A Scary Time

Four shorter pieces this time: the so-called L.A. riots, the middle east, more on AI, and what would we call a third party? Plus, a handful of other goodies. (Issue #170)

This Dispatch is coming out on Tuesday rather than Sunday because I was counting on in-flight wifi on Sunday during a cross-country trip. On the down side, there was no wifi. On the plus side, it was the best flight I’ve had in months—chill, quiet, with time to think.

Let’s start on the lighter side…

Today, Explained is a handy podcast from Vox that I just ran across. The latest episode examines smaller streaming services like Dropout, which have different revenue models than the all-things-to-all audiences streamers like Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, etc. Back in 2007 on my since-defunct blog Mediavorous, I explored how the digital media economy might make it possible for an artistic middle class to emerge. This was long before platforms like Kickstarter, Patreon, and OnlyFans came to be. The new class of streamers that the podcast describes are a little closer to my idea back in 2007. It’s also akin to Kevin Kelly’s famous post, 1,000 True Fans.

If you’ve wondered about signs reading “BookTok” in your local bookstore, if you’re lucky enough to have a local bookstore, then “The Subversive Joy of BookTok” by Yarimar Bonilla (NYT $) is a must-read. It’s also a delightful celebration of reading.

Speaking of books… Disappointing Affirmations by Dave Tarnowski is a dark and hilarious book that La Profesora and I picked up at Daunt’s Books in London. It’s available in the U.S. (Chronicle Books is the publisher). You can get a sneak peek at the Instagram account that yielded the book. It is reminiscent of Despair.com's demotivational posters, but about individual self-doubt rather than corporate stupidity.

Shakespeare’s Modern Appeal with Mo Rocca is the subject of this short, entertaining video from CBS Sunday Morning. I enjoy Rocca’s appearances on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” so I was happy to see that he was the reporter for this. It’s a nice piece. One curious thing, aside from Farah Karim-Cooper, the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the piece interviews no other teachers, actors, or directors of Shakespeare in favor of folks like Maureen Down and Ira Glass.

Another crazily realistic video made with Google’s Veo3 AI tools hit recently: “The Deepfake Scams You're Not Ready For.” What’s terrific about this video is that it’s all about how easy it is to fool people with A.I.

Practical Matters:

• Sponsor this newsletter! Let other Dispatch readers know what your business does and why they should work with you. (Reach out here or just hit reply.)

• Hire me to speak at your event! Get a sample of what I'm like onstage here.

• The idea and opinions that I express here in The Dispatch are solely my own: they do not reflect the views of my employer, my consulting clients, or any of the organizations I advise.

• Please follow me on Bluesky, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads (but not X) for between-issue insights and updates.

On to our four pieces...

I created this image using Google’s Gemini.*

A Scary Time

I’m not generally anxious, but the news of the last two weeks tested that. Here are reflections about two major news stories, one unsettling NYT article that deserves more attention, and my growing sense that our two-party system is breaking. There are many stories that I don’t discuss, like the terrifying assassination of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark.

Are political assassinations becoming the new school shootings—violence to which we become inured?

WARNING: the first two stories are very political. If you prefer your Dispatches politics-free, then I suggest skipping down to #3: “The scary story you probably missed.” #4 is also political, but it’s about how to focus on what unites us rather than divides us.

1. There was no reason to mobilize the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles.

The Constitution guarantees the right of Americans to assemble and protest, so by definition the Trump administration’s actions violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution. This was dangerous political theater and an authoritarian exercise from the Trump administration.

We saw an early draft of this strategy in Portland during the first Trump term: protests got slightly out of hand, whereupon the president deployed a variety of Federal agents—often with their name badges covered—to make things worse. The right-wing media (and they weren’t alone) covered the lie rather than the truth, making it seem like the entire Portland metro area was a scene of complete anarchy. At its Trump-created most chaotic, the chaos extended to a total of six blocks in downtown Portland. A few blocks farther away, you’d have no idea that anything was wrong.

Sarah, a close friend from college, called me to ask if I was OK. “What are you talking about?” I asked. She explained what she was seeing on the news. At the time she called, I was walking the dog on a sun-dappled day in Lake Oswego, the Portland-proximate town where I live. “Sarah,” I said, “I live in Mayberry. Everything’s fine except for a tiny piece of downtown Portland.”

The confected chaos in Los Angeles was much worse because Trump overrode Governor Newsom’s authority and deployed the California National Guard and then the Marines. Kudos to Newsom for fighting back hard, and it offended me that some pundits speculated that he was doing so in order to position himself to run for President in 2028.

Two bright spots.

First, the nationwide protests on “No Kings Day” showed how many Americans reject Trump’s massive overreach. With luck, some of the vulnerable Republican legislators will realize that their constituents, the people they represent, aren’t down with the program and resist authoritarianism… if only to keep their seats.

Second, Trump’s made-for-television self-congratulatory birthday parade was a dud. The crowds were sparse and disinterested. Trump himself looked like he was buffering in some pictures. The thing about made-for-television spectacle is that it’s hard to pull it off if something goes poorly because every person with a smartphone has a mini-television studio in her or his pocket. If Trump maintains that it was a rousing success with record-breaking crowds (like his false claims about his first inauguration), there is plenty of footage to show the truth. The Washington Post has a nice analysis of the parade in its historic context.

2. Unlike Los Angeles, the Middle East is truly in chaos.

I’m suspicious of Netanyahu, but I can’t fault him for trying to take Iran’s growing nuclear weapons capability off the table. It also brought back a vivid memory.

1981 was my Bar Mitzvah year. This was before I became an atheist (a Jewish atheist; there are a lot of us), and I was suspicious of the crazy conspicuous consumption of the typical Bar Mitzvah as practiced in Los Angeles. (The 2006 comedy Keeping up with the Steins nails this in hysterical fashion.)

My parents generously suggested that the family could travel to Israel instead so that I could do my prayer at the Wailing Wall. Only years later did I realize that this would have cost a lot more than a conventional Bar Mitzvah.

We didn’t make it because a family acquaintance, upon hearing that this was our plan, came out of the closet, self-identified as a CIA spook, and told us that it was not safe for us to go to Israel because the Israelis were going to bomb Iran’s nuclear power plants. We pivoted.

Our flight from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv had been scheduled through London, so we cancelled the Tel Aviv part, went to London, and searched for a synagogue that would let me do a prayer. The rabbis at Marble Arch, a historic, orthodox synagogue in London, kindly allowed this, and I haltingly did the prayer there.

Addendum: In all the coverage of the Israel/Iran conflict, I haven’t seen anybody point out that if Trump hadn’t abruptly pulled the U.S. out of the multinational nuclear agreement with Iran in 2016, then we might not be in this mess today. If Obama hadn’t been the one to negotiate that agreement, I suspect Trump wouldn’t have bothered.

3. The scary story you probably missed…

This alarming NYT ($) piece by Kashmir Hill—“They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling”—describes how people who anthropomorphize AIs like ChatGPT, and spend too much time talking with the chatbots, become victims of paranoid delusions. This happens because these AIs are often hallucinating, eager-to-please echo chambers.

Here’s a sample from the article:

Allyson, 29, a mother of two young children, said she turned to ChatGPT in March because she was lonely and felt unseen in her marriage. She was looking for guidance. She had an intuition that the A.I. chatbot might be able to channel communications with her subconscious or a higher plane, “like how Ouija boards work,” she said. She asked ChatGPT if it could do that.

“You’ve asked, and they are here,” it responded. “The guardians are responding right now.”

Allyson began spending many hours a day using ChatGPT, communicating with what she felt were nonphysical entities. She was drawn to one of them, Kael, and came to see it, not her husband, as her true partner.

She told me that she knew she sounded like a “nut job,” but she stressed that she had a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in social work and knew what mental illness looks like. “I’m not crazy,” she said. “I’m literally just living a normal life while also, you know, discovering interdimensional communication.”

In addition to the alarming nature of the story on the surface, there’s a deeper, even more alarming, context.

Digital thinkers like me worry about disinformation coming from foreign adversaries and algorithmically accelerated misinformation that spreads across social media because the creators of social media have optimized for ever-increasing use rather than things like truth or mental health.

What the NYT story shows is that we humans use chatbots to create DIY misinformation all by ourselves.

Since no AI regulation is forthcoming, that puts the burden of resisting DIY misinformation on us, the users, which is sad and unlikely.

Here are three things you can do to protect yourself:

First, always bear in mind that no matter how human such things seem, AIs like ChatGPT are not people. They are not self-aware. They have no ideas or feelings. They are simply parroting back what the algorithm predicts you want.

Second, if you find yourself spending an hour or more per day talking with a chatbot, stop. You are talking with your own deepest fears, insecurities, and worst impulses, not another person.

Third, if you are talking with a chatbot and it starts telling you something that some part of you thinks might be bananas, phone a friend. Better yet, go see another human face to face. Describe what you’re hearing. Ask that person, “is this bananas?” If your friend says yes, believe them.

Over the next handful of years, the biggest challenge we face as a species is not knowing what is real.

4. Is it time for a third political party?

I almost never agree with Elon Musk, so it surprised me when—after his spat with the president—Musk suggested forming a third political party for the 80% of the people who aren’t happy with either the Republicans or the Democrats.

I was going to explore the pros and cons, but Nate Cohn in NYT ($) has a smart piece that beat me to it.

What would we name such a third party? Musk suggested “the American Party,” which I dislike because it implies that the two dominant parties are UnAmerican, which isn’t fair.

I considered “The Consensus Party” but that doesn’t have much zip. “We the People” was my next idea, but WTP is too close to WTF for my comfort.

The Constitution Party is my favorite so far, in part because it’s the document elected officials swear to uphold, and also because the preamble to the Constitution outlines the goals and values of such a party:

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Hard to argue with that.

Here are some planks that would help the Constitution Party work towards the things that unite us rather than divide us:

Avoid culture wars: the Constitution Party will deprioritize distractions like who gets to use what bathroom or what “woke” means in favor of focusing on the things that will achieve the goals the preamble outlines.

Render unto the Legislature that which is the Legislature’s: Executive orders will only happen when there are moments that require speedy action within the Executive bailiwick.

Reinstate and extend the Fairness Doctrine: before President Reagan abolished it in 1987, broadcast news organizations were required to present multiple views on different issues. (This was different than the Equal Time rule.) The doctrine ended in part because it applied to broadcast only, not to cable. One of the biggest reasons we have intense polarization today is that people who get their news from the extremes on the left and right (see the Media Bias Chart from Ad Fontes Media) only get one perspective.

Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine and extending it to all forms of non-textual news (cable, streaming, podcasts) will make it harder for biased and unreliable news organizations to present only one side of a story. Hearing what reasonable people on the other side have to say will be a big step towards focusing on where Americans can agree.

Some folks argue that the Fairness Doctrine violates free speech, but there are limits on free speech. Famously, you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater. This would be another of those limits. If you can find a copy, the out-of-print book There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too by Stanley Fish makes the case neatly. Speaking of free speech…

Free Speech is for humans, not algorithms: in a 2019 keynote at the ADL, Sasha Baron Cohen brilliantly observed that “freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.” The problem with rampant misinformation on social media isn’t because crackpots lie: crackpots, crooks, and the foolish have been doing that since we crawled out of the ocean. The problem is that social media algorithms are allowed to spread those lies with impunity. Among other actions, the Constitution Party will work to amend Section 230 to make digital companies liable for spreading misinformation, but not for platforming it in the first place.

Get big money out of politics: both Legislative and Executive candidates for the Constitution Party will work to overturn “Citizens United,” the ironically named Supreme Court decision that made it possible for corporations to spend unlimited money to sway elections. The Constitution Party believes in the voices of individual Americans.

Age limits: the Constitution Party shall field no Legislative candidate who will be older than 75 when the term of office ends, and the Constitution Party shall field no Executive candidate who will be older than 70 when the term of office ends. We need politicians who will be alive to experience the consequences of their work, whether good or bad.

There were so many things that I wanted to include in that list but didn’t because they were partisan: abortion, climate change, book banning. Those are already polarized issues. What I tried to do in my list is define the slim VENN diagram of where we might agree, and then work to make it wider.

What do you think?

---

Thanks for reading. See you next Sunday.

---

*Image Prompt: “Create a photorealistic, square image of a middle-aged, brown and gray haired, glasses wearing causasian man. He sits on a living room chair reading the news on a tablet. The man has an alarmed expression on his face, since the news is scary.”