Ken's Blog

I was excited yesterday to realize that it was Rick Astley’s birthday. So I jumped at the chance to celebrate his special day on this blog in the most appropriate way.

I realize that some readers might not have appreciated the gesture, or the way that it may have sort of snuck up on them.

But perhaps the best response in such situations is exactly how you shouldn’t respond when creepy authoritarians are trying to destroy your democracy from within.

Just roll with it.

Today we celebrate a very special birthday.

In a stunning proposal, the U.S. President said Tuesday that the Federal Government will “take over” southern California, “level the site” and rebuild it, after earlier saying Californians living there should leave.

“They instead can occupy some other beautiful area with homes and safety, and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony,” he said at a news conference.

“The Government will take over greater Los Angeles and surrounding regions, and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous burnt out houses. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out,” he said.

“Create an economic development somewhere that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area,” he added. “Do a real job. Do something different.”

“We should go to areas of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this, and build various other domains elsewhere that will ultimately be occupied by the 23 million people currently living in Southern California, ending the death and destruction and frankly, bad luck,” he said. “This can be paid for by tariffs on other countries. It could be one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, 12. It could be numerous sites, or it could be one large site,” he said.

“But the people will be able to live in comfort and peace and will get sure — we’ll make sure something really spectacular is done. They’re going to have peace. They’re not going to flee their burning houses that were destroyed like these wonderful people have had to endure. The only reason the Californians want to go back is they have no alternative,” he said.

“I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of California and maybe the entire West Coast. And everybody I have spoken to, this was not a decision made lightly,” he continued. “Everybody I have spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent in a really magnificent area that nobody would know.”

Asked who would live there, Trump responded, “other people,” saying, “the potential in that beachfront area is unbelievable.”

“History, as you know, just can’t let it keep repeating itself. We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy. But the Riviera of the West Coast, this could be something that could be so … magnificent,” he said.

Earlier, in the Oval Office, when he also raised the idea, a reporter asked if Californians relocated would have the right to return.

“Why would they want to return?” he responded.

“It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return,” he said. Why would they want to return? That place has been hell. It’s become one of the most burnt out, toughest places on earth,” he said.

Asked about sending U.S. troops to Los Angeles, Trump appeared open to the possibility.

“As far as California is concerned, we’ll do what is necessary. If it’s necessary, we’ll do that,” Trump said. “We’re going to take over that place and we’re going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs.”

Asked if his view that the mainly Democratic Californians should be relocated from southern California is a sign that he is against the two-party policy that has traditionally been the policy of the United States, Trump said no.

“It doesn’t mean anything about a two-party or one party or any other party. It means that we want to have, we want to give people a chance at life,” he said. “They have never had a chance at life because the L.A. region has become a hellhole for people living there. It’s been horrible.”

The president argued that his proposal would benefit the U.S. as as a whole and not only Republicans.

“I have to stress, this is not for Republicans,” he said. “This is for everybody in America. Blacks, whites, this is for everybody. You have to learn from history. You can’t keep doing the same mistake over and over again. Gaza is a hellhole right now,” he said.

“I’ve studied it. I’ve studied this very closely over a lot of months, and I’ve seen it from every different angle,” he said. “And it’s a very, very dangerous place to be. And it’s only going to get worse. And I think this is an idea that’s gotten tremendous — and I’m talking about from the highest level of leadership — gotten tremendous praise. And people can live in harmony and peace,” he said, as the extraordinary news conference ended.

I am always amazed when I see people jumping the turnstiles in NYC. I find myself wondering “What are they thinking?”

In general, they tend to be well groomed and well dressed young people, so I am guessing that they can easily afford the modest fare.

Maybe they think they are rebels, bucking the system, sticking it to the Man. But in fact they are just hurting everyone else, dealing death by a thousand cuts to a transit system that is trying its best to accommodate the needs of the most difficult to run and interconnected city in the nation.

New York is a special place. It’s a city where people not only tolerate but celebrate diversity and cultural difference, where we all try to learn from one another, where we realize that people from everywhere in the world have much to teach us, and much to contribute.

So it’s hard to see entitled individuals simply taking all that for granted, and in their ignorance attacking the very infrastructure that makes it possible.

I’m pretty sure that these are not people who voted Republican. This is New York City after all.

But I’m guessing that many of them were too lazy to go to the polls on Election Day. I’ll bet they just said “Free Palestine” or some other convenient slogan, and then stayed home, robbing the rest of us of the slim margin of votes that would have preserved our democracy.

So now instead of an actual government we have a ruthless authoritarian kleptocracy, which is quickly dismantling the checks and balances that make democracy possible.

Meanwhile it looks as though Palestinian refugees are going to be shipped out of Gaza en masse, and around the world vulnerable people are about to die unnecessarily while our nation’s reputation takes a nosedive as USAID is dismantled.

I realize that the fare beaters are just being clueless idiots. But sometimes people need to do better than be clueless idiots.

Various people talk to me about what happens after you die. And I listen attentively, hoping to gain some insight.

Unfortunately, so far nobody who has actually died has come back to give me a proper report from beyond. It would be nice if somebody did.

Until then, I am going to wait patiently.

I remember seeing Tim Robbins’ film Bob Roberts three decades ago, soon after it came out. It tells the wild and fanciful tale of a creepy arch-conservative authoritarian politician on the rise who presents as a kind of friendly Bob Dylanesque folkie. Sort of Don’t Look Back meets A Face in the Crowd.

What struck me most about it was the segment in which Roberts is invited to be the guest host of a show that is clearly modeled on Saturday Night Live. Several SNL staff members protest when Roberts unexpectedly turns his appearance into a political pitch.

In real life, Elon Musk was more strategic. He used his time on SNL to present as slightly goofy and harmless. Unfortunately, we now know better.

Recent events suggest that Tim Robbins was eerily prescient. It feels as though we are watching Bob Roberts, the Sequel. Except this time it isn’t fiction.

The other day I posted about Douglass Engelbart. I discussed his prediction that humans are evolving exponentially as a species, because of our access to computer-based tools, which are growing in power exponentially over time.

In response, Andras posted the following very reasonable observation: “Not to take anything from the well deserved celebration but I wonder if there may be an inverse devolution under way.”

I’ve been thinking about this as well. Engelbart observed that humans were evolving exponentially, but he didn’t necessarily tell us whether this is a good thing. Clearly we have capabilities now as a species that we did not have even a short time ago.

When something happens these days, many millions of people can not only know about it pretty much instantly, but also respond to it, sharing their thoughts with other millions of people. Active discussions involving entire populations can not only begin but continue to mutate over the course of a single day.

Not that long ago this would have been seen as the realm of science fiction. Before the Web (a mere three decades ago), mass communication was pretty much limited to the old fashioned “one to many” broadcast and print paradigm.

But this evolution doesn’t necessarily mean that the power of social media is a good thing. Cancer grows exponentially, and nobody thinks of that as a good thing.

We are indeed evolving exponentially as a species, just as Doug Engelbart predicted, but that may not be a positive development.

There isn’t always a binary yes/no answer to the question “Do you know so-and-so?” Rather, there is a continuous range of correct responses to this question, ranging from 0.0 to 1.0.

There are people I’ve known all my life, and others that I have known for decades. In the latter category there are some people I knew for decades but then completely lost touch with.

Can I actually claim to know those people? Or do I really just know a younger version of them — a version that in a sense no longer exists? In any case, I don’t think that kind of “knowing” rises all the way up to 1.0.

Then there are the people I know only from professional conferences, or as friends of friends. They know who I am, and I know who they are, but there are vast swaths of information that we don’t know about one another.

And after that are people I’ve met only once. Maybe we had a conversation which stuck in my mind. That is a kind of knowing, but much nearer to 0.0 than to 1.0.

Finally there are the people with whom I have shared some sort of social situation, but with whom I’ve had at most a brief and meaningless conversation. If they are famous, my fragile ego might be tempted to say “I’ve met so-and o.”

But wouldn’t really be honest. On that superficial level I’ve met a lot of famous people. But I seriously doubt that they have the faintest idea who I am.

And I’ve noticed that of the people whom I really know (nearer to a 1.0 than a 0.0) who happen to be famous, I tend to forget entirely that they are famous. Which is probably a good thing.

Douglas Carl Engelbart would have been 100 years old today. One of the towering giants of computer science, he was, essentially, the father of user interface research.

But more than that, Engelbart believed in humans as toolmakers. Specifically, he said that as we continue to evolve our computer technology, we are in essence evolving ourselves.

Since computational capability evolves exponentially, this means that in this modern era, we possess the opportunity to evolve exponentially as a species. And he personally invented many of the new computer tools that could make that possible.

After witnessing so much recent stupidity on our national stage, it’s nice, for a change, to think about somebody who was actually intelligent.

On the other hand, as we learned in today’s news, maybe they are just really incompetent fools. Let us hope.

I love the fact that the official W.H. explanation for its decision to rescinding the memo was “dishonest media coverage.” Let that sink in for moment.

Essentially, the W.H. just said that if some news outlet badmouths a policy, that is sufficient reason for the W.H. to reverse that policy. Rule by sound bite.

It’s as though the entire lot of them are still stuck in third grade.