Category Archives: Politics

Let’s Ask Arty!

Let’s Ask Arty uses existing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to query LLMs about politics in these troubled times.

Query1: What strategies are used to turn a democracy to an autocracy and how many of those strategies has Donald Trump used in his second campaign for the US presidency?

Turning a democracy into an autocracy typically involves several strategies, often used in combination. Here are some common tactics:

  1. Extending Executive Power: Strengthening the executive branch’s power while weakening checks and balances, such as parliaments and judiciaries.
  2. Suppressing Dissent: Restricting freedom of speech, assembly, and press to silence opposition and criticism.
  3. Controlling Information: Manipulating media and spreading misinformation to shape public opinion and maintain power.
  4. Capturing Elite Support: Gaining the backing of influential groups and individuals by offering political favors and economic benefits.
  5. Undermining Democratic Institutions: Weakening institutions that uphold democratic principles, such as electoral commissions and courts.
  6. Exploiting Populism: Appealing to nationalistic and populist sentiments to rally support and create divisions.
  7. Crippling Opposition: Discrediting, intimidating, or legally targeting political opponents to reduce their influence.

Regarding Donald Trump’s second campaign for the US presidency, he has been accused of employing some of these strategies. For example, he has been known to challenge democratic norms, criticize the media, and promote conspiracy theories. However, it’s important to note that the US political system has strong institutions and checks and balances that make it difficult for one individual to transform the system into an autocracy completely.

My input

You’d have to be pretty dense not to see that Donald Trump is following the autocracy playbook pretty closely.

In terms of the following statement from Arty, I have some thoughts:

However, it’s important to note that the US political system has strong institutions and checks and balances that make it difficult for any one individual to completely transform the system into an autocracy.

In theory, this is correct. The US political system is indeed set up with checks (judicial and legislative) that are designed to prevent a malevolent person in the executive branch from dismantling democracy and instituting an autocratic dictatorship. But these systems are only as effective as the people in them. When members of the judicial and legislative branches lack the courage to check the executive branch — or if they support the autocratic goals and objectives of the executive, the system does not work.

Neo-Fascist-Oligarchic-Expialidocious

Sing to the tune of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins

Neo-fascist-oligarchic-expialidocious 
Elon-Bezos-Zuckerberg are really quite atrocious
We need to fight them in the streets and call them on their grossness
Neo-fascist-oligarchic-expialidocious 

Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

We cannot be afraid to speak at what is being done
Trump’s a bully and freak who wants to shock and stun
with fascists in our government, this isn’t a dry run
And so we have a song to sing, a song that must be sung
 
GO!

Neo-fascist-oligarchic-expialidocious 
Elon-Bezos-Zuckerberg are really quite atrocious
We need to fight them in the streets and call them on their grossness
Neo-fascist-oligarchic-expialidocious
 
Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

It seems a lesson wasn’t learned from Hitler’s evil days
when you lose democracy, your freedoms slip away
when oligarchs and fascist pigs try to steal away
everything you’ve worked hard for this is what to say

Hey!

Neo-fascist-oligarchic-expialidocious 
Elon-Bezos-Zuckerberg are really quite atrocious
We need to fight them in the streets and call them on their grossness
Neo-fascist-oligarchic-expialidocious 

Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

Now’s not the time for sitting back or fretting in dismay
Be courageous in your deeds and learn to seize the day
Don’t go hiding in the weeds or worse just weep and pray,
take to the streets to fight misdeeds while singing all the way

Hey!

Neo-fascist-oligarchic-expialidocious 
Elon-Bezos-Zuckerberg are really quite atrocious
We need to fight them in the streets and call them on their grossness
Neo-fascist-oligarchic-expialidocious 

Spit and Gravel

Look at all the fabricated posts

from the father, son, and the wholly most

mother-Zucker serves a roast

and the saluting Nazi gives a toast

“All that matters is what we’ve grossed”

humility dies inside the boast

our nation’s veins become thrombosed

when hate and greed are double-dosed

We need a Dylan of our own

calling out the orange overgrown

fascist fuckwad on his throne

autocratic in his tone

his wind-filled ego overblown

a head that’s crammed with nothing known

as knives cut justice to the bone

he snaps her picture with his phone

he loves how she’s become so prone

to wickedness and testosterone

As lies unfurl and we unravel

As truth gets bashed by the Speaker’s gavel

The blood-soaked trail on which truth travels

gets paved with liar’s spit and gravel

Is This the End?

Democracy versus Autocracy

MAGA the psyop Vlad velvet confection, no missiles exploding, just bloodless dissection

Pitting and plotting while spinning a web, get rid of sad pols like low energy Jeb

Replace them with barkers who grift for a living, wrap Christ in the flag and become less forgiving

FOX propaganda a new-age religion, the bread of brain dead, blood suckers, and pigeons

Populist fodder, cultural crack, farmed in the foul breath of Trump’s loyalist hacks

News is now tribal, with no true reporting, FOX is the bible, a church for consorting

Where lies lead to lust for the ignorant masses, gaping and raping in their Eva Braun glasses

Troubadour tribesmen of white patriarchy, pied-piping pitchmen for the new oligarchy

Putin has puppets, Elon and Don, a triad of fuck-wads running a con

As we sit on the sidelines and watch it unfold, blind to the history and too dumb to be told

We’re becoming the fascists we used to despise, and the good becomes evil, right in front of our eyes.

The new Jackboots are black suits with boatloads of money, they carve up the landscape and horde all the honey

The rest will subsist on crackers and crumbs, treated like losers, vagrants and bums  

Authentic Assholism

When someone is true to themselves, it doesn’t automatically mean they’re a good person. You can be authentic and an asshole – just look at Donald Trump.

There’s a strange phenomenon in the MAGA world where authenticity trumps character, where how Trump talks is more important than what he’s saying.

That’s why we see Trump supporters laugh and applaud at all the crass crap spewing from that moron’s mouth – to them, it’s like sitting next to their racist buddy at their favorite bar. It speaks to how shallow and lazy a large portion of the American electorate has become – that a simplistic view of Trump’s authenticity resonates more than his utter lack of substance and character.

I can hear the twang of a Trump supporter now: “That Arnold Palmer schlong story was hilarious; that guy has my vote.” 

Fourteen days until the election.

The Stench of JD Vance’s “No”

Since the 2024 VP debate, we’ve all watched JD Vance sidestep whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Most recently, Vance was asked five separate times in the same interview but refused a yes or no answer.

Anyone with an iota of intelligence understands that JD Vance knows Trump lost but was instructed never to say it. Trump won’t allow any of his people to utter the word “loser” when talking about him—he’s too fragile. So, like the good soldier, JD refused to answer, sidestepping more than Al Jolson and Fred Astaire in a game of dodgeball.

Yesterday, Vance got a message from his boss that sidestepping wasn’t cutting it and to fall in line with the election denial. So, when asked AGAIN if Trump lost the 2020 election, he said “No,” which we all know is complete bullshit.

How do we know it’s complete bullshit? Because it’s been almost 4 years since the votes for the 2020 election were tabulated, litigated, and re-tabulated, yielding the same result – an overwhelming victory in the popular vote and electoral college by Joe Biden, with no evidence of vote rigging or cheating, in what the lead Trump election official called the fairest election in a generation and in which Trump’s attorney general called Trump’s assertions of a stolen election “total bullshit.”

Zero evidence that Trump won.

If I were a reporter, I’d follow up with JD Vance and ask why he has refused to answer the question for the last several weeks. Why didn’t he say “No” the first time he was asked? Now that JD Vance has officially joined the Election Deniers club, I would press him to explain precisely why he thinks Trump won. What evidence does he have to come to his conclusion?

It was almost comical watching JD Vance refusing to answer the question about Trump’s 2020 loss because we all understood (to an extent) the Vance Dance – He didn’t want to piss off his boss by being honest, so, sidestep shuffle-shuffle, sidestep, no answer.” 

Embracing the lie is anything but comical because it shows us that JD Vance cannot be trusted with the most basic of things: facts, math, counting, and recounting.

If he denies something so clear and definitive, how can he be trusted to be truthful to the American people?

Everyone knows Donald Trump can’t be trusted—that if he loses AGAIN, he’ll refuse to accept the result. Some of us might have had an inkling of hope for Vance—that when faced with basic math that proved he and Trump came out on the short end of the election, he would man up and say, “We lost.” That hope is now gone with his one-word answer, “No,” and it’s the biggest reason to vote against this ticket.

Vance’s election denial is the latest example of the public humiliation by association that anyone close to Trump goes through. The cowardice of simply going along to get along will stick to Vance long after the stench of Trump fades.

Vote blue in 2024.

Political Poll Pourri

It’s challenging to poll the minds of Republican voters in 2024.

Some are undoubtedly embarrassed their party re-nominated an incompetent, narcissistic, and megalomaniacal liar who they deeply regret voting for in 2016 and AGAIN in 2020 and will no way in hell vote for again in 2024.

Others wobble on a farcical fence of feeling that says they must vote Republican because they are Republican, even though their candidate has long abandoned Republican principles in favor of authoritarianism.

There are large sacks of numb-nuts incapable of independent and critical thought who still believe the 2020 election was stolen and will undoubtedly vote for the orange jack-wagon again. 

And then all those barely closeted racists who won’t openly say they’re voting for Trump for fear of being publicly shamed, but deep down in their black hearts, have every intention of doing so.

Tough to quantify that fuck-tangled mess, even with the best polling in place.

Dog Food for Thought

Trump and Trumpism get their sustenance at the intersection of blind ambition and intellectual vapidity, as demonstrated most recently by the former President’s racist remarks about immigrants eating the pets of people who live in Springfield, Ohio.

More telling than the remark itself was Trump’s justification for making it on the debate stage in front of 67 million viewers:

“I saw a guy say it on TV.”

Nothing exemplifies the festering rot of politics in America more than that statement by former president Trump, which dovetails beautifully into the Murdochian decline of American news media and its host of shit shovelers like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingram.

Donald Trump is the embodiment of Nazi Joeseph Goebbels’s “Big Lie” messaging strategy:

If you repeat a lie or falsehood loudly and frequently enough with conviction, your audience will come to believe it, even when the facts do not support it.

  • America is a failing nation
  • Crime rates are through the roof
  • Inflation is the worst it’s been in the history of our country
  • Democrats stole the 2020 election
  • Haitian immigrants are eating the pets of the people who live in Springfield, Ohio

All of these statements are blatant lies that Donald Trump continues to promote and lean into.

The President’s willingness to repeat and share what he hears (regardless of validity) is strategic. When coupled with our natural inclination to glom onto stories that support preconceptions and voters’ zeal to dismiss evidence and facts they don’t like, the President’s words have a rippling and corrosive effect on social cohesion in our country.

So, when President Trump heard the unsubstantiated rumor on TV about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, that was all the evidence he needed – A responsible candidate for President of the United States would have done their due diligence on the veracity of the rumor because sharing false stories about Haitians eating their neighbor’s pets puts the Haitian community in danger.

Donald Trump is not a responsible candidate.

President Trump shared the lie about Haitians eating cats and dogs because promoting hate of immigrants serves his interests and ambition, the same way refusing to condemn insurrectionists who stormed the capital and violently attacked police officers serves his interests and ambitions.

It’s why we can’t allow this sociopath near the white house again.

The Voting Booth is Gen Z’s Normandy

After the presidential debate last night between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the choice of who should be the next President of the United States couldn’t be clearer.

Unfortunately, nearly 40 percent of Americans will continue to disregard Trump’s incompetence, petulance, and insatiable desire for power and vote for him this November.

In the 1940’s, the greatest generation stormed the beaches of Normandy to stop fascism from spreading across Europe.  This November, Gen Z Americans need to storm the polls in massive numbers to stop the spread of fascism here at home.

Gen Z voters are not facing machine gun fire, land minds, or snipers. Still, they are up against concerted voter suppression efforts, deep cynicism and apathy, and an information landscape of lies from far-right, anti-democratic, pro-Russian sources.

Voting this November to stop fascism here at home is far less dangerous and requires none of the bravery that young Americans faced on June 6th, 1944, on the beaches of Normandy – but it is no less critical in terms of what is at stake.

Kamala Harris did her job last night. She demonstrated a calm, cool, and collected understanding of the issues and exposed Donald Trump for the political and personal fraud that he is.

Now it’s up to the voters – it’s on us and (in large part the youth of America) to do their part on Election Day to keep Donald Trump from ending democracy and killing the great American experiment.