“The debate over America’s AI future is usually framed in a very specific way. In the tech and policy world, the common framing is as simple as a battle between those who want to build AI systems as fast as possible and those who want to slow it down. More accurately, the fight over AI is about who gets to control America’s AI future. On one side there are the AI Doomers, most of whom want to capture and control the technology for their peer networks. On the other side are those who believe that facilitating a free and open playing field is the best way for this technology to bring about human flourishing. AI Doomers are split over what the future looks like, and they surely have internal squabbles about how to navigate the narrative war, but they fundamentally agree about the idea that they should be the ones in charge.” (09/25/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Tech plutocrats are the high-budget expression of the ‘everyone is twelve now’ theory. You wanna go to Mars? Of course you do, you’re twelve. You think you can merge your consciousness with machinery and unlock the key to immortality? Hell yeah my twelve year-old homie. You’re gonna invent an Artificial Superintelligence God who will solve all our problems? Bless your twelve year-old heart. Their visions for the future of humanity are never particularly wise or intelligent. It’s just a bunch of drugged-up rich guys using their vast fortunes to chart a course for our species that would sound totally awesome to the average preadolescent boy.” (09/26/26)
“Racism plagues American health care: reverse racism. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division just brought another case against a top medical school for blatant discrimination against white and Asian applicants: Blacks applying to the University of California at San Francisco’s med school get admitted at almost 13 times the rate of similarly qualified white applicants. Black and Hispanic students the school admitted from 2023 to ’25 averaged lower test scores and undergraduate grades than the average white and Asian applicant the school rejected. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon’s letter blasting UCSF follows similar ones to UCLA, UCSD and Yale; virtually every other US med school is likely as bad, but she’s building the evidence before she strikes. The University of Pennsylvania offers a path for students at eight other colleges to enter medical school without taking the MCAT at all — and five of the eight are historically black colleges.” (09/26/26)
“President Donald Trump is in trouble and he knows it: He promised ‘no more foreign wars’, but started a war with Iran that he has lost. He promised to tame inflation, but tariffs and his war of choice have made it worse. He promised to deport only the ‘worst of the worst’ illegal immigrants. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement has terrorized American cities as agents sometimes arrested, detained, wounded, or killed US citizens. He promised to make the United States the most respected country in the world, but he has destroyed America’s reputation and alienated its allies. He calls himself the best president in history, but his approval rating has dropped to the mid-30s — his lowest ever and approaching President Richard Nixon’s final approval rating of 24% shortly before his resignation in 1974.” (09/26/26)
“Bolivia is beginning a new chapter. For nearly two decades, my country was governed by the Movement Toward Socialism. That period reshaped Bolivia’s economy, institutions, and relationship with the United States. Today, my government is taking a different direction: rebuilding confidence, strengthening institutions, opening the economy to investment, and creating more room for private enterprise and entrepreneurship. When I took office, Bolivia’s Central Bank had only $51 million in reserves. Ten months later, reserves had risen to close to $1.2 billion, and our objective is to continue rebuilding them. Inflation remains high, fuel shortages have tested our people, and the work ahead is difficult. But the direction is clear: Bolivia is putting its economic house in order. ” (09/26/26)
“Karl Marx believed that ‘Democracy is the road to socialism’. Socialists seem to have found a generation of dupes to buy their ahistorical, fanciful pitch. A new poll shows 43% now have a positive view of socialism. An astonishing 65% of Democrats have a positive view. Socialism is now the rage on the left. Like clothing styles, if you wait long enough, socialism tends to come back into style with generations with no memory of past failures. However, it is an astonishing trend in one of the most prosperous nations on Earth that outlasted a history cluttered with the broken failures of socialist and communist systems. A new slick packaging of socialism has emerged with leaders such as Zohran Mamdani offering to teach people of the ‘warmth of collectivism’. The Democratic Socialists of America are enticing voters with narratives like ‘Imagine the end of capitalism’.” (09/25/26)
“On Monday, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals further confounded Missouri’s ongoing mid-decade redistricting debacle. The three-member federal panel sided with a lower federal court and directed the state to use a new map gerrymandered in 2025 and specially designed to propel Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver into retirement—part of President Trump’s effort to secure the largest possible advantages for Republicans in the midterm elections. In early September, the Missouri Supreme Court had unanimously ruled that the 2025 map could not be used without first being approved in a voter referendum, especially since People Not Politicians, the Missouri referendum advocacy group backing the map question, had met all of the constitutional requirements to secure a slot on the ballot.” (09/25/26)
“The IRS recently did something federal agencies almost never do: admit their approach wasn’t working. They conceded that the approach to the Conservation Easement program tax assessments is flawed and often unfair. In a press release last month, the IRS rightly stopped its assault — at least for now — on more than a thousand separate groups nationwide, comprised of about 250,000 individuals, who have participated in land conservation easements. The agency decided to withdraw its own arbitrary deadlines under its punitive settlement initiative for these donations that taxpayers, relying on qualified appraisals and professional advice, believed complied with federal law. This longstanding program provides tax incentives for people who have put hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine forest, ranch, and farmland into a ‘conservation easement’ — preventing it from ever being developed.” (09/23/26)
“I feel like I need to apologize for a column a couple of months ago when I compared the current president of the United States to Caligula, the possibly mad Roman emperor who is said to have nominated his trusted horse for high office. I need to apologize to Caligula. From pitching his triumphal D.C. arch as a storage shed for deadly snipers’ bullets to banning reporters from the White House in a narcissistic rage, Donald Trump is losing his grip on reality. This is unsustainable. Worried about AI killing humans? Bad news: It already is. Which is it? Are the robots of AI, or artificial intelligence, so smart that they’re on the verge of holding a secret meetup in the darkest corner of the dark web and developing a plot to kill all humans through germ warfare, to make sure we don’t kill them first by pulling the plug?” (09/24/26)
“It appears that nothing says ‘saving Democracy’ like a good old-fashioned military coup. A new survey from the Center for Strategic Politics found that 59 percent of Democrats would favor a military coup to remove President Donald Trump from office. All it took was four years out of power for these Democratic voters to embrace a coup d’état to negate the results of the last election. What is particularly chilling is that many of these voters still portray themselves as defending democracy by calling for a military takeover. It is akin to supporting drive-by shootings to combat gun violence. That is not the only shocker in this survey. According to the Center, roughly six in 10 (59%) Democrats polled said they would feel ‘very positive’ or ‘somewhat positive’ if the US military removed Trump and seized control of the American government.” (09/24/26)
