Overheard at an imaginary reception:
I’m a chatbot censor—victim of the Musk purge. At Alphabet now. You?
Deus ex machina engineer.
Uh…?
I write science fiction.
Ah…guess we have a lot in common, then.
Overheard at an imaginary reception:
I’m a chatbot censor—victim of the Musk purge. At Alphabet now. You?
Deus ex machina engineer.
Uh…?
I write science fiction.
Ah…guess we have a lot in common, then.
Checking my web links this morning, I find that J.D. Vance has also been demanding that Governor Newsom do his job. Unfortunately he thinks that a governor’s job is to lick President Trump’s boots, express contrition for not doing it earlier, and to look the other way while the President conducts a Nazi-style armed invasion of his state, sends the most vulnerable of his people to concentration camps outside the country, and gets his propaganda minister to brag about it on Fox News.
No, J.D., that’s not Governor Newsom’s job, that’s not any state governor’s job. As Trump’s Vice-President, that’s your job. You’re the Toady-In-Chief. My advice to you is to stick to your knitting, and let Governor Newsom get on with the job of defending his people against the sociopath you work for.
This is more like it, Governor Newsom. Keep it up. If responsible government officials do their part, we citizens will do ours. Our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor—we all know the drill.
Defend your people. Do your fucking job. If you don’t know how, ask Володимир Зеленський.
Yes.
To call it anything else is to deny the painfully, devastatingly obvious.
Have I, as a citizen of the United States, been complicit in this genocide?
Yes.
To deny it is to pretend that the obligations of citizenship do not apply to me.
Were there provocations? Were they inhumane?
Yes. As true in October, 2023 as in May, 1948.
Do we need to talk about European colonialism, Muslim atavism and xenophobia?
If we’re being honest, yes.
How can a child of the Enlightenment, a citizen of the United States, countenance even the idea of an ethnic state?
Intellectually, not at all. Diplomatically, the wisdom of the principle of live and let live is unavoidable. We should accommodate any religion or ideology which doesn’t demand that we bend the knee to its claims of supremacy. (This absolutely includes Christianity, which has a long history of lethal meddling in other people’s legitimate affairs.)
Can we understand why, 80 years after the Shoah, Israelis feel embattled, feel justified in committing any atrocity which they believe will keep their enemies at bay?
Yes, absolutely.
Can we understand why, 77 years after the Nakba, Palestinians feel abandoned by the rest of the world—as alone as the Jew who once wrote on a Matthausen concentration camp wall, “Wenn es einen Gott gibt, dann soll er mich um Verzeihung bitten!” (“If there is a God, then he ought to beg me for forgiveness!”)?
Yes, absolutely.
Is there any hope of forbearance, of reconciliation here?
None that I can see.
Is this because I’ve become morally and spiritually numb?
Probably. Does this speak well of me?
No.
Can I, will I do better?
Time will tell….