My opponent likes to pose as a tough guy. But where I come from—and it may be old-fashioned—if you lose, you take the hit. You don’t whine and cry about it and blame everybody else. You take responsibility, you move on. That’s what a real man does. And by the way, why does a fellow who tries to be so macho wear as much makeup as a drag queen? Can anyone explain that to me?

President Joe Biden has four main objectives in his upcoming debate with Donald Trump scheduled for Thursday. He needs to champion his performance in office (bipartisan legislation, a trillion dollars in infrastructure investment, the expansion of domestic computer chip manufacturing, climate change policies, a better economy than other Western nations, the Covid vaccination distribution, and more); to share compelling aims for a second term; to defend himself against the expected attacks (age, inflation, incompetence, and supposedly heading a devilish cabal that aims to destroy the United States); and to assail Trump as a threat to democracy and the world. On that last point—a drop-dead serious matter—I am hoping that he and his advisers realize the value of strategic derision.

Like most bullies, Trump cannot bear humiliation. His whole act is an act. He pretends to be strong and the best in everything—with the “best words” that come from a “very, very large brain.” But his malignant narcissism is clearly interlaced with deep insecurity. Real stable geniuses don’t have to brag about being stable geniuses. Trump might best be attacked not with frontal assaults about his lies, shortcomings, and misdeeds but with mockery. One goal Biden ought to have during the debate and afterward is to provoke Trump into the most erratic Trumpish behavior so voters are reminded of the perils of placing this guy in charge again. Ridicule can be quite useful in this regard.

The point of a presidential debate is not to score debate points but to bolster a narrative and message. The most effective debate lines have tended not to be facts-driven. Look at the first face-off between President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980. During that debate, Carter criticized Reagan for having begun his political career by campaigning against Medicare. This was an absolutely true charge. In 1961, Reagan had declared that socialized medicine would lead to an American dictatorship, ominously and absurdly saying if Medicare were implemented, “We are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."

How did Reagan respond to Carter’s jab? He cocked his head and said, “There you go again.” He was implying that Carter was lying. And the media and the political world gobbled this up, thinking it was just the best damn retort ever uttered. It was of no concern that Reagan lied when he said that he hadn’t opposed the principle behind Medicare. His reply was viewed and portrayed as a slam-dunk put-down of Carter. The Democratic incumbent had Reagan dead to rights. That didn’t matter.

Twenty years later, something similar happened when Vice President Al Gore and George W. Bush met for the first time on the debate stage. Gore accused Bush of pushing a tax cut that disproportionately benefited the wealthy and a budget plan that would not secure Medicare funding. He vowed to place Medicare in a “lockbox.” Bush countered: “Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I’m beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy math.”

My memory is that the audience chuckled at this and that Gore, who overall performed poorly in the debate by sighing too much and acting too smug, looked perplexed. The veep clearly knew the policy better than the Texas governor, and his attack was justified by the facts. Yet Bush’s aw-shucks jibe about fuzzy math—which played off the unjustified criticism that Gore had once falsely claimed to have invented the internet—landed better. Bush had made Gore seem like a jerk.

These two retorts were false and—let’s face it—not feats of oration. Yet they were successful pokes aimed at core components of the targets: Carter’s self-righteousness and Gore’s know-it-all superiority. They were derisive. And that’s a good lesson for Biden.

Trump offers many opportunities for derision. I’m not suggesting that Biden use the specific line above about makeup. But he should look for chances to demean the blowhard.

Hey, Mr. Master Builder, how many Infrastructure Weeks did you have in which nothing happened? It was like a fake reality show. I passed $1 trillion in infrastructure spending. How much did you?

Remember all the times you bragged that you only hire the best people? Your former vice president, your former chief of staff, your former defense secretary, your former press secretary, your former White House counsel, your former communications director, your former national security adviser, and members of your Cabinet say they won’t vote for you. Why do so many people who worked with you keep saying, “You’re fired”?

Yeah, I know, some folks say I’m a bit on the old side. But I’ve never fallen asleep in the middle of a criminal trial in which I was found guilty. Can my opponent say that?

You promised Americans a health care plan that would be cheaper and better than the Affordable Care Act. But you never delivered one. Were you too busy writing love letters to the North Korean dictator? Which reminds me: Why did you call Vladimir Putin your BFF? What’s with this thing you have for murderous autocrats? Is it too hard for you to make friends with world leaders who are not tyrants?

Why can’t you take credit for the one big thing you did right during the Covid pandemic: encouraging the quick development of the Covid vaccine? Are you afraid of all the anti-vaxxers out there?

On January 6, while rioters attacked the Capitol, you sat there, did nothing, and watched television. We’re all curious: What did you have for lunch that day? 

You get the picture. You can concoct your own lines. Biden doesn’t need a long list of derisive assaults. Just a few. I bet Trump would take the bait. In the first debate of the 2020 campaign, Biden took a slap at Trump when the former reality TV host wouldn’t stop interrupting: “Would you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential.” He also referred to Trump as a “clown” and a “racist.” Biden was able to be sharp in his parries with Trump. Belittling him could yield the best payback.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

During our recent Our Land Zoom get-together, the kind-of-monthly gathering of premium subscribers to this newsletter—during which we commiserate, share stories, and kvetch about politics, the world, and other matters—one participant noted that he had recently re-read the introduction to my book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, which charts the long history of the Republican Party’s cozy relationship with right-wing extremism. He said he found it useful for understanding the 2024 campaign and asked if I could post that portion of the book so it could be widely shared. I am flattered that he thought these words of mine might be influential in the final months of a crucial election. I’m not sure the publisher would grant permission for such a giveaway. But there is a second-best course of action. When the book came out, Mother Jones published an essay adapted from the book that covered many of the ideas included in the introduction. That article remains available for reading and sharing here. And the updated paperback edition is still highly relevant and available wherever you find your books. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a menace. Not just because he may be a spoiler in the 2024 presidential election but because he is a reckless and disingenuous spreader of noxious conspiracy theories and dangerous disinformation. As I detailed recently, he is even crazier than you might think. No doubt, his promotion of baseless anti-vaccination propaganda has caused real harm to people. But...he has two pet ravens. Isn’t that cute?

The New York Times this week devoted an article to how Kennedy tamed two ravens at the Los Angeles home he shares with his wife, actor Cheryl Hines. The piece hailed his lifelong love of birds and his days as a naturalist. He even once had a pet emu? Alas, it was a bit too aggressive toward Hines. There was a glancing mention of “his caustic anti-establishment beliefs that at times veer into conspiracy theory.” Veer? That was a ridiculous characterization that soft-sold his dissemination of deranged claims. Overall, this puffiest of puff pieces presented Kennedy as a modern-day Teddy Roosevelt when it comes to a passion for nature.

Such normalization—or glorification—is troubling. Kennedy is as bonkers and toxic as conspiracy-monger Alex Jones. If Jones kept cockatoos, would the New York Times devote half a page of cutesy copy to that? No. But with this candidate, the Kennedy mystique and the compulsion to cover an abnormal campaign in a conventional manner combine to produce a piece of unnecessary and misguided journalism.

It seems that each day Fox News somehow becomes even more of a disinformation machine. Even after having to pay $787 million in a settlement for spreading lies about the 2020 election, Rupert Murdoch’s network has throttled up on the falsehoods. The most recent ones have included doctored video to make it seem Joe Biden wandered off at a D-Day commemoration. (He didn’t.) Then there’s just the bottomless bucket of crap Fox hosts keep diving into. One example: Jesse Watters, talking about Biden, ranted, “This thing looks bad! And now they are talking about swapping Hillary in if he bombs in this debate."

Who is the “they” that are doing this “talking”? Maybe Fox interns. But there’s no talk within Democratic Party circles of replacing Biden with Hillary Clinton. Watters is simply making this up to cause a dopamine spike in Fox watchers. What would give them a jolt in the knickers more than another Hillary beatdown? It’s transparent bullshit. But that doesn’t matter.

Another contender this week is Kellyanne Conway, who was back to swilling alternative facts. She celebrated her Dear Leader for connecting with Black folks, declaring, “You got Donald Trump in Detroit talking to 8,000 people at a Black church.”

Just another Conway lie. Trump spoke to several hundred people at what is usually a Black church, but not on the day he spoke. Check out the audience. White, white, and white. You can’t even call this Trump stunt a deepfake. It was a shallow fake.

Despite the strong efforts from Watters and Conway, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) brings home the trophy. Responding to former top Klansman David Duke’s vow of support for anti-Israel protesters—Duke said he was siding with them to “save us from Jewish supremacism”—Cruz tweeted, “Democrats founded the Klan…and now the Klan is backing the Democrats.”

No surprise, Cruz was dead wrong. This right-wing trope that the Democrats started the Klan is an old falsehood, repeatedly fact-checked and debunked. The KKK was created by former Confederate soldiers in Tennessee in 1866. Many Southern Democrats did sign up with it, and its first grand wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest, an ex-Confederate general and slave trader, spoke at the 1868 Democratic Party convention. So there was overlap. But there were plenty of Democrats in the North and South who were not Klan supporters.

As for Cruz’s quip that the Klan is now backing the Democrats because Duke has aligned his antisemitism with anti-Israel demonstrators, that was also misleading and false. As Right Wing Watch pointed out, Duke made his comments while in Detroit to attend a conference organized by Nick Fuentes, an antisemitic white nationalist and Hitler fanboy, who was a dinner guest of Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 (with antisemite Kanye West). Duke was allying himself not with Democrats but with a racist whom Trump had welcomed. Moreover, Duke endorsed Trump for president in 2016 and 2020. By Cruz’s calculation, then, the Klan has backed Trump.

There were multiple levels of stupidity in this short sentence from Cruz. For this accomplishment, he wins the week.

In the last issue of Our Land, I examined the toxic—perhaps apocalyptic—combination of artificial intelligence, tech billionaires, and a possible second Trump presidency. Readers had thoughts.

Mark Heinicke wrote:

Many people in AI development distinguish between AGI and ASI. Artificial general intelligence is at a level equal to humans, although presumably the smartest humans, and is dangerous in the wrong hands—and arguably the developers themselves are the wrong hands. But not necessarily an existential risk in itself.

ASI is different ballgame. Artificial superintelligence will have the ability to take control of our lives. What it will want to do, nobody knows. That's the "alignment problem." Computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, for one, believes, with a high degree of probability, once machines achieve superintelligence—and he is very afraid we're on the brink of it—they will want to seize all the levers of power and will have a capability to. They will keep enhancing themselves, ratcheting up their level of intelligence without limit. At some point, that might involve eliminating humans completely—not out of malice, but just because humans are an obstacle to increasing intelligence. Hinton expresses the long view that humans are just one step in an evolution of intelligence. They were needed to create the machines, but once they had done so they would become dispensable. 

If you haven't read Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, I highly recommend it. It's eight years old but delineates all the basic issues alive today. There's nothing new under discussion except the rapidity with which AI is being developed, and the power wielded by AI developers.

There's a wide variety of projections for time frames of AGI and/or ASI in the AI community. Days, weeks, months, years, decades? But we may not have much time. It's possible that once AGI is reached (Sam Altman thinks it is not far off), if the alignment problem is not solved to humanity's advantage, ASI will not be far behind. In favor of this hypothesis is the concept that AGI, given certain goals, will realize that in order to accomplish these goals quickly or at all, gaining control is a great, possibly decisive advantage, and it maximizes control. Once it gains control, it realizes that having control is advantageous in solving all kinds of problems, so it will proceed to take overall control. Then it has an inherent motive to augment itself that could be as powerful as sex is for humans. That kicks off the intelligence explosion Hinton warns about (and Bostrom was talking about when he described instrumental goals).

However it works out, the US government will lag behind. The legislative process mandated by the Constitution is just too slow to keep up. A parliamentary form of government has better chances, but they are not acting quickly enough to stall the evolution.

Craig Jones shared a less frightening observation:

I recently went to the Perplexity AI chatbot and asked if a law could be written that could generate revenue sharing with material protected by copyright and within seconds the answer was compelling with suggestions for further query. AI is definitely the next Industrial Revolution, and as you point out, those in command of this don’t have revenue sharing in their headlights.

Larry Roth noted an alignment between Trump and the tech bros:

It seems to me Trump has adopted the Silicon Valley mantra as his action plan on return to the White House: move fast and break things.

Patricia Jaeger had a positive reaction to my recent appreciation for journalist Howard Fineman, a friend who died recently of pancreatic cancer. His wife, Amy Nathan, had asked his close pals to each send Howard a note. This was a lovely idea, for it gave us a chance to share our feelings with Howard while he was still alive. I included that letter in this newsletter, and Patricia wrote:

As usual, I enjoyed this newsletter, but I especially enjoyed your letter to Howard Fineman. What an incredible idea his wife had. It's a shame that we are usually quick with criticism and slow with praise. A year or two before I retired, I realized that I was guilty of being stingy with praise, so I made it a habit to give praise when it was due. At work, I sent emails to people's supervisors when that person did something that deserved praise. In my everyday life, I began to give praise when someone did their job in a manner that showed efficiency and professionalism. I have noticed that the person who is praised is usually very surprised to get a compliment. We really do need to do this more often, especially when there's so much to criticize these days.

“What’s out there?”
“In the darkness, Moxie?”
“Yes.”
“Everything that was there when it was light.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s a concept called ‘object permanence.’”
“What’s a concept?”

June 15, 2024: Donald Trump, tech billionaires, AI: a recipe for disaster; Howard Fineman, RIP; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Associated Press); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

June 11, 2024: The most under-covered issue of the 2024 election (Trump’s ties to right-wing extremism); the monster theme in Godzilla Minus One; the secrets of J.M. Coetzee’s The Pole; and more.

June 8, 2024: Is Donald Trump Jr. right that Republicans are weenies?; more on Trump’s love affair with revenge; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Sen. Tommy Tuberville); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

June 4, 2024: The Trump-Russia denialists are back; revenge of the Trump; a frustrating Civil War; the unending extraordinariness of Richard Thompson; and more.

June 1, 2024: Trump loses a big battle in his war on accountability; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

May 25, 2024: Trump’s dangerous grifting; Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crazier than you might think; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Jared Perdue); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

May 21, 2024: Why do they believe Trump?; the meaning of Trump’s bad makeup; lesson from a mass shooter’s mother; the beautiful noir of Ripley; and more.

May 18, 2024: Here come the Russians, again; Sonya Cohen Cramer’s You’ve Been a Friend to Me; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Eric Trump); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more. 

May 14, 2024: Paul Manafort and the metrics of shamelessness; 3 Body Problem’s obvious but understated tie to climate change; Neil Young and Crazy Horse keep a promise; and more.

May 11, 2024: America is broken, and the media ain’t helping; my fascinating trip to Japan; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Laura Ingraham); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.