Their power is in broad daylight with total opacity

I’ve heard the term “redpill” before but didn’t really know what it meant. It comes from the 1999 movie The Matrix which I haven’t seen. At some point Neo, a main character, must choose between a red pill and confront reality or a blue pill and remain ignorant of reality. Kos of Daily Kos says there is now a black pill, though he doesn’t say where the term originated.

Unlike the blue pill, which means choosing ignorance, or the red pill, which means confronting reality, the black pill means giving up entirely. The problems are too big, the system is too broken, and nothing anyone does will make a difference.

The people who are figuratively taking the black pill are young men. The manosphere got these men to vote for the nasty guy in 2024. But the nasty guy hasn’t tried to keep them happy. Sure, he’s ranted against the supposed discrimination of white men and he and his team have posted racist memes, but that doesn’t pay the rent.

Bloomberg reports that more than 700,000 women have entered the workforce since Trump returned to office, compared with just 65,000 men. Construction employment has grown, but other male-dominated industries—including manufacturing, mining, transportation, and warehousing—have shed jobs. Meanwhile, inflation continues to squeeze household budgets, mortgage rates have pushed homeownership further out of reach, and gasoline prices remain roughly 37% higher than when Trump returned to office.

When they do get a job their economic mobility is lower. These young men are questioning their future. The MAGA movement was never about improving people’s lives – except himself, his family, and his cronies. MAGA was about hating others but with terms so vague the vice nasty can’t define them. These young men are discovering the nasty guy never intended to help them and he’s not delivering the revenge they want. What’s left is “living in their parents’ basements, gambling on sports, playing video games, vaping, and watching porn.” Kos will be happy if they don’t commit violence and don’t vote. I have a bit more compassion than that and will vote for people who have a goal of making life better for everyone, including those young men who have taken the black pill. Alix Breeden of Kos also wrote about young people, those trying to make the world better by running for office. Many face a problem – their online pasts are being put on display as campaign fodder. Breeden is a Millennial and is sure there is something in nearly young person’s social media that is worth talking about. That means some young people will decide they can never run for office. Others, such as Chris Gallant, 37 and running for Congress, are advocating for leniency. If the comments aren’t illegal, the writer should acknowledge that was in their history and doesn’t represent who they are now and should receive grace. Maybe this can be a breakthrough moment in understanding we’re all human and messing up is relatable. And a young candidate can refuse to be ashamed of their past. Lisa Needham of Kos reported we used to have a functioning Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to work with state election officials to secure voting infrastructure form attacks. But, like a lot of government, it’s been gutted. But it still asked to do a few things. CISA was supposed to secretly hack election machines and report findings to the White House. The purpose wasn’t to warn the voting machine companies, but to give the nasty guy a way to manipulate elections for Republicans. The command is in the past tense because the employees capable of this sort of hacking were laid off by DOGE.

Where CISA used to work in collaboration with the states, advising them on cybersecurity needs, it’s now just another part of Trump’s push to wreck elections. “Our number one risk at this point is the federal government,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold told Politico.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Marta Peirano of El País in English talking about how AI could disrupt our election. They could manipulate vote counts, though this remains least likely. They could cyberattack election facilities. And the most likely scenario is a deluge of disinformation campaigns where AI agents try to convince us that voting systems have been compromised and a large-scale fraud operation is underway. Already AI has been used to create fake document alleging fraud and to create videos of people tampering with ballot boxes, of the FBI inspecting boxes, of investigating voter registration groups, of corroborating conspiracy theories. Major AI companies say they have appropriate safeguards. But...

Big tech platforms concentrate unprecedented influence and access because they have replaced much of the traditional political infrastructure. They fund candidates and distribute their campaigns opaquely and selectively, but they are also the public square and the private communications system. They monitor all the public spaces where citizens debate, complain and express support or outrage. They are the main tool of power but also the means by which civil movements and the opposition coordinate and communicate. They distribute propaganda and journalism alike. Their alliance with the Trump administration in the age of artificial intelligence expands their power as surely as their large data centers do—broad daylight and total opacity.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme that fits with I wrote about yesterday. It shows Lt. Uhura of Star Trek saying, “Captain, it’s just a message on repeat asking if we disavow the Muslim Brotherhood.” Another meme posted by exlrrp is based on the nasty guy wanting to rename New Mexico as “New America.” Officials in New Mexico expressed their displeasure with that request, though they are pleased it is something he can’t do. The meme references MapQuest, the map company that did not rename Lake Ontario (who knew wearing a tourist shirt with that name would be an act of resistance?). Here’s the meme:

Instead of renaming New Mexico to “New America”, maybe we should rename Washington DC to “New Moscow.” Are you listening MapQuest?