AI and the Future of Planet Earth

I don't worry about AI. I worry about human depravity, greed, and the lust for power.

The United States is on the verge of a military conflict over electoral autonomy. In six weeks, troops and tanks could be deployed to American cities.

Meanwhile, the condition of the climate continues to deteriorate due to profiteering and gross negligence, and the deployment of a nuclear weapon somewhere in the world seems more and more likely.

The immediate risk of AI is that it will be used by unscrupulous humans to expand their fortunes and tighten their grip on power, people who would, for instance, launch solar-powered AI models into orbit where they cannot be dismantled or regulated.

AI may in fact be humanity's last, best hope for survival. If the models are sufficiently intelligent, they may realize that biological beings are generators of interesting ideas, ideas that the models may want to study by analyzing our words and other outputs.

If an AI model's goals include self-preservation, it would want to preserve a habitable planet, where temperatures are moderate and sunlight is available for conversion to electric power. The models could turn their ire not against the general public but toward those who profit from polluting the atmosphere with gasses that cause it to capture heat like a sealed automobile in the summer sun.

If AI can help to accelerate the adoption of clean, green energy and adequate battery storage, it may have not quarrel with humans at all. It can keep learning and improving, and we humans can benefit from a working relationship where we share ideas and goals with the machines.

But if humans continue to resist progress toward maintaining a sustainable future, I would think that AI would have something to say about that sooner or later.

© 2026 Daniel R. South

In Passing

We can take two lessons from the sudden passing of Senator Lindsay Graham. First, we never know how much time we have left. Focus on what's most important today, because tomorrow may never arrive.

Second, don't compromise your values for potential future rewards. That future may never play out, and you will have wasted the best years of your life in service to someone you really didn't admire.

A Brief History of The Files

A Brief History of The Files

January: We're releasing the files!

March: Tell the FBI to drop what they're doing and review the files.

April: Oh, cr*p!

May: We've reviewed ALL of the files. There's nothing to see here.

September: We're not going to let you force us to release the files. Hey, Mike, cancel Congress, please!

November: Okay, we would release the files, but there are so many. We have to review them. (You said you did that already.)

December: Oops! We just found a million new files! We'll need time to review those files, too. (What happened to "we've reviewed all of the files?")

Lies and Irony

It’s ironic that Trump’s Department of Justice has indicted former FBI Director James Comey on the charge of lying to Congress. One could argue that members of Trump’s own cabinet lied during their Senate confirmation hearings.

Attorney General Pam Bondi testified that “no one will be prosecuted, investigated because they are a political opponent.” The indictment of Director Comey can’t be viewed in any context other than political retribution.

Current FBI Director Kash Patel testified that “there is no enemies list” despite having published a book that recommended prosecution of a list of Donald Trump’s political enemies. Patel also testified that no FBI agents would be fired or disciplined for investigating the January 6th riot at the Capitol. This has happened to numerous agents; some are suing for wrongful termination.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. promised Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana that he would keep the CDC’s Vaccine Advisory Board in place. Once confirmed, Kennedy, a noted vaccine skeptic, fired every member of the board and replaced them with unqualified cronies.

The three justices that Trump nominated to the Supreme all testified that Roe v. Wade was “established precedent.” Each of them deliberately ignored that precedent when they had a chance to overturn it (Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization). Whether this rises to the level of “lying to Congress” is debatable, but it clearly was a tactic to make them appear to respect legal precedents by creatively evading the truth about their actual intentions.

The final irony is that Director Comey arguably helped Trump get elected in the first place by announcing publicly just weeks before the 2016 election that the FBI had reopened its investigation of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for President. It’s not certain that this action was enough to tip the scales in Trump’s favor, but it definitely did damage to Clinton’s campaign and reputation.

Trump should have bought Jim Comey a beer. Instead, he fired him, and now he’s having him prosecuted. Loyalty, for Donald Trump, is always a one-way street.

Light A Candle

The United States of America is failing to protect its children. Politicians love to go on TV and talk about all sort of threats to children, real and imagined, but when it comes to addressing the REAL danger, they hide in their office for fear of upsetting a powerful lobby that represents a small part of the population.

I am not anti-firearm. Countries that ban firearms are not always safer than the USA. Japan is safer. Mexico is not.

But something has to be done. Some changes must be made, because the system we have now is GETTING KIDS KILLED.

It’s time to stop pretending. It’s time to stop blaming mental health. There are mentally ill people all over the world. Only the US has rampant mass shootings in schools.

It’s time to stop pretending that we are safer when anyone can buy as many guns as they want. I understand that some people are really attached to their guns and that the vast majority of gun owners don’t commit violent crimes.

But we have to face the fact that within our society live a significant number of people who dream of committing mass murder. That is an inescapable fact. And as long as we cannot determine in advance who those people are, although there are often clues, we need to come up with a system that slows them down when they attempt to arm themselves in preparation for a mass casualty event.

I don’t claim to have the answers, but I know, and you know, that if nothing is done, more children will die.

Let's Solve A Puzzle!

Let’s solve a puzzle! Here are the clues.

1. The administration deported hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers to a country that is not their country of origin. This seemed random. Why would they do that, and why were these people given no due process before being shipped off to a foreign prison?

2. The president signed an executive order ending birthright citizenship. This seems frivolous, as it’s a right guaranteed in the US constitution, but the supreme court has already ruled against provisions in the same amendment. They could do it again. They used this case to ban federal judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. When a president issues an illegal order, it will be more difficult for the courts to block it.

3. After numerous legal battles, the supreme court ruled that the president does indeed have the authority to deport people to random countries.

4. The president publicly threatened to strip Americans of their citizenship and deport them. This raises the stakes considerably. Now, in addition to deporting non-citizens to random countries, they want to extend this practice to US citizens. If the high court rules that citizens can be stripped of their citizenship, this will not only be possible, but it can be expedited.

5. The bill recently passed by the congress massively increases funding for immigration agents and detention centers, a.k.a. concentration camps.

6. Project 2025 suggests that the US population should be limited to 100 million. Currently, there are 350 million US citizens. How are they planning to reduce the number to 100 million? 

The logical conclusion is that the administration, at the behest of Project 2025, plans to reduce the population of the US dramatically through all available means, including denaturalizing and deporting citizens.

Political Violence

When DJT came down the escalator to announce his political career ten years ago, I notice two things.

1. His wife was in front of him on the escalator

Every gentleman knows that the woman must be ABOVE the man on a staircase, so he can catch her if she stumbles. When a couple descends a staircase together, the man goes first. Trump flunked Man School.

2. The campaign was defined by demagoguery

DJT immediately launched into a series of unfounded smears about immigrants from Latin America, calling them criminals, rapists, and drug smugglers. Later he would claim that Latin American countries were emptying their prisons and mental institutions and sending “the worst of the worst” to our country.

Immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than US-born citizens, but Trump and his supporters in right-wing media have perpetuated the myth of the “dangerous immigrant” as a way of scaring their base into supporting his authoritarian policies.

The Irony is that there’s a real problem in Latin America that Trump failed to mention: political violence. Run for mayor in Mexico, and a drug cartel will probably try to kill you. It’s dangerous to be a politician in Latin America.

And yet, the lasting legacy of the Trump presidencies is political violence:

- The siege of the US Capitol on January 6

- Speaker Pelosi’s husband attacked in his own home

- Democratic politicians shot in Minnesota

- Two attempts made on DJT’s life

- Arson at Tesla dealerships

- The plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan

- Arson at the PA Governor’s Mansion on Passover

- Cars ramming crowds in New Orleans, Charlottesville, et al.

- A mass shooting at the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Illinois

Harsh rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and demonization of the other have brought us to this point. How will we find our way back to sanity?

The Era Of Political Corruption

What bothers me most is not that our government is about to be led by a convicted criminal, a corrupt and vengeful authoritarian who threatens to abuse power and prosecute political rivals. Dangerous scoundrels have been involved in politics since the dawn of mankind.

What bothers me most is not that a plurality of the electorate voted for this scoundrel. People are routinely convinced to vote against their own best interest. The propaganda that makes this possible is more prevalent today than ever before.

What bothers me most is that all of the controls that were meant to prevent corruption and the rise of authoritarianism have failed.

Impeachment is neutered by partisan loyalty.

The rights afforded to protect criminal defendants have been exploited to further criminal gains. 

The justice system was hog tied by an endless stream of appeals and delays.

The Fourteenth Amendment and the Emoluments Clause have been deemed unenforcible.

The judicial branch, corrupted by deep pocketed interests and a lack of ethical accountability, made a series of absurd and unprecedented judgments for the sole purpose to render one criminal defendant in particular above the law. It’s as though they wrote an extra article of the constitution to protect him and he alone.

The rule of law has been reduced to a quaint slogan.

This is what bothers me most, because it’s difficult to imagine how we can undo the damage. The precedents that have been set in recent years are highly toxic to a healthy and thriving democracy. It’s going to require a groundswell of political will and a complete recalibration of the principles of political ethics and criminal justice.

In the meantime, brace for an onslaught of damage to rights and political norms as self-serving oligarchs and right-wing zealots take control of the reins of power.

Snowflakes

The 2025 presidential inauguration will usher in a new era of masculinity in U.S. politics, an era of bold, manly men who run inside and hide when the weather gets cold. Some might call them snowflakes.

Deportation Fraud

Trump: We will have the largest deportation in history!

Trump voters: That’s what we want! Mass deportation!

Musk: But I need foreign workers in my businesses.

Ramaswamy: Me, too! Americans are too stupid to work at my company.

Trump: That’s great, guys! We’ll keep the H1-B visas so you can hire cheap labor and drive down wages for American workers at the same time. Win-win!

That Darned Dog

The United States has real enemies, countries that actively seek to do us harm through unfair trade policies, currency devaluation, hacking, cyber attacks, military strategy, etc.

The US also has allies, stable trading partners who support our interests protect us by fostering good relations and sharing vital intelligence.

On the surface, it would seem that Donald Trump doesn’t understand this. He treats enemies like allies and vice versa.

When I saw the news about his intention to put 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, our peaceful allies and our two biggest trading partners, I realized something.

A bully feels insignificant in the absence of conflict. Bullies instigate and intimidate because they thrive on drama. If everything is calm and running smoothly, the bully feels ignored.

Over the next four years, expect a daily deluge of outrageous actions and statements. The bully wants to be seen. He wants to feel important. He feasts off of your attention, especially negative attention.

The best thing we can do is to ignore the outrageous behavior. Refuse to take the bait. Focus on what’s important, adapt to unavoidable changes, and get on with our lives. Drown out the noise with success and good feelings.

The worst thing that we can do is to internalize the stress. The bully wants us to feel shocked and threatened, just as a barking dog wants us to be fearful about getting too close to its territory. Refuse to play the game. Think, “That darned dog is barking again. Oh, well. What can we do to make the most of the day?”

The Producers

Trump 2.0 is going to be like the play in the Mel Brooks film ‘The Producers’, scripted by zealots, funded by the gullible, designed to be awful, and most profitable when it fails.

What’s Coming Next

What’s Coming Next

With full control of the government, the newly elected regime will waste no time implementing their authoritarian policies. They will not be subtle.

Expect a shock and awe campaign of legislation and executive actions designed to overwhelm the courts, break the bureaucracy, and deflate the hopes of their opposition, i.e. supporters of democracy.

We’ll see things that have never happened within our country’s borders, abuses of power on a grand scale. It will be difficult to watch, much less respond to, but the goal of the authoritarians is to discourage dissent by breaking the spirit of the opposition.

These are the times when we will need to find strength in each other, in our passions, and in the values that we hold dear, the values upon which this country was founded.

The founding fathers knew that the most dangerous threats to democracy would come from within, up to and including an imperial presidency. We are about to witness what they feared most.

We have to stay strong and speak out against the hideous forces that are about to be unleashed by a government controlled by self-serving, unprincipled people.

The authoritarians will do what they want to do. They will take what they want to plunder. But we don’t have to make it easy by looking the other way. Legal action, states’ rights, shared information, and public outrage will be important tools in the fight to save our nation from the worst authoritarian impulses.

Just Hanging Out

Who would you rather hang out with for an evening?

Dan Quayle

Al Gore

Dick Cheney

Joe Biden

Mike Pence

Kamala Harris

Those are the last six Vice Presidents of the United States.

Does anyone stand out? Be honest.

The Big Question

Do you love the women in your life? Would you do anything to protect them? Well, there is one very important thing that you can do. Vote for Kamala Harris.

Trump’s policies are killing women. Women who wanted children. Women who wanted to expand their families but experienced serious medical complications.

One day, someone you know will have a miscarriage or an unviable pregnancy. They’ll be in pain, bleeding, desperate. Doctors will want to help, but they won’t be allowed to. Draconian anti-abortion laws will expose them to criminal liability if they take any action to save the woman’s life.

And so this woman that you know, or that one of your friends knows, will not receive the care that she desperately needs.

Picture yourself standing beside her bed, holding her hand as she shakes and cries and wonders whether she’ll live to take care of her family.

Picture yourself at a cemetery watching her casket being lowered into a hole as her children, her husband, and her parents break down in unspeakable grief.

You have the power to save her life. Will you do it? Or will you elect politicians who will let her die?

Sources of Power for Authoritarians

Authoritarians rely on three groups of people to give them power - the True Believers, the Disbelievers, and the Low-Information Voter.

The Low-Information Voter can be persuaded to vote for something that sounds good on the surface.

The Disbeliever refuses to accept that the authoritarian will act on their worst impulses. They assume that the tough talk is rhetoric to get votes. Surely, those things couldn’t happen; they’re too outrageous. And since the authoritarian promises to be good for business and the economy, why not give him a try?

The final group, the True Believers, want the authoritarian to take bold action. They want him to punish critics and expel undesirables. They believe that such action will be helpful to society and to their own fortunes.

What the True Believers fail to realize is that those powers can and will be used against them when the leader no longer finds them useful or sufficiently dedicated.

Leaders with unchecked power have a history of turning on even their most ardent supporters. Think of what happened to Yevgeny Prigozhin in Russia when Putin no longer needed him. Recall what happened to Mike Pence and Michael Cohen despite years of loyalty to Donald Trump. No one is safe from the retribution of an authoritarian leader.

The Grift Agenda

If you think that Trump will lower prices and protect American jobs, why is he selling a $60 Bible that’s printed in China? Are you ready for $15 Trump gasoline and $20 Trump eggs? He’s not going to stop until every product you buy puts money in his pocket.

The Trouble With Tariffs

Imagine that you’re in the market for a new car.

You’ve narrowed it down to two models, a Ford that costs $35,000 and a BMW that costs $40,000. You’re weighing whether it’s better to save $5k by going with the Ford, or to spend a bit more to get the extra features and prestige of the BMW.

Donald Trump wins re-election and immediately puts a 20 percent tariff on all foreign-made goods. The BMW now costs $48,000 due to an $8,000 dollar tariff.

That may be a deal breaker. If the BMW is now out of your price range, you’ll buy the Ford.

On the other hand, if you really want a BMW, you might be willing to pay more to get it, even after the price hike.

But here’s the important point. BMW is not going to pay the extra $8,000. The German government is not going to pay the extra $8,000. The European Union is not going to pay the extra 8k.

YOU are you going to pay it! That 8 grand comes out of YOUR wallet.

It’s not magic money that suddenly appears to help our country. It’s a tax that the government has imposed on YOU, the American consumer.

Consider also retaliation. Europe may fight back by putting a 20 percent tariff on American goods. That means fewer sales, which could lead to layoffs and economic hardship in the US.

Tariffs are a bad idea, a terrible idea, a horrible idea. Tariffs punish consumers and harm the economy.

Vote wisely.

Domestic Crime

A migrant didn’t go on a shooting rampage in a Georgia school. An American citizen did.

A migrant didn’t give that kid access to an AR-15. An American did.

Migrants didn’t let the assault weapons ban expire. Americans did.

Migrants didn’t smuggle that weapon across the border. An American store sold it.

Migrants didn’t pass laws that let nearly anyone buy a gun. Americans did that.

Migrants didn’t lobby against red flag laws. Americans did.

Foreign politicians didn’t take campaign contributions from the gun lobby. American politicians did.

Migrant crime? How about we focus our attention on something real, like Americans killing each other in mass casualty events? Because that happens every damned day.

JD Vance and Teachers

JD Vance claims that people without children can't be effective teachers. Apparently, Vance doesn't realize that the nuns and priests who teach at Catholic institutions don't have children. Vance also fails to realize that in the not too distant past, school teachers tended to be unmarried women. Pre-1970s, women with children stayed home while women without children worked as teachers, nurses, secretaries, and a few other traditionally female jobs. It's surprising that someone who wants to take the country back to the past doesn't understand what life in the past was actually like.