Kurt Anderson was being interviewed on The Daily Beast podcast and he had interesting things to say. And I would like share to a couple of his remarks with you. His words have a lot of validity in the current cultural zeitgeist.

Anderson discussed the President’s style of off the cuff remarks and bonkers social media posts. He said that this “style” appealed to many young people because it is unfiltered. But over time, the appeal is wearing off as it become increasingly clear that the President simply isn’t competent.

I always thought our fearless leader’s entertainment value was close to nil. The idea of a fake reality star emulating the “|drama” of championship wrestling is nothing but offensive to any man who desires the mantle of culture and gentlemanly behavior.

And indeed, his rise, has marked a horrifying loss in civility and intelligence in public discourse. He has mainstreamed a contempt for the handicapped and made a savage and unrelenting racism a regular part of American life.

When this ends there will be much to rebuild, much to avenge and much to get over.

Anderson does not reflect in the article my rage but it is well said.

It’s a good article and I recommend you read it in full.

Below is a link to the larger story about the interview and a very sharp quote from Anderson.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/author-says-trump-entertainment-driven-181119944.html

“Bread and circuses,” the author told Coles, explaining that leaders have been putting on a “circus” long before Trump came into power, but that this is only “fine if you’ve got the bread.”

Just the circus alone, and giant ballrooms for rich people, and giant tax benefits for rich people, and giant crypto scams for rich people. While I can’t afford meat at the grocery store, that doesn’t go down so well,” Andersen added.

Here is some background from my dear friends at Wikipedia on Anderson who has had quite the prolific and distinguished career.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Andersen

Entertainment Driven Politics

Our Supreme Court is in desperate need of reform. Its code of ethics is non-existent and what few rules there ae are commonly ignored.

Here we have Alito, long an advocate for gas and oil interests declining to recuse himself from an important case.

I would suggest that if he were under the rules of a federal trial court, he would have to bow out.

But he’s not.

Just another day with the six rabid proto-fascist judges on the Supreme Court, more and more at best a source of humor than any source of justice.

Here below is a link to an article about the case and the argument for recusal.

James Alan Pilant

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/scotus-justice-refuses-recuse-himself-222049085.html

“His irregular recusal practice in oil and gas industry-related cases is undermining public confidence in the impartiality of the Court. They could not occur were he compelled to adhere to enforceable ethics standards against adjudicating cases where he has financial interests or the appearance of a conflict of interest where his impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” the groups wrote.

(The Illustration above is from David Balfour and while not entirely appropriate — Who doesn’t like a good sword fight!)

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/elon-musk-attacks-odyssey-again-155157057.html

Elon Musk has strong opinions about the upcoming movie, The Odyssey.

I’m sure a lot of people do.

Now, there are three ways that people gain expertise about a subject.

First, they can have direct experience. For instance in having an opinion about a movie you could have directed on acted in one or perhaps even produced one.

Secondly, you can have developed an expertise by learning. You can take courses in acting and directing. You could study and read screenplays, etc.

Thirdly, you can contemplate the topic. This isn’t by any means bloviating like an old White man holding forth n a bar about the thousands of things he knows nothing about. This is where you actually think. You know, read some articles, try to understand more than you did before. Figure out what is important in the subject and use your thought on it creatively.

As far as I can tell, Musk has no experience in movies, has done no studies associated with the subject and hasn’t given a moment’s thought to the subject.

He has simply stated an opinion.

Now, I realize he has a great deal of money. But does that by itself make an opinion newsworthy? Really?

There are countless people who can hold themselves out as experts on movies.

Why don’t we talk to them?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/college-graduation-speaker-shocked-students-010355560.html

Gloria Caulfield, President of the Lake Nona Institute and Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Tavistock President of the Lake Nona Institute and Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Tavistock was a speaker at commencement and was loudly and repeatedly booed for praising AI.

This is one student’s response as reported in a local newspaper:

“To stand in front of a graduating class of artists and communicators and discuss Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz, is to spit on our efforts to flip the script. I’m embarrassed to have had to endure the most embarrassing, unskippable, tone-deaf, ad-like commencement. Boo to AI and boo to your agenda,” Eletr told Orlando Weekly.

And he is absolutely right. We hear this nonsense constantly — “new industrial revolution” “cutting edge,” “game changing,” “disruptive,” and then of course a truly incredible mountain of praise for the tech bros who stand to make trillions of dollars if only they can render virtually all of humanity obsolete.

All I see is AI slop on the internet and regular failure and disaster in deployment.

How can there be such constant unquestioning, sky-high praise, while at the same time the evidence of the current news and our own eyes shows just the opposite?

The National Institutes of Health are supposed to be phasing out the use of Cats in cruel and fatal experimentation but that does not appear to be the case.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/03/nih-funds-cat-experiments

New grants include $486,000 to study blood flow in the brain after stroke. In the study 60 kittens will have portions of their skulls removed, have viruses injected into their brains, are paralysed and have strokes induced. They undergo brain imaging before being killed.

Another, investigating gene therapy for human glaucoma, received a grant of $439,000. Three-month-old “mutant” kittens bred with glaucoma, are injected in the eye with viruses, restrained for examination and killed. Their eyes are then removed for dissection.

Except with cats (kittens).

Let’s get on with it and finally phase out cat experimentation!

James Alan Pilant

This is specifically aimed at my readers from China!

I’m curious. I’m getting hundred of hits from people in China!

So, if you don’t mind a few questions?

Are you a college class or something along those lines??

Would you like to send specific inquiries? I wouldn’t mind!

Tell me about yourselves!! I can run a translator if you like.

Thanks!

James Alan Pilant

“Bleak House is considered by some authorities to be Dickens finest novel.”

And so with the words above I began my last post.

“Oh, you say you didn’t see it?”

Well, no one did. The WordPress posting program ate it and all the writing I did on the subject.

It wasn’t a great post, sort of average, but I liked it and I thought I made some good points.

Losing an essay like I just did makes me unhappy.

You see I am posting in a sort of war zone.

Right now, probably in America, some kid or some adult alone in a basement somewhere is creating thirty or forty business ethics articles a day using AI. And he is doing it to make money usually off of advertising. (I don’t charge anything or make any money off of my posts.) The AI knows all about business ethics because it vacuumed up all the material on business ethics it could find on the Internet and that included the close to three thousand of my essays. This was all copyrighted material but in the United States, massive intellectual theft is another gift to the tech bros so they can be worth many billions of dollars.

Let’s say you ask a question about “corporate responsibility.” You run a search and the first thing that comes up is CHATGP which knows all about business ethics from vacuuming up all the articles including mine on the Internet. Anything I wrote will be down the page and you probably won’t make it that far.

Do you think there is something fundamentally wrong with stealing both my work and then making it unlikely anyone will read my current efforts? I do.

Hundreds of people have at one time or another read one of my blog postings. My last blog post got five hits.

And no one, and I mean no one, seems to have the guts to label an AI warning on postings or anywhere else. That labeling would seem to be a fundamentally necessary step in justice for actual writers. So, when you look at my posts you don’t know whether an AI wrote it or not. (It didn’t.)

I have learned after listening to audio from You Tube and reading on the web the signs of an AI doing its mediocre dance because most of this material is nonsense or a sort of a half done excuse for research or knowledge. But how would most people know?

Is this how it all ends? My writing becomes a source of AI bots and I, the original writer, lives unread and unmourned?

I guess so.

Well, tomorrow, I will climb back on the horse and get my Bleak House article written.

I’m just a man, not an AI but my soul and my honor demand that I persist.

James Alan Pilant

(From the book, “The Wonder Clock”)