Our Eroding Literacy: Fodder for Autocracy

 

Our Eroding Literacy: Fodder for Autocracy

I watch as the United States, on average, seems unable to shake its reliance on conspiracy theories, is willing to elect officials with extreme proclivities (beyond their “lips are flapping” memes) to lie and cast anyone with opposing views with exceptionally demeaning labels, and is increasingly searching for shortcuts to exceptionally complex issues with multilayered variables. As I will drill down later, the performance levels of American students are slip-sliding downwards as hallucinating AI is providing information that caters to the bias of the individual asking the platform for answers. Unlike the age of enlightenment (which the preceded the industrial revolution), where curiosity, education and knowledge were elevated societal values, the United States has, for the last decade or two, increasingly has relegated intelligence and education into a vat of elitist tripe, out of touch with reality. We have even challenged medical research, once-cherished medical doctors, and those driven to make life better for all through research.

Facts and the willingness to accept reality are fundamental to making democracy work. If lies, distortions and severely biased propaganda become the basis for election choices, where truth is distrusted, the door is wide-open for autocrats without moral compass, to foment falsehoods, repetitively and with passion, catering to fabricated fears and biases. The underlying underbelly of cherished ignorance makes it all possible. Start out with a few common biases, find people to blame, attach fighting words (“radical,” “extreme,” “unpatriotic,” “low IQ,” “communist,” “Godless,” “brainwashed,” etc.) to those who oppose the aspiring autocrat, and, well, you can explain Hitler’s rise from the post-WWI ashes and forced poverty on Germany, to a murderous villain who was directly responsible for the horrific deaths of millions.

Today, at a lesser level, where complex technology and billionaire access to capital and privileged government granted “indulgences” have marginalized most Americans to second class status, subordinate to the rich… you can see how a charismatic, cult leader, catering to millions of constituents seeking easy answers with a clearly eroding public school education, could cast a misguided spell. Looking at recent events, there are facts that even antecede Donald Trump.

Today, we have an attorney general who, per as earlier blog, has no understanding of the difference between privileges and rights guaranteed by the Constitution, or a former Trump-appointed Homeland Security head who turned habeas corpus, a shield against unwarranted incarceration, into a blanket right for the President to order warrantless arrests and jailing of people he considers “criminals” without proof. Hordes of Americans believe these profound inaccuracies as so many of our elected officials repeat these distortions as if true, I asked myself, what is the evidence of this decline? Or what The Atlantic staff writer and Washington bureau chief for The Economist, Idrees Kahloon addressed in his October 14, 2025 article, “America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy.”

It can start with our falling comparison test scores, domestic and international. In the examination of 80 nations, the US has fared badly in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (looking at 15-year-olds) over recent decades, dropping from first decades ago, into the middle of the developed world pack. “Test scores have been trending down for over a decade. There are some signs of recovery in math, but not many in reading. Learning declines are not a distinctly U.S. phenomenon and are not even limited to schoolchildren. Researchers are only just beginning to wrap their heads around the causes of this…

“Consider one example from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP: In 2013, 74% of American eighth graders scored at the basic or above level in math, the highest figure since the test started in 1990. In the most recent round that number fell to 61%, hitting levels last seen in 1996. Scores have fallen in other grades and subjects, too.” Matt Barnum, writing for January 8th Chalkbeat.org. Reading has fallen out of fashion as students increasingly rely on AI platforms for summaries, eliminating essential elements and nuance.

Attention span is eroding even faster: “While there is a formidable knowledge gap when it comes to measuring attention spans over time, particularly in pre-teens and adolescents, the work of Dr. Gloria Marks offers us some insight. Dr. Marks’ research shows that on average, the length of time people stay on a single computer screen before switching to another has decreased from 2.5 minutes to 47 seconds over the past two decades. In a study that used screen capture technology to analyze mobile device screen time, researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Stanford University found that the median number of times participants engaged with their phone was 228. What’s more, on average each session only lasted 10 seconds.” Columbia University’s CBMS (April 2, 2024). Kahloon focuses more directly on the pervasive failure of American education:

“The past decade may rank as one of the worst in the history of American education. It marks a stark reversal from what was once a hopeful story. At the start of the century, American students registered steady improvement in math and reading. Around 2013, this progress began to stall out, and then to backslide dramatically. What exactly went wrong? The decline began well before the pandemic, so COVID-era disruptions alone cannot explain it. Smartphones and social media probably account for some of the drop. But there’s another explanation, albeit one that progressives in particular seem reluctant to countenance: a pervasive refusal to hold children to high standards…

“We are now seeing what the lost decade in American education has wrought. By some measures, American students have regressed to a level not seen in 25 years or more. Test scores from NAEP, short for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, released this year show that 33 percent of eighth graders are reading at a level that is ‘below basic’—meaning that they struggle to follow the order of events in a passage or to even summarize its main idea. That is the highest share of students unable to meaningfully read since 1992. Among fourth graders, 40 percent are below basic in reading, the highest share since 2000. In 2024, the average score on the ACT, a popular college-admissions standardized test that is graded on a scale of 1 to 36, was 19.4—the worst average performance since the test was redesigned in 1990.

“American schoolchildren have given up almost all of the gains they achieved at the start of the century. These learning losses are not distributed equally. Across grades and subjects, the NAEP results show that the top tenth of students are doing roughly as well as they always have, whereas those at the bottom are doing worse. From 2000 to 2007, the bottom tenth of fourth graders in in reading and math scores not seen since these tests began in 1971 and 1978, respectively.

“A seemingly plausible culprit, and a familiar boogeyman for progressives, is insufficient spending. The problem with this tidy explanation is that it’s not tethered to reality. School spending did not decline from 2012 to 2022. In fact, it increased significantly, even after adjusting for inflation, from $14,000 a student to more than $16,000… Low-expectations theory explains other trends that the smartphone thesis, by itself, does not. If the bar for grading and graduating were constant year over year, we would expect both to decline in line with student performance. Instead, we see the opposite. An Act study found that the share of students getting A’s in English rose from 48 percent in 2012 to 56 percent in 2022, even as their demonstrated mastery of the subject declined over that period. (The same is true of other subjects, including math, social studies, and science.) Over the same decade, high-school graduation rates improved from 80 to 87 percent despite objective declines in academic achievement.” No, we seem to be learning less and accepting a lesser standard, or as George W Bush once stated, “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” I’ll add to that as the soft bigotry of lower values, normalized at the highest level of our nation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is so easy to blame Donald Trump for the collapse of a viable democracy, but the seeds of this demise were planted long before he arrived; he just turned these variables into his advantage.

How Trump Won His War Against Iran

 

How Trump Won His War Against Iran

He Chose the Metric of Victory: In Truth – Advantage Iran

Folks have lost their healthcare coverage, hospitals are closing, school children have lost their lunch programs, incomplete infrastructure and natural disaster repairs are wasting away, the rich have never been this disproportionately richer, the Trump family has never made remotely the money they have made of late, we’ve never spent this kind of money on “detention centers,” and costs are skyrocketing even as the stock market has plunged. Yet Trump is demanding an immediate $200 billion additional funding for his WAR. Yup, the one he told us he won. Our ground troops are descending into this theater of operations, despite opposition from a majority of US citizens. Think the failure of NATO allies to join in Trump’s WAR tells you anything? The rifle-shaped oil slick visual above (courtesy of the 3/25 NY Times) shows which oil-producing nations pass their product through the Strait of Hormuz. The fattest exporters are Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Kuwait, and their markets are almost all in Asia… with the tiniest sliver hived off for Europe.

The aggregate of this petroleum (oil and gas) accounts for roughly 20% of the global market. And as I have pointed out, as a global commodity, oil and gas are only priced globally, so a constriction of oil and gas anywhere on Earth impacts the price everywhere. For Americans proud of our standing as major global exporters of petroleum products, they have yet to identify any American oil extractors willing to give Americans a discount on their output. Since just about everything we consume is shipped, as airfares have most abundantly reflected, prices for everything are up and rising. Pundits are suggesting that unless the United States finds a full off-ramp, oil could easily reach $200/barrel, a very significant price increase from the $60/barrel before Trump’s WAR. Texas oil billionaires can barely contain their joy!

While Iran has allowed some “friendly nation” oil tankers to pass through the Strait, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of ships, loaded with oil or gas, stranded with no prospect of passage. Iran totally controls this very narrow strait, and through shoot-and-scoot missile, drone and shore batteries – reinforced with thousands of mines – even “neutrally-flagged” ships are denied the maritime insurance they need to protect their fleets.

Yet, even as Israel has declared its mission as not even half complete, blissfully incompetent Secretary of War, Little Man Pete Hegseth, and his orange-haired boss, even admitting they were blind-sided by Iran’s extraterritorial attacks on regional Arab neighbors (particularly those permitting US bases) and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, seemed to echo George W Bush’s laughable “mission accomplished” in 2003. I’m a damned entertainment lawyer from California, and I knew with absolute certainty that not only would each of these events occur but given the theocratic nature of Iran, with layers of IRGC leaders and senior clergy ready to replace fallen members instantly, Iran would never surrender.

Notwithstanding all of the above, the Trump-Hegseth mutual fabrication cabal touted complete victory. Seriously! Their metric: bomb and missile tonnage dropped or otherwise deployed against Iranian targets, the level of destruction of Iranian leadership, military personnel, equipment and infrastructure and their false reportage of in-depth direct negotiations with cowering Iranian leaders. US proposals were uniformly rejected, and the ultimate metric of success – a wide open safe international passage through the Strait of Hormuz – was nowhere to be found. Trump’s threats of military escalation fell on deaf ears, and he was forced to implement a TACO extension of his threat of destruction based on non-existent Iranian concessions. This little excerpt from the March 26th Atlantic underscores how pathetic US claims of victory truly are:

“EVEN BY HIS chaotic standards, Donald Trump has just presided over an unusually wild week in his misguided war on Iran. The president had threatened imminent, punitive bombing of Iran’s civilian energy infrastructure. Though Iran didn’t quail, markets did. So a U-turn followed. Mr Trump said he had become aware of secret proposals for peace talks, and held off. The Pentagon then said it would send some of the 82nd Airborne Division. That suggests escalation is still a possibility. Amid such uncertainty, Iran’s regime seems unfazed. Remarkably, it now has a strategic advantage over its opponents.

“True, the Islamic Republic has suffered dramatic blows. Many of its leaders, and hundreds of civilians, are dead. Its air defences are in pieces; its navy and missile launchers are largely gone. And yet the regime endures. As we warned when this war began, its mere survival counts as a victory of sorts.

“At home the regime’s grip is not easing, but has anything been strengthened by the onslaught from America and Israel? The hardline Revolutionary Guards are in control. Domestic opponents, whether ethnic separatists or urban protesters, are deathly quiet. Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, some 400kg, remain untouched, probably still under rubble. Most strikingly, Iran has established a chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz, blocking exports of oil and gas from the Gulf that account for a fifth of the global supply. For decades American military planners have prepared for this obvious risk. But the war has proved both that Iran can strangle the strait, and that it would be agonizingly hard to loosen its grip. Iran’s asymmetric warfare, with missiles, cheap drones and perhaps mines against shipping, is keeping the superpower at bay.”

Iran does not care if its citizens will suffer. There can be no “uprising” in this religiously driven surveillance nation, where they only guns are in the hands of the government and protesters are shot on sight. The economic damage that Iran has been inflicting around the world is testament that the number of bombs just might not be the right metric for victory.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as long as the Strait of Hormuz is not open to all ships without intimidation or risk of attack, Iran is definitely winning Trump’s WAR.

Tactical Victories, Massive Strategic Loss

Tactical Victories, Massive Strategic Loss

Ego, Oil and Ignorance Decimate Trump’s War

Trump’s MAGA war on higher education is showing its soft underbelly of failure and extreme vulnerability is his unilateral WAR against Iran. We winced as Trump’s HHS Secretary, RFK, Jr led his department to a medical stance that has resulted in the spread of new strains of bacteria and viruses and the resurrection of once extinguished diseases. The rising infections and resulting fatalities reflect our collective ignorance. But those missteps, colossal as they are, pale by comparison to the needless slaughter, our open rejection of the rules of engagement and the Geneva Conventions against targeting civilians (a genuine war crime), and failure to understand that our government’s military efforts in Iran, rejected by every Western nation, are provoking the exactly opposite result from the few announced goals by the Trump administration.

I write this as one who, as the stepson of an American diplomat, has lived in the Middle East (four years) and has actually visited Tehran. Americans tend to bundle their impression of the Middle East, assuming that Islam is a unitary religion and that all the regional nations are pretty much the same. Iran’s predecessor nations, its very identity and culture, is anchored in what may be the oldest organized state on Earth: Persia. Dated at least as old as 3500 years BCE, long before Islam or Christianity even existed. Iran, Persia if you will, has of late been mostly a secular nation – proud and highly educated, seeking a constitutional democracy – starting in its constitutional revolution in 1906. Unlike most of its neighbors, which were defined in a post-WWI carve-up and setting of artificial boundaries by colonial France and the UK, contemporary Iran occupies much of what was central Persia, defined millennia earlier. They speak Farsi, not Arabic, and never considered the upstart Arab neighbors as cultural equals.

Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc. are artificial states whose borders were drawn in secret backroom deals (e.g., the Sykes-Picot treaty of 1916), resulting in struggling with disparate factions that never really fit together. Iran’s culture is a unifying force, and to the extent that incumbent governments have been seen as repressive, Iranians have used religion at the vehicle for resistance. Or, if a religious power itself has become repressive, Iranians – noting that educated and urban Iranians are not particularly religious – you get the kind of civil unrest against theocratic dictators we have seen over the last few years.

Persians have never simply accepted external conquests without some strong symbol of protest. The Muslim Conquest of Persia, also known as the Arab Conquest of Iran, was a series of military campaigns conducted by the Rashidun Caliphate between 632 and 654 CE. But Persian resistance was manifest in a subtle reinterpretation of Islam. Instead of accepting the Caliphate’s definition of the strict meaning of the Koran (Sunnism), Persians designated an “Imam” (a Pope-like leader), to tell the newly initiated faithful what the Koran’s mystical meaning really was. Circa the 10th century CE, the 12th Imam disappeared, leaving this new version of Islam (Shia) in shambles, a reality that was course-corrected in 1979, when the repressive Shah was deposed and replaced by the current Shiite theocracy. But the Shiite takeover, where Ayatollahs became the new “Imams,” did not change that profound secular undercurrent that still defines modern Iran.

The theocracy rapidly built the massive paramilitary, led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), that is one of the most effective and repressive police states in the world. The IRGC reported to the elder Ayatollah Khamenei, a respected and purportedly God-linked autocrat, but his execution and the subsequent appointment of his son as his successor, did not imbue young Khamenei with the same power over the IRGC. Instead, the young Ayatollah is now subservient to the hardline IRGC. No regime change. Even as educated Iranians once believed in the US as a potential savior (no longer!), the persistence of the Persian culture is the backbone of Iran’s ability to withstand the American/Israeli onslaught and escalate the conflict with resolve and sufficient weapons in reserve to apply their symmetrical strength to stop our superior military dead in its tracks.

Look at what the Iranian theocracy has won: when the US said they totally dominated the air and sea above and around Iran, Tehran shot down two US jet aircraft and managed completely to control passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian tankers can pass freely, and Iran can grant safe passage to ships of any approved nation. Oh, by the way, the once “free passage” of ships through the Strait that has existed for decades until Trump’s WAR, assuming a ship is approved by Tehran, must now pay a $2 million toll just to get through. Between the toll and massive increase in the cost of oil, Tehran should have more than enough future cash to rebuild. And what have we gained except high prices and the disdain of most of the rest of the world.

Further, whatever deterrence against Iran’s building a nuclear warhead or bomb is gone; they have enough fissionable to build a functional, if inferior, nuclear weapon. Energy prices are triggering a massive global recession. Russia is smiling; they have profitable oil. And even China is smiling; between Russian oil and their massive deployment of alternative energy power generation (they never thought climate change was a hoax!!!), they are very well prepared to endure this conflict… and are enjoying the unraveling of the once powerful alliance of Western nations… and de facto demise of NATO. Hell, if Western nations will no longer be dependent on buying top-of-the-line US weapons systems, China may be poised to step in to provide substitutes.

This WAR will not be won by superior American military capabilities. We know that our history against asymmetrical enemies is littered with failure. I’ll end this blog with Iran’s response to Trump’s foul-language Truth Social quote above. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Parliament of Iran, responded to Trump’s threats in this social media post: “Your reckless moves are dragging the United States into a living HELL for every single family, and our whole region is going to burn because you insist on following Netanyahu’s commands… Make no mistake: You won’t gain anything through war crimes. The only real solution is respecting the rights of the Iranian people and ending this dangerous game.” And no, “Little Man Pete,” God is not on the side of any faction that glorifies war and killing, particularly when it was unilaterally initiated. I am shocked, no “horrified,” at a MAGA minority (represented by Republicans in Congres) failing to understand what is really happening and making inane statements that support and mirror Donald John Trump’s self-destructive ignorance.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I challenge any American to tell me what we have gained or a likely to gain from Trump’s military “excursion” compared to the cost, measured by any standard, that has been imposed on American taxpayers and has resulted our lost global credibility and respect.

Tykes on Trikes without Rights

 

Tykes on Trikes without Rights

“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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” 

Section 1, 14th Amendment

"Being a citizen in our country is a privilege, not a right. And Donald Trump is going to have everyone in this country who deserves to be here who is a citizen.” 

AG Pam Bondi, who must have flunked her Constitutional Law class.

“Birthright—that’s a big one… We think we have very good grounds.” 

 Trump on January 20, 2025 as he signed an Executive Order questioning birthrights of children born in the US of non-US citizens

I’ve been a practicing lawyer for the vast majority of my adult life. My UCLA Law School classmates and I were literally fed on notions of tolerance, equality and the goal of a level playing field for all in the eyes of the law. The United States was the global model for democracy in action, proving, we believed, that even one of the most heterogeneous and large populations could prosper under philosophical democracy, despite the legal struggles that constantly redefined our nation. Indeed, our post-WWII growth into the most powerful and economically successful nation on Earth seemed to confirm that assumption. And even as flawed as it is – our Constitution is the most difficult to amend among all the democracies in the world – we admired a document that was artfully planted a quarter of a millenium ago. Slavery was an unforgivable acknowledgement in the original Constitution (ultimately corrected), yet in a recent UN vote to decry slave trafficking in the modern era, the United States was one of only three nations to vote against that UN measure. Have we really changed that much?

I have always believed that our quality of life, our standard of living and our tradition of upward mobility, were direct and immediate results of that constitutional foundation. But today, upward mobility is relegated to the history books, our government openly prosecutes institutions focused on expanding opportunity, our military has denigrated women and racial minorities as second class soldiers, the legal system has been profoundly slanted in favor of mega-corporations and super-rich individuals (from tax cuts to deregulation to rewarding political loyalists with lucrative government contracts and privileges), as affordability has pushed post-secondary education and homeownership out of reach for a rapidly increasing number of Americans.

For the first time in our nation’s history, rising generations expect to do worse than the generations that preceded them. For those seeking correlations between the well being of American citizens, the big standout is that the more we gravitate toward one-man autocracy, the wider the disparity between rich and poor and the greater the disenfranchisement of middle- and lower-income Americans. America is proving what we always believed: autocracy assures success only for a privileged elite. The rest are expendable.

What does any of this have to do with birthright citizenship? Well, in an era of deporting a huge body of hard-working undocumented residents, where isolationist forces seek to erect massive trade barriers with the rest of the world, as we declare war without congressional approval, we are witnessing the push-pull of high inflation, fewer job opportunities, falling productivity and a dramatic plunge in our aggregate well-being. According to recent polls, we are ranked a shoddy 23rd on the global happiness index. We are shoving both workers and consumers out the door, such that our citizen birthrate (children per child-bearing aged couples) is down to 1.61… while we would need a birthrate of 2.1 simply to replace our citizens. Echoes of “they shall not replace us” echo across seeming conservative cohorts, and the notion of white Christian nationalism has become a rallying cry to the far right… notwithstanding the devastating impact of that belief even to our economy.

To put is very simply, this nation, built on immigrants entering our great nation to build and grow in what used to be known as the land of opportunity, cannot prosper either in an autocracy or without a serious growth in our population. As we ship cadres of workers and consumers out of the country, the vast majority of Americans suffer. We cannot improve our lot by shifting mountains of work and human productivity to AI-driven robots. Only the owners of those robots will generate benefits from that massive savings in labor costs. But diversity is our new “enemy,” and figuring out how to cull the voter roles, crushing paths to productive immigrants to citizenship, denaturalizing citizens where we can… and preventing a huge historical source of new citizens, constitutionally protected, from even achieving that status.

As Mark Walsh, writing for the March 26th edition of the Journal of the American Bar Association (of which I am a member), writes about the challenge to Trump’s Executive Order against birthright citizenship, now pending before the US Supreme Court. Walsh begins noting the government’s position: “The order declares that a person born in the U.S. is not subject to its jurisdiction and thus is not a citizen by birth under two circumstances: When the child’s mother is unlawfully present in the United States; or when the mother’s presence here at the time of birth is lawful but temporary, such as on a student, tourist or work visa. Both circumstances also require that the father not be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the birth….

“‘Automatic citizenship for children of illegal aliens provides a powerful incentive for illegal migration,’ U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer says in the administration’s main brief in Trump v. Barbara, which will be argued Wednesday. ‘Such children become citizens upon birth here, and their illegal-alien parents often promptly assert that citizenship to impede their own removal.’

“The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause ‘was adopted to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children—not to children of temporarily present aliens or illegal aliens,’ Sauer says in the brief. ‘The clause’s text, its original meaning and history, and this court’s cases confirm that the clause extends citizenship only to those who are completely subject to the United States’ political jurisdiction—in other words, to people who owe ‘direct and immediate allegiance’ to the nation and may claim its protection.’… Advocates for the class of young challengers say the Trump order would have severe consequences for any child born after Feb. 19, 2025, the order’s effective date that has, for now, been forestalled by litigation.” Walsh also presents the opposing view:

“Advocates for the class of young challengers say the Trump order would have severe consequences for any child born after Feb. 19, 2025, the order’s effective date that has, for now, been forestalled by litigation… ‘For them, what it means is being stripped of the right of U.S. citizenship, being exposed to the terror of—for their families—arrest, detention and deportation,’ says Cody Wofsy, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project, which represents the plaintiffs. ‘It means potentially rendering them stateless. … And then as they grow up, it’s going to mean excluding them from the only country that they’ve ever known.’

“The challengers say the language of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause—'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’—reaffirmed a centuries-old, common-law tradition of citizenship by virtue of birth, rather than parentage.” Indeed, the litany of Supreme Court cases has affirmed this view with no sign of limiting or reversing this constitutional mandate.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am tired of a minority of ultra-rightwing zealots continuing to engage in self-inflicting degradations to our economy and our core American values.

How to Contain-Unleash Artificial Intelligence

Melania at the White House with her Robo-Friend

How to Contain/Unleash Artificial Intelligence

Or is it unstoppable with dire consequences unavoidable?

“The U.S. government is insolvent. That’s not hyperbole.” 

Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University and David M. Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General, in a Fortune Magazine Op-ed citing the Bureau of the Fiscal Service

If you think AI is a phase that simply will fade, think again. It is second only climate change (that “hoax” that is flooding, burning and disrupting life in every corner of the planet) in its impact on modern life. Subsistence farmers and self-sufficient isolated pockets of humanity may have less to fear… unless they need to interact or trade with the outside world… but for everybody else, hang on for a very rough ride. In the annals of self-inflicted human disasters, even the failing Trump (Netanyahu?) WAR against Iran pales in comparison. AI is just so much more powerful.

There are populists justified in watching jobs vaporize by the millions (billions?), environmentalists who properly oppose construction of the massive building necessary to house AI’s required file servers only to watch the related exponential rise in electricity demands and resulting down and very dirty pollution, and the societal observers who note that the money involved can only magnify the imbalance between the rising rich and everybody else. In short, there is nothing that will stay the same. NOTHING!!! In fact, the swirling, shifting sands may ultimately require socialism as the only viable system of governance. Who can earn enough to buy their products when jobs disappear?!

If all the wealth is concentrated into a diminishing minority of billionaires and a few privileged centimillionaires, what political system can otherwise survive? I mean if the United States is truly insolvent… The baby steps of such one-sided domination are everywhere. For example, online retail Tsar Jeff Bezos (Amazon) wants a mega-combination of all major manufacturers as [his vision of “business”] is trying to leapfrog into the artificial intelligence race with a $100-billion fund to acquire manufacturers and bring more AI superpowers to factory floors.

“The Amazon founder has reportedly traveled to the Middle East and elsewhere to meet with potential investors for the massive fund. If he succeeds, it would be one of the largest buyout funds and could change the way products are designed, made and distributed… Here is what you need to know about the big plans: [Documents] connected to the fund described it as a ‘manufacturing transformation vehicle’ that would buy companies that could use an AI upgrade in sectors including chip manufacturing, defense and aerospace, according to the Wall Street Journal.” By Nilesh Christopher writing for the March 26th Los Angeles Times. This probably will not be the end of such massive consolidation, and it augurs for a fully corporate state, Trump’s dream.

As Trump’s federal effort at preempting state efforts to regulated AI, with “regulation light” by dictatorial executive order, states are still struggling with more meaningful “balanced” guardrails. As Ian Kreitzberg noted in Puck.com (March 25th). On March 25th, “President Trump named a who’s who of tech executives to a new body called the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)… It’s an unsurprising move for Trump, whose core policy stance on A.I. can be summed up as decidedly pro-business.” States are trying to reject this federal effort at preemption, speaking much more for “the rest of us,” as Kreitzberg wrote in Puck (3/24):

“New York Governor Kathy Hochul sounds like many politicians on A.I. these days—impressed, maybe a little worried, and trying to be practical about the unstoppable technological freight train headed our way. When I called her late last week, she waxed poetic about ensuring A.I. is ‘compatible with the public good’ before ticking off the various trade-offs she’s now trying to navigate: bringing high-paying tech jobs to the state without driving white-collar work to extinction, solving society’s ‘most-pressing problems’ without jacking up constituents’ electric bills, etcetera. In short, she wants the best of all possible worlds. ‘I do not want to be alarmist,’ she told me. ‘I see the upside, I see the downside.’

“Hochul’s middle-of-the-road mentality is not unique—California Gov. Gavin Newsom is as focused on regulating A.I. as on ensuring the industry continues to thrive, and former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin talked up ‘responsible governance’ without ‘stifling’ the A.I. industry. Likewise, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis wants to ‘protect consumers and support innovation’ while Rep. Sam Liccardo, the congressman representing Palo Alto and Atherton, told my Puck partner Leigh Ann Caldwell this week that Democrats need to get over their anxiety and embrace the future. (No surprise there…)

“But as the technology accelerates and the specter of widespread job displacement begins to appear slightly less hypothetical, a populist backlash is building at both ends of the political spectrum. Hochul told me she’s bracing for a ‘seismic impact,’ and worries about ‘students who took on debt to get degrees in fields that may be evaporating because of A.I.’ Other politicians have gone further: Sen. Bernie Sanders recently called for a national moratorium on all data center construction—not just to keep electric bills low, he says, but to prevent ‘a catastrophic impact on the lives of working-class Americans, eliminating tens of millions of blue- and white-collar jobs in every sector of our economy.’ Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has sounded similar notes, declaring that ‘these companies cannot be trusted with this power.’” It’s just sad that the Trump led billionaires just don’t seem to have enough money or power.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I’d like to pull a quote attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto after he led the Japanese fleet that bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941… and apply it to AI: “We have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”

Rapidly Rising Prices for Consumer Basics is a Small Price to Pay… NOT

 

Rapidly Rising Prices for Consumer Basics is a Small Price to Pay… NOT

Is sacrificing quality of life the new GOP austerity vision for middle America?

Donald Trump has already chastised Americans for giving their daughters too many dolls and hording too many pencils. Decrying the American “affordability crisis” as a Democratic Party “hoax” – which has to be right up there with the Dem “hoax” of climate change (surviving flooding and sweltering are just new American pastimes) – the GOP mantra has switched to convincing us that the exploding costs of living are short-term sacrifices for a better tomorrow. Americans, even diehard MAGA supporters, are skeptical. Simple historical awareness tells anybody with even the remotest sense of history that this skepticism is fully justified. Future cost cuts? Right?!

It should now be quite apparent that Trump’s true political beneficiaries are only the mega-rich. Deregulation does not benefit ordinary Americans who would prefer to live in a pollution-free environment, where less-than-honest profiteers are reined in, corrupt politicians are jailed, where housing and healthcare don’t require giving up most everything else, where children are not saddled with intolerable student debt in a job-impaired environment and where guardrail-free AI is no longer threatening future employment or sucking down a huge proportion of electrical power generation. But if those realities were challenged by a responsible government, those rich folks wouldn’t be raking in the billions that they are, and income polarization would vaporize.

That Trumpian “Big Beautiful Bill,” a Republican home run in a world of tax cuts for the rich, added trillions to our deficit (all Americans pay the interest carry on over $39 trillion in federal deficit) and has salivating Republicans wanting so much more. More tax cuts. Slashing federal spending, even as the DOGE experiment created massive job loss but virtually no reduction in federal spending, is still holy grail to the GOP. And more cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and even Social Security, beyond the almost $1 trillion already cut from those programs. But they also want $200 billion more for the Iran War, which they declared over?!

All across this nation, small hospitals are closing or contracting available services… medical facilities that Medicaid used to support. This hits rural communities the hardest, but these realities are roiling everywhere. Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services are focused on implementing those healthcare cuts necessitated by that Big Beautiful Bill. New restrictions on what federal healthcare programs will cover have sent healthcare providers and insurers scampering for the exits, leaving millions of Americans high and dry, even those seniors that were supposed to be covered in those elusive golden years. Vermont just might be the canary in the medical coal mine.

“The numbers coming out of Vermont are almost unbelievable at first glance. Roughly 92% of Medicare Advantage enrollees in the state were forced to leave their plans after insurers exited the market… That means tens of thousands of seniors suddenly had to find new coverage or switch to traditional Medicare. In some counties, there were no replacement Medicare Advantage plans available at all… Seemingly overnight, a staggering number of older adults were forced off their Medicare Advantage plans. This has left many people scrambling to find new coverage. And what’s terrifying is that this is setting the tone for a larger trend happening across the United States. If you rely on Medicare Advantage (or are considering it), this situation offers a critical warning.” SavingAdvice.com, March 23rd.

National numbers are closer to 10%, but for smaller states, where the insurance profit margins are not high enough, disaster looms. Medicare has reduced coverage and eliminated reimbursable programs to feed the above tax cut. With the collapse of Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, millions of Americans are no longer able to afford healthcare. The Peterson-KFF charts above show the relentless rise in medical costs, just as Congress chooses to cut benefits to fund unnecessary tax cuts for those at the top of the American economic food chain.

The reverse Robin Hood – stealing from the poor to feed the rich – is the new American Golden Rule, one that is particularly cruel to Gen Z. “Recent 2025 polling indicates:

• 42% of Americans under age 30 report they are ‘barely getting by.’
• One in three people are currently going into debt just to attend friends’ weddings or bachelorette parties.

“In response, a growing movement of personal finance experts is urging ‘radical transparency.’ Influencers are coaching Gen Z and Millennials to set firm boundaries, suggesting that being honest about budget constraints is the only way to preserve both their credit scores and their mental health… As the gap between income and social expectations widens, the choice for many Americans is becoming stark: stay home and stay lonely, or go out and go broke… New data from the CFP Board reveals that two-thirds of U.S. adults have declined social invitations—including weddings, holiday gatherings, and birthday dinners—over the past 24 months solely due to financial constraints. The trend highlights a growing ‘financial FOMO’ that is severing social ties across the country.

“The data suggests the economic burden is compounded by social stigma. According to the report, which surveyed over 1,100 Americans, 56% of those who decline invitations never disclose that money is the primary driver. This lack of transparency is leaving millions of Americans feeling ‘out of sync’ with their peers’ perceived spending habits.” Thomas Smith writing for BetterAmerica.com, March 21st. Yet, just about every priority and policy that Donald Trump has embraced, from tariffs and the War over Iran to the cuts to programs intended to benefit average and lower income Americans, as income inequality has widened in this country like never before… have slammed the cost of living and our quality of life. To serve the rich?!

I’m Peter Dekom, and beware of greedy Republicans muttering “creeping socialism” (hardly tracking the real definition of that term) as their excuse to pillage most of us.

 

Who is the Leader of the Free World Not the United States or Donald Trump

Who is the Leader of the Free World? Not the United States or Donald Trump!

“We don’t need anybody… We’re the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far in the world. We don’t need them.” 

Donald Trump, March 16th when European leaders initially declined to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Donald Trump has the lowest approval polls of any president since such polls have been conducted. His own base, traditional MAGA voters, are reeling from his beginning an unwinnable foreign war plus the staggering cost increases in oil & gas, medical care, foodstuffs, housing, automobiles and, well, anything that needs to be shipped by any means. After he and Secretary of War/Defense, Pete “Little Man” Hegseth, declared a total decapitation of the Iranian military, “removal by death” of dozens of key Iranian leaders and complete victory over this middle eastern Shiite theocracy – all in accordance with Israeli plans – Iran then shut down the vital Strait of Hormuz (depriving the world of 20% of all oil and gas), pasted regional Arab nations with missile attacks that destroyed as much civilian infrastructure as military targets, capping off those efforts by launching a longer-range missile (with a range that could reach Europe) 2,500 miles to the joint US/UK base in Diego Garcia (in the Indian Ocean).

Both Iran’s clergy and top military leaders, on the one hand, and the Trump administration, on the other, each declared victory in this Iran WAR. The Trump fomenter-in-chief, Israeli PM Netanyahu, noted that from his nation’s perspective, the WAR was not even half over. Even as Iran pledged that oil tankers from friendly nations would be granted safe passage through Hormuz (despite the extensive mining?) and even as the United States encouraged European and other “allied” nations to defy the Hormuz ban, companies that insured shipping made it very clear that they would not cover any losses incurred in such efforts to pass through that strait. Iranian tankers, now blessed to sell their cargo by Trump himself (more oil in the market may help reduce oil and gas prices), are still making their global deliveries.

Meanwhile, according to the March 24th Wall Street Journal, “Foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan gathered before dawn on Thursday [3/19] in Riyadh for talks aimed at finding a diplomatic off-ramp to the war in Iran. Egyptian intelligence officials managed to open a channel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and put forward a proposal to halt hostilities for five days. Those discussions laid the groundwork for an abrupt reversal: On Monday [3/23], as word of the discussions in the Saudi capital made its way to the White House, Trump backtracked on his threat to strike Iran’s power plants, embracing diplomacy with Tehran instead…” Trump claimed the United States was in direct negotiations with Iran, finding a path to settle the WAR. Iran denied that they were in any such discussions with the United States.

But Trump has managed to antagonize most of our traditional allies, whether through his TACO Trump tariffs (legally challenged by our Supreme Court), our out-and-out territorial demands over lands either in allied hands but in no event remotely legally under US control, or our government’s proclivity to use bully and blackmail tactics to coerce even our allies to join forces against Iran. Saudi Arabia, Iran’s most obvious foe despite a quasi-detente, seems to be encouraging the US to keep destroying Iran’s military and governance systems. We have reneged on trade agreements, made demands with threats (especially concerning the viability of NATO), abandoned supporting a democratic Ukraine in favor of supporting Russian bogus territorial claims, while lifting our oil embargo against Russia (ostensibly to increase product in the petroleum market), but effectively funding Russia’s attacks on Ukraine.

Contrary to Mr Trump’s assertions, there are dwindling few nations who still either respect or trust us. Workarounds are everywhere, further isolating the United States. It’s gotten to the point where, since Trump was reelected following an interim Democratic presidency where his volatile personality was quite well established, even a liberal successor to Trump (assuming we have elections) cannot create pledges or treaties that some subsequent autocratic American president just might undo. And Trump loves to find blame among his simpering appointees. Hey, Pete “Jesus Christ is on Our Side” Hegseth, a Trump bus has just left the blame depot and just might be heading in your direction.

So, what does a President who has fallen in global influence, even among his cherished followers, do? He knows that his party is facing midterm elections where his blind GOP follower-cadres face loss of one or, now, both Houses of Congress? Hold your breath until you turn, perish the thought, blue? Or the political equivalent of blackmailing his Senate stooges to repeal the filibuster rule so you can force passage of the Save America (voting) Act to eliminate all that consistently disproven election fraud… but in reality to cull as many blue voters out of their right to vote, knowing that unless you get that passed, GOP control of Congress is almost certainly toast. Add telling your stooges that you won’t sign any bills until they follow your autocratic order. Throw in full funding of DHS to ensure your brutal private ICE police force gets lots of money. Continue to pledge even more tax cuts for the rich – even noting the deficit is now over $39 trillion – but demand another $200 billion to continue your very unpopular WAR in Iran, costing a tad less than a billion dollars a day?

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time for the American public to put its collective foot down, send a clear message to their elected representatives in Congress that Trump no longer can call the shots without severe political consequences, underscoring that resolve with a massive “No Kings” day of protests across the land.