West Texts Trash

What do Women and Chatbots have in common?

Neither is posing a threat to the subconscious presumption of men’s intellectual superiority anytime soon.

Category: Politics

Mood: vexatious

Tags: #AI #trump

Length: mediu

Time to read: 5 min

On or about March 5, 2025 a few smaller, somewhat credible news outlets ran stories with headlines similar to this one:

Elon Musk’s Chatbot Says There’s a Strong Chance Trump is “Russian Asset”

And I hope to God I was the only American to read the article with a genuine sense of excitement and relief. The story is only barely news-worthy; a man asks Grok, Musk’s commercially available AI LLM, what the odds are that President Trump is, in fact, taking orders from the Kremlin. Terrifyingly, Musk’s own chatbot puts the likelihood between 70-85%, and speculates that the higher side of that estimate is favored given various factors and events it goes on to cite.

It is unthinkable that any American privy to the elegance with which both governance and principle were executed by our constitution’s framers would feel anything less than horror and despair at the prospect of it being delivered wholesale and vulnerable into the hands of a hostile foreign power. I sure as hell did.

But I’d had the distinct misfortune of arriving at the very same conclusion, with something closer to certainty, almost 72 hours before the headline ran. I don’t doubt that the gestalt of events as they were occurring pinged some other big-picture multidimensionally-prone thinkers. The lines of evidence that led to my near certainty seem to be independent of those that led Grok to consistent, and frighteningly high probability estimates of the same conclusion. I, however, had the poor taste to be distraught by the implications, and proceeding to tell a few close associates and family members the source of my deep consternation.

I messaged them:

“I’m pretty sure we’re looking at Israel and the US and Russia and North Korea against the rest of the world. China is going to hang back, play a mediator role, and so is Japan – no one is coming for them yet. But Trump and Israel are being assholes about Gaza, despite exceedingly expedient and reasonable proposals by the Arab states, and it’s because Trump is being egged on by Putin or handlers – it’s still unclear if Trump, like most Americans, is still ignorant of the deft and purposeful skill with which he’s being maneuvered.

Regardless, the worst of Israel’s politicians smell opportunity with the shift in US international policy. It’s 180° aboutface; Trump says he wants peace but it’s a bald faced lie; the literal truth is that the US is merely a pawn of Russia now, and Putin has imperial objectives – there’s too much happening in concert, both here and abroad, to be either coincidence or implementation of an agenda crafted by a cabal of even the most heinous of right-wing conservative Christians.

It is orchestrated, and elegant, and has long-game credentials with the hallmark of hard won experience. It boasts skill in subduing an entire populace by manipulation of information; a top-down hostile occupation and effective political annexation – essentially annihilation – of the United States of America without outright armed conflict and usual violence. If there’s any doubt that Putin’s been working on this for decades, then one fails to fully grasp the collective Russian identity – an intellectual tradition that spawned Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Rand, Nabokov, Pavlov, Stalin. The west might have forgotten what Russia excels at, but while Americans rotted their brains with video games, Russia’s official sport and abiding passion was, and will always be, chess.

Putin set his sights on the US long ago, knowing an overt hostile takeover wasn’t an option. The Facebook debacle was a near miss, with TikTok, he hit a home run before our due process was able to stop him. He knows the danger truth poses to power, and, conversely, he realized how to exploit an information economy with little regulation or government censorship of content and messaging.

What is fascinating to see right now is the disparity of sentiment in individual content spheres. X is exultant, Facebook is unaffected, unconnected, largely drivel, TikTok continues to push audiences towards Putin, BlueSky is hysterical, Threads is minority dominated, disillusioned, angry. The real news, the traditional outlets, are reporting what is, in fact, occurring - the wholesale dismantling of our government’s infrastructure implemented and operated by – and for the sake of – American citizens.

And of those accurately informed who are freaking out, they’re only freaking out about the concrete details – the layoffs, the funding cuts, the individual executive orders that reverse the federal stance and national policy on everything from DEI, guns, the death penalty, science funding, asylum, terroristic threats, healthcare. There are so many fires burning down individual supports of the basic structure of our democracy that it only takes a few steps back before the whole picture becomes quite clear; it’s an impact crater - the US is nuked. We’ve witnessed the end of US democracy and sovereignty. Stupidity, racism, and xenophobia actually 𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘥 it into office.

So Israel, backed by Trump, is going to do the absolute wrong thing and forcibly take Gaza. The Arab states will solicit the UN for help, and then shits gonna hit the fan with Ukraine. Putin won’t cede the territories he’s taken, and if Zelensky signs the mineral deal, we’ll essentially see Ukrainian resources going straight to the hostile invading nation - who in the US at anytime before now had their eyes on the whole of the Ukraine’s mineral reserves? You think Trump or any of his half-brained Christian-values obsessed conservatives were so worried about the dollar value of the aid we’ve sent to Ukraine that they were like, “Hey! Let’s have them pay that debt by signing over 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘴. While we’re at it, how about we shut down the major research institutions in the strongholds of progressive democratic thought, which also happen to be in major metropolitan areas and sanctuary cities. We’ll start with University of California, under the pretense of it harboring hostile foreign actors and fostering threats of domestic terrorism, and let’s also mandate the death penalty to anyone who kills a police officer (in anticipation of installing a federal militia - military police – in aforesaid sanctuary cities on aforementioned university campuses).

Rather dystopian, but gestalt is what it is, and that the flavor of this is distinctly Russian is practically unmistakable. I don’t understand why everyone’s so caught up in the details when Occam’s razor cuts clean through and lays bare not a single US-centric or American-ideology grounded administrative action that makes sense unless the commander in chief is actually a marionette for a brutal Russian dictator.”

The reactions to my synopsis weren’t quite what I expected from reasonable people who’d been presented with a mountain of evidence - and continued accruing exponentially en pace – that the man recently installed in the highest office in the country seemed barely concerned with concealing his intention to serve us on a platter to Russia – known enemy of democratic systems – and its unapologetic imperialist authoritarian dictator.

No, there was no sign of slowly dawning horror as a chain of recognition events went off like firecrackers - one after the other in the consciousness-equivalent of their Active Directory. The improbably congruent and highly portentous shifts in the policies of global entities, and – out of nowhere – tensions between predictably volatile players in notoriously unstable regions AND notoriously cooperative parties in historically non-contentious alliance were being keyed by and towards domino-like cascades of tension and outright hostility failed to set alarm bells a’ringing.

I realize now that I’d made the mistake of proposing the near-worst case scenario out of place. Out of turn. A conclusion of import that no one in their right mind would want to hear from with the authority to say it. So the dismay that lodged in knowing what I knew was only exacerbated by the fact that no one saw it. Compounding that, the indifference from people who I knew would and should share my concern, for want of their inclination to credit my ability to understand cause and effect on a global scale. And it was a scaling factor of dual betrayal that made Grok’s revelation a haunting see-saw launch from the depths of mourning a valiant try by the Enlightenment to end here. The double-edged sword of multidimensional analytic capabilities isn’t conducive to optimism, placidly content perspectives, or even mildly self-satisfied vindication for very long. The facts remained. And I was alone with them. And an LLM named Grok. Whose purported revelation was spurred by some man, in-named, and framed as an almost humorous curiosity. The next carpet bombing of realization that crashed through my running processes was: loss of confidence in the self-determining power of both my person and my country had been independently corroborated with a high probability of being reality by an anonymous male and an AI chatbot. From the perspective of the average reader – whether the piece of reading in question is a minor interest news article or their excitable friend’s too-long text – the gravity of what the written article is suggesting has a high probability of being a reality, to them, really isn’t. But that’s the envious intellectual sandbox of rigorous logic, methodical linear analysis, evidence-based reasoning. From the perspective of a multidimensional analysis capable individual, the US President is a Russian asset, and we would know; me, and Grok, and a anonymous male, thanks to the man’s insight to ask Grok the appropriate question, comprise the elements necessary to confer composite authority. But, so far, only Grok and I realize it. -SMH

Short Story for KS Haynes

I was looking for a 6 month hostage commitment, he just wanted to fuck. I told him if he fixed the starter on my Santa Fe, he had a deal. The next thing I knew his car was gone and I never heard from him again.

Category: Love Letter

Mood: Absurd

Tags: #dating

Length: short

Time to read: 1 min

And there I go scaring another dude away with the whole STD & microscope routine. “Be yourself!” they say. “Authenticity and having your own interests are attractive!” they say.

“Bullshit,” I say. Try getting laid when you have an abiding passion for STD diagnostics and a lab-grade con-focal by the bed. You know what kind of guys don’t blink an eye at that sort of shit? 23-year-olds with face tattoos who are already facing fed time for life, that’s who.

Every other perfectly nice guy with enough tattoos to make my mom extremely uncomfortable in more ways than one just hightails it outta here without as much as a, “Later, ya crazy cunt!”

*sigh*

8/10/2024

Epitaph to an Intrepid Heart

This is the 10 year follow-up to a poem I wrote in October of 2015 that started, “This intrepid heart . . .” I’ll find it if I get a chance.

Category: Poetry

Mood: Defeated

Tags: #relationships

Length: short

Time to read: 1 min

The epitaph to an intrepid heart

is but silence all the way through

what was once fierce roaring flame

over and again

falls softly like dark snowflakes

melting to nothing on the ground

without a sound

returned to earth

to become something new

8/3/2024

There Is No Pain

Just a little poetic musing.

Category: Poetry

Mood: Defeated

Tags: #death #dying

Length: short

Time to read: 1 min

There is no pain in death

only in the dying

and agony of the flesh

only a pale shadow

to the pain of not knowing

if all that we are, have been, and loved

will be blank, empty, nothing

endless as the darkness

behind the stars above

8/7/2024

You Called?

A text message turned short essay on my particular brand of paranoia in the wake of the 2024 election results. Written in response to the question, “How are you holding up?” which has become the cautiously sympathetic salutation employed by moderates and liberals both at home and abroad.

Length: medium

Time to read: 4 min

Category: Letter

Mood: Relieved

Tags: #politics

# You called? I was asleep. For nearly 20 hours. But I’m doing better with the election news than most around here, I think. I’m honestly relieved - I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him, but I couldn’t cast a vote for civil war either. Because unless you’ve lived among it, people don’t realize how angry, well-armed, and primitively minded (ie racist, sexist, anti-science) so much of America is. Our media and the capitalist agenda feed the backwards mindedness, entitlement, and anger that have taken root deep in the hearts of so many Americans. It is fomented without guilt or accountability for the inevitable outcome because capitalism has no conscience; its sole objective is to make money. The supreme irony, sadly, is that the those who have suffered most under capitalism’s rule are also the most vehement supporters of the unapologetically capitalist MAGA agenda. There’s been enough incendiary rhetoric and manufactured urgency in the run up to this last election to incite widespread violence with a single word. Mobs of America’s most irrational and allophobic citizens are chomping at the bit to execute their individual, subjective MAGA agendas on god-knows-who, god-knows-where. That is the basis for my relief at the recent election’s outcome: temporary postponement of the threatening MAGA violence. If and when it happens, it will be called civil war, but other than the fact that there will be violence done to US citizens in blatant violation of the US constitution, civil protections, and basic tenets of human rights, there won’t be anything civil about it. Those genuinely excited about the prospect of civil war (there are many), and most likely to take up arms should a call to arms be issued, are also those possessing the least-developed sense of civic or humanitarian ideals; they are true fascists, and racists, and un-American at heart. Their motivations are antithetical to the ideals their country was founded on. They long to abolish governing principles under the patriotic-sounding cause of “civil war,” wanting, effectively, permission carte blanc to commit prejudice-based violence. Violence that, in any other context, and particularly the current rule of law, is criminal. It’s not coincidence that rabid MAGA supporters are almost universally despicable as individual people. Without the guise of a larger political movement, they are violent extremists with xenophobic and blatantly self-interested agendas. The MAGA agenda seizes onto and distills the most divisive and un-American proclamations of the Fascist Neon Cheeto, now President Elect. But I am far less afraid of him or him holding presidential office than I am of the mobilization of his rabid MAGA supporters. As a man and politician, President Elect FNC is vile, but in a way easily controlled by true power, which we can only hope has more respect for human life than him or MAGA supporters. His highest ideal is his own popularity, his guiding principle is spending money to curry favor, and in place of a conscience when it comes to humanitarian ideals, his motivations are totally self-serving, and thus reassuringly predictable. In contrast, his core support in the US has no concern for popularity or self-preservation, individually or as part of a whole. They are infinitely diverse in their allophobias, but uniform proponents of violence, and therefore infinitely more dangerous and volatile than the Fascist Neon Cheeto. The dissolution of the United States in civil war would leave him without a world power of a nation on the global stage for which he can be acting head, so he has a vested personal interest in preserving the republic as it stands. I conscientiously abstained, for the first time ever, from voting in the presidential election. Because I couldn’t bring myself to vote for now-President Elect FNC, but the prospect of him mobilizing MAGA supporters against US citizens was terrifying, and the threat was (and still is) real. Because the Fascist Neon Cheeto won’t hesitate to cut the US’s nose off to spite its face; like a child, if he can’t have it, he’d rather see it destroyed. This is why he, as a person, the MAGA movement and the TikTok fueled expectation and preparation for civil war all reeks of Russia’s encroaching sphere of control on the western hemisphere. In how this plays out, one can only hope there is value in preserving the ruse of the FNC as an autonomous leader of an independent nation, instead of what a Harris victory threatened to reveal; that America still exists at Putin’s pleasure because propaganda has subverted the American people into blind support for Putin’s unwitting puppet, which is what I fear more and more is the truth. But if it’s the truth, for the moment, at least, it’s what we, as a nation, avoided. The near-universal despair of Democratic voters - a full half of the country thrown into despondence and depression - is a small price to pay to preserve the United States, be it in fact, or (as I’ve come to suspect) merely collective illusion.