And the Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year is Parasocial but Should Be ….

 

And the Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year is Parasocial but Should Be ….

BULLSH*T… FYI, Parasocial is an adjective defined as: involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, etc., or an artificial intelligence.

“I agree with President Trump, with the Department of Justice, with the FBI that you need all credible evidence and information out there… That word ‘credible’ is important. And why? Because you have to protect innocent people’s names and reputations whose names might be, as you noted at the outset of the program, intertwined into all these files…

“These are minors in many cases who were subjected to unspeakable crimes, abject evil…They’ve already suffered great harm. We do not need their names being unmasked. The Massie and the Khanna discharge petition does not have adequate protections.” 

Delay-master, House Speaker Mike Johnson, immediately before the Epstein-papers-release discharge petition was overwhelmingly passed by a bipartisan groundswell, after even Donald Trump admitted defeat and allowed GOP votes in support.

“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax.” 

Trump on Truth Social, November 16th, after he realized the discharge petition would pass with GOP votes.

As Donald Trump tells us that we have the best economy ever, robust full employment, such a tsunami of tariff revenue that he wants to give ordinary Americans a “tariff bonus” of $2000 each, we now have global admiration and respect, that “Biden era” inflation is now under control, no more money will be wasted on that “climate change hoax,” that blue cities (even in red states) are facing or will face crime rate plunge as federalized troops insure that result and undocumented residents will be shipped out as quickly as they can be detained, and that he always favored full “Epstein scandal” transparency, I am beginning to notice that a growing number of his MAGA supporters no longer trust him.

Is Donald Trump so used to fabrication that he cannot help himself, or is his growing proclivity to create a parallel universe, devoid of facts, just a sign of accelerating mental and physical decline that reminds me of his description of Joe Biden in the 2024 campaign? We are experiencing record levels of layoffs, prices are soaring, crops are rotting in the fields, more and more construction sites are empty, China is walking behind our missteps and making new trade deals and trade exchange workarounds all over the globe, soldiers and masked secret police are marching into some of our biggest cities (they don’t even ask for “papers, please” anymore), federal agencies are defying court orders and except for the fattest of fat cats, very few Americans can tell you they are better off than they were last year at this time. Fewer and fewer people are living in that Trumpian parallel universe.

Meanwhile, Noem (DHS) and Patel (FBI) are flying around in fancy new jets, Patel uses his plane and a contingent of FBI “protective” agents to support his relationship with a Nashville based country singer. Roughly a third of FBI agents have been pulled off their traditional serious crime case work to join immigration enforcement. Many FBI agents spent months redacting Trump’s name from Epstein documents under DOJ control. The DOJ has so hollowed out its cadre of super-qualified prosecutors such that virtually any lawyer, regardless of experience of education, who applies to any US Attorney’s Office, is likely to be hired. As reservist major Pete Hegseth likewise hollows out the military, morale among our troops is at an all-time low. White House ballroom, anyone? How about extra-judicial killings at sea without congressional approval?

As House Speaker Johnson decried the lack of privacy that the discharge petition would unleash, even as the victims of Epstein’s debauchery clamored for release anyway, he repeated Trump’s statements that the entire scandal was on Democrats (that “Democratic hoax”) and that the Dems sat on those same papers during the Biden era. That the underlying prosecutions were underway during the Biden era, which have required the DOJ not to release most of the relevant documents, was never mentioned. That Trump was registered Democrat during much of his time with Epstein also seems to have fallen between the cracks.

Even as Trump-ally GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene broke with Trump as he fought against the document release, she noted that this disagreement was tearing MAGA apart. She even faced death threats for going against fearful leader. Indeed, until Trump’s Truth Social post noted above, President Trump had consistently denounced calls for the release of the Epstein files as a Democratic hoax. Yet, with one no vote, the House and Senate passed the petition, with the President still maintaining that this scandal was merely a Democratic hoax… even after agreeing to sign the bill. He added he wanted the investigation to shift to culpable Democrats.

Trump had dispatched aides to warn Republicans that backing it would be seen as a “hostile act.” He placed personal calls to those who dared to do so, and even dispatched his attorney general and FBI director to meet with House Rep Lauren Bobert (R/CO) in the White House Situation Room in efforts to get her to flip her support of that discharge petition. In the end, will Trump be forced Nixon-like from office? He may transition into true lame duck status, and these events are severely damaging to him, but remember he was reelected notwithstanding the fact that he was a convicted felon. I think Trump will probably survive. And if he can rig the midterms to retain MAGA control of Congress, he may well thrive. Shame on America!

But those seeking fame and glory, creating what appear to be credible attacks on legitimate people, have a new ally beyond conspiracy theory-laden social media: artificial intelligence. Take this attack, reported by Gina Kolata in the November 4th New York Times: “Letters to the editor from writers using chatbots are flooding the world’s scientific journals, according to new research and journal editors.

“The practice is putting at risk a part of scientific publishing that editors say is needed to sharpen research findings and create new directions for inquiry… A new study on the problem started with a tropical disease specialist who had a weird experience with a chatbot-written letter. He decided to figure out just what was going on and who was submitting all those letters.

“The scientist, Dr. Carlos Chaccour, at the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navarra in Spain, said his probing began just after he had released a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine, one of the world’s most prestigious journals. The paper, published in July, was on controlling malaria infections with ivermectin, and it appeared with a laudatory editorial… ‘This has to be A.I.,’ Dr. Chaccour decided.

“A large language model must have been used to compose the letter, Dr. Chaccour reasoned. He thinks that, searching for references in a niche field where there aren’t many, it popped in two of Dr. Chaccour’s own papers… The study involved an analysis of more than 730,000 letters to journal editors published since 2005. It has been posted online ahead of submission to a peer-reviewed journal…. ‘Something happened in 2023,’ Dr. Chaccour said. There was a sudden emergence of authors who had published few or no letters before then but who suddenly had letters appearing on a regular basis — going, Dr. Chaccour said, ‘from zero to hero.’” The initials of that lead letter-writer? B.S. We are living in a society where truth is devalued, marginalized and ignored. Anonymous attackers and conspiracy theorists have unprecedented power.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder how our economy and our quality of life, even our form of government, can continue if lies are now routinely given the authority that once was accorded to truth.