Artificial Intelligence and Our “Cold Civil War”

While watching all six-plus hour of yesterday’s impeachment inquiry hearings I was continually struck by Carl Bernstein’s recent assertion that the U.S. is now in what has been describing as a “cold civil war.” (A mere eight months ago he was only saying we were close to “ignition” of said war.)

There are probably a dozen or more ways to describe this conflict: Liberals vs conservatives. Elites vs. real Americans. Urban vs. rural. Professionals vs. amateurs. Serious vs. silly. B-students and higher vs. C- and lower. But at some point this new civil war can be distilled to something closer to: Fact vs. fiction.

Some Things That Actually Happened vs. Some Things That Didn’t.

How else to you describe the contrast between the open and shut case of presidential extortion presented by Adam Schiff and the Democrats with the scattershot, “Oh hell, let’s spitball this” hodgepodge of guffaw-inducing nonsense thrown up by Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan? (What? “Nude pictures” of Donald Trump? What?)

Okay, yes, we understand that even Nunes and Jordan understand that Trump did it. And that it isn’t “heresay” when you’ve got first-hand witnesses. And that their only viable line of defense is to cloud up the story with a torrent of strange names lacking any bona fide connection to the extortion at hand, all in hopes of selling the idea that every government everywhere is such a sewer Trump was merely honoring a long, sordid tradition.

But the question, to Bernstein’s point, is who are they selling this sewage to? What sort of people would ever even begin to believe, to use just one example, that Trump was vitally concerned with corruption in Ukraine because, (after he said he was considering recognizing Crimea as Russian territory), a few Ukrainian officials said mean things about him on social media in 2016?

The short answer of course is that they’re selling this and every other absurd, baseless concoction to a remarkably lazy-minded (and large) constituency. The side of the civil war eager to accept that the Ukrainians have the actual physical server containing Hillary’s e-mails. That a Politico story about a few Ukrainians’ outraged over Paul Manafort’s role in gross corruption tipping Democrats off to that fact “proves” the country was aligned to undermine Trump’s campaign … and on and on, including of course the Trump-hating whistleblower and those nude pictures of Donny.

Try as I might to be generous, the constituency for this flagrant claptrap just is not very bright. Or, put another way, it’s a crowd, an upswelling or revolution you might even say, of people adamant that they know a lot but who have plainly — plainly — done way too little to actually know what is true and what is not.

As I’ve suggested many times before, this fundamental laziness explains a lot about why these very same people feel “left behind” in a fast-moving 2019 world.

In that context — and without going all science-fictioning here — the outlines of the divide in this new “cold civil war” become even clearer and more ominous.

Over the past couple years I’ve become fascinated with the quantum advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the warnings about it from people with thoughtful, first-hand experience, not only with what AI may (likely) do to human society but … how soon it will happen.

An algorithm-driven world, where our personal preferences and antipathies deliver more (and steadily more virulent and intoxicating examples) of those preferences is already well upon us. Think your Facebook feed, the rabbit hole of YouTube where every new video is weirder and more provocative than the last.

As noxious and culturally contorting as that is today, with precious few people fully understanding how this stuff works, its sophistication and application is increasing … rapidly.

One effect, say people like writer-philosopher Yuval Harari, is a further hardening of the tribal bubbles we see so much of today. And that is bad enough.

But, he and others also forsee the stark divide between people fully appreciative of facts — of science and sociology, etc. — and those ignorant of reality adding to the creation of a class of what he describes harshly as a “useless” citizens. People, who because of their ignorance of relevant knowledge are of little to no value to the people, companies and institutions propelling a pretty Darwinian society based on algorithms, machine-learning and other forms of AI.

In his book, “Homo Deus” (i.e. “Man God”), Harari notes that where cultures until now needed vast numbers of people of no great talent to populate armies and operate factories, neither is true today. Machines are already doing all that better, more reliably and less expensively. Ask any American auto worker, if you doubt it.

The “civil war” point then becomes clearer.

The appeal today of the Trump-era GOP’s sewer of nonsense and hysteria may be rooted in class and racial animus — the “left behind” feeling ever more marginalized and “disrespected”.

But let’s project — as Harari and others do — ten to fifteen years into the future, when the perpetuated ignorance of this large bloc of citizens leaves them even less relevant and employable.

Who are they going to blame then?

Probably not Sean Hannity or Devin Nunes.

Michael Cohen: “I fear … there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

You couldn’t help but make a direct, almost umbilical connection, between Michael Cohen’s parting words yesterday … “Given my experience working for Mr Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition of power” and the performance of 99% of the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.

As was plain to everyone watching, the Republicans, led by the loudest and most cynical of the (so-called) Freedom Caucus, had zero interest in refuting anything …  anything, mind you … Cohen accused Trump of being. Not of being a “racist”, or a “con man” or a “cheat”. Hell, if Cohen produced a HiDef video of Trump kidnapping schoolgirls (or boys) off the streets of Mole Hill, West Virginia and shooting them up with opioids the Republican response would still be, “Oh, yeah! But you want a book deal, you lying bastard!”

Trump’s flagrant incompetence and corruption has never bothered the likes of Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan and … it’s very important to emphasize … it never will.

Those two, the leaders of The Wrongest of The Right Wing, get elected and stay in office because they bring full-on toxic cultural warfare, not in spite of it. They are the equivalent of Subutai the Mongol for America’s fear-driven racist under-class. For that sad over-stressed crowd, ethics, legality, logic and human decency are incidental to defeating … liberals. “Liberals” of course being code for uppity women, blacks, Hispanics, climate change, electric cars, mass transportation, cheaper prescription drugs and everything else that comes with common sense in 2019.

Meadows and Jordan may not be quite the abject fools and buffoons that some of their colleagues are. Here’s looking at you ex-Loooosiana Sheriff and wearer of weird, ill-fitting vests, Clay Higgins

(may you personally re-confiscate Cohen’s “boxes”), or Carol Miller of West Virginia,

or Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin,

or … well, it got to the point, before the lunch break, where the Republicans looked to be in a competition to see who among them could sound most most like they were having an ischemic stroke; bug-eyed and struggling to put two coherent sentences together. With the exception of Justin Amash from Michigan, you’re excused if you thought the brain-eating zombie apocalypse had already attacked and fed off the GOP caucus.

Lord, what a collection of goobers.

But my point here, and it too is somewhat apocalyptic, is that this crowd; bred, raised and sustained on the raging gibberish of talk radio (several of them are ex-talk radio hosts), don’t have the genetic composition to concede defeat. Because of that, it is worth considering that they will see Trump being driven from office by the legal weight of Robert Mueller and the Southern District of New York and/or defeated at the ballot box in 2020 as the catalyst for all-out civil insurrection.

As Cohen suggested and others who have known Trump for years have concurred, Trump will resort to anything to avoid (or reject) defeat. This is acutely true in the context of this moment, where the Presidency may be the only thing that temporarily protects him from total financial destruction. Should the SDNY indict him for bank fraud, tax fraud, insurance fraud and on and on, the penalties for could easily leave him penniless, a blubbery shamble in a Trump Gardens efficiency, rocking a soiled wife-beater and eating cold, day-old KFC out of a bucket.

Facing that prospect Trump will have no choice but to rally the goober masses, the cesspool swamp of deplorables that re-elect the Jim Jordans, Mark Meadows, Glenn Grothmans and Carol Millers of the planet … because of their indifference to decency and common sense and revulsion of “liberals.”

Now, we always want to avoid hysteria and hyperbole. But you know that line you keep hearing about how, “this isn’t normal”?

Well, it could very easily, and likely, get even less normal.

Benghazi Committee vs. Hillary: Talk About a Fool’s Errand.

Lambert_to_the_SlaughterWhat do I know about political strategy? Somewhere along about the second hour of the latest interrogation of Hillary Clinton over Benghazi … Benghazi!BENGHAZI!!!, I turned to my dog, who looked about as interested in what was going on as the average voter. “I don’t get it, Lou. I would have opened with the blockbuster new revelation, the killer detail, the smoking pipe bomb that would have her sweating, ‘like Dan Quayle on ‘Jeopardy’, as we used to say. But they’re two hours into this and they’re talking … e-mails. This Gowdy guy couldn’t possibly be so stupid that he’d let the lights go up on this circus without bringing something new to the show, could he?”

Well, Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, may not be stupid, but he pretty clearly found himself in the position that having pandered for a year to his Tea Party base he couldn’t figure out any way to pull the plug on the lifeless corpse he was required to roll out on national TV, showing off a kind of Tea Party “Weekend with Bernie”, without any intentional laughs. He had no other choice than to put on whatever show he could, so he can go back to South Carolina, look the tri-corner hat crowd in the eye and say he brought the fight to the devil incarnate.

You knew it was a resounding disaster, certainly for the ambitious Mr. Gowdy, when his close-ups showed him slathered in Nixonian flop sweat by the time he gaveled the thing to adjournment 10 hours and 59 minutes after it opened. At least his faux hawk held up.

If you’re a Republican outside the Freedom Caucus psycho ward you had be shaking your head and reaching for the Jim Beam before lunch. All you could possibly see, knowing that Gowdy had nothing, much less anything new, is that Ms. Clinton would not only prevail against GOP’s clown car of interrogators, but that their easily foretold failure was only going to strengthen her for the 13-month run to the White House.

The conventional (Freedom Caucus) wisdom (sic) was that given enough time, the tea cup Torquemadas on Gowdy’s committee would either force Clinton into at least one juicy, viral 5-second gaffe or reduce her to a babbling Socialist, troop-hating ninny. Because, you know, she’s Hillary Clinton, someone who has never before in her long career ever had a tough/stupid question put to her or been forced to sit in front of cameras and smile patiently at a panel of filibustering buffoons. Of course they’d break her! She’s never seen the likes of Gowdy or Jim Jordan (leader of the Freedom Caucus) before! By the glory of God and our guns we’ll show her what freedom’s all about!

Talk about a fool’s errand. You got nothing. She knows it. She’s been at this game for 25 years. You’re still trying to find the Capitol rest rooms. What could possibly go wrong?

Until Hillary oversees the indictment of Goldman, Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon she won’t be my dream candidate. But as long as mastery of The Game and serenely swatting down mosquito logic — keep biting until it bleeds — are criteria for high office, she’ll do just fine.

Lord, what a pathetic farce that was.