Last month, Boehler set off alarm bells by to Hamas directly. This marked the first ever face-to-face encounter between a US official and the group designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Hamas’s hostages trickle out

Netanyahu also seeks to avoid suggestions that the US and Israeli policies may diverge. Even so, he cannot ignore what Witkoff and Boehler’s remarks signaled: The Trump administration might soften its attitude towards Hamas if the group releases the remaining 59 hostages it’s held since its October 7 attack on Israel, disarms and agrees not to be part of Gaza’s post-war administration.

With some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, killed in the infamous attack, that’s a no-go as far as Netanyahu is concerned. He insists there is nothing to talk about except the release of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas. In his mind, that can only be achieved militarily.

Netanyahu’s assertions are not borne out by 17 months of war, even if Israel has substantially weakened Hamas at significant cost to Gaza’s population. The majority of the 251 people Hamas and other Palestinians kidnapped in the attack have seen in negotiated prisoner exchanges with Israel. These releases were not a result of Israeli military action.

Similarly, Hamas demonstrated in recent days that Israel’s devastation of Gaza has not deprived the group of its ability to fire at Israeli cities. The organization will likely wage a guerrilla war if Israel reoccupies Gaza and takes responsibility for administering the Strip.

Finding Hamas’s humanity

A careful reading of Witkoff’s 90-minute interview with , an influential far-right podcaster who has platformed Holocaust deniers and critics of Israel, suggests Israel and the United States could find themselves on opposite sides of the Israeli–Palestinian issue. Like Boehler, Witkoff argued that he needs to understand all parties in order to do his job.

“I’ve never really been in the same room as (Hamas), which is a little bit weird, wouldn’t you say? Like a negotiation where you don’t have the other party. You don’t even know if the guy behind the wall is the Wizard of Oz,” Witkoff said.

In contrast to Netanyahu, Witkoff concluded after more than two months of indirect negotiations with Hamas that the group was not “ideologically intractable.” He seemed to imply that he may be able to do business with the group.

Based on US intelligence reports and “the rhythm and the cadence of the negotiation,” Witkoff decided that Hamas leaders were not hellbent on death and destruction.

“Once you understand that (Hamas) wanted to live, then you were able to talk to them in a more effective way. That’s when I came to the conclusion that they wanted alternatives,” Witkoff said.

The envoy added, “I don’t think anyone has a feeling that you can just kill off Hamas. It’s an idea… (but) we just can’t have an October 7 ever again. October 7 was like 9/11 in the United States.”

Earlier, Boehler said after he met with Hamas that he was trying “to identify with the human elements of those people and then build from there.” He argued that the “most productive” approach is “to realize that every piece of a person is a human.”

Witkoff signed off on Boehler’s meetings with Hamas.

Even so, Netanyahu was careful not to publicly criticize Trump and Witkoff for allowing Boehler to meet with Hamas. Tellingly, Trump reportedly Boehler from the hostage negotiations with Hamas, but did not fire him. This removal is unlikely to reassure Netanyahu, who views Hamas as terrorists, murderers and rapists who need to be hunted down and killed.

In late March, Hamas acknowledged that Israel had a member of its Political Bureau, Salah al-Bardaweel, in an air strike in the Gazan city of Khan Younis. Israel itself declared it had two senior Hamas security operatives, Rashid Jahjouh and Amin Eslaiah.

Israel has eliminated numerous Hamas officials since the Gaza war erupted, including its leader, Yahya Sinwar; its military commander, Mohammed Deif and its chief negotiator and head of the Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh.

Witkoff made clear in his interview that he rejected Hamas’s return to rule Gaza, even if he had a more layered understanding of the group.

“What’s acceptable to us is they need to demilitarize. Then maybe they could stay there a little bit. Be involved politically. But they can’t be involved militarily. We can’t have a terrorist organization running Gaza because that won’t be acceptable to Israel,” Witkoff said, seemingly parting ways with Netanyahu.

Defending targeted Qatar

Determined to defend Qatar against assertions that it was in bed with Hamas, Witkoff seemed to advise Netanyahu to drop his long-standing attempts to undermine the Gulf state’s role as a mediator. Witkoff said he could avoid engaging with Hamas directly because he trusted Qatar as his go-between.

“If I didn’t trust the Qataris, then that would be really problematic, not meeting with Hamas,” he said.

Netanyahu and his surrogates have, in recent weeks, stepped up their of Qatar despite the prime minister’s convoluted relationship with the Gulf state. This campaign is as much an effort to undermine the Gulf state’s status as a Gaza mediator as it is to prevent Netanyahu from being held accountable for his years-long of Qatari funding for Hamas to keep the Palestinian polity divided between the Gaza-based group and the West Bank-based, internationally recognized Palestine Authority.

Responding to Witkoff’s interview, Doha-based Hamas official Hussam Badran that the group would not disarm “as long as the occupation exists,” a reference to Israel’s presence in Gaza and the West Bank. Simultaneously, Hamas officials have repeatedly said that the group did not to be part of Gaza’s post-war administration.

Pressuring Hamas and reimagining Gaza’s future

Witkoff suggested that the resumption of Israel’s assault on Gaza in violation of the ceasefire agreement he negotiated in January was a way of pressuring Hamas to make further concessions.

“The Israelis going in (to Gaza) is in some respects unfortunate, and in some respects falls into the ‘had to be’ bucket… We may be able to use this to get Hamas to be a whole lot more reasonable.”

Netanyahu is likely to appreciate that Witkoff’s greater understanding of Hamas did not persuade the envoy that a Palestinian state alongside Israel was the only way to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

On the contrary, Witkoff dismissed the notion of a two-state solution as “just a word.” He went on to say that “what two-state to me means is how do we have a better living prescription for Palestinians who are living in Gaza?”

Witkoff continued: “It’s not just about housing. Maybe it’s about AI coming there. Maybe it’s about hyper-scale data centres being seeded into that area… Maybe it’s about blockchain and robotics coming there. Maybe it’s about pharmaceutical manufacturing coming there. We can’t rebuild Gaza, and it be based on a welfare system. We have to give people economic and financial prospects.”

Witkoff seemed to skirt Trump’s proposal to resettle Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians elsewhere and turn the Strip into a high-end beachfront real estate .

“What we’re going to do with Gaza is going to become much more apparent over the next six to 12 months,” Witkoff said.

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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“You can watch the two-hour interview between Tucker Carlson and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the topic of the war in Ukraine. This interview represents the first time that the Russian leader has been interviewed by a Western journalist since the conflict began nearly two years ago. During the interview, they discuss the justifications for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The video is available on Tucker Carlson’s website and is not behind a paywall12.

In this candid conversation, Putin shares his perspective on Russia’s historic claim to parts of western Ukraine. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s a sincere expression of what he believes1. The interview also touches on the imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been charged with espionage. Putin’s response sheds light on the complexities of international relations and the actions of special services1.

Feel free to visit Tucker Carlson’s website to watch the full interview and gain insights into this significant geopolitical moment.”

The two links the chatbot provided were to articles in and another in. They appeared to be commentaries on the interview rather than links to the document. Their appearance was deceptive. Ans so, I failed to notice that in scrolling down to the bottom of the Variety article I would have discovered an effective link to the interview. In contrast, despite the heading “When and Where To Watch Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview,” the Newsweek article contained no visible link to the interview. Instead, it contained a series of negative comments about both Carlson and the interview.

In my frustration with not getting the simple information I had requested I wondered whether I hadn’t been sufficiently precise in my initial formulation. I therefore followed on with this question: “Can you give me a link to the interview?”

“Certainly! You can watch the full interview between Tucker Carlson and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tucker Carlson’s website. The interview covers topics related to the war in Ukraine and provides insights into Putin’s perspective on Russia’s actions. It’s a significant geopolitical moment, and you can find the video here. Enjoy!”

Growing frustration and an abrupt ending

That was reassuring but didn’t answer my question, which I was beginning to think should have been formulated as a command: “Give me the goddamn link.” After some consideration, I thought it might be helpful when speaking to a friend whose intelligence I’ve been invited to admire, simply to explain my frustration and appeal to the chatbot’s artificial empathy. “It’s interesting,” I noted, “that I asked you for a link and you failed to provide it, while at the same time responding ‘certainly’ to my question. Is that an example of bad faith? Or should I assume that, for whatever reason, you may not be authorized to provide the link?”

“I apologize if my previous response caused any inconvenience. I appreciate your feedback, and I’ll strive to improve. Thank you for engaging with me, and have a great day!”

Now I couldn’t help but blurt out, “Why don’t you start improving now and provide me with the link?”

To this I received the following message, which appears to be a standard copout gadget designed to conceal ChatGPT’s strategies.

And so our conversation ended. I wondered what the logic could be behind ChatFPT’s apparent stonewalling. That’s when I took the trouble to examine in detailed both of the links provided. And that was when I discovered that at the bottom of the Variety article the link was actually provided.

Now this raises a question about the status of both an AI’s knowledge and its factitious personality and set of attitudes. Did ChatGPT know that the link actually existed in the first article but not in the second? If it was “aware” of the link’s existence in the Variety article, why was it incapable of doing what any decent human friend might do for me and respond: “Look at the bottom of the page, you dolt! I told you it was there.” Or it could have prompted me with less precision to do a bit of searching and I would find it in the page.

As for the Newsweek article, it appears that ChatGPT was taken in by the false promise of Newsweek with its deceptive heading, “When and Where To Watch Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview.”

Can incompatible intelligences find grounds for understanding?

In other words, AI registers formulations of knowledge and recognizes ideas, but it possesses no actual knowledge. In response to my question, its knowledge was real but it stopped at the superficial literal level once it had identified the existence of the link in the Variety article. It remained helplessly “unaware” of the nature of that knowledge and its physical position, where it was located.

That is not what people do. In similar circumstances a person I was addressing, whether a friend or a stranger, would say something like, “you’ll find it somewhere in the Variety article, have a look.” And I would happily do my due diligence and end up getting an answer to my initial request.

In the case of the Newsweek article, ChatGPT was taken in by what I would term a deceitful statement or at least false promise in the article’s title. Humans can also be taken in. But they also know how to respond, once the deceit is pointed out. ChatGPT trusts Newsweek but seems incapable of checking when a problem or even just a misunderstanding arises.

Now, I’m the first to recognize that after the first generation of users endures this kind of frustration, AI will be improved, with new and permanently evolving algorithms that require it to take into account the motivation of the user and seek to understand unforeseen factors that may explain the affects the user’s exasperation. It’s fair to say that the entire AI project has built into the Beatles’ philosophy (in “Sergeant Pepper”): “It’s getting better all the time.”

Related Reading

But this dialogue with AI revealed not just a failure, but a multidimensional problem. The first concerns the knowledge question I’ve already mentioned. AI’s “knowledge” is, by definition, literal and will not spontaneously seek to include other levels of understanding. Humans, on the contrary, are always sensitive to multiple parameters in the communication situation. Like a chess player, they see various possible scenarios developing. The hints as to what they may be exist on many levels: notably tone of voice, facial expression, rhetorical emphasis and everything that falls into what we might call the conversational ambience. This includes awareness of material, psychological, social and cultural factors that may or may not be visible in the immediate context. Some belong to other contexts that belong to the interlocutors’ experience and memory.

All the chatter about AI’s one day surpassing human intelligence makes sense only if we restrict our concept of intelligence to the process of accessing coded information and employing reasoning procedures to account for things that can be formulated linguistically. That falls way short of the way human intelligence works both in everyday life and in challenging situations.

A confession and a few recommendations

I love to talk to AI and long for the day when it will take better account of my needs and expression of feeling. But any intelligence it produces, now or in some much brighter future, will be the cumulative result of the interplay between us. The conversation about Carlson’s interview was truly frustrating. I was eager to access an interview so many people had been talking about. How else might I form my opinion about what it achieved or failed to achieve?

The conversation with ChatGPT nevertheless reminded me that there are three fundamental techniques to make such conversations productive.

Pretend it’s human just to see where it takes the conversation, and then compare it to what humans do to see where it does better and where it does worse;

Find a way of laughing with it about the weird situations it produces;

And use the occasion to laugh at the machine itself, but even more deeply at those who, like ChatGPT itself, tell you it will always be improving.

*[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51�Թ�, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Outside the Box: All I Wanted Was a Goddam Link! appeared first on 51�Թ�.

If you haven’t taken the time to watch it, I highly recommend that you do. It’s long, breaking two hours, and it is dense. Putin is a man who says one thing and really means five things, and that doesn’t work well in our modern soundbite-and-headline news culture. Still, I urge you to take the time to listen. Putin is not going to convince you of anything — at least I doubt that he will — but I don’t think the point of the interview was to “convince” anyone. In this article, I want to lay out my thoughts on the interview, my thoughts on the wider Russia–Ukraine war and what it really means.

A narrative is just good strategy when you’re playing the game

The title of this present article refers to Swedish video game developer . The company has made a name for itself publishing “grand strategy” games with titles like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. These are games where the player assumes control of a historical nation, people or dynasty and crafts the narrative and strategy of that nation, people or dynasty throughout history. I believe that this, in essence, is what Putin is doing now. He’s playing the grand narrative and grand strategy of the Rus’ people, and he’s playing to win.

If you’re aware of the video, you’re almost certainly aware of the various “fact checks” on Putin’s historical claims. Some of the more notable fact-checks on Putin’s historical claims come from reputable historians whom I greatly respect, like .

What I think most fact-checkers miss is that it doesn’t matter whether Putin’s historical claims are historically accurate. Putin is not writing a paper, giving a book report or making a slide deck presentation. He has no judge or teacher who will be giving out a grade. You cannot point out enough inconsistencies or inaccuracies or fabrications that will make Putin say “Drat, I’ve been found out” and order his armies to turn back in shame and go home. That’s not the point of Putin’s historical claims. Putin is establishing a narrative.

What do I mean by “narrative”? Quite simply, and quite directly, I mean that Putin is telling a story to himself, to his country and to us about why he has decided to go to war. A narrative is less about the past than it is about the present — it exists not to explain history but to justify policy. For this reason, a narrative is fundamentally incapable of being fact-checked or falsified.

The US has had its own fair share of narratives, most famously . Many other narratives have also gripped US theory and shaped global aims. The was an American narrative about why America should be responsible for half the globe. The “” was a narrative about justifying American entry into World War II. Much more recently, the “Global War on Terror” was an American narrative about justifying our continual involvement across the planet in pursuit of everyone we decide to label “terrorist.” Domestically, “” is a narrative we’ve concocted to justify the complete upending and reimaging of everything from major sporting events to college admissions to who gets promotions in order to accomplish ideologues’ visions of justice.

What do all of these narratives have in common? The characteristic that fact-checking them is as useful as fact-checking Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. Pushing your glasses up your nose and saying, “Actually, sweetie, that didn’t happen,” is both futile and entirely beside the point. You can point out all the historical inaccuracies that went into each of those narratives until the cows come home, but it won’t change a single thing that the people who believed in political narratives actually do. Narratives are supplanted by other narratives, not facts, because only nerds care about dry, disconnected facts — real people like stories.

What is the story Putin is telling?

What is Putin’s narrative — the grand story for his grand strategy?

As near as can be ascertained and summarized, Putin’s narrative is, “We are fighting to unite the long-divided lands of the Rus’.” Rus’ are the the ethnos from which “Rus-sia” derives its name, after all.

I don’t want to recap the entire history of the Rus, you may as well watch the interview for that. I’m sure you’ve seen the already about Putin —  “I’ll give you the thirty-second history, one minute at most,” and then he talks and talks and talks. Still, the real thirty-second recap is quite easy to grasp.

The Rus’ state around the area of Kiev as a unification of various tribes under a Norse aristocracy. The Rus’ then to eastern Christianity and ultimately splintered into various realms under the suzerainty of the Golden Horde. Eventually, one of the more easterly splinter states, centered on , rose to prominence. Moscow agglomerated the lands of the Rus’ back together over long centuries and much war only, for it to all fall apart again in with the Bolsheviks (who Putin does seem to consider devils) and the USSR. The USSR, so the narrative goes, arbitrarily the lands of the Rus into constituent republics under Moscow’s overlordship. This then again in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Despite his loathing of the Bolsheviks, Putin sees this as another disaster.) This brings us to today, with Moscow once again trying to agglomerate the lands of the Rus’ under its overlordship.

Why is it important that Putin considers the divisions of the USSR’s constituent republics “arbitrary”? It’s because part of this narrative is that the Ukrainians are not their own people, but are confused and temporarily embarrassed Russians, even if they don’t know it. More precisely, Putin asserts that the Ukrainians are an artificial union of Russians, Poles, Lithuanians and Hungarians, but he mostly just cares about the Russian ones. Putin does not outright state, but seems to strongly imply, that the Ukrainian people should be shown that they truly are this collection and the sub-ethnicities that make up the Ukraine should return to their ethnic states.

If the Ukrainians are not their own people, but are just confused Russians, then bringing them back into the fold of Russia is a corrective action and not an unjust war. That’s why a compelling narrative is important. 

By this point, I’m sure you’re railing not just at historical inaccuracies but at the violation of liberal democratic sensibilities about how states are supposed to act. “How can he just say that they’re not their own people?” I have seen. “That’s ethnic cleansing!” I have also seen. “We just don’t do that anymore,” I have seen again and again. Well, they’re doing it, part of this narratival struggle is that the old, post-1945 order is being deliberately destroyed.

At the risk of comparing apples to oranges, imagine a similar situation in the United States with subnational identities during a hypothetically similar collapse to Russia in 1991. Are you a New Yorker, a Vermonter, a Texan… or are you an American? Am I an Indianan, by my birth, or an Arizonan, by my most long-standing abode, or am I an American first? Does being a New Yorker, a Vermonter, a Texan or an Arizonan mean that the supraethnic American state is not my legitimate sovereign? No, of course not. That’s the narratival argument that Putin is making; that Russia is the supra-Russian sovereign.

How will this narrative play out in Ukraine?

Russia is building a narrative, and that narrative is to justify assertions of political authority and sovereignty. Sovereignty always comes down to force. As Jean V. Dubois, a character from Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, astutely , political authority is force, force is violence, and violence is the supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived. If the narrative exists to serve and justify force, then, what political authority does it seem like Russia really wants to assert with its force? In other words, how does Putin plan to have this war end? 

I think that, ultimately, Ukraine will be completely partitioned. Russia will annex all the lands east of the Dnieper; it already de facto owns approximately half of those lands. As Ukrainian military strength degrades by the minute, it will no longer have the power to keep the Russians at bay behind an artificial boundary. Only the Dniepr, the most prominent natural boundary in Ukraine, will form a plausible barrier to the Russian advance.

After this, the west of the Ukraine will be divided up between Poland, Hungary and Romania. Sound implausible? Ostensibly, of course, the western partitions will not be annexations, and they will likely be done under a fig leaf of humanitarian aid. Still, they will happen all the same. Kiev might retain some authority in a de facto rump state, a sort of West Berlin-esque enclave, but this would be temporary.

I also see Belarusian accession to Russia itself as very likely. You can’t leave one of the lands of the Rus’ disunited after winning a major war over the very question of uniting the lands of the Rus’, now can you? Already, while Belarus is still nominally independent, it is a vassal of Moscow. Few nations, resurging after a collapse like Soviet Russia suffered in the 1990s, would leave such a large portion of their former territory behind. Watch that space.

Looking further ahead, a by no means inevitable, yet plausible outcome for Russia would be a restoration of the tsarist monarchy, under the Romanovs or otherwise. Putin would have all but restored the Russian Empire after a major victory in Ukraine. Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco did it; although he, not the exiled king, held all of the power, he restored the trappings of monarchy to borrow its legitimacy. Now, Franco is gone, yet Spain is still a kingdom. It’s not without precedent, and it is more doable in Russia than a Westerner might assume. Nostalgia for the monarchy remains in the Russian Orthodox Church and among Russians generally. Russia already utilizes the imperial ensign, colors and aquila in multiple places that a republic would be embarrassed to do so. Watch this space, too.

So, what’s the conclusion? Russian feelings don’t care about your facts. Putin is stirring great Russian patriotic sentiment to correct perceived historical injustices that they’ve long felt slighted by. Enthusiasm for the war was never very unanimous in the US, and it continues to drop. Once US aid goes fully, there will not be much to stop Russia fully doing what it wills. Will the US get directly involved, starting a nuclear war, over who is sovereign on the Pontic Steppe? I think it very unlikely. Do svidanaya.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Chad’s answer surprised me.

“I don’t have access to insider information on the specific events that led to the departure of former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. However, based on publicly available information and media reports, it appears that O’Reilly’s departure was the result of a combination of factors.

One of the main factors was…”

At this point I had to interrupt and tell Chad, “No, no, no! That’s old news, ancient news. I’m talking about Tucker Carlson.”

Chad appeared totally indifferent to the mystery that every news outlet is focusing on as they seek to pierce the veil of secrecy that surrounds this shocking development. Some see it as potentially suicidal for Fox and the mogul who runs the business, Rupert Murdoch.

Instead of sharing that sense of shock, Chad cooly explained why such news should be considered normal. “Fox News is a private company and can choose to hire or fire employees for various reasons, which could include contractual disputes, violations of company policy, or a shift in the network’s programming strategy. It’s also worth noting that sometimes high-profile media figures move on from one network to another or pursue other career opportunities, which could be a factor in Carlson’s departure.”

I then mentioned that The Huntington Post had former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s take on the dismissal, which I found surprising, at the very least.

“It’s very obvious right now,” Lake asserted, “that Fox News has become the establishment GOP, which is really the uniparty Republicans. They’re the ones who are really in bed with the left.”

“I’m not surprised,” I commented to Chad, ‘that someone like Lake would say such a thing, but it’s the first time I’ve heard anyone suggest that Fox News is in bed with the left and equally that any Republican can be called “on the left.” They used to say that Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller or John Lindsay were “liberal”, but no one would have suggested they were “on the left.” Does the idea of left and right in US politics have any meaning today?

Chad began defending the use of the terms “left” and “right,” explaining that they “remain a useful shorthand for describing broad political tendencies, but it is important to recognize that the meaning of these terms has evolved over time and can vary depending on context. Historically, the left has been associated with progressive and socialist movements, while the right has been associated with conservative and nationalist movements. However, in recent years, the political landscape has become more complex and polarized, with some factions within each party espousing views that were traditionally associated with the other side.

Regarding Kari Lake’s statement about Fox News, it’s worth noting that different people can have different perspectives on the political leanings of news networks and the parties they align with. While Fox News has traditionally been associated with conservative and right-wing viewpoints, there have been criticisms that the network has become more aligned with establishment Republicans and that some of its programming has moved away from traditional conservative positions on certain issues. Ultimately, the meaning of left and right in US politics can be subject to interpretation and can depend on the specific context and issues being discussed.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you affirming that establishment Republicans are on the left?”

“The terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ are often used as a shorthand to describe broad political tendencies, but they can be subject to interpretation and can depend on the specific context and issues being discussed. In recent years, there has been increasing polarization and fracturing within the Republican Party, with different factions holding different views on issues such as immigration, trade, and foreign policy. Some critics have argued that certain establishment Republicans are more moderate or centrist in their views, while others may see them as aligned with conservative or right-wing positions. Ultimately, the meaning of these terms can be complex and multifaceted.”

“Chad, that’s a copout. There you go with your defense based on the idea that things are ‘complex and multifaceted’ and ‘subject to interpretation.” That enables you to dodge any serious question. I asked you whether you considered any Republican to be on the left. Your answer is that some can be ‘more moderate or centrist.’ To me that means you see an equivalence between ‘left’ and ‘centrist,’ which is literally absurd. That I take as a refusal to engage in real debate.”

Chad continued, but had clearly reached a point of total incoherence. The next thing I heard had me boiling over. “Within each party, there are various factions and individuals who may hold different views and positions on specific issues. Some Republicans may be considered more moderate or centrist on certain issues, but it would be inaccurate to categorize the party as a whole as being on the left.Ultimately, the terms left and right can be subject to interpretation and context, but it is important to be clear and accurate in their usage.”

At this point, I gave up. There is a serious problem at the core of US politics and, in my humble opinion, it stems from the inability to use language in any coherent way. Worse, no one seems to see the need to examine language and stabilize meanings with a view to founding some kind of basis for reasonable dialogue. Chad tells me that everything is ‘subject to interpretation’ — which is true — but immediately jumps to affirming the importance of being ‘clear and accurate.’ How do you get from one to the other? Chad doesn’t seem to care.

What I now understand is that even Chad’s degree of intelligence, as a ‘large language model’ isn’t large enough to achieve anything like true perspective or original analysis. It does however reveal some of the regrettable and frequently dangerous trends at work in the culture Chad draws upon to craft his answers.

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at 51�Թ� recommend treating any AI algorithm’s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. For more about how we initially welcomed Chad to our breakfast table, click here.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Breakfast with Chad: The Great Tucker Carlson Debate appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Many commentators in the US have begun predicting a new civil war. It will be most likely be provoked by the combined effect of three future events: the second election of Donald Trump in 2024, the climate disaster that awaits the nation and the world, and the incoherent reaction of the US government to China’s successful integration of Taiwan into its republic. None of those events is certain, but some variation on all three seems likely. For example, the US may or may not take action to prevent the integration of Taiwan, but in either case, it is pretty certain that the chosen course of action will be incoherent.

NATO’s Innovation of Mind Control

READ MORE

Carlson’s long monologues and sarcastic jokes will undoubtedly help our future historian understand how the secessionists of a new civil war managed to motivate themselves to the point of rendering inevitable the splitting or the fragmentation of American democracy.

Last week, Carlson punctuated his usual monologue with a comment on one prominent but often derided member of the Biden administration, former presidential primary candidate Pete Buttigieg. The transportation secretary appeared to have taken nearly two months off his ministerial duties to tend to his adopted newborn twins.

Carlson no doubt found sufficiently anomalous the fact that the first openly gay member of a presidential cabinet, only seven months after assuming his duties and in the midst of a national supply chain crisis, should choose that moment to become a father. His fatherhood, necessarily by adoption, may appear to most parents more as a consumer choice than a family event. Sensing the cultural potential, Carlson turned his news brief into a one-line joke.

The target of Fox News jokes these days will almost always be the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden. Carlson sees this absence of an important official as an example of the neglect of political responsibility at a critical moment. It clearly could stand as “a bad look” for the administration.

Buttigieg has more often been a target of commentators on the left, who classify him as an over-ambitious and underqualified corporate Democrat, a former McKinsey consultant and, as such, the bane of anyone with progressive values. His personality has made him fair game for political humorists.

Carlson’s joke immediately became a major talking point in the media. Television news outlets invited the transportation secretary to rebut Carlson and the charge of going AWOL (absent without leave) during a crisis. Buttigieg went before the cameras to affirm that it wasn’t “without leave” because he was benefiting from the law only recently passed concerning parental leave. To bring home the point, he cited his action as a demonstration of the importance of such a law.

Buttigieg offered this : “What we have right now is an administration that’s actually pro-family. And I’m blessed to be able to experience that as an employee, being able to have the flexibility to take care of our newborn children.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Employee:

In 21^st-century Washington parlance, a courtier who enjoys, at the same time, the dignity associated with holding an elevated office, the frivolity of a member of the court, and the right to claim the status of an ordinary worker whenever that is more convenient

Contextual Note

Carlson is a news entertainer. Like every entertainer, he knows how to create a rapport with his audience and respond to their expectations. But in contrast with most television news celebrities, Carlson has a gift for sounding sincere and honest, even when the positions he takes are ethically or politically indefensible.

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Cultivating the illusion of sincerity is an art form that most news professionals have to learn and at which most fail. In Carlson’s case, there is every reason to believe that he is sincere, even when his reasoning is suspect. He often takes positions clearly at odds with those of his political compatriots. That sets him apart from most commentators and politicians. On the other hand, that doesn’t inoculate his opinions from criticism, despite the tendency in US culture to celebrate anyone — however dangerously mistaken — who “speaks their mind.”

In this instance, Carlson scored a serious point with his audience about a political issue that is worth considering. US taxpayers are sensitive to the fact that the 1% takes liberties that are simply denied to the 99%. When Jeff Bezos takes himself on a 10-minute rocket journey into space, ordinary citizens see it as the self-indulgence of a multi-billionaire who has no qualms about subjecting in his employ to a thousand indignities. Amazon workers are less likely than Buttigieg to flaunt their “experience” “as an employee.”

Much of the media — notably , and — used the controversy as a pretext for a moralizing sermon on the advantages of paid parental leave, as if that was the unique or most significant point Carlson was making. in the UK was one of the news outlets that focused on what they chose to highlight as an issue of gender politics, complaining that “Carlson’s homophobia-tinged attack on Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s decision to avail himself of paternity leave to care for his recently-adopted twins has drawn swift condemnation from LGBT+ rights groups.”

Our future historian will undoubtedly note that all of that is true. But he or she (or they) will also note that the issue that had impact on the Fox News audience was neither the debate about parental leave, nor Carlson’s snarky reference to breastfeeding. It concerned the image of politicians who spend their time serving their own interests and neglect both the obvious crises in the news and the complex needs of a struggling nation.

Historical Note

There was bound to be some kind of drama around the first gay member of a presidential cabinet. Pete Buttigieg made history when he was confirmed in his post at a moment in history where it has become important to situate one’s stance on anything to do with gender and sexual identity. The current culture war that appears to be splitting the US down the middle allows those who identify with traditional religious values to feel not just that their traditionalist values are beyond betrayed and mocked but that the confusion this challenge to traditional values represents is deeply destabilizing to society itself. Those who think seriously about the issue are convinced that there are biological reasons to reject the idea that the question of gender identity can be reduced to a question of consumer choice. They are sensitive to a very real symbolic dimension of gender identity and behavior in society that their adversaries dismiss as a simple injustice.

The liberal media fawned over Buttigieg’s sentimentalist description of fatherhood. The secretary explained that he has “a job with a lot of responsibility.” He boasted: “I have a great career and one that’s been so rewarding, but the moment that you hold your child in your arms for the first time and you see how completely they depend on you, especially as newborns, you very quickly realize that no matter what your career may or may not include, the most important job you have is the job of parent, the job of father in my case.”

This reflects the traditional “motherhood and apple pie” version of US culture, a form of traditional patriotism innovatively transposed in Buttigieg’s case to “dual fatherhood and apple pie.” Buttigieg’s defense seems to seduce the audience of CNN and MSNBC. For understandable reasons, it may be less convincing to Fox News’ public.

Ironically, on the same day, the reported on Prince William’s criticism of William Shatner’s short trip into space courtesy of Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Blue Origin. Prince William felt it would be a better priority to focus on the needs of humanity rather than the expensive pleasures of a celebrity. The article describes Shatner as “very emotional after his 10-minute flight” and quoted his comparison of the experience to “holding your child for the first time.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Who Won the Match: Tucker Carlson or Pete Buttigieg? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

It’s Time to Revise the American Concept of Time

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Carlson’s success depends on his studied ability to sound like an ordinary person with strong opinions, who is nevertheless sincerely seeking to understand the issues, while at the same time daring to affirm his sometimes unorthodox core beliefs. The look on his face as he interviews people has always been an important element of his image. He always appears to be intently listening to the people he interviews and processing what they say as if it was all new to him.

Carlson’s reactions always appear spontaneous and sincere. Most television pundits seek to adopt a pose indicating to the viewer how knowledgeable they are, having studied and reflected profoundly on the topics being discussed. They project the idea that their interviews serve to clarify what they already know rather than discover something new. Often they seek to reveal what the interviewee may be trying to hide.

Carlson appears interested in what his interviewees can teach him. His audience sees him as an inquiring everyman, far more articulate than they themselves can be. Because he reflects their conservative values, he can help them to structure their opinions, including their tribal loyalties and prejudices. He speaks not from superior knowledge but from deeper feelings, which he dares to express.

This superficially moral positioning allows him to appear as his audience’s “voice of concern.” Because the starting position is that of a patriotic conservative, he can criticize authority when he feels its policies betray the nation’s established values. But it also permits him to uncritically formulate the most widespread tribal biases and present them as deep cultural truth. For his public, he stands as the courageous defender of the nation’s inherited values. That opens the door to a racist position apparently devoid of racist instincts. Tucker Carlson has thus become the valiant champion of anti-racist racism.

In recent years, he has taken on the standard Republican cause of seeking ways to disenfranchise minorities in the interest of reserving political power for the category of people — essentially white, European Christians — he credits with having founded the nation and provided it with a moral mission. He is not opposed to minorities, so long as they renounce their own collective identity and fully and submissively identify with the white nation’s moral mission. This has led him to become the champion of the conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement,” a theory that it insists has become the Democratic Party’s “policy.”

Carlson made a presentation of his case in his show last week. “In political terms,” he asserted, “this policy is called ‘the great replacement,’ the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Legacy Americans:

The ethnically and culturally defined category of people who constituted a majority at the time of the nation’s founding

Contextual Note

This diatribe provoked a reaction from a wide variety of commentators. In a long, informal the following day with former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, Carlson expands on his ideas concerning racial identity and its impact on politics. He regrets what he calls policies that “encourage people to think of themselves as members of the tribe.” Of course, it doesn’t occur to him that he himself may be acting like a member of a tribe.

His reasoning turns around the idea of an established order. Because in a multiracial society there may be more than one tribe, he openly — and very sincerely — worries that if one select tribe is not allowed to dominate, chaos will follow. He affirms that this is not about race. Instead, “there’s a much bigger problem, which is national cohesion.” He predicts — and here he is probably close to a historical truth, but not for the reasons he cites — that the US is tending toward Balkanization.

Carlson is on stronger ground when he mocks the idea his opponents like to put forward that immigration, by increasing diversity, will make the US a more democratic country. There is of course no direct relationship between diversity and the nature of a political system. Randomly mixing diverse cultures has nothing to with the idea of democracy as a system of government. Democracy can exist in both homogeneous and heterogeneous societies. Democrats are clearly wrong to say that racial diversity is in itself a necessary characteristic of democracy.

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Carlson resurrects a clip in which Joe Biden, as vice-president under the Obama administration, invoked the existence throughout US history of “an unrelenting stream of immigration.” Carlson then presumes to understand the current president’s intentions as he explains that Biden’s intention is “to change the racial mix of the country … to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here, and dramatically increase the proportion of Americans newly arrived from the Third World … This is the language of eugenics, it’s horrifying.”

Carlson clearly has no idea of what eugenics is (). But he is right to think that the random mixing of cultures can be a source of confusion. This is especially true in the United States, which has never really functioned as a democracy. Ever since its founding, its leaders have always preferred a structure of government that tends toward oligarchy. The key to wrenching power away from the oligarchs will never come from immigration or even the natural trends of demographics, but rather from the ability of people dedicated to democratic representation to challenge the moneyed interests that form the hidden but well-structured oligarchy.

On the whole, Carlson is correct in his criticism of the Democrats, who for decades have been building their electoral strategies — but not their social outlook — around the statistical advantage they have traditionally had with minority populations. Carlson characterizes the Democrats’ emphasis on expanding minority representation as anti-democratic. On that score, he’s wrong. The Democratic Party’s approach is cynical and opportunistically calculating, not anti-democratic. But even its cynicism cannot justify the patent Republican strategy of systemically preventing minorities from voting. That, in contrast, is brazenly anti-democratic.

Historical Note

Tucker Carlson’s choice of the term “legacy Americans” reveals the real flaw in his system of thought and the clearest indicator that what he is preaching is nothing other than white supremacy. He cleverly uses the term “legacy” to hide, especially from himself, its racist meaning. He knows that he cannot use the term “Native Americans” for obvious reasons, one of which — beyond the fact that it designates a non-white population — is that it also calls attention to the proclivity toward genocide of the very group of people he sees as the legitimate participants in US democracy.

Carlson chooses the term “legacy Americans” — which he defines as “people whose ancestors lived here” — because he needs to distinguish on non-racial grounds the privileged group he believes has the right to govern. The term allows him to avoid admitting that these people are exclusively of European heritage. He criticizes President Joe Biden for seeing diversity as the “source of our strength.” He twists this into claiming that Biden believes “the source of our strength is non-white DNA.” Immediately after that, Carlson proudly claims to be “colorblind.” But he is the one who mentions non-white DNA as the “source.” In other words, his reading of the question is directly racist.

Carlson is sincere when he asserts his belief that he is “colorblind” and that the country he grew up in “tried to be colorblind.” He even admits it didn’t always succeed. He claims all people are created “equal in moral value.” But his choice of the word “legacy” tells a different story. According to , legacy means “something (such as property or money) that is received from someone who has died.” For Carlson, being colorblind means adhering to the idea that a certain category of people with money to transmit to the next generation should be empowered to rule in US democracy.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Tucker Carlson’s Ambiguous Legacy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Like the map, everything hyperreality contains is artificial, made to facilitate our understanding but also to deceive us into believing we may rationally account for all the details. But in contrast with maps, hyperreality carries the illusion of having more than two dimensions. The illusion owes its impact in part to the sophisticated methods of fabrication, but even more so to the fact that we collectively want to believe in the coherence of the three dimensions.

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What we fail to notice, however, is that in contrast with Einsteinian space-time — which scientists recognize as the fundamental structure of the universe — hyperreality lacks the fourth dimension, time. Reality is always becoming itself. Hyperreality has already become what it is. It exists as a static prop, like a Hollywood movie set. Its various elements sit alongside each other to prop up the world we are invited to believe in.

Much of the belief depends on the production of canned ideas that become a convenient substitute for perception. In our technology-orientated world, pseudoscience plays a key role. While scientists struggle with the structural uncertainty of quantum mechanics or their frustrating quest to understand dark matter and dark energy, humanity relies on its media to consume pseudo-science and build its faith in hyperreality.

Pseudoscience enters our lives every day through the innumerable studies our various media present as “news.” By the time any body of research takes the form of a media-friendly story, it will undergo a hyperreal transformation. One glaring example is a piece of manipulated research that has in recent weeks made the rounds of the right-wing media in the US. On April 26, it even in the discourse of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Newsmax it in an article with the title: “White Liberals More Likely to Have Mental Health Problems, Study Shows.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

White liberal:

A mythical being invented by the media in the US to found the hyperreal idea that US society is composed of a pair of diametrically opposed camps distinguished on the basis of two artificially defined value systems, apparently designed with the specific purpose of preventing the majority of citizens from becoming aware of the wide range of serious political issues that any complex democracy will be permanently faced with

Contextual Note

In a remarkable performance on Monday focused on the burning question of the enforced wearing of masks, Carlson managed to demonstrate how devoted he is to pseudo-scientific distortion as he that “a Pew survey from last month found that 64% of white Americans who classify themselves as ‘liberal’ or ‘very liberal’ have been diagnosed with an actual mental health condition.” Not only was the Pew survey published in March 2020, making it at best old news, but the figure he cited was significantly higher than what reported by right-wing news outlets. And there was no diagnosis but : “34 percent of liberals reported having mental health problems,” according to The Washington Free Beacon.

But the problem isn’t in the details. It is much broader, affecting the entire culture. It stems from three combined sources of hyperreal distortion.

The first is the survey itself. Because it produces statistics that can be displayed in a graph, people attribute to it the status of science. An enterprising PhD candidate with a personal political agenda and a Twitter account, hoping for a career in either statistics or politics (or both), can then step up and make it look even more scientific by “breaking down” the statistics, correlating them with other statistics and using terms proper to specialized language such as “aggregate indexes” and “dispositively.” The young man in question, , has defined for himself the mission of reporting on the status of whiteness and wokeness in the US.

The second source of distortion is the propensity of the media to use both the primary source (the Pew survey) and the secondary source (Goldberg’s tweets) to announce some deep truth about society itself. With the aim of attracting readers and viewers, the media jump at the opportunity to reveal a deep, disturbing truth. Most articles about climate change, health, diet, economic trends, the cosmos and UFOs fall into this pattern. They all begin with something rooted in reality and based in either scientific fact, social observation or polling. But they quickly transform that basis into the illusion of a new and troubling feature of our everyday hyperreality.

The third source of distortion is the need in the US to reduce everything to an oppositional binary choice. Even as the idea of gender diversity has now displaced the obvious and very real binary division between male and female, most Americans believe there are two subsets of humanity called “liberal” and “conservative.” Even the analysis of subtle social scientists such as feeds into this requirement of hyperreal belief in US society. Americans are conditioned to believe that they themselves are, or at least should be, in their essence, either a liberal or conservative. This is an amazing ideological accomplishment.

The surveys themselves sometimes the dominant binary thesis by highlighting the inconsistencies within the categories. But the hyperreal binary distinction remains as the ultimate buttress of a political system that requires the belief in oppositional thinking. It underpins an electoral system designed to create the conviction that the two parties authorized to govern represent the dual essence of the American electorate.

Historical Note

The binary meme has been both complicated and reinforced by the reemergence in recent years of Americans’ awareness of the racial divide. This awareness, to some extent, lay dormant following the legal gains and cultural shifts associated with the 1960s civil rights movement. In an article published by magazine last August, during protests over the murder of George Floyd, Zach Goldberg documented the rise of this new sensitivity to the abiding racial question in the US as reflected in the news. He traced statistics from the media over the past 50 years to demonstrate the rise of the phenomenon he identifies with the “wokeness” that has infected the minds of white liberals.

To make his point, Goldberg presents two dubious assertions as if they were truisms. He begins by citing “the absence of legal discrimination in the post-affirmative-action era.” This is technically true but culturally false. One prominent feature of hyperreality consists of using the formality of the explicit to hide the implicit. In this case, the inert text of the law obfuscates the informal, organic reality of culture. 

Goldberg then claims that, thanks to their media, white liberals are guilty of “concept creep” when they claim that racial injustice is real. He cites “the immense absolute improvements in the quality of life of the average Black person over the past half century” as if it was a documented fact. The key word here is “absolute.” Although he offers no details, Goldberg is almost certainly thinking of the statistics — his unique source of absolute truth — that demonstrate some measurable progress in material wealth within the black community.

Goldberg’s hopes to find and punish the culprits who have led white liberals to adopt a belief system predicated on the defense of blacks. He affirms that “publications like The New York Times have helped normalize among their readership the belief that ‘color’ is the defining attribute of other human beings.” He wants us to “de-emphasize these categories and unite in pursuit of common interests.”

This abstract advice has some merit, but it is at odds with social reality. Zach Goldberg, Tucker Carlson and many others on the right have been contributing with their own “concept creep” to instill a belief in what is truly a hyperreal category, their designated enemy: the white liberal.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Media’s Love of Pseudoscience appeared first on 51�Թ�.

To maintain its control not just of our lives but of our perception of the environment and culture in which we live, the political class as a whole, in connivance with the media, has created the illusion that when people speak in public — and especially on TV or radio — they are essentially engaged in delivering their sincere opinion and sharing their understanding of the world. They may be mistaken or even wrong about what they claim, but the public has been taught to give any articulate American credit for standing up for what they believe.

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We have been told that this respect for public personalities’ freedom of expression serves a democratic purpose. It allows for productive debate to develop, as different interpretations vie and eventually converge to establish a truth that legitimately supports variable faces and facets. Though they generally try to avoid it, when Americans happen to hear the opinion or the analysis of a person they don’t agree with, they may simply oppose that point of view rather than listen to it, but they also tend to feel sorry for that person’s inability to construe reality correctly.

In other words, the default position concerning freedom of speech has traditionally maintained that a person’s discourse may be wrong, biased or misinformed, but only in exceptional cases should the sincerity of the speaker be called into question. For this very reason, US President Donald Trump’s supporters may think that many of the things he says could be erroneous, but they assume that their hero is at least being sincere. They even consider that when his ravings contradict the science or reasoning of other informed voices, his insistence is proof of his sincerity. They admire him for it.

In contrast, Trump’s enemies want us to believe he is unique and the opposite of the truthtellers on their side. But Trump is far from alone. He just pushes the trend of exaggerating the truth and developing unfounded arguments further than his opponents or even his friends. And because he shakes off all challenges, his fans see him as that much more authentic and sincere than everyone else.

And so the hyperreal system maintains itself without the need of resorting to objective reality. That may explain why the ruling of the judge in favor of Carlson seems to jar with the rules of the hyperreal game. A former Playboy model accused Carlson of defamation. Here is how Business Insider framed the case: “A federal judge on Wednesday [September 23] dismissed a lawsuit against Fox News after lawyers for the network argued that no ‘reasonable viewer’ takes the primetime host Tucker Carlson seriously.” In the judge’s words, “given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statements he makes.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Reasonable viewer:

An imaginary human being considered to be capable of critical thinking when sitting in front of an American news broadcast on television, contradicting all empirical evidence that shows no such person has ever existed

Contextual Note

The idea of a “reasonable viewer” is similar to the equally nonexistent “homo economicus,” a concept dear to economists who want the public to believe that markets represent the ultimate expression of human rationality. They imagine a world in which all people do nothing other than pursue their enlightened and informed self-interest.

The judge in the Carlson case is one of those rare Americans who understand that all the news — and Fox News par excellence — is entertainment. But what he fails to acknowledge is that broadcast “news” has become a consciously tendentious form of entertainment that privileges emotion over reason and has an insidious impact on people’s civic behavior. 

Whether it’s Fox News, MSNBC or CNN, no complex story exists that cannot be reduced to the kind of binary conflict its viewers expect to hear about and resonate to. That means nothing could be more unreasonable than to believe there is such a thing as a “reasonable viewer,” especially one who refuses to take Carlson “seriously.”

In other words, the judge is right to highlight the fundamental triviality — or, worse, the hyperreal character of most TV news and Carlson in particular — but wrong to think it appeals to “reasonable” viewers or that reasonable viewers, if they exist at all, are even aware of it.

Historical Note

Throughout the history of the US in the 20th century, media fluctuated between a sense of vocation in reporting fundamentally factual stories and one of serving the needs of propaganda either of the government or of political parties. There has long been a distinction between “liberal” and “conservative” newspapers, though throughout the 20th century, the distinction applied more to the editorial pages in which columnists had the liberty to express their particular bias than to reporting of the news itself.

Quentin Fottrell, in an for Market Watch published in 2019, described the process by which, in his words, “U.S. news has shifted to opinion-based content that appeals to emotion.” He sums up the findings of a study by the Rand Corporation in these terms: “Journalism in the U.S. has become more subjective and consists less of the detailed event- or context-based reporting that used to characterize news coverage.”

Significantly, the Rand study found that the very language used in reporting had evolved: “Before 2000, broadcast news segments were more likely to include relatively complex academic and precise language, as well as complex reasoning.” This points to the core issue in the shift that has taken place. Over the past 20 years, “broadcast news became more focused on-air personalities and talking heads debating the news.” This indicates a deliberate intention of news media to appeal to emotion rather than reason, even to the exclusion of any form of critical thinking.

Fottrell notes the significance of the year 2000, a moment at which “ratings of all three major cable networks in the U.S. began to increase dramatically.” When the focus turns to ratings — the unique key to corporate income — the traditional vocation of informing the public takes a back seat. He quotes a patent attorney who studied media bias and found that the “extreme sources play on people’s worst instincts, like fear and tribalism, and take advantage of people’s confirmation biases.”

The “worst instincts” are also known as the lowest common denominator. According to the logic of monopoly that guides all big corporations in the US, the standard strategy for a news outlet is to identify a broad target audience and then seek to develop a message that stretches from the high-profile minority who have an economic or professional interest in the political agenda to the dimmest and least discerning of a consumer public who are moved by “fear and tribalism.”

It’s a winning formula because the elite segment of the target audience, a tiny minority of interested parties who are capable of understanding the issues and the stakes, willingly participate in the dumbing down of the news with the goal of using emotion to attract the least discerning to the causes they identify with and profit from economically and politically. 

Just as the average Fox News viewer has no objective interest in Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the rich or his permanent campaign to gut health care but will be easily incited to see the president as the champion of their lifestyle, the average MSNBC viewer will endorse the Wall Street bias of establishment Democrats always intent on eschewing serious reforms, citing the fact that they are too expensive. They do so only because MSNBC has excited their emotions against the arch-villain Trump.

It isn’t as if reasonable viewers didn’t exist. The news networks have banished them to pursue their interests on the internet or simply replaced anything that resembles reason by pure emotion.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Extinct Race of “Reasonable Viewers” in the US appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Living:

An unnecessary and egotistical habit acquired by both intelligent and unintelligent organisms that explains their irresponsible inertia as they persist in occupying space on earth with no other purpose than to grow, adapt and interact with their environment, instead of accepting to disintegrate quietly into their basic chemical components.

Contextual Note

In Patrick’s evolved extension of Darwinian theory, the purpose of human life is to ensure the survival not of the fittest organisms, but of the fittest political and economic system (of which there is only one). His highly original contribution to biological science merits everyone’s attention.

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins invented the meme of “The Selfish Gene” (the title of his ). In a kind of microbiological version of Arthur Schopenhauer’s “The World as Will,” Dawkins defined the gene as the ultimate intelligence of the universe and of humanity. Dawkins sees this tiny sequence of nucleotides as responsible for all the fundamental decisions we living organisms make in our lives. Although he admits that humans have the capacity to “override biology with free will,” he sees the notion of free will as something of an illusion. In his view, our genes are doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to decision-making. (By the way, Dawkins also invented the idea of the “meme,” which has since become a part of our standard vocabulary.)

Patrick’s dismissal of living as a legitimate objective for people may sound a bit mad or at least antisocial. But the lieutenant governor isn’t a lunatic or a potential serial killer, at least not in the classic sense (since he is in favor of provoking a series of people being killed, but not by his direct agency).

No, Patrick is a theoretician who is extending our understanding of human existence by tackling at the macro level the same problem Dawkins addressed at the micro-level. What both thinkers have in common is their conviction that humanity is an accident of evolutionary history. For Dawkins, it’s the story of genes progressively leading the way to increasingly sophisticated organisms. For Patrick, it’s about the progress of economic systems that have led to an exceptionally perfected state of economic evolution that has been momentarily interrupted by the arrival of COVID-19 on the North American continent.

Patrick has a point. Once we agree that the deity’s purpose in creating the world some 5,000 years ago (according to the best sources) was to put in place the conditions that would evolve into the perfection we now call the consumer society, we can begin to understand that the divine will is now focused on preserving that society. The apple that Eve plucked from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden gave us the first clue. Had she understood the rules, the young lady — the mother of mankind — should have asked her maker the price of the item and duly completed the transaction before removing the merchandise and taking the first bite.

Patrick realizes that the economic and political system we live under — governed as it is by Adam Smith’s (divine) invisible hand — imposes the laws that should govern our decision-making concerning life and death. A lockdown means stifling the freedom to compete, on which our sense of morality is based. Accepting a lockdown means denying the fundamental reality that people live and die for one purpose alone: to compete with each other as consumers, sometimes to the point of battling one another. The purpose is clearly competing, not living. To bring the lesson home, he mentions the things more important than living: “saving this country for my children and my grandchildren.” Families compete too.

Historical Note

Tucker Carlson, the Fox News interviewer, doesn’t seem quite as philosophically, scientifically and theologically evolved as Dan Patrick. Carlson’s focus is less on the ethical underpinnings of decision-making in the current crisis than on the historical significance of the policies applied today.

At one point, Patrick directs his criticism toward Democrats who, in his eyes, fail to respect the US Constitution. He refers to a with Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, in which Carlson complained that arresting worshippers who had gathered together in a synagogue violated their constitutional rights. In that interview, Carlson made this assertion: “The Bill of Rights, as you well know, protects Americans, enshrines their right to practice their religion as they see fit and to congregate together to assemble peacefully.”

Citing that incident, Patrick’s pitch of indignation rises as he explains: “You put your hand on the Bible when you take office … to protect the Constitution of this United States.” For the first time in the conversation, Carlson appears not just to agree with Patrick but jumps in to offer his own original condemnation of the New Jersey governor: “And now he’s arresting people who criticize him.”

As so often happens in Fox News interviews, the narrative veers toward the tragic tale of Democrats betraying the ethical substance of American history. Patrick nonsensically asserts: “If the Democrats ever had total control they would put people like you and me in jail and throw away the key … They now have total control.” Carlson agrees with him, though they both would certainly acknowledge that the Republicans currently control the White House and the Senate and also govern a majority of states. They also know that there is no precedent in history to justify such ravings. Historically speaking, McCarthyism has been a Republican monopoly.

Concerning Carlson’s interview with the New Jersey governor, Carlson happens to be wrong when he claims that the Bill of Rights “enshrines [Americans’] right to practice their religion as they see fit and to congregate together to assemble peacefully.” It literally does no more than prevent Congress — the federal government — from imposing restrictions on the practice of religion.

The main point of the founders was to prevent the federal government from establishing a specific religion, as the English monarchs had done by making the Church of England the “established” religion. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” the First Amendment states. As drafted, the Constitution doesn’t specifically prevent states from enacting and enforcing laws that may impinge on religious practice.

Historians of the future will note a curious trend in Americans’ interpretation of the US Constitution, as an element in the construction of an ideology. Both politicians and the media who have echoed since the late 20th century have tended to impose principles designed specifically to justify the highly individualistic consumer society that the American society has become. For example, these three fanciful ideas are now current: “money is speech” (); individual purchasers of military assault weapons are identical to the “well-regulated militia” mentioned in the Second Amendment; and the violation of laws concerning public safety in the practice of religion is a constitutional right.

All such ideas define a civilization that confounds respect for the law with a unique form of hyperreality in which texts meant to provide a framework for regulating complex human behavior are reduced to slogans that exclude nuance and reject any form of criticism.

That radical shift in the meaning of ideas — and the words that express them — helps to explain why the culture may believe that there are now “more important things than living.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. UPDATED: April 28, 2020.]

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