Destroying democracy by saying they protect citizens

Daily Kos community member LaFeminista has a few thoughts about the promises of AI. From an article in Le Monde:

“It will not all go well. The fear and anxiety about AI is justified; we are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time, and perhaps ever.” S. Altman

Sam Altman has been the CEO of OpenAI since 2019, according to Wikipedia. LaFeminista wrote:

The amount of resources being thrown at basic AI is truly frightening, but worry not, AI will solve all the environmental damage done, it’ll solve most everything. Why stop at basic AI? Where is the gain in that mere bagatelle? The amassing of these colossal fortunes demands more, ever more. The race for Artificial Superintelligence and Artificial General Intelligence is on, the Prize for being first? Everything, it is the ultimate win. Ignore the damage! Perhaps not, methinks, but what do I know next to these titans of AI?

Lisa Needham of Kos wrote about an ongoing event, a major piece happened last Tuesday and I’m glad I missed it. This major piece is the nasty guy reading from the Bible while in the Oval Office. Noting like smearing the separation of church and state.

He’s not going to read it silently as a humble expression of faith, of course. That would be silly. This latest incursion into the separation of church and state comes courtesy of this grifty little America Reads the Bible production, where the world’s most ostentatiously Christian of Christian nationalist types in and out of government are reading you parts of the Bible over the course of a full week.

The other participants will be at the Museum of the Bible. And I’ll be happy to miss those too. I’m sure they will find the passages about war and ignore the ones where Jesus said love your enemy and feed the poor. Erin Aubry Kaplan, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, discussed the latest book by Ibram X. Kendi. His book Stamped From the Beginning has been on my to-read shelf for at least a couple years. His bestselling book is How to Be an Antiracist, which became “a cultural touchstone” and a handbook for Americans “confronted with the depth and persistence of the nation’s history of antiblackness.” His newest book is Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age, discussing the Great Replacement conspiracy theory and its significance in the rise of fascism. Wrote Kaplan:

Kendi defines the Great Replacement Theory as the belief that global elites are enabling people of color to displace the lives, livelihoods and electoral power of white people.

Kendi is a professor, a scholar of racism, and a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient. He’s also attracted the fury of the MAGA movement, always a good recommendation. When attacked he responds as a scholar – doing research and writing a book. GRT has been around in various forms for a long time. This version...

was coined by French novelist Renaud Camus in 2010, when he became convinced that Muslim immigrants from former colonies were overtaking the white population of France and its traditions. GRT warns that Muslims and people of color, whether immigrants or citizens, are literally replacing white Christians and traditional European culture, and must be stopped.

GRT isn’t just racism. It claims that social justice movements are acts of “white genocide.” It’s a zero-sum view of the world. It declares Democracy and multiculturalism are threats to whiteness and cannot be tolerated. It should sound absurd. But it is promoted by Elon Musk, Viktor Orbán of Hungary (now out of power), far-right parties in France, and the nasty guy. GRT makes a distinction between a “good” immigrant who came in the past and a “bad” immigrant who came recently. The “good” came legally and assimilated. The “bad” came illegally and they’re destroying the nation. Black Americans, many who have been here for more generations than many white people are also declared to be “bad” based on comments by people like Thomas Jefferson who believed slaves should be freed, but could not live among white people and should be sent back to Africa. GRT and its zero-sum thinking also infects other populations. Black people believe they are being replaced by Latinos. Black Christians believe they are being replaced by Muslims. Black people may be below white, but they can be higher than black immigrants who fear being nabbed by ICE. GRT is insidious because it “causes people to consent to dictatorial states.” Some people choose the protection of privilege over democracy. That’s why authoritarians push it. They can justify destroying democratic infrastructure by saying they are protecting the citizens. GRT is a problem for black people because they’ve fought for democracy for hundreds of years. Kendi says that’s why they need to understand GRT.

There is nonetheless a hopeful cast to Kendi’s latest work, centered on his belief that “human groups are natural allies against inequities,” and that coming together is more instinctual than sowing division.

A week ago Jessica Huseman, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos, reported that Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County, California, also Republican candidate for governor, seized the ballots from a recent election. His reason is to do his own recount and open a criminal investigation into the election. The California Supreme Court ordered a halt to his investigation. There isn’t any more reason for this Republican to seize ballots than for any other Republican to dispute any election in a decade.

Elections in the U.S. are run locally. So is law enforcement. That overlap creates a real vulnerability. The same county responsible for storing and counting ballots is also overseen by a sheriff who can get a warrant, enter election facilities, and take materials as part of a criminal investigation. In contrast, federal authorities seeking to obtain election materials have to establish jurisdiction and work through multiple layers of oversight. A local sheriff can act much more quickly, often before state officials or courts have time to respond.

Thankfully, in California the state attorney general has some authority over local law enforcement and was able to tell Bianco to halt his investigation. This may have been before the Supreme Court could act.

Lots of things make Riverside a special case. Chiefly, Bianco’s candidacy for governor raises an obvious question of self-interest — he may be using the powers of his office to elevate a political issue that he thinks will benefit him as a candidate. He is also stepping into the administration of the same election system he wants to compete in — a personal conflict many have long complained about in relation to secretaries of state who run for office during their tenures.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Adam Serwer of The Atlantic discussing Virginia’s vote to approve gerrymandering the state to give Democrats a bigger advantage.

What Virginia Democrats did by redrawing the congressional maps was antidemocratic, and it should be illegal. But, for those who care about ensuring the future of democracy, it was the least bad option of those available. As the political scientist Seth Masket wrote last year, Democrats couldn’t force the Republican Party to “feel more reverent toward institutions and norms”; they could only “raise the costs of irreverence. In the long run, that’s the most effective tool available.”

Thomas Edsall of the New York Times asked Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and the author of The Right-Wing Idea Factory: From Traditionalism to Trumpism, how consequential the nasty guy’s time in the Oval Office has been. The choice of “consequential” isn’t about how much the guy benefited the country, but how long his actions will endure. Edsall wrote of Kettl:

On this measure he placed Trump in the Top 5 of American presidents, alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, noting, however, that “Trump’s consequences have been aggressive efforts to unravel the ideas of the other four presidents.”