496
Trump says the US is officially renaming AI to ‘super intelligence’ (www.theverge.com)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
239 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 4 points 4 days ago (7 children)

Americans elect a moron to the presidency every ten to fifteen years going back to the country's founding.

It's not a matter of recovery so much as a hurdle that liberal democracy routinely stumbles over.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 12 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    I don't know that its ever been quite as much a moron as this guy. Dubba was dumb, but not "rip out USaid" dumb.

    Love 'em or hate 'em, most presidents (or at least their cabinets) understood that the laws and institutions of the country were all broadly weighted in their favor, even if that meant occasionally accepting this or that particular limitation.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 8 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Dubba was dumb, but not “rip out USaid” dumb.

    No. He just put the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association in charge of FEMA right before one of the worst hurricanes in the nation's history. Then he put John Bolton, a man even Donald Trump dunked on as a war-mongering idiot asshole, into the position of UN Ambassador. Oh, and he put Scalia - a man who recited 15th century poetry to defend a moratorium on gay marriage - on the SC. Oh, and don't forget putting Jeff Gannon in the White House press pool.

    most presidents (or at least their cabinets) understood that the laws and institutions of the country

    You are off your fucking rocker if you think Bush 43 either understood or respected the laws and institutions of the country. We were dealing with a Constitutional Crisis every other week during the last two years of his Presidency.

    Go back to Reagan, Nixon, fucking Eisenhower. Nevermind how corrupt and mendacious folks in the LBJ and Carter and Clinton administrations ended up being. It's all the same shit, different days.

    Trump feels worse because we're so far removed from the Golden Era of the New Deal that we've forgotten politicians can even be "good" in a proper sense. And when even the gritty Cold War jerk-off of the 1980s are a distant memory, we've forgotten that we're all supposed to be playing on the same team even if we don't like the Head Coach. It's the naked infighting that makes this modern moment suck so much. Sending gestapo in to drag women by their hair and shoot paramedics in the face is shit you do in Vietnam or Iraq, not LA or Minnesota.

    Trump is Imperialism coming home to the Core. But the policies are as American as Apple Pie.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago

    You are off your fucking rocker if you think Bush 43 either understood or respected the laws and institutions of the country. We were dealing with a Constitutional Crisis every other week during the last two years of his Presidency.

    I did not mean to say he "respected" them, far from it. But he did successfully reshape them. Bush did more to redefine US policy in the 21st century than any other president to come after. What does it matter that he ran up against constitutional crises, when the Democratic administration to succeed him just adopted most of his changes as the new normal?

    I'm trying to say that while Bush reshaped and redefined US institutions for those to come after, Trump is just breaking them. There is no way for a successor administration to use USaid, because there just is no USaid anymore. And I suspect Dems will shrug and accept that world as the new normal as well (hell, they'll probably keep ICE largely unchanged and claim its different now that they're in the drivers seat).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    George W. Bush was not that long ago. He (too) won with a popular minority. He won by shenanigans in Florida with the help of a partisan SCOTUS.

    Bush ran as a compassionate conservative_ but he moved hard-right as soon as he was in office. He started abusing power such as his conspicuous legal-boilerplate signing statements. (Essentially, _I don't have to enforce this law, IF i don't want to.) He immediately started rolling back environmental and consumer protections.

    Then 9/11 happened, and we went to war, and language started pivoting towards Iraq and WMDs. Joseph Wilson wrote an article about how there's no yellowcake (processed uranium) and to get revenge, the administration (via Scooter Libby) burned the CIA operative Valerie Plame, which was once a huge offense to the intelligence sector during the Cold War. I'm still sore about it, but I'm still sore about much of the Bush administration.

    Soon we started learning about the extrajudicial abductions of Arab, Muslim, Americans, extraordinary rendition (to black sites), torture, the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, the PMC black ops (precursors to drone-strikes) and so on.

    It was awful. So much that the Democrats were taking seriously blaxk and women candidates for the first time. So much so, that Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, mostly for not being Bush. (Even he was surprised.)

    I thought the US would never elect a Republican again.

    I totally overestimated the civic savvy of American voters.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago

    I thought the US would never elect a Republican again.

    People said that after Nixon and Reagan. But it all exists in a vacuum. No real consideration of why any Republicans got elected in the first place or who voted for them the first time.

    Also, you're completely divorced from right wing media. The consumption of this fascist propaganda hasn't stopped. The production of new fascist IP hasn't slowed. Consolidation by new fascist business interests hasn't been disrupted.

    What do you think is going to happen in two years, when Dems are running the House and maybe the Senate? They'll be getting screamed at by all the fascists who were screaming at them under Obama. It'll be back to 2008. Twenty years, nothing fundamentally changed

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago* (1 child)

    I think that the average American Trump supporter is a gun toting, neoliberal, bear shooting, death penalty supporting, misogynist, who believe that LGBT people should be stoned to death old testament style, a white supremacist, anti-vaccine, climate change denying, anti-evolution, anti- science, flat earth believing, pro-life, anti- intellectual, sanctimonious evangelical Christian, Islamophobic bigot. Chem trail obsessive, xenophobic and probably a racist, Ignorant, stupid, and possibly demented.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •