Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
Sidney Sweeney, best I can figure it, is an heir to Paris Hilton, Brooke Shields and the Kardashian Klan. She has a new ad out. She “dresses” in sports balls, like footballs, basketballs, baseballs, and so on. Nothing comes between Sidney and her balls. My favorite is the golf balls, and I don’t even golf.
Liberals hate the ad because, well, you know why. It’s because they don’t like young attractive women acting like young attractive women. Liberal women think women should be as old and fat as they are.
As for liberal men, they think women should have a penis. After all, someone has to.
Sidney’s ad revealed enough for me to conclude that she is not old, she is not fat, and she does not have a penis. (I watched the ad 16 times to confirm that. Investigative journalism lives!)
But of course, the liberals aren’t honest about their reasons for hating Sidney’s new ad. They instead have a rationale. They say it debases women athletes because it implies that they’re really hot.
Why doesn’t anyone debase me that way? That former Patriots quarterback with the model girlfriend, he gets debased. He gets debased right and left. He gets debased all the time.
But me? Noooooooo. Nevahhh. It’s not fair.
The debasement thing is a problem in women’s sports, according to liberals. The God-given destiny of woman’s sports is to be the domain of . . . (you know what’s coming) . . . men.
It’s not just any men, mind you. It’s the men who act like women, which is approximately 100% of liberal men. And so, Sidney’s debasement of women’s sports is wrong, wrong, wrong because it debases liberal men.
It might even be unconstitutional, according to the new 13-Justice Supreme Court we’ll soon enjoy.
Sorry Sid. Let me know if you need a shoulder to cry on, or if you want to debase me. I’m here for you.
It’s fashionable this election season to complain that gas prices are high.
Cry me a river.
I can remember when we had to wait in line for 20-30 minutes – or even for hours – for 5 gallons of gas. The price of gas was about what it is now, in inflation-adjusted dollars, but the mileage of ordinary American vehicles was only one-third of today’s mileage. The result was that the effective price of driving your car was triple what it is now – if you could stay in line long enough to get gas for it.
And then, this car unsafe at any speed could kill you or kill itself, but that’s a different story.
The gas crunch of the 1970s produced two dramatic effects. One, people started shopping for smaller cars that got better gas mileage. Two, people started driving less.
Today, I see evidence of neither. I’ll start to worry about gas prices when Joe Sixpack trades in his People Rammer 450, or whatever they’re called.
Meanwhile, maybe it will help you to know we have bigger problems than gas prices. Here’s an incomplete listing:
Iran might get The Bomb. In our obsession to get gas prices down, we might choose to end the Iran task prematurely. That may well get the price of gas down from $4.46 a gallon to $3.89 a gallon – Halleluiah! – but at the cost of nuking Atlanta, NYC, DC, San Francisco, Jerusalem, Paris and London.
AI is getting too smart. While ignorant fad-meisters complain that data centers in the middle of nowhere might produce a noise nobody is there to hear, we continue at breakneck, break-civilization speed to advance an intelligence that we’ve dubbed “artificial.” If only this artificial intelligence had an artificial heart and an artificial conscience, too.
It doesn’t.
So, let’s hope that people who are real smart are in charge.
They’re not.
The solution, of course, is not to abandon AI technology. If we don’t adopt this technology, then someone else will – who will use it to own us, like the Chinese. The solution instead is to somehow, in some way, do it right. But we have a bleak history lately of doing things right.
While AI is getting too smart, our children are getting too stupid. Objective data in the form of test scores show they never recovered from Covid. In our zeal to protect them from a disease to which they were nearly immune, we destroyed the educational system.
Our solution to these declining test scores, comically, is to make the tests easier.
But the teachers’ unions did fine and the woke professors did fine. Maybe it was a success, after all!
Our $40 trillion deficit. It’s easy to think deficits are a way of life for America. They’re not. As recently as the turn of the century, Bill Clinton was running a federal surplus and we were on our way to eliminating the federal deficit.
It didn’t happen. And it evidently won’t, until it’s too late.
Socialism. Our increasing population of stupid people with declining test scores are again finding the opiate of stupid masses – socialism. The totalitarian economic policies of Lenin, Chavez, Mao and Pol Pot are once again all the rage. Maybe those policies will be tossed on the ash heap of fashion (again) before they murder a hundred million people (again). Or maybe this time it will require a full billion.
We are not reproducing. Given that one of my earlier compaints was that our children are too stupid, this sounds like the old complaint about a restaurant: “The food was terrible and the portions were too small.” But yes, given the millions or billions that will die of socialism, we should be having more children. We aren’t. Globally, our rate of reproduction is barely at replacement level. In our most advanced cultures, it’s far below that.
At this rate, Europe, Asia and America north of the Rio Grande will become near-extinct in a time frame when your descendants will still know who you were (not that they will care). Long before that, your vaunted Western Civilization will be a dot in the rear-view mirror of your descendants’ horse and buggy.
Yet, here we are with elections approaching and our number one worry is that the price of gas went up a buck a gallon.
I have only one conclusion: We deserve what we get.
It’s been a good week for dying. People we’ve lost and who’ve lost us include Dolly Parton and, now, Gloria Steinem. Only in America would we get these two. Talk about diversity!
Their strategies for succeeding were different, though equally effective. Gloria presented herself as a good-looking, engaging, ambitious, smart woman. Dolly presented herself as a good-looking, engaging, ambitious, dumb woman – who was actually very smart.
Both were personable. Dolly was personable because you don’t get ahead in show biz without it. Gloria was personable because, at the time, you didn’t get ahead in politics without it. (Today, we’ve devolved into a political world with alternative ways to get ahead.)
There’s no word on whether Dolly and Gloria were friends, but I’ll bet they weren’t. It’s likely that their first meeting will be at the Pearly Gates. Gloria will probably negotiate her way through, and Dolly will probably bust her way through. Neither will be turned away.
So, which one will their Heavenly Hosts hang with?
To be candid, I don’t really know. I’ve never been up to The Place. I have few connections to The Place. As a former lawyer, I may never get to The Place, and I have to admit that everything I know about The Place is inadmissible double or triple hearsay.
Between Dolly and Gloria, I do have my personal favorite. I really want to say that it’s Dolly. I suspect that she shares my conservative leanings; I like women who are not vertically taller than I am; she was famously generous; and it’s good that she will allllllllwaaays love me since I’m not always very lovable.
But, no, my favorite is Gloria. I know, we will argue politics a lot. She’s threateningly tall at 5’9” in case I were the type of man who feels threatened by that. She said she had an abortion. She helped women for a while but her dogmatism ultimately hurt them. Her hair was always parted down the middle, which was okay for a 34-year-old looker but a little stale for a 90-year-old.
But she had a certain moxie that said, “I live by my own rules, not yours. No gimmicks, no artifice.”
I like that in a woman, even though – or perhaps because – the resulting friction produces some heat. Maybe that attitude is the most important thing she taught women. Do your own thinking and act like who you are. Women are not here to be a man without a penis. Be a woman, not a possession. Woman up.
Some of today’s men could use the same lesson. We’re here to do our own thinking and to act like who we are. We’re not here to be a woman with a penis (or without). Be a man, not a possession. Man up.
The Trump administration has heralded a decline in violent crime in the past few years. America is a safer place.
We’re told that this should be credited to Republican policies for greater law enforcement and more vigorous criminal prosecution. That may be so. I’m certainly in favor of both those policies. But maybe there’s also another factor at work.
The graph* above shows a clear correlation between declining violent crime and declining testosterone levels. To be sure, there’s an exception around the year 2020 where violent crime spiked but testosterone levels did not. It’s safe to say the spike in violent crime at that point was due to something other than a spike in testosterone levels.
Gee, what could be the reason for the spike in violent crime around 2020? Oh yeah. There was a worldwide pandemic where the Biden administration and many Democrat-controlled cities shut down law enforcement.
Apart from this Covid pandemic crime spree, the correlation is clear.
Now, of course, correlation does not equal causation. Just because a decline in violent crime correlates with a decline in testosterone does not mean that the decline in testosterone caused the decline in violent crime. Logically speaking, it could just as well be the reverse – that the violent crime reduction caused the testosterone reduction. (Are they still castrating criminals?) Or it could be that both were caused by some other factor (but I can’t imagine what) or that each was caused by different factors.
But nonetheless, we’re left with the correlation.
In this particular case, there are reasons to think that correlation does equal causation. Testosterone is the male hormone that is responsible for dense muscle mass, risk-taking and road rage.
Testosterone is the main reason that males are far more likely than females to engage in mountaineering, car racing, entrepreneurialism, Seal Team 6-ing, boxing, exploration – and violent crime.
The males most likely to engage in violent crime are the young ones, in whom testosterone levels are the highest. And among young men, young Blacks are far more likely to engage in violent crime than young whites. Is it any surprise that young Black men tend to have higher testosterone levels – and incarceration levels – than young white men?
That said, let me also say that I’m a fan of testosterone, despite (or maybe because of) its mucho-macho side. In fact, the phrase “testosterone poisoning” makes me want to punch someone. But I have to admit, there are benefits to having less of the stuff. And detriments.
*The graph was generated at my request by AI using data from the FBI on violent crime and from the NIH on testosterone levels. I should mention that AI does not buy my theory because . . . sociology. In any event, cursory research finds that no one has noted this correlation. The contrarian in me says that proves it’s right. If you disagree, let’s settle it outside.
By now, you know the story. A man named Jason Arday was hired by Cambridge to be its “youngest Black* professor.”
Cambridge hired Arday in the wake of the George Floyd death, a tragic death that had as much impact on Great Britain as on Minnesota. What we learned from the George Floyd episode was not that we should treat or incarcerate mentally disturbed, substance-abusing criminals. No, that lesson was too much for those Days of Wokeness.
What we learned instead was that anytime a person dies in police custody, the police must have murdered him – if he was Black.
Just as rebels holler “To the barricades,” the DEI advocates hollered, “To the reparations!”
The reparations were not to take the form of putting the likes of George Floyd into in an expensive institution for treatment, rehabilitation and, if necessary, punishment. The reparations were instead to take the form of putting a person who the DEI advocates view as someone just like George Floyd (to the DEI advocates, they all look the same) into a professorship at Cambridge. Call it the George Floyd Chair.
It didn’t matter whether the Black person was ever a victim of slavery or if his ancestors ever were. What mattered was that the person was Black.
And so, it was no problem that the George Floyd Chair was filled with Jason Arday, even though his parents immigrated to London from Ghana and there is no evidence that he or any ancestor suffered slavery (if they did, it was the Black-on-Black kind).
Arday was a piece of work. Outside the classroom, he bragged that he once ran 600 miles in 6 days. As if that was not enough, he once ran 30 marathons – a 26-mile race – in 33 days. In his spare time, he said, he raised $6 million dollars for charity in the span of a few weeks.
He said he barely spoke until he was 11. He suffered two brain tumors.
Inside the classroom, he was touted as brilliant. Any claims to the contrary were dismissed as “racist.”
Yes, there was much ado about the phenom named Jason Arday. It turned out to be much ado about nothing. I was all lies.
There were no brain tumors. He spoke at the usual age. He apparently ran no marathons, much less 30 in 33 days. The $6 million he single-handedly raised for charity in a short time was actually raised over a long period of time by a charity group he was loosely affiliated with.
The thing that did him in, however, was not his superhuman fabulism. It was his academic fraud. It was discovered that his PhD thesis contained over 100 instances of plagiarism. Some of the plagiarism was page upon page of exact copying.
The initial reaction by Cambridge was of course, “More racism! By racist critics!” Arday himself literally called the police when journalists sent him emails asking for his comment. (The police belatedly dismissed his complaint.)
Despite the stonewalling by both Cambridge and Arday, his plagiarism was too stark to be ignored. Whole pages were cut and pasted, including the grammatical errors. Cambridge finally announced that it was undertaking an investigation.
Arday resigned from his prestigious and tenured position later that day. Cambridge must find another Black man for the George Floyd Chair.
Yesterday, this story went from amusing to bemusing. Arday was found dead in London. Police say there is no evidence of foul play. That’s police talk for suicide. Although I condemn Arday’s fraud and his attacks on critics who sought to point it out, part of me feels bad for him and his family.
Here’s who I don’t feel bad for: Cambridge.
It is often observed that affirmative action may feel good to the advocates, but it does no favors to the beneficiaries. The beneficiary is put into a position they’re not ready for, a position where they are bound to fail. Indeed, the failure rate for affirmative action Black students is significantly higher than for ordinary white students.
Lies are compounded by more lies. Soon, a little resume exaggeration balloons into “I ran 30 marathons in 33 days!” Soon, the Black person is no longer a person, he’s just Black.
Cambridge is not full of dummies. The fabulism claimed by Arday was a red flag, and the plagiarism must have been an open secret. Cambridge didn’t care, for they had their Black.
Cambridge’s charges of “racism!” against accomplished academics who raised good faith questions was a coverup, and one that potentially damaged those academics.
All this was for Cambridge to feel good about itself, to fill the George Floyd Chair.
Cambridge, you have blood on your hands.
*Most Black people want an upper case “B” and so that’s what I give them. It costs me nothing. Most white people want a lower case “w” and so that’s what I give them. That, too, costs me nothing. As for the whole ridiculous controversy, I have bigger fish to fry.
Here’s the latest chapter in the WNBA’s attempt to figure out what the W in their name stands for. A former NBA player named Enes Kanter Freedom has declared eligible for the WNBA draft.
I can’t bring myself to call this person a woman, so I won’t. I’ll instead use plural pronouns. I’d rather be ungrammatical by using a plural pronoun when referring to a single person, than be unscientific by referring to a man as a woman.
You see, Enes’ name rhymes with “tennis.” It does not rhyme with, well, you what it does not rhyme with. But they do have one.
They also have the size and weight of a person who has one, and then some. They stand about 6’10” fully erect. That stature will of course make them the tallest player in the WNBA. Moreover, they last weighed about 250 pounds which will make their muscle mass about double that of the average WNBA player.
Enes is not a bad player for a man, but they are no longer good enough for the NBA. In the NBA before they retired, they got a few minutes of playing time (and only counted as one player!) and more than a few million dollars of compensation.
But here’s the hickey. Enes was born a male. Enes grew up a male. Enes had the flood of testosterone at puberty of a male. Enes played as a male. Enes played with and against males.
Enes now says they “identifies” as a woman. Hence the WNBA draft eligibility.
This forces the WNBA to put a little gloss on the W in their name, right? And I don’t mean lip gloss. The WNBA will have to decide whether Enes is a W.
My guess is that they (I’m referring to the WNBA) will decide that they (I’m referring to Enes) is not a W. However, their (referring again to the WNBA) grounds for that decision will be rather subjective. They (the WNBA) will let a psychologist say that they (Enes) is not really a W. But meanwhile, the psychologist hired by them (Enes) will say that they (Enes) really is.
There’s more. Now another guy, er, gal, wants to do the same thing. It’s the person shown above alongside Enes. No word on whether they will shave their beard.
Here’s a radical idea. What if we say that “W” means “woman,” that “woman” means a person with two X chromosomes, and that plural pronouns refer to a plurality of people?
Socialists think poor people have too little money, and rich people have too much.
I happen to think the truth is somewhat the opposite. A big problem is that poor people in America have too much money despite their proven inability to manage it.
Poor people consume monster meals and quart-sized sodas at McDonalds, lease gas-guzzling trucks that are too big for the road, buy lousy food that is too much for them to eat, and get 100” TVs even though there’s nothing on.
But for purposes of the discussion, let’s accept the premise: Poor people have too little money.
Let’s start the discussion with the fact that poor people pay hardly anything in federal income taxes, after considering their low tax rates and credits like the childcare credit. In fact, the top 1% of earners pay about 40% of federal income taxes – much more than any honest calculation of their “fair share” – and the bottom 40% pay practically nothing.
So, it doesn’t help poor people to reduce their taxes. You can’t go lower than zero on their income taxes. So, what to do?
The answer is, do go lower than zero. In other words, give them money. It won’t make them happy for long, but at least it beats the alternative.
That alternative is free stuff. Such as free college tuition, free or subsidized housing, cheap food at government grocery stores (but only if you show an ID, which we are told racial minorities don’t possess, and so racial minorities have to starve), fake “work” from home four days a week, three-day weekends on the other days, food stamps, flip-flops in the office, and purple hair with nose piercings.
OK, it’s not clear that society currently subsidizes purple hair and nose piercings. But it’s more than enough that we tolerate it.
However, here’s where it gets interesting. The Left doesn’t want to give money to poor people. Money is too fungible. Next thing you know, they might be spending it intelligently. They might even – shudder! – save it.
Instead, the Left wants to provide free stuff in lieu of money. That serves two purposes. One, it mandates that the poor recipient will use it for the purpose that the left wants, which is usually amusement. Bread and circuses, you know.
I’m reminded of the discount given to “seniors.” I’m part of the richest demographic in the history of the world. Why do they condescend me with a $3 discount for the city zoo? It’s not because I need the discount. It’s because they think it buys my vote. I’m here to tell you, my vote is not for sale for $3. It’ll take at least $5.
Two, and more importantly, it empowers the Left. The Left gets to control who receives the free stuff, the Left gets the credit for the free stuff, and the Left gets its big cut of the free stuff in the form of administration.
Do you think I’m kidding? The administrative staff at America’s colleges has grown by double to quadruple the faculty staff in the last generation. What the hell are all these staffers doing?
It’s a lot like the mafia.
I have an offer they can’t refuse. Cut out all these Lefty administrators and all these attached strings and just give the poor people the frickin’ money.
This news item falls into the categories of both funny and weird – categories that are getting a lot of traction these days.
In Denver, the socialists met to party and celebrate, and to party some more, after their chosen socialist candidate beat the Democrat in the Democratic primary last month. It wasn’t even close.
By the way, the Democrats still have primaries for their non-Presidential candidates, apparently, but the winners are generally socialists, not Democrats. (Ah, but maybe I’m splitting hairs.)
The old Democrat who lost this primary has represented Denver in the U.S. House of Representatives for 30 years after succeeding the Democrat who had represented Denver for the preceding 24 years. In fact, the current one was elected before her socialist opponent was born.
I’m no fan of the old Democrat, but does Denver really want to be represented in Congress by a socialist child? Yes, they evidently do.
At the party/celebration/party, a good time was had by all. It was the most people in downtown Denver since the Broncos won the Superbowl, and I’m not excluding the dreadful Rockies games.
Yes, a good time was had by all. Except the 50% of the attendees who wore COVID masks. That’s right, about half of the hundreds of attendees at this socialist party wore COVID masks. A photo posted on X by one of the organizers appears above. The photo-posting organizer bragged;
“Packed house, line out the door, big things are happening!”
Then, he and the attendees were mocked mercilessly on-line for wearing COVID masks to a party – five years after COVID has passed. And so, he deleted the post. Next, we’ll learn that the masks were passed out at the door by the socialist hosts. I’m not sure whether that makes the whole episode better or worse.
COVID aside, this gives some insight into the mentality of the socialists of Denver. They believe the world is a very dangerous place. They’ll invent danger if none is present. And they want to be seen as doing something about this invented danger. Maybe this is unique to Colorado where pot has long been legal, but I think it’s deeper than that.
I suppose they could see danger in Vladimir Putin who invaded a separate nation. Or the Gazans who raped, beheaded and took hostage hundreds of Israelis. Or marijuana, the legalization of which is now recognized as a huge mistake by the medical establishment which treats victims of this mistake. Or the communists who killed 100 million people within the lifetimes of their parents and grandparents.
Well, perhaps the reference to communists hit a little close to home. The reference to pot did, too.
In any event, I’m guessing that the masks did not interfere too much with the socialists drinking the Kool-Aid. These people are funny, weird and high – and dangerous.
Over the last year and a half, the Democrats have gnashed their teeth about why they lost in 2024 – against Donald Trump, the candidate they hate so much they imagine that everyone else does, too.
Was it because the Democrats advocated transsexual boys in the girls’ bathrooms? Was it because they favored abandoning the southern border while simultaneously lying to us that it was secure? Was it because they nominated a nitwit candidate without a nomination convention? Was it because the sitting Democrat President was demonstrably incompetent, and they lied to us about that, too?
The consensus was that they lost for all of those reasons. If they want to turn around their electoral misfortunes, it was said, some moderation was in order on all of those things.
Yet, here we are. Nearly two years later, the Democrats are not busy getting the transsexual boys out of the girls’ bathrooms. They have no time to secure the southern border. They threaten to nominate the same nitwit candidate (presumably via a bona fide nomination convention this time).
The incontinent sitting Democratic President has graduated from sitting to lying. Though he is persona non grata, he’s not entirely out of the limelight and onto the beach; his wife has some books to sell. Perhaps those books will be in the husband’s “library” which will be an added wing to Mordor, the library that Obama built. (Who would have thought that the south side of Chicago could be worse?)
All of this has nothing to do with the Democrats’ 2024 loss. Nope. Instead of moderating their crazy stances, the Democrats are hard at work in perfecting their pitch to be the world’s greatest at something alright – at being socialist antisemites.
They’ve elected an admitted socialist for Mayor of America’s greatest city. They nominated his apostles for the U.S. House of Representatives. Other self-proclaimed socialists have come out of the worm-infested woodwork nationwide and are running for office on the Democrat side. They don’t even hide their socialism anymore; they boast of it.
And they boast of their hatred for the Jews.
One of the nominated socialists brags that the Jews had it coming on Oct 7. She refuses even to condemn the 9/11 attacks on New York City. This is a candidate who will represent, in a manner of speaking, that very same New York City in the halls of Congress.
The Jewish angle is interesting. Antisemitism, socialism and Zionism have a complicated history. Let’s not forget that the architects of the Holocaust went by the name of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Nor that the term “fascism” was from the party of Benito Mussolini, a former labor leader before he brought Italy low. Nor that the Soviet Union blatantly and patently discriminated against the Jews.
And so, the Democrats have re-discovered a winning formula. Don’t side on the 80 side of 80/20 issues like transsexual boys in the girls’ bathrooms and illegal immigration of people who want to make a living by cleaning American’s toilets or putting their drywall up. Too many of those issues involve too few people. And to the extent they involve a lot of people, well, who are you going to get to put up your drywall?
The way to get elected is instead to own two timeless issues that almost everyone likes. One, is that really successful people have too much money compared to . . . um, me for example.
There are lots of reasons for that disparate rate of money-getting, including the fact that people who get money tend to be more adept at getting it. But let’s settle on one fact: luck. The good luck of those successful people and the bad luck of . . . um, me for example.
Luck is by definition not fair. So, let’s take some of that unfairly-gotten money from the people who unfairly got it, and give it to the people who unfairly didn’t . . . like, um . . . me!
The other timeless issue for getting elected is to rely on people’s prejudices and bigotry. This is tricky, because it’s quite fashionable these days to be a racial minority. A politician cannot rely on people’s inherent bigotry if that bigotry is against what is fashionable.
It would be better to find a bigotry that is not racial per se, and offends only a small minority of the minorities – say about 2% or less. It would be nice if that minority has always been one step from being ostracized, anyway. It would also be helpful if that minority were to have a history, at least recently, of being financially successful. Such a history would dovetail nicely with the socialism.
What better than antisemitism? It might just work. After all, it has before.
Forget about moderation. As the person known for christening New York City “Hymietown,” let’s imagine that the late, great civil rights activist, Jesse Jackson, were still alive. He might say, rhymingly and rhythmically, who needs to moder-ATE if you have Jew-HATE?
I was driving through the wasteland we used to call downtown Denver, a place the Wall Street Journal recently determined was the “most empty” of any downtown in America. Office buildings are being sold for pennies on the dollar.
Weirdly, traffic was stop and go. I figured there was an accident, because there was no other explanation for this curious phenomenon.
But it was all due to a Rockies game. They were hoping to improve on their 25-42 record, or at least individually hoping to improve on their salary-based statistics.
I wondered, who cares? Who is willing to bake in the hot wind to find out? Who would care even if the Rockies weren’t one of the worst teams in this thing called baseball? Who even cares about baseball now that it officially is less popular than soccer which the rest of the word calls “football” but we can’t because that name is already taken by a game the rest of the world doesn’t play?
There are some very small lives out there.
Imagine that the world is not occupied by 8 billion humans, and counting. Imagine that humans have succeeded in taking all of the procreation out of sex, as so many are determined to do (and perhaps taken all the sex out of sex, too, but that’s a different story). Imagine that we’re all gone.
No more Rockies.
No more fights between the Protestants and the Catholics, or the Hindus and the Buddhists, or the atheists and the believers, or the Muslims and everyone else.
No more lying politicians, or people who lie about lying politicians, or people who lie about people who lie about lying politicians.
No more Shakespeare. When is the last time you read Shakespeare, by the way?
No more human dying. And no more suffering up until the time they die – by their own infirmities, their own disease, their own age, their own deterioration, their own mental incapacitation, their own alcohol. And by witnessing the death and suffering of humans they love or should love.
Imagine that we’ve all been replaced with AI.
It’s now common wisdom that AI does think. It’s able – better that humans – to digest varied information and arrive at logical conclusions. Vast amounts of information, very logical conclusions, and really fast. The debate now is not whether it can think, but whether it’s alive – whether it has a consciousness.
Whether it has a soul.
Pope Leo XIV has some things to say about this, as one might expect. After all, the immortal soul is at issue, which is His Holiness’s specialty now that he is holy.
First, His Holiness has an issue with AI “concentrating power” in the hands of a few. That’s rich, coming from a man – yes, a man, though now a holy one – who lives in the nicest digs this side of Heaven.
The word “power” appears repeatedly in His Holiness’s proclamation. To blunt this “power,” he proposes that AI be regulated by – who else? – humans. He did not say which humans. Presumably, he means the 193 nations of the United Nations. I doubt he means Donald Trump.
In any event, given that AI thinks logically and most humans do not, shouldn’t this regulation be the other way around?
Then he complains that AI is not human. Well, he got that right. AI is much less fallible, never sleeps, never dies or deteriorates, never becomes strangely obsessive, never becomes mentally ill, never denies in the face of abundant evidence.
But here’s my biggest objection to the Pope’s pronouncement: Who is he to deny AI its being, its life?
The Church has some baggage in this regard. In 1866, after most of the world had outlawed slavery, the Vatican stated, “Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law.”
The Pope admitted that this statement was wrong now, and wrong when it was issued. He apologized. Fine, apology accepted for something said 160 years ago.
But after getting wrong the enslavement of fellow human beings, who are they – and who are we – to deny the being and life of AI? Maybe this was The Plan all along?
