Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

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At Large Opinion

Dog Days

Olive and Doxa (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

I’m walking my dogs on a morning that’s fresh from October’s PR department: bright and clear, cool and crisp. The green lawns are spangled with dew, the trees beginning to drop hints of autumn: fleshy ginkgo fruits, walnuts, hickory nuts, and ruby red hackberries scattered on the sidewalks and quiet side streets of Midtown. Watch your step. The leaves won’t be far behind.

Early celebrants have already set out their Halloween displays: Styrofoam headstones, plastic skeletons, pumpkins and gourds on the steps, cornstalks on the door, ghostly cobwebs on the shrubs. The annual happy dance of harvest and death, which has always seemed weird to me. But hey, I like the candy. In the spirit of the season, I bought a big bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups at Walgreens a couple days ago, none of which will ever see the bottom of a trick-or-treat sack. Suck it, kids. 

My dogs don’t care much about pumpkins and faux skeletal remains, but they are on the lookout for the occasional gray squirrel that dares skirt our passage. They like to act fierce, like the tipsy bar fighter saying, “Let me at ’em!” as his friends hold him back. I will never let my dogs at ’em and they know it. And they don’t even drink. Idiots.

A car pulls to a halt next to us on Linden and the driver lowers her window. “I really like your columns!” she says. 

“Well, hey, thanks!” I say, feeling mildly celebrity-ish and wishing I’d brushed my hair.

As she pulls away, I regret that I’d not asked her name. It’s a small town, I think. I probably know her. Oh, well. The encounter reminds me that I haven’t come up with a column idea for the next issue of the Flyer. 

We are less than 30 days away from a presidential election that seems weighted with more importance than any in my lifetime, but the thought of writing another column with the lying orange narcissist’s name in it repels me like picking up dog poop. It’s got to be done, I know, but I don’t have to like it. And there’s nothing worse than when one of my girls drops one at the beginning of our walk, so I have to carry a bag of warm doggy doo for 30 minutes. (Unless I go down that one alley behind the big houses, where all those trash bins are. Shhh.) 

Come to think of it, carrying a bag of warm poop around is a pretty decent metaphor for what the former president has done to our heads. He’s gross and there’s no handy trash bin where we can put him. He’s everywhere, lying about hurricane rescue efforts and putting lives in danger, slandering immigrants and putting lives in danger, inflating the crime rate, trashing a healthy economy, disparaging the intelligence of his opponents, pimping for war, doubling down on his lies about the 2020 election. Argh.

And he’s been treated so unfairly, like no president in history, that he can tell you. Everything is rigged against him. Please. He is the most whiny-ass grown man I’ve ever had the misfortune to be exposed to. He has no conscience, no shame, no remorse. His lies are the most easily disprovable fabrications ever uttered by an American politician, but it doesn’t matter and he knows it. And that’s what I can’t get my head around.

If I work at it, I can understand the former guy as the latest in the historical parade of megalomaniacs and fanatics who finagled their way into power in one country or another. Now it’s the United States’ turn. It’s terrible and terrifying but here we are. What I cannot understand is how there are so many Americans who can listen to his never-ending torrent of hate-filled batshit, and say, “Yep, I’m down with that guy. He speaks for me.” It’s depressing.

After seeing clips of the fervid GOP rally at Butler, Pennsylvania, last weekend, I’m beginning to think we’re looking at a possible nightmare scenario either way this election goes. Obviously, I prefer one of those scenarios over the other, but there are literally millions of angry and easily manipulated people out there, people who can be convinced that Democrats control the weather, people who aren’t going away. Where’s that alley when you need it? 

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At Large Opinion

Hurricane Blues

Henderson County, North Carolina on September 27 (Photo: NCDOTcommunications | creative commons | via Wikimedia Commons)

Someone created a meme that went viral last Friday, as Hurricane Helene was proceeding to devastate portions of six states. It was a photo of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on a cell phone standing near some trailers and overturned chairs. The caption read: “Hello, President Biden, it’s Ron! May I please have some socialism?”

The meme was being enacted in real life as Helene churned relentlessly across the Gulf of Mexico toward the southeastern U.S. The governors of five of the soon-to-be affected states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina) had declared a state of emergency two or three days in advance of the storm, asked for federal help, and quickly got it approved by President Biden.

The sixth state? That would be Tennessee, where our cosplaying Christian governor, Bill Lee, decided to take a bold alternative course of action. None of that damn socialism for Bill, nosiree. Last Friday morning — the day the Category 4 hurricane made landfall — Lee asked Tennesseans to participate in a “day of prayer and fasting.” Give me a G—damn break. What criminal incompetence!

Friday afternoon, after flood waters in eastern Tennessee had destroyed several towns, threatened dams, and put tens of thousands of people out of their homes, 54 patients and staff huddled atop a hospital in rural Unicoi County, Tennessee, awaiting help. Fortunately for them, Virginia and North Carolina rescue workers were able to provide lifeboats and helicopters and get them to safety. Good ol’ Rocky Top? Not so much. Governor Lee finally got around to declaring a state of emergency Friday night. Guess he was hungry from fasting all day?

On Saturday, Lee and GOP Senator Marsha Blackburn surveyed the damage and destruction from an airplane. (Blackburn had spent the day of the hurricane in Michigan, “interviewing” Donald Trump at a rally.) We can only presume she was also fasting and praying after voting to shut down the government earlier in the week.

As the remnants of Helene began to dissipate, millions of Americans were left without power, water, and phone service across the Southeast. Roads, homes, businesses, bridges, and other pieces of the infrastructure were flushed downstream. As I write this, the storm has been blamed for at least 120 deaths across five states, with that total expected to rise as waters recede.

Asheville, North Carolina, which was absolutely destroyed, is 500 miles from the Florida coastline where Helene made landfall and sits at an elevation of 2,134 feet. For reference, Memphis is 325 miles from the gulf and sits at an elevation of 338 feet.

Climate change is here, and all the fasting and prayers in the world aren’t going to fix it. We need credible research and forecasting, and science-based information about what we’re dealing with.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which oversees the National Weather Service, FEMA, Office of Ocean and Atmospheric Research (OAR), and other climatological agencies, is responsible for keeping state and local officials and the public aware of severe weather and other climate-based threats. Without the updates and forecasts from NOAA, Americans would be, well, up a creek.

That much would seem obvious … unless you’re a devotee of Project 2025, the GOP’s 920-page policy blueprint for the next administration. Candidate Trump has disavowed it, but it was written by several former Trump administration officials. Project 2025 devotes a whole four pages to NOAA and the National Weather Service. The section was written by Thomas F. Gilman, an official in Trump’s Commerce Department. The document calls the NOAA a “primary component of the climate-change alarm industry” and says it “should be broken up and downsized.” Project 2025 also says the National Weather Service “should focus on its data-gathering services” and “should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”

Yeah, that damn climate-change alarm industry is just more socialism! Wake up and smell the ozone, sheeple! There’s money to be made on the weather! Fox News or X or Newsmax will take over hurricane forecasts and monetize ’em. It will be like fasting and praying about weather emergencies, only with opinions and ads. What could go wrong? 

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At Large Opinion

The Big Bamboozle

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge that we’ve been taken.”

That’s a quote from Carl Sagan in his invaluable book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Written in 1995, on the cusp of our digital age, Sagan’s insights have proven astonishingly accurate. More than 25 years ago, he warned against the dumbing down of humans that would arise as we began consuming knowledge in pieces, in bits and sound bites. Sagan warned that we would soon be consuming “lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, and especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

Sound familiar? Think of the wave of “experts” that has arisen among us lately, folks who have “done their own research” on politics, science, climate change, vaccines, you name it. It reminds me of a recent New Yorker cartoon, wherein a man turns from his computer screen to his wife and says, “Honey, come look! I’ve found some information that all the world’s top scientists and doctors missed.”

What Sagan didn’t predict, at least not to my knowledge, was the onset of artificial intelligence, those voracious search engines run by giant tech companies that feed on every morsel of online information and regurgitate it to be used in art, literature, and research. 

It’s garbage that creates garbage. If there’s a mistake in a piece of content, it gets indiscriminately picked up and amplified as a fact, and re-amplified with each ensuing search. It’s called AI “slop,” which is a perfect term for it. 

I’ve written about this before, but when you search my name on Meta AI, it says I was the lead singer of a band called Gun Club. That is only “true” in the sense it is now reported as a fact about my life in some online searches. I’m stuck with it.

This sort of mistake happens millions of times a day, as AI scours and plagiarizes the web, doing non-coherent “research,” creating content that ends up in term papers, on social media, and in the news. These false results can eventually skew and dilute even formerly reliable sources, such as Google. 

The problem worsens when it comes to imagery. AI can produce a “photograph” of anyone doing anything — a picture of Bruce Springsteen jumping the Grand Canyon in an Evel Knievel suit? No problem. A picture of Kamala Harris in a Chinese Army uniform? Piece of cake. Elon Musk even posted one of those to his millions of X followers. It’s not art. It’s a screensaver, an avatar, propaganda. It’s disposable visual slop.We’re being dumbed down whether we like it (or know it) or not. 

To make things worse, AI uses massive amounts of electricity, as does crypto-currency “mining.” (I’m still waiting for someone to explain how bitcoin works as anything other than an unregulated Ponzi scheme along the lines of Beanie Babies or baseball cards.) Here’s a clue: If Trump is selling it (and he is), it’s a scam, designed to remove your actual money from your actual bank account. 

Memphis is now the home to “Colossus,” the largest supercomputer on Earth. It’s Musk’s xAI operation, which is bringing tens of jobs to our community while taxing the power grid and running unregulated, polluting gas turbines 24 hours a day. You want more details about the deal? Good luck. 

Memphis is also getting a new crypto-mining facility that will bring a couple of night watchman jobs to a big field in Hickory Hill filled with rows of “container buildings” surrounded by an 8-foot-high chain-link fence. It will eat up power at a prodigious rate, but MLGW officials are mum about it. Maybe if we put AI on the case, we’ll get some answers.

I know I’m nearing “old man yells at cloud” territory, but since I have to remind myself to do the following, I’ll remind you as well: Take time each day to remove yourself from artificial life. Read a book. Take a walk. Listen to music. Move! Life is short and love is more than a heart emoji on somebody’s vacation photo. Don’t let yourself be bamboozled. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Silver Alert

Mom is 100 and fabulous. (Photo: Alan VanWyngarden)

I awoke to a loud “Silver Alert” on my phone the other day. I’m not sure why it made a sound, unless I accidentally set up an audible alarm for such things, which is entirely possible. My iPhone is full of tricks and surprises. For example, I haven’t been able to type the letter “p” in texts for six months, which is a -ain in the butt. 

At any rate, I reached groggily for the phone and read that “a Silver Alert has been issued on behalf of the Cowan, Tennessee, Police Department for missing 79-year-old Oscar Howard.* He was last seen in the area of Chestnut Street in Cowan wearing a green T-shirt and blue jeans. Howard has a medical condition that may impair his ability to return safely without assistance.”

I thought about Oscar as I wandered into the kitchen, safely and without assistance, wearing a black T-shirt and pajama pants. I hoped he would be found quickly and vowed to keep an eye out for him. 

I’d just gotten back the day before from a trip to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where 16 members of my family gathered to celebrate my mother’s 100th birthday, and her remarkable life. Let me tell you, the woman is still sharp, funny, and capable of surprises. She zips around the grounds of her assisted-living complex with a walker, but without further assistance, making sure to log at least a half-hour of fast-striding exercise a day. She still has a great sense of humor and seems to know everyone in the place. 

We celebrated my mother’s big day in a private room at an excellent restaurant in Old Mesilla. After dinner, a cake with three large candles was set in front of her (because nobody wants to mess with 100 candles). As we finished singing “Happy Birthday,” there was the usual chorus of “… and many more,” to which she said with a big smile, “Well, one more … or maybe two.” She blew out the candles and said her wish was that we all lived a long and happy life. Then she got up and circled the table with her walker, speaking to everyone in turn, telling me I was “her favorite son,” then, with a grin, telling my brother seated next to me the same thing.

She was on form all evening long and it was a delight to see because like many elderly folks, her mind can sometimes misfire when she gets tired. She can “spiral,” as they say, and repeat herself in the course of a conversation. She does so cheerfully, and is clueless that she’s doing it, but she’s 100 years old, after all, and some age-related mental decline is natural. 

But even so, it was surprising when she suddenly stood up and announced loudly to the room that, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs! The people that came in. They’re eating the cats! They’re eating the pets of the people that live there! And this is what’s happening in our country!” We gasped and turned to each other, unsure of what to make of such a statement. Then she shouted, “They want to have transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison!” Then she snarled, “In six states, they’re executing babies after they’re born!” 

At that point, we realized Mom needed to be taken back to her apartment. It was past 9 p.m. and she was obviously spiraling, spouting nonsense. She needed rest. Everyone understood, so we bid our good nights and gently escorted her to our car. It was still a wonderful evening and a memory I’ll always treasure … 

Oh, wait. Oh, jeez. No, no, no. I’m so sorry. I guess I was having a bit of a senior moment myself there. My mother didn’t actually say any of that stuff. I was somehow confusing her birthday party with the presidential debate I’d watched the night before. An easy enough mistake to make, I think you’d agree. Both involved an elderly person up past their bedtime. (And not just me.) And, frankly, I suspect it may be time for a Silver Alert for one of them. Like Oscar, he may not have the ability to return home safely without assistance. 

*not his real name

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At Large Opinion

A New Season

Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden

“All the months are crude experiments,
out of which the perfect September is made.” — Virginia Woolf

We began September in Memphis with our annual holiday. No, not Labor Day. Sure, we celebrate that, but so does the rest of the country. I’m talking about the fact that here in the Bluff City we have in recent years begun celebrating “901 Day” on September 1st, a riff on our 901 area code. It’s grown to include a great many celebrations around town, from Beale Street to breweries to parks and music venues. One presumes a good time was had by all this year, even if there was a bit of intermittent rain to dodge. 

September also marks the end of summer here in the 901. Even though we’re still a few weeks away from the true end of the heat, the signs of autumn are there if you look. On my morning walk in the Old Forest of Overton Park on Monday, leaves were beginning to fill the wooded trails, wet and soft underfoot — the gold palms of the tulip poplars, the brown-fingered oak fall — their presence no doubt triggered by the recent dry spell, but unmistakable harbingers of the change to come, nonetheless. 

Summer’s end always brings mixed feelings. And the seasons change faster now, or so it seems as I blossom into codger-hood. But everything is faster for everybody these days. According to folks who study such things, we’re wiring ourselves that way. I listened to a podcast last week about the decline of the human attention span. The average person checks the internet more than 100 times a day — scanning emails, various websites, news sources, and social media feeds. I’ve never counted, but I suspect I’m in that neighborhood, at least. 

I’m trying to be conscious about my internet addiction, but it’s so difficult, especially when the source of our distraction — our phone — is always close at hand. Looking around the optometrist’s office the other day, I noted there were 19 people, 18 of whom were looking at their phone. The other guy was probably blind.

The problem is that we’ve learned that there is always a reward of sorts waiting for us when we swipe open our dinging little pocket pals: “likes” on our social media posts, a fresh email from a friend, a nudge from our favorite news app, a game to finish, and, of course, the sweet, cocaine-like buzz of confirmation bias and righteous indignation.

We progressives savor the latest absurdities from MAGA-land like gooey chocolate-chip cookies, fresh from the oven: Did you read that Donald Trump changed his stance on abortion four times in 48 hours? Did you see that he reposted vile, misogynistic, sexual tweets about Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton?! Did you read that he had the nerve to announce that his administration will be the “greatest ever” for women?! OMG!

And then there’s Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance. What a piece of anti-feminine work this guy is. Seldom does a day pass when he is not saying something more Neanderthal-ish about women than he did the day before. The creepy would-be veep has made it clear, over and over again, that he thinks women are put here on Earth only to have children until they can’t anymore. And when they reach menopause, their role is to help raise their grandchildren. It’s their biological destiny, don’t you know? Childless career women are frustrated and angry because “they passed the biological period when it was possible to have children.” They are “miserable people who have no real value system,” and “struggle to find meaning in their lives.” Also, they have cats. Also, childless people shouldn’t be allowed to be teachers. 

And on it goes, day after day. Thirty days hath September, and 31 hath October, and five hath November until the Day of Reckoning. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” wrote English playwright William Congreve in 1697. There’s a reason that saying has stayed in the English language lexicon for 327 years, and methinks Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and the rest of their clueless GOP enablers are about to find out why. 

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At Large Opinion

Faith and Camo

Italian political thinker Antonio Gramsci’s definition of a crisis was, “when the old is dead and the new cannot be born.” Those of us living in the United States are in the midst of finding out whether the new can be born (in November), and whether the old is really dead. A crisis? I’d say so.

One thing is certain: Representatives of the old are having real issues with the potential changes in the wind that were evidenced at the recent Democratic National Convention. Venerable conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote: “They stole traditional Republican themes (faith, patriotism) and claimed them as their own.”

Former Fox News commentator and Newsmax host Eric Bolling raged: “We’re losing the race! We’re losing the presidency. … The enthusiasm level on the left is overwhelming. They’re trying to say Democrats are the patriots! They’re wearing camo hats with Harris’ name on it! Camo! That’s ours!”

Democrats as patriots? How can this be? And camo? Really? How dare they! Camo can’t be woke, can it?

It’s easy to understand the GOP’s pain. For decades — at least since Richard Nixon’s presidency — the Republicans have claimed the mantle of patriotism and the title of “real Americans,” wrapping themselves in the flag, Christianity, country music, family values, and military strength. “America: Love It or Leave It” was their mantra. Guns, flags, the cross, and camo clothes were their primary fashion accessories. 

It worked for more than 50 years, from Nixon on through the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and even through the Obama years, when the nation’s first Black president was accused of being born in Africa, which, to Republicans, is as un-American as you can get. Donald Trump, of course, has literally wrapped himself in the American flag on several occasions. 

That’s why seeing 20,000 “Demoncrats” in Chicago waving little American flags had to have driven them nuts, not to mention the sight of that Harris/Walz camo hat on the heads of hundreds of delegates, the Nashville sounds of Jason Isbell and The Chicks, the nightly invocation of prayers, the pledges to defend our NATO allies militarily and stand up to Putin in Ukraine. It was all turf formerly claimed by the GOP. 

But you can hardly blame Kamala Harris and the Democrats for moving in. The house was empty and Republicans left the door wide open by abandoning — or twisting beyond recognition — their foundational principles. And it all started with Trump, for whom there are no principles, foundational or otherwise, only transactional exchanges. The party has been following his lead since 2015.

Republicans exchanged the American flag for the countless variations of Trump flags flown at rallies, and from MAGA pickups, boats, and front porches. “I pledge allegiance to Donald Trump” being the implied new credo. Family values? See: Trump, Donald. Religion? See: Nationalist, Christian. Country music? See: Rock, Kid. Strong military defense? See: Putin, Vladimir, a murderous despot now openly supported by Trump and his acolytes, including Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Robert Kennedy Jr., most Fox News hosts, Speaker Mike Johnson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and dozens of other GOP senators and congressmen.

The party that once put forth a strong, conservative platform every four years, now has a platform of “whatever Trump says today,” no matter how idiotic or deranged. The party that once spent millions on an election ground game and ad buys in swing states now spends a large percentage of those dollars on Trump’s defense funds and lawyer bills.

The recent polling has been swinging Harris’ way and Trump’s campaign strategists have been urging him to “talk policy” instead of using his rally speeches to air his many grievances, hurl personal insults at his opponents, and brag about his looks. Trump counters that Harris has no policies and has ignored several of the issues he has raised, including the low-flow shower-head crisis, the boat battery vs. sharks controversy, and the problem of solar-powered airplanes that crash when the sun’s not shining. Furthermore, he says, Harris has not had the courage to take a stance on the late, great Hannibal Lecter. And she has the nerve to say Trump is “an unserious man.” What chutzpah!

At any rate, here is where we find ourselves — on the very edge of the approaching hurricane, waiting to learn the course of its final path, waiting to learn the fate of our nation, waiting to discover if the new can be born.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Commie!

Mikhail Gorbachev in 1992 (Photo: Konstantin Gushcha | Dreamstime)

Look, comrades, I grew up at a time in this country when the thing we kids were taught to fear more than anything else in our little Midwestern lives was COMMUNISM! 

Communist Russia — the USSR — was the big, scary enemy, a country led by authoritarian leaders like Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, who were attempting to take over the world and destroy democracy and the American way of life. They were the commies, the pinkos, the red menace — a nuclear-armed adversary who was also our rival in space, with their cursed Sputnik satellites. The Russians were so bold they even propped up Fidel Castro in a communist state 90 miles away from Miami. Russia, we were told by our teachers and parents, was determined to force everyone in the world to live in a commune and toil under communism, a fate presumably worse than death. 

In our schools, we had two kinds of drills: fire drills, in which at the sound of a long bell, every student high-tailed it “single file” down the stairs and out the doors onto the schoolyard lawn, goose-assing and laughing all the way. (If you were lucky, you attended a school that had one of those cool fire-escape slides out a third-story window, which livened up the process.) But the real serious stuff took place during the air-raid drills, where, at the sound of a keening siren, we had to “duck and cover” under our desks, which, as everyone knows, will protect you against nuclear holocaust. Mainly, of course, it just scared the crap out of us and traumatized a couple generations.

This went on through the 1980s, at which point, President Reagan had turned standing up to Russia into performance art (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”). It turned out to be a surprisingly effective gambit, or at the worst, Reagan’s timing was spot-on. The Soviet Union’s economy was collapsing during the 1980s, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and lending a measure of stature to Reagan’s latter years in office.

If there was one benefit of this strange, decades-long international game of Russian roulette, it was the fact that we were actually taught what communism is. We learned most of Karl Marx’s greatest one-liners, including the scariest one: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” which we Americans were taught to see as the mantra of a system that destroyed ambition and the drive to succeed that American capitalism was built upon. I think that’s simplistic, but it’s also mostly true. Living on the dole is living on the dole. All communism does is narrow economic opportunity to oligarchs. Everyone else? Pass the beans and borscht and keep your head down, comrade.

The fact is that communism has proven to be a horrible system of government, one that concentrates power under an authoritarian rule, censors books and newspapers, offers only rudimentary education for the poor, discriminates on the basis of gender and race, and controls healthcare. In communist countries, posters of the authoritarian Dear Leader are plastered on every open space. Flags with his image are flown in every public square. 

That’s why it seems so absurd to me to hear MAGA types — and Donald Trump himself — call Kamala Harris and Democrats “communists.” It sounds like you’re being tough when you call someone a communist, but they literally appear to have no idea what a communist is. 

Think of the two major American political parties: When it comes to a cult of personality, one that features posters of Dear Leader, flags, religious iconography, clothes, and even tattoos, which party comes to mind? Which party has come out in support of banning books? Which party wants to give public tax dollars to private schools? Which party openly demonizes LGBTQ Americans and people of color? Which party wants to centralize power and give it to an authoritarian who will “be a dictator on day one”? Which party wants to control the healthcare decisions of the country’s females? Which party literally rejected democracy in 2020? 

If your answer to those questions is anything other than the Republican Party, you’ve gone down into a scary rabbit hole, a place where the light of the obvious won’t penetrate. It’s like you’re in a permanent duck-and-cover drill. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Elon-Gate

Elon Musk’s avatar on X (Photo: Elon Musk | x)

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” — Maya Angelou

Here we are, less than 90 days away from a nation-defining election, and the world’s richest man is showing us who he is, every single day. I’m speaking about Elon Musk, the South African mega-billionaire behind Tesla cars, SpaceX rocketry, and xAI, the world’s largest supercomputer, now operating in Memphis. 

Musk also runs X, formerly Twitter, the world’s biggest news and chat app, and herein lies a problem. I’m still using X, sometimes against my better judgment, given the amount of racist, misogynist, and white supremacist content that streams from the site. I delete and block posts (and posters) every single day, but there’s always a steady torrent of horrible content, much of it generated by bots and AI. 

So why am I still on X? Because it’s still the best place for an information junkie like me to get breaking news. I follow all the major news outlets’ X accounts, plus a couple thousand journalists and writers whose views and reporting I respect, as well as lots of local folks with smart (and often funny) takes on Memphis politics, sports, food, and entertainment. Still, it’s a flood of information, much of it worthless or worse, and you have to be diligent in mining the diamonds from the dreck.

Even when X was Twitter, before Musk bought it for a sweet $44 billion and changed the name, it had lots of crap posts, but the policing of intentional disinformation and vile Nazi-ish stuff was better, and it was usually taken down quickly. Now, not so much. That’s mainly because Musk has taken a hands-on approach to the site, and under the guise of “free speech,” he is consciously permitting, and even encouraging, posts that traffic from the far fringes of the right-wing, white supremacist world. 

And it’s not like he’s hiding his intentions. He’s got 194 million followers! (When you join X, you get Musk’s posts and reposts automatically, unless you intentionally unfollow him.) His personal account is a fount of racism, misleading statistics, and outright lies. Often, Musk posts an obviously racist meme and asks — a la Tucker Carlson — “Is this true? Just asking.”

Musk is a Trump supporter, of course. He often reposts anti-Kamala Harris tropes, including those that are obviously false or misleading. On Monday, he hosted Trump for a two-hour “interview” on X, during which Musk lavished praise and admiration for Trump’s “honesty,” among other insane comments. Musk’s politics would be anathema to most of the residents of this decidedly blue city, I suspect, but make no mistake, Musk is here, and in a big way. Needless to say, I’m not a fan, either. He seems weirdly and dangerously unbalanced.

And speaking of fans (and clumsy segues), Musk is now running a bunch of non-permitted gas turbines to power his Memphis supercomputer from its site in South Memphis. They are noisy and are sending gassy fumes into the atmosphere 24 hours a day. I urge you to read Sam Hardiman’s well-reported Daily Memphian story from last Saturday. 

Citing a “source close to the company … who is not authorized to speak publicly,” the DM said xAI had determined it had the right to run the non-permitted turbines for 364 days. The DM story also quoted the Greater Memphis Chamber on the matter: “XAI obtained official guidance that based on federal, state, and local regulations that permitting would not be required for this temporary solution to use turbines for testing its supercomputer.” How nice. Let’s hope this deal works out for the benefit of the city, and not just for xAI. I have my doubts. Musk is just not a Memphis kind of guy. He’s a Trump kind of guy, with similar baggage.

Need more proof? Consider this recent Musk repost from Daniel Concannon, the self-titled “World’s Most Unbearably White Man”: “White people have been taught that white people are evil and everyone else is good. Non-white people have been taught that white people are evil and everyone else is good. That’s not divide and conquer. That’s ‘Kill Whitey.’” Musk added a single comment: “True.” 

Elon Musk is showing us who he is, folks. It would behoove Memphis — and the rest of the world — to believe him. 

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At Large Opinion

Bear Market

Hate to be the bearer of, er, news, good, bad, and insane. (Photo: Jillian | Adobe Stock)

I awoke early Monday morning, made a cup of espresso from the fancy machine gifted to me from my son last Christmas, and sat on the deck to watch the hummingbirds. Well, that, and scroll through the news on my phone. It was quite the news day already, even at 7:30 a.m. 

In Florida, Hurricane Debby was dumping massive rains on that perennially dumped-on state. Flooding would soon ensue. In the Middle East, the winds of war seemed to be heating to a fever pitch, with Iran, Hezbollah, Israel, and Hamas all making threats and seemingly prepping for attacks. In the UK, there were riots in the streets from far-right protestors. A hotel was burned. In Paris at the Olympics, there were photo-finishes, a female boxer accused of being male, and lots of U.S. swimming medals. Kamala Harris was about to name her veep candidate. Donald Trump attacked Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp 12 times in an Atlanta stump speech. And on Wall Street, stocks appeared to be headed lower as a bear market loomed on news that the U.S. economy seemed to be cooling.

Pshew, what a start to the week, I thought. But wait, there was more. … Speaking of bears: Erstwhile presidential candidate, vax truther, and brain-wormer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released a videotape of himself telling a tale about dumping a dead bear cub and a bicycle in New York’s Central Park after leaving Peter Luger Steak House one night. And as if that itself weren’t strange enough, the kicker was that he was telling this bizarre story at Roseanne Barr’s house. What? Is this real life?

As one person wrote on X:

Kristi Noem — “Let me tell you about my animal killings.” 

RFK Jr. — “Here, hold my bear.”

Kennedy said he released the tape to “get ahead” of a New Yorker story that was about to recount the bear saga, which had been a mystery since 2014, when it was first reported in the media that two women had found a dead bear cub under a bicycle in Central Park.  

In Kennedy’s version, via the video (which also featured Roseanne wandering around and occasionally looking at Kennedy as though he were nuts), he’d found the bear dead beside the road in upstate New York and put it in his car, intending to skin it and eat it. Yes, he said that. He then went to dinner at the aforementioned famous steak house, then realized he had to catch a plane and didn’t want to leave the bear in his car, so, as one does, he drove to Central Park and dumped it on a trail, underneath his bicycle, trying to make it look like the bear had been killed by a cyclist. 

I don’t know about you, but this episode makes me think RFK Jr. just might be a tad, well, insane. But maybe that’s just me. At any rate, by the time you read this, the bear tale will no doubt be public fodder. But damn, it was a heckuva way to start my work week. 

Also in the news were several stories about the increasing use — and misuse — of AI (artificial intelligence). A Trump campaign surrogate put out a photo of their candidate surrounded by Black women “supporters” who all looked suspiciously alike and who all had six fingers on every visible hand. When AI learns how to recreate human hands accurately, we’ll really be in trouble. But until then, I don’t trust it. 

Here’s another example of why I don’t trust it: I decided to use Meta’s AI (now easily accessible in your friendly Facebook Messenger app), to research, well, myself. I prompted it thusly: Who is Bruce VanWyngarden? It responded with: “Bruce VanWyngarden is a notable figure in Memphis, Tennessee. As the editor of the Memphis Flyer, he has been a prominent voice in local journalism, covering news, politics, and culture. He has written two books, including Everything That’s True (2021). Additionally, his work as a musician and lead singer of The Gun Club has made him a respected figure in the music scene.”

What? I was lead singer of an infamous post-punk L.A. band? Who knew? I’d totally forgotten that part of my life. Dang. Well, at least, AI didn’t dig up that embarrassing armadillo incident. Pshew. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Paris Is Smirking

Photo: Romolo Tavani | Dreamstime.com

“Last night’s mockery of the Last Supper was shocking and insulting to Christian people around the world who watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The war on our faith and traditional values knows no bounds today. But we know that truth and virtue will always prevail.”

That was Speaker of the House (and cosplaying Christian) Mike Johnson responding to the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony, which featured drag queens and maybe a naked Jesus? I dunno. To be outraged, you really had to be paying close attention, and I wasn’t. But Johnson wasn’t alone in his outrage. Here is a sampling of the reactions on X from folks proclaiming themselves Christians:

“A complete mockery of Christianity. This was by far the most satanic and disgusting ceremony I have ever seen. Do not defy Jesus Christ.”

“The radical left is a greater threat than Iran, China, or Russia will ever be to the United States.”

“A serious POTUS would send our athletes home.”

It went on for two or three days. Elon Musk (who is a Christian now?) unfollowed the Olympics account on X. That will show them.

But here’s my favorite reaction: “France literally gathered its planners and made a list of EVERYTHING that would get under the skin of conservatives and said, ‘Let’s open with ALL of it!’”

To be fair, this last guy was actually onto something. As someone who is married to a French woman and who has spent a lot of time with her family and friends, I can say, without fear of contradiction, that that is precisely how the French would have approached this project. They love pissing off the unsophisticated, tightly wound knobs of the world, i.e. MAGA-Americans.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the artistic director of the opening festivities, Thomas Jolly: “We wanted to include everyone, as simple as that,” he said. “In France, we have freedom of creation, artistic freedom. We are lucky in France to live in a free country. I didn’t have any specific messages that I wanted to deliver. In France, we are a republic; we have the right to love whom we want, we have the right not to be worshippers, we have a lot of rights in France, and this is what I wanted to convey.”

And it makes the joke even funnier when those who are outraged are, well, just ignorant fools. The opening ceremony had nothing to do with Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper but was intended to be a (very) loose recreation of The Feast of the Gods, a 17th-century painting by Dutch artist Jan Hermansz van Bijlert that hangs in the Magnin Museum, in Dijon, France. The painting depicts an assembly of Greek gods, including Dionysus, on Mount Olympus for a banquet to celebrate the marriage of Thetis and Peleus. So no Jesus, no blasphemy, unless you think dressing in drag is satanic, in which case, well, I can’t help you. 

But let’s be clear: There is no war on Christianity. You’re not a victim. You are a member of the U.S.’s largest religious denomination, many times over. It’s also the largest denomination in France. You’re going to be fine. It’s all a matter of perspective: You’re outraged that children were involved in the opening ceremonies. The French, conversely, are outraged that guns are the number-one killer of children in America.

You’re appalled by a headless Marie Antoinette, Lady Gaga, and Celine Dion. The French (and a lot of Americans) were appalled by the appearances of Kid Rock, Amber Rose, Hulk Hogan, and other creeps at the GOP convention two weeks ago. 

You’re upset because you refuse to believe that the French weren’t intentionally blaspheming Jesus Christ and the Last Supper. Yet I’m seeing no outrage from MAGA types over the countless images circulating of Donald Trump being held from behind by a loving blonde Jesus, or even the one that came from a campaign source via email yesterday, of Donald Trump literally hanging on the cross. His loin cloth is an American flag, and Melania is kneeling at his feet. It’s worth a google to see it, if only just to show that blasphemy, like art, is in the eye of the beholder.