9/23/2026

 Wednesday, September 23, 2026

1955 An all-male, all-White jury found Roy Brant and John William Milam not guilty of the murder of Black teenager Emmett Till in Sumner, Mississippi; the two later sold an interview admitting to the murder

1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered US troops to support the integration of nine Black students at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas

2020 President Donald Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the US November election at a White House press conference

2025: The United Nations reported that Russian authorities subject civilian detainees in occupied Ukrainian territories to widespread torture, including sexual violence, while also documenting cases of ill-treatment of detainees held by Ukrainian authorities.

2025 Thousands of people across Italy held rallies and a general strike to protest against the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the recent ground offensive into Gaza City.

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:35; 0550 121/74/64 122 203.4; 54/47/65/54, mostly sunny pady; BEACH HAZARDS, 3-6' waves, currents.

Morning meds at 7:30 a.m.  Entresto at 6:20 a.m. and p.m.

This is a gouache portrait of DJT on paper that I did three years ago, with some of his telling quotes written alongside it.  If I had the energy, I would attempt a second one, depicting him as even more monstrous and deranged with quotes from his frightening speech yesterday to the General Assembly at the United Nations.

The United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere — and if necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital national interests of the United States… We are reasserting American power, including American military power where necessary, in our region and around the world . . . 

Like ISIS, [forign drug cartels] should be killed, exiled, or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release, which is what we’re doing. To that end, the United States has carried out dozens of strikes on cartel drug boats

 “The United States totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme of control for the Artificial Intelligence — hereinafter officially called ‘Super Intelligence.’”

And to our NATO allies, if Russian aircraft violate your airspace, shoot them down. Simple as that.

No more funding terrorism disguised as humanitarian aid.

We’ve recently begun using the supreme power of the United States military to destroy Venezuelan terrorists and trafficking networks led by Nicolas Maduro

El Salvador’s President Bukele is a hero for locking up our deportees in terrorist prisons.

As you know, [Venezuela]was a 48-minute war, it lasted 48 minutes. And we paid for the war with what we’ve taken out many, many, many times…That’s the old -fashioned way. To the victor belong the spoils, right?” 

 “I have a big decision to make: Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East?  Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness for generations?”

He might as well have stood before the General Assembly and physically torn up the UN Charter, largely drafted by the United States.  As I type this, I feel like Max Mustermann must have felt like in 1932 Weimar Germany, on the eve of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933 and accession to dictatorial power 53 days later.  Eleanor Roosevelt must have wept in her grave yesterday.

More on why I despair, from Tom Friedman's column in this morning's NYTimes:

[W]hen I think back on the biggest disaster stories I have covered — including 9/11 and Covid-19 — I am struck that they have one big thing in common: a failure of imagination. . . .So today, when it comes to the possibility that artificial intelligence, which is falling into the hands of rogue actors and is beginning to manifest a will of its own, could become incredibly destabilizing, my imagination is fully engaged.

Here is what my imagination is telling me. It is telling me that the big A.I. companies in America and China are not being candid with us about how little even they understand the power and reach of the models they have developed, like sorcerers, in their labs. It is telling me that the Trump administration, headed by a man who so often governs by social media post, is uniquely unsuited to the kind of comprehensive, sustained, coordinated governance that keeping A.I. safe demands. And it is telling me that there is so much at stake — economically, militarily and technologically — and so little trust between Washington and Beijing that it would take a miracle for the United States and China to agree on the kind of deep collaboration needed to defuse the most nightmarish threats posed by A.I. . . . 

Stanford political theorist Francis Fukuyama argued in the Substack publication Persuasion on Monday: “A.I. is a tool that can be used for good or bad purposes — and at the moment we have few mechanisms for regulating the bad uses other than the good intentions of the people creating the technology.”

The last time we trusted the good intentions of the tech bros of Silicon Valley, when they told us to “move fast and break things” — regulations be damned — we unleashed social networks that helped fracture our society. I do not trust for one second that these people will put the national interest ahead of their own on A.I. 

More on why I despair.  I am slowly plowing through The Nerd Reich by Gil Durán.  It's very interesting and informative, but scarier than I had anticipated.  What really troubles me is the political affiliation that has occured between the weird tech titans (Thiel, Andreeson, Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos), the far-right conservatives, and Trump's MAGA movement/constituency.  I just finished reading Duran's chapter titled "The New Reality," about the cultish and anti-democratic futurist theories of transhumanism, extropianism, singulitarianism, cosmis, rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism.  The far-right conservatives, Trump, and the techbros all mean BIG MONEY, and the techbros are the guys who combine BIG MONEY and BIG TECH.  That combo = mind control, thought control, POWER.  The chapter following "The New Reality" is titled "The Unicorn" and is all about J. D. Vance, who represents the nexus between the big tech whackos, the far-right, Trump, and MAGA.   In reading many of Vance's statements, I couldn't distinguish between him and Trump.

“I tend to think we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left, right?” said Vance. “We need, like, a de-Baathification program—a de-wokeification program—in the United States, right?” . . . 

“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024, I think he’ll probably win… he will be the president of the United States in January 2025, I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when the courts—because you will get taken to court—and when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.’ Because this is a constitutional-level crisis. If we continue to let bureaucrats control the entire country, even when Republicans win elections, then we’ve lost, we’ve just permanently lost, we’ve permanently given up.”

Another passage: 

But once Trump crushed his competitors, Silicon Valley’s right-wing zealots had no choice but to line up behind him. They wanted something in return and put intense pressure on Trump to choose Vance as his VP, with even the reluctant Thiel lobbying Trump in multiple phone calls. The effort paid off. Two days after the failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump announced that he had chosen Vance as his running mate. . . . 

No one could savor the triumph more than [Peter] Thiel, the man who had fished Vance out of obscurity and shepherded his journey to fame, wealth, and power. And with Musk alone spending nearly $300 million—plus major contributions from tech venture capitalists and the crypto industry—Thiel’s public decision to withhold his personal millions hardly mattered. In fact, there was something poetic about Thiel’s decision to keep his financial fingerprints off the campaign that would put his former employee and protégé in the White House. Thiel had already done his job, almost singlehandedly transforming a random Yale Law student into a venture capitalist, a Catholic, a right-wing radical, a US senator, and a vice president. And if Vance manages to succeed Trump, Thiel—his benefactor, mentor, and maker—will become the most powerful man in the world.  Durán, Gil. The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy (p. 146). (Function). Kindle Edition.  

Many say they hope that Trump will die in office, or be effectively ousted using the 25th Amendment, or be impeached and convicted this time.  I don't share these hopes, because instead of having Roy Cohn/Donald Trump in the Oval Office, we would have Peter Thiel/J. D. Vance.  It's a beggar's choice, but I prefer to roll the dice with Roy/Donald.  Roy had, and Donald has, Achilles' heels.  I'm not at all sure that the same can be said of Peter/J. D. 

Frick and Frack