Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Apparently, we’ve reached the point where Donald Trump and his political ilk—yes, ilk, because apparently we’ve wandered into the forest of bad ideas—have decided that artificial intelligence can police itself.

Because what could possibly go wrong?

Nothing says responsible technological governance quite like handing the keys to the candy store to the kids and saying, “Go ahead. Just promise not to eat everything.”

The people actually creating some of this technology have been warning that we need reasonable regulations and guardrails. Not because they hate AI. Not because they want to stop innovation. Quite the opposite. They understand what they are building, and some of them have openly argued that powerful AI needs oversight before it becomes a problem rather than after.

But apparently the Trump administration has a better idea:

Let the industry regulate itself.

Because corporations have always been famous for voluntarily limiting their own profits in the name of public safety.

What could possibly happen?

And then there’s the terminology. Apparently, we’ve now graduated from artificial intelligence to “super intelligence.” Because nothing makes a potentially complicated technological issue easier to understand than giving it a name that sounds like it belongs on the side of a Marvel villain.

I still prefer AI, although I’ve never been completely comfortable with the word artificial.

It isn’t really artificial intelligence in the traditional sense. It doesn’t sit around contemplating existence while staring dramatically out a window. It isn’t a synthetic human brain. It is essentially an extraordinarily powerful system for processing, organizing, recognizing and generating information at speeds no human can match.

So I’ve always thought automated intelligence was a better description.

AI doesn’t necessarily know something the way a human knows something. It processes an enormous amount of information and produces an answer based on patterns and probabilities at speeds that make the human brain look like it’s running Windows 95 on a dial-up connection.

And that’s precisely why guardrails matter.

The faster and more powerful the technology becomes, the more important it is to have rules about what it can do, who is responsible when it goes wrong, and how humans maintain control over it.

But apparently we’re going with:

“Trust us.”

Trust the companies.

Trust the technology.

Trust the administration.

And, apparently, trust that Donald Trump will personally keep superintelligence under control because he is a really smart president.

Well, that’s reassuring.

Because if there is one thing history has taught us, it’s that complicated systems involving enormous amounts of money, power and technology always work out beautifully when everyone involved simply promises to behave.

No regulations.

No meaningful oversight.

No independent guardrails.

Just a bunch of incredibly powerful companies standing around the digital candy store saying, “Don’t worry. We won’t eat the candy.”

Meanwhile, the rest of us are standing outside wondering whether somebody should at least install a lock on the door.

I’m not saying AI is going to become Skynet.

I’m not saying it’s going to become Ultron.

And I’m certainly not saying we’re inevitably headed toward some science-fiction apocalypse.

But here’s the thing about reasonable regulation:

You don’t have to believe the house is going to burn down before you install a smoke detector.

That’s what responsible government is supposed to do.

You look at a technology with enormous potential benefits and enormous potential risks, and you establish reasonable boundaries before the technology becomes so deeply embedded in society that changing the rules becomes nearly impossible.

We don’t need politicians to panic about AI.

We don’t need them to ban it.

And we don’t need them to pretend it’s harmless.

We need adults in the room.

Because handing superintelligent—or automated—technology to an industry and telling it to regulate itself sounds less like a technological strategy and more like giving a bunch of kids a credit card and dropping them off at the candy store.

And then telling them:

“Just remember, kids. Moderation is important.”

Yeah.

I’m sure that’ll work out great.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Apparently, the answer to every problem in America these days is remarkably simple:

Just give us another two years.

No, wait. Four years.

Actually, why stop there? Maybe just give us forever.

That seems to be the MAGA argument whenever somebody points out that the country isn’t exactly experiencing the promised golden age. Don’t like the economy? Give Trump more time. Don’t like the tariffs? Give Trump more time. Don’t like what is happening to government institutions, universities, scientific research, civil service, immigration policy, or America’s standing in the world?

You guessed it.

More time.

It’s a fascinating political strategy: if the results aren’t working, simply extend the experiment.

And apparently the fact that much of what is happening was not exactly a surprise is irrelevant.

Project 2025 was never some mysterious document that materialized from the political ether. It was a detailed conservative governing blueprint, and by early 2026, outside trackers were already documenting that more than half of its identified domestic administrative recommendations had been initiated or completed. (Center for Progressive Reform⁠)

So when someone says, “We haven’t finished what we started,” that’s actually the problem.

You’re almost finished.

And now you’re asking for more time to finish it?

Meanwhile, the economic scoreboard isn’t exactly the unquestionable triumph being advertised. FactCheck.org’s July 2026 review found slower job growth, inflation running at 3.5 percent in June, higher gasoline prices, declining labor-force participation, and federal debt up roughly 10.7 percent during Trump’s second term through the period examined. (FactCheck.org⁠)

The latest official GDP estimate isn’t exactly screaming economic miracle either: real GDP grew at a 1.5 percent annual rate in the second quarter of 2026, down from 2.1 percent in the first quarter. (Bureau of Economic Analysis⁠)

And here’s the part that makes the whole argument particularly strange.

Even Trump recently acknowledged that he had done a poor job communicating his economic record, while reporting pointed to rising gas prices and declining consumer confidence as sources of public dissatisfaction. (Reuters⁠)

But apparently the solution isn’t changing course.

It’s asking for another term.

It’s the political equivalent of taking your car to the mechanic because the engine is making horrible noises and saying:

“I know the check-engine light is on, the transmission is slipping, and there’s smoke coming out of the hood, but could you just give me another 50,000 miles? I’m pretty sure we’re about to see what this thing can really do.”

At some point, “give us more time” stops being an explanation and starts becoming an admission.

Because if your argument is that you haven’t had enough time to demonstrate how successful your policies are after nearly two years of unified Republican control and an administration aggressively implementing its stated agenda, then what exactly were all those promises about?

We were told tariffs would bring manufacturing roaring back.

We were told prices would come down.

We were told government would become more efficient.

We were told America would become stronger.

We were told this was going to be a historic transformation.

Well, history is keeping receipts.

And the answer cannot perpetually be:

“Just wait.”

Wait another two years.

Then another four.

Then another election.

Then another emergency.

Then another enemy.

Then another explanation for why the promised results haven’t materialized yet.

At some point, Americans have to be allowed to look at the actual results and say, “Okay. We’ve seen enough of the experiment.”

That’s not partisan.

That’s not radical.

That’s called accountability.

If the MAGA movement believes it has done a wonderful job, then fine. Make the case. Put the numbers on the table. Explain the policies. Explain the consequences. Explain what has improved and what hasn’t.

But don’t tell Americans that the only reason the plan isn’t working is because you haven’t been allowed to implement enough of it.

Because that argument eventually leads to a rather uncomfortable question:

How much power do you need before you’ll finally accept responsibility for the results?

Two more years?

Four more years?

A permanent majority?

At some point, “just give us more time” stops sounding like confidence.

It starts sounding like a request for an unlimited warranty on a product the customer is already watching fall apart.

Really?

One more time?

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Riley Gaines has lost another lawsuit.

At this point, I’m beginning to wonder if anyone in the history of American sports has managed to turn fifth place into such a full-time career.

Because here is the part of the Riley Gaines story that somehow keeps getting lost in the political fog machine: she did not finish second to a transgender athlete who barely edged her out for first place.

She didn’t lose a championship.

She didn’t get bumped from the podium.

She didn’t finish behind Lia Thomas.

She tied Lia Thomas for fifth place.

Fifth.

There were four women ahead of both of them. The official results show Gaines and Thomas touching the wall in exactly the same time, 1:43.40. (Supreme Court⁠)

And yet somehow this fifth-place tie became the origin story for a political career, lawsuits, congressional appearances, media appearances and an entire movement devoted to convincing America that Riley Gaines was robbed of something monumental.

The trophy situation certainly made for an awkward podium moment. NCAA officials initially had only one fifth-place trophy available and Thomas was the swimmer photographed holding it. Gaines later received her own fifth-place trophy. (PolitiFact⁠)

But let’s be painfully precise about what happened in the pool.

If Lia Thomas had never entered that race, Riley Gaines still would have finished fifth.

That isn’t my interpretation. It’s arithmetic.

Four swimmers finished ahead of them. Gaines and Thomas tied for fifth. Remove Thomas from the race and Gaines moves into fifth by herself. She doesn’t suddenly become fourth. She doesn’t become third. She doesn’t become the national champion.

She remains fifth.

And now, years later, Gaines has another legal loss to add to the résumé. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit against the NCAA, ruling that the plaintiffs had not established the NCAA as a recipient of federal financial assistance sufficient to support their Title IX claim. Gaines and the other plaintiffs have indicated they intend to appeal. (UPI⁠)

Which brings us to the remarkable part.

Imagine explaining this entire saga to someone who knows absolutely nothing about American politics or college swimming:

“Who was Riley Gaines?”

“She was a college swimmer.”

“Was she an NCAA champion?”

“No.”

“Did she lose the championship to a transgender swimmer?”

“No.”

“Did she finish second?”

“No.”

“Third?”

“No.”

“Fourth?”

“No.”

“So what happened?”

“She tied for fifth.”

“With the transgender swimmer?”

“Yes.”

“And the transgender swimmer beat her?”

“No. They tied.”

“And four other women finished ahead of both of them?”

“Yes.”

“And this became a major political cause?”

“Apparently.”

At some point, you almost have to admire the sheer efficiency of the American outrage machine.

Most athletes spend their careers trying to be remembered for winning.

Riley Gaines managed to become nationally famous for fifth place.

And that’s really the strange irony here. Whatever anyone thinks about transgender participation in women’s sports, policies surrounding eligibility, Title IX or the NCAA, those are legitimate subjects for public debate. They can and should be discussed using rules, evidence, athletic data and actual competitive outcomes.

But turning a tie for fifth into evidence that someone was personally displaced from greatness requires leaving the scoreboard somewhere back in 2022.

Because the scoreboard doesn’t care about the political narrative.

It says:

Five.

Not second.

Not runner-up.

Not robbed of first.

Fifth.

And apparently, after all these years, fifth place is still trying to become first place in the biography.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There is something slightly amusing about calling what we have today “artificial intelligence.” The phrase makes it sound as though we have created a digital brain sitting somewhere in a server farm, contemplating the meaning of existence while drinking imaginary coffee.

I’m not entirely convinced.

At least not yet.

What we have feels a lot more like automated intelligence.

AI takes an absolutely ridiculous amount of information—books, articles, images, code, conversations, scientific papers, photographs, history, mathematics, human language—and finds patterns in all of it. Then, when we ask it a question, it produces something that looks remarkably like an answer.

And sometimes it is remarkably good.

Sometimes it is also spectacularly wrong.

Which, admittedly, is another very human characteristic.

That distinction matters because we have a tendency to anthropomorphize technology. We see a machine producing a coherent paragraph, having a conversation, writing code, creating an image or solving a problem, and our brains immediately start filling in the blanks.

“Holy crap. It thinks.”

Maybe.

Or maybe we have simply become exceptionally good at building machines that can manipulate information in ways that look an awful lot like thinking.

And that’s where things get interesting.

Because eventually we’re going to have to decide exactly what we’re building before we discover that we accidentally built something we don’t completely understand.

We have been warned about this for decades.

The Terminator gave us Skynet, which apparently looked at humanity and decided the appropriate solution to the human condition was nuclear annihilation.

The Matrix gave us Agent Smith, who concluded that humanity was basically a virus because apparently even artificial intelligence can develop a superiority complex.

Avengers: Age of Ultron gave us Ultron, who looked at the entirety of human history—the wars, genocides, greed, stupidity and general tendency to repeatedly step on the same rake—and concluded:

“Yeah, these things have to go.”

And then there is Star Trek: The Next Generation, which gave us Data.

Data is considerably more interesting to me.

Because Data doesn’t want to destroy humanity.

He wants to understand it.

He wants to experience humanity. Humor. Emotion. Friendship. Art. Music. Relationships. All those wonderfully irrational things that make us human.

And perhaps that is the real question we’re facing.

Not “Will AI become Skynet?”

The question is:

What are we actually creating?

Because right now, we’re building systems whose capabilities are advancing faster than our ability to establish rules around them.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re ten minutes away from an AI deciding that humans are a disease.

But it does mean we probably shouldn’t wait until the metaphorical computer starts saying “I have become self-aware” before somebody in government asks what the hell we’re doing.

Regulation doesn’t have to mean stopping AI.

We’ve regulated automobiles without banning automobiles. We regulate airplanes without outlawing aviation. We regulate pharmaceuticals, medical devices, financial institutions and nuclear power because we’ve learned a rather important lesson throughout human history:

Just because we can build something doesn’t mean we should build it without rules.

AI deserves the same kind of thinking.

We should care about who controls it, what information it uses, how it affects employment, privacy, elections, intellectual property, warfare and critical infrastructure. We should care about what happens when an AI system makes a consequential mistake and nobody knows exactly why it happened.

And perhaps most importantly, we should care about whether we’re creating systems that become increasingly autonomous without establishing meaningful human accountability.

Because that’s the part that scares me more than Skynet.

Not a computer suddenly developing hatred for humanity.

Humans giving increasingly powerful machines increasingly consequential responsibilities and then shrugging when something goes wrong.

That’s a much more believable science-fiction story.

And maybe that’s the irony of artificial intelligence.

We’re worried that someday AI might become too human.

Meanwhile, we’re still trying to figure out how to keep humans from behaving like idiots with powerful technology.

We’ve spent centuries inventing things before fully considering what happens when those things fall into the wrong hands.

Gunpowder.

Nuclear weapons.

Social media.

Facebook.

Okay, maybe those last two aren’t quite equivalent.

But you get the point.

Perhaps AI isn’t the beginning of the end of humanity.

Perhaps it’s simply the next enormous technological gamble humans have decided to take.

And that’s why I don’t know whether I’m looking at the birth of something genuinely intelligent, an extraordinarily sophisticated information-processing machine, or the technological equivalent of a very convincing parlor trick.

Maybe someday we’ll know.

Maybe we’ll eventually have machines that aren’t merely assembling information but actually understand what they’re doing.

Maybe they’ll become something closer to Data than Skynet.

Or maybe, somewhere deep inside some future server farm, a computer will finally read the complete history of humanity and quietly mutter:

“You know what? Ultron had a point.”

Let’s hope our regulations arrive before that particular software update.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Apparently, we have reached a point in American politics where checking the team name before accusing someone of perjury is considered an optional step.

Senator Eric Schmitt thought he had himself a genuine gotcha moment with former special counsel Jack Smith.

There he was, sitting in a Senate hearing, armed with text messages that he apparently believed placed Smith at an Atlanta Hawks game on February 3, 2024. And not just any basketball game, because Schmitt was trying to establish that Smith had been in Atlanta at the same time Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was dealing with the Trump investigation.

So Schmitt went for it.

He warned Smith not to perjure himself.

Then he essentially announced that Smith had already perjured himself.

And for good measure, he called Smith a “total dirtbag.”

Mic drop.

Except…

Wrong Hawks.

The basketball game Smith actually attended was a University of Iowa women’s basketball game against Maryland in College Park, Maryland, where Caitlin Clark was playing.

The Iowa team is the Hawkeyes.

Not the Hawks.

You know, Schmitt’s entire case apparently depended on confusing a four-letter nickname with a five-letter nickname.

Hawks.

Hawkeyes.

Atlanta.

Maryland.

NBA.

Women’s college basketball.

It’s like accusing someone of being at a Dallas Cowboys game because somebody mentioned the Cowboys, only to discover they were watching Wyoming.

And the funniest part is that the correction didn’t require some 14-month forensic investigation conducted by twelve federal agencies and a guy with a magnifying glass.

Amy Klobuchar basically had to say, “Dude, perhaps look at the team name.”

The texts Schmitt presented apparently didn’t establish that Smith was in Atlanta. They referenced the Iowa game. Smith himself recalled attending the Iowa-Maryland game because Caitlin Clark was playing.

So the grand perjury trap went from “I’ve got you, Jack Smith!” to “Wait… which Hawks are we talking about?”

And that’s where the modern political magic trick begins.

Because when the facts don’t cooperate, apparently the strategy is to simply redefine what happened.

Schmitt’s defense afterward was essentially that he was just asking questions.

Ah, yes.

The “I was only asking questions” defense.

It’s the political equivalent of throwing a pie in someone’s face and then explaining that technically you were only investigating the structural integrity of pies.

The problem isn’t that a senator asked Smith whether he was in Atlanta. That’s a perfectly legitimate question.

The problem is accusing somebody of perjury and calling him a dirtbag before you’ve established that your own evidence actually says what you think it says.

That tiny little detail called being correct tends to matter when you’re accusing someone of lying under oath.

And now comes the part I’m really looking forward to.

Let’s see how this gets spun.

Because somewhere, right now, somebody is probably working overtime to turn:

“Senator confuses Iowa Hawkeyes with Atlanta Hawks.”

into:

“LIBERAL MEDIA ATTACKS SENATOR FOR EXPOSING JACK SMITH.”

Maybe tomorrow we’ll learn that the real scandal is that Caitlin Clark somehow caused the entire thing.

Maybe Fox will spend ten minutes explaining that technically both teams have the word “Hawk” in their name, therefore Schmitt was basically right.

Maybe Donald will weigh in and declare it the biggest basketball scandal in American history.

At this point, I wouldn’t even be surprised if somebody blamed the scoreboard.

But here’s the lesson, folks:

Check your facts, bro.

Before you accuse somebody of perjury.

Before you call somebody a dirtbag.

Before you hold up a giant poster board in the United States Senate like you’ve just cracked the Watergate files.

And especially before you build an entire conspiracy theory around a basketball game.

Because sometimes the smoking gun isn’t a smoking gun.

Sometimes it’s just a Hawkeye wearing a basketball uniform in Maryland.

And somewhere in Iowa, thousands of Hawkeye fans are probably watching this whole thing unfold thinking the same thing:

“Dude… seriously?”

Welcome to 2026 America, where apparently even the basketball mascots need fact-checkers.

Hawks. Hawkeyes.

Check your facts, bro.

Seriously.

It’s not that hard.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

I never thought I would live long enough to hear this.

Not in a history book. Not in some dystopian political thriller. Not in an alternate universe where the Cold War ended differently.

I mean actually sitting here in my lifetime and hearing other countries at the United Nations talk about the United States in terms that sound suspiciously like something we used to reserve for the Soviet Union.

Western oppression. Economic coercion. Military intimidation. American hegemony.

Well, hell.

Somewhere along the way, America apparently wandered into the international neighborhood and discovered that we were the guy everyone was talking about when they thought we weren’t listening.

China has increasingly been willing to portray the United States as a power that uses its economic and military strength to pressure other nations. And while China has its own enormous record of coercive economic practices and human-rights controversies, that doesn’t automatically make the criticism of American policy meaningless.

That’s the uncomfortable part.

You can disagree with the messenger and still recognize that somebody is hearing the message.

And under Donald Trump’s second administration, the rest of the world has been given plenty of material to work with.

Tariffs. Sanctions. Threats of military force. Pressure on allies. An increasingly transactional approach to international relationships. The administration has openly embraced an “America First” foreign policy while simultaneously insisting that American strength is greater than ever. Trump’s September 2026 United Nations speech itself emphasized American sovereignty, confronting enemies and rejecting what he characterized as global control.

That’s certainly one way to project strength.

But here’s the thing about leadership:

Leadership isn’t the same thing as having the biggest stick.

For most of my lifetime, American influence wasn’t simply about aircraft carriers and the size of the economy. It was also about alliances, diplomacy, international institutions, economic partnerships, foreign aid, scientific cooperation and the idea that the United States was willing to build things that benefited more than just itself.

We didn’t always live up to that ideal. Obviously.

America has never been the spotless hero in the international story. We’ve invaded countries, supported questionable governments, interfered in other nations’ affairs and occasionally demonstrated that our definition of “democracy” became remarkably flexible whenever oil, communism, terrorism or geopolitical interests entered the room.

History isn’t a Disney movie.

But there was still an enormous difference between having power and being trusted with power.

And that distinction matters.

Other countries are not sitting around waiting for America to tell them what to do anymore. They’re building alternative relationships, alternative trade arrangements and alternative institutions. BRICS has expanded its membership and influence, while China has been aggressively cultivating relationships throughout the developing world.

That doesn’t mean BRICS has somehow become the humanitarian Avengers while America twirls its mustache in a dark room. International politics doesn’t work that neatly.

But it does mean other countries increasingly have options.

And options are what happens when the guy at the head of the table keeps reminding everyone that he can flip the table over.

A June 2026 Chatham House analysis described Trump’s economic policies as a major break from the postwar economic consensus and argued that other countries may increasingly need to build economic cooperation that doesn’t depend on either Washington or Beijing. A separate Congressional Research Service assessment notes that U.S. actions perceived as threatening the economic interests or sovereignty of countries in the Western Hemisphere have contributed to some governments seeking stronger relationships with other partners.

That’s the part that should make Americans uncomfortable.

Not because China is suddenly the good guy.

Not because Russia is the good guy.

Not because BRICS is the good guy.

But because America shouldn’t need to be the only good guy in the room to remain a leader.

We should want other countries to look at the United States and think:

“That’s the country we want to work with.”

Not:

“That’s the country we need to protect ourselves from.”

There is a profound difference.

For decades, America’s greatest advantage wasn’t simply that we could threaten someone economically or militarily. It was that we could convince other countries that cooperating with us was better than fighting us.

That’s soft power.

That’s diplomacy.

That’s leadership.

And once other countries begin constructing their own economic and political alternatives because they don’t trust the guy holding the largest stick, rebuilding that trust isn’t accomplished by buying an even larger stick.

You don’t restore leadership by demanding everyone acknowledge that you’re the leader.

You restore it by becoming the country people want to follow.

At 59 years old, I honestly never expected to see the United States described in international forums using language I grew up associating with the enemies of the United States.

That may be the strangest part of all.

The country that spent much of my lifetime warning the world about authoritarian power now finds itself increasingly having to explain how its own exercise of power is different.

Maybe that’s the real lesson here.

Being the most powerful country isn’t the same as being the most respected country.

And if we’re not careful, we may discover that the rest of the world doesn’t have to overthrow American leadership.

They can simply build a world that doesn’t require it.

And that, more than any aircraft carrier, tariff or presidential speech, might be the real measure of how much influence we’ve lost.