This Week in American Dystopia #2
How was it only Tuesday and we were already asking, "Oh God, what now?"
There are Mondays, and then there are Mondays. This past Monday definitely fell into the latter category, waking up just after 6 am to learn that Pope Francis had died, and then being hurled into a maelstrom of news that made me yearn for two years ago. Much like a particularly glued on Band-Aid, the best way to discuss it all is to just rip it off.
JD Vance Killed The Pope….
Okay, he didn’t really kill the Pontiff of Rome, Il Papa, but much like Queen Elizabeth II carrying out the duty of asking Liz Truss to form a new government right before dying, the last public meeting that Pope Francis had was with a similarly unqualified and loathsome individual. I think atheists have to be feeling buoyed in their position that there is no God, because why would God punish one of His most faithful servants by making their last meeting be with terrible people? I, for one, can’t say that I’ve become an atheist over the past couple of years, but I repeatedly question the idea that God is loving and just—and this year is not helping make an argument that I’m wrong.
I do take some small solace in the fact that Francis did not hold his scheduled Friday meeting with the Vice-President, instead sending his deputy, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin to meet with him. Parolin, by the Vatican’s own account, told Vance that compassion is key to being a good Catholic, and the way America is treating immigrants and travelers fails that standard miserably. Since Francis appointed Parolin as his first key decision after taking the Papacy, Parolin’s lecture had the tacit approval of Il Papa and would entirely be in line with his beliefs and his Argentinian heritage.
I haven’t been an active Catholic since the Spotlight reports broke. My church attendance in the last decade has largely been at non-denominational churches, including my wedding. Despite that, I can say that Pope Francis, in my view, did a lot to redeem a church that had sacrificed a lot of hard-won moral authority with its behavior from the 1960s through the end of Pope Benedict XVI’s tenure. The decades-long coverup, the refusal to cooperate in the investigations led by various police forces and prosecutors throughout the world, the lack of change to church policies, it absolutely drove my departure and that of many others.
Francis came in and ushered in radical (for the Vatican) change. The services he provided to Rome’s poor—free haircuts, showers, and assistance with finding jobs—reflected far better priorities than the Prada shoes of his predecessor. He welcomed LGBTQ people into the church, and declared them to be just as worthy of God’s love, even if he did not go so far as to bless their marriages. He spent more energy on inclusiveness, climate justice, racial justice, and acts of love as opposed to focusing on things to hate. He also did a lot to clear out the reactionaries from church leadership, which makes it more likely that his successor will continue his progressive policies. He wasn’t perfect, and I criticized him at times, but he absolutely changed a church that was headed for destruction and steered it back in a far more positive direction. Few popes can claim such a success.
As for the headline, well, Google “JD Vance Pope” if you want to see some amusing merchandise designs deeming Vance the “Pope-Killer.”
Mark Zuckerberg’s Existence is an Excellent Argument for Abortion
This story from Vanity Fair details how Mark Zuckerberg and his Meta goons decided seven million books were perfectly suitable to pirate for his AI scheme. As the opening of the article (seen below) details, Zuck programmed a specific change to his AI, the same way that I wrote about how ChatGPT provided different, less honest answers after the AI stock boom began to the exact same questions I’d asked a year before.
Like many people, when I started university, I had one goal, and then when I was midway through, I decided I wanted to do something else and changed majors. Despite that, one line that has run through my life is my love of writing. I’ve reported and edited for a college newspaper. I’ve written freelance for print publications. I’ve done audio transcription and captioning for major documentaries. I read voraciously and have more books than bookcases in my house. I have a deep love of our language and the power of the written word.
It’s because of that, and because I’ve worked in the tech industry for over a decade, that I have a deep distrust for artificial intelligence. Eight years ago, I was very much an evangelist for the power of AI to assist humans in improving our condition—helping to diagnose medical issues, assist soldiers in identifying actual threats versus imagined ones, assisting researchers in finding information. What’s come of it, though, is unfortunately what happens with any exciting technology—it’s destroyed by corporate greed. AI has been shoved out into widespread use before it can provide an actual benefit. It’s unable to cite actual studies when assisting in research. It’s being trained on human works without compensation by companies with billions upon billions of dollars. It’s being deployed to try and save these mega-corporations a few extra bucks so the CEO can go buy their fifth mansion.
People don’t want to engage with it. I’ve actively fought any attempt at my own job to use it for writing technical documentation, because then I’m having to go through it all and correct things anyway, when I can write it myself correctly the first time. I disable it whenever it shows up in an application or operating system. It’s actively made Google search results and Android autocorrect worse. I no longer believe in its capability for good, because the companies building it are actively programming their biases into it—Grok, the stupidly named product from that aggressively mean clownshoes Elon Musk; Meta’s thieving AI whose name I can’t remember; and the ChatGPT from OpenAI.
If your business model and product are dependent upon outright theft of the hard work of other humans, not only are you a terrible person, but your product is trash. In Mark Zuckerberg’s case, he’s been a blight on humanity for nearly fifteen years now, so that headline? I said what I said.
The Secretary of Homeland Security Doesn’t Understand Basic Security Procedures
Ever since Kristi Noem and her insanely expensive Rolex filmed fascist porn at CECOT in El Salvador, there’s been questions about her wealth and how she acquired it. Those questions aren’t going away after she had her purse snatched right out from under her nose and that of the Secret Service.
Let’s take a look at what Noem had on her that was stolen, shall we?
Her Gucci bag retails for $4,400.
The Louis Vuitton clutch inside of it retails for $600.
$3,000 in cash
Her apartment keys
Blank checks
Her Homeland Security Access badge, which gets her in the door at all classified facilities and offices.
Her debit card
Her driver’s license
Her passport
Two Secret Service agents were at the bar, seated so they could observe the patrons and keep an eye on Noem. Based upon posted photos of the interior, it is hard to understand how someone could kept inching closer to the secretary of homeland security and swipe her purse from the floor without being seen. It also beggars belief that she had that much cash out to “treat her family” when she had her debit card and checkbook with her as well. Most people don’t withdraw that much cash for vacations, let alone family outings in the city where they live.
It also is noteworthy that her passport was with her. As a government official, her passport is a diplomatic variety, with a black cover, to signify her status as a senior official with diplomatic immunity. Why she would have that on her when she was just “enjoying the Easter weekend with her family in town” is curious, to say the least.
One also has to question her judgement as a senior official in a security conscious position to casually leave her purse on the ground with such important items inside. The entire episode seems fishy, as if it’s covering up for something else. The correct thing to do would be to have an Inspector General investigation into everything from her behavior to her security detail failing to spot the theft, but you know, the President fired the IGs right after taking office.
It’d almost be the dumbest thing this weekend, but we live in a world where Nancy Mace, Permanent Victim, exists…
Nancy Mace Is Flabbergasted At How A Man
Can Shop Inside Of An ULTA Store
What is really sad, and ultimately pathetic, about Nancy Mace’s behavior in the last two years is that prior to it, she was a genuinely impressive woman. She broke the gender barrier at South Carolina’s famed military academy, The Citadel. She co-founded FITSnews in South Carolina. She received a masters in journalism, and she bucked Republican positions on a number of things, including offshore drilling and total abortion bans. She passed a bill to end the shackling of pregnant prisoners. She criticized Trump and refused to support the challenges to votes on January 6, 2021. She pushed to address the backlog of rape kits across America and wanted to pass a bill mandating text alerts for mass shootings. She very much appeared to be as moderate as a Republican can be.
Alas, after Trump weaseled out of a second impeachment and criminal charges and stealing classified info, Mace stopped being an independent thinker. She fell in line with MAGA in full, and has turned into a constant troll, showing especially nasty hostility to transgender people—her bathroom ban in the Capitol, directed at transgender congresswoman Sarah McBride, and her screaming out, “Tranny tranny tranny!” at a hearing was some of the most degrading behavior I’ve ever seen in an official capacity. Not only towards Rep. McBride, but to Congress itself. She’s gone from being a role model to being a Jerry Springer guest.
Her war against transgender people, and constant invocation of “keeping men out of women’s spaces” took a bizarre turn Monday night. Appearing on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, this occurred.
I hate to break it to her, but the facewash aisle at ULTA is not, nor has it ever been, a female-only space. Retail stores, with a very few niche exceptions, are not gender-segregated. I don’t know what she thought she was trying to accomplish, but this is the saddest attempt I’ve ever seen by someone trying to make themselves the victim. This is the best encapsulation of the victim mentality on the right that I could dream up, being offended at a man’s presence in the facewash aisle. We get acne. We get blackheads. We need facewash too.
For someone who endured all sorts of hazing and ill treatment breaking a gender barrier at a Southern military academy, I refuse to believe Mace is this soft. What has become clear, though, is she’s a narcissist, and in that, she’s a perfect fit in a party that is entirely about its narcissist leader.
**sigh**
The sad thing is, I still could’ve written about more. This is America in 2025.