitioning to alternative energy. Likewise, the decline in home prices (and even rent) was more a factor of a dearth of buyers now unable to pay highly inflated housing values.

Coming after the shutdown and some of our worst labor numbers, declining faster than we have seen in a very long time, the general consensus of all Americans pinned their 65% supermajority fears of a declining economy squarely on Trump (57%), and only 3% heralded Trump’s economy as “excellent,” pretty much reflective of the monied class that dominates stock/asset ownership… noting that 92% of our GDP growth was, according to the December 18th Los Angeles Times, attributed to one, bubble facing, industry: artificial intelligence. Trump’s touting of the investment dollars he has “secured” - $18-$20 trillion dollars (representing well over 50% of our $38 trillion GDP) – fell into the “pie in the sky” territory. There’s no way to enforce those very loose international pledges, those numbers do not automatically translate into jobs (and certainly zero jobs in the foreseeable future) and even if made, are unlikely seriously to impact our economy in Trump’s lifetime.

Drilling into some underlying specifics in that 2.7% inflation number, the December 18th Newsweek, reports: “Within the 2.7 percent rate of inflation, the energy index rose 4.2 percent over the 12 months ending in November; the food index climbed 2.6 percent; electricity prices were up 6.9 percent; and gas utility costs increased 9.1 percent… Some categories saw prices fall on an annual basis, including dairy and related products (-1.6 percent), fresh fruit and vegetables (-0.2 percent), and eggs (-13.2 percent)… However, coffee and beef costs were up significantly over the past twelve months given recent supply issues, rising 18.8 percent and 15.8 percent respectively.”

As for all those claims he has made the world more peaceful – even the eight “peace settlements” he takes credit for are mostly denied by the relevant nations, and you only have to look at the continuing horrors in Gaza and the West Bank to watch that “peace agreement” unravel – his extra-judicial executions, lacking a supporting congressional vote, of small boats, probably loaded with cocaine that may or may not have been heading to the US may well constitute war crimes or even murder under both international and even US law. His blockade of Venezuelan oil tankers, wherein he claims that oil is “ours,” may require him to deploy our massive offshore navel fleet to fire upon escort ships that the Venezuelan government says it will deploy to project its tankers. Is Trump provoking a war without upfront congressional authority?

His railing at all those criminal immigrants he has thwarted from entering our secure southern border, his expulsion of immigrants with a completely unsubstantiated claim that they were effectively taking rental properties off the market, jobs that should have gone to US citizens, and his claim that his efforts have reduced crimes in the blue cities he has invaded flies in the general rejection of his indiscriminate cruelty… as masked and unidentified federal agents and troop literally marched in the streets over the manifest and massive rejection of such authoritarian tactics by the local American citizens, mayors and in blue state, governors. As so many courts have determined, the unlawful and violent activity may have “subsided” (the rates were already falling) from locally-originated crime, but it was more than made up for by invading federal forces.

We’ve abandoned our European allies, switched sides to favor the murderous Vladimir Putin in his avaricious war to conquer Ukraine, but Trump has not, as he claimed, ramped up global respect for the United States. Europe faces increasing Russian threats and troop build-ups focused well beyond Ukraine.

All of this brings me to the tone and acceleration of his easily disproven falsehoods, the utter lack of empathy for Americans suffering under uncertain economic and job instability that is beyond ubiquitous and the insulting blame shifting that was excessive even by Trump’s generally immoral standards. He even blamed Americans for the problems, suggesting that they buy smaller cars and spend less on consumer goods.

While elected and senior Trump appointed Republicans seem to quiver in fear and refuse to do what they know is right, in my personal opinion, Donald Trump is a clear candidate for removal from office under the 25th Amendment. A mysterious MRI (not routine as we know), that hand discoloration that never heals and causes Trump to resort to makeup, his falling asleep in key meetings (note that since he was standing up for the Wednesday speech, it was only 20 minutes long) and additional indicators that are relevant indicators, to me, of serious mental and physical decline, much more obvious than what we experienced in Joe Biden at the end of his presidency..

Even for Trump’s normal narcissism, his building an unnecessary White House ballroom fit for a king, his obsession with renaming buildings in his honor but most of all his accelerating habit of using misogynistic super-nasty insults or, alternatively, sexual admiration for women around him and expanding blame for all of his failures from Joe Biden to all of the American people who refused accept he “fixed everything.” Many of us, who have dealt with elderly parents or grandparents suffering from Alzheimer’s or other forms of rising symptoms of dementia, have seen this rise in uncontrolled anger and increasing name-calling before.

I’m Peter Dekom, and even as I argued that Joe Biden was not a qualified candidate for a second term, I equally believe that not only is Donald Trump unqualified for his office but that leaving him in the White House will simply compound the damage has already inflicted on America… a fact he seems to realize as he struggles to amplify gerrymandering to leave his House MAGA followers in office to rubber stamp his future orders.

The United States is at War with Itself… and Facts

    

The United States is at War with Itself… and Facts

Within less than half a century, China has lifted almost one billion people out of desperate poverty. But China was a failed state when its cadres were running around chanting Maoist slogans, parroting his “little red book,” labeling university professors as uncaring elites and believing in the officially sanctioned conspiracy theories that the communist government fomented as it sought only those with unquestioning loyalty to Chairman Mao. In the mid-1960s, when Mao was banished to a life of pedophilia and luxury after his abysmal “Great Leap Forward” program decimated the entire country, Mao then fomented the Cultural Revolution to bring the country down from the bottom. That was an even bigger failure. China was a big zero.

Deng Xiapeng was the father of modern China. In 1981, beginning with allowing some capitalism, crushing a world where conspiracy theories loomed over everything else, universities were elevated, scientific research was prioritized, the military modernized and infrastructure was a new national obsession. Simply, all those steps were necessary to undo Mao’s zealous slogans… and their hateful impact on China. The culture war destroyed what little was left of early communist China, loyalty mattered over competence, and China was just a giant, backward, third world nation. Deng turned the country around.

So as I look at China’s patterns of destruction and rebuilding, and by no means do I think the Chinese model is what would work to rebuild here, I think the mechanisms of China’s self-destruction – slogans, conspiracy theories, blind loyalty and vile labels for all who opposed Mao’s twisted vision –are visibly happening under a MAGA/Trump raging culture war with tens of thousands of secret police and label worshipping zealots seeking to turn the United States in to a white Christian nationalist dictatorship where science and expertise are dismissed as “elitist arrogance.” Greed and God are being manipulated to create our own path to destruction… even as nothing in the Bible seems to support that direction. It did not work there, and it definately won’t work here either.

Oddly, the zealots who wish to rule us have taken to using the epithet of “creeping socialism” in a way hardly reflective of the actual definition of that term. It is now simply a way to further pass all the remaining wealth to the top, and tax the rest of us for the pleasure of serving this billionaire or centimillionaire class. What is ironic is how we are effectively handling global influence, economic domination and military superpower status (China First?) to China… by doing the same things that killed China before they “woke” up. Aside from universal healthcare, which they and every Western democracy have in place, modern China is preparing itself to seize Taiwan by force, which some experts predict could well happen in 2027 or soon thereafter. And take us on!

This assessment from Shweta Sharma at the Independent (December 11th), based on Pentagon reports, is sobering reality as to how far we have slipped: “The U.S. military is most likely to suffer a defeat at the hands of China if it tried to intervene in a war over Taiwan, a top secret Pentagon assessment report has found.

“Pentagon war games simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan have shown that Beijing could cripple U.S. fighter squadrons, major warships, and even satellite networks before they deploy effectively, the highly classified document, ‘Overmatch Brief’, warned.

“The document, prepared by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, shows America's reliance on advanced and expensive weapons makes it vulnerable to China's rapidly manufactured cheaper ones, reported the New York Times… The report warned that China has developed the capacity to neutralise critical American assets at the outset of a conflict.

“It comes days after Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, warned U.S. to ‘handle the Taiwan question with the utmost prudence’… The report, recently delivered to senior White House officials, said China’s rapidly maturing arsenal – particularly its long-range precision missiles, expanding fleet of advanced aircraft, large surface vessels, and its counter-space capabilities – now places U.S. forces at a significant operational disadvantage in the region.

“China has amassed an arsenal of about 600 hypersonic weapons, which ‘can travel at five times the speed of sound and are difficult to intercept’, the report said. The Office of Net Assessment is a state agency that serves as the Pentagon's internal think tank… When a senior Biden national security official received the ‘Overmatch’ brief in 2021, he turned ‘pale’ after realising that ‘every trick we had up our sleeve, the Chinese had redundancy after redundancy’, a official who was present there said, according to the NYT… China considers Taiwan as an inseparable part of its insisting that the island of 23 million people eventually be unified with the mainland - by force if necessary.”

With an incredible system of cyber warfare and plethora of drones, sophisticated and inexpensive unsophisticated (the latter which could be launched in overwhelming numbers), sea and air based, can overwhelm our likely sophisticated naval assets, most of which are deployed in multiple fleets stretched thin all over the world. When you think that our Department of War is under the leadership of a recovering alcoholic reservist major, who probably would never have qualified rising through the ranks to command any major military asset, you can easily see how our “blind loyalty over competence” could easily fall in a conflict with seasoned professional military leadership.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we seem to be committing ritual suicide by falling on our own bayonets of conspiracy theories and blind loyalty to Donald Trump… as China stands by to watch the United States embrace a bizarre China First policy.

China Rises and Almost No Nations Trust the US Anymore

 

China Rises and Almost No Nations Trust the US Anymore

Biden, Biden, Biden, Antifa, Antifa, Antifa

“[The United States uses] economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will

and no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies.”

From a recent official report compiled by the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (DDIS)

“I know ’em [European leaders] really well. Um, some are friends. Some are OK. I know the good leaders. I know the bad leaders. I know the smart ones. I know the stupid ones. You get some real stupid ones, too. But, uh, they’re not doing a good job. Europe is not doing a good job in many ways. They’re not doing a good job… I think they’re weak, but I also think that they want to be so politically correct. They don’t ... I think they don’t know what to do. Europe doesn’t know what to do. They don’t know what to do on trade either. I mean, I look at a lot of the trade, you know, situation that’s going on over there. It’s a little bit dangerous. But ... but Europe uh, they want to be politically correct, and it makes them weak. That’s what makes them weak.” 

Trump from the December 9th Politico Interview with Dasha Burns

"I really hope that the United States, although they consider themselves entitled to conduct such operations, will somehow explain, out of respect for other members of the world community, what facts led them to take such actions." 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov demanding that Trump provide justification for the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker. December 11th.

"I do think there have to be consequences for abject war crimes. If you're doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, there is a consequence for that. That's why the military said it won't follow unlawful orders from their commander-in-chief. There's a standard, there's an ethos, there's a belief that we are above so many things that our enemies or others would do." 

From a 2016 video of Pete Hegseth, before Trump 1.0, and while he was a Fox News Host

"The video and classified briefings from the Pentagon were sufficient to convince Chairman Rogers that this was a legal action." 

Spokesperson for Alabama Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, which is dropping the bipartisan probe into the military's Sept. 2 double-strike that killed two survivors in the Caribbean

Given Donald Trump’s clear message to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that KYIV has to cede territory to Russia, reflects Trump’s seeming acceptance of Putin’s unchanged demands to settle the Ukraine war. European leaders, listening to direct threats from Putin and his senior ministers against Europe itself, fear that concession to Russia will only ignite Putin’s ambitions for the rest of Europe. “President Donald Trump said Wednesday [12/10] that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ‘has to be realistic’ about the war with Russia and questioned when Ukraine would next hold elections. Trump’s remarks at the White House followed calls with the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, whom he said discussed the conflict ‘in pretty strong terms.’” Germany is leading the charge of rebuilding Europe’s military strength, saying Europe can no longer trust the United States. Ripples of “the US has switched sides” and the “US is becoming a security risk for Europe” have been lifted to European headlines.

Yet Europeans on the right have noticed how effective Trump’s vituperative-laced, extreme rhetoric has worked in the United States. So, as some Europeans fear Russia and increasingly despise the United States, there is a new rising rightwing in Europe who are opting for new culture war in Europe, mimicking Trump’s style… and his deflection/distraction tactics…. “For the respectable men running western Europe’s three biggest countries, misery is heaped upon misery. All are presiding over stagnant living standards and declining global influence. In Britain and France their rivals from the populist right are itching to take power (even the Alternative for Germany, or the AfD, may win a couple of state elections next year). And America, their key ally, has just accused them of hastening Europe towards what it calls ‘civilisational erasure’. …

“As we [The Economist] report, support for the Alternative for Germany, National Rally and Reform UK is surging. In response, the very respectable leaders of Britain, France and Germany have warned of the catastrophe facing Europe. Just last week, Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, told Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist’s editor-in-chief, that Reform UK was a challenge to ‘the very essence of who we are as a nation.’…

“The doctrines of the populist right do indeed contain much to condemn. Yet talking about them in apocalyptic terms is destined to fail. The doom-mongering of mainstream politicians smacks of an attempt to draw attention away from their own failures in office. Given the strikingly normal way Giorgia Meloni is running Italy, their apocalyptic predictions are not credible. For their own sake, and for the good of their countries, mainstream politicians and their supporters urgently need a different approach.” The Economist, December 11th. The tea leaves of our own decline are everywhere.

You may ask yourself, for example, if there is a hidden agenda in our military’s rescuing a few survivors of one of the initial boat strikes in the Caribbean… and repatriating them to their home countries… and shortly thereafter making sure there were no remaining witnesses…er… survivors for the September 2nd second Naval strike on a “narco-terrorist” boat. If the Navy and the administration really felt that they were not violating any domestic or international law, we would have seen the full footage a month ago. But as noted above, the House investigation is done.

But if there were survivors, and instead of killing them, the Navy could have rescued those survivors and turned them over through a US federal criminal court or a military court. But with no declared war, no judicial approval and a very mysterious government legal memo attempting to “justify” the attack, there was a risk. And if that court were applying any US or international law to those killings of non-combatant individuals, the rulings would almost certainly have found a war crime, an extreme violation of the rules of war or even out-and-out murder. The ruling might apply not just to that attack but the very legitimacy of the program of attacks themselves.

Much of the world is disgusted by our actions. The UK is no longer sharing intelligence with us over the Caribbean region. If you want to see a summary of Europe’s disenfranchisement with the United States, here’s a piece (reproduced in the December 11th Newsbreak.com) by Sean O’Grady: “What does Donald Trump want from Europeans? It’s a question we didn’t use to have to ask ourselves about American presidents. That was because Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and even George W Bush, whom we used to think a little extreme, were very clear.

“They wanted a unified Europe to be a free and strong ally of the United States in Nato, and to stand for ‘Western values’; to defuse or to win the Cold War, and, in the long term, to liberate Eastern Europe from Soviet occupation, albeit while trying to coexist with the Russians… We did not insult one another, and no US leader ever bothered themselves about who was running London, still less called a mild-mannered [London] mayor ‘vicious and disgusting’. The very name ‘Khan’ is something that Trump can barely tolerate in his mouth. Imagine, if you possibly can, Ronald Reagan spewing bile about Ken Livingstone back in the day. Try to visualise Jimmy Carter saying that Germany faced ‘civilisational erasure’, or ‘Dubya’ whingeing about free speech in Sweden.

“That world has gone. We need to face up to the full extent of what is happening to us – and what Trump’s America wants and expects in return for even the semblance of military alliance and protection… Most immediately, Trump wants us to abandon Ukraine and make friends with Vladimir Putin, as if the invasion and the war crimes had never happened – or, as the new US National Security Strategy puts it, ‘re-establishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia’. We are a continent of ‘decaying countries’ suffering ‘weak leaders’ who ‘talk too much’. Maybe, but it’s up to us Europeans to vote them in or out. We neither want nor need interference from Washington or Moscow.” Israel seems to have written off a future US Gen Z relationship, and that “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas is hardly holding.

Worse, Europe trusts China over the United States these days, as European leaders, seeking to avoid Trump’s erratic and autocratic economic bullying policies, are racing to Beijing for new economic treaties. As Trump is forced to use taxpayer money ($12B, a small fraction of what US soybean farmers really lost) to compensate farmers for Trump’s dramatically failed tariff policies, China may not have fixed its own economic turmoil, but they have restored their global export machine to the level it was before Trump tripped all over himself with his tariff wars.

As Al Qaeda and ISIS return to parts of the Middle East as well as expanding significantly in Africa with no real US opposition, Europe is slowly separating itself from the United States… and China is loving it. Trump blames anything he has screwed up on Biden, Biden, Biden and only sees Antifa, Antifa, Antifa, as our only domestic terrorism threat. When asked to define who and what “Antifa” was in House testimony on December 11th, FBI Counter-Terrorism Director Michael Glasheen could only stammer. Apparently, no one told him “Antifa” per se does not even exist. China must have been giddy with laughter.

I’m Peter Dekom, and with Trump sinking the US into deeper and more unpopular failing isolationism in a globally-linked economic system, Americans and Europeans are learning to deal with the new, xenophobic/racist kleptocracy that Trump has inflicted on the rapidly declining power and influence of the United States of America.

Birthright Citizenship: If They Ain’t White, It Ain’t Right

 

Birthright Citizenship: If They Ain’t White, It Ain’t Right

They Shall Not Replace Us

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (July 9, 1868)

Let’s start with a little historical perspective via U.S. Constitution.net (May 2, 2014): “As the Civil War drew to a close, the Union grappled with how best to integrate millions of newly freed slaves into the American social, economic, and political frameworks. The Radical Republicans in Congress during Reconstruction played a pivotal role in framing and passing the 14th Amendment. They sought to counteract the Black Codes, which were laws passed throughout the South that severely restricted African Americans’ new freedoms.

“Significantly, the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment overrode the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision of 1857, which held that African Americans could not be American citizens, whether enslaved or free. Under the new amendment, citizenship was granted to ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States,’ a direct response to former slaves’ uncertain status.

“Once adopted, the 14th Amendment became a foundational text for future civil rights advancements in the US. Its Equal Protection Clause has been fundamental in various landmark Supreme Court decisions including Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which ended racial segregation in public schools…

“One of the landmark Supreme Court cases that deeply dissected this clause was United States v. Wong Kim Ark, decided in 1898. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, who, at the time of his birth, were subjects of the Emperor of China, but had established a permanent domicile and residence in the United States. The case arose when Wong was denied re-entry into the United States after a trip abroad, under laws that restricted Chinese immigration at the time… The Supreme Court’s decision affirmed Wong’s citizenship by birth, interpreting the jurisdictional clause as implying that anyone born on American soil, excluding children of foreign diplomats or [other official capacity under a foreign government].”

So here we are today with a President who simply believes that above-cited provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the way the post-Civil War constitutional amendment has been interpreted and applied since it was passed, are wrong. And if it cannot be severely limited into meaninglessness by a “almost anything you want Mr President” Supreme Court, can the Court hand the President an interpretation of this amendment that creates a Swiss cheese of holes so he can exclude children (particularly from those “shithole” countries) mostly likely to have a skin tone that is less than a pristine white? I have to add, this practice of avoiding the burdensome amendment process by having sycophantic justices grant the same effect by fiat, has to be contained. But after oral arguments before the Supreme Court, those same rightwing justices seemed poised to accommodate the severe and highly restrictive interpretation of this clause that Trump wants.

Robert Alexander, writing for the December 10th Newsweek, explains the case at bar: “The Supreme Court is preparing to hear Trump vs. Washington, a case that could redefine the constitutional meaning of birthright citizenship for the first time in more than a century.

At issue is President Donald Trump’s January 2025 Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which instructs federal agencies not to recognize citizenship for children born in the United States to “temporary visitors and illegal aliens” if their birth occurs more than 30 days after the order takes effect.

“The court’s decision will determine not only the legal status of children born to undocumented or temporary status parents, but also the constitutional boundaries of who belongs in the American political community… At stake is whether a president can unilaterally narrow the Citizenship Clause—an action that multiple lower courts have said contradicts more than a century of precedent.

“The ruling will shape immigration policy, define the limits of executive power, and decide whether the United States continues its historically broad interpretation of jus soli—Latin for ‘right of the soil,’ the principle that a person becomes a citizen simply by being born within a country’s territory… The alternative is a significantly more restrictive model that could alter the nation’s demographic and constitutional landscape for generations.”

So, what happens to such children now (adding in genuine immigrants who are here, properly and successfully applying for citizenship)? This level of cruelty will be inflicted on innocent children (many grown into adulthood as US citizens) if the Court supports Trump’s hateful de facto amendment to the Constitution.

I’m Peter Dekom, and a wildly unpopular President, ignoring polls and recent special election results, is pushing the United States into an autocracy of rule by law (as created by Trump and his henchmen) vs one where there is equal rule of law under constitutional and statutory restraints set through the democratic process that has governed the United States since the Declaration of Independence.