Illustration by Michael DiMilo
Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Michael D., Dave S., Mark O., Dennis C., John K., and Geoff Carter
Hello bots,
Are you out there? Have we declared radio silence? Gone undercover? Or are we all laid up with Brewer fever—or the dreaded Parsons Disease? Writing as we’re headed out to the Labor Day festivities and get some orange out of our systems.
Happy Labor Day,
G
My mind (and fingers typed–but never sent—high TLDR potential) a “What will history say?” bot starter piece just after the Mis vs Skenes clandestine bot conclave. I’ll try again, but shorter. Keep in mind the perspective is 20-30 years, or more, hence.
Dateline 2025: Three significant events defined this quarter mark of the 21st century. Society had reached first base safely, (barely) w/out blowing itself to smithereens.
- Baseball, a true craft sport, (unlike the more lucrative gladiator sport—American football), regained its foothold as the nation’s pastime due to the initiation of the pitch clock and a small midwest franchise capturing the nation’s fancy. “The Brewers win the pennant!, the Brewers win the pennant!, the Brewers win the pennant!, the Brewers win the pennant!”. Exclaimed: Thusly:
- Set into motion years earlier, Joe Biden’s rapid aging in 2024 and Barack Obama’s dissing of Joe in 2015 in favor of Hillary Clinton allowed for a sinister force in the universe to rise and prey upon the susceptible and selfish masses. Exploiting ancient, though proven, xenophobic and ethno-centric campaign tools, including blatant deceit described by one obscure blogger of the era as “Tartuffian”, Donald Trump single handedly turned a democratic American society into totalitarian fascism. Project 2025, (downplayed by Trump himself during the campaign) was indeed the playbook. Peace, love, and understanding were tossed by the wayside already filled with toxic industrial waste—after disembowelment of the EPA. Markets soared, consumer applause was deafening.
- AI started its meteoric rise. Large language models became household terms. Generative AI eliminated the need for human relationships. A demographic class of benign, aging humans known as “Deadheads” first started disappearing mysteriously at the Sphere in Las Vegas.Bot automation rendered construction trades obsolete. More Spheres popped up worldwide, human population continued its mysterious decline, decreasing the need for food and allowing more resource commitment to data centers. A matrix of Spheres and Data Centers replaced traditional modes of transport.
…dave.
Ibid:
- Besides the Dead shows at The Sphere article in The New Yorker a couple years ago which MM sourced, I also ran into Dead & Co huge 3-day concert events by being in Boulder and SF—by sheer coincidence at the same time.
- I recently watched a video on the production of The Wizard of Oz soon coming to The Sphere in Lost Wages.. Basically, an IMAX at a Disney park where they juice up the 3d with “immersion”–real physical forces—swirling winds, even leaves during the tornado scene. I once saw one of these—at a Disney Park…forget…might’ve been Honey I Shrunk The Kids…the gimmick there was the rat scene—they were everywhere—we have on the 3d glasses…and then they had little strings that started whipping back and forth under the seats…(rat’s tails on one’s ankles), must admit it was effective. Here’s one of a dozen videos you can find to the Sphere Wiz:
-D
Not hibernating, more in a state of catatonic muteness. Just when I think things can’t possibly get worse, they do. I think I need to visit an existential optometrist to get a new pair of lenses with which to observe the world, because my current lenses reveal a world of barbarism and hopelessness. Or maybe a prescription of happy pills would suffice. Is the Pink Floyd world of “Comfortably Numb” the best we can hope for? A Brewer pennant? A Packer trophy?
I’m in another men’s group in MN that occasionally meets for coffee and banter. At a recent meet-up, a member asked why I was unusually silent. My reply was that when I don’t have hope, words just don’t come. What is the point of language in these times? It’s just a tool for exploitation.
I may be black-pilled but not wallowing in despair. Of the many mental maladies in my family inheritance, depression isn’t one of them. Always looking forward, even to an apocalypse.
I’m curious what cheery thoughts the bots might have to share.
MarkO
Ha ha. Gotta say I love the humor of Mark and Dave’s posts. I’m currently vacationing in Door County, a great tonic for the MAGA red and orange blues. Mix a little or lotta nature, good ol’ fashioned cherry pie and Peninsula Park and I almost forget the news of the day. And the Packers hullabaloo fits the booyah stew perfectly.
I’m not quite sure how Americans have managed to swallow the red pill en masse, but here we are. I did notice that my sibs (notorious Dem supporters and red baiters) were unusually quiet about politics when they visited DC last week. Perhaps there is a sense of futility and tinge of helplessness associated with the red menace. Maybe it’s better to use this time to recharge ahead of next year’s fall midterms rather than endlessly wonder how Kennedy was ever put in charge of anything other than dog walking (not my dog, please).
-JK
“Futility and helplessness”, indeed. We are, in the words of Christie Hynde in My City Was Gone, “stunned and amazed”! (And she has the perfect intonation.)
It’s been most discouraging, and disappointing, to see the big societal actors caving to Project 2025. The law firms. The universities. Corporate America. The courts. And of course, Congress.
In the view of the thinkers behind Trump’s project (and I don’t count Trump among them), the bureaucracy had grown into an unaccountable fourth branch of government. It grows and expands , governs and regulates, operating as a kind of quasi-executive branch, but not really responsive to the Executive. The Supreme Court clearly agrees, as it has issued one shadow docket decision after another, always affirming Trump’s right to fire and dismantle. The era of “independent” Federal agencies is over.
I think that the destruction at HHS, FDA, and CDC is collateral damage, unplanned for by the conservatives, but nonetheless welcome to them. Trump has unleashed RFK, without really caring what he does. RFK destroys, according to his own anti-medical ideology, and the Project 2025 thinkers simply rub their hand together gleefully. This is bureaucracy destruction far beyond what they ever envisioned. They probably assumed that scientific & medical research and vaccine regulation would continue! But they’ll take this result. It’s conservative ideology uber alles.
The resistance, which is putatively led by the opposition party, is clearly back on its heels. But that has been the pattern in our national politics. When either the Dems or the Repubs lose big, they tend to wander through the Sinai desert for a few years. It’s going to take a strong Presidential nominee to get the Democrats back together as a meaningful force. Bill Clinton did it after the Reagan-Bush administrations by running, in effect, against his own party. The next Democratic nominee will need to do the same.
There WILL be Trump fatigue by 2028. Even if Trump had not planted all these economic time bombs (tariffs, deportation), a recession would have been likely. The added Trump headwinds cannot help.
It took 90 years (since the New Deal) for the modern administrative state to be fully built. Trump has dealt it a big, though not fatal, blow in just a few months. But the plain fact is that people like what government does. I don’t think Trump can fully weaponize the state in his own party’s interest. Even though it looks that way now.
–MM
Yeah, things are looking bleak. Trump’s version of Oliver’s Army invading our cities, citizens pulled off the streets by 21st century Brownshirts, and now Dumblefuck (yes, in this case it is capitalized) RFK, Jr. misguided and brainless policy decisions about the CDC and vaccines, leading to the suspension of Florida’s mandates for school-age vaccines were unimaginable a year ago. So, thanks, RFKJ. You’ve allowed polio to make a comeback. We’ll be building a quarantine wall around Florida pretty soon. And the Administration’s manipulation of our election system is probably the most chilling event.
Yeah, it’s bleak. But fuck ‘em. The people behind these horrible and cruel policies are in the minority. In some polls, 70% of the people oppose Trump and his policies. And as hard as they try to force minority rule upon us, they still have the majority of the American people to contend with. And we’re not taking it. We still (knock on wood) have a free press, the right to peacefully assemble, and freedom of speech. And we’ve been using it. Will we sit still when they try to take away our vote? Should things get really bad and push comes to shove (and I suspect it might) the American people will go to extremes to keep this from happening.
I certainly hope this situation doesn’t descend into violence, but I see this possibly headed towards civil war, or, if we do become a fascist state, in a weird reversal of the Allied forces in World War II, a free European coalition coming to free the American people from fascism (maybe through Canada or Mexico).
Things are bleak, but they’re not over. I hear no fat lady song.
G
But jeeez, Geoff. Thanks a lot for that ‘bot-slap of a wake-up call. Ouch–as I type these words I’m noticing that all-too-familiar twinge of queasy despair in my guts as I ponder the carnage of Trump’s nightmarish second term. But I shall follow y’all’s brave lead and, for a moment, try to shake-off that “state of catatonic muteness” that Marko so aptly describes.
I admit to a slight tendency to plug my ears and chant “la-la-la-can’t-hear-you” when confronted with the latest Trumpian outrages. It’s all so surreal and dystopian and mind-boggling and heart-breaking.
So yeah, I confess that when I manage to tune-out news of the ever-mounting crazy and cruel policies spewing out of the White House, my soul just feels a bit more intact. Then, okay, maybe it’s the rose-colored glasses or the white privilege or that kick-ass weed I scored at the Sphere, but the world where I live my day-to-day looks and feels pretty good. And I mean good like Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” skies of blue good. You know, like “I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do, they’re really saying ‘I love you’.”
Despite Trump’s uncanny ability to build a political base by exploiting the basest of human emotions such as fear and hate and greed, I believe there’s still a whole lotta love in America. Even beyond friends and family, most folks I run into seem to be generally kind and good people–including many of those who were lured into voting for Trump.
So I’m holding out hope. As MarkM says, “There WILL be Trump Fatigue by 2028.” Let’s say the glass isn’t 3/4th empty, it’s 1/4th full–and that just might be enough. And while I’m hacking-up cliched metaphors, let me add that the pendulum may have swung into crazy-land, but it hasn’t tipped over yet. C’mon, it’s going to swing back soon. Isn’t it?
DC