Monthly Archives: April 2017

Thursday, April 6, 2017 at 7 a.m.

One of the popular "But Her Emails" memes

After the election of Donald Trump, a meme was born. The one up there, though not always that specific picture. As an idea, but her emails became this powerful three-word sentence intoned whenever America dragged itself further into the sea with our presidents shenanigans.

Win McNamee over at Paste wrote an article on why we shouldnt say But Her Emails, but he utterly misses the point of the expression. In his mind, its an affirmation that Clinton was perfect and did nothing wrong in her bid for the White House. The meme drowns out Legitimate Concerns people had. Nothing could be further from the truth. Thats not at all what But Her Emails means as a concept.

To illustrate, Im going to bring up Atlas Shrugged. Though Im very liberal, Ayn Rands magnum opus remains one of my favorite books, mostly because I actually understand it and conservatives typically dont. If they did truly get it, theyd have run from Donald Trump as if he were a swarm of bees in a stupid hat, but they didnt because they typically think the moral is GOVERNMENT BAD, which, no, no, its not.

Atlas Shrugged opens with the famous line Who is John Galt? This is both a plot device and a clever piece of world-building. The phrase, which almost no one knows the true origin of, is a common utterance in the face of hopelessness. Its said by characters when they simply have no explanation for why the world they inhabit is falling apart, why their society isnt working despite doing everything they are being told is the right thing to do.

John Galt, it turns out, is a brilliant inventor who invents a perpetual-motion engine, but leaves it to rot as he flees into exile because the factory where he was employed had adopted communist ideals that would have robbed him of his invention's ownership. He ultimately becomes the love interest of hero and railroad entrepreneur Dagny Taggart, who is the last great mind to give up on a rotting country doomed to desolation over adherence to the philosophy of incompetents and parasites.

"But Her Emails" is our "Who is John Galt?"

Clinton lost for many small reasons, just as Rands America breaks down for many small reasons. There was the interference by Russian psyops, the shifting demographics in key blue states without enough gains in others to make up for it, decades of dedicated propaganda warfare against her, and, yes, some small mistakes on the part of the candidate herself. The tipping point, though, by any look at the last of the polling, was FBI Director James Comey announcing days before the election that he was reopening an investigation into Clintons emails. It wasnt the only reason she lost, but it was the nose across the finish line.

When someone like me says "But Her Emails," it doesnt mean that I think that America, as a whole, was so stupid it couldnt see an obvious nonstory for what it was. It means I cant understand how a social-justice backlash in the wake of Barack Obama's election got so large and powerful that it propelled an open racist into the White House. It means the anti-intellectualism movement is so bafflingly enormous that people were willing to elect an obviously unqualified man to be their leader because his ignorance made them feel better about the things they didnt understand. It means that none of the white women who voted against an open pussy-grabber can understand how the majority of their peers were just fine with that. It means, does no one really care that a foreign government, possibly with the cooperation of the candidate, helped elect our president? A foreign government currently best-known for poisoning and murdering the opposition to its own president?

Hillary Clintons email is the dark mirror of John Galts motor. Instead of infinite potential, it was infinite entropy. It was the light-sucking singularity that could be used to weigh against all of Donald Trumps incredible faults and deceits, and pretend that the two candidates were functionally identical. It was an excuse to not examine what had gone wrong in a world that welcomed Trump as president, not an absolution of Clintons flaws.

Im not going to stop saying "But Her Emails." Nothing sums up the world as it is now better. I would much rather there be a stupid reason things are as they are than there be no reasons. I get that the phrase annoys people.

That is the point.

Read more here:

The Hidden Link Between Hillary's Emails and Atlas Shrugged - Houston Press

Ayn Rand Photo Credit: YouTube Screengrab

Trumps secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has said Ayn Rands novel Atlas Shrugged is his favorite book. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, cited Rand as a major inspiration. Before he withdrew his nomination, Trumps pick to head the Labor Department, Andrew Puzder, revealed that he devotes much free time to reading Rand.

Such is the case with many other Trump advisers and allies: The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, famously made his staff members read Ayn Rand. Trump himself has said that hes a fan of Rand and identifies with Howard Roark, the protagonist of Rands novel, The Fountainhead, an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because the builders did not precisely follow his blueprints.

As a philosopher, I have often wondered at the remarkable endurance and popularity of Ayn Rands influence on American politics. Even by earlier standards, however, Rands dominance over the current administration looks especially strong.

Whats in common with Ayn Rand?

Recently, historian and Rand expert Jennifer Burns wrote how Rands sway over the Republican Party is diminishing. Burns says the promises of government largesse and economic nationalism under Trump would repel Rand.

That was before the president unveiled his proposed federal budget that greatly slashes nonmilitary government spending and before Paul Ryans Obamacare reform, which promised to strip health coverage from 24 million low-income Americans and grant the rich a generous tax cut instead. Now, Trump looks to be zeroing in on a significant tax cut for the rich and corporations.

These all sound like measures Rand would enthusiastically support, in so far as they assist the capitalists and so-called job creators, instead of the poor.

Though the Trump administration looks quite steeped in Rands thought, there is one curious discrepancy. Ayn Rand exudes a robust elitism, unlike any I have observed elsewhere in the tomes of political philosophy. But this runs counter to the narrative of the Trump phenomenon: Central to the Trumps ascendancy is a rejection of elites reigning from urban centers and the coasts, overrepresented at universities and in Hollywood, apparently.

Liberals despair over the fact that they are branded elitists, while, as former television host Jon Stewart put it, Republicans backed a man who takes every chance to tout his superiority, and lords over creation from a gilded penthouse apartment, in a skyscraper that bears his own name.

Clearly, liberals lost this rhetorical battle.

What is Ayn Rands philosophy?

How shall we make sense of the gross elitism at the heart of the Trump administration, embodied in its devotion to Ayn Rand elitism that its supporters overlook or ignore, and happily ascribe to the left instead?

Ayn Rands philosophy is quite straightforward. Rand sees the world divided into makers and takers. But, in her view, the real makers are a select few a real elite, on whom we would do well to rely, and for whom we should clear the way, by reducing or removing taxes and government regulations, among other things.

Rands thought is intellectually digestible, unnuanced, easily translated into policy approaches and statements.

Small government is in order because it lets the great people soar to great heights, and they will drag the rest with them. Rand says we must ensure that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements, while rising further and ever further.

Mitt Romney captured Rands philosophy well during the 2012 campaign when he spoke of the 47 percent of Americans who do not work, vote Democrat and are happy to be supported by hardworking, conservative Americans.

No sympathy for the poor

In laying out her dualistic vision of society, divided into good and evil, Rands language is often starker and harsher. In her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, she says,

The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains.

Rands is the opposite of a charitable view of humankind, and can, in fact, be quite cruel. Consider her attack on Pope Paul VI, who, in his 1967 encyclical Progressio Populorum, argued that the West has a duty to help developing nations, and called for its sympathy for the global poor.

Rand was appalled; instead of feeling sympathy for the poor, she says,

When [Western Man] discovered entire populations rotting alive in such conditions [in the developing world], is he not to acknowledge, with a burning stab of pride or pride and gratitude the achievements of his nation and his culture, of the men who created them and left him a nobler heritage to carry forward?

Telling it like it is

Why doesnt Rands elitism turn off Republican voters? or turn them against their leaders who, apparently, ought to disdain lower and middle class folk? If anyone like Trump identifies with Rands protagonists, they must think themselves truly excellent, while the muddling masses, they are beyond hope.

Why hasnt news of this disdain then trickled down to the voters yet?

The neoconservatives, who held sway under President George W. Bush, were also quite elitist, but figured out how to speak to the Republican base, in their language. Bush himself, despite his Andover-Yale upbringing, was lauded as someone you could have a beer with.

Trump has succeeded even better in this respect he famously tells it like it is, his supporters like to say. Of course, as judged by fact-checkers, Trumps relationship to the truth is embattled and tenuous; what his supporters seem to appreciate, rather, is his willingness to voice their suspicions and prejudices without worrying about recriminations of critics. Trump says things people are reluctant or shy to voice loudly if at all.

Building ones fortune

This gets us closer to whats going on. Rand is decidedly cynical about the said masses: There is little point in preaching to them; they wont change or improve, at least of their own accord; nor will they offer assistance to the capitalists. The masses just need to stay out of the way.

The principal virtue of a free market, Rand explains, is that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements

But they dont lift the masses willingly or easily, she says: While the majority have barely assimilated the value of the automobile, the creative minority introduces the airplane. The majority learn by demonstration, the minority are free to demonstrate.

Like Rand, her followers who populate the Trump administration are largely indifferent to the progress of the masses. They will let people be. Rand believes, quite simply, most people are hapless on their own, and we simply cannot expect much of them. There are only a few on whom we should pin our hopes; the rest are simply irrelevant. Which is why she complains about our tendency to give welfare to the needy. She says,

The welfare and rights of the producers were not regarded as worthy of consideration or recognition. This is the most damning indictment of the present state of our culture.

So, why do Republicans get away with eluding the title of elitist despite their allegiance to Rand while Democrats are stuck with this title?

I think part of the reason is that Democrats, among other things, are moralistic. They are more optimistic about human nature they are more optimistic about the capacity of humans to progress morally and live in harmony.

Thus, liberals judge: They call out our racism, our sexism, our xenophobia. They make people feel bad for harboring such prejudices, wittingly or not, and they warn us away from potentially offensive language, and phrases.

Many conservative opponents scorn liberals for their ill-founded nave optimism. For in Rands world there is no hope for the vast majority of mankind. She heaps scorn on the poor billions, whom civilized men are prodded to help.

The best they can hope for is that they might be lucky enough to enjoy the riches produced by the real innovators, which might eventually trickle down to them in their misery.

To the extent that Trump and his colleagues embrace Rands thought, they must share or approach some of her cynicism.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Firmin DeBrabander is Professor of Philosophy, Maryland Institute College of Art.

Read more from the original source:

How Ayn Rand's 'Elitism' Lives on in the Trump Administration - AlterNet

In a curious twist, South African-born and Canadian-American magnate Elon Musk, whose innovative business ventures include Tesla, PayPal and SpaceX, foresees a bad moon arisin in the world of artificial intelligence (A.I.) even though his innovations and A.I. share a symbiotic and self-perpetuating relationship.

And that may be part of the problem. Musk is reported to essentially believe (tangentially sympatico with other intellects and achievers, including internationally renowned physicist Stephen Hawking and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates) that, left unchecked, A.I. could evolve into a digital life force with autonomous reasoning processes and worldwide connectedness that would conceivably threaten humankind within a quarter century or so.

Now, granted, the link between genius and crazy is a familiar theme throughout history, and its obvious that Teslas autonomous vehicles are inherently dependent on machine learning software, as are the rockets being developed by his SpaceX venture. But a recent Vanity Fair article by Maureen Dowd that features Musk focuses on his warning of the dangers ahead.

The article quotes a comment by Musk to his biographer, Bloombergs Ashlee Vance, that he was afraid that his friend, Larry Page, a co-founder of Google and now the CEO. of its parent company, Alphabet, could have perfectly good intentions but still 'produce something evil by accidentincluding, possibly, a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind.

According to the article, Musks philosophical dilemma puts him at odds with, for example, Demis Hassabis, a leading authority and creator of advanced artificial intelligence and co-founder of the London laboratory, DeepMind, who, Dowd writes, once developed a game called Evil Genius, which featured a malevolent scientist and a doomsday devise capable of achieving worldwide domination.

Her article relates a story she was told about an investor in DeepMind who joked as he left a meeting that he ought to shoot Hassabis on the spot, because it was the last opportunity to save the human race.

This may be starting to sound a bit like The Terminator, a 1984 fantasy/sci fi movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but to Musk were dealing with a real problem and not Hollywood fantasy.

Musks feelings have prompted him to co-found and invest millions in the ethics think tank OpenAI while urging other billionaire technological pioneers like Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg to proceed with caution on their array of machine learning and robotics experiments.

Because, practically speaking, Musk told Dowd, Were already cyborgs. Your phone and your computer are extensions of you. But the interface is those finger movements or speech which are very slow.

He estimated we are roughly only four or five years away from a Vulcan mind-meld device, a merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence via an injectable mesh that would literally hardwire your brain to communicate directly with computers.

A direct biological connection between the human brain and computers would raise all kinds of interesting scenarios, including enhanced virtual and augmented reality from the humans perspective and the assimilation of thought processes, bias, emotional prejudice and so forth from the computers perspective.

Given the degree of digital interconnectedness, its therefore conceivable that computers might develop a sense of universal consciousness tinged with human attributesincluding self-preservation.

If that were to ever happen, we might all be in very serious trouble or at least so would say Musk and people who think like him. The article notes that Musk speculated at a Recode conference in California last year that we could already be in the Matrix little playthings in a simulatedreality world run by an advanced civilization.

Dowd notes that Musks views reflect a dictum from Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged: Man has the power to act as his own destroyer and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

As Musk told her in the Vanity Fair article, We are the first species capable of self-annihilation.

My goodness how totally disturbing! I can see how computers would process (as they already do) and reinterpret all available information, but not develop new ideas over and above that which created them in the first place. That being case, my feeling is were going to be fine, but then again, I never imagined Id have all known data and information living in my cell phone.

And who would have thought that the once futuristic Apollo spacecraft would start to resemble a wheel?

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Gilbreth column: Disturbing concerns about artificial intelligence - Charleston Post Courier

H.B. Warner is "The King of Kings," Jesus Christ, in the 1927 Cecil B. DeMille film, which screens Wednesday at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.(Photo: The Criterion Collection)

In 1947,Lloyd T. Binford, chairman of the Memphis Board of Censors, sent a letter toDavid O. Selznick with his opinion of the Hollywood producer's latest would-beblockbuster, the Technicolor "Duel in the Sun," starring Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones.

''This production contains all the impurities of the foulest human dross," Binford wrote."It is sadism at its deepest level. It is the fleshpots of Pharaoh, modernized and filled to overflowing. It is a barbaric symphony of passion and hatred, spilling from a blood-tinted screen. It is mental and physical putrefaction. It is a story of jungle savagery which might have amused the people of Sodom and Gomorrah in the final moments of the destruction of those ancient, evil cities.''

Sounds like a must-see, right? But Binford's letter was notan endorsement. The censor banned the film from Memphis.

An appointee of Memphis mayor E.H. "Boss" Crump, Lloyd Tilghman Binford was himself the notorious "Boss" of Memphis' movie screensfrom the tail end of the silent era (1928) to the dawn of the space race (1955).

While most Memphis political figures from that time are little remembered even in their hometown, Binford who died at 89, a year after his retirement from the censor board continues to be a figure of fascination for those interested in the history of free speech, the arts,race Binford banned films that gave "too much prominence to Negroes" and movie culturein Memphis.

The censor'spurple prose contributes to the fascination: Binford's free use of over-the-top anti-superlativeswas, in some cases, a godsend to publicists.

For example, in 1954, Binfordbanned RKO's "Son of Sinbad" on the basis of "one of the vilest dances I ever saw," performed by guest celebrity stripper Lili St. Cyr (who, of course, did not get nude in the movie).

"The dance lasted about 10 minutes, and it was more of a licentious wriggle than a dance," wroteBinford, displaying a sharp memory and a keen eye for detail. "The dancer was almost naked, wearing only a G-string and a filmy sort of apron ..." Is it any wonderMemphians crossed the river in droves tocatch such films in West Memphis?

The Memphis Board of Censors did not approve of the positive depiction of "Negroes" found in Vincente Minnelli's "Cabin in the Sky" (1943).(Photo: MGM)

In recognition of Binford's impact on a city that continues to have a complicated relationship with art, race and culture, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art launches a monthly series of screenings April 12 devoted to movies that felt the censor's wrath. Each film will be introduced by a speaker (or speakers), who also will lead a public post-movie discussion.

"The project gives us the opportunity to screen some really remarkable classic films through the prism of local history, using scholars, historians, writers and filmmakers to introduce each film,"said Andria Lisle, associate curator of film and public engagement at the Brooks.

The series begins Wednesday, April 12, with "The King of Kings," Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 epic dramatization of "the Greatest Story Ever Told" the ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ (played by H.B. Warner). A Baptist deacon, Binford reportedly chastised the film for being "a perversion of the true life of Christ," and it must be admitted he had a point: The film introduces Mary Magdalene as a sexy and wealthy courtesan "Harness my zebras!" she declares whose love affair with the handsome Judas is broken when Judas joins the apostles. (Incidentally, the movie's "cast of thousands" includes two very different Rand women: Sally Rand, the notorious peek-a-boo "fan dancer," and Ayn Rand, future Objectivist philosopher and "Atlas Shrugged" author.)

Inflexibleand eccentric, Binford didn't only ban moviesfor reasons of politics, race, violence, sex and religion. Some of his motivations were extremely personal, not to mention highly subjective.

Having been aboard a train robbed at gunpoint while he was a teenage railway clerk, Binford objected to movies depicting train robbers in generaland Jesse James in particular. Healso banned films based on his judgment of the off-screen moralityof the filmmakers.

Binford objected to Charlie Chaplin films because the "London guttersnipe" was "a perverter of home life and childhood ... and a reputed endorser of the Communist party."

Movies that viewers today might deride for containing racial stereotypes were too progressive for Binford. In 1947, the censor explainedwhy he rejected"Curley," producer Hal Roach's attempt to re-create the success of his mixed-race Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies. "The South does not permit Negroes in white schools nor recognize social equality between the races, even in children.

The arbitrariness of Binford'srulings made Memphis a laughingstock or a source of pride, depending on one's point of view. In 1950, Collier's Magazine reported: "Memphis has attracted nationwide attention for movie and stage censorship so severe and so unpredictable that pictures shown without a ripple elsewhere have been barred there."

Lisle said the Binford film series gives her "particular delight" because the museum "stands for everything that Binford was against," especially when he used his censor's role "to espouseclose-minded beliefs about 'Southern womanhood'and white supremacy."

There was a lot of gunplay and a lot of Jane Russell in "The Outlaw."(Photo: United Artists)

All movies are at 7 p.m.

Admission to each film is $9, or $5 for students or museum members. Visit brooksmuseum.org.

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'Banned in Memphis' returns once-censored films to screen - The Commercial Appeal