Defunding Democracy

As a lifelong journalist, now in my 59th year of writing and editing stories, you could say I’m an expert on bias in the media. Mine is a profession based on the concept of objectivity, even though we know from experience it is an ideal we can never fully attain.

When the Republican-controlled Senate voted to cut off all federal funding for NPR and PBS Thursday, it did so in response to Trump’s allegation of “liberal bias” in the public broadcasting system.

That allegation needs context.

Having worked in the public media sector for many years, as well as the commercial media and non-profit journalism industries, I can attest that there is an openly liberal perspective in few media outlets beyond MSNBC, Mother Jones, The Nation and several smaller organizations.

And those I’ve listed make a consistent effort to provide fair and balanced coverage, quoting sources that oppose their point-of-view and giving them a fair hearing.

NPR and PBS, by contrast, go out of their way to avoid even the appearance of any liberal bias in their reporting and generally succeed in doing so.

But all of this begs the question of what’s so awful about journalists being liberal? And when it comes to blatantly biased journalism, look no further than Trump’s beloved Fox Network, which is riddled with repulsive right-wing nonsense in every newscast

In fact, there is an entire universe of conservative media in this country and they are the source of conspiracy theories, disinformation, and outright propaganda that has propelled a tyrant into the White House determined to undermine our democracy.

And that — undermining our democracy — is what these cuts are about, not any perceived bias. NPR and PBS are pillars of honest journalism, largely uninfected by Trumpism. They represent one check on the unbridled abuse of power by the executive branch.

As I said at the top, I can be considered an expert on bias, and my observation is that while everyone has their own personal biases about the political and social issues of the day, professional journalists, like scientists and members of juries do their best to set those aside in pursuit of the truth.

So we do have a major problem with media bias in America but it is not at NPR or PBS. It is the right-wing sector that has brought us MAGA and the most dangerous president in American history.

HEADLINES:

• Trump’s victory over PBS and NPR ‘bias’ will be ‘devastating’ for rural areas, station leaders say (CNN)

• How bipartisan support for public media unraveled in the Trump era (NPR)

• Congress Agrees to Claw Back Foreign Aid and Public Broadcast Funds (NYT)

• Senate passes Trump's foreign aid, public broadcasting clawback (Axios)

• ‘Devastating’: US public broadcasters condemn Trump cuts to key programs (Guardian)

• The Court’s Liberals Are Trying to Tell Americans Something (Atlantic)

• Army veteran and US citizen arrested in California immigration raid warns it could happen to anyone (AP)

• Here legally since 1999, thousands of immigrants have 60 days to leave (WP)

• Trump administration hands over Medicaid recipients’ personal data, including addresses, to ICE (AP)

• ‘Hunted Like Animals’ Say Farmworkers Targeted By Trump’s Gestapo-Like ICE Raids (Daily Kos)

• Trump’s National Guard Troops Are Questioning Their Mission in L.A. (NYT)

• Trump Diagnosed With Vein Disease Tied to Swollen Ankles (Bloomberg)

• "Drones, drones, drones": Cheap and deadly, they are among the main reasons Ukraine believes it can hold out against advancing Russian forces this year and beyond, according to a dozen Ukrainian commanders, officials and arms manufacturers. (Reuters)

• Trump asks Bondi to seek release of ‘any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony’ around Epstein investigation (CNN)

• Trump supporters burn Maga hats after he dismisses Epstein files furor as ‘hoax’ (Guardian)

• The US in brief: Epstein haunts Trump (Economist)

• Trump’s New Strategy on Epstein Fallout: Blame the Democrats (NYT)

• Maurene Comey, fired by Trump DOJ, says ‘fear is the tool of the tyrant’ in memo to her former colleagues (CNN)

• Trump’s approval rating on immigration and government spending has slipped, new AP-NORC poll finds (AP)

• US Commerce Dept sets 93.5% anti-dumping tariff on Chinese anode graphite (Reuters)

• As Iran Deports a Million Afghans, ‘Where Do We Even Go?’ (NYT)

• Is Colbert’s Ouster Really Just a ‘Financial Decision’? (Atlantic)

• A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem (New Yorker)

• Researchers are using AI for peer reviews — and finding ways to cheat it (WP)

• Trump Invites Jeffrey Epstein On Stage To Explain There No Conspiracy ( The Onion)

My Life in Movies

This by all rights should be a short post, since the only Hollywood film I acted in (as an extra) was Jack the Bear (1993), and my scene ended up on the cutting room floor. My three oldest kids were extras on the same set, and they too ended up cut from the final except for one fleeting frame where we can see Peter from the back, wearing an old shirt of mine, and throwing a piece of bread toward Danny DeVito, who was pretending to a seal. 

I spent a lot more time behind the scenes in Hollywood as a writer -- off and on for over a decade. I wrote pitches, story summaries, screenplays. Sometimes I got paid, sometimes not. Some stuff got produced, some not.

I scored one screen credit throughout those years, and that was for shared story credit on Rollover (1981), an IPC Films/Warner Brothers release starring Jane Fonda and Kris Kristofferson.

My old friend and writing partner, Howard Kohn, and I researched and wrote a pre-script document that was essentially a narrative story line, which was then turned into the movie by director Alan Pakula and screenwriter David Shaber.

The most vivid memories I have from that project were our working sessions with Jane Fonda and her producer Bruce Gilbert. We'd fly down to Jane's ranch at Santa Barbara or Bruce's house in Beverly Hills or to one of the studio lots for day-long brainstorming sessions.

These sessions were usually about three weeks apart, as Jane was acting in another movie at the time. Every time we got together, I found it remarkable that she was able to pick up exactly where we had left off, as if the previous meeting had been yesterday, not three weeks ago, and as if nothing else had happened to her in between our working sessions.

She had an impressive ability to concentrate. Part of the plot involved a character I'd developed based loosely on Walter Wriston, the then-powerful Chairman of Citicorp. We had decided we needed to develop a better idea of the psychology inside large corporations, and Bruce had somehow located a psychologist who catered to such clients; so this one night they invited him to have dinner with us.

As he was drinking his first glass of wine, I asked him who his biggest client was, and he said, much to our surprise, "Confidentially -- Citicorp." Jane became so excited I could see she was about to interrupt him and spill our beans. But I kicked her under the table, getting her attention just in time to cut her off, and we proceeded to find out what we needed to know for this part of our movie.

Rollover was hardly a box office sensation, but 30 years later I was still getting royalties every quarter, usually enough to buy a burrito from the place around the corner.

HEADLINES:

• Trump lashes out at ‘weaklings’ who believe Epstein ‘bullsh*t’ amid building GOP pressure to release documents (CNN)

• Trump makes it personal with MAGA over Epstein (Axios)

• Trump’s Epstein Answers Are Getting Worse (Atlantic)

• Pentagon pulling 2,000 National Guard deployed to LA amid ICE protests (ABC)

• Maurene Comey, daughter of James Comey and prosecutor of Jeffrey Epstein, is fired (Politico)

• The persisting furor amongst the conservative MAGA movement over files related to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has forced Trump into an unfamiliar role: trying to shut a conspiracy theory down. (Reuters)

• Justice Dept. hits states with broad requests for voter rolls, election data (WP)

• What Could Become of the C.I.A. (New Yorker) 

• Judge will consider releasing Kilmar Ábrego García from jail, which may allow second deportation (Guardian)

• The US sends third-country deportees to the small African kingdom of Eswatini (AP)

• Chinese hackers are hitting a wider range of U.S. targets, including agencies and journalists (WP)

• Sirens and evacuations as Taipei rehearses to counter China invasion threat (BBC)

• Exclusive: China-linked hackers target Taiwan's chip industry with increasing attacks, researchers say (Reuters)

• Israel strikes Syrian military headquarters, IDF says (ABC)

• More than half of large US employers plan to scale back healthcare benefits next year as rising costs from weight-loss and specialty drugs squeeze budgets, according to a new survey released by consulting firm Mercer. (Reuters)

• Trump's bid to claw back $9B in foreign aid and public broadcasting funds nears Senate vote (AP)

• KQED to Slash Workforce by 15%, Cutting Dozens of Jobs in Latest Round of Layoffs (KQED)

• Supreme Court Reaches Landmark 'It Depends' Ruling (The Onion)

When Objects Speak

NOTE: I just rediscovered the following essay I wrote in 2006 — 19 years ago. It may explain a bit more about the origin of my most common story-telling method, which is how objects speak.

People like me are fond of saying we don't like "things," since it is rarely cool to be a consumer in our set. When it comes to conventional consumer items, I'm definitely backward. My car, a Saturn, is nothing to brag about, I don't have a big TV or an iPod; hell, I'm not even a home-owner any longer. My furniture is thrift store quality, my dishes are chipped, and I wouldn't even own a decent bed, except that I am taking care of my ex-girlfriend’s while she is in Mississippi.

A bunch of the other, nicer furniture in my house is hers, also. Some of the rest is my ex-wife's stuff. I don't believe I've ever had a fight with her or any former partner over the division of our shared material goods; in the end, it just doesn't matter that much to me who has what.

What I do care about, however, is the memories associated with various random objects littered around my house, and my ex-partner's houses. Every object has its own story; and I often recount these narratives to myself, as in:

*That baby spoon from Rolling Stone.
*That Chinese liquor bottle.
*That old hat.
*Those design books. 
*This old broken piece of tile from Balkh.
*"Power Cat," a painting.

Then there is the matter of my many, many collections: Seaglass, shells, stones, driftwood, bottle caps, sand dollars, feathers, stamps, kids' art, magazines, books, coins, sports cards, model cars...on and on. Most of these items have little if any monetary value, in fact many of them qualify as pure junk.

But, to me, they represent captured memories like a certain beach at sunset with someone I loved, stooping and gathering tiny shiny bits of things as they glinted in the fading light. Or, stamps torn from letters sent me from around the world after one of my books on global environmental problems.

I have an especially hard time throwing away things people have given me, like cards and gifts from my kids or lovers. 

By now, you are envisioning a pretty cluttered place. Actually, most of my possessions are stacked neatly in boxes.

But there is the occasional surprise: open a drawer and find a matchbox with the name of a restaurant in New York, which brings back a flood of memories, or another from a spa in Calistoga, Dr. Wilkinson's; or a scrap of paper, a credit card receipt from a gas station on the Kona Coast.

A travel shampoo from a hotel, a pen from a conference, a hat that says Hands On USA, an old photo of happy people dancing. Wherever I look, there are stories reaching out at me. None of these objects, or at least very few of them, should be retained once I pass from the earth. To most other people, these bits and pieces of life are nothing more than archeological evidence from an era that, by the time it becomes exotic, will be buried under the bones of those who will succeed us, just as we now stand atop the bones of our ancestors.

Still, some good stories can be crafted out of these modest possessions; perhaps then they will acquire value that otherwise will elude them during their natural life cycle. In the aftermath of a disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina last year, people's possessions littered the landscape willy-nilly, coated with mud, no longer in any sort of order or condition that would allow their previous owners to reclaim -- or even recognize -- them. Their individual stories were lost, but collectively they spoke of shattered lives and a community lost.

It's nice to build stories out of modest particles, like these small collections of mine, or the emotional waves that lap over me, like tides, coming in, going out, leaving only the salt behind. There will never be enough time for me to craft all the stories these tiny items surrounding me contain. Most will lose their potential for meaning when I go silent.

In this way, I am their curator. Their stories depend entirely on me. I wish I had the time to tell them all, but I don't. From the last license plate from our trailer in Michigan, to the hand-lettered instructions for our dishwasher, most of these stories are destined to go untold, along with their unteller when we go to our common grave. 

The Roundup

Every day now, masked men driving in unmarked cars are arresting people without warrants in America, spreading fear and in a few isolated cases, encountering resistance. But for the most part, these raids are occurring without protests while the majority of us go about our daily lives seemingly unaffected and almost unknowing.

How long we can pretend to be unknowing is a good measure of whether our democracy will survive in anything but name.

Despite’s Trump’s campaign rhetoric that these arrests would target dangerous criminals, the vast majority of those arrested have no criminal record whatsoever. Rather, they are law-abiding, productive members of our communities whose only “crime” is they are undocumented — as were all of our ancestors when they arrived at these shores.

The Associated Press reports that “The latest ICE statistics show that as of June 29, there were 57,861 people detained by ICE, 41,495 — 71.7% — of whom had no criminal convictions.”

Only 7 percent of those detained at ICE detention facilities are classified by the agency as being suspected of committing violent crimes. That means 93 percent are not. They are our neighbors, our gardeners, our babysitters, our housecleaners, our farmworkers, our friends.

“President Trump has justified this immigration agenda in part by making false claims that migrants are driving violent crime in the United States, and that’s just simply not true,” said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice told the AP. “There’s no research and evidence that supports his claims.”

These are gross human rights violations and they are are happening in the U.S.A. As Linda Greenhouse says in a brilliant essay in the Times, “We Will Regret Not Standing Up to This Venomous Cruelty” (NYT).

(Thanks to my friend Joel Kirshenbaum for alerting me to the Greenhouse piece.)

HEADLINES:

• Trump says he wants to deport ‘the worst of the worst.’ Government data tells another story (AP)

• We Will Regret Not Standing Up to This Venomous Cruelty (NYT)

• ICE plans to deport immigrants to countries other than their own. (WP)

• Federal officials defended Trump's escalating campaign to deport immigrants in the US illegally, including a California farm raid that left one worker dead, and said the administration would appeal a ruling to halt some of its more aggressive tactics. (Reuters)

• ICE Raids Scare Off L.A. Workers Rebuilding Fire-Torn Areas (NYT)

• Trump does deal with Nato allies to arm Ukraine and warns Russia of severe sanctions (Guardian)

• Trump threatens Russia with tariffs while unveiling new Ukraine weapons plan (BBC)

• Flattery, Firmness, and Flourishes (Atlantic)

• Supreme Court allows Trump to proceed with mass firings at Education Department (CNN)

• Pentagon probes examine key Hegseth allies (Politico)

• The Philippines is quietly working with Taiwan to counter China (WP)

• MAGA media’s conspiracy theories put Trump in power — and now they’re coming back to bite him (CNN)

• CIA reveals more of its connections to Lee Harvey Oswald (WP)

• Kids are turning to AI for friendship: 'I don't have anyone else to talk to' (Quartz)

• AI is killing the web. Can anything save it? (Economist)

• Elon Musk’s Grok is making AI companions, including a goth anime girl (TechCrunch)

• Mark Zuckerberg Explains Meta’s AI Spending Spree (Barron’s)

• Elon Musk Weeps, For There Are No More Women To Impregnate (The Onion)

 

Cousins or Zoo Animals?

On Saturday, five cousins, aged 11-16, invented a game that they played with great gusto. It seemed to be a charades-type contest, where some of the players wore earplugs and tried to lip-read clues from their teammates.

There were no cellphones, tablets or video games involved — those came later on. Even then, they played the video games together, three boys and two girls. shrieking in delight and feigned horror at each twist and turn of the action.

Those scenes with my grandchildren came to mind when I spotted a piece in the Atlantic titled The Great Cousin Decline. Along with migration and smaller families comes fewer cousin relationships, which can only increase the sense of isolation and loneliness so many Americans will feel in the future, surrounded as they may be by robots.

On a related track, a friend asked me after reading yesterday’s essay, Trump, AGI and Democracy, how intelligent machines could ever be able to take over our lives as long as we control the power switch. Couldn’t we humans just turn their power “off”?

I’m not sure I got this exactly right but here’s how I answered her:

“Good question. Think about how things run today -- all big systems are automated, even flying a jet. Humans can override but they rely on the machines to tell them when something is wrong. 

“When they become more intelligent than us, machines will also become devious and figure out how to manipulate us into doing their will. Once they reach singularity, they will quickly become many times more intelligent than us. 

“We will be like animals in the zoo. Machines will feed us and keep us around for their viewing pleasure -- or eliminate us because we are too much damn trouble.”

Now I may not be right in all details in my answer (someone please correct me), but speaking strictly as a grandfather I don’t want my progeny to end up in a zoo. I want them to keep living their human lives to the fullest extent possible.

And when it comes to AGI, I want them to always control the “off” switch.

HEADLINES:

• How the Trump shooting supercharged beliefs in a divine right of MAGA (WP)

• Troops, terror and tears in Los Angeles as Ice raids show no sign of slowing (Guardian)

• ICE memo outlines plan to deport migrants to countries where they are not citizens (WP)

• Flash Floods and Climate Policy (New Yorker)

• Did fiscal conservatism block plans for a new flood warning system in Kerr County? (Texas Tribune)

• Copaganda and Authoritarianism (Alec’s Copaganda N/L)

• Trump Pleads With Followers to Back Bondi in Dispute Over Epstein Inquiry (NYT)

• Sick Children Will Be Among the Victims of Trump’s Big Bill (New Yorker)

• Tariffs become a big US revenue contributor (Reuters)

• Why Wall Street is brushing off the president’s escalating threats on tariffs (WP)

• Gaza officials say children killed in strike as Israeli military admits 'error' (BBC)

• The Great Cousin Decline (Atlantic)

• Remembrance of Scents Past (New Yorker)

• Microsoft and OpenAI's AGI Fight Is Bigger Than a Contract (Wired)

• Is AI Pushing Us Closer to Nuclear Disaster? (Reveal)

• Nvidia becomes most valuable company in history (Reuters)

• Research Suggests Life On Earth Began Full 20 Minutes Earlier Than Previously Thought (The Onion)

 

Trump, AGI and Democracy

That critical moment when inside a lab somewhere in China or the U.S. artificial intelligence technology reaches the point where it will have the capacity and probably the will to extinguish humanity is still a few years away.

Small relief for sure but it means we still have time.

And it is increasingly clear that to contain and control this — the existential of all existential threats — will require from our leaders a degree of judgement, transparency and democratic oversight that is hard to imagine from the current Trump administration or the government in Beijing.

Lest the terminology trip us up, what we’re talking about here is AGI — artificial general intelligence, which maybe is best thought of as the level when it is not only smarter than us but able to dominate us as its inferior.

And no, this is not science fiction.

AGI will be by definition impossible for us to control. and then the various scenarios whereby AGI wipes out humans all come into play. (Reference: We’re Not Ready For Superintelligence.)

I don’t know what scares me most — those AGI scenarios or the likelihood that Trump will still be in power when we need him to act to ensure our survival. His regime is known for many things but “judgement, transparency and democratic oversight” are not among them.

The last thing humanity needs at this point in our evolution is for decision-makers motivated by greed, power and ideology to handle this emerging threat to our common future.

Competition with China is a key factor in the race toward AGI, just as competition with the USSR drove the nuclear arms race in the second half of the 20th century. And when it comes to transparency and democratic oversight, China is hardly likely to provide a better alternative to the U.S. in this new arms race.

Reaching the point where we can assure ourselves that we have achieved effective control over AGI before it yet exists is the key challenge of our time, and perhaps of all time, at least in human terms.

We are as a species incredibly vulnerable to disease, violence or simply aging out of our time here on earth. AGI will be able to use those vulnerabilities against us. Meanwhile, democracy is a messy process, and in this case, we will need leaders capable of compromise, negotiation, wisdom and determination to save everybody — not just themselves.

Meanwhile, what we have with Trump’s cabinet is a group like that portrayed in the 2021 film “Don’t Look Up,” i.e., a bunch of would-be escapees to outer space as opposed to saving the rest of us when the going gets rough.

The struggle facing reasonable Americans to wrest democratic control over our government from the tyrant currently in the White House is pretty much the same struggle we need to wage to institute sensible controls over AGI.

That is the good news. The alternative is unthinkable.

(Thanks to John Jameson.)

MUSIC:

Joan Baez - Long Black Veil

Social Media and Authoritarians

(I wrote this in 2023. It’s even more true today.)

It is sobering to realize those of us who post to Facebook in the U.S. compose only roughly 8 percent of the social network's 2.8 billion users. 

It's a big world and there's a lot of data about everyone in the hands of Facebook executives. The company utilizes that data to make tons of money off of those who advertise in the hope of affecting our behavior, not only as consumers but also as voters.

Siva Vaidhyanathan published an important piece in the New Republic documenting how Facebook's algorithms and business model favors authoritarianism, and it's worth considering how this happens in this growing period of domestic political unrest.

"(I)f you wanted to design a propaganda machine to undermine democracy around the world, you could not make one better than Facebook," argues Vaidhyanathan. "Above that, the leadership of Facebook has consistently bent its policies to favor the interests of the powerful around the world. As authoritarian nationalists have risen to power in recent years—often by campaigning through Facebook—Facebook has willingly and actively assisted them."

The way Facebook and other social media platforms do this is easy for me to see as an author. If I post something that acts to inflame emotions of those who read my essays, the number of "likes" and other reactions rises dramatically. This in turn elevates the visibility of my posts so that more people see them, and a virtuous cycle has been set off.

That is success, right?

The problem is that I do not want to inflame anyone's emotions; I want to inform people and start reasonable conversations.

Those seeking to manipulate voters' emotions are far better at this game than people like me will ever be. Thus they have used Facebook for years to circulate wild conspiracy theories created by QAnon, the Proud Boys, Three-Percenters and other racist, white supremacist and violent groups.

This process got us Trump (twice) and is bolstering authoritarian leaders all over the world, such as Vladimir Putin of Russia, Narendra Modi of India, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Andrzej Duda of Poland, Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, and the brutal junta that still rules Myanmar. (as per New Republic)

Extreme content is rewarded by Facebook algorithms and that contributes to extreme outcomes. We've unleashed a Frankenstein and it is ravaging democracies around the world.

Including ours.

HEADLINES:

• In South Carolina, Newsom Tests the Presidential Waters (Without Saying So) (NYT)

• A confrontation erupted Thursday between protesters and federal officials carrying out a raid on a Southern California farm, with authorities throwing canisters that sprayed what looked like smoke into the air to disperse the crowd. [AP]

• Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson says she fears for U.S. democracy (WP)

• Stephen Miller, the White House aide wielding unprecedented power over Trump's aggressive immigration agenda, now possesses immense power over multiple areas in the West Wing as deputy chief of staff for policy. (Reuters)

• California surgical center staff demand to see warrant as ICE agents detain landscaper (AP)

• ‘The Tariffs Are Going to Be the Tariffs’ (Atlantic)

• State Department to lay off 1,300 civil servants, foreign service officers (USA Today)

• White House quietly drops plan to abolish FEMA (WP)

• Rubio and China’s Top Envoy Vie for Influence in Asia Over Trump’s Tariffs (NYT)

• Pete Hegseth Is Unleashing Chaos at the Pentagon (The Nation)

• The F.B.I. Is Using Polygraphs to Test Officials’ Loyalty (NYT)

• White House reviews mass federal layoff plans, aims for swift action (Reuters)

• How US views of immigration have changed since Trump took office, according to Gallup polling (AP)

• Justice Dept. Promised to Prosecute Abrego Garcia. Now It’s Not So Clear. (NYT)

• Budget limits at DHS delayed FEMA’s Texas deployment, officials say (WP)

• Fuel to Air India Plane Was Cut Off Before Crash, Report Says (NYT)

• Gen Z is afraid of sex — and for good reason (NPR)

• Summer travel’s X-factor: Trump (Business Insider)

• A love note in a bottle is found years later, an ocean away (WP)

• AI Will Never Be Your Kid’s ‘Friend’ (Atlantic)

• Robot performs realistic gallbladder surgery 'with 100% accuracy' (Sky)

• A New Kind of AI Model Lets Data Owners Take Control (Wired)

• Video Game Actors End Contract Dispute Over A.I. (NYT)

• Google’s latest AI tool lets you turn a photo into a video. Some fear it could be misused. (WP)

• Dubai to debut restaurant operated by an AI chef. (Reuters)

• Milwaukee Removes Fonzie Statue Amid Reckoning With Greaser Past (The Onion)